The Forbidden Rose (10 page)

“And so . . .” She loosed a single loop and opened her hands. Everything dropped away. She held only a limp string. The children made a sound of disappointment. “It is time to stop. Let us do it before the thread breaks and disaster comes. We play out the last game and we walk away and we do not begin again.”

That was how she told Crow not to return to Paris. The wagons were too easy to recognize, now that they had been betrayed. Crow’s part in La Flèche was done. She would not put these children in danger again. Not to save a hundred sparrows.

 

 

 

 

 

MADAME LET THE LAST OF THE PAPER BURN TO ASH in the saucer of her coffee cup before she spoke. “His name is William Doyle. He landed in France ten days ago. He is crafty. Knowledgeable. Very dangerous. He has come to put a stop to the assassinations in England.”

Madame’s sources were beyond reproach. If she said an English spy had come to France, then that was what had happened.

Justine waited silently while Madame poured coffee upon the ashes in the saucer and, with the back of the spoon, patiently destroyed all semblance of writing.

Madame said, “He must enter Paris. But it could be any day and through any gate. He might even circle the city and come from the east.”

Music came faintly from the pianoforte in the parlor. It was still full daylight, but men had already come to drink with the girls. They came earlier and earlier every day. There were not many salons in Paris where the wine flowed so freely and the wit was so unfettered. In a brothel men believed their words were not immediately reported to the Secret Police.

They were correct in that, and not correct. Madame decided which indiscretions would be carried to the Secret Police. She was one of its chief agents.

“If William Doyle is so unpunctual, it would be a great waste of time to send me to watch at one of the
barrières.
” Justine dared to speak so frankly to Madame. She was young, but she was not the least of Secret Police operatives. “Where shall I wait for him, this English spy?”

“I think . . . at the Hôtel de Fleurignac. De Fleurignac’s home. I have a great wish to know who comes and goes from that house. William Doyle will arrive there sooner or later. Here. Take this, please.” She held out the saucer.

A pitcher of clean water stood on the sideboard among the liqueurs and good wine. She poured the mess of coffee and ashes into the washbowl and rinsed the dish. She returned, drying the saucer with a soft cloth. Carefully, she set everything in place on the tray. She took it upon herself to anticipate the next request and poured new coffee. “The British are sure of this connection to de Fleurignac? Between the deaths and his visits to England?”

“It is Monsieur Doyle who has done that. He asked many skillful questions concerning the men who were killed and discovered the silly French scholar who studied each of them and filled his notebooks with their histories and spouted such absurd theories. Monsieur Doyle is entirely the best field agent of the British Service. I am gratified when our enemy sends their very best to do our work for us.”

She wishes me to understand what she is saying. To show that I am clever.
“William Doyle is not to be killed.”

“Do not be bloodthirsty, child. There are conventions in these matters. Be glad the British observe the old customs and do not commit slaughter among our own group. In any case, we will let him find de Fleurignac’s troublesome list and put a stop to the murders of young men. Perhaps he will even discover which Frenchmen loosed this atrocity upon the world. Then,” Madame sipped coffee delicately, “we will see what becomes of William Doyle.” She set the cup aside. “You must dress beautifully tonight. Wear the gown with gillyflowers and the blue sash. It becomes you immeasurably.”

For an instant . . . a brief instant . . . she was sick and afraid. Because a year ago dressing beautifully had meant she must entertain men, as a whore does. It had meant—

“Child, I did not mean to frighten you.” Madame’s hand was on her arm, reassuring. “Forgive me for being clumsy. You will not do that. Never anymore. I have promised. We attend the Opéra tonight. Only that. We will go, you and I and Citoyen Soulier. For your birthday.”

Joy, uncomplicated joy, filled her. Because she was safe and Madame had remembered the day for her. They would go to the play and laugh and then, perhaps, afterward Soulier would take them to the Boulevard des Italiens for ices.

“Will you buy me cakes? May I bring cakes home for Séverine?” She was impudent. If Madame worried that she had been dismayed by memories of her past, this would smooth the moment between them and make all well again.

“You must ask Soulier to buy sweets. He is the one with bottomless pockets. Now, off with you. I must dress and go downstairs before my women are induced to give themselves away entirely for free. I will send Babette to you to put ribbons and curls in your hair so all the young men will fall in love with you.”

Justine went, dancing a little on the steps to the attic, to tell Séverine. It is not every day one becomes thirteen and goes to the playhouse in the company of the chief spies of France. She would wear a wide blue sash and perhaps drink absinthe at the café, if Madame was not attentive. Tomorrow she would watch the Hôtel de Fleurignac. Perhaps next week she would be allowed to kill an English spy.

Oh, but life was good.

SHE WAS SAFE. BERTILLE’S HOUSE WAS OVER THERE, across the stream. Sanctuary and friendship and a shoulder to cry on. The practicality of money and fresh clothing and help to get to Paris. She could relax.

Marguerite didn’t remember the name of this rivulet that wound past Bertille’s house, but it was wide enough one had to cross it stepping from flat rock to flat rock. Or one could splash through. The donkeys did not like the idea of splashing through.

