The Emperor's Gold

by Robert Wilton

His brain started to recall where the shopkeeper and his wife would be, and strayed into trying to remember the location of the shop and whether lonely, unpassioned Rachel had said she was going to the market today. His ears heard the voices down in the hall, and that took him through the door of the attic room to the top of the stairs.

  Voices. One voice; loud, unconversational. Orders.

  Then boots in the house, several pairs. Soldiers.

  Brain still back in the attic, Fannion was down the steep ladder-staircase three at a time, hands burning on the timber rails and feet dancing and stumbling and resounding through the house. The difference between a hunted fugitive and a corpse in a gibbet is an eye for an exit, and Fannion’s exit depended on him getting down to the middle floor of the house before the militia got up to it. Somewhere his brain was wondering about silence, and concealment, while his feet kicked him forwards off the boards and sent him swerving and bumping to the top of the main stairs. Shouts from below, and down he plunged, grabbing at the banister post and swinging himself round to the second half of the flight. Down faster than he could control, staggering forwards into a table, the table rocking and settling, pushing it aside and hurling himself along the passage, pictures clattering from the wall as he lurched past. There was red movement suddenly in his eyes, a uniform hurrying up from the floor below, a staggered, stupid face and a slow fumbling at the musket, and as the soldier reached the landing Fannion threw himself into him; shoulder and arm sent the man back against the wall and collapsing down the stairs, there was a flash and a crack of noise as the musket went off as he fell, and Fannion was still driving himself down the corridor like an elephant on fire. Behind him shouts and boots, always shouts and boots, as long as he could remember it had been shouts and boots, and he threw his whole weight against the door ahead and erupted into the bedroom, head and arms and knees ringing with bruises. One leap took him onto the bed, another took him off it against the window; he threw up the sash, kicked one leg through into the air, ducked his head under and out into the sudden glare of daylight, then grabbed the sill and swung himself down. There was an instant of lurching doubt in his gut, and he let go.

  The flat roof below was a drop of three feet – he knew it, he’d checked it – and he felt nothing in his feet and legs as he landed, staggered, and scrambled towards the low parapet. There was supposed to be a pipe – he’d seen a pipe – there it was – and again he swung over the edge; feet scraped for purchase between pipe and wall, hands flapped for a hold at the top. The alley was only four or five feet below him, and he was down in a second of rust-raw hands and feet slipping on the rough stone. On his feet again, back slumped against the wall, gasping for breath and heart hammering: left or right? Move! Down the alley, pressed against the wall for an extra second of invisibility from the men following him onto the roof, reining his legs into a walk and his gasping into regular breathing. Look for the crowd; disappear.

  ‘Stop there!’

  For a stupid second he thought the voice came from the pursuit behind him, and not from the soldier who’d just stepped into the end of the alley with musket held out towards him. An older man – not a new recruit – a worn red face and heavy sideburns and enough gravity to give a frail edge of confidence to his apprehension.

  ‘Quickly, man! Come with me! We’ve got him!’ Fannion was throwing out words in desperation; he had to close the distance to that musket, had to get inside the barrel and the bayonet.

  ‘But – but you was off the roof! I heard you!’

  ‘Of course I was! God’s sake, man, come on!’ Hurrying past the hesitant soldier, left arm brushing the musket vertical and reaching to catch the man encouragingly on the shoulder, to turn him, and right hand into pocket.

  ‘But – wait—’ and Fannion grabbed the soldier by the collar and drove his knife up into the chest.

  He held there for an instant, two men and a musket in an uncomfortable embrace, feeling the man’s blood hot on his hand, the man’s groin against his taut thigh. ‘There we go. That’s it, mate,’ he said softly. The big white eyes were shocked, and strangely young again, and then they died.

  Fannion eased the body to the ground, remembered the pursuit, looked back up the alley and heard the sound of voices on the low roof, saw bayonets and the edges of uniforms moving to the parapet. How many sentries had they posted? He wiped his shaking hand on the dead man’s shirt, stood, and hurried on.

