The Woman Who Rode the Wind

  And then Meurthe spoke.

  “I come here to read you something that Alain Chevrier wrote just before he died,” Meurthe said quietly. “It is this: ‘We cannot hope that a single flight will lead us to the sky. But each trial will show at least one fatal error, into which others might fall. So, by recording the wreckage of the first, we buoy out a channel that leads us to the heavens.’”

  And here Meurthe’s voice—still quoting Chevrier—gathered strength.

  “‘We must not each work for our own selfish interests, but all have at heart the common cause. And even if each of us does only a little, then soon will come the day when we no longer grope in utter blindness and the path to true flight is marked out.’”

  Meurthe paused for a moment, and then continued:

  “Alain Chevrier knew what lay before him. He knew that he faced death each time he went into the air. And he also knew that it is by death that we are tested. Our glory is not that we live—futilely—but that we die nobly.

  “The fight against death we can never win. But the struggle for life, we can challenge every day. And while we are yet living, we fight the battle Alain fought. When we fall, others will fight in our place. The spirit of Man, Alain’s spirit, is unconquerable.

  “The battle to win the air will go on. For we tilt not against windmills, but against the wind itself. Like Don Quixote, we raise our lances to the sky and give challenge: That nothing of earth, air or fire is unconquerable to man.

  “And, yes, our bones can be broken. We are not angels, blessed with eternal life. More heroes like Alain will die in our quest for the sky. But each such loss takes us higher. It is not death, but fear, that confounds us, that brings us back to earth.

  “So we can mourn Alain Chevrier. But we cannot linger over a grave. We are in the arms of the wind, suspended between heaven and earth, and there is no stopping place.”

  Then Meurthe turned to face Pouchet, who was still standing, clutching the stone railing with both hands as if he could put marks in the marble. Silence once again fell like a blanket over the entire church.

  Meurthe raised the medal of the winged man above his head.

  “I have been told to end this contest. I will not do it. The Prize I offered still stands. I do not expect to convince you of my reasons. But every man must choose a time and place to stand his ground, and this is mine.”

  He walked down the two steps to where the draped coffin lay in state, then reached out and took the edge of the coffin in his hand.

  “In this place,” he thundered, “where so many have confessed their faith in God, I proclaim my faith in Man. I will not betray this man. We may die for our dreams, but we cannot be defeated. And I...WILL...NOT... END...THIS...CONTEST!”

  Meurthe heard a crash as Pouchet knocked over a chair on his way out. His aides and guards rushed after him. At the doorway, as he stepped out into the rain and thunder, he turned back to look at Meurthe, a look seething with anger and frustration.

  “You cannot dictate to France, and I am France,” he shouted. “This travesty is over and so is your contest. And I will ruin you!”

  Meurthe, standing beside the body of his son, felt his knees start to buckle as if he were facing the guillotine. For once Pouchet will be a man of his word, he thought to himself. Then he remembered Mary Ann...and his promise to her. Fly quickly, little bird, before you are put in a cage.

  Chapter Twenty Seven: The Drowning Time—Afternoon, July 17

  The President wasted no time. Within minutes soldiers fanned out across the city. They invaded the Corn Exchange. Fistfights broke out as they pushed Meurthe’s traders off the floor. Pouchet had canceled all government contracts with Meurthe’s company.

  An entire company of hussars, led by a marshal of France so bulky that he could barely sit on a horse, delivered a notice of deportation to Maximilian von Hohenstauffen at the German workshop in Montparnasse. Maximilian read it...and laughed in the fat marshal’s face. Then he pulled out his certificate allowing him to fly over the city, signed by Pouchet himself. The marshal seized it, pretended to read it, and called it “a worthless piece of paper.”

  “Just like the one you have,” retorted Maximilian. “Among men like ourselves, the only thing that counts is force. Are you prepared to use it?”

  The marshal hesitated. Through the doorway and all of the windows he could see men with rifles. His orders had been to move the Germans out, not start a war, particularly not one in which he himself would be killed.

  “Stupid politicians,” he muttered. “They talk out of both sides of their mouths.” He rode away.

