by Amelia Nolan
“All right,” she agreed, and kissed him happily.
“Do you have everything?” he asked. “Money?”
“A little. Not much.”
“I have enough. The bread and water is in the sack?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go.”
They walked out of the bedroom, across the apartment, and opened the front door carefully. They waited a moment for any noise from the dark corridor, but there was only silence.
As soon as they crossed the threshold, though, Marian gasped.
“What? What is it?” Evan whispered anxiously.
“Hold on,” she said, and darted back inside the apartment.
There was the sound of a wooden drawer being opened. She returned within half a minute.
“I forgot something,” she whispered.
“Something important, I hope, to give me a heart attack like that,” Evan scowled.
“Very,” she said, and they crept down the stairs into the darkness.
78
Villars came to gradually. His skull felt as though someone were continually striking him with a wooden hammer.
He heard low voices speaking only a few feet away.
He froze – and then realized it was impossible to move anyway. His wrists were tied to the arms of the chair, and his legs seemed similarly bound. There was a gag in his mouth; the slightly dusty taste of cloth made him want to gag, but he controlled himself.
And he was naked, he realized with alarm.
He tried to recall the last thing that had happened.
He was on top of that whore… and then the arm came out of nowhere, like something out of a child’s ghost story…
“My God,” said a man’s voice.
The Englishman!
Did he arrive while I was unconscious?
Or was he here all along, hidden?
Was it he who attacked me?
“What?”
Marian’s voice.
It all made sense now.
She had lured him – Villars – to the bed, and the Englishman had tried to kill him from his hiding place.
Villars burned with searing hatred for them both. Nevertheless, he remained motionless, biding his time and listening, his head still hanging on his chest.
“Is this what I think it is?” Marian’s voice asked.
There was a crinkle of paper.
“A free pass to cross any barrier in France, signed by our helpful Lt. Villars? I believe so. This is impossibly good fortune,” the Englishman answered.
Villars almost opened his eyes, he was so shocked.
The letter I gave Baffert!
Good God, could things get any worse?
Marian laughed. “We could go directly through the gates of Paris with this!”
Do it, you little whore… and see how far you get…
“No. There’s no good reason for a Guardsman to leave Paris tonight, especially not escorting a woman.”
The Englishman is not as stupid as he looks.
Villars did not stop to consider what that made him, then, if he had been bested by a stupid man.
“Let’s just go to the break in the wall and use the papers outside Paris if we need them.”
The break in the wall – where did Baffert say it was? Ah yes, down by the Invalides Hospital, beside the Military School…
“All right.”
The man’s voice: “Do you have everything? Money?”
“A little. Not much.”
“I have enough. The bread and water is in the sack?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go.”
Feet creaked across the floorboards. A door opened out in the main room, followed by thirty seconds of silence.
Suddenly, whispering, and footsteps scurrying in the main room again. A wooden drawer slid open, there were the sounds of rummaging –
And then the footsteps, the click of the door closing… and silence once more.
Villars lifted his head, and the pounding got even worse.
He was still in the whore’s bedroom.
He strained against his bonds, but they were tied tight. After failing to loosen them, he looked about the room for some means of escape.
There were clothes scattered about – men’s clothes.
But not his own.
Where is my uniform? he thought in panic. I left the jacket by the door, and the pants –
They have taken them, he realized, and dread raced through him like ice water.
Never mind the signed order he had given Baffert – the uniform would help those English devils get through Paris faster and with fewer problems.
Even worse: if he got out of this mess and escaped his bonds, he still could not go to his squad and marshal their help.
He would be a laughingstock. The fools under his command would laugh and spit in his face.
He would quite probably lose his commission.
And he might even face the guillotine for dereliction of duty.
He could lie, say that the English spies knocked him out and stripped him –
But if the whore and her pimp were caught, the true story would out.
Even if they were not caught, that still left that rat Guillat. The sergeant had known exactly what Villars was planning to do with the tramp. Guillat despised Villars so much that he would not be shy in letting their superiors know his suspicions.
He, Gerard Villars, was ruined.
No! he screamed inwardly. No, not like this! I will not lose, not like this!
He began to scream furiously against the gag, strain against his bonds, and basically rock back and forth in his chair, causing it to clatter on the hardwood floor. His rage knew no bounds as he strained and screamed impotently, banging the chair back and forth, back and forth –
The door opened, and a woman’s voice whispered, “Madame, I did not know that you were still – ”
Villars whipped his head over to look.
The maid was standing at the door, her eyes wide, her hand on the handle.
“Mmmmrmph!” Villars shouted from under his gag, and pointed at her savagely with his finger – tied though the hand was to the chair.
She stayed there, frozen like a statue made of ice.
“MMMRM!” he shouted again as he fixed her with a glare that would have frightened the very devils of hell. He twisted his arm so that his palm faced up, then curled up one finger and beckoned to her.
