It was a week before she truly believed what they told her – that Luke was dead, and Michael with him. Almost mindless with grief, she lay for days unspeaking and uncaring of her own injury. She was indeed only vaguely aware of her surroundings, of the painful ministrations to her badly burned left arm. As often as was possible Pol would come, sitting by the bed, holding Kitty’s uninjured hand as she drifted in and out of a drug-induced sleep that was as troubled with nightmares as were her waking moments with grief. Her love for Luke had long ago been defeated by her fear of him, for herself and for Michael: but his death in this sudden and terrible way was a horror she would never have wanted nor even envisaged. That her child too was gone, dead with the father he had never known, was a loss so deep she could barely comprehend it. For a time the enormity of it filled her mind and her heart to the exclusion of all else, and though her body began to heal it seemed at first as if her spirit never would.
Released from hospital, she allowed herself to be taken back to Pascal Road by Pol and Barton. Once there, however, in familiar surroundings and amongst friends the strange anaesthetic of shock wore off, and for days she could neither eat nor sleep as the tears she had been until now unable to shed came in an endless flood. Patiently and with love Pol tended her, knowing instinctively that the storm of grief, healingly released at last, would eventually ease. And so it proved. A couple of weeks after leaving hospital, though almost unendurable sadness haunted her days Kitty was able at last rationally to face the fact of Luke’s and Michael’s deaths, even if still she could not reconcile herself to the loss.
It was on a day of sunshine and birdsong that Inspector Ian MacAdam unexpectedly called at the house in Pascal Road. Shown into the parlour, after effecting dourly brief introductions he came directly to the point.
‘I feel you should know, Miss Daniels, that we’re now as certain as we can be that the fire at the New Palace Theatre – in which, as you know, twenty-eight people died – was no accident. It was deliberately set.’ The Inspector was a lowland Scot, staunchly Presbyterian and no great admirer of women unless they be of the pattern of his own rigorously righteous, mouse-plain wife. He eyed Kitty repressively and with no great compassion, the weight of his disapproval of all things theatrical in his severe gaze. She sat stiffly upon a high-backed dining chair nursing, more from habit than from necessity, her still-bandaged left arm with her right hand.
‘Deliberately set?’ She frowned, shook her head. ‘Surely not, Inspector?’
His mouth tightened irritably. ‘I tell you, Miss Daniels, that we know it to be true.’
‘But – who would do such an awful thing?’
Pol, sitting in a chair by the flower-filled summer grate, stirred, and was still.
Self-importantly the man cleared his throat. ‘You are, I believe, Miss Daniels, acquainted with a woman named Charlotte Smith?’
‘Charlotte?’ All vestiges of colour were draining from Kitty’s already pale face, leaving it chalk-white. Beneath the flared brows the dark eyes were horrified. ‘Lottie?’ she whispered. ‘You can’t think—?’ She stopped.
He watched her dispassionately. ‘We have clear reason to believe, Miss Daniels, that she not only would but she did. The fire did not start on or near the stage as was originally believed. It began in your dressing room—’
For one moment Kitty’s iron control almost broke. She shut her eyes tightly, jaw clenched, then drew a deep breath and sat straighter, hands clasped in her lap, watching him steadily. ‘You have proof?’
‘We have a witness.’
Kitty heard Pol’s small, shocked intake of breath. She turned. ‘Pol—’
‘Miss Daniels.’ The Inspector interrupted her, his voice brusque, his eyes sharp and totally unsympathetic. ‘There is talk of a child.’
Kitty, despite herself, flinched. ‘Yes.’
‘You know no body was found?’
‘Yes.’
With the sudden energy of fury Pol jumped from her chair and ran to Kitty, laying a protective arm about her shoulders, glaring angry and open dislike at the man. ‘Fer Gawd’s sake! What yer tryin’ ter to do ’er?’
The Inspector coldly ignored her. His experience in the police force had encouraged him to draw uncharitable conclusions about Pol from the moment she had opened the door to him. ‘Miss Daniels, as I said, twenty-eight people died in that fire and the panic that followed it—’
‘Yes. I know.’
‘Two of the recovered bodies were children’s. Both have now been identified by their families. Yet I understand you to believe that another child died in the flames?’
‘There was a child in my dressing room. I tried to get to him after the fire broke out – but – I couldn’t.’ The helpless tears that always rose at thought of Michael were threatening to get the better of her again. She blinked fiercely and cleared her throat. Pol squeezed her shoulders hard.
‘The man’ – the Inspector glanced at his notebook – ‘Luke Peveral’ – the tone in which the name was spoken left no doubt that enquiries had been made and Luke’s criminal identity established – ‘was the child’s father?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that was why he entered the burning building?’
‘Yes.’
He looked up from the book. ‘His body was, as you know, recovered and identified.’
‘Yes. I know.’ Kitty’s voice was becoming desperate. She brushed a hand across her eyes. ‘Inspector – please – I don’t understand why we must go through all this again?’
‘Because a witness has come forward, Miss Daniels, and new evidence has come to light.’
‘What kind of new evidence?’
He did not reply to her directly. ‘To make clear the position and to facilitate enquiries – indeed to ensure that I am speaking to the right person – I should like in the first place to establish the identity of the child who is missing.’
‘For Christ’s sweet sake,’ Pol burst out. ‘What diff’rence does it make? The kid’s dead, ain’t ’e?’
Inspector MacAdam addressed Kitty, his voice steely. ‘Miss Daniels, would you ask your – companion’ – he emphasized the word with dry contempt – ‘to hold her tongue or to leave the room?’
He could not have chosen a better way to stiffen Kitty’s back and dry her eyes. A sharp spur of anger goaded her back to sharp self-possession. ‘I’ll do no such thing, Inspector. Pol has nothing but my welfare at heart, whereas you, it seems, are simply intent upon opening old wounds. However – if you insist—’ She met his eyes levelly with her own. ‘As I suspect you already know, the child is’ – she stopped, corrected herself painfully – ‘was – the child was mine. His name was Michael Daniels. He was two and a half years old. He was born in France at Christmas in 1867. As I have already told you, Luke Peveral was his father. Now – is there anything else you need to know?’ Only the slightest tremor in her voice betrayed her.
The expression on his face did not change. ‘Tell me, Miss Daniels—’ The emphasis on her unmarried title brought the faintest flush of colour to her face despite herself. ‘You and the woman Charlotte Smith – you were not on the best of terms?’
‘No.’ The word was short.
‘You had in fact quarrelled?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she had threatened you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your child?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at her thoughtfully. The silence ticked on.
‘Inspector—’ she began, a fraught edge of desperation back in her voice.
He stopped her with a brusque lift of his hand. ‘I think you should know, Miss Daniels’ – still he could not resist that faint, scornful emphasis – ‘that we have good reason to believe that your son did not in fact die in the fire.’
Had she been standing she would have fallen. As it was she swayed in her seat and Pol, her face as dumbstruck as Kitty’s own, caught her with strong hands.
