"Will you believe me, sir, madam… for your lives? Will you trust me to see you safely out of France, and home to England?" Plumb pressed them.
"Christ, I… s'pose we must," Lewrie gravelled, still unable to take it all in. "Trust someone, at any rate. Though it beggars all belief that Bonaparte'd go t'such lengths, knowin' such an act would re-start the war. 'Less… that's what he wishes…," Lewrie trailed off, his mind reeling.
"You didn't insult him, Alan, I don't think," Caroline said in a distraught whisper, looking deep into her husband's eyes. "It was more our government's delays that irked him, but surely he can't hold that against you… against us! Oh, why did I ever insist that we come to France? This is all my fault!"
"Still, sir and madam… do you trust me to make good your escape?" Sir Pulteney pressed with uncharacteristic sternness.
"Don't see how you can, yet… they say drownin' man'll clutch even the feeblest straws," Lewrie decided, puffing out his cheeeks in frustration. "Aye, I s'pose we must… We do. Though, how…?"
"We have our ways, stap me if we don't!" Sir Pulteney assured them, then cackled out loud. "Begad, but we do have our ways!"
Charitй de Guilleri, in the meantime, had been having a grand few days. Firstly, she had finally allowed the dashing Major Clary of the Chasseurs to have his way, discovering that Denis was a most pleasing lover. Secondly, her beloved New Orleans, her Louisiana, was now rumoured to almost be back in France's grasp. While she could not fantasise that her continued hints, suggestions, or pleas for France to reclaim Louisiana from the dullard, corrupt, and incompetent Spanish had been the sole cause, Charitй had, in the best salons, found allies who felt the same as she. A couple of Napoleon's brothers, Talleyrand (though that had taken an affair with the crippled, arrogant, and dismissive older fumier-an affair which had become almost unendurable before Talleyrand had discovered Madame Grand!), and a few others-all had coaxed, cajoled, and spoken favourably for an expansion of empire on the American continent.
Two years before, soon after Napoleon had become First Consul, talks had been opened with Spain for an exchange. Charles IV of Spain desired a kingdom for his new son-in-law, and Bonaparte had offered Tuscany, now firmly occupied by French troops, in exchange for Louisiana. An agreement had tentatively been signed then, at San Ildefonso, yet it still lacked the formal signature and approval from the dilatory and suspicious Charles IV.
Now, though… wonder of wonders, Talleyrand had dropped her a hint at the levee where she had confronted that imp of Hell from her past, Alan Lewrie, that Charles's final approval would soon come!
She could go home in triumph, not as an escaped felon from Spanish justice for piracy, not as a failed revolutionary, but as a confidante of Napoleon Bonaparte himself, a member of the official delegation which would accept the turnover in the Place d'Armes, before the Cathedral of St. Louis, to the cheers of her fellow Creoles, her fellow Frenchmen and Frenchwomen! She would be a heroine at last!
So it was that Mlle. de Guilleri felt as if she could float on air as she breezed into the quay-side entrance to the offices of the Police Nationale, at Fouchй's invitation. After all his sneers at her pretensions, let him eat crow that she had succeeded in reclaiming her dear home!
"Citoyenne," Fouchй began with his usual grouchiness and testy impatience. "You have met Citoyen Fourchette."
"Indeed, Citoyen Fouchй," Charitй sweetly replied, dipping one brief curtsy to the slouching, greasy-looking agent who had questioned her about that salaud, Lewrie. "A pleasure to greet you again, Citoyen Fourchette."
"My pleasure to see you again, Citoyenne de Guilleri," the man replied with an appreciative, up-and-down stare, openly leering at her. He did not fully rise from his chair, though he did sit up straighter and continued to draw on his cigarro.
"Fourchette has had this Lewrie gars under constant watch for the last few days, citoyenne," Fouchй gruffly told her, waving her to a chair, a touch too uncomfortably close to the lusting Fourchette for Charitй's comfort.
"Indeed, Citoyen Fouchй?" Charitй asked, with one brow up.
"His presence in Paris… his history of involvement with the British spy establishment… what the Ministry of Marine knows about him from their dossiers," Fouchй grumbled. "My thanks to you, citoyenne, for alerting us to him. For a time, we suspected he was here to kill the First Consul. How close he got to him during the exchange of old swords?"
"I was there, Citoyen Fouchй," Charitй pointed out, letting him know once more that she travelled in the best circles.
