Viridian (The Hundred-Days Series Book 2) (48 page)

“No.” Olivia shook her head. “No, I
did not. But if the trade is that I never have to see him again, then I can be
at peace.”

Metternich took her arm, guiding
them toward the hall. “Where Napoleon is going, Miss Fletcher, I can promise
that you won't.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Ty stepped into the study,
blinking, eyes adjusting out of the afternoon sun. “Grayfield.”

“Major.” Ethan commanded his overflowing
desk with straight-backed authority, appearing no more overwhelmed than if it
had been entirely bare.

Slouching onto a frail, gilded,
yellow silk sofa, Ty patted a hand over its square Empire construction and
frowned. “I preferred the blue couch.”

“As did I. Occupying French
infantry used it as kindling. Now I'm stuck with this...” Ethan jabbed wildly
with a pencil, “abomination.”

Feeling tacit permission in
Grayfield's distaste, Ty raised a leg and rested his boot on the opposite
cushion. “What do you need?”

“This is about what you need,
actually.”

“How's that?”

“Did you go to Webb about the
section office to circumvent me, major?”

“No.” He sat up straight, planting
both feet on the rug. “I went to Webb because he had more power and influence
in Paris than any other man until Wellington's arrival.”

Ethan relaxed into his chair,
looking satisfied. “Obviously, he handed off the errand to me now that he's
been called home and –”

“I'm aware of the shape he's in
just now.”

“What you're asking for falls under
the auspices of the
Quinze-Vingts
section offices.” Grayfield emphasized
the name and offered nothing more.

If Grayfield could play a hand, so
could he. “I don’t recall asking for anything in my letter except to inventory
them.”

“Perhaps I know you better than you
know yourself. Or perhaps your motives are just that transparent.”

Ty shrugged. “When will they be
cleared?”

Leaning even farther, Ethan crossed
his arms. “Inventory of the section offices is our lowest priority, to put it
bluntly.”

Ty crossed his arms in
counter-argument. “I thought we just established that I am not
asking
for an inventory.”

“Have peace, major. With Webb's
groundwork, I've called in a favor or two. You may enter the building on
provisional government authority, examine, and then
return
the contents
of
one
carton.”

Ty got to his feet, in no mood for
bureaucracy. “When?”

With one finger, Ethan slid a
rusted iron skeleton key to the edge of his desk. “Now, as I perceive you will
not wait.”

He offered Ethan a grateful nod.
“You perceive correctly.” Snatching the key, he stuffed it into his pocket and
spun on his heel, unwilling to waste another moment.

“Tyler.”

Ethan's use of his given name, how
it hung through the space between them, paused Ty's hand on the door and turned
him back.

“I have seen the 1804 record in the
ledger. If your intention is to make Olivia a part of your inquiries, then as a
friend
, I strongly encourage you to include her when this portion is done.”

“I understand.” He nodded and met
Ethan's eyes. “Thank you.”

*          *          *

Ty blew dust from the record’s
black canvas cover, years of build-up clinging tenaciously and refusing to be
displaced, willing only to change to a lighter film of gray. He rested it atop
the battered clerk’s counter and for a moment did nothing more than rest a palm
against its face. He had never particularly shared Olivia’s belief in symbols
or omens, but raising the cover stiffened his fingers with dread. He pried it
back, opening Pandora’s box, and with flicks of his finger he passed through months
of suffering in a single breath.

When he reached an especially long
entry, he stopped.

Section Office Ledger - April 18
^th
1804

“The woman was brought from La
Force out into the street, where a mob had grown throughout the day's course.
Rather than be sated by earlier bloodshed, they were thirstier than ever. When
she was tossed out, the crowd called her every horrible insult, surging and
circling. One of the men, a cobbler by trade, grew bold and struck her from
behind, throwing her cap clear off. She stumbled and they dragged her up. The
duc rushed forward in her defense, screaming, and was immediately impaled by
instruments of the mob.

They pierced Madame’s eye with a
pike, then jeered as she fell down. They made her get up again and again,
slapping her face and bracing her, tormenting her until she could not be
roused. Those who had tried to intervene, stopped. It was apparent by now that
both the duc's and Lady LaValette's wounds were mortal. More violence occurred,
by account of the witnesses, which I am loathe to record here, and then her
head was raised aloft to terrible cheering. Ropes dragged their bodies in one
direction, while a smaller mob carried M. LaValette's head in another...”

