by C. S. Quinn
Gaspard looks to his small table. It is strewn with sketches in pencil and pen and ink. Some depict his time as a slave in Russia. A few show a tall woman, a honey hue to her skin. His rescuer. Her features are so strikingly similar to this chattering girl, Gaspard can scarcely believe the resemblance.
‘You are Attica Morgan’s cousin?’ he says in his accented English, looking from the picture to the girl and the girl to the picture.
‘Grace Elliott,’ she agrees. ‘My grandmother fell in love with a sailor, so I am a commoner. We took Attica in for a time when she landed in Bristol from the plantation. I was the only one she’d trust to pick lice from her hair. It took days!’ Grace grins from ear to ear, dimples appearing in her chubby cheeks. ‘She still teases me because I was more savage than any slave, but grew to be the most rule-abiding of either of us.’
‘Incredible.’ Gaspard touches the picture.
‘Attica paid me back,’ says Grace loyally. ‘She insisted I share her private tutors instead of the penny school my father scraped to send me to. That’s why I am betrothed to a lord. I met him riding on the Morgan estate.’
Gaspard notices Grace has smallpox scars around both her eyes, like a pitted masquerade mask, but she hasn’t tried to fill them with paint, as a lady would. She has the rounded limbs of someone who grew up hungry and now eats at fine tables. If he were to draw her, it would be as a girl caught between two worlds.
‘Do you have the contraband?’ he asks.
‘Oh, yes!’ Grace removes a pouch from her dress and passes it across the table. ‘Lord Pole told me not to look inside,’ she says with an earnest frown. ‘So you can be very sure I didn’t.’
A wave of pity sweeps over Gaspard as he takes the pouch. It’s suddenly clear to him that this poor girl doesn’t know what she has been asked to deliver.
Gaspard opens the leather purse. Two million francs’ worth of diamonds beam out at him.
The Queen’s necklace.
He closes it.
‘I brought you food, too,’ Grace adds, taking a small loaf from her hanging pocket. ‘I thought you might be hungry. Uncle Pole says you are too unwell to get out very much.’
‘Thank you, my dear.’ He is suddenly sickened to the stomach by all the scheming and duplicity, most of all how this innocent girl has been duped by her own relative. Gaspard touches his neck where the manacle once was, a reflex he can’t yet seem to shift.
‘It is a good thing you do for my country,’ he concludes, ‘but you are in great danger.’
Grace beams. ‘My future husband will not mind that I am here,’ she says. ‘He believes France should be free from tyranny as I do. Everyone must pay tax, not just the poor.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ says Gaspard. ‘Your life is at risk. What you have been asked to deliver—’
He stops speaking, holding up a warning hand. Footsteps approach.
‘You must hide,’ hisses Gaspard.
Grace’s face is a picture of shock as Gaspard gets to his knees and pulls up a floorboard as silently as he can.
He points mutely. Grace looks into the space. Several spiders run out. She closes her eyes, cursing her obedient nature, then sees the fear on Gaspard’s face and moves quickly.
As she lowers herself into the gap, there is a kind of knock from outside, dissipated by the thin construction of the door.
‘Who is out there?’ demands Gaspard loudly, to hide the sound of Grace wedging herself sideways in the cobwebby space. The door begins to shake. Someone is pulling it open by force.
‘God’s blood!’ shouts Gaspard. ‘Have patience, won’t you?’
He scoops up the pouch from the table and flings it atop Grace. Then he settles the plank gently over her terrified face.
‘No need to break my door!’ he adds, moving towards it. Gaspard lays hands on the makeshift bolt – a flimsy thing of stick and wicker.
When Gaspard opens the door, he staggers back slightly.
It is a musketeer. Or was. Beneath his broad-brimmed hat, half of his face is peppered in strange scars. A blood-red eye sits sightless in one socket.
‘You are the Marquis de Mayenne?’ asks the stranger.
Gaspard knows, in this moment, he is going to die. He thinks of Grace under the floor.
‘Come in,’ he says.
