The Silver Blade

by Sally Gardner

  ‘Don’t you want to see our documents?’ said the toothless hag, and she licked her fingers and pulled the papers from her skirt.

  Frenet could not bring himself to touch them, in case he too would be taken sick.

  ‘Be gone, both of you.’

  ‘Well, I would have thought with all them stories of the Silver Blade,’ said the toothless hag, ‘you might like to—’

  ‘Get the hell out of here. Go before I change my mind.’

  ‘As you please.’

  The two guards watched as, painfully slowly, they made their way into the countryside.

  Back in the guardhouse, Citizen Frenet, lifting the cognac bottle, poured some over his fingers. Citizen Gabet did the same.

  ‘A precaution against infection,’ he said, and taking a mouthful from the bottle, he caught a glimmer of something silver glinting in the candlelight. The liquid ran down the side of his mouth.

  ‘Hey, hey, don’t waste it. That’s good stuff.’

  Gabet pointed upwards.

  The colour drained from their faces.

  ‘How the hell did that get—’ Frenet rushed outside to the gate. The road was empty. He returned to the guardhouse.

  ‘We’d better get it down. And let’s agree not to tell a soul that we’ve been duped by the Silver Blade.’

  The two old hags, having rid themselves in a convenient barn of their stinking costumes, emerged as Yann Margoza and a Monsieur Bille, a terrified wigmaker from Paris, who had needed almost no make-up, since fear had made the poor man look like death.

  ‘You did well,’ said Yann kindly. ‘At least, my friend, you didn’t faint.’

  Poor Monsieur Bille was speechless. All he could do was nod. Only when Yann handed him over to a trusted bargeman at Port du Gravier did the wigmaker recover his sense of humour.

  Yann returned to Paris later that night, sure he was being followed. Once again he sensed Balthazar close on his heels. Then he caught sight of him in the moonlight, through some beech trees. He was monstrously large.

  What is it he wants from me? Yann asked himself. The great beast slowly raised his head and stared straight at him. Yann’s blood ran cold. Once he had spoken to the soul of the hound, but Balthazar no longer had the eyes of a dog. Those brown orbs of love and devotion had been replaced by human eyes. Yann had no words that would touch him.

  Then the beast was gone.

  With a jolt Yann remembered the story of the devil’s dog, and knew that the spirit of beng, the evil one, was out walking. He trembled for himself; he trembled for Paris.

  He was relieved to be back in the city once more. Still trying to shake off the image of those human eyes, it came to him that it wasn’t Balthazar who was evil, but his master.

  He felt overcome by pity for the dog and for all those caught up in this bloodbath. Pity for those never to be remembered: the curtain-maker, pleased to dress the tall windows of Versailles; the hosier, whose silk stockings the King wore to his death; the tax collector, who brought in the revenue; the banker who sent money abroad to an emigre client. Pity the seamstress who sewed the Queen’s hems; the butcher who hoarded, the wife who whispered a confession to a priest. Pity France. What a sorrowful city Paris had become. And spare some pity for yourself, Yann. Perhaps Tetu was right. It would have been better if I had never known about Kalliovski, for the knowledge is a cancer that has eaten its way into my soul.

  That night, as with many nights when he wasn’t on stage, he felt lost. He had put away all Sido’s letters and would not allow himself to look at them. He had thought of burning them, but the idea of never seeing even her words again made him unbearably sad. As usual he sought comfort at the cafe on the square.

  Tetu had witnessed Yann’s descent into deep melancholy and was powerless to help. Everything he suggested, Yann rejected. He disregarded Tetu’s carefully laid plans for escapes, choosing instead to go about things in his own idiosyncratic way. If a priest knew where to find the Silver Blade, it would not be long before the authorities managed to work it out. It was as if Yann wanted to be caught. Even faithful Didier, who would have followed him to hell and back, was bewildered by the change in him. The only person who benefited was Anselm. For if Yann had been his old self, Anselm would never again have had access to the theatre, but somehow he had taken over Citizeness Manou’s job, and Yann made no protest.

  Tetu had waited anxiously for Yann at the theatre. He needed time alone with him; there was news that he didn’t want to tell him publicly. But Yann had avoided him, as he often did these days. Tetu found him seated with Pantalon at the middle table, engrossed in a card game. Anselm was watching with Colombine, whose arms were wrapped round his neck. She was wearing a small pair of guillotine earrings, which were all the fashion in Paris.

  Tetu pushed his way to the table. ‘I need to speak to you, Yannick.’

  ‘Not now, I’m on a winning streak. Look what I inherited from my father. Good at cards. The Jack of Diamonds, that’s me.’

  ‘Yann, please, now. It’s urgent.’

  ‘No, Tetu, leave me alone.’

  ‘Why don’t you talk French, you two,’ said Colombine, ‘instead of that gibberish none of us can understand. Anyway, what language is it you’re speaking?’

  Tetu ignored her. His presence began to irritate Yann.

