Rook (50 page)

“Yes. Could I trouble someone for a bucket or a bowl?” said Madame.

The door banged again. “Tom! Sophia!” called the sheriff. “Come on, now. I’ve got the militia with me. Open the …”

Sophia turned. “René, you love me, yes?”

His brow went up. “Yes.”

“And I love you, too. Then will you marry me? Right now?”

He stuttered. “Well … yes. I …”

She spun on her heel. “Tom, do I have your blessing?”

Tom shrugged from behind the squirming Mrs. Rathbone; Francois did indeed have the knife at her throat. “All right, Sophie.”

“Maman,” said René, “is the money in Kent?”

“Not anymore,
cher
.” Madame reached into the black bag she’d been carrying and set a box on the table. She opened it with an unsteady hand, and inside was a plastic bottle, perfect, without dents, its cap in place, a faded, scratched, but still legible plastic wrapping around its middle. Just above the lettering was the tiny word
DIET
.

There was a surprised silence from the room, made even louder by the banging of the sheriff. René shook his head. “Were you really not going to say something, Maman?”

Madame tossed her bedraggled hair. “She was the one who left it to the last moment.” The door banged harder; it sounded as if he were ramming it with something.

“Émile, how much is that worth?” Sophia asked quickly.

He was bent over with a tiny eyescope, inspecting the bottle carefully. “The fee,” he said. “Ten thousand in quidden, or probably more.”

“There is a … valuation, signed, in the box,” muttered Madame. “Could I please trouble anyone for a bowl?”

“That will do, then,” said Sophia. “Can I borrow that?” She took the black bag without Madame’s answer, shutting the box and shoving it inside. “Tom, come with us and be witness before the sheriff takes you …”

The door shuddered on its hinges.

“And, Benoit, see what you can do about her,” she said, tilting her head at Mrs. Rathbone. “We have a sheriff here, the body of the hotelier buried on the cliff, and you and Orla as witnesses. And I’m sure Jennifer Bonnard would not mind backing up whatever you decide to say. It wouldn’t hurt to let the sheriff know Mrs. Rathbone was trying to buy the house, too, since she ratted out Tom. He won’t like that.” Mrs. Rathbone struggled, then remembered the knife. “See if you can’t get her tossed out of the Commonwealth at the least.”

“That can be done, Mademoiselle,” Benoit said, still smiling.

“I leave it in your hands.”

“And Miss Bellamy,” said Madame, her voice a bit weak, “when you return, I’d like to discuss the empty building on your grounds, and the empty cottages, the prisoners in your house who have nowhere to go, and the need for Hasard Glass to … relocate.”

“Of course,” Sophia replied, pausing for a moment. What an interesting thought. Perhaps she and Madame would have more in common than previously anticipated. “Have coffee with Tom and me tomorrow at middlesun,” she said. “Or make that the day after tomorrow.” She started toward the pantry door, and then looked back at René and Tom. The other door was beginning to splinter. “Are you coming? Either of you?”

René jumped up and they both followed, Sophia careful not to set a pace that Tom couldn’t keep. She shut the pantry just before she heard the dining room door burst open, sidestepped quickly through the dusty storage room, opened a trapdoor, and slid through a short access tunnel into the closet below. René came through next.

“Now, just so I have this straight, my love,” René said, turning to catch Tom’s legs on the way through. “Where are we going?”

“To our wedding. Just as soon as we find the vicar. I hope he’s at home.”

“That is what I thought was happening. But it has been a strange day.”

They got to the stables, which were not being watched—Sheriff Burn was a nice man, just not particularly good at his job—and rode at a gallop for the vicarage, Tom on his horse, René behind Sophia, setting the rookery to flight in their haste. Tom was the first to get there, startling the vicar from the loo as he came thundering into his yard. There was a sleek landover waiting out front.

“Tom!” the man said. “And Miss Bellamy … What?”

“We’re in need of a wedding, Vicar,” said Tom. “Right now, before the sheriff finds us.”

Who they found waiting in the vicar’s dark-paneled study was Mr. Halflife, at his ease in a leather chair.

“Miss Bellamy, my dear,” he said. “How good it is to finally greet you. I had a feeling you and your charming fiancé might be coming here after the to-do that was going on in Bellamy House. I am very sorry, Monsieur, to know that your mother has such a weakness for drink.”

Sophia and René glanced at each other. He must have run into Madame wandering the halls. What could she have said? There really was no telling. But it must have had something to do with a marriage. Here he was.

Tom and the vicar were at the desk, doing the paperwork, Tom with one eye on the window and the view of the A5. Mr. Halflife had no power to arrest Tom on his own, and as soon as they were married, the sheriff would have none, either. Tom would have the money, in the form of a plastic bottle, in hand.

“So I assume, Monsieur Hasard, that you are able to pay the marriage fee after all? I had heard your family was in financial difficulties.”

His posh accent was jangling every one of Sophia’s nerves. She answered before René could. “Why, yes, Mr. Halflife, there is a fee. So I’m sorry to tell you that the Bellamy land stays as it is, and Parliament will not have a port. Not on our coast.”

