‘But they’ll be eating their supper now. They’ll be off guard. Those four men left ages ago. We’ll soon deal with the ones still there. Then we can help ourselves to the women.’
‘I want the fat one,’ said Gregory Pyle, almost dribbling. ‘I saw her coming out of the byre with a pail of milk. She’s mine — I like plenty to hold on to.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ cautioned Searle.
‘But you promised, Matt.’
‘All I promised was that you’d get your turn.’
‘Then I want it with that fat milkmaid.’
‘This is not a common whorehouse, Gregory. You can’t pick and choose. We have to kill the men, grab what we want then get out of there as quickly as possible.’
‘What about me?’ asked Lock.
‘You set fire to the barn.’
His cousin pulled a face. ‘I did that last time.’
‘Then we know we can rely on you,’ said Searle. ‘When you’ve got a good blaze going, you check to see what livestock is worth rustling. They’ve still got some pigs left. We’ll have to slaughter them first. That’s another job for you, Edwin. The next thing we need is one of their horses. Hugh can take care of that. Tie the dead pigs together and sling them across the horse’s back.’
‘And where will you be all this time, Matt?’
‘Inside one of the women like me,’ said Pyle, sniggering.
‘You’ll obey orders,’ Searle told him, ‘or you’ll end up like Ianto Morgan. Each one of us must have a particular job and make sure we do it quickly. Edwin and Hugh know what they have to do — now for the rest of you.’
Searle had planned the attack in advance. He gave his men their orders and reminded them that the village was only two miles away. When the fire was at its height, it would be seen from a long distance and help would soon arrive. They had to be well clear before anyone came galloping out from the village. Searle was wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the dragoons. Like the ones donned by his men, it had been stolen from a corpse left behind after a skirmish. He ran a finger around the inside of the collar.
‘I don’t know how anyone managed to wear this,’ he complained. ‘It’s so tight, it’s almost strangling me.’
‘You’ve been demoted, Matt,’ said Hugh Davey.
‘What are you on about?’
‘Last time you were a captain in the British army.’
Searle grinned. ‘Yes…that uniform could have been made for me. I know what it feels like to be an officer now.’
‘I hate officers,’ said Davey. ‘All they do is piss on the likes of us. I wasn’t putting up with it any more.’
‘That’s why you joined me, Hugh,’ said Searle. ‘I may make the decisions about where we strike but we have equal shares after that. Whatever the haul tonight, we’ll all get the same amount.’
Lock grinned. ‘That goes for the women as well.’
There was general laughter. They carried on bantering until the shutters were eventually closed and the occupants of the house had all rolled off to bed. At a signal from Searle, they came out of hiding and trotted towards the farm. Dismounting well before they actually reached it, they led their horses forward then tethered them to some bushes. They had an array of weapons, mostly filched from dead French soldiers. Some had pistols, others had muskets and a couple of them preferred daggers. When they reached the farmhouse, Searle waved them to their positions. Lock and Davey stayed outside while three of them went to the rear entrance of the building. Searle led two of the others to the front.
Using the element of surprise, they suddenly forced their way in and went charging upstairs, flinging open the doors of the bedrooms without ceremony. One of the farmer’s sons was shot dead but another was only wounded and leapt naked from the bed to grapple with his attacker. A third son was stabbed to death but the farmer himself was unharmed. When Gregory Pyle fired a musket at him in the dark, he killed the man’s wife instead and found himself wrestled to the floor. The other women screamed at the top of their voices.
Searle took it upon himself to finish off the two male victims still alive, cutting the throat of the one who’d been wounded so that his own man was released. Though he repeatedly stabbed the enraged farmer who was on top of Pyle, he was too late to save his friend from having the life strangled out of him. With their bloodlust sated, three of the other raiders chose a woman apiece and hurled them down onto their respective beds. Searle, meanwhile, hurried downstairs again, lighting a candle before searching for the place where the money was kept. Outside in the yard, Lock had set the barn ablaze and was trying to catch one of the squealing pigs in the sty. The creature kept slipping from his grasp and Lock had difficulty staying on his feet in the slimy, dung-covered sty. Davey harnessed one of the animals in the stables and brought it out to act as a packhorse.
Things were not going well. On their previous raids, there’d been little resistance. The men were killed instantly and the women ravished. This time they had casualties. Pyle was dead and Regan, the man who’d grappled with the wounded son of the farmer, was badly bruised. When he tried to overpower one of the women, she fought back so hard that he could not subdue her. Searle was having no success downstairs. Though he searched every nook and cranny, he could find neither money nor any other valuables. He dashed back upstairs to continue the search there, using the candle to illumine each room and going past beds on which frantic women were trying to push their attackers away. None was submitting without a fight, shrieking, biting and using their nails to scratch.
Through a gap in the shutters, Searle could see the flames from the barn as the fire really got a purchase. It would soon be spotted by someone in the village. Flying into a panic, his search became even more frenzied. He ran into the main bedchamber, stepped over the corpses of Gregory Pyle and the farmer then flung open the door of the little wardrobe. Nothing of value was in it or in the wooden chest under the window. Searle even dragged the dead body of the farmer’s wife off the bed so that he could lift up the mattress. No money was hidden beneath it. Panic mounting, he searched every inch of the room but to no avail. In his frustration, he kicked the farmer hard and swore under his breath. Then he used the candle to set light to anything that would burn.
When Searle went back to the top of the stairs, Lock and Davey were pounding up them, their faces gleaming with hope.
‘Where are the women, Matt?’ asked Lock.
‘You’re too late,’ snapped Searle. ‘We’re leaving.’
‘But we haven’t had our turn yet,’ wailed Davey.
‘Get outside before I kick you back downstairs. Things have gone wrong. We have to get out of here.’
Protesting aloud, the two men retreated down the steps. Five minutes later, the whole band was riding away with the blood-covered carcases of the pigs slung across the packhorse. Behind them, in the burning farmhouse, nobody had been left alive.
Since the 24^th had borne the brunt of the attack, Daniel was called upon to deliver a report on the skirmish. He was in Marlborough’s quarters in the new camp. Adam Cardonnel was also present. Daniel’s summary was succinct and lucid.
‘That’s my opinion, Your Grace,’ he concluded. ‘I think that it was a foraging party. They saw us coming and couldn’t resist the opportunity to give us a bloody nose.’
‘What were our casualties?’
‘Eight men were killed and almost thirty wounded.’
‘That’s rather more than a bloody nose,’ said Marlborough. ‘How many of the attackers fell?’
‘Only three of them,’ replied Daniel, ‘because they had the cover of the rocks. However, several were wounded. We captured a handful of them. The rest got away.’
Marlborough was philosophical. ‘It was ever thus,’ he observed. ‘The French are always inclined to turn tail and run. We seem to have spent most of this war looking at their retreating backs. This incident was highly regrettable,’ he went on, shrugging it off, ‘but of no real moment. There’ll no doubt be others like it during the campaign.’
Daniel thought that their commander looked better than he had done for some time. He knew that Cardonnel was worried about him and had noticed the signs of weariness and pessimism. Customarily, Marlborough radiated a quiet confidence, something he imparted to the ranks as well as to his officers. Corporal John knew how to raise the
