One Thing More (32 page)

For a moment Georges had seen his face in the light: a fine, sensitive, intelligent face, about Bernave’s age. Neither his look nor his manner were those of an artisan. There was an innate elegance in him in spite of his very ordinary brown and grey clothes. It must be St Felix. Georges saw instantly why Amandine would be drawn to him.

As St Felix turned into the Rue des Tours, Georges broke into a run himself and went after him. What had happened to panic him into leaving the house? Surely he must realise it would instantly mark him as guilty?

Even as he saw St Felix disappear, Georges heard a voice behind him, sharp with anger. A moment later a shot rang out. However, no bullet passed him. The shot was an alarm rather than an intention to hit anyone.

St Felix was going towards the river and the Île de la Cité. He was crazy. He was going right into the open. He must have lost his head completely to do something so utterly stupid. In the Cordeliers at least he would have a chance.

Georges could see him ahead, moving with a swifter pace now. He could not keep that up for long. From what Célie had said, St Felix was unused to much exercise, a scholar rather than a man of action. He was racing down the Rue Dauphine towards the Pont Neuf and the open river.

There was more shouting behind and the clatter of running feet.

Just before the road end, St Felix dashed across between two carts, was yelled at by drivers, and disappeared into a gateway.

Georges slowed down. Following him would only give away his direction. He looked around quickly. There were half a dozen other people on the pavement but all seemed busy with their own affairs.

A National Guardsman in a torn uniform came up to Georges, panting and clasping his side.

‘Seen a man in a brown coat running, Citizen?’ he asked between gasps.

‘Yes,’ Georges answered unhesitatingly. ‘He went down towards the river, the Île de la Cité.’

The guard raised his hand in thanks and then increased his speed, calling over his shoulder to his men to follow him. Half a dozen others set off at a run, fanning out to cover both sides of the street.

Georges turned back as if going to the Boulevard St-Germain again, still holding his wine and loaf of bread. He cut across the Rue Christine, in the same direction as St Felix had gone. If St Felix had continued moving, he should come out somewhere near the Rue Seguier. If he didn’t, then he had gone to ground. Perhaps he knew someone who would hide him. After dark it would be easier. He might get out of the district altogether.

Georges walked quite slowly down towards the river. The street was quiet. An old man lounged in a doorway. A woman sold coffee, her head wrapped up in a shawl which almost hid her face. Two children quarrelled over who had won a game, and a young man with black hair read a copy of
L’Ami du Peuple
.

Georges waited ten minutes and was just about to leave, satisfied that St Felix had found a place to hide, when he saw him step out of an alley entrance, glance up and down the street, and then come towards him, walking too quickly.

The young man with the paper looked up at him curiously. Both children stopped their argument and stared.

Georges stepped forward. ‘Oh! There you are!’ he, said boldly. ‘Thought I’d missed you!’

St Felix stopped abruptly, his face white, eyes wide.

Georges pushed the bread into his pocket and strode the last few paces to him and clasped his hand, putting his free arm around his shoulders.

‘Good to see you, my friend,’ he said loudly, then added under his breath, ‘For heaven’s sake pretend to recognise me. It’s your only chance!’

‘Hello!’ St Felix gulped. ‘Yes ... sorry. I went the wrong way. How are you?’ He looked terrible; his body was shaking and his breath rasped in his throat.

‘I’ve been on the run since September,’ Georges said softly. ‘I’m a hell of a lot better at this than you are. Come with me.’ As he said it he started forward, linking his arm in St Felix’s and half pulling him along. ‘We’ve got to get back into the alleys of the Cordeliers. They couldn’t find Marat there, even with three thousand soldiers. We might be just as lucky.’

St Felix kept up with him. ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t know me. Why should you care if they catch me or not?’

‘St Felix,’ Georges replied. ‘They want you for killing Bernave.’

St Felix snatched his arm away, his face ashen, the fine lines around his eyes deep-etched. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Georges Coigny, Amandine’s cousin,’ Georges replied. ‘For heaven’s sake don’t draw attention to us! Keep your head down.’

St Felix obeyed, but more from alarm than compliance. Together, almost in step, they hurried across the Boulevard St-Germain and into the alley behind the Rue Monsieur le Prince.

