The woman retreated, looking even more hurt, and Alceste stepped up keenly, but his uncle seemed suddenly very preoccupied indeed now.
“What’s wrong uncle?” whispered Alceste, after a while.
“Don’t interrupt, boy. I’m planning. Plotting.”
“Planning what, Uncle?”
The Black Spider scowled, but the sun came out.
“A brilliant counter plot,” he hissed, “and a strangling web to catch the League of the Gloved Hand itself.”
One of the most prominent members of which, at that very moment, was walking in full disguise towards a grand house in another Paris street, wondering if the English Ambassador had been recalled to London with the war.
William Wickham had been in Paris before, of course, many times. He had been in the Place, in disguise, that very day in January when they had chopped off the King’s head.
Sometimes he came in his official capacity, as First Secretary to the Ambassador who was travelling to Switzerland that coming year, but he had never been here at such a dangerous time as this, which is why William Wickham and his men were now dressed as French Revolutionary soldiers.
Wickham, Adam Foxwood, George Darney and Robert Hayfield had had to jump four soldiers on the border, to effect the change, slit their throats, then stolen their uniforms and ridden hell for leather to the French capital.
William Wickham wasn’t sure what they were going to do yet, except that he would present himself to the Marquis de Gonse de Rougeville, in person, at the earliest possible chance.
Then he would tell him not only of their Master’s missing message, and his identity too, but of the promised support of the English Crown itself for a Royalist uprising in Paris.
The missing Money Orders were a knottier problem, that only the English Ambassador himself might help with, as one of the few Englishmen in Paris now who might have access to a similarly huge sum of money.
That presented its own dilemma though, because the League had specifically decided not to involve the ambassador, since he was the one man in Paris who would be being watched more closely than anyone else.
Besides, the whole point was to obscure any link to internal plotters, in case the blasted thing backfired.
Wickham had decided to take a grave risk though, just the sort of risk needed to further his own career in the Spy Service and bring him closer to his true and greatest ambition, to one day be England’s greatest Spymaster himself.
As for his murderous thoughts about Dr Marat, that could come later.
Wickham suddenly wondered how many other members of the League were in Paris, spreading rumours, arguing events and recruiting counter revolutionaries too.
The English secret agent clutched that pair of beige embroidered gloves - their mark of membership and instant recognition - as they arrived at the English Ambassador’s residence, unwatched and rather boarded up too.
Just at that moment Hal and Skipper were nearing the cul-de-sac, somewhere else in Paris, wondering what that strange smell was.
As the boys turned the corner, they saw one of the most thrilling sights of their entire lives. Great, hot red flames were licking into the air, sending up a plume of acrid black smoke into the Paris skies.
There was a great deal of Liberty going on in the cul-de-sac too, and Hal and Skipper gasped. Roubechon’s place was on fire.
The house above was going up like a tinder box, and that sign for 1792 with it, but the cellar trapdoor was wide open and the last of the Dover wine barrels was being passed up to the mob, filled from those huge casks below.
Most of the crowd was already drunk, but Roubechon himself was nowhere to be seen
Hal and Skipper stood there helplessly, feeling their cheeks glow, wondering if the fire had just taken Henry’s cousin and the entire League with it.
“Blast,” said Henry dully, wondering what he would do with those secret letters now.
The disorder was so bad, the sense of abandoned authority, that no one could take the lead, unless the idea of the Republic itself was threatened.
It was only the sudden appearance of a group of Frenchie soldiers, carrying water in wooden buckets, that promised to put the flames out.
As Henry fingered the Chronometer, just passed twelve, and too late to open now anyway, he noticed that the dial was turned to a flame.
He looked up, wondering suddenly, and there in the real flames, climbing into the revolutionary air, Henry saw that terrible face again, from the Endeavour, in its great black wig, a face that turned to a skull and suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke.
