King, Ship, and Sword

down through the open trunk's contents. There were some gowns, many scarves and shawls, a heap of various- coloured wigs, and a smaller box of paints and makeup.

Caroline had changed into a sobre and modest, drab brownish wool gown, with a cream-coloured shawl over her shoulders and a dingy white apron. White silk stockings had been replaced by black cotton, and her feet now sported clunky old buckled shoes instead of light slippers.

'Good God!' Lewrie gawped again, noticing that Carolone's fair hair was now covered by a mousy brown wig, and atop that, there now sat a nigh-shapeless old straw farmwoman's hat. Lady Imogene had done something with her paints and powders, too, for Caroline looked at least ten years older, of a sudden.

'Lud, but that's subtle, m'dear!' Sir Pulteney congratulated.

'Merci, dearest,' Lady Imogene sweetly replied, beaming. 'What is necessary for theatregoers twenty rows back would be much too much for those we will deal with face-to-face. Artifice, as you say, must be subtle. Oh, I apologise for making you seem so careworn, Mistress Lewrie, but your natural beauty must notbe remembered,' Lady Imogene said, finishing up the additions, or slight enhancements, of furrows or crow's-feet darkening the merry folds below Caroline's eyes as if she possessed weary, sleepless bags. Et, voilа! Done,' she cried.

'Now, should any pursuers ask if anyone has seen a fair-haired Englishwoman, they can honestly say non, d'ye see, Captain Lewrie?' Sir Pulteney said with an inane titter. 'Your turn, now, sir.' He removed his own clothing and began to dig into another trunk. 'I will now become Major, ah… Pierre Fleury, a retired officer of foot, now too lame to serve. I will be a very disappointed man, haw haw! Lady Imogene is to be, oh hang it, Imogene Fleury… a disappointed woman in her own right, because… because… aha, I have it!' he said as he paced in a small circle.

'You, Mistress Lewrie, are the widow of my eldest son, Bertrand, who found you in the Piedmont during Bonaparte's Italian Campaign, an Italian, of all things, and not the sort of match we had arranged for him. Being foreign, of course, your less-than- fluent French is plausible. M'dear?' he asked Lady Imogene.

'I simply adore it, mon cher!' Lady Imogene cried, clapping her hands in delight.

'I see… I think,' Caroline said, sounding a bit dubious.

'You, Captain Lewrie,' Sir Pulteney said, whirling to face him and already feigning the stiff fierceness of a retired officer and a disappointed father, with a strict martinet's snap to his voice. 'You are my youngest son, our last hope of grandchildren and the continuation of our family's name, but you… Armand, yes, that'll do… you, Armand, tried to be a soldier. You can remember your name? Trиs bien. You enlisted as a private soldier in the cavalry, but proved so clumsy that you ended by getting kicked in the head by your horse, before you had a chance to go on campaign, and have recently been invalided out. We shall have papers to that effect… Well, we will shortly. You will have to play a dummy.'

It didn't help Lewrie's nerves, or his dignity, that Caroline let forth a cynical chuckle-snort, then a full-out hoot of laughter.

'You're addled as a scrambled egg, Armand,' Sir Pulteney went on. 'You must walk stiffly, as if afraid your whole head will tumble off. Slowly and stiffly. Be clumsy with anything you handle, forks and spoons and such. Be slow in speech, grasping for the proper names for things-'

'Je suis un crayon,' Lewrie interrupted, feeling sarcastic, too.

'With your poor command of French, I expect you'll grasp for a great number of nouns, yayss,' Sir Pulteney snapped, still in character. 'Do you rise from a chair, you might swoon a bit… '

'And wince, as if there's a sudden pain in your poor head, as well,' Lady Imogene prompted. 'We will cut your meat for you! Dribble a little wine so that I may wipe your chin.'

'Should I drool?' Lewrie rejoined, growing tetchy.

'That might be a bit too much,' Sir Pulteney said with a frown.

