You’ve been here before. You can do this. Phil stayed sitting, opened his hands, used fear as natural surprise in his face. ‘Ted Wass, what the hell are you talking about?’
‘Government spies is what I’m talking about!’ Wass took a solid step forwards, blade still pointing the way to Phil’s heart. The men between them stepped hurriedly back against the wall, chairs and boxes scraping clumsily with them, confusion in every face. ‘Seems you’ve done it before, looks like you’re doing it again.’ Now the blacksmith had picked up the other sword, holding it comfortable and firm in one fat hand.
Phil was up too, and backing. ‘’Fore God, Ted, I don’t know what you mean.’ This was it: alone, forgotten by the Government, dying in a cellar like the rat he knew he’d always be now. His chair fell under him; the swords moved another step nearer; frantic, he untangled his legs from the fallen chair, stepped back again, one arm finding the cupboard and the other slapping cold against the cellar wall.
‘Oh, I think you—’
Then the door of the old cupboard exploded outwards and Tom Roscarrock stepped into the room, knife steady in his left hand and a pistol in his right.
‘I’ve come to join the Revolution,’ he said after a moment.
The faces in the room just gaped at him, staggered and stupid, Phil beside him the same as his mind tried to deal with the successive shocks.
‘You was a bloody spy then!’ The blacksmith, sword still firm, halfway round the table.
‘Course he was!’
‘And what—’
Under the blacksmith’s words Wass had snatched at a chair and flung it towards Roscarrock; it was slow and clumsy and Roscarrock slipped easily to the side as it clattered against the cupboard, but as he moved he stumbled against Phil, lost balance, Phil pushing him away to avoid the stretching knife hand, and the blacksmith was charging at them with sword swinging. Roscarrock found his feet on the swaying deck and raised his arm and the cellar smashed in noise as he fired.
Galloping forwards, the blacksmith was no more than a foot from the rigid pistol barrel when it came up straight and the blast caught him full in the face. His head snapped back and he dropped like an elephant, the brutal sword that he’d forged clattering down with him.
The succession of shocks and the explosion of the pistol froze the room, stupid and deaf. Then Wass picked up his grim glare from the body of the blacksmith and took half a step forwards. ‘Now you’ve just your knife, you bastard, and I’ve still got the sword. So let’s see you!’
Roscarrock shifted the blade to his right hand, pistol to the left as a cosh, glanced at the rest of the group, kicked the chair away, checked his ground. Wass was coming on, steady half steps and the sword gripped two-handed in front of him. Roscarrock glanced at the furious face, then concentrated on the blade and the arms that held it. He had to catch the first sign of the charge; would the sword swing? Could he get inside the swing or could he deflect the first blow of that massive blade?
There was a sudden scuffling from the darkness, again the faces flicked around in confusion, thumping feet on the stone steps and the shadows became Jessel, launching himself into the room. Wass was still turning to face the new threat when Jessel pushed down the arm that held the broadsword and drove a sabre into the exposed chest. Wass gave out one long moan of last pain, and seemed to shrivel in on the blade that held him, and then as it pulled away he collapsed frail to the floor and gave up his life in breathless chokes. The Lord had called to Ted Wass sooner than expected.
Jessel said, ‘Did I interrupt?’
‘I had it under control.’ Roscarrock was watching the exultant face.
‘In which case I’m sorry we weren’t a little slower in getting here.’ Three soldiers had appeared from the gloom of the stairs, and at a gesture from Jessel they began shepherding the remaining plotters with their bayonets.
Roscarrock was already striding around the table towards the stairs. ‘Come on. Chance is getting away.’
‘It’s in hand.’ Jessel held up an arm to slow his colleague. ‘I’ll show you.’
From the back of the room, still slumped against the dank wall in alarm, Phil called out, ‘Mr Grey!’ Roscarrock turned. ‘You – you were looking out for me after all.’ Roscarrock just nodded. ‘Thank you.’ Phil gaped for the words. ‘I… I sort of thought you didn’t really care.’
‘I don’t. But that doesn’t mean you deserved to die tonight. Besides, I had to get after the tailor.’ He turned back to Jessel.
