The Pimpernel Plot tw-3 Read online

  Each night, after the gates were closed, Sergeant Bibot would remain to smoke his clay pipe and drink the wine that his admirers brought him as he regaled them with anecdotes concerning his illustrious career. He was particularly fond of telling them the story of the day that Citizen Danton had personally come to watch him discharge his duties. He had unmasked six ci-devant aristocrats that day and the Minister of Justice had personally commended him for the zeal with which he served the people.

  Corderro found himself propelled along by the crowd until he was standing by the West Barricade, where a sizable throng had already gathered to watch Sergeant Bibot put on his show. A large and heavy man with a florid face and bristling moustaches, Bibot was squeezed into his ill-fitting uniform like ten pounds of flour packed into a five-pound sack. A long line of carts and pedestrians was already cued up, held back by Bibot’s men until such time as the audience was built up to a suitable size. There was a great feeling of camaraderie and anticipation in the air as Sergeant Bibot strutted to his post taking time to pause so that he could exchange pleasantries with some of his regular observers, be slapped upon the back and, he hoped, admired by the young women m the crowd, whom he greeted with exaggerated winks and blown kisses. Corderro thought that he was going to be sick. He felt all wound up inside and his skin was clammy. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were shaking.

  Sergeant Bibot began to have the people brought up, one at a time, so that he could examine them and pass them through. The people in the crowd called out encouragement and suggestions.

  “There, that one! That beard looks false! Give it a good, hard yank, Sergeant Bibot!”

  “Why don’t you come here and yank it, you miserable son of a Royalist bootlicker!” shouted the owner of the beard, a burly farmer.

  “I’ll do more than yank your phony beard, you bastard!” yelled the first man as he ran forward and tried to climb up on the cart, only to be pulled away at the last minute by Bibot’s soldiers.

  “Peace, Citizen!” cried Sergeant Bibot, melodramatically holding up his hand. “All will be settled momentarily!” Turning to the farmer, Sergeant Bibot smiled pleasantly, wished him a good day and asked him to excuse the zeal of the good citizen who was only anxious that ci-devant aristocrats be brought to justice. “Purely as a matter of form,” said Sergeant Bibot, “would you consent to showing me your hands?”

  The farmer grunted and held out his hands, turning them from palms down to palms up.

  “ Merci,” said Sergeant Bibot. “These are the roughened, calloused hands of a working man,” he said to the crowd. “No aristo would have hands such as these. And the beard appears to be quite genuine,” he added for good measure. “A fine, luxuriant growth it is, to boot!”

  He clapped the grinning farmer on the back and passed him through as the crowd applauded. The process continued as Bibot intently examined everyone who sought egress through the gate, making a show of it and striving to entertain those he examined as well as the people in the crowd.

  A large and heavy wagon filled with wine casks came up next and Bibot made a great show of opening each cask and checking to see if anyone was concealed inside. His examination revealed no concealed aristocrats and Bibot passed the wagon through. Several others he allowed to pass with only the most cursory inspection, as the drivers were known to him having regularly passed through his gate twice a day on their way to and from the city. An undercurrent of hostility swept through the crowd as an elegant coach drew up and stopped at Sergeant Bibot’s post.

  Surely, no aristocrat would be so great a fool as to attempt leaving Paris so conspicuously. Several of the people in the crowd, close enough to see inside the coach, recognized one of its occupants and word soon spread throughout the mob that this was no person worthy of derision, but the very beautiful and famous Marguerite St. Just, that celebrated actress of the Comedie Francaise, whose brother, Armand St. Just, was a leading figure of the Revolution and a member of the Committee of Public Safety.

