III
To those who had so eagerly expected him, de Livardot appeared as a short, spare man, prematurely grey, with face drawn, eyes sunk and cheeks wan with obvious fatigue verging on exhaustion. He sank into a chair beside the iron stove and eagerly drank the wine offered him.
"I have been three weeks on the road," he murmured hoarsely; "and haven't tasted food for two days."
He dragged his chair to the table and they allowed him to eat and drink in peace, after which he felt better and answered the inquiring glances of the men with an encouraging nod.
"That cursed police-spy nearly did for me," he said.
"We thought something of the sort had happened," muttered Blue-Heart with a savage oath.
"The Captain of the Foam put me off at the Goat's Creek," continued de Livardot in a steadier voice. "Then he left me there to make my way inland, as I intended to do. I knew my way well enough, and my intention was to walk by night and to lie hidden by day where and how I could. I had no misgivings, but nevertheless my eyes and ears were on the watch for spies. I had climbed to the top of the Dog's Tooth; the coast seemed deserted—not a soul was in sight and the night had set in dark and stormy. I was standing on the edge of the cliff and at my feet the breakers were dashing themselves against the rocks two hundred feet below. All at once something sprang on me from behind a boulder. The attack was so violent and so sudden that, even as I veered round and closed with my assailant, I felt I was doomed. He was small and spare like myself, but he had unusual strength. We fought desperately—both of us—for our lives. Fortunately," continued de Livardot lightly, "I have spent my best years in England, where the art of self-defence is at its best. With a dexterous movement which I had learnt from a champion wrestler, I slipped out of his grip; the next moment he lost his footing. For a second or two his hands clawed the air, and then with a piercing shriek he fell, two hundred feet on to the rocks below.
"Et voilà!" concluded the Chouan leader as he threw a look of triumph on his breathless hearers. "But that accursed spy, whom Satan now hath in his keeping, managed to dislocate my knee ere he went to join his colleagues in hell, with the result that I have been very slow in coming. Oft times in the last three weeks, as I dragged my weary limbs along those interminable roads, I feared I would be just too late to be in at the death of the Corsican."
"Thank God, you are here now!" ejaculated one of the men fervently.
"All our work is ready," added Blue-Heart. "But if you hadn't come we shouldn't have known what to do—afterwards."
De Livardot rose and, holding his mug of wine aloft, said firmly:
"Afterwards we'll proclaim his gracious Majesty Louis XVIII, King of France. We'll assemble here and march in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville at the break of dawn, with banners flying, singing a Te Deum. Then by the time the city is astir the Fleur-de-Lys will be waving above every public building, and the worthy bourgeois of Caen will realise that France has awakened from her nightmare and that her lawful King sits upon his throne again."
He sat down amidst loud applause from the group of ill-kempt, unwashed, surly-looking brigands around him. Mugs were re-filled and deep draughts of wine drunk to do honour to the toast.
"And now to work, my friends!" continued de Livardot briskly.
"To work!" exclaimed White-Beak. "I thought you were dog-tired."
"So I was," he replied gaily, "till we drank that toast."
He took out a bundle of papers from the pocket of his coat and glanced rapidly through them.
"I shan't want all these in future," he said. "And the less of this sort of thing one has about one, the safer for the rest of us."
He turned to the iron stove which was close to his hand and, selecting some of the papers, dropped them into the fire one by one, keeping up a running comment on their contents the while.
"Here goes the list of your names, you fellows," he said. "Blue-Heart, whom I haven't seen since I was five; White-Beak, I knew you at once; Great-Fang, Green-Eye—I recognised you all. The chiefs spoke to me about you. And here goes our pass-phrase. I had such trouble to commit it to memory. But now I feel that I shall never forget it again! Would you fellows have admitted me if I had made a mistake?" he added with a light-hearted laugh.
