Time for Eternity (27 page)

“No refreshments,” Robespierre said through gritted teeth. “Where were you?”

“I am astounded, Citizen. How can my poor wanderings interest you?”

“Because your cook’s boy was down at the greengrocers saying you left a bloody handprint when you stumbled in through the servant’s entrance at four this morning.” Madame Croûte smiled in satisfaction. “And coincidentally, that’s just after an intruder was stabbed in the shoulder at the Conciergerie while trying to free a family named Rideaux.”

“My, you are busy,” Henri drawled. “Questioning my cook’s boy at this early hour?”

“The people are everywhere,” Madame Croûte said. Her smile was unwholesome.

“And you think I was involved?” He gave a chuckle. “Have I become an idealist now who rescues prisoners, risking my person?

Quite a reformation in fact.”

“There is the matter of your neighbor and her escape.” Robespierre held firm.

Very well, it was time to take a chance. “Well, well. So you suspect me. And you think I stand before you with a wound in my shoulder.” He shrugged. And hoped to God that the last pink of new skin had disappeared.

“Strip off his jacket,” Robespierre ordered the soldiers.

Henri raised his hands. “Hardly necessary, gentlemen. If the lady doesn’t mind?”

“The lady insists,” Madame Croûte snorted, ignoring Françoise.

Henri untied the silk rope at his waist, and slid the jacket down his shoulders.

Madame Croûte peered at his shoulder. “Is there … ?”

She stepped closer. “No.” She sounded very disappointed. Henri heard Françoise let out the breath she had been holding.

Robespierre looked … annoyed. Madame Croûte had made him seem ridiculous. Good. Let their black union strain and crack. He had a feeling that if Robespierre tried to throw off Croûte, she would be the winner, and find a new member of the Committee of Public Safety to support.

“Perhaps the intruder wasn’t wounded? There must be some way you can lay this at my door,” Henri said as he shrugged his jacket back on.

“There was a good five inches of blood on the guard’s sword,” Robespierre said thoughtfully. “He remembered black eyes.”

Henri should have taken time to plant a suggestion. That was what came of being tired. But that the man remembered black eyes was a lie. He’d seen only red eyes. Robespierre wasn’t willing to discredit his witness by admitting that. Or maybe the guard was afraid to admit he’d seen something impossible. “Dark eyes are so uncommon, too …”

Madame Croûte steamed. Robespierre too, but he concealed it better.

“Now, if you all will excuse me? I find my bed much more attractive than entertaining visitors at such an ungodly hour.”

Gaston woke to his duty and herded them all out the door. He would think Henri was concealing his duel. Françoise would put the whole down to the First Citizen’s paranoia and enmity. The better to convince her to leave the country next week.

Henri found the whole exercise depressing. It was now clear there would come a time when he could not continue his work.

When Françoise was gone. When life would stretch ahead with maddening familiarity. The door to his room closed. The whispered recriminations retreated down the main staircase. He looked at the bed and knew he wouldn’t sleep for a long time today.

Fifteen

What a strange morning. Avignon was hiding something. Françoise was sure of it. He ’d been avoiding her for two days. And Robespierre and Madame Croûte thought Avignon, of all people, was helping prisoners escape.

Was that so strange? Françoise knew of at least one prisoner for whom that was true.

That’s not his secret,
the voice said.
If you’d listen to me—

“I’m not listening to you,” she whispered to herself. She had to know if it was him. So she questioned the cook ’s boy. Shy, hesitant, he told her about the bloody palm print. He also reported that someone had burned clothes in the kitchen fire, for there were still charred scraps when he’d returned from the greengrocer’s. Fine linen and black brocade.

Pierre said Paris was buzzing. Another fourteen people had escaped from the Conciergerie last night. The guards were a laughingstock. One guard had been swearing in a coffeehouse that whoever was getting them out had bloodred eyes and disappeared into thin air. They were making up ghost stories to account for their incompetence.

Françoise didn’t know what to think. If the intruder had been wounded it couldn ’t have been Avignon. But what about the bloody palm print? She couldn’t see her way.

