They had turned out well, quite to the astonishment of Elizabeth herself. Now she curled her legs sideways and tucked her bare and filthy feet beneath the hem of her equally filthy dress, and thought how strange that almost on the eve of her death she'd discovered a talent. It had never occurred to her she might be good with her hands.
Suddenly it came again, that sharp realization of limited time, of the ordeal ahead of her and — worst of all — her lack of faith in her own ability to meet it. She'd heard screams for the last several months, men mostly, a few women, the soft dronings of a priest drowned out in that last moment of terror when one must face the fact you are seeing everything for the last time.
For the last time...
“Elizabeth?”
She looked up to see Madame Charvin looking down on her with what appeared to be grief as deep as her own.
Elizabeth managed a brief smile of reassurance, and thought how fortunate she at least had Madame Charvin. The warden had never shown her anything but courtesy and kindness, had from the beginning brought her small comforts that had made the solitary cell at least momentarily bearable.
“I hope you like them,” Elizabeth said now, looking up at the wax flowers, lilies mostly, because Madame Charvin had said they were her favorites. Elizabeth had hoped to break the mood of mourning on Madame's face. But instead of breaking it, she seemed only to have compounded it, and now, to her complete consternation, she saw Madame remove a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and dab at the corners of her eyes.
No! No tears. That was the one thing Elizabeth would not endure, would not permit. “Madame, I beg of you...”
Quickly Madame nodded, as though she understood, and almost in anger she shook her head. “I am sorry,” she apologized, her English very good for a Frenchwoman. “I won't stay,” Madame Charvin said. “I fear I'm intruding...”
“No, please. Just... no tears.”
Again the woman nodded and slipped the handkerchief back into the pocket of her dress. Suddenly, to Elizabeth's complete surprise, Madame Charvin declared, “I hate this job. I really do.”
Elizabeth smiled. What normal woman in her right mind wouldn't hate it? “Then why do you...?”
“I must.” The woman shrugged, and primly restored a strand of hair to the knot at the back of her neck. “My husband was the male warden until his death twelve years ago...” Quickly she crossed herself.
“Before General Montaud?” Elizabeth asked.
“...took Monsieur Charvin's place,” Madame sniffed. “Half a man — in every way,” she added.
“And you stayed on?”
“Where would I go? A widow with two children...”
Fascinated, though shocked, Elizabeth asked, “Your children grew up here?”
“Of course,” Madame Charvin replied, and she too seemed to be enjoying the chat. She came around the low table and sat on the edge of the bench, leaning forward, her arms resting on her lap.
From Elizabeth's position, seated on the straw, she thought she saw the remnants of what once had been a beautiful woman. It was hard to determine her age, but Elizabeth guessed late fifties.
“Where are they now? Your children,” Elizabeth asked.
“Dead,” came the flat reply. For a moment the single word seemed to echo endlessly about the small cell.
Stunned, Elizabeth looked more closely at Madame's face. Nothing for the children either? But if there was any degree of grief or mourning within the woman, it was so deeply buried as to be invisible.
“Wh-when? How?” Elizabeth asked.
“Auguste died when he was just a baby... five. There was nothing anyone could do.” Her voice was flat and without inflection, as though she were speaking of the weather or a new ruling. She didn't look at Elizabeth as she spoke, but rather laced her fingers together, then drew them apart, then laced them again.
“And Marie,” she went on, and abruptly stopped, as did her interlacing hands, the tension increasing, “was found dead in the courtyard on April 14, Thursday, at six-twenty in the morning, in the year 1868, by the morning guard as the shifts were changing.”
“How... did she die?” Elizabeth asked, without bothering to open her eyes and look up.
“Oh, she was murdered, of course.” Madame Charvin declared almost breezily, as though it was something Elizabeth should have known. “And she'd been raped — or so the doctor said.”
“I'm so... sorry...”
