Chapter 32

January 1573

Apolline stood at the edge of the estate. Before her was a wall of trees pressed tightly together. What was inside was precious and it needed to be protected. Sidonie was inside.

She cradled her stomach, hands skimming lightly over the slight bump. Something else that needed protection. There was no denying it now. It would be small, no bigger than a plum. Easy enough to get rid of. But she wouldn’t. Not this time.

Sidonie had said she could come to her if she needed help. But that had been almost two months ago, before the bitter frost of midwinter had gripped the land as tightly as fear did her heart. Before they’d found Gilles with Léo’s dead body cradled in his arms. Before she had run away like a coward and left Sidonie all alone. Before Gilles was arrested. They’d execute him, she knew it. And then what would happen to her, and to the life that grew inside her?

Sidonie still didn’t remember her. She’d only been a child at the time, but then so had Apolline. She closed her eyes, remembering the feel of the sun warming her back as they played in the field. Small fingers that had tickled her ribs, making her laugh – a sound that had been foreign to her; she’d had few causes to laugh before she met Sidonie. She remembered the sweet strawberry-scented breath that had whispered secrets and promises in her ear. Her first taste of pure happiness.

She’d forced herself into Sidonie’s happy life. And then it had been ripped apart in one horrible night of blood and fire and pain. Sidonie had looked so small, unconscious on the ground after Apolline had pulled her back out of the house, her little hand charred and burned, her maman’s precious jewel lying by her side where she’d dropped it. Apolline had only meant to keep it safe for her. But the guilt that she was somehow responsible for what had happened to the Montot family had driven her from her friend’s side. Only later, as she wandered along the road to Dole, had she remembered the jewel in her pocket. And by then it was too late.

All these years later, she understood what her heart had been telling her as she pulled Sidonie from that fire: she was family. If she went to Sidonie now, she knew she’d take her in. They were friends. More than friends. But what if it happened again? What if she tore apart another home, another family? Better to leave now. Those men hadn’t come back to the hermitage – there’d been no reason for them to, now that they had captured their werewolf, her husband. With a last lingering look at the estate, she turned away and walked back into the forest.

Sidonie sat at her window. She could see down the path, beyond the row of trees that bordered the estate to the hooded figure who stood beyond. She was too far away to be anything but a shape, but Sidonie knew it was Apolline. It was dangerous for her to be out there in the open where anyone could see her. Didn’t she know she was being hunted? Sidonie willed Apolline to walk towards the gate. She held her breath when Apolline turned but released it when it became clear she was walking away.

Changing into her sturdy boots and donning her cloak, she hurried out of the house.

There were six of them. Apolline heard them before she reached the clearing; their triumphant shouts and the clattering of iron against wood and stone shattered the peace of the forest. Her footsteps slowed and then stopped as she sought refuge behind a beech tree.

She recognised a couple of them from the mob that her husband had fought off last time. They might have been waiting until she left the hermitage, or it was just luck that they’d arrived when she wasn’t there. By the time she did get there, most of the damage had already been done. Two of the men were still swinging large hammers against the walls of her home, turning the walls that had sheltered her into nothing but a crumbling pile of grey stones. A fire burned a few yards from the cottage and onto it they’d thrown her smashed table and chairs. Had they found her precious box of medicines yet?

She huddled tight against the tree, her arms wrapped protectively around her body, her toes becoming numb as the chill from the snow penetrated her worn boots. Oh, how she wanted to fight them all. To go out there swinging her fists. Even without the small life she protected within herself, she knew it would do no good. Not with that many of them.

‘Where do you think she’s gone to?’ said one of the men, the hammer slung casually over his shoulder.

‘Wherever she is, she won’t be coming back here,’ said another who pulled out his cock and pissed on the fire. The other men laughed.

‘Monsieur de Lancre won’t be pleased,’ said the one with the hammer.

‘He never is.’ The man tucked his cock back into his breeches. ‘But he’ll find her. He caught the werewolf of Dole, didn’t he?’

