by Nita Abrams
“That is Corps,” he said, pointing up the hill to the rooftops just visible through the mist. “Napoleon will almost certainly be staying there tomorrow night, which means that his advance guard will be here tonight.”
“We cannot stop there, then,” said Diana, disappointed. She had shadows under her eyes, but it was obvious from the worried glance she gave his nephew that her concern was not for herself.
“I believe we should try to get beyond the town, perhaps find a secluded farmhouse.” He looked at Abigail. If she said no he was not sure what he would do, but he was tired of playing tyrant.
Luckily, she seemed to agree with him. “How far beyond the town? How much longer must we ride?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps another forty minutes.”
She, too, looked at Anthony. “We can do that. But not much more.”
Meyer turned to Rodrigo. “Can you lead them around the base of the hill, rejoin the road from the other side?”
His servant scanned the wooded valley and nodded. “You will go through town?”
“Yes, give me your coat. I will be you.” They made the exchange without dismounting. “I will engage rooms at every hotel in town for Mr. Meyer and his party, arriving later tonight; that should slow Doucet up a bit when he gets here. With luck, he will decide that he missed us somewhere and double back.” He eyed Diana’s pelisse, now supporting a very haggard-looking Anthony. “If possible, I will also purchase some more clothing for us.”
“But it is Sunday,” said Abigail, shocked. “No shops will be open.”
“Perhaps someone will take pity on me when I explain that we lost all our baggage when the horses bolted and dragged our carriage into a ravine,” he said solemnly.
“If you tell them you tried to take a carriage over that road, they will take pity on you, all right,” she said tartly. “They will think you are the servant of a madman.”
“Do you have a better story?” he asked, amused.
“Certainly,” she said. “Your, er, master’s nephew is very ill, and as a precaution, your master burned all his clothing. Oh, and ours as well.”
He laughed; he could not help it. She really was a terrible liar, but her attempt was oddly endearing. “Would you give a room in your hotel to someone so full of contagion that his uncle has burned all the baggage for the entire party? I suspect not. You would bar the gates of the town and stone any travelers who tried to come through.”
“Oh.” She blushed.
“I shall think of something,” he said. In fact, his main goal in Corps, apart from laying a false trail at the hotels, was an item he would have to steal. He might as well steal a few pieces of clothing as well.
“Shall I leave the usual mark for you to follow?” Rodrigo asked him.
He nodded.
“And when should we expect you?”
“Within a few hours.”
The servant looked relieved.
Meyer suspected Rodrigo would not be so relieved when his master disappeared after supper. He would try to slip off without attracting attention. The answer to “When should we expect you?” this evening would be a bit more dramatic: “possibly never” or “just before dawn, with a dozen troopers after me.”
Of course, if the drizzle did not lift, his self-assigned mission would be impossible to carry out. Instead of defying the former French emperor, he would be spending the evening in the farmhouse, sitting by the hearth and watching the few visible strands of Abigail’s hair turn different colors in the firelight.
“Where is my uncle?” Anthony asked Diana.
He was propped up against a mound of down-filled pillows, sipping a clear golden broth which most chefs in London would cut off their arms to produce. Towards the end of the day, he had been finding everything more and more confusing, so he was not quite sure why they were in this farmhouse in the middle of nowhere instead of at an inn, or why he was in what looked to be the bedchamber of the farmer and his wife, with its starched print curtains and old-fashioned furniture. He was certainly not complaining—after sleeping for several hours in the Durrys’s luxuriously overstuffed featherbed he was feeling almost human again. And when he had finally been awake enough to understand what was being said as various people gave him medicines and plumped up pillows, he had realized, to his astonishment, that he was something of a hero. He had resigned himself to figuring in Diana’s memories of this week as a clumsy weakling: too saddle-sore to walk one day, beaten by yokels the next, feverish the day after that. He would never have dreamed that she would look at him with obvious admiration while she held his soup for him. Or that his uncle would embrace him and tell him he was a credit to the family.
