The First Book of Samuel by SAREJESS (epub read online books txt) 📕

we will be leaving your fine village. I have pressing business in the capital” he said.

The servants brought in the trays of food. Devall smiled at the thought of filling his vast belly. Napoleon looked up at the serving maid and smiled, Sam noticed that although he smiled there was a certain tightness around his lips and his eyes were cold with cruelty. The two men ate in silence. Samuel watched from the bar. Since the arrival of the troops, business at the inn had dropped off now customers only came to eat there mid-day meal eating in silence and leaving in a hurry not wishing to draw attention to themselves. It had been worse since men like Robespierre had fallen, no one was safe.

Once they had finished eating the colonel stood up and looked at Devall who had pushed his chair back but made no move to rise. Realizing that he had committed some error the fat man sprang to his feet as if his behind had been burned with hot coals. Turning to the door they left without looking back, leaving the door open.

”I will have to visit our friends on the coast once the Colonel leaves” thought Samuel fortunately he knew the smugglers that had been caught were not part of the ring in which Samuel was involved. The locals began to drift in for lunch not really speaking. It was hard work working in the fields around the village even more so if you were the blacksmith or his assistant, who had just walked through the door since the troops had arrived they had been kept busy re shoeing horses.

The blacksmith seated himself at the bar and called for a jug of cold ale. One thing Samuel could depend on, be it a hot summer day or mid winter, the blacksmith drank cold ale every meal time.

It was three-o clock on Christmas morning. Samuel woke from a deep sleep. He had been dreaming of a day on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It had been a hot day but the people had crowded round to hear Jesus speak “any what many among you a father when asked by his child for bread do you give him a stone” the carpenter turned preacher had been saying.

Samuel lay in bed and listened to the sounds outside. Not that there was much to listen to, the night was cold, snow had fallen earlier and everything had been covered with snow. The drab courtyard had been turned into a wonderland with snow and icicles hanging off the awnings. Christmas would not be celebrated in France this year, all religious festivals had been outlawed by the tribunal.

The soldiers were still billeted in the village, Napoleon had gone to bed late. This was some thing that Samuel had grown accustomed to since the officer had been staying at the inn he had hardly ever retired to bed before one in the morning.

Samuel stretched and thought of the days when he had been a young. That had been so, so long ago, growing up in the town of Bethlehem in the years before the new age. He reflected on the lessons he had learned at his mother knee. They seemed so immaterial at the time and now 18 centuries later and what had 18 centuries of wandering across the world under a curse brought him? He still retained the look of a man of about 40 years of age he was still healthy, another part of the curse. He thought back over his life of the people he had known now long gone to their earthly beds. He thought of Count Gunther Von Bremen, the first Christian who he had encountered who had shown him that not all Christians were barbarians and killers of that which they did not understand. He also thought of the time he had spent in Spain two centuries earlier how the church and its priests had tortured and killed thousands in the name of the carpenter who had so long ago preached on the shores of the Galilee. Samuel was sure in his own mind that what had happened in Spain would not have pleased the Carpenter. Jesus would have turned away and wept to see what those who followed his creed had done to people who disagreed with them or believed differently from them, intolerance was some thing he had never understood.

Now in the year 1795 people were killing each other again, but this time it was not religion which was being used as an excuse, it was the idea that all men were born equal that all men were born free. He remembered a few years earlier when he had been in Paris. On a certain day in July when the anger of the mob had boiled over into action they had taken it into their collective mind to free those imprisoned in the old Bastille. What a day that had been and what horrors he had seen when the Bastille had been stormed and the mob had broken into the lower dungeons. What cruelty he had seen! Men chained to walls without water or food yet in a few inches from them lay food and water, how many had died in the Bastille he was unable to say. Samuel knew there was something which he was missing, something which was eluding his grasp yet he was unable to fathom exactly what that elusive something was. For a number of years, maybe a little more then a century he had been trying to find this ideal which was escaping him and thus he had applied his mind to solving this problem. He was sick of death, sick of the cruelty, which men did to men. He had seen centuries of it and he had, had his fill of the killing. Now he would try to help the children of mankind in his search for the elusive principal that had eluded him for so long.

