Where the Light Falls

by Allison Pataki

  “You tell me where my son is.”

  “Care for any?” Lazare, his white face enshrouded in darkness, extended the small case of snuff.

  “No.” Jean-Luc waved it away. Lazare poured another small sprinkling on his hand, which he snorted through his thin nose with two quick gasps. Sighing, he leaned his head back, his emotionless eyes holding Jean-Luc in their steady gaze.

  After a pause that seemed interminable, the old man spoke. “Seems your boy stole some bread from the baker. Tried to make a dash for it.”

  “That’s a lie.” Jean-Luc leaned forward. “He has never stolen. Would never do such a thing, not when he was there with his own…aunt…who had the money to pay for the bread.”

  “His aunt, you say?” Lazare tittered, his narrow teeth glistening in the shadows of the coach as he sneered. “Well now, I’m simply reporting what I heard.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He has been detained.”

  “Detained? But this is preposterous! He’s just a child!”

  “I am telling you what I know, Citizen St. Clair. I am a man of the law; justice is the only master I serve. You know that.”

  Jean-Luc narrowed his eyes, allowing himself to admit, for the first time, that this man was his enemy. This powerful, cunning man. He knew, in that moment, that Lazare would accept nothing more out of Jean-Luc than pleading. Submission. Absolute surrender.

  And so that was what he, a desperate father, would give. “Please, Lazare. I will do whatever you ask. Just give him back.”

  “I’d like to help you, St. Clair. I believe that it’s a bit…excessive…to detain your little boy. Why, he wouldn’t last more than a month in those dungeons. If it’s not the other prisoners, it’ll be the malnourishment. Or the diseases, the way they spread in this heat.”

  Jean-Luc balled his fists so tightly that his nails dug into his palms. “Where is he, Lazare?”

  “Come now, no need to be short with me.”

  “Tell me where my son is!”

  Lazare leaned his head to the side, whistling a sigh through his pale lips. “Would you like my help?”

  “You know I want my boy out of prison. I beg you to tell me: what do you want?”

  Lazare’s eyes were unblinking as he sat across from Jean-Luc in the shadowy coach. His face, after a long look of thoughtfulness, eventually folded upward, his lips spreading into a thin smile.

  “What do I want?”

  Jean-Luc swallowed, staring at the face opposite him.

  “How about an exchange?” Lazare leaned forward, his voice quiet as he continued. “I shall help you get your darling son back, and, in return, you help me get something I’ve wanted for a very long time.”

  “Tell me—whatever it is, I will do it.”

  “It’s simple. And I do believe that you are capable of arranging it.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “Give me Sophie de Vincennes.”

  Jean-Luc fell silent, the impact of these words blunting his ability to reply, even to think. A trade? This man, this sadistic man, was really holding his little boy hostage in order to gain access to Sophie? Jean-Luc stammered, his thoughts awhirl with the desperate need to save his child and to find a way to protect Sophie. Before he could reply, another voice filled the street, and Jean-Luc heard it through the open door of the coach.

  “He doesn’t have to. I am here. I will go with you, willingly.”

  Jean-Luc turned and saw Sophie standing on the street. She wore her travel cloak, her face an implacable mask. “I will go with you. But not until you’ve returned Mathieu.”

  “Sophie.” Jean-Luc stepped out of the coach and toward her. “This is madness. An exchange? This is utter madness. Surely we live in a land of laws. Mathieu has broken no laws. We must think—”

  Sophie held up a gloved hand, resolute. Her eyes communicated her message; they both knew this was a land devoid of the law. This was a land where people in power made the choices, and people without power paid—often with their lives. “I am through allowing others to suffer…allowing others to sacrifice themselves for me. Not this time. Not like Remy. Not like André. No, Mathieu will not suffer. Nor will you or Marie, not after the kindness you’ve shown me. I will go. I go freely.” She turned from Jean-Luc to Lazare, her posture rigid with her defiance. “Bring back the boy at once, and I’ll go wherever you take me.”

