The Emperor's Assassin (36 page)

The shorebound boat could be seen clearly now, black
hulled and bobbing among the small crests. Sweeps dipped and pulled in unison, lifting up into the air, then dipping again. Clearly the men in the boat suspected nothing amiss. Morton almost cried out to warn them, but over the waves and wind and distance he was sure they would not hear, and even if they did, they would not heed his warning.

The boat was barely thirty feet out, the oars backing now, controlling the craft as it slid toward the shore. He could see the men in her now: four at the oars, a man at the tiller, and in the bow a small man in a greatcoat, his collar up against the night.

Morton pushed himself harder, realising he would not reach them before the two parties converged. All he could hear was his own ragged breathing and the sound of his feet, hardly anything more.

A few yards out in the rising waves the boat ran aground, and as two of the oarsmen jumped out into the surf, the men from the shore waded out to meet them. One started to raise his arm.

Stumbling to a halt, Morton tried to call out, but his “Bow Street!” emerged more as a gasp than as a bellow. He raised a pistol and fired into the air, fearing at this distance that he would hit some other, perhaps Napoleon himself.

But he was ignored, or not even heard. The man from the beach levelled his pistol. A spurt of fire, the sound of a shot echoing off the cliff and out over the waves. The man seated in the bow tumbled back, the horrified faces of the oarsmen caught in the firelight.

“Dem!” panted Morton. Raising his other gun, he risked firing at them. But the distance was still too great, and his ball hissed wide. The closest man looked now toward Morton. Then he and his companions wheeled
and ran, without glancing back, disappearing into the dark.

“Bow Street!” Morton bawled more audibly now, and Presley, coming up behind, added his great bellow.

But there was nothing to be done here. Whatever harm the attackers had inflicted could no longer be helped, and Morton's fury was up. He and Presley raced past the men milling about the boat, through the small island of flickering light, and then into near-total darkness. Morton cursed himself for glancing at the fire, which danced before his eyes now wherever he looked.

But then, from not far ahead, a pistol fired. Morton heard the ball cut through the air between them. Even without looking back, he realised the fire burned bright behind them. He reached out and pushed Presley toward the cliff.

“They can see us against the flame!” he shouted. “Into the shadows!”

Up against the cliff they found soft sand, which slowed them, their chests heaving. Ahead Morton could see cliffs lifting up and along their base a white fringe of waves. They looked anxiously about, searching, their eyes moment by moment adjusting.

“There, Morton! Do you see? Someone moving.”

And Morton saw. A flickering shadow, skittering along the base of the cliff wall to their left. He instantly crouched, and Presley imitated him.

“Good man,” Morton said, his breath coming easier now. “We'll have the bloody villains yet. But now we can go more cautiously. They'll not be able to climb up here. It appears too perilous.”

Morton loaded his discharged pistols, and they crept forward. Along the cliff base the water swept in around their knees, the motion of it disorienting in the faint
light. Shadows were everywhere. Rocks stood up from the surf, tall as men. Morton found his footing carefully. A fall here would drown his pistols, and then they would be helpless. They were already outnumbered three to two.

A muzzle-flash flared ten yards ahead, and a ball cracked against the cliff by Presley's knee. The young Runner raised a pistol and fired back—at what Morton wasn't sure. But perhaps it would keep their enemies from growing too brave.

Presley hurriedly reloaded while Morton peered hard into the obscurity. But then, to his amazement, he heard a small sound from
above
. Raising his eyes, he thought he saw some dark movement on the cliff ahead, not twenty feet up. So they were trying to climb after all. Be it on their own heads. He raised his pistol and fired. Someone scrabbled, arms flailing, and then half-slid, half-plummeted down the cliff face, landing with a splash at the bottom.

Silence. Morton wanted to reload, then decided against it. The Runners crept forward until suddenly another flash from above sent them reeling back against the cliff. So at least two of them had gone up there. A few feet away, in the sea-washed rocks, Morton could see the fallen man begin to move weakly. A wave raced in and rolled him hard against the cliff base, flinging his helpless body back and forth. Keeping close to the stone, Morton tucked his pistols into his belt and waded forward, the water splashing up and soaking him. He could hear the man choking now. Choking and trying to lift himself up out of the surging water.

As the sea retreated, Morton reached out quickly with one hand and caught hold of the man's jacket lest the Channel claim him. As he did, the man gasped and
convulsively reached up to seize Morton's arm. But then there was the report of a pistol, a sharp snap half-carried away by the wind, and the struggling man went rigid. His fingers slipped from Morton's sleeve. After a moment Morton released his grip, knowing the feel of death, and the body slipped into the sea.

Another shot, but this time from behind. Presley came up beside him, tugging Morton back into the safety of the cliff. The dead man rolled limply against their legs as the sea surged in, then he was dragged out to sea, limp as kelp. In a moment gone.

Presley leaned close to his ear, as Morton pulled out his pistols again and they both bent to reload. “I think I hit the cully above. He's not moved since—neither up nor down. I thought he'd shot you.”

“Nay; hit the man I was trying to rescue.”

“Who was he?”

“Never saw him before,” Morton said as he fished his powder flask out of the inner pocket of his coat. “I want to go on. I thought I saw something moving up ahead. Will you stay here and watch the man above? Try to convince him to climb down. Tell him you will shoot him if he tries to climb up.”

Presley nodded, and Morton finished loading his pistols, the pan cover clicking into place. He prayed he could keep his powder dry. Starting out along the cliff face, he realised the seas were rising, and he had no notion of what the tide might be. It might rise some way yet, catching him here. He could likely swim to safety, but Presley, a born Londoner, couldn't manage a stroke.

