The Black Tower (19 page)

T
HE
S
ÛRETÉ HAS
a closet of costumes that would do credit to the Opéra-Comique, but Vidocq has decided that, if Charles and I are to wander Paris unnoticed, we need something a little more “breathed upon.” There is on the Rue Beautrellis a Jewish merchant known as “the Changer,” who makes it his business to transform rascals into honest men, for the bargain price of thirty sous a day.

“Monsieur Jules!” he intones, falling back on one of Vidocq’s old aliases.

“And a good morning to you. Here are the two rogues I told you about.”

“Mm,” says the Changer. “Never know it to look at ’em, would you? All mother’s milk.”

“Curdled,”
answers Vidocq.

“Well, let me see now.” He worms his arm through the stacks of garments. “We’ve got a magistrate, just been washed…curé…Russian soldier,
most
popular these days…English not so much….
That
one’s a poet. Got ink on the jabot, see? Doubles for beggar…And over here, I think you’ll find a
very
plausible leper. Sores cost a bit more.”

“I was inclining toward statesman,” says Vidocq.

“Now if
that’s
your line, you’re in luck, my friend. Got a matching pair, just came back yesterday. Black cloth coats, see? Trousers are
double
-milled cassimere. Silk waistcoat. And since you’re so beloved in these here precincts, Monsieur Jules, I’ll even throw in boots.”

With a haggling scowl, Vidocq holds one of the black coats next to me.

“What’s it supposed to be? Ambassador?”

“
Emeritus,
you might say.”

“Come with accessories?”

“Wigs, very recently deloused. Green spectacles, with optional silk shades. Watch fobs, plus trinkets for hanging from same.” His lips melt slowly away from his gums. “You can keep the trinkets. My gift to
you,
Monsieur.”

“Well, then,” says Vidocq. “What are you waiting for, boys? Try ’em on, for Christ’s sake.”

“The usual weekly rate, Monsieur?”

“Put us down for
two
weeks. No more.”

“Very good. And please to remember it’s double the fee for every day they’re late. And no eating of garlic. Gets in the fibers.”

We test our new identities that very afternoon—on the wide sandy paths of the Luxembourg Gardens. My boots pinch much more than they did in the shop, and my wig is home to something small and mobile and latently hostile, and every worn seam, every dangling thread seems to cry: “Impostor!”

But then a pretty young girl walks past us, her smile spilling over us like water. A slumbering Scotch terrier snores itself awake. One of the swans scrapes its rump on the stone. Vidocq guessed right. Ridiculous as Charles and I look, we’ve been absorbed, with no discernible struggle, into the warp and weave of Paris. (Where everyone is an impostor.)

“Hector!”

With a trembling voice, Charles takes me by the arm.

“What is it?”

“The chestnuts,” he whispers, pointing to a long branch with gaudy white feather-blossoms. “You were right. They’re in bloom.”

It’s what he’s been waiting for all along. The thing he was promised back in Saint-Cloud.

And now it seems perfectly natural to demand something in return. To look into those pacific blue eyes and say…

“Tell me about your parents.”

He doesn’t actively resist my queries, he simply huddles round them. When that fails, he bounces them back. We spend far more time talking about
my
parents than his, and whenever I try to return the conversation back to him, his eyes skim over, as though he were trying to remember an old poem. All he can say definitively is that his parents died.

“When I was very young,” he adds.

“Do you remember anything about them?”

“They loved me.”

“Did they leave you anything to live on?”

“I suppose they must have. I’ve always had people taking care of me.”

“Like Monsieur Tepac.”

“Yes.”

“Was there someone before him?”

“Ohhh…”

A yawn palsies his jaw, sets his wig to jiggling.

“What’s that?” he asks, pointing.

“The Luxembourg Palace.”

“Where the king lives?”

“No, the Chamber of Peers sits there.”

“And who are they?”

Old men
. Chateaubriand’s words rise to mind:
The dried-up débris of the Old Monarchy, the Revolution, and the Empire….

“They’re gentlemen,” I say cautiously. “Who’ve been given titles. Marquises and barons and so on. They gather at the palace, and they sit around and talk.”

“Imagine,” says Charles. “Doing nothing all day but talking.”

