Jack Chiltern's Wife (1999) (22 page)

‘If they succeed.’

‘Even if they do not, the sloop will wait two days for Jack.’

‘When is the attempt to be made?’

‘I was not told the exact date. The Minister told me he had already given me more information than he should have done and we must be content with that.’

‘Yes, I understand.’ But it was so very difficult to accept and her imagination was already running riot with all the things that could go wrong.

He smiled reassuringly. ‘We will go home tomorrow and wait and pray for Jack’s safe return. And Kitty …’ He paused. ‘We will say nothing of this to anyone, do you understand?’

‘Of course.’

‘Not even the Countess. Especially not the Countess. We must shield her from worry, she has had to endure enough already. Her country torn apart by bloodshed and her son so confused and unhappy, he must expunge it by flinging himself into ever more dangerous situations. But now he has you and a chance to settle down. To be honest, I am a little peeved with him for volunteering to go. He had no business to leave you so soon after your wedding.’

‘I expect he thought it was his duty.’

‘Duty, bah! His duty is to you and his family. He is my only son and heir and I want to see a grandson before I call in my accounts. If I lost him …’

‘Oh, pray that you do not,’ Kitty said, reaching out to touch his arm.

He took her hand from his sleeve and squeezed it. ‘This is no way to go on, is it? We will be patient and cheerful.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Can you not call me Father? I should like that very much.’

‘Yes, Father,’ she said, shyly. She was beginning to love this man and the thought of disappointing him as a daughter-in-law weighed heavily on her. She sensed that he needed her, that her presence was a comfort to him in the absence of his beloved son. ‘We will go home.’

If only Jack would come back, if only they could somehow learn to get along together.

The forger had been busy again and Jack now had a new identity. His cover as Jacques Faucon was blown. Now he was Pierre Bandol, a gunsmith. Because there had been mass conscription of all young men to fight the war that was sapping the country’s life-blood along with that spilled daily in the Place de la Guillotine, he was obliged to pretend to be lame and had practised a strange limping gait, as if one leg were longer than the other. It was tiring, but it did mean he was left alone when recruits were rounded up and marched off to be soldiers.

The Luxembourg and Tuilleries Gardens had been turned into massive forges and the fires were kept going night and day, making weapons. In the buildings nearby women were set to work stitching tents and uniforms, and children were making bandages. Men too old to fight were directed to repair roads and public places and encouraged to preach patriotism, the invincibility of the Republic and the hatred of kings.

The need for more and more weapons made it easy for Jack to find work, to listen to gossip, to find out exactly where in the Conciergerie the Queen was held. It was becoming even more urgent that something was done because there was open talk of putting her on trial for treason. But it seemed no one had any communication with the prisoner. She was kept in solitary confinement and even her guards had guards and were watched.

It was the end of August before any progress could be made. After weeks of careful nurturing the prison administrator, a former lemonade seller called Michonis, was persuaded to let the Queen have a visitor.

The Chevalier de Rougeville, who had led the Queen to safety from the attack on the Tuilleries just before the royal family were taken to the Temple prison, was allowed to have a few words with Antoinette and left her a message hidden in a carnation. ‘We have men and money at your service. I will come Friday.’

‘Now, we wait,’ he said to Jack and the other conspirators when he met them afterwards in the cellars of a wine merchant. ‘And pray she found the message. I was watched all the time and could give no indication that she should examine the flower.’

It was one of her guards, a man named Gilbert and a distant cousin of Jack’s, who brought her reply, pricked out with a pin on a scrap of paper. ‘I am watched. I speak to no one. I trust you. I shall come.’

The scene was set for one of the most daring attempts of rescue Jack had ever been involved in. Shortly before eleven on Friday the second of September, dressed as a guard, he accompanied Michonis and Gilbert to the Queen’s cell, deep inside the prison.

The room was only a few feet square, sparsely furnished with three beds, one for the Queen, one for her woman and one for the two guards who never left her. It had no fireplace and no lighting, save for a glimmer of light which came from a lamp in the courtyard. It was bitterly cold and had a sour-sweet smell of medicines and herbal concoctions, having once been the prison pharmacy.

