King, Ship, and Sword l-16

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Right-ho, Alan? The Plumbs must be wearing off on you. You will be saying 'Begad,' 'Zounds,' and 'Stap me' next."

  "Well, uhm… "

  They shared a bottle of wine, lingering over it and making but guarded small talk. Half an hour later, and they ordered a plate of hors-d'oeuves, then a second bottle of wine when that was consumed. They ordered soup and bread, then opted for breaded veal and asparagus, to while away another hour. Le Gantelet Rouge boasted an ormolu clock on the high mantel, and its ticking, the slow progression of its minute hand, was maddening, after a while, 'til…

  A coach could be heard entering the inn yard, wheels hissing and crunching over the fine gravel, and chains tinkling… bound to the rear of the inn, nearest the stables and well. Was it Sir Pulteney, was it soldiers? Both Alan and Caroline began to tremble despite their efforts not to, ready to bolt!

  "Zounds, but there you are!" Sir Pulteney Plumb exclaimed very loudly as he bustled in the rear entrance, now in more modest travelling clothes and a light serge de Nоmes duster and wide-brimmed farmer's hat, which he swept off elegantly as he made a "leg" to them. "Told you the 'Red Gauntlet' sets a fine table, haw haw! And, here is my good lady! Begad, m'dear, but look who has stopped at the very same inn as us! Allow us to join you, for we are famished and as dry as dust." The Lewries had to sit and sip wine, order coffee to thin the alcohol fumes from what they had already taken aboard as Sir Pulteney and Lady Imogene ordered hearty full meals and dined as if they had all the time in the world.

  "Now, for your coach and coachmen," Sir Pulteney said at last as he rose and moved to the front door. Lewrie followed him to see Sir Pulteney paying off their hired coach and ordering their luggage brought to the inn. "I told them that you found the inn so delightful, and the arrival of old friends so pleasant, that we would all be staying on the night, and coach to Le Havre together in the morning." Sir Pulteney explained after he returned. "They will rack back south to Paris a touch richer than they expected, and, God willing, your whereabouts ends here, haw haw!"

  "What happens tomorrow, then?" Lewrie asked him.

  "Not tomorrow, Captain Lewrie… what happens now is more to the Point," Sir Pulteney said with a sly expression as their luggage made its way through the inn, to the rear stableyard, and into the Plumbs' coach.

  "Sated, my dear? Excellent! Now we will all pay our reckonings and resume our journey, what?"

  There was no coachman for Sir Pulteney to pay off, for once he had handed Lady Imogene and Caroline into the coach, he sprang to the coachee's bench and the reins most lithely, and got the team moving with a few clucks, a whistle, and a shake of the reins.

  Lady Imogene crossed herself as they got under way once more "Pulteney adores playing coachee… though I fear he's not as talented as he imagines himself, and he rushes on much too fast sometimes."

  "Good Christ," Lewrie said, shaking his head in dread.

  Sir Pulteney got the coach on the road and began to set a rapid pace, whipping up like Jehu, the Biblical charioteer, putting the wind up Lewrie, who'd had his share of harum-scarum whip-hands like Zachariah Twigg and his damned three-horse chariot. Twigg was in his sixties, for God's sake, usually aloof, staid, and cold, but hand him the reins and he'd turn into a raving lunatick, screeching like a naked Celtic warrior painted in blue woad, revelling in how close he came to carriages, farm waggons, and pedestrians, as if re-enacting Queen Boadicea's final charge against the Roman legions.

  Sir Pulteney took the eastern road from Pontoise, following the north bank 'til reaching a crossroads that led north towards the smaller towns of Mйru and Beauvais, slowly climbing into a region of low and rolling hills that were thickly forested… and the roads were windier.

  Did it matter a whit to that fool? Like Hell it did, for their coach sometimes swayed onto two wheels, and those inside were jounced, tumbled, and rattled like dice in a cup. Lewrie's testicles, it must be admitted, drew up in expectation of the grand smash to come.

  At long last, and at a much slower pace, Sir Pulteney steered the coach off the road to a rougher and leaf-covered forest track, some few of those new-fangled Froggish kilomиtres short of Mйru, or so the last mile-post related, before they drew to a very welcome stop, deep in a forest glade.

  "What now?" Lewrie had to ask, easing the kinks in his back from keeping himself as stiff as rigor mortis the last few hours, as he and Sir Pulteney went into the woods in one direction, the ladies another, to tend to the "necessities."

