The French Bride (37 page)

Inside the house the captain finished his glass of wine and looked from the farmer to his wife who had been summoned downstairs and had given exactly the same answers to his questions as her husband. If anything, she was more sleepy and more sullen. The soldier Grissot put his head round the door.

‘We've searched upstairs, sire. There are only two women up there in bed.'

‘My niece,' the farmer's wife said, ‘and my husband's sister. They live with us.'

‘I think I'll have a look at them,' the captain said. ‘I thought you were alone here? Show me the way, Grissot!'

He went up the narrow stairs, and behind him the old couple followed, holding each other's hand. ‘The old woman's in here, sir.'

Grissot opened the door, and held up his lantern. A figure on a trestle bed in one corner dragged the shabby blanket to her chin and glared at them, a nightcap pulled down to her eyes. ‘
Mordieu!
' she said, and lay down again, grasping the cover as if she expected them to tear it from her.

‘Eh,' the captain nodded. ‘The sister. Move on, Grissot!'

When the door shut behind them Annie lay rigid, listening. She heard them go on down the passage, their heavy riding boots thumping on the bare boards, and then they stopped outside the door of Anne's room. The captain saw a young girl sitting up in bed, her brown hair hanging loose; she blinked in the light and made the same gesture with the covers as the old woman in the next room; she held them up to her and stared in terror at the captain and his sergeant. Immediately, Pauline pushed past them and hurried over to the bed. She sat on it and put her arm around the girl, holding her close.

‘Don't be alarmed, my child,' she said. ‘They won't hurt you. They're looking for some criminals.' She glared at the soldiers like an animal defending its young. ‘My niece is ill, don't frighten her.… There, there, my dove, they only want to look inside; they'll be gone in a moment!'

The girl clung on to her, her blue eyes gazing at the captain as if she expected him to spring upon her. It was a natural assumption for any young girl of the peasant class to make when confronted by the military. In his youth in the army the captain had enjoyed one or two amusing evenings at the expense of people like these when his duties called for a search or the requisitioning of food. They were all the same, stupid as oxen, stubborn and cunning as foxes when it came to hiding their money or telling lies to the authorities. He gave the girl a contemptuous look. She was as thin as a reed and obviously sick. He turned his back on her and went out.

‘There's nothing here,' they heard him say' Collect the men, Grissot, and we'll ride on. They'll have stopped somewhere. We'll find them!'

The old woman put her finger to her lips and squeezed Anne's shoulder as a warning not to speak. They stayed silent until the house door banged and they could hear the clatter of the horses as the troop remounted and began to ride out of the courtyard towards the gate. Anne sank back against the old woman and closed her eyes.

‘They've gone!' The old man came into the room and hugged his wife. She had recovered herself by then and she gave him a push. ‘Of course they've gone! I heard them. Quick, go down to the barn and dig those gentlemen out from under the hay before they suffocate!'

‘The baby,' Anne whispered. ‘Where is she …?'

‘Wrapped up in the cupboard, madame,' Pauline said triumphantly. ‘And sleeping like a little angel. She never made a whimper! You were very good too! Eh, if they'd come half an hour ago, those pigs!'

The coach had been hidden under mounds of hay, and Charles and Paul de Mallot were concealed inside it with the coachman. Their horses were unharnessed and stabled with the farm animals. The farmer had hidden everything very well; so well that it was as hot and airless as an oven in the coach, and the three men crouching inside it were almost stifled. They had still been clearing the towels and water jugs out of Anne's room when the troop stopped on the road, attracted by the light that burned in the upper window. Pauline and Annie between them had worked like furies, hiding the evidence of the birth, hiding the newborn baby in the linen cupboard as the first knocks sounded from below. Now Annie came rushing into the room, fully dressed in her travelling clothes, with the old woman's nightcap askew on her grey head.

‘Och, madame, madame,' she cried, bending over Anne. ‘Are you all right now? Where's the wee one? Take her out of that cupboard woman, for the love o' God, before she comes to harm!' That one exclamation with which she had greeted the intruders was the only French she dared trust herself to speak, and there were half a dozen better ones in honest Scots she would have sooner used to them. Anne opened her eyes and tried to smile.

‘She doesn't understand a word,' she murmured. ‘She's bringing the baby now. I'm bleeding again.… Annie?'

‘Yes, my lamb.' Annie bent down close to her, one wrinkled hand smoothed her forehead as if she were a child. ‘What d'ye want …?'

‘Where's M. Charles …'

‘Och!' Annie shook her head. She would never understand the ways of her own sex. Love turned their brains, for certain. She made a great effort and concealed her disapproval.

‘I'll go and get him for ye.'

It was the farmer's suggestion that they should hide in the coach until daylight, when anyone approaching from the road could be seen a mile or more away, and it was the insistence of Paul de Mallot that had made Charles agree to leave the house without knowing if the child was born.

‘How do we know you can be trusted?' he had demanded of the old man. ‘How do we know you won't betray us when we're buried alive in that coach.… By God, if you do.…'

‘You can trust me, monsieur, because you can trust my wife,' came the answer. ‘She's not the woman to betray that poor girl upstairs or her infant. We've had two of our own and lost both. Get outside and hide yourselves. If you've been followed, they'll be here any moment!'

The three men had hidden in the stuffy, suffocatingly hot coach for the best part of an hour when the troop of horses came into the courtyard. It had needed all the strength of Paul de Mallot and the coachman to hold Charles still, inside their hiding place, while the searchers were at work; he had been like a maniac for fear that they would discover Anne and take her away while he stayed in safety.

When the hay was dragged away, it was the farmer himself who opened the door and held the lantern for them as they scrambled out.

‘They've gone,' he said. ‘You'll be safe for a while now.'

‘My wife?' Charles demanded. ‘Is it over?'

