Fleur-de-Lis

by Isolde Martyn

  "I'm sorry, patronne," Thomas interrupted her thoughts. He stood behind her now, his large hands upon her shoulders. "I disliked the duke and I never thought much of your sisters or the boy either. All the servants got heartily sick of their pranks and your father never once took them to task."

  "So you didn't like my family," she whispered bleakly and then surprised herself. "Well, Thomas, I suppose nor did I overmuch. Looking back now, I can see they were all utterly selfish." She slid from his supportive hands, needing to stand alone. "But it's all right for you to say so, but I have betrayed them by... by consorting with the man responsible for their murder, and I cannot forgive myself nor him."

  "But who exactly is accusing the deputy?" M. Beugneux had the look of a weary magistrate. "Have you seen the testimony your brother mentioned?"

  "Yes, he gave me the copies." Fleur thrust her hand through the slit in her skirt and produced a folded square from her petticoat pocket.

  The patient perused the documents at arm's length then handed them up to Thomas. "There is no evidence that these men actually saw de Villaret kill either your father or your sister," he argued.

  "For heaven's sake! Bertrand saw him kill someone and he was spattered in blood. Someone's blood, if not Papa's. Well?" She dared them to disagree. "And don't tell me he was an innocent bystander. He's dedicated to the Revolution and utterly ruthless. All the Jacobins are."

  Thomas shrugged. "He saved your life at Clerville, didn't he?"

  "How can we be sure it wasn't him who incited the people to march against the chateau in the first place? He's been stalking my family like a hunter, picking us off one by one. It was all in his notebook. You should have seen it. Each date my sisters died. Oh, I've been so stupid, taken in by the easy charm... It would have taken one shot to revenge Papa's and Marguerite's deaths and I did not have the courage."

  The creased face opposite refused to judge her. "It takes courage to live. Killing is easy."

  "I have no more heart to do either." It was even more shameful that M. Beugneux, a quiet hero of the counter-revolution, should be absolving her so generously. "I've lost my way. I've betrayed my family, my noble blood, my honour."

  "No, patronne," protested Thomas, putting an arm about her. "In a time when there is little to eat, you've given people work."

  "Yes, that's true, Fleur," agreed M. Beugneux. "Matthieu would have been proud of you. Not only do you have to keep going for their sakes, ma petite, but you have to make up your own mind about what is important. Don't be a clock for others to wind. I have drawn my own conclusions. So should—"

  The furious rapping of the front-door knocker ignited panic in all their faces.

  "Open in the name of the Republic!"

  It was Fleur who dropped her cup. It caught the lip of the coal scuttle and shattered around her feet, splashing its contents over her skirt.

  De Villaret could have left orders for Françoise-Antoinette de Montbulliou to be guillotined while he was away. A clean finale that would not tax his emotions.

  Thomas rubbed a hand across his chin. "I'll answer it." He jerked his head at the back door." You want to leave, patronne?"

  "If they're here to make an arrest..." She thought about draping Machiavelli around her or arming herself. "No, what does it matter. I'm past caring."

  "How very brave." M. Beugneux calmly flicked open a cavity in his ring and shook the contents into his cup. "One should always be prepared," he murmured. "There is a certain quality to a knocking, don't you think, and this shrieks violence."

  The knocking echoed again.

  "OPEN IN THE NAME OF THE REPUBLIC!"

  * * *

  The Republic proved to be Felix Quettehou, enragé in ink-stained trousers, scarlet waistcoat, a shirt open to his belt and a bandanna which, had it sported a feather, would have made him look more like an American native than a Parisian. He ordered his escort—two section guards—to wait outside.

  Deliberately keeping the printer waiting while she changed her skirt, Fleur eventually entered the salon with a stately chill that would have frozen puddles, and swept a discreet glance around the furniture to make sure her guest had removed none of the ornaments. Behind her cold demeanour she was feeling as frail as a snail shell but she was not going to let this irritating in-law crush her.

  "Will this take long, Citizen Quettehou? I have to be at the café shortly." She clasped her hands at her waist, blatantly impatient.

