“I will look into it, then, mon cher Capitaine,” Pouzin allowed as an ormolu clock on the mantel over his large marble fireplace began to chime the hour. His mistress would be distressed by his lateness. “After all, what are old comrades for, if not to help each other safeguard the Republic, heu? I will look into it. If there is something to his presence in France, well . . . perhaps we can find some way to re-pay you for your bringing this to our attention, n’est-ce pas? An increase in your naval pension and a financial reward, hmm?”
Guillaume Choundas tossed back the last of his brandy, his ugly face split with a rough approximation of a pleased grin, which hideous attempt made Pouzin shudder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
What an odd but charming couple,” Caroline determined as they readied for bed. She yawned a couple of times, for such late hours in the almost-midnights was foreign to her rural life of early rising and early retiring. They had supped divinely well, with lashings of wine beyond her usual partaking, at one of the most elegant restaurants in Paris, packed to the rafters with the most fashionable and lively of Paris’s elite, and had been regaled by Sir Pulteney’s and Lady Imogene’s quick wit and repartee. Silly though half of it had been.
Afterwards, there had been the theatre, and a grand comedy—Molière, of course, an immortal of French theatre—which the Lady Imogene, who indeed had once been a star on that very stage a decade before, still knew by heart; she had translated the cleverest, funniest parts for them in gay whispers in their box closely overlooking the stage.
Lewrie was yawning, too, though he’d managed a few short naps at the Comédie Française, despite Lady Imogene’s excited whispers and Sir Pulteney’s cackles, guffaws, and donkey brays. Sir Pulteney also had the annoying habit of making idle comments on just about everything and everyone, disparaging a badly tied neck-stock on one gentleman in the box opposite theirs, or the colour of some fetching young woman’s gown, the tackiness of too much jewelry—“Cheap paste, most-like, Begad, that! What was she thinking?”
Charming, aye; annoying, as well. Still, the Plumbs had paid for everything, so what was one to do?
“So fortunate that Sir Pulteney married her away from France, before the Revolution, and the Terror,” Caroline said as she brushed out her hair. “And she is lovely . . . in a way. Or was, once.”
Meow! Lewrie thought, grinning. Lady Imogene Plumb was petite and wiry, with large, elfin green eyes and a wealth of shining raven-black hair, though her face was that of a slightly “over-the-hill” pixie. “She uses paints . . . the actress in her, I’d s’pose,” he said to show Caroline that he agreed with her, and had not found her pretty.
“Yes, she does!” Caroline agreed. “Even so, though . . . Lord, that gown of hers! Sir Pulteney must be hellish-rich, indeed, I’d not wish to ascribe Lady Imogene’s motives for marrying such a . . . daft fellow like Sir Pulteney,” Caroline cattily said, pausing her brushing, looking pensively into the mirror as if drawing a comparison, “but . . . a chance to flee France and all the bloodshed, and to a man with so much money . . . seeming money, rather . . .”
“Silly as a goose,” Lewrie agreed again.
“He does laugh rather a lot, doesn’t he,” Caroline said, chuckling, beginning to under-brush. “I must admit, though . . . they seem to be besotted with each other, still. Did you not notice, Alan?”
Usin’ my first name, hey? Lewrie exulted; that sounds promisin!
“Can’t say that I did, my dear,” he said, tossing his shirt at one of his old sea-chests, and donning a dressing robe. “But it takes all kinds, don’t it?”
“I suspect a great, mutual passion,” Caroline said, done with her hair, and swivelling about on her stool to face him. It sounded wistful.
I’m up for passion! Lewrie told himself, feeling frisky; should I break out the dental powder or settle for a swill-out with brandy?
“Did you think her fetching, Alan?” Caroline teased; it seemed like romantic teasing, at any rate, Lewrie hoped.
“Well, I was too busy tendin’ to you on the packet, Caroline,” he replied with a non-committal shrug. “Only really met her tonight. Aye, I s’pose she’s handsome . . . in her own way.”
“Lady Imogene and I will go shopping tomorrow,” she said as she put her toiletry items aside in a roll-up “house-wife,” then stood to go to the far side of the inviting bed, nearest the last candle. “You will have another day to yourself. If we are to be presented to that ogre Napoleon Bonaparte, I will need something truly grand to wear, and she has promised to advise me. We cannot let the French form a low opinion of how British people dress. Oh, she has such an exquisite sense of style and taste . . . as does Sir Pulteney.”
