The Emperor's assassin moabsr-2

by T. F. Banks

  “Eustache killed the count?”

  “ 'E had 'im killed,” Boulot said, as though this were unimportant. His gaze lost focus. “Do you know the irony, Bow Street? They did not mean to kill her. Just to find out the things they need to know, but she throw herself out the window so that she would not tell. That's why they needed me, Jean Boulot. I am not so brave. Not so… engage-committed. I would tell them what they wanted. But they could not find me, Bow Street. You had to do it for them.

  “I tell you something. Gervais was also my friend. And I also betray him, par accident. I lead Monsieur Eustache there, to his hiding place, his grange out in the moors. I lead them there, these monstres, this parricide and his little lackey, to the home of my friend. I had not betrayed enough people yet. For money I hoped this old friend of mine would help us, provide the boat we needed, arrange our escape to France. But Gervais is like me, he once was a supporter of Bonaparte, who lost his faith when the man he worshipped-the champion of egalite-put a crown on his head. He ran in trouble of the secret police and escaped 'ere. He did not like these royalists and took up an axe to send them away. But he did not know Pierre. Pierre is fou, a killer, a man who take pleasure from it. Pierre attacked 'im, and Gervais was forced to kill 'im with his axe. Rolles and d'Au-vraye, they carried pistols and amp;” He rubbed his trembling hands over his face, head bowed. Reaching out, he snatched up the uncorked bottle, but again he stopped. He merely cradled it in his hand, almost tenderly.

  Morton took out his own pistols and laid them on the table.

  “What is it you do, Bow Street?”

  “What every constable has been trained to do: assure himself of his weapons at such times. Where are d'Auvraye and Rolles? Do they really think they can shoot Bonaparte on the deck of His Majesty's ship? They will never escape!”

  Boulot closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “You do not see it yet, Bow Street. You come all this way doing your duty, but you do not understand. My betrayal is more complete than that. It is almost glorious in its scale. You remember that night outside my rooms, the men you met? You know that Bonaparte 'as agents in England, yes?”

  “They were spies?”

  “Well, once they were, now they are nothing. Men with no country, no leader, no cause. They are like Jean Boulot, but they don't yet know it. I tell them I will do anything if they will get me a pardon from Fouche, but they never do. They tell me Fouche always need a little more proof of my loyalty. Fouche, who is loyal to no one and nothing.” The Frenchman sat back, slumping against the wooden slats, the ‘ceiling, ’ that ran across the frames. He stared up at nothing. “Imagine that a little constable from the Magistrate's Court, a constable who never give up, would arrive here this night.”

  “I'm growing impatient, Boulot. So far your story is nothing but a long denial that you are guilty of these crimes.”

  Boulot fixed him with a bleary-eyed stare. “ 'Ave you not been listening? I am guilty of a hundred crimes. This is my confession-and you are my priest, Bow Street.”

  “How will they kill Bonaparte?”

  “Kill him? They plan to save him first.”

  “You are mad,” Morton said in disgust.

  “No, I tell you the truth, Bow Street.” He leaned for ward again, planting his elbows on the table, hands pressed against his cheeks, distorting his sweating face. “What is the hour?”

  Morton took out his brass repeater. “It is past eleven.”

  “Then per'aps there is time. Per'aps.”

  “Start speaking, Boulot. The simple truth!”

  “As if anyone could! You say five persons have died? But what is that, Bow Street? What is that? Millions have died. You know this. But don't look so impatient. I tell you.”

  Boulot breathed deeply and looked down at his chest again a moment, thinking. Somehow he was different, it seemed to Morton. More a man and less a clown.

  “The smugglers here on the Nancy, they think Rolles and d'Auvraye are my friends, friends of the Bonaparte loyalists who 'ave come here to 'elp. They tell them the exact hour, the exact location… that they bring him ashore.”

  Morton and Boulot stared at each other a long mo ment.

  “It is not possible, Boulot. It can't be managed.”

