Most Secret (33 page)

“Here’s a man,” said Bygones, ignoring him and addressing the roof lanthorn, “who for combined hypocrisy and viciousness can scarce be matched even among his Lord’s Elect. And yet we can’t touch him; he’s safe.”

Bygones laid his cheek against his palm, reflecting with half-closed eyes. Then he chuckled, looking up at Félix.

“Well, moan capeeten, eel fo bid you good day, nest paws? Nome doon peep! Eel fo que we go on to Calais and report to Madame Dorleaon and take our punishment,” proclaimed the old soldier, coming down to earth and letting French go after a short grapple. “You’re a pretty tolerable good fellow, as the lad seems to think. Ayagh, though! It’s cruel hard fate in store for you.”

“One moment!” Félix said grandly.

Hurrying across the cabin, pausing only to restore a fallen
Consolation of Philosophy
to the table, he opened another locker under the windows.

“Your sword and sword belt, yoong man,” he said to Kinsmere, producing these. “I put dem away, safe and sound for you, in case you are going to play rough again. You permit I restore dem now?”

“Indeed, I permit it Thanks very much.”

“But, monsieur,” and in stately fashion Félix addressed Bygones, “I do not understand what is so cruel ’ard. Dey do not ’ang me; dey do not even ’ang dat t’ing dere which would swear ’e ’ad de Pope’s blessing if he kill his own wife. No, no, no! If I could ’ave de deep honour to escort you and my yoong friend to Calais, I should be mos’ ’appy. Command me! All dat old Félix ’ave—”

“No, captain,” said Bygones. “Also with many thanks, it is only fitting that the lad and I should continue aboard the
Saucy Ann.
You are free; ay, to be sure. And yet, from what Captain Murch tells me, it
is
cruel hard notwithstanding. Roger Stainley, d’ye see, sold this ship to the East India Company less than a week ago. Gaines should never have promised her to you.”

“Eh?” said Félix.

Bygones rose up.

“If
you
have made an end here, lad, we will take our leave. Captain Souter, I am onchantay to have had the joy of your connaissance, rip me in small moreso if I’m not! We will leave Scrivener Salvation Gaines in your tender care. Doubtless, when we are gone, you will wish to have speech with him.”

There was a long silence.

Félix slowly closed one eye. His great chest had swelled, and he smiled upon Gaines.

“Monsieur,” he replied, obviously impressed with Bygones’s conversational style, “from de bottom of my ’eart, wit’ the pearly tear of gratitude which glisten at de corner of de heye, Félix Alexandre Charlemagne Souter desire to t’ank you. Ha, ha, ha.”

The knife fell from Gaine’s hand and stuck point downward in the deck. Gaines whipped round.

“This must not be!” he cried. “This cannot be! You are a villain, man Abraham; you are no better than a murderer! There are laws to be enforced, and English warships to enforce them!”

He flew towards the windows, shouting, “Englishmen! Englishmen!” It was there that Félix caught him, and tucked him under one arm so that his cries were stifled. Then Félix bowed to the others.

“My friends,” said he, “it desolate me dat I may not go on deck and say farewell. But I mus’ keep dis one quiet until de warships leave, and den I talk to him. Ah, one moment. Will you be kind enough, Mr. Abraham Bygones, to fetch me de knife ’e ’ave use himself? It is dere by your foot. One t’ousand t’anks, my friends both, and so good day.”

Again he bowed as they went out, and they saw the look in Gaines’s eyes.

The warships
were
preparing to leave for Dunkirk, as they discovered on deck. But Kinsmere could not think of this; he was feeling a trifle sick.

“Bygones,” he said, “where did you learn about Mr. Stainley selling this ship? From Captain Murch, was it?”

“Why,” Bygones answered with a meditative air, “so far as I know, he has not thought to recoup his losses by selling her at all. But I called to mind the tortured and elegant principles of diplomatic speaking; it seemed to me the effect was salutary. Let us go aboard the
Saucy Ann,”
says he, “and solace our woes with a bottle of rum.”

S
OUTHWARD LOOMED THE PURPLE
coast of France, and the lights of old Calais were twinkling on the hill as dusk drew in. Idling at a bare two knots, her mainsail dark against a pink sunset, the sloop
Saucy Ann
crept in an almost windless sea. A creak of protest shook through her from bowsprit to rudder, but the quiet water slipped whispering past her bows.

