The English Heiress (5 page)

“I did not care what those lunatics in Paris did,” Pierre growled disgustedly. “Men are men and it seemed to me that as many bottles and kegs would get by the town communes as got by the king’s agents.”

“Perhaps the town officials are more vigilant or more afraid to take a little bribe,” Roger suggested, concealing his amusement.

“It is worse than that,” Pierre groaned. “All this talk of equality and the rights of man has gone to the heads of those who can least afford it. Do you know what my supplier from La Rochelle told me?”

Roger shook his head, not wishing to spoil Pierre’s story, although he had a fairly good idea of what Pierre would say.

“That idiot,” the Frenchman continued, his voice rising with remembered fury, “refused to sell me anything unless I paid the tax! He said the taxes belonged to the people now, and he would not rob his fellow citizen as he had robbed the unjust king.”

“Did you not try to explain that a large portion of the revenue still goes to support the throne?” Roger asked gravely, although his lips were twitching with suppressed mirth.

Pierre threw his hands out in a gesture of hopeless revulsion. “I told him that, and he answered me that the amount was now strictly controlled to provide enough magnificence for diplomatic purposes. Then I lost my patience and told him he would rob no one since, doubtless, the major part of the revenue found its way into the private pockets of officials, as it always had. That was a mistake. The madman grew quite furious. He actually flew to strike me, exclaiming that those elected by the people had the people’s interest at heart and would not be corrupt as the king’s officers were.”

“‘Tsk, tsk,” Roger rejoined, unable to command his voice for a longer expression of sympathy.

“If this continues,” Pierre went on dispiritedly, “I will need to deal with dishonest men, and that is always a bad thing. One cannot—”

Unable to control himself any longer, Roger whooped with laughter. “Do you mean to say that you have dealt only with honest men all these years?” he choked.

Pierre looked at him with surprise. “Now and again, I suppose, there has been a thief or two mixed into the business, but I take good care to be rid of such men as soon as they betray themselves. Naturally I have dealt mostly with honest men.”

“But you are smugglers,” Roger said gently, as if he feared to shock Pierre with an unpleasant truth.

“That is not dishonest,” Pierre protested indignantly, “that is only against the law. Do not talk like a lawyer, Roger. I pay honestly for my wares and charge an honest price for delivering them. I cheat no man. I can see no reason why my labor, or any other man’s, should be taxed to support a king—or a commissioner either.”

This was not the first time Roger and Pierre had had such a discussion, and Roger merely laughed again. He had given up hope of convincing Pierre that government had some really necessary functions and that the cost of those functions rested rightfully on those who benefited from them. Although he did not even know the word, Pierre was a confirmed anarchist, absolutely convinced that each man should govern and protect himself and that part of governing oneself was not taking overgreat advantage of those weaker than oneself. Roger freely admitted it was a good idea, so was true Christianity, but neither philosophy was workable, except for a very few people. The rest of the world needed laws, lawmakers, law enforcers and judges to govern them.

Seeing Roger laugh, Pierre snorted with a mixture of irritation and good humor. He recognized that Roger had been teasing him. “Never mind your silliness,” he said reprovingly. To Pierre, Roger was still “much younger” and he often spoke to him as if he were a boy. “I do not know how I let you drag me into this argument again. All I wanted to do was to tell you that my trips will be less frequent. I will try to leave word when I expect to be back—”

“No, don’t do that. It would be dangerous for you. In any case there will be fewer passengers unless you sail to German ports. France isn’t a safe haven these days.”

Pierre sighed. “Idiots! If they did not like their king, did they have to make so much fuss to curb him or be rid of him?”

“Their king? You’re a Frenchman also, Pierre.”

“Not I!” Pierre exclaimed. “I am a Breton. I use their language, as I sometimes use yours, for convenience in business. But I am not French.”

