Page 21 of Souvenir Heart

“Citizeness, you wound me.” Marcus placed a hand on his chest, his offended tone only partially mock. Some of those fake assignats were among his finest works.

Fifteen

If Tuesday June 10th—no, 22 Prairial, had been a bad day for the brigade chief in charge of the Rouen office of public safety, the 23rd was even worse. The heat had not broken, the flies on the ceiling had expanded from a battalion to a brigade, and now this.

“We’ve found Captain Bouchary and his men, sir.”

“And?” The chief set down his papers, sat up in his chair, and waved away another swarm of flies.

“They’re dead, sir.”

“Dead? What do you mean dead?”

L’Helias tightened his grip on the brim of his dusty, sweat-stained tricorne. “No longer breathing, sir.”

“Good God man, I know what dead means. I’m asking how?”

His subordinate, who had spent the last day and a half scouring the roads to Barentin for the missing patrol, struggled to describe what he’d found. “They were in a field. About seven kilometers outside of Barentin. Covered with straw. Though not very well. Le Gac,” L’Helias put a hand to his forehead, “had been shot in the head. Le Milbeau…” His hand trailed down to his stomach. “Was gutted. Dufresne had been clubbed in the head. The rest…” He swallowed hard. “Shot. Trampled by horses.”

“Do you know who did it? Was it Austrians? Monarchists? Counterrevolutionaries?”

“That’s the thing.” L’Helias twisted the brim of his hat. “We don’t know. We asked around. No one we talked to had actually seen any armed groups or, well, groups of any kind. Just rumors…”

Rumors at least were a place to start. “What kind of rumors?”

“You know. The usual thing. Someone’s cousin heard from someone in a village the next town over, that some fellow saw....”

“Saw what?”

“Bandits.”

“Bandits?” The chief waved away a skirmish of flies and said skeptically, “Could it have been bandits?”

“For sure, bandits are always a problem on the road, but…” L’Helias shook his head. “With them it’s usually grab and run—not murder. And from lone travelers, not a troop of soldiers.” More to himself than to the chief, he added. “Why would bandits attack soldiers? And not take anything?”

The brigade chief leaned forward. “What do you mean, not take anything?”

“They were left with all their weapons. I had my men check the pockets of the bodies. All the things you’d expect a band of robbers to take were still there, coins, rings, pocketknives…”

“Identity papers?”

“Still there.”

The brigade chief interlaced his fingers, steepled his index fingers, and tapped them against his chin. “It makes no sense.”

“I know sir.”

The chief tried to approach the puzzle from another angle. “Who found them?”

“A farmer who saw the vultures circling his field.” L’Helias made a circling motion with one hand. “But even if the birds hadn’t alerted him, he’d have found them pretty quick. Like I said, the bodies weren’t well-hidden, just a layer of straw thrown over them.”

“Any tracks?”

“It was a field sir. Ground was pretty churned up.”

Which the chief interpreted to mean that L’Helias’s men had churned it up uncovering the bodies without bothering to look for tracks first. What had he expected? They were soldiers, not inspectors. And green ones at that. He tapped his chin again with his steepled fingers. “Could the farmer have done it?”

“We thought of that. Questioned him thoroughly. But he’s an old man. Lives with his two daughters, sturdy enough girls, but still, I don’t think the three of them could have shot and hacked up all those soldiers. Leastways, not on their own. Besides, we’re pretty sure that whatever happened, it didn’t happen there. There were no signs of a fight, no musket balls in the trees, no blood except what was under the bodies.”