The cavalrymen might look them over as their cart slowly plodded up the road, mostly to ogle Lady Imogene or Caroline and make lewd, suggestive japes to them, but Lewrie had to hand it to Lady Imogene, for she could hurl insults and gutter-French right back at them, insulting their manhoods in a way that made the troopers guffaw, not get angry, then canter on. Each time, Lewrie's stomach did back flips and a handstand, his mouth turned dry (which only another tipsy swallow of wine could assuage), and his "nutmegs" did their shrinking act, even as he swayed and scowled at the cavalrymen, striving for pie-eyed innocence.
The slightly soberer and more fluent Sir Pulteney always told them that he and his mate were bound for Calais to find a ship, since they'd spent the last of their previous voyage's pay, and, amazingly, every patrol, no matter how suspicious, had taken that as Gospel and ridden on!
And so it went, hour by slow hour, mile by plodding mile, each fetching them that much closer to the coast, the sea, and to the fisherman's hut, the inlet and beach, and freedom.
"Love what ye've done with yer face," Lewrie told Caroline as the afternoon wore on, and they finished off the last of the chicken, ham, and bread. Lady Imogene had "tarted" them both up with the sort of heavy makeup no respectable lady of worth would employ; red lips, kohl-outlined eyes, pale-powdered faces, and too much rouge. "And yer stockings!" Lewrie added. Caroline had her skirts up halfway to her knees, displaying blue-and-black horizontally banded hose. She flicked her skirt down quickly. "Arr, does yer warnt a l'il tumble roight 'ere in th' cart, missie?" he teased in imitation of a British tar. "Give a shillin', I will, fer a bit o' sport, har har!"
She tossed a chicken bone at him, grinning as she plucked some meat from a breast and chewed, looking impish, for a rare moment. She held out a strip for him to chew.
He took it, though chicken breasts were not as moist and tasty as dark meat. Playing a drunken sailor, and the many nips at a bottle to make that plausible, had made him hungry.
"More coming, from behind, Sir Pul… Henri," Caroline warned recalling Plumb's new alias. "A lot of them!"
The Plumbs went into their drunken singing, swaying, and bottle-waving in time to their tune.
"Christ, shit on a biscuit!" Lewrie yelped as he looked astern at the party that was rapidly gaining on them. "Mine arse on a band-box! Grope me, Caroline! Lay down and paw me… for our lives!
"It's that de Guilleri bitch and that Chasseur Major we met at Bonaparte's levee. They'll know us, sure as Fate, if-"
Caroline fell on her back and pulled him half over her, arms round his neck to hide his face, one thigh lifted to stroke down his thigh. It was a lazy kiss, a sleepy one 'twixt two people too foxed to couple. Lewrie shut his eyes tight, with the inane thought that if he couldn't see Charitй de Guilleri, she couldn't see him!
Rapid clops of hooves, coming closer! The chink of bit chains and metal scabbards, the squeak of saddle leather! A lot of horses, then the hiss and creak of a carriage's wheels and suspension, to boot! And they were slowing down, reining back to look them over!
"Hй! Des Matelots ivres et leur putains," someone said dismissively, so close that Lewrie could imagine that he had leaned over close enough to smell the fellow's garlicky breath. Drunk sailors and their whores… damned right we are, so sod the fuck off! Lewrie thought in panic.
"Hй, Capitaine Choundas," another mocked. "Are these some of your heroic Celtic or Breton seafarers, hein?"
Choundas? Gawd! Lewrie thought, ready to squeak in stark terror; him, too? Where'd they find him, floatin' face-down in the Seine?
There was a slow palaver 'twixt Sir Pulteney-Henri-and the leader of the mounted party; intent questions from one and drunken mumbles from the other. Whatever was said, what little Lewrie could glean from their French, he hadn't a clue. He fully expected a rough hand on his shoulder, tearing him away to face them, then…!
Caroline turned her face to his, tucking under his shoulder to hide her own identity while he pretended to lamely nuzzle her neck, his own face hidden in her red wig, wondering if his own black one'd stay in place, and trying manful not to sneeze!
"Merde," said the leader "Adieu. Allons vite, mes amis."
The clop of hooves picked up the pace from a slow walk to a canter, the carriage rattled past, and the Plumbs took up their mumbling song once more as their pursuers diminished on the road north.
