"There is only one thing you can depend on in this life," he gasped, grabbing hold of the wooden yoke and wincing as she urged his leg across the Passion cross of dark hair on the donkey's back. "Yourself. But you come a fair second, mon fils."
It was an effort not to stare at the spreading stain or the scarlet beading upon the fobwatch chain; Fleur busied herself hoicking the bristly panniers across her back.
"Not far." The smile on her face was forced. The man's shoulders were slumping precariously and his panting breath was loud in her ears as she tugged Blanchette's leading rein coaxingly: "Proot!" But the velvety ears shook rebelliously. Do not misbehave, she pleaded silently. The little hooves at first refused to move but then, as though sensing her panic, Blanchette reluctantly began to follow her.
Mercifully, M. Bosanquet was still conscious by the time they reached the cottage.
Her aunt, Estelle de Thury, once a grand lady of Bayeux, was waiting for her, anxiety creasing the brow that expensive creams had once protected; the apron she would have scorned to wear before her husband's exile crushed by roughened fingers.
"Never tell me," she exclaimed, relief replaced by asperity as she noted Fleur's companion and rescued the baskets from her niece's burdened shoulders. "He was sold at half-price?"
"No, madame," ground out the stranger's voice with momentous effort. "I was... given... away."
* * *
Fleur and her aunt made M. Bosanquet comfortable on their only bed and examined his injuries beneath a succession of tallow lights. Cleansed, the wound beneath his striped satin waistcoat did not look spectacular. It was rather the tiny froths of air in the seepage that bothered all three of them.
"What madness possessed you, Fleur? We could have a dead man on our hands," whispered her aunt, drawing her out of the room and shutting the door behind them. "He needs a physician, child. Oh, if only we lived closer to Caen, I am sure Charlotte's aunt would have taken him in."
"No choice," Fleur muttered, tugging off her cap and running an exasperated hand through her curls. "I will leave for Caen before first light. There's a new doctor from Cherbourg who's set up in the Rue Saint-Pierre. Maybe he will not ask any questions. It will be a risk but..." She shrugged; for nearly two years she had been living in fear of arrest. "And I am sure our guest will not want much to eat," she added wryly as her aunt darted a look at the meagre supplies that had to last them the week. "Besides, there is coin. Enough to pay the doctor's fee. Have a look!"
Her aunt lchecked through the man's wallet and gave a weary nod, tucking back a lock of dark, lank hair that had been too long denied the curling tong. As she replaced the porte-monnaie beside the fobwatch and pocket book on the scoured table, she let her chilblained hand linger on its soft leather. "Like one your uncle had," she murmured, and then in silence scraped a knuckle across her damp cheekbone. "No use crying, I suppose." It was bravely spoken with a lift of the Thury shoulders. "Goodness, child, you took a risk bringing the stranger here. Shouldn't we ask old Guillaume or one of the other forest people to take him in?"
"Tomorrow, perhaps." Too exhausted to argue, Fleur let her sabots thud to the earth floor and leaned her forehead on the heel of her hand.
"No news from your uncle, I suppose?"
"No." Poor Tante Estelle. A penniless fugitive, Uncle Charles's letters came by circuitous routes and they never had correspondence from Fleur's brother, Philippe. Deprived of the rank of duke, two splendid chateaux, a luxurious Paris mansion, not to mention access to the smelly glories of Versailles and all the sinecures that would have been his under the ci-devant King Louis XVI, Philippe was bitter and morose, according to Uncle Charles.
Fleur heaved the wicker pannier of supplies onto the table. "Charlotte and Mme de Bretteville gave me some dinner. I kept some for you. And I met the gypsies again. Paco asked after you. Would you unpack all this while I see to Blanchette?"
Her aunt tore into the wrapping and was already gobbling the cheese before Fleur reached the door. "You will get indigestion, aunt," she chided fondly, but once outside in the frosty twilight her smile vanished. Wrapping her arms batlike around her thin shoulders to keep away the shivers, she headed for Blanchette's stall.
"I cannot bear much more of this," she confided wearily into the long ears as she hugged the donkey. The journey to Caen had worn her out and she must tread the same path tomorrow. Then, despising herself for weakness, Fleur whispered a prayer for M. Bosanquet. If anyone needed God's help, he did.
