Revolution (41 page)

78

B
enôit, the kitchen boy at the Foy, is a total weasel, just like Alex said he was. I need him, though. Orléans’ apartments are locked and sealed. There’s a way in through a basement passage, though, and he guards it.

“I haven’t seen you for days. Thought you’d left for good. Or got yourself killed. Why are you back here?”

He thinks I’m Alex, too. Like Fauvel did. I must look like her.

“I left something behind. I need to get it,” I tell him.

“Pay me first,” he says.

“No, get me into Orléans’ rooms first.”

“Pay me first.”

“Look, I haven’t got any money. Let me in and I’ll get you some.”

Benôit stands there, scratching his neck. He finds something crawling on it and crushes it between his fingers.

“All right, then.” He picks up a basket of potatoes and hands it to me. “Put it on your shoulder. Like this. To hide your face. Follow me and don’t talk.”

He leads me into the Foy’s kitchens and takes a quick look around. The chef is yelling at an underling. Two men are rolling out dough. Others are shucking oysters. Chopping vegetables. Plucking chickens.

“Hurry up, will you?” Benôit barks at me, pretending I’m a delivery guy. “No! Not there! This way, blockhead!”

No one bats an eye at us as he leads me to the far end of the kitchen, then takes a sharp right and heads down a flight of stone steps. I trudge along behind him until we come to a large, cool, cavelike room full of baskets containing apples, pears, potatoes, and carrots.

“Put that basket there,” he says, grabbing a lantern off the wall. “Hurry up. I have to get back.” I put my basket down and he hands me the lantern. “If you don’t have my money when you come back, I’ll call the guard. Tell them I saw you sneaking into a property that was sealed by the state. You’ll be hauled off to prison.”

I don’t doubt for a second that he means it. As soon as I approached him, in the yard behind the Foy, he asked me how much I’d give him. “A gold Louis,” I’d said. I hope I can find one.

“You have one hour. I’ll be waiting for you,” he tells me, disappearing up the stone staircase.

I walk deeper into the dark cellar, past fat wine casks and dusty bottles, with no clue where I’m going. I couldn’t tell Benôit that, though. He thinks I’m Alex and Alex would’ve known the way. I see another flight of steps and follow it down into a larger, colder cellar. I walk past crates of fish, oysters, and mussels sitting on huge blocks of ice, baskets of eggs, hacked-up animals. There’s another set of stairs—this one leading up. At the top of it, there’s a door. I shoulder it open, step through it, and look around.

I seem to be in some sort of storeroom. The walls are stone and there are mean-looking hooks hanging from the ceiling. I walk out into what must be the kitchen, only I can’t believe it is one because it’s bigger than most people’s houses. It has vaulted stone ceilings. Worktables that go on for miles. Ovens the size of cars. It must’ve been teeming when Orléans was alive, but it’s empty and silent now. My footsteps echo as I move through it.

A palace made small—that’s how Alex described his apartments. Room upon room, floor after floor, and I only have an hour to find what I’m after—the money and jewelry and trinkets she stole. I need it because today is the day Fauvel said he would meet me again. He’s bringing rockets with him. And he won’t give them to me unless I pay him.

I haven’t been taking Amadé’s advice—to stop taking chances. I’ve been taking plenty. I shot half of Fauvel’s rockets off two nights ago and the other half last night.

“Okay, Alex, where do I go? I’ve got fifty-five minutes until Benno calls the guards and they beat the crap out of me. I need something. Cash. Bling. Something. “Where to?”

There’s no answer, of course. So I start walking. Through the kitchens, upstairs into a dining room. It must’ve been beautiful once, but not anymore. The table is gouged. The mirrors are broken. The paintings have all been slashed. I keep going, past room after empty room. In and out of hallways. Looking under furniture. On top of mantels. Behind statues.

