Soldier of the Queen (29 page)

There was a lot of smoke now and they could hear the thud of artillery, the rattle of musketry and the grinding roar of mitrailleuses. Men were yelling that a Versaillese battalion had broken through and they saw men running back, some without weapons, yelling they had been betrayed.

Number Seventy-seven, Boulevard Pereire, was untouched by artillery fire but not far away there was a house with a large hole on the first floor and rooms riddled with shell splinters. Inside, the flying wreckage of the windows had ruined carpets and curtains and furnishings. Number Seventy-seven was unlocked and appeared to be empty. As they entered, the firing increased and the roar of musketry sent them to the top floor windows to watch what was happening. As they looked out, shells began to fall among a column of marching Communards which immediately broke and began to head back at full speed. As it crumbled into a horde of terrified men and women, tumbling and rolling under the wheels of carriages and ammunition carts, frightened horses bolted, dragging empty vehicles or the fragments of broken shafts, then men began to throw down their weapons and bandoliers and shout the same old vicious cry of betrayal with which they had heralded every defeat since the war against the Prussians had started the previous year.

‘Generals’, their horses lost, came running back among the shouting workmen and the limping old men and women carrying dead sons. Here and there a body sprawled on the pavement, or a shattered carriage lay lopsided in the gutter with the equipment that had been thrown away by the fleeing troops. The trees in the Boulevard Pereire were being cut now by flying shell splinters and the ground was covered by grape, canister, shot, broken shells and flattened bullets. There was a gun in the garden of the house opposite and the men working it had knocked down the wall to allow them to pass through. Near the hole were the bodies of four National Guardsmen.

Thinking the people they were seeking might be hiding, they searched the house from attic to cellar. There was no sign of them and the terrified horse in the street was snatching at the reins. Thinking it would break free and bolt, they were just on the point of leaving when Colby’s eyes fell on a group of brick-built outhouses at the bottom of the garden and it occurred to him the Americans they were seeking might have hidden there. Through the dusty window, he saw a wheelbarrow and tools and plant pots on a bench. There was no sign of life but, as he turned away, he heard a cry that sounded more delighted than scared, and the door burst open.

As he swung round, his jaw dropped and his eyes widened, as memory raced back at a stretch gallop.

‘Jesus Christ in the mountains!’ he yelled. ‘Gussie Dabney! What in God’s name are you doing here?’

‘I’m always meeting you hiding in outhouses,’ Colby said. ‘Why in the name of Heaven didn’t you get away before it was too late?’

Ackroyd was helping a moaning Mrs Dabney into the carriage as Colby hurried Augusta down the path with a couple of Gladstone bags, the only luggage they had been able to pack.

‘Father was heading a trade delegation to the new government, so we all came.’ Augusta looked up at him. ‘I guess the reason for his visit disappeared with the government’s removal to Versailles.’

She hadn’t grown any taller and she was still so slender he felt he could span her waist with his two hands. But she had filled out and now clearly had a behind under her bustle and a before in front. The peaky elfin face had rounded into smooth curves and those enormous violet eyes of hers had taken on a new beauty that was enhanced by the lavender dress she wore. Despite the din and the flying metal she seemed less frightened than excited at having found him again.

‘Where’s your father now?’ he demanded, reaching for the reins.

‘He’s in Germany. We’ve been everywhere since we crossed the ocean in February.’

‘Why in God’s name didn’t you go with him? It would have been a damn’ sight safer.’

‘Because Ma got ill and we had to stay. She was real bad, too.’

‘I was told the name was Putnam.’

‘That’s the owner of the house.’ She gave him a nervous smile as if she thought he might make it an excuse to abandon them. ‘They’re friends of Pa’s. We rented it.’

As he reached for the whip, she scrambled from the tonneau of the carriage to the driver’s seat alongside him, treating Ackroyd, who had to climb into her place, to a view of a length of leg as she did so.

‘We were in London,’ she went on excitedly. ‘A friend of father’s at the Embassy looked you up in the Army List and I even found out where your home was. But when I arrived there you were in London. And when I reached London you’d gone back home. When I went there again you’d come to France.’

‘So
you
were the mysterious female who was always asking after me?’

