The Forbidden Rose

Ten

SHE WAS SAFE. BERTILLE’S HOUSE WAS OVER THERE, across the stream. Sanctuary and friendship and a shoulder to cry on. The practicality of money and fresh clothing and help to get to Paris. She could relax.

Marguerite didn’t remember the name of this rivulet that wound past Bertille’s house, but it was wide enough one had to cross it stepping from flat rock to flat rock. Or one could splash through. The donkeys did not like the idea of splashing through.

“There’s leeches.” Adrian stood in the middle of the stream, facing the pair. “Big, ugly leeches the size of my thumbs. You keep standing here and they’ll sneak up and suck your blood till you turn white.” This time, when he pulled the reins, they followed. It was a strange relationship he maintained with the donkeys.

Bertille’s snug stone cottage was set between her husband’s workshop and the vegetable garden. A rough shed looked down from the hill above. The front of the house was bright with roses and hollyhocks. Brown chickens wandered the brick walkways, occupied with small bugs.

The chickens in the yard told her Bertille was still here. No warning had reached her. She must pack and go into hiding at once.

“That is Bertille’s house.” She was informative to LeBreton. To Adrian also, if he was listening. “With the cooperage to the side, you see? Where the barrels are stacked. She married a cooper, Alain Rivière. He is a dour and silent man and given to long gaps in any conversation one might hold with him, but Bertille likes him.” Bertille had been her nursemaid, then her femme de chambre, and, always, her friend.

“You think they have fifty livres?” LeBreton sounded skeptical.

“Oh, yes.”

Because Bertille was the Dove, the oldest of old hands in La Flèche, a woman who had made hundreds of journeys, leading sparrows through the dark of the streets of Paris, she would have the pouch of coin everyone in La Flèche was given. Five hundred livres, all in coin. Enough to bribe oneself free, if captured. Enough to pay for an escape, even as far as England.

“I’ll be well taken care of by my friends,” she said. “And you’ll be paid.”

Inside the cooperage yard, behind the wooden gates, Alain’s big cart stood, its poles pointed up into the air. The cart hauled barrels to the makers of cider and the distillers of calvados brandy for miles around. It also led a secret life of ingenious hidden compartments and counterfeit barrels and false piles of wood. Of long, clandestine journeys to the coast. Ordinary at first glance, extraordinary upon closer inspection. It was a cart not unlike Citoyen LeBreton himself.

LeBreton looked over the house and yard, to the fields beyond. He was, she thought, a man who saw the fly upon every leaf. His face remained placid. “It’s quiet.”

The air lay heavy, humming faintly. In the late afternoon, no one moved anywhere within sight. The chickens of the dooryard were lackadaisical. No dog barked. Even the cows on the hill were motionless, as if they had been painted there.

Unease tickled under her skin. “Nothing is out of place. I am fond of quiet.”

“Not this much quiet.” Without making it obvious, he drew a circle with two fingers of his right hand. Adrian stopped talking. “If they’re looking out the window, they’ve seen us. Any reason your friend wouldn’t come out giving glad cries of welcome?”

“She is not expecting me, certainly. She might not know me at this distance. I arrive, always, in a carriage. They would wonder—”

“They’ll be wondering more if we stand here talking.” He made a quick hook with fingers that chopped down. Another signal to Adrian. “Let’s go see your friend.”

They followed the wall of the cooperage. LeBreton’s strides were long and she had to push to keep up. She said, “You are right to be wary. I will go ahead alone. You will wait back there with—”

“No.”

She had not yet learned the knack of giving this man orders. He was like a large rock rolling down a steep hill. Once started, difficult to control. “If there is a problem, it makes sense that I—”

“If there’s a problem, it’s looking out the window right now and it knows I’m here.” They passed the workshop gate where the ruts of wheel tracks turned in. “Your friends have a good broad view over the countryside.”

It was one of the reasons Alain liked this house. One could see visitors coming.

In the front garden, chickens scattered themselves out of LeBreton’s way. The shutters of the house were closed. That was not amazing on such a warm afternoon. But Bertille did not come to the door and fling it open and rush down the path toward her.