One room is so huge, and so stunning—with soaring gilt mantels and pictures of nymphs painted on the ceiling—that I decide it must’ve been Orléans’ ballroom. I walk through it and find a pale blue ribbon on the floor, dead roses on a mantel, a broken cello propped up in a corner. I squint and for a second I can see them—the duke and his circle. The women are all in silk and lace, with powdered faces and rouged lips. The men are wearing wigs and white stockings. They’re dancing and laughing. Flickering candlelight glints off a crystal goblet, a diamond earring, a ruby ring. There are bowls of roses. Perfume. Sugarplums.

And suddenly the music stops and all at once they turn to me, eyes glittering, color high. And then they smile. Not funny smiles or kind smiles—hungry smiles. One of them beckons to me. I open my eyes wide and they’re gone and there’s only dust—lying heavy on the mantels, floating in the light of an uncurtained window.

I keep going, into another dining room—a small one. And I realize I know this room. This is where Orléans took Alex after she tried to steal his purse. This is where he fed her supper and gave her wine. Where he cut her hair off and made her his own.

“You need to help me,” I say. “This place is huge. I’d need a week to search it. Help me.”

And then I smell it—cloves. So strong. In a shuttered, empty room. She’s here. I know she is. She’s the shadow in the mirror. Ashes swirling in the grate. I can feel her quicksilver spirit—nimble and bright—rush past me. I follow her out of the room, down corridors, around corners, up staircases, until I arrive at a garret room. It’s bleak, with faded curtains, an unmade bed, a table and chair, and a small fireplace. It was hers.

I get busy. I look everywhere. Under the bed. Behind the curtains. I pull the thin mattress off the bed and rip it open. I get down on my knees and try to pull up floorboards. I check the fireplace for loose bricks. But I don’t find anything.

“Where did you put it, Alex?”

The only answer I get is the sound of birds screeching from inside the chimney. They must’ve built a nest inside it. There’s a scratching sound. More shrilling. Soot crumbles down onto the hearth. And then something explodes out of the fireplace. I feel the beating of wings against my face, little claws in my hair.

I yelp and swat at the bird. It flies high above me, then lands on the mantel. It’s a sparrow. A little brown sparrow. Its eyes are dark and bright. I can see its tiny heart pounding in its breast. It lets out a cry. And then another.

“Hey. Chill,” I tell it.

Moving slowly so I don’t scare it, I cross the room and open the window. The bird shakes the soot from its feathers. Cocks its head at me. And doesn’t move.

“Go on,” I tell it. “Fly away.”

It still doesn’t move.

“Flap those wings. Go, sparrow, go.”

Sparrow
.

I practically dive into the fireplace. I pull the grate out, kneel down, and try to stick my head up the chimney. I can see a bit of light up above me, but nothing else. I crawl back out, get my flashlight out of my bag, and try again. Its beam is weaker than it was, but it’s still strong enough to illuminate the inside of the chimney.

I see a lot of soot, not much else. But I keep looking and then I see something weird—a small area, high up, that seems darker than the rest of the chimney wall. Like an empty space. A hollow.

I stretch my hand up, but I can’t reach it. I’m stuck. My shoulders are too wide. I put the flashlight down, raise both arms over my head like a diver and try again. Almost there. I can feel the bottom edge of the hollow with my fingers. I go up on my tiptoes and stretch every muscle in my arms, and then I touch something. Something hard. A box, I think. I try to get hold of it, but only end up pushing it in farther. I stoop down again, get the grate, and stand on it. I can’t see a thing without the flashlight. I can barely move. A horrible thought occurs to me: What if I get stuck? There’s no one to hear me scream for help.

Just a little higher, I tell myself. I push myself up on my toes as far as I can go, and feel for the hollow. My hands close on the box. I drag it out. Soot falls on my head. And then the box does.

I crawl out of the chimney clutching it. It’s about the size of a candy box. Flowers and dragons are painted all over it. A paper label gives the address of a Paris tea shop. I raise the lid. There are about a dozen gold coins inside. Two diamond rings. Three emerald bracelets that look like fakes. A gold pocket watch. A silver snuffbox. Half a dozen ruby buttons. A little sack of cloves. It’s no Ali Baba’s treasure, but it’ll do.

