Where the Light Falls

by Allison Pataki

  Jean-Luc sighed, pushing aside the papers and turning to the lone political pamphlet on his desk. “Let there be no more death meted out or received between Frenchmen,” the writer urged, his voice a rare and welcome dose of rationality and clemency. This theorist, this Citizen Persephone, urged members of the government to meet in a peaceful manner with the leaders of the royalist faction, reasoning that any government composed of free Frenchmen would be preferable to foreign invaders.

  Finally, a philosopher with whom he could agree, Jean-Luc mused, wishing he knew the identity of this mysterious and reasonable man, Citizen Persephone.

  But his thoughts were disrupted by the sudden barking of gunfire on the streets below, followed by cries of anger and rapid footfalls outside. Nightly battles like this had become common, and yet Jean-Luc considered spending the night in his office rather than risk traveling on foot to the bridge and the comparatively peaceful Left Bank.

  The trial date of André Valière had already been moved once, on account of the internecine conflicts raging in the government. Jean-Luc did not know when the new trial date would come, but the longer he sat at his desk that evening, allowing himself to be distracted by the noises below, the more certain he became that his arguments would fall short, whenever the day might be.

  He had visited the prisoner several times in his shadowy, dank cell at Le Temple. Those interviews had left Jean-Luc carrying a gloom and melancholy so heavy that he had felt the blackness of despair seeping into the very marrow of his bones. Jean-Luc consoled himself with one fact: that they were holding André at Le Temple, and not at the Conciergerie, meant that he might, in fact, be granted the tribunal hearing he had been promised. The Conciergerie, everyone knew, usually held men for only one night—always their last.

  And yet everything about the prison, it seemed, had been engineered to sap the hope from a man’s spirits. The block of black, rock-hard bread that was slipped through a creaky slit in the door. The sunless, tunnel-like passage that echoed with the cries of the other prisoners, their beards ragged and their minds in varying states of decay. The solitude of the place, where nothing but the shadows and the rats kept a man company. Jean-Luc dreaded his trips to Le Temple but reminded himself that his duties kept him there for a mere hour or two, while his client had to remain there indefinitely.

  Through his conversations with the prisoner, Jean-Luc had heard about André’s father’s execution as well as his mother’s exile abroad. He came to understand what the loss of General Kellermann meant to André. How did this man keep hope alive while all else crumbled around him? It perplexed Jean-Luc, while also filling him with profound admiration. If André still allowed himself to hope, it was Jean-Luc’s duty to demand the same of himself.

  Just then, suddenly, Jean-Luc noticed a lone envelope tucked in with the pile of papers delivered by the errand boy. He lowered his eyes, reading the note:

  Citizen St. Clair,

  I write to you as the fiancée of André Valière. I beg you to tell him that I am safe, thanks to his brother. I will not tell you where, as that would be far too dangerous. I fear writing André directly, as I suspect that my uncle would prevent my letter being delivered to him. Yes, it is my uncle, Nicolai Murat, who first brought the charges.

  And yet I must write and beg that you will tell André that I am well, and that I love him.

  I hope that, someday, André and I might be able to repay you for your kindness and courage.

  Your faithful admirer and servant,

  Sophie Vincennes

  Curious, Jean-Luc thought, reading it a second time. The letter was unaddressed, with no hint as to how Jean-Luc might respond to this Sophie Vincennes. But then, her intent had been to remain unfound, Jean-Luc reasoned.

  This poor woman, as hopeful as the man she loves. Fools, the pair of them, Jean-Luc thought to himself. And as he collapsed his head into his hands he felt the overwhelming desire to hold Marie. It wasn’t a desire; it was a need. An urgent, implacable need. This life was too mad, too tragic, and it all might change so quickly; he couldn’t allow for the recent estrangement that had hardened between them to persist. He pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up, determined to go home and take his wife in his arms.

  Outside, the chaos surrounding the Tuileries had spread so that an impromptu assembly of city folk stood in front of his building. There were several dozen, a number of them holding muskets, a handful of others bearing pikes, saws, and fire pokers.