  Citoyenne St. Just had recently caused a bit of a scandal when she married that wealthy English baronet, Sir Percy Blakeney, thus becoming Lady Blakeney, but no one could accuse her of being an aristocrat, much less a Royalist. The popular actress was well known as an ardent Republican and a believer in equality of birth. “Inequality of fortune,” she was fond of saying, “is merely an untoward accident. The only inequality I recognize and will admit to is inequality of talent.” As a result of this belief, her charming salon in the Rue Richelieu had been reserved for originality and intellect, for wit and brilliance. She had entertained members of the theatrical profession, well-known writers and famous philosophes, and the occasional foreign dignitary, which was how she had met Sir Percy Blakeney.

  It came as quite a shock to those within her circle when she married Blakeney. They all thought that he was quite beneath her, intellectually speaking. A prominent figure in fashionable European society, he was the son of the late Sir Algernon Blakeney, whose wife had succumbed to imbecility. The elder Blakeney took his stricken wife abroad and there his son was raised and educated. When Algernon Blakeney died, shortly following the death of his wife, Percy inherited a considerable fortune, which allowed him to travel abroad extensively before returning to his native England. He had cultivated his tastes for fashion and the finer, more expensive things in life. A pleasant fellow with a sophomoric sense of humor, Blakeney was a fashion plate and a bon vivant, but he made no pretense to being an intellectual. It would have been ludicrous, since he was hopelessly dull and generally thought to be a fool. He was totally enraptured with his wife and seemed perfectly content with remaining in the background and basking in her glow. Marguerite’s friends were all at a loss to understand why she had married him, unless his slavish devotion pleased her. However, though Marguerite St. Just might have been found wanting in her abilities to select a fitting husband, she could not be faulted for her politics. While the sight of Blakeney at the window of the coach provoked some unfavorable comments and some jeers, the appearance of his wife beside him was greeted with a scattering of applause.

  “I say there,” Blakeney said in perfect, if accented, French, “what seems to be the difficulty, Sergeant? Why this tedious delay?”

  Bibot appraised him with obvious distaste. The man was both rich and English, which were two counts against him from the start, but when he saw the well-known actress, his manner changed and he removed his hat and gave a little bow.

  “Your pardon, Citoyenne,” said Bibot, totally ignoring Blakeney, “but everyone must be passed through one at a time, so that I may prevent the escape of any aristocratic enemies of the Republic.”

  “Aristocratic enemies?” said Blakeney. “Good Lord! Does this mean that we are to be detained?”

  Bibot glanced at Blakeney the way a fastidious cook might look upon a cockroach discovered in her kitchen. “Your wife, monsieur, is a well-known friend of the Republic and you, though an aristocrat, are obviously English, which assures your safety, at least for the time being.”

  “Oh, well, thank the Lord for that,” said Blakeney, fluttering a lace handkerchief before his nose. “Then we shall be allowed to pass?”

  “ I see no reason why you should not be-”

  At that moment, a captain came galloping up to Sergeant Bibot, scattering all those in his way. His slightly skittish horse caused Bibot to back off some steps to stand before the Blakeneys’ coach.

  “Has a cart gone through?” the captain demanded.

  “I have passed through several carts,” Bibot began.

  “A cart… a wagon… Loaded with wine casks…”

  Bibot frowned. “Yes, there was one, driven by an old wine merchant and his son. But I examined each and every cask and-”

  “You fool!” cried the captain. “You checked the empty wine casks, but did you examine the wagon itself?”

  “Why, no…” said Bibot, nervously.

  “Idiot! That wagon concealed the Duc de Chalis and his child
ren! They’ve managed to escape, thanks to you!”

  I say there, Sergeant,” Sir Percy said, stepping down from the coach, “are we to be allowed to pass or-”

  “How long ago did they go through?” the captain said

  “Why, only a short while-” said Bibot.

  “Then there may yet be time to stop them! If they escape, Sergeant, you shall pay for this with your head! You had best pray that I can catch them!”

