French Passion (23 page)

“Goujon, no monsieur, mademoiselle.”

“If,” I replied, “it'll be just Manon.”

“Stop gawking at her.” Izette smiled. “Sit down.”

“Won't you have some food?” I asked.

The sturdy settle creaked as he lowered his great bulk. He finished the duckling and tart. The idiot hunkered in front of the small blaze, his flat-backed head nodding drowsily.

Goujon said, “I see your friend's content.”

“Thanks to you for saving him.”

“It was all your doing. In a day that will go down for bravery, that was the bravest act.”

I'd behaved instinctively, without thought, and Goujon's flattery, I felt, was undeserved. “What happened to the other guards?”

“Killed,” Goujon replied briefly.

I shivered, remembering heads on pikes. “And all the other prisoners, where are they?”

“There were only seven, including you.”

“Only seven!” Izette and I gasped at the same instant.

“We, too, thought there would be hundreds, else we shouldn't have risked going into the cannon's mouth. We found many soldiers and guards, but only seven prisoners. Manon, you're very rare.” His grammar was of the educated class, yet he spoke with peasant accents.

“Seven.… That's why it was so quiet.”

“The walls cried out. Skeletons hung in chains, there were torture chambers, vaults, oubliettes, holed-up mummies, letters pleading release from another century. Name of God, the horrors of the past cried out to us.”

Izette, grim-faced, raised her pewter mug. “To July fourteenth,” she said. “The day the people of Paris captured the Bastille.”

Goujon corrected, “To July 14th, the day the Old Regime was killed and the reign of the people began.”

His toast rang like a prophecy and, remembering those severed heads, I shuddered.

After three or four sips of wine I was drowsy, and their voices receded, buzzing.

Huge arms lifted me, I was being put to bed as if I were a child. How good to lie on a soft mattress and smell clean linen, feel the down coverlet over me. The curtain was drawn.

From the other room I heard Goujon say, “Name of God, that's a brave little one. When I took her from the cell she trembled like a captured bird. But the moment she saw them threaten this idiot, she was on her feet, ordering them to release him. One more minute and they'd have had her head, too. And she only a woman—”

“She's got more courage than all you men put together!” Izette said fiercely.

“She does,” Goujon said, his deep voice very low. “But, Izette, even with the courage of ten lions, she couldn't keep in Secret a year and come out the same.”

“She'll stay here, nice and peaceful, for a while,” Izette said. And then she whispered. I caught only the word
him
.

“Yes, I'll find out if he's in Paris,” Goujon said.

“Wherever he is, I'll bring him to her.…”

Then I heard no more. I slept.

Chapter Seven

I lay on my pallet watching shabby skirts and workmen's trousers whirl around me. Sabots thundered unbearably, and I yearned to cover my ears, but my muscles were leaden with fear. I couldn't move. Then, suddenly, the dance halted, the dancers parted, and one man stepped toward me. He carried a pike. If only I could move! If only I could shut my eyes! But I couldn't, and so was forced to watch as he slowly, very slowly, tilted the pike at me.

Atop the pike was a severed head. The dark hair was matted, the small forehead scar visible, the hawk nose more prominent in death. “André!” I screamed, and woke.

The nightmare was too real. Yesterday's heads, ghastly enough, were as nothing compared to André's severed head. I sat bolt upright It's an omen, a warning, I thought. The bed was darkened by hangings. I yanked them apart. Yellow sunlight told me it was late morning. The borrowed shawl hung on the hook, but I couldn't see my own tattered, filthy clothes. Feverish, I ran to open the armoire. Empty.

The curtain between the rooms parted. Izette stood with a porringer from which curled steam. “What do you think you're doing?” she asked.

“My clothes. Izette, where are my clothes?”

“I've just given them to the ragman.” Her brief smile gleamed. “He weren't no fool. One sou and no more, that's all he'd pay.”

“But I need them! I have to go—”

“You ain't going noplace,” she interrupted in an infuriatingly sensible tone. “Now eat your breakfast.” With one hand she pushed gently until I sat on the bed, while with the other she put down the bowl.

