by Regan Walker
Nuaillé, less than a hundred miles north. “Then he never made it back from Granville to the Vendée?”
The boy shook his head. “Non.”
She could not bear to learn Henri had died in agony. “Did he suffer?”
The messenger crushed his hat in his hands, his face stricken yet sincere. She knew he would tell her the truth. “He lived but a short while. His last words were for you, mademoiselle.”
Would his last words speak of his love, a declaration she could treasure always?
The boy raised his chin, the tavern’s lanterns reflecting the pride on his face. “Monsieur Henri said, ‘If I die, tell Zoé to avenge me!’”
Her heart plummeted and she grabbed on to a table to keep from slipping to her knees. She had wanted to hear an avowal of love that would give life to the feelings she had hoped he harbored for her, but it was not to be. In Henri’s last words, she recognized his order to his followers. Famous among the soldiers who had chosen him to lead the Vendéen army was his command, “If I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!”
Henri lived for his faith and his king, the words “Dieu et le Roi”, God and the King, embroidered on the Sacré-Cœur, the sacred heart patch he wore on his chest. Like the other Vendéen officers, his hat boldly displayed the white cockade of the Bourbons. Symbols of the Catholic and Royal Army of which he was a part. But surely he had loved her no matter his call for revenge. At the end it had been her name on his lips.
Zoé brushed the tears from her cheeks, steeling herself for the task ahead. Silently, she vowed she would not fail him. Henri would have his revenge, not just from his soldiers, who would fight on until victory was theirs, but she, too, would do what she could. France must be freed from the tyranny of men like Maximilien de Robespierre, the lawyer who had a taste for blood, and Georges Danton, yet another lawyer on the Committee of Public Safety that ruled France. Danton, she recalled, had brazenly called for the king’s death.
She remembered the murdered king and queen, their daughter confined to the Temple Prison and their nine-year-old son, Louis-Charles, the dauphin the royalists had named Louis XVII. The revolutionaries kept him in a cage in Paris where he suffered horrible treatment.
Could she do what Charlotte Corday had done the year before? The woman from Normandy, a few years older than Zoé, had slain Jean-Paul Marat, the radical journalist who had wanted more heads to roll. For her service to France, Corday had been guillotined.
Zoé shuddered. Surely there was another way she could serve the royalist cause, something other than taking up musket and sword.
A thought occurred, a way she could help. She could venture into the streets and villages to rescue those destined for the guillotine and work with her uncle to ferry the émigrés to freedom.
“Pour Dieu et le Roi” would be her motto, too. She would give herself to the royalist cause until the day a Bourbon king again sat on the throne of France and the people could worship freely.
The port of Granville, Normandy, February 1794
Zoé crept along the stone wall of the buildings facing the quay, heading for the place she would meet Erwan, one of the Vendéen fighters remaining in Normandy after the daring assault in Granville had ended in a terrible defeat.
Over the protests of the crew who had rowed her ashore, she had entered Granville alone, knowing the seamen’s presence would only draw the attention of the republican soldiers in control of the town.
The port had become a place of secret departure for émigrés fleeing Robespierre’s Terror, in which the constitution had been suspended and anyone accused of having less than patriotic fervor for the revolution faced the guillotine. No one was safe, least of all a woman descended from the comtes de Saintonge with an aristocratic lilt to her voice. Zoé had practiced for many hours to be able to blend with the peasants.
Heavy footsteps sounded on the cobblestones behind her. Seized with fear she would be stopped and questioned, Zoé shrank into the shadows, thanking the saints for the fog shrouding Granville this night.
With her heart pounding in her chest and hoping to remain unseen, she pressed against the stone wall, feeling the damp cold through her cloak. A veil of thick mist flowed over her, blurring her image.
A huge man with thick side whiskers and a revolutionary’s red cap passed in front of her, swinging a lantern as he weaved his way down the street, sated with drink. In a slurred voice, he sang the last lines of the song penned by the poet Lebrun the year before, commemorating the execution of Louis XVI.