'Let me wrap this bandage round your head,' Lady Imogene said, 'then turn your complexion pale and wan.'

By the time Lewrie had been 'touched up' and his good suitings replaced with ill-fitting and older cast-offs, Sir Pulteney had altered himself into a stiff and stern-looking fellow in his late fifties or early sixties, with a shock of reddish hair and a large, gingery mustachio, a man who wore a sobre black ditto suit and limped on a stout cane.

'When I address you, Armand, it may be well for you to cringe into your collar,' Sir Pulteney instructed. 'Who, after all, would wed you now? What hopes of family martial glory for la patrie can come from one such as you? Will you give us grandchildren, or a life of caring for a lack-wit? Pah!' he stamped.

Lewrie ducked his head as if avoiding a proctor's rod, gulping a bit as he recalled that what he must play-act now was him to the life in his student days-when caught lacking at his studies, skylarking, or wakened from a nap in class. Huzzah for an English public school education! he told himself.

'Thank God for Napoleon Bonaparte,' Lady Imogene said as she packed up her paints and closed the trunks, 'the meddler! He imagines he Will re-order so much of France… the civil law codes, the roads and canals, standardising the currency… He has even given instructions to the Comйdie Franзaise about costumes, makeup, and how roles must be played! All these cast-offs were available for a song!'

'Let's hoist these trunks back into the boot and be on our way, Capt. Armand,' Sir Pulteney snapped.

Not all that many kilometres, or miles, away at that very moment, Matthieu Fourchette was gazing across the fields to the river Oise, at a small crossroads place called L'Isle Adam on the main road to Amiens, and cursing under his breath as they watered their tired horses and eased sore fundaments. He had been forced to split his already small pursuit party after the incident with that English lord and his wife; some went on up the road to see if a second coach containing their quarry had gotten that far along beyond the first they'd stopped. There was a slim chance of that, but Fourchette had to make sure that that trailing coach had not been a decoy to put them off the chase and turn their attention elsewhere.

He wished he could sit down and rest, wished he could reach back and massage his buttocks and inner thighs, but he would not admit that he was not as good a horseman as that damned Chasseur Major Clary or the girl. On most of his missions for Fouchй, walking round Paris or coaching round France was sufficient, and when required to go by horse, the distances were usually much shorter, and at much slower paces.

Police agent Fourchette also wished he could get on with it, but he could not do that, either. Fouchй had promised him a cavalry troop, and he had to wait for their arrival. He had to wait for his agents to return with a report from the other road. 'Damn!' he spat.

'The coaches that left through the Argenteuil gate, and the gate at Saint-Germaine en Laye,' Major Clary thought to contribute as he stood nearby, idly flicking his horse's reins on his boots while his mount sipped water from the poor tavern's trough. 'The Englishman is most likely in one of those, M'sieur Fourchette.'

'From the west gate? Pah!' Fourchette snapped. 'Where would they run to, going west? Brest, Nantes, or Saint Malo? L'Orient or Saint-Nazaire? That would take them days to make their escape. That coach will prove to be a decoy. Fouchй writes that he has requested a troop of cavalry to pursue that one, though it will prove fruitless. No… I think our quarry flees north for Dieppe, Boulogne-sur-Mer, or Calais. Those ports are much closer, and make their journey shorter.'

'Then why do we tarry, m'sieur?' Charitй asked him.

Fourchette began to round on her, but Major Clary spoke up as he pulled the horse back from the trough and began to lead him to the shade under the trees beside the tavern. 'Beauvais, is it? Departing the Argenteuil gate, the direst route north leads to Pontoise, then to Beauvais. All the roads join there. We could go on, leaving word with the tavernier for your men, and the cavalry. We could cross the Oise and ride for Beauvais and be there by nightfall, n'est-ce pas? With your authority from M'sieur Fouchй and my rank in the Chasseurs, we could order fresh mounts from the regiment garrisoned there. And request more men