There was a clattering then and out of the smoke came a loose, white horse, snorting as it went. It seemed so strange—so ghostly and white. Where was its rider? What was it fleeing from?
Soon I saw. There was a barricade at the end of the street. A smell of sewers and gunpowder hung in the air. The barricade was made of chairs and barrels and desks and wardrobes and carts and tables, piled high to make a huge wall. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d heard tales of barricades but I didn’t know they’d be so big that I could hardly see the top of them.
“You there!” I was seized. It was a young man I didn’t recognize. He smelled of his own sweat and his hair stuck to his forehead and he said, “This isn’t a place for women! Are you crazy? Go!”
“I’m looking for a man—”
“I don’t care! You won’t find him! He’ll be either fighting or dead and he won’t want to see you! And what good’s a woman to us? We need fighters, not a scruffy girl who’s far too thin to fight … Get away!” He pushed me.
I stumbled back. “But I have a note for him!”
“You’re a nuisance! Go, or I will …” He raised his fist.
I ran back into the shadows. How could I get to the rue de la Chanvrerie? Or even get through the barricades and crowds of men?
It was true: there weren’t any women anywhere. They were all inside, I supposed—hiding, like I should be.
I felt Cosette’s note pressed against me. What good’s a woman to us?
So I thought: I’ll dress like a boy.
* * *
That was the way. I’d dress as a boy and run through the barricades shouting, “Vive la France!” and no one would stop me. They’d think, He’s just one of us.
But how could I find boys’ clothes? I’d seen them on washing lines, strung out from house to house, but I couldn’t take them. To take them would be stealing, and I’d promised not to steal again.
I’d have to find another way. In my left pocket, I felt the Louis d’or.
I could buy boys’ clothes. To buy clothes! Had I ever? But now, I had money and I could buy clothes like normal people did! Yes. I’ll do that.
I ran from street to street. Whenever I found a tailor’s shop I knocked on the door and called, “Let me in! I need clothes! Breeches and a shirt—and I can pay you well!” But all the shops were shut.
What now?
I closed my eyes very tightly. Think, Eponine … My belly growled with hunger.
Hunger. I thought of chestnuts.
The chestnut-seller! I opened my eyes. Him! Hadn’t he been kind to me and spoken of a son who was my age? I remembered him saying, We must help, when we can.
He had stood on the corner of rue de Pontoise and the passage des Patriarches. It wasn’t so far away.
I fled there, away from the barricades so that the gunshots grew quieter as I made my way. What if he wasn’t there? It wasn’t chestnut season.
But he was there. He was standing exactly where I’d hoped he might be and instead of chestnuts, he was boiling eggs in a metal pail. He was sunburnt and looked older. Who wants eggs? On a day of such fighting?
“Monsieur? Do you remember me?”
He looked up. He seemed very sad and I thought, He mourns Lamarque.
“We met last winter. You were roasting chestnuts and I asked for a single one because I was so cold and hungry and you gave me a handful. Remember?”
I saw in his eyes that yes, he remembered. “You don’t look much better, Mademoiselle. Still too thin.”
“I know. But, Monsieur, it isn’t food I’m looking for. I need help.” At that moment, I showed him my Louis d’or.
He stepped back, gasped. Then he hurriedly looked about him, said, “Hide that! That is a goodly amount of money and you could be robbed. These are dark times …”
“I want to give it to you in return for some boys’ clothing.”
He frowned. “Boys’ clothing. You’d pay me a whole Louis d’or for boys’ clothing? What on earth for?”
“I’ve got to get through the barricades and they won’t let women through.”
“So … you want to dress like a boy?”
“Yes.”
“Mademoiselle …” He shook his head very vigorously. “No, no. It’s not safe! You heard of what happened? At Lamarque’s funeral procession? There are hundreds dead already and the fires will burn long into the night …”
“I know, but I have to find someone. It’s very, very important that I give him a note. You’ve got a son?”