If some want a master,
In a world from King to king
Let them beg for shackles
Unworthy to be called Frenchmen!
She had heard the callous ditty before. The oft-repeated lines only increased her loathing of those who sang them.
The man disappeared around the corner. She let out a breath and peered into the fog. Where is Erwan? And the woman and her children?
Out of the misty shadows, a voice whispered, “Zoé, est-ce toi?”
Dressed as she was in peasant’s clothing, her hair captured under a dark blue cap and her face streaked with dirt, he had reason to ask. “Erwan,” she hissed. “You are late! And alone! Where are the ones we are to meet? La Reine Noire lies just offshore and the skiff awaits, but ’tis dangerous for it to linger.”
“The woman and her children are not far,” Erwan whispered, indicating she should follow. His long brown hair, stringy to his shoulders, was lost in the dark shadow beneath his wide-brimmed felt hat. A Breton by birth, he had gone south to the Vendée when the fighting began a year ago. He’d been a loyal follower of Henri de la Rochejaquelein until his death. Then he joined Zoé in her efforts to save those fleeing the Terror. “The two children were fearful and I could not risk them crying out. I have hidden them and their mother a short distance away.”
He led her down the darkened streets and stopped in front of a wooden door on which he rapped three times. Slowly, the door opened, allowing a narrow shaft of light to escape. Following him inside, Zoé inhaled a musty smell and glimpsed a sparsely furnished room before seeing a woman, two children and a maidservant huddled in front of a meager fire.
The whites of the mother’s eyes, huge in the firelight, shouted her fear.
Zoé had seen the same fear in the eyes of other refugees. “You are Madame de Montconseil, princesse d’Hénin?”
“Oui, and these are my two children.” She drew the girl and her younger brother close. The boy clutched his mother’s skirts, burying his face in the simple brown cloth. The girl stared at Zoé with haunted brown eyes, making her wonder at the things the child had seen. Gesturing to the servant, the mother said, “This is my maidservant, Éloise.”
The servant glanced at Zoé before dipping into a proper curtsey. Older than Zoé by several years, the maidservant was attractive even in peasant garb. She had the bluest eyes Zoé had ever seen and her golden hair curled around her face under the plain mobcap to which was attached the obligatory tricolor cockade.
“No need to curtsey, Éloise,” she told the maid in the speech of the locals. “As long as we are in France, we must all act as citoyens of the Republic, oui?”
Madame de Montconseil, her face lined with care, nodded. “We are so grateful.”
Zoé gave the little group a smile meant to lift their faltering spirits. “All will be well.” She was gratified they wore peasants’ clothing, even the princesse. Erwan had done his job well.
“We must go,” he urged, his dark eyes intense, his expression anxious.
“I don’t like it,” hissed Freddie as he joined the quartermaster, standing at the rail of la Reine Noire. “When did Zoé leave?” Freddie stared into the heavy mist toward the tavern lights glowing from the quay in an eerie manner. He had gone to his cabin for only a moment to review dispatches from his contact on Jersey. It rankled that Zoé had left the ship without a word.
Émile Bequel shrugged his powerful shoulders benea
th his leather coat. His dark eyes were barely visible under his heavy brows and the russet color of his hair hard to discern in the dim light. “The mademoiselle took a skiff to shore a short while ago. I await her return.”
When Donet was away, his right-hand-man, Bequel, took temporary command of the ship. The years he had served alongside Donet were etched deep in his face, the bond between the two men forged in the fires of adversity. It was he who had slid the brig-sloop into the foggy Granville harbor to hide among the other ships, as stealthily as a fox slipping in among sleeping chickens.
The only light allowed on deck glowed red from the port lantern, serving as a guide for the rescue party’s return to the ship.
Freddie’s frown deepened as a feeling of foreboding gripped him.
Bequel shot him an indulgent look. “Worry not, l’Anglais. Some of my best men are with her.”
“She was supposed to wait for me. Why did you let her go?”
