Secrets of the Fearless

by Elizabeth Laird

  The old woman, who was wearing a blue bonnet with a deep poke which almost hid her face, turned her head and stared suspiciously at Kit.

  ‘Bonjour,’ she said grudgingly.

  ‘Please,’ Kit went on in French, ‘Can you help us? My brother is wounded. Bandits. They shot at him. I have to get him home.’

  ‘Bandits? Where?’ The old woman was looking round nervously. ‘How many? Have they gone?’

  ‘They were in the forest. They ambushed us. Oh please, he’s very bad. He’s losing blood.’

  ‘Half of it seems to be all over you,’ the old woman remarked drily. She hadn’t pulled up the wagon, and the cows were still plodding quietly on. Kit walked alongside as she pleaded.

  ‘You could take him on your wagon, somewhere where he can be looked after.’ She was feeling increasingly desperate, but was acting the role of helpless young girl to perfection.

  ‘And where would that be? Where do you come from, anyway? You’re not from around here. I don’t know you.’

  ‘I’m from . . . Jalignac. From near Jalignac,’ Kit corrected herself. If she gave her name away, the news of Mlle de Jalignac’s return would be all over the country by the end of the day. She racked her brains to think of a way of persuading this obstinate old woman. ‘Jean-Baptiste, the man who used to work in the chateau, the old groom, he knows me.’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste?’ The old woman cackled. ‘That old soak? Nice friends you’ve got, mademoiselle.’ She paused, then gave Kit a sideways, crafty look. ‘Well, I’d like to help you and your brother, but times are hard. You don’t get something for nothing these days.’

  Kit looked back. Walking along beside the wagon, she had already come too far from John and the horse. By now he might easily have fainted dead away and fallen to the ground.

  ‘I have no money, she said helplessly. ‘I can’t . . .’ And then an idea struck her, perfect in its simplicity. ‘You can have the horse! Take me and my brother to Jalignac, and I’ll give you our horse.’

  The woman’s eyes opened wide.

  ‘A horse?’ she said, unable to disguise her greed. ‘Fetch it here. I’m not halting these cows for anything. Once the wagon stops moving, it’ll sink right down and get stuck in the sand. I’ll never get it moving again. A horse, you said. Broken-down old thing, I suppose.’

  But Kit was already flying back down the road to where she had left John among the trees.

  The old woman’s face softened slightly when she saw John, as she took in the whiteness of his face and the huge stain of red that had spread across his shirt.

  ‘Eh, le pauvre,’ she said. ‘You should have said how bad he was.’ But her eyes were already sizing up the horse. ‘The saddle,’ she said, ‘it looks English-made.’

  ‘Yes, yes, the saddle is yours too,’ Kit said impatiently. ‘The bridle, the saddle, everything. Just help me to get him down.’

  The old woman had jumped down from the wagon with surprising speed, and, while the cows were still ambling slowly on, was lifting the canvas that covered the back of the wagon. Underneath it were a few baskets full of cabbages, a sack of potatoes and a pair of chickens in a cage. Without ceremony, she tugged at John’s leg, caught him in her muscular arms as he fell, with a groan of pain, and a moment later had laid him on the floor of the wagon. Then she hitched the horse’s bridle to the wagon’s side and climbed back up into her seat.

  ‘Here, mademoiselle, what are you doing?’ she called back to Kit, who was untying the girths of the saddle.

  Kit finished detaching the saddle, and threw it into the back of the wagon.

  ‘As you saw, it’s English-made,’ she said, trotting to keep up. ‘With all the bandits around, someone might take a fancy to it.’

  The old woman looked at her shrewdly.

  ‘Bandits,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I believe in your bandits. But a horse is a horse and a saddle, especially an English one, is a saddle. The bargain’s good, and I won’t ask any questions. Get in the back there beside your brother, if he is your brother, and mind he doesn’t die on us. You’ll find a flask of wine and some water in a bottle. Let him drink sips at a time. And here –’ she pulled off the coarse linen kerchief she was wearing round her neck. ‘It’s a sacrifice, but I suppose it’s worth it. You’d better take this. Make a pad and hold it against the wound to stop the bleeding. Hop in now before I change my mind. It’s six miles to Jalignac, at least, but if these cows don’t decide to give us trouble we’ll be there in a couple of hours.’

