They passed along the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, where they gingerly made their way through masses of sleeping sheep. The stench was overpowering. Occasionally a startled sheep would bleat a complaint. They knew their way well, using tree stumps and hedges and ditches to mask their passage. There were occasional patrols of militia, but instead of patrolling, the men were gathered around small fires behind the newly constructed redoubts. Their heads were down in conversation, their hands clasping bottles of wine. It was a quiet night and the men were bored. The boys could hear their grumbling murmurs.
The first challenge of the night was to enter the city proper, which meant they had to get past the great wall that surrounded it. The means of their passage had generated most of the argument that day. Paul thought they should simply walk through one of the gates, for which they carried safe-passage cards, but Moussa rolled his eyes at the very thought of it. “We can’t go through the gate,” he said. “Merde, this is a secret mission. What do we tell the guards? That we’ve come to help a prisoner escape? Besides, we have to have some way to get back out again, when we have your father.”
Actually, no one would have questioned them at all at the gates, even at that hour. No curfew had yet been established and a great deal of foot traffic still passed back and forth at all hours of the day and night. Being questioned, however, was hardly the point. Moussa wanted their mission to have a certain flair; and one couldn’t have the same kind of adventure strolling through a gate as one could have sneaking into the city under the very noses of its guards. It wasn’t creative, or brave, or even very French to be so straightforward when subterfuge would serve so much better.
“I see what you mean,” Paul finally agreed, although he grew more nervous and less enthusiastic about the plan with each step. Yet he wasn’t a coward and couldn’t stand the thought of Moussa’s taunts if he refused to go through with it.
At the edge of the Bois they stopped at a culvert to pick up the secret transport they’d hidden earlier that day, their small wooden raft with two paddles. They had floated it many times on the river near the château. Their plan was to carry the boat to the Seine. There was a break in the city wall where the river passed through. They would put the raft in, paddle across in the shadow of the wall, and come ashore inside Paris on the left bank.
“It will be easy,” Moussa promised.
“What about the water gates?” Paul asked. There were large gates that swung across the river to halt traffic.
“There’s room at the edge. The raft is small enough. We can get around them.”
The boys carried the raft and neared the base of the thick stone wall. It was awkward going. The wood bit into their hands while the bushes scratched their faces. They had to stop often to rest. They were careful to stay in the shadows, but had to cross two roads before reaching the river. They entered the first road too quickly and were nearly spotted by a patrol of Zouaves. They reversed their course hurriedly and disappeared back into the brush until the patrol passed. At the next one they were careful to wait, watching and listening until they were certain there was no one about. After they were clear of the road they hurried down the gentle slope toward the river. The wall towered high and dark above them. On its ramparts were more guards, ready for the Prussians with cannons, mitrailleuses, and rifles. At one of the bastions they could make out the face of a guard as he came to the end of the walkway and paused. They could see a small red glow from the cigarette he was smoking. He threw it into the water, and they watched its long lazy descent. After a while the guard turned and disappeared. Across the river in the opposing bastion they could see other guards.
“They’re paying more attention than the guards in the Bois,” Paul whispered.
“I know.” Moussa nodded excitedly. He was highly pleased with their mission so far. The city was an armed camp, and they were about to foil its defenses. “Be quiet. Let’s go!”
Together they slipped the boat into the slow-moving water and crawled on board. They made barely a splash, but to Paul it sounded like thunder and trumpets. He was certain that every noise they made would be their last, and that the next noise he heard would be a rifle fired at them. He wondered what a bullet felt like. Then a terrible thought occurred to him. His whisper to Moussa was louder than he intended it to be.
“Do you think we might look like Prussians in the dark?”