  No, thought Corderro, not children! They can’t guillotine innocent children! Forgetting his strict orders not to interfere, Corderro leaped out in front of the horse just as the captain set spurs to the animal’s flanks. Eyes rolling, the horse reared and threw the captain, who knocked Blakeney to the ground as he fell. Corderro smashed a hard right into Sergeant Bibot’s face and at the same time wrenched the sergeant’s pistol from his waistband. He spun around, but the fallen captain had managed to get his own pistol out. Still, Corderro was quicker and he fired first, sending a ball into the captain’s chest. The captain fired as well, but instead of shooting Corderro, the ball went through the coach and struck Lady Blakeney.

  The shots frightened the horses and they bolted. Corderro leaped up on the sideboard of the coach and the runaway horses hurtled through the city gate. Bibot’s men raised their muskets and fired at the coach, hitting Corderro several times. He managed to get the door of the coach open and threw himself inside, where he collapsed onto the floor of the coach and lost consciousness.

  The crowd at the gate had panicked at the shots and they scattered, fleeing in all directions. The army captain lay dead in the middle of the street with a bullet through his heart. Clutching at his chest and coughing, Blakeney stumbled weakly through the gate in a vain attempt to follow his coach. He managed about one hundred yards before he sank down to his knees at the side of the road, retching blood. The hooves of the captain’s rearing horse had crushed his chest and with every step, his splintered ribs hastened the inevitable. Blakeney spoke his wife’s name and collapsed into a ditch. His eyes glazed over. The Scarlet Pimpernel was dead.

  1

  Biologically, Andre Cross was in her mid-twenties. If her age were to be reckoned chronologically, however, she would be well over fourteen hundred years old. She would grow older still, now that she had been given antiagathic drug treatments. Given all of this, it was difficult for her to accept the fact that by the standards of the 27th century, she was still little more than an adolescent.

  If asked, she gave her biological age, which was twenty-six. To do otherwise meant getting into complicated explanations. It would mean revealing that she had been born in the 12th century to a couple of Basque farmers who had died when she was still a child. It would have meant explaining that she and her little brother, Marcel, had gone out alone into the world to become itinerant thieves, surviving as best they could, which meant that they were almost always starving. She would have had to explain that she had learned to pass as a young boy because, as vulnerable as young boys on their own could be young girls were even more so. If all that did not already strain credulity, there was the matter of their having been befriended by an aging, addle-brained knight errant who had taken them both on as squires so that he would not be alone and so that they could care for him. In return, he had trained them in the arts of knighthood (for he had never suspected that Andre was a female). While Marcel was a bit too delicate of frame and disposition to be very good in the skills of chivalry, Andre had excelled at them. She was possessed of an indefatigable drive and under the doting guidance of the senile knight, she had transformed her young and coltish body into a well-coordinated, broad-shouldered, muscular physique. Nature had not endowed her with a voluptuous figure. She was slim-hipped and small-breasted. A life of hardship and physical toil had given her the sort of shape that was not traditionally associated with feminine beauty. She was wiry and unnaturally strong, which had made it easier for her to carry on her male masquerade into an age when most awkward girls began to develop into graceful women. When the old knight died, she took his armor and, swathing her small breasts in cloth, she assumed the role of a young “free companion,” a mercenary knight. She took the invented name of Andre de la Croix and eventually found service with Prince John of Anjou at a time when he plotted to seize his brother Richard’s throne.

  She found herself involved with time travelers from the far future, although she had not known it then, nor would she have understood it if she had. She knew nothing of time travel and she was ignorant of the Time Wars, a highly dangerous method of settling conflicts in the future by sending soldiers back through time to do battle within the confines of armed struggles of the past. Her first knowledge of such things came from a deserter from the Temporal Corps named Hunter, a man with a stolen chronoplate who helped her to avenge her brother’s murder and then took her ahead through time to the Paris of the 17th century. There, ironically, she once again became involved with the machinations of people from the 27th century, this time taking a more active part in their activities on what they called “the Minus Side.” If not for her, two soldiers named Lucas Priest and Finn Delaney might have died. They repaid her by granting her request and taking her with them to the time from which they came.

