King, Ship, and Sword

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

They got beyond Montdidier by farm roads as the unhappy Fleury family, then the Plumbs altered their disguises to those of a pair of old crones, Sir Pulteney doing a remarkable imitation of a woman for a whole day, whilst Alan and Caroline hid in the waggon bed under an even larger pile of pilfered straw. In that guise they crossed the river Somme, then let the Lewries emerge for another set of costumes and aliases. The way Sir Pulteney and Lady Imogene preened, giggled, and congratulated each other really began to cut raw with Lewrie.

Sir Pulteney became M'sieur Andrй Guyot, a garrulous, somewhat simple and grey-haired "Merry Andrew" with but a muted version of his inane donkey-bray laugh, no longer in need of a cane.

Himself t'the bone, and he don't have tact, Lewrie thought of that persona. Might we mention that Lewrie by this time was becoming a touch surly?

Lady Imogene became Madame Hortense Guyot, streaking her raven hair with touches of grey to play an elegant beauty, wed to an older, well-to-do man, and a silly goose herself, with fond toleration of her husband's foibles.

"Oh, such a clever ploy, m'dear!" Lady Imogene gushed as they studied themselves in a hand mirror. "And so distinguished-looking!" Be pullin' rabbits out o' his hat next, Lewrie told himself.

Now they were in Artois and Picardy, so close to the border of the former Austrian Netherlands and the dead Holy Roman Empire (which after 1815 would become Belgium) Sir Pulteney thought it made sense for the Lewries to portray the Guyots' manservant and maid, Flemings or Walloons, half-German really, hired from cross the border years before. Lewrie became a flaxen blond in neat but worn brown woolen ditto; Caroline became a coppery redhead with her face subtley re-done to pinky-raw cheeks and chin. Again, their poor French could be explained by their supposed origins, and in Flanders, Ricardy, and in Artois, no one gave a tinker's dam or the slightest bit of notice to crude Flemish or Walloon folk-as bad as so many Germans to them!

Sir Pulteney allowed his goose-brained self to be cheated most sinfully at Albert, a small town on the road to Arras and Lille, on a solo trip, then returned to join them in a wood lot short of the town at the reins of a shabby canvas-topped cabriolet with a younger and fresher two-horse team, wishing to make a grand entrance in Lille, he told them as they re-loaded the remaining trunks and valises, which by then had been reduced to but one valise each, and one trunk that held the last disguises Sir Pulteney decided would be apt when they got to the coast.

Albert to Arras, the famed woolen industry town. But instead of going through it and proceeding on to Lille, as Sir Pulteney had told the cabriolet's owner, they turned off the main road once more and resorted to back-roads and farm lanes 'til striking a major highway near Bethunй. There, they bought oats for the horses, bread and wine, cheese, a baked ham, and pair of broiled whole chickens, with all the necessities for a mid-day pique-nique, along with all the utensils and plates, the napkins, cork puller, and large basket necessary. By the looks on the faces of the various vendors by the time they were done, Sir Pulteney and Lady Imogene had made a distinct impression of a pair of cackling twits; so much so, Sir Pulteney whispered once back into the cabriolet, that no one would remember their silent servants! Then they rattled out of Bethunй on the St. Omer road.

"We will find a place to lay up somewhere off the road," Sir Pulteney informed them. "It will mean sleeping rough tonight. Then I fear poor M'sieur Guyot will be cheated most horribly when he sells the cabriolet in Saint Omer, haw haw! One last change of disguises, then we're off for the coast! Begad, m'dear, ain't it grand to be in harness again? Livin' by our wits! What marvellous sport!"

They dawdled along the road for the better part of the day, 'til the sun began to decline and traffic began to thin. A mid-day meal was taken en route, without stopping; sliced ham and cheese sandwiches with a mild mustard and pickles, and but one bottle of wine shared by all. Sir Pulteney had forgotten to purchase glasses, and made quite a dither for their lack, japing over how they had to pass that bottle back and forth.

Finally, as it drew on toward sunset, Sir Pulteney began peering ahead and to larboard for a place to leave the road, muttering over and over, "… sure to be here, just about here, I remember it well, unless they've gone and cut the woods down. Now where is it?"

