by C. S. Quinn
‘Please,’ she adds. ‘I am calm now.’
‘He is a good man,’ I say slowly. ‘In many ways, he made me the person I am.’ I frown. ‘It was he who suggested I train in Sicily,’ I say, ‘at an academy that teaches assassins knife-craft.’
She giggles. ‘Nothing you ever tell me sounds true.’
I smile in acknowledgement of this.
‘So this man,’ she says, ‘he sent you to school with cut-throats?’
‘It was a dreadful place,’ I admit. ‘Atherton came out to see me there, and I told him he had made a mistake. He had overestimated my abilities and I would be dead within the week.’ I smile. ‘I was so certain.’
I think back. For the first time since I’d known him, Atherton had raised his voice.
‘Do you think I sent you to Sicily to die?’ he said. ‘Do you think I would give my prized girl over to an Italian slaughterhouse, unless I thought her better equipped than any other there to defend herself? You have dexterity of a kind I have never seen before. You have a brain that can solve codes, puzzles. What is the human body, if not a code to de deciphered? Strength has nothing to do with it, Attica. So long as you are strong enough to plunge the blade where it matters, you have sufficient.’
Even so, it had taken a few days for his words to sink in. It was on the day of my first fight to the death and the third boot to my face, things had finally fallen into place. The delicate network of arteries and veins hiding beneath the skin. Slightly different in every person. The places if even lightly struck that would make a man gasp or bend in a particular direction. Things to put a person off balance so they might stagger left, right, down. Whichever direction would expose their most vulnerable pulse point.
It had all seemed easy then.
‘He gave me valuable advice,’ I conclude. ‘Advice that kept me alive. And changed me, too. My way of looking at the world.’
‘So you owe him something?’ asks Centime, rolling her tankard around in her hands. ‘The same as with me and Salvatore? He saved you from your old life.’
‘It is not the same. I love him,’ I say with feeling.
‘Maybe there are different kinds of love.’ Centime looks thoughtful. ‘I am sorry for putting you to so much trouble,’ she tells me. ‘I shall be a quiet mouse from now on, I promise.’ She tips a little water into her wine and slides my tankard to me.
‘To England,’ she says. ‘A new life.’
We chink tankards, and I drink wine, still entirely disconcerted by Centime’s lightning switches in character. She upends all the liquid into her mouth, a dribble running down her chin.
‘Sailors say you must drink it all for a lucky voyage,’ she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
I follow the gesture sadly, thinking Jemmy is right. These little defects in formal manners will be quickly noticed in London circles. Pitying her, I throw back my own wine, gritting my teeth at the awful taste.
The minute I do, Centime’s expression changes completely. The nervousness I had attributed to the upcoming voyage is replaced by something different. Guilt.
Dread spreads through the pit of my stomach.
‘Centime,’ I begin, ‘what have you …?’
She is looking at my tankard. I stare into the empty vessel. There is a horribly familiar oily residence at the bottom. Something I have seen a hundred times in the darkened fusty residues of my father’s study.
‘The spices,’ she says miserably. ‘You couldn’t smell it, with the spices.’
Laudanum. The sweet scent was disguised. Not so the brownish oil, which clings to the sides of the tankard. A terrible certainty strikes me, as I realise how much I must have ingested in one draught.
‘I am so sorry, Attica,’ she says. ‘You never could understand. I cannot survive without him. And he shall never forgive me unless I bring him the Pimpernel.’
I stand quickly. Too quickly. The fast movement brings an immediate rush of blood to the head. I turn, placing a hand on the table to steady myself, and noticing in a slightly abstract way that the wood seems to shift unexpectedly beneath my fingers. Putting one foot in front of the other, I walk determinedly to the door, but before I’m halfway there, my legs are not behaving as I want them to.
No one bats an eye at the staggering Englishwoman as I pass through the mouldering doorway.
Something moves behind me. I try to turn, but now I notice the world divides into two. Centime’s sad and guilty face is looking at me in duplicate.
‘Attica,’ she says, ‘be careful. You will fall.’
