Pam Rosenthal (32 page)

Jeanne visited every week: he laughed at her stories and gossip, nodded at her piercing commentary on what was being argued in the salons. He wished he could tell her that she needn’t be quite so unfailingly optimistic about his prospects. Luckily, Monsieur du Plessix had been more straightforward.

Joseph liked the quick-witted lawyer. Dutifully, in response to questions, he’d recounted every detail he could remember about the day of the murder. He found that he could easily reconstruct the list of booksellers he’d visited and even the approximate times of each visit. If the Baron had really been dispatched during a late-midday luncheon, it was probably while Joseph had been delivering books to a plump, scatterbrained fellow called Bluet, who specialized in pious literature but liked to keep a few atheist philosophers in stock as well.

After Bluet, he’d been jostled by passersby as he made his way to the back door of Rigaud’s grand establishment. He remembered vaguely that his leg had begun to hurt just about then. And then things had gotten hazy—no wonder Rigaud had been able to wheedle those extra books out of him. He’d gone to the Vernets’ last because their shop was too small to have a separate delivery entrance and was therefore more safely visited under cover of dusk.

“Ironic, isn’t it,” he commented to Monsieur du Plessix, “that it was only the Vernets—well Dr. Vernet, anyway—who told Inspector Lebrun that I was in Montpellier? Just enough evidence to establish that I was in the city. And none to prove that I wasn’t at the Baron’s.”

Du Plessix nodded and jotted down the most important points.

“We must get Bluet or Rigaud to confirm your alibi,” he said. “We’re lucky that the King has recently eased up on the censorship laws,” he added, “because it’ll be easier to get you off
on any possible book-smuggling charges.”

“And what are the chances,” Joseph had asked, “of any bookseller admitting to having dealt in forbidden books? Even when interviewed by as meticulous and engaging an investigator as yourself,
cher
Monsieur?”

Du Plessix had sighed.
Eh bien
, he’d admitted, none whatsoever. Still, he and Baptiste would be taking a coach to Montpellier that very evening to see what they could turn up. They’d been gone now for several weeks, since Easter. Well, at least it gave Baptiste something to do, Joseph thought. As for the efficacy of the trip—he shrugged. One must hope for the best, of course, but he had his doubts.

He stared idly out the window at a troop of street urchins begging a
sou
from a well-dressed passerby. The passerby shrugged, dug into the pocket of his alpaca cloak, tossed some coins into the gutter, and hurried on. A handsome light cloak, Joseph thought, the weather must have turned mild. Yes, now that he was paying attention he could feel a spring breeze. And the children’s feet were naked as well. Last January when he’d begun watching them, they’d run and skipped through patches of dirty snow with layers of rags wrapped from toe to ankle.

Most touching, Monsieur, your concern for the common people.

He winced at the sound of a familiar, sneering voice. Solitude could be restful, even a sort of discipline. But when one was feeling—well, oddly agitated, as he seemed to be today, the solitude might engender unpleasant phantom encounters, with alternative selves one had been trying to avoid.

Like a certain sneering, highly strung aristocrat, quick to anger, absurdly sensitive to slights. The same Vicomte d’Auvers-Raimond who was determined to convince him that Marie-Laure had married her old sweetheart.
She’s deserted you,
mon vieux.
Forget about her.

Luckily, he knew another phantom gentleman—call him Joseph Raimond—who found it easier to keep faith.
She promised to love you forever. She does love you. She needs your help.
Monsieur Raimond visited him a bit less frequently than the cynical Vicomte did. But today—it must be the unsettling effect of the spring breeze, the disappearance of the last snow from the cobblestones—today it seemed that both phantom selves had chosen to visit him simultaneously.

And suddenly
she
was with him in his cell as well—warm and alive, flushed and smiling. She held out her hand; he could see ink stains on her fingers. He felt himself go hot and cold. It had been a long time since he’d let himself imagine her. He had to stop. But he didn’t. It might be painful, it might even be madness, but he felt freer than he’d felt in months.

