Sovay (28 page)

Léon laughed down at him. It was what Gernaud had been after all along. God only knew what he would get for such a cargo. A fortune at a time of such scarcity. Sovay kept her eyes on the men as Léon turned in his saddle, his arm raised in signal to Virgil. Gernaud’s eyes flicked sideways. The man next to him eased back the hammer on his rifle and raised the weapon, ready to shoot from the hip. There was no time to warn Léon. At such close quarters, the shot would surely kill him. Sovay cocked the pistol she was holding down by her side, aimed and fired.

The man uttered a yelp as the bullet took him in the shoulder, the impact spinning him round before he fell to the ground. Léon’s horse reared and he drew his own pistol and called his soldiers forward. Gernaud’s men retreated behind their barricade, pulling their wounded comrade with them. Gernaud himself stood his ground, as if his authority alone could stop Virgil’s horses thundering towards him. He leapt aside just in time and the others threw themselves into the ditches as the heavy wagon smashed through the flimsy barrier, breaking the long poles into kindling. The other wagons followed, their horses whipped to a gallop, as formidable as a battery of artillery. Sovay and Hugh spurred after them, Léon and his men covering their retreat.

‘I underestimated you,’ he said to Sovay when they stopped for the night. ‘I was wrong.’

This was as near as he would come to an apology. Sovay accepted his gruff statement with a gracious nod of the head to hide her slight smile. She sensed that apologies did not come easily to this big, rumbustious Frenchman, who seemed a stranger to both doubt and physical fear. She had never met any man like him.

‘To fortune and
bonne chance
.’ Léon raised his glass. ‘We all live with our dangers. By rights I should be dead many times over. Let us have more wine. I still don’t understand,’ he said when their glasses had been replenished. ‘You are a girl of considerable spirit, I can see your concern for your father, but why come here anyway, put your life in jeopardy?’

‘We are both wanted for treason,’ Sovay answered. ‘We have no choice but to come to France.’

Hugh explained about Dysart and the accusations against them. Léon listened with careful attention.

‘I have heard the name before, I’m sure,’ he said when Hugh had finished. ‘In the Ministry of War when Roland was there. Find this man.’ He scribbled the name on a piece of paper. ‘He collected the evidence against Fabre and Danton. He might be able to help. He’s old-fashioned. Only works for money. Gold. Not assignats. Now, it is time to retire.’

He drained his glass and they all rose.

‘We will reach Paris tomorrow,’ he said to Virgil as they climbed the stairs.‘I will see you through the gates and then I have to report to my headquarters. She’s a very pretty girl,’ he added as they reached their rooms. ‘Such a noble gesture on your part, Barrett, to make her your fiancée.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ Virgil said, quick to deny any underhand motive. ‘It is for convenience only. I fear she has no feelings for me, in that way.’

Léon smiled. ‘Does she have feelings for anyone,
in
that way
?’

Virgil shook his head. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘What a waste!’ The Frenchman laughed. ‘If I was you, my friend, I’d marry her anyway. Before someone else does.’

CHAPTER 3
1

T
he elegant, imposing custom house that marked the entrance to Paris had been partially demolished, its function replaced by a rough wooden barrier hauled across the roadway. Everyone wishing to enter the city was stopped by a set of fierce-looking men, bristling with arms. They looked like Gernaud’s men, dressed in striped trousers and short jackets with faded tricolour rosettes on their tattered and grimy red bonnets.

‘What have you got there, Citizen?’

Their leader leaned on the side of the cart, looking up at Virgil in a belligerent, challenging manner, his scowling face made more ferocious by his long, trailing mustachios.

Léon stood back and let the man and his fellows go about their business. These were men of the Paris Commune, puffed up by the authority invested in them. Any interference could spark a major incident.

They insisted on everyone getting down and examined the papers Virgil gave to them with great care, although it was doubtful whether any of them could read. They were dangerous and volatile but also open to bribery. Léon waited until they’d had time to scrutinise the various documents and then he ordered sacks of flour to be taken off the wagon, along with boxes of soap and candles.

‘For the people of your
Section
, Citizens,’ he announced. ‘With our compliments.’

Eventually, they were allowed to pass. Sovay had thought that Léon would stay with them and was surprised when he said that he must leave them.

