The crippled man hauled himself up with the clumsiness of pain and began hobbling towards the main door, but seeing Ramage and Stafford he waved his stick as if in greeting. He was tall, though his shoulders were now hunched; his hair was grey and his face lined, but Ramage guessed that pain and worry - or was it sadness? - had aged him more than the passing years.
'Good morning, Citizen,' he said carefully, as though wanting to pass the time of day but wary and unsure, like a man half afraid he was about to be accused of trespassing. Ramage thought of the two gendarmes near the main door. Perhaps they were more interested in visitors to the Cathedral than they seemed: a man attending church, albeit without there being a priest present, could be a man against the Revolution ...
Ramage shook hands and, guessing that the man could satisfy his curiosity about the Cathedral's fate during the Revolution, waved towards the altar: 'Things have changed since I was last here.'
'You are not French. Italian, perhaps?'
Ramage nodded. 'From Genoa. I've been to Boulogne; now I go to Paris and then back home.'
'Italy ... at the pass of Mont Cenis -' the man tapped his wooden leg with his stick ' - that's where I left this leg.'
Was there fighting up among the Alps? Who would be crazy enough to have a battle among the mountains? The man saw his puzzled look and said: 'The snow - my regiment was part of the Army of Italy. We marched over the mountains in thick snow. Some of us were too weak to get over the pass . . .' He glanced at Stafford, uncertain whether to go on.
'And the weak ones were left behind?' Ramage asked quietly.
The man nodded. 'If an arm or a leg freezes it dies, and if it isn't amputated quickly gangrene sets in. It can set in even if it is amputated. I was lucky.'
'They carried you in a wagon?' Ramage asked innocently, hoping to draw the man out.
‘They left me in the snow, just where I collapsed. There was a monastery nearby,' he added, almost absently. 'After the Army had gone the monks came along the pass to see what had been left behind. Not looking for loot, you understand; they were interested only in saving lives. They found me - and seventeen more like me. They carried us back to the monastery. They couldn't save my leg, but they saved my life. They had very little food, but they shared it with us - with eighteen atheists who up to a few hours earlier had belonged to the 24th Infanterie de Ligne. They nursed us and fed us and sheltered us. For the five of us that needed them, they made legs of wood, specially carved and fitted. It was five months before I was well again - and by then spring had come and the snow had melted and I could leave ..."
'So you returned to your regiment?'
'With one leg?' He knew Ramage was encouraging him to talk and he smiled. 'There was war in Italy and war in Austria — there was war almost everywhere; but there was peace in the monastery near the top of Mont Cenis, so I stayed and tried to pay my debt. I helped hoe and sow and reap the year's harvest - it's a very brief season - and I left the following spring, when the snow had once again cleared, just a year and a half after I first arrived. I got back to my home here in Amiens as winter began; it was a long walk for a one-legged man.'
'But your family was glad to see you.'
'I found that my family was dead.' Again that flat, expressionless tone of voice. 'My brother and my wife had been denounced as anti-Revolutionaries and guillotined, and the shock had killed my old father..,'
'Who denounced them?'
'The man who wanted our grocery shop,' he said simply. 'He is now the prefect of Amiens and the most powerful man in the city.'
'And you?' Ramage asked quietly. 'What do you do?'
The man glanced at the statue of the weeping child for a few moments, and then at the old women who were still kneeling. 'I come each morning and pray; I pray as I did before the Revolution and I pray as I learned to at the monastery. I pray for the souls of those I loved, and I have one other prayer which I can reveal to no man.' No flourish, no drama; just a plain statement by a man no longer afraid.
Louis had become an atheist at the Revolution; but now he prayed, too; he prayed that there was an after-life, so that Joseph Le Bon would be eternally punished. Had Le Bon worked here in Amiens?
'I have met men who have prayed for Citizen Le Bon,' Ramage said in a voice barely above a whisper.
The man's eyes held his. 'I'm sure you have; many true Normans say a prayer for him before they go to sleep at night.'
The man had spoken freely because he was beyond fear. At first he had been cautious - probably because he saw no reason to invite trouble - but Ramage thought he would probably talk as freely to a gendarme. Such a man had nothing more to lose to a regime which had abandoned him in the snow of an Alpine pass and slaughtered his wife and brother (and, to all intents and purposes, stolen the family business). Fortune held none of his family hostage because now he had none to submit. With one leg chopped off above the knee, he must find it hard to make a living - Louis had said something about the wounded being reduced to begging once the Navy or Army had finished with them, the same as it was in Britain - so threatening such a man with the guillotine was about the same as offering him a swift release from his misery.
Ramage glanced round at the great interior of the Cathedral. 'I expected to find more damage ...'
The man smiled grimly. 'You haven't heard the story, then? It's one of which we Normans are proud. When the Revolutionary Army arrived from Paris after sacking and looting the churches and châteaux along the route, the people of Amiens decided they were going to save their Cathedral. The tocsin was sounded, the National Guard of Amiens assembled, and with drums beating they met the sans-culottes, who had already begun their work - you can see the damage they did to some of the statuary.
'Well, there was a pitched battle right here, where we are standing, and the people of Amiens drove them out and mounted guard over the Cathedral, to make sure no further damage was done. Eventually the Army left to carry out their evil business elsewhere, but the leaders in Paris learned their lesson: they could drive out the priests, chase off the bishop, steal the gold and silver ornaments - but they must leave us our Cathedral.'
He looked round at the four old women. 'Yes, you are right to be puzzled: how is it that in our city of 14,000 people - that is all that are left now - you find only four women and a cripple in the largest Cathedral in France and for which the people fought the Army? I'm not sure myself; I only know that the reason is complex. The Cathedral has stood here since 1220 - it is Amiens; the city has grown up in its shadow. But since the Revolution the Church as an organization has been regarded as anti-Revolutionary.
‘Those that want to pray - well, they find it safer to pray in the privacy of their homes. A few, like those old widows -' he gestured at the women - 'are beyond caring what goes on in Paris, or in the rest of France: the Revolution has taken their sons and grandsons, and they have nothing more to lose. They refuse to surrender the only solace left to them. You could say they refuse to give up the habit of a lifetime. ..'
He held out his hand and as Ramage shook it he said, ‘They say Citizen Bonaparte has signed some agreement with the Pope, and we might be allowed to have a priest soon; perhaps even a bishop. But who knows -' he shrugged his shoulders. 'At least they haven't locked the doors of the churches, even though they watch us.'
With that he left, and the only sound in the vast Cathedral was the click of his sticks and the muffled, dragging thump of his wooden leg. Somewhere out in the streets of Amiens, Louis, the man who had lost a wife at the hands of Le Bon, was talking secretly with men who, if they had not been bereaved, at least had good reasons for working against the present régime. Ramage understood then that an ally was simply someone who shared the same aim, even if his motives were different.