‘I must get down to him,’ she said. ‘I must.’
She ran to the door. It was locked. She came back to the window. She battered at it with her hands. I saw the blood on the plum-coloured velvet. She had broken through and stood on the balcony. I heard her agonized cry: ‘Léon! Léon! I am here, Léon. Save me from this rabble.’
I couldn’t see Léon Blanchard now. The crowd was staring up at the balcony. I saw Lisette leap and she was gone.
There was a hushed silence in the crowd. The mob seemed to stampede forward. There was deafening noise and screaming. The torches threw a grisly light on the scene. I saw a bloody hand come up and in its grasp was a diamond necklace.
I waited at the window.
I was there when they carried away a broken body.
It was quieter down below. Sickened by what I had seen, I wanted to lie down on that hard floor and drift into oblivion. I wanted to shut out the horror of it all. I felt that if ever I should escape from this peril I should be haunted all my life by the memory of Lisette with the fanatical gleam in her eyes. Life had become a nightmare and I believed that the end of it was very near.
I was cramped lying on the floor. I felt desperately alone. A great urge came over me to weep for Lisette. All those years of resentment … and she had been Charles’s mistress … Had she continued to be when I was in England and she was there with him alone? Was it going on them? It didn’t matter now. Why wonder about it? Soon they would come for me.
I went to the window and looked out. My eyes went to the lamp-post with its faint light which showed me the dark liquid running over the cobbles. I saw that it came from the wine shop into which the mob had broken. Some men were squatting on the cobbles scooping up the puddles with their hands and holding their hands to their lips. I heard a woman start to sing in a high-pitched, quavering voice and a man brusquely and crudely telling her to shut up.
Many of them were drunk. Some were propped up against walls. But they were keeping their vigil at the mairie. They had had one spectacle tonight and they were waiting in anticipation for another. The signal would come and they would storm the mairie.
I could not bear to look at them. I sat down and leaned against the wall with my eyes closed. If only I could sleep away the time until they came for me …
I wondered how long it took for death to come.
‘Quickly, please God,’ I prayed.
The door opened quietly. A man came in. I started to my feet, a sick feeling of horror enveloping me. The moment had come.
It was the Mayor who faced me.
He said: ‘You are to leave here.’
‘Leave here … ’
He put his fingers to his lips. ‘Don’t speak. Obey orders. The mob is quieter now but still in an ugly mood. I don’t want to have to tell them that you are being taken to a prison outside the town. They would not allow you to go. They are determined to hang you. Here … follow me.’
‘But where … where am I going?’
‘I told you to be silent. If the mob get wind that you are leaving they will tear you to pieces. They are bent on seeing the end of Aubigné.’
I followed him down the stairs. We were in a courtyard at the back of the mairie where a coach was waiting. It was shabby and enclosed. A bearded driver, wearing a coat and muffled up about the neck in spite of the weather, was seated in the driving seat. He was holding a whip in his right hand and did not turn as I came out of the mairie.
‘Get in,’ said the Mayor.
‘I want to know where you are taking me.’
I was given a rough push. ‘Be silent,’ hissed the Mayor. ‘Do you want to bring the mob down on you?’
I was pushed inside the coach and the door shut on me. The Mayor lifted his hand and the coach jolted forward.
We had to come round to the front of the mairie and as the coach rattled into the square a cry went up.
‘A carriage? Who rides in a carriage?’
The driver whipped up the horses. I heard the shouts of rage and guessed that the mob was trying to stop the coach.
I lurched from side to side. The driver drove like a madman.
Someone called out: ‘Who is this rogue? Who is in the carriage?’
For a few terrifying moments I thought we were going to be brought to a halt. I could imagine the fury of the people if they discovered who was inside and that an attempt was being made to cheat them of their spectacle.
The driver was silent. He just drove on. We were through the square. The coach gathered speed. Some of the people were running after us and, glancing through the window, I caught a glimpse of angry faces very close.
The coach lurched and trundled on; and the shouts of the people grew fainter. We had left the town behind. Still the driver went on driving with a furious speed so that I was thrown from side to side of the padded vehicle.
Suddenly we stopped. We were close to a wood from which a man emerged leading two horses.
The driver leaped down from his seat and pulled open the door of the coach. He signed for me to get out, which I did. I could scarcely see his face, so heavily bearded was he and he wore a scarf high round his neck.
He looked back the way we had come. The country road seemed very quiet and the first streak of dawn was in the sky.
Then he took off his scarf and pulled at the hair about his face. It came off in his hand and he grinned at me.
‘Dickon!’ I said.
‘I thought you might be rather pleased to see me. Now, no time to lose. Get on that horse,’ he said to me; and to the man: ‘Thank you. We’ll get off now for the coast as fast as we can.’
A wild exhilaration had taken possession of me. I felt faint with emotion; the transformation from terrible despair to wild joy was too sudden. Dickon was here. I was safe and Dickon had saved me.
