Since our childhoods - forgotten, I sincerely hope, by all of the adults involved - I have been, rightly or wrongly, the supporter of most of Percy's schemes. Not all of them, mind you. I worked hard to retain some semblance of foresight, whereas Percy's came and went, it seemed, almost with the changes of the wind. But I certainly allowed myself to fall before the force of his personality more than a few times, and more than a few times found myself at his side, trying, often in vain, to mitigate a bad idea that had suddenly gotten catastrophically worse.
There are a few times in the catalogue of our friendship, however, that I look back on with some pride for my discernment. There was, if nothing else, the excellent taste I showed in dissuading Percy from joining Tony and a few other boys in the little escapade of the squirrels...but I am bound under solemn oath to keep that a secret until all the offended parties are safely in their graves. There are a few octogenarian professors who would, even now, give a great deal to know the names and addresses of the perpetrators. The risks of France are a lark in comparison.
But what I am thinking of in particular tonight, watching you and your brothers, is the Christmas of 1792, bare weeks before the death of the unfortunate king. I don't know if you're aware, but it was only a few months after...
Well, but you are only indulging an old man, my dear, aren't you? There are dancing and games in the next room...you have other interests.
You are either a most courteous or a most dissembling young woman. Given the holiday season, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
So, then. It was the Christmas of 1792, and it was a most unpleasant one at that. The Terror was in full swing - those of us who had hoped against hope that it was a temporary insanity that would run its course had come face to face with the grim reality that this was the new life of that damned revolution. England, and much of the rest of Europe, prepared for war, and we in the League spent almost every waking moment in France. I was courting Lady Ffoulkes at the time, but she, of course, understood only too well the need for my frequent absences. And as a single man with no children, it was easier for me to get away. My sisters wondered a little, because I had always been a rather stay-at-home fellow...but they assumed I was merely enjoying my last few months of bachelorhood, and didn't question my excuses. We were all worn out, exhausted, and troubled. Even Lord Tony, normally an indefatigable source of good humor, had found his eternal optimism quenched by our daily toil. We saw so much happen, you see, and there was so little we could do...
But come, child, stop me when I go on like that. Dark times are best forgotten, or at least not aired at a Christmas party.
One source of brightness we did have, and that was Percy himself. I don't think any of us, even I, had realized quite how pained, how...brittle he had been, that last year. You know, of course, of that sad misunderstanding between him and Marguerite. It's a little odd: looking back on it now, it seems such a small part of their life together, a single discordant measure, quickly forgotten, in an otherwise flawless symphony. But time is different when you are young, and then...well, the courtship had gone so fast and ended so quickly, and then that long, dreadful year. Percy was my dearest friend, and though it felt like a betrayal, I held Marguerite to be a friend too, though I did not know her then nearly so well as I was to know her later. To see the two of them tearing at each other, in misery and sorrow, and to see no way on the horizon for it to end...I spent many nights in prayer, but I'm ashamed to say I had little hope.
And then the miracles happened, or so I always thought of them later, though goodness knows the price could have been terribly high for all of us. And then Percy became a man I had never known; even in childhood he had carried himself gingerly, shielding secret sorrows, but now it was if the doors were opened, the fear and the distance of a lifetime swept away. It may have been - no, I know it was - all the harder for him, to see what we saw and know what we knew. But he had Marguerite to go home to now, however rare and short those visits home were, and that made all the difference, you know.
I see that blush, my dear. Perhaps you know a good deal better than you're willing to tell old Andrew, hmm? No fear, child, I'm not going to tell anyone. Youth's secrets are sacred, if you can keep them!
In any case, to resume. Near the end of December, Percy and I returned home on the same ship, and Marguerite came with the carriage to meet him at Dover...and was kind enough to bring a note from Suzanne to me, as well. I spent a long silly afternoon in the Fisherman's Rest writing a reply, and then went in search of Marguerite to give it to her to deliver...for I had only come with Percy to gain some instructions and escort a few aristocrats, and I was bound straight back for France. He was to follow on the next tide, so any time they were to have must come with Marguerite.
