Illumination

by Matthew Plampin

  Hannah’s body seemed horribly light, made of hay, as if the breeze alone might knock her down and send her skittering along the pavement. A bullet zipped by, smashing a shop window, reflected light flashing crazily over the cobbles as the shards fell; and she was down with Laure, wrapped tightly around her, face pressed against the cocotte’s greasy copper plait.

  How long they lay like this Hannah couldn’t say. Laure’s limbs shivered next to hers, her breaths heaving and huge; she was mumbling some kind of incantation or prayer. The vinous stench of brandy filled Hannah’s nostrils. She shifted her head a little. A rivulet of blood was running thickly beneath them, half an inch from their pantaloons, dripping into the drain.

  Eventually Champigny grew a little quieter. The fight had moved on, further up the hill. Hannah got them both to their feet and looked around. They were the only people standing upright in the entire street. Recovered from her shrieking fit, Laure set about salvaging what bread she could, filling her pockets with dirty crusts.

  The two women made their way towards the town’s upper edge, climbing through lanes littered with snapped-off rifle stocks, bent blades and bits of bloody uniform. A number of houses and shops were occupied, rifles jutting from windows and holes knocked through roofs. Runners dashed past, taking reports back from the front; several Zoaves sat slumped against a wall, hands clamped hopelessly over mortal wounds. They reached a modest square set out around a dry-stone well. Beneath a row of cherry trees, a chaplain was attempting to tend to twenty or so of the badly injured, the dying men clawing at his robes as they begged him to hear their confessions. The battlefield was close; the din of heavy gunfire was shaking streams of dust from between the stones of the buildings. Bugles sounded beyond the rooftops, followed by cheers and a howl of agony.

  ‘There’s a whole damned army out there,’ Laure said, her voice hoarse, ‘two damned armies, and all mixed up. We’ll never find them.’

  ‘We will. Stay with me.’

  Hannah was certain that she’d be able to spot Jean-Jacques. He’d be conspicuous, even in the chaos of a battlefield. She could envisage his situation clearly: he’d be throwing himself into the worst of the fighting, trying single-handedly to turn the tide. It would only be a matter of time before he caught the attention of a Prussian sharpshooter, or happened to be standing in the wrong place when a shell landed. She had to reach him as quickly as possible; she might be the only one who could convince him that the sortie had been a dreadful error and that they had to retreat to Paris.

  On the other side of the square several teams of horse artillery were preparing to move forward. The vivandières went over, intending to follow them onto the field. Just as they were leaving, however, this column came to a sudden halt, the drivers at the front shouting that they needed to reverse. Hannah looked around the rearmost gun-carriage. A great stampede of French infantry was cresting a rise, pouring back into Champigny. A few dozen of the fastest sprinted past, on towards the centre of town; and then there were thousands thronging across the cobbles, ramming the square full. They packed around buildings, startling horses, overturning cannon and trampling the wounded. Laure pulled Hannah to the well; by clambering onto it they managed to avoid being immediately swept away. Most of the men were reserves from the north, but Hannah saw significant numbers of militia, including some from the 197th. Every one of them was in a state of absolute panic.

  ‘They are here, they are here!’ somebody yelled. ‘Oh God! Oh Christ!’

  A neat line of Prussian artillery appeared on the rise, the crews rotating their firing platforms. One, a captured mitrailleuse, opened up with that grating rattle they’dbeen hearing all morning, a jet of flame stuttering before it like fat spitting from a griddle; down on the square a flailing, bloody corridor was struck through the routing Frenchmen. Next came the field guns, firing with a series of flat crumps, splitting a cherry tree to the base of its trunk. The chaplain, still standing nearby, was among those felled by the flying slivers of wood. An officer shouted for his men to hold their ground, to aim for the crews – to give some account of themselves. He was ignored.

  Bodies were pressing hard against the well on every side. Hannah and Laure jumped off as it started to collapse, the stones leaning inwards and then coming apart, toppling into the shaft. Swallowed by the deluge of soldiers, they were carried irresistibly downhill.

  ‘The Leopard!’ Hannah cried. ‘Has any of you seen the Leopard?’

