For Our Liberty (51 page)

The Nautilus was floating out into the river, the current catching it as it slowly begin to get lower in the water, settling like a Dowager emerging from a bathing machine into the sea at Brighton. The dragoons rushed forward and began firing their carbines at the copper hull, spouts of water erupted around the strange vessel but some hit home. A light mist had begun to form on the river and the strange boat took on an almost ethereal quality in its last moments. The Nautilus began to list and sink lower into the water, the officer gave the order to cease fire, but then another voice countermanded him.

“Keep firing, keep firing!” It was Lacrosse. He was standing behind the line of dragoons and looked furious. He walked forward and stared at the river. The officer nodded to his men and another volley of carbine shots peppered the plunging boat. The Nautilus capsized and sank below the waves, bubbles of air floating away on the current. The dragoons kept watch, Lacrosse ordered them to fire at anybody swimming to the bank, he pointed out eddies and bubbles to the dragoons. The officer of the dragoons, I could tell, thought it all a waste of time but did not dare to argue with Lacrosse.

Dominique held my hand tightly. We were hiding in a boat shed fifty yards from the dragoons. You didn’t think I’d have risked my life on that implausible floating coffin did you? It seemed a far better idea and far safer to use it as a decoy. We waited a few more minutes until the dragoons had finished taking pot shots at any unfortunate water life that made the merest ripple in the water and Lacrosse had finally been convinced by the dragoon officer diplomatically pointing out that any further firing was a waste of ammunition. I stood very cautiously and led Calvet, Dominique and Claude out of the back of the shed and into the alley. We could hear the dragoons mounting up and began to feel safe. I had arranged with Henri to have some horses waiting for us in the ruins of the Abbaye St-Victor, only a short walk away. We were close to getting out of the city, so close.

“Are the horses ready?” I asked Calvet.

“Yes, everything is prepared. Four good horses,” he replied as we crept slowly through the maze of sheds and alleys.

“We’ll only be needing three,” I said pointing a pistol at his guts. I hadn’t had time to reload but I hoped he hadn’t been keeping count of my shots. “You aren’t coming.”

“What are you talking about?” he blustered.

“Yes, Ben. What do you mean?” asked Dominique, confusion on her face.

“Fauche wasn’t the traitor.”

“Not that again, Ben! We don’t have time…” Dominique began to protest but her uncle cut her off.

“No, he’s quite right. Fauche was not the traitor,” said Calvet. “I am.” That took the wind from my sails a bit. I had mentally prepared a long monologue outlining my reasoning and ending with what Montaignac had told me.

“This is no time for jokes,” said Dominique, now annoyed with us both. Claude coughed as she held him up. “We have to hurry, we need to get Claude to a doctor.

“We’ll take him to a hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu isn’t far,” said Calvet.

“We can’t take him there, we’ll be caught…” said Dominique.

“No we won’t,” replied Calvet as he took a pocket pistol from his coat and pointed at me. “I have made arrangements.”

“The same arrangements you made the night of the balloon flight?” I asked.

“Very similar, but this time I do not think you will escape your fate. Put down your gun, it is not loaded,” he said, almost smugly. I did as he asked and dropped the spent weapon on the ground.

“What are you saying, uncle?” asked Dominique, her head looking from one of us to the other and back.

“He was the one who told Lacrosse how I was going to leave Paris. Perhaps he was the one who betrayed Claude?” I said, not taking my eyes off Calvet’s pistol.

“No. That was the price of my failure to keep my side of the bargain I had made when Lacrosse confronted me and told me he knew I was sheltering you,” he replied. “I would never betray Dominique or Claude. Everything I did I did to keep them safe. Once Claude was in the Temple Lacrosse demanded more and more information in exchange for supposed good treatment for him. I had no choice.”

“How could you?” asked Dominique.

“I did it to protect you,” Calvet said, taking his eyes off me for a moment and looking at Dominique. I think he was telling the truth.

“Like you protected your brother?” I said. I swallowed hard and looked at Dominique. “He denounced your parents.”

“That’s not true,” she said shaking her head.