“Paddle!” Moussa hissed, and Paul hastily picked up his paddle and started working on the water, careful not to stir it any more than necessary. They had to go upstream, but the current was gentle. They were at home on the water, and Paul’s nervousness faded as he concentrated on the task at hand. They were midway across the river and passing the plane of the wall itself when he looked up. He saw the bright flare of a match that illuminated the face of the guard high above them. Unconsciously he tried to become part of the bottom of the boat. It seemed impossible that he could see the guard so clearly, and that the guard couldn’t see him. Paul had no idea why he’d agreed to this crazy stunt, especially since it must be done in the dark. He hated the dark, always had, hated its terrors and its mysteries, hated it when Moussa used it to scare him, hated it when he heard things in it, hated the things he imagined. Now it was their shelter, but it was awful shelter, and it was too late to go back. He promised himself he’d kiss a girl before he’d listen to one of Moussa’s half-witted ideas again. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer for invisibility and paddled softly along.
Suddenly, Moussa accidentally slapped the water with his paddle. Paul caught his breath. “Shhhhhh!”
“I know, I know,” Moussa whispered. They had both stopped paddling for a moment, and their raft began to turn and float downstream again. “We’re drifting! Keep paddling!” They dug their paddles into the water again, but Paul had shifted his attention, up to where he had seen the guard. Absently he started paddling the wrong direction, making the raft turn in a circle. “Not that way,” Moussa hissed. “Go the other way!” Hurriedly Paul corrected himself, and once again the boat turned in the right direction. His palms were wet with perspiration. He wondered how they could be so wet when his mouth was so dry. He hated the feeling, and wished he were home.
The boys worked softly, steadily. The little raft moved upstream.
Up on his post, a National Guardsman waited. Marcel Julienne was a forty-four-year-old blacksmith. He had been a soldier for six days, and on the ramparts for five. He blessed his luck at drawing guard duty on the wall. He could stay warm, and the solid earthwork and stone of the wall offered a lot of protection in the event the Hun actually tried to do something. Officers rarely showed up to check on them after dark, for after all, officers had better things to do than worry about an invasion everyone knew wasn’t coming. Yet Marcel was never overly casual. Even if no one else expected the Prussians to come pouring over the walls, he didn’t want to be surprised by a bayonet in the belly. Every so often he actually drew himself to his feet and shouldered his rifle and wandered off to the edge of the rampart to have a look.
Paris was eerily dark for a Saturday night, her windows all blacked out for the siege. Away from the city he could make out the outline of the fort at Issy, a glow of new electric lights on its far side. All the forts around Paris had them. Beyond Issy there were Prussian watch fires, too distant to make out anything other than the fiery glow. Below him the river was dark and quiet and full of shadows. He was tired. He rubbed his eyes and shifted his musket to his other shoulder. He lit a cigarette, waiting just an instant too long to close his eyes before the match flared. For a few moments he was blind to the night. It didn’t matter. There was nothing to see anyway. As he was throwing the match away he stopped abruptly. He thought he heard something, and listened. The city was quiet behind him, the clouds acting like a great muffler. It sounded like something splashing in the water below him.
Marcel unshouldered his weapon and leaned over the edge of the wall. He couldn’t see clearly. There were still bright spots in h
is eyes from the fire of the match. He took his cigarette out of his mouth and set it on the wall next to him, to keep the smoke from bothering him. He strained forward once again, cocking his head a little sideways, and listened. His finger found the trigger. He stood perfectly still. He was certain there was something.
Another guard walked up behind him. “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Do you see something?”
Marcel raised his hand in caution. The guard fell silent and listened. He peered downstream, to where the river separated and made an island. He could make out the faint outline of its shore, and a stand of trees. His eyes ranged along the dark clumps of bushes near the shoreline closer to the wall, and along the roadways visible from their post. The river was inky black beneath them. The night was alive with a thousand shadows, and some of them made noise. But none of the shadows, he felt certain, were Prussian troops.
“Come on,” the guard said irritably. “It’s nothing. You’re holding up the game.”