Jack was shocked that the queen of a great country like France should be treated so harshly, but he could say nothing, nor show her any politeness or good manners. He did not speak at all and neither did Gilbert.

‘I have orders to conduct the Widow Capet back to the Temple,’ Michonis told the guards.

Flanked by Gilbert and Jack, dressed as a gendarme, and preceded by Michonis, the Queen left the cell and began to walk down a long corridor and through several gates, each of which had to be unlocked. So far so good. There was only one more to be unlocked and then they would be at the main exit, where Rougeville waited with a carriage. Nervously Michonis fumbled with the keys, but at last they were through and could see the dim outline of a vehicle in the courtyard.

Suddenly Gilbert stopped. ‘What ails you, man?’ Jack demanded.

‘I saw something,’ he whispered, shaking from head to toe with fear. ‘A guard with a musket, hiding in the shadows.’

Jack looked. ‘There is no one there. Come on, we have no time to lose.’

‘I can’t. It is not right …’

Jack was all for knocking him down and continuing without him, but Michonis himself seemed to lose his nerve. He placed himself before the Queen, who appeared to be on the verge of fainting. ‘Go back.’ He glanced towards the main gate as he spoke. The sentries there were watching them intently, their
muskets off their shoulders, ready for use. ‘Our bluff has been called. Go back,
citoyenne
, back to your room.’

The Queen gave one despairing look at Jack, turned and walked slowly back through the gates they had just left, followed by Michonis and Gilbert. The sentries moved forward, muskets pointing. Jack could not go back into the prison; his only hope of escape lay with Rougeville, who was pacing impatiently beside the carriage, wondering what had delayed them.

He strode towards the sentries, hoping they had not recognised the Queen. ‘A slight hitch,’ he said, and passed them at a run. They levelled their muskets and called to him to halt. ‘Get into the coach!’ he yelled at Rougeville, as bullets spattered round him. Rougeville, startled, ran back to the coach and scrambled inside, holding the door open for Jack, while the driver whipped up the horses.

They rattled out of the courtyard followed by musket fire, across the bridge and into the maze of alleys on the north side of the river. Behind them they could hear shouts of command and the sound of horses in pursuit.

‘What happened in there?’ Rougeville demanded.

‘Gilbert got cold feet.’ Jack had been hit by a musket ball and his arm was hurting him. ‘We were within a hair’s-breadth of pulling it off and the spineless fool has to go and be frightened by a shadow. Michonis realised the game was up and quietly took the Queen back where she came from.’

‘Damn! We’ll never have another chance to save her. They’ll be doubly watchful now. Did they recognise you?’

‘I don’t know, but it is of little consequence. I am not going to go anywhere for a little while.’

Alerted by his tone, his companion turned to look at him. ‘You’ve been wounded?’

‘Yes. And please do not suggest taking me to a hospital.’

‘You need attention.’

‘I’ve had all the attention I need, I thank you, sir. I’ll get out here.’ He put his head out to tell the driver to stop. ‘You save yourself.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Best you don’t know.’ He opened the door and yelled at the driver. ‘I told you to stop, damn you. At least slow down.’

Reluctantly the man pulled the horses up, but long before the wheels had stopped turning Jack had jumped into the road. He stumbled and put his hand against a wall to save himself, jarring his injured arm, forcing a grunt of pain from him. The coach rattled on and he dashed into an alley as their pursuers passed.

Ten minutes later he half-walked, half-fell into Jean Clavier’s furniture workshop among the wood shavings and chair legs.

‘Jack! What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’ his friend demanded. ‘And wounded too. Well, do not say I did not warn you. Come on, let me get you upstairs. Thérèse will bind you up.’ He put Jack’s good arm about his shoulder and helped him up the stairs and into his living quarters. ‘But do not tell us what happened. We do not want to know.’ He gave a cracked laugh, as he guided him through the sitting room into a bedroom beyond it. ‘Not that it would help much if a wounded man were seen coming in. There is a new law. Anyone can denounce anyone anonymously. They call it the Law of the Suspect.’

