The Forbidden Rose (6 page)

“Lavender soap.”

The boy pulled the cloth flat between his fists, stretched out. “A handprint on the back. Somebody grabbed her when he was bloody.”

“And?”

“She got away. Citoyen Bloody Hand got the worst of that meeting, didn’t he?” Hawker looked off in the direction of the orangerie. “In the village they say one of the men from Paris got hurt during the fire. A knife slash. She doesn’t look the type to knife a man, somehow.”

“The best ones don’t.”

“You think she’s in it with her father? Part of the killings?”

“Well, somebody’s hunting down young officers and murdering them. It’s his list. She could be helping in a loyal, daughterly way. She’s got the brains for it.” Maggie was quiet in a corner, either sleeping or pretending to. “I wonder if she’s got the ruthlessness. I’ll go run a few errands. Always something to do when you have a woman to take care of.” He tapped the nightdress. “Burn this. Stir the ash. Toss the pearl buttons down the well.”

“I’ll make it disappear.”

“Don’t take your eyes off her. Don’t let her leave. Don’t hurt her. Don’t wave a knife in her face and terrify her.”

Deep irony. “I’m not the one she’s scared of.”

 

 

A pebble hit her arm. She heard it skip and rattle on the flagstones. She woke immediately. She had not flung herself deeply into sleep, in any case.

She faced a low, whitewashed wall. Above that, broken windows. She was in the orangerie. She lay on straw, on the floor, wrapped in a rough blanket.

The second small pebble bounced next to her with a clear ping. With it came, “Do not move. They can see you.” The words formed themselves in the patting of the rain, a whisper made of water. “If the wind is right, you can smell roses in the garden.”

The Crow’s messenger. At last.

Beyond the empty windows the bushes and trees were indistinguishable in the gray evening. The voice was almost as muted. Again came, “If the wind is right, you can smell roses in the garden.”

The fire made its accustomed small noises. She did not hear the boy servant breathing or turning pages. She turned a cautious inch to look. There was no one within the circle of light of the fire. No one in the open space of the orangerie, anywhere. No one in the shadowed patterns beyond the window.

She gave the reply, softly. “The roses are lovely, but it is forbidden to pick them.”

Leaves crackled, as if a body moved on the other side of the wall. “Ah. You are the one, then. You are Finch.” It was a child’s voice. “I was afraid you’d have the sense to be gone.”

“I expected you three days ago. You see the disasters here.” Marguerite took hold of the blanket. “I will come—”

“Stay where you are. The two men have stopped under a tree, not so far away. They are watching.”

The child was right. LeBreton would have his eye on her. He was not the man to let her just stroll away into the garden.

The whisper came again, with a child’s simplicity. “I do not need to see your face, Citoyenne Finch.”

The men and women and—yes—the children of La Flèche did not indulge in curiosity. No one could be forced to tell what they took care not to know. “That is wise.”

“I am entirely wise. I was watching from the woods when you were captured by that man. Do you want me to help you escape? It should not be impossible. You can travel with us, if you want.”

The men who burned the chateau were scouring the countryside for her. She would not lead them to the wagons of the Gypsies. To Crow’s family. “Thank you, no.”

“As you wish.” The shrug was unmistakable in that voice. The boy—surely no one would send a girl child on this errand—said, “I would not like to disengage myself from such a large man, entirely on my own. But Crow says you are wily in the extreme. Doubtless you have a plan.”

“Several. I am weaving them even as we speak.”

“Then I will deliver my message and go, before it is too dark to find my way through the woods. I am charged to say this—‘Finch, I saw your signal. I can’t go back the way I came. Skylark is on the run, with soldiers after him. Dragoons are stopping the wagons of the Rom everywhere west of Rouen, looking for me. It’s not safe for me to hold the sparrows. What are your orders?’ ”

It was worse than she’d dreamed. La Flèche was in disorder all across Normandy. Wren, Skylark, Crow. All unmasked. What was happening in Paris? How many of her friends were already arrested? Or dead?

“Tell Crow this—‘You are on your own, my old friend. I sent Heron away yesterday with the last of my sparrows. There’s no one left here. We are all scattered and in flight.’ ” She rubbed her forehead. “Tell Crow to go north and west, all the way to St. Grue. He knows the roads to the coast better than I do. I can’t advise him.”

“He will not like this. We do not—”

“There’s no choice. Say to him, ‘Pass the word everywhere. The chain is broken. Everyone is ordered into hiding. Send the sparrows westward as best you can.’ ”

The sparrows still in Paris—men and women condemned to the guillotine, hiding, struggling to get out of France—would have to wait.

“We cannot—”

“There is no other way. Now listen. We may have very little time.” She kept her voice to a bare thread. “At St. Grue, one mile south of the village, there is a shrine at the crossroads. The Lady’s face is broken. You will leave three white pebbles there, in a row. Pebbles the size of a baby’s fist. Camp in the dunes. Grebe will find you.”

Grebe was the last link to the smuggler who carried sparrows across the Channel. If Grebe had been taken, God help them all. “Let me say this again—”

“It is not necessary. My memory is excellent.” The brush outside did not quiver, but she felt a sense of readiness behind it. “You have given me a great basket of news to carry. You are sure you will not come with me to the wagons?”

“I am sure.”

“Then go with all good luck, Citoyenne Finch. I think we will all need a great deal of luck in these next days.”

No sound marked the transition, but she knew she was alone. “Be safe, child.”

