Time for Eternity (36 page)

“Give my best to the ‘Dark Lord.’ ” She must mean Henri. Did she know what he was? But of course, they all did. He had used red eyes and whirling darkness to rescue them.

Monsieur Navarre handed her child down to her and reached for the next woman’s hand.

“Will he be coming with us?” The woman held a toddler’s hand. “He has been so kind.”

“I do not know, madame,” Navarre said.

“I shall pray for his safety,” the woman said, scooping up her child with one hand and her skirts in the other.

“I only hope we can repay his kindness,” a young girl of about fourteen said, as she helped her mother into the boat. “He read us stories for an hour every night.” She blushed. “The little ones enjoyed it.”

Henri had visited them every night?

“And to have his personal chef prepare our meals,” Navarre said. “That was the outside of enough.”

“He could shush my Charles when no one could quiet him. And here I was afraid at any moment he ’d spit up on his grace’s silks.” She cuddled a curly-headed child not yet two.

“Plays a mean game of piquet,” another man said as he hurried the next woman into the boat. “I think he let us win, though.”

Jennings chuckled. “Well, you wouldn’t have accepted money direct, would you? It’s his way.” He gestured to two men. “You two take the oars and this one’s full.”

They practically revere him.
Frankie was stunned.

It was hard to imagine Henri dandling little Charles on his knee. He’d done it all to reassure them. All the women were secretly in love with him. All the men admired him. Even though they knew what he was. That was … interesting.

The prisoners and several of Jennings’s men took up oars and the second boat slid out into the darkness. Françoise looked up to see the next group of people hurry down the steps that came out under the level of the stone streets above to the wooden docks that jutted out thirty feet across the muddy banks to where the sluggish, smelly water rolled through the city. Barges creaked in the darkness of the deeper water beyond, some weighted down with cargo, and others moored for use by bathers, though why anyone would want to bathe in waters that floated corpses and garbage, night filth and the runoff from the slaughterhouses, Françoise couldn’t say. It was especially foul in July when the water level was low.

They moved down to where the next boat rocked. Françoise hurried the women down the steps. A little boy asked, “Where are we going?” in a plaintive voice that echoed with frightening clarity in the predawn air. His mother shushed him. The city would be stirring soon. They didn’t have much time.

“We better start loading two boats at once,” Jennings said sotto voce to Navarre. “Go bring the next group out.” Navarre nodded and took off up the wooden dock at a run. Emile watched him with big eyes. But he didn ’t cry. Perhaps even he felt the tension in the air. “You, there, get that rope ladder. They won’t like it, but we’re running out of time.”

Out of the shadows under the steps up to the street above, Henri stumbled, burdened with something heavy over his shoulder.

Beside him, Gaston sank to his knees with a gasp. Françoise had never been so relieved in her life.

More families poured from the doorway and streamed past Henri toward the boats.

“Henri,” she whispered, running toward him. He was dressed like a soldier in the blue of the Revolution, a sword swinging at his hip. His dark mane spread across his shoulders. His face was lined and tired-looking.

Relief washed his expression. Then he frowned. He strode forward, not setting down his burden. “Can’t you follow orders? You might have been taken.”

“I wasn’t.” The burden was Pierre. “Oh, dear. Is he alive?”

“Yes. He has a head injury thanks to the mob.” He gave a curt nod to Jennings, who had hurried up behind her. “Can you get these two into a boat?”

“Aye. We’re already riding a little low. We might as well ride lower. ” He motioned to one of his men, who took the groaning Pierre from Henri.

“And Mademoiselle Suchet, of course,” Henri said, to Jennings, not to her.

“Of course.”

“What about you?” She couldn’t help that it sounded like an accusation. Behind her a third boat pushed off the dock and shushed away into the river.

At that moment she heard a noise above them on the street. The noise of many people. The urchin she had seen earlier peered over the stone wall. A glow made him stand out in stark silhouette. Françoise stood riveted, as she and Frankie both realized what that innocent urchin might really mean. Jennings looked over his shoulder from his place directing the disposition of the ladder. Henri turned.