‘Time’s running out for the witch. Only so many places for her to hide. He’ll sniff her out and then she’ll burn alongside her man.’

The wind changed direction, blowing smoke over to where she hid. She pressed her cloak in her mouth so she would not cough and give away her hiding place. She need not have worried, for the men never came anywhere near her. Once their business was done, they collected their horses and rode off in the direction of town.

Sidonie stood looking at the rubble that had once been the hermitage in the Forest de la Serre. The home of Apolline and Gilles Garnier. She’d followed the direction Apolline had taken, along the familiar path from the estate to the forest. Kelpie had smelled the smoke before she did, tossing her head and showing the whites of her eyes. Not confident that the horse would not bolt, Sidonie had dismounted and led her the rest of the way.

When she reached the clearing, she found the hermitage a smouldering ruin. ‘Apolline?’ she whispered. She could almost feel the anger in the senseless destruction. Her heart pounded and her mouth went dry. Her mind conjured images of her friend buried beneath the rubble, her body twisted and broken, her emerald eyes staring sightlessly. ‘Apolline!’ she screamed.

‘You shouldn’t be here.’ Apolline appeared from behind the rubble pile where her kitchen garden had once been. She was covered in dirt and soot. ‘It’s not safe for you.’

Sidonie flung herself at the other woman, pressing her face to Apolline’s chest, desperate to hear her heart beating, her fingers digging into Apolline’s back like claws. ‘I thought I lost you.’

‘There now.’ Apolline patted her back mechanically. ‘I am as well as you see. There’s no harm done.’

Sidonie pulled back, troubled at the tone of her friend’s voice. ‘But your home. It’s gone, all gone.’

The walls and roof had been torn from the foundations, with heavy blocks of grey stone scattered around the clearing. What little furniture there had been within the cottage had been brought out in the open, smashed and set alight. Sidonie recognised the leg from the table on which Olivier had lay unconscious, scarcely three months ago, now charred and splintered.

Apolline turned her face away, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. ‘It’s only a cottage.’

Sidonie scanned her face, could see the tightness around her eyes, the trembling in her lips that betrayed the lie in her words. It had been so much more than a cottage; it was a place Apolline could call her own, where she was free to live the life she had chosen. And now it had been destroyed. Violated. ‘Apolline, I’m so very sorry.’

Apolline took Sidonie’s scarred hand and kissed her palm, her lips pressing hard through the glove. ‘Not today. I’ll speak of it someday but not today.’

Sidonie placed her other hand on Apolline’s cheek. Apolline gave that hand a quick kiss too before gently batting it away and putting her hands on her hips. She coughed to clear her throat. ‘What brought you here anyway? Did you see me at the estate?’

‘I did. I followed you; I wanted to warn you that Pierre de Lancre is after you.’ Sidonie broke off, her eyes moving down her friend’s body. ‘Apolline, what is this?’

Apolline followed the direction of her gaze. Where once her dress had fallen straight from under her breast to her knees now it gently curved over a rounded belly.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Apolline placed a hand on her belly. ‘I didn’t know myself for a long time. And then I think I didn’t want to know. When I felt the quickening, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. It’s just as they said, like there’s a tiny bird trapped in there, fluttering its wings. Cursed, unsettling feeling. But I never had one last long enough to feel it before.’

All these months, all this time together, and Sidonie felt like she hardly knew Apolline at all. ‘You’ve been with child before?’

‘I’d hardly call it that,’ Apolline said. ‘They were nothing but scraps. Even now, this one inside, it’s not a child, not yet, not to me. But it could grow into one if I let it, and I just might. It would be so easy to get rid of it. Crush barberry and yarrow, birthwort and yew, clove and white pepper. Then cook it in wine with honey. You don’t need the honey, but it hides the taste. Drink it while soaking in a bath of heated river water filled with tansy, mullein and feverfew. Simple, really. I’ve done it four times myself and more times than I could count for others.’

