The Forbidden Rose (19 page)

The houses of the quartier showed blank faces to the street, keeping their private lives private. Passages led to courtyards inside, everything closed off by wide, high, double doors, locked tight and guarded by suspicious concierges.

British Service headquarters was partway down Rue de la Verrerie. The gate was painted blue.

He was twenty-nine years old. He’d been British Service for a dozen years, an independent agent for six
.
This was the first time he’d been a damn fool for a woman.

The small door in the big double gate opened a crack.

“It’s me. And this one.” He tugged the boy up alongside, showing him. The porter didn’t mind if agents brought wild tigers to the door, but he had to see them first.

The door pulled back. The porter stood aside. They walked through a section of square dark overhang, into the courtyard. Dulce and Decorum clattered along behind.

It was quiet in here, but even this early in the morning the house was awake. The shutters on the kitchen windows were open, the sashes up. White curtains showed inside, swaying the tiniest amount. A broom leaned in the open door on the far side of the court, where the stairs ran up. Trails of water darkened the flagstones between the stone sink and the big pots of petunias and lilies set around the walls. Pools of water lay under the red geraniums on the windowsills. Dulce strolled over and started eating geraniums.

“I thought it’d be bigger, the way you talk about it.” Hawker looked around, probably considering ways to burgle the place. Nothing like a lad with a trade.

Everyone here, behind every window that overlooked this courtyard, was British Service. His people. If there was any safe haven in France, this was it.

He was expected. The kitchen door opened. Helen Carruthers, Head of Section for France, known here as Hélène Cachard—old, skinny, straight-backed, white-haired, dressed in raven black, dour as always, strode out. Her shadow—Althea—round and rosy and wrapped in a red-striped dress, followed, beaming.

“You have survived, I see.” Carruthers reached up, put a hand on each of his shoulders. Gripped and released. Stepped back. “We heard about the work in London. Not badly done.”

Which was the same as a crushing embrace and a hearty handshake, coming from Carruthers. He wondered what she’d heard about the job in England. Most of it, probably.

He might as well get the next part over with. “Adrian Hawkins. Hawker.”

Carruthers could make silence a weapon. She could roll it up and bludgeon you with it and bury you in the garden. He was surprised the flowers didn’t curl up and turn brown, the cold was so heavy in the air.

She said to Hawker, “You are not welcome here.”

“I didn’t ask to come.” The boy used his best French. Courtly, aristocratic, polite. “Madame.”

Carruthers sliced pieces off the boy with her eyes. “I have no choice but to house you. You will stay out of my sight, do you understand?” She raised her voice and beckoned a young woman over. “Claudine, take this . . . this rat to the room in the attic and leave it there. See that it remains quiet until it is needed. Other than that, I do not want to know of its existence. Guillaume, with me, please.”

 

 

HAWKER climbed the stairs to the attic, a pace behind Claudine, glad to get away from the wrought-iron wolf-bitch downstairs.

Claudine, though. He could see himself getting along with Claudine like a house afire. She was plain as a pine board, but with a nice wriggle to her hips like she was used to rocking that cradle. A knowing one, Claudine, and probably a good toss.

He loved women. It’d be a grim world it weren’t for the women in it, and ugly girls were the warm ones. The soft hammocks. The good friends. Who’d chase after pretty when there were women like this?

Claudine looked him over when they got to the top of the stairs. “Your room.”

She was wondering whether to treat him like a boy or a man. He could have told her. “You are kind, mademoiselle.”

“Citoyenne,” she corrected primly. “I am Citoyenne Claudine. We are careful,
mon petit bonhomme
, to be excellent citizens of the Republic. You have all that you need? We will bring your belongings to you, later, when your animals are unpacked.”

I do not envy the man who gets stuck with that job.
He hoped nobody inventoried the counterfeit they’d be taking out of those baskets. He’d helped himself to a few bundles.

“There is water in the pitcher,” Claudine said. “You may wash later at the pump in the courtyard.”

That sounded like a suggestion. The British Service was about universally in love with washing. He was getting used to it.

