The Companion - Time For Eternity Part 28

"We'll sort this out later, " she whispered, going to the window. She opened the cas.e.m.e.nt and peered out. Madame Vercheroux's boudoir looked out on a tiny garden under a pergola covered with an old and gnarled wisteria vine. She might just be able to reach it with her toes if she let herself hang from the sill. She took a breath. Well. What were her choices? She couldn't get out past Madame Vercheroux's servants without causing a stir. And she didn't want to get Madame in trouble for having helped her.

Being so weak really sucks.

Francoise picked up her skirts.

Henri paced his cell, ignoring the guards who cowered in the shadowy corridor, their taunting and bravura gone. Where was Croute? Hadn't enough time pa.s.sed for her to empty the warehouse?

Maybe if he waited for her return, it would be too late. Maybe she had already found the families and they needed his protection.

If there was anything he could do to protect them. Or maybe she had found Francoise. But if he transported out too soon ... His brain couldn't help replaying all the possibilities in a tattoo of probable failure.

You'd think that in a life of five hundred years, he would have learned patience.

Maybe what was bothering him was the fact that he didn't have all his eggs in a basket he could protect. Maybe he should find Gaston and Pierre, get Francoise. He had power enough for only one or two more transports tonight. He should go for Gaston and Pierre first, since he couldn't get them out any other way. If he used up his power on them, he'd have to take Francoise across town physically and hope to avoid the mob. Not great odds.

It always ended badly. Always. He got some out, but there were so many more he couldn't save. The world devolved into the chaos of stupidity at every turn. His years weighed upon him, along with the coming despair of living without Francoise.

Francoise. She had a plan to get the families out. What an act of faith in possibilities that was. He couldn 't let her plan fail. He had to draw on a little of her faith and get to it. Dawn was an hour or two away. Jennings had to get the prisoners out tonight.

So there was no time for patience. He must go, no matter the odds. Relief washed through him. He might not win through, but his course was clear. He had to try. He drew his power about himself like a cloak. The world went red. He was for Pierre and Gaston.

But first ...

Two of the guards were physically shaking. The metal of pistol barrels and sword and scabbard clattered against each other. He swept his gaze across them, capturing their will. "You," he said to the biggest of them, a strapping lad with a luxuriant mustache.

"Strip and hand your clothes through the bars."

"Monsieur Jennings," Francoise whispered fiercely at the gaping door of Henri's warehouse. "Are you here?" A faint sound of irregular thumping and crashing came from the back. She peered into the darkness. The entire floor of the giant building was empty, except for the detritus of broken crates and barrels, and Monsieur Jennings's desk, made small now by the open sweep of s.p.a.ce around it.

She stepped inside. Far away in the corner to her right, she saw four or five figures, Jennings and several of his men in shirtsleeves and one or two dressed in torn and dirty lace and satin. The fathers of the families. Monsieur Navarre grinned at her, and saluted, his eyes no longer sad, before he turned back to his task. She had never really believed the families were here in the warehouse, but now she could see a piece of the rear wall in jagged brick pattern had been swung open like a door. When it was shut it would leave no sign of what it was. But open, she could hear a baby wail, and low female voices.

The men took turns in twos swinging large, heavy-headed hammers at a section of the side wall. The others hauled away the bricks and mortar.

Jennings looked up. "Mademoiselle Suchet, what are you doing here?"

"I've come to help. Do you have boats?"

"Aye. Tied up two docks down. Enough, I think." He sounded a bit doubtful. He glanced to the door and strode across to shut it. "Was that open when you came?"

She nodded. "I saw no one in the street but a scruffy urchin. No soldiers."

Jennings sighed in relief. "Well, Croute took the bait."

"Looks like she took everything."

A large section of the wall collapsed. The men pushed through grimly. "Get on to the next wall," Jennings ordered in French. He turned to Francoise. "The warehouse two over has stairs down that go under the street from inside the building to where the boats are tied. Less chance of this little parade being seen."

"What can I do?" Francoise asked.

"Look confident and go to the women. They'll have to keep the children quiet when we start to move."

Francoise nodded and turned to leave.

Why does he do it?

Good question. She turned back. "You are Anglais. These people are nothing to you. Why do you risk anything for them?"

Jennings's hatchet face grew grim. Then he managed a shrug. "What are they to Avignon, just because he's French? Every other Frenchman looks the other way. Maybe the right question is, what is Avignon to me? And that 's a long story, miss. Let's just say he done something for me once when no one else would lift a finger to help me and mine."

Henri seems to inspire fanatic loyalty in spite of his nature.

