Jack Steel Adventure Series Books 1-3: Man of Honour, Rules of War, Brothers in Arms

‘No, No. I’ll be fine. He is a good man, Lieutenant. So gentle.’

‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to suggest that what has happened was of no consequence. It … matters to me very much indeed. It is just that if he hadn’t come in …’

‘Yes.’

She half-closed her eyes.

‘I know. But why? Why did he?’

Steel could see that she was confused. That would be Taylor’s potions, no doubt.

‘Herr Kretzmer will hang, Louisa. Have no doubt of that. We have him prisoner.’

She opened her eyes but did not smile. Saying nothing, she merely stared at the wall. Tears began to run down her face and Steel moved forward. He went to put an arm around her shoulders and then stopped himself.

‘I … I’m sorry. I was only going to …’

She smiled. ‘No. Please. I would like you to.’

Gently, Steel placed his arm in its filthy red sleeve upon her shoulder and thankfully she buried her head deep in his chest and began to sob. Steel held her closer and thought with revulsion of the last man to do so. An obscene excuse for a man.

She looked up at him.

‘Oh, Jack. I don’t know who to trust. He said he would kill my father and he will.’

‘He won’t. He can’t. How can he? We have him. Kretzmer can do you no more harm, Louisa. Trust me.’

‘He told me that too.’

‘Kretzmer? Yes, but I mean it.’

He looked at her and thought that he could see in her eyes, along with what he might now perceive as love, a nameless fear.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

Louisa turned away and said nothing. How could she tell him about Jennings? As long as the man remained alive her father’s life would be in danger. And there was something else. She had felt something just now. Something she had not expected.

From the street outside they could hear the sound of the redcoats gathering up their kit and anything still to be had and which might be carried in the way of food and drink. The day was passing. There was more, much more to say, but now was not the moment.

‘We must leave here soon. You must go to your father. Can he manage it? Can you?’

‘I think so. I will look after him. Go and get your soldiers ready. I promise we’ll be ready within the hour.’

Puzzled and not a little shaken, Steel left the room, passing Taylor as he went. ‘Stay with her. Look after her and help her with the old man. Make sure they take what they need. And, Taylor, thank you.’

He wondered if the man had guessed at his growing attachment to the girl. Whether he would tell the others. Steel thought he knew him well enough to be sure that he would not. He walked down the stairs and out into the sunshine of the square. Much as it irked him, he had to acknowledge Jennings’ role in Louisa’s rescue. Slaughter had been first on the scene and there could be no doubting his word. He had discovered Kretzmer, his trousers around his ankles, standing above Louisa’s half-naked form. Jennings was holding him firm and there had evidently been a struggle. The Bavarian had a bloody nose and a cut lip and Jennings was bleeding from his hand, wounded, it seemed, by a knife that lay upon the floor. There was, of course, no question of Kretzmer’s guilt. The facts spoke for themselves.

They had bound Kretzmer’s hands with rope and placed him, for want of anything more secure, in his own carriage, tied to the door and with a gag knotted across his mouth to drown the tirade of protest with which he had assailed them since he had recovered from his encounter with the floor – and two subsequent punches from Jennings.

Steel watched the Major now, as he crossed the town square to inspect his men, an unlikely hero, followed by Stringer, the lapdog. It was seven o’clock in the morning. It was a great deal later than they would normally have started their march to avoid the heat of the sun. But the events of the previous night had upset his intentions, and not just because of what had happened to Louisa. Contrary to his plan, most of the men had contrived to find rather more ale than he had intended and although only a few had actually been drunk, the rest did not find that the morning, with its various demands and duties, entirely suited their dulled senses.

Nevertheless, Steel had decided that they would leave within the next two hours. They might, he guessed, cover six miles in the day. He was about to rejoin the Grenadiers in the field when he thought the better of it. Time perhaps for one more thing. Something which he had not envisioned himself doing on this or any morning. Steel did not consider himself a religious man. Certainly he had grown up in a God-fearing Scottish Episcopalian household, where Sundays were observed and church attended. But he had not carried it through into adulthood. And yet, like all soldiers, when he was out on the battlefield and the air was thick with shot, Steel was inclined to believe that something or someone was keeping watch over him. His long-dead mother perhaps, or what other men might have called a guardian angel.

He pushed open the small five-foot-high entrance panel in the great church door and entered, his boots resounding on the polished stone floor. Sword rattling at his side, Steel walked towards the high altar and stopped the instant that his eyes caught the figure of the Madonna holding her son.

A woman and a dead man. He had seen it many times in the aftermath of battles, when a wife or a camp follower would find her husband or her lover on the field and, convulsed with grief, cradle him in just this way. He had heard the sobbing and knew the sound of the misery embodied now before him. The grief of all the world seemed bound up in this one image. He walked closer to the statue and tried to remember what it was you were meant to do. He had forgotten how to pray. Kneel. Yes, that was it. Holding on to his sword, he bent one knee and lowered himself down slowly on to the cold floor and bowed his head. That felt right. And now, what to say, after so long? He began, half-whispering, half merely thinking aloud.