His chest was tight; how long, he wondered, since he’d taken a decent breath? He thrust his nose between the bars at the window and inhaled a deep draught of warm, stinking Paris air. It was foul. It was thrilling. It stirred something within him.

He heard a rattle at the barred door of his cell. A key turned in the lock. He’d forgotten it was Thursday, the day of Jeanne’s visit. His little crowd of phantom guests evaporated, scared off by her footsteps and her reassuring corporeality.

He turned to embrace her, waiting until she dropped her parcels on a table. A burly footman put his heavier load of boxes and baskets next to hers, bowed, and stood at attention next to the warden, who took a stool by the cell door.

Visits couldn’t be private, but Jeanne treated the prison officials like servants anyway. “You
will
see that he gets some fresh water every day for these hyacinths I’ve brought,” she murmured to the warden as she settled into her seat.

And to Joseph, “Perhaps you would have preferred daffodils. They’re running riot over the garden this week. But I thought the hyacinths, because of their scent—

“But you’re looking unusually well,
chéri
,”
she interrupted herself.

He smiled. “It’s the spring, perhaps. I can’t help but feel stirred up by it.”

“Well, sit back in your chair then,” she said, “and brace yourself. Because you’re about to hear some extremely stirring news. You see, I’ve received a letter from Monsieur du Plessix today, from Provence…”

Monsieur du Plessix had quickly penned the letter at the inn in Carency, a few minutes before they’d boarded the coach for Paris.

“They’ll be delighted, Marie-Laure, to learn that you’re coming back with us,” he’d assured her. “And I want them to know it as soon as possible. So they can prepare for your arrival.”

She’d frowned. “Delighted? When I’m in this condition?”

“The Marquise is an unusual woman,” the lawyer said. “She and the Vicomte have a very liberal relationship.”

Whatever
that
might mean. She supposed she’d just have to wait and see.

Baptiste assured her that Joseph had been devastated not to hear from her. He’d be overjoyed to hear that she was coming. And
especially
—the
valet put an affectionate hand on her belly—about the baby.

Well, maybe he would be and maybe he wouldn’t. At least now she knew that he’d sent more letters. But there was something suspicious about Monsieur du Plessix’s bland good humor; he and Baptiste were clearly hiding
something
. Perhaps Joseph truly was in love with the sublime Mademoiselle Beauvoisin. Perhaps he would have stopped writing to her in any case. She thought of his letters, reduced to ashes in the Duchesse’s fireplace; it was maddening not to know what he’d written.

Still, what mattered was that he’d treat her and the baby decently—and this she refused to doubt. She would simply ignore her fears, she told herself, while she endured the rigors of the nine-day journey: the bumping and jolting of the coach, the all too-infrequent rest stops, the dubious quality of the food and beds at the inns where they stopped.

Discomfited by the idea of a young woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy undertaking such a trip, her fellow passengers stared disapprovingly at her. On the second day of the journey, Marie-Laure awoke from a nap to hear Monsieur du Plessix “explaining” her situation to their coach mates. Pretending to doze, she listened in astonishment as he spun out the story’s details. Deftly, effortlessly, like a fortune-teller in a carnival booth, he conjured up a husband away on important military maneuvers, a contested inheritance, and a family tendency toward difficult births.

“And so you see, Messieurs and Mesdames,” he concluded, “how absolutely necessary it is that the young lady be confined in proximity to a certain eminent Paris physician, under the patronage and protection of the gracious and generous Madame la Marquise de Machery, a distant relative who has interested herself in the case.”

Absurd, she thought, that anybody would believe this fatuous concoction when she was so evidently a seduced and abandoned kitchen maid in clogs and a stained apron. But her fellow travelers seemed quite satisfied with Monsieur du Plessix’s version of the facts, and began to treat her with increased sympathy and affection.

“Travelers enjoy sentimental stories,” the lawyer told Marie-Laure and Baptiste over a dreadful mutton stew that evening. “Would you begrudge them their entertainment?”

