The Price of Glory (44 page)

“And what of the Sacred Chalice?”

“Ah. So you know about that?”

“Yes, I know about that. And now I want to know where it is.”

Nathan repeated what he had been told by Nicolas Grimaldi. “Someone dropped it. And it shattered in a thousand pieces.”

“Someone dropped it,” Imlay repeated flatly. He thrust his face closer to Nathan's. “Do you find this amusing?” He was close to losing his temper. He waved a hand back towards the chapel. “Do you know what that man is ready to do to you—and to Sara?”

“It was made of glass,” Nathan assured him. “Or you could say sand, like all the treasure of the Casa di San Giorgio.”

There was still doubt in Imlay's eyes but then they heard Gillet calling him urgently from within. The chapel was empty but the door to the crypt stood open and Nathan followed Imlay down the steps, the corporal at his heels. Gillet had lit a lamp and was peering at one of the stones in the floor. Nathan looked for Sara and saw her sitting with her back to the wall, head down with her knees drawn up to her chest and her hands clasped round them.

“They were here,” Gillet said to Imlay. “There is bedding in the corner and someone made a fire: the ashes are still warm. And this stone has been moved.” He pointed. “See the marks on the side. Someone has levered it up.”

He strode over to the far side of the crypt and stooped down over something on the floor. When he came back Nathan saw that he was holding a crowbar.

“They must have used this.” He thrust it at the corporal who inserted it into the crack and levered the stone up a fraction until the other two dragoons could grip it with their hands and pull it back. Nathan eased the dirk out of his boot and held it behind his thigh.

Gillet peered down into the vault. “It's a body,” he said.

“Well, this
is
a crypt,” Imlay informed him dryly.

“But he has just been buried. Look. No more than a few hours ago, I would think.”

Nathan took a step forward and by the light of Gillet's lantern he saw the waxen face of Frederico Grimaldi.

“Is this who I think it is?” Imlay asked him.

Nathan said nothing. He stepped back into the shadows, with the knife in his hand. Gillet crossed over to where Sara was sitting and levelled his pistol at her head, cocking the hammer.

“It is Grimaldi,” Nathan told him. He looked back at Imlay. “He died just after we got here—and we buried him.”

“And the gold?”

“I keep telling you, there
was
no gold. There
is
no gold.”

Gillet gestured with his pistol at Sara. “Strip her,” he ordered the corporal.

The corporal looked astonished. “Strip her? Me?”

“You heard me. Now do it!”

“Gillet!” growled Imlay warningly.

“Shut up! I command here.”

The corporal looked to Imlay uncertainly. Gillet reached out and grabbed a handful of Sara's hair. Then he reeled back with a cry, his hand to his neck and Nathan saw the knife in her hand and the blood. Nathan was already moving, but he could never have moved fast enough. Gillet had the pistol cocked and aimed. The gunshot was thunderous in the confined space.

But it was Imlay who had fired and Gillet who fell.

Nathan changed direction and ran at the corporal, stabbing him in the stomach and wrenching the carbine from his hands. Another loud report, almost in his ear, and he saw that Imlay had shot one of the other dragoons. Then through the smoke he saw the third trooper running to pick up his carbine from where he had left it at the foot of the stairs. Nathan fired from the hip and saw him go down.

Then there was silence. It seemed to go on for a long time compared to what had happened in the three or four seconds before. Nathan stood, stunned, half-deafened by the explosions in that confined space, the smoke hanging heavy in the candlelight and the acrid smell of gunpowder in his nostrils and his throat.

Then Imlay crossed over to Gillet, picked up his pistol, and shot the corporal in the head.

Nathan stared at him in shocked disbelief. He saw his lips move but he could not make out a word he said. Then Imlay spoke again and this time Nathan did hear him.

“Don't look at me like that,” Imlay said. “This is all your fault.”

Nathan looked down at Gillet. He lay on his back in a spreading pool of blood with half of his face shot away.

