French moved obediently to the wall and Moss Mouth placed his bundle on the floor. He shut the door firmly and a key grated in the lock.
French resumed his search of the cabin. I scooted across the floor to the bundle and examined its contents. A greasy packet contained meat, though I was hard pressed to identify it as beef, pork or lamb. I hoped it was one of those; the alternatives were too frightful to consider. Our thoughtful hosts had included a loaf of stale bread, beginning to turn green at the corners, and a bottle of brackish water. I drank it anyway and was not surprised to find that it tasted like ambrosia.
I held out the bottle to French. “Drink?”
He stalked over and took a long swallow. “What I wouldn’t give for a large brandy,” he said.
“I’d settle for a stove. I’m beginning to think I’ll never be warm again.”
French was exploring the parcel, poking the meat gingerly. After some consideration, he tore off a small bit and held it to his nose.
“You’re not going to eat that, are you?”
“I’ve eaten worse,” he said, and then, after a pause, “I think.” He chucked the bite in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Not bad. Not entirely certain what it is, but it’s not bad.”
He pulled off another chunk and handed it to me. “Here, eat this. You’ll need your strength.”
“For what? Cooling my heels until Ivanov decides to let us go free? Not that that will be difficult to do in this weather.”
French was scraping the mold from the loaf of bread. “He’s not going to get the chance to send that message. We’re breaking out of this cabin and taking over the ship.”
I snorted. Not the least bit ladylike, but etiquette had gone by the wayside on this trip. “And how do you expect to do that? For one thing, the door is locked. And Ivanov said it would be guarded.”
He looked at me in exasperation. “India, I have had some training in extricating myself from just such circumstances as these. The lock and the guard are minor inconveniences.”
“And then? There are five of them out there waiting for us. And have you forgotten that Oksana and Ivanov both have guns? And while I’m thinking of it, shouldn’t you have a dagger down your boot or something? You are the most ill-prepared secret agent I’ve ever met.” A slight exaggeration, as French was the first secret agent I’d met (and, I hoped, the last).
“I don’t carry a dagger,” French bridled. “Rather messy, you know. You have to get in close to use it, and inevitably there’s a great deal of blood.” He pulled up his trouser leg and fished in his boot. “But I do have this,” he said, pulling out an impressive cannon of a handgun. “The Webley .577 Boxer revolver. It will blow a hole right through you.”
I gasped. “You’ve had that with you the entire time we’ve been chasing Ivanov? Why didn’t you use it on him when we ran into him with the sleigh?”
Irritably, French stuffed the pistol back in his boot. “Because, if you recall, I had Ivanov’s pistol in my hand at that time. There wasn’t any need to pull this out and wave it around.”
“You should have shot the bastard then,” I said, still miffed that French had been holding out on me.
“There was the small problem of Oksana holding a pistol to your head.”
“Oh,” I said, somewhat chastened.
We heard the key rasp in the lock and the door swung open. Moss Mouth and Beauty were back, this time carrying a rather larger bundle. They tossed it carelessly into the middle of the cabin and retreated through the door, careful to keep their distance from us, though Moss Mouth bestowed a radiant smile upon me as he left.
“What the hell is this?” said French.
The bundle groaned and stirred, sending shards of ice tinkling to the floor.
“Bloody hell,” breathed French. “Vincent.”
He was on his feet in an instant, clucking like a mother hen over Vincent’s prone body, brushing away the ice and snow that had accumulated on the boy, and then taking off his overcoat and tucking it around Vincent’s body, which made me sigh in exasperation. Would the man never learn? His beautiful coat, of finely spun wool and with a gorgeous astrakhan collar, would have to go on the fire as soon as Vincent got through with it. French seemed oblivious to the fate of his coat. He was patting Vincent’s cheek and murmuring softly to the boy.
“The boy’s half-frozen. India, give me your cloak,” French ordered.
Damn and blast. “Er, you’re sure he needs it?”
“Give it here,” French snapped. “You don’t want the boy to die, do you?”
Well, I could hardly answer that, could I? I handed over the cloak, without enthusiasm. Another perfectly good item of clothing for the bonfire. French spread it over Vincent, then sprang to his feet, strode to the door and slammed his fist against it, making the warped wood jump.
