The Old Vengeful

which he had boasted of—

'Enguerrand's music, c'est vrai,' Bourienne acknowledged Aske's guess. 'Although I should have had them play La Marseillaise for you this time, Paul. . . if not the rataplan of the drummers of the Guard.' They were moving now, as though by concensus, still lapped by Enguerrand's music, towards an inner gateway, much more ruined and overgrown, but also greater.

Paul turned towards his friend. 'So you have got something?'

'That ... I don't know . . .' Bertrand Bourienne mused on the question. 'I know that I have worked very hard for you, these last hours . . . and in a period unfamiliar to me—and also with material and people unfamiliar to me— yes!'

'Ha . . . hmmm!' Paul grunted unintelligibly, and Elizabeth sensed that he was trying to control his impatience.

'We're very grateful to you for taking such trouble to help us, M'sieur Bourienne,' she said carefully. 'And at such short notice.'

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'No trouble, Miss Loftus. Assisting fellow-labourers in the vineyard is always a pleasure. And I understand the importance of checking new material when it arrives so inconveniently, with a book almost finished . . .' Bourienne nodded sympathetically '. . . though that is the mark of a true scholar, but naturally—and nothing less than what I would expect of my friend, Dr Mitchell . . . No, my only reservation—

my only regret, even—is that this concerns an era of history with which I am not conversant in sufficient depth to be of real help, so that . . . with so little time at my disposal ... I have been dependent on the charity of others. And to no great effect I fear.'

'You mean that Dr Mitchell has sent you on a wild goose chase?' said Aske.

'No . . . that I do not mean.' Bourienne pursed his lips, and looked sidelong at Paul. 'I know him of old, and he has the historian's gift—the instinct for the one fact out of the many ... the one fact which cannot safely be left behind—the nose for the deep dug-out in the captured trench which is not empty, but full of Germans waiting to issue forth to take you in the rear as you move on.'

They were passing through the gateway now, with a labyrinth of ruined guardhouses, and steps descending into darkness, on one side, and a jumble of stones on a hillside on the other.

'And this is one of those dug-outs—those facts, I think,' said Bourienne. 'Even though I do not know this period, my nose tells me so.' He looked at Elizabeth suddenly, nodding again, dummy3

but this time thoughtfully. 'I think . . . you are wise not to leave this chapter behind you, Miss Loftus.'

'Why, M'sicur Bourienne?' She had come to the question at last.

He pointed to the stone-covered hillside. 'Do you not wish to see Enguerrand's tower?'

'I want to know why, first, if you please.' Once out, the why took precedence over everything else.

'Very well. If I have understood Paul correctly, you are concerned with the fate of a party of escaped British sailors who concealed themselves here, in one of the towers of this castle? Deserters—yes?'

'Yes.' If that was what Paul had said, then yes. 'Prisoners-of-war, though, not deserters.'

'No.' It was Aske who spoke. ' 'Deserter' was the official name for all escaped PoWs, on both sides of the Channel.

Once they broke out they were regarded in law as criminals, the officers as well as the men. over here, if they were recaptured they went straight to the dungeons in the punishment fortresses.'

'And in England they went to the hulks—the old wooden battleships rotting on the mud-flats, m'sieur. Which was worse, I have been told—is that not so?'

Aske shook his head slowly. 'Not worse than the hell-hole at Bitche—'the house of tears'. And they reckoned Sarrelibre was worse than Bitche. Or so I have been told, m'sieur.'

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The tall Frenchman looked down at the little Englishman for a moment, then turned back to Elizabeth. 'Let us say . . . it was a cruel age, Miss Loftus. Any man who escaped in those days risked more than mere recapture. But then any man who wore his country's uniform . . . that was also a cruel fate.

And especially here in France, After twenty years of war, and the Law of Conscription, which was hated so much.'

'Like the Press Gang?'

'That I cannot say. But here. . . by 1812 the countryside was full of refractaires—the evaders of conscription who were on the run ... as well as deserters from the army. And, for the most part, the peasants and the poor people pitied them, and helped them. Or at least did not inform on them—' he swung towards Paul '—and that, Paul, is how these men of yours survived here for so long without discovery: they passed themselves off as conscripts—as fishermen from the west coast trying to return to their homes . . . Would that be right?'

'Exactly right, Bertrand, by God!' Paul nodded first to the Frenchman, then to Elizabeth. 'Tom Chard said that Chipperfield and the midshipman both spoke enough French to get by, but they passed off their accents as Breton— like pretending to be Scotsmen in Kent. By God! Bertrand—

you've found them! That's brilliant of you!'

' Moment, Paul.' Bourienne cautioned Paul with a hand. 'It may be that I have not got them. None of the peasants who were interrogated admitted that these were Englishmen—'

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'But the place and the time is right, Bertrand—'

'But not the numbers, my friend. You said four men, and these were not four men—they were three men and a girl.'