Leaning against the forward rail on the port side, Bygones Abraham and my grandfather watched the light die out of the wrinkled sea; shadows deepened; France grew vaster against the sky. They felt the slight roll, and heard a drowsy flip-flap of canvas. From well aft drifted the noise of an argument about a wench. Somebody was performing prodigies of music with the assistance of a comb and a piece of paper. A hoarse salt-pork voice began humming the tune, and then soared into song.

To all you ladies now on land

   We men at sea indite …

Other voices took it up:

And yet would have you understand

   How hard it is to write;

The Muses nine, and Neptune too

   We must implore to write to you,

      With a fal lal lal, and a fal lal lal …

So close were they drawing to Calais that they could hear the bells from the Church of Our Lady, the bells of Our Lady were clanging and jangling, faintly, in slow discord. A peaceful discord over water: as though they were trying to speak both French and English at once; and neither could predominate, but only raised a din.

It would be fitting comment. For possession of this town England and France battled throughout centuries. Arrows sang from its walls before the fourth Edward was king; its name (they say) is written upon Mary Tudor’s heart. So the bell clamour from the Church of Our Lady fell
ding-clatter-clang
across roofs and cobbled quais; lights sprang up in narrow stone houses; and even the sea began to turn purple in the mild French dusk.

You would not suspect this sleepy, muddy old town of being at all associated with that most puissant and cold-faced sovereign, King Louis the Fourteenth. King Louis the Fourteenth has not yet attained his thirty-second birthday. But he has long set an example to other kings of slacker thoughts and dignity, or even less fashionable coats. He is a symbol. Awesome in a great mattress of a periwig, propped up on red heels to make him look tall, he is soon to be known, modestly, as the Sun-King.

Across Europe range his lace-hatted generals, Turenne and the great Condé, carrying war to the Spanish Netherlands. At his back rises marble Versailles, changed from a shooting box to the most splendid palace of all the earth. On his lawn Fashion stands tiptoe like a statue; world-shaking commands are issued as to the set of a periwig or the twirling of a clouded cane. Art and music sit at his feet; the
haut-lisse
Gobelins are woven, one square yard a year, to glorify his name. On his private stage the playwrights may be seen beckoning—that so-witty M. Molière, who makes him smile at the antics of a poor
bourgeois
trying to be a gentleman, or M. Racine, with the stately tragedies wherein all the violence occurs off stage and does not disturb his ears with any unmannerly noise.

Between the French and English courts, as represented by their theatricals, there is a curious parallel. If you feel drawn towards the rowdy robust English theatre, with its rowdy robust court besides, you may not be too enamoured of the stiff and brittle clockwork actors on the private stage at Versailles. At Whitehall Palace there is an open playhouse, with a gallery for Jack Public. King Louis would no more think of letting Jacques Bonhomme into Versailles than of letting him into an upper chamber of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jacques’s business is to work long and pay taxes, so that for Louis the Kingdom of Heaven may be (as decorously as possible) anticipated. Years afterwards Jacques Bonhomme will commence to think of this, and he will curse the Sun-King’s coffin as it goes past in the rain.

But it is young Louis now, at his marble-topped table in a hall of cake-icing finery. Small fair-haired La Vallière worships him; his cunning runs on unchallenged; and three hundred men are required to assist him in the heavy labour of putting on his breeches. At this court there is no place for the mocking laughter of Charles Stuart. A little light music. A little light vice, and certain unpleasant vices as well. A proud little scene to be painted on the ceiling, with gods and clouds and cannon, and all underlings a-tremble. Bow down, ye stiff-necked Englishmen!
L’état, c’est lui.

Bygones Abraham, hearing the bells of Calais across the water, was in an oratorical mood.

“Nay, lad,” said he, in a hollow and doleful voice like an oracle from its cavern, “never speak lightly or jestingly o’ the plight we’re in. ’Tis no jesting matter, mah fwaa it’s not! There’s His Majesty’s sister (God bless her) waiting in a ship called
La Gloire
for the terms of a secret treaty, and we’ve not got ’em. She’ll not come to England; there’ll be no treaty signed at Dover; the king will be several hundred thousand pounds a year out of pocket; and, worst of all, the plotter-in-chief is in a position to make His Majesty dance for ever. Oh, ecod! I hate the thought of facing that lady when we arrive. She looks little and mild; but she’s a clever woman, and she has a jaw. Still, it’s not much compared to the situation awaiting us at home. What our punishment will be I can’t guess, but …”

He fetched up a deep sigh, and again had recourse to the stone bottle with which he had been fortifying himself for some time. Calais’s lights strengthened through dusk. The salt-pork voices aft, which had rumbled through several verses, sang on with undiminished zeal.

