The Rainbow Bridge (5 page)

‘Colbert!’ Gaston said sharply. ‘Who gave you permission to speak?’

‘Well, Lieutenant,’ said the General, ‘I envy you your
prize. But, as you rescued her, then she rightfully belongs to you. Mind that you keep her safe.’ He smiled at the portrait. ‘No beauty, but definitely a girl of character.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Gaston noticed the boys stiffen. To his horror, young Colbert even made a gesture towards his sword! It was high time they left.

‘Enough!’ He ordered. ‘Cadets, dismiss!’ They turned to the door. ‘And don’t drag your sabres down the steps!’ he called after them. He turned to the General with a laugh. ‘You shouldn’t have said that she was no beauty, sir. You were in danger of your life. It would be a bad start to 1795 if you were sliced up by two of my clowns.’ The door darkened and Raoul appeared with a steaming jug and two glasses. ‘Ah … the punch at last. By God, but I need this; that canal water has me chilled to the bone.’

‘Proost! As we say here in the Netherlands. Here’s to your promotion,’ the General raised his glass, ‘and I don’t accept that nonsense about them having to promote you; I have heard good reports of you.’ The General drank. ‘So, are your parents well? I have not forgotten your family’s kindness to me. How have they coped with the Terror? I just don’t understand you French: the most civilised nation in the world and you have to start cutting off each other’s heads.’

‘With a humane beheading machine,’ Gaston said uneasily.

‘You tell that to the poor wretch on the tumbrel on his way to be guillotined! Hopefully, with the beheading of Robespierre in July, the worst is over. Did it affect you at home?’

‘On the day I left, we had an incident that could have turned nasty,’ Gaston said. ‘An agent provocateur came into the village and tried to stir up trouble. Looking back, it was
a timely warning. I’ve been back since then; everything was all right at home. You remember the Count? Well, he has declared for the Revolution, and still lives in the chateau, but now as its ‘caretaker’. However, I am not fully up to date; my mail has been chasing after me ever since I left Auxerre a year ago. It missed me in Nantes, and again in Paris, but I was hoping it would be here.’

General Daendels drained his glass. ‘I’ll ask after your mail, but I’d better go now. You look done in lad, go and get some rest.’

When the General had departed, Gaston suddenly felt exhausted. His trousers were still damp from his ducking and seemed to be sucking the warmth out of his body.

‘No more visitors, Raoul. I am going to bed.’

‘What’ll I say to them as wants you, sir?’

‘Tell them what you like,’ groaned Gaston, pulling off his shirt and waving Raoul away. The shivers that he had managed to suppress during the General’s visit were now coming over him in waves. He stripped down to his trousers and began to open his buttons. He was about to push them down when something made him uneasy; he had a distinct feeling of being watched. He looked at the portrait. The girl returned his gaze. Feeling more than a little foolish, he picked up his shirt, draped it over the picture and finished undressing. Then he discovered he had nothing to put on. ‘Raoul!’ he shouted down the stairs. ‘Where’s my nightshirt?’

‘Coming, sir.’

Down below, someone was demanding to see him. Gaston grinned as he heard Raoul snap, ‘No, you can’t. The lieutenant is entertaining a lady.’ Raoul stamped up the
stairs and threw his nightshirt onto the bed. ‘I was a-heating of it in front of the fire,’ he said defensively and began to pick up Gaston’s scattered garments. ‘Look at the mess your trousers is in, sir,’ he grumbled. At that moment he saw Gaston’s shirt hanging over the picture and plucked it away. Gaston covered himself involuntarily:

‘Don’t do that, you fool. Can’t you see I’m naked?’

Raoul looked at him in astonishment.

‘Mad … bleeding mad,’ he said aloud as he closed the door, and left Gaston to pull his nightshirt over his head.

Gaston sank back in the bed. This was one of the best billets he had had for a long time; it even had a feather mattress. But he would find no comfort in its softness tonight. The fever that he had been holding back all day was tightening its grip. He felt lightheaded and dizzy. As the room began to swim, he fixed his gaze on the girl in the portrait. Bent forward like that, it was almost as though she was reaching out to him …

‘Don’t go … stay with me!’ he whispered out loud, but his voice was lost in the long plunge down into his own private hell.

Raoul pressed a cloth, damp with vinegar, on Gaston’s burning forehead.

‘Bless you sir,’ he said soothingly, ‘they were troubled times indeed.’ Marcel and Pierre, overcome with guilt at having been the cause of their lieutenant’s sickness, stood and watched dejectedly. It was Gaston’s third day of fever. Suddenly the sick man sat up straight in bed. His eyes glowed like coals in their dark sockets.

