Part 11: "Minuit" (Midnight)

Muzillac, 1795

She had been dreaming again of her daughter, her beautiful, perfect little girl who had her father's black hair and clear green eyes. New babies' eyes were always blue she had been told. The midwife had smiled and shook her head, and shook her head again when Melusine told her she had thought it impossible she could have had a child, how Lucien had always made sure. "You stupid girls!" the woman had exclaimed, throwing up her hands. "Listen to me now. Men lie. Everything they say and do is a lie. Remember that, my child and you need never remember another thing!"

She'd named her Lucienne, but they'd changed it. They called her Margarethe, and that was what she called herself, peeking out shyly from behind her adoptive mother's skirts at the strangers who asked her name. "Margarethe", she lisped, with a shy little smile that broke Melusine's heart, her stubborn, foolish heart that ought to have known better after all. And for all the desperation and longing, and for all the courage it had taken her to tell Maximilian the truth, in the end she could not take her baby away from the family she loved, could not do the same to that poor woman as had been done to her. Hadn't it been for the best? Hadn't she meant to leave her past behind her forever?

She had meant to. And God knew Max would have let her. He was one man who did not lie, unless it was to himself. He had convinced himself that he could make her love him, even though she had told him, quite plainly, from the beginning, that she could not. He loved her without question, without demand, and when she would try to tell him things he would shush her and take her in his arms and tell her that none of it mattered, that all that was important was the life they would have together, their children, their love. His love was like a warm, bright room on a dark, bitter night, and in the end she could not resist and gave in to her own need to go inside, to curl up in its shelter and rest her cares, to let him try and make her forget.

But it had been an astonishing and a sobering thing to realize that the very kind of life she'd dreamed so hopelessly of having with Lucien, of keeping his home and giving him children, of living a peaceful, settled life would, once she had it, leave her so restless and dissatisfied. She was the cherished wife of an admired and promising young officer, the mother of two sons. She was so fortunate, enviable, and yet she could never shake the sense that she was but playing a part, that she was living in another's skin and she was dying inside. Her comfortable life had begun to feel as constricting and suffocating as the stays and petticoats she could never become accustomed to wearing. Maximilian sensed her unrest. He wanted to understand her, he would say. Perhaps because she feared he did not really wish to know it, or perhaps because she had spent her entire life concealing some part or another of her true nature, she seemed to find herself incapable of revealing what was in her soul. He would give her anything she asked for, he told her so again and again. How could she tell him that all she wanted was her freedom?

When war came, she begged him to allow her to accompany him on campaign, and finally, reluctantly, he agreed. She was at his side when he was killed during the Duke of Brunswick's humiliating retreat before the French at Valmy. Even in her grief she knew that she could not return to Salzburg to live out her days as the widowed Princess Von Weyrother. She could not do it, and she hoped that Marcus and Josef could someday forgive her.

They would be twelve and fourteen years old now, her beautiful boys with their golden hair and ruddy cheeks, their big, solid bodies and rough, rambunctious ways. It was now almost three years since she had seen them. Maximillian's family was large and loving. They must be happy, she thought. They were not alone. She knew she was the worst mother in the world, but her guilt was partially tinged with anger and resentment, for did not men leave their children to go to war? But then, a man did not carry a child beneath his heart.

Voices in the street roused her. She made a wry face, feeling her muscles protest and hearing her bones creak as she rose from the bed and moved to the shuttered window. She'd done nothing but ride, ride, ride for days. She was probably too old for this life, but she thought little about what else there might be for her.  She almost never thought about the future any more, only the present, and still sometimes, in spite of everything, the past.

The town had been deathly quiet once darkness had fallen, and she had slipped in here quite unnoticed. There were men sleeping downstairs, but this room was still empty. She had recognized the folding bed, the clothing chest, the chessboard set on a little table in front of the window. How very strange that everything was the same. How many times had she arranged these things herself? There was a painting, its frame damaged, the canvas slightly torn, propped on the windowsill. It was of Lucien, young and beautiful, and the mare, Lucette. Melusine remembered she had sold the horse for three hundred louis. A very good price, but she was a very good horse. It had been more than enough to keep her while she had waited for the baby, until she could go home.

