Well people I know that it gets a little mushy in places but like I said it will be worse and kinda graphical so if you're under 15 bug off… not really but read another story in the mean time.
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Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story
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Chapter 4
She didn't know whether it was the day or nights that were the worst. At night, she lay sleepless trying to think of a plan. Plan what? Think of what? By day haunting the courtyard, the streets outside where he was held. Each day she brought food for him, clean shirts and talking to him a moment though the thickness of the timber door until she was forced away by the guards.
Then the search for someone, someone who could help. Adele got in the carriage, went on foot, knocking at doors, then sitting in waiting rooms and staring up in hope that each time a door opened there would be someone who could help her. No such hope so it was home and the embassy repeatedly and every time the excuse was 'His Excellency is engaged, out in the countryside busy with affairs,' which one could possibly be playing with a puppy in the garden. She saw him from the window and ran down calling "my lord, my lord!" but he was gone. The chief of secretary passed her onto a junior who passed her onto an assistant who was a young man with a stammer who passed her onto an elderly clerk, until no one would receive her.
"My dear Madame." the secretary said at that first interview eyeing her from the calmness of his safe diplomat's splendour of his office. "My dear Madame I'll advise for you to come to Ishe at such a time. I assure you, if your father is innocent as I'm sure he is, he'll convince the fairest hearings. We're in constant touch with the authorities and his Excellency will make every representation." while his cold handsome eyes said clearer than his drawl, "Your father must be a real tom Paine sort of rascal to have come here at all and jolly well served him right."
"We didn't know what it would be like!" she cried in her answering his accusing look rather than his words. "We thought-I thought-"
"Please, Madame don't upset yourself. Joseph! Joseph! Please conduct Miss Baltimore somewhere where she may compose herself maybe call on one of the maids."
By the fifth or sixth visit no one would see her except the usher who kept telling her that Lord Gary sent word that 'everything possible was being done and than he begged her not to inconvenience herself by coming again tot the embassy, 'that everything is being done that is possible.'
Haunting the Palais-Royal, the Hotel de Ville and crying out after members of the Commune one was recognised. "Monsieur Citizen Michael! Citizen Pierre! Listen to me, please I've a petition!" Many times she forced herself through the crowd towards them as they looked angered, astonished or in fear at seeing a woman that tall. She was pretty much a giant in their eyes and that didn't help her cause as they would always walk away. Many times she was threatened and nearly arrested as being a madwoman disturbing the peace.
It was Doctor Cruesole who released her after finding her in the centre of an uproar in one of the stone corridors throwing every soldier attempting to detain her.
"I know her," Doctor Cruesole said, "Leave her alone, go home citizeness your father's case is receiving attention. Look after yourself, please get some sleep and come see me tomorrow." His eyes on her body as she backed away from him and the soldiers who had been arresting her then ran for home.
The next day she did go to the Mairie to look for him but he was no where to be found. An old usher to whom she told her case took pity on her, "Mademoiselle," he whispered having glanced around to see that no one overheard, "Don't come back here. He won't help you. He promises you everything but he'll do nothing. Pray for your father because there is nothing more that can be done."
The days were spent like that and at night sleepless. She no longer needed to sleep in the loft where the man was hidden and Loretta threatened hysterics if Adele wasn't in the room adjacent to hers at night. Sometimes she thought about who she was in about two maybe three months, probably a mad lunatic shouting, "Rights of man! Liberty! Equality! Fraternity" then being locked up and hanged.
Oh why did she tell her father that if they went to Aserythe they might stay in Ishe and learn what true freedom looked like. They would see the king and the queen, true they did see them but only when they were kicked out of their home to be executed.
'Oh Papa my poor Papa stupid, patient, kind Papa. Why did you listen to me? Why did we come at all? For that stupid weeping bitch and her damnable estates and to get away from Mama. If we must have come why didn't we not go straight there, to Nalalia and wherever else it was to do Loretta's business for her at once? Why why why? Papa you're probably lying awake in the stinking darkness asking himself the same questions.' Adele thought. 'I will never contradict you as long as I live. I'll make you comfortable and look after you. No matter how unpleasant mama is. I shall devote my life to obeying you and never let her torment you ever again. I'll kill her if she makes one complaint about you. I believe in you now and forever. I shall go to church and never make fun of clergymen. I shall make Cousin Kenny take his vows I swear.'
Why did we come here, I was mad, I was raving mad. What will happen? They can't punish him for what? And the rumours especially what the women whisper, "They mean to kill them I hear it I hear it in the Section. I heard it from someone who knows someone in the Commune and usher he said-"
The news of the war and the men going to the frontier. "They're afraid of the prisoners breaking out of the jails with all the men gone to fight. They're going to kill them before they can escape and kill all the deputies, that's what I heard."
