“God grant you are right, Captain,” Richard said.
“And it could be,” Jones said, “that your victory at sea might actually help keep whatever ransoms we have to pay at a reasonable level. The last thing bin Osman wants is other nations following your example. I’m betting he’ll want to conclude the negotiations as quickly as possible and get on with business.”
When neither of them seemed to have anything further to add to the subject, Richard steered the conversation back to Paris. “You said there was something you wanted to tell me about the Bastille, Captain?”
“Yes, I did.” Jones did not look at Richard as he answered. He stared instead at the wall directly across from him, as though deep in thought. At length he placed his hands resolutely on the armrests of his chair. “Help me up, would you? I get cramps when I sit for too long and I need to stretch my legs. Let’s walk over to that window and see what’s outside, shall we?”
Richard rose from his chair and put a hand under his former commander’s elbow. Jones rose slowly to his feet. After taking several tentative steps, he began walking with more assurance toward an open window at the far end of the room. On the way there, Richard happened to glance into the kitchen. Carlotta was standing at the opposite end of a table littered with white flour and other ingredients, a bread board, and some bread pans. When he looked in at her, she quickly dropped her gaze and went back to kneading a lump of dough.
Outside, the mist and fog had cleared, and the breeze wafting in through the open window was fresher, less humid. Across the street they could see a four-story building capped with a blue slate roof. At its base, huddled in a heap against the dirty brick wall, was a woman dressed in coarse gray cloth. She was nursing a baby while an older child, a boy, judging by the narrow-brimmed hat he was wearing, rested his head on her knee. Approaching them was a young woman clearly of the upper class riding piggy-back on a man bent over by her weight.
Jones followed Richard’s gaze. “He’s a gutter-leaper,” he explained, and they watched as the man paused in the middle of the street, balancing himself before jumping over a two-foot-wide channel running freely with human and animal waste mixed with rainwater. “Charming profession, isn’t it? I wouldn’t mind having a go at it myself, were all my passengers as buxom as that one.”
Richard grinned at the mental image.
When the young woman was deposited on the other side of the street, near where the woman was feeding her baby, she deposited a coin in the gutter-leaper’s hand. “Chivalry lives on,” Jones commented wryly, “at a price.” His tone then turned deadly serious, as did the look he gave Richard.
“What exactly do you know about what happened at the Bastille?”
Richard shrugged. “Not a lot. A thousand people marched there and demanded that the royal garrison surrender. They were armed with muskets and cannon taken from an army arsenal. Les Invalides, as I recall. Their goal, they claimed, was to free the prisoners. But according to General Lafayette, what they really wanted was to destroy this symbol of feudal authority and seize the powder stored inside.”
“Lafayette is correct. Go on.”
“At first, the governor of the Bastille refused to surrender. He ordered his troops to fire on the crowd. Some people were killed. He sent word to the mob that he would personally blow up the Bastille if they didn’t disperse. Since something close to twenty thousand pounds of gunpowder was stored inside, that was no small threat.”
“That’s not exactly how it happened. Yes, the governor did order his men to fire, but into the air, over the heads of the mob. He wanted to scare them, to bring them to their senses. And yes, the governor did threaten to blow up the Bastille, but only if the leaders of the mob refused to accept his terms of surrender—which basically were to allow his garrison to leave the prison unharmed. He was simply trying to defuse the situation, to avoid further bloodshed on both sides and guarantee the safety of his soldiers. He realized he couldn’t defend the Bastille with a hundred aging veterans and a few Swiss guards dispatched from Versailles. He lost all hope when three hundred Gardes Françaises defected from the regular army and marched into Paris to join the ranks of the mob. But the governor had his honor to consider.”
“What happened next?” Richard asked, caught up in the telling and seeing no point in recounting events that Jones obviously knew far better than he.
