Gingerly, he grasped for the pieces of carved stonework. The sill was wide, and he used the round frame to brace his body and climb onto the roof. A wolf, carved around the window frame, became a useful handhold. Pulling himself up with them, he managed to move one foot up onto the roof and searched around for a ledge of slate. Then slowly he moved on and up the roof and managed to get his other leg free of the window until he was hanging on the very edge of the slope. Little by little, tile by tile, Steel pulled himself up the steep angle of the roof until he was at the top.
He had hoped to find a chimney stack down which he might climb, but there was none here. In the centre of the roof, however, he could make out a lantern. He could see it quite plainly, some thirty feet from where he balanced, with a steep slope on either side. The only way to reach it would be along the apex of the roof itself. Steel lowered himself down until one of his legs hung on either side of the roof and slowly began to ease himself along. It was not the most comfortable of journeys and he realized that this must be what it felt like to suffer the infernal other ranks’ regimental punishment of ‘riding the horse’ where a miscreant soldier would be made to sit astride a wooden horse, his legs weighted down. It seemed to take forever, and the further Steel went the more agonizing his progress became until he felt as if the roof would cut him in two.
At length, however, he reached the tall lantern. It was a small, domed structure of roughly his own height from the apex with six sides. Steel recalled a similar structure at his family home at Carniston which sat on the stable block allowing air in to the horses. How many times had he and Alexander used it as a means to reach their nightly rendezvous with girls from the village in the hay loft? If this lantern was built in the same way then one of the sides would have to be a door. He pushed at each of them, gingerly moving around the roof. Four of them did not yield, and then on the east side, as he pushed, it slowly creaked open. Steel pressed himself to the stonework, anxious lest the noise might have alerted someone. But, to his great relief, the courtyard below was still quite empty and no one had yet raised the alarm. Steel peered into the darkness within the lantern. A chill breeze told him that it might well be a drop of seventy feet. Carefully, he reached inside and smiled as he felt familiar handholds. It was a ventilation shaft, exactly like the one at Carniston. He climbed in and began to descend.
If Steel had thought that any other part of his escape thus far had been difficult, they seemed as naught now compared with his current situation. He reckoned that he might if lucky be halfway down the shaft within the lantern. He had no way of knowing, for it was pitch black, the only light being at the top where the door met the sky. Every step was a new danger, every rung of the slippery ladder to be carefully negotiated. And the dark was smothering him. Several times he almost panicked. He thought of his sergeant, Jacob Slaughter, with his fear of dark enclosed spaces, thought of the tunnel in the walls of Ostend where Slaughter’s panic had almost cost them their lives, and thought how then he himself had steadied the sergeant. That was what ultimately drove him on, that and the knowledge that there was no way back, save to certain death.
His limbs ached – his whole frame, it seemed. Then he was aware in the blackness that the air had become somehow different and that his breathing was less hollow, somehow more audible. The only explanation must be that he was nearing the bottom of the shaft. He placed his foot on the next rung and found that it was not there. Momentary panic gave way to relief as, reaching down a little farther, the ball of his foot touched solidity. He took a few moments to get his bearings, and began cautiously to feel his way along a low tunnel. He felt with his feet, and after a few yards found an opening, or rather a hole, no more than two feet wide, in the floor. Sitting on the edge, Steel lowered himself down and found himself squatting in a tunnel. The roof was well made, of curved brick, and the floor hardened. He wondered what on earth might have been the purpose of this route originally. Whatever, that was not important now. He began to crawl along the tunnel, and after what may have been minutes or as much as a full hour, the wounds on his hands having been reopened by the surface of the floor, he began to sense the air changing and the passage becoming lighter. Then the roof of the tunnel opened up above him and another narrow shaft rose through the earth. He stood up and found that by climbing on a rudimentary staircase of rough stone, placed there for just that purpose, it was possible to touch the closure at the top. He pushed and was rewarded by movement. Taking a deep breath and praying that he would not come up directly beneath a sentry, Steel pushed harder and felt the wooden lid of the tunnel moving across grass. With a final effort he pulled himself up, and in a few moments was clambering into the fresh night air.
