1794

Note: This story is an experiment in the writing style of Hillary Mantel.

Noirmoutier: The guns are cleaned out and loaded, the soldiers slide on their boots, and the priests give many confessions. In a small, obscure house owned by a random woman, a bed-ridden man and his wife have a discussion.

D’Elbee looks anxiously to see out the small window of the bedroom. He has not been outside in days, but it is six a.m., and he hears footprints scattered around and, in the distance, the faintest of indications of booming. The invaders are approaching the island. “Please, Charlotte, I beg of you. Go and get some soldiers who are willing to carry me to the front of the battle on a stretcher.”

“Have you tried walking today?”

“My ribs are still broken. I doubt if the bullet wounds will ever truly heal. I will go out as I am. Please send for some volunteers. You urged me to join this war at the outset, so I know you support me at its defeat.” He gives her a sincere, weary smile: a smile that breaks her heart and simultaneously repairs it. This is her husband, the honorable, the selfless, the courageous. Ever-ready to oblige her exhortations, never willing to slacken his principles. She has not for an instant regretted marrying him, even if they are both doomed to tragedy. She presses his hand and gets up to fulfill his behest.

All around the island, ships and men come nearer and nearer. Everything is met with carefully-placed cannons and pierrieres, stone-launching swivel guns, from the shore. From the east, men wade up in knee-deep water, thinning out as they come, firing as they are able. Their bullets do no damage on the shore. From seemingly nowhere a bullet flies towards the advancing column and hits the blue-clad general, Jordy, on the head. He screams and staggers back in pain, but he knows it is not fatal. No matter the pain forging a trench in his head: This is his battle. He will lead the charge.

“Get me a stretcher,” he says. There is none around. The soldiers lay down their rifles and bid him sit upon them.

D’Elbee at last is carried to the front on a canvas stretched between wooden rods. His presence rallies the soldiers. A bit of water from the sea leaps up to spray his face. He is delighted. It has been so long since he has experienced nature. Charette left him in command of the island, and he may be wounded— with fourteen stubborn bullet wounds— but he will accept the command and play his role. The mere sight of him makes soldiers jump up in fresh courage, turn their faces back to the enemy, stand unflinching beside his stretcher. It is he of whom Turreau will say Vendean prisoners shed tears for at the mere mention of his name, after his death.

The two enemy generals spy each other on stretchers through their own men and each other’s men.

Maybe, thinks Jordy, we are all just humans after all.

Maybe, thinks d’Elbee, he will have a little mercy on my people.

Another Republican general rides up on a horse. This is Haxo, perhaps the Vendeans’ favorite enemy due to his reputation for honoring his word. He is forty-four years old, but seems younger because he takes care of his appearance. He is met by a few other riders, from the Vendean garrison.

“I would like to cease fighting and spare the blood of true Frenchmen and misled Frenchmen,” Haxo proposes. “Shall we come to terms?”

The Vendean riders agree. D’Elbee watches in tentative approval, knowing the choice is right but unable to rid himself of a slight tremor at heart. The Republicans are not known to ever spare cities they take. But this is Haxo, he thinks. He will keep his word.

Already the islanders are flying the Republican flag from the chapel, and are throwing down their weapons in heaps in the town square. D’Elbee tosses away the musket he was handed, his hand quivering slightly as it slides from his grasp. Exposing himself is tolerable. Exposing the beloved people in his protection is what strikes him, and what causes mist to cloud the town before him on this perfectly fogless day. Haxo will keep his word, he repeats to himself. Haxo will force all of the other Republicans to keep his word.

He lets himself get carried back to the small house he is tucked away in, where Charlotte helps get him back in bed, undresses him, and washes his wounds as she does every day. She is the real hero, he thinks. She is willing to do the work no one appreciates, while I get the undeserved glory. And glory for fighting— what sad glory!

“Thank you,” he says.

“For what?” she asks.

But he does not trust himself to answer evenly, so he says nothing.

She seems to understand, and smiles.

That night she also knows he is not getting any sleep, and stays up. Every so often, the glints of their gazes make contact. Haxo is a man of his word. He will make them keep his word. He will. He has a conscience.

The following morning shouts and firing rouse d’Elbee from the half-sleep he had managed to attain. “Charlotte!”

She, too, is awake, and already dressed, and hears the sounds. “I’ll be right back,” she says.

D’Elbee waits in incomparable anguish as his beloved wife slams the door to the outside, disappearing behind it. A few moments later she returns.

“They are arresting the islanders.”

A worse wound than all the others stabs his chest. “Where is Haxo? Wait, don’t go back. Did you see him? Someone must have not heard his command yet. It will be okay.”

But the day continues thus, and the firing increases so that it sounds like constant fireworks. D’Elbee’s anxiety aggravates his wounds, which Charlotte continuously tends. He feels like his body will give out. He half wants it to.

Then it comes to them. The knock. The one that comes to everyone else, but never to you. Except that someday, it inevitably does. At least he cannot reproach himself for neglecting others when their knock came. His life has been poured out for his people. And now, his mind can be at peace. They are not suffering without him.

The Republicans do not wait for an answer, but force the locked door open and stream into the bedroom. And then they are there. Charlotte thinks she will faint. D’Elbee smiles at the soldiers. He notices that Haxo is not among them.

As husband and wife are torn apart, and d’Elbee is dragged to the Maison Jacobsen house, which will be used as a courtroom, he sees Haxo in an upper window of that courthouse. They lock into each other’s faces. I was powerless, Haxo’s visage says. He looks shocked to the core.

That is alright, d’Elbee thinks. A clear conscience suffices for good fortune.