Mad women talking and whispering, demented for wanting their imprisoned men. A haunted comradeship of terror and the same faces everyday, the same baskets. Only the rumours new of the Mixerians, the princes, the prince of Darais, the Duke of Selasia were coming, to save us, they were coming to murder us; they would burn Ishe or was it that they were coming to save the King and Queen. There was no more King, there was a republic. They were going to try the King and send him out of the country. The rumours were muddled and one didn't know the true message.
Tomorrow all the prisoners would be freed, there would be amnesty. The Duke of Selasia demanded everyone be freed or he would destroy Ishe. His army was advancing and he would be there in a week. All the prisoners would be killed if he came too close.
Her father's voice through the door had grown hoarse and unfamiliar in the bad air. As if he was too ill to be angry and I he had shouted at her it would be only to blame her.
"Papa, it's my fault, my wickedness, oh Papa, can you forgive me?"
"The people in here, they're-they're all gentlemen," he said in that lost wondering voice that had become his. "Some of them speak Talmish but I don't understand anything that had happened. There's a priest here who's 84 years old."
"I've brought you wine Papa and roast meat, some peaches and some bread." she couldn't stop herself from crying, "I'm meeting someone this afternoon who promises me he can bring a petition in front of the Citizen Marcello, they say he has a great deal of power."
"The Citizen Marcello? Have you not seen Lord Gary yet the ambassador?"
"I've tried Papa I swear it, I'll have to try again tomorrow but thus man he says that he knows and old in Citizen's Marcello's house and she'll give him a letter I've written."
"If only you could manage to see Lord Gary. I can't understand why you haven't-."
"They say that they're doing all they can but this old servant of Citizen Marcello she is supposed to be very kind and to have helped-"
Another woman was forcing her way from the door crying out, "Monsieur l'abbe, its Blanchet. I've brought you your dinner!"
At night when she couldn't bear it any longer to be alone thinking Adele would go up to the loft to talk to the Captain Valkov and ask him question that he couldn't answer. The first day he'd offered to surrender himself for her father but they both knew that, that would be insanity. It would make things worse than better and give proof to what the authorities wanted to believe. Then he wanted to leave the house for the fear of brining more danger on them. Adele made him swear that he wouldn't do something as drastic as that.
"Your wound would open again and you would die in the streets or be arrested and they wouldn't know that you'd been hidden here. They'll come back to look for you, I know it and you do too."
"Curse this leg, what have I brought on you all? They can't do anything to him even these people, not to a foreigner and Talmishman. Your ambassador-"
"Our ambassador! He thinks more of his puppy than of-they think we're radicals to have come here, democrats. I can see it in their eyes; they think its Divine Punishment on us."
"I thought you were a democrat?"
She looked at him with such self torture in her face that he said quickly, "I'm not trying to be cruel for pity's sake and how could I want to be? I was a democrat once, a republican and I believed in the sacred people. I still do believe in the real people but not in these swine. If only I could walk, if I could get out and try to help."
"How? Tell me what to do! I'll go anywhere, see anyone, only tell me!" the candlelight shadows of the beams, the spider's webs, the mice scurrying, no longer frightened of the and the stale remains of yesterday's stifling heat. She should bring him downstairs again and the certainty that she could beside it would be safe. The men wouldn't come back but something herald her and she didn't know what. A sense that she didn't want to Loretta or Ester. Ester came up to him during the days to feed him, change the bandages and give him medicines. Perhaps Loretta came she said that she did although Adele found that hard to believe but not impossible. All she knew was that he was hers.
Not in that way that-that she had thought of him before, nothing of that, not to touch him but to look at him. Only someone to talk to and to tell what happened. He was hers to ask, "Will it be alright? They cant surely they cant-?" then hear him say, "No of course they can't of course not. They'll have to let him go as soon as-"
Then for a few minuets to try to forget what was happening and to think of something else. Telling about Menos, Cousin Kenny, uncle George-get him to talk about himself-about Kirovia.
He didn't talk very much just only a sentence here and there, broken off with a sharp impatience as if the past was done and best not remembered. Gradually over the day and nights she had begun to learn something of his past and of what had brought him ere. The war of Kirovia; not the war that Uncle George and her father and their friends talked of at the supper table in Talmond. Of the sieges and strategies, the generals and the swift night marches, of tribes, of scouting through the mountain passes and immense forests, of crossing vast rivers that no western man had seen before and travelling though an empty continent like the Garden of Eden soon after the Devil entered it.
"It only I was a man!" she whispered as the images of riding through those forests and him for a companion. She thought, "If I had found such a country I should never have come back."
