THE WIND OFF THE river was raw but Célie was glad of every step that took her and Madame Lacoste closer to the Boulevard St-Germain, and found herself increasing her pace. Behind them she could hear shouting, howls of jubilation as the news spread. The King was dead. Long live the Republic! Long live freedom and brotherhood!
What was freedom worth without safety from injustice, violence and hunger? Freedom to do what? The last restraint had been taken away. People could do anything that entered their imaginations. There was no King to govern the country, no aristocracy. The laws changed every day. And above all there was no God to reward those whom the world neglected, nor to punish those who were so powerful or so secret they escaped society. In their ignorance they had pitched all France into an unknown future.
The Boulevard St-Germain was all but empty as Célie and Madame Lacoste turned into it. For once there were no National Guards hanging around and they were able to enter the courtyard without any explanations.
Madame led the way into the kitchen. There was no one else there. Whether they too had gone to watch the execution or not Célie did not know, and Madame did not say.
Madame closed the back door and went over to the stove, her wet boots squelching very slightly on the stone. She put another piece of wood on and fanned the embers, then poured water from the ewer into the pot and set it to boil.
Suddenly Célie found her throat thick with tears again and she had to blink to stop them from spilling over. ‘I never saw the King before today,’ she said, ‘except in pictures. He was ... so small ... so terribly ordinary.’ She remembered it with fierce, painful clarity. ‘But he went up the steps with little help, even though they tied his hands and he couldn’t keep his balance. He didn’t shake or stumble.’
‘I know,’ Madame said softly. ‘He was a fool, but no one ever said he was a coward. He didn’t know how to rule ...’ There was a catch in her voice also, ‘but he knew how to die—better than they knew how to kill him.’
Célie looked away. ‘We’ve done something to ourselves, something petty and vicious, and it frightens me.’
‘It should,’ Madame agreed. ‘Go and take your wet clothes off or you’ll catch your death.’
Célie hesitated. She might not have another opportunity to speak alone with Madame. How much did she understand?
‘Thank you,’ she said awkwardly. All the way home they had not spoken. Célie’s mind had raced with desperate fears over Georges. Marat had gone after him, and after Briard. She had no way of knowing if he had caught them, or what he would do if he had. They had done nothing illegal, but did that matter? Did it even make any difference?
Madame shrugged, still with her back to Célie. It was both an acknowledgement and a dismissal of the subject.
Should Célie ask why Madame had been there? She wanted to, and was afraid.
‘Go and take off your wet clothes,’ Madame repeated.
Reluctantly Célie turned to obey. She was cold and tired now it was all over. It was strange to have it in the past. Now there was a kind of emptiness with nothing to work for, nor to fear, any more. The plan had filled her life. Everything else had revolved around that. Until it was accomplished nothing else mattered. Now it was over, and had failed, she found there was nothing else anyway.
She was standing in her room in her petticoat, looking for a dry blouse and shawl, when there was a knock on the door.
She waited a moment. ‘Yes?’
Amandine came in and closed it behind her. Her face was white, her eyes hollow.
‘Is Georges all right?’ she asked hoarsely.
‘I don’t know,’ Célie answered. ‘The King is dead. He wouldn’t come. Marat was there.’
Amandine gave the shadow of a smile, as if she had expected him to be.
‘No, I don’t mean in the crowd,’ Célie corrected her. ‘I mean right at the carriage. He actually touched me!’ She did not explain her attempt to distract him long enough for Georges and Briard to escape. ‘Then he went after Georges, but he was only a moment or two behind him. The crowd closed in, trying to press forward and see what was happening. He had to fight his way.’
‘And Georges?’
‘I don’t know,’ Célie said again.
Amandine looked down. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. Her voice was thick with tears also.
Célie went to her quickly, putting her arms around her and holding her tightly. She shared the fear, the loss, the disillusion, and through it all the overwhelming tiredness.
Amandine wept at last, her body shaking with sobs that racked through her with total heartbreak.
Célie did not try to stop her. She stood in the cold, aware only of Amandine’s pain and her own fear that Georges too could be dead! And even if he were still alive, she might never see him again.
