Chapter 6
Moreau crossed the remainder of the bridge into the Presqu’?le without waiting to see if I’d follow. I started after him, Brewster directly behind me.
“No need to accompany me,” I told him. “You’ll be wanting your breakfast, I’m certain.”
“I already ate,” Brewster said stubbornly.
“And I’m not letting you walk off with a bloke what was just found over a dead body, knife in hand, especially a man from the Frenchie army.
They were good at killing, weren’t they?
It’s not me what will be explaining to your missus why I let you go alone. ”
As I could not blame him for his suspicion, I didn’t argue. “Come along, then. But stand out of earshot. I have a feeling he won’t want to be overheard.”
“If you speak to him in French, it won’t matter, will it? Don’t understand a word beyond oui or merci.” He pronounced them wee and mercy.
Brewster was never as thick as he pretended to be, and I conjectured he knew more than that. But again, I did not argue as we continued on our way.
The vast square was bustling today, but with more ordinary activities, the riotous mob from yesterday but a memory.
A market did business on one end, and a contingent of ladies on a morning walk wandered across the other.
Coffee houses had set out tables so gentlemen could linger as they drank, taking the fine air.
Moreau waited for me in a relatively empty patch near the middle of the square. I walked to him, and Brewster, despite his protests, did halt a discreet distance away.
As I’d observed yesterday, Moreau dressed simply, in coat, trousers, and boots meant for tramping about. His suit had obviously been tailored for him, but it was of sensible wool, not a more costly fabric. Moreau wore no hat on this warm morning, and his light brown hair stirred in the breeze.
His grey eyes held intelligence but no shame. Did he mean to tell me he knew damn well where we’d met before, perhaps threaten me to stay away from him? Or would he apologize for what had happened?
How could a man whose soldiers had nearly killed me in a most brutal fashion simply say, I beg your pardon?
“I did not lie to Vernet when I told him I didn’t think you murdered Gallo,” I said in French before he could begin. “The theory that someone followed him from the comte’s home is likely the best one, and I did not see you at the comtesse’s ball last night.”
Moreau regarded me calmly. “I would not have been invited. I am from a family of no note, and I departed Lyon before its siege to follow a young Bonaparte when his career was rising. Was with him on the Italian peninsula and then in Egypt. The citizens of Lyon are respectful to me, but the aristocrats decidedly are not.”
“Those in the comte’s circle seem ready to return to the old ways,” I agreed. “I spent some time in Egypt recently. Fascinating country.”
“I was not there long. Your fellow Englishmen saw to that.”
I inclined my head. “Indeed, the Battle of the Nile was quite a coup for Admiral Nelson. A great tragedy when he later perished.”
“It was the end of our navy. And the end of the war, but we did not see it then. You recognized me,” Moreau stated bluntly, his focus on me intensifying. “And remembered.”
I gazed across the square to the ladies in their light summer frocks, parasols aloft to keep the sun at bay.
“Difficult not to remember,” I said, my voice light. “The entire incident is indelibly fixed on my mind. Not to mention on my left knee.” I tapped my booted leg with my walking stick.
“I believed you dead,” Moreau said. “When I cut you down, I was certain you had already perished. They would not obey me, those men. Wild and drunk—deserters I was trying to herd back to camp.”
“You have no need to explain yourself,” I said. “It was war. We were enemies.”
Moreau’s expression hardened. “There is war, and then there is needless cruelty. I knew it was hopeless trying to make those soldiers obey, but I could at least let you rest with dignity. I hid you the best I could so they would not desecrate your body. I left them there, asleep and drunk, knowing I could not save them. No one ever saw them again.”
“They were killed,” I said. “British soldiers came upon us. They killed or captured your men but didn’t see me. They probably would have gutted me by mistake, so it was a good job you did hide me.”
Moreau’s brows went up. “They did not take you back with them? Then how did you—?”
“Survive?” I sent him a mirthless smile. “As my commander likes to say, with my be-damned stubbornness. I don’t have the sense to know when I’m beaten, he claims, to give up and die.”
“I see.” Moreau looked me up and down, his gaze unreadable once more. “I am pleased that you did not give up and die.”
“My commander was not as pleased, but that is neither here nor there. If you seek forgiveness …” I shrugged, albeit stiffly. “As I say, it was war and a long time ago. Who knows what I would have done had our positions been reversed?”
