by JH Fletcher
‘What do we do with thieves, sergeant?’
‘We execute them, sir.’
‘What do we do with murderers, sergeant?’
‘We execute them, sir.’
‘Quite right.’ Foucher withdrew his crop and slashed it with full force across the man’s face, before his head had a chance to sag downwards once more. The skin split. Blood spurted. ‘Filth! Do it, then.’
‘Sir?’
‘Execute him.’
‘Sir.’
The two men nodded to each other; this, too, was part of the game.
The soldiers who had been holding Alain let him go. He swayed, falling first to his knees and then, slowly, onto his face. The sergeant kicked him so that he turned on his back, closed eyes to the sky. Foucher drew his pistol from his belt. He held it close to the prisoner’s ear so that even in his present state he could not fail to hear, and cocked it. Observed with pleasure a shudder pass slowly through the body lying in the grass. Oh yes, he’d heard that, all right. Probably all this business of being helpless was no more than an act. Hoping to drum up a bit of sympathy … Well, he had another thing coming, in that case.
Meticulously, he parted the man’s legs with the toe of his boot. Kicked once, savagely.
The body erupted from the grass in a wild convulsion, eyes and mouth wide. ‘Ahhhh …’ The scream echoed across the river, putting a couple of startled ducks to flight.
Foucher waited until Alain had settled down again and then said, ‘Hold on a minute, sergeant —’
‘Sir?’
‘Might be one way he could save his neck …’ He bent down, put his mouth close to Alain’s ear. ‘Hear me, can you?’
A groan.
‘Speak up, lad.’
‘Yes.’ Panting, barely audible, but yes, definitely.
‘Good, good. Between you and me, lad, I’m not in favour of all these executions. All Frenchmen, aren’t we? If I can spare someone, if someone gives me reason to spare him, I’ll do it every time. Foolish of me, I daresay, too soft-hearted, bad thing in a soldier, but there it is. Spare you, too, if I can.’
Gave him a minute to think about it. Said, ‘That young woman that came down the river with you. If you didn’t kill her, like you say …’
Silence.
‘Abandoned you, that’s what she did. You owe her nothing. Tell me: where were you going? Where do we find her?’
A pause, then a whisper of sound.
‘What was that?’
What sounded like drowned.
Foucher frowned. ‘Drowned?’
‘In … the river. When … the boat overturned.’
He did not want to believe it.
‘See her, did you? In the water?’
The head shook, slowly.
‘Then how do you know?’
The bitch could have swum ashore. Could still be in the boat, for all he knew. If this clown had somehow managed to fall in by himself.
From somewhere the prisoner had found his tongue. The words dripped one by one, like glue. ‘She must’ve drowned. What else … could have happened?’
All this crap was making Foucher angry. ‘She knows how to swim, I suppose?’
‘No.’
Enough to madden anyone.
‘Disappointed in you, lad.’
Had a hunch the poor fool really didn’t know what had happened. In which case there was no point wasting time. He bent closer, the weight of the pistol filling him with a wonderful sense of power. ‘Hurting, lad, are we?’
‘Yes.’
‘Soon stop that.’ A pause, smiling, waiting for the feeling to well up inside him. When he was ready, he murmured, ‘Look at me, lad.’
The eyelids flickered; the pale blue eyes looked up at him. Saw:
The pistol, rising, pointing.
The muzzle touched the upper lip. Just … so. There.
The two men looked at each other along the barrel. They were as close as lovers. The captain, erection tight to bursting inside his breeches, squeezed the trigger.
The kick of the gun. The noise. The gush of smoke. The shattered head. Like fucking an unwilling woman. Better.
Two days; three; a week. It didn’t look good. Michel pitched up, talking of roadblocks and patrols, of papers being checked.
‘The bastards are everywhere …’
He was a bit awkward with Eugénie, wondering how she’d react. Soon found out; all the notice she took of him, he might have been invisible.
All the same, it was obvious that she and the girls couldn’t stay here indefinitely.
