Miss Jacobson's Journey (14 page)

“
Vous. Venez.”

He made his clumsy way out to the corridor then as the four gendarmes surrounded him he turned to glance back. Felix, his chin raised defiantly, looked very alone. Between them the door swung shut. The fat jailer turned the key, the metallic click sending a cold shiver down Isaac’s spine.

He was sweating by the time they reached the top of the stair from the dungeons to the world above. He spared a thought for those unhappy wretches who made the climb without boots to protect their ankles from the heavy chains. The handcuffs were bad enough, scraping his wrists and straining his shoulders. He prayed he would not later look back on this moment as the last of comparative comfort.

The English-speaking man--one of the gendarmes had addressed him as lieutenant--led the way into a room littered with portmanteaux and boxes and their contents. With a shock, Isaac recognized his own clothes strewn about as if unpacked by a mad valet.

Accustomed to brief forays across the Channel, he had brought nothing incriminating; Miriam had been travelling Napoleon’s Europe for years; but what of Felix?

He was given no time to worry as the gendarmes hustled him through to an inner room. Behind a grotesquely over-ornamented rococo desk sat the dandified little man who had ordered their arrest. A scuffed red leather box bound with brass stood on the desk beside him, its lid hanging open. Miriam’s box.

“
Le prisonnier Cohen, monsieur le préfet,”
announced the lieutenant.

Stroking his narrow black moustache, the police chief stared at Isaac, his eyes cold and deadly as a snake’s in his impassive face. His thinning hair was elaborately styled to hide his pink scalp but those eyes nullified any hint of absurdity.

One long-nailed finger tapped on the pile of papers lying before him. “Code. You will give me the key.”

“Code?” It was not a word Isaac had ever heard in French but it was sufficiently like the English for him to guess the meaning. A startled question flashed through his mind--Miriam an English spy? Impossible! He stepped forward, his chain rattling. “Let me see.”

The prefect pushed some of the papers across the desk. The handcuffs made handling them difficult but Isaac picked up the top one and scanned it. The “code” was Yiddish. It took him a moment longer to identify the subject and then he very nearly laughed aloud.

They had worried about the gold. They had prepared a wonderful story for the gold, and here he was trying to account for a box full of medical records!

“
Eh bien?”

The sharp query effectively dispelled his amusement. “These are written in Yiddish, monsieur. It is a language, not a code, the language of the Jews of Germany and Poland, but widely spoken wherever there is a community of Jews.”

“A Jewish code, put at the service of your English masters.” The precise voice was chilly, unbelieving. Without shifting his stare from Isaac’s face, he ordered, “Lieutenant, take two men and find me a loyal French Jew, if such an improbable creature exists.”

The lieutenant slipped out of the room, leaving the four armed guards ranged against the wall.

“I can translate them for you,” Isaac offered, trying to sound unconcerned, “though I doubt they will interest you. They are a doctor’s notes on his patients.”

The prefect’s thin lips curled. “You expect me to believe that? I suppose you can explain why three travellers journeying for pleasure should carry with them a box of medical notes?”

“Naturally, monsieur.” Stick as close to the truth as possible, he advised himself. “My uncle was a doctor. He travelled everywhere to investigate different diseases.” Isaac hesitated, hampered by his mediocre knowledge of French. He was not sure that he hadn’t invented a word or two, but his interrogator seemed to understand.

“
Et puis?“

He struggled on. “My sister accompanied him on his last journey. He died in France, so I came here to fetch her. My cousin came with me, and after a period of mourning we decided not to waste the opportunity to see more of your country.” An ingenious, credible story at short notice, he congratulated himself.

“An ingenious farrago of lies! We shall wait until Hébert returns.” He took a folder from a drawer and opened it. Dipping a quill, he started scribbling, ignoring prisoner and guards alike.

The gendarmes waited in stolid immobility. After a few minutes Isaac grew impatient. A protest was unlikely to do him any good, but not to protest could be considered an admission of guilt.

He thumped with both fists on the desk. “I am a Swiss citizen!” he said sharply. “I object to this treatment. You have no reason to hold us. Release us at once or I shall complain to the Foreign Ministry.”

