Where the Light Falls
Page 38
“Can’t we go back out through the cellar?” Sophie asked.
“No.” Jean-Luc shook his head. “We’d have to run right past him to get to the steps down. Best if he doesn’t know where we are.”
“Then where are we going?” Sophie asked, panting as they raced up the stairs.
“To my office.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs—he won’t find us in time. I will call down for help from the window, or better yet, we can climb out.”
Sophie’s eyes betrayed fear, but she kept his pace as they climbed the steps. When they reached the office, they paused at the door. Lazare’s voice gave the two of them a moment of paralysis.
“You always thought you were so clever!” The old man, his voice high-pitched but steady, climbed the stairs after them. “But you’ve left a trail. Didn’t you learn—always cover your tracks?”
Jean-Luc looked behind him and, sure enough, both his and Sophie’s blood had dripped as they had run, leading their pursuer straight to them. “Damn it,” Jean-Luc spat under his breath. “Hurry, come in.” He pulled Sophie into the office. Propping a desk against the door, he reassessed the situation.
“Please?” Sophie turned and offered her hands, her wrists rubbed raw from the tightness of her bindings. Jean-Luc used the sharp point of the fire poker to slice through the rope and release her.
“Thank you,” she said, massaging her wrists.
Jean-Luc, hearing the old man’s steps approaching the doorway, looked to the window. “Come, this way.” They ran to the windows, the glass panes as tall as doors and running the full length of the wall. In the summer heat, the window was swollen and stiff, hindering Jean-Luc’s attempts to open it. With Sophie’s help, they eventually pried it open, just as Lazare began to bang against the door.
His entry was momentarily blocked by the propped desk. “Oh no, it’s not very nice of you to lock me out. Won’t you let me in?” The old man’s voice bore the mad determination that drove him on in spite of his injuries and old age. He banged again on the door, and the desk began to slide.
“Stay away,” Jean-Luc shouted, his voice hoarse, but he saw the desk moving and knew that Lazare would soon gain entry. Jean-Luc’s vision began to blur, his blood slowly draining from the wound in his thigh, but he forced himself to remain upright.
“It’s too high to jump,” Sophie said, looking out the window at the little alleyway that hugged the building. The same alleyway through which Jean-Luc had entered.
“Yes,” Jean-Luc said, agreeing. “Hello! Anyone?” He called out to the dark street, to the abandoned alleyway, but his yell was met by only the bark of a dog. Now the door to the office burst open and Lazare entered, his mouth spread in a fiendish smile, his hand wielding the knife.
Sophie, with a desperate bravery, charged at the old man. Before Jean-Luc could react, Lazare dodged her charge and pulled her into his arms. Turning her to face him, he punched her hard across the face with the handle of the dagger. She fell to the ground, her body limp. He turned his gaze on Jean-Luc.
Jean-Luc lifted the poker to lunge, but Lazare still wielded the knife he’d held earlier. Seeing Sophie lying on the ground, Jean-Luc’s anger threatened to overtake him. “If you touch her again, I’ll kill you.”
“You know, citizen, there was a time when I took a liking to you.” Lazare’s voice was a quiet hiss as he slowly stalked toward Jean-Luc. “I offered you a place on the world’s stage, and instead of cooperation, you chose to thwart me at every turn. But your short, pitiful story is over. When I am through here, you will not even have a family left to mourn you.”
The old man lunged, the knife held aloft. Jean-Luc parried the thrust, swinging the poker violently, smacking the old man’s hands. To his dismay, he saw that Lazare still held the knife. The old man regrouped and charged again, straight at Jean-Luc’s abdomen. His ferocity caught Jean-Luc off guard; all he could do to avoid the knife was step back. Now he had his back nearly against the wall. He was cornered, and both he and Lazare knew it, judging by the gleam in the old man’s eyes. All that was behind him was the tall open window. He could jump to the street, but that would mean certain death as well.