This part of France was looking less promising to Lewrie, when it came to a place to go to ground. It was mostly flat and not very interesting, with long gentle slopes that rose only slightly for what seemed miles, then fell away for what looked like even more miles, and the plowed fields they passed, the road bed, looked paler as they passed through a land of chalky soil. There were drainage ditches to either hand and enough windmills to put Lewrie in mind of the Dutch coast.

"Aha, there it is, Begad!" Sir Pulteney crowed at last. "Knew we'd stumble cross it sooner or later! See it, m'dear Imogene?"

"Hortense, cher Andrй… mon coeur," Lady Imogene prompted.

There was a long, slow rise to the left, what passed for a hill hereabouts, thickly covered with forest, with the faintest trace of a path where waggons or carts had cut a sketch of a road in white, chalky earth. It looked so long un-used that new grass was growing in the ruts, not just the crest of the track, and a few seedlings from the forest had even taken root, some as high as the belly of the cabriolet. Sir Pulteney drew the coach to a stop, stood on the seat to peer up and down the main road, then, satisfied that there was no one visible for miles, sat down and clucked the team up into the woods.

By the time they had un-hitched the horse team and hobbled them it was sunset, a rather spectacular one of yellow, amber, and crimson, which made Lewrie feel a tad better; the day's dawn had been a clear one, no "red in the morning, sailor take warning." Given the febrile, goose-brained airs that the Plumbs displayed, he was about ready to hunt up a rabbit's foot or spit and dance about three times counter-clockwise for luck!

There was a spring at the foot of the rise on the western side, and they fetched canvas feed bags of water for the horses 'til they were sated, then gave them their oats.

From the summit of their low rise, looking down to the northwest and west, Lewrie could see quite a long way into the sunset, and the land round them seemed but thinly populated. There was a village, far off, and a manor house a mile or two away. But in the immediate vicinity, there was nothing but empty fields, with not even the yelp of a stray dog to disturb the bucolic quiet.

"We'll put up the bonnet and let the ladies sleep in the cabriolet" Sir Pulteney suggested. "Blanket rolls beneath for us… hard ground, dews, and wee crawling things. Odd's Blood, what I would give for a straw pallet tonight! Haven't slept rough in ages. It's a feather mattress for me, I tell you!"

They dug a pit and risked a small fire, hopefully deep enough in those old-growth woods that it would not be seen. In companionable fashion, they spread blankets to sit on and delved into their basket once more for a cold supper. The new bottle of wine that they passed back and forth even proved to be a fairly good cabernet.

"An early rising at dawn," Sir Pulteney mused after jointing a chicken for them all, and choosing a thigh for himself, eating with his fingers most commonly. "By the time the shops open, pauvre M'sieur Guyot, the old addle-pate, will be selling the coach and team. Money matters not at this stage… just enough to tide us over 'til we are at one of the coves. Quel dommage" he said with a grin and a little sigh. Followed by one of his irritating titters, of course.

"An utter fool," Lady Imogene said with a fond grin, snickering. "Still, a fool has his uses, and his good points. Un bouffon, a clown, will outwit all of Rйal's, all of Fouchй's, minions, no matter how clever they are, or think they are. That fellow, what is his name, m'dear, in charge of the pursuit?"

"Fourchette," Sir Pulteney said with a guffaw. "He is named Matthieu Fourchette. My old sources informed me he's been watching the Lewries long before the levee, and he's reputed to be-"

"Come again?" Lewrie blurted through a bite of chicken breast. "We're bein' chased by a man named 'Fork'? And there's been people watchin' us all that long? Think ye might've warned us earlier?"

"By now, Fourchette could be as hot on our trail as he is on yours, Captain Lewrie," Sir Pulteney rejoined. "Though not as famous as the instigator of our league, my sobriquet was not unknown to the French authorities in those horrid days. Who knows? Perhaps a paper record of the times ten years ago was kept, the connexion made from old dossiers and suspicions of my presence in France before the war closed off access for English visitors, and the disappearance of the intended victims of the

Revolution, say? Perhaps I did have a careless moment, leaving a note behind, as a cheeky taunt or by omission, dropping one in haste… one intercepted or taken from a collaborator… "

"Mean t'say you signed yer bloody name?" Lewrie gawped; this was getting even more lunatick. And he still hadn't gotten an answer to his question about the watchers!

"My insignia, rather," Sir Pulteney told them.

"That wee flower at the bottom of the note Lady Imogene gave me before we left Paris, do you mean, Sir Pulteney?" Caroline asked. "A part of a family seal, or…?"

