7th August, morning - Rejoindre mon camarade

He blushed at her embarrassment, bending his attention over his coffee to cover his own awkwardness. But she was speaking again and he leaned forward, listening intently. Pablito's name he recognized, but the others were new, and he smiled to see her laugh and to talk of something innocent, even if he could understand very little.

"Maman, si," he answered, "And... Ana and Izold, my sisters. And my little brother Ruaud. Maybe. If he hasn't become a soldier already. Not so little anymore."

She listened to the names of his family members. "Ru- Raul? Is that your brother? He's a soldier too? Oh! Will he come today? Will he be here?"

Ruaud, here? That'd be something. He shook his head, his expression wistful. "No. Not here. I don't know where he is. Or if he's even alive." He took a drink from the small cup. The coffee was scalding still, but good. "What about Pablito and the others? Where are they? Will they come back soon? Come aqui?"

"Pablito? He's in the mountains, I think."

Paol's expression sobered somewhat. "He'd have been coming home soon, then, if it weren't for us. I'm sorry."

"What?" she asked with a puzzled frown.

Paol shook his head. "Nothing, sorry." He wasn't sure he could explain the sentiment, nor did he particularly want to try. The immediate consequences of their liberation were troubling enough.

"Pablito," he tried again, "He is a little cousin? Like Martita? Or older like you? Or old like me?"

She smiled at the thought of Pablito being as young as Martita. "He's two years older than me," she laughed, but then she looked down at her coffee cup and her smile faded. "I don't think he would like you. He doesn't like the French." Well, neither did she, but she liked Paol in spite of that. She doubted Pablito would be so generous. Then, feeling she had slandered her cousin's character, she added "But he's a good boy, a good young man, a good Catholic and a kind cousin. Are you Catholic?"

"Si, católico," he told her, a faint smile lightening the regret on his face, "Not a very good one, though."

She smiled again.  "Well that would be all right.  He would have to like a Catholic."  Though it scarcely mattered, because Pablito probably would not come home until the French, and Paol, were gone from the town.  Then she frowned thoughtfully.  "Is Bonaparte a Catholic?" She assumed naturally Paol would know the answer.

"Bonaparte?" his brows quirked, then drew together in thought. In his own limited understanding, the emperor's rise to power and his subsequent wars were simply an extension of the Revolution, an internal conflict evolved into an external one, with little change in ideology.

"I don't think so?" Then recalling some of the rumors which had been circulating around the army shortly before the battle, he added, "Not anymore, anyway. Excommunicated."

"Oh." She should have guessed that, really. He was a wicked man by all accounts, trying to claim the whole world for himself, and making farmers like Paol into his soldier slaves.

She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the table. All her anxiety had come back in an instant, though it had never been far away.

In that moment he could have easily wished the entire army away. He dropped his gaze to the small cup in front of him, struggling past his own hesitation, then carefully got to his feet, making his way around the table to sink into a chair beside hers. She'd been so kind to him, but she was delicate and gentle where he was hulking and clumsy and a soldier and an enemy.

He touched her arm, light and hesitant. "It will be alright."

She tried and failed to muster a smile. "You don't know that. You can't be sure." Though she was grateful to him for at least saying so.

The fledgling confidence of a moment ago faltered. She was right. He was weak and exhausted with a fever and only one good arm; desperation might temporarily lend him some strength, but what if it wasn't enough?

"I'll make it alright," he said quietly, as much to himself as to her. Then suddenly he tensed, listening, and into the waiting silence crept the first faint bars of music, too distant to be recognizable as any song, but to him unmistakeably familiar all the same.

She stiffened and sat up straight when she heard the sound.  "Is that them?" she asked, but she knew the answer just by looking at Paol.  "Already?  But it's so early!"

Now her aunt, who had been stirring quietly in her room, came hurrying downstairs.  "Ah, you're up, good.  They're coming! My poor girl!  These soldiers," she said, eyeing the Frenchman.  "We should send them all out to go and find their wicked friends."

"No, auntie!  They need to stay so other soldiers won't bother us!  They'll protect us!  Right?"  She turned to Paol for confirmation.  "You'll stay here and protect us?"

"Yes," he told her, as if tone and expression could somehow succeed where words had failed, "Si. I stay here. I protect you."

