by Jane Feather
She didn’t pause in her headlong dash along the street, her head down, as if she could reduce her visibility to anyone approaching. But there was no sign of a lantern, no sound of booted feet.
Where had they gone? Panic flooded her. Surely they weren’t already in the house. The street ahead was empty. Could they already be inside? No, it was impossible. They’d have needed wings to overtake her, and besides, she would have heard the noise. Fouché’s men had no reason to go quietly about their business.
She reached number thirteen and hammered on the door with her clenched fist, gazing frantically over her shoulder, down the street, expecting at any minute to see the sinister group of lanterns wavering toward her.
But Fouché’s men, seeing no need to hurry on their errand, had made a small deviation into a tavern, where they were slaking their thirst in blithe ignorance of their quarry’s imminent escape.
Shutters flew open above the door, and Monsieur Farmier’s head, nightcap askew, stuck out. A stream of obscenities accompanied his demand to know who was raising the dead at this hour.
“Ouvrez la porte!” Gabrielle spat out in an impassioned whisper, her white face glimmering in the darkness. She had no way of identifying herself, but her urgency must have communicated itself and the baker withdrew from the window, the shutters banging closed. She heard feet lumbering down the staircase, then the bolts screeched as they were pulled back.
“Merci. You have someone staying here, where—”
“Gabrielle!” Nathaniel was springing down the stairs, pistol in hand, before she could finish her sentence.
“Fouché’s men,” she gasped.
“Where?”
“Behind me … a few minutes, I think, but they disappeared.”
Nathaniel wasted no further time on questions. He grabbed her and pulled her behind him, upstairs, and into the garret, where he began throwing his possessions into the portmanteau. Jake sat up sleepily.
“Gabby?”
“Hush!” Nathaniel swung round on him, his voice barely a whisper but ringing with ferocious authority. “You are to say nothing, not one word, not one sound until I give you permission. Is that understood?”
Jake nodded, gazing in scared silence.
“That goes for you too,” Nathaniel instructed Gabrielle. He pressed the wall, and the slab of stone slid back. “Take Jake and get in there.”
“But you—”
“Do as I say!”
Gabrielle picked Jake up from the bed, grabbed the blanket, and went through the wall. The slab closed behind her.
Alone, Nathaniel moved with economical efficiency around the tiny space, removing every sign of habitation, shaking out the pillow on the cot, straightening the coarse sheet on the straw mattress. He poured the water from the ewer out of the window, wiped the surface of the dresser with his kerchief, and cast one last look around before grabbing the candle and his portmanteau and pressing open the slab again.
Gabrielle and Jake were standing against the wall, Jake wrapped in the blanket, Gabrielle’s arms around him.
Neither of them said anything as Nathaniel opened up the far wall and gestured ahead of him. They had reached the third house along when the sounds of hammering came faintly from number thirteen. Gabrielle jumped, glancing anxiously at Nathaniel, but his expression was impassive as he pushed her ahead of him.
In the last room Nathaniel reached up and removed two rafters from the steeply pitched roof.
“Up you go, Jake,” he said softly, lifting the child and thrusting him into the darkness. Jake whimpered.
“Now you, quickly, and keep him quiet.” Nathaniel lifted her by the waist and hoisted her up so that she could grasp the edge of the opening. “Use my shoulders.”
She scrambled her feet onto his shoulders and pitched herself forward into the dusty crawl space, then leaned down to take the portmanteau and candle from Nathaniel, and then the two dislodged rafters.
Nathaniel swung himself up and through the opening with the agility of an acrobat and deftly replaced the rafters. The space was barely big enough for the three of them. It was inky dark and what air there was was thick with dust.
Jake sneezed and whimpered again. Nathaniel pulled him into his body, turning the child’s face into his chest, muffling all sounds.
