‘They sent terms,’ John said. ‘His lordship is considering them.’
The captain turned and roared for a light and ordered the gunners to their posts. The signalling officer came running up with flaring torches. ‘Tell them to take up that ship,’ John said.
The man ran forward and started signalling. John, looking past him, suddenly saw a gleam in the dark water, a reflection.
‘What’s that?’
‘Where?’
‘In the water, beside that ship.’
One of the officers stared where John was pointing. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he said.
‘Hold a torch out!’ John ordered.
They held a torch low over the water and saw the dark shadow of a French barge, rowed swiftly towards the gap in the barrier.
‘To your places!’ the captain yelled. John raced to the bell and rang it again. The gun crew opened the hatches and ran back the cannon for priming and loading; the soldiers poured out on deck. Someone lit and threw a flare towards the dark water below and in its briefly tumbling light John saw a string of barges rowing steadily and confidently from the Papist camp around La Rochelle towards the fort of St Martin.
From the other end of the barrier of English ships he heard the bells ringing for action stations. A single cannon started pounding in the darkness and then he felt the timbers under his feet shake at the explosion and recoil of the guns on his own ship. The loose ship which should have been lashed into the barrier was swinging wildly out of control, the crew swarming to get sails up, and to get her under way so that she could rejoin the line. But through the gap she had left the barges were pouring, heading straight for the citadel.
‘A fire ship!’ John gasped as he saw them launch the blazing raft towards the French barges from the English ships on the other side of the bay. One man stood at the back of the raft, courageously steering it straight towards the supply barges, the wind setting the flames in the bow leaping and crackling, reflected in the water until it looked as if the fires from hell were burning up from under the sea. The sailor stayed at his post until the last moment, until the heat beat him into the water, and the flames licked towards the kegs of powder. He dived off the back of the raft just as the charges on the fire ship exploded like celebration fire crackers. His head went deep under the water and for a moment John thought that the man was lost, then he came up, wet-headed like a seal, and swam to the nearest ship, clung to a rope and was hauled in.
The wind swung around; the unmanned fire ship, yawing wildly, blew before it, drifted away from the French barges and helpfully lit their way across the heaving glassy seas to the shore and the fort.
‘Damnation!’ Tradescant swore. ‘It’s going to miss them.’
Perilously the fire ship swung in a current and headed for the English line. The sailors scrambled to the side of the ship with buckets of water to try to douse the flames and poles to fend it off. By its brilliant flaring light the English gunners on the other ships could at last see their targets. The English guns pounded into life and John saw the French barges struck and men thrown into the water.
‘Reload!’ the gunners’ officer yelled from below. The deck of the ship heaved and thudded under John’s feet as the big guns fired and rolled back. Another direct hit, and another French vessel smashed amidships, men screaming as they were thrown into the rolling dark sea.
Squinting through the smoke, John could see that some of the barges were getting out of range, heading towards the citadel.
‘Aim long!’ he shouted. ‘Aim for the furthest barges!’
No-one could hear him above the noise. Impotently, John saw the leading French barge run ashore below the castle on the tideline, the citadel’s sally port gates flung open in welcome, and a line of defenders rapidly form to unload the barges and throw sacks of food and supplies of weapons into the fort. John counted perhaps a dozen barges safely unloaded before the light from the fire ship died and the English gunners could no longer see their target, and the battle was lost.
The citadel was reinforced and revictualled and there would be no visit from Commander Torres to dine with the duke and accept his terms of surrender tomorrow.
John did not attend the council of war. He was in disgrace. His barrier had failed and the fort, so near to surrender, was eating better than the besieging English soldiers. While Buckingham took advice from his officers John walked away from the fort, away from the fleet, deep into the island, watching his feet for rare plants, his face knitted up in a scowl. The same pressures would still be working on the duke as before, but the situation was worse than ever. The fort was revictualled, the weather was deteriorating, and on one of the ships there were two cases of gaol fever. The cold weather would bring sickness and agues, and the men were underfed. They had the choice of sleeping in the open under pitiful shelters of bent twigs and stretched cloth and risking ague and rheums, or inside the ships packed like herrings in a barrel, risking fevers from the close quarters.
