The Eight

by Katherine Neville

  “You mean, it was all a trap?” El-Marad whispered in horror. He jumped up from the table, scattering matches everywhere. “She sent you into the desert merely to draw me out? No! I don’t believe you!”

  “Okay, you don’t believe me,” I said. “You’re still safe at home on the eighth square, protected by your flanks. You’re not sitting here, flushed out like a partridge …”

  “Across from the new Black Queen,” Lily chimed in gleefully. El-Marad stared at her, then back at me. I stood up as if prepared to leave, but he grabbed my arm.

  “You!” he cried, his black eyes darting around wildly. “Then—she’s left the Game! She’s tricked me.…” I was moving toward the door with Lily right behind me. El-Marad caught up and grabbed me again.

  “You have the pieces,” he hissed. “This is all a trick to lead me astray. But you have them. You’d never have returned from the Tassili without them.”

  “Sure I have them,” I said. “But not in a place where you’d ever think of looking.” I had to get out of there before he guessed where they were. We were nearly at the door.

  Just then Carioca jumped out of Lily’s arms, skittered on the slick linoleum floor, recovered, and ran around yapping his head off as he barreled for the door. I looked up in horror as the door burst open and Sharrif, surrounded by a brigade of thugs in business suits, filled the doorway with a solid block of shoulders.

  “Halt in the name of the—” he began. But before I could get my wits together, Carioca had plunged for his favorite ankle. Sharrif buckled over in pain, backed away, and went through the screen door of the pub, pulling some of his guards along with him. I plowed right after him, knocking him down as I left skid marks across his face. Lily and I headed for the car with El-Marad and half the bar on our tail.

  “The water!” I screamed over my shoulder as I ran. “The water!” For we’d never make it to the car in time to lock ourselves in and start it. I didn’t look back—just kept on running, straight out onto the little pier. There were fishing boats slopping around everywhere, loosely moored to the pilings. When I got to the end I looked over my shoulder.

  The quay was pandemonium. El-Marad was just behind Lily. Sharrif had pried Carioca from his leg, still snapping, and was struggling with him while trying to peer into the darkness for something moving to shoot at. There were three guys pounding down the pier behind me, so I held my nose and jumped.

  The last thing I saw as I hit the water was the tiny body of Carioca, lofted into the air by Sharrif and sailing toward the sea. Then I felt the cold dark waters of the Mediterranean closing around me. I felt the heavy weight of the Montglane Service pulling me down, down toward the bottom of the sea.

  THE WHITE LAND

  The land which warlike Britons now possess,

  And therein have their mighty empire raised,

  In antique times was savage wilderness,

  Unpeopled, unmanured, unproved, unpraised.…

  Ne did it then deserve a name to have,

  Till that the venturous mariner that way,

  Learning his ship from those white rocks to save,

  Which all along the southern seacoast lay

  Threatening unheedy wreck and rash decay,

  For safety that same his sea-mark made,

  And named it Albion.

  —The Faerie Queene (1590)

  Edmund Spenser

  Ah, perfide, perfide Albion!

  —Napoleon, quoting

  Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1692)

  LONDON

  NOVEMBER 1793

  It was four o’clock in the morning when the soldiers of William Pitt rapped loudly upon the door of Talleyrand’s house in Kensington. Courtiade threw on his dressing gown and hastened upstairs to discover what the racket was all about. As he opened the door, he could see the flicker of lights just lit in nearby houses and a few curious neighbors peering through their draperies at the cadre of imperial soldiers standing before him on the step. Courtiade drew in his breath.

  How long they’d waited in fear for this. Now it had come at last. Talleyrand was already descending the stairs wrapped closely in silken shawls that fell over his long dressing gown. His face was a mask of icy reserve as he crossed the small hall to the waiting soldiers.

  “Monseigneur Talleyrand?” said the officer in charge.

  “As you see.” Talleyrand bowed, smiling coldly.

