The Confectioner's Tale by Laura Madeleine Page A

tracks, watched the years sweep across Paris from between two iron rails and never spoken the name ‘Clermont’ again, had it not been for the rain. The rain changed everything.
    It came first as snow, then as sleet, and finally as a deluge that knew no end. Gui grew accustomed to the feeling of being damp, but nothing prepared him for the morning when he awoke to find his boots floating away. The water in the dormitory was ankle-deep and rising.
    ‘Shit,’ said Nicolas over and over, staring at the churning brown river that had once been the yard. They could not stay. Men hurriedly wrapped photographs and letters in oilcloth, hid them deep in their clothes. Just in time, Gui remembered Monsieur Carême at the bottom of his trunk. The water had seeped through and wrinkled the pages, but he swaddled the book tightly in a handkerchief, shoved it into the crack where the roof met the wall and where it might be safe.
    The sewers had burst and the Gare d’Austerlitz was in chaos. Tracks were filling up into canals, water lapping at the platforms like an incoming tide. There were shouts and shrieks as people slipped, struggling to drag handcarts out of the flood.
    A stationmaster recognized them as belonging to the railway and set them to work bailing out the tracks. Gui spent an unpleasant hour soaked to the waist, passing buckets hand to hand, but it made little impact. When they were shivering too much to continue, they hauled each other out and squelched up the stairs to the mezzanine, where a coffee vendor and roast-chestnut seller had set up business.
    Gui inched as close to one of the burning braziers as he could, until steam began to rise from his clothes. The stationmaster handed him a mug of treacle-thick coffee laced with brandy. He gulped it gratefully. A man he knew to be the owner of the tabac booth was sharing rumours from other parts of the city, trying to stay dry by busily stuffing his clothes with yesterday’s newspapers.
    ‘Never seen anything like it,’ he announced as he crammed a copy of L’Aurore down the front of his shirt. ‘Looks like Venice out there, or a giant boating lake. I was born in this city and I wouldn’t know it to look at. Salpêtrière’s turned into a swimming bath and the Opéra district looks grim. Hear it crept up on them in the night from below. Stores, cellars, all underwater, and now the streets—’
    ‘What did you say, about Opéra?’ asked Gui, grabbing the vendor’s arm. The man ignored him, shaking him off.
    Gui did not wait to hear any more. He pulled his sodden jacket tight about himself and set off down the steps, skidding in pools of mud. He heard his name being called but didn’t stop.
    Outside, the water was shin-high, full of silt and debris. He waded along the embankment, stumbling on submerged objects. The water rose even as it sluiced into the river; the Seine hadn’t yet broached its banks but licked at them, like a great tongue thrashing.
    The bridge had been barricaded with sandbags and old pallets. A hastily assembled task force stood guard, staring miserably into the rising river. Before he could cross, someone grabbed his arm.
    ‘What are you doing?’ panted Nicolas furiously. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling?’
    ‘I have to get past,’ Gui said, pulling free. ‘I have to go and help.’
    ‘It’s that place, isn’t it? Don’t go, Gui, they’ll deserve what they get. Let them know what it’s like to feel cold and scared for once.’
    ‘You heard them back there, Nicolas, the whole district’s in trouble! I can help.’
    ‘You think they’ll want you to stay,’ his said incredulously, seizing Gui’s waterlogged sleeve again. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You think if you act the hero they’ll forgive you for being poor and keep you around.’
    ‘You don’t know them,’ Gui protested. ‘I have friends there.’
    ‘What, that girl?’ Nicolas shook him. ‘Talk sense, Gui, she’s one of them, she’ll use you and throw you back