  Maximilian now had his reprieve. He could tie the deportation up in red tape, at least until tomorrow. And he would fly tomorrow.

  * * *

  At the Bethanie, Mary Ann inspected the aeroplane once more, giving the propeller a swing and watching its blades rotate in the sunlight. The storm that had broken over Paris at noon had blown away, leaving clear skies and only a mild breeze. The hour that she had awaited—and dreaded—was here. She would finally fly.

  Mary Ann went below and put on her overalls with the patched knees, the ones she hadn’t worn since...since Harding had found her at Jericho. She remembered it was against the law for women to wear trousers in Paris, ever since the Commune was overthrown, so she tucked her hair under a cloth cap and then put on a cork lifesaving vest. There were pontoons under the wings of the aeroplane to keep it afloat, but it was better to be safe.

  Back on deck Bishop was waiting, but he looked dazed, confused, almost suicidal. He had a welt on his cheekbone where Harding had hit him, and his hazel eyes were empty. Not the best person to send you off in flight, she thought.

  Without hesitation, she told him to start the boat engine. Here she was, giving orders to a Captain of Industry; a man who had given orders all his life. She almost felt sorry for Neville Bishop. He had spent his whole career destroying other people and taking their money. Now it was happening to him.

  Then she saw the three soldiers, a major, a sergeant and a corporal, coming toward the boat. The major looked vaguely familiar as he walked up the gangplank. Trouble, she thought, as she went to head him off before he got on board.

  “I am Major Vitary, in command at the Parc de Chalais Aeronautical Institute,” he announced pompously. “I have a message for Neville Bishop from Auguste Pouchet, the president of France.”

  “You’re Major Vitary?” She remembered how they’d laughed that day when Alain had fired off his flare gun at the presidential palace and Vitary had hidden behind a tree. Well, Alain was dead, and Vitary didn’t look so funny now.

  “I’ll take the message,” she said.

  Vitary looked her up and down. She knew what he saw—a greasy little woman wearing men’s clothes. “Who are you?” he sneered.

  “Marianne.” The sound of the name threw him off balance. She didn’t give him a chance to react. She grabbed the letter from his hands.

  When she had read it her hands started to tremble. She looked up. That son of a bitch with his twirling mustaches was watching her, smiling. So this is how it ends. First they were thrown out of Harvard, then burned out of Tennessee, and now the President of the Third Republic himself has evicted them from France.

  “My subordinates,” said Vitary, gesturing to the two soldiers behind him, “would be happy to help you and Monsieur Bishop collect your few possessions and leave immediately.” He used the personal pronoun for “you,” an obvious insult.

  Mary Ann brought herself under control and faced him as he stood on the gangplank. “What would make me happy,” she said, “is if you would get your ugly face off my boat!”

  Behind him Vitary heard coarse chuckles from his men. He searched for something devastating to say. Wasn’t this strange American woman rumored to be Chevrier’s mistress? Finally he pointed to her clothes.

  “There are rules in this city against women dressing as you do. Would you like me to have you arrested for wearing pants?”
>
  “What! Half the damn women in this town are selling what they sit on and you’re going to arrest me for wearing pants? Haul your fancy butt out of here.”

  Vitary did not move. “I do not have to take this abuse,” he sneered, “particularly from a soiled dove like yourself...Chevrier’s whore!”

  She hit him. Mary Ann had never learned how to slap anyone, so she punched right from the shoulder. He was twice her size, but the blow caught him in the jaw and staggered him back two steps. His face flushed.

  Vitary looked behind him. The sergeant and corporal who had accompanied him were staring discreetly into middle distance. He could tame this wildcat, he decided, but was it worth it?

  While he thought, Mary Ann acted. She cast off the only line that held the boat to the dock. The gangplank slid into the water, nearly taking Vitary with it as he jumped for shore.

  “Now,” she shouted across the widening gulf, “if you want to stop us, you’ll have to blow us out of the water!”

  * * *

  Time. Time was running out. The incident with Vitary had shaken her. She hadn’t eaten all day and she felt hungry. Eat later, she said to herself. If there is a later.

