But even her mother was listening now, although Giselle doubted she could understand much of the discussion. So, as Heath began to answer Kit’s question, Giselle began translating for her mother.
“Before I explain about the Citadel,” Heath went on, “I should mention that Father had just died. I knew you three had been sent to live with Cousin Yates, and I was desperate to get back to you, so we could be a family … such as it was without Mother and Father. So, I had every incentive to escape. I went into it knowing there was a risk, but I thought the risk was worth it.”
The boys were silent, for the first time seeming to understand that he had actually sacrificed to gain custody of them.
“Anyway,” he said, “Jon, Morris, Scovell, Percy, and I made a great deal of preparations for our escape before we even attempted it. Weapons were impossible to obtain, but we could get tools and thin rope and victuals that would keep over time, especially since it was nearing winter. When we were allowed out of the walled town during the day, we would take our items to a copse we’d found and hide them in a tree.”
“Why didn’t you just escape then?”
Heath laughed mirthlessly. “We wouldn’t have gotten far. First of all, we had to leave our passports in town to even be allowed into the countryside. Second, there were gendarmes posted three milesout on every road to keep us from going farther. Third, the peasantry were told that if there was an escape, they would be given a guinea, about twenty-three francs, for every prisoner they caught. So, they were all diligent in scouring the countryside and beating the bushes for escapees.”
“‘Escapes must be done by stealth,’” Evan quoted him.
“Precisely.” Heath gazed out the window. “Thus, we always had to return. But the day we planned to escape, we gathered our tools and rope from our supplies in the copse, hiding them on our persons. By then, our friend Percy had already been sent off to Arras, so it was just us four. Then we made sure to be late to roll call, which earned us a trip to the Citadel.”
“Didn’t they search you going in?” Evan asked.
“Never. We were supposed to be gentlemen, remember? Englishmen but also gentlemen, which in itself was strange. Anyway, the Citadel was within the walled town, but parts of it weren’t as fortified as others. Prisoners, of course, had no access to those, but one of our group, my friend Jon, had been put in the Citadel for a while, so he knew that the chapel was vulnerable.”
“There was a chapel in the Citadel?” Evan asked.
“There was an oldconventin the Citadel. The commandant used it occasionally to house some prisoners. But we knew scarcely anyone was there at the time. So, we got ourselves sent to the Citadel, knowing that Courcelles preferred to put people in the old convent.”
The boys hung on his every word. Even she and Maman, who knew part of the story already, were held rapt by his part of the tale.
“During the day,” Heath went on, “I climbed down the convent stairs to where only a wooden door separated it from the old chapel, which at that time was used for storage. With a gimlet I’d smuggled in, I bore small holes around one panel of the locked door, then plugged them with candlewax and pressed sawdust into it to make it look as it normally did.”
“Why?” Zack asked.
“I’m getting there, lad,” Heath said gently. “After the last time the gendarmes came to check on us at night, we knew we had until morning before they checked on us again. We hurried downstairsto the door panel, where the holes made it easy to punch the panel out, then we climbed through into the chapel and propped the panel back in place, so it wouldn’t immediately be noticed.”
“But then you had to get out of the chapel,” Kit said.
Heath nodded. “The windows had bars, but above one window was a frieze. We put storage items up on a desk to reach the frieze, pushed it out, then climbed through the hole. That led into the general’s garden, but he wasn’t at home that night, so we were able to cross the garden and get to the wall fairly easily, after evading a sentinel. Unfortunately, we miscalculated how far the drop was, so our rope played out ten feet above the ground. We ended up falling farther than we expected. That’s how our friend Morris got hurt—he was older than we were.”
Maman gave a little gasp, but the boys thankfully didn’t seem to notice. Giselle had never told her mother how Morris was hurt, just that it happened during the attempted escape.
“We made it to our copse, half carrying Morris. We intended to stay in there the next day until Morris could walk, but the gendarmes surrounded the copse in the morning and made us come out. Then we were sent to Bitche prison in irons. There was no more escaping after that.”
“Bitche prison had a dungeon,” Giselle said dully. “Everyone called Bitche the ‘Mansion of Tears.’ It was no place anyone would ever wish to be. Your brother and his friends spent three years there before being set free when Napoleon abdicated.”
“We were in two cells rather than in the dungeon proper,” Heath said. “But they were carved out of rock. All night we could hear those in the dungeon drinking, carousing, gambling … sometimes screaming. It wasn’t a pleasant place. There were a number of suicides.”
“There were those at Verdun, too,” Giselle said woefully. “When one’s captivity stretches on for a decade with no end in sight, people begin to lose hope of ever seeing their families.”
With a little cry, Zack threw his arms around Heath. “We’re glad you came home!”
Heath ruffled the boy’s hair, looking a bit taken aback by the show of emotion. “I’m glad I came home, too, lad. I missed all ofyou—even you, though I hadn’t met you yet. But Mother spoke of you a great deal in her letters, so I felt as if I knew you.”
Giselle blotted her eyes with her handkerchief, hoping Heath did not notice. But how could she not cry for what he had lost? It all seemed so unfair, even to a Frenchwoman. Then again, she was half-English, and her father had suffered with them. It was not right.
After his tale, his brothers had questions. They wanted to know all about life at Verdun and Bitche. She knew much of the first and little of the second, so she was almost as interested as they.
Dusk fell not long into the second half of their journey, but none of them noticed, especially once the small lamps inside the carriage were lit at their next stop. The questions continued, and Heathbrook answered every one until the boys fell silent.
After a while, Zack’s head fell against Heathbrook’s shoulder as the boy dozed, and her mother’s head fell on hers. On the other side of Zack, Evan stared out the window at the rising full moon. Kit got quiet next, and she looked over past her mother to where Kit sat next to the carriage wall. He was propping his head against it in an obvious attempt to doze a little himself.
Time passed, with the only sounds being her mother’s snores and the squeaking of the carriage.