The Tide Watchers

by Lisa Chaplin

  Another semaphore had come from the ship this morning. A promising new recruit with the improbable name of Peebles had passed the guards stationed on the roads to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Armed with excellently forged papers and a French accent he’d inherited from his French mother, Peebles had bluffed his way in, along with the small set of portable semaphore flags and a shade cloth on poles to hide his actions from anyone else. All he needed was an empty roof.

  Now Le Boeuf had become a link in the Channel Coast mystery chain—but despite his having saved her tonight, the girl had made it obvious she wasn’t willing to play his game. Somehow she’d worked out that he’d waited to save her until the last moment, and it made her suspicious.

  He must change her mind. Lucky for him, he knew how to do it.

  “Commander.”

  Without a sound Duncan wheeled around and cocked his head toward the house, covered Blue with a blanket, and left the stall.

  When the door closed behind them, he snapped, “Three seconds to behave correctly. And you’re supposed to be on ship.”

  “Pardon, Monsieur Borchonne,” Mark answered with abject humility, with the natural cheekiness still managing to shine through. When they returned to England, he’d hand the boy back to Zephyr. He wasn’t built to guide a boy who seemed to thrive in a harder school than he was willing to teach. “A letter came from a passing ship. Hazeltine thought you oughta see it quick-smart.” The wiry boy shoved a packet into his hand. By the looseness of the seal and the specks of dirt around it, Duncan suspected the flap had been pushed down hard after Mark read the missive.

  He lifted his brows. “You found your way here in unfamiliar territory, at night?”

  Mark rolled his eyes. “Ya fink I look fresh, monsieur? I got here afore sunset. I been waitin’ for hours. I fell asleep in the shrubbery over there. Ruddy cold it were, too.” The Cockney dialect mangled his French verbs, but was somehow apropos of a Paris slum-lad.

  Duncan’s mouth twitched as he opened the packet. A bit of roughing it wouldn’t hurt. Mark needed to learn obedience before he’d go anywhere in the Alien Office. Wily and cunning, bursting at the seams with raw talent, a loose cannon like him couldn’t be let on his own, or he’d advertise their presence to all the wrong people.

  Reading the packet’s direction, he understood why Third Lieutenant Hazeltine had sent it. Only Zephyr and Eddie knew Duncan’s new cover name—but the handwriting, slanted and hard without bothering to be copperplate, wasn’t the spymaster’s but his mentor’s.

  He read Eddie’s letter first.

  This information came to me. Leo and Andrew have verified it, but we cannot do more. I need you to meet with him in London—and for God’s sake, display a little patience!

  Intrigued, Duncan read the thicker letter. When he’d done, he looked up. “Return to ship and tell Flynn to prepare the crew. We must make the London docks by tomorrow’s sunset.”

  Mark’s brows lifted, but his eyes lit with excitement. “From ’ere to Lunnon in under a full day? It’s what, nine hours in the packet boat from Calais to Dover, and that’s less than a third the distance. We’d make a whole new record for that, Commander, um, monsieur!”

  “Then a record we’ll set,” Duncan retorted.

  THOUGH SHE ACHED IN every muscle, Lisbeth couldn’t change into nightclothes; the craving battled exhaustion and even the fear, and won. In a few minutes she was in her oldest dress, her hair out of the tight chignon and in its habitual braid. She threw on a thick cloak and headed out on the street going south. When she neared the soldiers’ checkpoint, she turned southwest, pushing into a small, tight forest by the river. She held up her cloak, allowing the brambles to tear her dress instead. Her hands were soon scraped raw and bleeding, but it was the only way. If there were a real walking path here, soldiers would man that, too.

  At the northern end of the village of Eaucourt stood a white-and-blue cottage with sky-blue shutters, the last summer flowers flaunting their beauty in the windowsills. Winter herbs were thriving despite the heat. She inhaled the restful scent of rosemary, sage, and wintergreen.

  Alain believed the child-wife he’d deserted in hostile territory wouldn’t know how to slip past the soldiers guarding the roads out of Abbeville. He wouldn’t begin to dream she’d be able to follow LeClerc and Tolbert as far as the Eaucourt road and time the minutes until their return.

