The Black Hawk Read online

  “Do not approach members of my household, Jacques. If you sneak behind my back in my own house, you will find the door closed to you.”

  “A thousand apologies,” he spread his hands theatrically and inclined his head, not hiding the smirk of triumph, “if I have trespassed.” All the time he peered beneath his lids at Madame, avid for some response. But he had not scratched the surface of Madame’s great composure.

  “You disrupt my house with your intrigues. I will not have my people upset.” She spoke as one does to a tradesman who has made a delivery of inferior goods.

  “I live to please you, Lucille.” He was not as skilled in sarcasm as he believed.

  “Let us hope you continue to do so.”

  This was how mortal enemies spoke to one another in the Secret Police. Threat and counter-threat. She watched Madame and hoped she would be half as subtle, someday.

  Leblanc made a great business of taking his leave. He bent over Madame’s hand, then he took hers, giving himself the excuse to touch her. “My compliments to your small sister. She is delightful.”

  There could be no reply to that.

  She stood at the door of the parlor after he left to make certain he went down the stairs and did not loiter. Then she left the door open. A closed door invites eavesdroppers.

  Madame had taken up a magnifying glass to examine the seal of the letter. “You have allowed him to discompose you.”

  “He makes my skin crawl. I do not want him near Séverine.”

  “It will not happen again. Babette was there in moments.” She set the magnifying glass aside. “For all his many faults, he does not molest children. His preference is for girls just come to womanhood. Like you.”

  “I know. He would smirch her a little, because he cannot have me. In revenge.”

  Memory struck like a spear. For an instant she felt men rutting on her body. Felt them smother her in their smell, poke their slimy tongues into her mouth. She was so sick with hate she could not breathe.

  Madame stood and shook out her skirts, drawing the eye, breaking the hold of the past, bringing her back to the present, to the sunlight, to the pleasant parlor. To safety. “He will borrow a beggar child for his scheme and use one of the whores of the Palais Royale. It is what he intended from the first. He only sought out Séverine to torment you.”

  “And to challenge you. I am surprised he dares. Many people have disappeared in the last few days.”

  “To the general rejoicing of all. But you will not assist him to disappear, petite.”

  With Robespierre dead, a great power struggle was under way for the control of the Police Secrète. For three nights Madame had gone into the streets alone and returned to the house late, in quiet triumph. Once, covered with blood. Several of the men who had vanished were Madame’s great enemies.

  “I would be thoroughly careful, disposing of him, Madame. I will not be busy tomorrow, and I am very good with my gun.”

  “You are admirably skilled, but I will not indulge you in that way.” It was gently said, but firmly. “Now, look here.” She took the letter from the desk and studied it a moment. “See how this has been opened? There is the smallest sign of misplacement in the resealing. Leblanc is purposefully insolent. I assume he has found a new patron.”

  “Why should I not eliminate him for you? I have watched events long enough. I am ready to work.”

  “Then understand the work I need you to do. My child, you are clever. You see the mind and heart of others. That is a weapon beyond compare. Leave poison and the knife to amateurs.” Startlingly, Madame chuckled. A warm, earthy sound. “You will find that making fools of men and plucking forth their secrets is more gratifying than killing them. One cannot, alas, rid the world of all of its Leblancs.”

  “I would like to try. He looks at me and licks his lips. It makes me sick.”

  “It gives him great satisfaction to know that.”

  No one was more wise than Madame. “You are telling me to dissemble more skillfully.”

  “You let him decide what you will feel. You delight him by showing your anger. Is that what you wish?”

  “No.” How often had Madame told her to deal dispassionately with men?

  “Leblanc is an open enemy. But he is vain, greedy, and predictable. As things stand, there will be one of the Jacobin party in that position. He is less dangerous than whoever might replace him.”

  “I hate him.”

  Madame went to look out the window, down into the courtyard. “If you allow it, hate will eat you hollow. It is not good to be hollow. Ah. He leaves. Come. Observe him as the bug he is.”

