by Jamie Carie
Scarlett must have seen the exchange of glances as she walked over and took André from his arms. “Go and talk to her. She needs you.”
Christophé gave her a quick nod, communicating his thankfulness. He walked over and touched Émilie on the shoulder. “Come with me.”
She looked up and over her shoulder at him. There were tears in her eyes.
He took her hand and led her from the now quiet room. As they walked away, he heard Scarlett ask in a bright voice, “Tell us, Jasper, who are Stacia and I to be?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Christophé took Émilie to the back door and led her outside. Jasper had an overgrown garden in the small yard behind his house. A long time ago, he’d explained to Christophé that he grew his own herbs for his medicinal concoctions and potions. He didn’t trust anyone else with the task. Now, in the middle of July there were thick clumps and rows of mature plants, mostly green, but a few flowering on either side of the narrow path that wound through his garden.
Toward the back of the garden was a wooden bench, painted red. “Émilie, what color is that bench?”
She stared at it and then back at him. “Green.”
He pressed his lips together and looked down. “And the plant here?” He reached over and pulled the leaves closer to them so that she could see it.
“The same, though a little duller in color.”
Christophé turned toward her and leaned his head into his hands. “I failed you.”
It was a whisper, but loud enough for her to hear.
“No. I failed you. I’m sorry . . . but . . .”
He looked up and saw that she was fighting back tears.
“I tried! I really tried. I walked up and down the street. But it was dark and I couldn’t find it, Christophé. I couldn’t find the red door in the dark.”
Christophé stood and brought her into his arms. “I should have known!”
“Known what?” Émilie demanded through her tears. “You had to go back. We didn’t have the money Father left for us. There was nothing.”
“Oh, Émilie. I should have known so much.” He didn’t say that now he knew how to travel on three silver francs. That he’d learned to hide and charm and work very hard. He didn’t tell her that he’d really just been afraid. How could he tell her that when she looked at him like some kind of savior?
Instead he led her over to the bench and sat beside her. Holding her hand, he spoke quickly. “Your sight is not the same as most people’s, Émilie. What you see as green is sometimes red. And there are many shades of green, which you see as yellowish or brown.”
She looked up at him. “I know. I didn’t know at the time. I should have, there had been signs all along. But I didn’t know it then. I’m sorry.”
He touched her thin cheek with the back of his finger. “It’s my fault.”
Émilie shook her head back and forth. “You were only trying to save us.” Her eyes looked as strong as glittering diamonds.
“Émilie, tell me. What did he do to you?”
Émilie looked away, out over the garden. She sat very straight on the bench, her breath coming in and out with effort. Her lips were pressed together, her chin up.
“Tell me.” Christophé demanded in a soft voice. “Tell me everything that happened after I went back to the chateau.”
“There’s nothing to speak of. I’ve forgiven him.”
“Forgiven him?” Christophé rasped out the words. “Forgiven him of what?” He stood and paced, unable to stop his movement in the face of her still form. The desire to hunt the man down and kill him rose so strong that he had to clench his hands into fists and his jaw shut. But he’d promised God not to take the path of revenge. He’d promised to trust Him.
Still, he had to know. He would not let her bear this burden alone. “What did he do?”
Émilie’s chin went up another notch. “He took me to the place where he resides—the Duplay home. I never saw them. He hid me in an adjoining room to his. I had a bed and food.” She paused and looked off into the distant sky. “He bade me to serve him his meals. Gave me money sometimes to go the market to get him certain fruits and vegetables, when the Duplays weren’t around. Sometimes he would have me sit at the table with him. I didn’t speak. He just looked at me.”
She stopped for a moment and seemed to gather herself. “I wrote out his correspondence. He said my handwriting was . . . clean.”
“Clean.” It came out a broken whisper. “What did he mean?”
Émilie looked down and then back up toward him. “He said I had something he did not. He said I had faith. So . . . I think he meant clean in the way Christ makes us clean.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think he knew what that even meant. He only loved one thing aside from his strange love for me. The law.”
Christophé sank. He knelt at her feet and put his head against her knees. “Oh, God. He was making you his savior.”
Émilie’s hand brushed over the bristled hair of his scalp. “He didn’t hurt me.” She paused; the silence growing with the only sound of Christophé’s shaking breaths. “He asked me to do everyday things. To play with his dog.”
Émilie reached out and touched Christophé’s arm as he leaned against her, his head bowed. He could not look at her. “I failed you.”
Émilie’s hand patted his back, as if she’d become the parent in this moment. “Jasper told me. You thought I was guillotined. He must have planned that. I am sorry for the girl that died in my stead.”
“How did you . . . survive?” Christophé backed up a little to look into her eyes.
She shrugged, an unconscious movement. Christophé held very still waiting for her next words.
“I didn’t speak. He understood. He didn’t ask me to. Not ever. I prayed . . . constantly to forgive him. But I never spoke aloud. He didn’t make me speak.”
Christophé blinked, trying to comprehend it. “How could you forgive him?”
Something came into Émilie’s eyes as he looked deep into them, like a blink of heaven, a flash of eternity. “When you didn’t come, when I realized that you couldn’t save me, I knew that only God could.”
