Richard held course as the great Gothic arches of Notre Dame towered up in the darkness to larboard. To starboard, the Hôtel de Ville loomed into view, its immense stone façade dark at this hour save for tiny flickers of candlelight visible in an upper-story window—a bureaucrat working late, perhaps, or a cadre of revolutionaries plotting their next move. On and on slogged the barge, its pace agonizingly slow but going unchallenged until they approached Le Pont Neuf at the western tip of the Île de la Cité.
“Attention, citoyen,” a voice called down from the bridge. “Où allez-vous à cette heure?”
“Prenez garde, capitaine!” Richard hissed under his breath. He could not determine if the man on the bridge was armed or in what capacity he had asked the question. The amber light cast by the lantern he held up in his right hand revealed little about him or his uniform, if in fact he was wearing one. More clearly discernible was Anne-Marie watching him, wide-eyed, from beneath the tarp.
“Où allez-vous?” the man repeated.
Richard held his breath. He gripped the pistol in his coat’s side pocket as the captain cupped his hands to his mouth.
“I am Captain Édouard Baudouin,” he called up in French as the barge approached the stone-block bridge. “I am moving my barge downriver to the Quai de Tuilleries for on-loading early tomorrow morning. If you are militia, please send my respects to Captain Michel de Lisle. He will remember me. Understood?”
The resonating gurgle and suck of swirling water close by was the only sound as the barge passed under an arch of the bridge and emerged on the other side. Richard kept his gaze firmly ahead on the barge captain, who looked back at the bridge and waved. Although Richard wondered why the man had mentioned the name of a militia officer, he decided not to ask. He would not likely be told the truth if he did.
“Understood, Captain Baudouin,” they heard the man on the bridge shout out from behind.
Free at last of the bridges and narrow channels fashioned by the two islets, Richard steered the barge to mid-river. Out here, with more than three hundred feet of water on either side of them, they would not likely be challenged from the shore. The farther they went downstream, the less activity appeared along the river’s sandy banks. He signaled to Anne-Marie that it was safe to come out. She crawled from her hiding space and walked aft.
“Capitaine,” she said in a low voice to the barge captain standing amidships, “merci beaucoup pour votre service ce soir.”
The Frenchman regarded her warily, said nothing.
She came to Richard and stood quietly beside him at the tiller. Time drifted as she gazed out upon buildings and parks and byways she knew by heart but could barely identify on this quiet, moon-silvered night, save for the massive frontage of the Louvre to starboard, an enormous rectangle of jet black passing slowly by aft. A northerly breeze kicked up, stirring the muddy river water and loosening strands of ebony hair at her forehead. Richard jogged the tiller slightly to larboard to counteract the effects of the breeze as the Seine rounded to westward.
“How are the children?” he asked at length.
She started, as though awakened from a dream. “They are excited, if you can believe it, Richard. This is a grand adventure to them, something they might take from a storybook. Such is the advantage of youth: they are too young to understand.”
“And Gertrud?”
She smiled. “Gertrud is old enough to understand.”
“Have you told her we are going to America?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
She shrugged. “She knows little about America. But she is relieved to be leaving Paris. She has been faithful to me over the years, Richard, more than I had any right to expect. You remember my dear mother. Gertrud is very much like her, only stronger. When the . . . when the troubles began, I gave everyone in my employ the option to leave. Everyone chose to go except Gertrud. She wouldn’t hear of it. Not only did she stay, she worked harder than ever, doing her chores and the work of those who had left. God is my witness, I would not want any harm to come to her for the devotion she has shown me and my daughters.”
“No harm will come to her. People in America will welcome Gertrud. She will become one of us.”
“Then America is a place I too wish to go . . . Richard?” she asked.
“Yes?”
She leaned in close to him. “Would you really have shot the captain had he refused to take us?”
His face remained expressionless. “What do you think?”