‘Might make some enquiries,’ Lacoste said.
He came back, face grave. ‘The cops have been round your place, asking questions.’
‘Nobody knows where I am.’ But would find out. Only one thing for it. She told him, first making sure that Michel was out of earshot. ‘We’ll go to my parents in Nantes.’
Lacoste looked dubious; getting out of Paris would be tricky, but Eugénie was right. It was out of the question for them to stay here, now the police were on their track. He set his shoulders and grinned, making the best of it. ‘Not to worry. I’ll fix it up, somehow.’
This sturdy man.
‘What do you want?’
Captain Foucher, uniform, cavalry sword, polished boots halfway up his thighs, gave the woman a good look-over before answering. Filthy, tattered dress, sack apron. He had six men with him, weapons at the ready, but was still on his guard; this wasn’t a good area. Hovels and tar-paper shacks, shit everywhere. Sooner they were away, the better. All the same, questions had to be asked.
‘Name?’
‘What’s it to you?’
A sour-faced slut, if ever he’d seen one. ‘Answer the question.’
‘Oh excuse me, I’m sure.’ She sketched a curtsy, insultingly. ‘Marie Antoinette of France, at your service, m’lord.’
‘I need to speak to your husband.’
A laugh, crow-harsh. ‘Make sure you let me know when you find him. Husband? That’ll be the day!’
‘He has a cousin —’
Like turning off a tap; no mockery now.
‘What’s she been up to?’
‘Never you mind.’
A grimy smile. The harridan rubbed finger and thumb together. ‘Reward, maybe?’
‘Just tell me where she is!’
The avaricious glint died. No reward, no interest in telling. ‘Dunno, mister.’
‘Where’s your man?’
‘Out.’
‘Where does he work?’
Again the derisive cackle. ‘Work? What’s that?’
It was hopeless. Never mind; there were other ways of finding out, other neighbours who would talk.
He turned and stalked away. Behind him, disappointed in her hopes of a bribe, the woman raised her voice mockingly.
‘Make sure you drop in again, next time you’re passing. Give you a quickie out the back.’ She laughed raucously as, sword clanking, he walked swiftly away from her down the alley. ‘On the house, mind. On the house.’
Put a torch to the whole district, he thought furiously. Would have done it, too, if he could have got permission. See her laugh, then. Burn the rats out, he told himself. It was the only way.
‘Got any money?’ Lacoste asked.
Even with this man, instinct made Eugenie cautious. ‘Why?’
‘I reckon I can get you out of the city, but you’ll have to manage for yourselves after that.’
She had always known her nest egg would come in handy. How thankful she was that she had never told Alain about it! Had felt a bit mean, sometimes, but consoled herself with the thought that it would have been out of the question.
The year before she met Alain there’d been a man, ensign in one of the Guard regiments, told her he’d marry her. As if he would; she’d been young at the time, plum-ripe, but not stupid enough to believe that. She’d been nice to him, all the same and, in return, he’d been nice to her. A few francs here, a few there; it
had added up to a tidy sum. Something to remember him by when he walked out, as she had always known he would.
There’d been many times since when she’d been tempted to use it, times when they hadn’t enough to put bread on the table, but she never had. At the back of her mind, she had always known that some day it would come in useful, at a time of real crisis.
Like now.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve got money.’
‘As well,’ Lacoste said. ‘I’ve a hunch you’re going to need it.’
The ancient cart was as bow-legged as the nag pulling it. At one end was a pile of scrap iron: old horseshoes, bits of pipe, broken pieces of boilers; at the other, a steaming heap of horse manure.
Eugénie looked. ‘In that?’
‘It’s your best chance. The guards won’t want to get their poncy uniforms dirty checking through it.’
It made sense. All the same …
‘How will I keep the kids quiet?’
Aline was old enough to understand the danger, but Marie was not. She’ll be frightened, she thought. She’ll screech her eyes out.
Lacoste shrugged. ‘Up to you.’
