Avenging Angels (Bad Times Book 3)

by Chuck Dixon

  “Titus!” he bawled out at last.

  “Tuccius, sir!” The lictor quavered as he appeared in the doorway between the glowering assassins.

  “Call for a runner! A fast one! Two runners!”

  36

  The Human Storm

  The House Villeneuve was in turmoil.

  Young Jeannot had not returned from his journey onto the streets the night before. By the early dawn hours, there was no word of his whereabouts. Mme. Villeneuve would not normally have been concerned since the boy had spent many nights out drinking with his friends. But he left the house after curfew and might have been taken by the guard. They were not known for their gentle treatment of violators.

  That was the least horrific of the possible fates her son might have suffered. The Prussian bombardment continued through the night, shells landing within the city, demolishing buildings and gouging craters in the streets. Jeannot could have been injured or even killed by a random explosive. Even now he could be lying dead in a gutter or dying on a filthy hospital cot.

  “You cannot blame yourself,” Caroline assured her. “He is a grown man. You could not forbid him from leaving.”

  “The feelings you have for your infant son will not abate as he grows older,” Mme. Villeneuve said as she sipped a cup of chicory fortified with brandy.

  “I do not presume. I only beg you to be easy on yourself. Jeannot was probably prevented from returning home for any number of innocuous reasons.”

  “Perhaps you are right.” The widow smiled at the baby sleeping in her guest’s arms. “I know that you are being kind. But a mother’s worry cannot be assuaged.” Cause for her worry grew more urgent as the sound of shouts reached them from the street outside. They rose from a muffled grumble to a loud clamor of voices clearly heard even through the shutters and thick drapes covering the windows.

  Caroline parted the drapes to look out the windows facing Avenue Bosquet. Men were marching down the street in ragged ranks through the morning mist. There were uniformed soldiers dotted among them, but the file was mostly men in civilian clothing. Some wore banners tied across their chests, others had ribbons pinned to their coats or knotted about their sleeves. There were flags being waved, and most of the men were armed. Some shouldered rifles or shotguns, others carried pikes or axes or mallets.

  They shouted for more men to join them. They sang a cacophony of different songs with no real attempt to share a common key or tune. This was a boisterous crowd of men, most of whom appeared drunk, if not on spirits then with some sort of uniting fervor of purpose. The noise of the crowd drowned out even the insistent pounding of cannon fire from the streets beyond. The cobbles and walks were littered with sheets of paper. Some of the men waved them in their hands or threw them into the air to fall on the heads of the marching mob like confetti.

  All along the sidewalks and the median that ran down the center of the avenue, crowds stood and cheered encouragement. Some women waved hankies and wept, while others laughed as they called out encouragement to the passing columns. Other women even walked with the men, and a few were held upon the shoulders of marchers. A few bared their breasts to the cold air as though to officially stamp the procession as purely French in nature. Old men waved flags. Children stood in mute wonder. This was not a celebration or a parade or a protest. These men were marching to battle.

  Caroline reported what she saw to her hostess, who sent the manservant Claude out onto the street to investigate. He returned a few moments later with one of the printed broadsheets in hand. The sleeve of his coat had been parted from his shoulder. He explained that some of the men had tried to draft him into their ranks. He assured his mistress that he had no intention of leaving her service, and so forcibly resisted their invitations. Caroline wondered how many of those men were capable of continuing their march after their encounter with the imposing Claude.

  Mme. Villeneuve read the printed notice with dismay. It was a call to arms for all able-bodied Frenchmen to join le sortie torrentiale to break the Prussian siege. In the most inflammatory language a fevered mind could imagine, the handbill urged the men of Paris to take up weapons and join the fight. It promised that each man would be a hero eternal to the empire and any who did not heed the call would be thought cowards and worse.

  The seals of the city’s most prominent clubs appeared at the bottom along with the embossed seal of the city itself and the bold signature of Jules Ferry, the mayor of Paris and commander of the National Guard.

  Jeannot’s words of the evening before were not idle musings. The government of the city and its citizens had been clamoring for an organized uprising for weeks. It became the cause of the day. In the student clubs, the Paris Commune, the bars and brothels, the idea that a half million Frenchmen could march out and spend their fury on the invaders took hold. First as an idle fantasy and then as an idée fixe that moved the men to action. In the end, the generals could not resist and agreed to lead a counter-assault to lift the siege.

  “There is not enough danger in the streets, my son marches to battle to die on a German bayonet.” Mme. Villeneuve sat with a lace handkerchief to her cheek, eyes numb with shock.

  “You don’t know that Jeannot went with them,” Caroline said with little conviction.

  “I am not a fool!” the widow proclaimed and waved her visitor from the front drawing room. She wished to be alone to embrace her grief without interference.

  “Can they succeed?” Caroline asked Claude as the big man gently shut the doors to the room, leaving his mistress to her sorrow.

  “It is doubtful, Madame,” he said solemnly. “The defeat and capture of the city are inevitable. The generals have tried to convince the populace of this with little result.”

  “You are a resolute people.”

  “We are a romantic people, Madame. And when romance is held too dear, it becomes foolishness.”

