Illumination

by Matthew Plampin

  The stock of a Prussian rifle pressed into Hannah’s back, directing her towards three close ranks of prisoners, a hundred of them at least, who’d been assembled for inspection on the far side of the green. This was a surprise: she’d had no idea that there were so many others being held in Gagny. Every other day she’d been brought out here for a half-hour’s perambulation. She’d taken the opportunity to memorise what she could of the village’s layout, observe its routines and patterns, anything that might prove useful should she manage to work open her cell door or give her ever-vigilant guard the slip. In all that time she hadn’t seen a whisker of these fellow captives, yet here they were – men of the line, Zoaves, militia – a full sample of the defenders of Paris. Like Hannah, they’d been permitted to bathe, but were still a scruffy lot, their uniforms filthy and torn and their beards overgrown. Around a third bore wounds of various kinds. Their role that morning, she supposed, was to look defeated, and they were fulfilling it admirably.

  Laure Fleurot was the only woman among them. She slouched at the right end of the formation, furthest from the town hall, her orange hair hanging over her face and her hands deep in the pockets of her greatcoat. The vivandières had been led off in different directions as soon as they’d arrived in Gagny. Laure had struggled hard against this, thinking that there might be some safety in numbers.

  ‘That’s my sister!’ she’d cried, bucking against the soldiers’ arms. ‘You Prussian bastards, that’s my damned sister! You can’t part us, you can’t!’

  Hannah had been prepared for the worst. They’d locked her in a tiny storeroom in the cellar of an occupied townhouse, empty save for a cast-iron chamber pot. For the first few days she waited, her ears straining for the scrape of a military boot on the basement steps, intending to use her teeth and nails – and her chamber pot – to protect herself as best she could. No boots came, however; no drunken soldiers bent on violation threw back her door. Neither did anyone attempt to interrogate, torture or starve her. The daily prisoner’s ration turned out to be more than a Montmartre resident had in half a week. Her cell’s high, brick-sized window was glazed against the weather; a hot-water pipe in a corner even kept her reasonably warm. Her guard had lowered.

  Another week had passed. Hannah’s isolation, the lack of anything, soon became tormenting. She was determined not to give up. Jean-Jacques had survived the sortie – she was convinced of it. The only acceptable explanation was that he’d become separated from the 197th on the Villiers Plateau and had fought his way back to the French line. Buried in her storeroom, surrounded by enemy troops, Hannah had to believe that he was alive and free – and very probably out searching for her. It was her duty to rejoin him. She’d resolved to escape from Gagny as soon as she could.

  Initially, Hannah hadn’t thought that this would prove too difficult. She was in a village, for God’s sake, not a gaol. There were no towers, moats, gates or anything like that; a little boldness and she’d be away. In practice, of course, it was not so simple. She was always either locked up or under close watch. They shot people, these Prussians – bothersome prisoners or saboteurs brought in from the countryside. She sometimes heard the rifle reports in her cell. A poorly considered plan and she’d meet her end against a wall with a Prussian handkerchief bound around her eyes.

  At a loss, Hannah had taken to sketching on the cell’s earth floor with her fingertip. Relying on memory, she composed a series of siege vignettes – guardhouse scenes, the storming of the Hôtel de Ville, Jean-Jacques addressing the Club Rue Rébeval – erasing each one with her coat-cuff as evening arrived. She found herself dreaming of colour: gleaming caterpillars of ivy, cream, russet and jet that squeezed out through cracks in the plaster, blending and spreading to form sunlit vistas of parks and boulevards – modern Paris bustling around her.

  Morning would often fail to break in that deadly winter, the black cold of night never fully lifting. Too late, Hannah came to understand why convicts keep tallies of their internment. Her days became a disorientated muddle, drawings in the dirt that were effaced at dusk and gone for ever. Christmas caught her unawares – simultaneously amazed that she’d been imprisoned for so long, and that it had only been three and a half weeks since her capture. All it meant, at any rate, was the smell of roasting meat seeping down through the floorboards, accompanied by raucous laughter and carols sung in German.

