CHAPTER TEN #3
Disgust began to erode the last seeds of this erstwhile friendship. Henri desired only to terminate all contact with this man. But there was still question.
“How have you persuaded Etienne and Augustin to dance to your tune? By the same form of blackmail? Or will you tell me they also have had a change of heart? Is it to them I am indebted for those failures in our schemes, where we all four rack our brains to find out how our plans have become known?”
A derisive laugh this time. “Ah, you have worked that out? No, citizen. I take to myself each little success in foiling such plans.” A glance to the door, and Jean-Marc lowered his voice as he turned back, triumph within it.
“But our compatriots very soon discovered where lay their interests, when they understood I had obeyed Citizen Robespierre’s instructions and meant to indict you for a royalist.”
Henri could not withstand a sickness at heart.
Fine friends he had! Worse than Jean-Marc.
They had not turned their coats for a reversal of political belief, but to save their own skins.
Even this paled beside the crowning insult of Jean-Marc’s betrayal.
If Henri was to die, let him do so having made it clear to this fiend that he knew him for what he was.
“Let us be frank, Jean-Marc. Robespierre had not a thought to investigate me until you put it into his head. You have told me your motive, but I have a brain, mon brave.”
“Ah, yes?” Loriot was mocking now. “Say on, citizen.”
Henri took a step into the room and faced him. “You talk of sacrifices. I am one, am I not? We all have been royalists, Jean-Marc, faithful to the Bourbon cause, working from within to save those we could from the threat of the guillotine.”
The pistol was lifted, and hardness sounded in the man’s tone. “I have no memory of this.”
“Do not play games! Remember that I know you of old. We were boys together, Jean-Marc.”
“I repeat,” stated Loriot, with arrogance, “I have no memory of this.”
“No, for you dare not remember.” The fury ripped out, scorching Henri’s veins. “You made of me your scapegoat, Jean-Marc. To Robespierre you indicted me as a royalist, for only by this could you save yourself. So live on, mon ami, at my expense, and may your conscience plague you!”
On the words, Henri threw himself suddenly forward, plunging into Jean-Marc’s body so that they fell together, thumping loudly to the bedchamber floor.
His enemy’s shocked grunt gave Henri intense satisfaction, despite the instant ache set up in his shoulder.
He ignored it, feeling for Jean-Marc’s pistol hand and grabbing it at the wrist. Pushing the man’s arm upwards, he banged the hand on the floor.
A howl of pain and rage erupted. Jean-Marc’s fingers opened and the pistol flew away across the bare boards.
Henri knew he had insufficient strength to win, and already the enemy’s free hand was clawing at his hair, seizing a hank in a strong fist. Retaining a desperate hold upon Jean-Marc’s flailing wrist, knowing his injured arm must give way too quickly, Henri grappled towards the man’s face, shoving his chin back with all his might.
Jean-Marc bucked violently at the hip, throwing Henri off so that his grip slackened.
Bringing his other hand across, Henri grabbed the man’s arm, tugging him two-handed in a direction away from where the pistol had clattered across the floor, trying at the same time to ignore the painful wrenching at his hair.
Loriot threw back his head and yelled out. “à moi! Augustin, à moi!”
Feeling time slipping away, Henri knew thunder in his mind.
Letting go suddenly of Jean-Marc’s arm, he seized instead his head between both hands and brought it down on the wooden floor with a crack.
Henri knew the man was dazed, although he could feel Jean-Marc’s hands weakly pushing at his wrists.
The sound of the opening door drove Henri to struggle up, scrambling over the man on the floor and flinging himself towards the corner where he thought the pistol had fallen.
Hunting desperately, he threw a frantic glance towards the clatter of feet and the grunting protests in the voices of men.
Someone was moving towards him. Henri struggled up, flattening himself against the wall, and lifted his clenched fists.
They would not take him down without a fight!
“Now there ain’t no need to go a-fighting o’ me, sir,” protested an English voice he recognised.
Panting, Henri stared at the tall figure, taking in its hawk-like expression. The excise officer! How had he come here? Henri lowered his fists, but kept them curled into makeshift weapons.
“That’s better, sir. Easy does it. Don’t you fret none, for Mayberry has got t’other overpowered.”
Looking past him, Henri saw Jean-Marc — chagrin in his face and one hand held to his head — captive in the hands of the burly parish officer.
Relief swamped him, and he staggered to the bed, falling on it in a state of semi-collapse.