That time Roger did not smile. The Scots felt the same way and had tried to make the point stick with bloody results more than once. The Welsh too, persistently regarded themselves as a separate people, although they had been tied to England for many hundreds of years. This was no joking matter, Roger realized, even though Pierre had never spoken of it before, and Roger valued Pierre’s friendship too much to make a jest of deep feelings, no matter how impractical.

“As to the German ports,” Pierre continued, going back to the concrete question, “I am not ready yet to use them, although I may be forced to. Sacred Heaven, I have already been forced to sell several catches of fish because I could not find cargo. I will end up as I started—a fisherman! It is not only France that has gone mad. Belgium is in an uproar too, what with the French troops marching in and the Austrians and Prussians driving the French out. I have not even been able to pick up any lace.” He sighed again “I cannot deny that your message was most welcome I can use a passenger. Where does he want to go?”

“It is I,” Roger replied with a smile, “and I’m not perfectly sure where l want to go.”

“You! No, my friend. Do not tell me that you are fleeing your government, and as we said before, this is no time for pleasure tour of France.”

“You’re quite right,” Roger agreed. “I will not be touring for pleasure, and my quarrel isn’t with my government but with yours—sorry, I mean that of the French.”

“There is precious little government in France right now,” Pierre remarked.

“I’m aware.” It was Roger who sighed this time. Then he grinned. “For a man of my profession, there’s much to be said for a strong, corrupt central government. It used to be necessary for my agent only to drop a word into the ear, and an appropriate bribe into the hand, of the right man to find someone or release a prisoner. Now I must go myself.”

It was apparent that Pierre was about to protest. Roger forestalled him by describing the entire problem and his father’s attitude. Having heard him out, Pierre shook his head with a jaundiced expression.

“In the words of your local people, that is a fine cock-and-bull story.”

“I swear every word is true,” Roger insisted.

“Oh, I believe that this Henry de Conyers is missing,” Pierre replied, “and I believe that your father wishes him to be found or to have good evidence that he is dead, but that you must go… My friend, you have been too long quiet and assisting others to escape the results of ‘raising the devil’. Is that how you say it? Now you wish to raise the devil yourself. No, do not shake your head at me. I know you too long and too well to believe your mouth. I look into your eyes and I see what I see. Only for that reason do I take you—because I know if I do not, you will go anyway. But it is dangerous, my friend, very dangerous, what you wish to do.”

* * * * *

The same evening that Roger St. Eyre landed in France, Leonie de Conyers began her attempt to jolt her father out of the passive despair that had enveloped him since the death of his wife and son. She began simply enough by announcing that in a few days they were to be executed. Henry looked at her blankly for a while and then asked slowly why Leonie should suddenly say such a thing.

“It was the way Louis looked at me and spoke to me yesterday,” Leonie replied. “Papa, we must escape or we will die.”

“I, not you, my love,” Henry answered soothingly, letting his eyes drift away from his daughter’s face. “I must die. It would be better for you if I were dead. Perhaps your friend would find a way to free you. Perhaps Marot would let you go. No one could believe that you were an enemy of the state, and—I am the one he hates.”

Leonie shook her head violently. She did not know how much her father guessed about her relationship with Louis, but he must not be permitted to convince himself that it could save her. Perhaps her father knew she was Louis’ whore. Perhaps he had accepted the knowledge for the sake of the few glasses of wine, the few saline draughts, the apple or two that Leonie had smuggled down to her sick mother and brother. Leonie had hoped, however, that her father had been too shaken up with his wife’s and son’s illness and with his own sad reflections to think much about the matter. Hopefully, he thought Louis as innocent as his sweet face looked. If he did, it would save a lot of trouble.

“You know it is not so,” Leonie protested. “Would Jean-Paul let me go to cry aloud the horrors he has committed? And as far as Louis, you know he could not let me go. That would mean his death as well as mine. He could not even run away with me. Where could we go that Jean-Paul would not find us? I know I must die,” Leonie’s voice shook, “but do not condemn me to live alone until then—and then die alone.”

