Traveller chafed at his confinement, protesting that he was no invalid and that there was work to be done. He was anxious to get to a telegraph station so that the work of transporting the scarred Phaeton to his home in Surrey could begin. Holden calmed him. “I, too, am anxious to return to civilization,” he said. “Remember I am a journalist. My paper, and others, should reward me well if I turn our jaunt into a well-turned narrative. But, Sir Josiah, I recognize my own frailty. As soon as word spreads of our return the world will surely descend on us. I have been through an ordeal without parallel in human history and am left barely capable of supporting a laden soup spoon, and would welcome the chance to recuperate for a few hours under the kind hospitality of Mrs. Lubbock. And so should you, Sir Josiah!”
Traveller did not accept the argument but had little choice but to comply; and so we were put to bed in hard pallets in small bedrooms scattered about the Lubbocks’ home. Holden persuaded the farmer to station one of his lads as a guard outside the room of the wretched Bourne; I thought this was rather sour, as Bourne was hardly in a condition to shin out of the window and race off to freedom across the fields.
I lay in my pallet waiting for sleep, with my window open to admit the bright autumn air, and reflected that, despite the discomforts of this world (the hardness of the mattress under my spine, for instance, was hardly helping my new induction into Earth’s gravity), the compensations—the scent of the trees growing just beyond my window, the distant rustle of a breeze through the hedgerow, the rough caress of the Lubbocks’ sheets against my face—made the thought of ever leaving this Earth again seem an abomination.
In the morning I awoke to bright sunlight, feeling quite refreshed, and was even able to take the few steps to my washbasin unaided. I found Traveller at the Lubbocks’ kitchen table; he was seated in an old bath chair wrapped in his own dressing-gown, brought from the Phaeton, and he was enjoying a hearty meal of bacon and farmhouse eggs. Newspapers were piled up on the table and he was working his way through them as he ate; and, despite the homely warmth of the kitchen, with the morning sunlight slanting across the floor to twinkle from the polished range, Traveller’s expression was as sour and thunderous as ever I had seen it. He looked up as one of Lubbocks willing lads helped me in and said, “Ned, it is no surprise that farmer Lubbock was mystified at our arrival. It was sheer vanity ever to suppose that our disappearance should have remained of interest for any length of time—not while Europe tears itself apart!”
Disturbed by these words, I began to go through the yellowing papers myself. They dated back to a few days before our departure on 8 August: apparently Lubbock stored the old journals to line his chicken coop. In general our disappearance had been overshadowed by its larger context—the sabotage of the Prince Albert on its launching day—and we had generally been assumed dead, lost in some chance explosion, a by-product of the assault on the ship. I was amazed to learn that it had since proven impossible to retake the Albert from the saboteurs, or franc-tireurs, who had stolen it; and, as best I could tell, it still wandered at large about the fields of Belgium or northern France like some escaped beast! The actions of the franc-tireurs had been linked to attacks on other British properties, at home and abroad; I wondered if the attempted sabotage of the Light Rail which Holden and I had witnessed at Dover had been committed by a Frenchman.
And, of course, there was no word of Françoise Michelet or the other trapped passengers of the ill- fated liner; and despite the pleasure of the Kent morning I felt my heart sink as I scanned those yards of barren newsprint.
Traveller remarked on my crestfallen expression, and asked what in particular distressed me. Haltingly—for Josiah Traveller was no sympathetic ear—I described Françoise: our meetings, and the immediate impression she had made on me. As I talked on I felt color steal into my cheeks; for what had seemed, in the privacy of my heart, to be an ethereal passion, became on the telling in this bright farmhouse kitchen a rather foolish infatuation.
Traveller listened to all this without comment. Then he said levelly: “The girl sounds like a franc- tireur herself, Wickers.” I made to protest, shocked, but he went on, “What else, if she was so thick with that wretch Bourne?” He sniffed. “If I’m correct you should waste no more sympathy on her, Ned. She is where she chooses to be.” So saying he turned to his papers again, leaving me devastated.
But, even in that first moment of shock, I perceived the plausibility of what Traveller suggested. The elements about Françoise which Holden, and even I, had noted as odd—her fascination with engineering, her angry absorption in politics—fell into place under Traveller’s hypothesis as components of a far more complex character than the girl I had idealized, and whose sweet face I had projected on to the oceans of Earth.
I wanted to curse Traveller for putting such a suggestion into my head; I cursed myself for a fool even more. But still, I was not sure. And the most galling aspect of the situation was that, with Françoise lost in war-torn France, I might never learn the truth about her.
With my heart in turmoil I turned my attention to the newspapers. Reading rapidly, Traveller and I pieced together the story of the European conflict, as reported in London, since our precipitate departure.
The war with the Prussians had gone badly for the French. Reading the harrowing accounts of battles fought and lost, it was scarcely credible to me that France, with its long military tradition, its proud heritage and its model army, should have collapsed before Bismarck’s aggression in quite such a craven way. French strategy seemed largely to have consisted of the twin Marshals Bazaine and MacMahon lurching about the French countryside in search of defensible positions and each other, while periodically losing skirmishes to the Prussians.
About the time of our enforced departure Napoleon III had left Paris for Chalons, while appointing Bazaine to the command of his Army of the Rhine. A few days later Bazaine, fearing encirclement by the fast-moving Prussians, had withdrawn to the west across the River Moselle. But near Metz he encountered two German corps and had finished up encircled after all; as we sat in our peaceful farmhouse reading about it, Bazaine’s force was still trapped in the town of Metz, invested by no fewer than two hundred thousand Prussian troops.
So much for one half of the glorious French Army. Of the rest, MacMahon’s instinct had been to stay close to Paris and so offer protection to the capital, but popular pressure, brought to bear by Parisians outraged by the violation of their precious patrie, had impelled him to a more aggressive course; and he had set off toward Metz in the hope of combining with Bazaine.
The Germans around Metz, commanded by the wily Moltke, had divided their forces. Bazaine was left trapped while the rest of the Prussians set off to meet the advancing MacMahon. MacMahon’s forces, exhausted by their difficult march, had been encircled by the Prussians at Sedan. MacMahon himself was wounded and French command lines were paralyzed.
The Army was annihilated. The French allowed 100,000 men and no fewer than 400 guns to fall into Prussian hands.
The French Second Empire collapsed in chaos. Napoleon III himself surrendered to the Prussians, and a Government of National Defense under the Governor of Paris, General Trochu, had emerged in the capital. And meanwhile two Prussian armies had advanced on Paris itself.
Even as we had landed in our Kent field, Paris, sixty years earlier Bonaparte’s capital of Europe, lay under a Prussian siege. The only hope appeared to lie with Bazaine, but he remained entrapped in Metz, and the rumors in London were that his supplies were running low. The Prussians, meanwhile, were predictably cock-a-hoop, and there was much wild speculation about plans for Kaiser William to ride in procession through the streets of conquered Paris.