Fires of Delight (25 page)

This was biblical. This was an eye for an eye.

Martha Marguerite finally saw it as well. “I shall go below and change,” she said huffily.

The riverboat journey up the Seine was uneventful, save for Selena’s enjoyment of the ordered beauty of the French countryside. Yet here too she saw the stark contrasts. Great châteaux and noble cathedrals rose above grimy, stinking peasant villages and towns. The nobility rode fine horses, better fed and cared for than the men and women, and children too, who tilled the nobles’ lands from dawn to dusk. Fat clerics, drawn in gleaming carriages, waved desultory blessings from closed cabs, as if a languid sign of the cross would put bread in a man’s mouth. The miracle of the loaves and fishes was not to happen here. A smoldering fury, ready to leap into flames, was evident behind the hedgerows and across the jade-green fields.

“La belle
France,” murmured Martha Marguerite, somewhat sadly.

But if Martha sensed the changes at work during her absence, the changes building to a crescendo now, that insight deserted her as soon as the riverboat reached Paris.

“Look at it!” she exulted.

And Selena did. She was thrilled from the start, but a little disconcerted. Compared to this gleaming, light-filled city spread out before her eyes, Edinburgh was a small town, Bombay a plain of hovels, New York a backwoods village. She had been taken by her father to London once, but she’d been too young to appreciate it. For her, for now, Paris could not but be the most wonderful place she had ever been.

She had been a toddler in London, a Scottish princess in Edinburgh, a slave in Bombay, and a spy in New York.

All she could do was wait and see what Paris might make of her now.

“It will be very simple,” explained Martha, as the two women walked up the gangplank and left the riverboat. “I’ll hire a cab to take us to my family’s home, we’ll settle in, and tomorrow I’ll begin sending invitations. Oh, we’ll have a grand time, we will.

“You there, boy!” she called, hailing a loutish young fellow in threadbare shirt and battered cap. He was busy currying a sway-backed horse hitched to a sagging buggy. In the buggy, asleep on the seat, was another young man of the same age, equally unimpressive in his attire. “You there! See to our bags here on the street. I wish to hire you.”

Selena saw at a glance that Martha had erred again, not by her apparel this time—she was dressed sedately, if well—but by the lofty presumption of her tone.

“Oh, and is that right?” the lout responded, continuing to brush the beast. He seemed lackadaisical on the surface, good-natured enough, but with a hint of something like meanness in his eyes. He glanced contemptuously at the pile of luggage on the street. “Well, you may want to
hire
me, as you say, so I’ll try to make up my mind while you and that pretty little piece with you trundle your junk over here and put it in the buggy.”

Martha Marguerite was aghast. She’d never been spoken to that way in all her life. “How dare you address me in that manner!” she sputtered.

“You’re lucky I’m talkin’ to you at all,” the fellow drawled, grinning at Selena.

She understood. However, this young man’s father or grandfather might have rushed to please a rich woman, he would not do so unless he chose.

“I’ll have you…I’ll have you beaten soundly for your impertinence!” vowed Martha.

The man laughed. “Sebastian! Sebastian!” he called.

His partner in the buggy awoke and sat up. “What is it, Hugo?”

“We’ve got us a rich woman here who’s going to have us beaten if we don’t jump right smart.”

Hugo and Sebastian laughed in unison. Martha was on the verge of apoplexy. “I’ll have you arrested!” she shrieked. “Gendarme! Gendarme!”

Hugo and Sebastian thought that this too was wildly funny.

“Madame,” said Hugo, when he had stopped laughing, “all the police are in the center of the city, trying to contain a demonstration. Now why don’t you calm down and find yourself another hack? As you can see, we’re busy.”

He returned to currying his horse. Sebastian pulled his cap over his eyes and leaned back against the buggy seat. He was still chortling to himself.

While this exchange had been taking place, riverboat passengers had hired the rest of the waiting buggies. This was the only one left. Stepping forward, Selena decided to see what she could do.

“Monsieur Hugo,” she implored, hearing the Scots accent clearly in her new French, “I’m afraid my companion doesn’t quite understand what is happening in France these days. She’s of the old school, if you know what I mean.”

