Fallen Angels (25 page)

'Well?'

She looked back to him. She thought of the scandal if the marriage did not take place. She thought of her father. 'No, uncle. I don't want you to stop it.' She spoke decisively, and she saw relief show on his thin face. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

'Well done, O most favourite niece of mine.'

She smiled. 'You didn't want to stop it, did you?'

'No. I just wanted to see if you wanted me to stop it.' He laughed at her, pleased with himself. 'Do you think we can go inside now? The sun is so bad for my complexion.'

She took his arm and went back into the Castle that was being prepared for the ceremony and celebration of her marriage.

—«»—«»—«»—

The
Lily of Rye,
a fine schooner, was a smuggling ship. No exciseman could touch her, she was too fast and too well sailed. Yet Captain Nathaniel Skeat's disdain of the Excise cutters and the Royal Navy did not stem from his ship's speed, but rather from the piece of paper in his cabin that bore the seal of His Britannic Majesty and guaranteed that the
Lily of Rye
was hired to the British government for services unspecified.

Those services, in addition to providing the brandy and wine that would find its way to Lord Paunceley's table, consisted of taking British agents to deserted parts of the French coast. Sometimes the same men would appear a month or so later to be picked up, but too often Captain Skeat never saw his passengers again.

The French navy or privateers could be troublesome, but the French did not have a single ship that could outsail the
Lily,
and on his frequent rendezvous with French smugglers Captain Skeat was told which enemy ships were ready for sea and where they would patrol. Then English gold would pay for French brandy and the
Lily,
her sails looming in the darkness, would bend for home.

Captain Skeat expected no troubles on his present task. He was riding off the northern Biscay coast, waiting for midnight, and he had Geraint Owen's assurance that the shore here was in the hands of the rebels. He still took no chances. The ship carried no lights except for the shielded lantern over the compass. His sails, like many a smuggler's sails, were dark as night. The hull was painted black.

A longboat was in falls at the ship's stern, its crew ready to row ashore. Captain Skeat had no intention of risking the tall, lovely
Lily
even in a safe harbour on the French coast. A ship like the
Lily
could make any man rich, even a rebel of the Vendee.

'D'ye see anything?'

'Nothing.'

'Wait.'

The wind sighed in the rigging, waves slapped at the hull, the timbers creaked. The
Lily
waited. If, Skeat reflected. Lord Werlatton did not come within the next two hours, then the
Lily
would have to return the following night. He stared at the dark hint of land, smelt the resin of the pines on this coast, and waited.

Ashore, in the deep darkness beneath a stand of pines that grew on a sandhill behind Saint Gilles, Toby Lazender also waited.

He lay on his belly. The trunk of a pine was sticky to his right. He had not moved in an hour, not even when an owl stooped close to him, claws reaching, to snatch a wriggling lizard to its airy death.

Toby stared at Saint Gilles. He saw the houses as dark blobs against the lighter strip of sand, beyond which the waves fretted ragged white. He could smell the salt.

Once, he was not sure, he thought he saw the dark shape of a ship to sea, and he had thought of the signal he would have to give from the small, stone jetty that served as Saint Gilles's harbour. Beneath his right hand, the oil of its lock pungent in his nostrils, was a musket. On his back, in a knapsack, was a lantern and a tinder box, both wrapped in cloth so that, when he moved, they made no noise.

There was a price on his head, a price sufficient to keep a French family alive for two years. He was
Le Revenant,
the leader of one of the rebel bands that harried the French government troops in the small, tight fields and woods of the Vendee. A score of his men were a half mile behind him, waiting for a signal that would tell them to come forward and collect the barrels of fine, English powder that the
Lily's
longboat would bring to France.

Nothing moved in Saint Gilles, nothing except the endless rill of surf.

He could not smell fire, and he suspected the villagers had gone. The fishermen of Saint Gilles, even on a warm night, rarely let their fires go out; fires that simmered the inevitable great pots of fish soup and kept the pitch warm for the boats and the nets. The village seemed deserted.