  Only one village was close enough to make a report and return in under an hour. Forging a path through the forest she’d searched Eaucourt by night until she’d found the house. Then she’d crept up the back stairs, found the nursery window—and she’d met her mother-in-law.

  Using the edge of the outside stairs to minimize noise, she climbed to the second floor. Soft golden light told Lisbeth that Marceline was waiting.

  Slat thin, with hollow eyes and frizzled gray hair bundled into a careless knot, Marceline rocked in the chair by the fire, holding Edmond in her lap, singing a ditty. Her damaged eyes stared dotingly into the sleeping face of her three-month-old grandson.

  Edmond was flushed, so pretty in sleep. Lisbeth drank in the honey-tinted blond curls, the crooked dreaming smile—all the signs that this beautiful child had something of her.

  She scratched on the glass. Though expecting her, Marceline started, her eyes pinched in the fear that never left her. Pity wrenching her, Lisbeth lifted the window and climbed in as quietly as possible. “It’s me, Marceline. Where is Alain?” she whispered.

  “He will be home at daylight,” Marceline murmured, not looking at her.

  “I understand.” She took the baby into her arms with a spurt of joy that hurt her. “Thank you, Marceline, thank you.”

  The pale night rail and wrap Marceline wore made soft whooshing sounds as the older woman left the room on uncertain feet, still singing the ditty.

  “My baby,” Lisbeth whispered, staring at Edmond’s face while she could. She had no way of knowing when Alain would discover her little trysts and move to where she couldn’t reach them. She put her finger in the baby’s palm. “I’m your mama. Can you understand, sweetheart? Can you remember me?”

  His fist curled around her finger as if in answer.

  Take him and go. Marceline can’t possibly stop you. You could run, and—

  And then what? With his resources, Alain would find her in hours. Though she hated to admit it, Edmond needed Marceline, this pretty cottage, the wet nurse, and all the time and attention she couldn’t give him. Though violent to almost anyone else, Alain was an adoring son, and—so the women in town taunted her—a devoted family man. Perhaps he was, to anyone born and raised in France, or to anyone he didn’t see as the destroyer of his greatest mission.

  Lisbeth’s throat filled with a lump she couldn’t swallow. Though she shouldn’t come—it brought nothing but pain—these minutes might be the only time she’d ever have with her son.

  THE FIRST COCKCROW CAME too soon. Edmond was in his cradle by the time Marceline appeared in the doorway, a tired ghost. “He’s coming. Go.”

  With a panicked merci Lisbeth slipped out the window, tiptoed down the stairs lest a servant hear her, stumbled through the back garden, and bolted across the fields to the forest.

  Pushing through the brambles, leaving skin, blood, and scraps of her dress behind; trudging back to Abbeville and the cramped room in the cheap boardinghouse she’d be ashamed to bring Edmond to, the hatred and need for revenge curled through her, a cat’s claws pushing into her skin. No matter what it took, one day she’d have Edmond, and all Alain’s beloved power games would avail him nothing.

  An hour later, nestled in her bed trying to sleep, she caught her breath. The man without a name had offered to take her home. Would he do as much for her son?

  CHAPTER 5

  St. Pancras Church, London, England

  August 19, 1802

  THE ARCHBISHOP’S GUMS were purple.

  The dentures were the latest innovation for the wealthy, made in porcelain instead of ivory, fixed in
to his head with gold screws that flashed when he smiled. The ousted Archbishop of Narbonne looked like a Botticelli cherub, with chubby cheeks, a sweet smile, and a halo of white hair, but those teeth—

  “You must be wondering why I asked you to meet me, Commander.”

  Click—the top denture dropped as the archbishop spoke, then clack—it moved back into place. A piece of half-chewed meat stuck above the denture showed every time the teeth dropped. And as for his breath—when Duncan was a child, he’d seen a two-headed goat at a fair. Now, he felt the same horrified wonder mingled with a churning belly.

  “Commander, did you hear me?” Narbonne’s voice was cold.