  “Citizen, what is the latest?” Jean-Luc asked a mustached man who stood several feet apart from the men holding muskets. This onlooker appeared less dangerous than his companions, with his arms crossed casually in front of his chest.

  The man looked at Jean-Luc and signified, with a jerk of his chin, to watch his associates. Jean-Luc’s eyes couldn’t help but rest a moment on the man’s mustache, which had an elaborate, unnatural quality about it. The man noticed him staring, and Jean-Luc averted his eyes, gazing back toward the crowd.

  Standing atop a bench, one of the apparent leaders of the gang held his musket aloft and cried out. He, too, Jean-Luc noticed, had the same dark, unnatural mustache. They all did, Jean-Luc realized, as he paid closer attention to the individual faces of the crowd now surrounding him. Even the women, he noticed with a quick gasp.

  “We showed that countess what we thought of her national treasure, did we not?” the leader on the bench shouted in a raspy voice. The crowd erupted in cheers and jeers, their fake mustaches flopping about on their lips in response. Several of them began to dance, a macabre dance that looked better suited for wild bonfires than a Paris street full of free citizens.

  Good God in Heaven, Jean-Luc thought, don’t let them mean what I think they mean. He’d heard about the uprisings in some of the other cities—uprisings during which unspeakable acts of vengeance had been carried out against the nobility. Children being tossed from château windows and women being deflowered and then defamed, their pubic hair turned into jests and playthings for the incensed mob. But those reports could not actually be true, could they?

  “Those royalists thought they could take our city back!” the musket-wielding leader roared from his bench.

  “Citizen?” The man to whom Jean-Luc had first spoken, the man who had stood apart, was now beside him. He leaned forward, and Jean-Luc saw through the glare of the full moon that a giddy, febrile excitement colored the man’s dirty face. Jean-Luc could not wrest his eyes from that horrid mustache.

  “You look as if you might need some cheering up, citizen. Care to get a whiff of the dear Comtesse de Beaumonde?” Beneath the vile mustache, the man’s lips spread apart into a broad, toothless smile, and Jean-Luc turned away, walking, as fast as he could, toward the river.

  On the southern half of the Pont Neuf, another impromptu assembly was gathering, and Jean-Luc groaned, pausing. What hateful villainy were these people up to? But their gathering seemed to be of a more subdued nature. They were perhaps two dozen in number, with several small children clutching their mothers’ skirts and fathers’ hands.

  “Citizens, what news?” Jean-Luc approached them slowly, cautiously.

  “We’re waiting for him.” One of the mothers, passing her fingers through a young child’s hair as if to improve his ragged appearance, turned and watched Jean-Luc approach.

  “For whom?” Jean-Luc asked, pausing before the group now.

  “Him!” Another member of the group pointed across the river in the southern direction, as if that might solve Jean-Luc’s confusion.

  “I beg your pardon, on whom do we wait?” Jean-Luc repeated his question, straining his eyes to peer through the nightscape of Paris. He began to hear the slow rumble of many horses approaching.

  “Bonaparte,” the first woman answered, her voice heavy with reverence. “He’s coming!” The group was now spreading out, forming a single file along the side of the bridge to clear a passage for the approaching horsemen. It sounded to Jean-Luc like an entire squadron of
cavalry.

  “General Napoleon Bonaparte!” one of the fathers in the group cried, hoisting his son atop his shoulders. The little boy began to wave the tricolor flag.

  Their torches appeared first, and Jean-Luc scampered back with the others to clear space as the horsemen became visible, approaching at a steady trot. At the front of the column rode a narrow figure, a nearby torch throwing enough light on his face to show dark hair and bright, delicate features, his black eyes fixed intently forward. He wore a jacket of a deep blue with golden epaulets on his shoulders, a bicorn hat on his head.

  As his horse charged onto the bridge at the head of the column, Bonaparte raised his sword and cried out: “To the Tuileries! For France!”

