Archive of Our Own

I arrived at Dick’s doorstep without warning, much as I had often hoped over the last half-year that he would arrive on mine.

“Barbara!” He held me by the shoulders and surveyed me with an expression that held equal parts surprise, joy and indignation – such a familiar expression, after all these years, that despite everything I couldn’t help but laugh. “What in God's name are you doing here in Paris? This is no place for – will you stop that, I don’t see what can possibly be so funny about this! And where's –”

He was craning his neck already, clearly expecting a slight, mocking figure to step out from behind me and reveal himself.

And I, of course, had been hoping against hope to see the same figure step out from behind him. “That's what I've come about,” I said. I stepped back so I could hit him in the shoulder, and not lightly, either. I couldn't seem to stop laughing; perhaps I was crying a little bit too. “It's all your doing, you beast! Now let me inside so we can talk.”

“My doing!” Dick huffed, and continued on muttering in much this vein as he led me to the little table in his apartment, and took my traveling cloak, and lit the fire, and got me a cup of rather bad tea. He never had got the trick of how long to brew it, Eleanor was always doing it for him. In fact, I wasn't sure I had ever seen him make a cup of tea for himself before. I held it in my hands, warming them rather than sipping, and listened to my brother's dear familiar aggravating voice. Before today it had been five years at least since I'd seen him.

Finally, he swung into a seat across the table from me and crossed his arms. “All right, Barbara – what's all this about?”

“You,” I said, and once again was torn between the urge to jump up and embrace him again, and the urge to throw the bad tea in his face. “You were supposed to visit us on your way home from France! Months ago! Instead all we got was delays and delays, barely a word of explanation from you as to why you were still in Paris and nothing that rang true, while the news got worse and worse – what did you expect us to think? What did you expect us to do! Of course we thought you were in some kind of terrible trouble –”

“Well, I'm sorry,” said Dick, his face coloring, “but you must be aware that some business can't be confided in a letter during times such as these – and certainly not to an agent of an enemy power, however much he may be one's brother-in-law!”

“Peaceable's not an agent of anything,” I snapped.

“You can't expect me to believe that,” said Dick. “Peaceable Drummond Sherwood, give up schemes and plots? As much expect you to give up – oh, Barbara!” He passed me a handkerchief; I blew my nose, loudly. “Look, I'm sorry, go on. What's happened?”

“Peaceable did scheme and plot,” I said, bitterly, “to find out what had happened to you. He meant to cross the Channel with a free-trader, see if he could talk to you face-to-face and shake the truth of things out of you – now don't look like that, you know that an adventure of that sort is child’s play to him. I'd have gone with him, too, if we weren't worried that we'd miss each other in the night, and you'd stumble half-dead off a boat in London while we were both gone!”

Dick contemplated his tea, and then said, “I think I'll need something stronger for this.” He went to a shelf in his little kitchen, pulled down a bottle of brandy, and poured a generous slug of it into the tea. “So Peaceable's planned a wild scheme to smuggle himself into France? What then?”

“Peaceable did sail to France. He sailed a month ago –”

“A month?”

“A month, and no word since,” I said, grimly, “and I take it, from your response, that he's not made his way to your door.”

“No! I hadn't the least idea!” Dick's face was white. “Good God – don't you know how the Revolutionary Government feels about Englishmen in disguise these days?”

I tried for a smile. “He speaks French very convincingly.”

Dick groaned and put his head in his hands.

“So you see why I had to come,” I went on, after a moment.

“Of course, I see perfectly! One fool after another! Don't tell me you sailed with a free-trader as well?”

“Of course not,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster. “I'm a perfectly respectable woman coming to visit her brother in France, there was no need to play cloak and dagger about it.”

“A respectable woman traveling alone, without brother or husband, into the teeth of what could be a war any minute–”

“Well, I wasn't the only one! I had respectable company as well,” I said, and then when Dick frowned at me suspiciously, gave him my brightest smile. “Perhaps you've heard of Miss Wollstonecraft? A charming young woman, and I believe Eleanor was quite taken with her On the Education of Girls –”

“Oh, wonderful! I'm delighted to hear that you and notorious radical Miss Wollstonecraft had a lovely jaunt across the Channel together!”

“Well, it was almost lovely, actually,” I admitted. “We argued all the way, of course, but better than traveling alone – I’d have hated to spend days on the Calais coach by myself with nothing to do but fret. Oh, Dick – it’s been awful, it really has. I’ve hardly been able to sleep for worrying, and meanwhile I’ve had to tell everyone that Peaceable’s horribly ill, and turn away all callers at the door – I swear I’ve not told so many lies since I was a little girl.”

“Now I’m sure that’s not true,” said Dick, but he poured me a little brandy into my tea, too, and I found myself once again laughing, that kind of laugh that was almost a sob.

“You’re so horrible! When it really is all your fault! And you really can’t think,” I added, with a wobbly smile, “how good it is to be able to complain to you at last..” I took a gulp of the brandy-laden tea. “All those callers, and not one person I could tell the truth to. Those awful fashion-plate cousins of Peaceable’s who kept making me the most solicitous offers of help – miserable! I can’t think what help they think I would need! Advice on haberdashery?”

“I always said you two ought to have stayed in New York,” said Dick, who had met the fashion-plate cousins on his last visit, five years ago, and not cared for them.

“I could say the same for you,” I retorted. Now that I’d had a few sips of brandied tea, I was starting to feel calmer. “If you hadn’t stayed so long in France to begin with – all right, so you wouldn’t put it in a letter, but won’t you tell me now what trouble you’re in?”

“I’m not in trouble! I’ve been – entrusted, with a – a sort of diplomatic mission,” said Dick, suddenly at his most stiff and pompous. “It’s very delicate, and the situation is quite volatile, and that’s absolutely all I can tell you.

