6 June, morning - Heading back to camp

"Would both of you shut up?" Roux asked, sitting back from the horse. He wiped a bloody hand across his forehead absently, leaving a red streak in its wake. "One of you could at least help. Or go get this Mme. Beneviste."

"I'll go," Lambert said, starting to rise.

"No no, I'll do it," Foucheaux said. "You'll cause a fright, looking the way you do. Guillot, at least you try and stay clean. I'll be back in a minute."

***** A little while later... **********

"It's amazing," Marguerite mused, staring down at the bloody carcass, "What you find lying around out here, isn't it?" Unslinging a thin leather bundle from over her shoulder, she knelt and began unfolding it on the ground. It was a modest collection of knives, all carefully slotted away in their corresponding pockets. Studying the beast for a moment, she selected two of the blades.

"Put that away," she ordered Roux, "You aren't cleaning a fish." She handed him one of the knives and then set to work herself.

Foucheaux stood back and watched in admiration. "I knew you'd know what to do, Madame," he said with a grin. "Now how do we carry it all back to camp?"

Roux wiped his own knife on the grass with a shrug, and tucked it back into his pack. The new one certainly was sharper, if nothing else.

"Gonna cause a bit of a stir if we carry it back like this," he said.

"So it would. Where exactly do you fancy it goin' once you get it to camp?"

Lambert grinned. "Into our pots and our bellies."

"Awful lot of it," Guillot said dubiously.

"Kind of the idea," Roux retorted. "Not like we normally have this much fresh meat."

"Getting it back will not be a problem. No one will look twice at a blanchisseuse hauling a basket of washing about. But unless you plan to eat it raw on the march, you're going to have to keep it somewhere." Margot tugged her knife through a particularly stubborn belt of sinew and looked up. She had a solution for this too, but she had found that men liked ideas all the better if they could claim provenance.

Foucheaux blinked as he thought, his brain working sluggishly. "Say, Margot, what if you carry it for us?"

"Oh, aye!" Lambert chimed in. "You could carry it and cook it and all! Then no one'd know that it was us who'd killed it." Now that the horse was boon instead of burden, he was glad to share responsibility for its death.

Margot pretended to consider this. "Aye. So I could." A devilish ghost of a smile crept into her eyes as she amended, "For a price."

This was to be expected, but Lambert still groaned. "Oh come on, Madame Why-not. We all know that half of this meat will end up in your own-"

But Foucheaux cleared his throat and held up a hand to silence him. The woman was their only chance of keeping some of the meat, and there was no sense in antagonizing her. "What sort of price?"

Margot gave Foucheaux a nod of thanks. "Only this: if I am to carry the meat, and to cook it, then I will require the right to sell it. At a generous discount to the present company naturally."

"Discount!" Lambert exclaimed. Then he lowered his voice, looking around nervously as his outburst echoed through the woods. "We should be getting it for free. It's our horse."

Margot regarded him with a mixture of amusement and pity. "Oh, luv... I'm afraid there's an officer or trooper somewhere who might disagree with you on that particular point."

Lambert bristled. "It's more ours than yours!"

"Shut up, Lambert," Foucheaux grumbled. "It's mine. I shot it. Margot... Let's just cut it up and figure out the details later. We can trust you to be fair." He gave her a skeptical look.

A sensible suggestion. "Fair enough," she said, the one answer serving for both statements. "Now if you two would be good enough to pack this as we cut it. There's an oil cloth in my basket there. Use it to line the basket before you put the meat in."

Foucheaux chewed his lip as he looked at his companions. "Yer gettin' covered in blood. That'll take some explaining if anyone sees you." He did not jump to the task that Margot had ordered, but instead rose to his feet. "Think I better go and report while the rest of you sort this out. Guillot, don't you touch anything. On second thought, maybe you should come with me."

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