  “But if this counterattack will fail, then why have the generals agreed to lead it?”

  “Perhaps because it is the only way to convince us that we have lost,” Claude said and held the door to the kitchen open for Caroline and her bundle to enter.

  “Excuse me for saying so, Claude, but for so formidable a man, you are quite the philosopher,” Caroline said.

  “I am French.” Claude shrugged. “What you call philosophy, I call seeing the world for what it is.”

  Anatole was within the kitchen. But rather than preparing their lunch he was pulling on his winter coat while Inès, the plump downstairs maid, stood weeping into the sleeve of her blouse.

  “And where are you off to?” Claude demanded. “I will fight!” Anatole declared. He jammed a hat upon his head and snatched a broad-bladed chopping knife from a block.

  Claude stepped close to him and batted the knife from the smaller man’s hand with a flick of his fingers.

  “You will not,” Claude said, and lifted the man from the floor by the front of his coat. A button went flying across the room from where Claude’s big hands took twin fistfuls of the heavy cloth.

  “You are needed here, you pompous little Breton,” Claude said with no malice. “The Madame needs the comforts of her home and staff, and you will not desert her, only to be killed by some Bavarian whoreson.”

  “Only a coward refuses the clarion call.” Anatole sniffed. He looked ridiculous suspended above the tiles, feet swinging and making belligerent challenges to the giant who held him.

  “What good are you to anyone dead?” Claude set him down. “Now, back to your stove and make us breakfast.”

  Anatole slipped from his coat with the help of an openly blubbering Inès, only now her tears ran down a face transformed by joy. The little chef glared at Claude, who took a seat on a stool. But the expression on the man’s face was a front that did little to mask the relief in his eyes. He had made his display of courage for all to see, and thus, his manhood was secure.

  Late that evening, either due to a widow’s prayers or pure, stupid chance, Jeannot did ret
urn.

  He came to the door well past midnight. Claude answered to a feeble patter from outside and drew the bolts open to admit the boy. Jeannot was covered in drying mud from his boots to his collar. His right hand was bandaged in dirty rags encrusted with black blood. He was drawn and exhausted. The young man looked as though he had aged a decade in a single day.

  Claude ushered the boy into the dining room and sat him down before pouring a tumbler of brandy. Jeannot gulped the draught greedily. Claude ordered Inès to rush upstairs and alert Madame, who came down the steps with the help of Corrine and their Canadian guest. She was not so overcome with relief to prevent her from ordering Inès to sweep up the clumps of muck left on the floor by her son’s passage. The widow sat in a chair close by her son and took his bandaged hand in hers.

  “We came out of the fog within steps of their defenses at Gennevilliers,” Jeannot said from his seat at the head of the table. His mother sat by him holding his wounded hand, leaving his other free to hold the tumbler of brandy. He spoke huskily, drily, with no trace of emotion. His eyes looked pained as they focused inwardly while he told his tale.

  “That surprised the swine. It really did. We swept over them, mobs of men rushing together to batter a single Prussian to the ground. There were children who joined us at the end. And women. I saw a woman fatter than Inès laughing like an asylum inmate as she drove a butcher knife into the face of a screaming soldier years younger than I. There was no rifle fire at first. It was man to man with bayonet and club. The trenches were packed with writhing men.”

  He took a long swallow of the brandy, and Claude poured a new portion that reached the brim of the glass.

  “I joined an attack on a gun position, a big twelve-pounder. I think our mad idea was to turn the gun and use it ourselves. Though I doubt one of us knew how to load or fire the damned thing. We slipped and slid up an icy earthworks hand over hand, climbing over one another to be the first.

  That was when the rifles sounded. The Germans recovered from their shock soon enough and trained their guns on us in ranks of three. It was like the old way, like Bonaparte’s time. They stood in files loading and firing in terrible succession.”

  A single tear coursed through the dried filth on Jeannot’s face.

  “We died then in numbers. Our zeal to fight was washed away in blood. I ran. We all ran. We stumbled over the bodies of our own. Anything to escape that deadly noise. Somehow they came around our left. Our right? I cannot know. They came quietly, with steel bared. They laughed as they caught us on the points of their blades. A big bastard with mustaches like a hairbrush came at me, and I grabbed his bayonet in my hand.”

  Jeannot held up the bandaged hand with a simpering sound.

  “It was foolish, but I believe it saved my life. I yanked the blade to one side and shot the man in the throat with Father’s pistol. I stole it from your room a few nights ago, Mama. The Prussian fell atop me. This blood is his.” Jeannot touched fingers to his coat where it was stained as black as ink.

  “You need tell us no more,” his mother pleaded.

  “I lay beneath him. I felt his last breaths on my face. I lay still and listened to the dying all around me. I did not move as the sortie en masse was slaughtered to a man. I heard women scream and children make sounds like...like... There is no sound like that this side of Hell. I remained under my German, feeling the warmth leave his body, covered with his blood, and acted as one dead. When the sun had gone down, I crawled from beneath him. Crawled...”

