by JH Fletcher
How to do it was another question.
‘All the boatmen I’ve seen use the oars to steer,’ Alain said. ‘Maybe we should try it.’
‘Is it safe?’ Frightened of the boat she might be, but Claudette was even more scared of doing the wrong thing and ending up in the river.
‘We’ve got to do something.’
He retrieved an oar from the bottom of the boat, pushed it over the side and plunged the blade into the water. The response was immediate, terrifying. The river snatched it, nearly wrenching it from his hands. A plume of foam jetted, drenching them. The craft slewed savagely.
Claudette shrieked, cowering even lower inside the hull. ‘You’re going to drown us!’
‘Nonsense …’
Nonsense it certainly was; he had seen boatmen without number manoeuvring craft like this as though they had been born to it. They had, of course; that was the point. But what they did so easily he could surely learn as well? At least well enough to get them ashore in one piece?
Goaded by the river’s challenge and Claudette’s disbelief, he set his jaw. Again he dipped the oar blade in the water. This time, aware of the stream’s strength, he did it more cautiously. Again came the drenching plume of spray; again the craft slewed, but less alarmingly than before. More importantly, the boat definitely changed direction, if only for a moment. He did it again; again the bow came round.
‘I’m getting the hang of it,’ he told Claudette exultantly.
He stared out at the land. They were sweeping past a lush meadow, bright with poppies that shone crimson in the early morning light. The bank was low-lying, edged with reeds. By contrast, a short way downriver the reeds gave way to a line of cliffs that continued as far as he could see. If they wanted to get ashore, this was the place to do it.
Resolutely, Alain thrust the blade of the oar deeper into the water. It worked, a thousand times more violently than he had expected. The bow swerved, the boat lurched. Stubbornly, Alain would not yield. He held the oar in place, the hull heeled, water came flooding over the side. Again Claudette shrieked, pushing herself away from the sudden influx.
‘Sit still!’
Too late. Her hand, with all her weight behind it, was on the gunwale. As she struggled, the boat heeled further. More water came in. Alain took one hand from the oar to try and grab her; the blade dug deeper, the hull swerved broadside across the stream, tipped higher, hung there for a few frantic seconds and capsized.
7
‘Dunno what you come here for,’ said Michel, one of nature’s moaners.
His woman didn’t help. Sour as sick, that one, with a face to go with it. Eugénie had never understood why he hadn’t chucked her out years ago and had once made the mistake of telling him so.
Chantelle had overheard; now was pay-back time.
‘No room here for you,’ she said, not bothering to hide her satisfaction. ‘We got little enough space as it is.’
‘A couple of days?’ Eugénie humbled herself. ‘Until Alain gets back?’
Chantelle would not hear of it. ‘You’ve a place of your own, I suppose. Unless the landlord’s chucked you out?’ Beady eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Has he?’
‘Of course not.’
‘What you doing here, then?’
‘Alain had to go away —’
Chantelle’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. ‘Lots of people gone away this last week. Not too many of ’em coming back, neither. Alain one of them, is he? The soldiers taken him, that it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Artists … Poxy lot, you ask me.’
I didn’t. Managed, somehow, not to say it.
‘Alain in trouble with the police?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Funny time to go away, if he’s not.’ She sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Man tries tricks like that, he’s liable to get himself shot.’
Eugénie would admit nothing. ‘Of course he won’t be shot. He’s got nothing to do with politics. Neither have I.’
‘Try telling that to Gallifet’s cavalry. Killing mad, they are.’ She turned to Michel, hovering lugubriously in a corner of the room. ‘Fancy that, do you? Being stuck against a wall?’
‘What you talking about?’ Attempting aggression, failing.
‘Wait and I’ll show you.’ She ferreted through a pile of junk, came up with a bill that had been circulated through Paris when the troops came in. Laboriously she pawed over the words. ‘Anyone harbouring runaways will be shot.’ She slapped it in front of him triumphantly, a gambler with a winning card. ‘What’s this lot, if they ain’t runaways?’
Michel snatched up the bill. His lips moved as he picked his way through the words, then looked up at Eugénie, and the shutters came down over his eyes. ‘What it says, right enough. I reckon you’ll have to move on.’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere you like,’ said Chantelle. ‘And the sooner the better.’
Michel clouted her casually, backhanded, not even bothering to look at her. ‘Shut it!’ Spoke again to Eugénie. ‘Go and see Lacoste, why don’t you?’
Lacoste was Michel’s boss, the blacksmith who had offered Alain a job.
‘Will he help us?’
‘Worth a try.’
‘And if he won’t?’
Michel shrugged.
That’s right, Eugénie thought contemptuously. Stick the blame on someone else. All the same, his suggestion made sense; her parents lived in Nantes, far away, and she had nowhere else to go.
She woke the children, got them ready. Again. At the door she said to Michel, ‘Thanks for letting us stay over.’
To Chantelle, sullenly nursing an incipient black eye, she gave neither word nor look. She was delighted that Michel had belted her; given half a chance, she would have done the same herself.
