The Forbidden Rose

Eleven

THE SPACE WHERE LEBRETON HAD STOOD WAS empty. LeBreton and the garde rolled on the floor.

She had to stop the other man. The sergeant. Keep him from shooting LeBreton.

She hit the barrel of the musket with both hands clenched together. It fell, clattering and clattering. The garde grabbed after it. She kicked the gun away. It slid two feet, hit the table leg, and exploded. The noise smashed the air like a fist. The shot hit the wall, spewing plaster.

Charles screamed and struggled in Bertille’s arms. In the other room, the baby began to cry. Bertille scrambled away from the table, taking the boy with her.

I have to distract him. She groped along the table and threw a china plate into the sergeant’s face. It was all she had.

And it did him no harm. He brushed china chips out of his eyes, cursing. Backed away. Pulled a knife from his boot top. For a bare instant he stood there, deciding whether to kill her before he went to kill LeBreton. Then he swung at her with his empty fist, backhanded.

A white flash struck. She felt the pain. The world spun black.

When her eyes cleared, the sergeant was fending off a bowl Bertille threw. And another. LeBreton was on the floor, butting his knee into the other man’s belly.

The sergeant, knife in hand, started for LeBreton’s unprotected back.

No! She lifted the cradle from the hearthside and swung it with all her strength. Hit the sergeant on the back of his head. He yelled and half fell, staggering off balance.

And sprawled headlong, because LeBreton was there to kick his feet away from under him. LeBreton, pure violence that struck like a javelin. She heard the thud of his boot and an animal shriek of pain.

The garde sergeant lay hunched on the floor, slowly drawing together around the pain.

It was strangely still then, though Charles was sobbing against Bertille and the baby wailed in the distance. The sergeant made an odd grating noise in his throat. The other garde whimpered, low and continuous, in the corner.

Adrian appeared in the doorway with no sound at all. His eyes traveled the room and ended on LeBreton.

“Don’t kill anybody,” LeBreton said.

The boy thought it over before he nodded. She saw then that Adrian had his knife out.

“Cut those two loose.” LeBreton indicated Alain and the apprentice, tied at the far end of the cottage. “I need the rope.” Then he was beside her. “Your lip is bleeding.”

“It is,” she touched it, “not so much.”

“That was a bad idea on his part.” LeBreton walked over and stood looking down at the sergeant till the man looked up.

“If you’d hurt her worse, I’d have cut your hand off.” LeBreton’s boot prodded the sergeant’s right hand. “This hand. The one you hit her with.”

Then he went off to check on the other garde.

THE aftermath of battle was left to the women. They were the sensible ones of the world and therefore left to clean up. She worked with Bertille to pack the cart, putting this in and leaving that behind.

Guillaume lifted large objects. Every so often he returned to the cottage, where he had tied the two gardes in chairs, and listened with unimpaired amiability while they blustered and threatened. Then he would go back to help Alain haul about the tools of his trade, some of which were heavy.

Charles sat on the hearth with wide eyes, taking in the words the soldiers used, till Bertille sent him outside. Then Alain came in and sent his young apprentice outside, too.

Marguerite helped herself to coffee from Decorum’s pack and brought it in to grind and heat in the copper pot. LeBreton did not seem to mind her small thefts. He doubtless committed greater ones. Frequently. She poured coffee from the pot, which would be packed last, into the cups, which must be left behind, and brought it to everyone. She did not serve coffee to the soldiers, who were saying filthy things about her.

LeBreton settled himself at the table to drink coffee while he searched the belongings of the gardes, their handkerchiefs and pocket knives, and most especially their papers. He put his boots up on the long bench, which was another thing to distress Bertille, who had a tidy soul.

When he addressed them by name—Sergeant Hachard and Private Labadie—they became more polite. “Who sent you to arrest the Rivières?”

That let loose threats and the promise of retribution. She would not have been so eager to make threats herself if she were tied hand and foot and Citoyen LeBreton were in charge.

“Who told you to arrest these people?” LeBreton drank coffee. He spoke like an educated man now. There was an air of authority about him, as if he had been a military officer and commanded men very much like these. “I’m going to ask that question three times. That’s the limits of my patience. Then I start slicing pieces off your body. Eventually I’m going to get to the bits your wives might miss. Who do I start with?” The question was for Adrian who was walking by.

“We’ll do him.” Adrian meant the sergeant.

“That’s a likely choice, lad. I am glad to see you understand the chain of command.”

Thick, nervous silence held the gardes. Anticipatory silence from Adrian. Stern, uncompromising silence from LeBreton. He nudged a stack of copper pans aside to give himself room to lean back. “Sergeant Hachard, there’s no reason you shouldn’t tell me. You’ve received orders. There’s nothing secret about it. Whose orders? Who told you to arrest these people?”

Adrian’s knife appeared. “Can I do it now?” She was almost used to seeing the boy with a knife in his hand. The soldiers, of course, were not.

“Half minute.” LeBreton shifted his boots. “Take his ears off before you start on the nose. And don’t be getting blood on yourself. I’m damned if I’m going to buy you a new shirt.”

The boy inspected the edge of his knife, looking critical.

