King, Ship, and Sword l-16

by Dewey Lambdin

  Once inside the coach, though, and under way, Caroline pressed her hands together and shut her eyes as if in prayer, looking wan and pale, whilst Lewrie fussed and shifted on the leather seat beside her, to rearrange his coat and waist-coat, trying to get comfortable.

  "Alan…," Caroline muttered in a fretful, conspiratorial whisper, "will they really let us pass, not snatch us out? Or murder us in one of the poorer stews? We've seen them, passing through. Crime is surely rampant in them… unremarkable!"

  "Still too public," Lewrie decided, patting her knee. "Casus belli… or bellum? Plumb's right about that, at least. It'd mean war, even if they put me on trial as a spy and slung me into prison. From what Bonaparte said to us t'other day, it sounds as if things're tetchy enough already. As Plumb says, their best chance'11 be out in the countryside."

  Seeing how fretful Caroline still seemed, he took her hand and gave her an encouraging squeeze. An instant later, and she turned to lay her head on his shoulder, silently demanding to be held, no matter if the sight of one of his former lovers had put her off intimacy the last few days. Nigh sixteen years of marriage-no one could call it "wedded bliss," exactly- counted for something, he supposed.

  "We never should have come to France!" she fiercely muttered on his coat lapel, and he could feel her body shudder at the brink of hot tears of remorse. "I'm sorry I ever…!"

  "Oh, tosh, m'girl," Lewrie calmly objected, though his own guts and heart were about to do a brisk canter. He kissed her forehead and muttered into her hair. "It was half my idea, d'ye recall? And… if ye dismiss this little problem, hadn't we a grand time? Well, fairly a good time, in the main?"

  Her answer was a tearful snort and a closer snuggling.

  "Mean t'say, it's been me, traipsin' halfway round the world, havin' all the adventures," he cajoled, "and gettin' paid main-well by King George for it, too. You haven't had a whiff o' danger since you whipped Harry Embleton with yer reins… or came nigh t'shootin' Calico Jack Finney's 'nutmegs' off when he burst in on ye and Sewallis when he was a baby. We get back t'England with our scalps, why… we could dine out on this for years!"

  Caroline uttered another snort, this one tinged with amusement. Lewrie gently tilted her face up to his and kissed her for reassurance, though, to his surprise, that kiss quickly turned to a warm and musky one of passion.

  "That's my darlin' lass," Lewrie told her, grinning. "Here now… ever do it in a carriage?" he added, to jolly her further.

  She punched him in the ribs, almost hard enough to hurt, but… she smiled at last; she laughed, even in "gallows humour," and said, "And I suppose that you have? Don't answer! Your lewd suggestion is clue enough to your past, you… wretch."

  "Well, later perhaps…," Lewrie allowed with an easy chuckle.

  "Uhm, Alan…," Caroline said, snuggling up to him. "Do you imagine that Sir Pulteney is that capable? Mean t'say, he seems as if he's done this sort of thing before, he seems to have the connexions, but… might he be in league with the French, too? Are we to be his victims? His wife's French-Lady Imogene was a famous actress during the Terror, and she'd have known a lot of the brutal revolutionaries, and… "

  "Don't think we've anything t'fear on that score, Caroline," Lewrie quickly dismissed. "At first, I took him for a 'Captain Sharp' who plays on unwary travellers, lookin' t'skin us broke, but… look at all they've spent on us. Suppers? Theatre? And if he meant to lay hands on our goods we sent off to Calais, then that'd be a damned bad trade. No, all these matchin' coaches and horse teams, the clothes the Plumbs came up with at the drop of a hat, and people who somewhat resemble us at short notice? Puttin' themselves to as much risk as us if they're exposed? No, I'm beginnin' t'think he's the genuine article… even if he is daft as bats half the time. We get home, we could look him up in Debrett's… see if he's authentic."

  The coach began to slow, and Lewrie turned his attention to the environs as they drew up into a line of dray waggons, coaches, and farm carts at the Porte d'Argenteuil.