Then finally she pulled away and reached for her dry blouse and shawl.
Amandine straightened up and blew her nose. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I can’t bear to think St Felix killed Bernave, but if he did, he must have had a reason, one that overwhelmed everything else, or he wouldn’t have done it. He was a good man ... really good!’
Célie was not going to argue, although she was less sure. Even if he had loved the girl in Vincennes, if she had been his sister, he could have waited until after the King’s execution to take his revenge on Bernave. But there was no need to say so now. Instead she told Amandine in a few sentences what Renoir had told her.
‘Twelve years old!’ Amandine was horrified, her face filled with grief. ‘Who was it? His sister?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if it had anything to do with St Felix at all! It’s just a possibility. Renoir didn’t know anything about the other person who had been asking.’
Amandine’s lips tightened. ‘It must be St Felix. If he killed Bernave it was either that, or because he knew he’d betrayed the plan. Either one could have been a reason, never mind both!’
Célie did not argue. None of it mattered now. She was shaking with cold.
Amandine looked at her. ‘Come down and have some hot chocolate,’ she said gently. ‘I’ve got a little left. There’s probably nobody in the kitchen now. I’ll make it. Come on.’ And she turned and opened the door.
Célie followed willingly. Anything hot would be good, chocolate best of all.
Amandine was right, the kitchen was empty, but Célie was only partway through drinking the chocolate when there was a knock on the back door. When Amandine went to answer it, Menou came in. His cheeks were pink with the cold, and also perhaps with the excitement of the day, and his hair was plastered to his head.
Célie’s heart lurched. Could he be here about something to do with Georges? She and Amandine were the only people he would leave any message for!
‘What is it?’ she demanded, her voice strangled and high-pitched.
He frowned, looking slightly embarrassed, but there was apology in his face rather than tragedy. But then why would he care about Georges?
She started to speak again but her voice would not come.
‘I still don’t understand,’ Menou said awkwardly. He stood stiffly, looking at Amandine, then at Célie. The colour stayed in his cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, but I am not satisfied about Citizen Bernave’s death.’
Amandine’s face was hard, anger blazing up in her eyes.
‘What does it matter now?’ she said furiously. ‘You shot Citizen St Felix. You can’t do anything more to him. He’s dead. What do you need to prove?’
Menou looked profoundly unhappy, and Célie wondered for a wild moment if it were caused by the problem which troubled him, or by Amandine’s pain. She remembered his fingers touching the lace on her linens when he had been searching for the knife.
‘I need to prove that it was really St Felix who killed Bernave,’ he replied. ‘Even if only to myself.’
Amandine’s eyes widened. Hope and fury fought within her.
But it was Célie who spoke. ‘You mean you think maybe it wasn’t?’ She turned on him. ‘But you shot him anyway!’
‘I didn’t shoot him,’ Menou corrected her quietly. ‘One of the patrol in the street shot him because he ran. If he had stopped they wouldn’t have.’ His face was dark with awareness of tragedy and misgiving. ‘But I am wondering now if he may have run because he was afraid rather than because he was necessarily guilty. Perhaps he had no faith in our skill, or our justice, and thought we would blame him anyway.’
Neither Amandine nor Célie answered. Nothing they could say was free from the danger of implying they were less than wholehearted revolutionaries.
‘I never found the knife,’ Menou went on. ‘I went up on to the roof. I took men with me and searched everywhere. And I asked all the neighbours, in case it was put in through someone else’s window. If they’d found it they would have told me. No one would dare hide it, not when they knew it had been used to murder a friend of Marat’s!’
No one argued with him.
‘But I didn’t look under the slate Monsieur Lacoste repaired,’ Menou went on. ‘I’m going to do that now. It has to be somewhere, and I’d swear no one carried it out of the house.’ He looked at Amandine. ‘Have you got something I can prise the slate off with? Monsieur Lacoste is still out, and his shed is locked. I don’t want to break in, but I’d prefer to go up before he returns.’
