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.
Steel turned to Williams.
‘Tom, I think that tomorrow I may send you on an errand.’
‘Sir?’
‘I was contemplating dispatching you to find the army. D’you think you could manage it?’
‘Of course, Sir. I’m quite certain of it.’
‘Then you’re a step ahead of me. We’re heading back towards Donauwörth now, but in truth I’m damned if I know where His Grace might be at present. You’ll just have to keep your head low and nose around until you see some redcoats.’
‘And then make sure that they’re our redcoats, and not the French, Sir.’
‘Quite so. You would think that someone might by now have realized that it would be a great deal easier to fight a war – to actually kill your enemy – if you were able to tell at a glance whether or not they were on your side. Certainly, we British wear red coats, just as the French foot have their white and grey. But are not our friends the Danes now too in grey?
‘And the Austrians retain a different colour of coat for every regiment. Sometimes I pity our commanders almost as much as I pity the men they command.’
The boy laughed and Steel with him. They had grown closer over the days and he was anxious to give the lad as much action as he could before they returned to the camp and prepared for the great battle which was surely soon to come.
‘How much further now, Sir, do you suppose, until we are within striking distance?’
‘I would think in the region of another six miles. The remainder of the day’s march, God willing. I intend to stop for the night at a place called Bachweiden, if I have the name correctly.