Minuet (25 page)

“It was my own hope he would ask me,” she admitted. “I am no longer in a position to hold out. How do he and Henri hit it off?”

Degan considered an answer, and said truthfully, “Mérigot has been often at Berkeley Square since Minou’s coming there. Before that, John saw little of him.”

“Stubborn man! I feel a strong desire at times to strangle that husband. Come, we go now.” They went back down to the parlor, where Degan was walked to the door by Lady Harlock.

“À
demain,”
she said with a cheerful wave. He left, thinking Lord Harlock the greatest fool in the world to have been apart from such a wife for ten years.

He told Sally of the visit. She was worried for Edward, and had soon a dozen plans to hasten his recovery. “The food, even the good food chez Belhomme, is not so very good, Degan. We will find in Paris decent fruit and meat and take them to him. You and Henri will walk with him in the orchard, institute some mild exercise regime, and make him well very fast. Then we can leave. We must devise some new means of travel. Taureau’s strumpet would not be so well supervised, with an elderly lady for chaperon, and who could Édouard pose as? We have a few days to plan all that. Let us go back to the hotel and hear from Henri how the execution went.”

Returning was easier than going, since they had gained some familiarity with the route. Their trip did not take them through the busier section of the city. They stabled the carriage and entered the inn with no thought of further troubles that night. Things were going not too badly. They spoke of celebrating with a late-night dinner, as they had not eaten for hours. In the lobby the manager approached them.

“You are the party who arrived with Citoyen Mérigot, are you not?”

Degan heard a short, sharp intake of breath, felt a sudden, fierce pressure on his arm, cautioning him to silence. “Mérigot? Who the deuce is Mérigot?” Sally asked in a brassy voice. “We travel with Michel Menard, a man who has been managing Le Taureau, my friend here. He is a boxer. Beat the Butcher of Lozère the other day.”

“You have been hoodwinked,
citoyenne,”
the manager replied. “He told the same tale to the
garde
who arrested him. That man is Citoyen Mérigot, the former comte de Virais. His family have all been executed already. He is the last. He was recognized by a former servant of the family, and hauled in this evening. You had better stick around. The Committee want to question both of you.”

“What, that clumsy dolt a former nobility?” Sally asked in a jeering tone. “He is common as dirt.”

“He is a fine actor. Let us see what kind of a show he puts on at the Place de la Révolution tomorrow, when he sneezes in the basket.”

“You hear that, Taureau?” Sally asked, and laughed. Had he been unaware of the truth, he would not have detected the slightly hysterical edge to her laugh. “That sneaky rascal Michel is to be beheaded. We won’t miss that,
hein?
He has been gypping us for two weeks. Where exactly have they got the scoundrel locked up? We’ll go and laugh outside his window.”

“The
gardes
took him away an hour and a half ago. I don’t know where. The Conciergerie is full; the Luxembourg is full; the abbey at St.-Germain-des-Prés is full, and half the homes of the former nobility are being requisitioned for prisons. You’ll see him at Madame Guillotine right enough. The Committee has been looking for that one a long time. We were afraid he’d got away to England.”

“Imagine that, Taureau! We have been associating with an enemy of the Republic. Come, we go upstairs and have a bath, to remove the stink of him. And a glass of wine to celebrate his death.
Bonsoir, citoyen,”
she said to the proprietor, and holding to Degan’s arm for dear life, turned and walked away.

“Don’t leave your room,” he called after them. “They are coming back later to question you, the
gardes.”

“We’ll be there,” Sally managed to get out in a nearly normal voice. It took the last of her fortitude to accomplish it. The arm that held on to Degan was shaking, and her knees beginning to turn to pudding. But till they got around the bend in the stairs, she showed no trace of all this.

Chapter Eighteen

If Sally had not been so near collapse from exhaustion and shock, she would have been hysterical. Degan thought it was sheer fatigue that kept her silent. She stood inside their room, staring at him while her body twitched involuntarily. “It’s impossible. It can’t be!” she said in an incredulous whisper.