Imlay was helping Sara up. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I could not allow that.”

“So now what?” Nathan heard his own voice but it seemed to be coming from a great distance.

“Now what?” Imlay repeated wearily. He looked about the smoking vault. “You tell me.”

Nathan still had the knife in his hand.

“Whose side are you on?” he said. Even after what had happened he still did not know.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” said Imlay. “Get out of here and take her with you.”

“What about you?”

“Me? It is a little late in the day for you to start worrying about me.” Imlay looked about him again, at the four bodies. “I expect I will blame it all on you,” he said. “I usually do.”

Nathan reached out a hand for Sara but Imlay grabbed him by the wrist.

“Tell me, is it true—about the gold?”

Nathan sighed. “All I know is that is what the Grimaldis told me.” How many more would die, he wondered, before it was believed.

Imlay looked down at Frederico's corpse. “Well, he didn't take it with him,” he remarked composedly. “I suppose you had better help me cover him up again.” But then he frowned and peered down into the darkness. “What is this?” He stooped and gingerly removed something from beside Grimaldi's head. A small silver casket, richly engraved.

He looked up at Nathan enquiringly. Nathan shook his head.

Imlay took a clasp knife from his pocket and slid the blade under the lid and worked away at it until he had wrenched the casket open. He stared for a moment at what it contained. Then he set it hastily down on the floor and stood up, taking a step back, as if it might explode.

“Christ Almighty!” he exclaimed. “Is that what I think it is?”

Nathan peered into the casket. It was filled with broken glass.

“I think it might be,” he said.

“Dear God.” Imlay made the sign of the cross though he was not, as far as Nathan knew, a Papist. He had seen him like this once before, in the catacombs under Paris, when they had entered the crypt under the Luxembourg Palace and seen the Devil—and the figure of Christ hanging upside down from the cross.

“What will you do with it?” Nathan asked him.

“What will
I
do with it?” Imlay looked down at the object at his feet. “I want nothing to do with it,” he said.

“But that is what you were looking for.” Nathan's tone was ironic. “The Holy Grail. The last reserves of the Casa di San Giorgio.”

Imlay lifted it up and placed it gingerly back where he had found it, at the head of Frederico Grimaldi. Then together they slid the stone back into place.

T
HEY
FOUND THE
CAVALRY
MOUNTS
tethered in the courtyard at the rear of the abbey—five of them, of a mountain breed similar to English fell ponies. Nathan was tempted. It would make them more conspicuous if they rode down to the sea but they would make much better time and there was not a great deal of it left. The sun was alarmingly low in the sky and the floor of the valley already in deep shadow. He had told Duncan to leave for the rendezvous at sunset and the first lieutenant was not the man to disobey a direct order. He decided to take the risk.

They followed the track in single file along the side of the valley, the ponies picking their way almost delicately among the roots of the trees, their hooves muffled by a thick carpet of pine needles. Nathan had his pistols ready loaded in the holsters on each side of the saddle, for Imlay had told them there were patrols out looking for the Grimaldis, and he strained his ears for the slightest sound of horses coming up the track toward them. But they made good time and within the hour they had emerged on to the ridge running down to the cliffs above the sea. And there in the distance were the two menof-war, hove to in the light of the setting sun. Nathan reined in for a moment, for he was confident now that they would reach the shore long before eight bells in the second dog watch and he was perfectly assured that Duncan would not leave a moment sooner.

“There is my ship—the
Unicorn
. The bigger of the two, a little further out to sea.” He pointed her out to Sara, not without a note of pride, for she had been a little too fond of referring to him as a boy when they were in Paris, and he still had thoughts of the Chouan leader, Charette, in his mind. It would do no harm to remind her that he was the captain of a frigate.

“The
Unicorn,
” she mused. “I like that. That is a good name for a ship. And the other?”

“That is the
Bonne Aventure
. A privateer we took from the French.”

“That is a good name, too,” she acknowledged. Then, after a moment: “Do you know it means a love affair as well as an adventure?”