  The front courtyard of the Pomme d’Or was bounded from the street by a high wall of square, biscuit-colored stone. The cobble was gray, crossed with lines of mud from coach wheels. A dozen orange trees in huge white planters stood at intervals against the wall, their green, shiny leaves glinting of silver where the afternoon sun hit. Leblanc strode away, stuffing his fingers into his gloves as he walked. It was a pleasure to see him this way, small and retreating.

  “He develops a bald spot. How amusing.” Madame let the curtain fall back. “Let us speculate, you and I. What is Leblanc’s purpose in coming here to play annoying little games with my people? It was not to deliver that letter.”

  This is what she teaches me. To be dispassionate. To consider this man as a problem of logic. “He tests you. He wants to know if I can be used to hurt you. He came for Séverine . . .” She thought of Leblanc near Séverine, and she could not be detached and calculating. Quite simply, she wanted to kill him. “He sought her out to see if she could be used to control you. Or me.”

  “Now he knows.”

  It was a hard lesson Madame set her. She swallowed. “I have allowed him to see that I am vulnerable. Because of that, I have put Séverine at risk.”

  “I believe you have,” Madame said gravely. She understood. She kept her own daughter well hidden in the countryside, where she could not be used as blackmail or threat. “She would be safer out of Paris, where Leblanc and others like him cannot reach her. You know my friends who keep the school in Dresden would welcome you both. You would be with young girls your own age.”

  The porter closed the gate behind Leblanc. What could one say? Only the truth. Madame would send her to play the innocent in some respectable school in Dresden. To live among giggling schoolgirls. To pretend to be heedless and wholesome. “I have not been a young girl for a long time.”

  “Child . . .”

  “There are roles even I cannot play.”

  Perhaps Madame sighed. “We will speak of this again. Are you ready for tonight?”

  It was a relief to turn to practical matters. “All is arranged. Every detail.” Her gun was cleaned and loaded and her clothing set out, upstairs. She had tied together the last strings of her plan this afternoon. “I will free the children. La Flèche has promised to take them onward. We will use the freight barge at the Jardin des Plantes and slide downriver at dawn. The Cachés will be to the coast within a week.”

  “That is well done.”

  “It will be the last great operation of La Flèche, I think, now that Marguerite will depart from France tomorrow. She was not only their mastermind. She was their heart. I do not think they will carry on without her.”

  La Flèche was the best of the several secret rescue organizations—clever, well organized and reliable. Hundreds of miserable souls, fleeing the guillotine, owed their lives to La Flèche. She knew them well, having spied upon them and reported all their stratagems to Madame. The Police Secrète found many uses for an organization that smuggled men into England. “I will miss spying on them. Marguerite de Fleurignac throws herself away on the Englishman Doyle. This business of falling in love is a great stupidity.”

  “And yet, I believe she will be a happy woman in England, with her large English spy. And still useful to France. She will doubtless give refuge to the Cachés you free, once they are across the Channel.”

 
“Nothing is more certain. She would care for every child in the world if she could reach her arms around them. She leaves Paris soon. Perhaps tomorrow. Citoyen Doyle will see to that.”

  “These new husbands . . .” Madame smiled.

  “He is very protective.” The English spy Doyle was like a great mastiff. He was a formidable enemy, but what he took under his protection was safe for all time. “He calls her Maggie, you know. I suppose she will become used to it.”

  “And the boy Hawker?”

  She had to smile. “He is mine.”

  Madame bowed her head with a touch of mockery. “I congratulate you. Even the English are not sure he is theirs.”

  “For the space of one night, he is mine.” In the midst of many troubles, amusement filled her. “Oh, I have been Machiavellian. You would have been so proud of me. I did not argue passionately. I showed him the barbarity of that place and told him what was planned. He will not permit it.”

