Cut From the Herd (Hunters & Heartbreakers II)

A Traveller’s Guide to France:

The Essentials.

2 June.

So there we were. Five hunters, chased out of our homeland, hiding like fugitives in an off-the-beaten-path bed-and-breakfast called La Grenouille. Two of us—me and my sister Naomi—had been able to get by on our wits thus far. There was another sibling pair with us—Cornelius and Marjorie Selling—who had hatched the plan for us to flee London in the first place. And then there was Langdon Wilkes—the boy I loved and who most definitely held us together as a group at all. More likely than not we’d be at each other’s throats if he hadn’t been here.

The owner and proprietor of La Grenouille, a quintessentially French woman with a penchant for long brown cigarettes and brightly-coloured bohemian dresses called Angelique, didn’t look like a hunter. Except she was—she was best known for taming a creature called La Bête, or The Beast. To this day, she was the only one he would obey.

“La Bête?” Naomi had said when Angelique had recounted the tale at supper last night. “Like the fairy tale? La Belle et la Bête?”

“He is no fairy tale, girl,” Angelique had said, pointing at her with a half-smoked cigarette. “He was a fierce creature…terrorising every village from here to Paris.”

I’d noticed she’d said it Pa-ree, the French way. Which, I suppose, was not unreasonable, considering we were in France.

“So he was like Beowulf,” Marjorie had said. “Leaving destruction in his wake.”

“Yes.” Angelique had nodded at her, then turned back to Naomi. “You see? Mademoiselle Selling understands.”

Naomi had grumbled and rolled her eyes, but she hadn’t protested any more. Besides, this wasn’t our homeland. We didn’t know the first thing about it.

“Wells?”

I looked up from the map spread on the table in the common dining room, covered with coloured circles and symbols I’d never seen before. I’d seen Angelique studying it a moment ago, but she’d gotten distracted by something Cornelius had asked her and breezed off to look into it. Now Wilkes was looking in, bright brown eyes curious. The forelock of hair that never seemed to stay in place was falling across his forehead, and as he joined me I brushed it away.

“Angelique says we can go to the market, on the Rue Sebastopol,” he said, and I saw his throat work as my hand grazed his cheek. “She needs something from there for supper.”

“Romantic,” I said.

Wilkes gave my arm a punch. “Must it always be about you stealing a moment?”

“I mean…” I shrugged.

“Besides, we can’t. The girls want to come.” Wilkes jerked his chin in a vague direction over his shoulder. “It’s better if we stay together as much as possible.”

“Cornelius trusts us?” I raised an eyebrow.

“He’s busy flirting with Angelique,” said a female voice from the doorway, and soon enough, my sister’s arms were wrapping around me from behind. “A bit gauche for my taste, but…there is no accounting for his."

“She started it.” Marjorie was joining us too, coming up next to Wilkes and slipping her hand into his as if they’d been a couple for years. “Neely likes any female attention. He’ll be fine.”

I glanced between the girls. Marjorie and Naomi had grown closer than I’d ever thought they could, different as their stations in society and their upbringings had been. Then again, there were bonds between girls that I'd never understood. And when Naomi had said she needed a female friend, she’d meant it. I hadn’t been great company lately.

“We ought to go while they’re busy,” said Naomi. She gave me a wink, finally looking and sounding her age—a year younger than me at seventeen, the same age as Wilkes and Marjorie. Once again, a commonality I didn’t share.

We straggled to the front door in a loose group, Naomi hooking the shopping basket set there through her good elbow on the way out. My eye caught the sign outside the bed-and-breakfast when we stepped outside, and it had changed overnight to Le Chat Blanc. The white cat. I made a mental note to ask Angelique what that meant when we returned.

“It’s so much different than London here,” said Naomi, her voice low and awed. She seemed truly fascinated, casting her eyes at everything. It was so white here, where London had been grey and brown and black. The buildings we passed were whitewashed stucco, and the signs stuck into them were covered with colour and French names, some Marjorie knew—but most she didn’t. Over there was Le Cheval Noir, The Black Horse, and next to us was a bakery called Le Citron—The Lemon.

“More colourful, if that’s what you mean,” I said. I was taking in the clothing—a few browns and almost no black. Instead there were patterns, like stripes and paisley, and colours I’d never seen: light pinks, dark greens, bright purples, pale blues and oranges.

“There’s the market,” Marjorie said, nodding down the street as we came to the next corner. “What did Angelique need again?”

