From a pocket in his breeches he produced a shabby silk purse no larger than the palm of his hand. He loosened the string that secured it and took from it a folded square of paper. It was a map of a part of Paris. This map had been given to him by a blacksmith named Bertrand who’d died three years ago. The prisoner held it in his closed fist. He had pored over the map’s trembling lines and instructions so often that he no longer needed to look for it to calm him. The former townhouse in Rue Saint-Antoine. Through the courtyard, down the stone stairs, find the rock with its eight-pointed star. But beware. A true witch must banish Baicher, the Guardian of Lost Treasure, with a crow that is stolen, never bought.
As had become his custom, the prisoner held the little square of paper between middle and index finger, pressed it against his lips and murmured those words he knew to be magical: ‘Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas’. This invocation – which might also be uttered in reverse – had been taught to him by a Jew in Toledo many years earlier. This was ancient wisdom, old magic, handed down through the centuries and transcribed and deciphered by the scholar Trithemius from manuscripts written by Simon Magus himself. Yes. Not a great deal of such magic remained, the Jew had assured him. It was now as rare as myrrh. And now the prisoner waited, eyes closed, lashes vibrating. His heart beat more rapidly. A prayer. Yes, yes, it was a coded prayer, he supposed – to whom exactly he didn’t know. Whoever might be listening to a man as wretched as he. God, the King, the Devil himself, for all he cared.
There. The frail dandelion of his imagination floated up through the rusty grille set high in the stone wall and right over this filthy harbour – across green fields and magnificent chateaux, to cities suffused with soft northern light. He glimpsed church steeples, boys on horseback, a cartload of red apples, gaggles of young women with their clothing falling away just so. The world beyond. So close! So maddeningly close! There, beyond these thick walls. And, ah, breathing deeply now, the far more agreeable smells of fresh bread and loamy soil.
A man nearby coughed and spat. This was followed by a loud, wet fart. The spell, such as it was, was broken.
The prisoner returned the treasure map to his purse, retied it and cupped the purse for a moment in his hand, thinking, dreaming, wishing. Then he put the purse back in his pocket. Under his breath he sang a childhood song that also never failed to comfort him. ‘Mes amis, que reste-t-il? À ce Dauphin si gentil? Orléans, Beaugency, Notre-Dame de Cléry . . .’
Around him in the gloom other men slowly stirred and sipped water from their cups. Most of the convicts were unfamiliar to him, having arrived on the chain from Paris a few days earlier. There arose a general murmuring, yawns, more coughing, the clank of chains and, now and then, the steady burr of old and tired cocks pissing into wooden buckets already brimming with human waste. And weeping. There was always someone weeping – sometimes the same man, at other times a different fellow – so much sorrow that they distributed the weight of it among themselves, passing it from slave to slave until it came around again.
From the other side of the dungeon there came the sound of a key opening a lock. The heavy door swung open and the turnkey Laurent stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the flickering yellow lamplight from the damp passageway. Jangling his iron ring of keys as usual, thoroughly enjoying his brief moment of authority. One of his guards stood behind him.
The turnkey scratched his bearded throat and stepped among the waking men like a farmer among a crop of giant mushrooms. A grumble, quickly swallowed, as he kicked some poor fellow in the head. Rats skittered out of his way. Shuffle and exclamation, someone crying out with a complaint, a request to see the surgeon.
Laurent approached the prisoner, peered at him. ‘Double one five double four?’
The prisoner showed him the small tin plate that was stamped with his number and sewn to the front of his red jacket. ‘Yes.’
The turnkey sorted through his massive ring of keys and crouched to unlock the prisoner’s chain from its bolt. He stood back. ‘Governor wishes to see you. Bring your bag.’
‘Why? What have I done?’
‘How would I know?’ Laurent laughed heartily and glanced around, seeking allies to share in and bolster his mirth. ‘You’re the fortune teller, aren’t you? Aren’t you? You should know, not me. Ha ha. Isn’t that right? Isn’t it? Look into your magic cards, my friend. Look to the fucking moon.’
