Children of the Siege Page 3

  And so it was that the St Clair family returned to Paris, tired and on foot, pushing their possessions before them on a handcart.

  Anne-Marie’s stories came flooding back to Hélène and she clutched her mother’s cloak as they followed the boy, Jeannot, along the narrow cobbled streets, sometimes so enclosed by the tall buildings on either side that it was like walking down a gloomy, noisome corridor. The road was slippery and foul underfoot, slimy with ordure, human and animal, giving off an indescribable stench which on occasion threatened to overcome them. Only by following Jeannot, trudging ahead with the rattling handcart, did they keep moving. Hélène found herself fighting not to be sick, concentrating her attention on the man and the boy ahead of her, keeping her eyes away from the filth around her feet, clutching Marie-Jeanne’s hand for strength. And all the time she knew she was being watched; she felt unseen eyes staring at her from doorways, spying from windows and shadows. Strange people loped along the street, ducking into buildings, emerging from alleys, and every time someone approached Jeannot cried in alarm, ‘Beware! Keep away! Fever! Fever! The sickness is here.’ And a pathway cleared before them and they kept on moving. But at last, one group braver than the rest, or more driven by hunger or greed, barred the way and did not retreat at Jeannot’s cry.

  ‘Well now, mon brave, what have we here then?’ The leader stepped forward and made to draw off the blanket. Jeannot tugged the scruffy cap from his head and turning it agitatedly in his hands, cried out, ‘Only two coffins, m’sieur. So far only two of us have died, but already my grandmother,’ he waved a casual hand at Marie-Jeanne, ‘has begun the shakes and may be in the cart herself before the journey’s end.’ The man drew back a step, but still very suspicious, pointed at the St Clairs.

  ‘And these? Who are these so fat and well-dressed? They never lived in Paris these last six months.’

  Emile fingered the pistol he carried under his coat, ready to fire at the man if he made a further advance, but young Jeannot, determined to keep the money he had already received from Pierre and to collect the rest as promised, knew that his fortune was, for the moment, inextricably linked with this well-to-do family so foolishly returning to the city, and he was prepared. He gave a thin laugh.

  ‘You’re right,’ he squeaked, ‘but they’ll surely die as well, for we’ve been locked up in the guardhouse together these last three days. The guards only let us out ’cos Ma and Pa died of the fever and they’m afraid of taking the sickness from us. See how pale that child is.’ Jeannot pointed a grubby finger at Louise who once again burst into tears and buried her face in her mother’s skirt. The thief gave a little ground and Jeannot said cheerfully, ‘Would you like to see in the coffins? They stink something powerful ’cos we’d no way to lay ’em out proper when they died. Still, I ’spect you’ll want to be sure.’ He reached for the blanket and there was a moment’s pause, then Hélène, entirely overcome by the foul-smelling midden beside her, lost her battle against her stomach, retched and was violently sick all over the cobbles. It was enough and the thieves lost their nerve. To a man they melted away into the shadows, their avarice overwhelmed by their fear of the sickness.

  Marie-Jeanne comforted Hélène and wiped away the vomit from her face and clothes, but the child was horrified by her lack of control, knowing she had disgraced herself and that she must have incurred the anger of her father. But strangely Papa did not seem at all angry at the exhibition she had made of herself in the public street. Indeed, when her face was wiped clean he patted her cheek in a rare display of approval and said, ‘Clever little chick. Brave little girl.’ Bewildered at his reaction but somewhat comforted by it, Hélène reattached herself to Marie-Jeanne’s hand and once more the little procession continued, this time unhindered, until they came out to the wider streets and boulevards nearer their own district of the city.

  Rosalie gasped in dismay at their strangely denuded aspect. Gone were the spreading trees which had lined them; only ugly stumps remained in the ground to show where they had once stood to lend their gracious shade.

  ‘The trees,’ she whispered. ‘What happened to the trees?’ It was strange, but of all the horrors they had seen and experienced in the last hour, it was the remains of the trees that finally cracked her iron control and silent tears crept down her cheeks.

  ‘Firewood,’ said the boy laconically and moving a little faster now on the broader thoroughfare, at last trundled the handcart into the Avenue Ste Anne, which had also been stripped of its trees, and turning to Emile he said, ‘Which house?’

