by C. S. Quinn
No, no, no!
I send up a little prayer, begging Salvatore not to see it. But he has the eyes of a hunter, and he turns, detecting movement. In a moment I scoop a stone from the ground and throw it a few sacks away from where Centime hides.
Salvatore strides towards where it lands, then stands over the bag for a moment, before levelling a hard kick at it. The sack tips over, disgorging a heap of flour that rises in a puff of white.
I risk a glance at where Centime hides, and am relieved to see it silent and still.
I fire off another stone, this time striking a sack to the far corner. Salvatore wheels around, darting his sword, then lowers it.
From the middle distance comes the sound of drunken voices. The customs guard are making their return, rolling an ill-gotten barrel with them.
Salvatore’s red lips press very thin.
‘A curse on you, then,’ he mutters towards the sacks of goods. ‘Commit yourself to his care. When you repent of your folly you will find yourself dead to me.’ He spits and taps a finger beneath his eye in an Italian gesture of warning. ‘You will regret your disloyalty,’ he says.
I watch, breath still held, as he returns to his horse, mounts and urges it away, digging his heels sharply into the animal’s belly. There is a clatter of hoof beats as he exits. From the showy edges, Salvatore’s men peel away, mounting their own steeds and following behind.
When the danger is passed, I run to where Centime is hiding.
‘You are safe now,’ I tell her as she emerges, white-faced and shaking. ‘He is gone.’
But Centime is blank-eyed, as though still listening to Salvatore’s words in a haunted replay.
I put an arm across her shoulder but she stands rigidly.
‘It is not true, what he said,’ I say. But my French is deserting me and I cannot find the words to say what I mean.
‘How would you know?’ she whispers. ‘Raised in grandeur, betrothed to a lord. I am nothing to you. I am nothing to anybody,’ she adds bitterly. ‘Only him, and now he is gone.’
‘Centime …’
‘Is it true?’ she demands, turning to face me. ‘The ports will close at midnight?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admit, feeling her falling away.
‘If Salvatore was telling the truth,’ says Centime, ‘then you must leave me to my fate.’ There is a dangerous note to her voice, as though she suspected all along I would betray her for my own cause. ‘We will never get to a port before midnight.’
I’m searching for a way to reassure her, and finding none, when, to my surprise, Jemmy speaks.
‘The royal port, just outside Versailles,’ he reminds me quietly. ‘Close enough. I know a captain there who’ll help us.’
We exchange glances. A royal port will be crawling with Salvatore’s men, and Centime seems in a mood to turn herself in.
Jemmy looks at me meaningfully. ‘So long as you are both on the water, you will be safe.’ I have not yet told him what my decision will be. Home to England or stay and attempt to warn the Queen and foil Robespierre.
‘There is a nearer port we can leave by,’ I tell Centime, possibilities uncoiling themselves. ‘We have hours until midnight. Let us get you aboard a ship.’
‘You will sail with me?’
I glance at Jemmy, and swallow hard.
I think of Atherton, waiting for me in England. If I get a message to the Sealed Knot, they can begin work, protecting English subjects in France, repatriating them.
‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘I will sail with you.’
It is the right choice, but my mind keeps leaping back to Robespierre. A fallen France.
This is not your country, I remind myself. The mission is over.
‘Only take me from the city,’ Centime mutters. ‘I am not in my right mind and cannot think so well.’
We leave the compound of confiscated goods, headed to find stables for fast horses. And neither Jemmy nor I say aloud what we are thinking.
If we are right about Robespierre’s plan, Versailles port will be one of the first to fall to chaos and looting. If Centime is to be made safe, we must set sail, and fast.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
uNCERTAINTY REIGNS OUTSIDE VERSAILLES. BREAD HAS been promised. But a great number of things have been promised to these hungry women over the past months. They believe things they can see with their own eyes. Not to mention they are exhilarated, charged with the power of their accomplishment. They have got what they came for, yet in a way they cannot define, they haven’t.