John knew that they must withdraw before the winter storms; and feared that they were mad enough to stay. He turned in his walk and went back towards the fort. One of the French sentries on the castle walls saw him and shouted a cheerful yell of abuse. John hesitated, then the message became clear. The sentry hauled up a pike with a huge joint of meat on the tip, to demonstrate their new wealth.
‘Voulez-vous, Anglais?’ he yelled cheerfully. ‘Avez vous faim?’
John turned and trudged back to the ill-named Triumph.
Buckingham was certain what they should do. ‘We must attack,’ he said simply.
John gasped in horror and looked around the duke’s cabin. No-one else seemed in the least perturbed. They were nodding as if this were the obvious course.
‘But my lord …’ John started.
Buckingham looked across at him.
‘They are better fed than us, they have almost limitless cannon and powder, they are mending the defences and we know that the citadel is strong.’
Buckingham no longer laughed at John’s fears. ‘I know all that,’ he said bitterly. ‘Tell me something that I have not thought of, John, or keep your peace.’
‘Have you thought of going home?’ John asked.
‘Yes,’ Buckingham said precisely. ‘And if I go now, with nothing to show for it, I can’t even be sure that I will have a home to go to.’ He glanced around the cabin. ‘There are men still waiting to impeach me for treason,’ he said bluntly. ‘If I have to die I’d rather do it here leading an attack than on the block outside the Tower.’
John fell silent It was a measure of the duke’s desperation that he spoke so frankly before them all.
‘And if I return home in disgrace and am executed then the prospects for all of you are not golden,’ Buckingham pointed out. ‘I would not be in your shoes when you are asked what service you gave the king on the Ile de Rhé. I shall be dead, of course, so it will not trouble me. But you will all be hopelessly compromised.’
There was a little uncomfortable movement among the men in the cabin.
‘So are we all decided?’ Buckingham asked with a wolfish grin. ‘Is it to be an attack?’
‘Torres cannot stand against us!’ Soubise exclaimed. ‘He was ready to surrender once, we know the measure of the man now. He’s a coward. He won’t fight to the last, if we frighten him enough he will surrender again.’
Buckingham nodded to John as if there were no-one else to convince. ‘That’s true enough,’ he said. ‘We do know that he will surrender if he thinks a battle is lost. All we have to do is to convince him that the battle is lost.’
He leaned forward and spread out some papers on the table. John saw that they were his sketch plans, drawn when they were new to the island and his new gillyflower was heeled into his little nursery bed. Now it was rooted and putting out new shoots, and the sketches were dirty in the margin from much use.
‘We bring the ships as close as we can and pound the fort from the sea, then fall back,’ Buck
ingham said. ‘First one side then another, so as soon as they get our range we drop back. Then on the landward side of the fort we launch an attack. Scaling ladders to get the men to the tops of the walls. They must carry and throw down ropes. As the ships fall back from their attack, they land the sailors and they support the soldiers in the attack on the walls. As soon as the soldiers are inside they open the sally ports and the rest of the sailors come off the ships and into the gate.’
‘Perfect!’ Soubise exclaimed.
John was looking critically at the map. ‘How will the ships come forward and fall back?’ he demanded. ‘What if the wind is in the wrong quarter?’
Buckingham thought for a moment. ‘Can we use the landing craft as barges?’ he asked. ‘Take the ships in tow to help them around?’
A gentleman nodded. ‘The wind is bound to be right for either coming in or going out.’
Buckingham looked to John. ‘What d’you think, Tradescant?’
‘It might work,’ John said cautiously. ‘But we could only tow one or two ships in and out at a time. We couldn’t do the big attack you described.’
