In the Commodore's Hands

by Mary Nichols

  Not until his flying feet took him within sight of the prison did he stop. There was no sign of Lisette. A few people moved up and down the street, a one-legged man sat in the gutter begging, a child played with a hoop, a skinny dog foraged in the gutter down the centre of the street. The door of the prison was shut and apart from the sentries there was no activity in the yard. He looked about him and caught sight of Sam, who was hurrying away from the prison. Jay shouted at him to stop.

  Sam turned to wait for him to catch up with him. ‘Commodore, our plans have been set at naught,’ he said. ‘I am on my way to tell the others.’

  ‘Never mind that. have you seen Mrs Drymore?’

  ‘Miss Giradet, sir? No, I have not.’

  ‘She hasn’t come along here or gone into the prison?’

  ‘No, why should she? Her brother ain’t there.’

  ‘Not there?’

  ‘That’s what I were going to tell you. He’s been moved to that place on the island where the trials are held.’

  ‘The Conciergerie. Oh, my God! That’s where she is.’ He slapped his forehead with his palm in an effort to untangle emotions which threatened to engulf him and think clearly. ‘Go and tell the others I think Lisette has gone to the prison to change places with her brother. I cannot, for the life of me, see her succeeding. She will be arrested in the attempt. We must stop her. There is not a moment to lose.’

  ‘Aye, sir, but what are you going to do?’

  ‘I am going to the Palais de Justice. Tell Lord Portman to meet me there. Go on, man, don’t stand staring at me.’

  Sam went off at a trot and Jay dashed back to the Île de la Cité. His anger had gone, replaced by remorse and an overwhelming love that filled his head, his heart, his whole body. He ached with it. Somehow or other, he had to get them out of the fix they were in and then he would never let her out of his sight again. But how?

  He was about to cross the bridge leading to the Conciergerie when he saw a cloaked figure coming towards him. ‘Lisette, thank God.’

  She did not appear to hear him and he took hold of her arm. A head came up from the hood of the cloak and he saw it was not Lisette, but someone very like her. ‘Michel Giradet,’ he said, his joy evaporating.

  ‘I don’t know you.’ The voice was uncannily like Lisette’s when she was trying to be haughty.

  ‘No, but I know you. You are so like Lisette I could not be mistaken. I am Jay Drymore. I am sure, when you changed places with her just now, she spoke of me.’

  The young man visibly relaxed. ‘Thank God. She said you would rescue her, otherwise I would never have fallen in with her scheme. I don’t know how you could subject your own wife to such hardship and squalor, even for a few hours. I never should have agreed, I should have sent her back and stayed where I was, but Lisette can be bossy when she chooses and I was not thinking clearly…’

  Jay did not think it was an appropriate time to go into why Lisette was posing as his wife. ‘It was entirely her own idea. I would have forbidden it had I known, but now we are left with the problem of rescuing her from her folly.’

  ‘She said they would let her go, that your influence would save her…’

  ‘I believe that was said to persuade you.’

  ‘You mean you cannot? That she is giving up her life for my sake?’

  ‘That may have been her idea, but it is not mine.’ His voice was clipped.

  ‘I will go back, give myself up, then they will let her go.’

  ‘Do you think so? I do not. I think it is more likely you would both be incarcerated. No, I must find a way to rescue her.’

  ‘Then you must make haste. It is far from pleasant in there and my trial is fixed for tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I intend to,’ Jay said. ‘Now you must do exactly as I bid you. There must be no taking matters into your own hands, do you understand?’

  His vehemence made the young man smile. ‘So you have been subject to her bossiness too, have you?’

  ‘Never mind that. Have I your word?’

  ‘To be sure. I am in your hands.’

