Down: Pinhole (26 page)

It was Simon’s turn to swear and John asked him why.

“Because it’s the best defended castle in Germany. We could have taken the Castle Guise with a bit of cunning and muscle but not Marksburg.”

John slammed his mug hard against the table. “That’s not the right answer. There’s always a move on the board.”

“We are going to need help,” Luca said. “We must go to Milano. Our master will have a plan and after he meets you he will agree to give you men. I am quite certain of this.”

John’s head was swimming. “On horseback? Cross the Alps to Milan? Who do I look like, Hannibal? You’re full of it. It’ll take forever.”

Luca agreed it would take a very long time then floored John with this: “We will have to drive.”

“What do you mean, drive?”

Luca smiled. “We will need to steal one of King Maximilien’s automobiles.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“He’s not,” Simon said. “Old Max has five or six of them if our intelligence is right. Steam powered, they are. The Germans were the first to make them, then the frogs nicked one of their designers and made him work for them. That’s why I’m here, actually. Signore … ” Before he could reveal the name, Luca grabbed his arm. “Sorry, I mean, our master wants to get his hands on one of them, and as I was a steam fitter it’s one of our objectives in coming to Francia. Marcel, can you get us to the place in Paris where they’re kept?”

“Yes, sure, why not?”

“How fast does a steam car go?” John asked.

“They’ll hold steady at fifty miles in one hour’s time if the road’s good,” Simon said.

John pulled his silver pocket watch from his pocket to check the time and did some mental calculations. Avoiding an Alps crossing meant traveling to the south of France and over to Milan on a coastal route which would take about twelve hours on a modern set of roads. Assuming a steam car could hold up without breaking down, it might take three days or more on rudimentary roads, and that was if they didn’t have to fight the locals along the way. He could kiss the second MAAC start-up goodbye, and maybe even the third.

“Then we don’t have a minute to spare,” John said. “Let’s roll.”

They finished their wine and left a few coins on the table. But as they got up, John saw an entire table of men, at least a dozen of them, rise at the same time. Before he was fully erect, John had pulled out his pistol and his friends had drawn their swords.

In the chaotic confines of the small inn, it was every man for himself. John felled one of the attackers with a shot to the head then tossed his pistol down and drew his sword. From the corner of his eye he saw Marcel getting gut-stabbed, but he had his own problems. He fought furiously, slashing and kicking, stabbing and overturning tables and benches. He was quicker than any one of them but they swarmed, driving him against a wall. He struggled to keep his footing on the bloody floorboards and turned to confront a three-man charge from his right, and though he heard yet more danger coming from behind, he didn’t have the time to escape the club that crashed down on his head knocking him into oblivion.

John awoke with a start and immediately felt at the throbbing lump on his crown. He was in pitch darkness. He felt around and grasped some slimy, smelly hay, beneath which was cool stone. He called out softly at first, and then louder to see if anyone was there with him. He tried to stand and despite wooziness, he was able to make it upright. He wasn’t a medic but he’d seen his share of trauma in the field. His head hurt like crazy but his clear thinking and lack of nausea made him think he probably didn’t have bleeding on his brain.

“Hello! Anybody there?”

Remembering he was in Francia, he switched to “bonjour” but no one came. He tried to explore his confinement with outstretched arms and quickly encountered a stone wall. Feeling along it, he found two more featureless stone walls then a fourth with a locked wooden door. He was in a small cell, a prisoner.

His bladder ached and he relieved himself against one of the walls then sat back down on the straw when his wooziness got the better of him. He heard something and strained his ears.

Footsteps.

He stood again, too lightheaded to fight.

He heard the clunk of a key unbolting a lock. The door slowly swung open. Someone was holding a candle.

The man spoke in accented English. “Are you all right?”

The candlelight hurt his eyes. “Yeah, never been better. Where am I?”

“You are in Paris.”

“Where in Paris? Where are the men I was with?”

“You are in the king’s palace on the Île de la Cité.”

“That’s where the Cathedral of Notre Dame is.”

“On Earth, not here.”

“My men?”

