Should he, then, have done the same, at least until the thing was decided? Was he a coward, or at least less brave, to be deserting them at this moment while the issue was still in the balance? Once or twice during the day he would have been glad to have accepted that stricture if it could have given him the freedom to turn and tell his followers that after all he had changed his mind and instead of hugging the French coast they were going to sail straight back to Cornwall and their homes and the safety and comfort and routine of their daily lives. This undertaking they were about to engage in was proper perhaps to a hot young fool of twenty-one dreaming his dreams of death or glory; it was not the sort of venture to be led by a successful mine-owner of rising thirty-six with a wife and two children and a position in the county. How George would laugh. Or more probably sneer. And how justified he would be!
They made the coast across the bay about six in the afternoon, and then there was much poring over the chart to decide which was the river entrance they sought. Tregirls had been twice in these waters during his years at sea, and it was his experience that took them towards the village of Benodet at the entrance to the river Odet. An hour later they sailed in through the narrow inlet and into the broader water beyond. It was still full daylight but the fact that they were in a French fishing boat enabled them to pass unchallenged. Twice men called to them from the other boats and Tholly replied with obscenities that seemed to satisfy.
The wind was fitful between the wooded hills, and as these closed in and the river narrowed again it almost failed. But they just kept way on. By now they were approaching steep and wooded cliffs. It was a dubious point how far they should sail in. According to the chart, after passing through this narrow gorge the river broadened again into a placid lake more than half a mile wide. But anywhere now they might be stopped, and still darkness was a way off. Ross raised his eyebrows at Tholly, who was at the tiller, and Tholly shrugged and said:
‘It’s up to you, cap’n.’
‘Then risk it.’
They reached the bay as it was called on the chart, and the dying sun threw startling shadows and tipped the tree tops with flame. A few cottages glimmered in the evening light. Mainly these were on the eastern bank, so they kept close to the western, which was overgrown and much wilder, with one or two châteaux on rising ground among the trees. They came on a tongue of water running off to the left; it was narrow and greatly overhung but the channel looked deep enough to take them. Ross motioned to Tholly, who put the tiller over. They drifted gently into the creek, sails coming down as quietly as they could be made to.
The inlet was no more than a hundred yards, and towards its end the yellow mud was showing. Two curlews flew across the water, crying out their own names in melancholy fright. Tholly brought the lugger in to the left bank, just before the water began to shoal and Nanfan tied up to a friendly tree.
‘Be it high tide or low tide?’ asked Jacka Hoblyn gloomily, staring over the side.
‘High, but I don’t think yet a flood.’
‘Mebbe when we come leave the tide’ll be out.’
‘It depends when we return,’ Ross said. ‘We have to take that risk.’
They ate supper of bread and cheese and wine while the birds twittered and the sun sank. Then when dusk had at last fallen Ross led the way along the river bank towards the town.
Chapter Eight
They found the convent on rising ground north of the town. So far they had not been stopped. The great risk was a patrol. If they were once challenged they were lost, for only Tregirls spoke French well enough to pass a casual word without raising suspicion. But again, equating it with England, Ross thought what patrols would be tramping the streets of a Cornish town?
In sight of the high surrounding wall they squatted and Ross told them quietly of the plan of the building in front of them.
‘Behind that high wall is a little town. There is one large building and four smaller ones spread over an area I suppose as big as Grambler Mine. Around it is a park, with trees, wheat fields, a vegetable garden, pasture land and a lake. This is so that the nuns could be self-supporting. Now there are no nuns but little else has changed . . . We have no certainty as to which building Dr Enys will be imprisoned in, but I am told that as a physician one would expect to find him in the main one. Now as to this main building. It is to the left of the gate as you go in, and the door into it is on the left of the building itself. The main gate through that wall has a grille through which callers may be viewed before it is opened. Just beside the gate on the inside a sentry box has been built where two sentries are posted night and day . . .’
He stopped. A cricket was creaking and sawing in the bushes.