  "The café, yes." Matthieu's obnoxious nephew moved past each of the paintings, rocking to and fro on his feet like a sergeant inspecting his men, before he grinned back at her over his shoulder."I am going to lay my cards on the table. You remember there was a fire at your café, a most unfortunate act of vandalism." Fleur nodded. "Well, I keep my ear to the ground—one does of necessity these days—and there are one or two unpleasant rumours going round."

  "You mean it's going to happen again, citizen?"

  His cheeks puffed out somewhat and he nodded.

  "And who is behind this vandalism?"

  "Well, I am." The man's chest, hairless and garlic in colour, inflated proudly. How did one answer such a scoundrel? "Nothing personal, Tante Fleur," he leered. "You must understand that." What other fairytale would he have her believe—that King Louis still had his head on his shoulders? "You see, it's only a matter of time before I find the evidence to prove what a conniving little actress you are, and believe me, I will, or... or we could come to some arrangement. I let you continue here," he waved a hand to include the house, "and you make over all your deeds to me. No?" He smiled deprecatingly as she slowly shook her head. "Alternatively, we could become partners. You're quite a resourceful little baggage. How about you marry me and safeguard your future?"

  Fleur grabbed the mantelshelf for support.

  "I can see I have taken the wind out of your sails, dear aunt."

  Her fingers curled slowly around the silver candelabra. Marrying Quettehou made the prospect of a seventy-year-old ploughman with bad breath seem appealing. "And... and if I don't entertain this magnanimous offer of yours?"

  "Pfft."

  "Pfft?"

  "Pfft! There is so much crime in Paris these days. One could almost accuse the authorities of turning a blind eye."

  She restrained herself from propelling the candelabra through the air. He deserved a setdown but she did not want any more attacks on her life. She must handle this carefully. "You really are such a sweet, thoughtful fellow to warn me and I do thank you for the proposal but although I find printers ink so," here she let her gaze absorb his full manly beauty, "so utterly compelling, I am still in mourning for my beloved husband. But I will give your offer some serious thought." She let go of the silverware and shook the small handbell, hoping that Thomas would assist her promptly. This was one visitor that must not linger. "Return to me in a month, Felix." Graciously offering her hand to him at shoulder height, she added charmingly, "Maybe my heart will ignite and we can run the printing works and café together. With your unscrupulousness and my duplicity, just imagine what advantages our children will have."

  Quettehou had lost his smugness and was staring at her, clearly torn between cynical disbelief and vanity, vanity that she might be genuinely encouraging him.

  "You shall have a fortnight to think about it. It's not long." He possessed himself of her fingers and trickled his lips down the back of her hand. "Not long at all."

  As Thomas showed him out, Fleur tried not to wipe her wrist on her skirt. At the salon door she paused. Surely the secretaire had been closed properly? With her temper mounting, she let down the writing table. The papers in the flanking pigeonholes looked unrifled except... Except there was a single document longer than the rest beneath her letters from Charlotte, letters she likely would not reread.

  Unfolded, it proved to be a properly witnessed will. Fleur's heart skipped a beat.

  And the signature—leaving the house and café to Felix Quettehou—was not her late husband's, it was hers!r />
  Chapter 17

  "Men!" snorted Columbine, hands on hips, as she admired the repainted pussycat sign. "If the Revolution hadn't closed down all the nunneries, I'd think about taking the veil, I honestly would. That revolting Quettehou threatening the Chat Rouge and your handsome deputy gone two weeks and not a word."

  Since she had tried to shoot the "handsome deputy" before he left, Fleur hardly expected correspondence from him, especially anything signed "love, Raoul". She was amazed to find herself still at liberty.

  "You are welcome to de Villaret, Columbine, but I assure you, pythons are better. They don't argue, they just hiss."

  "Wait a minute, patronne!" exclaimed the blonde, hastening after her into the café."Are you talking about Machiavelli? Oh, don't tell me he was at your house all this time. And here I've been making inquiries all over the place." She clapped her hands together. "Quelle merveille! Oh, please let me use him in one of my acts. I promise I'll look after him. Could you bring him here tomorrow?"