Some time later, as the Seine flowed in a more southwesterly direction and their speed increased a knot or two with the freshening breeze, Anne-Marie asked, staring straight ahead: “When we arrive in America, Richard, what will become of us? Where will my family live? And how will we live? I brought very little with me. I am no longer a woman of means.”
These were questions in which Richard had invested considerable thought. As yet, he had no definite answers. “There are many possibilities,” he hedged. “I suggest we hold off discussing them until we’re at sea.” He was grateful when she let it go at that.
A half-hour later the barge captain pointed ahead to larboard. They were approaching the quays across from Auteuil. Richard checked his watch: 12:40. They had made decent time. His first inclination was to send Anne-Marie back into hiding, but he decided against it. Although the post rider sent to Passy had confirmed that Monsieur de Chaumont had received his message, Richard had no way of knowing what, if anything, Chaumont might do in response. If he had done nothing, they could walk to Passy and seek refuge in the château of another of Anne-Marie’s acquaintances in the area. But given the marked status of those aristocrats remaining in Passy and the number of militia patrolling the area, it would be a decision, and a route, fraught with peril.
As the barge bumped against the quay on the left bank, he heard the high whinny of a horse coming from behind what appeared to be a long, low storage facility built perhaps twenty feet back from the riverbank.
“Wait here,” Richard whispered to Anne-Marie. He stepped onto the dock, secured the stern of the barge to a bollard with a clove hitch, and, in a hush broken only by the whispered rustle of leaves and the chirping of a few crickets, cautiously approached the building.
Suddenly two men appeared from around the corner. They were similarly dressed in sugar white trousers, coats, and cross-belts. One carried a lantern, the other a musket held out horizontally at his waist. At its tip a silver bayonet gleamed menacingly in the yellow light of the lantern.
“Qui est là?” the man wielding the musket demanded.
“Je m’appelle Richard Cutler,” Richard answered candidly. It was a gamble, because he did not know who these men were or whether he had just walked into a trap. But he had no other card to play. “Et vous, messieurs? Avez-vous connaissance de moi?”
“Oui,” the same man confirmed, relaxing his grip on his weapon and standing down. “Bonsoir, Capitaine Cutler. Votre voiture est prête. Nous sortirons tout de suite à Lorient.”
The relief Richard felt at that moment was immeasurable, and what he saw on the other side of the warehouse went far beyond what he had dared hope for. Not only was there a stagecoach ready to depart—a comfortable coach with cushioned seats yet not too conspicuous in its luxury—it was drawn by six powerful horses that were even now snorting impatiently and pawing the dirt. As if that were not enough, he learned that the two men who had challenged him were Royal Army soldiers assigned to escort his party to the coast. Clearly, Monsieur de Chaumont still wielded considerable influence in French affairs, notwithstanding the upheavals of revolution. “God bless you, monsieur,” Richard muttered under his breath.
He hurried back to the barge and urged everyone out of hiding and ashore to the carriage. Gathering up his seabag, he withdrew a leather pouch heavy with coins and handed it to the barge captain. “For your services tonight, Captain,” he said, before jumping ashore.
“Merci, monsieur,” Anne-Marie called out softly to
him from the quay. “Vive la France!” She took her daughters’ hands in hers and started running toward the soldier holding up a lantern as if it were a beacon of salvation. Richard and Gertrud followed close behind.
The barge captain stood mutely, staring first down at the pouch he held in his hands, then up at those now fleeing his country.
Inside the coach Richard took position facing aft, beside Gertrud, while Anne-Marie sat facing forward between her two daughters. With a light crack of the driver’s whip the coach lurched forward and maintained a slow but steady pace. The two heavily armed escorts followed behind on horseback, their army uniforms signaling to any highwayman or other miscreant lurking along the road that he would be well advised to keep his distance.
With the coach under way, Adèlaide and Françoise leapt excitedly to the windows to see what they could through the darkness. Their mother levered up the low, scrolled armrests to allow room for her daughters to stretch out to sleep when their interest waned. The tense glances the three adults exchanged amongst themselves confirmed that sleep would not come easily for any of them this night.