Degan took her firmly by the arms and gave her a little shake. “Come, snap out of it, Minou. This is not the time to lose control. You weren’t afraid of the Conciergerie or of the guillotine. Don’t let this destroy you.”

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let him come.”

“He wanted to come. From the first moment he heard where your mother was, he wanted to come after her.”

“Of course he wanted to, but I shouldn’t have let him. Oh, Degan, what am I to do?”

“The first thing we must do is get out of here. We don’t want to be taken to the Conciergerie for questioning. The man below said they were coming back for us. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Yes, we can do nothing to help him if we too are arrested. We must go. Where can we go
to?”

“I don’t know. The first thing is to get away. We daren’t go back for the carriage. They’ll have orders at the stable to keep it. We’d better get out of the window, or down a back staircase.”

Sally appeared to listen, but walked in a distracted fashion to the bed and sat down, her eyes staring and glazed. Degan saw with pity and dismay that she was beyond thinking or rational action. It was up to him now to get her away to immediate safety. The human spirit could take only so much, and it seemed imminent danger to Henri Mérigot was her breaking point. He didn’t wonder why this should be so. It was no time for emotion; cold, logical thought and action were called for—always Degan’s forte in the past. He walked to the window. They were on a third floor, with nothing between themselves and the street but sheer brick. No exit here, by the obvious means.

He went to the bed and sat down, putting an arm around her shoulder. “I’m going out into the hallway to find an escape route for us, Minou. You stay here. Be very quiet; keep the door closed. You understand?” She looked a helpless question at him. “I’ll be right back for you. It’s going to be all right. Don’t be afraid. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

“All right,” she answered listlessly.

He didn’t think she had heard. He went into the poorly lit hallway and down to the next story and saw at the end of the corridor a small window. He ran quickly and quietly toward it. It was still two floors above the ground, but there was a shed roof under it, sheltering a side door into the building. Not on the main street and not into the stable yard, but between the inn and the neighboring building, dark and obscure. Perfect. This was it. They hadn’t time to look for a better exit. He dashed again upstairs to find Sally still sitting on the bed, exactly as he had left her. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet.

“Is there anything we’ve left here?” he asked, looking around the room. She was still unable to act or react. Traveling as lightly as they were, there was nothing—a half bottle of wine, a newspaper. With a glance over his shoulder, he took her arm and led her out the door, down the stairs, along the corridor to the window. She said nothing, made no objection or suggestion. Minou, always so lively and inventive!

“We have to get onto that roof, then to the ground. I’ll go first and catch you. You’ll do it. You’re not afraid.” It was a command.

“I’ll do it. I must,” she answered mechanically.

He heaved up the window, climbed out, dangling by his fingers till his feet were on the roof, then called up for her to come after him. He waited on the gabled, precarious perch to help her, then leaped to the ground, and the operation was repeated by Sally. It was not a frightening leap, and he had to do no more than steady her. They found themselves in a narrow alleyway between the two tall buildings. Sally turned toward the street.

“Better go this back way,” Degan said, taking her arm. They hurried back thirty feet and found themselves at the edge of the stable yard with an adjoining plot of land gone to scrub. Degan decided to just walk through the scrub till they came to the next street, and keep going till they were well away from the Hôtel des Hosiers, trusting to blind luck to come out of it alive.

They proceeded quickly into a district that was poor and dirty, but had the desired quiet. There were no large buildings, no recognizable landmarks. He had no idea where they might be, nor was Sally in any shape to figure it out. They hastened on for an hour at a walk that was short of a run, with Degan pulling Sally along, through cobbled streets first, then into rougher uncobbled ones, the neighborhood unkempt and poor the whole time, finally dwindling to fewer buildings, and those of a large, rough nature, warehouses he thought. At a corner, he saw a river just south of them, and headed toward it to try to find his bearings. Looking across, he saw one of the barriers, and knew they could go no farther.

They retraced their steps west. He wanted to put that river between themselves and their pursuers, but bridges were few and far between, always densely populated. A small rowboat was anchored under a tree, and without a word he pulled Minou into it, untied the rope and rowed across to the other side. To the west La Salpétrière belched smoke from its unending manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder.

