'Two young ladies in Abbeville who taught the pianoforte, for example, were playing Ça Ira on the day a defeat by the Austrians was announced. Le Bon heard them and accused them of having an evil disposition towards the Revolution. They said quite truthfully they had heard nothing of defeat, and in any case Ça Ira was a patriotic tune. Le Bon disagreed - playing Ça Ira in those circumstances, he said meant that they wished the Austrians to advance and capture other French fortresses. If they were true patriots, he told them at the tribunal, they should have played Le Rével du Peuple...
'So he condemned them to death, and at the scaffold next morning, while the young ladies were in the tumbril at the scaffold, he delayed the public execution for a quarter of an hour, until some women of the town, in all their finery, had arranged themselves comfortably on a balcony overlooking the guillotine. You find the story hard to believe, I see ...’
Ramage nodded and was about to add that that did not mean he thought it was untrue when Louis turned to look him straight in the eye, the strained look back on his face. ‘Those two young ladies were sisters, m'sieur. The elder was my wife who was staying in her mother's house while I was away at sea. Some might say it was punishment on me for being a smuggler,' he said bitterly. 'Anyway, when you get to Abbeville, ask about Joseph Le Bon, and they will tell you that story.'
'But you said he was executed -'
'I came back a few days after Le Bon had finished his bloody business and gone on to Paris. I followed him - was arrested almost immediately, because my passport was for travelling only from Boulogne to Abbeville and back. They knew who I was but the gendarmes at Breteuil, where I was imprisoned, were sympathetic because of my loss. They never guessed I was following Le Bon; they assumed I was going to Paris to protest to the authorities. So they kept me in prison for a year, and during that time the mayors of several towns had protested to the Ministry of Police at Le Bon’s wholesale murders. He was accused of public assassination and oppressing citizens of the Republic, found guilty of "an unlimited abuse of the guillotine" and sentenced to death. Yet he was a craven man; I think he was always frightened for his life, and when they sent him back to Calais the second time he became so obsessed that he saw enemies of the Republic all round him. People told me that when the time came to dress him in the red garment which is reserved for murderers as they make their last journey in the tumbril to the scaffold, Le Bon said, "It is not I who should wear this garment, but those whose orders I obeyed." Ironic,' he added, 'that Fouché, the present Minister of Police, is also a former priest: a sea captain's son who was an abbé and a professor at Nantes university ...
'I had a long time to think about the past while I was in prison. I despaired and grew fat - can you imagine that? I, who did not want to live, became ugly and gross; my teeth fell out, I began to grow bald . . . But in that time I came to understand what Le Bon meant. I would agree with him if he had said, "It is not I alone...'"'
Louis stood up and walked over to the window, glanced out into the darkness, and then sat down beside Ramage, who knew the movement was not curiosity about what was outside but rather closing a door on his past which he rarely dared to open.
'I have been thinking about your journey to Amiens. It will be dangerous. In Boulogne people accept you as foreign carpenters because there are many of them working in the shipyards. The road to Amiens from Boulogne is different. Four Frenchmen might be suspected of being deserters. Four foreigners - well, I can only guess at what protection the possession of passports and travel documents would give you against suspicion.'
'Is the danger because there are four of us, or the fact we are young and not in the Army?' Ramage asked.
‘The number. If you travelled in pairs it would be safer, but there is the language problem if you split up. You and the American, for instance; that would be all right because you can do the talking and if you met with difficulties would understand what was happening. But the Italian - his French is not sufficient, and if they found a translator to question him in Italian, I doubt if he could tell a convincing enough story of travelling up from Genoa.'
Louis was only echoing the doubts that had beset Ramage since he first heard the Corporal's proud boasts: he had too many men. He needed Stafford in Amiens, but he dare not leave Rossi and Jackson behind here at the Chapeau Rouge in Boulogne: if they were questioned they would give themselves away. Unless they hid on board the Marie, ready to sail to England with his reports! He was angry with himself for not -
'You need the man who is the picklock,' Louis said. 'If you could leave the other two behind, Dyson can hide them on board the Marie: they can be his crew if he has to go to the rendezvous. If you need a third man in case of trouble, I know the road well enough ..."
Ramage stared at the Frenchman. 'But the risk for you would be enormous! I can't -'
'No greater than the risk you are taking,' Louis interrupted, 'One can be guillotined only once. I -'
'Once is enough,' Ramage said sharply.
Louis shook his head. 'I am content to share the risks that you take. We agree that our interests are similar - the smugglers' and the British Admiralty's - and I've just told you of Ça Ira. So listen to an idea which I'm sure will work and which is based on just you, the man Stafford and myself going to Amiens. You are an Italian who owns a large shipyard in Genoa. At the request of the French authorities there you came to Boulogne with your foreman to make arrangements to bring up all your carpenters and shipwrights - a score of them - and their tools.
'Very well, you arrived in Boulogne, made your inspection, and decided you and your men can help build the barges and gunboats - even improve and speed up the methods being used. But you are not satisfied with the wages or conditions you have been offered, so you want to return to Paris - you came by that route - to visit the Ministry of Marine and negotiate better terms.
'Now, we have to account for my presence. I am -' Louis's mouth curved down in a wry smile, 'I am a representative of the Committee for Public Safety, making sure you do not get up to mischief! Of course you do not know I am your guardian; you think I am a representative of the Ministry of Marine. Yes, that story would go down well with the gendarmes; I wink at them confidentially and show my papers and whisper a few words about Italians so they think they are helping the Committee. Well, how do you like my little plot?'
'Well enough,' Ramage said slowly, 'except that it will not stand up to a moment's investigation in Boulogne or Paris. If the gendarmes checked with the shipyard -'
‘No arrangement we can make will stand such checking,' Louis said emphatically. The best we can do is to have such a good story that they accept it the moment we tell it, and accept our papers. There is no problem about papers, and our whole purpose is to have a story that is slightly unusual yet completely probable: something only just outside the limits of their experience, yet well within their comprehension. There is not a man between here and Paris who wouldn't understand and believe the story I am suggesting.'
'Supposing we met someone who knew you?' Ramage said doubtfully.
'What if we did! That is the advantage of choosing the Committee of Public Safety for me: they work secretly and use the most unlikely people - Joseph Le Bon was once a priest! And we have the papers' - he pointed to the packet he had put on the beds - 'with the correct heading and stamps.'
'You certainly have a variety of stationery.'