Christophé’s voice was a harsh grating in the peacefulness of the swaying garden vines. “And will He save us, Émilie? Will He? For I fear I no longer know.”
Émilie’s bittersweet smile lit her eyes. “God brought you back to me. I didn’t think that was possible. And He brought you Scarlett, didn’t He?”
Hope, or the hint of it, stirred within him. Yes, God had done both. And now . . . He needed to do the impossible.
Get them out of France alive.
THEY WOULD LEAVE that night, as soon as it was fully dark, dressed as a bourgeoisie family. The patriarchs—Jasper and Suzanne—with their three daughters, son-in-law, and first grandchild were on a scientific errand. It wasn’t much of a cover, but it would have to do.
They were leaving France on a business trip as Jasper and Christophé, astronomers with a new discovery, had letters of invitation, albeit fake letters, to the London Royal Society for science. They’d packed their telescopes and many journals outlining all of Christophé’s notations over the last few years. They’d packed little else, aside from the food stores the women were insistent upon, some clothes, and their false passports.
Dinner that night was a huge affair, all of them feeling a jovial energy laced in anxiety. Had Robespierre noticed the missing women yet? His schedule was so erratic, with long hours at the Committee of Public Safety, the Council, and the Jacobin Club, they couldn’t be sure he had even been home to notice.
After dinner they dressed in their new identities: traveling costumes of sturdy shoes and plain dresses for the women, the homespun of the working class for the men. Christophé wore his stocking cap, the long red one of the Patriots low over his brow. Jasper wore the tri-cornered hat and powdered wig. Each man carried a walking stick. What the women didn’t know was that the bottom of the stick hid the point of a blade. They
might not be able to carry weapons, but Jasper and Christophé had their defense well planned should they need it.
Evening and time to depart came quiet and soft. A gentle breeze caressed their hair and faces as they hoisted up their bags and skirted through the narrow streets toward the eastern edge of the city. Traveling at night had its advantages, but also the added fear of the patrols. If they could just escape Paris, they might have a chance.
Christophé looked down at Scarlett, his heart swelling with protective love and pride. She had made a makeshift sling to carry André by knotting his blanket around her neck. She explained to him in low tones that, should the need arise to feed him or quiet him, she could easily unbutton her dress and continue walking. As he looked down at the little bundle, he silently prayed the child would not give them away.
Jasper led the way, keeping to shadows and the soft places in the light. The four women brought up the middle, with Christophé at the end of the line. They made their way quickly and silently around the ghostly buildings of old France. They passed through the ruins of palatial homes and gardens, monstrous churches and cathedrals and elegant hotels. Then they tread through the back neighborhoods of the city folk with their apartments, two- and three-storied houses, cafés, and shops. As they neared the edges of the city, the landscape gave way to the more rural feel of farmland, the houses getting further and further away from each other.
Scarlett was becoming increasingly winded and had dropped further behind. Christophé could tell that she was trying to keep up with Stacia, but now they could just make out the back of her striding figure. More alarming was the sudden stops she would make, bending down a bit and breathing hard.
Christophé came along beside her. “What is it?”
She didn’t pretend to know what he was asking. “I am bleeding again. I thought it was finished. It must be the walking.”
Christophé motioned toward the babe. “Give me the child.”
She stopped but fear tightened the skin around her mouth and eyes. “I can’t continue at this pace.” He could tell that she didn’t like it, but they both knew that she had to rest.
Christophé whistled, a bird-like call, and then reached for André, adjusting the sling around his neck. André woke, blinking in the night air and looking around as if he would know what had changed his world.
“He will cry. I know it.” She looked up at Christophé, alarm lighting her eyes. “What will we do?”
Christophé took the baby up against his chest and rocked him, looking down at the downy hair and soft skin. He leaned over and gave Scarlett a kiss. “We will rest awhile.”
The others had heard the whistle and came back. “Is everything all right?” Suzanne’s eyes in the moonlight held concern.
“Scarlett is tired. We have to rest.” André awakened, decided he did not like to be so confined, and began to wail in earnest.
Jasper looked around them. They were standing close to a grouping of houses. “We should find a safer place.” He looked to Scarlett. “Can you hurry a little longer?”
She grasped her skirt in her hands and nodded.
After several more minutes of walking, they saw a lone farmhouse. It sat in a hollow in the land, quiet and peaceful with light flooding from its windows. Jasper came up to Christophé and pointed to it. “I don’t like how Scarlett is bleeding. We could ask for shelter for the night.”
“It would be better to sleep out in the open, but I agree. They look awake and she needs a bed if we can get her one.”
Leaving the women in a small stand of trees, Christophé and Jasper approached the farmer’s door. It was an old door, he thought distractedly as he watched his hand curl into a fist and knock. The door opened and he saw the frightened face of a man peer out from the crack of light. “What do you want?” The man scratched at his cheek and then chin, while staring at Christophé.
“Good citizen, we are in need of shelter for the night.”
“What do you think? Out traveling at this hour? You could be anyone. Why would I let you into my house?”
