by Jane Feather
“Where’s William?” Marcus asked, looking over Hero’s shoulder as she stepped into the kitchen.
“I don’t know, exactly.” Hero closed the door behind her and set her basket on the table with a sigh of relief. “We were in the market in the Place St. André, and I think I saw the eyebrow . . . the Lizard. William told me to come back, making sure I wasn’t followed, and—”
“And you weren’t?” Stephen interrupted sharply.
Hero shook her head. “I’m as sure as I can be that no one saw me come here. I don’t know where William went.”
The men in the kitchen exchanged grim looks. “If the Lizard’s onto us, we’ll have to close down and move on,” Marcus said after a moment.
“But how could he be?” someone asked, then added, “Unless he’s been following Hero.”
Hero began to feel uncomfortable, as if she were somehow being held responsible. “He can’t have followed me from Calais,” she protested. “I’ve only been in Paris for three days.”
“When you were arrested, did they question you?”
“No. I was at the St. Juliens’ house in Rue St. Honoré. The mob was tearing it apart. A fight simply exploded around me, and I got caught up in it somehow, and the mob just carried me along with it until soldiers—or whatever they were, guards of some kind—appeared at the end of a street, and there was a skirmish, and everyone disappeared. I was trying to help a man who’d been injured, and the guards grabbed me, and the next thing I knew, they were throwing me through the door to the cell in La Force where I met William.” She looked around the circle of eyes fixed upon her. “They didn’t even ask who I was.”
“The Lizard has his tentacles reaching into every prison, guard post, and gatehouse in the city,” Alec said. “It could as easily have been any one of us who caught his attention. Even William.”
“True enough,” Marcus agreed. He stood up to examine the contents of Hero’s shopping basket. “Who’s good at plucking chickens? We may as well get on with dinner while we’re waiting for William to get back.”
The awkwardness passed, and Hero relaxed again, discarding her shawl and bonnet. She finished unpacking the basket while Stephen took the birds into the yard to pluck and dress them. They were roasting on the spit over the fire when William finally came in.
“Something smells good.” He sniffed hungrily.
“Where have you been?” Hero asked.
“Following our friend,” he responded. “You’re sure no one followed you?”
“As sure as I can be.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. I kept the Lizard in sight for a good while after you’d left, so it was only a question of whether he had any cohorts.” He poured himself a goblet of wine from the flagon on the dresser. “We’re safe for the moment, I think, but the dogs are getting too close for comfort. We’ll need to make a move soon.”
“But what of Marie Claire and her family?” Alec asked, unable to conceal his anxiety.
“I had a meeting with Armand just now.” William glanced at Hero, explaining. “Armand is one of our paid informants in the Committee of Public Safety. We have a rendezvous point if he has any information for us. He was there this afternoon.” He turned back to Alec, regarding him with a degree of compassion. “The Marquis and his wife went to the guillotine this morning . . . I’m sorry, Alec.”
Alec had paled, but his expression remained resolute. “And Marie Claire?” There was not a tremor in his voice.
“Marked for execution at Révolution tomorrow afternoon, which gives us little enough time, but we’re lucky to have any.” William gave him a reassuring smile. “Gather round, children, and I will tell you my plan.” He swung a leg over the bench at the table and cut himself a hunk of cheese.
The noise was the worst of it. The girl barely noticed the chafing of the rough rope at her wrists, the stench of the crowds, the blur of faces filled with hatred and menace surrounding her, but the noise was unendurable. It seemed a million voices were raised in a baying cacophony emerging from the sea of open mouths clamoring at the sides of the wooden cart, where she stood desperately trying to keep her feet as it swayed over the cobbles, swung wildly from side to side as the crowd leapt against the tumbrel, hanging on to the railing, hurling abuse, fists and staves raised in a wild fury.
Marie Claire St. Julien closed her eyes as if blindness would offer her some protection from the violence around her, but she could not block out the noise. And then something, some sound, seemed to separate itself from the pandemonium surrounding her.