‘Listen boys, listen. Those aren’t sea creatures, those are human voices, and they’re from the noyades. Listen … can’t
you hear?’ He held up a hand, commanding silence. ‘Now … “Vive le Roi”.’ He turned towards them, cupping his hand around his ear as if straining to hear. Then he shook his head sadly and whispered, ‘Rien … nothing … no more’. Raoul clicked his tongue as if he knew what Gaston was talking about. Then Gaston turned his head and vomited out in one long cruel retch into Raoul’s basin.

‘You’ll feel better after that,’ Raoul said approvingly.

The Lieutenant sank back on the pillows, and the boys stood by helplessly, as if their spurs were nailed to the floor. After a while Raoul placed his hand on Gaston’s forehead. He checked his palm. Then he hurriedly dried his hand on his trousers, and laid it back on his officer’s forehead. A broad grin cut his ugly little face.

‘He’s sweating lads, he’s bloody sweating! His fever’s broke.’ The battle-hardened little soldier-turned-servant banged his knee with his fist and then wiped his eyes on his sleeve. They all waited hopefully until at last Gaston’s breathing slowed into a deep natural sleep. The boys turned to go, but Marcel had a question for Raoul.

‘Raoul,’ he whispered. ‘What are the noyades?’

Raoul whipped around. ‘Don’t you ask that, boy. Not never, understand? It were in Nantes, before you joined. It cut us all up, him most of all.’

At last Gaston was dreaming normally. The horrors of his delirium were now replaced by delicious feelings of content. He was dreaming of home, a boy again, listening to the chatter and clatter
pickers setting out for the slopes. Perhaps he had been sick, because someone was sitting beside him, Mother probably, sewing. He would keep his eyes tight shut; she wouldn’t go away then.

He must have woken, because he heard Raoul’s voice complaining that it was snowing. This time his mind floated off to an earlier dawn and a younger boy, waking to find his room filled with a magical translucent light. The young Gaston lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering where the strange light was coming from. Then he hopped out of bed, threw the casement wide, and saw, for the first time in his life, a whole world turned white with snow. He looked up towards the vineyards that lined the shallow cup in which his village lay; to his amazement the vines had gone. But they couldn’t have disappeared! He searched the slopes until at last, where the sun was glancing low over the snow, he saw, like secret writing, soft lines of shadow, the regimented lines of vines beneath.

The scene changed, and the snow became one vast sheet of paper. Cadet Gaston Morteau was about to sit his written examination for the rank of sub-lieutenant. He appeared to be the only candidate. At a high desk in front of him sat his examiner, an ancient general, his sagging jowls giving him the look of a bloodhound.

‘Cadet Morteau,’ said the general with a sigh, as if Gaston was already a lost cause. ‘You are a dreamer and therefore quite unsuited to be an officer of Hussars.’ He laboriously placed his fingers together so that they formed a tent in front of his face. ‘At this point in time, Cadet Morteau, you are in a dream. In other words, you do not actually exist.’ Gaston was relieved to know it was just a dream, at least he could wake up. ‘For your examination today,’ the General continued, ‘your task will be to create the person you really are. Do I make myself clear?’

‘You mean, sir, the person who is dreaming my dream?’

‘Precisely. It is the reverse of your un-soldierly habit of constantly dreaming that you are someone who you are
not.’

‘But sir … what if I should wake up before I am finished?’ The General’s eyes glinted red and something that might have been a smile contorted his face.

‘Cadet Morteau … how can you wake up before you have created yourself? You have just one hour – starting now!’ He reached out for a huge hourglass that stood on the desk beside him and turned it with a thump. Gaston jumped; the sand was already cascading through the glass. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. Who am I? He looked around desperately for something to write with. It was all there: quill, penknife, ink, sand. He hacked at the quill, hoping that inspiration would come while he fashioned a nib, but his mind was as blank as the vast sheet of paper before him. He dipped his nib, but still couldn’t think of anything to say. He stared at the paper. Perhaps his story was there, hidden, like the vines beneath the snow. He tilted the sheet towards the light; but still there was nothing. The General coughed and tapped the hourglass.

Somewhere in the present-day building, someone, Raoul perhaps, dropped a saucepan.

Gaston opened his eyes and lay staring up at the ceiling. His first feeling was one of relief at having woken at all; he had thought that he was trapped in that dream forever. Out of the corner of his eye, he sensed that there was someone sitting beside him. He turned, expecting to see Raoul, but it was a woman … a girl really. She smiled at him. Her face seemed familiar, but he could not place her just at the moment. He felt his eyes closing, but then he remembered his dream, and opened them again quickly; he didn’t want to go back to that.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but do I know you?’

‘I’m Louise Eeden, the girl you rescued from the canal.’