  The faces around her were blank, glazed with terror, staring straight ahead. Nobody answered.

  By the time Hannah and Laure had struggled back up to the square the short winter day was over. High cloud hid the stars and it was brutally cold, frost sparkling over the debris and the heaps of dead. The French had rallied, after a fashion; they’d been repulsed from the plateau, having failed signally to punch through the blockade, but they were clinging onto Champigny. That little square was effectively the front line. Barricades had been thrown up and there were soldiers in many of the buildings, vainly scouring the heights for a lantern or campfire that might indicate the location of the Prussians. Only a single cherry tree had survived, the demolished well had been filled in and one of the larger houses on its outer edge was on fire. No one chose to stand near it, though, despite the freezing temperature. That would make a man an easy target for a sniper; and although a cease-fire had been instated for the collection of casualties, the regulars posted in the square weren’t about to trust their enemy after the day they’d just endured.

  The two vivandières hadn’t eaten or slept now for twenty-four hours. Hannah felt spectral, barely there, forced onward by the sole purpose of finding Jean-Jacques. Laure was grumbling to herself about the blasted Anglaise and her interfering ways – about how, if it wasn’t for her, she’d be back in Montmartre by now, her belly full of liquor and a nice young guardsman in her bed. Not once, however, did she talk of leaving. Duty to the 197th held her in Champigny; and it was she who spotted Octave.

  The sculptor sat on a kerb next to a long row of corpses. He was weeping, one of those wide, rough hands held over his eyes. As they approached they saw that the body directly beside him was Lucien’s. The painter’s mouth was slightly open, as if drawing breath in the middle of one of his acerbic discourses; but there was a tiny, precise hole in his left cheek, and a second, far larger, behind his right ear. His beard was white with frost; his skin the colour of clay. The sight left Hannah numb, her mind wiped clean. She heard herself say ‘no’, but had no sense of having said it. The last time she’d met with her three artist friends they’d been at the rear of the National Guard column, lit up by absinthe, reciting Victor Hugo’s latest siege-verses in less than reverential falsettos.

  ‘We couldn’t even see them,’ Octave said. ‘Not one Prussian soldier. The bullets were coming in from all over.’

  Laure bent down, putting her arm around his shoulders and offering him a grimy hunk of bread. He acted as if she wasn’t there.

  ‘Where’s Benoît?’ the cocotte asked. ‘Is he well?’

  Octave uncovered his eyes, his brow furrowing. ‘I should think so. He fled the very instant the Prussians opened fire – him and half our wretched battle-group. Back to Paris they went, and wouldn’t be told otherwise.’ He stared at Lucien. ‘We were the committed National Guard – the brave ones. Remember us in the Galette? We were going to fight for France. We were a damned joke.’

  Hannah fastened both hands around her satchel strap, bracing herself. ‘What of Jean-Jacques?’

  ‘Our Leopard?’ The sculptor shook his head. ‘He talked up a storm, I’ll give him that, all the way through Champigny. Once we were at Villiers, though, trying to reach the château along with Ducrot’s lot, he just vanished.’

  A frozen bolt was driven straight through Hannah’s chest, leaving her quivering upon it. ‘He vanished,’ she repeated.

  Octave wouldn’t look at her. He wiped his mouth and chin. ‘I don’t know what else to tell you, Hannah. No one saw wh
at happened to him or where he went. We were by these bales of straw, ready to charge. There was rifle-fire. A few shells. And he was gone.’

  Without another word or thought Hannah strode from the square, past the barricades, into the sloping, undulating fields that lay between Champigny and the Villiers plateau. The orange dots of oil lamps marked out the French ambulances as they toiled to remove the dead and rescue the wounded. Hannah peered into every waxen, contorted face she came across; in almost total darkness, she searched copses, bushes and hollows for that tall, spare frame, those broad shoulders, that black coat and hat.

