The Old Vengeful dda-12

by Anthony Price

  Aske shook his head slowly. "Not worse than the hell-hole at Bitche—'the house of tears'. And they reckoned Sarrelibre was worse than Bitche. Or so I have been told, m'sieur."

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  The tall Frenchman looked down at the little Englishman for a moment, then turned back to Elizabeth. "Let us say . . . it was a cruel age, Miss Loftus. Any man who escaped in those days risked more than mere recapture. But then any man who wore his country's uniform . . . that was also a cruel fate.

  And especially here in France, After twenty years of war, and the Law of Conscription, which was hated so much."

  "Like the Press Gang?"

  "That I cannot say. But here. . . by 1812 the countryside was full of refractaires—the evaders of conscription who were on the run ... as well as deserters from the army. And, for the most part, the peasants and the poor people pitied them, and helped them. Or at least did not inform on them—" he swung towards Paul "—and that, Paul, is how these men of yours survived here for so long without discovery: they passed themselves off as conscripts—as fishermen from the west coast trying to return to their homes . . . Would that be right?"

  "Exactly right, Bertrand, by God!" Paul nodded first to the Frenchman, then to Elizabeth. "Tom Chard said that Chipperfield and the midshipman both spoke enough French to get by, but they passed off their accents as Breton—like pretending to be Scotsmen in Kent. By God! Bertrand—

  you've found them! That's brilliant of you!"

  " Moment, Paul." Bourienne cautioned Paul with a hand. "It may be that I have not got them. None of the peasants who were interrogated admitted that these were Englishmen—"

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  "But the place and the time is right, Bertrand—"

  "But not the numbers, my friend. You said four men, and these were not four men—they were three men and a girl."

  "And a girl?" Elizabeth's heart sank.

  "A young girl. The sister of one of them, who was travelling with her brother, Miss Loftus."

  Elizabeth turned to Paul. "Paul—?"

  "Bloody marvellous!" Paul beamed at her, and then at Bouriennt. "You're a magician, Bertrand. I never thought you'd find them, not in the time. But you have!"

  "But. . . the girl, Paul?"

  "Tom Chard mentioned a girl—obviously," said Aske.

  "Everything comes back to Tom Chard."

  "Not quite everything." Paul cut back to the Frenchman, dismissing Aske. "What happened, Bertrand?"

  "Ah . . . now I am going to disappoint you! What happened is not at all clear... I have this friend in our society—a local history society, you understand, Miss Loftus—and he has a colleague who is an authority on the times hereabouts of the First Empire ... on the local administration under the Emperor Napoleon, and so on ... a man who knows his way round the records and documents of the period—"

  "Bertrand—"

  "All right. You are in a hurry, I know . . . The fact is, for security purposes the country was divided into small dummy3

  districts, each with a police commandant, and the presence of this party was eventually reported to the officer at Chauny

  —I say 'eventually', for it seems that they had lodged in one of the smaller towers here for ten days or more . . . the château as a whole had been derelict since the revolution, you understand . . . Yes, well... it was assumed that they were refractaires, and a party of police was sent to arrest them.

  But when they searched the château they found that the birds had flown. Possibly they had been warned by the peasants ...

  or perhaps they had a look-out. All that the gendarmes found was—a grave. A fresh grave."

  Elizabeth looked to Paul. "Lieutenant Chipperfield, Paul?"

  "Shh! Go on, Bertrand."

  Bourienne frowned at Paul. "This was all routine so far, you must understand. Hunting deserters was one of their main tasks— French deserters . . . All through that previous winter, and into the spring, there had been a special drive to bring the conscripts to the colours as never before—every man or boy they could lay their hands on, the class of 1813 even. The whole of France was on the move, they said—the whole of Western Europe even. This was 1812, remember—"

  "Russia," said Aske. "The great invasion! The dress rehearsal for 1941." He nodded to Elizabeth. "You remember what I said? This was the big year—1812!"

  "The year of Salamanca," said Paul. "One of David Audley's maternal ancestors was killed at Salamanca, charging with Le Marchant's cavalry in Wellington's greatest victory, as he dummy3

  never tires of telling us."

  "Greatest victory—phooey!" Aske sniffed derisively.