HE told her of that too, of coming back to an Aserythe on the edge of revolution; of the time when everything had seemed as if it was going to be made new, there were new leaders who would lead the country to life, liberty and happiness.
"Instead of that," he said, "the damned lawyers' clerks and the money man have got hold it. We tried to warn the King and tried to tell him what was happening. we tried to save him and now-" he opened and closed his fist as if it held something that he was letting fall to smash on the floor, " Now no one can save him."
The thought of the King in prison brought them full circle back to the present and tomorrow. She'd catch her breathe unable to manager her voice properly and wanting to cry and shout at him, "Tell me again! They can't do anything to him? They talked of the guillotine! Why should they even say that? To frighten him and me?"
His hands had grown stronger and there was health coming back into the feel of is skin but they were still cold but warm with every touch. His voice grating with impatience to be up and out to-to see to his own affairs? He had spoken once a long time, days and days and weeks ad years ago of sending a message to someone to tell them that he as safe and being cared for.
"No better not. You can't know who's still to be trusted." that had been when he still had the fever, before Papa-
"Is there no one who could help? That I could go to?"
"No one who might not make things worse. It's not a question of sending a message, I'd have to talk to them sound them out so that they know what's been happening since I've been here." he freed his hands and pushed his finger though his red hair. He could shave himself now and his cheeks shone slightly and his skin was totally pale while his blue eyes were brighter as though they were happy.
"I'm so frightened for him because he can't understand anything. You see he can't talk to anyone and I don't know if he's been eating the food I bring him. He's probably giving it away that's how kind he is behind all the noise he make and shouting."
"I'll get up tomorrow and go out. I'll find someone; I managed to walk the breath of the room today."
"You can't," she caught him hands again," Lie down and be quiet. I should be letting you sleep instead of-"
"You should be asleep yourself or you'll get sick."
She pressed him down against the pillows. The covers had fallen away from his chest and her hair spilled down to touch him and lay against his arm and shoulder. He had begun to breathe faster as his eyes stared at her lime green eyes. "Go away now! You don't know what you're doing."
She didn't move.
"I'm warning you go! Leave me alone!"
She shut her eyes and wanted to put her forehead against his chest. His hand were gripping her wrists tighter and tighter. Making her feel that she was captured and that she couldn't move. He as trying to push her up away from him but he could only spread her wrists apart. His laid her head down on him as though surrendering. Hie heart beat was heavy against her mouth.
He put his arms around her and she stretched herself down beside him with the covers half between them, Adele's breast against him and their mouths close.
"You don't know what you're doing!"
She didn't answer but kissed him without thinking that she was going to. The sky blue haired woman did it as if it was only for reassurance and forgetfulness.
"Hold me."
"No!"
She was shivering in long tremors that ran from her shoulder to her feet. His hand were on her skin under the shift and nightgown. His hands also were shivering and griping suddenly the buttocks, the inside of her legs; as if he wanted to hurt her, "For the last time go away!"
Adele had her arms around him holding him close. "Let me lie beside you." she whispered, "Just for a little while." she didn't realise what she was saying. He pulled the blankets away from between them and pushed her legs apart.
Like being stabbed, like a thick knife forced into her body. Lying under him with her face against his neck. The muscles of his shoulder were between her teeth as his hand pulled her down, his finger digging into the flesh as Adele let out a cry of pain and he gasped for breathe. It was like riding bareback naked as the horse gathered strength, the lean muscles stretching and heaving each time until he lay slack and still then the pain died away.
"I've killed him," she though but she couldn't move as she was pinned under his dead body holding it and tasting blood and salt sweat. Her hands were behind his shoulders; luckily his heart was beating against hers. They lay like that for a long time until he began to stoke her back under the shift. His fingers running down the valley of her spine to her waist, over her hips and down as far as he could reach.
"I've lain here thinking of doing this," he whispered into her ear, "I swore I wouldn't."
"What have we-what-did you-?" they had made love. Made love, Adele thought wonderingly, like dreaming. Everything far away, indefinitely far off. That was what the pain had been.
He held her by her hair and lifted up her head until he could look into her lime green eyes. She wanted to touch his face and stroke the lines of his mouth but she wanted more to say, "You're mine, you belong to me." Adele wanted to kneel up to look at what brought her so much, at where she bit him. The mark of her teeth, an area a dull purple wound oozing a bit of blood. Her silky mass of blue hair was falling forward as the candle flame illuminated its colour to make it look like crystal water.
"Lay down beside me."
Adele laid herself down and instantly but slowly his hands were touching her as if they were exploring, finding, wanting to remember. He pulled her close and covered them both.
