The Shoes of Fortune

Still I was incredulous that harm was meant to him, and he proceeded to tell me the Society of Jesus was upon the brink of dissolution, and desperate accordingly. The discovery of Fleuriau’s plot against the Prince had determined the authorities upon the demolition and extinction of the Jesuits throughout the whole of the King’s dominion. Their riches and effects and churches were to be seized to the profit and emolument of the Crown; the reverend Fathers were to be banished furth of France for ever. Designs so formidable had to be conducted cautiously, and so far the only evidence of a scheme against the Society was to be seen in the Court itself, where the number of priests of the order was being rapidly diminished.

I thought no step of the civil power too harsh against the band of whom the stalking man in the cowl outside was representative, and indeed the priest at last half-infected myself with his terrors. We sat well back from the window looking out upon the street till it was dusk. There was never a moment when the assassin (as I still must think him) was not there, his interest solely in the house we sat in. And when it was wholly dark, and a single lamp of oil swinging on a cord across the thoroughfare lit the passage of the few pedestrians that went along the street, Gordoletti was still close beneath it, silent, meditating, and alert.

MacKellar came in from his coffee-house. We sat in darkness, except for the flicker of a fire of peat. He must have thought the spectacle curious.

“My goodness!” cried he, “candles must be unco dear in this shire when the pair of you cannot afford one between you to see each other yawning. I’m of a family myself that must be burning a dozen at a time and at both ends to make matters cheery, for it’s a gey glum world at the best of it.”

He stumbled over to the mantel-shelf where there was customarily a candle; found and lit it, and held it up to see if there was any visible reason for our silence.

The priest’s woebegone countenance set him into a shout of laughter. His amusement scarcely lessened when he heard of the ominous gentleman in the cowl.

“Let me see!” he said, and speedily devised a plan to test the occasion of Father Hamilton’s terrors. He arranged that he should dress himself in the priest’s garments, and as well as no inconsiderable difference in their bulk might let him, simulate the priest by lolling into the street.

“A brave plan verily,” quo’ the priest, “but am I a bowelless rogue to let another have my own particular poignard? No, no, Messieurs, let me pay for my own pots cassés and run my own risks in my own soutane.”

With that he rose to his feet and was bold enough to offer a trial that was attended by considerable hazard.

It was determined, however, that I should follow close upon the heels of Kilbride in his disguise, prepared to help him in the case of too serious a surprise.

The night was still. There were few people in the street, which was one of several that led down to the quays. The sky had but a few wan stars. When MacKellar stepped forth in the priest’s hat and cloak, he walked slowly towards the harbour, ludicrously imitating the rolling gait of his reverence, while I stayed for a little in the shelter of the door. Gordoletti left his post upon the bridge and stealthily followed Kilbride. I gave him some yards of law and followed Gordoletti.

Our footsteps sounded on the stones; ‘twas all that broke the evening stillness except the song of a roysterer who staggered upon the quays. The moment was fateful in its way and yet it ended farcically, for ere he had gained the foot of the street Kilbride turned and walked back to meet the man that stalked him. We closed upon the Italian to find him baffled and confused.

“Take that for your attentions!” cried Kilbride, and buffeted the fellow on the ear, a blow so secular and telling from a man in a frock that Gordoletti must have thought himself bewitched, for he gave a howl and took to his heels. Kilbride attempted to stop him, but the cassock escaped his hands and his own unwonted costume made a chase hopeless. As for me, I was content to let matters remain as they were now that Father Hamilton’s suspicions seemed too well founded.

It did not surprise me that on learning of our experience the priest should determine on an immediate departure from Helvoetsluys. But where he was to go was more than he could readily decide. He proposed and rejected a score of places – Bordeaux, Flanders, the Hague, Katwyk farther up the coast, and many others – weighing the advantages of each, enumerating his acquaintances in each, discovering on further thought that each and every one of them had some feature unfavourable to his concealment from the Jesuits.

“You would be as long tuning your pipes as another would be playing a tune,” said Kilbride at last. “There’s one thing sure of it, that you cannot be going anywhere the now without Mr. Greig and myself, and what ails you at Dunkerque in which we have all of us acquaintances?”

