The Forbidden Rose (41 page)

“Did I now?” He counted off thirty seconds under his breath and tapped the next man. The one after that was a woman. She already had her skirts tied up high over her knees.

Hawker whispered, “I said you’d bring a friend or two. Maybe five. Maybe six.” The woman put her hands on Hawker’s shoulder as he lifted her up to the edge, found a rung for her foot, and started down. “Jean-Paul bet me you’d empty out the whole damn prison.”

“Ah.”

“I told him,” Hawker managed to pack a huge freight of sarcasm into a whisper, “you wouldn’t do anything that stupid.”

“We all make mistakes.” He gave the nod. Hawker put his arm out to help. The next man scrambled over the side.

 

 

THEY’D come to about the last of them. A scared girl. Hawker swung her across and prodded her over the edge of the well. She stuck there, holding on and whimpering. Hawker pried her fingers loose from his shirt and stuffed her down the well. It was catch on to the ladder then, or fall, so she grabbed the ladder.

Sister Anne, who was helping them, leaned over to coo and coddle. Pat, pat on the head. Pat the cheek. Whisper. Whisper. “Go, my child. All will be well. They’re waiting for you below. Go now.”

“Move before I hit you,” Hawker said.

Between them, they got the girl started. He motioned Hawker in after the girl. Hawker would get her to the bottom in one piece, if anyone could. It might involve tromping on her fingers to keep her moving, but he’d do it.

It had taken them an hour to get everyone out. Now it was only Father Jérôme and Sister Anne. The other two nuns were inside, too weak to walk. He’d have to leave them behind.

The nun had been useful, helping him move the women along. “Tuck your hem in your waistband, Sister. If your foot gets caught in your skirt, just hold on and kick it free.”

“Oh my, no. I’m not going.”

I don’t have time for this.
“There’s no choice, Sister. It’s the only way out. It’s easy once you’re over the rim.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “My dear boy, surely you realize I never intended to leave. I can’t.”

Maggie’s down there, and God knows what’s happening to her.
“If you stay behind, you’re going to die.”

The priest’s voice came, very calm. “Guillaume, it has already been decided. The sister and I will stay behind.”

“Father, we don’t—”

“The Sister will stay because it is her duty.”

“I could not possibly leave Sister Scholastica and Sister Benedict behind. There is no one to care for them. And they don’t understand what is happening.” A breathy pause. “Someone must be with them when we are taken to the guillotine. They are really too old and frail to face it alone.”

He closed his eyes. “Oh, damn.”

“They have been my sisters for thirty years. Of course we will go together.” She patted him, exactly the way she had patted the terrified girl on the rim of the well. “You must hurry and leave so I can return to them. They wake in the night sometimes, thinking it is Matins, and it frightens them that we’re not in the right place.”

“You can’t—”

“She can and will.” Father Jérôme hitched his steps toward the well. “Her work is here. You have work to do elsewhere and must get on with it.”

“Father . . . You know what I’m trying to do with those papers. Even if it works, it may not work fast enough to save you. They could take you out of here tomorrow.”

“That is now, and always has been, in the hands of God. To be practical, I do not believe even your great strength can play Aeneas and carry me out of Troy. Not with that cracked rib. There are some dozens of men and women at the bottom of this infernal pit. They are your responsibility now. You must go to them.”

“I can carry you. I’m strong enough.”

“We shall not attempt to find out. This is for you.” The box fit into his hands, corners and smoothness and the faint ridges of the inlaid squares. The chessmen. “I am delighted to say there will be no one left for me to pass it to. And it is time for me to return to bed. I am composing an edifying speech to deliver on the scaffold.”

“A man doesn’t throw his life away to make a point.”

“On the contrary. That is exactly what a man does. Put that away safely. You’ll need both hands to climb with.”

“At least send out that silly nun. You can order her to go.”

“But I will not do so.” The priest propped himself against the upright timber of the windlass. “She also will make her final point. Did you think bravery was the sole province of the wise? Go with God, my son.”

There was nothing else for it. He climbed into the well. Put his hands on the rungs. Started down.

Above him, the priest said, “I regret not finishing the last game with you. I would have won.”

Nun and priest were lit by the candles as they leaned over the rim of the well. He could see those candles all the way down. When he reached the bottom, when he was with Maggie, the ladder lifted once, to confirm it was empty. Then it fell, rung and ropes, plummeting into the water, forever concealing the path of their escape.

MARGUERITE SAID, “THEY’LL BE SAFE. EVERYONE who leads them has done this, or something like this, before.”

“You have interesting friends,” Guillaume said.

The last of Justine’s smugglers departed, taking with them the last of the prisoners—a dark-haired Polish man, a quivering seamstress, and a tight-lipped, frightened counter-revolutionary from Nantes.

La Flèche would be busy for weeks, spiriting this many men and women out of Paris.

Voices became a scratching on the surface of the silence and then silence itself. The great cavern was empty. Now it belonged to Guillaume and to her. Candles burned at the far edges of the stone galleries, small lights left behind, floating in the darkness. In a few hours, they would burn down and flicker out, one by one, and the dark would come back.

