Part 28 (1/2)
He handed the small coin over and she turned cajolingly to the others. ”It doesn't come any fresher than this, citoyens.”
”Oh, aye,” one of them said with a leer, revealing a mouth empty of all but one front tooth. ”Bet you're not such a fresh piece anymore, eh, citoyenne?”
”One loaf, one sou,” she said, handing him a baguette.
Game over, the others bought from her basket, joined by some of their fellow gendarmes, and when only crumbs remained she said, ”I've yesterday's here too. Any chance I could get rid of it yonder?” She gestured with her head towards the door to the prison behind them.
”There's some'll be glad of it,” said the gendarme with the single tooth. He shrugged. ”Don't see no 'arm in it. Just the women's jail, mind . . . and be careful they don't eat you alive.” He cackled and blew his nose vigorously between finger and thumb.
”It'll cost you,” the first man said, getting to his feet. ”A kiss first, citoyenne.”
His breath stank of stale wine, garlic, and tobacco, and his mouth was wet as he grabbed her b.u.t.tocks and pressed his lips to hers. She held her breath and endured. Finally he let her go. ”This way.” He jerked his head towards a door in the opposite wall, and she followed him across the crowded courtyard.
He spoke to the two gendarmes who stood leaning against the wall on either side of the door, one of them picking his teeth, the other reflectively scratching through his beard in search of lice. They nodded. One of them spat on the cobbles at his feet and unlocked the door with the great key that hung from his belt. He waved Arabella inside.
The door clanged shut behind her. She heard the grating of the key in the lock and thought she would pa.s.s out. How would she get out of this place? No one had said. What if they all left and she was abandoned in here? Why would they care? One more woman prisoner more or less left to rot would make no difference. Then she told herself that as far as the gendarmes were concerned she was one of them. A hardworking citoyenne who wasn't averse to a little ribaldry.
She stood still and took stock. It was gloomy, hot, and airless but slowly she began to make out shapes, huddled shapes against the walls, lying on the floor. A low murmur almost like the subdued buzzing from a beehive filled the air. The only light was thrown from two pitch torches on the far wall, and when she took a step forward the wooden soles of her clogs stuck to the unspeakable mire that was the floor. An infant wailed and a child cried.
Some of the shapes began to move towards her. Women. Ragged, thin, straggle-haired women, some with babies, all with haunted, hungry eyes.
”I have bread,” she said. Hands were outstretched and the buzz became a clamor as women stumbled across the floor. She looked helplessly into her basket. There was barely enough to feed a small family let alone this throng of starved and desperate women and children.
She put the basket on the floor, unable to bear the idea of handing it out, of picking and choosing. Her eyes were now accustomed to the gloom and she could make out the features of the women as they fell upon the basket. She stepped back a little and looked around. Prisoners still lay on pallets on the floor or huddled against the walls, and she guessed they were too weak to make the effort even for bread. She set off around the walls, sidling rather than walking, pausing at each bundle of rags, bending down to ask the same soft question. ”Charlotte?” She met only blank stares from white or fever-hectic faces.
She persevered along one wall, then turned to the wall beneath the sconces. She stopped; her breath stopped in her chest. A woman lay asleep on a pallet. A woman with a streak of silver-white running through her graying hair from a pointed widow's peak.
Arabella knelt beside the pallet and put her hand on the turned shoulder. The bone was sharp beneath her palm, heat emanating from the skin. Two red spots of fever burned on the woman's cheeks and her breathing was labored.
”Charlotte?” Arabella murmured, laying her hand now on the woman's cheek. ”Charlotte, is it you?”
Paper-thin eyelids opened slowly to reveal deeply sunken eyes, but they were the same piercing gray as Jack's. Purple bruises filled the hollows beneath. ”Who wants me?” she said, in a voice that had more strength to it than her appearance would imply. ”Who are you?” Suspicion lurked in her eyes, an alert watchfulness as she looked up at the woman leaning over her.
”Jack's wife,” Arabella whispered. ”You are Charlotte?”
”Jack?” She struggled up and Arabella supported her shoulders. ”Jack is here?”
”Outside. He thought you were dead.”
The woman leaned back against Arabella's arm. ”I was . . . to all intents and purposes. I should have died, but somehow I didn't.” She closed her eyes in a moment of exhaustion.
”You must conserve your strength,” Arabella said urgently. ”Please . . . sit back against the wall.”
Charlotte did so, then she looked at Arabella with a clear, penetrating gaze. ”Jack's wife?”
Arabella sat down on the filthy floor and took the clawlike hand in both of hers. ”My name is Arabella. Listen to me carefully, Charlotte.”
