I stood painfully, quietly numbed with fright. Dr. Brent; Thomas the groom. It would have been shock enough to learn these men were spies if I were standing in the town square with the noonday sun streaming down, but here in a dripping subterranean chamber, it was macabre. Spies? They were murderers! And now I knew and they knew that I knew. And I was at their mercy.
The man I called Sacre Bleu grabbed my arm aggressively, his calloused fingers pressing hard. “Where is the marquis, eh? You will not lie to me or I will make you regret it.”
“My dear Pierre,” purred Dr. Brent, “if you had not disobeyed orders, and left your watch, then you would know where the marquis is. And if you had any intelligence, then you would guess.” Pierre Sacre Bleu gave a crude curse and released me.
“All right, smart one, where is the marquis?” snarled Pierre.
“Probably, he is out searching for the mademoiselle here, which is why, Thomas, you will take the stallion and lose it somewhere in the countryside. I don’t want the nag found around here. Someone might have seen the girl riding it.” Dr. Brent took one step closer to me, gathered a lock of my hair between his fingers, and rubbed it slowly with his thumb. “When one knows a little of Miss Cordell, all becomes clear. You see, Pierre, she must have seen you in Mudbury and followed you here—it’s obvious that the marquis knows nothing of her presence here or he would not have allowed it. Ah well, good enough. To search for this little one will keep His Lordship’s mind away from us tonight.” Dr. Brent turned to Thomas. “Go now, Thomas, take the horse.” Into the patter of Thomas’s retreating footsteps, Brent called, “And take him far!”
Brent turned back to me. “So, Elizabeth, you have fallen into my lap, if I may be so bold, like a red, juicy little plum. Pray do not cower so. I have no thought of injuring you.”
The cruelty in his voice was as unyielding as a granite wall, but I pulled myself up with what I hoped would pass for dignity.
“That’s better, although I see you are still as stiff as a corpse, pardon the expression.”
I swallowed. “I would rather not pardon the expression, if you don’t mind.”
“As you wish.” He released my hair after giving it a sharp, admonishing tug. “You are an unexpected guest here and it is my place to show you hospitality. I had not expected this pleasure, but I am not too surprised. You have seemed fascinated for some time with Pierre; so much so that you follow him every time you cross his path, like a friendless pup. I myself cannot fathom the attraction, for to me he is ugly. But—to each his own. I apologize for the chloroform last month in the woods, but it was necessary, you see. I was trying to break you of an unseemly infatuation with my homely partner.”
In the lamplight, Sacre Bleu was glaring daggers at Dr. Brent.
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked. My voice quivered hollowly in the chamber.
“What are we going to do with you? Pierre and I have often asked ourselves that. Before now, we really had no use for you. You have been so closely guarded that it was difficult to see if you had any say in the matter. But here you are,” he spread his hands expansively, “a gift of Lord Dearborne’s underestimation of your disobedience.”
“That does not answer my question.” I tried to keep my voice steady.
“Pardon me. There are two alternatives. One, I could kill you—but what a waste of très jolie femme, you are quite a work of art, n’est-ce pas?” I wondered if I was going to be sick. It was a possibility, the way my insides were behaving. “Yes, killing would be the easy way out; I am an important operative for His Majesty Napoleon Bonaparte and I really cannot risk being identified. But I am returning to France tonight. I have overstayed my welcome and my adopted motherland awaits me with open arms. So I shall take you with me.”
“France? No! Why? Oh, why? If you are leaving England tonight, surely it can’t matter to you that I have seen you. I mean, you will have left England. If you leave me here I give you my word that I will say nothing to anyone until you are gone. I swear it.” I prided myself on being a much better liar these days. Evidently, Dr. Brent didn’t think so.
“My word, what a child,” he sneered. “Sometimes, little cherry, you are too disingenuous for belief. There will be other trips to England for me. Napoleon will have more need of information before France has brought England under her heel. France cannot afford to leave alive anyone who could put me out of business, or the only operatives that would remain are clumsy fellows like Thomas and Pierre.”
I wondered with surprising dispassion if I was going to be killed instead of merely kidnapped.