The dirty child pointed at them. Shouts echoed into the lightening darkness. Behind him the glow resolved itself into torches, and a crowd appeared. A shouting, angry crowd.

Henri swiveled to survey the boats and the refugees. They were still climbing down into two of the remaining three boats.

Jennings looked grim.

“Shall we push off with what we’ve got?” he asked.

Françoise saw Henri purposefully let the tension out of his shoulders. He pulled his sword. “I’ll hold them off until you can get everyone away.”

He turned toward the crowd. It had already grown.

“You can’t!” Françoise pleaded, taking his arm. “You’ll be killed.”

He won’t.
But they both knew that in some other version of this experience, Henri had been guillotined. What had Donna said?

Enough damage or sunlight. Françoise glanced to the lightening sky. Was this the beginning of that dreadful end?

“Take her to the boat, Jennings.” He didn’t look at her. He just stood there, his sword limp in his hand.

Jennings pulled her away. Françoise looked up at him, aghast. “You’re not going to let him sacrifice himself, are you?”

Henri took off at an easy lope toward the wooden steps up to the street.

“It’s him or all of them, miss,” Jennings said, just as though he weren’t wrestling her toward the boats with a big hand on each of her elbows. “He made his choice a long time ago.”

“Henri!” she cried.

He took the steps two at a time, sword now at the ready. She recognized the uniform of the
sans-culottes
as men poured down the stairs, shouting and crying for blood.

Jennings practically pushed her over the side of the dock and into Gaston’s waiting arms. Narvarre swung down, with Emile in one arm and settled the child on a bench. Families poured into the other boats.

“I have to go to him!” She struggled toward the ladder. The boat tipped precariously.

“He wouldn’t want that,” Gaston whispered to her.

Jennings cast off the lines then swung down the ladder. “To your oars, lads.” Three of his men and two of the tattered aristocratic fathers, including Narvarre, sat down at the oarlocks. Jennings took the remaining oar and pushed the boat away from the dock.

“And do you think we can put our backs into it?”

Françoise stood in the center of the boat as it turned slowly out into the current. Henri advanced up the stairway, thrusting and tossing adversaries over the railing. She turned as the boat turned so that she could see the tableaux of terrible courage. Gaston pulled her down to sit. Henri had made it to the top. Maybe …

She saw the first knife thrust home, just above his kidneys as the crowd engulfed him. Cudgels rose and fell.

He can survive this.

But both she and Frankie knew it was likely he would not. Françoise might have avoided becoming vampire, but Henri was on a path to the Place de Revolution. The boat found the sluggish current and the oars began to send it downstream in earnest. She was dimly aware of the other boats at her back gliding downstream with them.

The scene on the quay began to recede. Henri was still standing. She saw his sword gleam red in the light from the torches. Men still fell over the stone balustrade as he dispatched them. But they were on him now like ants engulfing a larger prey, stinging. She saw him stagger. Sabers flashed now into the torchlight.

Then she couldn’t see him anymore, only the ragged crowd. The whole was like a painting, small and unreal, a step removed from the pain and the anguish that drifted on the air. She hardly realized she was trembling until Gaston put his arm around her, and then the tears that had been coursing down her cheeks turned into sobs. She buried her head in Gaston’s shoulder and cried into his coat that smelled of prison.

He made soothing sounds. She looked up and saw him dash away a tear. They sat, looking back, long after they could no longer see the scene on the docks. The boats passed under the Pont Neuf, pulling downstream hard, past the stark walls of the Conciergerie. The refugees were silent as they passed the scene of their former suffering.

“He was a good man,” Gaston muttered.

Even Frankie had to agree.

Twenty-One

The blows stopped. That was strange. The sun was rising, somewhere. The gray of dawn had lightened into a bloodred glow.

Appropriate, since he was lying in a pool of his own blood. The scent of blood was almost overwhelming. He rolled his head. The crowd had parted. He hardly felt the pain of a last sword thrust. He was distant from himself, removed.

There it was—that strange smell again. He sucked in a breath. He was still able to do that. It was the smell of the drug Françoise had given him in his brandy.