"You, erm… know one of them, Captain Lewrie?" Sir Pulteney asked, once it was safe to speak in English again. "A de Guilleri?"
"The girl with em," Lewrie muttered, cautiously sitting up to look beneath the cart's driver's bench at the departing party. "Shot me once, in Louisiana. And if there was a crippled monster with a mask on his face and but one good arm, then, aye, I do. He's named Guillaume Choundas, and I'm the one who maimed him… several times. Known him since the Far East, in Eighty-Four… the Med, ten years later, and the West Indies in Ninety-Eight."
"One of the most disgusting creatures ever I laid eyes upon," Lady Imogene said with a delayed shudder.
"How many of them were there?" Lewrie asked, daring to sit up all the way.
"A whole troop of green Chasseurs," Sir Pulteney told him. "An open carriage for the ogre, a Major and a Captain of cavalry, and the young woman. And their leader, a fox-faced, lank-haired fellow, him I must imagine to be the very Matthieu Fourchette I mentioned to you last evening. Haw haw! Zounds! Odd's Blood, but we've just fooled the very people sent to catch you, Captain Lewrie! How glorious!"
There he goes again! Lewrie sourly thought.
"And just who is 'that de Guilleri bitch' to you, Alan? She shot you once?" Caroline asked, sounding very huffy and hard. "One may only imagine the why. You knew her before we encountered her at the levee?"
Oh, merciful shit! Lewrie quailed in alarm; just when I think I'm back in her good books!
The Plumbs shared a worldly-wise look, sure that it was none of their business, but…
Fourchette had been free with official funds at Beauvais. They improved their cleanliness and comfort, and hired coaches and teams to take them to Amiens, where he'd spent even more. Capitaine Aulard's cavalrymen had gone back to Paris, but they'd picked up a troop of Chasseurs at Amiens,
and Denis Clary had been delighted to don a borrowed uniform and once more be a complete soldier. Charitй had picked up a few new serviceable gowns, a fresh pair of breeches to allow her to straddle a horse, not perch daintily side-saddle, and fill a pair of saddlebags with not only fresh necessities but a few luxuries as well.
From Amiens on, though, they had set a furious pace, as rapid and demanding as the first dash from Paris to the Oise, to reach the coast, set a temporary headquarters in Calais, and coordinate with the gendarmerie and the local National Guard garrisons. So intent was the police agent, Fourchette, to get there that they performed only a cursory inspection of travellers on the road to Calais, trusting to the alerted cavalry patrols to nab any suspicious people matching the descriptions they had sent ahead by despatch riders.
Fourchette and his party had to depend on the vigilance of the local authorities; they could not be everywhere, on every road, or at every town gate, to spot their quarry.
It was only after they had taken brief lodgings at an inn at Calais, and Fourchette had bustled himself importantly to the hфtel de ville, the Chasseur troop had taken over a livery to see to the horses (and obtain lashings of wine, by fair methods or foul), and that beast Choundas had painfully, crookedly limped off to the out-house to ease his flaming bowels, that Major Clary finally had an idle hour to spend in private with Charitй.
"Why you, ma chйrie?" he posed over a welcome glass of wine on the inn's open-sided gallery as a soft, warm breeze redolent of fish and kelp and salt blew in from the sea. "You knew this man before, I suspect. Not from one brief introduction in Paris. What is he to you?"
She turned away, eyes closed in weariness and her face to the aromas of the breeze. She did not answer him.
"Why did Fouchй insist that you
come on this chase?" Denis went on. "Or was it you who insisted that you be included?"
"Denis, mon cher… ," she warned him, her lovely face stern.
"No, I must know, at last," Clary insisted. "We both know that the Anglais gave no real insult to the First Consul. He was not the assassin Fouchй suspected, either. Yet we chase after him, and will drag him back to Paris in chains? And you seem to have such personal interest in being here, in the pursuit. As if you have cause to hate him. I must know, Charitй!"
"He killed my brothers, my cousin, Denis!" Charitй snapped in sudden venom, turning to face him. "He chased us down to Grand Isle in Barataria Bay, and his frigate destroyed everything and everyone. He ruined it all, he destroyed all hopes of taking Louisiana back from Spain. And for that I despise him! I had a chance to kill him once, and I failed! I thought I shot him full in the chest, with a miserable air-rifle, but, by all that's unholy, he lived, all right? Happy now?"
