One Thing More (13 page)

‘When?’

‘Yesterday, the same day Bernave was killed. Do you think he found out that Bernave was spying for both sides ... or the wrong side?’

‘What else do you know about St Felix?’ Georges persisted. ‘Apart from the fact that Bernave seemed to trust him? Who is he? Where does he come from? How did Bernave know him?’

This time she thought for several moments before she answered, again trying to remember, disentangle facts from impressions. She was barely aware of how cold she was. She was clenched inside and her fingers were numb.

‘He came a little after Amandine and I did, towards the end of October,’ she answered slowly. ‘He just turned up one day. Bernave obviously knew him already, but it seemed as if they had not met for many years. Bernave was surprised, I’d swear to that. It was clear in his face. There was something about St Felix he did not expect, but he never said what, and I have no idea. St Felix’s wife had died. Laura, I think her name was. He seemed very grieved about it, although I don’t think it had just happened. Maybe a year ago. He still looked very distressed. I don’t know if he had lost his home or the revolution had taken it, or why it was he didn’t stay there.’

She struggled to visualise clearly the fleeting moments she had seen his face in repose, unguarded. She had felt an intense loneliness about him, as if the past returned to him and he could no longer keep at bay the loss and the regret which engulfed him. It had hurt her to see it, for him, and for Amandine, because it seemed no one could touch it.

‘Where was it?’ he asked. ‘His home?’

‘I don’t know. He hardly ever speaks of it. Maybe the memory was too painful. I gathered the impression he simply wanted to leave the place where he and his wife had been so happy. I think I can understand that.’ She tried to imagine loving someone so completely, knowing a time without blemish when everything that truly mattered could be shared, good and ill, laughter and beauty and pain. And then the unbearable loneliness when that person was gone ... probably for ever, if there really were no God. Perhaps you could not endure to stay in that place. It should be left, a perfect memory, never without the one you had loved, never spoiled by anything that happened afterwards.

And it was easy to think of St Felix feeling like that. In her mind Célie could see his face with its sadness, and the elusive emotion in it that no one in the Boulevard St-Germain seemed able to touch. Perhaps Amandine came the closest, but the core of it escaped even her. There was a secret heart of St Felix, a memory or a dream, that he never shared. Its presence was in his eyes even when he laughed.

Georges was waiting for her to continue. He was watching her, sitting in an echo of the same hunched position she was, the blanket huddled around him as her cloak was around her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘It’s a part of him he keeps locked away, perhaps so nothing will spoil it.’

‘That doesn’t tell us much,’ he pointed out bleakly. ‘When it comes to facts, it could be anything.’

She was afraid St Felix had killed Bernave, not for any political reason, but because he hated him for the danger and humiliation he put him through.

‘What?’ Georges demanded, reading her face. ‘You thought of something.’

There was no point in not telling him. ‘What if it was simply anger at the way Bernave used him?’ she asked.

‘Then why did he allow it?’ he countered.

‘I don’t know! Anyone else would have refused ages ago, but he never did. It didn’t matter what Bernave asked him to do, even if it was raining, or it was the middle of the night, he never refused. He never even complained. I don’t know why.’

‘Because he believed in the cause just as passionately as Bernave himself,’ Georges answered for her.

She did not voice the other reason that occurred to her with swift and ugly clarity.

He did, precisely as if he had heard it in her mind. ‘Or else Bernave had some power over him, a way of forcing him to do whatever he wanted, and that St Felix could not deny. Until last night.’ He peered at her, searching her eyes to see what she thought of it.

The wind gusted against the glass again and spattered it with sleet.

‘I suppose so,’ she conceded. ‘I ... I can’t think of St Felix like that. He seems ...’ She lowered her eyes. ‘Amandine is in love with him. If he killed anyone, it would be for a ... a better cause than to escape coercion.’ She looked up, confident again. ‘If Bernave were forcing him to do something he felt was wrong, he’d have stood up to him and refused in the first place, not now after months.’

He put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes slowly. In the silence she heard the faint rasp of his palms against his unshaven chin.