  Twenty soldierless seconds later he was in the main street, and into the crowd. He matched pace and direction with the person nearest him, tried to lift his head so as not to seem hunted, tried not to catch eyes so as not to draw attention to however he looked.

  Damn the fucking English. Damn the fucking English and their fucking tame Irish slaves. Damn the whole fucking world of shouts and boots and dead men. Now he’d see them burn.

  The smell changed. The current of people’s movement had changed too. Fannion looked around him. He was in a marketplace, and stood still for a moment among the swirling shoppers to find his bearings.

  Christ’s sake, it was her! That bunched red hair high off the neck, the full breasts he’d watched over the table for a week, Rachel was here, a conventional shopkeeper’s wife doing her conventional shopping. His brain urged anonymity and movement. There’d be soldiers flooding into the square in a second; they could have it surrounded by now.

  Blood in his cheeks, Fannion took three strides to the dairy stall, put one hand on her shoulder and another around the curve of her jaw and kissed her full on the lips before she could react.

  ‘When you want to join the rebellion again,’ he said softly, ‘you come and find me.’ Then he turned and weaved his way back into the mob.

  The audience of leaves whispered around them. Still settled against his tree trunk, Jessel took a lump of bread from his pocket and began to chew at it with slow attention, moving it to the side of his mouth to emphasize a word. ‘When the American colonies finally went their own way – and there are some pretty hair-raising stories about what this organization was up to – but when it was all lost in ’83, some people high up in Government found it easy to blame the Comptrollerate-General. Maybe if people had paid more attention in the sixties it might have been different, but who knows? Same with the Paris Revolution: some people found it convenient to say the Comptrollerate-General should have done more – though what we could have known, or what anyone could have done if we had known it, probably don’t signify. Rough time for the organization, anyway.’ He stretched his legs out, and crossed them. ‘Then, couple of years back, just before I got involved, seems there was a very strange time indeed. A bad time, a time no one talks about, a time no one – even Lord Hugo, who’s quite new – really knows about.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘We’re not like a bank or a regiment, Tom. The Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey doesn’t have statutes and official meetings and membership lists and rules and procedures. To the population, we do not exist. A very few people in the Admiralty and the Government know of the organization and what it does. Some officials have heard of it, but we let them assume what they want to assume about a department with a dull name like ours. Half the people who do work for us – those Magistrates, say – will never hear the name of Scrutiny and Survey. Ships carry our messages and our agents and our gold, and do not realize it. Even me or you, we’ll never know more than a handful of other people who know. The Comptrollerate-General is a chain of relationships, a constant series of conversations, a few memories.’

  Roscarrock nodded. ‘Good security. Something goes wrong, the effect is smaller.’

  ‘Exactly. A couple of years back, something did go wrong. Chiefs changed over quickly – a talk of corruption – maybe worse. Connections broke down at the top, the chain fell apart lower down. Bits of the organization must have just… drifted away. Contact stopped, time passed, and eventually the Comptrollerate-General was just a couple of conversations you’d once had with a st
ranger from London, if you even knew that at the time.’ He nodded in thought. ‘Good security, like you say. But chaos at just the wrong time. When the war resumed in ’03, a few in the Government recognized it was time to get a grip. Lord Hugo was one: clear head, clean hands, at the right time. Anyway, the way he tells it, taking over was like finding the house had been burgled in the night. Barely anything left. The one thing still standing, the one thing functioning, the one thing holding Scrutiny and Survey together, was a puritanical Scotsman.’

  ‘Kinnaird.’

  ‘Kinnaird. And sometimes Lord Hugo makes it sound like Kinnaird was the mangy rat in the corner of the burgled house eating the last of the cheese.’

  ‘Who is Kinnaird?’