Pushing up past the scattered boards at the top of the steps and through the clumsy stones, Jessel said softly, ‘Quietly now. I’ll show you.’
‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘Quickly now – and quiet, right?’ Jessel began to jog away from the ruins of the old church and along to the first corner. As they came closer to it, he slowed and held up a cautioning arm. Then he led them a careful step around the house end, checking that they were in darkness.
Two hundred yards away a man on horseback, moving away, was visible among the moonlit shades of grey. ‘Chance,’ Jessel murmured. ‘Now watch.’ Halfway between them and the pale, plodding horse, the shadow of a man became distinct from under some trees, and began to follow, stopping and starting and changing speed as he tried to read the pace of the horse and reacted to stretches of open ground or greater darkness. Jessel’s hand came up again to maintain the silence; after thirty seconds he whistled a single note. From some yard or alley nearer by, another horse thumped quietly into the street and began to follow too.
‘What’s happening?’ Roscarrock spoke low and insistent. ‘We should be on him.’
Jessel led the way back around the corner. ‘The esteemed Home Office is happening, Tom. Orders and decisions, now that we’ve done all their work for them. Chance is felt not a significant threat on his own’ – he continued over a single hiss of exasperation from Roscarrock – ‘and so we are to follow him and see who else he meets. Play this right and we can roll up a whole net of plotters.’
They were back under the great blank face of the tower, lonely and uncomfortable without its church beside it. Jessel continued past it to another turning and half a dozen horses being tended by a soldier.
Once mounted, Roscarrock said, ‘Risky though.’
‘Yup.’
‘He could be the assassin that the French have sent.’
‘Yup.’
‘Jessel, I’m serious: they’d better be damn sure they know what they’re doing. We’ve lost Fannion completely, and we’re not grabbing the one remaining connection we do have to whatever’s going on – a man who’s certainly trouble and could even be fatal.’
There was a grim smile in the gloom. ‘Yup.’
‘Jessel.’ Jessel’s head turned again. ‘Thanks for getting here when you did.’
‘’S’all right. Thanks for finding Chance; that’s twice now.’
‘Can’t promise it a third time.’
They nudged the horses into the slow walk back to London.
Sir Keith Kinnaird in London: snatched glimpses of him, through the sun-scorched window of a coffee house or behind a pillar in a candle-blazed reception room, seconds of illumination in twenty-four hours of shadows.
A room off a courtyard off a street near the Palace at Westminster. The lines on the gnarled face deepening in concern, the web getting thicker so that the face seems to darken. Alleyn, the Lawyer, had died again – a relapse into the pneumonia that had clutched him three months before – and this time there would be no gaunt Scot reaching down to conjure him back out of the gloom. That left Garrod, Roscarrock and Christiansen.
Three dead men against the Comptrollerate-General.
4th August 1805
The Home Office watchers lost Gabriel Chance exactly twelve hours after they had found him. As their department’s report of the day shows, the subject was observed entering St Michael’s Church on Cornhill. Twenty minutes later the same figure was seen leaving St Michael’s and wa
lking casually up Cornhill and then Bishopsgate. He walked for an hour, without obvious destination, but tending towards the east. Ambling among the stalls in Well Close Square, he suddenly turned into an alley and started to run. He was, though, being followed not by a single Home Office agent but by a team, some keeping ahead of him and some on parallel streets. He was seen again almost immediately on Cable Street, and at this point an agreement forced out of Wickham at the Home Office by Admiral Lord Hugo Bellamy came into effect: if the fugitive tried to escape, or showed any other signs of knowing that he was being followed, he was to be taken.
