“Where are you going?” Elisabeth asked. Her mind was reeling with the news, but she worked hard to remain calm. The bishop dead! It was thrilling. She began to believe, truly believe, that she and Pascal were going to pull it off. Now only the count posed a threat to her plans, and he was leaving.
“I don’t know. Somewhere. To the country.”
“You’re leaving the city?” Elisabeth’s eyes widened. “I suppose the Prussians have given you their blessing?”
“We’re taking a balloon. There’s one ready at the Gare du Nord.”
“Are you mad?”
“Quite, Elisabeth. Now please let me pack.” Upstairs Serena rousted the boys and was filling a small bag with a few clothes.
“Where are we going?” Moussa asked, rubbing his eyes.
“We’re leaving the city. By balloon. I’ll explain later. We must hurry!” Moussa looked uricertainly at Paul. “Leaving? Paul’s coming too, isn’t he?”
“No. He’s staying with his mother. She’s downstairs. You’ll see him later. Now quickly!”
The boys looked uneasily at each other, sensing that something larger than they could understand was happening around them. The adults were racing around, Gascon at the carriage house, the house in a turmoil. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.
“I guess I’ll see you later,” Moussa said, pulling on his clothes. The prospect of a balloon ride was exciting, but the thought of leaving Paul behind made him miserable.
“I guess so.” They both knew the end of the siege was a long way off. They wouldn’t see each other for a while. Maybe a long while. Paul took the pocketknife he used to carve wood from his dresser drawer. “Here, you’d better take this. You might need it.” Moussa nodded his thanks.
On the way out Moussa had a sudden thought, and panic set in.
“Father, I can’t go, not yet.”
“Nonsense. Where’s your coat?”
“I have to get my amulet.”
“What?”
“My amulet. Sister Godrick took it. I need it. I can’t leave without it.”
“Don’t be foolish. We’re in a hurry, Moussa. You can get another one.”
“No I can’t, Father. It’s the only one. It’s special. It’s from the amenokal. She took it from me and I need it back.”
“I know who it’s from, son, but there’s no time! We must go! Now! Quickly!”
“It’s at St. Paul’s. Please, Father.” His voice quivered. Henri stopped what he was doing and looked hard at his son. His voice had never had such a plaintive tone.
Serena spoke quietly. “We can stop there, Henri. It isn’t far out of the way. Please. It’s important.”
Henri sighed. If they could escape the château grounds without being caught, he figured it would be a good while before their pursuers thought of the balloons. They ought to have enough time. “All right, but hurry! They’ll be coming!”
“I will delay them as long as I can, sire,” Gascon said as they hurried to the carriage. “If you need me—”
“Thank you, Gascon.” Henri clapped him on the shoulder. His face was grim. “I’ll contact you later, when the siege is lifted. Mind things for me.”
“Godspeed, sire,” said Gascon, and they were gone. Paul stood in the doorway and with a sick feeling in his heart watched the carriage disappear down the drive. He saw the small form of his cousin in the back and knew Moussa was watching him too. He waved, and choked back a sob. In the distance he thought he saw Moussa waving back.
* * *
Twenty minutes after the count left, the police arrived at the château. The house was in darkness, and Elisabeth had retired to her room. The police pounded on the door and shouted. Gascon waited in the dark in the kitchen and let them carry on. At length, when it sounded as if they were going to break the door down, he answered.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” He opened the door, grumbling and scratching and rubbing his eyes as though he’d just gotten up. “What is it? Who’s there?”
“Police,” the sergeant snapped. “Where is the countess?”
Gascon shrugged and yawned. “Pardon, monsieur, but I do not know. Perhaps with the count.”
“And where is the count?”
Gascon shrugged again. “I have no idea. Perhaps with the countess. I work for him, not he for me. They haven’t been here tonight. If they do arrive, perhaps you would care to leave a message for them? I would be happy to deliver it, monsieur.”
The sergeant shook his head.