Mr. Halflife smiled. “But I am afraid a port on your section of the coast is going to be paramount to the safety of the Commonwealth, Miss Bellamy. Have you never considered—but of course you haven’t—what would happen if there should be war between the Sunken City and ourselves? The Parisian shores are only a short boat ride away. Or we might wish to expand beyond our own shores one day. One never knows.”

Sophia looked at Halflife with his non-Wesson jacket and slicked hair. Her father had been right, she realized, not to give the Commonwealth the Bellamy fire. The secret would go with her to her grave.

“But you also forget, Miss Bellamy,” said Halflife, satisfied by her silence, “that no matter what happens today, your brother must prove his fitness for inheritance before the Bellamy land is secure.” He glanced at Tom, standing beside the vicar, still prison thin and limping. “Do you think it is likely he will do so? I am not sure he will.”

Sophia smiled at him. “Is that a threat, Mr. Halflife?” She knew it was. He was going to make certain Tom had no opportunity to prove his fitness at all.

“Monsieur …,” René said. Sophia looked at him sharply. He had taken the seat opposite Mr. Halflife, leaning back elegantly, and all at once, there was the man of the magazine. She didn’t understand quite how he was pulling that off. You didn’t even notice the untied hair and the mud.

“You were asking about the financial matters of my family,” René went on, “which interests me, because I am wondering who could have mentioned this to you. My cousin, perhaps? The same cousin, just perhaps, who was paying you for information about what was happening on the Bellamy coast? And were you, just perhaps, using Mrs. Rathbone to find out these things that my cousin was paying you for? Letting her know of little opportunities that might come her way, like denouncing the Ministre of Trade that was opposing your plans for a Parisian port, a port Parliament says is for shipping goods, but that they will use for their own interests? Like invasion?”

He smiled at Mr. Halflife’s expression. “And would I be right in thinking that Mrs. Rathbone does not want Bellamy House as much as she wants to be the wife of a Parliamentary member? That perhaps she is under the impression this will occur rather soon, when the Bellamys are removed?”

Sophia stared at René. He was right. And he looked every bit the smooth-talking, daughter-stealing smuggler that she knew he was. How she loved him.

“But please, let me advise you, Monsieur,” he continued. “Mrs. Rathbone has been arrested in Bellamy House. Something to do with a dead man, and as you know, she is very much the talker. Also, Allemande is dead, and my cousin is no longer Ministre of Security. The revolution is over. When you go to Manchester, you will hear all that you wish to, I am sure. But I think it might also interest you to know that my cousin LeBlanc’s paperwork will very likely become public. Soon. Of course, I am sure you have been doing nothing illegal …”

“Sophie! René! We’re ready,” Tom called. The vicar was picking up his book. Mr. Halflife sprang to his feet.

“I wish you joy, Monsieur. Miss Bellamy.” And Mr. Halflife ran from the vicar’s study as if St. Just had been nipping at his heels. René stood and stretched, looking very smug.

“So just how much of that was true?” Sophia asked.

“Enough to make him run, yes?” He smiled with half his mouth. “I have hesitated to ask, my love, but do you normally wear spectacles?”

“Oh!” Sophia jerked off the glasses. They were made with clear lenses, and she’d completely forgotten their presence on her face. “They were just for delivering soup.”

“Ah.”

She pulled the kerchief from her head as well, running a hand through wild hair. “I never thought I would marry,” she whispered. “Especially in Orla’s old dress and with dirt on my nose.”

He took her hand, bringing her close and putting his lips on the inside of her wrist, paying no attention to Tom or the vicar. “I love you best that way,” he whispered. “When you come down the stairs with your painted eyes and caramel skin and you make every man stare, I still think of you with mud in your hair and a sword strapped to your thigh and a rook feather in your hand. Are they not both one and the same?”

Yes. Just as he was the man of the magazine and the smuggler and also the man of the roof who had stood on the scaffold. She looked into the fire-blue of his eyes. “Do you think this was meant to happen?”

Was it meant to happen, or could he have chosen differently, LeBlanc wondered, his hands tied behind him. Or was the world one great, repeating pattern destined to flow in the same lines? That was the teaching of Fate, the cold mistress that had taken Luck from him, that cared nothing that he was lying here, head on a block, surrounded by the faces of the Sunken City and a new premier. A female premier! Sanchia, reading his charges …

He was supposed to accept the will of Fate, but this could not be right. What if he had chosen a different thread of the pattern?

“Wait,” he called. “Wait!”

He had to ask. He had to know. He wanted to count the drops of blood, to toss a coin. He struggled.

“Wait! Wait!” he screamed.

The executioner raised his ax.

“I think it was meant to happen,” René said, “but I also say that if we had chosen differently, it never would have. Tell me I am wrong.”

She smiled. She couldn’t.

S
ophia
climbed out of the water-lift shaft, shaking her arms, wondering why they had to live on the twelfth floor. She’d been up the water-lift shaft three times since the Hasards got the flat back. She pulled off her black cap and jacket, but not before she had retrieved a cloth bag from her vest and set it aside on the table. The rope in the water lift was jiggling, and by the time she had washed the grime from her hands and was back in her embroidered yellow skirts, René was swinging his legs through the opening.