  Outside the storeroom’s high window was a lane, running from the village into the countryside. It was usually quiet, the view of the mildewed wall opposite only occasionally interrupted by a column of marching soldiers or the steel-rimmed wheels of a military supply wagon. With the New Year, however, came a marked increase in traffic. Monstrous artillery pieces blocked what little light Hannah had; shell-carts creaked by constantly. She’d quickly deduced what this surge of munitions meant. Gagny was close to the main eastbound railway, the Strasbourg line; men and equipment arriving from Prussia or the occupied territories passed through the village to deployments elsewhere. Preparations were underway for the bombardment of Paris.

  This realisation had jolted Hannah from her torpor. It seemed unfathomable at first, a crime of bewildering magnitude. The Kaiser’s men were about to turn the most devastating artillery ever created on Paris, an ancient seat of beauty and enlightenment – and the two million civilians sheltering within it. Unexpectedly, along with everything else, Hannah found that she was worried for her mother. Jean-Jacques and her friends in Montmartre would know how to manage this latest hazard. Clement had left Paris with Émile Besson, floating over the Prussians into another part of France. Elizabeth, though, would be drawn irresistibly into the heart of the barrage. She’d be taking all manner of foolish risks for the sake of her book.

  There was absolutely nothing Hannah could do. She paced her cell; she kicked at the walls. This was her time. Her home was under attack, under fire, and she was locked in a cellar in Gagny. The frustration was excruciating. When on her allotted constitutional, she tried to detect some change in the ubiquitous shell-fire, some slight shift in pitch or reverberation that might tell her whether the onslaught had begun, but without success. Gagny was seven or eight miles from the wall. Held out here she was as good as dead – of no use to anyone.

  Hope had returned in the form of laundered flags, drilling soldiers and a general frenzy of cleaning and polishing. Arrangements of a rather different sort were being made, and Hannah heard the word Kaiser often enough to be able to guess the occasion. A final royal tour of the line was being undertaken, before the imminent collapse of France and the Prussian victory. At dawn the next morning she was led upstairs, shown to a room containing a bath, towels and plentiful hot water, and left to wash. The visit was happening that day. Here was her chance, a distraction better than anything she could have imagined. She’d bathed and informed her guard that she was ready to be taken outside.

  Laure’s incarceration had obviously not been as eventless as Hannah’s. Her face was bruised and her coat missing several buttons. Hannah’s guard stood them together and went to the front of the prisoners’ formation. Their eyes met.

  ‘Holy Christ, Mademoiselle Pardy,’ Laure whispered, as if they’d only been apart a few moments, ‘we really need to get out of here.’

  Before Hannah could reply, every Prussian soldier in Gagny stamped to attention. A detachment of cuirassiers swept in from the west, silver breastplates and Pickelhauben shining, the hooves of their huge chargers pounding through the village. In amongst them was a carriage, a fine navy-blue landau with its top open; and within was Kaiser Wilhelm, an elderly man in a general’s cap, whiskers framing his precise white moustache. Wrapped in a greatcoat and scarf, he had a rather businesslike aspect, like a proprietor touring a factory. A high-ranking aide was at his side; both sat upright, taking in Gagny’s modest parade as they were driven around the green to the town hall.

  Across from them was a fleshy man in the same white uniform as the cavalry, with a fur-lined cloak instead of the breastplate
: Chancellor Bismarck, famed mastermind of the war, responsible for many of Prussia’s more nefarious strategies and the resultant suffering and humiliation of France. Hannah could scarcely believe it. What Jean-Jacques would give to be standing here with a Chassepot in his hands! Prussia could be laid low in a heartbeat.

  At once vigorously healthy and bloated by indulgence, Bismarck wore a long moustache upon a dogged, jowly face. French cartoons of him depicted a bulbous aberration, a slavering beast, a rampaging, rapacious swine. Like his king, however, the chancellor bore a closer resemblance to a tycoon – a fast-living magnate clad as a cuirassier for a fancy-dress ball. Puffing on a cigarette, slumped in his seat, he appeared profoundly uninterested in the outpost at Gagny, but sight of Hannah and Laure made him lean over the side of the landau for a closer look. The expression he fixed on them was both predatory and strangely playful, as if the three of them were sharing a lewd joke.

