Newt's Emerald (13 page)

A sloop of war was bearing down on the wallowing
Undine
, the red ensign flying from her mizzenmast, guns run out and fully manned, a scarlet cluster of marines and a throng of armed seamen in her waist ready to board. An officer in a blue coat was standing at the bow, a speaking trumpet at his mouth.

“Prepare to be boarded! Do not offer resistance!”

This order was answered by a hoarse shout that rose seemingly from the figurehead of the ship.

“About time you got here!”

It was Harnett shouting, Truthful realized. He had survived being lashed to the bowsprit. He
hadn’t
drowned, though she doubted he was at all comfortable. A wave of relief flowed through her, she stopped running, turned to face her pursuers, and stretched up to her full height with her nose in the air.

“So you are done up, Monsieur Fontaine!” she said haughtily. “Or whatever your real name is. I shall enjoy seeing you hang!”

Fontaine grimaced, anger stark on his face. Reversing his empty pistol, he brought it savagely down on Truthful’s head. She felt an intense burst of pain, had a brief cartwheeling vision of deck, sky and sea and then all was blackness.

++++

“Henri . . . I mean, Tru . . . damnation woman, wake up!”

Harnett was still shouting, thought Truthful, as sound once again entered her head and with the sound, consciousness. Gingerly, she opened her eyes to see a small portrait of herself reflected in Harnett’s eyes of the deepest blue. The colour of the sea, she thought dreamily, and smiled.

“Thank God!” exclaimed Harnett. Then, as if suddenly struck by the impropriety of staring at her face from three inches away, her jerked back. “That is, about time!”

Truthful gazed at him dumbly. Even through the throbbing pain in her head, she could see his relief of a moment before fade into an almost hostile stiffness. Deep inside, she felt a sudden pain at the loss of the friendly camaraderie she had enjoyed with him when she had been Henri de Vienne. Only then did she become aware that she was lying on an open deck, with several blankets expertly wound around her and tucked up to her chin. Masts loomed up into the dark grey fog above, but they were not the
Undine
’s masts. The yards and rigging
were too exact, the sails trimmed just so, the deck too clean. Truthful knew instinctively that this was a King’s ship.

“Welcome aboard His Majesty’s sloop
Lyonesse
,” said another voice. Truthful turned her head to see a young naval officer beaming down at her. “Though I should wish it were in different circumstances, Miss . . . um . . .”

“The lady’s name is not to be revealed,” snapped Harnett. “Her identity needs to be concealed for reasons of military secrecy, Captain. Hence the now regrettably incomplete disguise.”

“Certainly, sir,” replied the naval officer stiffly, his smile wiped from his face. Truthful felt for him, considering that he had rescued them both, and Harnett in particular from being lashed to a bowsprit.

Harnett obviously realised this as well.

“My apologies, Captain. I am short-tempered. Unlike Naval officers, I am not at home up to my neck in seawater.”

“I quite understand, sir,” replied the Commander, unbending a little. “However, I trust I shall be allowed to introduce myself? Richard Boling, at your service, ma’am. Master and Commander of the
Lyonesse
.”

“Delighted,” whispered Truthful. Her head ached terribly, and she found it difficult to open her eyes. “Please, what happened? How did you find us?”

“A belated rescue,” said Harnett, before Boling could answer. “My . . . ahem . . . associates were suspicious when we didn’t emerge from Lady Plathenden’s residence. One of them was watching the river. He saw the
Undine
being loaded from the house and alerted General Leye, who in turn sent an urgent message to the Admiralty, though unfortunately of course this all took some time. But once the facts were ascertained, things were put in motion, though I can’t say exactly how our rescuers caught up with us. Perhaps you could enlarge on that Captain Boling?”

“We were in the Pool awaiting dispatches to carry to . . . well, westwards,” continued Commander Boling, taking his cue. “Orders came for us and several other vessels to search for and intercept the
Undine
, on suspicion of having kidnapped two of General Leye’s
officers. I have to say that she is an uncommonly fast vessel and we might not have caught her if it weren’t for the sea anchor and then that scuffle around the wheel. I saw the latter through my glass, but was the former also your work, ma’am?”

“Yes,” muttered Truthful. “I didn’t know what else to do . . .”

