Read Chapter 31: The Gate at Vincennes

The rooftops east of the Bastille were slick with the morning’s rain, and Émile’s boots slid on the tiles as he crouched behind a chimney stack. Céleste pressed close beside him, her breath fogging in the chill air.

Below them stretched the empty boulevard leading to the Porte de Vincennes. And there, unmistakable against the grey stone of the gate’s arch, stood Luc.

He had made good time east, almost too good. But now he was not moving. Three Prussian soldiers in spiked helmets had him pinned against the wall, their rifles leveled at his chest. A fourth man, an officer with a waxed mustache and a monocle, was rifling through Luc’s coat.

“Merde,” Émile whispered.

“What is he doing?” Céleste’s voice was tight.

“Getting himself searched.” Émile pulled the field glass from his coat and brought it to his eye. The lens caught Luc’s face—pale but composed. The Prussian officer withdrew his hand from Luc’s coat, empty. He said something, and Luc shook his head.

Émile’s stomach turned. The watch. The plate. The single image that could get them all killed or set them free. Luc had carried it east as bait, knowing he would be searched. That was the plan. But the plan had not accounted for Prussians holding the gate. Moreau’s men, de Valois’s men—those they could reason with, or at least shoot. The Prussians were a third army, a foreign occupation force that neither side of the French civil war could claim allegiance from.

The officer gestured sharply, and one of the soldiers stepped forward and grabbed Luc’s arm. Luc did not resist. He said something, and the officer laughed.

Then Émile saw it. A small, deliberate movement. Luc’s right hand, still inside the loose folds of his coat, moved to his mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

The watch. He’d swallowed it.

“Jesus,” Émile breathed.

“What? What is it?” Céleste’s hand was on his arm now, her grip urgent.

“He’s eaten it. The watch. He’s swallowed the goddamn watch.”

She went still beside him. “Then we have to cut it out of him.”

“Or wait for it to come out the other end.” Émile lowered the glass and looked at her. “But we don’t have that kind of time. And the Prussians aren’t going to let a Communard walk free with a belly full of secrets.”

Below, the soldiers had bound Luc’s wrists with rope and were marching him toward the gatehouse. He went without a struggle, his head held high. For a moment, just before he passed under the arch, Luc looked up. Directly at the rooftop where Émile and Céleste were hiding.

He knows we’re here, Émile thought. And he knows what he’s done.

Émile watched him disappear into the stone interior of the gatehouse. The door slammed shut, and the sound echoed across the empty boulevard.

“He’s a dead man,” Céleste said quietly. “The Prussians will hang him as a Communard, or they’ll turn him over to Thiers’s people, or they’ll just leave him in a cell until one of the other sides decides to use him as a bargaining chip. None of those outcomes involve him leaving the gate alive.”

“Then I’ll go in and get him.”

“With what? You have no weapons, no flash powder, no—wait.” She turned to face him fully, reading his face. “What are you thinking?”

Émile scanned the gatehouse. Two sentries stood at the entrance. A third patrolled the wall above. Inside, he could see windows lit with the pale glow of oil lamps. The Prussian garrison had taken over the customs house when they’d occupied the city the year before—and for reasons Émile did not fully understand, they had kept a garrison at the eastern gate after the siege ended. A compromise with the Commune, or an arrangement with Versailles. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the officer had paused when Luc had spoken, had looked at him with something other than contempt.

Photography. That was the one thing the Prussians craved from Paris. They had paid handsomely for portrait sittings during the occupation, for images of their officers posed before the landmarks they had conquered. The commander of the gate garrison, if the rumors were true, had a collection of images of the city’s barricades. He wanted a permanent record of the fall of the rebels.

And who better to provide that record than the man who had spent two months photographing every barricade in the city?

“I’m going to offer him a trade,” Émile said. “Luc for a set of photographs.”

Céleste stared at him. “You’re going to walk into a Prussian garrison and offer to take pictures?”

“I’m going to walk in as a photographer. A professional, apolitical artist who has documents of the barricades that the commander would pay a fortune for.” Émile gathered himself, checking his coat. The plates were still in his boot and thigh, safe. But he had a third plate, wrapped in paper, in his inner pocket—a blank he’d prepared at the darkroom, one of the few supplies that had survived the ransacking. “I’ll give them something they want. In exchange for the man they’re about to hang.”

“Émile, they could shoot you the moment you approach.”

“They could. But they won’t.” He pulled the camera from his satchel, checking the lens, the bellows. It looked broken at first glance, but he knew what it could do. “A photographer is not a combatant. To the Prussians, I’m merchandise. A service provider. They have no quarrel with me.”

He stood, brushing the dust from his trousers. Céleste grabbed his wrist before he could step away.

“They’ll search you,” she said. “They’ll find the plates.”

“They might.” Émile met her eyes. “But if they do, I’ll tell them those plates are of the barricades. The ones they want. And I’ll develop them right there in their gatehouse, under their own guards, and hand over every plate I’ve got. Luc walks. I walk out with him, and the real plate comes home hidden in his belly.”

“And if the plate breaks inside him? If he dies from swallowing glass?”

“Then we’ll be no worse off than we are now. And Luc will have died for something true.”

She released his wrist slowly, her face unreadable. Then she nodded once. “I’ll be watching from the rooftops. If they don’t let you out, I won’t let them sleep tonight.”

Émile managed a thin smile. “I know.”

He descended the fire escape to the street, camera swinging from his shoulder. He crossed the boulevard without looking back, his boots echoing on the wet cobbles.

The sentries saw him coming. Their rifles came up. He raised both hands, the camera visible, the blank plate box held out before him like an offering.

“Tell your commander,” Émile called in careful German, “that I have photographs of the barricades. And I want to trade them for your prisoner.”

The sentries exchanged glances. The one on the left barked something in German that Émile knew meant they would shoot him if he moved closer. He stopped, waited.

The door to the gatehouse opened. The officer with the monocle stepped out, studying Émile with a cold, appraising gaze. He said nothing, but Émile could see the calculation behind his eyes.

A photographer. A trade. A barricade of images.

The officer inclined his head, just slightly. A gesture of acceptance.

Émile walked forward into the shadow of the gate, camera heavy at his shoulder, and wondered if he was walking into a trap or walking into the only chance they had left.