Lempriere's Dictionary (45 page)

‘Duluc has undertaken the task,’ the Cardinal replied, and looked around at his comrade. Duluc had been searching through the contents of a cabinet at the far end of the room while Jaques had been speaking. Now he advanced, untying a large scroll which was laid on the table to reveal a map of France. He pointed quickly to several areas which were marked in mauve ink.

‘From these cities, any disturbance will spread as fast as its report. We have our own men in place, they will merely have to stand back, to do nothing at the right moment.’ His finger had come to rest on an area marked more prominently than the rest. ‘It is here,’ he tapped, ‘that the revolt will succeed or fail. Here in Paris….’

‘It will succeed,’ Jaques said flatly. ‘Our only concern is the delay until that time. A year and six months; everything can change in such a period. Your revolt, if it fails, will fail in the aftermath. You will need to feed your partisans, clothe them, arm them. There will be a thousand expenses. As we agreed, we will meet them all. A ship is being loaded in London even now. Its cargo represents only a fraction of our wealth, but it will suffice. It will sail seven months from now and will reach your shores on the thirteenth day of July. I will be aboard to oversee the transfer. You, Duluc, will be waiting for me on that night.’ Jaques leaned across the table and placed his finger on a point on the western coast. ‘Here. You will need men and a jetty. The bay is isolated and there is only an anchorage. On that night, you will show three green lights from a hillside to the left of the bay, do you follow?’ Duluc nodded. ‘The slope of the hill is such that the signal will only be seen from the sea. The gold will be unloaded there.’

‘Gold?’ Duluc raised an eyebrow.

‘Have no fears. It is well disguised. A customs vessel would find nothing of note.’ Jaques paused, then indicated the decanters. ‘We shall take that drink now. A toast.’ Protagoras saw to the glasses. Juliette was not included. Jaques raised his arms. ‘To the overthrow, and the new France.’ The four men drank.

‘I must return to my guests,’ the Cardinal spoke.

‘We shall meet again in July,’ said Jaques and the Cardinal withdrew as though dismissed.

‘Our coach has been arranged?’ Protagoras confirmed that it had. Duluc was already at the door, the map in his hand. The four of them followed the same path through the house and gardens. Jaques saw Juliette peering curiously across the lawn at the lighted window where the dinner party was still in progress. The Cardinal was visible, smiling and speaking with a tall richly dressed man in a cascading wig. Duluc and Protagoras accompanied them only as far as the coach. As Jaques climbed in, Duluc caught his arm.

‘Jaques. I do not know the name of the ship.’ The back street was deserted but he must not be seen here.

‘The ship is called the
Vendragon
,’ he answered quickly. ‘Do not fail to be there.’

As the coach moved off, he realised that Duluc had no need of the ship’s name. He had been hurried into revealing it. Duluc was more adept than he had thought. The coach gathered speed. Juliette sat opposite him lost in her own thoughts. Jaques leaned back in his seat and breathed out a long sigh.

The evening had drained him. Now, as he looked through the carriage window, the darkened streets which flew past as shadows began to merge in his mind with the earlier street. He had avoided it, all their walks had skirted it. But now the Rue Boucher des Deux Boules was creeping like a ghost from the lines of slatted shutters, the fussy ironwork and high narrow doors which they passed now and Jaques felt the events of seventeen years ago leap out at him and chase through the streets after him. Earlier that evening, he had snapped the curtain shut, but the girl had blanched. Duluc had noticed and pretended not to. As they passed Madame Stéphanie’s, or the Villa Rouge as it was known, the coach had lurched and it seemed to him that he had been thrown up and left hanging in mid-air. He had struggled with the rush of memories, forcing them down under the neutral gaze of the two men opposite. But now they were climbing back, crawling back, reminding him of that night. He could not resist.