  She told Bishop to steer the boat downstream past the Pont d’Iéna bridge and then bring it around, heading into the current and the wind. The boat’s motor would keep it steady for a few seconds while Bishop came up and cut the cable that would send the aeroplane off. No preliminaries. No champagne, like the kind they carry on balloon flights. Just cut the cable and we’re off, she thought.

  As they chugged down river she watched the crowd. Boys were riding bicycles, trying to keep up, and threading their way between the people who lined the banks. She looked for Harding. She missed Harding. All right, she needed Harding. He was part of her life, and win or lose, she wanted to share this with him. But he was nowhere to be seen.

  Then she caught a glimpse of Henri Meurthe. He was standing in the prow of a rowboat, one foot on the gunwales. He tipped his top hat to her and she waved back.

  “Well,” she thought, “at least I didn’t let you down. Not yet, anyway.”

  They passed under the bridge with its winged figure at the center. She hoped that it was a lucky sign. Bishop turned the boat around, clumsily, just below the Tower and lashed the wheel. It was time.

  The aeroplane rested tight against the derrick at the back end of the boat. She seized the crank and slowly ratcheted the huge weight to the top. When it came down it would catapult the aeroplane forward.

  Then she climbed aboard. The wings, like broad shallow gutters turned upside down, sloped down toward the center of the frame. Behind the propeller was a cradle for Mary Ann to lie in, facing forward.

  She scrambled in amongst the wires that supported the frame and kept it taut. It felt like climbing into a too-small birdcage. She buckled the three straps that would hold her in the makeshift harness. With her arms outstretched, she could reach the two levers that controlled the craft, one for the rudder in back, the other for that strange wing-warping that would control the side to side motion, which she had told Bishop about so confidently a few months ago. She wiggled the levers. They worked perfectly...on the ground.

  Bishop dumped a gallon of naphtha into the tank over her head. A hose ran down past her face to the engine, where the fuel dripped onto a hot plate and vaporized. The acrid odor drifted into her nostrils and stung them.

  A breeze came at her, making her shiver. People thought Paris was hot in summer, but it could be cold as hell. Bishop turned the propeller and the engine kicked over, a spitting, snarling chunk of steel. It sounded like two rabid dogs in a fight. The propeller sent a draft to slap her in the face. Now it was really cold. Drops of hot oil came flying back from the engine and spattered her.

  Time was up. She wished once more for Harding.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  She felt a sharp jerk that snapped her neck back and then she was in motion. The scenery blurred on both sides. Then another jerk. This one snapped her head forward.

  “Is this what it feels like to be hanged?” she thought.

  Her senses told her the sky was below her; the water plunging at her from above. But that couldn’t be. Then it hit her. It was water! She was sinking. The machine, what was left of it, was sinking around her.

  She had to get out of the harness, had to. She ripped off the three straps. Still tied in. It was as though someone were holding her there, wanting her to die. Her mouth tasted like tin. It was the taste of fear.

  The cork jacket—it was caught! She struggled out of it, popping the buttons. Now to find air. But which way? She saw oil and gas seeping upwards. That way.

  Then, coming down at her, like the hand of a ghost, was the white fabric of the wing. It surrounded her, pressing her down. No, not now! Not after all this. She panicked. She thrashed. She breathed in water. She clawed at the sheet, bunching it, pulling it down below her. In that moment she realized that she was crying.

  And then she felt someone’s arms reaching out to her, pulling her up, freeing her from the ghost. She kicked as hard as she could. Her head broke free of the water and she gulped air. There was Harding, hanging onto her.

  “Oh my God!” she heard him yell. “The boat! Breathe! Breathe and go under!”

  She saw the black prow of the Bethanie coming straight at her. It was still moving forward.

  She took a breath just as Harding pushed her head under. Then the black shadow went over her, crushing what was left of the aeroplane under its prow. Harding was still holding onto her. She had no sense of direction, only a desire for air, for an end to that black shape overhead.

  And then it was gone, and they rose through the water to see the sky again. She looked through the waves.

