It didn't help Lewrie's nerves, or his dignity, that Caroline let forth a cynical chuckle-snort, then a full-out hoot of laughter.
"You're addled as a scrambled egg, Armand," Sir Pulteney went on. "You must walk stiffly, as if afraid your whole head will tumble off. Slowly and stiffly. Be clumsy with anything you handle, forks and spoons and such. Be slow in speech, grasping for the proper names for things-"
"Je suis un crayon," Lewrie interrupted, feeling sarcastic, too.
"With your poor command of French, I expect you'll grasp for a great number of nouns, yayss," Sir Pulteney snapped, still in character. "Do you rise from a chair, you might swoon a bit… "
"And wince, as if there's a sudden pain in your poor head, as well," Lady Imogene prompted. "We will cut your meat for you! Dribble a little wine so that I may wipe your chin."
"Should I drool?" Lewrie rejoined, growing tetchy.
"That might be a bit too much," Sir Pulteney said with a frown.
"Let me wrap this bandage round your head," Lady Imogene said, "then turn your complexion pale and wan."
By the time Lewrie had been "touched up" and his good suitings replaced with ill-fitting and older cast-offs, Sir Pulteney had altered himself into a stiff and stern-looking fellow in his late fifties or early sixties, with a shock of reddish hair and a large, gingery mustachio, a man who wore a sobre black ditto suit and limped on a stout cane.
"When I address you, Armand, it may be well for you to cringe into your collar," Sir Pulteney instructed. "Who, after all, would wed you now? What hopes of family martial glory for la patrie can come from one such as you? Will you give us grandchildren, or a life of caring for a lack-wit? Pah!" he stamped.
Lewrie ducked his head as if avoiding a proctor's rod, gulping a bit as he recalled that what he must play-act now was him to the life in his student days-when caught lacking at his studies, skylarking, or wakened from a nap in class. Huzzah for an English public school education! he told himself.
"Thank God for Napoleon Bonaparte," Lady Imogene said as she packed up her paints and closed the trunks, "the meddler! He imagines he Will re-order so much of France… the civil law codes, the roads and canals, standardising the currency… He has even given instructions to the Comйdie Franзaise about costumes, makeup, and how roles must be played! All these cast-offs were available for a song!"
"Let's hoist these trunks back into the boot and be on our way, Capt. Armand," Sir Pulteney snapped.
Not all that many kilometres, or miles, away at that very moment, Matthieu Fourchette was gazing across the fields to the river Oise, at a small crossroads place called L'Isle Adam on the main road to Amiens, and cursing under his breath as they watered their tired horses and eased sore fundaments. He had been forced to split his already small pursuit party after the incident with that English lord and his wife; some went on up the road to see if a second coach containing their quarry had gotten that far along beyond the first they'd stopped. There was a slim chance of that, but Fourchette had to make sure that that trailing coach had not been a decoy to put them off the chase and turn their attention elsewhere.
He wished he could sit down and rest, wished he could reach back and massage his buttocks and inner thighs, but he would not admit that he was not as good a horseman as that damned Chasseur Major Clary or the girl. On most of his missions for Fouchй, walking round Paris or coaching round France was sufficient, and when required to go by horse, the distances were usually much shorter, and at much slower paces.
Police agent Fourchette also wished he could get on with it, but he could not do that, either. Fouchй had promised him a cavalry troop, and he had to wait for their arrival. He had to wait for his agents to return with a report from the other road. "Damn!" he spat.
"The coaches that left through the Argenteuil gate, and the gate at Saint-Germaine en Laye," Major Clary thought to contribute as he stood nearby, idly flicking his horse's reins on his boots while his mount sipped water from the poor tavern's trough. "The Englishman is most likely in one of those, M'sieur Fourchette."
"From the west gate? Pah!" Fourchette snapped. "Where would they run to, going west? Brest, Nantes, or Saint Malo? L'Orient or Saint-Nazaire? That would take them days to make their escape. That coach will prove to be a decoy. Fouchй writes that he has requested a troop of cavalry to pursue that one, though it will prove fruitless. No… I think our quarry flees north for Dieppe, Boulogne-sur-Mer, or Calais. Those ports are much closer, and make their journey shorter."
"Then why do we tarry, m'sieur?" Charitй asked him.
Fourchette began to round on her, but Major Clary spoke up as he pulled the horse back from the trough and began to lead him to the shade under the trees beside the tavern. "Beauvais, is it? Departing the Argenteuil gate, the direst route north leads to Pontoise, then to Beauvais. All the roads join there. We could go on, leaving word with the tavernier for your men, and the cavalry. We could cross the Oise and ride for Beauvais and be there by nightfall, n'est-ce pas? With your authority from M'sieur Fouchй and my rank in the Chasseurs, we could order fresh mounts from the regiment garrisoned there. And request more men than a single troop."
"With these blown nags?" Fourchette gravelled, loath to take advice from a soldier. "We would be lucky to get to… what the Devil is the place?"-he snarled, unfolding a poor map-"to this little Mйru. Oui, we'll go to Beauvais, when my men have checked the road all the way to Creil, when the cavalry arrive, and when our horses are rested… else we get stuck in the woods until someone comes and rescues us! We will have to wait a bit longer, Major."
Major Clary thought to tell Fourchette that cavalry sent from Paris in haste would arrive with blown horses, too, but was beginning to take a great dislike to the lank-haired, weaselly fellow. He would have said that, in his military experience, and with General Bonaparte and his many victories as a shining example, forces so widely separated had to act on their own initiative, and quickly. Bonaparte had trusted his generals and colonels to think, to play their disparate parts in the overall scheme before converging before the final objective, to the utter confusion of the enemy. In this case, Beauvais was the objective, the junction of almost every road their quarry might take to flee.
But Major Clary didn't think that Fourchette would be in a mood to listen to sound advice. Besides, he didn't much care for how this insouciant, leering salaud ogled Charitй, either.
Major Clary came back from the hitching rails, letting his fond gaze assess his amour with a new lover's delight as she sat on a bench, impatiently jiggling a booted leg crossed over the other, idly pinning back up her wind-tossed coif. She rode astride, like a man, a pair of men's breeches underneath her gown. Charitй rode as good as a man, he further marvelled. Yet… what was this chase all about, and what was so important to her about being a part of it-beyond the fact that she could recognise the Englishman and his wife-that that billiard-ball-headed Fouchй had allowed her to come along? So this Anglais had insulted the First Consul, had he? Clary had heard their conversation, and Bonaparte had done most of the insulting to the smiling and bobbing "Bloodies." They were to arrest this gars for that? Horse-whip him, perhaps, or throw him into prison?