Secrets of the Fearless

by Elizabeth Laird

  ‘Betsy!’ Kit broke in hastily. ‘No, the emperor remains in Paris. The empress comes alone.’

  ‘I ’ave been telling your young lady,’ M. Fouchet broke in, ‘that there presents itself an opportunity too wonderful to ignore. Perhaps you do not understand, madame, ’ow serious are the affairs of mademoiselle. ’Er uncle, I regret to say, ’as for many years been attempting to . . . to . . .’

  ‘Defraud the poor chick,’ broke in Betsy. ‘Aye, I know it. And that old witch her grandmother too. As wicked a pair of villains as any you might meet in Newgate jail.’

  M. Fouchet laughed.

  ‘I see you do not ’ide your opinions, madame. In this matter, at any rate, I agree with you. I was explaining to Mlle de Jalignac that I ’ave, for all these years, done my best to save for ’er what I can. I too, like you, did not believe in ’er demise. She ’as been telling me ’ow she sought refuge with an old school friend in Switzerland, where she ’as been safely ’iding all this time. Mademoiselle is like her admirable papa, for whom I had a great respect and, may I say, affection. There are papers I retained in secrecy, at some risk to myself, from the grasp of the new Marquis de Vaumas. That gentleman ’as done much, while in Paris, to gain the favour of those in power. A little more effort from ’im, a little more time, and everything will be lost. Mlle de Jalignac is young, alone, without friends of influence who can speak for ’er. Soon enough ’er uncle will ’ear that she ’as returned. Such news spreads quickly. ’E will rush ’ere, bad man that ’e is, to get ’er once more in ’is power. What am I? A man of business, no more. I am telling ’er, Mme Betsy, she needs support at court. She needs a strong interest, someone who will take ’er part. She is beautiful, young, charmante. She must grasp this one chance, go to the empress, ’erself a woman full of sentiment, and beg for ’er aid.’

  ‘Beg help from that baggage?’ Betsy burst out. ‘The wife of the most vicious—’

  ‘Betsy!’ Kit’s voice was sharp with warning. ‘M. Fouchet is very kind to think of it. He has been working selflessly, you know he has, with nothing but my interests at heart.’

  ‘Yes, well, yes. That’s true enough.’

  In his hiding place, John smiled. He could imagine how Betsy looked – like a hen with ruffled feathers which were slowly settling smooth again. ‘You’re right, my lovey. M. Fouchet has been very good, I’m sure. Where are your manners, Miss Catherine? Offer the gentleman another slice of cherry tart. His plate’s been empty these last ten minutes.’

  John heard the scrape of a knife on a plate and the sound of a chair grating on the kitchen’s stone floor as M. Fouchet settled himself down at the table again.

  ‘M. Fouchet is right, Betsy,’ Kit was saying in a low voice. ‘It’s an opportunity too good to miss. To speak to the empress herself, to gain her support – it would be worth everything to us. However much influence my uncle has gained in Paris, what can compare with the voice of Napoleon’s own wife?’

  ‘Yes, but think, Miss Catherine. How will you do it? You can’t just walk in from the street, all on your own, looking like a milkmaid in those old clothes of yours, and say to everyone, “I’m Mlle de Jalignac, that everyone thought was dead, only I’m not, and now I want to see Her High-and-Mightyship and get my inheritance back.” Laugh? They’d choke themselves. And then they’d pop you in prison, as like as not, for impersonating a dead person.’

  M. Fouchet had swallowed the last of the cherry tart and now he cleared his throat.

  ‘Madame is taking too bad a view of the matter,’ he said. ‘For the dress, it is surely of no difficulty to create an ensemble that would enhance the beauty of mademoiselle. And the occasion – that will be of great magnificence. The city of Bordeaux is to give a grand ball at the Château Royal to celebrate the visit of the empress. It will be soon – on Thursday of next week. I myself am one of the committee that is making all the arrangements. It is a matter of ease for me to secure an invitation. Mlle de Jalignac will be presented to Her Majesty by Mme de Montsegard, a client of mine, a noblewoman of the first respectability, who remembers with fondness the Marquis and Marquise de Vaumas. She will undertake to introduce Mlle Catherine to the empress, in person. After that, it will be up to mademoiselle to bring ’er plight to the attention of ’Er Majesty, and touch the imperial ’eart.’