“When a leader of the mob—a man named Aubriot—refused the governor’s terms, the mob stormed into the outer courtyard, which was undefended, and cut the chains on the drawbridge leading into the inner yard. When they did that, the garrison opened fire. Many people were killed, which only served to inflame the mob further. They stormed inside in ever greater numbers until the governor finally was forced to surrender. When he did, he and his officers were seized and dragged off to the place de Grève, a spot where traitors and criminals have traditionally been executed. He was defiant to the end. He was even able to free himself long enough to kick one of his captors in the balls and spit in Aubriot’s face. The mob pounced on him like a pack of dogs after that. They tore at his body and cut into his neck with a dull knife. As the lifeblood flowed out of him, he managed to gurgle out ‘Vive le roi!’ before he died. They cut off his head, impaled it on a pike, and paraded it through the city streets followed by rioters shouting, ‘Death to all aristocrats!’”
Jefferson had briefly mentioned this horrific incident to Richard, but not in such detail. Richard understood why. Such savagery and butchery might have been part of the ancient world—perhaps even of the modern world in places like Algeria or Damascus or Bombay—but never would one expect to witness such acts of brutality in a city as civilized and enlightened and universally beloved as Paris. Perplexed nonetheless as to why Jones was telling him all this, Richard waited for him to continue.
“The governor died a brave and honorable man, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would,” Richard said.
“Has anyone told you his name?”
“I recall General Lafayette mentioning his name, but I don’t remember it.”
“His name was Bernard-René de Launay. He was a marquis from one of the oldest and most respected families in France.”
Richard sensed they had arrived at the crux of the matter. “Yes? And so?”
“You’ve never met him. But you know his wife.”
“His wife? How can that possibly be, Captain?”
“You met her when we were together in Passy, during the war. You two grew quite fond of one another. Her name at the time was Anne-Marie Helvétian.”
Richard’s jaw dropped. “Anne-Marie? De Launay’s wife? Dear God no! It can’t be true, Captain!” Even as he spoke he realized that it was true.
Jones made a hand gesture: keep your voice down.
“I thought you said we could trust her,” Richard whispered bitterly.
“That is not what I said. What I said was, no one trusts anyone in Paris these days.”
Richard’s hand went to where the old wound throbbed high on his forehead. He shook his head, trying to clear it. He felt an overpowering urge to sit down. And so he did. “Where is Anne-Marie now?”
“She lives at 22, rue Saint-Antoine. It’s not far from the Bastille.”
“Does she live alone?”
“She lives with her two young daughters. And with Gertrud.”
“Gertrud is still with her?” Richard inquired, asking the obvious. Gertrud was a sturdy Swiss-born woman of German descent whom the Helvétian family had hired as a nursemaid shortly before Anne-Marie was born. She had remained with the family after Anne-Marie had reached maturity because she was devoted to her mistress. When he was in Passy with Captain Jones, Richard had been frequently in her presence, though she lived at that time in a small cottage separate from the château. He had never known her last name. She was, and presumably always would be, simply “Gertrud,” a woman of substance, no nonsense, and severe loyalties who had regarded Richard’s intentions toward her charge with
extreme skepticism until near the end of his stay in Passy, when she finally warmed to him a little.
“Yes. She is all that is left of the family’s many servants and attendants. She stays because of her love for Anne-Marie. She has become a surrogate mother now that Anne-Marie’s real mother is dead.”
“Why did Anne-Marie’s other servants leave?”
“They were frightened, scared of being associated with her. Anne-Marie understood. She did not try to stop them. She gave each of them a substantial amount of money before they left. Many wept as they went out the door.”
“I see.” Richard willed himself to stay calm, to think, to reason this out. It proved to be no easy task. The questions were hard to put in logical order, the solutions even harder to determine. “Does Anne-Marie know I’m here?”
“Here today in my quarters? No. But here today in Paris, yes.”
“Who told her?”
