The Silver Blade (16 page)
‘You didn’t have them on at the Pont Neuf,’ said Basco.
‘The Pont Neuf? What was I doing there?’ He held the sides of his head.
‘Shall I take you home?’ asked Basco.
Remon Quint had round eyes in a large round head on a small neat body. He looked not unlike a stick balancing a ball. The memory of what he had been doing began to come back, and his eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his head.
‘I can’t go back,’ he said. ‘The voice will return. This is the first time since
he
came that she’s been silent.’
he
came that she’s been silent.’
‘Would you like to tell us what the voice said?’ asked Tetu, handing him a cognac, and knowing what the answer would be.
‘She never stopped. She said, over and over again, “The devil’s own is on your trail. Run like the wind.”’
Yann broke the silence that greeted his words.
‘Anis,’ he said.
‘
I
t is an incredible story,’ said Citizen Quint. ‘Things like this don’t happen, not to me. I am an ordinary man.’
I
t is an incredible story,’ said Citizen Quint. ‘Things like this don’t happen, not to me. I am an ordinary man.’
Citizen Aulard said, ‘We are all of a theatrical disposition here and when I tell you that nothing is beyond the realms of possibility, I say it to comfort you and give you the courage to speak.’
‘You will think me mad, perhaps I am.’
‘I think you are exhausted,’ said Tetu, with such authority that the keymaker felt his mind settling itself on the solid ground of rational thought.
So he started his story and he told it well; when he had finished you could have heard a pin drop.
‘Where is the key now?’ Yann asked Remon Quint.
‘On my workbench.’ He stopped, took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. ‘It’s my finest work.’
Y
ann set off across the Pont Neuf towards the rue de Rivoli. Here at the Pavillion de Marson was the noisome quarter of dingy houses intersected by narrow alleys which extended from the rue St-Honore to the Place du Carrousel. He found the house just as the keymaker had described. It was a tall tenement building which looked as if it had been stretched upwards to accommodate all its inhabitants; it hummed with life like a beehive. Yann took his time and decided that it would be better observed from the cafe across the road, though when he entered the place the smell of unwashed flesh and smoke made him instantly regret his decision. Having taken a table he felt that to leave straight away would draw unwanted attention to himself. He peered through the steamed-up window. Sobriety was a foreign word to the collection of drunks and misfits in the cafe, all of whom had the look of those who have sacrificed their souls to the bottle. The floor was covered in a matting of filthy sawdust, solid in parts where no one had the strength, or the will, to sweep it away.
ann set off across the Pont Neuf towards the rue de Rivoli. Here at the Pavillion de Marson was the noisome quarter of dingy houses intersected by narrow alleys which extended from the rue St-Honore to the Place du Carrousel. He found the house just as the keymaker had described. It was a tall tenement building which looked as if it had been stretched upwards to accommodate all its inhabitants; it hummed with life like a beehive. Yann took his time and decided that it would be better observed from the cafe across the road, though when he entered the place the smell of unwashed flesh and smoke made him instantly regret his decision. Having taken a table he felt that to leave straight away would draw unwanted attention to himself. He peered through the steamed-up window. Sobriety was a foreign word to the collection of drunks and misfits in the cafe, all of whom had the look of those who have sacrificed their souls to the bottle. The floor was covered in a matting of filthy sawdust, solid in parts where no one had the strength, or the will, to sweep it away.
To the disgust of the waiter Yann ordered coffee. At the next table sat a man with a bright-red face. He was dressed in a worn cotton jacket which had seen better days and had a red cap on his head. He was in the middle of lecturing a citizeness who was only slightly less drunk than him. She at least wasn’t slurring her words.
Yann watched the comings and goings of the building opposite, half-listening to their conversation.
‘No, woman, the way to feed the people is simple. We should be able to serve up aristocratic meat.’
‘What?’ said the citizeness, sniffing. ‘How aristocratic? I don’t mind where the blooming cow comes from as long as I have something to eat.’
Yann wondered, if purgatory did exist, whether it would be a cafe like this.
‘I tell you, woman, if the butcher Citizen Loup was still alive he would have done it, he would have sold meat from the guillotine.’ The man stopped to yell at the waiter for more brandy.
‘That’s disgusting,’ said the citizeness, spitting out her drink. ‘That makes me sick to my guts!’
‘Well, woman, this city is plagued by famine. It’s one way those stuffed-up, good-for-nothing, greedy, inbred aristos can bring about equality. After all, they eat only the very best food, so they should taste good.’
‘You are talking codswallop, you are.’
‘All right then, would you prefer that we kill all the cats and dogs to eat instead?’
‘That would be a daft thing to do.’
‘Why? Cat and dog not to your taste?’
‘No, all I mean is, if we did that, what would kill the rats?’
The
sans-culotte
, realising that he’d been got the better of, grunted. ‘The trouble with you, woman, is that your brains don’t work.’ He turned to Yann for support. ‘But it doesn’t matter, does it, because we’re all going to be equal.’
sans-culotte
, realising that he’d been got the better of, grunted. ‘The trouble with you, woman, is that your brains don’t work.’ He turned to Yann for support. ‘But it doesn’t matter, does it, because we’re all going to be equal.’
‘Equal in what?’ asked Yann. ‘For you say that you have a better brain than your companion, so if you’re right, where is the equality?’