She rolled over, to keep an eye upon happenings inside the orangerie. Silence gathered around her, with the smallest murmur at the bottom of it, like a cricket deep down in the well. She had lied about one thing. She had no clever plan for disengaging herself from Citoyen LeBreton.

After a time, the boy Adrian returned. She let her lids open, just a crack. She could see him sitting cross-legged next to the fire, his head bent, a book across his lap, his fingers tracing the line of words. He moved his lips when he read.

He limped from some injury. Perhaps she could outrun him.

His eyes shifted. They looked at each other.

He said, “I wouldn’t try it.”

“As you say.” She lay watching smoke coil and uncoil in the upper reaches of the ceiling, piled into shapes by the wind, lit red from below. LeBreton’s servant boy went back to reading Lalumière.

She had taken the name of La Flèche from Lalumière . . . where he wrote of the wild geese, rising from the winter marsh, all at once, all of them knowing when they must leave and where they must go, because it was natural for them. They made an arrow in the sky, flying toward safety.

La Flèche. The Arrow.

LeBreton did not come back to the orangerie. He had wandered into the dripping evening to see to some concern of his own.

He looks at my breasts when he thinks I will not notice.
After a while she slept.

IT WOULD BE A DIFFICULT DAY, AND IT WAS STARTING before the sun came up.

Marguerite sat on the edge of the fishpool and pulled the comb LeBreton had given her—a man’s comb, plain but finely made—through snarls, not being gentle with herself. It was a relief to accomplish something concrete. Her braid was heavy between her fingers when she wove it, twist by twist. Her hair smelled of smoke.

LeBreton came from the orangerie into the enclosed garden of the fishpond, deliberately making noise to let her know he was coming.

He carried a coarse towel and a roll of linen clothing. “There’s time to wash. The boy’s still currying the beasts.”

“I will groom myself while he grooms the donkeys. There is an inherent symmetry about mornings. Have you ever noticed?” She took the clothes from him. They smelled of fresh washing and ironing. “That is a chemise. It is an odd thing for a man like you to carry about with him.”

“I stole it last night from that hut down by the river.”

“From the laundry maids.” He had made a good guess of her size, had he not? He must have sorted through clean laundry from half the village to find clothing that would fit so well. Guillaume LeBreton was a man of unusual skills. “I think I have become a receiver of questionable goods. Still, I am glad to wear something clean.”

“I left a coin.” He set the towel on the wide lip of the fish basin. There was more clothing wrapped in it. A clean fichu. An apron. She would wear borrowed linen from the skin out.

He stood, looking formidable. Behind him, dawn curved like a shell. The wide granite pool was white as the moon.

It was cold as the moon when she dipped her hand beneath the surface of the reflection. “Will you tell me what you plan to do with me? I am naturally curious.”

“We’ll talk about it when we’re on the road. I want to get away from here. Soap.” LeBreton laid it beside the towels. A metal box of soft and greasy-looking soap. “Probably not what you’re used to.”

“It is lovely. Thank you.”

“Don’t get any in the pool.”

Fish were poisoned by soap. She liked it that LeBreton knew that, and cared. It is in such small things that men reveal themselves.

Goldfish came and nibbled at her fingers. She had named them all when she was a child. Moses—because he parted the waters—and Blondine and fat, lazy Rousseau. Once the noisy Jacobin riffraff took themselves off, Mayor Leclerc would come from the village with tubs to steal her fish for his own pond. He had coveted them for many years. She hoped he would hurry. They should not be neglected in this fashion.

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” LeBreton took himself off to the orangerie.

It was dawn, the beginning of a new day. It was not raining upon her. She had eaten good food and drunk good coffee. She had succeeded in sending a message to Crow. Her fish would go to a good home. She was filled with a mood of optimism.

On the other side of the wall, in the orangerie, she could hear LeBreton sweeping glass back into place across the floor where it would look natural and well scattered. The ashes of their fire had been tidied away, the straw thrown into the stable. There would be no sign that anyone had spent the night here.

The ties of her skirt had tangled into hard knots. She made herself patient, picking and tugging till the strings were free and her skirt fell to the flagstones. Her stays were already loosened to sleep in. She tugged them looser still and pulled them over her head. She slipped the shift from her shoulders and let it fall.

She wore nothing at all. It was strange to be unclothed under the open sky.

Her reflection looked up at her from the fish basin, more pale than the sky, rippling in the circles that spread where fish came to lip at the surface. The rim of the basin was gritty under her buttocks, with little puddles in every unevenness. The wind of the new day scraped her skin like a dull knife. She put her feet in the water. The slippery film of mud at the bottom of the pool crept up between her toes. Cold. Immeasurably cold.

Quickly, before she lost her courage, she wet half the towel, rubbed water down her arms, over her breasts and her stomach, hissing every breath in and out. Then up and down her thighs. She washed every scratch, every cut. There was not one of them without a sting. It was not helpful to remind herself that she was the descendent of warriors.

Moses and Rousseau and the other great rulers of the pool held themselves aloof, but many small fish came to nibble at her calves and ankles and the knuckles of her hands with little bites, like kittens.

Citoyen Giant Bear spoke to his servant in a distant grumble.

Enough. Enough. She was done. She pulled her legs from the water. Naked, except for an extensive covering of goose bumps, she stepped into her sabots. The chemise Citoyen LeBreton had stolen was clean but old. It had been mended unskillfully. She shook it out, becoming acquainted with its many faults and limitations.

There was no warning.

LeBreton was upon her. He slammed into her and carried her with him in a great angry rush, backward, against the wall of the garden. His hand covered her nose, her mouth, and she could not breathe.