Jennifer Horseman

by GnomeWonderland

  "I need that horse. I don't have any means without it. I need a militiaman—"

  "Oh no, not a smart move," he shook his head. "The devil that stole ye 'orse is riding it and they be long gone. Callin' the militia willna' do a thing but call attention to yeself and, well, I'd wager that is 'bout the last thing ye be wantin' right now."

  She searched his face. "Just how is it you know that?"

  "Same way I know ye not common. Too pretty by far. Ye desperate, too, all this is plain—"

  "But I need money, I — " Dear God, what now? She couldn't write a bank note without proper introductions. No one would take her word for it. She needed that horse. . . .

  "How much ye need?"

  She felt ready to cry. "Well, I don't know ... exactly."

  "Well, first off, seems to me ye ought to find out. Go on up there an get an answer."

  Another good idea, find out how much she had to steal. Juliet cast her gaze across the way to the port master's office. Three people, an older man with a boy and young man, waited in line on the wide planklike stairs that led to the office. Desperate but determined, she crossed the street like a blind person. The horses of an oncoming carriage reared up, bringing the vehicle to a dead stop. The driver swore at her but she hardly saw and didn't care. She stepped in front of the line, not bothering to excuse herself. Brows lifted but neither man said a word.

  The old man smiled toothlessly. 'Appens all the time. People just assume ye be mad to ignore pleasantries and politeness. So the men just roll their eyes and mumble 'bout the riffraff clutterin' up the streets as they let ye go on ye merry, mad way. . . .

  Juliet stared at the map on the wall in the port master's office as she waited for the elderly gentleman to finish booking a passage to Dublin. The Raven set sail from somewhere off northern France, probably Calais, the closest port to Brussels. Depending on the weather, the ship would take between one and a half to two weeks to reach Toulon. If she could reach Amsterdam— one of the last ports open to English commerce On the continent—in two or three days, she could with luck reach Toulon by the week's end. Provided she came up with enough money for the ship's passage as well as for a horse, and horses were so expensive with the war going on, and also provided she traveled by night as well as day, and especially provided she kept safe—

  Which was an immediate problem. Sailors and longshoremen passed on the streets. Shop and tavern keepers began opening doors to morning traffic, sweeping out the rooms. The calls of venders mixed with those of roosters and dogs. Four uniformed sailors appeared heading this way atop their mounts. More than one interested gaze watched the unescorted young lady standing in wait of a turn at the port master's window.

  The elderly man left at last and Juliet stepped forward. The white haired man looked her up and down, which resulted in a disapproving frown. "Yes? What can I do for you?"

  "I need immediate passage to Amsterdam."

  "Amsterdam . . ." He examined his books. "Ship leaving at noon and one later, at four."

  "Noon, please."

  "How many traveling?"

  She nervously bit her lip. "One."

  He looked up from his book.

  "Tis an emergency."

  "Always is. Nineteen pounds, payment up front."

  "Nineteen pounds? Why, it's only a hundred miles-"

  "A hundred and twenty miles. Nineteen pounds, please."

  What was she thinking of? Nineteen pounds and she didn't have a pence, yet alone a pound. Not without that horse—

  "Nineteen pounds, madame."

  "Ah, ah, I'll be right back."

  She stepped outside, thinking, thinking. What could she steal before noon? Without getting caught? Oh God, what to do? What to do? Going back was out of the question, completely out of the question, she told herself over and over as she closed her eyes and clutched the rail, hearing again the ticking of the grandfather clock. . . .

  "God . . . help me"

  "Look, loverly, 'tis simple. That ring on ye finger. Fetch a pretty price, 'twill. Enough ta get ye on ye way to Amsterdam, with plenty left over, too, for what ye be needin'."

  Juliet looked from the beggar to the ring he pointed at. Her ring ... her ring. For the thousandth time she pulled with all her might. She took a deep breath, pulling until her finger reddened, another pain added to ten others. "Oh, it won't come off! Tis Garrett's magic! He won't let me take it off!"

  "Not ye but me. I 'ave a way with mere mortal magic."

