Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  “I heard drums before,” Jules said at length.

  “I’m afraid it’s bad.” Henri explained the situation as best he knew it. “There may be civil war before it’s over. I don’t know who will be running things in the morning, or whether it will affect your trial. If it does, it can only make things worse.”

  “I don’t know how they could get worse. My God, the Prussians outside the gates and now le spectre rouge inside. I never would have believed that so much could go wrong so quickly.”

  A rainstorm settled over the city and lasted through the night. Jules listened to the steady downpour and didn’t sleep at all.

  At the château Paul prayed alone in his bed, silent prayers mingled with oaths and promises and declarations. It was the first night he had ever spent in fear.

  “You asleep?” he whispered to Moussa.

  “No.”

  “You think they’ll let him go?”

  Silence. The rain pounded on the window. “Oui. Do you?”

  More silence.

  “Oui”

  By the light of a candle Henri and Serena held each other and listened to the storm. Henri told her of his doubts.

  “No one could have done more,” she protested.

  “I could have broken him out.”

  “And I would have helped you, and then we’d all be in the cell with him, or outcasts. Then who would be left to help us?” She squeezed his hand. “It is not the way. You have done what you can, mon amour. You have done what you must. And I believe it will work. Tomorrow he will be free.”

  Alone among the deVrieses, Elisabeth slept soundly that night. She had not attended the trial. It was simply too embarrassing, and there had been no need. She had sealed her bargain with the bishop. Her part was done, and the rest was just show. She had found the papers, her heart nearly stopping when Serena entered Henri’s study while she had the papers out on the desk, but she had managed to cover them up, and had gotten them out successfully. The notary had done his work, the bishop his. The judges were the right judges, and they had received their instructions. The bishop was efficient.

  She wished she could share her knowledge with the others, with Paul at least; but of course, it was impossible. She told him not to worry, but he dismissed her with that awful look she’d seen in his eyes of late. He seemed so distant just now, and wouldn’t talk to her. He spent all his time with Moussa and when he talked to adults it was to Henri or Serena or Gascon, never to her. She supposed it was a phase, that he would get through it. She would fix it later. Everything would be better later, when this business was done.

  * * *

  Court was scheduled to convene at nine o’clock the next morning. By seven the crowds were assembling in the courtyard, larger than the day before, fueled by newspaper accounts of the trial. Some had spent the night outside the Hôtel de Ville, where an uneasy compromise had been reached in the hours before dawn. Elections were to be held, and there were to be no reprisals against the leaders of the uprising.

  For the moment, civil war had been averted.

  Half an hour early, at eight-thirty, the prisoner was shown into the courtroom. His lawyers and the prosecutor had been hurriedly summoned from their homes by special messengers, and were hustled into the court through a side door. The court was empty except for Jules and the lawyers. Suddenly the judges filed in and took their seats. Jules was puzzled. Obviously not even Henri had been informed. It was clear the judges had decided not to wait for the crowds. The prosecutor started to object, but the judge silenced him and told Jules to stand. The judge spoke only two more words.

  Non coupable. Not guilty.

  Jules heard it with numb relief. It was done that quickly, without speeches or explanation, a swift climax to his long nightmare. He closed his eyes. Again the outraged prosecutor leapt to his feet, but the judges were already departing. Outside, the crowd sensed that something was developing, and a few spectators entered the courtroom. Like a brush fire the news spread through the assemblage, producing disbelief and shock. They had come for blood and had been denied. The morning’s ennui was to have been punctuated with a firing squad. All the smart money knew it. Only pay offs and corruption could have managed such an outcome.

  Henri and the boys were approaching the court just as Jules was leaving. He was under an escort of guards who pushed their way through a crowd pulsing with malice. From atop the carriage Paul saw his father in the middle of the throng. The boy must have absorbed more than he thought the previous day, because he read the mood of the crowd and knew instantly what it meant.

