This is the second novel in the series the Toronto Public Library has dubbed "The French Intrigues," a name I'm rather pleased with. It is not quite a sequel to A Poisoned Prayer, but it's set in the same world, involves some of the same characters, and takes place just a couple of years after the events of that first novel. (Does that make it a sequel? I still don't think so.)
Chapter One begins below the fold.
Blue
Elephants
Robert, chevalier de Vimoutiers, hefted the purse he had hung from his belt and exhaled his relief at having escaped unscathed. His skill as a card-player—or, more likely, his luck—seemed to continue to improve and he wondered how much longer it would be before his luck ran out or his friends realized how often he won lately. Perhaps the two are really the same thing, he thought, letting the purse hang back down again. Its weight was a pleasant balance to the weight of the épée he wore on his left side.
He was still going to tell Maman that he was out of funds, though he might wait until just a few days before his allowance was due. It wouldn’t be fair to her to make her think he was becoming independent of her, poor woman.
“Which way did he go?”
The voice was familiar, and came from the front door of Respire’s gaming house. That didn’t make it any less unpleasant to hear, and Robert stepped sideways into the deeper shadows of the port-cochère. “Vimoutiers!” the voice shouted. “You won’t get away easily, you know.” Laughter burst out around the declaration, and a cat-call or two. “It’s not fair, you lucky ass—you have to give us a fair chance to win our money back.”
I suppose they’ve realized it now, he thought. Striding into the street he began to look for a locked door—or gateway deep enough in which to hide from over-eager friends.
* * * *
Victoire breathed a soft prayer, and the intensity of her God-light dropped until she could hardly see Hachette on the other side of the stable. The gaps in the door- and window-frames meant that more than the faintest light would be visible from the street outside, and she didn’t want to attract attention to what she and the boy were doing here in the middle of the night.
The dense, sweet smell of hay and manure was at once strange and reassuring, triggering a faint memory of the crude pleasures of the trip she had once made over the Alps, to and back from the Italian lands of the Holy Roman Emperor. And the feel of the cloth under her fingers was exciting, promising wealth that would bring intense pleasure even if past experience argued that pleasure wouldn’t last long.
“Thank God for Luc and his Apostles,” she said. “They’ve delivered right on schedule, and I count twelve bundles including this one.” She looked up at Hachette. “Sometimes there is honesty among thieves.” Hachette grinned.
“Let’s start breaking up these bundles,” she told him. This stable, north of the Palais Cardinal on the Right Bank, had proved itself a safe enough temporary hiding place for the smuggled cloth she dealt in, but she always moved the bundles on as quickly as she could to the old house she had bought for her gang. The house was safer if only because there was always somebody there. Most loads—she ordered two a year—she had moved out of the stable within two nights of arrival. This time she was a day late in starting, but that was the fault of the weather, which had been hot, humid, and oppressive even at night.
“Show me what we got this time,” Hachette said. “Please?” Hachette was twelve years old, going on thirty; this was his twelve-year-old side.
She smiled, nodded, and knelt down to cut open a bundle. Inside were bolts of painted Indian cotton, wrapped in wax-coated linen to protect them from moisture; she unwrapped one of the bolts and increased the light around them so Hachette could see.
“What are those?”
“Elephants,” she told him. “Giant creatures that could squash you the way you’d squash a beetle.”
“Wonderful.” He almost sounded wistful. “What colour do you think that is?”
“Really hard to tell right now, Hachette, but I think it’s blue.”
“Do elephants come in blue in real life?”
“Do humans?” She smiled.
“They might.” He knelt down, facing her. “Show me what you’re going to do with them.”
“Can’t you wait until we start doing the work? I can’t really show you until Catherine has worked her thread into the cloth.”
“I want to see it first. And you don’t have to wait for Catherine. I’ve seen you make the cloth dance, to show Catherine what she has to do before she even picks up a needle.”
“Good God but you can be stubborn, Hachette.” Well, a quick dance wouldn’t take too long. She bent her head, closed her eyes, and began to pray, wrapping wisps of prayer around the image of the dancing beast in her mind.
