‘Deuce take it,’ Nan said. ‘Why don’t they leave us alone? That won’t help trade.’
It didn’t help Billy Easter either, for he could hardly avoid the gossip in the Easter warehouse, and it didn’t take much intelligence to work out that his son must have been the Easter involved with Mr Maycock and Mr Jernegan, because the only other candidate besides Nan and himself was Henry and he was distraught at what had happened. And he hadn’t run away.
Matilda had been furious about that ever since she came home from Mirabelle’s salon.
‘What were you thinking of to allow him to go on this silly holiday?’ she demanded. ‘You might have known how bad it would look. And he should have known better than to leave you here at the unhealthiest time of the year. What was the matter with him?’
But he forbore to tell her, because it was plain from her distress that she already knew.
‘I shall have you took ill again,’ she complained. ‘Oh, it’s too bad! It really is!’
‘I won’t work too hard, I promise, Tilda,’ he said, trying to reassure her. ‘Trade is always slack in the summer.’
But it fell off alarmingly during the next two weeks. Soon Easter’s were hardly selling any books at all.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ Caroline worried when she’d persuaded Nan to show her the sales figures.
‘No,’ her grandmother said. ‘There’s nothing any of us can do, except wait, and waiting en’t in my nature.’
‘Nor in mine until now,’ Caroline said. And now she couldn’t think of anything else to do except wait.
‘If only Mr Rawson could find this awful publisher,’ Euphemia said. ‘What a difference that would make!’
‘Mr Rawson has a job on if he’s to do that,’ Nan said grimly. ‘Oh, he’ll do his best, I don’t doubt, but we should be fools to hold out much hope of his success.’
But unknown to all of them Mr Rawson had an ally.
Mirabelle’s salon had not been a success. Nearly half her guests failed to appear and those who did had plainly already heard rumours for they were just a little too solicitous as to her husband’s whereabouts, and took her careful answers about ‘a much-needed holiday’ with patent disbelief.
Then two days later The Times printed a discreet reference to the affair, and her good friend Mrs Abernethy called with the news that Mr Maycock and Mr Jernegan had been given notice. So she knew it was time for her to take action. As soon as Mrs Abernethy had gone, she put on her bonnet and went to visit Mr Brougham.
He received her guardedly, which was only to be expected, and told her nothing more than she already knew. But she persevered with her mission.
‘If my reading of this situation is correct, Mr Brougham,’ she said, ‘it would not surprise me to hear that you are endeavouring to find the man who published the books.’
Mr Brougham admitted the truth of her assumption. And waited.
‘I think I may know the gentleman’s name,’ Mirabelle said, ‘and I suspect that I have in my possession a printed list of the books he sells, or sold, as the case may be.’
‘I will not ask you how you came by it, Mirabelle my dear,’ Mr Brougham said, when she’d taken the paper from her reticule and laid it upon the desk before him, ‘but you will allow me to tell you how very much I admire your courage in this matter, and your loyalty to Mrs Easter.’
‘I can depend on your discretion, Mr Brougham.’
‘Of course.’
‘Edward is not a bad man,’ she said, as she closed her reticule. ‘Ambition is his downfall. He needs to feel important. As we all do, do we not?’
‘To a greater or lesser degree. Do you wish me to convey any of this information to Mrs Easter? Without naming my source, of course.’
‘No sir, not yet. I would rather wait a little until we know where Edward is and what he intends to do.’
‘You think he will write?’
‘I hope so.’
‘And return?’
‘That too, Mr Brougham. In time. I am sure of it.’
Chapter 30
When Edward disembarked at Boulogne he was still so enmeshed in panic that he couldn’t think of anything except his frantic need to get away as fast and as far as he could from the horrors that had suddenly risen about him like wraiths from a graveyard. He didn’t notice that the train to Paris was two thirds empty and he gave no thought at all to the reported revolution. In fact, as he approached the city and the cannons began to fire down upon it from the great hill of Montmartre, he assumed it was merely thunder rumbling overhead, and ignored it.
