A Citizen of the Country

by Sarah Smith

  Like Gauls.

  The Roman road, the road from Arras to Belgium, ran dust-white through the green fields, straight as a ley line, marked by the red swaying dots of roadside poppies. A road worn into the chalk by two thousand years of marching men. On the horizon was the bell tower of St. Vaast in Arras, eight miles away.

  Reisden thought of the Germans, marching down the temptingly straight Roman road toward Arras, between the beet fields on a steaming August morning. They would be cautious, of course, but there would be so little to fear. They would have already subdued the little villages and farms, locked up the inhabitants or sent them to the rear of the column. They would have captured Montfort; they would have men in the tower, watching for the telltale dust of soldiers gathering over the flat fields. But there would be nothing; no snipers in the hedges, no sharpshooter in a church tower; nothing; and they would be tired, off their guard a little, looking toward the capture of Arras and its railhead, and worried about taking the Beautiful Useless; but Arras, they thought, would be relatively easy, because Vauban had built the Beautiful Useless on the wrong side of town.

  They would march along the road. Perhaps some of them would be singing.

  How many tunnels were there? How large were they?

  These were the sort of questions the Ferret would have asked, or perhaps Blantire, who was so interested in the tunnels.

  What use is Montfort? No visible use. It is a joke; it is an actor’s folly. It is even more of a folly than it needs to be. Ridiculous chalk walls and little towers among the sheep, Friends of Montfort, Sunday excursions, the annual dinner and the speeches. A half-restored medieval castle with a garage, a gas-powered generator, André’s coat of arms on the chamber pots, and Cyron on the ramparts orating and huffing as he mortars another chunk of chalk. Ridiculous; Paris had laughed for years; and almost no one remembered what had been Cyron’s chief claim to attention before Montfort, that he had been a guerrilla soldier, using the tunnels to fight.

  Reisden thought again about those German soldiers on the Arras road, and because he was a bit German himself, he could see them very clearly, blond and round-faced, not unlike the men from Flanders; not unlike André.

  Sapping a road is terrifyingly effective. One digs a tunnel that dead-ends under the road. One packs into the end of the tunnel several hundredweight of dynamite, a stick at a time. One lights a long, long fuse. The mortality among sappers is horrifying, but a well-sapped piece of ground does not simply blow up; it explodes and dissolves in upon itself as if hit by an inconceivably large shell. No one in the area survives.

  Sapping the Arras road would not stop the Germans, except for those blond boys marching to their deaths, but it would delay them, narrow that six-week window in which Germany must conquer France.

  How many tunnels were there? Under Arras. Under Mademoiselle Françoise’s farm. Under Montfort.

  Suppose, Pétiot had said, there were some sort of fortification along the Arras road; something big, like the Beautiful Useless, but not useless.

  Suppose there were a fort in Flanders. Not one tunnel. More. Many.

  Suppose there were a fortress underground.

  He thought of Cyron. Indomitable, unstoppable Cyron. Young Sergeant Cyron, with his big Gallic nose and Gallic curled beard, had known all the crypts of country churches, the old cellars and the old mines, all the underground secrets.

  What could a man do if he had friends with picks and shovels and thirty-five years to dig?

  The secret of Montfort? Right out in the open. They shall not pass. The Germans might take Arras, but they couldn’t keep her. They would be caught between the Beautiful Useless and whatever Cyron had spent all this time creating.

  Cyron and the witches.

  It wasn’t possible. If Cyron were doing significant tunneling, he’d leave behind an enormous amount of broken chalk, a tailings like the pyramid at Wagny-les-Mines. Where would it go?

  And Reisden looked down from the Montfort tower, and saw the white road that spiraled up the hill, the roofless white towers, the stonehenges in the sheep fields, the mazes of useless chalk walls, the faceless chalk soldiers.

  The Fortifications of Montfort.

  Looking for Ruthie

  HE WANTED TO TALK with someone about it, but he didn’t know whom to speak with. He could have talked to Leo; sometimes he missed Leo. But he was alone in this. He went over to the New Buildings. Perdita and Toby were up from their naps. He could have talked to her if he had told her everything from the beginning. They talked about nothing in a fragile half-silence.

