Book Three: The Way of a Storm
The trip towards Paris from England was a slow one, late in the year 1792. Even if the King of France had still been in power, there would have been more than enough bad roads, bad coaches, and bad horses to make things difficult; but the changes in France brought new problems there. Every town and village had its group of freedom fighters with guns that they were more than ready to use, who stopped everyone, coming and going, to ask questions, look at their papers, look for their names in lists of their own, turn people back or send them on, or put them in prison as each group should happen to choose, in the name of their new country, where all were to be free and equal brothers or they were to be dead.
Charles Darnay had travelled only a few miles on the roads of France before he knew that he would never be free to return to England without first getting papers to clear himself in Paris. Whatever was ahead of him, there was no turning back now. Every gate that closed behind him on the road was another iron door that would stand between him and England on his way home. So many people were watching him now that if he had been taken in a net or were being carried forward in a cage, he would be no more without freedom than he felt now.
All these watching people would not only stop him as many as twenty times between towns, but they made his progress slower twenty times in a day by riding after him and taking him back, riding up to him from in front and stopping him before he arrived, and by riding with him to keep close watch on him. His trip in France alone had gone on for days before he went to bed one night in a little town on the road, still a long way from Paris.
Only the letter from Gabelle in the Abbey Prison had helped him to get this far; but the problems he had at the guard house in this little place made him think that his trip had come to an end.
Because of this, he was not surprised when guards came to wake him in the middle of the night at the hotel where he was staying.
A shy local leader with three of the new soldiers in rough red hats and with pipes in their mouths sat down on his bed.
"I am going to send people to go with you to Paris," said the local leader.
"Friend, I want nothing more than to get to Paris; but I do not need anyone to go with me."
"Be quiet!" shouted a red-hat, hitting the covers with the timber end of his gun. "Shut up, rich one!"
"It is as the good freedom fighter says," the shy leader said. "You are from the rich class, so someone must go with you... and you must pay for it."
"I have no choice then," said Charles Darnay.
"Choice? Listen to him!" cried the angry red-hat. "As if he's not lucky to have us protect him from being hanged as a lantern!"
"It is always as the good freedom fighter says," the leader put in. "Get up and dress yourself, traveller."
Darnay did as he was told and was taken back to the guard house, where other freedom fighters in rough red hats were smoking, drinking, and sleeping by a watch fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his helpers, and then started out on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning.
The men taking him to Paris were freedom fighters on horses, wearing red hats with special markings on them in three colours, and carrying government guns and swords. One horse walked on each side of him.
Darnay was able to ride his own horse, but a loose line was tied from his saddle to the wrist of one of the guards. Travelling like this, they started out, with the sharp rain driving in their faces, moving like soldiers quickly across the rough stones of the town streets, and more slowly on the deep muddy roads of the country.
They did not change this pattern when they changed horses or when they changed from a run to a walk, over all the deep muddy miles that lay between them and Paris.
They travelled through the night, stopping an hour or two after the sun came up, and resting until the sun was going down. The men travelling with him were so poorly dressed that they put straw around their legs to keep warm, and leaves on their shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the pain of travelling in this way and such dangers as came from one of them being drunk at all times and carrying his gun in a dangerous way, Charles Darnay did not let what was happening put any fear into his heart; for he believed that being tied like this said nothing about how good or bad he was until he had been able to tell his story, which would be backed up by the prisoner in the Abbey, when he reached Paris.
But when they came to the town of Beauvais, which they did in the evening, when the streets were still full of people, he could not help but think that things were not right at all. An angry crowd came to see him get off his horse at the horse station, and many voices called out loudly, "Down with the runaway!"
He stopped in the act of leaving his saddle, returning to his seat because it was safer there, and said: "Run away, my friends? Do you not see me here in France of my own free will?"
"You are a cursed runaway," cried a horseshoe maker, pushing toward him through the crowd with a hammer in his hand. "And you are a cursed member of the rich class!"
The station master put himself between this man and Darnay's horse (which seemed to be the angry man's target) and said quietly, "Let him be; let him be! He will be judged in Paris."
"Judged!" repeated the horseshoer, waving his hammer. "Yes! And killed for treason.” At this the crowd shouted in agreement.
Looking toward the station master, who wanted to turn the horses into the yard, Darnay said, when he could make himself heard:
"Friends, you have tricked yourselves, or you are being tricked. I am not guilty of acting against my country."
