Authors: Rob Griffith
“No, we would stand out,” Devrieux replied softly. “We will wait and see Bonaparte, you should see the face of your enemy. Besides the diligence would not be able to leave through the crowds.”
So we waited with everybody else for the man that would come to rule most of Europe. It was unnerving to say the least, standing there in front of so many elite French soldiers and gendarmes and waiting for Bonaparte to arrive, and knowing that the army that surrounded us was planning to invade my own country. The crowds were eager to see him, I heard mention of his victories in Italy and Egypt, others praised the reforms he had undertaken, a father lifted his son onto his shoulders and told him he would remember seeing the greatest Frenchman ever to live for the rest of his life. It was not the image of the Corsican tyrant that the popular engravings would have had us believe.
Finally, there was the sound of a military band approaching. The steady beat of French drums that I had last heard in battle echoed around the stone buildings. A company of the Consular Guard marched smartly into the square followed by a simple looking coach. They halted outside the Hotel des Androuins and the honour guards snapped to attention, presenting arms with a slap of hands on the wooden stocks of their muskets and the stamp of hobnailed boots. A colonel dashed forward like a footman to open the carriage door and a man of average height and appearance stepped out. I waited for General Bonaparte to follow and then when the crowd cheered I realised that the nondescript man was the great Bonaparte himself. He wore a simple cloak and cocked hat. He did not look like a ruler of a great nation but I suppose I was expecting the splendour of a king, not the dowdiness of a provincial General. His coat looked a little tight and I guessed his tailor was having to reinforce the buttons. He turned and glanced at the crowds, nodded and then went inside, a multitude of various officials and generals following in his wake. I would see him again one day, under very different circumstances.
The mob dispersed, contented, and we barged our way through to the diligence. Devrieux shook my hand and bade me farewell.
“Goodbye, and Godspeed. Tip the driver well if you want to be in Paris before next year,” he said before he disappeared into the throng. I paid my four hundred livres, twice what it had cost me during the peace, and took my seat inside. My luggage was already aboard, stowed with the rest on the roof. French coaches then were awful, badly-sprung and leaky. Three unfortunate passengers could sit in a cabriolet at the front. Six more sat with the conducteur on the roof with the luggage and those with money and sense sat inside. The poor postillion rode one of the seven horses. I was, though, gratified to see that the French coaching service had also adopted the habit of installing flatulent clergy in all their conveyances now that the church was back in favour. All the other passengers were military officers. They chatted about promotions, past battles and dead colleagues. I replied monosyllabically to their enquiries about my trade and destination. They soon left me alone and I feigned sleep as much as I could. All the while I prayed that Devrieux’s papers would continue passing inspection.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The closer I got to Paris the more nervous I became. It was ridiculous, I know. I was no less likely to be caught outside Paris than inside the city walls, in fact the anonymity of the city might offer some refuge, but there was something about heading into the lion’s den that focussed my mind somewhat. On the interminable coach journey I avoided conversation with my travelling companions as much as possible, but could not avoid it all together. Each time a new passenger replaced one that disembarked at one of the many stops, the polite enquiries would start again. My papers said I was a wine merchant from Bordeaux and fortunately wine was a subject I knew enough about to make small talk. The road from the coast was busy with carts full of men and supplies going to the army and despite the postillion cracking his long whip at the poor horses we made slow progress. Mounted gendarmes in dark blue coats and with red plumes in their cocked hats stopped us frequently and checked our papers. Eventually I learned to trust in Devrieux’s papers and began to take each check as the minor inconvenience it was. We stopped frequently for food, and for tolls, and we changed horses a total of thirty-four times. Each time we had to pay the postillion a little more to harness the correct number of horses for the number of passengers and so it took us a long two days to reach the cathedral of Saint Denis on the edge of Paris and then to pass through the Porte Maillot and into the city itself.
The coach terminated on the Rue Notre Dame Victoires and when I stepped down into the filth of a Paris street it was almost like coming home, just not to one that felt that welcoming. It was August now and Paris had that heavy, slow summer feeling. Not that you could ever accuse a Frenchman of hurrying. The sky was unbroken blue and the sun high and merciless. The roads had dried into thick crusts of mud with only the very centre still liquid and smelling even fouler than usual. It took some minutes before the feeling that eyes were turning towards me and that people were whispering about me subsided. I soon realised that nobody cared who I was or what I was doing. Paris always accepts you as you are and my fears faded as I waited for the agent that Devrieux had assured me would be there to meet me. I stood for half an hour with my portmanteau at my feet until a lad came up and offered to carry it for me.
“I’ll carry your bag, monsieur. It is too hot for a gentleman to be carrying anything, so it is,” he said. His clothes were well worn, his coat was too small for him and his trousers too long. A cap, also too large, flopped over his face.
“No, thank you I’m waiting…” I began to say but he’d already picked it up, grunting as he did so. “Hey,” I said, “put that down. I don’t even know where I’m going.”
“I do. Follow me, Ben.”
“What… Who…”
“It’s me, you idiot,” the lad said. I looked again, harder this time and the light of realisation slowly dawned. The lad was slender, fresh faced and with very shapely legs. Legs that I had a reason to remember.
“Dominique?”
“Yes. No, not here,” she said as I went to embrace her. She hefted the portmanteau over her shoulder and led me away.
“Here, let me take that,” I said, trying to take the bag from her. I knew it was heavy, stuffed as it was with pistols, carbine, powder and shot.