Maybe he wasn’t risking himself directly. Someone else got them out of prison, and he transported them out of the country with his smuggling network. The nobility would pay an extravagant sum for transport. The wicked duc wouldn’t be doing it for anything less.

She watched from the top of the stairs as he left for the evening. The affectation of his trailing black silk scarf and his quizzing glass would have made any other man look ridiculous.

She ate dinner, alone again, and sent her compliments to Pierre.

Then she went to her room. Annette helped her to undress and was dismissed. The household kept an odd timetable. Half the staff tidied his room and prepared for his return near dawn with food and drink and slept as Avignon did, during the day. Those who slept now did his business during the day. They all seemed to have adapted to it, almost cheerfully.

Still, by slightly after midnight, the house was quiet. She realized that she wanted to know what secrets Avignon kept, whether or not they related to prisoners escaping from the Conciergerie. The obvious choice for a record of his doings was his desk downstairs. But Avignon was not ordinary. She’d be surprised if his secrets were kept in his desk. So she slid down the hall to his bedroom and slipped inside, her heart in her mouth. Perhaps because the room still smelled of him, spicy and sweet.
Don’t be silly.

She went through his dressing table drawers. But there was nothing there that any man would not have; a knife for paring nails, a boar’s bristle brush with a silver back, a silver comb, and a selection of black ribbons to tie back his hair. They were only remarkable for what they did not hold. No powder, no patches, no rouge or other affectations. And no bottle of perfume. Where did he keep that? The whole room smelled faintly of his signature scent. The drawer under the stand that held the washbasin contained only tooth powder and brush and extra bars of soap. The night table held only flints and strikers for the candelabrum set upon it, the other only a copy of Voltaire’s
Candide.
A little odd for a man who had no ideals at all, let alone those of the people’s Revolution.

Very well. She’d been wrong. It must be in his desk. She tiptoed down the stairs, past the nodding footman in the foyer, and down the back hall to the library. Would his desk be locked? She’d not stop at prying locks, though she’d have to go up and get the knife for paring her own nails to do it. But none of the drawers were locked. Trusting man. There was even a roulade of gold pieces in the center drawer. Were all his servants as trustworthy as Gaston, Drummond, Pierre, and Jean? The other drawers held papers. She carefully went through them. They seemed to be invoices from a variety of vendors, including … Fanchon.

Dear mother Mary! Her wardrobe had cost six thousand francs? That was almost enough to keep her for life. Oh, this was dreadful. To be so indebted to him! Even though she would only take two dresses with her, she had worn the evening dress because she was vain and it was pretty and … Could he give them back? Maybe not. Oh, she was just a horrible person. He had been generous to her. And here she was rifling through his personal things, looking for secrets.

But maybe he had been generous to Madame Vercheroux as well. The woman had fingered those diamonds the whole time she was in the ballroom upstairs. That hurt.

It shouldn’t. Money apparently meant nothing to him. He used it to get what he wanted. At least Vercheroux gave him fair value for money. Françoise had told him she wouldn’t be kept by him, wouldn’t make love with him. He’d wasted six thousand francs.

Maybe he went every night to Madame Vercheroux. Maybe he wanted to put Françoise on his ship to England to get rid of her.

Or maybe, when she was alone and powerless in England, he would have his way with her and he needn’t be generous anymore.

She realized she was very naïve in matters of men and women. In which case, finding his secret would give her leverage with him.

The kind of secret he has isn’t found in a desk.
The voice seemed annoyed. Françoise continued her search; breeding papers for his horses, records of what he paid his servants. That was interesting. He was surprisingly generous. One day Pierre, Drummond, Gaston, Jean, and the others would retire with a good amount of money. At last she came to bills of lading for his cargos, and examined each one carefully. There was no sign of human cargo. What had she expected? Him to leave a paper in his desk saying, “Ten escapees from the Conciergerie on 10 June, in exchange for fifty thousand francs?”

Would the wicked duc rescue anybody?

