Another crash; Blunt turned to confront Mrs Chaytor and in that instant she fired a precise shot that smashed the pistol from his hand and sent it spinning wrecked across the floor. Shaw turned towards her too, and then a third pistol barked as the Deputy Lord-Lieutenant of Kent spun on one heel and shot the captain through the upper arm. Shaw screamed and dropped his weapon, staggering to his knees with his arm spouting blood. Fanscombe panicked and ran for the door; Mrs Chaytor blocked his way and in another two strides Clavertye was behind the justice of the peace, grasping his shoulder with a grip of iron and hurling him to the floor. In the midst of the smoke Blunt stood stunned, disarmed. Then his nerves shattered; he too fell to his knees, clutching at his hand, face twitching and body shivering.
As the smoke cleared, Turner dragged Morley to his feet. The doctor was strong, but the painter was stronger still; Morley struggled for a moment longer and then stood, arms pinned painfully behind his back.
‘There it is,’ he gasped. ‘Outwitted at last, by a woman and a clergyman. The shame of it . . . Still, I don’t think I shall be going to the gallows any time very soon.’
‘You seem very sure of yourself,’ grated Clavertye.
‘Oh, I am, my lord, I am. I have plenty to offer in exchange for my liberty. I told you, I have correspondents and connections with the Jacobin movement all over England. Including some in some surprisingly high places.’
‘And you would sell them out to secure your own freedom?’ asked Turner incredulously. ‘What happened to belief? To liberty, equality and fraternity?’
‘They’re all very well,’ said the doctor, ‘but, they are of little use if I do not live to see them. Bring a clerk, my lord, and a pen and plenty of paper. You’ll find my confession most interesting, I am sure.’
The rector looked back to the altar. He was just in time to see a flicker of movement, and then a rifle spoke death. Smoke flared around the altar. Dr Morley staggered as the bullet struck him in the side just below his right arm. Shot through the heart, he fell to his knees and then face forward onto the floor.
A man ran from behind the altar. He flung himself through the vestry door before anyone could move, and seconds later there came the sound of shattering glass. That was the vestry window, the rector knew; once through it, Foucarmont could make his escape through open country. But then from outside there came a sound of scuffling, an oath and a cry of despair. Footsteps could be heard running all around the church; and then men came pouring through the church door, masked men carrying heavy wooden cudgels. Their leader bowed to Mrs Chaytor.
‘All secure and shipshape, ma’am. We have the building surrounded. We caught the Frenchy trying to slip out of the vestry window and we have him safe. Who do we take in here?’
‘Him, him and him,’ said Amelia, pointing at Blunt, Fanscombe and Shaw. ‘Yorkshire Tom, do you realise that this is the first time in history that a smuggler has arrested a Customs officer in the name of the law?’
‘We live in strange times, ma’am,’ said the smuggler, sweeping off his hood and mask to reveal the pockmarked features of Joshua Stemp.
21
The Return to Mundanity
‘I should scold you,’ said Mrs Chaytor. ‘Very severely.’
They stood by the churchyard wall, looking out through the late sunlight towards Appledore and the distant hills. Behind them, the shadows in the churchyard grew longer.
It was over. Morley’s body had been carried away and Shaw’s wound attended to; then he, Foucarmont, Blunt and Fanscombe had been bound hand and foot, loaded into a hastily summoned cart and taken away to Ashford. A heavy guard of armed smugglers led by Yorkshire Tom and the painter Mr Turner, all temporarily sworn in as constables, had accompanied them.
Clavertye had briskly taken over the investigation, thanked the rector for his good services, thanked Mrs Chaytor too in a manner that was half courtly and half embarrassed, and departed to continue his inquiries at New Hall and Morley’s house. The two of them stood alone in the evening peace, side by side. In the middle distance, a few rooks cawed.
‘You should indeed scold me,’ acknowledged the rector. ‘And I should have sent word to you and told you of my plans. On the other hand, my dear, it was rather useful having you turn up unexpectedly and rescue us.’
‘I was nearly too late.’
‘But you weren’t. In fact, you were right on time.’
‘That does not disguise the fact that you were a damned fool.’ There was a tenderness in her voice that belied her words. He wondered how to thank her, and then looked at her face and realised he did not need to. She understood.
‘How did you know that I might be in danger?’ he asked.
‘I discovered in Rye that both Morley and Shaw were in on the plot. You will recall that I went down to Merriwether Hall to see what I could learn about Fanscombe, and whether he had a mistress in Rye. My friend Mrs Merriwether checked with the ladies’ gossip society, and no one had any recollection of him having a lover there. So I was just about to give it up as a bad job and return home, when I remembered that Miss Godfrey and Miss Roper said that Dr Morley used to take Eugénie to a house near the town.’
