A Night of Secret Surrender

by Sophia James

  A small hole in the canvas allowed him to slip into the backstreet behind the restaurant and up through a series of alleyways that led to Montmartre.

  McPherson’s apartment was halfway up the hill on the Rue des Abbesses and he was home, setting a substantial diamond in a gold ring.

  ‘The secret police and the War Office have us in sight. You will need to pack up and leave.’

  Grey eyebrows shot up. ‘Cunningham implied as much when I saw him last. The White Dove warned him.’

  ‘The White Dove?’

  ‘A woman who transfers cachets for us sometimes and one who goes by so many names I have lost the truth of her real one. It is rumoured her father was murdered six years ago by the English.’

  ‘Where was the daughter when this happened?’

  ‘Here in Paris. Another lost soul of the Empire.’

  Shay felt unaccountably sick. Was this Celeste he spoke of? Had she been with her father when he had been killed? Had she seen the murder?

  ‘Who does she work for now?’

  ‘Nobody and everybody. I pay her well for things pertinent to the security and success of Britain and her causes. Sometimes she slips in red herrings so even that loyalty is questionable. At heart I imagine she works for one of the clandestine and dangerous underground agencies set up by Napoleon’s less salubrious captains. Like everybody else here she needs money to survive.’

  My God, such revelations turned all he had once known of Celeste on its head. Spoiled. Impetuous. Arrogant. Brittle and beautiful like her mother, but in a far more spectacular way.

  Why would she come to his rooms and risk exposure? Why had she shadowed him? There was something he was missing and he could not quite put it together. The disguises she had sported each time he had seen her made no sense either, for August Fournier had been wealthy and his daughter’s gowns the veritable talk of the county. She could have retired into an elegant lifestyle with her looks and her money. She could have married anybody she’d desired and done well. Yet she plainly had not.

  McPherson hadn’t finished, though, and after a moment he continued speaking. ‘The thing is that there is a certain fineness about her that one understands only by degrees. She brought me medicine when I was in bed with a bad chest last winter and only a few days ago she played a role in trying to save the lives of a family caught in the crossfire of politics.’

  Now he knew it was Celeste, for she had spoken of the same blunder.

  ‘How?’

  ‘She warned them of the danger. They were about to leave Paris when they were killed.’

  ‘What was their crime?’

  ‘The father had shot a man who threatened his wife, but honour in Paris has many complex layers and most people are entangled in some way or other with government strategy. For all the freedoms Napoleon promises, he keeps a tight rein on divergent thinkers.’

  ‘Which Felix Dubois was?’

  ‘Ah, so you had heard of the fracas? The White Dove has her own thoughts on justice and if I know of her involvement, then others will, too. There were documents found in the Dubois house which heralded British sympathies. Some say they came from her hands. If she is not careful, it will be she who will feel the wrath of suspicion next, if she still lives.’

  Shay swallowed and hoped the bread boy had made it to ground safely.

  ‘I have had word that my identity is on the verge of being discovered. Your name has been mentioned as well. Cut your losses now and come home with me to England, James, for Cunningham is already gone. We can leave on the morrow.’

  The older man only shook his head. ‘To do what? There is no place left for me in Scotland now and I have been here in France for so long it has become my home.’

  ‘A home that is more and more unrecognisable. The causes here are as lost as Napoleon will be in a few short years and your name is certain to be found on the list of those who will be interrogated...’

  ‘If I knew from the start just how it would end, I still would not have changed a thing, Shay.’

  ‘Because you believed in Napoleon’s promises?’

  ‘No. The cause I believed in is long since dead. What I want now is justice for all those good souls who perished along the way, those who cry out for vengeance and who believe in equity and truth.’

  ‘The fight is no longer yours, James. It’s too dangerous for a start...’

  A heavy knocking downstairs had them both standing and they moved towards the back of the room in unison. They had practised for this, expected it for weeks now, ever since Napoleon had abandoned Paris, leaving the political chaos in the city behind him. There were so many factions seeking power in the vacuum of all that was left.

  ‘You first.’ Although the older man protested, Shay pushed him through the small opening and lowered the platform with its thick rope gurney. The crash of splintered timber alerted him to the fact that his enemy was close, as did the sound of feet pounding up the creaky staircase.

  As he heard the gurney hit the ground with McPherson safely away, Shay knew his own chance of escape had run out so he turned, raising the stool beside him like a shield, a thick twist of rope in the other hand.

  They weren’t in uniform, a fact that told him the military was not involved. They were also not at all conciliatory. He might have managed something if they had allowed him words, but there were five of them altogether and when the gun fired at close range he felt the bite of it in his right thigh. A coldness spread quickly, his sight blurring. He wondered if the bullet might have hit a major artery or the bone for he could not feel his leg any more. Weakness crawled into his head and his limbs. Then there was nothing.

  * * *

  He came awake in a room and discovered he was bound to a chair. Tightly bound. Two men sat in front of him. One had just thrown a pail of cold water over his head and the shock of it brought him back to consciousness.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Captain John Barton of the American Regiment of Infantry and one of President Madison’s envoys.’