“Well, I s’pose I could find something t’do with myself,” he allowed, sweeping back the covers on his side of the bed.
“So long as you don’t go in search of scents,” Caroline said, much more coolly.
“Scents? Hey?”
“Most especially at a shop called La Contessa’s in the Place Victor,” Caroline said on, her expression and tone hardening, the furrow ’twixt her brows appearing. “A shop run by a Corsican baggage by name of Phoebe Aretino?”
“Uhm, er . . . ! Who? Honest t’God, Caroline, how was I to know she was in Paris?” Lewrie flummoxed. “Mean t’say, rather . . . !”
Shit, there it is! Lewrie quailed; fourty-two-pound coast guns!
“And it did not give you pause that Lady Imogene and your . . . whore! . . . resemble each other remarkably closely . . . my dear? Here!” she snapped, handing him the candle from the night-stand. “It trust you find the settee in the parlour a pleasant bed for the night!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
By mid-morning two days later, whilst the unsuspecting Lewries were coaching along another bucolic stretch of the Seine, an increasingly concerned Joseph Fouché was receiving a summary report on what his agents had been able to glean about this troubling Anglais visitor.
“The Ministry of Marine notes that this gars was instrumental in destroying a secret alliance with native pirates in the Far East, back in the bad old days of the Ancien Régime,” Matthieu Fourchette, one of Fouché’s cleverest and most persistent agents, related to his chief. “A dumb idea, anyway, that wouldn’t have lasted a year once war broke out again and the Biftecs put enough warships out there to escort a China convoy,” Fourchette told him with a sneer. “Only a Lieutenant, but the Anglais force was directed by secret agents from their Foreign Office. Just a lackey at the time, I’d suspect.”
Matthieu Fourchette was one of the few people in France who did not cringe at the mention of Fouché’s name or shudder in fear when in his presence or carefully guard every utterance. Fourchette was too insouciant, too casual and carefree to fear the man he served so well, and it was against his wry and sarcastic, cynical nature. Fourchette did not sit upright, but slouched with his legs sprawled in the chair in front of Fouché’s desk, making free with a Spanish cigarro and knocking ash to the marble floor.
“Now, there’s this retired Capitaine Guillaume Choundas’s notes, but he’s débile on the subject of this Lewrie mec,” Fourchette breezed on, “and thinks the Anglais is a demon from Hell, sent specifically by the Devil to torment him. I can see why he thinks so, since this Alain Luray . . . Lew-rie . . . was the one who sliced him up like a veal sausage and crippled him. Odd, though . . . how often Choundas was put in charge of something that smacked of spy-work combined with combat, and Lewrie just happened to turn up . . . like a bad penny, as the Anglais say, hmm?”
“Anything recent?” Fouché pressed.
“We’re getting there, citoyen,” Fourchette said with a grin. “In the Mediterranean, he put a hitch in Pouzin’s plans, again with connexions to the same Anglais spymaster that ran things in the Far East. Poor old Choundas lost his arm to Lewrie that time. Poor old salaud . . . this fellow just keeps whittling Choundas down to a nub. It’s good our Navy retired him, hawn hawn! Anyway . . .
“This Lewrie did
rather well in the West Indies, taking prizes, keeping the Négres slaves on Saint Domingue, so their uprising did not spread to Jamaica,” Fourchette went on. “I spoke to that Citoyenne Charité de Guilleri, as you ordered. . . . Mon Dieu, citoyen, what a fine young thing, and thank you for the assignment! I’d love to ‘dip my biscuit’ in that. The fellow did dress in civilian clothes and go up the Mississippi to New Orleans as a spy, though there was no provable direction by Anglais spy agencies, but it is hard to believe that he did it on his own, n’est-ce pas? Then, when we and the Américains had our little disagreement, Choundas was out there on Guadeloupe, and, again, Lewrie was instrumental in his last downfall. Crippled the fellow’s frigate in his own harbour, and rolled up many of his privateers and smuggler vessels before the Américains captured him and his last convoy.”
“Perhaps this Choundas is not so demented, after all,” Fouché rumbled. “After that, then?”