Steel gathered his thoughts and recovered his breath. His body felt like lead. He was bleeding badly from his hands and from the cut on his head which had reopened during his flight. He crouched on the grass and looked around in the moonlight; he could not see any sign of a sentry. His first thought was to return to Simpson’s house, but then he remembered that Malbec had told him they were waiting for Simpson. The only other option in a friendless enemy city was to find his brother. Alexander had told him that he had temporary lodgings in one of the dormitory houses outside the main building – the very houses Steel now realized he must be looking at. He knew that Alexander’s apartment lay near the rue de Grenelle, and he tried to get his bearings. The dome rose behind him, and for a few seconds Steel stared at it before working out that he was facing east. By sheer luck he was on the right side. Now his only challenge was to find which of the three blocks housed his brother. At that instant he heard footsteps on the gravel path and a second later came the shout he had dreaded.
‘
Halte! Qui va là?
’
Inspired, Steel replied in poor French, deliberately slurring his words, ‘It’s me. Private O’Driscoll, Your Honour. I’m a little unwell.’
The sentry approached Steel, who saw that the man had a levelled musket tipped with a bayonet pointed at his chest. ‘You’re drunk. And you’ve been in a fight. It’s the guardroom for you, my Irish friend.’
Still acting the part, Steel raised his hands. ‘Don’t shoot, Your Honour. I’ll come quietly. Yes, I may have had a drop of the hard stuff, but then we’re all soldiers here, aren’t we, my friend? No need for your gun. I’ll come quietly. I’ll do my punishment.’
The Frenchman smiled and half dropped his weapon. Steel seized the chance. Taking the man by surprise, he brought his right hand, now clenched in a fist, crashing down on the sentry’s skull, knocking him to the ground. The musket, thankfully not loaded, fell to the grass. Steel picked it up and before the sentry had time to come to his senses drove it down through the darkness hard into the man’s chest. He heard a brief gurgle and then the body went limp. Pulling out the bayonet, Steel quickly stripped the corpse of its white coat and slipped it on. It was a little tight, he thought, but it would do. He took the man’s tricorn hat and placed it on his head. Then, picking up the musket, he positioned it in his left arm at the port and began to walk slowly and in a straight line along the gravel.
Fervently, he looked at the barrack blocks for any hint of which might be Alexander’s. He was beginning to despair when he heard voices speaking in English. In an instant he recognized his brother’s: ‘Good night, Lieutenant, and thank you for the wine. I must return the favour.’
Walking slower now, Steel kept to the sentry’s line of march and watched as a figure stepped out of the doorway and crossed his path. As the man passed him Steel brought the musket to the present and prayed that the French officer would not look too carefully in his direction. The man walked on in the direction of the main building, and as soon as he was out of earshot Steel turned and made towards the door. He turned the handle. To his surprise it opened, and there before him stood the equally astonished figure of his brother.
It was a good ten minutes before Steel was able to tell Alexander the full story, but now he did so, as they sat on a grassy verge beside the unfinished road. Alexander had taken care to dress and bind his wounds as best he could, talking much of the time in a low voice and keeping one eye on the door of his room. Then they had left, quickly and silently, walking until they were clear of the Hôpital. Still, though, Steel spoke in a hushed voice.
‘So you know of the secret passage?’
‘Charpentier told me. It was built by the King himself, twenty years ago, when the Hôpital was being constructed, to allow the safe passage of “unapproved” royal mistresses, those less noble girls of even lower morals who entertained him in his private quarters here.’
Steel laughed. ‘So I am free on account of the great King’s passion for young women? The old goat.’
‘He wears promiscuity like a medal. And the whole nation emulates him.’
Steel shook his head. ‘In truth, they are the strangest of peoples. How shall we ever settle a war between two cultures?’
‘Is that why you’re here, Jack? To settle the war?’
‘You know better than to ask me that, little brother. I’m a soldier. I told you before. Nothing more.’
‘You must go. I was putting a plan together. Now we have to act faster.’
Alexander stood up, but Steel’s addled mind was filled with questions.
‘You knew that I’d been taken?’
‘Your man, Simpson, found me.’
‘But how could he know of you?’
