For Love of Country (28 page)

Agreen folded his arms across his chest: “How long you reckon you'll be gone?”

“Not long. A week or so to get to Paris, two or three days there, and the time it takes to get to Lorient. So let's say three weeks. If it looks to be more than that, I'll send word to Lorient.” After another silence he added: “I want to get home just as much as you do, Agee.”

Agreen nodded, as though finally accepting the logic. “I know that, Richard. Just be sure t' bring along the letters you pick up in Paris. There should be a number for the men. And who knows, maybe one or two for me.”

The subject of letters pained Richard, for it forced him to recall those he had written during the dreary weeks of winter. As hard as it had been to write to his own parents, it was infinitely harder to write the families of those who had died or been injured in battle, and of those of
Eagle
's crew still held captive in Algiers or, in the case of Ashley Bowen, Nathan Reeves, and Joshua Winter, who had died there. He had limited himself to two letters a day, his frayed emotions more a barrier to further correspondence than his injuries. The last letter he wrote, to the parents of Phineas Pratt, was perhaps the hardest of all, for he had to inform them that while Pratt would be coming home aboard
Falcon,
it would be without his left leg, a victim of gangrene and amputation above the knee, and his left eye.

Two French naval officers strolled casually by the bench. One of them, apparently recognizing Richard, lifted his bicorne hat above his head and bowed respectfully. Richard acknowledged the courtesy with an American salute.

The officers having passed on, Agreen poked him in the ribs. “Introduce a few Arabs t' Davy Jones,” he commented blithely, “and the French Navy bows an' scrapes at your feet.”

When Richard did not reply, Agreen changed the subject. “So what have you told Lizzy in your letters home?” he asked, trying to stoke a jovial mood.

“I haven't told her anything. That's your job.”

“Alright then, what have you told Katherine? You know she'll tell Lizzy everything you tell her. Surely you've written her.”

“Surely I have.”

“Well, what have you told her?”

Richard tapped the side of his head with his finger, as if trying to jog his memory. “I told her we're beached in Toulon, but the scenery around here is fabulous.”

“Seriously, Richard. You know what I'm gettin' at. What have you told her about me?”

“About you? Not much. Just that you've been cavorting naked on the beach all day and that your sorry white ass is finally showing some color.”

“Ha ha. Very funny. I'm dyin', I'm laughin' so hard. What else?”

Richard snapped his fingers. “Oh, yes. I told her that I stand in awe, every night, at the number of
jeunes filles
who leave our room at the
auberge
with a smile on their lips and a dreamy look in their eyes.”

“Christ on the cross, Richard,” Agreen snorted. “What the hell kind of friend are you? Makes me wonder why I'm so fired-up anxious t' have you stand up for me at my wedding.”

Richard's eyebrows shot up. “Your wedding? You're getting married, Agee? To one of those
jeunes filles
you knocked up in the
auberge
?”

“Always the card, aren't you.” Agreen stared ahead beyond the quays out to the great line of battle ships riding serenely at anchor, sails neatly furled on their yards and the white Bourbon flag of France fluttering high up on their mizzen backstays. “What I mean, my friend,” he went on with a gravity and quality of purpose that Richard had rarely heard from him, “is that the first thing I do when I get home is ask Lizzy for her hand. I was hopin' you might agree t' stand up with me as my best man.”

Richard did not respond until Agreen asked, in a tone that was more plea than query, “Why don't you answer? Don't ya think she'll have me?”

Richard laughed out loud, at the sincerity of the question and for his joy in answering it. “Yes, matey, I think she will. I'd wager serious money on it. And I'd be proud as hell to stand up with you. What a day
that's
going to be!”

