‘I do not think so,’ replied Tardieu coldly. ‘He says that he has known you for several years, and has given us chapter and verse about you. From him we also know that the ship from which you landed was a British sloop-of-war; What purpose could a naval vessel have for standing in here secretly at night other than to put ashore a spy? I mean to see that you get your deserts before you are much older. Get up now and dress yourself.’
Roger made no further attempt to protest his innocence. Experience had taught him that when in a dangerous situation the less said the better. He feared that he had already said too much. To have protested that he had never heard of his own father had been unnecessary; worse, by mentioning Giffens by name he had admitted that he knew the seaman, which might later be difficult to explain if he was to get his story accepted that he had been picked up in the Channel.
As he thrust back the blankets he saw that his clothes were in a bundle on a nearby chair. Evidently they had been dried during the night and put there while he was still asleep. Tardieu walked towards the door. When opening it, he glanced back and, seeing that Roger was looking in the direction of the window, snapped: ‘Don’t imagine you can give us the slip that way. I’ve a sentry posted outside with orders to shoot you should you so much as show your head.’
‘My compliments, Citizen, upon your forethought,’ Roger replied tartly.
Left to himself, he took his time in dressing and used it to take stock of his alarming situation. It was, he decided, about as tough a corner as any in which he had ever found himself. Any immediate attempt to escape was obviously out of the question, and his only course was to await developments while saying as little as possible. His one consolation was that he had taken no harm from his immersion in the freezing sea. The brandy and hot soup he had been given, and his sound sleep between the warm blankets, had saved him from pneumonia or even from catching a severe chill.
When he felt that he could delay no longer he went down the narrow stairs to the kitchen. Tardieu was standing there with three of his men. Giffens was sitting on a stool in a corner mopping up with a hunk of bread what remained of a bowl of soup. As Roger appeared he gave him one swift, hostile glance, then kept his eyes averted.
Roger looked towards the kitchen range, upon which a pot was bubbling, hoping that he was about to be given some breakfast. Guessing his thought, Tardieu pulled at his grey moustache, then said with a sneer, ‘It would be a waste of a meal to give you one. You won’t need it where you’re going.’ Then, turning to one of his men, he added, ‘Tie his hands, Corporal, then bring him outside.’
At that Roger’s scalp began to prickle and the palms of his hands suddenly became damp. He could only conclude that there and then they meant to take him out and shoot him. Instantly he broke into violent protests, demanding a trial, a lawyer, a priest.
Ignoring his outburst, Tardieu drew a pistol, cocked it and pointed it at him. Faced with the probability of immediate death if he resisted, he had no alternative but to allow the Corporal to tie his hands behind his back. When the man had knotted the cord securely he said:
‘No need to keep him covered any longer, Citizen Lieutenant. Should he try any tricks now we’ve only to give him a good kick.’
Tardieu put up his pistol and led the way out. Roger was pushed after him by the three soldiers and Giffens brought up the rear. Drawn up in front of the farmhouse there was a small, covered cart with a single horse harnessed to it and two other horses tethered nearby. At the sight of them Roger, now wide-eyed and sweating at the thought that they had intended to put him up against the rear wall of the farmhouse and shoot him, felt a surge of temporary relief. Evidently he was to be taken somewhere in the cart, and even a brief postponement of his execution might yet give him a chance to save his life.
Two of the men bundled Roger into the cart. At a sign from the Corporal, Giffens clambered in after him and the two soldiers climbed on to the driver’s seat. Mounting one of the horses, Tardieu took the lead; then, with the Corporal bringing up the rear on the other horse, they set off.
The road was no more than a rutted track, and the rumble of the cartwheels on the hard ground drowned all other sounds; so, as soon as Roger had recovered a little from the ghastly five minutes he had just been through, he wriggled into a more comfortable position and said to Giffens:
‘Are you not utterly ashamed of yourself?’
‘Why should I be?’ muttered the man surlily.
‘For having betrayed a fellow-countryman, of course.’
Giffens shrugged. ‘I don’t ’old with nationalities. There’s rich and poor in the world, that’s all. And you be on the other side to I. Besides, it were either me or you.’