Ty stopped, breathing as though
he’d just run a mile and still struggling for air. He could feel the mob’s
crush, hear their obscenities and the sting of their blows. He’d been in more
than one village where hatred for the king boiled high, loyalty to Napoleon
flowed free, and his enemies were greeted by nothing less than violence. To
imagine Olivia in such a place, by then a woman in a child’s body, innocence in
tatters… he shuddered.

There was more, so much more,
written out in horrid detail, ink like blood spattered over the ledger. Ty
swallowed back his bile, skimming to the end.

“A Misseur Beltran, who was
waiting on the king's order for the duc to be released, claimed some of their
garments from the gutter, depositing them here with the clerk. Some witnesses
who came later, a street sweep and his companions, reported seeing the bodies
of both souls dumped on the step of a dressmaker who refused to help them do up
LaValette's body, as they demanded 'to match her head.’

Others asserted that the remains
were thrown into a pile of still more corpses, in an empty warehouse just near
La Force where the fruits of Madame Guillotine had been tossed all day...”

Beltran
. He could have
laughed and cried. All the time Olivia had scoured Paris, and her answer had
been in their own safe house. Beltran had probably never seen Olivie de la
Valette, and Whitehall had never shared her past with anyone, not even him. Ty
massaged his temples at the sad twist of fate.

He thumbed one last page in the
ledger; a list of contents from Charlotte's pockets followed by a box number.
Taking the rusted key from his coat, Ty seated it in the lock. A tumbler turned
without protest despite its age, as though ready to be unburdened from the
gruesome treasure contained within.

The number four vault was long,
running half the building's length, but still hardly wide enough for him to
turn between its lengths. Rough wood framed shelves, the sort he had seen
hastily cobbled together in dock warehouses, and reached for a cobwebbed ceiling
above. Boxes of sturdy brown card paper, row upon row of them, lined the
shelves like tiny coffins. Small brass foot plates framed hand-written
epitaphs;
'246 – Mme. DeEspey', '312 – Duc d. Clery'.

Ty ran a finger through dust piled
along the shelf's edge, watching it drift like ashes in the weak golden light
of his candle. Finally, he came to it:
'418 – Widow LaValette'.

Nestling his candle into an empty
space at the shelf's conclusion, he grasped curled edges with trembling
fingers, pulling free the small case. He wouldn't open it in here, in dampness
and dim light so like a mausoleum.

Tucking the parcel under his arm,
Ty claimed his stone candlestick and willed himself not to hurry from the
vault.

Placing the box atop the counter
with the ledger, he inhaled and snapped off the warped lid.

A torn cuff of blue wool from a
man's coat waited on top. Beneath was a gold ring set with an opal, banded by a
thin lock of bright blond hair – Olivia's perhaps. Beneath that was a carved
ivory needle case, a tiny steel shears, and a handwritten list smudged by time
and dampness. There were also coins. Next came a red leather bound prayer book
no bigger than his palm, tissue thin pages thumbed until it could no longer
close flat. When he plucked it from the container, something else fell onto the
counter, then drifted to the floor.

A scrap of expensive white vellum,
a strip folded and formed into a heart. Ty guessed it had rested atop the
collection, displaced when he tipped the box. It was new, newer than the box's
contents by years, though how it came to be there he couldn't guess. He
smoothed creases in the paper and examined its strangely familiar handwriting:
'Sacre Couer, Rue Fabienne. Sunday – Ten in the morning.’

A church, Catholic. He knew it
well, on a busier street and attended mostly by nobles and the well-to-do. Ten,
he guessed, was mass.

Turning the box
[1]
 upside down, he dumped the contents out and
raked them into his pocket. To hell with the ministry and to hell with their
rules about taking property. If anyone wished to make an issue of his
reclaiming the belongings, they were welcome to try.

*          *          *

“I nearly wish you hadn't told me.
Today is only Friday.” Hanging at the edge of her chair, Olivia fought the
consuming urge to get up, pace, fiddle with anything that might offer
distraction. “And I wish you had told me something on Wednesday, taken me with
you.” She tried to keep bitterness from her voice, but there was no helping it.
Ty had done so much to find her parents, but possessiveness whispered that she
had every right to be included.

He took up a chair opposite her,
throwing his hat to the floor and taking her hand. “No, Olivia, you do not.
Some things are better…” His other hand balled into a fist, and he stared past.
“Ignorance is best.”

“I was there, Tyler. On the other
side of the door when Fouche threw her out. Every cheer, every cry of 'whore'!”
She got up, pacing from window to window, hating the chaotic hammering in her
chest. It beat down rational thoughts and drummed up nightmares.