There was no getting anything out of him when he was like this. “Well,” I said, impatiently, “never mind all that, then – but will the work you’re doing for your delicate mission be of any use in finding out where Peaceable is, and getting him out of it, before something terrible happens?”

Dick stared darkly into his tea. I could tell he was restraining the impulse to point out that something terrible might already have happened, and I was grateful for it. I drank more of my tea, and looked at the familiar form of my brother in this shabby little foreign apartment, and tried to be thankful that at least the one worry was eased, and I no longer had to fear for both of them at once. It did help, a little. There were certain things that Dick, with his lofty patriot’s pride, couldn’t be trusted to do to get himself out of real trouble; Peaceable, I knew, would, and could.

But I also knew that it was possible for even Peaceable to be in a position that he couldn’t wriggle out of without help.

Finally, Dick set down his teacup, and said, “All right. Yes. I’ve got some ideas. Why don’t you rest from your journey? I’ll begin by asking at –”

“Wherever you’re intending to go,” I said, “you cannot possibly imagine, after all this, that I am going to allow myself to be left behind.”

“And you cannot possibly imagine, after all this,” said Dick, “that I’m going to bring my little sister on a tour of Parisian prisons!”

**

Three more days found us at our third Parisian prison.

It was not quite the tour of the city that I would have chosen. On the Calais coach, Miss Wollstonecraft had spoken ardently of the Rights of Man, of republican virtues and individual liberties, with such passion that it had almost recalled me to my sympathies with the Revolution.The news from France had been so bad, of late, and I had been so anxious about Dick and then Peaceable, that I had somewhat soured on the entire situation – and of course one met with so many aristocrats these days who had been rescued from terrible fates, and one did not wish one’s pleasant acquaintances to suffer terrible fates.

(One of Peaceable’s fashionable cousins, it was said, had once been quite the sympathizer before the executions began, but if that queen of the ton had ever held radical opinions, she didn’t share them with me.)

But one could not quite forget, either, how easy it was for a king to become a tyrant; one certainly did not forget that the same people who spoke in appalled tones about the Revolution in France had held quite the same opinions about the revolt of the American colonies. On finding myself in Paris, I should have liked to meet some people – not aristocrats, but ordinary people, like my own neighbors back in New York, and hear their own opinions about everything that had occurred.

To be quite fair, I was now indeed meeting some people who were not aristocrats. However, as all of them were instead jailors, it did not perhaps provide the best showing of republican virtues and the Rights of Man. This third prison in which we had found ourselves was a place called La Conciergerie, which had once been a royal residence. Like all the others, it was now an appallingly bustling place, people constantly coming and going with petitions and pleas and looks of despair.

Somehow, Dick managed to cut through the crowd; he bearded one of the clerks, who seemed to be leaving for the day, and pulled him aside to talk.

The first time we had attempted this investigation, at La Force prison, it had gone rather awkwardly. Dick’s contact there had asked him all sorts of suspicious questions, which were only resolved when I tossed my hair and exclaimed that the villain should pay with his life for what he’d done to me.

After that, I’d helped Dick to develop a script. Now, with his most menacing scowl and his best mediocre French, he said to the clerk, “My friend, I’m in search of a prisoner – a new prisoner, a man brought in over the last month, perhaps under an assumed name – a particularly aggravating man, an aristocratic sort, with fair hair, blue eyes, and an infuriatingly languid air about him.”

“And what interest have you in such a prisoner?” said the clerk, doubtfully. “I thought all your efforts were bent on the Marquis de Lafa–”

Dick hushed him, hastily, and shot an alarmed glance at me; I blinked wide eyes back at him and pretended I’d heard nothing.

“My reasons are personal, do you understand? The scoundrel’s tricked my sister into marriage –” He gestured to me; I took my cue to burst into tears. “-- and she wants to be free of him.”

I had made sure to dress prettily, and look as much as possible like the kind of young woman that a reprobate might wish to trick into marriage. The clerk looked me up and down, as I wept tragically into my handkerchief, and said, “I see, I see.”

“She’s a good American girl,” said Dick, sorrowfully, “a friend to the revolution, and a patriot. You can see, sir, how it hurts her to be tied to an enemy of the Republic!”

The clerk nodded, sagely. “Well,” he said, kindly, “your sister’s days of sorrow may well be nearing an end. I can tell you, we do have such a prisoner. A fair-haired, blue-eyed aristo, as aggravating a fellow as ever I’ve known, who does nothing but lie on the floor all day and make mock of the whole institution –”

Dick and I both jumped, as if stung by bees. “Truly!” hissed Dick, his voice sharp. “You truly have him here?”

“I swear to you,” said the clerk, “from your description, it can be no other man.”

I was glad then that I’d come up with a ruse that involved weeping into my handkerchief; the tears that pricked my eyes as he said it were real enough. Peaceable lived – Peaceable lived, he was here in this very building, and only now could I acknowledge all the fears I’d been so careful not to let myself think about, now that I knew they were not true.

Even as I thought that, the clerk went on, casually, “His case isn’t due to come up for some time, I believe, but if you’d like to see the matter expedited, a small contribution to the Jacobin Club –”

“Oh no,” I whispered, and then swallowed, and clutched Dick’s arm, and went on in my own schoolgirl French. “Oh, no, his tongue’s so clever – he can’t be allowed to speak in his own defense, Dick, he can’t!”

“I assure you, madam,” said the clerk, amused, “it takes more than a clever tongue to escape the guillotine, once you’re in her sights.”

But I shook my head, wide-eyed once more, so vehemently that a few locks of hair tumbled down from their pins. “No, no, no, we must make sure of it!”