"Not so incriminating as a signet ring in wax, no, Mistress Lewrie," Sir Pulteney told her with a smile, and a bray. He sat up straighter, as if in pride. "Back then, we all had our secret names and signs. I… was known as… the Yellow Tansy."

If he was expecting awe, rushes of indrawn breath, or knowing nods, he didn't get them; the Lewries looked at him like an escapee from Bedlam, then at each other, shrugging at the same time.

"Well, it was a long time ago, mon cher," Lady Imogene said as she patted his thigh to comfort his deflated feelings. "And it was a secret from everyone, wasn't it? No mention of the league in the newspapers, no thrilling tales written after the fact. We laboured in the dark, and our successes were their own reward, n'est-ce pas?"

"Mean to say, you never heard…?" Sir Pulteney said, crushed.

"Not an inkling," Lewrie rather enjoyed telling him.

Who the Hell runs about callin' himself the Yellow Tansy? he thought; "the Shadow," or somethin spy-ish, aye, but… mine arse on a band-box, who'd even admit t'such? They don't even call race horses at Ascot or the Derby such silly names!

The search round Beauvais had proved fruitless, as Fourchette expected, and the quickly erected road blocks on all roads leading to Rouen had not turned up the fugitives, either. For a time he had hoped that this mysterious "Fleury" family might appear in Le Havre or some other seaport, and the coastal police or guardsmen might identify them, but a rider had come from Rouen's hфtel de ville; according to a census, there were several real Fleurys living there, but all were accounted for, and none matched the descriptions they had gathered from Mйru. Again, as Fourchette dourly expected.

"How I wish that all France was linked by the First Consul's semaphore towers, the way it was when it was Gaul, and the Romans held us." Fourchette gloomed at how long messengers took to go back and forth.

"How Napoleon protects our coast with those new semaphore towers of his," Guillaume Choundas grumpily pointed out, stifling a belch of liquid fire that threatened to sear his throat. His digestion had been going bad during his last stint in the West Indies, and what the Amйricains served during his captivity had completed its ruin. On his own in his Paris hovel, and with his miserly excuse for a pension, he ate only the blandest, cheapest food. This hunt after Lewrie, though, and the lavish funds spent on it by Fourchette's employer, resulted in many hastily eaten meals in foul inns along the way, usually ordered by the policeman for all, with no individual choice, and guaranteed to be piquant and spicy, and insults to his stomach and bowels. Even with final revenge waiting at the end of their road, there were times that Choundas wished he'd stayed home with his tasteless broth. Some nights when the hunters could take lodgings, Choundas would spend half the hours that he should have slept in the outback toilettes, either squirting liquid and searing his hemorrhoids, or groaning in painful, bloated inability.

Charitй wasn't enjoying the hunt much, either, for she had come away from Paris imagining that Lewrie would be taken no more than two hours outside the city, and that she would be home in her chic appartement by dusk. She had packed nothing more than a brace of pistols and their accoutrements. No valise, no tooth powder or brush, no spare clothes. Her one small carry bag held a comb, a brush, a mirror, and a scented face powder and puff! And no more than two thousand francs to purchase a meal in celebration! After three days, she was sure she was as "high" as the rankest cavalry soldat. Her one serviceable gown and her single pair of men's breeches were stained with ammonia horse sweat and the stench of wet saddle leather, and after the hard use to which their horses had been put, both originals and remounts, the reek of open and rotting saddle sores.

The cavalryman's cloak Major Clary had loaned her against the chill of night rides, and one afternoon of sullen rain blown inland from the Channel, had seen an entire year's hard field use on campaign, and it, too, gave off a mйlange of odd odours, not a one of them that could be called pleasant, either.

All in all, Charitй reckoned, she had managed to stay cleaner, sweeter-scented, better groomed, and a world more stylish aboard one of their pirate schooners in the Gulf of Mexico, and Denis could have this "glorious" soldier's life!

"What you said, Mam'selle Charitй," Fourchette said suddenly, leaning intimately towards her at the breakfast table they shared at their lodgings in Beauvais, a seductive note to his voice and flirtatious glints in his oddly pale eyes. "How Lewrie only knows the roads from Calais to Paris?"

"Oui, m'sieur?" Charitй answered, put off once more by his continual lusty looks, shifting a few centimиtres further away, wishing she had a shawl with which to shield herself from his leering gaze.

