by Jane Feather
“It’ll be the devil’s own job,” Marcus put in somberly. “Families not yet arrested give us a better chance of getting them out of the country. And we don’t even know where the St. Juliens are.”
Hero sipped her coffee, wrinkling her nose at its bitterness. “It seems hopeless.”
“Not quite. We have a contact in the Committee of Public Safety who has access to lists of the people condemned to execution,” William explained. “They aren’t always complete, of course, but so far, no St. Julien has appeared on any list we’ve seen, so we’re assuming they’re in one of the prisons awaiting trial.”
Hero’s spine prickled at the memory of her brief incarceration, the tumbrels, and the terrifying mob. Marie Claire was a fragile flower, sweet-natured and very pretty; it was hard to imagine how she would survive the filthy rat-ridden straw of a Parisian prison, let alone the brutality of the guards. “How do we go about finding out which prison?”
“We have sources,” Marcus explained. “A few guards in both La Force and the Conciergerie can be bribed, but it takes time. We’ve been waiting for something from them for several weeks.”
“And there are other smaller prisons around the city,” William said grimly. “It’s impossible to get information on them all.”
Hero pushed aside her coffee mug, leaving the last swallow, and dipped her finger into the apricot jam pot, licking off the sweetness to relieve the coffee’s bitter aftertaste. “So did you come to any conclusions about the situation?” She couldn’t help the slightly sardonic emphasis.
William chose to ignore it. “It’s time you put on women’s clothes,” he informed her. “Alec has gone to procure some.”
“Why?” She looked indignant. “I feel safer in this disguise on the streets.”
“Believe me, you’ll fool no one for long,” he stated.
“I’ll bind my breasts again.”
He shook his head. “It won’t do, Hero. I’ll spare Marcus the embarrassment of a detailed description of your womanly assets, but trust me, my dear, they cannot be hidden from any interested eyes. And none of us can afford to attract attention. Besides,” he added with a sudden wicked chuckle, “if you continued with your disguise, it would be necessary to cut your hair, and that would be positively criminal.”
Hero wasn’t sure how to take the last comment in present circumstances. She decided that in Marcus’s company, it was safer to ignore it. She was forced to admit, however, that while her disguise could probably pass muster in a crowded street, anything out of the ordinary would draw attention to her—a scuffle, a fall, an altercation with an unruly cart horse, all perfectly normal occurrances in the life of the streets—but if her disguise slipped in any way, it would be disastrous.
“Well, I can’t see myself being much use as a woman,” she pointed out.
“That remains to be seen.” William stood up. “For the moment, you need to stay safely in here. Marcus and I have somewhere to go.” He pulled his red cap over his head as he spoke.
“What am I supposed to do here?” Hero demanded as the two men went to the kitchen door. “Twiddle my thumbs?”
“Well, if you have a turn for kitchen duty, there’s plenty to do.” William gestured to the pile of dirty crockery on the dresser. His eyes held a gleam of teasing amusement. He could well guess how Lady Hero would greet such a suggestion.
“I thought there was a bonne femme for such work.” Hero eyed him with a degree of malevolence.
“Sometimes she comes, and sometimes she doesn’t,” he responded blithely. “Stay off the streets.” He went out, followed by Marcus.
Hero fumed for a moment or two and then got up to deal with the dirty dishes. After that, she would wash the clothes she’d been wearing earlier and hang them in the kitchen yard to dry. Whatever opinion William held about her disguise, she would still prefer to have it at hand. Such domesticity was an anodyne activity and left her mind free to wander along whatever paths it chose. Despite the grim purpose that had brought her to this house on Rue St. André des Arts, the physical excitement she felt in William’s presence was too powerful to be ignored. Just the thought of him now, as she plunged dirty mugs into a bowl of scummy, tepid water, sent shivers of anticipation along her spine and a liquid weakness to the base of her belly. She had felt like this with Tom and had desperately missed this glorious sensation of arousal. The now familiar recklessness infused her, a feeling that she had nothing to lose by indulging this lust, and that was what it was, pure and simple. Here in this dreadful place of death and horror, what could societal convention matter?