Francoise nodded. "Something to think about," she said to both Jennings and Frankie, and hurried back to the open brick doorway.

One boat was away, another half filled with women in big skirts, their panniers torn out to make extra room, children in ragged dresses and grimy short pants, babes in arms, and worried, dour fathers. Three more rocked at their moorings, empty. The first boat was only a shadow, the creak of oars lost as it moved downstream. Dawn was coming soon. Jennings handed a woman who once had been heavy down onto the ladder to the rocking boat below. Now her skin sagged about her chin, sallow from prison.

"Give my best to the 'Dark Lord.' " She must mean Henri. Did she know what he was? But of course, they all did. He had used red eyes and whirling darkness to rescue them.

Monsieur Navarre handed her child down to her and reached for the next woman's hand.

"Will he be coming with us?" The woman held a toddler's hand. "He has been so kind."

"I do not know, madame," Navarre said.

"I shall pray for his safety," the woman said, scooping up her child with one hand and her skirts in the other.

"I only hope we can repay his kindness," a young girl of about fourteen said, as she helped her mother into the boat. "He read us stories for an hour every night." She blushed. "The little ones enjoyed it."

Henri had visited them every night?

"And to have his personal chef prepare our meals," Navarre said. "That was the outside of enough."

"He could shush my Charles when no one could quiet him. And here I was afraid at any moment he 'd spit up on his grace's silks." She cuddled a curly-headed child not yet two.

"Plays a mean game of piquet," another man said as he hurried the next woman into the boat. "I think he let us win, though."

Jennings chuckled. "Well, you wouldn't have accepted money direct, would you? It's his way." He gestured to two men. "You two take the oars and this one's full."

They practically revere him. Frankie was stunned.

It was hard to imagine Henri dandling little Charles on his knee. He'd done it all to rea.s.sure them. All the women were secretly in love with him. All the men admired him. Even though they knew what he was. That was ... interesting.

The prisoners and several of Jennings's men took up oars and the second boat slid out into the darkness. Francoise looked up to see the next group of people hurry down the steps that came out under the level of the stone streets above to the wooden docks that jutted out thirty feet across the muddy banks to where the sluggish, smelly water rolled through the city. Barges creaked in the darkness of the deeper water beyond, some weighted down with cargo, and others moored for use by bathers, though why anyone would want to bathe in waters that floated corpses and garbage, night filth and the runoff from the slaughterhouses, Francoise couldn't say. It was especially foul in July when the water level was low.

They moved down to where the next boat rocked. Francoise hurried the women down the steps. A little boy asked, "Where are we going?" in a plaintive voice that echoed with frightening clarity in the predawn air. His mother shushed him. The city would be stirring soon. They didn't have much time.

"We better start loading two boats at once," Jennings said sotto voce to Navarre. "Go bring the next group out." Navarre nodded and took off up the wooden dock at a run. Emile watched him with big eyes. But he didn't cry. Perhaps even he felt the tension in the air. "You, there, get that rope ladder. They won't like it, but we're running out of time."

Out of the shadows under the steps up to the street above, Henri stumbled, burdened with something heavy over his shoulder.

Beside him, Gaston sank to his knees with a gasp. Francoise had never been so relieved in her life.

More families poured from the doorway and streamed past Henri toward the boats.

"Henri," she whispered, running toward him. He was dressed like a soldier in the blue of the Revolution, a sword swinging at his hip. His dark mane spread across his shoulders. His face was lined and tired-looking.

Relief washed his expression. Then he frowned. He strode forward, not setting down his burden. "Can't you follow orders? You might have been taken."

"I wasn't." The burden was Pierre. "Oh, dear. Is he alive?"

"Yes. He has a head injury thanks to the mob." He gave a curt nod to Jennings, who had hurried up behind her. "Can you get these two into a boat?"

"Aye. We're already riding a little low. We might as well ride lower." He motioned to one of his men, who took the groaning Pierre from Henri.

"And Mademoiselle Suchet, of course," Henri said, to Jennings, not to her.

"Of course."

"What about you?" She couldn't help that it sounded like an accusation. Behind her a third boat pushed off the dock and shushed away into the river.

At that moment she heard a noise above them on the street. The noise of many people. The urchin she had seen earlier peered over the stone wall. A glow made him stand out in stark silhouette. Francoise stood riveted, as she and Frankie both realized what that innocent urchin might really mean. Jennings looked over his shoulder from his place directing the disposition of the ladder. Henri turned.

The dirty child pointed at them. Shouts echoed into the lightening darkness. Behind him the glow resolved itself into torches, and a crowd appeared. A shouting, angry crowd.