“I am amazed that a young lady might be so . . . so . . . nautically well-informed,” said Captain Boling enthusiastically.

“My father is an ad . . . that is to say my father is a naval . . . I mean I was brought up to have some familiarity with the sea and ships,” said Truthful faintly.

“Even so, you have my utmost admiration, ma’am.”

“My head?” asked Truthful, freeing one arm from the blanket and gingerly feeling a sore point on the back of her head. She couldn’t quite remember what had happened. A fleeting memory of the Newington-Lacys laughing about Robert’s loss of memory after falling off a horse went through her mind. She had been giving Fontaine her well-considered opinion and then . . .

“That damned Frenchman!” erupted Harnett, twisting his hands as if he was wringing Fontaine’s neck. “Ah, I beg your pardon. That wretched fellow.”

“Oh,” replied Truthful, still dazed. “He hit us both on the head, then. We must have identical bruises.”

Harnett’s hand went automatically to the back of his head, to feel his own memento of Fontaine’s bludgeoning. But he brought it back down again with obvious willpower.

“I don’t begrudge my own bruises,” he said sternly. “But he knew you were a woman!”

“Fellow’s practically a pirate,” muttered Boling. “Probably get a mention if I hang him from the yard-arm. But I suppose you will want to take him away, Colonel?”

“Yes, we will,” said Harnett. He hesitated, then added in a lower voice that Truthful almost couldn’t catch. “The truth is he’s a damned traitor, original name of Kellett. We caught him before, during the war, and he got away. He’s been slipping about under our noses for the past year or more. The General will be very pleased to lay him by the heels again.”

“I hope he
is
hanged,” muttered Truthful.

“He will be dealt with appropriately, milady,” said Harnett stiffly. “Fortunately he will no longer offer you any . . . his fate will not be your concern.”

Truthful hardly heard him, for behind Harnett’s words she saw that he was still deeply angry at her deception and probably angrier at himself for being unable to see through it, an anger exacerbated perhaps by the fact that it was she who had enabled their rescuers to catch up while he had been helpless. Major Harnett, one of General Leye’s confidential agents, unable to see through a deception perpetrated by a chit hardly out of the schoolroom, aided by a glamour focused on a false moustache! And then to be held fast and half-drowned while a mere woman rigged a makeshift sea-anchor and grappled with the enemy coxswain!

She also had the sudden insight that his current embarrassment and cold remoteness could easily grow into a real dislike of Lady Truthful. A dislike founded on something more personal and concrete than stories of her cutting Trellingsworth.

“I am sorry I couldn’t tell you who . . . that is . . .” she murmured, looking up at Harnett. “I
had
to adopt my disguise—”

“Best we do not discuss this, or any other matter, in public,” said Harnett coldly, and Truthful saw the anger she had feared in his eyes. He met her gaze only for a moment, before turning away to look out upon the sea.

“I see,” said Truthful. She suddenly felt angry too. The least Harnett could do was listen to her, she thought. After all, if it wasn’t for her he would still be tied to the bowsprit, swilling down great drafts of seawater. She looked over to Commander Boling and smiled at him. “I think I need to rest, Captain.”

“Of course, ma’am, I shall have you carried to my cabin,” she heard Boling say, but it was muffled and far off. Through half-lidded eyes she looked at Harnett, but he would not look at her. Then she heard footsteps, heard a muttered command and felt hands lifting her, sailors carrying her in the slung blanket like a stretcher, carrying her away to the captain’s cabin.

At the last minute Truthful was unable to resist peeking back at Harnett, hoping that he would turn and look at her.

But he didn’t. He just kept staring out to sea.

Chapter Eleven

The Return of Lady Truthful

The
Lyonesse
anchored in the Pool of London soon after dawn the next morning. Half an hour later Truthful was hustled ashore wrapped up in a boatcloak, a long woolen muffler and a rather disreputable broad-brimmed straw hat that Captain Boling somewhat shamefacedly said had once been very fine but had suffered from the rigours of a voyage home from the West Indies.

Truthful did not see Major Harnett, and upon enquiry was told that he had been met immediately on their anchoring by several grim-faced officials and a file of soldiers in a longboat. They had taken Fontaine away in irons, without waking Truthful. Harnett had paused only to issue instructions that Truthful was to be conveyed incognito to the side door of an office in Whitehall where she would be met and “assisted in returning to her home”.