  The sun was well up by now, and the heat seemed already to be too much for John, who, though lying on his back, was turning his head from side to side in distress. Kit pulled the canvas covering back across the wagon to shade them both, found the water bottle and the wine flask and gave him sips of each in turn. She made a pad, as the old woman had advised, and steeled herself to lift John’s shirt, drawing in her breath at the sight of the ugly, deep wound at the side of his chest, from which blood was still seeping. She pressed the pad gently against it, trying to ignore John’s groan of pain.

  ‘All will be well now,’ she told him. ‘Now you will be fine. I promise you, John. Soon we’ll be safe.’

  The certainty in her voice comforted John and he shut his eyes, unaware that she felt much less sure than she sounded. She sat silently beside him, biting her lips with worry.

  The old woman with her wagon had so far been the only person travelling along the road, but now Kit could hear voices, shouted commands, the jingle of a horse’s bit and bridle. She lifted the canvas cover and looked out.

  The sight was so horrible she wanted to drop the wagon’s cover again, but couldn’t tear her eyes away. A long line of men, shackled together with chains, their clothes in rags, their feet bare and bleeding, rough blood-soaked bandages round legs and arms, were shuffling along in the sand, their shoulders drooping with despair. Alongside them rode two gendarmes armed with muskets.

  ‘Allez! Vite! Don’t lag behind there,’ one of them was calling out in French. He lifted his whip and cracked it across the back of the last man in the line, who stumbled and nearly fell.

  ‘What have you got there, monsieur?’ the old woman on the wagon called out to one of the gendarmes. ‘Cattle for the market?’

  ‘Prisoners of war, madame,’ he called back, touching his hat with mock gallantry. ‘Enemies of France. English, half of them. Spaniards the rest.’

  ‘I hope they all rot,’ the old woman called out with sudden venom. ‘The English killed my boy at Aboukir Bay.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll rot, poor devils. They’ll rot where we’re taking them,’ the gendarme said cheerfully.

  At last, when the heat in the wagon was becoming unbearable, and the water was finished, and John’s voice, cracked and high, was rambling in incoherent, half-finished sentences, Kit felt the wagon lurch as it turned off the long straight road. It halted, and the cover was lifted.

  ‘I hope your young man is still alive, miss,’ said the old woman. ‘We’re here. At Jalignac.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Kit stood outside Jalignac’s massive iron gates looking up the long drive to the huge chateau, which crouched on a low rise, its grey roof rising above the surrounding trees. The old woman with the wagon, having discovered that the gates were locked, had pulled John unceremoniously out of the wagon and dumped him on the grass. Then she had gone, switching the backs of her cows with a willow cane to make them go faster and glancing back gleefully every now and then at her new horse.

  Kit was used to the emptiness of her family’s deserted home, which had usually been shut up since her father’s death fourteen years ago, but when she saw how derelict it had now become, how it looked almost ruined, her heart sank even further. She had last stayed here five years ago, when her grandmother had thought about restoring it, but her uncle had refused to spend a single ecu on the place and the old lady had given up and taken Kit back with her to her comfortable mansion in Bordeaux.

  It looked now as if n
obody had been here for years. Saplings were shooting up out of the once smoothly paved drive. The shutters, sagging and unpainted, were closed over the long rows of windows that ran along the front of the chateau, and the lamp over the front door hung drunkenly from its twisted bracket. Kit vigorously rattled the gates and shouted, ‘Is anyone there? Come and open up!’

  No one answered. The place seemed quite deserted. Kit shook the gates again. Surely Betsy would still be here? Betsy had always wanted to live at Jalignac, had always loved the chateau, and in his will Kit’s father had left her a cottage next to the stables. Betsy had always said she would return here if Kit didn’t need her any more.

  ‘She has to be here,’ Kit said out loud. ‘She is here, I know she is! I’ve just got to get in somehow and look round and find her.’

  She studied the gates again. They were very tall, made of good strong iron and firmly locked. There were gaps in the wall that surrounded the chateau’s vast park, she knew, but the wall was miles long. It might be hours before she could find a way in. By that time John might even be dead.