* * *
"You consider I should put my affairs in order, eh, doctor?" M. Bosanquet demanded, wincing as the physician set aside the wadge of linen and gently felt the telltale rigidity of the abdomen.
"I did not say that, monsieur." The physician stooped, his ear to the patient's belly, but as he straightened, the swift exchange of glances with Tante Estelle on the other side of the bed confirmed his suspicions.
"You did not need to, man. I have studied men's faces long enough to know when they dissemble. How long? Days? Hours?"
"The injury is indeed severe."
"Ma foi! Then I need a lawyer more than a doctor," groaned the patient. "Is there one in Caen or have they all gone to Paris to make mischief? What about that old devil Esnault? He and I were pupils at the Abbaye aux Hommes."
The doctor felt Bosanquet's pulse. "I will acquaint Citizen Esnault with your predicament and give him directions. It will save the boy here making another trip to town. I am also prepared to forward a message to your family on your behalf."
Fleur darted her aunt a troubled look behind the doctor's back. M. Esnault's tongue was said to be as long as the road to Paris! Why not invite the whole of Caen?
"Your fees are in my wallet, doctor. Ask the lad."
Outside the bedchamber, the physician was far more forthright.
"Since you are not his relatives, I will not mince words. If the blade has damaged the gentleman's intestine, waste will seep out and infect the rest of his belly within a few days. Just make him as comfortable as you can."
* * *
"Ah well, the Devil will be sharpening his toasting fork, I daresay," M. Bosanquet remarked cheerfully, but his skin was ashen. "It seems I need to make my last confession." He gave a derogatory sniff and added, "I wish I didn't give a fig as to whether a priest is a republican or a kisser of royal shoe buckles, but I am an old-fashioned soul at heart. There... there is no chance of fetching a nonjuring fellow, is there?"
"We-we might be able to manage it," muttered Fleur. "The priest of Saint-Gilles has been visiting the forest." Hiding might be a more apt description, since he had refused to take an oath to the Republic and was under a deportation order. "I shall see if any of the forest people know of his whereabouts."
"Gombault, eh?" His fingers scrabbled at her sleeve.
"Abbé Gombault, yes." She frowned. "You are well informed, monsieur."
"My mother knew them all. Ah, don't scowl so. I am no danger to him. Thinking of slitting my throat if I blabbed?" His ability to run ahead of her thoughts was quite unsettling.
"If I had to, monsieur."
"I do not know your circumstances, mon brave, and I'll ask no questions—gentility gone sour, perhaps." The eyes flicking over her clearly suspected more, for these days anyone could move a stone and find an aristo hiding beneath it, but he cleared his throat. "Bien, I've plenty of money with me to pay a score of lawyers and my board."
She had noticed. "I am glad of that, monsieur."
"Yes, so am I." Fleur's aunt was back, studying him from the doorway.
Their guest bestowed his wistful expression upon her as if inviting her absolution. "I know I am an infernal nuisance, madame." His voice was heavy with emotion. "But could you or the lad spare the time to read to me? I'd rather not be on my own until I get used to the notion of... going."
"Well, you will have the late King Louis to keep you company in hell, I daresay, sir," Fleur's aunt exclaimed tartly, fiddling with the cotton fichu around her bodice, "and
... and a score of philosophers who should have known better." With a sob, she fled.
"Aunt dearest." Fleur hastened after her and found her cradling her head against the wall.
"Ignore me, mignonne. You know how it is."
Did she? Had Tante Estelle glimpsed her own mortality in M. Bosanquet's face? She turned the older woman and drew her into her arms.
"Oh, Fleur." For a few minutes her aunt wept against her shoulder and then she roused herself. "Whatever happens to you, do not waste a moment of life. I wish your uncle were here. I wish I had not squandered... I wish I had known he and I would be parted. Promise me, child."
"I promise," Fleur hushed her, not understanding what she meant. With the prospect of starvation facing them, squandering anything was as likely as jumping over the moon. "Come back and be kind to poor Monsieur Bosanquet," she coaxed, straightening her aunt's cap and using an apron corner to soak up the tears.