The prisoner clasped his knees and forced a smile. Oh yes, how they loved to tease him. Laurent mocked his tarot cards – as did many of the other guards and prisoners – but visited him occasionally, in secret, to enquire about his future. Will I marry? Will my wife survive her illness? Will I have a son? The prisoner bore the jeering in good humour because his cards – and his skill in interpreting them – had secured his survival. After all, one needed brutality or wisdom to survive the galleys.
And so he held his tongue. His shoulders ached, his heart shivered in his chest. He gazed around at his fellow prisoners. A few desultory stares in his direction, grinning mouths. They would laugh at anything the turnkey said in order to ingratiate themselves and possibly be spared a beating in the future. Yes. Hilarious. Shaven heads and pairs of eyes glinting and unglinting like old coins pressed into the sockets of the dead. Most of them barely cared. After all, what was he to them? Another mouth to feed, another slave chained to his bench, one more worthless rogue destined to die in the dungeon or at his oar. Such scum. Oh, but how little they knew. How little.
Laurent jabbed him in the ribs with the wooden club he always carried. ‘Anyway,’ he growled, ‘that’s enough fun for now. Come along, convict. I don’t have all fucking day. Gather your things.’
The prisoner picked up his battered satchel and followed the turnkey from the dungeon.
The Governor’s office was in the east tower. Progress was slow. The prisoner’s ankles were shackled together with a short length of chain. The dreary warren of passageways was so dank and dripping with moisture that it seemed he was not being taken to see the Governor at all but, rather, King Neptune in his network of caverns beneath the sea. They shuffled past similarly chained prisoners who were on their way to work at the arsenal or for tradesmen in the port, and they were admitted through numerous rusty iron gates that slammed shut and were locked behind them.
Perhaps he was to be given a position in the port, off the actual galleys? Yes. He’d heard of it happening. His old friend – what was his name, Jean? – who had rowed on the same bench as he some years ago, he was given, for no apparent reason, an administrative post in the treasury or some such. Good with numbers, they said. So, it was not out of the question. No. After all, he could read and write, speak several languages, perform sums. He had skills. Chances came along in this life, didn’t they? It was merely a matter of determining their design. And of being in the right place. And, of course, recognising them when they appeared. Yes, that was a huge part of it. The pattern of things could be deciphered if one had the necessary skills. There was design, he knew, but this might be nudged in certain directions, might even be yoked to one’s own desires if one knew how.
When at last they arrived at his humid office, the Governor was seated behind his desk shuffling through a sheaf of papers. Round-shouldered, with his sallow, unshaven face close to the papers and records. The guard announced the prisoner, but the Governor merely went on reading. He didn’t even look up. Most boorish, really. The prisoner removed his red cap and cast his eyes about the room. A window looked out over the harbour. High, thin clouds, a strip of cornflower-blue sky. One, two, three seagulls wheeled about before vanishing, as if hauled from sight on a length of string. On one wall hung a plan of the prison, on another a map of the port. He inspected this port map, attempting to orient himself. Streets, churches, a chunk of the Mediterranean – that body of tepid water he had come to loathe.
A well-fed orange cat luxuriated in a slab of pale morning light that fell upon the stone
floor. Momentarily startled at the noise of their entrance, the cat had glanced up at the prisoner and the guard before relaxing again, half closing its green eyes and licking a grubby paw. The cat, he knew, was named Athénaïs. The shadow queen, the one who really ruled the prison. A local joke. If only they knew – as he did – what Madame de Montespan was really capable of. The prisoner shuddered at memories of what she’d been involved in – at what he had been required to do. The infant, the chalice, the knife, the blood.
The cat, perhaps sensible to these morbid thoughts, stopped bathing and eyed the prisoner as if committing his face to memory for future reference, or trying to place where they might have met before. Either way, it was most unnerving. The prisoner glanced away.