"He's lying!" cried the angry horseshoe maker. "The new law says he's guilty of treason. He owes his life to the people. His cursed life is not his own!"
Just when Darnay could see in the eyes of the crowd that they were going to take him, the station master turned his horse into the yard, with the guards moving close to either side of it. He shut and barred the gate behind them. The angry man's hammer hit the gate a few times, and the crowd shouted a little, but nothing more than that happened.
"What is this law the man spoke of?” Darnay asked the station master, after thanking him and getting down off his horse.
"It's a new rule, that lets us sell everything owned by people who have left the country."
"When was it made?"
"On the fourteenth."
"That's the day I left England."
"Everybody says there'll be more... if there are not already... stopping all runaways from returning, and killing all who do. That's what he was talking about when he said your life is not your own."
"But there are no such laws yet?"
"How can I know?” asked the station master, lifting his shoulders. "There may be or there will be. It's all the same."
They rested on straw in the top of the barn until the middle of the night, when everyone else was sleeping. Then they would start riding forward again. The country had changed in many strange ways, as Charles Darnay had seen as he travelled, and it made this wild ride feel like a dream. One of the bigger changes was how people did not sleep much now. After a long ride over open roads, they would come to a group of rough houses in the middle of the night, and far from finding them in darkness, there would be lights everywhere, and people, like ghosts in the night, dancing in a circle around a freedom tree or all joined close together singing a freedom song. But Darnay and his guards were happy to find people sleeping in Beauvais when they quietly moved out into the empty night. They moved with little noise through the cold and wet that was too early this year, on roads between poor fields that had nothing growing in them, and that were marked now by the black timbers from houses that had been burned, and by the freedom fighters who would surprise the riders at secret points on the way, in their day and night watch on all of the roads.
By morning they were in front of the wall around Paris. The gate was closed and strongly guarded when they reached it.
"Where are the papers for this prisoner?” asked a leader who had been called out by the guard, and who looked like he would not change for anyone.
Surprised and hurt by that awful word, Charles Darnay asked the man to look and see that he was a free traveller and a man of France, travelling with two guards whom the government had forced him to pay for because of the problems in the country.
"Where," repeated the same man, taking no interest in him at all, "are the papers for this prisoner?"
The drunk guard had them in his hat, and so he pulled them out. Looking quickly at Gabelle's letter, the same leader showed some confusion and surprise, and he looked at Darnay more closely now.
He left the guard and the one being guarded without saying a word and went into the guard room. When he was doing this, the others stayed on their horses at the gate. Charles Darnay used the time to look and think. He saw that the gate was guarded by both soldiers and freedom fighters, there being more fighters than there were soldiers. While it was easy for farmers and their wagons and other people and the things they were selling to get into the city, leaving the city was very difficult for even the simplest people. A crowd of people, animals, and vehicles of many different kinds were waiting to leave; but movement out through the gate was very slow. Some of them knew they would be there so long that they would lay on the ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together. Men and women everywhere were wearing the little red hat with three-coloured markings.
After sitting in his saddle for half an hour, looking at these things, Darnay saw the government man return and tell the guard to open the gate. He gave a paper to the two men travelling with Darnay, and then asked him to get down off his horse. He did, and the two men who had been travelling with him turned without going into the city, and left, leading his horse as they went.
He went with the man into the guard room, which smelled of cheap wine and tobacco, where soldiers and freedom fighters, asleep and awake, drunk and not drunk, some awake, some asleep, and some in between, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard house, half from the weak oil lantern, and half from the clouded sun coming up, was also in confusion. Some lists were lying open on a desk, and an officer who looked both rough and dark, was in control of these.
"Countryman Defarge," said the officer to the man leading Darnay, as he took a piece of paper to write on, "Is this the runaway Evremonde?"
"This is the man."
"Your age, Evremonde?” "Thirty-seven."
"Married, Evremonde?"
Yes."
"Where married?"
"In England."
"Not surprising. Where is your wife, Evremonde?"
"In England."
"As I thought. You will go, Evremonde, to La Force Prison."
"My heavens!" shouted Darnay. "Under what law, and for what wrong?"
"The officer looked up from his piece of paper for a second."
"We have new laws, Evremonde, and new crimes, since you were here.” He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.
"I beg you to see that I have come here freely, in answer to that letter there in front of you, from another countryman. I ask nothing more than a way to do that as quickly as possible. Don't I have a right to do that?"
