Thomas took the stairs two at a time, even though they were a bit rickety and he worried as he hit each step that his foot would go through the wood or the staircase would fall off the wall. Arriving at the top, he found himself in a loft. At the far end, Etienne was frantically casting around for something to smother the already well-established fire.
Unfortunately, the family had stripped the beds in preparation for their departure because no blankets lay to hand. Etienne had already removed his own wool cloak and thrown it over the flames.
“This isn’t working!” Even as Etienne spoke, flames shot up the wall to the ceiling, which caught fire too. Most Parisian houses, especially cheaply made ones such as this, were built from wood and plaster with tile roofs. The tile might not burn, but everything holding up the roof certainly would.
“There’s no more time!” Thomas grabbed Etienne’s arm. “We need to leave! It isn’t safe!”
Etienne allowed himself to be dragged back down the stairway and out the door. By the time they reached the street, the house’s entire upper story was engulfed in flames, threatening the neighbors on both sides and behind them. While many of the citizens of this street were gone, a few remained, gazing up at what once had been their neighbors’ home.
“Let it burn,” one of them said.
“I’ve lived in the city my whole life,” another said. “Let all of Paris burn for all I care.”
“It’s fitting for it to end this way, don’t you think?” said a third.
Thomas couldn’t blame them for feeling that way. They were being evicted from a city and homes they loved. Anyone would have been angry. Regardless, none made any move to deal with the fire.
But then the heavens opened, and the rain that had fallen on and off for the last two days began to fall again. The water couldn’t put out an oil fire, but wet wood didn’t burn well, and if it rained long enough, the fire would go out.
Jehan tugged on Thomas’s arm. “Leave it. We have a job to do, and this isn’t it.”
As if by signal, the rain began to pound down harder. Thomas had come prepared for battle, not a storm, and in a dozen heartbeats he was soaked. Etienne, who wore no sheltering cloak, since he’d used it to try to put out the fire, set off at a trot after the last wagon, which was even now disappearing around the corner.
Thomas backed away too. The street was empty, as was the one next to it and all the rest in the Jewish quarter.
They’d really done it.
Jehan at his side, Thomas hurried back to the Paris Temple, crossing the threshold as part of the last group to return. The big gates closed behind him with a thud. The far gate into the countryside was open, and people were already leaving by it for the next stage of the journey, which was a four-mile walk to the River Seine near St. Denis.
“That’s it?” Livia had been moving amongst the people in the crowded courtyard, checking names off a list, but now she clasped her list to her chest and stood with him under the roof of the gatehouse.
“As far as I know.” He grimaced. “If the truth comes out, history will revile us for serving David instead of Philippe.”
“No. You have it all wrong.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “You should be very proud. You must know it.”
“Must I?”
“Look into your heart. Is what we’re doing here right?”
He pressed his lips together without answering. These Avalonians had such a different way of thinking, it was hard sometimes to keep up.
Templars weren’t taught to think for themselves, though, of course, that he still did was why he’d questioned Christopher. Many years ago, it had been Thomas who’d freed David and Ieuan from Carlisle Castle after they’d been captured by his uncle, and he’d set the stables on fire in the process. In his child’s mind, their incarceration had been unjust. In all the years since, he’d never regretted saving them nor lost that part of himself that couldn’t blindly follow orders. He had to understand.
“While evil can prevail for a time, sometimes for a long time,” Livia continued, her eyes on his face, “that doesn’t mean good people should sit back and wait just because the odds of change are long. People need to stand up for what is right and act on it—as you have just done. As a great man once said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Thomas nodded, though he wasn’t entirely sure he understood. He still had a job to do, however, and he began to move among the refugees. He had never spent any time with Jews before, and he found their manner off-putting. Then he came upon a little boy, who was looking around for his family and crying. He scooped him up and carried him along the line of people until he found his mother, who already had a child by each hand and was urging her aged father forward.
The woman’s husband held out his arms for the boy, at which point Thomas realized they were the family from the house that had burned. The father’s face was wet with rain, and his back bent by a pack, but his expression was resolute. “Thank you for bringing him to us. We—” he gestured to his wife, “—have no way to thank you properly for all you’ve done, but we will give you what we have.” He made an expansive gesture to include not only himself but everyone around him. “We all will.”
“We don’t want your money.”
“You ... you don’t?”
“No.” Thomas managed a laugh. He might not be sure of a great many things tonight, but he was sure of this. “Go with your family to England. Make a new life for yourself. That’s all we ask.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Day Two
Rachel
They’d had to wait until full dark to move, an achingly long time during which few words were spoken. When their cells were so dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, Rachel stirred, plucked the lockpicks from her hair, and went to work on their lock by feel.
Then the narrow beam of a penlight shone on the bars, coming from the direction of Venny’s cell.
Her eyes on the lock, she whispered across the space, “We weren’t supposed to bring anything like that in here!”
“It was a stricture I felt I needed to ignore. Besides, King David slipped it to me before we were separated.” Venny gave a low laugh. “You’re the one who brought lockpicks.”