  ‘Then make your way to the British Embassy, stay there and do not move until I come. I do not want to find one of you and lose the other. You may come across a Madame Gilbert, the concierge. Do not let her see you too closely. Go straight upstairs to the second room on the left. It is Lisette’s bedchamber, you will not be disturbed there. If a carriage comes to take Commodore and Mrs Drymore to Calais, you are to get into it whether I am back or not. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand, but…’

  ‘No questions. Just do as you are told and trust me.’

  ‘Very well. By the way, take care if you are going in there.’ He jerked his head at the building behind him. ‘I think our uncle is there. Lissie described him to me and told me to avoid him at all costs. Luckily the foyer was crowded. He was pacing the floor, but then he was hailed by someone who knew him and they stopped to talk and I slipped out. I am sure he did not see me.’

  ‘Good. Now off you go. Keep to that disguise.’ He smiled. ‘It is very good. You could deceive almost everyone but me.’

  ‘It would be strange if her own husband could be fooled. Oh, I nearly forgot…’ He fetched Lisette’s letter out of his bodice. ‘She bade me give you this.’

  Jay took the letter, stared at it for a moment and put it in his pocket. As soon as he had seen Michel hurry safely out of sight, he strolled over the bridge and into the Conciergerie, curbing his inclination to rush. The court had finished sitting for the day and the place was crowded with people leaving. They were all discussing the trials and took no notice of him as he sat on the bench so recently occupied by Lisette to read what she had written.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘My dear Jay,’ he read. ‘If you are reading this, it means Michel is free and I am in prison in his place. It was the only thing I could think of to keep you all safe.

  ‘I told you the truth when I said my first meeting with Mr Wentworth—I will not call him Uncle—was by chance. He talked to me of you, but I told you that, did I not? What I did not tell you was that he persuaded me to confide in him, claiming that he would use his influence with Messieurs Robespierre and Danton to have Michel freed. What his connection is with those gentlemen I did not think to question. Nor did I tell him the whole truth.

  ‘I said that I had met a French Comte and his daughter at the home of Lord and Lady Drymore and the young lady had begged me to see her brother and persuade him to return to England with us. I said I had, since coming to Paris, discovered he had been arrested and I was at a loss to fulfil my promise to her. He asked me the name of the prisoner and I told him. It was a terrible mistake and put everyone—me, you and your friends—in great jeopardy because, of course, he recognised the name. He was allowed to see Michel and immediately realised who I really was. He came to see me at the Embassy and that was the beginning of the blackmail.

  ‘I was instructed to discover the names of the Englishmen who were helping the émigrés to escape which, you recall, Robespierre had asked of you. He said if I gave him the names, Michel would be freed and we would be given safe passage out of France. He gave me until today to meet him and deliver the names. I would never do that, Jay, never, but I did keep my rendezvous with him, hoping to stall him until you had effected Michel’s release and we had left. It was then he told me that Michel had been taken from La Force to the Conciergerie for his trial and that Henri Canard and the two Honfleur gaolers had arrived to give evidence. I knew then it was too late to rescue Michel in the way you planned and I had to think of something myself.

  ‘I told Mr Wentworth I wanted to speak to my brother before I gave him what he asked for and the list would be given to him by Madame Gilbert when we had safely left. He agreed to arrange it and that was how Michel came to be with you now. I commend him to your care. Take him to England. My father will be overjoyed to be reunited with him.

  ‘Jay, I am so very, very sorry. I have been a f
ool, a miserable pig-headed fool, who has brought you nothing but trouble. I would much rather have brought you lasting happiness, for I do not believe the lies Wentworth told me about you. No one could be kinder, more chivalrous, more truly good, than you are. I shall, in my heart if not in fact, always be your devoted but inconvenient spouse. Take care of yourself and return safely to England and your children. My prayers are with you.’

  Jay, the stoic, the man who kept calm no matter what, found his eyes brimming with tears. She had made this sacrifice to save Michel, to save him and Harry and the others, and expected to die for it. And she loved him. He screwed the letter up in his hand and sat numb and unmoving, his sight too blurred to see who came and went about him.

