'The bales of fodder which were afterwards unloaded because we were not taking any horses?'
'Precisely. They had to be put ashore but the bags were already hidden behind a false bulwark at the back of the powder reserve. Now Washington must take delivery of the gold and the secret must be kept until then, because one never knows what treachery a rumour may set in motion – and our friends the English would attack us on the spot if they knew of the presence of this gold. It is too important to the Rebels.
'Now, this is what you have to do. On pretence of returning your young Indian to his tribe, so as not to set the natives against us and to try and win us a few friends among them, you are going to leave Newport, with your friend Tim Thocker as guide, since you do not know the country. You will go to Washington's headquarters and tell him what I have just told you. No more and no less. In the meanwhile, Monsieur de La Fayette will no doubt continue to quarrel with me over the men I am asking for – and now you know why! Go and fetch Thocker and the Indian to me. La Fayette is on board ship and will not even see them.'
But Gilles did not make for the door at once. Instead, he stayed where he was. He was immensely proud of the secret with which he had been honoured but at the same time a deep sense of his own unworthiness made him slightly uncomfortable. Being incapable of guile, he confessed it openly.
'General, why do you honour me with this? Monsieur de La Fayette is a general and a great lord and one of your own kind. Surely he is more fit for this than I? Tell him all about it! He will go back at once and return with the escort you want.'
Rochambeau shot him a shrewd glance from under lowered lids.
'You think I do not trust him? Far from it, but it is not so with the man to whom this fortune belongs. Leray de Chaumont has no love for La Fayette and if he wanted to entrust the gold to him he would have had it put aboard the Hermione at Rochefort, rather than the Duc de Bourgogne at Brest.
'Monsieur de Vergennes, too, without whose authority I would never have agreed to carry the gold, wishes Monsieur de La Fayette to be kept out of the business as far as possible, since he regards him as a young hothead with dangerous ideas. I cannot say they are altogether wrong. The Marquis is young and hotheaded, and he does not always think as much as he should. Given his gilded plumes and his vanity, he would be perfectly capable of spilling the whole lot in front of Congress, just to show them how much aid he can bring to their cause. And then God knows how much Washington would ever see of it! Does my explanation satisfy you?' he added, with a touch of irony which at once re-established the distance between them.
'Perfectly, my lord. But one word more, with your permission?'
'Yes?'
'This Monsieur Leray de Chaumont – why is he so eager to assist the Rebels? It is a huge sum of money.'
'But he is hugely rich! One of the richest men in Europe, I think. One of the most vindictive also and he has nursed a grudge against the English for many years for the way they all but wiped out his slaving fleet. Finally, he is both a financier and a gamester. If the new United States are victorious and can win their independence and throw the English into the sea, then the potential of this vast, self-governed country will be equally vast. Leray knows that if that happens he will reap at least ten times what he has laid out. The game, as they say, is worth the candle. Now go, lad, for time presses.'
'At once, General.'
Almost before the words reached Rochambeau, Gilles was in the passage. The heat outside was staggering. Coming from the comparative coolness of the Wanton house, Gilles felt as if he were stepping into an oven. He wished he could have unbuttoned his thick waistcoat, but this was not the moment to be called to order for dereliction of dress. All the same, as he began to run towards Long Wharf Street, he had the feeling that the sky had opened and was pouring molten lead down on his head. The sea, drained of all colour, was a dazzling sheet of white.
It was with a real sense of relief that he plunged into the cool shade of Martha's shop, with its pleasant smell of new rope and tobacco. It was unusually quiet, even for this peaceful hour of day when three-quarters of the town was taking a nap, for Martha considered sleeping in the afternoon a deplorable and degrading habit.
She herself was accustomed to pass the time in a variety of feminine tasks about the house. With Rosa, her fat black maid who never slept, for company, she would sew gowns, make jam or concoct one of the enormous peach pies which were her speciality, with which she would regale her neighbours and the ladies of her sewing circle when they came to spend an evening. But the kitchen, adjoining the shop, was equally silent and when Gilles knocked gently no one answered.
