For Our Liberty (49 page)

“I think it will have to be the Nautilus after all? The steam launch takes too long to prepare, we’d have to have the boiler lit long before we wanted to use it.”

“And can you work this contraption?” Dominique asked as she stepped aboard the plunging boat, tapping the copper hesitantly with her foot, in case more should drop into the water.

“Perhaps,” I said and began to untie the ropes holding the launch to the plunging boat.

“Ben!”

“How difficult can it be, it was invented by an American?”

I got slapped for that one, and perhaps rightly so. By the light of a shielded lantern I told Dominique what I could remember of the stream of drivel Fulton spouted on that long trip through France and Holland. I opened the hatch on the top of the death trap, sorry, I mean plunging boat. An unfortunate name really, it reminded me of the phrase ‘plunging to your death’. There wasn’t much room inside, despite the fact it was to have a crew of three. We looked at the various gauges and levers and surmised the purpose of each. It would have been hard work using the hand-crank to turn the propellor with just the two of us. All the time I thought that the boat made a better coffin than a seagoing vessel and began to adapt my plan to cope with the near certainty of death if we were forced to use the Nautilus.

The walk back to the Rue Saint-Honoré was even more muted and reflective despite the sunrise vainly attempting to brighten our moods. During the day we got the remaining items in place and were ready to carry out our attempt that night, whatever happened. We each spent the day saying little and thinking much. We both knew the end was coming, as do you dear reader as you flick through the final pages of this tome to see how many are left. Do you have time to finish my story now or are you better off stopping and savouring the end when you have more time? Will your spouse asleep in the bed next to you forgive you if you do not douse your candle now? Should you ring the bell for another cup of tea and sit in that chair by the window now the light is beginning to fade? Is your journey nearly ended, do you have time to read more before you reach your destination? I would have liked more time. Time to savour that day, time to think of another plan, time to hold her, time to run away, but I did not have those options. The end was all too close for me. Read on.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

We arrived at the stables on the Rue Saint Denis at dusk. The sleet that had persisted for most of the day had just stopped and the last remaining shafts of sunlight made the wet slate roofs glisten and a brief golden glow reflect in the windows of the stable before the sun set. Calvet was already there and we exchanged a quick greeting but didn’t speak of what was to come while we could be overheard. His face looked drawn and he kept drumming his fingers on the top of the cane he carried. The owner of the stables, a veteran of the wars by the look of him and missing an arm, grumbled at our late arrival but was happy to pocket a generous tip whilst one of his lads harnessed up a steady-looking grey to the phaeton I had rented. I had wanted something light and fast and the phaeton fit the bill, the four large wheels and light body looked almost fragile but I had been assured that it could take rough country roads. Not that we would be going that far in it but I wanted to be sure it could take a race through the city streets if need be. I felt almost guilty that the owner would not be seeing it again for some time and would then probably face some harsh questions from Lacrosse as to why it had been used in the escape of a prisoner from the Temple.

I led the three of us back into the yard while the carriage was readied. We stood close together and talked in low voices. Calvet kept looking over his shoulder. He seemed uncharacteristically nervous.

“Is everything ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “Are you?”

“I am, but I still think I should come with you.”

“No. I need you ready to help us leave the city,” I said. We’d gone through the plan several times and each time Calvet suggested he come with us to the prison instead of securing our route out of Paris.

“But I am known to the gaoler at the Temple. I can help,” he pleaded.

“Don’t you think Lacrosse will have warned the gaoler that you may try and get your nephew released?” I said, a little louder than I should have.

“Yes, but he is my family. I have to help.”

“Ben, can’t he come?” asked Dominique.

“No, I’m not having my plan fall apart before it starts,” I said. “If we stick to it we may just all get out of this alive.”

“I have to protect my family, Blackthorne,” said Calvet and I could see Dominique’s eyes pleading with me to acquiesce.
 