Without raising his eyes from his work, the police chief asked, “If there is no reason to hold you, why did your sister evade us?”

Isaac took a deep breath, for a moment too relieved to speak. They hadn’t caught her! “She was afraid when she saw you take us away. Who can blame her?” Leaning forward across the desk, he added in a hard voice, “If she has come to any harm, I shall consider you responsible.”

The man looked up then. Was that a hint of uncertainty in his eyes? His response was noncommittal. “She has only to give herself up and she will be taken care of.” He waved at a nearby chair, an elegant gilt and brocade object doubtless meant for important visitors, and returned to his writing.

Taking the gesture to be an invitation, Isaac sat down. The prefect showed signs of being the sort of bully who was quick to capitulate if threatened. However, Isaac was in a weak position when it came to making threats, and in any case he was decidedly uncomfortable with the idea. He suspected any attempt would be less than convincing.

Felix might well be more competent in that direction. But even if Felix were here, his lack of French would disarm him. Unable to come up with a way to capitalize on the prefect’s possible weakness, Isaac found his thoughts drifting inevitably to worrying about Miriam and wondering what was in store for himself and Felix.

The quill pen scratched on and a bluebottle buzzed against the windowpane. Now and then one of the gendarmes shifted his position, the shuffle of feet loud in the stillness.

Heavy footsteps in the anteroom announced Lieutenant Hébert’s return. He brought with him a grey-bearded Jew wearing sidelocks and the traditional gabardine so much more suited to a Polish winter than a spring day in southern France. The two uniformed men who followed them joined the others standing against the wall.

“Ezekiel ben Joseph, monsieur le préfet. He claims to speak Yiddish and I have told him only that he is to translate some papers for you.”

With an air of patient tolerance, Ezekiel took the first sheet and started to read it. “`In the village of Radovich, two sons of the Mendel family are afflicted with the crippling disease. Their mother reports that both her brother and her aunt had children who died of the same disorder before the age of seven. The symptoms are...”

“Get out! Get out!” the prefect shouted shrilly. Losing his temper, he seemed to Isaac less menacing than when he was calm and dispassionate, but the lieutenant looked alarmed. The bearded Jew departed at a dignified pace.

By the time the door closed behind him, the prefect had recovered his chilling composure. He fixed Isaac with a steely gaze.

“So, it is written in a Yiddish code.”

“Not a code. I have explained everything.”

“You have explained nothing. You see, Monsieur Pasquier, Prefect of the Paris Police, in requesting that I arrest you has informed me that you arrived in Paris not from Switzerland but from the coast.”

Isaac’s mind raced. “That was where we met my sister. My uncle died in Calais.”

“That can be checked, though it will take several days. By the time I have received an answer, no doubt I shall have found your sister and cracked your code--or persuaded one of you to give me the key. Perhaps we shall find that your uncle, if he existed, also worked for the Emperor’s enemies.” He turned to Hébert. “Take the English spy back to his cell.”

  Chapter 13

 “Come, quickly.” Miriam put one hand on Hannah’s elbow, the other to her nose.

The alley, blocked at one end by the back of a building, was littered with a stinking refuse of rotting cabbage leaves, onion peelings, and unnameable substances covered with blue and green mould. Down the centre ran a slimy gutter. Picking their way through the filth with all possible speed, they startled a mongrel crouched over something Miriam preferred not to look at. The emaciated cur snarled then loped away, its tail between its legs.

When it reached the alley’s entrance, it looked back and bared its teeth again. Miriam raised her arm as if to throw a stone. The dog turned to flee, just as a stout figure in blue uniform appeared around the corner of the inn. Man and dog collided.

The gendarme tripped and fell, dropping a hunk of bread and cheese. The dog snatched it in passing. On his knees, the man scowled after it.

“Sacrebleu! Mon déjeuner!“ he wailed. Hoisting himself to his feet he ran a few pointless steps after the thief.

Miriam and Hannah slipped around the opposite corner and hurried down the narrow, twisting street.

