The Woman Who Rode the Wind
“But you lived,” said Alain.
“Yes,” said Louise, looking at him. “We lived.”
“This opera is a long one,” said Harding.
“But my opera is even longer,” said Louise with a small smile. “Are you sure you want to hear the rest of it?”
“Yes,” said Mary Ann. “I do.”
“I gave birth to Alain on an old rotting prison ship as it sailed to New Caledonia. When it arrived, we were given a cottage on the shore of Nouméa in the midst of the penal colony. All around us were volcanoes. Gray clouds of locusts would descend on the island once a year and eat everything but the gum trees. Cyclones would whirl in from the ocean, destroy our grass huts and send the tin roofs flapping off like butterflies.
“But life could also be good. Crops grew easily, and there was plenty to eat, even when the bread ration was cut. Everyone kept a garden and a hen house. The fruits of the forest, the tomatoes and figs, mulberries and yellow plums, were smaller than the European kind, but sweeter.
“When Alain grew old enough to walk, he and I would climb the western slope of the forest overlooking the colony. We would play hide and seek on the enormous rocks that had collapsed like ruined fortresses, and watch the gypsy cormorants swoop and soar over the island. ‘Look out there,’ I would tell him. ‘The whole world is yours. Reach out and take it.’
“When Alain’s time came for school, I knew that I would have to teach him myself. So I started a school, and taught the black Kanaka children of the neighboring village too. Every morning the children and I would go to the beach and find a place where the tide had washed the sand smooth so we could practice our sums and letters. I found a broken piano with hammers missing, and taught them to play by humming the note when they struck a dead key.
“Finally, 10 years later, the French government declared an amnesty for all the remaining Communards and we were sent home.”
“What about your school?” asked Mary Ann.
Louise laughed bitterly. “What is a school without children? The French brought their cattle to New Caledonia, the cattle brought ticks, and each year the tick fever killed more of the Kanaka children. Finally there were none left.”
She stopped. “And that is the end of my story.”
Harding winced. “Couldn’t you give it a happy ending?”
“But I did.” She smiled and touched Alain on the shoulder. “This is my happy ending.”
“You must hate the Germans,” said Harding.
“I do not love the Germans. But I reserve my hatred for the betrayers of my country, the rich men like Thiers and Meurthe who sat on the tribunal that terrible day at the crematorium and signed the death warrants...or sent us off to prison.”
“Meurthe?” Mary Ann blurted out. She couldn’t believe that the man she had met at the Eiffel Tower was capable of that.
“Yes, Paul Meurthe. He was the father of the one who is offering the prize.”
“They’re coming out now,” said Alain, his eyes on the marble stairs of the opera house.
A forest of top hats appeared at the door as men in evening dress trooped down the steps, sweating heavily, a few even removing their coats. Barkers, who had waited all night for this moment, hailed cabs for the very rich, then waited with their hand out for a tip. Drivers of the rakish black landaus for the wealthiest families butted into the crowd, calling out, “You’re blocking my way, Rothschild!” or “Move the hell over, Wagram!” Women, who had mercifully loosened the stays of their corsets during the performance, now adjusted themselves, hoping everything was in its proper place.
Mary Ann watched the tired faces and the weary bodies stuffed into their expensive clothes as they made their way across the square.
Harding nudged her. “Louise is right,” he whispered. “This is quite a show. The rich inconveniencing themselves to be seen by the other rich.”
And, at the far end of the crowd, came Henri Meurthe and his daughter Yvette. She looked cool and unruffled. Even at this hour she still turned heads as she stood there, poised in the gaslight underneath the stone wings of an angel’s statue. But Yvette was not looking at the men in their starched shirts with diamond stud pins winking from their cravats. She was looking across the square—where Alain sat.
“Father,” she told him, “some friends of mine are meeting at Maxim’s shortly. You take the carriage and I’ll go down the block and meet them.”
“But the hour is late,” Meurthe protested, “and Maxim’s is a mile away. I will give you the carriage.”