My legs give out on the cobbles outside, and I lean on the doorframe, putting a hand to my head. The world spins, changes entirely, and I realise that I am now resting my head on the open door.
Then the wooden texture slides away, and I am on the ground, watching Centime’s silken shoes walk lightly from the dockside tavern.
The last thing that crosses my mind, before the mouldering tavern interior closes into darkness, is Jemmy. He will assume I have boarded the ship to England.
CHAPTER SIXTY
WHEN I COME TO CONSCIOUSNESS I CAN’T MOVE MY ARMS and legs. I’m bowed backwards in a strange posture. It’s loud, as though I’m onboard ship in the midst of a terrible storm. Spray is hitting my face. The whole world rattles and rumbles around me.
I turn my head and see my wrists are tied above my head. I guess my ankles are fixed the same way. I’m tied to a massive waterwheel.
I close my eyes. This isn’t good. I’m struck by a sudden certainty that I’m in hell, subject to some bizarre torment for all eternity.
Then the shapes turning around me come into better focus and I realise.
I’m in the Marly machine.
The mighty set of waterwheels that send the immense body of water needed uphill to spurt through the Versailles fountains. I can feel the reassuring shape of my knife, cold across my chest. I can’t get to it, of course. I am completely immobilised.
I scan the wooden confines of my immediate area. A man is seated a little way back. Icy fear sweeps through me. Salvatore sits on a wooden stool watching me intently.
‘You woke up far sooner than I might have expected, for someone who had taken such a large sleeping draught,’ he says conversationally. ‘Perhaps your father’s tolerance for the stuff is in your blood.’
He stands, adjusting his green silk suit jacket. In the half-light of the mill his dark eyes and widow’s peak have taken on an even more fiendish quality. My vision is still horribly blurred and it’s hard to keep focus. There’s an ache to my head that ebbs and flows.
‘Centime,’ I manage, my lips parched. ‘Where is she?’
He shakes his head. ‘You needn’t concern yourself with her. Centime is a slave at heart and will always return to her master. She gave you up,’ he adds with relish, ‘to buy back her place at my side.’
I try to swallow, but my throat is thick. I cannot quite believe that Centime would bring me to Salvatore. But there is no escaping it. She drugged me, and arranged my capture. Hot betrayal flashes through me.
‘Mademoiselle Morgan,’ Salvatore stands, walking closer, ‘you are a strange breed. I imagine you think yourself noble. But a cup of wine half-filled with brackish water is still a salty drink. You are no commoner. You may as well accept it. Yet you are no noble either. There is no place for you.’
‘I have no delusions to my aristocracy,’ I say tightly.
‘Yet you do not know your place. You have been playing with my toys.’
The roar of the Marly machine is making it difficult to think. All around is tumbling water and groaning wood. I pull at the ropes securing my wrists and ankles, but they are bound so tight there is barely any blood left in my hands.
Salvatore doesn’t take his eyes off me.
‘As you know, I have an interest in old prison methods.’ He sweeps a hand to the pounding water all around. ‘The Marly machine is quite the marvel,’ he says. ‘But not all the elements first envisaged work
ed as the engineers hoped. This smaller wheel, for example, is now wholly dormant. Unless, that is, someone cares to turn it manually.’
I try not to look down into the dark waters beneath.
Salvatore comes back into view, scrutinising my expression.
‘I considered very deeply which punishment would best apply to you,’ he says. ‘Here in France we burn witches. But you are English, so I thought something from your own country more appropriate. I am told you English use a ducking stool for women who go beyond their place.’
He gestures to the waterwheel.
‘I could not replicate the exact same as you have in your native country.’ He gives a little smile. ‘But I believe this is close enough for the desired effect. The thing about cold water,’ observes Salvatore, looking at my face, ‘is it doesn’t take long for it to start stripping your faculties. I have watched men – very brave men – fall to pieces very quickly under its influence. Something to do with blood flow, I believe.’