She frowned. “I am not sure. He went out again a few minutes ago. Perhaps he is back now.”
The door opened, and Diana’s mother came in.
“Have you seen Mr. Meyer?” Diana asked her.
“I believe he went out to the stables again.” She came over to the bed. “You look much, much better,” she said approvingly. “I am glad I let Madame Durry persuade me to try her tisane. It seems to have worked wonders. Do you think you could eat some toast?”
He considered this, and decided that the answer was yes.
“I’ll go.” Diana jumped up from her chair beside the bed.
“Thank you, dear,” said her mother absently, taking her place. “There are kittens in the kitchen,” she explained apologetically to Anthony.
“I know.” He smiled crookedly. “Miss Hart has described them to me in great detail.”
She picked up the bowl of broth. “I must confess that this is far more comfortable than many of the inns we have patronized. Madame Durry is the most cheerful, warmhearted woman I could hope to meet. Her daughter idolizes Diana and has already brushed and pressed her dress for her and helped her put up her hair. The two sons groomed and fed all of our animals, so that Rodrigo could come in and eat. I am sure that your uncle is paying them a great deal of money, of course. Nevertheless, at the moment I am almost happy that those officers frightened your uncle. Otherwise we would be staying at one of the hotels in Corps, and I cannot imagine you would have been tended so well there.”
Anthony tried to remember his uncle saying something about officers, or about being frightened, and failed. His only memories of this morning involved cold water and a large mug of very dark coffee.
“It takes quite a bit to frighten my uncle,” he said, worried. “Did he say what had happened?”
“Your uncle does not seem to be the communicative sort,” she said dryly. “All he said was that two officers had recognized him, and we were all in danger. Which, I assure you, certainly frightened me. I assume they must have encountered him when he was smuggling the gold a few years ago.”
“Smuggling the gold?” Anthony asked, bewildered.
“He told me all about it,” she assured him. “I suppose it is some sort of trade secret, isn’t it? I promise I will not say anything to any of the Harts in London.”
“He told you he had smuggled gold? Where? When?”
“For Wellington’s troops,” she said impatiently. “In Spain. The gold your bank loaned the army.”
“My uncle had nothing to do with that! I have no idea why everyone seems to think that loan was so complicated! Yes, we shipped the gold through France, but it simply went south through our regular convoy system for transferring bullion. The only difficult part was getting the wagons over the border. And even then the real problem was the Pyrenees, not the French.”
She set the bowl back down on the night table. “But . . . your uncle . . . those scars . . . the knives,” she stammered.
Too late he realized that his uncle had presumably used the undeservedly celebrated story of the loan to explain the damning evidence the two women had seen at the roadblock. He racked his brain to come up with a substitute for the gold-smuggling story. His brain was not responding very well. And of course, his uncle had already used the most plausible cover story, which h
e, Anthony, had just ruined. Abigail Hart was looking very upset. As well she might.
“Why,” she asked, in a dangerously quiet voice, “would your uncle allow me to believe that he had incurred those injuries working for the bank if that was not the case?”
“He was—ashamed,” said Anthony, desperate. “Embarrassed.” His mind, reeling through the conundrum Spain-knives-scars, seized on the plot of his mother’s favorite opera. “There were, ah, ladies involved.”
Diana’s reappearance saved him. “Here is the toast,” she said breathlessly. “And Madame Durry sent some plum compote up as well. Oh, and your uncle has apparently gone off again; her oldest boy just helped him saddle up a few minutes ago.”
“Would you mind running back down, Diana? And finding Mr. Meyer’s servant? Could you tell him I would like to speak with Mr. Meyer the moment he returns, no matter how late it may be?”
She nodded and disappeared again.
“You won’t say anything to him, will you?” said Anthony, a bit uneasy. “About the scars? He is a reformed character now, you know.”