  "If Monsieur Beugneux agrees."

  "Oh, please, please, and have you time to sit down and listen to my idea? It will take your mind off your wicked Raoul. Oh la la, what have we here? Another deputy!"

  Fleur swung round to see Armand Gensonné blocking the doorway, staring about him aloofly. What had brought this rush of blood to his haughty head? Hardly the urge to play dominoes or watch Columbine's dexterity with gauze. Then she noticed a very dour Robinet behind him and a horrible feeling of foreboding enveloped her.

  "Citizens, let me find you a table."The blonde sashayed towards them.

  Fleur froze as Gensonné removed his tricorne hat and ignored Columbine. No man ignored Columbine unless he had something very serious on his mind.

  "Madame, I regret..." His large hand fumbled with his hat. "Deputy de Villaret was murdered on his journey to Caen. It-it took some time for the local officers to make an identification."

  It was Columbine who found Fleur a chair before she fell.

  * * *

  For the next week Fleur stoically carried out her duties but at night she sat distrait, bewildered by the world, realising that she would have given her life to hear Raoul's voice again. And while she hid her aching heart and, out of remorse, forgave the suspicions and lies that had lain between them, the Jacobins cropped hay out of her lover's death with nauseating gusto. Not just snippings from de Villaret's speeches but predictable words like "patriot", "martyr" and "hero" peppered the journals for days while the hacks scrabbled around for follow-up epithets. A week later the news sheets spoke of "daring aviator", "a thinker ahead of his time" and "a Frenchman worthy of Mount Olympus". But when one writer, too lazy to check his facts, described Fleur as "de Villaret's widow", the Chat Rouge was suddenly pestered by people frothing condolences in return for free cups of café-au-lait. The latter included Marat and a flotilla of his admirers, who propped their mud-crusted heels on the tables, emptied their pipes onto the floor and drank the Chat Rouge dry of crème and chocolate.

  Hérault came to the café to offer commiseration, but since his visits coincided with Columbine's sinuous performance with Machiavelli, Fleur concluded the actress was ranking high on his shopping list. She herself was impervious to the recruiting procedures for his seraglio, but she found his teasing friendship distracting. Perhaps his interest would keep Quettehou at bay.

  "Why are you complaining, citizeness?" Hérault chided as Fleur showed him the latest gazette. "Notoriety is good for business. I daresay poor old de Villaret would have been vastly amused. And this is for you." He pushed a black-edged card across the serving ledge. Curious, Fleur wiped her hands on a cloth and picked up the invitation.

  "The Panthéon!"

  "Of course! Dear old Raoul is to be buried among the greatest of this century: Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau and the first martyr of the Revolution, poor Lepeletier."

  "Wasn't he stabbed in a café?" Fleur suppressed a sarcastic tone.

  "Yes." Hérault was provoked into glancing round uneasily. "But it was at the Palais-Royal and the day before the King was guillotined. Raoul will be our second martyr. The coffin is arriving tomorrow and we'll have a gun carriage convey it through the city streets with lictors and virgins leading the way."

  "Did he manage to leave any?" muttered Fleur beneath her breath.

  The Jacobin eyed her with a blend of sympathy and speculation. "So the Bastille did fall. Rest assured I'm around to pick up the pieces."

  "So I've observed this last week. However, I don't want to be swept up and glued back like a broken ornament." She held out the invitation. "Please give this to someone who will enjoy la gloire. As I told you before, the deputy and I parted on bad terms. If I have wounds to lick, I'll do it privately."

  "Don't be naive, citizeness," he retorted, refusing to take it back. "As a good patriot, you will attend the funeral. The procession's going to start at the Jacobin Club by the Tree of Liberty. It should be an excellent spectacle. David has designed some special costumes. Mind, it won't be as good as Lepeletier's. Did you see that? No? A pity. David had him displayed for four days in the Place de Piques on top of the pedestal where the statue of Louis XIV stood and, of course, it was January, which helped—you can't do that with a body in high summer. But I tell you, it made a big impression, bloodstained shirt draped on a pike. Paris talked about it for weeks. Only thing that ruined it was his daughter wasn't very cooperative even though we made her a 'Daughter of the Nation'. Didn't deserve it, wealthy little cow.

