The Sparks Fly Upward (55 page)

‘Hello.' Philippa smiled at her and held out her hand. The child looked at it and ambled back to her mother.

Perhaps I'll have a little girl
, Philippa thought.
Or a little boy. One or the other would be nice.

‘. . . not a soul raised a finger. The tocsins rang and went unanswered.
À moi, à moi.
He could call till the cows came home and none but the cows would hear him. Either he shot himself or somebody else shot him, but his jaw's shattered whatever way.'

Sir Mick put a dramatic palm up against his ear; the noise like a machine had changed, become deeper and was accompanied by the tattoo of drums. It seemed to be moving. ‘God love him, he'll not be kept in suffering much longer, nor the others. He's on his way. Barras is getting rid of them quick. We should hear the cheer when the blade drops.'

He leaned forward again to look at Philippa. ‘And in answer to your question, Miss Dapifer, whether it's the end of the Terror, I don't know. Barras doesn't know. I'm not even sure he and the Convention intended to end it when they set out to arrest Robespierre; they were just hitting back first to save themselves, if you know what I mean. It's what's happened since has amazed them. D'you see, the
people
believe it's the end of the Terror. They want it to be, they're sick of it to their souls. They're greeting Barras and Co like saints from Paradise sprinklin' holy water. And I'm thinking that's an expectation not to be disappointed—or face the consequences.'

He stood up. ‘But nobody knows.' He stretched his fingers and waggled his hand. ‘I'd not like to bet on the next few days . . . Ah.'

The silence was so sudden it was as if the city had drawn in its breath and was holding it. They could hear birds twittering from the branches overhead. From across the river came a gull's scream, or perhaps it was a man's, then a howl from human throats blasting the sky apart.

The children looked up at the noise and ran towards their mother. She stopped painting and talked to them.

She doesn't know
, thought Philippa.
What is she telling them? Just another head, my dears, they always fall about this time of day. She doesn't know it's the head of heads and the last of heads.

The Irishman was crossing himself. Ffoulkes was saying something.

‘. . . which is why I want the two of yous out of Paris and quick,' the Irishman was saying. ‘Barras is keeping his options open, like the sensible man he is, and you, me dear Baron, are one of those options. If things go wrong, he'll feel the necessity to travel—and fast. To England maybe. I've persuaded him it won't do any harm to have a grateful soul like yourself speak for him to Prime Minister Pitt, saying he was the boyo tried to stop the Terror.'

‘I suppose I owe the bastard that much,' Ffoulkes said.

‘All things considered, I think you do.' The man became brisk, feeling in his pockets. ‘Now then, here's a purse and some shiny new papers for yourself and the lady. They should get you through to Gruchy; you'll be running alongside the news so I don't imagine you'll encounter too much efficiency at the barriers—the guards'll be staggering nine ways from Sunday. You've a safe house for tonight? I thought so.'

He picked up Philippa's hand and carried it to his lips. ‘You're to wait for me at Gruchy. I've some business but it'll be settled in a day and I'll follow you up. Take care now; I promised the missus I'd bring ye both home and that's not a woman to break a promise to.'

Philippa held onto his hand. ‘Mr Machina,' she said. ‘Is there any word about the Marquis de Condorcet?'

He smiled down at her; he had a good smile. ‘Did ye not find him? No, I've heard nothing. Ach, but with the Terror over—
if
it's over—he'll be grand.'

They watched him walk away. Before he disappeared, he turned and waved his hat at them, like an actor taking applause.

‘Who is he?' Philippa asked. ‘Did he drop from the clouds?'

‘I don't know. An Irishman, that's who he is,' Ffoulkes said. ‘Told me he has dealings with the French government. I don't like the Irish getting secretly together with the Frogs, it always means trouble for us.'

‘Why don't we give them back their damn country then?' she asked, wearily.

‘They wouldn't know what to do with it.'

So it goes
, she thought.
On and on.
‘We owe him our lives,' she said.

‘I suppose so.'

They sat where they were, trying to get the will to move. The angler caught a fish, a little flapping shard of silver, and put it in his creel.

It's going to take him years to get over this
, she thought.
I could help him. Please God, don't let Félicie encourage him to hate. Shall I tell him about the baby? I can't. I can't split him in two. He'd never let me go; whether he left Félicie or he didn't, we'd be a sordid couple and he's too honorable a man for that. I'd love him less; he'd love me less.

She considered the irony; she hadn't been able to tell him because they were going to die; now she couldn't tell him because they were going to live.

Ma will see me through
, she thought.
Bless her, she sent the Irishman to bring us back; she'll be waiting. One thing about Ma, she's never cared for society's rules. Or causes.
Causes kill people
. She's right. It's individuals that matter, seeing the person not the principle. Like Ma does. Like Mme Vernet.

She felt a minute pulse begin in her veins; she'd thought it had stopped.

There
is
hope,
she thought.
‘. . . independently of any power that would like to stop it, so long as our globe exists, the tempo may differ but we shall never go back.'

He's out there somewhere
, she thought,
bumbling along, certain of humanity's ultimate good.

Ffoulkes got up from the bench and walked down to the river's edge, watching the angler.

She went to join him.

He stooped and threw a pebble into the water. ‘I suppose we've got to go back?'

‘There's nowhere else to go. Not for us.'

‘No,' he said, ‘No coral island for Lord Ffoulkes and Mrs Fox.'

‘Shorn lambs,' she said. ‘They might have taken you and not me. Now we're both alive and the sun's shining and it's a day of amazements. You followed me into hell and you've carried me out, they can't take that away from us.'