  Summer 1798

  André’s stay on Malta was brief. After a sleepless night in a dark, cramped upper bedroom of a private dwelling in the Maltese capital, he and the rest of the French force were ordered back to the harbor below where their ships waited, ready to lift anchors.

  “André Valière?” A heavily mustached soldier blocked André’s way at the top of the gangway to his ship.

  “Captain Valière,” André corrected him. “What do you want?”

  “You are hereby placed under arrest.” The sergeant nodded and two soldiers appeared behind André, taking his hands in their thick fists and clamping irons around his wrists.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” André struggled uselessly against their collective force, glaring at the sergeant. “Need I remind you that I am an army captain serving aboard this ship? I’ve been reinstated by Captain Dueys. I just took part in the capture of Malta, in the presence of General Bonaparte himself.”

  “Ah, yes, the young nobleman who played such a significant role. You held a velvet pouch, was that it?”

  André knew that voice. He wheeled around to behold a familiar face—pale gray eyes and inky black hair.

  “Good to see you again, Valière.” General Murat stood before André dressed in a clean brigadier general’s uniform, a tricolor sash across his waist, a mirthless smile on his lips. “Thought you could escape your sentence just because you were floating in the middle of the Mediterranean? Have you forgotten that our Revolutionary justice extends beyond our borders?”

  “I serve on this ship for Captain Dueys.” André raised his chin, speaking with an authority that belied his inner dread. “I am here on orders as a member of General Bonaparte’s Army of the Orient.” His words rang hollow, and both men knew it.

  Murat waved a hand as if in boredom. “Captain Dueys has been…reminded…of the situation.” The general smirked. “Some of my colleagues have short memories, I’m afraid.” Murat stood so close now that André could smell his breath. “But I haven’t forgotten. No, I will never forget. You are a prisoner exiled from the Republic, not a hero in pursuit of the glory that rightfully belongs to other men.”

  André struggled now, futilely writhing and bucking against the bindings that locked his wrists in place. Across the deck, he spotted the white-haired captain who looked on, his face heavy. Dueys shook his head, as if in apology, but did not step forward to intervene.

  “I am the commanding authority aboard this ship right now, Valière,” Murat growled, his voice low. “Take him below!” And, with that, André was swept out of the clear, sun-washed afternoon and pulled belowdecks. A door creaked open and he was tossed inside like a sack. After blinking his eyes desperately in the darkness of a windowless room, André shouted, his voice hoarse. “Let me out! Let me out, you bastards! Open this damned door!”

  How was it possible he could have come all this way, survived this long, only to be back within the grasp of that hateful man? His disbelief and shock turned once again to white-hot fury and he pounded his fists on the locked door, his voice rabid as he screamed into the darkness.

  On the other side André heard laughter, a high-pitched cackle from one of the soldiers standing outside the cell. That laughter sapped the final ember of hope, and André shut his eyes, allowing everything to go dark.

  There was no way to gauge the passage of time in the black cell. No way to see the rising of the sun, or the appearance of distant shapes forming up out of mountainous shores and islands.

  All André knew, down below, was that the slit in the lower half of the door opened twice in any given
day: once, he assumed, in the morning, once in the evening. Though he groped at the door, demanding an audience with Captain Dueys each time he heard the creaky slat groan its way open, he was never answered by a human voice. His only reply was the careless toss of a hand, sending in a piece of black, hard bread and a small bowl of dirty water, half its contents spilled by the time it landed on the floor of André’s cell.

  Toward the top of the thick oaken door was a lattice, a small window lined with bars. If opened from the outside, it might let in a small square of light. Many times the small slit below had been pried open, resulting in an issuance of bread and water, but this upper lattice had never been opened.

  And so it was the opening of this window that stirred André from his troubled, numbed reverie. He heard the noise, first, before he saw the sudden spear of light. The glow, though nothing more than a small sliver of a candle’s flame, blinded him with the force of a hundred suns, and he put his hand to his eyes.

