The Game of Hope

by Sandra Gulland

  “I’m terrified,” Ém admitted.

  “I’m fine,” Mouse said, but with a tremor in her voice.

  “Are you sure?” It was so dark. “We don’t have to stay.”

  A voice boomed out of nowhere. “Citoyens and citoyennes, the spirits are gathering. The Fantasmagorie is about to begin.” A man’s white face appeared, illuminated by torchlight. “They are with us,” he said solemnly.

  I leaned across Ém. “Caroline?”

  “She’s not next to you?” Ém asked.

  Had we lost her?

  With grave ceremony, the man called forth the spirits of Virgil and Voltaire. Aïe! They looked so real.

  “And now, for something more current,” he said, throwing documents onto a burner. “These are reports pertaining to the massacres five years ago.” His face looked ghoulish in the flickering light. “And these are denunciations . . .”

  I felt a sudden chill. Had Father been denounced?

  More flames! “And this is a list of suspects . . .”

  Had Father been suspected?

  The dark chamber filled with the scent of burning paper. Then three apparitions came into view, moving slowly toward us. One was aristocratic in dress. He was wearing white gloves.

  Father? My heart jumped. Could it be?

  And then everything went black.

  * * *

  —

  The acrid smell of ammonia brought me to my senses.

  “Hortense?” I heard Mouse hiss.

  “Hortense?” It was Ém’s soft voice.

  I was stretched out on a bench. I struggled to rise, but I was too weak. Ém helped me sit up. Was it possible I’d seen my father? Seen him whole?

  “You fainted,” Mouse said.

  “I fainted?”

  “I had to use my salts.” Mouse sounded pleased.

  An usher stood over me with a lantern. “Citoyenne?”

  “I’m fine,” I assured him. I didn’t want to get us in trouble.

  “We can look after her,” Ém said, holding my arm.

  The door to the gallery opened, letting in light. With Ém’s help I stood, a bit unsteadily. We walked toward the door, arms linked.

  Once out of the musty, dank vault and through the two galleries, we stood outside, shivering in the cold.

  “Where’s Caroline?” Mouse said, pushing up her glasses.

  “Good question,” I asked. How could she have disappeared like that?

  “What foolery,” she said, appearing behind us.

  Caroline!

  “Where did you go?” I said.

  “I was in back, behind the curtains. Did you see the man operating a box-like thing?”

  “A box?” Ém said.

  “You didn’t see him?” Caroline asked.

  “No. I fainted,” I said.

  Caroline frowned. “I thought Mouse was the one who fainted.”

  “It’s a good thing I had salts,” Mouse said.

  “What do you mean, a box-like thing?” I asked Caroline.

  “It was like a big lantern, but on wheels. A man put panes of glass into it with images painted on them, and then the images appeared on the gauze.”

  “You mean the ghosts?” Ém asked.

  “They weren’t ghosts. It was a trick.”

  “Caroline, we saw them,” I said.

  “What gauze?” Mouse asked.

  “That curtain of gauze right in front of you. You couldn’t see it through all the smoke? Which another man was busy making, by the way.”

  “It didn’t smell like smoke,” Ém said.

  “Whatever it was, it was misty,” Caroline said. “So clever!”

  The crowd dispersing, we headed back toward school, stepping cautiously over the icy cobbles, watchful of the shadows.

  Had it all been a hoax? I hadn’t seen my father after all. The thought was crushing. I’d been foolish. Worse, I’d been naïve.

  TERROR

  At the gates to the Institute, I showed Maîtresse’s letter of permission to the night caretaker. Then a sleepy Citoyenne Hawk let us in the big door and her maid showed us up to our room, leading the way with her lantern.

  Quickly, we changed into our nightshifts and caps and jumped shivering into our beds. I snuggled under my comforters, feeling for the bed-warmer with my toes, seeking comfort. I’d been elated, thinking I’d seen my father—seen him whole. I’d been played for a fool.

  “Hortense?” It was Mouse. “Are you crying?” she whispered.

  I wiped my cheeks on my bed linen. “A bit.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  “Me too,” I heard Ém say.

  “All right,” I said with a quiet chuckle, “into my bed, you two.”

  “Is there room for me?” Caroline asked from across the room.

  “Of course!”

  “We’ll huddle,” Mouse said.

  “Let Caroline be in the middle,” Ém said. “She’s never been in a huddle.”

  “You’ve done this before?” Caroline asked, climbing in.

  “In emergencies,” I said.

  “And this is an emergency?” she asked with an incredulous tone.

  “We’re sad.” I pulled the blankets up over us all.

  “Because of that show?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  From somewhere below a girl began screaming.

  “Uh-oh,” Ém said.

  “Not again,” Caroline said with a moan.

  “Maybe the ghost is back.” I meant it as a joke.

  Caroline giggled. “I don’t think so.”

  She sounded so sure, so pleased. “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I’m the ghost,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” The girl below had stopped, to my relief.

  “The ghost with a beard?” Ém asked.

  Caroline sniggered. “That was just me.”

  “You!” Mouse squeaked.

