Le Temps des Cerises (25 page)

‘Can I help?' offered Eveline for the place was a flurry of activity now and she felt quite useless standing around watching. She hadn't come to watch, she'd come to act.

‘Help Sandy,' ordered Alphonse, striding off to the far end to open the exit gates; and Sandy threw her some hessian sacks.

She crept into a loosebox and knelt down in the straw beside a large grey horse. Its feet were black as liquorice and big as soup plates and she tapped one of them nervously. Nothing happened. She tapped again and pulled feebly at the tuft of hair behind the ankle. Still nothing happened. The horse stood, stubborn and placid, blowing gently down on her head.

‘Tap the foot at the front of the fetlock,' Sandy grinned, peering at her over the top of the loose box. ‘And he'll pick 'em up for you no fuss.'

Eveline tapped the front of the foot and instantly the horse re-balanced itself and lifted up its leg, revealing a half-moon-shaped, silver-coloured shoe. She slipped the hessian bag on and tied it up tightly before moving on to the next foot, feeling decidedly pleased with herself. How obedient the horses were. How beautifully trained. You tapped at their feet and their legs popped up like little Jack in the boxes!

She slipped into the next loose box, edging round another horse, tying its feet up tight in the sacks – putting on the mufflers as Sandy put it – as deft and sure as any professional horse stealer. Now she'd got the hang of it she hummed as she worked, marvelling at the beauty of these living, breathing statues. They'd seemed so different from the boulevards, careening along in their feathers and plumes but maybe she'd simply been confusing them with their owners or maybe carriage horses were a different breed entirely. These, after all, were inured to the battlefield. They didn't just prance over puddles and parasols, they stepped out to the rhythm of battle drum and bugle, tossed their manes in the line of fire, swished their tails at bullets like flies, stepped over cadavers and torn, broken limbs. Silver-haired and battle scarred, there wasn't much that could surprise them any more, even a girl messing about with a couple of hessian sacks. Some of them blew soft and gently on her hair, wisps of stray hay at the edges of their mouths, others stood calm and aloof, observing her knowledgably with their large liquid eyes as she hummed and hurried about their feet.

She was just onto her fifth horse – a giant chestnut-coloured animal with a back as broad and shiny as a mahogany table – when Ben came rushing in, the smile wiped right off his face.

‘They are coming,' he uttered in a piercing whisper. ‘Quick, quick, they are coming!'

Alphonse appeared out of the shadows of a loose box with a halter in his hand. ‘How many?'

‘I don't know,' Ben muttered helplessly. ‘I just heard voices.'

‘Right. Join your lot. And get going. Now. You know your destination. The rest of you follow one at a time. Don't panic. If they don't hear anything they're more likely to sit down to a game of cards than check on the horses. Sandy, Eveline, forget the hessian sacks.' As he spoke he moved rapidly towards the pitchforks hanging in a line above the food bins and, taking one down, began forking straw from an empty loose box onto the flagstones to deafen the sound of the horses' hooves. ‘Eveline, take Apollo and follow Sandy.' His eyes met hers briefly and she smiled gratefully back at him. ‘I'll join you as soon as I can.'

And they were off. The horses were off. Flying out of their stables with little jockeys on their backs as if they were heading for the racetrack at Longchamps. All they needed were colours and silks, candy stalls and roaring crowds to complete the picture. The boys crouched low, their knees high and their heads down to negotiate the exit gate and the horses surged forward like a wave, their ears pricked and twitching, sensing the excitement and adrenalin in the air.

Scarcely daring to breathe, Eveline led the chestnut horse out of his loose box, one hessian bag on its foot, cringing at the sound of the other three clip-clopping over the flagstones but Alphonse smiled and waved her forward. ‘Vault on! Vault on!' he urged; but she couldn't. The horse was too big and his coat too slippery – like a mahogany table polished up once too often by an over-zealous housemaid. In the end, they had to give her a leg up and she half sprawled, half lay across the horse's neck as he followed the others eagerly out of the cosy stable into the fresh night air.

And then began a ride Eveline thought she would never forget, not even if she lived to be a hundred years old. She felt about a hundred years old in the middle of it and for a few days afterwards but she never forgot it.