  2

  The Avenue Ste Anne was deserted. As the St Clairs walked along it towards their home, their feet echoed eerily on the paving and the squeak of the handcart seemed magnified in the surrounding silence. Nobody spoke, but all stared round at the changes that had occurred. Two of the houses had been destroyed by fire and remained only as blackened shells, unsightly gaps like rotten teeth; and many others presented only blank exteriors, their windows shuttered and their doors barred.

  As the family reached their own house they discovered it too was closed up, and for a long moment they stared at its shuttered windows and barred door with very varied emotions. Rosalie experienced a vast, if premature, relief; the house was, after all, still standing, it had been destroyed by neither the Prussian bombardment nor the French occupation, and she thanked God fervently that they had not survived the journey from St Etienne only to discover their home was a ruin. Emile also was relieved finally to have reached the house, for at last he was seriously beginning to doubt the wisdom of his decision to bring his family back to Paris, but he was amazed and angered by its air of desertion. Why was it shuttered and barred? Where were Gilbert and Margot? Why was nothing prepared for their homecoming?

  Clarice and Louise, hardly taking in that the door was not wide in welcome, were far more interested in getting warm and having something to eat, and Hélène longed to remove her soiled dress and wash herself free from the smells of the back streets and the taste of her own sickness which lingered stale and unpleasant in her mouth.

  Marie-Jeanne was old enough to remember revolution in Paris before. She was realistic enough to know that the declaration of the Third Republic in September last year, when the Emperor Napoleon III had been taken prisoner and subsequently returned to England, was going to have wrought an irrevocable change in Paris, and she knew very real fear as she stared up at the blank exterior of the house. Her eyes ran along the empty street where few houses showed any signs of life. The axed tree stumps were a stark reminder of the very recent and extreme needs the people of Paris had had to withstand and the gas lamps standing along the edge of the pavement did nothing to relieve the new austerity of the avenue. Marie-Jeanne shuddered as the cold fear came creeping.

  ‘Well,’ remarked Jeannot, cheerfully impudent, ‘they haven’t exactly rolled out the red carpet, have they?’

  His sharp little voice broke in on their individual thoughts and Emile said shortly, ‘Wait here while I get the door open.’

  The front of the house, guarded by large iron gates set in a railing-topped wall, looked across a paved yard with stone urns to be filled with flowers in the summer and shrubs to lend colour from November until spring. A wide flight of shallow steps led up to a huge front door, flanked on either side by shuttered windows and topped with a gracious fanlight splayed wide like a rising sun.

  All was quiet and still and wrapped in a melancholy air of desertion and neglect. Emile went up the steps and pounded on the front door with the fine brass knocker, but even as he did so he realised the knocker was not as fine as it had been; both the knocker, wrought in the shape of a dragon, and the heavy brass door handle, were sadly dull and discoloured. It was clear that neither had seen polish or cloth for a very long time. There was no reply to his pounding and he knocked again, aware that his original unease at finding the house closed was increasing to alarm. What had happened here during the long months of the siege while they had been away? Where the d
evil were Gilbert and Margot? The echoes of the dragon knocker died away once more but there was still no sign of anyone answering its summons.

  ‘No one at home,’ remarked Jeannot helpfully and ducked to avoid a box on the ear from Pierre.

  Rosalie approached her husband. ‘I still have my keys,’ she said and pulled a heavy key ring from her pocket. It was attached to her waist on a chain and she struggled for a moment to release the key he needed. Emile waited impatiently with his hand extended and when at last she proffered the huge key of the front door he almost snatched it from her. Inserting it in the keyhole he turned the lock and tried the handle. The door remained immovable, and Emile realised with a jolt that the massive night-time bolts were drawn across inside. He turned back to the family, who were waiting expectantly beside the disreputable handcart.

  ‘It’s bolted inside,’ he said. ‘Pierre, go through the stable yard and try there.’

  Pierre disappeared to the carriage entrance in the lane that ran along behind the house but was soon back. ‘I can’t get into the stable yard, monsieur,’ he said. ‘The porte cochère is chained and the door in the garden wall is locked as usual. From what I can see above the wall, the house is shuttered at the back as well. It is all closed up.’