‘And you found the house?’
‘Mrs Merriwether did. Under that cheerful exterior, she has the instincts of a bloodhound. We located the house, more of a fisherman’s cottage in truth, and learned that it was owned by a Mr Darby, which is I assume is an alias for Morley himself.’
‘We’ll find out when Clavertye goes through Morley’s papers.’
‘We also discovered that Fanscombe was staying there, alone. We paid a couple of boys to keep watch on the cottage, and this morning they reported that a boat had come up to the beach nearby in the small hours, and that Fanscombe had gone out to meet it. They couldn’t see much, for it was very dark, but they heard a good deal of shouting, most of it in a language they assumed to be French. They thought also that they heard Fanscombe pleading with someone. Then he ran back up the beach and locked himself in the cottage, and the boat pushed off and was gone.’
‘So that’s it,’ the rector mused. ‘That was how they were in contact with France. Boats landing in secret on a dark night. Morley must have used the house for meetings with his French masters. Presumably the plan was to take the papers from the Twelve Apostles and hand them over to the men in the boat, who would take them back to France. The shouting began when Fanscombe had to confess he did not have the papers. I wonder why Morley sent Fanscombe instead of going himself?’
‘You will recall that Morley was quite busy just then, trying to kill you. He preferred to do that job himself, rather than trusting Fanscombe or Foucarmont.’
‘I never did like him,’ said the rector in an injured tone.
‘Nor he you, it would seem. Then, just as I was packing up and preparing to leave, one of the boys brought another message. A man had ridden down to the cottage and spent a long time talking with Fanscombe. From the description they gave, it was very easy to recognise Captain Shaw.’
‘Once met, never forgotten.’
‘It was clear that, if he knew about the house, Shaw might also be involved in the plot. You had begun to trust Shaw and I knew, instinctively I suppose, that you might now be in danger.’
‘Women’s intuition?’ he offered.
‘If you use that phrase again, I really shall scold you. I drove back as quickly as I could. You can imagine my feelings when Mrs Kemp told me what you had done. In desperation, I turned to the only people I could think of. The smugglers.’
‘I don’t how you persuaded Joshua Stemp to give up his beer and come to help me.’
‘He is fond of you. Also, I had a pistol. While he was rounding up his mates, I decided to come on ahead and see if you had managed to get into trouble yet. Which, of course, you had.’
‘I have a habit of getting into trouble, my dear. You must have realised that.’
‘If I didn’t before, I do now,’ she said with gentle asperit
y. ‘Two things still elude me. Why was Foucarmont hiding behind the altar? And why did he shoot the doctor, of all people, and not one of us?’
‘Ironically, I suspect that it was Morley who ordered him to hide there with his rifle. He and the others were armed, of course, but he wanted a card up his sleeve, someone to cover their retreat if trouble developed. So Foucarmont entered the church in advance of us all, and hid there and waited ready to pull Morley’s fat out of the fire if necessary. My dear, it is a good thing that you remained standing in the doorway and did not walk out into the room. If you had moved out from behind the protection of that oak door, I suspect Foucarmont would have shot you.’
She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said without flinching. ‘I expect he would have done so without hesitation. Then the melee developed, and for a while there was too much smoke to see down the nave. But once the smoke cleared he could have shot anyone: you, Clavertye. Me.’
‘But by then, who was the most dangerous person in the room? Morley himself. He had just offered to betray the English Jacobins to the authorities. That would also mean the end of the French espionage network in Britain. It would take months, even years to rebuild that network. Foucarmont had one shot, and he used it to silence Morley before he could destroy everything. Then he tried to escape, and would have succeeded had you not had the resource to call in Yorkshire Tom and his friends.’
The sun was setting beyond Appledore. She sighed. ‘So it is over. A month of madness ends, and peace descends. I suppose that now we go back to our mundane little lives.’
‘There is a great deal to be said for mundanity,’ he said, and they both smiled.
Afterword
We can only apologise to the residents of St Mary in the Marsh, whose village we have rearranged and re-developed without so much as a by-your-leave from them. The church of St Mary the Virgin and the Star Inn exist, though we have rearranged their details a little; the present-day church has no vestry in the east end or near the altar, and the door opens in the opposite direction. Some of the details have been borrowed from other churches. We have located the Star further south than it is in the real village. The sewer, or drainage ditch, that runs through the centre of St Mary today does not appear in our story.
