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

which explained the screaming and frenzy. Several torches were sent flying, burning people in the crowd, while the pigs, in a paroxysm of pain, kept on rushing at the guard. There was such confusion for a few minutes that no-one noticed Landry insinuate himself in the wake of the pigs, deftly cut the rope that bound Michel to the executioner and push him down a dark, narrow alley opposite the convent. Everyone was far too busy inspecting their cuts and bruises and trying to collect their wits. A few of the braver souls were trying to catch the pigs. Catherine, who had been watching for it, was the only person who noticed the brilliant piece of strategy that did such credit to Landry’s coolness, courage and ingenuity. She raced after them down the narrow alley, stumbling in the dark on the slimy mud, which was strewn with stones and other less-readily-identifiable objects.
    She heard Landry’s muffled voice.
    ‘Is that you, Catherine? Hurry up! There’s no time to lose!’
    ‘I’m coming!’
    The darkness was so intense that she sensed rather than saw their two silhouettes, one tall, the other slightly shorter. The alley turned and twisted, as though trying to lose itself in the bowels of the Earth. The weird, derelict buildings on either side seemed to spring up at her out of the blackness like evil spirits. There was no light anywhere to be seen in this labyrinth of sinister, deserted alleys. All the dilapidated doors were shut and the windows blanks, their shutters torn away. Catherine was so tired that her heart felt as though it was bursting. But the three fugitives could still hear the mob roaring in the distance, and fear gave them wings.
    In the dark, Catherine tripped over a paving-stone and fell flat with a cry of pain. Almost in tears, she was pulled up again by Landry, and they all set off again on their headlong flight.
    Lanes and alleys branched off on all sides, punctuated here and there by dark stairways that seemed to plunge down into the depths of the Earth. They appeared to be in a labyrinth from which escape was impossible. Dragged along by Landry, breathless and frightened, Catherine climbed three flights of steps and turned sharply into an alley that suddenly opened out into a sort of square, surrounded on all four sides by tottering, shapeless buildings that seemed in imminent danger of collapsing on top of each other. There was an unpleasant stench. Gaps in the pointed rooftops showed here and there against the sky like missing teeth. The walls of rough stone, crudely cemented together with clay, bulged like abscesses under the weight of their roof-beams, now swollen with water. A few drops of rain fell.
    ‘Rain can only be a help to us at this stage,’ said Landry, coming to a stop and signalling to the others to follow suit. They leant against the wall of a house, trying to get their breath back. They had all run so far and so hard that their lungs seemed about to burst.
    Suddenly the profound stillness that reigned in this eerie place impressed itself on them. Catherine whispered, awestruck, ‘I can’t hear anything now. Do you think they are still after us?’
    ‘Yes, but it’s a dark night and they won’t follow us here. We are safe for the moment.’
    ‘Why? Where are we, then?’
    Catherine’s eyes had grown used to the darkness. She was now able to make out the outline of the decrepit, ramshackle buildings all round them. Across the square, a light glimmered feebly in an iron cage, half extinguished by the cutting wind. Overhead, the smoky clouds, drifting across an ink-black sky, were like a canopy stretched over the island of silence their surroundings formed amid the tumult of the town. Landry made a sweeping gesture.
    ‘This,’ he announced, ‘is the Grande Cour des Miracles – the place where miracles happen. There are several of them in Paris; one between the Porte Saint-Antoine and the Palais des Tournelles, for instance. This one is the most important though. It is the