"Paol!" Charcot called from above, his voice full of excitement. "Are you downstairs? Do you hear the music?" His voice grew louder as he made his way down the stairs, an almost familiar journey by now. "Let's go out and meet them!"

Paol quickly swallowed off the cup of coffee, snatched up the knife and was in the process of dragging one of the chairs over to the door when Charcot burst into the kitchen.

Seeing his friend reminded him of how he ought to feel. This was the infantry coming, among them the 86e. He had not been exaggerating when he told Bright that the company was the closest he had to a family, but the faint stirring of hope he'd felt at the sound of their music had been overwhelmed almost immediately by dread and anxiety so that the advancing army seemed almost as much an enemy as the Spanish or English. I didn't make any kind of a sense. But now was not the time to dwell on it.

"I...can't," he told Charcot. "I told them I'd stay here. To guard the door."

"What?  Oh, well all right.  Come on Bright!  Hurry up!"

"Don't shout in the house," Doña Castillo scolded.  "You're leaving?  Move the chair, and Manuela, help me lift the bar."

"Gracias, señora,"Charcot said, quick and light. "God bless you. Good bye!" And there was a pounding on the stairs as Bright came down to join him.

"What? No! Charcot, wait! Just to the corner, alright? Just to watch, don't go anywhere. To the right out the door, you keep your hand on the wall. Alright?"

"All right, all right," he laughed. "Don't worry, Paol! It's our lads! And I'll be with Bright." If Bright was not looking forward to the prospect of minding a blind man, he did not mention it.

Merde. Merde. He tried to fight down the sudden panicky dread as he helped lower the bar again and dragged the chair back into place, but he did not worry for long. The army broke upon them like a wave, the music and drums frothing at its head and the raw force rushing behind; shouts, pounding on doors, crashes, screams, rough laughter, surging against and around the house.

It wasn't so bad in the beginning, the bands who came sniffing at their door were eager, but still cool headed. Then taverns and stores of wine were broken open and things grew a good deal hotter, and Charcot and Bright were forgotten entirely.

By midday, he had shouted himself hoarse and the shutters on the window by the door had been smashed in -- testament to a particularly determined marauder who had attempted that entrance and nearly got himself shot in the process -- but the house was still somehow secure.

The house had seemed to go from cold to unbearably hot and back again as the time dragged on, and now Paol slumped shivering against the wall, his shirt damp from sweat, hugging the small patch of sun which slipped through the window, his eyes shut against the pounding ache in his head.

Across the courtyard, a soldier hurried out of a neighbor's house, taking the first exit he could find.  How could he have known there would be officers in the house, looking like they owned the place?  Whatever feeble excuse he had offered, he knew they had not accepted, and he kept looking over his shoulder expecting them to come after him.  But where was he now?  This was not the street.  He had entered by the front door, but he seemed to have left by a back door that led into a garden, not a street at all, and none of his friends or fellow soldiers were in sight.  Well, he was not going to risk going back inside with those officers there, and he had better find a way out of the garden before they shouted to him from the windows above.

There seemed to be no way to get back to the street at  all.  No gate, no passageway, no alley that he could see as he rushed about the courtyard, just the backs of other houses.  Hearing a sound like window shutters beind him and expecting angry shouts from the officers, he hurried through the first door he came to.  The owners of the house must have forgotten to lock it, thinking it was safe from any intruders but their neighbors.  He slammed the door shut and leaned back against it, finally catching his breath with a laugh.

A door slammed at the back of the house and Paol opened his eyes. Manuela was close by and it wasn't like the old woman to slam doors, and there was no call of greeting as from a neighbor. Motioning for Manuela to stay where she was, he pushed away from the wall and started towards the kitchen, moving softly in his bare feet.

The skuff of feet and a faint clatter as of someone working came from the kitchen. Perhaps it was just the old woman after all...

It wasn't. Nor was it any of the neighbors. Paol lurched forward, seeing almost nothing beyond the white 'x' of crossbelts. Soldiers! In the house. He must have got in through the back door, but that meant--

Paol's expression hardened. The man's back was to him still and Paol's hand shot out, seizing his shoulder. God help him if anything had happened to Martita or her family. With a snarl, he wrenched the other man round and flung him back against the wall. The knife was in his hand, then resting at the intruder's throat almost of its own accord. Get out. It was what he meant to say, but what came out, faint and disbelieving was, "Foucheaux?"