FOUR - THE DOVER ROAD
‘In which the Pimpernels have several English misadventures, pick up Francis Simpkins and Henry has a vision, although learns to his relief that there is no magic at all…’
Huge Horace Holmwood was biting his lip, in his father’s big straw hat and screwing up his not-so-intelligent face, wrapped in his mother’s long scarf now, as he tried to keep control of the jolting carriage on its way to Dover: William Wickham’s second best.
A flame pink dawn broke around Skipper and the brand new Pimpernel Club, across an English sky filled with mountainous purple clouds, as it bumped along the heavy earth road, without an enemy adult in sight.
Skipper Holmwood was deep in thought, or as deep as he could possibly manage, and getting increasingly nervous too, for such a feisty lad, because big Skip realised that his pa would be furious if he ever knew and he feared his fists a very great deal.
Several things had swept this country boy up into their strange and sudden adventure. Firstly the fact of his brand new friendship with little Nellie Bonespair, forged last summer, when Spike had asked him about rabbit traps, because Skipper was a rather lonely boy. Yet what made the journey really irresistible was the thought of seeing the sea.
Yet poor Skipper looked furiously guilty too because not only would his pa be furious but they were committing a crime, by stealing Mr Wickham’s carriage, and his Ma had always taught him that at all costs you must be honest in life.
Inside the rattling coach, on its hard leather seats, sat Henry Bonespair and Armande St Honoré now, newly Ninth Count St Honoré, gazing out of the open windows rather nervously.
They had both been in a carriage before, of course, but never one that they were actually driving themselves, or controlling at least, but now Henry Bonespair’s mounting sense of freedom came like a growing wind.
Henry’s right eye had a nasty black ring around it, as he clutched his parent’s itinerary, but underneath it the special letters of transit from the Frenchie Embassy too, that he had snatched up by mistake. They were quite useless to them, of course, since they weren’t even going to France.
The half English and the elegant French boy had managed to steel the coach past the lodge that night without waking Charlotte, but it had been far harder to persuade little Spike to stay behind, and tell their mother that the boys would be back in just a few days time. Henry was deeply glad that they had. He always felt responsible for reckless little Spike, although guilty Hal did not give more time to his sister.
Before getting aboard Armande St Honoré had gone up to the big house to change into simpler clothes, although dandified enough still, and to fetch his fine cloth valise too, which sat beside him now, while Constance had long retired to bed and to her smelling salts, in Mr Wickham’s great home.
After a quick dash back to the barn to help Holmwood carry an extra wheel to their carriage, the three boys had finally got on the road, in the very early hours.
A big cloth bag sat in the back too, which Henry had taken with the express purpose of confronting the problem of brilliant disguises in Dover. It was the family dressing up bag.
A little purse of silver coin sat on the seat next to Henry too, with a draw string to tie it shut, which Simon’s son kept looking at nervously. Henry felt as terrible as Skipper about stealing the thing, but this was no time for doubts now. An innocent young life was at stake.
The young Count was staring at Henry though and Armande suddenly realised that he did not really know this boy at all, feeling nervous and rather uncomfortable. It was like starting at some new school, although in France Armande St Honoré had had private tutors, of course.
Armande was very happy though that he had had a chance to clean himself up before they had left and wash off most of that dirt.
“Bonespair,” he whispered suddenly, raising a thick eyebrow, “Tis a strange name, non?”
Henry looked up and frowned. He was often teased at school for it, just like his nose. He hated being teased and he hated being bullied too, parhaps that is why he stood up for Francis Simpkins.
“Yes, Count. I suppose it is. Er, it’s Huguenot though. Frenchie, like you. Grandpa settled in London for a time. We were lace makers once.”
Henry looked at Armande’s fine shirt, wondering if the two of them really had anything in common and the Count frowned distastefully.
“Huguenot,” he nodded though, “You’re Protestants then, Monsieur, not French Catholics, like the great St Honorés?”
It was a rather grown up question and the two comparative strangers, of such different ranks too, felt very awkward indeed to be in the carriage together.