  “Prime Minister Pitt conveys regrets he could not deliver these papers in person,” replied the officer as if reciting a memorized speech. Pulling a packet of papers from his jacket, he thrust them at Talleyrand and continued. “The Republic of France, an unrecognized body of anarchists, has declared war upon the sovereign kingdom of Britain. All émigrés who support this so-called government, or who can be shown to have done so in the past, are hereby denied the shelter and protection of the house of Hanover and His Majesty George the Third. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, you are found guilty of seditious acts against the kingdom of Great Britain, of violating the Traitorous Correspondence Act of 1793, of conspiring, in your former capacity as assistant foreign minister of said country, against the sovereign.…”

  “My dear fellow,” said Talleyrand with a vicious laugh, looking up from the papers he’d been perusing. “This is absurd. France declared war upon England nearly a year ago! And Pitt knows full well I did everything in my power to prevent it. I’m wanted for treason in France—doesn’t that say enough?” But his words were lost on the officers who stood at the door.

  “Minister Pitt informs you that you have three days to quit England. Those are your deportation papers and travel permit. I wish you good morrow, Monseigneur.”

  Calling the command to about-face, he turned on his heel. Talleyrand watched in silence as the cadre of soldiers marched in cadence down the stone path that led from his door. Then he turned silently away. Courtiade closed the door.

  “Albus per fide decipare,” said Talleyrand softly under his breath. “That is a quote from Bossuet, my dear Courtiade, one of the greatest orators France has ever known. He called it ‘the White Land that deceives by trust’: Perfidious Albion. A people who’ve never been ruled by their own race—first the Teutonic Saxons, then the Normans and Scots, and now the Germans, whom they loathe but are so like. They curse us, but they have short memories, for they killed a king of their own in Cromwell’s day. Now they drive from their shores the only French ally who does not wish to be their master.”

  He stood, head bowed, his silken shawls trailing upon the floor. Courtiade cleared his throat.

  “If the Monseigneur has selected a destination, I might begin the travel arrangements at once.…”

  “Three days are not enough,” said Talleyrand, bringing back his attention. “I’ll go at dawn to Pitt’s asking for an extension. I must secure funds and find a country that will accept me.”

  “But Madame de Staël …?” said Courtiade politely.

  “Germaine has done her best to get me to Geneva, but the government refuses. I am a traitor to everyone, it seems. Ah, Courtiade, how swiftly the streams of possibility freeze up in the winter of one’s life!”

  “The Monseigneur is hardly in the winter of life,” Courtiade objected.

  Talleyrand regarded him with cynical blue eyes. “I’m forty and a failure,” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “But not a failure in everything,” said a soft voice from above.

  The two men glanced up the stairway. There on the landing, leaning against the balustrade in a thin silk dressing gown, her long blond hair tumbling about her bare shoulders, stood Catherine Grand.

  “The prime minister can have you tomorrow—it’s soon enough,” she said with a slow and sensual smile. “But tonight, you are mine.”

  Catherine Grand had entered Talleyrand’s life four months ago, arriving at his house at midnight bearing the golden pawn of the Montglane Service. She had not left since.

  She’d come in desperation, she said. Mireille ha
d been sent to the guillotine, and with her last breath, she’d begged Catherine to take this chess piece to Talleyrand so he could hide it just as he had the others. This, at least, was her story.

  She’d trembled in his arms, tears clinging to her thick lashes, her warm body pressed to his. How bitter she’d seemed at the death of Mireille, how comforting to Talleyrand in his own grief at these words—and how beautiful, as she fell on her knees to beg for mercy in her desperate plight.

  Maurice had always been partial to beauty, in objects of art, in thoroughbred animals—and most especially, in women. Everything about Catherine Grand was beautiful: her flawless complexion, her magnificent body draped in impeccable clothes and jewels, the violet scent of her breath, the cascade of white-blond hair. And everything about her reminded him of Valentine. Everything but one: she was a liar.

  But she was a beautiful liar. How could something so beautiful seem so dangerous, so treacherous, so foreign to his ways? The French had a saying that the best place to learn the ways of a foreigner was in bed. Maurice confessed himself only too willing to try.

