"More coming, from behind, Sir Pul… Henri," Caroline warned recalling Plumb's new alias. "A lot of them!"
The Plumbs went into their drunken singing, swaying, and bottle-waving in time to their tune.
"Christ, shit on a biscuit!" Lewrie yelped as he looked astern at the party that was rapidly gaining on them. "Mine arse on a band-box! Grope me, Caroline! Lay down and paw me… for our lives!
"It's that de Guilleri bitch and that Chasseur Major we met at Bonaparte's levee. They'll know us, sure as Fate, if-"
Caroline fell on her back and pulled him half over her, arms round his neck to hide his face, one thigh lifted to stroke down his thigh. It was a lazy kiss, a sleepy one 'twixt two people too foxed to couple. Lewrie shut his eyes tight, with the inane thought that if he couldn't see Charitй de Guilleri, she couldn't see him!
Rapid clops of hooves, coming closer! The chink of bit chains and metal scabbards, the squeak of saddle leather! A lot of horses, then the hiss and creak of a carriage's wheels and suspension, to boot! And they were slowing down, reining back to look them over!
"Hй! Des Matelots ivres et leur putains," someone said dismissively, so close that Lewrie could imagine that he had leaned over close enough to smell the fellow's garlicky breath. Drunk sailors and their whores… damned right we are, so sod the fuck off! Lewrie thought in panic.
"Hй, Capitaine Choundas," another mocked. "Are these some of your heroic Celtic or Breton seafarers, hein?"
Choundas? Gawd! Lewrie thought, ready to squeak in stark terror; him, too? Where'd they find him, floatin' face-down in the Seine?
There was a slow palaver 'twixt Sir Pulteney-Henri-and the leader of the mounted party; intent questions from one and drunken mumbles from the other. Whatever was said, what little Lewrie could glean from their French, he hadn't a clue. He fully expected a rough hand on his shoulder, tearing him away to face them, then…!
Caroline turned her face to his, tucking under his shoulder to hide her own identity while he pretended to lamely nuzzle her neck, his own face hidden in her red wig, wondering if his own black one'd stay in place, and trying manful not to sneeze!
"Merde," said the leader "Adieu. Allons vite, mes amis."
The clop of hooves picked up the pace from a slow walk to a canter, the carriage rattled past, and the Plumbs took up their mumbling song once more as their pursuers diminished on the road north.
"You, erm… know one of them, Captain Lewrie?" Sir Pulteney asked, once it was safe to speak in English again. "A de Guilleri?"
"The girl with em," Lewrie muttered, cautiously sitting up to look beneath the cart's driver's bench at the departing party. "Shot me once, in Louisiana. And if there was a crippled monster with a mask on his face and but one good arm, then, aye, I do. He's named Guillaume Choundas, and I'm the one who maimed him… several times. Known him since the Far East, in Eighty-Four… the Med, ten years later, and the West Indies in Ninety-Eight."
"One of the most disgusting creatures ever I laid eyes upon," Lady Imogene said with a delayed shudder.
"How many of them were there?" Lewrie asked, daring to sit up all the way.
"A whole troop of green Chasseurs," Sir Pulteney told him. "An open carriage for the ogre, a Major and a Captain of cavalry, and the young woman. And their leader, a fox-faced, lank-haired fellow, him I must imagine to be the very Matthieu Fourchette I mentioned to you last evening. Haw haw! Zounds! Odd's Blood, but we've just fooled the very people sent to catch you, Captain Lewrie! How glorious!"
There he goes again! Lewrie sourly thought.
"And just who is 'that de Guilleri bitch' to you, Alan? She shot you once?" Caroline asked, sounding very huffy and hard. "One may only imagine the why. You knew her before we encountered her at the levee?"
Oh, merciful shit! Lewrie quailed in alarm; just when I think I'm back in her good books!
The Plumbs shared a worldly-wise look, sure that it was none of their business, but…
Fourchette had been free with official funds at Beauvais. They improved their cleanliness and comfort, and hired coaches and teams to take them to Amiens, where he'd spent even more. Capitaine Aulard's cavalrymen had gone back to Paris, but they'd picked up a troop of Chasseurs at Amiens,
and Denis Clary had been delighted to don a borrowed uniform and once more be a complete soldier. Charitй had picked up a few new serviceable gowns, a fresh pair of breeches to allow her to straddle a horse, not perch daintily side-saddle, and fill a pair of saddlebags with not only fresh necessities but a few luxuries as well.
From Amiens on, though, they had set a furious pace, as rapid and demanding as the first dash from Paris to the Oise, to reach the coast, set a temporary headquarters in Calais, and coordinate with the gendarmerie and the local National Guard garrisons. So intent was the police agent, Fourchette, to get there that they performed only a cursory inspection of travellers on the road to Calais, trusting to the alerted cavalry patrols to nab any suspicious people matching the descriptions they had sent ahead by despatch riders.
Fourchette and his party had to depend on the vigilance of the local authorities; they could not be everywhere, on every road, or at every town gate, to spot their quarry.
It was only after they had taken brief lodgings at an inn at Calais, and Fourchette had bustled himself importantly to the hфtel de ville, the Chasseur troop had taken over a livery to see to the horses (and obtain lashings of wine, by fair methods or foul), and that beast Choundas had painfully, crookedly limped off to the out-house to ease his flaming bowels, that Major Clary finally had an idle hour to spend in private with Charitй.
"Why you, ma chйrie?" he posed over a welcome glass of wine on the inn's open-sided gallery as a soft, warm breeze redolent of fish and kelp and salt blew in from the sea. "You knew this man before, I suspect. Not from one brief introduction in Paris. What is he to you?"
She turned away, eyes closed in weariness and her face to the aromas of the breeze. She did not answer him.
"Why did Fouchй insist that you come on this chase?" Denis went on. "Or was it you who insisted that you be included?"
"Denis, mon cher… ," she warned him, her lovely face stern.
"No, I must know, at last," Clary insisted. "We both know that the Anglais gave no real insult to the First Consul. He was not the assassin Fouchй suspected, either. Yet we chase after him, and will drag him back to Paris in chains? And you seem to have such personal interest in being here, in the pursuit. As if you have cause to hate him. I must know, Charitй!"
"He killed my brothers, my cousin, Denis!" Charitй snapped in sudden venom, turning to face him. "He chased us down to Grand Isle in Barataria Bay, and his frigate destroyed everything and everyone. He ruined it all, he destroyed all hopes of taking Louisiana back from Spain. And for that I despise him! I had a chance to kill him once, and I failed! I thought I shot him full in the chest, with a miserable air-rifle, but, by all that's unholy, he lived, all right? Happy now?"