“And perhaps Monsieur the Marquis will not be so cool toward us when I hold you in the, er, palm of my hand. Ah, don’t look so dismayed, petite. Life need not be so bleak for you, I can be a charming fellow and I will teach you how to please me, eh?” He turned to Pierre and ordered him to tie my hands behind my back. “We go to the tower now, such a useful view from there. One can signal to ships far at sea.”
I assumed I was to be taken then. To the clock tower, the one I had always found so forbidding, standing like a sentinel gazing for Napoleon’s troops.
“Do you have to tie them so tightly?” I said through clenched teeth.
“Pain is good for the soul,” said Dr. Brent.
Pierre pushed me roughly in front of him as Dr. Brent led the way. We went deeper into the crypt, round an absolutely black corner, and ducked to the left. We were walking on stone no longer, but on hard-packed dirt. I realized that we were in an ancient smuggler’s passageway. We walked in silence for a few moments, the monotonous blackness of the surroundings broken only by the thin circle of light from the lamp and an occasional skittering rat. I began to hear a dull, wooden roar.
“The surf, my dear,” said Dr. Brent. “Pierre will steady you from behind; we are about to ascend a ladder.” Rather than steady me, Sacre Bleu grabbed me bodily round the waist and lifted me up the ladder.
Suddenly, we were inside the tower and the light from the lamp was superfluous. The thin rays of the late-afternoon sun were attempting to stream through the dusty stained-glass windows.
“Be so kind as to follow with us up the stairs,” Brent said. “The view from the top is stunning.” I always wanted to see the clock room, but I had never had the nerve to climb up the spiral staircase which wound up the inside of the tower. Now the problem of nerve was taken care of and I would get my wish. One should always try to look on the bright side. I tried not to look down and followed my captors up the steps and through the small doorway into the clock room.
The heat of the place made me feel faint and it was some moments before I could get my breath. The clockworks clanked and whirred noisily in the golden light. There was a thick covering of dust. I could see a drop of sweat run down Dr. Brent’s cheek, leaving a trail behind it.
“Pierre, open the window. Not that one, fool, the one toward the sea.” A clean salt breeze swept through the room and I could feel my skin cooling. “Much better, eh, Elizabeth?”
I stepped back uneasily as he advanced to stand in front of me.
“What a shy creature you are.” His smile was serpentine. I could see that now more than ever. “Merely, I am going to help you to sit down. Regard the wooden chair to your left. Yes, the appearance may be a trifle unstable, but it should hold your slender form with no trouble.” His hands pressed cruelly down on my stiff shoulders until I was seated. “Now,” he continued, “you must school yourself to sit quietly while Pierre and I conduct some little business. I must caution you, my dear, to behave very well. If you are a trouble, I’m afraid that it will be more convenient to… dispatch you to your Maker. Ah, I see that you can see reason. What a delightfully intelligent girl.”
Only for now, you ghoul! The more passive I was now, the less they would be on their guard. Oh God, I had to escape. Please, please, let there be help for me somewhere. Suddenly I thought of Mrs. Goodbody identifying my lifeless body. Her face would be—no, I couldn’t imagine what it would be. Where had I been in heaven when they were handing out brains—out picking berries?
Dr. Brent (I wondered what his name really was) and Pierre sat together at the rickety pine table. Brent pulled out some papers and they gazed at them, talking in French, their voices rising and falling rhythmically with the surf washing outside. I watched through the window behind them as a black thunderhead sailed in majestically and began to overwhelm the late-afternoon light, brilliant rays shooting high into the sky as the sun made a futile effort to stay alive. Sacre Bleu lit a candle and the conspirators’ faces took on an even more sinister aspect. The bumps and craters in Sacre Bleu’s cucumber nose were accentuated in the wavering candlelight, and a gold tooth glinted as he talked. Dr. Brent’s face seemed carved out of marble. Their voices were drowned in a clap of thunder, and, as if making amends for my own unwillingness to cry, the sky began to weep torrentially. I sympathized.