"Runaways have no rights, Evremonde," was the hard answer. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, used sand to dry the ink, and handed it to Defarge with the words "in secret".
Defarge made a movement with the paper to show the prisoner that he should come with him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed freedom fighters went with them.
"Are you the one," said Defarge in a low voice as they went down the steps of the guardhouse and turned into Paris, "who married the daughter of Doctor Manette, who once was a prisoner in the prison that has been destroyed?"
"Yes," answered Darnay, looking at him with surprise.
"My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine shop in the Saint Antoine part of Paris. Maybe you have heard of me."
"My wife came to your house to meet her father! Yes!"
The word "wife" seemed to bring a cloud over Defarge, making him say angrily, "In the name of that sharp female baby they call Guillotine, why did you come to France?"
"You heard me say why just a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the truth?"
"A bad truth for you," said Defarge, knitting his forehead and looking straight ahead.
"I am really lost here. Everything is so different, so changed, so quickly and so cruelly, that I am fully lost. Will you give me a little help?"
"None.” Defarge spoke, still looking straight before him.
"Will you answer me just one question?"
"Maybe. If it is not about the wrong things. Go ahead and ask."
"In this prison that I am going to so wrongly, will I have some freedom to talk to people outside of it?"
"You will see."
"I am not to be buried there, judged without any way to argue my case?"
"You will see. But what difference would it make? Others have been buried in the same way and in worse prisons before now."
"But never by me, countryman Defarge."
Defarge looked darkly at him as a way of giving his answer, and walked on saying not one word. The longer he went without talking, the less hope there was -- or so Darnay thought -- of him becoming any softer. For that reason, he quickly said:
"It is very important for me (and you know, brother, even better than I do, just how important it is) that I should be able to send word to Mr. Lorry, from Tellson's bank, an Englishman who is now in Paris. I want to give him word that I have been thrown in La Force Prison. Will you do that for me?"
"I will," Defarge said, without any change in his hard spirit, "do nothing for you. My job is to help my country and the people. I must serve both and protect them from you. I will do nothing for you."
Charles Darnay saw no hope in changing him, and his pride was hurt as well. As they walked on, without talking, he could not help but see that many prisoners must have been taken along those streets. Even the children did not show much interest in him. A few people turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him because they could see he was from the high class. Other than that, the thought of a man in good clothes going to prison was no more different to a man in working clothes going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street an enthusiastic speaker was standing on a chair and talking to an interested crowd about the sins of the king and members of his family. The few words that Darnay heard were enough to let him know that the king was in prison and that the people acting for governments from all other countries had left Paris. On the way to Paris (apart from those few words in Beauvais) he had not been able to learn anything about what was happening. Being under two guards, and with people watching him everywhere it had been quite impossible.
But he knew now that he was in far more danger than he had planned for when leaving England. The danger around him had been growing quickly and he now knew that it might grow even more quickly in the days ahead. He knew that he would not have been brave enough to make the trip if he had known it would be like this. But still his fears were not as great now as they would be soon. As bad as the future looked, there was much about it that he still did not know, and where there was no understanding, there was always hope. The awful killing of thousands, that had been going on around the clock for days and nights now, taking the place of farm work, was so far from him knowing about it as it would have been if it was a hundred thousand years away.
He knew almost nothing about the "sharp female baby called Guillotine" at this time, as did most of the people. The awful acts that were going to be done soon were probably not even thought of in the heads of the people who would soon be doing them. So how could they have a place in the thoughts of Charles Darnay's kind and generous mind?
He could see that it would be a hard life in the prison, and that it would be cruel to be separated from his wife and child; but of more than this, he had nothing to clearly fear. With this on his mind -- which was enough to carry into a prison yard -- he arrived at La Force Prison.
A man with a fat face opened the metal door, and Defarge said to him, "The runaway Evremonde."
"What the devil! How many more will there be?” cried the fat face.
Defarge showed no interest in what the man said, and left Darnay there with him, taking the two freedom fighters with him as he left.
"What the devil, I say again!" the prison master said when he was left only with his wife and Charles Darnay. "How many more?"
His wife, not having an answer, just said, "One must be patient, my love!"
Three guards who came in answer to a bell that she was ringing, said much the same thing, and one added, "For the love of liberty!" which sounded like a strange thing to say in a prison!