After a moment she heard him giggle. Opening her eyes again she saw one of the elephants—or the shadow of the beast on the cloth—dancing on its hind legs. That’s a nice effect, she thought. Must tell Catherine about it. “There,” she said as the dancing elephant faded into the dark. “Satisfied? Now will you start moving these bolts into hiding?”
He nodded. “That was good, Victoire. Thank you.” Evidently satisfied, he set to work. As Victoire opened each bundle he helped her pull it apart into its component linen-wrapped bolts of cloth, each small enough for even Victoire to carry. As each bolt came free from a bundle, Victoire muttered over it a brief prayer to protect it from the smells emanating from the stable’s regular inhabitants. Then Hachette dragged it across the stable, wooden sabots occasionally thumping when they encountered wood or stone set into the stable’s floor of packed earth. Victoire worked to the rhythm of Hachette’s steps and the sounds of him tucking bolts in hiding places built into the dark end of each stall.
“That’s everything stowed away except these elephants,” Hachette said as he knelt beside the first bolt they’d opened. “Is it all elephants?”
“No. Where’s the fun in having it all the same?” Fun. She sometimes wondered if she found this work more exciting than was healthy. “Though I do think my favourite cloth is—” She stiffened, then looked to the door. “What was that?”
She was on her feet before she’d finished the question, and Hachette was right behind her.
“Shit,” Hachette said. He’d dropped to his knees and was looking through one of the bigger gaps between door and frame. “There’s someone out there. And he’s waving to someone. God, it’s Inspector Grenier.”
Victoire didn’t think; she had prepared herself for this even though she’d hoped she would never need it. Grabbing the bolt of cloth, she ran back to the far end of the stable. She threw open the hidden rear door.
“Run,” she told Hachette.
* * * *
Blue elephants. I am going to the Bastille for the sake of blue elephants.
Victoire felt the soles of her boots skip and slide across the cobbles as she turned the corner, and for a horrifying moment the glamour that made them appear as sabots shimmered with threatened failure. “There! Up that way!” someone shouted, and she realized that she had never considered the need to disguise the chance that a hobnail might strike a spark on the cobbles, something no sabot could ever do. Make a note of that for next time, she thought to herself. If there is a next time.
She ducked down the first street she came to. It wasn’t on her planned escape route, but right now taking a direct route mattered less than confusing the policemen chasing her. Besides, she knew where she was going and there were eight different routes to that doorway. When she had first contemplated this enterprise, Victoire had spent weeks analyzing every step of the routes she might need to take though night-time Paris. She could find her way to that door blindfolded if she had to.
Victoire paused in an alleyway just a stone’s throw from the Tuileries Palace, listening for sounds of pursuit. Steadying herself, getting her breathing back under control, she fixed in her mind her location, and the various routes to her intended hiding-place. The night air was warm and damp, and the city stank of a summer that had outlived its welcome. She was, she knew, contributing to the stink; running on such a warm, humid night had made her sweat like a blacksmith. At least she seemed to be safe now: the bulk of the palace was nearly as dark as the sky behind it with the emperor and his family not yet returned from climates cooler than this. Though it was now September it remained as hot as August had been, and anyone who could afford to was still well north of Paris.
She thought she might be safe for at least a few minutes, which would be enough time to hide the cotton she’d been carrying when she and Hachette fled the stable. Spotting a small gap between two buildings, she set the bundle into it. Then she prayed, weaving a glamour that would prevent anyone from seeing anything other than an extension of one of the walls. The prayer was stubborn, taking much longer to come together than it should have. She was, she knew, tired, but it shouldn’t have been this hard. This has never happened to you before, she reminded herself as she resumed her journey.
The shouts of her pursuers seemed to be fainter. It was a good thing the archers of the Paris police were more enthusiastic than professional; smarter policemen would have kept silent as they searched, rather than betray their positions in this way. Smarter policemen wouldn’t have given her even the small opportunity she’d had to escape the stable before they reached it. Still, Victoire decided it wasn’t safe enough to risk a main street. She continued to use alleys and small, dirt-paved side streets as she made her way east, in the direction of the Place Imperial, toward the aristocratic neighbourhood called The Swamp—the Marais—and her intended hiding-place. The eastern edge of the city was far away from her true destination; the houses in the Marais were rich and large; and nobody would think of looking in one of them for the hard-bitten street tough she had prayed herself into resembling. One of them had a courtyard gate whose lock was surprisingly easy to pick, and lackeys behind it who were prone to drink and sleep.