‘I have other duties to attend to, I’m afraid, and you might be better without me,’ he said as he bade them farewell. ‘There is no love lost between us and some of the committees that control different areas of the city. Our presence might impede your progress, or stop it altogether. Until we meet again!’

He gave no indication of when that might be. Sovay found that she was unwilling to see him go, and her reluctance was not altogether to do with fear for her safety.

Their wagon made slow progress. Each area of the city had its own committees and every one had to be bribed, convinced and placated. Everywhere they went, there was evidence of poverty and want, far more so than in London. There was an air of exhaustion about the hot, dusty streets; most doors and windows were closed and shuttered, just like in the villages.

Their route took them past the Place de la Révolution. The guillotine had been removed and the vast space seemed empty and desolate, ominous despite its openness. In the hot sun, the blood-drenched stones stank like a charnel house.

As the wagons trundled on, Hugh pointed out the landmarks: the garden of the Tuileries, full of trees, with people taking shade under their drooping leaves and walking down paths formerly reserved for the King and his court; the huge, sprawling palace, empty now of its royal occupants; the arches of the Palais- Royal; the café where Camille Desmoulins leapt upon a table and incited the Paris mob to storm the Bastille. Every building, every name, it seemed, carried significance. It was as if they journeyed through the landscape of the Revolution and therefore history, and yet people sat in cafés, gossiped on corners, formed queues outside shops. Life went on, Revolution or not.

They were heading for the Rue Duval on the edge of the Marais district. Their way took them past the most famous monument of all, but there was nothing left to see of the Bastille. The huge prison had been reduced to so much rubble. The citizens had torn it down, stone by stone. Nothing that Sovay had so far heard or seen better attested to the power of the many than the complete and systematic destruction of that symbol of oppression, or was better testimony to the people’s determination that they would never be so oppressed again.

The people had imposed their will in small ways as well as large. Statues had been toppled or defaced. Streets renamed, churches turned into stables and storehouses.
There is no going back
, these acts declared,
the only way is forward, whatever the
consequences.

Eventually, the wagons turned into a narrow street between tall walls of peeling yellow stucco. They stopped in front of the closed gates of a hôtel, the grand town house of some long-departed noble family, with a crumbling coat of arms on the arch above the entrance. Virgil got down from the wagon and rapped on the door. A grate slid open and shut again and the gates swung wide. The wagons were driven into a wide, cobbled courtyard and the gates clanged shut behind them. Sovay felt safe at last.

The Hôtel Fonteneau had once been a very grand house, but the marble floors in the hallway were chipped and dulled with dust and grime. Struts were missing from the balustrade of the wide staircase, the pale green silk wallpaper was marked with water stains and smeared with dirty handprints.

The state rooms were bare, the furnishings looted or removed. Little remained below the decorated ceilings to bear witness to the building’s former status, except cracked mirrors and painting-shaped spaces on the walls. They passed from apartment to apartment, their footfalls echoing over lengths of smeared and scuffed wooden floors which must once have been polished as bright as mirrors. Since the armies of servants had been dispersed, there was no one left to polish and sweep, clean and tend.

At the far end of the last room, a man sat in shirtsleeves, working at a desk piled high with papers that at any moment threatened to spill onto the floor. He stood up as they approached. His face was pale and tired, the skin drawn and greyish. He was wearing spectacles and his hair was sparse, receding from his forehead, the few fair strands streaked with grey. As he came towards them, Sovay realised with a shock that it was M Fernand, Hugh’s old tutor. She could not recall ever having seen him without his crisp, flaxen wig before and could hardly find the handsome young man she remembered in that prematurely aged and careworn face.

‘My dear, dear friends! Welcome! I thought that I would not see you again!’ His voice shook with emotion as he clasped Virgil warmly by the hand and embraced Hugh as if he was his own son. He smiled when he came to Sovay, his eyes wide with surprise. ‘And this must be Sovay! You look so different. So changed!’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Quite the young lady now!’ He put his arms round brother and sister. ‘We must talk, but first you must eat. You have had a long journey. You must be hungry.’

He took them down to the kitchen where they made a supper of bread, cheese and
saucisson.

