Miss Jacobson's Journey (25 page)

“Judging by the way the carriage departed, I’d guess he really was our dear friend,” said Isaac. “I wonder how far off his friends are?”

“We’ll hear them before we see them,” Felix pointed out.

They fell silent, straining their ears. Clear across the water came the distant drumming of hooves. The boatmen heaved on the oars with renewed vigour.

“Sound carries,” said one in a low voice. “Keep silent.”

The hoofbeats drew nearer, then someone called an order and they stopped. At that moment the moon sailed out from behind her veil. In the boat, white faces turned towards the bank, where a confused mass of men and horses milled about. Shouts and shots rang out as the gendarmes spotted the fugitives. A bullet whined overhead.

And again they were plunged into pitch-darkness. Behind them gunfire crackled but the marksmen were shooting blind. Nothing came near them.

Isaac sensed rather than saw the ship as they approached, until a dark lantern was slung over the side, its single beam illuminating a dangling rope ladder. The boy caught a hawser with the boathook and pulled the boat in close to the grey-painted wooden side as the rowers shipped their oars. Isaac grasped the bottom of the ladder.

“You first, Hannah,” said Miriam. “I shall be close behind.”

“Oh, miss...” The lantern showed the maid’s fearful face, but she bravely started upwards.

Isaac did his best to stop the ladder swinging as Miriam followed. From above came a murmur of voices and the steady clanking of chains. The Alouette was already weighing anchor.

Sporadic shots sounded, presumably aimed at the lantern’s glow, but the ship was beyond their range. Grignol had arrived too late.

The boy swarmed up after Miriam, and then Felix steadied the ladder for Isaac. Isaac was near the top and reaching for the rail when a jerk told him Felix was coming after him. The heavy-laden ladder swung free. He glanced down and saw Felix’s upturned face. Below him was nothing but swirling water, once more gleaming in fickle moonlight. Arm over arm along the looped hawsers, the boatmen were pulling the boat back along the side of the ship towards the stern.

Isaac looked up again. Miriam stood at the rail, smiling at him. Then she glanced down and her expression changed to horror. A sudden jerk on the ladder was followed by a splash.

“Felix!” came Miriam’s anguished cry.

Felix floundered in the water, reaching desperately with one arm for the end of the ladder. Isaac half climbed, half slid back down. His feet on the lowest rung, he hung on with one hand and stretched the other toward his friend, his rival.

Too far. His arms taking his weight, he lowered himself with a gasp into the river’s startlingly cold embrace. He hooked his left arm around the bottom rung, reached out with the right.

Hands met. The ladder swung wildly as he pulled Felix towards him against the drag of the river. The Alouette was under way. Isaac’s muscles protested at the brutal usage, but Felix moved closer, closer, until at last they both grasped the ropes and clung there.

Before Isaac could call for help, a second ladder and a rope with a canvas sling snaked down. Two sailors followed. Isaac and Felix were hauled up and deposited on the deck, shivering and streaming with water.

“Your shoulder, Felix?” Miriam’s voice was steady, but Isaac saw tears glinting on her cheeks and knew that Felix’s flirtation with Suzanne had not altered her feelings for him. “I’ll have to bind it again. But first, both of you go below at once and get out of those wet clothes! You are fortunate that the crew are expert at retrieving barrels from the water.”

Felix grinned wryly. “My good fortune is that Isaac has developed a habit of rescuing me from the results of my folly. I should have known I couldn’t make it up that ladder.”

“So should I,” she whispered.

“I don’t suppose we was any of us thinking too clearly just then,” said Hannah briskly. “But we’ve seen the last of the lieutenant and that nasty prefect. Now off with you and get dried off.”

Isaac was turning to obey when Miriam laid her hand on his arm. For a dreadful moment he was afraid she was going to thank him for saving her beloved’s life.

“You won’t let Nathan Rothschild send you to Bordeaux again, will you?” she beseeched him, her eyes searching his face in the moonlight. “Hébert and Grignol will not forget.”

Warmed by her concern, he nearly revealed then that their journey to Bordeaux and beyond had been a ruse. But he couldn’t ask her not to tell Felix, as Kalmann had insisted. He put his hand over hers. “Nathan is no ogre. He will not expect me to go.”

She nodded and gave him a little push towards the cabin boy, who was waiting to show the way below.