  “They’re letting him go!” he cried in jubilation. He leapt from the carriage and plunged into the multitude, ignoring the count’s shouts to stop. He made his way through a forest of legs and arms to Jules. “We’re going home!” Paul said in a half-question, half-statement.

  “Oui,” the colonel nodded. “We’re going home.” He said it dully. His eyes were listless, his spirit low. His happiness at seeing Paul could not overcome the awful sadness that engulfed him. During the long dark hours of his captivity he had often wondered how it would feel to be set free. It wasn’t to be like this, not at all. The glorious delight of liberation he had expected was missing, choked away by the loathing of the crowd. He felt cheated and empty.

  Paul followed him closely as he made his way to the carriage. The shouts got uglier as they went. “Déserteur! Traître! Allez au diable!” The crowd was becoming a mob. People jostled and pushed and ripped at Jules’s uniform. One tore an epaulet from his shoulder. The motion startled Jules from his reverie. Without thinking he hit the man, whose jaw shattered with a crack. He collapsed on his back, the crowd around him incensed at the colonel’s brutality. With growing concern for Paul’s safety, Jules took him by the hand and began shoving his way along, pulling Paul in his wake.

  “Quickly!” Henri called desperately, seeing that the situation was getting out of hand. Jules heaved his son onto the carriage and leapt aboard himself. Henri lashed the horses, and the carriage lurched against the crowd that was surrounding it. The guards had melted away altogether, abandoning the square to its own passions.

  “It was all fixed!” a man shouted. “Justice bought and paid for by the Count deVries!” “À bas la noblesse! À bas le gouvernement! Vive la Commune!” The crowd roared and the horses drawing the carriage whinnied in fright. Pebbles began to fly. The colonel took one on his forehead that drew blood. Terrified, Paul and Moussa huddled on the floor of the carriage. Determined hands grasped the sides of the carriage and tipped it back and forth, hoping to overturn it. Henri pushed relentlessly on, turning his whip on two men who tried to grab the harness. They fell away and the carriage moved out of the square.

  As the angry gauntlet faded behind them Jules looked to be sure the boys were all right, then down at his hands. With surprise he saw they were trembling. They hadn’t ever done that before, not in Africa or Italy or in the face of Delescluze. His temples were throbbing. The carriage passed quickly through the city. He stared out into the cold November day. It was a different Paris than the one he had left on his way to war. He didn’t know her anymore, nor she him.

  CHAPTER 12

  The pangs of hunger began to gnaw at the smallcaps belly of Paris. November passed and milk ran out. The massive herds of sheep and cattle that once filled the Bois de Boulogne and the Champs-Élysées were depleted. Private livestock was confiscated. Donkeys and mules disappeared. The dog population began to shrink, while cat carcasses were decorated with colored paper and hung in butcher shop windows above signs that proclaimed the delicate pleasures of the “gutter rabbits” for sale inside. Butter and cheese were only fond memories. For one franc a day men ventured into the neutral zone between French and Prussian lines, ducking bullets as they pulled roots and vegetables and stuffed them into sacks before scurrying back to safety. Goldfish in the ponds of the Luxembourg Gardens were caught and eaten. Women waited all night in food lines that stretched for blocks. Only wine was plen
tiful and still cheap, so that except for the well-to-do most of the city went to bed drunk and hungry.

  On one of their Sunday morning explorations Paul and Moussa saw a crowd gathered around a vendor’s stall in the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. The vendor had a patch over one eye and wore a seedy jacket. Before him were piled stacks of wooden cages full of red-eyed rats whirling madly around inside, desperate to escape, nipping at each other and working on the wood of the cages with long sharp teeth. The rats were fat and brown with pink ears and feet and tails. A bulldog lay on the sidewalk next to the cages, occasionally opening an eye to inspect the rats or the gawkers, but otherwise rock-still.

  “What do you do with the rats?” Moussa asked.

  “Eat them,” grumped the vendor.

  “Why would you do that?” Paul asked in wonder.

  “Because you are hungry, naturellement.” The man shrugged.

  Moussa couldn’t imagine it. “How could you ever get that hungry?”

