The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories (10 page)

“Is it yours?” she asked, sitting up on the branch.

“It belongs to your father,” he said. “I didn’t think he’d mind if I borrowed it for a few minutes. I’ve read it before, and I wanted to come back to it like an old friend.”

“What happened to your book?” she asked.

“I lost it somewhere or other,” he said. “You could come down out of the tree.”

Victory considered and then climbed down. “What happened to your arm?” she asked, sitting down on the grass.

“I was shot.”

She thought he had a very nice face, even though his legs were sort of too long for the rest of him. “Did it hurt?”

“It hurt awfully at first,” he said. “But it doesn’t hurt anymore. When you’re a soldier you have to get used to things like that.”

“Are you a soldier?”

“I’m a captain,” he said. “In the Hussars. But I’m detached right now.”

“What’s your name?”

“Is this a parlor game? Honoré-Charles Reille. And yours?”

“Victory,” she said. “Have you had lots of adventures?”

“Some.” He put the book down on the grass and stretched his legs out in the shade, leaning back against the tree. “I got to carry a secret message into a besieged city. That was an adventure.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “That sounds fun.”

He put his hat on the grass and ran his hands through his hair. “General Bonaparte knew that your father was holding the city of Genoa. You’ve heard about that?”

She nodded.

“And so he decided to bring lots of troops and beat the Austrians while they were all camped around Genoa watching your father and not watching their backs. But he knew that there was no way that your father could know what he was up to, and that help was on the way. So he ordered me to sneak into Genoa and tell him.”

Victory sat up very straight. “How did you do that?”

“I snuck past the British fleet at night on a smuggling boat. It was painted black and it was hard to see against the water. The smugglers got me in as close as they could, and then I took off my coat and my hat and my sword, and climbed overboard into the black water.” He paused for a breath, and grinned at her. “I’m a good swimmer because I grew up swimming all the time at home, so I swam very quietly past the British ships and they never saw me. When I got to shore, I went to your father and told him the secret message. That he was supposed to hold until 12 Prairial, and then after that he could make terms with the Austrians, but that he had to hold them there until 12 Prairial.”

Victory hugged her knees up to her chin. “What happened then?”

“Then I was inside the besieged city with your father. And it was a long fight. We didn’t have much to eat, and the Austrians kept attacking. And we kept pushing them back. 12 Prairial came, and we didn’t have any more news. So your father said we’d just keep holding as long as we could. I got shot on 14 Prairial, and on 15 Prairial he finally asked the Austrians for terms. In the meantime, General Bonaparte trapped the Austrians and beat them.”

“That’s so…” Victory couldn’t think of enough words to describe it. “Terrific,” she said.

“It pretty much was,” he said.

She laughed. “I think you ought to marry a princess for that,” she said. “Just like in the stories.”

“I’m not sure a princess would want to marry me,” he said, smiling back. “I’m a merchant’s son. And besides, we don’t have any princesses anymore.”

“Then will you marry me?”

He didn’t laugh at her. Victory was glad of that. He looked at her, as though seriously considering. “How old are you?”

“Almost six,” she said. “I was born in Thermidor.”

“I think six is a little young to get married,” he said. “You probably need to wait a few years.”

“How old are you?”

“Almost twenty-four,” he said. “I was born in Thermidor too.”

“You’re not too old for me,” she said. “Not if you wait.”

He did laugh then, and she thought it was a very nice laugh. “You’ll have forgotten all about me by then. Come on, little Victory. The people are starting to go into dinner, and your nurse will be looking for you.”

He helped her up. Or maybe she helped him up. After all, he had a bad arm. They went up the lawn to the party, Victory skipping a little to avoid the peacock shit. He stepped in it, but he didn’t notice and she didn’t tell him.

Her father came down and swooped her up. “Where are your shoes?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Victory shrugged. When she looked around the young man was gone. “Where did he go?” she asked.

“Where’s your nurse?” her father said. “You need some dinner too. And then it’s your bedtime. And how do you get such snarls in your hair?” He started trying to work a tangle out of her long dark curls.

“I don’t know,” Victory said. She looked after the young officer, but she didn’t see him anywhere. “I’m going to marry him,” she said.

It was ten years before she saw him again.

The ballroom of the Tuileries was hot and stuffy, even this early in the evening. The candles and the press of bodies made that inevitable. Victory carefully lifted her skirts as she climbed the stairs, trying not to trip. She had told her stepmother it was too long at the dressmaker's, but she'd insisted it was fine. Now Victory would spend all night trying not to fall on her face. If she ever got a dance, which wasn't terribly likely. This was only the second time she'd attended an Imperial ball, and the first time she hadn't danced at all, only stood around with Marianne, looking more and more stupid as the evening went on.

Victory knew she wasn't pretty. Golden girls with pink and white complexions were pretty, girls with large breasts and curving shoulders and décolletage that invited a second look. She was short and sallow, at barely sixteen still boyish and too thin, with lank brown hair that wouldn't take a curl no matter how much time she spent on it. She could singe her hair off with irons and it still wouldn't curl. The only feature she liked were her eyes, dark and smoky brown, fringed with long lashes, deep and (she hoped) mysterious. Unfortunately, anyone would have trouble seeing them, as the curls had already fallen out of her bangs and lay in a sodden mass across her forehead that she had to peep out under.

They were announced at the top of the stairs. Fortunately, no one would see her anyway, behind her father and stepmother and her older sister. At the bottom of the stairs her sister was claimed by her fiancé, and her stepmother was already making a beeline for Madame la Marechale Lannes, who had recently come out of mourning and could always be counted on to know everything.

