Love's First Light (6 page)
He reached into his pocket, then stilled. He’d not thought to bring money. He thrust the loaf back toward her, turning away.
“Wait.”
Her voice was like the power of sound . . . wave after wave after wave . . . resounding in his chest and in his heart. The sound of his own heartbeat roared in his ears.
She held it out to him, leaning in. Her breath fanned across his cheek, sending him reeling back a step or two, clutching the loaf like some gift from heaven.
He looked down at the present thrust into his hands. Regaining his voice, he spoke low, leaning toward her. “My thanks.”
It was all he could manage. He didn’t know if she heard the low words but didn’t turn back. As his footsteps rang over the old stone bridge back to his crumbling castle, he found something inside him that hadn’t been present in a very long time.
Hope.
Chapter Five
1789—Paris, France
Jasper pulled Christophé from the middle of the deafending mob to a side street and supported the young man as they half-walked, half-ran from the ghastly scene. Christophé’s body shook uncontrollably within his grasp. Jasper saw the silent tears on Christophé’s cheeks and felt his own heart break with a thunderous crash. How could this have happened?
Jasper had never married, had no children of his own, and had never grieved a loss. His father, an alchemist with a small shop in one of Paris’s business districts, had died several years ago—leaving Jasper his trade, his shop, and all his knowledge. The shop’s steady clientele believed their concoctions could cure everything from stomachaches to the plague. He did particularly well when some pestilence struck the city. He was an old man, but happy in his solitude. He had his laboratory, his experiments and books, and the cryptic recipes he reworked and refined. He was content—until the day a ten-year-old boy ran into him, knocking them both down.
Now, as he looked down on the man that boy had become, intense gratitude swelled within. He didn’t have much faith in God, had never really needed Him, but even he recognized that it was the hand of fate that brought him and young Christophé together that windy day on a kite’s tail. Without the boy, he would have never known the joy of having a child—nor the sorrow. After all they’d witnessed this terrible day, his heart lay broken and heavy, but he knew that was nothing compared with what Christophé must be feeling.
“Come now. Almost there.”
Christophé had stopped shaking and was walking beside him, stiff, stilted . . . like the dead upright. Jasper reached his door, fumbled for the key, and ushered the young man inside. “Come, sit by the fire,” he ordered his friend in a voice meant to soothe.
Christophé obeyed, collapsed on the floor in front of the small flames, and held out his hands. When he appeared to begin studying the back of one hand in a lost way, Jasper set into motion. He quickly poured Christophé a cup of two-day-old tea, then rummaged around the cupboard until he found a loaf of bread and a crock of butter, setting them side by side on the plate. He sliced the bread into hearty slices then brought the refreshments over to Christophé. He sat the tray down next to the young man with a clatter. The noise had Christophé turning and finally noticing that Jasper was in the room with him. “Here,” Jasper held out the glass. “Drink this.”
Christophé turned his head away from the offerings.
“If you don’t drink it and eat a little, I shall make you a sleeping draught.” He might do that anyway, but he wasn’t going to say it yet. Let the youth get something warm in his belly and then Jasper would see what had to be done next.
Christophé looked up, a little light of humor sparked in his eyes, then extinguished as quickly as it came. He took up the cup and gulped at it. He coughed a little, looking up at Jasper with an angry blaze. “That’s horrible! Are you trying to kill me?”
Jasper offered a grim smile. “No. Trying to save you.”
Hurt and confusion darkened Christophé’s wide eyes. “What do I do? What do I do now?”
Jasper shook his head and stared into the fire. “You can start by not blaming yourself.” He knew it was too soon to be saying such things, but he couldn’t help it. Clearly Christophé thought he had brought this on Émilie by sending her to Jasper’s door alone.
Christophé’s laugh was a harsh cry in the room. “How can I not? When I am alive and she is dead?” He downed the rest of the cup and set it heavily at his side. “It should have been me.”
Jasper’s eyes filled with tears as they locked onto Christophé’s. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, if ever. Life was so ordered for him. So immersed in compounds and powders and elixirs. His patrons might have problems that they needed solved, but he rarely did.
“Possibly.” Arguing would only upset his young friend more. “But don’t forget the true enemy, son. You did not do this to your family. It was done to you.”
Jasper was of the trade class and should be on the other side. Truly he had wondered what was wrong with him that he felt such antipathy toward the Republic and despair over the recklessness of the Crown. He had little patience for politics. He could only credit the fact to his immersion in his own world, and how he had never lacked for anything he wanted.
“Yes. Robespierre.” Christophé brought him back to the topic at hand. “Robespierre will pay for this day.” Christophé’s eyes sparked again, but this time they burned with fire. “I will escape, hide until they are tired of hunting me. And then, when they’ve given up, I will return and see justice done.”
Jasper wasn’t sure what he had just unleashed, but for now, it was better than the debilitating grief. Against his better judgment, he nodded. “I will help you leave Paris. You will go to Carcassonne, yes? To the old castle your father told you about. It should be safe there.”
Christophé rose and poured another cup of the cold tea. He slung the drink into his throat. “I will sleep now. Tomorrow we will plan it all.”
Jasper led Christophé to the spare room where his father had slept. He tucked him into the covers like a child, watched as Christophé pulled the blanket chin high and turned on his side. When Christophé closed his eyes, Jasper turned to leave, but Christophé’s hand shot out to grasp his coat. “Thank you.”
Jasper ruffled the young man’s hair as he might have years ago when Christophé impressed him in the laboratory, which was quite often. “Sleep now.”
Christophé let go, his arm falling to the side of the bed. “Yes. For a little while.”
