The English Heiress (8 page)

The hard eyes stared at Roger, personal greed struggling with foreknowledge. Finally the patron shook his head, but he smiled again, this time with a certain respect for a clever opponent-partner.

“Very well, the prisoners free of the Hôtel de Ville and outside the gates. It would be easy enough to do without the mob, but I must live in the town. Marot would surround this whole quarter and burn us out if a thief unlocked the prison and a bribe found a way through the gates.”

Roger shrugged. “Suit yourself, but remember that I am a stranger here without resources. What I have, I have. If we can come to terms—good. If not, I have no way of finding more money. I am an agent doing a job, nothing more.”

“Ah.” There was an expression of satisfaction on the seamed and hardened face. The cold eyes flicked from the pistol in the boot to the well-worn sword. It made sense now, and the patron knew where he stood, which made him comfortable. He had been concerned that he was dealing with some highborn idiot who would have all kinds of scruples. However, everyone knew Monsieur de Conyers was a nobleman in his own land. It was most reasonable that his family should send an agent. Doubtless the man would strike as good a bargain as he could get, hoping to keep whatever was left for himself. But it was also true that there was a limit to the money. For a moment the eyes fixed on Roger went even colder.

Roger could feel a trickle of icy perspiration down his back and hoped similar beads were not standing so boldly on his face that they could be seen. Still, he managed to shake his head and smile coldly.

“I am not a fool,” he said softly “There is another pistol in my pocket, aimed at your belly under the table, patron. And the money is not at my lodgings. It is not even in the town.” This was a flat lie, of course. The money was where it had always been, under a clever false floor beneath the seat of the carriage. Roger, however, was quite accustomed to lying in a good cause. “You will get it quicker and easier by doing your part honestly.”

The hard eyes blinked. The tense moment passed. A price was named. Roger shook his head, although he felt considerable relief. He had brought a good sum of money, but he had been considering simple bribery, not insurrection. The price named was beyond his ability to pay, but not very much beyond it. They began to bargain in earnest. In this Roger was somewhat less successful than he hoped. The price came down a little, but not nearly as much as he expected.

“If you do not have that much,” the patron said at last, plainly impatient, “I am wasting my time and you are wasting yours. I will not do it for less.”

“I have it,” Roger said, “but just. I must also get these people to England. We must eat and sleep.”

“That is not my problem. There are ways to eat without money. Surely un des coureurs de rue Bow can arrange that.”

Roger stared blankly and then began to laugh. It had taken him a moment to connect the French phrase with Bow Street Runners, an organization devoted to restoring lost property, finding missing persons and trapping criminals—for a price. He did not know whether to be insulted or flattered. The Runners were not, in general, of high repute. The men employed were usually little better than the criminals they dealt with. On the other hand, some of them were hard, clever men and it was plain that the reputation of the organization was better abroad than in England. There had been a challenge rather than a sneer in the remark about living without money.

The laugh, of course, was unwise because it finished the bargaining. Probably it did not matter; the patron did not sound as if he were open to more bargaining anyway. Roger was concerned at how little money he would have, but he had his stock of guns. Once they were away from Saulieu, he could sell what he had. He turned his attention to the arrangements for delivering Henry and his daughter and paying the fee agreed upon. When the matter was settled, Roger suggested, with a smile in the direction of the gun he carried, that his companion escort him to a safer quarter of the town.

“Do you think I will take this matter in hand on your word alone?” the old man asked, his face getting harder and uglier. “What is this, a joke?”

“No, I had forgotten.” That was the truth although Roger did not expect to be believed. No matter, the “excuse” was in character for the role he was playing. He pulled the rouleaux of gold from his pocket and slid them across the table.

The rolls of coins were weighed in the patron’s hand briefly. “More,” he said.

“Not a sou,” Roger replied. He stretched out his hand toward the coins he had passed over. “Give them back and we are quits. I will not bargain with you further, and in any case I did not bring any more. You will have the people in your hands. When I receive them in good condition, you will be paid. And I do not want more than the two men we agreed on to accompany them. If more come to the appointed place, I will not be there and you will never find the money.”

“And if I bring out your people and come with only two men, what is to stop you from shooting us or handing over gilded lead? I want more.”