She didn't turn round and look at Alphonse or wave goodbye to him for fear of sliding off in an inglorious little heap again; she simply twisted her hands in the luxurious mane and allowed the horse to have its head, following Sandy on the smoky-grey creature in front of her. Sometimes she felt like she was following a smoke signal as the horse in front weaved this way and that, silently drifting out of her line of vision but Apollo followed closely one step behind as he must have learnt to do in the battlefield. She could hear no sounds of chase or pursuit, only the faint clip-clopping of the horses in front as they fanned out to their separate destinations; and she breathed a small sigh of relief and loosened her grip on the thick chestnut mane. She hoped Alphonse had escaped too or at the very least hidden out of sight and she wanted to ask Sandy if they should wait for him somewhere but she didn't have the time to. They were already catching up with the rest of his men and he was spinning in and out on the smoky grey, urging them away from the Rue de Rivoli and Place de la Concorde and onto a grassy little path beside the Seine. She couldn't help but notice how beautifully they rode, without saddle or bridle, some of them leading a horse or two behind, guiding them solely with knees and voices; and she was ashamed to think she'd once labelled them tearaways, scrap merchants, pilfering sparrows at the back of Brébant's.

They streamed ahead of her along the little path beside the Seine and it was all she could do to keep her balance, bumping up and down at the rear end in a bone-shaking trot. Every movement the horse made seemed to send her more and more out of kilter and she tried sitting up straighter but that sent her dizzy and she was frightened an overhanging branch might knock her head off her shoulders so she went back to crouching forward, clinging on to the neck and thick wiry mane. Sandy shouted something to her but the wind tore it out of his mouth and all she could hear was her own laboured breath, the roar of the water and the horse's pounding feet. Whatever had possessed her to say she could ride? She managed to stay on as they negotiated small obstacles, puddles, bridges, sharp narrow alleyways, the horses gliding like ghosts past dark and shuttered houses, washing lines and trellised vines. Nobody was afoot. Nobody, not even a mouse was stirring, for they rode as soft as a mouse's dream or a prayer sent forth in sleep. Sandy was whispering to everybody that they didn't have far to go now, mainly to keep morale up, Eveline thought, for they were nowhere near the Bois de Boulogne.

‘We're nowhere near the Bois de Boulogne,' she said indignantly, sitting up straight for dignity's sake and blinking her eyes wide open to distract herself from the fatigue that was threatening to overwhelm her and the pain that went from her legs to her shoulders. ‘If that is where we are headed…'

‘We are headed for freedom,' he replied cryptically and nonchalantly then cantered off before she could ask him to explain himself.

She dug her knees into Apollo's sides, desperate to catch up and suddenly furious with the euphemisms, the secrecy, the idiocy of the mission. Whoever heard of stealing a pack of horses in the middle of the night only to take them to freedom? Weren't they free enough with their jam tarts and polished hooves, cosy stables and warm sweet hay? She dug her heels in again querulously but the horse didn't respond. If anything he got slower and she watched the others streaming away from her, their tails flying out in the wind. She stared miserably after them into the darkness, banging uselessly at the barrel sides. What if her horse had gone lame? It suddenly occurred to her that Apollo might be lame. He'd lost his hessian sack ages ago and his stride didn't seem any different but his neck was hot and damp with sweat. She knew that they wouldn't come back for her if she got left behind. They'd leave her here in the middle of nowhere to fend for herself. Survival of the fittest Laurie would have called it. That was how they lived, how they survived, existing as they did under blackness and stars. She felt a rising sense of panic then pulled herself up sharply. She wasn't some damsel in distress needing to be rescued. She would follow on at her own pace, head for freedom and the Bois at her own pace. Even if she never got there at least she would have tried.

She spoke to the horse as she'd heard the others do, in a soft low crooning murmur. ‘Just a few more steps,' she whispered, patting him on the neck, ‘just a few more steps old man.'