The room had curtains and a rag rug on the floor. Looked like he wouldn’t have to share the bed. Clean sheets. A bureau with a china basin and pitcher on it. And towels. Folded white towels. This was a bloody palace.

It smelled clean. He robbed houses that smelled like this. He didn’t live in one.

“Nice.” He’d been expecting a basement, with the possibility of chains. They knew what he was. What he’d done.

“Althea prepares the rooms. You must thank her. And Citoyenne Cachard, who ordered this for you.”

Probably some trap to it then. He kept his face blank. In this household, Claudine was likely to be a woman of many talents. She might be the one they’d send to smother him in his sleep. That added a certain—what would Lazarus call it?—a certain piquancy to the situation.

“You will stay here till Citoyenne Cachard calls for you.” Her eyes danced. “If you are patient, perhaps I will even feed you.”

She checked to see there was water in the pitcher before she left and locked the door behind her.

The longer he lived, and he’d lived twelve or thirteen years now, the less he understood about women.

He was on his own. It behooved him . . . And wasn’t that a fine word? Behooved. He wasn’t sure what it meant but he’d heard Doyle use it. It behooved him to show a little initiative.

The window had a drop to the stones below that would kill a man a couple times over, doing a right painful and thorough job of it. But the roof was in reach overhead.
Once you’re on the roof, the house is yours.
Lazarus said that. Unlike some of what that bastard said, that was golden truth.

Lazarus got him into this mess. It was Lazarus sent him to search Meeks Street, British Service headquarters in London. When he got into trouble, Lazarus gave him over to the Service, easy as kiss yer hand.

It started smooth, a caper like any other. He’d come down the chimney, headfirst, hanging like a spider on a silk thread. Always some fool lighting a fire in the fireplace, but this one had been out for a while. The bricks were cooled down enough he could stand to touch them. But it was always hard to breathe in chimneys. Hurt his lungs.

Light came up from the bottom, a gray square of it. They’d left a glim lit on some table when they went to bed.

He let out rope. Let out some more. The last dozen feet were hot enough to roast a haddock. He did them fast. Poked his head out. Saw an empty room. Good. Now it was just not knocking the fire dogs over when he climbed out.

He wiped his feet on the hearth rug. No point tracking ashes all over the house. Lazarus had drawn him a map of the rooms. Guesses mostly. Galba’s office was in the back corner. Galba was Head of the whole damn British Service. If there was papers about Lazarus making deals with the French, they’d be in Galba’s desk.

Find the papers. Get back up the chimney. Leg it out of here. He wasn’t supposed to kill nobody.

Not his fault Galba walked in on him.

Claudine’s sabots clicked to the bottom of the stairs. The courtyard down below was empty. He went out the window. A tight fit around the shoulders. He was putting on muscle.

He balanced on the windowsill with all that flat and hard waiting down below, hanging to the cracks in the stone with his fingertips. Holding on and reaching up to the roof, both at the same time. All a little tricky, that bit. Then he pulled himself up and over the edge of the roof. It was his roof now.

Good job.
If he didn’t say a word of praise to himself, who was going to?

There was nobody outside to take any notice of him. He crawled along till he could hear Doyle talking in one of the rooms below. Doyle and that woman Carruthers.
Let’s go see what they have to say.

Knowing things was like picking up diamonds and rubies off the street. Made him feel rich. It might even keep him alive long enough to see fourteen.

The drainpipe that ran down the inner corner of the building, into the courtyard, turned out to be sturdy enough to hold him. He let himself down a dozen feet, bracing against the corner wall, leaving some skin behind. His left knee was giving him trouble again. He didn’t take any account of it.

Then he could hear.

“. . . rabid little weasel. I’ll wring his neck myself if you’re too squeamish.”

The Old Trout thought she was going to kill him. Not likely.

He couldn’t pick all the words out when Doyle answered. “. . . falling into bad habits.” Too bad he couldn’t hear who was falling into what bad habits. Everybody, probably. “. . . we need . . .”