“He is not riding off to an illicit tryst in Corps, then?” she asked. There was an angry glitter in her eyes.
He was now very uneasy. “Of course not!”
“What a shame those two officers who are pursuing us do not know that he is such an upright citizen these days,” she said.
14
“What do you mean, they cannot be found?” Doucet glared at the adjutant. “Five people and six animals cannot simply disappear between the last village and a town the size of this one!”
The adjutant, a middle-aged man with thinning hair, spread his arms helplessly. “Monsieur, up until now it has been a very plain trail. A party traveling in haste, with no baggage, including a young man who is clearly ill—everyone remembers them. The servant came here and inquired at all three hotels for rooms, but they were full, and he left. There is no trace of them in the next village along the road; no one has seen them pass northwards. Perhaps when there were no rooms available they turned back.”
“Had they turned back,” Doucet reminded him in a dangerously soft voice, “we would have met them.”
“Ah. Of course.” The older man cleared his throat. “Eh bien, I am at your service, monsieur. What shall I do now?”
Doucet flung himself into a chair and thought hard. “Fetch me the innkeeper again,” he said.
“Which one?”
“The one from this inn, fool. He is probably listening outside the door, in fact.”
A moment later the adjutant came back into the dining room with both the innkeeper and his son.
“You wish something else, monsieur?” the father asked politely. “More wine perhaps?”
No. No more wine. He needed a clear head.
“This man, this servant who was looking for rooms for his master. Which of you spoke with him?”
The son bowed awkwardly. “I did, monsieur.”
“What did he look like?”
The boy frowned. “Tall, stoops slightly. A Spaniard, from the sound of his French. Dark hair.”
That was Meyer’s servant, sure enough. Or Meyer himself, they were very much alike. Could their party possibly have separated? Was there another road that led to the bridge? He fought off a momentary surge of panic. He had sent five men and a dispatch rider onward to the bridge, and the messenger had already returned to report that it was secure.
“Your pardon, Monsieur Doucet.” It was one of the soldiers, hovering in the open doorway. “I thought you might wish to speak to this man. He reports a theft from his shop.”
Doucet raised one eyebrow. “Do I look like the prefect of police?”
The soldier said apologetically, “No, monsieur, of course not. But—is it not true that we hunt for a saboteur?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Monsieur Roussier is a sausage-maker. The missing item is half a barrel of saltpeter.”
Doucet sat up very straight. “And when did this happen?” he asked the sausage-maker, who was twisting his hat nervously in his hands.
“I am not certain, monsieur. Madame Roussier heard a small noise while we were eating supper—I did not hear it, but she insisted, and you know how it is, monsieur, with women, when we were preparing to retire she became very nervous about this noise, and occasionally animals have managed to get into the shop; they do a great deal of damage—”
“Yes, yes, so you went downstairs, and your barrel was missing. When was this?”
“An hour ago, monsieur. But madame my wife remembered that Your Excellency had asked us to report anything suspicious . . .”
Thank God for the Madame Roussiers of this world, thought Doucet. At least when you were hunting spies. “And what time was it when you—or rather, your wife—heard the noise?”
“Perhaps six o’clock, your honor.”
More than five hours ago. Had it rained since then? He could not remember. All he had been doing for the past six days was riding on terrible roads and interrogating people. Here in the mountains when it wasn’t raining it was about to rain or it had just stopped raining. He turned to the adjutant. “Take the rest of the men. Borrow every lantern in Corps. Go to this man’s shop and see if you can find any traces—footprints, hoofprints, anything—which might tell us where he has gone. Barrels of saltpeter are heavy; even Meyer can’t carry one himself. If you do find something, follow it as though it were leading to the Holy Grail. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly, monsieur.”
“Show this officer your shop,” Doucet told the sausage-maker. “And take this to replace your loss.” He handed the man a small purse. If he could find Meyer before the Englishman blew up that bridge, he would buy every sausage the man had.