Amandine looked through the kitchen drawer. ‘I’ve got one of his old chisels,’ she offered. ‘It’s broken, but it might do.’ She held it out.
‘Thank you.’ Menou took it from her gently.
‘Bring it back,’ she said. ‘I use it to lift the stove lid.’
‘Of course.’ He nodded.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Célie told him. ‘You’ll need help anyway, even if it’s only with the window. It sticks.’
He drew in his breath to argue, then changed his mind and allowed her to lead the way upstairs.
He held the attic window open while she climbed very carefully out on to the wet and slippery roof, clinging on with cold fingers. She crawled up precariously towards the ridge, her feet sliding beneath her weight. She had worked out where the slate should be corresponding to where the leak had been on the inside.
Menou came behind her. She realised that if she slipped and fell she would almost certainly carry him down with her too. Had he thought of that?
Foot by foot, she got as far as the ridge. The fog had lifted a little and it was beginning to rain again, turning to sleet. The sharp spire of the finial on the end of the dormer roof was like a black dagger against the grey sky. That was where the leak was, in the bedroom.
‘Here!’ she said aloud, searching for the repaired slate. ‘Somewhere near here.’
Menou was beside her now, his face streaked with rain, his hair stuck to his head and across his brow.
‘I see it,’ he answered. ‘That one, paler than the others. But I don’t know how I can get it off without cracking it—and we haven’t got another to replace it with.’
She was shaking with cold. ‘It has to be somewhere!’ she said stubbornly. ‘Somebody murdered Bernave—and I’m not sure it was St Felix either. Anyway, whoever did it, they still had to hide the knife somewhere! It was thick-bladed–almost square at the handle. I saw the wound.’
‘Like a sword bayonet,’ he agreed.
She half swivelled around. ‘Yes!’ She was holding the broken chisel in her hand.
‘Or like that?’ he said softly, looking at it.
She stared down, then up at him. ‘Yes ... only this one is broken! And you looked all through Monsieur Lacoste’s tool box ... and paints, and varnishes and everything else.’
He did not answer, consumed in thought.
It was growing colder by the second. Pellets of ice were rattling on the slates around them. Soon she would be too frozen to cling on. The wind was stronger and the clouds were scudding past the black point of the finial. It was a sheer drop to the alley below.
Then she understood.
‘There!’ she said between chattering teeth, inclining her head.
‘What?’
‘The finial!’ she answered. ‘It’s different from the others! Take the paint off—and it’s a chisel blade! Look at it! The knife was never under the slate—it was right there in plain view!’
Menou remained frozen only for a moment, then very carefully he inched forward towards the dormer. She held her breath, body shuddering, while he worked his way to within a yard of the finial, then back again to where she was.
She knew from his face before he spoke.
‘You’re right!’ he said, his teeth chattering with cold. ‘Now get down, before we both fall off!’
He climbed in the attic window and helped her through. He looked at her steadily.
She stared back. St Felix was dead: nothing could alter that, or make it hurt less. But surely Amandine had the right to know that he had been innocent? These thoughts passed wordlessly between them.
‘For Amandine’s sake?’ she suggested. ‘It’s a terrible way to lose someone you care for so deeply. This way she would at least keep her dreams.’
Menou nodded. ‘Dreams are precious. They last all life long, and there are times when they’re all we have.’
Amandine was still in the kitchen. She turned from the stove as they came in.
Célie spoke before Menou could.
‘Amandine, we found the proof it was not St Felix. He only ran because he knew they were after him, and he had no defence.’
Amandine raised her head and turned slowly to Menou, her eyes wide, red-rimmed. She looked from one to the other of them. When she spoke her voice was husky. ‘What?’
‘A chisel,’ he answered. ‘It had been put on the old finial where it had been broken. When it was painted it looked pretty much like the rest.’
Amandine looked from one to the other of them, emotion welling up inside her with such power and confusion she could find no words big enough to express it.
The silence was broken by a tap on the back door. Menou walked over and opened it. A middle-aged man in brown clothes stood on the step, his white hair plastered to his head, his blue eyes mild.
