Authors: Rob Griffith
More notes followed the first, softly but determinedly soaring along the hallways and up the stairs. I walked over to the door and tried it, knowing it was locked. I put my ear to the wood to hear the music more clearly. I paced some more, then rang the bell for the maid to come and get the tray. Claude had not reappeared. The maid was a sweet but simple girl from Normandy and was unlocking the door within a couple of minutes. As always she left the key in the lock when she entered, but the door always slowly closed after her. She walked over to the tray and was about to leave when I asked her for some more water. I helpfully placed the empty jug on the tray. It was now too heavy for her to carry one handed and the extra few moments had given the door time to shut completely. I gallantly made a great show of opening the door for her, flashing her a flirtatious smile at the same time. She smiled shyly back and walked through the doorway with the tray and out on to the landing. I patted her on the rump, grinned lasciviously again for good measure and let her walk away hot and flustered. I closed the door behind her, whipping the key out of the lock before she noticed. She glanced coyly over her shoulder and disappeared down the corridor.
I waited a few moments, picked up the candle and then left the room, locking the door behind me. She would return in a few minutes when she remembered the key, she’d find the door locked and be convinced she had locked it behind her and then lost the key. I hoped.
I could hear the piano more strongly now. I was in a short unlit corridor and could see a soft flickering light coming from a landing ahead. I walked quietly to the banister and heard laughter and voices. I am normally not in the least hesitant about arriving at a party bereft of an invitation but I thought that a sick looking Englishmen, dressed only in shirt and breeches might attract some unwelcome attention. Besides, it was enough to be out of that damned room for five minutes, and whoever was playing it was doing so very well. So I sat on the stairs and just listened for a while. I had heard Lucy play the same piece often, and whoever was playing it then was almost as talented. It came to an end all too quickly and I was struggling to get up when I heard the creak of someone coming up the stairs. I stood as quickly as I could but it wasn’t quickly enough.
“Monsieur Blackthorne, if you had wanted an invitation to my uncle’s soirée you need only have asked.” Dominique’s tone was half amused and the now red-faced maid followed her up the stairs. She wasn’t that simple after all.
“I apologise, Mademoiselle. The music lured me from my room as surely as the sirens led Odysseus astray.”
“You liked my playing then?”
I would have answered her but I was struck dumb. She was wearing a diaphanous dress of flowing muslin slit to above the knee, while her hair spilled over her shoulders like chocolate silk. A diamond and sapphire necklace both matched her eyes and led mine to a décolletage that would have had the Pope chewing his knuckles. She was a goddess. It got even better when she came closer and I could see just how diaphanous the dress was. She blushed and frowned at the same time when she saw me looking at her. I smiled apologetically and looked away. I did see a hint of a smile though, before the frown took hold.
“Come Monsieur Blackthorne, back to your room, I think. We really can’t have you wandering around now, can we?” There was a hint of threat in her voice, but I didn’t think she meant it. I was led back down the corridor and into my room. Dominique held her hand out for the key, I meekly placed it in her palm and she unlocked the door and waved the maid away. She motioned for me to sit on the bed and I did. My little adventure had fatigued me; either that or I would have done anything she asked of me. Especially when she was wearing that dress. Many of the English ladies that had come to Paris in those few months of peace had embraced the French fashion for classically influenced dresses, but none that I had seen had captured the beauty of Aphrodite or Venus as Dominique did that night. She took the candle from me and lit a few more on the mantelpiece. I averted my eyes from her silhouetted form, after a moment or two.
She looked at me thoughtfully for a few seconds and then appeared to come to a decision. She went to the desk on the other side of the room and pressed a catch. A hidden drawer opened and she took out a packet of papers. I cursed under my breath and patted the mattress searching for the lump, my heart sinking. The papers had gone.
“Looking for this?” Dominique turned and waved the papers at me. “I think that perhaps it is time for you to answer some questions, some important ones this time.”
“Give me the papers. You had no right to take them from me.”