  During the Reign of Terror, under the hideously mis-named Committee for Public Safety, then even later under the Directory of Five, France had become a suspicious police state, fearful of counter-revolutionaries and spies, of saboteurs and each other. Paris, and the great cities, had closed and barricaded their medieval gates completely at night, and only the market carts that fetched fresh produce from the countryside were let out. Travellers not known to locals were instantly suspect, and soldiers of the Garde Nationale or Police Nationale inspected every basket or valise for contraband, bombs, smuggled weapons, or coded messages.

  Even now, in the autumn of 1802, the city gates were manned by policemen or soldiers, though passage was usually much easier, even for foreigners, and thorough questionings and searches were a thing of the past. At least Lewrie hoped!

  "Buck up, now, Caroline," he told her. "It's time to play the snooty English tourists. Bland, serene, stupid… "

  A Garde Nationale soldier with a musket slung on his shoulder, a sabre-briquet on his hip, and a cockaded shako tipped far back atop his head, rapped on the left-hand coach door, demanding papers.

  Lewrie handed them over in a languid, limply bored hand through the lowered window, and the guard, a Sergeant by the tassel hung from one shoulder, moved his stubby pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other, tugged at a corner of his impressively long and thick mustachios, and gave out a grunt. He looked up, locking eyes with Lewrie for a second, then peered into the coach to assure himself that it contained only the two people declared by their laisser-passers.

  "Anglais, m'sieur?" he gruffly asked.

  "Oui," Lewrie replied.

  "Et vous retournez en Angleterre?"

  "Retourn… yes, we're going home," Lewrie replied pretending even poorer command of French. "Back to Jolly Old England, what? Mean t'say… oui."

  "Au revoir, m'sieur… madame" the guard said, handing back their laisser-passers and sketching out a salute before waving to the coachmen and his compatriots to signal that they were allowed to exit Paris.

  "No worse than any other day-coach jaunt we made," Lewrie told Caroline. "We're on our way, one way or the other."

  Matthieu Fourchette had placed three covert watchers in close vicinity to the lodging house in the Rue Honorй; feeding pigeons, taking a stroll, sullenly sweeping horse dung. As the first coach came to a stop by the doors, the senior man tipped an underling the wink, and he was off, quick as his legs could carry him, to alert the band waiting for his news in the place du Carrousel.

  The second coach, then a third, bollixed everything, throwing the remaining two watchers into feetful confusion. The departure of those three coaches, with three pairs of Lewries, less than a minute apart, threw those two agents into a panic. Try to pursue them? Try to catch up with Fourchette and his men, who had most likely started off for the Porte St. Denis, the logical exit for the Calais road, or raise a hue and cry? The senior man decided that his best choice, if he wished to continue his employment, was to run to the headquarters of the Police Nationale on the south side of the Tuileries Palace to pass the burden on to Director Fouchй- well, not directly to his face!-and let him despatch riders to sort it out.

  If Director Joseph Fouchй had had a single hair on his head he would have been sorely tempted to yank it out in frustration as contradictory news came in in mystifying dribs and drabs.

  Horsemen from three of the portes had come to report the departure of the Anglais couple the guards had been ordered to be on alert for? Another horseman had to be sent off to catch up with Fourchette and his party to warn them that a massive charade was being played on them. Of a sudden, Fouchй needed two more parties of pursuers, with no time to brief them on the purpose of their urgent missions or to scrounge up the proper men who could manage the elimination of those perfidiously clever Anglais! All their plans had put that task into the hands of Fourchette, that salope de Guilleri, and that foul fiend, Choundas.

  "Damn, damn, damn!" Fouchй roared, flinging an i
nk-pot at the nearest wall. "Even if they catch them, they won't know them from Adam! Their papers give nothing away! Merde alors! Merde, merde!"

  "Citoyen?" his meek clerk timorously asked, cringing a little. "You have orders?" he dared to pose.

  "Another rider!" Fouchй demanded, grabbing for pen and paper and realising he no longer had any ink with which to write new orders. "Putain!" he roared in even greater frustration. "Ink, fool! Bring me more ink, ballot, vite, vite!"