Armande was scrutinising Hal’s rather plain clothes and the fifteen year older suddenly wondered if he should bring up the question of a leader again. Armande St Honoré thought better of it, for the moment at least.
“Yes, Count,” said Henry cheerfully, “although Ma and pa don’t worry about it too much. Pa says we should just try to fit in in England.”
“Well, Robespierre does not care either,” said Armande coldly, “Because they believe in nothing at all in France now, Mamman says. Not God, nor anything else. What now though, ‘enri? A plan. If you are really to be our leader.”
Henry Bonespair suddenly didn’t like this talk of France and he was glad to get back down to practical matters now. He held his nose thoughtfully again.
“First off, I reckon we make for the Night Watch Inn, Count,” he answered. “We’ve got rooms already paid, on the itinerary. Then we pick up Francis Simpkins, if we can, and drive to the King’s Head and on to Dover, if we have to, that is. From there we can spread around the port and search too. Then we come straight back again. With Juliette, safe and sound.”
It seemed a very scientific plan indeed, if a little too easy, and Hal felt rather important, as the coach hit a bump, and the two boys were lifted from their seats and dashed down again.
The boys went on, rattled and buffeted about, and after a time they felt the carriage slowing, so Henry leant out of the window. They had come to a wide cross roads, with a moss covered mile stone that said:
DOVER 123
It seemed like travelling to the moon to the untraveled Club.
“How fast do you think we’re going, Count?” asked Henry, pulling back inside again and suddenly wishing Francis Simpkins was there instead of Armande. “At this rate we won’t even be at the Night Watch til the early hours. At least no one knows about us.”
They went on again, wondering if they would catch up with Juliette, as the three Pimpernels passed fields and little hamlets, villages, pleasant streams and a countryside mostly at peace with itself in the sticky summer heat, untroubled by the bloody Revolution raging for four years across the sea in France, although with many signs that England too was mobilizing for war now.
It was not until mid-morning when Skipper Holmwood suddenly cried out though - “Look out, yoose.”
The boys both looked out, and to their horror, along the road to the West, came five men on horseback, travelling fast. Henry recognised their bright red coats: They were soldiers.
Were they following the Pimpernel Club though, wondered Hal, and if so, how did they ever know?
Skipper slowed the coach and a major, by the pips on his bright red jacket, came alongside the window at a trot, surprised to see two young lads inside, and looking as if butter would not melt in their young mouths.
“Mornin’, boys,” he grunted, “I’m Major Bishop of the 3rd Dover Regiment. What are you lads doing travelling out here, on your own?”
“Going back to school, Sir,” answered Hal immediately, blushing slightly, “With this illness in London, Sir, er, our parents thought it safer to study by the sea.”
Armande frowned, when Henry added quickly: “St Hilyards. My little sister’s got the cholera, Sir, so they sent us on ahead. Just to be safe.”
“And I’m sorry indeed to hear it,” cried Major Bishop, noticing Armande’s over fi
ne attire and Hal’s black eye and sitting back a little in his saddle, since the cholera was so feared. “But the road’s not safe, lads. Soldiers can’t be spared to patrol it, with the Devil loose in France, so travellers are easy game now, for Highwaymen.”
“Highwaymen?” gulped Henry.
“Right, lad, and one’s been working this very route, for months. He’ll hang when we catch up with him though. I’ll string him up myself.”
“You’re looking for him now, Sir?” asked Henry nervously.
“No fear, boy, we’ve other quarry now,” said the Major shortly, “There’s word of Frenchie spies abroad too. A farmer heard them talking and rode to raise the alarm.”
The two Pimpernels glanced sharply at each other and Count Armande seemed about to blurt something out, when Henry flashed the French lad a stern warning look. His Frenchie accent would give them both away.
Henry felt guilty though and wondered if he should not alert the adults immediately: The Authorities. What stopped him sharp was Juliette’s accusation of cowardice, what they were doing now, but above all their secret oath to the Club: The sacred oath.