“You are. Getting Claude out of the prison is only half the battle. We have to get all of us out of Paris and to the coast. Have you got the papers?” I asked, Calvet had said he could procure the passes we would need to get through the city gates and to the coast.

“Yes, I have the papers. I just wish I could do more than wait for you,” Calvet said. I think he saw I would not be persuaded.

“Just be ready for us. We will have little time,” I said.

“Very well, Bon chance,” he said with what I suspected was feigned good grace. He embraced Dominique and I thought for a moment he was going to embrace me, you can never tell with the French, but fortunately the stable lad led the Phaeton out into the yard at just the right moment.

I helped Dominique up into the seat and climbed up myself. I took the reins and a light touch from the whip had the horses edging us out into the road. The stables were one of the few establishments in the street that wasn’t a brothel and I hoped that meant that short notice rentals at odd times of the day were a common occurrence and also that the owner might know when to mind his own business. The traffic was light for a change but the roads were muddy and slick after the sleet. We took it steady and were soon travelling up the Rue de Temple towards our goal. We pulled into an alley behind the house on the Rue de la Corderie and I paid a boy a few coins to watch the horses. As Dominique and I walked around to the front of the house the Temple loomed across the street, a dark and forbidding shadow. The cellar was much as I had left it, the damp, the dust and the rats were undisturbed except for a couple of crates left for me by Henri’s men in the last room. I quickly checked that all I had asked for was there. It was.

I handed the first of four pistols to Dominique and we grimly and silently checked the flints, loaded them, and then made them safe. They were not fancy duelling pistols but rough, and hopefully dependable, cavalry weapons. We both worked quickly until we each had a pair of pistols ready but whereas I fervently hoped not to use mine the look in her eyes said that she would relish the chance to kill someone that clear and cold night.
 

The same crate that held the pistols also contained the uniform of a lieutenant of the Gendarmes à Cheval. Where Henri got it from I know not and knew not to ask. The other crate contained four small barrels of powder and a length of slow match. The powder was to be placed against the wall of the Temple, in the tunnel that ran from the cellar. The slow match was rated to burn at one foot per hour. I would need time to crawl back down the tunnel, dress in the gendarme uniform and get into position. Needless to say I did not want the powder going off whilst I was still in the tunnel so I cut a generous six inches. I took off my coat and cleared the entrance to the tunnel of the debris I had piled against it. Dominique was to go back to the phaeton and circle around to the opposite side of the prison to be ready to pick me and, hopefully, her brother up if things went to plan. If I could get other prisoners out as well then that would be a bonus.
 

I started to say something reassuring to Dominique but she grabbed my head in her hands and kissed me almost painfully on the mouth, I tasted the salt of her tears and buried my own hands deep in her hair. We came up for air after a couple of minutes and I looked into her eyes for a few moments, those enigmatic eyes, sometimes warm and loving, sometimes cold and forbidding. I kissed her once more and then crawled into the tunnel. I heard her leave behind me and I paused for a moment, gathering my thoughts and stealing myself for the task ahead.

The tunnel was as cramped and airless as I remembered and I was pushing a barrel of powder in front of me, so I was sweating even more this time. Also since flames and powder don’t mix I was crawling in complete darkness. I would only take a lantern into the tunnel when all the powder was in place and it was time to light the fuse. I am not one of those men who delights in anything that goes bang. I had blanched when the ex-Royal Engineer had held his explosives classes at Cadoudal’s little academy of espionage. The old sergeant treated gunpowder in a very cavalier fashion, notwithstanding the three fingers he had lost from one hand. He taught us how to lay a charge and the principles behind directing the explosive force where it would do most damage. He boasted that he had trained the men who had planted ‘the infernal machine’, the bomb that almost killed Napoleon on his way to the opera a few years before. I would have been more impressed had his trainees succeeded.