  He took a deep breath to calm himself as the clerk scrambled to fetch a fresh ink-pot. Fourchette could sort it out; he'd better, or it would be his neck! Three coaches to pursue, so… he would split his party, of course, and make haste, Fouchй assumed. The girl, with a few agents to help her; thank God she'd talked him into including her Chasseur, Clary, who could chase after the second with a few more men… though he'd been included to identify them, to trail them, and had not been in on the conclusion of the plan. Would he balk? Fourchette and that beast Choundas could chase after the first coach… before all three of them got too far away from Paris, before the roads diverged too far apar!

  The clerk returned with the ink, and Fouchй scribbled furiously to impart his new instructions, then… issued a second order. There was a chance that the Anglais couple would get so far along that there would be no catching them if the first lead was false. He needed more men, with orders to arrest them; he would leave the elimination to his man, Fourchette. For that, he would send an urgent request to the general in charge of the Garde Nationale garrison in Paris, no… no request, but an order, for at least three troops of cavalry!

  "Send them off at once, at once!" Fouchй snapped, thumping down into his chair with his head in his thick hands, staring at the middle distance, and wondering if things could go even more awry!

  Fouchй's first despatch rider caught up with Fourchette and his party no more than two kilometres past the Porte St. Denis.

  "Putain, quel emmerdement!" Fourchette spat once he'd read it, balled it up, and shoved it into a side pocket of his coat. "Our quarry must have been warned, but I do not see how! Three couples at three portes presented papers declaring themselves as the Lewries."

  "With the help of Anglais spies, I knew it!" Guillaume Choundas growled, thumping his rein hand on the low pommel of his saddle. He had never been a decent horsemen, even when in possession of both his arms and working legs, and even a little more than one hour astride a horse was beginning to be an agony. "He's in league with the Royalist conspirators. How else? In league with the Devil!"

  "Make haste," Fourchette decided quickly, "The coach bound for Calais from the Porte Saint-Denis can't be that far ahead. We'll see whether we're after the real Lewrie, or another. Allez vite!"

  Fourchette spurred his horse to a gallop, quickly joined by the girl, and her Chasseur Major. Both revelled in the sudden chase and the kilometre-eating pace and the wind in their faces. Still unaware of their true purpose, Major Denis Clary delighted in showing off his superb cavalryman's mastery of a horse, and Charitй was just as eager to impress him with her seat. For a few moments, she could shake from her mind the image of what would occur at the end of their chase and take a little joy. She looked over her shoulder and laughed out loud to see that foetid monster, Choundas, jouncing almost out of control in only a bone-shaking trot as she left his hideous form and mind behind!

  "There it is!" Fourchette bugled, espying a slow-trotting coach-and-four on the road ahead. "Hurry!"

  Fourchette, Charitй, Major Clary, and half a dozen agents garbed in civilian clothes thundered up to the coach, catching up easily and passing down either side of it as Fourchette bellowed demands for the coachee to draw reins and stop. He sprang from his saddle and was at the carriage door before one of his men could take his reins.

  "M'sieur et madame, I order you to present your laisser-passers at once, and… oh, merde alors. Who the Devil are you?"

  "Sir, I do not know who you are, but you will not use such foul language in my wife's presence, do you hear me?" the gentleman with the mid-brown hair inside the coach shot back with an imperious back and in perfect French, with but a touch of Anglais accent.

  "Your papers, at once!" Fourchette shot back, fighting down his shock to find utter strangers. Once handed over, he read them over quickly and got a sinking feeling. The man and his wife were English… but not the ones he sought. "You are…?"

  "Sir Andrew Graves… sir," the Briton said, looking at Fourchette with that maddening supercilious air of a proper English lord looking down at a chimney sweep. "My lady wife, Susannah. And what is the meaning of this… sir?" Irking Fourchette so much that he wished this arrogant Anglais was his real prey, and he could just put the salaud into a hastily dug grave. Yet… the laisser-passers he had been presented were authentic, with entry dates and a departure from Paris showing that they had been in France two weeks, and with all the proper signatures and stamps depressingly authentic, to boot!

  "A thousand pardons, m'sieur, madame, but we seek escaping criminals thought to be fleeing justice on this highway in a coach quite like this one. Adieu, you may proceed," Fourchette said, though that galled him to no end.

  "And you apologise, m'sieur" Sir Andrew pressed, a brow up. "A thousand pardons for… my choice of words, as well, and my apologies to madame," Fourchette was further forced to say.