She nearly tripped over the archer before she saw him. Shit, she thought, and the prayer was on her lips before she had to think it. She swung her fist in the general direction of the archer’s jaw, but it was magic that slammed him backward and into the filth of the street.
Not before he had shouted the alarm.
No need to be careful now, she thought, and ran. If she managed to avoid obstacles or cramps in her side, she would be safely inside that ill-guarded courtyard before any of his fellows had caught up with the archer she’d just stunned. Ahead she could hear voices, but these weren’t official; from the laughter she guessed they belonged to young aristos on their way home from a night in a tavern or gaming-house. She spared a small blasphemy for younger sons who never had to give a thought about where the money came from.
Finally, she was at the rue des Francs Bourgeois, and the glow from the occasional lantern provided enough light for her to spot the desired indent in the street, and then she was darting past the empty guard-house and into the alcove of the port-cochère.
And colliding with the other person hiding there.
* * * *
“Get the hell out of my way,” she gasped, wriggling back and out of his grasp. “What are you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same,” someone asked, a young man judging from the voice. “After all, I was here first.”
Oh, Lord. An aristo on a spree. “Why don’t you go rejoin your friends? Surely they’re looking for you.”
“Of course they’re looking for me. Why do you think I’m here?” Then the idiot kindled a flame of God-light. “Who are you?”
“Put out that light, you horse’s ass! Are you trying to bring the archers?” A horse’s ass he doubtless was, but he could follow orders: the light vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
The impression she got before darkness wrapped him again was of someone young and fashionable, curls cascading from the top of his head over his shoulders and down his back. No doubt he was the sort who thought the emperor’s court a place to be avoided at all costs. There wouldn’t be an intelligent vapour in his head.
“Now that you mention it, perhaps I ought to call the archers,” he said. “After all, you’re quite a dodgy looking sort, for all that you don’t precisely sound as if you’re street-born and bred. And you’ve come charging in here, smashing into me and rumpling my suit and implying you somehow have a right to this spot that I don’t.”
“No, don’t do that. It wouldn’t—it wouldn’t be wise.” She felt sick. I ran too far, too fast. I have to get inside there, even if I have to drag this clod in with me. She found herself bending over, trying to fill her lungs and not quite succeeding. I could probably manoeuvre him into leaving me, if I didn’t look like someone who’d rather cut his throat than talk to him. “Could I persuade you to at least look the other way for a moment?” It was a stupid idea; it was also the only one she had.
“I rather suspect it’s too late for that,” he said, and Victoire heard the shouting from the direction of the river. They were coming closer.
So. The Bastille it is, then. “Temple-cursed stupid blue elephants.” She sighed and began to straighten.
“No, bend back over again like you were,” he said. “Whatever prayer you cast is starting to fail, and you’re beginning to look as wobbly as”—he paused, and she could almost hear his smile—”as wobbly as we want them to think you’re feeling.” He was silent again, for a moment that was too long for comfort. Victoire, concerned, turned and looked up to find him staring at her, eyes widening. And then he said something extremely odd. “Oh, no. Not again.”
Before she could ask what in God’s heaven he had meant, he had edged between her and the street—in the process pushing her closer to the door and preventing her from standing upright. “Think wobbly thoughts,” he said in a voice that suddenly sounded deeper, more thick. Then he thumped her, hard, in the middle of her back. Victoire began to cough.
“Hi, you!” a voice shouted from the street. Then it was closer, and more apologetic. “Sorry, monsieur. Thought you was someone else, there.”
“That’s surely not him,” a second voice said. “Come on.”
“No, there’s someone else in there,” said the first voice.
“My friend,” said the young aristo. “A bad night at Respire’s, I’m afraid, made worse by drinking as badly as he was playing.”
“Did you see someone go by here a minute ago? Short little rat, long hair tied back. He came up this street, we know.”
“Sorry, my good men, but I didn’t see anything.” A pause, then: “Oh, I heard something, all right. A God-awful clatter, going up that way. Probably heading to Les Halles, I should think.”