The road westward from Paris to Lorient was as well maintained with tight-fitting stones as the road winding north from Marseilles, and for the same reason. Each road led to a French naval base: one in Toulon, the other in Brest. And in Lorient, not far down the Breton coast from Brest, was the headquarters of the quasi-military and now defunct French East India Company, once the proud and mighty conveyor of spices, silks, exotic woods, and other Asian goods coveted by those in French haute société who could afford such items.
As dawn crept into the eastern sky and the driver could see better the road ahead, he picked up the pace. It was not unusual, along this military road, for a coach to be traveling at high speed and escorted by Royal Army soldiers. At relais stations along the route, and at a coaching inn near Mayenne where they put in the following night, les propriétaires and other citizens they encountered paid them scant notice. With the first streak of dawn the next morning they were on their way again, in the company now of but one soldier, who, at the first relais station of the day some distance west of Rennes, whipped his horse around and galloped back toward the old provincial capital of Brittany.
“Where is Stéphane going?” Richard asked Aubert, the driver, as the horses, hot and sweaty with foam, were being replaced by a fresh team of six. “And where is Paul-Henri?” referring to the other escort, whose company he had come to enjoy and who had treated him and his entourage with every courtesy. Gertrud had gone into town in search of food and drink while Anne-Marie’s daughters, giggling like the little girls they were, chased each other around the coach under the watchful eye of their mother. It was a sultry and cloudless day, though a brisk westerly breeze mitigated what otherwise would have been oppressive conditions.
“Paul-Henri took ill, monsieur,” Aubert replied wearily. Unlike the horses, their driver was not replaced when fatigue set in. “He stayed behind in Mayenne. Stéphane? He is going back to Rennes to check on something. He didn’t tell me what. He will return soon. Do not worry, monsieur,” Aubert encouraged when he noted Richard’s concern. “These men are your friends, as am I. They will not betray you. Besides, we are now very close to our destination. We will arrive in Lorient this afternoon.”
Richard nodded, although he did not fully share the driver’s optimism. Something about this turn of events unsettled him: exactly what, he could not identify. He waited impatiently until the coach was ready for its final surge toward the Breton coast.
THE SUN WAS WELL UP when Richard awoke with a start. He had been sleeping fitfully, dreaming of something he could not quite pull up from the depths of his subconscious, and had come awake with a sharp jounce of the coach as it sped past open pastureland interspersed with ancient hedgerows, rocky outcrops, and clumps of trees. Beside him Gertrud breathed deeply, her head resting on his jacket, propped up as a pillow and put near a half-open window. Across from him Adélaide and Françoise slept, each with her head on her mother’s lap. Anne-Marie was gazing down at them, stroking the hair of one, then the other, while humming a tune Richard did not recognize but assumed was a favorite nursery rhyme of the girls. She lifted her gaze to his when she sensed him watching her.
She smiled at him, and he at her. A comfortable silence ensued as they sat, the eyes of one upon the other, each silently recalling sweet moments of yesteryear.
“So, Mr. Cutler,” she murmured at length. “What will Mrs. Cutler think when her sailor returns home from the high seas and deposits me and my two daughters at her feet?”
His smile faded but did not altogether leave his lips. “Katherine and I keep no secrets, Anne-Marie. I told her about you long ago. It’s a good thing I did, since she already knew about you . . . and about us.”
“How?”
“My cousin Lizzy Cutler told her. She has been Katherine’s best friend since they were children in England. Her father, my uncle, was a close friend of Lord Stormont. Remember him? He was the British ambassador to France during the war and an acquaintance of Dr. Franklin. He was the one who helped gain my release from Old Mill Prison and who told my uncle about our . . . relationship. When my uncle told Lizzy, the words were hardly out of his mouth before she was galloping off to tell Katherine.” He said that humorously, with affection.
“Did Katherine not object to our . . . relationship?”
“She was hardly in a position to object. At the time, she was engaged to marry a British sea officer.”