“Oh, it was a long time ago. It all belongs to another life. Sometimes one's progression through this world seems made up of separate lives, doesn't it?”
Elizabeth nodded, grateful for the woman's control. “Did they ever discover who...?”
Madame nodded quickly. “Prisoners, of course,” she said. “At least, that's what General Montaud claimed. The fact that all prisoners are locked up at night and Marie was discovered in the courtyard, a place where only staff and soldiers go, seemed not to make a great deal of difference.”
“Was there a trial?”
“No, there was a circus,” Madame Charvin muttered. “General Montaud used the case for his own advancement. Four miserable wretches were unjustly accused and shot, and the guilty went free... until...” All at once she looked down at Elizabeth, the blaze of a smile on her face. “...until you punished him,” she added.
“I...?”
“I have proof-eyewitnesses — that Marie was assaulted and murdered by Lieutenant Jean Dauguet.”
Elizabeth looked up. Lieutenant Dauguet, the same officer for whose murder she would shortly die.
“Are you... certain?” Elizabeth whispered.
Madame Charvin nodded broadly. “Eyewitnesses, as I said.”
“Why didn't they come forward during the trial?”
“Would you? It was not in their best interests to do so.” Shocked, Elizabeth said, “But your daughter. I should think that the true solution to such a - ”
“She was dead. What could we do that would bring her back? I knew who had done it, and at the time, that was enough. And further, somehow deep inside I knew he would be punished. I didn't know how or when, but...” Still smiling, she gestured down on Elizabeth, and briefly the smile faded. “I just wish...”
“No,” Elizabeth said quickly, and stood, holding on to the wall for support until she found her center of balance.
“Please,” Madame Charvin whispered, following after her. “Let me do something, anything, to ease these last few hours. I have access to opium. It will render you senseless. Let me...”
But Elizabeth merely shook her head and moved away to the far side of the cell and wished the woman would speak of something else.
“They are letting the press in, you know. It will be a carnival.”
“Please...”
Suddenly Madame Charvin grabbed her elbow, thus halting her flight around the narrow cell. “Elizabeth, you must listen to me. I have tried every avenue that is available to me, and a few that are not, to alter the sentence, to have it reduced, to postpone it, in an attempt to give your English friends a chance to intercede.”
“I didn't ask - ”
“I know you didn't ask. But I did it anyway, to the point I made a pest of myself at the Ministry of Justice and...”
Elizabeth dared to look back, briefly hopeful.
“It will go on as scheduled, and because you are a foreign woman, the press will be allowed to...”
It made no difference — it really didn't — and Elizabeth turned slowly away and moved toward the dark corner of the cell.
Edward...
That was the only name that made the moment bearable.
Edward.
“Please, Elizabeth, let me do something.” It was Madame Charvin again, burdened with her weight of gratitude and not quite knowing what to do with it.
How ironic! As Elizabeth had plunged the shears into Lieutenant Dauguet, she had simultaneously ended his life and hers and had given Madame Charvin's new meaning.
“What
can I do?” Madame again. All right, ease her burden.
Elizabeth smiled at the persistence of female vanity. “A bath,” she said without hesitation. “A long, luxurious hot one, with fragrance, please.”
Madame Charvin nodded. “Of course. In my own apartments. You shall have it - ”
“Wait! I'm not finished,” Elizabeth interrupted playfully.
“Good! Ask away!”
“A dress. A new one. Blue. Very elegant,” Elizabeth added, coming all the way out into the light of the candle. A blue dress? Where had that request come from? She'd been wearing a blue dress on the night in Bermondsey when Jack Wilmott had brought Edward's body home. “Yes, a blue dress,” she repeated softly, “if it isn't too much - ”
“You shall have it,” Madame Charvin declared. “The prettiest in Paris. I shall go now and return for you tomorrow eve.” Abruptly she broke off, a look of pleasant conspiracy on her face. “Oh, what fun we will have. I promise...” Now she walked to the door of the cell and signaled to the guards to let her out.