‘That I do not know. It’s enough, Jack, that he did, is it not? And now, brother, we really must hurry. As I said, we have not much time. I shall take you close to safety, then I must return to the Hôpital before I am missed. Look at the sky. The night is getting brighter. We must make best use of the shadows.’
Helping Steel to his feet, Alexander indicated their direction and the two men set off eastwards, away from the Hôpital. Steel, however, was unable to resist a final look and, turning, saw the moonlight glance off the gilded dome. He thought of the empty room and the open window and anticipated the surprise and fury when Malbec discovered that his prisoner had escaped.
‘Where did you say you were taking me?’
‘I’m sending you, Jack. I cannot follow. They call it the “Cour des Miracles”, Paris’s own St Giles or Tottenham Court, if you like – a place so full of whores, cutpurses and felons that you should have no trouble fitting in.’ Alexander laughed.
‘Were I not as weak as a kitten I’d strike you for that.’
‘Come now, brother. Deny that you’re no more than a spy, and thus as guilty of deception as any who make their homes in the rookeries and tenements of Paris or London.’
Steel bristled. ‘I may deceive, but I do so in the name of honour.’
‘Pah! Your honour is that of the card sharp. It is the safest place for you to hide until you can leave the city. And now that’s twice I’ve saved you. I expect as much from you one day.’
They crossed the sleeping city as quickly as they could, heading first for the gardens of the Tuileries and then on to the Place des Victoires.
As they walked, Alexander told Steel as much as he could of their ultimate destination, his place of safety. ‘It’s a thieves’ kitchen, nothing more, but a thieves’ kitchen the like of which you’ll never see again.’
Even at this time of night the streets around the Tuileries were remarkably well lit by thousands of candle lanterns, hung every forty feet across the street on chains. Gradually, however, as their route took them further away from the palaces and the splendid mansions, the light dimmed, and by the time they reached the Place des Victoires the candles had vanished and the only light was from the moon. Alexander took them deep into the unfashionable quartier of La Villeneuve. They took an abrupt right turn and worked their way through a tortuous series of small streets.
Alexander went on: ‘The authorities have always denied its existence, and you will not find it marked on any map, but it’s there all right. Of course no one in their right mind would normally go there at night, and by day only thieves and harlots. But I think you’ll fit in. Have you ever wondered where they go to at night, all the beggars and rogues of Paris? Well, this is where they come to strip off their disguises.’
They walked quickly and Steel, his body racked with pain, found it hard to keep up with his athletic younger brother.
‘Is it safe? I mean, why shouldn’t they just kill me?’
‘You’ll be fine as long as you keep in with the man who rules the place. They call him the Kaiser. Don’t ask me why. Simpson seems to have connections there. He’s arranged it all.’
At length they stopped. Steel knew that they had come northeast. Apart from that, though, he was lost.
Alexander turned to him. ‘Now, take every turning to the right and you’ll find yourself at the rue St Sauveur. From there it’s easy. Follow your nose. This is as far as I go. Remember, Jack. Whatever your natural instincts, in that place you’re all criminals. Forget that and you’re a dead man. You’re on the run now, and outside the law. You must think and act like a felon. And whatever you see, do not for heaven’s sake express horror or indignation. Treat it as normal behaviour.’
Steel clasped his brother by the arm. ‘From the bottom of my heart, Alexander. Perhaps one day I may repay you.’
Alexander smiled. ‘Who knows? Perhaps you will. And never forget, Jack, that though we fight for warring causes you and I are opposite sides of the same coin. We are still made from the same metal. Do not forget that, brother. For that we will always be. And now I must go. Not least to ease my mind about Charpentier. Do you suppose Malbec knows of his involvement with you?’
‘It would seem likely. He must surely have guessed. But I swear he learnt nothing from my lips.’
Alexander smiled at him. ‘I believe you, Jack. I know no one as loyal as you, brother or not. Adieu.’
He smiled one last time and then was gone. So it was that Steel found himself alone, in the last hour before the dawn, in a place with no name, off the rue St Sauveur. To his left stood the convent of the Filles-Dieu, the Daughters of God. It seemed an unlikely location for a thieves’ kitchen, but then, he thought, nothing would have shocked him any more in this city of constant surprises. Following Alexander’s instructions, he turned right and kept on doing so until he reached an apparent dead end. Looking more closely, he was able to discern the tiniest of passages, no wider than a single person. At the same moment he caught the smell, or stench, more like. It was as if every sewer in Paris had been opened at once. Holding his breath, Steel pushed himself through the narrow entrance and emerged in another world.