It had rained. That was a constant. All night it had rained. He and Charles had been in the city a week, touring paper-factories, one of which they would later buy and, later still, sell for a loss that would ruin Charles.
That was the plan. Necessity would drive the man into their arms, but necessity had not proved strong enough for the task. It was another story. It had ended in the fields above Blanche Pierre on Jersey, and Jaques had foreseen that ending seventeen years before. That was why he had been in Paris with Charles, why he had lied to him, deceived him, ruined him. And when years later he had seen the ripped corpse on the slab in Saint Helier he had known in equal measure that he had been right and that he had failed. Charles had been too proud, and too enterprising. The Lemprières had not been poor for long. As they had toured Paris that week, Jaques guiding his friend through the streets and alleys, the cafes and inns, the gardens, he had felt that he was right to do as he did. The deception was justified. He had believed it then and still believed it now. But the night it had rained changed the nature of Jaques’ belief, made it complex and more dark.

They were eating at Puy’s when the downpour began and stayed on there through the afternoon, waiting for it to subside. The factory they had seen that morning was perfect for them. They toasted each other with glasses of Gannétin and Condrieu until evening. The rain had not decreased, indeed it was worse when they eventually left. Already they were quite drunk. Charles had stuffed his pockets with virguleus pears from the table and they ate these as they tramped through the streets which were running with the overflow of rain water from the open gutters. Both were quickly soaked, but still in good spirits as they sang
Tod’s Buckler
walking down Rue Saint Martin. Charles was clowning; it was unlike him. He was oddly irritated by this. Nothing was typical that night.

Charles had seen him first, though he had not mentioned it at the time. They took their bearings at the Rue de Venise and decided to walk west. But the Rue de Venise led only to a churchyard and they retraced their steps to turn right at the next opportunity. Charles was saying something about paper or watermarked paper. He was animated. Jaques tramped through the downpour with his hat pulled down in unresponsive silence. The rain fell in rods. The street they took led them to a corner of the Marché des Innocens where uniformed terraces stretched away to the south and west, shuttered against the weather. The square was deserted. Rain curtained the far corner. Sight of the flat expanse of black cobbles and desultory mud pools sobered Charles and they marched across in silence.

At the far corner, Jaques looked back at the dismal square, then turned to Charles and pointed back at their route. Both peered into the rain. There was an indistinct outline that might have been a man, thirty or forty yards behind them. In the dark and the wet it might have been any kind of thing. Charles thought they should find the river and orientate themselves by that. They began to thread a path through the maze of narrow streets and
alleys below the market square. A drinking shop claimed them in Rue de Déchangeur. Blowing on cups of hot wine the two of them sat there in contented silence while their clothes dripped on the planked floor. That was when, too late, Charles told him of the man who had followed them from Rue Saint Martin, his decision prompted suddenly by the same man’s appearance across the crowd from them, there in the tavern.

He was soaked like themselves, a tall man with a dark, oval face. Jaques rose unsteadily to gain a better view. The man was well dressed, even with his clothes bedraggled, sitting alone at a table in the corner. He was staring up at nothing in particular. His manufactured ease had the opposite effect on Jaques who stamped out of the room to the jakes with his mind racing. There were any number of possibilities. Charles might have been mistaken, but Le Mara’s warning about ‘the Indian’ was ringing in his ears. The Nawab’s man was coming for them, so the intelligence went. And Jaques was burdened with Charles, who could be told nothing. A narrow corridor led to the outhouse, with a door off the passage to a kitchen. A fat woman began to squeeze past him carrying a steaming dish of leeks high above her head, but she had forgotten something and ducked back into the kitchen. Jaques moved back into the corridor. The Indian was waiting for him at the other end. Jaques froze, all his doubts suddenly resolved. The Indian was moving towards him. Jaques could not think, glued there, but then the fat woman backed out of the kitchen once again, blocking the passage between them. His mind worked again and he moved up to the woman who advanced with a pile of dishes stacked precariously in her hands. The Indian was confused. The woman was forcing him back out of the corridor. He could not get to his man. As the corridor became the tavern, Jaques edged sideways to keep the woman between them and saw the hilt of a knife in the Indian’s hand. But now he was in the crowded room, and he grabbed Charles by the elbow, pulling him up and propelling him towards the door and the street beyond it.