‘One or two would do it,’ Buckingham said. ‘It’s to keep their attention to the seaward side while we attack on land.’
‘We should do it on the turn of the tide,’ John proposed. ‘So the tide pulls the ships out of range, helps the barges to do their work.’
Buckingham nodded. ‘Give the orders, John. You will know how it should be done.’
‘I shall make them practise first.’
‘Very well. But do it out of sight of the fort, and have them ready for dawn tomorrow, as near to dawn as the tides permit.’
John bowed and went to leave the cabin. He hesitated at the door. ‘And the attack on the castle?’ he asked.
‘A textbook attack!’ one of the officers enthused. ‘While they are looking out to sea we attack on land. Speed, stealth. May I have the command, sir?’
Buckingham smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘You may.’
‘What about the ladders?’ John asked. ‘And the ropes?’
The officer turned on him impatiently. ‘You may leave all that to me!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ John said politely. ‘But that’s only a rough sketch I did. Someone needs to check the angle of the walls, any overhangs, the best places for the ladders. The ground beneath the walls.’
The officer laughed. ‘I had no idea you were a soldier of experience, Mr Tradescant!’ He emphasised the ‘Mr’ to remind John that he was among gentlemen on sufferance, he had no right to the tide. Buckingham, leaning back in his chair, sniffed his pomander and watched John control his temper.
‘I am a gardener, and a collector of my lord duke’s rarities,’ John said tightly. ‘I’ve never pretended to be anything else. But I have seen action.’
‘Once,’ someone said softly at the back. ‘And hardly glorious.’
John did not look around. ‘It is in my line of work to look at the little things, to see that they are not forgotten. All I am saying is that the height and the dimensions of the walls have to be known exactly.’
‘Thank you,’ the officer said with icy courtesy. ‘I am grateful for your advice.’
John glanced at his duke. Buckingham gave a small jerk of his head to the door and John bowed and withdrew.
It was a small slight after three months of slights but it was the one conversation that John was to hear in his head, in his dreams, over and over again.
They could not make the attack when the duke wished, the tides were wrong and the moon was too bright. But two days after his final orders they launched the attack on the castle. John was on shore, watching the ships manoeuvre before the fort as he had planned they should do. The scheme worked well. The French defenders took time to get their aim on each attacking ship, and as they got it in range, the ships dropped sail and the rowing barges and the ebbing tide pulled her out of range again. John watched for only a few minutes, to see that the ships were safe, and then turned to run to the landward side of the fort where the army was going in to attack.
The citadel was not taken unawares. They were fully armed and ready on the landward side, and they poured musket fire down the high walls on to the attacking English army. John pushed his way through the crowds of soldiers, sometimes surging forward, and then hanging back, until he was near his duke. Buckingham was at the very centre of the line, dragging the men forward with him towards the musket fire.
Before him were the soldiers running with the scaling ladders. Buckingham was pushing them on, towards the deadly fire, towards the walls of the castle.
‘Go on! Go on!’ he was shouting. ‘For England! For God! For me!’
The men had suffered after three months on the island. Buckingham could not make them laugh any more. They hesitated and went reluctantly forward. At every point in the line the officers were shouting and demanding that they advance. Only the musket fire – as dangerous for those who hung back as for those who ran forward – kept them moving.
‘For the love of God get those ladders up!’ Buckingham shouted. All down the line of the castle wall there were soldiers setting the feet of the scaling ladders into the rocks at the foot of the wall.
‘Up! Up!’ shouted Buckingham ‘Now! And get those damned gates open!’
Tradescant was flung back by a man falling against him as he took a musket ball. He turned to hold him; but at once a man on the other side went down too.
‘Help me!’ the man called.
‘I’ll come back!’ John promised. ‘I have to …’
He broke off, abandoning both men, and plunged forward, trying to keep close to the duke. Buckingham was at the foot of a scaling ladder, urging men up it. For one dreadful moment Tradescant thought that his lord was going to climb the ladder himself.