“I don’t think that you are in a position to make any demands, do you?” She sat down on a chaise longue across the room.
“So, are you going to answer me?” She asked as she straightened what little of her dress there was. She was torturing me as surely as if she was using the rack.
“I have nothing to say. Those papers are private and confidential and refer to a legacy left to me by a great aunt. You hold me here against my will, lock me in this damned room…”
“Stop it! An aunt? I thought your family had disowned you. You really are a very bad liar, Ben. I know what those papers say because I have read them. Now what are you doing with Bonaparte’s plans for the invasion flotilla?” She waited for my answer and then after a moment she looked exasperated. Then disappointed. And finally amused. “You didn’t know what they were did you?”
I had thought that I had covered up my surprise quite well, but perhaps it was the jaw dropping, eye popping and spluttering that betrayed me. I knew that I had to say something, to make something up, otherwise I could have been on the end of a gibbet before sunrise. Being caught with that type of information didn’t bear thinking about.
The thought that Boney wanted to invade Britain wasn’t a revelation of course. We were just about the only power he had not soundly thrashed. It was the fact that he had a plan and must obviously have a scheme to get past the wooden walls of the Navy that concerned me. I might have proudly worn the Army’s uniform but I was not blind to the fact that the only reason England had survived nearly a decade of war with France was that there was a rather inconvenient body of water between London and Paris and that all French ports were constantly blockaded by our 74s. I opened my mouth again trying to think of something to say but Dominique held up her hand.
“Don’t bother lying again. Perhaps you might be more inclined to tell me if you knew who we were?”
“We?”
“Yes, we. Me, my uncle, some friends. We who fight Bonaparte.”
“You’re Royalists, but I thought you father was a revolutionary?” Things began to make a little more sense. Just a little.
“When my father and mother were guillotined I vowed I would see them avenged. I do not know who is responsible for their death but I know the type of man it must have been. I fight against their kind in any way I can. Bonaparte is a tyrant, as bad as the Bourbons, if not worse.” She walked to the window and stared out into the darkness. She turned back and pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. “We are on the same side, Ben.”
Even though old fat Louis had been dead a decade there were plenty of Frenchmen who wanted an end to the chaos of the Revolution and a return to the old order, or order of any kind. The Vendée had been in almost permanent ferment for years and was barely under the control of Paris. Princes, Dukes and Counts plotted and schemed on France’s borders and many who were still loyal to the Bourbons had survived The Terror. I was heartened because the Royalists had cause to help me, an English ally, but also wary because I might be getting myself into even more trouble by being associated with them. I looked into her eyes, wanting to believe her, and knowing that I would.
“How…”
“How can you believe her?” A man entered the room. He wasn’t tall or short, he was well past his youth and his stomach was beginning to hang over his belt. In a few more years he would be fat and he would have lost more of his greying hair. His face was lined and pale. He was dressed well but somehow without style.
“If you knew the true horrors that Dominique has endured, you would believe her,” he said.
He walked over and held out his hand. The grip was strong and his eyes met mine. Some men you trust when you feel their grip, some you don’t. I wasn’t sure about Dominique’s uncle. He had the air of a man who had survived and who had not always been too particular about who else survived with him. I thought that I might be all right if I was valuable to him but if not, well then I might be finished. He let go of my hand.
“I am François Calvet. I may work for that scoundrel Bonaparte, but my loyalty lies elsewhere, the same as my niece’s.” He placed his hand on Dominique’s shoulder, protectively. Dominique turned to shut the door behind him.
“Ben Blackthorne, late of the XII
th
Dragoons, shot, confused, and indignant.”
“Monsieur Blackthorne, I cannot apologise for your being shot, and as for your confusion and indignation, well if you answer my questions I will answer yours. Now, where did you get these papers?” He grinned and poured a glass of Armagnac from a decanter that had also been locked away in the desk. If I had known it was there then the time would have passed much more easily. I paused before accepting the drink. Unlike me, I know, but I felt I could be crossing the Styx by accepting. He thrust it towards me.