Rachel shook her head, appalled, but at the same time admiring his chutzpah. Then the lock clicked, and she pushed open the door. Her relief to be in the corridor gave her a shot of adrenaline, which she swallowed down in order to work on the locks for the other cells.
Marco Polo’s eyes were fixed on the light in Venny’s hands. “What is that?”
Rachel shot Venny an I told you so look, but Venny just said. “It’s from Avalon. I’ll show you later how it works. I’m sure you’ve seen many strange sights in your travels.”
“That I have, friend,” Marco Polo said, and maybe he actually sounded convinced.
Samuel snorted. “If they really wanted to stop us from getting out, they should have searched us better.”
“Vision.” Matha shook his head in mock disappointment. “Nobody has it these days.” He clearly had been spending far too much time of late with Avalonians to be able to join the mocking humor.
As Rachel opened the last door, Mathew put out a hand. “I need one of those picks.”
“How about this instead?” Samuel gave him the knife that Darren had given to him.
Mathew snorted laughter. “We’ve got our own supply store, it seems.”
Then Rachel handed one of the lockpicks to Matha and the second to Samuel, and the seven of them went up the stairs, Mathew in the lead with the knife and Samuel bringing up the rear just behind Rachel, whose heart was in her throat.
She was no warrior, and she knew it. She was relying on these men to protect her. Some of them were very large, but with their only weapons two lockpicks and a six-inch knife, the odds didn’t really seem to be in their favor.
They reached the top of the stairs at the entrance to the courtyard and st
opped. The barracks and the dead room were both to the north, the former set in the northern curtain wall and the latter on the eastern side.
One torch shone at the gatehouse and a second at the barracks, but everything was otherwise in darkness. Rachel didn’t even see a guard on the top of the tower.
It was raining.
Then the door to the barracks opened and two men came out, staggering a bit as they walked across the courtyard. Halfway across, one of them stopped and said, “I’m going to let loose right here.” He proceeded to do so, pulling up his surcoat and adjusting his breeches. The rain kept falling, and he was getting very wet, but it seemed to have no effect on him.
The other man stood watching for three seconds before he laughed and followed suit.
Rachel rolled her eyes and leaned against the wall at her back. Twenty seconds later, they were still at it, but it did finally end, and the guards covered themselves back up before continuing to weave their way towards the gatehouse. They disappeared inside the guardroom a moment later.
Mathew still didn’t move, and it was just as well he didn’t because the two guards who’d been on duty appeared next, loping back across the courtyard to the barracks, their hoods up over their heads against the rain.
“King’s Cross Station, we’ve got here,” Rachel said to nobody in particular, since none of her companions would know what or where that was.
The instant the barracks door closed behind the two guardsmen, Mathew left the shelter of the porch, walking purposefully but not hurriedly towards the dead room.
Rachel trotted a bit to catch up, sloshing through the puddles that riddled the courtyard. Once at the door, the men bunched up behind her. It was very dark under the eaves, and she worked the lock by feel, trying not to count out the seconds it took her to open the door. But the lock was essentially the same as those on their cell doors, and five seconds later, she had it open too.
They slipped inside the dead room, and Samuel gently closed the door behind them.
There was a finality to the moment that had Marco Polo clearing his throat. “I assume you have a plan for getting us out, because, as far as I can tell, we are locked in here both directions, and it stinks to high heaven!”
The bodies of their friends had already been taken, so the room was empty, leaving only, as Marco Polo had pointed out, an unpleasant smell.
“Give it a moment.” Matha’s voice came out of the darkness.
The wait felt interminable. Rachel started doing some breathing exercises, trying to calm the rising panic. She reached for Aaron’s hand, which was warmer than her own.
“What did you mean by suggesting I write my memoirs in London?” Marco Polo’s voice came out of the darkness.
“You have stories to tell, don’t you?” Rachel was glad for the distraction. “People you’ve met; places you’ve seen.”
“I suppose I do. In fact, many years ago, I found myself in a cell much like this one—” he broke off as a voice came from beyond the door that led into the prison.
“Did they come for them yet?” The voice of the prison’s commander was not one Rachel would soon forget.
“I think so.”
Samuel whispered, “They were supposed to be asleep.”
Then there was a scrabbling at the door that sounded terrifyingly like a key being put into the lock. Instantly the seven of them threw themselves to the floor as far away from the prison door as possible. Rachel ended up lying next to Marco Polo, who said, amusement in his voice, “—or maybe not.”
She could tell by feel that he had put himself face down, which was probably wise, since he’d been beaten and might be recognized. She lay face up, trying to stop her heart from racing and slow her breathing.
By the time the door opened, she had turned her head to one side and her eyes were narrow slits. The commander held a torch which, after their ten minutes of darkness, was blinding. It would have been a relief too if she wasn’t so afraid of being caught.
Nobody moved as he took one step into the room and swung the lantern around. “Looks like they left a few.”