He waited another twenty minutes, still nothing moved and then, silent as a ghost, a revenant, he moved down the sandhill into a gully which led to the beach.

The surf was louder here.

He stopped at the dunes behind the beach and watched again.

A great wooden frame reared up on the foreshore and something moved there. He stared at it, seeing at last that it was hung with nets which stirred in the small wind. He moved again, going closer to Saint Gilles, closer to the small jetty from which he should embark for England and Campion's marriage.

He found the first sentry ten minutes later. It was a boy, scarce sixteen, who had fallen fast asleep in a bowl of the dunes. Toby saw him because of the shimmer of light on the lad's bayonet. The position of the sentry told him where the French troops would have their cordon and he crouched, unmoving in black shadow, and at last saw a second man take off a hat and scratch his head.

They were silent. He knew they expected him. Not one had lit a pipe, which proved that their discipline was good. They had waited in silence and if he had not half expected them, and if he had not moved with such silent caution, their skilful positions might well have been sufficient to surprise him.

He went back the way he had come.

He stopped where a hedgerow came to the dunes and there, hidden by the earth bank on which the thick hedge grew, he discarded the useless knapsack with its lantern that would make no signal now to the dark sea. He pulled back the flint of the musket, put it to his shoulder, and aimed it in the general direction of the village. At this range the ball had no hope of accuracy.

He fired.

The flash of powder in the pan momentarily dazzled his open right eye, while the burning grains stung his cheek. His shot whistled over the dunes and smacked into the hanging nets, startling the French sentries and provoking them into a panicked, ragged volley.

Toby climbed the hill towards the pines, knowing his men would bring his horse forward. He stopped once to see if the French would send patrols out, hoping they would so that his band could cut one off and chop it down, but the troops stayed in the village. He could hear them shouting, he could see the lanterns unmasked and hear the officers yelling for order, and then he turned away to his waiting men and his saddled horse. He had been betrayed.

In the village the Colonel, who had come with his men to Saint Gilles after dusk in a convoy of fishing boats, swore foully. 'Who fired?'

Everyone had fired, yet the sentries swore that they had been fired on first, that, indeed, a whole army of rebels had blazed at them from the sand dunes and the Colonel, who had been an army butcher before the revolution had opened up the ladder of promotion, kicked some of the younger men, swore once more, and went back to the fishing hovels from which, as his men landed, the inhabitants had precipitately fled. God damn and God damn and God damn! He wondered if the
Le Revenant
would try again tomorrow.

If, he thought, there were to be any tomorrows left for him. His orders had come from Paris, signed by Citizen Marchenoir himself, orders that were astonishingly specific. They named the dates, they named the place, and they named the time when
Le Revenant
would come to this rendezvous.

The Colonel had failed. He had been pointed towards an enemy of France and, as his orders said, all he had to do was wait for the Englishman to walk into his arms. The ambush had failed. It was unlikely that the Englishman would come on the morrow.

Such failure, the Colonel knew, led to that last sneeze into the bloodstained basket. He shouted for one of his officers who could read and write, shouted for a lantern, demanded wine. The officer, a subtle Captain called Tours, sat quietly opposite the Colonel. 'Sir?'

'You will concoct a story, Tours.'

'A story?'

'Why
Le Revenant
did not come. We are told he's ill. We're told…' the Colonel's invention ran out. 'Write something, you fool.' The Colonel poured himself wine. He decided he hated Paris and its secret men and its power and its ability to make him shiver with fear on this warm coast. God damn
Le Revenant,
God damn Paris, God damn everything. He drank.

And at sea, where the
Lily
jerked against the waves, the crew saw the sparks of the musket flames and heard, a few seconds later, the rattle of shots come over the water.

Captain Skeat clapped his hands. 'Wear her round!'

The jibs were tightened and the beautiful ship creaked as the wind pushed her, as the bows swung to the open sea, and then the staysail caught the breeze, the
Lily
dipped, and suddenly all the great spread of canvas was driving the lean, black ship away from the enemy shore towards the safety of the empty ocean.