The former arid heat of the chamber was soon replaced by a clammy draft and I was to find that cold was added to my other physical miseries. After a while my bound wrists became mercifully numb, but the burning throb in my limbs was increasing. My afternoon in the saddle was catching up to me with a vengeance. I wondered whether the ache in my stomach was hunger or fear. A piercing pain bit at my temples and my stiff neck felt inadequate to hold up the satiny heaviness of my head. With a dismal clarity I recalled the time I had followed Sacre Bleu into the woods, the blow on the head, the aftermath in the arms of Lord Dearborne. I had laid my head against his chest as he carried me home in front of him. Jupiter’s strides had slid like silk over silk. I remembered, too, the shamed realization that the marquis’s touch had aroused those first stirrings of pleasure in me. His flirtations under the honeysuckle bush, the moment at Lady Catherine’s ball when he had pulled me against him, his light friendliness on the hillside on the way to London; these were times of glowing sensation for me, however little they had meant to Lord Dearborne. Heart-stricken, I realized that these might be the only such moments I would ever have. I felt a sudden bright warmth under my eyelids.
A clatter on the stairs far below us indicated the approach of a visitor. Dr. Brent and Sacre Bleu heard it also, and without a word Sacre Bleu stationed himself behind the door, wielding a wicked-looking truncheon. The steps continued their advance.
“Rest easy, boys, it’s only me,” said Thomas. Sacre Bleu relaxed his stance as Thomas burst through the door, shaking water from his greatcoat like an unruly dog. “Put down the club, Pierre. If you knock me on the head, you’ll get no victuals.” He appraised my condition, but made no remark. Placing my box of maps on the floor, he produced a loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese, and a bottle of wine from out of his coat.
“Why in the devil’s name did you bring those maps along?” said Dr. Brent.
“I thought we might be able to use them,” he said defensively.
“Can’t you give the boy some credit?” said Sacre Bleu. “If he had left them someone might have found them.”
“Forget it,” said Dr. Brent with an impatient wave. “Your methods of operating are beyond me. Let’s have the refreshments. Pierre and I have had a hard afternoon of intrigue while you have been running about the countryside getting wet.”
The three of them sat down again around the table and began scattering crumbs as I watched. I’d be damned if I was going to ask for any. Suddenly Dr. Brent looked in my direction and feigned great surprise, slapping himself on the forehead.
“Elizabeth, my dear, I completely forgot about you.”
“I wish you had,” I muttered.
“But you must be starving.” He sauntered over to my corner and crouched down beside me, brushing away a strand of hair that had fallen across my face.
“Don’t touch me.”
“But I was going to untie your hands so you could eat. Since you wish me not to touch you, I may have to have Pierre untie you. But Pierre is busily eating, so I will just ignore your desires. You must eat,” he said, roughly freeing my hands from behind my back. “That beautiful body of yours will otherwise become but a fence post.” Dr. Brent tore a crust of bread and a rind of cheese and tossed them into my lap. I rubbed my wrists and winced involuntarily as the blood came rushing back. He smirked slyly at my pained expression.
“I thought you were married to the Hippocratic oath,” I flashed angrily.
“Ha!” Thomas grinned nastily. “He is a hypocritical oaf and as for his doctoring, I would not trust him to pull a splinter from the paw of a dog!”
I took a small bite of the bread, though it almost choked me as it lodged halfway down my dry throat “But how did you fool all of your patients? And Dr. Lindham? You were his assistant.”
“Dr. Lindham knows even less about medicine than I do, for all his distinguished appearance. My father was a doctor, and I know what a farce it is. All you have to do is nod your head and look wise, use large Latin words, and when I ever had to treat anyone, I just gave them opium. You should be glad the marquis contacted me to treat your overdose, for it is one thing I am expert at. Any other ailment and he would have been on to me for sure. Dearborne is no fool.”
“But why pose as a doctor?” I asked him.
“Because I get to poke around the countryside and gain access to people’s secrets. Mudbury is centrally located, close to the coast of France, and populated with yokels. Who is going to suspect me, no matter who they see me talking to?” The rain drummed steadily on the roof.
“Thomas,” he said. “Leave off your chompings and keep watch for the ship. It should be along any moment, and we don’t want to miss the signal.” Thomas did not leave off his chompings, but instead took a large hunk of bread and stood by the window. Sacre Bleu and Dr. Brent resumed their desultory French conversation, Dr. Brent keeping an eye on me while I finished choking down my food.