She leaned against the window frame and tried to see out. The night was moonless, and all lights had been doused. Finally she saw that it was only two of Lucien's men, who were probably supposed to be on sentry duty, but they appeared to be drunk, staggering down the street holding on to one another, talking loudly, a lantern swinging wildly in the hand of one, the other allowing the butt of his musket to drag in the dirt. It did not set well. Lucien had always been so strict about discipline and order. Something was wrong.

She almost had to laugh at herself then. Of course something was wrong! Everything was wrong. From the moment it had been discovered that Charette's plan had been intercepted in London things had been going from bad to worse, and now it seemed there was nothing she or anyone else could do to head off the coming disaster.

Her men had not made the rendezvous at the ruined chateau, and she feared their loss. Jonvil had ridden back up the coast. There was a slim chance, she thought, if she could get word to the British, that the force at Muzillac might at least be saved. Jonvil was the son of an old, aristocratic Breton family. He knew the country and the language. If anyone could get through, it would be he.

And she had come here, to wait for a man she had thought never to see again.

*****

They boy had never been so happy to get away from any place as he had been to finally follow his Colonel out of that dark and desolate churchyard. He had stood, trying to hold his breath, terrified to breathe the stale, moldering air of the crypt, superstitiously fearing that by doing so, he might inhale his own mortality.

Moncoutant had knelt, silent and motionless before his wife's tomb for what had seemed like hours. When he finally stirred, and the boy had moved forward to help him rise he had shaken him off distractedly. 

Walking back to the Marquis' house, the sight of the tall black shape of the guillotine, rising out of the darkness of the deserted town square filled the boy with a fresh sense of foreboding. Without realizing, he had stopped in his tracks, staring up at the monstrous machine.

Directly behind him, Moncoutant laughed softly, and he felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry so much, Ducruix," the Colonel said lightly, "It is only a joke! We make a bit of an impression, oui?"

It was past midnight when the boy settled into his blanket amongst his fellows, and in spite of his exhaustion, he found himself a long way from sleep. The stones of the scullery floor were uneven and cold, but he had slept on worse in the past two years. He could not seem to settle his mind. He thought of the guillotine, of the faces of the people when they had entered the town. He saw again the tricolour, fluttering softly down to cover the face of the mayor, Faure; the disbelief and apprehension on the faces of the British officers; the blind fury in Moncoutant's eyes.

He thought of the final moment before they left the crypt, of Moncoutant standing before the effigy of his long dead wife, raising a hand to tenderly caress the stony alabaster cheek.

"A bientot, mon amour," he had whispered, at last.

Soon, my love.

*****


"Qui va la!"

The rasp of metal on metal as a sword was drawn from a scabbard; the room suddenly flooded with lantern light as the door was flung open wide. With a start she turned from the window, and only for a moment, twenty-five years fell away. She stood in the white, wide-open space of the fencing gallery; sunlight glittered on steel, and in the clear, green-gold eyes of a beautiful young man who raised his blade to hers.

But no. He was older, as she was, heavy, his lithe, athletic body gone stout. His skin was still smooth, but his color was florid, as if from too much drink. But unlike her own, no strands of grey threaded the lustrous black of his hair, and the eyes were the same, lucent green, as hard and as transparent as glass.

She moved toward him. She told herself she was a ridiculous, silly woman. For three years she had been in the employed in the service of the Comte de Boisfailly, living the most dangerous life imaginable and now, now her heart was in her throat?

"Bon soir, Lucien," she said softly.

He cocked his head to one side, and the strangest smile crossed his face as he slowly lowered his blade and sheathed his sword.  