“Strictly straightforward,” Fourchette said with a shrug, brushing his loose shock of dark hair back from his broad forehead and his oddly pale green eyes that sometimes, in the right light, looked yellow. He was lean and fox-faced, not much above middle height, but despite his insouciance, there was an air about him that made others tread as wary about Fourchette as most did about Fouché. “A time in the South Atlantic, escorting China convoys, a fight with one of our frigates, which he won. . . . Uhm, there’s a note from the Gironde that he was responsible for the reduction of two forts in the bay of the river, a bombardment of troops dug in on the Côte Sauvage that resulted in heavy casualties, and one of our naval officers who was spying on the Anglais blockade ships, pretending to be a poor fisherman who’d trade with them, sent a letter to the Ministry of Marine to say that the man is a clever liar.
“Which does not agree with Pouzin’s, or Choundas’s, opinions, citoyen,” Fourchette pointed out. “They think this Lewrie just lucky, or well-tutored. Un type de poorly educated Anglais officer, one who will do anything to avoid being called ‘too clever by half,’ n’est-ce pas?”
“Which public face can disguise a wealth of cleverness,” Fouché snapped, ill at ease with what he’d heard so far.
“This Lewrie did run into legal troubles last year,” Fourchette told him. “He stole a dozen Nègres slaves from an Anglais planter he’d duelled with . . . from the family, that is . . . to crew his ship, then was tried in absentia and sentenced to be hung, but . . . the Abolitionists in England got him off.”
“Perhaps he is lucky, as well,” Fouché commented.
“Two medals, participated in the battles off Ushant, at Cape Saint Vincent, and Camperdown, and lately at Copenhagen,” Fourchette tossed away. “Got sent into the Baltic, alone, to scout the Danish, Swedish, and Russian fleets before the battle . . . the new Anglais head of their Ministry of Marine is said to have appointed him to the duty directly. It is also rumoured that he carried two Russian nobles home . . . men who are further rumoured, so the Foreign Ministry dossiers say, to here participated in the assassination of the late Tsar.”
“What? Assassination, you say?” Fouché perked up, going into an instant rage. “How sure are those dossiers, Fourchette?”
“Oh, citoyen . . . ,” Fourchette disparaged, flicking more ash on the floor, “speculative, at best. The Foreign Ministry people whom I talked to about it don’t believe the Anglais could ever undertake anything that simple and direct. The Russky aristos most likely wangled a rapid way home, promising a diplomatic solution . . . so they could be in at the kill, and prosper on their own. That’s how Talleyrand and the rest of the Ministry interpret it.”
“Talleyrand and his grands légumes are a pack of simple fools, Fourchette!” Fouché barked, rising to pace with his hands in the small of his back, head down, and unconsciously imitating his idol, the new First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte. “Limp-wristed, over-educated, closeted aristos, and arrivistes! They would not recognise a rampaging bear in their dining room. . . . They’d call it a hungry foreign visitor with no fine manners such as theirs! You have placed this salaud under observation, Fourchette?”
“Since the first moment I spoke with you, citoyen,” Fourchette assured him. “A rotating crew of watchers, so he will not take alarm, even should he be here to spy on us, and has been instructed in tradecraft. The concierge at his lodgings reports he and his wife mostly spend their time here in touring cathedrals, palaces, and such, with shopping and dining. The Comédie Française a few nights ago, accompanied by another Anglais couple, uhm . . .”—Fourchette had to refer to his notes for a moment—“neither of them are fluent in French, and he is the biggest off ender. Both need the aid of bilingual servants and guides for even the simplest exchanges. Hardly what one would expect of a man sent to spy on us,” Fourchette said with a shrug and a sniff of derision.
“No, it is not, is it?” Fouché said, raising his head and ceasing his frenzied pacing, calming as quickly as he’d raged. “What are they doing today?”
“Coaching along the Seine, citoyen,” Fourchette told him. “Taking the air. Under observation by at least six watchers.”
“Well, then . . . perhaps . . . ,” Fouché allowed, sitting back down behind his desk and running his heavy hands over his bald pate. “Our terrified Capitaine Choundas . . . our deluded Citoyenne de Guilleri . . . both have good cause to seek revenge on this Anglais, and imagine him an agent of the Devil. In so doing, they magnify this Lewrie’s cleverness and guile. To get me to do their dirty work, hein?”