Reluctantly Marcel nodded. He had been so sure. He shouldered his musket once again. He opened his jacket for the flask of brandy and took a deep drink. They walked back to the card game. It would be a long night.
Below him on the water the boys were just beginning to make out the murky outline of the water gates. The raft moved steadily forward. As they drew nearer Moussa began to discern something that didn’t look right. He slowed his paddling, and Paul followed suit. “What’s that?” Moussa whispered. Ahead, just in front of the gates, there were dark bulky objects floating in the water. They were indistinct, big, nothing more than shadowy phantoms. Smokestacks loomed above them, bobbing slightly on the river, and then they could see what looked like cannon in one end. As they drew closer they began to see the scattered forms of men. Moussa’s heart froze as the dark shapes took form in the darkness and he realized what they were.
“Gunboats!” There was a small flotilla of them, all tied together to form a boom on the water in front of the gates. They had not been there before, but had been brought in to defend against an enemy approach on the water. The boys were almost upon them by the time they realized what they were.
“Quick! Turn around!” Paul said. In his panic he forgot to whisper, and his voice carried across the water.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” From one of the boats a deep voice rang out, its stern authority plunging cold fear into the boys. A sailor jumped up and looked out across the water. Instinctively Paul and Moussa hunched down and started to paddle as quickly but quietly as they could, turning their raft back the other way. The sailor heard the noise they made quite clearly, but saw nothing.
“Who is there? Identify yourselves!” he demanded. Others stood to look. The voices floated over the little craft as it moved away from them in its quickening flight downstream. “Craft in the water!” came a shout. “Fire the engines!” came another. “Man the guns!” The gunboats came alive with sailors who had been asleep in them. The boys paddled madly, listening in dread to the commotion growing behind them, abandoning caution and paddling harder, ever more furiously as the noise of the alarm drowned out the sounds of their passage. There were metallic noises and the clank of tools from the boats as sailors scrambled to start the engines. Firing the boilers to full steam was a slow process, and the crews wasted no time. No one knew exactly what was out there, whether it might be a sneak attack by the Prussians or Bismarck himself on a night cruise up the Seine.
A bosun roused from a deep sleep quickly realized that the steam engines would take too long to fire up, and determined to make chase immediately. He led five men in an awkward dance over the tops of the gunboats. They made their way to one of the iron-plated shallops, a small open boat with long oars and a single gun. They would row after the intruder. The shallop was moored between two of the gunboats, poorly positioned for a quick departure. The bosun shouted orders as the sailors worked furiously to free it. “Cast off that line,” he roared in frustration as one of the sailors fumbled with a rope. They were wasting precious time.
“Faites vite! Quickly! Quickly!”
With barely controlled panic fueling their arms, Paul and Moussa were paddling as fast as they could move, terrified by the explosion of activity behind them. “Are they chasing us?” Moussa asked. Paul looked around. He couldn’t see anything on the water, and wasn’t about to wait and look. “I can’t tell,” he puffed. Paul’s face was dripping, splashed each time Moussa lifted his paddle from the water. Their arms were aching from the effort. They were just passing the wall of the city, the raft moving rapidly as it passed into the open water.
Marcel Julienne was sitting at the card game with a good hand when he heard the shouting. So there was something after all! Without a word he picked up his musket and ran back to his post at the edge of the rampart, where he could get a view of the water and the gunboats. The other guards threw down their cards and ran to their own posts. “Is it a general attack?” one asked nervously. A night assault was something they all feared.
Marcel saw sailors moving around on the gunboats, their forms backlit by the fires awakening the boilers. He couldn’t make out what was happening, except that there was a commotion. Something was out there. His eyes began searching the water, methodically passing back and forth from the near bank to the far one, his search starting at the gunboats and moving back down-river. Without diverting his eyes he unslung the musket from his shoulder and nestled it under his left arm.