“I’ve ordered a freshly killed and roasted capon for tomorrow from the market stand down the road,” he continued, “so we won’t have to depend on what we get from the next inn.

“Happily, the beds at this place are not as bad as the food. Well,
your
bed is all right anyway, Marie-Laure. But what’s the matter,
petite
?” he asked, for she’d suddenly turned pale.

“Just a headache.” She gasped, surprised by its intensity. “I think I’d better go to bed. Could you help me up the stairs, Monsieur?”

He was already at her elbow. Smiling as they mounted the stairs, he assured her that there was nothing to worry about: his wife had had just such headaches with their third, a vigorous eight-pound boy. His volubility and matter-of-factness were so comforting that by the time they’d reached her room she’d decided that the headache must not be so bad after all. And it was only after a miserable, sleepless hour that she remembered he’d told his lies in the coach that afternoon with the same cheerful certainty.

Her head felt a little better the next morning, but the ache never entirely disappeared. Her vision was sometimes blurred, and the coach’s jolting made her dizzy and fretful. She tried to ignore it, sleeping fitfully as the pastures and vineyards of Burgundy rolled by. As they drove through the majestic forest of Fontainebleau the next day, she couldn’t remember ever having been free of the insidious pain flickering behind her eyes. Still, she was determined to stay awake. For they were approaching the city gates of Paris.

Joseph felt as though he’d never sleep again.

Pregnant with his child! He paced the cell, trying to absorb the wonder, the enormity of it. The baby would look like her, of course—though if it were a boy, he supposed a little of his height might be a good thing. He tried to imagine its face, its limbs. And failed utterly. How big were babies anyway? Could they smile? He’d seen very few of them in his life; the women of his acquaintance bundled off their offspring to wet nurses as soon as possible, returning to society a week after the birth as though nothing had happened.

Well, that wouldn’t be the case with this baby. And even if he were still locked up when it arrived, he knew that mother and child would be safe with Jeanne.

Safe. His eyes grew hard. According to Jeanne, du Plessix said very little about why Marie-Laure had been running away from the chateau. Well, he could guess readily enough what must have happened.

I
should never have allowed her to stay with those monsters
, Joseph thought.
When I get out of this place, I’ll…

But would he ever get out of this place? He resolved that he would. No more cynicism about his chances. With Marie-Laure and the baby on their way to Paris, he couldn’t afford the luxury of cynicism.

The stewed partridge on the table in front of him had grown cold an hour ago. The candle sputtered out. He shrugged. He’d been living in a sort of semidarkness anyway: his success in maintaining faith had been intermittent at best.

He lit a new candle. Perhaps it was time to learn to live secure in the light of someone’s love.

Paris began even before its city walls. Marie-Laure stared at the outcroppings of small, temporary-looking dwellings: shanties for the poor souls who’d come to escape their misfortunes in the countryside. She supposed she should feel saddened, but instead she was energized by the city’s force, attracted to its center like a bit of iron leaping to a magnet.

The customs officials at the gates were rude, canny, and quick to make personal remarks. She didn’t mind in the slightest. They were city people, their attitudes laced with the ironic intimacy engendered by urban crowding and anonymity. She returned a wink with a haughty nod. And then a grin.

An open carriage—it belonged to the Marquise, Monsieur du Plessix told her—awaited them at the city gate. Low and elegant, upholstered in plush velvet, its outside was painted gaily in blues and violets and trimmed with gold. A fairy coach, she thought wryly, to bring a sooty, pregnant Cinderella to her prince—if he could spare a moment from his mistress. But she wouldn’t worry about that just yet. She turned her attention to the city: the tall, narrow buildings that sometimes blocked the sky, the noise and the crowds, carriages, peddlers, beggars, dogs, children. She wanted to know these streets.

“Look,” she cried excitedly, “there’s a bookshop! And oh, what a beautiful church. Is it Notre Dame? No, it can’t be, for that’s on an island, isn’t it? And oh my goodness, look at the cakes in that shop window, the bonnets in that one.”