  “Caroline! You terrified the little girls,” I said.

  “That was the point!” She laughed.

  “But you shouldn’t have—the kids here, the teachers, Maîtresse, we’ve all been through so much, and . . . well, something like that, it—”

  “You mean because of the Terror?”

  Yes, because of the Terror. Because of the deaths that haunted us. Because even an ocean of tears would never bring a loved one back.

  “I sometimes wonder what it was like for all of you.” Caroline sounded almost sad.

  I’d never considered how strange it must have been for her, an outsider. Ém, Mouse and I had all been through that terrible time. We’d seen what beasts humans could become. But Caroline was from another world. Her father was dead, true, but he’d had the grace to die naturally in his bed. He’d not been sent to the guillotine, reviled with spittle and jeers.

  “Most everyone in this school saw awful things,” Caroline went on, “yet it’s as if it’s a big secret. Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about it?”

  “It’s because we’re ashamed,” Mouse said in the silence that followed.

  Shame. The word surprised me with its truth. We had not cared whose head rolled, so long as it wasn’t ours, or that of someone we loved.

  “Why should you be ashamed?” Caroline demanded. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “We survived,” Ém said.

  I tried to put it into words, that awful feeling that was so often with me. “And maybe because we know how terrible people can be.”

  “Nights were the worst,” Mouse said, her voice hushed.

  “Because that’s when they would come for you,” I said. It chilled me to think of that sound, the pounding on the door in the dead of night.

  “Oh, scary,” Caroline said.

 
“They came for my mother in the dark,” Ém said.

  “Mine, too,” I said.

  “Why didn’t people just hide?” Caroline asked.

  “You couldn’t,” Ém said. “They would stab knives through the bed covers to see if anyone was hiding under them.”

  “Marcelline in White has a scar from that,” Mouse said. “From being stabbed in her bed.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Ém said.

  “But the executions happened during the day,” I said. To immense fanfare, the cheers of a crowd, a drum roll. “Which was worse, in a way.”

  “Did you ever see one?” Caroline asked.

  “I was kept away.” But it was impossible to keep out the smells. Deep gutters had to be dug around the square because of all the blood. “Eugène and I were staying with our aunt when our father was . . . when he was sent to the—”

  “Your father was beheaded?” Caroline asked, awed.

  How could she not have known? “Yes,” I said. “Eugène and my aunt went—”

  “Eugène saw?” Ém said. “How terrible.”

  “—but they didn’t take me. They told me that they were going to the prison with provisions.”

  “Prisons were the worst,” Ém said with feeling. She herself had gone to the prison her mother was in to try to save her.

  “Maman once told me how awful it was in the Carmes,” I said, “knowing that every day might be your last. The women kept one good dress for the day they would be taken away. They cut off their hair so that the blade would cut through their neck more easily. Men too.”

  We prayed for a clean cut, a fast cut, Maman had told me in a moment of despair. Botched executions were a horror. Eugène told me Father’s had gone quickly. That was a comfort, of sorts.

  “I thought short hair was the new fashion,” Caroline said.

  “It is now,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  We must have all fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew I was sitting upright, terrified by the sound of pounding on the school doors.

  I cried out and Ém gasped. Mouse bolted upright in fright. It was so loud!

  I could hear screaming from below. Little kids—a chorus of them.

  I heard men’s voices, the sound of horses in the courtyard. I sat up, trembling. Government officials had come to take us all away, throw us in prison, execute us.

  “What the devil?” Caroline protested sleepily.

  Maîtresse appeared at our door. She was shaking, her lantern light jumping around. Her maid, Claire, was behind her, carrying a firearm nearly as tall as she was.

  “Don’t worry, girls. I’ll see to it,” Maîtresse said, her voice atremble, and they hurried down the stairs.

  Caroline crawled out of bed and threw on her fur-lined robe. Holding the night candle, she pried open the wooden shutters.

  I crept out of bed and looked over her shoulder. It had rained—there were puddles everywhere, glistening in the moonlight. I could make out four men holding torches, their horses standing by. Hussars, they looked like, judging by their white breeches and tall plumed hats, their long swords.

  “What’s going on?” Caroline called down to the men in the courtyard below.

  They looked up, surprised. “Citoyenne Bonaparte?” one of them called out. Caroline’s Corsican accent identified her easily.

  “Yes?” she answered, but guardedly.

  “We’re General Murat’s men. He sent us to inform you of the most glorious news: your brother, General Bonaparte, is victorious!”

  Caroline turned back to us in the room. “Joachim sent them to tell me!”

  “Sent them to tell you what?” Mouse asked, still huddled in my bed with Ém.

  “Something about Napoleon’s victory.”

  “But a victory over what?” I demanded. What had the General done?

  A CURIOUS GIFT

  A tight cluster of students stood shivering in their night robes at the foot of the spiraling stairs. I noticed Eliza among them. She offered Henry to a weeping younger student, who clutched him fearfully.

  “Tell your commander he’s never to do that again!” Maîtresse said, berating the four hussars who stood in the foyer. She was pale as a corpse in the lantern light.

