by Rob Griffith
“I never thought it would be like this,” she said.
“Do you mean to tell me that with all your protestations about the safety of balloons you had never actually travelled in one yourself?”
“Of course not. I am not a fool. But I must say though, that the experience is not disagreeable.”
She was right. I had expected a feeling of speed and motion, of, well, I don’t know but I felt no different than if I was sitting on a bench on the banks of the river not on a seat a thousand feet above it. It was the stillness that struck me first. I was travelling quite quickly it seemed, but I wasn’t being thrown around in a coach or bouncing on the back of a horse. I couldn’t even feel any breeze. I mentioned this to Garnerin and he looked disparagingly at me and said it was because we were moving with the wind, hence we could not feel it. That still didn’t make sense to me but I decided not to worry and tried to enjoy the view.
The sun was rising in the east and there was just enough light to see the city beneath. All of Paris lay before me like some great panorama. The streets were laid out just like on a map, a few carts moving along them, and ant-like delivery boys weaving between them. I could see down the Seine to Notre Dame, see the Palais des Tuilleries and its gardens, the islands in the river, Les Invalides and the bridges, perhaps just make out the ancient walls that encircled the city. The village of Montmarte, nestled on rolling green hills and dotted with windmills, was just catching the golden light. We floated over columns of smoke from a hundred chimneys and over the slowly tacking barges on the river, the water glistening in the dawn. Dominique took my hand and leaned over to look. She yelped when the car swayed and Garnerin glared but it soon settled down. We were heading north-west as we had hoped. Beneath us, more than three thousand feet below, almost a whole mile, was the area around Chaillot and we’d soon be crossing the walls and over open countryside. It was getting lighter every second now. A flash of sunlight on metal made me look down at one of the bridges over the Seine and I saw the troop of dragoons charging their way across. They’d never catch us, though. The higher we got, the stronger the wind was. Garnerin estimated we were travelling at a rate of nearly thirty miles in every hour. It was unbelievable. Well it was then; those of us born before the advent of train travel have a slightly different sense of velocity to the youngsters of today.
Dominique shivered slightly and I opened one of the small lockers beneath the seat, took out a blanket and put it over us. I also brought out the basket of food and tucked into a cold fowl with relish; I hadn’t eaten dinner because I’d been so nervous.
“So what do you think of your first aerial voyage?” Garnerin asked.
“It’s miraculous. Incredible. I never imagined it would be like this,” I said between mouthfuls.
“It is not miraculous. It is science,” he replied slightly indignantly.
“How high will we go?” I waved a chicken leg upwards.
“About seven thousand feet. I sometimes go higher if there is cloud.” He was very matter of fact. I still thought that a bag of gas holding three people two miles above the fields of Picardy was extraordinary but I didn’t argue.
“Have you ever had an accident?” I asked, knowing that I probably didn’t want to know the answer.
“I have always come back to earth, just sometimes slightly harder than I wished. Do not worry,” and when he saw that he had not calmed my nerves he continued, “If you imagine that a mere balloon flight is dangerous you should see me use my parachute.”
“What on earth is a parachute?”
“It is a bit like a very large parasol, made from cloth and rope. With it I can jump from the balloon and land safely even from a height of several hundred meters,” he said it very proudly. The one thought that scared me more than floating under a bag of gas a mile high would be opting to get out.
“You must be mad!” I said it more sharply than I intended.
“Yes, quite possibly. But look at the views I get.”
He was right about that at least Seeing the world spread out below us was astounding, it quite literally gave one a new perspective. The glow of dawn bathed everything in a wonderful light, long shadows emphasised each tree and farm house. The clouds, only just above us now, were tinged with pink and orange. Even the close escape we’d just experienced couldn’t detract from the beauty of the moment. Garnerin told me that he had demonstrated his balloon for the military. I appreciated how such a view would aid a General in battle but how would he pass his orders? The thought of Aides de Camp parachuting down with notes from the General made me smile.
