Flashman's Escape (32 page)

Chapter 31

Despite my injuries, the climb through the gardens was the less risky part of the night. Now we had to take a chance with an unknown boat captain. If he was a Bonapartist or fearful of the authorities, he might turn us in, especially when he saw the colour of Grant’s uniform. But if we were lucky and he was greedy then there was a chance we could get away.

“How are we going to persuade the captain to take us?” asked Grant as though this thought had only just occurred to him.

“I have some gold sewn into my belt.”

“You never told me that before,” he bleated.

“You did not need to know before,” I muttered.

I paused in a doorway and removed my belt. It never did to show people where you kept your gold and how much you had left. There were twelve golden guineas in the belt and I removed six of them and put them in my pocket. Fixing the belt back, I checked that the pistol was still in my pocket and then gestured to where a large pile of cargo was gathered at the end of a pier.

“Let’s try over there,” I suggested.

Despite the hour there were several shadowy figures moving about; none of them, I suspected, involved in legal activities. We walked between some bales of cloth and suddenly found ourselves facing three dark shadows who whirled around at our appearance. A knife glittered in the moonlight as one snarled, “What do you want?”

I held up my hands to pacify them and show we were not holding weapons. “We are not here on duty,” I spoke quietly. “We are looking for a boat to take us upriver and then to the coast.”

The man grunted. “Some more who don’t want to go to Russia, eh?” It seemed we were not the first to try this route. He gestured up the pier. “Try the last boat on the left, the
Nantes Lilly
; he will take passengers for the right price.”

Grant and I walked up the jetty. I looked back over my shoulder to check that none of the men we had spoken to were moving off to fetch the authorities but they seemed more engrossed in whatever illicit business they were conducting. This was turning out to be much easier than I expected. I should have realised that most of the river captains made at least some of their income from smuggling.

We found the
Nantes Lilly
tied up where she had been described. There was no one on deck and so I stepped over the rail and knocked on the cabin roof.

“Who is it?” called a voice.

“Passengers,” I replied just loud enough for him to hear.

A hatch slid back and a middle-aged head appeared through the opening. His eyes narrowed as he took in our uniforms and swords in the dim light. I glanced again at the eastern sky; a dim light was just starting to appear on the horizon but it was still too dark to make out the colour of Grant’s coat easily. “You are officers,” observed the head. “It costs more for officers. Where do you want to go?”

“We are officers who want to go to Nantes without anyone asking questions,” I told him. “We can pay in gold, British gold guineas taken from the battlefield. Three guineas for each of us. You get them when we get to Nantes.”

“No, I want them before you step aboard,” insisted the head.

“Two now, four when we arrive in Nantes. But I will show them to you so that you know we have them.”

The man grunted his acceptance and opened the side hatch so that we could step into the cabin.

“When do we leave?” I asked, stepping down.

“First light on the tide… hey, what is this? He is British.” As Grant had stepped down towards the cabin the light of a candle inside had illuminated the colour of his coat.

“He is one of the Hanoverians fighting for the emperor; they fight in red like the British.”

“Ja, I am ze Hanoverian,” confirmed Grant in an appalling German accent.

The boat captain looked suspiciously at Grant, but I distracted him by showing him the six gold coins in my hand and then giving him two of them.

“I want all of the money now,” persisted the captain truculently. “I need it to make some... investments.” By which he undoubtedly meant smuggling

“Not a chance,” I told him. “If we gave you all the money now, you could just turn us in and keep it.” I paused, considering. We would have to trust him to some degree. It would not do to make him an enemy when right now we depended on him. I gave him a third coin. “Half now and half when we get to Nantes.”

He gave a grudging nod of agreement.

“Are you alone on board?” I asked.

“No, my son is with me.” As he spoke the captain moved what had seemed a fixed cabinet to reveal a hatch underneath. He pulled the hatch open and a nervous teenage boy stared up at us from the shallow space under the deck. “We saw you coming and thought you were from the harbour master. Lucien is seventeen, and if they found him, they would conscript him.” He looked down at his son. “It is all right, boy. They are here for passage to Nantes.”

The captain turned to me. “I have to go ashore to conduct some private business.” He patted the pocket in which he had put my gold. “If any officials come, join Lucien in the space under the decks until they leave. He has a string to pull the cabinet back over the hatch; no one will find you down there.”

Grant and I sat in the cabin facing the little window that showed anyone coming down the jetty. It was not quite dawn and we were cold and tired, but neither of us could sleep. I thought we had an hour or two before our absence was noticed and I was desperate to have the ropes cast off and be sailing upriver by then.

“Do you think we can trust them?” whispered Grant in English, staring at the young boy who busied himself getting us cups of a very decent wine and bread for breakfast.

“What choice do we have?” I asked. “I think he would have taken his boy with him if he was going to play us false.”

It was a tiny cabin with most of the boat dedicated to cargo. Eventually the boy ran out of things to do and sat nervously beside us. I talked to him in French to pass the time. He had been born on the boat, his mother had died eight years ago and he and his father made a decent living, half from cargo and half from smuggling. Light slowly began to spread across the sky and just as we started to make out the colour of things outside the old captain could be seen coming back up the jetty. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he looked furious. I sensed things were not about to go well.

