A Name in Cyrillic

Chapter 1 – The Road East

Paris · 1793

Rory Darragh MacKail had once left Ireland because the farm seemed too small for him; now Paris itself had become too narrow to breathe.

The cart waited in the grey before dawn, its wheels half sunk in the filth of the yard behind the merchant’s warehouse. A tarpaulin sagged over bundled cloth, empty crates and three barrels smelling faintly of vinegar. Two horses stood with their heads lowered, steam rising from their flanks into the cold March air.

Rory stood in the shadow of the wall, his coat collar turned up, one hand resting on the leather satchel beneath his arm. The satchel contained papers under a name that was not quite his, two shirts, a little money and a scrap of his mother’s handwriting which he lacked the strength to leave behind.

The driver glanced at him once, then looked away.

That was wise. In Paris, the habit of noticing too much could shorten a man’s life.

‘You’re late,’ the driver muttered.

‘I’m here.’

‘That isn’t the same thing.’

Rory said nothing. He had learnt during the last year that explanations rarely improved matters. They gave other people details to remember, and now a careless phrase might become a denunciation, a family name evidence or a friendship a charge.

The driver climbed onto the cart and took up the reins. ‘Under the cloth,’ he said. ‘Only until we are through the barrier.’

The space between the crates was just wide enough for a man who had not eaten properly in two days.

‘I thought I was travelling as your assistant.’

‘My assistant would have papers the guards believed.’

Rory’s hand tightened on the satchel. ‘You said the papers were good.’

‘I said they had been paid for.’

There was no point in arguing. Rory climbed into the back and lowered himself between the crates, careful not to knock the nearest barrel. The smell of vinegar thickened around him. The driver dragged the tarpaulin over the load, shutting out the pale suggestion of morning.

Beneath the tarpaulin, his world contracted to canvas, timber and the sound of his own breathing.

The cart jolted forward.

Paris moved around him in fragments: iron-rimmed wheels over cobbles, a woman coughing behind shutters, the distant bark of a dog, the clatter of pails somewhere in the alley. The city had not fully woken, yet the streets were already watched. There were men about — watchmen, patrols, informers, market women, soldiers half drunk from the night before, and citizens too frightened to sleep.

Rory lay still and listened.

He had always listened well. At Killiecrankie Farm, he had absorbed arguments about land, weather, cattle and harvests; his father’s judgements upon soil; Conall’s certainty that belonging could be held like land; and Bronagh’s equal affection for French manners and Irish mud.

He had always loved them, but he had never wanted the life they wanted.

The farm had been strong, old, and necessary. It had also felt like a door closing before him. By the time the family came to France, Rory already understood that the world extended far beyond the valley, Baile na gCrann and the stories through which the MacKails preserved themselves.

Paris had given him room to breathe: language, commerce, politics, maps, accounts, salons and banks, and people whose knowledge reached far beyond their own households.

Paris had shown him that a man need not inherit earth in order to have a future. He could move through systems. He could watch, learn, prepare, and choose.

Conall and Bronagh had chosen Ireland.

Rory had not judged them for it. In truth, when they left, he had felt a pinch of envy at the certainty of their decision. They had walked away from comfort and danger alike, though none of them had then understood how closely those two things would come to resemble each other. Conall had wanted fields beneath his boots. Bronagh had wanted the old house, the old river, the familiar voices. They had gone west with their hearts already across the sea. Rory had stayed out of prudence, believing that foresight and preparation might protect him. He could place money beyond reach. He could make friends in more than one language. He could keep his name clean and his bags almost packed.

Whispers had become laws, laws had led to arrests, and arrests to executions; despite every warning, he had remained too long.

When the cart slowed, Rory concentrated upon keeping his breathing inaudible.

Voices sounded nearby. One of them laughed. Another spat. A musket butt struck wood, not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough to remind every person within hearing who held power at the gate.

‘Where are you bound?’ a guard demanded.

‘Meaux first,’ the driver answered. ‘Then further on if the road holds.’

‘With vinegar?’

‘And cloth.’

‘Cloth for whom?’

‘Whoever has coin. If you know any patriots in need of honest trade, send them my way.’

Rory waited, feeling the blood beat in his throat.

‘Get down.’

The cart shifted as the driver climbed from his seat. Footsteps came closer. The tarpaulin lifted a fraction near Rory’s boots, and cold air slid in beneath it.