‘What makes you suppose that?’
‘Why, they’d ’ave sent I to the galleys. But by givin’ you away I’ve saved me bacon, ain’t I?’
Roger managed an unpleasant little laugh. ‘I wouldn’t count on that. These Frenchmen of the Revolution have a nasty habit of using one enemy to bring about the death of another, then ridding themselves of his betrayer. I ought to know, seeing that I am a Frenchman myself.’
‘You a Frenchie!’ Giffens snorted. ‘Don’t give me such gab. I know different. You’re Admiral Brook’s son, just as I tells the officer when ’e questions me an ’our back.’
‘I’ve no doubt you believe so,’ Roger said quietly. ‘But in that you are wrong. How long is it since you think you last saw me?’
Giffens scratched his head. ‘Let’s see now. Miss Amanda were married in the summer o’ninety, weren’t she? Then you come down to Walhampton with she the following spring; so ’twould be getting on seven year agone. But I seed you many a time afore that.’
‘No, it was my English cousin, Roger Brook, you saw. We are near the same age and have a striking resemblance. But I am of the French branch of the family and was born in Strasbourg. That is why my name is spelt Breuc.’
‘Them’s a pack o’ lies fit only for the marines. Seems to ’ave slipped your memory that only yesterday you played the fine English gentleman an’ threatened me with a floggin’. You was Mr. Roger Brook then, right enough, an’ made no pretence otherwise.’
‘Indeed, no; and I’d have been out of my mind to do so, seeing that I was passing myself off as him in order to get back to France.’
‘That’s another tall one. ’Ow come it that you recognised me, then? It was you as said to me, “ ’Aven’t I seen your face some place afore?” Remember?’
‘Certainly. And I had. On several occasions while our two countries were still at peace I stayed at Lymington with my relatives, and more than once I visited Walhampton with the Admiral—or Captain Brook, as he then was.’
Giffens was evidently shaken, but he stubbornly shook his head and declared, ‘I’ll not believe it. I’ll be danged if I do.’
Sensing the doubt he had sown in the man’s mind, Roger pressed his advantage, and retorted, ‘You will continue to disbelieve me at your peril. Listen, Giffens. Believe it or not, I am a Frenchman and a Colonel on the Staff of the most important General in France. There are hundreds of officers in the French Army to whom my face is well known. When we reach the place to which we are being taken I shall demand to see the local Military Commander. I’ll then have no difficulty in establishing my true identity. I shall, of course, at once be freed. But what of you? If you persist in this idea of yours and make it more difficult for me to get a fair hearing I vow I’ll see to it that you are sent to the galleys. If, on the other hand, you are prepared to admit that you may have been mistaken I’ll see that you are treated decently and perhaps even arrange an exchange for you.’
For the better part of a minute Giffens remained silent, then he muttered, ‘I’ll ’ave to think about it. I told the bloke what did the interpreting that my politics was red-’ot Republican, an’ arter that they treated me very friendly-like. So as things be I ain’t afraid they’ll send me to the galleys. But say I goes back on what I said about ye, all the odds is
they’ll act very different. I’ve still ’alf a mind that you’se lying; but even given I’m wrong about that, maybe none’ll be found as knows you for a French Colonel, so they’ll shoot you just the same. That ’ud be ’ard luck on you, but on me too. No sayin’ I were a Republican would do me no good then. They’d clamp the fetters on me an’ afore you was cold in your grave I’d find meself a slave in a dockyard.’
There was sound reasoning behind Giffen’s argument. As Roger knew only too well, the chances of coming across an officer with whom he could claim acquaintance were all too slender and, although he continued to argue with the man for some while longer, he could not persuade him to commit himself.
Nevertheless, being by nature an optimist, Roger derived some little comfort from their conversation. It was Giffens who had denounced him and if, as he now thought probable, he was to be given some form of trial, Giffens would be the principal witness against him. It was no small achievement to have both sown doubt in his mind and scared him. Whereas before he would undoubtedly have given his evidence with malicious gusto, it now seemed fairly certain that even if he did not hedge he would exercise some degree of caution in what he said.
