The gendarme straightened his hat and compared the signatures with those on the two remaining passports. He ran a finger down the travel documents, folded them all and handed them back to Louis. 'Cela suffit, Citoyen' he said, 'have a good journey.' Louis took the documents and with a curt grunt turned on his heel and walked back to the carriage, as if he had bestowed a favour on the gendarme.
The coachman whipped up the horses and the 'chaise clattered through the cobbled streets of Abbeville. It was a wretched and gloomy town, depressing in its squalor. Many of the houses were wooden and bare of paint, with planks hanging down loose and obviously too rotten to hold any more nails. A number of houses had their windows and doors boarded up. The whole town looked as though half its inhabitants had fled several years ago at the rumour of an approaching invader and never returned. And that, Ramage realized, remembering Joseph Le Bon, was almost what happened; except that the enemy had been their own people, and Abbeville had been ravaged by fratricide, not war.
As they reached the square Louis pointed up at a long balcony which ran the length of the first floor of a house, and then imitated a woman primping her hair and adjusting her hat, and Ramage knew that it was from there that the women of the town had watched the execution which had been delayed for their benefit by Joseph Le Bon. Louis stared ahead as the carriage passed the place where his wife had been beheaded.
Once through the square the 'chaise swung inland after running parallel with the coast for eighty kilometres and followed the valley of the River Somme. Nine miles beyond Abbeville they reached Ailly, and while the horses were being changed Louis pointed out the Red Cap of Liberty perched on top of the weathercock, which swung in the wind a point either side of south-west, reminding Ramage of a patient schoolmaster shaking his head in reproof.
A few miles farther on Ramage and Stafford saw their second symbol of the Revolution: Flixecourt, a village otherwise indistinguishable from most of the others on the Paris road, boasted its own Tree of Liberty. The damp air - probably helped by night mists from the River Somme - had rusted the metal trunk and branches, as though Liberty at Flixecourt had passed the autumn of its days and was now well into winter. Louis laughed bitterly at Ramage's comment and said: 'It began rusting the day the blacksmith finished making it!'
The coachman reined in at Picquigny for the last change of horses before Amiens and, to Ramage's surprise, began cursing the postmaster, swearing he would never reach Amiens before the curfew with such spavined and broken-winded beasts. Louis climbed out to add his voice to the protest. Two gendarmes strolled over to listen and were promptly involved by Louis, who invited them to note that the postmaster's villainy would be the cause of them reaching Amiens after the curfew, but they refused to become involved. With that Louis reached inside the 'chaise and took out his papers, beckoning to the gendarmes. There was a whispered conversation, with much nodding towards Ramage, who caught the phrase 'Committee of Public Safety,' and a few moments later both men walked over to the postmaster and told him peremptorily to provide good horses. The postmaster nodded sullenly and went back to the stable, signalling the coachman to follow him. 'Choose for yourself,' he mumbled, 'I cannot help it if the horses they provide are broken-winded. It happens to all of us at a certain age, and these horses are no exception.'
An hour later, with the sun setting behind them, they saw Amiens Cathedral high above the city, the sun's last rays turning the stone of the tall spires into pinnacles of pink marble. And then, with an almost startling suddenness as the sun dropped below the horizon, the city was in shadow; the Cathedral spires became menacing and stark grey fingers towering over narrow streets. Somewhere below them would be jail cells and police headquarters, guillotines and Trees of Liberty. Although France was at war, Ramage knew by now that the enemy the French people were still incited to fight in almost daily exhortations was not the English but almost every aspect of their lives before the Revolution: anything connected with the ancien régime, and a lot more besides.
The Church - although according to Louis there was talk of Bonaparte allowing the priests some freedom after recently signing the Concordat with the Pope - was obviously still a major enemy, and perhaps the hardest for the Revolution to fight (although by now the one from which it had least to fear), since both Church and priest had until a few years ago been so much part of people's lives. Charitable institutions were also the enemy; their almshouses and hospitals had been destroyed or taken over. Anyone faintly connected with the aristocracy had long since fled abroad or taken a tumbril to the guillotine and, Louis had told him, so had many people whose only connection with the aristocracy had been proud boasts of high-born relatives, boasts made before the Revolution and frequently imaginary, intended only to impress neighbours.
The main enemy, the one said to lurk round every corner, was the anti-Revolutionary. To be so denounced to the local Committee of Public Safety or the police put any man's life in peril, since all too many tribunals set up by the Committees - there was one in every town - listened to the charges and, like Joseph Le Bon, either refused to listen to the evidence or disregarded it, along with any defence. The general view was that the guillotine settled any doubts: the thump of a head dropping into the basket was the sound that secured the Revolution from plotters. The guillotine was also a great boon to a man heavily in debt, Louis had said bitterly. It was surprising how many creditors were strapped down on the 'Widow' after being denounced by debtors, and equally surprising how many grocers and bakers and butchers expanded their businesses after their rivals were judged to be plotting against the Revolution.
All the facts that Louis had told him last night in that tiny room at the Chapeau Rouge in Boulogne, all the horrifying examples he had cited of the tribunals at work (not least the one that sent his own wife to her death), seemed to take on a new and more immediate meaning as the horses trotted towards Amiens. In Boulogne there had been risks. He never forgot for a moment that he was in an enemy country - the sudden unexpected arrival of the gendarme at the door yesterday morning had been a frightening enough reminder. But somehow Amiens seemed different; although for the moment he was not sure why, he was beginning to feel uneasy. Was it because Amiens was well inland, away from escape by sea? No, that was absurd; he was not a turtle that had to be near water. Nor was it due to the sheer size of the city.
It must be the atmosphere which, even from this distance and viewed from a jogging 'chaise, seemed sinister and full of foreboding. If he was taken prisoner and locked in the room of a house, with an armed sentry at the door, obviously he would feel trapped and more than aware of the danger he was in. But supposing he was taken prisoner in the same circumstances and locked in a cell in a fortress with an armed sentry at the door: he would be in no more and no less danger - but the heavy, cold atmosphere of a fortress cell would frighten him more, as if the sheer bulk of a fortress was menacing.
He wished he could talk about it to Louis; he was certain the Frenchman would understand his uneasiness. But whispered conversations as they approached the city would puzzle the coachman and might arouse his suspicions, even though he had been a jovial enough fellow so far. That was another reason for unease: everyone had been comparatively jovial while the 'chaise rattled along the road from Boulogne, but once it approached the shadows of Amiens itself the joviality had vanished - even the coachman had flared up at the postmaster at Picquigny - and for Ramage it had been replaced with a grey fear that came like evening mist in a valley, something that just formed without apparent effort or movement.