King, Ship, and Sword

before the roads diverged too far apar!

The clerk returned with the ink, and Fouchй scribbled furiously to impart his new instructions, then… issued a second order. There was a chance that the Anglais couple would get so far along that there would be no catching them if the first lead was false. He needed more men, with orders to arrest them; he would leave the elimination to his man, Fourchette. For that, he would send an urgent request to the general in charge of the Garde Nationale garrison in Paris, no… no request, but an order, for at least three troops of cavalry!

'Send them off at once, at once!' Fouchй snapped, thumping down into his chair with his head in his thick hands, staring at the middle distance, and wondering if things could go even more awry!

Fouchй's first despatch rider caught up with Fourchette and his party no more than two kilometres past the Porte St. Denis.

'Putain, quel emmerdement!' Fourchette spat once he'd read it, balled it up, and shoved it into a side pocket of his coat. 'Our quarry must have been warned, but I do not see how! Three couples at three portes presented papers declaring themselves as the Lewries.'

'With the help of Anglais spies, I knew it!' Guillaume Choundas growled, thumping his rein hand on the low pommel of his saddle. He had never been a decent horsemen, even when in possession of both his arms and working legs, and even a little more than one hour astride a horse was beginning to be an agony. 'He's in league with the Royalist conspirators. How else? In league with the Devil!'

'Make haste,' Fourchette decided quickly, 'The coach bound for Calais from the Porte Saint-Denis can't be that far ahead. We'll see whether we're after the real Lewrie, or another. Allez vite!'

Fourchette spurred his horse to a gallop, quickly joined by the girl, and her Chasseur Major. Both revelled in the sudden chase and the kilometre-eating pace and the wind in their faces. Still unaware of their true purpose, Major Denis Clary delighted in showing off his superb cavalryman's mastery of a horse, and Charitй was just as eager to impress him with her seat. For a few moments, she could shake from her mind the image of what would occur at the end of their chase and take a little joy. She looked over her shoulder and laughed out loud to see that foetid monster, Choundas, jouncing almost out of control in only a bone-shaking trot as she left his hideous form and mind behind!

'There it is!' Fourchette bugled, espying a slow-trotting coach-and-four on the road ahead. 'Hurry!'

Fourchette, Charitй, Major Clary, and half a dozen agents garbed in civilian clothes thundered up to the coach, catching up easily and passing down either side of it as Fourchette bellowed demands for the coachee to draw reins and stop. He sprang from his saddle and was at the carriage door before one of his men could take his reins.

'M'sieur et madame, I order you to present your laisser-passers at once, and… oh, merde alors. Who the Devil are you?'

'Sir, I do not know who you are, but you will not use such foul language in my wife's presence, do you hear me?' the gentleman with the mid-brown hair inside the coach shot back with an imperious back and in perfect French, with but a touch of Anglais accent.

'Your papers, at once!' Fourchette shot back, fighting down his shock to find utter strangers. Once handed over, he read them over quickly and got a sinking feeling. The man and his wife were English… but not the ones he sought. 'You are…?'

'Sir Andrew Graves… sir,' the Briton said, looking at Fourchette with that maddening supercilious air of a proper English lord looking down at a chimney sweep. 'My lady wife, Susannah. And what is the meaning of this… sir?' Irking Fourchette so much that he wished this arrogant Anglais was his real prey, and he could just put the salaud into a hastily dug grave. Yet… the laisser-passers he had been presented were authentic, with entry dates and a departure from Paris showing that they had been in France two weeks, and with all the proper signatures and stamps depressingly authentic, to boot!

'A thousand pardons, m'sieur, madame, but we seek escaping criminals thought to be fleeing justice on this highway in a coach quite like this one. Adieu, you may proceed,' Fourchette said, though that galled him to no end.

'And you apologise, m'sieur' Sir Andrew pressed, a brow up. 'A thousand pardons for… my choice of words, as well, and my apologies to madame,' Fourchette was further forced to say.

'Well, I should bloody-well think so, dash it all!' Sir Andrew huffed. 'Whip up, driver! Avance, cocher, vite vite!'

'One down, two t'go!' his wife, Susannah, who was really better known round Drury Lane as Betsy Peake, chortled to her companion who was also better known on the Shakespearean stages of London and its nearer counties as Anthony Ford, as the party of horsemen clattered far enough away for them to revert to their natural accents and glee to have fooled the Frogs so thoroughly.

'Must say, m'dear, but these roles we play give life a zest!' Ford said with a satisfied sigh of contentment and a bit of relief that they were free and clear.

'Here, I'll shred these lyin' packets t'wee bits as we bowl along,' Betsy offered. 'And, yes! It is very… piquant!'

'Showin' off, again! Piquant, my eye! Hoy, Bets… ever do it in a carriage?' Ford leered.

'Wif th' likes o' you? Hmmph!'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

'Oh,' Caroline said with a start, after sitting silently tense for more than an hour as their coach rolled past the last outskirts of Paris and into the pleasant countryside 'tween the Seine and the Oise.

'Trouble?' Lewrie bolted erect, thinking she had seen some sign of pursuit. 'What?' he demanded, wishing that he'd thought to pack a single pistol in his bags before leaving England. Even the hanger he had gotten back from Napoleon was in a round-topped trunk on its way to Calais.

'No, I don't believe,' Caroline told him, delving into her reticule. 'Forgive me for being remiss, but I quite forgot the note that Lady Imogene slipped me just as we were leaving.' She produced a wee folded piece of paper, when opened no more than four inches square.

'Oh!' Caroline exclaimed again. 'Sir Pulteney has additional instructions for us. Here, see for yourself.'

Once you pass through Pontoise, there is a quite nice coaching inn on the far bank of the Oise, called Le Gantelet Rouge. Stop there for refreshment. Linger! I arrive anon.

'Hummph!' Lewrie huffed. 'What's that, down at the bottom?' Lewrie asked his wife, once he'd read it. 'That blob, there.'

'It looks like a flower of some kind,' Caroline said, peering more closely at the note, which was written in black ink; the flower petals though, were coloured yellow with chalk or pastel pencil.

'Should we eat the note, now we've read it?' Lewrie japed.

Caroline rolled her eyes at him for making jest in such circumstances but at least she did it with a grin. She began to shred it, feeding wee pieces of the note out the window on her side of the coach, bit by bit. 'That should be sufficient, enough so for the likes of your mysterious old friend that hideous Zachariah Twigg!'

'Never a friend,' Lewrie countered. 'I wonder if they'll ask for our papers when we enter Pontoise… cross the bridge, or when we order dinner at the inn?'

The authorities in Pontoise evidently could have cared less of a damn anent the identities of travellers, for there were no soldiers posted on the southern outskirts, nor on the bridge which spanned the Oise. The carriage trundled through the heart of the town's business district, to the northern outskirts, then…