  “Who’s there?” André’s voice was hoarse, his throat dry. He blinked, suddenly stunned after what seemed like days of uninterrupted darkness.

  “Captain Valière?”

  As André’s eyes slowly adjusted to the garish new light, he saw an unfamiliar face through the slit in the door. The face that eyed him was stern, with large black eyes and a smooth complexion several shades darker than André was accustomed to seeing. “Are you Valière?” the stranger repeated, his accent sounding French, yet with the tinge of something unfamiliar.

  “Yes?” André still held a hand to his eyes as he shielded them, feeling a headache throb mercilessly. “I am André Valière.”

  “If I unlock this door and come in, do you promise you will not try to force your way past me and out of the cell?”

  André considered this question. “I don’t think I would get very far. So I suppose so, yes.”

  The man ignored André’s sarcasm. “Do I have your word?”

  “You do.”

  The man fiddled with a key and the lock creaked plaintively before him. As the door swung into the cell, the rush of new light overwhelmed André, and he blinked desperately.

  “Goodness, a few candles too bright, eh? How long have they had you in this wretched hold?” The man’s accent was strangely foreign to André, but he wore the high-collared blue and gold coat with the tricolor sash along the waistline indicative of a French officer.

  “But good God, I’d think the stench in here would do more to trouble you than a light!”

  André, who had retreated back to the corner of the cell like an animal frightened by the light, felt a rush of embarrassment; this cell had served as bed, home, and toilet for him. He said nothing. As he blinked, André found his eyes adjusting and noticed that indeed all the light by which he had been stunned issued from only a few flickering candles.

  “You scared of me, lad? No need for that.”

  “Sorry. I’ve been in the darkness for…well, I don’t know how long.”

  “Almost four days. Damn foolish, if you ask me.” The man spoke in a quiet tone, but his gestures were quick and purposeful as he surveyed the tiny cell. “Have they been feeding you in this bloody rat hole?”

  “I get bread and water.” André tried to swallow but found his throat too dry.

  “Well, at least that’s as it should be.” He turned his focus back to André, his dark eyes taking in the prisoner’s squalid appearance. “My name is Dumas. General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.”

  André wondered why the man’s name sounded familiar, and then he knew; his was the name mentioned on the beach in Malta. “I’m André Valière,” he said, quietly. “Formerly a captain in the Army of the Republic.”

  “I know who you are.” General Dumas rested a hand on his sword hilt, looking intently at André. “You testified at General Kellermann’s trial.”

  André nodded, lowering his eyes to the grimy cell floor.

  “He was a good general, and a good man. I told my wife—the day we killed him was the day our Revolution lost the side of the angels.”

  André chewed on his lower lip, seasoned now at hiding his true feelings, too frightful to speak anything that might further condemn him.

  Dumas continued. “Kellermann was one of the few who supported my promotion to brigadier general.” The more this man spoke, the more distinctly André noted his foreign, rolling cadence. “While many of the others, Murat especially, said there was no way someone so dark-skinned as me should be commanding Frenchmen…so much for their liberty and equality, eh?” Dumas spit in the corner of the cell. “But the past is the past. I’ve proven to them a time or two my mettle.”

  André, not knowing what to say, said nothing. But the general continued.

  “You look confused, Valière.” General Dumas’s hard stare unsettled André. “Never seen a Negro before?”

  “No, sir, it’s not that. It’s just…well, I’ve never seen a black general before. Sir.”

  “Well, that’s something we have in common then, Captain,” Dumas said, pacing the small cell. “I’m the son of a Haitian slave, my mother. Never mind the fact that my father was a French lord—most men only see the dark half.” To André’s surprise, the imposing man suddenly flashed a broad smile. “But never mind that now.”

  André still did not know what to make of this strange visitor. He asked the first question that came to his mind. “If you please, General Dumas, what time is it?”