  There was a short silence. Kit broke it.

  ‘I . . . I didn’t realize. A ball? Dancing, in front of a crowd of people? To go there and not know a single soul? I can’t do that. I couldn’t do that!’

  ‘Oh yes, you can, my girl.’ Betsy spoke roughly. ‘There’s a few old dresses of your mama’s that I have laid by, things the rascally revolutionaries never laid their hands on. Make up nicely the blue silk will, into a pretty ball gown. Jewels you don’t have, but that don’t matter, being young as you are, and jewels unsuitable for an unmarried girl. Slippers now, slippers . . .’

  She fell silent.

  ‘But I’d need a coach to take me there!’ Kit sounded breathless with panic.

  ‘There’s your grandfather’s coach mouldering away in the coach house, as well you know. Clean out the hens’ nests, polish it up, smarten the paintwork – it will do very well.’

  ‘A coachman! Who would drive it?’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste, of course. The man’s a doddering fool, but he was driving coaches before you was born.’

  ‘You will not need your own coach to arrive at the ball,’ M. Fouchet broke in. ‘You will go accompanied by Mme de Montsegard in her own elegant equipage. All you will need is a footman to accompany you.’

  ‘Betsy! I can’t! I won’t do it! You know I can’t!’

  ‘Can’t is a word I never taught you, Miss Catherine,’ Betsy said severely. ‘I never thought to hear you say it. ’Tis only a part you have to play, and you so good at acting. You’ll pull it off easy. Think of your poor papa, going so bravely to his death, and your mama, wanting all that was best for you. You owe this to their memories. You must make a push to help yourself and take your rightful place – or marry your charming cousin Hubert or live a pauper for the rest of your days. The choice is yours.’

  ‘A footman!’ Kit said wildly. ‘M. Fouchet is right. I need a footman, and I don’t have one!’

  John, with a flash of inspiration, knew what he had to do. He groped under the stairs, lifted out an old earthenware preserving jar and holding it to his chest marched into the kitchen.

  ‘Here’s the jar, miss, what you sent me to look for,’ he said, in what he thought was a suitably subservient tone. ‘Where did you wish me to set it down?’

  The effect of his entrance was dramatic. Kit gasped and took a step backwards, but her eyes were dancing with excitement. Betsy frowned ferociously and glared at him. M. Fouchet turned to stare at him, his thin eyebrows raised suspiciously.

  ‘And who might this person be?’ he asked.

  John put down the preserving jar and tugged his forelock.

  ‘Mlle de Jalignac’s footman, at your service, sir.’

  ‘Another English person?’ M. Fouchet was frowning. ‘What is this, mademoiselle? Mme Betsy, she is one thing. She ’as lived in France for many a year. She is known in Bordeaux. But this . . . an Englishman . . .’

  ‘English? Oh, I’m not English!’ John smiled broadly as if the idea amused him. ‘Scottish by birth, but now a citizen of the United States of America. That’s what I am. I’ve no more love for King George and his murdering redcoats than you have yourself, sir.’

  ‘An American!’ The agent smiled delightedly. ‘You are the first from that country that I ’ave met. Your Boston, it is a big city, no? The ’arbour, I ’ave ’eard, it is better than Le Havre. ’Ow many ships, would you say . . . ?’

  ‘That will do, John,’ Betsy said, bustling forwards. ‘Get along with you now. Find Jean-Baptiste and tell him to fetch out the coach from the coach house and start to clean it up. Whatever Mr Fouchet says, we’ll need to get about somehow. My lor’, there’ll be so much to do these next few
days we won’t none of us find the time to blow our own noses!’

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  John had plenty of time during the next few days to regret his rashness. He barely saw Kit. She was closeted with Betsy talking about dresses. They were measuring lengths of silk and rummaging through the dusty old boxes full of feathers, artificial flowers, beads and ribbons that had once belonged to Kit’s mother, and which Betsy had managed to squirrel away.