Once inside the market, it was even more overwhelming: colours, smells, and sounds came from every direction, and the crush of people was so tight we had to link arms to keep from being pulled apart. Marjorie led the way, with Wilkes right behind her and the two of us after him. She was saying something about bread and a woman named Mathilde, but between everything else I couldn’t catch much more.

She pulled our human chain to the right when we reached a less-congested intersection, towards an old woman wearing a scarf over her head and a shawl across her shoulders, sitting next to a cart piled high with bread of all shapes and sizes. The woman watched us come, and when we were close, she wobbled to her feet.

“Allo?” she said, blinking at us with small, squinting eyes.

Marjorie let go first, approaching the woman cautiously. “Mathilde?”

The woman squinted suspiciously at her, but didn’t say anything.

“We came from…er…La Grenouille?” Wilkes said, mispronouncing it. “Angelique knows we’re here.”

“Angelique?” the woman croaked. “Send you here?”

“Well, we…” Marjorie looked back at us, then to the bread woman again. “We’re running an errand for her. She mentioned you and your bread-cart.”

“You hunting?” She squinted again, this time at me. “He mission leader?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “We’re not. We're here to buy some bread, honest.”

She gave us one more suspicious once-over. We didn’t look too threatening—Wilkes and I had both dressed in normal clothing, and the girls had done the same. Naomi even wore a makeshift sling for the wound in her shoulder, which I thought the biggest non-threat of all. Injuries meant we couldn’t fight even if we wanted to.

“One franc for one loaf,” she said then, deciding we weren’t a threat. “Two for boule.”

Marjorie dug into the coin purse looped around her wrist and came out with four coins. “One boule, two loaves, please.”

We traded, Majorie pouring the coins into the woman’s hand and she motioned to us and then the cart.

“You take which you want,” she said.

We did, and I felt her watching us the whole time. Briefly I wondered if she was doing this just to get us to go away, or if she actually believed Angelique had sent us. Then we wandered away, arms full of bread, and back into the crowd. Naomi clung to me on one side, and I kept my eye on Wilkes and Marjorie in front of us.

At least, I thought I was. After a few minutes I realised I couldn’t see them anywhere, and even with my height, I couldn’t tell which way they’d gone.

“Hang on, I can’t see them,” I said, stopping in my tracks.

“What?” Naomi pressed into my side as a man pushing a cart stacked high with eggs passed by us.

“I lost them.” I stood on tiptoe and turned my head both ways as far as it would go, but I couldn’t pick them out.

“Wells, I’m sure when they notice…”

“Have you seen them, Naomi? They’re wide-eyed as toddlers. And about as inexperienced.”

“Oh, give them some credit…”

That was when I saw the man standing behind a vendor selling fish. He was dressed like most of the men here, in a waistcoat, morning-coat, and a grey top hat with a white band. But it was the glint of gold against his cravat that caught my eye.

“There,” I said. I couldn’t point, because I carried two loaves we’d picked out in one arm and supported Naomi with the other. I jerked my chin in his direction. “Behind the fishmonger.”

Naomi stood on tiptoe like I had, and momentarily the crowd cleared. I felt her hand tighten in my elbow, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

“Is it…a Shikari medallion?” She lowered her voice and leaned over to speak in my ear. “Can you tell?”

“Not unless we get closer,” I said. “I don’t think we should.”

“Do you suppose they’ve caught up to us that quickly?” Naomi sounded worried. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours.”

“It took them less time than that to find us in the Channel,” I pointed out.

“What do we do?” I heard the rasp of fear in her voice. “How do we throw him off?”

“We’ll have to leave,” I said. None of us were ready to. It'd been a tense forty-eight hours during our flight from London, and we were all grateful for a little rest. Now it seemed that was about to be scuppered. “Preferably at night like before.”

Naomi seemed about to reply when a hand clapped down on each of our shoulders and made us whirl in surprise. There stood Wilkes, glancing between us.

“There you two are,” he said, a furrow in his brow. “I left Marjorie with an overly-talkative fruit seller for this.”

“We were following you two—” I shot back, but Naomi squeezed my arm again, this time in warning.

“Sorry, Langdon,” she said. “It’s crowded. We thought we had eyes on you and assumed that was enough.”

“Come on,” he said, nodding back the way he’d come. “Marjorie says she only knows enough French to fill up a few minutes.”

I almost mentioned the man I’d seen. When I glanced over my shoulder, he was gone. Melted into the crowd, like he’d never been there at all.