  For a moment they all stood there at a loss and flakes of snow began to drift silently down; the fragile illusion of spring which had come with the morning had disappeared with the afternoon, the sky was once again leaden and the reality of winter returned. Hélène shivered. She stared up angrily at the barred front door and then, suddenly, an idea came to her. Taking her courage in her hands, for she seldom spoke to her father uninvited, she ventured to his side and said timidly, ‘Papa, the sunshine window.’ She pointed to the fanlight above the door.

  Her father turned, irritable. ‘Well, what about it?’ He looked up at the semicircular window above the dark door.

  ‘It has no shutters, Papa. Perhaps if you could break the glass and lifted me up I could…’ Her voice, uncertain of her suggestion from the start, trailed away as she saw incredulity in her father’s face. She felt the colour flood her cheeks and said in a whisper, ‘Sorry, Papa.’

  But her father was not angry, he was just amazed that Hélène had seen a solution to the problem that he had not. For the second time that day he patted his surprised daughter on the cheek and said, ‘Well done, Hélène, but not you.’ He glanced up at the little window again and said, ‘Jeannot, if I break that window can you wriggle through and draw back the bolts on the front door?’

  Jeannot grinned and said loftily, ‘Well, breaking and entering isn’t really my line, of course, but I reckon I could manage that all right. As long as you’re the one what breaks the window!’

  Using the butt of his pistol Emile reached up and with a sharp blow shattered the glass, then Pierre tossed the feather-light Jeannot up on to his shoulders and the child peered inside.

  ‘Break away more glass if you have to,’ ordered Emile and unwilling to hand over his pistol, he picked up a piece of stone and passed it up to the boy.

  Balancing easily on Pierre’s shoulders, Jeannot broke the remaining shards of glass and with a cheerful, ‘Here I go then,’ hoisted himself up on to the window frame and started to slide through head first, drawing his legs in behind him to swing them round and drop down on the inside. He made the move with such practised ease that Emile, watching him, thought wryly that there was no doubt the boy had completed this manoeuvre on many occasions before. But just as Jeannot was preparing to drop nimbly down into the hall he suddenly froze and then with a tremendous scuffling re-emerged from the window and leapt down from Pierre’s shoulders. As he landed there was a loud report from inside the house and a bullet whistled through the broken window.

  ‘Good God,’ ejaculated Emile. ‘What the devil…?’ He looked at Jeannot, white-faced and poised for flight but firmly held in Pierre’s massive grasp.

  ‘There’s an old biddy in there with a pop gun,’ explained Jeannot, his voice quavering a little at his narrow escape. ‘Just standing in the hall shooting.’ As if on cue there was another bang from inside the house and they all instinctively ducked away.

  Rosalie came to her senses first and raising her voice clearly and commandingly called, ‘Margot? Is that you? It is I, Madame St Clair. Open the door at once, Monsieur and the children will take cold standing in the street in such weather as this. You hear me, Margot? It is I, Madame St Clair, speaking to you.’

  A tremulous voice called from behind the locked door, ‘Is it really you, madame?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ cried Rosalie. ‘Now look sharp and open the door, for it is snowing again and we wish to be indoors immediately.’

  There was another moment’s pause and then to their relief they heard the bolts being dragged back and the door at last eased open to reveal the pale and frightened face of Margot Daurier, the housekeeper. At the sight of Emile and Rosalie standing on the step her face crumpled and she began to wail. With a muttered oath at the terrible sound Emile led his family indoors, instructing Pierre and Jeannot to find Gilbert and get the cart unloaded. At the mention of Gilbert’s name Margot’s wailing intensified and Emile said angrily, ‘For heaven’s sake, Rosalie, find out what’s wrong with her and stop that appalling noise.’

  Rosalie, once safely inside her own home, felt immeasurably restored and took immediate charge.

  ‘Marie-Jeanne, please take the girls upstairs and get them changed into warm, dry clothes. Margot, stop that crying if you please and tell me what has been happening here.’ She spoke firmly, her tone rallying the distraught woman a little, and her wails subsided to quieter sobs. Marie-Jeanne bustled up the stairs, chivvying the girls before her, while Rosalie continued to calm Margot.