And, as if chastened, our own conversation tapers down. We leave the garden behind, we stroll north on the Rue de Seine, gathering speed as we go, and we’re nearly to the Pont des Arts when we are stopped by a backward swell of bodies. The Parisian people, quite oblivious to most vehicles, are making an exception for one. A golden coach of ridiculous proportions, surrounded by silver-trimmed, saber-wielding bodyguards.

“Oh, look,” says Charles. “It’s got lilies painted on it. Come along, Hector!”

In later years, I confess, I won’t be able to trust my account of this moment. Surely it couldn’t have happened as easily as all that? On our very first day abroad?

And yet the King’s carriage is a common enough sight in these early days of the Restoration. Invalided by gout and obesity, Louis the Eighteenth compensates by setting his carriage loose through the streets of Paris at ever-greater speeds. More than one of his subjects has known the sensation of narrowly escaping the royal cavalcade’s progress—and being rewarded with the cool, incurious stare of His Majesty as the carriage shoots past.

Today, however, that journey is foiled by an advance party of pigs, fording the street and cinching the royal carriage into stillness.

“Is that the King?” whispers Charles.

Who else?
I want to answer. Who else would be sitting in a posture of such erect indolence? With a litter of white satin cushions to buffer him from any collision?

Across from the King sits the captain of the guard, and next to him, leaning into the window’s frame and registering, in the curve of his mouth, a twining of pique and amusement….

There sits Vidocq.

N
O
.
T
HE FIGURE
slowly reconfigures itself.
No, not Vidocq
. Vidocq as he might look in twenty years. The reserves of flesh melted away by respectability, the expression of animal absorption refined down into large, encompassing eyes.

“That man must be very good friends with the King,” says Charles, “to be sitting so close.”

“Not friends at all. They’re merely related.”

“Related how?”

“Well, that man is the Comte d’Artois. The King’s younger brother.”

“How funny.” Charles reaches under his wig, gives his scalp a good long scratch. “I never think of kings having brothers or sisters, but I suppose they must. Are there any others?”

“Brothers, you mean? There was an older one.”

An unfortunate gentleman, thickly built, thickly walled. Handed the keys to the manor just as the serfs were bashing down the door. He married an Austrian princess, and they had a boy who was thrown into a great black tower and never came out alive.

We all know that. We know what’s possible, and this is not possible: that this same boy could still be alive, a grown man, pressed into a throng of Parisians, watching his two uncles drive past without even recognizing them. Such things don’t happen.

But when I look up and feel the eyes of the Comte d’Artois on me, it’s as if the space between us has contracted. I hear a voice behind me say:

“Marie! He’s looking this way.”

And another voice:

“Ooh, such a handsome figure of a man. Regular cavalier. Everyone says Monsieur has the finest manners in the world.”

M
ONSIEUR
.

I
T’S IMPORTANT TO
say that there’s nothing strange in that address.
Monsieur
is simply the honorary title bestowed on a king’s younger brother. But the Monsieur I’m pondering in this moment is that
other
fellow, the mastermind first mentioned by Tepac’s assassin. The Monsieur who revealed himself as only a voice and a title. Who sat behind a confessional screen and sent Herbaux on that deadly errand to Saint-Cloud. Sent him to kill a king.

And why has it taken me so long to see? That there is, in all of Paris, one
particular
Monsieur who would loathe the prospect of long-lost kings laying claims to the crown that will one day be his.

“Charles,” I whisper. “Turn away.”

“What?”

“Turn away.”

And as I fasten onto his arm and drag him away, a new fact, stark and plain, leaps out at me.

We’ve just presented ourselves to him.

“L
ET ME MAKE
sure I’ve got this right, Hector.”

I’m back in Vidocq’s office, and he’s reclining once more in his black leather armchair, wedging his shoes against the rim of his mahogany desk.

“The King’s brother,” he says, “the Comte d’Artois, has decided that a certain young man named Charles Rapskeller is really the long-lost Louis the Seventeenth. Rather than let this young fellow claim his rightful throne, he hires a pair of assassins. Scoundrels from the Parisian underworld who manage, in the way of scoundrels, to get the wrong man. Artois doesn’t know it, though, until yesterday afternoon when he just happens to drive by and see this same Charles Rapskeller staring out at him from beneath an ambassador’s wig….”

