Christina Hollis
Authors: Lady Rascal
Paris is no longer safe.
‘Then you must leave,’ Madeleine said.
‘On the contrary, mademoiselle, I have no intention of being hounded from Paris by such treatment. My mother will, of course, leave tomorrow. You will accompany her. I shall remain, at least for a while.’
Mistress Constance gasped, and Madeleine looked up at Philip Adamson.
‘You’re mad, sir! The mob might be good-humoured enough now, but they won’t stand being opposed. If you had any sense—’ Madeleine suddenly realised what she was saying, and crumpled, crimson.
‘I should leave immediately, is that what you are saying? How can a gentleman bow before the threats of an ill-organised, ignorant rabble of wasters and scoundrels?’
‘To the mob all aristos are the same, sir.’
Christina Hollis
* * *
© 2012 Christina Hollis
Christina Hollis has asserted her rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Christina Hollis
First published and printed in 1991
First published in eBook format in 2012
eISBN: 978-1-909270-21-3
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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CHAPTER ONE
Paris, 1789
Night was turning into day. A summer-dark sky was blazing with a thousand new suns as torches bobbed along with the crowds flooding the Rue St-Antoine. It was a burning river of revolt.
Madeleine stopped in the safety of a doorway to catch her breath. She had a stitch from so much running and laughing, and had to press one hand to her side.
The crowd swept past her, egging each other on in the search for weapons and ammunition. All around, the snap and crackle of breaking glass peppered shouts of delight as the citizens of Paris found caches of guns and swords. They would be well protected now if King Louis tried to turn his men on them.
A great cheer broke over the rooftops from the direction of Châtelet. With a dull rumbling crash, fountains of flame leapt into the sky. Acrid air hot with fire and excitement raced through the slum warrens around Place de Grève and encouraged Madeleine to find her second wind.
‘Come on, Sister!’
A small shadowy figure straggled along in the wake of the revolutionaries, weighed down by a festoon of ammunition belts.
‘They say the monastery of St Lazare’s been taken, Sister! They’re going to bring the hoards of grain and flour down into the marketplace—there’ll be bread for all at last!’
Madeleine watched the little citizen stagger off westward in the direction of the corn market. The small cache of food back at her lodgings would last her for a day or two. There was no danger of its being discovered, either. It was well hidden, under the floorboards.
Madeleine had so little, her room was practically bare anyway. If looters did break in, they would probably be moved to put something back, not steal!
Reflected firelight danced across small flawed window-panes in the shop doorway she had sheltered in. Madeleine wondered why this particular place had escaped intact. Cupping her hands against the glass, she peered in.
What she saw there took her remaining breath clean away.
It was a fairyland. Paradise. A heaven on earth.
It was a gown shop.
Bolts and bolts of material, lace and ribbons were stacked from floor to ceiling against the rear wall. Mannequins draped and swagged in endless lengths of fabric stood sentinel over a huge counter that loomed between the stacks of material and the doorway.
Madeleine pressed her nose against the glass, trying to imagine life in clothes that didn’t prickle and itch as her own did.
In the next street her comrades were looting and firing any shop that looked as though it might contain arms or money.
Madeleine considered for a moment.
It wouldn’t be as though she was going to steal. Or do any damage.
Surely it wasn’t really wicked to want to touch—to stroke all those pretty things? Not really...
She stood back, thinking long and hard. She was law-abiding by nature and had never stolen anything—unless the bread roll now nestling in her pocket could be counted. That had bounced down the gutter towards her during the raid. What else could she do but catch it?
This wouldn’t be stealing, anyway. Only looking, and feeling.
Nervous in the riotous dark, she cast about for a missile. There was plenty of choice. Broken barrel staves, chunks of wood, pots and pans—all carried into battle by the crowd and thrown down when better weapons were found.
Madeleine picked up a lump of wood.
She was still uncertain. What if someone saw? Weighing the wood in her hand as she weighed her thoughts, she hesitated. Then she shut her eyes and threw the chunk of wood at the shop doorway.
It bounced back and hit her on the shin. The door was completely undamaged. Leg stinging, Madeleine snatched up the wood and hurled it at the door in rage. A brittle crunch and once more it fell back on to the cobblestones beside her.
Only when she looked up from rubbing her bruise did Madeleine remember the reason for her desperate act. The pane of glass beside the door handle was star-crazed and only just held in place. Forgetting her pain, she went up to investigate.
The glass fell out with her first nervous poke. A swift look up and down the street and in the blink of an eye she was inside the gown shop.
A fragrance of new fabrics and old money drew her to the first of the mannequins, although there was a disappointment in store for her. What Madeleine had thought to be an aristo’s exotic gown was all pretence. Lengths of material had been pinned artfully about the plaster torso, and came away in her hand. All that was left was a shapeless pile of fabric.
Disappointed, she moved on. Creeping around the counter, she expected every minute that someone or something would spring out at her. Nothing did. Like all other good citizens the shopkeeper was probably out raiding someone else’s property.