He fixed his eyes on the barrel inches from his face and did not move.

A hand struck one of the crates.

‘Open this.’

Wood groaned. Straw rustled. The guard muttered something about damp cloth and cheating merchants. Another crate was opened. Then another. The vinegar barrel beside Rory was shoved with enough force to press against his ribs. He bit the inside of his cheek and kept silent.

‘What’s under the back?’

‘More cloth. Spoiled, most of it. You’re welcome to it.’

The tarpaulin lifted until grey light cut across Rory’s sleeve.

For one terrible moment, he saw the guard’s hand gripping the canvas above him, the roughness of his nails, the dark half-moon of dirt beneath the thumb. Another inch and the man would see him.

A shout came from the road.

‘Citizen! Over here.’

The canvas dropped.

The guard swore and stepped away. A woman was crying now, loudly enough to draw attention from half the barrier. Rory heard the driver climb back onto the cart.

‘Move on,’ the guard snapped. ‘And tell your friends in Meaux that the Republic has eyes on every road.’

‘I will tell them the Republic has excellent eyesight.’

‘Careful.’

The driver clicked his tongue to the horses, and the cart lurched forward.

Rory stayed where he was until the sounds of the barrier had faded behind them. Only then did he allow himself to breathe normally. He lifted one hand and touched the small wooden cross inside his shirt.

He had not prayed properly in weeks, not because he had ceased believing, but because every prayer became the same three pleas before he could finish it: let me live; let them live; forgive me for leaving.

The cart rolled on.

By the time the driver pulled into a yard behind a shuttered tannery, daylight had spread thinly over the outskirts. Rory pushed the tarpaulin aside and sat up, stiff with cold. The driver did not help him down.

‘You can ride in front now,’ the man said. ‘If anyone asks, you are my wife’s cousin from Châlons. You are dull, obedient, and hard of hearing.’

‘That last part may prove difficult.’

‘Then say less.’

Rory almost smiled. The attempt felt strange on his face.

He climbed down and stretched his cramped legs. Beyond the yard, Paris lay under a brownish morning haze, chimneys smoking, roofs crowded together like a city huddling against its own fear. Somewhere within that sprawl stood the house where his father and mother would by now be awake.

He saw them as he had left them the night before.

Alex by the window, one hand resting on the back of a chair, older than Rory wished to admit. His father had survived war, imprisonment, courtrooms, exile, bereavement and the long ache of memory. Yet Paris had worn him in a different way. War had given him wounds. The Revolution had given him waiting.

Jeanne-Marie had sat beside the fire, her hands folded in her lap. Her hair, once bright beneath candlelight, was silvered now. She had said less than Alex, but Rory had felt her watching him. His mother had always known when one of her children carried something unsaid.

He had gone to them after dusk, using the back streets and twice doubling back to make sure he was not followed. He had told himself he was only checking on them. That was not wholly a lie. He needed to see them once more with his own eyes.

Alex had opened the door himself.

‘Rory.’

‘Father.’

For a moment neither of them moved. Then Alex stepped aside and let him in.

The house had been colder than he remembered. It was not neglected, but unmistakably diminished. Fewer candles, fewer servants, fewer signs of the Laurent wealth that had once made every room seem safely beyond the reach of ordinary catastrophe. Money, rank, age and innocence no longer placed anyone beyond danger.

Jeanne-Marie rose when he entered.

‘You should not have come so late,’ she said.

‘I waited until the streets were quieter.’

‘That is not the same as safer.’

‘No.’

He kissed her cheek. She held him a moment longer than usual. When she let him go, her eyes searched his face.

‘Have you eaten?’

‘Yes.’

‘That means no.’

‘It means not recently.’

She drew breath to call for food, but Alex interrupted quietly.

‘There is soup left.’

Rory accepted it because refusing would have hurt her more than any danger could. He sat at their table and ate slowly while his parents watched him pretend not to be hungry.

No one spoke of Finn at first.

That was how grief had changed the house. It had not made them silent; the MacKails were rarely silent by nature. Certain names had become locked rooms within the house. Everyone knew where the doors were and passed them carefully.

At last Alex said, ‘You are in trouble.’

Rory set down the spoon. ‘Everyone is in trouble.’

‘That is not an answer.’

‘It may be the only honest one left.’

Alex studied him, and Rory saw again the man who had stood before courts, soldiers, creditors, and worse men than any revolutionary clerk. His father’s face had aged, but the eyes were the same.

