King, Ship, and Sword

ready to hunt up a rabbit's foot or spit and dance about three times counter-clockwise for luck!

There was a spring at the foot of the rise on the western side, and they fetched canvas feed bags of water for the horses 'til they were sated, then gave them their oats.

From the summit of their low rise, looking down to the northwest and dry!' Choundas happily conjured, looking like a beast having a blissful orgasm, so much did he like his fantasy.

Even the jaded Fourchette felt a shiver up his spine.

'Oui, I dare say we can all go to bed and get a decent rest at last,' Major Clary told Aulard. 'At dawn, we tell the good colonel to send out more riders to alert the coastal garrisons and police. It may still be necessary to scour the immediate area round Beauvais, but if they travel all night without pausing, they may be too far away for an exhaustive search hereabouts to matter very much. The only question is, where do we place ourselves along the coast to organise the search? Rouen? Amiens?'

'They landed at Calais,' Charitй suggested, perking up no matter how weary she was. 'How much of France do they know how to travel?'

'The soup,' a surly waiter growled as he set his tray down atop the rough table, bowls slopping onto the tray. He dealt them out with a glower on his face. 'Bon appйtit,' he said off-handedly, making that sound more like a curse.

'Hot potato soup, aha!' Fourchette cheered, quickly spooning up a taste. 'Rouen… Amiens… we can decide in the morning. Hй, garзon! Can we get some good wine?'

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

They got beyond Montdidier by farm roads as the unhappy Fleury family, then the Plumbs altered their disguises to those of a pair of old crones, Sir Pulteney doing a remarkable imitation of a woman for a whole day, whilst Alan and Caroline hid in the waggon bed under an even larger pile of pilfered straw. In that guise they crossed the river Somme, then let the Lewries emerge for another set of costumes and aliases. The way Sir Pulteney and Lady Imogene preened, giggled, and congratulated each other really began to cut raw with Lewrie.

Sir Pulteney became M'sieur Andrй Guyot, a garrulous, somewhat simple and grey- haired 'Merry Andrew' with but a muted version of his inane donkey-bray laugh, no longer in need of a cane.

Himself t'the bone, and he don't have tact, Lewrie thought of that persona. Might we mention that Lewrie by this time was becoming a touch surly?

Lady Imogene became Madame Hortense Guyot, streaking her raven hair with touches of grey to play an elegant beauty, wed to an older, well-to-do man, and a silly goose herself, with fond toleration of her husband's foibles.

'Oh, such a clever ploy, m'dear!' Lady Imogene gushed as they studied themselves in a hand mirror. 'And so distinguished-looking!' Be pullin' rabbits out o' his hat next, Lewrie told himself.

Now they were in Artois and Picardy, so close to the border of the former Austrian Netherlands and the dead Holy Roman Empire (which after 1815 would become Belgium) Sir Pulteney thought it made sense for the Lewries to portray the Guyots' manservant and maid, Flemings or Walloons, half-German really, hired from cross the border years before. Lewrie became a flaxen blond in neat but worn brown woolen ditto; Caroline became a coppery redhead with her face subtley re-done to pinky-raw cheeks and chin. Again, their poor French could be explained by their supposed origins, and in Flanders, Ricardy, and in Artois, no one gave a tinker's dam or the slightest bit of notice to crude Flemish or Walloon folk-as bad as so many Germans to them!

Sir Pulteney allowed his goose-brained self to be cheated most sinfully at Albert, a small town on the road to Arras and Lille, on a solo trip, then returned to join them in a wood lot short of the town at the reins of a shabby canvas-topped cabriolet with a younger and fresher two-horse team, wishing to make a grand entrance in Lille, he told them as they re-loaded the remaining trunks and valises, which by then had been reduced to but one valise each, and one trunk that held the last disguises Sir Pulteney decided would be apt when they got to the coast.

Albert to Arras, the famed woolen industry town. But instead of going through it and proceeding on to Lille, as Sir Pulteney had told the cabriolet's owner, they turned off the main road once more and resorted to back-roads and farm lanes 'til striking a major highway near Bethunй. There, they bought oats for the horses, bread and wine, cheese, a baked ham, and pair of broiled whole chickens, with all the necessities for a mid-day pique-nique, along with all the utensils and plates, the napkins, cork puller, and large basket necessary. By the looks on the faces of the various vendors by the time they were done, Sir Pulteney and Lady Imogene had made a distinct impression of a pair of cackling twits; so much so, Sir Pulteney whispered once back into the cabriolet, that no one would remember their silent servants! Then they rattled out of Bethunй on the St. Omer road.

'We will find a place to lay up somewhere off the road,' Sir Pulteney informed them. 'It will mean sleeping rough tonight. Then I fear poor M'sieur Guyot will be cheated most horribly when he sells the cabriolet in Saint Omer, haw haw! One last change of disguises, then we're off for the coast! Begad, m'dear, ain't it grand to be in harness again? Livin' by our wits! What marvellous sport!'

They dawdled along the road for the better part of the day, 'til the sun began to decline and traffic began to thin. A mid-day meal was taken en route, without stopping; sliced ham and cheese sandwiches with a mild mustard and pickles, and but one bottle of wine shared by all. Sir Pulteney had forgotten to purchase glasses, and made quite a dither for their lack, japing over how they had to pass that bottle back and forth.

Finally, as it drew on toward sunset, Sir Pulteney began peering ahead and to larboard for a place to leave the road, muttering over and over, '… sure to be here, just about here, I remember it well, unless they've gone and cut the woods down. Now where is it?'

This part of France was looking less promising to Lewrie, when it came to a place to go to ground. It was mostly flat and not very interesting, with long gentle slopes that rose only slightly for what seemed miles, then fell away for what looked like even more miles, and the plowed fields they passed, the road bed, looked paler as they passed through a land of chalky soil. There were drainage ditches to either hand and enough windmills to put Lewrie in mind of the Dutch coast.

'Aha, there it is, Begad!' Sir Pulteney crowed at last. 'Knew we'd stumble cross it sooner or later! See it, m'dear Imogene?'

'Hortense, cher Andrй… mon coeur,' Lady Imogene prompted.

There was a long, slow rise to the left, what passed for a hill hereabouts, thickly covered with forest, with the faintest trace of a path where waggons or carts had cut a sketch of a road in white, chalky earth. It looked so long un-used that new grass was growing in the ruts, not just the crest of the track, and a few seedlings from the forest had even taken root, some as high as the belly of the cabriolet. Sir Pulteney drew the coach to a stop, stood on the seat to peer up and down the main road, then, satisfied that there was no one visible for miles, sat down and clucked the team up into the woods.

By the time they had un-hitched the horse team and hobbled them it was sunset, a rather spectacular one of yellow, amber, and crimson, which made Lewrie feel a tad better; the day's dawn had been a clear one, no 'red in the morning, sailor take warning.' Given the febrile, goose-brained airs that the Plumbs displayed, he was about ready to hunt up a rabbit's foot or spit and dance about three times counter-clockwise for luck!

There was a spring at the foot of the rise on the western side, and they fetched canvas feed bags of water for the horses 'til they were sated, then gave them their oats.

From the summit of their low rise, looking down to the northwest and west, Lewrie could see quite a long way into the sunset, and the land round them seemed but thinly populated. There was a village, far off, and a manor house a mile or two away. But in the immediate vicinity, there was nothing but empty fields, with not even the yelp