He risked discovery when he stood up and leaned over the balustrade to watch her as she disappeared through the open doors into the drawing-room.
***
Charles waited until the hall was almost deserted before coming upstairs. Wordlessly Paul motioned him to follow, as he led the way back to the nursery.
‘What has happened?’ Charles said as he closed the door behind him.
‘You know a man called Pierre Latour?’
‘Latour!’ Charles exclaimed. ‘Pierre Latour was Phillipe de Montignot’s secretary. Is there news …?’
Paul nodded. ‘Not good news, Charles. Latour landed to-night from Le Havre. He needed to see you urgently, but I could not let him come here …’
‘Quickly … tell me! What has happened to Louise?’
‘Still in Le Havre,’ Paul said. ‘Latour brought her down from Paris by barge, and they lodged at the house of friends of Latour, whom he swears are loyal. Then he looked around for a ship to take them to England. They had to wait … you understand the tension has been growing this past month, and everyone is suspicious …’
‘For God’s sake, tell me!’
‘He contacted Joe Shore, the skipper of the Dolphin and arranged passage for them both. But before he could get back to the Countess he learned that he was under suspicion himself. He dared not go back to the house where she was, because it would have led to a search, and her description is circulated in every port in France. She would have been recognized and taken. There was nothing to do but slip back to the Dolphin, and bring the news to you. He says someone else must be sent to get her.’
Charles’s thin lips tightened. ‘And Louise herself …? What did he say of her?’
‘She’s very ill. How ill, he’s not sure ‒ they couldn’t risk calling a physician. He says … he says that even when he was making the arrangements he doubted that she would have the strength to make the journey across …’
Charles was silent; he clasped his hands behind his back and paced the length of the room. As he turned back Paul saw his face was drained of colour, the skin pinched tightly on the high cheek bones.
‘She will die!’ he said distractedly. ‘If she is left there, she will die! Mon Dieu ‒ think of it! She is there all alone …’
Paul shook his head. ‘Latour assures me she is in good hands, and that his friends will care for her …’
Charles waved his words aside. ‘But she believes she is deserted! ‒ and she will die!’
A burst of laughter from the kitchen yard below seemed suddenly to mock his words. Then there were drunken, ribald whistles, and a girl’s high-pitched voice, laughing also, and protesting. Someone gave a faint cheer, and there was more laughter. James’s tenants, Paul thought, were making good use of his free cider and ale.
‘We will find someone to go over,’ Paul said. ‘There are plenty who will do that for payment … there are some I know in Folkestone and Dover who speak French tolerably and may come and go without …’
‘It would take too much time,’ Charles cut him short. ‘We cannot afford the days ‒ even the hours! It grows worse in France all the time. Since the royal authority has been suspended, and the King a prisoner in the Temple, every hour a royalist stays alive is an hour of grace …’
Abruptly he broke off, looking now directly at Paul. ‘You say the Dolphin brought Latour over?’
Paul stiffened, preparing now to face Charles’s accusations of double-dealing. ‘Yes, it did ‒ Joe Shore brings over anyone he can give passage to on my authority, and if you think I’ve no right …’
Charles gestured impatiently. ‘What does it matter! That’s your affair. I want to know where the Dolphin is now.’
‘Lying off Barham. She’s waiting for me to come back ‒ I’m captaining her to Flushing this trip …’
‘Good!’ Charles exclaimed. ‘Then ride to Barham and hold her there. Don’t let her move! I’ll join you as soon as I can break away from here.’
‘What do you mean ‒ hold her? The Dolphin leaves for Flushing as soon as I go aboard!’
Charles laid his hand quietly on the other’s sleeve. ‘Ah, no, my friend! The Dolphin will sail for Le Havre as soon as I go aboard!’
Paul’s expression darkened. ‘I’m captain of the Dolphin, and I say she’ll go to Flushing, as arranged. There’s plenty in Dover who’ll go for the Countess, and in the meantime she’ll come to no harm. She’ll be more rested, and better able to undertake the journey …’
‘Every day she stays in France the danger grows worse,’ Charles said calmly. ‘The Dolphin will sail to-night for Le Havre!’
