“Yes, yes, Capitaine, as you have told us,” Fourchette said with a wave of his hands. Ever since this foul creature had joined their expedition, they all had been subjected to Choundas’s tales of Breton derring-do and pagan myths and sagas. More than enough of it! “This Lewrie, though, stands a better chance from Calais and Dunkerque?”
“He does,” Choundas sulkily said, nettled that no one would appreciate his people’s glories.
“Then we shift to the Calais coast,” Fourchette decided.
“God,” Charité softly groaned, not looking forward to another long, hard ride on a reeking horse, in her reeking clothes.
“We will coach to Calais, mademoiselle,” Fourchette informed her. “Once there, in more comfortable lodgings, we will wait for the quarry to come to us, instead of haring all over France as we have. And I think that Minister Fouché would not deny us clean clothing, barbers, or hair dressers, n’est-ce pas? It will be my treat to reward your cleverness, ma chérie.”
Oh, gag me! Charité thought; I’ll owe him gratitude? A debt?
The ladies went off deeper into the woods atop their rise just before bedtime, a last moment of modesty. Sir Pulteney Plumb produced a pint bottle from a side pocket of his coat, pulled the cork, and had a brief taste, then waved it to draw Lewrie down-slope northwest once more. “Will you partake, Captain Lewrie, as we give our good ladies a touch more privacy, what?
“Not a bad tipple, does one prefer apples to grapes. So near Normandy, their calvados, an apple brandy, is easy to find.” He handed the bottle over to Lewrie, then tended to his trouser buttons for his own ease.
“Mmm, tasty,” Lewrie had to agree after a taste.
“Whilst we’re here, sir, in private . . . so we do not alarm the womenfolk, there is something that has been nagging at me this past day or so . . . ,” Plumb hesitantly began.
Him? Worried ’bout somethin’? At this late stage? How far up Shit’s Creek are we, then, for him t’look worried? Lewrie cringed.
“Since crossing the Thérain river, no one has given us even the slightest looking-over,” Sir Pulteney said, sounding fretful and sombre. “What I took for success at eluding them may have been that they have guessed our final objective, the coast and the seaports, and have set watchers in place . . . so we stumble into their spider-webs.”
Oh, just bloody grand! Lewrie sourly thought; ye didn’t think they wouldn’t? He took a goodly slug of the calvados before he gave in to the urge to curse, loudly.
“They’ll guard the cross-Channel packets, the good-sized boats we could steal,” Lewrie said. “But we ain’t plannin’ t’sail ourselves over, are we? Your schooner, waitin’ off some beach t’take us off . . . like you told me, right? We do have a plan, hey?”
“Of course, Captain Lewrie,” Sir Pulteney was quick to assure him; perhaps reassure himself on that head. “There’s the very place I had in mind . . . a very lonely wee beach where we may hide in a maze of rocks above a small inlet ’til the schooner arrives. Used it in the past . . . though . . .”
“Though?” Lewrie felt like screeching.
“Ten years ago, it was totally abandoned,” Sir Pulteney said in reverie. “There were some fishermen’s shacks atop the cliffs, and the path down so steep and convoluted that hardly anyone even knew there was a shallow inlet, and a beach, at the foot of it. The shacks were falling in on themselves, un-used for years, as well, and, did a lone gendarme happen by and see activity, what could one man do, with help miles away at the next post? Then, at any rate. But, as you say, the French have thousands more police and army patrols now. And . . . now I can cannot say with any certainty whether it is unhabited, still.”
Just bloody, fuckin’ great! Lewrie gawped; you clueless . . . !
“I’d thought to take a look at the place, for old time’s sake, but Imogene wished to get on to Paris, so I didn’t,” Plumb lamented. “Neither of us is quite as eager to forego our comforts as we did in our headier days, d’ye see. Yet who could have expected a visit to be necessary?” he added, to excuse himself.
“Well, you couldn’t have known,” Lewrie said, sighing heavily to the reality and taking another deep gulp of calvados. You’ll get us killed, for the lack of it, though, you hen-headed . . . ! he thought.
“Once we’ve donned our last disguises and gotten a new form of transport in Saint Omer, I must leave the three of you somewhere safe and make a reconnaissance on my own, before committing us to its use,” Sir Pulteney decided aloud, waving a hand for the bottle, as if in need of “Dutch courage” himself. “In a very humble costume, haw haw!”
Hope it ain’t clowns or mimes! Lewrie gloomed.
“So close to the sea, what better way to blend in than to play the part of common sailors?” Plumb said with a clever little hee-haw. “I trust our ladies will not be scandalised to become sailors’ doxies!”
Sailors and doxies, is it? Lewrie thought; no sailor is authentic without a good knife, no doxy without a wee pistol up her skirts! We get to Saint-Omer safe, the last o’ my money’s goin’ for weapons!
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Plumb drove alone to St. Omer to dispose of the cabriolet and their last, now-empty trunk and leather valises, getting what he could for them. He came back, on foot this time, with a canvas sea-bag partially filled with something, and changed his clothes and appearance to match their own. Caroline and Lady Imogene had changed, in the meantime, to voluminous peasant skirts, with hems high enough to show a bit of ankles, clunky buckled shoes, and a froth of lace. They wore rough ecru blouses with be-ribboned and embroidered peasant vests over them, topped with tawdry shawls and hats. Caroline kept her coppery-red wig, whilst Lady Imogene went for frizzy, dishwater blond. Sir Pulteney and Lewrie wore tattered and dingy old-style slop-trousers, the legs so loose and baggy, and ending just below the knees, plain cotton stockings to hide gentlemanly legs that had not been bronzed by the sun, their feet crammed into buckle shoes, as well. Sailors of any nation were proud to be well-shod when ashore. Itchy fishing smocks atop striped pullover singletons completed their disguises, as did the tasseled red Jacobin Liberty caps proper to good French revolutionaries. The fact that they hadn’t shaved in few days helped with versimilitude, though Lewrie thought Sir Pulteney’s eye-patch was a bit much.
They walked into St. Omer on “shank’s ponies” to do the last shopping and to purchase a rickety, two-wheel cart and a lone older nag to pull it. The Plumbs took the front bench together, whilst the Lewries lolled in the rear, using sea-bags for bolsters, and, to make their disguises even more believable, all made an open show of wine or brandy bottles, tobacco in the form of cigarros or blunt pipes, and an air of merriment. On their slow way north out of St.-Omer, the Plumbs quickly taught them some semi-drunken songs to sing should the need arise when confronted by a patrol.
It was disconcerting, though to see how many cavalry patrols there were on the road that morning. Almost every hour, a file of ten or more troopers would come cantering south from the sea, or another file would go past towards Calais, but only now and then stopping the rare coach-and-four or the larger public conveyances.
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 s
o 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 Charité 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!
“Hé! 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.
“Hé, 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. Charité 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 hôtel 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 Charité.
“Why you, ma chérie?” 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 Fouché 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 Fouché 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, Charité!”
“He killed my brothers, my cousin, Denis!” Charité snapped in sudden venom, turning to face him. “He chased us down to Grand Isle in Barataria Bay, and his frigate destroyed every
thing 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 Fouché . . . so you could kill him at last, Charité?” Major Clary surprised her by speaking softly, with understanding, as if in sympathy. “Is that what you wish, ma chérie? To see him dead? The way that hideux Choundas wishes him dead?”
“Yes, I wish to see him dead!” Charité 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,” Charité 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, Charité,” 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 . . . ,” Charité 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.”
King, Ship, and Sword Page 23