  The vendor looked at the boys with their fine clothing and full faces. He was tempted to shoo them away, but they were just stupid children and meant no harm. He spat in the gutter. “By being born in this hellhole of a world,” he said. As he spoke a woman approached the stand. She was frail and gray. Two small children clung to her skirts. For a few moments she regarded the occupants of the cages. The rats quarreled and stared and turned in circles. She shivered and drew her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, unable to make up her mind. For a moment her resolve deserted her and she began to leave. She had gone only a few steps when she hesitated and then returned, a look of despair on her tortured face. At length she raised a bony hand and pointed. The man used a stick to goad her purchase through a little gate into a smaller cage. The bulldog stirred itself from its languor and sat up attentively, waiting to do its duty. The vendor opened one end of the little cage and tilted it at an angle toward the waiting dog. The rat turned and tried to run, but it was a poor uphill climber. The vendor shook the little cage, the rat slipping and clawing and scratching, and finally it fell out the end to the waiting animal, who caught it in powerful jaws before it hit the ground. With a quick motion the dog tossed it in the air and caught it by the head. The dog shook it once. The rat went suddenly limp, neck broken, body dangling from the dog’s mouth. Dutifully the dog dropped it at the feet of the vendor, and promptly plopped down again, bored. The boys watched in awe. They’d never seen a smarter dog. The vendor bent over and deftly picked the rat up by the tail, wrapped it in a piece of newspaper, and passed it to the woman. She paid him two francs and left. Paul was shocked.

  “You mean people pay to eat them?”

  The vendor smirked at his ignorance. “Oui, little master, as I will pay you. If you’ve the courage and the stomach for it, go hunt some and bring them to me. I’ll give you fifty centimes apiece.”

  “Fifty centimes? That would be easy money,” Paul scoffed. “Gascon catches them all the time in the stables.” Gascon set out traps filled with glucose to attract the rats, which became trapped in pots. He drowned them and threw their bodies behind the woodshed, where the neighborhood cats finished them off. Sometimes Moussa assisted with his slingshot. He didn’t like the rats much, but he wasn’t afraid of them, either.

  Moussa’s mind raced as he pondered the possibilities of becoming a rat magnate. “I know a place we could get more,” he said to Paul. “A lot more.”

  “Where?”

  “A place Sister Godrick showed me, without meaning to.”

  The cellar of St. Paul’s was a dark and ancient place of stone that Moussa knew well. There was a basement beneath the crypt where they buried old dead bishops, and another basement below that, all of it built centuries earlier with huge stone blocks quarried from beneath the city. After the latrines it was Godrick’s favorite purgatory for him, down there in the dark where some penance or another with a broom and dust-cloth awaited him. When she wasn’t checking up on him or he was tired of the work, he spent the time exploring. There were boxes of old leather-bound books, their pages brown and crumbling with age, filled with illustrations that showed men with horns and animals with human heads. One book showed graphic pictures of men and women – saints, he guessed – who had haloes and were shown meeting various horrible deaths. They were gored and speared, drawn and quartered, beheaded and hung upside down. Riveted, he turned the pages, concluding it was a tough business being a saint.

  There were stacks of old paintings leaning against the walls, covered with dust and tied together in bundles. Some were taller than he was. He cut them apart and found more gruesome pictures, oils that were cracked with age and depicted gargoyles and giant winged monsters being flown by men in armored suits. On the whole he liked them better than the portraits of cardinals and bishops that hung upstairs in the cathedral.

