Authors: Rob Griffith
“I cannot stand this, Blackthorne, this waiting,” said the General as he slumped back in his chair; took a long gulp of cognac and looked with a pained expression at his surroundings. The rooms were squalid, even for me. Paint flaked off the damp walls and a musty odour permeated the few furnishings. The only saving grace was the fact that the one small candle and the light from the fire did not reach as far as the dingier corners of the room.
“What choice do we have? We cannot leave Paris without help and we can barely find a bed for the night. I do not trust Leblanc. We must find another place to stay tomorrow,” I said. Leblanc was the gentleman, if you could call him that, who had rented us the rooms in the Rue de Chabanais. He’d struck me as a man who looked after himself first, not something I could necessarily criticise him for, but he had the air of a man who had a price. That price turned out to be 100,000 livres from the Minister of Police, as we were to find out. The General sighed heavily and put down his empty glass.
“As you wish, Ben. I am going to bed. We will see what the morning will bring.” He got up and wearily went through to the bedchamber. The bed groaned and creaked a few moments later, or it might have been Pichegru himself.
I could not sleep. There was too much whirling around my mind. I was tempted to leave the General there and then. It was obvious he would be betrayed sooner rather than later and I had other priorities. I had promised Dominique I would meet her again but tramping the streets with the General all day looking for a bed didn’t give me much opportunity to slip away. The weather had not improved and the rooms were as cold as a grave. I walked over to the fire and felt the heat of the burning papers warm my breeches. The money chest, though much diminished, was at the bottom of the wardrobe in the General’s room. He was a heavy sleeper. If I waited a few minutes I could take it and leave. What was left would keep a man and his new bride for quite a while. My valise was still packed and by the chair. I could be free and clear and at Dominique’s side before dawn. Brooke would not have blamed me for bolting at that stage, he would likely be amazed I had not left long ago, as indeed I would have done had it not been for her. A log shifted in the fireplace and a shower of sparks spat across the floor. I gently trod on the still glowing embers, watching the curls of smoke spiral up from the rug. I could do it. I could leave.
Then I heard a creak on the stairs. I went to the door and leant against it, putting my ear on the cold bare wood. Outside I heard whispers and the click of a pistol being cocked. I went over to my valise and dug out my old cavalry carbine. My pistols went in my belt and the carbine I pointed at the door. As quietly as I could I cocked the gun. The sound echoed around the room and I heard the voices outside pause.
Still I waited, not even breathing, until I heard a key being pushed into the lock. Then I fired. The fat lead ball from the carbine tore a hole in the door the size of an apple and a similar size hole in the face of the police agent beyond. There were screams, perhaps from me, and shots from the doorway. I ducked back and looked towards the General’s room. He stood in the doorway, a pistol in each hand. I glanced behind me at the window, the only other way out of the suite of rooms. I think he nodded. I think he understood. I threw the carbine at the municipal guards charging through the door and then took the pistols from my belt and fired off all four barrels in quick succession before leaping for the window. I held my arms over my face and just jumped through it.
Now I must warn you, dear reader, that such an exit is only to be advised in the direst of circumstances and only then if you have reconnoitred the route to ascertain for sure what is beneath said window. Granted, my circumstances were several steps beyond dire, but I had only a vague idea what fate I was leaping to. I thought I remembered a roof or something not far beneath the window, or perhaps it was one of the other windows. Just as I leapt I began to doubt myself. There could have been a straight drop down to the street four floors below. Of course, since you are reading this memoir you might guess that Lady Fortune, for once, was smiling coquettishly at me.