“You’re cold. Every part of you is cold to the bone.” He touched her face. Her upper arms.

“A little chilled. I don’t feel it.” There had been no time in the noise and confusion of the rescue to hold him. Now she did. She pulled close to him and pressed to his chest. She did it carefully, because he had been hurt. The first men to descend the ladder in the well shaft had come out speaking of Guillaume. How he had given them their lives and how he had been beaten in prison.

He stroked her hair. Soft. Soft. Tucking it behind her ears where it had come loose.

“Victor hurt you. Everyone heard it happening.” She drew away from him to look down at his body. Her hand hovered over his ribs, without touching them. “I wasn’t fast enough to spare you this.”

“My own fault, for getting arrested. If I hadn’t walked off and left you alone with him it wouldn’t have happened. I should have kept you with me. Protected you.”

“I am pleased to be protected, as any woman would be. But it also happens I am well able to decide when I shall go to my own house and when I will be carried off by a handsome seller of political texts.”

“You can do any damn thing you decide to.” He put his hands down upon her shoulders. “Keep away from Cousin Victor. He knows you’re in La Flèche.”

That was hard news, though it explained Victor’s behavior, which had puzzled her. “He knows and you know and your colleague Hawker as well and these many odd men who came to take the sparrows away. I am utterly revealed. If I were one of my couriers I would send myself to England.”

“If you don’t, Victor’s going to try to lock you up someplace to keep you from making trouble for him. He might have worse in mind. There’s not much I’d put past him.”

“That is what Jean-Paul says. He says that Victor poisoned me with foxglove leaves.”

Guillaume’s hold tightened. “I’ll have to make sure he doesn’t do that again, won’t I?”

“You sound very threatening, I think, but I shall handle my Cousin Victor. It was the night I was so sick and came to find you in the café—that night—I drank some of a tisane Victor brought me. But I withhold judgment in the matter. I do not say Victor would not poison me, because he is a man lacking the most elementary scruples, but there is no real proof that—”

He kissed her, swiftly. Claiming her mouth, once, and letting go. “I’m going to kill him.”

“It is a thoughtful offer, but no. I have no proof, only guesses and the evidence of his character. If one set about murdering all the men who are without scruple, one would depopulate Europe. Let us instead go find hot coffee and a bed. As it happens, I have never gone to bed with a married man.”

He continued to hold her and look at her, his face serious. “Why did you stay here in the quarries all night?”

He knew very well why she had stayed. “I was waiting for you. I will always be waiting for you.”

“You . . .” He breathed out. “Damn.”

She had deprived him of speech. That was satisfying. She said, “Make love to me.”

He shook his head. “Not here. Not underground. And I’m filthy.”

“Then we will go somewhere else and wash you. Then we will make love.” She picked up the end of the twine that would lead them out of the dark. Poulet’s coat was lined with silk and smelled of musk. She put it around Guillaume’s shoulders to keep him warm and they left the dark.

MARGUERITE FOLLOWED THE PATHWAY OF TWINE Jean-Paul had threaded for her through the galleries and corridors. Guillaume carried the lantern. She gathered in the thread of their way, winding up the labyrinth. It was as if she were Ariadne and had rescued the Minotaur instead of Theseus. That was a slight rewriting of the old tale, but she was in the mood for rewriting sad endings. The ball had become huge by the time she reached the inconspicuous stairway that led upward.

It did not amaze her to find Hawker sitting upright, dozing, at the top of the stone stairs. He pretended he had not been sleeping.

“About time.” Hawker rubbed his sleeve over his face. “Means I don’t have to go down and fetch you. Anybody else coming?”

“We’re the last.” Guillaume closed the lattice door that blocked off the stairs and began to shift barrels in front of it. He could do this by himself, even when he was hurt, but she helped him anyway.

He stopped once, suddenly, in the middle of rolling a barrel on its edge from one place to another, and said, “Every breath I draw from now on, I owe to you.”

“It is not—”

“I want to say it.” He let the barrel down gently, in place, exactly where it belonged.

She changed from boots to shoes. Guillaume blew the lanterns out, all except one, and left them behind on the table. She was on the narrow ladder that led to the café when he said one of several things that had been resting, silent, between them. “The priest and the nuns didn’t come.”

She had seen that and had said nothing. “I wondered.”

“They chose not to.”

“They may survive. Jean-Paul’s friends were full of news. There were accusations in the Convention yesterday. Robespierre is isolated and the delegates seething like a stew. He may fall. It could be today or tomorrow. Soon enough to save them.”

“I hope so.” But he was somber inside, preparing for the worst. Guillaume would be hurt to the soul that he had to leave people behind. It would never be enough for him to save almost everyone.

They opened the door to a café, disturbing a small gray moth. Outside, it was the darkest time of night, long before the streets would begin to wake. Guillaume took a deep breath and started off. She didn’t know where they were going, but she was willing enough to follow.

Did anyone at all see them go past? Were there eyes behind the closed shutters? No one challenged them, in any case. They stopped once and huddled together in the alcove of a doorway while boots marched on a street nearby.