Memory of Flames
Page 8
The drinker sat up, not as drunk as all that. 'I'm waiting for a friend.’ He spoke with a Portuguese accent.
‘I am that friend.’
‘In that case, you’re welcome at my table.’ He smiled and drank some beer, happy that the exchange had passed off exactly as his intermediary had told him. He was missing three fingers on his left hand, which lay exposed on the table. He had lost his fingers to a cannonball during a naval battle off the coast of Portugal. His sloop, A Corajosa, had been wiped out by the frenetic cannon fire of L’Amelie, a French frigate.
‘I have what you need, senhor. But it was much harder to come by than I expected. It was bad enough that I had to go to the Amazonian jungle, but what was worse was that even though I had already bartered with the Indian tribes there, they still didn’t trust me. I risked my life dealing with them! And the ocean! There was a storm in the Atlantic, the like of which I’ve never seen ... It felt as if the sky was sucking up the sea to drink it, the waves were so high. And I’ve been a sailor for sixteen years! Then getting across France ... The English, the Spanish and the Portuguese will all tell you that Napoleon’s on his knees, only they’ve all forgotten to tell him that!
I was almost arrested, I had to grease the palms of soldiers ...’ ‘How much more?’
‘Ah, por Deus, at least you know what you want!’
‘More than you can know. How much?’
‘I should ask for four times as much, but I’ll settle for triple the amount.’
‘You can have double.’
‘No, no, senhor, with all due respect: triple. If we can’t agree on a price, you can always dispense with my services and go yourself to our viceroyalty, Brazil, to get what you want.’
The thought of that made him laugh. But he added: ‘Believe it or not I’m not just motivated by money. I also want a return to the monarchy for the French. As long as Napoleon is overthrown, any king will do - Louis XVIII, Bernadotte, even a fish: “King Fish” ... Napoleon has invaded so many countries, perhaps he’s forgotten Portugal, but Portugal hasn’t forgotten Napoleon.’
The man gave in and handed over almost all the money, under the table. In exchange he received a bag full of little receptacles.
‘That isn’t triple, but it’s more than double. I had foreseen that you
would be greedy, but not that you would demand quite that much.’ ‘Do you really think you’re going to succeed, senhor?’
The man smiled in reply. It was a strange smile, a mixture of joy and ferocity. The sailor was leaning back in his chair now. He displayed his left hand again. It looked like a pale starfish a shark had taken a bite out of. ‘In your case,’ he said, ‘Napoleon has taken much more than just three fingers ...’
The man walked through the disordered crowd without taking in what he was seeing. There was a profusion of National Guardsmen, farmers from Picardy, Champagne or the Ardennes, perched with their families on carts filled with their furniture, and people standing about hoping for news. He had waited months for that meeting! Finally! Finally! But had he really obtained what he needed? If not, he would have to think of another plan.
He reached an area of the city where there was a concentration of butchers. In 1810, Napoleon had ordered that five abattoirs should be built outside Paris. But they were not finished yet, and the killing areas - the parts of the city where slaughter was authorised - were not sufficient to feed Paris with its fondness for red meat. So the capital’s butchers continued their old practices. They slit their beasts’ throats by the dozen in the courtyards of their shops and the blood ran into the streets. The man wondered if it was a prophetic vision of the Paris of tomorrow, when the city would be bathing in the blood of Parisians, Russians and Prussians, like Venice, but with blood instead of canals.
The butcher’s shop he went into was just like all the others. The animals were bleating and mooing in a nauseating odour of blood. Blood, blood, blood everywhere - it was as if he had walked into the mouth of a Leviathan that was devouring the world. An apprentice butcher recognised him and came to meet him. The man merely nodded and followed the young man towards the pen, where they would be away from prying eyes. As agreed in advance, he handed the apprentice a twenty-franc piece, but when he asked the boy to leave, the apprentice refused.
‘I want to see what you’re going to do to the animals/
‘Go on now, you won’t get any more. The person before you took everything.’
