Authors: Matthew Plampin
They skirted the hall at a brisk pace. Away from the square, the only light came from the stars and a low half-moon, cut to a crisp oval by the shadow of the earth. Everything was black or a metallic, bluish grey; above, beyond the columns and domes, the winged statues on the opera house roof were taking flight into a shimmering sky. Two infantrymen ambled into their path, greeting the Leopard with suspicious overfriendliness. He shouldered them aside without speaking.
The boulevard Haussmann was a good deal emptier. Over a mile long, this colossal Imperial thoroughfare was lined with iron-shuttered shops. In front of one of these, just beyond the intersection that connected the boulevard to the rue Lafayette and a few smaller avenues, a crowd was assembling. It was made up of a hundred or so working people, supplemented by the usual contingent of National Guard, and was growing fast. Hannah spotted Laure close to the centre, swigging from a bottle of spirits. She’d done as she’d promised out in the woods. Montmartre had been raised to deal with the Leopard.
The Prussian led them across the road, out of the starlight into deep shadow. They needed to pass through this intersection, only twenty yards or so from the crowd, in order to reach Mr Inglis’s apartment. Someone launched into a speech from the lip of a water trough. It was Raoul Rigault, dressed as a militia major – although he certainly hadn’t been out to fight on that day or any other. He was stoking those around him for a run at the Grand; a bastion of obscene Imperial inequality, he proclaimed, that should be thrown open to residents from the mills and the workshops. And then he mentioned Elizabeth by name.
‘This old
Anglaise
, this Madame Pardy, is the great supporter of the damned Leopard – the Judas of the 18th arrondissement. She made his name in the
Figaro
. She backed up his lies and spun new ones to gain him more followers. She must now be subjected to the same revolutionary justice!’
The crowd bayed, waving cudgels and blades in the air. Someone shouted that they despised the English; that they would burn them all on a bonfire if they could, and dump the ashes into the Seine. There was agreement, and cheers, and yet more extravagant threats – and the man they sought slipped straight past them, escorting his accomplices through the dark intersection. One word from Hannah could have seen the Leopard destroyed. She remembered the promise she’d made to her mother and said nothing.
‘We are safe,’ whispered Elizabeth. ‘My goodness, we are safe.’
They’d almost reached the mouth of the rue Joubert when a dozen pairs of boots hammered from a side street: a party of men with Émile Besson at their front. Clem was among them as well. This was what her brother had fled the Grand to do. The rest were clad in sheepskin jerkins and brimless caps – sailors from the Gare du Nord balloon factory. Several were carrying municipal-issue rifles.
‘Stand there!’ Besson yelled. ‘You
stand there!
’
The Prussian regarded him steadily. ‘I will not, Monsieur Besson. You will have to shoot me down.’
Besson advanced – and without warning the two men were fighting in the gutter. They were not as mismatched as might have been assumed. Although smaller by five inches at least and lacking his opponent’s broad build, Besson was spurred by fury; head lowered, he drove the Prussian against some railings with wide swings of his arms. Elizabeth went to intervene, endeavouring both to pull Besson off and keep the sailors at a distance. This, of course, made everything worse.
‘Dear Lord,’ she wheezed, ‘you infernally
stupid man!
’
There were cries from the boulevard. Besson’s attempted arrest had drawn the attention of Rigault’s mob; a number were coming to investigate. Hannah walked back towards them, not knowing what she might actually do when they met. Clem rushed up beside her. She stopped to look at him. Her twin brother had been refashioned by the siege, his form and features trimmed down to the quick. This leanness lent him a new significance. His costume – that shabby green suit, the length of curtain wrapped around his neck, the tall, discoloured hat – belonged on a Westminster thief-master; yet for the first time something in his bearded face reminded her of their father.
Remorse drew around Hannah like a net, swift and tight. It was because of her that Clem had come to Paris; because of her that he’d suffered prison and hunger and who knew what else, and now faced the most dreadful danger. She took his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Clem,’ she said, ‘for leaving you as I did. You didn’t deserve it.’