I found them sitting in the inn's little garden, silent and seeming deep in thought. Marguerite had tears upon her face and held Percy's hand in a tight grip; he for his part seemed pensive, his brow wrinkled in an unfamiliar uncertainty. I approached carefully, not wishing to interrupt a conference, but when Marguerite caught sight of her she brightened with a surprising hope.
"Andrew will agree, Percy, I'm sure of it," she said, or something like it; she reached out her other hand to me, and I took it uncertainly. Percy spoke first to his wife.
"It's not for Andrew to decide, my angel." Nevertheless he looked at me with something like supplication, and seemed about to speak when the lady forestalled him, springing quickly to her feet.
"I want to come to France with you, Andrew. With the League."
My initial reaction, of course, was vehement, but fortunately I did not speak it aloud. My face must have shown my thoughts, however, for Marguerite's own face fell, and she began eagerly to ply me with arguments that I was sure Percy had just heard. I do not remember the full train of her reasoning now, but she certainly pointed out her extensive dramatic training, and the ways in which it could stand our mission in good stead; she reminded me that she was no fainting specimen, accustomed to protection and shielding, but a woman who had lived her adult life with a brother who treated her as an equal partner, not a fragile obligation. She described her knowledge of the most serpentine neighborhoods of Paris, surely the equal if not the superior of her husband's; reminded me of the calm way in which she had conducted herself under the most terrifying circumstances a few months previous; and closed, somewhat triumphantly, by pointing out that of all the wives, fiancées, mistresses or sisters of members of the League, she was perhaps the only one so unorthodox in her origins, so self-reliant in her training, and so tenuous in her connections to England as to be able to absent herself for days or even weeks at a time without exciting comment or suspicion. If ever our band was to have a woman involved, she was surely the logical choice.
Of course, there were two things she had forgotten. First, that it had never before been considered that our band ever would have a woman involved; and secondly, that a woman whom the leader of a dangerous enterprise loved to distraction might well find herself barred from participation in that enterprise.
Perhaps it is merely that I lost my father at an early age, and had no grandfather or uncle to step into the breach, and so watched my mother and older sisters handle quite competently a long list of tasks considered unsuitable for women., or perhaps it was that my friendship with Marguerite swayed me beyond my normal beliefs, but either way, I quickly found myself on her side. It would be astonishingly useful to have a woman with us, even occasionally, and Marguerite was by far the most suited for that task. She appealed to Percy's desire to succeed in his mission, to his longing to be near her, to his respect - which she fully earned - for her intellectual powers - and I joined her in pointing out to Percy that all of the traits which made her useful to us also made it relatively unlikely that she would fall into danger, and that of course he would have full control over where and how she worked. Marguerite didn't much care for that, but Percy roused himself and insisted. As his wife she was his equal and his lady; as a member of the League, she was his subordinate, committed to obey without question, whatever the command...even, he stressed, if that command was to remove herself from danger and leave him to face it.
Most of the conversation has blurred in my memory, but that exchange I remember clearly. Marguerite's face went quite pale, and her eyes very dark. She is a fine woman still, but I do not think I can make you understand what she was then, at twenty-five, standing in the waning light of a pale afternoon and swearing to abdicate a wife's most precious duty - to stand beside her husband, come what may, even to die with him - in order to gain the right to be at his side in the daily dangers. She had taken his hand, and rested her fingers upon his signet ring.
"If I swear that, Percy," - even as it does today, strong emotion rendered her French accent far more marked - "then you must swear, too."
There was something almost forbidding about Percy's aspect, shrouded as he was in the shadows of the vines, sitting rigidly upright on the small bench.
"No one else in the League demanded an oath in return, Margot."
She turned his hand over in hers and looked up at him with those great dark eyes.
"They don't need to; it's unspoken. They swear to obey you, and you swear to protect them. With your life, if necessary."