  "Well, I should bloody-well think so, dash it all!" Sir Andrew huffed. "Whip up, driver! Avance, cocher, vite vite!"

  "One down, two t'go!" his wife, Susannah, who was really better known round Drury Lane as Betsy Peake, chortled to her companion who was also better known on the Shakespearean stages of London and its nearer counties as Anthony Ford, as the party of horsemen clattered far enough away for them to revert to their natural accents and glee to have fooled the Frogs so thoroughly.

  "Must say, m'dear, but these roles we play give life a zest!" Ford said with a satisfied sigh of contentment and a bit of relief that they were free and clear.

  "Here, I'll shred these lyin' packets t'wee bits as we bowl along," Betsy offered. "And, yes! It is very… piquant!"

  "Showin' off, again! Piquant, my eye! Hoy, Bets… ever do it in a carriage?" Ford leered.

  "Wif th' likes o' you? Hmmph!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  "Oh," Caroline said with a start, after sitting silently tense for more than an hour as their coach rolled past the last outskirts of Paris and into the pleasant countryside 'tween the Seine and the Oise.

  "Trouble?" Lewrie bolted erect, thinking she had seen some sign of pursuit. "What?" he demanded, wishing that he'd thought to pack a single pistol in his bags before leaving England. Even the hanger he had gotten back from Napoleon was in a round-topped trunk on its way to Calais.

  "No, I don't believe," Caroline told him, delving into her reticule. "Forgive me for being remiss, but I quite forgot the note that Lady Imogene slipped me just as we were leaving." She produced a wee folded piece of paper, when opened no more than four inches square.

  "Oh!" Caroline exclaimed again. "Sir Pulteney has additional instructions for us. Here, see for yourself."

  Once you pass through Pontoise, there is a quite nice coaching inn on the far bank of the Oise, called Le Gantelet Rouge. Stop there for refreshment. Linger! I arrive anon.

  "Hummph!" Lewrie huffed. "What's that, down at the bottom?" Lewrie asked his wife, once he'd read it. "That blob, there."

  "It looks like a flower of some kind," Caroline said, peering more closely at the note, which was written in black ink; the flower petals though, were coloured yellow with chalk or pastel pencil.

  "Should we eat the note, now we've read it?" Lewrie japed.

  Caroline rolled her eyes at him for making jest in such circumstances but at least she did it with a grin. She began to shred it, feeding wee pieces of the note out the window on her side of the coach, bit by bit. "That should be sufficient, enough so for the likes of your mysterious old friend that hideous Zachariah Twigg!"

  "Never a fri
end," Lewrie countered. "I wonder if they'll ask for our papers when we enter Pontoise… cross the bridge, or when we order dinner at the inn?"

  The authorities in Pontoise evidently could have cared less of a damn anent the identities of travellers, for there were no soldiers posted on the southern outskirts, nor on the bridge which spanned the Oise. The carriage trundled through the heart of the town's business district, to the northern outskirts, then…

  "There it is!" Caroline exclaimed as Le Gantelet Rouge came in sight on the right-hand side of the road, out where the homes were humbler and further apart, where stone-fenced or hedged pastures and farm crops began to predominate.

  "Uhm… cocher?" Lewrie called, leaning out his window. "I say, cocher. Arrкte, s'il vous plaоt… а le Gantelet Rouge. For dйjeuner."

  "Mais oui, m'sieur," the lead coachman laconically replied as he slowed the horses and turned the coach into the large, shady yard in front of a two-storey stone inn with a slate roof, with a cool gallery to one side, and many outbuildings and barns.

  "We will be awhile, erm… quelque temps?" Lewrie said to the coachmen once they had alit. "Ah… you're free to… "

  "Faites comme vous voudrez messieurs" Caroline provided for him, explaining that while they took a long dinner and a rest from the ride on the hard benches, the coachmen could do as they will; have a bite themselves, some wine, and such. "Give them a few franc coins, Alan."

  "Oh, right-ho," Lewrie agreed, handing up coins from his purse.

  "The gallery looks inviting," Caroline commented as the entered the travellers' inn.

  "Perhaps an inside table, Caroline. Out of sight from the road." "Yes, of course," she agreed, then looked at him with amusement.