Toby was betrayed and still in France. He rode eastwards, far from the sound of the sea, and in his thoughts were Lucille and revenge. He rode, the revenant, towards the dawn.

Lord Culloden was no longer a Major in the Blues. He claimed he had sold the privilege for close to four thousand pounds, yet he still wore the gorgeous uniform. Seeing him at the stairhead, waiting for her, Campion even wondered if his uniform was new. He had lost none of his new weight, yet his neck no longer bulged at the embroidered stock, and the tunic was not stretched at its buttons. He bowed as she approached. 'Ready, my dear?'

'As I'll ever be.' She smiled.

The Earl had wanted to see them before the ball began, to look at them in their finery, to imagine how they would look when they descended the great staircase. He had smiled at them, wished them well, but his humour had been driven away by the pain. 'Go, children. Enjoy the evening.' He had waved them to the door. Campion had held back and kissed him. 'Thank you for all this.'

He tried to smile. He reached out to touch her hand. 'I suppose your brother hasn't come?'

'No, father.'

He sighed. He could scarce move his head. His red-rimmed eyes rolled away from her as he coughed. Dr Fenner was mixing laudanum and brandy. The Earl waited eagerly for the drink. 'Go, my love. Go.'

The Castle was filled with guests. A host of relatives had come for Lord Culloden, and with them had arrived a dozen young cavalry officers, loud mouthed and braying, who had churned up the south terrace lawn with a horse race the day before. Aunt Lucretia had come, sniffing into odd corners of the Castle as though planning what she would do if her son, Sir Julius, inherited them. The dowager Duchess d'Auxigny, Achilles' mother, had descended in billows of black silk and white powder, wishing to know why the flag on the Castle staff was not at half mast for her elder son. She brought an expensive mercury thermometer to test the heat of the water in her washing bowl, declaring that water too chill would prematurely age her already wrinkled face. The Duchess, with her drove of maids and servants, was given the Garden House, making the rest of the Castle even more crowded.

And on this night, the celebration before the wedding, there were the local gentry, officers from Dorchester, the mayor of Lazen, and the rector, the Reverend Horne Mounter, who fussed at the Castle entrance in anticipation of the Bishop's arrival.

Campion, as she waited at the top of the stairs, was dressed in coloured Pekings, the silk brilliant, the colours seeming to shimmer as she moved. She wore silk gloves that reached to her elbows. Her hair, piled high and held by a comb of gold, was crowned by ostrich feathers. About her neck were the four jewels of Lazen, the chains now of differing lengths so that the seals seemed to make a bar of jewelled gold at her breasts. She had decided, for a reason that seemed whimsical but good to her, that the seals should be seen. They had been locked up too long, these symbols of Lazen's pride. She put her arm into Lord Culloden's and thought how much her father wanted her to enjoy this night. For his sake, she decided, she would.

Culloden smiled down at her. 'Forward? The full charge?'

'Shouldn't we wait for the music?'

'I rather think it waits for us.'

'Oh!' She laughed. 'I'd have stood here all night!'

Lord Culloden's spurs and sword-sling jingled as he stepped forward. The two of them went from the shadows of the upper hallway into the chandelier-lit brilliance of the ballroom.

Septimus Gheeraerts de Serckmaester, who was in truth called Ernest Gudgeon, but who had found his musical services more in demand when he assumed a continental name, rapped with his hand on the lid of the pianoforte. The orchestra had rehearsed for two days and now, resplendent in wigs and livery, the musicians bent to their instruments and played a triumphant processional that had been commissioned for this occasion.

Applause rippled through the ballroom, it swelled, and Campion, dazzling on the stairway, smiled shyly.

Lord Culloden wondered if this would be the last time that the great house would ever see such a ball. Within months this place would be stripped, its treasures sold, and the money used to bring down an even greater edifice, Britain itself. Yet Lord Culloden had no great desire to see Britain humbled, or Reason, whatever that was, triumph. His membership of the
Illuminati,
like his membership of the Fallen Ones, was merely an extension of his partnership with Valentine Larke.