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He had taken the route through Poitiers and was now heading towards the East coast of France. It had been hard traversing the country: soldiers at every turn with every possibility of being discovered. Wickham had thought he would be able to make it over the Pyrenees to the Western coast of Spain - a quicker route but, with Britain's armed forces on both land and sea amassing South East of the country, his best opportunity would be to try to intercept any ships on their way and hitch a lift.

And then, once in Spain, the spectre of enemy would be behind him. He would be in the position to seek help where and when he needed it; he could gain valuable information and insight towards his undertaking. In short, he would be ahead. And then he would be the best – everyone who was in the position to know, would know that he was the best spy. The fact that the opposition had been eliminated was irrelevant.

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The prison cell, for that was what it was, lay open into a stone corridor. The darkness had opened up slightly as daylight found its way along it. Cicely had ascertained that the room in which she was incarcerated was small, with a low ceiling, but not unclean. Also with the receding darkness she had discovered what purported to be a pewter plate of food and a flagon of ale. The latter she had drunk but, as the food looked fit only to be fed to animals, she had left untouched.

How long had she been here? Cicely had little idea. She did not remember at all being brought there, and had met no-one since. Sitting there, in a cell, waiting, she wondered what her brother, Edward, would have made of her now.

She concentrated on the bars, and on the corridor. Someone must have been there to leave the sustenance. Someone knew she was there. Was her fate something like the suffering of the poor wretch she had heard? At least she now had a clear mind. And she began to use it, trying to piece together what she remembered.

Cicely hadn't got far into her thoughts when the lock on the cell door was being opened and the door wrenched open. A soldier, saying nothing to Cicely, thrust another figure, hunched in shoulder, into the room before clanging the metal bars shut. Against the adjacent wall the figure slid until they were sitting with their knees bent and head inclined downwards.

She made to look towards the soldier who had brought her now-companion in the hope of questioning him but she could only hear his boot-steps on the flagstones getting fainter and fainter by the second. Who was the person? Why were they in the cell with her?

Cicely felt her mind race. Whoever it was must have some connection to her – the building surely contained more than one cell and the place seemed quiet enough. Why would the soldier bother to make them share a cell when others were probably vacant…

…unless…

…could it be…?

She darted towards the figure, who raised their head. It was Matthew Harris. In the gloom, her colleague smiled in her direction. Cicely tried not to let her disappointment show as his recognition of her made him smile a little, then wince, leaning slightly away from the wall.

"Mrs Maturin?"

"Harris," replied Cicely. They had agreed to surnames between one another, and "Young" aboard the Thorn. "It's good to see you." Next to Harris Cicely sat next to him. "Was that you I heard…earlier?"

"Yes," he nodded. "They wanted to know what the regiment and the ship were doing, and weren't taking no for an answer. I said that the only people who knew that were the Lord Admiral, a commodore or two, and maybe a captain. They didn't like that answer much!"

Cicely smiled in the gloom. Having bonded a little with Harris on the Thorn in their week working together it had struck her how like her brother he was. Kind and honest, patient and considered. Yet he was unlike Edward in other ways too: forthright where her brother was reserved; jovial rather than serious. He was as popular a sailor as he was a soldier.

"What about you?" asked Harris. Cicely saw his head move so that he was looking at her. "I thought you were still aboard the Thorn. I thought you'd sailed with it."

"I think I was drugged," she replied, licking her lips. They were moist again – she had deigned to drink the ale which had been provided with the food that had been left. Had she not read over Stephen's notes, she might not know that laudanum and valerian too, in large doses, could induce unconsciousness, nor recognise the after-effects.

"There are things I don't remember. I thought Blunt had reneged on his deal and sold me over." He had handed her over to Wigg, Cicely had deduced and she had spent a large proportion of her time alone imagining what her life would be like as the wife of the JP. Benjamin Wigg would want her…she would be confined…in general, it would be awful, and all because her father wanted Wigg's money he her father's status. It was a match made in heaven for both men, but, unfortunately for her, depended upon Cicely giving up her life, and her choice of life.

