King, Ship, and Sword

and sour wine, over which they could linger 'til his return from his reconnaissance. The two bent-backed old prune- faced hags and the one white-whiskered old man who supposedly ran the place must have a 'fiddle' on the side, Lewrie thought, for in the hour or longer that they sat there coughing in silence over their food in low-hanging haze of smoke from the fire, they were the only three customers. Lady Imogene whispered that they had used the inn as a way-station long ago, and… it appeared that the owners had not scrubbed the bare wood of the table top in all that time!

At last the door, leaning at an angle on loose leather hasps, creaked open, the bottom screeching on the wood floor as Sir Pulteney, in his one-eyed piratical sailor's disguise, slouched in to join them. He up-turned a somewhat clean glass to pour himself some wine, used a sailor's sheath knife to cut himself some bread and cheese, and dropped a silver coin on the table for his fee.

'That untrustworthy Anglais smuggler is not coming,' Plumb, or as he preferred, 'Henri,' growled, well in character, talking through his food in raspy-throated French. 'We might as well go on into Calais… There are others who might be interested in our goods, hein?'

The old, whiskered man came to collect the coin and bend an ear to the conversation for a moment.

'We are full? Bon. We go.'

They had left the two-wheeled cart and the weary horse in the side yard. Still grumbling about the perfidy of any Anglais, 'Goddamn,' or sanglant in business, or anything else, Sir Pulteney climbed up to take the reins, leaving Lady Imogene to clamber aboard on her own, still in character. The Lewries took their place at the tail-board as he clucked the horse to a slow plod once more, and the cart creaked off into the night.

For a late summer night, it was cool, with a soft wind wafting off the Channel, cool enough to make Lewrie shiver as his shoes dangled a foot or so above the road. Caroline was huddled into her shawl, her arms crossed-for warmth, Lewrie hoped. Since he had blabbed the name of Charitй de Guilleri that afternoon, and had then had to explain how she and her kin had gone pirating in the West Indies, and how he'd ended them-how the girl had shot him!-leaving out the bawdy parts, of course, Caroline had acted very coolly towards him, rightly suspecting that there was a lot more to the tale.

He put an arm round her shoulders to warm her up and adjust her shawl, but she shrugged him off with a much-put-upon bitter sigh.

They came to a turning, another of those faint tracks, within sight of the lights of Calais, before the crossroads of the east-west Boulogne-Dunkerque road and their former St. Omer-Calais road. This jolting, grass- and gorse- strewn track led west, parallel to the main road, and Lewrie wondered how Sir Pulteney could even see it in the dark.

A mile or so more, and the track bent northwards, after a time spent in low, wind-sculpted trees and bushes. 'We'll rejoin the road to Boulogne, soon,' Sir Pulteney told them in a harsh whisper. 'Missing any crossroads, where patrols might be, what? A mile and a bit more, and we'll be just above the cove, and stap me if it still ain't occupied!'

They had to get off the cart and almost drag it, and the horse, through a shallow ditch that ran alongside the Boulogne road, calming the skitter-ish old horse 'til it was back on solid ground, then boarded their cart for the last leg.

'Here!' Sir Pulteney cried at last, drawing reins. 'Fetch out your things, and we're off, Begad!' They alit, and Plumb looped reins loose and slapped the old horse on the rump to send it plodding down the road on its own. 'This way, smartly, now!'

They stumbled over uneven clumps of grass, small bushes, and a field of half-buried rocks, at first on the level, then gradually on a down-slope, northwards. Cape Gris Nez, 'Old Grey Nose,' stood high to their right, barely made out in starlight and the hint of a moonrise.

Yes! Ahead of them loomed a black, sway-backed mass, that hut that Sir Pulteney had mentioned; crumbling slowly into ruin, its roof half-collapsed, and its low front and back doors seemingly no higher than Lewrie's breast- bone, and the jambs leaning at crazed angles. A bit beyond, the coast was a darker mass, erose and bumpy-looking to either hand, but for a notch a little to their right, back-lit by some lighter something that seemed to stir and glitter in the starlight…

'The Channel!' Lewrie exclaimed as loud as he dared. 'The sea!' And for the first time since their harum- scarum odyssey had started, he felt a surge of confidence; he was within reach of his proper milieu!

Matthieu Fourchette and five Chasseur troopers sat their horses at the crossroad, where the east-west highway met the St. Omer road, about a mile before the porte of Calais, with Fourchette showing a lot more impatience than the bemused, softly chatting cavalrymen. He could hear a horse approaching from the south, taking a damnably slow pace, one that almost made him spur out to meet it. At last, a rider emerged from the dark, a gendarme. 'See anyone on the Saint Omer road?' Fourchette demanded.

'No one, m'sieur' the fellow said, making a sketchy salute to him. 'It is very quiet, nothing moving this time of night. Even the Jolly Hound tavern had only a few patrons tonight. God help them if they ate there, though, hawn hawn!' he added with a laugh.

'What sort of patrons? Did you enquire?' Fourchette pressed.

'Only two sailors and their whores, the innkeeper reported to me,' the local gendarme easily related, smiling. 'Most likely, they were smugglers, looking for a ship, m'sieur. The Jolly Hound is one of the regular rendezvous points for smuggling dealings… We keep a wary eye on it, I assure you, m'sieur. The innkeeper said that the older one, a gars with an eye-patch, told the others that some Anglais smuggler didn't come, as agreed, so they Would go into Calais and try someone else. They had a two-wheeled horse cart… They should have passed here, m'sieur, so surely you have-'

'Four people… two couples in a cart?' Fourchette said with a frown, shifting his sore bottom on his damp saddle. 'Two sailors and two women? One with an eye-patch, you say?'

'Oui, m'sieur,' the gendarme told him. 'One woman with coppery-red hair, one fellow with black hair, much younger, with a scar down his cheek… '

'We passed them on the road south of here this afternoon,' the frustrated police agent muttered, half to himself. 'Drunk as aristos and… a scar?' Mademoiselle de Guilleri said that Lewrie had a scar, a faint one, but… 'You're sure the innkeeper heard them say they would go to Calais?'

'Certainement, m'sieur' the gendarme said, mystified.

'Yet they didn't!' Fourchette spat, thinking hard.

Two couples, four Anglais, had dined together at Pontoise, then coached together, disappearing from the face of the earth, it seemed. Two couples had supped at Mйru: Major Fleury, his wife and widowed daughter-in-law and… a bandaged son! The watchers on the Somme bridge had noted four well-dressed people, though oddly travelling in a hay waggon, going to Arras and… morbleu!

'Disguises!' Fourchette yelped, realising how gulled he'd been. 'A whole set of disguises! The two sailors and their women, they are the ones we seek! If they didn't come through this crossroads, then they must be either east or west of us this very instant!'

'The criminals we seek are disguised, m'sieur?' the gendarme gawped. 'If they change again, how can we ever-'

'Trooper!' Fourchette snapped at the nearest cavalryman. 'Ride to Major Clary and his party and bring them here at once!' His burst of sudden energy made his horse fractious, beginning to circle. 'You! Ride the other direction where we left mademoiselle and bring her here! And you…,' he ordered in a rush, 'fetch that ugly thing Choundas and his party. We have need of all