Then the Governor, who was rumoured to be a decent enough fellow, screwed up his face and nodded to himself with – what? Satisfaction? Surprise? Bafflement? He looked up and inspected the tin plate affixed to the prisoner’s jacket. ‘Ah. Double one five double four.’
‘Yes, monsieur.’
The Governor glanced again through the papers in front of him. ‘Let me see. You have been here since . . . September ’68? Five years. Quite a long time. A survivor, eh? Monsieur Adam du Coeuret . . .’
The prisoner flinched at hearing his name spoken so plainly. Adam du Coeuret. Yes, that was his name but it had been so long since he had been addressed in such a manner that he had almost ceased to think of himself as a man. After all, was it not the purpose of the galleys to transform men into compliant beasts, to take a man’s name from him and expose him? The guards called him by his number – by other, worse names – or referred to him sarcastically as the Magician. They flogged the convicts, denied them food, forced them to perform all manner of unnatural acts. Oh, the things he’d seen. Most of the time the prisoner – this Adam du Coeuret – managed to act as if these terrible things were happening to other men but, suddenly, he could deceive himself no longer. And now what? Were they preparing to execute him? Was he guilty of some new crime? It was all too much. He began to weep softly.
‘I see that you are from Caen in Normandy,’ the Governor went on blithely. ‘I went to Caen once. Very nice. I had a cousin there. But you were sentenced for . . . for impieties and sacrileges, it says here. Uttering incantations. Spells. Found in possession of a black book. Frogs. Worked with an Abbé Mariette. François Mariette.’ A sort of harrumph – of disdain, of disbelief, who knew. ‘And what happened to this Mariette fellow? He was not here with you, was he?’
The prisoner composed himself. ‘Oh. No. I believe he was, ah, he was banished, monsieur. But it was nothing, really. Harmless tricks, nothing more than that. Really. Nothing. As if I would – as if I even could – do anything of the sort of which I was accused. Well. I don’t know. Mysterious, quite unfathomable. François Mariette is a most devout man. Or he was. As am I. It’s true I was involved in the production of certain creams that might whiten a lady’s complexion, but that’s all. Frogs are well known for this, of course. I am a wool merchant, sir, that is my profession. Of a quite favourable repute, might I add . . .’
The Governor waved a hand for him to shut up, then scrutinised him anew, as if unable to reconcile the criminal charges with the ruined man standing before him. Probably he wondered at the twitch in the prisoner’s cheek, although certainly he had seen much worse in his years here. The confinement. The confinement and the months of rowing. The uncertainty, the rats (oh, the rats!), the mosquitoes, the whippings, the damp, the salt, the blisters, the endless diet of beans, the perpetual fear of the bastinado, of drowning. It all did terrible things to a man. All those nightmares wriggling away like maggots in his brain. Ugh. He, the prisoner, had himself seen men reduced to no more than rubble and rags. Men trembling, unable to speak in actual words or, worse, speaking in languages intelligible only to themselves. In madness and despair they scooped out their own eyes with spoons, hacked off their fingers, killed themselves in all manner of ways. Why, more than once he had seen a fellow bequeath to another all he owned in return for a knife pounded into his heart with a mallet. Promises. Promises and threats, all of it made immeasurably worse because he understood it so intimately. Life reduced to its bones, wherein you could see how it all truly worked, like a man rotting away in a gibbet. And, yes, it was certainly an ugly business.
The Governor glanced down once more at his papers. ‘But on June the twelfth you were injured at Genoa. In the assault.’
‘Yes, monsieur. Yes, yes. Some shot in my head. Quite close, they were, the bastards. Came right up alongside.’ The prisoner angled his head to display his injury.
Again the Governor waved his hand, not eager to see such a wound. Doubtless he had seen plenty of the sort.
‘Well,’ he continued, ‘it would seem that you acquitted yourself quite admirably on that day. The Secretary of State of the Navy has sent word through Monsieur Arnoul that fifteen men who served on that vessel are to be freed. And, as it happens, Monsieur du Coeuret, you are to be one of those men.’