 At the first crossing Miriam turned right, then left at the next. Hannah was gasping for breath so Miriam slowed her pace. Already their obvious haste had drawn a few curious glances. She was afraid, though, that when the police failed to find her at the Prince de Galles they would search the area.

Hannah recovered her breath as they walked on between the overhanging timbered houses. “May God not forsake them,” she groaned. “They’re good lads, both of them. Where are we going, child? What shall we do?”

Miriam forced herself to ignore the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach when she thought of Isaac and Felix in police custody. At present she could do nothing for them. She must concentrate on not joining them.

“We have little choice, we shall go to the Ségals. At worst, Monsieur Ségal will lend us money to escape; at best he may be able to help the others. Do you recognize this street?”

“No, Miss Miriam. It looks just like all the rest to me.”

“To me, too. We must be on the west side of the city, I believe. The Ségals live to the north.”

Though Miriam felt as if days had passed since she woke that morning, it was still early. Looking up at the strip of blue sky above, she saw that the sun shone on the eaves of the houses on her left. Straight ahead was north, then. Not that anything was straight ahead in that labyrinth, but she feared they might be conspicuous in the wide streets of the new section.

They kept on course by checking the sun’s position now and then, and in spite of being one of France’s larger towns, Bordeaux in no way compared with London for size. A brisk fifteen-minute walk brought them to streets they recognized. Soon they were gazing across the Rue Médoc, straighter and wider than most, at the Ségals’ house. Composed of three of the small, old town houses combined into one, it had an air of prosperity without ostentation.

“The police cannot possibly know we are acquainted with them,” said Miriam firmly, and they crossed the road.

As she raised her hand to knock on the door, she noticed the carved wooden mezuzah case nailed to the doorpost. Her own home in London had a mezuzah at every entrance, but she had never enquired as to their meaning. A sudden longing for Isaac swept through her.

The smart maid who opened the door regarded them with disfavour. “What do you want?” she asked sharply.

Miriam was suddenly conscious of her shabby appearance. Since Felix had ceased to judge her by them, she had almost forgotten her worn, unfashionable clothes. Still, she had been no more modish last time she was in Bordeaux and the Ségals had welcomed her nonetheless.

“I wish to see Madame Ségal,” she told the maid. “Please tell her that Miriam Jacobson is here.”

“You are much too early to call on madame. She is not yet come down.”

“At least inform her that I am come. We shall wait if need be.”

Reluctantly the girl admitted them. She left them in the small but elegant hall and went upstairs, only to return moments later to sulkily invite them to go up.

Madame was in her dressing room, seated before a dressing table laden with porcelain jars of cosmetics. A small, fine-boned woman, her dark hair just touched with grey, she wore a wrap of crimson silk embroidered with vine leaves in gold thread.

“
Que je suis ravie de te voir, chérie,”
she cried, bouncing up and darting across the room to kiss Miriam heartily on both cheeks. “What a delightful surprise. Tell me, shall I dye my hair? This wretched grey, it makes me look old, but even my Lucette cannot find a dye that looks natural! You recall Lucette, Miriam? I see Hannah is with you still. You are pale as ever, chérie, but I suppose you will as always refuse to try a spot of rouge. And how goes
le bon oncle?”

At last she paused for breath. In the course of her chatter, she had returned to plucking her eyebrows, Miriam had greeted Lucette, and Hannah had moved to help the elderly abigail iron a morning gown of fawn satin, liberally adorned with fine lace.

Seizing her chance, Miriam imparted the news of Uncle Amos’s death. Madame jumped up and embraced her again.

“My poor Miriam,
je suis désolée.
Ezra will be greatly afflicted. The doctor was a saint. So, you have not found a husband to keep you on this side of the Channel? Your standards are too high, ma chère. You wish to return to England, without doubt?”

“Yes, but...”

“Ezra will arrange it. He went to the synagogue for the morning prayer, but he will return for
le petit déjeuner
before he goes to the bank. We shall speak to him then. Have no fear, he will manage it without difficulty. He knows everyone of importance in...”

“Suzanne! I am grateful for your offer, but I have a much greater favour to ask. Indeed, it may prove impossible, but I cannot run away and leave my friends in prison without trying to save them.”