She set the clean mugs on a shelf on the dresser and wiped her hands on her britches. It wasn’t as if she had a reputation to lose. No one apart from Alec knew where she was anyway. As she had said last night, Great-aunt Emily, her companion and ostensible chaperone, thought she was visiting friends in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. The old lady wouldn’t worry for a moment about not hearing from her; indeed, knowing her great-aunt, Hero thought she would be too occupied with some new and as yet undiagnosed ailment to add to the compendium of her physical infirmities.
Hero smiled affectionately. Aunt Emily was a valetudinarian but a lovable one, and Hero was fond of her. She wouldn’t cause her a moment’s anxiety if she could help it, and her present journey had been meticulously planned to ensure that her aunt slept peacefully in her bed at night.
A half hour later, she was hanging her freshly washed britches and shirt on a makeshift washing line in the kitchen yard when the gate from the alley creaked open. Her heart raced for a moment, her hands stilling on the wet garments pinned to the line as she looked to the gate. Alec came into the yard, a bundle in his arms. He looked curiously at his sister. “Washerwoman, Hero? That’s a strange occupation for you. Are you all alone?”
“It appears I’m considered a liability on the streets,” she said tartly, turning away from the washing line. “Or so William seems to think.”
“He’s probably right,” her brother said with a careless shrug. “He usually is. See what I’ve found.” He went into the kitchen and set his bundle on the table.
Hero approached cautiously, wondering what her brother had obtained in the way of suitable female wear. He himself was dressed, as they all were, in the uniform of the sansculottes, his red cap tilted at an angle. She fingered the pile of coarse homespun. “Where did you find this?”
“Bought it all off a woman in the market in the Marais. I think it will all fit you well enough, but you don’t want to look too smart.” He laughed as he shook out a striped kirtle and holland apron. “They’re not new, of course, but clean and well darned in places.”
Hero examined the petticoat and laced bodice, which would go over her own chemise. There were no stockings, but then, most of the peasant women went bare-legged, and her wooden sabots would be fine, as would her red bonnet. “I’d better go and put them on.” She gathered up the garments and hurried upstairs to the little bedchamber. When she came down the stairs again, she could hear voices from the kitchen. It sounded as if most of the men were back, judging by the level of noise. She pushed open the door, feeling suddenly shy.
“Ah, there you are.” William turned from the dresser with a foaming ale tankard. He took in her appearance with an assessing frown before pronouncing, “That should do well enough . . . much more suitable.”
“It feels strange after all this time in britches,” she observed, smoothing down the apron. “Rather restrictive.”
“You’ll become accustomed soon enough.” He tipped his head back and drained his tankard. Hero found her eyes riveted to his sun-browned throat, the steady movement of his Adam’s apple as he drank. Everything about the man set her skin on fire. And it was beginning to be inconvenient, she decided. It was getting in the way of clear thinking.
“Let’s go and test the new Hero on the street.” William set down his empty tankar
d. “Fetch your bonnet, and we’ll go to market.”
“Market?” she exclaimed. It seemed such a mundane activity in the circumstances.
“We have to eat,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let’s see how you fare as a Parisian femme de ménage.” He unhooked a shopping basket from behind the door and, with an exaggerated bow, offered his arm. “Citoyenne, allons-y.”
There seemed no help for it. The man appeared to sweep all before him. Hero shook her head, laughing, and put her hand on his arm. “My thanks for your escort, sir.”
They went out into the street, walking briskly to the food market in the square at the bottom of the steep street. The farmers and peasants had driven their laden carts into the city from the countryside at dawn and would leave before the city gates closed at curfew, but for now, the stalls, although depleted, still had produce, and Hero found to her surprise that she was enjoying herself. The sense of threat she had lived with for so many days was no longer with her. Was it because she was not in such an extreme disguise and so had little to hide? Or was it just the reassuring presence of her companion? She was aware that he was on guard; she could feel it in the tension of his supple frame as he walked close beside her. He had his hand resting casually on the hilt of the knife in his belt, and his eyes were everywhere.