The stranger has a metal hand, Gaspard notices, elegantly made, with silver, skeletal fingers. He has a sudden awful prescience of what those fingers could do.
Gaspard sits, picks up the bottle, swigs deeply.
‘How did you find me?’ he asks.
‘Your candle-glow was too yellow,’ says the stranger. ‘Beeswax. Most people in this part can only afford lamb-fat tapers.’
‘Ah.’ Gaspard drinks some more. ‘But how did you know to come to this street?’
‘Not all your friends are friends, monsieur.’ He speaks with a country accent. Not native to Paris.
Gaspard accepts this. Beneath his booted feet, he can hear Grace’s trembling breath.
He picks up a few sketches with shaking hands.
‘Did you hear what is happening at Versailles?’ says Gaspard. ‘Commoners went to demand justice. They refuse to leave and the King has not force enough to make them.’
Gaspard pushes forward a pencil drawing of the two hundred animated men who have besieged themselves inside a covered tennis court in Versailles.
‘I imagine you regret swearing your oath as His Majesty’s musketeer now,’ says Gaspard. ‘You fools worked unpaid whilst the King spent your wages on American troops.’
The stranger’s flesh hand curls slowly into a fist.
Beneath the floorboard, Grace tries to slow her breathing. A spider crawls over her face. She closes her eyes and prays.
‘Know what Parisians say about musketeers?’ concludes Gaspard. ‘We say even the stupidest cunt in Paris gets paid for his work.’
There’s a silence. From her place under the floor, Grace sees a flash of movement. There comes a sound like when one of the tin gutters at the Bristol docks becomes clogged. A steady gugh gugh gugh.
She strains to place it. The pouch weighs heavily on her chest.
Unexpectedly, warm liquid begins to stream through the floorboards, running down her cheek. A bottle of wine, Grace hopes. It has been spilled. But the flow goes on and on, in spurts, pooling under her head.
It isn’t wine. Grace feels her body explode in a single, silent scream.
CHAPTER 10
HERE’S A FUNNY STORY. ON HIS WEDDING DAY, ATHERTON confessed he had wanted to ask for my hand but thought the Sealed Knot would never allow it. There was a strangely beautiful moment, perhaps a few seconds, when we knew we loved each other. But Atherton’s marriage-of-convenience wife was waiting in his carriage and neither of us are the kind of people who break promises. As soon as I knew I loved him, I knew I must let him go.
Besides, Atherton had already saved me from one marriage and, knowing my feelings on the subject, knew better than to suggest I be his wife.
‘I was born a slave,’ I remember telling him, ‘I do not mean to die as one.’
So it’s perhaps not surprising that Atherton cannot meet my eye at the painful topic of my arranged wedding. But my feeling is there is something stranger at play.
‘Why have me married off?’ I demand, appalled, thinking back to Lord Pole’s thinly veiled threat. ‘I was the only person to bring direct intelligence from Russian slavers.’
‘Because of those Kurdish slaves.’ Atherton shakes his head. ‘You’re not as good as you think, Attica,’ he admonishes. ‘You’re young and you rush into things. You make short-term decisions based on emotion.’
‘You think I should have left those people there, in chains?’ I protest.
‘If you had,’ replies Atherton gently, ‘if you’d only freed Gaspard as we asked, we might have got information on other slave rings. Now the market is destroyed, that information is gone.’
This silences me. An icy feeling of f
ailure fills my gut.
‘It was always your weak point, Attica,’ says Atherton, ‘to do it all alone. Now you’ve made enemies. Your right-to-travel documents, royal seals and weapons are all curtailed. They’ll only issue you papers for France.’
‘They? Or you?’ I’m glaring.
Atherton rests his sticks and stretches out to put a hand on my arm. ‘Attica, you know I couldn’t care less who your mother was.’
I’m slightly pacified. Atherton is the only person who can do this.
‘But they do.’ He begins manoeuvring himself back down on his chair. ‘There’s no doubt of your bravery or talent,’ he says, ‘but no one in Whitehall wants you to succeed. You make a mockery of aristocratic privilege. They want you safely wed.’