Dick had, by now, understood what I was driving at. He turned to the clerk. “Look here,” he said, confidingly. “How much just to let us see the fellow? Don’t worry, we won’t deprive the Republic of her prize; I’d just like a chance to personally remove that smirk from his face, first. And I think it would do my sister good to see it.”

The clerk laughed. “I think it would do me some good, too,” he admitted. “Very well, a small contribution, as I’ve said, and it can be arranged. Could you manage tomorrow, at four of the clock?”

“By all means,” said Dick, fervently, and reached out to shake the clerk’s hand; a small sound betrayed the coins passing between them. “I’ll do my best to give him one for the both of us.”

We hurried back to Dick’s apartment in silence, not daring to risk a word that might betray us; Dick had warned me that spies and informers had begun to proliferate in Paris since the political shifts of September. Only once we were ensconced in the safety of his walls did he turn to me and say, anxiously, “Barbara, are you all right?”

“Hardly ever better,” I told him, jubilantly. “Finding him was the difficult part. Now all that’s needed is to get him out of there.”

Dick stared at me as if I’d lost my head. “All that’s needed – Barbara, La Conciergerie isn’t exactly the Goshen Jail!”

“To be sure,” I said, and wiped the tears away, briskly, with my arm; now wasn’t at all the time to go to pieces. “Which, if you’ll recall, Peaceable contrived to escape on his own from quite handily. So, La Conciergerie is more of a challenge; very well, not to worry, with our assistance I’m sure he’ll manage perfectly well. I’ve already got half a plan in mind, and once we see him tomorrow, we’ll sort out the rest. You’ll see!”

**

Four o’clock on the following day could hardly come fast enough for me. As we walked through the vaulted stone halls of La Conciergerie – a strangely beautiful place, for such a house of misery – my heart was thundering so loud in my chest that I wondered our guide couldn’t hear it.

He ushered us into a small cell lit only by a single lantern, tipped Dick a wink, and gently locked the door behind us. My eyes were so fixed on the snoring lump of dirty blanket before us that I hardly noticed him go.

Then the lump of blanket began to stretch – and went on stretching – and went on stretching, as he started to climb to his feet, and I stumbled back towards the door, hand pressed to my heart.

This prisoner was easily a foot taller than Peaceable.

“What the devil?” exclaimed Dick.

In unaccented French, the prisoner said, “Sir, I might ask you the very –”

Then he saw my face, and I saw his, and I clapped my hand over my mouth just barely in time to muffle a cry.

As for him, the lift of his eyebrows was all that betrayed his shock. “Egads – if it isn’t Lady Barbara!” He’d slipped seamlessly back into soft-spoken English, with the air of a man unexpectedly accosted at Alcott’s.

“Barbara,” demanded Dick, “you know this man?”

I found myself with the strangest urge to giggle; it was better, after all, than screaming. “By all means,” I said, and dipped a curtsey, as if I was indeed making an introduction at a ball. “You’ve met him as well, you may recall. Dick, under the most unexpected circumstances, may I have the honor of presenting to you Sir Percy –”

“The fashion-plate cousin?” Dick blurted out, and then colored so vividly I could see it even in the dim light of the prison cell.

“I’m honored,” murmured Peaceable’s fashionable cousin, and leaned back against the wall. I could easily see now where the confusion had arisen; he’d always had Peaceable’s insufferably languid air. “Now, madam, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well,” I said, helplessly, “it’s – something of a mixup. We were hoping to find Peaceable –” And I had to stop for a moment, as it suddenly bore in on me that every lead had once again gone cold.

“Oh, Lud, don’t cry,” begged Sir Percy. “I can’t stand a woman in tears.” He began patting down his dirty coat, absently, for a handkerchief.

I waved him off. “You won’t see one here!. Now, Sir Percy, I – to be frank, I haven’t the least notion of what could bring you here of all places, but having found you, I suppose we’re duty-bound to rescue you.”

I said it with no particular joy, for rescuing Sir Percy now could only make any attempt to find Peaceable more difficult later, not to mention endangering whatever Dick’s mission was in Paris. Indeed, I could see Dick making anguished faces next to me. Nonetheless, if – when! – we found Peaceable, I could hardly tell him I’d left his cousin to languish in a French prison – even a rather distant cousin whom we’d both always thought something of a ninny.

Sir Percy looked down at the two of us through his lashes. When encountering him in a ballroom, with his foolish airs, one often forgot just how tall and broad he was. “It’s devilish good of you,” he said, apologetically, “and I’m afraid, therefore, that this is devilish awkward of me, but you see, at this particular moment, I’ve no desire at all to be rescued.”

We stared at him in complete incomprehension for a moment, until suddenly a suspicion dawned on me – the one wildly improbable thing that might, somehow, explain all of this. “Sir Percy,” I said, slowly, “you wouldn’t, by any chance, be …”

“Now, before you begin speaking in that vein,” begged Sir Percy, “might you be so good as to check that door’s properly closed, won’t you, and that nobody’s listening at it?” He settled himself back down on the ground, cross-legged, and with a sweep of his arm gestured to us to do the same. While Dick checked the door, I sat myself down opposite him, grateful for the more casual French fashions that allowed me to pull my knees up to my chest.

Dick, meanwhile, hesitated above us, looking as if he was wrestling with himself. He had clearly followed me in my leap of intuition; after all, here on the ground in Paris, he must hear as much or more of the news in that vein as I did. “Sir,” he finally broke out, “I must inform you, I am registered as a diplomatic representative of the United States of America, and, as such, must maintain a policy of the strictest neutrality regarding any political affairs –”

“What political affairs?” laughed Sir Percy. “I was only going to speak of our mutual relation – he is mutual, I think? You’ve got a strong enough air of the lady here that I feel safe in assuming you’re my cousin’s brother-in-law, which – by God!” He looked quite struck, and pleased with it. “-- puts us rather in the way of being connected, don’t it just!”