‘But I have a cargo of wool loading that’s due in Flushing …’
Charles’s grip tightened on Paul’s arm. ‘I’m not asking you for the Dolphin, Mr. Fletcher. I’m commandeering her!’
III
The group who waited in Joe Shore’s cottage at Barham turned their heads expectantly as they caught the rumble of the carriage wheels on the cobbles at the end of the village street. Paul rose, took the candle and went quickly to the door; he had posted Joe’s son, Matt, to watch for the coach and direct it to the cottage. It stopped before the door, but Paul waited, his hand on the latch, listening to the low-toned conversation outside. Then he heard Patrick’s voice as he urged the greys forward again, and the carriage moved off towards Lydd. Shielding the candle with his body, Paul opened the door.
But it was not Charles who entered first. There was a tap of high-heeled slippers on the cobbles, and the brush of heavy silk against the door frame. Startled, Paul fell back a step, and Jane moved past him; she was followed closely by Charles and Matt Shore. Matt dropped the latch into place, and leaned back against it
‘Jane!’ Paul’s tone was a shocked protest. ‘Why are you here? Why have you sent the carriage away?’
She turned back to him. The billowing silk seemed to fill all the space in the small room, and her perfume was heavy on the air.
‘I’m coming to France with you,’ she said simply. Then she glanced to Charles for support before she went on. ‘I’m coming because the Countess is ill, and will need a woman on the journey back …’ Her voice faltered a little as she encountered Paul’s thunderous scowl.
‘This is madness!’ he said. ‘Utter madness!’ He turned furiously towards Charles. ‘Have you gone out of your mind to permit this? There’s danger ‒ you said yourself there’s danger! If anything goes wrong there’ll be no leniency for Jane.’
He swung back to Jane appealingly. ‘Jane, have a thought before you do this! I beg you, have a thought!’
‘Why should there be danger for me? I’m not wanted in France.’
‘You’ll be aiding the escape of a royalist …’ He looked back at Charles. ‘Why don’t you stop her? ‒ since you seem to be commanding this expedition!’
Charles shrugged. ‘I don’t stop her because I don’t believe she’ll be in danger. And … and I was profoundly grateful to her for offering her help. Louise may be dying, and a woman alone on this sea voyage …’
Paul threw out his hands. ‘Oh! ‒ this wretched Frenchwoman! So long as she is served it doesn’t count what danger Jane is exposed to …’
Charles held up his hand. ‘I think we’ve talked enough. I have pointed out to Jane what risks she will run, and she is still willing to come. Is that enough for you, Fletcher? The time is going, and we stand here and make talk …’ He looked carefully around the group ‒ from Paul to Joe Shore, the Dolphin’s captain, to Matt, to a man he had never seen before, sitting wearily hunched over the table, and finally to Pierre Latour. He held out his hand.
‘Latour! It’s good to see you here in freedom!’
Emotion crossed the other man’s face swiftly as he gripped Charles’s hand; he held on tightly for a moment, struggling for control.
‘I do not feel as if this is freedom, Monsieur. I have saved myself and failed my master, and Madame la Comtesse …’
‘You have not failed, Latour. She
is out of La Force, and only a few hours by ship from England. We shall have her safe here …’ He broke off, as the other shook his head.
‘Monsieur … I fear for Madame’s life. The time in prison has weakened her greatly. We only made Le Havre because it was possible to come directly from Paris down the Seine by barge. And getting her out of La Force … I tell you, Monsieur, it was genius! And it cost a fortune!’ For an instant his melancholy face lit up. ‘Such a beautiful plan, Monsieur …’
‘I’m sure it was, Latour, and you deserve great credit … your skill and loyalty have earned Madame’s unending gratitude, and mine also …’ He broke off, and put his hand on the other man’s shoulder as he saw the tears well up in those tired, bloodshot eyes.
‘Oh, Monsieur,’ Latour whispered, ‘go to her! She needs help so badly, and she may be dying. So brave she has been, and so helpless … and since Monsieur le Comte was so foully murdered by those fiends she has no one but yourself. All the family dispersed, or dead … living in exile and poverty. Her son is dead, and her brother ‒ there is only you, Monsieur! You will take care of her?’
