Well, thought Steel, that was a hard one for a man in his position. Perhaps a year ago he might not have found it so. But now he had a beautiful wife who was in love with him, as he was with her, and thus he had no real desire for further female company. She had protested when he had announced that he must go away, but had relented with the promise of further advancement. Steel had not, of course, told her his destination, merely that he was under orders from Marlborough himself. That had been enough to calm her. He knew that she would now be content to await his return. At least she would be comfortable, even on their modest income. Although, even he admitted, perhaps a little more would not go amiss. Particularly with Henrietta’s tastes. He had his health, God and the French willing. And he had his profession. What more in truth could any soldier want but rank, wealth, health and love?
He smiled, patted the horse gently on the neck and saw that he was approaching a village. It seemed a small and peaceful place, with plumes of smoke curling up into the fresh air from the crooked stone chimneys. At present, he reckoned, the people would just be entering the height of a busy morning’s work. As Steel passed along the street a few of the inhabitants glanced up at him but, somewhat to his surprise, none remarked upon the presence of the tall red-coated soldier. The truth was that they had grown used to such sights. Indeed the oldest of them could still recall the day in 1643 when the Spanish invaders had come here to be met by the French under the Duc d’Enghien at a place called Rocroi and been all but annihilated. What a time that had been. The villagers had cheered their victorious troops from the windows and festooned them with garlands. But today, as this tall, solitary horseman retraced the footsteps of d’Enghien’s regiments, there was no rejoicing. The people seemed sullen, and that broke his mood of contented levity. Somewhere a dog barked, and in a distant farm a cock crowed ceaselessly. Steel passed through the place without event, yet once again in open countryside he felt dejected, as if the mood of the place had sent a cloud into the sky directly above him. He could not quite place it, but he knew that in the space of minutes something had gone awry with his apparently flawless world. Nothing, of course, could ever be as perfect as it had for an instant seemed. Quite what was wrong, though, he had yet to discover.
He rode on, passing the wayside distance marker stones as they counted down the miles to Paris and listening to the church bells as they chimed his way by the hour through the French villages. He reckoned that he must be travelling at around eight miles an hour. It was not a bad speed, but if he were to keep his rendezvous he knew that he would have to make faster time, so he pushed the horse on, as gently as he could.
Soon the villages began to grow more numerous and larger, and then they became towns. At the town of Roye he rode at a careful pace below the walls of the citadel under the inquisitive eyes of the French garrison guards, but no one summoned him. No one questioned his presence. To the sentries too this man was merely another solitary soldier in an apparently friendly uniform, a messenger, perhaps, on his way back into France. The men on the battlements, seeing the sergeant of the guard wave Steel on with a cursory glance at his papers of travel (faked, of course), spat and cursed at the devil for his luck, for they all knew Marlborough and his accursed polyglot army, drawn from the gutters of Europe, might be here and upon them at any time. Tales were coming in daily of atrocities perpetrated by Lord Marlbrook’s dragoons upon defenceless French civilians. Fires, it was said, rose from a thousand towns and villages of Picardy and Artois. Women, it was claimed, had been raped by the dozen, and scores of innocent suckling infants put to the sword. Had the sentries but known Steel’s true identity they would have tried to string him up from a tree with no questions asked. But happily they did not know, and he was also blissfully unaware of the rumours. Confidence increasing by the hour, he made the crossroads at Conchy and took, as Hawkins had directed, the straight road to cross the Oise at Pont Ste. Maxence.
For a further half-day Steel road on. Then, as dusk began to fall and weary from two days in the saddle, he found himself on the outskirts of a dense forest. Aware that this area of the north of France was known for wild boar, and not wishing either to disturb a hunting party or to enter into an argument with one of the notoriously ferocious creatures, he decided to stay close to the edge yet sufficiently within the tree line to afford cover. Naturally, making such a circumnavigation took a good deal longer than had he plunged through the woods, and it soon began to grow dark. Steel dismounted, and having eked out the last of the stale bread and hard cheese that he had brought from the camp and washed it down with the little Tokay and brandy that remained in the two flasks that had been provided by the ever-thoughtful Colonel Hawkins, he wrapped himself in his cloak and made as good a bed as he could from the undergrowth. Sleep, as it always did when he was in the open, came to him unbidden and without much effort, and his last impression was of a canopy of trees above which the stars hung suspended in a cloudless night sky.