His voice trembled just the slightest in response.
"And you think I would not protect you, with my life, if necessary?"
Marguerite shook her head.
"Of course, Percy. That's precisely the problem."
She turned his hand over and held it close, and looked suddenly at me.
"With Andrew as a witness, Percy...someone you trust as a member of the League, and as a friend...promise to treat me as you would him. Promise to never send me out of any danger that you would allow someone else to face."
I think we all three held our breath, for a moment...then Percy raised his lady's hand to his lips, and made the vow.
Well, excuse me. The old eyes leak easier than young ones. Yes, thank you, my dear.
Well! In any case. A few days later, I fear very much that Percy was beginning to reconsider his decision. Not that Marguerite had done anything but prove herself cheerful, intelligent, and competent during a rough voyage, a clandestine landing at Calais and a grueling journey to Paris. A few of our colleagues, however, had proven themselves to be quite different.
You must understand, my dear young lady, that many of us were quite young, and that Marguerite was a specimen of woman quite different from that which most of us had encountered - or, at the least, women with Marguerite's virtues did not necessarily show those virtues to a vapid young Englishman in the course of a few minutes' dance, which was the most acquaintance most of them had ever had. Jeremiah Wallescourt, whose Sybil was a wise matron with a quick tongue, and myself, and Timothy Hastings, who was himself busy courting a quiet woman with a sharp mind behind her demure eyes, were at least willing to be convinced, but many of the others grumbled as unhappily as any pack of young hoodlums called upon to include a despised younger sister in their games.
In a word, they sulked. It grieves me to say it, and I say it only because I know you have heard all the fine old stories of their nobility and courage and selflessness. But the finest men have feet of clay. It is, perhaps, what makes their efforts all the more noble.
And it grieved me then to see it. Marguerite shone with a transcendent happiness when she was beside her husband, a happiness the more piercing and beautiful for the poignancy of her concern for him. But when Percy was gone, she sat silently, awkwardly among the men, and the conversation shambled and stumbled around her or, with almost flagrant discourtesy, they would gather their cards or dice and move elsewhere.
Christmas Eve was a bitterly cold night that year, and we shivered in our meager lodgings as Percy, Galveston and I prepared to go out. The thorny question of sleeping arrangements had been settled with consummate ease by Marguerite the first night in Paris: she had simply yawned in the middle of a sentence, excused herself, rolled herself in a cloak and curled up in a convenient corner. She so evidently assumed that the rest of us would do likewise that, well, we did. Now she sat quietly before the fire, staring at the flames and ignoring Percy's preparations; it was only when her husband was readying himself for some mad attempt that Marguerite's determined effort to be simply one of the men faltered. Tony and Glynde - that's Sir Phillip Glynde, of Lyon Manor - were frowning over cards in the corner, sulking a bit at being left out of this particular effort.
I remember, too, the smell of the place, a most unpleasant burnt odor that made me, honestly, rather glad to be escaping, danger or no. In an attempt at providing a true English Christmas to her husband's companions, Marguerite had done her best earlier that afternoon at a flaming pudding, but the results had had more to do with flame than festivities.
She followed Percy into the other room, they spoke a few words to each other while we all did our best not to overhear, and then we set forth on our evening's plan. To be honest, I had nearly forgotten that the next day was Christmas.
The plan for that evening, as best I can remember, was a simple one, which we had succeeded at often before. A bourgeois family of Paris - a young father, his wife and child, and her aged mother - had been denounced by a spiteful servant as keeping a portrait of the deposed king in the mother's room. In the past, this might have led to nothing more than a pointed letter from a civil servant, but a few choice words that Hastings had overheard made us suspect an arrest was imminent. I had passed the modest house earlier in the day and seen an evil-visaged loafer who kept a sharp eye on the door.
The family did not yet know we planned to succor them, and I pitied them the moments of terror that would necessarily ensue when we arrived at the door in full guard regalia and took them sternly into custody. Once safely out of sight of the watchers set on the house, however, we would be able to end the masquerade.