Inspector MacAdam stood and walked to the fireplace, turned to face them, hands clasped behind his back. For the first time he directly addressed Pol. ‘You were in charge of the child?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you left him to go and see Miss Daniels perform on stage?’
‘That’s right. We’d arranged it. I’d asked—’
‘You had asked a young woman – Betty Dyson by name – to take care of the child while you were gone?’
Pol eyed him warily. ‘That’s right. If you know, why ask?’
‘What you did not know was that Miss Dyson had’ – he lifted sardonic brows – ‘affairs of her own to arrange with a certain young man; an acrobat, I believe’ – he pronounced the word as if it had been in a foreign and unintelligible language – ‘and she left the child alone in Miss Daniels’ dressing room.
‘I’ll murder ’er,’ Pol said, conversationally.
Not by the flicker of an eyelid did he indicate that he had heard her. ‘Miss Dyson it was who saw Mrs Smith come from your room, Miss Daniels. And who then saw the smoke, and flames—’
‘She raised the alarm?’
‘No. Unfortunately she did not. She panicked, and she ran away. She has, it would appear, a very possessive husband. She was afraid of the consequences of explanations. She isn’t a very intelligent young woman, I’m afraid. If she had raised the alarm immediately many lives would probably have been saved.’
‘Then why has she come forward now?’
‘Conscience, Miss Daniels, is a strange thing. She could not sleep.’
‘And – you say she actually saw Lottie set the fire?’
‘She saw Charlotte Smith hurry from your dressing room, which was by that time well alight.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Miss Dyson says that she was carrying the child.’
For a moment the words hardly registered. Kitty stared at him. Then, ‘Are you – is she – sure?’ Her voice was a stranger’s.
‘She has sworn to it.’
‘Lottie’s got Michael?’ Pol whispered. She was staring at the man as if he had been a ghost risen to haunt her. Suddenly Kitty was galvanized into action. She leapt from the chair and caught the man’s arm, almost shaking him. ‘Where is she? Where is she?’
He removed his arm from her clutching fingers. ‘Precisely? We don’t know. Too much time has elapsed and the bird has flown, I fear. She has left the country.’
‘Oh, no!’ Kitty flung her head back in a sudden furious gesture of frustration.
‘And gone where?’ Pol asked, steadily, an arm once more about Kitty’s trembling shoulders.
‘We traced her to France—’
Kitty stilled. ‘France?’ she asked, sharply. ‘Whereabouts in France?’
‘We think possibly to Paris – we traced her so far, then I’m afraid we lost her. Twenty-eight people died in that fire, Miss Daniels. She had good reason to hide.’
‘Luke,’ Pol said softly, as if the name had only just occurred to her. ‘She killed Luke. Jesus Christ.’
Kitty’s mind, emerging with sudden, shocking clarity from the daze of shock that had shackled it, said quickly, ‘She’s been to Paris before, Inspector, do you know that?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Surely there must be some way to trace her whereabouts? The French police—?’
‘—couldn’t find a pig in its sty in broad daylight,’ the man said, sourly. For the first time in this interview his expression was slightly less than granite hard. ‘I have to tell you, Miss Daniels, that I fear it’s hopeless. To look for one woman in a city of two million souls is a hard enough task at any time – to attempt it now, with hostilities about to break out and Paris the centre of France’s war activity… No, I’m afraid I must tell you that I didn’t come here to offer you hope of the child’s recovery, but simply to inform you that he is at least, we believe, still alive.’
Kitty was staring at him blankly. ‘Hostilities? War? What war?’
In the act of picking up his hat and gloves from the table the man stopped. ‘My dear Miss Daniels – surely you must have seen something of what is going on? Prussia and France have been intent upon picking a quarrel for months, and now it seems the pretext has arrived. War it will be, sooner or later.’ His expression was stern again. ‘And I know I’m not alone in hoping that our German cousins will teach that harlot nation a lesson they will never forget. Sin brings its own rewards, Miss Daniels, and I dinna doubt that Paris, like Sodom and Gomorrah before her, is likely at last to reap her just deserts in the coming conflict. I give you good day.’
The door closed behind his sanctimonious back onto dead silence.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ Pol said at last, profound and inexpressible feeling in the two words. ‘Why didn’t I see? Why didn’t I guess? God Almighty – she told me! She bloody as good as told me—’
‘What? What are you talking about?’ Kitty’s voice was trembling slightly.
Pol closed her eyes, searching her memory. ‘The day before the fire Lot was ’ere. She was laughin’ – ’appy – just like old times. I ’adn’t seen ’er like it in years. I asked ’er what was up. She said – she said it was a secret. ’Er secret. An’ then she said—’ Pol screwed up her face ferociously. ‘Gawd, if I could just remember exactly! – somethin’ about Luke comin’ to ’er. She said if she could give ’im the thing ’e most wanted in the world ’e’d never leave ’er. She said ’e’d come to ’er when she ’ad ’is son. Kitty– may I be struck dead, I swear I thought she was pregnant!’
‘But – she meant my son. Michael! She intended to steal him – offer him to Luke in return for – oh, no! It’s mad! Unbalanced! It’s horrible—’
Pol nodded, a sickness in her eyes.
‘But – the fire! Why the fire?’
Pol shrugged. ‘’Oo knows? P’raps she did it to create a diversion. Could even ’ave bin an accident. But once she realized she’d bin seen – that the police’d be after ’er—’
‘She made a run for it. To the only place she knows outside London. The only place far enough away for her to feel safe. Paris.’
Suddenly very calm, Kitty walked back to the chair in which she had been sitting and stood behind it, holding on to the high back as if for support. ‘Think,’ she said, softly. We have to think. Where would she go?’
Pol was at her side in a moment. ‘Kitty, love, no! Don’t fool yourself! That jackass was right about that at least. It’d be like lookin’ fer a blinkin’ needle in an ’aystack! An’ you’ll get no ’elp from the coppers, that’s obvious—’
‘I shan’t ask for any.’
‘But – s’pose – like ’e said – s’pose there is a war?’
‘I don’t care. I’ve got to try. Pol – Michael’s alive! He’s alive!’ Small, feverish spots of colour had appeared on Kitty’s pale cheeks. Unnoticed, tears rolled down her thin face and dripped disregarded onto the pale silk of her dress. ‘He’s alive!’ she whispered again, and almost in one movement they stepped into each other’s embrace, hugging, rocking, laughing and crying together. When at last they drew away, Pol mopped her face with a large handkerchief.
‘Pol,’ Kitty said, urgently. ‘Please – think! Try to remember everything Lottie ever told you about that stay in Paris. Where did they go? What did they do? What did she like? Most important of all – did she make any friends?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Pol said immediately, ‘she made a friend all right. Couldn’t stop talkin’ about ’er. An’ English girl ’oo’d bin over there some time. Done quite well for ’erself by all accounts.’
‘Doing what?’
Pol lifted caustic brows. ‘Whorin’, what else? Oh – she ’ad some fancy Frenchification for it, but whorin’ was what she did.’
‘What was her name?’
Sadly Pol shook her head.
‘Oh, Pol – please! You must remember!’