“But you didn’t—”
“No, I was too busy taking care of my friend here. As I said, a bit the worse for wine tonight.”
“Let’s have a look at your friend, then,” said the second archer. “Right, sergeant? We’re supposed to ask everyone, that’s what the inspector said.” The first archer—the sergeant, Victoire supposed—sighed the eternal disgust that experience felt for uninformed enthusiasm.
“I’ll see if I can make him presentable,” said the aristo. Victoire heard him turning around—was he really turning his back on policemen? She took a deep breath—it didn’t hurt so much to breathe now—and resumed her straightening up.
Then she heard the aristo’s muttered prayer, and the smell of vomit filled her nose. Horrible, bad-wine vomit. The smell was so strong, the suggestion so urgent that her exhausted stomach put up no fight whatever. She sank back to her knees, retching.
“Um,” the archer said. “Maybe we don’t have to intrude, eh, sergeant?”
“You’re damned right we don’t have to. That’s nasty. And don’t think I won’t remember this, you clot.” Victoire heard the slap of the back of the sergeant’s hand connecting with his subordinate’s head, followed by the clack of boot-nails on cobble-stones. The sergeant said, “Sorry to intrude, monsieur. Don’t want to be rude, but I sort of feel an obligation to point out that you and your friend there is out after curfew.”
“Never fear, sergeant. I intend to get my friend home and safely into bed just as soon as I can.”
Victoire threw up again. With the last strength remaining to her, she tried to aim for the aristo’s high-heeled shoes.
“They’re gone,” the aristo said, once she had finished spewing. “You can get up now. My name is—”
“No,” she said, and tried to spit some of the foulness out of her mouth. “I don’t want to know. I am nobody you need to know. And if you are still here when I am able to get up,” Victoire said, gasping for breath and spitting some more, “I am going to gut you like a fish.”
around—was he really turning his back on policemen? She took a deep breath—it didn’t hurt so much to breathe now—and resumed her straightening up.
Then she heard the aristo’s muttered prayer, and the smell of vomit filled her nose. Horrible, bad-wine vomit. The smell was so strong, the suggestion so urgent that her exhausted stomach put up no fight whatever. She sank back to her knees, retching.
“Um,” the archer said. “Maybe we don’t have to intrude, eh, sergeant?”
“You’re damned right we don’t have to. That’s nasty. And don’t think I won’t remember this, you clot.” Victoire heard the slap of the back of the sergeant’s hand connecting with his subordinate’s head, followed by the clack of boot-nails on cobble-stones. The sergeant said, “Sorry to intrude, monsieur. Don’t want to be rude, but I sort of feel an obligation to point out that you and your friend there is out after curfew.”
“Never fear, sergeant. I intend to get my friend home and safely into bed just as soon as I can.”
Victoire threw up again. With the last strength remaining to her, she tried to aim for the aristo’s high-heeled shoes.
“They’re gone,” the aristo said, once she had finished spewing. “You can get up now. My name is—”
“No,” she said, and tried to spit some of the foulness out of her mouth. “I don’t want to know. I am nobody you need to know. And if you are still here when I am able to get up,” Victoire said, gasping for breath and spitting some more, “I am going to gut you like a fish.”
“What? I just saved you.” The aristo sounded like a little boy arguing that he’d been punished unfairly.
“There was no need for you to be so thrice-damned realistic about it!” She sat back on her haunches, willing her stomach to stop clenching.
“I told you: your prayer was fading. If they’d got a good look at you I don’t know what, exactly, they’d have seen, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have liked it. And I happen to know that prayer I used pretty well, so I knew it would work. My friends, ah, think it’s an amusing way to end an evening’s sport.”
“I’ll just bet they do,” Victoire muttered. “Well, my good Monsieur, if what you say is true then I’m going to ask you to be on your way before I get up and go on mine. Believe me, you don’t want to see anything that you didn’t want the archers to see. It’ll be safer for you. Trust me.”
“Oh, that’s just what I want,” the aristo said. “To be safe is so much fun.”
* * * *
Robert tried to follow the mysterious—woman? He was pretty sure it had been a woman, her boyish glamour notwithstanding—but was forced to give up almost immediately. For one, she was just too good at not being followed. For another, there really were far too many archers out and about tonight, and it wouldn’t be fair if his efforts accomplished nothing more than to help them find and arrest her. Whatever she had done, he decided, he wanted her to get away with it.
