The Silver Blade

by Sally Gardner

  Yann walked past the stagehand to the bar. ‘I’m thirsty, that’s all.’

  Colombine, who had been lifted off the table, rushed over to him. Anselm watched closely. Her obvious interest in Yann made her more desirable.

  Yann drank up, not wishing to stay longer than necessary. He wanted to find a bar where he would be guaranteed some peace.

  ‘Don’t leave. You’ve only just arrived,’ said Colombine, sensing that something was wrong.

  Ignoring her, he handed the barman a roll of assignats, then turned to the rest of the company and said, ‘Well done, everybody. Have a drink on me.’ And with that he was gone.

  Colombine picked up her shawl to follow him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Anselm, grabbing hold of her arm.

  ‘Let go of me.’

  ‘Not until you tell me where you’re going.’

  ‘That’s none of your business. Take your hands off me.’

  ‘What? A lovers’ tiff already?’ asked Pantalon.

  Colombine shook her arm free, to see two white marks where Anselm’s fingers had gripped her.

  ‘Look what you’ve done!’ she said, and slapped him hard.

  Red, raw rage surged through Anselm. His fingers itched to break every bone in her body, a longing that was almost beyond his control.

  Only a small voice inside his head willed him to be still.

  Colombine flounced out of the cafe.

  ‘Have another drink,’ said Basco, putting his arm round Anselm. ‘Take no notice, that one has broken more hearts than the guillotine has cut off heads.’

  Yann meanwhile walked towards the Seine, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He crossed the Pont Neuf and reached the Cafe des Amis. The owner knew Yann well and was pleased to see him.

  ‘Not many out tonight,’ he said. ‘We miss you. You don’t come this way so often since you left the rue du Temple.’

  Yann nodded, took a bottle over to the table by the window, sat down and poured himself a glass. Damn Tetu. Damn all the lies, damn the Revolution. Damn everything. He poured himself another drink. How can I live with this? Tell me that, Yann Margoza, son of Count Kalliovski?

  He downed his drink in one gulp. If I’ve inherited anything from my father, I’d better hope that it’s his ability to feel nothing. Keep on tipping this vinegary muck down and nothing is all I will ever feel. Nothing is all I will ever be.

  Why him? I could cope with a coward, a traitor, a fool - but not Kalliovski.

  Yann looked down at the bottom of his glass and refilled it.

  What is it that Pantalon always says? ‘Life is a bottle of wine. The art is to make it last and to know how to enjoy it.’ I don’t want it to last. The sooner the bottle is empty the better.

  ‘Can I join you?’

  He looked up to see Colombine.

  ‘Why aren’t you with the others?’

  She slid down next to him. ‘I thought you looked sad. And something has gone wrong, I could tell.’

  He laughed. ‘What about golden boy? Won’t he be a bit fed up that you’ve gone?’

  ‘He’s nothing to me.’

  ‘Does anybody mean anything to you?’

  ‘Yes. You do,’ she said, looking wistfully at him.

  Yann finished his drink.

  Anselm had left shortly after Colombine and followed her, knowing she would lead him to Yann Margoza. He couldn’t care less about Colombine, except that he had been ordered to win her trust. That was easy. If he wanted her, she was his and he knew it. No, the challenge lay with Yann Margoza. He was everything Anselm longed to be. What if he could possess Yann’s powers?

  Through the window of the Cafe des Amis he watched Colombine and Yann for a few minutes. Then, sweat gleaming on his face, he went in and sat down with them.

  ‘I am Anselm, citizen,’ he said extending a hand to Yann.

  Yann got up and walked unsteadily to the door. He turned towards them. ‘Goodnight.’

  Anselm tried to follow him, but Colombine pulled him back. If she couldn’t have Yann, let him at least see what he was rejecting. She quickly kissed Anselm, whose eyes were fixed on Yann’s retreating figure. He wanted to throw her off, to punish her for her cheek, but Kalliovski’s words were an anchor in his stormy mind.

  ‘Make the girl yours and the rest will follow.’

  Anselm violently kissed her back.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Next morning Yann woke on the forest floor, his head thudding. He looked at the sky. The sun shone bright through the canopy of transparent leaves as if it were the emerald stained-glass window of a great cathedral. A choir of insects buzzed and the day was already warm. He felt in his pocket and found a coin. Having no idea which direction to take, he flipped it and let fate lead him.

  His anger with himself, with everything, was the spur which kept him walking. He tried not to think of Sido, which proved impossible.

  Leaves, he said to himself, watching one young leaf fall from an oak tree. Leaves for a while must think they own the skies, that they are close to heaven. When do they resign themselves to gravity? I am like a leaf.

  I believed I owned the sky without realising that I’m destined to fall to the ground.

  He noticed neither rain nor sun. His tangle of thoughts slowly unwound so that by the afternoon, he could feel enough to know he was hungry. He hunted rabbits and ate berries. At night, with a fire going and his food on a spit, he felt himself like the king of fools, the stars the painted roof of this wondrous palace he had found. He paid no attention to his route. If he saw a hamlet or smoke from a farmhouse chimney he made sure he took a large detour. If uncertain which way to go, he tossed a coin.