I’m going to bag a Hun! he told himself, too excited to be afraid. He felt his pulse quickening, the effects of the brandy washing away in the excitement. His eyes moved systematically, quickly. Damn! Nothing but darkness! He stared again at the gunboats. A few lanterns had been lit on their decks as the crews worked furiously. He could make out a shallop as it moved away from the group, its long oars like fine wings waving from its sides as the crew maneuvered into position. There was a shrill whistle, and more shouting.
Cold black water from the river splashed over the front of the raft as Moussa dipped and leaned and leaned and dipped, pulling with all his might. He could feel Paul in the back doing the same, the raft bobbing slightly against their movements. They were making great time, he knew. The noise behind them was terrifying in its effect. All hell was breaking loose as the whole of Paris seemed to be awakening and coming after them. Moussa didn’t want to imagine the trouble they were going to be in, the look on his father’s face when the militia dragged them home to the château. We have to get away! He pushed the thoughts out of his mind. There was no time for thinking, no time for anything, just flight down the river, exhilarating and horrifying at the same time, his body flushed with adrenaline, his mind fixed on the rhythm of his motion, no time to look left or right or anywhere but straight ahead, downstream. He kept to the middle, not wanting to chance heading for either shore too close to the wall. There would be men on foot or maybe even horseback out there, looking for them. There was an island in the middle of the stream not far ahead. He would steer them there. Dip, lean, dip, lean; the boys paddled with all their might.
Marcel searched the river a section at a time, letting his eyes adjust each time he moved them, his every sense alert. He desperately wanted a cigarette, but dared not take his eyes from the water. Where are the bastards? He fidgeted with his musket, wondering if it would fire properly when he needed it. Sometimes they didn’t, and blew up in the faces of the men firing them. He wished he had one of the new Chassepots, instead of the old tabatière. And then he saw a movement in the water and held perfectly still. What was it? A wave? A log? His eyes ached as he sought a focus. He rubbed them, but it was too dark. The water was full of tricks from his angle. Everywhere he looked there was something; everywhere he looked there was nothing. But there it was again! It moved!
“Oui!” he shouted, to no one in particular. He raised his weapon and shouldered it, supporting himself on his elbows as he leaned out on the parapet wall. He took aim at the spot, blinking to clear his eyes of the liquor and the smoke. He felt th
e hair tingling on the back of his neck, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet zinged into the water next to the raft. Both boys heard it, but neither realized what it was until an instant later when the rifle shot registered.
“Moussa, they’re shooting at us!” Paul croaked, his throat so constricted from fear that he almost couldn’t speak. The realization was stunning, the fright crushing his chest so that it was hard to breathe.
“Go faster!” Moussa said. “We’ve got to get out of range!”
“No, let’s tell them—!”
Before he could finish Marcel had reloaded and fired again. The bullet was closer than the first one. Its sound shook Paul with the terrible understanding that their harmless adventure had gotten all twisted and turned deadly, that behind and above them were soldiers determined to find and obliterate the occupants of the little boat. They don’t know we’re just boys, Paul thought. They don’t know we’re not Prussians. His heart was going wild. He closed his eyes and felt himself peeing in his pants. No one knows we’re just kidding.
“Shut up and paddle!” Moussa hissed, and the little boat fairly flew down the water as they pulled for their lives. In the distance they could make out the dim silhouette of the island looming out of the river. Far behind them, on the other side of the city wall, they heard the chunk-chunk of one of the gunboat engines as it steamed at last into life.
For a mile up and down the wall, the alert was confused but gathering momentum. Lanterns went out and guards raced to their posts. Soldiers in the bastions hailed others down the line. Men shouted orders into the night as the drowsy and half-drunk garrison sprang into action. There had been no drills, so few of the men knew what to do but to run half-panicked to the edge of the wall and peer into the night at the unseen enemy. “What’s the trouble?” they asked each other uncertainly. No one knew anything except that something was going on. Gun barrels poked uncertainly at the blackness as hundreds of eyes strained to see.
Empires of Sand Page 23