A season ago the suggestion would have set my heart in flame; but now it left me cold. Yet I backed up the proposal, for I reflected that (keeping away from the Rue de la Boucherie) we might there be among a good many friends. Nor was his reverence ill to influence in favour of the proposal.

The next morning saw us, then, upon a hoy that sailed for Calais and was bargained to drop us at Dunkerque.

CHAPTER XXXVII

I OVERHEAR THE PLAN OF BRITAIN’S INVASION

I began these chronicles with a homily upon the pregnancy of chance that gives the simplest of our acts ofttimes far-reaching and appalling consequences. It is clear that I had never become the Spoiled Horn and vexed my parents’ lives had not a widow woman burned her batch of scones, and though perhaps the pair of shoes in the chest bequeathed to me by my Uncle Andrew were without the magic influence he and I gave credit for, it is probable that I had made a different flight from Scotland had they not led me in the way of Daniel Risk.

And even now their influence was not ended. During the months I had spent at soldiering the red shoes reposed among my baggage; even when I had changed from the uniform of the Regiment d’Auvergne upon the frontier of Holland, and made myself again a common citizen of Europe, I had some freit (as we say of a superstition) against resuming the shoes that had led me previously into divers perils. But the day we left Helvoet in the Hollands Deep hoy, I was so hurried in my departure that the red shoes were the only ones I could lay hands on. As luck would have it, when I entered Dunkerque for the last time in my history some days after, I was wearing the same leather as on the first day of my arrival there, and the fact led, by a singularity of circumstances, to my final severance from many of those: companions – some of them pleasant and unforgetable – I had made acquaintance with in France.

It was thus that the thing happened.

When we entered Dunkerque, the priest, Kilbride, and I went to an inn upon the sea front. Having breakfasted I was deputed to go forth and call upon Thurot, explain our circumstances, take his counsel, and return to the hoy where my two friends would return to wait for me. He was out when I reached his lodging, but his Swiss – a different one from what he had before when I was there – informed me that his master was expected back at any moment, and invited me to step in and wait for him. I availed myself of the opportunity.

Our voyage along the coast had been delayed by contrary winds, so that now it was the Sabbath; the town was by-ordinary still (though indeed Sabbath nor Saturday made much difference, as a rule, on the gaiety of Dunkerque), and wearied by the sea travel that had just concluded I fell fast asleep in Captain Thurot’s chair.

I was wakened by a loud knocking at the outer door, not the first, as it may be remembered, that called me forth from dreams to new twists of fortune, and I started to my feet to meet my host.

What was my chagrin to hear the Prince’s voice in converse with him on the stair!

“Here is a pretty pickle!” I told myself. “M. Albany is the last man on earth I would choose to meet at this moment,” and without another reflection I darted into the adjoining room and shut the door. It was Thurot’s bed-chamber, with a window that looked out upon the court where fowls were cackling. I was no sooner in than I somewhat rued my precipitation, for the manlier course indubitably had been to bide where I was. But now there was no retreating, so I sat with what patience I could command to wait my discovery by the tenant of the place after his royal visitor was gone.

It was the Sabbath day as I have said, and the chimes of St. Eloi were going briskly upon some papist canticle, but not so loud that I could not hear, in spite of myself, all that went on in the next room.

At first I paid no heed, for the situation was unworthy enough of itself without any attempt on my part to be an eavesdropper. But by-and-bye, through the banging of the bells of St. Eloi, I heard M. Albany (still to give the man his by-name) mention the name Ecosse.

Scotland! The name of her went through me like a pang!

They spoke in French of course; I think I could have understood them had it been Chinese. For they discussed some details of the intended invasion that still hung fire, and from the first of M. Albany’s sentences I learned that the descent was determined upon Scotland. ‘Twas that which angered me and made me listen for the rest with every sense of the spy and deterred by never a scruple. At first I had fancied Thurot would learn from his servant I was in the house, and leave me alone till his royal guest’s departure from an intuition that I desired no meeting, but it was obvious now that no such consideration would have induced him to let me hear the vast secret they discussed.

