Page 3 of A Fierce Wind

Chapter 1

The port of La Rochelle on the west coast of France four years later, January 1794

One look at the messenger’s ashen face and Zoé’s heart sank. The news from the Vendée, the region between La Rochelle and Brittany, must be bad. She shrank away from the boy as he approached, not wanting to hear what he had to say.

He pressed toward her and the din of the tavern faded away as she fixed her eyes on his young face. Removing his hat, he said, “Monsieur Henri est mort, mademoiselle. Je suis désolé.”

Dead?She shook her head, her mind shouting Non! It could not be true, but the tragic look on the messenger’s face forced the words into her thoughts. Tears filled her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks as she thought of the golden warrior who was her whole world.

At twenty-one, Henri du Vergier, comte de la Rochejaquelein, had become the youngest general of the Vendéen royalist armies fighting against the revolutionary government in Paris. And now he was gone.

Zoé had never considered the possibility one so full of life, the bravest of men, could die. “How? Where?”

The boy’s forehead furrowed over his light blue eyes forming an angry frown. “Near Nuaillé, mademoiselle. Shot in the head by a republican pig who feigned surrender.”

Nuaillé, less than a hundred miles north. “Then he never made it back from Granville to the Vendée?”

The boy shook his head. “Non.”

She could not bear to learn Henri had died in agony. “Did he suffer?”

The messenger crushed his hat in his hands, his face stricken yet sincere. She knew he would tell her the truth. “He lived but a short while. His last words were for you, mademoiselle.”

Would his last words speak of his love, a declaration she could treasure always?

The boy raised his chin, the tavern’s lanterns reflecting the pride on his face. “Monsieur Henri said, ‘If I die, tell Zoé to avenge me!’”

Her heart plummeted and she grabbed on to a table to keep from slipping to her knees. She had wanted to hear an avowal of love that would give life to the feelings she had hoped he harbored for her, but it was not to be. In Henri’s last words, she recognized his order to his followers. Famous among the soldiers who had chosen him to lead the Vendéen army was his command, “If I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!”

Henri lived for his faith and his king, the words “Dieu et le Roi”, God and the King, embroidered on the Sacré-Cœur, the sacred heart patch he wore on his chest. Like the other Vendéen officers, his hat boldly displayed the white cockade of the Bourbons. Symbols of the Catholic and Royal Army of which he was a part. But surely he had loved her no matter his call for revenge. At the end it had been her name on his lips.

Zoé brushed the tears from her cheeks, steeling herself for the task ahead. Silently, she vowed she would not fail him. Henri would have his revenge, not just from his soldiers, who would fight on until victory was theirs, but she, too, would do what she could. France must be freed from the tyranny of men like Maximilien de Robespierre, the lawyer who had a taste for blood, and Georges Danton, yet another lawyer on the Committee of Public Safety that ruled France. Danton, she recalled, had brazenly called for the king’s death.

She remembered the murdered king and queen, their daughter confined to the Temple Prison and their nine-year-old son, Louis-Charles, the dauphin the royalists had named Louis XVII. The revolutionaries kept him in a cage in Paris where he suffered horrible treatment.

Could she do what Charlotte Corday had done the year before? The woman from Normandy, a few years older than Zoé, had slain Jean-Paul Marat, the radical journalist who had wanted more heads to roll. For her service to France, Corday had been guillotined.

Zoé shuddered. Surely there was another way she could serve the royalist cause, something other than taking up musket and sword.

A thought occurred, a way she could help. She could venture into the streets and villages to rescue those destined for the guillotine and work with her uncle to ferry the émigrés to freedom.

“Pour Dieu et le Roi” would be her motto, too. She would give herself to the royalist cause until the day a Bourbon king again sat on the throne of France and the people could worship freely.

The port of Granville, Normandy, February 1794

Zoé crept along the stone wall of the buildings facing the quay, heading for the place she would meet Erwan, one of the Vendéen fighters remaining in Normandy after the daring assault in Granville had ended in a terrible defeat.

Over the protests of the crew who had rowed her ashore, she had entered Granville alone, knowing the seamen’s presence would only draw the attention of the republican soldiers in control of the town.

The port had become a place of secret departure for émigrés fleeing Robespierre’s Terror, in which the constitution had been suspended and anyone accused of having less than patriotic fervor for the revolution faced the guillotine. No one was safe, least of all a woman descended from the comtes de Saintonge with an aristocratic lilt to her voice. Zoé had practiced for many hours to be able to blend with the peasants.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the cobblestones behind her. Seized with fear she would be stopped and questioned, Zoé shrank into the shadows, thanking the saints for the fog shrouding Granville this night.

With her heart pounding in her chest and hoping to remain unseen, she pressed against the stone wall, feeling the damp cold through her cloak. A veil of thick mist flowed over her, blurring her image.

A huge man with thick side whiskers and a revolutionary’s red cap passed in front of her, swinging a lantern as he weaved his way down the street, sated with drink. In a slurred voice, he sang the last lines of the song penned by the poet Lebrun the year before, commemorating the execution of Louis XVI.

If some want a master,