He was speaking as if he were in the ballroom again, with not a care in his head, but I was looking at him closely, and thought I caught a flash of sharp wit lurking behind the foolish face. So I recounted the whole story again, while Dick shifted next to me, and Sir Percy listened imperturbably opposite me.

He didn’t venture a word until I’d told him everything. Then he nodded decisively, and said, “Thought it was dashed queer, my cousin vanishing like that – if you’ll forgive me saying so, Lady Barbara.” It was occurring to me, rather belatedly, that the help that Peaceable’s fashionable cousins had tried to offer me was not quite the sort that I had thought. “Not to give unwanted advice,” he went on, “but if Sherwood’s smuggled himself across by boat, why not ask directly with the free-traders to find out what’s become of him before you start rattling all the prison-bars?”

“That would seem quite sensible, Sir Percy,” I said, a trifle sharply, “if one had a way of finding such a person – but a prison has a public address, you see, where a free-trader does not.”

Sir Percy applauded me as if I had made a bon mot. “Just so! Just so indeed! But in absence of a public address, Lady Barbara, perhaps a private one may serve?””

He gave me the address, without the name attached; then he stretched out his legs on the dirty floor of the cell, quite comfortably, as if it was his own home. “If you run into difficulties with my old acquaintance there,” he said, kindly, “do you just contrive a way to return. I’m sorry my obligations prevent me from paying a call on you at present, but for the next week you shall find me quite at home here.” And he laughed at his own joke, that braying laugh that always made him seem so much the fool of the party.

I was longing to ask him more – about why he was here in prison, and what his plans were, and whether he could, indeed, really be the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel! – but Dick’s warning had served to remind me that pressing Sir Percy for the answers to any of those questions could indeed put my brother into a most awkward position. So instead I just got to my feet, and swept him another curtsey, as deep and respectful as I could in the cramped prison cell.

“Sir Percy,” I said, “I owe you a debt – and if you won’t take my aid today, I hope you’ll someday call on me at another time to repay it, for I surely won’t forget it.”

Sir Percy gave me another grin. This one hardly looked foolish at all. “Before you go,” he said, “I confess there’s a question I’ve been longing to ask you. Suppose I had wanted to be spirited out of this cell, after all – now how in God’s name were you planning to go about it?”

I flushed. “Well,” I said, “we got in by telling the clerk that we wanted a chance to take a little private revenge, before you went to the guillotine – so, I’d rather thought, if you were willing to suffer a little injury, and could play convincingly enough dead, that we might say that Dick got carried away, and charge the clerk with helping us hide your corpse.”

“Barbara!” expostulated Dick, appalled at this hypothetical slander on his reputation, but Sir Percy Blakeney just laughed and laughed.

“Egads, Lady Barbara, one of these days, I think I shall call on you for that favor!”

**

Sir Percy had given us a lead to follow, but I still wasn’t at all sure how to go about convincing his mysterious connection to confide in us. As it turned out, however, fortune was still on our side – for when we called at the address that Sir Percy had given us, we found there yet another unexpected friend

“But Miss Wollstonecraft,” I said – once I’d presented her to Dick, and Dick to her, and we’d all been invited inside – “This isn’t the address you gave me to call on you, surely?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Wollstonecraft. She was clearly delighted to see me and resume our old arguments, and paid hardly any heed at all to Dick, following on my heels like a rather dour dog “No, indeed, you’ve found me at the home of an – of an acquaintance – a Mr. Gilbert Imlay.” A faint blush landed on her cheeks as she said the name; at the same time, Dick’s face changed as well, brows drawing together. Miss Wollstonecraft gave him a polite nod. “Perhaps you know him, Mr. Grahame? He’s an American, like yourself.”

“I know him,” Dick said, shortly, and not another word escaped him for the next few hours, as Miss Wollstonecraft and I whiled away the hours until Mr. Imlay’s return arguing over the slated execution of the King. I could tell he disapproved of the acquaintance – there was, certainly, no respectable reason one might think of to find a young lady such as Miss Wollstonecraft alone in an unrelated man’s home! – but I was a woman grown and married now, and could hardly be hurt by it.

Finally, Mr. Imlay arrived. He and Dick gave each other the coldest, briefest nods of greeting that politeness would allow, and I was terribly afraid that Dick in his pride would spoil the whole thing before we could get the least bit of information out of him. Fortunately, Miss Wollstonecraft, clearly seeing the danger as well as I did, laid an affectionate hand on Mr. Imlay’s arm.

“Gilbert, this is Lady Barbara, who kept me company on the crossing – won’t you hear what she has to say?”

“Mr. Imlay,” I said, “please forgive me for intruding on your privacy, but I was given your name by a mutual friend, as a man who might know something about – about certain activities in – oh, Dick, perhaps you’d better go outside, after all.” For I had just remembered, once again, that Dick was an official agent of the American government, and perhaps Mr. Imlay might not wish to speak of his smuggling operations with Dick in the room.

But Mr. Imlay only laughed. “It’s charming of you, Lady Barbara, but I assure you, my certain activities are all well known to Grahame’s superiors.”

“Oh! Well,” I said – Dick was looking stiffer-jawed than ever – “in that case, I’ll beat about the bush no longer. I’ve reason to believe an Englishman of my acquaintance came over the Channel with a free-trader last month, and ran into some sort of difficulty. Might you have heard anything, sir, that could shed light on the matter?”

Mr. Imlay’s face gave nothing away. “Now,” he said, slowly, “what reason, Lady Barbara, can you give for me to provide you with information that could compromise my contacts, and with no guarantee of your word?”

I was wondering whether to say the name of Peaceable’s cousin, or simply refer obliquely to a tall blonde man with a braying laugh, when I was forestalled by Miss Wollstonecraft. “Gilbert,” she said, reproachfully, “don’t be a brute.”