  In a blur, the horses approached and then passed, racing up toward the Right Bank and the siege. The group surrounding Jean-Luc roared back its response, chasing after General Bonaparte, the tricolor flag waving like a banner carrying them to battle.

  Jean-Luc seized upon the momentary excitement of the crowd and slipped off, unnoticed, in the opposite direction. He had been struck by an idea, as sudden and abrupt as the frenzied dancing of the crowd. He ran toward home now, thinking that, perhaps, he’d finally landed upon the line of argument that might actually save André Valière. He could not wait to tell Marie.

  At home, the garret apartment was dark and quiet. Marie would not have expected him home this late, not when he had taken to spending so many nights at the office. He found his wife and son curled up together in the corner of the room on Mathieu’s small sleeping pallet, their bodies intertwined in the blissful web of sleep. Jean-Luc slid out of his shoes and tiptoed toward them. He stared down at their serene faces for several minutes, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. Mathieu was snoring, his plump little body enfolded in his mother’s arms.

  Jean-Luc lowered himself down beside them on the pallet. Marie shifted, sighing in her sleep, but settling back down into the arms that her husband now wrapped around her. “I love you, Marie,” Jean-Luc whispered into her ear. “I love you both.” Whether in her sleep or in waking, she smiled, and he kissed her soft cheek. The warmth of their bodies softened his entire frame, and fatigue pulled on him; he might actually sleep well tonight, for the first night since he could remember.

  But just then, Jean-Luc’s eyes landed on a spot next to the sleeping pallet, just inches from his son’s head. There rested the shiny, elaborate figurine that Mathieu had been given by the mysterious, unseen “nice man.” The gift that had made both Marie and Jean-Luc so unsettled; it had been an unwelcome presence in their apartment since Mathieu had first displayed it.

  But that miniature was not what made Jean-Luc’s heart lurch this evening. What made his heart lurch this evening was that right beside the figurine, its glossy paint catching the light of the moon, rested yet another new toy, and one that surely had not been given to the boy by his mother—a miniature guillotine.

  Spring 1795

  Jean-Luc had smuggled in two letters from Sophie in the past year, and that was the only word André had had from her. The first letter had been a quick note scrawled to tell André that she was hidden safely in the country; Remy had done his job getting her out of the city and beyond her uncle’s grasp. As long as he heard no other news, André had assured himself that she remained safe. Hidden. Her silence had afforded him a small measure of peace of mind, in recent months, to think about and prepare for his trial.

  Until this morning. On the day of André’s long-awaited and -postponed trial, Jean-Luc had come to the prison bearing another letter. It had been early. André had been lying in the corner of the cell, his body curled up in the damp straw and his eyes shut as he tried not to consider the potential outcomes of the day ahead, when his counsel appeared, bearing the note from Sophie.

  “I wasn’t sure whether to give it to you or to wait until after the trial,” Jean-Luc admitted, his brow bearing a new worry line between his eyes that André had never before noticed. “But I decided that I couldn’t, in good conscience, keep this from you. I hope that Sophie’s words will give you strength today.”

  André took the note, the paper shaking in his dirty fingers, wondering whether perhaps Jean-Luc had been correct to consider holding on to it; perhaps he ought to wait until after the trial to read it. Keep his mind clear, or as clear as it could be, for the day’s ordeal. But then, he reasoned, if he was found guilty, the opportunity to read this letter could be gone forever.

  He tore through the wax seal and unfolded the paper, his chest contracting as if squeezed by a rope when he beheld her familiar handwriting.

  My love,

  I’ve left the château where Remy had installed me. I was forced to leave, in fact. My uncle found me.

  André lowered the paper, his hands trembling. But he forced himself to read on.

  The only answer at which I can arrive is that one of my uncle’s men must have followed Remy to the spot, as your brother came somewhat regularly to ensure that I was all right and to offer me news on your well-being. Always it was the same—that you were still alive, though imprisoned, and awaiting your trial. Remy told me that you had forbidden him from visiting you in the prison, out of the necessity of keeping him at a safe distance and free of any suspicion, and as such, that he could not deliver my letters. It was agony for me, but I do not wish to dwell on my suffering when you currently shoulder a burden so heavy as to render my own pains light by comparison.