“Hello,” she said.

His boots hit the floor and he grinned. “Have you looked yet?”

She shook her head, the brown curls grown longer but no less wild. “I waited for you. No, let me. You’re still dirty.” She pulled a little hinged box from the cloth bag and opened it.

“Ah,” said René. “It is in excellent condition.”

They stared at a small plastic man, his colors of red and blue still unnaturally bright, strange, plastic clothes tight to show a body oddly bulged and top-heavy with muscles. Was this the way Ancient men had wanted to look, she wondered? Because surely they hadn’t. But that wasn’t even the part that amazed her. The man sat in a vehicle, something like a landover, only longer, elaborate, no horse attached, and with no visible way to hitch one.

René ran a finger along a yellow wheel. “Sanchia told me tonight that she thinks this little man should be destroyed because he is an Ancient idol. Do you think he is a god?”

“Sanchia thinks that she is a god,” said Sophia, closing the box.

“Sanchia is half-afraid you are,” René teased. “Are you aware that the Red Rook actually flew to the top of the scaffold, my love?”

“That’s a new one. Where did you hear that?”

“From Sanchia. She was showing me her new tattoo.”

“Was she?” Those who had fought against the revolution and in support of the Red Rook had taken to tattooing a red and black feather on their forearms. And so had some who had not fought. Like Sanchia, Sophia suspected.

René sighed. “Ah, well. She has opened the chapels and the Lower City, so we will extend her some forgiveness, even if her council is corrupt.” His smile became devilish. “I wonder how soon she will miss her artifact.”

“What did she think of your suggestion for a representative parliament?”

“She seems to prefer five council members to five hundred. I would have talked with her more had you not slapped me so soon.” René tugged off his black trousers to show blue satin breeches underneath. “Is it necessary? To hit so hard?”

“You shouldn’t have flirted so hard with Commandant Napoléon’s wife. And you know those breeches are vile?”

“Of course I know my breeches are vile. And if I had not flirted so hard, you would have had no reason to hit me. It is only your enthusiasm I question.”

She smiled sweetly. “But your
maman
recommends it.” She waited a beat, and then they both laughed.

“Maman needs to come back to the city,” René said. “Tom manages the glass factory too well and it makes her testy. She has no one to fight with.”

And when Madame returned to the flat, Sophia thought, that would be just about the right time to take René back to Bellamy House. It was practically a village now, like it had been when she was a girl, only with both Parisian and Commonwealth to be heard on the lane. No ports in sight. And she would be arranging Tom and Jennifer’s Banns in the autumn. The glass factory was doing well enough to pay the marriage fee, which the Bonnards would immediately give back so Tom could prove for his inheritance. The thought made her smile as she tucked the flowers into her hair. She was thinking of taking René to Finland after that, where he could be himself for a while.

“Did you hear what Napoléon was saying to me?” René was saying, buttoning his jacket. “That the premier plans to build a lattice tower, all of metal, right in the center of the Lower City? It will be taller than the cliffs.”

She looked over her shoulder. “Whatever for?”

“I do not know. But Sanchia should watch Napoléon closely, I think …”

Sophia frowned as she finished arranging her hair. It was from Napoléon’s residence that they had stolen the last three tubes of Bellamy fire, part of what Cartier had put in place for panicking the mob and never lit, there being quite enough panic as it was. The tubes had been left behind in the melee, and Sophia had often wondered how they had fallen into the commandant’s hands. Mr. Halflife was no longer a member of Parliament, but she’d not forgotten his talk of war. The barrels in the sanctuary had been rolled into the sea, Tom’s recipes and her father’s research locked in the secret compartment of her desk in Bellamy House. But it would not be long, Sophia thought, before he, or Sanchia, or someone, discovered what her father had. The tubes they had stolen from Napoléon’s safe had been opened, their contents examined.

There was a light knock and Benoit stuck his head in the door. “Is your lovers’ tiff over? Because the singers are almost done.” He checked the small clock strapped to his wrist. Everyone in the city was allowed to have clocks now, but the sight never failed to give Sophia a start. And they still worked terribly.

René said, “Tell Émile we have it, and that he can leave tonight for Canterbury.”

“Very good.” But instead of going, Benoit came inside, took out a handkerchief, and wiped a smudge of dirt from Sophia’s cheek. “You might have taken care of that,” he chided René, winking once before he left.

René turned to her. “Do you need taking care of, my love?”

Sophia looked up in alarm. “Oh, no,” she said. “The singers are nearly done …” But he already had his arms around her, and she was already done protesting.

“Let’s go back to the party,” René whispered into her neck, “and behave so badly that everyone will go home early.”

“René,” she said. He pulled back just far enough to see her, but she didn’t speak right away. He was beautiful, even in the gaudy jacket, which also brought out the fire of his eyes. Nothing was certain, she knew that, and the world ever circled. But she couldn’t help but wonder what she would risk to keep her future exactly the same as her present.

She tilted up her chin, and knew the answer even before he kissed her. It was everything.