“It was two men from Paris,” the private blurted out. “They carried orders from the Committee of Public Safety. Twelve arrest orders. They divided them up and gave us two names.” He looked around nervously. “We chased the first man yesterday and lost him. Then we came to take Bertille Rivière.”

“Now that is very interesting.” LeBreton took up his coffee cup again. “Tell me about these men from Paris.”

And they did. Ten words were enough to tell her these were the Jacobins who had come to her chateau.

The questioning continued. Everyone packed. She carried bags and boxes out of the cottage, coming back to listen from time to time. It could not be said the men spoke freely. But then, it seemed there was very little Citoyen LeBreton expected them to know. He asked the same question many different ways.

Yes, there were twelve to arrest. No, they did not know why. They’d been denounced in Paris, most likely. Lots of folks condemned in Paris. And the men who brought the orders—? Fine revolutionary patriots, to be sure.

When she walked through the next time, carrying sheets, matters had advanced somewhat. Adrian straddled a bench. He’d found a whetstone and was honing a keen, bright edge to the knife. She brought him coffee with milk in it and sugar, the way she had seen him drink it . . . was it only this morning?

When she set the cup down beside him, fierce, dark eyes glanced at the coffee then at her. “I’m supposed to do that.”

“You are engaged in being terrifying. Continue.” She said it low enough she would not be overheard. When she returned, LeBreton was on his feet. “. . . bandits would be my advice. Five or six of them, at least, took you by surprise. If I were you, I’d say they were from the Vendée.”

The gardes said nothing.

“Or you can tell everybody a woman hit you over the head with a damn cradle and you let your prisoners get away.” LeBreton sounded perfectly agreeable. “I wouldn’t like living with that reputation myself. I don’t want folks laughing in corners every time I walk by. And what I also don’t want, Citoyen Hachard . . .” He strolled closer. “What I don’t want is, when I’m back in Paris, I don’t want to hear that anybody’s looking for a big man, with a scar like this.” He drew a line down his cheek, pointing it out. “I get annoyed as sour milk when somebody talks about me.”

“He gets irritated,” Adrian murmured, sharpening.

The sergeant cleared his throat. “We are required to—”

“Men who annoy me wake up one morning and notice their throat’s been cut.” LeBreton loomed over the sergeant. He was of a size to loom with great effect.

“It’s very sad,” Adrian said.

LeBreton was most utterly convincing in his threats. If she did not know him somewhat, she would wholly believe he slit throats from time to time. When she next walked through the cottage, the gardes had been left bound and gagged, facing the wall, but with all their bodily parts intact, which must have been a great relief to them.

It was not long after that, that Citoyen LeBreton tracked her to the tiny room where she was sorting Charles’s clothing.

He watched without offering to help. She said, “There are many things that must be done in this household before Bertille leaves. Surely some of them require great strength. Why do you not go do them?”

“Why did men come from Paris to arrest your friend?”

“I have not the least idea. Most likely it is nothing at all but some jealous neighbor who has denounced her in an argument over strayed cows.” She folded shirts and laid them on the bed. “I do not know why gardes have come all the way to Normandy to fix upon Bertille and Alain. Paris is full of suspicious characters to arrest. The very dogs and cats in the street belong to secret societies. Look at you. You are a man of a thousand questionable activities and they do not come after you. That coat, behind you, on the hook. Will you hand it to me? Yes. That one.”

“You’re part of it, whatever it is,” he said.

It was inevitable he would see this. He was not an idiot. “On the contrary. I have nothing to do with anything. I am prosaic as cucumbers. The hat as well, please.” She smoothed the coat flat so it would bundle neatly and took the hat from him to set on top.

“Will you leave with your friends?”

“No.” She knelt and pulled shoes out from under the bed. Two pair. She took the new pair and left the old. So much must be left behind.

He waited till she’d finished with that. “You can’t stay here. You can’t go back to the chateau.”

She set a last pair of stockings on the pile of clothing, pulled the corners of the quilt together, and tied them. Guillaume LeBreton stood blocking the door, fixed firmly in place, like several boulders piled together.

This man could take her to Paris. With him beside her she would not have to skulk through the fields at night and take the back roads, avoiding every village. She would travel more quickly. He could probably even talk her through the gates of Paris, into the city.

She did not have to trust him. She only needed to make use of him.

And there was no one else. “You’ve been paid for bringing me this far. I’ll pay you more to take me all the way to Paris. To my father.”

LeBreton had been cool and menacing as he questioned the garde sergeant. Now that implacable concentration was directed toward her. She felt herself weighed and measured, plucked apart and studied. He had come to various conclusions regarding her. Nothing in his face would reveal what they were.

She would not let herself be afraid of him.

He said, “How much?”

Money. He thought first about the money. It was a pleasure to deal with a man so straightforward. She did not feel any disappointment that he was not gallant. “My father will give you twenty louis d’or.”

“A hundred.”

“That is an impossible price. My father is not made of money.”

“Gold louis. Not paper. Not silver.”

“You could smuggle giraffes across France for that price. You could—”

“And I take that ring. The one on your finger. You give that over and I hold it till I get paid.”