“Then perhaps you would care to come inside and wait? I am certain they will be home later this evening. I can offer you wine, to take away the chill.”
The sergeant thought it over. He decided to leave a man at the château and return to the prefecture himself. He wasn’t terribly worried about not finding the countess. After all, where could she go? It was one of the few advantages of the siege, he supposed. They would have her soon enough.
“Oui,” he said to Gascon. “I will leave one man here with you.”
The sergeant was near the end of the drive when a figure loomed out of the darkness. The horse almost ran into her, and had to be drawn up suddenly.
“Are you crazy?” the sergeant shouted. “You might have been killed!”
Elisabeth ran to the side of the carriage. Even though it was dark she pulled her shawl up around her face, so that no one could identify her. She had made her decision in the study, and ran out the back door when she heard the police coming down the drive. She would seize the opportunity she saw in Henri’s ruin. If Henri were arrested helping Serena escape after the murder of the bishop, his own credibility would be forever destroyed. The bishop’s death and Henri’s dishonor would seal her claim to the property. She looked up at the officers in their carriage.
“You must be quick!” she said. “The count is escaping with the countess!”
The sergeant laughed. “Not much running to be done through a ring of Prussians,” he scoffed. “And who are you?”
“Never mind, you fool! This is the Count deVries you chase!”
“So?”
“Have you not seen the balloons leaving the city? It is he who sends them up! Even now he is on his way to the Gare du Nord, where they are launched! He is leaving tonight!”
* * *
“You what, Maman?”
“I shot him. I killed him.”
She tried to explain it as they rode together in the back of the carriage. She had thought about not telling him, or lying. But their lives were about to change forever. She had to tell him. He was old enough to know the truth. And when he knew the truth his lip quivered, and he was desperately afraid for her, afraid for them all, and he clung to her and knew it was all his fault, this terrible trouble that was chasing them through the night, and he began willing the horses to run faster.
Serena waited in the carriage while Henri and Moussa hurried into the cathedral through the main door. An acolyte was preparing the church for the late Mass. Puzzled, he watched as Moussa led his father down the aisle and into the sacristy, where they disappeared through another door that led to the back corridors. Henri hadn’t been in the passages for years, but Moussa knew his way through the maze blindfolded, and soon they arrived at his classroom. The door was locked. Henri pulled hard at the brass handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
“I can go around, and get in from the window in the courtyard,” Moussa said.
“No. No time.” Henri set his shoulder and rammed the door. It moved and wood splintered, but the heavy oak held fast. Henri hit it again with more force, and the door gave way with a crash. Moussa ran into the darkened room, tripping over a chair as he went, the chair clattering to the floor. Across the courtyard in the rear of the cathedral the count saw the light of a lantern moving their way. “The curé,” he said. At the desk Moussa rummaged quickly through the top drawer where he was sure she would have put it.
It wasn’t there.
He opened another drawer, and another, his desperat
ion mounting as he ran out of places to look. He was terrified. What if she’d taken it with her? What if she’d destroyed it? He pushed the papers aside, his fingers probing the back of each drawer.
“Hurry, Moussa!” the count said. “They’re coming!”
Moussa slammed one drawer shut, and opened another below it. Papers and pencils and books. It wasn’t there! He was ready to cry.
And then he had it, his fingers closing around the familiar leather. He pulled it out and looked at it triumphantly. “Got it!” he said, and they ran from the classroom as the curé was fumbling with the door at the other end of the hall.
In the carriage Moussa had an idea. “I know another way out of the city, Father.”
“Oh?”
“Through the basement of the cathedral. I’ve been there, with Paul. There are tunnels that run all the way to the Prussian lines. We could sneak past them.”
The voice was a whip. “You were at the Prussian lines?”
“They never saw us, Father.”
“We’ll talk about that later. But now we need to get past the Prussian lines, Moussa, not just to them. We’ve got to fly. We’ll take the balloon.”
Once again the carriage lurched forward into the darkness.
