Illumination (31 page)

‘Damn it all!’ he shouted, starting to panic. ‘The fiends’ll hole us for certain!’

Besson was rolling the collodion over the plate; he’d wedged himself into a corner to keep steady, and was frowning at the fluid’s unpredictable path. ‘They will not do any serious damage, Pardy,’ he said. ‘I think they are aiming for the basket.’

The
Aphrodite
was now past the Marne, above the plateau – officially in enemy territory. They were welcomed by a massive blast from somewhere below. The next instant a shell streaked past about twenty yards to the left, rocking the car on its ropes. Clem ducked, cursing; and the Dallmeyer slipped from his grasp, toppling over the side. He lunged forward, hands outstretched, but it was no use. The camera was a spinning mahogany cube, dwindling down to nothing; it landed in the courtyard of an occupied farmhouse, breaking into so many different pieces that it seemed to vanish.

Besson showed no anger at the Dallmeyer’s loss. ‘That should keep us airborne a while longer, at least,’ he said. ‘Get us well past the Prussian lines.’

‘What – what was that? What fired at us?’

‘The special artillery I was talking of before.’ Besson answered as if this was obvious. He pointed. ‘There it is.’

A huge gun was squatting on a village green, directed up at them – or at where they’d been a few seconds before. The brown-uniformed crew was working hard to rotate it, but they hadn’t a hope; the low-flying
Aphrodite
was really racing along now, faster than Clem had ever travelled in his life. If it weren’t for the prospect of my imminent death, he thought, this would be tremendously exciting.

With swift efficiency, Besson began to bundle the rest of the photographic equipment out of the basket, unleashing a hail of bottles, boxes and trays. The tripod rattled into a café garden, scattering some breakfasting officers. Ahead of them, past one last village, was open country: occupied France, and very peaceful it looked too. Purple-grey fields were dappled with snow; here and there smoke rose from the chimney of a sleepy farmstead. If we can make it far enough, Clem dared to speculate, Besson might be able to use the trail-rope to land us without mishap. We might stand a chance after all.

‘Horsemen,’ announced Besson as he jettisoned the doctor’s bag. ‘Uhlans, if I am not mistaken.’

There were a dozen of them, leaving that last village at full pelt, ahead of the
Aphrodite
, but going in the same direction – intending to get them the moment they hit the ground. They were only a couple of hundred feet up now, the envelope visibly flabby, weakened by the loss of gas. The balloon passed over the cavalry; sunlight glittered across their helmets and bridles and the scabbards of their sabres.

Besson’s coolness was finally starting to ebb away. ‘This can only be one thing,’ he said, but did not reveal what. ‘I believe that it is time for the ballast to go.’

The dumping was done methodically, in stages, half a sack of coarse sand at a time. Clem willed it into the eyes of their pursuers, but it dissolved into the air like salts in a glass of water. A more or less level height was sustained and the chase began. The perspective from the
Aphrodite
was a fascinating one, he had to admit: galloping horsemen seen from above, held in place it seemed, the fields and lanes flowing beneath their hooves. He wondered why more artists didn’t exploit the possibilities of flight. An hour’s work up here would make your name. The notion led him to Hannah, the astonishing talent she’d always had; and how she was enrolled in that army he’d just seen queuing by the Marne to meet its ruin. He sat heavily on the basket floor. This cold November day might well see the last of them both.

Besson let the final empty sack leave his fingers and twist away on the wind. He moved across the basket, stepping over Clem’s legs, taking hold of the side as he surveyed the landscape ahead of them. ‘Look here, Pardy,’ he said. ‘Get up. Come on.’

Clem struggled to his knees. ‘What?’

Besson indicated a dark mass, low-lying, moving out from the mists of the horizon. ‘A forest.’ He reached for the rope and grappling iron fastened to the basket’s exterior. ‘We can land there. Lose the Prussians.’

‘Surely the blighters’ll still track us down. This thing we’re riding in is rather conspicuous, you know.’

‘It is better than a field.’ The
aérostier
opened his coat, drew out a revolving pistol and handed it to Clem. ‘Hold this.’

Firearms were one of the few areas of human mechanical ingenuity that had never attracted Clem’s interest. He was no pacifist, but the idea of applying his powers of invention to more effective methods of killing and maiming was devoid of appeal. The device in his hands was unfamiliar, ugly, unpleasantly weighty; he almost dropped it.