“And we’d better be riding on,” said the major suddenly, “Don’t dawdle for a moment, lads, and get that eye seen to soon. We’ll wish you good day then, boys. Go on there, Henrietta.”
The major tapped his horses flanks gently yet the horse gave a furious whinny and almost reared as, to the boys’ astonishment, the major went galloping off on Henrietta, with a loud ‘Woaw there, girl’.
Something had struck her flanks and startled the horse into a frantic gallop, soon followed by the major’s men.
“Slow, Henrietta,” he bellowed. “Slow there.”
“Phew,” gulped Henry, thinking he could hear a faint banging from somewhere below, “that was close. And that’s a Pimpernel first skill.”
“Lying?” said Count Armande St Honoré rather doubtfully.
“Making things up, Count,” corrected Henry, irritably, “And improvising. It just saved our blooming necks, didn’t it? It’s not lies.”
Count Armande supposed that it wasn’t.
“But this school, Bonespair,” he said, “‘ow ever did you…?”
Henry grinned.
“Easy, Count. Ma grew up in Dover. She was always talking about it.”
At that very moment, in a black coach much further along the Road, Juliette St Honoré was glaring at the horrible man sitting opposite her.
Of the two agents in the pay of the feared Committee of Public Security, one was driving, the other dozing fitfully opposite her, but snapping open a single, beady eye, every time that Juliette even stirred.
The carriage was moving far too fast for the poor girl to jump out, unlike her brother, and Peurette, the bigger and uglier of the dreaded agents of France, had two loaded pistols in his big hands. A white handkerchief was wrapped tightly around on of his palms, where Armande had bitten him.
Juliette was proud of how hard her brother had clenched his teeth, and of his sudden escape at a cross roads too, although she suddenly missed Armande terribly. Juliette loved her younger brother a great deal and she worried constantly for the responsibility that had fallen on him so soon. Her brother was very sensitive really.
Juliette longed to be back at the big English house, in the free air and the horrid enclosed carriage was making her feel sick already. She had gathered from the horrible men they were taking her back to France, for whatever reason she could not yet fathom. But among the names they had talked of, including a ship called L’Esperance, one had kept reoccurring, with worrying reverence too – Charles Peperan Couchonet.
Beyond that, what was happening to Juliette now was like some dreadful nightmare. She thought suddenly of what that strange Bonespair boy had said about “Brave People”, thinking too of the size of Henry’s nose, and feeling sad that she had ever called the strange English boy a coward.
Juliette suddenly wished too that there really were such heroic Englishmen as this Scarlet Pimpernel, or at least someone to come to her rescue. It was hopeless though.
In hot pursuit of Juliette now, the stone mile stones seemed to pass achingly slowly for the bold little Pimpernel Club. Darkness came in, but at last the boys reached a sign for the Night Watch Inn. The low windows were filmed with fat and grime, while very unwelcoming black smoke billowed copiously from the old stone chimney. Count Armande looked as if he wanted to be sick.
Skipper insisted on stabling the horses, then sleeping in the barn with them as well, and the publican was too drunk to notice the strangeness of two boys, travelling alone to Dover.
Despite it’s fearful appearance The Night Watch was a friendly enough place though and soon most of the guests had retired to bed.
Upstairs, after a hot beer stew, that tasted delicious, two simple cots were made ready and there was a fire burning in the boy’s room. Hal loved to look into fire light, just as he liked to gaze into water, in the sunlight, since it always did something to his thoughts and made him dream.
He gazed into it now, as Count Armande looked sceptically at the rather dirty cot, but placed his cloth valise on a chair and lay down on top of the sheet, fully dressed, finding it strange to be sharing a room with this funny English lad.
Henry Bonespairt was exhausted too and felt his eyes half closing, as he stood in front of the fire, fiddling with the dial on his marvellous watch, when something very bizarre happened.
The fire in the room seemed to leap up and like a red wave, the flames parted. It was like a door opening in thin air, there in the middle of the Night Watch Inn and as if a strange light was flooding into the room too. In the firelight now Henry saw people though, and a clear scene, that made him blink in fear and absolute astonishment.