* * * *
“Oh mademoiselle, no!” Marie-Louise fluttered her hands, clearly wanting to hug Victoire and yet repulsed by the stained coat and shirt facing her. “What happened to you tonight? And where is the cloth?”
“Where is Hachette?” Catherine asked, coming up behind Marie-Louise with her eyes wide with fear.
“I have no idea where Hachette is, but I’m sure he’s safe.” Victoire felt herself smiling, despite her fear and anger, at the thought of the boy leading the archers on a chase that doubtless ended with him laughing and them plunging into the river. The boy could look after himself, no matter what the city or the authorities threw at him. And he, too, knew innumerable ways of making his way back to this tiny old house, on a rudely named side-street near l’hôpital de la Trinité, in which Victoire hid her enterprise amongst the prostitutes and beggars.
“As for what happened tonight, plenty happened and all of it bad. I’ll tell you everything, Marie-Louise, but only after I’ve got out of these clothes and washed myself.” She stripped off the coat. “You should probably burn these.”
“Not until I’ve done everything in my power to clean them,” Marie-Louise said. “Fabric this good should not be burnt, mademoiselle.” Scurrying to the fireplace, she swung the big iron pot, on its hook, over the flames. “Catherine, don’t just stand there gawking! Help her out of those clothes. We can brush the coat, but that shirt and trousers will have to be boiled.”
Before the watch called out the next hour Victoire was in the small garden behind the house, cleaned up and as cool and comfortable as the weather allowed, wearing the lightest shift Catherine could find for her and sipping a cup of the half-sour wine that was the best they could currently afford. The house officially belonged to Catherine, but it was Victoire who had bought it, to serve as the shop through which they sold their enchanted cloth to aristocratic women and bourgeois dressmakers. On the eastern edge of a small slum—a cour des miracles—north of the Halles marketplace and south-east of the greater slums near the Filles-Dieux convent, the house was old and decrepit enough to resist official notice, but close enough to rue St-Martin to allow Victoire and her employees—co-conspirators—easy access to the aristocratic houses of her customers.
Marie-Louise topped up the wine in Victoire’s cup while Catherine twisted her arthritic fingers around one another, and both of them stared at her with nervous, unhappy faces.
“Grenier knew where the cloth was,” she began, “and he knew we were coming to collect it.” Victoire told them as much of the tale of their discovery and her escape as they had to hear. “The good news is, he doesn’t really know much more about who we are than he did yesterday. The bad news is, we had to leave the cloth behind. It’s hidden,” she added as the others voiced their dismay. “But I don’t know how dangerous it will be for us to try collecting it again.” She relaxed her shoulders and slumped in the chair.
“It’s hard to imagine him not finding the cloth, if he does any sort of search at all. His master de La Reynie will be pleased. And we are out several tens of gold Louis.” She couldn’t muster up the energy to be as angry as she ought to be, but she cursed anyway.
“What do we do now, Mademoiselle Victoire?” Catherine was brilliant where cloth and clothing were concerned, but in every other respect she might as well have been seven years old. That unworldliness made it all the more cruel that Victoire’s mother had cast her away when arthritis attacked those talented fingers, crippling her usefulness as a seamstress and dressmaker.
“I don’t know yet, Catherine. Well, I suppose we can pick up my hidden bundle, at first light tomorrow. Then we could walk to the stable. If we’re very lucky the cloth will still be where we left it; it does look like cheap linen, after all. And Hachette and I got out before the archers came in, so perhaps they were too busy chasing us to do a proper search.” She didn’t really believe it would end so well, but she knew it wouldn’t do Catherine and Marie-Louise any good to know that.
Had it been coincidence that had brought those archers to the livery at the precise moment she and Hachette were opening the smuggled bundles? Had Inspector Grenier finally learned to predict her movements? Or had she been betrayed? If so, by whom? Victoire closed her eyes, beginning to feel sick again.