Célie’s heart leaped.
It was a moment before Menou recognised him.
‘Citizen Lejeune? What can we do for you now?’
Briard looked beyond him to Célie. ‘I just wanted to thank you for your kindness, and say that I spoke to the gentleman myself. He decided to remain in Paris after all. I believe he felt going now would cause trouble for too many other people.’
‘That’s ... that’s all right,’ Célie stammered. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me. And ...’ How could she ask about Georges?
Briard smiled. ‘Your kindness enabled me to find another client, in a rather insalubrious area of St-Antoine, but a nice enough gentleman. I thank you for giving me his acquaintance.’
St-Antoine! Now she knew where he was, and that he was alive. She found herself smiling idiotically. She wanted to throw her arms around Briard, but it would be ridiculous—and probably offensive to him.
‘Thank you! I—I mean ... you are welcome, Citizen.’
He was about to reply when Fernand came in through the other doorway. His clothes were dry but his hair was wet and dripped down his forehead. Monsieur and Madame Lacoste were immediately behind him. Perhaps they had heard the voices in the kitchen, but more probably they were hoping for hot coffee or chocolate. Monsieur and Madame stared at Menou.
‘What are you doing here?’ Monsieur Lacoste demanded. ‘It’s all over. Go back to keeping order in the streets.’
Madame looked beyond him to Fernand, whose mouth was open as he gaped at Briard.
‘I thought ...’ he started, then whirled to Célie. He started to say something else, but bit off the words.
‘You thought he had the misfortune to look like the late Citizen Capet,’ Célie said for him, pushing the words between her teeth. ‘So he does. But now that Citizen Capet is dead, it doesn’t really matter, does it?’ She met his eyes unflinchingly, and saw reflected in them that it was he, not Bernave, who had told Marat of the plan.
Perhaps he recognised that in her face, because he paled, and looked away.
Célie turned to Briard again. ‘Thank you, Citizen Lejeune. We will not detain you any longer. Good day.’
He understood. He bowed very slightly. ‘Good day, Citizeness.’
Madame glanced at Célie, but her eyes betrayed nothing.
‘Well, why are you here?’ Monsieur Lacoste said, turning back to Menou.
But it was Amandine who answered him, her voice thick with uncontrolled fury. ‘He wants justice, Citizen Lacoste! We all do.’
‘Of course we do,’ Lacoste sighed, frowning. ‘Isn’t the King dead and a new republic enough for you in one day?’
‘No. I want justice for Citizen St Felix.’ Her body was shaking. ‘I want his name cleared of murdering Bernave. And I want you to answer for his death!’
This time everyone froze, staring at her with incomprehension.
Monsieur Lacoste’s face was immobile. ‘Me? I had nothing to do with St Felix’s death.’ He jerked his hand at Menou. ‘This man shot him—I presume because he ran away.’
Amandine was breathing so deeply she seemed to gasp. ‘He ran away because Menou thought he’d killed Bernave, and he couldn’t prove his innocence! But you could have!’
Fernand turned to his father.
Marie-Jeanne stood in the doorway, drowned by the shouting.
Madame did not move her eyes from Amandine.
‘What do you mean?’ Fernand asked. He looked at Menou. ‘Did you start all this?’
‘Perhaps,’ Menou agreed. ‘You see I know what happened, and I know why. I just wanted to find the knife. I’d looked so many times, but it had to be here.’
Monsieur Lacoste was white-faced, but he did not back away.
‘Are you accusing my father?’ Fernand moved a step closer to him. ‘That’s ridiculous! Why would he harm Bernave?’
‘Because he discovered Bernave was spying for the royalists, not for the Commune!’ Amandine answered, swinging round on him. Her lips were dry, and two frantic spots of colour marked her cheeks. ‘None of you could report him, or you’d all lose the house.’