‘Blood rushes to the heart,’ I tell him, ‘away from the hands and other extremities. One quickly loses the ability to coordinate the muscles, to swim.’ I manage a smile. ‘Fortunately, in my present condition, this is not a concern.’ I meet his eye. ‘Anatomical knowledge is a little more advanced in England than in France. We dissect our criminals for science, rather than pull their bodies apart with horses.’
Salvatore’s expression darkens.
‘Ah yes, your insufferable English superiority,’ he sneers. ‘Look at you, in your ridiculous unfashionable clothes, all straight and stiff and full of your own importance. I imagine you think yourself very clever indeed, running around, playing at spying for your country.’ He pauses. ‘Yet they keep things from you,’ he says. ‘The escaped slave.’ He smiles wolfishly. ‘You really think your countrymen would have troubled themselves to inform a half-breed – female at that – of English plans in France?’ He leaves a deliberate pause, then moves closer.
‘Did they tell you the English are mad to acquire French slaving routes?’ he enquires. ‘I imagine they left that little detail off the briefing when they sent you to spy on me?’
I say nothing, keeping my mouth tight shut.
‘We French own a great many lucrative plantations,’ he muses. ‘That kind of wealth is very tempting to an English King.’
‘It isn’t true,’ I say. ‘England advises France on how to end slavery.’
‘And why might that be?’ Salvatore grins. ‘Because if France ends slavery our economy will collapse. England will be free to pick and choose which coastal routes they like. Do not fool yourself, Mademoiselle Morgan. It is all about money. There is not a drop of sentiment to your country’s seeking abolition in France.’
Lord Pole. I feel my hands ball into fists. This is exactly the kind of plan he would construct.
It would be a means to an end, of course. Gain the routes, overtake the plantations. Allow a degree of trading that could be controlled and finally phased out. I remember how Atherton was tight-lipped about the exact plans for our upcoming mission and it hits me like an assassin’s knife in the ribs: Atherton must have known.
A means to an end.
A livid despair blooms on my heart like a bloodstain. It occurs to me in a flash of clarity: I have been fighting for men who are no better than Robespierre.
The pain must show on my face because Salvatore’s smile widens.
‘So you see, your country is not so very noble after all,’ he says.
A chasm seems to open up between the Atherton who is to be my husband and the man who keeps national secrets. In the depths of the void, everything I knew has been turned upside-down. I do not know what to think or what to believe.
‘I know how you feel,’ says Salvatore philosophically. ‘Everything you have believed in is a lie. I thought the same myself, shortly after the Queen had me imprisoned. You cannot imagine how many ways I plotted killing Marie Antoinette.’ He smiles cruelly. ‘Then came the little lawyer with his plans to have her torn apart by the mob. Naturally I was happy to help.’
‘You plot the destruction of your own kind,’ I spit. ‘If the Queen dies France will fall to chaos and the commoners will wipe your noble bloodlines from the earth.’
Salvatore chuckles. ‘You think me as silly as the lawyer. This is not England, mademoiselle. France has had kings and noble blood for centuries.’ He pauses, to be certain I am listening. ‘There is another way out of the Queen’s bedchamber that a commoner such as Robespierre would not expect. A passage that connects her chamber to her husband’s.’ He smiles broadly. ‘Marie Antoinette will have a nasty fright, but she will escape. I am sensible enough, Mademoiselle Morgan, to salve my revenge with such. The idea of our Queen running through a cobwebbed corridor in her undress,’ he chuckles. ‘She will probably die of the humiliation.’
‘What if the Queen doesn’t do as you expect?’ I say. ‘There is every likelihood she won’t understand the danger she is in.’
Uncertainty flashes across his face.
‘Not even she would be so foolish,’ he mutters, but I can see from his face he thinks she might. ‘The people love the King,’ he decides. ‘Even if something were to happen, he would retain the throne.’
‘It sounds as though you have underestimated Monsieur Robespierre,’ I tell him. ‘The lawyer plans for everything. I doubt he would have risked his schemes on something as obvious as your betrayal.’