They seemed to be entombed in silence, and Gabrielle felt the old nightmare terrors nudging at her mind. Once before she’d lain hidden in a roof from a rampaging mob. The musty smell of the rafters, the prickle of dust, was in her nostrils as it had been on that day. This roof pressed down on her as the other one had. In a minute she would fall … or she would cry out—
Suddenly she felt Nathaniel’s hand on hers in the darkness. It was a connection that grounded her in the present and she pulled herself back from the abyss with a shudder of horror. His grip tightened, and she knew as clearly as if he’d spoken that he understood what had happened and how close she’d been to losing herself in the nightmare again. She squeezed his hand in gratitude and found that despite perching on the pinnacle of hideous tension, she could now listen intently and without panic for the sounds of pursuit.
They could hear banging from the street, and Gabrielle guessed that Fouché’s men were waking the inhabitants of every house, prepared to search the entire street when they found number thirteen empty of spies.
They didn’t know, then, about the secret doors connecting the attics of the houses. It was a not-uncommon device in these medieval streets where through the ages the persecuted had fled the oppressor. But Fouché’s policemen were not known for the subtlety of their thought process or their knowledge of history, only for their ability to wrest information or commit murder without a qualm.
The banging finally came at the door of the last house on the street. It was almost a relief after the terror of anticipation. Gabrielle bit her lip hard, tasting blood, forcing herself to concentrate on the pain and not on the sounds in the house—the banging and scraping and shouting.
Nathaniel stroked Jake’s head, holding him tightly against him, his other hand gripping Gabrielle’s firmly. He was, as always at such moments, perfectly calm, reserving his strength and the power of fear-engendered adrenaline for when it would be needed. There was nothing more he could do at the moment except wait and impart what strength and reassurance he could to his companions.
Then the sounds were immediately below them. The door was kicked open, boots scrunched on the wooden floor.
Was there a smudge of plaster dust on the floor from when he’d removed the rafters?
The thought flitted across Nathaniel’s brain and he felt his heart begin to speed in preparation for action. They would be looking only for him. If they made any move toward the rafters, he would jump down on them, leaving Gabrielle and Jake still hidden. Gabrielle would have the sense to stay put—for Jake’s sake if not her own.
But she was in the gravest danger. She must know that. She’d betrayed her own masters to save an enemy spy. He hadn’t expected her to betray him on this mission, not when Jake was with him, but he certainly hadn’t expected her to risk her own life to protect him either.
Someone flung back the shutters over the tiny window with a resounding clatter and the sound of splintering wood. A woman’s wail of protest at this wanton destruction was answered with a string of obscenities. Fouché’s men were clearly very put out. Rue Budé had yielded only terrified slum dwellers.
The Farmiers, like most of their kind, were expert at producing a cringing idiocy in the face of violent authority. Once it was clear their lodger and the child had fled, leaving no trace, they had nothing to gain by volunteering information and everything to lose. Ignorance and cupidity were understood by the policemen, who came from their own social ranks and saw nothing out of the ordinary in a man turning a blind eye to the goings-on in his house in exchange for generous payment.
Finally, having vented their frustration by wreaking terror and destruction up and down the street, Fouché’s men went
on their way to drown their failure in a cask of via ordinaire in the tavern.
Jake was trembling against Nathaniel as the sounds of booted feet receded on the stairs. Gabrielle became aware of an agonizing pain in her shoulders where the muscles were knotted in a violent cramp. She tried to ease it, wanting to scream with the pain, and instead bit hard on her lip again. Nathaniel drew several long, slow breaths and relaxed his hold on Jake so the child could move his head out of the muffling confines of his father’s chest.
They remained huddled in silence for an eternity until Nathaniel deemed it safe to move. He put his mouth against Gabrielle’s ear, barely whispering his instructions.
“I’m going down. You’re both to stay here.”
She nodded. The prospect of being alone in the dark crawl space while Nathaniel exposed himself to whatever uncertainties there were outside filled her with dismay, but she was no stranger to dismay in dangerous situations.