‘I swore your sister to secrecy. I think she thought it was a good idea. I felt that she approved of me.’

By God, Colby thought, gripping the reins, so do I. She was beautiful, she was brisk, she sounded intelligent and she had the most honest eyes he had ever seen. Brosy la Dell’s suggestion that it was time he married came into his mind at once.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Only one place
to
go,’ he said. ‘Apartment I’ve rented. Not very big but safer than here. Yesterday I could have got you out of the city. It’s too late now.’

She said nothing but she gave him a glance that looked remarkably like one of triumph.

A burst of firing broke out behind them and fragments of brick and stone were chipped from the walls above them.

‘You must have been mad to stay in Paris,’ he yelled as he lashed the wretched horse into a half-hearted gallop.

‘Don’t snarl at me, sir,’ she snapped back. ‘It wasn’t my fault!’

‘Why didn’t you get a protection pass then?’

‘The man wouldn’t give me one. I think he had his eye on me.’ She gave him a quick grin. ‘He told me his name was Rigault and started talking about sexual promiscuity and concubinage and saying I was too pretty to leave. When he suggested dinner, I thought I might suffer something far worse than the refusal of a pass so I left and didn’t go back.’

‘You damn near left it too late. There’s talk of shooting the Archbishop and rounding up all foreigners as hostages. We may have to go over the ramparts.’

Finding a cross street where there was no firing, they stopped at an épicerie to buy food, wine and a bottle of brandy. The landlord told them barrels of gunpowder were being stacked in the sewers with men waiting with lighted torches to blow the city sky-high if the Versaillese got in. As they climbed back into the carriage, the rifle fire began to grow in volume and ragged men and women began to appear with mattresses which they piled on top of a barricade that was being built. Manoeuvring the old horse through them, the carriage bouncing in the potholes where the paving stones had been ripped up, they reached the end of the Boulevard St Germain. There was a small group of soldiers under a mean-looking sergeant who seemed no more than a child. Stopping them, he came to Colby’s side and demanded that he hand over the carriage. Before he knew what was happening, he was staring down the barrel of Micah Love’s huge LeMatt.

‘Get out of the way,
mon petit
,’ Colby murmured. ‘Or I’ll blow your head off.’

The boy’s eyes glittered and he waved a hand. ‘Pass, friend,’ he croaked.

Colby passed the gun back to Ackroyd. ‘If he changes his mind, Tyas,’ he said. ‘Shoot him dead.’

Despite being in a state of near-panic, Augusta was studying Colby with pride mixed with alarm. The biggest part of civilised life came within a woman’s sphere and most occasions were dominated by them. But this one, she realised, was clearly not one of them. Colby was not a big man but at that moment he seemed strong enough and capable enough to deal with anything, and her heart almost burst with happiness. Overcome by curiosity, she was just glancing back to see what was going to happen when she felt her head pushed down between her knees, then, grasping the whip, Colby brought it down savagely on the horse’s rump. Hurt and startled, it leapt straight into a gallop.

It was only a few yards to the corner and, as they turned it, they heard a shout behind them. The huge LeMatt exploded near her ear with a sound like a cannon firing, then a volley of shots splintered shutters and whanged against iron veranda railings. At the other end of the boulevard there was another barricade and Colby wrenched the horse into a side street leading to the Luxembourg. Another volley and the sound of bugles made him swing into another street, just as a flurry of men dived round the corner and bullets started to chip stone from the walls in a shower of sparks.

‘We’re in the middle,’ Ackroyd yelled.

With a swing of his arm, Colby swept Augusta off the driver’s seat into the tonneau of the carriage in a flurry of white petticoats and flailing legs, and Ackroyd pushed her to the floor where her mother already cowered. As they reached the door of the apartment block, a volley stopped the old horse dead in its tracks. For a second, it stood trembling, its head up, blowing crimson spray through its nostrils, then it collapsed with a crash to the cobbles, the taut reins dragging Colby in a nose-dive from the box on top of it. As he sat up, sprawling across the dead animal, Augusta was alongside him, clutching him in an agony of apprehension.

‘For God’s sake, Tyas,’ he yelled, disentangling himself from the reins. ‘Get ’em into the doorway!’