She walked towards him as though she were a sleepwalker caught in a horrifying nightmare.
As she approached, she looked at his lap and averted her eyes, cringing.
“Mrrm!” Villars shouted, and pointed at his mouth.
She gingerly untied the gag, whimpering as she did it. She kept as much distance between their bodies as possible, as though she were being forced to touch a corpse ravaged by the plague.
Finally the gag was off.
“Untie me, Citoyenne – untie me now,” he commanded in a low, harsh voice.
Her fingers began to scramble at the knots around his right wrist. She began to cry. “I am so sorry, sir… I did not know… please, you must believe me…”
“UNTIE ME!” Villars roared. “Or by God I swear I will not rest until I see your head in the guillotine!”
She finished the right hand, and he pulled it away and began on his left. “My feet! Untie my feet!”
Within minutes he was free.
He touched the scrap of cloth tied around his pounding head. When he pulled his fingers away, they were dotted slightly with blood.
He realized either Marian or Blake must have bound his wound.
In his indignation and hatred, he despised them all the more because of it.
Villars hurriedly dressed in the Englishman’s discarded clothes.
They have been gone no longer than ten minutes – it will take them at least two hours to get to the Invalides if they are being cautious, maybe three – they have the head start, but I
can catch them! I might even be able to beat them to the wall!
Once fully clothed, he whirled on the weeping maid.
“No word of this to anyone, do you hear me?” he barked. “Or I swear, I will come back and kill you with my bare hands. Do you hear me?”
She nodded, bawling, and sank to her knees on the floor.
Then he was gone.
79
Villars ran through the streets, using back alleys where he could.
He knew the patrols and the paths they took. At least he had that advantage over the English dogs.
And he had surprise in his favor. They did not know he was coming. That was something, at least.
But he had no weapon.
However, he knew where to get one.
His head felt like a metal spike was running through it now, but his rage dwarfed his pain and spurred him onwards.
Within thirty minutes he was at the Tuileries, which still smoldered from the fires earlier in the day. He had to be careful of the few troops patrolling the boundaries of the gardens, but he was able to sneak in close enough.
The corpses of dead Swiss Guards littered the ground outside the Palace. Most had already been picked clean of valuable items – shoes, money, weapons – but there were hundreds of bodies. Surely not every single one had been looted.
He spent ten minutes searching the piles of corpses, which had begun to smell dreadfully in the August heat, until he found what he was looking for.
A sword in its sheath, still attached to the belt of its dead owner.
Villars rolled the bodies away, withdrew the sword, and then ran as fast as he could for the Royal Bridge over the Seine River.
80
Evan and Marian reached the gap in the wall almost four hours after they had left her apartment. In that time they had encountered several soldiers – but the men merely saluted. Evan would say, “Vive la Nation!”, he and Marian would walk past as though he were escorting her to jail, and that was that.
Otherwise they kept to the shadows as best they could, being doubly cautious to evade any patrols.
When they reached the gap in the wall, their energy redoubled. Evan cupped his hands as a foothold and boosted her up. When she was safely atop the break, he handed up the cloth bundle containing their bread and bottles of water.
“Be careful when you land, you mustn’t twist your ankle – we have a long way to go,” he warned.
“Yes, Papa,” she said sarcastically.
“I’m just – ”
“You forget I was crawling in and out of windows on account of you not two years ago.”
“Well, now you can add the wall around Paris to that list.”
She smiled down at him, then dangled over the other side and disappeared.
There was a tiny cry on the other side of the wall.
“Marian?” Evan whispered.
No answer.
“Marian, are you all right?” Evan asked, beginning to worry. “This is no time to joke!”
No answer.
He stepped up into the breach and stood atop the gap.
What he saw stopped his heart.
There was a small clearing on the other side of the wall before the woods took over.
In that clearing stood Marian, her face terrified, her cloth bundle dangling from one hand.
Behind her stood a man who held Marian in front of him like a shield, his sword at her throat.
Villars.
He was dressed in the clothes Evan had left at the apartment. His head was still bandaged with the bloody scrap of curtain Evan had tied there earlier.
“Throw down your gun, Englishman,” Villars commanded.
Villars had been carrying a pistol when he undressed at the apartment. Evan tossed it into the clearing, where it thudded in the grass.
“The other gun, too, or whatever it was you used to assault me.”
“I used a candlestick.”
Villars pressed his sword tighter against Marian’s throat. She gasped with fear.
“I urge you not to lie to me, Englishman. For the woman’s sake.”
Evan reached into the belt and drew out the dueling pistol, then tossed it into the grass.
“Now the sword.”
As Evan unbuckled the belt, his mind raced.
The only chance Evan had was to provoke Villars into a duel. In a fair fight, Evan had a chance. Without that, both he and Marian were lost.