“There now, all finished,” he said. “I must tie your hands again, my dear.” He stood behind me and performed the task, adding an extra twist before he left off. “Now go back to your corner. I will bring you some wine.” I went back to my corner and sat with my back to the wall, so I could gaze enviously at the gulls wheeling in the storm. The cliché “free as a bird” gained new meaning.
“Here you are, dear,” said my captor. “The wine I promised you.”
“You don’t expect me to drink that,” I said.
“You’ll drink it or I shall require Pierre’s assistance to hold open your lovely mouth,” he said, affecting a frightening aspect.
“Pierre will be minus his fingers,” I shot back at him.
“Such spirit,” he said. “No, I was joking. This is just wine. See, I will drink half of it myself.” He did so, but I still did not trust him. “So be thirsty,” he shrugged, finishing the bottle. “I will talk to Pierre. He is more interesting than you.”
Distraught with misery, I gazed out at the storm and wondered if I could reach the window sufficiently ahead of my captors to throw myself out. I tried to imagine what my last moments of life would be like, twisting and turning, the wind rushing through the dark as I plummeted from the tower. There would be a blinding flash of pain as I collided with the rocks far below; then I would be one with the gulls and the storm. I was trying to raise my courage, to shed my hold on life, and was about to make the attempt, when I heard something. Wait and listen, I told my disbelieving ears.
Through the crying of the gulls, the thundering of the wind and surf, the rattle of the rain against the roof, the ticking of the clockworks, and the talk of my captors, came a sound that, thin and low as it was, sounded to me like the clarion call of a thousand bugles. Dear and familiar to me from a hot summer day, it was a sound which brought hope rushing back into my heart like a cavalry charge.
The marquis was blowing a grass whistle, unless my naughty sisters had left their beds to rescue me. It had to be him; only he would know what the sound meant to me, from our moment under the honeysuckle bush. He was close to me, probably in the wood at the base of the tower, and I would bolt from them when we left. Better to die in the attempt than to be dragged across the English Channel with a half-mad spy.
“I see the signal,” shouted Thomas.
“He’s right, for once,” said Dr. Brent, leaping to the window. “We will soon be treading the Champs-Élysées. Pierre, get the pistols.”
He turned to me. “And you, my dear. It is time to begin our journey. You will walk behind Pierre, I will walk behind you, and Thomas will bring up the rear, carrying our baggage like the pack mule he is. And one more thing. Don’t try to flee. It is a deserted area and no one will hear your screams when I catch you and beat you with the buckle end of my belt.”
I staggered to my feet as best I could with my hands tied behind my back. “I can barely walk,” I said. “How am I going to flee?”
He gave me an ugly smile and pushed me in front of him. “Let me help you,” he said. “Thomas, bring the candle.”
We were making our way down the staircase, the sounds of the storm ringing hollow in the interior of the tower. Our shadows cast giant grotesque shapes on the far wall as we spiraled downward. We reached the bottom of the stairs and paused for a moment, Dr. Brent cocking an ear.
“Snuff the candle and we will be out,” he said. Thomas obeyed his orders with a quick motion. “As a precaution, we will cock our pistols.” Three clicks rang ominously.
“Well, Pierre, open the door. Are you waiting for Christmas?”
We were out in the open, a windy drizzle was prickling my skin. Dr. Brent halted us again. If we could only be underway. He listened and shrugged.
“Let’s be off,” he said, pushing me again. Five steps, I thought to myself. Five more steps. Two… three… four…
I took a deep breath and ran as hard as I could into the darkness at my left, my bound hands bumping uselessly behind me.
“She’s there!” shouted Thomas.
“Elizabeth, get down!” came the marquis’s voice. By way of obedience I tripped on the wet grass and fell to my face with such a jar that my wind was knocked out of me.
“Now!” shouted the marquis.
A dozen lamps were uncovered at once, and the three scoundrels were standing in a brilliant circle of light.
“Damn your eyes, Dearborne,” shouted Dr. Brent. He crouched down with his companions and a blistering crossfire opened up over my hapless head. The noise was deafening, but in a few moments it was rocketing away over the cliffs and gone, leaving only the plaintive cries of the wheeling gulls.
The three friends of Napoleon had sung their last Marseillaise.