The Forbidden Rose (12 page)

Adrian’s knife appeared. “Can I do it now?” She was almost used to seeing the boy with a knife in his hand. The soldiers, of course, were not.

“Half minute.” LeBreton shifted his boots. “Take his ears off before you start on the nose. And don’t be getting blood on yourself. I’m damned if I’m going to buy you a new shirt.”

The boy inspected the edge of his knife, looking critical.

“It was two men from Paris,” the private blurted out. “They carried orders from the Committee of Public Safety. Twelve arrest orders. They divided them up and gave us two names.” He looked around nervously. “We chased the first man yesterday and lost him. Then we came to take Bertille Rivière.”

“Now that is very interesting.” LeBreton took up his coffee cup again. “Tell me about these men from Paris.”

And they did. Ten words were enough to tell her these were the Jacobins who had come to her chateau.

The questioning continued. Everyone packed. She carried bags and boxes out of the cottage, coming back to listen from time to time. It could not be said the men spoke freely. But then, it seemed there was very little Citoyen LeBreton expected them to know. He asked the same question many different ways.

Yes, there were twelve to arrest. No, they did not know why. They’d been denounced in Paris, most likely. Lots of folks condemned in Paris. And the men who brought the orders—? Fine revolutionary patriots, to be sure.

When she walked through the next time, carrying sheets, matters had advanced somewhat. Adrian straddled a bench. He’d found a whetstone and was honing a keen, bright edge to the knife. She brought him coffee with milk in it and sugar, the way she had seen him drink it . . . was it only this morning?

When she set the cup down beside him, fierce, dark eyes glanced at the coffee then at her. “I’m supposed to do that.”

“You are engaged in being terrifying. Continue.” She said it low enough she would not be overheard. When she returned, LeBreton was on his feet. “. . . bandits would be my advice. Five or six of them, at least, took you by surprise. If I were you, I’d say they were from the Vendée.”

The
gardes
said nothing.

“Or you can tell everybody a woman hit you over the head with a damn cradle and you let your prisoners get away.” LeBreton sounded perfectly agreeable. “I wouldn’t like living with that reputation myself. I don’t want folks laughing in corners every time I walk by. And what I also don’t want, Citoyen Hachard . . .” He strolled closer. “What I don’t want is, when I’m back in Paris, I don’t want to hear that anybody’s looking for a big man, with a scar like this.” He drew a line down his cheek, pointing it out. “I get annoyed as sour milk when somebody talks about me.”

“He gets irritated,” Adrian murmured, sharpening.

The sergeant cleared his throat. “We are required to—”

“Men who annoy me wake up one morning and notice their throat’s been cut.” LeBreton loomed over the sergeant. He was of a size to loom with great effect.

“It’s very sad,” Adrian said.

LeBreton was most utterly convincing in his threats. If she did not know him somewhat, she would wholly believe he slit throats from time to time. When she next walked through the cottage, the
gardes
had been left bound and gagged, facing the wall, but with all their bodily parts intact, which must have been a great relief to them.

It was not long after that, that Citoyen LeBreton tracked her to the tiny room where she was sorting Charles’s clothing.

He watched without offering to help. She said, “There are many things that must be done in this household before Bertille leaves. Surely some of them require great strength. Why do you not go do them?”

“Why did men come from Paris to arrest your friend?”

“I have not the least idea. Most likely it is nothing at all but some jealous neighbor who has denounced her in an argument over strayed cows.” She folded shirts and laid them on the bed. “I do not know why
gardes
have come all the way to Normandy to fix upon Bertille and Alain. Paris is full of suspicious characters to arrest. The very dogs and cats in the street belong to secret societies. Look at you. You are a man of a thousand questionable activities and they do not come after you. That coat, behind you, on the hook. Will you hand it to me? Yes. That one.”

“You’re part of it, whatever it is,” he said.

It was inevitable he would see this. He was not an idiot. “On the contrary. I have nothing to do with anything. I am prosaic as cucumbers. The hat as well, please.” She smoothed the coat flat so it would bundle neatly and took the hat from him to set on top.

“Will you leave with your friends?”

“No.” She knelt and pulled shoes out from under the bed. Two pair. She took the new pair and left the old. So much must be left behind.

He waited till she’d finished with that. “You can’t stay here. You can’t go back to the chateau.”

She set a last pair of stockings on the pile of clothing, pulled the corners of the quilt together, and tied them. Guillaume LeBreton stood blocking the door, fixed firmly in place, like several boulders piled together.

This man could take her to Paris. With him beside her she would not have to skulk through the fields at night and take the back roads, avoiding every village. She would travel more quickly. He could probably even talk her through the gates of Paris, into the city.

She did not have to trust him. She only needed to make use of him.

And there was no one else. “You’ve been paid for bringing me this far. I’ll pay you more to take me all the way to Paris. To my father.”