Otherwise Villars would certainly slaughter him, that much was certain. What he might do to Marian afterwards caused Evan to shudder.
In fact, given that they had knocked him out and stolen his uniform from him – a humiliating slight, which no doubt was the reason Villars had come alone, with no other soldiers – Villars would murder them both, just to keep the secret safe.
Evan paused.
That was it. That was his and Marian’s only chance.
Villars was afraid of humiliation most of all. He had been humiliated once. The key was to use his trampled honor to goad him into a fight.
“What’s the plan here, Lieutenant?” Evan asked. “To attack an unarmed man and cut him down?”
Villars pressed the sword even tighter against Marian’s neck. She whimpered.
“The sword, Englishman,” Villars smiled.
Evan tossed the sheathed weapon to the grass.
But he was not thinking of losing his weapon. He was thinking of what he should say next.
Evan had been goaded into duels in his youth, and had goaded others into duels as well. It was fairly easy to do to a man whose self-regard outstripped his brains.
Which Marian, no doubt, would say meant all men.
Villars was also a brute who thought himself superior to everyone else. With such men, their pride was usually their weakest spot. And Villars’ had been critically wounded.
Not to mention, Villars was French. Evan was English. There was antagonism there to spare.
Also, Evan was a nobleman. Villars was most probably a commoner, well-educated though he may be. Villars loved the Revolution so much because it allowed him to lord over those who had previously lorded over him. And to abuse them, even murder them, when the opportunity arose.
Above all, Villars hated men like Evan, and could not stand to be insulted by them.
Over the past few months, no French noble (other than perhaps the King himself) would have dared insult Villars. It would have meant almost certain death. If not that day, then at some point in the future when Villars held the upper hand.
Evan, however, was not a Frenchman.
He was facing almost certain death no matter what he did.
And the day of reckoning was right here, right now.
“Come down from the wall,” Villars said.
“I knew you were no real man from the moment I laid eyes on you,” Evan said contemptuously.
Villars stiffened.
Evan jumped from the wall into the grass in a showy display, like a circus performer flouting his physical prowess. He stood up straight and stared into Villars’ eyes.
“And you have proved it – hiding behind a girl. Taking a hostage. Challenging an unarmed man. Your honor, whatever little you have left, is worth less than the dirt on the soles of my boots.”
Marian looked terrified. Her eyes begged Evan to stop.
Villars’ face was a cold mask of rage. However, he did not use the sword at Marian’s throat as leverage again. Instead he sneered, “Harsh words from a man who assaulted an unarmed, naked man – ”
“Yes, a naked man with a rather small dagger,” Evan smirked, as he dropped his gaze just below Villars’ waist.
The lieutenant flushed an angry, scarlet red.
“Who came with twenty armed guards to arrest me,” Evan continued. “You French were always cowards, and you prove it again here, you low-born dog. The Revolution has its pick of mongrels to fill their ranks, don’t they? All you have to do is dress up a pig, scrub the merde off its ass, teach it to salute,
and voilà… Lt. Villars, foremost coward of the Revolution.”
Without warning, Villars flung Marian violently to the ground. She cried out as she sprawled in the grass, her bundle clattering a few feet away from her.
Evan tensed, waiting for Villars to charge him – but the Frenchman stood where he was.
“Pick up your sword, you English bastard, and I will show you who is a coward,” Villars snarled. “And while you’re at it, take off my jacket.”
Evan frowned. “Why?”
“So when I run you through, I don’t get any of your blood on it.”
Evan slowly stooped to grab the sword, never taking his eyes off the lieutenant, afraid that Villars might change his mind. Only when he had the sword in hand did he begin to remove the jacket. He had just barely taken it off when Villars apparently decided he was tired of waiting.
The Frenchman rushed forward and thrust his sword right at Evan’s chest.
Evan parried and stepped aside, then threw the jacket in Villars’ face as he came about.
The Frenchman sputtered, flung the jacket to the ground, and then began to circle.
Evan had practiced sword fighting since he was ten years old. He had fought over a dozen actual duels that had ended in bloodshed, serious injury, even accidental death.
But all of that was a distant memory, childish play-fighting in well-lit corridors and mist-shrouded meadows.
For the first time ever, Evan was fighting furiously for his life.
Feint, advance, attack, parry, riposte. Their swords clanged together and flashed in the moonlight.
Villars was good – quite good. And Evan’s swordplay had suffered during his drunken year of solitude.
But the terror coursing through his veins brought it all back.
Villars lunged.
Evan slapped away the blade and riposted.
Villars parried.
Evan stumbled.
Villars rushed in and was clumsy in his effort to exploit his foe’s momentary weakness.
Evan recovered, whirled around, and slashed the blade as he went.
Villars cried out as the steel cut his arm. He grasped his shoulder – and in that instant, Evan knew he had him.