“She’d better learn the coming ways right quick,” Hugo growled. But he looked her up and down with interest. “You look like a
comtesse
all right,” he said in appraisal, “but you seem fairly human. How’d you get stuck with that old cow?”

He pointed rudely toward Martha, who was close to dancing with outrage.

“Please. She’s all right really. Could you take us in your buggy? You’ll be well-paid.”

Shouldn’t have said that!
she realized.
Now we might be robbed
.

“Oh? How well?” asked Hugo, his eyes narrowing.

“We don’t…that is, we don’t have any money with us. But when we reach our destination—”

“Which is?” he snapped.

Martha Marguerite, with great dignity, gave the Right Bank address.

“Hey! Maybe we ought to hold ’em for ransom then?” commented Sebastian, from his seat in the buggy.

Hugo laughed, not entirely pleasantly, but Selena decided, before things got further out of hand, to give him the full benefit of her violet eyes.

“Please?” she asked, so kittenishly she might have meowed as well.
“S’il vous plait?
My companion does not mean what she says.”

“Ah!” commented Sebastian sarcastically, heat of anger in his voice now. “And the Archbishop of Rouen did not mean it when he had my grandfather’s hands lopped off for failing to tithe. Nor did the chief magistrate of St.-Cloud mean it when he hanged my sister for stealing a loaf of bread to feed her starving children.”

“When the Third Estate takes its rightful place in affairs,” added Hugo grimly, “the tyrants will receive their just due.”

Third Estate?
wondered Selena. She did not know exactly what the men were talking about, but their meaning was clear enough. They were outraged at the order of things.

All she wanted to do now was to reach Martha Marguerite’s home in safety. Selena and the older woman lugged their bags over to the carriage where Hugo changed his mind and deigned to help them lift the luggage into the vehicle. It was large enough to seat six, with a canopied top but open sides. She helped Martha inside, the men swung up into the driver’s seat behind the horse, and the buggy moved off.

“What is the Third Estate?” Selena asked Martha in a whisper.

“Oh, nobodies. The workers and the peasants. They have no power and mean nothing. They have always been poor and will always be poor. It is the order of things. Philip the Fair said it best: the duty of the Third Estate is ‘to hear, receive, approve and perform what should be commanded of them by the king.’”

“I don’t think Hugo and Sebastian quite share that view.”

“They will when I get through with them. As soon as we reach home, I shall have our family servants seize these obstreperous brigands and take them to the magistrate. Then we shall see how things are!”

Martha was so agitated, so furious, that Selena decided not to
discuss the matter further. Perhaps when Martha reached the safety of her house, she would look more charitably upon the young men who had brought her there.

The carriage passed first through a haphazard neighborhood of narrow, winding streets. Tall houses of gray stone were jammed together here, houses with steep, slate-shingled roofs and grimy brick chimneys. Many people walked about, apparently idle, most of them ill-clothed. They glanced sullenly at the buggy, inspecting its occupants with something barely short of malice. Then Hugo guided the horse out onto a wide street that ran along the Seine. Selena had heard of Notre Dame and now she saw it for the first time in all its hoary, historic magnificence. She held two thoughts simultaneously: how grand it was, and how many poor people had gone hungry in order that it might be built and maintained.

On the roadway and all around the great church a vast crowd of people blocked the buggy’s progress. Hugo reined the horse to a halt.

“Go on!” commanded Martha. “What is the matter?”

Sebastian glanced over his shoulder. “We’ll move along, madame,” he said sharply, “when we’re able. Or would you have us run down these people in our path?”

“What’s happening?” asked Selena. She could hear someone shouting in the distance. Welling roars of approval followed each spate of shouting.

“It is someone giving a speech,” said Hugo. “And I intend to listen.”

Selena stood up in the carriage. She saw, perhaps fifty yards away, a man speaking from some sort of wooden platform. He was half-hidden from her by the crowd. Hugo and Sebastian were standing up in the driver’s seat for a better view, so she crawled up on top of the canopy for a look as well. She could hear the speech more clearly now.