I would have given my men hell for torturing a helpless prisoner, I could say with certainty. But the French soldiers had been, as Moreau indicated, drunk and trying to desert. They might have simply shot Moreau if he’d tried harder to stop them.
“In the end, we both lived,” I told him. “And here we are.”
“As you say, Captain.” Moreau gave me a rigid bow. “Alors. I will say good day to you, sir.”
I bowed in return. “Bonne journée, Colonel.”
We studied each other, both of us awkward. Moreau at last gave me a nod, and then turned and strode briskly toward the north side of the square.
“Are you going to tell me what that was about?” Brewster demanded as he approached. Not for him the silent deference of the good manservant or bodyguard.
“I met him during the war, on the Peninsula,” I said. “The encounter was fairly savage, and it almost killed me. We were deciding to let bygones be bygones.”
Brewster regarded me as though he doubted my sanity. “I’ve had plenty of savage encounters in me life, right on the streets of London. When my old enemies see me, they take another road. No bygones for us.”
“The colonel and I might have been friends in other circumstances,” I said. “I’d rather buy him a coffee than strike him down.”
“That’s why a soldier’s life weren’t for me. Don’t want to shake hands and be friends with those trying to kill me. Don’t much want no one telling me what to do either.”
“The army is not for everyone,” I agreed. I’d met plenty who could never adapt to the discipline that kept us alive. “Now, I’ve worked up an appetite. I’m returning to Beaumont’s for my breakfast, if you care to join me.”
I also wanted to find Fernand Devere. He’d reacted strongly to Gallo’s dead body, and I had to wonder why.
Brewster said no further word as we made for the narrow lanes that led to Beaumont’s wine shop.
The proprietor welcomed us with a mere lift of his brows. I’d come to know that, for Baptiste Beaumont, this was an outpouring of joy. He slammed a plate of sausages swimming in thick sauce and a hunk of bread to the table as I sat down, plunking a cup of coffee beside it.
The regulars in the cafe had heard all about the dead man and the gendarmes questioning me. They turned to me in expectant curiosity, and I had to explain what had happened as I ate. Brewster gulped coffee and kept a sharp watch on the door.
“Has anyone seen Fernand Devere?” I asked the room once I’d finished my tale. “He was on the bridge, but I lost sight of him.”
Beaumont shrugged and drifted behind his counter, his effusiveness finished for the day.
“Saw him heading along the quay,” a man in one corner told me. “Past the old arsenal. Probably going back to his ironworks. Seemed to be in a hurry.”
“Ah.” I thanked him, feigning unconcern.
Once I finished the excellent food, restoring my strength, I decided to make for the south of the city and call in at the Deveres’ factory.
When Donata and I had been shown around the ironworks the Deveres owned, I’d expected something rather like a country blacksmith’s, if a bit larger.
I’d pictured a stone shelter with a few men pounding at anvils while Emile’s father and uncles trundled the finished goods in horse-drawn wagons to the farmers who’d purchased them.
I had not been prepared for the scale of their operation.
We’d arrived at a large brick building with chimneys at either end that belched smoke into the cloudy sky.
Several delivery vans waited in the courtyard, and a stream of workers had flowed into and out of the main foundry and the outbuildings surrounding it.
Emile, with his Uncle Fernand, had ushered us inside, giving Donata a thick woolen cloak to shield her and her gown from sparks and soot.
She’d worn half-boots for this journey but had been curious enough about the workings to don the crude but sturdy boots Emile brought her to keep her own from being ruined.
The factory’s interior consisted of a huge open room with men working giant bellows to stoke equally massive fires.
Workers had banged on bars and poles of iron at their anvils, finishing dozens at a time.
The room was open to the second floor, windows high above helping smoke to escape and not linger where the men worked.
The workers had ceased when Emile and Fernand guided us through, letting us move among them without hazard.
Today, my unexpected appearance with Brewster at my side had men glancing up from forges without ceasing their labors.
Two men poured a vat of white-hot iron into a mold, sparks bursting upward in a bright rain. The men were protected by heavy woolen suits and scarfs across their faces, but their brows and hair appeared to be permanently singed.
One man thrust a bar he’d been working into a barrel of water, steam exploding with a sharp hiss. He hoisted the bar out again and left it to cool while he walked to us, hammer in hand.