Once he was in the station, it was obvious, even to him, that there was something going on. There were no cabs, no omnibuses and very few porters, only troops and their horses and their supply wagons. Now and a little late he began to think that it might have been a mistake to come to this city, and he made up his mind that he would spend one night there with cousin Will and then press on again as soon as he could.
But finding his cousin was another difficulty he hadn’t anticipated. The concierge at the address on Will’s letter said she hadn’t seen Monsieur Eastaire since February, and sent him next door. Next door suggested that he try round the block, and round the block offered him four or five other apartments in the vicinity and told him that Madame Morisot’s was the most likely.
It didn’t look likely to Edward, being disappointingly scruffy, and horribly full of people. But to his relief the concierge assured him that Monsieur Eastaire did live there, and when he reached the second floor, which was pungent with the most appetizing smell of stew, and knocked at the door, which was clearly labelled ‘W Easter’, somebody came running to open it.
His welcome was another surprise. The doorman turned out to be Tom Thistlethwaite, and in such an agitated state that he actually spoke first without being spoken to. ‘Oh, Mr Edward sir, what a blessing you’re here! I been worried out ‘a me wits.’
Edward decided to ignore his social gaffe because the man was plainly upset. ‘What is it, Tom?’ he said. ‘Where is Mr Will?’
‘That’s just it,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t know. I ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since yesterday morning. I’m worried out a’ me wits. Anything could’ve happened.’
It was necessary to take over. ‘Do you know where he was going?’
‘He was off to them barricades, that’s where,’ Tom said, scowling his anxious disapproval. ‘In the faubourg, right plumb in the line a’ fire from all them cannons on Mont-martre.’
Right plumb in the line of fire, Edward thought. That didn’t sound very healthy. But he shrugged the thought away because there was a job to be done and he’d undertaken to do it now, and being an Easter there was no turning back. Not yet anyway. ‘Have you looked for him?’ he asked.
‘I was to stay here,’ Tom said. ‘He give me strict orders.’
‘Very well,’ Edward said decisively, ‘now I am countermanding them. Get your hat and coat and we will go and find him.’ The stew would have to wait until they all returned, even though his stomach was rumbling for it. With any luck it shouldn’t take them long.
‘Lead on,’ he said to Tom, when they were out in the street. ‘The sooner we go, the sooner we shall get back.’
‘We got to get over the river first, Mr Edward sir,’ Tom said. ‘The faubourg’s in the east by Les Halles.’
They headed for the Seine, through streets emptied of people and full of rubbish, piles of ash and heaps of stinking nightsoil that had obviously been left to accumulate for weeks. It was alarmingly quiet out in the open like this, but as they neared the quaysides they could hear the sound of wheels being driven roughly over cobbles and men shouting orders, and at that they quickened their pace, for at least company would be preferable to this sinister emptiness.
The quayside was thronged with people. There were soldiers keeping all the bridges to the Ile de la Cité completely empty except for the Pont Neuf and that was crowded with carts and carriages all trying to cross the
river on their one available route. If we are to get across too, Edward thought, we shall have to fight against all that traffic as well as the guards.
Two high-sided carts had stopped beside the pavement where he stood. Both of them were full of elderly men and women wrapped in blankets and obviously ill.
‘What is happening?’ Edward asked the driver.
‘We clear the hospitals, monsieur. We vacate our beds for the wounded. There is to be an attack.’
‘Do you know when?’ The cart was on its way again. They were moving apart. ‘Tell us quickly for the love of God.’
‘Tonight, monsieur.’
‘If we are stopped,’ Edward said to Tom, ‘we are working for the hospital. Come on.’
But they weren’t stopped. There were so many people pushing and shoving and arguing on that narrow bridge that two more were hardly noticed. When they got past the island to the north side of the river it was necessary to follow the carts for some considerable distance before they dared set off on their own again because everybody seemed to be moving in the same direction away from the bridges and the troops were watching with nervously sharp eyes and rifles at the ready.
