“I’ll be well taken care of by my friends,” she said. “And you’ll be paid.”

Inside the cooperage yard, behind the wooden gates, Alain’s big cart stood, its poles pointed up into the air. The cart hauled barrels to the makers of cider and the distillers of calvados brandy for miles around. It also led a secret life of ingenious hidden compartments and counterfeit barrels and false piles of wood. Of long, clandestine journeys to the coast. Ordinary at first glance, extraordinary upon closer inspection. It was a cart not unlike Citoyen LeBreton himself.

LeBreton looked over the house and yard, to the fields beyond. He was, she thought, a man who saw the fly upon every leaf. His face remained placid. “It’s quiet.”

The air lay heavy, humming faintly. In the late afternoon, no one moved anywhere within sight. The chickens of the dooryard were lackadaisical. No dog barked. Even the cows on the hill were motionless, as if they had been painted there.

Unease tickled under her skin. “Nothing is out of place. I am fond of quiet.”

“Not this much quiet.” Without making it obvious, he drew a circle with two fingers of his right hand. Adrian stopped talking. “If they’re looking out the window, they’ve seen us. Any reason your friend wouldn’t come out giving glad cries of welcome?”

“She is not expecting me, certainly. She might not know me at this distance. I arrive, always, in a carriage. They would wonder—”

“They’ll be wondering more if we stand here talking.” He made a quick hook with fingers that chopped down. Another signal to Adrian. “Let’s go see your friend.”

They followed the wall of the cooperage. LeBreton’s strides were long and she had to push to keep up. She said, “You are right to be wary. I will go ahead alone. You will wait back there with—”

“No.”

She had not yet learned the knack of giving this man orders. He was like a large rock rolling down a steep hill. Once started, difficult to control. “If there is a problem, it makes sense that I—”

“If there’s a problem, it’s looking out the window right now and it knows I’m here.” They passed the workshop gate where the ruts of wheel tracks turned in. “Your friends have a good broad view over the countryside.”

It was one of the reasons Alain liked this house. One could see visitors coming.

In the front garden, chickens scattered themselves out of LeBreton’s way. The shutters of the house were closed. That was not amazing on such a warm afternoon. But Bertille did not come to the door and fling it open and rush down the path toward her.

She must be putting the baby to bed. That was why everything was quiet. She would come running in a minute, laughing.

LeBreton clumped up the path, scuffling his boots on the stone. Being loud. He banged the door. But only once. It jerked open before his fist landed again.

A soldier in full uniform stood in the doorway. The muzzle of his gun rose. Pointed at LeBreton.

Blue coat, white breeches, white shoulder belts, red cuffs. Garde Nationale. Loyal revolutionaries from Paris. Not a local gendarme.

I have walked us into disaster. Cold washed over her. Fear gripped her breath.

Behind the garde, Bertille’s cottage was in chaos. Broken dishes, chairs overturned, something—flour—sprayed in plumes on the stone floor with dozens of boot marks. Bertille sat at the dark wood table, her arms tight around Charles, the two-year-old. He sat in her lap, pressing his face into the white of her apron. She was alive. Unhurt.

I have done this to her. I have dragged them all into danger. I did not protect her. Where were Alain and the new baby? There was an apprentice boy. Where was he?

“Ahhh . . .” LeBreton rubbed the back of his neck. His huge, tough body was awkward. His expression, sheepish. He had become the bewildered bumpkin. “You don’t want to be doing that, Suzette.”

She had taken a step forward, without thinking, to go to Bertille. The gun swung and pointed toward her.

Suzette? That is a ludicrous name.

The garde was young and scared, his finger on the trigger. He’d shoot LeBreton if any of them—herself, Bertille, LeBreton—made the smallest mistake.

She must be harmless. “What has happened here? Why do you have guns? You should not bring guns into the house. Have you no manners?” She would chatter and babble like a fool. She would be silly. A soldier might turn his back on a silly woman.

“Now, Suzette.” LeBreton was placating.

There were two of them, at least. Bertille was looking at something out of sight, behind the door, letting her eyes show that someone was there.

She jostled the garde, knocking the barrel of the musket. They will think I am a twittering idiot to bump into an armed soldier this way. “I heard nothing of any fighting near here. Has someone been hurt?”

