'Thankfully, we escaped that, but… perhaps you also witnessed how angry the First Consul was, as well, n'est-ce pas?' Fouchй went on with a mocking grin over her comment. 'Later, he gave me orders that this mec should drop dead of something, hein? Since you already know-'
'He will be done away with at last?' Charitй exclaimed in sudden joy. Could her prospects be even more blissful? 'Bien! Trиs bien! You have just made me the happiest woman in all of France!'
'Despite Citoyenne de Guillen's enchanting beauty and seeming innocence, Fourchette, she is a fire-eater, a veteran of armed revolution back in Louisiana, hein?' Fouchй told his agent, almost winking on the sly even as he praised her. 'She and her brothers went to sea to pirate Spanish ships… raised funds and took arms so the patriots of Louisiana could rise and throw off the Spanish yoke, comprenez? I assure you, Citoyenne de Guilleri is a very dangerous young woman.'
'Then all France must owe you a great debt, Citoyenne Charitй,' Fourchette said with slow and sly surprise, and an incline of his head to her, in lieu of a bow. 'A slim sword, hidden in a silk scabbard.'
'How? When does he die?' Charitй demanded impatiently, feeling irked by Fouchй's sarcasm and Fourchette's suggestive ogling. 'May I be there, when it's done? My brothers, my cousin, must be avenged at last,' she insisted, shifting eagerly on her chair.
'Not here in Paris, non' Fouchй told her. 'That's too public. Fourchette's watchers say that he and his wife will soon take coach to Calais, now the exchange is done, and their touring is over. The last trip, Fourchette?'
'Two days in the forest of Fontainebleau. Very romantic, I suppose,' Fourchette answered with a chuckle and roll of his eyes. 'They pay the concierge the final reckoning and may depart by the end of the week. A highway robbery may be arranged… tragique, hein?'
'The both of them?' Charitй had to ask. That bastard Lewrie was one thing, but his wife was quite another.
'Might be best,' Fourchette suggested with a tentative shrug of his shoulders. 'And the coachmen, too. Better they simply disappear and are never heard from again. Hmm?'
'Pity they do not coach towards Normandy or Brittany,' Fouchй grumped. 'It could be blamed on Royalist bandits, like Cadoudal and his compatriots, reduced to robbery to fund their schemes against the Republic. Ah, well, I suppose the Calais highway must do. You are sure that is their destination, Fourchette?'
'It is what they speak of with the concierge, the port to which they have already sent off their heaviest luggage,' Fourchette assured his chief. 'They will travel lighter, departing. Else it would take a second coach, she's bought so much in Paris. Understandably.'
'I have summoned both of you, who know the man and his wife by their faces,' Fouchй continued, 'just in case something goes wrong en route. You see, citoyenne, you will be in at the kill, hawn hawn!'
'A thousand thanks, Citoyen Fouchй,' Charitй said in heartfelt and genuine gratitude, though she had her doubts about travelling with the leering Fourchette. 'For that matter, Major Denis Clary, of the Chasseurs, was with me when I spoke with Lewrie at the levee, and he knows his appearance, as well.' She thought she would have to put up with a lot less cloying attention should Denis be at her side.
'Uhm… perhaps,' Fouchй allowed, leery of involving anyone too official, in uniform, though; of any slip-up that might lead back to the First Consul or the French government. 'I sent for another gars, who also has intimate knowledge of Lewrie's appearance, though… '
'Pardon, citoyen,' the meek clerk intruded, rapping hesitantly on the door before sticking his head in. 'But that naval fellow you sent for is here. Should I show him in?'
'Ah bon!' Fouchй perked up, clapping his meaty hands together and getting to his feet. 'Come in, Capitaine, come in! A man from the earliest days of the Revolution, you see? A zealous hunter of aristos and traitors, is… but here you are, Capitaine.
'Allow me to introduce you to Citoyenne Charitй de Guilleri and one of my best agents, Citoyen Matthieu Fourchette,' Fouchй continued. 'But of course you and Fourchette have met before, hein? Citoyenne, I give you Capitaine de Vaisseau Guillaume Choundas.'
Charitй shot to her feet in sudden, shivering horror as she got sight of the monstrous caricature of a human being, her face blanching. Surely, this… this hideux could not be real!
Guillaume Choundas limped into the office, his stout cane tapping on the marble floor, his crippled leg in its stiff iron brace making a dragging swish-clomp, swish-clomp… with a leer on that half of his dissipated, twisted, and aged face that he still showed to the world. 'Citoyenne de Guilleri, enchantй' the horror said to her with an evil smile, clumping close to her, flipping his cane to the elbow of his sole arm and reaching out to take her hand as if it had been offered to him, he bestowed a kiss upon it, a kiss that, to Charitй, felt like the crawling, maggoty lips of a rotting corpse. It was all she could do to not jerk her hand away, to recoil in disgust from his monstrosity… to flee the office and go light candles at Notre Dame and make her confession to a curй in hope of deliverance from one of Satan's demons!
'Capitaine Choundas, like you, citoyenne, is also a victim who has suffered at the hands of that salaud, Alan Lewrie,' Fouchй informed her.
'In… indeed, citoyen?' Charitй managed to say, stricken with terror and revulsion.
'This is about Lewrie?' Choundas snapped, dropping her hand and regaining the use of his cane so he could turn towards Fouchй, a feral gleam in his remaining eye. 'Something is to be done?'
'He insulted the First Consul, Capitaine,' Fouchй told him. 'He is to be done away with. Somewhere lonely and quiet, out of sight on the road to Calais. The three of you know what he looks like, so… '
'Sacre bleu!' Choundas exclaimed. 'And I will participate in his end? Mort de ma vie, all I have asked of life, for so many years, and it comes to pass? Perhaps there is a God!'
He spun about, more nimbly that Charitй imagined that he could, to face her again. 'All the ravages you see, Citoyenne Charitй, have been at his hand… my face, my laming, my lost arm! The ruin of my life's work Oui, I will gladly help you murder him!'
Another quick turning to face them all. Swish-clomp!
'But it must not be an easy death for him,' Choundas demanded. 'With forethought… he must be taken alive. Only for a time, hein?' he specified with an anticipatory cackle. 'Give him to me for half a day… a full day, and I will take from him what he took from me so long ago and make him beg for death's release, oh mais oui!'
'That, uhm… might be a bit beyond what is necessary,' Fouchй hesitantly countered as he fiddled uncomfortably with his loosely bound neck-stock. 'We had thought to make it appear as a highway robbery by aristo-lovers and criminal elements.'
'And so it may, citoyen' Choundas quickly countered, his mind a'scheme as he haltingly paced in anxiety, swish-clomp, swish-clomp. 'Is the crime brutal enough, it can be blamed on Georges Cadoudal and his conspirators against the Republic, financed by the Comte d'Artois with Anglais gold, from his lair in England… to… to foment anger in Britain against France, because their government wants to begin the war again, hein?'
'Their Prime Minister, Addington, pays the Comte d'Artois for a murder of one of their naval officers and his wife?' Fouchй scoffed at the notion. 'Too complicated. They disappear, everyone in the coach, with no one ever the
