Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [154]
I put my head down and walk fast, my guitar case in my hand. It almost works. I’m nearly off the street and around a corner when one of them shouts at me. I pretend I don’t hear him.
“You there! With the guitar! I said stop!”
And then his rough hand closes on my arm, spins me around.
“Your papers!” he shouts at me. He’s holding a pistol.
“Ah, citizen, I’m so sorry. I left them in my rooms,” I say.
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
“Alexandre Paradis,” I tell him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was playing guitar. At a café. The Old Gascon. Just up the street.”
His nostrils twitch. I stink of sulfur and smoke. He grabs my case and opens it. It’s empty. Almost. He holds it upside down. Shakes it. Paper fuses flutter to the ground.
I know what comes next. “Don’t. Please,” I whisper. “Listen. Listen to me.…”
“Raise your hands above your head,” he commands.
I shake my head and start to back away. I didn’t go to church as a child so I have no prayers to say now. No words to commend my soul. But the lines of a poem come to me.
“ ‘Perchance I perished in an arrogant self-reliance ages ago,’ ” I say, “ ‘and in that act, a prayer—’ ”
“Raise your hands!” the guard yells.
“ ‘—a prayer for one more chance went up so earnest, so instinct with better light let in by death—’ ”
“This is your last warning!”
“ ‘—that life was blotted out—not so completely but scattered wrecks enough of it remain, dim memories, as now, when once more seems the goal in sight.’ ”
He raises his pistol.
And fires.
84
I run. With a bullet in my side.
Through streets and alleys, through the night, through the pain, I run. And somehow I get away. The guard is slow. There are no other guards nearby to hear him shout for help. There are too many people screaming and running, frightened by the gunshot. I push through them, run down an alley, through a yard, and into a dark street.
I keep running. South. To the Palais-Royal.
The Foy is open when I get there. People are eating and drinking. The kitchen is busy. I wait by the door, in the shadows. When I see my chance, I dart to the cellar.
I make it through the passageway. I make it through Orléans’ empty kitchens, up a flight of stairs, through hollow, echoing rooms, to the dining room, where I collapse on the cold stone floor.
I lie there for some time, and when I’m brave enough, I feel the wound. It’s a hole at the bottom of my rib cage. The blood on my hands looks black in the darkness.
I close my eyes and try to think. About what to do. And where to go. I have no money on me, nothing. The guard has my guitar case. My bag and the guitar itself are in Amadé’s rooms. All I have is my flashlight, tucked inside my boot.
I hear footsteps. It’s a guard; it must be. He’ll drag me out of here and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t have the strength to hide. I close my eyes and wait. The steps come closer. They round the door and stop.
“My God. What have you done?”
I open my eyes. It’s Amadé.
“I tried to help him,” I say.
“You stupid, stupid fool.” He kneels down, opens my jacket. “Are you alive?”
“I think so.”
“Then you must get up. Now. The guard is coming.”
“I can’t.”
Amadé lunges at me. He grabs my arms and lifts me to my feet. I cry out.
“Stand up!” he shouts.
I do, and feel blood trickling out of the wound.
He wraps my arm around his neck. We stumble out of the dining room and head for the foyer.
“The door’s locked,” I tell him.
“There might be a key somewhere,” he says. We’re walking fast.
“How did you find me?” I ask him.
“I went to the Foy to eat. There was commotion everywhere. In the dining room, the kitchen, outside in the street. I asked Luc what had happened. He said Benôit saw you go into the cellars. He saw that you were bleeding and knew you to be the Green Man. He’s run off to shout for the guard.”
“And you came through the cellar to find me?”
“Yes. Shouting all the way that I would catch you and drag you to Bonaparte myself, to fool