Above him, he saw Croûte’s face appear, distorted, as though it were seen through a magnifying glass.

“Well, well.” The voice echoed horribly. “You got them out. For now. We will still catch them. We are everywhere. Your sacrifice was for nothing.”

She knelt beside him and pulled aside his coat. “You might heal even this. But you won’t escape.” She uncapped the soft bottle and pulled his jaw open. He couldn’t resist. Maybe he didn’t want to resist. It was over now. No purpose to his life. Everyone he ever cared for gone. Perhaps Croûte would do for him what he could not do for himself. End it.

End. That sounded peaceful. Though he would have to face the guillotine to gain peace.

She poured a good portion of the bottle down his throat.

Françoise woke slowly. She was hot. She cracked her eyes and shaded them with her hand against the glare.

“Are you awake,
ma petite?”

Gaston. She nodded and sat up. She’d been cradled in his lap.

“Good, for it is my turn at the oars.” He whipped a handkerchief from his coat pocket, miraculously white. “Perhaps you could soak this in the water, and give Pierre some comfort?”

Françoise nodded. Her eyes felt like scratchy, dry pebbles. Gaston relieved one of the older aristocrats at the oars.

“I’m hungry,” a little girl wailed.

“Soon,
ma chérie,”
her mother whispered with frightened eyes.

Françoise looked around. They were moving through the countryside northwest of Paris, among the barges. There were other boats, but their own, heavily loaded craft looked conspicuous. Who would not realize they were fleeing?

She got up and knelt beside Pierre, who was sitting up, but looked gray. “How are you, my kitchen wizard?” she whispered. His limpid brown eyes held despair. He shook his head slowly. She dipped the handkerchief over the side in water noticeably less foul than in the city. The river was bigger here too, having taken on several tributaries on its way to the coast north. “Jennings will get us away.”

“Who will appreciate my magnificence? No one had so discerning a palate as his grace.”

Françoise had trouble breathing for a moment. She could not answer him, but instead wrung out the cloth and dabbed at his head.

Jennings pulled at his oar. He looked exhausted. She gave her handkerchief to Pierre and crawled over several people to get near him. She raised her brows in inquiry.

“What?” he gasped, bending his back and reaching forward.

“We are rather conspicuous.”

“Avignon’s barge should be coming upriver somewhere between here and Rouen. Closer to Montes-la-Jolie if we’re lucky.”

“Is that the plan?”

He nodded, pulling at the oar. “We’ll take the barge to Le Havre. If we’re lucky the
Maiden Voyage
will just be coming in. If not, we pull out into the Channel. We’ll find her. And then it’s to England.” He said the word reverently.

She sighed. For him England meant life. She had the worst feeling that what meant life to her was on the way to the guillotine.

The drugs she’d brought back from her future were a means to his end, if the wounds he sustained and the sunlight were not. And there seemed to be nothing she could do about it. The path of history was like a river, flowing inexorably back into its course. She crawled to the back of the boat and sat in the stern, looking back toward Paris.

Well, you got your way, Frankie,
she thought.
We aren’t vampire. And if Henri’s dead, he can’t ever make you vampire.

So why doesn’t that feel good?

I don’t know.

Maybe because a good man died. One I love. You never loved him like that, did you?

I thought I did.
Frankie was pensive.
But it was just infatuation with the wicked duc. I never really knew him. Not like
you do. You were right. When I thought I was abandoned … I automatically blamed him.

So why do you think I looked for the real Henri this time around?
Something was niggling at Françoise’s brain.

Maybe it took both of us together to see the truth. My experience and your … your optimism.

Françoise chuffed a bitter laugh.
A kind word for naïveté. I’m not optimistic now.
A weight settled on her, doubly heavy because it settled on Frankie too. Her future had changed and yet it hadn’t. She was going to be just as disappointed, as cynical as Frankie. She’d just achieve it in a single lifetime.

Wait.

She sucked in a breath.
Frankie, you’re still here.

I know what you’re going to say. It’s just one of these time-travel-conundrums. If Robert Heinlein couldn’t figure it out,
I sure can’t.