“It is my dear. It was your father’s idea,” Calvet said, again flummoxing me. “He knew he was going to be accused of betraying the revolution. He’d been warned. He thought if it was I that denounced him then I would prove my loyalty and could protect his family. I said I couldn’t, that I wouldn’t. He insisted. I conceded. I feared for my own life but told myself it was to protect those I loved. The scheme did not go quite according to plan. Your mother was executed as well, but they both went to their deaths knowing their children were safe.”

“You lied to me,” said Dominique. I can’t describe the expression on her face. It was a mix of pain, disbelief, disappointment and astonishment and much more beside.

“Your father made me promise never to tell you the truth.”

“Then why are you telling me now?”

“Because I have to protect you again. I prayed Ben’s plan would work, but it hasn’t. We won’t be able to get out of Paris now they know Claude escaped. If I give Ben to Lacrosse then he will let us live.”

“No, I won’t let you,” said Dominique.

“You can’t stop me."

“I can. I will,” she said and drew her own pocket pistol, the twin of the one Calvet still had pointed at me.

“Can’t you see I am doing this for you?” he asked.

“No, you are saving your own skin once again. If you love me you could not kill the man that I love.”

“No, you will forget him, and you will live. You have to,” he said and raised his pistol. His aim didn’t waiver, I was looking down the barrel. It was a small calibre but I had no doubt it would kill me if he pulled the trigger. The shot came and I flinched, but it was Dominique who had fired. Calvet sank to the ground and clutched his side. Dominique passed Claude to me and went to Calvet.

“I am sorry uncle,” she said as she knelt beside him.

“As am I, dear Dominique,” said Calvet. She propped him up against the wall of a shed. “I did what I thought was best. The only thing I could do to save you both. Your father made me swear to protect you. I am sorry I lied. Sorry I didn’t trust you with the truth. I thought you would hate me.”

“Dominique, we have to go,” I said. I knew the shot would have been heard by the dragoons.

“No…” she began.

“He is right. I will slow them down,” he said and held his pistol in a bloody hand.

“Thank you Calvet,” I said.

“Look after them, Ben,” he pleaded and he reached into a pocket and handed me the passes to get us out of the city.

“I will, I promise. Dominique, we have to go, now,” I said and began to walk, hoping she would follow.

She kissed Calvet once and then stood and ran after me, taking Claude’s other arm. Between us we half carried the boy quickly away. He was regaining some of his strength now.

“What about uncle?” he asked weakly, looking over his shoulder. Neither Dominique or I looked back.

“He’ll be along in a moment,” I said.

The city of Paris has changed much since that morning, it is no longer the same city that we left as the a grey dawn broke. I remember looking back across the river, seeing the rooftops poking out of the mist and wondering if I would see it again. I did, but not for many years and then another Louis was on the throne, and, like returning to the arms of an old lover, it wasn’t quite the same. Bonaparte, or I suppose I should say Napoleon since he crowned himself Emperor later that year, demolished large areas of the city to make majestic boulevards, monuments to his victories and large public buildings. Of the people I knew, some were still there, like Henri, but many others were gone, casualties of the long war.
 

Claude found that Mrs Simpkins’ cooking and the Oxfordshire air on my father’s estate restored him to health but his desire to avenge his family led him, against my wishes, to enlist in the British Army. He was fatally wounded at Badajoz fighting with Wellington and I was at his side when the surgeon took one look at the ball lodged in his stomach and shook his head. My friend and soon-to-be brother-in-law James Hawkshawe fought under the Iron Duke as well, but fortunately survived to father my nieces and nephews; Lucy of course was a wonderful mother. The Alien Office continued to ferment treachery in Europe, with a little help from myself, but in the end it was the sacrifices of many British and allied soldiers and sailors that did for Napoleon, and not some infernal machine or dagger between the ribs.