But all did not go as planned. It should have been a simple effort enough, but when we demanded entrance to the house and stood rigidly at attention just inside the open door as the trembling young father handed us his papers and the brave young wife sought to calm her crying child, I could see no sign of the old mother. Percy ordered us curtly to search the house, and we did so - each of us pocketing a few of the most valuable or evidently sentimental objects, to give back to the family afterwards. But nowhere was she to be found.
It was a most distressing development. We could not hesitate to take the family now. The watchers would quickly report a "safe arrest" to their superiors, and said superiors would take quick action when they realized that no arrest had been ordered or made. But to abandon a helpless old woman to the trial, the tumbrel, the guillotine…and there could be no doubt that such would be her fate. Some judges were capable of clemency, especially to one so weak and so clearly not long for the world, but if her daughter and family had escaped the Republic's justice, even an old woman would serve to be made an example of.
Down below, Percy blustered and threatened and cajoled, but no one in the family would admit the slightest knowledge of the mother. When I returned from my third fruitless trip through the upstairs, shaking my head, he sighed, and gestured to Galveston to close the door. I caught a glimpse of that same watcher on the other side of the street.
Percy has always been most theatrical. A simple explanation might have sufficed, but no – he must doff his red bonnet, make a sweeping bow, and inform the family in elegant French that "We are here, monsieur and madame, to take you to salvation."
The young father stared at us dumfounded, but his wife burst suddenly into tears.
"Mama est a l'eglise," she choked after a moment, clutching her child tightly. "J'ai essaye, mais elle a insiste…elle est a l'eglise. Pour la veille de Noel. Mais je ne sais meme pas quelle eglise…elle n'a pas voulu que j'ai risqué, moi, avec le petit.."
A loaned handkerchief and a few promises from Percy sufficed to calm her; the family fetched their warmest clothes, and we led them into the street. Fortunately the watcher was gone, as neither the wife nor the young man were capable of concealing their joy at their rescue - however, that also meant that our time was exceedingly short.
I drew close to Percy as we marched the fortunate young family briskly through the streets, mournful neighbors lifting up the shades to watch them go, and spoke very low in English. I remember his face drawn in tight, contemplative lines, though he doubtless seemed quite emotionless to anyone watching.
"Blakeney," I said, "what should we do about the other?"
He shook his head slightly.
"Something quickly," was the only reply. "If she returns from Mass to the empty house, she's liable to find it filled with soldiers."
Unfortunately, life sometimes does mirror melodrama; even as Percy spoke, some distant clock chimed the quarter hour. Another fifteen minutes and it would be midnight; a few moments after that, and the old woman would likely be returning to the home that was no longer a haven. Snow had begun to fall, drifting gently down on a silent Paris.
"We'll get them to the safe house," Percy continued, "and I'll return."
"And then?"
He smiled with a blend of uncertainty and confidence that I had learned to dread in our school days.
"I'll think of something."
As it so happened, however, Percy's wits were called upon a bit sooner than that. As we wound our way through solitary back streets - the uniforms by now discarded, and most of our attention focused on keeping the family silent - Galveston slipped ahead to reconnoiter the safe house...and returned at a dead run a few moment later, his face white in the moonlight.
"There's voices and lights there, Blakeney," I remember him saying, and I remember too how that harsh whisper thrilled me with terror. "At least a dozen people, and all trying very hard to be silent."
Blakeney's face grew grave, but his voice retained a lightness calculated to calm the anxious family, who had drawn close to us with wide eyes.
"Well, Galveston. If you would be so kind as to find these good people a place to stand out of the wind, I shall see who was so discourteous as to take up possession of our night's lodgings."