Sidonie flushed. Her experiences with men were limited to unwanted attention from Hubert Dampmartin or Olivier Chéreau. She had thought, from what she knew of Gilles Garnier, from the way he interacted with Apolline, that theirs had not been a true marriage.

‘How did you ... What I mean to say is ... How did ...?’ She gestured at Apolline’s stomach.

Apolline understood her intention even if she could not say the words, and she laughed heartily. ‘You grew up around men of medicine. Surely I do not have to explain the how of it all?’

‘No, that I do understand. I know of the act itself. Only my impression of your marriage was that—’

‘Sarding?’ Apolline filled in.

‘Did not form a part of it,’ Sidonie finished.

Apolline had spoken of her past openly with her. She had lain with men for coin. But this was different. There was true affection between Apolline and Gilles as husband and wife, affection she had mistook for something else.

‘You love him.’

‘Wasn’t my intention. But he’s easy to love. He didn’t come to my bed often and when he did, he was so sweet and shy. Can you imagine?’

Sidonie could not. ‘You did not refuse?’

‘Never. He is my husband, and I am his wife. He’s good to me, better than any man I’ve known. He loves children. He had another wife before me, did you know that? And a babe. Fever took them both and what was left of his wits. He still looks for her, the little one. Those men who took him away, who said he did horrible things. They called him a beast.’

Sidonie protested, ‘I do not believe he was a beast.’

‘Then you would be wrong,’ Apolline said. ‘Because that’s what he is. He is big and fierce, and he would kill a man to defend those dear to him. But he would never lie or scheme or betray another. Only men do that. Not beasts. Beasts are honest. Even though they’re simple. He is simple. He works hard. He looks after me.’ Apolline’s voice choked as she struggled to hold back the tears.

Sidonie reached for her, intending to fold her into her arms as Apolline had done for her when she’d been distraught over the death of the girl, only Apolline stepped away from her.

‘Don’t pity me. Anything but that,’ Apolline said. ‘I’ve brought this on myself. I must have done. It’s happened before. In Poligny.’

The name of that village, her childhood home, jolted her. ‘You were in Poligny? When were you ...?’ Sidonie had tried so hard to push away the memories of that day. To bury them deep where they could no longer hurt her. But in doing so, she had pushed away something else – or perhaps someone else? A playmate, a friend who had been important to her. Her precious little secret for only one summer. With hair as black as night. ‘I remember you.’

Tears spilled from Apolline’s eyes, leaving trails on her soot-covered skin. ‘I knew it would come to you when you were ready.’

‘How could I forget you?’

‘I think you didn’t remember me because that memory hurt you so much. You buried that day, and me with it. That day I pulled you back from the fire, I never regretted it. You’d sheltered me and fed me. You’d called me your friend. But I brought death to your door and I’m doing it again. I can’t bear it for you.’

Apolline reached for her hands. They were blackened with dirt under the fingernails, but Sidonie could imagine those hands as they had been when she was a child, playing in the meadow. She could almost taste the sweet nectar of the fraises des bois, the wild strawberries, on her tongue. Apolline wore her hair covered now, and Sidonie could swear her eyes had been lighter, like a seedling newly risen from the soil. They were darker as a woman grown. They had seen so much more of life.

‘I don’t think I truly forgot you,’ Sidonie said. ‘I thought I’d imagined you.’

‘I often thought I did too,’ Apolline said. ‘Those days were the last happy memories I had until I came here.’

‘You were a friend when I had none. And then you saved me, you pulled me from the fire.’

‘What else could I do?’

‘You didn’t stay,’ Sidonie said. ‘Although perhaps I wouldn’t have known if you had. I remember little from the days after. One moment I lived in a village and the next I was living in Paris, and it was as if I had always been there. Only something pulled at me. I used to run away, in those first few years. But I don’t think I was running from Uncle Claude. I was running towards something else.’