“Ivanov!” he shouted.
In a moment Moss Mouth opened the door cautiously, with pistol in hand. “Wot d’ya want?”
“We need brandy for the boy,” said French. “Quick as you can.”
“I’ll check with the guv’ner.” The door slammed shut.
In a moment it opened again. “Stand back, you.” A bottle of brandy rolled across the sloping cabin floor. French seized it and knelt beside Vincent. He cradled the boy’s head in his arm and opened Vincent’s mouth, tilting the bottle up and sending a good portion of the contents down Vincent’s throat. I could only hope, for French’s sake, that the cold had killed the vermin that routinely shared Vincent’s clothes with him.
Vincent regained consciousness in a spasm of coughing and retching. He blinked several times and then looked up into French’s face.
“There ya are, guv,” he said weakly.
“Don’t talk, Vincent,” French shushed him. “Here, have some more brandy.”
You don’t have to offer liquor twice to Vincent. He took a healthy jolt and shuddered visibly.
“That ’its the spot, it does. I was near froze through. Ain’t a fit night for man nor beast out there.”
He managed to sit up, hugging French’s coat and my cloak closely about him. His face and hands, which had had a bluish tinge, were beginning to return to a normal colour (though it was difficult to be certain, given the layer of grime).
“Lord, what a gallop I’ve ’ad,” he said.
“How in the world did you get here?” asked French.
“Why, I ’opped on the back of your wagon and then that damned sleigh.”
That explained the way the sleigh had bucked and skidded when we’d left the last two inns. Vincent had thrown himself upon the runners.
“And when you two got yourselves nicked by them Russians, I rode on the back of their coach all the way here. I wuz tryin’ to sneak around, ever so quiet, until I could find a way to let you out, but I wuz so cold I could ’ardly move, and one o’ them bastards caught me by the scruff of the neck and tossed me in ’ere with you.”
“You followed us all the way from London, riding out in the open?” I was shocked. Shocked and impressed. It was a damned sight more than I would have done.
Vincent nodded. “Any more of that brandy?”
He took another slug (no other word for it), then French and I took turns trying the local favorite. It turned out to be a fine French cognac, the spoils, no doubt, of some smuggling operation.
“Is that meat?” asked Vincent.
“Of a sort,” I said, and handed him the packet and the loaf of bread. He fell on it like a starving hound.
“Why the devil didn’t you make an appearance when Ivanov and French were duking it out on the road to Dover?” I demanded. “We could have used your help then.”
“It was clear you two weren’t goin’ to be able to take that Ivanov bloke and that Russian bitch. I figured I should ’ang back, sorta like a reserve column, you know? Ready to rush in when you needed me.”
I opened my mouth to dispute Vincent’s assessment of French’s and my capabilities, but it occurred to me that he had pegged it exactly, and I decided to let his observations go unremarked.
The three of us sat on the floor then, sharing the last of the brandy, and huddled together for warmth, with me praying fervently that the lice and fleas had decided to migrate to the aft cabin, where there was a warm stove and plump Russians to feast upon. We had nearly finished our picnic when we heard shouts and clattering from the deck, the cabin floor tipped ominously, and the rattle of the anchor being raised penetrated the thin hull. We were on our way to France, on a clapped-out wreck of a boat during one of the worst winter storms I could recall. The three of us looked at each other, and a heavy silence settled around us as we contemplated the journey ahead.
Vincent had the final swallow from the bottle, brushed a crumb from his mouth with a genteel swipe and said, “Right, then. Wot’s the plan?”
“We’re hijacking the ship,” I said. “And as we’re leaving port, shouldn’t we get moving?”
Vincent’s eyes gleamed. “’Ijackin’, eh? Just like them pirate fellers. This’ll be a treat. What ’ave we got for weapons? Oh,” he said, patting his pockets. “’Fore I forget, India, here’s this for you.” He extracted my Bulldog from his trousers and handed it to me.
“Vincent, you’re a treasure,” I cried.
“I dried it the best I could. ’Ope it still works. That was good shootin’, the way you gunned down that big Russian bloke. Remind me not to steal no more cigars from ya.”