"What have we done?"
"Your father-"
"Not now. Tomorrow. Now hold me closer noting will happen to him? Promise me."
"Nothing I swear it. Let me-and I'm the first? You've never-" he gently stoked her hair and throat. Kissing each in turn. "I've lain day after day and night after night. Imagining-how has no one ever-what are Talmishmen made of?" he was stroking the length of her side from the arm pit to the hip bone and around the groin to her lap.
"Papa says that I frighten men away."
He began to laugh but lay back as he started to choke with too much laughter.
Adele turned on her side towards and laid her arm over his chest, "And you? You've had lots of -lovers?"
He looked at her as the candlelight illuminated her form. "Are you jealous already?"
Suddenly she was with such a shock of jealousy that if felt like the pain was coming back. "Don't laugh! Don't tell me!" she laid her palm over his mouth before another word was uttered.
After a while she raised her elbow to stare down at him like a lioness over her kill, over her mate.
He held her away from him for a second or to and they drew her down until her hand separated their mouths, "Lay on me," he whispered, his voice was thick. She could feel his heart beating against her breast; his body damp cold with sweat as if the fever had come back.
'He is mine,' Adele thought, 'If he has had a thousand lovers he's mine now."
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Adele woke up without being sure of where she was or what had happened. The seemed to be an emptiness of the bed beside her, a dream? She sat up in the greyness of light from the small dust covered skylight, there he was walking around. He had to bend his head, as she did to avoid the roof beams, the joists and the many cob webs that draped the roof. He limped as he walked, curing under his breath and holding his wounded lag with both hands against the bandage. Instantly Adele knew what he was going to do.
"No! You're not going!" Adele sat up and furiously caught hold of him and dragging him back down onto the mattress.
'I can walk," he said.
"No!" she held him to her and found his mouth. She could feel her nerves quivering. It had seemed to her as if she had never been alive before, never known what life was and what her body was. Her hair was part of her alive and burning, her hands, her skin and the feeling of her beat of her own heart. The sky blue haired woman felt that she needed to do some tremendous things that break, crush, smash something and use all her strength. She felt it like a pressure bursting inside her for the first time. As if she belonged to a new race that had nothing in common with the Loretta's, or the Queens.
She kissed him gently, brushing her mouth against his forehead and cheekbone. HE kissed her, her shoulder, her breast and sliding his arm behind her back.
"No, it will kill you, wait, and wait for a time, until tonight, until you're strong again. I'll fetch broth; Ester will make you more medicine." Adele whispered into his shoulder.
It seemed like an immense sacrifice and the pleasure of making ti had its own sensuality and joy. Adele began to lay him down and cover him. She would have liked to be able to fasten his hands to imprison him but he didn't need imprisoning. He lay as weak as drowned man with only his alive. She closed the blue eyes with her fingertips. What made him laugh? What could he find to laugh at in making love?
She forced herself up and pulled on her nightgown. Something seemed different about her waist, her body, the feel of her own flesh as she tightened the girdle. There was so much strength in her hands, her body and if she did pulled tighter the girdle would burst.
"Lie still," the sky blue haired woman said then went down the ladder, down the stairs to the apartment. Her bedroom seemed strange and cold as it belonged to someone else. She opened the curtains and window to breathe in the morning air. She had forgotten her father. Forgotten? She hadn't stopped thinking of him all night, during- everything. HE had been there in the back of her mind. There was nothing in the world that was impossible, if she could she would rush into there and free her father but that would give the soldiers a reason to arrest her.
"This is another kind of morning. Look at it! Look at the sun!" Adele wanted to shout to the people in the streets below.
There was a sound behind her and when the sky blue haired woman turned Ester was there sleepy and fastening her gown yawning and stitching. "Madam Adele!" looking at the untouched bed and the smooth pillow. "Madame is early."
"Make us some broth and medicine and-food."
"I'll bring it upstairs to you."
Adele went to the oriental girl and caught hold of her on the shoulders. The shoulders smooth and rounded as a golden pear, soft and yielding under the white muslin and red satin ribbons.
"Why does he laugh at me?" she wanted to shake her until the round head rolled off her shoulders and the eyes would be frightened but they were never frightened.
"Men have to laugh at what makes them afraid."
Adele didn't understand it but she let go of Ester. She wanted to say, "Medicine to make him strong," and was ashamed but she didn't have to say it aloud.
Later upstairs as they ate the food and drank the wine and broth, "Why do you laugh at me?"
"I don't laugh," he said and laughed aloud, but luckily it didn't make her angry.
'He truly is afraid of me,' she thought gently over the rim of her cup.
