Earthly Joys Read online

  Buckingham grinned at him. ‘A man such as you can do a dozen,’ he said sweetly. ‘Show me your plan, John.’

  John unfolded the paper and spread it on the little table before his master. ‘The fort is built like a star,’ he said. ‘And only half-finished on one side. Our trouble will be that the north side, on the strand, is facing La Rochelle over the sea and can be easily relieved by the French troops who are camped around the besieged city on the mainland. We hold the island, right enough, they will get no help from here. And the town of La Rochelle is holding out against the Papist French army. But there are sally ports all along the base of the St Martin’s fort wall and they have boats moored ready. We will have to cut them off from the mainland before they can be reduced.’

  Buckingham looked at John’s sketch. ‘What about a direct attack? Never mind starving them. An attack against the walls?’

  John’s mouth turned down. ‘I don’t advise it,’ he said briefly. ‘The walls are new-built and high. The windows look very deep. You can’t hammer your way in, and you will lose half your men trying to scale it.’

  ‘They have to be starved out?’

  John nodded.

  ‘So if we put our army all around them on the landward side, can you build me a barrier to span the seaward side to prevent them getting ships in and out?’

  John thought for a moment. ‘I can try, my lord,’ he said. ‘But these are high seas. It’s not like building a raft across the Isis, it’s like building a raft across Portsmouth harbour. The waves come very high, and if there is a storm, anything we built would be smashed.’

  ‘Surely if we have enough wood, and chains …’

  ‘If the summer weather remains calm it might hold,’ John said doubtfully. ‘But one night of high winds would smash it.’

  Buckingham got up swiftly and strode forward, looking down on the fort. ‘I tell you, John, I cannot stay here seated before a little fort, looking at it forever,’ he said, his voice so low that no-one but Tradescant could hear him. ‘I am laying siege to them, and they are trapped inside the fort, right enough; but all I have to feed my men is what I brought in my ships. I need support as much as the fort. Their army and their suppliers are over a small channel of water, while my army and suppliers are many miles away. And their king is commanded by Richelieu, while my king …’ He broke off, and then saw John’s uneasy face.

  ‘He will not forget me,’ he said firmly. ‘Even now he will be preparing a fleet to come after us and revictual and supply us. But you see that I am in a hurry. I cannot wait. The French in the citadel of St Martin must starve and surrender at once. Otherwise we will beat them to it. We will starve and surrender even though we are supposed to be laying siege to them.’

  ‘I’ll plan something,’ John promised.

  There were no tents for the men nor for the poorer officers; no-one in England had thought that the expedition would need tents. John laid his soldier’s pack on the ground beside the other men, heeled in his new gillyflower in his little nursery bed, and then set about planning his blockade of St Martin.

  Within an hour or two he had his drawing of ships’ timbers and a couple of spare masts chained together. The senior shipwright and John supervised the throwing of the wood in the water and watched the sailors leaning out from little boats and struggling to chain them together.

  ‘Those were our spare masts and timbers to repair the ships,’ the shipwright observed dourly. ‘Better pray we don’t lose a mast on the way home.’

  ‘We can’t go home until the citadel falls,’ John reasoned. ‘First things first.’

  ‘And have you heard when they will come to relieve us?’ the shipwright asked. ‘The lads were saying that a great fleet is coming behind us, now that the king knows that the duke has been successful, now they know that we are at war.’

  ‘It will come soon,’ John said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘My lord told me that the king had promised it.’

  John was right about the fragility of the timber barrier. The high wind blowing over their camp in the next week warned him of the storm that was coming. He crawled out of his makeshift shelter and looked out to sea. In the darkness he could see nothing. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Buckingham, sleepless too.

  ‘Will your blockade hold?’

  ‘Not if this wind keeps up,’ Tradescant replied. ‘I am sorry, my lord.’

  He could feel the warmth of Buckingham’s breath as he leaned forward to be heard above the storm.

  ‘Don’t ask for pardon, John,’ he said. ‘You warned me of the danger and I told you of the need. But at first light tomorrow get out there and build me another barrier. I must have St Martin cut off.’

  John’s next attempt was to use the landing-craft ships, lashed together prow to stern across the channel before the St Martin citadel. Two small camps of soldiers were set up at either side, to guard the barrier and to take the occasional pot shot at those citizens of St Martin who were bold enough to peep over the half-finished walls. The building work on the fort had almost ceased, although the need to finish the citadel had never been greater.

  ‘They’re weary and hungry,’ Buckingham said with satisfaction. ‘We will outlast them.’

  Within a week of the new barrier being in place there were more high winds, and the stormy waters, pushing the landing craft in opposite directions, broke through. Some of the officers were openly contemptuous of Tradescant at the council of war.

  ‘I am sorry,’ John said dourly. ‘But you are asking me to build a barrier in what is almost open sea. I can rebuild it. I shall bring the ships closer in to shore and run hawsers one from another. The men on board ship can keep watch, and if a hawser breaks we can replace it. But the weather is getting worse, I can think of nothing which will withstand the autumn storms.’

  Buckingham’s face was grave. ‘The king’s fleet will arrive this month,’ he said. ‘It will come without fail. His Majesty loves me and I have his solemn promise of a fleet in September. I have asked him to send more hawsers and timber as well as munitions, money and food. And three thousand more fighting men. As soon as it arrives we will take the castle and move on to La Rochelle itself. Once we’re on the mainland all our troubles will be over.’

  There was a brief dispirited silence. Only John dared voice what they were all thinking. ‘If he is delayed …’ he began cautiously. ‘If the king cannot raise the money for the fleet …’

  Buckingham’s sharp gaze warned John to be silent; but he doggedly continued.

  ‘I beg your pardon, my lord, but if His Majesty is delayed in sending succour then we will have to withdraw for this year,’ he said stoutly.

  ‘You are afraid,’ one of the Frenchmen declared. He whispered something behind his hand about gardens and easy lives.

  ‘I know that we are running short of food and munitions,’ John said steadily. ‘And the men are on half-pay. If there was anywhere for them to go they would have deserted already. We cannot make them fight if they are hungry. They cannot shoot their muskets if they have no powder.’ He looked at Buckingham, past the gentlemen who were openly laughing at him. ‘Forgive me, my lord. But I am much with the common soldiers and I know what they are thinking, and I know that they are going hungry.’

  Buckingham glanced at his table where a flagon of red wine gleamed beside a plate of biscuits. ‘Are we short of food?’ he asked, surprised.

  ‘We’re not starving; but rations have been cut,’ John replied. ‘The Protestants are sending us all they can from La Rochelle – but it is not justice for us to eat their supplies. We came here to relieve them, not to devour their stores. And they themselves are surrounded by the Papist French troops, they cannot go on supplying us forever.’

  ‘I will speak with the French commander,’ Buckingham said thoughtfully. ‘He is a gentleman. Perhaps we can make some sort of terms.’

  ‘We should starve them to death and drive them into the sea,’ Soubise said hastily. ‘We have raised t