Unfortunately, when two Home Office men scrambled to their feet still fixed to the man they had just wrestled into the dust, they found that they had not been following Gabriel Chance, but Gabriel Chance’s coat and an unemployed Irish labourer by name of Kirwan. After an uncomfortable two hours with Home Office and Comptrollerate-General officials, a bruised and desperate Kirwan could do no more than confirm that a dark-haired, good-looking fellow countryman had paid him a shilling to put on another man’s coat and hat and draw off someone following that man – of course he knew it must be criminal business, but he’d been told it was just a little thieving, and who wouldn’t take a shilling to help an Irishman in need in alien, threatening London? A tighter description confirmed that the other Irishman could have been James Fannion, but Kirwan knew nothing more. He got a week in the cells just to pay for the frustration and embarrassment of those who’d lost Chance. The owner of the Spitalfields slum room where Gabriel Chance had spent the night also spent an uncomfortable interview with the authorities; he knew nothing whatsoever about his erstwhile tenant, but he also got a week in prison from the angry Home Office men.
Roscarrock didn’t need Jessel to open his mouth to tell the story – the expression on the normally pleasant face was enough. He swore once at the sky, short and vicious, and shook his head in fury.
The sloop Seahorse slipped into Folkestone with the dawn, an insubstantial emanation of the clearing mist. She tied up at the quietest, most distant part of the harbour, silent grey men moving around the deck with the competence of generations.
In the course of the next hour, the Captain of the Seahorse received two visitors, and the crew kept themselves out of the way until both had come and gone. The first arrived shortly after the boat was secured, a tall man with a scarf around his face and an official pass in his pocket who stopped silent on the edge of the jetty until the Captain strode to the ship’s rail to meet him.
‘The life of a sailor must be lonely,’ the tall man said.
‘But the life of a sailor is free,’ the Captain replied.
‘God save the King.’
‘God save the King,’ the Captain said, and handed over a leather satchel.
The tall man nodded, turned, and disappeared into the mist. The contents of the satchel, re-addressed to Mr Morrison Cope at the Admiralty, would be with the Comptrollerate-General of Scrutiny and Survey by lunchtime.
The second visitor ambled along the jetty towards the end of the hour, and stepped over the rail with surprising skill for someone of his bulk. He greeted the Captain genially, and accepted the offer of a drink. As he walked to the Captain’s tiny cabin, he glanced through one of the hatches into the hold, where at least two dozen barrels fresh from France were carefully stowed. After a gentle empty chat, the visitor pulled a thick notebook from a pocket and said, ‘What have you got, then?’
‘Dozen barrels of wine. From Lisbon.’ The Captain nodded to a little table, with a single sheet of paper and a small but heavy bag.
The customs officer signed the paper noting the arrival of a dozen barrels of wine from Lisbon, made an entry in his notebook, pocketed the small but heavy bag and left as cheerfully as he had come.
As soon as he was gone, the Captain walked through the sloop to where the crew were sheltering out of the wind. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘Unload.’
The men stood immediately and without discussion, and moved to the hold. The Captain beckoned to one, a small man who came uncertainly towards him.
‘Where are you headed?’ the Captain asked. The little man just shrugged, and shook his head in discomfort. ‘Oh, hell. Er – où… allez-vous?’
Joseph peered at the clumsy French and clutched at ideas. Where was he going, after all? He had escaped France, thanks to these strange and organized Englishmen, but what was he supposed to do now?
‘Londres?’ he said after a while.
‘London.’ Louder: ‘Lon-don. Say it. Essayez: “London”.’
‘L – Lun-dern.’
‘London. Who – er – qui?’
Another shake of the head. The young Master. He must try to find the young Master. Had the young Master ever told him how to do this? He had told him never to use his name, that was important. He must remember that. Eventually: ‘J’sais pas. L’Ambassadeur de la France?’
‘All right. Try it. Essayez: “French Ambassador”; “French”… “Ambass-a-dor”.’
The memory of Lady Sybille repeating words with him flooded Joseph with pain – but a pleasant ache of familiarity as well. After a few goes he got the phrase close enough to make the Captain feel he’d done what he could to help.
‘All right,’ he said again, and shook his head in doubt at the idea of the little man setting off alone into England. He looked at the lost face for a moment, and then pulled out a handful of coins and thrust them at him. ‘Now – allez – help – aidez… les autres.’
