For Our Liberty

by Rob Griffith

  It wasn’t an easy position to recover from, as you can imagine. I inched sideways like a crab. To the right I could see both roofs ended at a flat roof that marked the start of another building. I edged along as quickly as I could, ducking and almost falling as another shot shattered a slate where my hand been a moment earlier. I looked back up and saw one of the guards begin to slide down after me. He’d opted for dignity rather than expediency and tried to stay on his feet. Halfway down he lost his balance. He shouted for help from his colleague but there was nothing to be done. His legs went over the edge and I watched as he held on with his fingertips and he slowly but surely lost his grip and fell into the alley below. There was a short scream and then a very nasty thud.

  I resumed my progress to the flat roof, it beckoned to me like an oasis to a dying man in a desert. My one remaining pursuer was running along the top of the roof, we got to the end at about same time. I managed to get to my feet just as he jumped down ten or so feet. It was lucky he found something to break his fall; me. I was badly winded. He was probably mildly surprised he hadn’t broken a leg. It took a moment for us to remember to fight. He recovered first and tried to hold me down by the wrists. I raised a knee hard into his groin, he rolled off me clutching himself and cursing. I stood and went to kick him but he grabbed my leg and twisted. I fell, my head over the edge of the roof. He was back on top of me in a second, punching me viciously in the face. I twisted and bucked like an unbroken horse but he was heavier and stronger than me. I looked down, another roof was about ten feet beneath me, and the struggle was pushing me ever further over the edge. The guard got his hands around my neck and was squeezing for all he was worth, my vision was going black around the edges, I couldn’t pull his hands away. I twisted and turned and got us both closer to the edge. In the last instant I think he cottoned on to what I was doing. A look of incredulity crossed his face and he lessened his grip just slightly. It was enough for me to heave us both over the edge into the void. As we fell we rolled so he was beneath me, his hands left my neck and I swear he tried to flap his arms. We landed together and this time he broke my fall.

  The roof was not built to withstand the sudden impact of twelve stone of Englishman and probably sixteen stone of Frenchman, and we went straight through it and landed on a bed beneath. Lady Fortune was definitely flirting with me that night. Said bed was not however unoccupied, in fact it was rather crowded already. I lay stunned for a few moments whilst assorted screams and curses greeted our sudden arrival. The guardsman was out cold. I struggled up and brushed the wood splinters and plaster dust from my clothes and apologised to the three occupants of the bed, who appeared to be a priest and two nuns, although I admit to not having seen habits cut quite that revealingly before. I would have stayed and introduced myself to at least one of the buxom wenches, especially since their previous client seem to have expired or at least fainted, although if it was from shock or exhaustion I could not guess since he was at least seventy, but there was no time for pleasantries. I ran out of the door and on to the landing, in time to see various semi-clad hysterical ladies of doubtful virtue come out their rooms to see what the dreadful noise had been, their gentleman clients following, frantically pulling up their breeches.

  “It’s a raid,” I shouted, at the top of my voice, and this doubled the volume of the screams and led most of the gentlemen to start running down the stairs, whether they had successfully dressed themselves or not. Being not unfamiliar with such establishments I knew there would be a back way out somewhere and so I followed the rush of clients down the stairs and down a passage to the back of the house and thence into an alley. I could hear more screams and the sound of police crashing through the brothel as I ran. Hopefully the flesh on show would offer some distraction to my pursuers. I ran down the alley and into the street. The night was very cold. My breath rose in clouds in front of my face and the mud underfoot was frozen solid in ruts interspersed with slick puddles of solid ice. A surface less suited to a rapid escape could not be envisaged. I staggered and skated away as best I could. I would like to say that I looked back and spared a thought for the old General but I did not. I just ran.

  I swore as I heard shouts behind me followed by the crack of a musket and then the whine of the ball over my head. I ducked into another alley, my feet sliding on the ice. I had lost my pistols when I jumped through the window so I could do nothing but keep on running. The alley got narrower and narrower and I heard the laboured gasps and footfalls of a guard running behind me. The alley twisted and turned and I was running out of breath. Finally I slipped and fell on to the frost hard mud, sliding along several yards before coming to a hard stop against a wall. The guard blundered around the corner. I grabbed the only weapon to hand, a broken piece of wood, and held it ready in front of me. I was shaking with fear and cold. I could hear him coming up to the corner where I had slipped. I tried to struggle up but my boots just slid on the ice. My foe skidded to a halt as he saw me sprawled on the ground, he scrabbled for a grip on the wall but began to fall. I reached up with my free hand, dragging him down on top of me and impaling him on the wood. He shuddered for a few seconds and then was silent. He was young, maybe not even twenty, and had been trying to grow a moustache but had only managed a barely visible fuzz. I lay there, fighting for breath, and waiting for another guard to come around the corner and finish me off but none came. Steam rose from the blood flowing over me and I pushed the dead weight of the body off me. My coat and shirt were sodden and I ripped them off despite the cold. I shivered and looked down at the greatcoat of the still warm body.