"Mon caporal," he said smoothly, with as little surprise, she thought, as if not more than a day had past, never mind a lifetime. "Where have you been?"

He stood there smiling, blinking, as if expecting an answer. She stared back, suddenly confused, not knowing what to say. She shook her head. "Lucien…"

"My God, Melusine," he stumbled forward suddenly, and instinctively she stooped to reach for him, catching him in her arms as he fell to his knees. "My God," he gasped, raising his head to look at her with anguished eyes. "Don't you know that when you are not here, I cannot sleep?"

*****

He had seemed to recover himself with the brandy. Again, she felt such an eerie sense of time contracting, shifting; she knew exactly where to find the flask, the little silver cups. So very strange that everything should be so much the same, and yet so much had changed.

The lantern on the table cast its yellow light onto the smooth white plastered walls. This house was not what she imagined for Lucien. Even before it had been stripped of most of its furnishings it must have been very plain and spare. But it had been her house, really, hadn't it?  So long ago, but Melusine would never forget that beautiful face, pale and cold, and the green eyes that held her in their raptor's gaze.

"How much time?" he asked her. He sat on the edge of the bed. He had stripped to his breeches and shirtsleeves in front of her as casually as he had ever done. It was all very disconcerting, his initial reaction, and now this cool familiarity, his acceptance of her presence as if she had never been away.

"I don't know," she replied. "Perhaps not even a day. You should move your men as soon as possible; go south, maybe to Le Croisic. General Charette—" she sighed, "I don't think…"

"It doesn't matter," he said, beginning to loosen his neck cloth. "I'm not leaving."

She sat down beside him. "All may still be lost, Lucien, but you must withdraw while you have the chance, for the sake of all of these men. Most of them are not even French! There is no point in trying to defend this position. It is not right to expect them to make this sacrifice, when there is not a chance to succeed."

"Ah but you see, I did not come here to succeed," he said, turning to face her with that same strange smile. "I came here to die."

He raised a hand to her face then, ran the pad of his thumb over her chin and cheek. "Your sweet face," he said softly, in that old caressing voice she remembered. "How could I not have known, Melusine? How could any man not know?"

She reached for his hand to stop him touching her. His fingers closed around hers, in a grip so tight it pained her. She tried to pull away, but he would not let go. She searched his face. His eyes had always affected her so; keen and prideful they had been, piercing, like the eyes of a hunting hawk. The anguish she had seen for a moment had gone, and there was a curious blankness there now, an opacity, almost as if a veil had been drawn. But at the touch of his hand she felt the tension in his body and she was filled with a powerful sense of unease that made her skin prickle.

"What has happened to you, Lucien?" she whispered, resisting the urge to move away, and instead placing her hand over the one he held. "Why do you say you came to die?"

He smiled again and shrugged. "I am the last."

"The last?"

He looked past her, at the blackness outside the window. "My son is dead. I am the last, cursed to madness, cursed to die in this place."

"Cursed…" she shook her head. Uncomprehending, she put the word aside. "What are you talking about? Emmanuel is lost, Lucien, but we do not know that he is dead! The Comtesse d'Agniers saw him before she died in Les Invalides. Charette's man found her there!"

"Three years ago…" he said absently.

"She said that he was safe, Lucien, there is every kind of hope!" she squeezed his hand, giving it a little shake as if to rouse him from his melancholy.

"You are tired, you grieve, you are in despair," she said soothingly, "But there is hope, Lucien, hope for you and your men, hope that you will see your son again. Come, don't talk of dying for nothing." she started to rise, but still he held her hand.

"Where is the British commander? Will you send word to him now?" she asked, sitting back down.

He startled her with a short, sharp laugh. "We are allied with the British! Edrington, with that stick up his ass! I killed four just like him at Yorktown, the pompous fool. And he thinks himself my equal. And that ridiculous boy. He is probably in bed with my daughter by now. Ha! What a joke!"

He looked thoughtful for a moment, and gave another careless shrug. "Eh. Probably not mine after all. Much too fair. Pretty, though."