He was awakened shortly after dawn by a sharp cry from his front, followed by a shot. In an instant sleep was forgotten and his senses sprang into action. Instinct, which in many another man might have made him spring up and betray himself, told Steel to freeze to the spot. He pressed his taut form deep into the earth and prayed only that his horse, which, sporting an unmistakably military-style harness, was standing a few yards off, chewing happily on a patch of borage, might not yet be spotted by the intruders, whoever they might be. Cautiously and careful not to make the slightest sound, he felt to his side and found his sword. It was his most trusted weapon now. His deadly fusil he had left with the company, exchanging it unhappily for a pair of pistols, given him by Hawkins, which hung inaccessible in long leather holsters across his saddle, their ammunition held in a small leather box on a belt.
The voices sounded again, shouting clearly in French and closer now, and Steel’s fevered mind began to hatch a plan. Craning his neck so that he was able to peer through a gap in the foliage, he was able to see one of the figures. The man was dressed in a uniform, but none that Steel had seen before and certainly not military in design. It was of green velveteen and ornamented with gold at the collar and cuffs. On his head he wore a skullcap of the same design, and in his hand he held a long spear. Taking him at first for some courtier in a masque, Steel soon realized that he was in fact a huntsman. As he watched, another man appeared to his left, in similar dress. So that was it: he had stumbled into the middle of a boar hunt. These were the hunters, and close behind no doubt would be the quality, the gentlemen and ladies of the hunting party.
The advance party was almost upon him now. Dangerously close. Steel decided that there was nothing to do but bluff it out. Here would be a test, rather sooner than he had anticipated, of his newly assumed character. The only problem was how to make his presence known without giving the huntsmen cause to take him as their quarry and stick him with their spears. This worry, though, was quickly and violently put to flight by others of a more serious nature. Steel was already in the process of getting to his feet when his horse gave a loud whinny of distress, drawing not only his attention but that of the group of huntsmen, whose numbers had now grown to a half dozen. It was not the mare, however, but rather the cause of her alarm which now froze them all in their tracks. For not five yards away from where Steel had been asleep and where he now stood, clear in the red coat against the undergrowth, the huge form of a wild boar rose up from the dense foliage and stood utterly motionless, staring hard in his direction. Steel reckoned it must be a good five feet above the ground and in length half that of his horse. Its head was crowned by a mane of black hair, and on either side of its flat snout was a long, sharp, curved white tusk. The man nearest Steel stared too. The boar he could understand. He was a huntsman, and this was a hunt in a forest full of such creatures. But what was this other beast? This red-coated soldier who had risen from the ground was something quite unexpected. He was wise enough to know that now was not the time to question who this stranger might be – probably, he thought, a deserter or a poacher. He resolved to deal with the matter in hand and whispered to Steel, in French, ‘Monsieur, I beg you, do not move. Stay quite still.’
Steel nodded his head and slowly eased his right hand across his body and down towards the hilt of his sword. The boar snorted, gouts of steaming breath clouding the air from its nostrils.
