Miss Jacobson's Journey (4 page)

“Felix, you had best teach Isaac so that he can spell you on the box,” she said.

Once again they united to glare at her, but after a moment his lordship gave a reluctant nod. “We shall travel faster in the end if we can take turns,” he acknowledged. “We’ll give it a try once we’re past the city traffic.” He turned towards the horses then swung back. “But I’ve not the least notion how to get out of Paris.”

Jakob had foreseen the difficulty. The boy holding the horses was to show the way to the Orléans road. He scampered up onto the box and Lord Felix climbed up beside him. Isaac, more gentlemanly than the noble English gentleman, handed Miriam and Hannah into the carriage.

Seating herself facing the horses, Miriam smiled and thanked him. His lips tightened and without answering he turned away to exchange a last word with his employer’s brother.

Disconcerted by his obvious resentment--it was unfair of him to blame her when her presence was entirely Jakob’s fault!-- Miriam cast a questioning glance at Hannah, seated beside her. The abigail was about to speak when Isaac joined them. A moment later the berline jerked into motion and they rolled out of the yard.

Despite its unprepossessing exterior, the carriage was well-sprung. Inside, there was less space than Miriam had expected, no doubt because of the hollow walls, but the cushions, though worn, were surprisingly comfortable. She leaned back against the squabs. They felt all the softer when she recalled the deplorable seats in the diligence that had brought them to Paris.

She had not expected to leave the city by the Orléans gate, on a dangerous journey to Spain, with two strangers who made no bones about their dislike of her and each other. And all of them with Swiss passports!

“Isaac, how did Herr Rothschild obtain Swiss passports?” she asked.

“Anything can be bought if you can pay the price,” he told her curtly.

“He must have had them ready and added our names at the last minute. I suppose the papers are in order for leaving Paris? They will be checked at the gate.”

“I have a pass signed by both the Finance Minister and Savary, the Minister of Police.”

“The Rothschilds bought the minister and the police chief, too?” Miriam was skeptical.

“I believe not, though the police prefect of Calais was handsomely bribed to turn a blind eye. No, these papers were obtained through the Minister of Finance, who is delighted to encourage the flow of gold from England to France. The Rothschilds are very thorough, Miss Jacobson.”

“And very hard to resist! But you must call me Miriam, since we are supposed to be brother and sister.”

“Not by my choice, I assure you!”

His vehemence reawakened her curiosity. Surely there was more to his resentment than mere annoyance that she was to travel as his guide. She studied his averted face, racking her brains to think where she might have seen him before. How could she have forgotten so unlikely an event as having deeply offended an attractive young man?

Enlightenment failed to come. “Have we met before, sir?” she ventured to enquire. Hannah, looking dismayed, laid a cautionary hand on her arm.

Isaac turned from the window, his expression compounded of bitterness and incredulity. “You don’t remember?”

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“It is not for me to remind you,” he said stiffly.

She would have pressed him, despite Hannah’s warning, but just then there came a shout of “Halte là, citoyen!” The berline stopped. The boy who had showed the way scampered past on one side and a moment later a uniformed figure in a cockaded shako appeared at the opposite door.

Miriam clutched Hannah’s hand. Perhaps their passes were in order, but suppose the man decided to search the coach? The Benjamins had mentioned that the police were always on the look-out for smugglers, though she thought goods were usually smuggled into the city, to avoid the city taxes.

Isaac let down the window.

“
Monsieur, ‘dame, vos papiers, s’il vous plaît.”
The soldier took the package Isaac handed him, studied the papers, and looked suspiciously around the interior of the vehicle.

“
Je suis Cohen. Voici ma soeur et sa bonne,”
Isaac said in passable French with a strong accent, “and our cousin Rauschberg is driving. We are not rich aristos, you understand, to hire a coachman.”

The man stepped back to examine Lord Felix on the box, sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. “
Vous êtes suisses?
Then that explains itself.
Passez, messieurs.”

The carriage rolled onward, across the hundred-yard space of demolished buildings intended to prevent smugglers tunnelling into the city. Miriam let out her breath in a long sigh.

“God be praised,” said Hannah.