 He  released her hand, finally, and he lay back on the bed, smiling, his arm behind his head. "Well it has been somewhat amusing, at least, to play my little part, if not terribly challenging. To perform as expected requires no subtlety, so little art." He sighed. "I don't give a shit about the British."

She looked at him, disbelieving. Uncomfortably, she watched his face. It was like watching a player of the commedia dell'arte, constantly changing masks. As quickly as it had appeared, his smile faded, and he raised himself on his elbow, putting a hand on her arm. She looked down at his fingers, white against the rough dun brown of her shirt.

"Still, I am rather tired of the play," he said flatly. His fingers wandered distractedly beneath her sleeve, lightly caressing the soft white underside of her wrist, and she was still, watching him.

"When I thought my wife would never bear, I would look at you, Melusine, and think what sons you would give me; what strong, beautiful children we would have. Its as well we never had them, Melusine. Better that I should be the last."

"What?" the words, unexpected, almost failed to penetrate her mind. "Please, Lucien," she began. "I did not come here to speak of the past…"

She could not know about Emmanuel. She could not know about Margarethe, but somehow she thought her soul would know if her daughter was not in this world. "I don't understand why you are saying these things…you are not the last, Lucien," she whispered, "Listen to me…"

He went on speaking. "I know why you went away, Melusine. Pierre was right. I should never have kept you. But I did need you, Melusine, as much as I needed her. You kept me safe, ma femme de guerre! The pain in my head, the dreams, the voices that speak, you were the only one who could keep them away. Why would that be? They never go away, now. Not when I am awake, not when I sleep, they are here now, as we speak. There is no peace. No peace."

His hand fell away and he sat looking at her, his expression horribly strange and blank.

She realized that she had known it from the first moment, and why she should feel thus after so much time, after all that had gone before, she could not tell, and yet a terrible grief rose in her breast and overwhelmed her heart as at last she allowed herself to understand that he had lost his mind. 

"My God," she whispered, and not knowing what else to do, instinctively took his head in her hands and drew him to her. He sank onto her breast as softly, as wearily as a sleepy child.

"Don't go." His arms went around her and she felt afraid, but she yielded softly to the embrace, wrapped her own arms around him, sank down beside him on the narrow bed.

A long time ago she would have died to save him from pain, would have given her life to heal him; feared nothing but the thought of never seeing him again, of never more knowing the joy of his touch. And now she had the oddest sense of something leaving her, a thing she did not even know she had, a thing she had been keeping, and she was sorry for it to go, a little, the thing that had been a part of her for so long. It was so surprising, so strange, this lifting of her soul, this liberation weighed with sorrow, and there was nothing more to do, she saw, but let the thing be gone. For a fencing match, for a game of chess, for a reckless charge into battle, for the passion born of innocence that had burned and consumed her, for the love never answered; for each of these things she would let her heart grieve one last time, and then no more.

With one hand he smoothed the hair at her temple. "It's white…just here," he said wonderingly.

"Yes," she smiled and said gently. "I am getting old. It cannot be helped."

"I cannot believe it, my Melusine," he said, and his voice had its old ironic, mocking tone. "Can you not think of a way to cheat?"

*****

She started at the sound of cannon fire, wrenching her arm as she pulled it out from beneath Lucien's body. He never stirred. He had slept like the dead through the night while she had lain awake.

She moved to the window. The sun was already strong, streaming in through the slatted shutters which she opened to lean out and look up the street towards the old stone arch. God, was it possible the Republicans could move this quickly with artillery?

She saw a man racing up the street, and a moment later, there was Jonvil, emerging from around a corner, as the sentries, rousing themselves, paid him no attention. He was without his horse, and looked much the worse for wear. Without a second thought she grabbed her boots up off the floor, trying awkwardly to cram her feet into them as she hurried from the room. She heard footsteps on the stair, and suddenly found herself looking into the startled eyes of a young man in the white coat of the Bourbons, coming to rouse his Colonel. Shit, she thought. What a terrible mess this is! She pushed past the boy and flew down the stairs, out of the house and into the street.