This is what’s changed between us. I no longer quail before his skepticism.

“Whether or not Charles is the king,” I say, “
someone
believes he is.
Someone
had Leblanc and Tepac killed. And if that’s the case, who would lose the most if Louis the Seventeenth came back to life?”

“Start with Louis the
Eighteenth
.”

“No.” I give my head a robust shake. “The King is old, he’s ill, he has no children of his own, he’s ready for his reward. It’s the Comte d’Artois who has the most at stake here. If
another
king were to rise up, a king capable of having children of his own, then Artois’ line is disinherited in a trice. And if Artois doesn’t go quietly, then France will be forced to choose between
two
monarchs. What’s to keep things from escalating into civil war? Which almost certainly would finish what the Revolution started. An end to monarchy, now and forever. I ask you…” And here I raise my eyes to his. “Is the Comte d’Artois the sort of man to take kindly to that prospect?”

Vidocq says nothing at first. He only cups his hands round his empty bowl of coffee, twirls it in quarter turns.

“Serious charges, Hector.”

“I know.”

In the next second, he’s pushing away the coffee bowl and slamming his hands down on the desk.

“I
like
it, Hector!”

“You mean you agree?”

“No, you’re brimful of shit, but who cares? You’re thinking like a policeman. When I remember what a timid little sod you were just a couple of weeks back, scared of your own
voice,
and now look at you, with your grand, beautiful theories! I couldn’t be prouder if—well, enough praise. Tell me where you left Monsieur Charles.”

“In bed.”

“Ohh, sleeps well, does he? Well, let him know from me, it’s early to rise tomorrow. The first test is at hand.”

I’
M CAREFUL NOT
to use the word
test
with Charles. Later, though, I won’t remember what I call it.
Outing,
maybe.
Lark
…
adventure
…

Well, at any rate, that’s the spirit in which he enters into things. It’s no trouble at all to shepherd him into the office of Vidocq’s secretary, Coco-Lacour, and to leave him there with nothing more than a deck of cards and a red ball for entertainment. I slip into Vidocq’s adjoining office, where the etching of François Villon has been removed to reveal a peephole, carved in the shape of an eye.

This particular orifice is scaled to Vidocq’s height, which means that the Baroness de Préval requires a footstool to reach the peephole, and even then, to see through it, she must rise an inch or two more on her slippered toes.

“Well, Madame?” says Vidocq, leading her back to earth.

She crosses slowly to the window, stares out at Sainte-Chapelle, ivory with sun. At last:

“What would you have me say, Monsieur?”

“No more than you care to say.”

Her shoulders give a delicate shrug. “I am loath to disappoint you,” she says, “but you must understand. A quarter of a century has passed since I laid eyes on the dauphin, and he was a mere boy at the time. Surely someone of your
indefatigable
nature, Monsieur, could find someone more suited to this task than I.”

“Ah, Madame, you do yourself a disservice. Were you not a bosom companion to the Princesse de Lamballe?”

She turns on him with a flash of fan. “I hadn’t supposed you to be a student of ancient history.”

Grinning, he claps his hands to his breast. “We brutes do require civilizing influences, Madame. Toward that end, I’ve begun acquiring art.”

“The police trade is more lucrative than I realized.”

“Loyalty has its rewards, yes. As it happens, my most recent acquisition came from the Galerie Barrault. Would you care to see?”

Stooping under his desk, he draws out a canvas, loosely wrapped in burlap, and lays it across his desk.

A trio of young women, captured in the very ripeness of their beauty. Their bodies are sheathed in cotton lawn. Their necks and shoulders burn moth-white. Violets lie strewn about their straw hats with bohemian dishabille.

“You can see the artist’s name right there,” says Vidocq. “Madame Vigée-Lebrun. Not the original oil, of course—Barrault would have charged a great deal more for that—but not without a certain interest, either. The figure in front, of course, is the Princesse de Lamballe. Lovely, wasn’t she? But perhaps, like me, you’re
most
struck by the woman positioned over the Princess’s left shoulder. As you can see, the artist has done her the distinct favor of portraying each iris in its true color. One blue, one brown.”