They continued in silence for a few minutes, then Isaac asked irritably, “What did he mean, ‘
Ça s’explique’
?”

“Our being Swiss explains our peculiarities, especially where language is concerned. It was very clever of Herr Rothschild to provide Swiss passports. Every valley in Switzerland has its own dialect of French or German, often mutually incomprehensible, so no one will wonder if we speak Yiddish, or French with a peculiar accent.” At once she wished she hadn’t criticized his accent, however indirectly, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Jakob told us you speak good French and know France and Spain. I suppose you are well acquainted with Switzerland also?” He sounded disbelieving.

“As a matter of fact, I am.” She would have continued, pleased that at least he was showing some interest, but the carriage suddenly halted again. With a gasp, she swung round to peer out of the open window, fearing to see troops galloping after them.

“Cohen, come up here!” came a shout from the box.

Miriam shuddered. “For pity’s sake, tell him not to use English in public, and to call you Isaac.”

Not deigning to reply, he stepped out.

As the berline started off once more, Miriam turned to Hannah. “So I have met him before, and you recall the occasion?”

“Child, child, he is the young man the matchmaker brought to your father’s house.”

Miriam stared at her, aghast. “Oh no! He can’t be!”

“How could you forget him?”

“I was a mere girl. That was nine years ago and I have seen so much, met so many people, since then. But are you sure? Isaac Cohen is not an uncommon name. That boy was a fright, weedy and stooped and colourless, and this man is... well, quite different.”

“After all, he’s had nine years to grow up, too.”

“It cannot be him. He was a Talmudic scholar, studying to be a rabbi, and excessively wealthy besides. Why should he be working for Nathan Rothschild?”

“It’s all in the hands of God, Miss Miriam. If it’s fated, it’ll come to pass. But rich or poor, it’s the same fellow, for sure.”

“He did seem familiar, right from the first.” She laughed ruefully. “If he had been as good-looking then as he is now, I might have had second thoughts about running off with Uncle Amos. I was positively odious to him, was I not? No wonder he loathes me. I don’t suppose he will ever forgive me.”

  Chapter 4

 So the girl didn’t even recall having insulted him before her entire family! Isaac’s anger at the memory of his humiliation grew and he was relieved to escape her presence, however temporarily. His long legs making short work of the climb up to the berline’s box, he settled at Roworth’s left side on the hard wooden seat.

“How could you be so crackbrained as to shout out in English?” he rebuked his lordship. “You’ll get us all arrested. And since we are now cousins you’d best accustom yourself to using first names.”

“I made sure no one was near before I called you.” Roworth’s voice was as cold as his aristocratic face. “Now, if I am to attempt to teach you to drive, you’ll start by observing carefully.” With the slightest flick of the reins he set the horses in motion.

Isaac observed. Barely taut reins in the left hand, whip in the right, guiding the team looked not much more difficult than riding. Wielding the whip was doubtless an acquired skill, but Roworth seemed not to use it.

Ahead the road stretched straight into the distance between poplars just coming into leaf. Though they were still close to Paris, the only traffic was a carrier’s wagon coming towards them. It had rained in the night, just enough to damp down the dust, but now the midday sun shone in a cloudless sky. The fields on either side, still cultivated in the ancient strips long abandoned in England, formed a precise, rectangular patchwork of green and brown.

The scene, even the lack of vehicles so close to the capital, was very unEnglish. However objectionable his travelling companions, Isaac was glad of the opportunity to see more of a foreign land.

The rear of another slow-moving, heavy-laden cart loomed ahead. “Watch,” said Roworth sharply. “Not the horses, my hands.”

His whip hand assisting with the reins, he directed the team around the cart. Isaac quelled a grudging admiration for the neat way he accomplished the manoeuvre. After all it was not much of a feat, since they were moving at not more than eight miles an hour and the cart crawled along at less than a walking pace.

Roworth embarked on a patronizing explanation of draught reins and coupling reins, tugs, traces, buckles and bits and curb chains.

“Unless you have a competent groom with you, you must always supervise the harnessing of your cattle. A badly harnessed team will pull unevenly and soon wear itself out, besides being difficult to control. I always see to the harness myself before a curricle race,” he went on with some enthusiasm, then paused and added bitterly, “that is, I used to.”