Pol concentrated ferociously, an intent frown creasing her brow. Then she shook her brassy head in quick self-impatience. ‘No. ’S’no good. If I ever knew it, it’s gone. Tell you what, though’ – she brightened suddenly – ‘I’ve got a picture of ’er somewhere, with Lot. Some street artist drew ’em sittin’ at a table at a bar near this girl’s ’ouse. Lot gave it to me as a keepsake. P’raps the girl’s name’s on it?’
‘Where is it?’
‘Upstairs somewhere.’ Pol, followed closely by Kitty, was already halfway to the door.
It was a full, frustrating hour later that Pol, with a quick, profanely triumphant exclamation, pulled a crumpled piece of paper from the back of a drawer. ‘’Ere it is!’ She laid the picture, a smudged pencil sketch, on the dressing table and carefully smoothed the creases. A remarkably faithfully drawn Lottie laughed from beneath an open parasol. She was seated at a small table upon which were set a bottle of wine and two glasses. Beside her sat an attractive dark girl with wide, cat-like eyes and a full, pouting mouth. Behind them a fountain played, the water cascading from the mouth of a dolphin upon whose back a plump cherub rode, one arm upraised and the hand missing. Beyond that were sketched tall, shuttered houses, their front doors opening straight onto the pavement of what looked like a typical, slightly seedy Parisian square.
‘No. No name. Blast!’ Disappointed, Pol made to refold the picture.
Kitty snatched it from her. ‘It doesn’t matter! At least it’s a start! If I could find that statue—’
Pol was staring at her. ‘You gone bleedin’ potty? You can’t go ter Paris on a wild goose chase like that! Didn’t you ’ear what the man said? They’re goin’ ter be shootin’ at each other over there! An’ besides – Kitty, love, I don’t like ter be a wet blanket, but aren’t you addin’ two an’ two an’ makin’ bloody twenty-one? You don’t know fer sure Lot’s in Paris. You don’t know she’s still got Michael with ’er. You don’t know—’
‘I don’t care! Oh, Pol, you must see – I’ve got to try! I’ve got to! While there’s a chance – the faintest chance – that Michael’s alive, I’ve got to try.’ She stood for a moment, thinking, clicking her fingers. ‘What was the name of that boring man from the Foreign Office - you know, the one that kept sending me those terrible poems? Hogarth? Howard? No – Howarth! Lord Howarth! That’s it!’ Turning, she flew from the room and clattered at risk to her neck down the narrow stairs.
‘Where the ’ell you goin’?’ Pol followed her onto the landing and hung over the bannisters.
Kitty was struggling into her light summer cloak, wincing as she strained her damaged arm. ‘To Whitehall. To find the poetic Lord Howarth. And if he won’t help me – then I’ll find someone else.’ She lifted her face, white and determined in the half-dark. ‘I’m going to Paris, Pol. War or no war. Not the whole damned Prussian army will stop me. Michael’s in Paris. I know he is. And I’m going to find him. I have friends to help me – Jem, if I can find him, Charles, Genevieve—’
‘But—’
Kitty’s movements stilled. Her face as she looked up at Pol was strangely sympathetic. ‘Don’t “but” me, Pol. It won’t do any good. Try to understand. I’m not stupid – I know I’m clutching at straws – but what else do I have?’ The shadowed dark eyes glittered. ‘I lay in that hospital bed and I prayed to die, Pol – as they had died; Matt, Luke, Michael. I thought I had nothing to live for. Now I have. Don’t try to stop me. I’m going to Paris.’
The words, of course, were easier said than the journey made. Inspector MacAdam had been right; war between a France sadly deluded as to her own strength and support and the newly united German states was imminent, and the massive guns that Herr Krupp had exhibited so proudly at the Paris Exhibition three short years before were about to be turned in anger upon their erstwhile hosts. Opinion in England was divided, but not evenly; while for a few the idea of the barbaric Prussians daring to threaten the very heart of European civilization was unthinkable, a far greater proportion of the jingoistic British public were far from put out at the prospect of the old, arrogant enemy being given the trouncing it was felt they so richly deserved. Few saw the dangers inherent in an over-strong and unified Germany that might dominate the European mainland for a century to come: fewer still saw this as the first signs of a conflict that would engender generations of destruction, terror and death.
For Kitty, anyway, none of the raging arguments signified. She did not care for cause nor for effect. Her every thought, every effort, was bent upon getting herself, over all protests, to Paris. And with the help of the fortunately still besotted – if unfortunately still as boring – Lord Howarth, she did it. Passes and passports, the transfer of a large sum of money and the acquisition of an equally large sum in French currency in case of emergency – the brainwave of a friendly Under Secretary who had known people who had been caught in such situations before – the obliging Lord Howarth took care of it all. Pol, tutting still, but constitutionally unable to refuse her aid, helped to sew the cash securely into a cotton petticoat, made sure that the necessities of life found their way into Kitty’s trunk and issued many a dire warning about the problems a woman might encounter travelling alone. ‘Especially with them damn’ Froggies about,’ she muttered for at least the hundredth time as she sat heavily upon the trunk lid while Kitty pulled the strap tight and buckled it. ‘You can’t trust ’em, you know, not an inch!’ Even Pol, Kitty noticed with some amusement, who had never set foot outside London let alone the country, seemed to have caught the prevailing anti-French feeling.
She straightened. ‘I’ll be all right. I can take care of myself. And anyway, I’m not travelling alone. Lord Howarth has discovered a worthy and very dull young man named John Babbercombe who is travelling to Paris to join the Embassy there, and he’s offered to escort me. The only danger I shall be in is that of dying of boredom. So stop worrying!’ With the knowledge that her son was, after all, alive, and with the prospect of positive action, however uncertain its outcome, Kitty had taken a new lease on life. She would not look back; finding Michael was her one and only aim – how it was to be achieved she had no clear idea, but the possibilities of failure she refused to consider. She had determined to take it step by step, and the idea had rooted, deep as superstition in her mind. The first step was to get to Paris; what was to follow would become clear then.
She left London in the blaze of a summer dawn in the middle of July. On the already crowded Victoria Station, as she said her goodbyes to an openly worried Pol they both saw the placards that shouted news of a final affront to French pride that must surely herald war.
‘Somethin’ about a telegram—’ Pol said. ‘Kit – don’t yer think yer should just wait a bit – see what’s goin’ to ’appen?’
‘No.’ The word brooked no argument. Briskly Kitty kissed her. ‘Now I’ll have to go, for I have to find my seat and Mr John Babbercombe, heaven help us. I expect he’ll know what’s going on. And will tell me – at length!’ She pulled a comic face which cut no ice with Pol at all. ‘Oh, Pol dear, do try to crack a smile. I’ll be back in no time, I promise – and Michael with me!’
‘’Course you will.’ Pol, valiantly as she tried, totally failed to hide her lack of conviction. ‘You’ll write, won’t you? Let me know what’s ’appenin’?’
‘I will.’ A train whistle shrieked to the steel-girded roof. ‘I’ll have to go,’ Kitty said again. ‘Porter!’