The prisoner remained still. Stunned. Everything slowed down. The gulls outside fell silent. The cat halted its ablutions to watch him. Blinked. Blinked again. Somewhere outside a woman cried out, in what at first sounded like anger, then amusement, ‘Oh, you sly old devil!’
This moment. This was the precise moment he had dreamed about for so many years. Although, to be sure, it had never been exactly like this. Usually an escape, flight across the water or, better still, belated recognition of their egregious mistake in jailing him in the first place. There would be grovelling excuses; perhaps a royal pardon; invitations to the court; the attentions of young ladies who vied with each other to minister to his wounds, to his poor heart, to other – equally tender, equally mistreated, equally neglected – organs.
‘Sorry,’ the Governor said, ‘did you say something?’
The prisoner shook his head. ‘Pardon? No, monsieur. I don’t think so.’
A confused lull.
‘Congratulations,’ the Governor added, although it seemed clear from his tone of voice that he felt no such praise was necessary. Then, when there was still no response: ‘Did you understand what I said?’
Another pause. Did he understand? ‘Yes, monsieur,’ he said at last in a whisper. ‘I understand. Thank you. Thank you.’
The Governor smiled. ‘You did not foresee this in your cards, then?’
The prisoner hesitated, said nothing.
‘It must be quite a shock.’
‘Indeed.’
‘But a pleasant one.’
‘Oh, yes, yes. Of course, monsieur. Thank you.’
‘Not many get out of the galleys. We’ve had some here for ten years, twelve – longer. Old lags, no good to anyone, really. But Monsieur Colbert is quite determined to build up the fleet and, as we have already seen in this part of the world, defiance does not pay. Still. The punishment for impieties is usually death by burning. You are lucky twice over, monsieur. I assume you have been praying?’
‘Every day.’
‘And it seems your prayers have been answered.’
‘I know it, monsieur.’
‘A bonfire, eh? They might easily have turned you into ashes. Spread you all over the garden beds of Paris.’ And here the Governor gestured, as if casting his powdered remains to the wind.
‘Yes.’
Silence. The Governor appeared puzzled, and glanced again at the papers on his desk before returning his attention to the prisoner with his chin perched on his fist. His face shone with sweat. ‘Do you have somewhere to go?’
The prisoner considered. Swallowed. He felt dreamy, as if his head were filling with wine. Again tears pricked his eyes. ‘I do have a wife, monsieur. Claudette. If she is still alive, that is. If she’ll have me. She still lives in Normandy, I assume. It has been a long time since I had word from her. We are a long way from Normandy.’
�
�Yes. Well, a wife is a good start. Some children, I presume?’
Adam du Coeuret was taken aback. He had indeed fathered two sons who survived, but he’d heard no word of them for many years. Doubtless the long-suffering Claudette had remarried, for no reasonable person expected a man to survive the galleys, let alone ever be released. His sons André and Étienne would be in their twenties, if they were still living. He recalled the two of them as children, standing in a green field when he returned from some journey or other, watching his approach as if uncertain of who he was.
‘Yes, I have two sons,’ he said, when he realised the Governor was still waiting for his response. ‘They would be men by now.’
‘And have you given much thought as to what you might do upon your release?’
Had he given much thought to what he might do upon his release? Was the man a complete idiot? What else was there to do in prison aside from dreaming of such things? There was survival, avoiding the salacious attentions of sodomites, scrounging for favours. That all took time, naturally (and more than one might think), but there was plenty left over. Like an oafish and ungainly squirrel in its nest he had hoarded plans and ideas, returning to them over and over – discarding some, embroidering others, stitching and filing and whittling and crafting – until they were so magnificent that it seemed a pity not to share them. But what could he tell this man of these plans? That he was intending to go back to Paris as quickly as possible and that, there, he would find a sorceress powerful enough to banish several terrible demons so he might take possession of treasure hidden in a cellar? And then – what? – live a life of luxury and indolence? Probably. Why not? After all he had endured.
City of Crows Page 5