I somersaulted neatly on to my back and landed on a short sloping roof. I slid down the frost slick slates and scrabbled for something to hold on to. I felt my legs go over the edge of the roof just as one hand grabbed the bricks of a chimney. I hauled myself up, panting for breath. There was a musket shot and chips of brick stung my cheek. I crawled along the roof as quickly as I could. The moon was full, its silver light gave me just enough light to see where I was going, and for others to see me. Another shot whistled past me. The roof came to an end where it abutted another building. I managed to stand and began to climb a drainpipe. The metal was freezing cold and I could feel the brackets that attached the pipe to the wall begin to give. Just in time I reached the top and hauled myself up on to another roof. I looked down, two guards were making their way gingerly towards me. One looked up and fired a pistol, the recoil made him slip and his mate had to stop him slipping off into the courtyard below.
I crawled up to the apex of the roof and then stood and walked carefully along until I came to the end. I could see down to the Seine, the Palais-Royal and the towers of Notre Dame. To the north I could see the flickering lights of the village of Montmarte. The city was beautiful in the moonlight, but I didn’t have time to admire the view for very long. Behind me I could hear my pursuers climbing the protesting drainpipe. I looked down into the street. It was a very long way down. There were men running, one saw me and raised his musket. His was the first of a volley of shots that went up past me into the night sky. I looked left. There was a valley between one building’s roof and the next. I opted for speed rather than dignity and slid down the roof on my behind. I built up more speed than I intended and tried in vain to slow myself, digging my heels into the slates. From above it had looked as though the two adjoining roofs had met, but when I finally slithered to a stop my feet were on the roof opposite, my arms were holding me desperately on to the one I had just slid down and my arse was hanging in the air between.
It wasn’t an easy position to recover from, as you can imagine. I inched sideways like a crab. To the right I could see both roofs ended at a flat roof that marked the start of another building. I edged along as quickly as I could, ducking and almost falling as another shot shattered a slate where my hand been a moment earlier. I looked back up and saw one of the guards begin to slide down after me. He’d opted for dignity rather than expediency and tried to stay on his feet. Halfway down he lost his balance. He shouted for help from his colleague but there was nothing to be done. His legs went over the edge and I watched as he held on with his fingertips and he slowly but surely lost his grip and fell into the alley below. There was a short scream and then a very nasty thud.
I resumed my progress to the flat roof, it beckoned to me like an oasis to a dying man in a desert. My one remaining pursuer was running along the top of the roof, we got to the end at about same time. I managed to get to my feet just as he jumped down ten or so feet. It was lucky he found something to break his fall; me. I was badly winded. He was probably mildly surprised he hadn’t broken a leg. It took a moment for us to remember to fight. He recovered first and tried to hold me down by the wrists. I raised a knee hard into his groin, he rolled off me clutching himself and cursing. I stood and went to kick him but he grabbed my leg and twisted. I fell, my head over the edge of the roof. He was back on top of me in a second, punching me viciously in the face. I twisted and bucked like an unbroken horse but he was heavier and stronger than me. I looked down, another roof was about ten feet beneath me, and the struggle was pushing me ever further over the edge. The guard got his hands around my neck and was squeezing for all he was worth, my vision was going black around the edges, I couldn’t pull his hands away. I twisted and turned and got us both closer to the edge. In the last instant I think he cottoned on to what I was doing. A look of incredulity crossed his face and he lessened his grip just slightly. It was enough for me to heave us both over the edge into the void. As we fell we rolled so he was beneath me, his hands left my neck and I swear he tried to flap his arms. We landed together and this time he broke my fall.
The roof was not built to withstand the sudden impact of twelve stone of Englishman and probably sixteen stone of Frenchman, and we went straight through it and landed on a bed beneath. Lady Fortune was definitely flirting with me that night. Said bed was not however unoccupied, in fact it was rather crowded already. I lay stunned for a few moments whilst assorted screams and curses greeted our sudden arrival. The guardsman was out cold. I struggled up and brushed the wood splinters and plaster dust from my clothes and apologised to the three occupants of the bed, who appeared to be a priest and two nuns, although I admit to not having seen habits cut quite that revealingly before. I would have stayed and introduced myself to at least one of the buxom wenches, especially since their previous client seem to have expired or at least fainted, although if it was from shock or exhaustion I could not guess since he was at least seventy, but there was no time for pleasantries. I ran out of the door and on to the landing, in time to see various semi-clad hysterical ladies of doubtful virtue come out their rooms to see what the dreadful noise had been, their gentleman clients following, frantically pulling up their breeches.