  "Anyway, David's doing his best, especially since Raoul was once his apprentice." That jarred Fleur. Jarred her so much that she did not protest as he added, "I'm off south on another commission, one less lethal, I hope. A swift trip to Mont Blanc. I'd be pleased if you'd attend a soiree at Le Nid before I go." He leaned across and kissed her on either cheek. "Tomorrow, I will see you at the Panthèon." It was an order.

  Apprentice to David? The empty two-handled pan she had just picked up somehow crashed to the floor. She stood dazed as the startled customers glanced up from their chess and newspapers. A gentle arm—Juanita's—came round her shoulders.

  "I am such a fool," Fleur exclaimed, smacking her forehead with the heel of her palm. De Villaret had known about the secret passage at Clerville because her sisters had shut him in it. He was the apprentice her furious father had horsewhipped all those years ago. The apprentice, the thief and the deputy! Had he been picking her family off ever since?

  "You are not with child, are you?" whispered Juanita anxiously.

  Diable, she innocently hoped not. That would be the greatest irony of all.

  * * *

  It was not every day that one's only lover and greatest enemy was interred among the mighty. Lacking a tragic wife for deVillaret, the Jacobins intended Citizeness Bosanquet to play the grief-stricken fiancée. David had even sent her a message suggesting she hurl herself upon the coffin, and please could she weep copiously—the people would love that. But Fleur had no intention of being paraded like some black-draped war trophy, nor would she sit near the coffin alongside the butchers of the Revolution.

  Fleur did, however, close the Chat Rouge on the morning of deVillaret's funeral and, insisting Thomas and Emilie leave ahead of her to attend the service, she crossed the old bridge to the Îsle de la Citéand paused in shock opposite the cathedral, where carters were offloading sacks of stockfeed and bales of straw. That was expected—nothing was sacred any more-but it was the damage to the beautiful facade that bruised her soul. Was there no end to ignorance, stupidity and such appalling vanity? Above the main portal of Notre Dame, every one of the Biblical kings had been smashed out of their niches. What gave these vandals the right to destroy these priceless sculptures?

  She lingered on the Pont-au-Double and stared unseeing at the lantern spires rising beyond the quays of the Left Bank. She was loath to continue, loath to turn back. No past worth remembering, no future either. God was binding chains around her ankles to weigh her down, and the grey riv
er, reflecting the gathering rain clouds, ran beneath the bridge uncaring, its mindlessness beckoning her to a desperate oblivion. Survival was not everything. Existing in a city at war was a challenge she had met, but now... Now life no longer held any savour for her, for the fire that lit her soul was flickering out. Why should the memory of feeling safe in deVillaret's arms flood her mind suddenly? Instinctively safe in the embrace of a murderer!

  As Fleur hesitated, the bell of the Palais de Justice began to toll. A lone booming bell from Notre Dame gave answer, and across the city, on either side of the Seine, the towers and spires replied in slow, doleful chorus so that the sound became one vast heartbeat for the whole of Paris. This was for Raoul de Villaret? Downriver Fleur heard the drums, the hooves and the marching feet crossing the Pont Neuf. Tears trickling down her face, she began to run.

  She reached the Rue Soufflot before the cortege and stood with her back to the wall of Montaigu College, her blood churning, her breath uncertain and her reeling mind still a mosaic of cobbles and corners. But she was here in time, opposite the modern, domed Panthéon, watching as the carriages spewed out the new noblesse, led by the Adam and Eve of the Girondin government—the drab M. and Mme Roland.

  The republican unity was transitory. The Girondins might object to trailing behind a Jacobin coffin but they were here because public tribute was expected even if it meant rubbing shoulders with the coarser, vulgar orators. Mme Roland swept into the temple without a glance at the pinch-faced poor who were seeping in from the Court of Miracles and the sewers of nearby Saint-Severin to eddy restlessly before the temple. The ravenous students from the abolished colleges jolting their scrawled banners for a dead hero did not warrant acknowledgment.