For Our Liberty (45 page)

Duprez was quickly clear and free, the horses taking him rapidly down the street away from the pursuit. The guards wouldn’t catch him but Duprez’s flight was to be a short one. The breathless guards fired a ragged an ineffectual volley and Duprez, for a moment, must have felt that wonderful exhilaration of defying death or fate but it wasn’t to last. Mounted police agents dashed from a side street and more municipal guards, likely the sentries from the Corps Législatif, flooded on to the street. Duprez turned madly to avoid them, the horses whinnied and the cabriolet almost overturned but one of the agents jumped from his mount and caught the bridle of one of the horses, he was dragged along for a few yards before they came to an untidy stop. The man must be mad to try something like that, I thought, and then I recognised him. It was Lacrosse. The dark stocky figure was unmistakable.
 

I turned and ran. There was nothing I could do for Duprez now Lacrosse had him. I had to tell Pichegru. Duprez might not have been at the centre of the conspiracy but he knew those that were. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him pulled down from the cabriolet and held by two police as Lacrosse strutted up to him, pistol drawn. I didn’t see what happened next. I sped around a corner into a narrow alley, just the kind of place where I had been thinking of killing Duprez but a few minutes before. It was littered with rubbish, abandoned barrels and the odd dead cat. I had to slow down before I tripped over something not very pleasant. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see a guard taking aim with his musket. I ducked and the shot whined over my head. I fired back with my last remaining pistol shot but I too missed. I thrust the pistols back in my pockets and ran out of the alley back into another street. I was heading east and knew I wasn’t far from Fauche’s house but I couldn’t seek sanctuary there until I had shaken off any pursuit.
 

I dashed across the street, dodging between carts and carriages. I was looking for another alley. Given the weather there weren’t many people on the street but those that were mostly took one look at the wild expression on my face and the police in pursuit and wisely got out of the way. The guard was gaining on me. He hadn’t waited to reload his musket and he seemed a determined, hale-and-hearty individual. It’s always a mistake to look over your shoulder when fleeing, but it is a temptation that is hard to resist. I paid for my weakness. I collided with a maid laden with baskets of vegetables. They spilled on to the mud and she cursed me roundly. I didn’t have time to apologise. The guard’s pace wasn’t slackening and I had wasted priceless seconds. I charged on, as fast as I could.
 

I rounded a corner and found myself alone. The street was empty. I decided that it would have to do. I ducked into a doorway and waited a few bare seconds. The guard careered around the corner and I leapt out and tackled him. We went down into the mud with more of a squelch than a thud, his musket slid out of his reach. I pinned him with one hand and punched him with the other. I felt teeth crunch under my knuckles. He spat blood and scrabbled for my face. Two strong hands closed around my neck and began to squeeze. I took hold of his arms and tried to pull them away. I was struggling for breath, his hands clamped around my neck like a vice. I couldn’t move them. I butted my head forward and felt my forehead break his nose. His grip slackened, just for a moment. I managed to pull one of his arms away and took a deep and ragged breath before closing my own hands around his neck. I squeezed for all I was worth. I could feel his windpipe being crushed by my grip. His hands were groping blindly in the mud. He must have found a stone or something else similarly hard. I felt a sharp blow to the side of my head and pitched off him into the gutter like a drunken dragoon.

In a trice he was on top of my back, pushing my face down into ice cold watery ooze. Again, I couldn’t breath. I felt my mouth and nose filling with the unspeakable filth. I tried to reach around but he had one of my arms twisted and pinned to my back. My other searched for something to hit him with so I could play his own trick on him. Suddenly I stopped. ‘You pudding-head,’ I said to myself. My free hand managed to find the dagger in my cloak. I gripped it and stabbed wildly upwards. The guard cursed. I don’t think I did any real damage but it was enough for me to lift my head and take a breath. I stabbed again and he rolled off me holding his side. I turned and this time landed a proper blow. My knife went in between his ribs. I felt some resistance and twisted the blade. Blood gushed from the wound as I pulled the knife out and then stabbed again. He shuddered, a look of complete surprise on his face and then lay still. I suppose he had no more thought that that morning would be his last than Duprez had.