‘Wait here,’ Apolline went back into the ruins of the house and Sidonie heard her rummaging through the rubble. She returned holding the small wooden chest that contained her special medicines. ‘I’m grateful it was unharmed, because there’s something in here that belongs to you.’

Sidonie could recognise all of these herbs now and give them their proper names and uses. Belladonna, hemlock, mandrake, henbane and the deadly mushrooms, shrivelled and dried. Beneath them was something wrapped in cloth. Apolline pulled it out of the chest and removed the cloth, revealing a chain of burnished gold. At the end dangled a purple jewel.

‘Maman’s pendant!’ Sidonie cried, holding it in her hands and watching as the light caught the stone. ‘I thought it was lost.’

‘You dropped it when I pulled you from that house. And I took it. When times were hard, I thought to sell it, to earn some coin. God knows I needed the coin. But I never could.’

Sidonie’s hands fumbled with the clasp as she tried to put on the necklace. Clucking her tongue, Apolline said ‘Give it here’ and secured it around her neck.

Sidonie held up the pendant, gazing at it in wonder. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.

Apolline sighed. ‘It suits you, that jewel. I was found too, as I told you. The woman I told you about, she took me and put me in her coach. She was going to Dole, she said, with her husband.’

Sidonie had heard this story before, but she had never connected the pieces together. Letting the weight of the pendant nestle reassuringly on her chest, she asked, ‘The woman in the coach. Do you remember anything about her? Her name? Her appearance?’

Apolline looked off to the left, her brow furrowed. ‘Her hair was dark, and she was stout. Not a beautiful woman either. That’s all I can remember of her.’

Could it be possible? Sidonie thought. Could the woman in the coach have been Aunt Eloise?

‘I often wondered after you,’ Apolline said. ‘The surprise I felt when I saw you by the broken coach in the forest ... You were exactly as I’d imagined you to be, and a woman grown. A bit shorter, truth be told, but otherwise exactly as you are.’

Sidonie laughed, a sound as light as gently falling rain on parched soil. Patches of forgotten moments of her life were slowly being revealed, like clouds parting to let through the sun’s golden rays. And with it, a weight was lifting from within her heart – a weight she had carried for so long she’d ceased to notice its burden. She had so many questions; there was still so much she wanted to know!

‘But how did you come to Dole?’

‘By way of Toulouse, where I ran from another orphanage. There was no way they were locking me up, so I took work. Honest work, at first.’ Apolline jovially nudged Sidonie in the ribs. ‘Less honest when I realised honesty didn’t pay good coin. Then to Lyon, as I told you, where they took my ear.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘After Marie left me, I didn’t like the thought of working the streets alone. I’d heard of the Magdalene houses. All whores know about them. On the face of it, they were supposed to help us reform into respectable women and become wives and mothers.’ Apolline snorted derisively. ‘The truth was it was little better than slavery, but it was better than what I’d had. Two years I spent there. Women would come and go from the house, and I became good at spotting those they called wise women. I picked up bits and pieces of knowledge – like how oil of lavender soothes an ache in the head, or a tea of blackberry leaves stops the watery shits, or oil of clary sage soothes cramps from the monthly bleed.’

Apolline stroked the precious box. ‘It’s where I learned to harm too. How to stop a babe from taking root and how to pluck it once it had, how to make a man’s cock go limp, or how to send him to his grave with none the wiser. I suppose you’d call me a witch, if you believe in them. The things I can do, they are a type of magic in a way. Magic to heal, magic to harm. If it hadn’t been for Gilles, I’d still be there.’

Sidonie placed about as much belief in witches as she did werewolves. However, there was no denying there was something magical about Apolline. About her friend. Her oldest and dearest friend.

‘How did you meet?’