She pressed her hand where it rested on his arm, and gazed earnestly up at him; he smiled back down at her.

“Reason enough, then,” he said, raising his fingertips to brush her cheek, and then turned back to me. “There was a ship found crashed, the Ill-shot Owl, off the Cap de la Hague – found empty, ma’am,” he added quickly, seeing my face, “of all save the salt they were smuggling in. If your man was coming over with the free-traders, I’d lay ten to one that he escaped the wreck, and if you’re lucky you might still have a chance of finding him before the authorities do.”

“Now,” said Miss Wollstonecraft, still gazing at Mr. Imlay, “that wasn’t such a hardship, was it?”

It was clear, from the way they were looking at each other, that our presence was becoming superfluous. We got as much information out of Mr. Imlay as he would deign to give us; then we made our thanks and goodbyes – well, I made thanks and goodbyes, and Dick echoed them with as much brevity as possible – and took our leave.

As soon as we were well down the street, Dick burst out, “I can’t stand that man!”

“You made it clear enough,” I said, irritated. “If it weren’t for Miss Wollstonecraft, we might never have known about the wreck at all, and lost what’s now our only lead!”

“He’s a confidence man and a rogue,” snapped Dick, “with a string of unpaid debts in his wake. Miss Wollstonecraft, I think, is exceedingly unwise to put her trust in him – and I believe my superiors are as well.”

Looking at Dick, I thought perhaps that what really bothered him about Gilbert Imlay was the reminder that the new government – the people’s government that he’d fought for, under a President that he loved – was as capable as any other of underhanded dealings, profiteering and ruthlessness in its own interest.

“They do seem so very much in love, though,” I said, and then made a face, to distract him. “I hope Peaceable and I are not quite so bad as that?”

That did get a laugh out of him, the first I’d heard all afternoon. “Worse,” he told me, without a moment’s hesitation. “Far, far worse.”

**

The journey from Paris to the Cap de la Hague seemed to take a thousand years – far longer than my trip a few weeks ago, when I had traveled the conventional route by coach in Miss Wollstonecraft’s unconventional company. Even in these difficult days, there were still plenty of foreigners making their way from Calais to Paris, but nobody expected to find such foreigners venturing into the depths of rural Normandy; moreover, the turmoil and suspicion within France was increasing by the day, and all our fellow-travelers were as anxious as we were. We were stopped at what felt like hundreds of checkpoints, and each time we had to show our papers and keep a cool head to remember our various lies.

Dick’s company didn’t make the delays any easier to bear. He was exceedingly anxious to be leaving his business in Paris, but wouldn’t think of letting me travel alone, either, and our tempers both grew worse as the journey dragged on. None of the other passengers were much inclined to conversation, either, after an impassioned argument between two citizens about political philosophy nearly came to blows. Instead, I passed the long hours spent in the coach on writing a letter to Eleanor, who alone, I felt, could understand my travails:

Exceptionally cross today
Dick in the sulks again
Dick has seen me writing these lines to you and is now, indeed, further in the sulks than before

Once we reached Rouen, it was a full two days til the next stage was leaving for anywhere in the direction we wanted to go. We decided to cover the remaining distance on horseback, against the advice of our coachman: “There’s bandits,” he said, darkly, “and Royalists, and all kinds of riffraff out there – mark my words, you’ll be longing for a nice safe checkpoint!”

“Now that,” said Dick quietly to me, once we were out of his earshot, “I admit I find hard to believe.”

I laughed. “Just think what he’d say if he knew where we were headed!”

Once we got out of the coach and onto the horses, we were quite in charity with each other again; both of us had loved to ride since we were children, and escaping the enforced rattling idleness of the stagecoach made all the difference in the world. Still, the closer we got to our destination, the slower we had to go. Mr. Imlay had advised us that the smugglers were likely to take refuge in the Cotentin wetlands, where the winter flooding made passage dangerous for all except those who knew the region best. We’d been warned to take exceeding care in the marshes lest our horses put a foot wrong, and Dick kept his hands on both his pistols.

For all the danger, it couldn’t be denied that the journey was beautiful. The locals, Mr. Imlay had said, called the place the ‘white marshes’ during the winter floods. As we crossed over the safe route that Mr. Imlay had marked out for us, it seemed that our horses were indeed walking on water.

We were hoping to reach the town of Ste.-Mère-Église before nightfall and make the acquaintance of the innkeeper there, who surely received supplies from the free-traders, and could perhaps point us in the direction of making contact with them. However, the December days were short, and the setting sun caught us still making our way through the wetlands. I couldn’t regret it, either, when I saw the brilliance of the light reflected on the water all around us; it was a sight like I’d never seen before, and I raised a hand to shield my eyes, wishing with all my heart that Peaceable was there to share it with me.

It was then that I saw, pinned to a gnarled tree across the way, a piece of fabric in a pattern I should have recognized anywhere..

“Dick!” I cried, and pulled my horse to a halt. “Dick, do you see that?”

Dick, too, would have recognized that tartan anywhere. He looked at me, and then we both looked again at the tree, which stood next to a shimmering flat line of water that could – once one noticed it; once one was paying quite close attention – have easily been another hidden path through the marsh, like the one we were currently riding.

We had no light, and our map showed no detours; we knew we could not afford to linger long, and yet, without exchanging a word, Dick and I both turned our horses to make their slow way down the water-trail indicated by the tartan sign. We made our slow way through the shining silver sunset, me dreading at every moment the time when Dick would say that we had to turn back, and straining my eyes to see anything that might be another sign through the mist of the marshes.

But in the end, it was from behind us that the familiar voice came laughing through the trees: “I’m quite determined to claim your horse, so what’s the usual phrase? Stand and deliver, I believe?”