“Izette, I must get to Versailles! I have to warn André. See, I had this awful dream, except it wasn't a dream, it was a warning. His head … his head was on a pike.”

“It was what you seen yesterday,” she said easily. “Goujon warned me. After they get out of Secret, he said, they gets nightmares, and worse. But you're going to be fine, just fine.”

“It was a warning, I tell you!”

“He's quite in love with you, the big gawk,” Izette said. “Now eat.”

Inexorably, she raised a spoonful coated with melted butter.

The gruel was wheat, my old favorite. Now the smell nauseated me. As at first the Bastille's repulsive, wormy fare had sickened me, so now the odor of good food was unendurable. Anxiety clenched my stomach. I gagged.

“You're so wasted,” she sighed. “Come on, ma'am, try to eat.”

“How can I? When something terrible's going to happen to André?” For a moment I saw his various expressions: that look of caring, that poetic brooding, the way his dark eyes half closed as he looked at me with love. “Don't you understand? I'm telling you he must be warned! Now! Otherwise—otherwise something awful will happen!” My voice rose.

“Don't you worry none about Égalité,” she soothed. “As one of the Assembly, no soldier'd dare harm him. And he's just about the most popular deputy there is, so the people's really on his side. Nothing can harm him.”

“Then why'd I have this omen?”

“Because,” she explained patiently, “you was by yourself too long. It hurts the mind. Ma'am, your mind is sick. Now listen to me. It ain't safe for you to go out. There's men with guns prowling.”

“André needs me!”

“Calm down,” she said, holding up that sickening spoonful. “Here's some good news. Fido's employed. Last night the innkeeper's varlet ran off, so they need more hands in the kitchen. No brains, just hands.”

“I'm glad for him,” I said. “Oh, Izette, why won't you help me?”

“Because you ain't talking from reason but from sickness. Now, try to eat your breakfast. I'll be back in a while.”

“Where are you going?”

“First, to tell Monsieur Sancerre I can't work today.” After Aunt Thérèse had died, the gown designer had hired Izette to do his pressing. “Then to get you some powders for your nerves.” She paused, adding mysteriously, quite at variance with her usual straightforward manner, “And to … well, you'll see soon enough. But, ma'am, I want you to remember that Égalité is safe, absolutely safe.”

She slipped out the door.

Shoving aside the gruel, I began pacing six steps up, six back. My weakened body streamed with perspiration. It never occurred to me that Izette might be right, that André was safe. My panic increased with every step. Cold ripples of fear radiated through my stomach. The nightmare throbbed in my head.

I paused at the window. In the mean, narrow street below, two aged women inched along together. There was nobody else about. So much, I thought, for Izette's armed men!

I pulled the black shawl over my shining, fresh-washed hair. For a moment I gazed in the mirror. My face was pale, and so thin that my cheekbones stood out below my huge green eyes. How could Izette say I was beautiful? Still, the shawl covering me, I decided I looked inconspicuous, except for my bare feet. Well, I told myself, there's barefoot beggars aplenty. The narrow corridor sagged toward narrow stairs. Months of tramping up and down the stones of my cell in worn-out soles had toughened my feet and the splintered steps didn't bother me. But seeing a pair of clogs in the courtyard, I sat down to pack them with straw so they'd stay on my feet.

The idiot shambled up behind me, his forearms and hands dripping with dishwater. He smiled emptily at me.

“Good morning, Monsieur Fido,” I said. “How goes your work?”

He lifted a finger to his lips.

“I'll see you later,” I said, and hurried into the street, dodging as some woman opened a third-floor window to empty a chamber pot. My straw-packed clogs chafed. Fido shuffled after me.

“Go back,” I called.

He kept following. I raised my palm, gesturing to him to return. Head down, he shuffled dejectedly back to the inn.

I hurried south to the quays, for the river Seine would lead me across Paris to Porte de St. Cloud, the gate leading to Versailles.

I had gone a short distance when I heard the rise and fall of many voices, and this frightened me, yet I kept on in their direction, for it was the direction of the quay. I must warn André A mule-drawn wagon rattled between the tall, mean lodging houses, forcing me into a doorway. The wagon was piled with sacks, and the ragged driver lashed at his thin mule so the animal lurched forward, splattering my borrowed shawl with mud. Two children jerked in the wagon, holding onto a sack from which spilled corn.