  Even explaining that much to people would have meant omitting many details and inviting further questions, so Andre Cross (for that was her name now and, indeed, she could no longer recall the name she had been born with) did not bother with any explanations. A small handful of people knew her true history. As far as everyone else was concerned, she was just an ordinary young woman of the 27th century who had enlisted in the Temporal Corps and been assigned to Lt. Col. Forrester’s elite First Division, better known as the Time Commandos.

  When she had first arrived at Pendleton Base, at the Temporal Departure Station, she had been completely overwhelmed with future shock. She had understood literally nothing of what she had seen and had been badly frightened, in spite of warnings from Priest and Delaney to expect a world of seemingly inexplicable miracles. Now that she was returning to Temporal Army Command Headquarters, she still possessed an unbridled fascination with the new world in which she found herself, but it was no longer an awesome mystery to her.

  Since her arrival in the 27th century, she had been in the hands of specialists, being prepared for her new life at the Temporal Army Medical Complex in Colorado Springs. Firstly, and most importantly, it had been necessary to determine whether or not her temporal transplantation would have an adverse effect upon the course of history. The first part of this question had been settled when it was discovered that, due to an injury sustained in combat at some time in her past, she would be unable to bear children. The second part took a little longer, but exhaustive research and the correlation of findings made by members of the Observer Corps on the Minus Side satisfied the investigators that Andre’s removal from her natural time would not constitute a threat to temporal continuity. That opened her way to a new life as a soldier in the Temporal Corps. However, it had been only the first step.

  It had been necessary for her to receive immunization treatments, followed by the carefully administered program of antiagathic drug therapy that would extend her lifespan far beyond what she had believed to be possible. That was followed by a long series of tests designed to establish a psychological profile for her, after which she underwent surgery to receive the cybernetic implants that would enable her to function as a temporal soldier and allow her to be implant-educated to compensate for the knowledge she lacked as a result of her primitive origins. They had viewed her as a blank slate and the programming had progressed in slow and carefully controlled stages, during which she was assiduously monitored to make certain that at no point was there any danger of sensory or cerebral overload.

  After the long process had been completed, she had emerged as a full-fledged citizen of the 27th century, computer-programmed to take her place in the modern world and trained to assume her new role as a private in the First Divisi
on. She had the lowest rank of any soldier in that vaunted cadre, but she had already participated in one of the most important missions in the history of the unit. While she had still been back in 17th-century Paris, she had worked with Finn Delaney and Lucas Priest, as well as agents of the TIA, to help foil a terrorist plot against the Referee Corps. As a result of her performance, Forrester had personally invited her to join his unit and to be trained to work alongside Priest and Delaney.

  As she rode the lift tube up to First Division Headquarters in the Temporal Army Corps HQ building at Pendleton Base, she was looking forward to seeing Priest and Delaney once again. When she had completed her training and preparations at the Colorado Springs facility, she had contacted the First Division administrative offices, requesting that Priest and Delaney get in touch with her as soon as they were able. Shortly thereafter, as soon as they had clocked in from an assignment, she received a message from them.

  “Private Cross is herewith ordered to report to the First Division lounge, TAC-HQ building, on 1 January 2614 at 2100 hours. Congratulations are in order. Major Lucas Priest and Staff Sergeant Finn Delaney, First Division, TAC.”

  She smiled when she saw them waiting for her at a table by the huge window that comprised the outer wall of the First Division lounge. It was at the very same table that she sat with them when she first met Colonel Forrester and had her first taste of a drink called Scotch. It had helped to numb her senses somewhat as she gazed out that window and saw the shuttles floating by like great steel birds while, far below, soldiers massed down in the atrium, looking like insects from the great height at which she gazed at them.

  Priest and Delaney saw her coming and they rose to their feet to greet her. Andre saw that there was a sort of center-piece upon the table consisting of a medieval broadsword crossed with a 17th-century rapier. Above the juncture of the two swords, in a little velvet-lined box, was a golden division insignia, a stylized number one bisecting a horizontal figure eight, the symbol of infinity.