King, Ship, and Sword

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It had been a grand jaunt up along the Seine to Melun and Fontainebleau to tour the pristine forests and the grand hunting lodges of the displaced nobility; over thirty English miles each way, but more than worth it, for the side-trip had soothed Caroline into calmer takings. That, and several smaller vineyards' best wines, and heartier provincial dishes than the effete kick-shaws found in Paris.

Still, it felt grand to kick off shoes, coat, and waist-coat and sprawl on one of the settees in their rented parlour-Lewrie upon one, and Caroline on another, in stockinged feet, too. She was tucked up with a new book in her lap when there came a rapping on the hallway door. Jules went to answer it.

"Stap me, if the Lewries didn't get eaten by the Corsican ogre!" Sir Pulteney Plumb brayed as he swept in, bestowing an elaborate bow to each with a flourish of his hat. "Imogene and I are dyin' of curiosity as to how your levee at the Tuileries Palace went, so much so that we simply had to barge in and enquire, haw haw haw!"

"Main-well, if ye like 'icy' and 'threatenin'," Lewrie said as he got to his feet. "You find us not quite ready to-"

"And, to extend an invitation to supper this evenin', where you may reveal all the juicy details to us," Sir Pulteney blathered on. "I have discovered a pearl of a wee restaurant in the Rue Saint-Nicaise. Odd's Fish, but their vol-au-vent, their bouchйe а la reine, and their sautй а la provenзale are simply divine, and you must try the place… before you leave Paris. Oh, do say you will join us… Our treat?" Sir Pulteney tempted, then added, "Imogene and I have news to impart to you, as well, which news you will find astounding, sir and madam."

"Well," Caroline said, cocking her head to one side and looking at her husband. "If you do not find our travelling clothes too plain, Sir Pulteney."

"Begad, Mistress Lewrie, no fear o' that, for you are always elegant," plumb pooh-poohed. "It is we Plumbs who may shame you, haw!"

Indeed, Sir Pulteney was garbed in darker, soberer fashion than was his usual wont.

"'Tis a splendid evenin' for a stroll before we dine… grand for both appetite and the digestion, to which the French pay particular care," Sir Pulteney further suggested. "A turn along the Seine in the twilight?"

"Yes, let's," Caroline agreed, deciding for them.

A quarter hour later, after they'd dressed, the three of them slowly ambled along the Galerie du Louvre, enjoying the coolness of a breeze off the Seine and the soft, lingering amber sunset. Sir Pulteney had babbled, brayed, and japed most amusingly, plying his walking-stick with the panache of a regimental drum-major, but then fell into an unaccountably gloomy silence. At last, he turned his head to look at the Lewries, and muttered through a fool's smile.

"Pray, do not react at all to what I have to impart to you, or make any sign of distress. Pretend I tell you another amusing tale-can you do that? There may be people watching us this very instant."

"Watchin'? What the Devil for?" Lewrie asked, frowning, fighting the urge to peer about. Caroline put her hand in his but kept a silent shudder well hidden.

"Years ago, as the Revolution turned violent, and right through the Reign of Terror in Ninety-Three," Sir Pulteney Plumb explained in a softer voice, "there was a grand English lord who was so appalled by the injustice and bloodshed that he organised a league of gentlemen dedicated to the rescue of innocents from the guillotine and the Mob… which league was quite successful, right up to the death of Robespierre and the outbreak of the war with France in February of Ninety-Three. Of course, this league sometimes depended upon the aid, and the intelligence passed on, from well-disguised Royalist sympathisers here in Paris, throughout France. I confess to you only that I was once a member of that league then, and now, able to make cautious rencontres with former French supporters… even under the noses of the Police Nationale."

"What the bloody-" Lewrie began to flummox.

"Hist! Listen carefully, I pray you!" Sir Pulteney cautioned, then continued. "The rebel Georges Cadoudal's failed attempt to kill Bonaparte with a hidden bomb a while back-quite near here in point of fact, at the intersection of the Rue Saint-Nicaise and the Rue de la Loi-has tightened the surveillance of the Police upon any who might still harbour Royalist, anti-Bonaparte feelings.