At last they were in empty streets again and heading east. And now they passed the signs of a recent battle, walls pitted by shot; pools of blood still congealing damply on the cobbles or smeared in long, tell-tale trails where the dead or injured had been dragged away; dead mules and horses lying in ungainly heaps, some already beginning to bloat and smelling most vilely. And above it all hung drifting shrouds of smoke, grey yellow and sulphurous, and the sharp, bitter smell of gunpowder.
‘Is it much further?’ Edward asked. They were approaching a crossroads and he was feeling horribly vulnerable. There was no way of knowing what might be lurking round the corner.
Tom didn’t have time to reply for at that moment there was an explosion no more than a hundred yards ahead of them. The noise of it swelled in their ears as the blast threw them to the ground. For a brief second, Edward was aware that the air was full of bricks and fragments of stone, and that people were screaming, and then there was a second explosion further off and he scrambled to his feet and hurled himself at the nearest doorway for shelter. He and Tom were tugging at the door together, and so was a scruffy urchin who had flown in behind them like a bat into a cave.
It was the urchin who opened the door. ‘Follow me,’ it said and immediately shot off through the hall, trailing stink behind it, into a dark corridor, through a plain deal door and down a rickety staircase into the cellar. They could still hear the bombardment, but at a distance. The sound of their own laboured breathing was louder.
The urchin had found a candle and was scratching for flame in a tinder box, muttering with impatience. The wick caught light, flickered and then bloomed into a fat golden tulip in the foetid darkness. And they saw that she was a girl, tousle-haired, layered in rags, with a pistol in her belt, but decidedly female. ‘Voilà!’ she said. ‘Where do you wish to go?’
‘Can we go anywhere?’ Edward asked her, speaking in French because English would plainly have been wasted on her. ‘We are in somebody’s cellar, is that not so?’
‘The houses are empty, citoyen,’ the child said. ‘From here we may run through the cellars wherever we please. All that is needed is a master key.’ And she touched the key suspended round her neck and hid it underneath her rags.
‘Could you take us to the barricades?’
‘Which barricade?’
But neither of them knew. ‘I search for my cousin,’ Edward explained. ‘An Englishman called Mr Easter.’
The girl’s face erupted into smiles. ‘Monsieur Eastaire,’ she said. ‘Monsieur Guillaume Eastaire. I know him. A good citizen. Follow me.’
They followed as well as they could in the darkness, climbing through narrow gaps in the walls and stumbling over coals, while the noise of gunfire rumbled overhead, until after about a quarter of an hour, lamplights suddenly flickered in the darkness ahead of them and the girl began to run.
‘Come back!’ Edward called in panic. ‘Don’t leave us, I pray you!’
Voices were talking rapidly in a French so quick and slurred he couldn’t understand it.
‘She’s led us into a trap,’ he whispered to Tom. ‘Get ready to run for it.’
But before either of them could run anywhere, Will’s face loomed at them from behind the blue-edged corona of an approaching lantern. He was filthy dirty and his beard was untrimmed but it was decidedly Will.
‘Who’s there?’ he said in French.
‘It’s me,’ Edward answered in English. ‘Edward.’
‘Good God! What are you doing here?’
‘I came to find you and …’
‘And Tom too,’ Will said, speaking roughly and quickly. ‘Thank the Lord for that. We need all the water we can get, as quick as you can. That last one fractured a main, and there are so many wounded. Take these buckets. I’ll get more. Marie will lead you. Hurry!’
‘Just a moment,’ Edward said. ‘We didn’t come here for that…’
But the buckets had been thrust into Tom’s hands and Will was already gone.
‘Well, just for a little while then,’ Edward said. It was infra dig to allow himself to be put upon like this but what else could he do?
