than a single troop.'
'With these blown nags?' Fourchette gravelled, loath to take advice from a soldier. 'We would be lucky to get to… what the Devil is the place?'-he snarled, unfolding a poor map-'to this little Mйru. Oui, we'll go to Beauvais, when my men have checked the road all the way to Creil, when the cavalry arrive, and when our horses are rested… else we get stuck in the woods until someone comes and rescues us! We will have to wait a bit longer, Major.'
Major Clary thought to tell Fourchette that cavalry sent from Paris in haste would arrive with blown horses, too, but was beginning to take a great dislike to the lank-haired, weaselly fellow. He would have said that, in his military experience, and with General Bonaparte and his many victories as a shining example, forces so widely separated had to act on their own initiative, and quickly. Bonaparte had trusted his generals and colonels to think, to play their disparate parts in the overall scheme before converging before the final objective, to the utter confusion of the enemy. In this case, Beauvais was the objective, the junction of almost every road their quarry might take to flee.
But Major Clary didn't think that Fourchette would be in a mood to listen to sound advice. Besides, he didn't much care for how this insouciant, leering salaud ogled Charitй, either.
Major Clary came back from the hitching rails, letting his fond gaze assess his amour with a new lover's delight as she sat on a bench, impatiently jiggling a booted leg crossed over the other, idly pinning back up her wind-tossed coif. She rode astride, like a man, a pair of men's breeches underneath her gown. Charitй rode as good as a man, he further marvelled. Yet… what was this chase all about, and what was so important to her about being a part of it-beyond the fact that she could recognise the Englishman and his wife-that that billiard-ball-headed Fouchй had allowed her to come along? So this Anglais had insulted the First Consul, had he? Clary had heard their conversation, and Bonaparte had done most of the insulting to the smiling and bobbing 'Bloodies.' They were to arrest this gars for that? Horse-whip him, perhaps, or throw him into prison?
Asking Charitй in the few fleeting quiet moments of this chase had resulted in vague answers, waved off with an impatient hand, and a change of topic. All Paris knew Mlle. de Guilleri's heroic history to raise a rebellion against the Spanish and reclaim Louisiana and New Orleans for France, the loss of her kin, and her banishment before the Dons garrotted her. Others said the Englishman was a spy, sent to kill Bonaparte, but that hadn't happened, so why the urgency?
Thinking back on what he'd seen at the levee, Major Denis Clary suddenly recalled being introduced to this Lewrie… and how Charitй had spoken to him with such well-concealed anger. Had she known him before, in Spanish Louisiana? Impossible, Clary decided. Yet…
'Oh, beurk!' Charitй exclaimed, standing quickly. She made a gagging sound. A light two-horse open carriage was trotting up the road to the tavern, with a saddled horse tied to its rear by the reins. 'Can we not be rid of that obscenity? That disgusting…!'
Capitaine Guillaume Choundas had caught up with them, bleating in bile to run into them, demanding why Lewrie was not yet in their hands, and what did they think they were doing, standing about with their fingers up their idle arses!
Police Agent Fourchette didn't think much of Mйru, when they got there at last just before sunset; a wide spot in the road, most likely awash in pig-shit, inhabited by numbskulls in wooden clogs, he concluded, sharing the views of most Parisians with regard to their rural countrymen. They did call a halt for wine, bread, and cheese, water and feed bags for their horses, and a few questions.
The local policeman, the only policeman, was a corpulent, lazy jumped-up hay- scyther, stuffed into a uniform and a lax set of duties.
Yes, there were some travellers at the two foul inns, but none of them were Anglais, and no one even close to Lewrie's description had passed through. Of course he'd carefully looked at the registries (or he would once this intense Parisian and his entourage had departed!) and no foreigners of any kind had paused in sleepy little Mйru.
A coach? A big, shiny black coach-and-four with a matched team of sorrels? Mais oui, a coach like that had passed through, but that had been three hours before.
That forced Fourchette, Major Clary, Charitй, the police agents, and the befuddled troop of light cavalry into their saddles, some still chewing or pulling at spare canteens hurriedly filled with a raw local vin ordinaire a vague step away from vinegar.
'On to Beauvais, allez vite!' Fourchette demanded. 'They're in a coach, three hours ahead, but we can still catch them!'
'If they did not change teams somewhere along the way, m'sieur Fourchette,' Major Clary said as they began to clatter north, 'we will be much faster, even on tired mounts.'
'Fresh team? Oui, the livery,' Fourchette snapped, spurring his horse for the stables. 'If they obtained fresh horses here…!'
The old stableman was as much a slow-witted bumpkin as the policeman, interrupted from shovelling dung with a pitchfork from one of the barn stalls. 'M'sieur wishes?' he asked slowly.
'A coach came through here a few hours ago,' Fourchette began impatiently. 'Did you provide them a change of horses? They are criminals, wanted in Paris.'
'A coach came here, oui m'sieur' the older fellow said, taking his own sweet time to puff on his pipe, take it from his lips, and look into the bowl to see if it was drawing properly, then spit to one side. 'But, I did not change horses with them.'
'So they will be slow, aha!' Fourchette started to cheer up.
'You wish to see the coach, m'sieur? The horses?' the old man asked. 'They left it all with me and gave me three hundred francs to see it back to a livery in Paris. Is it stolen, perhaps? Will you be taking it? I was looking forward to going to Paris. Quel dommage.'
'Still here? Where?' Fourchette yelped.
'In the barn, certainement, m'sieur' the old fellow said with his pipe stem for a pointer to the barn's interior. 'The old fellow is a criminal, then? One would never have guessed.'
'What old man?' Fourchette snapped as he dismounted and ordered some troopers to help him search the barn and the coach.
'The man who left the coach here, m'sieur' the stableman said in his slow, laconic way. 'A m'sieur Fleury.'
'How old? With a fair-haired woman?'
'An old soldier, I took him to be,' the stableman answered- maddeningly slowly. 'Red hair and mustachios? In his fifties, I should think. Carried himself as an officer would. A colonel or general of brigade, I thought him. He travelled with his wife, but she had dark hair, mixed with grey, and quite stout. He had a limp and leaned on a cane.'
'Lewrie could not disguise himself that much,' Charitй said in rising impatience, too. 'Nor could his wife. Just the two of them?'
'No, mademoiselle' was the grunted reply, 'tween smoke puffs. 'M'sieur Fleury had his widowed daughter-in-law and his son with him. Poor fellow.' Puff puff, look at the pipe once more, and spit.
'What about him?' Fourchette demanded, coming back from inspecting the coach and coming away without a clue.
'Why, he'd been kicked in the head by a horse, and let go from the army,' the stableman related. 'All his wits knocked from him.'