‘I did, didn't I? I'm a marvellous fellow. You know what was one of the worst things?'

‘What?'

‘Letting Blanchard get away with it. Spoiled my sleep, that did.'

She should have known. ‘Now you're not to challenge him to a duel. It'd be silly to die the moment you're home. What would happen to the turnips?'

‘I'm not going to challenge him to a duel, he's a better swords-man than I am. No . . .' He looked lovingly around at the view. ‘That shit-sack owes me money, lots of money. I'm going to bankrupt him and then I'm going to kick his lungs out. No, I'll kick his lungs out first and
then
I'll bankrupt him.' He might have been picking a particularly splendid meal from a menu. ‘I'm not vindictive, I may let him out of debtor's clink on his sixty-fifth birthday.'

‘I am,' she said. ‘Make it his seventieth.'

‘Very well.' He tucked her hand under his arm and patted it. ‘We'd better go, my love.'

They ambled off together towards the bridge.

‘Another good thing,' he said. ‘At least those lady natives on our island won't be given the opportunity to vote me off it.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' she said. ‘They might. One day.'

Chapter Seventeen

SHE did a lot of fishing, not catching many fish, just dangling rod and line over the edge of her rowing boat and allowing the tide to drift her to the mouth of the cove and back again.

She'd wondered if Jacques would miss the theater but he'd begun to work again on the steam engine that would raise water from the well of the Pomeroy Arms without Dell or Tobias having to wind it up. As long as he could mess about with machines, he didn't mind anything much.

When they'd first arrived, the two of them had carried agitation with them; they had been betrayed, they would be pursued, government agents were on their way to arrest Jacques and send him back to France.

Babbs Cove had remained calm. ‘What you gettin' in a tizzy for?' Jan Gurney had asked. ‘Think any bugger's going to get at un here?' The village had spent generations thwarting government agents in the form of excisemen and no unwelcome visitor could come at it by the clifftop path or the long, long lane from the road or by sea—its three approaches—without warning being given and preparations made.

Nor had any such visitor appeared, which meant that Luchet had kept his mouth shut about the place that had been his port of entry into England.

Jacques himself favored Mme de La Pole as the one who had given him away. That former lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette had been particularly imperious in ordering him about and spoken slightingly of his stage effects, thus qualifying herself, as far as he was concerned, as a Messalina.

Makepeace let him believe it. The boy had been shaken by being betrayed at all; it was healthier for him to attribute it to someone with a political motive and unpleasant disposition than to learn so early that villainy could assume a friendly form.

She still didn't understand why Blanchard had done it but was convinced that he had. Murrough had never trusted him, nor had Ninon. And he had hampered Philippa in every way he could.
Spite
, she thought, and had lain awake at nights wondering if, over the years, Andrew had ever mentioned the name of Babbs Cove to his friend. As peaceful day had followed peaceful day and no magistrate's men came for Jacques, she'd been able to assume that he had not.

It had seemed the obvious place to lie up. She and the boy would not only be protected while she decided what to do but, should that necessitate going abroad, they were in a position to sail away immediately.

So far she had made no decision of any kind—other than to let Dell cut her hair. It had grown overlong and troublesome now that she had to dress it herself, so off with it. Dell, for whom Tobias bought the
The Gallery of Fashion
on his weekly trips into Plymouth to fetch supplies and the newspapers, said that short hair was ‘in.' Even the gray among the red in the heap of curls on the floor when the operation was finished hadn't bothered Makepeace as it would have done once. She was old, she told herself dully, she was lucky to have hair at all.

The accumulated alarums and excursions and losses of the past weeks had been so severe that now, in the sudden peace, she was afflicted by a sort of acceptant numbness. She felt like a sponge; no thought, just absorbent as if, in the nature of sponges, it was her function to soak up what God sent her without protest.

Apart from sending letters to Aaron, Jenny and Sally back with Sanders—who returned to Reach House so as to be at Aaron's disposal—telling them her whereabouts and situation, she did nothing, initiated nothing, felt very little except lassitude.

At nights she sat in the taproom playing cribbage with Jacques or Jan or Tobias before climbing the Pomeroy's cupboard stairs to bed. She slept late, dressed in the first thing that came to hand, put on the large straw hat that protected her from freckles and the sun and wandered down to the beach for another aimless day, chatting to the children piling seaweed on their sledges to spread on Gurney's fields up the hill, sometimes helping the women collect their lobster pots, but mostly spending it alone in her boat.

Until the afternoon when Tobias rowed out to join her. She saw him pulling across the bay and knew that God hadn't finished with her yet.

As he came alongside, she said, ‘It's bad, isn't it?'

Silent, he picked up a newspaper from the thwarts and handed it to her. It was the
London Gazette
, displaying as much excitement as that sober journal could over the news that, in Paris, Danton had gone to the guillotine. Among those who'd gone with them was listed the name of de Vaubon.

‘Have you told him?' she asked at last.

‘No.'

No, it was her job; her job to fight blackness and pain on her own account in order to inflict them on an eleven-year-old boy. ‘I don't know how,' she said.

Jacques was in the inn yard, hammering a piece of metal.

They sat together on the mounting block while she held his hand and told him. ‘He was the bravest man I ever knew,' she said. It was true but at that moment it didn't help an exiled motherless boy who would never see his father again.

What did help, a little, was that Babbs Cove went into mourning with them. Its men and women had known Guillame de Vaubon longer than had Makepeace and much longer than had his son; he'd been their smuggling ally on the other side of the Channel. They'd sailed alongside him, outwitted the excise with him, hidden him when he was wounded, nursed him back to strength, danced at his wedding to Diana, toasted the birth of his son.