There stood a high, wooden scaffold, in a wide city square, that he somehow knew immediately was in Paris and on it stood that infamous machine: The Guillotine.
A still beautiful if aging lady was standing right by it, shaking her head, in a simple white cap, bound with a sombre black ribbon. There was something in her tragic look, in her poise and grace, that made Henry Bonespair think instantly of a Queen.
An angry crowd was watching, booing and jeering silently and, as the woman was laid down below that terrible axe blade, Henry noticed three extraordinary figures standing to one side, watching intently too, one of whom rather reminded him of his own teacher back in their little school in Stockwell. He had the same detached and almost scientific air, a bit like Hal’s friend Francis Simpkins.
Henry’s tired eyes were on stalks now and he shivered desperately, wondering if he was asleep and dreaming already, or if he had had too much beer in the stew.
The fire flared though, the scene vanished and Henry jolted. There was no one there at all: They had vanished.
“’enry,” said a tired voice behind him, “Get some rest, Bonespair. You were sleeping on your feet.”
Henry couldn’t sleep for ages, because of what he had imagined in the firelight, especially the strangeness of those watchers, and he was suddenly thinking about magic again, as he stared at the ceiling: Spike’s magic.
Dawn woke them though and when they looked out of the grimy window, Skipper was already harnessing the horses in the breezy morning.
So they went down to breakfast and with a few careful questions to the publican, who was nursing a dreadful headache, Henry ascertained that another coach with a pretty blonde girl had passed by the evening before, although it had not stopped.
“We need to hurry, Holmwood,” the leader of the Pimpernels cried, as he and Armande climbed back on board and felt the wind getting up stiffly, “if we’re ever to catch her up. She musn’t sail before the Club arrives. But first we get Francis, as quickly as we can.”
The sign for Fule was only two miles on from The Night Watch and since Henry had visited once, they found the house easily enough. There stood Henry’s friend Francis Simpkins too, in a thick woollen coat, standing next to his aunt, right out
side the door. They had been waiting half the morning.
Francis was a slight, lanky lad, with curly brown hair, big, watchful eyes and a nervous, owlish face, blooming with hundreds of freckles. The Second Catcher was very good at sums, codes and maps, and dreamt of being a great scientist one day.
Now Francis Simpkins looked desperately nervous though, especially as he saw the snorting horses at the front of the carriage. He was frightened of animals and as he looked into those flaring nostrils, seeing the bright red veins inside, he wobbled slightly and stepped back.
Henry jumped out though, as soon as Skipper pulled up, hiding in his big hat, and though they were a day late, Henry had been right about their waiting on changed plans. Nothing was certain for travellers now.
“Hello Mam,” he said boldly, nodding to Francis’s aunt and grinning at his best friend too, who was a good head shorter than Henry. “We have to hurry though, we’re late in our itinerary.”
“And Mr Bonespair?” said Francis’s aunt suspiciously, and Henry almost blushed.
“Er, my pa rode on ahead to stop the boat sailing, maam.”
Skipper grunted and nodded furiously, in his big hat, but Francis Simpkins had just noticed the strange, glittering look in Henry’s eyes, one of them with a nasty black ring around it.
“Oh, dear,” said Francis’s aunt, looking at Henry Bonespair in surprise, “but you’ll all keep warm, won’t you now, dears, and hurry poor Francis back again? We think you are very brave, Henry Bonespair, going to France like this.”
The aunt looked as uncertain as Constance had but Francis was frowing at the fact is aunt had described him as ‘poor’.
“Yes, maam,” said the leader of the Pimpernels, “Holmwood here will bring him back straight again, won’t you Holmwood, Man?”
Skipper nodded again, and gave a manly grunt too, trying not to show his blushing face.
“Havagal,” whispered Francis though, looking admiringly at the carriage, especially the clever luggage webbing beneath it, if not the horses. He had just decided to study it, scientifically. “Wavagots gavago…”
The Terror Time Spies Page 6