As the key grated in the lock, Elizabeth concentrated on the narrow opening that led to freedom for some but would lead to death for her.
What was death?
Was one's concept of oneself constant, or was that too of this world and abandoned along with hopes and fears and dreams and loves?
If so, then there was just cause for premature mourning, for, in the case of known death, one mourned for oneself, that self that had accompanied, stood by, pleased, disappointed, amused, gratified one all life long. Would that self die?
As the cell door closed and locked behind her, Elizabeth thought she would not look. But she did, and she was glad, for she saw the once-beautiful Madame Charvin, who had lost a husband and two children in this circle of hell, and she decided she probably couldn’t find anyone more appropriate to spend her last night with than Madame Charvin.
Now Madame gave her a warm wave, and by way of response, Elizabeth smiled and watched the woman march off down the corridor, and counted, with increasing intensity, the number of times Madame Charvin’s sharp heels struck the stone corridor floor. She continued to listen until she could hear them no more.
When all was silent again and the two guards had gone back to their pipes and cards out of sight beyond the corridor, there was no sound in the cell, in the corridor, in the prison, in the world, save the accelerated beating of her heart. Elizabeth fell to her knees in the straw and thought of one name, one man.
Edward.
Would she see him? If only she could be certain, then not only would she not fear the moment of her death, she would welcome it.
Monsieur DuCamp’s Lodging House, Paris November 14, 1874
Never skillful at waiting, the last few days had served as a new kind of hell for John.
There were certain rituals to be observed morning, noon, and night, and these had kept him on the tentative balance he now maintained as he sat in Monsieur DuCamp’s cramped and smelly reception room before a small and smoking fire, forced to listen to French chatter, glaring at what had to be the ugliest wallpaper in the civilized world — an arrangement of bile-green fern interspersed with broad-leafed orange flowers.
“Cafe, monsieur?”
Stirred out of his loathing for the surrounding world, John glanced up at the little waitress, one of Monsieur DuCamp’s numerous offspring. “Yes,” he replied, full-voiced. “But that is not cafe in your pot there. That is caramel-flavored acid. So to that I will say, ‘No, thank you.’”
At the sound of his voice, the conversations going on about him died. Good. Silence was better, though he saw the old watchdog Bates start forward, a familiar red blush on each cheek, as he was again called upon to smooth feathers John had ruffled. John watched for as long as he could bear to watch as the old man explained something to the young girl, who fortunately did not understand a word of English.
While this obnoxious exchange was going on, John checked his watch — going on four P.M. — and dared to think the unthinkable: What if Charley Spade did not...?
“Shall I fetch you a brandy, sir, in lieu of coffee?” It was Bates again.
Though John would have welcomed the comforting numbness of a half-dozen brandies, he felt on this night he must be alert. Everything was packed and loaded on the carriage. They had signed out of their rooms — hence the necessity for waiting here in this disgusting public room filled with belching women and farting men.
But as soon as Charley arrived with Gladstone’s letter of clemency, it was their intention to deliver it promptly to General Mon-taud, fetch Elizabeth, and leave immediately for the coast, where John had planned to hire a packet; and with luck, dawn would find them in English waters.
Execution... by firing squad.
He leaned forward sharply in his chair, as though someone had delivered an invisible blow to the back of his neck. Peculiar, how those four words seemed to be permanently lodged in his head, and no matter what he did, they continuously presented themselves for his scrutiny.
Damn! Where was Charley Spade? He promised...
Suddenly John stood up, a movement so startling that all eyes in the room turned to him. For a moment he didn’t know what to do. Confined by the rain and by General Montaud’s last angry edict, he had no choice but to wait here, though it was killing him to do so.
“Sir, may I suggest...?”