Feeling about in the dark, Madeleine’s fingers danced over tapers and a tinder-box. A moment more and she found candles, too. She lit them. Then, hidden behind the great counter, she dropped grease on to the scrubbed floorboards and set the candles up.
Sitting in a little pool of light, Madeleine began to take out the drawers of luxuries that were all around her. At first she put each one back carefully when its contents had been caressed and wondered at, but, as her astonishment grew, she forgot.
Shoes of lace and brocade, kerchiefs fine as spider’s-web, nets and laces and ribbons—all had been laid out in neat rows in their separate drawers.
There were gloves of silk, fur, and softest leather. Madeleine chose two and pulled them on—dark fur on one hand, white kid on the other. Putting her hands to her face, she rubbed her cheeks with their soft, expensive new beauty.
Losing count of time, she busied herself pulling out lengths of Swiss lace and braiding ribbons through her mane of dark hair. Only when the last tray of delicacies had been stroked and sorted and pulled about did Madeleine stand up to find some new pastime.
She nearly couldn’t manage to stand at all. The gold brocade shoes that now replaced her own ancient sabots were so high and stiff, she had to cling to the counter for support.
Madeleine suddenly saw something she couldn’t live without a moment longer. Picking up one of the candles, she took three wobbling steps out from behind the safety of the counter. Balancing precariously in front of a long mirror, she took down the wisp of gossamer that hung beside it.
It was a shift of some description, needing only the hem to be finished. But what a shift! Almost transparent, the fine fabric rippled through Madeleine’s gloved fingers like water. It was all she needed to complete her outfit.
In a moment her work dress of coarse brown stuff had been cast aside. It took her a few minutes to work out how to get into the shift, which had no fastenings but pulled on over her head. At last she managed, arranging the folds of fabric about her painfully thin body.
It clung to her like pale mist, flowing with every movement and making graceful her stumbling steps in the borrowed shoes. She was entranced, and so beguiled that the running footsteps outside went unnoticed. Only when a foreign voice called out very close at hand did she jump out of her dream.
Then panic turned her to water. To be found here, dressed like this would be certain death. Like an idiot she had not thought to douse the candles, and now it was too late.
The door flew and a large shadow rippled through the shop towards her.
With a scream Madeleine dropped the candle she held, but when the spectre grasped her wrist it was, it seemed, without murderous intent.
‘Then my coachman was correct, mademoiselle!’ The voice was low, and spoke in her own language. ‘There was a lady hereabouts. Thank goodness I found you in time. Here, quickly!’
In a moment he had cast a voluminous cloak and hood about her despite the warmth of the evening.
‘But—’
‘There is no time to lose, mademoiselle. The mob may return at any moment. There will be time enough for explanations when we are well away from here.’
‘But—’
Madeleine was too startled for any more protest as the dark stranger swept her out of the shop. Beneath the reek of woodsmoke and danger he smelled sweet and fresh, which alone would have identified him as a stranger to the Place de Grève. Although his speech had been cultured and perfect French, Madeleine knew immediately that he was an Englishman.
She also knew that she was in serious trouble. Matters in the city must have taken a bad turn. Marie the Austrian must have bullied the King into running to England for help. The English must have then invaded the city, and now one of them had caught Madeleine out in her wickedness.
Silence was always the best defence, so she kept her mouth shut. In a minute the stranger had jostled her out through the last rank of wooden tenements and they were at the river-bank.
A black carriage stood at the Pont Marie, with four dark horses plunging before it. To Madeleine’s horror the stranger gripped her arm with more assurance than ever and strode towards it. That was when her nerve finally failed her.
‘No!’ Digging in the heels of her borrowed shoes, Madeleine was dragged for a few painful steps before the stranger realised her terror.
‘It is for your own good, mademoiselle.’
As he spoke, he pulled Madeleine into his arms. The heavy cloak held her as securely as though she had been tied. Clutched to the stranger’s body, she could not even manage to cry out.
Bundled into the coach without ceremony, Madeleine did not have time to draw breath before the dark stranger sprang in beside her. Then the conveyance leapt forward into the night.
The stranger removed his cloak and threw it on to the seat of the coach with a sigh of relief. Madeleine had squashed herself into the corner furthest away from him, and watched silently by the light of one dark lantern.
She could hardly take it all in. Here she was, dressed from head to foot in stolen clothes and being driven away with a handsome young gentleman in the most luxurious fashion.
At first Madeleine thought she must be dreaming, but the wild rocking of the speeding carriage was too painfully real. And no fantasy could have conjured up such deep buttoned plush, or the richness of the heavy curtains swinging at each window.
‘Here, mademoiselle. You have suffered a great deal, I can see. Take a little brandy.’
He pulled out a silver flask. Unscrewing the top, he poured a goodly measure into it. Madeleine’s first thoughts were of what the flask would fetch on the streets, but she drank the cognac gratefully enough. As it warmed its way down she risked another glance at her captor.
Although tall and slightly built, the young man was in proportion and not rangy. His pale fragility of colouring was not that of a common person. Madeleine saw at once that he was no soldier, either. His bearing was too formal, and the movements as he arranged himself in the spacious carriage were too refined.