Free Ramage's Devil by Dudley Pope Page B

and vigour of the Tropics—to which he had become accustomed over the past few years—but because men and women hoed and dug and ploughed and weeded from dawn to dusk.
    Gilbert became impatient with the horse, a chestnut which looked as though it was not exercised enough and heartily resented being between shafts. Perhaps, Ramage thought sourly, it was a Republican and resented having to work (if jogging along this lane rated the description “work”) for Monarchists.
    â€œPretend to be asleep—or sleepy, anyway,” Gilbert said as they approached the first village. Ramage inspected it through half-closed eyes, and for a moment was startled how different it was from all the villages he had seen up to now. A few moments later he realized that the village was the same but his attitude had just changed. He had been a free visitor when he had seen all the other villages on the roads from Calais to Paris, south across Orléans and the Bourbonnais, among the hills of Auvergne, and to the north-west up towards Finisterre through Poitou and Anjou … Towns and villages, Limoges with its superb porcelain and enamels, the fourth-century baptistry of the church near Poitiers which is France’s earliest Christian building … Clermont-Ferrand, where Pope Urban (the second?) sent off the first Crusade in 1095 (why did he remember that date?), the châteaux and palaces along the Loire Valley … Angers with the château of seventeen towers belonging formerly to the Dukes of Anjou, and no one now willing to discuss the whereabouts of the tapestries, particularly the fourteenth-century one which was more than four hundred and thirty feet long. And Chinon, on the banks of the Vienne, where Joan of Arc prodded the Dauphin into war. No, all these towns had been impressive and the villages on the long roads between them for the most part interesting (or different, anyway), but they had been at peace—with England, at least.
    With England: that, he suddenly realized, was significant, and he wished he could discuss it with Sarah but it had to be talked about in English, not French, and it was too risky talking in English when they could be overheard by a hidden hedger and ditcher.
    The French had been at peace with England but not yet with themselves. He had been surprised to see that the enemy for the people of all the villages, towns and cities of France was now their own people: the members of the Committees of Public Safety at the top of a pyramid which spread out to
gendarmes
enforcing the curfew and standing at the
barrières
demanding
passeports,
the old enemies denouncing each other in secret, the banging on doors in the darkness, when no neighbour dared to look to see who the
gendarmes
were bundling away.
    Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité—
fine words. They had stretched France’s frontiers many miles to the north, east and south, but what had they done for the French people? Now every able-bodied young man would have to serve again in the army or navy, and there was no harm in that if they were needed to defend France. But France would be attacking other countries: earlier France was everywhere the aggressor, even across the sands of Egypt.
    That was looking at the phrase in its broadest sense, yet the picture those three words summoned up for him was simple and one that fitted every
place
in every city, town and large village in France.
    The picture was stark and simple: two weathered baulks of timber arranged as a vertical and parallel frame, and a heavy and angled metal blade, sharpened on the underside, sliding down two grooves. A bench on which the victim was placed so that his or her neck was squarely under the blade, a wicker basket beyond to catch the severed head. Weeping relatives and wildly cheering onlookers—that dreadful melange of blood and hysteria. Of the three words, the guillotine must stand for
fratenité
and
égalité
because
liberté
was