“Anglais, m’sieur?” he gruffly asked.
“Oui,” Lewrie replied.
“Et vous retournez en Angleterre?”
“Retourn . . . yes, we’re going home,” Lewrie replied pretending even poorer command of French. “Back to Jolly Old England, what? Mean t’say . . . oui.”
“Au revoir, m’sieur . . . madame,” the guard said, handing back their laisser-passers and sketching out a salute before waving to the coachmen and his compatriots to signal that they were allowed to exit Paris.
“No worse than any other day-coach jaunt we made,” Lewrie told Caroline. “We’re on our way, one way or the other.”
Matthieu Fourchette had placed three covert watchers in close vicinity to the lodging house in the Rue Honoré; feeding pigeons, taking a stroll, sullenly sweeping horse dung. As the first coach came to a stop by the doors, the senior man tipped an underling the wink, and he was off, quick as his legs could carry him, to alert the band waiting for his news in the Place du Carrousel.
The second coach, then a third, bollixed everything, throwing the remaining two watchers into feetful confusion. The departure of those three coaches, with three pairs of Lewries, less than a minute apart, threw those two agents into a panic. Try to pursue them? Try to catch up with Fourchette and his men, who had most likely started off for the Porte St. Denis, the logical exit for the Calais road, or raise a hue and cry? The senior man decided that his best choice, if he wished to continue his employment, was to run to the headquarters of the Police Nationale on the south side of the Tuileries Palace to pass the burden on to Director Fouché—well, not directly to his face!—and let him despatch riders to sort it out.
If Director Joseph Fouché had had a single hair on his head he would have been sorely tempted to yank it out in frustration as contradictory news came in in mystifying dribs and drabs.
Horsemen from three of the portes had come to report the departure of the Anglais couple the guards had been ordered to be on alert for? Another horseman had to be sent off to catch up with Fourchette and his party to warn them that a massive charade was being played on them. Of a sudden, Fouché needed two more parties of pursuers, with no time to brief them on the purpose of their urgent missions or to scrounge up the proper men who could manage the elimination of those perfidiously clever Anglais! All their plans had put that task into the hands of Fourchette, that salope de Guilleri, and that foul fiend, Choundas.
“Damn, damn, damn!” Fouché roared, flinging an ink-pot at the nearest wall. “Even if they catch them, they won’t know them from Adam! Their papers give nothing away! Merde alors! Merde, merde!”
“Citoyen?” his meek clerk timorously asked, cringing a little. “You have orders?” he dared to pose.
“Another rider!” Fouché demanded, grabbing for pen and paper and realising he no longer had any ink with which to write new orders. “Putain!” he roared in even greater frustration. “Ink, fool! Bring me more ink, ballot, vite, vite!”
He took a deep breath to calm himself as the clerk scrambled to fetch a fresh ink-pot. Fourchette could sort it out; he’d better, or it would be his neck! Three coaches to pursue, so . . . he would split his party, of course, and make haste, Fouché assumed. The girl, with a few agents to help her; thank God she’d talked him into including her Chasseur, Clary, who could chase after the second with a few more men . . . though he’d been included to identify them, to trail them, and had not been in on the conclusion of the plan. Would he balk? Fourchette and that beast Choundas could chase after the first coach . . . before all three of them got too far away from Paris, before the roads diverged too far apart!
The clerk returned with the ink, and Fouché scribbled furiously to impart his new instructions, then . . . issued a second order. There was a chance that the Anglais couple would get so far along that there would be no catching them if the first lead was false. He needed more men, with orders to arrest them; he would leave the elimination to his man, Fourchette. For that, he would send an urgent request to the general in charge of the Garde Nationale garrison in Paris, no . . . no request, but an order, for at least three troops of cavalry!
“Send them off at once, at once!” Fouché snapped, thumping down into his chair with his head in his thick hands, staring at the middle distance, and wondering if things could go even more awry!
Fouché’s first despatch rider caught up with Fourchette and his party no more than two kilometres past the Porte St. Denis.
“Putain, quel emmerdement!” Fourchette spat once he’d read it, balled it up, and shoved it into a side pocket of his coat. “Our quarry must have been warned, but I do not see how! Three couples at three portes presented papers declaring themselves as the Lewries.”