---

4 June.

I didn’t see the man for two days after that. I wondered if I’d been seeing things, or if I was paranoid. After all, plenty of the men that weren’t fishermen or farmers were dressed in top fashion with brass and gold tie pins that gleamed in the sun. If it weren’t for the obvious fact that Wilkes wasn’t an adult, he could've fit right in. Even this far from home he still dressed in a fresh suit of clothes every morning, with a tie pin winking from his cravat.

“You seem disturbed, Monsieur Hudson,” said Angelique that morning, coming in after everyone else had finished breakfast and finding me still there. “What is the matter?”

“I saw a man the other day at the market,” I said. “He looked like he might've been from our Guild. One of their elite hunters.”

“Ah, oui, the Selling boy was telling me about them,” she said, waving a hand and trailing curls of smoke from her cigarette. “Shikari, he called them.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m worried they might've followed us.”

She nodded, then motioned to the sign visible from the dining room window. “You saw the change outside?”

“To the white cat? The other hunters said that means it’s not safe.”

“It does,” she said, beginning to gather plates with an efficiency that rivalled Naomi’s. “A white cat, un chat blanc, was an old saying in hunters’ circles that dates back to the days of the kings. Roughly translated, it says ‘A white cat is as bad as defeat.’ A defeated hunter is a disgraced hunter.”

“How did it come to mean a place was unsafe?” I got up to help, but by then there wasn’t much left to do.

“The king’s guard used to be called Gardes de la Manche. Guards of the Sleeve—that is, the guards stayed so close to him they had to brush his sleeves. The elite hunters of our Guilds have adopted that name for themselves, and they have also adopted the sign of the white cat as part of their crest. Catching a mouse.” Angelique shuddered. “You do not want to meet a member of the Manche, Monsieur. They will sense fugitive on you from a distance.”

Much like the Shikari. It made sense. “Do they ever…come here? Look around?”

“I have had a few stay, yes,” she said. “That sign, of the white cat, does not hold them off for long. If you want to prevent them finding you, I suggest you make arrangements to get to the next safe-house as soon as you are able.”

“How soon?” I asked. “We aren’t in any condition to fight them off.”

She nodded. “I can see that. Which means, when you go, I will have La Bête and Antoine escort you.”

“Antoine?” I said, surprised. I’d never heard of an Antoine before now. “Who’s that?”

She waved me off. “You will meet him in due time. For now, you must tell the others what we have discussed. I am sure they would like to know.”

“Right.” I nodded. “I’ll go now.”

I found them out in the garden, Naomi drawing with a piece of graphite on a sheet of paper, Wilkes and Marjorie struggling over French phrases from an old guidebook I’d seen in Angelique’s small library, and Cornelius kicking at weeds in the path.

Naomi saw me first, looking up with a surprised expression. “Wells! There you are!”

That made the others look up too, with similar reactions.

“Wondering where you’d gotten off to, mate,” said Cornelius.

“He likes to brood,” said Naomi.

“I was actually having a serious conversation with Angelique,” I said, getting a glare from Cornelius that I ignored. “You’ll all want to hear what we discussed.”

Then, without letting another word in edgewise, I told them everything. I didn’t think I’d get any response until Marjorie stood, passing the guidebook to Wilkes as she did. I saw the worry in her eyes, one mirrored in Naomi’s when I glanced at her.

“You know this means they’ll follow us no matter where we go?” she said, addressing all of us but shooting pointed glares at her brother and Wilkes. “We’ll have to throw them off before we can go on with our plan.”

“Where do you suggest?” Cornelius crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.

“I don’t know, because I didn’t realise it was up to me—”

“It was your idea we leave in the first place—”

“You went along with it—”

“Enough, you two!” Naomi shot to her feet, throwing down her pencil and paper. “We won’t get a thing done if we’re fighting amongst ourselves! That’s one thing I know, after all of this! So if you can’t get along, then maybe you two aren’t meant to make any more decisions!”

Marjorie and Cornelius looked stunned, glancing between her and me. Then at each other. Marjorie broke first, sighing and slumping down on the edge of the nearest raised garden bed.

“You’re right,” she said. “She’s right, Neely. Maybe we ought to let them do this.”

Cornelius nodded reluctantly. “Much as I want to say you’re wrong, I agree.”

The only one who’d said nothing this whole time was Wilkes, and now he was getting to his feet too, throat working as he swallowed hard.

“Look, I…” He cleared his throat, then started again. “The only way we’re going to keep doing this is if we work together. We’re in the same situation. We got ourselves into it, so we should put our heads together to get ourselves out. Besides…we’re here for Giff, until we get to Geneva. We should try to get along until then.”