His ears flickered back and forth at the sound of her voice and his pace picked up a little on the rough pebbly track. Encouraged, Eveline patted him again, reminded him he was a grand old fellow, a veteran soldier who'd taken Generals and Emperors into battle, who'd survived explosions and cadavers, whisked bullets away like flies. This in comparison would be a breeze. Just a short step out to the Bois de Boulogne, to freedom and to liberty. What horse wouldn't give its eye teeth for a holiday in the Bois de Boulogne? To be able to race under the canopy of trees, drink from the fountains and taste the tasty herbs and flowers the Emperor had planted, imported from abroad.

‘You'll love it,' she whispered into the chestnut's ear. ‘They may even have snowdrops at this time of year.'

The horse seemed to understand for he nodded approval at the sound of snowdrops and she giggled out loud, wondering if his name was Snowdrop and not Apollo after all.

‘Snowdrop,' she kept muttering into the emptiness. ‘We're heading for snowdrops and liberty.'

The wind had dropped by now, the clouds evaporated and the stars hung clear and icicle bright in the night sky. Was everything Alphonse did concerned with freedom in some way, she wondered. Freedom of choice for people, even animals. Freedom from family and friends, the mundane, the routine. Freedom to rustle up a little army in the night that appeared and disappeared silent and surprising as dewfall. Was freedom so intoxicating to him? She touched her face with her fingers and felt nothing but cold. She heard nothing but the sound of her indrawn breath and the horse's hooves on the road; and she felt entirely alone. Was freedom just another word for loneliness? She tried to imagine La Païva asleep in her golden bedroom and the shop girls dreaming of sales and crinolines; and she wondered if she would exchange her life for theirs now, at this very moment. Was luxury a freedom, as she had always thought, or just another form of aloneness? Freedom after all was hard, gritty, painful and uncomfortable. Maybe you couldn't get there on a feather bed. Maybe you had to get there on the back of a mahogany table!

She clasped her hands about Apollo's neck to stop herself from falling asleep and falling off; but the horse seemed to pick up its pace, sniffing the air and whickering softly as if he could smell the snowdrops just around the corner. ‘Slow down,' shrieked Eveline as she lurched up and down in her bone-shaking trot. ‘Slow down you idiot!' But the horse didn't seem to be listening now. He was careering along, his hooves making sparks along the road and she only hoped he wasn't about to bolt. The last thing she needed was him bolting back to his stable.

‘We're heading for snowdrops,' she reminded him in an attempt to pacify, gripping as hard as she could with her knees and nearly unseating herself in the process. ‘Not the battlefield!'

The horse suddenly slithered to an ungainly halt and began pawing the air with his foreleg. Eveline pushed herself up straight and peered about her into the darkness. What on earth had gotten into him now? And then she saw it – a shadow tall and straight leap from the hedgerow and she ducked behind Apollo's neck as if it might make a difference before realising instinctively who it was. How had he got here so quickly? Had he flown on a broomstick? Come in a cab?

‘He knows you,' she smiled as Alphonse vaulted up behind her and took her in his arms. ‘You smell like a horse…or a pâtisserie!' She didn't know what she meant or what she thought and she was too exhausted to care. She was tongue tied, hysterical, overwrought and all of a sudden blissfully happy. And she allowed herself to sink back into his warm reassuring arms as he moulded his body about hers and they rode on, hard and strong, into the darkness. And she dreamt she was riding every night with him hard and fast into the darkness and out the other side again to freedom and snowdrops…

Chapter twenty-one

Laurie heard the sound of the rappel through the fogginess of sleep but thinking he was dreaming turned over with a grunt, pulling the pillow after him. But the noise persisted, loud and insistent as a hammering on the door or a peal of thunder; and he sat up suddenly wide awake, his fair hair as tousled as a haystack, his soft eyes full of alarm.

There was no mistaking it – that sound. A sound that filled every heart with trepidation, proclaiming as it did that Paris was in danger and summoning every man and woman out into the streets. But what could it be? The war was over wasn't it? Had there been an insurrection? Had the day dawned at last on revolution? Laurie leapt from his bed and cast aside the curtains of his porthole mirror but he could see practically nothing for the morning was grey and misty. It could not be the dawn of revolution, he said to himself, for he had imagined that day to be bright and clear, a promise and a sign of good things and new beginnings.