She found Jonvil. He grabbed her and led her through an alley that opened into a tiny walled garden where a pair of horses waited.

He appeared unhurt, but exhausted, filthy, and somewhat wet.

"What?" she demanded, "Are they here already?"

He raked his big hands through wild dark hair. Incredibly, she had a dreadful urge to pick the leaves and twigs out of it for him. He shook his head.

"No, no! There are just a few snipers across the river. It’s the British with the gun. The imbeciles shot my horse! The French—the Republicans—are half a day behind me."

"What were you doing on the other side of the river?" she asked, and finally unable to resist, reached up and picked a long strand of damp grass from his shoulder.

"I was curious. That is what makes me a good spy, madame." He grinned widely, showing strong white teeth. "It was not so easy to get back over without the horse."
 
She frowned. "What happened? Did you get through?"

"No. It was too late, just as we thought. I am sure Charette has been engaged by now. Merde! It is hopeless, but---" he paused. "One of the British ships remains in the bay. A frigate."

"One? But there were four---why leave one?" She looked at him for a moment, weighing the implication. "Of course. They knew."

"We should go Madame, before its too late. It is about to get very hot here, and I think there is nothing more to be done but to get word to le Comte. If that frigate Captain has any sense he will abandon his station and try to save his men. What do you think of this one?"

The horse was magnificent, a Spanish stallion, massive, snow white, with a proud Roman nose and dark, liquid eye. His flowing silver mane rippled over a splendidly muscled forequarter. Showy, Melusine thought. Exactly Lucien's taste.

"Madame?"

She laid a hand on the animal's shoulder, and he turned his great head to lip gently at her hand.

"Should we not seek out the British?" she asked.

"Why risk losing another horse?" Jonvil snorted. "You have spoken with Colonel Moncoutant, haven't you?"

"Yes, I saw the Colonel."

She thought, for a moment, of how history might regard the outcome of this ill-fated day. The papers in Paris would exult, no doubt. Was there any more to be done? The frigate would come, or it would not. She thought of Lucien's son, wherever he might be. What might he come to know of his father, learning of this day? Did anyone know what she knew?

"You could not find a more conspicuous animal to steal, Jonvil?"she said, gathering the stallion's reins and preparing to mount. Before she could get a foot in the stirrup he seized her and tossed her up into the saddle as if she were no bigger than a child.

As if that were not startling enough, his big brown hand was resting comfortably on her knee, as if he was in no hurry to remove it, and he was grinning at her again.

"You will thank me when it begins to snow," he said. "I am happy to see you, madame."

It occurred to her that the event of snow could hardly be less likely. The day was getting hot already. She glanced down at his hand. Still there.

"And I…to see you safe, Jonvil," she said.

*****

How odd. How perfectly absurd. A man who looked like him was being carried along, borne by many hands. There was quite a bit of noise, too, but it seemed so far away. He had a feeling of floating, he could smell the river, and all around him were the golden marsh grasses, and the sound they made was so much sweeter than the noise, just the softest of sounds, a rustling and a whisper of air.

The man who looked like him was shouting, waving his arms and legs as they carried him along, but he was as quiet and still as could be. Drowsy and happy, he watched the clear blue sky.

"Look, Lucien! See, she comes!"

A tiny speck of black floated on the blue, drifting lower, and lower, wheeling in her lazy circles. His Fantome, his beautiful Grey Ghost, was searching for a kill.

He heard her scream, the high, shrill call of the hawk that sent a shiver down his spine, and there was a terrible noise somewhere, a grating, rasping, frightening sound, the heavy blade falling.

His head was pillowed in her lap. He felt her cool fingers upon his brow.

"Imogene," he whispered, tilting his head back to see her face.

"My beloved," she sighed, bending to kiss his lips.

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