  "Why, we become other people before we reach Mйru, sir," their rescuer told him, beaming with pleasure as he took a pinch of snuff on the back of his hand. "Then, once there, we change our mode of travel. Ten years ago, during the height of the French Revolution's bloodiness, there were more than a few residents there, Royalist in their sympathies, who aided our endeavours at spiriting the blameless to safety. In such a rural place, I rather doubt the Committee for Public Safety, or the later Directory, even bothered to root out so-called reactionaries, or hold their witch-hunts. No no, I'm certain there are still many of our old allies ready to speed us on our way. Ah-ah-achoo!" Sir Pulteney paused for a prodigious sneeze into a handkerchief, with all evident delight. "You will partake, Captain Lewrie?" he said, offering a snuff box. "Zounds, but that's prime!" he said, sneezing again.

  "Never developed a liking for it, thankee," Lewrie said. "You say we're t'become other people?"

  "Your trail goes cold at the Gantelet Rouge in Pontoise. Now, it will go even colder at Mйru," Sir Pulteney confidently told him as they went back to the coach. "My trail, and Lady Imogene's, as well. We will openly sup in Mйru after obtaining a much humbler conveyance, then travel through the night to put as much distance between us and Paris, and any pursuit, before tomorrow's dawn. That will require new aliases, and some, ah… costume changes, to transform us into a most unremarkable party of travellers… French travellers, Begad!"

  "I'm t'play a Frenchman?" Lewrie gawped in dis-belief. "Me, sir? That's asking rather a lot!"

  "I took that into consideration, Captain Lewrie," Plumb replied, "just as I noted that your wife's French, though not fluent, is much better than yours, which suggested to me the very personas which must be assumed, haw haw! Imogene and I shall do most of the talking."

  "Wouldn't we need new documents or something?" Lewrie wondered.

  "For foreign visitors, of a certainty, but for innocent and up-standing Frenchmen? Hardly! Aha!" Sir Pulteney exclaimed, hurrying them to the boot of the coach, "my lady has already begun the alteration of your wife's appearance!"

  The leather covering of the boot had been rolled up, revealing several large trunks, one of which was open, whilst a second served as a seat for Caroline as Lady Imogene fussed over her, now and then having a good dig down through the open trunk's contents. There were some gowns, many scarves and shawls, a heap of various-coloured wigs, and a smaller box of paints and makeup.

  Caroline had changed into a sobre and modest, drab brownish wool gown, with a cream-coloured shawl over her shoulders and a dingy white apron. White silk stockings had been replaced by black cotton, and her feet now sported clunky old buckled shoes instead of light slippers.

  "Good God!" Lewrie gawped again, noticing that Carolone's fair hair was now covered by a mousy brown wig, and atop that, there now sat a nigh-shapeless old straw farmwoman's hat. Lady Imogene had done something with her paints and powders, too, for Caroline looked at least ten years older, of a sudden.

  "Lud, but that's subtle, m'dear!" Sir Pulteney congratulated.

  "Merci, dearest," Lady Imogene sweetly replied, beaming. "What is necessary for theatregoers twenty rows back would be much too much for those we will deal with face-to-face. Artifice, as you say, must be subtle. Oh, I apologise for making you seem so careworn, Mistress Lewrie, but your natural beauty must notbe remembered," Lady Imogene said, finishing up the additions, or slight enhancements, of furrows or crow's-feet darkening the merry folds below Caroline's eyes as if she possessed weary, sleepless bag
s. Et, voilа! Done," she cried.

  "Now, should any pursuers ask if anyone has seen a fair-haired Englishwoman, they can honestly say non, d'ye see, Captain Lewrie?" Sir Pulteney said with an inane titter. "Your turn, now, sir." He removed his own clothing and began to dig into another trunk. "I will now become Major, ah… Pierre Fleury, a retired officer of foot, now too lame to serve. I will be a very disappointed man, haw haw! Lady Imogene is to be, oh hang it, Imogene Fleury… a disappointed woman in her own right, because… because… aha, I have it!" he said as he paced in a small circle.

  "You, Mistress Lewrie, are the widow of my eldest son, Bertrand, who found you in the Piedmont during Bonaparte's Italian Campaign, an Italian, of all things, and not the sort of match we had arranged for him. Being foreign, of course, your less-than-fluent French is plausible. M'dear?" he asked Lady Imogene.