  The Bethanie was still chugging upstream and Harding was screaming, “Stop the boat, Bishop! Lower the anchor!”

  But the boat kept going as waves smashed her in the face every time that she tried to breathe. Harding was cursing Bishop and she was dizzy and starting to slide away into the depths of the Seine.

  Then the Bethanie stopped, reversed course and came back. She saw Henri Meurthe’s face above the bow. The anchor chain lowered just enough for Harding to grab onto it. Then the chain clanked back upward, carrying them toward the deck. Meurthe’s hands reached out and pulled them aboard.

  She lay there, with Harding still holding her. She threw up all over him but he didn’t seem to care. When she finally looked up she saw Neville Bishop sitting on the deck, just sitting, looking at the destruction in the river, not moving, not doing anything. His silver-headed cane lay by his side.

  She knew then what had happened. Meurthe had come aboard and taken control. And Harding had saved her.

  “Come on,” said Harding, helping her up as they steamed into the dock. “We’ll get you off this tub. And you’ll never have to look at it again.”

  “Harding,” Meurthe called him back. He pointed to the runway for the catapult. At the far end, just before the aeroplane left on its flight, a two-inch bolt had sheared off while another was bent over. “Imagine the force that took?”

  “Enough force to flip the plane,” answered Harding, as if he was reading Meurthe’s mind. “Someone raised these bolts so they would catch the aeroplane as it came forward and tip it over.

  It must have happened last night. I checked the whole apparatus yesterday."

  "You know more than you are saying, don't you?" said Meurthe. "Now that we have both gambled and lost, why not put our cards on the table?"

  Harding hesitated. "Talk to your friend Fabian Bouchard," he said.

  Meurthe nodded and shook his head grimly. “Harding, it is time for me to fight my last duel.”

  Chapter Twenty Eight: Embarrassment at Maxim’s—Evening, July 17

  Fabian Bouchard felt comfortable at Maxim’s restaurant. The most beautiful and exciting women of Paris came here to face off, counting each other’s carats and admiring themselves in the huge flower
-etched wall mirrors that reflected their images across the room and back at them. Spanish dancers, wearing emeralds on their toes—and nothing else—did the flamenco on its tables. The restaurant had a wicked and sensual reputation. And so did he.

  Fabian’s demimondaine, a pretty, painted 14-year-old, was feeding him oysters, pulling them out of their shells with her teeth and putting them between his lips as he slumped down on the cushions. His brocade vest and shirt were open and she was rubbing his bulging belly. Oysters were love food, and Bouchard could feel himself becoming aroused. Soon he would take the girl upstairs to a private room.

  Suddenly Henri Meurthe loomed over him. Meurthe sat down opposite him at the narrow table without an invitation, or a greeting of any kind.

  “Send your horizontale away, Fabian,” he ordered. “You do not want her to see this.”

  Fabian was ready to argue. And the girl was angry at being called a common prostitute. Then he looked at Meurthe’s face, with its crag of a nose and blazing eyes. What was it people said about him? “When Meurthe gets angry, the weak give way.” And Fabian was not a strong man. He pushed the pouting girl off his lap and told her to go amuse herself.

  “Now,” Meurthe demanded, “tell me everything that you know about the Germans, von Hohenstauffen, and that building you put up for them in Montparnasse.”

  Fabian started to protest. His involvement with the German was a well-kept secret; the only man who had seen him with Maximilian was LeRond, and he had been eliminated. The workshop in Montparnasse—how could Meurthe know about that? Just deny...deny.

  “I...I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But the words rattled out of him. He sounded, even to himself, like a bad actor.

  Meurthe shook his head; a schoolmaster correcting an erring pupil. “Do not try to bluff, Fabian. I have played cards with you, and you’re not that good. My time is short. Here is something that may help your memory.”

  Underneath the table Fabian heard a click as the catch on a sword cane was released. Then, looking down, he saw its point at his navel, working its way slowly toward his crotch. It marked its trail with a thin line of blood, as if Meurthe were a surgeon planning a much deeper cut.