  Caught out mid-run. He forced his gaze up to the old man’s eyes and bowed—a swift, jerking movement, with none of the grace Eddie had taught him. “I beg your pardon, Votre Éminence.” If a man of the archbishop’s exalted status requested a meeting in a tomb-cold church with underpriests stationed outside every entrance on the hottest day of the year, he must have vital news. Moreover, if he wore gentleman’s attire rather than luxurious vestments of gold and purple, especially when inside the church he’d frequented since fleeing France, he must have information he didn’t dare allow anyone else to overhear.

  With a haughty nod, Narbonne forgave him. Duncan’s jaw tightened, and his hands curled into fists. Oblivious, the old man waved his hand at the crypt and nave beyond. “This dates back a thousand years. So-called improvers with their gold leaf and plaster pots are fools.” Click-clack-click. Meat and spittle. “These things tie us to the faith of ages past. In the Revolution, so much beauty was lost to the world.”

  Duncan suppressed a sigh. Elderly people liked to talk, and any informant of his standing expected and deserved a respectful hearing. But he wasn’t saying anything that didn’t happen during the Reformation, the Dissolution, the Wars of the Roses—name a war, or a country.

  The silence stretched thin. It seemed Narbonne wanted an answer. “To lose your bishopric under the terms of the Concordat must have felt like betrayal.”

  An irritable look settled on the archbishop’s face. “Don’t patronize me, boy. You—”

  Duncan’s stomach jerked. You are nothing. You will live up to the name you’ve been given, boy! Even with his eyes open he saw Annersley’s hand lifting, the whip descending . . .

  Halfway to his face, Duncan forced his hand down. The scars had been there so long he mostly forgot they were there.

  The old man sat ramrod straight on the pew: a highbred bird with ruffled feathers, every inch as imperious and easily offended as the old bastard at Mellingham Hall. He knew what Narbonne expected, but damned if he’d grovel. When he’d run from Annersley the last time, he’d sworn never to cringe or bow before any man again.

  Eddie had asked him to display patience. “I will refrain from patronizing you if you do the same for me. If I was a boy, or not from your class, I doubt you’d have agreed to meet me.”

  Unexpectedly, Narbonne’s lips twitched. “Touché. So which of your names do I use, the oh-so-English Commander Aylsham”—click-clack—“the equally French Monsieur Borchonne, or perhaps I should call you Tidewatcher?”

  Duncan stiffened with the quiet use of his code name, given by the British Alien Office when he was given his first Continental assignment, back in ’93. “Commander Aylsham will do.” He spoke with an edge of rigidity he couldn’t control. “My ship leaves with the tide.”

  A slight nod indicated Narbonne’s second gracious acceptance of an apology Duncan refused to offer. He pointed to a pew seat and crossed to it without bothering to see if Duncan followed. The silken whisper of the episcopal slippers the comte’s son wore with the best tailoring London could provide ground at Duncan’s patience, which was never his strong point. Wily old hypocrite played the man of God when it suited him, but the latest in his string of mistresses was rumored to be his own niece.

  Duncan spoke through a tight jaw. “The tide turns in an hour, Votre Éminence, and my mission is imperative.”

  The archbishop lifted his brows, holding his haughtiness to the end. “With the signing of the Concordat, France and the Church abandoned me. Still, French, Irish, and Catholic dissidents here believe I share their causes and tell me their secrets as if in the confessional. They are sacred, and I will not reveal them without strong reason.”

  Click-clack. French. Irish. Duncan expected Narbonne, with Irish nobility for parents, but born, raised, and ordained in France, to have divided loyalties. “I know the rules of the confessional, Votre Éminence.” When would the old man finally get to the point?

  “But one I must tell. There is a plot to kill the king.”

  Duncan stared at Narbonne. Surely Eddie wouldn’t recall me from France for this old chestnut? Poor old Farmer George, why so many people wanted to kill a harmless, half-mad king who liked to potter in his garden was beyond him. The Irish or the Catholics, he thought wearily. It’s always the same. “If you find it a serious threat, take it to a government representative.”

  Narbonne shifted on the pew, putting a cushion behind his back. “Sir Edward sent me to you. So don’t waste my time, bo . . . Commander.”

  Frozen inside, Duncan bowed again. “Why did Sir Edward pass this to me?”

  Narbonne’s lips pursed. “His wife is . . . ill.”