Marie-Louise stood and said, “So let’s not worry about anything tonight beyond getting some sleep. Plenty of time tomorrow to worry about the future, if God wills it.” Marie-Louise was a weaver’s widow. In Victoire’s employ she had travelled further, and more frequently, than even the most exalted of aristocratic women. The men who actually brought the cloth over the mountains and into France for Victoire weren’t allowed to buy even an ell of it from the Italian traders; it was Marie-Louise’s eye that determined what would be purchased, and her sharp tongue that obtained the best terms.
“You’re right, Marie-Louise.” Victoire got to her feet. “I’m going home now.” It wasn’t always easy for her to decide which of the two buildings was her real home in Paris, but for now home was her soft bed in her parents’ hôtel. “I’ll come by tomorrow morning in my usual disguise; we’ll discuss what’s to be done then.”
* * * *
Her first thought, when she saw the lights through the small ground- and first-floor windows of the house, was that Inspector Grenier had somehow intuited her role in tonight’s adventure and had arrived to arrest her. Then she saw the shadowed bulk of the travelling coach and the twist of tension unravelled.
Her parents were home.
Papa, of course, was still awake when she went upstairs, having entered the house through the kitchen door. “You are very late, my dear,” he said as she passed the open door of his bedroom. His voice, soft and distracted, passed no judgments but she felt a flush nonetheless; she had never quite accustomed herself to the amount of lying she did to him.
“I was too involved in a conversation with Jeanette,” she said, “and didn’t notice the time.”
“Jeanette—”
“Jeanette Desmarais,” Victoire told him.
“Ah. The poor cousin of the de Beaune woman. A nonentity to be certain.”
“But a friend for all that,” Victoire told him, apologizing silently to Jeanette for the lie the poor woman was unknowingly supporting.
“Not everyone can have our pedigree,” Papa said, and she heard the smile in his voice. “So I can’t criticize you for your friends, any more than you should criticize me for the company I’m forced to keep at court.”
I wish we had half our pedigree and twice our fortune, Victoire thought. But of course Papa would never agree, and so she never spoke in this way to him. Once upon a time she had been able to speak that way with Maman, but not for some time now.
“I feel somewhat guilty that I let you out of the hôtel on your own so much, my dear. I trust you had a proper escort home?”
Victoire giggled, thinking of her current glamour’s appearance. “A most thorough ruffian and street-rat,” she said. “I felt completely safe, Papa. How was the north?”
“A bore, as it always is. But as Saint-Simon couldn’t be with the emperor for the whole of the summer someone had to watch him, and that someone was me.”
“Surely the duc de Saint-Simon doesn’t believe the emperor would try to take away your ancient rights and privileges while he was away from Paris, Papa.”
“These Burgundians are a crafty dynasty,” Papa said, and for a moment Victoire wasn’t completely certain he was joking. “It wasn’t a complete waste, though. Tomorrow when I wake remind me to show you the latest addition to my library.”
As Papa’s library mostly consisted of books and manuscripts supporting the ancient pedigree of the comtes de Berenguer, Victoire felt no urgency to see his latest treasure. “I have to go out in the morning,” she said, “but I will try to be back home by the time you awake.” Which, she knew, would be well past mid-day.
“Don’t forget to say hello to your mother before you leave.”
And her damned priest, too, I suppose, she thought. “Good night, Papa.”
* * * *
He was staring at the cup in which his breakfast chocolate cooled when Robert de Vimoutiers realized today no longer had to be like yesterday or the day before. Or the day before that.
I believe I’m going to find out this morning who she is. Or at least I’m going to start finding her out.
That the person he’d met and helped last night was a young woman was by now nearly a certainty to him. He didn’t know why he was certain, just that he was. Something in the eyes, perhaps. Mind, the eyes were really all he’d had a good look at before she’d made him douse his God-light. He felt the corners of his mouth tugged upward as he recalled the prayer he’d made to drive away the archers. She didn’t find it so funny, the voice of his conscience reminded him. He decided she’d be less angry once she knew him a little better.
“You’re suspiciously quiet this morning,” Maman said. “And I don’t like that grin either. What were you up to last night?”
“What am I up to every night?” There was a pretty good chance Maman knew the young woman, or at least her mother. But it was too soon to get Maman involved. And anyway, where was the fun in the discovery if all he had to do was ask over the breakfast table? “I was just remembering a joke I played on a chap after the party broke up.”