  Jeannot turned and met his mother’s eyes. His face was white, his skin like wax. Only his eyes, rimmed scarlet, betrayed the life inside the boy. He collapsed then, sobbing on her breast while she patted his head and cooed comforting words the rest could not hear until he fell into a deep slumber there.

  “I took the liberty of adding a tincture of laudanum to that last portion of brandy, Madame,” Claude said as he lifted the unconscious boy from the widow’s arms.

  “That was quite thoughtful, Claude,” she said with a smile that might have been incongruous considering the tale of horror her son had told them. But her boy was alive, and no one saw anything out of place in her joy.

  Claude walked to the foot of the steps, carrying the boy like a child.

  “May I help?” Caroline asked.

  “Do you know of medicine?” the big man replied.

  “I have had training,” she said. Dwayne had shown her some combat medical procedures about treating wounds of all kinds. She was no expert but knew the rudiments, and being from the twenty-first century, she knew more basics about fighting infection than anyone alive in 1871. Hell, one mouthwash commercial on TV was worth more than a university education in this day and age.

  With the help of Corrine and Inès, they stripped the boy and washed him. He was bruised along the ribs, and Claude checked for breaks while Caroline cut away the caked cloth tied around Jeannot’s hand. The wound was deep across the palm of the hand, but none of the fingers were threatened, though she could see the white of bone through a gash at the base of the thumb. She cleaned the hand with hot soapy water. She picked tiny remnants of cloth left from his glove out of the sticky crevice of the wound with tweezers.

  “What are the strongest spirits you have in the house, Claude?” she asked.

  He left the room and returned with a dark bulbous bottle.

  “Rum. From Antigua. No one could stand it but the master,” he said and pulled the cork with his teeth.

  He held a bowl under Jeannot’s hand while Caroline poured a liberal splash over the wound. The boy winced audibly but did not awaken.

  “It should be sewn closed,” she said.

  “I will do it if one of the maids will fetch the sewing box and thread the needle for me.” Claude smiled gently and held up his scarred sausage fingers. The man was absolutely a boxer in his day.

  “There is a sewing kit in my room,” Caroline directed Corrine. There were several unused needles in her case. They would be far more sterile than whatever was customary for use in this house.

  The wound cleaned, closed, and wrapped in fresh muslin, Jeannot was laid in the bed in a laundered nightshirt. Claude would stay with him through the night. The crisis was over, for now.

  Down in the dining room, Mme. Villeneuve accepted Caroline’s prognosis with gratitude. The widow was dozy, and confessed that she had helped herself to a cocktail of brandy and laudanum. Caroline helped her up the steps to her room. The maids worked together to see their mistress to bed as swiftly as they could manage.

  And so Madame Villeneuve did not update her journal for a second night, thus sparing them from the dark man with the head of ivory hair for one more day.

  37

  Strangers With Candy

  Bat Jaffe never realized how exhausting talking could be.

  She stood atop the earthworks of the Roman fort and addressed the clumps of freed slaves milling about the ruined camp. Her voice was hoarse from trying to explain that they were all free to go. No one was listening. She wasn’t even sure most of them could understand her. They weren’t running away as instructed or as expected. They were just poking around through the wreckage, helping themselves to whatever they found there. Others located the cook tent and dragged out baskets of food that they then gorged on. Bat called out to them, but they ignored her. A few were wandering off over the rough ground in the general direction of wherever they thought home lay. But even those few didn’t appear to be in a particular hurry.

  “Give it a rest for a minute,” Lee said and wet a bandana from his CamelBak. The big Ranger was carrying the banner of the Twenty-third.

  “You taking that with us?”

  “Bet your ass. This is gonna look great in my media room.”

  “What media room?”

  “The one we’re going to have,” he said and handed her the dripping cloth.

  “That almost sounds like a proposal,” she said and accepted the damp cloth, which she held to the back of her neck.


  “Way cooler than a stupid ring,” Lee said and waggled the banner. The polished horse atop it caught the sunlight.

  “We have to get them moving, Lee,” Bat said, pointing her chin down at the men clumped below them.

  “Remember, there’s only one here that we’re interested in,” he said. “Some of them ran off. Maybe he was one of them. It’s ‘Jesus, save yourself’ from here on. Our job is done here.”

  “Or maybe he died on the march or in the quarry. Maybe we came here for nothing.”

  “That’s always a possibility.”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “Then the world we go back to is going to be a lot different than the one we left.” He shrugged.

  “If we get back. Mission failure would mean that the future changed from this point on, right? No Taubers. No time machine. No way back.”

  “I try not to think about things like that,” Lee said. “What if things are different? What will they be like? Rhetorically.”

  “Rhetorically?”

  “Okay, theologically,” Bat said. “If they’re different, it’s because Jesus’s life was interrupted and the events he lived through were never recorded. What does that prove?”

  “Maybe you and Chaz will be singing from the same hymn book.”

  “I don’t think so, stupid. Jews recognize Christ as a philosopher, just like Buddha or Plato. He lived and was influential to history. Subtracting him from the historical record would be a major shake-up to the status quo even if you don’t believe.”

  “Like if there was no Elvis.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Maybe that should be our next mission,” Lee said. “Go back and save the King.”