  Days passed in this way until early one misty morning, emerging from a forest, he saw a gilded armchair left standing, its stuffing oozing out as if it had been mortally wounded, its dainty carved wooden legs bravely sunk into the carpet of leaves. Ivy had already wrapped around it, anchoring it to the earth.

  Walking past it he came to a gravel drive. Several of the trees on either side were burned, their skeleton limbs outstretched like ancient timber that had been turned to stone by what they had witnessed, for all that remained of the chateau was rubble.

  He meandered round outbuildings, through the empty stables down to the overgrown garden, to see flapping in the breeze a lady’s dress, poised like a butterfly on a box hedge, its silver bows catching the first rays of warm sunlight. It fluttered, waiting for a gust of wind to free it, to take flight.

  Why the chair and why the dress? Why, out of everything that must have been here, had they alone survived?

  As he turned to leave he spied a child’s wooden horse lying on its side in a stream, one of its wheels occasionally turning. He found these three objects profoundly moving: small mysterious relics of lives destroyed. He lifted the wooden horse out of the water. All the paint had washed away from the side that had been in the stream, and he imagined this horse was once beloved of a child who had refused to leave it behind until it became a burden.

  He freed the dress, light as gossamer, and it nearly fell to pieces in his hands. He took it and the wooden horse back to the armchair and left them there: an altarpiece to a vanquished world.

  He carried on walking. By late afternoon he was grateful to come to a lake surrounded by cornfields. In the far distance a row of poplars cast long sleepy shadows. He sat contemplating the still waters before undressing and diving in, swimming lazily back and forth, as a moorhen, in ruffled indignation, took flight. Dragon-flies skimmed the surface of the lily leaves, flashes of incandescent emerald and sapphire. He floated on his back, hypnotised by the sky, before emerging from the water and dressing.

  He made his way through a cornfield dotted with dancing bright red poppies, rubies among the gold.

  The air was filled with birds, and it came to him then and there, a revelation of sorts, and he said out loud, ‘The love I have for Sido is not diminished by what has happened, or by who my parents were.
It is stronger. Even if I can never see her again, never be with her, this much I know, a truth as bright and yellow as the corn, as red and passionate as the poppies: I have loved and been loved in return. I can find the strength to set her free. I can do this, for true love must have at its very soul the power to let go and to know that nothing is lost.’

  Yann was crying. He realised he was not alone. A little way off he could see the figures of a man and a woman. They were brightly dressed as if going to a fete, their clothes rather old-fashioned in style. Why hadn’t he noticed them before? The woman seemed so familiar.

  By now the sun was setting and for a while he was blinded by its glare. The two figures were walking away from him towards the poplar trees and Yann knew he must speak to them. He called out and the man, stopping, waved. Yann heard him say quite clearly, ‘Son, we are birds, we are free.’

  Yann ran towards them, yearning to hear more. They waited, shimmering mirages, all golden they stood, hand in hand. In that moment the sun blinded him again. He blinked and they were gone.

  Looking back the way he had come, he could see where the corn had bowed under his weight and that there were no tracks other than his. He lay down, exhausted, and it came to him that the man had spoken Romany, and he was reminded of Tetu’s story of his mother and her bridegroom, of their wedding the day the soldiers came.

  He woke feeling as if he must have been asleep for days, although it was still light, a perfect summer’s evening; and thinking back to the couple in the cornfield, he decided they were nothing more than a dream.

  Now there was peace within him, as if a tempest had passed. All the anger gone, still he asked himself: can I forgive Tetu? In the fading light he came to a graveyard and realised to his surprise that he had been there before. This was, if he were not mistaken, the Duc de Bourcy’s land. Curious as well as hungry, he wondered whether in his dishevelled state he could show himself. Then, the thought of seeing the Duchess, of explaining, the thought of talking, of being civil, made his hunger seem less important.

  He was turning back towards the woods when he glimpsed a light spilling from the kitchen door. He went closer.

  On a bench outside sat an old man and a young woman whom Yann recognised as the children’s nurse. The small table in front of them was spread with peas that they were busily podding into a copper pan.

  He was debating with himself what to do, knowing that it was only hunger making him linger, when he heard the girl say, ‘What do you think will become of our mistress?’

  The old man looked despondent. Yann knew what he was thinking: unless they did something the Duchess would be sent to Paris and the guillotine.

  Yann came out of the shadows. The old man grabbed hold of a hunting gun that was resting beside him.

  ‘Please, I mean you no harm.’ Yann held out his hands. ‘I am unarmed.’

  ‘Are you a deserter from the army?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you a priest?’

  ‘No. I came here in March, about two months ago, to help the Duke escape to England. Please put the gun down.’

  The young woman looked at him. ‘I remember him, Grandpa. He came with the big man. Are you all right, monsieur?’