“Very well. I certainly don’t need—or want—to know about the sort of joke you find amusing.” The duchesse de Vimoutiers sipped her chocolate. “You won’t forget we are both expected at the Saint-Simon event tonight.” Maman didn’t seem to be looking forward to the event any more than Robert was, but he kept silent. There was nothing to be gained by reminding her of the rarity of such invitations lately.
“I won’t forget.”
“And you won’t disappear fifteen minutes after you’ve greeted the hostess this time either.”
“No, Maman. If you insist.” He ventured a smile. It fell on salted ground.
Then an idea struck him, and he felt the smile broaden. “Lise is in the city now, isn’t she?”
The name succeeded where smiles and raillery had failed. “She is,” Maman said. “I had her to dinner last night and found her very well. I admit I would not have credited it, but marriage to that scoundrel has made her thrive.” A pause for effect. “You could have talked with her if you had been able to keep yourself away from Respire’s for one night.” The look she gave him was far softer than her words had been.
“I will rectify my error this morning, Maman, if you’ll tell me where I am most likely to find her.”
* * * *
Golden sparks flitted from side to side behind her closed eyelids, and up and down. Victoire, praying, corralled the sparks into lines without reducing their tendency to curl and curve. Once she felt her control of the sparks lock in, she built another layer of image in her mind, this one occupied by the pale grey thread Marie-Louise had placed beside Catherine’s embroidery frame. Taking care, Victoire looped the prayer-sparks around, and bound them to the thread. It was a slow and tiring process, but doing it correctly was what made the cloth she sold so valuable.
She was sweating when she opened her eyes again. Catherine, Marie-Louise and Hachette sat in a row, watching her like cats staring at a fish-monger’s inventory. “I think that’s done it,” she told them. “Catherine, it’s over to you. Let me know when you’ve finished the first couple of elephants and we’ll put my prayer to the test.”
Catherine nodded, picked up a fine needle and leaned over the cloth stretched on the frame. Victoire turned away; she didn’t like having to see reminders of Catherine’s growing rheumatism. “Hachette, tell me what happened to you last night. How many archers were there?”
“Oh, dozens,” he said. “Most of them went after you, and I didn’t think that was fair. So I ducked back into the stable, grabbed some horse-shit and threw it at Grenier and their officer.” He laughed. “That did the trick; I wound up with most of them chasing me. That was good with me—I know this city. Most of those asses are just a few months off the farm. They didn’t stand a chance, you know. Not a chance, not with me.”
“Oh, you’re a clever rat-boy, you are,” Marie-Louise muttered.
“Hey! You know you’re not supposed to call me that.”
“Well, you do have a ratty sort of face,” Victoire said, unable to suppress a giggle. It was a relief to have the magic done with, at least for now.
Hachette sucked his prominent front teeth at her. “You can call me anything you like, mademoiselle Victoire. I just don’t have to put up with it from the likes of them.”
“You’re prepared to cook for yourself, then?” Marie-Louise asked.
“Stop it, you two. You’re disturbing Catherine,” Victoire said. “Did you put the archers into the river again, Hachette?”
He smiled, toothily. “You should have seen it. It was absolutely splendid.”
“I’m sure it was wonderful,” she said. “Though I wish it hadn’t been necessary at all.” She watched Catherine embroidering for a moment. “I still don’t understand how the cloth disappeared that way.” Besides the bolt she had rescued they had recovered only one other—and that one Hachette had taken with him when he’d fled the stable.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me either, Mademoiselle Victoire.” He paused a moment. “Didn’t make sense to the archers either.”
Victoire, who had been watching Catherine embroider the cloth, turned back to Hachette. “To the archers?”
“Well, to their officers, anyway. I thought I’d sneak back to the stable once I’d dropped the archers in the river. Just as I get there, I see two officers coming out. One says to the other, ‘I can’t guess how they got it out of here. There were only two of them and I swear they didn’t come back here.’ And the other one says, ‘And where could they take it?’ I didn’t understand what they was talking about until I went back inside.”
“And found the cloth was all gone.”
“Every last damned bolt and bundle,” he grumbled.
“But if the archers didn’t take the cloth,” Marie-Louise began.
“Then who did?” Victoire finished for them all.
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