The woman was talking again. “You see only the English side of it. There were seven in the last six months in Austria. Two of them at the Theresian Military Academy. Not into their twenties. The top of their class.” He could hear the chink of china on china. They were sipping tea. “It’s obscene.”

The Service was worried about Austrians. Seemed like de Fleurignac made himself a couple of lists. Not just the one for England.

He missed Doyle’s answer. Then the old woman was talking. “. . . resources. We’re keeping low to the ground while the French guillotine each other. But, certainly I can assign men to watch the de Fleurignac woman.”

“. . . reporting to me. I want them in place today. They follow her every time she puts a foot outside the house. I need . . .”

Easy enough to know what Doyle needed. And wasn’t that a pocketful of irony? A man like Doyle could reach out and take anything he wanted. He didn’t let himself take that woman.

They talked too low for him to hear. Doyle mentioned the counterfeit in the baskets, saying it was a relief to get it off his hands. Then Carruthers said, “It is not my first priority, but it will give me great pleasure to strangle the life out of that poisonous reptile you’ve brought among us.”

That was him. A rabid weasel and a reptile, too. He was a man of parts, wasn’t he?

A long rumble from Doyle. “. . . take more than that to kill Galba . . . recovered except he can’t play that damned violin of his and . . .” More words he couldn’t hear, and finally, “. . . is mine. Ask first. I have plans for him.”

It was time to hike off. He felt the itch of it. Any thief who didn’t get that feeling didn’t live long. Lazarus said his instincts were good. They told him to shove off.

He could climb up, back to that room. Or he could head down, to the courtyard, and over the wall into Paris.

That was what Doyle would call a foregone conclusion.

He slipped, hand over hand, to the ground. He was flat to the wall by the privy, well hid, when Doyle stuck his head out the window and looked around.
Not bad, Mister Doyle. You are one of the best I’ve ever seen.

This house had more holes than a sieve. He was out of it and on the Rue de la Verrerie in three minutes. He walked off, whistling one of the songs he’d heard today. The song was about killing people.

Hell of a city, Paris.

 

 

“I don’t see him.” Doyle let the curtain loose. “But he’s out there behind the shed. You owe me that louis.”

Carruthers grimaced. “Crawled down the wall like a lizard. Nasty little monster. I’ll admit I heard nothing.”

“You can check his room if you want. He won’t be there.” He thumbed a roll open and stuffed hard cheese inside. Held it while he gulped down his tea.

“He can’t be trusted, just because he was handed over to you. You know that.”

“He wasn’t handed over. I won him in a card game.”

“He’s planning to slit your throat one night, while you’re sleeping.”

“Then he’ll do it. He hasn’t tried yet.” He scooped sugar lumps out of the dish on the tray and tucked them into the pocket in his breeches. “Right now, I think he’s going to lead me to the man who brought the de Fleurignac list to London. He’s out looking for something at any rate. I have to go. Who runs La Flèche? Do we know?”

Carruthers raised an eyebrow. “The Paris side is run by a botanist at the Jardin des Plantes. Jean-Paul Béclard. In Normandy, it’s a woman. The Finch.”

“Then Marguerite de Fleurignac is the Finch. I watched her hand out orders to all and sundry across the countryside. I’ll tell you about it when I get back.”

“In detail.” Carruthers collected every secret that walked through France. Including his. “A woman of the old Normandy aristocracy. It makes sense. Yes. The de Fleurignacs have always done precisely as they pleased.”

“Helen, I need to know she’s safe. This isn’t just the job.”

He got a searching look. “I’ll keep her safe.”

Four words. From Carruthers, that was all he needed. “I’ll leave that to you. I want Pax with me.”

“He’s yours. I’ve already told him.”

His hat was on the table by the door. A glance out the window said Pax was in the courtyard, waiting, with the door to the street open. “If my rat comes back alone, don’t kill him.”

“If he comes back.”

“Always that chance.”

“Do you honestly think you can make something of that evil little animal? It’s unwise to adopt baby scorpions. They grow to be venomous.”