"Is it because I'm so big, so tall? I'm not like-other women."
"It's wonderful," he said, "I swear it, you're wonderful." but his eyes still laughed.
"I must get dresses and go." Adele said, "Don't move. Don't-" there really wasn't any needed to say it because he lay very still trying to smile, "Ester will come to you."
He whispered blasphemies under his breathe but she knew they were at himself, his condition and not at her. The night had gone and the terror had never left her but only withdrawn into the shadows. Everything else was a charade. She went downstairs and gave her orders to Ester then walked into Loretta's darkened, scented, orchid-house of a bedroom.
"Are you leaving us again?" Loretta asked in a plaintive voice out of the dark, "I'm so afraid about that man up in the loft. Oh Adele! How can you be so cruel to me?"
The sky blue haired woman hesitated closing her eyes and imagining herself lifting her cousin and hitting some sense to her.
"I shall be back before dark," Adele said.
She didn't bother looking for a carriage as the sir cleared her head as she walked. The basket weighed nothing on her arm. Taking a carriage would have brought too much attention to her. Mostly her height brought enough attention but the people on the streets took nothing of a lady carrying a basket like a market girl with a basket of eggs. She had found an apron, long blue cotton skirts and a red scarf. If she spoke Aserythian then they wouldn't suspect her too much.
She strode in the sunshine carrying her basket of wine, chicken, peaches, hard boiled eggs and a jar of broth. She also brought some clean clothes and coins for he was to be free today. It must happen, it must! She would go to the embassy again to Lord Gary if he would see her at last and perhaps he had already done something. Now-or the Citizen Marcello's old serving woman or Doctor Cruesole- he hadn't a wicked face, mad but not wicked. A lot of people said that he was the only who cared anything for real people, the poor and wretched, the workmen and beggars. The others were what you liked; they were in it for themselves as Tala said they were. Lawyers and shopkeepers who wanted nothing out of the revolution except what the aristocrats use to have. A revolution to pull down the dukes and set up money lenders in their places. Doctor Cruesole was surely different; he was what she had always thought of ever since it had begun. Of men who burned with love again, go to his office; wait for him, no matter what the old usher had said about of him. She saw the thick broken nose the wet mouth, the mad, searching eyes, the twitching of his body and the thick hand scratching down below. It scared her to let the thought go further so she looked away.
'The world is mad,' she thought and looked at the street around her, the people, the river, the bridge, as if it was made of nightmares and at any second would turn to blood. The citizen Pierre with his pretty round face and his fresh scented clothes. "No citizeness leave your petition with the usher. It shall be attended to, I promise you."
Adele couldn't think that her father could be in that stinking room with eighty, ninety others crammed in without air to breathe, water to clean themselves, a closet to go to in decency. Only bucket overflowing with putrid vileness.
The Mairie's courtyards was always crowded with guards, ushers, messengers, idlers but difference about ti were the different faces and the hurrying tension. Adele felt it like turning a corner into a biting wind. She began to hurry to push her way through to the doorway and the stairs.
"You citizeness, yeh the tall one, where do you think you're going?"
"To my father, he's-"
A guard she knew taking his pipe out of his mouth looked at her almost pityingly. "He's gone they're all gone the ones upstairs too. We're getting a new lot soon."
"Gone?" like a shriek she grasped his arm. "He can't be gone tell me where have you-?"
"Get off me go find him yourself bitch of an aristocrat." he pushed her roughly off him then winked at her. Adele heisted a little as the man's eyes looked towards the gat and she nodded. On her way she said to the woman, the abbe's servant, coming breathlessly late.
"They've gone" Adele said." Taken them away."
"Gone? My master?" the woman said.
"Wait." the woman stopped and they waited for a quarter of an hour.
Blanchet was trembling as an old grey haired woman with a black cotton bonnet and black shawl appeared. The guard came out and spat, "The Abbaye," he said
"My master-" the old woman rushed forward grabbing the guard's leg.
"Get away from me you old hag. You should be in jail with him now clear off with you." he went inside Adele pulled the old woman up.
"Be quiet come with me. Where is Abbaye prison? Which one could he mean?"
"The rue Sainte-Margertite" the woman said, "Why had they-?"
Across the river again, was Sainte-Margertite with its stone walls, locked timber gates in a vast archway and wicket gate. Adele knocked then had to wait a little while before being let in at last by the chief gatekeeper. He was a large man with a red sash and a round, sweaty unshaven belly and gross black hairs coming out of the open shirt. He fingered through the heavy book.
"Abbe Montbeliar, refractaire. Yes we've got him and we'll keep him don't worry he won't get lost." the gross laugh and stink of garlic and stale tobacco was too over powering and the women had to cover their noses.
