For Our Liberty (11 page)

“Eat, drink. The wind is good and we’ll be up here for some time yet,” he said.

I looked down again. Going up into the air wasn’t so bad I thought. However, I was soon to learn that coming back down to earth again was the dangerous bit.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When I saw the silver snake of the river Somme twisting its way across the fields of Picardy all my trepidation returned. We would have to land soon. We had been in the air nearly two hours and travelled at least seventy-five miles. Our pursuers should have been left far behind, no word should even have reached Amiens of our escape; the fastest horse would scarcely be thirty miles from Paris. Apart from being suspended a mile up in the firmament we were safe. Or so I thought.

The ground was getting closer all the time and the lower we flew, the faster the trees and hedgerows passed beneath us. Calvet had sent word by coded letter to some Royalist friends of his, asking them to watch for us along the Somme to the west of Amiens. As the river came closer, Garnerin began to look for a suitable field to land in. I’d read enough about ballooning to realise that ascending was the easy part and that descending was far more hazardous. The wind had picked up and I didn’t like the look of the frown that made the aeronaut’s thick bushy eyebrows meet like amorous caterpillars as he scanned the meadows below. Every now and then Garnerin would pull on the rope that controlled the valve at the top of the balloon. Some gas would escape and the ground would come rapidly nearer. Gravity was going to exact its revenge for our transgression.
 

“The wind is not good. Too fast, much too fast,” Garnerin said.

“Can’t we go back up?” Dominique asked.

“No. No. I have let out too much gas and have no more ballast to throw overboard. We will get down, one way or another.”

It was hardly the most reassuring speech I’d ever heard but there was little I could do, save for bracing Dominique and myself for the inevitable impact. We both clung on to the flimsy ropes until our fingers ached. We sailed low over a small village and children shouted and began to chase us, geese honking as they escaped the horde of youngsters. Old women crossed themselves and two men sitting at a table outside an inn looked suspiciously at their empty tankards. Just as our departure had been far less anonymous than we had hoped I had the feeling that our arrival back on God’s good earth would be met with a crowd. A herd of cows scattered as our shadow crossed quickly over them. Then the car brushed the top of an oak.

Branches snapped and the car tore through leaves and twigs. I was hurled forwards and almost out of the car; only my desperate hold on one of the ropes saved me. After the silence and stillness of the flight the sudden cacophony of sound and movement was terrifying. Dominique screamed and Garnerin swore as he pulled desperately on the valve rope to get us down. We hit terra firma with a thud that I felt all the way up my spine and then we were airborne again. Bouncing up to fifty or sixty feet and then coming down again with another splintering crash.
 

Garnerin was thrown to the ground but we ascended once more. I grabbed the valve rope and pulled, praying to God that the next time we landed would be the last. Dominique was as white as a sheet and a look of sheer terror passed between us. The balloon was heading for a row of Lombardy poplars at an alarming speed. We were only a few feet from the ground and I thought about just jumping out with Dominique but before we had the chance the fabric of the balloon was tearing into the branches and the car smashed into a trunk. I grabbed Dominique and held her to me as the world ended around us. We lay there in a mass of leaves, tree, and the remains of the car, covered in a shroud of green and yellow cloth. There was silence again, until I began to laugh.

“What,” Dominique asked in an unsteady voice, “is so funny?”

“I don’t think that aerial voyaging will ever be all the crack, do you?” I was still holding her and her head was on my chest as it heaved with laughter. She tried to get up but I held her there. She looked at me, beginning to laugh with relief herself. Her hair was a mess and her face ashen with shock but her eyes were as beautiful as ever. They met mine. We stopped laughing. I reached up and moved a lock of her hair from her brow. My hand brushed the soft skin of her cheek and then stroked the back of her neck, drawing her towards me. She didn’t resist. Our lips were only an inch apart. She was breathing hard.
 

“Monsieur, Mademoiselle Calvet! Where are you?” Garnerin pulled the balloon from on top of us and we hastily disentangled ourselves from each other and the remains of the car. Garnerin was standing in front of the wreckage looking very forlorn.

“Very sorry about your balloon,” I said lamely, literally as well as figuratively. I was battered, bruised and pains shot through one of my knees every time I put weight on it. My wound hurt again for the first time in days but I didn’t think it had reopened, not until I noticed the spots of blood on my shirt later. Dominique was again trembling slightly but seemed uninjured. Garnerin began to pick up pieces of wood, examining them and tutting.

 
“C’est la vie. I was going to build a larger one anyway,” he shrugged and threw away the piece of wood he was holding, “Now you must hit me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes. You must hit me. I will tell the gendarmes that you made me take you. It will help if you…”

I thought it would be better if I didn’t give him any warning and so delivered a swift jab to his chin. He collapsed on to the remnants of his craft. Dominique put her hand to her mouth.

“Ben, don’t you think that was a bit too hard?”

“I didn’t know he was going to go down like that. I only tapped him. Still, probably for the best. I think we should be going.” I was a little shame-faced but did my best to cover it. Garnerin had risked his life for me, but knocking him out was the best favour I could have for done him. It would surely convince whoever found him that I was a desperate English spy who had kidnapped him and the niece of a police official.

The audience for our spectacular landing had consisted of a couple of goats, who were now chewing on the remains of the balloon, and I thought we’d better be on our way before the local farmers and their families began to gather. I could hear them coming already, the first billhooks visible over the hedges. I doubted that the French peasantry would appreciate their rural idyll being disturbed by anything as unlikely as a balloon so I grabbed Dominique’s hand and ducked through the remains of the poplar into the field beyond.
 