  He tried apologies in his head. I believe you love me more than Gilbert.—He didn’t believe it. He believed what she said; she wanted both him and Gilbert, as if she were still the little girl in Gilbert’s house in Boston, and wanted Richard to come back for Gilbert’s sake.

  She took Toby away. He threw himself on the bed. The pillows smelled of her hair. He laid his cheek against them. He was sick of love and sick for it. Despicable.

  He was going to forget about this idea of underground tunneling. Pétiot had already arrested Gehazy, and Gehazy was on his way toward the frontier. With him would go the secret of Montfort, whatever it was. Reisden was a curious man but he knew when to stop.

  T.J. Blantire. Political, of whatever stripe, and involved with Mademoiselle Françoise, who apparently had been involved with witches. And under her cow-barn was a tunnel. Leading to Montfort, which Cyron had bought thirty-five years ago.

  Someone was knocking at the door.

  “Reisden!” André.

  “What?” Reisden said crossly.

  “Have you seen Ruthie?”

  “No.”

  “I have things for her to do.”

  “I’m sure she’s doing them.”

  André added uncharacteristically, “I’m—” He groped for a word. He was looking for some emotional word to apply to himself. This was new. “I’m worried,” André said uncertainly.

  “Shall we go look for her?”

  They checked at the Auclart farm, which was as deserted as it had been earlier. They drove all the way to Arras and looked for her at the film office; Ruthie hadn’t been there. Jules was there and was concerned too. They brought him along and returned along the Arras road, driving slowly, looking for her. Necrosar would have made up some dreadful fate for her. André half-stood in the car, holding on to the windshield, examining the tall grass at the side of the road.

  It was André who saw her bicycle.

  In the hospital; flying ointment

  NEITHER LAUGHTER NOR FRIGHT will help her; Necrosar is no use here. While Reisden drives the car at top speed back toward Arras, André sits in the back seat with Ruthie’s head on his lap, willing her to breathe. The pupils of her eyes are dilated. Her face is pale, her lips are pale. She is breathing slowly, shallowly. (Barely breathing, he thinks.) Ruthie has been poisoned. He cannot help thinking that. She is dying and he has to face it without Necrosar.

  In the hospital, Ruthie’s hands lie lax on the sheet. Reisden helps Jules talk with the doctor. André sits by her and holds her hand.

  Heatstroke, the doctor thinks, possibly a heart attack. But Ruthie has been poisoned. An alkaloid. André knows these things. He is a little mad but what he knows, he knows.

  He gazes into her face. It is strange to him, so faraway, so profoundly asleep. He stares at her, willing her to wake, to be Ruthie.

  Ruthie. When Jules joined the Necro she was still working at a grocery. She was useful, good with figures. She would tell him how much he could spend on an effect. She could mend a costume, make tea. He had always thought of her as older because she wore glasses and there had always been a streak of grey in her brown hair. Now her hair is sprinkled with grey, but she’s younger than he is. He gazes at her face, relaxed by the poison, smooth, remote, soft-edged. Her hair is spread on the pillow.

  He is crying again. Water stars his dusty hands.

  The straight chair where he is sitting is painf
ul. He gets down on his knees, by the bed, and lays his head and arms on the sheet by her shoulder. His loose long hair falls among hers. The brown hair and the blond both have silver in them. André stirs their hair with his fingers, mixing them together.

  “André, what are you doing?” Reisden asks sharply.

  “Nothing.” André sits in the chair again.

  Ruthie’s knitting bag is on the table by the bed. It feels heavy. It is perverse and tender to look in her bag, to see her private things, her handkerchief, her change-purse. In the bag are four books and a little covered tin canister.

  He opens it. He only sniffs at it, but the tin is greasy with the rancid stuff. André wipes his fingers on his handkerchief. They tingle a bit. He rubs his fingers together, frowning.

  He opens the first of the books. It is late and his vision is blurred, he is sleepy, but he reads. When to plant tender vegetables. A recipe for sausage.

  How to call upon Vapula.

  How to fly.