He pauses.
‘I want you safely wed,’ he adds. ‘Attica, do you know how many times I’ve planned your funeral?’
‘Amongst the noble men, there’s an acceptance that I’m not a real person,’ I say. ‘That I can be passed around, bought and sold.’ I’m shouting, but I don’t care. ‘I expect it from them. I never expected it from you.’
‘I only want to protect you.’ Atherton is shaking his head. ‘France is a tinderbox. They’ll be militia on the streets in less than a week. Aristocrats will be lynched and you’re noble enough to be a target. You can’t rather die than marry.’ There’s something in his face I can’t quite understand.
I lower my voice. ‘I mean to get back to my work freeing slaves. If getting Gaspard to Versailles is the only way, then so be it.’ My eyes meet his. ‘But I can’t do it without your help,’ I admit. ‘Without your contacts and papers I won’t make it out of Dover.’
Atherton sits back in his large seat. His long face looks pained.
‘Why must you always chase danger?’ he mutters. ‘Do you have any idea—’ He stops himself.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say quietly, ‘it’s who I am.’
For a long moment I think he will refuse. He looks at me as though trying to commit me to memory.
He pulls a concealed lever on his dark-wood desk. My heart leaps. A compartment I’ve come to call the treasure drawer slides out silently. Inside are blank papers, awaiting a Crown stamp and signature. Slotted beside them is an array of charred sealing wax stubs arranged in a muted rainbow. These are royal seals, illicitly obtained from all over Europe. I stole several of them for Atherton myself.
Atherton’s long fingers begin gathering the tools of his trade. He hesitates. Then he extracts papers, shuffles them, pauses again and finally picks up an ink-stained quill.
‘These are French documents of safe passage,’ he said, inking letters at speed. ‘Forgeries, of course, but they’ll get you into high places.’
I don’t trust myself to reply.
‘France’s constitution changes daily,’ he says. ‘These permissions will be valid for a few days at best. After that, we’ll deny all knowledge. We won’t risk an open war with France.’
I nod, taking a reflexive sip of naval rum. It really is bad. I can feel my tongue curling at the edges.
Atherton slides out blue wax for France and holds it in the candle. With his other hand he pulls forth a cluster of rings hanging on a loop of ribbon from inside his coat. I watch as he sorts them dexterously, selects a House of Bourbon crest, smudges hot wax and presses the ring.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
‘You’ll need a code name.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘Mouron,’ he says, rolling his French Rs. ‘Should serve.’
I roll my eyes, translating.
‘Little flower?’
‘Pimpernel,’ he corrects. ‘A particularly poisonous species of primrose, capable of inducing nausea, headache and death. We’ve used the extract in several successful assassinations.’
I’m liking the name more.
‘I suppose it will serve,’ I say begrudgingly, thinking of the dynamic code names given to our male spies.
He looks at me for a moment then unexpectedly takes my hand.
‘Be careful. France is about to get bloody. King Louis has lost control. The country is on a knife edge.’ He swallows. ‘Every day, for the past year,’ he says, ‘I have expected a letter telling me you’ve died.’
I hesitate. Perhaps in another life I might have boldly promised Atherton that he would never open such a letter. But I know the truth. Heroes fall, unbreakable promises are broken and no one can be trusted to stay alive.
So I say instead: ‘When I do die, Atherton, know my only regret will be drinking your terrible rum.’
He smiles.
‘You should get aboard the ship at Dover by nightfall. After that, you have one week, Attica. If you don’t get those diamonds inside Versailles you must return to England and marry.’
CHAPTER 11
GRACE EMERGES FROM UNDER THE FLOOR, WHITE WITH shock, red with blood. With shaking hands, she picks up the bottle of wine still on the table and drinks deeply. Her eyes take in the room vacantly. She is trembling with cold. Her teeth are chattering.
Gaspard is not here. She tries to imagine him taken to a place of greater safety but she knows this is not the case. Grace heard something heavy being dragged across where she lay, the grunt of exertion from the stranger. She glimpsed what looked like a metal hand, sparkling with blood, through a crack in the floor.