Menou shook his head a little, his brows furrowed. His voice, when he spoke, was remarkably gentle. ‘It was very clever, and quite deliberate. First Citizen Lacoste spread the rumour that you were hoarding food in this house, so the mob would riot and force their way in here.’ He held up his hand to stop Fernand interrupting him. ‘It all worked perfectly, and would have looked just like another incident of looting gone too far, but Bernave was braver than Citizen Lacoste foresaw, and the intruders backed away from him.’
Amandine was shaking, her hands clenched into fists by her sides.
Menou glanced at her once, then away again.
‘You struck too soon,’ he said to Monsieur Lacoste. ‘Perhaps you were afraid someone would come back with torches. There were none of the rioters behind Bernave when you stabbed him. It did not take me long to see that, and that he couldn’t have been shot by the soldiers in the street. But I thought it was a knife. I never imagined a chisel ... until I found it tonight.’
There was total silence in the kitchen. The noise of the rain outside was clear and soft, deadening all other sounds.
‘On the roof,’ Menou said quietly, a certain admiration in his voice. ‘Not under the slate. I thought of that. That was clever, loosening a slate to give yourself an excuse to go up. It was nothing to do with the slate—it was the finial. Painted black—where everyone saw it—and yet no one.’
Fernand swallowed. ‘Well, if Bernave was plotting against the Commune, he deserved to die! My father is a hero, not a criminal. You should be grateful, not coming here to persecute him.’
‘I’m not persecuting him,’ Menou answered. ‘I have no intention of arresting him.’ He lifted his hand slightly in a small gesture. ‘You see I came alone. But Citizen Lacoste did not kill Bernave for betraying the Commune!’ He looked very levelly at Monsieur Lacoste. ‘You asked about Bernave, from many people. I don’t know where you first caught a thread of the story, and it hardly matters now. But I heard about it. I wanted to learn who was enquiring, and why.’
Monsieur Lacoste glared at him.
‘I went to Vincennes too,’ Menou continued. ‘I saw the records and read them. If I had been in your place I think I might have done the same things. But you should not have let St Felix perish for it.’ His voice dropped. ‘I hope I would not have done that.’
‘Why?’ Amandine shouted, her voice choking. ‘Why did you kill Bernave? What could there ever have been that was worth letting St Felix be killed for?’
They all turned to stare at Monsieur Lacoste.
He gazed at Amandine, his shoulders hunched, his head forward. When he answered her, his voice was hoarse with a passion of loathing so bitter it filled his face and his whole body trembled. ‘He was evil!’ He spat the words between his teeth. ‘Irredeemably evil, and he deserved to die. I’m sorry I could only kill him once. If I could, I would have killed him a dozen times, a hundred, and relished watching him die. I would like to have seen his face when he saw me, and understood!’
‘What are you talking about?’ Marie-Jeanne asked desperately. ‘You’re talking rubbish!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Monsieur Lacoste said to her, and for a moment his face softened as if he really were. ‘But you didn’t know him as I did. You couldn’t. I wish you would never have to—but blame Amandine for that and Menou, with his enquiries!’
‘What?’ Marie-Jeanne was still completely confused. ‘What do you know that we don’t? How could you?’
Lacoste shook his head, his eyes filled with pain. ‘Before you were born, before Fernand was born, Bernave raped a twelve-year-old girl.’ He stared at her ashen face. ‘I’m sorry—but it’s true. He served twelve years in prison for it, where they tortured him almost to death, but he could never undo the wrong for me.’ His voice was choked thick with tears. ‘Because that girl was my wife! And he made her with child—you, Fernand! Her family threw her out of their lives, out of their world, the whole society she was born to! I found her and married her when she was fifteen, alone and all but starving.’ He looked forward, his lips snarling. ‘And more than that, Marie-Jeanne—you are his daughter, and Fernand is his son! Think of that! He allowed you to marry—that’s obscene, a crime against nature—and he stood by and let it happen rather than admit it to you!’
Marie-Jeanne, waved her hands, as if she would push him away, and the whole, hideous truth with him. ‘No! No—it isn’t possible! How could you know?’ She shook her head. ‘You’re wrong! You have to be!’