“Peaceable!” exclaimed Richard. “Are you mad? I nearly took a shot at you!” And he went on this vein as he took the reins of my horse, for I had already come to a halt, and vaulted out of the saddle, and was in the process of throwing myself into my husband’s arms.

One of those arms closed round me tightly – but the other hung limp, and I heard Peaceable let out a muffled sound of pain. I stepped back at once, and finally could see what my sun-dazzled eyes had missed: “You’re wounded!”

“Shaken all to pieces,” said Peaceable, ruefully. “No, come back here, love, it’ll be good to have someone to lean on.” He wrapped his good arm around my shoulders, and I put mine round his waist, noting with alarm how much thinner said waist was; I’d not seen him this gaunt since his escape from Goshen Jail.

“Now,” said Peaceable – his fingers, on my shoulder, idly playing with a stray lock of my hair; I don’t think he knew himself he was doing it – “I’ve a thousand questions for you, but first tell me one thing.”

“Anything, dearest,” I murmured.

He gazed in my eyes, and implored, “Do you, my love, know the way out of these blasted marshes?”

“We do, dearest!” shouted Dick, before I could respond. “And if you’re in such a hurry, then perhaps you could stop staring at each other like moon-calves and get up on that horse?”

**

We reached the inn at Ste.-Mère-Église an hour past sunset. Dick and I took ourselves a set of rooms, as we had done every inn we’d stayed at over the course of our travels, and left Peaceable hidden in a copse of trees nearby. We waited an agony of time until the whole place was asleep; then I lit a light at the window to signal to Peaceable, and Dick slipped back downstairs to let him into the house unseen.

We were all too exhausted, after that, to say much to each other – Peaceable was asleep nearly as soon as he’d lain down – so it wasn’t until the next morning that we finally heard the story of how he had come to be in the marshes.

“The boat belongs to my old school-friend Lavenham – he tripped up against a murder accusation a few years ago, fled the country, and has been running brandy across the Channel ever since. The smash-up was pure bad luck; we got caught in a storm and it sent us right on the rocks, and nearly into the arms of the officials, too.

“I got knocked up pretty badly in that crash, and a fever set in on top of it, so there were several weeks there during which I really wasn’t in a position to do much but lie prone and groan. To do Lavenham justice, he couldn’t have taken more tender care of me, but the fellow’s no doctor. He grew convinced he ought to try and get someone with more of a medical head on his shoulders to take a look at me.”

I tied off the clean bandage I’d been winding round his broken elbow, and told him, “This Lavenham sounds very sensible to me.”

“That, my dearest,” said Peaceable, “is exactly what he isn’t. Unfortunately for himself, and, regrettably, also for me. Here I am,” he went on, increasingly heated – or as heated as he could be, half-prone on the bed – “one-armed, muddle-brained, in the middle of a landscape more or less designed to murder the unwary – and here is my dear friend Ludovic Lavenham, who assures me that he’s going to town to fetch a doctor for me, and never to worry about him (well-known smuggler in these parts) being captured, because he’ll be disguising himself as a nun, and surely no one will look twice at him –”

“It sounds, in fact,” said Dick, barely able to conceal his amusement, “like one of Peaceable Drummond Sherwood’s notorious stunts.”

Peaceable looked reproachfully up at Dick. “Now,” he said, “perhaps, I grant you, there might be circumstances under which I might have disguised myself as a French nun; indeed, I flatter myself that I might even, perhaps, have made some small success at it. In assessing this proposition, I beg you to consider the following: first, I’m a rather puny sort of fellow, and Ludovic Lavenham is a strapping six feet.”

He switched to French. “Second, I speak the language well enough to have passed as a native on more than one occasion, whereas Ludovic Lavenham has never met an emphasis that he couldn’t manage to put on the wrong syllable.”

Back to English. “And – last , but certainly not least – were I to undertake a dangerous mission of this sort, on behalf of an injured friend – did I know that there was any chance, any chance at all, that I might not be able to return as I had planned – had I done that, Richard Grahame, I feel confident enough in myself to say that I would leave him –” He drew in his breath; he drew out his breath, and concluded, quite calmly, “that I would leave him, perhaps, some sort of map.”

“Oh dear,” I said, comprehending.

Peaceable’s eyes softened, as they came back to me. “Remarkable,” he murmured, “the extent to which a sympathetic ear serves as a balm to the spirit. Two hours ago, I was ready to wring my dear friend Lavenham’s neck, but your ‘oh dear,’ my dear, quite reconciles me to his foibles. Say you’ll stroke my brow soothingly, and I’ll forgive him entirely.”

I stroked his brow soothingly, and he closed his eyes, with the sigh of a contented cat. “Well – as you may have gathered, my love, I wasn’t quite the thing when Lavenham proposed the plan; I objected as best I could, but without the reasoned arguments I would have brought to bear under other circumstances. And – as you may also have gathered – Lavenham has not since then returned, leaving me alone in the marshes without doctor, friend, or guide. My healing continued, at its own pace; I ate the food he had left me, until it ran out; and since then, I have been determined to escape the white marshes, discover what became of Lavenham, and –” He opened his eyes again suddenly, and gave me a dazzling smile. “-- of course, get word to you; but it seems that you forestalled that endeavor on your own.”

I smiled back down at him. “Would you have expected anything else?”

“If I ever again underestimate you for a moment,” said Peaceable, all of a sudden quite serious, “I’ll be a fool thrice over.”

Dick cleared his throat. “So – before we came along, what was your plan?”

“Ludovic did leave me a pistol, and I was, reluctantly, just about determined that I’d have to hijack some unwary smuggler, and bribe, beg or threaten him to take me along to town with him. Then –” He glanced over at Dick, and smiled. “-- I started to think about our old games. I left those scraps of tartan pinned up on every tree as far as I could venture safely, hoping someone would take the bait and let me play highwayman – and who should come along instead but my own wife!” He returned his attention to me, putting a hand up to cover mine. “It’s enough to make a person believe in fate.”