Roger stood up. He was sweating again, and it took an effort to keep the hand that was showing steady. However, the bulge in his pocket made by his hand on his pistol was very apparent. “I am in business and not the business of murder,” he said angrily, wondering what he could say that would convince this man. “It is in my interest to get de Conyers back safe, because I will be richly paid if I return with them. Moreover, it is not my money. I do not care whether I pay it to you or return it. But once the money is paid, it is my neck that is in danger. I must have either the people or the gold in order to go back to England—and I have a family there. I will take no chances on this. I can explain losing what I gave you. I could not explain losing more. This or nothing.”

“You did not tell me you would be paid again when you had the people safe,” the patron grumbled.

“It is no business of yours how I am paid,” Roger said sharply to hide his relief.

The truth was that he had never thought of the subject, because of course there was no question of his being paid for anything he was doing now. However, the patron seemed to find all the problems that had been troubling him solved by the idea of future payment and promptly agreed to see Roger safely out of the area. It was only later, when he was having a brandy by the fire in his own room, that Roger understood and began to laugh. The patron believed he had driven so hard a bargain that Roger would have to cheat in order to make a profit. Roger had smothered his initial burst of laughter, and now he chuckled softly. This business was going to be a dead loss financially, even if Stour wished to repay the expenses. Still, Roger would not have missed it for the world. He could not remember having been so completely terrified as he had been while bargaining with the patron since his older brothers had told him ghost stories and then left him alone in the dark when he was four. There was nothing like a bout of knee-knocking, cold-sweat fear to make one appreciate the luxury of a good brandy and cheerful fire.

Then Roger frowned. He had forgotten one thing—one essential thing. How would he know the man and woman who were brought to him really came from the Hôtel de Ville and actually were Henry and Leonie de Conyers?

Chapter Five

By the end of the week, Leonie and her father had speculated themselves into total hopeless confusion. No matter what Leonie did, she could neither get Louis into the cell nor get herself out. Still, the food continued to be excellent and real luxuries had appeared—a half bottle of wine, a small cheese, a packet of raisins. Henry believed that there was going to be an insurrection that would overthrow Jean-Paul Marot and return his friends to power. Louis must have heard rumors about it, he told Leonie, and was now trying to get on the good side of his prisoners.

That was not possible, Leonie argued. She did not give her father very strong reasons to support her assertion because she did not wish to expose her knowledge of Louis character, but she had reasons. Louis might want to get rid of Marot, but he certainly would not want the officials Marot had overthrown back in power. No, rather than that, Louis would warn Marot of the danger. The most logical reason for Louis’ refusal to take Leonie out in his usual way or even to talk to her was that he was under suspicion. But that notion was directly contradicted by the sudden excellent quality of the food. Nothing could explain the food.

The tension was growing unbearable, and Leonie decided that she would have some answer that evening. As she had become more insistent, Louis had become more cautious. Now he did not even permit his hand inside the door. He pushed the bowl and bread in halfway and then began to release them. If Leonie did not grab them, the food would spill on the floor. Louis was not taking the chance of having his hand or wrist grabbed by a frantic woman.

Leonie had cursed herself as soon as she realized what Louis feared. She had not even thought of doing that, dolt that she was. However, there are more ways than one of accomplishing any purpose. Leonie did not consider reaching out to grab Louis because she knew he was not at all beyond slamming the door on her arm and breaking it. Instead, she gathered some of the rotten straw they used as beds and bound it around one of her feet, about as wide as the food bowl. When Louis opened the door, she would thrust her protected foot through it and ask what was wrong.

Henry had wanted to grab the door, wrench it open and attack Louis, but Leonie pointed out it would never work. She was not strong enough to pull the door open, nor was she strong enough to hold Louis. If Papa did succeed in getting the door open, he would be in the wrong position. It was not late enough when Louis brought their food. There were still people in the building. Louis would only need to run up the stairs, close the door up there and call for help. That would finish any chance of escape for them. On the other hand, if she blocked the door open with no sign of violence, Louis might come in or come closer to push her out of the way. Then they could grab him.

Only desperation induced Leonie to suggest such a scheme. She did not have much hope that it would work, but she did not think it could do much harm. Louis could hardly be more cautious than he was right now, no matter what they did. And it should be safe because the good food and delicacies suggested that no retribution would be taken.

 
n any case, all Leonie’s carefully laid plans went to waste. As the door opened, before she could thrust her foot into it, Louis whispered, “Préparez-vous! Cette nuit! Votre père aussi!”