‘Over an hour or more,' the old man said; he turned and shouted after him into the darkness, but Charles was already running to the house.

‘It's only a girl, but she's healthy!'

Annie met him in the hallway; she raised her eyebrows for a moment at the wild figure, dishevelled and decked with pieces of hay, and stepped in front of him.

‘Ye've a daughter, M. Charles,' she said. ‘And Madame is not too bad now, bless her. She's been asking for ye.' She gave him a look that expressed a full twenty-seven years of disapproval. ‘God knows why!' she added, and then she stepped aside.

‘She's dark,' Charles said. He pushed the edge of the wrapper back from the tiny head, showing the fuzz of inky hair; the little girl yawned and settled with a birdlike movement closer into the shelter of her mother's arm. Anne glanced down and smiled.

‘She's like you,' she whispered. ‘She's so small, poor little mite. Promise you'll take care of her.'

She had not looked at Charles for some moments after he came into the room and Pauline gave her the child to hold and then left them together. She had asked for him, but now that he had come she felt unspeakably weary and drained; all she wanted in the world was to sleep, and her longing for it was very near that fatal yearning she had felt in the Bastille when death was very close.

In the panic when the soldiers came, the two older women had been forced to move her while they hid the signs of the birth, and she had suffered a heavy loss of blood. She was no longer in pain, but there was a shadow round her mouth that had nothing to do with the light in the room. The child was born and it was safe; it felt very warm next to her side. Her own body was quite cold. The same chill was on her hands and cheek; Charles felt it when he kissed both, and a spasm of fear flickered through him like a shaft of lightning. He gazed at the pale face, sunken and sallow as if her skin had turned to wax, the heavy lids were closed over her eyes as if they would never open again, and it came to Charles then that in spite of everything that he or anyone could do, his wife was going to die.

‘Anne! Anne!'

She was drifting gently and the sound of her name was like an echo, as if he were calling her in a dream.

‘Open your eyes! Look at me.… God damn you, woman, do as I say!'

Instinct made her look at him, blinking to bring him into focus; she saw the dark, angry face a few inches away from her, the light eyes blazing with command. The tears were running down his cheeks.

‘If you go to sleep now,' he said, ‘you'll die. Do you hear me, you'll die! I love you. Anne. I want you; don't shut your eyes again.…'

‘I'm so tired,' she whispered.

‘I know,' he said, and now his voice was gentle again and he held her close, pressing his cheek against hers. ‘I know, my darling. But you mustn't give way to it. Listen to me. I love you. Does that mean anything to you now?'

‘It meant everything to me, always,' she said. ‘It was all I ever wanted. I thought you hated me; I thought you got the
lettre de cachet.
' The words were trailing off again and desperately he persisted.

‘Now, you know I didn't. I thought you'd run off with your Irishman to Metz. I was going down there to kill him, I was so jealous. I love you, Anne. I loved you long before, but I wouldn't admit it. I didn't know how. Try to forgive me for what I did to hurt you. Anne, I beg of you, fight it, don't slip away from me now. My heart will break if I lose you.'

With a great effort she looked up at him and raised one hand to touch his face.

‘There's nothing to forgive. I love you; nothing could change that. And I'm happy now, believe me. Nothing matters except that I'm with you at last, just as I always dreamed of being. Safe and loved by you.… Take good care of the little girl for me.'

‘I'll take care of you both,' he said. I'm taking you home to Scotland; we've done with France, you and I and Mistress Macdonald there. And when you're well and strong, my love, and the good Scottish air has healed you, I'll tell you how you came to be in the Bastille and how I came to get you out. When you're safe at Dundrenan, it will seem like a hundred years ago.'

‘It seems like it now,' Anne murmured. She felt a little warmer in his arms and she was loath to let him go. The baby made a tiny sound, and she smiled. The past seemed very unimportant; nothing mattered but her love for him and the knowledge of his love for her. She listened as he talked on of the Highlands, and felt sad for a moment because she knew she wouldn't be going with him.

‘Hold me,' she said softly. ‘Just for a few moments more. I'm really going to sleep now.'

When he looked down at her, her lips were smiling.

A week later, a small boat set out from Le Havre to make the long crossing through the Channel and up the North Sea to the port of Leith. She often combined a little smuggling of French silks and brandy to the Scottish coast on her trade runs; the captain was quite sure he carried an equally dangerous cargo when he accepted the gentleman and the baby and their young servant, but he had been well paid to take them aboard and take his ship off its usual course. He gave up his own cabin and the gentleman, who was never seen to smile, settled the maid and the child in it and slept below decks himself.

Throughout the voyage the captain kept to his bargain and avoided all other ships. Five days later he landed his passengers at Leith and did a profitable trade with his contraband among the Scottish merchants. He never made another journey because the French customs arrested him on his return.

Across the sea, Charles and his infant daughter stayed with Marie-Jeanne in Leith until the child was strong enough to make the long, slow journey through the Highlands to the glen of her ancestors at Dundrenan.

As a result of what the French customs officers discovered about the passengers who had sailed to Leith, a King's commissioner paid a visit to the Château de Bernard at Charantaise, and silently inspected the new tomb of the last marquise, which was inscribed simply – A
NNE
M
ACDONALD
and the date. The commissioner took his leave without asking any more questions and the affair was soon forgotten.

About the Author

Evelyn Anthony is the pen name of Evelyn Ward-Thomas, a female British author who began writing in 1949. She gained considerable success with her historical novels—two of which were selected for the American Literary Guild—before winning huge acclaim for her espionage thrillers. Her book,
The Occupying Power
, won the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize, and her 1971 novel,
The Tamarind Seed
, was made into a film starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif. Anthony's books have been translated into nineteen languages. She lives in Essex, England.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.