‘That’s that, then,’ murmurs Ovette, as they watch a large wagon of bread being trundled out of the palace to muted applause. ‘The King is a good man, as we hoped. We can return home.’ But somehow, none of them want to.
‘The men would not do it,’ they say, ‘but we did. We came and asked, and it was given.’
A brave group of representative women are now back on the road to Paris, packed off with a token offering. Several wagonloads of bread. The rest stay, waiting for something else. What, they cannot quite say.
They cannot quite shake the feeling they have been tricked. Fobbed off. Certainly they are on the outside of the palace, with the huge golden gates very firmly closed against them.
Drunk Greta staggers around the courtyard and vomits copiously on the royal cobbles. A soldier approaches, trying to guide her out by the arm. She shakes him off.
‘I don’t give a fuck for your rules!’ she tells him. ‘We want Marie Antoinette!’
A small man walks to the front of the throng. Smartly dressed, which usually means a person cannot be trusted. But there is something about him that makes the women quieten down.
‘If you have come to tell us to go back to our husbands, you can fuck off,’ shouts one, over the growing hush.
The man smiles coolly. ‘I do no such thing,’ he says. ‘I only come to greet you as equals. Lion-hearted citizens who have come to claim rightful justice.’
Some of the women recognise his voice. He is the same man who offered them kind words in the marketplace.
‘Wait!’ calls one. ‘It is the lawyer. Monsieur Robespierre.’
‘I hear you were granted an audience with the King,’ says Robespierre. ‘I commend it. You women have done what all the politicians could not.’
He gives a moment to let the words sink in. The women are listening now. The kind words resonate.
Robespierre tilts his head towards the palace.
‘The men of the National Assembly meet in a hall in Versailles,’ he says with a jerk of his thumb. ‘A small hall, you might be sure,’ he adds with a little smile. A few good-natured jeers go up, like cat-calls at a pantomime.
‘The men talk of law for many hours, often late into the night,’ continues Robespierre. ‘And in the many months that have passed since the great storming of the Bastille, they have achieved not one tenth of what you ladies did today.’
A variety of broken and missing teeth are displayed in the crowd as several women grin. They like being referred to as ‘ladies’.
‘I only counsel you now with a warning,’ continues Robespierre. ‘The King is a kind man and has heard your pleas for bread. He has pledged to open the stores of Versailles.’ He raises a finger to stop the inevitable glee from rising. ‘But tonight he will go to his Queen, and tell her what he has done.’
There is a ripple now of discontent.
‘You brave women well know how a husband in his bedchamber can be persuaded by a willing wife,’ says Robespierre, waiting to see his words have been understood. A snake-like whisper begins in the crowd. The women’s faces harden.
‘She will make him take it back,’ says one, loud enough for the others to hear. ‘The Austrian bitch will make him go back on his word. She will starve us for her pretty ribbons and laugh as we drop.’
Robespierre holds up his hands.
‘I will say no ill of the Queen,’ he says.
‘Of course you won’t,’ bellows a red-faced woman at t
he front. ‘You’re a man, like all the rest of ’em!’
This is met with jeers and taunts.
‘All I say,’ replies Robespierre, ‘is be assured you have the King give you his promises in writing.’
‘What good will that do us?’ mutters a market girl with two broken front teeth. ‘None of us can read.’
Discontent is growing now in the crowd. Fear of hunger is back in the faces.
Robespierre moves back. A marvellous feeling of power surges in his chest. It was all so easy. He retreats to the discussion chambers, wishing for more such crowds, more such listeners. If only his words could reach those ears, the cause would be won in a day.
He walks quickly back to the main gate, where he is duly looked over and sneered at by the perfumed guard, before being admitted to the commoners’ area, a part of the palace carefully demarcated to those without noble blood.
Hemmed in by high walls is the hall where the National Assembly meet. The stench of sweaty men in the small chamber is oppressive, and Robespierre raises a handkerchief to his nose as he insinuates his small body back next to Danton’s bulky frame.
The large lawyer looks down at his diminutive friend.
‘How is it looking out there?’ he asks, moving aside slightly to afford Robespierre more room in the crush.