The last she saw of Pol as the train pulled, snorting steam, from the platform, was a handkerchief, bravely fluttering until it was blocked from view by a curve in the track; whereupon, Kitty thought a little guiltily, it would probably be put to its more proper use. She directed a weakly polite smile at the studious-looking Mr Babbercombe, who had in the first moments of re-acquaintance proved himself every bit as dull as she had remembered, and prayed that the journey might be accomplished as speedily as possible.
In that, however, she was to be disappointed. By the time she set foot on French soil, after a smooth crossing, war had been declared and, despite a sweltering and ennervating heatwave, the whole country had run mad with joy. Here was the Imperial dream again – victory and glory, La Belle France the true ruler of Europe as God had so clearly intended. The upstart, comic-opera Prussians would be taught a lesson they would not quickly forget.
Meanwhile the roads and railways were in utter chaos.
The train crawled from station to station, was shunted into sidings, stood still, it seemed to a Kitty wild with impatience and half dead from the heat, for much longer periods than it actually moved. The journey, which should have taken ten hours, in the end took fifteen and it was full darkness before the train steamed wearily at last into Paris and the Gare du Nord, and more scenes of national jubilation. Kitty, her brain cudgelled almost to a stupor by the heat and the tiring journey – to say nothing of the effort of fifteen hours of sporadic conversation with the tedious Mr Babbercombe – leaned eagerly from the window. Charles had been informed of her intended arrival and, late or no, would surely be there to meet her. The vast station was crowded, the atmosphere high-strung and celebratory as Mardi Gras. One might have believed, she thought, scanning the singing crowds, that a holiday rather than a war had been declared.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right, Miss Daniels?’ The commendably concerned John Babbercombe, sweating profusely, handed her down to the platform.
‘Oh, yes. I’m being met – ah! There he is – Charles! Charles!’ Catching sight of Charles Parisot’s face, handsome as ever if a little heavier, she waved energetically.
He pushed his way through the crowds, hugged her with unreserved, Gallic pleasure. ‘Kitty, my Kitty! What a day to choose to arrive!’ Even he seemed affected by the euphoria that had swept aside the good sense of a nation. Introductions were effected, Mr Babbercombe gratefully accepted the offer of a lift in the Parisot carriage as far as the Embassy, Kitty’s trunk was located and collected, and they were at last on their way. A scant half hour later, at last, she was in the so-well-remembered, elegant apartment on the Rue de Rivoli, clasped in Genevieve’s happy, expansively perfumed embrace. ‘But, chérie, it’s so good to see you! And so good to have someone here who will talk some sense instead of this ridiculous shouting of war! Oh – we should lock up all the generals, French and German – British too, perhaps! – and then we shall have a bit of peace, non? Come in, chérie, come in. Everything is prepared, and a bath is waiting—’
More tired than she would admit, Kitty allowed herself to be led along by the other woman’s affectionate efficiency. A short while later she lay in a soothing, sweet-smelling bath, soaking out the sweat and frustration of a trying day, whilst in the room beyond Genevieve’s maid, Jeanne-Marie, unpacked her trunk. Yet even now her brain refused to rest. The first step was taken, the second must now be determined. It was with some surprise that she realized suddenly, as she lay, eyes half closed in a state of blessed somnolence, that in fact her next task was as clear-cut as the first had been. She was in Paris; and, as she had suspected would happen, the Parisots had failed to recognize the location of the dolphin statue. The next step was clear.
She must find Jem O’Connell.
The streets of Paris were chaos. Kitty, pushing her way towards the Pont d’Arcole, found her progress hindered by yet another detachment of marching soldiers; they were everywhere, it seemed. She watched as they shambled by, grinning, raggedly out of step, waving at the pretty faces in the crowd, and reflected not for the first time since she had arrived in Paris that to all outward appearances the French forces might be going on a picnic rather than marching to war. In the two days since her arrival she had watched groups such as these parade endlessly up and down the Rue de Rivoli, cheered on by crowds perhaps too wildly patriotic to be taken seriously. At her openly expressed puzzlement at the holiday atmosphere that still prevailed in the city Genevieve had shaken an impatiently disgusted head. ‘They’re mad. All of them. They hear the trumpets, they see the flags and they go crazy. Phut! Do they care that our army is scattered all over the country, that our generals are too busy fighting each other to have time for any other enemy, that our Emperor is a sick man?’
Kitty, aware that beneath her friend’s fashionable chic and charm there lurked an astute brain and shrewd grasp of affairs, had been surprised at her outburst. ‘Oh, surely – things aren’t that bad?’
Genevieve had shrugged angrily and turned from the window and the sight of the carnival crowds and the marching men. ‘Look at them. Half of them don’t know out of which end of the rifle the bullet comes. The other half don’t have a rifle. Most of the officers have more experience in the bedchamber than on the battlefield. Oh, they are brave, there’s no doubt. They’ll storm the Prussian guns with sabres. What good will that do?’ She shook her head sombrely. ‘France is not prepared for war, Kitty. The army is disorganized, communications are in chaos, the railway system all but broken down under the strain of mobilization.’
‘How do you know all this? The papers are saying—’
‘The papers? Oh, Kitty, don’t make me laugh! The papers say what they are told to say – all but a few, that are branded left-wing revolutionary – what do you say? – rags? The country, and especially Paris, wanted war. It has war. It doesn’t want to hear the truth. I spoke to a young officer yesterday, the son of a good friend of mine and a young man of sense. Through the incompetence of his superiors he had lost – physically lost! – a whole battalion of men. He had been told to join them in one place – when he got there – phut! – no men! And no one knew which train they had been put on or where they were. Tell me – does that sound like an army that is likely to win a war?’
She had lifted her head then, and looked directly at Kitty, her expression worried and compassionate. ‘Kitty – it’s so lovely to see you – but you should not be here! To look for a woman and a child under normal circumstances would be hard enough. But now? Impossible. And – supposing the worst happens? If our army cannot hold these barbarians – these savages! – who knows what will happen to my poor Paris?’
Kitty had been horrified at the gleam of tears in the other woman’s eyes. Remembering the uncharacteristic outburst now, she felt a renewed stirring of unease, quickly suppressed. Of course Paris could be in no danger; the idea was absurd. And of course, eventually, somehow, she would find Lottie and through her, Michael. She must. For now, though, her task was to find Jem. He knew Paris better than did most native Parisians. Perhaps he would know the square with the dolphin statue. If not, he would help her to find it. She knew he would.
She passed the great Hôtel de Ville, pushed her way across the bridge, passed beneath the massive shadow of Notre Dame, hurried across the Ile and over the Pont au Double to the Left Bank of the river. She remembered well the way to Jem’s apartment and in ten minutes was standing in the familiar narrow street with its tall, shabby, shuttered tenements and disreputable bars. As she climbed the dark stairs she could no longer deny her anxiety. It had been to this apartment that she had written, but he had never replied. She could now no longer suppress the worrying thought that the reason for his neglect might have been other than his preoccupation with his own full and disorganized life. He might have left the apartment, and so never have received her letters…
The door was opened by a brute of a man in a dirty vest and ragged trousers held across his vast belly by a piece of string. His breath as he grunted a suspicious and slurred enquiry was foul. Behind him she could see the familiar room, squalid and filthy and with no sign of the artist’s clutter that had always characterized it, no strong, acrid smell of paint and varnish.
