The streets were empty. The populace was spent. They retreated to their homes and their churches in exhaustion. They were past celebration, or shame, or resentment. Tomorrow they would mourn. Tomorrow they would think again of the future. Tomorrow they would face the terms of surrender.
The House of Villeneuve had taken to bed. Only Claude wandered the lower floors making certain that the candles they’d lit were damped for the night. The sound of voices from the street caused him to halt on the stairs. He turned to step to the foyer and listen closer. Men were directly before the house and coming closer. They were in a hushed argument, not wishing to be heard. The empty streets echoed their utterances in the cold night air, amplifying them so that Claude could catch the tone if not the words. One voice rose above the others and, after a moment of silence, something hard struck the door of the outer portico.
A crash of splintering wood and glass informed him that, whoever this was, they were through the street door and into the entryway of the house. Claude moved to the stout front entrance door and made certain all the bolts were shot. Seconds later, the hammering began on the other side. From the noise of them, two heavy iron mallets were striking the door in tandem like lumbermen felling a tree.
Claude was confident that the door would hold against such an assault. The street-facing windows of the house were heavily barred and entry through them near impossible. Even so, he reached into a stand by the door and retrieved, from among the umbrellas, a heavy cavalry saber that had rested there unnoticed by visitors for decades. He unsheathed the curving blade with no difficulty. One of his self-assigned duties was to keep this relic of his days in the Hussars cleaned and oiled in its scabbard. Now that ritual chore rewarded him with a ready weapon to face these intruders.
He glanced up to see fresh orbs of reflected light upon the ceiling at the top of the stairs. The cacophony had awakened the house.
“Remain upstairs, mesdames!” he called.
A new sound, deeper in the house, reached him. Metal upon metal rang. Glass tinkled musically. The kitchen and pantry at the alley rear.
“Merde,” he hissed to himself, then shouted, “Anatole! Get out here!”
A flutter of women’s voices from above. Claude raced down the back hall for the kitchen. Anatole appeared before him in a nightshirt, sputtering questions.
“The front door, you fool!” Claude thundered as he raced past the man. “Get the girls and shove furniture before the door! Quickly, man!”
Claude was in the kitchen and through the pantry to find men in dark clothing outside the rear portico and prying the wrought iron bars free from the gate there. He backed toward the doorway to the house to secure the copper-clad service door. The men tore away the ladder of bars to shoulder through the alley gate for him. They were armed with the tools of tradesmen, hammers, adzes, and knives. There were five that he could see.
And one more man with them, who stood at the back with hands in the pockets of a fine woolen coat in starkest contrast to the rest of the grubby crew clothed in layers of ragged garb. The man had skin of mahogany, made all the darker by the fringe of snow-white hair visible beneath his tall silk topper. The man snapped orders to the others. These were no common looters, and this was no random assault.
The big footman lunged and speared the most eager attacker through the guts. Claude twisted the blade and pulled it free. The man shrieked. Blood jetted from between fingers laced over the wound. The others hesitated. The dark man growled a fresh order in high-mannered French and the gang pressed forward over the kicking body of their comrade.
Claude drove the hilt of the saber into the face of one man and felt the crackle of breaking bone through the steel. He booted another in the knee, hearing the joint snap with a report that could be heard over the grunts of his assailants and the shouts of the dark man. The attackers renewed their efforts, emboldened by rage, and carried Claude backward through the door and into the house by the weight of their numbers.
Caroline was still awake thanks to Stephen.
He was fussing. Perhaps it was the silence of the night after so many days of constant rumblings from outside. She had the baby back to sleep after rocking him in her arms and pacing for what seemed like hours. The hammering on the front door reached her as she was laying the infant back in the crib. She stepped to the hall to see Claude shouting for the chef, surprised to see a sword in his fist. The front door was shuddering in its frame under steady impacts striking it from the other side. Mme. Villeneuve joined Caroline, a candelabra held aloft in her hand. Jeannot brushed past them and charged down the steps to help Anatole and the maids haul a large chest and then a spinet piano from the drawing room and against the door.
“Who is it? Have they identified themselves?” the widow called down the stairs.
“Looters, Mother!” Jeannot shouted back. “Come to rob the house!”
“Why have they chosen us?” Mme. Villeneuve said with more irritation than apprehension.
Caroline did not know who they were, but she knew they were not robbers. She knew why they were here and why they chose this house.
“Where has Claude gone?” Mme. Villeneuve called down.
The sharp crack of an explosion sounded from below, followed by another and another.
Caroline backed toward her room where her child was now crying, startled by the sudden noise rising even above the rhythmic hammering. She swept up the squalling, wriggling bundle and held it close to her with one arm. Her
