The Spy's Reward (13 page)

Anthony tried to remember his uncle saying something about officers, or about being frightened, and failed. His only memories of this morning involved cold water and a large mug of very dark coffee.

“It takes quite a bit to frighten my uncle,” he said, worried. “Did he say what had happened?”

“Your uncle does not seem to be the communicative sort,” she said dryly. “All he said was that two officers had recognized him, and we were all in danger. Which, I assure you, certainly frightened
me
. I assume they must have encountered him when he was smuggling the gold a few years ago.”

“Smuggling the gold?” Anthony asked, bewildered.

“He told me all about it,” she assured him. “I suppose it is some sort of trade secret, isn't it? I promise I will not say anything to any of the Harts in London.”

“He told you he had smuggled gold? Where? When?”

“For Wellington's troops,” she said impatiently. “In Spain. The gold your bank loaned the army.”

“My uncle had nothing to do with that! I have no idea why everyone seems to think that loan was so complicated! Yes, we shipped the gold through France, but it simply went south through our regular convoy system for transferring bullion. The only difficult part was getting the wagons over the border. And even then the real problem was the Pyrenees, not the French.”

She set the bowl back down on the night table. “But . . . your uncle . . . those scars . . . the knives,” she stammered.

Too late he realized that his uncle had presumably used the undeservedly celebrated story of the loan to explain the damning evidence the two women had seen at the roadblock. He racked his brain to come up with a substitute for the gold-smuggling story. His brain was not responding very well. And of course, his uncle had already used the most plausible cover story, which he, Anthony, had just ruined. Abigail Hart was looking very upset. As well she might.

“Why,” she asked, in a dangerously quiet voice, “would your uncle allow me to believe that he had incurred those injuries working for the bank if that was not the case?”

“He was—ashamed,” said Anthony, desperate. “Embarrassed.” His mind, reeling through the conundrum Spain-knives-scars, seized on the plot of his mother's favorite opera. “There were, ah, ladies involved.”

Diana's reappearance saved him. “Here is the toast,” she said breathlessly. “And Madame Durry sent some plum compote up as well. Oh, and your uncle has apparently gone off again; her oldest boy just helped him saddle up a few minutes ago.”

“Would you mind running back down, Diana? And finding Mr. Meyer's servant? Could you tell him I would like to speak with Mr. Meyer the moment he returns, no matter how late it may be?”

She nodded and disappeared again.

“You won't say anything to him, will you?” said Anthony, a bit uneasy. “About the scars? He is a reformed character now, you know.”

“He is not riding off to an illicit tryst in Corps, then?” she asked. There was an angry glitter in her eyes.

He was now very uneasy. “Of course not!”

“What a shame those two officers who are pursuing us do not know that he is such an upright citizen these days,” she said.

14

“What do you mean, they cannot be found?” Doucet glared at the adjutant. “Five people and six animals cannot simply disappear between the last village and a town the size of this one!”

The adjutant, a middle-aged man with thinning hair, spread his arms helplessly. “Monsieur, up until now it has been a very plain trail. A party traveling in haste, with no baggage, including a young man who is clearly ill—everyone remembers them. The servant came here and inquired at all three hotels for rooms, but they were full, and he left. There is no trace of them in the next village along the road; no one has seen them pass northwards. Perhaps when there were no rooms available they turned back.”

“Had they turned back,” Doucet reminded him in a dangerously soft voice, “we would have met them.”

“Ah. Of course.” The older man cleared his throat. “
Eh bien
, I am at your service, monsieur. What shall I do now?”

Doucet flung himself into a chair and thought hard. “Fetch me the innkeeper again,” he said.

“Which one?”

“The one from this inn, fool. He is probably listening outside the door, in fact.”

A moment later the adjutant came back into the dining room with both the innkeeper and his son.

“You wish something else, monsieur?” the father asked politely. “More wine perhaps?”

No. No more wine. He needed a clear head.

“This man, this servant who was looking for rooms for his master. Which of you spoke with him?”

The son bowed awkwardly. “I did, monsieur.”

“What did he look like?”

The boy frowned. “Tall, stoops slightly. A Spaniard, from the sound of his French. Dark hair.”

That was Meyer's servant, sure enough. Or Meyer himself, they were very much alike. Could their party possibly have separated? Was there another road that led to the bridge? He fought off a momentary surge of panic. He had sent five men and a dispatch rider onward to the bridge, and the messenger had already returned to report that it was secure.

“Your pardon, Monsieur Doucet.” It was one of the soldiers, hovering in the open doorway. “I thought you might wish to speak to this man. He reports a theft from his shop.”

Doucet raised one eyebrow. “Do I look like the prefect of police?”

The soldier said apologetically, “No, monsieur, of course not. But—is it not true that we hunt for a saboteur?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Monsieur Roussier is a sausage-maker. The missing item is half a barrel of saltpeter.”