“Marie Claire . . . Marie Claire.”
The sound was insistent, low and yet penetrating. The girl opened her eyes, looked around, trying to see past the ugly, vicious faces, and she caught the vivid green stare fixed upon her as if it could bore into her skull. She knew the face, knew those eyes, the heart-shaped face. But her brain would not accept what her eyes were seeing.
“Maire Claire.” Again, that insistent voice, demanding her attention.
“Marie Claire, it’s me. Hero. Listen to me.” A hand came out, reaching for Marie Claire’s arm as she swayed close to the edge of the cart when it bounced over the cobbles. “Get near the back so that you’ll be the last off. Now.” And then the face disappeared as a woman waving a cudgel pushed Hero aside and she lost her grip on the rail, half jumping, half falling back into the crowd, only just managing to keep her feet.
Marie Claire looked wildly around, returning finally to her senses, feeling herself alive again in the midst of this horror. Hero jumped up against the cart again, waving her hand. “Move to the back.”
It was hard to move in the violently swaying cart, her hands bound behind her, but somehow she managed to inch through her fellow victims, squeezing her way to the rear of the tumbrel as they lurched from side to side. Now she could hear the screaming of the crowd from Place de la Révolution, and the smell of blood was strong in the air. She thought she would be sick, but then Hero’s face appeared at the rear of the cart, just for a moment, but it was long enough to keep Marie Claire conscious of her surroundings.
The cart halted suddenly, sending its occupants tumbling backwards against one another. The vehicle was one of a line stretching across the Place to the stark silhouette of the guillotine against the reddening sky of late afternoon. For a moment, Marie Claire’s eyes were mesmerized by the blade as it fell, seemingly so very slowly, from the sky amidst the roar of the crowd. Then the cart lurched forward once again as it moved up to take the place of the one in front. For an excruciating ten minutes, the cart moved forward as the ones in front disgorged their victims at the steps of the guillotine. And Hero kept pace, her face popping up whenever Marie Claire thought she must have dreamt her.
And then came the moment when the gate at the rear of the tumbrel in front was lowered and the victims were hauled out to the square, instantly surrounded by men with pikes, who pushed back the crowd seething forward to hiss and spit as the condemned were prodded towards the blade, which had never paused in its relentless rise and fall.
Marie Claire pressed back against the rear of the tumbrel as it lurched forward to the place immediately in front of the steps. The gate was lowered. She saw Hero’s face once more, at the opened rear of the tumbrel, as she stumbled forward in the midst of her fellow passengers, unable to halt her progress, pushed and pulled as she was by filthy hands. She half fell out of the cart and, even as she seemed to lose her footing, felt hands grab her, push her down under the waving arms of the crowd. She was being pulled along, so fast she could hardly keep her feet on the ground, desperately trying to keep her balance with her bound hands, her eyes fixed on the cobbles beneath her feet, confusion and terror engulfing her, making her faint with dizziness. But the hands that held her were strong, and amazingly, she could hear the thud of the blade and the roar of the crowd receding. Her head seemed to spin, and the world around her faded into blackness.
“Marie Claire, sweetheart . . . sweetheart, it’s all right. You’re safe now. I’m here.” A remembered voice penetrated the dark, and she swam upwards to awareness again.
Alec was kneeling on the ground, holding her up against his shoulder. Someone else was cutting through the rope that bound her wrists. Marie Claire leaned sideways suddenly and vomited into the kennel. Alec thrust his kerchief into her hand, and she lay back helplessly against his shoulder, wiping her mouth, her gaze slowly taking in the faces looking down at her.
“Hero?” she managed to say. “I saw Hero.”
“Yes, you did,” a man said briskly. He was standing over her, a tall figure exuding a power and strength that seemed to enfold her. He was dressed in rough peasant garb, a red cap on his dark head, but he spoke English, and while his tone was almost brusque, there was compassion in his tawny gold eyes. “And you’ll see her again. But for the moment, we have to get off the street. Can you walk?”