‘God! What a mess!’ he sighed. ‘I believed Bernave completely. I never doubted him. It seems absurd, but there was so much else to care about.’

‘There still is,’ she assured him. ‘And now Bernave is dead we’ve lost the only person who knew the whole plan, and all the people.’

He looked up at her. ‘Are you prepared to go on alone ... if we can?’

‘Without Bernave?’ Célie thought of all the things they would have to learn: who was prepared to take the King’s place, how they could contact him. Who else knew the details and could betray them. What would have to be changed, for safety, how they would do it in time.

Georges was watching her, his dark eyes wide. ‘If we don’t the King dies, and we plunge into even worse chaos than this ... and war,’ he said. ‘The risks will be higher. We’ll have to change everything Bernave knew the details of, in case Menou was right and he told the Commune.’

The full enormity of it struck her, almost choking her breath. ‘They’ll be expecting some attempt! They’ll double the guard, and wait for us!’

‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘We’ll have to move earlier on the route than we planned before. I never told him where the safe houses were that I’d found. He didn’t ask. But he knows the one in the Faubourg St-Antoine, because he sent St Felix there. We’ll have to find a new one.’

‘He knew the drivers!’ she went on. ‘He sent me with messages for them—Bombec, Chimay and Virieu.’

He was silent for a moment.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘We can’t change them,’ he replied. ‘They are the ones who knew the man who will take the King’s place, who’ll recognise the clothes when the King wears them, and assume it is him again.’

‘Then that means they are not part of the plan! Not knowingly!’ she pointed out. ‘So Bernave will not have trusted them with anything—whichever side he was on! We can still use them! We just need to change the safe houses.’

There was the shadow of a smile, not on his lips but in his eyes. ‘You’ll go on, won’t you?’

His certainty warmed her—and frightened her. ‘We have to,’ she replied, swallowing. ‘Bernave is dead, but nothing else has changed. If we don’t go on, all the other things will still happen: war, everything else.’

He nodded, with just a tiny movement of his head in the guttering candlelight. ‘We need St Felix,’ he agreed. ‘He knows about the routes beyond the city, and he has the passes. You’ll have to talk to him, see if he is still with us.’

‘What ... what if he was the one who killed Bernave?’ She hated saying it; her voice betrayed her emotions.

Again the moment of humour came and vanished. ‘If he did, then it was because Menou was right, and Bernave betrayed us to the Commune,’ he said softly. ‘St Felix will be with us. We just have to change everything Bernave knew about.’

She tried to keep her own voice level. ‘And if it was Fernand, or Monsieur Lacoste, because they knew he was trying to save the King?’ she asked. ‘They wouldn’t have turned him in to the Commune, even loyal as they are, because they’d know that if they did Bernave would go to the guillotine and the house would be confiscated, and the business. They’d all be out on the street, without a sou.’

‘The same.’ There was no hesitation in him. ‘We change everything Bernave knew about, and keep going ... if St Felix is with us.’

‘I’ll speak to him,’ she promised, dreading doing it. She had no idea how he would respond, what arguments she would have to use. And yet he had endured all kinds of hardships, even misuse at Bernave’s hands. He must be passionate in his loyalty to the cause. Perhaps he understood it even better than she did? ‘Yes, of course I will,’ she repeated more firmly. She made as if to stand up and begin already.

He reached across and caught her wrist. She felt the strength of his fingers.

‘Something else you must do—tonight!’ he said urgently.

She relaxed into the seat again, waiting.

‘You must search through all Bernave’s papers, before this Menou does,’ he said. ‘Destroy anything that could betray us—or that could look like it. He’ll be sure to go through everything in the morning. He’ll be looking for reasons for someone to kill Bernave. He’s got to consider money and the business. I imagine Marie-Jeanne will inherit it. Even if no one else does, she’ll go through all the papers herself. If she found anything she thought suspicious, or she didn’t understand, she might show it to Menou. You must do it tonight.’

She nodded, her throat momentarily too tight to speak. The thought made her stomach flutter with fear.

