Page 52 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘It feels a bit better. The dizziness has eased, at least, and it doesn’t ache as much.’
‘If you eat, you will feel better still. Have some bread and cheese.’
He brought the food from yesterday’s meal out from the bag again. It was delicious.
Afterwards, Celeste lay down on the branches he had broken off to fashion as a bed under a huge tree. The sky had cleared and the first stars were out, the heavens endless and bright out here in the dark.
‘If I had not dropped my father’s journal, then maybe—’
‘No,’ he interrupted her. ‘They knew us anyway, the soldiers. I could see it in their eyes for the reports from Paris will have been sent far and wide.’
‘Would your friend Aurelian de la Tomber hear of this skirmish, do you imagine?’
‘He might and it is certainly a hope. Blois lies to the south on the Loire. If we can get there, I have good contacts and Lian knows of them, too. We could find new identity papers and travel again legally, which would make things so much safer.’
‘Are you always so optimistic?’
‘Certainly—after every setback I have always found a solution that is workable.’
‘How were you caught, then? In Spain?’
‘Unexpectedly and with a lot of good luck on the side of the French patrol that came across us. I lost a good friend in that skirmish, though.’
‘A friend?’ She wished to know more now that he was talking.
‘A patriot. Guillermo Garcia. A good man who did not deserve to die like that.’
This was said with a great feeling of loss. She could hear the grief in his words.
‘When Papa died I felt the same.’
‘You saw August die?’
‘In front of my eyes. A knife to the breast. The man who sunk it through his ribs was at least skilled so I doubt he felt it.’
‘What happened then? To you?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Her pupils were small black pinpoints of wrath and Shay knew she remembered just fine, the same way he could recall every second of Guillermo’s murder.
What he could not understand was how she had been allowed to live herself after it, for the layers of espionage were deep and secret in the underbelly of Napoleon’s empire.
Unless there had been another reason for her prolonged existence? A darker and more heinous truth began to stir in the back of his mind.
The marks around her wrist worried him, as did her reaction to the soldiers and to the two men at the village who had manhandled her.
Perhaps it was not just a loss of blood that had made her dizzy and disorientated? Even now as she bent to pick up another piece of bread, he could see her hands shake in the half-light. He lay down beside her and looked up at the sky, careful not to touch her.
‘Do you know the constellations?’ Anything to take both their minds off the death of her father was welcomed.
‘A few of them. Aquarius. Aries. Orion.’
‘There is Andromeda, the chained lady.’ He pointed and was glad as her gaze followed the direction. ‘She was tethered to a large rock and left out at sea to await the wrath of the great monster Cetus. But Perseus arrived on his winged sandals and, like a true champion, he went to her aid.’
‘Did he save her?’
‘Indeed, he did. The monster was turned to stone by the severed head of Medusa that he’d brought with him and Perseus claimed Andromeda as his beautiful bride and queen.’