Dragging her thoughts back to the present Cicely felt herself sighing and Matthew reached down and picked up her hand, putting his other over the top of hers. It was something the Major had said as the regiment left…

"…when we've gone right over that ridge there, you'll be your own master, Mrs Maturin…"

At the time, Cicely had taken it to mean that she had repaid her debt to him and Great Britain, but now, sitting here in little light and reduced liberty, something seemed to miss a chord.

"I don't think so," Matthew continued, returning her hand back to her side after a reassuring grip. "We were supposed to join them – don't you remember – but the Thorn was ambushed.

The regiment retreated back to the Thorn once they saw the blue coats aboard. You were working below decks. I don't know who else they captured. I did see Blunt instruct the men to fight. If he had wanted to hand us over, he would have waited. They used the fishing boats, the French soldiers…"

Yes, of course, thought Cicely, noticing the pain that Harris was making every effort to hide from her. That had been the reason the Thorn had docked at Penzance was to collect fishing boats from the harbour. The regiment's men, Cicely and Harris included, were to dress as fishermen in order to converse with the local population – fishermen on the North coast of France put aside political difference when trade, upon which livelihoods depended, was at stake – and discover the whereabouts of the hidden anti-republicans.

They had anchored just off Quiberon Bay and this, Blunt had explained to both regiment and salts alike had been his second attempt at invasion in alliance with these French rebels…aristocrats, academics, those who were just fervently against Bonaparte in general. This group inside France were to be the ones to help Blunt's regiment into France, with more to follow, providing them with help in the meantime. Clearly this endeavour was not entirely successful either.

"Tell me what happened," Cicely asked when she realised Harris had fallen silent. "They've tortured you, haven't they?" She took his silence as affirmation.

"They gave me a choice Mrs Maturin," Harris said eventually. "They might give you one." She stared at him quickly. Had he told her secret?

"No," he replied, as if reading her mind. "It wasn't for me to talk of your...femininity. But I implore you…tell them…they may be lenient…"

Harris's voice trailed off as he looked towards the cell door. The figure that was pulling away at the iron railings of the door appeared to be the same one who had thrust Harris into the cell less than twenty minutes before. Cicely held her breath as, in French, the soldier uttered something in her direction.

She edged forward, past Harris and towards the door. To underline that it was indeed her that he required, the soldier banged something across the bars and ushered frantically towards the door.

This was it – they would want to know what she knew too, and she knew less than Harris did.

"I've not told them anything about you," Harris added, as if to emphasise his previous sentence. But before she could reply, the soldier was locking the cell again and pushing her away from it and towards a flight of stone steps.

Thank you, Matthew Harris, thought Cicely as she went. And now…?

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The room into which she was driven was dark, much darker than the cell she had just occupied for there appeared to be no natural light entering it, unlike the corridor and even the cell. In one corner a fire licked in a waist-height hearth which looked not dissimilar to a forge fire. The rest of the room, with the exception of a couple of wooden chairs against the far wall, was empty. In one of them, adjacent the fire another soldier sat. He barked something in French towards the one who had brought in Cicely.

Cicely had spoken French, had learned it when she was a girl. But her soldier was speaking in the language in an unrecognisable dialect – voice seemed slurred and disjointed. He turned to Cicely and spoke again and when she replied in French that she did not understand the soldier raised his hand and struck her across her face. She stumbled as the man shouted now the words that he had uttered moments before. She still did not understand.

This time he repeated his words slowly, punctuating each word with a shove or a punch. The final fist-blow landed on her nose, causing liquid to well on her top lip and drip down her chin onto the floor. The soldier pulled her up by her shirt, tearing at the fabric with his fingers. Cicely had little time to consider this as the other man began to make his way over to the fire.

He appeared to be prodding at the coals in the fire, glancing at Cicely every so often. The first soldier held her firmly: clearly her incomprehension had infuriated the soldier.

Cicely felt her mind go cold as she saw the man take the horse brand out of the fire.