  “Eh, oui, they think they can do it. The others, that is, my old friends. They are desperate, they gather up lovers of the emperor from everywhere, from the strangest places. This botiment, this Nancy that we are in, it belong to an English, a smuggling-man, name Rattenbury, from somewhere there on the Devon coast. I know him from before, from the wartime. They have some soldiers also, as 'ave escape from the prison on the moor, and they have some other men, brave and mad, who have pistols and swords.”

  “The Royal Navy will take the most absolute care. We are in a harbour full of warships. You are talking nonsense.”

  “They don't plan to sail away with him. No, no. They need only to get him ashore. They have a lawyer there, an ecossais, with papiers, court documents, there will be a proces, a trial. The very moment he put one boot on English sand, then he is saved.”

  “They cannot get him off a ship of seventy-four guns with over two hundred men aboard!”

  “They say to do it by stealth. They have two boat, about a dozen men. One boat create la diversion, la ruse de guerre, and talk to the cutter that patrol. Then slip in the other and bring him out rapidly through the window of the great cabin, in the stern of le navire. They are prepared there, Bertrand and the others. They know, and expect. They will lower him on a rope, and Bertrand will impersonate him. Then all the others need do is row so fast as they possibly can to the beach and arrive there before the Britishes. On the beach they light a fire, to show the way.”

  “It cannot prosper,” breathed Morton.

  “Bien, Bow Street, then there is no difficulty, is there?” Boulot was sardonic. “You may sit here the evening and agree with yourself that it cannot succeed, God bless the Navy Royale. And I may spare myself la crise de conscience. I will 'ave my reward, and all will be well.”

  “If these royalists now know about this plot, they will be able to prevent it, they will warn the navy.”

  “Oh no, Bow Street, pas de tout, not at all! That is why I say you do not see. They do not want to prevent it. They want it to succeed. So they can be there, waiting. They want him dead. No more prison. No more Elba. La mort.”

  Morton uttered a heartfelt curse. “Where, Boulot? Where will they bring him ashore? Is that where Eustache and Rolles will wait?”

  Boulot placed his palms together and tapped his fingers thoughtfully against his lips for a moment.

  “I remember. The smuggler left here to watch the ship, he say he take them to the beach at the place called Bovisan' Bay. Maybe someone know where that is. You will find who you want there.”

  “The hour! Tell me the hour this is to happen!”

  “An hour past midnight, Bow Street.”

  Morton stared at the enigmatic little man a moment, then climbed up the ladder to the deck. The sky was bright with stars, the fog washed away by a small breeze.

  “Bow Street!” Boulot called.

  Morton turned and looked back down into the tiny cabin.

  “Can you not release me? They will kill me when they find out what I have done.”

  “Can you swim?” Morton asked.

  “No.”

  “Then best stay as you are.”

  He turned away. “Did you hear all that?” he asked

  Presley and Westcott.

  They nodded.

  “Is it possible? Can they do it?”

  Westcott considered. “Yes, perhaps.”

  “Then we must strike out for the ship and see if we can stop them.”

  “The ship is distant,” Berman said. The smuggler perched on the rail, his feet dangling over the side. “You will not reach it in time. Bovisand Bay is near.”

  Morton dropped down into the boat that rocked alongside. “Then it is Bovisand Bay.” He reached into his
coat and took out one of his Parker pistols, handing it, butt first, to Westcott. “I expect Sir Nathaniel will forgive me.”

  Westcott smiled.

  They pushed off from the Nancy, Westcott and Berman at the oars.

  “The beach at Bovisand Bay is narrow and meagre,” Berman said. “These Frenchmen will certainly see us approaching.”

  “We will have to take our chances,” Morton said.

  “Well, that is fine for you, but I'd be glad to keep living a few years yet. There is another small beach over a rise. A narrow track connects the two. I could land you there, and you could come upon them by stealth.”

  “How much farther is it? Our time is short.”