  André blinks, wonders whether he is dreaming. His head falls helplessly against the chair-back. His body is numb from having sat so long. But he feels, because he has been reading about it, that he is flying, a strange, innocent, happy sensation; he is climbing through the air on huge wings. He looks at Ruthie and remembers, with hallucinatory clarity, the first time he saw her. She was sweeping the floor in the grocery. When he came in the door she turned with the broom in her hands, stopped, blushed, smiled at him, her beautiful shy smile.

  Waiting at St.-Vaast

  REISDEN LEFT JULES AND André at the hospital, arrived back at Montfort exhausted, stumbled down the hill from the garage to his own pallet in the New Buildings, and took off no more than his shoes before clearing a place on the bed by his wife and son. He actually fell asleep, and dreamed that he was sitting in a café in Paris with Gilbert; even in the dream he knew it was only dreams.

  “Reisden.”

  Pétiot’s voice woke him. “Get up. I have to talk to you.”

  It was three in the morning. From her side of the bed, Perdita half-woke. Toby began to wail. “Is it Ruthie?” he said, his heart sinking.

  “No. No change with her.”

  They sat in the kitchen again. Reisden made coffee. He saw his unshaven, rumpled self in the bottom of a copper pot. Why was it that every time he talked with Pétiot, he looked like he’d slept under a bridge?

  “Gehazy hasn’t got the secret,” Pétiot said. “We went to arrest him. He wasn’t there. Judging by the amount of mail, he hasn’t been home for days. My clerk’s letter was there, unopened. Has Gehazy got in touch with you?”

  “No.”

  “I have to pass the secret. I want you to go to Saint-Vaast to meet him in case he comes.” The water was boiling on the gas-ring. Reisden poured it into the filter, wetting the grounds, then poured again. He poured them both cups of coffee and passed Pétiot his cup of coffee.

  I thought I would get the contract without paying for it, he thought.

  “You think he’ll be there?”

  “I hope so,” Pétiot said. “Eleven o’clock today. You’ll pass him the secret. We’ll arrest him as he gets on the train.”

  “No,” he said. “You know what I will and won’t do. I will not give even the appearance of spying or passing secrets.”

  “This is not about the integrity of your d—d company!” Pétiot exploded. “This isn’t about your good name! I’ll guarantee your name. Your country needs you, if France is your country—I didn’t come to argue with you. I came to give you this.” He pulled an envelope out of his jacket. “Give it to him.”

  He slapped the envelope onto the kitchen table and left.

  The envelope lay on the table. One sheet of writing paper, perhaps two, in a long envelope. He could see the grey blur of typewriting inside the envelope.

  He didn’t want to know what it said.

  He thought of those German soldiers marching along the Arras road toward Paris. Whatever Cyron had done, if the knowledge of it was enough to stop them—

  Pétiot was outside. Reisden handed the envelope back. “Give this to me at St.-Vaast. I’ll pass your secret but I will not know what it is.”

  Pétiot shrugged impatiently.

  ***

  The church of St.-Vaast on a Sunday morning was cream-colored, enormous, and echoing, filled with a cool Dutch light. In the side chapels, old women knelt at their private devotions. A priest was mumbling Mass at the altar. Reisden waited in the St.-Barbara chapel, the envelope in his pocket, reading the plaques and epitaphs on the walls. Sacred to the memory of forty-two men killed in the explosion at Portas, April 20, 1878; St. Barbara protect us.

  Women in the rough clothes of miners’ wives and in the caps of coal-sorters knelt, prayed briefly, dropped their centimes into the money box and lit a candle, in memory of a disaster or to prevent another, until the candle-rack in front of the altar was a mass of flame.

  He moved away from St. Barbara’s chapel, into the aisle, trying to look like a man whose wife was at Mass. He didn’t fit in; he felt conspicuous, too tall, too clean, too well-dressed. The coal-smudged miners’ wives and widows looked up at him suspiciously.

  The bells tingled as the Host was exposed on the altar. The smoky sweetness of incense drifted back to the chapel. The faithful queued to take Communion. Reisden’s eyes searched the recesses of confessionals and the rows of rush-bottomed chairs.