  ‘Go away, Tetu. It can wait till the morning. There, I win.’

  ‘This afternoon I saw Cordell. Serious news has arrived posthaste from London—’

  ‘Damn it,’ said Pantalon. ‘Another hand?’

  What Tetu had to say couldn’t wait.

  ‘Last week Sido was abducted. There was no note, no trace left behind.’

  Yann found that he had lost his appetite for cards and wine. Sobriety hit him abruptly in the face.

  ‘Who … ?’ He swallowed. ‘… How did it happen?’

  ‘She was leaving Mr Trippen’s. He was shot trying to save her.’

  ‘Is he … dead?’

  ‘No. The doctors believe he will recover. The Laxtons expected a ransom note, but then they had word that she had been found.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Yann. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Her body was recovered from one of the ponds on Hampstead Heath. It had been in the water, they think, for a week.’

  Yann could no longer hear any voices, only the drum of blood beating in his ears. Had everything stopped? He couldn’t breathe.

  Tetu saw the brightly coloured threads that danced around Yann fade before his eyes, as the young man staggered to his feet, his face bloodless.

  ‘What is it?’ said Colombine, looking frightened. ‘Cheri, speak to me! What’s wrong with you?’

  He pushed past Colombine, knocking over the card table.

  ‘Hey,’ shouted Pantalon, ‘that was a winning hand.’

  Yann, gasping for air like a drowning man, made it out on to the street before he spewed up half his insides.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Tetu was talking to him, and yet he heard nothing. He felt Tetu put something in his jacket pocket … but he was falling, falling, and had a long way to go. Sick to his soul, he stumbled into the night, so lost he hardly knew where he was going. Sido’s death stripped Yann of his powers; the threads of light had gone, disappeared from his vision. He was blind.

  He went down to the Seine and sat on an upturned boat. Tonight they could arrest him, he didn’t care. They could guillotine him, he didn’t care. He would willingly lay his head on the block, as if it were a feather pillow. How could he go on living if there was no Sido? Without her, time had stopped. She would always remain in yesterday, and he felt Paris wrap itself around him, a city of the broken embracing a broken man.

  I want Sido to be alive. I want to hold her. To love her, to tell her the truth. I want to have lain with her, to have been beloved of her, always. And in that I would have known I was blessed upon this earth. The luckiest of men.

  At dawn, Paris was almost quiet as if she were holding he
r breath, the city trembling at what the new day might bring. In its watery light Yann found something in his pocket. It was an envelope.

  He opened it, pulled out a letter and straightened it. The words danced away from him until he made them stay still long enough to read.

  I have something that I wish to tell you.

  I couldn’t live like this all my life, a doll in a dolls’ house. I long for adventure, I long to be free, I want to ride with you across moors, through forests. I want to travel with you across the seas. I don’t want a painted ceiling in a bedroom, I want the stars, I want to lie with you on the mossy grass in fields of poppies, in haylofts of gold, to be with you always. I am not a marquis’s daughter, Yann. I was born the wrong side of an unhappy marriage. What use is a title? I give it away. There. Anyone can have this iron cage full of prejudice and privilege. I want to be plain Madame Margoza. That has a freedom to it, that has wind in its sails.

  Never, ever, Yann, tell me that your being a gypsy would stop me loving you. I too have a gypsy soul. I am yours and only yours.

  Sido

  Yann felt as if he had been mortally wounded by his own hand, his own folly. This was the letter he’d given back to Tetu, unread. He thought of what Sido had received from him in return, his short letter cutting her off from him.

  And now it was too late.

  ‘I must go to London,’ he said out loud, as if emerging from a fog. His words sounded awkward, his tongue heavy as lead. He never wanted to talk to anyone ever again if he couldn’t talk to Sido. And by the waters of the Seine he wept.

  Didier had been out since dawn looking for him. Now, having as good as scoured Paris, he decided to go back to the Circus of Follies.

  The barman at the cafe on the corner was sweeping out the sawdust, the tables and chairs stacked in the morning sunlight.

  ‘Citizen,’ he called to Didier, ‘have you found him?’

  Didier shook his head. The barman brought him coffee.

  Didier drank it and was about to leave when the barman said, ‘It looks as if Citizen Aulard has the inspectors in again.’

  Didier, thinking nothing of it, entered the theatre by the stage door. He’d started up the stairs to Citizen Aulard’s office when, too late, he saw five National Guardsmen on the landing, their pistols cocked. He turned to run when two more armed guards stood up in the concierge’s sentry box, their weapons aimed straight at him. Didier was chained and taken on to the stage. The rest of the company, including Anselm, was there, surrounded by soldiers.

  ‘Is that everyone?’ said the sergeant, catching Anselm’s eye. The look that passed between them didn’t escape Didier’s notice.

  Didier, a giant of a man and stronger by the power of ten when angry, rushed at Anselm and with one punch hit him halfway across the stage. The guards descended on him like wasps on jam, but even in chains, Didier knocked three of them unconscious before the sergeant restored order by firing his pistol at the ceiling.