Charlotte listened, not moving, not speaking, her eyes never leaving Arabella's face. When the other woman fell silent she let her head fall back against the wall and closed her eyes again. ”I have strange dreams,” she murmured. ”This is not one of them.”
”No. I'm truly here.” She took the other's woman hand and held it up to her face. ”Feel, Charlotte. I'm no figment, no chimera. I am Jack's wife and we are going to get you out of here very, very soon.”
Charlotte stroked Arabella's cheek then let her hand drop to her lap. ”I am ill,” she said with a sigh. ”What's left of my life is not worth putting anyone else's in danger.”
”Can you imagine what your brother would say if he heard you say that?” Arabella demanded, taking the woman's hands again tightly in her own. ”Charlotte, he's on the rack. He was told you had been murdered in La Force and he can't forgive himself for believing it.”
”It would have been better if I had died there,” Charlotte said.
”No,” Arabella declared. ”You have to be strong for just a little while longer. And when you're outside, in the fresh air, in the sunlight, with good food, and birdsong, and the scent of flowers, you will get well.”
A flickering smile touched Charlotte's bloodless lips, before her eyes closed again. ”I own I would give my last breath to feel the sun on my face.”
”You shall feel it,” Arabella said strongly. ”Believe me . . . trust Jack.”
”I would trust my brother with my life,” Charlotte said softly. The smile flickered again as she looked at her visitor. ”I always wondered what kind of woman would be strong enough for Jack. Do you love him?”
”With all my heart.”
”And if he has given you his heart, it will be without stint,” she said. ”Sometimes I despaired that he would ever find the right woman. He is not an easy man.”
”No,” Arabella agreed readily, and laughed. Charlotte managed a half chuckle and then began to cough. Arabella watched in despair as the sc.r.a.p of cloth she held was rapidly filled with blood. She got up and fetched her now empty basket. She gave Charlotte the two napkins. It was all she could think of to do.
The spasm pa.s.sed eventually and Charlotte leaned back with an exhausted sigh, her eyelids fluttering, the blood-soaked cloths scrunched in her lap. ”If it is to happen, it must happen soon,” she said weakly.
”I know.” Arabella leaned over and kissed her cheek. ”I would like to know my sister-in-law.” Charlotte lightly touched her cheek then her hand fell again into her lap.
”I understand the prisoners are known by number,” Arabella said urgently, seeing Charlotte begin to drift away again. ”Tell me yours, Charlotte.”
For a long moment there was silence, Charlotte's breath rasping unevenly in little puffs between her lips. Arabella began to despair and then the woman's eyelids fluttered. ”Prisoner 1568,” she whispered.
Arabella got up, brus.h.i.+ng the dirty straw and dust from her ragged skirt. She pushed the straggling hair away from her face with a sense of hopelessness. She could have brought a blanket with her, some nouris.h.i.+ng soup, laudanum. She had some in her cloak bag. Then she shook her head to dispel the despairing sense of futility. She had done what she had been sent to do. Now it was for the others . . . for Jack . . . to win Charlotte's freedom. And she knew that they would.
With her empty basket she made her way back to the locked door in the far wall. A few hands reached out and plucked at her skirts but there was no threat there, only despair. She didn't look like someone who might have access to the kind of power that would secure the release of any one of these wretched prisoners, and for the most part they watched her progress across the jail with dull and indifferent eyes.
She hammered with her fist on the door, desperate now to get out into the suns.h.i.+ne, to leave the fetid, diseased air of this prison behind. She hammered again and again, panic rising in her throat. Then the key grated and the door swung open a few inches. She slipped outside and drew a deep breath.
”Hope it was worth it,” the gendarme said. ”It'd take the promise of more than a few sous to get me to go in there.”
”I take what I can where I can find it,” she responded, and hurried away, swinging her basket with all the insouciance of a woman utterly at home. She broke through the gateway almost at a run and saw Jack, still standing motionless where she had left him. He didn't move as she reached him but his eyes were filled with an agonized question.
”She is there,” she said.
He had wanted it to be Charlotte. He had not wanted it to be Charlotte. If she wasn't there, if Flamand had been mistaken, then she had died in La Force and he hadn't abandoned her. But then, as the reality seeped through, and the agonizing wait was over, he felt only a surge of elation and deep and abiding joy. He became aware of Arabella again, standing close to him, her hand on his arm, her expression grave.
”Jack, she's ill. Consumption, I think.”
And the blackness filled him anew.
”We don't have much time,” she said, shaking his arm. ”Every minute she stays in that charnel house-”