  ‘Now,’ she began, but looking at Margot she suddenly saw how old and shrivelled she had become, her face like parchment stretched over her skull, and her clothes hanging off her as if they were not her own. She softened her voice. ‘Now, Margot, tell me, where’s Gilbert?’

  ‘Gilbert is dead, madame.’

  ‘Dead!’ Emile had just returned from below stairs where he had been unbolting the back door. ‘What happened?’ he barked.

  Margot shrank away from him and said, ‘He went for food, m’sieur. He did not come back.’

  ‘How do you know he’s dead?’

  ‘Emile,’ remonstrated Rosalie, but he ignored her and repeated his question.

  ‘Because I found him, m’sieur. We’d nothing left to eat, not a crumb in the house. Then we heard that food waggons were coming into Les Halles so we went to buy food, but so did all of Paris. As they began to unload, the whole crowd surged forward, pushing and shoving, fighting to get the food. We were separated, Gilbert and I, and I lost him. People were grabbing at the food, screaming and cursing each other as they fought to snatch a chicken or some vegetables. Eggs were smashed on the ground – those precious eggs.’ Margot began to weep again and her story became less coherent. It seemed she had escaped the mob clutching a chicken and a cabbage. Concealing them beneath her cloak, she had made her way fearfully home to wait for Gilbert. When he did not return and darkness fell, she ventured out to look for him, but an angry mob was still seething round Les Halles and afraid for her own safety she had run back home. Next day, when there was still no Gilbert, she returned to the market and in a narrow alley she had found him a crumpled heap, still clutching half a loaf of bread. ‘They’d smashed his head in.’ Margot’s voice had become almost normal once again and then she cried, ‘but they didn’t get the bread. He was holding it still, clutched tight in his hand. A loaf of bread, that’s what they killed him for, but he didn’t give it up even then. He kept it. For me. I found it. He gave it to me, that’s what he died for.’ She began to laugh, a shrill hysterical laugh which rocked her frail body and echoed terrifyingly in the lofty hall.

  A glance up the stairs showed Rosalie three pairs of horrified eyes peering through the banisters and she acted at once. She deal
t Margot a sharp slap across the face and as the awful laughter ceased abruptly, hurried her away to the privacy of the kitchen, where to her relief she found the embers of a tiny fire in the grate. Gently she pushed Margot into a chair and looked for wood to rebuild the fire. There were two sticks in the basket and no sign of more, but recklessly Rosalie put them both on the fire and poked the embers to coax a flame.

  ‘There, that’s better,’ she said, turning back to Margot who sat quietly rocking herself in the chair, her thin arms clasped round her, hugging herself for warmth and comfort and crooning tunelessly.

  ‘Is there any more wood?’ Rosalie asked, but Margot did not reply. Her eyes stared, unseeing, into the middle distance as if she had not heard her mistress speak. With a tut of irritation Rosalie gave her attention to the kitchen, opening cupboards and then going into the stone-floored pantry. She stared in horror at its emptiness. It should be filled with hanging meat, there should be vegetables and bowls of eggs, cheeses stacked on the stone shelves, and chickens waiting to be plucked; crocks of bread and butter and fruit grown at St Etienne and brought into town. Today it was empty except for two turnips and an apple. The sight of the empty shelves panicked Rosalie for a moment. What would they eat? Here they were, a hungry household of eight – or nine if she was to feed Jeannot – and there was nothing in the house but two turnips. Of course Paris had been besieged, of course people had gone without food, died of starvation and, if Margot’s dreadful tale were true, been murdered for a loaf of bread, but the siege was over now, had been for two weeks. The gates of Paris were no longer closed, there must be food and fuel coming into the city, why had Margot not gone out and restocked the store cupboards? Why had she not re-engaged the necessary servants when she had received notice of their homecoming? Rosalie turned to Margot to demand these things but as she did so her anger faded. It was clear Margot had been incapable since Gilbert’s death, only fetching enough food to keep her from starving. Terrified and alone, she had barred herself into the house and as she lived in perpetual fear, her mind had cracked. She was of little practical use to them now, and leaving her huddled in her chair, Rosalie hurried from the kitchen to acquaint Emile with the situation.