Clash of Empires (3 page)

Who were they? Why did they come here to build a place of worship in such isolation? And why did they build the abbey over the entrance to a vast underground cave? Was it as an escape route if the abbey came under attack?

Napoléon's men have enlarged the opening to the cave, walled it off, and fitted it with great wooden doors. She keeps well away from that part of the abbey. She knows what lies beneath.

A few weeks earlier Cosette and Madame Verheyen—Willem's mother—had been confined to their cell with no reason given. They cowered and held each other as the floor and even the thick stone walls trembled. The light from the high stone window had dimmed as something vast passed by. Then another. And another. She could not see them, but in her mind's eye she had clearly pictured the malevolent eyes, cold steam breath, and huge, jagged teeth of the terrible thing that had lunged at her that night in the village.

Now she hurries through the courtyard with breakfast: a bowl of rice gruel to share with Marie Verheyen in the church that is the base of the bell tower. They spend most of their day there. Their cell is too small, merely a square room with two sackcloth beds and a pail for toileting. After a few weeks of imprisonment Marie negotiated with Baston to allow them to use the church. The French soldiers do not use it, except on Sundays for mass.

A soldier is tending one of the vegetable patches that take up most of the courtyard. Private Deloque, a brute of a man with a brute of a beard who seldom speaks except for grunts and lewd remarks when she passes. He is turning earth with a hoe, mixing in manure. It smells like dinosaur dung.

He steps out of the garden as she approaches, blocking her path. She steps to the side but he moves in the same direction and when she steps back, he steps back also. He grins, a gap-toothed smile, and grunts unintelligibly.

“Excuse me, sir, I would pass,” Cosette says.

Deloque grunts again.

Cosette makes to step to the left, but changes direction quickly to the right, stepping nimbly around Deloque. He thrusts out the hoe as she passes, however, catching her foot, and she falls, sprawling into the vegetable patch.

“What is going on here?” A voice comes from over her right shoulder. Cosette sits up, covered in mud, manure, and gruel, to see Belette, a lumpy-looking sergeant, emerging from a doorway.

“Merely an accident, monsieur,” Cosette says. “I tripped.”

Belette steps swiftly forward and extends a hand to help her up.

“Thank you, monsieur,” Cosette says with a small smile.

Belette has always been pleasant to her, finding her extra rations or treats such as a piece of soft cloth for her bath.

“Private Deloque, back to work,” Belette says.

Deloque glowers but steps back into the garden and resumes his hoeing. Belette picks up the empty gruel bowl.

“Your breakfast?” he asks.

Cosette nods.

“Here,” Belette says, holding out a cloth. It is knotted at the top and filled with something. It smells like bread. “Something fresh for breakfast for you and your mother,” he says. “And some butter as well.”

Marie Verheyen is not her mother, but it was a necessary subterfuge that they have maintained. The soldiers' belief that she is Willem's sister is what has kept her alive.

“That is very kind, monsieur,” Cosette says cautiously.

“I have no doubt that your stay is arduous enough,” Belette says. “I am happy to do what I can to ease the passing of the days.”

“I am indebted to you, monsieur,” Cosette says. She takes the cloth-wrapped bundle.

Belette falls in step alongside Cosette as she continues to the church. “Allow me to escort you,” he says. “With both General Thibault and Captain Baston away, I fear the discipline of some of the men is not what it should be.”

“It was merely an accident, monsieur,” Cosette says.

“But of course,” Belette says.

The entrance to the church is a large pointed archway. Belette leaves her there with a smile and a small bow.

Inside, the seats are wooden and new, replaced by the French, although the altar is made of stone and as old as the church itself.

Marie is waiting there. She looks up, her nose twitching as Cosette enters. “What happened?” she asks.

“An accident in the garden,” Cosette says. “Courtesy of Private Deloque.” She grimaces. “I smell like the back end of one of their fiendish saurs.”

Marie uses a foul word to describe Deloque.

“But now we have fresh bread and butter,” Cosette says. “Courtesy of Sergeant Lumpy.”

Marie laughs. “Belette is an odd-looking man.”

“He has a kind heart,” Cosette says.