  Almost without thinking I began to strip him, some survival instinct taking over. I tried to ease the coat over the piece of wood but in the end I had to pull it out and the sucking sound from the wound made me retch. I kept looking and listening for his colleagues but before long the corpse was down to his patched and stained under garments and I wore the slightly sticky uniform of the Paris Municipal Guard. I picked up the musket and reloaded it from the cartridge belt he had worn. I straightened myself up a bit, but not too much since I was impersonating a French policeman. Striding purposefully out of the alley I joined the search for myself.

  The grey figure of Lacrosse was leading the hunt and I saw him gloating as Pichegru was led into his carriage, hands bound in front of him. At least he was still alive, but that was only a temporary state of affairs.

  Weeks later the old, proud General was found strangled in his cell after a mockery of a trial. Cadoudal was guillotined a couple of weeks after that. The Grand Conspiracy achieved nothing, it neatly decapitated, in many cases literally, the opposition to Bonaparte, paved the way for his rise from Consul to Emperor and led to a decade more of war for Britain. A war in which I was to continue to play an unwilling part. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself wishing that Pichegru had succeeded and saved me and many others a great deal of trouble.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Dominique washed the blood from my bruised and battered body. It turned the water to the colour of burgundy and I was glad most of it wasn’t my own. As she lent forward to kiss a yellow and purple bruise on my chest, the warm weight of her breasts rested on my arm and I could not help my other hand reaching round to gently caress her back.

  “You are not so very hurt then?” she asked, as she wrung out the cloth.

  “I could be at the very gates of heaven and I would still return to the land of the living at your gentle touch,” I said, struggling to sit up.

  “I would remove your hand from my skirts or it isn’t the gates of heaven you’ll be knocking on,” she replied as she gently but firmly made me lie back and abandon any amorous thoughts, much to the relief of my battered body.

  We were back in the small and very cold rooms I had rented on the Rue Saint-Honoré near the Palais Royal for our last assignation. This time Dominique looked distant and anxious. Paris was filled with rumour and suspicion. The net was tightening around the few conspirators left at liber
ty. Our time was running out.

  “Any news of your brother?” I asked.

  “Yes, he is not well. He has a fever.” She looked desperate.

  “Then we must hurry,” I said as I grasped her hand, hopefully reassuring her but I wasn’t certain I did. I have often found kind words are more designed to make the comforter lessen their own sense of inadequacy than to actually reassure the comfortee. I would have done anything then to ease her pain.

  She just nodded and reached into the valise she had carried with her. She pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a letter authorising the release of her brother, it had all the proper seals and signatures.

  “It looks very convincing,” I said.

  “It should be, it came from the office of the Consul himself, we just had the name changed. Somebody will stay in gaol so that my brother can go free.” She sat on the bed, drew her legs up and rested her head, very gently, on my chest. Her hair flowed over my skin and I stroked the back of her neck and then gently pushed her away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I sat up stiffly and took her hand. “It won’t work. I watched the damn place for days. The guards check all papers against a list of those that they are expecting. I’ve seen people turned away, even gendarmes.” I hadn’t really appreciated the meaning of the word crestfallen until that moment. All the life seemed to drain out of her.

  “I will still try. I have to,” she said.

  “No you don’t. I have another plan. I just need to get a few things in place. I should be ready tomorrow.” I then outlined what I had in mind, and no, dear reader I am not going to enlighten you now because that would spoil the surprise, and also I don’t want you to know just how far we ended up departing from my half-baked plan.

  “Will it work?” she asked, when I had finished.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, somewhat pointlessly, “we will soon be in England with your brother, and you will both be safe.” When I said it I believed it, which just shows how wrong you can be.

  We stayed in those rooms all that day whilst the search for me died down and we finished our preparations for the task ahead. Dominique was quiet and withdrawn, I was stiff and bruised. We did not make love. We would lie in front of the small fire with the sheets swirled around us, tastefully covering our naked bodies like something out of a more modest Rubens. We didn’t even talk much. We did not talk of the future, or even the past. Dominique went out to buy us food, and to get me some clothes. She also procured me a brace of pistols and a dagger, and she rented us a carriage. When she returned I kissed her gently but she turned her face away and just held me tightly, as if she was afraid I would leave.

  In my life I have left many women in the face of far less adversity. I have deserted them when I heard their husbands knocking on the door. I have run a mile when they mentioned love or any kind of more permanent arrangement. I even left one because a friend had said she was ugly, even though I knew she wasn’t and had lain with her and marvelled at the perfection of her body. Lucy said I ran because I was a coward, scared of love. She was wrong. I was scared of not being worthy of love. I loved them all but could not see why they should love me. It was different with Dominique, I knew why she loved me. I was all she had. That is why she clung to me so desperately, like a shipwrecked sailor holding on to a broken spar. If she let me go she would sink, and that need awakened something in me I did not feel again until I held my first child in my arms and looked down at his small, squashed, red face and those pure blue unfocussed eyes looked back at me. I realised that what I had been missing all these years was to be needed. I had been a diversion, a light relief from a husband’s grunting demands, a bit of rough to annoy an over-protective mother, a desperate bid to prove that my lover’s charms had not vanished with age, and even on one occasion a failed attempt by a lady to deny her Sapphic predisposition, but I don’t think I had ever been really needed before.