  ‘Jay.’ It was Harry standing in front of him, dressed in a smart suit of black cloth with a pristine white shirt and cravat and a wide-brimmed black hat, the garb a priest or a lawyer might wear.

  Jay scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand and gave him Lisette’s letter without speaking.

  Harry smoothed it out and read it. ‘Now we are in a pickle,’ he said, folding it and handing it back. Jay put it in his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘I know, but I can’t leave her, Harry, I simply can’t.’

  ‘She means that much to you?’

  ‘She does. She is not like Marianne, is she, Harry?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ his friend agreed cheerfully. ‘But there is no need for anyone to die. Do not despair, we will think of something, but we might have to wait until the trial. Michel Giradet will be brought up for that, provided, of course, his accusers do not tumble to the ruse before that. Shall we take a stroll? I want to be able to find my way round this building.’

  They walked unhurriedly through the public rooms where there was no ban on who entered and poked their noses into private rooms, noting their function and apologising in a mixture of French and English when they were challenged. They went down some of the stairs to the prison itself, which struck cold and airless. On one landing between one floor and the next, they were stopped by a turnkey. ‘Your business, gentlemen.’

  Harry put his handkerchief to his nose, for the stench was overpowering. ‘No business,’ he said in execrable French. ‘We have become lost.’

  The man laughed. ‘You will be even more lost, Anglais, if you try to go any further, lost to the world.’

  ‘How many prisoners are you holding here?’ Jay asked him, going along with Harry’s pretence of being two bumbling English sightseers.

  ‘A thousand, give or take a score or so.’

  ‘As many as that? How many are due for trial tomorrow?’

  ‘Sixty, I am told.’

  ‘Methinks we will come and listen,’ Harry said. ‘Will we find seats, do you think?’

  ‘If you come early enough.’

  ‘Do you have lists of who is to go when and what they are being charged with?’ Jay asked, producing assignats from his pocket and holding them where the warder could see them.

  ‘What do you want to know that for?’

  ‘We want to choose the most interesting to witness,’ Harry put in. ‘Something melodramatic and juicy. We are not interested in run-of-the-mill thieves and harlots.’

  ‘Do they go up one by one when they are called?’ Jay asked.

  The man took the assignats from Jay’s unresisting fingers. ‘No, I send a dozen up together, under armed guard of course. Here, take a look.’ He turned away from them to open a cupboard behind him. Jay raised both hands above his head, ready to strike while the man’s back was turned, but Harry grabbed his arm and shook his head, just as the warder faced them again with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

  Jay took them and scanned the list until he came to the name Giradet. ‘Who is this?’ he said, pointing. ‘I think I have heard the name.’

  ‘Oh, He is just another aristo who thinks he can overthrow the republic and take us back to the dark ages. He will die.’

  Jay handed the papers back. It was plain Lisette’s real identity had not been discovered and probably would not be until the following day. The two men returned to the cleaner air of the foyer.

  ‘I could have knocked him out and seized his keys,’ Jay said. ‘Why did you stop me?’

  ‘If they have a thousand prisoners and more, those dungeons must fill the whole of the lower floors and there would be other turnkeys guarding them. How could we be sure which of them holds Lisette? While we were trying to find her, the man would have come to his senses and the alarm been raised. I know how impatient you must be, but we must wait until tomorrow when she is brought up for trial.’

  ‘My God, Portman, you are not suggesting we leave her in that stink hole overnight?’

  ‘That is exactly what I am thinking. She might, by then, realise that she has to trust you.’

  ‘You mean to grab her while she waits for her turn to go into the dock?’

  ‘Yes, the place will be crowded. We will stage a diversion, start a rumour, and while everyone is milling about we can spirit her away.’

  ‘But if they have already realised it is not Michel, but Lisette?’

  ‘I have no doubt they will try her in his place. One Giradet is as good as another in their eyes.’

