Britannia's Reach: The Dawlish Chronicles November 1879 - April 1880 by Antoine Vanner

Author:Antoine Vanner [Vanner, Antoine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-02-03T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

El Pobre moved to his desk and sat down. Madame Le Vroux laid a hand on his shoulder, the gesture at once reverent and protective.

“I’m not trying to justify the world to you, Señor,” Dawlish looked El Pobre in the eye and hoped that his own tone conveyed absolute sincerity. “I would not have risked my life to come here for that. But I must tell you that the desolation you speak of will be here, and more terribly than before, if you do not take this chance to negotiate. Your people only have their lives, and you must leave at least that much to them.”

“You think I do not know the Consortium, Señor?” El Pobre's voice was quiet now. “I who worked two years as its Medical officer? I who was fool enough to think I might do some good among the wretches Murillo's brigands enslaved? I saw them come with their steamboats and their workshops and their managers and their improved cattle breeds. I believed that here at last might be justice and compassion, if only because they would guarantee the Consortium a contented workforce. And what was the reality? That the cattle were worth more than the people! That the people were livestock themselves, though of a more worthless breed! They might herd the cattle, but Culbertson’s jackals were there to herd them in their turn. For two years I endured it, and when I spoke out at last...” He stopped, held up his hands, as continuation was futile.

“He was flogged senseless, flung in a stable and then flogged again.” It was Roybon, his voice toneless, as if tired of the recitation of misery. “They shipped him downriver with the cattle and he spent another eleven months in a cellar in Asunción. They flung him on the street when they thought his mind was gone. That was where we found him.”

“We?” Dawlish said.

Roybon smiled and there was a hint of pride. “Simone. My brother Michel, who died so well with the howitzers. Myself. One other. We were the last poor remnants of seven Old Communards who escaped the penal colony. We survived Cayenne, but we lost the others in Northern Brazil, yet because we had some skills between us we survived after a fashion and we found our way to Asunción."

"We survived – yes, we survived, but at what cost!" Madame Le Vroux sighed.

"We might be in Argentina now, or Chile, and with new identities, had I not recognised a familiar face on what I first took to be a beggar," Roybon said. "You see, Señor Dawlish, I knew Aguirre Robles before – when I was young, when my cousin also studied medicine in Paris."

“A lesser man would have been dead. It was I who had the joy of nursing him back to undertake his great work.” Madame Le Vroux’s tone mixed pride and love. El Pobre reached for her hand, caressed it and kissed it. She looked at Dawlish. “Meeting this man – this poor man, Comandante, this great man – gave meaning to all a poor Parisian schoolteacher had endured.

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