  "I simply adore it, mon cher!" Lady Imogene cried, clapping her hands in delight.

  "I see… I think," Caroline said, sounding a bit dubious.

  "You, Captain Lewrie," Sir Pulteney said, whirling to face him and already feigning the stiff fierceness of a retired officer and a disappointed father, with a strict martinet's snap to his voice. "You are my youngest son, our last hope of grandchildren and the continuation of our family's name, but you… Armand, yes, that'll do… you, Armand, tried to be a soldier. You can remember your name? Trиs bien. You enlisted as a private soldier in the cavalry, but proved so clumsy that you ended by getting kicked in the head by your horse, before you had a chance to go on campaign, and have recently been invalided out. We shall have papers to that effect… Well, we will shortly. You will have to play a dummy."

  It didn't help Lewrie's nerves, or his dignity, that Caroline let forth a cynical chuckle-snort, then a full-out hoot of laughter.

  "You're addled as a scrambled egg, Armand," Sir Pulteney went on. "You must walk stiffly, as if afraid your whole head will tumble off. Slowly and stiffly. Be clumsy with anything you handle, forks and spoons and such. Be slow in speech, grasping for the proper names for things-"

  "Je suis un crayon," Lewrie interrupted, feeling sarcastic, too.

  "With your poor command of French, I expect you'll grasp for a great number of nouns, yayss," Sir Pulteney snapped, still in character. "Do you rise from a chair, you might swoon a bit… "

  "And wince, as if there's a sudden pain in your poor head, as well," Lady Imogene prompted. "We will cut your meat for you! Dribble a little wine so that I may wipe your chin."

  "Should I drool?" Lewrie rejoined, growing tetchy.

  "That might be a bit too much," Sir Pulteney said with a frown.

  "Let me wrap this bandage round your head," Lady Imogene said, "then turn your complexion pale and wan."

  By the time Lewrie had been "touched up" and his good suitings replaced with ill-fitting and older cast-offs, Sir Pulteney had altered himself into a stiff and stern-looking fellow in his late fifties or early sixties, with a shock of reddish hair and a large, gingery mustachio, a man who wore a sobre black ditto suit and limped on a stout cane.

  "When I address you, Armand, it may be well for you to cringe into your collar," Sir Pulteney instructed. "Who, after all, would wed you now? What hopes of family martial glory for la patrie can come from one such as you? Will you give us grandchildren, or a life of caring for a lack-wit? Pah!" he stamped.

  Lewrie ducked his head as if avoiding a proctor's rod, gulping a bit as he recalled that what he must play-act now was him to the life in his student days-when caught lacking at his studies, skylarking, or wakened from a nap in class. Huzzah for an English public school education! he told himself.

  "Thank God for Napoleon Bonaparte," Lady Imogene said as she packed up her paints and closed the trunks, "the meddler! He imagines he Will re-order so much of France… the civil law codes, the roads and canals, standardising the currency… He has even given instructions to the Comйdie Franзaise about costumes, makeup, and how roles must be played! All these cast-offs were available for a song!"

  "Let's hoist these trunks back into the boot and be on our way, Capt. Armand," Sir Pulteney snapped.

  Not all that many kilometres, or miles, away at that very moment, Matthieu Fourchette was gazing across the fields to the river Oise, at a small crossroads place called L'Isle Adam on the main road to Amiens, and cursing under his breath as they watered their tired horses and eased sore fundaments. He had been forced to split his already small pursuit party after the incident with that English lord and his wife; some went on up the road to see if a second coach containing their quarry had gotten that far along beyond the first they'd stopped. There was a slim chance of that, but Fourchette had to make sure that that trailing coach had not been a decoy to put them off the chase and turn their attention elsewhere.

  He wished he could sit down and rest, wished he could reach back and massage his buttocks and inner thighs, but he would not admit that he was not as good a horseman as that damned Chasseur Major Clary or the girl. On most of his missions for Fouchй, walking round Paris or coaching round France was sufficient, and when required to go by horse, the distances were usually much shorter, and at much slower paces.

  Police agent Fourchette also wished he could get on with it, but he could not do that, either. Fouchй had promised him a cavalry troop, and he had to wait for their arrival. He had to wait for his agents to return with a report from the other road. "Damn!" he spat.