"Calais, Boulogne, Dunkerque… perhaps even Abbeville and Dieppe," Fourchette went on as if amused by the reaction he elicited. "Much closer to England, n'est-ce pas? On a good day, one can see the cliffs of Dover from Cap Gris Nez, n'est-ce pas? I thank you for the suggestion. It is so astute of you, mam'selle. You are a treasure indeed."

He was so obvious that even Guillaume Choundas snorted in derision.

"You, Capitaine Choundas, remind me that Lewrie is a sailor," Fourchette said, turning to face that ogre. "He certainly cannot try to book passage aboard a packet, for we watch all departures by now, yet… is he a good sailor? One able to handle a small boat? And tell me, Capitaine, how small a boat might he need to sail it himself cross the Narrow Sea?"

"Every second day, the straits are so boisterous that anyone trying to cross in a small boat would be swamped and drowned, and if he managed to get far enough offshore, the swift tide race would take him either into the North Sea or halfway to Le Havre before turning," Choundas was quick to say, drawing on his nautical experience, which was long and expert. Choundas paused though, his evil sword-ravaged lips curled in sourness anent the first part of Fourchette's question.

Was Lewrie a good small-boat man? With a crew, even Choundas had to cede him tactical skill, and… daring, damn him! But he'd only seen Lewrie handle a jolly-boat, gig, launch, or cutter on his own once, so he did not know. His natural hatred of the man made him wish that he could say no, yet… the British Royal Navy was a demanding and hard school, and Lewrie had come up in it, successfully. Choundas could not let him make his escape this time by underestimating him or deprecating him.

"He has spent twenty years in their navy, most of that at sea, Citoyen Fourchette," Choundas slowly and carefully said, at last. "He most certainly can 'hand, reef, and steer' as they say, as good as any matelot. If he obtains a boat, then he could sail it to England.

"But…," Choundas added, holding up his one hand and arm, "he would need a decent-sized boat, of at least ten metres' length, with a single mast… a typical fishing boat… to survive the crossing in any sort of rough weather. Such a boat would be hard for one man to handle without help. His wife could toss free the dock lines, while he could hoist the single lugsail. A woman might have the strength to hoist the much smaller jib for him while he mans the tiller. Your small rowing boat, your small ship's boat, would not avail him."

"Such are more likely to be found in the smaller harbours then?" Fourchette asked, looking pleased with Choundas's answers.

"In all harbours, citoyen. Unfortunately," Choundas told him.

"What if he travels with this mysterious second couple?" Charitй fretted, though relieved that Fourchette had turned his mind to ideas other than bedding her behind Denis Clary's back. "How big a boat can two men handle?"

"If the seas are rough, as I just said, Citoyenne de Guilleri," Choundas told her with his mildest manners, "any boat much larger than ten metres would be too much for two men to handle. For two men and two women… if we now believe that Lewrie and his wife travel with help… anything with more than one mast would also be hard for them to sail."

"We can send riders to alert the Guard Nationale and the local gendarmes to keep a closer watch on such boats, and pass word among our fishermen to guard their livelihoods from theft," Fourchette said.

"Hah!" Choundas scoffed with a mirthless laugh. "You might as well tell them to lock up all the smugglers 'til we've caught them, too, Fourchette! Our smugglers, who would drown their children for a purse full of coin, or the Anglais smugglers, who come and go as free as the wind and brazenly walk the streets of Dunkerque and Calais in full view, with the winking knowledge of police and customs men! How do plotters against the Republic enter France or escape back to England, like will-o'-the-wisps? On smugglers' boats, I tell you!"

"What of smugglers further down the Narrow Sea?" the policeman pressed, suddenly unsure of his clever idea.

"Our entire coast, their entire coast, is as infected with smugglers as this inn is full of bed-bugs," Choundas sourly replied. "In my own Brittany, in Saint Malo, the heroism and patriotism of my glorious Celts is corrupted by the lure of quick money. Brittany, where one may find the bravest, most skillful seafarers in all Europe since the days of Julius Caesar and-"

"Yes, yes, Capitaine, as you have told us," Fourchette said with a wave of his hands. Ever since this foul creature had joined their expedition, they all had been subjected to Choundas's tales of Breton derring-do and pagan myths and sagas. More than enough of it! "This Lewrie, though, stands a better chance from Calais and Dunkerque?"