“Meat?” he suggested, pausing in front of a butcher’s stall.
“Does anyone know how to cook it?” she asked, looking in bemusement at the bloody piles of flesh. “I don’t even know what any of it is. I could recognize a chicken, but what’s the rest of it?”
“Then it had best be chicken.” He steered her in the direction of a poultry stall, where chickens clucked mournfully from baskets piled high.
“But we have to kill them.” Hero was aghast. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to kill a chicken, let alone pluck it. In her experience, chickens came to the table carved and lapped with some delicate sauce.
“If the poulterer won’t do it for us, I can wring a chicken’s neck,” William said firmly. “We can roast it on a spit over the fire.”
Tentatively, Hero asked the poulterer for three chickens. The man looked astounded and then suspicious, and she realized belatedly that peasant women did not buy chickens in bulk. One bird would have to go a long way to feed a large family. “It’s a celebration feast,” she offered hastily, reaching into the pocket of her apron for a handful of sous. “A new baby in the family.”
The man said nothing, but he still looked suspicious. “You want ’em alive?”
She shook her head hastily, and with swift efficiency, he wrung the necks of three scrawny birds, dropping the still- pulsating carcasses into her basket. To her relief, William took the basket from her as she paid the poulterer.
Hero turned away. “What now?”
“Bread, cheese, vegetables,” her companion said in an undertone. “Try to remember the revolution started in the first place because people were starving and there was no flour for bread, let alone meat for the asking.”
“I know,” she said in the same undertone, flushing a little, shocked at how easy it was to make a mistake. “But I’ve only ever shopped for hats and dress material before.”
“Just keep your wits about you.”
Hero watched her fellow housewives and copied them, poking and prodding vegetables, sniffing at cheeses, selecting carefully but frugally. Nevertheless, the old, familiar feeling of menace was back with her despite William’s presence. There were so many pitfalls just trying to pass unnoticed through the crowds, even though her peasant dress was indistinguishable.
She was moving away from the back of a cart from which a woman with thick forearms and reddened hands was selling loaves of day-old bread when she felt it. Her scalp crawled as if an army of lice were nesting, and the hairs on her nape lifted.
William was a few paces behind her as her step faltered and her eyes slid sideways. Her breath caught in her throat. William moved up beside her, not looking at her as he said under his breath, “What?”
“Over there, in the doorway of that cobbler. The eyebrow.”
William glanced once and said swiftly, “Take this.” He gave her the basket. “Now, walk through the market and take one of the side streets, any one. If you think you’re being followed, do not go back to the house. Lose him if you can; otherwise, just come back here.”
“And do what?” Her heart was battering against her ribcage.
“Just wait. Do you understand?”
Mutely, Hero nodded and continued to stroll through the stalls, her eyes on a steep and narrow lane, more an alley than a street, that led out of the square and ran parallel with Rue St. André des Arts. Every inch of her skin seemed sensitized, but she didn’t dare stop to look behind her to see if she was being followed. On impulse, she moved sideways back into the melee of stalls and carts, pausing casually to examine a mound of cabbages. She glanced quickly behind her. The man with the eyebrow was nowhere to be seen.
“Fine cabbage, citoyenne.” The seller held out a head for her inspection.
She shook her head with an assumption of regret. “Non, merci, citoyen.”
He shrugged with resignation, and Hero moved on, glancing once more behind her. She couldn’t see the man with the eyebrow and moved with more resolution to the steep side street. It was quieter there, and if she was being followed, she’d have a better chance of seeing her pursuer. She toiled up the hill, changing the heavy basket from hand to hand. It gave her the perfect excuse to pause now and again, glance casually behind her, and listen closely for steps, a change in step, a pause, anything that would indicate a pursuer. But she could detect nothing.