"Thankfully, we escaped that, but… perhaps you also witnessed how angry the First Consul was, as well, n'est-ce pas?" Fouchй went on with a mocking grin over her comment. "Later, he gave me orders that this mec should drop dead of something, hein? Since you already know-"
"He will be done away with at last?" Charitй exclaimed in sudden joy. Could her prospects be even more blissful? "Bien! Trиs bien! You have just made me the happiest woman in all of France!"
"Despite Citoyenne de Guillen's enchanting beauty and seeming innocence, Fourchette, she is a fire-eater, a veteran of armed revolution back in Louisiana, hein?" Fouchй told his agent, almost winking on the sly even as he praised her. "She and her brothers went to sea to pirate Spanish ships… raised funds and took arms so the patriots of Louisiana could rise and throw off the Spanish yoke, comprenez? I assure you, Citoyenne de Guilleri is a very dangerous young woman."
"Then all France must owe you a great debt, Citoyenne Charitй," Fourchette said with slow and sly surprise, and an incline of his head to her, in lieu of a bow. "A slim sword, hidden in a silk scabbard."
"How? When does he die?" Charitй demanded impatiently, feeling irked by Fouchй's sarcasm and Fourchette's suggestive ogling. "May I be there, when it's done? My brothers, my cousin, must be avenged at last," she insisted, shifting eagerly on her chair.
"Not here in Paris, non" Fouchй told her. "That's too public. Fourchette's watchers say that he and his wife will soon take coach to Calais, now the exchange is done, and their touring is over. The last trip, Fourchette?"
"Two days in the forest of Fontainebleau. Very romantic, I suppose," Fourchette answered with a chuckle and roll of his eyes. "They pay the concierge the final reckoning and may depart by the end of the week. A highway robbery may be arranged… tragique, hein?"
"The both of them?" Charitй had to ask. That bastard Lewrie was one thing, but his wife was quite another.
"Might be best," Fourchette suggested with a tentative shrug of his shoulders. "And the coachmen, too. Better they simply disappear and are never heard from again. Hmm?"
"Pity they do not coach towards Normandy or Brittany," Fouchй grumped. "It could be blamed on Royalist bandits, like Cadoudal and his compatriots, reduced to robbery to fund their schemes against the Republic. Ah, well, I suppose the Calais highway must do. You are sure that is their destination, Fourchette?"
"It is what they speak of with the concierge, the port to which they have already sent off their heaviest luggage," Fourchette assured his chief. "They will travel lighter, departing. Else it would take a second coach, she's bought so much in Paris. Understandably."
"I have summoned both of you, who know the man and his wife by their faces," Fouchй continued, "just in case something goes wrong en route. You see, citoyenne, you will be in at the kill, hawn hawn!"
"A thousand thanks, Citoyen Fouchй," Charitй said in heartfelt and genuine gratitude, though she had her doubts about travelling with the leering Fourchette. "For that matter, Major Denis Clary, of the Chasseurs, was with me when I spoke with Lewrie at the levee, and he knows his appearance, as well." She thought she would have to put up with a lot less cloying attention should Denis be at her side.
"Uhm… perhaps," Fouchй allowed, leery of involving anyone too official, in uniform, though; of any slip-up that might lead back to the First Consul or the French government. "I sent for another gars, who also has intimate knowledge of Lewrie's appearance, though… "
"Pardon, citoyen," the meek clerk intruded, rapping hesitantly on the door before sticking his head in. "But that naval fellow you sent for is here. Should I show him in?"
"Ah bon!" Fouchй perked up, clapping his meaty hands together and getting to his feet. "Come in, Capitaine, come in! A man from the earliest days of the Revolution, you see? A zealous hunter of aristos and traitors, is… but here you are, Capitaine.
"Allow me to introduce you to Citoyenne Charitй de Guilleri and one of my best agents, Citoyen Matthieu Fourchette," Fouchй continued. "But of course you and Fourchette have met before, hein? Citoyenne, I give you Capitaine de Vaisseau Guillaume Choundas."
Charitй shot to her feet in sudden, shivering horror as she got sight of the monstrous caricature of a human being, her face blanching. Surely, this… this hideux could not be real!