‘There was a small number of men working at the house. They were watched closely by the matrons to be sure they didn’t interfere with us women. Truth be told, some of the women would have relished a little interfering, if you catch my meaning!’ She chuckled and Sidonie could not help but join in. ‘I knew when I first saw Gilles Garnier that he was different. “Apolline,” he would say, “when can we leave this place and go home?” I’d tried to tell him that this was my home, and his too besides, for Gilles had taken to sleeping in the cellar of the house. But he wouldn’t listen. He’d ask his question again. “Soon,” I’d say. And that seemed to settle him. But he made me imagine a better life.’ Her gaze softened, brimming with unshed tears. ‘He would talk of his home in the forest. A cottage of good size with gardens and as much fresh air as you could breathe. He would talk about a babe sometimes. The “little one”. It made him so sad, and I couldn’t bear it. So, I told him the little one was sleeping, and that would quieten him. But the matrons didn’t want me to marry a beggar, let alone an imbecile.’ Apolline scoffed. ‘As if I was too good for him! When the truth was, he was the best man I’d ever known. I told the matrons about his cottage and land, what he’d promised. I didn’t tell them about the little one. I didn’t tell them he called me Apolline when it wasn’t my name.’

Sidonie straightened, her mind flashing back to Poligny. To the girl with the black hair. Had she ever called her by name? ‘What do you mean, he called you Apolline?’

‘Apolline isn’t the name my parents gave me. But it’s the most real one I know. In Poligny they gave me a name, and they gave me another in Toulouse. I never told you my name when we were children because it didn’t feel like mine. Besides, you were a loose-tongued child and my name spilling from your lips could have sent me back in the orphanage,’ Apolline added with a small smile, before becoming serious once more. ‘My names were always given to me by someone who wanted to hurt me, use me or control me. This one was given to me by someone who loves me, who needs me. It was Gilles who brought me here, to the first real home I’ve ever had. And back to the first person who ever cared to know me. So close to Dole, where I thought I might even cross paths with that woman who tried to help me all those years ago. Foolish of me, I know.’

‘I don’t think you foolish at all,’ Sidonie said.

‘You don’t?’

Sidonie shook her head. ‘You must meet my aunt Eloise.’

‘If she’s anything like you, I’d be pleased to know her.’ Apolline rubbed her belly. ‘Can’t say she’ll be pleased to know me.’

‘She will love you as I do,’ Sidonie said with unwavering certainty. ‘We could go now to Aunt Eloise’s estate. You will be safe there, you and your babe.’

Apolline winced as she looked around at the ruin that was once her home, pain etched on her features. ‘Have they set a date for the execution?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Sidonie said. Seeing the look on Apolline’s face, a horrible thought occurred to her. ‘You do not think to go?’

‘I have to. You won’t see the sense in it; I’m not sure I do myself. But I owe that man so much. He came here in part because of me, to give me a better life. He’ll be so scared, won’t understand what’s happening to him. If I’m there, it will comfort him.’

‘Apolline, you can’t. Think of your own welfare and that of your babe.’

Apolline gently stroked her stomach. ‘She’ll understand. And someday I can tell her that she got to say goodbye to her papa.’

‘You won’t be safe! Pierre de Lancre will be there. He’ll be looking for you.’

‘I’ll keep out of sight. But this is something I must do. I know you don’t understand why.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Let’s not think on it now, then. You take me home to your family so I can meet this aunt of yours. Come the morning, I’ll do what I need to do.’

‘And then?’

‘Then maybe I can write my own future.’

Apolline thought the woman looked the same, except older and considerably shorter. No doubt that she had done well for herself, judging by the richness of her clothes and the way she dripped in jewels like the queen of France herself. Apolline lowered her eyes. Why would a fine woman like that want anything to do with a creature like herself? Sidonie had called this room the solar. ‘For family,’ she explained. As if being a head taller and a great deal shabbier didn’t already make her feel awkward enough.

‘My dear girl, look at you!’ Baroness Eloise de Montargent exclaimed. She sat beside a woman whose dress was plainer; not that that said much. But her eyes were kind, and when she smiled at Apolline, the little gesture made her feel more welcome.