I’m sifting through the coins, holding a ring up to the light, opening a snuffbox. I forget all about the bird. Until it starts screeching at me.

“What?” I ask it. It blinks at me, then launches itself at the window, and it’s gone.

Like I should be. Benôit only gave me an hour. I’ve got to get back to the cellar before he calls the guard.

I take a gold coin out of the box and stuff everything else wherever I can. In my jacket pockets. Down my boots. Into my underwear. Then I tear a strip of fabric from the ragged curtains, wind it around the box, and knot it. I’ve had my lunch money stolen on the streets of Brooklyn more times than I can count. Jewelry and an iPod, too. I know a thug when I see one, and Benôit’s a thug.

I tuck the box under my arm and start running. Out of Alex’s room, down staircases and hallways, back through the kitchen, through the hidden door, and into the Foy’s cellar.

Benôit’s waiting for me. “Where have you been?” he hisses, standing between me and the way out.

I put a gold coin in his palm. His piggy eyes widen, then rove over me, taking in the soot on my face and my clothes.

“Give me the rest,” he says.

“The rest of what?”

“The rest of the gold. And whatever else you’ve got in that box.”

“There’s nothing in this box. Only papers.”

He snatches it.

“Give it back!” I yell, pretending to grab for it. He shoves me aside, then steps away from me, blocking me with his back. Just as I hoped. I dart by him as he fumbles with the knot in the fabric and run up the steps. In the kitchen, the chef is still yelling. A man cleaning a fish gives me a look, but I’m out the door before he can say a word.

I don’t attract any notice in the streets anymore. Probably because I’m now as dirty and smelly as everyone else. I slow to a walk and risk a glance back at the Foy. No one’s following me.

I look up over the restaurant, at the Palais’s highest windows. Benôit will be up there tonight, I’m sure, poking a stick up every chimney in the place.

But the treasure will be gone. And the little sparrow, too.

And I’ll be under the colonnade. Waiting for Fauvel.

79

I
wish my cell phone worked. Right now. I wouldn’t call 911 to come rescue me from the eighteenth century. As much as I want to. I’d call Nathan.

“Nathan, you won’t believe this,” I’d say, “but I’m in the eighteenth century. Listening to Handel being played on eighteenth-century instruments by eighteenth-century hands in eighteenth-century rooms. And it’s amazing, Nathan. It gets inside of you, just like Alex said it did, and changes the beat of your heart.”

And then I’d hold up the phone so he could hear it. This sound. This music. And he’d have tears in his eyes, listening to it. I know he would. Because I do.

Amadé brought me here. We’re at a house in St-Germain. At a Victims’ Ball. It’s a paying gig. He’s playing and he brought me along to fill in for another guitar player who’s sick. I wore an old shirt and suit of his and tied my hair back in a ponytail. He powdered my face and hair and told the others I was a friend of his from the country.

“The host, LeBon, likes Lully and Bach, and you play them well,” he said.

I’m sitting still now, my guitar across my lap, while the other musicians rock the hornpipe from the second suite of
Water Music
. The strings are a wall of sound. The horns are blowing the roof off the place. The drum’s way too loud and the harpsichordist is pounding the hell out of his keys. It’s incredible.

The final notes rise and fade now and they’re even more beautiful to me as they do because I know I’ll never hear them again. There’s no way to catch them, to hold them. Nothing can bring them back.

The musicians finish. The audience applauds. Someone calls for a minuet and we—a small orchestra of about twenty—oblige. I get to play on this one. Men and women face each other across the room. They bow and curtsy. There’s no sober Republican dress code here. Women are wearing bright silk gowns and men are in colorful embroidered coats.

“Here, they can wear all the things they hid in the attic while Robespierre was in power,” Amadé told me when we arrived.

