The Terror Time Spies (33 page)

The Club froze but hid their faces under their floppy Liberty caps, or tried to, as the pair passed them. 

The man at Alceste’s side in black gloves seemed furious, deep in thought too, because it had been a deeply frustrating week for the Black Spider.  

In Calais Charles Couchonet had exercised power like a King, but Paris was not a provincial port and, although he had Dr Marat behind him, it was always harder to get things done in the city. 

Couchonet had had no success at all trying to uncover the activities of this mysterious English League for Marat’s Great Happening, nor in revealing the identity of the League’s leader either, or what their great plot really was.

That very morning Charles Peperan Couchonet had woken with a startling thought though, now coalescing into absolute certainty, in his ever scheming brain. 

This Anglais plot
had
to be to do with the matter discussed so constantly in the French papers now - the fate of Marie Antoinette herself.

Which is why Charles Peperan Couchonet was taking his own nephew straight to the Temple prison, to consult a favoured source of information that he employed whenever he visited Paris - his Muttons. 

Charles Peperan Couchonet wrapped on that low door in the wall, as the Pimpernels glanced at each other and split into two, on their own respective missions - to Roubechon’s and to the Court House in the Champs de Mar.

The Black Spider was admitted immediately, much to his nephew’s delight.  Uncle and Nephew suddenly stood in a bare little courtyard, where the unfortunate inmates were sometimes exercised. 

The policeman, not at all secret to the warders of Paris’s jails, had a private word with a male jailer, who bowed and hurried away.

“Now listen carefully, Alceste,” grunted Couchonet, “and learn your true trade.  The Spy’s profession.”

“Yes, Uncle.  But isn’t something more I can do?” asked Alceste hotly.

The Black Spider looked distastefully at his nephew, and thought how he was just getting in the way. Yet he felt some strange responsibility to instruct his relation.

“Keep your ears open in Paris, Alceste, for anything of interest.  Whispers. Rumours.  English voices.  Perhaps you’ll learn of this Pampernelle Pact, eh?”

“Pampernelle, Uncle?”

“Some children talked of it in Dover, in relation to an English aristocrat called Snareswood.  Dr Marat told me himself.”

“Children?” said the boy coldly though, as if the very idea was alien to him, “But I’m concerned with the great affairs of France now, Citizen Uncle.   I’m sixteen.”

Charles Couchonet looked at the spotty sixteen year old very sceptically indeed.

“Perhaps you should spend some time at the trials then,” he suggested, “and sharpen up your mind.  It is good to know some Law, and how the clever use it too.”

Alceste rather liked the idea, but there was a sudden rattling and an oily gate opened, as seven prisoners were led outside, like sheep, very old sheep in the case of four of them, and lined up against the dripping prison wall. 

They all looked very nervous, as they caught sight of Couchonet, who marched up to them, his gloved hands behind his back, questioning them in turn. 

Couchonet learnt many things as he did so, but it made him wonder if these muttons weren’t just making things up, to earn themselves a slice of hope. 

As for a new plot concerning Marie Antoinette though, or any daring English League of the Gloved Hand, there was nothing at all. 

As the last filed away though, that female warder who had picked out Juliette appeared in her liberty cap, smoothing the edges of her greasy hair. 

“Charlie,” she whispered, with a fond smile.

“Please Citizeness,” snapped the Spider, glancing at his nephew, “Citizen Couchonet.”

The woman looked rather hurt.

“Yes, Charlie.  I mean Citizen Couchonet.”

“Anything then, Martha?” asked Charles Couchonet.

“They’ve taken the boy away.  Just this morning.”

The Black Spider smiled, as Alceste stepped closer, to better hear the masterful machinations of his brilliant and ruthless uncle.

“Capet’s been sobbin’ all mornin’,” said the woman, “Cryin’ ‘er bleedin’ eyes out again.  Her daughter’s almost as bad.”

“And no one’s tried to contact them?”

“No fear, Charlie,” said the jailer and Couchonet winced, “The guard’s changed daily.  They’ve just given her a maid though, so the only person who’s been in to see her is the St Honoré girl.”

Charles Couchonet looked up sharply.  He had almost forgotten about pretty, brave Juliette St Honoré.

“Well keep your ears peeled, Martha,” he whispered, “I want to hear of absolutely anything, understand me? Especially any talk of an Anglais Spy League.”

“Right, Charlie.  Spy League.  You look nice, Charlie.”

Couchonet blushed deeply, although he was proud of the new coat that he had bought in Paris for his meetings with Marat, dyed an especially inky black.

“But I suggest you get back to work,
Citizeness,”
he said
. “
Now.
 
Time’s moving on
.”

The woman retreated, looking even more hurt, and Alceste stepped up keenly, but his uncle seemed suddenly very preoccupied indeed now. 

“What’s wrong uncle?” whispered Alceste, after a while.

“Don’t interrupt, boy.  I’m planning.  Plotting.”

“Planning what, Uncle?”

The Black Spider scowled, but the sun came out.

“A brilliant counter plot,” he hissed, “and a strangling web to catch the League of the Gloved Hand itself.”

One of the most prominent members of which, at that very moment, was walking in full disguise towards a grand house in another Paris street, wondering if the English Ambassador had been recalled to London with the war. 