For several sickening moments, he could do nothing but lie there, recovering his breath, vaguely aware of voices in the room.
He felt bruised and battered, and his shoulder was aching badly.
Someone was moving his legs, shifting him on to the bed. He settled back with a sigh and opened his eyes. “Merci.”
Wooferton was standing above him, a frown in his face. There was no sign of Mayberry or Jean-Marc.
“I should’ve come in earlier, sir,” came from the man apologetically, “only I didn’t know as the fellow would start a mill in here.”
Henri gave a weak laugh. “It is I who attacked him, m’sieur.”
“Ah,” said the other noncommittally.
“What would you, enfin? He had come with a purpose to kill me.”
Wooferton looked sceptical. “Kill you, sir? How would he do that?”
“Since I failed to fall into his trap I do not know, but not, I think, with his pistol.”
“What pistol?”
Henri waved a vague hand. “You will find it in the corner there, for he has dropped it when I have attacked him.”
The man was looking about. “Beats me what you wanted to go attacking him for.”
“I did not intend it. I thought to wait to find out what means he has in his head, but —” Henri half-shrugged, and winced at the pain it caused him — “I became angry, and thus I have fought him.”
Wooferton tutted. “There weren’t no need, sir. We was up to his little game. Aha!” He disappeared from Henri’s sightline.
Puzzlement was added to his present discomforts. What game? As Wooferton rose again, the pistol in his hand, Henri was conscious of satisfaction. Surely now the man would believe in Jean-Marc’s murderous intent?
“This Loriot’s, is it?”
“Yes, but he is not a fool to use it in this room.”
A grin spread across Wooferton’s dour features as he pocketed the pistol. “He ain’t nowise as clever as he thinks he is. Sir James warned me as the feller might take it into his head to try and come at you quiet like — not for to kill you, but mebbe to try and get you away.”
Henri grimaced. “It was his plan, yes. How have you found him out?”
“My man was under orders to let hisself be seen as if he were duped. See, the Frenchie bribed one o’ my lads to bring my man a tankard. My lad knowing better like, he comes to me.”
“Ah, now it is seen. You have made a plot to capture Jean-Marc?”
“To outwit him rather, sir. My lad takes the tankard and gives it to my man under the Frenchie’s eye, see. My man pretends to drink it like, and puts it to one side. By and by, he drops his head on his chest, like as if he’s sleeping.”
“Diable! A plot excellent, mon ami.”
“Well, yon Frenchie leaves his man outside and comes in here. At which point, my man ups and grabs the other feller, along o’ my second man, hiding close by, and they takes him away. Which leaves me and Mayberry waiting outside the door instead, sir.”
It struck Henri as odd. Why wait outside, if they knew Jean-Marc might seek to murder him? Or perhaps they did not know. He found himself too distracted by his ailments to concentrate on the problem.
“Your little argy-bargy bring us in pretty quick, I can tell you,” pursued the excise officer.
“For which I thank the good God. My strength is not enough to win this fight.”
Wooferton nodded sagely. “Ah, and I’d not care to face Miss Grace if you’d taken the worst of a beating, especially while you was locked in your bedchamber.”
The thought of Grace gave Henri an abrupt feeling of homesickness. He would not lie long in a state of such discomfort were she with him. He was obliged to request Wooferton to assist him to put his arm back in the sling, for he could scarcely move it.
“Also it is needed that I have help to dress for the night, mon ami, if this is not a great trouble.”
The excise officer promised to send one of the waiters up to perform this office, and added to his goodness with the offer of a glass of brandy to be brought up as well, which was gratefully accepted.
With an admonition to Henri not to concern himself because both his men would be outside, Wooferton retired, locking the door behind him.
It came home to Henri that he was yet a prisoner. In light of what had transpired, he had forgotten he had still all to lose. Jean-Marc might have been thwarted tonight, but he could yet win.
Gazing at Joe Piper in mounting dismay, Grace bade him tell her the whole story.
The postman recounted it with relish, apparently oblivious of his daughter’s dismal countenance.
Jemima, having passed through much the same cycle of reaction as Grace had done herself on hearing of Henri’s involvement with the French Revolution, had reached the stage of bewailing the vagaries of a malignant fate, which had seen fit to throw in Grace’s way a suitor as undeserving as he was handsome.
In vain did Grace point out that Henri had been anything but a suitor. The maid had the matter fixed in her mind, and nothing would serve to convince her otherwise. But this news bid fair to revive the girl’s unaffected liking for Henri, if against her will.