"No, you shall read to him. Oh, but, Fleur, there is only the prayer book left. We've burned the rest."
"Then prayers it is, since I cannot remember the jest Charlotte told me yesterday," Fleur answered dryly. How did one comfort a dying man when everyone now believed that the Supreme Being was some sort of celestial clockmaker?
"Can you remember any Molière, the scenes we used to read together?"
Yes, Fleur remembered every precious line, the laughter, the shawls, the pilfered waistcoats from her uncle's garde-robe. That had been in '89 before Thomas had delivered her to her uncle's doorstep in Caen like an unfranked letter. She thought of the abandoned library with sadness. Molière's plays were among the few books her aunt had brought to the cottage, books they had burnt last winter, scene by scene.
She might have been giving M. Bosanquet news that he would live, judging by the delight which flooded his face as she stood at the end of the bed declaring: "'Follow me! I'm going out to show off my clothes in the town...'"
"Bravo, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme! But I think something less humorous, mon petit; it hurts to laugh and I think you could make me laugh a great deal, yes? How about: 'Aristotle and the philosophers can say what they like, but there's nothing to equal tobacco: it's... it's...'"
"'...an honest man's habit...'"she finished, grinning and asked, "So how did you guess I could read, monsieur?"
"I heard you humming last night. An unlettered peasant would not know a melody by the youngest of the Bachs—or has the Revolution enlightened all of us?"
It was necessary to meet his gaze evenly. "As you say, monsieur, gentility gone sour."
By the time the last fingers of daylight struggled in between the blinds, Fleur was exhausted and exhilarated. For a few hours she had lost herself in a saner, happier world, but now Tante Estelle stood waiting for her to finish declaiming and sent her out into the shadows to gather firewood.
Had she managed to distract M. Bosanquet from the omnipresent pain in his belly and the darkness of death that awaited him, she wondered. It had to be darkness. Surely it was not Divine Will that had killed the King, tossed down the nobility and placed France at war with half of Europe? She almost envied M. Bosanquet's approaching night.
* * *
Tante Estelle kept vigil beside M. Bosanquet's bed throughout the small hours while Fleur curled up next to the kitchen hearth. As the sun rose, the girl took her turn again. The sick man hardly dared move now and the thin mouth of the wound was yellowing.
"Tell me about yourself, monsieur," Fleur asked, for the fever was mounting and soon he would succumb to delirium.
"I live in Paris, 47 Rue des Bonnes Soeurs," he told her, adding like a pompous bourgeois, "A man of property."
"Then what are you doing coming to Caen, monsieur?"
"Each year on my mother's birthday, I come to visit her grave." Sadness clouded the air between them. "You know, I'll wager all I own that the attack on me was planned."
"Have you so many enemies?" Fleur asked, trying to dispel his sorrow with a teasing smile.
"Only one," and he added with feeling, "God willing. My nephew, Felix Quettehou. He loathes me, covets my wealth to build up his business."
"But it is up to you how you bequeath it. Have you no children?"
"Never married, not-not the marrying kind, and yet—" He blinked at the window where a rosy dawn suffused the sky. "Child, I have been doing some hard thinking about this matter. Call your aunt in, will you, please."
Puzzled, Fleur coaxed her aunt to leave off chopping the shrivelled wild garlic that would enhance a thin pottage.
M. Bosanquet cleared his throat, tightened his face at the agony this caused, and then waited for their full attention as though he were a lawyer addressing a parlement. "I have a proposition." He paused. "You live a poor existence here. What are you, aristocrats in hiding?" Tante Estelle's mouth tightened. Neither woman answered. "And this pretty creature." He reached out a hand to take Fleur's fingers.
Tante Estelle's shoulder stiffened. "Go outside, child!" she snapped.
"Aunt, no." Fleur had lost her childhood the day the chateau had burned down.
Had it not been painful, M. Bosanquet might have laughed; he had to be content with a grimace instead of a smile. "I may be an old fool but I can tell a lovely boy from a girl. Why this masquerade, ma petite?" he asked, his fingers closing tight on hers.
"It is safer for her, monsieur. Two women living on their own," her aunt replied. "The forest people respect us. Others will not. Now, come to the point, old fool. I have not all day."