"Ba-l-ti-mor ah the devil take his wretched tongue twister of a name. What do you call your imbecile of a father?
"Baltimore, monsieur Harrison Baltimore. Is he here? Is he?"
Adele thought of the money and found it in the basket and sliding it across the table.
"Aye, he's here if that's how you say it. It's like puking up your filthy language. Bal ti morse, foreign spy. let's see your baskets you don't fool me with your foreign tricks. No weapons in the bread eh?"
The man's filthy hands dug into the white cloths, breaking open the white loaves.
"Good white bread for these whore's droppings and we get stuff that'd plug up your guts. Aright let em through."
Iron grinding then the stone corridors and the stench of urine were things that would make you double over in pain. There was despair everywhere as the gates clanged prisoners grabbing for a way out of the living hell.
"In here, shout thorough that door and I'll put your baskets in when you're going."
"Papa, papa! are you there?" the sky blue haired woman called.
"Monsieur l'abbe? It's me Blanchet! My master!"
Voices and the shuffling of feet as Mr Baltimore called, "Adele, Adele! My dear! My dear!"
"I've-I've brought your-your dinner." leaning her forehead against the timber as tears run down her face.
The woman was crying besides her whispering to the abbe, "They can't do anything to you, you who are so good."
Another woman behind them cried out, "Monsieurs monsieur Alexander, Monsieur Edward, my children are you there? The nurse woman staggered with her basket so big that she could hardly lift it from the ground. There was also an old priest that trailed with the nurse.
"I've come to find my brother," he said to the guard but he merely laughed.
"He's right in there alright so we'll put you in since you willingly walked her by your won will."
"Put me-?"
The door opened and the guard took their baskets and threw them inside.
"Get in with the rest of them,"
Adele got a glimpse of her father beside the half opened door. A long crowded room so high it vanished into the shadows. On the littered floor she saw mattresses straw and men laying down, sitting with hunched knees and those staring faces that prisoners have. The door slammed, "What are you doing? I only came-"
The guards laughed slapping their thighs, "That old fool can talk is head off now, say mass with them."
The guards took the three women away from the prison into the streets and left them there. Adele was sure that she could get her petition through and possibly see Mayor Pierre or maybe doctor Cruesole. When she saw them she ran after them but they seemed to not notice, "Citizen please listen to me let me speak to you only a moment!"
There was no luck to get to talk to them and so Adele was on the street again looking at a poster. A man was reading slowly at the top of his voice. "Citizens this is to warn you of the day's general order for all the inhabitants of Ishe. At 8 hours of the evening all active citizens are to report to the headquarters of their Section for important instruction. Every other person, male or female is to be indoors in their own house by 11 o'clock. Each house must be lit and the door left open whether the street door or into the courtyards, obey without fail on the order of the Commune this Wednesday the 29th August 1792."
"What does it mean?"
"They locking for spies,"
"No they're looking for priests! Refractories. They're going to search every house I heard it from my brother he's a cook at the Palais-Royal."
"They're going to search for arms you fool, they're looking for Royalists. There's ten thousand of em hidden in attic all over Ishe. They've got guns and they're going to start a rising on Sunday I hear it from-"
"I'm going home now I've got a bit of cash put away that I don't want those thieves laying their hands on."
"What's that you said?" what did that man just say? Stop him that man in a blue coat stop him! Bring him to Mairie, I heard him calling good patriots thieves. Hoarding gold! He's a royalist."
The crowd was melting and vanishing as the man in the blue coat was shouting protests. "I never said anything it wasn't me citizens do I looked like a man who would?"
Hidden in attic all over Ishe. Attics? Every house to be left open? 11 tonight searched-running afraid to run. What time it now? 4 in the afternoon I must get him away. How disguised as what a soldier? A woman? A servant? They would see his wound his limp. Running again to the house and not stopping to speak to Loretta or Ester.
He was asleep but woke as her cam through the open trap door. Dear heaven how could she have left it open the ladder there as if there was no more danger. He waited and watched her. His eyes serious and his expression changing.
"Get me my clothes."
"No!"
"Do you think I'm not going to stay here and let you be-?"
"No!"
He sat quietly looking at his wounded leg. "Get me a couscous. It'll bring me where I need to go. There's a man-"
"No!"
"Listen to me I should've gone before. I'm going if I have to get up through that skylight and crawl from roof to roof. Get the carriage now! I know what I'm doing."
She began to argue and he gripped her wrist. "Do what I tell you," he said as if he was talking to a man, a soldier under command.
"Tala," she had never said his name, never as much as 'Monsieur Valkov.'