He blinked in embarrassment. ‘Oh God, Han, that was all me. I tripped on a kerbstone, didn’t I – went down like the ass I am.’ He squeezed her fingers, his forgiveness so immediate that it didn’t register in his mind; he didn’t even recognise that there had been an offence in the first place. ‘You could hardly have come back. Why, we’d have both been tossed in the Mazas.’
This was only part of Hannah’s meaning. ‘No, I – you don’t—’
At least thirty people were now heading in their direction. Hannah turned; Besson and the Prussian were being held apart by the sailors, Elizabeth haranguing in the background. They had him.
‘I went as fast as I could,’ said Clem quickly; he was apologising to Hannah now. ‘I ran the whole bloody way. I wanted to nab him in the Grand. This really is no good at all.’
Hannah collected herself. ‘I’ll talk to them.’
Clem nodded, moving closer; the twins stood together before the approaching mob. She started to speak – to explain that the spy had been caught and justice would be served. Then they saw him.
‘There he is!’ someone bawled. ‘Traitor!
Traitor!
’
The crowd broke into a charge, running for the Leopard. Hannah was buffeted and barged; she called Clem’s name, but couldn’t even hear her own voice in the clamour. Hands were grabbing at her, holding onto her – apprehending her, she realised, as one of the guilty parties. She was shoved down, pressed hard against a lamppost. A man threw an arm around her neck and squeezed, trying to work her legs open from behind. The shouting was furious and continual: ‘
Vive la France! Vive la Commune! Get him! Get the traitor!
’
Suddenly her neck was released – her attacker sent sprawling. She was rescued, just as she’d been on the quay beside the Tuileries; she coughed, struggling for breath, unable to see anything but boots and pavement. A hand took hold of hers, hauling her from the mob into darkness. The index finger was inflexible, a solid piece of wood; and for an instant, without thinking, she was reassured.
They were in an alleyway. Émile Besson was there also, at her other arm. A truce had plainly been called for the purposes of mutual survival; the Prussian and the
aérostier
were virtually carrying her between them.
‘Clem,’ she said, ‘they have Clem. We must go back.’
‘We cannot,’ Besson replied. ‘I am so very sorry, Mademoiselle, but we cannot.’
Elizabeth was in a moonlit courtyard, a long rectangle to the rear of a parade of shops. They’d come around in a circle; they were behind the boulevard. One side was a blank wall, the other a row of padlocked double-doors. At the far end were four broken supply-carts. There was no other gate. They were trapped.
Her mother came over. ‘Where is Clement?’
‘The crowd,’ Hannah gasped. ‘Oh God, Elizabeth, I saw him go down!’
‘There is hope,’ Besson said. ‘The sailors will help if they are able. And he is not the one they want.’
The
aérostier
was gazing at her, his hated Leopard all but forgotten. His expression was almost of wonder; his eyes glistened. He too had believed her dead, she realised – had been mourning her while she drew on a dirt floor somewhere beneath Gagny. Right then, at that moment, this left her utterly unmoved.
‘Could
you
not have helped him, Monsieur Besson?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were his friend!’
Besson’s dazed half-smile disappeared. ‘I will find him, Mademoiselle. I promise you that.’
Shouts were gathering out in the alley; their location had been discovered. They hurried into the shadows, to the nearest set of shop doors. Besson drew a clasp-knife from his jacket pocket and started to force the lock.
Hannah looked around. The Leopard was with them no longer. He’d walked to the centre of the courtyard, into the full glare of the moon. He was standing very straight, calmly tugging the black leather gloves tight on his hands. The urgency that had infused him since they’d left the Grand had disappeared. He removed the Zoave cloak and dropped it by the wall. He was preparing himself.
The Prussian agent glanced over at her. After Hannah’s incredulity and grief, and then her agonising anger, had come a straightforward desire for answers. She wanted to know everything about the deception that had been worked on her – the level of premeditation; exactly how detached he’d remained while she’d thought herself in love; how he’d imagined it might end. He seemed to recognise this. His face, previously unreadable, opened up by the smallest amount, the brow lifting almost imperceptibly. He was ready to speak to her.
The first of his pursuers, a gaggle of militiamen, loped noisily into the courtyard, cutting across Hannah’s line of sight. They closed around their erstwhile champion, keeping him at arm’s length as if containing a dangerous animal. The main body of the mob was directly behind, piling in through the gates, streaming past the doorway where Hannah huddled next to Besson and her mother. A ring of bodies formed around the Prussian, spitting and swearing and promising terrible violence.
