Love's First Light

by Jamie Carie

  It was his brother’s shoe. His shoe.

  Christophé clutched the shoe to his chest as a sob broke from his tight throat. He bent over it, feeling the leather, remembering the last time he’d seen it on his brother’s foot. Had it only been yesterday? He raised the leather up to his forehead and pressed into it. “Jean Paul.” His hands roved over the stitching in the leather as if each stitch held a memory that they had shared. As he moved the shoe, he heard a little sound from inside it. He placed his hand inside and brought out a small bag. It was black and soft and as Christophé loosened the cord he heard a clinking noise. Tipping the bag, he poured the contents into his palm. Coins, several of them. The sight drew a little chuckle that quickly turned into a mourner’s cry. “Jean Paul, you always did rescue me.”

  Rising, he stuffed the bag into his pocket and rushed to the library, feeling his energy rise. There were other secret compartments in that room, and in two more rooms: the dining room and the blue salon, his mother’s favorite room for entertaining family friends. The library held nothing—the blackguards obviously knew to thoroughly search that room. The blue salon’s safe was empty as well. He ran to the dining room, the candle nearly out. The long, heavy sideboard stood on the far wall. Setting the candle on top of it he pulled out all of the drawers. They were empty, all of the fine silverware and dishes gone, but he had figured that would be the case. If only they’d missed the hiding spot . . .

  Reaching inside he pulled on four loose nails in the back. It was a false back and held a space between it and the authentic back of the piece. There was a little hole in the middle where Christophé inserted his finger and pulled with all his strength. It popped open, and a clattering sound followed the pop. Something had fallen to the bottom of the piece. Christophé felt with his hand until his fingers wrapped around something solid and metal. He pulled it out and held it up.

  Rubies and emeralds sparkled in the dim light of the candle and the silver light of the moon coming in through the window. A golden goblet. He’d heard it existed but had never seen it. Louis claimed their father showed it to him once, saying that it came from their ancestors, the mighty Trencevals. He said that the early kings of France had drunk from it. At the time Christophé and Jean Paul had rejected the idea out of jealousy and knowing how much Louis liked to tease them and lord it over them that he would be the next Count. But now . . .

  The cup was heavy in his hands, weighted like a crown, and looked like something from a medieval king’s table. The Trencevals. From Carcassonne. Maybe it was a sign. He shoved it inside his waistcoat and quit the room.

  Back out into the cold night, he slunk against the stone edifice that had been his childhood home. Even if Robespierre and his minions weren’t still looking for him, it was after curfew and the patrols would be out. He ran, eager now, back into the street where his friend lived. Please God, I pray Émilie found Jasper’s house.

  It didn’t take long to find the red door. He knocked softly, pressing himself against the peeling paint on the wood.

  After a few moments, Jasper, sleepy-eyed with tousled gray hair pulled open the door.

  “Christophé!” He came awake suddenly and pulled him into the room. “What has happened?”

  Christophé had a sinking, panicked feeling rise and expand throughout his whole body. “Émilie, my sister”—he stopped, everything in him stopped—“is she not here?” He watched in a kind of sick, slow-motion dread as Jasper shook his head in confusion.

  “Your sister?”

  Christophé looked around the dark shop. “She didn’t come to you? Just under an hour ago?” He stopped and stared, then whispered. “What have I done?”

  Jasper pulled him further into the room. “I’ve not seen her. Did you send her here? What has happened?”

  “Robespierre . . . he killed them . . . all.” Christophé couldn’t get his breath. “All except Émilie and . . . and me. A man attacked me. I sent her here, told her to run to you. I told her to go to the house with the red door while I went back for this.” Christophé lifted the heavy goblet from his waistcoat and then let it fall to the floor in a metal clinking thud.

  Christophé sank to the floor beside the cup. The events of the day overwhelmed him, like night had come forever. He couldn’t think what to do next.