‘Hang on a bloody second, old man,’ he said hastily, ‘I’m not shooting at anyone. I’m not a damned soldier. When I volunteered I didn’t—’

‘I will take it back when we land.’ Besson gripped Clem’s shoulder. ‘We are going to run, Pardy. We must. We can avoid them.’

The forest was evergreen, pines it looked like, the trees carpeting a long dip in the countryside. The Uhlans pulled up at its periphery; Clem could hear somebody shouting what sounded like orders and they split up, one party urging their mounts among the trees, the other commencing a patrol of the borders. The pine-tops were closing in, a bed of black-green spikes rising to meet them; the pigeons on the side of the basket came alive, scratching and pecking at their cage. Besson lowered the rope, the grappling iron spinning at its end. Clem rifled through his brain for something profound and meaningful to reflect upon in the last minute of his life. All that came to him was Mademoiselle Laure, crying out in French at the height of one of their embraces; the feel of her heel pressed against his cheek, slick with perspiration. Ah well, he thought with a distracted flush of arousal, that’ll just have to do.

There was a snap, followed by rustling – the sound of the iron dragging through the trees. Clem saw a doe on the forest floor, looking up in alarm before taking flight. He searched about for a solid handhold.

The iron caught. The rope flew through Besson’s grasp. Six loops left; five; four.

‘This is it,’ said the
aérostier
.

Clem shut his eyes again. ‘
This is madness!
’

A single bin of autumn fruit remained in the apple cellar, filling the room with its sweet, earthy smell. Clem opened his eyes. He was lying amongst an assortment of farmyard detritus: broken machinery, barrels, coils of rope and chain. His head ached something ferocious, as if his skull was slowly being tightened – a screw turned at the top of his neck. He touched the spot near his temple where he’d bashed against that low branch, shearing it clear from the tree; there was a swelling the size of a ripe plum, squashed against his skin. He was extremely lucky to be alive, Besson had told him. An inch or two to the left and it would have been curtains. Clem looked around. He had a vague memory of entering the cellar, but it had been lighter then; he must have fallen asleep.

They’d staggered around for a day and a night, attempting to lose their pursuers. Those reinforced
aérostier
boots Clem had been so proud of in Paris had become like lead ingots strapped to the feet; he’d cursed them a little more vehemently with every mile they’d covered. It had been desperately close on a couple of occasions, Uhlans passing within a few yards of where they’d been hiding. The Prussian horsemen had been a fearsome sight –
terrible
, Clem had thought, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. These were men who really knew how to use their swords and guns, and enjoyed doing so: actual, proper soldiers, a stark contrast to the green regulars and strutting militia of Paris. He’d worried anew for the sortie, for his sister – who must have been in the very act of crossing the Marne as he cowered there among the ferns, praying not to be discovered.

Besson was on the other side of the cellar, sitting against a wall. Seeing that Clem had woken, he struck a match and lit a small white candle. He was dressed in peasant clothes: a smock, a shapeless woollen cap and a canvas jacket. A similar outfit had been piled before Clem, along with a bread roll, a pitcher of water and a wedge of cheese.

‘Eat something,’ he said. ‘Change your clothes. And hurry – we cannot risk keeping the candle burning for too long. The flame might be seen.’

Clem scrabbled over to the pitcher. He took a long, gulping drink and then turned his attention to the bread. For one accustomed to a Parisian diet, the taste was overwhelming, fresh and full, a moment of ecstatic revelation; five bites and it was gone. He noticed that Besson was nursing a bird in his lap, stroking it softly. It was one of their carrier pigeons. It looked rather dead.

In the minutes directly after the crash, while Clem had crawled among the browned pine needles thinking that his head was cracked open and its contents dripping out, the
aérostier
had been occupied completely with his fallen
Aphrodite
. He’d pulled at the envelope, bringing it down from the trees, rummaging through the deflating folds until he’d found what he was hunting for. He’d stopped, his face cold – then he’d attacked the calico, fists thrashing, disappearing in the sagging remains of the balloon.

