Where the Light Falls(86)

Sophie kissed him and then asked Parsy to call for the carriage to take her across the Seine. Her uncle had sent a vague message inquiring after Sophie’s health, but she and André had both wondered what Murat really wanted with her.

André waited in her rooms as the hour approached three o’clock. The mobs on the island had thinned as most people had made their way, en masse, across the Seine toward the Right Bank and La Place de la Révolution. The plan was that as soon as Sophie returned, she and André would take advantage of the distraction to hurry to the Palais de Justice to be married.

André felt besieged by warring emotions as he waited for Sophie on that sweltering afternoon. At the fore, he felt anger, but it went beyond that. Rage was what he felt—rage consuming his spirit, roiling within. As he replayed the scenes from the trial, he felt the overwhelming desire to throttle Murat, Lazare, and all of the others who had turned their sinister designs on Kellermann.

His rage was rivaled in its intensity only by a heavy sadness: a sense of profound and bottomless grief over losing a mentor like Kellermann, even a friend. Over the French army losing such a leader. Over the entire French nation losing such a man. But as he plumbed this grief, he found something else—something inescapable and even more unnerving: guilt. Guilt because of the part he himself had played, however unintentionally, in the man’s conviction. He hadn’t been able to save his hero, just as he hadn’t been able to save his own father. And yet here he was, still living. Why did he get to continue on?

“You’ll drive yourself mad. You must stop this, André.” Jean-Luc, his own soul haggard following the court’s verdict, had pulled André aside to tell him not to blame himself.

“But it was my testimony—”

“His guilt had been determined before you spoke a word. You did your best.”

André looked at the lawyer, knowing that the man would certainly not heed his own advice; Jean-Luc would blame himself, even though it was he who had done everything he could. And had nearly succeeded. No, André thought, it was nobody’s fault but his own. He, who had been unable to prevent his own father’s execution, now had had to look on uselessly as a hero was marched to his death. And this time, he had been in some position, however small, to prevent it. But he had spoiled even that opportunity.

He sat alone in Sophie’s empty apartment, running his hand through his already disheveled hair, his stomach in a tangle of grief and anguish.

And yet, in spite of everything, a part of André would not give itself wholly over to despair; there remained an inner recess in which lurked the vague yet inextinguishable embers of joy. Today was, after all, the day that he was to marry Sophie de Vincennes. In any other set of circumstances, such an event would surely overpower every other consideration, and some part of him still clung now to that happiness, to the hope of what she meant to him. It was she, after all, who had insisted that today be the day they follow through on their plan to join their lives together.

But now it was nearly three o’clock, the hour of the day’s execution, and Sophie had not returned. And so another emotion entered into his mood: unease. What was taking her so long? André began to pace the room, his sense of dread growing heavier with each minute that passed.

“Parsy?” André called for the maid. He listened, and, hearing no response, opened the door and glanced into the corridor, but there was no sign of the older woman.

Several minutes later, a flurry of footsteps sounded from the hall outside the apartment and in flew Sophie, her eyes wild and her breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps. She still wore her cloak, which she did not shed as she ran toward him, but she had lost a glove. “André!”

“What is it?” He stood up, alarmed by her entrance and the shrill tone of her voice.

“He knows! He knows about us!” Sophie panted so violently that André wasn’t certain he had heard her correctly.

“Who knows? Your uncle?”

Sophie nodded. “He knows you’re here. That we are planning to be married today. Everything.”

“But how?”

Sophie glanced around the room as if to ensure that they were alone. “Parsy,” she whispered.

“Parsy?” André repeated the name, incredulous. He’d barely heard the woman speak five words in all of his visits to Sophie’s apartment.

“We must leave at once! He’s coming!” Sophie turned, running to a trunk in the corner of the room into which she began to throw gowns, scarves, and shoes with reckless haste.

“Where is he now?” André approached her.