The English Heiress Read online

  “As to the German ports,” Pierre continued, going back to the concrete question, “I am not ready yet to use them, although I may be forced to. Sacred Heaven, I have already been forced to sell several catches of fish because I could not find cargo. I will end up as I started—a fisherman! It is not only France that has gone mad. Belgium is in an uproar too, what with the French troops marching in and the Austrians and Prussians driving the French out. I have not even been able to pick up any lace.” He sighed again “I cannot deny that your message was most welcome I can use a passenger. Where does he want to go?”

  “It is I,” Roger replied with a smile, “and I’m not perfectly sure where l want to go.”

  “You! No, my friend. Do not tell me that you are fleeing your government, and as we said before, this is no time for pleasure tour of France.”

  “You’re quite right,” Roger agreed. “I will not be touring for pleasure, and my quarrel isn’t with my government but with yours—sorry, I mean that of the French.”

  “There is precious little government in France right now,” Pierre remarked.

  “I’m aware.” It was Roger who sighed this time. Then he grinned. “For a man of my profession, there’s much to be said for a strong, corrupt central government. It used to be necessary for my agent only to drop a word into the ear, and an appropriate bribe into the hand, of the right man to find someone or release a prisoner. Now I must go myself.”

  It was apparent that Pierre was about to protest. Roger forestalled him by describing the entire problem and his father’s attitude. Having heard him out, Pierre shook his head with a jaundiced expression.

  “In the words of your local people, that is a fine cock-and-bull story.”

  “I swear every word is true,” Roger insisted.

  “Oh, I believe that this Henry de Conyers is missing,” Pierre replied, “and I believe that your father wishes him to be found or to have good evidence that he is dead, but that you must go… My friend, you have been too long quiet and assisting others to escape the results of ‘raising the devil’. Is that how you say it? Now you wish to raise the devil yourself. No, do not shake your head at me. I know you too long and too well to believe your mouth. I look into your eyes and I see what I see. Only for that reason do I take you—because I know if I do not, you will go anyway. But it is dangerous, my friend, very dangerous, what you wish to do.”

  * * * * *

  The same evening that Roger St. Eyre landed in France, Leonie de Conyers began her attempt to jolt her father out of the passive despair that had enveloped him since the death of his wife and son. She began simply enough by announcing that in a few days they were to be executed. Henry looked at her blankly for a while and then asked slowly why Leonie should suddenly say such a thing.

  “It was the way Louis looked at me and spoke to me yesterday,” Leonie replied. “Papa, we must escape or we will die.”

  “I, not you, my love,” Henry answered soothingly, letting his eyes drift away from his daughter’s face. “I must die. It would be better for you if I were dead. Perhaps your friend would find a way to free you. Perhaps Marot would let you go. No one could believe that you were an enemy of the state, and—I am the one he hates.”

  Leonie shook her head violently. She did not know how much her father guessed about her relationship with Louis, but he must not be permitted to convince himself that it could save her. Perhaps her father knew she was Louis’ whore. Perhaps he had accepted the knowledge for the sake of the few glasses of wine, the few saline draughts, the apple or two that Leonie had smuggled down to her sick mother and brother. Leonie had hoped, however, that her father had been too shaken up with his wife’s and son’s illness and with his own sad reflections to think much about the matter. Hopefully, he thought Louis as innocent as his sweet face looked. If he did, it would save a lot of trouble.

  “You know it is not so,” Leonie protested. “Would Jean-Paul let me go to cry aloud the horrors he has committed? And as far as Louis, you know he could not let me go. That would mean his death as well as mine. He could not even run away with me. Where could we go that Jean-Paul would not find us? I know I must die,” Leonie’s voice shook, “but do not condemn me to live alone until then—and then die alone.”

  To Leonie’s relief her father looked at her again much more alertly. His mind had been jerked out of the deadly rut it was traveling by his daughter’s statement. Dull despair was thrust aside by rage. Leonie die too? Not without a struggle to prevent it! Henry had not considered escape previously. All four of them could never have managed, and no one would consent to leave the others, who would surely be tormented even more in punishment. Now however, there was only one to escape. No one would be left behind, because Henry fully intended to die to free his daughter.

  This noble resolve had to reconsidered a moment later. Leonie had put her finger on the problem when she asked where she could go. Worse than that, how could a seventeen-year-old girl without family or friends survive in the France that his “noble” ideas had created? In the past… Henry wrenched his mind away from the past. It was dead…like François…like Marie… The numbness of despair began to drift over him again. He wished to die. At least if he died here, there was a chance he would be buried in the same grave with Marie. Henry shuddered. It was not he alone who would die. Leonie was right. Jean-Paul would never let her go, and the young guard was nothing but a child. In any case, it was a father’s duty to take care of his daughter. That was more important than his wish to die. It would be his punishment for not sending his wife and children to safety that he should be separated from Marie even in death.

  “No,” he said strongly, startling and delighting Leonie. “You will not die.”

  “Oh, Papa—” she began.