While Leonie stood paralyzed with surprise, the bowl was pushed at her, followed by the bread and then—wonder of wonders—two hard sausages. Leonie nearly spilled the stew down her dress while she clutched the sausages to her breast. A hard sausage… “Votre père aussi!” Hard sausage was the concentrated food the poor often carried on a journey. It was quite resistant to spoilage, only growing harder and more spicy with age. It could only mean one thing—escape.

“What did he say?” Henry asked eagerly.

“He said,” Leonie repeated in English, “be ready. Tonight. Your father also—oh Papa, perhaps you were right, at least partly. Perhaps there will be an attempt to free us. Look at this!” She thrust the sausage at Henry. “It can only be meant to sustain us while we hide. Papa—do you think…”

“I do not know what to think,” Henry said slowly. “I could have believed in a revolt against that monster Marot and being freed by my friends when he was finished. But Leonie, they are not—not adventurous or daring men, and most of them are considerably older than I. Can you see Maître Foucalt arranging an escape? Child, I fear—I fear this may be a trap.”

Leonie swallowed hard. It must be so. This must be the excuse that Louis and Marot were arranging, so that she and her father could be condemned to death and executed. She looked down at the sausage in her hand and nearly threw it from her. That was just the clever kind of thing Louis would do to convince them. Leonie began to shake.

“No, Leonie,” Henry said, taking her in his arms. “Do not be frightened. Think. In order to accuse us of escaping, they must let us seem to escape. Since we are forewarned, we will still manage to get away. Do not fear. Only be ready to seize an opportunity.”

For Roger, who sat down to his dinner at about the same time, it had been a particularly quiet day He had been briskly active on the three preceding days, inspecting premises that might be thought suitable to setting up a gunsmith’s shop and going to Maître Foucalt’s house on the pretense of consulting with him about rents and leases. At least, that was what the innkeeper assumed they talked about, because Roger was loud in his praise of Maître Foucalt’s, knowledge on these subjects. There could be no doubt either that Roger was a skilled gunsmith. Several men brought weapons to be repaired. After politely asking the innkeeper for permission to conduct business on his premises, Roger did a very creditable job, improvising very cleverly when he did not have the correct part for one gun.

The previous evening, as he came back from Maître Foucalt’s house, where final arrangements had been made for insurance against treachery by the patron, Roger became aware that he was being watched. He was quite familiar with the sensation. Several times Solange had taken it into her head that he had a regular mistress among the upper-class ladies and had determined to find out who it was. She did not care, of course, except that she hoped to be able to hurt Roger by embarrassing or making trouble for his mistress by exposing her.

In the past, Roger had been furious and disgusted. This time he was delighted. Either the patron was hoping he would go and collect his gold from wherever he had left it, or he was watching for the danger of betrayal. Whichever was true, the watcher was proof that the patron intended to get the rest of the money. Since there was no chance that Roger would betray the whereabouts of the gold, it was a sure bet that the raid on the Hôtel de Ville would take place.

Not wishing to rouse suspicion of any kind at the moment, Roger stayed quietly at the inn all the next day. He spent some time writing a letter to his father, detailing what he had done and warning Sir Joseph not to worry if he did not hear from him again for a little while. He and the de Conyerses might need to hide until the worst of the fury over their escape had passed. He left it to Sir Joseph, he added, whether to show Philip the letter or not. He enclosed this letter in a cover addressed to Pierre Restoir. He would give it to Maître Foucalt’s clerk, who was coming to “borrow” his horse and carriage. The clerk was to drive the vehicle out of town, conceal it at a nearby farm until after dark, and then drive back and wait near the western gate after dark. Henry and his daughter were to be brought there by the patron and his men, who would then follow Roger in another carriage to the place where the gold was “hidden”.

The carriage was “borrowed” exactly on time, as Roger was called to dinner. He found himself as shaken and excited by this preliminary move as he had been when he discovered the smugglers in the cove. It was very difficult indeed to do calm justice to the meal set before him, but he managed. He had contrived to get food down without strangling on it and with a calm and indifferent expression while Solange was berating him at the top of her lungs at a dinner party. To eat while his heart was pounding with pleasurable excitement instead of sick rage and shame was not nearly so difficult.

Later, in the early evening, he engaged in his usual desultory conversation with the other customers of the inn. A traveler who bought wine had come on his way south. He began to regale the company with an eyewitness account of the massacre of the king’s Swiss guard and the deposition of Louis XVI. This was apparently not news to the others in the inn, although they listened avidly to the details. But Roger, who had left England on the twelfth of August, had not heard it previously. The events had taken place, he realized, on the tenth and the information had not come to England before he departed. Why he had not heard of it while he traveled south, he could only guess. Either the small towns he stopped at had not yet received word of the events, or the people there had been afraid to talk in front of a stranger.