She must be putting the baby to bed. That was why everything was quiet. She would come running in a minute, laughing.

LeBreton clumped up the path, scuffling his boots on the stone. Being loud. He banged the door. But only once. It jerked open before his fist landed again.

A soldier in full uniform stood in the doorway. The muzzle of his gun rose. Pointed at LeBreton.

Blue coat, white breeches, white shoulder belts, red cuffs. Garde Nationale. Loyal revolutionaries from Paris. Not a local gendarme.

I have walked us into disaster. Cold washed over her. Fear gripped her breath.

Behind the garde, Bertille’s cottage was in chaos. Broken dishes, chairs overturned, something—flour—sprayed in plumes on the stone floor with dozens of boot marks. Bertille sat at the dark wood table, her arms tight around Charles, the two-year-old. He sat in her lap, pressing his face into the white of her apron. She was alive. Unhurt.

I have done this to her. I have dragged them all into danger. I did not protect her. Where were Alain and the new baby? There was an apprentice boy. Where was he?

“Ahhh . . .” LeBreton rubbed the back of his neck. His huge, tough body was awkward. His expression, sheepish. He had become the bewildered bumpkin. “You don’t want to be doing that, Suzette.”

She had taken a step forward, without thinking, to go to Bertille. The gun swung and pointed toward her.

Suzette? That is a ludicrous name.

The garde was young and scared, his finger on the trigger. He’d shoot LeBreton if any of them—herself, Bertille, LeBreton—made the smallest mistake.

She must be harmless. “What has happened here? Why do you have guns? You should not bring guns into the house. Have you no manners?” She would chatter and babble like a fool. She would be silly. A soldier might turn his back on a silly woman.

“Now, Suzette.” LeBreton was placating.

There were two of them, at least. Bertille was looking at something out of sight, behind the door, letting her eyes show that someone was there.

She jostled the garde, knocking the barrel of the musket. They will think I am a twittering idiot to bump into an armed soldier this way. “I heard nothing of any fighting near here. Has someone been hurt?”

LeBreton stood upon the doorstep like a frog and did nothing. “That’s a gun, love.” His voice was perfect stupidity. “You got to move aside and not touch it. You don’t want to get yourself shot, just by accident.”

“Enough! You.” The garde grabbed her. “Inside.”

While she dithered and sputtered, she was shoved roughly into the room. She hit the table edge hard, clacking her teeth together, biting her tongue. A bowl rolled off the table and fell to the floor and broke.

She was face-to-face with Bertille. Their eyes met. And it was like old times. They had been in danger before, the two of them. They had survived. Always. She thinks this is like the other times. She expects me to get us free.

LeBreton lumbered forward, his hands spread and open. “There’s no cause to go pushing Suzette. She don’t mean no harm.”

“Out of my way, ox. Over there.”

“I’m coming, citoyen.” LeBreton swung his head from one side of the cottage to the other, taking in the destruction, looking puzzled. Looking like the ox he most certainly was not. “But I don’t know what’s going on.”

The second soldier, a sergeant, had been hidden from sight by the door. He stood with his musket ready. Behind him, in the curtained alcove where the boys slept, Alain lay on the floor. His hands were tied behind his back, his face bloody and swollen. His apprentice, twelve years old, huddled at his side, also bound.

No one had been killed. Bertille had not been despoiled. These were not deserters or bandits. They were professional soldiers, disciplined, following orders. They’d come to make arrests.

This is bad. Bad as it can be.

She leaned over and clutched her belly as if she were in pain from colliding with the table. It hid her face while she thought, frantically. They know this house is a waystation of La Flèche. They have stayed here to catch the next courier. To trap anyone who comes. “Why have you hit me?” she whined. “What is happening? Why is that man bloody?”

“Are you hurt, Suzette?” LeBreton looked from one soldier to the other, all puzzlement. “There’s no call to do that.”

The sergeant snapped, “Your documents.” When LeBreton didn’t move quickly enough, he was hit sharply with the butt of the gun the way a man prods an animal into motion.

“You want to see my papers?”