  “No, no, listen,” Henry urged, switching to English to avoid any chance of being overheard and understood. “Let’s set aside the question of how you will escape for the moment. I have some ideas, but what you must know is where to go and what to do if we should become—separated.”

  Although the implications of that word were ugly, Leonie could not help smiling. The impetuous tone, always more pronounced when her father spoke English, carried her back to the days when Papa rode the high horse of his dreams and his wife mischievously unhorsed him from time to time with practical observations. Not that Henry came down without a struggle. He loved a discussion and would seek with great energy and ingenuity to find a way around the practical obstacles Marie presented. Because she was not certain of how to introduce the idea that she would be able to free them, Leonie fell into the old pattern.

  “But Papa, you are putting the cart in front of the horse. What difference does it make whether I have a place to go if I cannot get out?

  Leonie’s English was clear, fluent and idiomatic. Only the slightest accent and foreign intonation marked it as being a second language. Henry had always spoken English to his children. He had always insisted that they should visit his family. Somehow, it had never been the right time to go to England. The first years of his marriage had been devoted to restoring his wife’s estates to profitable productivity. By the time he had things running smoothly on the land, Henry had seen that the government of France could not continue to exist as it was and had thrown himself into the agitation for reform and into practical measures for relieving the misery of the local population. Those efforts had made inevitable his election as deputy for the district in 1789 and then it was too late.

  Henry smiled at her. “The way out is simple enough child. When someone brings us food—it’s always that young man these days—I’ll jump on him from behind the door. I’m not as strong as I was but I’m still stronger than that boy.”

  Leonie was not at all sure of that. The muscles in Louis’ small body were whipcord and steel, and her father’s were soft with inactivity and weak with starvation. However, she did not argue. Her plan was better and surer, but there was no harm in having a second string to one�
�s bow. If Louis did not soon “take her for a walk” or if Louis should be sent away or denounced—Jean-Paul might be more aware of what Louis was than the thief believed—it might be necessary to use her father’s plan. There was a good chance it would work, Leonie thought. Even after the first shock of seeing his wife and daughter raped had worn off, Papa had been docile for fear his loved ones would be punished for any rebellion on his part. And since Mama’s death he had been little more than a limp body. Leonie was surprised at how well he responded to her prodding. She had feared she would be unable to rouse him, even though he had begun to eat and sit up without urging the day before.

  “If we must,” Leonie agreed tentatively. “I could help you. Between us… Very well, once out of the cell there can be no trouble getting out of the building. Usually no one except Louis is here after dark. There is a side door that is barred which we can open from the inside.” Louis had shown Leonie that door—a temptation to test whether she would try to escape while he “slept”. “It is after that we will have trouble. The gates of the town are locked at night and we certainly could not escape before dark. Also, by the next morning our absence will have been discovered.

  “That’s all true enough, but I daren’t try to get help from friends in town. If they’re not already prisoners, Jean-Paul’s men will look first in those places. I think we can get over the wall.”

  “Over the wall!” Leonie looked with blank astonishment at her father. The walls of Saulieu were nearly ten meters high.

  Henry grinned at his daughter, his face losing for the moment the haggard, defeated look it had worn for so long. “I’ve climbed cliffs three or four times as high, and smoother, but I don’t expect you to be a monkey, my sweet. In the poor quarter, there are houses built right up against the wall. If I can find a rope, I can draw you up from a roof and let you down on the other side.”

  “But Papa,” Leonie protested, “there might be guards on the wall. And what about the people that live in the houses? What will they think and do if they see us climbing roofs and walls? Will they not cry out that we are thieves?”

  “There won’t be guards on the wall. Why should there be? France may be at war in the north, but there’s no present danger of invasion here. As to the people in the houses—in that part of the town we’re more in danger of being stopped to share what we have stolen than of being reported to the authorities. If anyone questions us, we need only say we’re escaping criminals—and surely we look the part. They’ll likely help us.” A bitter laugh shook him “We’ll not even have to lie. It’s true. To those who rule now, we are criminals.”

  Leonie was a good deal less sure of this wall-climbing notion than of her father’s previous idea. She had been hoping that her father would suggest a house in town where it would be safe to hide. Apparently he did not believe that would be possible. There had to be a better way than attempting to climb the wall.

  “The offices of the civil guard are here in the Hôtel de Ville,” Leonie suggested. “Perhaps we could write passes for ourselves so that the guards would let us out the gates?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Henry agreed, ‘‘but I don’t know the forms they use now or what excuse anyone except a messenger could have for leaving in the middle of the night. If we were decently dressed and had a horse and carriage… But for a man and woman afoot and in rags… No, Leonie, I don’t think it will work. However, if we have time, we could try to find something. Perhaps there will be passes we could copy or even steal. Henry’s eyes brightened. ”Perhaps there will be weapons we could steal.”