"Yet!" Sir Pulteney went on with a louder bark, as if getting to the punch-line of a jape, "one of our old confidants sought me out whilst you were away, and told me that whatever it is you did or said to Napoleon has made him exceedingly wroth with you,… and he has given orders that you are to be… eliminated for your insult to him."

"My insult?" Lewrie gawped. "But what the Devil did-"

"Dear God!" Caroline softly exclaimed, blanching.

"Now laugh. Laugh as if I just told you the grandest amusing tale!" Sir Pulteney hissed, breaking out his characteristic donkey's bray. The Lewries' amusement sounded much lamer, as if they were merely being polite or the tale had not been all that amusing.

"Therefore, you both must flee Paris, instanter," Sir Pulteney said, leaning closer and urging them to begin strolling again. "Pack as if you haven't a care in the world, wind up your accounts, without showing any signs of haste. Above all, do not let on to your hired servants or the concierge of your lodgings back yonder that you are departing in a panic. Most importantly, do not discuss the matter if a servant is anywhere within earshot, for you may trust no one whom you do not know, even a fellow Englishman whom you suddenly encounter here in Paris… He may be a skilled, bilingual Police agent. I will arrange for your bulkier possessions' shipment back to England, and I have already begun the scheme to spirit you back to England. If you will trust to my experience and abilities in this matter?"

"What? Well, erm… hey?" Lewrie stammered, thinking that only a feeble idiot would trust this braying ass with an empty pewter snuff box, for Sir Pulteney Plumb gave all evidence of losing it within the hour; too scatter-brained to keep up with a pocket handkerchief!

Part of a secret league, him? Lewrie thought, incredulous over the very idea; he arranged hundreds of escapes? Best we abandon all our traps and run like Blazes, this instant! I made Napoleon angry? He wants me dead? Or, is it Charitй de Guillen's doin? Yet she's no real power here… does she?

"Alan, if what he says is true…," Caroline almost whimpered, squeezing his hand like a vise. "What must we do? This is impossible!"

"Softly, Mistress Lewrie, softly!" Sir Pulteney cautioned her, "and do not lose heart. You must believe that what I say is true, and that what our old league accomplished in years past we shall be able to accomplish now. plans are already afoot, soon as I was informed of Bonaparte's wrath by someone well placed in his entourage. I've sent word to some of our old compatriots in England to cross over to help, and once we reach the coast, we shall be met by a schooner, mastered by yet another of our old compatriots. Royalist sympathisers and old supporters, though Minister Fouchй and Rйal imagine they have eliminated our, and Cadoudal's, networks, I assure you that whichever route we take, there will be many along the way to aid us.

"Will you believe me, sir, madam… for your lives? Will you trust me to see you safely out of France, and home to England?" Plumb pressed them.

"Christ, I… s'pose we must," Lewrie gravelled, still unable to take it all in. "Trust someone, at any rate. Though it beggars all belief that Bonaparte'd go t'such lengths, knowin' such an act would re-start the war. 'Less… that's what he wishes…," Lewrie trailed off, his mind reeling.

"You didn't insult him, Alan, I don't think," Caroline said in a distraught whisper, looking deep into her husband's eyes. "It was more our government's delays that irked him, but surely he can't hold that against you… against us! Oh, why did I ever insist that we come to France? This is all my fault!"

"Still, sir and madam… do you trust me to make good your escape?" Sir Pulteney pressed with uncharacteristic sternness.

"Don't see how you can, yet… they say drownin' man'll clutch even the feeblest straws," Lewrie decided, puffing out his cheeeks in frustration. "Aye, I s'pose we must… We do. Though, how…?"

"We have our ways, stap me if we don't!" Sir Pulteney assured them, then cackled out loud. "Begad, but we do have our ways!"