Émile chuckled under his breath in the manner of a man in his fiftieth year who had seen much. “One does not tell Mademoiselle Donet to wait when she is setting forth to save those the Republic has marked for death. She has the stubborn will of le capitaine, non? The rescue of innocents has been her raison d’être since the death of de la Rochejaquelein.”
At the name, Freddie let out an exasperated sigh. Zoé still carried a torch for the fallen hero of the royalist army, much to Freddie’s chagrin. He told himself he was merely concerned for her safety, dismayed at the personal risks she was taking. Inspired by the memory of her martyred hero, she repeatedly defied the revolution’s leaders to steal away their victims. At a deeper level, he had to admit to himself he was jealous. Jealous of a dead man! It was insane. He couldn’t help wishing that lovely Zoé might be as enchanted by the living man beside her as she was by the fantasy of a man gone from her life forever.
In his mind, Freddie heard again her admonishment earlier that day. “Why do you worry so?” she had asked, her beautifully shaped brows drawn together. “How will this night be any different from the other nights when my friends and I have helped those seeking to escape the guillotine?”
If it weren’t for the unsettled feeling in his gut, he would have conceded her point. But because of the foreboding, he had insisted on going with her. “If you must venture into Granville tonight, I will go, too.”
“Très bien,” she replied with a flick of her wrist, “come if you must. But do not get in the way and remember to don the clothes of a citoyen. Speak only French and be ready to leave the ship with me. The streets grow more dangerous and I dare not tarry.”
He hated wearing the tricolor cockade and the shabby trousers of the sans-culottes, the revolutionaries who scorned the breeches worn by the nobility, merchants and lawyers. He found it ironic that the staunchest of the revolutionaries had their own uniform, wearing ill-fitting trousers; some even striped red and white in a ridiculous manner. “I hate what the clothing stands for.”
“Oui, I know. But since the Vendéens’ defeat, the republican army controls Granville. If you are going ashore, you must look the part. Your French is quite good for an Englishman but your disguise must also convince.”
“Very well,” he had told her. “I will do as you say.” He rarely went to such lengths when on his own missions, but she knew none of that. “How many émigrés will you be meeting tonight?”
“At least three, possibly four. Madame de Montconseil, princesse d’Hénin, a guillotine widow and former lady-in-waiting to the dead queen, will bring her two children. There was also mention of a maidservant.”
“An illustrious refugee.”
“Aye. And there’s no guessing when Oncle Jean might return.”
Donet had gone to Paris to rescue two Ursuline nuns from Saint-Denis where they had once led a convent school. Not content with beheading royalty and aristocrats, the leaders of the revolution had become more virulent in their view of the Church, vowing to destroy it. Houses of worship, cloisters and monasteries were gutted and burned, their lands seized. Priests and nuns were attacked, imprisoned and slain.
The two nuns Donet meant to save had been in hiding since the September Massacres two years before when more than a thousand prisoners, including two hundred priests, had been brutally slain by an angry mob. Word had reached Donet on Guernsey that some Ursulines had been sent to the guillotine and he wanted to make sure these two would not face that same fate.
Freddie had considered the plans to retrieve the refugees tonight. “With you, the women and the men to row, the skiff will be nearly full.”
Zoé had given him an angelic smile. “Oui, the boat will be crowded, but if I am successful, four souls will be saved.” He was dismayed at how blithely she dismissed so great a danger. It had made him more determined to accompany her.
The sound of the sails flapping gently as the ship bobbed in the still water drew Freddie back to the present. The damp air carried a chill. He pressed his tricorne down on his head and drew his arms around him, wondering how long he would be venturing into Granville’s cold nights. How long could the Terror continue?
What had begun as a means to strike fear in the hearts of France’s enemies soon became a hunt for anyone accused of disloyalty. Death carts rolled incessantly through the streets on their way to the guillotines erected in every major town. For some revolutionaries, the guillotine was too slow. Hundreds of priests and nuns had been cast into the Loire and drowned. Others had been shot.
After the Vendéens had fled south, retreating back to their own lands, the Committee of Public Safety, now effectively ruling France, had sent General Turreau into the Vendée with orders to “leave nobody and nothing alive”.