  Jasper brought Christophé a cup of water, bade him drink, and then sat down across from him on the floor. “Tell me everything. We will find her.”

  THEY COMBED THE street up and down, every tree and bush and shadowed corner. They looked into the streets surrounding them. They quietly called out her name.

  “Émilie! Émilie . . .”

  “Émilie! Émilie . . .”

  “Émilie . . .”

  There was no sound.

  There was no response.

  DAYS LATER A sudden commotion filled the streets of Paris. Christophé ran to a window and saw that it was a mob of people. “What is it?” he asked Jasper as his friend came up to stand next to him.

  “Looks like another execution. Did you see the carts go by?”

  “No.” Christophé looked over his shoulder at Jasper. “We have to go. They might have . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Jasper pointed to a hook on the wall. “Get your cloak, pull the hood well over your head.”

  The streets were filled with crowds making their way to the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood. Street criers were eager accomplices as they strode through the boulevards and weaved around the chateaus and mansions of what used to be the privileged. The people cheered as news spread of the latest aristocrats to fall.

  Unable to wait until they reached the platform, Christophé stopped one of the street criers. “Do you know the identities of the prisoners?”

  The man gave him a suspicious look but rattled off several names. “Oh, and Émilie St. Laurent. She’s a young one, but they say she is the last of the St. Laurent house. Another aristocratic line ended.” The man grinned at Christophé, showing rotten teeth to match his rotten soul.

  Christophé turned, his stomach rolling, unable to speak. Jasper grasped his arm and pulled him along. “Hurry.”

  He felt swept along in the thick crush of people, as if he were one of them. He didn’t speak as they did, shouting their victory: “Kill them! Destroy the royals!” He couldn’t speak at all, only let himself be jostled along until he neared the front.

  They all stilled as the first prisoner was led to the platform. He could feel the hatred around him like a living thing, voracious and feral, as they read the name of a man he was sure he’d seen in his mother’s elegant salon. He watched, strangely detached, as they tied him to a long board, lifted him, then slid him under the scaffold and blade.

  Christophé’s throat thickened as the blade shot down. Gravity. Weight. Steel. Blade. Neck. Friend. Foe. Human. Man. His thoughts were scattered . . . abrupt . . . nauseating.

  Then they led another and another. Their heads were taken up by the executioner and held high for the crowd to see and cheer. Some were pierced on a wooden pole. Members of the mob grasped the poles in wild-eyed glee to parade amongst the thronging crowd. The people around him shouted in a murderous, frenzied state that he’d prayed only existed in nightmares. Christophé couldn’t imagine that he was still alive. That this was real and terrifying and . . . real.

  God! He cried silently. Oh, God!

  Then they led a girl up to the platform. Christophé saw the long, golden hair. The slight, shaking body. There was a hood over her head, but he knew.

  It was Émilie.

  He had thought to rescue her. He had thought he might do something. Now he knew. There was nothing he could do—except rush, screaming her name, to his own death. Émilie would die this day.

  And the only choice he had was to watch or turn away.

  CHRISTPOHÉ BRACED HIS legs. He took long, deep breaths to keep from succumbing to the beckoning blackness. But he stayed. With tears rushing, one after the other. With drea
d filling him like a blackness taking over his body, with legs that shook with the effort to stand . . . he stayed and he watched and willed with everything in him that God would work a miracle.

  He blinked as her body was laid on the wooden platform. He stumbled as the blade swooshed down. He cried out as her head fell into the bloody basket, the honey curls bouncing.

  As the crowd cheered he staggered away. Jasper was behind him, supporting him, half carrying him . . . but he couldn’t care. He sank to the side of the street and curled into a ball.

  “Noooo . . .” The cry wrung through him and then out. Jasper hastened to hush him, but he did not care if the hordes of murderers surrounding him noticed. He did not care if they raised him up, stripped him down, and pulled the hood over his head. In that moment he welcomed the mounting of those wooden steps.