Charitй de Guilleri, in the meantime, had been having a grand few days. Firstly, she had finally allowed the dashing Major Clary of the Chasseurs to have his way, discovering that Denis was a most pleasing lover. Secondly, her beloved New Orleans, her Louisiana, was now rumoured to almost be back in France's grasp. While she could not fantasise that her continued hints, suggestions, or pleas for France to reclaim Louisiana from the dullard, corrupt, and incompetent Spanish had been the sole cause, Charitй had, in the best salons, found allies who felt the same as she. A couple of Napoleon's brothers, Talleyrand (though that had taken an affair with the crippled, arrogant, and dismissive older fumier-an affair which had become almost unendurable before Talleyrand had discovered Madame Grand!), and a few others-all had coaxed, cajoled, and spoken favourably for an expansion of empire on the American continent.

Two years before, soon after Napoleon had become First Consul, talks had been opened with Spain for an exchange. Charles IV of Spain desired a kingdom for his new son-in-law, and Bonaparte had offered Tuscany, now firmly occupied by French troops, in exchange for Louisiana. An agreement had tentatively been signed then, at San Ildefonso, yet it still lacked the formal signature and approval from the dilatory and suspicious Charles IV.

Now, though… wonder of wonders, Talleyrand had dropped her a hint at the levee where she had confronted that imp of Hell from her past, Alan Lewrie, that Charles's final approval would soon come!

She could go home in triumph, not as an escaped felon from Spanish justice for piracy, not as a failed revolutionary, but as a confidante of Napoleon Bonaparte himself, a member of the official delegation which would accept the turnover in the Place d'Armes, before the Cathedral of St. Louis, to the cheers of her fellow Creoles, her fellow Frenchmen and Frenchwomen! She would be a heroine at last!

So it was that Mlle. de Guilleri felt as if she could float on air as she breezed into the quay-side entrance to the offices of the Police Nationale, at Fouchй's invitation. After all his sneers at her pretensions, let him eat crow that she had succeeded in reclaiming her dear home!

"Citoyenne," Fouchй began with his usual grouchiness and testy impatience. "You have met Citoyen Fourchette."

"Indeed, Citoyen Fouchй," Charitй sweetly replied, dipping one brief curtsy to the slouching, greasy-looking agent who had questioned her about that salaud, Lewrie. "A pleasure to greet you again, Citoyen Fourchette."

"My pleasure to see you again, Citoyenne de Guilleri," the man replied with an appreciative, up-and-down stare, openly leering at her. He did not fully rise from his chair, though he did sit up straighter and continued to draw on his cigarro.

"Fourchette has had this Lewrie gars under constant watch for the last few days, citoyenne," Fouchй gruffly told her, waving her to a chair, a touch too uncomfortably close to the lusting Fourchette for Charitй's comfort.

"Indeed, Citoyen Fouchй?" Charitй asked, with one brow up.

"His presence in Paris… his history of involvement with the British spy establishment… what the Ministry of Marine knows about him from their dossiers," Fouchй grumbled. "My thanks to you, citoyenne, for alerting us to him. For a time, we suspected he was here to kill the First Consul. How close he got to him during the exchange of old swords?"

"I was there, Citoyen Fouchй," Charitй pointed out, letting him know once more that she travelled in the best circles.

"Thankfully, we escaped that, but… perhaps you also witnessed how angry the First Consul was, as well, n'est-ce pas?" Fouchй went on with a mocking grin over her comment. "Later, he gave me orders that this mec should drop dead of something, hein? Since you already know-"

"He will be done away with at last?" Charitй exclaimed in sudden joy. Could her prospects be even more blissful? "Bien! Trиs bien! You have just made me the happiest woman in all of France!"

"Despite Citoyenne de Guillen's enchanting beauty and seeming innocence, Fourchette, she is a fire-eater, a veteran of armed revolution back in Louisiana, hein?" Fouchй told his agent, almost winking on the sly even as he praised her. "She and her brothers went to sea to pirate Spanish ships… raised funds and took arms so the patriots of Louisiana could rise and throw off the Spanish yoke, comprenez? I assure you, Citoyenne de Guilleri is a very dangerous young woman."