“—and so we demand these things,” cried a young firebrand, dressed in a cheap, black suit and flailing the air with his fist. “The inequalities of feudal times must be ended! Serfdom must be abolished throughout France. Taxation must be applied equally on nobles, clergy, and peasants alike. Officials ought no longer be allowed to buy the positions they hold. And the
lettres de cachet
, by which our citizens can be imprisoned at whim, without trial, must be abolished as well!”

The great crowd roared its approval. Selena saw the speaker smile. He was quite young, no more than thirty, she thought, still with a young man’s leanness. His thick, chestnut-brown hair looped down over his forehead, and he brushed it back with a gesture that was at once graceful and self-assured. She who had known many men, and politicians among them, was immediately struck by the casual air of command he showed, whether speaking or simply standing there in front of the throng. It was a gift of natural leadership, a characteristic to which she had always been attracted.

“And so,” the man continued, when the shouting had died down again, “tomorrow, July fourteenth, we shall—all of us, every one of us—march as a body to the fortress of Bastille on the east end of Paris, in the past a prison for so many of our unfortunate citizens, and seize it in the name of our cause!”

The roar that followed this announcement was overwhelming. Selena pressed her hands to her ears. In the buggy seat, Martha Marguerite had turned pale.

“Why is such talk permitted?” she complained with incredulous outrage.

Hugo and Sebastian were cheering along with everyone else.

“Oh, my France! What has become of you?” Martha mourned.

“Maybe you want to go back where you came from?” said Hugo sassily.

From her perch atop the buggy, Selena saw a phalanx of plumed and uniformed horsemen riding toward the crowd, their glittering swords upraised. People scattered, shrieking, and began to run.

“The Royal Guard! The Royal Guard!” someone screamed in warning and alarm. “Flee for your lives!”

“Well, thank heavens!” Martha said.

It was sickening, and Selena saw it all. The guardsmen, at a gallop, rode directly into the crowd, their horses plunging and rearing. People fell, trampled, to the stones in front of Notre Dame, wailing in agony, slashed and mauled by iron-shod hoofs. The fiery speaker had leaped down from his platform, which was overturned in the melee, and Selena caught a glimpse of his glossy, flying hair as he fled the horsemen and came toward the buggy! She saw too that, with the confused and swirling mob
blocking his way, he would never be able to reach the safety of distant alleys.

Instinctively, not merely for his words but because of his plight, her sympathies were with him. She herself had been hunted by authority that possessed vast power but little mercy, and she could imagine what his fate would be if he were to be seized. Royal Guard or no, men who would trample children and slash out willy-nilly with great swords were not those with whom she would ever ally herself.

So when the speaker came near the carriage, she waved her arms, caught his eye, and beckoned him.

He looked puzzled at first—she almost thought there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes, seeing her there atop the canopy—but he turned in her direction and pushed his way through the crowd.

Twenty yards away, two guardsmen had halted their mounts, turning this way and that, scanning the crowd in eager search of their quarry.

Selena jumped down from the top of the buggy, grabbed the speaker by the hand—which was, to her astonishment, dry and cool—and pulled him up with her into the carriage itself.

“Move along!” she shouted to Hugo and Sebastian, who were grinning with surprise and delight. “Get down on the floor!” she commanded the speaker. He looked younger than he had at a distance, and more handsome. But his hard, clever brown eyes left no doubt that he was someone fearless in principle, decisive, perhaps even ruthless in action.

“Selena, have you gone mad!” shrieked Martha Marguerite. “We could be arrested for harboring—”

“Yes, and we will be too, if you give any sign that something’s amiss.”

The buggy was moving now, rolling slowly through the thinning crowd.

The young firebrand was crouched down on the floor of the vehicle. Selena arranged her skirt and that of Martha, spreading them out and fluffing them to conceal their new passenger. She could feel him hunching down, shifting around, against her legs. Then she felt his hand on her ankle for a moment, patting her as if to say, Thanks, thanks, I’m fine down here.

The coach was stopped by a mounted guardsman who held up
a gloved hand and looked at the drivers and their passengers with cruel, hostile eyes.

“Where are you going?” he demanded, scanning every inch of the buggy.

Martha Marguerite had taken all she could, and here at last was a man sworn to serve the interests of her family, her king, her class.