‘I’m not wrong!’ There was no doubt in his eyes, or his voice. The passion of hate burned uncontrollably in him. ‘I grew suspicious of him with the royalists and the Commune, and always sending St Felix out, and why he used him so horribly, with all the worst and the dirtiest jobs, and St Felix accepted it. I found other people from Vincennes. They told me. There’s no doubt—don’t torture yourself seeking for it. He was a man evil to the heart and soul.’ He slashed his arm violently through the air. ‘Disown him and forget him!’
Marie-Jeanne was numbed and confused, cowering away from what she’d heard.
Fernand took a step towards her, then changed his mind. He too was shattered. With one fact his entire life had been stripped apart and broken. He seemed limp inside, as if his whole being were bruised. ‘You did the right thing, Papa,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I would have done it myself, if I’d known.’ He turned to his mother, regarding her with amazement and pity. He started to say something, but the idea died before it reached his tongue. What could he offer his mother who had borne him as the result of rape, and then been forced to live in the house of her attacker? The tears spilled down his cheeks. ‘God! I wish I had killed him myself!’ The words choked in his throat. ‘It wouldn’t have been one quick stab to the heart!’
Amandine put her hands over her face, then looked up slowly at Lacoste.
‘I understand why you killed him,’ she said slowly. ‘I can’t blame you for it. Nobody could. He was as evil as you say—monstrous! But I can’t forgive you for letting St Felix be blamed in your place.’
Madame raised her head, her face like a mask, only her eyes blazing. When she spoke her voice held a lifetime’s passion and pain.
‘Except that you killed the wrong man, François. It was not Bernave who raped me.’ There was paralysed silence in the room. ‘It was dark,’ she went on. ‘I was terrified and I was hurt. My family would have nothing to do with me. The Church took me in, for a while. But I couldn’t stay there—and help my baby. It was only later, when I met the man again, that I recognised him. By then Bernave had been tried and convicted. I went to the Mother Abbess, but she wouldn’t listen to me. No one wanted to know—’
‘He confessed!’ Lacoste cut across her, shaking his head, his voice loud. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying! You were only a child! You didn’t know any more.’
She looked at him with anguish. ‘I know he confessed!’ Now she spoke softly, the words torn out of her. ‘They both loved the same woman—but she preferred the other man—the one who raped me! And Bernave loved her enough to take the blame for him, so he could go free—and marry her!’
‘Oh, Mother of God!’ Fernand breathed out in agony.
‘That’s not true!’ Lacoste cried hoarsely, but even as he said it he knew from her face that it was. He saw the horror in her, the anguish beyond his power to understand or to touch. ‘Then who?’ he shouted. ‘Who was it? Who did that to you?’
They all stared at her.
Célie felt cold, and sick inside. From Madame Lacoste’s eyes she knew the answer was terrible—beyond bearing.
‘Jacques St Felix,’ Madame replied with a rage of loathing so intense it seemed to scorch the air.
Lacoste was speechless.
Amandine tried to cry out, and it died inside her.
It was Célie who splintered the silence. ‘Then why did St Felix come here, of all places, to Bernave’s house?’ she asked softly. ‘And why in God’s name did Bernave let him in? St Felix must have known that of all men on earth, Bernave could never forgive him!’
‘You are wrong.’ Madame met her eyes unblinkingly, her voice a whisper. ‘That is exactly why he came here. Laura was dead, and he realised then, when it was too late, what his sin had done to him. He longed to be with her in some kind of heaven, but he had mortgaged his soul. He wanted to earn some shred of forgiveness. He was desperate.’
‘And Bernave ...?’ Célie said huskily.
All the fury dissolved from Madame’s face and it became suffused with a strange, passionate radiance. ‘Bernave forgave him,’ she answered so softly they barely heard her. ‘He allowed St Felix to work out his redemption by doing all the worst jobs, the most difficult, the most sordid or dangerous. If it had killed him, St Felix would not have cared—in fact I think he half sought it—except that in the end his courage failed him, as it had in the past. When it came to the moment, he ran.’ She looked at Amandine with a terrible pity. ‘I’m sorry. He had intelligence and wit and great dreams, but he was not the man you believed. Victor Bernave was. He was the noblest man I ever knew.’