‘I thought you were dead,’ Augusta was shrieking at him over the din.

‘Of course I’m not bloody dead!’ he yelled back. ‘It takes more than a few dirty Froggies to kill me!’

Ackroyd had got Mrs Dabney out of the carriage and leaning against the door. But it had been locked from inside and, as they struggled with it, a swarm of ragged men carrying a red banner ran past them towards the barricade. Another volley sent several of them sprawling, one of them falling right in front of them, a pool of bright blood spreading under his chest.

‘Oh, my God!’ Augusta said.

A gun banged in the distance and stone and splinters of wood rained round them, and leaves began to drift down from the trees. Men with rifles were crouching in the angles of the wall firing down the street and bullets chinked and whined overhead. The barricade burst into flame as a line of rifles fired, and a woman standing in a doorway opposite with her head out, watching what was going on, spun round as if she’d been snatched away by an invisible hand.

The doorway where they sheltered was shallow and Colby was standing with his arms round Augusta, who was clutching his jacket in terror, trying not to scream. Ackroyd managed to kick the door open at last, but there was no sign of the concierge. His apartment was unlocked, however, and Colby began to drag a sideboard into the hall. To his surprise, he found Augusta alongside him, her hair coming down, leaning her small body against the sideboard, red-faced and panting as she worked with him.

Jamming it against the smashed door, he added a table and chairs, then grabbing her hand, pulled her after him down a curving flight of stone stairs to a cellar where men, women and children from other apartments were sheltering. Outside a gun was banging away monotonously, close enough to bring plaster down every time it fired.

They got Mrs Dabney to lie on a mattress which Ackroyd dragged down from upstairs, and Augusta bent over her, crooning encouragement, her small face taut and strained but showing no sign of fear. The firing was still going on outside as it grew dark and, under Colby’s direction, they dragged an old tallboy full of apples across the cellar and jammed it across the grill that opened on to the street. One of the men went upstairs and produced blankets and, as they settled down for the night, Colby found Augusta next to him.

‘Frightened?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ she said, her voice shaking and uncertain. ‘Why should I be, with you here?’ She paused. ‘I suspect you saved our lives, Mr Goff.’

‘Micah Love’s gun,’ he said. ‘It’s enough to frighten an elephant.’

There was a long silence. The cellar was damp and smelled of decay and, after a while, Augusta’s voice came through the darkness.

‘Mr Goff,’ she said quietly. ‘May I come a little closer? I guess there’ll be mice. I don’t like mice.’

They lived off wine and apples and stale bread for three days as fighting raged up and down the street. When it seemed safe to move out of the cellar and everybody vanished to their own apartments, they helped Mrs Dabney up the stairs and Augusta put her to bed. When it was safe to go outside and they emerged, stiff and dirty and tired, the barricade down the street lay in a heap of broken paving stones, sandbags and torn mattresses, with here and there a body sprawled among the bushes in the gardens alongside. The old horse that had brought them home still lay in the shafts of the carriage, its blood dried to a brown crust, its stomach swelling as the heat lifted its legs. Charred papers kept drifting down from the buildings the Communards had set on fire and, against the redness of the sky, the Butte de Montmartre stood out like a dark hump. As the last Communard resistance was blasted into tears of blood against the wall of Père Lachaise, summary courts martial were already being held in the theatres, the Communards condemned in batches and taken outside to be shot at once in the streets round the Panthéon.

It was like coming into daylight after being through something from Dante’s
Inferno
. As he stood in the street, staring up at the smoke-filled sky, Colby felt Augusta’s hand slip into his and he drew a deep breath. It was summer now and the weather would be good in England. In France they were already looking round for scapegoats, and parliamentary weasels in France were even more spiteful than they were at home. He suddenly wanted to see Braxby. To hell with Wolseley. To hell with Disraeli. To hell with the Queen, come to that. He was going to take some leave – real leave – even if it meant going on half-pay.

He turned to find Augusta watching him. It was as if she knew what he was thinking and, uncomfortably, he suspected she did. Why not marry the damn girl, he thought. He wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t let her down because, after thirty-five years of freedom, he had a feeling he would notice the reins more than she would, but at least he felt she would never let
him
down.