Chapter 11
Eleven
James Dinsmore announced his plan to leave the coach and all its baggage behind with David and Andre, as the three men stood on the cliffs looking down at the sloop that was waiting to carry the team and their rescued fugitive to England.
David was still marveling at this unexpected and very generous change of heart when he steered the coach into a farmyard, several hours later.
The evening sky had darkened to a shade of blue that matched the Berlin’s, making it necessary for him to stop and light a lantern before steering the team behind the barn.
The farmer, who was part of the network they’d been working so hard to set up in France, helped unharness the horses and stable them. Then, after providing David and Andre with more lanterns, a set of chisels, a meal of cold meat, fruit, and bread, he made himself scarce.
The remains of that repast, a plate holding a few pits, a heel of bread, and a pile of chicken bones now sat on a wooden bench a few feet away from the Berlin.
Beside the bench lay two thin wood panels, their blue and gold paint barely visible in the flickering lantern’s light.
David and Andre had begun removing the panels, after shifting whatever luggage might be of use into the hiding spaces beneath the coach’s seats.
Andre, who was using one of the chisels to pry a panel off the carriage’s door, cursed as a splinter slid under his thumbnail.
David looked up from where he was working on the front of the coach. “You all right?”
“How do you manage to make working with wood and tools look so bloody easy?
“Practice. And patience. The latter a skill, no doubt a challenge nigh impossible for you….”
“I prefer to rely on my blinding flashes of astonishing creativity.”
David snorted. “I’m almost done here. I’ll bring you another lantern. The light should tide you over in between the blinding flashes.”
“No.” Andre shook his head. “We can’t risk too many lights attracting attention.”
“But if you could pull the bench closer, I’ll set my lantern on it. Should give me a bit more light than where it is now.”
There was a screech and a pop as the curved veneer panel in front of the coach came free.
David stumbled back a step, then righted himself.
Keeping hold of the panel with both hands, he bent it over his knee and broke it into pieces.
Then he carried them over to the pile beside the bench, dropped them atop it, and crushed the lot with his booted foot.
“What are you doing that for?”
“They’ll burn faster if we break them up first,” he replied. “Don’t want to leave any traces of our stay here behind if we can help it.”
Dumping the remains of their meal onto the pile, he set the plate on the ground, dragged the bench closer to Andre and put the lantern on it.
“That’s better.”
There was another scrape and pop as Andre finished removing the panel on the door.
David took it from him, broke it, too, into pieces, and tossed it on the pile.
He stepped back to study the progress they’d made so far.
In the now slightly larger pool of lantern light, he could see that one side of the coach, once marine blue with gold trim, was pea-green with a reddish-brown trim.
“Not bad,” he said, more to himself than to Andre. “Though I wish there was more I could do to change this beast’s profile—maybe add some moldings onto the roof. And the wheels…” He frowned at them. “I’d like to change out that yellow.”
“No time. We lost too much tangling with those soldiers. It’s a miracle we were able to meet the sloop.”
“And that the tides were in our favor.”
“And the seas weren’t too rough.” Andre gave a dramatic shudder. “Have I mentioned that I hate sailing?”
“How do you know if you hate sailing when you spend most of the voyage hanging over the railing puking your guts out?” David picked up the lantern from the bench, raising it high enough to see inside the coach.
There were the slashes from the soldiers’ bayonet inspection of the seats and a few smears of blood on the upholstery, despite the care they’d taken.
“Isn’t that the definition of sailing?” Andre, noticing the direction of David’s attention, came to stand beside him. Nodding at the slashes he said, “How will you explain those if we’re stopped again?”
Not if, but when. With his free hand, David patted the identity papers in his breast pocket.
“Thanks to Marcus’s most excellent work, we’ve just acquired this coach from some patriots who “liberated” it from an aristocrat who has no use for it in the foreseeable future, seeing as how they also liberated his head from his body in the process.
I, David Dumont, am just a humble country boy, hoping to use this fine vehicle to make my fortune in the big city.
“It’s a good story, but you’re going to have to drop your ‘r’s more if you want it to sound convincing.“ He slapped David on the back. “You want to work on this back panel together?”
“Sure, I’ll bring the bench and lantern around.”
As they worked, Andre asked, “Do you think we should change our route to Paris? Just in case…?”
Just in case the national guard pursued them. David slid a chisel under a layer of blue veneer. “I’ve thought about it, but it’s liable to take us even longer to get there.”
“We do have three weeks until the sloop returns.”
“And if three weeks isn’t enough?”
Silence stretched between them as if they’d cast a net into a dark sea of worries and were waiting to discover what they’d bring up.
“We’ll come up with something. We always do.”