“It’s a raid,” I shouted, at the top of my voice, and this doubled the volume of the screams and led most of the gentlemen to start running down the stairs, whether they had successfully dressed themselves or not. Being not unfamiliar with such establishments I knew there would be a back way out somewhere and so I followed the rush of clients down the stairs and down a passage to the back of the house and thence into an alley. I could hear more screams and the sound of police crashing through the brothel as I ran. Hopefully the flesh on show would offer some distraction to my pursuers. I ran down the alley and into the street. The night was very cold. My breath rose in clouds in front of my face and the mud underfoot was frozen solid in ruts interspersed with slick puddles of solid ice. A surface less suited to a rapid escape could not be envisaged. I staggered and skated away as best I could. I would like to say that I looked back and spared a thought for the old General but I did not. I just ran.
I swore as I heard shouts behind me followed by the crack of a musket and then the whine of the ball over my head. I ducked into another alley, my feet sliding on the ice. I had lost my pistols when I jumped through the window so I could do nothing but keep on running. The alley got narrower and narrower and I heard the laboured gasps and footfalls of a guard running behind me. The alley twisted and turned and I was running out of breath. Finally I slipped and fell on to the frost hard mud, sliding along several yards before coming to a hard stop against a wall. The guard blundered around the corner. I grabbed the only weapon to hand, a broken piece of wood, and held it ready in front of me. I was shaking with fear and cold. I could hear him coming up to the corner where I had slipped. I tried to struggle up but my boots just slid on the ice. My foe skidded to a halt as he saw me sprawled on the ground, he scrabbled for a grip on the wall but began to fall. I reached up with my free hand, dragging him down on top of me and impaling him on the wood. He shuddered for a few seconds and then was silent. He was young, maybe not even twenty, and had been trying to grow a moustache but had only managed a barely visible fuzz. I lay there, fighting for breath, and waiting for another guard to come around the corner and finish me off but none came. Steam rose from the blood flowing over me and I pushed the dead weight of the body off me. My coat and shirt were sodden and I ripped them off despite the cold. I shivered and looked down at the greatcoat of the still warm body.
Almost without thinking I began to strip him, some survival instinct taking over. I tried to ease the coat over the piece of wood but in the end I had to pull it out and the sucking sound from the wound made me retch. I kept looking and listening for his colleagues but before long the corpse was down to his patched and stained under garments and I wore the slightly sticky uniform of the Paris Municipal Guard. I picked up the musket and reloaded it from the cartridge belt he had worn. I straightened myself up a bit, but not too much since I was impersonating a French policeman. Striding purposefully out of the alley I joined the search for myself.
The grey figure of Lacrosse was leading the hunt and I saw him gloating as Pichegru was led into his carriage, hands bound in front of him. At least he was still alive, but that was only a temporary state of affairs.
Weeks later the old, proud General was found strangled in his cell after a mockery of a trial. Cadoudal was guillotined a couple of weeks after that. The Grand Conspiracy achieved nothing, it neatly decapitated, in many cases literally, the opposition to Bonaparte, paved the way for his rise from Consul to Emperor and led to a decade more of war for Britain. A war in which I was to continue to play an unwilling part. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself wishing that Pichegru had succeeded and saved me and many others a great deal of trouble.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Dominique washed the blood from my bruised and battered body. It turned the water to the colour of burgundy and I was glad most of it wasn’t my own. As she lent forward to kiss a yellow and purple bruise on my chest, the warm weight of her breasts rested on my arm and I could not help my other hand reaching round to gently caress her back.