Lazare lunged again, this time slashing the blade at Jean-Luc’s throat. Jean-Luc sidestepped, but his thigh was in such severe pain from the earlier wound that he was unsteady and he banged into his desk. He groaned in agony, clutching the bleeding gash as his vision became mottled, his gaze dizzy. The poker fell from his grip just as Lazare’s knife grazed the side of his waist, tearing through his waistcoat and the flesh just below his ribs. It was a superficial wound, not fatal, but it served to stun Jean-Luc. Now, unarmed, he stared in horror at the knife-wielding madman before him.
Jean-Luc’s thigh burned from the wound and his side bled. He had no weapon and nowhere to run. His vision blurry, Jean-Luc slumped to his knees and crashed to the floor. He reached a hand out desperately to the old man, but his strength failed him and he blinked, fighting to stay conscious. Lazare approached him slowly, cautiously, as one would a wounded—but not yet dead—beast in a trap. The old man arched his back as he skulked toward Jean-Luc. He stood before the open window, his figure a black silhouette against the sky.
And then, before either of them knew it was happening, Sophie stood and charged the man, her arms bent and bracing. With a shove that took the entirety of her strength, she screamed and pushed her tormentor’s frame toward the large window. He hadn’t expected the assault from that direction, and he dropped the knife, turning his confused gaze to her. She was struggling to wrap her arms around him, and the two of them were caught in a tenuous embrace.
Sophie’s face was contorted and flushed, her eyes burning with the frenzied, primordial instinct to survive; Lazare was stronger, but still surprised and disoriented by her unexpected ferocity.
“You filthy whore!” Lazare spat at her, lifting his hand to strike her across the face. Staying low, Sophie looked up into the man’s eyes. Using her last bit of fight, she shoved her body against his once again. The force with which she knocked into him sent him flying backward, toward the opened window. He slipped on the pool of blood that had collected beneath Jean-Luc’s gaping wound and lost his footing. Sophie, in a flash, capitalized on the old man’s unsteady balance and gave him another push. At the moment Sophie lunged forward, Jean-Luc stirred and saw through his blurred vision Lazare reeling back, his frame thrown by the momentum. His eyes wide with shock, his arms groping at the air, he flew backward out the window.
Jean-Luc struggled to pull himself to the window to watch the man’s fall. Lazare careened toward the street but was stopped suddenly short. Before his body could smash onto the cobblestones, the spear of the archangel Michael met the man’s back so that he landed impaled on the blade of divine vengeance; it tore through his flesh and rose out the top of his gut as the old man writhed, losing his blood and his life, coloring the pristine white of the statue a bright, brilliant red.
The few pedestrians on the street in Jean-Luc’s neighborhood eyed him and Sophie with a mixture of fear and ghoulish interest; why were they covered in blood, their clothes tattered, their faces hollow? Jean-Luc did not acknowledge their shocked expressions or muted utterances of alarm. He had no time to pause to answer their questions. He had left Marie hours earlier and needed to get back to her.
Jean-Luc limped up the stairs toward his garret, his arm around Sophie’s shoulders for support.
“Marie?” He burst into their apartment, and it was there he found the thick figure of Madame Grocque. The woman sat beside the bed, holding a small bundle of linens, a pink face of wrinkled flesh. The baby had come, and now it began to whimper.
“Oh, God have mercy! The baby is here, already? Healthy? But it’s so small. It arrived so early.” Jean-Luc gasped, surveying the scene. Marie was in bed, asleep. The baby, unbearably tiny, was swaddled snugly in the tavern keeper’s arms while Mathieu sat in the corner. The boy wept, undoubtedly upset after what
he must have witnessed during the birth, Jean-Luc realized. Sophie rushed to the boy and took him in her arms.
“Oh, thank you, Madame Grocque. Thank you ever so much.” Jean-Luc crossed the room, looking down at the fragile body clutched in the woman’s embrace. But Madame Grocque said nothing, staring at Jean-Luc in dumb silence. What was the meaning of such an expression on her face? Jean-Luc wondered.
“Oh, Monsieur St. Clair, I’m so sorry. I tried, I did. But it all happened so fast. I didn’t even have time to fetch the midwife.” Just then, the infant began to cry, its wail surprisingly strong given the newness of its lungs.
