TURNS OF DESTINY by Laney Part 4 « A drink, a drink is what we need ! Alain, from the French Guards, sang. Hold tavernkeeper ! Give us some of this good wine again !” The man smiled at him, and showed him the bottles which were in evidence on the bar : “Don’t you think that you have had enough for tonight, soldier ? -Hey, you will not refuse this to me ! Look at the others, there : they would be really sad if you do not want to give them a drink either.” He wanted to look threatening, but the tavernkeeper burst into laughing : “Help yourself, if it makes you happy ! But I will not look after you if you sink in front of the door of my tavern ! -Do not worry about that” Alain answered with a jolly tone. ‘The good table’ was the tavern these French Guards liked the best. Usually, after drinking more than six bottles, a great fight burst and everybody had a part in it. « Hey Alain, we will be soon on duty. We have to leave, a soldier with a demoralized look told him. -Okay Jacques, but let me finish drinking this, the man answered, sighing. When we have to go, we have to go !” After several minutes, the two men stood up with the boos of their mates. Alain did not notice them, and opened the door of the tavern, yelling : “Have fun, mates ! We will see how you look tomorrow !” He turned back to see the other soldiers’ reactions, when he suddenly stopped : he had not seen that a soldier of the French Guards was sitting, alone in a dark corner near a window. “Oh no, he whispered. Jacques, he said with a higher voice, go first, I will meet you there. -But Alain... -Do not question it !” The other man agreed reluctantly. Alain crossed the room, ignoring his mates’ comments, and met with the soldier who was sitting alone at a table, a bottle of wine in front of him. “Why do you stay alone like this ? Sit down with the others. -I am thinking.” Alain shook his head and sat down near the soldier : “Why haven’t you come to the barracks these weeks ? We have looked for you. Where the hell have you been, André ?” The other man took the bottle and gulped wine down, before answering with a thick voice : “I have wanted to come today. Do you see, I have even put on my uniform. But finally, I have not thought that I was capable of coming, and I have prefered to go for a walk. -You are not saying anything about the Colonel. Have you managed to find him, after all this time ?” André looked at him, then said in a breath : “She is dead. Well... it seems that she is...” Alain looked at the bottle, then at André, and said in a hesitating tone : “I think that you have been drinking too much, mate. ‘She’ is dead ? It is absurd, Colonel Oscar de Jarjayes cannot be a woman. -I can swear that she is.” Long minutes of silence came. Alain had difficulty in believing in his friend. It was so... unlikely ! How a woman could have had a job in the army ? But he remembered André’s behaviour when someone spoke about the Colonel... a behaviour Alain never managed to understand. However André resumed : “General de Jarjayes organized his daughter’s funerals. It was a horrible day, in every sense of the word. I even tried to put an end to my life that day.” Alain chose his words wisely : “Listen, all of that seems odd to me. We do not see you for several weeks, suddenly you reappear in this tavern and you tell me... extraordinary things ! What did you do during all this time ?” His friend sighed and took the bottle of wine again. He looked at it for long minutes, then he threw it by the open window, saying : “I do not really know anymore. Above all, I persuaded myself that she was waiting for me, somewhere. So I tried to find her. -Well, that’s enough, I bring you back to your home. -My home ? I do not have any home anymore since Oscar has left. It is not the same now. -I am fed up with your bloody rubbish, alright ? I am leaving, I am on duty tonight.” Alain slipped on his jacket but a barely audible murmur prevented him from leaving : “I am begging you... I must speak to someone... if only you knew how bad I am feeling...” Alain turned back and noticed with surprise that André was in tears. Really worried, he sat down again near him and whispered : “All right, I am listening to you. -No. Not here.” Later, they arrived in front of the closed gate of the Jarjayes’ mansion. “André, I do not know if it is a good idea to... -Do not worry, there is not anyone here, anymore. The servants have left, and the General is in England with his daughters and my grandmother. She brought us up, Oscar and me.” Once in the living-room, André lighted a fire and told Alain to sit down. He took a great breath and told him everything. His infancy with Oscar, the feelings he had for her from the first glance, the Royal Guard, the French Guards. At the end of his account Alain whispered : “So it was that... I knew there was something odd with this Colonel... a woman...” André nodded, and his mate went on, with a higher voice : “And now, her disappearance. Where was her coffin carried ? -I do not know, and I do not want to know. The only thing that I am almost sure about, is that she is not dead. -Wait a minute, you told me about her funerals, and... -I also told you that it was an insane day. The coffin was empty.” Alain raised his eyebrows : “I do not understand anymore... -Well, even so there were some things. Pieces of her uniform, for example, and... scraps of white flesh. All of that in a pool of dry blood when we arrived in the forest. -How can you be sure that... the pieces of blue fabric were a part of her uniform ? -Blonde hair was in the blood, André answered, trying to prevent his voice from quavering. And we found slim pieces of gilded fabric, which make us think that they come from the collar of the uniform.” Alain welcomed these revelations in silence. Then he declared : “Now I know what you mean by ‘insane’. The General organized funerals which had no reason to be, only to pay tribute to his daughter. Ah, these nobles... Did