THE MORNING LIGHT intruded into the room. It was harsh, and Christophé couldn’t remember, at first, why he didn’t want it to come. Then, sudden and complete, the previous day’s events rushed over him like a death chill.
Émilie!
His mind screamed her name.
Why God? Why not leave me her? I don’t understand. I can’t move . . . out of this bed.
How to make his limbs work? How to make his heart slow to any normalcy?
Why did You leave me here? It should have been me.
His mind screamed her name.
Why God? Why not leave me her? I don’t understand. I can’t move . . . out of this bed.
How to make his limbs work? How to make his heart slow to any normalcy?
Why did You leave me here? It should have been me.
He wanted heaven to answer him. His muscles grew taut against the crisp sheet as he waited. Nothing. Nothing. So much nothing.
Angry, he swung his feet to the floor and stood, his bare chest heaving in the cold air of the room. “Is that all You have for me?” In the continued silence, Christophé turned away and swung his fist into the thin air. “Fine then. Thy will be done.” That was the first time he said the phrase, and it was filled with all the pain and hurt and rage that he could muster.
Stretching his tired muscles, which felt like they hadn’t any rest or sleep, he reached to the ceiling and then out to the side. He looked at his arms stretched wide. His muscles bulged and flexed as he tested his physical strength. He raised his forearms at a ninety degree angle and bulged out his biceps. He looked down at his chest, saw the muscles swell as he took a deep breath and flexed them. He looked down at his lean belly and chuckled. He was young. He was strong. Maybe he didn’t need God and His will.
Maybe he should abandon his faith—little good it had done him—and trust in his own strength. He laughed, knowing his thoughts were foolishness, but feeling a rise of power into his throat. Walking over, he grasped the molding at the top of the door, set his fingers in the groove of the wood, and lifted his body until his chin touched the doorframe. He did this again and again and again, the air from his lungs becoming great whooshes. He did twenty, then thirty, then fifty.
“Exercise is healthy for the mind.”
At Jasper’s wry voice, he glanced over his shoulder.
“Come. Have some breakfast.”
Christophé dropped to his feet. “I’m not leaving today.”
“No?”
“No.”
Jasper stared at him for a long minute and then smiled. “Very well then. Perhaps you can assist me with a problem I am having.”
Christophé grinned, rubbing his stomach. “Some food first. I have a feeling any problem of yours will require an astute mind.”
Jasper waved him into the kitchen. “Only a study of Pascal’s—some unknown bacteria and the wherewithal to destroy it without killing the good cells. But come, I’ve made you oatmeal.”
As they sat across from each other, Christophé told Jasper his plan. “I can’t leave yet. Not while Émilie’s final resting place is yet unknown. I have to know where they buried my family before I can leave Paris. I have to pay my last respects.” He looked at Jasper, his lips pressed together in a thin line, then voiced his fear. “I don’t want to put you in danger. Robespierre is looking for me. If he finds me here . . . you will go to prison, at the very least.”
Jasper stared back into Christophé’s eyes, equally hard. “You have always been welcome in my home.” The old man paused and looked down into his own lap. His voice was low as he revealed the hidden parts of his heart. “You are as close to a son as I will ever have. So never again question my love for you.”
Christophé nodded once, then looked down at his bowl and shoved a big spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth so that he wouldn’t have to reply. He nearly choked on the giant mouthful, then grabbed his cup and gulped a quick drink of water to help him swallow.
After breakfast the two men entered the sanctuary of the laboratory. It was just a room. A room filled with beakers and books and powders and potions. Jasper kept methodical records of all his experiments, all the concoctions he had invented or improved upon were carefully recorded, sometimes in a secret code that Christophé had helped invent. Christophé’s interest had veered from alchemy but he respected it more as an art form.
“Here. Come look at this.”
For a moment, being in this place he had loved so as a child, hearing the voice that had led him into the wonders of alchemy and science . . . Christophé was ten years old again. Life was full of promise, not destruction. Life surrounded him.
Death did not exist.
He moved to stand beside Jasper, and they bent their heads, his dark and the other gray, over the latest recipe, which looked more like artistic symbols than text. The familiar symbols filled his mind, drawing his heart and spirit away from terror, into the light of reason.
And there, at his mentor’s side, cocooned by symbols and numbers, Christophé was, for a little while, at peace.
A FEW NIGHTS later, just after the eleventh hour struck, a loud banging sounded at the door. Christophé heard Jasper get up and pull on a dressing gown, then pad to the door. Indistinct voices demanding to search the house drifted to his ears. Christophé leapt out of bed. He could hear Jasper trying to put them off, delaying with sarcastic humor and questions. Christophé dressed, shoved a few precious belongings into his bag—the loud and heavy goblet—and then scurried to make up the bed and put the room to rights. In his haste, he backed into the bedside table, tipping it over with a loud thump. He stopped and listened. Heard the voices go quiet. And then . . .
“In there! What was that noise?”
No time! Christophé cursed silently, grabbed up the bag, and slithered through the open window. He didn’t even have time to put on his shoes!
Barefoot, he charged across the lawns of Jasper’s neighbors.
“There he is!”
A shot rang out and Christophé felt the bullet whiz by his left ear. His heart pounded until he thought it might spring from his chest.
Another shot and then more shouts. Christophé veered into a side street, barely registering the fact that his feet were bleeding from sharp stones in the street. He raced passed shops his mother had taken him to as a boy—the barber, the sweet shop, and—his favorite besides Jasper’s laboratory—the general mercantile where he begged her for tools and anything mechanical for his experiments. Now the dark shops passed by in a blur.
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