  ‘Who knows? You’ve met him – what – once?’ Roscarrock shrugged non-committally. ‘You know more than most of us. He’s part-businessman, part-politician. He’s no idealist, but he’s supposed to be ruthless. Important thing is – and Lord Hugo’ll say this, even though he thinks Kinnaird’s a maniac – he’s a one hundred per cent pure gold genius at intelligence work. For a time he was pretty much running the Comptrollerate-General, and if there’s anything that’s working today, the chances are he set it up. Half the procedures were devised by him. The fleet of little ships that run errands into France for us – most of them smugglers and cut-throats – that was his idea. And then there’s his network.’

  ‘His?’

  ‘Doesn’t feel like it’s ours. A small network of agents across Britain, identified and developed by him. Not fieldsmen like us, but men who observe; men who explore; men who reflect; men who will stay silent until you find them and ask them for their insight. He reaches into France, as well. I know even less about that, but the whispers make it a legend. The network de la fleur.’

  ‘The flower?’

  Jessel shrugged. ‘People recruited by Kinnaird or under his direction, overlapping with the Royalist underground led by an old general called Metz. He’s a legend, too – or perhaps a myth. Metz’s influence reaches across northern France, they say; sympathizers everywhere. All sounds a bit optimistic to me, but it’s not my area. Anyway: that’s Kinnaird’s network.’

  ‘And why aren’t we talking to them now?’

  Jessel pulled his legs up to his body, and leant forwards. ‘Because we don’t know who they are, not more than a few.’

  ‘You don’t know? Lord Hugo – he must know.’

  ‘No lists, Tom, no regimental muster on the common. We know some because they’re open in the reports they send. Some report anonymously. Some don’t report directly and we’ve little chance of finding them. And here’s the thing’ – he grinned wildly – ‘Kinnaird’s not telling.’

  ‘He’s that secretive?’

  A shrug. ‘You’ve met him, and if he picked you you must be closer to his thinking than most of the rest of us. He’s secretive, he’s… obsessive, he treats his plots and his arrangements like a new religion.’

  Roscarrock shook his head. ‘The Admiral must love this. Can’t he—’

  ‘Order Kinnaird to co-operate?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘They rarely meet, and they’re not exactly similar people. Kinnaird disappears for days, then pops up with a bit of insight, then wanders off again. If Lord Hugo had anything else to build his organization on, he’d have pushed the old man into the river long ago, just to be free of the irritation.’

  ‘So what’s Sir Keith doing now?’

  ‘Who knows? Probably the same as us, and he’ll come and give us the answer when the mood takes him. But until he’s got something useful, he’ll say nothing. He won’t be sharing the names of any of his agents, and those we know about are reluctant to talk to anyone except him.’

  Jessel picked up a pebble, tossed it once in his hand, then took it between thumb and forefinger and threw it slowly and precisely at Roscarrock’s boot. ‘And that, Roscarrock, is why Lord Hugo Bellamy is so interested in you.’

  The whole affair was an irritation that he could ill afford, but the Colonel of Militia in Tiverton accepted grudgingly that he couldn’t simply throw the murdered dragoon into a grave pit and forget about him, tempting though that was. A Lieutenant was given the order to make the necessary enquiries of the nearby regiments, and the clear impression that the Colonel wished nothing more to do with the matter. The Colonel dismissed the young officer, made a sudden scowl of annoyance into his empty office as he wondered again why it wasn’t the Magistrate who was making an investigation of this kind, and tried to think of lunch.

  He was allowed three days of peace, the Lieutenant having absorbed the point that his Colonel did not see the business as a priority. But the young man had become interested in his mission, and willing to overcome the Colonel’s irritation when he brought it back to him. No one claimed the dragoon. No one knew him. He was not a local man nor from a unit stationed locally. He had no kind of identification in his pockets. No explanation could be found for how he came to be in the Magistrate’s house, and how he came to be stabbed to death there.

  The Colonel, with a pleasing rush of clarity, realized that he could now at last get rid of the problem. He wrote a short description of the affair and ordered it sent to London – they could hunt the murderer if they chose – to be followed more slowly by the coffin of the dead man.