  “Not far. You will see.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Bovisand Bay was far on the other side of Mount Batten, out toward the open Channel. The Nancy had been anchored in the sound near the eastern shore, but the bay was still some distance off.

  Far ahead and to the left the dark coastline was featureless, lightless, empty, and Morton began for the first time to feel a low grumble of anxiety stirring within. He was in the bow, staring out into the night. Presley sat in the stern, a shadowy form clinging to the gunwales, none too comfortable about setting off into the dark Channel in such a small boat.

  Smooth, elongated clouds began to drift across the stars, and the risen moon, three-quarters full, cast a pale light over the ocean. Its glow also lit for a few moments a dim whiteness in the face of the headland, before it passed again behind a cloud, illuminating it from within.

  “They's Ram Cliff Point, the cliffs there,” Berman said quietly. “Statten's next. Bovisand Bay's beyond.”

  They altered course and worked their way parallel to the invisible shore below the cliffs, surrounded entirely now by pitchy blackness. They looked constantly from larboard to starboard, on the one hand for signs of the beach, and on the other for any motion or sound coming from the direction of the Bellerophon, which had to be somewhere off in the obscurity to the west.

  After some minutes, from that direction, they began to hear a steady, quiet splashing sound. Morton asked the others to put up their oars, and they all sat still, straining to hear. The sound continued low and steady, neither strengthening nor receding.

  Finally Berman whispered, “Ah! That be the new breakwater.”

  Morton drew breath, and they set off again. Twenty minutes later Berman muttered that they should come about now and head in.

  Then it went more quickly, as they surged along with the low swell, all of them keeping very quiet. Out of the dark they soon saw emerging a horizontal ribbon of pale grey, and began to hear the surf. A minute later their keel grated on the shore. Morton and Berman silently leapt into the shallows and pulled the boat briskly up into the shelter of black, weed-slick rocks.

  For a moment the four men stood on the strand, listening. But they heard only the breeze whistling softly around them and the low, hollow crash of each new wave on the beach, the slow moan as it retreated. A wavering line of foam stretched off both ways into the dimness.

  “You have no part in this,” Morton said to Berman. “But I would be obliged if you would wait by the boat, which we might need to return.”

  Berman nodded quickly and turned back to his boat, coiling the painter with quick, smooth motions. Morton thought he had the man's measure. The smugglers along this coast could be dangerous folk and were not averse to violence or even murder when their interests were at stake-as some of the customs officers had discovered to their woe. But Berman didn't want to be party to a murder that failed to serve his own advantage. These Bow Street men had not pressed him on his role in these doings, and as long as they didn't threaten his freedom, he would stay quiet. And ferry any man left standing to the destination of his choice-for a price.

  Morton turned to Westcott and Presley. “There should be only three men here for us to contend with: d'Auvraye, Rolles, and the third who accompanies them.”

  “But didn't Boulot say there are a dozen men out to fetch the Corsican? Three royalists against twelve, Morton.”

  “Three armed men who have the element of surprise. And we don't know how fanatical these three might be. They might not care if they are killed themselves.” Morton could hardly make out the others' faces in the deep darkness, but Westcott was shifting from foot to foot.

  “Morton,” the navy man said, “if they somehow manage to get Bonaparte off the ship, I think stopping him from coming ashore will be paramount. These royalists, we can pick them up at our leisure-or they can escape. It hardly matters. But Bonaparte…”

  Morton shook his head. “I am here to arrest men who are suspected in five murders. Bonaparte is nothing to me. I'm a Bow Street constable, and my duties are clear.”

  “But what of your duties as an Englishman?”

  “If Bonaparte comes ashore, Captain, it will be a matter for my government to deal with.”

  “Well,” Westcott said angrily, “our duties are not the same here.”

  “Then you must do yours, Captain Westcott.”

  With these cold words hanging in the air, the three men set out along the slippery stone beach.