He went in, nevertheless, and swore roundly as he saw Martha, a small mound of blue and white checked gingham, lying unconscious before her stove, on which a pan of gooseberries was simmering gently. On either side of her were the sugar-covered ladle which must have fallen from her hand and the heavy frying pan which had evidently struck her down.
In addition, an overturned chair, a cup of tea spilled on the table and the marks where a hand had scooped something up from the white sugar all combined to show that something had happened. But of Tim and the Indian boy there was not a sign. Rosa, too, was conspicuous by her absence.
Gilles began by lifting up the girl and setting her in the big rocking chair by the window, and after making sure that she was not hurt, he set about reviving her with the help of a drying-up cloth dipped in a bucket of water and manipulated none too gently.
His energetic ministrations very soon produced results. Martha opened her china-blue eyes wide, sighed once or twice and put a hand up to the bruise that was already colouring on her temple. Her bewildered gaze went to Gilles who was busy chafing her hands.
'What happened?' she asked in the faint voice usual on such occasions.
'That's just what I'd like to know. Where is Rosa? Where are Tim and the Indian?'
The last word seemed to shed some light for Martha Carpenter. Recovering miraculously, she flushed brick red and leaped to her feet and began striding up and down her wrecked kitchen giving vent to such a spate of indignation that it was all Gilles could do to make sense of what had happened.
In the end he made out that when Tim had arrived with the young Indian, the boy was so quiet that he had untied him, after first relieving him of the weapons he used so readily. Then he had asked Martha to give him something to eat.
'I was not best pleased,' she said emphatically. 'I did not like the boy's looks, or his eyes. But Tim insisted and he was hungry too. I dished them up some pickled beef, doughnuts and a maple syllabub. God forgive me, but you should have seen that young savage eat! And now and then he said something in his own barbarous language—'
'Did he answer Tim's questions?'
'Yes, and without missing a mouthful. Upon my word, I ought to have given him ratsbane! When he had done stuffing himself, he began to look sleepy so Tim asked if he could put him in the outhouse with a blanket over him while he went to fetch the canoe from the place where you had hidden it. I said of course he could. Tim carried him out and locked the door on him and I went on making my gooseberry jam. Rosa is in the orchard picking peaches. I was just skimming the jam when something hit me on the head – and that's all I know. But it must have been that little wretch who did it. My head is ringing like a bell. Can you give me—'
'I'm sorry, Miss Martha, but now that you are awake again you'll have to look to yourself! Where is the outhouse?'
'Back of the house, on the right—'
Gilles was already outside. One glance was enough to tell him that although the door which Tim had locked was still as he had left it, the narrow window in the wall at head height was gaping open, its wooden lattice torn out. The boy could not have been as sleepy as Tim and Martha had thought and must have found some tool inside the little shed to use on the window. Just to make sure, Gilles hoisted himself up and looked inside. The shed was empty. The Indian had made off.
'Yet the gap is far f
rom wide,' Gilles muttered to himself. 'The boy is like a snake.'
But what mattered now was to find the snake as quickly as possible, and Tim as well, since Rochambeau was waiting for them both. Gilles hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do. The best thing might be to go to meet his friend. He knew the ways of Indians so well that he was bound to pick up the trail at once. But then it occurred to him that the boy, knowing that Tim had gone for his canoe, might have stayed in the town and be hiding there until nightfall when he might steal some fisherman's boat and get away from the island without having to pass the camp.
Pausing briefly at the house to tell Martha that he was going to search the harbour and to ask her to send Tim there when he came, Gilles started to patrol the length of the wooden quay, inspecting the line of boats moored to the piles below.
Except for three or four longshoremen snoozing in the sun against a stack of timbers, the place was deserted. Only a boat from one of the French ships blocking the harbour mouth was sculling ashore across the smooth waters. Fearing that it might be La Fayette, Gilles paused, shading his eyes with one hand against the glare, and studied the figures standing in the stern. But when he had recognized the stocky figure and cocked hat of Monsieur de la Pérouse and, beside him, the taller shape of Monsieur Destouches, the Neptune's captain, he resumed his search with an easy mind.