‘Watch out for those damn soldiers,’ Michel said. ‘What I hear, they’re everywhere.’
‘They won’t bother a woman with two small children.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’ And closed the door. Soldiers or not, Eugénie was once again on her own.
8
The water seized Alain, sucked him deep.
It was appallingly cold and dark. When he came back to the surface, he looked around, frantically, but could see only the surge of the foam-crested waves. No sign of Claudette, and the bank seemed much further away than it had from inside the boat.
He had no more than a few seconds; his hands flailed the surface as the current took him down again. For the second time the water engulfed him, wrapping its sinuous strength about his body, his mouth, his eyes. No air, no light, only the rushing whisper of the stream, filling him with terror.
He came up again in a froth of bubbles. The weight of his clothes was dragging him down, his boots were full. Cold, fear, helplessness had already begun the inexorable process of killing him.
A few metres away a large branch raised black fingers imploringly at the heavens as it tumbled over and over in the water. Alain flailed his arms, shoving himself towards it as much by will-power as strength. His clutching hands closed upon the branch, slipped, snatched again, took hold. Inch by inch he clawed himself forward. Now both arms were on it. He levered himself higher. First his shoulders were clear of the stream, then his chest. He clung on, literally for life. He twisted his head, once more looking about him, but of Claudette there was no sign.
Militia captain Foucher wondered if he’d been misinformed. The report had spoken of two people in a boat, coming downriver from the capital. One of them a young woman, the farmer had said. Which raised interesting possibilities, if true.
He had galloped his patrol across country to the river, reaching it at a point where it drew a wide curve between open meadows. On either bank fingers of land jutted out into the water, affording a clear view of anything coming downstream. If there had been a boat, they would have been able to see it for half a kilometre before it reached them. He had
positioned his men where it would be easy for his sharpshooters to pick off the fugitives if they ignored his order to surrender.
Now they had been waiting half an hour. Still there was nothing. He wondered if that damned yokel had been spinning them a yarn. It didn’t seem likely — why stick his neck out for no reason? — yet you could never be sure with these people. He could be hiding behind a bush at this minute, laughing at them. Surely the boat should have got here by now?
Could it have passed before they arrived? He worked out times, distances. No, that was impossible. So where were they?
Hanging about for something that might never happen made him feel a fool which, in turn, made him angry. He decided he would lead the patrol eastwards along the bank to see if the runaways had come ashore anywhere.
‘They can’t carry the boat with them,’ he said. ‘If they’re there, we’ll find them.’
9
On the outskirts of the city, the whole district was run-down and neglected, far removed from the showcase boulevards that Napoleon and Baron Haussmann, God rot them, had wanted to present to the world.
On her way Eugénie had seen no soldiers, but that was hardly surprising. They were not likely to show their faces in these parts; like the rich, the poor knew how to look after their own. Inside the blacksmith’s shop, the forge cast its ruddy glow over hoops, barrels, bars and piles of sheet metal as Lacoste, brawny arms bulging out of his leather waistcoat, brought his hammer crashing down in an explosion of sparks and noise. There might be mayhem in the streets, but a man still had to work if he wished to eat. But there was time, too, for a man — the right sort of man — to find out what trouble the mayhem might have brought to his friends.
Lacoste rubbed a hand over his sweating forehead. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘It was a model,’ Eugénie said. ‘Claudette Lebeuf …’
She told him the story.
‘So the bastards are on the lookout for you?’
‘I’m not sure. They may be.’
‘Have you eaten?’
‘No.’
‘First things first,’ said Lacoste. ‘We’ll get some food into you. Then we’ll make up our minds what to do next.’ His massive arms swept Aline high into the air. ‘That’s what we’ll do, isn’t it? Feel like a bit of grub, do you?’
He led the way through the back of the shop into the house where his wife — warm cheeks, warm heart — dished up hot soup. Eugénie golloped shreds of meat, sucking on the bones of pigs as the blacksmith questioned her.
‘So Alain will come here to fetch you when he gets back?’
Eugénie hesitated, burping genteelly behind a raised hand. ‘He doesn’t know I’m here.’
And explained that, too.
Lacoste scratched his head. ‘You waited till he was gone, then took off? Without saying anything to him about it?’
‘It’s better that way. If he doesn’t know, he can’t tell anyone, can he? If they catch him, I mean?’
‘How are you going to know if they’ve caught him or not?’
‘If he’s safe, he’ll find us.’
‘And if he isn’t?’
Silence; despite her fears, Eugénie had not been prepared to think too seriously about that possibility.
‘You can stay here till we know what’s going on,’ Lacoste said. ‘That goes without saying.’
To be offered sanctuary by this man, whom she barely knew … She compared Lacoste’s welcome with the way her cousin and his hellfire bitch had chucked them back onto the street; her face crumpled.
Lacoste was embarrassed. ‘Take it easy. I’m sure he’ll be fine.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s —’
Grateful tears choked her, while Aline, round-eyed, watched in silence.
Safety, at last.
10
Alain, limbs growing numb as the river’s deadly cold overwhelmed him, faced death.