he accept the disappearance of the Colonel ? -He grew insane when he saw all that. The blood, the blonde hair... He did not withstand, and he is convinced that Oscar is dead. According to him, her assailant carried her elsewhere. He had understood that he could not kidnap her, I suppose she struggled a lot... So he killed her on the spot. Then he hid her corpse in another place. Monsieur de Jarjayes’ idea can be true, we found big tracks of blood in the grass, as if the person had been dragged. -But you, you do not believe that she is dead. You refuse to admit it. -There is nothing to admit, Alain ! Oscar is alive, I know it ! -Do you have the least proof of what you are saying ?” André shook his head : “No, but I know it. I can feel it, can’t you understand this ? -So why did you try to kill yourself ? That is what you told me, in the tavern ! -I was so desperate at that moment. I had not understood that the clues we had were not enough to make conclusions. So I took the General’s weapon and I pressed the trigger. But there was a problem, it was not loaded. -Well, it is a miracle that you are still here ! Good old André, you would have made a big mistake if you had killed yourself ! -I am sure that it is a sign. It was as if... Oscar was with me and stopped me... as if she said ‘do not do that’.” Alain stood up and stretched : “What are you planning to do now ? -For many weeks, I have tried to find her. In vain. I had had enough when you find me tonight, but now I am ready to move mountains ! I will find her ! -Do you need me ? Alain asked, smiling, and happy to see the good mood on his mate’s face again. -No, go on with looking after the Company. I only ask you not to tell anyone that maybe Oscar is alive. Everybody thinks that she is dead.” André took him back to the gate of the mansion, and for the first time in the past weeks, his sleep was not disturbed that night. The following day, he came out early. He wanted to elucidate the mystery of Oscar’s disappearance, and went directly to the forest to look for new clues. He knew that he had thin chances, because they had lost the trail of Oscar since many weeks now. However he had no other lead to explore for the moment. André tied up the reins of his horse to a tree, and walked slowly through the thick green cover. The more he walked, the more a hardly-contained emotion threatened to come to the surface. He felt a pang of anguish when he saw the little river which flowed quietly, and thought : ‘So much tranquillity... however this place has been the witness of an attempt of assassination...’ Indeed he would not believe in Oscar’s death before seeing her corpse. At this word a cold shudder ran along his back, and he swore to himself that he would find the woman, but alive. While he was coming closer to the river, he heard footsteps. So he quickly went back, and hid himself behind a tree which had a thick trunk. Flabbergasted, he saw three men making their way toward the banks of the river, and sitting down with nonchalance on the tender grass. One of them suddenly exclaimed : “In all cases it was perfect ! You managed to do it greatly, Marcel ! -Maybe, but I mention you that he killed one of our people. And I do not think that Saint-Just will be able to forgive him, even if he is dead.” André could not believe what he was hearing. Was it possible that they were talking about Oscar ? Saint-Just... the young man knew the deep hatred that this man had for Oscar. However the man named Marcel went on : “It was the perfect place. He was full of himself at the beginning, but when I gave him the finishing blow, he had lost his self-confidence. He was bleeding... only his big blue eyes had still the strength to express his anger. Do you see these trails, there ? I dragged him along to this river so as to throw him in it. Finally, when I noticed that he was still breathing, I prefered to offer him a much slower death than a banal drowning accident...” André’s blood got cold in his veins. It was that... this bastard had wanted to kill Oscar... and certainly in a horrible way. His fears were confirmed when Marcel added : “I cut this poor-quality Colonel’s veins of the wrists ! And believe me, at the moment, he must be burning in Hell, stamping his feet with rage.” His two mates burst into laughing with him. For his part, André was paralysed by astonishment and horror. His poor Oscar... how could she have endured all that ? For the first time in several weeks, he had a doubt... what if Oscar was dead ? Everything matched. The only problem remained her... her corpse. André leant on the tree and tried to take in all that he had just heard. ‘Oh my God, it is impossible... she cannot be dead... it cannot be possible...” The young man raised misted eyes toward the group of the three stooges who went on their conversation. They thought that Oscar’s corpse had been devoured by some animal, and they were convinced that they had to destroy the possible clues which were certainly in the place again. ‘I will not let them do that...’ “There is nothing left here ! Since this time... Come in, we come back. Oh ! What the hell is...” André had rushed on them, a big branch in the hand, yelling his rage and his pain. Surprised, the three men tried to protect themselves the way they could. But they had no weapon near them, so it was in a pitiful state that they could escape from André’s anger. ‘I will find the three of you... I swear it...’ At the end of his tether, the young man let himself fall in the green grass, which was still soiled in some places. He wiped his bloody lips on the sleeve of his shirt, the direct consequence of a punch he had received in his face. But it was not this punch which hurt him the most. All his hopes from the day before were destroyed. He would never find Oscar... A burn he had never felt appeared in the corner of his eyes. But this time, he let tears of pain and despair flow freely along his trembling cheeks. To be continued