The baroness marched over, the top of her head at the height of Apolline’s chin. ‘You were a scrap of a thing, all hair and eyes, when you escaped our coach in the night. I often thought of you, wondered what could have become of you, and here you are, towering over me! So healthy and plump.’ Sidonie’s aunt held her in a tight grip. ‘You were there one moment and gone the next. I thought about you often in the intervening years, worried that I’d failed you. It planted a seed that would eventually sprout and inspire me to help others like you. I like to think I’ve made a small difference in this world, in part due to you.’

This rich woman might look like the baroness she was, but she spoke to Apolline as if she was a person that mattered. Just like Sidonie. They were a lot alike, if you scratched the surface. And squinted. ‘I’m surprised you remember me.’

‘My dear girl! You are quite unforgettable,’ the baroness said.

Apolline coughed, glancing in Sidonie’s direction.

‘I am truly sorry!’ Sidonie grinned. ‘You have my word that I will never forget you again.’

‘Sidonie?’ Baroness de Montargent looked at her niece in confusion.

Of course, this led to the baroness and the other woman – her companion, Madame Liane Renard, as she explained – needing to hear the whole tale. Sidonie and Apolline took chairs facing the two older women, Apolline perching on the edge of hers lest she dirty the delicate embroidery with her soot-stained dress. No one commented on the state of her, and as she told the story, she found herself relaxing.

‘I did wonder what life would be like if I didn’t run,’ Apolline mused after telling the tale. ‘Only I couldn’t go to another orphanage. Not after having left that one in Poligny.’

Sidonie turned to her. ‘You never said you were from the orphanage?’

‘A horrible place run by a cruel priest. I saw things there, things I didn’t understand at the time. The way he’d touch the children – especially the pretty girls with yellow hair. He’d take children out of the orphanage, and they’d never come back. He said they’d gone back to their families. But their belongings were still there. He did something to those children, I know it. I ran away before he could do it to me.’

‘And that is how you found yourself at the home of my sister and her husband?’ the baroness said.

Apolline turned to Sidonie. ‘I often wondered if it was me who brought trouble to your door. Who brought the accusation of werewolfery against your papa.’

Sidonie reached for her hands, but her aunt cut in. ‘Why would you say such a thing?’

All eyes were on Apolline and she couldn’t bear to look at them. ‘Sidonie had a happy life before she met me. She had a maman and papa who loved her, a nice home, plenty to eat. After one season of knowing me, all that was gone.’

‘You were just a child,’ the baroness said gently.

‘But if I’d stayed in that orphanage, if I’d never run away, then things might’ve been different,’ Apolline said, giving words to thoughts that had haunted her ever since that terrible night.

‘My dear girl,’ the baroness said. ‘How long have you carried this burden? You should feel no guilt for the tragic deaths of Sabine and Philbert. You were in no way responsible.’

‘If I had not been there—’ Apolline began.

‘I would have died,’ Sidonie interrupted. ‘If you had not pulled me from the fire, I would have burned alongside my maman.’ She pulled off her glove, holding up her left hand to display her scars. ‘I always believed these scars were a source of shame, but they are proof that when I was a little girl, I had a friend who loved me dearly, as I loved her. As I still do.’

Sidonie’s aunt and companion had never seen her scars before. Apolline could tell; the shock was writ on their faces. And pity, too. But Sidonie was no victim. She’d gotten those scars as a child trying to beat the flames off her dead mother with nothing but her own hands. There was nothing to pity there, but a great deal to be admired. Sidonie knew love; she’d had it with her maman and papa, with her aunt. And now she was offering it to Apolline, who’d never in her whole life heard those words spoken to her until this moment. Nor had she said them to another. ‘And I love you,’ Apolline said, her voice cracking. She coughed lightly.

‘I’ll ring for some refreshments,’ Liane said, a knowing look in her eye.

‘Don’t go to any trouble for me,’ Apolline said. ‘A splash of water’s good enough, or some ale.’