‘You have papers?’

Rory did not ask how he knew. ‘Some.’

‘Good ones?’

‘Good enough to get me killed if they fail.’

Jeanne-Marie’s hands tightened in her lap.

Alex looked towards the shuttered window. ‘Where?’

Rory hesitated.

He had planned not to tell them. During the walk, he had rehearsed several evasions: he was moving between houses, had friends outside the city and might be absent for a few days. Each version sounded almost merciful until he imagined them discovering the truth after he had vanished.

‘East,’ he said.

His mother closed her eyes.

Alex absorbed the word without moving. ‘Not south?’

‘The southern roads are watched.’

‘Not west?’

‘The ports are worse.’

‘Ireland?’

Rory shook his head. ‘No.’

The word came more sharply than he intended. Jeanne-Marie opened her eyes again.

‘I do not mean that as an insult,’ Rory said.

‘I know,’ Alex replied.

‘Conall belongs there. Bronagh too. They always did.’

‘And you do not?’

Rory looked at his father, hoping he would understand and fearing that he already did. ‘I was born there. That is not the same thing.’

Alex flinched, though only slightly.

Rory regretted the words at once. ‘Father—’

‘No. You are old enough to know your own mind.’

‘I love the farm. I love what you rebuilt. But if I go back now, it would not be a return. It would be surrender.’

‘To what?’

‘To the idea that everything I wanted was folly.’

Jeanne-Marie spoke gently. ‘Was it?’

Rory looked around the room — the thinned fire, the drawn curtains, the family portraits turned towards shadow because even painted faces could seem accusatory now.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

That was the most frightening truth of all.

Alex came to the table and sat opposite him. ‘Listen to me. Survival is not surrender.’

‘I know.’

‘No, you know the sentence. That is not the same as knowing the thing.’

Rory swallowed.

His father’s voice lowered. ‘When I left Scotland, I thought I had lost the shape of my life. When I left France, I thought the same. Then Ireland became home because it had to. A man may begin again without betraying what came before.’

‘You did not choose exile.’

‘Few men do.’

Rory looked down at his hands. They were ink-stained rather than hardened by farming or soldiering. He had spent his adult life studying the quieter movement of power through correspondence, credit and obligations entered in ledgers. He had believed that understanding such things might keep him safe.

Paris had taught him otherwise.

‘If I go east,’ he said, ‘I may disappear.’

Jeanne-Marie’s face tightened.

Alex did not look away. ‘And if you stay?’

Rory gave a small, bitter laugh. ‘Then I may disappear more quickly.’

The fire settled in the grate.

Jeanne-Marie rose and crossed to the small cabinet beside the wall. From it she took a folded handkerchief and a little packet of food wrapped in linen. She placed both beside Rory’s satchel. Then, after a moment, she removed the silver rosary from her wrist.

‘No,’ Rory said.

‘Take it.’

‘Maman—’

‘Take it.’

He did.

Her hand closed over his. ‘You were always the one looking past the road you stood on. Even as a boy. Conall saw a field and wondered what it would yield. Bronagh saw a room and wondered who needed comfort in it. You saw a road and wondered where else it might go.’

Rory tried to answer, but his throat had closed.

‘That is not a sin,’ she said. ‘But roads have costs.’

‘I know.’

‘I pray you do.’

Alex stood. For one mad instant Rory thought his father might embrace him, forbid him, bless him, or strike him. Instead Alex took a small purse from the inside of his coat and placed it on the table.

‘There are louis d’or in that. Not many.’

‘I can’t take your money.’

‘You can.’

‘You may need it.’

Alex’s mouth tightened. ‘I have needed many things in this life and done without them.’

‘Father—’

‘Take it.’

The command was quiet, and therefore final.

Rory took the purse.

When he rose to leave, the room seemed to change around him, as if the walls understood what none of them had yet said aloud. Jeanne-Marie kissed both his cheeks. Her hands trembled against his face.

‘Write when you can,’ she whispered.

‘I will.’

‘Do not promise lightly.’

‘I promise.’

Alex walked him to the door. The corridor was narrow, lit by one candle. For a moment father and son stood facing each other while Paris waited outside.

‘Do not use MacKail unless you must,’ Alex said.

The advice struck harder than any farewell.

Rory nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Names carry weight. Sometimes too much.’

‘And sometimes they keep a man upright.’