He indicated with a nod that I was to accompany him, and we approached, step by cautious step. We were drawing now near the outskirts of Paris, where ill-built houses huddled together, sometimes on a scrap of arid land that many a despairing housewife had struggled to coax into fertility. This particular home leaned against two others, both empty, and at first glance, appeared empty itself. Only as we drew closer could I see what Galveston had seen - a flicker of light, as if a shaded lamp had passed, just inside a cellar window, and I could hear the muffled rustlings that were footsteps and voices. It was clear, as Galveston had said, that the inhabitants wished to pass unnoticed, and that boded ill. A collection of tramps or an indigent family seeking shelter from the cold would not worry about discovery, not in this blighted and half-deserted quartier where everyone knew better than to be their neighbor's keeper. But a small force of soldiers, waiting in silence for the expected enemy of the Republic...
I thought with dreadful suddenness of Tony, and Glynde, and Marguerite, back at Percy's lodgings. If soldiers were waiting for us here, then surely they were betrayed as well.
Whether the same thought crossed Percy's mind or not, I have no idea; but a few feet away from the house he held up one hand, and then stepped carefully back a few feet until he could approach his mouth to my ear.
"Stay here," he whispered. "And get them out of Paris tonight, if necessary. Take the others, as well."
That was a position I was often in, those years, and one I am heartily glad to no longer need to repeat: promising obedience and then waiting, silently, as I watched my dearest friend forge ahead into danger, danger wherein I was barred from accompanying him. There would be moments in the future when that would end almost as badly as my nightmares imagined it - but that Christmas Eve was not one of those moments.
I watched Percy creep silently to the window, draw himself cautiously level with it, poke at the creaking shutters, peek gingerly in - and after a moment of frozen astonishment, turn and wave me frantically over to the smudged pane.
What we saw in the grubby cellar of that half-rotted house - well, it still warms my heart to remember it. Tony and Glynde, radiating smugness, waved at me from a game of cards they were playing with half a dozen young boys, all of whom were being quickly and eagerly corrupted by their elders. Gathered around a small fire were another crop of children, as well as a cluster of old men and women - one of them, unmistakably, the mother we had been so anxiously searching for. And Marguerite, smiling and laughing softly, was speaking to her husband through a shattered pane of glass.
And was also dressed, unmistakably, as a nun...though also wearing rather heavy cosmetics.
"It was pure chance, Percy," she whispered. "I saw her pass in the street, not ten minutes after you'd left. So I followed her, to see, and then...well, of course there would still be Christmas Mass! They must have it!"
Percy was only shaking his head, half in pride and half in bewilderment.
"I went back for Lord Tony and Sir Phillip, and a costume, and I...well, I didn't actually tell anyone I was a nun. So it wasn't, you see, lying. But I spoke to nearly everyone there, and first of all to the priest.." and with one hand she indicated an elderly man at the fire whose clear eyes and firm expression remain with me, even today, "who a few of the parishioners have been hiding from the guard for months now. And he told me everyone who was in hiding, or about to be, and they'd already done so much work to keep the service secret and keep the guards occupied elsewhere that it...well, it was barely a risk at all to bring them back here. Tony and Glynde led them, and I...changed, and made sure that no guards got too close."
Percy's face underwent an interesting transformation at the last phrasing, but he refrained from comment and merely turned to me.
"Ffoulkes...do go and bring the others over. I'd like to speak to my wife."
There would be other Christmas eves in France, but none that went so smoothly or saved so many people as that one...and of course, from that time on, Marguerite had little difficulty in keeping the place she had earned in the League. Through her ingenuity, she had saved half a congregation while Percy and I fretted over a single family.
And if any animosity remained, it was removed thoroughly by the concoction she produced Christmas morning - an elaborate and flawless Buche de Noel, which most of the young Englishmen of the League had never tasted. Chocolate, berries and cake quite outweighed a scorched plum pudding...which is why, my dear, your grandmother makes it even today. Suzanne has tried hard to master it, but I fear that as long as any of us in the League remain on this earth, your grandmother will be compelled to offer us dessert every Christmas day.
Well, yes, my dear, if you insist...I should be delighted for you to fetch me another piece.