In fact it was not quite as bad as she’d feared. You couldn’t see from the outside, but the manure was piled over a framework of laths and strips of cloth, making a tiny nest into which the three of them could crawl.
‘I’ll have to heap it up once you’re inside,’ Lacoste explained, ‘or they might smell a rat.’
‘Smell something else too,’ Eugénie said, nostrils fastidious.
‘Hope they do,’ he told her. ‘More it stinks, the better.’
Which was all very well for him. Nevertheless, there seemed little choice. Shooing a protesting Aline ahead of her, Marie once again slung about her neck, Eugénie crawled inside the cage.
Lacoste shovelled layers of manure on top of what was already there. It stank, as she had feared. Worse, it leaked liquid in nauseous streams that seeped swiftly through the cloth. It dripped onto their garments, their hair, their faces. There was no light at all, only stench and the vile liquid. Aline wept; Marie shrieked.
Lacoste’s concerned voice came to them. ‘You’ll have to shut them up somehow.’
Eugénie did the best she could. Aline, first. ‘Baby, I’m sorry. Soon we’ll be all right. Hush, now.’
‘It’s dark,’ Aline wailed. ‘It’s terrible.’
Terrible was right; the child was teetering on the edge of terrified hysteria. Eugénie’s hand groped in the darkness, trying to soothe the filthy hair. ‘We’ll be all right. We’ll be fine.’
Aline choked and swallowed, but fell silent, more or less. Which had to be a miracle.
‘There, then,’ Eugénie soothed. ‘There’s a brave girl.’
Marie was easier. Eugenie undid her bodice and stuck her nipple into the baby’s mouth. A gasp, then all — apart from a rhythmic slurping — was still.
They heard Lacoste speak to the horse, and the cart began to move. All they could do was wait and pray. Eugénie had never given a thought to God in her life, but did so now.
Please, please, please …
At worst, it could do no harm. It might even do some good, if only by keeping her mind off their situation.
The fact that the military had been around to the apartment could mean only one thing: Alain and, presumably, Claudette were dead or captured, which amounted to the same thing. The idea that he had gone, finally and fatally, forever … It hadn’t taken hold yet but would, in time. For the moment, all she had was a sense of emptiness, of pain waiting in ambush. Perhaps later there would be time to grieve, but not now, while they were in so much danger themselves. Now their own predicament occupied all her attention. If the soldiers discovered them, they would kill the lot of them: herself, Lacoste, the children. That was the soldiers’ function, to kill and kill.
Once out of Paris, they still had to find their way to Nantes, four hundred kilometres away. They would be alone and unprotected at a time when all the world was suspicious of strangers, reluctant to help them in any way.
Even after they reached Nantes, their troubles would not be over. There would be more suspicion, more soldiers. More executions, too, no doubt.
There seemed no reason to believe they would ever survive.
Lacoste’s voice, shouting, brought her from the prospect of a desperate future to an even more desperate now. The cart was slowing. It came to a stop. She heard the clatter of boots on cobblestones, the voices of men accustomed to authority.
A checkpoint.
Heart pounding, Eugénie held her breath. Aline whimpered in terror. Hoping to calm her, Eugénie stretched out a cautious hand and rested it on her daughter’s shoulder. The movement must have disturbed Marie, who had fallen asleep at the breast.
She woke. She screamed.
11
Eugénie grabbed Marie, who only screamed the louder. Panicked, she tried to force her nipple back into her mouth but, sated, the child rejected it. Eugénie felt her draw a deep breath, prelude to even more noise. Only one thing for it. She slapped her hand firmly over the baby’s face, stifling the bellow in its throat.
The sentry paused, frowning, in the midst of examining Lacoste’s papers. ‘What was that?’
Lacoste’s face the picture of innocence. ‘What was what?’
‘Sounded like a baby …’
Lacoste spied a woman pushing a brat in a cart. ‘That kid over there,’ he said.
For whom I would say fifteen paternosters, if I believed in God. Say ’em anyway, if it helps.