‘Tell ’em no more, young Cap’n,’ Tregirls said. ‘Else you’ll discourage them.’
‘Speak for yerself!’ said Jacka Hoblyn. A quarrelsome man, Jacka, whom Ross had always been able to control. But he had not reckoned with the long immurement with Tregirls in the Energetic.
Ross said: ‘As you go in through the main door you will be in an entrance hall, which leads to a church. This church, which of course has been stripped of its religious emblems, is the biggest room in the building, and sleeps five hundred prisoners every night. But to the right of the entrance hall as you go in is another door leading to a chapter house, which has been turned into a guard room. Here all the rest of the guards will be at night – usually six. They seldom patrol the building since there is hardly a path for them to do so among the sleepers. Beyond the church is a row of cells, a recreation room and a refectory. These of course are no longer used for their original purposes but are simply sleeping and living quarters for the prisoners.’
‘That all the guards there is, sur?’ asked Ellery.
‘No. Another dozen or so live in the laundry which is about three hundred yards from the main building. They are the off duty guards who can be called on in an emergency. But I am told that usually only about half that number is there, since many privately prefer to slip back to their homes for the night.’
‘Or to somebody else’s,’ said Tholly.
‘Six – twelve – that’s fourteen at the least,’ said Drake, ‘that’s if the alarm be raised. But d’you hope to get in without raising the alarm?’
‘We think we may,’ said Ross.
It was eleven before they moved. A thin sliver of moon was just setting. The Dutchman thought the guards on the gate were changed at 10 p.m., 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. The wall surrounding the convent was about ten feet high and had been ornamented with steel spikes to discourage climbers. The door in the wall was of oak studded with iron, and the grille slid sideways in it about five feet from the ground. When the knock sounded the guard slid back the grille to see who wanted to come in at this time of night.
‘Quels poissons pêche-t-on ici?’ Tholly snarled in his thick voice. ‘Eh? Eh? Voici mon prisonnier! Un Anglais qui s’échappe de votre petite crèche! je l’ai attrapé pres de chez moi!’ He held Bone by the collar and shook him.
‘Let me go!’ Bone gasped. ‘Let me go! Ye’re choking me!’
After a long pause bolts slipped back. The guard peered out. ‘Qu’y a-t-il? De quoi s’agit-il? Qu’ voulez-vous? Je ne sais pas de – ’ Tholly struck upwards with his dagger into the guard’s stomach.
The man gave a scream which choked itself into a gurgle as blood flooded into his mouth. Bone caught him as he was falling; Tholly went past him to meet the second guard just emerging from their little hut. Ross was close behind him but Tholly was first, striking with his iron hook. The second man collapsed with a monumental clatter of musket, hat, sword, belt, equipment and dead weight. Within a minute all eight of the intruders were within the wall, the door shut behind them, waiting and listening.
After that terrible noise there was silence. The crickets were busy with their dry violin solos all along the foot of this wall. In the great building to their left six lights showed. They waited for more lights to go on. Another building low and squat to the
right. Could this be the laundry? It was all in darkness. An owl flitted by.
Ross bent to examine the second Frenchman. ‘You’ve killed him too,’ he said to Tholly.
Tregirls hunched his shoulders and coughed. The exertion was bringing on his asthma. ‘You don’t have the same delicate touch, like. Not with this.’ He lifted his hook.
Ross made them wait longer than any of them wanted to. Then they moved across grass and gravel and grass again to the door of the main convent building.
It was a small door, round-topped, oaken and solid but without a grille. A lantern hung in the wall above it but was not lighted. Ross rat-tatted sharply at the door, a loud authoritative rap, and waited. Nothing happened. He tried the ring latch but it would not turn. He rapped again.
Footsteps. A French voice grumbling, muttering to itself, clearly not expecting superior officers but supposing some other guard was being a nuisance. Clack of a key. Screech of a door. A man in shirt sleeves holding a lantern. Ross thrust a pistol into his chest. The man opened his mouth to shout; Ross’s raised fingers stopped him; he took a step back; Tholly snatched the lantern as he was about to drop it. Door thumped back with a thud. Then they were in, Nanfan grasping the guard’s hands, Bone thrusting wadding in his mouth.