  This was said as if it were a jest as his hand went around her finger. She felt a warm tingling as the ring slipped off her finger. As if it had never been stuck.

  He grinned toothlessly. "How long since ye last ate?"

  Stunned, staring, from far away Juliet heard herself say dumbly. "What?"

  "Aye, a long time, I can tell. Ye no doubt lost some flesh, that could explain it. Could I say. Tis a bloody shame to part with such a lovely bit 'o earth. But when I saw ye face come out of the office, I knew ye had to do it. Ye got no choice, do ye?"

  Staring at the ring, Juliet shook her head.

  "Well now, the most 'onest swap dealer around is Rosenberg. 'E be a Jew, but Jews be more 'onest than Christians, always 'ave been ifn ye ask me. Rosenberg's the only fellow who won't take ye shirt with the swap—"

  "Where is his shop?"

  "Two blocks south, round the alleyway and up the stairs. Small sign. Run on, lass, ye got to get on that boat 'eadin' to Amsterdam—" He stopped, grinning, for Juliet was already running. "Tell 'im Garrett will pay double to get it back ifn 'e waits on it!"

  That's when Juliet knew there was something very strange about the beggar man, an impression that doubled when nearly an hour later he still waited for her as she emerged from the port master's office with passage booked. "The ship leaves in an hour. I'm off—"

  "Not like that ye not. Ye look like trouble, too pretty by far, I keep thinkin', and ifn I be thinking it, so '11 the men who sees ye. Not that ye'd be safe even if ye were a sorry sight. No, what ye need now is a package o' new rags. Canna cut that hair, I know, but mayhap if ye stuff it inside a shirt and coat and with breeches and a hat, it might work. Aye . . . and lucky for ye, I know just the place."

  He started off but stopped and turned around, realizing she had not followed. A stream of sunlight broke through the clouds and fell behind him, and with the smallest leap of faith and a great leap of imagination, Juliet witnessed a transformation too startling to be believed.

  Admiral D'Villeneuve stood on the balcony of his chateau, staring off at the ocean beyond the Toulon hillside. The vista before him was an idyllic green hillside rising from the sea: grassy slopes interrupted by small groupings of beech trees and brackens of late summer wild-flowers. He saw another vista, though. He closed his eyes, trying desperately to escape the rows and rows of dead or dying men neatly lining the decks of each one of his ships. Yet even with his eyes closed he heard the pitiful screams and gasps of men in the quiet rustle of the breeze, smelled blood and burnt flesh over the scent of freshly shorn hay and salty air. ...

  The sight of the British fleet on the horizon would haunt him forever. The British fleet had known exactly where they were, as he would swear they knew the battle they had planned. Admiral Nelson had been ready, each ship outfitted and readied for battle, the tables turned and the world changed. They sailed full sail into the cannon fire where Nelson's naval brilliance was demonstrated relentlessly, over and over again, as ships were picked off and sunk like so many carnival puppets. It was a bloody massacre, they were doomed long before they reached full readiness.

  How? Dear God, how had they known?

  From above and to the side, the fourth bell of the monastery's steeple interrupted the peace of the sleepy village of Toulon. For the first time, he realized why the church was the keeper of time. His two eldest sons had died in the battle. At age forty-nine, after a life dedicated to France and the military, after sending thousands of men into battle under great umbrellas of national plat
itudes and rationalizations, he finally understood the cost of each one of those lives. If God could be bargained with for past sins, he would die a thousand times for any one of those men. . . .

  Boots sounded on the deck behind the admiral, but he did not turn around.

  "Sir!"

  "Yes?" came the whisper of his voice.

  "Corporal Samone to see you."

  The corporal held the distinguished honor of being Napoleon's personal messenger. A waste of service, the admiral knew well the message: no more bullion to rebuild the navy, yet not because his navy failed France and her emperor. For there would be no more bullion for the great army either. France was at last bankrupt. The world he had conquered had been bled dry; commencement de la fin: the beginning of the end.

  "See him in," the admiral said wearily.