‘Peasant food, I’m afraid, but it is all we can get. There are such shortages. We have wine, though.’ He filled their glasses. ‘Now. To business.’ His face grew grave. ‘Things have got worse, much worse since you left. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety have taken leave of their senses. Truly. They see conspiracy everywhere. Now, to merely be
suspected
of anything counter to the Revolution, no matter how innocent-seeming or trivial, is enough to get one brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal.’ He removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘To be tried by them bears no relation to trials as you know them. In Britain, even the lowliest, most vicious prisoner is allowed a lawyer and a defence; witnesses are called, for and against, before the jury decides. Here things are different. Once the accusation is made, the Tribunal decides. They are fanatical in their prosecution of the Revolution.’ He closed his eyes, the lids papery in the lamplight. ‘Since there is no defence, no lawyers are involved, no witnesses called. The alternatives are stark. It is acquittal or death. They rarely acquit and the death sentence is carried out within twenty-four hours.’

‘Since when is this?’ Virgil asked.

‘Since 22 Prairial by the Revolutionary Calendar – 10th of June by the old reckoning.’ He glanced up at Sovay, in case she was unfamiliar with this new way of dividing the year. ‘Life grows everyday more perilous. For all of us. No one is safe.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘No one.’

‘And my father?’

Hugh leaned forward, searching his old tutor’s face. The man paused before answering, as if gathering the last of his strength. Then he reached over to Hugh and Sovay, taking their hands in his long, thin, scholar’s fingers.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid. He has been arrested and brought to Paris.’

Fernand’s words echoed round the empty room like a death knell. Hugh went white, his lips trembled and his eyes filled with sudden tears.

‘Where is he?’

‘In the Luxembourg, where he lies gravely ill. There is hope in that.’ Fernand gave a bitter, ghost of a smile. ‘They do not like to try those who cannot understand their sentence. Such strange days we live in.’ He gave a despairing lift of the shoulders. ‘That it should all end like this.’

‘We must go to him!’ Hugh was on his feet.

‘You cannot go now. You have had a long and trying journey and, besides, they would not admit you.’

‘Surely, M Fernand,’ Sovay felt as though her heart was being wrenched from her, ‘there must be something we can do?’

‘Perhaps,’ Fernand relented. He did not want to give out false hope but hated to see his young friends so distressed. ‘There are many more awaiting trials than can be accommodated. Some wait for months. Let us hope your father is one of those. And with his illness . . . Until the blade falls there is always hope. Tomorrow, we will see what can be done. Meanwhile, Hugh, perhaps you would show Sovay to her accommodation? You will find rooms on the second floor.’

‘No need to worry them further,’ Fernand said to Virgil after they had left. ‘But they are unlikely to see their father. The prisons no longer allow visitors. No one is admitted except to a cell.’

‘Is that so?’ The American stretched out his long legs, his grey-blue eyes distant as he turned over the problem. There would be a way. There was always a way. ‘I have another matter,’ he said eventually. ‘Do you know this man?’

He pushed over the slip of paper that Léon had given him.

‘Yes.’ Fernand studied it. ‘He’s a journalist. Used to work for Marat’s scandal sheet. Specialises in lies and slander. If he can’t find anything, he makes it up. Or forges it.’

‘That’s what I’m hoping. Where can I find him?’

‘He lives above a printer’s on the Left Bank somewhere, but you’ll likely find him in the wine shops of St Germain. What do you want with him?’

Virgil shrugged. ‘He might be able to help with something.’ He leaned forward. ‘Those two are in more trouble than you know.’ He told Fernand about Dysart. ‘He has spies everywhere. It’s only a matter of time before he finds out that they are here. Sovay is travelling as my fiancée.’ He waved away Fernand’s congratulations. ‘A matter of convenience only, unfortunately.’ He laughed. ‘I doubt the lady has feelings for me and I’m promised elsewhere, more’s the pity. I’ll own that I’ve grown fond of her. I fear being affianced to me will afford but flimsy protection. I would like to find a better way of keeping her from harm.’

Sovay was shown to a cavernous chamber which must once have been a grand bedroom, but all the original furnishings had been removed, apart from a great armoire that was probably too heavy to shift, although the doors had been taken, for some inexplicable reason. Other than that, there was a battered washstand holding a chipped basin, and a rickety table and chair. Her bed was small, most likely brought down from the servants’ quarters upstairs. She was so tired that she lay down upon it fully clothed and slept almost immediately.

She was torn from sleep by a sudden scream and woke thinking that she was back in her room at Compton, and had heard the cry of a vixen in the park, but the bed was too narrow, the huge room too empty. The shriek she had heard had been human and had come from the street outside.