King, Ship, and Sword

took up their mumbling song once more as their pursuers diminished on the road north.

'You, erm… know one of them, Captain Lewrie?' Sir Pulteney asked, once it was safe to speak in English again. 'A de Guilleri?'

'The girl with em,' Lewrie muttered, cautiously sitting up to look beneath the cart's driver's bench at the departing party. 'Shot me once, in Louisiana. And if there was a crippled monster with a mask on his face and but one good arm, then, aye, I do. He's named Guillaume Choundas, and I'm the one who maimed him… several times. Known him since the Far East, in Eighty-Four… the Med, ten years later, and the West Indies in Ninety-Eight.'

'One of the most disgusting creatures ever I laid eyes upon,' Lady Imogene said with a delayed shudder.

'How many of them were there?' Lewrie asked, daring to sit up all the way.

'A whole troop of green Chasseurs,' Sir Pulteney told him. 'An open carriage for the ogre, a Major and a Captain of cavalry, and the young woman. And their leader, a fox-faced, lank-haired fellow, him I must imagine to be the very Matthieu Fourchette I mentioned to you last evening. Haw haw! Zounds! Odd's Blood, but we've just fooled the very people sent to catch you, Captain Lewrie! How glorious!'

There he goes again! Lewrie sourly thought.

'And just who is 'that de Guilleri bitch' to you, Alan? She shot you once?' Caroline asked, sounding very huffy and hard. 'One may only imagine the why. You knew her before we encountered her at the levee?'

Oh, merciful shit! Lewrie quailed in alarm; just when I think I'm back in her good books!

The Plumbs shared a worldly-wise look, sure that it was none of their business, but…

Fourchette had been free with official funds at Beauvais. They improved their cleanliness and comfort, and hired coaches and teams to take them to Amiens, where he'd spent even more. Capitaine Aulard's cavalrymen had gone back to Paris, but they'd picked up a troop of Chasseurs at Amiens,

and Denis Clary had been delighted to don a borrowed uniform and once more be a complete soldier. Charitй had picked up a few new serviceable gowns, a fresh pair of breeches to allow her to straddle a horse, not perch daintily side-saddle, and fill a pair of saddlebags with not only fresh necessities but a few luxuries as well.

From Amiens on, though, they had set a furious pace, as rapid and demanding as the first dash from Paris to the Oise, to reach the coast, set a temporary headquarters in Calais, and coordinate with the gendarmerie and the local National Guard garrisons. So intent was the police agent, Fourchette, to get there that they performed only a cursory inspection of travellers on the road to Calais, trusting to the alerted cavalry patrols to nab any suspicious people matching the descriptions they had sent ahead by despatch riders.

Fourchette and his party had to depend on the vigilance of the local authorities; they could not be everywhere, on every road, or at every town gate, to spot their quarry.

It was only after they had taken brief lodgings at an inn at Calais, and Fourchette had bustled himself importantly to the hфtel de ville, the Chasseur troop had taken over a livery to see to the horses (and obtain lashings of wine, by fair methods or foul), and that beast Choundas had painfully, crookedly limped off to the out-house to ease his flaming bowels, that Major Clary finally had an idle hour to spend in private with Charitй.

'Why you, ma chйrie?' he posed over a welcome glass of wine on the inn's open- sided gallery as a soft, warm breeze redolent of fish and kelp and salt blew in from the sea. 'You knew this man before, I suspect. Not from one brief introduction in Paris. What is he to you?'

She turned away, eyes closed in weariness and her face to the aromas of the breeze. She did not answer him.

'Why did Fouchй insist that you come on this chase?' Denis went on. 'Or was it you who insisted that you be included?'

'Denis, mon cher… ,' she warned him, her lovely face stern.

'No, I must know, at last,' Clary insisted. 'We both know that the Anglais gave no real insult to the First Consul. He was not the assassin Fouchй suspected, either. Yet we chase after him, and will drag him back to Paris in chains? And you seem to have such personal interest in being here, in the pursuit. As if you have cause to hate him. I must know, Charitй!'

'He killed my brothers, my cousin, Denis!' Charitй snapped in sudden venom, turning to face him. 'He chased us down to Grand Isle in Barataria Bay, and his frigate destroyed everything and everyone. He ruined it all, he destroyed all hopes of taking Louisiana back from Spain. And for that I despise him! I had a chance to kill him once, and I failed! I thought I shot him full in the chest, with a miserable air-rifle, but, by all that's unholy, he lived, all right? Happy now?'

'And you took advantage of Fouchй… so you could kill him at last, Charitй?' Major Clary surprised her by speaking softly, with understanding, as if in sympathy. 'Is that what you wish, ma chйrie? To see him dead? The way that hideux Choundas wishes him dead?'

'Yes, I wish to see him dead!' Charitй spilled out in rage. 'He owes me blood He came to New Orleans in disguise, to deceive, to spy and find all about our plans, our force! He…!'

Denis Clary leaned back a little, his face harder as he realised just who had been deceived in New Orleans, and surmised how this girl had been beguiled.

'So. We're to murder him,' Denis Clary whispered. 'And what of his wife? We must shoot her, too? The mysterious couple that they travel with? Leave no witnesses?'

'That is what Fourchette was told, Denis,' Charitй de Guilleri confessed with a bitter laugh. 'You heard him speak of it before, so do not pretend that you are here unwittingly. He is a dangerous enemy of France, and you are a distinguished, patriotic soldier of France. It will be your duty.'

'I will gladly obey orders to fight, Charitй,' Clary objected, his chin up. 'I will happily shed a foe's blood in the heat of battle. But this…! I already feel slimed… mademoiselle. Dear as I hold you in my heart…,' he trailed off, distancing himself with the formal address and suddenly feeling very sad, and badly betrayed.

'Perhaps…,' Charitй relented, feeling a chill under her heart that she might lose him after such a wonderful, whirlwind beginning. 'Perhaps you do not have to take an active hand, Denis mon cher, but… my revenge… and the First Consul's revenge, must be fulfilled.'

'Ah, the cooing little lovebirds!' Fourchette exclaimed in glee as he breezed back into their inn, coming to the table to pour himself a glass of Wine, not waiting for permission. 'And where is that ugly old cow-hide Choundas? Dying in les chiottes again, hein? It's no matter… I've lit a fire hot enough under our local soldiers and police for the night, so we will split our party, each of us to go with five or six troopers to cover the city gates and the roads to Boulogne, Dunkerque, and Saint Omer. If we can reach the coast by now, then so can our quarry. I have a feeling about tonight. Eat a hearty meal, and then we'll be about it!'

Fourchette sat himself down a bit away from their table, taking another sip of wine and savouring the late- afternoon sea winds; hiding a grin as he shrewdly took note of the stiff and uncomfortable postures and the silence between the girl and her soldier. Not as fond of each other as they'd been when I left? Bon! More hope for me, Fourchette thought.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Sir Pulteney left them at a foetid inn a mile or so short of the sea, so old and begrimed that they were afraid even to speculate what simmered in the large iron pot over the fire in the hearth, settling instead for bread, cheese,