LeBreton had been cool and menacing as he questioned the
garde
sergeant. Now that implacable concentration was directed toward her. She felt herself weighed and measured, plucked apart and studied. He had come to various conclusions regarding her. Nothing in his face would reveal what they were.

She would not let herself be afraid of him.

He said, “How much?”

Money. He thought first about the money. It was a pleasure to deal with a man so straightforward. She did not feel any disappointment that he was not gallant. “My father will give you twenty louis d’or.”

“A hundred.”

“That is an impossible price. My father is not made of money.”

“Gold louis. Not paper. Not silver.”

“You could smuggle giraffes across France for that price. You could—”

“And I take that ring. The one on your finger. You give that over and I hold it till I get paid.”

“You put a high price on—”

“I’ll get you to your father.” It was said with great determination. She entirely believed him. It was that iron resolve that would get her across all the miles between here and Paris, regardless of who might be hunting her.

She had to twist the ring back and forth to get it off. She wore it always. She had sold her jewelry, year by year, to pay for La Flèche. She had not sold this small ring. It was gold, engraved with bands of flowers. It had belonged to her mother, who died when she was born. Her mother had been pretty, from the pictures of her. She must have been patient, too, since she had been married to Papa for a decade and not murdered him. One needed great helpings of patience, dealing with men.

Finally she had it off.

LeBreton dropped her ring into the pocket of his waistcoat. “You shouldn’t be wearing that anyway.” He tamped the ring down firmly with his forefinger into the very bottom of the pocket. “It doesn’t match what you’re pretending to be.”

 

 

BERTILLE washed Charles’s face and went to say good-bye to her flowers and her cows. One would think she was leaving behind a cousin or two, at the least. She clucked over the state of the cottage as she made one final search for a silver spoon, unaccountably missing. LeBreton helped Alain load his anvil. Bertille washed the apprentice’s face. She washed the baby. Then she washed Charles’s face again. Adrian found Bertille’s sewing kit.

Then it was finally time for them to leave. Bertille held her close in the garden, among the roses. “Take care.”

“I am the most cautious of mortals. You know that.”

“So I see.” Bertille reached out to lay fingers upon her lip, where it hurt. “Put cold cloths upon this. It will not swell as much.”

“That is good advice. I am sorry you must leave and lose—”

“Don’t blame yourself, Marguerite. We knew this might happen. The house in Bernay is ready. La Flèche will survive this. In a week Crow will go east, beyond the fighting. Heron has his safe haven prepared. And Wren will finally go to England. You know Wren can take care of herself.”

It had been Wren, four days ago, who came at midnight, sneaking up the back stairs of the chateau. Wren pursued, her sparrows in danger. Wren, desperate for help. She needed clothing. Money. Food from the kitchen.

A man burst into the room. Tall. A coarse face. He wore the jacket and striped trousers of a
sans-culottes
. A Jacobin. He was armed.

“Wren is in England by now,” Bertille said.

It was bright daylight around her. She was in Bertille’s beautiful garden, not the chateau. She swallowed and put the memory away. “Wren is halfway to London, as you say. And you have escaped. I’ll solve the rest of this.” She touched Bertille’s face. “Go with God. Be in his hand always. I’m glad you are out of this.”

“I am Dove.” Plump, comfortable, indomitable Bertille shook her head. “Remember that. I was the first. Before Jean-Paul and Wren and Crow. Before your secret signals and your safehouses and the dozens of couriers. I was there when it was only the two of us and a compartment under the seat in your coach. I am La Flèche as much as you are.”

“I would rather you were safe.”

“
Chut
. We do not do this to be safe. When I am settled in the house in Bernay, I will pass the word. If you do not send sparrows my way, I shall go to Paris and remove them myself.”

“Bertille . . .”

“Now we will cry. I must leave before we do that.” Bertille said that even though tears were already on her cheeks. “Take care of your great giant. He is very impressive, that one. And in the name of God, Marguerite, brush your hair. It is a shame upon the honor of French womanhood.”

There was nothing to do then but watch the cart creak slowly out of sight over a hill.

“RIGHT, THEN. PRETEND I’M A DESERTER, COME UP from the army in the Vendée.”

“I would rather not.”

“I spotted you.” LeBreton waved in the general direction of west. “Over there. I take off after you. I’m big and I’m angry and I’m dangerous.”

“That does not require great amounts of imagination to picture. Nevertheless—”

“You come panting up the hill, meaning to hide in these bushes around up here. But I catch up to you. And look what’s loose here.” He lifted her braid. Picked it right from her shoulder and closed his hand around it. His knuckles were scraped with dozens of fine, red-brown lines from where he had hit the
gardes
. “I grab hold of this, which any man would, by the way. You have an irresistible braid. Now what? What do you do?”