The Frenchman drank to it and then put his glass down carefully. 'Not so strange, when you think about it carefully. I don't want to rule the world; I just want to be left in peace to follow my trade. You don't want to rule the world either, nor do these men; you just want to be left in peace, knowing your family and friends are safe from invaders. That is why we are allies against this Corsican . . .' He stood up. ‘I’ll see you in your room after supper,' he said.
That night while Ramage and his three men were sitting on the two beds in their room, talking in whispers as they waited with the flickering candle flame glittering occasionally on the shiny blades of the carpenters' tools stacked on the floor beneath the window, there was a faint double tap at the door, and before anyone could move Louis slipped into the room, closing the door silently behind him.
Stafford looked at him and said admiringly, 'Cor – didn’t hear the coming of you! If you want a job when the war’s over, just look me up in London: we could make a good living, s'long as you don't mind working at night.'
The Frenchman grinned and said to Ramage in his hesitant English: ‘I think the heavy feet might alarm you, no?'
'It most certainly would,' Ramage said in French. 'We were woken this morning by a gendarme banging on the door. He wanted to inspect our papers - mistook us for conscripts.'
'I warned you: they check all inns and lodging houses for deserters two or three times a week. A matter of routine, but alarming if you have a guilty conscience!'
He sat down on the bed beside Ramage and took some papers from his pocket. After putting them down, he brought out a bottle of ink, and then carefully removed a quill pen which he had slid down inside his boot. He held it up to the candle flame to make sure the point had not split.
'We have to write in the details on the documents,' he explained. 'Who you are, why you are travelling . . . But first I must tell you some differences you will find on the road to Amiens - on any road, in fact. If you use a postchaise (the wagon is too slow), the posts are still the same: thirty-four between here and Paris, and usually ten kilometres (about six English miles) apart. They are well supplied with horses, although the postmasters no longer follow the old rule of one horse per person; you're lucky to get three horses for four people these days. The postillions can legally charge only fifteen sous per post, but if you do not pay them double they can make the journey unpleasant in many little ways.
'Now, listen carefully; there is now a new system by which the traveller has to pay a toll. The money is supposed to be for the upkeep of the roads, but no one has spent a sou on a road in France since the Revolution, let alone a livre: there are deep potholes every few yards. You pay the tolls at barrières which have been set up along the main roads. But watch out, they are not at regular intervals, and the toll varies between three and eighteen sous.
'All of this makes travelling expensive: before the Revolution you could take a postchaise to Paris for 213 livres; now you have to pay double. Still, there is a brighter side: before the Revolution you would be lucky to arrive in Paris without meeting a highwayman or a footpad. Now they are a rarity.
"They are a rarity,' he said, tapping Ramage's shoulder for emphasis, 'because - from your point of view - there is another pest on the roads: mounted gendarmes. They halt all carts and carriages and demand to see every traveller's papers. Anyone arousing suspicion is taken to the nearest jail. Oh yes, their favourite trick is to make you sign your name, which they compare with the signature in your passport, so remember that and practise it!'
After making Ramage repeat the details, Louis said: 'Now, the journey to Amiens. The route from here is through Montreuil (four posts, or about twenty-three miles), Nampont, and Nouvion to Abbeville -'
Ramage noticed the Frenchman tensed slightly as he paused and then continued.
'It is a wretched town now; half the people have left and the Revolution has ruined the damask industry. Reichord's Hotel is comfortable - by today's standards, anyway. Then you go on to Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher. There's a Red Cap of Liberty on top of the church steeple. It is stuck on the weathercock, so it swivels round with every change of wind.' He shrugged his, shoulders. 'Perhaps others have noted the irony - to comment aloud in public would be to risk your neck. At the next village, Flixecourt, you will get your first sight of a Tree of Liberty; they are proud of the one set up in the square. You will change horses for the last time at Picquigny, and Amiens is only a league and a half beyond.'
'Abbeville,' Ramage said quietly, 'has some unpleasant associations for you.'
Louis looked down and was silent for a full minute, seeming almost to shrink, leaving his body behind while he went to some private place full of dreadful memories. Embarrassed at this unexpected reaction to his curiosity and regretting the question, Ramage was trying to think of a way of changing the subject when the Frenchman looked up.
'I will tell you about it - no, don't worry,' he said as Ramage went to speak, ‘I want to tell you so you can understand better why I help you. At the moment I must seem to be a smuggler with no allegiances; a man whose loyalty can be bought - no, do not bother to protest, M. Ramage, you have all the doubts about me that I would expect in an honest man. In a minute or two you will understand and we shall be better friends.
'The name Joseph Le Bon means nothing to you. To me he is a former priest from Arras who almost made me believe in God. "Ah" you might say, "a saintly man, and wise, as befits someone who once taught rhetoric at the College of Beaune, in Burgundy, and a man of great ability if he nearly succeeded in making an atheist like Louis believe in God and an after-life."
'You would be partly right: Le Bon made me hope there is an after-life because I want the comfort of knowing there is a Hell in whose flames Joseph Le Bon burns in agony for all eternity, for he is now dead. My only regret is that the Committee of Public Safety finally ordered his execution and cheated me of my revenge. But those who watched him on the scaffold - they saw him screaming with fear, groaning, wailing and begging for mercy before the blade dropped. I had planned that he would be begging me for mercy, but -' he shrugged his shoulders '- the Committee that set him on a path of mass murder eventually executed its own servant.
'I can see you are wondering why this man Louis should be hunting another man, a former priest and teacher of rhetoric, with a knife, with the intention of murdering him. Don't protest, m'sieur' Louis said grimly, 'it is a reasonable question for a man whose country is not torn by revolution, who has never seen pork butchers set down their knives and become ministers of state overnight and use the guillotine to butcher their fellow men, and bakers and grocers made judges who listen only to the charges against the man, never the evidence for his defence, before sending him to death.
'You will leam what happens when I tell you of Le Bon. After the Revolution this man left the Church and entered politics, becoming the Mayor of Arras. He showed judgment; he was even moderate. Then, since he had also been given responsibility for the whole Department of the Pas de Calais, he was told to destroy any anti-revolutionary movement in Calais and the neighbouring towns.
'Again, he was moderate, even indulgent - so much so that one of his enemies denounced him to the Committee of Public Safety as a protector of aristocrats and a persecutor of patriots. He was recalled to Paris, escaped being put on trial for his life only because Citizen Robespierre liked him and accepted his promise to redeem himself.
'Redeem himself! He was sent back to Calais - a badly frightened man, with unlimited powers to crush the anti-revolutionaries. The problem was that Le Bon could not find any, so in fear of his own life he simply accused scores and scores of innocent people and sent them to the guillotine. Within weeks hundreds met their death in Calais alone. He then went to other towns - Abbeville, Amiens, Arras, Boulogne ...