“You put a high price on—”

“I’ll get you to your father.” It was said with great determination. She entirely believed him. It was that iron resolve that would get her across all the miles between here and Paris, regardless of who might be hunting her.

Sometimes only the wolf can protect you from bands of wild dogs.

She had to twist the ring back and forth to get it off. She wore it always. She had sold her jewelry, year by year, to pay for La Flèche. She had not sold this small ring. It was gold, engraved with bands of flowers. It had belonged to her mother, who died when she was born. Her mother had been pretty, from the pictures of her. She must have been patient, too, since she had been married to Papa for a decade and not murdered him. One needed great helpings of patience, dealing with men.

Finally she had it off.

LeBreton dropped her ring into the pocket of his waistcoat. “You shouldn’t be wearing that anyway.” He tamped the ring down firmly with his forefinger into the very bottom of the pocket. “It doesn’t match what you’re pretending to be.”

BERTILLE washed Charles’s face and went to say good-bye to her flowers and her cows. One would think she was leaving behind a cousin or two, at the least. She clucked over the state of the cottage as she made one final search for a silver spoon, unaccountably missing. LeBreton helped Alain load his anvil. Bertille washed the apprentice’s face. She washed the baby. Then she washed Charles’s face again. Adrian found Bertille’s sewing kit.

Then it was finally time for them to leave. Bertille held her close in the garden, among the roses. “Take care.”

“I am the most cautious of mortals. You know that.”

“So I see.” Bertille reached out to lay fingers upon her lip, where it hurt. “Put cold cloths upon this. It will not swell as much.”

“That is good advice. I am sorry you must leave and lose—”

“Don’t blame yourself, Marguerite. We knew this might happen. The house in Bernay is ready. La Flèche will survive this. In a week Crow will go east, beyond the fighting. Heron has his safe haven prepared. And Wren will finally go to England. You know Wren can take care of herself.”

It had been Wren, four days ago, who came at midnight, sneaking up the back stairs of the chateau. Wren pursued, her sparrows in danger. Wren, desperate for help. She needed clothing. Money. Food from the kitchen.

Bags were ready for just this emergency. She took out one and then another when she heard the cry behind her.

“No. Oh, no.” Jeanne stood at the window. Jeanne—the Wren—was never afraid.

She ran to see. Lights threaded the night, along the road, among the trees. Men poured across the lawn toward the chateau, shouting. They pounded the door, broke windows. Two horses, two riders, led the mob. She shouldered a bag. Handed the other to Jeanne. “Through the kitchen. We’ll go out the back.” There was no time for more. “I’ll take care of the sparrows. You go to Heron. You know where?”

“The mill.” Jeanne patted her skirt. “I’m carrying a knife. They will not take me alive.”

“Don’t be dramatic. If you’re alive, I’ll get you free.”

Outside, a voice yelled for the de Fleurignac bitch. “Bring her here. Bring her to me.” The torches sent shadow and light flickering across the curtains. Smoke rose from the library below.

She pushed sabots onto her feet. A pouch of coins lay in the drawer. She tossed, and Jeanne caught it neatly.

Jeanne yelled, “Marguerite!”

A man burst into the room. Tall. A coarse face. He wore the jacket and striped trousers of a sans-culottes. A Jacobin. He was armed.

Jeanne threw herself on him. Knocked the pistol from his hand.

He caught Jeanne. Pushed her backward, down on the writing table. His hands crushed her throat. In filthy speech from the gutters of Paris he promised death.

Papers and books scattered. The letter opener slithered off the desk, to the floor. The ivory handle glowed against the carpet. She found it, took it in her hand, and slashed him across his face.

The man screamed. Jeanne rolled away, free. The night lamp fell from the desk and smashed. The papers on the floor caught fire.

There was blood everywhere. Jeanne was on her knees, sobbing air in and out. A red mask twisted in the red light of burning. The man reared up and staggered toward her. Grabbed her and caught her. When she fought him off, her hands were red with blood. The curtains went up in flame.

“Wren is in England by now,” Bertille said.

It was bright daylight around her. She was in Bertille’s beautiful garden, not the chateau. She swallowed and put the memory away. “Wren is halfway to London, as you say. And you have escaped. I’ll solve the rest of this.” She touched Bertille’s face. “Go with God. Be in his hand always. I’m glad you are out of this.”

“I am Dove.” Plump, comfortable, indomitable Bertille shook her head. “Remember that. I was the first. Before Jean-Paul and Wren and Crow. Before your secret signals and your safehouses and the dozens of couriers. I was there when it was only the two of us and a compartment under the seat in your coach. I am La Flèche as much as you are.”

“I would rather you were safe.”

“Chut. We do not do this to be safe. When I am settled in the house in Bernay, I will pass the word. If you do not send sparrows my way, I shall go to Paris and remove them myself.”

“Bertille . . .”

“Now we will cry. I must leave before we do that.” Bertille said that even though tears were already on her cheeks. “Take care of your great giant. He is very impressive, that one. And in the name of God, Marguerite, brush your hair. It is a shame upon the honor of French womanhood.”

There was nothing to do then but watch the cart creak slowly out of sight over a hill.