by David Mellon
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For Judith
In a circle of oak not far from the river Aisne, in northern France, Coal sat and slept, leaning against a tree for twenty-two years. As the snowflakes changed to cowslips and crocuses, and falling leaves turned to snow once again, he must have dreamed. But when the boy woke him, scraping at the gold watch buried in the palm of his hand, the only dream Coal could remember was about the bottle of cognac. He could still hear it shatter as it fell to the marble floor of the restaurant.
Chapter 1
Restaurant Perséphone Reine
July 24, 1914
Coal gazed across the room at the table full of German officers and thought about starting a war.
Any damned fool could start one. The trick was doing it with subtlety and a little imagination. A war that would be talked about for ages. How passionately it had begun. How tragically it ended.
But of course, one had to make sure it didn’t go on too long.
Pulling a worn leather satchel from beneath his chair, Coal opened the flap and removed a bottle from a nest of cotton rags. Pushing dishes aside, he placed it on the table.
No common bottle of brandy, this was a Cognac Grande Champagne, Château de Compiègne, from Napoleon’s own cellars. The emperor’s eagle, engraved on the label, black as a crow. Sealed ninety-six years ago, the bottle had been sitting on a bookshelf in Coal’s house, waiting for this day.
The most extraordinary thing, though, was that in addition to the spirits, the bottle contained one hundred and thirty grams of cyanide. He’d added the poison himself, the day it was sealed.
Brushing at the dust on the bottle’s shoulder, Coal looked around the room for his waitress.
• • •
Adi Dahl was hiding beside the hot water urn, tugging at the tight collar of her uniform, cursing Mozart.
“I think it’s Mozart,” said Adi. “Whatever it is, I hate it.”
It was Schubert. The string quartet had been playing him most of the morning on the balcony above the table where the German officers were making so much noise.
“They probably like this music, whatever it is.”
It wasn’t the officers she was referring to, however, but her brothers. The more aggravating her day got, the more she wanted to blame it on the twins.
“The Little Princes,” she muttered. “If not for them, I’d be—well, I’m not sure where I’d be, but it wouldn’t be in this awful little restaurant, in this awful little country.”
Stretching her neck, she yawned and looked up at the clouds painted across the ceiling. Some god or other, in a chariot, was carrying away a nearly naked woman as fat little cherubim showered them in rose petals. A Greek myth? Roman, maybe. She was never sure which was which, though the scene would easily fit any number of Hindu stories she’d heard growing up. The gods were always stealing someone away.
“I wish someone would steal me away. Somewhere, anywhere, other than this—”
“Ting, ting, ting.”
“What now?” she said, peeking out of her hiding place. “The drunk young men? Or the—”
Of course. It was the man at table seven. He was tapping a fork against the side of his teacup. “Oh, well,” said Adi. “It’s not the worst birthday I’ve ever had. But it is getting higher on the list.” She sighed and began making up a fresh pot.
• • •
As soon as the doors had opened that morning, she’d seen him come in. Thirties, early forties, maybe, tall, with a leather satchel tucked under the arm of his overcoat, he marched in and took the table in the corner. Not bothering to remove his coat, he slumped back in his chair and surveyed the room from under the cover of his neglected black curls.
When she presented herself, he started in on how he would like his eggs poached in wine.
“Pardon, monsieur,” she said. “I only serve the tea and coffee.”
“I don’t like my waiter,” said the man.
This was odd, as his waiter hadn’t yet come over to the table.
The maitre d’, in his scarlet vest, scooted by. Adi held up a finger to the man at the table.
Chasing down the maitre d’, Adi explained her predicament.
“We’re a man short,” he said peering down his great nose at her. “Take his order.” Just as he turned, Adi yawned, again.
“A little sleepy?” asked the maitre d’.
She was about to say she’d been up late reading, when she saw the look in his eye.
“Yawn again in front of the customers,” he whispered, “and you’ll have all the time to sleep you’d like.” Dishes fell in the kitchen, rescuing her.
She returned to the table, muttering, “Oh, what I wouldn’t give ‘to sleep. Perhaps to dream.’ ”
The man at table seven looked up at her.
“Perchance,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“The quote from Hamlet. ‘To sleep, perchance to dream.’ ”
“Ah. Of course, monsieur.”
He looked at her for a long moment and then continued. “Eggs poached in wine, a Riesling from Alsace should do.”
Adi had been hired to serve tea; the menu was unfamiliar to her. To make matters worse, the man had bewildering instructions for every dish he ordered: the oysters should be salted and braised, the rabbit served with the head, etcetera. She scribbled it all down as best she could and ran off to the kitchen to deal with the chefs. They didn’t like being told how to cook, least of all by a tea girl.
She had other tables to attend to. Most of them were little trouble. “Could you bring coffee after the cheese plate?” “Might the child have a candle on top of her cake?”
The table of women with great big birds on their hats was gabbling on about the trains colliding in Strasbourg the day before.
“Those poor children! Can you imagine!”
