our men! They're looking for a smuggler to take them cross the Narrow Sea, but not in Calais itself. Someplace along the coast… Gendarme, you know this coast well? What of side roads, farm lanes, that lead round Calais?'
'There are some, m'sieur' the local gendarme replied, his own horse beginning to rear and arch. 'We… my unit and I… know almost all of them. I should ride to fetch my officer and more men, to be your guides?' he asked, eager to please this fellow from the splendours of Paris, and surely a man of great importance.
'Go, go, go, vite, vite! I will wait for you here! Make haste, for the love of God, though!' Fourchette demanded, in a lather. Poor as this lead was, and as slim a hope, there was still a chance that the enigmatic foursome would be in his hands before daylight!
They paused briefly at the tumbledown fisherman's hut to take a breath, kneeling by its back side. It was a rough log structure, re-enforced with scrap lumber and driftwood from the beaches. It looked, and smelled, as if it had been a decade since anyone had even attempted to make use of it, or maintain it. Sir Pulteney dug into his sea-bag and pulled out a battered old brass hooded lanthorn and a flintlock tinder-box. 'Remain here and rest, ladies, whilst Captain Lewrie and I head down to the cliffs for a little look-see,' Sir Pulteney said in a harsh whisper, though cackling to himself in his old manner.
They scampered bent over at the waist, as if dashing through a volley of fire 'til they reached the edge of the cliffs, to the left of a deep, axed-out notch that led down to the Channel, a deep, hidden inlet, and a rock-guarded sand beach. Lewrie looked back and realised that the abandoned fisherman's hut was below the long slope from their highway above, and was invisible to any but the most intent searchers following the Boulogne road.
Whoever fished from here, he most-like broke his damnfool neck! Lewrie thought, espying a zig-zag path down from the notch, through a maze of boulders, to the beach. Had the last tenant kept a cockleshell boat drawn up above high tide, down there, he wondered? Or was he a simple caster of nets?
'You've keen eyes, Captain Lewrie?' Sir Pulteney asked. 'Fear mine own are of an age, but… might there be a schooner out yonder? I think there's a vessel of some kind, but it's hard for me to make out. If you'd be so kind… '
Lewrie lifted his eyes to the vague horizon. The moon was rising at last, that orb waxed half full, spreading faint blue light on the Channel waters, illuminating the white chalk cliffs of Dover, far to the north, twelve or so odd miles away! Only! So close, yet…
Lewrie cupped his hands round his eyes and strained to scan the sea quartering near, then closer. 'Wait!' he hissed. 'Aye, there is something out yonder! I think… '
There was an eerie, spectral blotch of pale grey, about three or four miles offshore, a ship of some kind. Two trapezoids, like twin fore-and-aft gaff-hung sails? There was a smaller, thinner shape that might be a single jib, to the right of the trapezoid shapes, so she was making a long, slow board East'rd, up- Channel.
'Aye, there's something much like a schooner,' he said at last. 'But it could be a smuggler's boat, puttin' in to Calais, a Frenchie, or even one of their navy's chasse-marйes, lookin' for smugglers. No,' he said on second thought.
Chasse-marйes had a short mizen, right aft, he recalled. Was it an innocent fishing boat making a long night trawl, to be first to the market come daybreak?
'We must have faith, Captain Lewrie,' Sir Pulteney said with rising enthusiasm as he fluffed the lint in the tinder-box, cocked the firelock, and pulled the trigger. On his third try, sparks took light in the lint, which he carefully coaxed with his breath into a fire that caught in the oily rag, which began to glow with dark amber, which yet another breath turned to a flame! He opened the lanthorn and applied the rag to an oily wick… which, at last, flared up!
'Zounds!' Sir Pulteney crowed, standing erect, holding up his lanthorn and waving it to and fro for a bit, then he turned it round so the closed back side faced the sea. Rapidly rotating it back and forth, he sent some signal known only to him and one of his old conspirators, then lifted it high once more, the glass-paned side facing outwards.
'Begad, sir! Odd's Life, will you look at that!' Sir Pulteney yelped, almost leaping in joy as a tiny glim aboard that vessel leapt to life and began to flash a slow reply in a series of rotations much like Sir Pulteney's. 'It's our schooner, Captain Lewrie. He has seen us, and, if God is just, we shall be away before the dawn! Let us go gather our ladies and make our way down to the beach, haw haw!'
Major Clary, Charitй de Guilleri, and Guillaume Choundas had responded to Fourchette's urgent summons to join him at the crossroads, Choundas in such bilious haste that he'd demanded a Chasseur to carry him behind his saddle, no matter how painful it was. Now he was incredulous, and raging. 'Costumes? Disguises? Pah!' he bleated. 'Are we chasing phantoms, chimeras? The Comйdie Franзaise?' he snarled as Fourchette's suspicions were laid out.
'This Lewrie salaud was bandaged at Mйru, most likely dismissed at the Somme bridge, and groping a red-headed whore in the back of the cart this afternoon, and we never thought to ask to see his face. But he showed his face at a smugglers' inn, and he had a faint scar. They tried to find a smuggler to take them over to England, but they didn't… they didn't enter Calais or pass this crossroad,' Fourchette told them all. 'You did not see two sailors and two whores in a cart on the Dunkerque road, Major Clary? Then we must admit that the older man of their party has an intimate knowledge of farm lanes and back roads from here to Paris… and that they are very near us, this moment, and desperate for passage. We almost-'
He was interrupted by a lone rider coming from the west, up the road from Boulogne, 'Qui va lа?' the rider called out nervously as he caught a glimpse of their large party.
'Police!' a Capitaine Vignon, commander of the local gendarmes, barked back. 'Who are you, damn you?'
'Oh, there you are, Capitaine. It is I, Gendarme Bossuett,' the rider said, spurring up to them and re-slinging his short musketoon. Evidently, the threat of dangerous, fleeing felons, aristo conspirators, or cut-throat smugglers had made him edgy.
'Report, immediately,' Capitaine Vignon snapped.
'Pardon, Capitaine, but one cannot be too careful tonight, with so many…,' the gendarme began with a relieved chuckle.
'Have you seen anyone on the Boulogne road? Two sailors and two women, in a one-horse cart?' Fourchette pressed him.
'I've seen no one, m'sieur… citoyen,' the gendarme said in confusion as to the proper form of address to use. 'But there is a two-wheeled cart, abandoned, about a league back, just grazing along, with the reins… I thought it rather… '
'Zut alors! Putain! We have them!' Fourchette cursed, crowing with glee. 'They did find a smuggler to carry them away… from some beach along the road! Allez, allez vite, at the gallop! Where they left the cart, they cannot be far from it on foot!'
Despite the faint moon and starlight, Fourchette spurred into a reckless gallop, leading the party of soldiers and police at a furious pace. Choundas whimpered and howled with pain, clinging desperately to his trooper's back; music to Fourchette's ears, as it was to Clary and Charitй, as well!
Once they were over the edge of the cliff, the path down to the beach was not quite as steep as Lewrie feared, though it wound like a snake round large coach-sized boulders, in some places so snug between that he had to turn sideways and puff out his breath to squeeze through. At other points the flinty earth, gravel, and loose soil crunched and tumbled as soon as he set foot upon it. In the steepest stretches, someone had long ago used pick and shovel to carve out rough steps down to flatter ledges, before another uncertain descent.
