Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  The sentry who had seen Jules said nothing, for there was nothing to say, really. An officer had ridden by in the dawn on his way to the Prussian lines and had not returned. He might have gone anywhere. Might have gotten drunk and fallen from his horse, might have gone off to Versailles to shoot Herr Bismarck, What officers did was not his concern. Madame LeHavre was sure Jules was out slopping drunk in an alley somewhere as he had been before, at no loss to the household. At first Henri thought Madame LeHavre might be right, but then Gascon told him one of the horses was missing. Henri went into Jules’s room. He saw that the sword and uniform and sidearms were gone, and suspected the truth. He rummaged through the papers and found no notes, nothing that would tell him for sure. It was unlike Jules to leave no word. Henri was heartsick at the tragedies that had befallen his brother, and agonized about what he might have done differently. Gascon asked him whether he wanted to mount another search in the city as they had done before. Henri shook his head. “This time we’ll not find him,” he said.

  “We mustn’t tell Paul,” Serena said. “Not now, not yet. You may be wrong. Anything might have happened.” Henri agreed.

  Paul himself decided that either his father had gone off to get drunk somewhere, or he’d finally become so angry with him that he didn’t want to live at the château anymore. Mostly he tried not thinking about it at all. A week passed, and another, and he couldn’t help noticing that life was easier when his father was gone. He loved his father and hated himself for the thought, but it wouldn’t go away. If only he could have his old father back, and things could be the way they used to be.

  Elisabeth was living somewhere in the city. She came and went without explanation. If she had to visit Paul she did it when she knew Henri was unlikely to be there. She had not seen the count. She had no idea whether he had found out about the property and no wish to be there when he did. She thought not, because she had intercepted the pathetic letter from Jules. But the count’s contacts were legion, the discovery just a matter of time. In fact the count’s property manager had volunteered for the National Guard, and had gotten himself shot by a subordinate. The count’s affairs were in complete disarray. Henri was too busy to tend to them himself, and not particularly concerned.

  Elisabeth hadn’t moved out, but she was never there. She told Paul she had business to attend to in the city, and that she would be back; things were just temporary. One day when it was snowing Paul saw her riding in a carriage next to a man with an elegant top hat and a fur collar and a trim goatee. She snuggled next to him as he draped his arm around her. Paul called out and chased her carriage, but she was laughing and didn’t see him, and disappeared down the boulevard.

  Henri worked feverishly on his balloons. It was something to do, something that kept his mind off his brother and the deteriorating situation in the city. The Volta was launched, carrying equipment and instruments to be used in making observations in Algeria of the approaching total eclipse of the sun. No one knew whether the balloon got there, but to launch it at all was a little victory over the Prussians, a triumph that proved French science and will thrived even in the face of war.

  One night in mid-December when the boys were asleep he snuggled with Serena, exhausted. “I want to take you to the opera,” he said. “There is a performance on Christmas Eve. A benefit.” Henri was not much fond of socializing, especially not during the siege, but he loved the opera and it would be a welcome break from routine. A benefit performance was being held to raise money for the hospitals. Many performers and musicians remained in the city, and a noted director had been persuaded to mount the production. The city was desperate for ways to sustain morale during the siege, to remind itself that it was still the glorious center of civilization.

  “The opera? Which one?”

  “This one is perfect for you.” He showed her the invitation. “It is called L’Africaine. I saw it once before. It is about an African woman named Selika.”

  “Selika? Very like mine.”

  “She pretends to be a slave, but is really a queen of her people.”

  “Why would a queen pretend to be a slave?”

  “For the story, and so she can fall in love with the hero. He is a great explorer. She can read maps, and shows him the way to India.”

  “Who cannot read maps? And this man, if he is such a great explorer, why does he need help to find India?”

  Henri smiled. “Did I know the way to the heart of the desert? He is not the first man who needs a clever queen to guide him. Anyway, the opera has everything. It is a great spectacle. Ships and storms at sea. A poison tree and a grand inquisitor.”

  “A grand—?”

  “Inquisitor,” he said. “A heckler, who works for the Church and has people tortured and put to death.”

  She arched her eyebrows. In her experience Henri’s Church seemed to have a lot of unsavory characters in it. “How amusing. Does he sing too?”

  “Everybody sings. It’s a very pretty opera. There are flutes and oboes and violins. It’s very moving. And graceful, like you.”

  “The more you describe it the more it sounds silly.”

  “Of course it’s silly. But it’s beautiful. You’ll love it, I know you will. Except in the end the queen lets the explorer sail off in his ship with another woman.” Henri squeezed her gently. “Of course, you know I would throw the other woman overboard, and come back for you.”

  “There would be no need,” Serena said. “I would see that her bed was crawling with scorpions. She wouldn’t live past the first night.”

  “You see? You understand the opera perfectly. And then she would sing even as she died from the venom.”

  Serena giggled. “That’s a lot of singing.”

  “They say writing it killed the composer. I met him once. A man named Meyerbeer. He died the day he finished.”

  “A difficult business, this Africaine.”

  “Yes, all around. I want you to dress up so all Paris can see what a true African queen looks like.”