  “Midnight,” the general answered, still looking around the cell in disgust. “I came down here to see what you were about. This is a waste—having an officer like you locked up. The British are chasing us like a sailor chases whores. We are going to face fire any day now. Whether it’s the Royal Navy or the Mamelukes. Murat is a fool if he thinks we don’t need every able-bodied man above, ready to fight.”

  André noticed the quickening of his pulse, the fire of what he was sure had to be hope filling his chest. “Dueys agrees with me,” Dumas said. “That makes a general and a ship’s captain against a general. We outnumber him.”

  André swallowed hard. What did this mean?

  “Valière, I wasn’t sure about it, but now it’s decided. I’m setting you free.”

  André nearly doubled over in shock. “Free? You mean…” André’s voice caught in his throat. He hadn’t dared use the word for so long he had almost forgotten its meaning.

  “I mean you are free. Come now, I’ve seen what it means to be a slave, and these conditions rival even that. We’re less than a week’s sail from Egypt. We keep you down here another week and you’re likely to be dead by the time we make land. And then what? No, no, no, this won’t do. We need all the men we can get.”

  “But…General Murat—?”

  “You let me deal with Murat.” Dumas waved a large hand, frowning. “In fact, I look forward to the chance to tell Nicolai Murat what I really think.”

  André could not suppress a short, guttural laugh. He was free—free to leave this dark cell that smelled of piss and filth and what would surely be his death. He could have hugged this man, this strange yet gracious General Dumas. “Thank you, General. Truly, thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me now. Perhaps once we’ve gone ashore you’ll prove to me that it was worth it, saving your sorry skin.”

  André nodded, managing a smile in spite of all of his recent misery. “Gladly.”

  The man paused in the doorway, leaving the door ajar behind him. Now, in the full light for the first time, André noticed just how tall and imposing this half-noble, half-Haitian general really was.

  “You said your first name is André—is it not?”

  “It is, sir. André Valière.”

  Dumas leaned in the doorway. “My wife is pregnant. She thinks it’s a boy and she wants to name him Alexandre.”

  “Alexandre Dumas,” André said, repeating the name aloud. “It’s a fine name.”

  “I like André. Perhaps we’ll shorten it and call him André.”

  André’s
good luck continued when, the next day above deck, he heard a familiar voice. “They say that Allah is good, and yet he keeps putting you in my path.” André turned at the sound of this playful remark and stared into a wide, earnest smile.

  “Ashar!” The two men embraced. “How are you, my friend?” André could not help but notice the man’s changed appearance compared to the last time he had seen him. He was dressed in a flowing saffron tunic that hung past his knees and wore a white hood coiled about his head. It was Ashar, free of his sailor’s garb and dressed in the clothes of his homeland, as if he had been restored to a former life.

  “But how have I not seen you before?”

  André couldn’t suppress a short, bitter laugh. “I’ve been belowdecks.”

  Ashar gave a quizzical expression as the two men walked, side by side, toward the deck railing.

  “I was locked away,” André added by way of explanation.

  “Locked away?”

  André nodded.

  “But…why?”

  André glanced over his shoulder, waiting as a pair of sailors passed before answering: “I seem to have made a very powerful enemy. One who has chased me here. All the way from Paris.”

  Ashar’s eyes narrowed as he leaned toward André. “Who?”

  André whispered the name: “General Murat.”

  Ashar blinked his eyes, a grave expression settling on his handsome features. “How did you do a thing like that?”

  “The true reason? I’m not sure.” André sighed, looking back out over the rolling horizon of azure blue Mediterranean. “But it could not have helped that I fell in love with his niece.”

  The summer ripened into scorching heat and the late June sun poured down onto the men, turning their skin darker with each passing day. At night, a blinding moon shone, setting the water’s surface to a rolling shimmer, accented by the reflection of a thousand stars. All the while the French fleet, a traveling fortress of hundreds of ships, their sails fat with the salty Mediterranean wind, sped toward the unsuspecting kingdom of Egypt.