  ‘You’ve broken my nose,’ whined Anselm. Then seeing everyone’s sharp eyes on him, including Colombine’s, he said, ‘Don’t look at me, she’s in on it too.’

  ‘Quiet, not another word,’ said the sergeant.

  While Anselm and Colombine were taken away separately, the sergeant said, ‘You are all under arrest. All of you are suspects. Things might go better if you tell us which of your company goes by the name of the Silver Blade.’

  Silence.

  ‘I ask you again, and this will be the last time. Which of you is the Silver Blade?’

  And again no one said a word.

  ‘To the Conciergerie with the lot of you.’

  The barman at the corner cafe on the square stared open-mouthed in horror to see nearly all his regular customers from the Circus of Follies chained together and loaded on to the waiting wagons like sheep.

  ‘Oh, these are the days of murder and mourning,’ he muttered miserably to himself.

  The only two persons missing from this sorry band were Tetu and Basco.

  ‘Where are they?’ asked Didier.

  ‘Tetu went to see Cordell,’ whispered Citizen Aulard. ‘Basco accompanied him.’ Iago was perched on his shoulder.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Cordell wanted to see you, too. Oh, God, what’s going to happen to us?’

  ‘I would have thought,’ said Didier, avoiding the subject, ‘that you’d have left the parrot behind.’

  ‘So would I, but Iago was adamant.’

  Didier looked at the cart carrying Anselm and Colombine. What we do for love, he thought. Still, he would have imagined Colombine to have had more sense than to fall for that thug. He turned his back on them and instead watched the city he loved roll slowly past, saying a long farewell to his freedom. By the time the turrets of the Conciergerie came into view the sky had turned ominously black, the air laden with the approaching storm.

  In the past, when there was still justice in France, this palace had been its seat. But justice had long been banished, and the palace was home to the dreaded Revolutionary Tribunal and its tyrannical ruler, the hatchet-man of the Convention, Fouquier-Tinville. It contained within its weather-stained stone walls one of the most notorious prisons in Paris. The sight of those infamous gates sent a ripple of fear through the whole company. This was where Marie Antoinette had been imprisoned; through these gates Danton had been taken in a tumbril on his way to execution.The list was growing, day by day, of the great and the good who had been sacrificed to the pernicious new ruler of France - the guillotine.

  It was not surprising, then, that the company was trembling as they stepped from the wagons. Pantalon was a sorry sight, make-up running, knees knocking, as he and the rest were unceremoniously prodded and pushed, unable to hear themselves think above the barking of the dogs. They were ushered through more gates and doors which clanged shut and locked behind them, then down a long stone corridor, to be left waiting on a bench in a sunless place whose walls seemed to sweat tears.

  Opposite was a small room, and through the filthy glass they could see the prison governor seated in his armchair in front of a wooden table. Above and below, a tangle of sounds reverberated: the turn of a key, the echo of footsteps, the cries of a prisoner, laughter and the clang of a bell. All were separated by impenetrable silence, and still they waited. Tick … tock. Tick … tock. Time imprisoned here was thin and whispery, its beat almost lost in the dungeons.

  The prison governor seemed not to have noticed the new arrivals, or that one of them had a parrot on his head, for never once did he bother to look in their direction. Only a rat appeared interested in them, sniffing the air before scurrying under the bench. Colombine let out a gasp.

  ‘Quiet,’ boomed the guard. His dog looked hungry and mean, ready to tear to pieces anyone who crossed him.

  ‘You there,’ said a turnkey, breaking the silence, pointing at Anselm, ‘the governor is waiting.’

  A few minutes later Anselm came out, and avoiding all eye contact, walked to the end of the corridor where a door, unlit and unseen by those left seated, opened. Then he was gone.

  Colombine was next to be summoned, followed by Pantalon, and after a short interview each was taken out through the door at the end of the corridor. This routine went on until only Citizen Aulard and Didier were left.

  ‘Do you think they betrayed us?’ asked Citizen Aulard gloomily.

  What had saved Yann from returning to the theatre that fateful morning was exhaustion. It had finally overcome him, and he had curled up and slept under a tarpaulin in the bottom of a broken boat. He had woken with a start around midday and for a moment, one blissful moment, all looked right with the world. Then he remembered.

  Slowly he made his way back to the Place de Manon.

  ‘At least,’ said the barman, his hand on Yann’s sleeve, ‘you have been spared. I feel terrible.’

  Yann looked at him, bewildered.

  ‘I mean, I didn’t know,’ continued the barman, making no sense whatsoever.

/>   ‘Know what?’ asked Yann.

  The barman pulled him inside the cafe.

  ‘I didn’t know the National Guards were in there waiting to arrest everyone. Early this morning they took all the members of the Circus of Follies away in tumbrils to the Conciergerie.’

  What have I done? thought Yann. I have let so many people down.

  ‘I heard,’ said the barman, ‘that they think they’ve caught the Silver Blade.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six