‘I know. I do not ask you to hide me. Simply bind me up and let me be on my way.’

Jean let him down onto a bed. ‘Where do you go?’

‘Home.’ The sound of the word conjured up visions of England, of Chiltern Hall, of his parents and Kitty. Most of all, of Kitty. He had been a fool not to tell her he loved her, a bigger fool not to stay at home where it was safe and where they could learn to love each other. She had a great capacity for love, he knew that without being told; all he had to do was make her fix some of it on him.

Edward Lampeter on
Lady Lucia
was standing by off the coast of Brittany, watching for the signal to send a boat ashore to pick up the Queen and her rescuers. They had failed, but he must still make it to the rendezvous and then home. Home and Kitty.

Thérèse was digging around in his wound, trying to find the musket ball, and the pain was making him sick and dizzy. Jean handed him a bottle of cognac and he gulped at it. It dulled the edge of the pain. Kitty hovered in a kind of fog just out of his reach. He lifted an arm feebly beckoning her to come to him. Thérèse put it back under the covers.

‘To England?’ she demanded. ‘How will you get there? You will be lucky if you do not catch a fever from this wound.’

‘No, no fever …’ He yelped as the ball came out and Jean fetched the poker from the fire to cauterize the wound.

‘Be quiet, would you have the whole
armée revolutionaire
down on us? Drink some more brandy.’

‘You’re a hard woman Thérèse Clavier,’ he murmured, half-drunk, half-fainting. ‘But an angel.’

‘You can stay here tonight, tomorrow you go, understand?’

‘Yes.’ He rolled his head towards Jean. ‘Get me a cart.’

He was far from fit to travel the next day, but it was not because of Thérèse’s insistence that he went, but his own determination to reach the coast. They dressed him up as an old woman, an old woman with a fever, so that no one would come near him, then they loaded him on to the back of an empty farm cart and covered him with sacks which had once held potatoes. The stench made him feel sicker than ever.

The owner drove him through the
barrière
at Saint-Denis and took him to the farmhouse on the Calais road, where, having been paid generously in gold coin, he left his passenger to the tender mercy of Lucie and her mother.

The jolting had made his wound bleed again and he was only semi-conscious. It took all their strength to haul him from the downstair room where the farmer had dumped him like a sack of potatoes, up to his own bedroom, by which time he was past caring.

Lucie, who loved him, would not let him die. She would take any risk for him and set off for Paris to buy salve and ointment and laudanum for his pain, hiding her purchases in her petticoats in case she was stopped. She did not go through the barriers, but out over a broken wall and through a cemetery. As soon as she was clear she began to run.

He was worse by the time she arrived. Her mother had been sitting at his side all day, bathing his brow with cool water, giving him sips of water to drink, and praying loudly to every saint she could think of who might help. ‘He has been calling Kitty’s name in his delirium,’ she told her daughter, when she returned. ‘And he thrashed about and made his wound bleed. What shall we do if he dies? How shall we get word to his family?’

‘He is not going to die,
Maman
. I will not let him. Come let us wash him down and dress that wound again with this new ointment and see if we can get him to swallow a little laudunum.’

It was three days before he came to his senses; by then he knew it was useless to go to the coast. Edward Lampeter had his orders not to wait above two days and he would obey those orders. Now everyone would know the attempt to rescue Antoinette had failed and they would assume he had died. He might do so even now, if news of his whereabouts reached the Revolutionary government.

He must escape, if only for the sake of Lucie and her mother, who would forfeit their lives for giving him succour; it would take only a malicious neighbour to denounce them. All the ports
were blocked. Save one. Toulon was in the hands of Admiral Hood. Five hundred miles away. Five hundred miles across enemy terrain, and this time without the woman whose company had delighted him before. Did he have the strength for it?

I
t was September and the leaves were beginning to turn colour in the woods on the estate before the news reached Chiltern Hall that the attempt to rescue Antoinette had failed.

