The Old Vengeful

hill, was it?'

'On a hill? But no! Here—where we stand—was the edge of a great ditch. The ruin of the tower fills the ditch and also makes your hill, Mamselle. And what we see is but the edge of a huge crater where the tower stood. The greatest single ruin in France is what you see here—am I right, Paul?'

'What?' Paul frowned abstractedly.

The Frenchman nodded. 'They were not ordinary prisoners?

Am I right?'

'No, they weren't. I suppose I owe you that, Bertrand.' Paul grinned. 'But I don't yet know why.'

'But you knew before, nevertheless?' Bourienne nodded.

Elizabeth stared at Paul. 'How did you know, Paul?'

'I don't know—I'm guessing, like Bertrand.'

'They were sent to Lautenbourg, that's why,' said Aske.

'Sent there—and then interrogated about something. And then, when they escaped, the French pretended to the British that they didn't exist. And if they'd been caught I'll bet that would have been the truth. 'Shot while escaping' is the standard formula.'

'Timing is the giveaway, Elizabeth,' said Paul, ignoring Aske.

'They met the Fortune by accident—the Vengeful was wrecked—they came ashore ... By the ordinary rules they would have been marched to somewhere like Verdun, and Lieutenant Chipperfield and the midshipman would have been semi-paroled there, and perhaps the warrant officers dummy3

with them. That must be what Chipperfield reckoned on.'

'So what?' said Aske.

'So he didn't need to escape. Once he reached Verdun he'd be among friends, with a Senior British Officer to advise him what to do next... Or at least he'd be safe, anyway.'

'Where does timing come into this?' persisted Aske.

'At first they did march towards Verdun—they nearly got there, in fact. But then they were diverted to the Lautenbourg, and Colonel Suchet turned up. And then they were in trouble.' Paul looked at Elizabeth. ' Timing, Elizabeth.'

He expected something of her—and since he could hardly expect her to be brighter than Aske it must relate to something he expected her to know, and to be able to put together as he had done.

'Timing . . .' Her mind stretched into Father's Vengeful Number Seven chapter, but to no avail. And Bertrand Bourienne, who knew nothing about the Vengeful's last voyage, was looking frankly bemused. And Humphrey Aske—

The Vengeful's last voyage?

'The French couldn't possibly have known that she'd be off Ushant—' But now she was echoing her own answer to the question she'd put to her in the garden at the Old House '—

but she was at Gibraltar for re-fitting and stores before that. . . and then she called at Lisbon on the way home . . . ?'

'Come on,' Elizabeth!' Paul encouraged her.

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'Well ... I suppose the French could have received news of her sailing from Lisbon, if they had spies there ... if she didn't sail immediately—but meeting the Fortune. . . that was still accidental, Paul.'

'You're just guessing—clutching at straws,' murmured Aske.

'Of course I'm bloody guessing!' snapped Paul. 'But our people say the time factor just about fits—allowing for the length of time it took to transfer information to Paris from Spain.'

'But that would take weeks—' Aske stopped suddenly, and his expression changed. 'Ah!'

Elizabeth stared at Aske.

'That's what he means, Miss Loftus,' Aske nodded. 'The Fortune doesn't come into the reckoning at all. But once the Vengeful survivors came ashore the news would have gone to Paris in a matter of hours, by semaphore. They always celebrated whenever one of our ships came to grief—the Moniteur would publish it, we can check that even ... But . . .

they didn't do anything about it. They just started the prisoners off towards Verdun, like always . . . and that also took weeks—don't you see?'

Belatedly, Elizabeth saw—saw the two additions of time, and what they might mean: on the one hand the days the Vengeful had been in Gibraltar, or Lisbon, and at sea, plus the time from the sea-fight with the Fortune, through the shipwreck and the survivors' landfall, and the long trek dummy3

thereafter across France towards the prison depot. . . and on the other, the odyssey of the information about the Vengeful from Lisbon to Paris, first from behind the British lines, from some French spy, and even through French-occupied Spain . . . which, with guerrilla bands watching every road, would have been hardly less slow and dangerous. And together those two additions of time and distance turned into snails creeping across the map, but converging on each other just short of Verdun and safety, when Colonel Suchet finally caught up with Lieutenant Chipperfield.

'So Suchet's our man now—'Colonel Soo-shay' who asked the silly questions— goodbye Tom Chard, hullo Mon Colonel,'