'The barrières,' Ramage reminded him.
'Ah yes, sir. Well, first there is the curfew from sunset to sunrise: everyone must be in his own home during the hours of darkness. To travel - well, one has the documents you have seen. You need plenty of change - at every barrière there's a toll. The amount varies, depending on the distance from the last barrière, because they are not at regular intervals.'
'A large toll?' Ramage asked.
'No, usually between two and twenty sous. It wouldn't matter if the money was spent on the repair of the roads - which is what it is supposed to be for - but no one empties even a bucket of earth into a pothole. But luckily we have our own gig because travelling by postchaise is very expensive. Before the Revolution a postchaise from here to Paris was about 250 livres; now it is 500. No highwaymen, though; that's one triumph of the Revolution!'
'Highwaymen!' Sarah exclaimed. 'You mean that France now has none?'
'Very few, ma'am, and the reason is not particularly to our advantage. We now have many more mounted gendarmes stopping honest travellers, and instead of money and jewellery they demand documents. Truly "money or your life" has now become "documents or your life". So as well as the gendarmes at the regular barrières, there are ones who appear unexpectedly on horseback, so no one dares move without papers. But,' he added, tapping the side of his nose, 'there are so many different documents and so many signatures that forgery is not difficult and false papers unlikely to be discovered.'
'How many barrières are there between here and Brest?' Ramage asked.
'Three on the road, and then one at the Porte de Landerneau, the city gate on the Paris road. We could avoid it by going in along the side roads, but it is risky: if we were caught we would be arrested at once.'
'Whereas our documents are good enough to pass the Porte without trouble?'
'Exactly, sir. Now, if I may be allowed to remind you of a few things. As you know, the common form of address is "Citizen", or "Citizeness". Everyone is equal - at least in their lack of manners. "Please" and "thank you" are now relics of the ancien régime. Rudeness is usually a man's (or woman's) way of showing he or she is your equal - although they really mean your superior. Many gendarmes cannot read - they know certain signatures and have them written on pieces of paper for comparison. But don't be impatient if a gendarme holds a paper upside-down and "reads" it for five minutes - as if it has enormous importance. They are gendarmes because they have influence with someone in authority. Neither the Committees of Public Safety nor the préfets want illiterates, but often giving a job to such a man is repaying a political debt from the time of the Revolution.'
Gilbert paused and then apologized. 'I am afraid I am talking too much...'
'No, no,' Ramage said quickly. 'And you must get into the habit of giving orders to "Charles" and "Janine". Lose your temper with me occasionally - I am a slow-thinking fellow. Poor Charles Ribère, he can read slowly and write after a fashion, but ... even his wife loses her patience with him!'
A smiling Gilbert nodded. He found it impossible to toss aside the natural politeness by which he had led his life. Since he had been back in France, some Frenchmen had called it servility: why are you so servile, they had sneered: man is born free and equal. Yes, all that was true, but man also had to eat, which meant he had to work (or be a thief, or go into politics). Working for the Count was very equable: he lived in comfortable quarters, ate the same food as the Count and his guests, but in his own quarters without the need (as the Count often had) to let the food get cold as he listened to vapid gossip. But for these revolutionary fools he could have expected a comfortable old age with a good pension from the Count, and probably a cottage on the estate, here or in England.
'Servility' - yes, that was what these Republican fools called it. Elsewhere, particularly in England, it was called good manners. Please, thank you, good morning, good evening - according to the Republicans these were 'servile phrases'. A true Republican never said please or thank you. But he had never listened to the Count, either: the Count always said please and thank you and the suitable greeting every time he spoke to one of his staff. In fact, a blind man would only know who was servant and who was master because the Count had an educated voice: his grammar, too, betrayed his background of Latin and Greek, and English and Italian. Gilbert had once heard him joking in Latin with a bishop who laughed so much he became nearly hysterical. No Committee of Public Safety would ever understand that normal good manners were like grease on axles - they helped things move more smoothly.
'I think Edouard will have the gig ready for us by now,' Gilbert said, making a conscious effort to avoid any 'sir' or 'milord'. 'We are going to buy fruit - our apples have been stolen - and vegetables: the potatoes have rotted in the barn. And indeed they have. We need a bag of flour, a bag of rice if we can buy some, and any vegetables that catch your fancy. I am tired of cabbage and parsnip, which is all we seem to grow here. A lot of salt in the air from the sea makes the land barren, so Louis says, but I think it is laziness in the air from the Count's good nature.'
Gilbert gestured towards two wicker baskets as they reached the back door. 'We take these to carry our purchases - you put them on your laps. I have all the documents here and will drive the gig, because your hands are occupied.' He winked and then looked startled at his temerity in winking at a milord and a milady. Ramage winked back and Sarah grinned: the grin, Ramage thought in a sudden surge of affection, of a lively and flirtatious serving wench being impertinent. Impudent. Adorable. And what a honeymoon - here they were setting off (in a gig!) at the beginning of an adventure which could end up with them all being strapped down on the guillotine. So far, the Committee of Public Safety (though perhaps the Ministry of Marine would step in, but more likely Bonaparte's secret police under that man Fouché would take over) could accuse Captain Ramage of disobeying the order to report to the local préfet as an otage, because to call them detainees and not hostages was polite nonsense. Then of course he was carrying false papers and dressed as a gardener - proof that he was a spy. And he was lurking around France's greatest naval base on the Atlantic coast ... Yes, a tribunal would have only to hear the charges to return a verdict. And Sarah? A spy too - did she not carry false papers? Was she not assisting her husband? Was she not also an aristo by birth, as well as marriage? Alors, she can travel in the same tumbril, and that valet, too, who was a traitor as well as a spy.
As he helped Sarah up into the gig and heard a disapproving grunt from Gilbert (husbands might give wives a perfunctory push up, but they did not help them), he thought bitterly that their luck had been unbelievably bad. First, that the war had begun again while they were on their honeymoon - after all, the peace had held for a year and a half. Then that they should be staying with Jean-Jacques. Admittedly they would have been arrested if they had been staying at an inn, but the point was that they were now involved with L'Espoir and trying to think of a way of rescuing the Count of Rennes. Noblesse oblige. He was becoming tired of that phrase - his first love, the Marchesa di Volterra, was back in Italy because of it, and possibly already one of Bonaparte's otages, too. An otage if she had not yet been assassinated.
So, heavily involved with keeping himself and Sarah out of the hands of the local Committee of Public Safety, trying to rescue Jean-Jacques, and getting all of them (including the faithful and enterprising Gilbert) back to England, it was not just bad luck, it was damnable luck which brought the Murex through the Chenal du Four and into Brest with a mutinous crew on board.