"And you took advantage of Fouchй… so you could kill him at last, Charitй?" Major Clary surprised her by speaking softly, with understanding, as if in sympathy. "Is that what you wish, ma chйrie? To see him dead? The way that hideux Choundas wishes him dead?"
"Yes, I wish to see him dead!" Charitй spilled out in rage. "He owes me blood He came to New Orleans in disguise, to deceive, to spy and find all about our plans, our force! He…!"
Denis Clary leaned back a little, his face harder as he realised just who had been deceived in New Orleans, and surmised how this girl had been beguiled.
"So. We're to murder him," Denis Clary whispered. "And what of his wife? We must shoot her, too? The mysterious couple that they travel with? Leave no witnesses?"
"That is what Fourchette was told, Denis," Charitй de Guilleri confessed with a bitter laugh. "You heard him speak of it before, so do not pretend that you are here unwittingly. He is a dangerous enemy of France, and you are a distinguished, patriotic soldier of France. It will be your duty."
"I will gladly obey orders to fight, Charitй," Clary objected, his chin up. "I will happily shed a foe's blood in the heat of battle. But this…! I already feel slimed… mademoiselle. Dear as I hold you in my heart…," he trailed off, distancing himself with the formal address and suddenly feeling very sad, and badly betrayed.
"Perhaps…," Charitй relented, feeling a chill under her heart that she might lose him after such a wonderful, whirlwind beginning. "Perhaps you do not have to take an active hand, Denis mon cher, but… my revenge… and the First Consul's revenge, must be fulfilled."
"Ah, the cooing little lovebirds!" Fourchette exclaimed in glee as he breezed back into their inn, coming to the table to pour himself a glass of Wine, not waiting for permission. "And where is that ugly old cow-hide Choundas? Dying in les chiottes again, hein? It's no matter… I've lit a fire hot enough under our local soldiers and police for the night, so we will split our party, each of us to go with five or six troopers to cover the city gates and the roads to Boulogne, Dunkerque, and Saint Omer. If we can reach the coast by now, then so can our quarry. I have a feeling about tonight. Eat a hearty meal, and then we'll be about it!"
Fourchette sat himself down a bit away from their table, taking another sip of wine and savouring the late-afternoon sea winds; hiding a grin as he shrewdly took note of the stiff and uncomfortable postures and the silence between the girl and her soldier. Not as fond of each other as they'd been when I left? Bon! More hope for me, Fourchette thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sir Pulteney left them at a foetid inn a mile or so short of the sea, so old and begrimed that they were afraid even to speculate what simmered in the large iron pot over the fire in the hearth, settling instead for bread, cheese, and sour wine, over which they could linger 'til his return from his reconnaissance. The two bent-backed old prune-faced hags and the one white-whiskered old man who supposedly ran the place must have a "fiddle" on the side, Lewrie thought, for in the hour or longer that they sat there coughing in silence over their food in low-hanging haze of smoke from the fire, they were the only three customers. Lady Imogene whispered that they had used the inn as a way-station long ago, and… it appeared that the owners had not scrubbed the bare wood of the table top in all that time!
At last the door, leaning at an angle on loose leather hasps, creaked open, the bottom screeching on the wood floor as Sir Pulteney, in his one-eyed piratical sailor's disguise, slouched in to join them. He up-turned a somewhat clean glass to pour himself some wine, used a sailor's sheath knife to cut himself some bread and cheese, and dropped a silver coin on the table for his fee.
"That untrustworthy Anglais smuggler is not coming," Plumb, or as he preferred, "Henri," growled, well in character, talking through his food in raspy-throated French. "We might as well go on into Calais… There are others who might be interested in our goods, hein?"
The old, whiskered man came to collect the coin and bend an ear to the conversation for a moment.
"We are full? Bon. We go."
They had left the two-wheeled cart and the weary horse in the side yard. Still grumbling about the perfidy of any Anglais, "Goddamn," or sanglant in business, or anything else, Sir Pulteney climbed up to take the reins, leaving Lady Imogene to clamber aboard on her own, still in character. The Lewries took their place at the tail-board as he clucked the horse to a slow plod once more, and the cart creaked off into the night.