Still white-faced and with an aching head, Truthful soon found herself in Whitehall, beyond that side door, sitting in an armchair in an obscure antechamber without a very clear recollection of how she had got there, Captain Boling having bowed himself out a minute before.

“Ah, Chevalier de Vienne!”

Truthful turned slowly to the inner door, her large hat shadowing her face. General Leye stood there beaming, with an aged servant behind him carrying a silver tray on which rested a tea service and a basket of buttered muffins. The general settled himself in the chair opposite Truthful while the servant arranged tea and muffins on the table.

“Thank you, Menton. That will be all until I ring.”

“Yes, sir. May I remind the general of your appointment with the Duke for breakfast?”

“Yes, yes, I won’t be long. Off you go.”

General Leye waited until Menton had shut the door, then he reached into a waistcoat pocket and took out a hairy object that it took Truthful a moment to recognize as the false moustache she had been sporting in her male disguise.

“I’ve taken the liberty of recasting the glamour,” said General Leye. He reached into another pocket and took out a small bottle of gum Arabic. “Best put it on again, Lady Truthful. You’ll still need to keep that cloak and hat, of course, but best to have belt
and
braces, hey?”

Truthful silently complied, smoothing the moustache on under her nose while the general poured the tea and handed her cup. He didn’t speak until she had taken several sips and had put the cup back down again to reach for a buttered muffin.

“Charles told me about your sea anchor and so forth,” he said. “Excellent work. We’ve been after that Fontaine fellow for some time.”

“He told you?” asked Truthful, barely swallowing in time to not be talking through a mouthful of crumbs.

“We had a quick chat,” said General Leye. “He was keen to get after Lady Plathenden again. Charles is the very devil for work.”

“I see,” said Truthful. Harnett was very keen to get away from her, she thought sadly. “What has happened to Lady Plathenden? And the Emerald?”

“I’m afraid we don’t rightly know. We had thought she was also on the
Undine
, hidden below, but she wasn’t. Now it seems she took a smaller boat upriver. But I have rather a lot of people looking for her now, so I expect we shall find her presently.”

“Thank you,” said Truthful wearily. None of it seemed to matter very much to her now.

“No, I thank you,” said the General. “The more we look into Lady Plathenden the less I like what we’ve found. She’s definitely a malign sorceress, and I fear that her desire for the Emerald has always been about its potential power. There is also some . . .”

He hesitated, as if uncertain whether to continue, then leaned closer and added in a whisper.

“There is also a strong suggestion that she has been working with Bonaparte for years, hence her connection with Fontaine. Now one of our smart chaps at the Royal thinks there is a possibility the Emerald could be used to free Napoleon from the Rock.”

“What!” exclaimed Truthful, lowering her voice as Leye made hushing motions with his hands. “But I thought that was impossible! Wasn’t that the point of imprisoning him there? I always wondered why he wasn’t just . . . just executed like the poor old French King?”

“Can’t kill him,” said Leye shortly. “Hang a master of Death magic, that’s like giving a thief the key to your front door. But it was thought he’d be safe enough, there being very few talismans of the right kind and the power to release him, and all of them secure. No-one considered your emerald, not till now. But looking into it, that stone is considerably older than was ever thought and certainly a damn sight more powerful than is safe. When we get it back it’ll have to go to the Tower. You’ll be compensated, of course.”

“Father will need to at least see it first,” said Truthful doubtfully. “I’m sure he’ll get better if he can just hold it in his hand. But apart from that I’m sure he’d be happy for it to go to the Crown, considering the circumstances.”

“Yes, yes,” said Leye. “That can all be arranged. Have to find Plathenden first, of course, wrestle it from her. Fortunately she won’t have had time to learn how to use its powers.”

“Oh,” said Truthful. “Does it take time? I don’t know much about it.”

“Very tricky things, talismans of that sort,” said the General. “Particularly if you haven’t the right to them. But a skilled and determined sorceress like Amelia Plathenden would be able to work around that, given time. Time I trust she shall not have. Now, I have a coach waiting to take you back to your great-aunt’s, and the sooner the better, so she will stop pestering me about your safety.”