  "Napoleon withdrew forty of his best battalions from Spain for Russia. Spain was a side-show, compared with Russia—

  like Greece and North Africa were side-shows in 1941

  compared with Russia. Once they'd dealt with Russia—

  Napoleon and Hitler both—the rest was chicken-feed . . .

  they'd have taken England next after that. In fact. . . in fact, the only difference between the year 1812 and the year 1941

  is that at the very end of 1941 the Americans came in on our side . . . Whereas, in 1812 the Americans declared war on us, old boy!"

  "This is Professor Wilder talking, presumably?" Outside his 1914 -18 War Paul wasn't so sure of himself.

  "Professor Wilder and the facts." Aske picked up Paul's uncertainty like a £5 note in the gutter. "Wilder says the trouble with us is that we've been brought up on Arthur Bryant and Nelson—we reckon we're winning the war from Trafalgar in 1805 onwards. But the fact is that by the summer of 1812 we were losing it. Bad harvests . . . riots in the cities—the Luddites breaking up the factories and burning the corn-ricks . . . the pound falling against the franc. . . and war with the United States . . . and then Napoleon leading the greatest army of the age against the Russians." He shook his head. "In 1812, when poor old Chipperfield was being planted here, we were losing, believe me, Mitchell."

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  "Hmmm. . ." Paul cut his losses at a stroke. "So they found a grave, Bertrand. And did they dig it up?"

  "They dug it up, yes." Bourienne didn't quite know what to make of the Mitchell-Aske byplay. "And that is when it started to cease to become routine, my friend."

  "How so? He died of natural causes, surely? Blood-poisoning or gangrene, or whatever?"

  Bourienne waved a hand. "What he died of, I do not know.

  But there was a British naval officer's uniform coat buried with him—that is when the trouble started . . . en effet, that is when the records start. Because until then it was no more than a police matter."

  "So what happened then?"

  "Oh ... it did not happen immediately. I do not know all the dates, but it was late summer, early autumn, when the coat is ... is ... disinterred. And then the commandant's report goes through the official channels, and eventually to Paris.

  And then—and then . . ."

  "The shit is in the fan?" Paul grimaced at Elizabeth. "Sorry, Elizabeth—and then, Bertrand?"

  "And then . . . Colonel Jean-Baptiste Suchet, bringing the fear of God and the Emperor with him, and two squadrons of

  gendarmes d'élite from the Young Guard battalions in Paris

  —"

  "Suchet!" exclaimed Aske, "Meaning 'Soo-shay', Colonel of the Gendarmerie?"

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  "Not the Gendarmerie, m'sieur—" Bourienne shook his head

  "—this Suchet was a colonel of the Marines of the Guard, and also a special aide of the Emperor himself . . . What you would call 'top brass'—and not so much a policeman, I think, as—as—as, maybe a colonel of the general staff—or of intelligence, perhaps?"

  Now they were really in deep, thought Elizabeth, looking quickly from Paul to Humphrey Aske. Because, with that one flight of comparative fancy, Bertrand Bourienne had lifted up Lieutenant Chipperfield of the Vengeful out of the category of escaped PoW into the realm of cloak-and-dagger.

  "Indeed?" Paul seemed disappo
intingly unmoved. "So just what did this fellow . . . Suchet do, to put the fear of God up everyone?"

  "Ah . . . well, he dismissed the commandant at Chauny—for incompetence, one supposes . . . And he summoned the adjoints from Compiegne and Soissons and Laon, and drafted both the local police and the soldiers from the garrisons to conduct house-to-house searches . . . Also, it would seem that he despatched messengers to St Quentin and Arras and Amiens, and even as far as Rouen—"

  "What messages?"

  Bourienne shook his head. "Messengers . . . what messages, I do not know . . . And he interrogated many local people—

  peasants and farmers from Coucy here, and also from Folembray and Guny and Pont-St Mard—after he left there dummy3

  were complaints from several mayors to the Prefect, both about his behaviour, and the behaviour of his men . . . chiefly his men, for damage to property . . . and there were two assaults, and the rape of a respectable woman. After the troubles of the winter and the spring, when the conscripts had been combed out, there was much disaffection—even after he left—even with the news of great victories in Russia—

  false news, as it turned out."