“Well, the baby sounds perfectly healthy, madame, even if a bit early,” Jean-Luc said, approaching the bed. “A little hungry, perhaps.” He looked down at his child, and there was no mistaking that he had a daughter. The baby’s face was a mottled pink, a rosebud with a shock of her mother’s chestnut hair. “As beautiful as her mother,” Jean-Luc said, momentarily consumed by the first sight of his daughter. “And I think she ought to be named for her, as well. Hello, Mariette. Little Marie. How do you like the sound of that?”
The old woman, still holding the baby, shook her head and did something Jean-Luc had never seen her do before: she began to cry.
“Why, Madame Grocque, what is the matter? I know that it must have been frightening, but you’ve done wonderfully well. Surely there’s no need for any tears, unless they be tears of joy.”
“You don’t understand, monsieur!”
“What don’t I understand, Madame Grocque?” Jean-Luc looked from the woman to the baby, then to his wife, where she lay sleeping in bed. And it was in that moment that he noticed the unnatural paleness of Marie’s cheeks. The eerie plum color of her lips—lips that had always shone red and warm. Her brown eyes shut, and remaining shut, even as her baby wailed and her son whimpered in the corner and her husband clamored about.
He noticed for the first time the pile of papers by her side, and he leaned over to inspect them. Political pamphlets. All of them signed by the same mystery writer, Persephone. Beneath them were the originals, all written in Marie’s familiar handwriting. And then on top, a note. Also in Marie’s handwriting.
Hands trembling, Jean-Luc read her words:
My darling Jean-Luc,
You know that I have always been your greatest admirer. Carry on with our noble work, for there is still so much more to be done. I shall stand beside you, always, in the two children you will raise, two children who could never have a more loving and devoted father. Do well for them, do well for our free nation, and you shall do well for me. I know you will.
Yours, with love for eternity—
Marie St. Clair
Postscript: You’ve always been worthy of me—though perhaps a little less wily.
“Marie?” Jean-Luc looked from the note to the motionless figure of his wife, his lungs collapsing, his chest squeezed tight by a noose. “Marie? No! This can’t be! Wake up!” He leaned over her, tears rushing to his eyes as his wife, his beloved, failed to respond to the crying out of her name.
“Maman!” Mathieu, too, joined in, but his mother’s eyelids remained shut, impervious to the supplications of her son, her husband, her new daughter. That was not something Marie would ever have done. Marie had never once ignored the cries of her son. She would never have been deaf to the pain of her husband. To the plaintive yelps of her newborn daughter. There was only one explanation: Marie was no longer there.
And when Jean-Luc took her hand in his own, he knew it to be true, for her soft flesh was cold.
July 22, 1798
André woke to a strong odor in his nostrils and a throbbing in his head. He sniffed the air and recognized the faint but familiar smell of sulfur. Stronger still was the smell of burning flesh. His neck ached as he lifted his head, and he saw that he was no longer in the desert but in the middle of a crowded tent with a dozen others. Cots lined the space and a pair of physicians tended to groaning men.
One of the camp doctors noticed André sitting up and walked over to his cot. Thin eyeglasses perched on the edge of his sunburned nose. He leaned over, pressing his hand to André’s forehead. “Your fever has passed. And some of your color has returned. I believe the worst is over for you. You’re luckier than some of the others.”
André parted his parched lips. “Is there…water?”
The man walked across the tent, returning with two skins. “General Bonaparte has ordered us to be generous with the last of the wine rations. No, take the water first.” André gulped greedily at the water, letting it run down his bare chest. “Slowly, sir. You’ve lost a good deal of blood and will be weak for some time.”
As André caught his breath, he held out his hand for the wineskin. The warm drink burned slightly as it dripped down his throat. He closed his eyes as he savored the taste. “Thank you.”
“Save your gratitude for that Egyptian fellow.” The doctor smiled faintly at André. “You would have bled out onto the sand if he had not brought you back.”
