For Our Liberty (10 page)

The sound of a troop of cavalry at the trot is unmistakable. First you hear the drumming of the hooves, like the rolling of a barrel. Then you hear the harness jangling, the weapons slapping on leather. Finally you hear the shouted orders of the officers and, if you are unlucky, the hissing of the blades from their scabbards. We were unlucky.

I leant out into the street. A half troop of dragoons were coming up the street. They slowed as they reached the guards huddled back in their doorway. I fired and hit a horse, but a pistol ball at that range didn’t bring it down. It did however have the desired effect and brought the troop to a halt. They dismounted quickly and their officer ordered the horses to the rear and the dragoons into cover. Their swords were sheathed and instead they took their carbines from their saddles. I hoped Calvet and Claude had found an exit from the convent and were safe. Dominique leant out to see what was happening. Immediately a volley of shots splintered the gate near us and ricocheted off the stone wall. I dragged her back into cover and she fell against me.

“Get into the balloon and tell Garnerin we’re going, now,” I said. She hesitated. “You’ll have to come with us. I’ll be behind you, don’t worry.”

She looked at me for one more moment, and then nodded and ran back into the courtyard. I heard her shout something to Garnerin. I risked a quick look. The bastard had already cast off all but one rope and I think he would have left us there had Dominique not stopped him when she did. I couldn’t blame him really. I looked back down the street. The dragoons were creeping forward, moving from doorway to doorway. I steadied myself against the wall and aimed just above the head of the nearest trooper. It was a long shot with a pistol. The flash from the pan blinded me and I didn’t see the ball strike but I heard a cry of pain and a curse. That was good enough for me. I stuffed the spent pistol in my belt and ran for the balloon.

Dominique and Garnerin were already in the basket and the balloon was pulling against the last remaining rope holding it to the ground. I jumped into the small car, making it rock wildly as I did so. I heard running boots behind me. The dragoons would be upon us in seconds.
 

“Monsieur Garnerin. I think we should depart. Now!” I said. Garnerin cut the last rope and we began to rise. The dragoons had drawn their swords again and were charging through the gateway. I fired, dropping the leading dragoon. Garnerin turned at the shot, ashen faced.

“Merde! Don’t fire you fool. The gas is combustible. You’ll kill us all.”

“We’ll all die anyway unless we ascend quickly.”

“Yes, yes. I should never have agreed to this. Never. ” Garnerin said as he began to throw bags of ballast out of the car. All too slowly the ballon rose. Only a few feet at first and then the wind caught the top of the balloon as it rose above the convent walls and we began to head towards the running dragoons. One leapt and grabbed hold of the car, just getting his arms and elbows over the edge. I was standing, holding on to the ropes. We were still rising and the trooper’s legs were waving in the air. He looked at me, suddenly regretting his heroics and realising what was coming next. I shrugged apologetically and kicked him in the face. He fell about fifteen feet and I heard a nasty crunch as his leg broke.

“Can’t you steer this damn thing?” I shouted at Garnerin who was still dropping sacks of ballast over the side.

“No. We are at the mercy of the wind.”

“Then can’t we get up more quickly? We’ll hit the damn roof,” I said and we were getting very close to the convent buildings.

“I don’t usually fly with three. All the ballast will have to go I think,” he said.

I prayed and cursed at the same time as I helped him again with the ballast. It worked, the ballast not the prayer, and we began to ascend more quickly. Just clearing the roof by inches. I looked down at the dragoons. They were milling around the courtyard, with some following us and coming back into the street. We were at about a hundred feet now and a gust of wind began to take us away from them. The officer turned and spoke to some his men. They slid their swords back into their scabbards. I thought they had given up but they were reaching again for their carbines. The first one aimed and fired, splinters flew from the wood only inches from my leg. I took a pistol from Dominique and then remembered the explosive gas above me and thought better of it; I threw the last couple of bags of ballast at them instead.
 

We were rising quickly now and by the time the second dragoon fired we must have been nearly three hundred feet from the ground. A carbine could miss even a target the size of a balloon at that distance. The convent began to shrink behind us and we were soon over the Seine and safe. Well, safer than we had been. All the excitement had almost made me forget that I was now aloft and that my life depended on some science that I didn’t totally understand and the aerostation talents of a half-mad Frenchman. I sat down. The car rocked and I gripped the side, knuckles white. Dominique looked flushed and animated.

“I never thought it would be like this,” she said.

“Do you mean to tell me that with all your protestations about the safety of balloons you had never actually travelled in one yourself?”

“Of course not. I am not a fool. But I must say though, that the experience is not disagreeable.”

She was right. I had expected a feeling of speed and motion, of, well, I don’t know but I felt no different than if I was sitting on a bench on the banks of the river not on a seat a thousand feet above it. It was the stillness that struck me first. I was travelling quite quickly it seemed, but I wasn’t being thrown around in a coach or bouncing on the back of a horse. I couldn’t even feel any breeze. I mentioned this to Garnerin and he looked disparagingly at me and said it was because we were moving
with
the wind, hence we could not feel it. That still didn’t make sense to me but I decided not to worry and tried to enjoy the view.
 

The sun was rising in the east and there was just enough light to see the city beneath. All of Paris lay before me like some great panorama. The streets were laid out just like on a map, a few carts moving along them, and ant-like delivery boys weaving between them. I could see down the Seine to Notre Dame, see the Palais des Tuilleries and its gardens, the islands in the river, Les Invalides and the bridges, perhaps just make out the ancient walls that encircled the city. The village of Montmarte, nestled on rolling green hills and dotted with windmills, was just catching the golden light. We floated over columns of smoke from a hundred chimneys and over the slowly tacking barges on the river, the water glistening in the dawn. Dominique took my hand and leaned over to look. She yelped when the car swayed and Garnerin glared but it soon settled down. We were heading north-west as we had hoped. Beneath us, more than three thousand feet below, almost a whole mile, was the area around Chaillot and we’d soon be crossing the walls and over open countryside. It was getting lighter every second now. A flash of sunlight on metal made me look down at one of the bridges over the Seine and I saw the troop of dragoons charging their way across. They’d never catch us, though. The higher we got, the stronger the wind was. Garnerin estimated we were travelling at a rate of nearly thirty miles in every hour. It was unbelievable. Well it was then; those of us born before the advent of train travel have a slightly different sense of velocity to the youngsters of today.