  It was a sore subject with her. “Your countrymen have no desire to see me dressed up or otherwise, Henri. You know that. They think me a Prussian spy.” Her treatment at the hands of Paris had never been warm. She had never felt at home, never accepted. But since the beginning of the war it had been much worse, by turns humiliating and infuriating.

  Just before the siege the civil authorities had rounded up and expelled from Paris a large number of citizens whose character or demeanor was judged less than exemplary. As a consequence, people in the poorer quarters of the city were arbitrarily forced into carts and driven to a distribution point near the Point Du Jour. They made up a long and pathetic procession as they filed out of the city’s gate.

  Serena had been returning from a visit to her Algerian friends in Montparnasse when a gendarme stepped in front of her carriage and blocked her way. With no attempt at courtesy he forced her to descend to the street. He regarded her with suspicion. She wore a plain dress and a light cloak. Her hair was pulled back in a thick braid. If she was elegant and noble in her bearing, she wore none of the trappings of wealth, no jewelry or furs. A woman of means would never have driven herself, as Serena invariably did. Her looks were vaguely European, but just as vaguely Mediterranean. She spoke with an accent and had no papers. Henri had warned her to carry them, but she was uncomfortable with the notion of a free woman needing papers to travel. The officer noted her expensive carriage and concluded she must be a servant, a whore, or a thief.

  “Where have you stolen this carriage, woman?” he demanded contemptuously.

  “I don’t know what you are looking for, sir, but I am the Countess deVries,” she responded icily. “The carriage belongs to me. Now you will get out of my way.”

  He roared with laughter. “La comtesse! But, of course, why did I not recognize you immediately? How foolish of me. Please forgive me, Comtesse,” he said, bowing with deep irony. “And now you will kindly proceed to that gate, where the royal procession is even
now leaving the city.” He shoved her roughly into the forlorn line of human refuse being ejected through the gate, and ordered her carriage confiscated. Serena stumbled and found herself caught and supported by a woman who was painted in loud and lascivious colors, and they held on to each other as they passed through the leering crowd toward the gate. “It will be all right, dear,” the woman said to her. Serena was not frightened, but she was shocked by her treatment. The procession was filled with diseased people, blind women and crippled children, street urchins and whores, misfits and thieves—people the authorities preferred to see outside the city gates.

  The procession passed in the shadow of a large building. Standing on one of the low balconies, watching the targets of their decree pass as they might watch effluent drift by in the Seine, stood a few members of the committee of defense. Serena saw them watching. Among them, in the center, she saw purple robes on a corpulent figure. He saw her at the same instant, and looked straight at her. Their eyes met, and in that silent moment between them they understood each other well. Without an outward glimmer of recognition or a move to help her, the bishop turned away from the rabble.

  Most of the city’s rejects accepted their fate at being consigned to the line, but Serena saw an opportunity and slipped away easily. One of the guards shouted after her, but was unwilling to give chase to the woman who fled so quickly into the trees. Another whore more or less wouldn’t matter in a city the size of Paris.

  As the siege progressed, paranoia in Paris became rampant. Anyone whose face was not Gallic or who spoke with an accent was presumed guilty of spying for the Prussians, which was to say that half the population of Paris regarded the other half with suspicion. Arrests were common. Serena was quite imperious enough to back down most of her accusers, but not always. On one occasion she was escorted roughly by a mob to the prefecture, where the prefect himself recognized her. The color drained from his face and his abject apologies to her were mixed with a searing tirade against the crowd. He had personally conducted her home, and wrote her a laissez-passer, a safe passage with his signature and seal, and he advised her to stay indoors. She thanked him and tore up the paper, and went about her business as usual. Serena never told Henri of her difficulties. She saw no point in upsetting him, and in any event there was nothing he could do. She would not disguise her looks or hide herself away in the château.

  As casualties of the siege increased, Serena volunteered to assist in one of the hospitals. She knew nothing of French medicine, but was content to help in other ways. She washed bedding and cleaned floors and provided small comforts to the wounded after the surgeons had finished. She read to one of the men, a private from Belleville who had drifted in and out of consciousness for days. One afternoon he opened his eyes and saw her and heard her voice, and he raised a terrible commotion over the foreign woman. “Get away!” he shrieked. “Get out! You have no right in our country!” He pushed her away and his wound broke open. The surgeon calmed the boy and applied fresh dressings, but then he drew her aside. “We are most grateful for your help, madame,” he said, “but perhaps it would be better for all concerned if you were not here to upset the men.”

  Serena started to protest, but then she checked herself. She would not force herself upon them. She had chosen her path when she married Henri. If it was difficult, it was by choice. Out of that choice France had become her adopted country. If she occasionally found herself hating its hauteur, if she suffered too often at the hands of its bigots, she must learn to deal with it, even as she thought the more satisfying course would be to put some of those bigots to a horsewhip. If her son was to learn tolerance, she had to know it herself. Yet it was not easy. In the deep desert it was said the Tuareg were the world’s most arrogant people. But in the deep desert, she thought, they had never met the French.