“Ah, I see. My, my, Richard Cutler. What a fascinating life you have led.”
He shrugged. “No more fascinating than yours, Madame.”
Their eyes locked a second time and stayed that way until Françoise stirred in her slumber, muttering something incomprehensible. She turned, facing forward now, and curled up like a baby. Her mother spoke softly to her, stroked her arm, coaxed her back to sleep. When she had succeeded, she looked up.
“Richard, forgive me, but I must ask you something.”
“Ask me anything.”
She drew a deep breath, hesitated. “You love her very much, don’t you.” It was a statement more than a question, and she said it with a note of resignation, as though steeling herself for the answer she knew he would deliver.
“Yes, Anne-Marie, I do. Very much.”
She nodded her understanding. With a gentle sigh she said: “Then God has blessed your union, Richard. What bliss it must be, to be married to someone you truly love. Katherine is a most fortunate woman.”
“And I, a most fortunate man.”
She held his look for another moment before dropping her gaze to her daughters. She resumed her singsong lullaby as Richard closed his eyes, feeling sleep overcoming him anew.
He sprang suddenly awake at the distant bang! of a pistol and a shout from someone approaching from behind. Aubert yanked in the reins, and the coach shivered to a stop on the western edge of a Breton village of timber-framed white stucco homes and shops crowded close together.
Fumbling for his pistol from the seabag placed under the seat, Richard shot a glance out the right side of the coach, to see the soldier Stéphane closing in on them. When he was abreast of the coach, Stéphane drew hard on the reins, causing his horse to rear up on its hind legs. He spoke directly to Richard, who had opened the window to its full extent.
“Monsieur Cutler,” he cried, “I must warn you, we are being followed. I heard rumors of this in Rennes and went back to see for myself. It is true. The semaphore confirms it,” referring to a recently constructed system of communication that transmitted messages from one relay station to another by manipulating two long white arms according to a prescribed code.
“Who is following us?”
“Militia.”
“How many?”
“Four, five, I cannot say for certain. I have not seen them.”
“How far away are they?”
“Ten miles, monsieur, maybe less.”
Richa
rd cursed under his breath and heard Gertrud gasp beside him. He reached over to pick up his coat, which had fallen to the floor when she jerked awake. From an inside pocket he withdrew the pouch of extra shot and powder.
“Monsieur,” the soldier hesitated.
“Yes,” Richard replied irritably, his mind awhirl. “What is it, Stéphane?”
“Monsieur, I am sorry. I cannot stay with you. I cannot protect you.”
Richard instantly grasped what the soldier was saying. It was what he had suspected from the start of their journey. The army escort was for the sake of appearance only, to ward off any isolated troublemaker who might think to waylay the coach and rob its passengers. It was unlikely that a king’s soldier would defy a citizens’ militia, certainly not a militia force chasing a fleeing aristocrat. To do so could have dire consequences, not only for the soldier but for France.
“I understand,” he said, his tone much subdued. “Stéphane, may I beg you to ride ahead to Lorient, to warn my vessel at anchor there? Her name is Falcon. She is schooner-rigged and has a yellow hull. Ask for Monsieur Crabtree. Tell him what has happened here.”
“I will do as you ask, monsieur.”
“Thank you, Stéphane. God be with you.”
“And with you, monsieur. And with the kind lady and her children.” He saluted and galloped off westward.
Richard knew precisely how many rounds of shot he had in the pouch, but he counted them out anyway, to buy a few seconds in which to think. Giving up was out of the question. That would spell disaster for everyone inside the coach. They could make a stand here, but he had only one small weapon which he could not reload fast enough to have much effect against a force of men coming at him on horseback. Or they could make a run for it. The militia was five to ten miles behind them and catching up fast. The coach was still fifteen miles from Lorient. Quickly he estimated the different rates of speed of coach versus horse, the relative distances involved, and the time required to reach the coast, assuming both pursued and pursuer were traveling at full tilt. It would be close. Very close.
For Love of Country Page 28