Morton was still angry, and he was not about to let his prey go free. He went forward, wary but hurrying. The moon emerged from behind a cloud, its cold light washing over the sea and cliff. He kept himself low,
pistols in hand. Every few beats the cold sea would wash in around his legs, then drag at him as it retreated. The water grew deeper as he went, the cliff curving out into the Channel. Above he could see shadows on the cliff face, long dark streaks that were fissures in the ancient stone.

Morton began to think that he had been wrong—all three must have gone up the escarpment—when he saw something move ahead. A pistol flashed, and Morton fired once in return.

The water was to his waist now, and when the waves came in, he was thrown about, holding his pistols high, praying that he could keep them dry.

A rocky headland jutted out raggedly, and beyond he found a tiny bay, perhaps twenty yards across but cut back into the cliff for some unknown distance. With the sea washing around his legs, Morton tried to load his discharged weapon, fumbling powder into the water, certain that the seawater splashed down the barrel. He rammed the wadding home, took a few long slow breaths, and went forward.

As a wave washed out, Morton reached a jutting edge, behind which he crouched to look around the corner. He could see no one and dodged out, finding some shelter behind another small projection of stone a few feet farther along. Exposing as little of himself as possible, he leaned out and examined the small bay at which he had arrived. Here the pebbled strand was above the water. Shadows were everywhere, pale stone faint in the moonlight. The cliffs, however, looked too steep to be climbed. If his royalist quarry had come in here, he was well hidden.

Morton stepped out from his hiding place into terrible darkness. He'd not gone three paces when he realised
he faced a man with a pistol levelled at his heart. Eustache d'Auvraye. The young aristocrat was leaning against the stone, his slight figure tucked into a hidden niche in what had appeared to be smooth wall, a perfect natural ambush. He stooped a little, his other hand clutched to his abdomen. Morton observed that the young Frenchman looked somehow amiss in his plain English clothing, whose dark hues had helped conceal him in the shadows of his hiding place.

“I think you have enough blood on your hands, Count,” Morton said evenly. But he was horribly conscious of the racing of his heart, the sickening prospect of that small black hole barely an arm's length away. And his own weapon useless by his side.

“And most of it is mine.” Eustache took the hand from his abdomen and revealed a wound. “You shot me, you filth!”

“You are a murderer, several times over—”

“I am a servant to my king!” the young man hissed.

Morton could just make out his face now, the dark deep-set eyes. The bitter mouth. His face unnaturally pale and haunted.

“I am a servant,” he repeated softly, and sagged against the stone. “Bonaparte had to die. It does not matter what happens to me. Bonaparte had to die.” A fleeting look of triumph passed over his face, then a spasm of agony convulsed him.

“And what about all the others? Did it not matter what happened to them, either?”

“It is a war, monsieur. In wars people die.” The young man's arm wavered, as though he weakened. The pistol wandered in a slow circle, the black eye within the muzzle ring searching for Morton's heart.

“People do die in wars, but not many kill their own father, or have him killed.”

D'Auvraye blinked several times, shaking his head. “It is a tradition of war that fathers sacrifice their sons,” he said quietly, as though he were instructing an idiot. “I sacrificed my father. But not without cause. Not without reason. No, monsieur, I hoped to kill the father of us all. The father of this terrible age, this time of revolt, and Madame Guillotine, of blood, and the loss of all that was once good and glorious.” He looked down at the blood running between his fingers. “This age of horrors—that is what sired me, monsieur. Kill my father? It is a pity someone did not kill him before I was born. Now I die in any case—the true son of this glorious age. I go to whatever darkness will have such a child, but I will take my murderer with me.” He steadied his pistol with effort and pulled the trigger.

There was a sharp
tick
as flint struck steel; a feeble white spark flared and fell. But the gun did not go off. Eustache d'Auvraye's arm drooped, and the muzzle swayed away from its target, as if the effort to hold it up were beyond his power. An instant later the pistol fired. Pebbles scattered about Morton's boots, and they were encircled in a cloud of smoke, which then rolled off on the breeze. As it cleared, Morton saw the young count sliding down the stone, the weapon dropping from his fingers, clattering onto the gravel.

The gun had hung fire. Had d'Auvraye been able to hold it up a moment longer, Morton would be dead.

D'Auvraye crumpled onto the wet beach, limp, unseeing, gone into the darkness.

Rolles, too, was gone—wedged into the crevice he had been climbing—slain by Jimmy Presley's first shot. The young Runner climbed up into the dark and pulled the little secretary free, letting him tumble into the water below. The Runners dragged the bodies of the two Frenchmen round the small headland back to Bovisand Bay, where they laid them out above the high-tide line.

Along the beach the fire still burned, and Morton could see figures moving there.

“Shall we load our pistols, Morton?” Presley asked as they set off toward the firelight.

“I don't think we'll need them now, but perhaps prudence dictates we should take no chances. Here, take one of mine.” Morton handed the young Runner a pistol. “I won't promise that it will fire, but just waving it in the air might be enough. I think the murderers are all dead.”

But when they reached the fire, the boat was gone, and they found only Berman, feeding wood onto the blaze, and nearby a small man wrapped in a blanket.

“Ah, 'Enri,” that man said. “I thought it would be you.”

“Marcel?” Morton would have been less surprised to find Bonaparte himself. It was Houde, the chef from Boodle's.

“
Oui, c'est moi.
It is I, your old friend.”

Morton stood looking down at the chef, who seemed very small there in the flickering light. “Where is Bonaparte? And where has everyone gone?”

Houde was cradling an arm, Morton realised.

“Bonaparte?” the little chef said. He shook his head sadly and hunched over his injury. “Gone. Taken out to sea this very night by the Navy Royale. Who knows
what they have done with 'im. Transported 'im, perhaps, as they said they would.”