‘Remember everything you can about the routes he uses to Spain, England or Italy,’ he went on. ‘Post houses where they change horses, properties he owns, anything that could be part of the plan, or of use to us. Don’t destroy anything they’ll expect to find, unless it betrays us completely. Don’t take anything away with you. They might search you and you can’t afford to be found with anything. Apart from the fact that it would draw greater attention to whatever it is, they’ll have you for stealing.’ He was still holding her wrist. His hand closed more tightly. ‘Be careful, Célie!’

‘I will.’ The urgency in his voice was better than the fire of brandy, making the blood beat inside her. She stood up, feeling his fingers slip away, releasing her.

He stood also, as if they were in some polite salon, like the early days of the revolution and before. He was very close to her.

‘I ... I wish I could help!’ All the rage and frustration of his imprisonment as a fugitive were in his voice, and in his face in the wavering shadows of the candlelight.

‘I’ll be careful,’ she promised, to herself as well as to him. ‘You couldn’t come into the house anyway. And if it is one of us, the more discreet we are the better. I’ll go now. I’ve got a lot to do before the others wake up.’

‘How are you going to get back in?’ he asked, taking her arm again.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. She had not thought that far. She could not break into anyone’s house to return the way she had come, over the roof. ‘I ... I’ll think of something.’ But she did not move, because no idea came to her and she could imagine only too clearly being outside in the street all night.

‘I’ll come with you.’ It was a statement, and his grip was too strong to shake off.

‘Why?’ she argued. ‘You can’t get in either, and you might be seen!’

‘I’ll help you climb up on to the roof from the Rue de Seine. I know a way. Walk beside me and say nothing. And don’t ever do this again.’ He blew out the candle and pinched the wick, then he opened the door and, taking her hand, led the way down the narrow, pitch-black staircase, through the door to the outside, then down the last stair into the icy street.

They walked together carefully, uncertain of the cobbles beneath their feet. The stones were erratic and uneven, the puddles deep. They kept their heads down against the wind and the gusts of sleet. They crossed the Boulevard St-Germain well before the church and went into the quieter Rue de Seine. There was hardly anyone about, only a distant flare of torches as half a dozen soldiers came up towards the Rue Dauphine.

When they reached the house before the corner, roughly level with Bernave’s, and backing on to it, Georges stopped, holding out his hand to stop her also.

‘There’s a place to climb up here,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll go first, then take my hand. From the second storey I can lift you up to the valley between the roofs. From there you’ll have to find your own way to your window. Be careful! Can you tell the right one?’

She was not sure if she could, but there was no point in admitting that now. She should have left a candle burning, but she had not thought of it.

‘Yes,’ she lied with confidence. He would think she was a fool if she told him the truth, and that thought was worse than the icy rooftops. ‘Thank you.’

He started to climb, reaching down for her, and gripping as tightly as he could.

Hands almost numb, cursing her skirts, she made her way up the slippery ledges until he lifted her the last few feet and she felt the roof slates beneath her knees.

‘Thank you,’ she repeated, gritting her teeth. ‘Go back before you’re seen!’

‘Be careful,’ he said again, then the next moment he was gone, swallowed up by the dense shadow and she was alone amid the roofs. The ridges were black against the sky, the finials sharp and strangely beautiful.

C
ÉLIE FOUND THE RIGHT
window, even though it seemed to take ages. The catch was still off and she climbed inside and slid to the floor with intense relief, because for several moments her legs were shaking so badly. At least it was warm in here, far warmer than Georges’ icy attic. Would it remain so, now that Bernave was dead?

That was a miserably selfish thought, but far too real to dismiss.

She stood up again, went to the door and listened. There was no sound in the house. She crept back to her own room, overwhelmed with relief, and took off her sodden boots and cloak, then realised how wet her skirt was as well, so she changed into a dry one. She looked at herself in the glass. Her skin was flushed with the cold, her pale hair shining. She brushed it to hide the damp ends, and went down the stairs to the door of St Felix’s room. Should she knock, and risk anyone else hearing her, or simply go in, regardless of the intrusion? Propriety hardly mattered now, not in comparison with everything else that was at stake.

She lifted the latch and went in. It was totally dark. No light came through the windows which faced over the rooftops and there was silence except for the wind and rain.