Gaspard’s pictures have been taken, she notices. The tennis court at Versailles, where people demanded the King give them equal votes.
Feeling numb, she takes the pouch from her dress. Grace considers for a moment, wondering if she is now allowed to open it.
‘I gave it to the man as I was asked,’ she decides, speaking aloud to affirm it as fact. ‘He gave it back to me.’
Inside is a necklace. She holds it for a long time.
Grace knows a great deal about politics. She reads pamphlets, writes essays. This diamond necklace is familiar. Grace imagines the particular style of jewellery is known to almost every literate person in Paris.
A necklace to surpass all others.
She blinks at the image for a moment and finds herself looking around, as if she’s being watched.
Her hands are shaking again. She read the court case, as did a thousand Parisians. Queen Marie Antoinette had taken the stand to swear she had no knowledge of the jewels. No one had believed her. The public has not trusted the Queen since the trial. That was when all the lewd images started up. The cruel nicknames. Almost overnight it was indisputable fact: Marie Antoinette’s profligacy was the reason Parisians starved.
Grace cannot get the man with the silver hand from her mind. And now she imagines she is responsible for ensuring the necklace is given safely back to Lord Pole.
The only place she can think of is the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where the English Ambassador’s house is. She stands, wondering if she is brave enough, and also thinking that she has no choice.
As Grace opens the door, a cluster of beggars eye her from over the street. Paris has changed, even in the few days she has been here. An army of dispossessed farmers now surround the city and have been filtering in, one by one, swelling the populace of vagabonds tenfold.
The price of bread has doubled. Things have reached breaking point.
There were parties last night. Grace heard people celebrating. They believe the men who besiege themselves in Versailles will be victorious. The King must grant them the right to vote by head. Many ordinary people are jubilant. They think a tide has turned. Democracy, such as the English have, surely is not far away.
She can hear a man’s voice. ‘No longer will the clergy and nobles pay no tax!’ he is shouting. ‘An end to the thirty days’ unpaid labour commoners must annually give, repairing roads ...’
Grace is uncertain where this will lead. Versailles is a long way from Paris. She fears the King will not let this affront go unpunished.
As she slips out of Gaspard’s house into the bright dawn of the Paris day, a man in a musketeer’s h
at moves silently from the shadows and follows after.
CHAPTER 12
DOVER IS A GRISLY SORT OF PORT, THE KIND OF PLACE I’D like if I didn’t have to meet a pirate.
Muddy alleys are filled with malodorous taverns, houses of ill repute and down-on-their-luck women hoping to snare a sailor-husband. Tumble-down half-timbered buildings stand cheek by jowl. And everywhere are services to tempt sailors to part with their pay. Swinging signs advertise tooth removal, wedding licences and cheap tailors.
He’s not here yet – the privateer I’ve arranged to meet. This is making me uneasy, since the sun is creeping to midday. If I miss this boat, there’s no other way to get to Paris. Borders to France have clanged shut.
I’ve dressed myself as the kind of girl nice men avoid. My dress is tattered cotton, low-cut, with a grubby blue apron tied under the bust. I’ve no bonnet, no shoes and I’ve applied dirt and water to my face to make it appear I was crying yesterday and haven’t washed since. It’s a well-honed combination that allows me to sit alone in taverns without undue attention.
The meeting place is a meandering shack of an alehouse with bottle-glass windows and smoke-stained timber walls. It’s cosy, with a little smoking fire and low dark-wood benches and stools. I’ve ordered a jugged hare and risked a red wine – a good decision as it transpires. They’ve got hold of some smuggled French stock.
I take a gulp of Burgundy and drum my fingers on the table distractedly. I’ve never done well at disguising my contempt for privateers. Legal pirates seem the worst hypocrisy to me. I eye the motley drinkers: a few dead-drunk sailors, a group of dockers ready for the night shift and two threadbare prostitutes doing the rounds.
I run through what I know. Atherton told me he’d be wearing a black leather coat and a tricorn hat – something of a uniform for murderous brigands at sea.