Kitty had gone downstairs to breakfast as she was in the habit of doing, though Lady Beauworth rarely rose before midday. She found his lordship alone, eating toast and reading his mail. Bidding him good morning, she seated herself at the table to be served her own breakfast.

‘This is a letter from Captain Lampeter,’ he told her. ‘He docked at Portsmouth two days ago.’

Her heart began to beat so fast she could hardly breathe. The sloop had been in two days, long enough for Jack to have reached home if he had been on board. Where was he? Had he had taken one risk too many? ‘Jack?’ she queried. ‘Oh, tell me he is all right. Tell me has has only gone to London to report and will be here soon.’

‘I only wish that were so.’

‘What does Edward say?’ She could only pick at her food; her stomach was too queasy in the mornings to eat heartily.

‘Only that the sloop waited a full twenty-four hours longer than the allotted time, but there was no signal from the shore. They had to leave without any of our people.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything, does it?’ she said, clutching at straws. ‘There could be any number of reasons why he missed the rendezvous. It is early days yet.’

‘Of course,’ his lordship agreed, sounding positively cheerful. ‘If the Revolutionaries had captured him, they would not have kept silent about it, the French papers would have been full of it. An English peer, trying to free the Queen! My goodness, the whole world would have heard of it by now.’

‘What shall we tell her ladyship?’

‘Nothing. Not yet. I shall invite Captain Lampeter to visit us. He will perhaps be able to tell us more.’

But when Edward came there was little else he could tell them. He had landed Jack secretly on the coast of Brittany where the remnants of a counter-revolution had not yet been entirely eradicated. ‘There were sympathisers there waiting for him,’ he said.

‘And that was the last you saw of him?’ Kitty asked. They were talking in the library where his lordship had received his visitor. It was afternoon and her ladyship had taken the carriage to call on friends. Kitty had declined to go with her, preferring to stroll round the grounds. Seeing Edward arriving, she had hurried back to the house to join the two men, knowing her father-in-law would not exclude her.

‘Yes.’

‘So you do not know if he even reached Paris?’ his lordship asked.

‘No, but we know the attempt to free Antoinette was made and one must suppose he had a hand in it. It was his mission, after all.’ He paused, knowing something more was expected of him, but unable to give them the reassurance they needed. ‘It is a pity it failed. If it had succeeded, it would have been a great coup and every exiled Frenchman would have rallied to her. The
other great powers might have renewed their efforts to rid France of the scourge. As it is …’ He shrugged.

‘Do you think Jack stayed behind to try again?’ Kitty asked him.

‘It is possible, but very unlikely. The Queen will be more closely guarded than ever and the latest intelligence is that she is to be tried for treason. Our sources say it was talked of at a secret session of the Committee of Public Safety, but as the man most wanting the Queen’s execution, besides being a
procureur
of the Paris Commune, is also the editor of
Père Duchesne
, a popular newspaper, it did not remain a secret very long.

‘He is reported to have said he promised his readers Antoinette’s head and, if there was any further delay in giving it to them, he would go and cut it off himself. The Public Prosecutor has been called in to make a case against her.’

‘Have they one?’ Kitty asked.

‘I don’t know. The report is non-committal, but no doubt they will fabricate one.’

‘Jack is missing, not dead,’ Kitty said stubbornly. ‘He has simply gone to ground. He knows where he can be safe.’

With Lucie, perhaps?

The thought of Lucie and Jack together in that shabby but comfortable farmhouse filled her with jealousy. Lucie loved Jack, she had made no secret of it. How long before Jack, in hiding and cut off from home, came to reciprocate that feeling? He was not made of stone, he had told her so, had demonstrated it in no uncertain way.

Lucie had known Jack longer than she had; Lucie had made no demands on him, she had simply given him her love. And if Jack chose to ignore his clandestine marriage … What had he said? ‘How do you know that, in these heathen times, a wife cannot be discarded as easily as a grubby cravat?’ Oh, she did not want to think of that. She would not.