  The more he learned, the more she seemed perfectly suited to him in every way. Perhaps too perfectly. She loved the wines of Madeira, the music of Haydn and Mozart, and she preferred Chinese silks to French against her skin. She loved dogs, as he did, and bathed twice a day, a custom he’d always thought unique to himself. It was almost as if she’d studied his preferences—in fact, he felt certain she had. She knew more of his habits than Courtiade did. But on the subject of her past, her relationship with Mireille or her knowledge of the Montglane Service, her words rang false. That was when he’d decided to learn as much of her as she had of him. He wrote to those he could still trust in France, and his investigation began. The correspondence reaped interesting results.

  She’d been born Catherine Noel Worlée—four years earlier than she claimed—to French parents at the Dutch colony of Tranquebar, India. At fifteen they’d married her off for money to an Englishman far older than herself—one George Grand. When she was seventeen, her lover, whom her husband had threatened to shoot, paid her fifty thousand rupees to leave India forever. Those funds enabled her to live lavishly in London first and later in Paris.

  At Paris, suspicion had mounted that she was a spy for the British. Shortly before the Terror, her porter had been shot dead on her very doorstep, and Catherine herself had disappeared. Now, barely a year later, she’d sought out the exiled Talleyrand in London—a man without title, money, or country, with little hope that his prospects would change. Why?

  As he loosened the pink silk ribbons of her gown and slipped it from her shoulders, Talleyrand smiled to himself. After all, he’d built his own career on his attractiveness to women. Women had brought him money, position, and power. How could he fault Catherine Grand for using her own considerable resources in the same fashion? But what did she want from him? Talleyrand thought he knew. There was only one thing in his possession she could be after—she wanted the Montglane Service.

  But he wanted her. Though he knew she was too seasoned to be innocent, too driven to be genuinely passionate, too treacherous to be trusted—he wanted her with an urgency he could not control. Though everything about her was artifice and veneer, he wanted it nonetheless.

  Valentine was dead. If Mireille had also been killed, then the Montglane Service had cost him the lives of the only two people he’d ever loved. Why should it not bring him something in return?

  He embraced her with a terrible, urgent passion like a dry thirst. He would have her—and let the devils that tormented him be damned.

  JANUARY 1794

  But Mireille was far from dead—and not far from London. She was aboard a merchant ship that even now hove through the darkened waters of the English Channel as the coming storm closed fast upon them. As they churned through the choppy straits, she caught her first glimpse of the white cliffs of Dover.

  In the six months since she’d left Charlotte Corday in her place at the Bastille, Mireille had traveled far. With the money sent by the abbess that she’d found in her paintbox, she’d hired a small fishing boat near the port of the Bastille to take her along the Seine until she’d found, at one of the docks on that twisted river, a ship bound for Tripoli. Secretly securing passage, she’d boarded and raised anchor in the Seine before Charlotte had even been taken to the tumbril.

  As the coast of France melted away behind her, Mireille thought she could hear the groaning wheels of the cart that would now be carrying Charlotte to the guillotine. In her mind she heard the heavy steps on the scaffolding, the roll of the tambours, the swish of the blade in its long descent, the cheers of the crowd in the Place de la Révolution. Mireille felt the cold blade cutting away whatever remained of childhood and innocence, leaving only the fatal task. The task for which she’d been chosen—to destroy the White Queen and reunite the pieces.

  But first there was another task. She would go to the desert to bring back her child. Given a second chance, she would overcome even Shahin’s insistence to keep the infant as Kalim—a seer to his people. If he is a prophet, thought Mireille, let his destiny be twined with my own.

  But now, as the North Sea winds struck the yards of sail with the first slashes of rain, Mireille wondered whether she’d been wise to tarry so long before heading to England—to Talleyrand, who had the pieces. She held Charlot’s small hand in hers as he sat on her lap on the deck. Shahin stood beside them, watching another ship passing out into the turbulent English Channel. Shahin, in his long black robes, who’d refused to be parted from the little prophet he’d midwifed at birth. Now he raised his long arm toward the lowering clouds over the chalky cliffs.