Turreau’s colonnes infernales, the “infernal columns”, were still crisscrossing the Vendée, killing thousands of men, women and children and burning all they encountered.
With reports of such horrors reaching him each day, Freddie despaired of the Terror ending anytime soon.
Bequel turned to face the crew on deck, interrupting Freddie’s thoughts. “Éric, Bastien! Rig a cable to the bow. Stand by to pass it off to the skiff when it arrives. Silencieusement, c’est entendu?”
The crew scrambled to comply with the quartermaster’s order, minding the command to do so without making a sound.
Turning back to Freddie, Bequel said, “In this fog, ye understand, we do not exist. The skiff will become our little donkey and tow us out of the harbor and into the Channel.”
Looking toward shore, Freddie brooded into the fog. He hoped the continued disquiet that roiled his stomach did not mean the woman he vowed to protect with his life, the woman he hoped to one day make his wife, was facing imminent danger.
Why had she gone without him?
“Take citoyenne Montconseil to the skiff,” Zoé instructed Erwan. “I will be along shortly.”
Erwan shook his head, about to protest, but then he looked at the children, their frightened faces anxiously gazing up at their mother. He knew as well as Zoé if they traveled to her uncle’s apartment together, the sound of so many feet would attract unwanted attention. Alone, she could move undetected, like a wraith, wending her way through the darkened streets, leaving Erwan to take his charges directly to the skiff.
“Go!” she prodded.
He gave her a last concerned look, then ushered the women and children outside into the foggy street.
Zoé waited until the small group silently moved away before setting off in the opposite direction.
She paused before an inconspicuous wooden door on the narrow street that led to the rooms her uncle had secured a few years ago. Located close to the dockside taverns and supervised by a fierce landlady with royalist sympathies, the location served their purposes well.
Zoé hoped her uncle had arrived, though he would be earlier than expected if he had. Outside the apartment, she looked for the signal that would tell her he was there. Relief flooded her when she glimpsed the small piece of blue ribbon wedged between
two stones.
She retrieved the ribbon, knocked twice and the door opened. She slipped in like a shadow to be greeted by her uncle, sword in hand. He was clothed all in black, save for the tricolor cockade pinned to his tricorne.
With a look of recognition, he returned his sword to its sheath and lit a candle, adding to the light from the flames flickering in the stone fireplace. The room had a small area for preparing food along with a table and chairs. Their landlady often left food and wine when she knew to expect them. Two cots were set against the opposite wall, sleeping places for her uncle and Gabe, his former cabin boy and now an experienced seaman, who accompanied him on many of his runs. But this one her uncle had made alone.
Casting her a worried look, he chided, “I was beginning to think you had encountered… difficulty.” Difficulty meant republican soldiers that patrolled the streets in pairs.
“Non. I have just left Erwan. He is taking the ones we met tonight to the skiff. Saints be praised, you are early. Have you recovered the nuns?”
From the back room, the only bedchamber, two women emerged, one older and one younger. Each wore a shawl over her head, hiding any hint of shorn locks that might betray the vows of their cloistered lives. Their worn female clothing mirrored that of the tradeswomen in Granville. No one would have guessed they were nuns, that is, until the older one gave Zoé an assessing look and spoke in a refined speech that belied her feigned lower station.
“M’sieur Donet, she could be your daughter, Claire, when last I saw her.”
Zoé had been told there was a resemblance between her cousin, Claire, who lived in England, and her although Claire was ten years older.
“Oui, my niece has the Donet look about her.” He gave Zoé a slight smile that hinted at his approval. Her father and her uncle were so alike in appearance they had often been mistaken for each other. Both had bold features, coal-black eyes and hair, her uncle’s now liberally threaded with silver.
Addressing the nuns, he said, “Allow me to present my niece, Mademoiselle Zoé Donet.” Then to Zoé, “These are Sisters Augustin and Angélique, who are very dear to my daughter and to me. Claire was educated in their convent school.”