Naomi nodded. “Langdon’s right. The only way we’ll find a solution for Gifford’s predicament and ours is if we work with each other, not against. We all have something to contribute.”

Both Sellings looked at us, then at Wilkes. Without another word, of protest or otherwise, they both nodded.

“So what’s this new plan?” Cornelius asked after a moment. “You have one, Hudson?”

I nodded. “I might, yes.”

---

It was all about diversion. I’d thought of a similar thing we’d done when we’d dispatched three werewolves stricken with rabies, and a bite from one of them could've passed both diseases to us. I’d been the bait, running up three flights of stairs in an abandoned tenement with them close behind, snapping at my heels. Naomi had waited on the roof. As soon as I’d burst out of the roof hatch, she’d fired three silver-tipped arrows, one by one, as they’d followed me.

We’d have to do something like it to get to Rennes and throw off our Shikari tail. Make them chase a false lead while we fled to the next safe-house.

“How do you suggest we do that?” Cornelius asked, folding his arms and scowling at me.

“We’ll have to separate,” Naomi said. “This once. We can’t have all our assets in one basket.”

“Meaning what?” Marjorie raised an eyebrow.

“Two of us go with Antoine and The Beast,” I said. “Take a direct route to Rennes. The others will go the long way.”

“We only have one French speaker among us,” Wilkes pointed out. “How will we get around?”

“We’ll use the trains,” said Naomi. “I’m sure Angelique knows the routes.”

“What do I know?” Angelique, entering the dining room where we’d hunched over the map of mainland Europe, interrupted us.

I told her what we’d been discussing. She was nodding, which was good. Once I finished, she inserted herself into our circle and plucked up a red pencil from a cup in the middle of the map. She drew two red lines, meandering in opposite directions from Brest but eventually intersecting right at Rennes.

“This way,” she said, rapping the northernmost line with the end of the pencil like a schoolmarm giving a lesson, “is the most direct. It makes two stops, Morlaix and Saint-Brieuc. They will expect you to be on this route. If you are separating, I suggest you talk amongst yourselves to figure out who is more equipped to handle the threat. This”—she tapped the second line, the longer and more winding of the two, farther south—“is the back way, so to speak. It makes more stops, but is less crowded and will arouse less suspicion. Those of you who go this way, you will not have to worry as much about capture.”

“Capture?” Marjorie echoed, and I heard worry in her voice. “You aren’t saying they’ll try it, are you?”

“No. What I am saying is that they might ambush you once you get there. Which means your diversion tactic may yet work in your favour—if you play it correctly. Divide your targets and your strongest fighters. That way, they have no choice but to wait for the rest of you, and you divide their manpower in the process.”

“Will they not see through that?” Wilkes asked. “What if they counterattack?”

“One of you will have La Bête, remember?” Angelique raised one eyebrow. “He will be enough to distract them.”

Right. Diversion diversion diversion. “How should we decide who goes where?”

“That depends,” said Angelique. “Who do they want?”

Naomi nodded to Wilkes and Marjorie, standing opposite us. “Those two, specifically. The rest of us, I think we’re just details.”

I saw an indignant expression cross Cornelius’s face, but he didn’t say anything.

“You two,” Angelique said, pointing both index fingers at them and then in opposite directions. “Split up.”

They looked at one another, then back at us, and nodded.

“Now that we have it figured out, I shall fetch Antoine. Wait here.” She swept from the room with a flutter of her colourful dress, and we stood looking at each other but not saying anything. I wasn’t sure how well this was going to work, or if it would. But our only hope was trying it.

A clatter from the front door made us turn. Angelique had returned, dwarfed by the large man behind her, built like a bull and solid as a mountain. It made his head look outlandishly small, especially compared to the muscles in his shoulders.

“This is Antoine?” Naomi peeped, and I felt her press close as he entered behind Angelique.

“Yes,” said Angelique. “Antoine, these are the petits chiots I told you about. Children, my cousin Antoine.”

Antoine grunted each time one of us introduced ourselves. But not a single word. Angelique seemed unfazed, which made me wonder if that was normal for him.

“I have told Antoine you will be ready by nine sharp tomorrow morning,” Angelique said, once he lumbered out again. “Will that be doable?”

“It’ll have to be,” I said after a glance at Naomi, who shrugged.

“Yes. Bon." Angelique clapped her hands together once. “We should outfit you with ways to defend yourselves, non? We cannot throw you in empty-handed.”

“No, of course not,” I said. She really had thought of everything.