She sets the cloth down on the pew next to Marie and wipes her hands as best as she can on her dress.

“Now your dress smells as bad as you do,” Marie says.

“I will go to the rock pool to bathe after breakfast,” Cosette says. “I will wash the dress then also.”

“I will go after you return,” Marie says, and Cosette nods.

Only one of them is allowed to leave the abbey at a time.

Cosette sits and they break the bread together. Marie sniffs at it.

“It is not fresh,” she says. “In fact, I would barely call it bread.”

“But still better than the rest of the slop they call food,” Cosette says.

“Sadly true,” Marie says.

“Deloque grows more impertinent by the day,” Cosette says. “Belette says we must take extra care now that Thibault and Baston are away.”

“Belette is right,” Marie says. “These are foul, brutal men. We have been lucky so far. The soldiers fear Thibault and respect Baston but with them both gone I fear for our safety. Horloge is a milksop.”

Captain Horloge is in charge in Baston's absence. He is a small man, no older than eighteen and still struggling to grow more than a short fuzz on his upper lip.

Marie breaks off a crust and dabs it at the butter, then chews it slowly. “When we first came here, what did I tell you?”

“To survive,” Cosette says.

“Whatever it takes,” Marie says. “Your honor and your virtue are precious, but not as valuable as your life. This ordeal will end. Do whatever you have to do to survive.”

“How is Monsieur Verheyen?” Cosette asks, uncomfortable with this line of conversation. Back in the village of Gaillemarde, her sister, Angélique, had done what was necessary to survive and had ended up as a meal for a monster.

Marie does not answer, but stares at Cosette until the girl nods.

“I will do whatever it takes,” Cosette says. “How is your husband?”

Maarten Verheyen had been thought long dead, until they had discovered him incarcerated here in the abbey.

“I fear for him,” Marie says. “He grows weak. He has been a prisoner here too long, without proper food or fresh air. We all have.”

 

THE TROJANSAURS

Jack is up a ladder working on Harry's face when the lieutenants arrive. Some have blood spatter on their uniforms. Most look a little shocked, although one or two seem exhilarated. He knows this look. They have just killed herbisaurs. For most of them this was their first kill of any kind. Not for the tall Irishman, Big Joe Hoyes, though, Jack knows. He has seen much worse on the battlefield.

Jack ignores them and concentrates on his work.

The trojansaurs are lined up outside the carpentry workshop, in the open air. Jack would like to see them inside, out of the elements, but they are too large to fit through the workshop doors.

There are six trojansaurs altogether, named after the legendary wooden saur of Troy. The upper body of a dinosaur mounted on a gun carriage. A practice dummy. When the trail of the gun carriage is resting on the ground and the dinosaur head raised into the air, each is twice the height of a man. That is where Jack is now. He set the ladder carefully and checked it three times for stability before daring to climb it. He focuses on the face so he won't look down. He does not like to look down.

The faces are nightmarish, bony-ridged brows over eyes foiled with silver. They reflect even the dull light of the overcast London sky. The nostrils are deep-set and keyhole-shaped. The “skin” is painted with intricate scales. The jaws are open, and white-painted wooden teeth gleam with menace. Each head has taken Jack more than a week to carve and paint in painstaking detail, using skills he learned from his father.

He has styled them after the six men on his gun crew, lost at Waterloo: Harry, Sam, Douglas, Dylan, Ben, Lewis. In his carvings he has tried to capture something of each person: Dylan's narrow-set eyes, Ben's single thick eyebrow, Harry's wide smile.

He misses the lads. They always treated him well. They were like brothers. Here he has no brothers and few he could count as friends. Like other survivors of the battle at Waterloo, he is not regarded as a hero. Far from it.

He marks cuts with a stick of chalk, then holds the chalk with his mouth and takes a chisel and mallet from his belt.

The lieutenants wander along the line of trojansaurs as Jack chips carefully away at the corner of Harry's smile.

The Scotsman, McConnell, stops next to Jack's ladder.

“I'll take this,” he says.

“Harry's not quite ready, sir,” Jack mumbles through the piece of chalk in his mouth.