Her heart sank within her. ‘Er – pardon, M’sieu – je – je cherche Jem O’Connell?’
The man grunted, shook his head and made to close the door.
‘Oh – please! S’il vous plaît – Jem O’Connell! He – he used to live here—’ Despairingly she was aware that every word of French she knew – a pitiful enough store at the best of times – had fled her memory. ‘Jem O’Connell,’ she repeated. ‘An American. Un Américain. Ici!’ She stabbed a finger to the floor. The ugly head shook again, the dull eyes unhelpful and uncomprehending. The door shut in her face.
She stared at the blank door in a frustration of anger and disappointment. She would not – could not – give up that easily. She lifted her fist to rap again, stopped at a quiet call from the stairs above her. ‘Mam’selle?’
She looked up. A thin-faced girl, shabbily dressed, leaned over the rickety bannister. ‘Vous cherchez Jem O’Connell?’
‘Yes – er oui! You know where he is?’
The girl lifted a finger, smiling a little. ‘The American. Yes. Wait a moment, please.’ The words were so strongly accented that it took a moment for Kitty to realize that they were spoken in English. She waited as the girl disappeared up the stairs, heard a door bang. It was hot and airless on the dismally filthy landing and the smell – that familiar stink of poverty-stricken, overcrowded humanity that she so hated – was vile. She swallowed, a faint sheen of sweat breaking out on her face. Her burned arm throbbed very slightly. From behind the door that had been Jem’s came the sound of raised voices and a crash.
‘Voilà!’ The girl was back, a grubby piece of paper in her hand which she proffered eagerly to Kitty. ‘The – American – leeves – ’ere—’ The mangled words were spoken with pride and Kitty heard in the rolled ’r’s and the long vowels the echoes of Jem’s teaching. She glanced at the paper, upon which in faded writing that she recognized as Jem’s was scrawled an address.
‘Ees een Montmartre,’ the girl said. ‘You know? Montmartre.’
‘Yes. I know Montmartre. Thank you. Thank you very much.’
The girl watched her, her eyes expectant. Kitty fumbled in her pocket and produced a couple of coins. ‘Merci.’
A small grubby hand snatched the coins and the ragged skirt was hauled up as the girl secreted her prize.
Kitty waved the paper. ‘How long – since he left?’
The girl frowned, puzzled.
She tried again. ‘How long – combien de—?’ She struggled over the words, then held up her fingers, counting, ‘Un? Deux? Trois?’
‘Ah!’ Comprehension brightened the pinched little face. The girl held up a dirty finger and thumb. ‘Deux.’
In the unpredictable way of such things the word for ‘months’ popped into Kitty’s brain. ‘Deux mois?’ she asked.
The girl laughed and shook her head. ‘Deux années!’
Two years! The address she held was two years old! In a city such as Paris and a nomadic life such as Jem lived that might as well be a lifetime.
Dejectedly – for though a part of her had known all along that this might happen yet still her hopes had been unrealistically high – Kitty stepped out into the hammering sun of a summer that was being spoken of as the hottest in living memory and, nursing her faintly throbbing arm, made her way back to the Rue de Rivoli.
Montmartre, with its windmills, its tiny garden vineyards, and its ancient jumble of winding streets, perched upon its hill above Paris like a turret above a castle, part of the city since the fields that had once divided them had disappeared under the inexorable march of the city streets and buildings into the countryside, and yet separate too, by virtue of its position and its distinctive village character. Kitty had never been there before, and even in her somewhat distracted state of mind she could not help but notice as she climbed the steep, pretty lanes how picturesque were the tumbledown cottages with their little gardens and brightly painted doors, dwarfed by the great windmills, disused now, or converted into places of entertainment, that towered over them. There were one or two larger and more prosperous-looking houses and a few small tenements, but little industry; the steep nature of the terrain upon which the original village had been built not lending itself to the building of factories.
Following the directions Charles had given her, she toiled on up the hill to where a narrow lane crossed the one she walked. The disappointment she had felt two days before at not having found Jem at the first attempt still nagged her – a disappointment that she had been forced on reflection to admit was rooted in more than the simple and obvious causes. She had told herself that she had wanted to find him for purely practical reasons – his intimate knowledge of Paris, his facility with the language, his wide and varied circle of acquaintances. But the setback of two days ago had shown her that her reasons for wanting to find him did not in fact stop there; she had not realized until that moment of disappointment how much she had looked forward to seeing again that fair, boyish, warm-smiling face, to hearing the attractively slow-drawling voice. How very much she had counted upon the unquestioning support and encouragement that she was sure he would afford her. Strangely it seemed to her that finding Jem had now become every bit as important to her as finding Lottie and Michael, a surprising fact that she did her best not to examine too closely.
She turned into the lane, counted the houses. Number twelve was, if anything, more tumbledown and in need of several licks of paint than its neighbours. The gate stood wide open, as it obviously had for some considerable time, at a wild angle, its lower bar tangled in the wilderness of weeds that rioted through the tiny front garden and grew even within the cracked brickwork of the building itself. She picked her way to the sun-faded, peeling front door. Somewhere a dog barked, fiercely, and was quieted. In the blazing sun warmth radiated from the broken paving stones at her feet, from the heavy door, from the very fabric of the building. In the absence of bell-pull or knocker she lifted her fist and thumped upon the door.
Nothing happened.
She knocked again, as hard as she could, and this time somewhere within she heard movement, a woman’s bad-tempered muttering, heavy, shuffling footsteps.
The apparition that opened the door was the most fearsome she had ever seen. A squat, enormously fat woman, dressed even on this sweltering day in the many-layered dark, voluminous clothes of a country peasant and with a patriotically red, white and blue knitted cap perched ridiculously upon an iron-grey, untidy head, scowled at her fiercely. By her side, held not very securely by the scruff of its neck, a great red-eyed mastiff snarled, no better tempered from its looks than its mistress. Kitty felt the hairs of her neck stir beneath the twin, baleful glares.
‘Er – pardon, Madame—’ she stammered, stepping back a little. The mastiff growled menacingly at the movement and she froze. Sweat trickled uncomfortably between her breasts, soaking her bodice. ‘Je – je cherche M’sieu O’Connell. M’sieu Jem O’Connell—?’
The name brought a remarkable and quite terrifying reaction. The woman’s heavy face convulsed with rage and she spat a torrent of obviously abusive French, spittle running obscenely from the corner of her mouth. Desperately Kitty resisted an overwhelming urge to turn and run. This was her only hope.
‘S’il vous plaît – lentement – je ne comprends pas—’ she managed as the woman paused for breath at last.
The woman’s head jerked menacingly. ‘Américaine?’
Kitty shook her head. ‘English.’
