The Terror Time Spies

by David Clement-Davies

  Simon lowered his hands, as he finished, to see the Quaker Simpkins had started to pray, while both Charlotte and Constance St Honoré had both burst into floods of tears, hugging each other tenderly.

  As they hugged and talked, safely in leafy Peckham, Simon’s great employer, the English diplomat and leading agent in the powerful League of the Gloved Hand, was striding down a narrow country road in the distant country of Holland.

  The long sea crossing to the Hook of Holland, the port where he had recently landed, had been very rough indeed and now the Yorkshire man was glad to be on firm, dry land again.

  At his side walked three men, fellow members of the secretive League too, all on their way together along the French border through Holland and Germany, into neutral Switzerland. There lay the perfect vantage point to spy on France.

  William Wickham’s coach had stopped on the roadside further back and now the four men were approaching a small barn, set back among a copse of ash trees and as they did so, the air was suddenly filled with a strange cooing.

  As they drew nearer, the English spies looked up at a grey bird flying through the blue. It turned in a clean loop and sailed down towards the back of the barn, as if the creature was making for it on purpose.

  William Wickham’s clever eyes sparkled and just then another man appeared in a strange apron and clogged shoes, with thin blonde wisps of hair, and the most extraordinarily ruddy cheeks. He looked like a huge cheese.

  As he spied the strangers, fear entered his beady, suspicious eyes. There were always dangerous characters in these parts and Europe was at war now.

  “Who is U?” he grunted loudly, which seemed to be bad English, but was in fact Dutch for ‘who are you’?

  William Wickham pulled something from his frock coat and, marching forwards, swept it towards the Dutchman. His face softened, as he took the thing and began to examine the most beautiful beige silk glove, emblazoned with the letters LGH: League of The Gloved Hand.

  “English?” he asked immediately.

  “Of course we’re English,” answered the Yorkshire man curtly, although the League had many foreign operatives too.

  “Then welkum,” cried the Dutchman, producing a glove himself and handing them both back to Wickham. They made a perfect pair.

  “We’re in a hurry,” said Wickham, with a nod. “The Carriers? There’s word from England?”

  “Yah. Five days ago. Kom, kom.”

  The Dutch agent turned and led them inside, as one of the other Englishmen, who was called Darney, covered his nose with a silk handkerchief. The floor was strewn with white bird droppings and grey mouldy feathers everywhere. The place smelt awful.

  The furious noise of cooing rose and beyond a wire meshing, with a little gate, there must have been thirty pigeons, sitting with puffed up feathers or strutting about among the piles of pecked corn. Wickham noted that each had little leather ankle straps on, with a tiny holder, as if to carry a message.

  That is exactly what they did, for these specially trained homing pigeons were flown all over Europe, between the many staging posts established by the League of The Gloved Hand, to send messages between England and Holland, Austria, Switzerland and Germany: All countries that were the enemies of France now.

  It was a very complicated business, training and flying pigeons to convey a message, so much quicker than any ordinary transport in the days before any real Post, as was shown by the wooden compartment that the Dutchman now approached. It housed rows and rows of tiny little cubby holes, each no larger than an apothecary’s draw, in which were scrolled any number of tiny messages.

  Each hole had a name attached to it too: PEITR. WOLFGANG. MARQUISE. HORTANCE. ROLF.

  So they went on, the names of the birds themselves, and since each could only be flown, out of habit and training, from just one point to another, with their message or reply, also the key to their point of origin and departure.

  “Here,” said the Dutchman, reaching up to one that said ARTHUR and pulling out the tiny message, with his thumb and forefinger, as if extracting a splinter from a favourite patient.

  He handed the miniscule note to William Wickham, who unfurled it carefully. It was written delicately on the finest and thinnest paper, especially made in England, and all it said was this: “Bonespair journey cancelled this morning. RIP.” It had been sent the day after Wickham had left.

  “Blast n damn it,” cried Wickham, scrunching up the note from Robert Ian Penhaligon in his large fist, and thinking of his special Chronometer too.