‘Aye,’ Alex said softly. ‘That too.’

Then he embraced him.

It was brief, fierce, and over too soon. Rory felt the hard frame of his father’s shoulders beneath his coat, the strength that age had not wholly taken, the life that had carried them all further than any one man should have had to carry a family.

When Alex released him, his eyes were wet but steady.

‘Go with God, son.’

Rory stepped into the night.

He had not looked back until he reached the corner. When he did, Alex was still in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame. Behind him, Jeanne-Marie stood half in shadow.

Rory lifted his hand, and his father answered the gesture before the door closed between them.

Now, in the tannery yard beyond the barrier, Rory climbed down from the back of the cart, stiff from the cramped space beneath the tarpaulin. For several moments he stood bent forward, one hand on the wheel, breathing air that did not smell of vinegar, canvas, and his own fear.

The driver was tightening a strap on the cart. ‘You’ve got the face of a man attending his own funeral.’

‘In a way.’

‘Then try to look less interesting.’

Rory adjusted his coat and climbed onto the bench.

They left the yard by a narrow lane that led towards the open road. The city thinned gradually: high houses giving way to workshops, workshops to gardens, gardens to fields still hard with the last grip of winter. Behind them, Paris receded without seeming to release him.

For the first few miles, neither man spoke.

At a village beyond the outer sprawl, they passed a church with its doors barred and a liberty tree planted in the square. A poster on the wall named enemies of the Republic in thick black letters. Some of the names had been crossed through by hand. Others had been circled.

Rory did not look too long.

By noon, they reached a roadside inn where the driver changed horses and argued loudly over the price of bread. Rory stayed near the cart, head lowered, hands in his pockets. A group of National Guardsmen stood outside drinking thin wine, their muskets propped against the wall. One of them had a red scarf knotted at his throat and the watchful stare of a man who enjoyed being feared.

The driver returned with bread, cheese, and a warning glance.

‘Eat on the road.’

Rory climbed up again.

They had gone perhaps half a mile when hoofbeats sounded behind them.

The driver cursed under his breath. ‘Do not turn around.’

Rory kept his eyes on the road ahead.

Two riders came alongside them. One was the red-scarfed guardsman from the inn. The other was older, with a narrow face and a pitted complexion. His gaze moved over Rory first, then the cart, then the driver.

‘Your assistant,’ the older man said. ‘Where is he from?’

‘Châlons,’ the driver replied.

‘He does not look like a man from Châlons.’

‘You know every man in Châlons?’

The red-scarfed guard smiled. ‘Careful, merchant.’

Rory felt the papers inside his coat as if they had begun to burn.

The older man leaned closer. ‘Your name.’

Rory made himself look confused.

The driver snapped, ‘He’s half deaf.’

‘Then shout,’ the red-scarfed guard said.

The older man raised his voice. ‘Your name, citizen.’

Rory turned slowly, as if only now understanding he was being addressed. He shaped his face into mild irritation rather than fear.

‘Pierre Delorme.’

‘From Châlons?’

‘Near Châlons.’

‘Where near?’

‘Saint-Memmie.’

‘Your business?’

Rory looked at the driver. ‘Cloth.’

The red-scarfed guard laughed. ‘A genius.’

The older man did not laugh. ‘Show me your papers.’

Rory drew them out carefully. Not too quickly. Not too slowly. The man took them and unfolded them with one hand. His eyes moved across the page.

The world narrowed again.

A crow lifted from the field beside the road. Somewhere ahead, the horses stamped and snorted. The driver’s thumb tapped once against the reins, then stopped.

‘You are a long way from Saint-Memmie,’ the older man said.

‘Work is not always considerate.’

‘You have wit for a deaf man.’

Rory met his gaze. ‘Only in one ear.’

The red-scarfed guard snorted.

The older man looked again at the papers. ‘Who signed these?’

‘Citizen Martel.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘No.’

‘Then why did he sign for you?’

Rory allowed a flicker of annoyance into his voice. ‘Because I stood in a queue for two hours and answered the same questions from three different clerks. I thought that was how the Republic worked.’

For a moment the man only stared at him.

Then the red-scarfed guard laughed properly. ‘He has you there.’

The older man folded the papers and handed them back. ‘Mind your tongue. Roads are dangerous.’

‘So I have heard.’

The riders moved on.

Rory did not breathe freely until they had disappeared over the rise.