He had just come to Flint's Inn, where Rochambeau had spent his first night ashore, when a tremendous uproar broke out within. It was the unmistakable clamour of soldiers off duty and getting out of hand. Knowing how strictly Rochambeau and Ternay were watching their men's behaviour, Gilles thought that he had better go inside and take a look, and try to calm things down before Pérouse and Destouches came ashore and heard it.
He pushed open the door and saw that it was high time someone intervened, and also that he had found what he was seeking. The Indian boy was there, lashed to one of the wooden pillars supporting the inn's roof. His face was as impassive as ever but as Gilles came in the boy turned to look at him and the terror in his eyes betrayed his youth. The child was afraid, as any child in the world would be at the mercy of a pack of ruffians.
Seated at a table a few feet away were some thirty men of Lauzun's legion, jostling one another to put down their money in a game of faro.
'Come now, gentlemen,' shrilled a voice that Gilles recognized with a thrill of anger. 'Who'll have him? You'll have to bet higher than that! This young, strong savage I have had the good luck to capture will certainly fetch a higher price at the next slave sale in Boston or Providence than any negro child.'
'If he's worth so much,' someone growled, 'why don't you keep him for yourself? Sell him yourself!'
'Because when you've been where I have, you need money more than a slave,' snarled Morvan de Saint-Mélaine. 'And you'd not be asking such stupid questions if you'd any left to put down! Now, gentlemen, where's your nerve? You won't get such a chance again.'
Gilles, standing in the tavern doorway, allowed himself a moment to observe his enemy. He had not set eyes on Judith's brother since their encounter in the port of Brest, the evening before they sailed. But an examination of the army's muster rolls which, as the general's secretary he had access to, had assured him that no Saint-Mélaine was included in them and he had concluded that Morvan had enlisted under an assumed name.
This was unexpectedly confirmed during the course of the interminable voyage. On May 26th, a signal had been received from Monsieur de Lombard, the captain of the Provence, which was carrying Lauzun's men, that one of them had been found guilty of stealing rum and attempting, while under the influence of drink, to set fire to the ship, and was sentenced to be keelhauled. The man's name was Samson.
Seized by a premonition he could not explain, Gilles watched the punishment through a telescope and saw that he was not mistaken: the man being plunged into the sea from the yard-arm was indeed Morvan.
Once ashore, he had made inquiries as to what had become of him and so discovered that the man had not died of his punishment but had finished the voyage in irons, as a result of which he had been taken to the hospital on Conanicut Island on arrival, along with the rest of the sick. He could not long have rejoined his regiment.
Absorbed in the game and in the growing pile of coins in front of him, Morvan had not seen Gilles come in. Gilles walked straight up to the wooden post to which the boy was tied, scooping a knife from a table as he went and slipping it into his pocket. His first impulse had been simply to release the lad without more ado but he remembered just in time that he could not afford the luxury of letting him run away.
Instead, he smiled encouragingly as he passed, making the child crimson to the roots of his hair, then pushed his way through the players until he stood facing the temporary banker.
'You are playing for something that does not belong to you, gentlemen,' he said coolly. 'This young Indian is a prisoner of war. He belongs to the Comte de Rochambeau who has sent me to fetch him. Pick up your money and get out!'
There was an instant silence, broken only by the clatter of Morvan's chair as he thrust it backwards in rising. The face under his red hair was white, with a curious greenish tinge about the pinched nostrils. But a flame of savage joy sprang suddenly into his dark eyes.
He let his breath out in a sigh of pure pleasure.
'The bastard! At last! The devil has saved me the trouble of looking for him and handed him to me on a plate! And, on my oath, giving orders, too! Cocksure young puppy! Hold him, lads! Don't let him get away before I've got even with him! We can finish the game later.'