  It is easy to look back now and make more of what we had in that small, cold room. I dare say I wasn’t content to hold her and be glad that I was needed, I think I do remember a few occasions when she had to slap my hand away from the myriad of distractions her body offered.

  Fortunately we had plenty to keep us busy. I had a long shopping list of things I needed if my plan was going to work. I tried tapping some of my contacts from the few Royalist conspirators still at large and Dominique did the same but they were thin on the ground and in the end I had to turn to the one man I knew could help us, for a price. I left the room at midnight whilst Dominique slept. I did not want her to run the risk I was about to. I walked the short distance to the Palais Royal and stood outside the Salon de la Paix, watching the customers come and go. Most were foxed and staggered as they entered, all those leaving had the look of disappointment I knew well. I gathered my courage and crossed the road. One of the tarts who hovered about the door looked hopefully at me and then recognised that my purposeful stride was unlikely to lead me to her bed. I entered through the green door, no skulking around the back for me tonight. If this place was being watched I was done for, whichever entrance I used. I nodded to the doorman, who nodded in return before looking slightly puzzled as he placed my face and realised I should be either in Verdun with the rest of the English prisoners or back across the Channel.

  The Salon de la Paix was as busy as ever. True its clientele had changed, the English lords had been replaced with army officers and politicians, but the girls were all familiar. The candlelight and the haze of tobacco smoke hid the tawdriness I had seen on my last visit. The clutches of the desperate around each table groaned and laughed and cried with each roll of the dice or cut of the cards. I watched a captain from a voltigeur regiment place a bet and then try and mask the look of desperation when the cards did not fall in his favour. I could recognise myself in a dozen faces around the room. I spotted Henri standing silently by the door to the kitchen, surveying his kingdom with quiet satisfaction. His stomach had grown fatter and his hair had grown thinner. He saw me and nodded towards the door to his office. I followed him and he closed the door behind me, shutting off the noises from the salon. The office was sparsely but finely decorated. There was none of the tawdriness here. The walls were panelled, the desk bright red mahogany, the chairs rich green Moroccan leather.

  “Ben, it is good to see you,” Henri said, shaking my hand and grasping my shoulder warmly.

  “And you Henri. Business looks good,” I said as I sat.

  “I cannot complain. My customers now have smaller fortunes to lose but that does not seem to dissuade them from losing them anyway.” Henri poured us both a generous measure of Cognac before sitting down himself.

  You may wonder why the greeting from Henri was more effusive than the last time when I was running for my life. Well, all will be revealed in a moment. I took a list from my pocket and laid it on Henri’s desk.

  “There are a few things I need,” I said.

  Henri took the list, his eyebrows raised higher and higher as he read down the piece of paper until they had almost caught up with his receding hairline.

  “It is an expensive list,” he said.

  “You can take a third of what I deposited with you,” I said. He shook his head.

  “I think not, I read the papers, I hear things. Helping you could be bad for my health. I’ll take all of it.”

  “Half?”

  “All of it, Ben.”

  “Two thirds?”

  “All of it, Ben”

  “Three quarters, please?”

  “All of it, Ben”

  “All of it,” I finally agreed and guessed my expression now matched that of the Captain who had lost at the tables. All of what, I imagine you are asking. You don’t really expect that I could carry a chest full of gold, notes and banker’s drafts into Paris and not, how shall I put it, take a commission? As soon as I had entered Paris I deposited a portion of the Alien Office’s funds with Henri. It was not a unreasonable amount considering the risks I was
running and I had a feeling that I might need a strategic reserve to fall back on. I had hoped to come out of it with something left for my old age but I would have to settle for simply reaching my old age instead. I shook Henri’s hand on the deal and he had the good grace to look slightly apologetic that he had fleeced me so comprehensively, he even offered me a free game on one of the tables but I wanted to leave without any new debts to repay. I felt confident I could trust Henri to deliver the items on the list, after all he had a reputation to maintain as a man who could get anything. I walked back through the Salon without a second glance. I returned to Dominique and slipped into bed beside her, she muttered that my feet were cold and rolled away from me.

  I lay awake thinking through the plan, trying to see where it could go wrong, which was almost everywhere. The one last stumbling block I kept coming up against was how to get out of Paris after the initial escape. The city gates and roads around Paris were still heavily patrolled and we had no friends or contacts we could count on. Our one ally was Dominique’s uncle. He would be helping us and then escaping with us. He’d said that suspicion would fall on him as soon as all those arrested were interrogated. He might have been able to arrange our exit from the city but I still didn’t entirely trust him. I wanted a solution of my own making. Eventually I came up with something. It would be risky but it could work, given a healthy dose of luck.