The Old Vengeful

died in France, Professor.'

'Ah! The great tower? You've been following them in France, I was forgetting! I have been tracking them in England—Tom Chard and the American, Timms.'

'That leaves a gap in the middle, between Coucy and here,'

said Aske. 'But obviously they crossed it somehow.'

'You haven't read Miss Cookridge's papers?' Wilder seemed surprised. Then he gestured towards the box. 'But that can be easily rectified.'

'Don't bother, Professor—just tell us.' Aske looked at Elizabeth. 'We're used to having the facts doled out to us one by one. I think they wanted to see how much we could make of them as we went along.'

Wilder studied them both for a moment, as though he didn't know quite what to make of that flash of bitterness. 'There isn't much to tell, Mr Aske. After Chipperfield died they went dummy3

on towards the Pas de Calais.'

'With Paget dressed as a girl?'

'At first. But not for long.'

'He didn't like being a girl, I'll bet.' Aske nodded.

'He took command, Mr Aske, nevertheless.'

'At the age of thirteen?'

'He was a warrant officer and Chipperfield naturally passed on the command to him. ' Mr Chipperfield instructed Mr Paget as to his wishes, and these we did then execute to the best of our power' , that is what Tom Chard said. It was the old navy, Mr Aske: the Lieutenant gave them their orders, and the orders lived on after he was dead.'

'So they headed for the Pas de Calais . . .'

'For Dunkirk. That was almost certainly the plan from the start— to steal a boat at Dunkirk.'

'Why Dunkirk?'

'Because the Dunkirkers were celebrated for their pro-British sympathies. Only the year before we'd released a couple of dozen of their people—men they particularly wanted—in gratitude for the way they'd treated the survivors from a wrecked Indiaman. And there'd long been an unofficial live-and-let-live understanding between the navy and the local fishermen. Also Napoleon himself notoriously disliked Dunkirkers—and they reckoned he was more their enemy than King George, who at least didn't conscript their dummy3

sons and get them killed . . . If Chipperfield had ever served in the Channel Fleet he'd have known that. And I think he did know it.'

'And they did steal a boat,' said Elizabeth.

'Not without difficulty—with tragedy, in fact.' He sighed.

'That was where the midshipman got it?' said Aske.

The Professor gazed at him for a moment, then nodded.

'The boats were guarded, inevitably. And the beaches themselves were patrolled—indeed, while they were lying up in the dunes the patrols were increased, with the addition of soldiers as well as mounted gendarmes.'

Aske caught Elizabeth's eye, but didn't interrupt.

'After four days their water ran out, and they were of a mind to give up the attempt, and try again later. But then there came a thick sea-mist, and they chanced it.' Wilder paused, and then lifted a hand in a sad little gesture. 'Paget was killed as they were manhandling the boat into the sea—a mounted gendarme came out of the mist behind them, and took one shot at them—' but one ball was discharged, yet that a fatal one' ... I suspect those are Parson Ward's words, rather than what Tom Chard said. But that's probably true of much of the Chard narrative, it's a sight too pedantic in places for an unlettered man, though the sense is right. . . No, what I think Chard meant was that the odds against a French policeman hitting what he was aiming at with a cavalry carbine were about one in a million. But this was that one- in-dummy3

a-million that had the boy's name on it.'

After all they'd been through, thought Elizabeth, after all they'd achieved against impossible odds, it had been a too-cruel end for Chipperfield and Paget both, who might otherwise have lived to be admirals. But then how many other admirals and generals—and prime ministers and surgeons and scientists . . . and good husbands and loving sons—had been cut off by chance bullets ahead of their time?

Even Father's shell, which had only maimed him, had changed history to bring her here. But there was no point in mourning any of these mischances; one could only trust that the cause had been just, the quarrel honourable, as King Harry's soldiers had hoped before Agincourt.

'So he handed them that box,' Wilder pointed at the Vengeful box on the table, 'and he died.'

' That box?' repeated Aske incredulously. 'Are you telling us that they carried that box all the way from . . . from Lautenbourg—no, all the way from the Vengeful—?'

'That's what it looks like. 'The surgeon's case', Tom Chard calls it.' Wilder nodded. 'That box, I think— yes.'

Aske stared at the box. 'But—for God's sake—what was in it?' Then he looked at Elizabeth. 'Did you know this—about the box?'

Elizabeth shook her head. 'What was in the box, Professor?'