“With the help of Anglais spies, I knew it!” Guillaume Choundas growled, thumping his rein hand on the low pommel of his saddle. He had never been a decent horsemen, even when in possession of both his arms and working legs, and even a little more than one hour astride a horse was beginning to be an agony. “He’s in league with the Royalist conspirators. How else? In league with the Devil!”
“Make haste,” Fourchette decided quickly, “The coach bound for Calais from the Porte Saint-Denis can’t be that far ahead. We’ll see whether we’re after the real Lewrie, or another. Allez vite!”
Fourchette spurred his horse to a gallop, quickly joined by the girl, and her Chasseur Major. Both revelled in the sudden chase and the kilometre-eating pace and the wind in their faces. Still unaware of their true purpose, Major Denis Clary delighted in showing off his superb cavalryman’s mastery of a horse, and Charité was just as eager to impress him with her seat. For a few moments, she could shake from her mind the image of what would occur at the end of their chase and take a little joy. She looked over her shoulder and laughed out loud to see that foetid monster, Choundas, jouncing almost out of control in only a bone-shaking trot as she left his hideous form and mind behind!
“There it is!” Fourchette bugled, espying a slow-trotting coach-and-four on the road ahead. “Hurry!”
Fourchette, Charité, Major Clary, and half a dozen agents garbed in civilian clothes thundered up to the coach, catching up easily and passing down either side of it as Fourchette bellowed demands for the coachee to draw reins and stop. He sprang from his saddle and was at the carriage door before one of his men could take his reins.
“M’sieur et madame, I order you to present your laisser-passers at once, and . . . oh, merde alors. Who the Devil are you?”
“Sir, I do not know who you are, but you will not use such foul language in my wife’s presence, do you hear me?” the gentleman with the mid-brown hair inside the coach shot back with an imperious back and in perfect French, with but a touch of Anglais accent.
“Your papers, at once!” Fourchette shot back, fighting down his shock to find utter strangers. Once handed over, he read them over quickly and got a sinking feeling. The man and his wife were English . . . but not the ones he sought. “You are . . . ?”
“Sir Andrew Graves . . . sir,” the Briton said, looking at Fourchette with that maddening supercilious air of a proper English lord looking down at a chimney sweep. “My lady wife, Susannah. And what is the meaning of this . . . sir?” Irking Fourchette so much that he wished this arrogant Anglais was his real prey, and he could just put the salaud into a hastily dug grave. Yet . . . the laisser-passers he had been presented were authentic, with entry dates and a departure from Paris showing that they had been in France two weeks, and with all the proper signatures and stamps depressingly authentic, to boot!
“A thousand pardons, m’sieur, madame, but we seek escaping criminals thought to be fleeing justice on this highway in a coach quite like this one. Adieu, you may proceed,” Fourchette said, though that galled him to no end.
“And you apologise, m’sieur,” Sir Andrew pressed, a brow up.
“A thousand pardons for . . . my choice of words, as well, and my apologies to madame,” Fourchette was further forced to
say.
“Well, I should bloody-well think so, dash it all!” Sir Andrew huffed. “Whip up, driver! Avance, cocher, vite vite!”
“One down, two t’go!” his wife, Susannah, who was really better known round Drury Lane as Betsy Peake, chortled to her companion, who was also better known on the Shakespearean stages of London and its nearer counties as Anthony Ford, as the party of horsemen clattered far enough away for them to revert to their natural accents and glee to have fooled the Frogs so thoroughly.
“Must say, m’dear, but these roles we play give life a zest!” Ford said with a satisfied sigh of contentment and a bit of relief that they were free and clear.
“Here, I’ll shred these lyin’ packets t’wee bits as we bowl along,” Betsy offered. “And, yes! It is very . . . piquant!”
“Showin’ off, again! Piquant, my eye! Hoy, Bets . . . ever do it in a carriage?” Ford leered.
“Wif th’ likes o’ you? Hmmph!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Oh,” Caroline said with a start, after sitting silently tense for more than an hour as their coach rolled past the last outskirts of Paris and into the pleasant countryside ’tween the Seine and the Oise.