I looked around. The street was still empty but I could hear the sound of running boots. I hurriedly took off my cloak, wiped the mud from my face as best I could and lay it over the body of my pursuer. With my hands I tried to staunch the flow of blood from his wound. Three more guards and a couple of police agents came around the corner.

“He stabbed him!” I shouted wildly. “He ran off that way,” I continued pointing up the street. They looked down at their comrade and with grim determination ran up the street. Onlookers emerged from houses and shops around me. I hoped none had witnessed the deed. They gathered round and expressed shock, sympathy and fear that such a thing could happen on their doorsteps. Another gaggle of police paused in their pursuit and this time were directed on by a portly gentleman who declared he had seen the attacker flee in the direction I had previously indicated. Quite a crowd had gathered now. An elderly doctor arrived and quickly pronounced that the guard was dead. I stopped my feigned ministrations of mercy and stood. I received a couple of pats on the back and muttered comments along the lines of ‘you did all you could’. I stepped back into the crowd as more police came by. Lacrosse among them. I bent down, hiding myself from him, making a show of wiping the blood from my hands with my kerchief and generally looking shaken. It wasn’t a hard part to play. My heart was still doing its best to leap out of my chest. A kindly old lady told me I should go home and clean myself properly. I agreed.
 

As Lacrosse detailed some of his men to take charge I slunk away from the rear of the crowd, back around the corner and away from the police who would very soon realise they had been misdirected. I too had been duped. Someone had wanted us to think Duprez was the traitor. Someone who was protecting their own treacherous hide.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Have you ever wondered why it’s called ‘plaster of Paris’? No, neither had I but I found out the night after Duprez had been taken. I’d tried to clean the blood from my hands but my fingernails still had crimson stains at the edges. Before the night was out I would have more blood on my hands, figuratively if not literally.

Rusillion, Pichegru and I had entered the old gypsum mines, from which the eponymous plaster got its name, through the cellar of… Actually I’d better not tell you. For all I know the barrels of gun powder and the crates of muskets I saw are there still, awaiting the next time that the French rise up against their government. The Royalists had been using the mines both to traverse the city safely and secretly but also to hide people and weapons for many years. The mines hadn’t been worked for centuries but their maze of tunnels and galleries still ran beneath the city like the trails of maggots in an old cheese, and they smelled much the same; mouldy and dank. We followed Rusillion while he droned on about the history of the mines as the lantern bled light into the black.
 

He led us unerringly through a complicated grid-like maze of passages. The old miners had dug through the gypsum in a series of tunnels, leaving square columns in between to support the rock above. Some galleries, where the deposits had been thicker, were thirty feet or more high. In others we had to stoop. All were as cold as graves.

After a few minutes we entered a much larger chamber, as big as a church nave. In the middle there was a figure in a chair, I knew from his bulk that it was Fauche. Around him stood Dominique, Calvet and Cadoudal. Fauche sat, his hands tied behind his back, fear on his face and sweat on his brow despite the cold. The lanterns were placed either side of his chair, and the low angle of the light emphasised the folds and creases of his many chins and the look of abject terror on his face. Cadoudal was angry, his face warped by hate, his eyes cast into dark demonic shadows. Dominique looked scared, and slightly confused. I was glad. I would have thought less of her if, from her countenance, I had detected consent or even pleasure in what was happening. I couldn’t see what was on Calvet’s face. All I could see of him was a black silhouette.

“Has he talked yet?” asked Rusillion as we walked into the chamber. They all turned to look at us. I saw hope cross Fauche’s face when he saw me. I looked away.

“No, he denies it. As I thought he would,” said Cadoudal.

“Perhaps he denies it because he is not the traitor,” I said, but without the conviction of a true believer. While my gut told me he was innocent my head had its doubts. However, after my experiences at the hands of Lacrosse I must say I felt a great deal of sympathy for Fauche, and possibly a little more for the chair on which he sat since the legs were visibly bowing and I wasn’t at all comfortable with what I saw. I walked up to Dominique and put my hand around her shoulders. She was wearing a thick coat but still I could feel she was shivering. She didn’t shake off my embrace but neither did she return it.

