Read Chapter 29: The Convent of the Carmelites

The woman who called herself Sister Angélique was not a sister of anything. Élise knew it the moment the woman shook her hand—the calluses of a rifle grip, the flat stare of someone who had watched men die and decided which ones deserved it.

They met in the chapel sacristy of the Convent of the Carmelites, among vestments yellowing in cedar chests and the smell of old wax. Outside, shells still fell somewhere across the river, a dull percussion like distant thunder that never quite stopped. Paris had become a city of ruins wearing the mask of piety.

“Your father’s men watch the river crossings,” Sister Angélique said. She was small, with a face that might have been pretty once, before the siege had pared it down to bone and wire. “But they don’t watch nuns.”

Élise touched the coarse wool of the habit they had given her. It smelled of mothballs and dust. Her own clothes—the fine dress her father had forced her back into, the corset that felt like a cage—lay folded in a corner where a statue of the Virgin looked on with blank plaster sympathy.

“You think I can pass?” Élise asked.

“You’ll pass.” The nun—spy, woman, whatever she was—studied Élise with an appraiser’s eye. “You have the look. Gentle. Broken. That’s what they expect from a nun. That’s what makes them not look twice.”

Élise’s hands were steady. That surprised her. Inside, she felt like a struck bell, vibrating with fear and something else—a hot, clarifying anger that had been building since her father had locked her door. But her hands were steady.

“Tell me about the prison,” she said.

Sister Angélique spread a map across the altar, pushing aside the missal and the cruet of wine. The Convent of the Carmelites. Élise knew the building—she had walked past it as a girl, wondering at the high walls and the silence within. Now it was a Versaillais holding pen, a way station for prisoners being processed before transport to the ships.

“They move them in batches,” the nun said. “Three times a week. Early morning, before the city wakes. They march them from the convent to the railway at the Gare d’Orsay, and from there to the coast.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. Dawn.” Sister Angélique’s finger traced a route through back streets. “Thirty prisoners. Your man will be among them—the medical officer. They’ve kept him separate from the others. Some kind of special treatment.”

Élise’s stomach turned. Special treatment. That could mean anything. Interrogation, torture, a mockery of a trial with the verdict already written. She thought of Henri’s face, the way he had looked at her across the ruined hospital ward when the soldiers had come for him, his eyes holding hers like a promise.

“What are his chances if he reaches the ship?”

Sister Angélique did not bother to lie. “New Caledonia is a long way. But they say he knows things—troop movements, defensive positions. Your father’s people will want that knowledge before they let him go. They might keep him in Paris longer. Question him.”

“Or execute him and be done with it.”

“That too.”

Élise looked at the map. The route was clear: through the narrow streets of the Left Bank, past the ruined market, down to the river. She could picture it—the soldiers in their blue coats, the prisoners in chains, Henri among them with his healer’s hands bound behind his back.

“A transfer,” she said slowly. “You want to hit them during the transfer.”

The nun’s mouth curved. It wasn’t a smile, exactly, but something closer to approval. “You think fast, for a schoolteacher.”

“I’ve had good teachers.”

Élise thought of her mentor, the doctor who had shown her how to pack a wound, how to set a bone, how to stay calm when the blood would not stop. He had died at the barricades, his hands stained red to the elbow. She had held him as he went. She still dreamed about it, most nights—the way his breath had rattled, the way he had squeezed her wrist and said her name.

Henri had owed him a debt. Élise was beginning to understand that she did too.

“The guard rotation is predictable,” Sister Angélique was saying. “Every morning at four, they change the watch at the south gate. There’s a window of about ten minutes when the new men are getting their orders, and the old men are too tired to notice anything.”

“Ten minutes.”

“Five of my people will be in place. We’ll need you for the signal.”

Élise looked down at her hands. Steady. Still steady.

“What kind of signal?”

The nun reached into her sleeve and produced a small brass whistle, worn smooth with use. “You’ll be in the convent courtyard, praying. When the prisoners are brought out, you’ll see your man. When you see him, you’ll fall to your knees, wailing like a woman who’s lost her wits. Loud. That’s the signal. My people hear it, they move.”

“And if I don’t see him?”

“Then you don’t wail, and we wait for the next transfer. But the word I get says he’ll be there. Your father’s ordered his transport expedited. He doesn’t want your—his—whatever he is to you, sitting in a Paris cell any longer than necessary.”

Élise flinched at the hesitation. *His daughter. His prisoner. His pawn.* She still didn’t know what she was to her father now, after everything. The revelation of her birth—the daughter of Henri’s dead uncle, a man she had never known—had changed something between her and Moreau. She was not his blood. She was something else. A burden he had carried, and now a liability he wanted to discard.

“He wants Henri gone,” she said quietly. “Before anyone can connect us.”

“Your father is a careful man.”

“He’s a butcher.”

Sister Angélique made no comment. In the chapel’s dim light, her face was unreadable. “We all are, in our own way.”

The words hung between them. Élise thought of the hospital at Neuilly—the neutral zone she and Henri had built together, where they had treated Versaillais and Communards side by side. It was abandoned now, its wounded scattered to the winds or recaptured. Her father had seen to that too.

“There’s something else,” the nun said. She folded the map, her fingers lingering on its creases. “One of the prisoners—a woman. She was a nurse at Neuilly. She was there when you and the medical officer ran the hospital.”

Élise’s chest tightened. “Who?”

“Her name is Marthe. She’s been in the convent for a week. She’s refused to talk, but your father’s interrogators are persistent.”

Marthe. Élise remembered her—a stout widow with capable hands and a sharp tongue, who had bullied wounded soldiers into eating broth and cursed at anyone who complained. She had been there the day the soldiers came for Henri. She had thrown a bedpan at one of them.

“She’ll be on the transfer list,” Élise said. It was not a question.

“She’s already on it.” Sister Angélique looked at her steadily. “If the plan fails, she’ll be on a ship to New Caledonia with the rest of them. If Marthe talks before then—if she tells them about the hospital, about what you and the medical officer were trying to do—your father might decide to keep Henri for himself after all. For a different kind of questioning.”

Élise understood. Her father wanted Henri gone. But if he learned that Henri had knowledge that could help the Versaillais—troop movements, defensive positions, the networks of the Communard underground—he might decide Henri was worth more alive than dead. And Henri would rather die than betray his family’s cause.

Which meant Élise had to get to him first.

“I’ll do it,” she said. “The signal. Tomorrow morning.”

Sister Angélique nodded. “You’ll sleep here tonight. The Mother Superior is one of ours—she won’t ask questions. At dawn, you’ll go to the courtyard and pray. And you’ll wait.”

Élise looked down at the habit she wore, at her steady hands resting in her lap. A nurse, a teacher, a daughter. A woman who had buried her mentor, who had loved a man across enemy lines, who had discovered she was not who she thought she was.

Tomorrow, she would become something else.

“One thing,” she said, as the nun moved toward the sacristy door. “If the plan goes wrong—if they catch me—you’ll make sure Henri doesn’t suffer?”

Sister Angélique paused. For the first time, something softened in her hard face. “You love him.”

Élise did not deny it. “Yes.”

“Then you should know.” The nun’s voice was low. “He talks in his sleep. The men who guard him have heard it. Your name. He calls your name.”

Élise closed her eyes. The fear was still there, the anger, the grief—all of it churning beneath her skin. But the steadiness held.

“Good,” she said. “Then he’ll know I’m coming.”