Ty caught a fistful of her skirts
on her next pass, drawing her up hard. He stood, and placed a warm rough palm
on each of her cheeks. “Trust me now, as much as you ever have. Whatever you
heard, whatever you have imagined, count it as kinder still than the truth.”
Arms slipping around her back drug her close, and she buried her face in his
shoulder. “Let me spare you something, Olivia. If I can carry some of this
misery on my shoulders to lighten your burden, then let me.”

She nodded against a rough wool
sleeve, throat aching too much for any words. Pressing close, Olivia listened
to a clock ticking in the hall and let Ty's warmth and the room's stillness
calm her. She tried not to think about the future or the past.

When he pulled away, Ty cupped her
hand and dropped something into her palm. “There was more, but I only thought
to bring this downstairs.”

It was a ring. She turned it over,
struggling to remember how it had looked on her mother's delicate index finger.
“This was a gift from my mother's husband. She married young, divorced young.
They stayed on good terms until he was guillotined during the first go-round.”
Raking a fingernail over her hair woven into the setting, she tried and failed
to remember the day Madame Toulon had cut it.

“Thank you,” she whispered, giving
the ring a last look before tucking it inside her pocket. “For everything.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Sunday

Olivia hardly ate. She didn't
sleep. It showed, when she reached the bottom of the stairs on Sunday morning,
stiff-limbed and blinking at shadows under her eyes. Her black collar and
bonnet, usually a flattering combination, framed stark features.

Ty brushed a thumb over her cheek,
heart stabbing. “You cannot do this to yourself.”

“I know,” she snapped, scrubbing
her face. “I know,” she repeated, voice softened. “You're right.”

Settling his hat, he took Olivia's
arm and led them out into the street. “You have a worry on your hands as it
is,” he teased, locking the door.

“Which is?”

“Awfully brave of you, setting foot
inside a church with
me
.”

Her smile was thin, but genuine. “I
like to think God feels about you the same way I do.”

“Unconditional love?” he offered,
tugging her arm.

“Hmph. No.” She tugged back. “That
church is the
safest
place for you to be.”

He considered that a moment. “That
theory has been tested before with mixed results.”

Olivia snorted, shaking her head.

The streets were emptier than
normal, owing to a silver cast above that filtered down sunlight even as it
threatened rain. Smaller crowds revealed more of the city, and Ty enjoyed a
moment to take it in.

Summer in Paris. The only season
more beautiful than winter in Paris. He wished more of it could be spent
between the two of them. Small herds of young dandies crowded doorways,
watching young ladies flit from shop to shop under the wary eyes of their
chaperons. Color splashed the gray stone landscape with flower stalls on every
corner brimming with lavender, roses, orange tulips, and scarlet carnations
that reached out from a sea of mossy green foliage. Gnarled limbs of ancient
trees formed a shady canopy overhead as they walked, and clusters of pink
lilacs perfumed a cool breeze. He had never been young and in love, never
courted anyone as a lad, but by his estimation, Paris had been made for it. And
who better than Olivia to share it with?

He sighed and pulled her closer,
all too aware that they were on an errand, no matter how worthy.

“Some black cloud has settled on
you,” she murmured softly.

Her words pricked at him. He opened
his mouth to answer but was shouted down by a baker's boy waving a crusty loaf
who was directing passersby to a tempting yeasty odor behind him. It took real
effort not to shush him on a third attempt at conversation with Olivia.
Frustrated, he pulled her along at a quick march until they reached an empty
stretch of walkway.

Finally, when things had quieted,
he leaned against the nearby wall and sighed. “Just a moment to catch my
breath. To walk with you and have no purpose. Wake up, make love and stay in
bed all morning with no thought for the consequences. That is all I want.”

“So he
can
be domesticated,”
she teased, her soft voice almost drowned by a carriage rumbling past.

“Webb and I met a shaman in India.
Ketahn. Used him as a guide and sometimes for intelligence. He kept a lame
tiger as a pet. Tamed for ten years, so he claimed.” Grinning, he appreciated a
hint of color rising in her cheeks. “So yes, it is possible.”

“I would hardly call you 'tamed',”
she cut in.

“Mrs. Burrell, whatever do you
mean?” She had a retort but he missed it. He was too busy forming the words
again. “Mrs. Burrell.”

“What?”

“I don't think I've said it before.
Have
you
thought about that being your name?”

Beside him, Olivia came to a stop
so fast that he nearly jerked her over. “No. It never crossed my mind. With everything
else, everything we’ve done…” She waved her hand vaguely. “No. No I haven’t.”

“Me either.” He exhaled, blowing
out some of his frustration. “Olivia, we need a moment of peace.”