“De Joley.” Andre, said, momentarily ceasing his efforts to pry up a panel. “I understand why he didn’t take his daughter on the run with him. Too dangerous. But why didn’t he make arrangements to get her out of the country before he left?”
“Who knows. There was a husband. The Girondin fellow. She probably couldn’t bear to leave him.”
“Yes, but, according to the comte, he died six months ago. Leaving the poor lady on her own.”
“She might have thought she’d be safe. Her husband’s the Girondist. She’s just a woman.
And she’s caught between a hammer and anvil with these new laws.
Emigration means banishment for life from France and forfeiture of all lands and properties here.
Remaining in France may be the only way to avoid losing everything she has. ”
“Except her life.” Andre slid his chisel along his side of the back panel, popping it free. “Me, I’d rather be destitute than dead.”
“She might have not known where to turn for help. Who to trust.”
They fell silent, both thinking of the networks they were relying on, the networks that might be compromised, as they continued the work of prying the panels loose and breaking them into pieces.
“Grab the lanterns and let’s move the bench and tools around to the other side.” David directed.
Andre lifted the lantern from the end of the bench, searching the surrounding area for any tools they might have left on the ground.
Finding none, he walked to the front of the carriage, unhooked the lantern hanging on the side of the box and moved it to the opposite side.
He set a second lantern down next to the carriage’s steps,
“If she stayed to protect the family fortune,” Andre mused returning to help carry the bench, “does Joley truly have the monies he promised Marcus?”
“He’s the former finance minister. Grenville seems rather keen to have him in England. I’m guessing he’s a clever one. Clever enough to have found ways to shift his money to England, or Switzerland, or Austria.” As they set the bench down, he added. “Not that I think it makes a difference.
“It was quite a tidy sum.”
“If acquiring a fortune was what mattered to him, Tyns wouldn’t be risking his life in France on a regular basis. He’d be hanging about London ballrooms hunting heiresses.”
“Tyns,” Andre said, the name emerging on a huff of amusement. “In a ballroom. Can you imagine our scribbler dancing attendance on girls just out of the schoolroom? Fetching lemonade? Making small talk?”
David, who prided himself on his inventive mind, tried. And failed. “Small talk? The man can barely bring himself to make polite conversation.”
“Still,” Andre mused. “He volunteered. You know what he always says about volunteering.”
“The preferred choice of idiots and dead men,” the two men said in unison.
“And that bit about him knowing what it’s like to leave a child behind,” Andre shook his head in disbelief. “Did you know he had a child?”
“He never mentioned it.” David picked up a chisel and began prying at a panel.
The trust between the three men was built in part on the understanding that they avoided asking questions about each other’s pasts or why they’d chosen their peculiar line of work.
“But then, we all have secrets we’d prefer left comfortably buried. ”
Andre shifted the lantern onto the bench, pulled out his chisel and began working on the lower right-hand panel of the coach. “I haven’t heard him talk about a woman since the American war. Much less look at one. At least not in a manner that might produce a child.”
When the last blue panel had been added to the pile, David removed a candle from the lantern and held it to the edge of the wood until it began to blacken and burn.
Fueled by paint and varnish, it didn’t take long for flames to spread, and soon the men found themselves standing beside a small bonfire.
“Still, there was a time when Marcus was quite the romantic,” Andre said. “Went about spouting poetry and writing odes to m’lady’s eyes…”
“Odes?” David turned to look at him. “Tyns wrote poetry? Our Tyns?”
“The most awful stuff. But the ladies adored it. Or at least, adored him. There was one in particular… Was it Anna? Annabelle? Alice?” He frowned. “Can’t remember, but I seem to recall there was talk of a marriage upon his return.”
“So, what happened?”
“We were shipped back at different times after the battle of Saratoga and that ghastly march to Boston. He was gravely wounded. I’d even heard rumors he was dead.
When I met up with him again in England, he was…
changed. I put it down to the war. No mention of the lady or marriage.
And then of course, he went racketing off to Paris. ”
“Did the lady not wait? Did she die?”
“I don’t know. I asked. Once. He gave me that look and went chilly as the tomb.” Andre gave a mock shudder. “Then he picked up his sketchbook, buried his nose in it, and pretended I didn’t exist. For weeks.”
“An effective strategy. The man is entitled to his privacy.”
“The man’s damned lonely, if you ask me...”
“He hasn’t. Asked either of us. And it’s his choice.”
They stepped back to avoid the flying sparks. Behind them, the coach’s transformation was complete; the pea-green coach with the rust-colored trim looked very little like the baggage-laden blue one it had been only a few hours before.
As they turned to admire their handiwork, Andre said softly, “Tell me, if you saw a friend walking closer and closer to the edge of a cliff, would you let him walk on, even if you knew it was his choice?”