La Force was a dark, dirty prison with very little hope in it. It had an awful smell of dirty sleep too, that seemed to strangely be a part of many places where there is poor care for those who live there.
"In secret too," the prison master said angrily, looking at the written paper. "As if I wasn't already too full!"
He angrily put the paper on a nail and made Charles Darnay wait another half hour, at times walking from side to side in the strong covered room, and at times resting on a stone seat. Either way he was there long enough for the prison master and his workers to see and remember this new prisoner.
"Come!" said the master, at last taking up his keys. "Come with me, runaway."
Through the half light of the prison, his new prisoner walked with him, from room to room, with many doors closing loudly behind them, until they came to a big, low room with a rounded stone roof, that was crowded with prisoners, both male and female. The women were sitting at a long table, reading, writing, knitting, and sewing; the men were, for the most part, standing behind the women or moving up and down the room.
In the way that we all think of prisoners as bad people, this new prisoner had a bad feeling about the others in the room. But the strangest thing of all the strange things he had seen on his ride to Paris was that they all stood up as one to receive him, with all the kindest actions of the best people of those times.
So strange did this action seem in such a dark, dirty prison, so out of place with all the sickness and pain of the place, that it was like Charles Darnay was standing in a room with a crowd of ghosts. A beautiful ghost, a proud ghost, a happy ghost, a smart ghost, a young ghost, an old ghost, all waiting to leave this empty place, all turning on him eyes that had been changed by the death they died when they came there.
He was so surprised that he could not move. The guard at his side and other guards moving about, who looked good enough for their job in any other prison, now looked awful next to the sad mothers and beautiful daughters who were there like ghosts of the young happy women and the older high class women they had been. All of this made Darnay feel that it was not really happening, that the long ride had made him sick, and what he was going through now was just a side effect of the sickness.
"In the name of your friends here in this room," said a man who looked like he should have been in a court, as he came forward, "I have the job of welcoming you to La Force, and of sharing our sadness with you on what awful changes have brought you here. May it soon end happily! It would not be kind of us to ask you this in a different place, but it is not wrong to ask it here: What is your name, and why are you here?"
Charles Darnay forced himself to speak, and answered as well as he could.
"I hope," said the man, following the head guard with his eyes as he moved around the room, "that you are not in secret?"
"I don't understand the meaning of those words, but I have heard them say that."
"Oh, how sad! We feel very bad for you! But be brave; others of us have been in secret at first, and it was only for a short time.” Then he added, speaking more loudly to the others, "I am sad to tell the room... in secret."
There were the sounds of people feeling sorry for Charles Darnay as he crossed the room to a metal door with little holes in it, where the guard waited for him. The soft loving voices of the women were the easiest to hear of the many voices that tried to encourage him. He turned at the door to thank them from his heart, when it closed under the guard's hand, and the ghosts were gone forever.
The door opened on some stone steps leading up from there. When they had climbed forty steps (The prisoner of half an hour had already counted them.) the guard opened a low black door, and they stepped into a small room. It was cold and wet, but not dark.
"Yours," said the guard.
"Why am I being left alone?"
"How should I know?"
"Can I buy a pen and ink, and some paper?"
"No one told me that you could. You will be visited, and you can ask then. For now, you must buy your food, and nothing more."
In the room was a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the guard looked over each of these things, and studied the four walls before leaving, the prisoner, leaning against the wall opposite to him had a strange thought about how fat the guard was, thinking that he looked like a man who had drowned and filled with water. His thoughts went on in the same crazy way after the guard had left, thinking first, "Now I have been left, as if I were dead.” He then stopped to look down at the mattress, with insects in it, and he thought, "Here in these insects is what will happen to my body after I die.” He walked from side to side in his room, counting the steps. "Five steps by four and a half, five by four and a half, five by four and a half.” The sound of the city was like a softly covered drum with wild voices added to it. "He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.” The prisoner measured the room again, walking more quickly this time to take his thoughts away from what he had started to think. "The ghosts that became invisible when the door closed... There was one of them, a woman dressed in black, who was leaning back in a window seat, and she had a light showing on her golden hair. She looked like... Let us ride again through the lighted villages, where the people are all awake! ... He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. ... Five steps by four and a half.” With such thoughts coming up from deep down in his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, choosing strongly not to quit counting. The sound of the city changed in one way. It still sounded like a softly covered drum, but for him, the wall of voices above the drum were now voices that he knew.