Yvette kissed him on the cheek. It was a kiss of dismissal. “Thank you, Papa, but it is only a short walk down the Boulevard des Capucines. I need the air.”
“Of course,” said Meurthe. “Wherever you want to go.” She wanted to go past the Café de la Paix.
Harding watched as Yvette went by. It was impossible not to. He had been a connoisseur of women once; painted them, made love to them, and appreciated them, clothed or unclothed.
Yvette’s gown of water silk was as intimate as a good lover. It showed off every feature, from her high breasts to her famous dance hall legs. Its frilly satin bottom shimmied back and forth along the pavement as she walked, making a rustling frou-frou sound that was almost hypnotic.
The way she kept her hand on it, pulling it up to tighten around her hips and thighs, was seductive in itself. Her hobble skirt made walking difficult, but emphasized those lovely feminine curves. By taking small steps, she seemed to glide, while her body undulated in a particularly sinuous way. As an artist it reminded him of a birch tree in an autumn breeze. But as a man, it was simply raw temptation.
As she passed, Yvette threw her head back just slightly and gave Alain a look—flaring green eyes that burned right through and came out the other side—the captivating look that a knowledgeable woman can give a man when she knows his eyes are upon her.
Harding saw everything. He saw Louise, her face wreathed in shadow but her eyes as watchful as a lookout. He saw pretty, naive Mary Ann, so in love with Alain, trying to hide her feelings.
And he saw Yvette. Oh yes, he saw Yvette. Everyone on the boulevard that night saw Yvette as she walked that walk.
And Harding knew that, for one of these three women, the story would have no happy ending.
Chapter Fourteen: Conspiracy on the Canal—June 6
Alain’s speech was a tripwire that set off an explosion.
It electrified Paris. By morning, a million people had heard about it; everyone with his own flying machine conquering stars, immortal. The boule players, the brokers on the floor of the Bourse, even the men walking their dogs on Boulevard Saint-Michel could talk of nothing else. Alain was cheered wherever he went.
But some were not cheering. To the wealthy and powerful men all over Paris, Alain’s ideas about flight smelled of anarchy. President Auguste Pouchet’s phone began to ring before he awoke, and all the callers said the same thing. “Shut Chevrier up.”
Pouchet also wanted to roast Chevrier on a very hot spit. Twice this mere army captain had humiliated him. Captain? That was it. He called the Minister of War, who called the General-in-Chief, who called Alain’s superior officer, Major Vitary, and ordered him to keep Chevrier quiet.
Major Vitary apologized profusely. He too hated Chevrier. But he reminded his superiors that they had ordered Alain to resign from the army when he entered the contest. That way, if he lost, there would be no disgrace to the French military; he had been a civilian all the time. If he won, the resignation would conveniently be forgotten. Pouchet, who had been trying to cover all bets, now found himself outpointed.
Very well, thought the President, there’s another way. He called Henri Meurthe.
“Use your personal influence to silence him,” Pouchet told Meurthe.
Meurthe shook his head at the angry voice in the knob-shaped receiver. “I only care if he flies, not what he says,” Meurthe told Pouchet. Talking like a father to his son, Meurthe tried to calm the French President.
“Auguste,” he said, “I can make no promises. He does not respect you and he hates me. But Alain Chevrier is also a patriot. He will fly...and he will win the prize.”
“He’d better,” shouted Pouchet. “If he fails, and the Germans win, the government could fall. You remember what happened last time? Barricades in the streets. The city in flames. All that will be on your head,” his voice crackled over the phone. “On your head!”
Pouchet slammed down the receiver.
Henri Meurthe shook his head. He had never before seen his friend so near the breaking point, even during the dark days of the Dreyfus scandal. Pouchet had a reputation as a windbag who tried too hard to be liked. But he also had a hard edge.
A year ago, when the anarchists were setting off nail bombs all over Paris, he signed the orders executing two of them. Then he stood by the guillotine with Monsieur le Paris, the top-hatted executioner, and watched the blade come down. He was splashed by blood when their heads dropped into the basket, but never did he flinch.
