For Our Liberty Page 5

  “Yes,” she said with a look that said I wasn’t going to escape.

  “I am not obliged to answer.”

  “But you will.”

  “Why?”

  “What man could resist such a challenge?”

  “I can.”

  “So you are not going to answer?”

  “I may do, if you promise to answer my next question, whatever it may be.”

  She thought for a moment and then said, “Very well. Answer me then. No more prevarication.”

  Once more into the breach I thought as I began to stumble my way through an answer. “Because when I saw you first…” I began badly and had to recover quickly. “No that would be banal and you have warned me about being conventional. So, I’ll say that I flirt with you because you are…”

  “Let me answer for you,” she interrupted. “You flirt with me because that is what you do with women.”

  “That is harsh.”

  “But true?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps we are back to my insecurities.”

  “Do women ever take your flirtations seriously? Do you?” she said. I was finding this interrogation increasingly disagreeable but kept my temper in check. You can often find out more by the questions someone asks rather than the answers they give.

  “Most women I have flirted with know there can never be anything serious between us.”

  “Because you are a bastard?”

  “Yes.”

  “So…”

  I stopped her there. “Enough about me. It is my turn. Why do you scorn men so much?”

  “Perhaps I just have contempt for you?” It was her turn to squirm.

  “I don’t think so,” I said flatly.

  “It is a hurtful question.”

  “But one you have promised to answer.”

  “It is not a gentlemanly question.”

  “I think we have already established that I am not a gentleman.”

  “I think you are, but you do not allow yourself to be,” she said. She was trying to deflect me.

  “Don’t change the subject,” I said.

  “Mon Dieu! All right. Perhaps I show derision for men because that is all you deserve. I have seen men in mobs baying for blood. I have seen men murder. I have seen men lie and cheat and betray. What reason do I have for not holding them in such contempt?” she said, almost as if she was stating the obvious. After she had finished she sank back into her chair with what seemed like relief, but her eyes glistened in the candlelight.

  “Thank you for answering my question. It is your turn,” I said softly.

  “I have had enough of this game.” Dominique leant forward and massaged her temples with her fingers. I, as you could imagine, felt contrite.

  “I didn’t think the French gave up so easily.”

  “Give up? I wish I could.”

  “Ask me your question,” I asked quietly.

  “Oh, alright. But it will be the last. It is late.” She sat back up and looked at my face intently. I looked back and for a moment I felt a connection between us.

  “Make it a good one,” I urged.

  “You have a scar on your cheek, where did you get it?”

  I don’t think that was really what she wanted to ask me and I was going to make light of my scar but I didn’t. One of us had to drop our guard completely and I didn’t think it was going to be her. So I began to tell her about Egypt, about the battles, about the Pyramids, the Nile and everything else I had seen. She asked questions occasionally but when I finished she just sat there looking at me.

  “What else happened?” She asked.

  “What do mean?” I said, flustered by the intensity of her stare.

  “The thing that changed you?”

  “Isn’t battle enough?”

  “Ben, battle may change someone but it won’t twist them like guilt can.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” It was so tempting to tell her but I had never spoken of what happened that hellish night in the Roman ruins and at the time I thought I never would. I was saved by a knock at the door. Dominique got up to open it, reluctantly. Whatever had been passing between us was lost, like smoke blowing away in a breeze.

  A boy entered the room, carrying a tray. Dominique looked slightly annoyed to see him.

  “Claude, what are you doing?” she asked, sharply.

  “Bringing Monsieur Blackthorne his food?” he replied, but he wouldn’t meet Dominique’s eye. He was perhaps sixteen, possibly slightly older. He was tall and thin, with the same dark brown hair as Dominique and similar features.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your brother?” I asked, guessing at their relationship. I had seen that look of disapproval from my own sister many times.

  “He should not be here. I asked that he keep away from you,” she replied to me but was looking at the boy.

  “Sorry,” he said, but he brought the tray over to me. “I’m Claude.”

  “Ben.”

  He placed the tray on the bed beside me and opened his mouth to ask me something but then saw the glower on his sister’s face and though better of it. I winked at him and he smiled, shrugged and then left. Dominique shut the door behind him.

  “Why were you trying to keep him away from me?” I asked as I sliced some cheese and put it on a thick slice of bread.

  “Because you are dangerous.”

  “Hardly, I can barely stand.”

  “No, I meant that your presence here is dangerous. The less Claude knows the better.”

  “He doesn’t seem to agree with you,” I said after finishing my mouthful.

  “He thinks he knows best.”

  “At his age so did I.” I sipped some wine. “This is good,” I said, indicating the glass.

  “It’s from my family’s vineyard,” she said. “Please Ben, stay away from Claude. I do not want him involved. He is all I have.”

  “Dominique, what did happen to your parents?” I asked. She looked at me for a long time and said nothing.

  “It’s alright,” I said. “You needn’t answer if you don’t want to.”

  “No,” she said. “I will. In a moment.” She sat on the end of the bed, straightened her dress and then spoke.