‘Take no notice, citizen,’ said the woman. ‘It’s just a bee in his bonnet. Equality? I can’t see it myself.’
Yann asked, ‘Have you heard the one about the king who made all men equal by the simple means of an iron table?’
‘No. How?’
‘Everyone who came to his kingdom was forced to lie on the iron table. If you were too short for it, your legs would be stretched on the rack; if you were too long for it, your legs would be chopped off to fit. That way the king could guarantee all men were equal.’
The man looked foxed. ‘I don’t understand.’ ‘Neither did anyone who had to lie on the iron table, but they all had to live with the crippling consequence.’
The woman burst out laughing.
‘Are you a comedian?’ she asked.
Yann drank up his coffee and paid his bill. ‘No, I leave that to the likes of your friend here with his taste in meat.’
The citizen lurched to his feet. ‘You’re making fun of me. No one makes fun of me. I will show you equality and you too, woman, if you don’t shut your trap.’ He went to take a swing at Yann. Mysteriously, he missed his footing and fell flat on his face.
The waiter rushed forward as Yann, stepping over the prostrate man, winked at the woman, who sat there chuckling.
Outside the sun hit the narrow street in intense strips of light. A queue for bread stretched all the way round the corner. A scuffle had started by the door of the baker’s shop between two women who were fighting tooth and claw over a loaf of bread. The crowd, bored with waiting, goaded them on.
We have become a city of scavengers, thought Yann, as he slipped into a small, dark courtyard, an open mouth stinking of bad breath. A door led to wooden stairs which twisted and turned unevenly, his footsteps were the beat of a drum. The smell of animal fat, rotten vegetables, tobacco and tallow candles hung thick and sickly in the air. He heard a noise on the ground floor, a door opening and closing, an argument, a man’s voice shouting. Above him, a quieter click, the kind of noise you make when you don’t want to be heard. Someone was coming out of the keymaker’s apartment. Yann pressed himself against the wall and caught a glimpse of a face he recognised glancing over the banister. If the owner of the milky eye had any vision in it he might have seen him, despite the gloom of the stair well. He heard Milkeye start to walk down towards him.
Yann, knowing there was nowhere to conceal himself, acted quickly. Tetu always said the best place to hide is under the noses of those who want to find you.
He slumped to the floor, almost blocking the stairs, pulled his hat over his face and started muttering drunken patriotic drivel. Milkeye took no notice of him except to kick his legs aside so that he could pass, at which the drunk let out an expletive for having been so rudely disturbed. The sound of his voice spurred Milkeye to move with greater speed down the creaking steps, taking them two at a time. Yann heard the door close behind him. He waited to make sure Milkeye wasn’t coming back before going into the keymaker’s apartment.
The place had been ransacked, the key was gone. Yann stood among the wreckage feeling as if he had been punched in the chest. What a fool he had been. How many signs did he need before he acknowledged his worst fear? Now seeing Milkeye again he had no doubt: Kalliovski must still be alive. Not for the first time he wondered if luck was on his side. Perhaps Tetu was right. He needed the talisman. Ever since he’d heard the dog howling at the Duc de Bourcy’s chateau, he’d known the spirit of Anis was trying to warn him. Again fate was gambling with his life.
He looked up at the tobacco-stained ceiling. ‘Kalliovski, ‘ he said out loud, ‘let this be between you and me, no one else. Leave Sido be.’
He left the apartment. There was nothing to be done there. He looked down the stairwell to make sure the coast was clear. At the bottom a door opened.
‘Who are you?’ said a man, reaching out to stop Yann.
‘What is it to you, citizen?’
‘Everything. I know everything that goes on in this building.’
‘Well, you don’t, citizen, otherwise you would know that Remon Quint’s apartment has been burgled.’
‘What’s happening, Brutus?’ came a female voice from inside.
‘Burgled, then? Maybe I just caught the villain who did it,’ said the man, grabbing hold of Yann’s coat.
Often Yann saw people’s minds as market stalls, all the thoughts in their heads put out on display. This shoemaker’s mind, pickled in wine, was so simple that he knew exactly what he was thinking.
‘You should take your hands off me, citizen,’ said Yann, ‘unless you want me to report you. I know you’re still making shoes for the counter-revolutionaries.’
Rats scurry away into dark places when they hear footsteps and so did the shoemaker. At the words ‘counter-revolutionaries’ he disappeared.
Chapter Thirteen
T
he banker Charles Cordell arrived at the theatre around midnight.
he banker Charles Cordell arrived at the theatre around midnight.
He was a tall, bespectacled man, with a broken buttress of a nose and grey eyes that looked as if they had stared at too many facts and figures, and found that nothing in life added up. In the early days of the Revolution he’d been one of its most ardent supporters, but long before the execution of Louis XVI, he realised it had become a monstrous excuse for cruelty. The clever talk, the velvet-tongued justification of such acts in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity, mattered little. The truth, as far as he was concerned, was far less palatable and altogether more basely human: vengeance, jealousy and greed.
Unlike many of his fellow Englishmen he had stayed in Paris when war with England had been declared. With a rabbit foot for good luck in his coat pocket he hadn’t been arrested yet. But he had a feeling that time was not on his side.
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