Meyer hoped this would be his last sleepless night; they were taking a toll. As he led his horse and the mule out of the barn he sent a quick glance back towards the farmhouse. Rodrigo had taken him at his word when he had requested a secluded refuge. The place was so secluded that even with Rodrigo’s blaze cut on the trees by the road it had taken him three tries to find it. It was ideal for his purposes. There was even a stream at the foot of the hill, with a small waterfall that would mask most of the noise he would be making. Presumably everyone in the farmhouse would be asleep by the time he tested the mixture, though, and the small explosion should not be loud enough to awaken anyone. Unless he made a mistake, in which case he would not be around to worry about who had heard him.
When he reached the waterfall, he heaved the barrel off the mule’s back and tethered the animals securely a little distance away. Then he cleared enough dead foliage away to form a small, flat working space and laid out his equipment. A large square of oilcloth, which he spread on the ground. The barrel on top of that. A sack of crumbled charcoal, also on the oilcloth. A mallet—he had borrowed it (without asking) from his host at the farmhouse. He hoped it was heavy enough. The paddle from a butter churn. That was another borrowed item. Madame Durry’s butter was going to have an odd flavor for the next few weeks. A small wooden cup, taken from the barn. And finally, emerging from its concealment in the tin box, his precious jar of sulphur.
Pounding the charcoal into powder was easy, and the sack muffled the noise. He scooped up the grains which had spilled onto the oilcloth, and pushed them carefully back into the sack. Then he tipped over the barrel and dumped the saltpeter slowly onto the oilcloth. It formed a white, flaky mound that covered nearly the entire cloth. Odd, that gunpowder was so black when there was so much saltpeter in it and so little charcoal. He picked up the bucket and started scooping the saltpeter back into the barrel, adding small amounts of the charcoal and sulphur after every fifteen scoops of saltpeter, and stirring very gently with the paddle. It took quite some time; everything had to be done very precisely, very gently. Even in the cold he was sweating with tension. He ran out of sulphur after the third mixing. It was just as well; he should be on his way as soon as possible.
Now fo
r his test. He mixed once more, took the broken stem of a clay pipe from his pocket, and poured a thin stream of the glittering dark powder into one end, stopping the other with his fingers. Then he pressed the tube upright into the ground, pushed a thin twist of paper into the top, and struck a light.
The result was very satisfactory, although perhaps louder than he would have liked. He glanced up at the moon. No time to clean up. He left the oilcloth, with its pile of unused saltpeter, and hoisted the barrel back onto the mule. It was reassuringly heavy. There was enough here to bring down most bridges, placed properly.
The moment he had stumbled downstairs in Barrême to find the news of Napoleon’s escape sweeping up from the coast, he had thought of Pont-Haut and realized its importance. If he had not been hampered by Anthony and the Harts, he would have been here days ago. He would have packed the central pier with powder and blasted it apart as soon as Napoleon had moved north of Sisteron. Every day, the bridge was the first thing he thought of when he woke up and the last thing he thought of before he went to sleep—on the few nights he had slept. What was the safest way to get the saltpeter? How fast was Bonaparte marching? Where were his advance troops? How quickly—or slowly—could Meyer move his own party so as to stay ahead, but not too far ahead? Practical questions, questions whose answers usually required spending the entire night in the saddle, leaving him (conveniently) too exhausted to consider impractical questions. Ethical questions.
Only now, as he led the mule closer and closer to the ravine, did he realize that he had never thought beyond the moment when the bridge would collapse, tumbling in shards of blackened stone down into the river below. Suppose he did manage to evade the guards—Cambronne had surely posted some by now—and set off his homemade gunpowder. What then? Ride casually back to the farmhouse and tell three innocent people that they were now trapped between a bridgeless ravine and two thousand frustrated, angry soldiers? He had not asked for their company; he had not wanted their company. But he could not pretend they did not exist.