Minuet (24 page)

“Why was Henri so anxious to see Robespierre die?” Degan asked. “I should think the spectacle he witnessed at the Tuileries would be enough revenge, if that is his motive in going.”

“That is his motive, but when so many of your family and friends have been killed, apparently it is not enough revenge. He was foolish to go.”

They drank and chatted listlessly for the better part of an hour, waiting for darkness before going to the rue de Charonne. Twilight was falling as they began their trip to the little-traveled quarter. It would be dark before they arrived.

Beautiful Paris showed the scars of her recent history. Filth and garbage in the streets, houses uncared for, and everywhere the revolutionary slogan,
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
Degan drove the team, with Sally sitting beside him on the bench. “What an idea this gives you of Paris,” she apologized. “It used to be beautiful, a happy place. That big building on your left is—used to be—a Benedictine monastery, Bon Secours.”

“We aren’t sightseeing, as you so often remind us,” he answered.

“Mon Dieu, non.
Maybe one day when the troubles are over you will come back and see the sights.” He wondered that she said “you,” and not “we.”

“Finding the way is difficult, with every second street name changed, and soon they will be changed again, to be rid of the Hanriots and St.-Justs. First the saints’ names and all references to the monarchy had to go.”

A few wrong turns were taken, but they continued in the general right direction, and found themselves at last in the rue de Charonne, in front of a small establishment where lights shone, and music was dimly heard from behind the windows. There were a few visitors entering, as the hour for guests was now at hand.

“You get inside the carriage and wait. I’ll be as fast as I can,” Degan told her, not liking to leave her alone, and wondering that Mérigot would desert them at this critical time. They rehearsed Degan’s speech, and he was off.

It was an elderly, genteel-seeming woman who answered the knock at the door. “I would like to see Lady Harlock,” Degan said, in his best imitation of Minou’s accent.

“Lady Harlock? But she is no longer here,” he was told. No speech had been rehearsed to meet this shocking bulletin.

“What? Where is she? What happened to her?” he asked.

The woman looked at him sharply at the accent. “You come from England?” she inquired with a knowing look.

“No! No, I am a friend from—from the country,” he replied with a guilty start.

“She has need of friends,” the woman replied. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Madame Belhomme. My husband, you must know, has been imprisoned—sentenced to six years in chains. But I continue with the work of the Maison.”

“What of Madame Harlock and her son?” he asked, panic robbing him of caution.

“They are next door—the Hôtel Chabanais. I have been required to expand my operation, with all the souls requiring treatment. Not quite so elegant, next door, but cheaper, and they are safe enough. The son, of course, is not at all well. I have not heard that he is dead, however. You will help them, monsieur?”

Degan, his head reeling, answered, “Yes, I will help.” Then he went in a daze back to the carriage and told his news. “Minou, I can’t understand. I suspect it’s a trap,” he said. “They say Belhomme is arrested, and a woman claiming to be his wife is running the place. Surely the officials wouldn’t permit such a thing. What do you think?”

“I must have a peek in the window and see if it is really Madame Belhomme. It seems irregular, but Belhomme might have been arrested for political reasons with no real wish to do him harm or lose out on the business. He pays plenty. The lightness of the sentence—not executed—suggests it. There are many irregular things going on at this time. Come, we take a look in at the windows.”

Together they crept through the darkness, to stand behind a bush, peering into an elegant saloon, well lit, where several card tables were filled with lively, well-dressed players. The woman who had answered the door sat with one man talking in a corner.

“That’s Madame Belhomme,” Sally said at once. “The old rogue. It is as I thought. She continues with the work. Probably having an affair with one of the officials to keep the place going. You see that small lady with the large white puff cap on her head? That is the duchesse d’Orléans, and her partner is Rouzet, the former deputy. What a pair,
hein?
A princess of the royal blood and a deputy. Look, they are having champagne. I wonder where madame gets it at such a time.” As they looked, a wildly staring man in a gray nightshirt roamed into the room, pointing, gesticulating, in a menacing way.