1796 January a Paris Execution
The cart rumbled on through the street of Paris. One of the members of the mob threw a rotten egg, the missile found its mark splattering over Samuel’s face. The filth ran down his face and over his beard. Samuel knew the unpleasantness could not last much longer. The pain he felt was not only physical but also mental he had suffered much at the hands of the tribunal; if only he had been able to escape he might not have found himself here. Now in the streets of Paris, he was on his way to a meeting with Madam Guillotine. He had deemed it better to allow the last of the refuges to escape by boat to the waiting arms of the English war ships, which patrolled continuously off the coast. It had been shortly after the last boat load of refugeess had made good their escape when he had been caught. “Ah well it had been good while it lasted.” If he tried he would not be able to remember how many people he had helped to escape the terror. He only hoped that he would be brave enough now when his time came to face the demanding steel of madam Guillotine.

They had found him as he returned to the inn. The group of soldiers had approached him while he was on the road from the coastal village with a load of fine English goods. At the head of the group was Devall. Instantly Samuel had expected trouble, their last meeting had not been pleasant. The fat Frenchman had demanded more money then Samuel had available and Samuel had told him the truth, that he could no longer pay the fat man’s high price. "If that is your answer we will have to see what we can do" the fat man had said. Quickly the soldiers under DeVall’s instruction searched the cart and found the goods Samuel had also been searched and his purse removed. Thereafter he had been placed in custody while further investigation was done. The secret room had been found with evidence, which pointed to Samuel’s complicity in the crime of helping others to escape the long arm of the French republic.

Immediately thereafter Samuel had been taken to the hotel De Villiers in the capital, here he had been questioned by the tribunal. This had been another experience that Samuel would not be quick to forget the ferocity with which these men set about questioning, the rough way in which they shouted their questions at him, seldom allowing him to answer fully. Samuel’s main concern was that he not implicate others in the alleged crime for which he had been taken into custody. When the questioning was over he had been returned to his cell to await the outcome of the trial, it was not long in coming. One of the members of the tribunal had come to the cell with an escort. Making a show of it the man had unrolled an official document and began to read "Citizen Ferreria you have been found guilty of crimes against the Republic. It is the considered opinion of the tribunal of the city of Paris that you are guilty. Therefore I am here to inform you that two days hence you are to be taken from this cell and committed to the care of the executioners to pay the price for your crime."

So there it was; he had spent the last few days waiting for the inevitable. The day before the execution he had his hair cut and his beard cut short in preparation for the meeting with the dreaded lady of steel. Now as the cart turned into the square, he could see the platform on which the machine of death stood, a basket standing below the fall trap. The executioner drove through the crowd who were in a holiday mood. An execution was always what the crowd appreciated; that and the fact that some people lost their composure just before their execution and had to be carried and placed on the machine. Others met their death with a boldness which the Paris crowd could appreciate and applaud but mostly they just loved the sight of blood and the fact that some of the victim’s bodies would kick their feet as the last vestige of life left their bodies. Samuel was roughly helped from the cart. The cry of “traitor” and “Viva Le France” rang out as he was marched up the stairs to the guillotine. The executioner helped to lay his head in place. Now the moment was at hand. A member of the tribunal was standing nearby and asked "Do you have any thing to say before you are put to death". To which Samuel replied "No I have nothing to say" he lay his head down in place and waited, a few moments later the blade fell. As it fell, there was the sound of a sharp edged blade flying through the air then the sickening sound of the blade meeting resistance. The head of the condemned man fell into the basket. A few member of the crowd who were standing too close received a showering of rich red blood for their trouble. The crowd waited; the executioner reached into the basket and lifted the head of the dead man "So die all traitors to the Republic! Viva Le France!" he shouted. The cry was answered by a thousand voices from the crowd "Viva Le France."
Prelude to war
It was a frosty morning in the year 1804 on the French coast. Samuel pulled the cloak he was wearing closer round his body. For the last week he had been on the move gathering intelligence for the forces of the Duke of Albany