  Mme de Montsegard, who came clattering out from Bordeaux in a smart carriage, looked briefly at Betsy’s accumulated treasures and rolled her eyes derisively. The fashion had changed completely, she announced. No one wore such sad stuff any more. Stiff coloured silks had been consigned to history. White muslin and the flimsiest satin, with perhaps a dusting of tiny pearls, were all that could be allowed. She offered to dress Kit in a ball gown in the appropriate style, entirely at her own expense. She added that her son, the Chevalier de Montsegard, would be delighted to squire Mlle de Jalignac to the ball, as he was on leave from his regiment, and that he had already requested the honour of the first dance.

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard all about him. Spendthrift fortune-hunting nobody,’ Betsy muttered under her breath when she heard this. ‘After my poor duck’s fortune, if she ever gets it.’

  Mme de Montsegard looked John over with a cold eye as she left. She remarked that footmen were hard to come by nowadays as all young men with a shred of patriotism in them had gone off to join the emperor’s glorious army, but informed Kit that she would send over a livery and wig for him to wear at the ball.

  ‘American, you say?’ she said to Kit, turning John round to look at his back, as if he was a horse she was planning to buy. ‘They’re too democratic as a rule to make good servants, but I suppose he’ll have to do.’

  She lifted her skirts as she stepped fastidiously down the rubble-strewn steps outside the chateau’s great front door.

  ‘It will cost a fortune to set this place to rights, my dear. Why don’t you simply leave it to fall down and come to me in Bordeaux? I’ll find you a charming husband in no time at all.’

  John, understanding the gist of her words only too well, punched out at her departing shadow and stalked off to the coach house, where Jean-Baptiste, with infinite slowness, was washing down the panels of the antiquated coach.

  ‘Jem not back?’ he asked the old man in his halting French.

  Jean-Baptiste didn’t bother to answer, and John didn’t press him. Jem had vanished days ago, sidling away from Jalignac while M. Fouchet was still eating pies in Betsy’s kitchen. John had no real expectation of seeing him return. He berated himself daily for letting his one chance of escape slip away so easily.

  He helped Jean-Baptiste for a while, relieving his feelings by scrubbing so hard at the coach’s yellow wheels that he was in danger of taking the paint off along with the grime.

  ‘Trop fort! Don’t rub so hard!’ Jean-Baptiste grumbled, coming up behind him.

  ‘Oh, do it all yourself, then,’ said John, flinging down the rag he’d been wielding and marching out of the stable yard.

  He wandered through the gate in the high brick wall that surrounded the kitchen garden. The peaches and apricots had long since been gathered in, but the apples were ripening now. A few days ago he and Kit would have climbed the trees together. They would have munched through the apples and thrown the cores at each other, hurling insults in sailor’s language till they were both weak with laughter.

  Kit was slipping away from him. When he looked at her, he could see no sign of the boy who had been a powder monkey. Sometimes he could hardly believe that that Kit had ever existed.

  ‘We were equals. Shipmates,’ he said out loud to the wasp that had fastened on to the apple in his hand. ‘What am I now? Her stupid, mincing footman.’

  He was revolted at the thought of dressing up in a fancy livery, cramming a hot, itchy, powdery wig over his own thick hair and bowing and scraping like a servant to the wife and hangers-on of Bonaparte, his country’s deadly enemy, the man that every British sailor was sworn to defeat.

  At the same time, he had to admit, the idea of the ball scared him too. What if he was found out? What if anyone guessed that Mlle de Jalignac’s footman was in fact a Scot, a seaman in the Royal Navy, who had come ashore in pursuit of French spies? The thought of what they would do to him sent a chill running down his spine.

  But they won’t guess. Why should they? No one looks at footmen anyway. They just stand about like rows of dummies. It’ll be Kit they’ll look at. She’ll be so pretty there’ll be men crawling about all round her, sniffing after her and her fortune, like Mme de Montsegard’s revolting son, and I won’t be able to do anything about it.

  He blew the wasp off his apple and took a savage bite.

  ‘John! John!’ Kit came flying through the gate. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

  He turned reluctantly.

  ‘Really? What for?’

  He knew he sounded sour, but he couldn’t help it.

  ‘That horrid woman, Mme Montsegard, she was so proud and rude. I hated the way she looked at you.’

  ‘Oh. You noticed.’