"Then all France must owe you a great debt, Citoyenne Charitй," Fourchette said with slow and sly surprise, and an incline of his head to her, in lieu of a bow. "A slim sword, hidden in a silk scabbard."

"How? When does he die?" Charitй demanded impatiently, feeling irked by Fouchй's sarcasm and Fourchette's suggestive ogling. "May I be there, when it's done? My brothers, my cousin, must be avenged at last," she insisted, shifting eagerly on her chair.

"Not here in Paris, non" Fouchй told her. "That's too public. Fourchette's watchers say that he and his wife will soon take coach to Calais, now the exchange is done, and their touring is over. The last trip, Fourchette?"

"Two days in the forest of Fontainebleau. Very romantic, I suppose," Fourchette answered with a chuckle and roll of his eyes. "They pay the concierge the final reckoning and may depart by the end of the week. A highway robbery may be arranged… tragique, hein?"

"The both of them?" Charitй had to ask. That bastard Lewrie was one thing, but his wife was quite another.

"Might be best," Fourchette suggested with a tentative shrug of his shoulders. "And the coachmen, too. Better they simply disappear and are never heard from again. Hmm?"

"Pity they do not coach towards Normandy or Brittany," Fouchй grumped. "It could be blamed on Royalist bandits, like Cadoudal and his compatriots, reduced to robbery to fund their schemes against the Republic. Ah, well, I suppose the Calais highway must do. You are sure that is their destination, Fourchette?"

"It is what they speak of with the concierge, the port to which they have already sent off their heaviest luggage," Fourchette assured his chief. "They will travel lighter, departing. Else it would take a second coach, she's bought so much in Paris. Understandably."

"I have summoned both of you, who know the man and his wife by their faces," Fouchй continued, "just in case something goes wrong en route. You see, citoyenne, you will be in at the kill, hawn hawn!"

"A thousand thanks, Citoyen Fouchй," Charitй said in heartfelt and genuine gratitude, though she had her doubts about travelling with the leering Fourchette. "For that matter, Major Denis Clary, of the Chasseurs, was with me when I spoke with Lewrie at the levee, and he knows his appearance, as well." She thought she would have to put up with a lot less cloying attention should Denis be at her side.

"Uhm… perhaps," Fouchй allowed, leery of involving anyone too official, in uniform, though; of any slip-up that might lead back to the First Consul or the French government. "I sent for another gars, who also has intimate knowledge of Lewrie's appearance, though… "

"Pardon, citoyen," the meek clerk intruded, rapping hesitantly on the door before sticking his head in. "But that naval fellow you sent for is here. Should I show him in?"

"Ah bon!" Fouchй perked up, clapping his meaty hands together and getting to his feet. "Come in, Capitaine, come in! A man from the earliest days of the Revolution, you see? A zealous hunter of aristos and traitors, is… but here you are, Capitaine.

"Allow me to introduce you to Citoyenne Charitй de Guilleri and one of my best agents, Citoyen Matthieu Fourchette," Fouchй continued. "But of course you and Fourchette have met before, hein? Citoyenne, I give you Capitaine de Vaisseau Guillaume Choundas."

Charitй shot to her feet in sudden, shivering horror as she got sight of the monstrous caricature of a human being, her face blanching. Surely, this… this hideux could not be real!

Guillaume Choundas limped into the office, his stout cane tapping on the marble floor, his crippled leg in its stiff iron brace making a dragging swish-clomp, swish-clomp… with a leer on that half of his dissipated, twisted, and aged face that he still showed to the world. "Citoyenne de Guilleri, enchantй" the horror said to her with an evil smile, clumping close to her, flipping his cane to the elbow of his sole arm and reaching out to take her hand as if it had been offered to him, he bestowed a kiss upon it, a kiss that, to Charitй, felt like the crawling, maggoty lips of a rotting corpse. It was all she could do to not jerk her hand away, to recoil in disgust from his monstrosity… to flee the office and go light candles at Notre Dame and make her confession to a curй in hope of deliverance from one of Satan's demons!