  ‘Someone!’ she shouted as loudly as she could. ‘Whoever’s there! Open the gates!’

  And then she saw it. A thin curl of smoke was rising up out of one of the chimneys in the east wing of the chateau. Someone was there!

  ‘Ahoy!’ she yelled, unthinkingly becoming a sailor again. ‘Betsy! Il y a quelqu’un? Venez!’

  She thought she could detect the smallest movement of one of the shutters on the far left of the ground floor. At this distance it was hard to be sure, but, encouraged, she screamed ‘Betsy! Betsy!’ with the full force of her lungs.

  She hadn’t been wrong. The shutter was moving. It was opening now, and so was the window behind it. Someone was leaning out.

  ‘Betsy! It’s me! Catherine!’

  The window was flung up to its full height and someone, a woman, was climbing out of it, dropping awkwardly the short distance to the terrace beneath. Now she was running down the long drive as fast as her considerable weight would allow.

  ‘Betsy! Oh thank God, it’s Betsy!’ croaked Kit, her voice too strained and cracked to shout any more.

  Betsy’s wispy brown hair was escaping from her mob cap, the apron she wore over her voluminous skirt was awry and the kerchief round her shoulders was coming adrift. She came to a halt inside the big iron gates and stared through them, her blue eyes wide with shock, a plump reddened hand over her mouth.

  ‘Miss Catherine! It is you! Oh my dear darling, I thought you was dead. They told me you was dead! What’s happened? There’s blood all over you. You . . . you’re not a ghost, are you? You’re really real?’

  Kit laughed shakily.

  ‘Yes, of course I’m real. Let me in, Betsy. Open the gates, quickly!’

  ‘I can’t do that, my lovey. Jean-Baptiste, he’s the one with the key. I hardly recognized you! Where have you been? Why did they tell me . . . not that I believed them. Look how you’ve grown!’

  ‘Betsy, listen.’ Kit turned her head. She could hear a sound from down the road, the jingle of harnesses, bridles and stirrups. Not one, but many. ‘There’s someone here with me.’ She stood back to show Betsy where John was lying, his eyes shut, on the grass. ‘He’s a British sailor. He’s badly hurt. I’ll explain everything. He mustn’t be found. We’ve got to hide him, nurse him – oh, be quick, Betsy! I can hear people coming. You’ve got to let us in!’

  ‘A British sailor! Oh my lor’.’ Betsy peered through the gates at John’s still body. ‘Looks more dead than alive, poor lad.’ Then she turned, put her hands round her mouth and shrieked, ‘Jean-Baptiste! Where are you? Jean-Baptiste!’ Without waiting for an answer, she set off up the drive again at a lumbering trot.

  Kit stepped out into the road to see who was coming. She gasped in dismay. A troop of French cavalry, plumed helmets nodding, metal breastplates gleaming, was trotting down the road towards her. They would be level with the gates of Jalignac at any moment. There was no chance of Betsy returning before they passed, and when they did they couldn’t fail to see John, lying covered in blood, at the gates of the chateau. She would have to think fast, and make the best of it.

  She ran to an overgrown bush beside the gate and managed to twist off a couple of big leafy twigs. Then she sat down on the ground beside John, covered the bloody mess on his shirt with one twig, and began to fan him with the other. She arranged her skirt attractively around her, tucked her wildly flowing hair behind her ears and pressed her arm across her chest to cover the marks of John’s blood on her own chest as well as she could.

  She waited, shutting her eyes as she thought herself into a new role.

  The troop of cavalry was here already, level with the gates, twenty men at least. Their sabres rattled at their sides as they rode. At their head was a young officer. He turned and stared curiously at Kit, then called out, ‘Continuez, les garçons!’ to the troopers, wheeled his horse round and cantered up to Kit. He looked admiringly down at her from the immense height of his magnificent black horse.

  ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle. A maiden in distress? Do you need a knight to come to your rescue? In which case, I offer you my services.’

  She tried to smile charmingly.

  ‘No, no, monsieur. My brother was overcome by the heat. Well, to be frank with you, he drank too much last night. He fell dead asleep. I’m waiting here until he wakes. We can make our way home quite easily.’