They had unfinished business, she and Jack, and he must come home. He must. She had put their quarrel firmly behind her, pretending it was nothing but a tiff, her innocent reaction to the act of love which she had not understood, and she wanted to tell him that. She wanted to tell him that the result of that one night’s union, unnerving as it had been, was to be a child. And the waiting was tearing her to shreds.

Her theory that Jack had stayed behind to make a second attempt to free the Queen was blown away a month later when they learned she had been tried and executed.

‘A week ago on October the sixteenth,’ his lordship said, tapping the newspaper which had been delivered that morning. ‘She was accused of conspiring with her brother, King Leopold of Austria, against France and sending him money; organising a counter-revolution; forcing Louis to veto the deportation of priests; having a hand in appointing her husband’s ministers favourable to herself and trying to start a civil war.’

‘C’est incroyable
,’ Justine said. They were seated at nuncheon and this time the Countess was included in the discussion. ‘‘Ow can anyone believe that nonsense? Why, she is nothing but an empty-headed pleasure seeker. I ‘ave met her and anyone less likely to meddle in politics I cannot imagine.’

‘They tried at the preliminary examination to trap her into a confession, but she came out of it very well,’ her husband went on, referring to the report. ‘At the trial itself the prosecution maintained that she had influenced the King into doing whatever she wished, that she made use of his weak character to carry out her evil deeds. They called dozens of witnesses, including her son. His evidence was vile.’

‘Poor little Louis loved his mother,’ the Countess said. ‘‘E must ‘ave been coerced into giving evidence.’

‘Was she not allowed to say anything in her own defence?’ Kitty asked, remembering her own so-called trial.

‘She was allowed to speak at the end, but it did no good. The jury took only an hour to find her guilty and she was sent to the guillotine the very next day. The report says it took nearly an hour for the tumbril to reach the Place de la Guillotine because of the press of the crowd. She had to be helped out of the cart and up the ladder to the scaffold. Four minutes later she was dead and her head held up for all to see. According to this, the crowd cheered themselves hoarse.’

Kitty shuddered. ‘Whatever is the world coming to? Where is their Christianity?’

‘Denounced, along with everything else.’ He sounded weary and dispirited. ‘Sunday has been abolished, the churches closed or turned into what they call Temples of Reason.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘It is bizarre. All the months now have thirty days divided into ten-day periods.
Décades
, they call them. And they have new names. October is called
brumaire
now.’

‘I cannot imagine anything more likely to cause chaos,’ his wife said. ‘Surely the people will rise up against that? They are most of them Catholic, they will want to say Mass and go to confession.’

‘They will do it secretly,’ Kitty said. ‘The priest who conducted the marriage ceremony for us at Haute Saint-Gilbert did it in secret because he was one of those who would not take the new oath, but he said it was no less legal.’

‘When Jack gets back we’ll make doubly sure,’ his lordship said. ‘We will have another ceremony.’

‘Oh,’ she said, shocked. ‘Do you think it wasn’t legal?’

He smiled and reached out to pat her hand. ‘Of course it was, my dear. You and Jack believed it was and that is good enough for me. Think no more of it.’

But now the doubt had been planted in her head, Kitty could not shake it off. Had Jack known the marriage wasn’t legal? Was that why he was able to say they could have it annulled and why he was so angry with her on their wedding night? Now,
added to the worries over Jack’s absence was added the anguish of a marriage that was no marriage at all and of bringing an illegitimate child into the world. How could she be sanguine about that? She had not told anyone of her condition, but it would soon become obvious, and then what? Would they accept the child?

‘Now perhaps Jack will come ‘ome,’ the Countess said, then smiled when she saw the startled look her husband and daughter-in-law gave each other. ‘Do not look so surprised. Did you think I did not know ‘e ‘ad gone back to France?’

Kitty smiled. ‘We hoped to save you distress.’

‘What about your own distress, Kitty? You must be as worried and afraid as I am.’

‘No, Mama, I am not afraid,’ she lied. ‘Jack will come back soon. I have no doubt he has gone south to Toulon, as we did before.’

‘Then perhaps ‘e has gone to Haute Saint-Gilbert and will bring us news of Anne-Marie.’

