The Coral Thief (31 page)

“You must sleep,” I said, alarmed by the pallor of her skin and unable to bear any more talk of Silveira. “You will make yourself ill. Let me do this watch. You can take over in the morning.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” she said, her eyes brimming. “I have bad dreams. Everything ends in bad things. You know, yes? You know about Jagot? Manon told you, didn’t she? When I saw you today, when you looked at me like that, I said to myself,
someone has told Daniel
. He looks at me like that because he knows that Jagot has Delphine…”

“Yes,” I said, relieved not to have to keep her secret. “It’s terrible. You must be … What will you do? There must be something we can do … the convent… Silveira must have men. There’s Sabalair, there must be others.”

“Silveira knows too. He wants to take men into the convent. I made him promise not to. I tell him Jagot’s men have guns. If there are guns in the convent, think what might happen.”

“But you must do something. Jagot’s not going to let you go back to Italy once he has the diamond. It’s a trap. He won’t honor whatever promises he made you. He is hard and unscrupulous.”

“I’m going to do everything that Jagot tells me. I’m not risking anything—not this time.”

She was broken that night, and I knew I was part of that brokenness, responsible at least in part. And I knew that if Lucienne did not rally, if someone didn’t do something, they were already in Toulon-all of them, and they would die there. Jagot would see to that.
Je suis un homme mort
, Alain had said.

“Now that I have the map, Daniel,” she said, “you must not come back here or to the atelier. You must pretend you don’t know us. You must behave as if we have thrown you off.”

“It’s too late,” I said, thinking of the expedition to Sumatra that Cuvier had planned for me that would no longer be possible. “You can’t rescue me. Jagot knows I’m caught up in this. But it doesn’t matter. You have to find a way out of Jagot’s trap, for your own sake and Delphine’s and the others. Unless you take a risk, Lucienne, unless you can think of another way, you will all be in Toulon by the end of the month and Delphine will be in a Paris orphanage. Have you thought about that? There’s no going back to Italy unless you
stop
doing exactly what Jagot tells you. Unless you make another plan.”

“Will none of you leave me alone?” she said, pulling on her clothes and her boots. “You, Silveira, Manon. You’re like flies in my head. I can’t think. I can’t sleep. All the time, you say, Lucienne, you must do something. Lucienne, you must think of something. She’s my child
and I can do nothing. There is no way out. There is no other plan. I am not a magician.”

And then she was gone, disappearing behind a series of slammed doors into the night. When I awoke the next morning, stiff and hunched over the windowsill from watching, I found her on the mattress beside the fire, curled up like a child inside the covers, her hands bruised and bleeding, with Deleuze’s map laid out on the floor next to her.

There’s a certain kind of hunger that can’t be sated. You can never get enough. The more you have, the more you want. In Paris in 1815 I never had enough of her, of the thief, the coral collector, the card player, the woman who knew, or thought she knew, how time began. I could never have had enough. I would have risked everything to save her.

Moving between the museum library and the warehouse on the rue de Seine, between Cuvier and the thieves, between order and disorder, taxonomies and mutability, I knew nothing for certain anymore. I was lost in clouds and dark waters among questions I couldn’t shape and didn’t understand. I still hoped I might come to know how time began. I thought about what it was that makes the birds nest and corals spawn and birds migrate and eels head for the sea. Until then, until Lucienne and the heretics, until Paris and the quarries and the mammoths and the corals, there had always been a god behind the scenes, pulling the levers, pressing the buttons, marking time, keeping order. You don’t stop believing in God just like that. It’s a way of seeing, a voice inside, a structure. But the picture of the beginning of time was getting crowded with different stories and explanations. I was still certain that it was about to be discovered in one of the rooms of the Jardin des Plantes.

Silveira was climbing the stairs as I left the warehouse that morning for the Jardin, leaving Lucienne sleeping on the mattress by the fire. He took the steps two at a time, his umbrella leaving a trail of raindrops behind him. He carried a basket of food. I could hear the sound of china jangling against glass; I could smell garlic and spices.

“Il pleut dehors,”
he said as he reached me on the staircase. “There is so much rain that soon we will grow fins.” He gestured at his basket. “There is a new
traiteur
in the Marais run by a Jew from Santiago de Compostela. The food is magnificent. I brought some for her, for breakfast. She is too thin. Peppers marinated in oil. Lamb in quince. And some late peaches from the Loire I found at the market. She must eat.”

“Don’t wake her yet,” I said. “She’s finally asleep.”

He paused, then tipped his head to one side so the thick curls of his hair fell in ringlets that made me think of ropes. Silveira was all sea-carved wood, the figure head of some great ship washed up on an empty beach. Out of water, never at home.

“Are you lovers?” he said, putting the basket down on a stair so that I could not pass.

I did not have time to compose myself.

“You can’t ask me that,” I said.

“Why not? You have blushed, monsieur. You think I will be angry with you? You think Silveira will be jealous, is that it? You are afraid of me.”

“No,” I said, pulling myself up to my full height, which was still short of his. “I am not afraid of you.”

“I have offended you, monsieur. I am not used to city manners and sensibilities. I say what I think. I will not say sorry for that.” He took a step to me and reached for my chin, turning my head toward the light. “You have a good profile,” he said.

“I have to go,” I muttered. “I am already very late.”

He leaned back against the flaking plaster of the wall and lifted his polished boot onto the balustrade. He was not going to let me pass.

“Monsieur, I have one more question for you, before you go. Do you think, have you ever thought, for a moment at least, that she might be a little mad?
Aliénée?”

“No,” I said. “I think she is the cleverest woman—person—I have ever met.”

“Yes, she says something like that about you, M. Connor. She thinks you are very clever. You must use your cleverness to make her let me go into the convent with my men, M. Connor. You must try. This other way is impossible. We will walk straight into Jagot’s net. I tell her the child will not come back that way.”

“I know,” I said. “I think she is beginning to see that too.”

“You’ve seen her—the child? No one will talk to me about her. Lucienne has no likeness, nothing to show me. What does she look like?”

“You,” I said, remembering. “She looks just like you. She is clever and spirited.”

“Of course.”

“She is like no child I have ever met. Her mother called her a dragon slayer when I first met her. She said she had seen Delphine lift an elephant and its rider with one hand.”

“Good. I like that. An elephant you say … Does she like sailing boats? She must be taught to sail and to fence.”

“Yes,” I said. “Delphine would be good with a sword, I think, perhaps when she’s a little older. She is only five, monsieur.” I motioned to indicate Delphine’s height. He laughed and stood to one side to let me pass.

“Yes, perhaps she is a little young yet.
Merci, monsieur. Vous étes gentil
. We are all relying on your cleverness, M. Connor,” he called down as I reached the front door. “Talk to her.”

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