  ‘You may be right, but then they will be searching for the boy and—’ Jay stopped speaking and grabbed Harry’s arm to pull him behind a pillar. ‘There’s Wentworth. And he’s with Danton.’ He peered out at the two men. ‘They seem to be arguing.’

  ‘No doubt Wentworth is at the receiving end of a drubbing for letting Lisette slip through his fingers.’

  ‘I hope they do not send for the prisoner.’

  His fears were groundless, at least for the moment. The two men parted and Wentworth hurried past the pillar without looking either to right or left. ‘If he goes to the Embassy, there will be trouble,’ Jay said. ‘Lisette left him a blank sheet of paper instead of the names.’

  ‘She has courage, that inconvenient spouse of yours,’ Harry said, laughing.

  ‘Too much courage,’ Jay added gloomily as they followed Wentworth out of the building.

  They had kept on his heels all the way to the Embassy.

  ‘I shall have to waylay him. You keep out of sight.’ Jay increased his pace to catch up with the man before Madame Gilbert answered the door. ‘Wentworth, were you looking for me?’ he called out.

  The man turned at the sound of his name. ‘Drymore, there you are.’

  ‘Yes, here I am. To what do I owe this visit?’ It was an effort to remain polite.

  ‘I came to wish you and your good lady bon voyage. Is she at home?’

  ‘She will be resting before our journey, I think. The carriage will be here at any moment.’

  ‘Then allow me to say goodbye to her.’

  ‘Why the courtesies, Wentworth? You were not always so particular.’

  ‘She is my niece, but you knew that, did you not? Mind you, I’ll wager you didn’t know she married you to use your name as protection in a country where she is wanted for counter-revolutionary plotting. Or did you? You are not innocent in the affair, I think. Do you think you can keep her safe, Drymore?’

  ‘Go,’ Jay said, trying to keep his voice level although it was an effort. ‘My wife will not see you.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure she will.’

  The window above them was opened and Lisette’s head poked out. ‘Is that you, Jay, darling?’ she called. ‘I have been waiting this age for you. Who is that with you?’

  ‘It is Mr Wentworth come to say goodbye and bon voyage,’ Jay called back, his heart in his mouth.

  ‘Oh, Mr Wentworth, how civil of you. I am afraid I cannot receive you. I am déshabillée and do not have much time to dress before we are due to leave. A thousand pardons.’ And with that she withdrew her head and shut the window.

  ‘I must go in and make sure all is ready,’ Jay said. ‘Good day to you, Wentworth. I will not say I hope we meet again because I am not given to untruths.’ He paused, watching a twit
ch in the man’s jaw which told him the other man was even more nervous than he was. Fear, perhaps? Danton must have threatened him. ‘If you are thinking of forcing your way in, you will regret it, I promise you,’ he went on. ‘I will not spare you a second time. The only reason I tolerate your presence at all is in deference to my wife.’

  Wentworth hesitated, opened his mouth and shut it again, then left. Jay breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘How did she manage it?’ Harry asked, joining him on the step.

  ‘She?’

  ‘Lisette.’ He jerked his head towards the upper window. ‘Back here.’

  ‘She isn’t. That was Michel. He is as bad as Lisette for acting on his own account. I could cheerfully throttle him.’

  ‘My God, he was good. He fooled me.’

  ‘Come in and meet him. You will see the difference when you are close to him.’

  ‘I do not think we dare wait until the morning now,’ Jay said as he ushered Harry into the vestibule. ‘Wentworth will not believe Lisette would leave without her brother. He will check that Michel is still in the prison. We cannot risk him recognising Lisette.’

  Michel was peering over the banisters above them. ‘Did he go away?’

  ‘Yes, thank goodness,’ Jay said. ‘Come down and meet my friend, Lord Portman.’

  Michel descended the stairs, every inch of him an uncanny imitation of Lisette. ‘And you can forget the charade,’ he added. ‘Lord Portman knows all about it. Harry, this is Michel Giradet, Lisette’s twin.’