The clouds of fury gathered again in the woman’s face. She spat very accurately at Kitty’s feet. ‘English? Pigs. All of them. They desert us, eh?’ The surprising English, like the girl’s a couple of days previously, was heavily accented and bore the unmistakable stamp of Jem’s own speech. On a faint lift of hysteria Kitty found herself wondering if Jem had set himself to teaching his native tongue to the whole of the female population of Paris. ‘They think we lose this war, eh?’ The apparition stepped forward threateningly and the dog snarled again. ‘Eh bien! After we slit Bismarck’s fat belly we come to England, eh?’
Kitty found herself shaking her head a little wildly. She had been warned by a worried Charles of the growing anti-British feeling in the city but this was the first time she had actually encountered it. ‘I’m – I’m sure that most British people are most sympathetic to your cause, Madame—’
The woman snorted, pushed her ugly face closer to Kitty’s.
Kitty this time stubbornly stood her ground. ‘Please – I’m looking for Jem O’Connell. Does he still live here?’
There was a short, expressive silence. ‘O’Connell,’ the fearsome woman said then, very clearly, having marshalled her linguistic reserves to the attack, ‘is a no-good son of bitches. A lying, double-cross bastard—’ She pronounced the last word in the French way, but there was no mistaking her meaning or her malice.
The expletives lost none of their force for being spoken in the incongruous, distorted English, yet Kitty found herself fighting suddenly a manic desire to laugh. She had heard stories in those long-gone days of a Suffolk schoolroom of the harpies who had sat at the foot of Madame Guillotine with their knitting as the heads rolled into the baskets; this, surely, must be a direct descendant of one of them. She swallowed hard, fighting down the dangerous possibility of hysterical laughter; she did not for a moment think she would find it funny if the awful woman chose to release the even more awful dog. The tirade had slipped into French now. She waited until the woman ran out of words before asking, ‘What did he do?’
That brought a further stream of unintelligible outrage. Kitty concentrated, trying to make some sense of the words. Then, still screeching, the woman extended her free hand and rubbed thumb and forefinger together in an age-old gesture, and all become clear.
‘He owes you money?’ Kitty held up her hand to stop the excited flow of words. ‘How much?’
The two short words brought a sudden silence. Crafty eyes squinted at her, taking in the good clothes and the jewellery and resting in sudden greed upon the gold chain that hung about Kitty’s neck. ‘Two ’undred francs.’
Kitty knew the sum must be outrageously exaggerated, but she did not argue. She unfastened the chain and held it out, swinging and glittering in the sunshine. ‘Would this cover it?’
A rapacious, filthy hand reached out. Quicker, Kitty snatched the chain behind her back. ‘Only if you tell me where he is,’ she said, knowing as she said it her danger. If the woman chose simply to release her dog…
The sly eyes regarded her unblinking. The massive shoulders lifted. ‘I don’ know where ’e live.’ There was no denying the careless truth of the words, Kitty knew that instinctively, her buoyed-up hopes collapsing. Then, ‘But I know where ’e drinks—’ the woman said.
The bar of Le Mouchoir Rouge was the converted front room of a Montmartre cottage, crowded, thick-hung with smoke, cheerfully noisy as a monkey-house. Kitty stood on the threshold trying to adjust her eyes to the gloom. The place was filled to bursting and echoed with chatter and laughter. Predominantly the customers were men, and Kitty recognized with lifting heart the hallmarks of the artistic fraternity – canvases were propped against the wooden tables, paint-stained hands waved in Gallic conversation, or lifted glasses to be swiftly drained and as swiftly refilled. The scattering of women among the customers had a look she recognized also – striking if not always pretty girls with the challenging poise of the professional model. The walls were covered in paintings of that school that Jem termed realist, and so admired. Ignoring the curiosity and unwelcome interest in the eyes of a group of men who stood close by the door she stood on tiptoe and surveyed the crowd.
‘Bonjour, Mam’selle—’ A young man had sidled close to her. She ignored him. He laughed, making a quick aside to his watching friends that brought a gale of laughter.
And then she saw him. Jem sat at a bare wooden table in a corner, a vociferous part of the rowdiest group in the room. He was smiling that wide, vivid smile that she found she remembered so well as a young man of florid complexion and flamboyant dress declaimed passionately, his hand on his heart. Other members of the party were chipping in noisily, obviously good-temperedly baiting the young man. As Kitty watched, a girl moved from her place at Jem’s side, languidly draped a long arm about the passionate speaker’s shoulders and kissed him long and hard upon the lips, thus forcibly stemming the stream of words to thunderous laughter and applause. At that moment, laughing, Jem turned and his eyes met hers. To her astonishment, knowing her own face to be alight with delight and greeting, she saw for a split second the laughter leave his face as if turned off by a switch, in its place a look of stunned and not altogether joyful surprise. Then the brilliant smile was back and he was across the room to her, hugging her, standing her from him to look at her, hugging her again, and she thought she must have imagined that strange moment of almost painful shock.
‘Kitty! By all that’s holy! What are you doing here? How on earth did you find me? Good God, girl, don’t you know there’s a war on?’ She allowed herself to be swept to the table, acknowledged unheard introductions, clinging to his hand as if to her hope of salvation. She had found Jem. Against all the odds she had found him. Now everything would be all right.
‘Luke dead. Jesus Christ.’ Jem stood by the window of the airless and stifling attic that was his home, looking out with unseeing eyes across the wide and lovely vista of the roofs and spires of Paris to where the distant trees of the Bois shimmered in the heat. ‘Dead,’ he said again, and shook his shaggy fair head in a sharp movement, like a dog emerging from water, bemused disbelief and a muted grief in his eyes. ‘And in such a way.’
Kitty said nothing. She had told her story steadily and without tears. Now she felt tired, drained of energy; almost without feeling.
‘My God!’ Jem came back to the table, splashed dark wine into a cracked cup, lifted the bottle questioningly to Kitty. She shook her head. He tossed the drink back, poured more, then lifted his light eyes to Kitty’s. ‘And you’ve come here – despite the war – to look for the child?’
‘Yes.’ Kitty put her hand in the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the crackling paper of the pencil sketch. ‘This is all I have to go on.’ She held it out to him, watching with suddenly bated breath as he smoothed the creases thoughtfully and moved back to the light of the window. ‘Do you recognize it?’
He looked for a long moment, then shook his head. ‘No.’
Obstinately she suppressed once again the dreary rise of disappointment. ‘Would you – would you help me try to find it?’
He watched her in silence for a surprisingly long time, his face sombre. Then that well-remembered smile came again, fleetingly, warm and entirely charming. ‘I sure will. I guess needles have been found in haystacks before.’
She pulled a face. ‘You sound like Pol. And Genevieve. And Charles. Do you really think it’s that bad?’
He shrugged a little. ‘Who knows? We won’t know until we try, will we? Have you tried the cab drivers?’
She stared at him. The simplest answer; and she had not thought of it. ‘Oh, Jem – how stupid of me – no, I haven’t.’
‘Right.’ He smiled again, and her heart lifted with hope. He toasted her with the battered cup, and for a moment it seemed to her that the gesture was wry, strangely self-mocking. ‘That’s where we’ll start.’