‘Dear God, if you do exist. Or whatever you might be. I am not asking for a miracle. Keep me safe in the battle that is surely to come, just as I know you will protect my men. And look down on Marlborough. Bless his victory and let us live. If I am to die, then let it be quick. Don’t let me be maimed or blinded. But most of all, if you do exist, I pray you, let us win.’

Steel heard the door creak open behind him and, worried lest one of his men should discover him, rose quickly, his scabbard scraping on the floor and filling the empty basilica with its echo. He turned to see Slaughter advancing towards him, grinning.

‘Sorry, Sir. I didn’t know you were a godly man.’

‘I’m not, Jacob. But there are times when anything is better than nothing, eh? Reckon we need a bit of luck at the moment. Right now I’d swear on a ruddy rabbit’s foot if you had one.’

‘Luck, Sir? Well, perhaps if that’s what you want to call it. I’d call it fate myself. Oh, I credit you there’s something bigger than us. Stands to reason. But all this?’ He pointed around the church at the paintings of the saints, the carved tombs and the side chapels.

‘All this is a bit too Papist for my liking, Mister Steel. Fate. That’s what it is. You’ve to make your own way in life. But fate’s what decides whether you live or die.’

Both men looked for a moment towards the altar. Steel broke the silence.

‘Ready then?’

‘As ever will be, Sir. Men are assembled in the square. Grumbling a bit, but that’s the ale, mostly. They’re happier than they were. The wagons are all rigged and ready to move. But it doesn’t seem right, Sir, having poor Miss Weber sitting with him. I mean, after what he did to her.’

‘No, Jacob, it doesn’t. But there is no room for her to travel with the driver and we must keep Kretzmer in a closed carriage. He knows he’s for the drop. If it were up to me I’d shoot him now. But that’s not the way. There’s nothing for it. The bastard can’t go in a flour wagon and he can’t very well travel with the wounded.’

He turned and together they walked down the nave. At the door, Slaughter turned his head back towards the altar, which was lit by a brilliant beam of sunshine through one of the clerestory windows. He spoke.

‘Funny, ain’t it, Sir. The power of that statue, if you get my meaning. I mean, what does it d’you think? What makes people come here from all over, just to make a wish on a piece of painted wood?’

‘I wish I knew, Jacob. I wonder if any of them ever come true.’

Steel watched the great bird circling in the sky above them. What, he wondered, would they look like from up there, this sorry column of men and wagons trailing back along the dusty road? Nothing of interest to a black kite, he was certain. The bird wheeled again, high into the blue, climbing free of earthly tethers. Steel longed for such freedom. Merely to be free of this tiresome command would be sufficient. It was two days now since they had left Sielenbach. They had continued south at first, before turning right, towards the east. Then, re-crossing the Paar at Dasingen, they had started up the long, straight road north, which would take them back to the army.

Steel watched the bird again as it grew closer to the ground now. Perhaps it had finally spotted a likely prey. Riding in his place at the head of the column, he wished for once that he was not with his men.

He could hardly bear to imagine Louisa locked in the stifling coach with Kretzmer. From time to time Steel rode back to make sure that nothing was amiss, and their progress had been damnably slow. The road was dry and rutted. Recent rains had turned the earth to mud, which, pushed by passing traffic into ridges, had been baked hard in the sun. Now, unless the wheels that crossed it were iron-shod, they would eventually break on the clay. And even such carts as those provided by Hawkins could be easily unsettled.

On the previous day, two of the flour wagons had veered off the road. On the first occasion the men had managed to heave the wagon back. On the second though, the vehicle had overturned, spilling half of its contents into the roadside ditch and breaking both of the legs and crushing several ribs of the driver, who was now travelling in the wounded cart. Taylor had said that he doubted the poor man would last another day.

They had moved what could be salvaged of the spilt flour on to the other wagons, but the accident had cost them a precious two hours.

Steel tried to calculate the time remaining before they would reach the allied lines. This morning they had found the river Ach at the little town of Au and had been following it ever since. According to the map they had another eight miles before they reached the crossing of the Lech and then another day’s march back to Donauwörth, if indeed that was where Marlborough had now taken his army. Hawkins had intimated that there might be some movement in the main body while Steel was away on his mission. He realized that his best recourse was to dispatch Williams in search of an outlying cavalry picquet from their army, once they grew closer to the theatre of operations. He turned to the boy and pointed at the wheeling kite.

‘Look, Tom. D’you see it. Up there.’

Together they watched as the bird swooped down into a field, diving on its prey.