“No, I’ll take it. It looks better if we are being watched,” she replied in a low voice. She had a point, I admitted to myself, and I took my station behind her. I must confess it was a very pleasant place to be. She filled the seat of her trousers very nicely, and to watch her derriere move as she walked was almost mesmerising. I’d not seen a lady in breeches or trousers before and I could see why, it would enflame men’s passions far too much. There weren’t many people on the streets and I glanced behind me every now and then to check we weren’t being followed. Dominique too seemed to be taking precautions, taking a circuitous route to where ever we were going and stopping occasionally. There was no opportunity to speak to her without the risk of being overheard but a thousand questions waited to be asked.
It was hot, or maybe it was just me, and I could see she was struggling a little with the weight of the bag. I saw a small alley between a boulangerie and a charcutier and grabbed her arm, dragging her off the street. She dropped the portmanteu.
“What are you…” was all she managed to say before I kissed her. She resisted ever so briefly before kissing me back, passionately, even roughly. She put her hands around my neck and pulled our faces together so hard it hurt. My hands slipped down her back to her behind, following the contours of her body. She pressed herself against me, hooking one of her legs behind mine. Eventually we had to stop to take a breath. The alley was wonderfully cool and dark, but did rather stink of offal. To take my mind off the smell I kissed her again, longer, slower and more gently. Once more we had to stop before one of us passed out. I pulled back slightly and looked into her enchanting eyes.
“I said I’d come back.”
“Men say lots of things but women seldom believe them,” she said, reminding me that her eyes could be mocking as well as beautiful.
“Did you doubt me then?” I asked, stroking her cheek with my hand.
“No, at least not your intentions.”
“Well that’s a first for me.”
“You doubt yourself and expect others to do the same.”
“Perhaps.”
“What do you think of my disguise?” she asked, stepping away and coquettishly twirling around.
“I saw through it straightaway.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I knew there must be a good reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the bottom of a young lad.”
“Perhaps it has just been too long since you’ve had a woman.”
“If you’re fishing for an admission of something then let me tell you that there has been no other.”
“I’m very glad to hear it. I have a knife that’s just sharp enough for the job if it had been otherwise.”
“You claim ownership over me after just one night?” I asked feigning indignation.
“Yes,” she said and kissed me again, with even more passion than before. If good sense hadn’t intervened, at least on her part, the pedestrians of Paris might have been more than a little shocked had they looked into that alley, but as it was she pulled away from me just as I thought things were going to get interesting.
“That’s quite enough of that, I think. For now at least,” she said. “We must go.”
“Where?”
“To your lodgings.”
“And where would they be?”
“La Rue Mazarine.”
“That’s quite a walk, let’s get a cab,” I said. It was a street I knew because I had often frequented Le Procope, a café once popular with the revolutionary crowd. It was just across the Pont Neuf on the left bank.
“No. We need the time to talk without a driver listening. We will walk but I think you’ll have to help me with your bag. What have you got in there?” she asked, giving my luggage a kick.
“Oh the usual; clothes, books, guns.”
After one last impulsive embrace we straightened our clothing back to some form of decency and each took one handle of the bag. We left the alley, pausing at the street to check for watchers. There were none, at least none that we saw. We headed for the river. The thousand questions I had for Dominique mostly remained unanswered and on the streets with the portmanteau between us it wasn’t easy to have a conversation with the necessary level of discretion.
“How’s Claude?” I asked.
“Well, thank you.”
“And your uncle?”
“Also well. But I don’t see him often.”
“You aren’t living with him anymore?”
“Of course not. Lacrosse is still looking for me,” she said with a typical toss of her head.
“Sorry, stupid of me. Where are you living then?”
“With Claude, at a friend’s. Best you don’t know where for now.”
“But how will I see you?”
“We’ll find a way I’m sure,” she said, and smiled teasingly.
“Where am I lodging?”
“With Ferdinand Fauche.”
“What?” I said, stopping so suddenly that she was yanked backwards by the trunk between us.
“You heard me,” she said, pulling me forwards.
“But why? He might be the traitor!” I hissed, staying put like a stubborn mule.
“Yes, precisely. How better to keep an eye on him than sleep under the same roof?” she glared at me and pulled harder. I relented.
“I was advised to keep away from all three of our suspects,” I whispered as we walked on.
“Good advice, but I need your help. Besides do you always do what people advise you to?”
“No, I suppose not. Why do you need my help?”
“I’ve been trying to find out which of the three is the traitor and I can’t watch them all at once.”
“The Alien Office has an agent trying to determine who it is, leave it to them.”
“I am that agent, you fool. What did you think I would be doing with my time? Sewing?” she said, muttering something else under her breath I felt certain it was best that I didn’t hear.
“You shouldn’t be taking such risks. You should be lying low. Keeping safe,” I said, realising I sounded like a molly-coddling elder brother.
“I can’t just wait for Claude and I to be caught,” she replied fiercely and probably too loudly. “Much better to find the traitor before they betray anybody else.” A greengrocer standing outside his shop looked long and hard at us before turning his attention back to his fruit, no doubt fretting they would over-ripen in the heat. I pulled Dominique across the street, away from other ears.
“And you expect me to keep an eye on Fauche?” I said when it was safe again.
“Yes.”
“I do have a mission of my own, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was asked to meet you and arrange lodging for you. I assumed that you aren’t here to visit the cathedrals or just to see me, fool.”
“Very well. Do you know what the mission is?”
“No. What is it?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you,” I said, trying and failing to sound superior.
“But you will.”