He still clung to the branch, but knew he would be unable to do so much longer. Already his stiffening fingers had lost all feeling. With fatalistic certainty he knew that the branch would soon get away from him. That would be the end of him. The prospect no longer troubled him, yet he had not quite reached the point of letting go deliberately. He still had too many pictures to paint; the need to capture life, its joy, sorrow, ecstasy, was still too strong.
He knew he was not a great artist, not yet. In comparison with some of his friends he was little more than a journeyman, but at least he had tried. He had given it everything he could. One day the glory might come. But only if he lived.
As for Claudette …
He had seen no sign of her since the boat overturned. She must have drowned, he thought. The weight of her dress would have carried her to the bottom. He imagined that face and body, recently so full of life and beauty, bumping and scraping along the river bed, the bloated flesh tearing in green-tinged darkness where the fish swam and gorged, the bones shining like pearls beneath the sun-shot surface of the stream.
It would make a good painting, he thought. But who would buy it? No-one, as always. No-one could see what he could see, the flare and glory of light, of colour, of the aura that existed between the subject and the eye. No-one. But they will, he told himself fiercely. They will. If I live.
The thought brought strength. He clung to the tumbling branch with renewed determination, forcing numb legs to kick harder and harder against the spider stream that held him fast in its web of water. At first it made no difference, the branch plunging on without deviating from its midstream course. Then the river emerged beyond the line of cliffs. Once again it traced a long curve between meadows bright with poppies. There was a small bay; he felt the current carry him into an eddy close beside the bank, the water’s surface iridescent with a thousand sun-bright scales as it flowed across a series of shallows bordering the main channel.
With bated breath, scarcely daring to believe it, Alain felt the branch lurch as it scraped the bottom. Undercut by the current, crowned by tufted grass, the bank was not more than a dozen metres away. But the branch was still moving; as soon as it broke free of the shallows, his chance of escape would be lost. To launch himself, a non-swimmer, into the river was a terrifying prospect, yet he saw the bank sliding inexorably past and did so without hesitation. Arms and legs churning foam, he flailed his way bankwards, while the wet depths sucked greedily at him.
The water swamped him. It reached his mouth, flooded between his straining teeth. He stretched out frantic arms but the bank was still a finger’s length too far. As quickly as it had come, his strength evaporated. His legs sank. Touched silt.
At once the current carried him back into deeper water. Again his arms smashed foam. Again a foot scraped bottom. A step, tottering. Another. Both feet on the bottom now. Another step, as he broke defiantly from the river’s grip. Numbed fingers, as grey as rain, touched the bank, scored the earth’s rich mud. He reached up. His fingertips brushed grass.
No way could he haul himself up.
He was colder than ever, still almost to his neck in water that had not yet given up the battle. He could die here, with his fingers in the mud.
NO!
Again he tried to lift himself, succeeded only in bringing great clods of chocolate-coloured earth raining down upon him. He inched along the bank, found a root as thick as his arm growing out into the stream. Wedged a foot, painfully, between it and the sullen earth. Again he seized the crown of grass above him. Levered himself slowly upwards. He rested his panting chest upon the edge of the bank. Scrabbling fingers obtained a purchase. Centimetre by centimetre, he hauled himself upwards.
Almost dead from cold, terror, exhaustion, Alain Desmoulins lay upon the grass with the scent and voice of life, of bees and grasshoppers, about him. He felt the sun, saw through glazed eyes the brilliance of poppies, heard — felt — the slow crunch of grazing cattle. He had returned from the dying place. He was free. Barely conscious, but free.
There the soldiers foun
d him.
‘Up! Get up!’
The riding crop slashed: fire and blood. Yet Alain was too far gone to move, even when Captain Foucher hit him a second time.
Two of the soldiers hauled him upright but still had to hold him or he would have fallen again. Foucher’s sergeant clouted him across the face to remind him what was what, but it did no good, his legs without the strength to stand unaided.
It was a pity; there would be little sport from a man already so far gone, but the formalities had to be observed.
‘Name?’
Head hanging, Alain mumbled something inaudible.
‘Speak up!’
Another clout. Again it did no good.
No matter.
‘What are you doing here?’
Nothing.
‘You’re from Paris, aren’t you?’
Nothing.
‘We know there’s a woman with you. What’s happened to her?’
‘What happened to the boat?’
‘Why are you running away?’
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
‘I believe you stole the boat. I believe you left Paris illegally. You are a thief as well as a traitor. Can you give me any reason why I should not shoot you?’
The man, dangling head, dangling limbs, might have shaken his head, but it was impossible to be sure or to know what he meant.
Please don’t.
Or it might be, No, there is no reason.
Not that Foucher gave a damn what he meant.
‘The young woman with you … Perhaps you murdered her?’
A definite shake of the head this time, which Foucher disregarded.
‘I think you did. I think that’s it. Because you thought she might hold you up.’ With the tip of his crop he raised the prisoner’s chin. ‘A traitor, a thief and now a murderer. What do we do with traitors, sergeant?’
‘We execute them, sir.’ Answering smartly, on cue; it was a game they had played any number of times in the last few days.