Guillaume Choundas limped into the office, his stout cane tapping on the marble floor, his crippled leg in its stiff iron brace making a dragging swish-clomp, swish-clomp… with a leer on that half of his dissipated, twisted, and aged face that he still showed to the world. "Citoyenne de Guilleri, enchantй" the horror said to her with an evil smile, clumping close to her, flipping his cane to the elbow of his sole arm and reaching out to take her hand as if it had been offered to him, he bestowed a kiss upon it, a kiss that, to Charitй, felt like the crawling, maggoty lips of a rotting corpse. It was all she could do to not jerk her hand away, to recoil in disgust from his monstrosity… to flee the office and go light candles at Notre Dame and make her confession to a curй in hope of deliverance from one of Satan's demons!
"Capitaine Choundas, like you, citoyenne, is also a victim who has suffered at the hands of that salaud, Alan Lewrie," Fouchй informed her.
"In… indeed, citoyen?" Charitй managed to say, stricken with terror and revulsion.
"This is about Lewrie?" Choundas snapped, dropping her hand and regaining the use of his cane so he could turn towards Fouchй, a feral gleam in his remaining eye. "Something is to be done?"
"He insulted the First Consul, Capitaine," Fouchй told him. "He is to be done away with. Somewhere lonely and quiet, out of sight on the road to Calais. The three of you know what he looks like, so… "
"Sacre bleu!" Choundas exclaimed. "And I will participate in his end? Mort de ma vie, all I have asked of life, for so many years, and it comes to pass? Perhaps there is a God!"
He spun about, more nimbly that Charitй imagined that he could, to face her again. "All the ravages you see, Citoyenne Charitй, have been at his hand… my face, my laming, my lost arm! The ruin of my life's work Oui, I will gladly help you murder him!"
Another quick turning to face them all. Swish-clomp!
"But it must not be an easy death for him," Choundas demanded. "With forethought… he must be taken alive. Only for a time, hein?" he specified with an anticipatory cackle. "Give him to me for half a day… a full day, and I will take from him what he took from me so long ago and make him beg for death's release, oh mais oui!"
"That, uhm… might be a bit beyond what is necessary," Fouchй hesitantly countered as he fiddled uncomfortably with his loosely bound neck-stock. "We had thought to make it appear as a highway robbery by aristo-lovers and criminal elements."
"And so it may, citoyen" Choundas quickly countered, his mind a'scheme as he haltingly paced in anxiety, swish-clomp, swish-clomp. "Is the crime brutal enough, it can be blamed on Georges Cadoudal and his conspirators against the Republic, financed by the Comte d'Artois with Anglais gold, from his lair in England… to… to foment anger in Britain against France, because their government wants to begin the war again, hein?"
"Their Prime Minister, Addington, pays the Comte d'Artois for a murder of one of their naval officers and his wife?" Fouchй scoffed at the notion. "Too complicated. They disappear, everyone in the coach, with no one ever the wiser. The First Consul does not wish a new war with Britain… at least not yet. I have his personal, spoken assurance on that matter."
"His wife, too. Oui, I saw her with him!" Choundas crooned with an evil hiss, shrugging off the quick dismissal of his initial scheme. "If they must disappear, the coachmen, horses, carriage, and all, then an out-of-the-way place could be found where all that could be disposed of… an hour or two with her, before his eyes, before I begin on him, and that swaggering lout, that despicable fumier would beg-"
"Ahum!" Fouchй pointedly coughed into his fist. "You will be in at his demise, Capitaine Choundas. That must be enough."
"If you insist, citoyen, then… it must be so." Choundas seemed to surrender-too quickly for Matthieu Fourchette or Charitй to believe. Choundas set the exposed half of his face in a wry smile of contentment, but… she and the police agent shared a quick, dubious look and an even briefer nod in mute agreement that, if they had to be saddled with this hideous monster, they would have to keep a sharp eye on him at all times… and keep his half-insane fury on a tight leash!
I must have Denis with me, Charitй de Guilleri vowed to herself; to keep this "hot rabbit" Fourchette from laying his hands on me, and… to keep this disgusting beast from killing anyone who denies him his revenge.
A sour taste rose in her throat, a chilly feeling in the pit of her stomach,
and a weak, shuddery feeling that forced her to sit down in her chair once more, with only half an ear for Fouchй's plan being revealed.