Marie Claire nodded, turning her own blue eyes up to Alec, who still leaned over her, supporting her. “I can walk,” she said, with more strength now, seeing the instant relief in Alec’s intense gaze. He half lifted her to her feet, and she swayed for just a moment, then straightened. “I can walk,” she repeated, shaking the numbness out of her freed hands.
The man who had cut through the rope gave her a reassuring smile as he slipped his knife into the sheath at his belt. “I’ll leave you here, then,” he said. “The fewer we are, the less conspicous.” He raised a hand in farewell and loped off back in the direction of Révolution.
“Come, then.” William gestured down the narrow alley in which they stood. “We’ll cut back and then cross the river on the Pont Neuf.” He set off ahead of Alec and Marie Claire.
“Who is he, Alec?” Marie Claire whispered, still dazed and yet conscious of a miraculous sense of safety.
“Just call him William, or Guillaume if we are in French company,” Alec said. “I’ll explain everything once we’re off the street.”
Hero was still in the Place, surrounded by the screaming horde. She closed her mind to the scene and focused. She had never felt so completely alone before. Marie Claire was safely away with William, Marcus, and Alec. She had to make her own way back to the house. It was what they had agreed upon. The fewer they were, the less likely they would draw attention to themselves. And even though she had agreed to it, she still felt vulnerable and very lonely, despite the mass of humanity pressing around her.
She moved casually away from the guillotine, slithering through the throng all gazing upwards at the rise and fall of the blade. It seemed unbelievable, but William had been right. In the chaos, amidst the stumbling prisoners, their pike-thrusting guards, and the screaming, vengeful crowd, it had been possible to extract Marie Claire as she half fell from the cart with her fellow victims. Her rescuers had been waiting at the cart’s tail when the gate was opened, and Alec had caught his fiancée at the moment she took a step forward. The three men had bundled her against them, drawing her beneath the outflung arms of the crowd and away from the cart, and for the moment, at least, it seemed that no one had actually noticed one of the prisoners was missing.
Would they bother to count the heads in the piled baskets at the end of the day’s murders? Would they notice the absence of one young woman’s head? The St. Juliens were an old and wealthy aristocratic family, but they had never been active in political life or even particularly prominent frequenters of the court at Versailles. Marie Claire would not be well known to the crowd. She would just have been one of the many heads that fell that afternoon—young, pretty, and worthy of death simply because of her name.
Hero reached the riverbank and stopped, breathless, as the fear-fueled energy that had brought her out of Place de la Révolution ebbed, leaving her feeling weak and shaky. She leaned against the low parapet, looking down at the river below, where the great shadow of the Conciergerie on the opposite bank rippled and wavered in the swift current. William had told her not to cross directly into Place St. Michel as she would normally have done but to make her way along the river and cross the ancient rickety wooden bridge at the great cathedral of Notre Dame. And, as always, to be absolutely certain she was not followed.
After a moment, she turned and stood with her back against the parapet, looking around her with what she hoped was a convincing air of indifference. There were people around, vendors pushing wheeled barrows reeking of fish leftover from the markets and the rotting leaves of vegetables too old to find customers. Voices spilled into the lanes from the open doors of wine shops. Soon enough, they would be packed to the rafters with the crowd from Place de la Révolution, their thirst for blood slaked, their throats hoarse from screaming, and their thirst for wine piqued by the afternoon’s spectacle. She needed to get well away from the area before they started streaming out of the square.
She could see no one watching her; indeed, no one seemed to be aware of her as she stood there. She was an unremarkable figure. Feeling stronger and more confident, Hero turned to walk left along the riverbank under the lime trees.