“Please, I think that you could do with this. Come on, man. If we had wanted you dead then we’d hardly take the time to return you to good health first would we? Nor would I waste fifty year old brandy on you.”
I took the spirit and downed it in one gulp. It probably tasted very fine but I drank it too quickly, eager for the glow to spread from my lips to my belly and perhaps calm my all-too-frayed nerves. Dominique looked at me from across the room, our eyes met and she nodded almost imperceptibly. There was no point trying to lie any more. I told them the whole story; Wright, the papers, everything.
After I had finished, Calvet poured me another brandy.
“Very well. It is as we thought. We know Captain Wright well. Once you have recovered your strength we will get you out of the city and to the coast.” He said it so plainly, as if he did this type of thing all the time. Perhaps he did.
“How?”
“We will find a way. It will not be easy since the city gates are all guarded, but there are ways. You can have these back by the way. We will trust you, for now, but you will only betray us once, you understand?”
“Yes, I understand.” I took the papers and weighed them in my hand. “I understand that I should have stayed in bed last week and got myself quietly arrested at a decent hour of the day and that I would now be on my way to wherever Bonaparte is keeping the rest of his English prisoners. However, I do not understand how I came to be involved in all of this.”
“Fate, Monsieur Blackthorne, just fate.” Calvet smiled.
“Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll wait for fate to get me out of it. I want to know what is going on. Whom do you work for?”
“Bonaparte and the French Government, officially. My boss is Jean Baptiste Dossonville, Controller of Administration. I also work for your Alien Office, occasionally. And I support the Royalists who hope to return a king to the throne instead of that damned Corsican.”
“If you work for Bonaparte then who was chasing me?”
“In France life is not at all simple. Many men work for Bonaparte but fortunately for our cause they mostly work against each other. A man called Lacrosse led the guards but no, I’m afraid that you are not that important. He was after the papers. He knew Wright had them, how I don’t know. I got wind of it too late to warn Wright. After your little fracas on the Seine Lacrosse suspected that Wright might have passed the papers to you. Knowing of Bonaparte’s plan to arrest all Englishmen I had already spread the word amongst others of like mind to help any of your countrymen trying to escape. It was pure luck that you went to Henri and ended up here.” He poured himself another Armangac, refreshed my own glass again and then settled down in a gaudy throne of a chair. I got the impression that he rather relished initiating a novice to the complexities of being a secret agent. At least it made him more inclined to give me more information, despite the warning looks shot from Dominique, and I now knew the identity of the man in grey who had led the guards that awful morning.
“And so it’s the papers that Lacrosse wants?” I asked.
“Yes, but not for the reason that you might suspect. Lacrosse works for General Moncey, head of the Gendarmes. But his real loyalty is to Joseph Fouché. He doesn’t care if you English get warning of the invasion or not. He just wants to help Fouché get his hands on them and get the credit for foiling the plot.”
“I thought Fouché had been dismissed?” The former French Minister of Police was infamous for his intrigues and brutality, but above all the Butcher of Lyon was known as a survivor.
“He has but, just like Lacrosse, Joseph Fouché only cares about one thing. Power. During the dark days of The Terror he held the power of life and death over anyone in France, as indeed, to my shame, did I. These days, when the guillotines are less busy, we all have to jostle for position. Each allowing certain groups to operate, to make trouble, while claiming the other does nothing and then perhaps turning on their own creations and crowing victory to Bonaparte. My superior, Dossonville, tried to bring Fouché down. Fouché had him arrested. Dossonville appealed to Bonaparte. Fouché was dismissed. Such is life in France. Without such men as Fouché, Lacrosse, Dossonville and I perhaps we could all sleep at night without waiting for the tramp of the guards and a knock on the door. I do what I have to do to survive and to see Bonaparte’s plans frustrated. We don’t want another tyrant. A constitutional monarch with their power limited by a proper assembly is what we originally fought for all those years ago.”