He thought of the von Ostenfelds’ stable, luckily not visible from the road.Even if a neighbor had traveled by while he was there, no one could have seen his horses, but he’d also been at a number of small homes and inns between Eutin and Lübeck.How many people had he met during his travels who had keen eyes and a desperate need for French favor?
“You should take me up on my offer,” the merchant pressed.“Not for free, but cheap, I promise.”
Jonathan’s duty to his parents and his inheritance, his obligation to one day manage the earldom, with all the responsibilities owed to his family’s tenant farmers and to the tradesmen who leased Castleton land for their mills and breweries and bakeries, this warred with his duty to the King.
“I need to complete one more survey, heading south,” Jonathan said.“Send what I’ve already given you, but I intend to finish my task.I hope to leave by way of Hamburg.If I cannot, then I’ll return within a fortnight and take you up on the passage to Travemünde.”
Neumann shook his head.“You’re a stubborn man.”
“I’ve been called worse,” Jonathan said, trying to make light of his possible capture, hoping it wasn’t imminent.“But I am a thorough one.”
“Thoroughness won’t matter when you’re arrested.”
Jonathan wished the man had said “if” not “when.”Neumann reached into his desk and withdrew a folded paper.
Jonathan glanced at it, merely a village and a person’s name.“A sympathetic household,” Neumann assured him, “who hate the French.They’ll give you shelter if you need it.But finish your work quickly.The net is closing.”
Committing the information to memory, he handed the paper back to the merchant.If capture was imminent, he didn’t want anything on him that could lead the French to a British sympathizer.
Leaving Lübeck, he retrieved his horses and his panniers before heading toward Niederbüssau.Always farther from Lise, which was a reassuring thing.The work consumed the next week.Jonathan moved carefully, avoiding main roads and traveling mostly at dawn and dusk when light was poorest.
He was surveying a small tributary of the Elbe snaking north when the patrol found him.It happened with brutal efficiency.Jonathan had grown perhaps too confident, lulled by days of successful avoidance.He was following a salt road in late afternoon, planning to cut into the forest before dusk, when riders appeared from both directions.
French cavalry, six of them, blocking his escape.
His hand moved toward his pistol, but the officer shouted a command and suddenly a musket was aimed at his chest from uncomfortably close range.
“Your hands where I can see them, monsieur,” came the order in French.
Jonathan complied, calculating odds and finding them dismal.He might shoot one, perhaps two, but the others would cut him down before he could reload.And the mare with his surveying equipment was already being seized by a soldier.
“I’m a civil surveyor,” Jonathan replied in French.“I have permission to —”
“You have maps,” the officer interrupted.“Maps of routes and crossings that are of great interest to us.You will come quietly.”
They bound his wrists and confiscated his weapons.Jonathan’s pistol and his knife disappeared into French hands.All his defenses except his wit, his strong will to live, and the small blade he kept in his boot.The soldiers weren’t brutal, which told him something important — they wanted him alive and cooperative.
Although they had his maps, they wanted the information in his head.
Expecting to be taken south, into solidly French territory, instead, Jonathan soon realized he was retracing his path.Back to Lübeck.Traveling without halting, except for a few hours at night, the journey took less than two days.
How quick and easy travel was when one wasn’t surveying, Jonathan thought, scarcely able to believe it when their cavalcade rode onto an estate in the occupied city’s outskirts.
A manor house that had clearly belonged to someone of consequence now seemed to be serving as a headquarters for the regional occupation forces.They locked him in what had once been a wine cellar, a stone-walled chamber beneath the main house.A narrow, barred window, wider than it was tall, sat high on one wall, providing minimal light and air.
Jonathan tested the door as soon as he was left alone.It was solid oak, locked from the other side.The window was too small for any creature other than rats to squeeze through.
Worst of all, there wasn’t even any wine!
He had few illusions about what would follow.They would question him, applying increasing pressure until he revealed his contacts, his intelligence networks, the people who’d helped him since he first landed at Tönning so long ago.They would demand to be told everything he knew about British operations in northern Germany, which was absolutely nothing.Not that they’d believe him.
Jonathan had received little training to resist interrogation.After all, he was an earl’s son and not a soldier, not even an officer.Regardless, he knew that all the training in the world couldn’t prepare one for the stark reality of never seeing home again.
The first interrogation came that evening.Two officers came to the cellar, one who spoke excellent English and seemed educated, the other who simply watched with dull eyes.Accompanied by a guard holding a lantern, they wanted to know who had sent him, with whom he’d met since arriving in Europe, and what he’d reported.
Jonathan gave them his prepared story.“I am a civil surveyor, retained by a large merchant house with interests in several ports.”
“Yet you were not in a port when we found you?”the officer pointed out.