Raoul Rigault appeared. He was enjoying himself immensely; this was precisely the sort of thing he’d been hoping for since the beginning of the siege. That his victim was a man he’d recently considered a useful ally didn’t seem to bother him in the least.
‘We have before us an enemy of the people, citizens!’ he cried. ‘An enemy of Paris, of socialism! A traitor to France!’
‘I am not French,’ the Leopard replied. ‘I am Captain Johann Brenner of the Imperial Prussian Army.’ He paused. ‘I am one of those who have bested France.’
There were hisses and jeers, and the spitting grew more intense; the black coat now sparkled with spittle in the cold white light. The Prussian – Brenner – was goading them, guiding them to an increasingly certain result.
Rigault’s satisfaction had vanished. ‘You have bested the
Empire
,’ he corrected hotly, ‘and the Empire only! We have not been
defeated
, damn you, but betrayed – by our coward governor and his band of coward ministers! The workers of France remain valorous; they remain bold; they remain unconquered, furthermore, and will show—’
‘I have worked to reduce Paris,’ Brenner interrupted, easily talking over Rigault, ‘solely by drawing on what is already within her. You must question these leaders, these drunks and lunatics who have assigned themselves the power to command you. You must ask how much blood – how much of
your
blood – they will see spilled to achieve their ends.’
Rigault was scowling now. ‘Who the devil are
you
,’ he declared, ‘to talk of
our blood?
Enough of this! The sentence is death – this foul spy must die, at once!’
‘Death!’ howled the mob. ‘Death to traitors and spies!’
Besson broke the lock.
Brenner went to the wall, offering no resistance. Without ceremony, rifles were raised and fired at little more than point-blank range. Any flash from their muzzles was smothered by the press of smocks and National Guard tunics; the three overlapping reports were almost lost in the cheers. The tall, black-clad man fell dead on the cobbles of the yard, the crowd swarming around his body as if they meant to devour it.
Hannah was in a shop, an upmarket dressmaker’s. It was very dark; there was a smell of lavender and fresh cotton. Naked clothes dummies stood in the slivers of moonlight that crept between the shutters. She fell to her knees and retched, an outstretched palm slapping against the polished wooden floor. Elizabeth and Besson eased her up and on through the shop, towards the boulevard on its other side. Behind them, back in the yard, the mob began to chant.
‘
À bas les Prussiens! Vive la Commune!
’
Smaller than most steerage cabins, the attic was crammed with mismatched furniture, some of it rather fine; ladies’ dresses in a range of sizes and styles; more pairs of shoes and boots than could easily be counted; and a pawn-shop assortment of random semi-valuables, including a large quantity of exotic feathers.
Besson lowered the hood of his pea jacket. ‘Much of this,’ he said, ‘is looted.’
Clem sat up on the chaise longue and adjusted his foot, wincing at the movement of the cracked bones beneath the bandage. He took a sip of rum and then leaned forward to have a good scratch.
‘I daresay that opportunities have been taken,’ he replied. ‘Have you seen any food yet, down in the centre?’
‘We have had our share. A convoy of wagons arrived this morning.’
‘Dairy has been the big success here. You’d think it’d be a leg of lamb or a minute steak, but no – butter is what the people most want. And milk! By Jove, who’d have thought one could miss it so badly? Yesterday I drank a quart, old man, a bloody
quart
, as if I was a calf long separated from its mother. You could hear it sloshing whenever I moved.’
‘Such things are a slight consolation for the people of Paris.’
Clem nodded; what a blabbing blockhead I am, he thought. The official announcement of the armistice – the French capitulation – was over a week old now. The disaster of Buzenval had finally unseated Trochu, and after a frank assessment of the supplies at their disposal, the provisional government had dispatched Jules Favre to Versailles to negotiate terms for their surrender. The bleakest few days of the entire siege had followed. Prussian soldiers occupied the forts around Paris; its inhabitants were transformed from combatants to mere captives, still starving, still freezing, but denied the slightest scrap of hope.