Eye of the Storm (6 page)

Chapter Six

Marshall trudged up the path, gravel crunching beneath his feet. He wondered if he had only imagined feeling the stares as he walked past the cottage closest to the beach. What did these people think of a stranger setting foot on their shore? They must have seen the
Mermaid
from time to time, these past two weeks.

The village seemed deserted. This close to Honfleur, one would expect more activity, fishing boats, something. Had there been some misfortune, an outbreak of disease? There should be children…

There was no sound but the cry of the gulls.

The path up the hill was steep, but certainly easier than going straight up the chains. After twenty minutes’ steady climb, he came to a wrought-iron gate set between two stone pillars. The gate was mostly for show at this point, as the stone wall on either side had either been battered or weathered until it was no barrier at all.

He called a greeting in French, but there was no reply, so he opened the gate—it was not locked—and continued along the path to the imposing house. He knocked at the door, but heard not so much as an echo coming from within. Not surprising, of course—the door itself looked as though it was made of planks hewn from an ancient tree-trunk, at least three inches thick.

After waiting for several minutes, he gave up and decided to scout around the back. If there was anyone living here at all, there should be some activity near the kitchen garden. There might be a chicken-coop in back, or a dovecote.

The stone flags that led around the back were worn, but looked as though they still saw regular use. They had been swept clean of dead leaves, at any rate. Marshall followed them, and discovered a small stone terrace at the back of the house, and a discouraged, dormant herb garden. He had nearly reached the back door when he heard a click behind him—a sound he recognized as the cocking of a pistol. And  “
Mains vers le haut!”
followed, hesitantly, by “Put up your hands, you English dog!” in heavily accented English.

Knowing that Davy would never let him hear the end of this—and hoping he would have the chance to hear his lover say “I told you so!”—Marshall slowly raised his hands.

Dear Will:

I hope this finds you well. I must say it is far too quiet here since you went back to sea, but no doubt His Majesty has more need of your services than we have of your company. My cousin is well, though he misses his wife very much and I must admit I feel the lack of agreeable companionship pretty severely myself.

The weather has been unremittingly glorious, and if it were not for the knowledge that hurricane season will begin in another few months—and the loneliness, and the tedium—I could call this Paradise. It was that, for a little while, but the ability to appreciate the tropics seems to have left me very suddenly, just this past week, and I would be delighted if I could ever get it back.

I hope you will be sent back to these waters soon. Please write, when your duties permit.

Your most humble servant,

D S-J

“My apologies, monsieur.”

It was a friendly voice, at least, not the harsh croak of the elderly fellow who’d crept up on him with the pistol. Marshall barely had time to tuck his letter safely away when the door to the cellar creaked open. “Thank you,” he called up in French. “I did not mean to alarm your household.”

“Jean-Claude is easily alarmed, and suspicious of strangers. But he tells me you are a friend of Jacques Colbert?”

“Indeed, sir. My name is William Marshall, and I am Captain of the yacht
Mermaid.
The gentleman who owns her is a nephew of Dr. Colbert, a cousin of his son-in-law.”

He hoped his French was adequate to this task. That mouthful felt exactly like a grammar lesson from the tutor aboard the
Titan
, although the situation was embarrassingly opposite what Captain Cooper had intended to cultivate. His captain had wanted the young gentlemen taught the language in order to converse politely with captured French officers, not to make themselves understood when the French had the upper hand.

“Yes, it is understood that my friend’s daughter married an English milord. I am Etienne Beauchene. The doctor and I have many common interests of a scientific nature.”

Marshall breathed a sigh of relief. “I am delighted to meet you, Monsieur. We had been told that a friend of Dr. Colbert’s lived here at the chateau, and that he wished us to meet him here.”

“Ah, we had wondered at your interest in our little village. Please, sir, come upstairs. Our countries are at peace, at least for now. There is no reason we cannot converse like civilized men.”