The Baroness’s hand trembles, yes, but the closer it comes to the canvas, the steadier it grows. Until it comes to rest, finally, not on her own long-ago reflection but on the seated figure of the Princesse de Lamballe.

“Paintings never did her justice,” says the Baroness.

Her hand draws slowly away.

“You are correct, Monsieur. She was my dear friend. She stayed on in Paris when all the rest of us left, for no other reason than that the Queen needed her. You may recall how her loyalty was rewarded.”

Vidocq bows his head, mumbles into the carpet. “It was a terrible episode….”

“Yes, the mob was unusually thorough in her case. They ravished her first. Then they set to tearing her apart, piece by piece. Her
head
—her beautiful head—was cut off and set on a pike.
Paraded
beneath the Queen’s window at the Temple.”

“Such a tragedy,” says Vidocq, letting a moment of silence unfold before once again picking up the thread. “I believe—am I correct in saying the Princess was superintendent of the royal household?”

“She was.”

“In which capacity she would have seen much of the royal children.”

“Of course.”

“And
you,
in your capacity as the Princess’s intimate…”

“…would have enjoyed no more entrée to the dauphin than any other member of court.” Frowning, she pulls her shawl round her neck. “Really, Monsieur, if you expect me to tell you that Louis the Seventeenth is standing in your antechamber, I’m afraid I cannot oblige you.”

“Perhaps,” says Vidocq, “you might oblige the memory of Monsieur Leblanc.”

Her eyes narrow ever so slightly. She crooks a finger round her mouth, then slowly releases it.

“There
is
something,” she allows. “Your young man—I noticed he has a habit of
passing
things. Between his feet. Balls and the like.”

“Yes,” says Vidocq. “What of it?”

“I mention it because it was an old habit of the dauphin’s. His mother used to admonish him.
If you keep that up, Charles, you’ll go cross-eyed!
No doubt she believed it, too. The Queen was always a credulous soul.” She pauses, startled to find herself smiling. “Well, it’s not an
uncommon
habit. Any boy might have picked up something like it.”

There is a note of genuine apology in her voice as she adds:

“I’m afraid I have nothing more I can tell you.”

She rearranges her shawl, her gloves, the line of her skirt. She nods to us. She makes straight for the door.

That, at least, is her intent, but then her petticoats shudder round her, and she begins to topple, like an elegant poplar.

We move as one, Vidocq and I, catching her on either side and walking her gently to the nearest armchair.

“Shall I fetch some vinegar, Madame?”

“No. Thank you.”

She looks down and finds her fan, still miraculously prized between her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “It all came flooding back. Talking of the Queen, I mean. The Princess. All those dead times.” A tiny groove of sweat wells up on her powdered forehead. “The women all in white and the men in their—their Florentine taffeta. Marvelous marble fountains. Perfumed water. Every night, a
concert spirituel
. Gluck, Piccinni….”

Just as she did in her shabby apartment on the Rue Férou, the Baroness extends her arms, begins to play an invisible keyboard.

“I wish I could tell you,” she says. “How beautiful it all was.”

“Not for everyone,” answers Vidocq, in the mildest of tones.

Her fingers fall gradually still. She says:

“I regret I cannot be of further use to you, Monsieur.”

“Your cooperation has been greatly appreciated, Madame. The Prefect will be duly apprised of it.”

“Ahh.”

A small laugh escapes her as she grips the arms of the chair and rises in a dry rustle.

“Monsieur,” she says. “Do you really wish to know who that young man is?”

“Of course.”

“Then there is but one person alive who can tell you.”

“Just so,” he answers, lowering his head the barest half inch. “The Duchesse d’Angoulême, the dauphin’s sister. Shall I convey her your respects, Madame?”

Etched on the Baroness’s face now is an uncanny echo of the smile preserved on that canvas, not six feet away. How many men must have crumbled before it.

“I must beg you to leave me to my obscurity,” she says.

She hesitates one last time, just as she reaches the office door.

“I’m sorry, Monsieur. Would you mind showing out the young man first? I fear one more encounter with my past will be the death of me.”