“I do. But his clothes aren’t worth a whole Louis d’or.”
“They would be to me.”
“It’d be far too much money and I couldn’t accept …”
“I’d give the coin freely. Think of it as a thank-you—for your kindness in the winter, which meant so much to me.”
He looked at the coin. I knew it was more money than chestnuts or eggs could ever give him. “So be it,” he said. “I’ll help you. What do you need? A chemise? Breeches?”
“And a cap to hide my hair.”
“Boots?” He saw my feet.
“I’ve been barefoot for years, Monsieur. Let your son keep his boots.”
“I live nearby,” he said. “If you wait here, I will get them.”
I nodded and waited. When he returned he carried a simple flannelette shirt and brown woolen trousers. The trousers were too large so I had to tighten them with string and roll their bottoms up. A leather cap hid my hair. I kept Cosette’s note tucked in my underclothes.
As for my ragged dress, I offered it to him.
“No,” he said. “Take it. You may have need of it—as bandages, perhaps.”
I pressed the Louis d’or into his palm. I closed his fingers around it and hoped it would bring him happiness and safety, and a better life.
“Be careful.” He looked tender, almost fatherly. I thanked him, and ran—a girl dressed as a boy—into the gloom of night.
No skirts and no swinging hair. Eponine the boy. I ran back to the rue de la Chanvrerie, afraid of nothing. I just thought, Him … him … as I leapt over a pothole.
The breeches and the leather cap meant that no one noticed me. No hand reached out to grasp me and no one called out, This isn’t a place for you! I ran past other boys and they were all dirty-faced and wide-eyed and maybe they heard my footsteps and thought I was a soldier with a musket or a revolutionary like them or just a young urchin—I didn’t care. I was alive and running. Helping two people.
I ran over the river. There were bodies in it, floating among the weeds.
On, on to the Café Musain. I took side streets and alleyways because I knew that soldiers would be marching in the boulevards. Everything looked different. There weren’t any carts or barrows anymore; all movable things were gone, even doors. There was blood underfoot.
A body. I saw it slumped against a wall. I stumbled, pressed my hands to my mouth, scared it might be him. His eyes were open. His chest was open too—like a red, wet cave.
I retched.
It’s not Marius. I exhaled with relief—but I was frightened now. Suddenly I understood the darkness around me and I trembled as I turned on to the rue de la Chanvrerie. I wanted to see the Café Musain as it had always been—lively, warm, and candlelit. But it didn’t look like that now.
Where the café had been, there was a barricade.
It was huge, far bigger than the other one, towering above me like a cathedral and reaching up toward the sky. Chairs and tables and barrels and doors and wagons and cartwheels and wardrobes and desks and what seemed to be the frame of a bed all glowered down on me. Even so, how could this protect them? I’d seen what a musket ball could do and if it could break through the bones of a poor man’s chest it could splinter a wardrobe or break a chair.
“Halt! Stand there!”
The voice was very angry.
“You, boy! What do you want?”
Boy? I thought he was speaking to someone else. Then I remembered.
I couldn’t say, Don’t you remember me? Because I wasn’t a girl anymore. So I cried, “I’ve come to join the barricades!”
He paused. “You’re for a republic? You’d see the monarchy defeated?”
I shook a little. In the deepest voice I could manage I said, “Yes, I would.”
“How old are you, boy?”
“Seventeen. Old enough!”
“And your name?”
What name could I give? Both Thenardier and Jondrette were hateful, thieving names. What was left? “Just Boy!”
“Boy? Garçon? That’s your name?”
“It’s the name I go by. What does a name matter? What matters is France, Monsieur! Vive la république!”
He stared from his wooden tower. Perhaps he thought he knew me or had seen a girl with a face a bit like this boy’s but he didn’t say so. “Do you have weapons, Boy?”
“No weapons.”
“Never mind. We have ones to spare. Walk to your right, toward the lantern, and we’ll help you through.” He seemed to step back but then he suddenly called out again as if checking for the final time, “You’d be willing to die for the cause? It may come to that.”