  There was no one left to care what might happen to the new Count of St. Laurent.

  Chapter Four

  1794—Carcassonne, France

  Scarlett charged through the door. She paused just inside, seeing the shabby furniture, the old carpet that they beat with a stick every other laundry day, the dim light of dawn filtering through the small windows of the cottage. But it smelled of fresh-baked bread and no amount of shabbiness could take away that homey feeling of comfort and, with it, a measure of peace.

  She shut the door behind her and leaned back against it . . . who was he? Where had he come from? She was still shaking inside as she threw off the cloak, tossing it to a chair, thinking to run upstairs and put on some clothes before her mother found her out.

  “Scarlett, is that you?”

  Too late. Her mother was already up and in the kitchen. Scarlett took a deep breath, brushed a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear, and entered the hot room, the smells of market day heavy in the air.

  “Yes, it’s me.” She avoided her mother’s eyes as she rushed in and tied an apron over her billowing nightgown. She hadn’t realized how late it was.

  Her mother, Suzanne Bonham, turned and wiped her sweat-soaked hair from her temple with the back of one hand, her eyes assessing. “You were at the gravesite again.” She said it low and a little disapproving.

  Scarlett looked up and saw the concern in her mother’s eyes. “Yes. Time escaped me.” She would not apologize.

  Scarlett picked up a basket and moved toward the long, golden loaves of baguettes. “I will hurry.”

  “You should have at least dressed.” Her mother started the tirade as she turned back to the fluffy dough she was kneading on a wooden counter. “I’ll not have you running about the countryside in slippers and your nightgown. It is bad enough that you have to go at such an ungodly hour, but, saints preserve us, in your nightclothes! What would anyone think if they saw you?”

  Scarlett agreed but couldn’t force anything but a whiff of air from her tight throat. All she could see was the man. His dark silhouette against the pink of the sunrise. His deep voice resounding against the gravestones. His dark cloak hung loose and yet moved with the breeze as if . . . as if something important was to happen. As if her life was more than grave visiting and guilt assuaging and this eternal waiting. As if . . .

  As if that man meant something to her.

  And how can that be? she chided herself. Will you always let yourself fall suddenly for a man? You don’t even know his name?

  That’s what had happened with Daniel anyway—her falling suddenly. That should have taught her a lesson. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  Scarlett turned at the sound of her mother’s voice, knowing that she’d missed some of the lecture.

  “Sorry will not help you should you meet some strange man and he think it an invitation. I’ve told you time and again it’s not safe to be alone at such hours. With everything going on these days you should visit the grave during the daylight hours like any good girl would do. I don’t understand why you need to visit it every day. It has nearly been six months.”

  Scarlett’s round stomach bumped into the basket of bread and tipped it over, causing the steaming loaves to fall to the floor. “Oh!”

  She bent, an awkward sinking, half-bending motion around her pregnancy, and scrambled to gather them up. Rising with effort, the bread clutched in her hands, she looked up into her mother’s stricken eyes. “I’ll dust them off.”

  Her mother pursed her lips together and sighed. “We have no choice. There is not time nor enough flour to make more.” She turned back to the dough and began to knead the giant soft ball with her hands. “I do wish they would send more flour. We could sell double what we bake.”

  Scarlett had heard the argument countless times before. Her husband’s uncle, the infamous Maximilien Robespierre, had arranged for them to receive flour from his powerful office in the Committee of the newly established government. He also gave them a small stipend every month to supplement a household of three lone women. But still, it was a struggle to keep the cottage and body and soul together. Becoming bakers had been her little sister’s idea. Stacia had her father’s entrepreneurial spirit and was always coming up with ideas to increase their bottom line so that she could buy dresses and shoes and fashion papers from Paris. Scarlett and her mother simultaneously despaired over Stacia’s reckless streak and admired her sharp business mind.

  The baking of bread, though, had turned into a small gold mine. Scarlett’s uncle agreed to send what flour he could arrange, it being closely managed by the new French government, and so their business had begun.

