Asking Charitй in the few fleeting quiet moments of this chase had resulted in vague answers, waved off with an impatient hand, and a change of topic. All Paris knew Mlle. de Guilleri's heroic history to raise a rebellion against the Spanish and reclaim Louisiana and New Orleans for France, the loss of her kin, and her banishment before the Dons garrotted her. Others said the Englishman was a spy, sent to kill Bonaparte, but that hadn't happened, so why the urgency?
Thinking back on what he'd seen at the levee, Major Denis Clary suddenly recalled being introduced to this Lewrie… and how Charitй had spoken to him with such well-concealed anger. Had she known him before, in Spanish Louisiana? Impossible, Clary decided. Yet…
"Oh, beurk!" Charitй exclaimed, standing quickly. She made a gagging sound. A light two-horse open carriage was trotting up the road to the tavern, with a saddled horse tied to its rear by the reins. "Can we not be rid of that obscenity? That disgusting…!"
Capitaine Guillaume Choundas had caught up with them, bleating in bile to run into them, demanding why Lewrie was not yet in their hands, and what did they think they were doing, standing about with their fingers up their idle arses!
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Police Agent Fourchette didn't think much of Mйru, when they got there at last just before sunset; a wide spot in the road, most likely awash in pig-shit, inhabited by numbskulls in wooden clogs, he concluded, sharing the views of most Parisians with regard to their rural countrymen. They did call a halt for wine, bread, and cheese, water and feed bags for their horses, and a few questions.
The local policeman, the only policeman, was a corpulent, lazy jumped-up hay-scyther, stuffed into a uniform and a lax set of duties.
Yes, there were some travellers at the two foul inns, but none of them were Anglais, and no one even close to Lewrie's description had passed through. Of course he'd carefully looked at the registries (or he would once this intense Parisian and his entourage had departed!) and no foreigners of any kind had paused in sleepy little Mйru.
A coach? A big, shiny black coach-and-four with a matched team of sorrels? Mais oui, a coach like that had passed through, but that had been three hours before.
That forced Fourchette, Major Clary, Charitй, the police agents, and the befuddled troop of light cavalry into their saddles, some still chewing or pulling at spare canteens hurriedly filled with a raw local vin ordinaire a vague step away from vinegar.
"On to Beauvais, allez vite!" Fourchette demanded. "They're in a coach, three hours ahead, but we can still catch them!"
"If they did not change teams somewhere along the way, m'sieur Fourchette," Major Clary said as they began to clatter north, "we will be much faster, even on tired mounts."
"Fresh team? Oui, the livery," Fourchette snapped, spurring his horse for the stables. "If they obtained fresh horses here…!"
The old stableman was as much a slow-witted bumpkin as the policeman, interrupted from shovelling dung with a pitchfork from one of the barn stalls. "M'sieur wishes?" he asked slowly.
"A coach came through here a few hours ago," Fourchette began impatiently. "Did you provide them a change of horses? They are criminals, wanted in Paris."
"A coach came here, oui m'sieur" the older fellow said, taking his own sweet time to puff on his pipe, take it from his lips, and look into the bowl to see if it was drawing properly, then spit to one side. "But, I did not change horses with them."
"So they will be slow, aha!" Fourchette started to cheer up.
"You wish to see the coach, m'sieur? The horses?" the old man asked. "They left it all with me and gave me three hundred francs to see it back to a livery in Paris. Is it stolen, perhaps? Will you be taking it? I was looking forward to going to Paris. Quel dommage."
"Still here? Where?" Fourchette yelped.
"In the barn, certainement, m'sieur" the old fellow said with his pipe stem for a pointer to the barn's interior. "The old fellow is a criminal, then? One would never have guessed."
"What old man?" Fourchette snapped as he dismounted and ordered some troopers to help him search the barn and the coach.
"The man who left the coach here, m'sieur" the stableman said in his slow, laconic way. "A m'sieur Fleury."
"How old? With a fair-haired woman?"
"An old soldier, I took him to be," the stableman answered- maddeningly slowly. "Red hair and mustachios? In his fifties, I should think. Carried himself as an officer would. A colonel or general of brigade, I thought him. He travelled with his wife, but she had dark hair, mixed with grey, and quite stout. He had a limp and leaned on a cane."
"Lewrie could not disguise himself that much," Charitй said in rising impatience, too. "Nor could his wife. Just the two of them?"
"No, mademoiselle" was the grunted reply, 'tween smoke puffs. "M'sieur Fleury had his widowed daughter-in-law and his son with him. Poor fellow." Puff puff, look at the pipe once more, and spit.
"What about him?" Fourchette demanded, coming back from inspecting the coach and coming away without a clue.
"Why, he'd been kicked in the head by a horse, and let go from the army," the stableman related. "All his wits knocked from him."
"Fair, mid-brown hair, slightly curled… with a faint scar on his cheek?" Charitй pressed, sketching a finger down her own face.
"No, mam'selle. Dark-haired. Didn't see a scar."
"Did they say where they were going?" Fourchette asked.
"Did they rent horses from you?" said Charitй at the same time.
"Did they just walk on up the road?" came a croaking snarl from the open carriage from Guillaume Choundas.
"Hй, merde, what a sight!" The old stableman gawped at Choundas and made a gesture guaranteed in local lore to ward off evil. "One question at a time, pray you!" he pleaded with his hands before him.
"Did… they… say… where… they… were… going, you old fool?" Fourchette. "And how!"
"No reason to be insulting, m'sieur," the old fellow said in a sudden sulk. "M'sieur Fleury said they were going home to Rouen. He had taken his son to a physician in Paris, to see if they could do anything for him. As for how they went on, they rented an old two-horse farm waggon from me. They went up that way, the road to Beauvais."
"What is all this nonsense about these people, Fourchette?" Choundas demanded from his carriage, slamming his cane on the floor. "Lewrie did not come this way, he's on another road right now, laughing his head off at how feeble we are!"
"Who the Devil are we after and why, Major?" Capitaine Joseph Aulard, leader of the troop of cavalry, asked the only military man in the party. "Two Anglais or four French people? My colonel told me nothing but to catch up with this police fellow and follow his orders."
"Two Anglais… a capitaine in their navy and his wife. As to why, you might have to ask M'sieur Fourchette, for I see no sense in it, mon vieux," Major Clary replied in a mutter, with a shrug. "I am here simply because I met the Anglais and can recognise him."