Vendetta: The Dorset Boy - Book 6

by Christopher C Tubbs

“No, that’s not true! She is beautiful, yes, but I didn’t want her for myself. She had information that could get both me and the Minister promoted.”

  “So, you killed him for the information?”

  “No! I didn’t kill him at all. Why don’t you believe me?”

  “What was this information that was so valuable?”

  “Plans! Plans of the British defences against invasion from France.”

  “Pffft. Highly likely,” Matai said with ample scorn. “How would a woman get hold of those?”

  “I don’t know,” sobbed a now desperate Aubele. “But the Minister had them hidden in his rooms. He showed them to me but didn’t let me have them.”

  “Where in his rooms?”

  “I don’t know. Please, I am innocent!”

  Matai stepped forward, replaced the gag and looked to Ryan. Ryan tried to think like Marty, what was it he said? ‘Never leave a live enemy behind you.’ He stiffened his resolve and nodded to Matai.

  He tried not to look at the pathetic figure lying in a pool of blood as he tossed the lantern into the corner, setting fire to the house on his way out.

  The trip to Paris was uneventful and, like his last journey down this road, he snoozed. The last time he had only a half a head of hair and was dressed as a French Lieutenant. That mission hadn’t worked out anywhere near as well as they hoped when Napoleon, with the help of his brother, had finessed a coup-de-tat and taken power.

  Now the two-day trip was just tedious. They couldn’t talk in front of the coach driver and John Smith resorted to a macabre game of charades. He mimed blowing things up, cutting throats and hanging treasonous spies. Marty ordered him to be still in the end, as he could see Linette was getting annoyed. He was missing Blaez, scratching his ears always made him calmer.

  Paris was as loud, smelly and exciting as it always was. The boys had never been there before and gawped at the sights out of the windows of the coach.

  Linette directed the coachman to a hotel she knew in the centre of town and they debarked at the entrance. Once registered Linette went clothes shopping for all of them, dragging Antton with her as her mule. She had an exceptional eye for size and had ‘measured up’ each of them with a glance.

  Marty got them a floor of rooms, much to the hotelier’s joy as it had been a quiet month and he knew anyone with Linette would pay handsomely for him to forget they were there.

  He went to the office of the Moniteur and asked where the Minister’s house was. The bored clerk knew as the news he had been assassinated had reached Paris a couple of days before and he had sent a reporter.

  “The editor is a man of little patience and it is more than my job’s worth to hold up the news!” he told Marty. When asked how the story went, he gave him a free copy.

  Marty read the article to everyone when they were all back in the hotel.

  Minister Robert de Chambre foully assassinated in Madrid.

  The body of the story was sensational and a mostly fictional account of how a beautiful émigré had returned to exact revenge on the country and men who had exiled her and then been spirited away with the help of a weak-willed merchant who had fallen under her wicked spell.

  “What a load of bollocks,” Marty guffawed as he read the last line. They hadn’t mentioned the fact that he had to have had help to dispose of the guards. Linette wasn’t impressed and pointed out that the Monitor printed what the Government wanted it to say so they were just using at as a rallying call against the Royalists.

  Marty sobered at that thought, he knew what a well-orchestrated mob was capable of and shuddered to think of what would happen if the Government decided to use this as the match to light a fuse.

  Now they had an address, Marty and Linette went scouting with Samuel in tow. John Smith stayed at the room, forging new identity documents from a set he had ‘lifted’ from a passer-by. He needed to replace the ones he had made on the Bethany, which were in an out of date style. The rest of the team went out around the city to pick up as much information as they could.

  The house of the family de Chambre was in a good part of town not far from the centre and had a French flag flying at half-mast in the small front garden. The front door was bedecked in black ribbons.

  “They are making a big play on his death,” Marty observed. “That flagpole has been put up recently.”

  A servant came out of the front door and walked up to the gate.

  “If you are waiting for Mr. De Chambre to arrive, he is not due for another two days,” he told them with a harried look on his face.

  “Oh, that is a pity, we were wanting to pay our respects,” Linette said. “We have just returned from Martinique and heard the terrible news. It is a horror!”

  “Martinique? That explains the black man. Is he a slave?” he asked.

  “Yes, he is our house slave, but we intend to free him soon,” Linette replied.

  “Wouldn’t bother myself,” the man said peering at Samuel who just looked right back at him “they are only savages, after all.”

  With that ringing in their ears they moved on to find the street the house backed onto.

  “Did dat man call me a savage?” Samuel asked once they were certain not to be overheard.

  “You caught that did you?” Marty replied. “He doesn’t know you like we do.”

  “I am a civilised savage,” Samuel declared.

  Marty looked at him in question.

  “A savage who speaks English,” he grinned.

  “There are more than a few of those!” Linette quipped.

  The back of the house backed onto a narrow lane. Marty got Samuel to make a cup with his hands so he could be boosted up to look over the wall. There was no coach house, which was unusual, but there was a stable. The rear of the house had a large, well-stocked garden and a courtyard which was completely empty. He could see one person pottering around who looked like an elderly gardener.