Twelve

France, June–July 1789

T
HE RUGGED TOPOGRAPHY THAT protected Toulon's harbor and defenses also served to isolate the city. If not sent by military dispatch, word from Paris often arrived days after a significant event had occurred there, such as the violence that erupted in the Réveillon factory on April 23. As reported in the Toulon newspaper in early May, three hundred workers went on a rampage following unsubstantiated reports that the owner of the factory, Jean-Baptiste Réveillon, intended to cut the wages of his employees in order to lower the price he charged his élite clientele for the luxury wallpaper his factory produced. Fears of layoffs and destitution in an already crippled economy fanned the smoldering embers of rebellion into a raging inferno. Order was restored only after government troops were called in, but not before both the factory and the residence of Jean-Baptiste Réveillon had been burned to the ground and twenty-five people lay dead.

It seemed unfathomable to Richard and Agreen, after reading the account of the riot, that danger of this sort could lurk in Toulon. The hot sun glittering off the blue Mediterranean was too sensuous, too soporific, and the white sand on
la plage du Mourillon
too warm and inviting, to brood for long over anarchy and chaos in the French capital. The local population, military and civilian alike, appeared perfectly content with their lot. The arrival of summer had restored the natural order of things. And while local crops had been devastated by the brutal winter weather, harvests from the sea were, as always, plentiful.

In the course of Richard's five-hundred-mile journey to Paris in late June, however, his perception of things began to change. On June 22 he boarded a stagecoach in Marseilles, the southern terminus of a well-maintained road snaking northward through the Rhône Valley, to travel the main corridor linking northern and southern France. Early on, as the coach entered the province of Provence, he saw little of note beyond the natural beauty of a place studded with rocky plateaus, fields of neatly pruned olive trees, and terraced hillsides dotted with picturesque farmhouses. But as they left behind the old papal city of Avignon and approached Lyons, the second-largest city in France, the physical and psychological consequences of social upheaval became depressingly visible. Buildings that once had served as
patisseries,
government offices, or silk factories lay in ruins, their charred walls and roofs collapsed in blackened heaps. Farms bereft of crops stood abandoned, their fields gone to weeds, their great barn doors ajar, the animals gone—slaughtered, perhaps, for lack of feed. Citizens in the towns and villages the coach passed through went about their business furtively, studiously avoiding eye contact with the passengers inside the coach and with each other, save for the legions of beggars and waifs piteously pleading for coin and succor and the whores aggressively hawking their wares. It was as though such a fire of hate and despair burned within these townspeople that but one smoldering look, one fiery word, would ignite yet another deadly conflagration.

Richard tried talking with his fellow passengers, most of whom were of sufficient social standing to afford silk neck stocks and gold watch chains gleaming on their waistcoats, not to mention the luxury of travel in a coach-and-six featuring thickly padded cushions and armrests on its seats. He got no response. The door of ordinary civility remained closed to him, and Richard understood why. Although he might be fluent in their language, he was not one of them. Any conversation, however banal or benign its intent, would likely lead to places these men of privilege preferred not to go.

They had started out on their journey at a lively pace, making good time along the well-maintained road. Whenever the coach thundered into a
relais,
local personnel quickly exchanged the frothing horses with a fresh team of six. But as the coach jounced and shuddered into the heart of France, their pace began to slow. Here the road was pockmarked with deep ruts and sinkholes, and each day the number of hours they traveled on the road diminished. Despite the abundant hours of daylight afforded by midsummer, when the coach pulled into a
relais
during the late afternoon or early evening, it would likely as not remain there for the night, its passengers charged with finding their own food and lodging in some local
auberge
. Often it was midmorning the next day before they were on their way again.

A journey that should have taken a week was taking considerably longer. By the time the three passengers remaining aboard were within a day's ride of Paris, the coach's pace was reduced to a walk. Other coaches were slowed as well, trying to make headway against the streams of people afoot with various baggage and belongings and animals in tow, many of them dressed in decent clothing, their eyes blank with despair and hunger, coming the other way like refugees from a war zone. When the coach arrived within sight of the city, a squad of heavily armed soldiers ordered it to halt. Minutes stretched into a quarter-hour, a half-hour, an hour, and still the coach sat there, crowded in among the other coaches, with only wisps of hot, sticky air circulating inside and no explanation forthcoming.