Charles nodded. ‘I will take care of her.’
Then he motioned the other to a chair, and he drew one up for himself. ‘Now, Latour, you must remember every single detail we’ll need to know to reach her.’
Their talk went into French then, rapid questions and explanations, and finally Latour produced a piece of paper on which he had drawn a crude map. To this he added a name, and an address. As he wrote, Charles looked up at Paul.
‘Is everything ready to sail on the Dolphin?’
Paul nodded curtly. ‘Yes ‒ I shall captain her myself. Joe here has made six trips without a break, and, in any case, there’s only one cabin, and we shall need that for the Countess ‒ and Jane,’ he added grimly.
Charles’s gaze slowly turned on Jane. ‘My dear, I’m afraid to ask you if you’ve reconsidered your decision. You heard what Latour has said … Louise needs kindness, and a woman’s care …’
‘I’m coming!’ Jane said brusquely. ‘Let’s have no more talk about it!’
Charles nodded. ‘Very well ‒ I’m glad to hear it.’ Then he gestured towards her gown. ‘Couldn’t you find something …’ he appealed to Joe Shore. ‘She’ll be in more danger from that gown as she goes up the side of the Dolphin than from the Frenchies.’
Shore nodded. ‘That she will! There should be something about the place to borrow.’ He moved towards the passage leading to the back of the cottage. ‘I’ll fetch my daughter ‒ I sent her packin’ t’ bed when I knew Mr. Fletcher an’ the two others was comin’ …’
He opened a door at the end of the passage, and they could hear a low murmur of voices. Then a woman’s figure appeared, wearing nightgown and wrapper. But by the smoothness of her lustrous dark curls and the fetching angle of her cap, it was plain she hadn’t been in bed. She held a candle, and it shone directly on her pretty lively face.
‘Well, quite a company we have ’ere!’ She gave a little gasp as her eyes fell on Jane. ‘Didn’t know the Queen o’ France ’ad escaped.’
Jane remembered the voice, the warm, rough voice in the Barham churchyard on the night of the run. She held out her hand.
‘Rose!’
IV
The hull of the Dolphin seemed to tower above Jane, the masts and rigging lost in the blackness of the sky; she had crouched stiffly in the boat as they were rowed towards the Dolphin, afraid to move in this strange new world where everything was damp and smelled of old fish, afraid of catching her feet in the tackle at the bottom of the boat, afraid of losing her balance ‒ afraid, most of all, of earning a rebuke from Paul. She felt lost and forlorn, and she had a moment to wonder if she had been in her right mind in agreeing to go, before Paul motioned her to start on the ladder up the side.
Matt Shore’s shoes, which she had borrowed from Rose, were too big for her, and she was clumsy. It seemed an incredible labour to haul herself up the rope. The ladder was a treacherous thing ‒ giving and swaying with each movement from her. Her face was wet with sweat when she drew level with the deck, and rough hands pulled her the rest of the way. She found herself set on her feet with less care than a bundle of cargo. Charles’s head had appeared at the top of the ladder, and soon he also was on the deck. She took another hitch in the belt that held Matt’s breeches loosely about her waist, and waited for Paul. He was the only one reassuring thing in this bewildering scene, and she needed him.
But he would come to her only after he had given detailed orders to the hands, and consulted in low tones with his mate. She stayed away from Charles, feeling humble and unsure of herself, and not wanting to betray it. As she stood there, questioning her own sanity for offering to make the journey, she tried to fix in her mind Rose’s words, and the expression on the girl’s face as she had helped Jane change into her brother’s clothes.
‘If Paul Fletcher was my man I’d go with ’im, too! I’d follow ’im wherever ’e went.’
She could hear the rattle of the cable as the anchor came up, and the quick movements among the crew as an order from Paul sent the hands aloft. She watched the mainsail unfurl, and the sight as the breeze slowly filled it was one of new, unbelievable beauty to her. A slight shudder ran through the Dolphin as the vessel lifted to the breeze. Her bow swung slowly about, and she set course, on a tack that would take her clear of the tip of Dungeness.