But yet again her hopes were doomed to disappointment. Try as they might over the next few days as they wandered the chaotic city streets that were a shambles of military vehicles and personnel, of wheeled gun carriages, ponderous cannon, marching men and heaped wagons of supplies, they could find no one who recognized Kitty’s picture. At last, on the day that they stood with the rest of cheering Paris and watched a tired-looking Louis Napoleon ride out of the city at the head of his colourfully uniformed army, they had to admit that the idea, good as it had been, had produced no positive result.
‘But at least,’ Jem pointed out as they watched the gallant cavalry parade past, colours bravely flying, ‘we do know something.’
‘What?’
He turned to look at her. ‘If the cab drivers of the city don’t know the place, then it isn’t in fashionable Paris, is it?’
She shook her head. ‘I suppose not.’
‘I know Montmartre like the back of my hand. It isn’t there either, I’ll stake the price of my next meal on that. So – at least we’ve narrowed the field a bit—’ He glanced at her again, grinning like a boy. ‘How do your feet feel?’
‘Fine. Why?’
He ran his hand through his untidy hair, tossing it back from his eyes. ‘Because from now on, little Songbird, we walk.’ The use of the old nickname was entirely natural. She was astonished at the small stab of pain it brought. ‘We’ll pound the pavements of Paris and we’ll find that confounded statue if it’s the last thing we do.’
They quartered the city, poring over a map that Charles had produced for them. Genevieve looked on in sympathetic exasperation, her practical nature outraged by the whole venture. ‘But – Kitty! Chérie! You cannot comb the whole of the city!’
‘Oh, yes I can.’ Kitty straightened, pushing the heavy dark hair from her eyes, drawing a small sharp breath as a hot needle of pain stabbed at her injured arm. ‘Michael’s out there. I’m going to find him.’
Jem had glanced at her quickly. ‘You okay?’
She nodded, though the sudden angry pain in her arm had taken her breath away. Impatiently she tried to ignore it; the arm had been all but healed when she left England – why should it be bothering her now? ‘I’m fine.’
He looked at her for a moment longer, probing. She turned from him, back to the map. ‘Where do we start?’
But in the days that followed, as they tramped the streets of the city and as the war news swung in a few short, disastrous days from victory at Saarbrucken to terrible and bloody defeat for the French army at Wissenbourg and Spicheren, the pain in her arm worsened. Beneath the bandages the skin was inflamed and burning. As the war news, all bad, filtered back to the city a new, darker mood engulfed Paris. The gay, improvident enthusiasm of those first days was gone entirely, and in its place a dangerous and unsettling disaffection, fostered and encouraged as always by the extreme Republicans for whom this city, the very cradle of violent revolution, had always been a breeding ground. A long, dispiriting retreat by the bulk of the French army had begun, falling back towards Paris. Suddenly the monstrous possibility of a Prussian army at the gates of the city became more than a nightmare with which to frighten children. Chanting mobs roamed the streets and packed the squares; street orators, who had waited, patiently, upon the hour, came from their attics and their cellars to whip up anti-government feeling and to preach righteous revolution. By the end of the second week in August passions were at white heat and it had become dangerous for any foreigner to be found on the street by the unstable, excited mobs. Jem himself was relatively safe – his French, though slightly accented, could pass as native. But Kitty had no such safeguard.
‘It’s no good,’ Jem said, firmly, ‘we’ll have to give up for a while. Give them a chance to settle down. I’m not risking having you walk into a mob that mistakes you for Madame Bismarck. They all but lynched a woman in the Rue Royale yesterday. And anyway’ – he held up a narrow hand to still her protest — ‘you’re looking done in. You need a rest.’
In fact she needed rather more than that, and in the end she had to admit it. When she at last shamefacedly showed Genevieve her swollen and obviously infected arm her friend was horrified and justifiably angry. ‘You idiot! How long has it been like that? Mon Dieu! You could lose the arm!’ The Parisots had over the past weeks become increasingly worried over the situation in the city, and the strain showed on Genevieve’s face and in her shortened temper. The theatres had closed. Kitty knew her friend were contemplating leaving the city, suspected a little guiltily that she was the main reason for their staying. ‘I’ll send for a doctor at once,’ Genevieve said briskly and, with a quick glance that Kitty did not miss, added, ‘You cannot think of travelling with such an arm.’
Kitty lifted her head sharply. ‘Travelling? Travelling where?’
Genevieve was already halfway to the door. She spoke over her shoulder. ‘We are going to the south – and of course you must come with us. We cannot wait here to be trapped like rats by the Prussians, or murdered in our beds by revolutionaries. You’ve heard the news? That there’s insurrection in the city?’ She did not wait for a reply. ‘And more defeats. Bazaine’s retreat has been cut off. There is no one – no one! – to protect us.’
‘Gené—’ Kitty cut in, desperately.
Genevieve rushed on. ‘God only knows what will happen to Paris now. So you see – we must go. All of us. But first – a doctor for your arm.’
In the silence left by her going Kitty, nursing her now agonizingly painful arm, crossed to the window and looked out. The wide, beautiful boulevard was all but deserted, though beneath the window lay a broken placard and some leaflets, remnants of a noisy demonstration an hour or so earlier. On the pavement opposite, sitting on the kerb, his feet in the gutter, sat a dispirited-looking soldier, his rifle discarded beside him, his uniform filthy and his cap gone, in its place a bloodstained bandage. He seemed to Kitty to personify the broken hopes of that gallant army that had marched from the city, colours flying and bands playing, such a very short time before. As she watched, a file of Zouaves shambled by in the charge of a mounted officer. Their flamboyant uniforms were worn and dirty; they walked like men sleepwalking. The man on the pavement did not even lift his head to watch them pass. For the first time and through a rising haze of fever Kitty found herself in the grip of dread. It did not need an experienced eye to perceive that these were the harbingers of disaster, the remnants of a defeated and impotent army. She had at last to accept the truth that she had steadily ignored for so long: the enemy, any day, might indeed be at the gates of Paris. And Michael was somewhere here in the city, unprotected. Her head thumped. The skin of her face burned drily. She would not leave Paris. She could not. Not until she had found her son.
Genevieve and the doctor found her an hour later crouched upon Genevieve’s elegant chaise-longue, trembling with fever, her skin on fire. Muttering and protesting incoherently she was put to bed, cool damp cloths laid upon her blazing body, the infected arm lanced and bandaged, bitter medicine forced down her throat. The next many hours were lost to her completely, in pain and delirium. Luke came to her and she called to him, desperate, as he turned from her. Michael played upon the bed, his dear, sunny little face turned brightly to her before crumpling to heartrending tears as unknown hands tore him from her. She fell then it seemed into a pit of darkness shot with flame. For an endless time she struggled, calling on Luke, on Jem, on someone – anyone – to help her. And then at last help came. A firm, cool hand held hers, a voice spoke, calmly and encouragingly. ‘Luke,’ she said. ‘Thank God.’ And she lapsed into healing sleep.