"The point, eh." He clenched his teeth and sank back against the pillow. "I thought to leave my properties in Paris to a friend but..." The Adam's apple moved painfully. "Fill this pipe again for me, child."
"You think your nephew may have hired the assassins, monsieur?" Fleur packed the clay barrel with tobacco from his pouch.
"Ha, clever child, now there is a theatre piece for you! I made no secret of my annual pilgrimage to Caen." He watched her poor efforts at lighting the pipe. "I will not leave my nephew a sou!" The draw of tobacco flavour gave him fresh heart. "There must be no question, you understand," he told her aunt through the wispy smoke. "No challenge! My point is, what if I bequeath my property to you?" His effort to give Tante Estelle a charming smile failed tragically. "What are you, in your fifties? Still some life left, eh?"
"Man's already delirious," muttered her aunt, but it was more than rouge pinkened her cheeks. "Foolish old roué."
"I was never more serious in my life, woman. I behold here a young lady who is quick-witted, resourceful, hungry and poor. Will you condemn her to starvation and loneliness? Marry me, Estelle-whoever-you-are, become Madame Bosanquet, and I will make my will in your favour. You shall never starve again and this sweet young flower will soon find a beau in Paris."
Fleur laughed, not impolitely but out of astonishment, and glanced for her aunt's reaction. Tante Estelle humphed.
"No, listen to me, woman," he retorted. "You both need a new identity, else why does this child dress as a youth? Why do you hide her away in a forest when she is the age to seek a husband? What have you to lose? I shall be dead within the week."
Fleur's aunt bristled. "Paris, indeed! Would you send us to be massacred, to live among murderers where the cobblestones are clogged with blood? At least here we are safe."
"Safe, here?" M. Bosanquet's eyes had grown shrewd. "What about those innocent women dragged to Caen bound to the guns just because they were related to the priest at Saint-Jacques? Oh, I heard all about that last time I came here. Do not delude yourselves, mesdames, the Revolution is like a hungry sea creature. It will slowly reach out its tentacles and devour all of France. You should have seen the deputy who overtook me on the road—the light of revolution in his eyes, a true believer. There will be a guillotine in the Place Saint-Sauveur before the year is over. Why do you not accept my offer, you old goose?"
"Be quiet, sir!" Her aunt clasped her hands against her ears.
Fleur patted his arm. "Dear monsieur, your of
fer to us is very generous but, well—your nephew, if he is so greedy for your money that he tried to kill you, he will contest your will and—"
"—and murder us!" finished her aunt.
"I have friends in Paris, madame."
"They did not do much for your safety!"
"No, but this journey for Maman I always do alone. I did not think my—my nephew would be so desperate. If I could make the journey back to Paris, I would destroy—aïe!" A stab of pain twisted in his belly. "For the love of God, when the priest comes, let him marry us."
"No!" snapped Tante Estelle, and flounced out; the vigorous chop of the cleaver recommenced.
"Oh, monsieur." Fleur rescued the pipe. "She prays my uncle is still alive."
His expression was genuinely rueful. "But she wore no wedding band."
"She sold it to feed us through the first winter here."
M. Bosanquet swallowed and turned his face to the wall. "Oh, Christ!"
"Tiens!" Fleur rose from the stool, paced to the shutters and stood for a moment considering, before she swung round decisively. "My aunt may not be able to wed you, monsieur, but I certainly can!"
Chapter 2
"Wife to widow in one day!" Charlotte exclaimed, pulling hard at the laces of the quilted linen stays she had lent to Fleur. "You do experience life to its full."
Fleur clenched her teeth and held on to the chest of drawers, wondering whether, if she lost her grip, she and the respectable Charlotte Corday would tumble backwards through the second-storey window in full view of Caen's Rue Saint-Jean.
"Life to its full!" she gasped. "Oh yes, like the time I was set upon by those young ruffians behind the butter market and arrived on your doorstep black and blue."
"Fortunate they were not older," clucked Charlotte with the weight of her superior years. "Take this." She generously scooped out one of the last two eau de millefleurs sachets from the box on the chest of drawers. "Down your chemise, Madame Bosanquet."
Fleur-de-Lis Page 3