“You won’t find your brother in Le Mans,” he replied. “The citoyen Busson du Charme will have left with the rest of the National Guard to defend the road to la Flèche. They had their orders at midday, just as we did.”
To retreat now was impossible. The bleak countryside beyond the Huisne whence we had come, lashed with rain, gray in the gathering dusk, decided me. Also our dispirited horse, sagging between the shafts.
“We’ll take our chance, citoyen,” I said to Monsieur Roger. “Good luck to you and your men.”
He saluted gravely and waved us on, and we entered a dead city, the houses shuttered, not a soul out in the streets. The hotel where we usually baited the horse was barricaded like the rest, and it was only after continued knocking that the landlord came, thinking we were the guard. Although he knew me, and the horse and carriole, he would not have stabled either had I not paid him triple his usual charge.
“If the brigands come, citoyenne, they’ll burn the city down, you know that, don’t you?” he said to me, on parting, and he showed me a pair of loaded pistols with which, so he assured me, he would shoot his wife and children rather than that they should fall into the hands of the Vendeans.
Marcel and I hurried through the streets to the quarter where Pierre lived, near the church of St. Pavin. As we walked, to be drenched by the rain within five minutes, I kept thinking of François and his brother, sitting contentedly at home at le Chesne-Bidault, knowing nothing of our plight. I thought of my baby too, sleeping peacefully in her cradle, and of poor Marcel’s wife and children.
“I’m sorry, Marcel,” I said to him, “you have me to blame for this adventure, no one else.”
“Don’t worry, citoyenne,” he answered me. “The brigands may never come, and if they do we’ll answer them with these.”
He carried our two muskets over his shoulder, and I remembered the eighty thousand Vendeans said to be starving in la Flèche.
Pierre’s house was shuttered and barred like its neighbors, but here I had only to give two double knocks in quick succession, an old childhood signal, for the door to be opened forthwith and Edmé to be standing there. She might have been Michel in miniature, her brown hair ruffled, her eyes suspicious, a pistol in her hand which I had no doubt was loaded. At sight of me she put it down, and flung her arms about me.
“Sophie… Oh, Sophie…”
We clung to each other for a moment, and I heard my sister-in-law’s anxious voice calling from the room beyond, “Who is it?” One of the younger boys was crying, a dog was barking, and I could imagine the pandemonium within.
I explained everything to Edmé in a moment, there in the entrance, then Marcel helped her bolt and bar the door once more.
“Pierre went off with the National Guard at noon,” she said. “We haven’t seen him since. He said to me ‘Look after Marie and the children,’ and that’s what I’ve done. We have food enough in the house for three or four days. If the brigands come, I’m ready for them.”
She glanced at the muskets that Marcel had placed beside the door.
“Now we are well armed,” she added, and, smiling at Marcel, “Do you mind serving under my command, citoyen?”
He was a lanky fellow of six foot or more, and he looked down at her sheepishly.
“You have only to give your orders, citoyenne,” he answered.
I was reminded of our childhood at la Pierre, and how Edmé had preferred boys’ games to dolls, forever asking Michel to shape swords and daggers. The chance to play the man had come for her at last.
“Troops cannot fight on an empty stomach,” she said. “You’d both better come to the kitchen and fall to. It may have been foolish of you to leave le Chesne-Bidault, but I’ll tell you one thing… I’m glad of reinforcements.”
The boys now came running through from the inner room, Emile, the eldest, now thirteen, the youngest, Pierre-François, barely six, followed by a terrier bitch and a litter of puppies. My sister-in-law brought up the rear with the elderly widow and her daughter, permanent fixtures in this haphazard household, peering over her shoulder. I did not wonder that Edmé was glad of reinforcements. Her small community needed some defense.
We ate as best we could, bombarded on all sides by questions, none of which we could answer. The Vendeans were at la Flèche, that was all we knew. Whether they would now strike north, east, or west, nobody could say.
“One thing is certain,” said Edmé. “If they try to take Le Mans, the city is virtually undefended. We have one battalion of Valenciennes quartered here, a detachment of cavalry, and our own National Guard; and they are now, all of them, somewhere on the road between the city and la Flèche.”
This she told me later, when we were preparing for bed. She did not wish to alarm Pierre’s wife, or the two boarders. She made me sleep on her bed, and she herself lay fully dressed on a mattress by the door. Marcel had elected to sleep in the entrance hall on a second mattress.
“If anything happens,” said Edmé, “he and I are both prepared.”
I saw she had a loaded musket beside her, and I had as much confidence in her capabilities to defend us as I would have done in Pierre himself.
We awoke to the same bleak sky and driving rain, and after breakfasting—eating as little as possible to save our rations—we sent Marcel out into the town to hear the latest news. He was gone more than an hour, and when he returned we could see at once by his face that the news was grave.
“The mayor and the municipality have already left for Chartres,” he said. “All the public officials have gone with them, taking money, documents, papers, whatever mustn’t fall into rebel hands. They’ve taken their families with them too. Whoever can find transport to get away has gone.”
His words produced in me the old panic of ’89. Then, the brigands had been legendary. Now they were real, not a half day’s march from Le Mans.