"He does," Choundas sulkily said, nettled that no one would appreciate his people's glories.

"Then we shift to the Calais coast," Fourchette decided.

"God," Charitй softly groaned, not looking forward to another long, hard ride on a reeking horse, in her reeking clothes.

"We will coach to Calais, mademoiselle" Fourchette informed her. "Once there, in more comfortable lodgings, we will wait for the quarry to come to us, instead of haring all over France as we have. And I think that Minister Fouchй would not deny us clean clothing, barbers, or hair dressers, n'est-ce pas? It will be my treat to reward your cleverness, ma chйrie."

Oh, gag me! Charitй thought; I'll owe him gratitude? A debt?

The ladies went off deeper into the woods atop their rise just before bedtime, a last moment of modesty. Sir Pulteney Plumb produced a pint bottle from a side pocket of his coat, pulled the cork, and had a brief taste, then waved it to draw Lewrie down-slope northwest once more. "Will you partake, Captain Lewrie, as we give our good ladies a touch more privacy, what?

"Not a bad tipple, does one prefer apples to grapes. So near Normandy, their calvados, an apple brandy, is easy to find." He handed the bottle over to Lewrie, then tended to his trouser buttons for his own ease.

"Mmm, tasty," Lewrie had to agree after a taste.

"Whilst we're here, sir, in private… so we do not alarm the womenfolk, there is something that has been nagging at me this past day or so…," Plumb hesitantly began.

Him? Worried 'bout somethin'? At this late stage? How far up Shit's Creek are we, then, for him t'look worried? Lewrie cringed.

"Since crossing the Thйrain river, no one has given us even the slightest looking-over," Sir Pulteney said, sounding fretful and sombre. "What I took for success at eluding them may have been that they have guessed our final objective, the coast and the seaports, and have set watchers in place… so we stumble into their spider-webs."

Oh, just bloody grand! Lewrie sourly thought; ye didn't think they wouldn't? He took a goodly slug of the calvados before he gave in to the urge to curse, loudly.

"They'll guard the cross-Channel packets, the good-sized boats we could steal," Lewrie said. "But we ain't plannin t'sail ourselves over, are we? Your schooner, waitin' off some beach t'take us off… like you told me, right? We do have a plan, hey?"

"Of course, Captain Lewrie," Sir Pulteney was quick to assure him; perhaps reassure himself on that head. "There's the very place I had in mind… a very lonely wee beach where we may hide in a maze of rocks above a small inlet 'til the schooner arrives. Used it in the past… though… "

"Though?" Lewrie felt like screeching.

"Ten years ago, it was totally abandoned," Sir Pulteney said in reverie. "There were some fishermen's shacks atop the cliffs, and the path down so steep and convoluted that hardly anyone even knew there was a shallow inlet, and a beach, at the foot of it. The shacks were falling in on themselves, un-used for years, as well, and, did a lone gendarme happen by and see activity, what could one man do, with help miles away at the next post? Then, at any rate. But, as you say, the French have thousands more police and army patrols now. And… now I can cannot say with any certainty whether it is unhabited, still."

Just bloody, fuckin great! Lewrie gawped; you clueless…!

"I'd thought to take a look at the place, for old time's sake, but Imogene wished to get on to Paris, so I didn't," Plumb lamented. "Neither of us is quite as eager to forego our comforts as we did in our headier days, d'ye see. Yet who could have expected a visit to be necessary?" he added, to excuse himself.

"Well, you couldn't have known," Lewrie said, sighing heavily to the reality and taking another deep gulp of calvados. You'll get us killed, for the lack of it, though, you hen-headed… ! he thought.

"Once we've donned our last disguises and gotten a new form of transport in Saint Orner, I must leave the three of you somewhere safe and make a reconnaissance on my own, before committing us to its use," Sir Pulteney decided aloud, waving a hand for the bottle, as if in need of "Dutch courage" himself. "In a very humble costume, haw haw!"

Hope it ain't clowns or mimes! Lewrie gloomed.

"So close to the sea, what better way to blend in than to play the part of

common sailors?" Plumb said with a clever little hee-haw. "I trust our ladies will not be scandalised to become sailors' doxies!"

Sailors and doxies, is it? Lewrie thought; no sailor is authentic without a good knife, no doxy without a wee pistol up her skirts! We get to Saint-Omer safe, the last o' my money's goin' for weapons!