The soldier glanced across, listened again, still frowning. While Lacoste, close to fainting, whistled a little tune.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ the soldier said. He walked around the side of the cart, eyed the steaming ordure with distaste. ‘Poo!’
A few more steps. The scrap iron was easier. ‘What you got here?’
What does it look like? But knew better than to be smart. ‘Scrap.’
‘What you going to do with it?’
‘Sell it to the iron works. They melt it down, see.’
‘Give you a good price?’
‘Gotta be joking. Never get rich in this trade.’
‘Nor in this.’ The soldier handed Lacoste his papers and waved him through. ‘See you, then.’
‘Right.’ He clicked his tongue at the horse, who thought about it a bit, eventually sighed, farted, and broke into the slowest of walks.
‘Lucky you’re not going far,’ said the soldier.
‘Damn right.’
* * *
They were out. All the same, it was another half hour before he pulled off the road beside a deserted stream and went back to rescue his passengers.
‘You can come out now.’ And pitched in with the fork.
They crawled out, blinking in the sunlight. They were a sorry sight: filthy, stinking, bits of manure in their hair and eyes. Physically and emotionally they were exhausted. And their journey had barely begun.
‘Wash yourself down in the stream,’ Lacoste directed them. ‘Good scrub, change of clothes, you’ll feel a hundred times better.’
Lucky they’d brought fresh clothes with them. As it was, they’d have a hard job getting help along the way. Stinking like a cesspit, they’d have had no chance at all.
While they were washing, he sat with his back against the wheel, smoking his pipe. Eugénie was a pretty thing. He could have spied on her skinny-dipping but did not; it didn’t seem right. Eventually they climbed back up the bank to join him. He knocked out his pipe and stood up.
‘The road to Nantes is straight on. Long hike, I’m afraid. But you know that.’
‘We’ll get there.’
‘I daresay you will.’ He fished under the driver’s bench, came up with a couple of packets. ‘The missus put up some grub for you. Won’t last long, but at least it’ll get you started.’ Again Eugénie wept; these strangers had taken them in, smuggled them out of the city, knowing the dangers … Now thi
s.
There was nothing she could do to show her gratitude. Or perhaps one thing. She knew men; or thought she did. She went up to him and smiled, very close.
He grinned back.
She lifted his heavy hand. It was powerful and rough-skinned, a blacksmith’s hand. She played with his fingers. Said, ‘If there’s anything I can do for you …’
Still he smiled, very composed. ‘Appreciate the offer. Reckon I’ll stick with the woman I got.’
She didn’t want him to think badly of her. ‘All you’ve done … I’d hate you to think I took it for granted.’
‘Thought that, I wouldn’t have done it.’
Even now it was hard to leave. The thought of all those kilometres bound her feet. Gently he set her on her way. ‘Best get on. It’s a long way to Nantes.’
‘Over four hundred kilometres,’ she said.
‘You’ll make it. You’re a survivor, same as me.’
And climbed into the cart for the return journey.
‘What you going to do with the scrap?’
Lacoste grinned. ‘Like I told that bastard at the roadblock. Sell it to the foundry.’
‘Thanks for everything, eh.’
‘Forget it.’
She was lucky. With the state of the country, she’d taken it for granted they would have to walk the whole way, scrounging roots out of the fields to survive. Alone and unprotected, had feared they might have other troubles.
The way it turned out, the plight of the woman walking with her two children down the dusty road seemed to arouse chivalrous instincts in the passers-by. From the first they got lifts — in carts and wagons, once in a barouche, in which a grandly-dressed dame, ancient and haughty despite her kindness in stopping for them, told Eugénie all about her grandmother who had lost her head in the Revolution eighty years before.
‘And why are you on the road?’ she asked, turtle eyes staring. ‘Madness, with two small children.’
Eugénie knew when to be humble. ‘No choice, ma’am.’
‘Nonsense. Everyone has a choice. Always remember that.’
‘It’s my husband, you see, ma’am. He died. There’s nothing in Paris for us, now.’
‘Those damned Communards killed him, I suppose.’