* * *
Across the field from Alain’s workshop in Saint-Cloud was one of Paris’s pissotieres, those ugly cast-iron green structures where men could stand and relieve themselves in a trough. The pissotiere reeked of acrid ammonia, but it was the one place that was truly democratic. As animals come to a truce at the waterhole, so do men at urinals.
Guillaume LeRond had just stepped up to the trough after finishing his day’s work when his instincts warned him that something was about to happen. Two men came up to the urinal on either side of him. At first he felt fear, then he realized that he knew the one on the left. It was Fabian Bouchard, a wealthy member of the Aéro Club. The other was a striking-looking stranger.
“Guillaume,” said Bouchard, “may we talk to you?”
LeRond was flattered. “Of course,” he said. “I was only going back to my room.”
“Then we would be honored to walk with you,” said Bouchard.
They strolled through the city, three abreast, with the stranger on one side and Bouchard on the other, almost as if he were a fish in a net.
“We are very concerned about Chevrier,” Bouchard said.
“As am I,” LeRond admitted.
They walked on the grass that lined the middle of the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. A legless mutilé on a cart pushed his way toward them and held out his tin cup. The stranger, annoyed at the interruption, casually gave the beggar a kick, spilling his cart and coins onto the street.
Bouchard paused. “If it becomes necessary to eliminate Chevrier—in one way or another—could you take over the project?”
Guillaume stared at them, open-mouthed. He never thought that such an opportunity would come along.
“Don’t look so surprised, LeRond,” said Bouchard. “We at the Aéro Club are aware of your work. We know how good it is. And we know how dangerous Chevrier can be. Show him,” Bouchard ordered the other man.
They were walking along the Canal Saint-Martin now. The fishermen with their 15-foot poles watched them pass. Ducks bobbed in the water.
The stranger pulled a letter out of his pocket and handed it to Guillaume. “Wait until you see this,” said Bouchard.
They were walking across one of the arched bridges over the canal and Guillaume paused at the top to read it. It was a letter from Chevrier to Emile Zola, the novelist who had done so much damage to the military—to everything Guillaume believed in—with his defense of the traitor, Dreyfus. Chevrier was offering to take his airship and use it to bomb Paris!
Chevrier a traitor? LeRond didn’t like the man, but he couldn’t believe...yet here were all sorts of details about the airship project that no one else could know: the number of gas cells, the amount of hydrogen, even the names of those involved, including his own! And Chevrier’s signature at the bottom. Authentic! He had seen it many times.
The stranger took the letter gently from LeRond’s shaking hands.
“Go home,” Bouchard said softly, “and think about what we’ve said. But don’t tell anyone else, especially not Chevrier.”
LeRond walked off the bridge, trembling but proud. His talent had finally been recognized. And Chevrier, the one who had set himself up to be better than his fellow officers? Well, LeRond just hoped that he would be there when Bouchard and the others came to take Chevrier away.
Bouchard and the stranger waited at the top of the bridge until LeRond walked away into the night. Then Bouchard turned to his partner.
“Did we do well?” he asked.
“Very well,” said Maximilian. “A good seduction must always be accomplished slowly and with infinite care. And I am grateful for the information about Chevrier’s dirigible.”
Then he took the letter and, very slowly, shredded it before throwing it into the water. He shook his head in wonder at his own brilliance. It was amazing what a little forgery could do.
Chapter Fifteen: Return of the Captain—June 9
God, it was ugly, she thought.
The top of the boat had now been flattened out, and a device that looked like a Texas oil derrick had been installed in the back. On top of it was a huge lead weight, so heavy that it made the Bethanie stick up in front. It was part of the catapult, and when that weight dropped it would send the aeroplane down a 30-yard railroad track, fling it into the air 20 feet above the water, and it would fly.
Or so they hoped.