She turned slowly to Fernand. ‘I wish he had been your father, but he was not, except in so far as it was his money that fed and dressed you when I was cast out by my own people, and then by the Church—before I met François. He gave me everything he had before he went to trial. The law saw fit to leave it that way. They thought it recompense; they never knew it was compassion.’
Fernand stared at her, the truth dawning on him. ‘You loved him, didn’t you?’
To have denied it would have been pointless. The answer shone in her face, transfiguring it so the years fell away and they saw the woman she had been long ago: beautiful, passionate and alone.
Célie turned to Monsieur Lacoste.
He tried to speak but the torrent of emotion inside him was too great and too terrible for words to convey it. A darkness had engulfed him, a wound which devoured all of him.
Amandine was also faced with a disillusion so fierce it destroyed everything else she could think or say. She stood perfectly still, but she seemed to sway a little, as if only her body were truly present, and the will to be, to survive, had left her.
Menou looked at her with a naked and fearful gentleness, but he knew enough not to speak.
Monsieur Lacoste stumbled towards the door and went out, and a minute later they heard the outer door slam and the echo of his footsteps across the courtyard.
‘He’ll be back,’ Marie-Jeanne said hesitantly.
Madame Lacoste raised her head. ‘No, he won’t,’ she answered. ‘Not yet, perhaps not ever.’
Fernand stood helplessly, turning from Amandine to his mother, then to Célie. ‘What can we do?’ he begged.
‘Nothing,’ Madame answered him, rising to her feet slowly, as if lifting a mighty weight. She went to Amandine and very gently put her arms round her. ‘I have lost the man I loved—to death; and the man I married to an abyss of guilt he will probably never climb out of. You have lost the man you loved to reality. He never existed. I’m truly sorry.’ She touched Amandine’s dark hair with her hand, in an intensely compassionate gesture, as she would have touched a wounded child.
Then she looked beyond Amandine to Célie.
‘You have courage, enough to risk everything for your beliefs. I’ve watched you. You love Coigny. Don’t deny it to yourself any longer, and lose the one thing you truly want. Don’t live in the past, or hope too much of the future. You’ve lived up to the best in yourself at last. Hold that precious. Don’t waste it.’ She glanced at Menou, then back to Célie again. ‘Leave while you can—safely. I don’t know what François will do. He has nothing left to lose, and no God to hope in. I’ll care for Amandine, I promise you.’
Célie hesitated.
‘Go,’ Madame Lacoste commanded. ‘No one can say what tomorrow will bring. The King is dead and we are on the edge of chaos. I think we will fall headlong into it. There will be war, hunger, more violence. Cling to what you love. Never let go. Take some food, and the money Bernave left in his desk. He liked you. He would be glad for you to have it.’
Célie glanced at Marie-Jeanne.
Marie-Jeanne nodded, her eyes brimming with tears.
‘Thank you,’ Célie whispered.
In no time she had collected her things and the money. She went to Amandine, kissed her once on the cheek, and turned and walked away, then took a great gasp and ran, her feet flying.
They had failed to rescue the King, and now France would slide into civil war, probably even war with England and Spain as well. But all through the wet streets only one thought beat in Célie’s mind. The guilt, the contempt for herself was gone. It had slipped away like a forgotten thing, leaving her a shining freedom to love, and to be loved.
She clattered up the steps of the house in the Faubourg St-Antoine and flung the door open. Georges was there, bending over the stove. He turned and stood up. Then he recognised her and his face filled with joy.
She dropped her bag on the floor and went straight into his arms, holding him as tightly as she could, clinging to him with all her strength.
His arms closed around her. He bent and kissed her cheek, then her eyes, then her mouth. She answered with absolute certainty, knowing exactly what Madame Lacoste had meant, and she would do it, with all the passion of her being. She had no idea where they were going or what would happen to them, but to be with him, with a clean heart, was everything that she needed. Happiness sang inside her, soaring upward above and beyond all else.