“How many can the carriole hold?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “I called there not twenty minutes since, citoyenne,” he answered. “The place was empty, and the stable too. That scoundrel of a landlord has taken carriole and horse to save himself and his family.”
I turned desperately to Edmé. “What are we going to do?” I asked her.
She folded her arms and stood there, watching me.
“There’s only one thing we can do,” she answered. “Stay here, and fight it out.”
Marcel moistened his lips with his tongue. I don’t know who felt the more desperate, he or I.
“They were saying in the place des Halles that if the brigands enter the city no harm will come to those who don’t resist them, citoyenne,” he said. “It’s food they want, nothing else. Women and children won’t be made to suffer. They may take the men, though, and hang every one of them.”
Edmé and I knew what he was after. He wanted permission to leave. He could still get away alone, and on foot. If he stayed with us, he might lose his life.
“Do as you wish, citoyen,” said Edmé. “You don’t belong here anyway. It’s for the citoyenne Duval to say, not me.”
I thought of the family waiting for him at le Chesne-Bidault, and I had not the heart to ask him to stay, though it meant leaving us defenseless.
“Go quickly, Marcel,” I said. “If you reach home safely… you know what to tell them. Here, take your musket.”
He shook his head. “I can travel quicker without it, citoyenne,” he replied, and, bending low over my hands, he was gone the next moment.
“He meant,” said Edmé, barring the door, “that he can run the faster. Are all the workmen at the foundry as chickenhearted? If so, the place has changed. Can you fire a musket, Sophie?”
“No,” I told her truthfully.
“Then I shall use the one and keep the second in reserve. Emile is old enough to use the pistol.” She shouted for her nephew.
I had one of those strange aberrations of the mind when nothing that is happening seems true, and every action the sequence in a dream. I w
atched Edmé post the thirteen-year-old Emile at an upper window with the loaded pistol, while she herself, the muskets at her side, watched by the window of an adjoining room. Marie, the younger boys, the widow, and her daughter were all locked up in the widow’s apartment at the back of the house. The window there looked out upon rooftops but no street. It was the safest place.
“If they break down the door,” said Edmé, “we can defend the stairs.”
At this moment at le Chesne-Bidault Madame Verdelet would be giving Zoë Suzanne her mid-morning feed, lifting her from her cradle, propping her up in her high chair in the kitchen. Jacques Duval would be riding to Mondoubleau, perhaps, for news, and François employing the few men left about the foundry.
Just before midday I went down to the kitchen and prepared a meal which I carried up to the family in the back room. They had pushed the bed against the wall to give more floor space for the children’s play. Marie, my sister-in-law, was mending the boys’ socks. The widow was reading and her daughter threading beads on a string to amuse the youngest child. It was a calm, domestic scene, and the unusual peace more shocking to me than if the children had been crying and the others had shown fear.
I left them with their food and locked the door. Then I took a bowl of soup to Emile and a loaf of bread, which he ate as if half-starved.
“When will the brigands come?” he asked. “I want to fire this pistol.”
The numb dream state that had been mine for the past few hours suddenly left me. What was happening was real. Edmé turned from her window on the street and looked at me.
“I don’t want anything to eat,” she said, “I’m not hungry.”
Outside it was raining still.
16
I was sitting at the top of the stairs, resting my head against the baluster, when Emile called out, “There are some strange-looking people in the street. Some men who look like peasants, wearing sabots, and a lot of women, one of them with a baby. I think they must be lost.”
I had been dozing, but his words startled me to action. I heard Edmé fumble with her musket, and I ran into Emile’s room and stood beside him, peering through the chink of the shutters down into the street. When I saw them I knew. The Vendeans had entered the city. Here were some of the stragglers, who had found their way into our street, and were staring up at the houses for signs of life.
Instinct made me pull Emile back from the window.
“Stay quiet,” I said, “don’t let them see you.”
He looked at me, puzzled, then suddenly he understood.
“Those ragged people down there?” he asked. “Are they the brigands?”
“Yes,” I said. “Perhaps they’ll go away. Keep still.”
Edmé had crept into the room to join us. She had her musket with her. I questioned her with my eyes, and she nodded back at me.
“I won’t fire,” she said, “not unless we’re attacked.”
The three of us stood shoulder to shoulder looking down into the street. The first stragglers had gone ahead, and now others were coming, twenty, thirty, forty. Emile was counting them under his breath. They were not marching, there was no sort of order, these could not be the army proper, who would have gone by the main streets to the place des Halles. These were the followers-on, the rabble.
Now the numbers were growing larger, with more men than women, many of them armed with muskets and pikes, some barefoot but most in sabots. Some of them were wounded, and were supported by their fellows. Nearly all of them were ragged, emaciated, white with exhaustion, soaked and grimy with the mud and the rain.
I do not know what I had expected, or Edmé and Emile either. The beating of drums, perhaps, firing, shouting, singing, the triumphant entry of a victorious army. Anything but silence, the slow clatter of sabots on the cobbles and the silence. The silence was the worst of all.