The next Clem had known the Frenchman was over at the flattened basket, the pigeon cage open at his feet. He’d been surrounded by escaping birds, grabbing at them as they flapped past him into the air. Incredibly, he’d managed to get hold of one, arranging its wings and tucking it inside his coat. Only then had he come to Clem’s aid, helping his stricken partner to his feet before looking around briefly for the pistol – which was long gone, catapulted into the undergrowth. They’d left the
Aphrodite
just as the first hoof-falls sounded among the pines.

‘That poor creature isn’t going anywhere.’

Besson made a hopeless gesture. He set the body beside him; you could almost believe that the bird was sleeping but for the curled claw that poked out from under its plumage. ‘It must have suffocated in my pocket.’ He stared at the candle. ‘We have to get word back to Paris. Tell them what happened.’

Clem started on the cheese: firm, nutty, utterly delicious. He just prevented himself from cramming it all in his mouth at once. ‘About the orders for Gambetta, you mean – how they haven’t got through?’

Tension carved a line through Besson’s brow. ‘About that, certainly,’ he answered, ‘but also about the
Aphrodite
. She was sabotaged, Pardy. A seam in the envelope had been worked loose so that we would come down early – a seam close to the top, where it stood less chance of being noticed. They probably hoped to drop us among the Prussians.’

This was a shock; Clem nearly stopped eating. ‘Who would do such a devilish thing? The reds?’

‘It was not the reds. It was Jean-Jacques Allix.’

‘But Allix and the reds are one and the same, ain’t they? He’s their Leopard, their general, their inspiration and—’

‘Pardy,’ said Besson wearily. ‘Listen for a moment. After all this you deserve an explanation. Allix is not what you imagine. Something about this man has troubled me from the start. I have gone to the red clubs and seen him standing before them – this brave, idealistic orator, this battle-hardened soldier, prepared to do anything – and it is too perfect. Do you understand?’

‘Too
perfect
,’ repeated Clem around his cheese.

‘Allix was exactly the man these ultras needed to rid them of their squabbling and their inaction. The only thing he lacked was people who knew him, but his natural gifts have made him plenty of friends since. They have won him Hannah Pardy,
la belle Anglaise
, who had rejected so many others.’ Besson hesitated. ‘And then this business with your mother in the
Figaro
, this name he has made for himself – the timing just so – as if it had been engineered somehow. Guided from on high.’

‘Besson—’

‘I know how I sound,’ the
aérostier
said. ‘Bitter. Envious. Perhaps I am both. But this is real.’

‘You’ve been asking questions about Allix, haven’t you? Around the city?’

‘You mean my meetings with Sergeant Peabody.’ Besson was unsurprised; a note of irony had crept into his grim expression. ‘However did you learn about that?’

Clem realised he’d been spotted that afternoon. ‘You led me to him on purpose. You wanted me to find out what you were doing.’

‘How much did the sergeant impart?’

‘Barely anything, I’m afraid. I only had a few sous on me. I don’t believe the fellow’s overly fond of the English, either. He fought in the American war, didn’t he?’

‘For the Union. He is a veteran of the Richmond–Petersburg campaign. He was with General Miles at the battle of Sutherland’s Station.’

Clem saw where this was headed. Allix was supposed to have particularly distinguished himself during this engagement, as a lieutenant in one of Miles’s battalions. Elizabeth had mentioned it several times in her reports; how he’d broken the Confederate line single-handed, taken more than thirty prisoners despite terrible injuries, and then stood on the station roof, waving the enemy’s colours in the air.

‘And the good sergeant doubts our Leopard’s version of events.’

Besson nodded. ‘I have questioned him closely on several occasions. He has no memory whatsoever of a Lieutenant Allix performing the great acts accredited to him in Paris – or serving in the Union forces at all. No memory
whatsoever
.’ The
aérostier
was growing animated. ‘Jean-Jacques Allix is no hero of the American Civil War, as everyone loves to say. He
wasn’t even there
.’

‘What of those injuries of his, then? The scar – his mangled hand?’

‘A tavern brawl. A riding accident. There are many possible explanations.’

Clem finished off the cheese. He wasn’t enjoying it quite so much now. ‘This is all based on the word of one man,’ he said, ‘and a rather strange man at that. Your Peabody may be mistaken, you know. He may be lying himself.’