Doucet sat up very straight. “And when did this happen?” he asked the sausage-maker, who was twisting his hat nervously in his hands.

“I am not certain, monsieur. Madame Roussier heard a small noise while we were eating supper—I did not hear it, but she insisted, and you know how it is, monsieur, with women, when we were preparing to retire she became very nervous about this noise, and occasionally animals have managed to get into the shop; they do a great deal of damage—”

“Yes, yes, so you went downstairs, and your barrel was missing. When was this?”

“An hour ago, monsieur. But madame my wife remembered that Your Excellency had asked us to report anything suspicious . . .”

Thank God for the Madame Roussiers of this world, thought Doucet. At least when you were hunting spies. “And what time was it when you—or rather, your wife—heard the noise?”

“Perhaps six o'clock, your honor.”

More than five hours ago. Had it rained since then? He could not remember. All he had been doing for the past six days was riding on terrible roads and interrogating people. Here in the mountains when it wasn't raining it was about to rain or it had just stopped raining. He turned to the adjutant. “Take the rest of the men. Borrow every lantern in Corps. Go to this man's shop and see if you can find any traces—footprints, hoofprints, anything—which might tell us where he has gone. Barrels of saltpeter are heavy; even Meyer can't carry one himself. If you do find something, follow it as though it were leading to the Holy Grail. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly, monsieur.”

“Show this officer your shop,” Doucet told the sausage-maker. “And take this to replace your loss.” He handed the man a small purse. If he could find Meyer before the Englishman blew up that bridge, he would buy every sausage the man had.

 

 

Meyer hoped this would be his last sleepless night; they were taking a toll. As he led his horse and the mule out of the barn he sent a quick glance back towards the farmhouse. Rodrigo had taken him at his word when he had requested a secluded refuge. The place was so secluded that even with Rodrigo's blaze cut on the trees by the road it had taken him three tries to find it. It was ideal for his purposes. There was even a stream at the foot of the hill, with a small waterfall that would mask most of the noise he would be making. Presumably everyone in the farmhouse would be asleep by the time he tested the mixture, though, and the small explosion should not be loud enough to awaken anyone. Unless he made a mistake, in which case he would not be around to worry about who had heard him.

When he reached the waterfall, he heaved the barrel off the mule's back and tethered the animals securely a little distance away. Then he cleared enough dead foliage away to form a small, flat working space and laid out his equipment. A large square of oilcloth, which he spread on the ground. The barrel on top of that. A sack of crumbled charcoal, also on the oilcloth. A mallet—he had borrowed it (without asking) from his host at the farmhouse. He hoped it was heavy enough. The paddle from a butter churn. That was another borrowed item. Madame Durry's butter was going to have an odd flavor for the next few weeks. A small wooden cup, taken from the barn. And finally, emerging from its concealment in the tin box, his precious jar of sulphur.

Pounding the charcoal into powder was easy, and the sack muffled the noise. He scooped up the grains which had spilled onto the oilcloth, and pushed them carefully back into the sack. Then he tipped over the barrel and dumped the saltpeter slowly onto the oilcloth. It formed a white, flaky mound that covered nearly the entire cloth. Odd, that gunpowder was so black when there was so much saltpeter in it and so little charcoal. He picked up the bucket and started scooping the saltpeter back into the barrel, adding small amounts of the charcoal and sulphur after every fifteen scoops of saltpeter, and stirring very gently with the paddle. It took quite some time; everything had to be done very precisely, very gently. Even in the cold he was sweating with tension. He ran out of sulphur after the third mixing. It was just as well; he should be on his way as soon as possible.

Now for his test. He mixed once more, took the broken stem of a clay pipe from his pocket, and poured a thin stream of the glittering dark powder into one end, stopping the other with his fingers. Then he pressed the tube upright into the ground, pushed a thin twist of paper into the top, and struck a light.

The result was very satisfactory, although perhaps louder than he would have liked. He glanced up at the moon. No time to clean up. He left the oilcloth, with its pile of unused saltpeter, and hoisted the barrel back onto the mule. It was reassuringly heavy. There was enough here to bring down most bridges, placed properly.

The moment he had stumbled downstairs in Barrême to find the news of Napoleon's escape sweeping up from the coast, he had thought of Pont-Haut and realized its importance. If he had not been hampered by Anthony and the Harts, he would have been here days ago. He would have packed the central pier with powder and blasted it apart as soon as Napoleon had moved north of Sisteron. Every day, the bridge was the first thing he thought of when he woke up and the last thing he thought of before he went to sleep—on the few nights he had slept. What was the safest way to get the saltpeter? How fast was Bonaparte marching? Where were his advance troops? How quickly—or slowly—could Meyer move his own party so as to stay ahead, but not too far ahead? Practical questions, questions whose answers usually required spending the entire night in the saddle, leaving him (conveniently) too exhausted to consider impractical questions. Ethical questions.

