Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

exceptionally resourceful a 15-year-old as himself.
    ‘They will take him to Montfaucon,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘It’s quite a long way, but not so far that we have time to spare. How do you expect to free him before he reaches the gallows? He has an army round him and there are only two of us.’
    ‘We must keep close behind him,’ Catherine insisted. ‘We’ll find a way.’
    ‘All right then,’ Landry sighed, taking her hand. ‘Let’s go, but you mustn’t be angry with me if we don’t succeed.’
    ‘You will try? You really will try?’
    ‘Yes,’ the boy groaned. ‘But this is absolutely the last time I take you out with me. Next time you might want me to take the Bastille single-handed!’
    Landry and Catherine were panting and breathless by the time they reached the Rue Saint-Denis, but they had the satisfaction of knowing that they had caught up with Montsalvy and his escort once more. Luckily the latter had been halted several times along the route by shouting, chanting bands of townspeople. Some of these were on their way to help in the storming of the Bastille, while others were heading toward the Hôtel d’Artois, the Duke of Burgundy’s residence, in the Rue Mauconseil.
    The escort had just halted once more when Landry and Catherine caught up with it. Capeluche, the public executioner, had ordered the halt to enable a passing Augustine friar to shrive the condemned man and help him make his peace with God before dying. It was fear rather than piety that finally persuaded the protesting monk to agree; but when the party started off again he was there, walking along beside the prisoner and telling his beads in an undertone.
    ‘It’s lucky for us that they are taking him there on foot,’ whispered Landry. ‘If they had decided to drag him there, or put him in a tumbrel, we would not have had a chance.’
    ‘Have you thought of something, then?’
    ‘I’m not sure. But it is getting dark now, and if I can just lay my hands on the one thing I need, we might manage it yet. But we will still have to think of somewhere to hide him …’
    Just then they were joined by a group of students and women of the town who had come running up to take part in the procession to the gallows. Landry fell silent, but the precaution was unnecessary. Students and doxies alike were uproariously drunk, the predictable result of looting a tavern. They shouted and sang at the tops of their voices as they lurched and stumbled from one side of the street to the other.
    ‘The best thing to do,’ Catherine whispered, ‘would be to hide him in the cellar at home. There is a little window there that faces the river. He couldn’t stay there long, but …’
    Landry promised that she could leave the rest to him. Catherine’s suggestion had suddenly inspired him, and the rest of the plan presented no problem.
    ‘I’ll steal a boat tonight and bring it alongside your house. All he has to do is slide down a rope into the boat and then go on up river as far as Corbeil, where Comte Bernard d’Armagnac has his camp, dropping me off somewhere along the way. Of course, he would have to get past the chains they have stretched across the river between La Tournelle and the Île Louviaux, but that should not be too difficult at present, as there is no moon. Anyway, we should have done all we could then, and the rest would be up to him, or fate. It would be something of a triumph if we even got as far as that …’
    The young girl silently squeezed his hand. A new hope was making her tremble with excitement. It was getting dark rapidly, but people were lighting torches all around them, and the light flickered over the nearby houses, with their overhanging eaves, gilded and painted signs and small leaded windows, before moving on and briefly lighting up the red faces of the crowd.
    The uproar was deafening and seemed a strangely inappropriate accompaniment to the last moments of a man on his way to the gallows. Landry suddenly