They left the boat and darted off, southward. “I must rest. I can’t walk another step,” Minou said at last, panting.

“We’ll find somewhere to sit and make plans. We have to do something about finding Henry and rescuing him. There’s some noise and light ahead. One of those cheap taverns. We’ll go there. We’re far enough away now that they won’t find us in a hurry.”

The room they were soon entering was such as Degan had never seen before—decrepit, dirty, with a mangy cat slinking between uncovered tables. The customers one could only describe as rabble, but they were a discreet rabble, as a result of Paris’ turmoil. No one behaved ill to them, or made any unsavory remarks. “Do you have a private parlor?” Degan asked, using the best French pronunciation he could muster.

“Par ici, citoyen,”
the waiter replied, and they were suddenly in privacy. A little cubicle with a table and fourchairs, no fire, nor even a window, but at least a door, which could be soon closed. “Have you any brandy?” Degan asked.

There was a bottle of what the man chose to call brandy set before them, with two not very clean glasses. Uncomplaining, Degan poured the suspiciously light liquid out, and he and Minou sat and drank a moment in silence, too overwrought and tired to even speak till they had rested.

After a few moments, Minou looked to him with an expression between grief and a sorry smile on her face. “My poor Degan, what have I done to you?” she asked, shaking her head. “I never thought to see the very proper Lord Degan in such straits. Nor dealing so adequately with them, either. Thank you, my friend. I went to pieces. I will be all right soon. As soon as I have had another glass of this much-diluted
eau-de-vie.
I have brought you even to that, drinking brandy. Deleterious for the health, you told me.”

He was greatly relieved to see her spirits recovering. “My health must take its chances tonight. It is our lives that are at stake. And Henry’s.”

“Yes, we must think. Form a plan. Oh, it must be a formidable plan, Degan—nothing can go wrong. First we have to discover where they have taken him. One of the homes of the nobility, if we can trust what that proprietor said. I thought I would
die
when that
vaurien
at the hotel asked if we were not with Citoyen Mérigot’s party. I knew then the jig was up. He shouldn’t have come, that Henri.”

“You were admirable, my dear. Not a single muscle twitching, except your fingers on my arm to warn me. Your mother mentioned it being very dangerous for him to be here. What is it, exactly? You are all in danger—on the list for execution. His family is noble, I take it? The man mentioned the word ‘comte.’ Henry uses no title.”

“We are of the English nobility, we Harlocks, in danger only because of Grandpère Augé. Henri’s father was a Virais, a very old and noble family from the Rhône Valley. They were always active in politics, influential at court. They were among the first to go, even before Louis. The Tribunal made it a special point to eradicate all the Virais. Henri is the only survivor—he is the comte now, though he never thought to inherit the title. His father was only a younger son. The estates too would be his if... But his situation now is only a curse, at such a time as this. He purposely avoided using the title in England, hoping it would be thought here in France he was dead, for they have been known to kidnap French noblemen from England and bring them back for execution.”

Degan listened to this, nodding. “He shouldn’t have risked coming, in that case. Why did he, Minou? I can’t believe it was only concern for your mother, a female relation, that brought him. He did it for you?”

She shook her head. “He did it for all of us—we are a close family. He lived with us as a brother years ago, you know. It is very like him. He is afraid of nothing, Henri. I must be afraid of nothing too, and free him.”

“We’ll do it somehow. Let me go to the—”

“Degan—it is kind of you, but very foolish. Now we need all your wise caution. Two words and you would be recognized for an
anglais.
You remember Cap Gris. Even in the provinces you couldn’t pull it off and in Paris—impossible.”

This was true, and there was no point in being gallant about it. It would end up with Minou trying to rescue the pair of them if he went off half-cocked. No, they must work together, and how was it to be done, the both of them so very easily distinguishable?

“The
garde
who picked Henry up will have a description of us from the hotel man,” he mentioned. “With that red hair of yours, Minou, you’ll be easy to spot.”