* * *
The sergeant whipped savagely at the big horse straining at the harness. Steam poured off the animal’s neck, its breath labored and deep. The other officer sat at the sergeant’s side. He was not much more than a boy, nervous and new to the force, clutching a rifle in one hand and holding on to the edge of the cabriolet and trying to keep from pitching out with the other, all the while trying not to freeze to death. It wasn’t easy, police business. Their carriage was light and fast but unstable, slipping and sliding and bouncing through the streets, making a terrible clatter on the cobblestones, the wheels creaking and popping as they went.
The sergeant cursed his horrid luck. He knew he had been lax when he set out to make the arrest. He had barely trotted his horse from the opera to the château, deluded by the notion that a besieged city made a good jail. If he let the countess escape so easily it would end his career.
But he was determined not to fail. Again and again he lashed his horse, spurring it on ever faster. They flew along the narrow passage of the Quai de Grenelle, past the long sloping lawns of the Champ de Mars, where thousands of troops slept in tents or huddled together before small fires, trying to ward off the arctic freeze. Then it was on to the Quai d’Orsay, the horse pounding alongside the river that looked so dark and deep and cold, the great shadowy form of the Louvre looming large across the water. He turned across the Pont Neuf, swerving to avoid a group of startled pedestrians who jumped back out of the way. The Île de la Cité was a blur, the towers of Notre Dame just visible in the darkness, the crowds beginning to assemble in the great square for midnight Mass. He pressed ahead along the rue St.-Denis, willing his horse to run faster. A sudden blast of wind took his hat and muffler, but he never slowed.
“Just a little farther now,” he shouted to his young companion. “We’re almost there.”
* * *
The envelope of the balloon billowed up against the cold dark sky. The wind flags on top of the gare showed just a slight breeze, to the southwest. It wasn’t much. The cold had settled over the city like a blanket, and the air wasn’t moving. It would have to do, Henri thought as he looked up briefly. He cursed the cold. His fingers weren’t working properly. They were numb, his knuckles bleeding and torn. He pounded at the valve to get it working again, so that it would open all the way for the coal gas. The balloon was nearly full, but he wanted more so that when the temperatures warmed – if they ever did – they’d have plenty of lift for long distance. But something was stuck, some grease frozen or lever caught, he couldn’t tell, and there was just a weak hiss as the gas moved instead of the normal whooshing sound. The more he hurried the longer it seemed to take.
Henri had lit two bright gas lamps at either end of the square outside the station, to give them enough light to work. The square was surrounded by a tall iron fence, erected to keep the curious away from the equipment and the gas lines. There was a large gate at one end through which supplies were carried. A sleepy guard tended the gate. He had been surprised to see the count arriving at such a late hour on Christmas Eve, but then the balloons went up at crazy times.
“A launch tonight?” he asked.
“Oui,” Henri said. He nodded and closed the gate after the carriage entered the compound. A small group of spectators gathered outside the fence to watch. They always came when a balloon was going up. They were used to seeing more lights and more people involved, but they chattered excitedly anyway. A balloon launch was a great event, even to one who’d seen a dozen.
Henri set about filling the balloon, leaving Serena and Moussa to load sacks of ballast into the basket. They hauled them off a big pile and lugged them one at a time across the plaza. They lashed some to the outside of the basket, and simply dumped others inside on the floor. Moussa ran to the carriage and collected the blankets and the sack of food, and carried them back. He slipped on the corner of one of the blankets and tripped, spilling everything onto the cold stone. He recovered quickly and scooped things up, running and dumping them into the basket.
A light snow started to fall. The balloon began to strain at its tethers as the gas poured in. Henri timed it, his mind calculating the cubic meters and the flow. Three minutes, two minutes. The basket was starting to lift. They needed more weight.
“Serena! Moussa! Get in, now!” he shouted, and they climbed over the wicker railing. The balloon was like a live mass trying to escape its bounds. The halyards creaked above them and the wicker crackled under their weight.