French took the pistol from him and opened the cylinder, peering down the barrel and taking out each bullet and examining them one by one. “There’s no snow compacted in the barrel. It’s wet through, though. We’ll see if we can dry it further. With luck, it’ll shoot when you need it. If not, well, you can at least threaten someone with it.”
“French has a .577 Boxer,” I said waspishly. “He’s been carrying it around, saving it for a rainy day.”
“Wot am I goin’ to use?” asked Vincent.
French fumbled in his boot and produced a dirk.
“Here,” I said indignantly. “You said you didn’t carry a dagger. Close quarters. Too much blood. Etcetera, etcetera.”
“One of the things I find most charming about you, India, is your certainty that you’re entitled to know everything. A good agent always keeps something in reserve.”
“What have you got in reserve now? A derringer in your unmentionables?” That stumped him, as I knew it would.
He ignored me, handing the dirk to Vincent. “I trust you know how to use one of these?”
Vincent took it nonchalantly and hefted it in his hand, testing it for weight and balance. “From the cradle,” he said. “Just tell me whose throat to slit.”
“I’m hoping we won’t have to slit anyone’s throat,” said French.
Vincent looked disappointed.
“You’re a bloodthirsty little hooligan,” I said.
French rose to his feet and made his way unsteadily to the door. We were in open water now, well away from the protection of the coastline, for the boat was climbing steeply over waves, then crashing down into the troughs with a shudder. I felt the first stirrings of nausea and hoped it wouldn’t get worse. I noticed Vincent had begun to look peaked, and even French was pale beneath his dark complexion. He jiggled the handle of the door cautiously, careful not to make any noise, but I doubt a battering ram could have been heard above the shriek of the wind and the groaning of the ship.
He returned to our little group and sank down into a sitting position.
“I expect Ivanov and Oksana are in the aft cabin, out of the weather. There may also be a guard on the door.”
“Then ’ow do we get out of ’ere?” asked Vincent, running his thumb down the length of the dirk’s blade, testing the edge.
“I’m afraid, Vincent, that you’ll have to die.”
We took our stations. Vincent lay huddled beneath French’s coat and my cloak, cradling the dirk in one hand and ready to throw off his coverings as soon as he got the signal from French. I hovered over him like an attending nurse (though I was careful not to actually touch the boy; even the thought of escape wasn’t strong enough to overcome my aversion to Vincent’s filth). Tucked into the folds of my skirt, my hand was wrapped around the Bulldog’s grip. French had wiped down all the surfaces of the gun, dried the bullets and replaced them for me. I only hoped that if I pulled the trigger, I wouldn’t lose a hand. French had stuffed the big Boxer into the pocket of his jacket, where it made a bulge that a blind man couldn’t have missed.
He looked us over critically, and I was reminded of the first time we had met, on the night Vincent and I had been trying to dispose of Bowser’s body. Less than a week ago, I’d been innocently minding my own business, haranguing bints, flattering lusty old goats and haggling with tradesmen. Since the day of Bowser’s death, my world had turned upside down. I’d endured kidnapping (by the prime minister, no less), performed a naughty routine for a Russian count and been held hostage at the Russian embassy. I’d nearly killed myself (and French) trying to steal Bowser’s case from William Gladstone’s hotel room, ridden in an open sleigh through some hellish weather, been kidnapped again (at least it was the Russkis this time, and not my own country-men) and was now on my way to France. Say what you will about the experience, at least I hadn’t been bored.
French nodded at Vincent. “Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“Don’t forget to groan, lad. Remember, you’re on the verge of death.”
“Righto.”
“India?”
“Oh, get on with it, will you? We must be halfway to Calais by now.”
French hammered on the door. “Ivanov? Are you out there?”
Ivanov’s voice came, muffled and suspicious, through the door. “What do you want?”
“It’s the boy. He’s not responding. It’s too cold in here.” There was a hint of hysteria in French’s voice, which I thought was a nice touch, if a bit overdone. Somehow one could never think of French as getting hysterical about anything.
Silence. Then Ivanov spoke. “I’ll give you another bottle of brandy.”