Halfway up, she took a side alley that would connect with Rue St. André des Arts. It was dark and narrow, overshadowed on both sides by shabby houses. Her heart was pounding again, her breath coming fast as she strained to hear, to sense if anyone was behind her. She knew she could not betray the house, however inadvertently. But she could detect nothing as she emerged onto her own street.
She set her basket down, pressed her hands into the small of her back, and stretched as if weary of the steep climb. No one paused to give her a second glance; no one appeared from the side street, which remained silent and shadowed. Dare she risk it?
Hero picked up her basket and crossed the street. She could access the back of the house by the passageway between two of the houses. It was little more than a corridor, stinking of ordure from the kennel that ran through it, and she had to pick her way over the slimy cobbles. But here she could be confident that no one was behind her. The gate leading into the backyard of number 7 stood slightly ajar, its hinges loose, the latch broken, just like its fellows. She walked to the end of the passage, then turned and walked back. There was no one in sight, and she had no sense of eyes upon her. She listened and could hear no footsteps, just the sound of iron wheels on the cobbled street at the end of the alley, the sharp yelp of a dog from somewhere, a child crying. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. She was alone.
Swiftly, she pushed open the gate, catching her breath as the hinges squeaked. She paused again, listening, peering over her shoulder. Nothing. She slipped sideways through the gate into the bedraggled kitchen yard, glancing up at the very top floor of the house, wondering if the old man in his garret was watching the gate. The wooden shutters were open, and she thought she caught a shadow of movement across the window. But William had said the old man was safe enough, so what did it matter if he had seen her?
She tried to walk slowly to the kitchen door, to look as if she was just an ordinary housewife with a heavy shopping basket. She lifted the latch on the door and pushed it open, stepping into the kitchen with a warm rush of relief at the familiar room and the circle of faces turned as one towards her.
SEVEN
Sometime after Hero let herself into the yard of number 7 Rue St. André des Arts, Viscount St. Aubery strolled, hands i
n the deep pockets of his loose britches, down Rue du Bac. He stopped outside a wine shop, glanced casually up and down the street, and then pushed through the door into the dark, noisy interior, where customers crowded the shelf that served as a bar while the owner filled leather flagons from the wine barrels piled against the wall behind him.
“Bernard.” William nodded at the man, elbowing his way to the front.
“Citoyen.” The owner set a tankard in front of his new customer with a nod of acknowledgment. William raised it in a toast and drank, smiled his appreciation as he turned with his back to the counter, and surveyed the men and women gathered around the small space. After a moment, he pushed himself away from the counter and threaded through the crowd of drinkers to a shadowy corner, where a man sat alone at an upturned wine barrel, hunched over a tankard of rich ruby-red wine.
William gestured with his head to the empty stool on the other side of the wine barrel and, receiving a wordless nod in exchange, straddled the stool, setting his own tankard on the barrel. His companion at the barrel was dressed in serviceable leather britches and jerkin, a pair of fine leather boots on his feet and a sword at his waist. He was clearly a more substantial citizen than his fellows in the wine shop, who all wore the standard uniform of the sansculottes.
“So, Armand?” William inquired softly.
“So, Guillaume . . . the St. Juliens,” the other responded in the same undertone. “The parents went to the guillotine this morning.”
William drank from his tankard, only his narrowed eyes showing he had heard his companion. “The daughter?”
“Marked for execution with tomorrow afternoon’s cull in Place de la Révolution. She’s held in the Conciergerie.”
William nodded, drained his tankard, and stood up. “My thanks, Armand.” His hand rested for a moment on the makeshift tabletop, then lifted. Armand’s hand slid swiftly across and then disappeared into his lap. William turned and walked out of the wine shop, his expression somber even as his mind worked swiftly, selecting and discarding possible plans for effecting the escape of Alec’s fiancée from the very steps of the guillotine.