She woke to dust-motes dancing in the gleams of sunlight that knifed through the gaps in the closed shutters. It was very hot. Through the half-open door she could hear sounds of near-frantic activity in the apartment. She moved her head a little. Beside her, asleep in the chair, his fair head lolling at a painful angle, his sharp-boned face in shadow, was Jem. At her movement he started awake and leaned forward. ‘Kitty? You’re awake?’
‘Yes.’ The whispered word surprised her by its weakness and by the effort it took to speak.
‘Are you feeling better?’ With the efficiency of practice he laid his cool hand on her forehead.
‘Yes, thank you, doctor.’
That brought a slight smile, yet still it seemed to her that a faint shadow lay across his face as he looked at her. ‘The fever’s gone, thank God. I’ll call Gené.’
He left her for a moment. She lay taking careful stock of herself – of her appalling weakness, of the faint soreness still in her arm, although the awful knife-point pain of infection had gone, of the dryness of her cracked lips. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again Genevieve was there, smiling.
‘How long – have I been ill?’
‘Two days. Nearly three.’ As Jem had done Genevieve laid a hand upon her forehead and nodded with satisfaction. ‘You’d like a cool drink?’
‘Yes. Please. Gené – what’s happened?’
Genevieve hesitated. Then she shrugged. ‘It’s bad, I’m afraid. The Emperor no longer commands the army. Half of our men are besieged within the city of Metz. The other half – who knows? They move, so it is said, towards a place called Sedan. The war is lost, I think. And Paris – Paris seethes.’ She sat on the bed, carefully took Kitty’s thin hand. ‘Kitty, we cannot fool ourselves any longer. In a very short while Paris herself will be in danger. We must leave. We are packing now. We have been waiting for you to recover so that you may travel with us.’
‘I’m not coming.’
‘Kitty – there is no choice! You cannot stay.’
‘I’m not coming.’ Her voice was still weak. She shook her head upon the pillow. ‘I can’t. Don’t you see?’
‘But you must.’
‘No.’ The new voice, from the open doorway, was firm. Jem crossed the room, knelt by the bed, laid a gentle hand upon hers. His pale eyes were very serious. ‘Kitty. Look at me. Now. You should go. Everything that Gené says is right. It’s the only sensible thing. Will you go?’
‘No.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. Very well. We both stay.’
Inexpressible relief moved in her, and showed upon her face. ‘You’ll stay with me?’
Genevieve, disbelief and exasperation getting the better of her, jumped to her feet. ‘Are you both mad?’
For a long, strange moment Jem held Kitty’s eyes with his own, and again she was aware of that inexplicable shadow of sorrow that haunted his face, changing it. He grinned then, and the shadow fled. ‘What would I do in the south? It’s always raining.’
To the Parisots’ concern and continued exasperation, no arguments would change their minds. Genevieve, anxiously tending the still-ailing Kitty whilst her husband made the last-minute arrangements for their departure, threw up her hands at last in despair. ‘But what will you do? Where will you go? Charles has given up the lease on the apartment.’
‘I know.’ Propped amongst the pillows, Kitty was very pale but totally determined. ‘I have plenty of money, Gené. Jem has rented me a small apartment in Montmartre, not far from his room. I’ll be all right, Gené dear – he’ll look after me—’
Genevieve gave her a long look, shaking her head in disbelief then, oddly, laughed suddenly. ‘Yes. I’m sure he will.’
Two days later, with news spreading through the city that the second of France’s battered armies lay besieged and helpless within Sedan, the Parisots left, having first efficiently supervised Kitty’s removal to the small, shabby but comfortable apartment on the heights of Montmartre that Jem had found for her. Genevieve’s last, thoughtful service before she left was to acquire for Kitty a little maid, cousin to her own Jeanne-Marie, whose bright smile, willing nature and smattering of English promised well. There were tearful goodbyes, last-minute pleas which Kitty adamantly resisted, and then her good friends were gone. Kitty sat in bed, propped upon pillows, and looked out of the window at the vista of sunlit Paris laid out before her. Michael was there somewhere. She banished the doubts that crowded her mind. She knew he was there. As always in such situations it was the rich who were able to flee – leaving the poor, who could not, to face the consequences. If Lottie were here with the children it was unlikely in the extreme that she would be able to leave. And Kitty would find her. Today, tomorrow, sometime – she would find her.
It was a week before she was properly on her feet again. By then Sedan had fallen, the Emperor had been captured and the French army hardly existed except in scattered remnants about the country. The capital lay helpless before the advance of an invader whose new war-cry was ‘Nach Paris!’ Two days after the disaster of Sedan the Republicans of Paris rose and stormed the Hôtel de Ville, helped by the Paris National Guard, whose democratic ranks were thoroughly permeated with Republican sympathizers. Amid scenes of confusion and wild celebration a new national government was proclaimed – a government, as had happened so often before, constituted in Paris, by Parisians, and of Parisians, with no note taken of the rest of France. The Empress Eugénie, hated by the mob, fled the city barely with her life as the mob stormed the Tuileries and turbulent history repeated itself yet again. It was victory for the new Republic with – more by luck than by judgement – not a single drop of French blood shed.
For a while wild optimism invested the city – the enemy, surely, had no quarrel with the people of France as they had had with their Imperial masters? The Emperor was captured, disgraced, deposed – what more could they want? The Prussian armies could now, with honour, withdraw. But, of course, they did not. Sustained by seemingly endless supplies of excellent looted wine, they continued their all-but-unopposed march on Paris. Beaten remnants of the French armies trailed back into the city. Their camps filled the Champs Elysées and the Champ de Mars where a scant three years earlier the triumphant Exhibition had dominated fashionable Paris. By the time, a few days after the coup, Kitty was well enough to venture into the streets she was appalled at what she saw; the city had been turned into a fortress. Sheep grazed in the woods, the gardens and the squares. Fortifications and military encampments were everywhere. The bridges that spanned the Seine were barricaded, the walls of the city were being strengthened and armed as were the forts that ringed them. In the sweltering heat soldiers, National Guard and civilians laboured side by side: and in the way of such things their work had become a popular entertainment for the sightseers of the city for whom a day out inspecting the fortifications of Paris had become a regular pastime. Day by day as the euphoria once again died the mood of the city became more determined. Paris would never be defeated. With no respite from the heat the defenders worked feverishly to fortify the city that a few months before had been the fabled and fabulous Ville Lumière. Kitty, her good common sense restored with her health, drew a considerable amount of her capital from the bank and with the small maid, Louise, embarked upon several extremely tiring but successful shopping expeditions, thinking wryly more than once as she did so of those earlier sprees with Genevieve in the elegant arcades of the Rue de Rivoli. Of course, her reason told her as she surveyed their stock of supplies, the Germans would never reach Paris; the rest of Europe – the world! – would surely not allow that to happen? But, just in case, it was as well to be prepared.
And still the Prussian armies advanced.
On 15 September a train heading north from the Gare du Nord was captured.
Two days later the implacable German pincers closed about the city and Paris – the glittering heart of the civilized world, the jewel of Europe – was under siege.