The fourth trip up the tunnel and back almost killed me, my hands and head were bleeding from numerous scrapes and I was soaked with sweat and as filthy as a mudlark. At least I had the luxury of taking the lantern the fifth time, although I was even slower because I was checking the ground minutely for traces of powder in case I dropped the lantern and set off a trail to the barrels. I eventually got to the end, placed the barrels hard against the stone wall and then placed loose stones against them to help direct some of the blast into and not away from the wall. I took the bung from one barrel and very gently inserted the slow match. I then gingerly opened the lantern and touched the candle to the other end, it began to burn with a deep red glow. I turned and crawled as quickly as I could down the tunnel for the last time, every second expecting the charge to go off early. Once back to the cellar I changed into the uniform as quickly as I could and was still sticking the pistols into my belt and fastening buckles as I ran up the cellar steps and out of the building. What would happen to the house when the explosion occurred I wasn’t at all sure but I knew I wanted to be far away from it.

I walked up the street, hastily wiping the dirt from my face with my sleeve, and looked at my watch by the light of an inn’s window. I realised it was the one I had stayed at and moved away quickly in case I was recognised and someone questioned why I was now in a gendarme’s uniform. I still had twenty minutes to wait, if the rating on the slow match was accurate. It wasn’t. I was still walking up to the prison gate when the earth shook and a huge roar came from behind me. I fell flat on my front and felt a blast of hot air pass over me. Stones fell on the road, glass shattered in windows all along the street and somewhere somebody screamed. I stood shakily, my ears ringing. I turned and looked down the walls of the Temple, all looked normal save for a swirling mass of dust and smoke that blotted out the night sky but as that settled I saw that a section of the wall had just collapsed. The old sapper would have been proud of me.

I ran towards the gate, shouting at the sentries, I didn’t have much time now if my plan was to work.

“Call out the guard, call out the guard,” I shouted again and again. Both sentries looked a bit bewildered and were just staring down the street. A corporal came out and I repeated my call to him, he did nothing until I had reached him and pulled him bodily into the prison.

“Call out the guard, you fool. You’ve got a breach in your wall. Royalists are upon us,” I tried to add urgency with a wild eyed and panicked expression, which wasn’t hard to emulate given that I was about to walk into the most feared prison in Europe.

The corporal awoke from his daze and started to shout at the sentries to do this or that. I couldn’t have cared less what they did as long as they ran around like headless chickens, which they duly proceeded to do. I contributed to all the shouting and pointing as I made my way through a small wicket gate in the inner wall. A stream of guards and officials were coming the other way. I directed them all to the exercise yard or the walls outside. I wanted as few as possible in my way. The inner courtyard had trees around the perimeter and the old castle keep with its four round towers in the middle. I ran across to a doorway in the keep and began to look for the prisoners.

The Temple had been added to and rebuilt many times in its history and the corridors inside were almost labyrinthine, and badly lit. I knew the prisoners I was looking for were held on the second floor of one of the towers but I was buggered if I could find a stairway. I met a guard running towards the yard and I barked at him to show me to Claude Calvet’s cell telling him the royalists had come for him and we had to make sure he was not released. He lead the way, scuttling in front of me with such evident terror that I guessed Lacrosse had told the guards what would happen if one of his prisoners escaped. We passed by a window that looked down on the exercise yard where the tunnel had meant to emerge and was gratified to see that as well as the collapsed wall several small fires had been started.

The smell of the interior of the Temple was beyond belief. A mix of sewer and slaughter house pervaded the air and it was all I could do not to retch. We went up two flights of spiral stairs before reaching a small landing with several doors, the guard pointed at one of the doors.

“Open it,” I said. He fumbled with his keys, trying three before getting the right one, giving me time take a pistol from belt. I heard the lock click and promptly hit the guard on the back of the head with the butt of the pistol before he could turn around. He grunted and staggered but did not fall so I had to hit him again, harder. He slumped against the wall and I stepped passt him and into the cell. The only light came from a taper burning in a holder on the wall. The room was bare apart from a foul bucket, and a wooden bed with one blanket on and a straw mattress. Something shivered underneath.