He and Tom worked obediently for the next two hours, struggling from cellar to cellar until they came to an empty house where the pump was still working and then labouring back again with those awkward buckets slopping, and up to an ill-lit kitchen where the stone flags were strewn with the injured bodies of men and women, some of them so young as to be almost children. Their uninjured companions wandered amongst them, doing what they could to staunch the endless flow of blood and offering the precious water.
‘So many wounded,’ Edward said to Will after his seventh or eighth sortie.
‘They’ve been fighting hand to hand,’ Will explained. ‘For the barricade. Most of them were cut by bayonets.’
‘Dreadful,’ Edward said. ‘When are you coming back to your apartment?’
‘Come upstairs, and I will show you why I cannot answer you,’ Will said, picking up a candle and walking from the kitchen.
Edward wasn’t really sure that he wanted to go upstairs, but by now he was too tired to argue. So he followed, up eight flights of stairs and into an empty room on the fourth floor. It had obviously once been a bedroom for it still contained the broken frame of a four-poster, but now it was being used as a look-out post. In the light from their candle he could see that the mattress was propped up against the window, and crouched against their make-shift defence were two children, a boy and a girl, keeping watch, rifles in hand.
‘How does it go?’ Will asked in French.
‘Badly,’ the boy said.
‘Have you taken sides with these people?’ Edward whispered in English. ‘I thought reporters were supposed to be impartial.’
‘So did I once,’ Will said, snuffing the candle. ‘But this is a war. You can’t stand on the sidelines in a war, Edward. You have to take sides. Look out of the window and you’ll see what I mean.’
They joined the two children behind the mattress and peered down into the moonlit battle that was going on below them.
Tall though it was, the barricade had been breached, its cobble-stones scattered about the street, and its flag post snapped in two. Now some of the defenders were struggling to mend it, hauling furniture into the gap, and bringing cartloads of fresh cobbles from further along the street, their straining backs grimed and urgent. But there were too few of them for such a task and they worked under a continuing fusillade. He could hear bullets whistling overhead and pinging against the walls, and beyond the barricade red and orange fires spat into the darkness. And as his eyes grew accustomed to the moonlight he realized that they were too few because so many of their companions were dead. There were bodies everywhere, grey with death and dust, lying in black pools of blood, their limbs spreadeagled where th
ey fell, their faces still grimacing in anguish. Some of them were hideously wounded, with gaping holes in their heads, or stumps of dark red meat where their arms should have been. One man had half his head blown completely away. The bile rose into Edward’s throat at the sight of him. Why on earth had he come to such a place?
Yet very few of the insurgents were fighting back. He could see four men lying among the cobbles training their pistols on the opposing army, but they didn’t fire.
‘Why don’t they fire?’
‘We have little ammunition now,’ Will said. ‘Every bullet must count. They will wait until the next attack.’
‘Will there be another attack? Now?’
‘It is likely.’
‘And the dead?’
‘The dead will wait too. There is no time for the dead in the middle of a battle. Only for the living and the wounded. When it’s quiet we’ll get the wounded out and back into the suburb.’
‘But if they have run out of ammunition would it not be better to surrender?’
‘The French army don’t take prisoners, you see,’ Will said bitterly. ‘I think they’ve been given orders to kill every insurgent they can find. It’s a massacre. There is nothing for it but to fight on to the bitter end.’
‘They kill us like flies, monsieur,’ the boy said, speaking in French but as though he had understood what they were saying. ‘We are dead men, all of us.’ And yet he spoke with a sombre pride that Edward found moving despite his own fear of the place and his abhorrence of the carnage below him.
‘I will stay tonight and help you to get the wounded out,’ he said. It was the only thing he could do in the circumstances. He would stay here until this awful business was over and then he’d move on.
The killing went on for days. There seemed no end to it. Under cover of darkness they put the wounded on carts and dragged them back to their hovels in St Antoine. They filled water tanks when they could, using the cellars as underground roadways, and from time to time somebody cooked a watery stew and dividing it equally, in the manner of communards, brought tin plates of it to anyone who was hungry. And the killing went on.
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