It seemed extraordinary to Steel that only a few streets away from the Sun King’s vision of urban splendour you might find something as poor and unforgiving as the Cour des Miracles. Despite its name it was no more than a warren of suffocatingly narrow and badly lit alleyways and earth-floored yards that stank of urine and raw excrement. The enclave was crammed into a single block in the northeastern corner of the city’s eastern extremity. This was a place where few would ever venture. But even as he cursed its foul stench, Steel thanked God that it existed.
The narrow street onto which he had emerged began to slope downwards, at first quite gently and then with a steeper gradient, so steep in fact that several times Steel thought he might lose his balance and tumble onto the cobbles.
On his left was a house – if you could call it that, for it was no more than a mud dwelling. In front of it, beside a rusty standpipe, filthy children played in rags, and their half-naked mothers, apparently oblivious to the fact that their breasts were uncovered, laughed and shouted, even revelling in their indecency. Outside of a field of battle in the aftermath of an engagement, it was without doubt the most unpleasant, most inescapably evil place Steel had ever found himself – worse even than the dungeon in Ostend where he had seen a friend tortured to death by merciless pirates, worse than the charnel house of Bavaria. For there seemed to be no end to this depravity, yet this was the place that would, apparently, be his salvation.
A figure approached him from the shadows. Steel’s hand fell instinctively to his sword hilt. He drew his weapon a few inches from the scabbard.
‘Who’s that? Who’s there? Speak your name. Why are you following me?’
‘Steel. Thank God. It is you.’
Simpson walked into the low light. Steel saw that he was wearing an uncharacteristically plain coat and a more modest wig than usual. He seemed genuinely pleased to see Steel.
‘By God, Jack, I’d well nigh given you up for dead. That woman is pure evil. She would have kept you at her pleasure until you died. Believe me. This is not her first encounter with a British officer.’
Simpson, it seemed, knew everything as usual. And Steel guessed from his tone of voice that he was not invited to make further enquiries for the present. However, there was a look in Simpson’s eyes that spoke of a deep and lasting hurt, a lost love, even. He wondered how the Marquise had managed it, and concluded that in this strange city anything was possible.
Steel smiled. ‘I was sure that you too must have been taken. And Charpentier. What of him?’
Simpson laughed. ‘The major is safe. Malbec believes that he was duped by you, and Charpentier is playing along. And as for me, I’m a slippery fish to catch, dear boy. They’ve been closer to me than this before, and still I’ve eluded them. But you look as if you only just escaped with your life. Malbec and his cronies are as cruel and heartless a gang of rogues as ever set foot on the planet, Jack. And that’s the only way to meet them – on equal terms. That at least is how I intend to meet them, and to dispose of them.’
Steel looked at him and saw for the first time a streak of utter ruthlessness shining in his steely-blue eyes. Yes, he thought, I believe you do and I think that you probably will. He peered around the street, his eyes well accustomed now to the half-light.
‘Now tell me, what exactly are we doing here?’
Simpson held his finger to his lips. ‘Welcome to the Cour des Miracles. As your brother will have told you, nothing here is quite what it seems. It’s the only place in Paris that Malbec and his bitch would never think of looking for you. But you’re right. It is squalid, the realm of crime and chaos. At one time they say there were a dozen such dens in Paris. Now this is the only one.’ He looked about. ‘I often think it’s as if the scum of all the others has risen to the top.’ He brushed something which he very much hoped might merely be mud from his breeches.
Steel spoke. ‘How do you know my brother?’
‘A lucky encounter and a little deduction. Yours is not so common a name. At least not here. I took a gamble.’
‘That we must be related?’
‘That, and the probability that if that were the case and you managed to escape, then he would help you. I did not know for sure if he would do so. It might have been a dreadful mistake. I’m truly glad it wasn’t.’
‘Not as glad as I.’
Steel detected in Simpson’s tone an honesty and a genuine friendship quite devoid of any sexual purpose, and realized that, for all his fine airs and contrary predilections, Simpson was still at heart a brother officer.