  “Bonespair,” said one of the other men immediately, “But that’s yer own Land Agent, aint it? Who’s son was to carry the special…”

  “Right, Foxwood,” answered William Wickham. “To Roubechon’s place. Penhaligon sent a carrier to the vintner, to tell him that he were to steal…er, remove it, and give it straight to our man in Paris. With what it carries inside it now.”

  “Then the plan’s foiled already, Man,” cried the third accomplice, a man called Hayfield, in a very aristocratic voice, though with nothing of the fop in it.

  Wickham looked at him gravely and swung his head towards the Dutchman, who was holding a prize pigeon to his chest, blowing on it softly, and stroking its head tenderly.

  “Leave us now,” Wickham ordered sternly.

  The Dutchman blanched, but turned and hurried from the pigeon coup. He was only a paid servant of the League and so, although he picked up the currents of great affairs in the cryptic little notes he handled, he was never to be entrusted with such deep knowledge as Wickham was about to speak of now.

  There was a low table in the little room, with five broken down stools and a half drunk bottle of Kummel, a strong Dutch drink. William Wickham and the other spies sat down conspiratorially, among the mouldy feathers and pigeon droppings.

  They all looked desperately worried now.

  “The Chronometer were only a second front though, Hayfield,” said Wickham, “What’s inside it is worthless, unless banked in person.”

  “Then why did you…” began the man called Darney.

  “Insurance, Darney. Always cover yer options, man. The Bonespair boy was going to Paris any rate, and coincidentally to one of our own. As an innocent abroad, the lad were the perfect human carrier then. Who’d ever suspect children? The business wouldn’t have touched him, except for the loss of that watch, and I was going to make that up to him. Somehow.”

  The man called Hayfield looked rather disapproving now.

  “Then where are the originals, Wickham?” he asked.

  “Agent Malgret has them on him, travelling through Le Havre to Paris right now. He’s instructions to take them straight to the Marquis in person.”

  William Wickham helped himself to a stiff drink.

  “Though sending a Frenchie Double Agent via Calais would have been much quicker, it would be far more dangerous too, with Couchonet stationed there. So I came up with my secondary plan and our insurance. The Bonespair boy.”

  “And if Malgret misfires too,” said Darney, “then the Marquis won’t ever act to…”

  “Not only that, man,” interrupted William Wickham gravely, “but the Girondins and those royalists poised to rise up, using all that our plans will bring them, and at the very moment of her Liberation too, may loose courage altogether.”

  “While Austria waits,” said Foxwood, the sweetest faced of the four, “to defend her honour as well.”

  William Wickham nodded sadly.

  “By Jove,” cried Hayfield, taking a very stiff drink too.

  “So we must pray, gentlemen,” said Wickham, lifting his glass, “That Malgret makes it to Paris in one piece. For the very sake of France now.”

  The men stiffened and toasted the thought, then sat in the shadows whispering together among the cooing, as the conversation turned to what was happening in Paris.

  “Dr Marat,” said Wickham, after a while, “a man of genius, I’m bound, and one I’d sorely love to topple from his seat o
f Security. That flaky little devil.”

  “Perhaps the League should try it then,” suggested Foxwood, “Get to him ourselves, via Malgret, and cut his throat. Or poison him.”

  “Murder?” said Wickham, with a frown, “I’d have no qualms, Foxy, if we could get to him without being discovered. Slip a dagger deep in his dark Frenchie heart.”

  The scheming adults nodded. In the machinations of the League of the Gloved Hand they had often had to do and order many terrible things, almost daily too. Or they thought they had to, with Europe facing Revolution and war.

  “But Marat’s guarded in that damned bath tub, day n night,” said Wickham angrily, “and, as Penhaligon always says, a man must know his limitations. Besides, what would happen then?”

  His co-agents gazed back at him questioningly.

  “The beast would just rise up, in some other form. No, Gentlemen, we need a more gallant stroke now. One that turns men’s eyes to hope, not Terror, and that, Gentlemen, is our royal plan.”