We floated along above the Paris-Amiens road, past Clerment and the hills of Liancourt dotted with vines, fruit trees still in blossom and fields of clover and wheat, many now overgrown and neglected. We were heading for the coast and soon the landscape changed to dull, flat chalky plains. Occasionally we’d hear a post-chaise or cart below and see the white upturned faces of the coachman or carter but apart from that we seemed to be alone, even the birds flew far below us.
Dominique had been quiet for almost an hour; she was just staring down at the passing meadows. I imagined she was thinking of her brother.
“He will be safe by now.” I said. She looked up. There was a flush of colour in her cheeks. A lock of her hair had become unpinned and was hanging down over one eye.
“What?”
“Claude. He’ll be all right.”
“Yes, of course,” she tucked the wayward lock back into place. I don’t think either of us believed what I said at the time; Calvet would have been lucky to get away from the dragoons and if he had been caught he would be hard pressed to give an adequate justification of his actions in aiding an Englishman to escape from Paris. They would probably be in the Temple prison by now. Even if Lacrosse had turned a blind eye to his activities before, he couldn’t overlook an escape in a balloon.
I squeezed her hand for added reassurance.
“Thank you Ben. I just didn’t expect to be up here. You can never be sure where life will take you, can you?” She forced a weak smile.
“Indeed not. We are all in the hands of fate, much like we are now in the hands of the wind,” I said, not sure that I was reassuring her.
“Do you believe in fate?”
“Sometimes. I try to make my own luck but there are times when life seems to have other plans,” I shrugged.
“And your life. Is it as you wish?”
“Is anybody’s? I think that perhaps I have made some poor choices, used certain things as excuses for my own troubles. Perhaps I see things a little more clearly now. It must be the height.” I tried to lighten the conversation but Dominique wasn’t in the mood for levity.
“Do you think we can change our fate?” She was looking down at the passing landscape, twisting her hair in her fingers. She shivered slightly and I reached for a blanket and placed it across her shoulders, leaving my hands there. Her hands came up and lightly touched my own.
“Of course. It’s not just the cards you are dealt, it’s how you play them,” I said, moving slightly closer to her so our bodies touched.
“But how?” she asked, leaning towards me.
“Lord, I don’t know. With me I was born a bastard and for a long time that was the part I played. Everything that went wrong for me I blamed on being born on the wrong side of the sheets. My favourite words were ‘if only’. This last year in Paris I have had time to think. I made my own mistakes, taken from life and not given. When, or if, I get back to London I’d like to think that I could begin to change.” It was her turn to squeeze my hand.
“Ben. You… I…” Her voice trailed off and she looked back down. A burnt out chateau with sheep grazing on its lawns glided beneath us.
“Dominique. I know that life has dealt you some poor cards but look what you have done with them. You’ve thrown them back at the dealer and stood up for what you believe in. You’ve risked your life to free your country from a despot when so many of your countrymen let themselves
be led blindly into massacres and hate. You are an amazing woman.”
“You see only what you want to see.” She looked back up at me and I saw both tears and anger in her eyes. “All men just see what they want. You don’t know me at all.”
It was my turn to turn away and look back to the now distant smoke of Paris. Garnerin caught my eye and shrugged as if to say ‘Women. What can you do?’ He handed me a bottle of wine and a piece of bread.
“Eat, drink. The wind is good and we’ll be up here for some time yet,” he said.
I looked down again. Going up into the air wasn’t so bad I thought. However, I was soon to learn that coming back down to earth again was the dangerous bit.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When I saw the silver snake of the river Somme twisting its way across the fields of Picardy all my trepidation returned. We would have to land soon. We had been in the air nearly two hours and travelled at least seventy-five miles. Our pursuers should have been left far behind, no word should even have reached Amiens of our escape; the fastest horse would scarcely be thirty miles from Paris. Apart from being suspended a mile up in the firmament we were safe. Or so I thought.