‘We’ve got to go west,’ Georges said urgently, ‘otherwise we’ll end up in the Luxembourg Gardens. They won’t be looking for two men.’

‘Why do you bother?’ St Felix asked, but he kept up with him, his head forward, eyes down on the rough stones of the pavement.

A cart rumbled by them, followed swiftly by a high-wheeled single-seated carriage driven at considerable speed. An old woman swore as a spurt of mud sloshed against her. There was a National Guardsman standing at the far corner where Georges and St Felix had passed a few minutes before.

‘Hey you! Stop!’ he bellowed. ‘You in the brown coat!’ He turned sideways to someone out of sight. ‘Michelet! Up here!’

Georges grasped St Felix again and half-dragged him under the archway into a courtyard.

‘We can’t get out of here!’ St Felix accused him, his eyes wide with fear. ‘We’ll be trapped!’

‘Up the steps,’ Georges ordered, waving at the flight of stone stairs that led to a door in the second storey. ‘Come on—hurry!’

‘Where to?’ St Felix demanded desperately, pulling away. ‘We can’t get in!’

‘Yes we can ... get on with it!’ Georges slapped his back hard. ‘Run!’

There was nowhere else to go. They lurched forward and all but collided, stumbling up the steps to the door. Georges beat on it with his fist, still clutching the bottle in the other, and then threw his weight against it. The catch burst and they overbalanced inwards just as a large woman in a grey dress came out of the room beyond.

‘We mean you no harm, Citizeness,’ Georges said, forcing himself to smile at her dazzlingly. ‘Some drunken louts abused my friend here, and when he answered back they set on us. Flight is the better part of valour.’

The woman looked at St Felix’s pale face with its poet’s mouth and terrified eyes. He seemed to be holding his arms over his chest as if he had been hurt. Actually he was a little winded, but she was not to know that.

‘Please?’ Georges urged, offering her the bottle of wine and the bread.

She closed her eyes and waved an arm in the general direction of the room behind her.

Georges took it for permission, and put the bread and wine on the table. He yanked St Felix forward through the doorway, past a couple of chairs and a table set out in quiet domesticity, into the next room, up a short flight of stairs and threw open the window.

‘Out!’ he ordered.

St Felix swung around, eyes wide. ‘What?’

‘Out!’ Georges repeated sharply. ‘On to the roof. We’ll be out of their sight. They won’t know where we’ll come down. Don’t stand there! Do you want to be shot?’

There was shouting in the street below.

St Felix scrambled through the window and slid down the roof slates awkwardly, only regaining his footing when he was almost at the bottom of the valley. He straightened up and started along towards the nearest divide, quite quickly gaining some skill.

Georges went after him, feeling his feet slip on the wet slates and banging his elbow as he tried to get his balance.

St Felix was already disappearing around the corner of the valley into the angle of the next row of houses. There were more shouts from the street below and half a dozen bullets shot into the air.

Georges let go and half rolled down into the guttering. He landed on hands and knees, then went forward as fast as he could, on all fours, keeping as low as possible. At the corner he saw St Felix ahead of him, crouched, undecided which way to go next.

Georges caught up with him. ‘Keep going west,’ he said quickly. ‘Don’t let them drive us into the open.’

‘We can’t help it,’ St Felix replied with desperation. ‘We can’t go round and round these roofs for ever! This is only one block. We’ll have to cross a street, and then they’ll catch us.’ His eyes were wide, his face blotched where wind and exertion had whipped the blood into his cheeks. Georges could almost smell his fear, and he understood it. He had fled just as wildly with the National Guard baying at his heels like dogs, and in less open places than this—places he knew, and where he had friends among other fugitives. He felt a surge of pity for St Felix, a scholar and dreamer caught up in events that were little of his choosing—especially if he were not the one who had killed Bernave.

‘Which way?’ St Felix repeated. ‘They won’t take long to work out what we did.’ His voice shook. He gulped air.

Georges pointed ahead. ‘That way, until we get the chance to go down towards the west. We’ve got to get closer to St-Sulpice. There are warrens around there where they’d never find us.’

‘Why? Why are you doing this?’ St Felix demanded with disbelief. ‘For all you know I could have killed Bernave. I didn’t, but I can’t prove it.’