We rode all through the morning. He would say little except: ‘I want to be out of this accursed country by tomorrow. With luck we’ll catch the paquet. It means riding through the night but we can make it.’
So we rode. My body was in a state of exhaustion but my spirits were uplifted. There came the time when we had to rest the horses and ourselves. Dickon decided when and where. We were not going through any of the towns, he told me. He had a little food with him and we must make do with that. In the late afternoon of the first day we came to a lonely spot by a river. There was a wood nearby where he said we could sleep for an hour. We had to. We needed the rest, and there was a long way to go. First he took the horses to the river and they drank and then he tethered them in the wood. We lay down under a tree and he held me in his arms.
He told me a little then of what had happened. When he had returned to Eversleigh and discovered I had left for France he had followed me at once.
‘I knew that the revolution would begin soon,’ he said. ‘I was determined to bring you away. Abduct you if necessary. I went to the château. They had made a mess of it. But Armand was there with the others. Sophie was looking after him with her servant and that older one. They told me that you and Lisette had been taken. I had to act quickly. You see, Lottie, what it means to have friends in the right places. You have despised me for my interest in worldly goods and money chiefly, but see what useful purposes it can be put to. I have been coming over here now and then. I had business over here, as you know. There were many French who did not like the way things were going … friends of England, you might say. The Mayor, by great good fortune, was one of them. I took the precaution of bringing money with me … plenty of it. I knew I was going to need it. So I came. I was there in the mob. I saw what happened to that girl Lisette. I was waiting for them to get the carriage for me. I would have fought them with my bare fists if they had touched you. But this was the best method. You can’t fight against the mob. It would have been the end of us both. Never mind. I have got you so far. The rest is child’s play in comparison. Now rest … sleep … though that is difficult for me lying here holding you in my arms.’
‘Dickon
,’ I said, ‘thank you. I shall never forget what I owe you.’
‘I have made up my mind that I shall never let you.’
I smiled. He had not changed. He never would and I was glad.
We were so tired that we slept and when we awoke evening had come. We mounted the horses and rode on all through the night, stopping only for brief respites.
We came into Calais on the afternoon of the second day. We left the horses at an inn. Only once were we challenged as escaping aristocrats.
Dickon answered that he was an Englishman who had been travelling in France with his wife and had no interest in French politics and quarrels.
His haughty and somewhat bellicose manner intimidated our accusors and it was clearly obvious that he was indeed an Englishman. So trouble was avoided.
We boarded the paquet. Soon we should be home.
We stayed on deck, so eager were we for a sight of land.
‘At last,’ said Dickon, ‘you are coming home to stay. Do you realize that had you come earlier, had you not dashed back to France, you could have saved us a good deal of trouble?’
‘I did not know that I should find my father dead.’
‘We have wasted a lot of time, Lottie.’
I nodded.
‘Now,’ he went on, ‘you’ll take me for what I am. Ambitious, ruthless, eager for possessions … and power, wasn’t it?’
‘There is something you have forgotten,’ I reminded him. ‘If you married me you would be marrying a woman who has absolutely nothing. I am penniless. The vast fortune which my father left in trust to me will all be lost. It will be taken by the revolutionaries. I don’t think you have thought of that.’
‘Do you imagine I should not have thought of such an important detail?’
‘So, Dickon … what are you thinking of?’
‘You, and how I shall make up for the lost years. And you, Lottie, what are you thinking? This man on whom I have foolishly turned my back for many years is ready to marry me—penniless as I am. And he was foolish enough to be ready to give up all he had acquired through a long life of ruthless scheming … and all for me.’
‘How was that?’
‘Lottie, when we drove through that square we were within an inch of being stopped, of being dragged from our coach and hanged on the lamp-post … both of us. If that had happened I should have lost all my possessions, for it is a sobering thought that when you die you cannot take them with you.’
‘Oh, Dickon,’ I said, ‘I know what you did for me. I shall never forget … ’
‘And you’ll take me in spite of what I am?’
‘Because of it,’ I said.
He kissed my cheek gently.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Land. The sight of those white cliffs always uplifts me … because they are home. But never in all my life did I feel such joy in them as I do at this moment.’
I took his hand and put it to my lips and I held it there as I watched the white cliffs come nearer.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Daughters of England series
A Birthday Party
ON MY SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY MY mother gave a dinner party to celebrate the occasion. At that time I had been living at Eversleigh for three years. Little had I thought when I had left my grandfather’s château that I should never see him again. Of course I had known that there was great anxiety throughout France. Even a girl as young and ignorant of the world as I had been, could not be unaware of that, especially as my own grandmother had met a violent death at the hands of the mob. That had had a devastating effect on everyone around me.
Afterwards my mother, my brother Charlot and I had left our home at Tourville and had gone to live in my grandfather’s château of Aubigné in order to comfort him, and Lisette, my mother’s friend, and her son, Louis Charles, had come with us.
I had loved Aubigné and my grandfather had seemed a splendid gentleman, though a very sad one, unlike the man I had known before the death of my grandmother. Yes, no one could help being aware of a brooding menace; it had been everywhere—in the streets, in the country lanes, in the château itself.