  “My father was a member of the National Assembly. He saw hope in the Revolution. A chance to make our country better. He and his brother came to Paris. François, my uncle, was also a member of the Assembly. A little more radical perhaps. Maybe that was why he wasn’t denounced.”

  “And your father was actually denoucned?” I asked.

  “Yes. My father was arrested and accused of treason. I don’t know why or who accused them. My mother protested, a little too well, and so she was also arrested.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Both were guillotined.”

  I reached out and touched her hand. She didn’t draw away but continued, with some effort. Her eyes were moist but she seemed to be trying to control her emotions, to not cry.

  “Claude and I were orphaned. My uncle took care of us. This was my father’s house. Now it is his. The hope my father saw was squandered. Instead murderers rule France. The Bourbons were bad but this is worse.”

  She stopped talking, her head down. I squeezed her hand. It seemed to bring her back from whatever dark place she had been to. She stood.

  “That’s enough talk for one night,” she said as she walked to the door. “Tomorrow we’ll start planning your journey to the coast. Eat, regain your strength. You’ll need it.”

  The door closed behind her and the key was turned. The click of the lock sounded very loud in the silence that remained.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was on the tenth night that I heard the music. I was finishing a couple of lamb chops, washed down with another glass of the Calvet family wine, when the first notes of a Mozart nocturne floated up from the floors below. I had recovered much of my strength and was getting rather bored of
my faux Egyptian cell; I had spent the day pacing up and down like a tiger in a menagerie. Boredom has always been a vice of mine. Give me nothing to do for a day or so and I’ll soon spiral down from ennui to melancholy. Usually I fought it by immersing myself in a good book but even the borrowed copy of Candide and Voltaire’s satirical optimism hadn’t helped this time. I had too much to reflect upon and too little information to come to any conclusions. My conversations with Dominique had not helped ease my troubled soul. I had spent so many months in Paris doing very little but now that I could do nothing at all I found it unbearable.

  More notes followed the first, softly but determinedly soaring along the hallways and up the stairs. I walked over to the door and tried it, knowing it was locked. I put my ear to the wood to hear the music more clearly. I paced some more, then rang the bell for the maid to come and get the tray. Claude had not reappeared. The maid was a sweet but simple girl from Normandy and was unlocking the door within a couple of minutes. As always she left the key in the lock when she entered, but the door always slowly closed after her. She walked over to the tray and was about to leave when I asked her for some more water. I helpfully placed the empty jug on the tray. It was now too heavy for her to carry one handed and the extra few moments had given the door time to shut completely. I gallantly made a great show of opening the door for her, flashing her a flirtatious smile at the same time. She smiled shyly back and walked through the doorway with the tray and out on to the landing. I patted her on the rump, grinned lasciviously again for good measure and let her walk away hot and flustered. I closed the door behind her, whipping the key out of the lock before she noticed. She glanced coyly over her shoulder and disappeared down the corridor.

  I waited a few moments, picked up the candle and then left the room, locking the door behind me. She would return in a few minutes when she remembered the key, she’d find the door locked and be convinced she had locked it behind her and then lost the key. I hoped.

  I could hear the piano more strongly now. I was in a short unlit corridor and could see a soft flickering light coming from a landing ahead. I walked quietly to the banister and heard laughter and voices. I am normally not in the least hesitant about arriving at a party bereft of an invitation but I thought that a sick looking Englishmen, dressed only in shirt and breeches might attract some unwelcome attention. Besides, it was enough to be out of that damned room for five minutes, and whoever was playing it was doing so very well. So I sat on the stairs and just listened for a while. I had heard Lucy play the same piece often, and whoever was playing it then was almost as talented. It came to an end all too quickly and I was struggling to get up when I heard the creak of someone coming up the stairs. I stood as quickly as I could but it wasn’t quickly enough.

  “Monsieur Blackthorne, if you had wanted an invitation to my uncle’s soirée you need only have asked.” Dominique’s tone was half amused and the now red-faced maid followed her up the stairs. She wasn’t that simple after all.

  “I apologise, Mademoiselle. The music lured me from my room as surely as the sirens led Odysseus astray.”

  “You liked my playing then?”

  I would have answered her but I was struck dumb. She was wearing a diaphanous dress of flowing muslin slit to above the knee, while her hair spilled over her shoulders like chocolate silk. A diamond and sapphire necklace both matched her eyes and led mine to a décolletage that would have had the Pope chewing his knuckles. She was a goddess. It got even better when she came closer and I could see just how diaphanous the dress was. She blushed and frowned at the same time when she saw me looking at her. I smiled apologetically and looked away. I did see a hint of a smile though, before the frown took hold.

  “Come Monsieur Blackthorne, back to your room, I think. We really can’t have you wandering around now, can we?” There was a hint of threat in her voice, but I didn’t think she meant it. I was led back down the corridor and into my room. Dominique held her hand out for the key, I meekly placed it in her palm and she unlocked the door and waved the maid away. She motioned for me to sit on the bed and I did. My little adventure had fatigued me; either that or I would have done anything she asked of me. Especially when she was wearing that dress. Many of the English ladies that had come to Paris in those few months of peace had embraced the French fashion for classically influenced dresses, but none that I had seen had captured the beauty of Aphrodite or Venus as Dominique did that night. She took the candle from me and lit a few more on the mantelpiece. I averted my eyes from her silhouetted form, after a moment or two.