Should foggy Opdam chance to know

   Our sad and dismal story,

The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe

   And quit their fort at Goree;

For what resistance can they find

From men who’ve left their hearts behind?

   With a fal lal lal and a fal lal lal …

Bygones handed the bottle of rum to my grandfather, who took a deep pull and returned it.

“Well,” Kinsmere said thoughtfully, “I hope we are not expected to go out and hang ourselves or some such nonsense. Because burn me if I’ll do it! Now that the dispatch is gone, in spite of our doing our devilish damned best to keep it, don’t you find yourself tolerably well pleased?”

“Pleased?”

“In candour, yes. These proceedings were none of the most honest, now, were they? Asking for bribes, selling his country—”

“Shush!” muttered Bygones, peering round as though in fear of an eavesdropper. “Lad, lad!”

“Well, don’t you think so?”

“Oh, ecod! This is treason talk, no less!”

“Why, as to that,” Kinsmere’s gaze searched the crowded masts in the harbour, “let us disregard words and think only of deeds. A considerable inheritance went down the wind when they desired me to go in with ’em …”

“Ay, and you wouldn’t! Why, lad?”

“I don’t know,” Kinsmere replied. And, as they both pondered this, it is a sober fact that he didn’t know.

“At all events, and in strictest confidence,” he continued, “you can answer my question. Aren’t you tolerably well pleased?”

Then, presently, Bygones began to chuckle.

“Why,” says he, “it may be—it may just be—you are in the right of it. ’Tis the proper happy ending, with the villains all circumvented and the like; although,” added Bygones, taking another reflective swig at the stone bottle, “the heroes and the villains seem to have become most unconsciously scrambled. For the life of me, ecod, I can’t tell which is which. But it’s a profound moral lesson, this is, and shows the perspicacity o’ Providence. Whichever were the villains, we see clearly that right and justice have triumphed. This not-entirely-reputable treaty has been put aside or at least much delayed …”

Then Kinsmere saw that he was winding himself up with rum for a profound discourse, and about to hold forth at some length.

“Right and justice!” Bygones pursued affably. “Those twin glowing beacons which are as frankincense and myrrh crying aloud in the wilderness to the ears of a multitude grovelling in chains! And what’s the odds how the dice fall to rekindle ’em. I may be a-growing old, lad, but I’m not too old to pick up my bed and walk again, as I’ve been doing since I carried a pike for Langdale in ’forty-five. Wherever there’s fighting to be done, or a drop o’ good liquor for the belly, old Bygones will be walking not on crutches until they shovel him six feet under.

“And what’s the result? Out of this business you get a rare fine lass in Dolly. And I make a friend of as good a fighting man (if you’ll allow me to say so) as I could ha’ wished for when the cavalry charges.

“Truth and justice, we see, have been a-working from the first. In my lodgings yesterday, when you first told me the story of your ring, I thought you were a liar and a spy. And if,” said Bygones, exhibiting on his finger the blue stone of a ring that glittered in the last light, “if Providence hadn’t caused both our rings to be hollow so that you could show yourself an honest man—why, we’d ha’ cut each other’s throats. But here’s old Rowley outwitted, and justice triumphant. And all I had to do was pull sharp at the stone in the ring, like this, and it came open, like this, and—

“Great body o’ Pilate!”
roared Bygones, as though stung by a snake.

Kinsmere, still looking ahead at the masts in the harbour, started and whirled round. Bygones stared with bulging eyes at the cavity he had disclosed when he pulled open the stone by way of illustration. Peering down at it, Kinsmere saw wedged inside a small object which looked like very thin paper folded many times over.

“Every time we carried a message,” Bygones was saying vacantly, “we were obliged to pass in our rings to His Majesty—Do
you
remember? Last night? He called for both our rings; we put ’em on the desk; we saw ’em not again until we took our leave? Also, whenever a King’s Messenger calls on Madame, ’tis the same process.