I rounded a corner, coming upon a stream of people. One old man pushed three sacks on a wheelbarrow. Two children staggered under the weight of a sack they carried between them. An old woman held up her apron with grain streaming from it. Men and women and children, all dirty-faced and starving-looking, hurried past me. I didn't understand what this meant. The noise and people terrified me. I was back in an unreal nightmare world.

The tangle of people thickened. I found myself at a market warehouse surrounded by dragoons who strained and sweated to haul sacks out to the waiting crowd. Soldiers not guarding property but distributing it!

While I was in the Bastille, Franch indeed had turned upside down.

“Here,” a stout dragoon shouted to me. “Here, our sister.”

I sagged under a heavy corn sack. I dragged it through the crowd. My empty stomach rebelled at the odors of unwashed flesh. The voices pierced my eardrums. Hauling the corn after me, I turned into a quiet cul-de-sac.

The houses here were large. I sank onto a carriage block, easing my scratched feet from the straw-filled clogs.

A fat carter stood over me.

“Where'd you get that?” he asked, nodding at the corn sack.

“It was given to me,” I murmured.

“What? Speak up.”

His cart and horse blocked the alley. I was trapped. Shaking all over, I replied. “Soldiers at the market warehouse gave it to me.”

“I'll bet,” he said.

“They did. But you can have the whole sack if you'll drive me to Versailles.”

“The punishment for looting is death.”

“I'm looking for my … my betrothed. He's a deputy to the Assembly. His name is Égalité.”

“Égalité!” The fat body shook with laughter. “Your betrothed is Égalité! Tell me, are you also bride to the Dauphin?” He leaned forward, gripping my chin, forcing my face upward so he could look at me. The shawl fell from my head. “What hair. What lips. Sane or insane, you're a lovely wench.”

“Will you take me to Versailles?”

“I won't turn you in for looting,” he said, leering. “That is, if you're nice to me.” He glanced at the sedate ivy-covered houses. “We best get in the cart.”

“Don't you understand? I must hurry to Versailles. Égalité's life depends on it!” I was screaming.

“Keep quiet,” he said, reaching for my arm.

I pulled away, the shawl dropped. He saw I wore only a night shift, and began to pant, jerking me to his full belly, wrapping his arms around me, grasping my buttocks, kneading. His roughness reminded me of my initiation into Secret. In my terror I thought that not only did he plan to rape me, but also to lock me back in the Bastille. I twisted. Kicked. Hit. My strength was the strength of madness. He punched me hard between my breasts.

I fell. My head crashed onto the carriage block.

Darkness tunneled by me.

When I came to, he was pressing me onto the cobbles, raising the homespun night shift around my thighs. “Wench, let a real man cure your madness for you. We best get into the cart.” He bit a kiss on my mouth. I was barely conscious enough to feel it. He stood, hefting the corn on one shoulder, jerking me to my feet, leading me, dazed and shoeless, toward his cart.

Easily he tossed the sack over the rail. And, equally easily, he lifted me into the wagon.

And then, just as senseless as anything else on this day, André was coming toward us. He was soberly yet properly dressed in a brown tailcoat, knee breeches, dark silk stockings. His black unpowdered hair was clubbed back. His head was securely attached to his shoulders.

His expression was bewildered, as if he didn't believe that he saw me. I, on the other hand, was lightheaded enough to accept anything. Of course André should walk up this particular street at this moment. Why not?

The carter's palm clamped over my mouth, his stout bicep pressed on my neck, and this stranglehold forced me to the wagon's dirty boards. The smell of cedar mingled with the heavy feral odor of fresh cowhide. I could see nothing.

“Where are you taking that woman?” André's voice.

“Home. It's my wife. She gets spells. And then she wanders.”

“If she's your wife, you shouldn't have to hold her down.”

“I told you,” the carter blustered, “the poor woman has spells.”

“She looks like a—my friend. Let me see her.”

“She's
my
wife.”

“Release her!”

“Can't a man tend to his own wife in peace?”