Nathaniel removed the rafters again and swung down into the silent room. He replaced them before crossing to the window, where the shattered shutter swung desolately back and forth. He peered down into the courtyard. It was deserted, the house once again dark and silent.
He crossed to the door, opened it gingerly, and stepped onto the landing, listening. There was total silence.
Returning to the room, he dropped the heavy wooden bar over the door, locking them in, before removing the rafters again.
“Come on, Jake.”
The little boy’s terrified face appeared in the opening, and he half fell, half jumped into his father’s arms.
Gabrielle swung herself down awkwardly because of her cramped muscles and stretched with an almost inaudible moan of pain.
“All right?” Nathaniel asked evenly, still holding the child.
She nodded. “A bit stiff … nothing worse … thank God.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said in the same even tones.
“Where to?”
“Truly underground,” he said with a bleak attempt at a smile. “At least for tonight.”
Carrying the child, he led the way back through the houses until they reached number thirteen. They crept downstairs and out through a rear door into the courtyard where the rabbits lay in a somnolent heap in their cage.
“We must hurry,” Nathaniel whispered, looking up into the sky where the first faint streaks of gray were showing.
They slipped through a gate into another alley, and Nathaniel strode quickly ahead, his speed unaffected by the child’s weight in his arms. Gabrielle half ran to keep up with him.
They came to a small church with cracked, moldering stone walls and slates tumbling from a sagging roof. Its tumbledown air struck Gabrielle as pathetic, like someone whose offers of comfort have been inexplicably spurned. She assumed it had fallen into disrepair during the Revolution, when organized religion was banned and no one had any use for churches.
Nathaniel looked up and down the alley, then walked rapidly around the side of the building. A flight of crumbling stone steps led down into the crypt. Gabrielle followed him down. He felt in a niche in the wall, drew out a key, fitted it into the tarnished brass lock, and the door creaked open, emitting a waft of air, cold as the grave and heavy with the reek of ancient stone and damp earth.
“I don’t like it here,” Jake whimpered as they entered the dank darkness and Nathaniel pulled the door closed behind them. “I want to go out.”
“Hush now, I’m here,” Nathaniel soothed. “You’re quite safe.”
“But it’s spooky.”
“Yes, it is,” Gabrielle agreed, making her voice bright and cheerful. “But I’m sure we can light the candle.”
“Can you find it?” Nathaniel asked in the same easy tones, as if this were all quite normal. “There’s flint and tinder somewhere in the portmanteau.”
Gabrielle felt in the darkness through the small pile of possessions, found the requisite articles, and in a minute the welcoming glow of the candle threw some illumination.
It was not a cheerful place, Gabrielle thought in understatement, looking around at the oozing stone walls, the cracked greenish slabs beneath her feet.
“Is this another safe house?”
“More like sanctuary,” Nathaniel said as if it were perfectly ordinary to make witticisms in such circumstances. “The church is disused and the crypt’s an emergency shelter to be used only in dire emergency,” he added. “We should find some blankets and a lantern somewhere, and some basic supplies.”
“Over there.” Gabrielle pointed to a tomb where a fully armed stone knight stretched out in perpetuity, hands piously crossed over his breast. A mound of blankets and a lantern with a small jar of oil stood at the base of the tomb. There was a flagon of water and several slabs of chocolate. A slop pail stood on the floor. Apart from that, there was nothing but the graves of the dead.
“A trifle cheerless,” Gabrielle observed in what she hoped was a tone to match Nathaniel’s. “Let’s see if this will make a difference.” She filled the lantern with oil and lit the wick.
Jake promptly howled and buried his face in his father’s shoulder as the grotesque shapes of armored knights and mitred stone bishops danced on the vaulted ceiling.
Nathaniel gentled him, stroking his back as he sat on the tomb, settling the child in his lap. Jake pushed his thumb into his mouth and rocked himself in his father’s arms, suddenly overcome with emotional and physical exhaustion.