“Trouble?” Lewrie bolted erect, thinking she had seen some sign of pursuit. “What?” he demanded, wishing that he’d thought to pack a single pistol in his bags before leaving England. Even the hanger he had gotten back from Napoleon was in a round-topped trunk on its way to Calais.
“No, I don’t believe,” Caroline told him, delving into her reticule. “Forgive me for being remiss, but I quite forgot the note that Lady Imogene slipped me just as we were leaving.” She produced a wee folded piece of paper, when opened no more than four inches square.
“Oh!” Caroline exclaimed again. “Sir Pulteney has additional instructions for us. Here, see for yourself.”
Once you pass through Pontoise, there is a quite nice coaching inn on the far bank of the Oise, called Le Gantelet Rouge. Stop there for refreshment. Linger! I arrive anon.
“Hummph!” Lewrie huffed. “What’s that, down at the bottom?” Lewrie asked his wife, once he’d read it. “That blob, there.”
“It looks like a flower of some kind,” Caroline said, peering more closely at the note, which was written in black ink; the flower petals, though, were coloured yellow with chalk or pastel pencil.
“Should we eat the note, now we’ve read it?” Lewrie japed.
Caroline rolled her eyes at him for making jest in such circumstances, but at least she did it with a grin. She began to shred it, feeding wee pieces of the note out the window on her side of the coach, bit by bit. “That should be sufficient, enough so for the likes of your mysterious old friend, that hideous Zachariah Twigg!”
“Never a friend,” Lewrie countered. “I wonder if they’ll ask for our papers when we enter Pontoise . . . cross the bridge, or when we order dinner at the inn?”
The authorities in Pontoise evidently could have cared less of a damn anent the identities of travellers, for there were no soldiers posted on the southern outskirts, nor on the bridge which spanned the Oise. The carriage trundled through the heart of the town’s business district, to the northern outskirts, then . . .
“There it is!” Caroline exclaimed as Le Gantelet Rouge came in sight on the right-hand side of the road, out where the homes were humbler and further apart, where stone-fenced or hedged pastures and farm crops began to predominate.
“Uhm . . . cocher?” Lewrie called, leaning out his window. “I say, cocher. Arrête, s’il vous plaît . . . à le Gantelet Rouge. For déjeuner.”
“Mais oui, m’sieur,” the lead coachman laconically replied as he slowed the horses and turned the coach into the large, shady yard in front of a two-storey stone inn with a slate roof, with a cool gallery to one side, and many outbuildings and barns.
“We will be awhile, erm . . . quelque temps?” Lewrie said to the coachmen once they had alit. “Ah . . . you’re free to . . .”
“Faites comme vous voudrez, messieurs,” Caroline provided for him, explaining that while they took a long dinner and a rest from the ride on the hard benches, the coachmen could do as they will; have a bite themselves, some wine, and such. “Give them a few franc coins, Alan.”
“Oh, right-ho,” Lewrie agreed, handing up coins from his purse.
“The gallery looks inviting,” Caroline commented as the entered the travellers’ inn.
“Perhaps an inside table, Caroline. Out of sight from the road.”
“Yes, of course,” she agreed, then looked at him with amusement. “Right-ho, Alan? The Plumbs must be wearing off on you. You will be saying ‘Begad,’ ‘Zounds,’ and ‘Stap me’ next.”
“Well, uhm . . .”
They shared a bottle of wine, lingering over it and making but guarded small talk. Half an hour later, and they ordered a plate of hors-d’oeuves, then a second bottle of wine when that was consumed. They ordered soup and bread, then opted for breaded veal and asparagus, to while away another hour. Le Gantelet Rouge boasted an ormolu clock on the high mantel, and its ticking, the slow progression of its minute hand, was maddening, after a while, ’til . . .
A coach could be heard entering the inn yard, wheels hissing and crunching over the fine gravel, and chains tinkling . . . bound to the rear of the inn, nearest the stables and well. Was it Sir Pulteney, was it soldiers? Both Alan and Caroline began to tremble despite their efforts not to, ready to bolt!