We ran through shoulder-high green wheat until we reached the shelter of another row of trees, behind which, mercifully, was the main Paris-Amiens road. It was barely wide enough for two carts to pass and badly rutted but fortunately it was empty when we stumbled on to it. I turned and gestured left and right along the road to Dominique. She shrugged and began to walk towards the river, glancing over her shoulder to see if I was following. I was, the pain in my knee was abating slowly and I was only limping a bit. The sounds of the mob around the balloon soon faded behind us.

The day was warm despite the wind that rustled the trees either side of the road. The verges were full of foxgloves; bees dipping in and out of them. It felt good to be free. I took off my cloak and carried Dominique’s for her as well. Her green dress was only slightly torn and between us we managed to pat ourselves down and straighten our clothes so that we had, perhaps, the look of a courting couple returning from an intimate country stroll rather than two fugitives fleeing the scene of a balloon crash. Carts ambled past us, the drivers nodding to us as they dozed off at the reins, and on one occasion we were left choking in the dust of a mail coach but otherwise the road was quiet. It was an hour or more before we spoke more than a few words to each other. I don’t know what she was thinking about but I kept picturing what would have happened if we hadn’t been interrupted beneath the balloon.

Well now, if everything else went as planned you might suppose that the rest of my tale would me a mite dull. After all, if I hadn’t got the girl quite yet she was unquestionably coming round. I was out of Paris and well on the way back to England, the plans for Bonaparte’s invasion were safe in my pocket, I was out of immediate danger and well ahead of any pursuit. However, given that you are barely a quarter of an inch through this volume you would be correct in assuming that events soon take an unexpected turn.

The trouble began after we had persuaded a carter to let us ride with him, Dominique wasn’t in favour of it but after so many days of inactivity I was getting weary. We sat on the stained and sticky wood on the back of the dray in between the large barrels of wine he was carrying. The sour smell of cheap burgundy pervaded the air and wasps swarmed around the oozing casks, but it was better than walking. We trundled past an inn and looked away when we saw two soldiers sitting outside in the sun, though judging from the empty bottle between them they would have been too insensible to notice us. The road began to get even worse with deep ruts worn into the baked mud and it was all we could do to hang on as the cart pitched up and down. We passed in and out of thick woodland, the kind of old oak forest that had long since been felled in England, feeding the voracious appetite of the navy for good timber.

Through the trees I glimpsed a wide and slow brown river and at about the same time I heard voices ahead. The cart slowed to a stop, the driver cursing the delay in a thick accent. I turned and stood in the back of the cart, looked over the barrel and past the balding head of the swearing carter. In front of us there was a row of carriages and carts and two gendarmes checking everyone’s papers before letting them cross a small bridge. Dominique and I looked at each other, I indicated we should get off the cart with a nod of my head and she nodded back. She climbed off the cart and began to walk back down the road. I tapped the shoulder of the driver and handed him a few coins. We had already told him that we were eloping and I explained our departure by saying Dominique was worried in case her father had set the gendarmes looking for us. We exchanged a few comments on the folly of women and marriage and I bade him farewell. I don’t think he believed a word of it.

Dominique was several yards down the road, walking quickly and purposefully, not even glancing over her shoulder to see if I was following her. The road passed through a dense stand of trees, dark shadows loomed either side of us and I felt far from safe. I was worried since we had now made ourselves suspicious and were walking back towards Paris. We had been on the ground for more than two hours and it was possible that news of our dramatic escape from the capital was getting near. We needed to be travelling in the opposite direction but the gendarmes had put paid to that.
 

I was just catching up to Dominique when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. There were figures moving parallel to us in the wood. I started to run towards her but it was too late. Two men grabbed her and pulled her into the trees. She struggled and tried to scream but a hand was clamped around her mouth. I pulled a pistol from my coat but before I had the chance to fire I heard the click of a musket being cocked behind me. I held up my hands and my pistol was taken. A musket barrel was jabbed into my back. I walked into the wood, every step urged on by a prod from behind. Figures scurried in front of me and I saw Dominique still writhing in the grip of her captors, the hand over her mouth still stifling her screams. Nothing was said until we were out of earshot of the road. Every time I tried to protest the musket was pushed more firmly into my back. I soon got the message and shut up.

After a few minutes I was shoved against a tree. Dominique was already there sprawled on the ground where she had fallen. She had twigs in her hair and she was red faced but appeared unharmed. I helped her up and turned to face our assailants, waiting for the worst. There were five of them and the first thing that occurred to me was that they were well dressed for footpads; all wore boots, breeches, waistcoats and coats, most wore hats. They were clean-shaven and looking somewhat sheepish. They hadn’t asked for our money and they hadn’t killed us yet; they didn’t look like the police either. I took a chance.

“We are friends of Monsieur Denizot.” That was the alias Calvet had told me to use for him. My words were left hanging in the clearing for a few moments while four of the men glanced at the fifth. He was the best dressed and held a pair of expensive and ornate pistols. A bit too ornate for my taste, a man should look down the barrel of a pistol with fear and not with grudging appreciation of the intricacy of the gold filigree work. The man’s eyes flicked between me and Dominique but he said nothing. It was Dominique that made the next move. She took out a small folded piece of paper and handed it to the leader. He put one pistol under his arm and unwrapped it. His face was hard, his mouth set in a firm line, but his eyes seemed gentler, almost embarrassed by what he was doing. He opened the last fold and a small pressed white rose fell to the ground. He bent to pick it up keeping both one eye and a pistol on us while he examined it.

“Well, well. La Rose. I didn’t think that you were coming yourself,” he said. His accent was cultured, almost aristocratic.

“I wasn’t. There were complications,” said Dominique.

“We know. Gendarmes have been looking for you all morning.” He motioned for his men to lower their weapons as he put his own pistols into his pockets and came over, hand extended. “I am Paul Beston. In another life I was the Vicomte de Saint Riquier. We must go, we have horses and we will take you to the Abbé.”