Then my mother had brought us to England—myself, Charlot and Louis Charles—to visit her relatives, and there everything was different. I was fourteen at the time and adapted myself quickly. I felt it was my home. I knew my mother felt like that too; but that was understandable because she had lived there in her childhood. There was a certain peace—indefinable—for it was by no means a quiet household. No household could be with Dickon Frenshaw in it. Dickon in a way reminded me of my grandfather. He was one of those dominating men of whom everyone is in awe. Such men don’t have to ask for respect; it is freely given them, perhaps because they take it for granted that it must be there. He was tall, quite handsome, but what one was most aware of was that sense of power which emanated from him. I think we were all aware of it—some resented it, like my brother Charlot, and I fancied on some occasions that Dickon’s own son Jonathan resented him as well.
So through those June days we rode, we walked, we talked, and my mother spent a lot of time with Dickon, while I was delighted with the company of his children, David and Jonathan, who both showed an interest in me and teased me because of my imperfect English; and Sabrina, Dickon’s mother, looked on benignly because Dickon liked to have my mother there, and Dickon’s slightest wish was law to Sabrina.
She was turned seventy then, but she did not look her age. She had a great purpose in living, and that was anticipating and granting the wishes of her son.
It was clear to us all even then that Dickon would have liked my mother to stay. If ever two people were attracted by each other, those two were. They seemed very old to me and it was a source of wonder that two such mature people could behave like young lovers—and one’s own mother, at that, made it more surprising than ever.
I remember the time when my father had been alive. She had not been the same with him; and I think she did not mind very much when he had gone to fight with the American colonists. That was the last we saw of him for he had died in the fighting, and it was soon after that when we left Tourville and went to my grandfather at Aubigné.
Then came this holiday. My mother had refused to leave my grandfather and he had promised to come with us but he had been too ill right at the last moment when it was too late to cancel our arrangements—and I have never seen the château since.
I remembered well that day when my mother received the message that he was very ill and prepared to return to France. There had been hurried consultations and at length she had decided to leave us children—as she called us—with Sabrina, and had travelled back with one of the grooms who had brought the message from Aubigné.
Dickon had been in London at the time and Sabrina had tried to persuade my mother not to go because she knew how upset Dickon would be by her departure when he returned to find her gone. But my mother was adamant.
When Dickon returned and discovered that she had left for France, he was frantic and lost no time in setting out after her. I did not fully understand why he should have been so disturbed until I heard Charlot talking with Louis Charles and Jonathan.
“There’s trouble over there,” said Charlot, “big trouble. That is what Dickon is afraid of.”
“She should never have gone,” said Louis Charles.
“She was right to go,” retorted Charlot. “My grandfather would want to see her more than anyone when he is ill. But she should have taken me with her.”
I joined in then. “You would, of course, fight all the mobs in France.”
“What do you know about it?” asked Charlot witheringly.
“If I knew what you knew, that wouldn’t amount to much,” I replied.
Jonathan grinned at me. I always felt that he was amused by me. He provoked me, but in a special sort of way—not in the least like Charlot, who was contemptuous.
“You’re an ignoramus,” said Charlot.
“You’re a swaggering braggart.�
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“That’s right, Claudine,” said Jonathan. “Stand up for yourself. But there’s no need to tell you to do that. She’s a bit of a firebrand, our little Claudine, eh?”
“A firebrand?” I asked. “What is this firebrand?”
“I’d forgotten mademoiselle’s imperfect knowledge of the language. It is one who is always ready for trouble, Claudine… and very energetic in pursuing it.”
“And you think that describes me?”
“I know it. And I’ll tell you something else, mademoiselle. I like it. I like it very much indeed.”
“I wonder how long they’ll stay in France,” went on Charlot, ignoring Jonathan’s banter.
“Until our grandfather is better, of course,” I said. “And I expect we shall be going back soon.”
“That was the idea,” said Charlot. “Oh I do wonder what is happening there. It was so exciting… in a way… but awful that people are hurt. One wants to be there when something important is happening in one’s country.” Charlot spoke earnestly and it occurred to me then that he did not feel as I did about Eversleigh. This was an alien place to him. He was homesick for the château, for a way of life which was different from that of Eversleigh. He was French. Our father had been French and he took after him. As for myself, I was like my mother, and although she had had a French father, her mother had been English, and it had not been until she was well past her youth that she had married my grandfather and became the Comtesse d’Aubigné, presiding over a château, living the life of a lady of the French nobility.
Ours was a complicated household, and I suppose that accounted for many things.
I shall never forget the day they came home—my mother and Dickon. News was filtering into England from France, and we were realizing that the long-awaited revolution had broken out at last. The Bastille had been stormed and the whole of France was in turmoil. Sabrina was beside herself with anxiety to contemplate that her beloved Dickon was caught up in the holocaust.
I never doubted for one moment that he would not emerge triumphant. And he did, bringing my mother with him.
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