  ‘Voilà,’ he announced as he rolled past, ‘les Amazones!’

  A second carriage came behind, larger and less fine, bearing attendants and a couple of lesser dignitaries. Both vehicles pulled up before the town hall. There was a round of sharp salutes as Wilhelm climbed from the landau. The band began a new tune, a lurching, martial number that could have been the Prussian national anthem. Before they’d played a bar the Kaiser had gone indoors, the rest of the royal party hurrying after him. Chancellor Bismarck was more leisurely, pausing to finish his cigarette and exchange a few words with the band leader. He was making a request; as he followed Wilhelm in the music changed again, to an up-tempo hunting song.

  The soldiers stood easy. Hot drinks were brought for the cuirassiers, who dismounted and were soon laughing with the infantrymen. A relaxed, distinctly celebratory air spread across the green. The French prisoners were largely forgotten. Their ranks loosened, threatening in places to dissolve completely. A few of them grumbled; someone said ‘À bas Wilhelm!’, although not very loudly. Hannah watched the town hall. She could see Bismarck through one of the tall ground-floor windows, in his white tunic. He was making an expansive declaration, his arms thrown open.

  ‘Now,’ she said.

  Laure snorted. ‘You’re not serious.’

  Hannah glanced about. Her guard was turned away from her, chatting with his comrades-in-arms. No one was monitoring them. She stepped backwards, into the second rank. Laure was regarding her with a mixture of incredulity, amusement and fright, as one might an especially daring feat by a circus acrobat. She wasn’t going to be left behind, though, and a moment later they were both at the rear.

  Some of the Frenchmen noticed what they were doing. ‘Don’t,’ said a regular with his arm in a sling. ‘We’ll all pay for it.’

  ‘If you were a man,’ Laure hissed at him, ‘you’d be doing the same.’

  The soldier stayed put. ‘Stupid bitch.’

  A few yards of open ground separated the prisoners from a tavern courtyard. Hannah knew from her walks that it contained a large stable with a door on its far side. She crossed it in six swift strides – expecting shouts, shots, the pounding of boots. They did not come. The band played on, a good number of the Prussians breaking into song. The tavern was closed up, its windows shuttered. Hannah approached the stable, thinking that it could easily be locked as well, leaving her and Laure cornered in this courtyard. The past ten seconds had changed them irreversibly from prisoners into fugitives. They’d surely be executed.

  The stable was open. Hannah rushed past the stalls, colliding heavily with the far door. Her hands were numb, her fingertips tingling; she fumbled with the bolt, unable to get a grip on it. A terrible pressure was building in her chest, making the task many times more difficult – making it impossible.

  Laure stumbled into her, all elbows and knees and panicked panting. ‘Can we do this?’ she asked. ‘Really?’

  The bolt banged back. ‘We’re doing it,’ Hannah replied. ‘It’s done.’

  Beyond was a crooked lane filled with French peasants, diverted from their usual course through Gagny by the Kaiser’s visit. Everyone stared at them; no one made a sound. An old woman pointed towards a low door. This led into a walled orchard, the bare branches of its pear trees dusted with frost. A gate at its end opened onto an icy meadow, past which was the border of a wood. Hannah made a last check for guards. None could be seen. She took hold of Laure’s hand and ran.

  ‘I don’t like the woods, really I don’t,’ said Laure, hugging herself. ‘Fuck the woods.’

  The vivandières were in a hunter’s hut, discovered after several hours of wandering through the limitless, misty forest. It was well hidden, tucked in a stand of ancient oaks, and hadn’t been used for some time. They’d agreed to shelter there until dark, when there would be less chance of them being spotted. Their exultation at having escaped had long since worn off. Both now saw that the more arduous part of this challenge still lay before them; both also wanted very much to rest. Hannah had eased the door open a few inches, taking care not to disturb the weeds growing over it, and they’d slid inside. The hut was the size of a double bed, and only slightly less cold than the forest. Moss carpeted the walls; toadstools dotted the floor. Above the door a stag’s skull hung on a nail, one of its antlers snapped back to a stump.