No doubt he lost his curricle to a wager, Isaac guessed contemptuously. A typical spoiled scion of the nobility with no consideration as to who paid for his extravagance.

“Shall I take the reins now?” he asked.

“No. Stopping again will just waste time, you’ll have to wait until we reach the first stage. In the meantime, repeat what I’ve told you about the harness, if you can remember.”

Isaac was word perfect, but he suspected that actually dealing with the tangle of straps and rings would be another matter altogether.

His thoughts drifted back to the infuriating female inside the berline. Wealthy, beautiful--he could still feel the shock of delight that had overwhelmed him at his first sight of his prospective bride--Miss Miriam Jacobson ought to have easily found another husband after brutally rejecting him. Instead, it seemed, she had been wandering across Europe, shabbily dressed, with none but her maid to accompany her.

The Jacobsons were still pillars of London Jewry, and Isaac couldn’t believe they had cast off their only daughter, their only child. Miriam was still beautiful; her mahogany-red hair, glimpsed under her bonnet, unfaded; her pale complexion translucent as fine porcelain. Despite the years and the dowdy clothes, her loveliness had once again made his heart jump, before he realized who she was. She should be married and raising a family, not guiding an expedition fraught with danger across an enemy country.

He wondered how Jakob Rothschild had persuaded her to set off on a long journey with a man who detested her and another who despised all Jews.

In fact, Isaac himself was strongly tempted to walk back to Paris and quit the Rothschilds’ service without further ado. He foresaw nothing but trouble. However, persistent by nature, he was unwilling to give up on a job he had undertaken. Besides, Nathan Rothschild had been good to him and deserved his loyalty, and last but not least, delivering the gold to Viscount Wellington would strike a blow for England. Roworth might make it plain that he didn’t consider a Jew to be a true Englishman, but Isaac was as patriotic as any man born and bred in Britain.

Whatever her faults, England was his country. Change must come from within, not be imposed from without by a bloody-handed tyrant like the Emperor Napoleon.

“Bloody hell!” swore Roworth as the berline’s wheel dropped into a pothole and jolted out again. “You’d think the Emperor of most of Europe would spend some of his ill-gotten gains on repairing his roads.”

Inside the carriage, Miriam groaned. “The road has been amazingly good so far. I knew it couldn’t last.”

“It’s not so bad in a decently sprung carriage,” Hannah consoled her. “Just be glad we’re not in the diligence again, praise God.”

“How right you are. And we shall be able to get out and stretch our limbs at the posting houses. We’ve been travelling at least two hours, at a reasonable pace compared to the diligence. Surely we must be near the end of a stage by now.” She leaned forward to look out of the window. “Yes, I believe I see an inn ahead. I trust that toplofty lord has the sense to stop there.”

The toplofty lord did indeed have sufficient sense to pull into the yard of the Auberge du Chapeau-rouge, a low, whitewashed building that appeared to be deserted. As Miriam opened the carriage door, Lord Felix swung down from the box and a vacuous-faced ostler slouched out of the stables, chewing a straw.

“Catter newvo chevalls,” called his lordship.

The ostler gaped at him, the straw falling unnoticed from his gap-toothed mouth.

Light dawned on Miriam. “Four new horses--
quatre nouveaux chevaux!
I must go and interpret for him.”

“Nay, child, let the men work it out for themselves, God willing. They’re fools, to be sure, but best indulge them unless they’re in such a pickle they can’t find their own way out.”

In fact, Isaac had joined Felix and in his painstaking, accented French was instructing the ostler to provide a fresh team. Felix was obviously disgruntled by his intervention, especially when it proved successful.

The man nodded and said wisely, “Ah, you’ll be foreigners, without doubt.”

“Swiss,” Isaac confirmed.

“But why did monsieur expect me to understand German?” He shrugged and, not waiting for an answer, turned away to call another ostler to help.

Miriam could tell that Isaac was trying to suppress a grin. Hoping to preserve the peace she stepped forward, too late.

Isaac’s grin escaped. “The fellow thought you were speaking German.”