“I did not,” he admitted. “But that is how I will think of it in future.” He was about to move on when he saw the boat. It had just come into view from below the cliffs and he recognised it as the launch from the
Unicorn,
pulling back to the ship. And though he was too far to say with any certainty, he thought he could see two women in the stern. Whiteley's party from the abbey ? He stood up in the stirrups, took off his hat and waved furiously, though there was little chance of being spotted at such a distance.

“Have we missed them?” Sara called out to him.

“Yes, but they will come back for us,” he reassured her. “Still, we had better crack on.” Then he saw something else. A cloud of dust approaching along the coast road, about half a mile below them. And among it, the glint of steel.

He led the ponies swiftly off the ridge, hoping to lie low among the scrub and the pines until the danger was past. But he realised almost at once that it would not do. There was no time. The sun was just about to slip below the western horizon—he saw its dying light gleaming on the dragoon helmets and the carbines. Their only hope was to cross the road ahead of them and race for the shore.

He let Sara take the lead and they rode the ponies as fast as they dared down the slope of the ridge. The dragoons must have seen them, for several of them had pushed ahead of the main troop and were riding just as hard to cut them off. Nathan reached for one of the pistols in the saddle holster and then thought better of it as the pony almost lost its footing on the sandy track. The only thing to do now was to ride.

They hit the road about a hundred yards ahead of the leading horsemen and plunged into the broom and the rocks on the far side. There was still a track of sorts but it was difficult to follow at any pace and the dragoons were firing at them now from above. Splinters flew up from the rocks and pines and Nathan's mount stumbled and fell. They were both up at once but Nathan had lost the rein and the horse plunged away from him through the brush. He let it go and sprinted after Sara who was trying to turn her own horse back for him. Nathan caught it by the bit and ran with it for a while but the slope was too steep and all three of them went over. They reached the shore in an avalanche of earth and stones but miraculously without breaking their necks. Nathan ran to Sara and picked her up and they both ran together to the sea. He could see men pointing to them from the stern of the brig and they were swinging a boat out from the yards. But it would never reach them in time.

“Can you swim?” he called out to Sara.

“I can swim in a river,” she said doubtfully. “But I have never tried the sea.”

“It is just the same,” he assured her. “But you will have to take off your boots.”

He looked back up the slope and saw the first of the dragoons burst through the pines further back along the shore.

“Is it cold, the sea?” Sara asked him as she struggled with her foot-wear. He admired her composure, though forced to curb the first ignoble retort that sprang to mind.

“No, not at all,” he replied, as if it they were about to take a leisurely paddle in Cuckmere Haven. “Not in the Mediterranean.”

A shot smashed into the shingle, sending up a shower of stones and he felt a sting on his cheek and the warm flowing blood. He grabbed her by the arm and hustled her towards the water's edge.

She let out a yell when the first wave broke over her.

“You lied!”

“Wait until you are in Sussex,” he said. “That is what you might call cold. Now swim,” he shouted, as a fusillade of shots echoed around the little bay and the dragoons urged their horses towards them across the sloping shingle.

And they struck out together for the
Bonne Aventure
.

In writing
The Price of Glory
I've combined fiction with historical fact, inasmuch as it is known, and readers might like to know where the battle lines are drawn.

The events on the Quiberon Peninsula and in the Gulf of Morbihan are based on various accounts of the Royalist landings of 1795, though in real life the frigate
Unicorn
was not involved in the expedition. However, the campaign does seem to have been as chaotic and ill-planned as I have described. The divisions in the Royalist command, the failure to reinforce Auray and the collapse of the proposed uprising in Paris are all well documented. It is also true that William Pitt released over a thousand Republican prisoners to swell the meagre ranks of the émigrés, and that these men defected almost as soon as they were put ashore, betraying the defences of Fort Penthièvre to the enemy. The account of the gun brig
Conquest
accidentally firing on the column of refugees is based on a similar incident involving the corvette
Lively
.