‘I don’t care whether you did or not,’ Georges answered honestly. ‘But this is not the place to debate it.’ He pushed him, feeling the rigid resistance of his body. ‘We’ll argue the issues of justice later, if there is a later. Just move!’ Now his voice too was rising, panic close beneath the surface.

St Felix obeyed. He seemed to have caught his breath. He clambered along the valley with considerable alacrity, Georges close behind him.

About twenty yards along they found a window Georges was able to lever open. They scrambled in and shut it after them just as there was a clatter on the roofs behind, and more shouting. A shot ricocheted against the slates with a sharp whine.

St Felix let out a gasp of terror.

Georges could feel his own heart pounding. He had joined St Felix spontaneously, without weighing what the cost to himself would be if they failed to give the Guards the slip. He was just beginning to realise it now, when it was too late.

He went across the bare floor of the room at the far side, hesitated a moment, wondering what would be beyond it. St Felix was at his back, breathing hard. Whatever was before them, there was no retreating. The roof was impossible now, and any minute the Guard might look through the window and see them.

He opened the door with a creak. There was a small room leading into another slightly larger one. He went in and St Felix came on his heels.

‘Close it!’ Georges whispered sharply.

St Felix obeyed, his hands fumbling on the door latch.

‘Down!’ Georges hissed. ‘We don’t want to hurt anybody, but if we have to give them a swift blow to keep them silent, it’s better than the guillotine.’

St Felix swore under his breath.

But no one disturbed them as they tiptoed rapidly down the stairs and out of a first-floor window on to a ledge. Then they dropped rather awkwardly on to the yard below. It was filled with piles of wood, some of it sawn, some not. It afforded excellent concealment as the two men moved towards the entrance to see if the street were clear.

Georges went first, looking around carefully. He felt a cold thread of fear when he saw the white and blue of Guards’ uniforms at the far end. He withdrew quickly, turning to St Felix.

St Felix was ashen.

‘Change coats!’ Georges ordered.

‘What?’

‘Change coats!’ he started to take his own off. ‘Hurry up!’

St Felix understood. He almost tore his sleeve in his haste. He started to say something, then changed his mind. He did not take his eyes from Georges’ face.

Georges took the brown coat and put it on, passing over his own blue one.

‘Thank you ...’ St Felix began.

Georges smiled briefly. ‘Hide behind the wood here, then when they’ve gone after me, cross the street and head towards St-Sulpice,’ he commanded. ‘You’ll be safer there than anywhere else this side of the river. Good luck.’ Then before he could lose his nerve, he sidled out into the street and began walking rapidly away from the Guards at the end. He hoped to cross the Rue Mazarine, then the Rue de Seine and disappear into the maze of buildings around the Church of St-Germain-des-Prés. If he threw them off there, he could eventually get to St-Sulpice himself.

He was almost to the end and around the corner into Rue Dauphine when he heard the yell. He started to run. There was a shot fired, and an answering shot somewhere to the north, near the river. Footsteps sounded behind him as if there were a whole detachment of men thundering down the street.

He swung round the corner, almost colliding with a fat woman holding a mug of coffee. It spilled all down his jacket, soaking him through. She screamed and cursed him as she overbalanced against the wall.

He shouted an apology over his shoulder and kept on running. The Rue Dauphine was full of traffic: wagons, coaches, a public diligence so overloaded someone was leaning half out of the door. It was beginning to rain again and everyone was hurrying, their heads down, collars up. The cobbles were slippery.

Georges dodged between a wagonload of firewood and a miller’s cart half full of grain. He almost banged into a standing horse at the far side and stumbled up on to the pavement. There was an alley opening ahead. He ran into it, praying it was not a dead end.

There were shouts in the street behind him. Someone let off another shot.

At the far end of the alley was a wall with a gate in it. Georges threw himself against it, and it held fast, locked.

His first intention to help St Felix had been to draw the Guard off. When they caught up with him they would know he was not St Felix.

Now he realised how stupid that idea was. They would be furious with him, and take him in anyway, simply out of revenge. Someone would know who he really was and just as wanted as St Felix, if not more so! He was an idiot!