  He didn’t see Gehazy.

  He remembered Gehazy coming to the back door of Leo’s house. He’d always been early. A man who is early for an appointment is never surprised; one of Leo’s maxims.

  Reisden strolled down the aisle toward the ambulatory, a religious tourist, and looked into each of the chapels behind the high altar. Funerary monuments of abbots and bishops. Behind him the priest intoned prayers for the sick and all those who had died in the Lord.

  He went back to the St.-Barbara chapel and stared into the candle flames.

  He was a Catholic—not a believer, but Catholic. For something to do, he lit candles. For T.J. Blantire and Mademoiselle Françoise. For William Knight. For Leo, whose teaching was getting him through this. For Ruthie and Jules, to prevent more accidents and disasters.

  For Ferenc Gehazy.

  Who had not been home for days.

  Who had disappeared too.

  Nunc dimittis . . . The Mass was over. The priests and altar boys glittered down the aisle, a mass of red, white, and gold. Behind them, churchgoers gathered their hats, genuflected, and moved toward the doors, murmuring to one another.

  Reisden took the envelope out of his pocket, twisted it, and fed it into the candle flames. Fire flared and gnarled along the envelope. The fire almost burned his fingers; he dropped the blackened envelope on the floor and stepped on it. He could see the Ferret clearly: fat, chinless, with his pointed nose and grey curls, ridiculously lifting his pinky as he drank coffee and waited for Leo. The Ferret had had a weakness for fast women and slow racehorses. He’d been a journalist. Once he had given Reisden a copy of an opera review he’d done. That was all Reisden knew about him.

  Except that he had wanted the secret of Montfort, and would have been here if he could.

  Pétiot met him on the steps. “He’ll contact you yet—”

  The two of them stood on the steps for a moment. Blantire is dead, Reisden thought. Françoise Auclart is dead. . . .

  “I think something has happened to him too,” Reisden said. “In a month, two months, he’ll show up in a river somewhere.”

  “I will have someone find that letter from my clerk,” Pétiot said resignedly. “Someone who will believably pass on secrets. Which you will not, I really think you will not. You have caused me an immense amount of trouble, Reisden.”

  “Blantire,” Reisden said. “Mademoiselle Françoise. Jules framed and beaten up. Now Ruthie. And Gehazy’s missing.”

  “Don’t exert your imagination where it isn’t wanted. Jules Fauchard caused his own problems, his sister ha
s heatstroke, Blantire and Mademoiselle Françoise died by accident, and we don’t know Gehazy is dead. There is no mystery here.”

  “Whatever you say,” Reisden said with irony. But he was not going to challenge Pétiot. Gehazy’s disappearance was too much a relief: for him, Jules, André, everyone. (Not disappearance. Say death. But he didn’t know that.) He thought once of Gehazy, proud of his opera review, and then consigned him, with Blantire and Mademoiselle Françoise, to the spreading silence.

  Sabine discovers Ruthie is a thief

  SABINE WENT TO VISIT Ruthie in the hospital. Ruthie was still asleep, still pale, still drugged—Sabine knew with what—and beside her, sleeping in a chair, with his hand stretched out across the bed and his fingers tangled with Ruthie’s, was André.

  He was drugged too, though not so profoundly. Sabine glared at them, narrow-eyed, uncertain. She felt as she had when André had danced with his father.

  What were they both doing, using flying ointment together?

  She looked carefully into both their faces. She wanted to see grey. She wanted them out of her life, even if it meant losing Necrosar. But Ruthie was only pale and André’s ugly cheekbones and big lips were as red as ever. She wished them dreams full of monsters.

  Ruthie’s knitting bag was on the metal table by the bed. Sabine looked inside, hissed with annoyance and surprise, and brought out Mademoiselle Françoise's bibles and Book of Shadows and her tin of concentrated ointment.

  What! A thief! Ruthie a thief!

  Sabine took the whole knitting bag back to Montfort, telling the nurse she was keeping Ruthie’s things safe for her. She left the bag in Ruthie’s bedroom but hid the books and the ointment in her own room.