‘It is up to them to choose. No one forces them to try. But if they have the choice, is it not better to die escaping than die in this stinking hell?’
‘Aye,’ said one of the others who had awakened. ‘Go to, Enys. Do not be a fool. I wish I had your chance!’
‘Escape!’ shouted young Enwright in the doorway. ‘Escape!’ His shout died as Ellery thrust a rough hand over his mouth.
Dwight looked round at the men above him. Then he looked at Ross. He licked his sore lips.
‘Caroline – is she well?’
‘She will not be if you stay here.’
‘I am ready. Thompson, I leave you in charge.’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Think nothing of it. But if there be half a chance I shall be following you.’
‘Keep this young fool here,’ Ross said, indicating the struggling Enwright. ‘Otherwise he will alert the whole of France.’
He handed the boy over and they backed out of the cell. Dwight he saw was unsteady on his feet.
‘Which way?’ Dwight said.
‘Is there another route to the main door except through the church?’
‘Through the cloisters. But they are locked at night.’
‘I have keys.’ Ross showed him.
‘Ah.’ Dwight smiled painfully. ‘Then I’ll lead the way.’
He turned to another door and there stopped. The Cornishmen were in a cluster behind him. Bone holding the second lantern to show the way. Dwight made no move. He was listening.
‘I think we are too late,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
Somewhere someone was shouting, and there was a growing murmur of voices. Then there was a musket shot. Before the echoes had died, the bell in the church began to toll.
The Dutchman who had instructed Ross in the geography of the prison had been wonderfully accurate. His one failure was in his estimate of the time the guards changed. Those at the main gate were changed not at ten o’clock but at midnight.
Chapter Nine
‘Well,’ said Ross quietly. ‘Perhaps we have come to join you after all. Is there another way out?’
Dwight said: ‘No. Nothing possible. There is an exit from the kitchens but it will be bolted. And the door to the kitchen is locked anyway.’
‘That we can probably open.’
‘Yes . . . Well, it is a thin chance . . .’
With the noise of wakening men around them and shouts and cries outside, they hurried through another room crowded with men just stirring from sleep. Now they could not wait to tread carefully, and many shouted and cursed as they were trodden on. As he brought up the rear Ross thought his comment about joining these prisoners an optimistic one. With two dead guards to answer for . . .
The kitchen door was at the bottom of five steps. Three keys chosen in urgency failed to turn the lock. A fourth succeeded, and they were in a great vaulted room with a few cooking utensils but bare of food. A well with hanging bucket stood at the end. The remains of a fire still smouldered in the hearth. Dirty pans lay about and the smell of stale soup. A door at the end: four or five ran to try their weight on it: Tregirls took the keys from Ross and thrust them in turn into the hole. The second clicked the heavy tumblers but the door would not budge.
‘It is bolted from the outside,’ Dwight said.
‘Hell and damnation! Twould be impossible to open without a thundering noise!’
‘Jacka,’ Ross said. ‘Take these keys and lock that door we’ve come through. It will protect our rear for a while.’
While Hoblyn ran to do this the others cast around for something to use as a lever. There was a big poker beside the fire and Ellery and Tholly took it to the door, but there was nowhere to get any purchase. The hinges of the door were this side and Ross thought it would be more profitable to attack them than the solid oak door. But if all the guards were free, with another half-dozen at least from the laundry, there were enough to patrol the grounds and any violent hammering would immediately bring them to this door to wait for them to emerge. The exercise was self-defeating.
Two windows, small and high. But by breaking the glass you could get at the bars beyond. He put his hands to the glass, pressing it, then he took the kerchief from round his neck, put it between his hands and the glass to try to prevent cutting. He was about to lunge when Drake caught his arm.
‘Cap’n Poldark. Look.’
‘What?’
‘The chimney. I been looking up. Ye can see the sky.’
Ross frowned at him. ‘So what of it?’
‘I can climb it.’
‘How?’
