“Are you all all right?”
“Jay got himself killed.” Why did people have to keep reminding him of it? He’d remember it when he had time, damn it.
“Oh God.”
“Yes. Well, it happens.” He turned away. “I was serious about all that stuff. O’Gilroy and I’ll keep them pinned down until the Surete gets here. Don’t worry.”
“What d’you mean, don’t fucking worry?”
There was another spatter of shots as he went cautiously back up the lane, and he crouched in the cover of a fence, but nothing came his way. And then, after he had turned off into the copse and begun crawling again, he and O’Gilroy had to reveal themselves with husky calls before they met. But that attracted no more shooting.
“They tried coming out’ve the back door,” O’Gilroy explained. “I sent ’em back. Next time, they might have the sense to come out crawling and I’d never see ’em behind that fence.” The cottage had a tiny fenced garden at the back. Once Kaminsky and Co. were loose in that, they would slip among the trees beyond and filter down into the village.
“No . . .” Ranklin stared at the cottage roof, dark against the starry sky. At the far end there was a chimney stack, and a wall with a chimney wouldn’t have a door, and probably no windows either. So there was just a front door on to the tow-path, a back door on to the garden, with windows on those sides and the narrow end facing them.
One man up in the corner of the copse and the tow-path could cover the front and this side, but the second would have to be across the lane, able to contain any who crawled out into the little garden.
“That’s my job,” O’Gilroy said firmly. “Yer a Gunner.” With the gentle implication that Ranklin was most effective when several thousand yards from the enemy. And Ranklin couldn’t really argue.
But: “We’re not after revenge. We’re still doing the job we came to France for. Right now, that means keeping them penned up until the Surete gets here.”
O’Gilroy said: “Uh-huh,” and then started asking how many cartridges they had left. Ranklin knew that revenge for Jay’s death made a lot more sense to the Irishman than saving the King from embarrassment. It made it straightforward and personal. But he would obey orders . . . or rather, he wouldn’t disobey them.
So Ranklin crawled off through the undergrowth to the corner by the tow-path with Jay’s big revolver. It was the familiar Army issue, with the disadvantage that he’d never known it to be accurate for anything but killing off wounded horses.
It took O’Gilroy five minutes to cross the lane and creep through a patch of waste ground studded with small bushes and goat droppings, to the trees by the far corner of the garden fence. Shielded by a trunk, shadowed by the almost bare branches overhead, he rose carefully upright and peered around and over the low garden fence.
The cottage was only a few yards away, the little garden between just a shapeless mess of scrawny bushes and long grass. He was pretty well diagonally opposite where Ranklin should now be, the cottage in between, so there was no risk of their shooting each other. War Office letters to sorrowing parents never mentioned getting in the way of a mate’s shooting, but it happened often enough.
All right. Suppose he now fired a couple of shots through the door or its flanking windows: that would tell Kaminsky this side was covered and not to attempt anything. That would certainly be obeying orders. On the other hand, waiting for such an attempt wouldn’t be disobeying orders, would it? It would just be a sensible saving of ammunition, and he only had six rounds left. Far better, really, to keep them until he could see a target. That was what the Army had taught. It had also taught patience.
It was very quiet, a silence such as cities like London and Paris never know. The excitement might be causing untypical noise down in the village, but the houses and trees blocked it off. Even the barge’s engine had stopped – seized up, perhaps – and half a dozen people with cocked guns waited within yards of each other in dead silence. And two more, in real dead silence, in the lane.
Suddenly there was shouting from the far side of the cottage. Something in French about a woman, and then an English female voice. God damn! They were sending out the fake Mrs Langhorn on Ranklin’s side. And him an English officer and gentleman who’d be quite unable to handle that, who wouldn’t see it for a trick . . .
Then he realised the back door had opened, slowly and quietly, so slowly and quietly that he wondered if it had moved at all. But then a shape slithered over the doorsill. Moving as slowly as the door had, he leant his gun hand against the tree and aimed.
For a moment he had cunning thoughts about waiting for a second creeping shape and shooting that to block the retreat of the first . . . But it was too dark, the shooting too uncertain. He just fired, twice.
The figure gave a grunt, and then came a wild blast of firing – from the door, from the windows. Whatever anarchists really believed in, having enough ammunition came near the top of the list, and it was too much for O’Gilroy to risk. With his back to the tree trunk, he slid down to the ground while twigs, bark and even branches pattered down around him, and when the firing died down, he bellied away to a new position.
By the time he had raised himself to see over the fence again, it was quiet and the back door was shut. Then there was a clattering from inside the cottage, a muffled screech of pain, and O’Gilroy smiled in the darkness. He didn’t know if it was Kaminsky he’d hit, and anyway, there was no reason to suppose it had been Kaminsky who’d killed Jay. So it was just his hope and imagination, and all very primitive. He felt much better for it.
Moreover, those in the cottage now knew he was waiting out there, so in the end he’d done just what he’d been told.
It took ten more minutes, silent except for groans from within the cottage, for the first of the Garde Mobile of the Surete to arrive. Eight men in two motor-cars (Ranklin worked out later) who first questioned the village gendarme, then advanced cautiously – except for shouting loudly – up the lane. Ranklin called back and, after a time, handed over control of the copse to them. It took longer still to get a couple of men across the waste ground to take over from O’Gilroy, but that was managed, too.
He met up with Ranklin halfway back down the lane, and after they had both said they were unhurt, O’Gilroy asked: “What happened with the woman coming out the front door?”
“Oh, she just wandered along the tow-path calling to me.”
“What’d ye do?”
“Nothing, of course.” Ranklin sounded surprised. “She was obviously a ruse, but I knew she couldn’t see me. And when the shooting started on your side, she turned and ran back inside. What should I have done?”
“Nothing. Jest what ye did.” After all, O’Gilroy was recalling, I had to talk this man out of killing the real Mrs Langhorn just a few hours ago. Maybe he’s learning.
There were a few official-sounding shouts behind them, then a Surete voice calling on the cottage to surrender. That brought a burst of shots, and Ranklin was a bit surprised to feel himself relaxing. Firing on the Surete clearly established the besieged as villains, but more than that, it suggested that the siege would go to a fatal end. Odd how anarchists fought to the – quite pointless – death: at Sidney Street and here in France, too, at Choisy-le-Roi last year. Of course, Kaminsky had said he wasn’t an anarchist – but was he really? Or would he just prefer to die than be thought a coward? Either way, it was a deplorable waste of life, but if Kaminsky opted to be dead and silent – unless, of course, he already was – Ranklin wouldn’t complain.