“Twenty thousand men are between Brest and Vannes,” said M. Albany. “We shall have them in frigates in a fortnight from to-day, and then, mon Capitaine, affairs shall move briskly.”

“And still,” said Thurot, who had some odd tone of dissatisfaction in his voice, “I had preferred it had been the South of England. Dumont has given us every anchorage and sounding on the coast between Beachy Head and Arundel, and from there we could all the sooner have thrust at the heart of England. This Scotland – ”

“Bah! Captain Thurot,” cried his Royal Highness impatiently, “you talk like a fool. At the heart, indeed! With all habitable England like a fat about it, rich with forts and troops and no more friendship for us than for the Mameluke! No, no, Thurot, I cry Scotland; all the chances are among the rocks, and I am glad it has been so decided on.”

“And still, with infinite deference, your Royal Highness, this same West of Scotland never brought but the most abominable luck to you and yours,” continued Thurot. “Now, Arundel Bay – ”

“Oh! to the devil with Arundel Bay!” cried M. Albany; “‘tis settled otherwise, and you must take it as you find it. Conflans and his men shall land upon the West —mon Dieu! I trust they may escape its fangs; and measures will be there taken with more precaution and I hope with more success than in Seventeen Forty-five. Thence they will march to England, sweeping the whole country before them, and not leaving behind them a man or boy who can carry a musket. Thus they must raise the army to fifty or sixty thousand men, strike a terror into England, and carry all with a high hand. I swear ‘tis a fatted hog this England: with fewer than ten thousand Highlanders I have made her thrill at the very vitals.”

Thurot hummed. Plainly there was much in the project that failed to meet his favour.

“And Conflans?” said he.

His Royal Highness laughed.

“Ha! Captain,” said he, “I know, I know. ‘Twould suit you better if a certain Tony Thurot had command.”

“At least,” said Thurot, “I am in my prime, while the Marshal is beyond his grand climacteric.”

“And still, by your leave, with the reputation of being yet the best – well, let us say among the best – of the sea officers of France. Come, come, Captain, there must be no half-hearts in this venture; would to Heaven I were permitted to enjoy a share in it! And on you, my friend, depends a good half of the emprise and the gloire.”

“Gloire!” cried Thurot. “With every deference to your Royal Highness I must consider myself abominably ill-used in this matter. That I should be sent off to Norway and hound-in wretched Swedes with a personage like Flaubert! Oh, I protest, ‘tis beyond all reason! Is it for that I have been superseded by a man like Conflans that totters on the edge of the grave?”

“I hope ‘tis England’s grave,” retorted M. Albany with unfailing good humour, and I heard the gluck of wine as he helped himself to another glass. “I repeat gloire, with every apology to the experience of M. le Corsair. ‘Tis your duty to advance with your French and your Swedes upon the North of England, and make the diversion in these parts that shall inconvenience the English army front or rear.”

“Oh, curse your diversions!” cried Thurot. “If I have a talent at all ‘tis for the main attack. And this Conflans – ”

The remainder of the discussion, so far as I remained to hear it, gave no enlargement upon the plan thus laid bare. But in any case my whole desire now was to escape from the house without discovery, for I had news that made my return to Britain imperative.

I opened the window quietly and slipped out. The drop to the court was less than my own height. Into the street I turned with the sober step of leisure, yet my feet tingled to run hard and my heart was stormy. The bells of St. Eloi went on ringing; the streets were growing busy with holiday-makers and the soldiers who were destined to over-run my country. I took there and then the most dreadful hatred of them, and scowled so black that some of the soldiers cried after me with a jeer.

The priest and Kilbride I found were not at the inn where I had left them, having gone back to the vessel, so I hurried down to the quay after them. The hoy had been moved since morning, and in the throng of other vessels that were in the harbour at the time I lost well-nigh an hour in seeking her. Whether that was well for me or ill would be folly now to guess, but when I had no more than set a foot upon the gunwale of a small boat that was to take me out to her I was clapped upon the shoulder.

I turned, to see Thurot and two officers of marine!

“Pardon, M. Greig, a moment,” said Thurot, with not the kindest of tones. “Surely you would not hurry out of Dunkerque without a congé for old friends?”