‘Tis broad enough. And Jonas has some rope left. I can carry’n up round my waist and lower it down when I get to the top.’
Dwight was beside him. ‘The fire is still in, bricks hold the heat. You would burn yourself.’
‘Nay, not so bad. I’ve scraped it to one side already.’
Ross said: ‘And if we get up? We are on a roof.’
‘Better’n being rats in a trap,’ Tregirls said. ‘I know these Frenchies if they’ve found the ones we killed.’
Ross took his scarf from the window. ‘You believe you can do it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. Try, then.’ For an unwelcome moment Demelza, climbing trees at Nampara, had looked out at him. While Drake took off his boots and wound what was left of the rope round his waist Ross went to the door of the kitchen and listened at it. Noise and clamour from the main area of the convent. The other prisoners, having once been roused, were likely rioting, trying to get out, and were impeding the guards in their search. But it could only be a matter of minutes.
Ross said to Jacka: ‘Put what you can against the door. That table might be some use.’
The fire, after being raked away from the chimney, had had water thrown in it, and dust and smoke filled the kitchen. Drake threw down a pastry board where the fire had been and stepped on it, then held the lantern to see up. There were a few hand holds but no proper spikes for a sweep’s boy to climb it, such as there would be in England. He took a breath and began.
In a few steps his hands were blistered and the stockings burned from his feet. Then as the chimney narrowed the worst heat went. The brickwork was rough and gave him hand and foot holds, which he was able to maintain through pressure of his legs and back between one wall and the other.
At the top the chimney narrowed more. He had climbed perhaps twenty feet and had about six to go. The soot was in his eyes and nostrils and hair, but when he looked up the stars were visible through it. He blinked and coughed and groped for his next hand hold. It was not there.
Someone called up from below, and he answered that all was well. But all was not yet well. By arching his back, head and buttocks against one wall, he made another dozen inches; then another six, then another. The top was now near. He reached a hand up, fingers clutched at a projection, slipped, held. He let go with his other hand and grasped at the top, swung a second. One foot found a precaution hold where the mortar had fallen away. He kicked a couple of times and was up.
They joined him one by one. Dwight was next to the last, for they had to fasten the rope round his waist and haul him up. Ross completed the group. A thunderous banging had begun on the door into the kitchen just as he left. It might hold three or four minutes.
The chimney stood up four feet above a spire of roof which sloped steeply on either side. But other roofs about them of similar size hid them from the ground except on the north side. This way they could see across to the laundry, where many lights now flickered, and to two other buildings which were coming awake.
Dwight said: ‘If we can get across the roof of the refectory, there is a way down there. One roof leads to another and there is not six feet to jump.’
‘What do we jump to?’
‘The back of the convent. Beyond it is the dairy – a separate building – and after that is pasture for the cows and rising ground to the wall.’
‘Can you lead? Bo
ne will help you.’
‘I can lead.’
‘Take your boots off,’ Ross said to the rest. ‘And for God’s sake no stumbling. If they hear us on the roof we are finished.’
They edged along the steep roof, Dwight and Bone in the lead, Ross and Drake in the rear.
There was an awkward point to be negotiated as they came on to the refectory roof, for the refectory was a single storey only and it meant a drop of about nine feet. Bone went down first, slithering, with help from above, then Dwight was more gently lowered, and so one by one the others followed. From here they could hear shouts in the grounds, and then another musket shot.
Dwight directed them along the side of a parapet somewhat exposed from below. A few clouds were drifting across the stars, but it was too light for comfort. The roof here was decorated with gargoyles and stone effigies. They crept and slithered among these to another drop upon an almost flat roof, and from there it looked no distance to the ground.
‘Can you run?’ Ross asked Dwight Enys.
‘A short distance.’
‘Which way?’
‘You see the dairy? Make for that, then across the open field. At the gate at the far side of the field turn south. There’s an old orchard. A man got out in the spring by using an apple tree which overhangs the wall.’
‘There is no other gate but the front one?’
‘Yes, but they are kept permanently padlocked, and those will be the places the guards will first go to.’