A tall, thin man, his red cap pulled low over his forehead, stood leaning idly in a doorway, watching the woman move away down the river. There was something about her that didn’t seem quite right, something that set her apart from the other women in similar garb scurrying around the streets. He had been trained to look for the different, the not quite right, and he set off after the woman, his stride lengthening as she quickened her pace. Her back was too straight, her head held too high. She moved with all the pride and confidence of an aristocrat.
EIGHT
Marie Claire was flagging as her escorts supported her stumbling steps through the narrow streets. She seemed to be moving through thick sludge, each footstep a gigantic effort despite the strong arms on either side. She found it hard to breathe after the weeks of incarceration in the filthy dungeons of the Conciergerie, where the air had been damp and pestilential and the moans and groans of her despairing fellow prisoners were never silent.
With a muttered curse, Alec bent and lifted her in his arms. She was incredibly light, even for someone who had always been small and fragile—in appearance, at least. But now she seemed almost weightless, and it frightened him. He started at a half run down the street, heedless now of drawing attention to themselves, his one thought to get his beloved into the warmth and safety of the house.
William frowned but followed, quickening his own pace even as his eyes darted from side to side, looking always for a watcher. “Go around the back,” he instructed as they approached the house. “I’ll make sure all’s clear here.”
Alec turned into the narrow passage alongside the house, carrying Marie Claire easily. He edged the gate open with his elbow and stepped into the yard, pushing the gate shut with the heel of his boot. The sun had gone down, and a chill was creeping into the evening air as the evening star rose bright against the darkening sky. Marie Claire shivered in his arms, and he cursed again, hugging her tightly against his chest. “Just a few minutes, and you’ll be in the warm, sweetheart.” Lamplight showed through the unshuttered window alongside the door. He kicked at the latter, and it was opened almost instantly, a circle of anxious faces turned towards him as he stepped inside with his burden.
William waited on the street until he was certain no one was paying him or the house any attention before rapping on the shutter in the familiar pattern. The door opened, and he stepped quickly inside, demanding over his shoulder as he strode to the kitchen, “Is Marcus back yet?”
“Not yet,” Stephen replied. “All went well?”
“Aye. We have the girl safe, at least.” He walked into the kitchen, where Marie Claire slumped in the rocker in front of the range, Alec kneeling at her feet, chafing her icy hands.
William poured brandy into a glass and brought it over to the girl. “Drink this slowly. It will warm you . . . Alec, she need
s food.”
Marie Claire shook her head. “No . . . no . . . please, I couldn’t eat, it will make me sick again.” She took a wary sip of the brandy and leaned her head back against the chair, her cheeks deathly white, her fair hair hanging in lank strands around her small face.
William merely nodded his acceptance and went to pour brandy for himself and Alec. He had just set down the flask when the kitchen door opened to admit Marcus. “All well?” William asked tersely.
“No one followed me.” Marcus helped himself to brandy and turned to look more closely at their rescued prisoner. “Poor girl,” he murmured to William. “She looks half dead.”
“Hardly surprising.” William glanced at the unshuttered window. It was almost full dark. “Where the hell is Hero? She should be back by now.”
“Maybe it took her a while to get out of the crowd,” Marcus suggested. “It was packed pretty tight.”
“Mmm.” William didn’t sound convinced. He glanced at Alec, still kneeling beside his fiancée, chafing her hands, urging her to drink the brandy. After a moment, he left the kitchen and opened the door to the street. He looked down the hill, where the darkness seemed to be climbing upwards from the river below. There was no one around, no clop of wooden clogs on the cobbles, although the sounds from the wine shops and taverns in the square at the foot of the hill were clear enough on the still air.
He frowned, tapping his fingers impatiently against his thigh. He should not have left her to make her own way. He had had his doubts, but Hero had sounded so confident, and from everything he’d seen of her, she had an instinct for looking after herself. There was nothing of the naïve ingenue about Lady Hermione Fanshawe. She had made her own way from Dover to Paris, for God’s sake. Of course, she could get herself from Place de la Révolution to the Rue St. André des Arts without mishap.
