"Sir, this is madness," Drouet said. "Nobody comes this way!"
"Not usually," Mack said. "But soft! Hear you not hoofbeats coming as from a distance and riding hard?"
Drouet listened, and Mack listened with him. It was odd how the imagination worked. Standing in this quiet place, with no sound but the gentle susurrus of the wind passing overhead through the soft boughs of chestnut and oak, he could swear he was hearing the distant sound of hooves. It was only his imagination, of course.
"Yes, I hear it," Drouet said excitedly.
Prematurely, as it turned out, for now the sound became louder, and it was accompanied by a telltale squeak that could only be the springs on the royal carriage protesting as they jounced along the deeply rutted and high-crowned bypass road.
The little leaves shimmered in indistinct moonlight. Drouet stared, transfixed, as the sounds grew louder.
And then the coach came rolling up, glimmering faintly in the moonlight. It drew up to them, moving slowly now because of the curvy schematics of the road. Glancing inside as it went by, Drouet gave a violent start of amazement at what he saw.
"Your Majesty!" he exclaimed.
"What the hell?" Mack said under his breath.
And then the coach had gone by.
"Did you see him?" Drouet asked. "It was King Louis, plain as day. I remember seeing him at the royal levee held for postmasters from all over France last year. And the queen was there, too!"
"It must have been someone else," Mack said. "There are a lot of people in France today who look like those two."
"This was them, I tell you!" Drouet cried. "Thanks, citizen, for leading me to this seldom-used byway. I must return to the village and give the alarm!"
He turned to go. Mack didn't know what had happened, but he knew that this turn of events needed instant action. He had a sandbag in his pocket, something no experienced mugger is ever without. As Drouet turned to go, Mack pulled out the sandbag and swung it, catching Drouet on the back of the skull. Drouet dropped noiselessly onto the mossy forest floor.
Moments later, a lone horseman came galloping up, his crimson cape billowing behind him. It was Mephistopheles, looking every inch the fiend from Hell on a tall black horse with fiery eyes. "Did you see the royal coach go past?" he cried.
"I did," Mack said. "What were they doing here?"
"I rerouted them," Mephistopheles said proudly. "Got them off the main road entirely so they wouldn't be seen by Drouet. I told you I'd help."
"All you've done is mess everything up," Mack said. "I told you I could handle it myself."
"I was merely trying to help," Mephistopheles said sulkily, and vanished, horse and all.
Mack turned to the unconscious Drouet. He looked as if he'd stay unconscious for quite a while. Mack dragged his body into the shrubbery and covered it with ferns. Then he hurried back to Marguerite and the horses. He still had one chance left to save the royal party. The bridge at Varennes! And with Drouet unconscious here in Saint-Menehould, he should be able to keep the bridge open, letting them escape into Belgium!
CHAPTER 11
The pale light of false dawn revealed the tall stone houses and narrow lanes of Varennes. Here and there, on street corners, drowsy National Guardsmen leaned on their muskets, keeping guard over the sleeping nation. Then the early morning silence was broken by the hoofbeats of Mack's horse ringing out from the cobblestones and reverberating from the stone-fronted houses.
Mack rode through town at a smart trot, and came to the bridge over the Aire. It was not a large bridge.
It had a stone bed and it was buttressed from beneath by timber balks cut in the nearby Ardennes.
Below it, the Aire river flowed placidly by on its journey to the sea.
The bridge was crowded, for even at this hour there were a number of carts upon it, filled with produce and driven by snappy-tempered fellows with sharp whips. It was obvious at once that nothing could get through; certainly nothing as big and cumbersome as the king's yellow coach. Drouet or not, the bridge was blocked. Unless… Mack decided to take a high hand.
"Clear the way!" he cried. "Hot stuff coming through!"
There was a chorus of protesting cries. Mack assumed the role of traffic policeman, waving this one to go forward and that one to back up, all of the time shouting, "In the name of the Committee on Public Safety." Cursing, hooting, drinking, whistling, but also deeply impressed, the cartmen tried to obey his orders. But as fast as Mack got a cart off, more carts piled onto the bridge. They seemed to be coming from all over, carts of all sizes and shapes, carts filled with manure, apples, corn, wheat, and other products of the ingenious French and their Belgian neighbors. Cursing and sweating, Mack stood in the center of them and tried to direct traffic. But where in hell were all these carts coming from? He kicked up his horse and, with Marguerite following, pressed through the cart traffic jam and crossed the river.
On the other side, he went around a little bend and came across a tall white-clad figure with an unearthly light glowing around him even in broad daylight. This figure was directing cart traffic toward the bridge.
"Who are your Mack demanded. "And what do you think you're doing?"
"Oops," the white-clad figure said. "You weren't supposed to see me."
At that moment Mephistopheles materialized, horse and all, beside Mack. He looked at the white-clad figure and exclaimed, "Michael! What are you doing?"
"I was just sending some carts into Varennes," Michael said, his expression somewhat sulky.
"And causing a traffic jam," Mephistopheles said, "and thereby impeding our contestant. You are interfering with the contest, Michael, and this is not permitted even of an archangel."
"Nor is it allowed to a fiend," Michael said. "I'm doing no more than you've done."
Mephistopheles glared at him. "I think we had better discuss this in private."
Michael glanced at Mack and pursed his lips. "Yes. There are matters that no human should hear." The two spirits dematerialized.
CHAPTER 12
Mack rushed back to the bridge. It was jammed, packed, loaded, overburdened, and suffused throughout its length and width with carts and their attendant horses and drivers. There were carts to the right and carts to the left and low, lean carts between. Mack raged among them, trying to get some order. But more and more carts came piling onto the bridge, drawn there by Michael's promise of early morning price reductions at the big market in Varennes.
The pilings groaned ominously. Then one last cart piled high with dried herring from the Baltic shouldered itself onto the bridge. There was a creak of tortured timbers, and then the whole thing gave way.
Mack scrambled off the bridge just in time to save himself a dunking. The bridge collapsed in slow motion, and carts fell dreamily into the limpid waters of the Aire. A many-throated cry of chagrin could be heard, and a great bellowing of oxen. Then there was silence. And then, from the distance, could be heard a jingling sound—the harness of the king's horses as the royal coach came up the road and pulled to a halt before the ruined bridge.
Losing no time, Mack hurried over to the royal coach. "Your Majesty!" he said. There is still time."
"What are you talking about?" Marie Antoinette asked. "The bridge is blocked. We are undone."
"Yet there is still a way," Mack said.
"What is that, pray tell?"
"Get out of the coach at once, Your Majesties. We will purchase horses from the yokels about here and ride, back at first toward Paris, that will throw them off the trail, then we will take another branching and get across the frontier to safety. There is still time to effect your escape."