LeBreton stood upon the doorstep like a frog and did nothing. “That’s a gun, love.” His voice was perfect stupidity. “You got to move aside and not touch it. You don’t want to get yourself shot, just by accident.”

“Enough! You.” The garde grabbed her. “Inside.”

While she dithered and sputtered, she was shoved roughly into the room. She hit the table edge hard, clacking her teeth together, biting her tongue. A bowl rolled off the table and fell to the floor and broke.

She was face-to-face with Bertille. Their eyes met. And it was like old times. They had been in danger before, the two of them. They had survived. Always. She thinks this is like the other times. She expects me to get us free.

LeBreton lumbered forward, his hands spread and open. “There’s no cause to go pushing Suzette. She don’t mean no harm.”

“Out of my way, ox. Over there.”

“I’m coming, citoyen.” LeBreton swung his head from one side of the cottage to the other, taking in the destruction, looking puzzled. Looking like the ox he most certainly was not. “But I don’t know what’s going on.”

The second soldier, a sergeant, had been hidden from sight by the door. He stood with his musket ready. Behind him, in the curtained alcove where the boys slept, Alain lay on the floor. His hands were tied behind his back, his face bloody and swollen. His apprentice, twelve years old, huddled at his side, also bound.

No one had been killed. Bertille had not been despoiled. These were not deserters or bandits. They were professional soldiers, disciplined, following orders. They’d come to make arrests.

This is bad. Bad as it can be.

She leaned over and clutched her belly as if she were in pain from colliding with the table. It hid her face while she thought, frantically. They know this house is a waystation of La Flèche. They have stayed here to catch the next courier. To trap anyone who comes. “Why have you hit me?” she whined. “What is happening? Why is that man bloody?”

“Are you hurt, Suzette?” LeBreton looked from one soldier to the other, all puzzlement. “There’s no call to do that.”

The sergeant snapped, “Your documents.” When LeBreton didn’t move quickly enough, he was hit sharply with the butt of the gun the way a man prods an animal into motion.

“You want to see my papers?”

“Yes, I want to see your papers. Dolt.”

LeBreton unbuttoned his waistcoat, his elbows sticking out awkwardly. His shirt was coarse weave, cut full and loose like the smock of a laborer. He tugged it out, all the way around, being slow and clumsy about it. Next to his skin, he wore a linen money belt with flat pockets. “Got it in here. Just a minute.” He eased out a square of stained, brown leather, tied with twine. “I keep it safe, see. You can’t be too careful these days. The roads are full of thieves.”

The younger guard was calming down. His finger came off the trigger. The muzzle no longer pointed at LeBreton.

And she had no weapon anywhere. What was here? Wood benches. A table. Two chairs. A cupboard with dishes on the shelves. Pots on the hearth. An empty cradle. Alain had carved the cradle for Charles. Now the new baby used it. The windows were shuttered. Light came through in bright slits. Nothing she could make use of.

LeBreton put the leather packet on the table and picked at a knot in the twine. “We followed the road out of Vachielle, up over that hill there. Now that was a mistake.” He picked at the knot, his face screwed up in concentration. “They said this was a shortcut. ‘Suzette,’ I said—I call her Suzette on account of her name being Suzanne. But I had a cow named Suzanne before I got married, and I couldn’t call my wife and the cow the same name, now could I?” He worked away at the packet, his face screwed up in concentration.

“Give me that.” The sergeant propped his gun against the table and unwound the twine, muttering to himself.

“I told Suzette, ‘It’s not much of a shortcut, if you ask me, when you have to go walking all this way uphill.’ ”

He was clever. But it did not matter what he said or how innocent he appeared, these men had orders to hold anyone who came into this house.

She shook with being afraid. If she stopped to think, she would be clumsy. There is one gun pointed at us. I will get my hands on the other.

She began a low, irritating grumble. “This way is shorter if you had not gotten us lost.” No one watched her. One does not see annoying women who chatter and scold. She inched toward the gun the sergeant had leaned against the table.

“That’s Boullages ahead, ain’t it?” LeBreton’s accent had thickened to sludge. “If we keep on this road, we come there?”

“If you do not shut up your mouth, you will go nowhere at all.”