  Bourienne shrugged. "But after that there is little more to tell

  — little more that the records here contain, at least. This is the worm's-eye view of what you seek. If you wish for the eagle's-eye view, you must go to Paris, that is what my friend's colleague advises. There are many other records there, and it was from Paris that Colonel Suchet came."

  "Suchet does sound like our best bet," agreed Aske. "If he was top brass, someone must know about him. And now that we know he turned up here as well as at Lautenbourg—"

  "Lautenbourg?" Bourienne frowned. "In the Vosges?"

  "That's where they escaped from," said Aske.

  "And Colonel Suchet pursued them all the way here?" The Frenchman's bushy eyebrows rose. "But then that fits well enough—well enough . . ."

  "Well enough how, m'sieur?" asked Elizabeth.

  Bourienne considered her for a moment. "I said ... a worm's-eye view, Mamselle . . . and that is the truth . . . And there is little enough that I have been able to give you, beyond what dummy3

  you already appear to know . . . the more so, as I myself know so little of this period. But there is one thing I do know, which every worm knows . . . and every student of history must learn to identify from the worms' memories—" he paused for dramatic effect "—and that is the heavy tread of authority. . . the tread of history itself crushing down on the worms."

  Elizabeth looked at him blankly.

  "I do not know what messages Colonel Suchet sent—I do not even know why he pursued these prisoners. But it is clear that he wanted them very badly . . . enough to turn this whole region upside down . . . and it was not merely because they were escapers—of that I am sure." He shook his head. "They were not ordinary escapers."

  "What makes you think that?" asked Aske quickly.

  "Partly because he was no ordinary policeman—and an imperial aide does not chase ordinary escapers." Bourienne looked at Paul, and smiled. "And partly because he has a nose for the dug-out full of Boches." He came back to Aske and Elizabeth. "And partly because I also feel the heavy tread above me—perhaps that most of all."

  "Hmm . . ." Aske wrinkled his nose doubtfully. "A bit of circumstantial evidence, in fact. Plus a lot of mere instinct."

  Bourienne gestured towards the hill of rubble. "This is Enguerrand's tower, Miss Loftus."

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  hill, was it?"

  "On a hill? But no! Here—where we stand—was the edge of a great ditch. The ruin of the tower fills the ditch and also makes your hill, Mamselle. And what we see is but the edge of a huge crater where the tower stood. The greatest single ruin in France is what you see here—am I right, Paul?"

  "What?" Paul frowned abstractedly.

  The Frenchman nodded. "They were not ordinary prisoners?

  Am I right?"

  "No, they weren't. I suppose I owe you that, Bertrand." Paul grinned. "But I don't yet know why."

  "But you knew before, nevertheless?" Bourienne nodded.

  Elizabeth stared at Paul. "How did you know, Paul?"

  "I don't know—I'm guessing, like Bertrand."

  "They were sent to Lautenbourg, that's why," said Aske.

  "Sent there—and then interrogated about something. And then, when they escaped, the French pretended to the British that they didn't exist. And if they'd been caught I'll bet that would have been the truth. 'Shot while escaping' is the standard formula."

  "Timing is the giveaway, Elizabeth," said Paul, ignoring Aske.

  "They met the Fortuné by accident—the Vengeful was wrecked—they came ashore ... By the ordinary rules they would have been marched to somewhere like Verdun, and Lieutenant Chipperfield and the midshipman would have been semi-paroled there, and perhaps the warrant officers dummy3

  with them. That must be what Chipperfield reckoned on."

  "So what?" said Aske.

  "So he didn't need to escape. Once he reached Verdun he'd be among friends, with a Senior British Officer to advise him what to do next... Or at least he'd be safe, anyway."

  "Where does timing come into this?" persisted Aske.

  "At first they did march towards Verdun—they nearly got there, in fact. But then they were diverted to the Lautenbourg, and Colonel Suchet turned up. And then they were in trouble." Paul looked at Elizabeth. " Timing, Elizabeth."

  He expected something of her—and since he could hardly expect her to be brighter than Aske it must relate to something he expected her to know, and to be able to put together as he had done.

