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"See that Captain de Montreval and his aide are properly integrated."

Gaetan was already discussing the road with de Brissac. Rodrick moved with them when the column resumed.

Louise watched his shako disappear. He was only a few lengths ahead, yet his absence from sight removed the road's marker.

Nonsense. Lieutenant Jean needed no landmarks.

Lefèvre brought his horse alongside hers. "D'Arc. Like the maid?"

"Like the soldier," she grunted, lowering her voice.

"Huh." He appeared to weigh this. "You know the maid burned, yes? Terrible precedent for a name. Welcome to the Seventh. Try not to burn."

"I will definitely try."

She rode between Lefèvre and Trooper Vernet, who appeared to have survived several campaigns by refusing to speak. While she watched France move past on either side, the hedgerows, the fields, a farmhouse with smoke from its chimney, a church spire rising above the tree line, Lefèvre questioned her.

He asked why no one in the regiment had seen her before, where she had been during the previous campaign, whether she preferred saber or lance. Louise gave each a prepared answer and waited for the question that would expose something Rodrick had failed to anticipate.

But within another quarter hour he had moved on to the inadequacy of army bread, the incompetence of a quartermaster in Amiens, and another officer's horse that objected to bridges.

At Covent Garden, dancers could measure intimacy by who was permitted to hear grievances about choreographers, shoes, wages, lovers, and other dancers. Perhaps cavalrymen were not so different.

Some of these men had followed Napoleon before Elba. Some might have crossed the Niemen, ridden through Germany, fought in France while Paris itself came under threat. They had seen the Emperor fall. And now they were here. France had remembered.

"They came back quickly," she said.

Lefèvre glanced at her. "Who?"

"The men. When the Emperor returned."

"Some did." He pointed toward an older sergeant several files ahead whose saber hung from a belt worn white at the edges. " Perrin would follow the Emperor into hell, provided hell has forage."

The sergeant turned as though he had heard his name and lifted one finger in response.

Lefèvre nodded toward another cluster of riders. "Bernard lost two brothers in Prussia. Says he has no particular affection left for emperors, kings, or anyone else who owns a crown, but he follows Gaetan."

"And the others?"

Lefèvre shrugged. "Some because they hate the Bourbons. Some because the Prussians crossed France once already and they'd rather return the courtesy. Some because they were demobilized on half pay."

Louise looked at him. "And you?"

Morel's smile faded. "My brother died in 1813. My mother spent last year feeding Prussian officers from plates she had hidden during the first invasion. I have an account to settle."

Frowning, Louise looked ahead again. Lieutenant d'Arc didn't have opinions.

The countryside narrowed around them as the road dipped between stone houses. Conversation thinned. A shutter closed above the column with a crack sharp enough to make Louise glance up, then another followed farther along the street.

A man outside the cooper's shop removed his hat when Gaetan passed. Across the street, a woman caught a small boy by the shoulder and drew him inside before the horses reached their door.

No children ran toward the horses. No one called Napoleon's name. By the time they entered the village square, the silence had begun to press against the sound of the regiment.

"Royalists are thick through here," Lefèvre said. "Émigrés came back with the Bourbons, old families reclaiming estates, old officers demanding new regiments."

Montmorency. The name surfaced unexpectedly. Rodrick's second man. Antoine de Montmorency had fled after Charlotte's death, and few names were older—or more Bourbon—than his. For one uncomfortable moment Louise wondered how Autun, who had moved among kings, ministers, and exiles for half his life, had never found him. Then she dismissed the thought. If Autun had known where Montmorency was, he would have told Rodrick. There could be no purpose in keeping a man searching for fifteen years when one possessed the answer.

They arrived at the village's well and color flashed ahead. Two high posts had been driven into the ground and joined by a crossbeam. The tricolor hung there like a body.