Read Chapter 22: The Plan

The monastery chapel smelled of beeswax and old stone, and for the first time in weeks, Lise felt something dangerously close to peace. Her father sat across from her on a wooden bench, his hand wrapped around hers, his skin paper-thin over knuckles that had once guided her through her first hem, her first dart, her first nervous stitch.

"I hid it," Pierre Marchand said, his voice a dry rasp. "The list of bribes. Every payment Fouquier-Tinville accepted from the English. Dates, amounts, names of the couriers."

"Where?" Lise leaned forward.

He glanced toward the chapel door, where the abbot had promised to keep watch. "There is a ship moored on the Seine, near the Pont Neuf. The *Marie-Ange*. A merchant vessel, sails under a tricolor flag now, but her captain is a man I saved from the Bastille in '89. He owes me his life."

"And the list is on board?"

"In the false bottom of a chest in his cabin. Oak, iron bands, brass lock with no key—it opens with a spring behind the left hinge." He squeezed her fingers. "Paul Desmoulins was supposed to carry it to Orleans. But when I was taken, I had no time to pass it along. The captain—Benoît—he knows nothing of what he guards. He thinks it's a set of old ledgers from my shop."

Lise's mind raced. The house arrest. The Tribunal's inquiry. Jean-Luc in custody. Every hour she spent away from Paris was an hour Fouquier-Tinville's men spent hunting her.

"How do we retrieve it?"

Pierre smiled, thin and tired. "You don't. I do."

"Father—"

"You're wanted, Lise. I'm dead. Officially condemned and executed, if the records are to be believed." He coughed into his sleeve. "A ghost can walk where a fugitive cannot. I know the docks. I know Benoît. I'll go at dusk, when the watch changes."

Lise shook her head. "You can barely stand."

"I've stood through worse."

"You've never stood through the Terror." She pulled her hand free and stood, pacing the narrow aisle between the pews. "We do it together. I'll hire a cart, we travel at night, we reach the river before dawn—"

"No." The word came sharp, and for a moment he sounded like the father she remembered, the man who had ruled his workshop with quiet authority. "If we're caught, we're caught together. There's no one left to carry this if we both fail. You need to stay free. You need to know the list exists, and where it's hidden, in case I don't come back."

The words landed like a blade. "In case you don't—"

"I've already been sentenced once. The guillotine and I are old acquaintances now." He tried to smile again. "But I'd rather not renew the acquaintance."

Lise opened her mouth to argue, but a sound stopped her. Footsteps in the cloister beyond the chapel, rapid and multiple. The abbot's voice, raised in alarm.

Then the chapel door burst open.

Half a dozen men in the blue coats of the National Guard poured in, muskets leveled. At their head stood a thin man with a scar across his jaw—one of Fouquier-Tinville's deputies, Lise recognized him from the Tribunal. He was the one who had handed her the execution lists each morning with a smile like a knife.

"Élisabeth Marchand," he said. "By order of the Public Prosecutor, you are to be taken into custody. Resisting will be—"

Pierre moved faster than Lise could have believed possible. He lunged for the deputy, his frail body colliding with surprising force, sending the man stumbling backward into the soldiers. The muskets swung wild.

"Run!" Pierre shouted.

Lise didn't want to run. Every instinct screamed at her to grab her father, to drag him through the window, to fight. But his eyes met hers—urgent, desperate, and utterly clear.

*Someone has to carry this.* His voice echoed in her memory. *You need to stay free.*

She ran.

The chapel had a side door leading to the sacristy—the abbot had shown her that morning, pointing out the route to the garden and the outer wall. She burst through it, her nun's habit catching on the doorframe, tearing. Behind her, shouts rang out. A musket shot cracked. Stone chips sprayed from the wall beside her head.

She didn't look back.

The sacristy was dark, cluttered with vestments and candlesticks. She shoved past a heavy armoire and found the rear door, fumbling with the latch. It was stuck—rusted or swollen with damp. She threw her shoulder against it once, twice. A third time, and it burst open, spilling her into the narrow garden.

Night air hit her face. The garden wall rose before her, seven feet of rough stone. She heard boots pounding behind her, closer now. She grabbed the lip of the wall, hauled herself up, felt the coarse stone scrape her palms, and rolled over the top.

She landed hard on the far side, in a ditch full of mud and dead leaves. For a moment she lay there, breath ragged, listening.

Voices in the garden. One man shouting, "She's gone over the wall! Go around!"

Then, her father's voice, strained and defiant: "She's already on the river road, you fools. You'll never catch her."

A heavy thud. A cry of pain.

Lise pressed her fist against her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

More shouts. Someone cursed. Then the deputy's voice, icily calm: "Tie him up. We'll take him back to Paris. The prosecutor will want to question him personally."

Lise closed her eyes. She could run. She knew she should run. But her legs wouldn't move.

*The Marie-Ange,* she told herself. *Pont Neuf. Oak chest, iron bands, spring behind the left hinge.*

Her father had given her the poem of his last hope. Now she had to memorize it alone.

She pushed herself to her feet and began to move along the ditch, away from the monastery, toward the river road. Her heart hammered with grief and fury, but her mind was already working, stitching together the pieces of a new plan.

She would reach the ship. She would retrieve the list. She would find Jean-Luc, if he was still alive, and she would use the list to tear Fouquier-Tinville down—whatever it cost.

Behind her, she heard the sound of the soldiers dragging her father into the chapel. She did not turn around.

She had a promise to keep.

She had a father to save.

And she would not let the guillotine have him twice.

---

The river road was quiet. She walked for hours, her nun's habit caked with mud, her hands raw and bleeding. The sky began to lighten in the east, grey and cold. She found a hollow beneath an abandoned cart and rested there until full dawn, her body trembling with exhaustion.

When she emerged, she had made a decision. She could not enter Paris disguised as a nun—too many of Fouquier's men had seen her now. But she could enter as someone else. Someone no one would look at twice.

She found a farmhouse outside the city gates, where an old woman sold milk and bread. Lise paid for a loaf with the last coin in her pocket and asked, in a voice she made humble and rustic, where she might find the *Marie-Ange*.

The old woman squinted. "That old hulk? Moored near the Pont Neuf, last I heard. But the captain's been gone a week. Left his mate in charge."

Lise's pulse quickened. "Gone where?"

"Orleans, I think." The old woman shrugged. "Some message came. Said there was cargo to collect."

Orleans. The same city where Paul Desmoulins was supposed to take the list. Where Hébert was trying to reach.

Coincidences were knives that cut both ways. And this one was sharp.

"Thank you, mother," Lise said, and walked toward the bridge that led into Paris.

The city was waking. The smell of bread and coal smoke filled the air. In the distance, she heard the drumbeat of a procession—more prisoners being taken to the scaffold.

She did not look. She kept walking.

The *Marie-Ange* was still there, moored against the stone embankment, her rigging cluttering out like a widow's hair. A single man lounged on her deck, smoking a pipe.

Lise adjusted her habit, straightened her shoulders, and stepped aboard.

"I need to speak with the captain's mate," she said in her most authoritative voice. "It concerns a debt owed to Pierre Marchand."

The man's pipe went still. Slowly, he lifted his eyes to meet hers.

"Pierre Marchand is dead," he said.

"He has a daughter," Lise replied. "And she is very much alive."