  “You trust your judgment of him? He has killed men, my child. He has a reputation for cold-bloodedness.”

  “It is deserved. But he has weaknesses, as all men do. I watched him carefully. He is driven by his curiosity. And, most especially, he does not like to see women hurt. I took care he should see one of the girls being mistreated upon the fighting field. Now he is tied to my cause.”

  “That was astute.”

  The praise filled her with warmth. “One may hang many hopes upon the hook of a single small decency.”

  “Do not forget he is an enemy, Justine.”

  “He is a most useful enemy.” In all of France, she could have found no more perfect associate. There was a core of honor in him, though he would have denied it vehemently. Once he was committed, he would not turn back. “I will use that ruthlessness of his.”

  She ran plans through her mind, as a woman might run a strand of pearls through her fingers, every pearl familiar in shape and texture. “If we are caught, I will see the blame falls upon him and the English. Everything works out perfectly.”

  Eight

  BY THE TIME JUSTINE RETURNED TO THE KITCHEN, Séverine had left.

  “It is too hot. She has gone to play in the loft.” Babette waved to the kitchen window, toward the stable and the shed behind it. She was brushing a dozen wide, fluted circles of pastry with egg yolk, using a little brush made of feathers, making progress with the tartes now that she had less assistance.

  Justine had not eaten, so she stole an apple from the big bowl and dodged away from Babette’s scolding, out to the stable yard behind the brothel.

  The yard was kept in the most perfect order and cleanliness. Madame said—she was very practical—that men would expect to find clean girls in a clean house. Jean le Gros worked in front of the stable door, currying one of the coach horses, keeping an eye on everything. When she walked by eating her apple, he called, “La petite is off that way,” pointing to the shed, and, “That pig-faced piece of dung is gone.” No harm would come to Séverine while Jean watched.

  The storage shed hugged the back of the stable and held all things that were outworn but not yet useless enough to throw away. The loft above the shed was a considerably more interesting place. It was a very secret place, that loft. Hard-eyed men—and some women—came to shelter for a night or two and left under the cover of dark, carrying messages. Some were agents of the Police Secrète. Some were Madame’s own couriers, loyal only to her. Many were sent here by La Flèche.

  That had been her own particular work for La Flèche—hiding those who must flee France, taking them onward to the next link in the chain that would lead them to safety. Under Madame’s orders, she had become a trusted member of the great smuggling organization. That was a noble work in itself, of course. It was also useful to the Secret Police to have an agent within those counsels.

  When the loft was not occupied by desperate people, this was Séverine’s playhouse.

  The door to the storage shed was left open, always, as if nothing of importance happened here. The main room was dull and innocent. She picked her way between feed bags and wooden boxes. A ladder slanted up to the open square in the ceiling. She bit strongly into the apple, held it with her teeth, and climbed the ladder to emerge through the opening of the trapdoor.

  A path was cleared the whole length of the loft, from the small window at one end to the large window at the other. Lumber, broken furniture, shelves of old dishes, crates, barrels, and piles of moth-eaten blankets jostled together on both sides.

  In the relatively empty space below the window, where fugitives made rough beds of straw and blankets, Séverine had invited her favorite doll and a subsidiary doll to take luncheon upon a square handkerchief spread upon the floor. They were eating pieces of bread, small stones, and leaves from the chestnut tree, served on cracked plates.

  “You have come, Justine. I am so happy. We are having dinner, Belle-Marie and her friend and I. Here.” She patted the boards imperiously. “I will share my bread with you.”

  “I am just in time, then.” She pulled herself the last steps into the loft. “I am famished, you know. My morning was busy.” She came and sat and composed her skirts around her. It was not necessary to eat the somewhat dusty bread, only to raise it to her mouth and pretend to eat. “That is very good. You may finish this apple. I stole it from Babette.”

  “We will pretend Babette is a giant and you have stolen the apple from her castle.”

  “That is exactly what I did. I am too clever for any giant. I always escape with their treasure.”

