Read Chapter 23: The Farmhouse of No Man's Land

The farmhouse smelled of hay and woodsmoke and something sour—cider gone off, perhaps, or the last of a winter’s root vegetables rotting in the cellar. Élise stood at the window with her palms flat on the cold glass, watching the road. Empty. It had been empty for three days.

Henri came up behind her and set a chipped cup of chicory coffee on the sill. She heard the tremor in his hands before she saw it—the way the cup rattled against the ceramic. He’d been shaking since Neuilly. She didn’t mention it.

“The farmer says there’s a well out back,” he said. “Water’s clean. We can wash properly tonight.”

She turned. His collar was open, his face thinner than she remembered it being even a week ago. The stubble on his jaw had gone from shadow to a rough, dark beard that made him look older, harder, less like the government medical officer she’d first met across a field of wounded men, and more like a deserter. Which he was, now. They both were.

“He’ll talk,” she said. “They always talk.”

“He’s a Communard. He burned the local tax records in March. The Versaillais would hang him from his own apple tree if they caught him.” Henri picked up the cup and drank, grimacing at the bitterness. “He has no one to sell us to who wouldn’t shoot him on sight.”

Élise let the curtain fall. The farmhouse was small—two rooms, a loft, a stable that held one lame mule and a pile of hay that had become their bed. The farmer, a man named Roche who spoke little and spat less, had given them the loft without asking questions. He’d looked at Élise’s red armband once, then at Henri’s fine coat, and shrugged.

“War’s war,” he’d said. “Eat what I give you. Stay out of the yard at dawn. That’s when they send the patrols.”

They’d stayed out of the yard. They’d stayed in the loft, mostly, wrapped in each other’s arms against the cold, learning the shape of each other’s bodies in the dark. It had been almost peaceful. Almost.

Élise had stopped counting the days. She counted the cannon fire instead. It came from the east, toward Paris, a low grumble like distant thunder that never resolved into rain. Some days it was closer. Some days it was so far she could pretend it had stopped. But it never stopped. It only waited.

Henri sat on the edge of the loft, his boots beside him, darning a hole in his sock with a needle he’d found in the farmer’s wife’s sewing basket. The motion was methodical, medical, precise. He’d been a surgeon before the war. He’d stitched men’s wounds with the same careful hands. Now he was stitching his own socks in a barn while the world tore itself apart.

“We could go south,” he said, not looking up. “Lyon. Marseille. The coast.”

“And then?”

“Then we disappear. Ships leave every day. We could be in Algeria by the end of the month.”

Élise shook her head. “You don’t believe that.”

“I believe I’m tired.” He set the sock down and looked at her. His eyes were the color of the Seine in winter—grey, deep, carrying something beneath the surface. “I believe I’ve watched men die for flags on both sides of a barricade, and I don’t know which flag was worth it. Maybe none of them. Maybe the only thing worth anything is this.” He tapped the space between them. “Us.”

Élise crossed the room and knelt beside him. She took his hand—his surgeon’s hand, with its steady fingers and the small scar across the knuckle where a scalpel had slipped during an emergency amputation at the barricade at Rue de Rivoli. She pressed it to her cheek.

“We’re not free yet,” she said. “We won’t be free until we’re off this land. And we’re not off this land until the patrols stop running the roads.”

“The farmer says they’ve pulled back. The Commune is losing ground around the walls. The Versaillais are pushing.”

“Then the roads will be worse before they’re better.” She released his hand and stood. “I’ll help Roche with the evening meal.”

He caught her wrist. “Élise. What happens when we reach a port? What happens when we’re on a ship, and there’s no war, and I’m just a man and you’re just a woman?”

She understood the question beneath the question. Who are we, when we’re not defined by the conflict? She didn’t have an answer. She had only the memory of her classroom, the chalk dust on her fingers, the faces of children she would never teach again.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I know I’d rather find out with you than alone.”

He released her wrist. She went down the ladder.

The farmer was in the yard, splitting wood. He was a block of a man with forearms like hawsers and a face that had weathered everything the century could throw at it. He nodded at her, wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve.

“Storm coming,” he said. “Not the cannon kind. The rain kind.”

“Good,” Élise said. “Rain will wash the roads clean.”

“Or turn them to mud. Depends on your point of view.” He split another log with a single, vicious blow. “Your man—is he a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Army?”