Happy to change the subject, however, the women were delighted to have a girl from a foreign land waiting on them. They were relentless with the questions.
“India, ma’am,” said Adi, as she poured tea. “Two weeks ago, ma’am. Yes, my father also has hazel eyes. Yes, and the dark auburn hair. Thank you, ma’am, very kind of you. Delighted to be here. Such a beautiful country, ma’am.”
She finally escaped. “People talk too much!”
Then there were the two young men sitting next to the window.
They might have been seventeen or eighteen. Hard to say as they were laughing like children. Bottles of yellow liqueur were scattered across the table, unaccompanied by any sign of food. One of the young men waved her over.
“Monsieur?” she said. They fell about laughing again.
The one with the spectacles—a liqueur stain ruining the front of his beautiful white shirt—held up his hand trying to regain his composure.
The second young man, not as handsome as the first but nearly as intoxicated, composed himself enough to ask, “What my friend, George”—he gestured to the young man in the glasses—“is wondering, mademoiselle, is if you might wish—to sail down the Amazon River with him?” This sent them into fits of laughter again.
“Augustin. Stop!” said George, lifting his glasses and wiping his eyes.
Adi’s cheeks flushed. “If there’s nothing else,” she said, turning on her heel.
They called her back, but
she pretended not to hear.
“Is this what the men are like here?” she said.
She passed a couple of the other tea girls, but they were no help. They whispered to each other, giggling. Not a surprise; Adi had hardly gotten a word from them in the four days since she’d arrived.
• • •
The German officers, an even twenty with their adjuncts and aides, had come in an hour or so after Coal, but they were more than keeping up. Their table groaned from the plates heaped with pig’s knuckle, rabbit, blood sausages, steins of beer, and countless bottles of wine. A surprise, considering how many dishes and bottles the general at the head of the table had sent back. “Won’t do!” he shouted, pulling at his extravagant mustache and stamping his perfectly shined boots on the marble floor.
It was past noon now; the restaurant was bustling with chatter and the clink of silver on china. The Schubert had turned to Rossini.
Adi stood next to Coal’s table holding the last of the desserts he’d ordered: a chocolate soufflé, searing her fingertips.
He refused to have anyone take away his dishes, so there wasn’t an open space on the table bigger than a pack of cigarettes. She noticed a dusty unopened bottle standing in among the mess. Where had that come from, she wondered?
Coal dragged his eyes away from the Germans, looked over at the girl and then at his wreck of a table. Putting his cigarette between his lips, he started pushing dishes aside.
“I could take those for you, monsieur,” Adi offered, for the umpteenth time. He shook his head and watched the girl put the soufflé down next to the bottle of cognac.
“Not too close to the bottle, mademoiselle.”
Coal knew the girl’s name. Adi Dahl. Fifteen years old. Indian mother and British father, which explained her complexion, as lovely as the rest of her but conspicuous in this part of the world, where any skin color was acceptable as long as it fell between ivory and alabaster. He knew that she and her brothers had shown up in Italy fourteen days earlier to find their grandmother dead of a stroke. The girl was terrified of spiders and afraid of heights, and she often cried when no one was around. He knew this and much more. None of it mattered to him. He had chosen her for two reasons. She was quite pleasing to look upon. And she was foreign. Other than the brothers, whom she didn’t seem to like much, she knew no one here. And no one knew her.
He leaned forward and picked up the bottle, tall and fine and black as death.
“Mademoiselle,” he said. “Would you be so kind?”
“Monsieur?”
“You see the gentleman at the head of the officers’ table? The one with the large mustache.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“He’s an old colleague of mine. I want to surprise him.” Coal held the bottle out. “You have a corkscrew?”
“I should fetch a waiter, monsieur, I’m not—”
“No,” said Coal. He pushed the bottle into the girl’s hands, then leaned over to dig around in the satchel beneath his chair, emerging with a bottle opener. “He’ll enjoy this much more from a beautiful young woman like yourself.”
He dropped the corkscrew into her apron pocket.
“But—monsieur, who might I say it’s from?”
“Tell him it’s compliments of the restaurant. And, here—” Coal reached into a vest pocket and pulled out two enormous gold coins. “For your trouble.”
The coins, thick and old, weren’t like any others she’d seen in Europe. She spotted 1786 on the front as he slipped them into her pocket.
• • •
Holding the bottle tight in her arms, Adi crossed the room to the officers’ table. The two drunken young men were watching her, the bird-hat ladies as well.
Near the kitchen doors, Adi spotted the maitre d’ whispering to the waiter from the general’s table. Wide-eyed, the man clutched a bottle of wine to his chest, waving the cork helplessly.
Oh, God, she thought, closing in on the officers. They’ve rejected another bottle.
Standing next to the general at the head of the table, a little colonel, with mean little eyes, was telling a story, something about the Devil’s grandmother, talking in a shrill voice and making all sorts of dreadful faces. A few chuckles from the men, but the tale did not seem to be going over well. Limping to the end, the man spotted Adi.