“I did. She visited me several times this past year, the last time only a fortnight ago. She told me she feared her family was in danger. Bear in mind that was before the Bastille. She wanted to leave Paris—if not with her husband, at least with her two daughters—and she came to ask me for help. At the time, I was in no shape to help anybody.” As if on cue, a round of harsh coughing assailed him. Jones held his handkerchief to his mouth until the coughing stopped. “But it didn’t matter. She and I both understood that at the end of the day, she could not leave her husband. Her sense of duty and loyalty would not permit that.”
Richard used the coughing interlude to try to think things through. His business in Paris was concluded. Falcon and home beckoned. But he could not just abandon Anne-Marie to her fate. It didn’t matter whether or not she knew he was in Paris. The fact that many years had passed since he had last seen her or heard from her was also of no consequence. What did matter was what they had shared together back then. Those few unforgettable weeks had established a bond between them for life, a bond that not even love for another, and marriage and children and the passage of time, could change. He had to try to help her. He had no idea what he could do, but he had to try something. Of this he was certain: were their roles reversed and it was his life that was on the line, she would wade into the fires of hell to try to save him.
“I apologize if I spoke out of turn,” Jones said slowly. “I debated whether or not to tell you this, but I thought you ought to know. And I must confess, I have always felt rather . . . avuncular toward Anne-Marie. I love her too, in my own way.”
That brought Richard back. “You did the right thing, telling me. Please, Captain, I have kept you long enough. You should rest now. I have but one last question to ask you. How much danger is Anne-Marie in?”
Jones twisted his mouth. “As the widow of one of the most reviled nobles in France, and the mother of his two daughters, I would think that she is in grave danger.”
“Is she guarded?”
“She is closely watched, which amounts to the same thing. She can’t go anywhere without being followed. Whatever she needs, Gertrud gets. The guards leave Gertrud alone, probably because they’re afraid to confront her. I would be were I not in her good graces. Most days, Anne-Marie stays at home with her daughters. They mean everything to her. She would do anything to protect them.”
Richard gathered up his belongings. He left the written report for Jones, but as Jones had suggested, he slipped the drawings of Algiers back into his satchel to give to Jefferson to take back with him to Philadelphia.
“Where are you going?” Jones asked when Richard made ready to leave. “And what will you do?”
“I don’t know,” Richard replied. He walked over to Jones and embraced him. Jones replied in kind this time, embracing Richard in return as a father would his son. “God’s blessings on you, Captain,” Richard whispered. “I’ll come by or send word, one way or another.”
Jones looked up from his chair with pleading eyes. “Be careful, my boy. Please God, be careful.”
“That I will, sir.” Richard saluted Jones in naval fashion, then turned toward the door leading out.
IT WAS NOT UNTIL Richard had retraced his steps back across the Petit Pont and the Pont de Notre Dame that he decided on his immediate course of action. He could know nothing for certain until he had met with Anne-Marie and assessed the situation. She was a woman of considerable influence and means, he reasoned, and she was not French by birth, but Swiss. That heritage might somehow protect her. Perhaps she had already managed to escape from France. Or perhaps she and her children were not in as much danger as Captain Jones presumed.
His pace quickened as he followed the rue de Rivoli past the grand Renaissance façade of the Louvre, heading east toward the rue Saint-Antoine. Clusters of soldiers milled about, both of the regular army and of the National Guard. Increasingly as he approached the more affluent districts near the Bastille, he saw elements of what appeared to be a citizen’s militia, men and women clad in everyday dress and wearing a red stocking cap with a small tricolor rosette attached. Many carried a musket over one shoulder and a powder bag at the waist. Intermingling easily with the more traditional armed units, they formed yet another quasi-military force of uncertain loyalties and purpose in this city of confused allegiances.
As Richard approached 22, rue Saint-Antoine, a four-story affair of graceful white brick construction, his way was blocked by two of these musket-wielding militiamen.
“State your business here, citizen,” the taller of the two demanded in French. He was foul-breathed, scruffy, and unshaven, yet the coal black eyes that bored into Richard’s remained steady and uncompromising.