“Pardon, citoyen.” One of Fouché’s clerks, a fellow much warier of his employer than Fourchette would ever be, tremulously rapped on the half-open door. “You are busy, citoyen? A letter has come from Minister Talleyrand, at the Foreign Ministry?”
“Oui, bring it,” Fouché snapped, waving the man in impatiently and snatching the folded and sealed letter, winking at Fourchette as he did so. “More foolishness from that oily, lame bishop, the lecher. Mon Dieu!” Fouché exploded a moment later. “Zut alors! Putain! Mort de ma vie! The fucking fools! Get out, get out, get out!” he barked at the little clerk, and threw the letter at Fourchette, startling the wiry younger man to his feet. “At the next levee, two days hence, the First Consul will greet the very man we discuss, Fourchette! They’ve come up with a piece of diplomatic theatre, in the name of peace, bah!
“The Anglais, this espèce de merde, this fumier, Lewrie, will present to Bonaparte some swords he’d taken from defeated French captains, asking for one of his taken by Napoleon from him years ago! So everyone can applaud and fawn and simper about what good friends we and the sanglants now are! Within the reach of a dagger to Bonaparte, within a point-blank shot of a hidden pistol!”
“Are they mad?” Fourchette exclaimed.
“Non, Fourchette . . . deluded by their own foolishness,” Fouché accused, eyes darting about the room for something he could smash, and not regret later. “Suddenly, it all makes sense, that this man is a spy, an assassin sent to destroy our head of government, and start the overthrow of the Republic! If the salaud did have a hand in the assassination of the Tsar, last year. . . . ! The faithless, perfidious British have sent him to do this.”
“Uhm, citoyen . . . how might he plan to escape, once the deed is done?” Fourchette pointed out after a brief, quiet moment. “And would a man, even a mad Anglais, endanger his wife, as well? If she is here in Paris, will she not be presented with him? I do not see how anyone could be ordered to face certain death for both himself and his woman. And for England to envision such an act, hein? Surely, they know it would mean immediate war.”
“Which they might be planning on,” Fouché hotly rasped. “Their army and navy might even now be mobilised, just waiting for news of the success of their murder!”
“Have we seen any sign of that, citoyen?” the more practical spy suggested. Fourchette suspected that Fouché saw plots where he’d put plots were he in their enemies’ shoes, and had spent so many years at sniffing out opposition where there really was no opposition, that h
e had become as fixated as that débile old sailor, Choundas.
Despite what Fourchette publicly espoused about the Revolution and the Republic, he was too pragmatic a fellow to give heart and soul completely; such sentiments—for a fellow who held very few sentiments—were the social oil necessary to keep his delightful career, and gain him plum assignments which guaranteed his steady rise in the Police Nationale. The Committee of Public Safety, the Directory, the Triumvirate, and now the First Consul, Hell . . . they could bring back a king, an emperor, and he could really care less.
Fouché, though, Fourchette considered; he owed his life to the continued good health and firm grip on power of his master, Napoleon Bonaparte. Fouché was his man . . . for as long as it looked like Bonaparte held sway. After that, perhaps he would jump ship and espouse another leader, but . . . for now, Fouché would go to any lengths to protect the fellow. Too devotedly, too slavishly, Fourchette thought him. A cool head was needed here.
“This gars Lewrie wishes to present captured swords? Let us ask for them to be held by the Ministry of Marine ’til the levee,” he breezily advised his chief. “Before the presentation, call the fellow aside and check him for weapons. What can he do after that, leap and try to strangle the First Consul, hein? In the meantime, I will keep him under the strictest surveillance, and look into anyone that Lewrie speaks to . . . for any connexion to reactionary elements, n’est-ce pas?”
“One to keep watch on will be his former lover, the owner of a parfumerie in the Place Victor, a woman . . .”
“Well, I should hope so,” Fourchette japed, “though so many Englishmen prefer boys.”
“This is no laughing matter, Fourchette,” Fouché cautioned him. “A Citoyenne Phoebe Aretino. She fled Toulon aboard his ship as our army re-took the city, fled good Republicans with aristos. In fact, assign one of your men to look into her, no matter whether this fumier contacts her or not.”
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