  “The White Land,” he said quietly. “Domain of the White Queen. She is waiting—I can feel her presence even so far away.”

  “I pray we are not too late,” said Mireille.

  “I smell adversity,” Shahin replied. “It always comes with storms, like a treacherous gift from the gods.…” He continued to watch the ship that, spreading its sails into the wind, was swallowed into the darkness of the violent Channel. The ship that—unknown to them—was carrying Talleyrand away toward the Atlantic main.

  The one thought that Talleyrand had as his ship moved into the heavy darkness was not for Catherine Grand, but for Mireille. The age of illusion was ended, and perhaps Mireille’s life as well. While he, at the age of forty, went to begin life anew.

  After all, thought Talleyrand as he sat in his cabin assembling his papers, forty was not the end of life, nor was America the end of the world. Armed with letters of introduction to President Washington and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, he’d at least be in good company in Philadelphia. And of course he’d known Jefferson, who’d just resigned as Secretary of State, during the latter’s tenure as ambassador to France.

  Though he had little to see him through but his excellent health and what cash he’d raised from the sale of his library, he at least had the satisfaction of now having nine pieces of the Montglane Service in his possession, instead of the original eight. For despite all the connivings of the lovely Catherine Grand, he’d convinced her his hiding place would also secure the golden pawn she’d entrusted to him. He laughed when he thought of her expression at their tearful parting—when he’d tried to convince her to come with him, rather than worry about the pieces he’d left so well hidden in England!

  Of course, they were in his trunks aboard the ship, thanks to the resourcefulness of the ever-alert Courtiade. Now they’d have a new home. He was thinking these thoughts as the first onslaught struck the ship.

  He looked up in surprise as the ship moved violently beneath him. He was about to ring for assistance when Courtiade rushed into the cabin.

  “Monseigneur, we are asked to come to the below deck at once,” said the valet with his usual calm. But the swiftness of his movements as he collected the pieces of the Montglane Service from their hiding place in the trunk revealed the urgency of the situa
tion. “The captain believes the ship will be driven upon the rocks. We are to prepare for the lifeboats. They will keep the top deck clear to work the sails, but we should be on the ready to come up at once if we cannot clear the shoals.”

  “Which shoals?” cried Talleyrand, leaping up in alarm, nearly upsetting his writing tools and inkstand.

  “We’ve passed the Pointe Barfleur, Monseigneur,” said Courtiade quietly, holding Talleyrand’s morning coat as the ship tossed them back and forth. “We’re driven upon the Normandy corniche.” He bent to shove the pieces into a carrying case.

  “My God,” Talleyrand said, grasping the case. He limped toward the stateroom door, leaning on the valet’s shoulder as he clutched the bag. The ship took a sudden lurch to starboard, and the two men were hurled against the door. Clearing it with difficulty, they made their way along the narrow passage, where women were already sobbing hysterical commands to their children to hurry. By the time they reached the below deck, people were crammed everywhere—the shrieks, wails, and moans of their fear mingled with the pounding feet and cries of sailors on the upper deck, the sound of the Channel’s waters striking in fury against the ship.

  And then, in horror, they felt the ship itself falling beneath their feet as their bodies crashed into one another like eggs loose in a basket. The ship fell and continued falling as if it would never stop. Then it hit, and they heard the horrid splintering of wood. The water gushed through the jagged hole, washing them everywhere with powerful force as the gigantic ship foundered upon the rock.

  The icy rain slashed down upon the cobbled streets of Kensington as Mireille carefully picked her way over the slippery stones toward the grilled gates of Talleyrand’s garden. Shahin followed, his long black robes drenched with rain, carefully holding little Charlot in his arms.

  It had never occurred to Mireille that Talleyrand might no longer be in England. But before she’d even opened the gates, she saw with heavy heart the empty garden with its deserted gazebo, the boards across the windows of the house, the iron bar sealing the front door. Nevertheless she unfastened the gate and went along the stone path, her skirts trailing in the puddles.