A door ajar at the end of the passage; a slit of light falling on panelled wall and tiled floor. Ross slid towards it, Tholly and Drake behind him. As they reached it a man came out. Ross shoved him reeling back into the room and they followed him. Four other men; three at a table playing cards and an empty chair, money on the table, glasses, a jar. The fourth man was standing by the slit window putting on his tunic.
‘Stay,’ said Tholly. ‘Quiet all. Move and you’re dead men.’
Jacka Hoblyn had one of the other pistols, Ellery the third. They were all in the room now, a big room, Nanfan and Bone holding the man they had first captured. Jonas unwound a rope from round his waist and with this they began to tie up the six men. Little was said. The man by the window tried to argue, tried to struggle. It did him no good. But it was a long job, tying and gagging them all. Trying on the nerves. It was a full fifteen minutes before they were all done to Ross’s satisfaction. Failure here would mean failure of the whole scheme.
‘Now,’ he said, and lifted down a bunch of eight big keys from behind the door.
With two lanterns from the room, leaving it in darkness, they went out into the hall, to the further door which led into the church. This was locked and bolted. A key fitted; they slid the bolts very carefully. At this stage essential not to give the impression they were coming to let the prisoners out. If this idea communicated itself there would be a mad rush for the doors and a general alarm.
A vile stench of unwashed bodies, sickness, sweat. The church, which was perhaps two hundred feet long by forty broad, doubled its width at the transept and soared into lofty Gothic arches. They had come in by the west door. All the chairs and ordinary furnishings had gone; the floor was an unmoving, unsavoury carpet of human beings, packed so tight they might have been woven together. Here and there one tossed and moaned; some snored; the vast majority lay quiet, whether asleep or awake, as if they knew that only by remaining quiet could they stay alive. God, thought Ross, am I back in Launceston prison rescuing Jim Carter? Do all men’s lives run in cycles?
He stared down at his feet. Twenty men to be called on within a few paces. But which to choose? He saw an eye gleam in the light of the lantern. He stepped across a couple of men.
‘Hey, you! Wake a minute. We’re new to this camp. Just come. Direct us, will you?’
‘God ’elp you, matelot. What’s there to direct? There be no room to lie ’ere. More room up by the altar.’
‘I was directed to find Dr Enys. Know you where he is?’
‘Who? Never heard o’ him! Clear out and let me sleep!’
The man had put his head down, but Ross caught his emaciated arm and pulled him up.
‘Listen – we have to know!’
‘Hark yourself, dog!’ Ross’s arm was flung off. ‘I’ll have no man lay ’is ’ands on me. If ye so much as—’
Ross took a firmer grip and shook the man. The man kicked and waked two others lying near. ‘There’s someone ill! You’re English, are you not? What sort of help is this? Listen, I wish to know! Dr Enys! You must all know Dr Enys!’
‘Enys?’ said one of the other men, sitting up. He was a naked cadaver, but somehow still alive. ‘Rot you, Carter, with your evil temper. Who’s this? Who are all these? New men? God help ye all! Enys? Yes, we all know Enys.’
‘Then where is he? Where does he sleep?’
‘Not here, matelot.’
‘In this building or another?’
‘Oh, this, if you can find ’im. He’ll be not far from the infirmary. He never is, I’ll say that for ’im. But he don’t sleep there. Try one o’ the cells this side o’ the refectory.’
‘Which way?’
‘Oh, damn your eyes! Go up to the altar. In the south transept’s a door leading to the sacristy. Beyond that’s the infirmary and then this row of cells. He’s like to be there.’
‘Thank you, friend.’