  Their commander: Joachim Murat. I glanced at Caroline. She looked more elated than alarmed.

  Nurse Witch helped Maîtresse to a wooden bench and draped a wool blanket over her shoulders. The big doors had been shut, but it was still freezing in the foyer. Maîtresse pressed her hands to her heart. I thought of running up to our room for Mouse’s vial of salts, but it was dark. Berthe, our head cook, appeared with a bottle of vinegar, which Maîtresse inhaled to keep from fainting.

  “What’s this all about?” Citoyenne Hawk demanded of the men, her words hard to understand without her teeth in.

  The tallest of the four hussars stepped forward, his tasseled boots tracking mud. “There’s been a coup, citoyennes,” he said, the plume on his tall hat bobbing.

  What did that mean, a coup? I glanced at Ém, Mouse and Caroline. Wasn’t that like a battle?

  “The Directory no longer exists,” he clarified. His three companions hovered by the door, in the shadows.

  Maîtresse moaned.

  The Directory, gone? Did that mean that the Directors were dead? I thought of Maman’s “dear” Director Barras and her friend Madeline’s husband, Director Gohier. I remembered her looks of worried concern. No wonder Caroline and I had been sent away!

  “But bloodless,” he assured Maîtresse.

  “Grâce à Dieu,” she said, pushing the vinegar aside.

  “Everyone is safe?” I dared to ask. “What of my brother, Lieutenant Beauharnais? What of the aides? What of Colonel Duroc?” (I spoke his name!) “And Captain Lavalette?” I added (to cover up).

  “Nobody was hurt,” he said.

  “Yet the Directory no longer exists?” Maîtresse pressed, standing now, but with her right hand on Nurse Witch’s shoulder.

  “Now there is a Consulate headed by three men,” he said. “General Bonaparte is one of them.”

  “Who are the other two?” Caroline demanded. (I knew what she was thinking, that Joachim Murat might also be one.)

  “Former Directors Sieyès and Ducos,” another of the men said.

  Caroline made a look of disgust.

  The night monitors began ushering the younger students back to their rooms. Eliza, shepherding the younger girl who clutched Henry, glanced up. I smiled encouragement, pleased to see her being so caring.

  “We will have a lot to talk about in the morning,” Maîtresse told the older students as Citoyenne Hawk saw the men out the door, “but I will allow you to sleep until eight, just this once.”

  If I can sleep, I thought.

  * * *

  —

  I was awoken late the next morning by Caroline, who was shaking my shoulder. “Wake up! We have to leave.”

  “Leave what?” I asked, bleary from little sleep. I’d been dreaming of the spirit show, but in the dream Maîtresse was with me, trying to pull me out. Trying to save me.

  “The Institute!”

  Caroline was dressed, but where were Ém and Mouse? I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The fire was blazing. Had I missed the wake-up triangles?

  “But we just got here.” What time was it? I remembered that we’d gone to the Fantasmagorie the evening before, remembered fainting.

  “Get dressed! The Hook wants to see you.”

  Ém and Mouse ran in all aflutter.

  “Is it true, Hortense, you’re going back to Paris?” Mouse asked.

  “I am?” This was all too much to take in. I felt half-asleep, still in a dream. Was this how people felt after fainting? I wondered. Then I recalled, vaguely, four scary hussars in the night. And something
about a coup? Had that been a dream?

  “I’m going too,” Caroline said, opening up her trunk and taking out stained silk stockings, small linens and a musty feather boa.

  “You are?” Mouse said.

  “You are?” I said.

  “We get so bored without you,” Ém objected.

  “Without you both,” Mouse said.

  “Hortense, get up!” Caroline grabbed hold of one of my hands and tried to pull me out of bed. “She said to tell you to come to her study. Sorry, I ate all the sugar puffs.”

  Caroline had talked with Maîtresse? Had she told her that I’d fainted?

  * * *

  —

  I approached Maîtresse’s office with foreboding. She’d been right—the Fantasmagorie was a fraud. How could I have doubted her? She’d been like a mother to me in so many ways, a wise and loving mother. She’d been the one to explain the changes a girl went through, the one to help me through all the embarrassing moments. What would I have done without her?

  “Caroline told me we’re being withdrawn from school,” I said the instant I saw her. “I’m sorry! We went to the spirit show, and you were right, it was—”

  “Breathe, angel,” she said, leading me over to her cozy nook. “Everything will be fine. You’ll be safe at home.”

  Safe? From spirits? And then I realized that what she was trying to tell me had nothing to do with the spirit show. Rather, it had to do with the hussars pounding on the door in the middle of the night. They had not been a dream.

  “Because of . . . because of the coup?”

  “Yes. Your schooling will continue, but in a different way,” she said, arranging the down pillows on the divan. “I will write you often.”

  This gave me pause. It sounded as though I was going to be away for more than a day or two.

  “You will have tutors,” she went on, offering me a plate, mostly crumbs now.

  I took the one remaining fig, annoyed at Caroline for eating all the sugar puffs. My newest Fearsome Friend was something of a glutton.