  As it turned out, all three of them had a knack for baking. The weeks took on a comforting if exhausting routine.

  It was an ordered life. A simple life. In the wake of Scarlett’s father’s death, and then Scarlett’s husband . . . with no man to carry them . . . flour, yeast, water, bread. That was what sustained them now.

  “Scarlett, did you hear me?”

  She shook her head, turning from arranging the basket to best display the loaves. She seemed to have a knack for making the bread look more a decoration than something to eat. “I’m sorry. My mind doesn’t seem as keen these days. What did you say?”

  “About visiting the grave as you do, so late or so early. It’s not fitting. Why do you insist on going only when it is dark?”

  She would never be able to explain it to her mother. That in dark, it still wasn’t quite real. That in the bright light of day she couldn’t hide as well from the guilt that she was a little relieved her marriage was over. Had she known Daniel at all? There hadn’t been enough time. She would have, after this Révolution was over, been able to make it work between them if he’d lived, wouldn’t she?

  She turned away, not knowing how to answer her mother, except: “I will try.”

  “You will try.” Her mother put her hands on her rounded hips, making Scarlett sigh internally. Please, God, let the lecture be finished.

  “What if some evil person comes upon you? What will you do then? I worry so about you.” Her mother paused, throwing her hands into the air. “And in your condition.” She thrust her hands out toward Scarlett. “You couldn’t even run away.”

  It was true. She could not have run away this morning. She looked down and saw the giant mound of her stomach. Her mother was right. There had been a moment when she thought that she should run. Until he spoke . . .

  Who was he? She could not let her mother learn of him! Their encounter would send her into a worried state of agitation that would last for weeks. Scarlett didn’t doubt that her mother would even start to follow her, at a distance, thinking she was successfully spying. She had done it before to both Scarlett and her sister. But Scarlett was a woman grown, and about to be a mother herself. She should be allowed to make her own decisions.

  Scarlett turned back to the hot fire, pulling the round, split, sweet-smelling bread from the heat with her flat, wooden paddle. Her cheeks burned from both the blaze and the thoughts of the dark stranger. How could she not recognize him? Carcassonne was such a small community, and bein
g bakers at the market three mornings a week had assured that they knew every reaching hand. But this man, she was certain, had never been in the busy streets on market day, never reached out for their meager sustenance.

  The baby kicked hard and then turned, folded, and stretched inside of her. She stilled her hands and then clutched her stomach. She could feel him stretch against the thin barrier of his world and hers. He wanted out . . . and soon. She smiled with the thought, her head down, her body curled into their private world.

  “What is it?”

  “The babe.” Scarlett rose up and motioned her mother over. “I don’t believe he likes it when I bend over. It must crowd him.”

  Her mother took the few steps toward her, her hands dusted with flour. She hesitated. Scarlett took firm hold of her mother’s hands and laid them on the round stomach. Scarlett moved them to the place where she could feel the child move. “Here. Can you feel it?”

  Scarlett’s mother looked up, her round face still unlined, her eyes closing. Her lips curved into a smile. “A baby in the house again.” She blinked rapidly, a look on her face that Scarlett seldom saw. Another sudden turn by the babe and both their eyes grew round as Scarlett’s entire mound shifted. They burst out laughing. “A strong one!” Her mother leaned in and kissed Scarlett on the forehead, and then waved a hand. “Go and get your slugabed sister up. I will finish down here.”

  Scarlett ducked her head and smiled.

  It wasn’t often that her mother kissed her.

  CHRISTOPHÉ TUCKED THE curtain around the narrow rectangle of the old castle’s window. At one corner he propped up the dusty fabric with an old bottle in the corner of the sill. It allowed a small shaft of light into the vast, stone room. On a table he positioned a prism, hard won and a little stolen; convincing the woman it was but glass. God help him, that had been years ago, soon after he had fled Paris.