“Come on, Skipper,” he cried in horror, backing away violently and remembering something about the devil being here in Paris too, “let’s get back to Grandmere’s.”
The two Pimpernels marched away, again feeling the weight of high affairs of State on their brave young shoulders, as Skipper Holmwood wondered if the others had faired any better. They could hardly have faired any worse, could they?
TWELVE – REAL TRIALS
“Where nothing much happens, it seems, until a public trial, a very famous murder and a horrid shock for the Black Spider too…”
They found out how Count Armande and the others had fared, that very same evening back at Headquarters, in Hal’s room, as Henry B tried to forget that horrible, wicked face in its judge’s wig.
“Just went up in smoke,” he sighed, wondering about the apparition, “I wonder if they’re on to Roubechon. What about you lot though? Any luck with the Tribunal building?”
“I think we could get her a message there,” answered Francis, looking very uncertain indeed and suddenly hating being back in the house too, “I’ve made a careful sketch, H.”
Francis opened his notebook rather proudly, to show a little drawing. It looked like a map, marked at various points of importance.
“The crowd stand along the route, where they bring the prisoners to the Champs de Mars,” said Francis, “on the way to the C-c-court room. We saw several people hand them things, H. Flowers. Crosses. Rotten vegetables. Well, they were throwing those.”
“Then we’ll each carry a note,” said Hal, “to tell her she mustn’t ever give up hope.”
“Why not?” said Spike, “we don’t know how to rescue her, ninnee.”
Henry rather agreed, but he had just noticed that Francis had also sketched that machine, the Guillotine, since on the way to the Champs de Mars they had passed La Place, and drawn it very precisely too: The long table, and rising poles, the traces, like an empty window pane. He had only been able to do it, hating the sight of blood, because there had been a day off to clean the thing.
Francis Simpkin’s Guillotine
Henry saw the slight dip in the table too, and the space where the head would lie; Juliette’s pretty head. The thick, heavy blade that slotted between the traces was there as well, that carefully narrowed to a knife edge, a slanting knife edge, for best leverage.
The holder for the blade had a hole for the thick simple rope, that would draw it back up again, where it was held in place by a simple catch leaver, a little like the catch on the Chronometer.
That was all it took to engage the terrible mechanical thing, because simply remove the lever and the axe fell, with the force of Mr Newton’s gravity, while the weight of it did the rest.
It was incredibly simple really, this invention of the Frenchie Revolution.
It was true what Spike had said though and the growing confusion of the Club, and Francis’s unease in the Rue Beaulieu, was only added to at Geraldine’s gloomy table that very night, with its bald food, when spotty Justine read out some more news from the French noosepapers.
There were several interesting items. One report was about smugglers, one about Arlene Merimonde, another about two planned Balloon flights, in the coming months, by the United Boston Balloon Company.
There were more stories of battles between Government forces and Girondins in the regions too, but it was one report in particular that
caught the Club’s ear, as Malfort jumped on the table and hissed at his mistresses’ Death Mask.
“The Widow Capet has been given a female to help her, one Citizeness St Honoré, niece of traitorous Charles, known to have fled to Austria to aid the Counter Revolutionaries. The Honoré girl is the only help in attendance of the Austrian now. She herself will stand public trial for treason, this very month, July 9th, and all Free Frenchmen and women are welcome to mark her guilt, and the swift justice of the Committee of Public Safety too. CPC”
“St Honoré,” mumbled Geraldine, this time, staring lovingly at her waxen mask, over a boiled fish head, “Didn’t we have the charming Count to dinner, only last month?”
Armande blanched and Francis frowned, silently dubbing Henry’s grandmother The Queen of Death. There was nothing the Club could do though but kick their heels around the house and wait and so the day of the trail dawned at last: July 9th,, 1793.
Poor Juliette was utterly terrified, as a cart took her from the Temple prison that day to face her accusers at last. She was wearing a humble cotton dress, that Marie Therese had given her, which the Queen had suggested would deflect the anger of the jealous mob.