“Did no one teach you not to spoil the end of a story, girl? In whatever little brown-skinned country you washed up from?”
The general glanced over at the girl. Seeing Adi, he turned and studied her more closely. With a bow of his head, he said, “You should have interrupted sooner, fräulein. My five-year-old tells a better joke than this man.”
The colonel grumbled in response.
“Sit down, Blumbach,” said the general. The men at the table laughed.
The colonel glared at Adi, but did as he was told.
Looking at the bottle in the girl’s hands, the general asked, “Have you brought us some more sad wine, fräulein?”
“Not wine, monsieur.” Adi held the bottle out. “Cognac, I believe.”
He leaned forward and studied the label, an eyebrow rising; his finger brushed across the seal on the top of the bottle.
“N for Napoleon,” he said. “And the seal appears to be tight. Where did this come from?”
Adi hesitated, then managed, “From the management, monsieur. Compliments of the house.”
“Just as I was beginning to think they didn’t care for German officers here. Unless,” he said, scraping his thumbnail along the edge of the seal, “you’re planning on poisoning us all?” He looked up at the girl again.
The men laughed.
Across the room, the maitre d’ caught Adi’s eye. He was holding his hands wide in bewilderment. The general looked over as well and gestured to the man. The maitre d’ rushed to the table, his hands fixed in prayer.
“Thank you for the cognac, mein herr,” said the general. “Are we to drink it from our teacups?”
Staring at the bottle, the maitre d’ needed a second to recover from his confusion. He turned to the waiter at his heel. “Why have you not brought the brandy glasses?” Tears in the man’s eyes, he took a look at the bottle and ran for the kitchen.
“I’ll have the sommelier come and open this for you, monsieur,” said the maitre d’.
“No,” said the general, nodding at the girl. “I want her to do it.”
“But—but of course, monsieur.” He leaned and whispered to Adi, “You’ll tell me later where you got this bottle. Can you open it?”
“I believe so, monsieur.”
The maitre d’ ground his teeth, but smiling to the general, he withdrew.
Adi had little affection for her father these days, but just then she thanked heaven that he had insisted she know how to open a bottle properly. Slicing through the seal, she peeled it aside and slid the corkscrew in. Popping the cork, she bowed and handed it to the general.
“A hundred years old,” he said. “In one piece! Bravo, fräulein.” The officers hooted and clapped. All but the colonel, who sat there sucking at his teeth.
The general picked up his water glass, splashed its contents into his plate and held it out to the girl. “Let’s see what the emperor has left us.”
• • •
“A shame about the general,” muttered Coal, watching the girl pour. “He’s played his part so well.”
Coal broke off a piece of his soufflé and popped it in his mouth. He was tempted to stay and watch.
“But there’s no sense being here when the police arrive.”
He imagined the authorities, for a moment at least, would reckon that the Germans had stumbled upon a bad bottle of cognac. Before long, though, someone was bound to notice the foreign young lady who had opened the bottle. She’d tell a story about the man at the table in the corner. But that would be forgotten quickly enough when they found the vial of poison and the letter tucked away in her cabinet in the back of the servers’ area.
H
e took a quick look at his pocket watch. Satisfied, he clicked it shut, dropped it into his vest pocket, and rose from the table.
• • •
Maybe things are not so bad, thought Adi.
The officers were happy. The maitre d’ was doing a little dance over by the kitchen. Two gold coins lay heavy in her pocket. That could get new shoes for Xavier and fill the pantry with more than turnips and potatoes. She held the bottle tightly in her arms and thought about how Xander had pecked her on the cheek as he ran up the steps to school that morning.
The general swirled the amber liquid around in his glass, rhapsodizing upon the color. Inhaling the aroma once more, he raised it to his lips, just as the waiter charged over to the table, twenty crystal brandy glasses chiming on his tray.
But the general was unwilling to wait. Waving the man away, he raised his glass again, its golden poison a whisper away from his tongue.
From under the long tablecloth, the little colonel kicked hard against Adi’s heel.
Protecting the bottle like a baby, she lost her balance and fell into the general’s shoulder. His glass shattered against his teeth. A drop or two on his tongue, but the lion’s share of the liquor and cyanide poured down on his medals and his perfect uniform.
Trying to recover her balance, Adi’s elbow caught the edge of the waiter’s tray. Twenty glasses tumbled, cracking like fireworks upon the table. With a wretched moan from the cello, the quartet stopped playing. The entire restaurant turned to look.
Across the room, Coal watched the girl’s heel land on the broken stem of a glass. Her hands opened like wings as she fell, but it was only the bottle that flew away.
Even the cooks in the kitchen heard it shatter into a thousand pieces as it struck the marble floor.
Chapter 2
Adi stood in a puddle of cognac while the broken glass was swept up around her feet. The maitre d’ reprimanded her, promising appropriate punishment. The little colonel banged on the table and shouted that a mere reprimand would not satisfy them. The general slumped in his chair saying nothing.