She squeezed his hand tightly and
continued on, speeding up quickly, as if every step moved them toward the peace
he’d spoken of.

When they pushed through bustling
traffic at a narrow end of the square, Ty was surprised to see people filing
out of, rather than into, Sacre Couer's high stone arch. A priest, distinctive
in his full-skirted black cassock, was posted at the church steps, well-wishing
a newly returned flock. Catholic mass had become a novelty after Bonaparte's
decade-long excommunication, and even those who did not necessarily abide by
the good book were happy to attend simply because it was available.

Olivia drew up, staring. “I thought
the note said ten in the morning.”

“It does.” He shared Olivia's
confusion. “Perhaps they've moved the mass? This hasn't exactly been a regular
occurrence for the last few years.”

She sighed. “It could be worth
asking.” She pointed out the priest. “Perhaps he knows something.”

They waited behind the last two
parishioners, a portly matron in dusty green velvet roped with rubies and her
fashionable companion, a much younger man with no family resemblance. If they
were not relations, Ty gave credit to both: her for taste and him for prudence.

They caught the priest as he
mounted wide steps. Ty called out, halting him just at the top. Wide dark eyes
studied their approach over a kind smile. “Peace of the lord be with you.” A
Spanish tongue trilled his 'r', deepened his 'u'. “Father Aguirre.”

Ty accepted a proffered hand. “I
see we have missed services today.”

“You have, I am sorry to say.”
Aguirre patted a stone facade with pride. “Nine in the morning like clockwork,”
he offered proudly, “every day that mass has been held for the last fifty
years.”

“Strange,” said Olivia. “We were
directed here at ten in the morning.”

Aguirre's thick black brows jumped.
“By whom?”

“A note from a friend. Perhaps a Misseur
Beltran?” offered Olivia.

“Beltran!” gasped Aguirre. Then he
recovered, patting at close cropped black hair and giving Olivia careful
attention. “Olivie?”

At first she stared, then nodded
slowly.

Aguirre's face turned down. “He
could not have sent you today. Brother Beltran passed from this world a
fortnight ago, God rest his soul.” Straightening, he smoothed his cassock,
giving every appearance of being finished with their conversation. “Misseur
Beltran spoke to me at his last rites, of a place that gave him peace. He urged
me near his end that I should share that place, if I met with a certain
friend
.”

“We should very much like to find
it.” Ty struggled for his voice, while beside him Olivia seemed frozen in
amber.

“Brother Beltran enjoyed times of
deep reflection in the Madeleine cemetery. There is a wild corner against the
south wall. White roses, an
English
variety, if I recall.”

Ty wondered at the emphasis and
glanced at Olivia.

Olivia was not looking at him or
Aguirre. She stared past him, head shaking. Breath came fast through parted
lips. “Why? Why did he never say a word to anyone?”

He voiced something, a thought he’d
turned over in his mind for two days. “I’m not certain he puzzled out that
you
were the one to tell. He left Olivie de la Valette a clue as best he
knew how, and had to hope she would find it.”

Olivia swallowed. “She did.” Her
eyes were wide, glistening with a damp sheen, and, were he not so practiced at
reading her lips, he would never have heard her over the crowd.

Aguirre rested gentle fingers on
Olivia's arm. “Beltran's retreat was a
safe
place, for himself and
others
through many uncertain times. He would not risk betraying that
safety.”

Now she met the priest's eyes,
exhaling a long breath that seemed to relieve tension she must have carried for
days. “I understand. Thank you, father.”

Ty
did not
understand. Not
when Olivia embraced Father Aguirre. Not as she took his arm, leading them
toward the street. He glanced back twice, catching the priest's serene gaze and
his parting wave as they were swept into bustling traffic. Beltran, his note,
Father Aguirre; it all seemed too convenient. “What was that riddle at the end?
I am entirely lost.”

They were rushing now, Olivia
forced to hold the crown of her bonnet to keep it in place. “My father was
being set free that day. It is a very long story, but some of his votes
benefiting the people made Napoleon's life easier, too, and the emperor was
willing to reward that.”

Ty snorted. “So after a sound
beating to clear the air, Bonaparte was simply going to grant your father his
freedom.”

“It had already
been
granted.” She was talking faster, doubling their pace. “He came from the
Conciergerie straight to La Force to claim us when he discovered we were still
being held.” Her pretty features twisted up. “When Napoleon heard that father's
first destination was to my mother and not to bow and kiss his ring...”
Panting, she paused at the crossing, catching her breath.