To Leonie’s relief her father looked at her again much more alertly. His mind had been jerked out of the deadly rut it was traveling by his daughter’s statement. Dull despair was thrust aside by rage. Leonie die too? Not without a struggle to prevent it! Henry had not considered escape previously. All four of them could never have managed, and no one would consent to leave the others, who would surely be tormented even more in punishment. Now however, there was only one to escape. No one would be left behind, because Henry fully intended to die to free his daughter.

This noble resolve had to reconsidered a moment later. Leonie had put her finger on the problem when she asked where she could go. Worse than that, how could a seventeen-year-old girl without family or friends survive in the France that his “noble” ideas had created? In the past… Henry wrenched his mind away from the past. It was dead…like François…like Marie… The numbness of despair began to drift over him again. He wished to die. At least if he died here, there was a chance he would be buried in the same grave with Marie. Henry shuddered. It was not he alone who would die. Leonie was right. Jean-Paul would never let her go, and the young guard was nothing but a child. In any case, it was a father’s duty to take care of his daughter. That was more important than his wish to die. It would be his punishment for not sending his wife and children to safety that he should be separated from Marie even in death.

“No,” he said strongly, startling and delighting Leonie. “You will not die.”

“Oh, Papa—” she began.

“No, no, listen,” Henry urged, switching to English to avoid any chance of being overheard and understood. “Let’s set aside the question of how you will escape for the moment. I have some ideas, but what you must know is where to go and what to do if we should become—separated.”

Although the implications of that word were ugly, Leonie could not help smiling. The impetuous tone, always more pronounced when her father spoke English, carried her back to the days when Papa rode the high horse of his dreams and his wife mischievously unhorsed him from time to time with practical observations. Not that Henry came down without a struggle. He loved a discussion and would seek with great energy and ingenuity to find a way around the practical obstacles Marie presented. Because she was not certain of how to introduce the idea that she would be able to free them, Leonie fell into the old pattern.

“But Papa, you are putting the cart in front of the horse. What difference does it make whether I have a place to go if I cannot get out?

Leonie’s English was clear, fluent and idiomatic. Only the slightest accent and foreign intonation marked it as being a second language. Henry had always spoken English to his children. He had always insisted that they should visit his family. Somehow, it had never been the right time to go to England. The first years of his marriage had been devoted to restoring his wife’s estates to profitable productivity. By the time he had things running smoothly on the land, Henry had seen that the government of France could not continue to exist as it was and had thrown himself into the agitation for reform and into practical measures for relieving the misery of the local population. Those efforts had made inevitable his election as deputy for the district in 1789 and then it was too late.

Henry smiled at her. “The way out is simple enough child. When someone brings us food—it’s always that young man these days—I’ll jump on him from behind the door. I’m not as strong as I was but I’m still stronger than that boy.”

Leonie was not at all sure of that. The muscles in Louis’ small body were whipcord and steel, and her father’s were soft with inactivity and weak with starvation. However, she did not argue. Her plan was better and surer, but there was no harm in having a second string to one’s bow. If Louis did not soon “take her for a walk” or if Louis should be sent away or denounced—Jean-Paul might be more aware of what Louis was than the thief believed—it might be necessary to use her father’s plan. There was a good chance it would work, Leonie thought. Even after the first shock of seeing his wife and daughter raped had worn off, Papa had been docile for fear his loved ones would be punished for any rebellion on his part. And since Mama’s death he had been little more than a limp body. Leonie was surprised at how well he responded to her prodding. She had feared she would be unable to rouse him, even though he had begun to eat and sit up without urging the day before.

“If we must,” Leonie agreed tentatively. “I could help you. Between us… Very well, once out of the cell there can be no trouble getting out of the building. Usually no one except Louis is here after dark. There is a side door that is barred which we can open from the inside.” Louis had shown Leonie that door—a temptation to test whether she would try to escape while he “slept”. “It is after that we will have trouble. The gates of the town are locked at night and we certainly could not escape before dark. Also, by the next morning our absence will have been discovered.