Page 46 of Beyond the Lavender Fields
Martel grinned. “I found my priest.”
Thesavonnerie’s sign swayed like blooming lavender in the evening breeze ahead. Sweat beaded across Gilles’s brow. Daubin was hardly a religious man. He wouldn’t be keeping a refractory priest hidden in the factory, would he? Not withsans-culottesin his employ.
One of the laborers walking just ahead of Gilles spat at the door of thesavonnerieas they passed, then glanced back at Gilles.
Luc Hamon? Gilles resisted the urge to wipe the spittle off the green paint. What gratitude. Daubin had saved the job while Luc and his family were sick, something most employers would not have done. Gilles’s blood simmered. Not to mention Marie-Caroline had risked her safety taking the family a basket of provisions. And this was how Luc thanked them.
Gilles looked away quickly. No real harm had been committed. If Luc wished to be angry, he could carry it on his own conscience.
It took several minutes after passing the soap factory for Gilles’s pulse to slow. The Daubins were not in danger. Thank the skies.
But as they moved out of town and into the orchards that cloaked the eastern edge, the tightness returned to his gut. Farther down this road lay his great-uncle’s orchards, the ones Gilles had been reading in when he spied Marie-Caroline last month. His uncle, though wealthy from the success of his shipping company, had aligned himself with the Jacobins, at least in word. He wouldn’t harbor a priest. Not with the worldly lifestyle he followed.
The familiar road was not so sleepy tonight as it had been that Sunday morning. Carriages passed and workers trudged home from long days in the fields. Most gave the group ofrévolutionnairesa wide berth. Some shouted, “Vivre la France! Vivre la nation!”
They did not stop at the orchards. Another relief. Martel led them down a different street and called for a halt. A few old, but well-cared-for houses extended down the road, and a church’s steeple rose up behind them.
Martel motioned to a few men. “Our target is the third house on the street. You men circle around the back to prevent any escape. The rest of us will break down the front door.”
Gilles nearly asked whether they should knock before barging in, but held back. Of course, someone running from the law should not be alerted to his arrest. Never mind that the law had been vetoed by the king. Under the current government, the veto was invalid. Wasn’t it? The people of France wanted the law. Most of them.
The smaller division went ahead and climbed over the gate that protected the house’s gardens. The shutters on the house had an odd look to them with their dull-brown coloring and irregular finish. They didn’t match the elegant hues of the neighboring houses.
Martel swore and ran ahead. He threw himself at the locked gate, scrambling over with the grace of a flopping fish. The rest of the group hustled to catch up to him.
On closer examination, the strange shutters revealed themselves to be boards secured across the windows. Martel charged up the front steps and pounded on the door. Gruff murmuring rumbled through the group.
Gilles pulled himself up the iron gate and easily vaulted over. Shrubs and trees in the front garden looked well kept. Someone had swept debris from the path.
“Traitors,” Martel hissed. “Filthy renegades.Emigrés.” He whirled toward the group. “Break down this door.”
The man with the hatchet and a few of his mates ran up to hack at the neatly painted wood. Martel stood back, coming to Gilles’s side.
“They were here Saturday night. I saw the blasted priest with my own eyes,” Martel said through clenched teeth.
“Your relative?”
The young man nodded. “I should have acted then.” He turned away, pulling at his hair.
Men pulled at the boards over the windows. One by one they clattered to the paved walkways. Someone took up a scathing revolutionary tune.
“Come help, Étienne.” Martel shoved past him to get to the nearest window. The song increased in volume as many joined in.
Gilles pulled the boards out from under the feet of the other men and gathered them in a heap by a flowering rosebush. No need for someone to get a nail through their shoe in the mounting rage. In the last two years since Gilles had returned to land, he had avoided getting involved in riots. The lack of control in a frenzied crowd led to too many undesirable events. The newspaper headlines from the massacre at Avignon earlier that year wavered through his mind. Perhaps it was a good thing the inhabitants of this house had left.
The hatchet thwacks quieted. A large crack echoed across the garden as the man destroying the door kicked it in. Grey shadows lay beyond it.
Crash.
Gilles flinched as glass panes crumpled from their perches, the jagged pieces shattering on the ground. Martel swung again with his nail-studded board, then relinquished it to another and sprinted up the steps. Shards of window glittered on the ground in the opening notes of a sunset.
Ducking out of the way of the flying daggers, Gilles pulled more boards into his pile. His stomach jolted at each crash. It wasn’t the blast of cannon reverberating across the deck ofle Rossignol, but still his ears strained for the pop of a blast. The urge to crouch like a powder monkey scurrying between the guns threatened to make a fool of him.
With the windows properly disposed of, the men swarmed the house and grounds. Bumps and clangs echoed through the gaping holes left by the windows. Outside the gate, workers stopped to watch. Some scaled the fence to join, including a few young women. Max and Émile would have gone for the girls, rather than ruining the house.
Gilles wanted to melt into the crowd, but he couldn’t leave Martel thinking he’d abandoned the task. With a board, he started smacking the rosebush. Yellow and pink petals exploded around him, spreading the summery aroma through the garden.
Did Marie-Caroline like roses?