  But my cause for writing now, as you’ve likely guessed, is due to an urgent change in my situation; as I said, I was forced to flee my hiding place. My uncle arrived at the château two nights ago. Remy had just come with fresh supplies of food and firewood. We didn’t see my uncle’s party until it was almost too late. Remy heard it first, the sound of hooves some distance away. We thought it was our imaginations until we saw the torches lighting their approach. The sight sent a chill through my blood.

  Remy, ever the soldier, kept his wits about him and hastened me out a back door to the stables, where we found the estate’s one remaining horse. Your brother put me into the saddle and sent me into the orchards. From there, I was able to slip into the woods and vanish from the grounds before my uncle’s party discovered me. Given that the stables had only the one horse remaining, and that the old, starving beast would have been overburdened by the two of us, Remy sent me away on that mount and assured me that he would make his way to the front of the château, where his own horse was tied. André, I don’t know what became of your brother. I have not heard from him since that hasty farewell in the darkened stable.

  The last thing I saw, as my own horse panted through the orchard and into the backwoods, was a great blaze, as the château was set to fire. My very soul urged me to return, to offer help to Remy, whose selfless actions had led him to protect me and put his own life in danger. But I don’t know if I would have brought back help or more harm. I recalled that he had made me swear that I would keep riding until I found safety.

  Oh, André, I am so sorry that I did not turn back. My heart is torn apart with regret. I’ve put both you and your brother in the way of danger, and that inescapable fact makes me ill.

  I will write you again when I have a more regular and permanent situation. In the meantime, know that I am alive and well, though very eager for news on what I hope was your brother’s safe delivery. He is the only reason I am able to write you this day.

  And, of course, even more important than my own happiness—I search everywhere for news of your trial. When it will be and what its outcome is. Oh, what terrible times we live in!

  My heart remains yours,

  and I shall remain for the rest of my days your loving and faithful,

  Sophie

  André lowered the letter, guessing from the rushed and disorderly handwriting that Sophie had been just as distressed in this note’s writing as he was now in its reading. Sophie, hunted from her hiding place like an animal. Remy missing, or worse. André sat or, rather, fell to the groun
d. For a moment his vision blurred and his eyes failed him. He shut them and dark visions swirled in his mind’s eye—his father, his general, his brother, his love—a waking nightmare playing out before him.

  “André de Valière?” A stout guard, his cheeks flushed from a morning of cards and wine, stood at the door of the cell. André peeled his eyes open and blinked, looking around as if by some miracle he would wake to find himself anywhere in the world but this place. He noticed the letter lying on the damp straw at his feet and remembered Sophie’s troubled words. Despite his feeling of hopelessness, he hurriedly grabbed the letter and held it close to his person, as though protecting a candle’s light from flickering out.

  “It’s time,” the guard said, jamming a rusty key into the lock and pulling open the groaning cell door.

  “Time?” André stammered, remembering the trial. “Oh, yes.” He rose to his feet unsteadily. “But first, a moment. I must quickly change.” He glanced around his cell. “My uniform…my army uniform. It was right there—where did it go?”

  The guard shrugged, unhelpful and uninterested. “You’ll stand trial in the sackcloth just like the thousands before you.”

  André felt his spirits sink even lower. “But I meant to wear my uniform—”

  “You’ll wear a new bruise ’cross your ugly aristocratic face if you don’t hurry out now.” The guard lifted the butt of his musket menacingly. “Now, get out, or I might lose my temper.”

  One of the other prisoners peered out of his cell, staring at André, his dark eyes earnest. “May God be with you, brother. May God be with you.”

  God hasn’t been with me for quite some time, André thought, as he shuffled through the cell door. His legs were unsteady, barely up to the task of carrying his body to its condemnation. As he walked, his thoughts turned to Sophie’s letter, the news he had just read in his cell. He agonized now, one question haunting him more than even the dread of his upcoming trial and sentencing: where was Remy?