"Au revoir, m'sieur… madame" the guard said, handing back their laisser-passers and sketching out a salute before waving to the coachmen and his compatriots to signal that they were allowed to exit Paris.
"No worse than any other day-coach jaunt we made," Lewrie told Caroline. "We're on our way, one way or the other."
Matthieu Fourchette had placed three covert watchers in close vicinity to the lodging house in the Rue Honorй; feeding pigeons, taking a stroll, sullenly sweeping horse dung. As the first coach came to a stop by the doors, the senior man tipped an underling the wink, and he was off, quick as his legs could carry him, to alert the band waiting for his news in the place du Carrousel.
The second coach, then a third, bollixed everything, throwing the remaining two watchers into feetful confusion. The departure of those three coaches, with three pairs of Lewries, less than a minute apart, threw those two agents into a panic. Try to pursue them? Try to catch up with Fourchette and his men, who had most likely started off for the Porte St. Denis, the logical exit for the Calais road, or raise a hue and cry? The senior man decided that his best choice, if he wished to continue his employment, was to run to the headquarters of the Police Nationale on the south side of the Tuileries Palace to pass the burden on to Director Fouchй- well, not directly to his face!-and let him despatch riders to sort it out.
If Director Joseph Fouchй had had a single hair on his head he would have been sorely tempted to yank it out in frustration as contradictory news came in in mystifying dribs and drabs.
Horsemen from three of the portes had come to report the departure of the Anglais couple the guards had been ordered to be on alert for? Another horseman had to be sent off to catch up with Fourchette and his party to warn them that a massive charade was being played on them. Of a sudden, Fouchй needed two more parties of pursuers, with no time to brief them on the purpose of their urgent missions or to scrounge up the proper men who could manage the elimination of those perfidiously clever Anglais! All their plans had put that task into the hands of Fourchette, that salope de Guilleri, and that foul fiend, Choundas.
"Damn, damn, damn!" Fouchй roared, flinging an ink-pot at the nearest wall. "Even if they catch them, they won't know them from Adam! Their papers give nothing away! Merde alors! Merde, merde!"
"Citoyen?" his meek clerk timorously asked, cringing a little. "You have orders?" he dared to pose.
"Another rider!" Fouchй demanded, grabbing for pen and paper and realising he no longer had any ink with which to write new orders. "Putain!" he roared in even greater frustration. "Ink, fool! Bring me more ink, ballot, vite, vite!"
He took a deep breath to calm himself as the clerk scrambled to fetch a fresh ink-pot. Fourchette could sort it out; he'd better, or it would be his neck! Three coaches to pursue, so… he would split his party, of course, and make haste, Fouchй assumed. The girl, with a few agents to help her; thank God she'd talked him into including her Chasseur, Clary, who could chase after the second with a few more men… though he'd been included to identify them, to trail them, and had not been in on the conclusion of the plan. Would he balk? Fourchette and that beast Choundas could chase after the first coach… before all three of them got too far away from Paris, before the roads diverged too far apar!
The clerk returned with the ink, and Fouchй scribbled furiously to impart his new instructions, then… issued a second order. There was a chance that the Anglais couple would get so far along that there would be no catching them if the first lead was false. He needed more men, with orders to arrest them; he would leave the elimination to his man, Fourchette. For that, he would send an urgent request to the general in charge of the Garde Nationale garrison in Paris, no… no request, but an order, for at least three troops of cavalry!
"Send them off at once, at once!" Fouchй snapped, thumping down into his chair with his head in his thick hands, staring at the middle distance, and wondering if things could go even more awry!
Fouchй's first despatch rider caught up with Fourchette and his party no more than two kilometres past the Porte St. Denis.
"Putain, quel emmerdement!" Fourchette spat once he'd read it, balled it up, and shoved it into a side pocket of his coat. "Our quarry must have been warned, but I do not see how! Three couples at three portes presented papers declaring themselves as the Lewries."
"With the help of Anglais spies, I knew it!" Guillaume Choundas growled, thumping his rein hand on the low pommel of his saddle. He had never been a decent horsemen, even when in possession of both his arms and working legs, and even a little more than one hour astride a horse was beginning to be an agony. "He's in league with the Royalist conspirators. How else? In league with the Devil!"
"Make haste," Fourchette decided quickly, "The coach bound for Calais from the Porte Saint-Denis can't be that far ahead. We'll see whether we're after the real Lewrie, or another. Allez vite!"
Fourchette spurred his horse to a gallop, quickly joined by the girl, and her Chasseur Major. Both revelled in the sudden chase and the kilometre-eating pace and the wind in their faces. Still unaware of their true purpose, Major Denis Clary delighted in showing off his superb cavalryman's mastery of a horse, and Charitй was just as eager to impress him with her seat. For a few moments, she could shake from her mind the image of what would occur at the end of their chase and take a little joy. She looked over her shoulder and laughed out loud to see that foetid monster, Choundas, jouncing almost out of control in only a bone-shaking trot as she left his hideous form and mind behind!
"There it is!" Fourchette bugled, espying a slow-trotting coach-and-four on the road ahead. "Hurry!"
Fourchette, Charitй, Major Clary, and half a dozen agents garbed in civilian clothes thundered up to the coach, catching up easily and passing down either side of it as Fourchette bellowed demands for the coachee to draw reins and stop. He sprang from his saddle and was at the carriage door before one of his men could take his reins.
"M'sieur et madame, I order you to present your laisser-passers at once, and… oh, merde alors. Who the Devil are you?"
"Sir, I do not know who you are, but you will not use such foul language in my wife's presence, do you hear me?" the gentleman with the mid-brown hair inside the coach shot back with an imperious back and in perfect French, with but a touch of Anglais accent.
"Your papers, at once!" Fourchette shot back, fighting down his shock to find utter strangers. Once handed over, he read them over quickly and got a sinking feeling. The man and his wife were English… but not the ones he sought. "You are…?"
"Sir Andrew Graves… sir," the Briton said, looking at Fourchette with that maddening supercilious air of a proper English lord looking down at a chimney sweep. "My lady wife, Susannah. And what is the meaning of this… sir?" Irking Fourchette so much that he wished this arrogant Anglais was his real prey, and he could just put the salaud into a hastily dug grave. Yet… the laisser-passers he had been presented were authentic, with entry dates and a departure from Paris showing that they had been in France two weeks, and with all the proper signatures and stamps depressingly authentic, to boot!