T.F. Banks: The Emperor's assassin

Agust of wind combed up the grassy knoll and fluttered the women's shawls and dresses. A quick hand preserved Arabella's hat, and she stepped behind the small windbreak afforded by Arthur Darley and his friend. She took Lord Arthur's arm as she settled into his lee.

They had not been up on Plymouth Hoe a quarter of an hour before a charter member of Darley's vast acquaintance found them. This gentleman, a captain in His Majesty's navy, bent his head toward her, the wrinkles about his eyes suggesting a smile.

“Permit me to observe, madam, that your dress is luffing. I think you've sailed too close to the wind.”

Arabella smiled in spite of herself. The cheek of the man! Would he have said the same to Arthur's wife? It was a lucky thing the man possessed considerable charm. Arabella had wounded bigger men without need of a pistol or second.

She remembered her rather unfamiliar duties, suddenly, and set her gaze scurrying amongst the crowd. And there she found Lucy, in a lather of unselfconscious delight, chasing an escaped lapdog. Before Arabella could decide if this was an acceptable activity for a young lady (for she knew little of that particular species), a movement and murmur spread down the hoe like the gasp of an audience as, on the stage, a character is murdered.

“Well, there,” said Captain Colgan, lifting a hand to point, as did so many others that afternoon. “Maitland arrives at last.”

“The Billy Ruffian !” called a young man to some of his friends nearby, and Arabella could feel the excitement of the crowd.

Still holding her hat, she ventured out of Arthur's lee and into the full force of the wind. A ship of the line rounded the eastern headland, little ant men aloft taking in sail. It was not an uncommon sight here in Plymouth Sound.

“Well, there is a bit of living history,” Arthur said. “Where is Lucy? She cannot miss this.”

“But what is it, pray?” Arabella asked sweetly.

“H.M.S. Bellerophon ,” Captain Colgan explained.

“And aboard her the deposed Emperor of the French- or as the Admiralty has ordered he be addressed, General Napoleon Bonaparte.”

“But was he not luxuriating happily in Tor Bay?”

“I don't know how happily, but yes.” The captain took off his hat a moment and combed a hand through his thinning hair-an unconscious gesture. The hat returned to its perch. “It is not widely known,” he said quietly, “but they thought he'd slipped off the Bellerophon a few days ago. Did you hear, Darley?”

“Just a rumour. Was he not asleep, after all?”

“Yes. Asleep in his cabin. But Maitland did not quite believe the general's followers, and rather than send someone into the great man's cabin, he had one of the topmen shinny out to the end of the spanker boom to peer in through the stern gallery. Astonishing! It got the Admiralty thinking that Tor Bay was rather an open anchorage and that Bonaparte still had numbers of supporters at large, even in the French navy. They might try to rescue him from seaward.”

Some part of the crowd had begun to make their way hurriedly toward the paths leading down to the quayside.

“Or he might slip ashore,” Darley said, “and avail himself of English law.”

Captain Colgan made a snorting sound-as disgusting as it was disgusted. “What fools we are made of by our own laws! Bonaparte is not an Englishman. He is our enemy, perhaps the greatest enemy we have ever known. Shoot him, say I.” He glanced over at Arabella and smiled sheepishly. “Do excuse-” But he did not finish. The general movement down toward the bay suddenly became a rush, the way orderly retreats turned of an instant into routs.

Arabella was suddenly aware of an absence.

“Lucy!” Arabella called. “Lu-cy!” She was jostled just then and grabbed Arthur's arm to balance. Her hat was torn free of her amber curls and thrown up into the sky, lost in an instant among the wind and clouds and forlornly crying gulls.

The boat reeked of fish. The two men who handled it did not smell much better. Arabella sat on a thwart, holding tightly to Lucy, as though she must keep her safe in case of calamity.

“Can you swim, Mrs. M.?” Lucy asked.

“Not a stroke. And you?”

“Less than that.” Lucy clung a little more tightly to Arabella's hand, all the same.

“You needn't worry yourself, miss,” said the older of the two watermen. “This crabber was built in Sennen Cove by men who knew their business. She'll keep the sea when more tender boats have all run for home. There not be another one like her round these parts, and a great deal of envy she causes as a result.”

Arabella couldn't believe that this battered and stinking little boat caused any envy anywhere-not even in Sennen Cove, wherever that was. She looked about the harbour. Boats of every shape and size were putting out into the sound, all drawn in one direction like leaves on a running river. She shifted on the hard plank that made her seat.

Darley's largesse and Arabella's celebrity had secured them a place in a boat, for the demand to be taken out to see the Bellerophon -or rather the prisoner who waited aboard-was enormous, as were the fares being asked. They were loaded in like the fisherman's greatest catch, leaving just enough room for the two watermen to work the oars.

“There are rather a lot of boats setting out, aren't there?” Arabella said, trying not to sound too apprehensive.

“Oh, aye, ma'am. They've been coming here ever since the rumour spread that Bonaparte would be carried to Plymouth.” He sat up a little and looked about. “Punts and dredgers and gigs. There be draggers and drivers and luggers. You know that the trade is rich when luggers have gone over to it.”

This caught Darley's interest. “And why is that?”

The leather-faced little man looked suddenly down at his hands on the oars. “Well, your grace, their trade is usually found… elsewhere.”

“They're smugglers, he means,” said someone else aboard, and laughed.

“Well, I expect they'll need another trade,” another man said, “now that the French ports have opened again.”