“What are they looking for? Where are they all going?” whispered Emile.
We did not answer him. There was no answer to give. Like ghosts of dead men they passed beneath our windows and out of sight along the street, and as they passed more took their place, and then in the midst of them another band of women, and some half-dozen whimpering children.
“There won’t be enough to feed them,” said Edmé, “not in all Le Mans.”
I noticed then that she had put down her musket. It was resting against the wall. The clock in the entrance below struck four.
“It will soon be dark,” said Emile. “Where will all these people go?”
Suddenly we heard a clatter of hoofs, and shouting, and what appeared to be a small body of cavalry came down the street, led by an officer. He wore the hated white cockade in his hat and a white sash round his waist, and flourished a saber in his hand. He yelled some order to the straggling wretches ahead, who turned and stared at him. He must have spoken to them in patois; we could not understand a word of it, but we could see by the way he pointed with his saber that he was directing them to the houses opposite.
Some of the people, dazed but obedient, began hammering at the doors. No one, as yet, touched ours. Another body of men, armed and on foot, came down the street. The mounted officer, at sight of them, shouted a command, directing them to the houses, and they scattered, taking a house apiece, hammering on the door, pushing the stragglers away. One of them came and knocked on our door too.
Then the mounted officer, raising himself and standing in his stirrups, shouted aloud, for all of us to hear.
“Not one of you who opens his door will be molested,” he called. “There are some eighty thousand of us here in your city, and we must be fed and housed. Anyone who does not open his door will have that door marked, and the house burned down within the hour. It is for you to decide.”
He paused a moment, then, signaling to the mounted troops behind him, clattered off down the street. The armed foot soldiers and the peasants in the street went on knocking at the houses.
“What shall we do?” asked Edmé.
She had reverted to her role of younger sister. I watched the houses opposite. One of our neighbors had opened the door, and three wounded men were being carried inside. Another door opened. One of the armed soldiers shouted to a woman with two children, and motioned her inside.
“If we don’t open,” I said to Edmé, “they’ll mark the door and come back and burn the house.”
“It could have been a threat,” she answered. “They can’t spare the time to go round marking every door.”
We waited. More and more of them were coming down the street, and since the officer had passed, giving his orders to knock upon the doors, the silence had been broken. They were now calling and shouting to one another in confusion, and it was getting darker as each moment passed.
“I’ll go down,” I said. “I’ll go down and open the door.”
Neither my sister nor my nephew answered me. I went downstairs and unbolted the door. There were some half dozen of them waiting, peasants by the look of them, and three women and two children, and another woman carrying a baby. One of the men was armed with a musket, the rest with pikes. The man with the musket asked me a question—he spoke so broadly that I couldn’t understand him, but I caught the word “rooms.” Could it be that he wanted to know how many rooms there were in the house?
“Six,” I said, “we have six rooms above, and two below. Eight in all.” I held up my fingers. I might have been the patron of a hotel touting for custom.
“Go on… go on…” he cried to those about him, driving them ahead, and they filed into the house, the women and the other peasants. Following them was a man who seemed to have but half a leg; he was carried by two others who, though they walked, looked almost as ill as he.
“That’s it,” said the peasant with the musket, prodding his fellows like so many cattle, “that’s it… that’s it…” and he pushed them forward to the salon and to Pierre’s small library that opened out of it.
“They’ll fix themselves,” he said to me, “they’ll need be
dding…”
So much I understood, more from his gestures than his speech, and he pointed to his mouth and rubbed his belly.
“They’re hungry. Doubled-up. What with that, and the sickness…” He grinned, showing toothless gums. “All day on the road,” he said. “No good. Everybody tired.”
The man with half a leg was being stretched out on Marie’s settee by his two companions. The women had pushed past me to the kitchen and were opening the cupboards. “That’s it, that’s it…” repeated the man with the musket. “Someone will be along directly to see to the wounded man.” He went out into the street, slamming the door behind him.
Edmé came down the stairs, followed by Emile. “How many are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I haven’t counted.”
We looked into the salon, and there were more than I thought. Eight men, one with the injured leg, and two who seemed sick. One of these was already grasping his stomach and retching. The stench coming from him was appalling.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Emile. “Is he going to die?”
The other sick man raised his head and stared at us.
“It’s the sickness,” he said, “half the army has it. We caught it in the north, in Normandy. The food and wine there poisoned us.”
He seemed more educated than the others, and spoke a French I understood.
“It’s dysentery,” said Edmé. “Pierre warned us about it.”
I looked at her, aghast. “We’ll have to put them in a room apart,” I said. “They had better go in the boys’ room upstairs.”
I bent down to the man whose French I understood.
“Follow me,” I said. “You shall have a room to yourselves.”
Once again I reminded myself of some hotel patron, and a wild desire to laugh rose in me, instantly checked when I perceived the full state of the man with dysentery, whom his companion was helping from the floor. He had been lying, poor wretch, in his own filth all about him, and was too weak to walk.
“It’s no use,” said his companion, “he’s too ill to move. If we could have the room yonder.” He jerked his head at Pierre’s library, and began to drag the sick man to it.