  William Wickham leapt to his feet and raised his glass high.

  “The Queen of France!” he cried.

  Foxwood’s eyes were sparkling with tears, but just then they heard a different tone in the cooing and noticed that a newcomer had just landed. It was an especially fat looking lady pigeon, lifting her foot with the weight of the little message attached to it.

  Darney summoned the Dutchman back, who had soon popped into the bird enclosure again.

  “Dover,” he whispered fondly, as he unhooked the little note from her pigeon toe.

  “From Dover?” asked Wickham keenly.

  “Noo. Name’s Dover,” corrected the Dutchman, thinking, like the others, that this technology was very remarkable, and far more impressive than even that terrible French Guillotine, “but she kum frum Le Havre.”

  “Le Havre!” cried Wickham, “The damned message, Man. Quickly.”

  All it said was this: “Malgret taken, but plans destroyed first. LGH.”

  William Wickham looked as if the world had just turned upside down. His colleagues knew his furious temper too and they backed away a little.

  “By Jesu,” said their leader, “Then the plan’s ruined in a single afternoon. We’re lost.”

  “We should get a message,” said Foxwood sombrely, “To the Earl.”

  As he glanced at the Dutchman, the handler went over to a pile of tiny pieces of paper by those drawers.

  “Destination?” grunted the Dutchman.

  “London,” answered Foxwood cheerlessly. “First Class.”

  The Dutchman’s podgy hand was moving across those names, until it settled on CUTHBERT, and he pulled out a little holder and handed it to Foxwood. Foxwood sat down to write, but William Wickham had begun to pace about the smelly room, trying to focus his churning thoughts.

  “Wait, Foxwood,” he cried suddenly, stopping in mid stride.

  “Wait? Why, Wickham?”

  “Maybe we don’t need to tell his Lordship just yet,” said Wickham, his eyes glittering almost fearfully, “And maybe the plans of the League aren’t foiled quite so easily either.”

  “Not foiled? But what you going to do?” asked Darnley.

  Wickham frowned, not a man to be too bound by limitations, just like brave Henry Bonespair.

  “We go to Paris, of course. In disguise. And perhaps we can deal with Dr Marat too, while we’re there.”

  As the adult secret agents wondered what they would see, what Nellie Bonespair had seen arriving in Paris, over six hours before the other Pimpernels, was that sleeping dragon, but very much awake.

  As the oak barrels had passed unchecked through a different Paris gate, Spike had poked her head over the top, as her carriage came to a stop in the city of Paris. The place seemed to be thronging with people at every quarter.

  Many were in those funny red caps, Spike rather liked, coloured sashes tied around their wastes too, and others dressed as fairly ordinary, respectable folk, although more discretely than you might have seen in London.

  The last thing anyone wanted now was to be mistaken for an aristo.

  Nor did it seem a place dedicated only to the terrible work of state execution, or the sombre purposes of men like Charles Couchonet. For people must work and live their lives, especially when threatened with their lives being rather shorter than they had first imagined, or hoped.

  That is why, if Nellie had only known it, Paris currently contained sixty places to dance in, and twenty three theatres, open nightly, one of which Citizeness Merimonde was due to perform in, that very evening.

  What Spike noticed too, with a sinking little heart, were the number of weapons everywhere. All the adults seemed armed, whether with staff or simple pike, pistols or muskets and swords. Spike thought, with a gulp, of what she had overheard Count Armande saying about only one thing waiting in Paris now – DEATH.

  Yet, poking up her head all day, Nell had seen so many amazing things that she thought Paris and this silly Revolution were the most exciting things in the whole world. She noticed too that people were taking down street signs though, like the Rue St Jaques and L’Avenue St George. Spike realised that all the signs thy were removing were of funny Saint’s names, although she did not know what it meant. Even as the others raced after her though, Spike looked out to see a sign that said this:

  HOTEL CRILLON

  It wasn’t the homely sight of a ‘Hotel’ that so struck the seven year old, it was the sounds all around the great and famous Place de la Revolution. For that is just where the detour had just taken those barrels, because the cart drivers had spent the entire day sightseeing, then noticed a stream of excited people, so followed them here.