Salvatore tilts his head to consider my expression. His eyes narrow cruelly. ‘I must confess, Monsieur Robespierre’s fixation with a mysterious English spy piqued my interest.’ He comes close enough to be only inches from my face. ‘Which is why you are going to tell me all about the Scarlet Pimpernel.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
THE MARLY WATERWHEELS POUND LOUDLY, CHURNING A constant spray of water into the air.
I close my eyes, letting Salvatore’s words sink in. Centime must have told him everything.
‘Poor little Centime,’ continues Salvatore. ‘She would do anything to buy back my good favour. Including betraying your little secret.’ I open my eyes. He is smiling malevolently. ‘Imagine what the lawyer will say when he discovers I have captured you. He is obsessed. I have already sent him a message, telling him that I have the Pimpernel in my possession. Monsieur Robespierre will doubtless arrive with us, as fast as his cheap old mare can carry him.’ Salvatore scoffs at his own joke.
I turn over what this might mean. In the short term, Salvatore is more likely to keep me alive, so he might show Robespierre his prize. In the long term … Even if I do escape, it is all over.
‘Naturally,’ he continues, ‘no woman could have masterminded the kind of escapes and plots this Pimpernel masterminded.’ He reveals white teeth in a partial smile. ‘You weren’t working alone.’
It’s as much as I can do not to shake my head at the ridiculousness of it all. The thing would be funny if I did not know what was coming next.
‘The pirate,’ continues Salvatore. ‘Jemmy Avery. You will tell me how to find him.’
‘Jemmy can barely sign his own name,’ I say. ‘He is a fool, with a love of jewelled pistols. Nothing more than a pirate drawn to gold.’
‘Tell me where he is.’
I shake my head.
Salvatore smiles cruelly. ‘I thought you would be difficult,’ he says. ‘Hoped, rather. It is always more entertaining to win a lady, rather than her be too willing, don’t you think?’
‘Our notions of winning women are very different.’
Salvatore walks away. His being out of sight is more frightening than anything. I close my eyes, trying to drive the fear back, then feel the wheel jerk hard downwards. My feet are submerged, then my legs and torso.
I try to stay calm, not to panic and gasp. But as I’m plunged under the icy water all orderly thoughts flee and the cold takes my breath away. I shut my mouth, only just managing to catch a scant gasp of air before I’m plunged into the depths. The wheel is turning a full rot
ation, taking me all the way down.
The wheel is pulling me so I am inches from the riverbed, and back up out again. For a moment I am upside-down, blood rushing to my head. Then I am face to face with Salvatore once more, nausea and despair hitting me in equal measure. I cough out water, involuntary shivers convulsing my entire body.
‘I imagine you are enjoying your time in France rather less now?’ suggests Salvatore, as I gasp for air.
‘On the contrary,’ I say, coughing out water. ‘It’s long been an ambition of mine to see the Marly machine mechanisms. I must thank you for the opportunity.’ I drive back another shiver.
This gives me an idea. I have studied the great waterwheel. Surely I must have some knowledge that might help me escape. None comes to mind. Jemmy’s scorn at the over-engineered construction drifts into my frozen brain.
Did any clever soul ever think to build the palace closer to the water?
Jemmy would tell me not to make things so complicated.
Salvatore eyes me keenly. ‘The lawyer will be very angry,’ he says. ‘He has a fascination with you. Imagine his expression when I tell him how you died.’
‘You should be careful, monsieur,’ I say. ‘Robespierre will soon be a powerful man. Torturers of the ancient regime such as yourself will not be part of his vision.’
‘I? Torture?’ His eyes lower laconically. ‘I only perform His Majesty’s justice. A little sideline, albeit a very pleasant one. The lawyer hasn’t the stomach for it.’ His fleshy lips widen in a smile. ‘The very notion that little runt might become powerful. You are very amusing, mademoiselle. But enough pleasantries. Let us get on with discovering what you know.’
This time he cranks the wheel slowly, submerging me to the chest in water. The cold is such that my head aches beyond rational thought. I cannot seem to piece together something that could help me escape.
I try to fix my gaze on anything but Salvatore. There is an unexpected movement at his shoulder. For a moment I think it is Jemmy, come to rescue me.