"Do what I tell you." he said again as he caught her with his other hand at the nape of her neck. "I'll not laugh at you again." he kissed her mouth, "Now go."
When she came back with the couscous, tilting and swaying on its ancient springs, its horse spavined and starving, its driver complaining of the heat. Tala was already in the hall waiting for her as Ester was supporting him.
"Not dressed like that!" Adele whispered. She ran upstairs and found her deepest brimmed bonnet and a cloak and scarf before coming down and putting them on him. "You're my grandmother, very ill I thought of it as I looked for the cab. Come I'll help you. I'm coming with you to where you're going to make sure you're safe. Don't argue."
He was not strong enough to argue. Even the effort of dressing had brought on a fever sweat. She brought him outside, "Not you." she said to Ester, and the driver would remember an oriental servant girl and the address.
"This is my grandmother." she said to the driver. "We must go very gently don't drive too fast, she shouldn't have come visiting today, she's not well enough."
"Rue de Sainte Vierge." Tala whispered his voice and old woman's whisper as if all his life he had acted. "Just by the church number 14."
In the cab they held hands like lovers except that she sweated in fear. They were lovers for one night! And now- "How will I know you're safe?" she breathed. "Where are you going?"
he rested hi head on her shoulder and old woman's head on her strong granddaughter's shoulder if anyone was looking. "A man called Bryan," he said "A swine one of the patriots but he owes me a great favour and he can't refuse."
"Bryan? Isn't he?"
"We were in the school together. He's probably a great man by now but he likes to keep in touch with both sides just in case. What do you know about him?"
"Nothing, I've only seen him. He's in the Commune on the committee of something I'm not really sure."
"Maybe he can help your father. I'll try sssh we're near. Get out with me let the driver go."
They got down in a narrow street where there was filth in the gutters that ran down to the centre of a cobbled roadway.
"Oh my rheumatism!" Tala whispered, be careful of me girl, you're so clumsy!"
"You're not so small yourself old grandmother," the driver said, "She'd a good girl to mind you so well."
Tala fumbled under his woman's cloak, the bonnet and cloak was too smart for the street and too foreign. Thank heaven that the driver didn't have an eye for details.
"Here." she said to the driver paying him," we're alright now."
He drove away and Tala hobbled lead on Adele's arm. "Not 14." He said, "That was for him, 18 is over there." she felt him weighing on her arm footsteps were beyond the door. Somehow she had expected a woman to answer them but it was Citizen Bryan himself. The tall thin figure with silver grey hair and grey eyes. As if she had known him for a long him his face was so instantly familiar and he didn't seemed too surprised to see her, only angry remembering her calling after him at the Palais royal. Thinking that she e had traced him here.
"Citizeness!" he looked at her companion.
"Jin, let us be quick." Tala said.
Monsieur Bryan stood back to make way for them, he didn't ask any questions. When the door was she he led the way at a quick pace down the hall past a dark stairway and opened a door to a courtyard. Adele supported Tala almost carrying him. Monsieur Bryan seemed to know without asking what they wanted; the courtyard was occupied with a carpenter's affairs. Stacks of fresh cut timber, workbenches and some chairs half made. Monsieur Bryan stepped up some stairs that led to a loft and in which Adele followed close behind.
In the loft there was a smell of sawdust, wood and resin. There were stacks of the same rough made chairs and piles of timber. She eased Tala down on one o the bale and he shut his eyes as sweat poured down his face.
"come." the Citizen Bryan said, he beckoned her out onto the wooden seat again and let the way down into the house. He still didn't ask anything. In a small room there was a mattress on a truckle bed and he gave it to her to carry with the blankets and pillows. While she was arranging them in the corner for Tala to lie on he followed her with a basket. Wine glasses and clean rags and a loaf of white bread.
"I warned you," he said to Tala pouring out the wine. "Give it to him" he said to Adele as he poured himself a glass.
"What's going to happen tonight?" Adele said not able to keep back the questions any longer." Will he be safe with you?" looking at him at the sneer and eyes trying to believe that he would help.
"We're searching for arms," he said, "and suspects." the sneer became deeper more mocking. "He'll be safe." looking at her but seeming not to need to ask anything. "You can go now."
"But-"
"Do as he says." Tala whispered. "I'll be alright here."
She stood up but Monsieur Bryan didn't stand he had pulled forward one of the kitchen chair and was sitting quite elegantly leg crossed sipping his wine.
"Wait down there," he said nodding to the doorway. She went slowly looking back. Tala was lost in the shadows lying on the mattress as if he had never belonged to her.
It was a good ten minuets before he followed her down.
"Go out this way." he said nodding towards the gates, "And walk home make sure that there's not a trace of him where you've been keeping him. Nothing."