Nathaniel regarded Gabrielle, his eyes unreadable in the flickering gloom. “How did you find out about the raid?”
“After I sent you the message telling you that Fouché knew you were in Paris—”
“What message?” The interrogatory crackled in the dank chill. “I got only one, the day before yesterday, and it said nothing about Fouché.”
“But I sent you a message via the flower seller this morning … well, yesterday morning now.”
“I never received it.”
“What could have happened to it?”
Nathaniel gazed bleakly over the child’s head. “It’s a bit late to worry about that now. How did he know I was here?”
“One of his men spotted you, apparently. I assume there are people who would recognize you.”
“It’s never happened before,” Nathaniel said flatly. If Gabrielle had betrayed him to Fouché, why would she then risk her neck to save him? Belated remorse? That seemed too indecisive for Gabrielle. No, probably he’d been recognized at one of the checkpoints on the journey from Cherbourg. It was always a risk.
“Well, it happened this time,” Gabrielle declared, tension and fatigue putting a sting in her voice. “And then tonight I was at a soiree at Madame de Staél’s and Fouché was boasting about some coup he was going to pull off. I didn’t know if he meant he’d found you, but I thought I’d better warn you just in case. And then I ran into his men …” She spread her hands, palm up.
“I suppose you followed the messenger yesterday?”
She nodded.
Nathaniel stroked Jake’s head thoughtfully. Gabrielle had risked her life to save him. It had been a most decisive choice. He wrapped a blanket securely around the shivering child. A permanent choice or simply an emotional response?
“You’d better go back before you’re missed,” he said. “Jake and I will stay here for today, and move on this evening.”
Gabrielle stood looking at him in the gloom as he sat holding the child on the tomb. It was a dreadful place to spend the long hours of the day. The tensions of the night were apparent now in the taut lines of his face, shadowed with the blue tinge of his nighttime beard, and his eyes were sunken with fatigue.
“I’ll come back later, then.” She went to the door.
“Gabrielle.” His voice was soff.
“Yes.” She turned back.
“I owe you my life. Mine and Jake’s.” His face was in shadow, but she could sense his stillness, the deadly seriousness of his statement.
“What els
e did you expect me to do when my spymaster was in danger?” She tried to invest the question with a lightness, as if it were partly a joke, but it didn’t come out right. She sounded ungracious, impatient almost.
“I don’t know what I expected,” he responded quietly.
“Oh, well, I’m full of surprises.” She tried a smile. “I’d better go. I’ll come back this evening.”
Without waiting for a response, she slipped through the door into the now-clear light of dawn and left Nathaniel and his son in the lantern shadows of the crypt.
Gabrielle de Beaucaire was certainly full of surprises, Nathaniel reflected. She’d made a choice that day that made no sense for the ruthless, skilled, and experienced opponent he knew her to be.
Where did that leave his plans?
Impossible to decide at this point. Jake stirred and whimpered in his arms, and Nathaniel stroked his head, murmuring soft words of reassurance until the child was still again.
Nathaniel shifted on the tomb until his back was against the oozing wail of the crypt. He closed his eyes. Helen’s face came to him in the dank, frigid air of this grim tomb … her face as it had been on her deathbed. White, bloodless, the lines of suffering smoothed by the hand of death. His hold tightened involuntarily around her child.
20
It was eight o’clock that night when Nathaniel emerged from the crypt, holding Jake’s hand, the portmanteau slung over his shoulder. He locked the door, replaced the key in the wall niche for the next person in dire need of sanctuary, and climbed the steps.
Jake was silent, clinging to his father’s hand. He was frightened, but his relief at leaving their hiding place far surpassed his fear. He was sucking a piece of chocolate, holding it in his cheek, the warm sweetness melting over his tongue. It reminded him of safe and comforting things like his bed in the nursery, and Neddy, and the way Primmy smelled when she kissed him, a faded, sweetish smell like the dried flowers in the still room.
A tall, cloaked figure separated itself from the shadows at the top of the steps.