Dominique shivered slightly and I opened one of the small lockers beneath the seat, took out a blanket and put it over us. I also brought out the basket of food and tucked into a cold fowl with relish; I hadn’t eaten dinner because I’d been so nervous.

“So what do you think of your first aerial voyage?” Garnerin asked.

“It’s miraculous. Incredible. I never imagined it would be like this,” I said between mouthfuls.

“It is not miraculous. It is science,” he replied slightly indignantly.

“How high will we go?” I waved a chicken leg upwards.

“About seven thousand feet. I sometimes go higher if there is cloud.” He was very matter of fact. I still thought that a bag of gas holding three people two miles above the fields of Picardy was extraordinary but I didn’t argue.
 

“Have you ever had an accident?” I asked, knowing that I probably didn’t want to know the answer.

“I have always come back to earth, just sometimes slightly harder than I wished. Do not worry,” and when he saw that he had not calmed my nerves he continued, “If you imagine that a mere balloon flight is dangerous you should see me use my parachute.”

“What on earth is a parachute?”

“It is a bit like a very large parasol, made from cloth and rope. With it I can jump from the balloon and land safely even from a height of several hundred meters,” he said it very proudly. The one thought that scared me more than floating under a bag of gas a mile high would be opting to get out.

“You must be mad!” I said it more sharply than I intended.

“Yes, quite possibly. But look at the views I get.”

He was right about that at least Seeing the world spread out below us was astounding, it quite literally gave one a new perspective. The glow of dawn bathed everything in a wonderful light, long shadows emphasised each tree and farm house. The clouds, only just above us now, were tinged with pink and orange. Even the close escape we’d just experienced couldn’t detract from the beauty of the moment. Garnerin told me that he had demonstrated his balloon for the military. I appreciated how such a view would aid a General in battle but how would he pass his orders? The thought of Aides de Camp parachuting down with notes from the General made me smile.

We floated along above the Paris-Amiens road, past Clerment and the hills of Liancourt dotted with vines, fruit trees still in blossom and fields of clover and wheat, many now overgrown and neglected. We were heading for the coast and soon the landscape changed to dull, flat chalky plains. Occasionally we’d hear a post-chaise or cart below and see the white upturned faces of the coachman or carter but apart from that we seemed to be alone, even the birds flew far below us.

Dominique had been quiet for almost an hour; she was just staring down at the passing meadows. I imagined she was thinking of her brother.

“He will be safe by now.” I said. She looked up. There was a flush of colour in her cheeks. A lock of her hair had become unpinned and was hanging down over one eye.

“What?”

“Claude. He’ll be all right.”
 

“Yes, of course,” she tucked the wayward lock back into place. I don’t think either of us believed what I said at the time; Calvet would have been lucky to get away from the dragoons and if he had been caught he would be hard pressed to give an adequate justification of his actions in aiding an Englishman to escape from Paris. They would probably be in the Temple prison by now. Even if Lacrosse had turned a blind eye to his activities before, he couldn’t overlook an escape in a balloon.

I squeezed her hand for added reassurance.

“Thank you Ben. I just didn’t expect to be up here. You can never be sure where life will take you, can you?” She forced a weak smile.

“Indeed not. We are all in the hands of fate, much like we are now in the hands of the wind,” I said, not sure that I was reassuring her.

“Do you believe in fate?”

“Sometimes. I try to make my own luck but there are times when life seems to have other plans,” I shrugged.

“And your life. Is it as you wish?”

“Is anybody’s? I think that perhaps I have made some poor choices, used certain things as excuses for my own troubles. Perhaps I see things a little more clearly now. It must be the height.” I tried to lighten the conversation but Dominique wasn’t in the mood for levity.

“Do you think we can change our fate?” She was looking down at the passing landscape, twisting her hair in her fingers. She shivered slightly and I reached for a blanket and placed it across her shoulders, leaving my hands there. Her hands came up and lightly touched my own.
 

“Of course. It’s not just the cards you are dealt, it’s how you play them,” I said, moving slightly closer to her so our bodies touched.

“But how?” she asked, leaning towards me.

“Lord, I don’t know. With me I was born a bastard and for a long time that was the part I played. Everything that went wrong for me I blamed on being born on the wrong side of the sheets. My favourite words were ‘if only’. This last year in Paris I have had time to think. I made my own mistakes, taken from life and not given. When, or if, I get back to London I’d like to think that I could begin to change.” It was her turn to squeeze my hand.

“Ben. You… I…” Her voice trailed off and she looked back down. A burnt out chateau with sheep grazing on its lawns glided beneath us.

“Dominique. I know that life has dealt you some poor cards but look what you have done with them. You’ve thrown them back at the dealer and stood up for what you believe in. You’ve risked your life to free your country from a despot when so many of your countrymen let themselves be led blindly into massacres and hate. You are an amazing woman.”

“You see only what you want to see.” She looked back up at me and I saw both tears and anger in her eyes. “All men just see what they want. You don’t know me at all.”

It was my turn to turn away and look back to the now distant smoke of Paris. Garnerin caught my eye and shrugged as if to say ‘Women. What can you do?’ He handed me a bottle of wine and a piece of bread.