She hesitated. “He was.”

“Which army?”

“Does it matter?”

Roche spat into the dirt. “Only insofar as which side he’ll swing from if the patrols catch him. They don’t ask for papers before they string you up these days.”

Élise took the basket of laundry from the line and began folding the sheets. They were Roche’s dead wife’s sheets, worn thin in the middle, patched at the corners. She’d been tending to him. It was something to do. Something that wasn’t waiting.

“There’s a boy from the village comes through,” Roche said, not looking at her. “Runs messages between the farms. Keeps us informed of the fighting.”

“And?”

“And he’s due tonight. Probably has news from Paris.” He split another log. “Good news or bad, I’ll tell you when he comes.”

The boy came at dusk, as the first fat drops of rain began to fall. He was thirteen, maybe fourteen, with a woollen cap pulled down over his ears and a pair of shoes that had once belonged to someone with better fortune. Roche met him at the edge of the yard, and they spoke in low voices while Élise watched from the kitchen window.

She saw the boy’s face change. Saw the words land like stones.

She was at the door before Roche had even finished. “What is it? What’s happened?”

Roche looked at her. The rain was falling harder now, plastering his hair to his skull. He handed the boy a few coins and sent him off into the grey.

“It’s your brother,” he said. “The boy knows your name. Said he saw you at the barricade school in the eleventh, teaching the children to write their letters. Said you were kind.”

“Jules,” Élise whispered. “What about Jules?”

Roche’s jaw worked. He was a hard man, but he was not a cruel one. He looked at her the way he might look at a heifer that had broken its leg—sorry for it, but knowing what had to be said.

“He was a spy,” Roche said. “Everyone knew it. He was feeding information to the Versaillais about the barricade positions on the Left Bank. The Committee got proof. They tried him two days ago.”

Élise felt the world tilt. She gripped the doorframe.

“He was executed this morning,” Roche said. “Shot by the Commune for treason. Your brother is dead, girl. I’m sorry.”

The rain was cold on her face. She hadn’t realized she’d walked out into the yard. Henri was there suddenly, his hands on her arms, steadying her. She heard his voice as if from underwater.

“Élise. Élise, come inside. Come inside now.”

She looked up at him. Her brother. Her foolish, angry, broken brother who had sworn to destroy her. Who had wanted Henri dead. Who had died at the hands of her own side, for betraying her to the other.

“He was my brother,” she said. The words meant nothing and everything. “He was all I had left of my mother. And now he’s gone, and I wasn’t there, and I couldn’t save him.”

Henri pulled her into the house. Roche followed, closing the door against the storm. The fire crackled. The coffee went cold.

“I should have been there,” Élise said, her voice hollow. “I should have pleaded for him again. I should have—” She stopped. What could she have done? She could have been killed too. She could have been arrested at his side, convicted of the same treason, shot against the same wall.

“He chose his path,” Henri said quietly. “You chose yours.”

“And what path is that?” Élise laughed, a bitter, broken sound. “Abandoning my city. Abandoning the children I taught. Abandoning the revolution I believed in, to run away with a man whose father serves the butchers who are shelling my students’ homes into rubble.”

Henri went still. The words hung between them, sharp-edged, true.

“I’m not your enemy,” he said.

“I know.” Élise sank onto the stool by the fire, her hands limp in her lap. “That’s the worst part. You’re not my enemy. And Jules was on my side, and he tried to destroy me. And I ran anyway. And now he’s dead, and I’m here, and I don’t know what any of it was for.”

Roche cleared his throat from the corner.

“The boy also said,” he began, “that there’s a bounty on you both. Versaillais have your description, Henri. And the Commune has your name, Élise, for helping the escaped prisoner Lucien Chabrol. They think you’re in league with your brother.” He paused. “They’re saying you helped him pass codes. That you’re a spy too.”

Élise looked up.

“Both armies are hunting you,” Roche said. “You can run south, but they’ll find you. You can hide here, but they’ll burn me out.” He picked up his axe, stood in the doorway, and looked back at them. “You brought this war to my farm, doctor. And now you have to decide what you’re willing to die for—because you can’t run from both sides. Not forever.”

He went out into the rain and shut the door behind him.

The fire crackled.

Élise and Henri sat in silence, the weight of two armies pressing down on the small farmhouse, and for the first time since they’d fled the walls of Paris, Élise thought about turning back.