Bates’s voice, filled with advice, only seemed to enrage him further, and without a backward look he strode angrily to the door and hurled it open, as though it offended him, took the vestibule and the corridor with equal outrage, and proceeded on beneath the arched front door, out onto the rain-wet pavement, where halos cast from the gas lamps caught and reflected every light source in the puddles that had collected between the cobbles.
He lifted his face to the night sky and breathed deeply of the cold, wet, smoke-scented air. It was still raining, though it was just a drizzle now. The wind had died and the Rue Saint Jacob was alive with people scurrying about after the confinement of a downpour.
In an attempt to check his anger, he turned up the collar of his coat, positioned his walking stick, and started slowly down the stairs, not really wanting to join the rabble on the street but preferring it to the plain, bovine, middle-class faces which now occupied Monsieur DuCamp's reception rooms. He wouldn't go far. Just a stretch for his legs. Perhaps when he returned, Charley Spade would be waiting for him.
As he fell into the pedestrian traffic, he discovered first that everyone else was moving too slowly — plodding, shuffling creatures going no place, with no sense of direction or purpose.
But at the end of the street where the intersection angled off toward the Seine in one direction and Saint Germain in the other, he suddenly discovered the foot traffic was moving so fast he couldn't keep up.
He tried to move off the pavement and onto the side of the road, but fast-moving carriages prevented that. Now, as the foot traffic increased even more, he found a relatively safe harbor in a large courtyard which fronted a church — Gothic in style, with gas lamps flanking the large doors and casting upward shadows on the square bell tower.
Strange he'd never noticed the church before. They must have passed it several times going to La Rochelle. He must have been occupied with thoughts of Elizabeth...
Elizabeth...
He'd tried every hour of every day to cleanse his mind of that last image of her, seated on straw, her ankles manacled.
The thought still was unbearable. Hungry for diversion, he saw a large gathering near the church doors, a curious circle of some sort with something at the center holding the audience's attention, a single plaintive instrument filling the night air with a simple melody.
Upon closer examination, he saw the ghostly white faces of a troupe of mimes, their eyebrows arched, garbed wholly in black except for their white faces. About six in all, he observed.
The audience seemed hushed now, their attention focused rigidly on the drama taking place in the
arena before the church doors.
Suddenly the single piping instrument grew even more plaintive, and he saw now that the church itself was apparently part of the mime, for a priest stood in the high arched doors. Not a real priest, he felt certain, for the figure was part Satan — my God, how clever! — the priest mime wearing two disguises. On one side were the black robes and cassock of a priest holding the church standard in his hand, a two-faced mask drawn tightly down over his head with fixed and staring eyes, while on the other side, as the actor rapidly turned, John saw the Satan figure, one half of the black robe bright glistening red satin, a predominant horn, the standard pitchfork, the same benign and passive face of the priest. All the mime had to do was turn in one direction to be a priest, then in the other to become Satan.
A few moments later the figure lifted his arms, beckoning, and the mimes ran through the doors of the church, the audience following, proceeding up the broad steps in an orderly, hushed fashion.
Before John realized what had happened, he found himself alone on the wet pavement where only moments before the crowds had jostled him and each other in comforting closeness. Suddenly self-conscious, he looked about. For just a moment he suffered an impulse to follow, to see what drama would transpire under the skillful hands of the painted actors.
Then he heard a human wail coming from the church. He stood still for a moment, listening, and it came again, still louder this time, more frightening, like a cry from Hades.
As John felt the hair on his arms rise, he backed away from the closed doors of the church. He wanted nothing to do with what was going on inside.
This world was hell enough without adding God's heaven to it.
Paris November 14, 1874
Charley Spade knew they were late, regretted it, and at the same time wished that something, anything, would happen to delay them further.
But with the exception of the rain squall which had slowed them down crossing the channel, the journey had been speedy and uneventful, the West Indian more than keeping up the pace. Now as with difficulty they tried to maneuver their way through Paris traffic, Charley looked anxiously around in an attempt to get his bearings.
Eden Rising (The Eden Saga Book 5) Page 31
