Bon Marche (2 page)

The racecourse is, therefore, a necessity, for through its instrumentality the blood horse has been brought to his present high degree of perfection. Human judgment is often in error, but on no subject more frequently than in the opinions we form on the relative power and value of the horse. It is as easy to judge the powers and qualities of man by the eye, and all will admit the fallibility of such judgment.

No, my friends, we can only judge correctly the intellectual and moral worth of our great men when we view them on the world's stage in competition with distinguished competitors. Without a theater the world could never have known those distinguished delineators of human character whose names now fill many an honored page in history. The same is true of the blooded horse. The racecourse is his stage, his theater.

I am aware of the prejudices existing against the racecourse by religionists, generally on account of its immoral tendency. That these prejudices are not altogether groundless, I admit; but that the immoralities of a well-regulated racecourse are greatly magnified by those who know the least of their operations, I am perfectly satisfied; that it may be still further improved, I earnestly desire.

For more than sixty years I have been a breeder of the blood horse, and an active participator in his education and development, and can affirm that vice and immorality do not necessarily attach to racing and, as before remarked, the racecourse is a necessity, for without it the breeder could not know the superior horses and the best strains to propagate, and without this knowledge his improvement would cease and deterioration begin.

Here the question arises whether we will permit this noble and most useful creature, which has been brought to his present degree of perfection by the efforts of breeders for near two hundred years—and by the expenditure of as many millions of dollars—to retrograde into the coarse and clumsy brute he was prior to the introduction of the Arab, or to go on to improve and develop still higher and more useful qualities. For one, I advocate his preservation and at the same time call upon the moralist to unite with me in the effort to remove all objectionable features that may attach to the institution so necessary for his development.

Beauty, speed, action, durability, and the many admirable qualities I claim for this magnificent animal do not constitute his chief—nay, or his greatest—value. His mission is to improve his race. The pure and unadulterated blood which flows in his veins improves and gives additional value to
ALL
the horse family.

CHARLES DEWEY

Bon Marché,
1845

BOOK ONE

If there were no God there would be no blooded horse.

—Marshall Statler, 1781

1

S
HIVERING
in the early-morning chill, the cabin boy stood naked on the aft deck of the
Ville de Paris,
pouring buckets of water over his head. It was going to be a very special day for him, one warranting a bath.

The ship's log placed the date as October 19, 1781. “Standing off Yorktown, Virginia,” it noted.

The night before, the lad had received the grudging permission of Comte François Joseph Paul de Grasse, Admiral of the Fleet, to be part of the flagship's contingent at the formal surrender ceremonies. But it wasn't the capitulation of Major General Sir Charles Cornwallis that occupied his thoughts now.

As he bathed, he contemplated the orders he had received from his guardian spirit.

Through all of his sixteen years the spirit had been with him, sustaining him. He had always been certain of that. There was a motto by which he lived:
Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera
—“Help thyself, and heaven will help thee.” He had never been hesitant about helping himself.

His name was Charles Dupree. Or so he believed.

He had been a
gamin
—a street boy—surviving alone on the inhospitable thoroughfares of Paris. He couldn't remember ever having been held to a mother's breast, although there were faint shadows in his memory of a woman who might have been his mother. A father was not someone he knew, not even as a shadow. And he had never really lived anywhere—not in a house or a flat or even a room. Just finding a place to sleep had been a challenge every single night of what he could recall of his life before the navy.

On this morning, as the sun rising in the east dried him after his bath, Charles remembered his past. Vividly. It was important to him that he did—that he never forget.

His memories were his incentive.

II

M
ARIE
sat huddled in the middle of the disheveled bed, drawing her bare feet up under her, watching with frightened eyes as the lad poked into the corners of her room with a heavy club.

“Do you see him,
chéri?
”

“No, not yet,” the boy answered, continuing his search.

The girl shuddered. “Oh, I hate them so!”

Suddenly the boy raised his club and brought it down with great force on something in the shadows. There was an animal squeak. When he turned to the girl, he was holding a huge rat by the tail, its ugly fangs clearly visible in its open mouth.

Marie screamed.

Grinning, the youngster went to the open fourth-floor window and tossed the dead rat into the street below.

The young woman giggled nervously. “My hero!” Her giggle turned into a full-throated laugh. “You should have seen Monsieur Farinet scoot when he saw that beast walking across the top of the commode.” She shrugged. “Ah, but it cost me money.”

“That's too bad.”

The boy was only nine, but he knew of the trade of the prostitutes—
les filles de joie.
A host of them were quartered in the five-story brick pile of a tenement three or four twisted, dirt-strewn streets removed from the splendor of the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Tenements were jammed together in the narrow back streets, each one five to seven stories high, twenty-five rooms to a floor. Warrens for people. And rats, too. He had come to the woman's rescue when she screamed out of the window of one of them.

Marie got out of the bed, stretching her slim limbs, loosening her corset, dropping it to the floor with a contented sigh. She stood naked for a moment, languidly arching her back, thrusting out her small, firm breasts as the boy stared. Retrieving a thin
chemise de nuit
from the back of a chair, she wriggled into it, half covering her nakedness.

“Now—how can I reward you,
chéri?
”

“Some food maybe—” the boy said hesitantly.

“In the pantry.” She pointed to a door. “Some bread and cheese.”

He went into the pantry, cut a thick slice from a block of molding cheese, and tore a chunk of bread from a long, hard loaf. When he returned to the bedroom, he nodded to her.
“Merci, Marie.
”

“You know my name?”

“Yes.”

“How's that?”

“I saw you on the street many times. And I asked someone.”

