Page 5 of Souvenir Heart

“Done,” Marcus wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Surveyed the scene. Elizabeth cradled in James’s arms. Andre wiping down his musket. The coach a short distance away, the comte clutching the slack reins. David beside the team, rubbing the cheek of the lead gray. The broken bodies of the French soldiers scattered alongside with the luggage they’d been searching only moments earlier. He spotted his sketchbook, splayed in page down in the dirt between the gouges left by the Berlin’s great wheels. He bent to retrieve it. Turning it over, he saw his sketch of their rendezvous had been torn in half; there was no hope of salvaging it now.

“Forget your battered sketchbook, scribbler,” Andre said, “we’ve six bigger problems to clean up now.”

Three

Andre had been right. Clean-up had been hell. They lost precious travel hours wrapping the soldiers’ bodies in tarps, concealing them atop the coach’s roof, in the boot, and in the secret compartments David had designed beneath seats, then finding a place to leave them where they wouldn’t immediately be discovered. But now the men lay hidden under scattered bales of hay in a field several miles back, waiting for some unlucky farmer to stumble across them. Yet more casualties in yet another politician’s war. France’s this time, though no doubt, England’s soon enough. Which was why Marcus and the rest of the team were in France building up the spy networks and setting in motion the plans that would ensure it was their King and country that came out ahead.

“Scribbler, put your sketchbook down and come eat,” David said.

He didn’t look up from his drawing to where the others were sitting on a red and white blanket spread beneath the gnarled branches of an old tree. Exhausted and hungry, they’d stopped for a quick repast. Even if the taste of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur wasn’t still bitter on his tongue, Marcus couldn’t bring himself to eat.

“Bread?” Andre’s offer was accompanied by an odd thwang.

Marcus looked up in time to see a chunk hurtling towards him. He caught it in his hand and examined it. Flour was in short supply in France, and the ‘bread’ was a curious shade of brown.

“Eat,” David repeated in a warning tone.

Marcus popped the chunk into his mouth and chewed, noticing three things: it tasted terrible, he was hungry, and Andre was loading a fig into what appeared to be a catapult made out of a spoon.

“Is that your doing?” He nodded at the catapult, then at David.

“Fig’s got significantly more mass than bread, so you’re not going to get as much range with it. Move the launcher up and slide this under it. It’ll give you more of an arc,” David said, addressing Andre.

“Et tu, Brute?” Marcus plucked the flying fig out of the air and ate it. “Must you encourage him?”

The big man shrugged. “If it gets you to eat.”

He knew his friends were right. Fatigue and hunger muddled a man’s mind. And while they were getting closer to the coast and the waiting rescue sloop, now wasn’t the time to get careless. “Hand me a plate, I’ll serve myself.”

“Fairly certain the bread’s made with at least some wheat,” Andre said cutting him a proper slice and putting it on a plate. “But definitely better if you put a generous amount of cheese on it.” He dropped a glob of pale, melting stuff beside the bread. “Or pâté. The pâté is particularly fine.” He added a slice, then glanced around at the collection of plates and the basket spread on the red and white blanket. “There’s some pigeon and more figs around here somewhere.”

“No cake?” Marcus said teasingly. The French countryside was plagued by food shortages, but somehow Andre had managed to put together this impromptu feast.

“No m’lord, there is neither pudding nor cake, but there is wine.” Andre lifted a bottle and pointedly topped off David’s glass.

“Good for what ails you.” David raised his glass encouragingly.

“A matter of opinion.” Marcus took a bite of fig, still tasting the lingering sharpness of saltpeter. The three of them had their share of demons and had developed different ways of keeping them at bay. For him, it was the easy flow of line over paper.

He glanced down at the sketch he’d just started; the comte was his focal point; he’d drawn him in the center, facing toward the viewer. Joley’s hands were outstretched, as if in supplication, drawing the viewer’s eyes toward the rough triangular shape of James and Elizabeth in the foreground. They were sitting side by side, Dinsmore’s hand stretched protectively behind her back.

He studied his composition. Andre handed him a plate. He took something off it without looking—it turned out to be bread smeared with cheese—and chewed. With a few quick strokes of his pencil, he added the hint of a tree trunk at the top of the page, on the right side. Then, deciding the whole thing was sufficiently balanced, he began adding in detail, starting with the comte’s face; he sketched in the high forehead, hawk’s beak of a nose, and the eyes, smudged with fatigue from weeks on the run.

But his mouth… Marcus looked up frowning at the actual man; Joley kept talking, making it difficult to capture the shape.

“I must go,” he said sharply.

“Go? Where?” Dinsmore gave voice to the question that immediately leapt into Marcus’s head.

“You heard those soldiers? What they said about the Girondins being arrested? My late son-in-law was a leader in the party. I must find out if my daughter, Marguerite, has been taken in his stead. I must go to Paris.”

“But they will kill you!” Elizabeth cried.

She had that right. After everything that had happened on this mission, everything they’d risked, he couldn’t believe the comte was even considering turning back. It was far too late for the Girondins—they’d misplayed their political hand. Their cause—and anyone associated with it, were lost.

“I will make an offer to those monsters.” Joley declared, hand on his heart. “My life in exchange for hers.”

The fool. Only four months ago, the Assembly had voted to execute their own King. If they had her, those madmen in Paris would never release the comte’s daughter; they’d simply add another aristocratic head to the pile.