“Maybe. For enough money.” She sat back in the great red leather chair. Bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling all along three walls, with breaks for the fireplace and doors. The fourth wall held windows. There were so many books she couldn ’t imagine trying to look through all of them for some hidden piece of paper. And a paper that said … What? What would he have that would reveal that he was making money off someone else’s altruistic impulse and the impossible risk they were taking?

She closed the desk drawers, retrieved her candle, and trudged back up the stairs. If whatever she was looking for were hidden in a book, she’d never find it in that huge library. If it were up to her, she’d keep anything to do with illicit doings somewhere more personal anyway.

So if he were going to hide something in a book, it would be in the one in his nightstand.

She almost gasped.

Stupid. Ridiculous. But once the thought had popped into her head, she had to check. So she let herself back into his room and placed her candle on the nightstand. She pulled open the drawer. The red leather binding of Voltaire’s masterpiece gleamed in the candlelight.

She picked up the book and held it by the two covers. The pages fanned out. And a folded paper wafted to the floor.

She was so surprised she couldn’t move for a moment. Finally she picked it up, unfolded it, and held it to the light.

It was a long list of names in careful script. Family names or titles, and then indented, given names. After the first given names, father or mother was notated, implying that the others were children. Twenty groups were crossed off. The first name not crossed off was Rideaux.

The implications washed over her in waves. He wasn’t just accepting for transport whomever someone else brought to him. This list said he planned whom to rescue, crossing off specific names as the job was completed. Was he the one actually rescuing them?

Not hardly.
The voice spoke so strangely. But she knew what it meant.

“The man who tried to rescue Madame LaFleur and read the benediction over her could be doing this, ” she whispered to herself. “And not just for money. You just refuse to see it.”

In which case, she’d been entirely wrong about Avignon along with everyone else in Paris. The man who had served her food, the man who had carried her to bed after the party, the man who had made passionate love to her—that man could risk his life to rescue families from the guillotine.

But the rescuer had been stabbed in the shoulder, and Avignon’s shoulder was whole.

It’s not him. He’s transporting them to England on his ships. Maybe. That’s it.

She
had
to know which part of her was right about Avignon. Henri. The only way was to catch him in action. That meant the Conciergerie.

At night.

Impossible.

Why? Guards could be bribed. She knew that for a fact. And there was a roulade ready -made for the purpose in the center drawer of the desk in the library. That’s probably how he was doing it, bribing guards. If it was he actually rescuing them, then she knew where he would be tonight. He was taking the list of families in order. He ’d left off with Rideaux. She’d copy the list and return his original to
Candide.

She was going to do it.

Be my guest. You’re wasting your time, though.

“Ye can’t see the Rideaux family.”

The young guard with the luxuriant mustachios and the limp hair was avaricious. She could see it in his eyes. Still he refused nearly a third of Avignon’s roulade.

“Why not?” she asked.

“They was sent to the hungry Madame this morning. First Citizen figured they’d be next to escape, since someone was almost caught in front of their cell—before he disappeared, right in front of Colbert’s eyes.”

“The … the whole family … guillotined? There were … three children.”

The young guard chewed his lip. “I know … But sins of the fathers and all that … They’d be a breeding ground for the counterrevolution.” The young guard looked away in shame in spite of the excuses he was giving. Françoise could barely control her stomach. To think of those children, laying their heads on the block in front of the cheering crowds …

She had to get hold of herself. One family was lost, but there were fifteen or twenty others on the list with names not yet crossed off. There was still hope for them. “Well, then, I … I want to see the … the St. Navarre family.” The next names on the list. Wait.

Wasn’t that the name of the sad-eyed man who had helped her find Madame LaFleur? He had a son, Emile. Panic blossomed in her like a bloodred rose.

The guard looked at her queerly.

“They knew my aunt.” A lame explanation at best. She held out the coins.

She saw him decide as he fingered the coins. He marched her past cells full to overflowing with prisoners trying to find enough room to sleep. Loud snores, quiet voices, groans, and sobs echoed through the stone passageway. “We put the families in cells around the courtyard, so we can keep an eye on ’em. Montmorency will let you in, if you grease his palm.”