“We are scientists traveling to London. Another two days and we will reach Le Havre to board a ship. We have papers.”
The man opened the door a little wider. “Let me see them.”
Jasper pulled the papers from his overcoat pocket and handed them over to Christophé. Christophé found his and Jasper’s in the pile and passed those over to the man.
The man looked to be reading them, but Christophé could tell from the way the man’s eyes scanned the documents that he could not read.
Christophé and Jasper exchanged sudden glances. They’d both seen it.
A tall shadow just behind the man.
Christophé backed slowly up as Jasper put a hand, low and waving back, toward the women.
The man saw their actions and filled their silence, dropping the passports on the ground. “Yes. Yes. Everything looks to be in order.” As he said the words his hand, the one outside the door, waved them frantically away.
Christophé took a few running steps back toward the door to pick up the papers. His fingers grasped the pages, wadding them into his hand as he turned to run.
The man talked to them as if they were still standing in front of him. “You may stay. But I don’t want any trouble. Come in.” There was a thread of panic in his voice.
Christophé shouted over his shoulder. “We’ll be back after we gather our belongings. Thank you, good citizen.”
When he reached the women, he grasped Scarlett’s arm.
“It’s a trap!” Jasper rasped out the words, stopping in front of Suzanne. They could see the man standing where they left him, waiting for them. “Someone has been following us.”
“Oh, heavens!” Mrs. Bonham squeaked. “What shall we do?”
“Run,” Christophé commanded softly. “Hurry.”
As they turned away from the house and ran from the road, they plunged into a thick copse of woodland. A sudden commotion sounded from the house.
“Run!” Christophé shouted to all of them.
Émilie stumbled and fell. Christophé turned back, scooped her up into his arms, and followed the flying feet of Scarlett and howling cries of André. A bullet whizzed by his ear but he grinned. He couldn’t help it.
He didn’t know Scarlett could run like the wind when she had to.
Chapter Thirty
Jasper had Suzanne’s hand grasped tightly in his as they rounded the thick brush and undergrowth of the forest. The dear lady was doing her best, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up their reckless pace much longer.
The pursuit was on. They could hear their adversaries coming.
“There, do you see that?” Jasper paused as the others caught up. He pointed up into a tree with easy climbing branches, lots of them.
“Up you go, madame.”
“Into the tree?” Suzanne gasped, turning shocked eyes toward him. She looked up and up at the swaying, leafy branches.
“I have faith in you.” He stared at her feeling his heart in his eyes.
Suzanne looked at him for a second and then planted a big kiss square on his mouth. Turning from him, she hoisted her skirts up and grasped the lowest limb. Jasper clasped her around the hips, able to feel their lush curves beneath her skirts, and lifted with all his strength. She gasped and let out a little squeak.
And even that sound was music to Jasper’s ears.
CHRISTOPHÉ AND THE other women caught up with Jasper, all of them breathless as they watched in silent hope as Suzanne reached for the next higher branch, her shoes sliding against the slick bark.
“You can do it, Mother. Hurry!” Stacia whisper-screamed her support.
Stacia was next. Then Émilie, as lithe and agile as most children. Scarlett looked at Christophé with fear in her eyes. “I’m afraid. What if I drop André?”
Christophé took hold of the sling and quickly adjusted the fabric so that André was completely ensconced. “I will be right behind you. Now
go.”
Scarlett scrambled up the first two branches. Her foot stretched for a far branch on the other side of where Stacia, Émilie, and her mother clung. It slipped, causing a yelp to sound from her throat. Christophé started to come up behind her but then they all heard a great crashing sound behind them.
Overcome with fear, Scarlett scrambled for the branch, this time aiming for a knot in the wood to help steady her. With a mighty step, hanging onto the branch overhead, she landed on the stout limb.
The sounds of men shouting and the rustle of the bushes broke into their little clearing. Scarlett looked down and saw that Christophé had two choices. He could leap up after her, which might give them away, or drop to the ground to protect their hiding place. Her heart beat in her throat so that she felt like choking as she watched him weigh the options and then drop from the branch and walk over to stand with Jasper, away from them.
She watched as a dozen men surrounded them, rifles pointed at their chests.
“State your names, citizens!”
Scarlett’s brow knitted in anxious thought. The booming voice sounded vaguely familiar.
Jasper and Christophé stood erect, chins up and spines stiffened as they were surrounded. Jasper spoke first. “Mon Dieu. We go to London for science. We have done nothing wrong. See?” He pulled out the passports and Scarlett’s heart chilled—those were the papers for her and the women.
Jasper must have realized the same, for he looked to Christophé, who quickly pulled the wadded papers from his pockets. “We have passports for travel to London.”
The leader spat. Scarlett suddenly recognized him from her hiding place and took a long quivering breath. Henri Vonriot, one of Robespierre’s supporters in the Convention. Suddenly it all seemed to Scarlett madness and hopelessness. They would be caught. Christophé and Jasper would be imprisoned. They might all be imprisoned. What story could they conjure to explain false passports, a sudden trip to London, and hiding in a tree?