  “We need a map so we can figure out the most likely route for the body to come home by,” Marty stated as they walked back to their hotel. Linette said she knew of a shop and they made a diversion to buy one.

  In Madrid, Ryan and Matai stood in the shadows across from the Embassy. It was midnight and there was a guard on the door, which was closed and four more around the back. Every ten minutes one of the four would make a circuit of the building.

  “They are not making it easy,” muttered Ryan under his breath.

  “It will take the guards at the back around fifteen minutes to realise that the patrolling man hasn’t returned and get around to the front to investigate. That gives us enough time to set the place on fire and leave a couple of surprises for anyone who tries to put it out.” Matai stated after counting three laps of the guard.

  “Right. We go the next time that guard is level with the sentry,” Ryan decided.

  There was the double twang of crossbows and the two guards crumpled to the ground, stunned by the heavy bolts. A quick examination showed one would never wake again having been hit in the temple, the other was alive but unconscious. A quick search got them a set of keys.

  In the entrance hall of the Embassy they split up to find good places to start a fire. Ryan headed down to the basement and Matai went up to the first-floor kitchen. Lamp oil was liberally splashed around a pile of wood used for the ovens along with anything else combustible he could find. A small pile of priming powder was poured from a powder flask on a pile of paper. A clockwork timing device was set for two minutes and set atop the powder; its wheel-lock primed.

  Ryan had been doing the same in the cellar and the two met in the hall. Ryan placed one of their new bombs under the clerk’s table and set the timer for ten minutes. Matai took a second and set it near the entrance set for five minutes, a third was set on the stairs set for fifteen minutes. Satisfied, they left through the front door, closing and locking it behind them and replacing the keys in the guard’s pocket.

  It had taken just over ten minutes and they waited close by t
o be sure they had done a good job. There was the faintest of whumps and the flickering light of a fire on the first floor could be seen through the windows.

  A guard came around the corner from the back of the building looking for the overdue sentry. He was just bending over the prone guards when the bomb by the door went off. The doors burst outwards and the right-hand door tumbled down the steps narrowly missing the three guards. The left hung drunkenly from one hinge.

  The smoke from the open doors first billowed out and then was sucked back in as the fires in the basement and kitchen drew it in to feed themselves.

  The third guard dragged the unconscious, but alive guard away from the door and was yelling at the top of his voice. Another guard arrived and recklessly ran through the doors into the hallway. After a couple of minutes, he appeared in the door shouting ‘FIRE!’ at the top of his voice. It was the last thing he ever said as the second bomb went off under the desk and blew him across the street. The blast was bad, but it was the shards of iron from the bomb casing embedded in his back that killed him instantaneously.

  Five minutes later, just as a small crowd had gathered to see what was going on, the third bomb detonated effectively, persuading everyone to stay out of the burning building. An hour later with it well ablaze and the roof about to collapse, Matai and Ryan headed back to the hotel, collected their horses and left for Bilbao.

  In Paris, Marty and Lynette poured over the maps they had bought on their way back to the hotel. It didn’t take long to narrow down the possible routes the minister’s body and his baggage would take.

  “We know that they sailed the cargo from Valencia to either Marseille or Montpellier. I’m betting on Marseille, but we need to cover both options. Antton, John, and Linette will cover the road from Orleans. Sam, Garai, and I will cover the other route. If we find the cargo, we stop it and search it. If we find the plans, we destroy them. Don’t try and bring them back. It’s too risky.”

  He looked at each of them in turn.

  “Don’t take any risks, we just need to make sure the plans are either not in his belongings or, if they are, they are destroyed. Be stealthy, crafty, and careful.”

  They split up and headed out of Paris along their respective routes. The plan was to travel until they were a day’s cart ride out of town, find a likely stopping place and find out if the carts had passed. As the carters would stop for the night and there were only a few villages on the route with places that they could stay, they just had to check each in turn until they found them.

  Marty and his team stopped two hours before sunset at the type of hotel that carters would stay at, took a table overlooking the road, ordered some drinks and waited. No carts appeared and chatting to the landlord they found out that no one had passed, “the road has been quiet all day.”

  They finished their drinks and tossed some coins on the table in payment, mounted up and headed south to the next potential stopping place. Again, nothing. This time they didn’t wait but moved straight on.

  It was dark by the time they reached the third and they were greeted by an empty courtyard and stable. There was nothing else for it but to stay the night and try again further south in the morning.

  Marty was edgy and grumpy and Garai tried to cheer him up.

  “It’s alright, boss. If they aren’t here, they must be running late, and we will find them further down the road.”

  Marty wasn’t consoled. He had a phobia about failure and the thought made him feel physically sick. He was also terrified that, despite all his successes, he would be revealed as a fraud. It was what drove him, and it was a relentless task master. It was Samuel who snapped him out of it with a half whispered, half rumbled comment.

  “Dese Frenchie’s aint got no idea about doin’ anything on time. Dey is more interested in eatin’ cheese an drinkin’ wine. The minister fella is in heaven en if dey have him in a barrel of brandy, he be greetin’ Saint Peter wid a bad head!”