It’s a trippy scene. Everyone has red ribbons tied around their necks. The dance begins and they move toward each other, then nod in a weird, jerky way that’s supposed to look like a severed head falling off a neck. It continues for about ten minutes. When it’s over, we take a break. We’ve been playing for more than two hours in all, and need to eat something and stretch our legs.

I pick up a chicken leg off a long table covered with food, then stand in a corner to gnaw it. There are bosoms popping out of dresses everywhere I look. Miniature portraits of loved ones who were guillotined are pinned to clothing, fastened to crazy-tall wigs, or propped up on tables. Near me, a woman bites into a strawberry. The juice drips down her chin. A man slurps it off. A smelly terrier dozes on a satin chair. Girls hide, smiling, behind pretty fans. A man takes a whiz in a corner. A parrot flies across the room and drops a load on someone’s shoulder. The host hobbles after it, a cane in his hand, yelling, “Malvolio! You scoundrel!”

From where I was sitting, with the other musicians at the far end of this enormous ballroom, the whole thing looked glittering and decadent, but now, as people pass by close to me, I can see the pockmarks under their paint and the lice crawling in their wigs and the loss in their glassy, haunted eyes.

“It’s beautiful, no?” a man next to me says dreamily.

But it’s not. As the night wears on, the people seem to me like dolls dancing, like clockwork figures. Lost in time.

The party breaks up just after one. The music stops. The ribbons come off. There are sighs and kisses and promises to meet again soon. Everyone leaves quietly and disperses quickly once they hit the street.

“Let’s go to the Foy,” Amadé says to me and a few musicians who are walking with us.

I hang back. I met with Fauvel earlier, gave him a snuffbox, a ring, and six gold coins, and I now have a new bundle hidden under Amadé’s bed. I’m going to go back to his apartment to get it, then make my way to a rooftop near the prison.

“Are you coming?” he says to me.

“No, you go. I’ll catch you back at the ranch.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll see you later.”

He frowns at me. “Where are you going?”

“To meet someone.”

“Who?”

I’m about to tell him some big fat lie when Stéphane, one of the musicians, talks over me.

“Do you think we’ll have fireworks again tonight, Deo?” he says. There’s a woman hanging on his arm. He introduces her as Mademoiselle d’Arden.

“They’re beautiful, the fireworks, no?” she says, giggling.

“It’s whispered that they are for the little prince,” Stéphane says.

“A tribute to the little captive. How tragic. How beautiful,” the woman says. She’s drunk and stupid.

“No, it’s not beautiful,” I say angrily. “He’s sick. He’s dying. Horribly.”

“Nonsense! I have heard the boy is treated well and will be released soon,” Mademoiselle d’Arden says.

“Yeah? Where did you hear it?” I ask

She waves her hand. “I cannot remember. The papers. My neighbors. Somewhere.”

“Friends, friends!” Stéphane says. “What matters is that things are getting better. The Terror is over. It’s finished. It will not trouble us anymore.”

“But it will,” I say. “Over and over again.”

“That’s right, of course,” someone else says. “Do you imagine that simply because one madman is gone, there are no more? Yes, Robespierre is dead. And Marat. Saint-Just. Hébert. But there are always more, waiting in the wings. History always throws off these power-hungry monsters. It’s because of people like them that this little boy suffers.”

I think about another Max. And another little boy. I remember the future. “Maximilien R. Peters! Incorruptible, ineluctable, and indestructible! It’s time to start the revolution, baby!” he shouted. I remember the other people who lived with him in the Charles. Poor people, damaged people. I think of how I walked past them every day, not seeing them, not caring. Until it was too late.

And then I think of how these people, Amadé’s friends, amuse themselves all night long with mannered dances and witty conversation, shutting themselves off from the world, while a helpless child slowly dies.

And I say, “No, not because of Robespierre and Marat. Or people like them. Because of people like us.”

It’s quiet then.

“Later, Deo,” I say, and head away from them. Into the darkness.