His and Felix’s quarters proved to be not a cabin but a corner of the space between decks, screened off by sailcloth hangings and furnished with a pair of hammocks. The only cabin, the captain’s, was reserved for the ladies. Thither, after binding Felix’s arm, Miriam and Hannah retired. Isaac helped Felix into his hammock and climbed cautiously into his own. He scarcely had time to wonder at how comfortable it was before he fell asleep.

As Lavardac had promised, by morning they were far out in the Gironde, the banks a hazy line on each side. The Alouette darted down the estuary like the bird she was named for, not, as the captain explained, the soaring
alouette des champs,
the lark, but the sandpiper, the
alouette de mer
.

The captain, a barrel-shaped, black-bearded man, considered it a huge joke to have been shot at by Monsieur Grignol. He spoke English of a sort, his accent a curious mixture of French and Cornish so thick that Isaac found his French easier to understand. He welcomed his passengers on deck, but sent them below whenever another vessel approached.

Felix, pale after his ordeal and his arm once more in a sling, found the companionway difficult to ascend and descend. Though he made light of it, that afternoon when Miriam ordered him to his hammock, he made no protest.

Isaac helped him into the hammock and went up again to find that Hannah had also retired to her quarters. He and Miriam found a sheltered spot to sit looking out over the ruffled blue estuary, dotted with white sails. Herring gulls screamed overhead, timbers creaked, and every now and then a shouted order was followed by the rattle of pulleys and snap of canvas as the Alouette came around on a new tack.

 “Can you conceive of anything more peaceful?” Miriam murmured with a sigh. “It’s impossible to imagine storms and sea battles and shipwrecks.”

“Don’t try to imagine them,” Isaac advised, laughing. “At least, not until we are put ashore.”

She smiled at him, her brown eyes sparkling. The breeze played tantalizingly with wisps of glossy red hair. “`Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,’“ she quoted.

“Who said that?”

“Some poet we read at school. Our teacher was at pains to point out the deficiencies of such a philosophy.”

“It has its attractions, though, on a day like this.” Isaac decided to dismiss the future and enjoy the few uninterrupted hours he had with Miriam.

That night under cover of darkness, the Alouette slipped through the narrow opening of the Gironde, past the Cordouan lighthouse, and out into the Bay of Biscay. She skipped and frolicked across the rolling Atlantic waves. When Isaac helped Felix out of his hammock in the morning, Felix stood quite still for a moment, turned green, and grabbed at the nearest bulkhead for support. Isaac grabbed the nearest container, an empty tankard, and handed it to Felix just in time.

At last Felix looked up, pallid and sweating. “I didn’t think I had drunk so much brandy last night,” he groaned.

“I don’t believe it’s a hangover. You are just seasick.

“Just! I’m dying!”

“You might feel better in your hammock. To some extent it counteracts the roll of the ship.”

So Felix returned to his hammock, and admitted that he now merely wanted to die. Isaac soon found out that Hannah, too, was incapacitated. He and Miriam were unaffected.

In fact, he had never felt better. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” he told himself. Once they were back in London he might never see her again. A banker’s courier was not likely to be a welcome guest in the home of the wealthy furrier, nor, if Felix’s parents blessed his marriage, at the home of the Earl of Westwood. But Isaac had a week of her company ahead of him. Except for her visits to the sufferers, for whom she admitted she could do little, and the jovial captain’s occasional intrusions, he had her to himself.

Ignoring twinges of guilt for profiting from Felix’s illness, he took advantage of every minute. They talked endlessly, strolled around the deck, stood at the rail watching the rocky cliffs of Brittany slide past or the red-gold setting sun quench its fires in the limitless western seas. Together they marvelled at dolphins and flying fish, and fed the squawking gulls on scraps. And then she would worry over Felix’s health, or go down to sit with him for a while, sometimes to coax him into eating dry biscuits to keep up his strength, sometimes just to cheer him, and Isaac would be devoured by jealousy.

That she fussed over Hannah, too, was no consolation. He knew her deep devotion to the faithful servant, so he was prepared to believe her equally devoted to Felix.

The days slipped away. Fair winds carried the Alouette around the tip of Brittany and sped her across the Channel. Then one afternoon the captain announced that as soon as it grew dark they would be blindfolded and transferred, along with his cargo, to an English lugger.