  "Timing . . ." Her mind stretched into Father's Vengeful Number Seven chapter, but to no avail. And Bertrand Bourienne, who knew nothing about the Vengeful's last voyage, was looking frankly bemused. And Humphrey Aske—

  The Vengeful's last voyage?

  "The French couldn't possibly have known that she'd be off Ushant—" But now she was echoing her own answer to the question she'd put to her in the garden at the Old House "—

  but she was at Gibraltar for re-fitting and stores before that. . . and then she called at Lisbon on the way home . . . ?"

  "Come on," Elizabeth!" Paul encouraged her.

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  "Well ... I suppose the French could have received news of her sailing from Lisbon, if they had spies there ... if she didn't sail immediately—but meeting the Fortuné. . . that was still accidental, Paul."

  "You're just guessing—clutching at straws," murmured Aske.

  "Of course I'm bloody guessing!" snapped Paul. "But our people say the time factor just about fits—allowing for the length of time it took to transfer information to Paris from Spain."

  "But that would take weeks—" Aske stopped suddenly, and his expression changed. "Ah!"

  Elizabeth stared at Aske.

  "That's what he means, Miss Loftus," Aske nodded. "The Fortuné doesn't come into the reckoning at all. But once the Vengeful survivors came ashore the news would have gone to Paris in a matter of hours, by semaphore. They always celebrated whenever one of our ships came to grief—the Moniteur would publish it, we can check that even ... But . . .

  they didn't do anything about it. They just started the prisoners off towards Verdun, like always . . . and that also took weeks—don't you see?"

  Belatedly, Elizabeth saw—saw the two additions of time, and what they might mean: on the one hand the days the Vengeful had been in Gibraltar, or Lisbon, and at sea, plus the time from the sea-fight with the Fortuné, through the shipwreck and the survivors' landfall, and the long trek dummy3

  thereafter across France towards the prison depot. . . and on the other, the odyssey of the information about the Vengeful from Lisbon to Paris, first from behind the British lines, from some French spy, and even through French-occupied Spain . . . which, with guerrilla bands watching every road, would have been hardl
y less slow and dangerous. And together those two additions of time and distance turned into snails creeping across the map, but converging on each other just short of Verdun and safety, when Colonel Suchet finally caught up with Lieutenant Chipperfield.

  "So Suchet's our man now—'Colonel Soo-shay' who asked the silly questions— goodbye Tom Chard, hullo Mon Colonel,"

  said Aske to Paul. "Because whatever it was the old Vengeful had on board, Mon Colonel wanted it, that's for certain—"

  Colonel Jean-Baptiste Suchet—

  The night-bells of Laon had stopped long since, but sleep still eluded Elizabeth as the roll-call of the living and the dead—

  the newly dead and the long dead—continued to echo inside her brain—

  Colonel Jean-Baptiste Suchet and Lieutenant Horace Chipperfield . . . and Danny Kahn and Julian Oakenshaw—

  and Harry Lippman and Ray Tuck . . . and Harry Lippman and Father . . . and Father and Lieutenant Chipperfield—and Tom Chard and Abraham Timms and the little midshipman . . . and Colonel Suchet and Bertrand Bourienne . . . and Paul—and Paul ...

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  And Humphrey Aske, and Chief Inspector Del Andrew—and Danny Kahn . . . and David Audley, and Faith Audley, and Cathy Audley—and David Audley and Josef Ivanovitch Novikov, and Paul—Dr Paul Mitchell of the King's College, Oxford— Paul. . .

  And all the dead Tommies, lying so neatly, row on row, on their hillside in Champagne, below the road on which the king's sisters had chattered their way so long ago . . . and yet not so long ago as Enguerrand had built his tower . . .

  Friends and enemies, heroes and villains . . . heroes and villains at the same time, according to whose side they were on—Suchet and Novikov and Audley and Paul . . . and whose side had Tom Chard been on, who had somehow beaten all the impossible odds to break free, and to live to tell the tale?

  Whose side? And why?

  The questions crowded behind the ghosts closing round her bed in the silence—whatever it was the old Vengeful had on board—what had Father been doing—what had he done—