  Marty almost snorted the mouthful of red wine, he had just taken, out of his nose and had a coughing fit on hearing that. All the same, he slept badly and had them on the road as soon as the sun came up. He wouldn’t have been any happier to know that Linette and her team hadn’t found anything either.

  They rode south at a trot, which Samuel hated as he had just learned to ride, and the constant posting made his thighs ache as he hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet. He was mightily relieved when they came to the next stopping place and there was a pair of heavily laden carts in the courtyard with a hogshead sized barrel tied securely in the centre of one of them.

  The drivers were finishing hitching up the horses and Marty was going to move in when a squad of Lancers trotted around the corner and formed up in front of the carts. The minister had a military escort!

  They had no choice but to let the carts move ahead and follow at a discrete distance. Marty chewed his lip as they rode and tried to keep his urge to charge in and try and take the carts by force under control.

  “At the speed they are going they will stop again before they enter Paris,” Garai, ever level-headed, pointed out. “They must be paid by the day!”

  Marty chuckled at that as it relieved the tension. Garai was right! The wagons and escort pulled up to a tavern at midday and spent a leisurely two hours over lunch and a nap. The carts were left unguarded but not out of sight of the Lancers who lounged around at the front of the building.

  Mid-afternoon they set off again and trundled along until four o’clock when they stopped again well before dark. This time the horses were unharnessed and rubbed down before being fed and watered.

  Marty, Garai, and Samuel took a very cheap room over the stables, had a passable supper and settled down to wait. Around two AM Marty rousted them out and led them down to the courtyard. All was quiet and they made their way over to the carts.

  As they approached, they heard a loud snore come from the cart with the hogshead barrel in it. Samuel’s eyes went wide, and Marty could clearly see the whites in the starlight. He put a hand on his arm to reassure him and moved over on silent feet to see who was in there.

  Laid out across the driver’s seat was one of the Lancers. He was fast asleep. Marty pulled a small bottle from his pocket and put several drops from it on a cloth. Careful not to breath any of the vapour, he gently placed the cloth over the nose and mouth of the Lancer and held it there for thirty seconds.

  After he removed it, he pinched the guard’s cheek and tweaked his nose. He was out cold. Samuel looked over his shoulder and grunted something on his native tongue and prodded the Lancer in the chest. When he got no reaction, he grinned at Marty, showing his brilliant white teeth. Damn, Marty thought. You can see them for a country mile!

  Garai was checking the baggage cart and had already undone the tarpaulin covering it, He began opening boxes and carefully sorting through them. Luckily, the starlight was enough for them to see by, the concern was that it was also bright enough for them to be seen.

  Marty joined him after posting Samuel as a sentry and saw that there weren’t that many boxes and chests to work through, but, all the same, it was four AM when Garai tapped Marty on the arm and handed him a sheaf of folded drawings. It was too dark to make out what was on them, so Marty went back to their room and lit a candle.

  By its flickering light he saw that they had found what they were looking for, well, mostly. Having unfolded three sheets he realised that one was missing. He had a plan of London and its immediate surrounds, another of the Eastern approach to it covering the Thames, Medway, and down to Hastings, and a third that started around Brighton and covered the southwest approach. He didn’t have the one which covered the area from Brighton to Hastings.

  He took the drawings to the fireplace and carefully tore them into shreds and fed them into the fire, stirring each piece to make sure it was fully destroyed. Matai came back to the room, followed soon after by Samuel. He hadn’t found any more sheets.

  Marty sat and thought about it. Would he h
ave handed over the full set? The answer to that was a definite no! He would want some insurance that he was going to be treated fairly. So, he could assume that Marie had held on to at least one sheet. After all, she was vengeful, not stupid.

  Chapter 6: A Prince’s Gratitude.

  They met up with Linette and the others back in Paris and took a coach back to Le Crotoy, where they were to meet the Bethany. Tarrant had been waiting for them out of sight of the coast and a fishing boat was ready to take them out. Ryan and Matai were already aboard with Franco.

  “Who came to collect Marie?” asked Linette once they were all in the dining room.

  “A pair of palace footmen and four guards dressed in black tunics with red piping and letters,” Franco replied.

  “Yeomen Warders,” John Smith stated, “they be from the tower.”

  “Did they state where they were taking her?” Marty asked.

  “One of them, the older one, told her she had been very foolish, and she would have to explain herself to the Prince and plead for his forgiveness,” Franco replied.

  “Zat will not go well,” Linette frowned, her accent slipping.

  “I will talk with the Prince, see what is going on and what their plans are,” Marty stated trying to stop the conversation from going any further.

  “Well they only send traitors to the Tower,” John Smith said with a knowing look then yelped as Marty kicked him in the shin under the table.

  It only took the Bethany a few hours to sail up to the Thames Estuary and then she had to be reined in to make the passage upstream to India Dock. Once they got there, he went straight to St James’ Palace and requested an interview with the Prince, only to be told to go to the Tower and that he was expected.

  He got a cab to the Tower and was greeted at the gate by a Yeoman who escorted him to the Beauchamp Tower and up several flights of stairs. They passed carved names and other graffiti left by the myriad of noble prisoners who had spent their last days there, to a suit identified by the Yeoman as Anne Boleyn’s rooms.