The news threw Miriam into a flutter of apprehension. Whatever happened, the longed-for return to her native land was going to change her life completely. One way or another she was bound to lose the freedom she was accustomed to. Would she also lose Isaac? She was more than ever certain that she loved him, but she still could not decipher his feelings.

How she regretted that night in Pau when she had responded to Felix’s kiss and rejected Isaac’s. If only he would kiss her again!

She threw herself into preparing her patients for the move. The last day or two they had both recovered enough to take a little exercise and food, but they were both sadly pulled. At least Felix’s shoulder had benefited from the prolonged rest.

 The transfer from ship to ship as a blind, helpless bundle was terrifying, but for once all went smoothly. The smugglers’ slings and tackle worked as well for people as for barrels. Aboard the lugger they were left blindfolded and warned not to speak. Miriam gained the impression that they put in to shore somewhere to unload the barrels. At last the blindfolds were removed and the small ship sailed openly into Plymouth.

Shortly after daybreak the next morning, the travellers sat down to breakfast in the coffee room at the Drake’s Arms.

“Dry land at last,” Hannah sighed thankfully.

“Everyone speaking English at last,” said Felix, laughing, “and not a whiff of garlic in the food. I’m famished.”

“Home at last,” Miriam murmured, but it did not feel like a homecoming. What did it matter where she was if Isaac didn’t love her?

Chapter 23

 Soon after arriving in London, Isaac and Felix walked through the City to St. Swithin’s Lane and turned into New Court. Nathan Rothschild’s clerks recognized Isaac. After a few minutes wait, they were ushered into Mr. Rothschild’s private office.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Despite fourteen years in England, seven as a naturalized citizen, his accent was still that of the Frankfurt ghetto. A stocky man in his mid-thirties, beginning to bald, his full lips had a faintly amused expression belied by the piercing quality of his dark eyes. Isaac had seen him at the Royal Exchange, leaning against his favourite pillar near the Cornhill entrance, his face stony and his eyes blank. There, no one could guess his thoughts or intentions. Those who tried were often mistaken, and Nathan Rothschild had built a fortune on their mistakes.

Isaac gave him two copies of Wellington’s receipt, and a letter from his brother Kalmann, wrapped in the oilcloth that had preserved the papers from the waters of the Garonne. Nathan waved them to chairs, opened the package, and perused the contents.

“Very good,” he grunted, and pushed one copy toward Felix. “Here is a receipt for the Treasury, my lord. Mr. Cohen will go with you to present it to ensure that all is in order, but first I must have a private word with him, if you will be so good as to wait.”

Somewhat surprised at his summary dismissal, Felix stood up and took the receipt.

“We can go to the Treasury tomorrow if you prefer,” Isaac suggested.

“No, I’ll wait. Good day, Mr. Rothschild.”

“Good day, my lord.” As the door closed behind the outsider, Nathan leaned back in his chair and nodded at Isaac. “A good job, Cohen.”

“Did you know we were to be used as decoys, sir?” His anger stirred anew.

“No, that was Jakob’s notion, I gather, as was involving this Miss Jacobson. He is young yet. I am acquainted with Aaron Jacobson and I doubt he’ll be pleased to hear his daughter was used so.”

“Miss Jacobson will tell him of the journey, of course, but neither she nor Felix--Lord Roworth--knows we were escorting a load of lead.”

“Your discretion is admirable.” Nathan stared consideringly at Isaac. “Kalmann says that he and Jakob expected to write off as expenses the gold used to disguise the lead. He suggests that, for your efforts in preserving it, you should receive half its value. I shall have an account opened in your name in the amount of three thousand pounds.”

“Three thousand...!” He stiffened. “You do not need to buy my silence, sir.”

“I am aware of that. Permit me to reward a capable and trusted employee. They are not so easy to find.”

“Thank you, sir. I am not such a fool as to refuse,” he said ruefully. An idea struck him. “Do you think... I don’t suppose you would consider hiring Lord Roworth? I doubt he earns much at the Treasury and I know he dislikes his position. He’s a good fellow.”

Nathan’s eyes narrowed and he tapped his lower lip thoughtfully. “Lord Roworth. Viscount, and heir to an earldom. His title and connections could prove useful to me, I daresay. Do you think he would be willing to work for a Jew?”