‘I have always thought women were cleverer than men,’ replies Robespierre. ‘Those market girls will not be fooled by sugared words and a little bread. They distrust the Queen too greatly.’
‘Very good,’ grunts Danton. ‘If they stay to put pressure on His Majesty, we might even get this thing signed today.’
His eyes drift back to the man speaking. So far he has been on the stand for thirty full minutes, speaking about the importance of a King on the throne.
‘Lucky they can’t get into the palace,’ adds Danton meaningfully. ‘If they hate the Queen as much as you say, they’ll tear her to pieces.’
‘Quite,’ smiles Robespierre, looking pointedly to the speaker.
His hand drifts to his coat, feeling out the shape of the tool Salvatore got for him. So simple for a noble to acquire these things.
Inside Robespierre’s pocket is a golden key that will open the side gate at Princes’ Court leading into Versailles Palace.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
WITH FAST HORSES AND A JUDICIOUS CHOICE OF ROADS, we make short work of the miles between Paris and the town of Marly-le-Roi. Even so, it’s a tiring journey, flat out, with Centime clinging to the back of my saddle. I am growing increasingly uneasy as to her state of mind. Since Salvatore’s indictment of her character she seems to have closed in on herself, silent and brooding.
She agreed to be clothed in a disguise of a ragged peasant dress wordlessly. I have no idea what she is thinking. Her pensive silence has swollen to something more ominous as we reach the neat outskirts of the small royal town.
The rain is relentless, cold and running down our collars. Strands of Jemmy’s dark hair are plastered to his face under his hat, which is rammed down low, and even his dark seafaring coat is showing signs of failing him. I can feel Centime shivering. She could easily have taken some dread contagion, hiding in the dusty windmill, then the damp customs compound and now soaked and shaking with cold. I promised her safety and exposed her to menace.
The road forks, and Jemmy and I slide from our horses to examine the road sign. Centime waits, shivering, on my horse, her face blank and distant.
I brush mud from the wooden sign and dig my finger into the old letters.
‘This way,’ I say. ‘Only a few more miles.’ I hesitate, taking advantage of Centime not being able to overhear us.
‘From Marly Port it is a short way to where your men are docked?’ I confirm, not willing to admit out loud that despite my decision to return to England, I am leaving things extremely close, even by my own standards, to return for the wedding day.
Jemmy eyes me knowingly. ‘Wedding jitters? Or have you finally realised it’s not the best start to a marriage to arrive dirty from a channel crossing with a female lover in tow?’
‘So long as Centime gets aboard, we shall be out of France before the borders close,’ I say, as much to reassure myself as to convince Jemmy.
Jemmy shields his eyes and squints at the horizon through the downpour.
‘You’ve read the sign wrong, Attica,’ he accuses. ‘There is Versailles Palace on the distance. Every bit as magnificent as they say, too,’ he adds admiringly. ‘I can see the great fountain they speak of.’ He gazes at a vast marble-flanked crescent of water just visible in the middle distance.
‘This is Marly-le-Roi,’ I tell him, wiping rain from my face ineffectively. ‘A country house for the Sun King. It’s fallen out of favour so is mostly abandoned.’
‘No!’ He turns to me, half-smiling. ‘You jest, surely? That great palace? You’re certain?’
I smile. ‘I told you, I came to Versailles before. I remember it well enough, young though I was. Listen,’ I add. ‘Hear that?’
Jemmy frowns, tilting his head. Rainwater streams off his hat to one side. ‘That great booming noise? I thought it was thunder,’ he says.
I shake my head. ‘That is the great waterworks. Seven wheels, each ten times the height of a man. I have always wanted to see it,’ I admit wistfully. ‘It’s held to be a marvel of engineering. Built to supply Versailles’ fountains – there are at least fifty.’
We walk back to our horses and mount up. I glance at Centime, and she manages a wan smile.
‘You’ll have to come back and tour the waterwheels another time,’ Jemmy tells me drily, urging his horse on.