But the journey from prison had been awful. All these hooting, spitting people around her, whether the prisoners to be tried were be found innocent or guilty, had made her head spin and her knees shake.
Juliette climbed down as it pulled up in the Champs de Mars and began the march towards the great courthouse - the Special Revolutionary Tribunal.
Juliette thought she was going mad though, because she had just imagined a shining face in the crowd, in a floppy little Phrygian cap, who looked just like that little boyish girl from England - Eleanor Bonespair.
The terrified teenager pushed the impossible fancy aside, until she saw another, remarkably like that funny freckled faced boy, Francis Simpkins, with a book in his hand. Juliette did a double take, as a soldier pushed her on.
The great doors to the Tribunal lay open ahead in the Champs de Mars now, the Field of Mars, and her sudden confusion would have been stifled by her terror, if Juliette had not caught sight of a face that made her heart melt.
“Armande,” she almost shouted. “You’re here too, dear Armande.”
Her brother was waving furiously at her, but Juliette was hurried on, in a haze of hope and confusion now. It was incredible, impossible, and a wave of warmth swept through her being.
As a part of the crowd broke to her right though, Juliette now found herself face to face with none other than Henry Bonespair, with his big nose and that bold, clear gaze.
Behind him stood that hulking coachman’s son, and both were in red Liberty caps.
“Juliette,” whispered Hal eagerly, slipping something into the older girl’s hand and blushing, “Good luck, Juliette. And don’t worry.”
Juliette clutched the paper, as if she was clasping onto her own life, as the guard thrust the teenager forwards again and other soldiers pushed back the thronging, angry crowds.
She felt sick though, as none other than Charles Couchonet suddenly stepped into line beside her.
Something very lucky had just happened though. In that breaking crowd the Black Spider had not seen Hal slip Juliette that note at all, despite his eagle eyes, or his many paid agents watching like hawks, for that very thing.
They were watching so intently because Juliette St Honoré herself now lay at the very centre of The Spider’s brand new plan to catch the English League red handed, or red gloved.
The Black Spider’s clever plan was to use pretty Juliette as bait, not for Charles St Honoré, this time, but for this English plot instead, which he was now convnced lay around the Queen of France.
The Black Spider had wanted members of this Gloved Hand to hear of the trial then, in the newspapers, and so to try and get to her at the public hearing; either to send a message back to the Capet woman or, if they weren’t ready to act, to open up a line of contact.
So the Pimpernel Club had been very lucky indeed that they had not been spotted, even if the Spider’s men were looking for horrid grown-ups, and not brave or foolish youngsters at all.
They were less lucky in trying to follow Juliette herself, because the Court Room was so packed that, for the first time in weeks, the guard had to slam the doors on the People.
The Pimpernels were thus left on one side and poor Juliette St Honoré on the other.
Now she was waiting inside, in a long line filing towards the dock, where prisoners were being publically arraigned – so freed, or found guilty and condemned: a fine, banishment, imprisonment, or Mrs Guillotine’s deathly kiss.
Juliette was trembling furiously, as she stood there in the noisy French Courtroom. What on earth could it mean though?
The sudden appearance of her brother and the other strange English children made her feel less alone in Paris, but was her dear mother here too, she wondered, or perhaps Mr Wickham too?
Juliette St Honoré was desperate to see what was written on Henry’s note now, but with horrid Couchonet standing there right beside her, she had her palm clenched tight.
Suddenly Charles Couchonet himself decided that he was standing far too close to her though, if this Anglais League were ever to try to reach her here, and so he turned and walked smartly away, towards one of the prosecutors, to leave his bait exposed.
Juliette glanced about her, then opened her cupped hand and read Hal’s message. It said just this:
NEVER FEAR, THE PIMPLES ARE HERE.
WITH SURE FIRE PLANS TO RESCUE YOU
Henry B
(Ps I’m not a coward!)