As the cart jogged on across the windswept downs both its occupants began to suffer from the cold. Giffens could slap his arms across his chest now and then to keep his circulation going. He had also had a hot breakfast, whereas Roger had an empty stomach and, with his hands tied behind him, could do no more than drum with his feet on the floorboards of the cart. Except that it had a hood the cart might easily have been taken for a tumbril and after an hour in it Roger’s spirits had again fallen so low that he began to think of it as one in which he was being driven to the guillotine.
At length, between the undrawn curtains above the backboard, glimpses of occasional houses could be seen. Then the cart clattered down a succession of mean streets, to pull up outside a big building in a square, after a journey that had lasted about two hours. As Roger was helped out, he recognised the place as Boulogne and the building as its Hotel de Ville.
His guards hustled him inside, took him down a flight of stone stairs to a basement and handed him over to a turnkey, who locked him, cold, hungry and miserable, into a cell. But he was not left to shiver there for long. After a quarter of an hour the turnkey returned with a companion, and they marched him up to the ground floor again, then into a spacious courtroom.
Earlier that morning the uniforms of Roger’s captors had confirmed his belief that they were not Regular troops but Coastguards, with similar functions to the English Preventives, whose principal task was to stop smuggling. In consequence, as he had feared might be the case, he now saw that he was about to be tried not by a military but by a civil court. That meant that he would stand less chance of convincing its members that he was a Colonel in the French Army.
At one time the courtroom had been a handsome apartment, but the walls were now stained with damp, the windows long uncleaned, with numerous cracked panes, and the straw on the floor badly in need of changing. Yet the state of it was far from being as bad as that of many so-called Courts of Justice that Roger had seen during the worst days of the Revolution. The walls of the room were not lined with pipe-smoking, spitting, out-at-elbows National Guards, or the public benches packed with an evil mob of both sexes which, at the first sign of the judges inclining to show mercy, would intimidate them by howling for the blood of the accused.
Here there were no more than half a dozen casual spectators: Tardieu with his men, Giffens, a handful of depressed-looking advocates in the well of the Court and three magistrates, who were sitting at a table on a dais. On the wall behind it the Axe and Fasces surmounted by the Cap of Liberty had long since replaced the Royal Arms of France.
As Roger was put in the dock he swiftly scrutinised the three magistrates seated on the dais. The only thing they had in common was that they all wore tricolour sashes. The Chairman was a tall, lean individual. He had a bulging forehead, was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, a shiny suit of dark-green cloth and looked as if he might be a lawyer. On his right sat a heavy-jowled, fattish man with black, curly hair. He wore a bright-blue coat, a big horseshoe pin was stuck in his cravat and he was sucking a straw, so Roger put him down as probably a farmer or a horse-dealer. The third man was small, with apple-red cheeks, a snub nose, and was dressed very neatly in a snuff-coloured suit with silver buttons. His appearance suggested the well-to-do bourgeois merchant who had succeeded in living through the Terror.
One of the advocates, who was evidently the Public Prosecutor, got to his feet. He was elderly, thin-faced and had a rat-trap mouth. After taking a pinch of snuff, most of which fell upon his already snuff-stained gown, he opened the trial. In a tired, indifferent voice, he stated that he did not think the present matter would occupy the Court for long, as there was ample evidence to show that the prisoner was an English spy. He then called Tardieu.
Speaking quickly and using many gestures, the Coastguard Lieutenant gave an account of the happenings of the previous night. From time to time he ran a finger down his long nose and shot a malicious sideways glance at Roger, who rightly assumed that Tardieu, having been fooled into giving his prisoner the benefit of the doubt to start with, and a night in a comfortable bed, was now working off his spite. But he said nothing that Roger had not expected him to say.
The next witness was one of the men who had acted as escort from the farm. It transpired that he belonged to the second patrol and had been among the first to reach the two men whom Roger had wounded. In a gruff voice he described the injuries they had sustained and how Roger had taken refuge in the sea, but had been compelled, on account of the cold, to come up out of it and surrender.
