Where the Light Falls(122)
Summer 1798
“You must eat, even if you have no appetite.” Jean-Luc sat beside Sophie on the small rusty bench in the courtyard. He was visiting her in the prison that had once housed her fiancé. The air was uncharacteristically chilly on this summer morning, with a biting damp that felt more like late winter. They sat in a small garden reserved for the female prisoners, their bench tucked beneath the limbs of an ancient plane tree. “Eat whatever food they bring you; do you understand?”
“I would hardly call what they offer us food,” Sophie said, trying to smile even though her eyes were devoid of mirth. She looked thin and pale, and her small frame shivered more than it should have, even in the damp morning air. Jean-Luc peeled off his coat and draped it over her slumped shoulders.
“All the same, you must force yourself to eat. You must keep up your health. For when you are set free.”
Sophie exhaled a short, apathetic laugh. Lifting her gaze from the puddled ground, she looked up at him, her eyes encased in shadow. “Have you found out anything more?”
Jean-Luc sighed, breaking from her stare. “Seems the only things they have on you are some vague conspiracy charges of consorting with a ‘criminal’ and eluding your guards and captors.”
“I hadn’t even been arrested or charged! I was just trying to avoid my uncle because I know what he is capable of.”
“On technical grounds your relations with André at that time can be construed as ‘criminal.’ But thankfully, according to the recent laws, your offense is not a capital one. I promised you, and I hold to it: I will do everything in my power to get you out of here.” Jean-Luc paused, knitting his hands together in his lap. “Have you given any further thought to what I proposed?”
Sophie let her eyes slide away as she shook her head, a barely perceptible gesture.
“Come now, Sophie, I think it might be our best chance. Please allow me to write to your uncle.”
“I told you—I suspect that he has as much to do with my being in here as that old snake, Guillaume Lazare. Who else would be charging me with ‘eluding guards’? Why, he’s the very man who chased me from the city.”
Jean-Luc thought about this, sighing. The last couple of months had been the strangest and most troubling time since the Terror and the trials of General Kellermann and André. His mind ceaselessly returned to that night when Guillaume Lazare had appeared outside his door—the same night that Mathieu had gone missing. How the old man had demanded that Jean-Luc turn in Sophie, and how Sophie had willingly gone, exchanging herself for the little boy.
And now, weeks later, Sophie still sat in prison, enduring the stifling, pestilent-ridden summer, as neither she nor Jean-Luc came any closer to understanding how or why they had become entangled in this strange game of cat and mouse with Guillaume Lazare.
Jean-Luc stared past the prison walls and up at the patch of visible sky, closing his eyes for a moment. “It’s likely, I suspect, that your uncle was angry with you for defying him, and he hoped to teach you a lesson. I think you’ve learned it well enough.” He brought his eyes down and looked back at Sophie.
“I am certain that he wants me locked up in here until he returns home from…wherever it is. Where is the army now? Italy?”
“Somewhere in the Mediterranean, from what I’ve read, and heading toward Egypt. Seems Bonaparte wants to make a play for Cairo.”
Sophie’s entire face sagged. “Cairo? But that’s an entire world away. Even farther than Malta. Is André there as well?”
Jean-Luc reached for her hand, taking it in his. Overhead the sun slipped behind a cloud, casting a pall over the courtyard that added to Jean-Luc’s sense of hopelessness. Neither of them had heard from André in many months, but he forced a buoyant tone as he answered: “I’ve reason to believe he is with that army, yes. Or at least was nearby when they departed from Toulon and Marseille.”
“How can you be sure he is safe?”
Jean-Luc thought about this, knowing that there was no honest way to answer her. “I cannot be completely certain, but none of the letters I’ve sent to him have been returned. And I always addressed them to the port of call at Toulon, where a greedy Temple prison guard tracked him for me, in exchange for a fee.”
“Have you heard any news of his mother?” Sophie asked. Jean-Luc felt heavy at the question—he had put off telling Sophie, wanting to keep her spirits lifted. But perhaps it was time she knew—perhaps it would give her the determination she seemed to be losing.
“My contacts in London have replied, yes.”