“Zounds, but there you are!” Sir Pulteney Plumb exclaimed very loudly as he bustled in the rear entrance, now in more modest travelling clothes and a light serge de Nîmes duster and wide-brimmed farmer’s hat, which he swept off elegantly as he made a “leg” to them. “Told you the ‘Red Gauntlet’ sets a fine table, haw haw! And, here is my good lady! Begad, m’dear, but look who has stopped at the very same inn as us! Allow us to join you, for we are famished and as dry as dust.” The Lewries had to sit and sip wine, order coffee to thin the alcohol fumes from what they had already taken aboard as Sir Pulteney and Lady Imogene ordered hearty full meals and dined as if they had all the time in the world.
“Now, for your coach and coachmen,” Sir Pulteney said at last as he rose and moved to the front door. Lewrie followed him to see Sir Pulteney paying off their hired coach and ordering their luggage brought to the inn. “I told them that you found the inn so delightful, and the arrival of old friends so pleasant, that we would all be staying on the night, and coach to Le Havre together in the morning.” Sir Pulteney explained after he returned. “They will rack back south to Paris a touch richer than they expected, and, God willing, your whereabouts ends here, haw haw!”
“What happens tomorrow, then?” Lewrie asked him.
“Not tomorrow, Captain Lewrie . . . what happens now is more to the point,” Sir Pulteney said with a sly expression as their luggage made its way through the inn, to the rear stableyard, and into the Plumbs’ coach. “Sated, my dear? Excellent! Now we will all pay our reckonings and resume our journey, what?”
There was no coachman for Sir Pulteney to pay off, for once he had handed Lady Imogene and Caroline into the coach, he sprang to the coachee’s bench and the reins most lithely, and got the team moving with a few clucks, a whistle, and a shake of the reins.
Lady Imogene crossed herself as they got under way once more. “Pulteney adores playing coachee . . . though I fear he’s not as talented as he imagines himself, and he rushes on much too fast sometimes.”
“Good Christ,” Lewrie said, shaking his head in dread.
Sir Pulteney got the coach on the road and began to set a rapid pace, whipping up like Jehu, the Biblical charioteer, putting the wind up Lewrie, who’d had his share of harum-scarum whip-hands like Zachariah Twigg and his damned three-horse chariot. Twigg was in his sixties, for God’s sake, usually aloof, staid, and cold, but hand him the reins and he’d turn into a raving lunatick, screeching like a naked Celtic warrior painted in blue woad, revelling in how close he came to carriages, farm wagg
ons, and pedestrians, as if re-enacting Queen Boadicea’s final charge against the Roman legions.
Sir Pulteney took the eastern road from Pontoise, following the north bank ’til reaching a crossroads that led north towards the smaller towns of Méru and Beauvais, slowly climbing into a region of low and rolling hills that were thickly forested . . . and the roads were windier.
Did it matter a whit to that fool? Like Hell it did, for their coach sometimes swayed onto two wheels, and those inside were jounced, tumbled, and rattled like dice in a cup. Lewrie’s testicles, it must be admitted, drew up in expectation of the grand smash to come.
At long last, and at a much slower pace, Sir Pulteney steered the coach off the road to a rougher and leaf-covered forest track, some few of those new-fangled Froggish kilomètres short of Méru, or so the last mile-post related, before they drew to a very welcome stop, deep in a forest glade.
“What now?” Lewrie had to ask, easing the kinks in his back from keeping himself as stiff as rigor mortis the last few hours, as he and Sir Pulteney went into the woods in one direction, the ladies another, to tend to the “necessities.”
“Why, we become other people before we reach Méru, sir,” their rescuer told him, beaming with pleasure as he took a pinch of snuff on the back of his hand. “Then, once there, we change our mode of travel. Ten years ago, during the height of the French Revolution’s bloodiness, there were more than a few residents there, Royalist in their sympathies, who aided our endeavours at spiriting the blameless to safety. In such a rural place, I rather doubt the Committee for Public Safety, or the later Directory, even bothered to root out so-called reactionaries, or hold their witch-hunts. No no, I’m certain there are still many of our old allies ready to speed us on our way. Ah-ah-achoo!” Sir Pulteney paused for a prodigious sneeze into a handkerchief, with all evident delight. “You will partake, Captain Lewrie?” he said, offering a snuff box. “Zounds, but that’s prime!” he said, sneezing again.
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