"Capitaine Choundas, like you, citoyenne, is also a victim who has suffered at the hands of that salaud, Alan Lewrie," Fouchй informed her.

"In… indeed, citoyen?" Charitй managed to say, stricken with terror and revulsion.

"This is about Lewrie?" Choundas snapped, dropping her hand and regaining the use of his cane so he could turn towards Fouchй, a feral gleam in his remaining eye. "Something is to be done?"

"He insulted the First Consul, Capitaine," Fouchй told him. "He is to be done away with. Somewhere lonely and quiet, out of sight on the road to Calais. The three of you know what he looks like, so… "

"Sacre bleu!" Choundas exclaimed. "And I will participate in his end? Mort de ma vie, all I have asked of life, for so many years, and it comes to pass? Perhaps there is a God!"

He spun about, more nimbly that Charitй imagined that he could, to face her again. "All the ravages you see, Citoyenne Charitй, have been at his hand… my face, my laming, my lost arm! The ruin of my life's work\ Oui, I will gladly help you murder him!"

Another quick turning to face them all. Swish-clomp!

"But it must not be an easy death for him," Choundas demanded. "With forethought… he must be taken alive. Only for a time, hein?" he specified with an anticipatory cackle. "Give him to me for half a day… a full day, and I will take from him what he took from me so long ago and make him beg for death's release, oh mais oui!"

"That, uhm… might be a bit beyond what is necessary," Fouchй hesitantly countered as he fiddled uncomfortably with his loosely bound neck-stock. "We had thought to make it appear as a highway robbery by aristo-lovers and criminal elements."

"And so it may, citoyen" Choundas quickly countered, his mind a'scheme as he haltingly paced in anxiety, swish-clomp, swish-clomp. "Is the crime brutal enough, it can be blamed on Georges Cadoudal and his conspirators against the Republic, financed by the Comte d'Artois with Anglais gold, from his lair in England… to… to foment anger in Britain against France, because their government wants to begin the war again, hein?"

"Their Prime Minister, Addington, pays the Comte d'Artois for a murder of one of their naval officers and his wife?" Fouchй scoffed at the notion. "Too complicated. They disappear, everyone in the coach, with no one ever the wiser. The First Consul does not wish a new war with Britain… at least not yet. I have his personal, spoken assurance on that matter."

"His wife, too. Oui, I saw her with him!" Choundas crooned with an evil hiss, shrugging off the quick dismissal of his initial scheme. "If they must disappear, the coachmen, horses, carriage, and all, then an out-of-the-way place could be found where all that could be disposed of… an hour or two with her, before his eyes, before I begin on him, and that swaggering lout, that despicable fumier would beg-"

"Ahum!" Fouchй pointedly coughed into his fist. "You will be in at his demise, Capitaine Choundas. That must be enough."

"If you insist, citoyen, then… it must be so." Choundas seemed to surrender-too quickly for Matthieu Fourchette or Charitй to believe. Choundas set the exposed half of his face in a wry smile of contentment, but… she and the police agent shared a quick, dubious look and an even briefer nod in mute agreement that, if they had to be saddled with this hideous monster, they would have to keep a sharp eye on him at all times… and keep his half-insane fury on a tight leash!

I must have Denis with me, Charitй de Guilleri vowed to herself; to keep this "hot rabbit" Fourchette from laying his hands on me, and… to keep this disgusting beast from killing anyone who denies him his revenge.

A sour taste rose in her throat, a chilly feeling in the pit of her stomach,

and a weak, shuddery feeling that forced her to sit down in her chair once more, with only half an ear for Fouchй's plan being revealed.

As dearly as she desired Lewrie to die before her eyes, for her own revenge, still-completely innocent coachmen, Madame Lewrie, and any unfortunate peasant who happened by at the wrong moment must die as well? Callous as she had been over the fates of those taken in the merchant ships by her and her brothers, her cousin, and the old pirates Jйrфme Lanxade and Boudreaux Balfa, this just didn't enflame her former passion or hatred of all things English.

It felt to her, of a clarifying second, as foul as the touch of Choundas's lips on the back of her hand!