  The great Paris square were a King had already died was filled with onlookers, jostling around a great wooden platform, bearing the object of their fascination: That new Frenchie killing machine - Madame Guillotine herself.

  The weird contraption looked like something that Spike had seen at an English country fair, although from the buzzing excitement of the French mob, the brave little girl realised that it most certainly wasn’t a tombola.

  Spike saw the slanted axe blade gleaming high above a flat bench. Then the headsman’s block, as yet unused that day, so still clean and shiny. She also saw a large wicker basket and the fresh straw all about it’s base, waiting for another poor Frenchie head to be delivered, sharpish.

  The mob in the terrible square were crowding around it expectantly and men and women walking through them, selling sheets of paper to the audience, carrying the lists of victims to be executed that day, and the times of the event too, like play lists at a vaudeville.

  Of course, free and brave Englishmen might find this all very shocking indeed, and very French too, until they remembered that the same thing happened in England too, at spots like London’s Tyburn, although it was a rope that they used there for common criminals, and silken ones for criminal aristocrats.

  There was an especially raucous, even jubilant quality to this Revolutionary crowd, waiting for their Madame to get to her work again. Not to mention the mob’s size and colourful outfits, while hawkers made a killing selling wine, beer and saucison - French sausage.

  It all gave the Revolutionary Square a carnival feel, as the adults jostled about, looking greedily at their newly acquired programmes, as if they owned the lives about to be sacrificed in front of them all.

  “’ere,” one cried, thrusting a dirty finger at the list, “DeBouchiville. Husband ‘an wife. The Comte du Rene, and Beaulieu too. A fine batch.”

  “Malplaquet,” another ventured, spitting on the cobbles, “Tessonard. Filthy Girondins.”

  Spike hadn’t understood this, nor quite connected the terrible axe with all that was going on and so, thinking it really a carnival, the little girl was not surprised to see how many children were in the Square too.

  They were all over the place, in fact. Near the cart a group of little girls were dancing in a circle, as if it was May day, singing a lively s
ong. Boys darted in and out of the crowd, some trying to sell candy, or programmes, others just for the fun. Some, as Spike noticed a boy near the cart, were engaged in another activity - pickpocketing and filching.

  Many of the children were dressed like the grown ups, in miniature red Liberty caps, or with tricolours at their wastes, while others looked as poor and emaciated as any wastrel Spike had ever seen in London. These children didn’t seem attached to adults at all, because, during the four years of Revolution, the number of abandoned foundlings in Paris had doubled.

  Spike was peering from over the top of her barrel, and her eyes had fallen on the heavy metal grilling over a drain nearby, where a reveller dropped one of those play sheets.

  The grill suddenly lifted up and out of it poked a little head, followed by a body. Then came another, and another. Children were emerging from the ground itself, like sewer rats.

  As they climbed out they darted into the crowd, like vanishing brigands. Spike ducked back inside her barrel though, because a ghastly old women had just appeared right in front of her, grinning evilly.

  She had only one black tooth and her face looked so ancient that it seemed that her skin was dripping off the old witch’s cheeks, like candle wax. She was wearing the filthiest clothes too, grubbiest of all the old Liberty cap on her head, holding up a bundle of filthy wool and two long knitting needles.

  Thankfully she hadn’t seen Spike, watching her nervously through the spy hole, but she was grumbling loudly to herself.

  “Couchons,” she grunted, “Pigs. Make way, I say. Les Tricoteuse have come to enjoy the show.”

  She jabbed a man in front of her with one of her needles, who swore and swung around angrily but, seeing her and others behind, armed with needles too, stepped quickly aside.

  So famous were these ghastly women in Paris, and such a prominent fixture in the spectacle of execution, that a fearful corridor appeared before them immediately.

  Les Tricoteuse, or Knitting Women, almost symbols of the Revolution itself, marched forwards to take their place at the foot of the great scaffold.