  ‘Liar. You are Major Summerley Shayborne of the Eleventh Foot and you have worked for General Wellesley as an intelligence officer in Spain for these past two years.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are speaking of.’

  ‘Do you not, Major?’

  There was a slight kerfuffle and there materialised before him the face of one of the soldiers who had accompanied him across Spain after his capture by the French Dragoons in the north-west provinces.

  ‘The Englishman’s hair is darker now, sir, but his attitude is exactly the same. It is him, I am sure of it.’

  ‘Thank you, Private. That will be all.’

  A hard fist glanced across his mouth, tight with fury, the smack of it coinciding with pain. A dislocation of the jaw perhaps. He shook his vision clear.

  The second blow jabbed a soft spot in his lower back and then a third targeted the injured leg. His thigh ached like the dickens. It was a considered torture and a damned effective one.

  ‘Confess who you are, Major Shayborne, and we will leave you alone.’

  To hang, he thought, though it did cross his mind a simple knife to the throat might also have been an option. They were in a basement room and the floor was hard-packed earth, a drain of sorts to the side. To sluice away the blood, he supposed, the mess of death easily dealt with.

  ‘Who are...you?’ He got the words out with some difficulty.

  No one spoke. Not Savary’s men, then, for they were braggarts and would have supplied such information readily given the unequal balance of power and the obvious outcome. Not from the War Ministry either. He doubted they would treat a man in uniform like this.

  One of the shadowy unit of Napoleon Bonaparte’s that James McPherson had spoken of? He’d heard of them, of course, but only in veiled reference, the layers of intelligence deep here and impenetrable. He decided to play them at their own game.

  ‘The Emperor will move the Grand Armée into Russia before the winter. It i
s his first priority and the vacuum left will allow the English to take back Spain.’

  Another slam into his ear, the high squeal of sound inside the drum a direct result.

  ‘Joseph Bonaparte and the Marshals shall be thrown out of Madrid and then piece by piece the victories of Napoleon will dissolve into defeats.’

  His mouth was hit this time and he tasted blood. At this rate, he would be dead before they meant him to be. He kept talking.

  ‘Wellesley will chase General Soult back to where he belongs. When the British enter France, no one will stop them for the French military effort lies in disarray. It will be a straight march up to Paris and victory.’

  They were getting more and more furious and he knew that Marmont’s orders to kill him when he crossed the border all those weeks ago from Spain were still in force here.

  He’d given his life’s work for England. His death would be for that country, too. It was surprising how calm he felt, how distanced. He wondered if perhaps he were already part way gone to that shadowy place between death and life he’d heard talk of on the battlefields of Europe.

  When the door suddenly opened, he was brought sharply back into the moment, the pain skewering through lethargy and dislodging the mucus and blood from his breathing passages. With shock, he saw it was Celeste Fournier who’d walked in, dressed in a harlot’s gown, her hair the red of blood, fire and betrayal, and falling in a curling mass down to her waist. There were bruises around her mouth and a bandage encircling the fingers of her right hand.

  ‘Benet told me to come in and identify the prisoner.’ Her eyes met his own, but there was no warmth or recognition in them, no compassion for his wounds. Only distrust and fury. They were not blue at all, he suddenly thought, but the pale purple of storm clouds over mountains. The skin on both her cheeks was drawn into hollow pits and her lips were rouged and full and sensual. The colour had bled across her teeth. He looked away.

  ‘You know the English bastard?’ The tall bearded man stood now.

  ‘I met him once a long time ago, unfortunately. It is indeed him. I would know him anywhere.’

  Her glance raked across him and then down to take in the dark blood marking his trousers at the thigh. Adept at reading people, all Shay could see in her face was disgust, underpinned by a certain distance.

  ‘You are sure? You would swear your life by it, Brigitte?’

  She stepped closer and regarded him. ‘Marmont wants him dead. Benet wants information. Either way, Shayborne will not leave this room alive. It’s up to you how much you make him tell you, Guy. I would probably use the blade. Here.’ She gestured lewdly to his crotch. ‘Even heroes have their vanities, I should imagine.’

  Her head tipped up to the man standing next to her, an overt and shocking sensuality in her expression. The bodice she wore was partly opened and very revealing and she made no effort at all towards modesty. There was something else there, too, a subservience, he might name it, drawn across the edge of lust. She looked like a prostitute about to satisfy a client’s needs in the back corner of the harsh streets around Les Halles.

  He could smell a perfume on her that was neither expensive nor subtle. Beneath that was the sharp tang of fresh sweat.

  ‘Perhaps I could make him talk, Guy, if you wish to leave me with him for a few moments. Reparation, if you like, for my foolishness.’

  Shay heard the laugh of his interrogator and saw his hands slip into the silk bodice of her flimsy dress, large fingers cupping one breast.

  ‘I am pleased to see that you have come to your senses, ma chérie. I wish I’d thrashed you more often over the years if this was all it took. You were always a quick learner.’

  When he leaned forward to take a pink-tipped nipple in his mouth, Celeste Fournier raised her fingers to his hair as if to gather him in. Then all Shay saw was blood. Even as the dark-haired man began to fall, she had taken the other down, too, with the heavy punch of steel from the butt of her upturned knife. Within five seconds his own bindings were cut.