The employee still hung around, curious. The man protested, but eventually gave in because he was short of time. He opened the bag that contained eleven little terracotta pots. Eleven possibilities of success. He took a needle from his pocket, picked up the first pot and pulled out the stopper, releasing a strong vegetable odour. The butcher was amused by these strange manoeuvres. The man plunged the point of the needle into the black, syrupy liquid, which gave off such a pungent smell that it seemed as if the little pot magically contained a whole miniature virgin forest. He was so emotional that his hand trembled as he injected the thigh of an ox. The animal did not react. The man threw the needle into the straw, far away so that he would not poison himself, closed up the pot and put it in his pocket. He moved with cold precision. He took a new needle and went through the same procedure with a second pot. Still no reaction. He did it again. Failure. He tried again. Still no result. His gestures were exactly the same each time, like an automaton. Only the odours of the substances varied - strong and smooth, sharp and lingering, like soil in a forest after a storm ... A few seconds after the seventh injection, a frisson ran through the ox, and its back legs began to tremble, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped. The trembling spread through the rest of its body and the enormous 120-stone ox, opening its mouth but unable even to moo, collapsed on its side. Stiff. Dead. The man swivelled round and pricked the butcher in the arm. The effect was even more immediate and the boy fell before he understood what was happening to him. His mouth was wide open, but he was no longer breathing.
The man packed away his equipment and left. There were so many people of all types about that no one paid him any attention. He was filled with joy. He had what he wanted and the poison was even more effective than he had heard. His confidence knew no bounds. Now he could kill at a touch, like a god.
CHAPTER 13
ON 20 March Margont paid an errand boy to take a note to ‘Monsieur Lami’. The message was coded, using a method he had perfected with Lefine in the past to while away the hours of boredom in the bivouac. The note, when decoded, simply said, ‘Meet me at midday chez Marat.’
They met at the appointed hour on the outskirts of Paris, at the foot of the hill of Montmartre, ‘Mount Marat’, as it had sometimes been called during the Revolution. Lefine still mockingly used the old-fashioned appellation. Margont was delighted to see his old friend. He felt himself again.
‘Are you sure you weren’t followed here?’
‘Certain, and you?’
‘I’m certain as well. I’m expert now at complicating my route — needs must. Well, it’s happened! I’ve met them!’
He recounted the events that had led to his admission to the organisation, and what Charles de Varencourt had told him. ‘And
what about you? What have you learnt about our suspects?’
Lefine sat down and leant against a tree, in the shade. Margont followed suit. The birds were singing at the tops of their voices, as though to hurry the arrival of spring.
‘Everything I’m about to tell you comes from the police files that have been “enriched” by Charles de Varencourt’s reports. Sometimes I was able to add to the information with my own research.’ ‘Which police? There are so many ...’
‘Joseph’s personal police. They’re the ones controlling the investigation. But they’ve also used information gathered by Fouche’s police when he was Minister of Civilian Police but had also developed his own networks, and by the civilian police—’
‘What do they think of Charles de Varencourt?’
‘Right. I’m listening.’
‘Let’s start at the top with the leader, Vicomte de Leaume. Varencourt has already told you a good deal about him. But do you know how he escaped?’
‘No, tell me!’
‘He pretended to be dead. It sounds simple when you say it like that, but when the gaolers see a prisoner is apparently dead they stab the body with a lance or bayonet. All the fakers yell immediately or writhe in pain. But Louis de Leaume didn’t move a muscle. As it was during the Terror, when there was killing and maiming left, right and centre, the guards thought he had succumbed to his injuries. He was thrown into a communal grave with the guillotined bodies of the day and the bodies of the poor wretches who had died of starvation in the streets. When night fell he pulled himself out from under the dead bodies.’
Margont could not help imagining the scene. He saw the man extricating himself from the decomposing dead bodies — his silhouette, illuminated by the pale light of the moon, looking more like a ghost than an escapee. The thought was chilling. ‘Where did the gaoler wound him?’ he asked.