  The officer laughed.

  ‘Drunk, eh? I’ll soon bring him round.’

  He took his feet out of his stirrups, ready to swing himself off his horse.

  ‘Miss Catherine!’ Betsy was back at last, fumbling at the gates with the key. Kit leaped to her feet and dashed across to her.

  ‘Say he’s my brother,’ she hissed. ‘Pretend he’s drunk.’

  Betsy turned the key and the gate swung open on creaking hinges. She marched across to where John lay and stood over him, her hands planted aggressively on her hips.

  ‘Drunk again,’ she said, in heavily accented French. ‘What your father’s going to say about this . . .’

  The officer coughed. He had already replaced his feet in his stirrups.

  ‘If you need any help . . .’

  ‘And who are you?’ demanded Betsy, glaring up at him. ‘Making up to my young lady, I suppose. We’ll see what her father has to say about that too.’

  The officer backed his horse away.

  ‘Mille pardons, mademoiselle. I leave you, quite clearly, in capable hands.’

  He looked over his shoulder and waved as he rode away. Kit waved back, then wished she hadn’t. The officer’s brows had twitched together at the sight of the blood staining her dress.

  Betsy had already lifted the twigs off John and was staring down at him, clicking her tongue in dismay.

  ‘We’ll have to get him up to the house,’ she said. ‘There’s only one habitable room in my cottage since the roof began to leak. One good thing is that there’s no fear of hurting him. The poor lad’s fainted clean away. Take his legs, Miss Catherine. Hurry now. There’ll be others coming along this road soon enough. He looks mighty young to be a sailor, but I suppose you know best.’

  She bent down as she spoke and picked up John’s shoulders in her strong arms. Kit took hold of his legs and, lumbering and lurching under the weight of John’s hefty bone and muscle, they staggered up the long drive to the chateau.

  John knew nothing of what was happening. He had fainted dead away when the old woman had dumped him out of her cart. When he came to, he seemed to be lying on some kind of mattress, covered with a sheet like the ones he had always slept between at home.

  ‘I’m at home. I’m at Luckstone,’ he thought, with no particular surprise.

  It needed an effort to drag up his eyelids, but when he had managed it, nothing he saw made sense. Light was coming towards him, stripes of light, as if through thick bars.

  Not Luckstone. Prison, he thought indifferently.

  But
that wasn’t right either. He narrowed his eyes, trying to see better. Yes, that was it. What he had mistaken for bars were actually the slats of wooden shutters. They were closed on the outside over tall windows, three windows, stretching down one side of a big, empty room.

  There was a sound of footsteps on a creaking woodblock floor at the far end of the room. John tried lifting his head to see who was there, but the effort sent a wave of pain crashing through him. He groaned, and dropped his head again.

  Kit heard him and came running over.

  ‘John! You’ve come round! Oh, John, I thought you were . . . Here, take a sip of water. Betsy!’ She turned her head as someone else came up behind her. ‘Betsy, he made a noise! John, can you hear me? Open your eyes. You must drink, John.’

  He tried to open his eyes again, but the effort was too great. Instead he opened his mouth to accept the water that someone was dribbling into it. It felt good. He swallowed, and opened his mouth for more.

  ‘That’s enough, my lovely,’ a strange woman’s voice said. ‘A little bit at a time. You don’t want to go choking on it.’

  There were questions in his mind. Puzzles. Nothing seemed right. Everything was strange. Only Kit’s fingers, patting and stroking his hand, seemed real, and only her voice was familiar.

  ‘John,’ she was saying, ‘you’re going to be fine. Betsy’s taken out the bullet. All you have to do now is rest and sleep. You’re safe here. I promise you, there is no danger now.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  A fever took hold of John that night and for many days he knew nothing of what was happening around him. In his wandering mind he sometimes believed that he was at Luckstone, and that the woman leaning over him, changing the dressings on his wound and holding cups of water to his lips, was his barely remembered mother. Sometimes he was on the Fearless, struggling to get out of his hammock at the sound of the bosun’s whistle, only to feel arms around him holding him down and cold rags laid on his forehead.