  The ice inside Duncan broke into sharp pieces. If Eddie wouldn’t leave Caroline even long enough to hold this single meeting, but had recalled him from France, she must be seriously ill. That meant he’d have to waste more time bringing the girl home—if he could make her leave without her child. Damn it, it meant delaying the mission until he could find another woman. But where the hell would he find a lady of a similar age and the same perfect combination of ruin and innocence? “Can we please get to the point?”

  Narbonne closed his eyes, as if asking God for patience. “As a French-born man of Irish nobility, and a displaced archbishop, I’m in a unique position to hear things. The plotters are not Jacobites or students preaching insurrection on the streets of London. Nor is it beer talk by the United Irishmen. These men lost titles and lands in Ireland and Scotland through ambitious men with social connections. The explosion is planned during the Opening of Parliament, which the king always attends, as do hundreds of those absentee lords raking in profits from their Irish and Scottish lands. A Colonel Despard is the ringleader—the former superintendent of Honduras, an Irishman with sufficient reason to want several men dead.”

  “I read about the case.” The men in Honduras, who’d accused Despard of treason and had him imprisoned for their profit, had escaped perjury charges through connections to the king; but though he’d eventually been freed, Despard’s life and reputation had been destroyed. “I don’t see how they’d get close enough. Armed guards surround Whitehall—”

  “They’ve emulated Guy Fawkes and unsealed a tunnel beneath Whitehall,” Narbonne interrupted. “I didn’t dare ask for details, but from what one man said, I think they’re using time-lock devices on naval barrel bombs, to give them time to escape. If they blow up the tunnel beneath Parliament . . .”

  Duncan’s stomach dropped. The tide must come and go without him. He had to find Windham, in whichever part of the British Isles his spymaster had gone in this inclement weather, and report this posthaste. “I’ll look into this plot. That I promise you.”

  “I’m not finished,” Narbonne said when Duncan stood. “What if it’s only the start of their revenge, and they destroy Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, or the Tower of London to begin a collaborative Irish-Scots uprising throughout Britain?”

  Duncan closed his eyes. Given Irish history, and the brutal abuse of power the English had used against the Scots and their lands since Culloden, it was horribly plausible.

  “. . . you’ve been scouring the Channel Coast. I want to know what you found there.”

  Too late Duncan caught what Narbonne said, and he stiffened.

  “Yes, I’m an Irish-French Catholic with an ax t
o grind.” Narbonne’s voice turned gritty as he lay bare every reason for reticence on Duncan’s part between them. “So I’ll tell you what you found. There were soldiers everywhere stopping entry to Boulogne-sur-Mer. The area’s flooded by spies of too many persuasions and plots. You suspect Bonaparte has more infantry—and possibly far more warships—than the Treaty of Amiens allows, and you need to find out why he’s blocked off every approach to Boulogne by land and sea.”

  Duncan leaned forward. “You have royalist spies inside Boulogne?” Narbonne’s loyalties had been obvious from the moment he gave Duncan the information.

  Narbonne whispered, “Not now. Nonresidents without official permission have been forcibly escorted outside Boulogne, and newcomers refused entrance. My man was killed.”

  Duncan’s innards were going through the Labors of Hercules today. Hell in a bloody handbasket, he’d tossed a raw recruit like Peebles into Boulogne alone. “Why? What’s going on?”

  Narbonne shrugged. “Any proofs I have, your government would want verified. My speculations are useless to a government that does not want to know what Bonaparte is up to. It is convenient to them to suspect my connections, and my religion,” he said in a wry voice.

  Duncan waved that aside. Any Englishman with a brain in his head couldn’t trust a French-Irish Catholic, especially one with a religious ax to grind. He wouldn’t believe it now but for the evidence of his own eyes. “How long have you known of this?”

  Narbonne’s chubby face darkened until he was as purple as his gums. “I sent men across France after Bonaparte paid his thirty pieces of silver and the pope sold the faith there. Now Bonaparte gives bishoprics to his sycophants or those with gold enough to pay for his army!”

  Narbonne didn’t answer the real question. The Concordat had been proposed over a year ago, and a man of Narbonne’s standing would have been warned early on from someone in the Vatican. Early enough to send spies throughout France to spike whatever guns Boney had set up. “You must have impeccable sources.”