“Quod desidero obtineo,” I said. “A Sherwood does always get what they want, dearest – and right then, I’d been wanting you terribly.”

“Right,” said Dick, brightly, “I’ll go see about scaring up breakfast,” and hastily stepped out the door.

But it seemed only the briefest moment later that Dick was banging on the door again.

I reluctantly untangled my arms from around Peaceable’s neck (we had only just managed to position ourselves in such a way that his elbow should not be hurt) and went over to open it for him, intending to demand what he thought he was about.

But one look at his face dissuaded me. He shut the door carefully behind him again, looked straight at Peaceable, and said, “I have a feeling your friend Lavenham’s in more trouble than you might have thought.”

“That’s a strong statement,” said Peaceable. He used his good arm to push himself up, until he was sitting on the bed, and frowned at Dick. “What have you discovered?”

“What I’ve discovered,” said Dick, in disgust, “is that the officials here in Ste.-Mère-Église seem to believe they’ve caught the Scarlet Pimpernel!”

Ludovic Lavenham, it seemed, had been as good as his word. He had disguised himself as a nun and gone into town to seek a doctor – quite unaware (as indeed we all were, among the flood of other news and our own various personal concerns) that wearing of women’s religious habits had very recently been outlawed within the confines of the Republic.

Of course he had been arrested at once, and the village officials in the small town of Ste.-Mère-Église had been beyond delighted to abruptly find themselves in possession of a tall Englishman, in disguise, and clearly in pursuit of some nefarious scheme. They had sent word straight to Paris; Paris had immediately sent word back that they were to tell no one of their capture until everything was certain, but to keep their prisoner under strictest lock and key until the official in charge of the Pimpernel problem could arrive to take charge of the matter. He was now expected in Normandy any day – and I wondered if this was not, perhaps, the reason that Sir Percy Blakeney was finding it so unexpectedly easy to enjoy an apparently anonymous sojourn in La Conciergerie.

In the meantime, since the town was too small to have a proper prison, Ludovic Lavenham was now being kept in the abandoned priest’s quarters, in the church that gave Ste.-Mère-Église its name.

“In a way,” I said, glumly, “it was easier to contemplate spiriting a man out of La Conciergerie. There, they had thousands to keep track of, it seemed reasonable that for a time they shouldn’t miss one; but here –!”

“Ah, but at La Conciergerie, they’re professionals,” said Peaceable. “The fine folk of Ste.-Mère-Église, on the other hand, have never had to do with a prisoner of this status in their lives. We’ll have no trouble whatsoever.”

“You seem in remarkable spirits,” said Dick, “for a man with a broken arm, no resources, no legal presence in the country –.”

Peaceable merely smiled. “Since Lavenham left me, indeed, I’ve been as low as I ever was in my life – but here! now my fortunes have turned; not only have I a map of the landscape to be going on with at last –” (It had clearly rankled enormously with him, not to have the power of guiding his own journey.) “-- but the cleverest and most resourceful woman of my acquaintance is here with me, so how would it be possible to fail?”

“And Dick, also,” I added, helpfully.

“And Dick, also,” agreed Peaceable, straight-faced.

Dick rolled his eyes, and Peaceable laughed, and amended: “And the worthiest enemy, besides your sister, that I ever crossed swords with – will that do?”

“I suppose it’ll have to,” said Dick. “Just bear in mind, won’t you, that I’m –”

“-- a diplomatic representative of the United States of America,” I completed for him, “and must maintain a policy of the strictest neutrality! Take comfort, Dick – it’s not as if we were going to be rescuing the real Scarlet Pimpernel.”

**

Ste.-Mère-Église was a small village, of no particular importance, and far from the political center of revolutionary thought; although it had dutifully stripped its church of valuables and disbanded its priesthood, in accordance with the dictates of the Revolutionary Committee, the citizens still cherished a certain degree of sentiment regarding their old traditions.

Of course, security measures around the church had changed, now that such a person of importance as the Scarlet Pimpernel was being stored in the tower. So here I stood, pleading with the young villager who served as the gate-guard, who had once (I was told) been an altar boy, not ten years ago, in a previous era of history. “I had hoped – of course I understand the church is closed, but –”

“It’s impossible,” said the gate-guard, sternly.

“For shame, Jean!” said the elderly woman we had befriended at the inn this morning, who had guided me to the church. “She’s come all this way, what harm to let her in to have a look at the place?”

By this point we had attracted quite a little crowd in the square. The embarrassed young man drew himself up to his full height, and said, vehemently, “It is impossible!”

I considered him doubtfully. “Could I perhaps speak to your superior?”

Someone else in the crowd laughed; another woman’s voice, that sounded almost familiar to me, though I couldn’t quite place it. “Really, you think this wispy young woman could steal away your secret prisoner?”

This sally found great success with the audience. The villagers, as a whole, were not officially supposed to know about the capture of the Scarlet Pimpernel; this had been made quite clear in the message received from Paris. Of course, since half the town had been present when Ludovic Lavenham was captured, and the other half had immediately heard about it from the first half, this particular instruction was the source of much general merriment among the townsfolk. The gate-guard turned red, and said, “I’ll fetch him, and he’ll tell you much the same!”

“Enough of this nonsense, Barbara,” said Dick. “I told you it wouldn’t serve. Now you’re just making us look ridiculous.”

“I shan’t leave until I’ve spoken to his superior,” I said, stoutly.

Dick shook his head, disgusted. “Well, suit yourself,” he said, and stalked off around the outside of the church; on the inside of the church, the gate-guard did much the same.

