"And you took advantage of Fouchй… so you could kill him at last, Charitй?" Major Clary surprised her by speaking softly, with understanding, as if in sympathy. "Is that what you wish, ma chйrie? To see him dead? The way that hideux Choundas wishes him dead?"
"Yes, I wish to see him dead!" Charitй spilled out in rage. "He owes me blood\ He came to New Orleans in disguise, to deceive, to spy and find all about our plans, our force! He…!"
Denis Clary leaned back a little, his face harder as he realised just who had been deceived in New Orleans, and surmised how this girl had been beguiled.
"So. We're to murder him," Denis Clary whispered. "And what of his wife? We must shoot her, too? The mysterious couple that they travel with? Leave no witnesses?"
"That is what Fourchette was told, Denis," Charitй de Guilleri confessed with a bitter laugh. "You heard him speak of it before, so do not pretend that you are here unwittingly. He is a dangerous enemy of France, and you are a distinguished, patriotic soldier of France. It will be your duty."
"I will gladly obey orders to fight, Charitй," Clary objected, his chin up. "I will happily shed a foe's blood in the heat of battle. But this…! I already feel slimed… mademoiselle. Dear as I hold you in my heart…," he trailed off, distancing himself with the formal address and suddenly feeling very sad, and badly betrayed.
"Perhaps…," Charitй relented, feeling a chill under her heart that she might lose him after such a wonderful, whirlwind beginning. "Perhaps you do not have to take an active hand, Denis mon cher, but… my revenge… and the First Consul's revenge, must be fulfilled."
"Ah, the cooing little lovebirds!" Fourchette exclaimed in glee as he breezed back into their inn, coming to the table to pour himself a glass of Wine, not waiting for permission. "And where is that ugly old cow-hide Choundas? Dying in les chiottes again, hein? It's no matter… I've lit a fire hot enough under our local soldiers and police for the night, so we will split our party, each of us to go with five or six troopers to cover the city gates and the roads to Boulogne, Dunkerque, and Saint Omer. If we can reach the coast by now, then so can our quarry. I have a feeling about tonight. Eat a hearty meal, and then we'll be about it!"
Fourchette sat himself down a bit away from their table, taking another sip of wine and savouring the late-afternoon sea winds; hiding a grin as he shrewdly took note of the stiff and uncomfortable postures and the silence between the girl and her soldier. Not as fond of each other as they'd been when I left? Bon! More hope for me, Fourchette thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sir Pulteney left them at a foetid inn a mile or so short of the sea, so old and begrimed that they were afraid even to speculate what simmered in the large iron pot over the fire in the hearth, settling instead for bread, cheese, and sour wine, over which they could linger 'til his return from his reconnaissance. The two bent-backed old prune-faced hags and the one white-whiskered old man who supposedly ran the place must have a "fiddle" on the side, Lewrie thought, for in the hour or longer that they sat there coughing in silence over their food in low-hanging haze of smoke from the fire, they were the only three customers. Lady Imogene whispered that they had used the inn as a way-station long ago, and… it appeared that the owners had not scrubbed the bare wood of the table top in all that time!
At last the door, leaning at an angle on loose leather hasps, creaked open, the bottom screeching on the wood floor as Sir Pulteney, in his one-eyed piratical sailor's disguise, slouched in to join them. He up-turned a somewhat clean glass to pour himself some wine, used a sailor's sheath knife to cut himself some bread and cheese, and dropped a silver coin on the table for his fee.
"That untrustworthy Anglais smuggler is not coming," Plumb, or as he preferred, "Henri," growled, well in character, talking through his food in raspy-throated French. "We might as well go on into Calais… There are others who might be interested in our goods, hein?"
The old, whiskered man came to collect the coin and bend an ear to the conversation for a moment.
"We are full? Bon. We go."
They had left the two-wheeled cart and the weary horse in the side yard. Still grumbling about the perfidy of any Anglais, "Goddamn," or sanglant in business, or anything else, Sir Pulteney climbed up to take the reins, leaving Lady Imogene to clamber aboard on her own, still in character. The Lewries took their place at the tail-board as he clucked the horse to a slow plod once more, and the cart creaked off into the night.
For a late summer night, it was cool, with a soft wind wafting off the Channel, cool enough to make Lewrie shiver as his shoes dangled a foot or so above the road. Caroline was huddled into her shawl, her arms crossed-for warmth, Lewrie hoped. Since he had blabbed the name of Charitй de Guilleri that afternoon, and had then had to explain how she and her kin had gone pirating in the West Indies, and how he'd ended them-how the girl had shot him!-leaving out the bawdy parts, of course, Caroline had acted very coolly towards him, rightly suspecting that there was a lot more to the tale.
He put an arm round her shoulders to warm her up and adjust her shawl, but she shrugged him off with a much-put-upon bitter sigh.
They came to a turning, another of those faint tracks, within sight of the lights of Calais, before the crossroads of the east-west Boulogne-Dunkerque road and their former St. Omer-Calais road. This jolting, grass- and gorse-strewn track led west, parallel to the main road, and Lewrie wondered how Sir Pulteney could even see it in the dark.
A mile or so more, and the track bent northwards, after a time spent in low, wind-sculpted trees and bushes. "We'll rejoin the road to Boulogne, soon," Sir Pulteney told them in a harsh whisper. "Missing any crossroads, where patrols might be, what? A mile and a bit more, and we'll be just above the cove, and stap me if it still ain't occupied!"
They had to get off the cart and almost drag it, and the horse, through a shallow ditch that ran alongside the Boulogne road, calming the skitter-ish old horse 'til it was back on solid ground, then boarded their cart for the last leg.
"Here!" Sir Pulteney cried at last, drawing reins. "Fetch out your things, and we're off, Begad!" They alit, and Plumb looped reins loose and slapped the old horse on the rump to send it plodding down the road on its own. "This way, smartly, now!"
They stumbled over uneven clumps of grass, small bushes, and a field of half-buried rocks, at first on the level, then gradually on a down-slope, northwards. Cape Gris Nez, "Old Grey Nose," stood high to their right, barely made out in starlight and the hint of a moonrise.
Yes! Ahead of them loomed a black, sway-backed mass, that hut that Sir Pulteney had mentioned; crumbling slowly into ruin, its roof half-collapsed, and its low front and back doors seemingly no higher than Lewrie's breast-bone, and the jambs leaning at crazed angles. A bit beyond, the coast was a darker mass, erose and bumpy-looking to either hand, but for a notch a little to their right, back-lit by some lighter something that seemed to stir and glitter in the starlight…
"The Channel!" Lewrie exclaimed as loud as he dared. "The sea!" And for the first time since their harum-scarum odyssey had started, he felt a surge of confidence; he was within reach of his proper milieu!
Matthieu Fourchette and five Chasseur troopers sat their horses at the crossroad, where the east-west highway met the St. Omer road, about a mile before the porte of Calais, with Fourchette showing a lot more impatience than the bemused, softly chatting cavalrymen. He could hear a horse approaching from the south, taking a damnably slow pace, one that almost made him spur out to meet it. At last, a rider emerged from the dark, a gendarme. "See anyone on the Saint Omer road?" Fourchette demanded.