I knew the answer. Willing to die for the republic, and for France? No, I wasn’t prepared to do that because that wasn’t my cause or what I dreamed of. But to die for my own cause? For the sake of the man I loved and for his own happiness? For the sake of a little goodness, in a dark world?
“Yes!”
He nodded. “To the right. I’ll come down.”
* * *
He had the gray shadows of sleeplessness and worry beneath his eyes, as if someone had smeared ink there with their thumb.
“Come in.”
I ducked under. I was behind the barricades.
I looked around. I saw the street I’d known before the barricades had been built around it—the stunted tree and the cobbled ground. The small butcher’s shop was empty and the deep drain in front of it had been blocked with wet straw to stop soldiers creeping up through it. I’d seen dogs waiting by this butcher’s shop, tongues lolling. It seemed a long time ago.
And there it was—the Café Musain. It was in the heart of it all, as if the barricade had grown from the café itself like a mushroom from soil. There were no songs here now. A small fire burned and men and boys sat around it—warming their hands. I recognized the boy with half-moon spectacles. Pistols and rifles lay against the bar’s wall. I was glad to be dressed as a boy with my hair tucked under my cap.
Marius wasn’t here.
“I’m Enjolras. The barricade is newly made—but hourly more and more come to join us, just like you’ve done. We grow stronger in number. We’ve got a runner too—a boy younger than yourself—who tells us that we outnumber the soldiers who have gathered on rue de Vertbois, three streets away. They’ll attack soon—tonight, perhaps—but we’re ready for them.” He looked at me. “You can shoot a gun?”
“No,” I confessed. “I never have.”
“No matter. It’s easy and you can learn. Or perhaps you could be a runner too—alongside Gavroche.”
“Gavroche?”
“Our boy. The urchin.”
“He’s called Gavroche?”
“He is.”
“He’s ten years old, perhaps? No older?”
Enjolras frowned. “You know him?”
I caught myself. “I know his sister, I think. He’s well?”
“Quite well.” He smiled a little. “He’s spirited, isn’t he? Determined. He’s never afraid and he’s singing all the time …”
I smiled back. I didn’t think my heart could be any fuller with love, but now it was. My little man—as warm as baked bread, as curious as an explorer setting out in the world. Eyes bright like the moon. Gavroche.
I reached for Enjolras. “Will you take care of him?”
He half laughed. “What? Of course—or I’ll do my best to.”
“His sister would be grateful. She loves him very much.”
If the shadow of a thought passed through his mind, his face didn’t show it. He only touched me on the shoulder and then he walked away.
* * *
Other men—young and old, wounded and healthy—came to the barricades too. Enjolras pressed guns into their hands. He showed them the fire and told them to warm themselves, or eat. There wasn’t much talking. Only the scrape of a spoon against a bowl, or a whispered voice.
By the fire’s light, I searched for Marius but didn’t find him. He must be here, I thought. But where?
I looked up at the stars. Did they recognize me, in my boys’ clothes? They did. I imagined them saying, We can see you, Eponine.
Enjolras climbed to the top of the barricades and nestled into them. I saw his silhouette against the stars and knew he was on guard, looking out. A night breeze moved his curls. I might have thought him handsome if I didn’t love Marius so much.
I climbed up carefully—from chair to wagon, from barrel to chair. “Enjolras?”
He was looking out across the rooftops of Paris. “Isn’t it beautiful? When it’s like this, it’s hard to imagine the suffering this city has seen, to believe that people are starving.”
It did look very beautiful. Even where smoke rose up or where we could see another barricade. Gunfire crackled.
“Do you know a man called Marius?”
“Marius?” With that, he turned. “I do. Why do you ask?”
“He’s a friend of mine. I thought he might be here so I could fight beside him.”
He nodded. “You could, if he wasn’t so …”
I waited for the word.
“… lost.”
“Lost?”