After a few moments, the gate-guard stormed back, with his superior in tow. This was a weary-looking older man, who told me, “Mademoiselle, I regret exceedingly that I cannot comply with your wishes, but –”

“Mon Dieu,” said someone from behind us, “what’s that from the church?”

“Do you see that? That’s smoke!”

“Something’s on fire in the church!”

The gate-guard and his superior stared at each other, aghast. And then a shout came, from inside the nave: “Move the prisoner! If he dies before M. Chauvelin arrives, we’ll all lose our heads!”

That was enough to set them both in motion. Without a word of farewell to me, they both charged back into the church.

“Well,” I said, to the old woman who had been my guide, “it seems I won’t be praying in that church today.”

The old woman began to cross herself, then dropped her hand before anyone could see. “It’s a real pity,” she said, and shook her head, wearily. “Still, if they won’t let anyone in to use it, then what’s the good of having a church at all? Perhaps it’s better it burns to the ground!”

We had no intention of burning the church to the ground, but it did no harm, we thought, to make it seem that it might. When Dick stormed off, he had given the signal to Peaceable that the guards were quite distracted; Peaceable had then taken advantage of one of the church’s several broken windows to set a fire smoking in the nave.

When the guards fetched their prisoner down from the tower, Peaceable would wait by the exit to strike. Ludovic Lavenham, it seemed, for all his foibles, was a remarkable man with a pistol; now he was outside his cell and unbound for transport, Peaceable would only have to seize the opportunity to get a gun into his hands, and the untried village guardsmen would be no match for the two of them.

For now, my part was done. I walked back to the inn, said farewell to the old woman, and joined Dick at the table, where he was already waiting, clearly and visibly quite uninvolved in anything that might occur down by the church.

Tonight, we would stay respectably at the inn. Tomorrow, we would remove ourselves, meet Peaceable and his friend back in the marshes, and then –

– well, then we would need to find ourselves some sort of way to get back across the Channel; the boat that had brought Peaceable and Lavenham over was smashed on the rocks. But that, I told myself, was a difficulty for tomorrow, and we would resolve it as we had resolved all the others.

I reached for my glass to stiffen my determination, and, finding it empty, raised a hand to see whether the innkeeper’s girl might refill it. She came by at once with the pitcher. I turned to smile at her in thanks, and – when she met my eyes boldly –once again found myself quite speechless in shock.

One would think, by this time, I would be quite accustomed to running into the least expected people in the least expected places. Still, the sight of Lady Marguerite Blakeney – the queen of the ton herself – pouring wine in a little village inn was perhaps the strangest I had yet encountered on all this long journey.

And yet, I should have known already; for on seeing her, I knew at once that hers was the voice I had heard taunting the guards from the crowd in the square!

I had heard that she was once a magnificent actress. I caught a glimpse of it then, for her face did not change a whit when she saw me. She, merely curtsied and asked, in French, “Will mademoiselle require anything else?”

“Actually,” I said, recovering my voice, “there is something. I spilled wine on one of my gowns last night, and no lady’s-maid with me – might you be able to help?”

“Of course, mademoiselle,” said Lady Marguerite, eyes and voice humbly lowered once more. Had she not let me catch her flashing gaze a moment ago, I should not have recognized her in the least. She followed me up to my room, leaving Dick staring in puzzlement after us.

I made sure the door was safely closed behind us before I turned back to her. “I suppose,” I said, “I’m speaking now to the wife of the Scarlet Pimpernel?”

The curtsey she gave me this time was sweeping and elegant – ballroom mannerisms, and I thought how well-suited she and her husband were. “But I confess,” she murmured, “you have me at a disadvantage; your presence here I did not at all expect before today.”

“I didn’t expect you either,” I said, ruefully, “but I suppose I should have. Lady Blakeney – may I confirm one thing with you?” She nodded, her eyes narrow and wary, like a cat’s. I went on, a little apologetically, “Are you aware that it is not Sir Percy Blakeney who has been captured here in Ste.-Mère-Église?”

The complete control that she held over her face cracked, at last, as her eyes went wide.

So I told her all about Peaceable, and Ludovic Lavenham, and all the rest of it, and concluded with the fact that I’d left Sir Percy in prison in Paris, but that he seemed perfectly happy to be there.

“He was supposed to be in Paris,” Lady Marguerite admitted, when all of this was done. “But when we heard the news of the capture –” (truly there was no hope of keeping a secret in Ste.-Mère-Église!)“-- we feared the worst. Percy can always be counted on to show up in the least expected places, you know.”

“I understand,” I said, with deep feeling, and we shared a look of perfect understanding.

“But,” Marguerite went on, “at least, there is this good luck out of it – your husband and his friend, are, I think, in need of a ship to return to England?” When I nodded, she smiled, for the first time, and made a theatrical gesture with her hand. “Well, then – let the Day Dream oblige, and I shall say to my husband when he returns, bah! Who needs him to rescue Englishmen in peril? I can do it very well myself!”

**

“And that,” concluded Barbara, “was more or less the end of it.”

“It’s a marvelous tale,” began Peggy, with some hesitation, and Barbara raised her eyebrows.

“But?”

“But, it’s only – well, if Dick was perfectly well all the time,” said Peggy, “and Sir Percy didn’t need rescuing, and Ludovic Lavenham only got into trouble trying to help Peaceable – then all of it was for nothing, and none of you need ever have gone to France to begin with!”

Barbara smiled, eyes bright with mischief. “Well, I wouldn’t say it was for nothing. It was true what I told Dick – Peaceable had never been interested in working for the government after the war – but we’d been starting to get rather bored before all this happened. And thanks to all this, it was only a month later that Sir Percy and his wife gave us a call …”

She laughed, already starting to fade. “But that must be a tale for another time!”