Page 59 of The Spy’s Song

Rodrick looked toward the farmhouse. One upstairs window held a faint bar of candlelight. Freedom appeared considerably less impressive from an orchard at midnight.

The plain had made for easy riding. Now the road dropped toward the Sambre, pinched between limestone on the left and a wooded slope on the right, the river flashing silver through the trees. The column tightened. Lucie tossed his head against the bridle. Poor creature. He disliked confinement as much as she did.

Now that Gaetan had left, Rodrick rode with de Brissac. He had been riding with de Brissac since dawn. He spoke with de Brissac, consulted maps with de Brissac, and addressed the world in general with the easy confidence of a man who had no awareness that anyone might be counting the hours since he had last turned around.

Four hours.

She was not counting. She looked at the line of his shoulders, the dark green coat, the gold braid, the spine she had memorized during the night. It was broad daylight, yet the world had the strange flatness of an unlit stage, everything visible and somehow lifeless.

Must be his English blood. Norman her foot. If he had a single drop of French blood in those cold, spy veins, he would have turned around at least once. He would have looked. He would have acknowledged, with the corner of an eye or the angle of a shoulder, that something had passed between them in the dark.

Never again would she permit him to kiss her and move against her so deeply that she had thought he would never be able to leave.

"You've gone quiet," Lefèvre said.

"I'm thinking."

"You've been thinking since breakfast. I've been trying to cheer you up for two hours. You haven't noticed a single joke."

"Tell me one now."

"I can't. The moment's gone. Oh, wait. I have one. It's so funny it will make you lose your seat. There was a general and a—"

The world cracked open. The boom slammed into the rock face and ricocheted down the road, loud enough to jar her teeth, and sent Lucie rearing beneath her.

"What is that?" she asked.

Lefèvre had his hand over his eyes, squinting at the cliff above. "Cannons."

De Brissac's arm went up, and the column stopped.

A scout arrived at a gallop, his horse lathered to the shoulder. He hauled up before de Brissac.

"Prussians at the bridge. Infantry in the houses beyond it. Two guns on the rise covering the crossing." He pointed downriver. "They've barricaded the far end, and men are working beneath the bridge. Powder, I think. They mean to blow it if we push them."

De Brissac wrenched his horse around. "Then we push them before they finish. Guns forward. Skirmishers down to the bank. We take the bridge and throw the bastards off the other side."

"If you send men across that bridge, the Prussians need only fire straight ahead." Rodrick's gaze moved from the guns on the rise to the narrow span below. "Four abreast, perhaps. Nowhere to scatter. And if they cannot hold it, they light the powder while your first companies are still crossing."

"War is payment, monsieur. We pay in blood, not coin," de Brissac said, his face already turning red.

"Then let us pay less." Rodrick looked upriver. "What lies beyond that mill?"

The scout followed his gaze. "A cattle ford. Half a mile, perhaps. The locals use it when the river is low."

"How deep?"

"Waist-high yesterday."

Rodrick looked at de Brissac. "Tonight, give them the attack they expect. Guns forward. Skirmishers along the bank. Make enough noise to convince them you intend to force the bridge."

"I do intend to force the bridge."

"Which should make the performance unusually convincing." Rodrick pointed toward the mill. "Under cover of darkness, I take fifteen men upstream, cross at the ford, and come down behind the guns. We seize the battery and capture the demolition party."

De Brissac's grin arrived slowly, spreading across his broad Gascon face like the sun coming over a battlefield. "I'll be damned. That plan is filthy. I like it."

He turned in the saddle.