She needn't finish. He was beginning
to put the pieces together. “The emperor took out his rage on your mother.”

“Like a jealous woman,” she hissed.
“First married to a traitor, then poisoning my father with her royalist
sympathies, the emperor saw her as a wedge between himself and my father. She
had no value to Napoleon, and he was ready to be rid of her.”

They had come to the cemetery wall,
columns of high ivory blocks standing sentinel between a lacy iron fence. Here
Olivia paused and leaned against the stones, looking tired again. “Metternich
told my uncle that when Napoleon got word of father's murder, he wept.” She
pressed knuckles to her lips a moment. “I don't know if I believe it.”

He did. For all of the emperor's
whims, his effortless dismissal of even his closest allies, he had moments of
mortal frailty. There were a few people in the world for whom he felt a genuine
attachment, even if was simple practicality. There was no sense opening that
door with Olivia just now. His purpose was certainly not to change her mind
regarding Napoleon, and anything else was moot just now.

Her eyes narrowed, and she seemed
to settle on her own answer. “He may have wept later. But in those hours after
the massacre, his fury was equal to the mob. He forbade anyone from claiming my
parents’ bodies, ordering the gravediggers to turn away any person who tried to
bury them in consecrated ground.”

“That much does not surprise me,
but I'm still not grasping why that mattered, once...”
Once they were dead.
Olivia said it all the time; he couldn't bring himself to speak the words.
“Once they were gone, how could his rage still threaten them?”

“Vengeance,” she bit out. “Do you
know how many remains were found, when Therese reburied
her
parents?”

“Not a guess.” Others had been
searched for, when the king and queen were discovered, but he had no idea how
successful the efforts had been.

“Almost none; a few pieces. Bodies
were lymed in the pit, again and again.”

Lyme ordinarily was a sanitary
measure. They had used it on the battlefield a time or two, to speed
decomposition and prevent disease spreading. That, he gathered, was not what
Olivia was indicating.

“Vengeance,” she rasped again,
answering his silent question. “Napoleon wanted nothing left of his enemies. No
relics, nothing to stir up rebellion. And no peace for me, for families who
wondered at the fate of their loved ones.”

He absorbed her point,
understanding it all at last. “Someone claimed your parents, buried them before
that could occur.”

She nodded. “The street sweep, if I
had to wager, with Beltran’s help. Fouche may have been truthful, and the men
cleared them from the dressmaker's door. And then Beltran kept their secret for
a decade, protecting my parents’ remains from Napoleon's wrath.”

The last of his doubt washed away.
Knowing a little of Beltran's nature, the story no longer seemed a giant series
of coincidences. “He likely had no idea where to find you afterward, if your
uncle's intervention was as convoluted as you say.”

Olivia nodded. “Madame Toulon,
maybe? He must have found her, learned enough to begin tracing my path.”

An expression softened her face.
Not happiness or joy, but something like peace. She stood away from the wall
and reached for him. “Take me in?”

Overcome suddenly, for a moment he
could only stare at their joined hands while the world passed by all around.
Then he pulled her close, pressing a kiss to her flushed cheek.

*          *          *

Cool shadows fell across the
Madeleine's green mounds. Shadows of high cypress trees reached over mausoleum
roofs like gentle fingers, soothing the weary spirits sealed within. High walls
and thick hedges kept outside sounds of the living at bay, blanketing them in
stillness. Olivia tried not to think about the swaying stalks of viridian grass
above the black loamy soil, spongy beneath her heel, lush because it had been
fed by the blood of those laid under her feet.

They cut between two shattered
caskets, rough stone slabs violated long ago, testified by clumps of moss
softening each crack. Ty guided them to the back wall, the firm steady pressure
of his fingers reassuring against clamminess born of nerves. She was grateful
for his presence now, grateful for
him
, and as they picked between the
wall and blank, weathered headstones, Olivia gave silent thanks.

As they walked, her eyes darted
everywhere, straining so hard for the clues Aguirre had given that her temples
ached before they had gone halfway. Finally, they reached a corner where the
south and east walls intersected. Nothing was as the priest had described. A
gray stone partition cut the corner's angle, the back wall of a long demolished
crypt, judging by its height and width. It couldn’t be more than seven feet in
both directions, were she to guess. Its only purpose now seemed to be as a
brace for woody stalks, underpinning a shrubbery that appeared to have
forgotten, then remembered to grow a hundred times. Holes in the waxy leaf
cover revealed bits of the wall’s face. It gathered, twisty and root bound at
the base, trying and failing on both sides to blend with a spindlier, more
sophisticated climber.