Henri swiveled to survey the boats and the refugees. They were still climbing down into two of the remaining three boats.

Jennings looked grim.

"Shall we push off with what we've got?" he asked.

Francoise saw Henri purposefully let the tension out of his shoulders. He pulled his sword. "I'll hold them off until you can get everyone away."

He turned toward the crowd. It had already grown.

"You can't!" Francoise pleaded, taking his arm. "You'll be killed."

He won't. But they both knew that in some other version of this experience, Henri had been guillotined. What had Donna said?

Enough damage or sunlight. Francoise glanced to the lightening sky. Was this the beginning of that dreadful end?

"Take her to the boat, Jennings." He didn't look at her. He just stood there, his sword limp in his hand.

Jennings pulled her away. Francoise looked up at him, aghast. "You're not going to let him sacrifice himself, are you?"

Henri took off at an easy lope toward the wooden steps up to the street.

"It's him or all of them, miss," Jennings said, just as though he weren't wrestling her toward the boats with a big hand on each of her elbows. "He made his choice a long time ago."

"Henri!" she cried.

He took the steps two at a time, sword now at the ready. She recognized the uniform of the sans-culottes as men poured down the stairs, shouting and crying for blood.

Jennings practically pushed her over the side of the dock and into Gaston's waiting arms. Narvarre swung down, with Emile in one arm and settled the child on a bench. Families poured into the other boats.

"I have to go to him!" She struggled toward the ladder. The boat tipped precariously.

"He wouldn't want that," Gaston whispered to her.

Jennings cast off the lines then swung down the ladder. "To your oars, lads." Three of his men and two of the tattered aristocratic fathers, including Narvarre, sat down at the oarlocks. Jennings took the remaining oar and pushed the boat away from the dock.

"And do you think we can put our backs into it?"

Francoise stood in the center of the boat as it turned slowly out into the current. Henri advanced up the stairway, thrusting and tossing adversaries over the railing. She turned as the boat turned so that she could see the tableaux of terrible courage. Gaston pulled her down to sit. Henri had made it to the top. Maybe ... She saw the first knife thrust home, just above his kidneys as the crowd engulfed him. Cudgels rose and fell.

He can survive this.

But both she and Frankie knew it was likely he would not. Francoise might have avoided becoming vampire, but Henri was on a path to the Place de Revolution. The boat found the sluggish current and the oars began to send it downstream in earnest. She was dimly aware of the other boats at her back gliding downstream with them.

The scene on the quay began to recede. Henri was still standing. She saw his sword gleam red in the light from the torches. Men still fell over the stone bal.u.s.trade as he dispatched them. But they were on him now like ants engulfing a larger prey, stinging. She saw him stagger. Sabers flashed now into the torchlight.

Then she couldn't see him anymore, only the ragged crowd. The whole was like a painting, small and unreal, a step removed from the pain and the anguish that drifted on the air. She hardly realized she was trembling until Gaston put his arm around her, and then the tears that had been coursing down her cheeks turned into sobs. She buried her head in Gaston's shoulder and cried into his coat that smelled of prison.

He made soothing sounds. She looked up and saw him dash away a tear. They sat, looking back, long after they could no longer see the scene on the docks. The boats pa.s.sed under the Pont Neuf, pulling downstream hard, past the stark walls of the Conciergerie. The refugees were silent as they pa.s.sed the scene of their former suffering.

"He was a good man," Gaston muttered.

Even Frankie had to agree.

Twenty-One.

The blows stopped. That was strange. The sun was rising, somewhere. The gray of dawn had lightened into a bloodred glow.

Appropriate, since he was lying in a pool of his own blood. The scent of blood was almost overwhelming. He rolled his head. The crowd had parted. He hardly felt the pain of a last sword thrust. He was distant from himself, removed.

There it was-that strange smell again. He sucked in a breath. He was still able to do that. It was the smell of the drug Francoise had given him in his brandy.

Above him, he saw Croute's face appear, distorted, as though it were seen through a magnifying gla.s.s.

"Well, well." The voice echoed horribly. "You got them out. For now. We will still catch them. We are everywhere. Your sacrifice was for nothing."

She knelt beside him and pulled aside his coat. "You might heal even this. But you won't escape." She uncapped the soft bottle and pulled his jaw open. He couldn't resist. Maybe he didn't want to resist. It was over now. No purpose to his life. Everyone he ever cared for gone. Perhaps Croute would do for him what he could not do for himself. End it.

End. That sounded peaceful. Though he would have to face the guillotine to gain peace.