Sir Pulteney might not have been an impressive figure of a man, but he was wiry; when he and Lady Imogene reached the boat, he lifted her from behind, not breaking stride, and practically hurled her into the arms of the second-tier oarsmen, then scrambled over the larboard side, tumbling into the boat head-down. Lewrie reached it a second later, hoisting Caroline with both hands on her waist, his face in the small of her back for a second as a starboard oarsman took her by her upper arms to hoist her up and over the gunnel.
Sailors' shouts, the mate's orders by the tiller, the thud and rushing hiss of surf and… a buzz-hum! and then a meaty thunk of a bullet. Hot wetness sprayed his face, blinding him.
Christ, I'm killed! he thought, amazed that he'd neither heard the fatal shot nor felt the hammer-blow impact of his death.
"Sweet Jesus, no!" Lady Imogene was screaming.
"'Em murd'rin' Frog bashtits!" a sailor cursed while two men seized him by his arms and armpits and threw him into the boat, down onto the sole, with his legs atop a thwart.
"Alan?" a faint, weak, and fearful cry, almost lost in the rale of the next wave breaking on the beach, a phantom voice.
Go game! Lewrie told himself; make a brave face for her!
Lewrie lifted a hand from the sole, dripping with seawater from the splashing of the chop, and swabbed his face, wondering when pain would come. His hands came away almost black in the false dawn light.
What the Devil? If my head's blown open, how am I still able t'see? he goggled. Oarsmen were sitting back down to back-water, some were poling off the sand, and he was getting trampled, so he grasped the next-aft thwart and rose to his knees.
"We get her aboard quickly," someone aft was saying, "we might save her… even with no surgeon aboard."
"Alan?" came that phantom cry again, weaker and more fearful.
"What? Caroline? Good God!" he cried, scrambling aft to her. She lay on her back in an inch or two of seawater in the sole, head and shoulders in Lady Imogene's lap. "No! No, no!"
Her light-coloured blouse, so cheery that morning, was covered in large nigh-black stains that slowly spread, even as he crawled to her. Lady Imogene was pressing her shawl and bright kerchief to try and staunch the flood at its source, but there was so swift an out-welling that both cloths had turned almost completely dark, too!
"Caroline!" Lewrie cried as he got to her and took her hands in his. A thin trickle of blood sprang from the corner of her mouth, and she coughed, spasming and gasping. Her eyes opened and she looked up at him, eyes wide for a moment, and her hands squeezed back, then lost their strength. She let out a long sigh, then lay very still.
"Caroline?" Lewrie croaked, gathering her to his chest, knowing she was gone. "God damn them, God damn them!"
The boat was now off the sands, one bank of oarsmen stroking ahead, the other still backing water to turn her bows out to sea, and the mate at the tiller was judging the best moment to put the helm over between incoming waves, so she would not be upset, spinning her in her own length before both sides of oarsmen could row together.
"You bastards!" Lewrie howled, unaccustomed tears in his eyes. "You murderin' bitch, Charitй! You foul child-fucker, Choundas!" he raged, searching for the pistol he'd lost, but he'd dropped it when he'd lifted Caroline into the boat. "Any guns aboard? Any sort of gun!"
"Aye, we've…," the mate said, jutting his chin towards a pair of muskets near him, intent on his steering.
Lewrie snatched one up, jerked from the muzzle the cork used to keep out the damp, and tore off the greasy rag that sheltered the fire-lock and primed pan. He scrambled right aft to the transom, crowding the mate at the tiller, to kneel and drag the lock to half-cock, and check the powder in the pan and the tightness of the flint clasped in the dog's jaws.
The boat was rowing out now, swooping wildly as the incoming waves lifted her bows and the oarsmen dragged her through the troughs, making the stern soar upwards in turn. He braced one foot on the aft end of the sole boards and the vertical stub of the keel where it emerged. He had to try!
"Lewrie, no, what matters, it will make no difference!" Plumb was cautioning him.
He dashed a hand over his eyes once more, squinting away those tears; he had grim work to do. Then he'd weep. "Stop yer bloody gob!" he told Sir Pulteney.
There were several French Chasseurs on the beach now, some of them tending to their fellows who had slid or tumbled there, none with a weapon at the ready, as if they realised that firing would be pointless. With them was a man in a dark suit and narrow-brimmed hat, and he held a weapon at high port-arms. Lewrie could conjure that spent powder smoke still fumed from its barrel, but… up above the beach, at the top of the scree slope stood that Major of Chasseurs, Charitй de Guilleri, and that bastard Choundas, who was crowing and waving his cane in triumph.
Seventy, eighty yards? Lewrie gaged it; shootin' uphill, so if I take one of 'em… the man on the beach's closer. Which? Who do I kill? Who deserves it most? Please, Jesus, help me shoot true, help me kill just one of 'em!
"We are damned," Major Clary whispered.
"Fouchй will be furious, oui," Charitй numbly agreed, "and the First Consul…," she trailed off, numb and drained and horrified by how badly her vengeance had gone amiss.
"I speak of God and our souls, mademoiselle," Clary said with a rasp of anger. "Mon Dieu, does he intend to shoot at us? Bon!" Clary said, sheathing his sword and standing to attention, chest offered as a target.
"Is she dead, Lewrie?" Guillaume Choundas was cackling and huzzaing. "Do you suffer now, hawn hawn? Weep, lament! Suffer as I, vous fumier!"
Charitй suddenly felt ill, sick at her stomach and exhausted beyond imagining. Even her long desire to kill Lewrie was gone, flown away, and all she felt was deep sadness, and revulsion to be a part of the deed, and those with whom she had shared it, and at everything-they had failed.
The boat was now over hundred mиtres offshore, and there was nothing to stop it, short of a miracle. It was pitching and swooping wildly, yet Lewrie was still aiming at them? Charitй took one step away from Denis Clary and squared her own shoulders to make herself an open target, and crossed herself for the first time in a long, cynical time, in expiation.
There was a sudden tiny bloom of gunsmoke from the boat's stern-sheets, whipped quickly away by the wind.
"Stupid!" Choundas yelled seaward. "You always were a hopelessly stupid salaud, Lewrie! Mistaking muscle for brains! See your last hope dashed, and fear for my revenge! I will get you in the end. Suffer, and… Eee!"
Thunk! as lead slammed into flesh and bone! Choundas reeled on his good leg for a moment, looking down at the blood spurting from his chest before toppling forward, turning a clumsy pirouette as he slid down to the beach in a shower of loosed gravel and flinty stones, going over and over, head then feet, before thudding to a stop at the foot of the slope in the deep sand, his cloak spread out like a shroud and his corpse resembling a pile of cast-off laundry.
Major Clary let out a whoosh of relief, agog that anyone could kill with a smooth-bore musket at that range… and delighted that he had not been this Lewrie's mark!
"You see, mademoiselle, there is a judgmental God!" he said in wry delight, beginning to whoop with laughter for a moment. "We must thank Him for removing that thing from the earth. And pray that we've been allowed to live for a good reason."