  After that she helped Henri with his balloons. She searched the city for material for the envelopes. She found some through her friends in Montparnasse, and by making the rounds of tailors’ and milliners’ shops. There was initial suspicion as she made her requests of strangers, but when they heard it was the balloons for which she sought help, their eyes lit up. From them she collected bits of calico and silk, and learned to sew them together. She was content with what she had found to do, and loved being with her husband. Still, when he told her that he would show her off at the opera, it stirred up all the anxieties inside.

  “To hell with them,” Henri said. “You will be with me. You will be the most beautiful woman there, and the only thing people will think is how jealous they are of me and my Prussian spy.”

  Serena smiled, and kissed him. She would go to his silly opera.

  * * *

  Moussa’s shoes crunched on the snow as he walked down the lane toward St. Paul’s. The air was still and crisp and his breath swirled in great clouds around him. He drew the collar of his coat around his neck to keep out the winter air. His mouth was set grimly, his teeth clenched against the cold. He felt it stinging all the way down his throat to his lungs, and wondered what it was going to be like to die of pneumonia or consumption or just plain cold. Without the amulet it was certain to happen. Things were beginning to go wrong. He’d already been bitten by a spider in his own bedroom. It left a big welt under his arm, which swelled up and stretched until the skin was shiny. In a desperate search for the spider he’d turned their room upside down, angering Paul when he tore his bedding apart and set all his clothes out in the hall.

  “If the spider’s in my clothes it’ll bite me,” Paul said irritably. “Leave my stuff alone.” But Moussa couldn’t chance it, and he emptied drawers and turned out the closets. When he found it hiding under a windowsill he crushed it with his shoe and threw it outside. But after that he couldn’t sleep for fear the spider had a relative waiting to get revenge.

  Then Moussa had fallen when he and Paul were walking on a wall behind the château, fallen and nearly broken his arm. They’d walked on that wall a thousand times and never so much as teetered the wrong way. Suddenly he’d gotten clumsy, and the world seemed a dangerous place. He was certain it was no coincidence.

  Now as he trudged along the path he could already feel some hideous disease burning his lungs. He wondered whether, if he died, Sister Godrick would be sorry when she heard. Not a chance. She’d probably cross herself in thanks, and lead the class in hymn. He considered leaving a note, so that when they chipped his body out of the ice the gendarmes would know who to blame. But the police would never dare arrest Sister Godrick, not even for murder. As far as he could tell people didn’t do things to nuns. Nuns did things to people.

  The cathedral loomed dark against the gray winter sky. There were lights on and it looked warm inside. He was going there to pray. Nobody knew except Paul, who said it was a waste of time. But Moussa had to try. Christmas was just two days away, and there would he four weeks of holiday after that. He had to get the amulet back before then.

  He went inside, the heavy door shutting behind him with a loud thunk that echoed through the building. The cathedral was empty, dark except for a few lanterns hung along the walls. It wasn’t nearly as warm as it had looked from the outside. He could still see his breath. His footsteps echoed on the stone floor as he walked to the bank of candles. He struck a match and lit one. He put some of his rat money in the wood offering case anda prayer. Then he went to one of the hard wooden chairs facing the altar. He knelt and bowed his head. He didn’t know how to make a proper prayer, exactly, so he started with a few that he knew by heart, and then he just started talking. It still felt awkward, as it had with Sister Godrick, but the words began to come more quickly, and soon he relaxed and was rambling on as if to an old friend. The murmurs of his voice carried up from his small form until they were lost in the darkness of the great nave. His hands and feet were numb from the cold, but he didn’t notice.

  Without artifice and without evasion the boy poured out his heart. He explained things as they seemed to him, and confessed things that nobody
else knew, not even Paul. He admitted how he felt about Sister Godrick, trying as best he could to be fair about it. He figured God already knew about her anyway and would understand his feelings. He apologized for what he’d done to Pierre in the lavatory, although he allowed there might still be trouble between them. He admitted an old crime against a cat in the neighborhood. He tried to tell it all, and along the way to make no bargains he couldn’t keep. When he finished he crossed himself and said, “Amen.”

  That night was full of hope. His earlier doubts about God were erased and he fixed on the certainty growing in his mind that tonight had worked, that soon the amulet would be his again. Before he went to sleep he said another prayer, to be sure. He had never said so many prayers in his life.

  The next day he went eagerly to school. It was Christmas Eve, and the day was to be a short one. All classes reported first to the Great Hall for a special program of poetry, prayers, and hymns, which the bishop himself was to attend. Moussa saw him sitting on one side of the room, the curé at his side and most of the nuns arrayed in a circle behind him. The bishop was so mountainous he looked as if he needed two chairs. Moussa read his part flawlessly and suffered through the rest of the program. When it was over the curé gave a benediction and at last they were released from the torture to return to class.

  When Moussa entered the classroom he looked on the wall and his heart skipped a beat. The wall was empty by the board. It was gone. The picture, the amulet. Sister Godrick walked in and began talking immediately, so he didn’t have a chance to question her. He was overwhelmed with fear that she had thrown it away, or burned it, or that someone else had stolen it. But then it occurred to him that maybe the prayer was working, and that she had taken it down to give it back to him. When the break came at last he eagerly went to see her.