As dearly as she desired Lewrie to die before her eyes, for her own revenge, still-completely innocent coachmen, Madame Lewrie, and any unfortunate peasant who happened by at the wrong moment must die as well? Callous as she had been over the fates of those taken in the merchant ships by her and her brothers, her cousin, and the old pirates Jйrфme Lanxade and Boudreaux Balfa, this just didn't enflame her former passion or hatred of all things English.
It felt to her, of a clarifying second, as foul as the touch of Choundas's lips on the back of her hand!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The hired servants, Jules and Marianne, were paid off, the last funds in their temporary bank account had been withdrawn, and a coach had been arranged for their journey to Calais. With their travelling valises at their feet, Alan and Caroline waited in the foyer of their lodging house for their coach's arrival, whilst the concierge and her servants were busy abovestairs; so far as Lewrie knew, fumigating the appartement after being occupied by "Bloodies."
Yet the coach-and-four that drew up by the kerb outside was not theirs, for a French couple emerged from it with some hand-carried luggage, and began to palaver with the concierge, announcing, so far as Lewrie could follow the conversation, that they wished to take lodging for a fortnight, and would she show them a vacant appartement. Barely had they gone abovestairs before a second coach rolled up, and out of it popped Sir Pulteney Plumb and Lady Imogene, as well as two other couples whom Lewrie didn't know from Adam and Eve. They also bustled in with hand-carried luggage, as if they would seek lodgings, too.
"The concierge is busy, is she? Good!" Sir Pulteney said with a snicker. "See why we asked specifically what you would be wearing for your departure, haw haw? All ready? Names are not necessary for now, but these fine people are old companions, summoned back to work in our endeavour. All change now, quickly!"
The women, one with sandy blond hair and the other a brunette, had entered in light travelling cloaks over their gowns, their faces and hair obscured by long-brimmed, face-framing sun bonnets. Valises were opened, and the cloaks stowed away in them, revealing that both women wore plain light-grey gowns very similar in colour and cut to the one that Caroline wore. The brunette further produced a wig from her valise, changing herself to a sandy blonde, too.
The men had entered in broad-brimmed hats more suited to a day on horseback, and light riding dusters to protect their suitings. At the same moment, they revealed themselves in black coats, buff waist-coats, buff trousers, and black top-boots. A quick change of cravats to match the dark blue one that Lewrie sported, a change of hats to a taller model with short, curl
y-brimmed hats much like Lewrie's, too.
"You've both sets of laisser-passers? Good!" Sir Pulteney said to the first couple. "Off you go, then, Thomas, you and your lady and we shall see you in Dover."
At that, "Thomas," or whoever he was, picked up his valises and offered his "wife" an arm. They stepped outside into the Rue Honorй, and entered the waiting coach, which, Lewrie could note from a vantage point back in the foyer's shadows, quite blocked the view of any watchers. The coach clattered off, heading west.
Not half a minute later, a second coach, almost the twin of the first, with a four-horse team of the same colour, drew up, facing the other direction.
"Andrew, you and Susannah next. You're on!" Sir Pulteney urged, almost shoving them towards the doors. "Last one to the Queen's Arms Inn pays the reckoning for all, haw haw!"
He tapped his long walking-stick on the parquetry foyer floor impatiently as the second couple of "Andrew and Susannah" exited and got into the coach, which headed east, whip cracking.
"Now for you and your lady, Captain Lewrie," Sir Pulteney said hurriedly, cocking his head and ears as the rattle of a third carriage could be heard. "Calm as does it. Show serenity and unwitting blandness to the guards at the porte. They'll have orders to report your passing… all of them will. After they allow you to leave the environs of Paris, which I expect they will, for any attempt in the city would be too incriminating, let your coachees proceed at their normal pace. You'll be using the Argenteuil gate, so you must say that you will be taking ship at Le Havre. We Will catch you up on the Pontoise road, before your coach crosses the river Oise, where we shall put into play other measures to throw the authorities off your scent. Now be on your way, quickly! Go with God, and we shall see you shortly!"
Lewrie heaved a deep breath and picked up his valises whilst Sir Pulteney shrugged out of his elegant suit coat, tossed his hat to the sideboard table, and whipped out a white porter's apron, to play a servant's role to carry the rest of their luggage to the coach that was, that very instant, drawing rein right by the doors. Lady Imogene gave Caroline a fond, assuring hug, then shooed her out to join Alan, with a last instruction to smile and be gay. "You are going home to England, n'est-ce pas?"
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