“The one called Marcel was heavily wounded. The others, unfortunately, got away. I want their names. Marcel is beyond questioning.”

“George.”

“George?”

“Yeah, they were all named George. I didn’t catch their last names.”

“I see. My name is not George. It is Guy Forneau, minister to the king. You will come with me.”

“And leave this spa? I don’t know, George.”

“You are humorous. Come, the king wants to see a living man.”

“Okay, I’ll play. I’m keen to meet another dead king.”

Outside the cell was a torch-lit dungeon hall with a row of cell doors along a long, dank wall.

“Put these on,” Forneau said, pointing to a pile of clothes on a bench. “We cannot have you meeting the king in your revolting outfit.”

“Not into horse shit, is he?”

John’s knees buckled and he would have fallen if a soldier hadn’t grabbed him. He sat on the bench and looked the clothes over. The trousers were a blue serge, the shirt, a blousy white linen, and the jacket, short and black. He removed his boots, stripped to his shorts and tried on the button-front trousers which fit well enough. He finished dressing but before he could put the boots back on, Forneau had a soldier search them for a knife.

Fully clothed, John stood and tugged at the jacket. “This could use a little tailoring.”

“Not to worry, monsieur. You look acceptable for the occasion. The king will surely understand.”

John took the stairs slowly and deliberatly and emerged with his guards into a candlelit rabbit warren of small rooms, pantries by the look of them, stocked with jars of preserves and sacks of dry goods. They marched through a cavernous kitchen, a dozen chefs apparently too cowed by fear to raise their heads from their chopping and stirring to look at the live man who had emerged from the cellars. Then they passed through a series of increasingly ornate, empty formal rooms before ascending a staircase to a long corridor, off of which, Forneau explained, were the royal apartments.

“The king is indisposed,” he said. “His physician, a modern man, says he has a clotting of blood in his leg. He has put the king on a regimen of extract of willow bark, which, he claims will thin his majesty’s blood. We shall see. In any event, he will see you now in his suite.”

Two guards stood outside the king’s apartment. John was ushered by Forneau into a drawing room where the minister knocked lightly against a double door before opening it and announcing the arrival of their visitor. The room was the first John had seen in the palace with any art work. There was a mixture of oils and watercolors, none of them particularly impressive.

Forneau motioned for John to accompany him into the bed chamber and whispered, “The king speaks a most passable English. You would do well to compliment him on his facility.”

John quickly scanned the room. A man, no more than forty by the look of him, thin as a rail, with a shock of swept-back, preternaturally white hair and sunken eyes, was lying on a large bed, his right leg propped on a plump pillow. He wore a simple smock the shade of a robin egg. Seated in a chair by his side was a young, exquisitely beautiful woman with dark, mysterious looks, turned out in a fancy, bosom-revealing dress. She stared at him with an intense fascination.

“Come closer,” the king said, “so I can better see you.”

John did so and assumed an at-ease posture, his hands clasped at his waist.

“How is it that you are here, monsieur?” was the simple question posed.

John gave what was becoming a practiced response. The monarch listened while nodding mechanically like a bobble-head doll.

“The era you come from must be supremely interesting,” the king said. “A time of science and enlightenment.”

“Science yes, enlightenment, I’m not so sure. May I ask what era you come from?”

“The turbulent late eighteenth century, a time in France of great—what is the word in English?—tumult. Tumult and bloodshed.”

John decided it was an opportunity to toss in a compliment about the man’s English, eliciting an appreciative smile from Forneau. “The Revolution, Bastille, Marie Antoinette, a lot going on, wasn’t there?” John said. “I’ve been told you are King Maximilien but I confess I don’t recall any French kings by that name.”

The king laughed so hard that tears streamed down and his female companion and minister seemed to think it best to join in up to a point. “I was hardly a king, monsieur. I was a king slayer. I am Maximilien Robespierre, one of the architects of that revolution. Do you know of me?”

“Yes, I do. You’re famous.”

“I am told I developed a certain notoriety which persisted well after my death.”

“I’m not an historian, sir, I’m a soldier, but I guess I’m surprised on a number of counts.”