As he slid the sword from its scabbard Steel was aware of the baying of hounds behind him, and seconds later a pack of hunting dogs broke into the clearing. Seeing them, the boar panicked. Steel’s sword was clear now and he held it before him, as ready as he might be for the beast. But it was not at him but elsewhere that the boar’s eye was fixed. The hounds were circling him now, gums drawn back and teeth bared, snarling. Not waiting, the boar lunged forward and tore through the pack, tossing one dog to one side with a razor-sharp tusk and goring it. The dogs stood back but the boar went on and hit the most forward of the green-coated huntsmen full on. The man was thrown to the ground, winded and, Steel could see, with a slight cut to his thigh from one of the tusks. The boar stood above him now, head raised, ready to push down with its full weight and skewer the man to the earth. Instinctively, Steel leapt from his position and, landing on the beast’s back, plunged his blade hard into its head. But if he had thought to kill it he was wrong. The boar bellowed in agony and the huntsman rolled away before it had time to complete its attack. Steel clung on to its back and endeavoured to withdraw his sword. There was a noise, a shout as another of the men called across to the pack, and suddenly around Steel and the boar a dozen dogs were tearing at the creature’s flesh. Its blood flew up in gouts, and one unlucky hound was too slow to avoid being impaled upon the boar’s right tusk, where it hung, stuck through in mid-air, howling pitifully. Behind the dogs came the huntsmen. Four firm shoves from their expert pikes were all it took to finish the job. As Steel slithered off the dying creature and at last drew out the gory blade the wounded man was helped away from the scene. Steel stood recovering, and through the noise of hunting horns and shouts he heard a single voice calling desperately from behind the huntsmen.
‘Let me see. Let me through. Get out of my way.’
As Steel watched a horse broke into the clearing – a huge black hunter of perhaps fifteen hands, sweating and snorting in the morning air. The green-clad figures parted and bowed in deference. Its rider pulled up before the gory, cacophonous spectacle, and looked upon the scene with an expression which to Steel’s mind seemed to marry disgust with pleasure in equal measure. What made such a reaction all the more surprising and unnerving was that the newcomer was a woman.
She was of small stature, with almost the figure of an adolescent girl, and she was breathtakingly beautiful, with an aquiline nose and Cupid’s bow lips. Her most remarkable feature, though, was her eyes, which were of a deep emerald green. Seeing the squealing, half-dead dog and the bleeding boar, she let out a gasp not of horror but of delight. ‘Oh how splendid nature can be when at her very cruellest.’
The dog, still impaled upon the tusk, was squealing now in a madness of agony. The senior huntsman approached the woman: ‘My lady. Might we –’
She brushed him away with her hand. ‘Not now, François. Can’t you see I’m watching?’
‘But Your Ladyship, the laws of nature and all humanity dictate that we must dispatch the beast, put it out of its misery. The boar too –’
‘Silence, man! I dictate what happens in my forest. Not nature, and most certainly not humanity. Don’t you dare challenge me. Next time I’ll have you horse-whipped.’
The man was silent.
It was then that for the first time she noticed Steel. ‘Who’s this? You there. Who are you, man? And what the devil are you doing on my land? Master Marin, who is this man?’
The huntsman answered, ‘I do not know his name, milady, but he saved the life of young Hébert.’
Steel bowed and attempted to look as officer-like as his filthy state would allow. ‘Captain Johnson, milady, of the Irish Brigade, in the service of King Louis. I travel on the King’s business, milady.’
She frowned and looked at him long and hard. Steel felt the sharp green eyes searching deep into his soul, boring into his mind. He could feel, too, the sweat coursing down his back. It was as if she was deciding what to do with him, just as she might with any poacher or indeed quarry found in her forest.
At length she spoke again, with a smile. ‘Well, Captain, if you are on the King’s business then you had better be about it. Your uniform vouches for your story. What regiment are you?’
Steel, surprised at her interest, replied, ‘Clare’s, ma’am.’
‘Oh yes, poor Lord Clare. You knew him?’
‘Indeed, ma’am. A fine man. A damn shame that he should die in that way. Killed in cold blood – by a heathen.’
She nodded. ‘I believe now that you are who you say you are, Captain. But you’d best be on your way. Thank you for saving my servant. Good men are so hard to come by these days.’
Steel was not certain as to whether he had been correct in detecting the slightly salacious edge to her last comment, but her look of parting told him that he had not been wrong.