Her father turned to her, one eyebrow raised.

"Don't you dare," Victory whispered urgently.

"All right then," he said, and gave her a wink as he headed off to join Marechal Berthier, who no doubt had something stronger than punch to drink.

There could be no fate worse than to be the kind of girl who doesn't get anyone to dance with her but her own father! It was better to sit it out, fanning oneself, looking like the kind of girl who was too exhausted from all her previous dances to dance this one.

Marianne was standing in the corner behind the punchbowl, an enormous painted fan held right up to her nose. Victory sidled over and joined her. "What's the matter with you?" she whispered. "That fan's eating you!"

Marianne dipped it momentarily, long enough for Victory to see the enormous spot on her chin, rendered more conspicuous by a vast quantity of powder and some sort of creamy concealer meant for someone with much darker skin.

"Oh no!" she whispered sympathetically.

"I wanted to stay home," Marianne replied, "But my father said I shouldn't act like a little fool, so here I am!"

"I'm so sorry!"

"If I just keep the fan here, maybe nobody will notice," Marianne said miserably.

Victory nodded, and refrained from saying; nobody will notice the huge spot on your chin because they'll be wondering why that crazy girl's hiding behind a fan. "I'll stand with you," Victory said. "Nobody's going to dance with me anyway, and we can look like sophisticated women who have much more interesting things to talk about than dancing."

Across the room, the pack of unmarried men were clustered around the buffet table instead of the punch bowl, their brilliant uniforms glittering with gold braid. A few pairs of tall boots gleamed.

"Aren't they supposed to be wearing evening shoes?" Victory said. Her father certainly was.

Marianne nodded. "Of course they are. But they wear boots to show they're cavalry. It's so much more romantic."

"Oh." Victory cocked her head at the gorgeous pelisses, the pants so tight they looked as though they might split, the velvet and gold lace. "We'd know that anyhow."

There was a burst of laughter from the group, and a smaller man stowed what looked like a flask in his breast pocket. "Onward, men!" he laughed. "If I dance with a debutante, we all have to!"

"Onward!" another agreed, and the whole pack of them came across the room, sizing girls up like so many horses on a picket line.

"Oh God!" Marianne moaned.

The man who had spoken stopped in front of her. "If I might have the honor, mademoiselle?"

Marianne cast a desperate look at Victory, and put her un-fanned hand in his. "Yes."

He blanched when he saw her chin and tried not to laugh. Which made Victory mad. She stood along the wall seething.

"If you would, mademoiselle?" A hand in an immaculate white glove had appeared in front of her.

She turned about and saw what was attached to it, an apparently infinite stretch of scarlet wool trimmed with gold braid, dolman laced across his chest, a scarlet pelisse thrown over his shoulder trimmed in fur, and above that, a very long way up, a pleasant enough face with olive skin and dark eyes. She looked down, which was a mistake, as his white pants were incredibly tight and outlined all of his masculine attributes to perfection.

He offered his hand again. "Mademoiselle?"

"Oh, yes," she said belatedly and let him pull her onto the dance floor.

They rounded the first turn without disaster. He mumbled something.

"What?" she shrieked as they went round again.

He looked at her and she thought there was something vaguely familiar about his face, as though they'd met before. "I said, it's unseasonably warm, don't you think?"

"Yes," Victory said.

Which carried them through the turn.

She should have begged off, said she had a headache or something. She should have known better. Now he would think she had fluff between her ears. Which was not at all the problem. In fact, it would be something of the solution. At school until last month, it had not been the problem at all. Even the headmistress, Madame Campan, who thought that girls should have an education, had been fairly appalled by Victory.

"The applications of higher mathematics in Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion are not a suitable subject of study for young ladies," she had said, "You are a debutante, not a scientist."

"Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion," she said.

Her escort blinked. "What about them?"

Victory shrugged. "Do you like them?"

He laughed, and the smile transformed his face from pleasant to really handsome. "I like them well enough. I don't think I can name them anymore. It's been a long time since I was in school." He nodded to the glitter of decorations on his chest, all the jewelry of an Imperial Aide de Camp. "I ran away from school to join the Army of the Republic a long time ago."

Victory put her head to the side. "Why?"

He blinked again, looking almost shy. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yes."

"So I wouldn't have to take a Latin exam," he said. "I knew I was going to do very badly and they'd write to my father, and I thought, if I just run away and join the army, I won't have to take it!"

Victory laughed and pushed her bangs back with her free hand. "That's a good story. Were you good in school?"

He shrugged. "Not bad."

"Kepler or Copernicus?"

"Copernicus," he said. "The rings of Saturn are more fun."

"Goethe or Schiller?"

"Oh, Goethe of course," he said. "Doesn't everybody write poems about dying for love when they're seventeen?"

"Arthur or Charlemagne?"

"Arthur," he said decisively. "But not Lancelot."

"He's a later addition anyway," Victory said. "In The Year 2440 or Dangerous Liaisons?"

"Impossible." He shook his head. "Time travel or pornography? I can't make the choice."

"How about time travel with pornography?" Victory suggested. "Someone could write it."

"Someone could."

"Egypt or Rome?"

"Rome," he said, coming out of the last turn as the song ended. "I've never been to Egypt."

"You weren't on the Egyptian campaign then?"

They stood by the edge of the floor.

He shook his head. "I wasn't with Bonaparte's corps then. I wasn't with him in Italy either. I was in Genoa with Massena."