‘Villiers!’ he shouted above the screams and the firing, and saw Buckingham turn his bare head to look for him.
John pushed his way through the crowd at the foot of the scaling ladder to get to his master’s side, and cling with all his weight on to his arm to prevent him going upward. Only then did he realise that something was wrong. Tradescant and Buckingham looked upwards together. The men were climbing the ladder, head to heels all the way up, the new soldiers at the foot of the ladder pushing up and forcing the ones at the top onwards and upwards. But then they seemed to stick. No-one was moving, the attack had paused. John stepped back a pace and looked up. The scaling ladders were too short. The men could not reach the top of the walls.
The picture of the ladders, crowded by men with nowhere to go, and their faces turned upwards to where the musket balls were raining down on them, burned into Tradescant’s vision.
‘Retreat!’ he yelled. ‘My lord! The day is lost! The ladders are too short. We have to go back!’
In the noise and the panic Buckingham did not hear him, did not understand him.
‘We’re lost!’ Tradescant repeated. He fought his way back to Buckingham’s side. ‘Look up!’ he shouted. ‘Look up!’
Buckingham stepped out from the foot of the ladder and craned his neck to look upwards. His face, bright with excitement and courage, suddenly drained of blood and lightness. John thought that his master aged ten years in that one upward glance.
‘Retreat,’ he said shortly. He turned to his standard bearer. ‘Sound the retreat,’ he ordered. ‘Sound it loud,’ and he turned on his heel.
John ploughed back, still flinching from the musket fire rattling from the citadel walls, to where the man had fallen. He was dead, there was nothing John could do for him except say a swift prayer as he ran, stumbling, like a coward, out of the range of the musket fire, and away from St Martin’s citadel – the fort where the walls were never measured and the scaling ladders were too short.
‘I will fight him myself,’ Buckingham said at the council of war the next day. ‘I shall send a challenge.’
John, weary and bruised, leaned against the doorway of the cabin and saw that his master wa
s in despair, and making the grand gestures of a man in despair.
‘He must accept!’ Soubise exclaimed. ‘No gentleman could refuse.’
Buckingham glanced across at John and saw the weary pity in his servant’s face.
‘Do you think he will accept, John?’ he asked.
‘Why should he?’
‘Because he is a gentleman! A French gentleman!’ Soubise exclaimed. ‘It is a matter of honour!’
John’s shoulders slumped, he moved to take the weight off his. aching knee. ‘Whatever you say,’ he said. ‘It can’t do any harm. You would beat him with a sword, would you not, my lord?’
Buckingham nodded. ‘Oh, yes.’
John shrugged.
‘The scaling ladders were absurdly short,’ the officer burst out. ‘The wrong size had been loaded. They should have been checked as they were loaded. It was madness to think that they would be any use. You could not reach a thatched cottage roof with ladders that short. You would pick apples with ladders that short!’
There was an awkward silence.
‘Send a challenge,’ Buckingham said to one of the officers. ‘He might be fool enough to take it.’
As John had predicted, Commander Torres did not take up the challenge, but the following week the French tried to break out of their siege and capture the English camp. The alarm sounded in the night and the men stood to and fought like savages, pushing the French forces back to the citadel again. It was, in theory, a victory for the English besieging army, but there was little joy at dawn when they did a roll call for the wounded and dead and found that they had fought a long hard battle and were still no further forward.
The siege had held; but the cold weather was coming and it would be a better winter for those inside the fort with food, fuel and shelter, than for those camping on marshy ground outside the walls. The duke had been promised that the reinforcing fleet was waiting in Portsmouth harbour under the command of the Earl of Holland, ready to sail any day. But there it stayed, and none of King Charles’s protestations of love and constancy could relieve the English army on the island. The bad weather that kept the earl in harbour also made it impossible to sustain the siege in France. In October, another flotilla of French barges broke the English barricade and fresh French troops were successfully landed inside the fort. Buckingham decided to withdraw.