  It was futile. Hannah’s muscles were stiffening, protesting against the effort and the cold. She turned back, smothering a sob, took a step and then turned back again. She couldn’t leave. A tear crept over her jaw and raced down her neck, under the collar of her tunic. He’d fallen. It was the only explanation. He’d been at the head of the militia column. The Prussians had known who he was; Elizabeth’s Leopard articles were bound to have found their way into enemy hands. They’d have been hunting for him, looking out for the man who’d so humiliated them over the past months and killed so many of their sentries. He’d been shot down, rolled aside; or far worse, taken as a trophy, overpowered somehow and dragged away for a public execution at the Prussian headquarters at Versailles. Hannah saw Jean-Jacques on the scaffold, a noose being readied for his neck – standing before a firing squad like Manet’s Maximilian. She tore off her kepi with a cry. It was too much, too much! The very worst had happened, the unthinkable. She’d pressed for this, shouted for it, demanded it, and here was the result: a failed attack, a minute, tenuous extension of the line and the death of her love.

  No – this was not known for certain. There was still hope. Hugging herself, stamping her boots, Hannah formed a gap between her lips and exhaled hard. She tried to be scientific, to deduce the course of the doomed French advance so that she could identify the best areas left for her to search, but it was no use. The Prussians had been coming from all sides, manoeuvring the French into a killing ground, a massive trap. It had been folly, in short – folly on a calamitous scale.

  Hannah began to lose her place in the landscape. The dim glimmer of Champigny was behind her, then to her left; she seemed to have been set adrift on the grey hillside. She tripped on a rock, stumbling to her hands and knees. The long grass beneath her crunched with frost yet was inexplicably inviting. She lay down, resting her head on the icy ground. Sleep crept through her, warming her, sinking her into the earth.

  A tapered toecap poked against her hip, testing for life; a pair of patent bottines, scuffed and crusted with mud, completed a sauntering circuit of her body.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ said Laure. ‘A sick-hearted fool. I told you this was pointless. You’ll never find him. You’re wasting your damned time, and mine too. Risking our lives.’

  She’s been following me, Hannah thought, ever since I left the town. ‘I didn’t ask you to come,’ she replied, without moving. ‘Go, go on.’

  The cocotte sighed, drawing on a cigarette; she’d recovered a good deal of her Parisian poise. ‘He could well be alive, I suppose – in Paris, or Champigny, or Saint-Maur. He could even have got past Fritz, knowing him, and be halfway to Tours by now. But he sure as hell isn’t out here.’

  ‘Let me be, will you?’

  Laure didn’t respond; she’d noticed something. Hannah pushed herself up onto an elbow. The lanterns of the ambulances were moving downhill, heading for the French line like fishing boats returning to shore. Laure had thrown away her cigarette and was holding out a hand.

  ‘Mademoiselle Pardy,’ she said, ‘I do believe that we should go back. This minute.’

  They were about fifty yards from Champigny when the shouting started, countless male voices joined in a mad battle roar. Hannah looked over her shoulder, into the darkness. The horizon itself was shifting, the heights rising and sliding towards them – the entire Marne valley trembling. The two women broke into a run, all tiredness forgotten. Their greatcoats flapped around them, Laure’s shedding ragged chunks of siege-bread. One of the bottines suddenly gave way; Laure caught hold of Hannah’s sleeve and they staggered into the square, clutching onto each other tightly.

  The French soldiers stationed there were checking rifles and strengthening barricades with the grim concentration of the condemned. All were men of the line, with their Chassepots and red trousers – there was no sign of any militia, Octave included. A couple were complaining about the limited supply of ammunition; that it wasn’t yet dawn, the agreed end of the cease-fire; that they hadn’t been reinforced, as had been promised by General Trochu. Others were saying their prayers.

  Hannah and Laure ducked into a ruined shop, a bakery that was missing half of its upper floor. Seven regulars were already inside. They managed some laughter at the appearance of women at this point, but the firing started before anyone could ask a question or make a crude remark. Bullets sliced through plaster – pinged off metal and stone. The vivandières hurried behind the shop counter, crouching together on the chipped floor tiles. Through an open doorway Hannah saw several hundred brown greatcoats rushing in the side of the square, charging around the sole surviving cherry tree.

  ‘We’re being overrun,’ shouted one of the soldiers, his voice wavering. ‘Damn it all, my friends, we’re being overrun!’