Ross turned to the group clustered quietly about them. ‘You heard that?’ They nodded. ‘Well, Bone and Dr Enys will lead the way. Tregirls and I will bring up the rear. But if we are discovered don’t bunch together. Scatter and make your way over the wall as best you can. The apple trees are our best hope. If some of us get out and others do not, don’t wait about outside – make for the boat and wait there. Do not stay by the boat but in the woods near by. Wait through tomorrow’s daylight. If some have not turned up by midnight tomorrow, it will be concluded that they have been captured. Sail as soon as there is enough water. Now.’
Bone dropped to the ground and caught Dwight as he fell. They both rolled over in the rank grass. As soon as they had picked themselves up the others followed. They ran across to the shelter of the dairy. As they did so figures appeared round the corner of the house and a musket barked.
Bone and Dwight still ahead, the fugitives left the shadow and ran for the field. At the corner of the dairy Ross grasped Tholly’s good arm.
‘We’ve got to give them time.’
They stayed in the shadow. Two men came running, one carrying a musket. Ross hit him with the butt of his pistol. The other saw Tregirls in time and ducked and swung at Tholly’s head with his sword. Tholly parried it with his iron hook; metal on metal sparked. Ross hit his man again as he struggled to rise; turned to where the other two were rolling over in the grass. He groped and clawed, grasped at a French boot, yanked the man upon his face and Tholly dispatched him with the iron hook. He was reaching for his dagger, but Ross stayed him.
They followed after the others. A musket ball cracked past them: it was odd, Ross heard no shot, only the near miss of the ball. They were among a group of cows and temporarily safe. Then out in the open again – over a gate and turning right. Tholly had to stop to get his breath.
‘Them cows! That white-faced one. I thought twas a Frenchie!’
Ross was peering. ‘I can’t see the others.’
Tholly straightened up, and his wheezing breath was noisy. He followed Ross, who kept a pace or two ahead. They moved doubled up towards a clump of trees. A figure loomed.
‘I came back,’ said Drake. ‘I wondered—’
‘Listen, boy,’ said Tholly, ‘you’re liable to be mistook. My knife don’t know the difference—’
‘Where are they?’ Ross said.
‘Over there. By that tree. Tis an easy climb. Sid and the doctor is near over.’
They pushed their way through nettles and brambles. Whatever else had been attended to since the nuns were thrown out, the apple trees had not. Dark figures clustered together.
‘Go on!’ Ross said irritably. ‘Don’t wait!’
Hoblyn went next. His figure was briefly silhouetted against the night sky before he picked a way through the spikes and jumped. Then Jonas, then Ellery. As Ellery stood up to jump a musket barked, somewhere quite close. Tregirls was next, and being short of an arm had to be helped to climb the tree by Joe Nanfan. He got to the top and stood to jump and the musket fired again. So it was not accident or chance. Someone could see them.
‘Go on, you fool!’ Ross hissed, but Nanfan, having noticed how near the shot was, had ducked back into the tree. There might be more than one shooting but it seemed unlikely, and to hesitate now meant giving him time to recharge his gun.
‘No!’ Drake hissed. ‘Go on!’
Nanfan stood up to jump; the gun fired again; Nanfan lurched, then stepped among the spikes and disappeared over the edge.
‘Quick,’ Ross said. ‘Go quick now!’
Like a cat Drake climbed the tree and was on to the wall. Then he stood up to jump but did not jump; instead stood there several long seconds, swaying back and forth as if hesitating. Ross, half up the tree behind him, cursed and swore at him to jump. Then the musket fired for the fourth time; Drake wobbled forward and jumped; Ross, on his heels, was over the wall without trouble.
They had come over into another orchard; these were small trees; a cider orchard probably; the men were clustered round a figure. Ross thought it was Drake, but Drake came up suddenly out of the long grass.
‘It’s Joe. He’s bad.’
