The epitaph of a kindly man. Who had . . . Renzi's eyes stung. Rushing in came the memory of the little bald baker taking pity on a hungry stranger and finding a tasty loaf, which Renzi had gratefully devoured. He would no longer serve his ovens or see his little ones. And now where was pity? Where was the humanity? With a catch in his throat he felt control slipping. Why could not logic preserve him from the stern consequences of its own imperatives?
He staggered to his feet, sending the table and its papers crashing to one side. Urgently seeking open air he was soon out on the battlements, breathing raggedly. His fists clenched as he sought the sombre night horizon. The salty air buffeted his face bringing with it a sensory shock. The spasm passed, but left him troubled and destabilised. Since his youth he had found reason and logic a sure shield against the world, but now it had turned on him. What was left to him without the comfort of its certainties?
Sleep came finally to claim him but in the early hours he was dragged to consciousness by a disturbance—shouts, d'Auvergne's urgent retort, men in the passageway. He flung on a coat and hurried there. It was d'Aché, trembling with fatigue, sprawled in a chair and retching, his side blood-soaked to the waist. "Go, fetch a doctor!" d'Auvergne threw at the men standing about uncertainly. "The rest, get out!"
D'Aché had risked everything in bringing his message to Mont Orgueil, such was its urgency. "D'Auvergne," he said weakly, "listen to me! We—we have a crisis!" He slumped in pain, then rallied, his eyes feverish. "Paris—they won't rise up unless they have an unconditional assurance that the British will play their part." He coughed, and the consequent pain doubled him over until it was spent. "You must understand, Bonaparte suspects something. The country is alive with soldiers. It is very dangerous. The Chouans sense treachery, that as soon as . . ."
Once they raised the banner, made their throw, they were marked men, and if the plot failed Napoleon's revenge would be terrible. All the more reason to fear that England, the old enemy, might play them false.
"The last moves will be the most critical," d'Aché resumed, shaking with pain and emotion. "If anything goes wrong it will be most tragic."
D'Auvergne nodded. The frenzied dash with their prisoner through the dark countryside, forces closing in on all sides, the final frantic arrival at the coast—and the Royal Navy not there to receive them into safety? He could see it must be their worst imagining. "They wish a binding commitment of some sort?" he asked.
"A written statement of late date under signature of a high officer of state." Nothing less, apparently, than a document proving the complicity of England in the plot.
"Very well, you shall have it," d'Auvergne said calmly. He paused. "And I shall deliver it."
"No!" d'Aché said hoarsely. "You are known, you'll have no chance." D'Auvergne had been imprisoned on trumped-up charges once in Paris during the brief peace and only been released reluctantly after considerable diplomatic pressure from Westminster.
Yet if things stalled now, inertia would set in, causing the whole to crumble without hope of recovery. As if in a dream Renzi heard himself say, "I shall take it to them." It was logical. The situation was desperate. He knew of the plot, he could speak knowledgeably of the dispositions and—and he would be dispensable in the eyes of the Government.
"You!" gasped d'Aché. "They don't know you. They'll think you a spy." The irony was not wasted on Renzi, who gave a half-smile.
D'Auvergne frowned. "My dear Renzi, do reflect on your situation. You would have the most compromising document in Christendom on your person that most certainly would incriminate your government. If threatened, your only honourable course would be to—to . . ."
"So who, then, will be your emissary?" Renzi challenged. There was no reply. "I shall require a form of password, an expression of authentication as it were, and . . ."
Early on the Thursday morning a knock at the door caught them by surprise. As the only one fully dressed at that hour, Kydd answered. A messenger held out a letter. "Mr Kydd's residence?" he asked. "Favour o' Mr Vauvert."
Rosie squealed in anticipation and rushed over, her attire forgotten. Kydd broke the seal: it was a curt note from Vauvert indicating that if he wished to hear something to his advantage he should be at the Three Crowns tavern at four promptly.
Rosie clapped and snatched the message from Kydd. "To your advantage, Tom!" she cried. "I knew something would come!"
Kydd did not reply. It was obvious: he was going to be asked to run contraband as a smuggler. No doubt this Vauvert was extracting a fee from a business associate for introducing him. Well, damn it, he would disappoint them both.