“
Qu'est-ce qui se passe
?” the man next to Richard asked of his companion sitting across from him. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief already damp with perspiration.

The two men had come aboard the previous day in Troyes and had ignored Richard ever since, even after the other passengers had disembarked at various towns along the way and it was clear that the three of them were the only ones going on to Paris. The two men had chatted back and forth on various subjects of a mostly trivial nature, although their conversation did offer occasional interesting tidbits. Richard heard of a lawyer named Robespierre, whom the fatter of the two passengers described as a godless rabble-rouser. They also mentioned a writer named Mirabeau, described as a traitorous pig for forsaking his noble heritage and speaking out in support of the National Assembly—the self-proclaimed parliamentary body comprising the peasants and bourgeoisie in the third estate and those few nobles and clerics in the first and second estates who chose to join them. Their voices grew ever more agitated when the subject of the dauphin came up, not because the young heir to the throne had recently died, but because the death of his oldest son had caused the grieving King Louis to further withdraw from his duties as the leader of the upper classes.

The conversation then turned to something that sounded very odd: an oath that had been sworn a week or so ago on a tennis court in Versailles by what Richard understood to be outcast delegates of the third
estate. Exactly why the delegates had been cast out, what the oath was, or what its ramifications might be—or why it was taken, of all places, on a tennis court—Richard could not determine since apparently the two men did not know themselves. When he asked, the man sitting across from Richard glanced out the window and shrugged, “
Qui sait
?”

Boredom and stifling heat coupled with curiosity about what seemed to be a continuing chorus of church bells clanging in the far distance brought Richard out of the coach. The heat was more tolerable outside, although the sun was bright and high, and a slight breeze stirred the tall grass on the gentle rise on which Richard found himself standing alongside clusters of other disgruntled passengers. They were stopped southeast of Paris. To the north, beneath a powder blue sky dotted with cotton puffs of clouds, Richard could make out tiny spires sprouting above the capital city and the deeper blue of the great river running through it. Directly below, the main artery leading into the heart of Paris was swallowed up by dense thickets of trees, though Richard could see where the road eventually led, for it broke into the open perhaps a mile farther on.

On the hill and in haphazard lines down each side were soldiers, hundreds of them, many wearing the familiar white of the regular French army, others in uniforms reminiscent of the American Continental Army: white trousers and white cross-belts, and a blue coat lined with bright scarlet on the collar and cuffs. Still others wore uniforms Richard could not identify, though he assumed the various black, yellow, and white colors represented one or more of the German states: Bavaria or Prussia, perhaps, or Saxony. Whatever their uniforms, these soldiers stood ill at ease as they stared out toward Paris, listening, as Richard was, to the bells and waiting for word. Whatever was happening down there in Paris clearly had implications for every person up there on the hillside, soldiers and civilians alike.

As Richard walked around the area, keeping a close eye on the trunk at the back of the coach in which he had stowed his baggage, he approached several officers to learn what he could. Finding himself ignored, he tried a different tack, remembering something he had read in a Toulon newspaper that was subsequently corroborated by Captain Mercier. He walked up to a young officer wearing the tricolor uniform who was studying Paris through a long glass.

“
Excusez-moi, monsieur. Votre uniforme: est-il l'uniforme de la Guarde Nationale
?”

“
Oui,
” the officer acknowledged. The way he expressed that one word and continued to peer through the glass suggested that he was not inclined to continue the conversation.

“
Ensuite, monsieur,
” Richard persisted, “
le général, le marquis de Lafayette, est-il ici
?”

The officer skewered him with a harsh glare. “You are not French,” he stated in English.

The brusqueness of the observation took Richard aback. He tried an ingratiating smile. “The fact that I'm not is all too obvious around here.”