André thought back to the battle, recalling only confused flashes. He remembered the French squares shooting deadly fire into the enemy horsemen. He recalled the massive pyramids as the cavalry pursued the fleeing Mamelukes. A cold, shadowed doorway. A struggle for a gun. Murat. The madman had tried to kill him. But here he was, in spite of it all, alive and in one piece, for the most part. Had he killed Murat?
“You know, shirking duty is a crime punishable by death, Major Valière.”
André turned toward the familiar voice and saw the tall, dark figure of General Dumas standing in the open flap of the tent. His face was stern, his uniform weather-beaten. His boots were caked in mud and silt. André gawked for a moment, unsure of what his superior had meant by that remark. The general took several steps toward him and flashed a sudden smile, his broad face handsome and relaxed. “Don’t you know there is more work to be done, soldier?”
André made to sit up but Dumas put a hand to his shoulder, motioning him to remain as he was.
“From the looks of everything, I take it we’ve won the battle, sir?”
“We did not defeat our enemy, Valière,” General Dumas replied. “We annihilated them. They’ve bolted into the desert with their survivors, abandoning Cairo. Our commander believes that twenty thousand of them perished in the battle. Between us, I think that may be something of an exaggeration. Still, he has already written his report to Paris, trumpeting the glorious miracle of the Battle of the Pyramids.” As he said this, General Dumas appeared tired and somber, not proud like one who had taken a central role in an astonishing victory.
“You do not seem convinced of our success, General.”
Dumas stood in thoughtful silence for a moment. He put a hand through his dark hair and sighed. “We have won the battle, of that I have no doubt, but what follows concerns me. These desert tribes will never yield to our rule. And Admiral Nelson and the British Royal Navy will descend upon us within weeks, even days.”
Dumas glanced at André and smiled weakly. “But you need not concern yourself about any of that now. You have survived a smart little wound and deserve a rest.”
André nodded, his thoughts returning to Murat. “Did we take many casualties? At least, anyone important?”
“Less than a hundred killed. Perhaps two hundred wounded. I suppose we should be thankful for that.” Dumas studied André for a moment before adding: “General Murat was killed. Took a blade to the gut. Seems to have gotten himself entangled in some side skirmish, away from the main fighting.”
André stared at the general, his heart beating sharply in his chest as grisly flashes of memory burst across his mind. A moment that felt like an eternity passed between them. Did Dumas know—could he hear the clamoring of André’s heart?
Dumas nodded once, clasping his hands as a sigh of finality passed his lips. “So, his story is over. He will be mourned in Paris like all the others who have fallen bravely in the service of their country.”
Dumas lingered beside the bed a moment longer. “I suppose there are certain souls who have despaired of this world and are determined to drag down as many as they can. I admire you, Major, for fighting for your own life.”
André’s thoughts drifted back to Paris. “I swore to survive for those whom I’ve lost, and those I will not accept losing.”
“And so you have. And you shall continue to do so.” General Dumas looked at André, an admiring gaze, before nodding and placing his bicorn hat back on his head. He stood tall and arched his back. André sat up and offered him a salute.
Later, André woke from a deep sleep, bolting upright in his cot after being startled by a commotion inside the tent. He looked around and saw a cluster of soldiers standing in the opposite corner. There, in the center, stood one man, slightly apart. André nearly lost his breath when he caught a glimpse of the red sash about his waist, the tricolor cockade. “General Bonaparte, sir.” He saluted, trying to keep his mouth from falling open in dumb shock.
“Major Valière, is it?” General Bonaparte approached the cot, his short-legged stride buoyant and jaunty. “At ease now. You’ve got to heal a bit still.” The high commander stood beside the bed, staring at André with his intense, dark eyes before asking: “Anything we can do for you, Major?”
André, his mouth painfully dry, his brain feeling as if it were filled with cotton, answered with the simple, honest reply that came to him: “Sir, I just wish to go home.”
“Ah, in due time, Major.” Bonaparte’s voice took on a heavy, imperious tone as he stared off to the far corner of the tent. “There are yet more enemies to fight, more battles to be won. The citizens of the Republic will learn of the Battle of the Pyramids a hundred years hence. This Army of the Orient will be remembered as the worthy successor to the soldiers of Alexander and the legionnaires of Rome.”