The rectory, New Hall, Sandy House, Rightways and other private homes are entirely figments of our imagination. We have at least been relatively faithful in our description of the surroundings. The coastline of Romney Marsh was a little different in 1796 from today; St Mary’s Bay was a slight indentation in the coastline, and there was also a large shallow bay extending inland between Greatstone and Littlestone.
There was an invasion scare in Kent in the winter of 1795–6 when it was suggested that the Directory in Paris, having cemented its power by putting down a royalist coup d’état in October 1795, would proceed to invade Britain, which had partly backed the coup. In fact the British government – provided with intelligence through sources such as the Twelve Apostles – had already realised that the main French offensive in 1796 would be directed at Austria and took no further steps to defend the Kentish coast. Not until Napoleon’s army was camped on the coast around Boulogne in 1803–4 did the government begin to construct defences such as the Dymchurch Martello towers and the Royal Military Canal.
Blunt, Fanscombe and Shaw were all convicted of treason in the summer of 1796, and hanged. Foucarmont was tried on charges of espionage, but despite overwhelming evidence against him, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty and he walked from the court a free man. Very shortly after, he disappeared from view.
Mrs Fanscombe cleared her possessions out of New Hall and departed from the Marsh, taking Eliza with her.
Lord Clavertye had hoped to receive the thanks of Parliament for his role in personally closing down an important French spy operation, but in this he was disappointed. On orders from A Very High Place, the entire affair was declared to be a secret never to be spoken of. His Lordship did however receive an invitation to 10 Downing Street, where the prime minister personally shook him by the hand.
Joseph Mallord William Turner went on to become one of Britain’s greatest artists. His paintings of north Kent and the Thames Estuary are well known, but strangely, none of his pictures of Romney Marsh have ever been exhibited.
The Very Reverend Folliott Cornewall resigned as Dean of Canterbury and moved to the West Country. He went on to become Bishop of Hereford.
The rector and Mrs Chaytor will return.
Acknowledgements
Truly it is said that no one writes a book alone, and never has that truth been more clearly demonstrated than in the case of this book. We would not be here without our splendid agents, Heather Adams and Mike Bryan from HMA Literary Agency, who put us in touch with Zaffre and guided us into the – to us – brave new world of fiction publishing. Their comments on early drafts have been invaluable; but much, much more that, they provided a steady flow of encouragement, advice and reassurance that we nervous debutant novelists badly needed. Thanks, both of you; and it has been fun working with another husband-and-wife team, too.
Our thanks also to everyone at Zaffre and at Bonnier, who took our text files and turned them into a book we are rather proud of. Particular thanks must go to Mark Smith and Jane Harris, who believed in this project and were willing to take us on, and further to Jane for treating us to a delicious lunch soon after signing – publishing lunches still exist; who knew? – to Kate Parkin for helping us get our house in order in advance of publishing and, again, for a tremendous amount of encouragement and support; to the unfailingly helpful Kate Ballard for coming in and taking us smoothly through to the launch; and especially to Joel Richardson for being there on the other end of the email and patiently answering even the most naïve of questions. Partway through the publishing process, Joel grew a beard. We acknowledge that we may be partly responsible for this. Seriously, Joel; you were terrific and it’s been a pleasure working with you. Thanks also to David Watson for his careful editing of the text, and to Claire Johnson-Creek, Annabel Wright and Charlotte Norman for their hard work in production and proofreading.
Thanks must go to the many people in Romney Marsh who helped us and gave us information and advice. Especially we would like to thank Liz Grant at the Kent Wildlife Trust visitor centre, which happens to be almost on the route of Hardcastle’s walks from St Mary in the Marsh to the sea; the very kind owner of Mary’s Tea Room in Dungeness; and the man who was out walking his dog while we examined the bridge over the New Sewer between St Mary and New Romney. We’re so sorry we never got your name, sir, but you were a mine of information.
Rachel Richards at Chameleon Studies has done us proud with her website design, and she, Siobhan Williams and Ian and Jane Colbourne kindly offered their views on the cover design. Many thanks to Gary Beaumont for turning our scribbles on paper into a map. Thanks must go also to Jim, Katharine, Jane and Alex, who looked at some of the early chapters and gave us very helpful comments, and to Thomas Wood, who gave up a large portion of his weekend to read the proofs (well, it was raining). Many thanks as well to Dartmoor National Park for providing the splendid surroundings for some of our editing sessions.
Finally, thanks to all our family and friends who encouraged us and cheered us on. As the Reverend Hardcastle might have put it, just before reaching for another glass of port: bless you all, for your kindness and friendship have made our labours worthwhile.
West Devon, 2016
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Zaffre Publishing
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Text copyright © A.J. MacKenzie, 2016
Map copyright © A.J. MacKenzie, 2016
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of A.J. Mac
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