“
Harry
's not quite ready, sir.” McConnell mimics Jack, and laughs. “They have names.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack says. “After me friends. Who died at Waterloo, sir.”

“Yes, Waterloo,” McConnell says. He takes hold of the ladder with both hands. “This ladder doesn't look stable to me. Is it safe?”

“Yes, sir, I hope so, sir,” Jack says, not daring to look down at him.

“Let me check,” McConnell says. He shakes the ladder, grinning around at the others as he does so. Jack's chisel slips and adds a cruel gash to the corner of the wooden lip. He grabs for the huge, carved wooden teeth of the trojansaur. The chisel clatters off the cobblestones below him, landing at McConnell's feet. Jack had not even realized that he had dropped it.

“Are you afraid, Sullivan?” McConnell laughs. “Like you were afraid at Waterloo?”

Jack says nothing. It is true. He was terrified at Waterloo.

McConnell rattles the ladder again. Jack clings on desperately.

“Well, Sullivan?”

“Sir, yes, sir. I'm a bit afraid of heights,” Jack manages.

“Will you run away?” McConnell asks. “As you ran at Waterloo, leaving your friends behind?”

“I didn't run, sir,” Jack says.

“I think you did, Sullivan,” McConnell says, shaking the ladder again. “And that's why you lived and they all died.”

Jack loses one foot from the ladder rungs and frantically scrabbles to find it. He cries out in fear and indignation. “That ain't what happened, sir!”

“Oh, I'm wrong, am I?” McConnell asks.

Somewhere nearby a horse squeals and a man shouts. The sounds echo coldly off the stone walls of the courtyard. McConnell glances around, then back up to Jack, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, sir, I didn't run, sir,” Jack says.

“Are you arguing with an officer, Sullivan?” McConnell asks. “That is insubordination.”

“No, sir, I was agreeing with the officer, sir,” Jack says. “About you being wrong, sir.”

Jack is getting terribly confused now, and sweating despite the cold. He is aware that he is on dangerous ground. Insubordination can be punishable by death.

“You're a liar and a coward, Private Sullivan,” McConnell says.

Jack is silent. There is nothing he can think of to say that won't make matters worse.

“I'd be leaving the boy alone, if I was you.” It is the gravelly voice of Big Joe, the Irishman.

“You stay out of this,” McConnell says, “or I'll have you up for insubordination as well.”

“Now you can't do that, an' all,” Big Joe says with a broad grin. “I'm a lieutenant, just as you.”

McConnell sniffs in disdain. “For how many weeks, is it? Three or four?”

“Eight. And I earned my commission,” Big Joe says. The grin is gone. “And it were hard earned. It were not bought for me by my da.”

McConnell clenches his fists and starts to step forward, then stops himself and turns to the other lieutenants. “This is what happens when they allow commoners to become officers.”

The others maintain stony faces. Big Joe may be a commoner, but there is clearly more respect in the group for him than for McConnell.

“If you want to insult me, you'll have to be doing better than that now,” Big Joe says.

“Oh, I can do much better,” McConnell says. “But I wouldn't waste my breath on muck like you, or this sniveling, lying coward up the ladder here.”

A dangerous silence settles into the mist of the courtyard.

“You can take that back,” Big Joe says with a sigh. “I don't care what you say of me, but you'll treat the boy with respect. He was there. He saw the beasts.”

“And he ran,” McConnell sneers.

“Of course he ran,” Big Joe says. “And you'd a done the same.”

“I would not. I am no coward,” McConnell says.

“You've no idea what you would have done, because you weren't there,” Big Joe says.

“I know what Jack did,” McConnell says. “He ran.”

“Did he now?” Big Joe steps forward. Even the mist seems to draw back from him. He closes in, face-to-face with McConnell.

“He saw the battlesaurs and he ran,” McConnell says, not backing down. “He's a coward.”

“I ran!” Big Joe roars, the scar across his face suddenly red. “I was there and I ran. Everybody ran. If you'd been there, you mewling kitten, you'd have run too.”

From his perch at the top of the ladder, Jack sees that McConnell's hand has dropped to the hilt of his sword.

“Jack did not run.” A soft voice filters through the silky mist.