  Then there were Prussians in the bakery. The first was shot down; those coming in behind him bayoneted the shooter and shot two more. The remaining four French regulars ran upstairs, bellowing oaths as they went. Rifles were trained on Hannah and Laure, a semicircle of alert young faces staring in at them. The cocotte screamed at the top of her voice. One of the soldiers yelled out a query, and a sergeant strode over, an older man with a long, ruddy face and drooping moustaches. He leaned across the counter and slapped Laure hard about the head, knocking off her kepi. She fell silent immediately.

  More enemy troops entered the shop. Orders were given, two staying with Hannah and Laure while the rest piled up after the Frenchmen, the sergeant in the lead. There were cries; furious scuffling and four or five shots; the thud of bodies hitting floorboards. The survivors, all of them Prussian, descended the stairs.

  It was finished. The firing was already subsiding, or at least shifting down the hill into Champigny’s centre. The French had been driven back in moments, swept from their positions, leaving Hannah and Laure at the mercy of their enemy. Hannah had heard many times what happened to female prisoners of the Prussian army. She tried to watch every man in the bakery, to be ready for whatever move they might make; her eyes darted about so much that they started to ache with the strain. The infantrymen seemed huge, barbarian-like, menacing despite their youth; they wiped the blood from their bayonets and straightened their spiked helmets. Hannah attempted to compose an insult, something they would understand – something that might goad the soldiers into killing them then and there. Invention deserted her, however, so she simply threw out her arms, across the dazed Laure, jamming them both into the right angle between the counter and the wall and preparing to kick, gouge and bite. If this was to happen, if they were to be ravished and murdered, she was going to make it as difficult for these Prussian devils as she possibly could.

  The sergeant regarded Hannah for a few seconds and then lunged forward. His grip was improbably powerful; he hauled her up onto the counter in a single movement, pinning her to it and pointing in her face. His manner was one not of malice or lascivious excitement but immense boredom.

  ‘You are prisoner of Kaiser,’ he told her in careless, makeshift French. ‘You fight us, you die.’

  PART FOUR

  Illumination

  I

  The atrium of the American Embassy was filled with people, as it had been on Clem’s five previous visits since the sortie. All nationalities were present among this crowd, but by far the majority were Germans, the Prussians and Bavarians who’d lived in Paris under the Empire – waiters, jewellers, barbers, l
ocksmiths, along with their wives and children – and been sealed in by their own army. As they lacked official representation, and met only with hostile unconcern from the French, no attempt had been made to secure them safe passage out of the city. They were a miserable, persecuted-looking bunch, gaunt and shabbily clothed even by the standards of besieged Paris. Sticking together in groups of a dozen or more, they murmured in their guttural language and glanced constantly towards the doors, as if expecting National Guardsmen to burst in and start making arrests.

  It was around half-past three on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and these German mendicants were gathered for a festive almsgiving. The American minister, the honourable Eli Washburne, had taken it upon himself to care for all who found themselves stranded in Paris without the means to live, sustaining several thousand from his apparently bottomless stockroom. Some Second Empire bureaucrat had thought it a great jest to assign the world’s one true republic a building decorated in the most splendid, palatial fashion. Trestle tables were set out across lush red carpets; boots, blankets and tins of grits were being dispensed beneath gilded archways and pilasters; earnest exhortations not to neglect religious observance at this holy time of year were echoing from ceilings splashed with pastel-hued rococo debauches.

  Clem disposed of his cigarette end in a marble urn. ‘Stirs the deuced soul, don’t it,’ he said, scratching his beard. ‘Such disinterested charity. Basic humanity and all that, asserting itself in a time of crisis.’

  Besson was peering ahead into the gloomy hall, which was unlit in the late December afternoon – gas had been turned off across the city a fortnight earlier. He was attempting to catch the eye of an official standing at one end of the tables. He didn’t comment.

  ‘Puts one in mind of Richard Wallace,’ Clem went on, enjoying this rare spot of positive reflection. ‘The only rich Englishman left in Paris, Émile – who’s now feeding all the poor ones. I’ve heard that he’s taken recently to walking from mairie to mairie, leaving packets of banknotes for the relief of the needy. They say—’