His lantern held high, Ross began to pick his way among the other skeletons sleeping on the floor, Bone bringing up the rear with the second lantern. The procession of men wound its way up the church. It was impossible to do so without waking some of the massed sleepers, for there was no room to step between. Once or twice men in the middle of the croc stumbled in the half dark, and curses followed them. Ross knew well he was leaving curious men behind him as well as wakened ones. New arrivals, he was sure, did not enter unaccompanied by guards and carrying two lanterns, and in the middle of the night.
The door into the sacristy could not be opened for sleeping men. Two had to be pulled to their feet and, more thoroughly awake than the rest, pursued the intruders with questions. One of them was very young, very alert – probably a midshipman – and he was the first to guess that they had no business here. He scrambled to his feet and grasped Drake’s arm, but Drake could only shake it off and smile and follow the rest. The boy followed them. In his scarecrow state he looked scarcely older than Geoffrey Charles.
Into the infirmary. Here the stench was doubly vile, but the sick men had little more room to toss and turn. They were in rows like corpses in a casualty station after a battle. At least there was a light: a single candle in a lantern hung so high that no one could reach it. It cast geometric shadows, illuminating one sick and ghastly face, leaving another in shadow. A ragged old man with a black beard was tending a delirious patient. He rose as they came in.
‘Who are you? There’s no more room in here.’
‘I am Captain Poldark. We are seeking Dr Enys.’
‘I’m Lieutenant Armitage of the Espion. You cannot wake him now. He’s been off duty but an hour. I have some little medical knowledge.’
‘It is not his medical knowledge we seek. Where does he sleep?’
Armitage looked at them doubtfully.
‘What are you here for?’ demanded the young midshipman. ‘Sir, I think they have no business here!’
‘No business with you,’ said Ross. ‘We seek Dr Enys and mean only his good. I assure you, Lieutenant Armitage. My word as an officer.’
‘Look, sir,’ said the midshipman, ‘this man has a dagger! Why are they here?’
‘To slit your throat,’ said Tholly, looming behind him, ‘if ye need more air than will come through a shut mouth.’
Armitage was staring at Ross. ‘Have you broken in?’
‘Come with us to Dr Enys and I’ll explain.’
Armitage said: ‘I cannot leave here. Enwright, take them to Lieutenant Enys.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
As they left, a sick man was crying out for water, and Armitage went to him. The midshipman led the way into a stone corridor with cells opening off to the left. The cell doors were not shut and at the third Enwright stopped.
‘I believe
he is here.’
Ross went in. There were eight derelict men in the cell, and he held up the lantern, peering to find his friend. They were all bearded, and he thought there was no one here he sought. Then one at the end stirred and sat up.
‘What is it? Do you want me?’
It was a physician’s reaction, used to waking to a sick call.
‘Yes, Dwight,’ said Ross. ‘We want you.’
To Ross he was at first unrecognizable, with the heavy beard, black freckled with grey, and the skeletal features. He could hardly have weighed more than seven stone. The skin of his face was disfigured with sores. Deep sunken eyes made him look a man with a short term to his days.
At first he was unbelieving. Then he was doubting. Then at last he was reluctant.
Because he had half expected it Ross was the more urgent. ‘Look, Dwight, eight of us have risked our lives for this! You have done your share here. Now you owe a duty to others. If you do not come willingly, you come by force!’
‘Oh, it is not that I do not deeply appreciate what you have done. But some of these men in my charge are on the verge of dying—’
‘And what of you? How near are you to dying?’
Dwight made a deprecating gesture. ‘We all take our chance together. All these men with me in this cell have received a little medical training from me in the last twelve months, but they could not take over—’
‘There are no other doctors – no other surgeons?’
‘Oh, yes, four. But we all have more than we can do, and—’
‘So should we go home without you?’
‘Oh, Ross, it is not that. No, no. I thank you more than I can say—’
‘Believe me, we are not out of the wood yet, and every moment you argue adds to the danger. But when we are gone these other men can get free if they will. We came this far secretly so as not to create a panic breaking out—’
‘And how many of these men will stand a chance of reaching England if they do break out? How many will not be recaptured or die in the attempt to escape?’