  Henry was catching fire at the notion of action after such a long and bitter hopeless state. Leonie was delighted to see him “alive” again, but she did not wish to be swept away by his enthusiasm and hurled into a new trap. She could see that if they could obtain weapons, they could get through the gates by killing or threatening the guards. Well, that or over the wall. She would try anything, but to make their escape successful they would need money, and Leonie did not believe her father would steal. Louis had a few francs around, and she had every intention of taking those, but it was a very small sum. If Louis had more money, either it was not in his room or it was well hidden.

  “If we cannot go to your friends,” Leonie said, shelving for the moment the problem of how to pass the walls and raising the new idea that had hit her, “the question arises of how to live and how to get far enough away that Jean-Paul cannot seize us again. We will need money, Papa.”

  “Yes, and clothes and horses—but those can be bought with money. We have money, Leonie. There’s money at the château.”

  Leonie caught her breath and looked aside. Did her father think the château would be as he left it? Did he think the peasants had not run amok over it as soon as he had been seized by Jean-Paul?

  “No, my love,” Henry said gently, seeing what she feared in her face. “I’m not living in a dream world of the past.” His eyes shadowed. “Of course, if they have burned it to the ground… Well, let’s hope part is still standing. There was a secret strong room just behind the chimney in the library—that would be the last place to go even if the château was set afire. The wall slides out from behind the mantelpiece. Even if they have burned and sacked the house, I don’t believe they would have found that room.”

  That was probably true. Leonie herself had not known there was such a room. Seeing her surprise, her father smiled.

  “I didn’t tell you or François because your mother—” His voice wavered and the smile died, but he took a breath and continued steadily, “Your mother had this terrible fear that you might think it was a place to play and lock yourselves in, in some way. It didn’t seem important that you should know.”

  It was not. Nothing in the past was important except the money, if it was there, and the danger involved in getting it. “The château is the worst place to go. They will be waiting for us there. Jean-Paul and his men will run to the château as soon as we are discovered missing.”

  “Possibly, but there’s just as much chance they’ll realize we must expect them to look there for us and, therefore, that we would go in the opposite direction. I don’t dare hope they won’t send someone to the château, but there’s a good chance that they’ll send only a few men, not surround the place in force so that we can’t get in.”

  “And if they come after we are in? Will we not be trapped there, Papa?”

  “If we can get in, they’ll never find us. The château was built over a much older place. There are tunnels behind the cellars—oh yes, you never knew of those either. Even I would never have allowed that until you were older. Those tunnels are dangerous. You can be lost in them and they are old. Sometimes something falls from the roofs. In this case, however, there’s less danger in using them than avoiding them. Jean-Paul could search forever and not discover those passages. The only danger is that if they knew we were hidden there, they could starve us out.”

  At that, Leonie laughed mirthlessly. “They will have a long wait before that happens.”

  Her father smiled at her and nodded. “We know how to starve now, do we not, my love?”

  Chapter Four

  Despite Pierre’s warnings, Roger found no danger at all in his first days in France. With Pierre’s help, he was able to purchase a rather worn-looking carriage. The horse that was hitched to it looked little better, but that was a deception of the eyes. Under unkempt mane and uncurried coat was a strong body, and the gelding had a real turn for speed as well. Also through Pierre, Roger changed more of his English currency for a few assignats and low-denomination French coins, so that he would not draw attention to himself.

  Altogether Roger’s trip from Saint-Valéry to Saulieu was uneventful. Sometimes he was recognized as an Englishman by his accent. Althoughrelations between England and the “central government” in Paris were growing more and more strained, the people in the towns through which he passed did not care about that. They were happy to accept his francs
and sous and gave him accommodations in the inns, which were emptier than usual owing to the unrest in the country. He did not stop at any of the large towns, although he could not avoid going through Amiens. From there, however, he was able to travel south and west by lanes and byways, asking his way to Dijon.

  That method had drawbacks as well as advantages. Roger lost himself quite thoroughly in the mountains and traveled nearly as far as Vesoul on a miserable rainy day, without even a light spot in the sky to show the sun’s position, before he realized he was going in exactly the wrong direction. All in all, the two days this cost him did not turn out to be a total loss. When he deplored his mistake in going east instead of west, a fellow guest at the inn told him of a road a few kilometers south of Langres that would take him due west as far as Châtillon. There he took the chance of inquiring for Saulieu and found to his relief that he could get there without even entering Dijon.

  Up until this time Roger had had no need to use the cover he had devised. The guns and gun parts he had brought with him rested quietly in the boxes in which they had been packed. No one had seemed interested or curious about why he was traveling. Those who recognized him specifically as an Englishman dismissed him as another of the lunatics who seemed to rush all over Europe with no aim beyond the actual traveling. Those who just realized he was a foreigner, without guessing from where, assumed he was intent on getting back to his native land before the war grew more intense and closed the borders. In Saulieu, however, Roger needed a reason to stay, at least until he could discover what had happened to de Conyers.

  Having taken up residence in a modest but decent inn frequented by middle- to lower-class artisans, Roger broached his purpose to the group assembled in the main room the evening after his arrival. He liked Saulieu, he stated, and he saw there was no gunsmith in town. Was there a place where he could set up a temporary shop to buy, sell and mend until the town’s needs were satisfied?