Richard met his gaze without faltering. “I am here to see Madame de Launay,” he replied, also in French.
“On what business?” the other militiaman demanded. Richard found the man’s officious self-importance obnoxious.
Above, on the second floor of the building, he caught a glimpse of a curtain being drawn back and a form appearing briefly at a mullioned window. It was a shadow, gone in an instant.
“I am here on a personal matter, monsieur,” he replied, forcing himself to sound respectful. “I am an American. I travel frequently to Paris on business. I made Madame de Launay’s acquaintance some years ago when I was here with Captain John Paul Jones and Dr. Benjamin Franklin during the war with England. I am staying as an official guest of the American consul and I have papers with me to prove it. Captain Jones told me where I might find Madame de Launay, and I have come to pay my respects.”
Richard gambled that the calm of his voice, reinforced by the names of Jones, Franklin, and Jefferson, would have the desired effect. He did not want to invoke, yet, the name of General Lafayette. That was a card he might have to play later. “I can assure you, citizens,” he said in brasher tones when the two militiamen stood their ground, “that you have nothing to fear from me unless you insist on detaining me further. Now, if you will please excuse me.”
As Richard stepped forward, the two Frenchmen grudgingly stepped aside.
“As you wish, monsieur,” the taller one allowed, but with a warning: “You have one hour. One hour only. We will be waiting here to make certain you do not overstay your welcome. If you do not leave by then, there will be consequences for you and for Madame.” It was as if he were granting Richard leave to visit a condemned man in a prison rather than a marchioness living in one of the more stylish residences of Paris. The other guard added with a sneer, “An hour should give you plenty of time to pay your respects, eh, monsieur? In more ways than one? Before die Fräulein returns?” He poked his companion in the ribs, and the two started laughing.
“Merci, monsieur,” Richard spat out. Hot fury welled up within him. His right hand coiled into a fist, and he had to summon all of his willpower not to swing it against the militiaman’s jaw. He used it instead to knock on the door.
His bile yielded to more tender emotions when, a moment later, the door opened, he was whisked inside, the door was bolted behind him, and Anne-
Marie was in his arms. Her embrace was not that of a lover but of a woman greeting her savior, one who had risked all to honor what the two of them had once meant to each other.
“Richard, mon plus cher,” she wept. “I knew you would come. I knew it.” She clutched him tighter, her body trembling with sobs.
“How could I not?” Richard whispered, feeling the emotion as much as she. Nevertheless, he gripped her by the shoulders and urged her gently away from him, on the pretext of wanting to look at her but in truth because the feel of her lithe body pressed against his had unsettled him.
As if in tacit understanding, she took one step backward. He put a handkerchief in her hand, and as she wiped her eyes and straightened herself he gazed upon a woman who had lost little of her allure over the years. Her hair remained thick and long, and it curled down to frame a face that even at the age of twenty-nine could still fetch an amorous glance from any man of normal persuasions, notwithstanding the marks of fear and worry etched on her brow and at the corners of her eyes. She wore an ankle-length dress of eggshell blue, finely embroidered in white at the wrists and neck, and a white shawl of light cotton across her shoulders, both garments attractively accentuating the ebony gloss of her hair and the sky blue of her eyes. Composed now, she stood before him both as the dignified aristocrat she was and as the beautiful young woman who, years ago, had so eagerly initiated him into the blissful rites of manhood.
“You look well, Richard,” she said with feeling. “You’ve changed hardly at all.”
“And you, Anne-Marie. You’re as lovely as the first day we met. And as gracious,” he added with a smile.
She gave him a weak smile in return. “You must forgive me,” she said. She dabbed a final time at her eyes with the kerchief and handed it back to Richard. “I am not in the habit of erupting in such fashion. I know perfectly well what came over me, but that is no excuse.”
For Love of Country Page 25