The ground was getting closer all the time and the lower we flew, the faster the trees and hedgerows passed beneath us. Calvet had sent word by coded letter to some Royalist friends of his, asking them to watch for us along the Somme to the west of Amiens. As the river came closer, Garnerin began to look for a suitable field to land in. I’d read enough about ballooning to realise that ascending was the easy part and that descending was far more hazardous. The wind had picked up and I didn’t like the look of the frown that made the aeronaut’s thick bushy eyebrows meet like amorous caterpillars as he scanned the meadows below. Every now and then Garnerin would pull on the rope that controlled the valve at the top of the balloon. Some gas would escape and the ground would come rapidly nearer. Gravity was going to exact its revenge for our transgression.
“The wind is not good. Too fast, much too fast,” Garnerin said.
“Can’t we go back up?” Dominique asked.
“No. No. I have let out too much gas and have no more ballast to throw overboard. We will get down, one way or another.”
It was hardly the most reassuring speech I’d ever heard but there was little I could do, save for bracing Dominique and myself for the inevitable impact. We both clung on to the flimsy ropes until our fingers ached. We sailed low over a small village and children shouted and began to chase us, geese honking as they escaped the horde of youngsters. Old women crossed themselves and two men sitting at a table outside an inn looked suspiciously at their empty tankards. Just as our departure had been far less anonymous than we had hoped I had the feeling that our arrival back on God’s good earth would be met with a crowd. A herd of cows scattered as our shadow crossed quickly over them. Then the car brushed the top of an oak.
Branches snapped and the car tore through leaves and twigs. I was hurled forwards and almost out of the car; only my desperate hold on one of the ropes saved me. After the silence and stillness of the flight the sudden cacophony of sound and movement was terrifying. Dominique screamed and Garnerin swore as he pulled desperately on the valve rope to get us down. We hit terra firma with a thud that I felt all the way up my spine and then we were airborne again. Bouncing up to fifty or sixty feet and then coming down again with another splintering crash.
Garnerin was thrown to the ground but we ascended once more. I grabbed the valve rope and pulled, praying to God that the next time we landed would be the last. Dominique was as white as a sheet and a look of sheer terror passed between us. The balloon was heading for a row of Lombardy poplars at an alarming speed. We were only a few feet from the ground and I thought about just jumping out with Dominique but before we had the chance the fabric of the balloon was tearing into the branches and the car smashed into a trunk. I grabbed Dominique and held her to me as the world ended around us. We lay there in a mass of leaves, tree, and the remains of the car, covered in a shroud of green and yellow cloth. There was silence again, until I began to laugh.
“What,” Dominique asked in an unsteady voice, “is so funny?”
“I don’t think that aerial voyaging will ever be all the crack, do you?” I was still holding her and her head was on my chest as it heaved with laughter. She tried to get up but I held her there. She looked at me, beginning to laugh with relief herself. Her hair was a mess and her face ashen with shock but her eyes were as beautiful as ever. They met mine. We stopped laughing. I reached up and moved a lock of her hair from her brow. My hand brushed the soft skin of her cheek and then stroked the back of her neck, drawing her towards me. She didn’t resist. Our lips were only an inch apart. She was breathing hard.
“Monsieur, Mademoiselle Calvet! Where are you?” Garnerin pulled the balloon from on top of us and we hastily disentangled ourselves from each other and the remains of the car. Garnerin was standing in front of the wreckage looking very forlorn.
“Very sorry about your balloon,” I said lamely, literally as well as figuratively. I was battered, bruised and pains shot through one of my knees every time I put weight on it. My wound hurt again for the first time in days but I didn’t think it had reopened, not until I noticed the spots of blood on my shirt later. Dominique was again trembling slightly but seemed uninjured. Garnerin began to pick up pieces of wood, examining them and tutting.
“C’est la vie. I was going to build a larger one anyway,” he shrugged and threw away the piece of wood he was holding, “Now you must hit me.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yes. You must hit me. I will tell the gendarmes that you made me take you. It will help if you…”
I thought it would be better if I didn’t give him any warning and so delivered a swift jab to his chin. He collapsed on to the remnants of his craft. Dominique put her hand to her mouth.