  Hannah stood at the filthy window, watching for Prussians. Laure took this as a good sign, assuming that she was thinking things through – plotting their next step. Her mood began to mellow; she sat down, taking off one of her battered bottines and holding it up to release a trickle of water.

  ‘Everything will be all right,’ she said. ‘I know it. We’re lucky together, Mademoiselle Pardy, dead lucky. Something about you makes up for me in the eyes of God.’

  Hannah was weary and cold, and very nervous; she had no time for tarts’ superstition. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked testily.

  ‘We made it through Champigny, didn’t we,’ Laure answered, ‘when all those men were killed. We escaped just then, something few would have dared to try – or got away with.’ She rubbed at her bruises. ‘And I wasn’t so very fortunate while we were parted.’

  Her meaning was plain enough. Hannah’s impatience vanished. ‘Was it the Prussians?’

  The cocotte shook her head. She suddenly looked very young; Hannah realised that she probably wasn’t even twenty. ‘Men of the line. Even guardsmen, a couple of times. They’d get me in the mornings, when we were let out for exercise. Fritz didn’t interfere. Didn’t much care, I suppose.’

  Hannah cursed every one of them. This was what she’d been expecting herself, albeit from enemies rather than alleged comrades, yet it hadn’t happened. She’d been closely guarded when walking outside and had been kept in complete isolation. It was as if someone had been trying to spare her – to protect her. It made no sense.

  Laure shrugged. ‘Nothing I haven’t had before. My own brothers gave me worse.’ She tugged her boot back on with a shiver. ‘Christ, what I wouldn’t do for a damned cigarette.’

  They fell silent. Hannah felt shame and a tense, directionless anger. She thought of the frequent complaints she’d made about her own upbringing. Elizabeth might have perplexed her, smothered her, annoyed her beyond endurance, but what was that next to this? She was particularly upset by the offhand way Laure had spoken, as if what she’d been through was unremarkable – a banal ordeal, part of her earthly lot. It made Hannah want to knock out the window with her fist. Could this ever be stopped? Would their socialist revolution, with all its talk of workers’ rule, of federalism and freedom, be able to end such basic human misery? Would a commune? She stared at the floor, mired in troubling reflections.

  ‘We’ll get back,’ she said at last. ‘I think I know where we are. I have a plan.’

  Laure was smiling. ‘Mademoiselle Pardy,’ she said, her tone almost affectionate, ‘I’m sure that you do.’

  They left the hut at nightfall. Hannah’s guess was that they’d originally fled to the north. Earlier, she’d decided that their best bet had
been to move in a broad westwards arc, meeting up with the Strasbourg line and following it back into the city. This had been proving harder than anticipated; she’d grown worried that they were going in a circle rather than an arc, half-expecting the spire of Gagny’s church to emerge among the trees ahead. Now, though, the forest’s disorientating similitude was punctuated by the flashes of distant explosions. Hannah guided Laure towards them. The ground grew firmer and began to tilt, as if they were rounding the side of a gentle hill. A village appeared between the trunks – not Gagny, to Hannah’s relief – clearly occupied, but unlit so as not to attract French artillery-fire; and past this, beyond the artless heaps of the forts and redoubts, was bombarded Paris.

  The barrage was being concentrated on the south of the city. Several ranks of heavy guns were sparking up on the Châtillon plateau, lobbing shells over the wall into the dark streets of Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter. From where Hannah and Laure stood, looking across from the north-east, they could see buildings burning near the Jardin de Luxembourg; the flames were sharp specks of colour, lending a pinkish tint to the snow-covered rooftops around them. A railway station was ablaze beside the Seine – the Gare d’Orléans, Hannah thought – the fire lighting up the iron-and-glass hall like an enormous lantern.

  ‘Oh God, my beautiful city!’ Laure moaned, turning away, ‘I never thought it’d come to this. Damn them, damn them to hell!’