“Yes, I want to see your papers. Dolt.”

LeBreton unbuttoned his waistcoat, his elbows sticking out awkwardly. His shirt was coarse weave, cut full and loose like the smock of a laborer. He tugged it out, all the way around, being slow and clumsy about it. Next to his skin, he wore a linen money belt with flat pockets. “Got it in here. Just a minute.” He eased out a square of stained, brown leather, tied with twine. “I keep it safe, see. You can’t be too careful these days. The roads are full of thieves.”

The younger guard was calming down. His finger came off the trigger. The muzzle no longer pointed at LeBreton.

And she had no weapon anywhere. What was here? Wood benches. A table. Two chairs. A cupboard with dishes on the shelves. Pots on the hearth. An empty cradle. Alain had carved the cradle for Charles. Now the new baby used it. The windows were shuttered. Light came through in bright slits. Nothing she could make use of.

LeBreton put the leather packet on the table and picked at a knot in the twine. “We followed the road out of Vachielle, up over that hill there. Now that was a mistake.” He picked at the knot, his face screwed up in concentration. “They said this was a shortcut. ‘Suzette,’ I said—I call her Suzette on account of her name being Suzanne. But I had a cow named Suzanne before I got married, and I couldn’t call my wife and the cow the same name, now could I?” He worked away at the packet, his face screwed up in concentration.

“Give me that.” The sergeant propped his gun against the table and unwound the twine, muttering to himself.

“I told Suzette, ‘It’s not much of a shortcut, if you ask me, when you have to go walking all this way uphill.’ ”

He was clever. But it did not matter what he said or how innocent he appeared, these men had orders to hold anyone who came into this house.

She shook with being afraid. If she stopped to think, she would be clumsy. There is one gun pointed at us. I will get my hands on the other.

She began a low, irritating grumble. “This way is shorter if you had not gotten us lost.” No one watched her. One does not see annoying women who chatter and scold. She inched toward the gun the sergeant had leaned against the table.

“That’s Boullages ahead, ain’t it?” LeBreton’s accent had thickened to sludge. “If we keep on this road, we come there?”

“If you do not shut up your mouth, you will go nowhere at all.”

The sergeant had the packet open. Papers were laboriously unfolded and spread flat—the passport, a creased sheet with a stamp on it, and a smaller certificate that was nearly new. The sergeant dealt with each cautiously, like a man unused to handling documents.

“Look here. This.” LeBreton splayed his hand on the passport. “This is me. You see? Bon . . . i . . . face . . . Jo . . . bard.” He picked it out with the pride of the illiterate. “Boniface Jobard. Resident of the Section des Marchés of the Paris Commune. And this one. That’s my certificate of civism. Says I’m a good patriot and an active citoyen. My friend Louis Bulliard—”

“Be silent. I can read.” The sergeant shoved LeBreton’s hand aside and took up the passport and scowled at it. “I am not impressed by papers, citoyen. Bandits and counter-revolutionaries walk the road with impressive papers. I will decide for myself what you are and why you are here.”

She edged along the table, as if she wanted to look at the papers also. She was close. She could put herself between the sergeant and his gun. It was one step.

“That’s the sign of an honest man, that is. Not trusting papers.” LeBreton turned to get confirmation from the other garde. Took a step toward him. “I’ve always said it. There is no truth to be found in papers.”

They were well positioned, she and LeBreton. Each within reach of a gun. It was time to act. We must do this now. Should I wait for his signal, or—

At the shuttered windows, a shadow crossed the light. A leaf fell, or a bird flew through the path of the sun.

LeBreton, explaining that too much writing was the downfall of liberty, scratched his belly. His fingers bent, stretched, touched one to the other.

I had forgotten Adrian. It is about to happen. Fear crystallized into spears of ice under her skin. Now.

The sergeant piled documents one upon the other. “I ask myself, Citoyen Jobard, whether you are a counter-revolutionary or just a very, very stupid traveler. Where are your wife’s papers?”

LeBreton took his hat off and held it in front of him. “I—”

I must give no warning.

The shutters crashed open. LeBreton dropped like a stone.