The Privateer's Revenge

was soon out on the battlements, breathing raggedly. His fists clenched as he sought the sombre night horizon. The salty air buffeted his face bringing with it a sensory shock. The spasm passed, but left him troubled and destabilised. Since his youth he had found reason and logic a sure shield against the world, but now it had turned on him. What was left to him without the comfort of its certainties?

Sleep came finally to claim him but in the early hours he was dragged to consciousness by a disturbance— shouts, d'Auvergne's urgent retort, men in the passageway. He flung on a coat and hurried there. It was d'Ache, trembling with fatigue, sprawled in a chair and retching, his side blood-soaked to the waist. 'Go, fetch a doctor!' d'Auvergne threw at the men standing about uncertainly. 'The rest, get out!'

D'Ache had risked everything in bringing his message to Mont Orgueil, such was its urgency. 'D'Auvergne,' he said weakly, 'listen to me! We—we have a crisis!' He slumped in pain, then rallied, his eyes feverish. 'Paris—they won't rise up unless they have an unconditional assurance that the British will play their part.' He coughed, and the consequent pain doubled him over until it was spent. 'You must understand, Bonaparte suspects something. The country is alive with soldiers. It is very dangerous. The Chouans sense treachery, that as soon as . . .'

Once they raised the banner, made their throw, they were marked men, and if the plot failed Napoleon's revenge would be terrible. All the more reason to fear that England, the old enemy, might play them false.

'The last moves will be the most critical,' d'Ache resumed, shaking with pain and emotion. 'If anything goes wrong it will be most tragic.'

D'Auvergne nodded. The frenzied dash with their prisoner through the dark countryside, forces closing in on all sides, the final frantic arrival at the coast—and the Royal Navy not there to receive them into safety? He could see it must be their worst imagining. 'They wish a binding commitment of some sort?' he asked.

'A written statement of late date under signature of a high officer of state.' Nothing less, apparently, than a document proving the complicity of England in the plot.

'Very well, you shall have it,' d'Auvergne said calmly. He paused. 'And I shall deliver it.'

'No!' d'Ache said hoarsely. 'You are known, you'll have no chance.' D'Auvergne had been imprisoned on trumped-up charges once in Paris during the brief peace and only been released reluctantly after considerable diplomatic pressure from Westminster.

Yet if things stalled now, inertia would set in, causing the whole to crumble without hope of recovery. As if in a dream Renzi heard himself say, 'I shall take it to them.' It was logical. The situation was desperate. He knew of the plot, he could speak knowledge-ably of the dispositions and—and he would be dispensable in the eyes of the Government.

'You!' gasped d'Ache. 'They don't know you. They'll think you a spy.' The irony was not wasted on Renzi, who gave a half-smile.

D'Auvergne frowned. 'My dear Renzi, do reflect on your situation. You would have the most compromising document in Christendom on your person that most certainly would incriminate your government. If threatened, your only honourable course would be to—to . . .'

'So who, then, will be your emissary?' Renzi challenged. There was no reply. 'I shall require a form of password, an expression of authentication as it were, and . . .'

Early on the Thursday morning a knock at the door caught them by surprise. As the only one fully dressed at that hour, Kydd answered. A messenger held out a letter. 'Mr Kydd's residence?' he asked. 'Favour o' Mr Vauvert.'

Rosie squealed in anticipation and rushed over, her attire forgotten. Kydd broke the seal: it was a curt note from Vauvert indicating that if he wished to hear something to his advantage he should be at the Three Crowns tavern at four promptly.

Rosie clapped and snatched the message from Kydd. 'To your advantage, Tom!' she cried. 'I knew something would come!'

Kydd did not reply. It was obvious: he was going to be asked to run contraband as a smuggler. No doubt this Vauvert was extracting a fee from a business associate for introducing him. Well, damn it, he would disappoint them both.

'What will you wear, love?' Rosie enthused. 'It could be a swell cove taking you t' see his friends!'

He paused. There was just the tiniest chance that it was something else—but the cold tone of the note fitted that of a businessman holding him at arm's length while he was handed along to another. 'Nothin' special, Rosie. If'n they can't take me as I come, then . . .'

The Three Crowns was a spacious and well- appointed inn, liberally endowed with snug rooms and discreet alcoves with high-backed chairs for those inclined to serious conversation. Kydd entered diffidently, fingering the single florin in his pocket, which was all he could bring himself to accept from Mojo. He hoped that his mysterious visitor would not expect more than a nip of ale.

A few faces turned curiously but he stared ahead defensively and was left alone. Soon after four the figure of a gentleman in an old-fashioned wig appeared at the door, looking in hesitantly. He seemed distantly familiar, and Kydd rose.

The man hurried over. 'I thank you for seeing me, Mr Kydd,' he said, in an oddly soft voice.

For a moment he was caught off-balance. Then it came to him. This was Zephaniah Job, whom he had once arrested in Polperro as a smuggler and then been forced to release by higher authority. 'I'm to tell you how very sorry I am to have heard about your Rosalynd. Such a sweet child, and to be lost to the world so suddenly.'

Kydd gulped, a memory catching him unawares with its intensity. 'Yes, sir, I was—much affected.' He turned away, so that Job would not catch his expression, and willed himself back to the present.

He realised he shouldn't be surprised to see Job there for he was a sagacious businessman with interests in all things profitable—he even printed his own banknotes. Kydd recalled that Guernsey was the main place of supply for Job's many smuggling enterprises. Now he was going to be offered a position operating against his own colleagues by the man he had previously taken in charge for doing just that.

Job gave a polite smile. 'I heard of your privateering voyage just concluded, Mr Kydd. My sympathy on meeting with such poor fortune.'

'Thank ye,' Kydd said. He was damned if Job was going to get a beer out of his precious florin now.

'You seem in need of some cheer, if I might make bold—will you allow me to press you to join me in a jorum of their finest?'

'Er, maybe I will,' Kydd said warily.