“They probably didn’t have room in the cart, since there were so many,” the underling said helpfully.
The commander took another step into the room, the lantern raised high. He stood still for long enough that Rachel feared he had noticed movement—or at the very least breathing. She herself was trying very hard not to breathe at all.
“Are you going to tell Nogaret what happened?” The guard spoke anxiously from the doorway.
“Dead prisoners.” The commander shone the torch around the room once more before retreating. “Happens every day. No need to bother the nobility with it.” The door closed behind him.
Nobody moved, though Rachel allowed herself a deep breath that she hoped wasn’t audible beyond the door. With the rain still coming down hard, it wasn’t a real fear. Then, after a long count of ten, a scratching came at the other door, the one to the outside.
Instantly, Venny was on his feet and replied with the appropriate rat-a-tat.
“Too bad they didn’t come earlier,” Matha said, deadpan. “Imagine the excitement.”
“I’m imagining, believe me.” Mathew stood and set his feet, knife at the ready in case those on the other side weren’t as they expected.
Then the door opened, bringing a grayness to the room, followed by Darren carrying a lantern, dressed now like a Templar sergeant. Beside him was the same man who’d helped him with the casks of wine, also dressed in Templar garb.
“This is Gerard. Come on. We have a long way to go.”
The former prisoners couldn’t move nor close the door of the prison fast enough.
Without even taking a moment to hug her, Darren boosted Rachel into the back of the wagon they’d brought and then signaled to Gerard to get moving. As the horse started forward at a walking pace, Darren clambered into the bed too in order to pass out blankets, cloaks, food, and water to the former prisoners.
Rachel wrapped her blanket tightly around herself, hunching her shoulders and feeling in every cell of her body the exhaustion that followed an adrenaline rush. All the others appeared to be taking their release from prison as if it was nothing special, but she thought that might be macho posturing.
A big part of her was jumping up and down with glee. They’d done it! If nothing else went right tonight, they’d rescued everyone from the prison without raising an eyebrow—much less an alarm. And nobody had any reason to connect them to the Templars. It would be as if they’d disappeared into thin air.
Then Samuel, who’d elected to walk, reached over and removed Rachel’s yellow badge, which she’d been wearing even in the prison, as required.
“Never again,” Samuel said.
Darren glanced at Rachel, who lifted one shoulder in a silent message, telling him there was no point in enlightening Samuel to the fact that similar badges and similar pogroms could be in this world’s future, if it was anything like Avalon’s. He knew it already because he was one of the few citizens of Earth Two to whom David had told the truth about who they were and where they were from.
Marco Polo had also found a seat in the bed and sat with his back to the side of the wagon, rocking with the motion, punctuated by occasional jolts as the wheels went in and out of a particularly deep rut. Rachel’s legs hung down off the back, and she wasn’t sorry to be protected from the rain by the tarp above her.
As the road curved away from the wall, Gerard urged the horses into a trot while the men broke into a jog, and a minute later they came out onto a much larger road, one that circled the city six hundred yards from the actual city wall. In the next century (in Avalon), the kings of France would enlarge the city, building a bigger, second wall approximately along this very road, with the Bastille anchoring the city’s defenses on the city’s eastern side. The new wall would also fully enclose the Paris Temple, though the Templars themselves would be long gone by then.
A few more yards on, the wagon
slowed and stopped, having reached a crossroads. Gerard turned in his seat. “Time to go, gentlemen.”
Darren came close to Rachel and took her hands. “Gerard will get you safe.”
Rachel swallowed hard, but she nodded. “We’ve come this far. We can finish it.”
Darren kissed her and then said to Gerard, while pulling off the Templar robe and tossing it into the back, “Tell them not to wait for us. We’ll catch up or make our own way home.”
“Such were my orders already.” Gerard slapped the reins. The wagon moved on, following the road that went around the outside of the city towards the west.
Marco Polo watched the men disappear into the darkness and then said, “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
She shot him a look which he wouldn’t be able to read, it being so dark—and then laughed, finally letting her relief at being free show. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Day Two
David
David smiled as the rain started to fall. He’d told his own men time and again that rain was their ally, and it was going to be no different tonight. If the sky had been clear, the twilight might have been long, but with the all-encompassing cloud cover, the darkness beyond the ring of their torches was close to absolute. Torches also shone from the gates ahead of them, and the guards there should have seen them coming from the moment they appeared over the rise.
If they weren’t inside hiding from the weather, that is.
David’s hands were tied in front of him, in a slip knot expertly crafted by one of the sergeants, who came from a family of seafarers. In the palm of his hand, David held the reassuring length of rope that with one tug would loosen his bonds. Henri held the other end while astride his horse, tugging David, who was on foot, behind him.
Cador and Constance had remained on watch all afternoon. When David returned, they reported nothing had changed in the hours it had taken to ride back to the Paris Temple, regroup, discuss, argue, consult, and ultimately come up with a plan remarkably similar to the one David had initially suggested.
Unbroken in Time Page 21