  Within minutes, Corporal Samone stepped out onto the balcony, followed always by his four guards. "Admiral, sir," he saluted with his guards. The admiral started to go through the motion of greeting the younger man but was interrupted midsentence, "From the Emperor, sir, a matter of the utmost importance and urgency."

  The admiral took the sealed envelope extended to him and quickly tore it open, ignoring the formalities to read:

  Intelligence services discovered the personage by name of Black Garrett to be one and the same as Lord Ramon Garrett Van Ness, third earl of Brack-shire, a member of the English House of Lords and, most pertinently, a commissioned captain in His Majesty's Royal Navy. For five years, said personage has conducted espionage missions of high order against the French Empire, the Greater French Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, the Confederation of the Rhine, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw.

  The personage of Black Garrett and the English sailors of his crew are presently sailing en route to Toulon. Your orders are to tax every available resource, including the fourteenth regiment in Marseilles, to insure Lord Ramon Garrett Van Ness and every member of his crew's immediate capture and execution by hanging for war and espionage against the French Empire and her peoples. Nothing and no one is to be spared in the execution of these orders. ...

  The admiral read the orders twice before he understood, an understanding reached only after he put the information against each and every encounter he had with Garrett, settling at last at Tangiers and the young lady Juliet. At first he couldn't believe the scope of the deception: that somehow Garrett had discovered his past with Anna and found her daughter to make him into . . . into what? What word described a man who traded hundreds and hundreds of lives, the very future of the French Empire, for a young lady's grand theatrical whim? There was no word terrible enough . . .

  "Admiral? Admiral?"

  The voice called him from sick dread settling around his soul. For a moment still, he could not make the proper reply, but with the sole thought of his two sons buried, he finally managed to say: "Alert the fourteenth regiment and initiate the immediate transport of troops to Toulon. Call my captains immediately." Then in a passionate vow: "Commencement de la fin de Negra Garrett!"

  Crouching in the bushes, Juliet followed the sound of laughter until she came to the two soldiers resting at the edge of a small brook. The two men must be the last of the regiment heading to Toulon to join the naval force there. When she had first seen the neat rows of men coming up behind her, she had been terrified, terrified they had come for her, but of course that was ridiculous; not a soul in the last five long days of travel had seen through her disguise to discover even her sex, let alone her mission. Then she had been terrified of being discovered, for while she had fooled peasants and the farmers along the way, they numbered a handful. A regiment numbered in the hundreds.

  She had left the road for the cover of forest, where, owing to two days of travel with no sleep and only brief stops for water, she had fallen asleep as she waited for the soldiers to pass. Morning sunlight streamed through the trees, and still she might never have wakened had not these last two soldiers talking quietly by the stream burst into sudden laughter.

  "Toulon is not so bad. I know a pretty mademoiselle there. Her name is Mercedes, long brown hair and . . ." he motioned with his hands at his chest, indicating another attribute he found attractive. "She's a serving wench at a little cafe that overlooks the water there—"

  "A little cafe? The only cafe in Toulon, I wager! And one with the entire outfit cramped inside, a hundred eyes on this little Mercedes. Ma foi! The entire regiment in Toulon, mixed with what's left of the navy. What on earth for?"

  The question had been asked but never answered by every last one of the soldiers ordered to move from Marseilles to Toulon. The dark-haired soldier only shrugged as he dipped his cask in and out of the cool water. "Who knows?"

  Juliet remained perfectly still and silent until at last the two soldiers rose and left again. She knew what they did not; the Marseilles regiment had been ordered to Toulon to ensure enough men and arms to capture a man named Garrett.

  A man she loved far more dearly than life.

  Once she felt it was safe, she silently returned to where she had tied her horse. She wore the clothes Jack had gotten her: baggy breeches and oversized coat over a dirty cotton shirt, suede boots two sizes too large and a straw hat that covered nearly the whole of her face. The clothes kept her safe and felt now like a second layer of skin, especially as they were plastered to her by grime. "And donna be thinkin' o' bathin', either," one of the beggarman's pieces of parting wisdom. "Ye already smell o' 'orse sweat and ye can take my word that nothin' keeps people away like a goodly scent. A few more days an' the only people who'll be able to come near ye will be those with a perfumed kerchief 'bout the nose. Unless ye be wantin' company?"