  "The coaches that left through the Argenteuil gate, and the gate at Saint-Germaine en Laye," Major Clary thought to contribute as he stood nearby, idly flicking his horse's reins on his boots while his mount sipped water from the poor tavern's trough. "The Englishman is most likely in one of those, M'sieur Fourchette."

  "From the west gate? Pah!" Fourchette snapped. "Where would they run to, going west? Brest, Nantes, or Saint Malo? L'Orient or Saint-Nazaire? That would take them days to make their escape. That coach will prove to be a decoy. Fouchй writes that he has requested a troop of cavalry to pursue that one, though it will prove fruitless. No… I think our quarry flees north for Dieppe, Boulogne-sur-Mer, or Calais. Those ports are much closer, and make their journey shorter."

  "Then why do we tarry, m'sieur?" Charitй asked him.

  Fourchette began to round on her, but Major Clary spoke up as he pulled the horse back from the trough and began to lead him to the shade under the trees beside the tavern. "Beauvais, is it? Departing the Argenteuil gate, the direst route north leads to Pontoise, then to Beauvais. All the roads join there. We could go on, leaving word with the tavernier for your men, and the cavalry. We could cross the Oise and ride for Beauvais and be there by nightfall, n'est-ce pas? With your authority from M'sieur Fouchй and my rank in the Chasseurs, we could order fresh mounts from the regiment garrisoned there. And request more men than a single troop."

  "With these blown nags?" Fourchette gravelled, loath to take advice from a soldier. "We would be lucky to get to… what the Devil is the place?"-he snarled, unfolding a poor map-"to this little Mйru. Oui, we'll go to Beauvais, when my men have checked the road all the way to Creil, when the cavalry arrive, and when our horses are rested… else we get stuck in the woods until someone comes and rescues us! We will have to wait a bit longer, Major."

  Major Clary thought to tell Fourchette that cavalry sent from Paris in haste would arrive with blown horses, too, but was beginning to take a great dislike to the lank-haired, weaselly fellow. He would have said that, in his military experience, and with General Bonaparte and his many victories as a shining example, forces so widely separated had to act on their own initiative, and quickly. Bonaparte had trusted his generals and colonels to think, to play their disparate parts in the overall scheme before converging before the final objective, to the utter confusion of the enemy. In this case, Beauvais was the objective, the junction of almost every road their quarry might take to flee.

  But Major Clary didn't think that Fourchette would be in a mood to listen to sound advice. Besides, he didn't much care
for how this insouciant, leering salaud ogled Charitй, either.

  Major Clary came back from the hitching rails, letting his fond gaze assess his amour with a new lover's delight as she sat on a bench, impatiently jiggling a booted leg crossed over the other, idly pinning back up her wind-tossed coif. She rode astride, like a man, a pair of men's breeches underneath her gown. Charitй rode as good as a man, he further marvelled. Yet… what was this chase all about, and what was so important to her about being a part of it-beyond the fact that she could recognise the Englishman and his wife-that that billiard-ball-headed Fouchй had allowed her to come along? So this Anglais had insulted the First Consul, had he? Clary had heard their conversation, and Bonaparte had done most of the insulting to the smiling and bobbing "Bloodies." They were to arrest this gars for that? Horse-whip him, perhaps, or throw him into prison?

  Asking Charitй in the few fleeting quiet moments of this chase had resulted in vague answers, waved off with an impatient hand, and a change of topic. All Paris knew Mlle. de Guilleri's heroic history to raise a rebellion against the Spanish and reclaim Louisiana and New Orleans for France, the loss of her kin, and her banishment before the Dons garrotted her. Others said the Englishman was a spy, sent to kill Bonaparte, but that hadn't happened, so why the urgency?

  Thinking back on what he'd seen at the levee, Major Denis Clary suddenly recalled being introduced to this Lewrie… and how Charitй had spoken to him with such well-concealed anger. Had she known him before, in Spanish Louisiana? Impossible, Clary decided. Yet…

  "Oh, beurk!" Charitй exclaimed, standing quickly. She made a gagging sound. A light two-horse open carriage was trotting up the road to the tavern, with a saddled horse tied to its rear by the reins. "Can we not be rid of that obscenity? That disgusting…!"

  Capitaine Guillaume Choundas had caught up with them, bleating in bile to run into them, demanding why Lewrie was not yet in their hands, and what did they think they were doing, standing about with their fingers up their idle arses!