‘What a question! I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘The scar would be a way of identifying him. Because where’s the proof that the real Louis de Leaume climbed out of that mass grave? Someone could have usurped his identity ...’
‘I asked myself the same thing, but the police dossier backs up that version of events. And what’s more, the description you’ve just given me corresponds to the one the Revolutionary Tribunal gave at the time of his trial.’
‘I see. Co on.’
‘He was believed to be dead. But instead of adopting a new identity and changing his life, Leaume once more joined a royalist group, the Alliance, and under his real name! He eventually came to the notice of the Commune police three years after his death. There was an investigation into the exact circumstances of his demise, which concluded that he had in fact escaped alive.’
‘That was all he had left: his real name. He had no family, no house, no money, and not even any country ... I don’t know if he’s
an impostor or if the real Louis de Leaume did escape and keep his real identity, through pride, to defy his enemies and humiliate them by letting them know that he had fooled them. But I can tell you this. If someone pretends to be dead, is wounded, thrown in a communal grave and spends hours entombed under corpses, when he finally gets out of the charnel house, he’s no longer the same man. Perhaps that’s the reason Louis de Leaume kept his real name. He wanted to keep a link with the man he had been before his ordeal.’
Margont had spent his childhood steeped in religion, and now he thought of Christ, who had also been ‘dead’. To confirm it, a legionary had wounded his right flank with his lance. Could one consider Louis de Leaume like a sort of perverted Christ, resurrected not to love, but to avenge himself?
Lefine disliked speaking of death. He therefore moved swiftly on to the next phase of Louis de Leaume’s life. ‘In 1796, he left the Alliance because he found its members too moderate. He emigrated to London where he spent at least two years. The police lost track of him until he reappeared in Paris in January 1813, where he formed a new group, the Swords of the King. That’s all I can tell you about his past. As you know, I have many “friends”, some reputable and others less so. But I have not managed to hear any mention of him. So this Leaume knows the capital extremely well!’ ‘If he’s the murderer, you can understand why he left the symbol of his group on the corpse. If you had seen them dithering about me ... He would be the type to cut to the chase to force them all into action. But why the fire?’
‘They wanted to cut his head off, he burns their faces ... And I do agree with you: after you’ve escaped from a grave, your ideas must become somewhat warped.’
‘That’s not what I said. I was only emphasising that an ordeal like that would change you.’
‘Well, anyway, I wouldn’t trust him if I were you. Because if he finds out who you really are ... He’s sure to have left his mercy behind in the communal grave. That’s all I’ve found out about him.’ ‘You don’t know anything about his stay in London?’
‘No. All our suspects live very secretly, so the facts are incomplete.’
The facts are like the people: you just have time to glimpse them in silhouette before they disappear again into the shadows. Tell me about Charles de Varencourt.’
‘Again, almost nothing is known about his past. He was born in 1773, near Rouen. His family belonged to the Norman nobility. Nothing else is known about them. In 1792, he emigrated to England. And after that we have very little. He claims to have lived in London. In January 1814, he contacted the police and offered to sell them information. As he distrusted the civilian police, he approached Joseph’s personal police force. He knew the names of some of them because the royalists kept tabs on the people hunting them. Joseph’s agents accepted his offer. He had to provide them with a variety of his own documents. He showed them his passport, which stated that he had returned to France in 1802.'
‘Ah, the great amnesty of 6 Floreal, year 10. Just like me.’
‘Exactly. And, as you know, it is widely acknowledged, given the level of corruption at the time, that many of those passports were handed out to royalists who did not actually return to France until much later. As Varencourt did not tell them anything concrete about what he did in France between 1802 and 1814 - he said he travelled around the country earning his living by playing cards -it’s quite possible that the documents are fake. That’s what the police suspect. In any case, thanks to that “valid” passport, which “proves” that he was pardoned for his crime of emigration, he lives comfortably at home, whilst Louis de Leaume, Honoré de Nolant and Jean-Baptiste de Chatel are on the run and spend their time moving from house to house.’