“Ben, it must be him,” said Pichegru. “We’ve ruled everyone else out, or they have been ruled out for us by Lacrosse as he arrested them. There is a traitor among us and it must be Fauche.”

“I still don’t believe it,” I said, but with less certitude than I should have.

“I don’t want to either, Ben, but it has to be him. He’s the one who betrayed Claude. He must pay,” said Dominique. I took my arm from her shoulder and looked at her face. There was pain there. Pain that needed someone to blame. There was silence for a few moments, perhaps we were all examining our consciences. A process mine seldom withstood. The light from the lanterns didn’t reach the ceiling or the walls of the chamber. It was as though the seven of us resided in some bubble of existence separated from the world by a veil of night.

“If I may be permitted to speak?” said Fauche.

“Only if you tell us the truth this time, you dog!” snarled Cadoudal.

“I have been, but I see now it doesn’t matter what I say. You will not listen. Your minds are closed by fear. Why would I…” Fauche got no further. Cadoudal punched him hard in the face, splitting his lip. I’d been in Fauche’s place only months before, I had to stop what was happening. It was wrong. It made us no better than Lacrosse and his thugs. Also I didn’t think the chair Fauche was sitting on would last much longer. It was groaning more than he was. I was about to plead for mercy, for common sense but somebody else beat me to it and it was the last person that I expected.

“Stop!” shouted Calvet. “I agree with Ben. Fauche cannot be the traitor. I have known him a very long time and a truer man I have not met. Cadoudal, you are doing Lacrosse’s work for him. If we are turning on ourselves then he has already won.”

“You are a fool Calvet. If it isn’t Fauche then who is it? You? Me? Your niece? There have been too many arrests. We have lost too many friends,” answered Cadoudal, and I divined that the it wasn’t betrayal that Cadoudal was feeling but fear and doubt. He looked at Rusillion, seeking an ally.

“We know there is a traitor,” said Rusillion. “We thought it was Duprez. It evidently wasn’t. Who else can it be but Fauche, if what you told us of your escape from Paris was true?” I couldn’t stop myself glancing at Calvet. Dominique saw me and scowled as she stepped away from me. If Calvet was the traitor I couldn’t see how it served him to defend Fauche. Surely it would have been better for him to join the condemnation?

“Perhaps Lacrosse is better at his job than you thought,” replied Calvet. “If Lacrosse had an agent amongst us I would have heard of it. He would not have been able to stop himself boasting. Many reports come across my desk. Most are just rumour and malicious denunciations but a clever man could put them together and learn much. You haven’t been betrayed. You have been careless. You have involved too many people in your plot. Been seen too often. All of Paris knows something is afoot.”

“If you’d been more helpful to us then we may have had more success,” said Cadoudal.

“My position is precarious, you know that. I am more used to the cause staying where I am than committing to any one plot,” said Calvet looking to the rest of us for support. The others couldn’t meet his eye. I did, briefly, but I still couldn’t look Fauche in the face.

“That sounds like a convenient excuse for cowardice to me,” said Cadoudal. I saw Calvet flinch as if he’d been slapped. I feared the two of them would come to blows if the argument continued.

“That’s enough. Stop this,” said Pichegru. He didn’t shout, in fact his voice was barely above a whisper but he was heard all the more because of it. “Calvet is right. This is getting us nowhere. I am still convinced there is a traitor, but without knowing for sure that it is Fauche we cannot continue this obscenity.”

“You are all imbeciles! Can you not see? It is him. It has to be,” appealed Cadoudal.

“I swear to you that I am not…” Fauche got no further, Cadoudal turned and punched him viciously again. There was a loud crack as his head twisted and the chair collapsed. We all waited for some sound to come from Fauche; a cry, a sigh or even a curse but there was nothing. Calvet walked over to him and knelt beside him. Dominique sobbed beside me, I reached for her hand and she grasped it tightly.