Where the Light Falls(88)
Sophie’s eyes were wide with terror but dry of tears. With a deep exhale, she nodded, resolved.
“Thank you, brother.” André pulled Remy into a hug, whispering into his ear. “We were supposed to be married today. I was going to come and ask you to stand up as our witness.”
Remy pulled back, looking into his brother’s face, the light blue of his own eyes brightening at André’s news. “If I’d have known that I’d be carrying the ring, I would have taken better care of my hand.”
They shared a brief, sorrowful laugh, and the three of them stood in silence for a moment. Remy whispered into his brother’s ear: “I’ll send word as soon as we’ve found a place in the country for her to hide. I promise that I will do my best.”
“You’re a good man.”
“Not half the man you are, André. I think it was she who once told me that.” Turning back toward Sophie, Remy tried to interject some levity into his tone. “Am I remembering that correctly?”
“That was not quite what I said.” Sophie sighed, stepping forward toward André. Remy turned away and busied himself with packing a small satchel while Sophie and André stood together, clinging to each other. After a hug that felt too short by a lifetime, they separated.
“What will happen to you?” she asked.
“I will be all right.”
“No, really. If this is our last chance to speak for a while, I want the truth.”
“I will be arrested,” André answered. “But I should be allowed a trial. I am an officer in the Army of the Republic, after all. They will grant me that.”
“What good is a trial?” Sophie asked, her voice drained of hope; she knew what a trial most likely meant.
“Sophie, my love, I’ve done nothing wrong. On what charges can they convict me?”
“But who will make them see that? If you’re denounced by my uncle, who would be willing to defend you in a trial?”
André paused, trying to think of something to ease her mind, and then it occurred to him. “Jean-Luc St. Clair. I will ask him to represent me.”
Sophie nodded, lowering her eyes.
“Sophie?” André tucked his fingers under her chin and tilted her face upward toward his own. “I still intend to marry you, you know.”
“Good,” Sophie answered. Her blue eyes glowed with an intense fire, but she blinked her lashes, keeping the tears at bay. “Don’t keep me waiting too long.”
The sun set over the city, and Remy made his way to the western barrier, with Sophie tucked out of sight under four half-empty bags of gunpowder. Across the city, General Nicolai Murat and a handful of guardsmen marched into Sophie’s courtyard. Their boots thumped loudly as they climbed the steps to the second floor. Two of them carried torches. No one answered the door when they banged, so Murat ordered them to pound through the lock. They found André dressed in his uniform, his pistol holstered and unloaded. Parsy stepped with them into the drawing room, her eyes puffy and apologetic as André beheld her.
“There he is.” Murat ordered the men to bind André in irons, and he did not protest. “You are under arrest, André de Valière.” Murat stared André squarely in the face, the words sliding from his thin lips like a vengeful serpent.
“On what charges?” André tried not to wince as the men clawed and pinched the skin of his wrists into the manacles.
“I denounce you as an enemy of the Republic. You have no right to ask me any questions.”
Murat crossed the room in two strides, his cavalry saber lifted, and André thought, with a brief flash of incredulity, that the man might run him through right where he stood. But then the hilt of the sword swung down swiftly across the side of André’s head, and his vision went dark.
Fall 1794
Jean-Luc St. Clair sat in his Right Bank office late into the night, preparing his opening statement for the case of André Valière, when a knock on the door pulled his focus upward. “Yes?”
The office errand boy peeked his face in. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. Late evening papers.”
“Bring them here.” Jean-Luc waved the boy in. “I need a break from this damned trial, anyway. Though, of course, reading the news is hardly the medicine to lift one’s spirits these days.”
The office boy nodded agreeably, though Jean-Luc suspected that he had little idea of what Jean-Luc spoke about. “Thank you, little lad. Now, go home to your family. And be careful on the streets—no side alleys, you hear?” Jean-Luc tossed the boy a coin and turned to the papers, scanning the sprawl of calamitous headlines.