  26th July 1805

  The mist swelled fat and heavy out of the English Channel, and bumped dully against the ancient Dorset cliffs. None of the inhabitants of the village of Burton Bradstock, a few thatched cottages hiding behind the cliffs, had cause to scramble down to the beach so early. But once they did so – once the mist had rolled back from the long shingle sweep of the Chesil Beach – they would find that the night sea had cast up a new offering. From a distance it looked like a piece of driftwood; then perhaps a low rock; nearer still, and the first beachcomber would wonder at some unknown sea creature floundering stupidly in the shallows.

  Close to, this scrap of rubbish from the sea was unmistakeably a man – a man long drowned, skin white, clothes saturated and rank. The tide nudged and rummaged at the corpse, washing the hem of a coat, strands of hair and a forgotten hand back and forth with gentle indifference. Rings had been pulled from fingers before the body entered the water, and the fine shirt that would have drawn attention on a deck now floated sour and sogging. The gulls circled overhead, bossy shrieks disguising their wariness of the puffy plaster face.

  Another of the Comptrollerate-General’s ships – that informal collection of irregular vessels devised by Sir Keith Kinnaird – would need a new captain.

  MONSIEUR THE MINISTER OF POLICE MEETS WITH GABIN, INSPECTOR OF POLICE,

  THE 26TH DAY OF JULY 1805

  M. Fouché:

  I am not in the habit of dealing directly with Inspectors.

  M. Gabin:

  I am honoured, Minister.

  M. Fouché:

  I have formed an assessment of you from what I have read and what I have heard. Your actions are swift, effective, and without scruple. Your reputation is impressive.

  M. Gabin:

  The Minister is too kind.

  M. Fouché:

  I have neither time nor inclination for receiving or giving flattery. The Revolution and the rise of the Emperor have brought a world where a man rises on his merits. I welcome that. A man also falls on his merits.

  M. Gabin:

  I understand.

  M. Fouché:

  As of this moment, you work directly to me, and report directly to me. If you have any doubt or question about that arrangement, speak now.

  M. Gabin:

  None, Minister.

  M. Fouché:

  Just as your work will be outside the normal arrangements, so will any reward for success and any punishment for failure.

  M. Gabin:

  I understand, Minister.

  M. Fouché:

  Be useful to me, and you make your career in a morning. Fail me, and you return to your Britta
ny pigsty. Betray a word of this or any future conversation and you will be at the bottom of the Seine within the hour.

  M. Gabin:

  A man who understands loyalty respects a chief who understands loyalty.

  M. Fouché:

  We understand each other. The Emperor desires England. It is his dearest wish, and it is therefore the duty of every Frenchman to advance it. It is obstructed by two things, the only solid parts of the whole rotten apparatus of British Government: the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey, and the Royal Navy. I have a scheme that will neutralize both. You will be my sole agent in executing the French portion of that coup, and you will thereby assist me to deliver England to the Emperor. You will have absolute authority to use the forces of the police in my name, and you will be able to command the assistance of the military on the same basis. This letter, and my personal seal, will open all doors in France.

  M. Gabin:

  The Minister honours me with the task. I offer my life to it.

  M. Fouché:

  Let us hope that is not necessary. Within weeks, London will be paralyzed by a violent outrage; shortly afterwards, the Royal Navy will be removed from the Emperor’s path. The collapse of the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey will be part of this.

  M. Gabin:

  I have not heard of this Comptrollerate-General.

  M. Fouché:

  Of course not. With the exception of a few men working for me, any Frenchman who knows it is by definition a traitor. This organization is responsible for all that is truly secret in England, and all that is truly dangerous in France. It is filled by officers of unusual ability, and led by a man of remarkable vision and shrewdness. Our first step in defeating it will be not underestimating it. While my plan is brought to completion, by myself in concert with our friends in England and Ireland, you have one immediate task. It is of the utmost secrecy and importance.