One Thing More Read Online Free PDF Page A

amusement that she should ask.
    ‘What is he like?’ she pressed.
    ‘Shy, very ordinary, like an actor playing a part for which he hasn’t been given all the lines.’
    It was not what she had expected. It did not sound like a king, still less like a tyrant. Against her will it drew from her a kind of pity.
    ‘Four days!’ His voice cut into her thoughts. ‘We’ll need a lot of people, simply to cover what we’re doing, but only say a dozen or so we can really trust. At least in Paris ...’
    ‘Can we do it in time?’ she asked, feeling it pressing in on her, all the complication of what must be arranged, uncertain what Bernave had already planned, what would need to be changed now time was so short. ‘Who can we trust?’ she went on. ‘Royalists? People who believe the King rules by God’s decree?’ She felt faintly ridiculous as she said it, but she knew such faith existed, or had done.
    Georges bit his lip in a derisory humour. ‘The royalists are a shambles. We’ve got rid of the Church and whatever priests there are still alive are in hiding ... like a lot of us.’
    She was painfully aware of his situation, and that she herself had brought it about, but there was no time for indulgence of guilt now, however deep. Time was urgently, desperately short. And yet Bernave had seemed so certain there was a chance!
    ‘Bernave has the drivers.’ Georges returned to the practical, his face concentrated in thought. ‘The safe houses can be taken care of. It’s really the crowd to find to seize in on the King’s carriage as it goes from the prison of the Temple to the guillotine, and then others to block the side streets with carts so they can’t be followed by the National Guard.’
    ‘Do you know enough for that?’ she asked, trying to imagine the trust it would take to ask someone to do such a thing, to tell them how and where, and, above all, why! Georges would be placing not only the King’s life in their hands, but his own, and those of everyone else who helped. And they would have to be men and women of great resource, ice-cool nerve even under the greatest pressure, incapable of panic, and willing to risk their lives.
    ‘I think so,’ he answered softly. ‘I ... think so.’
    ‘And after that?’ She watched his eyes, his face. ‘We’ll have to get him out of France altogether. Maybe to Austria? Or perhaps England? A lot of aristocrats have gone to England—at least that’s what I’ve heard. It’s quicker to Calais than to any other border.’
    And also more obvious,’ Georges pointed out. ‘It’ll be the first place they’ll look.’
    ‘Spain?’ Célie suggested. ‘Or Italy?’
    He hesitated. There was no sound in the room but the dripping of water off the eaves, and every now and then the faint flicker of the candle flame in the draught. She did not interrupt.
    ‘Perhaps it would be best if we didn’t know,’ he said at last. ‘Leave it to them at the time.’ A very slight smile touched his lips. ‘Bernave has connections. He’ll have planned it. His business stretches all over France, and he imports silk from Italy, and sells it out again to Spain, and wool and leather to England. At least he will until we are at war with them too!’
    He stood up, hitching the blanket around himself and shivering. ‘I’d offer you chocolate if I had any, and the stove were going. But since I haven’t, and it isn’t, how about a glass of wine?’
    ‘Thank you,’ she accepted, watching him as he went to the cupboard and took out a bottle and two glasses. He set them on the table, uncorked the bottle and poured, measuring carefully to see she had slightly more than he, then passed her the glass.
    ‘Thank you.’ She took it and sipped. It was rough, but at least the warmth of it sliding down her throat eased out a little of the cold knotted inside her. ‘Aren’t there any royalists we could trust?’ She had not meant her disbelief to be there in her voice, but she could hear it