  One day Moussa found a staircase made of stone that descended from the lower basement. The opening was almost completely obscured by a faded woolen tapestry that hung on the wall. Moussa discovered it by accident with his broom. He took a lantern from its wall stand and started cautiously down. His insides tingled and stirred. He kept the lantern up and his head down, fearing only that he might run into a colony of spiders who, when not working in the school latrines, hid there waiting for people to come downstairs. To his vast relief there were none at all, not even any old cobwebs. Too dark and damp, he guessed. He descended one flight, and then another, and another. At the bottom stood an old rough-hewn oak door, heavy and worn. He tried to push it open but it didn’t budge. He set the lantern down and heaved with all his might. At last it moved, its old iron hinges complaining with rust and neglect. When he had gotten it open a little he stopped and listened. He could hear a faint rustling noise. He picked the lantern up and put it through, past the door, and looked inside. A wide corridor stretched away in the distance to where the light was swallowed up by the blackness. The walls were made of rough stone. Along the floor were piles of dirt and rubble.

  And amid the dirt and the rubble he had seen the light of the lantern reflected in a thousand tiny eyes, eyes that were now bringing fifty centimes a pair on the street. A perfect hunting ground. He hadn’t finished describing it to Paul before their decision to go hunting was made.

  “I don’t want it to be dark,” Paul said nervously as they gathered up what they needed. “I want to be able to see what I’m doing. We’ll catch more that way.” He wondered whether Moussa could read the fear in his voice, whether he knew Paul was afraid of the dark. Probably not, because when Moussa suspected such things he said so, just before gleefully rubbing it in. Paul had no idea of the terror lurking in Moussa’s soul about spiders, for of course Moussa never revealed it. Paul thought Moussa was absolutely fearless.

  “It won’t be dark,” Moussa said. “We’ll have a lantern.” Paul wasn’t as sure as Moussa sounded, but then he rarely was. Still, it seemed easy enough, if the rats were as plentiful as Moussa promised. They’d have quite a treasury by dark. They had glucose and tins and burlap sacks for their catch. Moussa brought his slingshot and a bag of pebbles, “in case the hunting gets too good for the traps.” They slipped into the cathedral through one of the side doors. No one paid any attention to them. They hurried through the hallways and toward the basement. It was all territory that Moussa knew well. Down the stairs they went, then down some more, until they were in the room with the tapestry. Paul’s heart beat a little faster, and he wondered if it was time to get a stomach ache or something. But so far Moussa was right – there was plenty of light, and Paul figured at least the tunnel wouldn’t have Prussians in it or, worse, trigger-happy French guards. He decided to keep going.

  They slipped behind the tapestry and descended the stairs, one flight after another, Moussa leading the way and Paul right behind. It got colder and damper as they went down, the stone walls seeming to weep with the ages. The stones were smooth and felt slimy to the touch. Their shoes made little noise on the solid steps. At last they reached the old door.
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  “Push it back,” Moussa whispered. His voice sounded loud in the confined space. Paul set his lantern and sack down and pushed. The door gave way with a creak. They stepped through the opening into the blackness, the air musty and still and cold on their necks. Paul closed the door again behind them, taking care not to let it go all the way. He was afraid the latch would catch and trap them there forever, in a lonely dungeon filled with devils and dread.

  “This is it,” Moussa said. He lifted his lantern, which cast a dim glow over the shadowy realm of mystery and the rats. “And they’re still here.” Paul saw them everywhere, little red eyes shining among the piles of dirt, eyes cautiously surveying the intruders. They stayed back out of the way, hiding at the farthest edges of the light.

  Waiting.

  The boys ventured farther into the room and busied themselves setting out the traps. It helped to be moving around, as if the noise they made might banish the demons of the darkness. They set the lantern on a ledge while they worked. Paul scooped out hollows between stones on the floor where they could set the tin traps, into which Moussa then poured glucose. When they were done they surveyed their work with satisfaction.

  “Two hours and I guess they’ll be filled up. We ought to get about a hundred,” Moussa said. He looked around. The area they were in was a room that narrowed into a corridor. “I wonder what’s down that way.”

  Paul didn’t share his curiosity. “I don’t know. But I’ll be all right just waiting here.”

  “You can’t wait here. The rats won’t just jump in the traps while you’re staring at them. You’ve got to give them some room.”

  “Then we can go upstairs.”

  Moussa replied using his long-perfected tone of voice that made Paul feel small and gutless. “You go upstairs if you want. I’m going exploring.”