As for my own fate, and that of Dominique, well I have one more chapter to write and you have one more to read, but forgive me dear reader if I put up my pen now. Dawn is breaking, as it was then, and I have been writing all night, the candle has almost burned down. I can hear the birds singing outside and I feel the need to walk through the songs and stillness of an English morn before completing my tale and telling you what happened in that other dawn, so long ago and so far away, but still so close to my broken heart.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I could hear Lacrosse and the dragoons coming after us as we hurried away from Calvet. He was lost in the mist by the time we heard the shots; the first one a crack, followed by several louder and deeper. Dominique and I looked at each other but said nothing, we just quickened our pace. We were heading towards the lane that would take us to the Abbaye St-Victor. It had been one of the oldest and finest churches in Paris but like many others it had been attacked during the revolution and had long been abandoned. It was a ruin, a shelter for tramps and bats but little else. Most of the population of the city still had enough respect for the church to leave it alone.
 

The mist had spread its tendrils from the river and provided us with welcome extra concealment. The sounds of the dragoons chasing us seemed to be very close but we hoped it was the fog misleading us and were careful to make our own progress as silently as possible. The cold had started to bite now. I was still wearing my stolen gendarme’s uniform but I had given my cloak to Claude, as had Dominique, so one of us at least was warm. The boy still looked pale and weak but I think at his heart he had the same strength as his sister. The fog was laced with smoke from the city’s hearths and had a dirty, almost gritty taste to it. Coughs wracked Claude’s body every minute, making Dominique and I wince at the noise, but he never faltered and managed to keep pace with us.
 

The first shout came a few minutes later and we could no longer pretend it was the fog making it sound closer than it was. I saw the dragoon emerge from the mist behind us, carbine in his hands. He aimed and snapped off a shot.
 

“Run!” I shouted and headed for the lane that led to the abbey. We heard more shouts. I knew we had little hope of escape even if we did reach the abbey but we could do nothing but try. The fog enveloped us as we ran, I hoped it would mask the direction of the gun shot so that the dragoons would take a few extra minutes to find their comrade and join the pursuit. Claude began coughing again and stumbled his body was barely up to the task of standing, let alone running, but the lad was trying hard. I picked him up and threw him over my shoulder, hardly breaking my stride. Dominique was holding her skirt up and cursing its restrictions.
 

The lane was narrow and rutted, weaving between walls, hedges and cottages. There was nowhere to hide, no one to help us. We were not going to out-run the dragoons, or anybody else. Our only hope were the horses Henri had left for us. If we could get to them before the dragoons caught up to us we had a chance. A small one, but a chance nonetheless. I had gambled on tighter odds before but never with so much at stake.

The dim grey shapes of the abbey’s walls and outbuildings emerged like ghosts from the gloom. An arched doorway stood bereft of the walls that had once stood beside it but I ran through it all the same. I could hear horses on the lane behind us. Someone shouted and a shot chipped the arch above my head. I pulled Dominique into the ruins, and into a maze of cloisters, kitchens and chapels. I could hear the dragoons outside and their officer ordering them to search the abbey. He had a clear and authoritative voice, he sounded calm and efficient and he was going to kill us. The blackened shell of a dairy, or perhaps it was a brewhouse, looked as good a place to hide as any. I entered and put Claude down, he slumped against a wall but stayed on his feet. Dominique kept watch at the doorway whilst I readied the pistols.

“Where are Henri’s horses?” she asked as she took a loaded and cocked pistol from me.

“They should be at the south side of the church.”

“Then let’s go,” she said, and before I could stop her she led the way through the fog towards the looming spire of the abbey church. Claude followed, quietly and unbidden, still had with a slightly glazed look about him as if he thought he was still dreaming. He was about to have a nightmare.
 

I followed him and his sister, pointing my pistol at every shadow and wisp of mist. We could hear the soldiers all around us. Dominique raised her hand and we stopped. She motioned us to crouch and we did so behind the remains of a low wall. I looked at her face, she showed no fear, no doubt and put a reassuring hand on Claude’s. When I reached over and took her other hand she squeezed it tightly. A dragoon stepped stealthily along a path on the other side of the wall. His scabbard scraped on the stone and we all held our breath. He walked on and after a few moments we moved off. This time I stepped forward and took the lead, much to Dominique’s annoyance. I held both pistols before me, slightly raised, my fingers on the triggers.