"No," replied Blue-Heart curtly. Then he said more quietly, as if to atone for the bluntness of his negative: "Think of all that we have at stake——"
"I know, of course," rejoined de Livardot earnestly. "I only wished to test the measure of your caution. And now," he continued, "here is the plan of Les Acacias, just as it was in my father's time."
He drew his chair in closer to the table and spread the map out before him. He bent over it, shielding his face with his hand. The flickering light of the candles threw into bold relief the grim and sinister faces of the Chouans as they pressed eagerly round their new leader.
"Now tell me what you've all done!" said de Livardot.
"We followed closely the instructions you sent us from Jersey," Blue-Heart explained, as his grimy forefinger wandered along the surface of the map. "Great-Fang obtained work in the garden of Les Acacias and soon located the disused shaft you spoke of, quite close to the house. It had, just as you said, been used at one time for lowering wine barrels into the cellar. It was no trouble to Great-Fang, in the course of his work, when no one was about, to loosen the stone which closed the mouth of the shaft, and after that matters were quite easy."
"I used to leave the postern gate on the latch," interpolated Great-Fang; "and the others took it in turns, two by two, to steal into the grounds by night. We very soon found the trap-door at the bottom of the shaft which gave directly on the cellars underneath the house, and when we had removed that our work was practically done."
"Now we've got two kilogrammes of gunpowder stored down there," added the man who as called Green-Eye.
"We carried it over, keg by keg, of nights," interposed Blue-Heart.
"Our time-fuse is set," quoth White-Beak.
"Even if you hadn't come, we should have fired it," concluded another. "We were not going to have our work for nothing."
They all spoke at once, eager to have their say, anxious that the leader lately come from England should know the share everyone had in the dastardly work which was to rid France of her Emperor.
"Thank Heaven I am in time, then," concluded de Livardot fervently. "When does the Corsican arrive?"
"To-morrow afternoon," replied Blue-Heart.
"And he sleeps at Les Acacias?"
"For the one night."
"There is to be a big fête in the evening. Marshal Cormier has issued hundreds of invitations," added White-Beak.
"Nothing could be better!" exclaimed de Livardot. "And of course we wait till the guests have departed, and everyone in Les Acacias, including the Upstart, has gone to bed. Yours, Blue-Heart," he continued, "will be the honour of firing the time-fuse, which will send Napoleon Bonaparte to a tea-party among the stars. In the meanwhile all of you men must spend the best part of to-morrow in seeking out the friends you know of, who are at one with us in this great undertaking, and convene them in my name to a meeting in this house directly after the event. In fact, the explosion itself shall be the signal by which we'll all rally together for that glorious proclamation of our lawful King and our triumphal march to the Hôtel de Ville. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly!" they cried with one accord.
The next half-hour was devoted to the discussion and copying out of the names of various personages, whom the Chouans suggested as having been chiefly concerned in the present affair—men and women in and around the city who were ardent Royalists and would not shrink from a direct attack on the man whom they deemed a usurper; men and women for the most part who had countenanced if not directly participated in many of those hideous crimes which had already sullied the Cause they professed to uphold, and who would see in the base murder of the Emperor whom they hated, nothing but an act of lofty patriotism.
Wary and cunning, they had hitherto escaped apprehension; though many of them were suspected, few had ever been confronted with proofs of actual conspiracy. They were wise enough to employ men like Blue-Heart or White-Beak to do their dirtiest work for them, men who had neither scruples nor conscience, and who hid their deeds of darkness behind weird masks of anonymity.
It was long past midnight ere the party round that table was broken up. De Livardot was the first to go; he had given his orders and he knew he would be obeyed.
"You will see nothing of me all day," he said when he finally took leave of his comrades. "I am too well known in these parts to dare show my face in the open. At dusk we shall meet here for a final word. Until then let our password be as before: 'The fearful wild fowl is abroad,' and the counterpass: 'And the wild duck comes with a feather in her mouth.' I have not forgotten it this time!" he concluded with a hearty laugh, which found its echo in the grim chuckle of his men.