Uneasily, Joseph moved over to where the crew were using pairs of poles to shift the barrels onto the jetty. A minute later a cart clattered down towards the Seahorse; four men jumped down from it, unhitched the horse, and turned the cart with practised fluency on the narrow jetty. Then they began to take the barrels from the edge of the jetty and load them on. The process continued for a few minutes, the men on land with the short journey to the cart catching up on the sailors hauling the barrels up from the hold.
Joseph, palms burning as he struggled with his end of a pole, stiffened as a hand dropped onto his shoulder. It was the Captain again, beckoning to him. Another of the silent crew moved quickly to replace him at the barrel. The Captain pointed along the jetty, and Joseph followed the finger to see two soldiers a hundred metres away, tramping ponderously towards them.
‘Quickly now, mate.’ Joseph started to panic at the confusion of words and uniform. ‘Vite. They’ve started checking crews, for some reason. Vite now.’ He grabbed Joseph by the collar and dragged him towards the rail.
Joseph gaped helplessly. What were they doing? Was he being arrested? Was he being thrown into the sea?
The Captain was gesturing him emphatically onto the jetty. ‘Vite, for God’s sake. You – vous – avec les autres.’ He was pointing at the men loading the barrels onto the cart, and pushing at Joseph, and at last Joseph understood. He half-fell onto the jetty, all elbows and knees, then pulled himself upright and together. He looked back at the Captain, and gabbled his earnest thanks. The Captain nodded sincerely. ‘All right, mate. Bonne bloody chance to you.’
The gang loading the cart accepted Joseph with the same wordless indifference that had so scared him in the crew. He was part of some silent, efficient machine. He felt small and yet somehow warm.
He didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t know why these helpful Englishmen should be protecting him from English soldiers. He didn’t know of the Comptrollerate-General’s irregular ships, nor of the sentries that had been posted to stop an assassin. But by the time the English soldiers, a brusque young Captain hurrying ahead of a stolid Private, reached the Seahorse and jumped down to question the crew, as the last of the barrels was being passed onto the jetty, the little Frenchman had become an English dockworker.
Thus Joseph Dax, leather satchel still strapped under his coat, came from the office of Napoleon’s Minister of Police to the shore of England, and thus the old habits of the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey over
came the procedures that the organization had recently imposed to intercept just such a man.
Gabriel Chance had followed the peculiar instruction to visit St Michael’s Church as the edict of inscrutable fate. He knew now that he was in the hands of some larger power, which would lead him along a path that he could not discern but could not avoid.
When, though, after a few minutes sitting serenely on a pew among the pallid echoes of the church, he saw James Fannion beckoning to him from the shadows, he went warily. He did not protest when Fannion pulled off his hat and coat and threw them to another man, but he looked up into the face of the Irishman not knowing whether this powerful angel had determined on his destruction or his triumph, whether he was another of the eternal bullies of his childhood alleys or the long-awaited hero of his daydreams.
They waited fully fifteen minutes in the darkness at the side of the church. Then the other man left the church wearing Chance’s hat and coat. Another ten minutes, and Fannion led the way out through a side door and away into the bustle of London. For a mile they walked in silence, Fannion following a mazy route through streets little and grand and regularly scanning for pursuit, Chance following.
There was an unusual respect in Fannion. He rather liked the little tailor, and knew him as the essential tool of his plan, but the west of Ireland brings you up to tread very carefully in the face of spirits beyond your understanding. Only once they were in the park did Fannion seem to relax. He stopped suddenly and grabbed Chance in a handshake. ‘Mr Chance, sir, it’s a pleasure to be with you again. Please forgive all this bustle and incivility: for the agents of this tyrannic regime you are a prize beyond rubies. I’m sworn to protect you, and I have to go a little careful myself.’
‘You are… wanted for crimes?’
Fannion looked grave. ‘I don’t have your enlightenment, Mr Chance. But in my small way I’ve been trying to help people where I can, to move them forwards against the oppression of this Government, and it’s earned me an ill name with the oppressors.’ Chance stared up in wide-eyed compassion. Fannion tried to read the gaze, and failed. He beckoned them on again. ‘We should keep moving; we’ll see them if they try to follow, and they’ll never hear what we say, but we should take every precaution nonetheless.’
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