A lawyer had considerable practice in maintaining an impassive expression, but Roger felt sick with horror. He was no fanatical upholder of monarchy, but he realized this had to be only a first step along a more desperate and ultimately bloody path. England had tried deposing kings. One had finally been executed and the other escaped that fate only by fleeing the country before he was taken. Deposed kings were not conducive to political peace. Even from France, James II had caused much trouble and several bloody battles. How much more trouble, how many more insurrections Louis XVI would cause—even if he did not encourage counterrevolution, which was scarcely believable—was obvious. There would be no peace in France until Louis was either dead or restored.

“You look troubled, monsieur,” one of the men who frequented the inn remarked. “Do you pity the king?”

“I pity myself,” Roger said quickly, annoyed with himself for betraying more of his thoughts than he intended. “I am afraid there will be more violence and that it will spread to the countryside. I am an artisan, not an adventurer. I do not wish to be involved in these things.”

As he spoke, Roger suddenly realized that his involuntary expression of distress and the excuse he used to cover it had been most fortunate. He began to express himself more and more freely on his disapprobation of violence. He had left Cambrai, he complained, because of the threat of war. Yes, business was good for a gunsmith so close to the Belgian border, but dead men could not enjoy profits. Then he began to wonder aloud whether there was any place in France that would be safe.

“If you are so frightened,” the man who had asked why he was troubled remarked disdainfully, “perhaps you had better go back to England.”

Roger first looked at him as if he had turned green, then slowly, he allowed his expression to change. “I had never thought of it,” he exclaimed. “What a fool a man can be! One grows into a habit, a certain way of thinking, and it takes someone outside oneself to point out the obvious. Monsieur, you have done me a great service. Let me buy you a drink. Indeed, you are right! That is just what I will do. I will go back to England where I will be safe.”

The result of this announcement was really comical. Roger had considerable difficulty in keeping himself from laughing, instead painting an expression of uncomprehending hurt on his face. The man to whom he had offered the drink refused it curtly. The rest of the company withdrew from him. Even the innkeeper, who had been very pleasant to so well paying and uncomplaining a customer, grew very cold. Roger made one or two feeble attempts to rejoin the company, who now combined to shun a self-confessed “coward” and then he began to show signs of growing angry. At last, after seeming to seek to buy his way back into favor by offering to treat the whole group and being refused, Roger stalked stormily over to the innkeeper.

“It seems that my custom is not appreciated here anymore,” he said angrily. “Very well. I can take a hint.” He drew forth his purse. “I would leave tonight, only that I was fool enough to lend my horse and carnage to one of your fellow townsmen. Tell me what I owe I will not trouble you even for breakfast.”

In private the innkeeper would probably have changed his tune and tried to pacify so good a customer, but the eyes of the rest of the group were on him. He comforted himself with the consideration that Roger was about to move into a shop of his own in a few days anyway, and he coldly stated the charge. Roger paid and stamped angrily out, smothering his laughter until he was safely in his own room. Even there he laughed softly. It would not do to have the company guess how they had been used.

Perhaps the, device would not save Roger from being associated with the raid on the Hôtel de Ville, but it might. After the sentiments he had announced that evening, no one would be in the least surprised at his disappearance after a mob attack on the center of town government. Since he had paid his bill, the innkeeper would not complain or seek for him. It might even be possible, if it was necessary, for Roger to return openly to Saulieu. He need only avoid the inn and its environs. That is, Roger amended his thoughts with a new spurt of excitement, it would be possible if no one noticed him among the “mob”.

The next few hours were a terrible strain on Roger’s nerves. It was necessary for him to seem to have gone to bed. He doused his light and sat still in the dark until the last of the company at the inn was gone and the innkeeper had locked up for the night. Another hour passed while Roger waited for the innkeeper and his wife and servants to clean up and go to bed. Then, boots in hand, he crept down the stairs, trying to remember everything Pierre had taught him about entering and leaving premises. He kept as close to the wall as possible as he went down the stairs, to prevent them from creaking, and, after he slipped through the window of the private parlor, he pulled it shut and wedged the two halves of the window together. It was not that Roger was worried about the inn being robbed. This night every thief would probably have something better to do. However, Roger did not want the window to bang open and wake the innkeeper. He would prefer if his absence was not noticed until the morning.