She laughed, strangely flattered that he had made an effort to learn who she was. “Did you, now? And what's your name?”

“Charles.”

“Well, Charles, why don't you sit down and eat your food?”

He perched tentatively on the edge of a chair opposite her, hungrily wolfing the bread and cheese, keeping his eyes on the attractive young woman.

“Where do you live, Charles?”

“Out there,” inclining his head toward the open window.

“On the street?” Her face went sad. “Are you an orphan?”

The
gamin
thought for a moment. “I take care of myself,” he replied firmly.

“
Chéri,
” Marie said, smiling, “you might take care of yourself, but, dear God, you're dirty!” She wrinkled up her nose. “And smelly! I'm going to give you a bath.”

Charles came quickly to his feet. “No, no!” He edged toward the door leading to the hallway.

Marie moved with alacrity to entrap the boy, dragging him to a corner where a large metal tub was propped against the wall. She stood it upright with one hand, keeping the other on his collar. Then she began to strip off his clothes. He struggled, but not hard enough to get away.

“Now, you stay right there,” she ordered, “until I get the water.”

Into the pantry she went, returning quickly with two buckets of water, pouring them into the tub.

“It's cold, but it'll get you clean. Get in.”

When he hesitated, she picked him up bodily and plunked him into the water. He was surprised by the strength of the girl.

Kneeling by the tub, Marie began to rub soap on his body. Splashing water over him, laughing gaily. She made a game of it, and he enjoyed it, especially when she touched him where no one else had ever touched him before. The whore scrubbed him clean, and, although he objected vehemently, she poured a few drops of cheap perfume into the water, splashing it over him again.

When it was over and Marie was drying him with a piece of sheeting, she was nearly as wet as the boy. But the intimacy of the bath had made them friends.

She watched him as he pulled on his dirty clothes, wishing that she could wash them, too, but knowing she had done as much as he would allow.

“Isn't that better?”

“Yes,” Charles admitted.

“Can I call on you when I need a ratter again?”

“Sure.”

She kissed him on the lips.
“Mon chéri,”
she laughed. And Charles left her rooms.

The boy had another piece of information to file away in his mind. When he really needed food, he could always go back to Marie and kill another rat. It was bits of knowledge like that that kept him alive, that made him a survivor in the frantic hive that was the Paris of the mid-1770s.

He knew a lot of things: of the cafés that put out the best garbage, of the money-changers and goldsmiths at Pont au Change where he could run errands to earn a few coins, of the
maisons de confiance
where he could spend his money—when he had it—for food without getting cheated, of the alleyways and cellars where he could sleep without risking being murdered in the night for his shoes or his tattered coat.

And he kept one rule: he never begged. There were beggars everywhere on the streets. Charles thought them a pitiable lot. With no pride. Whatever else he might become, he promised himself, he wouldn't be a beggar. He was better than that.

Most times he could read the mood of the city. It was a live thing, with its street singers and jugglers, its pickpockets, its vagabonds, its thieves, its grand ladies being transported in sedan chairs, its effete gentlemen in their colored knee breeches and stockings of white silk and long coats of velvet, its mountebanks, its rich, and its rabble. And the moods of Paris were as varied as its people, gay at times, but often cruel as well.

A popular public amusement was the administration of the stern justice of the city. The sight of a dishonest merchant locked in the pillory was entertainment for many. As was the flogging of thieves as they were trundled through the streets in crude carts. On occasion, there was the capital punishment of a murderer, a sorcerer, or even a blasphemer. The criminal was bound to a wheel, his arms and legs broken with a heavy iron bar, after which he was left to die on the wheel, without concern for his pain. The real punishment was the slowness of the death. Even more gory, a
truly evil
person, perhaps one found guilty of incest, would sometimes be drawn and quartered in full view of the delighted crowd. Charles watched these events, but failed to understand the general glee.

The punishments made Charles wary of the efficient municipal police. He kept clear of them, his careful study of their methods making him aware of what they planned to do before they did it. It was in mid-September, some two months after he had killed the rat for the prostitute Marie, that he saw something beginning. Something familiar. He rushed to Marie's rooms.

Banging on her door: “Marie, it's Charles!”

“Go away.” She wasn't angry, merely occupied.

“Come now!” he insisted. “There's a roundup!”

Most often the gendarmerie looked the other way at the activities of the whores, recognizing that they performed a necessary function in the teeming city. But on this day, following what must have been a highly placed complaint against a prostitute, the police were sweeping through the streets, gathering up as many of
les filles publiques
as they could find.

Marie opened the door.

“The police,” Charles said breathlessly. “They're in the next street!”

Her customer, hurriedly getting into his clothes, brushed by them at the door and ran off down the hallway.

Marie was thoroughly frightened. Pulling on a gown, she permitted Charles to lead her out the rear door of the building into the alley and down into a filthy basement he believed to be safe. They huddled there in a dank corner, the sounds of the police roundup coming through to them from the street above.

Finally, Marie spoke quietly. “My hero again, eh?”

“I didn't want to see you caught.”

Charles had seen prostitutes who had been swept up in other raids, released after a few days in prison, shorn of their hair. He couldn't imagine Marie without her flowing auburn hair.

“It's getting bad,” she sighed. “The last time the police did this, my friend was sent to Louisiana.”

“Where?”

“Louisiana—in the New World. To work on a sugar plantation, it was said.” Another sigh. “I don't imagine I'll ever see her again.”

Charles cocked his head, listening to the nuances of the noises of the street. “I think it's safe now.”

“How can I pay you?”

“Don't think about it.” He wasn't hungry then.