“Take back your British gold and get off my boat,” he thundered as he entered the cabin, throwing the gold coins on the table. “Go on, get off! We cannot afford to get involved with people like you!”

“What on earth do you mean?” I asked. “You were perfectly happy to help us last night.” I glanced out of the cabin window. We could not leave the boat now; it was too light. Grant’s red coat would stand out like a whore at a royal reception. Everyone would remember seeing him.

“Hanoverian my arse,” roared the captain, throwing the paper on the table. It was our wanted poster. “You are enemies of the state,” he raged. “Do you have any idea what happens to people like us that get mixed up in the state’s business? I am taking enough risks keeping Lucien out of the army. They would execute us for helping you.” He took a breath to calm himself before finishing: “Now get those British coins and yourselves off my boat.”

Grant had gone pale and had started to get up, but I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pistol. I cocked it and put it to the startled head of Lucien, who was still sitting beside me. The boy had been staring wild eyed between the other occupants of the cabin and the poster on the table, but now he paled in horror. “You are right, we are desperate men,” I told his father quietly. “This is why I will kill your son if I have to.”

“Flashman, you can’t! That is murder,” cried Grant, whom I could see from the corner of my eye standing at the end of the little table. I had no intention of killing the boy, just to get the captain to do what we needed. I kept my gaze on him and watched the anger disappear in an instant.

“Please, no,” pleaded his father, a look of anguish now crossing his face. “We just want to be left alone.”

“Then all you have to do is go on deck, cast off and sail up the river as planned,” I told him. “We don’t want to hurt you or your son, but we have to leave
now
.” I reached into my pocket for the exemption and put it on the table. “You get us to Nantes and your son can have that. No one will try to conscript him again.”

The captain reached forward and picked up the paper as though it was a venomous snake. Carefully he unfolded it and gave a gasp of surprise when he saw the signature. “It is signed by the minister himself,” he breathed.

“That’s right; this is a political affair, one minister against another. If you turn us in, you will be right in the middle of it, whether you like it or not.” I smiled at him and moved the pistol a few inches back from his son’s head. “So go on deck and cast off, would you? There’s a good chap.”

The captain stared between us from the paper in his hand to his son, Grant in his red coat and me. He clearly did not know what to believe, but his son’s safety was his priority. Without another word he dropped the exemption on the table and climbed up on deck. All three occupants of the cabin silently watched through the portholes as he moved about the deck, untying ropes and hauling the big sail up the mast. It was only halfway up when I saw that we were slowly moving away from the jetty. He handled the boat well on his own; soon the sail was sheeted home and the captain was at the tiller, steering through what was fast becoming a busy waterway.

“You can leave us now,” I told the son, uncocking the pistol. He leapt from the table like a startled rabbit and ran on deck to join his father. I sank back on the bench seat. “That was close,” I breathed. “There was a moment back there when I thought we would never get away from that jetty.”

“Where did you get that gun?... You wouldn’t have shot the boy, would you?”

“I got the gun from Sophie and of course I would not have shot the boy. I have no idea if the gun is even loaded.”

Grant leaned forward and picked up the exemption. “This looks very realistic. Is it one of Malet’s forgeries?”

I was an idiot then: I should have agreed that it was. But now we seemed out of imminent danger I could not help showing off. “No, it is genuine, given to me by the minister himself.”

Grant sat and gaped at me for a full thirty seconds before he could speak. “You have met the minister of war?... How?... When?”

“A few days ago,” I admitted offhandedly. “I was arrested and he wanted me to spy on Malet and the other conspirators, which was why he let me go and gave me that. He also wanted me to plant papers to implicate some of his enemies in the plot.”

“You betrayed the plot to save you own skin?” accused Grant, appalled.

“Of course not. The minister already knew everything about the plot. He was the one who released Malet to attract other conspirators. As I had suspected all along, they had seen the documents in Malet’s trunk.”

“But you agreed to spy on the conspirators for him?”

“When the alternative was a firing squad, of course I did.” I gestured around the cabin. “As you may have noticed, we are not staying around to spy on Malet or plant documents.”

“But what of the second republic?” he cried. “It is betrayed, Bonaparte will not be overthrown and we will not bring an end to the war.” Grant was seeing his dreams of fame and glory collapse in ruins.

“It was never going to happen,” I reminded him. “The minister of war was really behind the whole thing to attract those opposed to the regime and implicate his enemies.”

“Have you told General Malet that he is being falsely played? And what of poor Madame Trebuchet?”

“I couldn’t tell them or the minister would have found out; he had other informers. They would all have been arrested and executed. The minister already has enough evidence in that trunk. But I…”

“So Madame Trebuchet,” interrupted Grant, “that dear, precious woman who provided us with hospitality and succour in our hour of need, is left ignorant of the trap closing around her head!” Grant was now working himself up into quite a passion. “You do not know this, Flashman, but I greatly admire that lady and her courage to bring an end to the war. But now she is abandoned because you have behaved like a…” He paused, thinking of a suitable condemnation. “… like a viper in her bosom.”

I laughed at him. The pompous prig had barely spoken to Sophie, and if he was honest with himself, he was much more upset over his lost dreams of glory than Sophie’s fate, not that he could admit that. “I was a lot more than a viper in her bosom,” I told him. “And I fancy you would have admired the lady even more if you had bedded her. She was a skilled and enthusiastic mount, that one.”