The driver kept his eyes forward. ‘You enjoy death?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘You speak too well.’

‘I’ll try to become stupider before the next stop.’

‘Do.’

The road stretched ahead, pale beneath the winter sky.

By evening, clouds gathered low over the fields. They lodged in a barn belonging to a man who asked no questions once the driver paid him. Rory slept badly in the hayloft, waking at every creak of timber. Twice he dreamed of the gate at Paris. Once he dreamed of Killiecrankie Farm, though not as it had been in his childhood. In the dream, the fields were covered in snow, and his father stood beside the river calling his name.

When Rory woke, his face was wet.

The driver was already below, harnessing the horses.

For four days they moved east.

At Meaux, Rory heard that another group had been arrested on suspicion of carrying letters for émigrés. At Château-Thierry, he watched a priest in plain clothes deny three times that he had ever worn vestments. At Châlons, he parted from the driver and took his next road under the guidance of a widow who smuggled people with the same brisk competence other women used for selling eggs.

‘You are not the first man to leave France,’ she told him.

‘I’m not leaving France.’

‘No? What are you doing?’

Rory looked back at the road behind him. ‘Surviving it.’

She gave him a dry look. ‘Men always dress things up.’

The further east he travelled, the less certain his path became. Names changed. Accents thickened. Borders, once lines on maps, became questions asked by men with weapons. He heard talk of the German states, of the Rhine crossings, of merchants willing to carry a passenger for coin and silence. Beyond that lay possibilities rather than plans: Poland, perhaps. The Austrian lands. Some place where a man could become useful before he became known. On the fifth evening, they reached a farmhouse outside a village whose name Rory failed to catch. The widow left him there with instructions to wait for a man called Étienne, unless a woman with a scar over her left eye arrived first, in which case he was to ask for no one and follow her immediately.

‘And if neither comes?’ Rory asked.

‘Then God help you.’

It was not the least comforting answer he had received.

Inside the farmhouse, an old couple gave him soup and a place beside the stove. They mistook him for a clerk fleeing conscription. He did not correct them. When the old woman asked whether he had family, he answered yes before he could stop himself.

‘Where?’ she asked.

The question should have been simple.

Ireland. Paris. Both. Neither.

He thought of Conall and Bronagh at Killiecrankie Farm, perhaps safe in the life he had refused. He thought of Charles and Marie-Louise, of Kieran, of all the scattered branches of a family that had crossed too many seas. He thought of Finn, whose words had burnt brighter than caution until fire became blade. He thought of his mother’s hands closing over his, and his father warning him not to use the name MacKail unless he must.

‘Far away,’ he said.

The old woman nodded, as if that answered everything.

After supper, Rory went outside.

The night was clear. Stars spread coldly above the dark fields. To the west lay Paris, his parents, and the wreckage of the life he had chosen. To the west also lay the road to the sea, to Ireland, to the farm whose soil knew his blood but not his future.

To the east lay uncertainty.

He took out his papers and looked at the false name by moonlight.

Pierre Delorme.

It had served for one road. It would not serve for a life.

Names could save a man, his father had said without saying. Names could also hang him. Rory MacKail was a Jacobite’s grandson, an Irish-born Scot, a French household’s son, brother to men who had made choices the Revolution might call crimes. Pierre Delorme was a fiction too thin to shelter beneath for long.

He whispered his own name once.

‘Rory Darragh MacKail.’

The fields gave no answer.

He folded the papers and put them away. He would need other names before this was done. Names that bent to the languages ahead. Names that could pass a checkpoint, sign a ledger, rent a room, open a door. Perhaps one day a name that looked nothing like the one he had been given.

The thought should have frightened him.

It did.

But beneath the fear, unwelcome and undeniable, came something else.

He recognised before him a road he had neither wanted nor prepared for, but one he could still choose to follow.

Behind him, the farmhouse door opened. A woman stood in the threshold, lamplight at her back. A pale scar ran from her left brow to the corner of her mouth.

‘You are the man from Paris?’ she asked.

Rory turned.

‘For now.’

She studied him, then nodded towards the lane. ‘Then come. We cross before dawn.’

Rory adjusted the satchel on his shoulder. His mother’s rosary rested against his chest. His father’s coins weighed in his pocket. His own name remained inside him, hidden but not surrendered.

He followed the woman into the dark.

By morning, France would lie behind him.

Rory MacKail was not going home.

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