  ‘Can you stand?’

  He nodded, because if he couldn’t they were both dead. He had no idea who was outside the room as he’d been brought into it unconscious.

  ‘Follow me, then. We haven’t much time.’

  She did not open the door she’d come through, but took him deeper into the basement, prising off a vent of some sort and telling him to slip through it.

  ‘Crawl along until you find the second opening on the left. There is a ladder a hundred yards down which goes to the street. Wait for me inside the vestibule of the church Saint Eugenie on Rue de Richer. There is a brown cloak there hanging on the peg nearest the door. Wear it. Do not show yourself to anyone. If I fail to come within twenty minutes, leave the city and travel east. They will expect you to make for the safety of Spain and every road will be watched. Do not visit the jeweller James McPherson. He is already gone.’

  ‘And you. How will you get out?’

  She pulled down one strap of her bodice and smiled. ‘As easily as I got in.’

  He swore even as she showed him a small glass vial strapped to the inside of her leg. Her skin was white like ivory, her thighs smooth and slender. ‘If you are caught, it would be wise to fight to the death before they take you. There will be no second chances.’

  And with that she replaced the grille so the bars were between them, dividing the light. She used her knife to screw the grate back into place and Shay noted blood seeping through the bandage at her wrist.

  * * *

  Guy Bernard was a threat as well as a bully and Celeste trod lightly past his inert body. She could not be sorry it had come to this, for her debts to him had long since been discharged in full, and more. The other man, one of Guy’s younger accomplices, was someone she had never liked, though she was confident she hadn’t killed him. When he awoke he would talk, but it was too late any more for caution and she no longer held the taste for brutality.

  She rubbed her cheeks hard with her hands and breathed deeply to try to take away the tremors, her tongue coming to the split in her lip. The pulse in her throat beat wildly, but there was nothing she could do about that save summon the strength to cope. If she looked even vaguely guilty, she would never get through the next room alive.

  Martin Blanc looked up from his desk and then down again, but not before she’d seen him take in her disarray. With a practised start she fumbled with the silk.

  ‘Interrogation makes Guy imagine every woman wants to bed with him. It is a fault he needs to address, I think, for it is becoming tiresome.’

  At that he stood and walked across to her just as she knew he would. Breathing in hard, she sniffed and wiped her eyes with the fabric in her sleeve. She had allowed Blanc small liberties before when she wanted information. This time all she needed was distraction.

  ‘Guy said the English Major is proving difficult and I had no desire to stay and watch his violence. He also said to tell you that it might take a while to gain information and that he does not wish to be disturbed again until he calls.’ With a small shake she clutched at the side of the table. ‘Perhaps I should go outside and get some air? Could you take me?’ Her cloak was on the chair and she shrugged into it, glad for its covering.

  Martin Blanc’s hand came beneath her elbow as he shepherded her out, past a group of men busy around a map on the table. Out on the street she led him into the doorway of an empty shop, her hands pressing down on the side of his neck with just the right amount of force. Her father had shown her this defence and she had never forgotten the teaching. It would be precious moments before Blanc regained consciousness, though to stop him hurting himself further she pushed him back to sit against the sturdy wood of the door frame and pulled up the collar of his jacket.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said quietly and then she was off, walking fast with her face against the wind.

  At the chapel, she found Shayborne stepping out from the shadows, his nose dark with blood, his right eye swelling.

&n
bsp; ‘Come, but hide your face.’ She did not touch him or allow him to touch her as they traversed the streets to a part of town she seldom visited. She could not risk the other address and this one was closer anyway. She saw that he limped badly and that his face was pinched with pain under the cloak’s hood. Still he followed, doggedly. She was glad of the sudden rain shower to wash away any blood that might have splattered on the road behind him, giving them away.

  Inside the apartment, she quickly sought some privacy to dry retch into a hand basin without any sound whatsoever. Killing never got any easier, but her soul had long since been damned.

  ‘The way of life is above for the wise that he may depart from hell beneath.’

  Her father had often recited this verse from Proverbs and she believed in its message. She shook her head. There was no hope for her to rise with the angels. The most she could pray for was a quick and final end.

  After rubbing herself down with a dry cloth, she looked at herself in the mirror. The blood of Guy Bernard felt as though it had soaked through her very skin, the harsh tang of iron filling her mouth, even as she swallowed. The smear of red lip grease coated the small damp towel she held.

  She had always known it would come to this, one way or another.

  Spare clothes were neatly folded in a wicker basket and she donned them with haste, stuffing the gown she wore back where the others had lain. A hat, boots and a belt followed. The pistol she slid into a leather pouch and attached her knife beside it, the blade cleaned and readied for the next time. Armed well, just as she liked it.

  Rubbing boot polish into her hands and cheeks, she bent to scrape her nails against the rough plaster on the floor. Success lay in the detail and she had been brought up for years on the stories of the demise of the French aristocracy and their unblemished hands as they had marched to the guillotine for a final reckoning.

  She felt more confident now, the tremors inside quietened. This was her world and it had been for a long time. There was just one last job to do.