For a late summer night, it was cool, with a soft wind wafting off the Channel, cool enough to make Lewrie shiver as his shoes dangled a foot or so above the road. Caroline was huddled into her shawl, her arms crossed-for warmth, Lewrie hoped. Since he had blabbed the name of Charitй de Guilleri that afternoon, and had then had to explain how she and her kin had gone pirating in the West Indies, and how he'd ended them-how the girl had shot him!-leaving out the bawdy parts, of course, Caroline had acted very coolly towards him, rightly suspecting that there was a lot more to the tale.
He put an arm round her shoulders to warm her up and adjust her shawl, but she shrugged him off with a much-put-upon bitter sigh.
They came to a turning, another of those faint tracks, within sight of the lights of Calais, before the crossroads of the east-west Boulogne-Dunkerque road and their former St. Omer-Calais road. This jolting, grass- and gorse-strewn track led west, parallel to the main road, and Lewrie wondered how Sir Pulteney could even see it in the dark.
A mile or so more, and the track bent northwards, after a time spent in low, wind-sculpted trees and bushes. "We'll rejoin the road to Boulogne, soon," Sir Pulteney told them in a harsh whisper. "Missing any crossroads, where patrols might be, what? A mile and a bit more, and we'll be just above the cove, and stap me if it still ain't occupied!"
They had to get off the cart and almost drag it, and the horse, through a shallow ditch that ran alongside the Boulogne road, calming the skitter-ish old horse 'til it was back on solid ground, then boarded their cart for the last leg.
"Here!" Sir Pulteney cried at last, drawing reins. "Fetch out your things, and we're off, Begad!" They alit, and Plumb looped reins loose and slapped the old horse on the rump to send it plodding down the road on its own. "This way, smartly, now!"
They stumbled over uneven clumps of grass, small bushes, and a field of half-buried rocks, at first on the level, then gradually on a down-slope, northwards. Cape Gris Nez, "Old Grey Nose," stood high to their right, barely made out in starlight and the hint of a moonrise.
Yes! Ahead of them loomed a black, sway-backed mass, that hut that Sir Pulteney had mentioned; crumbling slowly into ruin, its roof half-collapsed, and its low front and back doors seemingly no higher than Lewrie's breast-bone, and the jambs leaning at crazed angles. A bit beyond, the coast was a darker mass, erose and bumpy-looking to either hand, but for a notch a little to their right, back-lit by some lighter something that seemed to stir and glitter in the starlight…
"The Channel!" Lewrie exclaimed as loud as he dared. "The sea!" And for the first time since their harum-scarum odysse
y had started, he felt a surge of confidence; he was within reach of his proper milieu!
Matthieu Fourchette and five Chasseur troopers sat their horses at the crossroad, where the east-west highway met the St. Omer road, about a mile before the porte of Calais, with Fourchette showing a lot more impatience than the bemused, softly chatting cavalrymen. He could hear a horse approaching from the south, taking a damnably slow pace, one that almost made him spur out to meet it. At last, a rider emerged from the dark, a gendarme. "See anyone on the Saint Omer road?" Fourchette demanded.
"No one, m'sieur" the fellow said, making a sketchy salute to him. "It is very quiet, nothing moving this time of night. Even the Jolly Hound tavern had only a few patrons tonight. God help them if they ate there, though, hawn hawn!" he added with a laugh.
"What sort of patrons? Did you enquire?" Fourchette pressed.
"Only two sailors and their whores, the innkeeper reported to me," the local gendarme easily related, smiling. "Most likely, they were smugglers, looking for a ship, m'sieur. The Jolly Hound is one of the regular rendezvous points for smuggling dealings… We keep a wary eye on it, I assure you, m'sieur. The innkeeper said that the older one, a gars with an eye-patch, told the others that some Anglais smuggler didn't come, as agreed, so they Would go into Calais and try someone else. They had a two-wheeled horse cart… They should have passed here, m'sieur, so surely you have-"
"Four people… two couples in a cart?" Fourchette said with a frown, shifting his sore bottom on his damp saddle. "Two sailors and two women? One with an eye-patch, you say?"
"Oui, m'sieur," the gendarme told him. "One woman with coppery-red hair, one fellow with black hair, much younger, with a scar down his cheek… "
"We passed them on the road south of here this afternoon," the frustrated police agent muttered, half to himself. "Drunk as aristos and… a scar?" Mademoiselle de Guilleri said that Lewrie had a scar, a faint one, but… "You're sure the innkeeper heard them say they would go to Calais?"
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