William Wickham had been in Paris before, of course, many times.  He had been in the Place, in disguise, that very day in January when they had chopped off the King’s head. 

Sometimes he came in his official capacity, as First Secretary to the Ambassador who was travelling to Switzerland that coming year, but he had never been here at such a dangerous time as this, which is why William Wickham and his men were now dressed as French Revolutionary soldiers. 

Wickham, Adam Foxwood, George Darney and Robert Hayfield had had to jump four soldiers on the border, to effect the change, slit their throats, then stolen their uniforms and ridden hell for leather to the French capital.

William Wickham wasn’t sure what they were going to do yet, except that he would present himself to the Marquis de Gonse de Rougeville, in person, at the earliest possible chance. 

Then he would tell him not only of their Master’s missing message, and his identity too, but of the promised support of the English Crown itself for a Royalist uprising in Paris.

The missing Money Orders were a knottier problem, that only the English Ambassador himself might help with, as one of the few Englishmen in Paris now who might have access to a similarly huge sum of money.   

That presented its own dilemma though, because the League had specifically decided
not
to involve the ambassador, since he was the one man in Paris who would be being watched more closely than anyone else.

 Besides, the whole point was to obscure any link to internal plotters, in case the blasted thing backfired.

Wickham had decided to take a grave risk though, just the sort of risk needed to further his own career in the Spy Service and bring him closer to his true and greatest ambition, to one day be England’s greatest Spymaster himself. 

As for his murderous thoughts about Dr Marat, that could come later.

Wickham suddenly wondered how many other members of the League were in Paris, spreading rumours, arguing events and recruiting counter revolutionaries too. 

The English secret agent clutched that pair of beige embroidered gloves - their mark of membership and instant recognition - as they arrived at the English Ambassador’s residence, unwatched and rather boarded up too.

Just at that moment Hal and Skipper were nearing the cul-de-sac, somewhere else in Paris, wondering what that strange smell was.

        As the boys turned the corner, they saw one of the most thrilling sights of their entire lives.  Great, hot red flames were licking into the air, sending up a plume of acrid black smoke into the Paris skies. 

There was a great deal of Liberty going on in the cul-de-sac too, and Hal and Skipper gasped.  Roubechon’s place was on fire. 

The house above was going up like a tinder box, and that sign for 1792 with it, but the cellar trapdoor was wide open and the last of the Dover wine barrels was being passed up to the mob, filled from those huge casks below.

Most of the crowd was already drunk, but Roubechon himself was nowhere to be seen

Hal and Skipper stood there helplessly, feeling their cheeks glow, wondering if the fire had just taken Henry’s cousin and the entire League with it. 

“Blast,” said Henry dully, wondering what he would do with those secret letters now. 

The disorder was so bad, the sense of abandoned authority, that no one could take the lead, unless the idea of the Republic itself was threatened. 

It was only the sudden appearance of a group of Frenchie soldiers, carrying water in wooden buckets, that promised to put the flames out. 

As Henry fingered the Chronometer, just passed twelve, and too late to open now anyway, he noticed that the dial was turned to a flame. 

He looked up, wondering suddenly, and there in the real flames, climbing into the revolutionary air, Henry saw that terrible face again, from the Endeavour, in its great black wig, a face that turned to a skull and suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke.

“Come on, Skipper,” he cried in horror, backing away violently and remembering something about the devil being here in Paris too, “let’s get back to Grandmere’s.”

The two Pimpernels marched away, again feeling the weight of high affairs of State on their brave young shoulders, as Skipper Holmwood wondered if the others had faired any better.  They could hardly have faired any worse, could they?

“Where nothing much happens, it seems, until a public trial, a very famous murder and a horrid shock for the Black Spider too…”

They found out how Count Armande and the others had fared, that very same evening back at Headquarters, in Hal’s room, as Henry B tried to forget that horrible, wicked face in its judge’s wig.

“Just went up in smoke,” he sighed, wondering about the apparition, “I wonder if they’re on to Roubechon.  What about you lot though? Any luck with the Tribunal building?”

“I think we could get her a message there,” answered Francis, looking very uncertain indeed and suddenly hating being back in the house too, “I’ve made a careful sketch, H.”

Francis opened his notebook rather proudly, to show a little drawing.  It looked like a map, marked at various points of importance.

“The crowd stand along the route, where they bring the prisoners to the Champs de Mars,” said Francis, “on the way to the C-c-court room.  We saw several people hand them things, H.  Flowers.  Crosses.  Rotten vegetables.  Well, they were throwing those.”

“Then we’ll each carry a note,” said Hal, “to tell her she mustn’t ever give up hope.”

“Why not?” said Spike, “we don’t know how to rescue her, ninnee.”

Henry rather agreed, but he had just noticed that Francis had also sketched that machine, the Guillotine, since on the way to the Champs de Mars they had passed La Place, and drawn it very precisely too:  The long table, and rising poles, the traces, like an empty window pane.  He had only been able to do it, hating the sight of blood, because there had been a day off to clean the thing.

Francis Simpkin’s Guillotine

Henry saw the slight dip in the table too, and the space where the head would lie;  Juliette’s pretty head.  The thick, heavy blade that slotted between the traces was there as well, that carefully narrowed to a knife edge, a slanting knife edge, for best leverage.