They all heard it at the same time, the clatter of wheels and the relentless rhythm of hooves beating against the distant pavement. Without looking Henri knew who it was. He could take on no more gas. Furiously he started to close the valve, struggling with it as the cold thwarted the movement of the brass and iron.
“The guns!” Moussa’s voice choked in panic. “I didn’t get the guns!” They were still in the back of the carriage.
“Leave them!” Serena said, but he was up and over the side before she could stop him. She had to stay where she was, to tend the ropes. She looked helplessly on as he ran for the carriage and picked the weapons out of the back. He put the ammunition boxes in his pockets, and scrambled back over the rough stones. Relieved, Serena pulled him up and over the side.
She heard the carriage on the other side of the station. It stopped.
“Henri, come now!” Serena shouted, her voice desperate. “They are here!”
* * *
The sergeant pulled up on the wrong side of the building. He had no idea where the balloons were launched, but quickly saw through the station to the lights on tbe other side. The biggest part of the balloon was hidden from his view by the structure of the gare itself, but he could make out the round neck through the windows, and the halyards straining upward. The balloon was ready to go! He lashed at his horse and raced around the side of the building. He cursed. The way was blocked by a wide ribbon of tracks. There was no time to backtrack, to find a crossing to get to the other side.
“Merde!” he said. “We’ve got to go on foot. Be quick now!” They jumped from the cabriolet and scrambled across the tracks. The boy stumbled and fell heavily on the rails. He bloodied his lip on the cold steel, and wiped it with his sleeve as he jumped up and ran. Their boots clomped on the pavement as they ran to the fence; Serena saw them first. Henri was just lifting off the lines that held the balloon to concrete posts at either end of the square. He had two more to go.
The sergeant saw him through the fence. “You there! Count deVries! Arretez! You are to stop this instant! The countess is under arrest! You must stop now!” He saw the count glance over his shoulder as he raced to the next post. He lifted off the line, turned, and started for the last one. Desperately the sergeant looked for the way in.
The gate was all the way on the other side of the area. There was no time.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he said, and at that the boy at his side raised his rifle.
Henri ignored him and ran full speed to the last of the posts. Off came the line. Now the only rope holding the balloon to earth was under Serena’s control. “Cast off the line!” he shouted, and quickly she twisted the line off the post. The balloon lurched upward, then quickly dropped, then started upward again. Serena panicked as she saw how far he had to run, and that the balloon was lifting away from the ground. He was running full out. He would have to jump in.
“Fire a warning shot,” the sergeant said to the young gendarme.
The youth was nervous. He was an expert marksman, but had never pointed his rifle at another human being. He had already sighted the count down the long barrel of his rifle, fixing on the retreating back. Perhaps he was too nervous, or perhaps he only heard the word “fire.” He breathed deeply and squeezed the trigger.
Henri had just reached the basket when the shot rang out. Serena was reaching out to take his arms when the bullet struck. She heard a thud and felt his arms jerk, and his grip slipped away. “Henri!” she screamed. The balloon was lifting away and she was holding him by herself over the side of the basket, his legs dangling free. He couldn’t help, and was dead weight in her arms. She knew she couldn’t hold on for long. He was beginning to slip, and the balloon was climbing quickly. “Moussa, help me!” she cried. Moussa leaned over the side, and together they struggled desperately to pull him up. Serena could see a red stain blossoming on the back of his jacket.
At last they had him inside. He collapsed in the bottom of the basket, onto the bags of sand. His eyes were closed. Serena slipped down the side of the wicker and took his head in her lap. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. He opened his eyes, and saw her there. He squeezed her hand weakly and smiled, then closed his eyes. Her face was next to his, and she saw his color draining. “Oh Henri, no, no, no,” she cried. She held him tightly as the balloon began to rise from the yard and soar over the top of the gare. “Je t’aime,” she whispered. More shots rang out from below. “I love you, Henri. Je t’aime, je t’aime.”
Empires of Sand Page 36