“Old Cloutier, the star lunatic,” she said. “He imagines he is in direct communication with God. I’m not at all sure he is crazy, that one. God demands the very best for Cloutier always. God says he should eat only pheasant, and drink champagne, and Cloutier shrieks and screams till God is obeyed. But he is harmless. He is not the one who stabbed Agnès. That was a woman. They keep her locked in her room now, or did. We’d better go next door, eh? I won’t be recognized there. I can go in with you.”

“There might be servants who would recognize you. You’d better stay in the carriage.”

“That’s true. All right. And Degan, don’t tell Mama I am here. She will worry so. With Édouard ill, she doesn’t need any more worries. I hope he is not very ill. It is probably the maggoty bread. We were all sick at the stomach when the bread was bad.”

Sally returned to the carriage, and Degan approached the new doorway to mouth his carefully phrased words. He was asked into a shabby parlor, markedly inferior to the establishment next door. He thought the unhappy people sitting around the chamber were gentlefolk, but did not realize by their worn, outmoded garments they were for the most part nobility like himself. Their eyes were frightened, to see a stranger with a cockade on his hat enter the house. Heaven knew if he might be a spy or petty official come to make trouble for them.

Lady Harlock was called down. Degan sat, wondering how Minou’s mother would appear. He had a hazy recollection of having seen her eons ago, but could not recall her appearance.

He would have known had he met her in a jungle or a tavern who she was. The same eyes as her daughter, the hair similar in color and cut, though a little gray around the temples. The face too, such a pretty face, should have been smiling, not white and drawn, with fine lines forming around the eyes. The figure was still lithe, and the step light. She looked at him in wonder as he arose to greet her.

“Qui êtes-vous?”
she asked, the phrase and the voice even reminiscent of Minou.

“Let us be seated,” he said quietly, and they sat, in sufficient isolation that lowered voices concealed their business.

“Your husband sent me,” he said, deciding to leave Minou out of it.

“My daughter, she got to London safely then?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes, she made it a while ago. She is safe.”

“Thank God!” she said with a great sigh of relief. Yes, Minou was right to save her at least this one worry.

“Now our job is to get you and Edward home. How is he?”

“Ah, he is very bad.” She shook her head. “Not fit to travel. I fear—though I daren’t say it or they will throw us out into the streets, but I suspect it is—
the plague!”
she said, the last dread word scarcely audible.

“What are the symptoms? How long has he been ill?” Degan asked quickly.

“A week with a high fever and headache.”

“Not the plague, I think,” he consoled her, and was vastly relieved himself. “The patient seldom lasts out a week. Has he carbuncles, delirium, nausea?”

“Nausea till three days ago, yes, and tremors.”

“No one else in the place is infected with it?”

“A little dysentery from the food. Édouard is the worst off.”

“I imagine it is a severe case of food poisoning, likely made worse by the conditions, the lack of exercise, the worry. The plague spreads like wildfire. Is he able to travel, ma’am?”

She thought about this, but when she spoke she had a different suggestion. “If you are sure it is not the plague, perhaps you would like to see him, Monsieur—ah, who are you? I don’t even know your name. I know what you are, though—an angel of mercy.”

“I am John’s cousin. Your daughter calls me
citoyen,”
he answered. The clever mother looked sharply at hearing the tender tone in which the last statement was made. “You have been tending Edward yourself?” he asked.

“Yes. I was afraid to let anyone see him, in case it was the plague. I didn’t know the symptoms exactly, but one always fears the worst,
n’est-ce pas?”

“It was dangerous for you to be so close to him if it had been the plague.”

“He is my son,” she answered simply.

Degan was led up to a very small chamber on the top floor, under the eaves, in a garret really. “It is the worst room in the place. We share it,” she told him. “That old shrew Madame Belhomme raised the rates in the big house, and we were forced to come here to save money. We weren’t sure Minou would make it to London, or that John could do anything. We cannot afford the better food, you see. That is half the problem. Not a decent meal have I been able to order the boy all week. Everything costs extra—a piece of fruit or meat.”