Only now, as he led the mule closer and closer to the ravine, did he realize that he had never thought beyond the moment when the bridge would collapse, tumbling in shards of blackened stone down into the river below. Suppose he did manage to evade the guards—Cambronne had surely posted some by now—and set off his homemade gunpowder. What then? Ride casually back to the farmhouse and tell three innocent people that they were now trapped between a bridgeless ravine and two thousand frustrated, angry soldiers? He had not asked for their company; he had not wanted their company. But he could not pretend they did not exist.

He would face that problem when it arose, he told himself firmly. His more immediate concern was the task ahead.

He stopped half a mile short of the hill that ran up to the cliffs and led the animals into the woods until he found a clearing where he could tie them up. There was some kind of path running up the slope, a goat track, perhaps. It was certainly safer than the road. He made his way up to the edge of the ravine and began moving cautiously west. The moon was right overhead, giving plenty of light through the thin clouds. He could see the top level of the bridge, the modern, three-arch structure, and after a moment the older Roman bridge below came into view as well. As expected, there were guards at both ends. He would have to bring the mule up here, then rope the barrel, and himself, down into the ravine. If he wanted to be done before dawn, he had better hurry. He went back down the hill much faster than he had come up and was panting by the time he reached the clearing.

Only at the very last minute did he see that there were three animals tied up, not two.

“Do you need any assistance?” asked Rodrigo in a cold voice, stepping out from behind a tree. “Or should I rejoin the other dupes back at the farmhouse ?” He was still wearing Meyer's coat. In the moonlit shadows it was eerily like seeing his own reflection come to life.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Meyer, horrified. “How could you leave Anthony and the women alone, with Doucet likely searching for us at this very moment?”

“I am your servant, remember? You chose the bridge over your nephew, over Señora Hart and her daughter. I concluded that the bridge was more important. So here I am.”

“I trusted you,” said Meyer, breathing hard. “I trusted you to be there while I was absent.”

“You did
not
trust me. You never told me anything. I guessed, of course. But since you were never willing to explain what you were doing, you could never quite bring yourself to ask. To say, out loud, ‘Rodrigo, please stay behind and stand guard while I go off and stop Napoleon single-handedly. And then I will come back—or not come back. And in either case all hell will break loose.'”

“I am asking you now. You can lecture me about my morals some other time. Just get back to that farmhouse.”

Rodrigo gestured towards the cliff. “That is not a one-man job. You will need help.”

“Get back to the farmhouse,” Meyer said again.

“You want both,” said the servant, hoisting himself back into the saddle. “You want the bridge . . . and the woman.”

Meyer did not ask what Rodrigo meant by that. He knew perfectly well which woman.

“But sometimes, señor, you have to make choices. You cannot have both.” He looked down at his master. “At this rate, you will have neither.”

 

 

Abigail heard the explosion very clearly. She would have heard it even if she had still been in the farmhouse, but she was actually pacing back and forth outside the barn, rehearsing the fourth version of an impassioned speech she planned to deliver as soon as the perfidious, lying, arrogant, ruthless Nathan Meyer returned from whatever criminal mission had taken him away this time. She did not know who was more despicable: Meyer, for using her and deceiving her, or herself, for being so gullible. She had
known
there was something odd going on right from the start, from that first meeting at the inn in Barrême, when he had pretended to defer to her preferences and had pushed her—she could see that now clearly—into choosing this northern route. But she had ignored her own intuition.

Every day had witnessed some new act of folly on her part. Why had she let him keep her papers? How could she have failed to see that he was staggering with fatigue nearly every morning, that he had been out all night? He had even stumbled into her room and she had still failed to comprehend the obvious. And then he had let her make a complete fool of herself, with her dramatic little story of the smuggled gold. She remembered his face, during that sudden, fraught silence in the alcove. He had been about to kiss her, and she had been about to let him do it—her own daughter's suitor! His feelings had seemed so genuine—the mixture of confusion, desire, and tenderness in his dark eyes so plausible to someone who was feeling all those things herself. But it was a sham, a fraud, like the mask of the Spanish partisan he had put on at the blockade.

The explosion was the last straw. It had come from the woods below the farmhouse, and she would wager her entire fortune that Meyer was involved. She would not go to her bedchamber like a dutiful female and wait for the next lie. She wanted answers, right now.

The brush was very thick once she left the farmyard, and after untangling her skirts twice she conceded reluctantly that even in the moonlight she would need a lantern. She returned to the barn and took one that was hanging inside the door already lit. With a sense of deep resentment, she saw that not only was Meyer's horse gone, but the servant's as well. She had thought Rodrigo was her friend.