'Just a minute,' one of the men broke in. 'He says the savage belongs to the General and, if he's the General's secretary, he ought to know what he's saying. I've no wish to be flogged for theft—'
'You poor fool!' Morvan roared. 'He's a bastard, I tell you. Lies are second nature to him and I tell you—'
'And I tell you,' Gilles took him up, as cool as ever, 'that you have no right in a tavern at this hour of day. Don't trust to the fact that everyone's asleep. They aren't. I can assure you, for instance, that Monsieur de la Pérouse and Monsieur Destouches are landing at the jetty at this moment. I saw their boat.'
He had no need to say it twice. Lauzan's hussars fell on the heap of money on the table and, each grabbing roughly what was his, escaped with it, at the cost of a few buffets, by way of the discreet rear door of the inn. From there, they fled between the houses like a flock of scarlet crows.
Three men, however, had remained with Morvan. All were clearly drunk. Their looks, were so threatening that the landlord, Flint, guessing that evil things were about to be done in his house, plucked up courage to emerge from the kitchen, whither he had fled with his serving maid for safety, and ask in quavering accents in his bad French:
'Soldiers go now?'
'We're not finished yet,' Morvan snapped, his narrowed gaze still fixed on Gilles' face. 'Shut the doors! And lock them! Then get back to your kitchen and stay there, if you don't want to end on your own spit.'
But fear for his property stirred one final spark of courage in the wretched Flint.
'If there's anything broken – who's to pay?'
'It's you'll be broken if you're not gone in one second!' roared a great black-avized lout who looked like the devil himself in his red uniform coat. The words were accompanied by a gesture expressive enough to elicit a moan of terror from Flint and send him scuttling to obey. He shut his doors and vanished like a rat into its hole.
Convinced now that he was going to have to fight for his life against the four of them, Gilles quietly drew his sword. Morvan gave a jeering laugh.
'What? Do you think I'm going to fight you? A trooper of the king's horse fight a bastard penpusher? Such as you are only to be touched with a cane or a riding crop! Come on, you men! Get him. We'll give him his deserts. Careful, now. Don't damage him too soon!'
Gilles' jaw set under the taunts and the surge of anger that flared up in him drove caution to the winds. Re
gardless of his unprotected back, he lunged at Morvan with his sword.
'I'll show you who's the bastard, you damned craven scoundrel! Fight, damn you—'
A howl of fury drowned his words. Morvan clapped his hand to the long scratch that marked his cheek. His fingers reddened and he sprang back with a yell:
'Take him, in God's name! What are you waiting for?'
As one, the three men fell on Gilles and, taken in the rear, he was unable to defend himself. In another moment he had been overpowered, stripped of shirt and waistcoat at a sign from Morvan and lashed by the wrists to a rope flung over one of the ceiling beams. In this position he was hoisted up a few inches from the ground.
'What do you think you're doing?' His voice was as calm as ever. 'Must I remind you I was sent by General Rochambeau to fetch the Indian boy, and that he is still waiting?'
One of the men, impressed perhaps, muttered something about 'maybe better not make trouble' but Morvan only sneered.
'Trouble! What can the General want with a scrubby lad like you? And even if it's true? We don't have to know anything about it – especially since he won't be seeing either of you! Because get this into your head. There's not going to be much skin, or much flesh left on your bones when we've done with you! Scum! I'll show you what you get for throwing a gentleman in the mud.'
'You don't need me for that,' Gilles scoffed. 'As to being a gentleman – I'd no idea you boasted anything so exalted – Samson!'
All this time, the devilish-looking man had been unfastening his belt and wrapping the pierced end round his hand, leaving the buckle free. Evidently he was to be executioner. 'Samson' obviously had a knack of making the right friends, or accomplices.
Gilles' wrists were already painful from the whole weight of his body hanging on them. He tried vainly to grasp the rope with his fingers to ease them, shut his eyes and braced his muscles instinctively against the coming agony, praying with all his might that it should not drag a single cry from him. He would not give his enemy the fearful satisfaction of hearing him scream. The time had come for him to commend his soul to God.
Falcon 1 - The Lure of the Falcon Page 19