  The entire trip had passed like a dream of changing landscapes. Once she reached Amsterdam, with its canals and cobblestone streets edged by tall, thin Dutch houses, she walked to the nearest stables and bargained with the rest of her money for the best horse there. Once she had a horse, she left on the long, ever-changing roads that promised to get her to Toulon, a trip that amounted to nothing more than endless hours along country roads. The steady trot of horses' hooves matched the rhythm of her heart, and she sang childhood songs less to pass the time than to keep from thinking, thinking about how she would save him and what would happen if she could not.

  Using Jack's advice, she avoided people traveling along the way just as she avoided passing through the larger townships: Brussels, Waterloo, the Parisian valley, and finally Lyons, choosing instead the road circling around these places. In six long days she stopped only twice—in villages where she traded her exhausted horse for a fresh one and for a small bit of food she could eat along the way.

  She stopped only once to sleep. As she passed the Parisian valley toward Lyon, she had come across a lovely old church outside a small farming village. She had felt so tired and hungry. The severe cramps in her legs from hour after hour of sitting in the saddle felt all but unbearable, and still she might have resisted if not for a chill settling over the land with dusk. The chill had frightened her, it seemed to seep through her skin to surround her heart and make her afraid. Afraid of the familiar road and the horse that wanted to rest as badly as she did, afraid most of all of losing sight of the light. "Now remember, lass," Jack's parting words came to her then, "the best place for desperate people 'as always been God's church. Ifn ye find yeself afraid, truly afraid, seek out the nearest church. . . . With ye salvation, a soul gets a little warmth. . . ."

  The church had been small and empty and ... so strangely warm. She remembered little else, too tired even to pray. She must have fallen asleep immediately. Her sleep was visited by strange dreams: dreams of him, the strange old beggar pointing urgently to a church far away on a distant hillside, her emotions lifting with joy as she ran toward it ... the church, the place where she would be safe. ...

  She woke to the morning light. A blanket had been placed over her and a single votive lit in the sacristy. She thought of Garrett and felt his love as she never had before. It m
ade her cry, evoking his name over and over as she hurried out the doors. . . .

  Now she was within miles of Toulon, arriving on the heels of a regiment. Leaves and twigs made a thick carpet, crackling under foot and hoof alike as she led the dappled mare out onto the road. With her hat in place and the pistol heavy in her coat pocket, she mounted and turned the horse toward Toulon.

  The noonday sun shone in a cloudless sky as she passed the first small houses and farms on the outskirts of Toulon. The road traveled about a mile up from the sea and the air was warm and humid, moist with the salty fresh taste of the Mediterranean nearby. To her left, rollinggreenfoothillsstretchedbeneathahigh mountain. A few chateaus dotted the hillside to her side, separated from barns, stables, and pastures where idle cows and horses grazed. Sheep grazed on the slopes above that. Yet her gaze followed her consciousness, which was centered on the stretch of blue sea where The Raven would appear on the horizon.

  A plan had finally occurred to her. She would need a small boat and someone to row it. She had enough coins left to pay someone. She needed a flag too, and the only flag that might work to warn of danger was the quarantine flag, the one flown when disease struck a ship. Garrett would guess from that. Every ship had them and she could probably bribe a cabin boy to fetch one for her—

  Hoofbeats sounded behind her and she turned to see a dozen more mounted soldiers heading her way. Nervously, she reined her mount to the side. No one cast a glance in her direction. Still, she waited long after they passed before starting out again.

  Toulon had to be just ahead. The harbor emerged in the distance and there she saw what was left of the ruined French naval fleet. Amidst fishing boats of various sizes the tall masts of the great ships rocked peacefully at dock. Even from a distance she could see many were burnt or had gashes in the sides, masts torn or fallen.

  Gradually Juliet became aware of the strange odor filling the air, unpleasant in the extreme, and alarmed by it, not knowing why, she slowed her mount as she rounded a wide bend. The vista came into view. Startled, she stopped the horse to stare.