  ‘Of course I noticed.’ She raised her eyebrows and stared down her nose, looking so like Mme de Montsegard that in spite of himself John had to laugh. She grinned back. ‘Listen, John, you don’t have to do this – be my footman, I mean. I can see that you feel bad about it. Anyway, it’s dangerous. All the other servants will be French. They’re sure to suspect something when you can’t speak to them, even if you say you’re American. I can manage this thing on my own. I’m sure I can.’

  But he heard the doubt in her voice.

  ‘I don’t care if it’s dangerous. I’m not scared. You’d like me to come, I know you would. You’d feel better if I was there with you.’

  ‘Oh yes! Just to know that there was someone I could trust, a true friend nearby, who knows, who understands . . .’

  Her hand was on his sleeve. He couldn’t help putting his own over it. The warmth of her fingers sent a shock right up his arm and he snatched his hand away.

  ‘I’ve said I’m doing it. I’m not changing my mind.’

  ‘But anyway, John, admit it. Aren’t you a bit anxious to see Josephine? In person? I want to. She is so beautiful, everyone says, and lazy, and charming.’

  He made a face.

  ‘Why should I care about Napoleon’s woman? That’s the worst of it. I’ll have to show respect to her and all her lackeys when I should be out at sea, on the Fearless, trying to blow holes through her husband’s ships.’

  She stretched up to pick an apple for herself.

  ‘I know. The war and everything. It confuses me. Did you see the troops this morning, marching up the road towards Bordeaux? They must have come back from Spain. They were wounded, half of them, and the others were in rags. It’s so stupid – hundreds of thousands of men marching off to kill each other. And all for what? For nothing!’

  ‘All so the husband of your precious Josephine can rule over the whole of Europe! I don’t want him marching in triumph down Edinburgh High Street. I’ll come to your precious ball. I’ll be your footman, but afterwards, don’t you see, I have to get back to the Fearless.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I know. And I’m coming with you.’

  ‘What? You can’t!’

  ‘I must. There are still five months to go till I’m fourteen. Until then, even if I gain the empress’s favour, even if M. Fouchet manages to regain my inheritance for me, I’m still in my uncle’s power. He’s my guardian. He can do what he likes with me, and my grandmother will help him every way she can.’

  ‘He can’t force you to marry your cousin. No one can actually make you.’

  She shivered.

  ‘You don’t know my uncle.’

  ‘Anyway, you’re too young to get married.’

  ‘No, I’m not. My cousin was married last year. She was thirteen. Nothing will change for me, John. No
t till January next year. As M. Fouchet said, sooner or later my uncle and grandmother will hear I’m in Bordeaux. It’ll be very soon, in fact, now that I’m going to be seen in public. There’ll be a scandal, since they let it be known that I was dead. They’ll come racing down here as fast as they can, to make everyone believe they’re delighted to hear that I’m alive after all. I’ll be caught. My only hope is to get away and wait until my birthday.’

  His heart had lifted.

  ‘You’ll be Kit again,’ he said.

  ‘I will if Captain Bannerman will let me.’ She stuck out her chest, lowered her chin, frowned mightily and pretended to look through a telescope. ‘“Females on my ship is what I can’t abide,”’ she said in a deep gravelly voice.

  He laughed.

  ‘He can hardly turn you adrift at sea, though, if you somehow manage to get on board.’

  ‘No, he can’t. Not Thundering Sam. Though some captains would.’

  They had turned out of the kitchen garden and were walking slowly back towards the chateau.

  ‘How will we do it, Kit? How can we get back out to sea?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking and thinking. But we’ll find a way. We have to! As soon as I’ve met the empress and secured her support, we’ll track Jem down again. If he takes us within sight of the Fearless, and lets us have his little skiff, we can row the rest of the way ourselves. Just imagine how astonished everyone will be to see us again!’

  ‘They probably think we deserted,’ John said gloomily. ‘You know what the punishment for that is – hanging from the yardarm.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. The captain and Mr Erskine know the truth. We’ve information to give them, anyway.’

  They found Betsy outside the kitchen door, working the rusting pump in the yard. She stopped when she saw them and tucked her brown curls, dampened with sweat, back inside her mob cap.

  ‘Get over here, do,’ she said sharply, ‘and give me a hand with this pump. If I have work this thing much longer I’ll melt like a pat of butter and run all over the cobblestones.’