Pebbles from a Northern Shore

by Peter D Wilson

  *****

  Gaston's lodgings were in a quiet street near the site of the Bastille. He rented a single room from a cabinet-maker, taking his evening meals with the family, but casually evading all attempts to draw him into deeper social intimacy. Since he seemed thoroughly respectable with regular and unobtrusive habits - eminently desirable qualities in a lodger during those troubled times - no one ever pressed the attempts. His business was his own, and he might have sound reasons for keeping quiet about it, while some things were better not known.

  Even so, the two daughters of the family remained intrigued long after the parents had ceased openly speculating. Despite his being at least half a generation older, one of them for a while had romantic notions about him, weaving complicated fantasies of how he might have fallen into his present humble condition and of the noble deeds she might yet call upon him to perform for her, until his gentle discouragement, the chaffing of her brother and finally the arrival of a more tractable prospect next door put a stop to them.

  There was one very good reason for saying nothing about his background: he knew nothing himself. His earliest memory was of a few years earlier, being nursed through a bad case of concussion by a kindly slut in Marseille. Before that was a blank, and "Gaston" was simply the name she gave him in memory of a childhood companion. She could tell him only that after a disturbance on the quay-side, a friend in the militia had found him unconscious with a nasty wound on his head. Whether it came from a blow or a fall no one could be sure, but the emptiness of his pockets suggested foul play. Fortunately his rather well-made coat proved to have a useful cache of money sewn into the lining, enough to pay off some worrying arrears of the woman's rent and keep him going until he found work with a nearby cartwright. The mystery of his past eventually gave a disagreeably nosy neighbour an excuse to denounce the woman to the local Committee of Public Safety for supposedly harbouring royalists, and he was lucky to escape arrest, heading for Paris where he hoped to be lost in the crowd. As an odd-job man at the Bicêtre hospital, he helped competently in Dr. Guillotin's experiments and had no objections when he thus became a natural choice to continue operating the machine in earnest.

  The episode with the Comte de Soissons continued to puzzle him. Quite apart from the unnatural chirpiness of the fellow, what on earth could he have meant about the ring's possibly being useful? Most evenings Gaston spent some time studying it, or rather letting his mind wander over the possibilities. He wasn't one to go in for the Arabian Nights stuff about rings with occult powers. He knew, of course, that rings were sometimes used to hold a suicide capsule in case of need, but this one was obviously not of that sort. There was no room for any kind of hidden mechanism, and even if there had been there was no sign of a trigger. More plausibly, the unusual design could be the symbol of some secret society; showing it might indeed serve as a discreet signal. But when would such a signal be needed? The only likely occasion would be a plot against the regime, and if that were so, anything linked with it could prove a very dangerous possession. He would be wise to get rid of it. But he feared it might perhaps still be traced to him, and the attempt would be taken as a sign of guilt. Besides, for some reason he was reluctant to disregard the Comte's dying wish for him to take care of it. His thoughts went round in convolutions as twisted as those in the design, never leading to any conclusion.

  Then there was that ambiguous farewell. What did the Comte mean by it? It might be no more than suggesting a meeting in the afterlife, if he believed in one. Gaston didn't. A tantalising notion - if there turned out to be one, would unbelievers be included? He supposed they would have to be. There was something deeply objectionable about the idea of being hauled willy-nilly into a future existence that he had always denied. Always? He really had no idea of his views on the subject before the incident that had erased past memories. Now there was a thought; could the significance of the ring be as a clue to his past? Had the Comte in fact recognised him from earlier acquaintance and tried to give him the key to some important fact? The money sewn into his coat, now he belatedly came to think about it, suggested that he had once been prosperous: was it possible that he might himself be one of the aristocracy? No, the coat was good, but practical, not ornate. It might belong to a tradesman, or just possibly a professional of some kind, never a nobleman.