Dwight was on his knees beside Nanfan. It was still too dark to see properly, but the ball had hit Nanfan on the side of the head and taken away part of his ear. The ball was still lodged in his skull. He was not yet dead. His eyes were fluttering.
Dwight said: ‘There’s nothing I can do. Or anyone.’
‘God, we need a light!’ Ross said.
‘We got to leave him!’ said Tregirls. ‘Else we’ll all be in his shoes.’
‘I’ll stay,’ said Drake. ‘You go. I’ll join ye if I can.’
‘Don’t be a fool, boy!’ Ross snapped. ‘They know how we got over. As soon as that marksman tells the rest . . .’
‘I want to stay!’ Drake said. ‘I don’t care!’
‘You came under my orders!’ Ross said. ‘You’ll all go, as arranged. I will stay with Nanfan until he . . .’
‘Nay,’ said Ellery. ‘He’s my mate. We’ve worked together nigh on three year an’—’
‘And you take my orders! All of you! We came to—’
‘There’s no need to stay,’ Dwight said quietly, standing up. ‘He’s dead.’
They made their way through the cider orchard, and through another and another, each one taking them farther from the convent but also farther north and away from the river. Having lost the sound of the pursuers they began to make a detour; but Dwight was now too far gone to walk, and carrying was a slow business. Then Drake began to lag behind. They thought it was his feet, but as a little light grew Ross saw him holding his shoulder and went across and found his sleeve soaked in blood. The marksman had been successful a second time. To score two hits out of four on a starlit night said much for the Frenchman’s skill and eyesight.
But it said nothing for their chances of reaching the boat today. By dawn they had worked their way round the town and were on high ground looking down on it. They had moved in the right general direction, anti-clockwise, so that the river was not between them and their boat. When it was known that Drake was wounded Dwight had made a temporary dressing to stop the wound from bleeding; but as soon as day came fully – with fortunately a light mist – and they found themselves in a wood which looked untrodden by man, he roused himself to take a closer look. The ball had gone in above the armpit and had come out under the shoulder blade. The size and position of the exit wound suggested that the ball had car
ried some splintered bone away with it.
With no water to bathe the wound and no fresh lint to put on it, there was little Dwight could do. With bandages torn from shirts the arm was bound to the chest to prevent further bleeding and to hold the pads in place. Drake had lost a lot of blood. It was a toss-up, Ross thought. Many men had recovered from far worse wounds. Many had succumbed to less.
By the light of day they looked a sorry lot. They were all full of cuts and bruises and were black-faced and smeared with soot from the chimney. Dwight’s hands were like an old man’s, the skin blotchy and brown; the skin of his face was as blue as skimmed milk, emphasizing the red scorbutic blotches. Even his voice was hoarse and thin. Taken now instantly into his own home, given warm milk and chicken broth and a pint of wine a day, and no doubt he would begin to pick up. But given a day in the open without food, followed by perhaps a week’s privation at sea, and his chances looked slim. Ross cursed himself. The death of Nanfan had turned him sick. If he now returned home with Drake and Dwight dead in the boat beside him, would he ever be able to live with himself again?
But now at this moment he had to go on as the leader of this vainglorious enterprise. In a sense he had succeeded in his task, in that Dwight was free; and the loss of one man was not an inordinate loss considering the magnitude of what had been attempted. A captain commanding a platoon would consider his casualties light. But Ross, in spite of his rank, was not quite a captain in an ordinary way and this was not an ordinary platoon. The urgent need now was food and water. On board the boat – if it had not been stolen – were rations enough. But they could hardly march through the countryside and spend the day on the boat or set sail in daylight with ten miles of river to traverse. Their present relative immunity was almost certainly because of the emergency further south. If there were twenty guards left in the whole of Quimper that would be likely to be the maximum – and of those, in view of last night’s raid and riot, at least a dozen would be on permanent duty at the camp.
Every man’s hand no doubt would be against them, but few such hands would be armed with anything more lethal than a pitchfork. Ellery had dropped his pistol somewhere; they still had the other two.