The king didn’t get the meaning of John’s expression and asked Forneau to explain in French.

“Ah, a number of counts. I see. What counts are these?”

“Well, for one, you were an anti-royalist, so going from there to being a king, well, that’s surprising. And for another, I never figured you for the kind of person to wind up here. I thought your revolution was a noble affair, like our revolutionary war in America.”

Maximilien uncomfortably shifted his weight which caused the woman to spring into action, fluffing pillows and the like. When she was done, the king asked her to pour wine for him and his guest and fetch a chair for John, leaving Forneau in the awkward position of being the only one standing and the only one without libation.

“Well, I was a lawyer, you know,” the king began. “I was an ardent follower of the great philosophers of my day, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and as such was a believer in equality of rights and of the establishment of a republic. When the Bastille fell, events moved quickly. Before we knew it, King Louis had lost his head and we had our republic. I, among my colleagues, was particularly well-suited as an organizer and an orator. I worked tirelessly as a member of the committee of public safety. But revolutions are messy affairs, monsieur. Always, there are elements who would defy the will of the people and seek a return to the ways of a dictator. So we had to be vigilant and tough, very tough. I played the guillotine the way a musician plays the violin. In the early days after the revolution I was signing two or three execution orders per day. Then twenty. Then fifty. The jails were so congested with prisoners, much like the clot in my leg, in order to restore the flow of justice, I authorized laws which deprived the accused enemies of the fatherland of a right to defense lawyers and dispensed the need for witnesses. Juries could convict on the basis of moral proof alone and the only penalty for the guilty was death. Oh, how the blood ran. Although I never pulled the rope myself to let fall the blade, I am certain that my role in the matter is the reason for my fall from grace. France had its republic but after my head was taken on my own guillotine I was forced to pay the eternal price.”

“King Henry told me the same thing. He said he never personally killed anyone himself.”

“I am aware you were at his court. Our ambassador reported this. We have been following your every movement, monsieur, just as we have been following Marcel Polverel, who, we know, is an agent for a subversive in Italia. Tell me, monsieur, who is this man?”

“I don’t know.”

Robespierre showed his irritation by roughly snatching a handkerchief and blowing his aquiline nose. “You will tell me the name of the Italian subversive.”

“They said if I knew his name I’d give it up if I was tortured. They kept me in the dark.”

“We can see if this is true. Forneau can arrange a session in the dungeon.”

John gave him an icy stare. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Robespierre snorted. “No, I will not torture you. Indeed, I will pamper you. You will have good quarters, good food, good women. You will be my prisoner, but a prisoner in a gilded cage. You will be systematically questioned. We intend to learn from you how to manufacture the superior cannon which you fashioned for the English, and any other technology which you might enable. We also wish to question you on the capabilities of the English fleet. You are a unique and valuable resource which we shall plumb to the fullest depths.”

“Here’s what I have to say about that. Screw you, Max. I’m going to be the worst houseguest you’ve ever had.”

When he fully understood John’s response Robespierre turned furious and told Forneau to take him away.

John started to leave but turned to say, “Tell me something. What ever happened to liberty, equality, and fraternity?”

Robespierre leaned forward to massage his swollen leg. “These are not relevant principles in Hell, monsieur. Surely you know this by now.”

John ignored him, smiled at the astonished woman, and followed Forneau out the door.

The two men walked in silence, accompanied by the armed dungeon keepers, down a long hall to one flight of stairs, then another. The corridor on this floor was as long as the one which housed the royal apartments but there was no carpet and the walls were unpainted plaster. Each of the doors had bolts on the outside.

As they walked down this hall John turned to Forneau and asked, “So what’s your story?”

“My story?” the man said. He had a full face with incipient jowls of a well-fed man in his sixties, and the saddest eyes John had ever seen. “It is a short one. I was a bureaucrat in the court of Emperor Napoleon III. I was involved in a complex, unsavory matter. I died in 1861. Fortunately, my talents were recognized and rather than being condemned to slave labor in the fields or a salle décomposition, I was made a junior minister by the king. I excelled in my job and I was elevated.”