Jane squeezed herself in against the bulwark, and hoped she would get in no one’s way until she was told what to do. The breeze caught the ends of the cloth Rose had bound about her hair, and they flipped across her face. She could feel the heave and drop of the Dolphin, and the motion, not yet too strong, pleased her. At her feet on the deck was the cloth bundle containing the old gown and petticoats Rose had given her to wear in Le Havre. In the box under Rose’s bed lay her own silk ball gown.
At last Paul came to her; he stood beside her staring up at the starless sky, listening, she thought, to the steady thrumming of the wind in the rigging. He leaned back, his back and elbows against the bulwark, feeling the rhythm of his ship.
‘Well, Jane,’ he said. ‘Here you are, aboard the Dolphin, and there’s a woman lying over there in Le Havre, who’ll take Blake’s Reach from you!’
In the darkness she moved and pressed herself close to him, standing on her toes and reaching up to put her arms about him, to put her hands behind his neck and pull his face down to her.
‘Forget that woman lying over there,’ she whispered. She opened her lips to meet his kiss, and pushed her body firmly against his, feeling her breasts hard against his body, feeling him tighten and respond to her urging. They rocked together with the motion of the vessel.
‘Yes, I’m here aboard the Dolphin,’ she said softly. ‘And you promised me that one day I would see France!’
V
Jane lay wakeful and restless in the narrow cot, huddling naked under the thin blankets that smelled of sea-water. She occupied the tiny stern cabin, the only one on the lugger; at the end of the companionway Charles had tried to stretch his length in a hammock slung between two beams. She wondered if he also lay awake, listening to the creak of the timbers, the wind that now shrieked high in the rigging. The weather had worsened steadily, and for more than an hour the Dolphin had been rolling in high seas. Sometimes the wind brought flurries of rain against the stern ports; Jane shivered and pulled the blankets higher about her shoulders, wishing that the morning would come, so that at least she might see how rough it was, instead of imagining mountains of water beating against the small vessel. She lay with her hands on her queasy stomach, and a kind of respect began to dawn in her for the men whose livelihood was the sea, for Paul, on deck now since they had left Dungeness, and for the hands who had swarmed up the rigging.
She sat up and fumbled in the darkness to find her shirt; after she had put it on she slid out of the cot, easing her way along the bulkhead until her groping hands encountered an oilskin she had see
n hanging there. She brought this back and spread it over the cot, and once more crept down between the blankets, wishing she now had the biscuits Paul had offered, and which she had declined.
The Dolphin suddenly gave a much more violent pitch, and she grabbed the side of the cot to save herself from rolling out. The Dolphin might be a thing of beauty and joy to Paul, but to her it was damp and cold, and possessed of sly, ungracious little tricks to trap the unwary. The night seemed endless.
Still clutching the side of the cot, she closed her eyes, and kept them closed firmly; after a time she seemed to drift towards sleep. The Dolphin settled back to the steady pitch of the past hour.
She was brought to complete wakefulness by the boom of a cannon. The sound was close by, and loud, even in the wind. She sat bolt upright, frantically trying to make out some shape in the blackness beyond the stern ports.
Above she could hear orders being shouted; she distinguished Paul’s voice, but could not hear the words. The orders were followed by the rush of horny, bare feet drumming on the deckhead above her cot. She could feel the swing as the Dolphin went about on a different tack. Then, for an instant, through the ports, she caught sight of the riding-lights of a vessel. Then the Dolphin gathered way, and the lights fell astern.
She sat there, shivering and frightened, straining to try to hear what was going on about her. In the passage she heard a muttered curse in French as Charles struggled to find his shoes in the darkness. Then she heard his steps on the companion ladder. She too wondered if she should dress and go on deck; she remembered Paul’s orders, and that crowded deck space where every inch seemed to be given over to equipment and gear. She slid down between the blankets once more, and decided that, unless a cannon shot came through the stern ports, she was better where she was.
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