The two of them crashed into the street, Jaques with his visions of a cold tickle in the ribs, blood running down the corridor and the rain was still coming down, Charles still mumbling about the river, drunker than Jaques had allowed for. Should have left him, he thought then; and would think the same again much later, and with better reason. They made a stumbling run down the street and took the corner as the tavern door opened again behind them. The houses were battened down and lightless as Jaques pulled Charles along by the collar. They had to get off the street. Jaques saw quick ugly movements, a quick movement in the street. Another corner, and a glance over his shoulder. The Indian was still there, loping around the last corner as they ran into Rue Boucher des Deux Boules. And there was their refuge, with its lights blazing behind the blood-red curtains.
Villa Rouge, the name scorched roughly on a wooden plaque. Charles was talking disjointedly about a boat down the river, he would buy a boat and carry it to the river. Jaques hammered on the door as the Indian came into view, saw them at the door and broke into a run. But he would not reach them. The door was opened by a woman of forty or fifty dressed in lilac who would have closed it again at the sight of them but Jaques was already pressing coins into her hands and they were inside, bent over, panting in the entrance hall, dripping on its tiled floor. The woman offered them her hand, she was Madame Stéphanie and she welcomed them to her establishment. Jaques realised that their refuge was a brothel.

In his later consideration, Jaques would think of Charles in the hours that followed as an escaped detail, a tiny area of neglect in the wider canvas, which would grow to overwhelm all the other elements, like missing one’s own name in a list of other, unknown names and signing the order blind. The Madame spoke in an exaggerated manner. She asked them both to sign a visitors’ book. All her gestures were extravagant. For the moment, Jaques was only glad that Charles was too drunk to require explanations. Already he had drifted into the long salon beyond the hall where two fires burnt briskly and a limp hand pulled him down onto one of the sofas. Jaques paid the Madame some more money. Le Mara, Vaucanson and their men were a tantalizing few streets away. The Indian would be waiting somewhere outside, out of sight. He would be patient. Jaques spoke quickly to Madame Stéphanie telling her a nonsense about practical jokes, lost in the streets and worried friends; the essential point, a messenger. It could be done and Jaques concealed the relief which flooded through him. The Indian had missed his best chance in the corridor, and he had allowed them too long a leash in the streets. Now his own patience would work against him. A boy was fetched. He would use the rooftops which straggled away almost to the ground at the back of the house. He was young and too solemn for his age. No-one would see him, he shook his head at the suggestion. The message was scrawled quickly and the boy left. Jaques moved through to the salon to wait, feeling that the evening’s events were slowing and turning in his favour.

An hour or two hours later, Madame Stéphanie ushered in a short thickset man and Jaques knew that the episode was concluded. It was Vaucanson. The message had been received. The Indian had been caught somewhere in the streets outside. He had been expert, Le Mara’s throat was gashed but it was not deep. The Indian was safe in Vaucanson’s custody and already the man had a design on his captive. The Nawab would be repaid in his own coin. Vaucanson left then and Jaques walked back into the salon to take a glass of wine. The girls and their clients were engaged in low, halting talk, a soothing sound as he sipped at the liquor,
with his back to the fire. Charles, whom he had last glimpsed entwined in the thin arms of the establishment, was nowhere to be seen. Jaques finished his wine and asked one of the girls if she had seen him. She had not, but another called over that he was with the ‘little Contessa’. They had ascended to the privacy of the first floor some half an hour earlier.

Jaques climbed the stairs and opened doors, until at the end of the passage he came to a room in which a young woman with a sour expression on her face was sitting up in the centre of a large iron bed. Jaques noted her hair which was thick and black and fell in tresses over her shoulders. Charles lay beside her, mostly undressed, quite unconscious. The woman was naked and did not trouble to cover herself as he stood in the doorway. Details, small details.

The next morning brought nausea and a shivering fever to Charles who accepted them as his lot and sat in bed as small islands of memory floated past him in a sea of rain and drink. He remembered the streets and the tavern, scenes from the brothel, a woman’s face. He swore Jaques to silence on the whole matter. They had departed for their return to Jersey some days later and neither of them had given that part of their adventure another thought until almost a year later when Charles stood in Jaques’ doorway, holding a letter from Paris, stammering that the woman had been got with child that night, the night it had rained. Charles had written his true name in the register in the brothel, another detail. Now the woman wanted money for her baby girl. Jaques stood there in a rage that was all his own, telling his friend to ignore the demand, she would assume from the silence that his name was false.