  She looked at me thoughtfully for a few seconds and then appeared to come to a decision. She went to the desk on the other side of the room and pressed a catch. A hidden drawer opened and she took out a packet of papers. I cursed under my breath and patted the mattress searching for the lump, my heart sinking. The papers had gone.

  “Looking for this?” Dominique turned and waved the papers at me. “I think that perhaps it is time for you to answer some questions, some important ones this time.”

  “Give me the papers. You had no right to take them from me.”

  “I don’t think that you are in a position to make any demands, do you?” She sat down on a chaise longue across the room.

  “So, are you going to answer me?” She asked as she straightened what little of her dress there was. She was torturing me as surely as if she was using the rack.

  “I have nothing to say. Those papers are private and confidential and refer to a legacy left to me by a great aunt. You hold me here against my will, lock me in this damned room…”

  “Stop it! An aunt? I thought your family had disowned you. You really are a very bad liar, Ben. I know what those papers say because I have read them. Now what are you doing with Bonaparte’s plans for the invasion flotilla?” She waited for my answer and then after a moment she looked exasperated. Then disappointed. And finally amused. “You didn’t know what they were did you?”

  I had thought that I had covered up my surprise quite well, but perhaps it was the jaw dropping, eye popping and spluttering that betrayed me. I knew that I had to say something, to make something up, otherwise I could have been on the end of a gibbet before sunrise. Being caught with that type of information didn’t bear thinking about.

  The thought that Boney wanted to invade Britain wasn’t a revelation of course. We were just about the only power he had not soundly thrashed. It was the fact that he had a plan and must obviously have a scheme to get past the wooden walls of the Navy that concerned me. I might have proudly worn the Army’s uniform but I was not blind to the fact that the only reason England had survived nearly a decade of war with France was that there was a rather inconvenient body of water between London and Paris and that all French ports were constantly blockaded by our 74s. I opened my mouth again trying to think of something to say but Dominique held up her hand.

  “Don’t bother lying again. Perhaps you might be more inclined to tell me if you knew who we were?”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. Me, my uncle, some friends. We who fight Bonaparte.”

  “You’re Royalists, but I thought you father was a revolutionary?” Things began to make a little more sense. Just a little.

  “When my father and mother were guillotined I vowed I would see them avenged. I do not know who is responsible for their death but I know the type of man it must have been. I fight against their kind in any way I can. Bonaparte is a tyrant, as bad as the Bourbons, if not worse.” She walked to the window and stared out into the darkness. She turned back and pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. “We are on the same side, Ben.”

  Even though old fat Louis had been dead a decade there were plenty of Frenchmen who wanted an end to the chaos of the Revolution and a return to the old order, or order of any kind. The Vendée had been in almost permanent ferment for years and was barely under the control of Paris. Princes, Dukes and Counts plotted and schemed on France’s borders and many who were still loyal to t
he Bourbons had survived The Terror. I was heartened because the Royalists had cause to help me, an English ally, but also wary because I might be getting myself into even more trouble by being associated with them. I looked into her eyes, wanting to believe her, and knowing that I would.

  “How…”

  “How can you believe her?” A man entered the room. He wasn’t tall or short, he was well past his youth and his stomach was beginning to hang over his belt. In a few more years he would be fat and he would have lost more of his greying hair. His face was lined and pale. He was dressed well but somehow without style.

  “If you knew the true horrors that Dominique has endured, you would believe her,” he said.

  He walked over and held out his hand. The grip was strong and his eyes met mine. Some men you trust when you feel their grip, some you don’t. I wasn’t sure about Dominique’s uncle. He had the air of a man who had survived and who had not always been too particular about who else survived with him. I thought that I might be all right if I was valuable to him but if not, well then I might be finished. He let go of my hand.

  “I am François Calvet. I may work for that scoundrel Bonaparte, but my loyalty lies elsewhere, the same as my niece’s.” He placed his hand on Dominique’s shoulder, protectively. Dominique turned to shut the door behind him.

  “Ben Blackthorne, late of the XIIth Dragoons, shot, confused, and indignant.”

  “Monsieur Blackthorne, I cannot apologise for your being shot, and as for your confusion and indignation, well if you answer my questions I will answer yours. Now, where did you get these papers?” He grinned and poured a glass of Armagnac from a decanter that had also been locked away in the desk. If I had known it was there then the time would have passed much more easily. I paused before accepting the drink. Unlike me, I know, but I felt I could be crossing the Styx by accepting. He thrust it towards me.

  “Please, I think that you could do with this. Come on, man. If we had wanted you dead then we’d hardly take the time to return you to good health first would we? Nor would I waste fifty year old brandy on you.”