“Ben, don’t you think that was a bit too hard?”
“I didn’t know he was going to go down like that. I only tapped him. Still, probably for the best. I think we should be going.” I was a little shame-faced but did my best to cover it. Garnerin had risked his life for me, but knocking him out was the best favour I could have for done him. It would surely convince whoever found him that I was a desperate English spy who had kidnapped him and the niece of a police official.
The audience for our spectacular landing had consisted of a couple of goats, who were now chewing on the remains of the balloon, and I thought we’d better be on our way before the local farmers and their families began to gather. I could hear them coming already, the first billhooks visible over the hedges. I doubted that the French peasantry would appreciate their rural idyll being disturbed by anything as unlikely as a balloon so I grabbed Dominique’s hand and ducked through the remains of the poplar into the field beyond.
We ran through shoulder-high green wheat until we reached the shelter of another row of trees, behind which, mercifully, was the main Paris-Amiens road. It was barely wide enough for two carts to pass and badly rutted but fortunately it was empty when we stumbled on to it. I turned and gestured left and right along the road to Dominique. She shrugged and began to walk towards the river, glancing over her shoulder to see if I was following. I was, the pain in my knee was abating slowly and I was only limping a bit. The sounds of the mob around the balloon soon faded behind us.
The day was warm despite the wind that rustled the trees either side of the road. The verges were full of foxgloves; bees dipping in and out of them. It felt good to be free. I took off my cloak and carried Dominique’s for her as well. Her green dress was only slightly torn and between us we managed to pat ourselves down and straighten our clothes so that we had, perhaps, the look of a courting couple returning from an intimate country stroll rather than two fugitives fleeing the scene of a balloon crash. Carts ambled past us, the drivers nodding to us as they dozed off at the reins, and on one occasion we were left choking in the dust of a mail coach but otherwise
the road was quiet. It was an hour or more before we spoke more than a few words to each other. I don’t know what she was thinking about but I kept picturing what would have happened if we hadn’t been interrupted beneath the balloon.
Well now, if everything else went as planned you might suppose that the rest of my tale would me a mite dull. After all, if I hadn’t got the girl quite yet she was unquestionably coming round. I was out of Paris and well on the way back to England, the plans for Bonaparte’s invasion were safe in my pocket, I was out of immediate danger and well ahead of any pursuit. However, given that you are barely a quarter of an inch through this volume you would be correct in assuming that events soon take an unexpected turn.
The trouble began after we had persuaded a carter to let us ride with him, Dominique wasn’t in favour of it but after so many days of inactivity I was getting weary. We sat on the stained and sticky wood on the back of the dray in between the large barrels of wine he was carrying. The sour smell of cheap burgundy pervaded the air and wasps swarmed around the oozing casks, but it was better than walking. We trundled past an inn and looked away when we saw two soldiers sitting outside in the sun, though judging from the empty bottle between them they would have been too insensible to notice us. The road began to get even worse with deep ruts worn into the baked mud and it was all we could do to hang on as the cart pitched up and down. We passed in and out of thick woodland, the kind of old oak forest that had long since been felled in England, feeding the voracious appetite of the navy for good timber.
Through the trees I glimpsed a wide and slow brown river and at about the same time I heard voices ahead. The cart slowed to a stop, the driver cursing the delay in a thick accent. I turned and stood in the back of the cart, looked over the barrel and past the balding head of the swearing carter. In front of us there was a row of carriages and carts and two gendarmes checking everyone’s papers before letting them cross a small bridge. Dominique and I looked at each other, I indicated we should get off the cart with a nod of my head and she nodded back. She climbed off the cart and began to walk back down the road. I tapped the shoulder of the driver and handed him a few coins. We had already told him that we were eloping and I explained our departure by saying Dominique was worried in case her father had set the gendarmes looking for us. We exchanged a few comments on the folly of women and marriage and I bade him farewell. I don’t think he believed a word of it.