  ‘Yes. I have been walking. I came this way by chance. I am sorry to have frightened you. I was wondering if your mistress was at home.’

  The old man still looked uncertain.

  ‘There could be another man with him, Marie. This could be a trap.’

  ‘I assure you it isn’t.’

  Reluctantly the old man said, ‘We’d better go inside the chateau.’

  The kitchen was neat and the table well scrubbed. In the light of the oil lamps, Yann caught sight of his reflection in the window and was shocked to see what a wild man of the woods he had become.

  The old man, looking at him, said suspiciously, ‘Are you sure this is the same man? I don’t remember him. He looks like a vagabond to me. He smells of woodsmoke.’

  ‘It’s his eyes,’ said Marie. ‘I’ve never seen eyes like his.’

  ‘When I was here there was an attempt to rob the Duke, and a man died,’ said Yann, to put the old man at his ease.

  The old man let out a sigh as if he had been holding his breath all this while. ‘I remember you now. You all went down to the dovecote. The Duchess ordered breakfast, but you just wanted a fast horse.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Monsieur, forgive me, I owe you an apology. I have grown too fearful of late that we will be attacked. My name is Tarlepied. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Ravenous.’

  Marie, now busy at the stove, said, ‘Sit, please, and I will make you something to eat.’

  ‘These are dreadful days indeed,’ said the old man. ‘Farms are going to ruin; the land worked by people who know nothing of the soil, only politics. Fine words don’t grow into corn.’

  ‘Has the National Guard been here?’ Yann asked, remembering the sea of furniture.

  ‘No, monsieur, so far they have left us in peace. Everyone in the village is loyal to the de Bourcy family. The peasants here were all well looked after by the Duke. There is a growing resentment about the lack of food, the abolition of the Church. Many harbour a secret longing for the old regime.’

  ‘Where is your mistress?’

  Monsieur Tarlepied said nothing.

  Marie looked at him. ‘Grandpa, we should tell him.’

  ‘It goes against the grain … but the Duke would never forgive me …’ He sighed. ‘Ten days ago our mistress left to visit the Marquise de Valory. The Duchess was expected to return last week, but today we heard the most terrible news and I don’t know what can be done. One of the Marquise de Valory’s servants comes from our village and has been sent back to her family. She is a friend of my granddaughter.’

  Marie brought an omelette and a bowl of peas to the table. The smell of fresh mint almost overpowered Yann.

  ‘What my friend told me was in confidence, you understand,’ she said. ‘But you have helped the family before.’ She took a deep breath. ‘She said the Marquis de Valory had been taken to trial, found guilty and executed. On hearing of it, her mistress went into early labour, and after giving birth became very ill. A few days later the soldiers came to arrest her. She was so poorly. They hid her in the servants’ quarters and the Duchess pretended to be the Marquise de Valory. She was taken to the prison at Chantilly. She was always a brave woman, my mistress.’

  ‘Chantilly,’ repeated Yann.

  ‘Yes, the chateau has been made into a prison. Can anything be done?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Yann.

  That night Yann bathed in a large tin bath and slept in a feather bed. He woke early. Monsieur Tarlepied arrived with breakfast and later shaved Yann, and opened the Duke’s dressing room for him.

  Yann selected a pair of breeches and a waistcoat that belonged to the days of dancing and grand balls, a shirt and a beautifully embroidered dressing gown, and took them down to the kitchen. He and Marie sat at the table altering the clothes so that the breeches looked like those worn by the National Guard.

  By three o’clock,Yann was ready to leave. He stood at the door dressed in a waistcoat, shirt, breeches and dressing gown, a three-cornered hat with a tricolour pinned to it and a sash of office across his chest, his boots well worn and muddy.

  The old man stared at him, foxed. ‘Forgive me, monsieur, ‘ he said, ‘but I can’t see how this is going to work. You look too eccentric.’

  Yann lifted his shoulders back, stuck his chest out like a cockerel and in the thickest of Marseilles accents, which Monsieur Tarlepied could hardly understand, demanded to know why he addressed him as ‘monsieur’. Wasn’t he a patriot?

  Marie, looking terrified at the transformation in Yann, backed away. ‘Stop it, sir, you’re frightening us.’

  ‘Good,’ said Yann, ‘that’s the effect I want to achieve. As for the clothes, I will explain that the waistcoat and the dressing gown have come from the Concierger
ie, property of a prisoner who was guillotined, a reminder, if one was needed, of what we are fighting for: the freedom of this great country against the tyrannical claw of the past that all this brocade represents.’

  It was late afternoon when Yann set off, riding the Duke’s only remaining horse, a fine white stallion which had been loose in the fields and near gone wild. Yann whistled him to come, spoke Romany into his soft ears, and the great horse stood quietly as Yann mounted. Like Yann he had need of the wind beneath his hooves. Yann’s unanswered question came back to him: should I forgive Tetu? And he was surprised by his own answer. Yes.