  “You are immensely brave.” Séverine took a bite of apple and held it to Belle-Marie, who presumably ate some.

  “Belle-Marie is looking fashionable today.” The doll wore a little cap with real lace. One of the women of the house was skilled with a needle and had made that cap, and also the apron and the blue dress. Justine accepted the apple from Séverine and took a bite and offered it back.

  “It is Théodore’s turn now,” Séverine said.

  Théodore had been carved from a bit of thick board and wrapped in red cloth. His arms and legs were nailed on and could move. “Perhaps he does not like apples.”

  Séverine giggled. “Of course he does. Jean le Gros made him for me.”

  That was enough of an explanation, she supposed. There was a crude face carved on Théodore and a fine big mustache drawn on in ink. “He is a soldier,” Séverine said. “He is Belle-Marie’s particular friend.”

  So Théodore got his bite of apple. Séverine was content to finish the rest of it. The dolls, after all, had their lovely plates of round white stones.

  Séverine had opened the windows at both ends of the loft. It could not be said to be cool, but a little breeze found its way here, often enough. The loft was shaded by the height of the stable. It was as comfortable a place as any to pass the heat of the afternoon.

  Under the disorder and the deliberately cultivated dust, this was a place of refuge. One could rest here . . . and she was very tired. This last week, her days had been filled with schemes and excitements and work that must be done. Robespierre had fallen. The government had changed. There had been a small amount of riot and fighting. She had been soaked in the rain, not once but twice, and had run the length of Paris a dozen times arranging small matters with huge consequences. She could not remember when she had last slept.

  She said, “I must work tonight. I’m sorry.”

  “It is all right. Babette lets me sleep in her room, you know. She is teaching me to knit. I am making a shawl for Madame, but that is a secret you must not tell anyone.”

  “I will be as silent as soup.”

  “You are very silly. Soup is not silent. Soup goes . . .” and Séverine made a slurping sound.

  “I will be silent as a potato then. Potatoes are the quietest of vegetables.”

  The festivities upon the napkin continued. Séverine discussed the weather politely with Belle-Marie and Théodore.

  Justine took advantage of the decrepit chair that
was overturned behind her. Blankets were stacked here, ready to make up rough pallets for the next occupant of this refuge. She pushed them about to make a pleasant softness and leaned back against the chair and closed her eyes. In a while, she must go to her room and sleep. For now, she would enjoy being with Séverine, who had abandoned the plates on the floor and was walking both dolls over the tops of some barrels.

  Justine said, “What are they doing now?”

  “We are through with luncheon. We are going to the office of the avocat.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Théodore will give Belle-Marie a nice settlement. He is very kind.”

  She opened her eyes. “What?”

  “He will take her to live in the Faubourg Germain in a grand appartement and buy her pretty clothing. He has promised it.”

  “Oh. Well.” She sat up. She did not feel like dealing with this. She did not know how.

  “She will give him her youth. It is like Virginie, who is giving her youth to Monsieur le Citoyen Barbier. She has a beautiful bracelet from him. She showed me. It has red stones in it.”

  Belle-Marie and her Théodore decided they would go to the park instead. So they jumped from crate to crate, going to the park. Then Séverine pulled a box over to the window and stood on it and looked out to wave at Jean le Gros.

  “Look.” Séverine leaned very far out the window. “Jeanne has brought a new man home. I hope he does not have diseases. Virginie says we will all catch diseases because Jeanne has the brains of a peahen and brings home any man she meets in the park. Will we catch diseases?”

  “No.”

  She cannot stay here. What am I going to do?

  Nine

  “WERE YOU FOLLOWED?” THE OLD BITCH SAT DRINKING coffee, glaring at Hawker.

  She wasn’t just any old bitch. She was Carruthers, Head of the British Service for France. She could order him killed just as easy as stirring sugar in her cup. Easier, because she liked sugar and she didn’t like him.