"Will he-"
"I've told you." he gripped her by the elbow making to push her out of the courtyard.
"If he's not-if you-"
The sneer deepened, "you'll what? Mind yourself and I'll mind him. Now go."
It was only then that she thought of her father. Adele turned and caught hold of his black coat sleeve. "My father is in prison."
He tried to push her outside but she was too strong. "You must listen! What is going to happen to him?"
"How do I know? Let me go!" his voice was savage with dislike. "Why did you come to Ishe?"
"We-I believed in you! In what you're doing! I'm still willing to-I know its a mistake someone thought-"
The contempt in his face was like a whip. "You believe! You Talmish imbecile! What so you know about anything? You-woman! Get out and don't dare lay your hands on me."
"I wont go till you tell me! He has done nothing he is more innocent than Tala. Ten thousand more." she wouldn't let go of his wrists.
"What do you want?"
"I want him to be free of course!"
"Let me go you don't know what you're asking let me think." she did let go and he turned and walked the length of the courtyard. After a moment he beckoned her and in the house took a sheet of paper and a pen and ink. "Take this to Pierre." he said, he scribbled for a moment sanded and folded the sheet, "no go before I have you arrested too."
"And Tala, how will I know-when will I-"
"Get out of my sight!"
"But I must know!"
"Why did god make woman? Get out! He'll send word for you. Someone will tell you that the Kirovian is safe, now go."
He pushed her out into an empty laneway. She opened the folded paper, "I know nothing against the foreigner she will speak of. Help her if you think it fit. Bryan." on the outside of the fold he had written, "To Mayor Pierre by hand urgently." behind her the wicket gate was shut as his footsteps faded away.
"Monsieur!"
No answer, "I know nothing against-" she tried to think could that be enough? Had he tricked her fobbed her off? Urgently by hand urgently. She began to run as a clock chimed seven and then a quarter. Quarter past seven! Where would he be now! Where! The Mairie? The Hotel de Ville? At his house? Where was his house?
It was ten o'clock before she saw him. She had sat in his ante room for two hours and been told a dozen of times he wouldn't come and leave the paper until tomorrow. He would see no one tonight of all nights. He was still at the Hotel de Ville.
"He's not! I've been they told me!"
"He'll wont come here go home everyone must be indoors by 11 there is a curfew."
But Adele didn't move and at ten five minuets past ten came he came with his quick bustle.
"Citizen Pierre here's a message from the citizen Bryan let me give it to you please it's urgent, it's marked urgent!"
He recognised her and a look of tired exasperation came over his face like a grey veil. "Citizeness!" then as if it had taken moments for what she said to penetrate though his tiredness he clicked his fingers, "Give it to me"
One of the ragged patriots surrounding him made to take the paper from her but she forced her way past him until she could lay it in his hands personally. He read it and then handed it back.
"Have no fears citizeness all will be well with him."
"But I haven't told you yet1 my father monsieur Baltimore the Talmishman he's in the Abbaye prion he was transferred there today last night they're saying -" she dared not to say the words' murder and execution' dared not say anything.
"All will be well by the week end. By Sunday night. He'll be released by then I promise you."
"Not until Sunday? But it is Wednesday, only Wednesday he had done nothing."
A sans-culote pushed her away and she fended him off like a child annoying her and the man staggered and shouted. "Whore's bitch!"
"Sunday I tell you now Citizeness-."
"Then at least write it here. Write an order put your name here that you approve I beg you in the name of everything you believe in. I beg you he's totally innocent he loves Aserythe. We're republicans we hate tyranny as you do please!"
Mayor Pierre clicked his fingers again, "pen and ink. A daughter's prayers" so sweet a smile like a saint. Men brought what was needed and a man bent his back for the mayor to write on. Waving the paper delicately in the air to dry then gave it back to Adele. "There citizeness do your duty love liberty have no fears."
he had written, "an order will arrive for Monsieur Baltimore at 3 o'clock of the afternoon Sunday 2nd September signed Pierre, Maire de Ishe." thank god she wanted to kneel and thank him but he was gone and his patriots following.
The streets were quiet silent as her lone footsteps echoed like shots in the empty city. Windows were lit and doors open. The patrols closing the entries to the streets four and five guards and a barrier of trestles of tables commandeered from somewhere.
"Why are you not at home citizeness? Didn't you hear the retreat?"
"I've been to Mayor Pierre. I'm going home now."
"Hurry its almost 11."
Adele finally reached the apartment and old Margareet was at the door look at out fro her, "Madame! Madame!"
Inside all safe thank goes thank god all safe!
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Smiles and good whatever time you read this
ikl wings