The next day, after a messenger arrived at the base with news of the arrival of their special delivery, Sophie prepared her story for Claude to take – but she couldn’t resist giving the earnest young newspaperman last-minute advice as they accompanied him. He was dressed in his best suit, no doubt hoping to make an impression when he reached Lutetia, but Sophie reassured him that the editors would be more interested in his news than in his fashion sense.
After they donned civilian clothes to minimise attention, and with Claude directing, George drove the wagon he’d bought to the riverfront a hundred yards from the collapsed railway bridge. The busyness on the docks had the vitality of old. The river was jammed with all manner of craft ferrying people and goods from one side to the other, where Aubrey could see the steam and smoke from a train that had just pulled up on the far bank. Claude ignored the touts who were offering to buy and sell anything he had and instead led them a distance upriver to where a barge was being loaded with crates of apples.
‘Henri is my cousin’s best friend,’ Claude said, introducing them to the captain. He was nearly as venerable as the craft he was in charge of, but his back was straight and his eyes were bright. A stubby pipe was jammed in the corner of his mouth. ‘He can be trusted.’
‘Trusted?’ Captain Henri said in heavily accented Albionish, made all the more obscure by his not removing his pipe. ‘Of course I can be trusted. What have you been telling these young people? That I am a pirate?’
‘We have a shipment waiting for us on the other side,’ Aubrey said. ‘A dozen large crates. You’ll be able to manage them?’
Captain Henri took his pipe from his mouth and pointed it at the crate-loading. ‘Lothar and Volker are made of muscle.’
The two deckhands were indeed mountains of men. One, blond haired, had stripped off his shirt in the sun, either because he was hot or because his mother had grown tired of sewing up the seams after he burst them. The other was the more muscular of the two.
‘Lothar?’ Aubrey said. ‘Volker? Aren’t they Holmlandish names?’
Captain Henri laughed. ‘Of course. Holmlandish names for Holmlanders.’
George broke the uncomfortable silence that followed this announcement. ‘Your deckhands are Holmlanders?’
‘They are and have been all their life.’
‘Even though we’re at war with Holmland?’
Captain Henri scowled around his reinserted pipe. ‘These fellows have been with me for years. I vouch for ’em.’
Claude cut in anxiously. ‘We are close to the border here. We have always mixed, Gallians that way, Holmlanders this way. When the war was declared, most went home, but not all.’
‘Those boys don’t care about rich men in Fisherberg playing games with young men’s lives,’ Captain Henri said. ‘Now, you want your shipment or not?’
Claude promised that he’d see the crates safely stowed before he departed on the train. Some last-minute instructions from Sophie and he was off, leaping from the dock to the barge as it pulled away.
While they waited, George and Sophie wandered along the riverbank and bought some very savoury goat’s milk cheese, bread, a basket of pears and two bottles of fresh milk, thus pleasing the deckhands they bought from, who thereby had less to load, the barge captains, who grinned at the cash transaction, not to mention Aubrey and Caroline, who were the beneficiaries of this scavenged but delightful luncheon.
They sat under a pin oak that spread its branches wide, and they watched the commerce of the river and its banks while they passed Aubrey’s penknife and the cheese to each other. Aubrey insisted on cutting Caroline’s bread and cheese for her and remarkably – after a minor show of refusing – she accepted his help.
Aubrey was thinking of a dozen things at once, as was his wont, but he found time to notice how close Sophie and George were sitting to each other. Sophie had her legs folded up, with her striped skirt neatly draped around her. She wore a straw hat bravely perched on her head as she pointed out to George what he was missing in the bustle below.
Then he realised that Caroline and he were sitting just as close. He swallowed nervously and went to apologise but she hushed him with a twitch of one eyebrow.
‘Just sit back,’ she said. ‘Enjoy the moment.’
He did and he wished it would go on forever.