“Merci,
Monsieur.” Marshall wasted no time in ascending the stairs he’d been unceremoniously shoved down half an hour before. He shook hands with Beauchene, who was much younger than he had expected a colleague of Colbert’s to be. Beauchene appeared to be no more than thirty, though he wore spectacles that Marshall would expect to see on a much more elderly man. He was slender, of middle height, with pleasant features, friendly eyes behind the thick lenses, and smooth, light-brown hair pulled back in a short pigtail much like Marshall’s own.

“Come,” the man said. “You may leave your coat here on this rack, if you wish.” Another coat, probably Beauchene’s own, hung on a carved stand in the foyer, beside the front door. “And then I will introduce you to my mother.”

“I would be honored.” Marshall left his greatcoat, but felt its absence in a strong draft that ran across the floor when they passed a stone stairway that led downwards, probably to the cellar. As they proceeded down a chilly but elegant gallery, Marshall asked, “Have you heard from Dr. Colbert recently?”

“I have had letters from him since the treaty was signed, and I believe he has written to my mother; she has a wide correspondence. But no, I have not heard from him lately—not this past month or more. And I have not seen him. Yet he told you he would be here?”

“I wish it were that simple,” Marshall said. “Dr. Colbert wished to return to France to attend to personal business in Paris. From there, he wrote to his son-in-law, Baron Guilford, asking him to send transportation. The Baron wrote to my employer and friend, Mr. St. John, who is traveling in the area partly for business and partly for pleasure.”

“For pleasure—in winter?”

“Yes. He is an adventuresome man, and having bought the ship only recently, he wished to make himself acquainted with it. He has lived in Canada, so to him our weather is quite mild. And, because he is an amiable man and fond of his cousin—he is godfather to one of their children—he agreed to sail by your village and see if we could rendezvous with Dr. Colbert.”

“That might cause some small awkwardness with the authorities,” Beauchene said tactfully.

“It would cause a great deal of awkwardness, sir,” Marshall agreed. “Believe me, I realize that, but there was nothing to be done by the time word reached us. Had there been any opportunity to contact the doctor before he left Paris, we would have urged him to choose another rendezvous. We can only imagine that he wished to visit you, perhaps to discuss some mutual scientific interest.”

Beauchene shook his head. “I would be pleased to see him, naturally, and so would my mother; we do not see our friends as often as we might wish. But we have corresponded little, this past year or more—the war, of course, but also our interests have diverged. His greatest attention is given to natural science, while I have found myself more and more entertained by descriptive geometry, to the neglect of all other studies. Do you know of Gaspard Monge?”

“Descriptive geometry?” Marshall asked with genuine interest. “I have not studied it. My profession turns my attention to celestial navigation. I am familiar with the work of the great LaGrange.”

“You should read the works of Monge. He was Minister of the Marine for some time, and his work on the cannon—” Beauchene broke off, and slapped his own forehead.
“Je suis fou!
No, sir, as an Englishman you should not read Monge. Not at all!” He smiled disarmingly. “I am not a man of war, Captain. I am a scholar, and when I meet a man who knows LaGrange, I cannot call him my enemy. It is seldom that I have the chance to share this passion, except in letters. We have few visitors, and I cannot travel without assistance, nor serve in the military. My eyes, you see,” he added, touching the frame of his very thick-lensed spectacles. “In my home, there is no trouble. Outdoors, I fall down. In battle, I would be more dangerous to France than to England.”

Marshall was touched by the self-deprecating humor. “Then there is more than one good result of your misfortune, sir. I shall never fear the chance to return your hospitality aboard ship.”

“You are in the Navy?”

The question reminded Marshall that this charming mathematical gentleman was, after all, a Frenchman. “Not at present, sir. Like most of my fellows, I was set ashore when the treaty was signed. It was the greatest good fortune that my friend Mr. St. John had decided to stop dealing in furs in Canada and began dealing with gems in Europe, and needed a man with experience to take charge of his ship.”