‘I do have an interest in fountains and waterworks,’ I say, clicking my tongue for the horse to walk. ‘The mechanics have always intrigued me. Versailles has some of the greatest, and Marly-le-Roi is the site of one of the greatest water pumps ever built. The Palace of Versailles is pitched at an elevation, you see, a great distance from water. A huge amount of power is needed to pump all that water to the grand fountains. And with every new fountain the task became more difficult.’
I sense I’m losing my audience, since Jemmy has turned his head back to the road with a glazed expression.
‘Not without flaws, of course,’ I add, moving my horse closer alongside his, and switching to an aspect of design I feel sure will interest him. ‘It never worked as it should. One of my father’s games for me was to hypothesise how the wheels and pumps might have been better configured. I always held the wheel should drive a piston horizontally. He thought the wheels should be larger. But that is often the answer of men.’
Jemmy is shaking his head. ‘That’s the problem with you nobles,’ he says. ‘Did any clever soul ever think to build the palace closer to the water?’
We trot on, slowing as the tidy residences of Marly-le-Roi close around us. The little town hasn’t lost its royal favour, and the residents still enjoy a little glamour, despite being eight miles from Versailles. To my great relief, the port is still operating as usual, with several likely-looking skiffs and boats being loaded with expensive supplies – gifts from the King of France’s munificent advisers to royals from other realms.
‘Should be easy enough,’ says Jemmy, catching my mood. ‘That ferryman by the little barge will help us, I shouldn’t wonder.’
He slips easily from his horse, and I do the same. But I am shocked as I take in Centime’s exhausted appearance. She seems near to swooning as I help her from the horse, and I fear the worst as she slumps to sit on the dirty cobbles.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
LETTING GO OF THE REINS OF MY HORSE I AM ABLE TO GET to Centime just before her head hits the ground. Her frail little body is ice-cold and shudders in my arms.
‘Centime?’ I say, as her eyelids flutter. ‘Can you hear me?’
Jemmy is at my side in an instant, waving a little bag of smelling salts under her nose. She starts at the stench, and her eyes fly open wide.
‘Centime.’ I kneel beside her. �
��Are you unwell?’
She waves away my concerns, raising her head. A baleful look goes in Jemmy’s direction, I notice.
‘It was a bumpy ride. I am only a little fatigued.’ Her eyes settle on the decorated port before us. I glance up at Jemmy, who is hovering uncertainly, holding both our horses by the reins.
He motions me to come closer. I stand, hesitating for a moment. I drape my riding coat over Centime’s shoulders then walk to his side, out of her earshot. Huddled down on the cobbles, she doesn’t even seem to notice.
‘I’ll talk to the ferryman,’ he says. ‘You stay and look to her. Take care, Attica, I think the malady is more in her mind than her body, and this port trades arms.’
He doesn’t need to say more. I am also concerned that Centime still bears loyalty to Salvatore. With her former master’s vast criminal network, it would be all too easy for her to get a message to him here and alert him to our whereabouts.
Jemmy hesitates, looking at me.
‘You’re certain about this, Attica?’ he asks quietly. ‘Sailing to England? If you’re right about Robespierre’s plan, then tonight will be the end of France as we know it.’
‘I promised Centime I would bring her to England,’ I say, glancing at her.
Jemmy pauses. ‘I only meant … You sure ye know what you’re doing, marryin’ this man?’ he asks, his accent dropping several levels into New York Irish. ‘If you were to be my wife, wild horses wouldn’t—’ He stops himself. ‘I just don’t know how he can be so rational about it, is all. Letting his bride to be off to Paris, when he could be bedding her.’
I wince at the vulgarity of the image. ‘You don’t understand,’ I say, more harshly than I mean. ‘People like me don’t marry for hot-blood and fancy. There is too much at stake.’
‘I don’t see you as the calculating kind. Maybe you’re more common than ye think.’
‘You don’t know anything about me,’ I snap.
I glance up to see Jemmy looks wounded and regret saying it, but I won’t take it back either. I’ve spent the last few hours wrestling with my conscience. The last thing I need is more doubt.