‘Right. And what have you found out about the Charles de Varencourt of today?’
‘I arranged for two men to take turns keeping an eye on him day and night, as agreed. I went back to see Natai - I wish you’d seen his face when I asked him for a hundred francs to pay the men.’
‘A hundred francs? That’s going it a bit. You’re taking a cut, I assume?’
‘You misunderstood when I said “I wish you’d seen his face”. He recognised that this was an extraordinary situation and found my bill quite normal — I just had to sign a receipt in the name of Gage, the pseudonym I use when I go and see him. For months now soldiers have not been paid, yet any old spy employed for less than ten days can walk away with a hundred francs! That’s nearly five months’ sergeant’s pay!’
‘Fernand, for heaven’s sake! The Swords of the King might come across you. If you have all that money on you, they’ll know immediately who you’re working for!’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve already spent it all. I may be greedy, but I’m not stupid. I paid the men - four in all, because there were also two men watching Catherine de Saltonges - and I bought a present for a lady friend.’
He smiled disarmingly. Margont, who was always in a ferment of projects and ideals, sometimes envied his friend his nonchalant approach to life.
‘Let’s go back to Charles de Varencourt,’ continued Lefine. ‘No one ever visits him. But he often goes out, so he’s almost never at home. Unfortunately, he is practically impossible to follow. For example, he will suddenly begin running and, obviously, the person who’s following him can’t do the same ... He sometimes manages to lose my men. Sometimes I go myself to keep watch outside his house. I’ve tried to follow him three times but lost him. But yesterday I got Natai to tell me that Varencourt was coming to see him that day, to collect his traitor’s salary. Natai refused to say exactly how much it was, from which I gathered that Varencourt is even greedier than I am. I hid opposite Natai’s office. Varencourt came to ge
t his money and immediately went off to gamble. He was so impatient that he wasn’t as cunning and careful. He was trying quite hard, like the other times, but he must already have been thinking about the hands he was going to play, and this time he didn’t manage to lose me.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t spot you?’
‘When I follow someone, they only see me if I want them to! First he went to Quai des Miramiones, opposite Tie Saint-Louis, to a
cabaret, La Gueuse du quai. He seems to be very well known there. Everyone greeted him by the name Monsieur Pigrin. And his nickname seems to be King Midas because he’s so lucky at cards that everything he touches turns to gold! I wish I was like that. He joined a table of whist players and began betting, betting, betting ... I was having a drink with a bunch of drunkards who were all telling me their misfortunes, either real or imagined, and I was able to watch him discreetly. You should have seen his face as he looked at his cards. Such nervous excitement, such impatience, such rage ... Oh, yes, the card-demon has him in its grip. And it’s a hell of a demon, I can tell you! He won more often than he lost, and left with his winnings. He didn’t seem worried about being set upon for the money - he must be armed. He didn’t go far, only to a second bar, very small, Le Louveteau. I didn’t go in there; it would have been too risky. So instead I asked a passer-by where I could find a game of cards. He gave me a few addresses of the best-known ones, La Commere, Le Sultan du feu ... I went to the closest, which was Le Sultan du feu. What a strange name!’ ‘That’s what the Mamelukes called Bonaparte during the Egyptian campaign, because our infantry fired on all the devils opposing them.’
‘Who do you think came in half an hour later? He joined the other players like a starving man feeding his hunger. The more he plays, the more the card-demon reinforces his hold over him.’
‘Like eau-de-vie only makes a drunkard thirstier and thirstier...’
‘But this time he didn’t play whist. He played vingt-et-un and he took huge risks. At first he accumulated winnings. But as he was pushing his luck, he began to lose. I did notice one thing. There was something that gave him more pleasure than winning. It was when he began to win after having lost a lot. It was very striking. When that happened, he was exultant.’