He shook his head. “He was here earlier. He was at the funeral procession with us but then he broke away, saying he couldn’t be away from the girl he loved. He left. Who knows where he is now? He isn’t here, anyway.”
I stared. I couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t here? I’d dressed as a boy and run down through the bleeding, burning streets for no reason at all? “Not here?”
“He went to her—Colette? A name like that. It must be a love I’ve no knowledge of because I can’t think that any love would take me away from this, our cause.” He seemed disappointed. “He should be here, Boy. He should be fighting at his friends’ sides.”
“But love,” I whispered, “can be so very strong.”
“So it seems.”
I looked at the rooftops. I tried to think. What must have happened? He’d have left the funeral procession and run to the rue Plumet. But he’d have found the house empty. He’d have found Cosette gone with no word or reason—and so where was he now? Wandering Paris with a broken heart?
I felt tearful. I’ll never find him now—not in a city of ruins and fire.
I climbed down. I found a corner near the Café Musain and nestled into it.
I didn’t sleep. Others tried to—they lay down on the ground or against the barricade itself. Some talked very softly. Inside the café, I could see a man was cleaning the rifles and I wondered if he was a husband or father.
The stars above. What could they see? A Paris on fire. A fighting world. They could see Marius, wherever he was.
Keep him safe. And her.
Perhaps I slept a little because after a while, the men’s soft murmuring sounded like water. I dreamed of an upturned boat and of my mother. I saw a snowy morning in Montfermeil where every single fence post wore its own hat of snow.
I dreamed of Gavroche too. I could hear his voice and he was saying, They’re coming, Enjolras! They’re coming! And I stirred then because why was Enjolras in a snowy Montfermeil?
I opened my eyes. Gavroche was standing there, puffing hard. His hair was long and he was taller, but it was still him.
“The soldiers are coming, everyone! I’ve seen them!
They’re standing up and getting ready and they’ll be here soon!”
The men jumped up and drew their pistols or ran to get their rifles. “To your posts!” called Enjolras—and there was a rush of feet and hands and voices. I wanted to go to Gavroche and take off my cap and say, Look. It’s me—Eponine … But I couldn’t. All I could think was, Be safe, be safe, my darling brother who deserved so much better than a life like this.
He ducked between two chairs and was gone from sight.
I had heard gunfire—a crack! A snap! I knew its sound but I’d never felt gunfire before. When it happens near you, it booms so that your heart and lungs seem to shudder under your skin, and you stumble.
I fell. There was dust everywhere. I couldn’t see for the powdery air and I couldn’t stop coughing. Something heavy was crushing me—chairs and desks?—and with a second gunshot more wood came down on me like splintery rain.
There was a warm wetness on my face, trickling down from my hairline.
A third shot. More dust and more shouting and I heard Enjolras scream, “Fire back! Fire back!” and there was a thundering of musket fire that shook the ground.
I managed to crawl free. I licked my lips and tasted blood.
Get up! I managed it—but then a fifth gunshot tore into the barricades. Suddenly there was a hole in the middle of it, smoky and black, and I saw soldiers through it. They wore red coats with shining buttons and high leather boots. They knelt, lifted their rifles, and aimed.
“Fire! Fire!”
Another shot and another and another, and the windows of the Café Musain shattered, spraying glass. People were screaming “Over here!” or “Coufreyac is hit!” or “My eyes! I can’t see!” or “Grantaire is dead!” or “Lord, save us!” and Enjolras was shouting, “Hold strong, have faith! Vive la France!” But the soldiers didn’t stop. A shot passed so close to me that I fell and landed on my side, onto broken glass.
As I lay, I reached beneath my clothes: The note was still there.
Then I heard him.
Marius. It was his voice! I knew it! There was so much noise around me but I heard his voice and I clambered to my feet. I shouted, “Marius!” and lunged through the smoke with my arms stretched out. Marius, who I loved more than anything, even if he didn’t love me. I called his name again and again.
A Little in Love Page 17