  Berman had promised that Bovisand beach was less than a mile to the north. After a few hundred yards Morton led the way up from the water and started to skirt the base of the bluffs, where rocks and projections of various sizes provided shadows and concealment. Their progress slowed as they peered cautiously ahead.

  Several times black forms looked like men but turned out to be still, silent mounds of rock or the strange shapes of weathered wood cast up from the sea. Straining to look into the darkness, they moved forward with ever more hesitation. There was an unearthly silence and emptiness here, a world occupied with spectral forms, the uncanny shapes of imagination seeming to flit across the distant sands each time the lightening veils of cloud shifted briefly away from the face of the moon.

  They were forced up a narrow path where the cliff met the sea, but the rise was small, and they were soon almost at the crest. Morton held them up with a gesture of his hand; he did not want the silhouettes of their figures to appear along the skyline, their motion detectable in the moonlight. Leaving the path, he scouted along the slope until he found a small depression that provided them a place to lie on their bellies and peer through the tufts of grass that grew raggedly along the ridge. Cautiously all three brought themselves into position, working their way just far enough forward on their elbows, and looked over. Below them, still and quiet, lay a dark curving beach, the pale line of surf just visible in the dim light.

  For a long moment they all gazed.

  “Bovisand Bay,” Westcott said.

  “But no one's home,” Presley said.

  But then halfway along the curve of the bay, a flame lifted up, wavered in the black, and began to spread outward. A shadow passed before the orange glow, and then another. The shapes of men, gathered near. Three men. And close.

  The three watchers above studied the scene for another long minute, without speaking.

  “Smugglers light signal fires for their friends out at sea,” Westcott cautioned.

  “I'd be very surprised if those weren't our men,” Morton answered quietly. He drew himself back below the top, and the others followed suit. In a moment they were crouching together in the lee.

  “How should we proceed, Morton?” Presley took out his pistol and nervously checked the priming. Morton and Westcott left their own weapons pocketed.

  “It is dark, and their night vision will be spoiled by the firelight,” said Morton. “If we stay near the base of the cliff and go quietly, we can surprise them from behind.”

  “We might be detected the moment we cross that ridge.” Westcott gestured upward with a nod of his head.

  “A risk we must take, I think.”

  “Let's at them,” Jimmy Presley muttered.

  The two Runners started upward again. Morton was looking for someplace where they could easily slip over the s
pace of greatest visibility and conceal themselves again against the darkness of the far hillside. As they hesitated just below the ridge-top, Westcott's voice, calm but somehow changed, spoke from behind.

  “Morton?” The familiar sound of a pistol being cocked came to their ears. “Hold where you are, both of you.”

  Neither Morton nor Presley moved nor turned around.

  “I shall have your pistols, if you please,” Westcott said calmly.

  “You can only shoot one of us, Captain,” Morton said. “But I doubt you are that much of a traitor.”

  “I'm not a traitor at all,” Westcott said, a cold edge in his voice. “I will not see Bonaparte come ashore and make a mockery of England because of our own foolish laws! The man cannot be allowed to simply go free. Can you not see that? He will wait until the Bourbons have antagonized the people of France, and then he will cross the Channel one night, and it will all begin again. And you would allow that? Who is the traitor here?”

  “You are, Westcott. And the Admiralty will hang you for it. Did you not hear what Boulot said of these royalists? They've killed five people. Eustache d'Auvraye allowed his own father to be murdered.”

  “Boulot is a drunkard and a liar.”

  “A drunkard, yes, but about these murders I believe he tells the truth.” Morton went to step forward.

  “Do not force me to fire, Morton!”

  “No one is forcing you to do this, Captain. Let us see how deep your treachery runs.” Morton began to move slowly up the slope in the darkness.

  In the quiet night the cock struck the steel, sending out a little fountain of sparks. No shot fired.

  Morton turned around to find a pistol aimed at his chest. “I had hoped you would not do that, Captain.” He nodded to the pistol. “I emptied the pan and plugged the touch hole.”