Juliette St Honoré felt hope surge through her young heart and stood bolt upright.
“No, you’re not, Henry,” she said proudly and someone in the crowd thought that she was just talking to herself, in her distress, and laughed cruelly.
With this sudden elation, new emotions surged through Juliette though; both fear, and guilt.
Her brother Count Armande was in terrible danger too now, how ever he had managed to get to Paris, while these bold Pamples, however brave, were not much more than mere children. Whatever could they do to really help her?
That’s just what the Pimpernels were thinking too, as they regrouped outside, among the French throng, buffeting them about like battered skittles.
Some were handing out pamphlets, exhorting friends to more furious Revolutionary frenzy. Others stood on soap boxes, haranguing the mob.
One, dressed in colourful Persian clothes, was entertaining a small revolutionary audience.
“I, Anarchsis Cloots, orator of the Human Race, congratulate you,” he cried. “You’ve restored the primitive equality of men. So all the peoples of the Universe may, by French example, break the yoke of world tyranny.”
The Club wondered if this wasn’t a rather noble ideal, as Francis’s scientific ears pricked up at the mention of the Universe.
“And what about all these deaths?” cried a voice suddenly, though hidden in the throng.
“Please,” said this man called Cloots loftily, “Our Revolution is not just a Guillotine. Besides, we all have to go sometime.”
As he spoke, Spike was fiddling with her Chronometer and she had just turned the dial to the Door, when she blinked in total astonishment.
A figure had just stepped up at her side, in no clothes that Spike had ever seen before. He seemed to be wearing pyjamas, a BCA embroidered on his silken pocket, and he was wearing leather gloves too and carrying a black satchel.
He looked rather like a boy, with a huge bald head, but he was staring straight down at William Wickham’s watch. Her watch. Spike thought she saw a stage glow all around them.
“Time, child,” piped the stranger, in a bizarre and rather high pitched voice, “fascinating, no? Especially one’s own. Chargeable hours.”
Spike blinked at the silly man. What was the ninnee talking about, and in English too, in the middle of Paris?
“Spose it is,” shrugged
little Spike, putting the Nometer quickly away and almost sticking out her tongue.
“Adds a new dimension too, we all find,” the dwarfish man went on, with a sly wink, “since times always change. Or secretly stay the same. But then we’re all just atoms, no? Aristo, priest or commoner.”
“Atoms?” whispered Nellie, wanting him to go away.
“An ancient Greek idea, Garimondo says,” said the stranger, “The tiniest particles, like you. They are very scientific these days.”
“Who are you, ninnee?” asked Spike boldly. “What are you talking about?”
“We work for the SP, of course,” answered the dwarfish man and Nellie Bonespair suddenly thought of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
“The Tribunal,” explained the man though. “You’ll see, child. Although we can’t do anything to help you, until we’re hired. It’s been a nightmare getting through at all. Very unstable.”
Spike went deathly cold.
“Tribunal?” said the little girl in terror. “The Revolutionary Tribunal? Crikey.”
The man’s little eyes glittered, but at that moment Hal called to his sister, “Spike,” and Nellie turned to see the others pushing off through the crowd.
She looked back to see the strange bald man walking towards a very tall, thin figure with black hair, and a woman in blue stockings, both in long silk gowns.
The crowd swept around them, and when they passed again, they were gone.
Poor Spike wondered if she had imagined it, and decided not to tell the others, just like Henry and Francis, as the Pimpermel Club reconvened away from the crowd, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible.
“She got it then,” said Hal, beaming at his compatriots.
“But now comes her public Trial,” said Armande, with a frown.
“Maybe they’ll find her innoc…” said Francis but he stopped, as the knowing look from the others shut Simpkin’s mouth.
“When d’ya think she’s up then, F?” asked Skipper.
“I heard one of the guards saying it could be one o’clock.”
The Terror Time Spies Page 24