‘It’s no trouble at all.’ Liane moved to the door, raising her hand to catch the attention of someone walking by – a child with golden hair. ‘Lyse? Could you ask Cerise to bring in some refreshments?’

Apolline turned at the name. ‘Lyse? I know you. Come over here, girl.’

The child who shuffled her feet along the floor barely resembled the child who had stayed in her cottage; it was like seeing a beech tree in winter, stripped of its colour. She raised her small head and smiled, a poor attempt at best.

‘I’ve missed your sweet face,’ Apolline said, chucking her chin. That brought on a real smile, genuine. ‘You carrying something heavy?’

Lyse wrinkled her brow in confusion, looking at her empty arms. ‘I’m not carrying anything.’

‘Apolline.’ Sidonie’s voice held a note of warning.

She didn’t heed it. She poked Lyse’s chest. ‘Carrying something in here is what I meant. A hurt that no one else can see.’

The girl lowered her head. ‘I miss Léo.’

Apolline heard a small gasp, quickly stifled, from the direction of the baroness. But she only had eyes for Lyse. ‘What do you miss about him?’

Lyse glanced over at the baroness. ‘I don’t like to talk about him. It upsets Madame Eloise.’

‘Oh no, dear child.’ The baroness walked over to the girl, pulling her into a firm embrace. ‘What upsets me is that Léo is gone, and seeing how that has hurt you. And knowing there is nothing I can do to make you feel better.’

Lyse went to wipe her eyes on her sleeve, but Madame Renard produced a handkerchief and handed it to her. She rubbed her eyes and blew her nose, offering the sodden item back to Madame Renard, who bid her to keep it.

‘I like to talk about Léo,’ Lyse said, a note of brightness returning to her voice. ‘He loved horses, and the forest. And I never knew anyone who could curse so well!’

Apolline chuckled along with the other women. Grief was a long road, but if she had judged the girl right, loss was not unfamiliar to her. She could already see traces of that bright and bubbly child she’d first met shining through.

As Lyse hurried away to find Cerise, and the others settled into their chairs once more, the baroness raised the subject of Gilles’s execution. ‘What shall you do, after your husband is gone?’

The woman clearly favoured a plain way of speaking. Apolline shrugged. ‘I haven’t thought of much beyond the execution. Once I see it through, maybe I’ll know.’

Sidonie grabbed her hand. Apolline could feel the ridges of her scars. ‘Please, don’t go to the execution tomorrow.’

‘Of course she will not!’ the baroness thundered, rising to her feet ‘What a foolish notion!’

‘With respect, madame, I will go. I know what you’re saying comes from wanting me not to be harmed. I’m not seeking violence or a confrontation with this man who wants to hunt me down. But I made a vow to someone I care for. And I couldn’t—’ She coughed and took a moment to collect herself. ‘I couldn’t live with myself to know I abandoned him when he needed me.’

Madame Renard placed her hand on the baroness’s shoulder. ‘I understand, Madame Garnier. If I were in your situation, I would do the same.’

The baroness scoffed. ‘I should hope you would not! Be sensible, Liane. What has come over you all? Young woman,’ she said to Apolline. ‘While your intentions are honourable, they are misplaced. Your husband could not possibly see you, nor you him, without alerting all the gendarmes at the execution to your presence. So much risk, and he would not even know you were there.’

Apolline straightened her spine and raised her chin. ‘He’ll know I’m there. He’ll feel it. It will comfort him.’

‘What of you?’ Sidonie asked. ‘The things you will see can never be unseen.’

‘I’ll bear it,’ Apolline said, and she meant it. ‘For Gilles, I must.’

Sidonie squeezed her hand. ‘You shall not be alone. I will stand by your side.’

The baroness threw her hands in the air. ‘Are you hearing this, Liane? These young women have lost their minds.’

But Madame Renard’s eyes were soft as she kissed first Sidonie and then Apolline on the cheek. ‘Be safe, both of you.’

‘At least take Antoine and Fabien with you!’ the baroness called after them.