“There’s leeches.” Adrian stood in the middle of the stream, facing the pair. “Big, ugly leeches the size of my thumbs. You keep standing here and they’ll sneak up and suck your blood till you turn white.” This time, when he pulled the reins, they followed. It was a strange relationship he maintained with the donkeys.

Bertille’s snug stone cottage was set between her husband’s workshop and the vegetable garden. A rough shed looked down from the hill above. The front of the house was bright with roses and hollyhocks. Brown chickens wandered the brick walkways, occupied with small bugs.

The chickens in the yard told her Bertille was still here. No warning had reached her. She must pack and go into hiding at once.

“That is Bertille’s house.” She was informative to LeBreton. To Adrian also, if he was listening. “With the cooperage to the side, you see? Where the barrels are stacked. She married a cooper, Alain Rivière. He is a dour and silent man and given to long gaps in any conversation one might hold with him, but Bertille likes him.” Bertille had been her nursemaid, then her
femme de chambre
, and, always, her friend.

“You think they have fifty livres?” LeBreton sounded skeptical.

“Oh, yes.”

Because Bertille was the Dove, the oldest of old hands in La Flèche, a woman who had made hundreds of journeys, leading sparrows through the dark of the streets of Paris, she would have the pouch of coin everyone in La Flèche was given. Five hundred livres, all in coin. Enough to bribe oneself free, if captured. Enough to pay for an escape, even as far as England.

“I’ll be well taken care of by my friends,” she said. “And you’ll be paid.”

Inside the cooperage yard, behind the wooden gates, Alain’s big cart stood, its poles pointed up into the air. The cart hauled barrels to the makers of cider and the distillers of calvados brandy for miles around. It also led a secret life of ingenious hidden compartments and counterfeit barrels and false piles of wood. Of long, clandestine journeys to the coast. Ordinary at first glance, extraordinary upon closer inspection. It was a cart not unlike Citoyen LeBreton himself.

LeBreton looked over the house and yard, to the fields beyond. He was, she thought, a man who saw the fly upon every leaf. His face remained placid. “It’s quiet.”

The air lay heavy, humming faintly. In the late afternoon, no one moved anywhere within sight. The chickens of the dooryard were lackadaisical. No dog barked. Even the cows on the hill were motionless, as if they had been painted there.

Unease tickled under her skin. “Nothing is out of place. I am fond of quiet.”

“Not this much quiet.” Without making it obvious, he drew a circle with two fingers of his right hand. Adrian stopped talking. “If they’re looking out the window, they’ve seen us. Any reason your friend wouldn’t come out giving glad cries of welcome?”

“She is not expecting me, certainly. She might not know me at this distance. I arrive, always, in a carriage. They would wonder—”

“They’ll be wondering more if we stand here talking.” He made a quick hook with fingers that chopped down. Another signal to Adrian. “Let’s go see your friend.”

They followed the wall of the cooperage. LeBreton’s strides were long and she had to push to keep up. She said, “You are right to be wary. I will go ahead alone. You will wait back there with—”

“No.”

She had not yet learned the knack of giving this man orders. He was like a large rock rolling down a steep hill. Once started, difficult to control. “If there is a problem, it makes sense that I—”

“If there’s a problem, it’s looking out the window right now and it knows I’m here.” They passed the workshop gate where the ruts of wheel tracks turned in. “Your friends have a good broad view over the countryside.”

It was one of the reasons Alain liked this house. One could see visitors coming.

In the front garden, chickens scattered themselves out of LeBreton’s way. The shutters of the house were closed. That was not amazing on such a warm afternoon. But Bertille did not come to the door and fling it open and rush down the path toward her.

She must be putting the baby to bed. That was why everything was quiet. She would come running in a minute, laughing.

LeBreton clumped up the path, scuffling his boots on the stone. Being loud. He banged the door. But only once. It jerked open before his fist landed again.

A soldier in full uniform stood in the doorway. The muzzle of his gun rose. Pointed at LeBreton.

Blue coat, white breeches, white shoulder belts, red cuffs. Garde Nationale
.
Loyal revolutionaries from Paris. Not a local gendarme.

I have walked us into disaster.
Cold washed over her. Fear gripped her breath.

Behind the
garde,
Bertille’s cottage was in chaos. Broken dishes, chairs overturned, something—flour—sprayed in plumes on the stone floor with dozens of boot marks. Bertille sat at the dark wood table, her arms tight around Charles, the two-year-old. He sat in her lap, pressing his face into the white of her apron. She was alive. Unhurt.

I have done this to her. I have dragged them all into danger. I did not protect her.
Where were Alain and the new baby? There was an apprentice boy. Where was he?

“Ahhh . . .” LeBreton rubbed the back of his neck. His huge, tough body was awkward. His expression, sheepish. He had become the bewildered bumpkin. “You don’t want to be doing that, Suzette.”

She had taken a step forward, without thinking, to go to Bertille. The gun swung and pointed toward her.

The
garde
was young and scared, his finger on the trigger. He’d shoot LeBreton if any of them—herself, Bertille, LeBreton—made the smallest mistake.

She must be harmless. “What has happened here? Why do you have guns? You should not bring guns into the house. Have you no manners?” She would chatter and babble like a fool. She would be silly. A soldier might turn his back on a silly woman.