‘I mean to say, thank you for being so astute as to take that risk. I should not be here had you not done so. But what concerns me now is how you intend to get me out of here. Surely the minute I set foot on the streets of the city or try to leave through any gate I’m a dead man. Or worse.’
Simpson smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I have realized that. We are here not merely to hide you until you can leave, but because we must find you a disguise. And where better to look than a place where no one is what they seem?’
Steel looked around and saw that Simpson was right. For the first time he realized that as they walked other shapes had been travelling with them along the street. Now as they neared one such dark form he saw it to be a man with no legs, a cripple, pulling himself along the ground by means of a board mounted on wheels. He looked up at Steel and the light caught his face, pockmarked and haggard beneath a lace-trimmed hat of the type worn by the French foot.
‘For the grace of God, sir, spare a sou.’
Steel ignored him and turned back to Simpson, but hardly had he done so than he was aware of a black shape rising on his left and flying past him along the street, cackling as it went. He turned back towards the cripple and found nothing.
Simpson laughed. ‘You see what I mean?’
‘That man was a sham. Not a cripple at all.’
‘Exactly. But he took you in. I thought Alexander had told you.’
It occurred to Steel as he passed them that all the other dark forms making their way along the street must also be fakes, and he began to look at them as he passed: a man on crutches, a man without eyes, a woman with a dead baby, a man who addressed him in German and was wearing the uniform of a Bavarian soldier. There were men disguised as women who would lure an unsuspecting fool into a side street with the promise of sex, only to cut his throat. There were the
Francs-Mitoux
, the fakers of illness and all manner of disease. There were the
Sabouteux
, who faked epilepsy and demonic possession, writhing around on the ground to gain sympathy and alms, their mouths filled with harmless frothing sap. There were lepers covered in sores, and as he looked on the numbers seemed to grow by the moment, for they were getting close to the hub of the
quartier
now.
He turned to Simpson. ‘So what are you going to turn me into? What’s it to be? A cripple? A woman?’
Simpson smiled again and touched Steel affectionately on the shoulder. ‘No, Jack, though I would pay dearly for the chance of seeing you in a silk gown. No, I think we’re going to make you a blind beggar.’
Steel was amused by the irony of the subterfuge – to mimic a character who until lately he might indeed have been.
‘But first you have to meet the Kaiser. Nothing can be done without his approval. And for God’s sake show deference, or we’re both dead men.’
Steel balked at the name and the arrogant audacity of such a man. ‘Surely, you mean the king of thieves?’
Simpson looked alarmed. ‘Sh. Do not refer to him as a thief. Never say that, if you wish to escape this place with your life. He is king here, and considered by some a magus. And every day for their protection in his city within the city he simply exacts his portion of their takings. But he’s not half as scary as he seems. He knows me. We have an “arrangement”.’
Steel appeared puzzled. ‘You mean …?’
‘No. Nothing like that. He favours the ladies as much as you, dear boy. More so. No, what I mean is that should I find myself, shall we say, in a compromising position with one of my gentleman friends I simply have to get word to the Kaiser and he will arrange to make the poor fellow disappear.’
‘He has your lovers killed?’
‘You might want to put it that way. I suppose it does sound a trifle callous.’
‘I should say it does.’
‘Remember, Jack, that here in Paris, indeed as in London, to commit the act which is the ultimate expression of my love for another man remains a crime punishable by death or at least by mutilation. What else would you have me do to safeguard my position in Marlborough’s employ? And in return, of course, he gets whatever riches they might have about them. I contrive to ensure that they are always carrying something precious, or a larger than usual sum of money when he turns them off. I believe he disposes of the remains in the Seine.’
Steel knew he was right. Simpson had been an invaluable asset to the Duke, a direct link to the French capital and with a previously undetected cover. What were a few stray men dumped in the Seine compared to the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers? However, it occurred to him, as it surely must have to Simpson himself, that now, with his cover blown, his usefulness was at an end. Steel wondered what lay ahead for a spy who had outlived his usefulness. A job at Horse Guards, he presumed, as an expression of the Duke’s gratitude, would be all Simpson could now hope for.