Roger had been offered no legal aid; so he asked permission of the Court to cross-examine the witness, and it was granted. In reply to his questions, the man at once agreed that there had been no moon and that none of his party was carrying lanterns. Then, after some pressing, he admitted that it had been very dark and the starlight so feeble that an approaching figure could not be seen at more than a few paces.
The Prosecutor then informed the Court that the next witness would be a seaman of the British Navy. He was a member of the crew of the sloop-of-war that had brought Roger to France and had been captured when landing him from a boat. He would swear to having known the prisoner for a number of years and that he was an Englishman, the son of Admiral Sir Brook.
Giffens was put in the box and, by a series of little more than nods and grunts, confirmed, through an interpreter, the Prosecutor’s statement. But Tardieu was not satisfied by this and took it on himself to prime the Prosecutor with further questions. This resulted in Giffens repeating, in dribs and drabs but fully, the statement he had volunteered so readily to the Coastguards early that morning. Roger could see that he had succeeded in scaring the man to a point at which he gave these details only with reluctance, but he could not prevent particulars of himself, his home at Lymington, his visits to Walhampton and his marriage to Amanda from coming out.
When they had finished with Giffens, Roger cross-examined him and, greatly to his relief, found that the seaman had made up his mind to hedge. He agreed almost eagerly that before Roger boarded the sloop at Lymington he had not seen him for nearly seven years, so might perhaps have mistaken him for the Admiral’s son.
Roger then made a bold attempt to trade on Giffen’s fears by saying, ‘As you were at Walhampton before the war with France began, you surely must remember a French gentleman who came there several times with the Admiral: a cousin of young Mr. Brook, who strongly resembled him?’
Giffens gave him a startled look, shook his head, then, thinking better of it, mumbled something that the interpreter translated as, ‘Well, perhaps. There were a lot of Frenchmen who were refugees from the Revolution living in Lymington in those days, and some of them visited at Walhampton. But I couldn’t be certain.’
Although that left the matter in doubt, Roger felt, as Giffens sto
od down, that he had scored a valuable point and when the Prosecutor began to question him he gave his story with quiet confidence.
It was that General Bonaparte, knowing that he had spent several years of his boyhood in England and was bilingual, so could pass as an Englishman, had sent him there to report on the measures being taken by the English to resist invasion.
He had been landed on the Kentish coast by smugglers, and had spent the past six weeks staying in small towns on the Kent, Sussex and Hampshire coasts, working his way westward until he reached Lymington.
There, four nights ago, at an inn, he had got into conversation with a naval Lieutenant. This young man had been drinking heavily and, after they had talked for some while, confided that owing to gambling he had got himself into serious money troubles. The Lieutenant had also mentioned earlier that he was under orders to sail his sloop up to Dover as soon as the weather permitted.
Having covered the territory assigned him by his General, Roger was anxious to get back to France. Normally he would have had to wait until he could get in touch with another gang of smugglers working from the Hampshire coast; but the sloop had seemed too good an opportunity to miss if he could persuade the Lieutenant to put him over. He had, therefore, told the Lieutenant that he was a Government agent seeking a passage and asked his help. The officer had, at first, demurred, on the grounds that he would be acting without orders and might risk his ship if he stood in too near the French coast; but Roger had played on his anxiety about money and had overcome his scruples by offering him the considerable sum he would have had to pay a smuggler to run him across.
The Prosecutor then asked him a number of questions about his parentage, upbringing in England, later career in France, recent stay in England and whether, during it, he had been to Grove Place to see any of his English relatives.
Assuming the last question to be a trap, Roger replied promptly, ‘Certainly not. With a war in progress how could I possibly have explained my presence in England to them? They would have felt compelled to hand me over to the authorities. On the contrary, while I was in Lymington I was in constant fear of being recognised; so I spent nearly all the two days I was there in my room at the inn. I would never have gone to Lymington at all had it not been a part of my instructions to report on the shipping in the harbour.’
The Sultan's Daughter Page 6