At the back end of the boat, what appeared to be a curved black cigar was sticking out at an odd angle. It was the exhaust pipe for the steam engine, which had been run from front to back inside the boat to avoid contact with the plane or catapult. But the connections were loose. The inside of the cabin was covered with black soot. Passersby, who looked at the Bethanie and shook their heads at the outside of the weird ship, should see the inside, she said to herself. It was 10 times worse. Here, in the heart of the most beautiful city in the world, they had created their own sweatshop, their own slum.
In the dirty bowels of the boat, they all worked and sweated and hated each other; Harding, Bishop, Mary Ann and two dockyard goons brought along by Bishop. They were still eating from the Limoges china that the French captain and his wife had left, but most of it had been smashed. The two hired men practiced throwing it at each other. The same was true with the furniture. Soon they would be eating on the floor, she thought.
As the aeroplane was built below deck, there was less and less room for them. Ever more space was taken up by the two wings, the engine and propeller, struts, fuselage, and pontoons, so that in case the aeroplane fell into the Seine it would float and could be fished out.
Things got even tighter when Bishop decided the work was not going fast enough, and built an apartment for himself on board, even though he already had a railroad car to live in just outside the Gare du Nord train station.
On the aeroplane the pilot would lie prone, facing forward in a harness with three leather straps tying him in at the chest, waist and legs. Which meant that his head would be the first to hit anything, she thought. And, if he was lucky enough not to knock himself unconscious, he’d have to undo the leather straps, one at a time, before he could escape.
“Who’s going to fly this thing?” Harding asked Bishop.
Good question, thought Mary Ann. Bishop said that he had hired a professional jockey and stunt man named Jack Reece, who would arrive from England within a week. Then he went on and on about how great Reece was and how clever his plan was.
Actually, Bishop’s plan did make some sense, she admitted to herself. The idea was to let the boat do most of the work. It would chug downriver to Pont d’Iéna, just a few hundred yards from the Eiffel Tower. Then the aeroplane would take off, and as long as it stayed above the ground until it got around the Tower, it didn’t matter what happened next—to the pilot or the plane. At least that was Bishop’s thinking.
But time and money were both against them. Time, because it was obvious Alain Chevrier could fly at any moment; he had already proven that the
day he took Mary Ann on that now famous flight over the President’s palace. He was only waiting until July 14, Bastille Day, when the contest would officially start.
And money, because it was increasingly clear that Neville Bishop was going broke.
Harding would go to Bishop’s private railroad car at the Gare du Nord each day to pick up the mail. One day he brought back a half-opened letter, took Mary Ann to a local cafe and read it to her.
My Dear Sir:
The limitation on your line of credit has been exceeded again. We are aware of your explanation for the aforementioned difficulty and are sympathetic. However, at this point, all advances will have to cease.
Finally, we have been in contact with the other stockholders of the Bishop Air-Car Construction Syndicate and they informed us, to a man, that no further advances would be made on their part until there is word of definite results from Paris.
We hope this letter finds you well. We remain,
Very truly yours,
Thomas R. Sommers, Manager,
Morgan Bank
“It seems old snootface has empty pockets, doesn’t it?” said Harding. “What’s that mean for you and I? Do we jump ship, make our way across France, and hope someone takes us back to America? Or do we stay with Bishop?”
Mary Ann didn’t know, but she stayed around the next day and the next. And, on that lovely Sunday, several things happened. First, Bishop told her to leave her hotel room and come live on the boat. She would have a “private” room, he promised.
And then the kindly old couple who owned the Bethanie came back to see how Bishop was treating it.
Mary Ann was on deck when they passed by early in the morning, arm in arm, not recognizing the boat as theirs. She waved, then was sorry for it, thinking that they might have passed by without ever knowing. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. Their dog, chained to a post at the stern, also recognized them and started to bark.
At first they seemed stunned. The wife put her hand to her mouth. She was sobbing: “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” The old captain’s face turned red and he let out a string of rapid French that Mary Ann assumed was swearing. He was shaking his fist.