“With such a cargo, would it not be safer for him to take himself aboard a larger ship?”

“No doubt, but I believe that North America breeds men with a taste for independence. His business is small, and he does not have the large, precious stones. I have advised him that we should travel in convoy if we venture outside the Channel.”

Beauchene nodded as they approached the end of the corridor. “That would be wise in any case. The war has gone on for so long that too many men have forgotten how to behave as men, not brigands. Come, let me introduce you to the mistress of the house.”

They entered a large, bright room, with windows looking out onto a garden that in summer would no doubt be beautiful. The room was clean, but it had obviously seen better days; both the wall-paper and the furniture looked a trifle faded. Marshall noted all that in passing, his attention on the lady who sat in a tapestry chair beside a small fire. A tiny white dog with a brown face and huge brown ears peered up attentively from her lap. Its tail wagged tentatively as he approached.

“Maman
, this is Captain William Marshall of the merchant ship
Mermaid.
Captain, my mother, Madame Beauchene.”

“Enchanté, Madame,” Marshall said, making a leg. He decided that he would not attempt the Continental kiss on her hand; this trim, sharp-eyed lady must have married and become a mother at quite an early age. Even though there were signs of silver in her dark hair, she appeared to be on the sunny side of fifty, and she did not look susceptible to flattery…and he did not want to run afoul of the little dog, who was watching him closely. “I apologize for intruding upon your home.”

“I imagine you are sorrier still, after meeting Jean-Claude,” she said in passable English. “You have made this a great day for him. Ever since the treaty was signed, he has been haunting the grounds, waiting for the English to invade and murder us all. He is good with the hens and the vegetables, but he does have his notions. And now he has caught an Englishman in the kitchen garden—his fears are vindicated.”

“I came unarmed, Madame,” Marshall said, spreading his hands. “I mean no harm to you or your household.”

“Yet you came. Why?” She gestured at the settee opposite her. “Sit, I have told Yvette to bring tea.”

Beauchene sat down beside him, and Marshall once again explained about the errant Dr. Colbert. Madame Beauchene’s reaction was much the same as her son’s had been. “I would be most glad to see him, but we have had no word. Why did he not travel along the shore?”

“I wish I knew, Madame. Mr. St. James is most willing to oblige his cousin, but I cannot think it a good idea for us to loiter along the coast. Our mission is a private matter, quite harmless, but our presence might alarm the authorities. Can you think of anything that would have delayed the doctor?” He included them both in his question. “He would have been traveling from Paris, and we know that he left by the last week of November.”

“Jacques Colbert could be delayed by nearly anything,” she said. “A good conversation, a sick child, a two-headed calf…but I do not think he would delay if he knew that you would be waiting for him. He is not a thoughtless man.”

“Except for the military, travel is slow,” her son said. “At least, that is what we hear. I hope he has not had trouble leaving the city.”

Madame Beauchene made a noise that Marshall would, from someone less ladylike, have called a snort. “Politics. We must hope he has not had political trouble. If those fools decide to refuse him permission to leave because his daughter married an Englishman—”

“Is that likely, do you think?” Marshall asked. Sir Percy said Colbert had left Paris, but would he know if the doctor had been arrested in secret?

“It is possible,” Beauchene said. “Almost anything is possible. But there have been so many English traveling to France…” He gave what Marshall had to call a Gallic shrug. “If every French family with an English connection were denied permission to travel, no one would go anywhere. We ourselves have relatives in Devonshire.”

The tea arrived, and Marshall did what courtesy required, though he was becoming restless. If Colbert was not here, he should get back to his ship as quickly as possible. As soon as he reasonably could, Marshall said, “I apologize again for disturbing you, and I must ask your advice. What would you suggest I do? We should not stay too nearby if we mean to avoid creating distress, but I would not wish the doctor to be stranded here.”