"Begad, sir! Odd's Life, will you look at that!" Sir Pulteney yelped, almost leaping in joy as a tiny glim aboard that vessel leapt to life and began to flash a slow reply in a series of rotations much like Sir Pulteney's. "It's our schooner, Captain Lewrie. He has seen us, and, if God is just, we shall be away before the dawn! Let us go gather our ladies and make our way down to the beach, haw haw!"
Major Clary, Charitй de Guilleri, and Guillaume Choundas had responded to Fourchette's urgent summons to join him at the crossroads, Choundas in such bilious haste that he'd demanded a Chasseur to carry him behind his saddle, no matter how painful it was. Now he was incredulous, and raging. "Costumes? Disguises? Pah!" he bleated. "Are we chasing phantoms, chimeras? The Comйdie Franзaise?" he snarled as Fourchette's suspicions were laid out.
"This Lewrie salaud was bandaged at Mйru, most likely dismissed at the Somme bridge, and groping a red-headed whore in the back of the cart this afternoon, and we never thought to ask to see his face. But he showed his face at a smugglers' inn, and he had a faint scar. They tried to find a smuggler to take them over to England, but they didn't… they didn't enter Calais or pass this crossroad," Fourchette told them all. "You did not see two sailors and two whores in a cart on the Dunkerque road, Major Clary? Then we must admit that the older man of their party has an intimate knowledge of farm lanes and back roads from here to Paris… and that they are very near us, this moment, and desperate for passage. We almost-"
He was interrupted by a lone rider coming from the west, up the road from Boulogne, "Qui va lа?" the rider called out nervously as he caught a glimpse of their large party.
"Police!" a Capitaine Vignon, commander of the local gendarmes, barked back. "Who are you, damn you?"
"Oh, there you are, Capitaine. It is I, Gendarme Bossuett," the rider said, spurring up to them and re-slinging his short musketoon. Evidently, the threat of dangerous, fleeing felons, aristo conspirators, or cut-throat smugglers had made him edgy.
"Report, immediately," Capitaine Vignon snapped.
"Pardon, Capitaine, but one cannot be too careful tonight, with so many…," the gendarme began with a relieved chuckle.
"Have you seen anyone on the Boulogne road? Two sailors and two women, in a one-horse cart?" Fourchette pressed him.
"I've seen no one, m'sieur… citoyen," the gendarme said in confusion as to the proper form of address to use. "But there is a two-wheeled cart, abandoned, about a league back, just grazing along, with the reins… I thought it rather… "
"Zut alors! Putain! We have them!" Fourchette cursed, crowing with glee. "They did find a smuggler to carry them away… from some beach along the road! Allez, allez vite, at the gallop! Where they left the cart, they cannot be far from it on foot!"
Despite the faint moon and starlight, Fourchette spurred into a reckless gallop, leading the party of soldiers and police at a furious pace. Choundas whimpered and howled with pain, clinging desperately to his trooper's back; music to Fourchette's ears, as it was to Clary and Charitй, as well!
Once they were over the edge of the cliff, the path down to the beach was not quite as steep as Lewrie feared, though it wound like a snake round large coach-sized boulders, in some places so snug between that he had to turn sideways and puff out his breath to squeeze through. At other points the flinty earth, gravel, and loose soil crunched and tumbled as soon as he set foot upon it. In the steepest stretches, someone had long ago used pick and shovel to carve out rough steps down to flatter ledges, before another uncertain descent.
Now below the line of the cliffs, and unable to be seen by any watchers along the road, Sir Pulteney kept the lanthorn lit and open to hasten their progress and to light the ladies' way.
"Thank God our last disguises called for stout old shoes, not slippers," Lady Imogene whispered, between deep breaths.
Halfway down, Lewrie told himself, helping Caroline down a set of steps, then looking out to sea again. That schooner was the one Sir Pulteney had arranged, by God! After that mysterious signal, it had hauled its wind and come about to approach the coast, and their notchlike inlet and cove. She was not more than two miles off now, and cautiously slanting shoreward, with a large rowing boat in tow, astern, and dare he imagine that it was already being led round to the schooner's larboard entry-port?
"Not much further, not much longer, all!" Sir Pulteney crowed as they reached the last of the boulders, and a faint solid path down through a dangerous scree slope where the going was all gravel, flat shards, and fist-sized rock where ankles could be turned, bones broken, and skulls smashed in an eyeblink if the way slid in an avalanche.
"There, there's the cart!" Major Denis Clary cried, pointing to the west, caught up in the chase despite his misgivings, as he caught sight of the weary horse trying to feed on the spotty, dry weeds and shrubs by the landward side of the road. The cart was crosswise upon the road, and the poor horse was fortunate that the cart had not gone into one of the ditches. They drew rein short of the cart. "Is this about where it was first discovered?" Fourchette demanded, wheeling his mount to search for that sluggard dim-wit gendarme who'd found it. "Speak up, you!"
He wasn't much of a horseman, so it took the gendarme some time to thread his way through the others. "Uhm, near here, m'sieur. When I first came across it, it was on the right side of the road, back near a little cart track, uhm-"
"Show us!" Fourchette ordered impatiently. At the walk, they had to re-trace their way about two hundred metres east, 'til the gendarme at last pointed to two faint ruts in the poor vegetation. "It was here I saw it, m'sieur," the gendarme told him. "By this path to the old hut. The one down there, m'sieur."
"And you did not think to explore the hut?" Capt. Vignon snapped.
"By myself, Capitaine? Against four dangerous criminals? Non, I rode for re-enforcements. To raise the alarm."
"What about the hut?" Fourchette asked. Vignon quickly informed him that it had been abandoned for a decade or better, caving in upon itself. "And is there a beach down there, below the bluffs, m'sieur?"
"Oui, there is a beach, a small one," Vignon said. "And there is a path down to it. But this useless simpleton-"
"Dismount, everyone, and arm yourselves," Fourchette cried. "We must inspect the hut, find the path, and look for them. They are here, I know it, I feel it!"
Choundas insisted that his Chasseur stay mounted and take him to the edge of the cliffs at once. As armed troopers and policemen crept down the slope to surround the hut, as torches or lanthorns were lit to aid the search, Charitй kneed her mount to follow Choundas, and Major Clary, fearing for her safety on the cliff edge, below the hut, where their quarry might shoot at her before the troopers cleared it, trotted his own horse after her, urging her to wait in a harsh whisper… to which she paid no heed. She'd drawn one of her long-barrelled pistols, intent on her revenge, as intent as that twisted monster!