Degan stepped up to a small cot in the corner and looked down at a young man who he imagined had once been handsome, rather like his father. There was no red hair here, no little pointed face. A long, square jaw hung loosely. The eyes were closed, giving him the aspect of a corpse. Degan put his fingers to the boy’s forehead, finding it hot, but there were no symptoms such as he had read of in the black plague of London. Malnutrition, generally run down to a state of collapse, he thought. “It’s not the plague, but he isn’t fit to travel till we get him built up a little. I’ll leave you money for decent food, a better room. You will want to stay with him, I expect?”

“I cannot leave him. With food—decent food—and the ray of hope you give us, he will come around if it is not the plague as you say.”

“I’m sure it is not. Don’t fret yourself on that score. There is... someone waiting for me outside. I can’t stay long. I’ll be back tomorrow to see how Edward goes on.”

“Henri is with you? Surely he was not fool enough to come!” she asked in considerable alarm.

“Yes, Mérigot is with me, but he is in the city.”

“Ah,
mon Dieu!
These boys of mine—what madness! Why did he not come to see me if he is in Paris?”

“He thought it better for one of us to stay behind and see what is going forth in the city.”

“I hope he is well disguised. What a state Paris must be in, with Robespierre to be executed. We hear everything here, but alas can
do
nothing. I expect Robespierre has gone the way of his victims by now. There won’t be many tears.”

Degan nodded, his thoughts beginning to rise to fears for Minou, outside alone. He put into her hands the money lately obtained from Mérigot. “This will tide you over for a few days.”

“This is as safe a place as any to be till we see what happens as a result of Robespierre’s execution. Before you go, monsieur, tell me how are Minou and Henri?”

“Both well,” he told her briefly.

“That Minou! What an angel she was to me during all this. I behaved very badly, monsieur. I admit it. Cried like a spoiled baby when we were thrown into the Conciergerie, but Minou and Édouard made me ashamed for myself, so brave they were, and just babies really. They gave me the courage to face anything. Do you know what they did, monsieur? They took turns staying awake all night chasing rats, for it was the rats that frightened me more than anything. The place has more rats than people.”

“That at least is over,” he consoled her.

“It is in abeyance,” she corrected. “We made sure we would all three lose our heads. ‘If they behead us, Mama,’ Minou told me, “we die like ladies, making a careful toilette and saying our prayers like good Christians.’ God was outlawed at that time, you must know, and Minou said she would make the sign of the cross, and ask His help in a loud voice, to make all the gawkers ashamed for themselves, and afraid. They believe still, you know, every one of them. It was necessary in the end to give their God back to them.”

“Yes, she would say that,” Degan answered, nodding.

“Chez Belhomme they took good care of me too, my children. Always so cheerful, doing little jobs for themselves to save money. Minou making up our room and sweeping the floor, always pretending she was not hungry, that I could have more to eat, but I got on to her when she began to go off her looks, and it was
my
turn to be not hungry. She is very pretty,
non?”

“She is beautiful. Nearly as beautiful as her mother,” he responded gallantly.

A silvery tinkle of laughter, very young and charming, was his reward. “I can’t believe you are related to my John, monsieur, despite that dreadful accent you use. You are not at all like him, so dull and proper. No, of course you are not like that, you are very gallant, or he would not have sent you, nor would you have been agreeable to come. I observe your trip has been an eventful one,” she said, looking at his various bruises and bandages. “You are a friend of Henri’s, I take it?”

“More a friend of Minou’s,” he answered.

“My poor baby. If it happens that I don’t get back to London, take care of her for me, monsieur. Will you promise me that?”

“It would be my great pleasure, but you
will
be back in London, Lady Harlock, and Edward will be back in London. We must hurry. Minou is already planning a ball to make you welcome.”

“The minx! I bet she is. There are a million questions I must ask you, but you are in a hurry. I hope Minou does not make a scandal of herself?” He shook his head firmly. “John—he is well?”

“Worried, but well.”

“I mention him last, but it is not necessarily my order of priorities. The others were in such danger. I assume he is not ailing. Does he speak ever of me?”

“Often. It is his hope you will return with him to stay, when this is over.”