Kitty agreed, not daring to say what was in her mind. With the whole of France undoubtedly searching for the conspirators, Toulon, in British hands, was an obvious place to look for them. And if Jack’s identity was known, they would also be watching Haute Saint-Gilbert and Malincourt.

For his lordship’s sake and for the Countess’s, she had to sound confident, but inside she was crying.

As the autumn days shortened towards winter and still there was no news of Jack, hope began to die inch by inch.

France was slipping into anarchy. According to some reports reaching England, the Law of the Suspect was being used to feed the guillotine, often several at a time, and those who had been at the forefront of the Revolution were themselves being put to death. No aristocrat was safe and even men of letters and science were obliged to watch their tongues and be continually
looking over their shoulders. What hope had a foreign agent of staying undiscovered?

The Earl wrote frequently to the War Department, but they had nothing to tell him, except that the situation in France was so confused that there was little information coming through. ‘We are forced to the conclusion that Viscount Chiltern has been apprehended and may have met his death,’ they wrote. ‘Until lines of communication are reopened, we cannot confirm this but must counsel you against false hope.’

Kitty, in her fourth month of pregnancy, was in despair. Had Jack died? Had he given his life for a foreign queen, not knowing she loved him, that he was to be a father? Knowing about the baby helped the Earl and Countess to bear their loss and Kitty herself was a little comforted by the small being growing inside her. She must live for her child, watch him grow healthy and happy and pray that the dreadful deeds being perpetrated against humanity in France would never be repeated.

She corresponded with James and Nanette frequently, and that November they arrived for a short visit. Nanette, too, was expecting a baby, though she was not as far advanced in pregnancy as Kitty, and the two young women were able to talk and even laugh a little over it so that the dreary atmosphere was lightened a little.

James and the Earl talked a great deal about the war with France, expressing the hope that, when it was won, the monarchy could be restored in France and that it would be safe for Nanette to visit her parents, or for them to come on a visit to England. She worried about them constantly.

They were two weeks into their stay when everyone’s rest was disturbed at eight one morning by a loud knocking at the front door. Apart from the servants, Kitty was the only one already astir.

She had slept badly and had decided to dress and go down to the kitchen rather than summon a maid to bring her a dish of hot chocolate. She paused on the stairs as Fletcher, slow and ponderous, went to open the door.

The man who stood on the step was tall and gangly, dressed in a plain dark suit of clothes over which he wore a cloak and a black tricorne hat, both of which glistened with damp. It had rained during the night and now a thin mist covered the ground and hung in the air.

‘Captain Trent!’ Kitty cried, dashing down the rest of the stairs. ‘How good it is to see you! Have you news of Jack?’

‘My lady.’ The one-time roadmender bowed to her, while his cloak dripped on the tiled floor. ‘No, I am afraid not, but I have brought someone to see you.’

He turned back to a hired coach which stood on the drive and opened its door to assist a lady to alight. She was of middle years dressed in a rich taffeta gown with a woollen riding cloak, both of which were creased and travel-stained. The long feathers in her high-crowned hat drooped in the damp air. It was a moment or two before Kitty recognised the Marchioness de Saint-Gilbert.

‘My lady!’

Anne-Marie smiled feebly. ‘
Bonjour
, Kitty.’

Although it was only a few months since Kitty had last seen her, she had aged. She seemed smaller, shrunken almost; her eyes were dull and there were deep lines about her mouth.

Kitty ran forward to help her into the house. ‘Come in. Come into the morning parlour. I believe there is already a fire in there. Take off your cloak. Fletcher will have it dried for you. You too, Captain Trent.’ Then, to Fletcher, ‘Please tell the Earl and Countess and Mrs Harston we have visitors.’

She led the Marchioness and the Captain into the parlour and invited them to sit down by the fire. ‘I’ll have some refreshment brought in. You must be cold and hungry. Lord and Lady Beauworth
will be here soon.’ She rang a bell and ordered coffee and food to be prepared, then sat down, biting her lip in an effort not to bombard them with questions.

‘Nanette is here,’ she said in French. ‘Did you know?’