City of Crows

by Chris Womersley

  All four of them stepped backwards and stared at the crow with trepidation. The bird stretched its wings experimentally before taking several steps towards the two strangers. Then it flattened its body and opened its beak to caw its terrible caw. The strangers winced. The woman gasped and gripped the man’s arm. She pulled him away and they moved silently backwards, far beyond the candle’s wan light, as if sinking beneath black waters. The crow then cocked its head as if in silent discourse with itself before launching into the darkness after them. The clatter of its wings – the sound like that of a woman shaking out her cloak – was followed by another shriek from the far reaches of the tunnel, some distant swearing. Then nothing more.

  It was a terrifying ordeal. Lesage bent down to retrieve the pistol and turned to Madame Picot. They waited, for what exactly he couldn’t be sure. Another sign, perhaps. The candle flame flickered. Lesage put his hand to his cheek, felt his own body’s anxious tremble and jerk. His apprehension was replaced by fury. ‘Why the hell did you not act sooner, woman? He might have killed me. Killed us both, for that matter. What were you doing?’

  Madame Picot didn’t answer. Her gaze was fixed on her hand – the one with its wound – and on the book, as if she had been unaware of them until this moment. ‘I was too afraid to speak,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lesage closed his eyes and crossed himself. ‘Ave Maria.’ Opening his eyes, he inspected the heavy pistol before jamming it into his belt.

  Madame Picot closed her book. ‘That was most strange.’

  ‘Yes. A devilish pair. Did you notice how they travelled without lanterns, without any light at all? Horrible creatures. Do you think they have gone?’

  ‘Yes. It seems so.’

  They waited a while longer but detected no further sign of the unwelcome pair. Finally, with trembling hands, Lesage set about shifting the stone block bearing the star and the inscription. He could scarcely believe what was happening. A dream? Dear God, who knew? But no. The rock was hard and rough beneath his hands; this was certainly a real thing, at least. Its corners crumbled as he wrestled with it, but eventually, by setting his shoulder to its rough bulk and pulling it back and forth a number of times, he dislodged it. The sound of it thumping on the ground echoed along the tunnel, prompting them both to peer anxiously into its darkness for any further signs of those they had recently dispatched.

  Lesage took up the candle and peered into the space he had exposed. He thrust a hand through. Another prayer under his breath, to whomever might listen. Please. After everything I have endured, do I not deserve some wealth, some success? He touched something that felt like a leather-bound trunk. Yes, a trunk! His heart jumped.

  Still with his arm deep in the hole, he swung around to Madame Picot. ‘Help me. Quickly. I’ve found it!’

  Together they dragged the trunk from the gritty crawl space. It was secured with a padlock but the iron was old and corroded, and Lesage was able to break it off easily with a rock. He flipped open the lid with shaking hands. And there, anticipated but also so surprising – like a baby’s birth – were coins and other items of treasure. Money. Treasure. Freedom. At last. Even Madame Picot was pleased and they embraced clumsily with the sudden joy and relief of it.

  *

  Dawn was breaking by the time Lesage and Madame Picot returned with the trunk to the room on Rue Françoise. The trunk contained treasure from all sorts of countries. Thalers, Roman and Spanish coins, doubloons, an assortment of bejewelled necklaces and rings. There were also hundreds of livres in the trunk, perhaps thousands – enough to free the woman’s son, with plenty left over for him. As if he were a parched man and the coins water, he sifted them in his hands as a terrible pleasure coursed through him.

  26

  It was late morning when Lesage met his countryman Willem outside the tavern where they had encountered each other the previous evening. They travelled in a hired carriage as far as La Porte Saint-Antoine, then walked along a broad road into the nearby countryside. Farmhouses loomed here and there over fields and orchards in which the heads of field workers bobbed around in the heat haze as if on green and fragrant seas.

  The day was growing hotter and they conversed little as they walked. This Willem was a scraggly, ill-built fellow – a scarecrow broken free from his post – and Lesage trusted him even less in the daylight than he had the previous night. He held a hand protectively across his satchel containing the money. What if this were an elaborate ruse to rob him? Away from the shadows and alleyways of the city, he felt alone and rather exposed. The sunlight, all these birds, strangers, the horizon. A carriage rumbled past, leaving in its wake a drift of woman’s laughter, like petals strewn along the road; doubtless some nobles on the way to their country estate.

  ‘Where is this place?’ Lesage asked, stopping for a moment to wipe his face with his scarf. ‘Is it much further?’

  ‘Perhaps another league or so. Do you see that hill over there?’

  Lesage squinted into the distance. He saw stands of cypress trees, occasional huts and houses, windmills endlessly churning. A man on horseback moved through a field and Lesage was reminded of the tale he’d told the stupid tavern keeper Scarron – of monkeys riding on the backs of dolphins. Eventually he made out the low, wooded hill Willem was pointing to, a patch of green darker than its surrounds.

  ‘And can you see the house to the side? It’s there, monsieur.’

  ‘You’re sure Nicolas will be at the house? It’s most important to me that he is safe and well.’

  ‘If you have the money, they will have the boy. I have already sent them word. They are waiting for us. Across the field there. Not far now, monsieur. Don’t worry – they will provide a carriage for our return.’

  Willem must have noted the puzzlement in Lesage’s eyes, for he went on: ‘Sometimes the children resist being taken. They expect something terrible to happen to them. And we do not wish for anyone to notice boys coming and going, do we? Especially in the condition they are sometimes in.’

  They left the road and tramped through a wood of birch and maple trees, their trunks bristling with glossy ivy. It was cool and peaceful after the harsh sun. Bees lumbered in the dappled light and bracken crunched underfoot. Lesage wanted to lie down and rest in the shade, but felt the nagging urgency of his task. Soon, he thought. Soon he would be free at last. Free of Madame Picot and – thanks to the treasure – free of La Voisin, too. Then he could lie down in glades as much as he wished.

  After telling Madame Picot about his sons at La Filastre’s, he had started thinking; perhaps he could return to Normandy and be finished at last with La Voisin, Mariette and the rest of those scoundrels – those vile abortionists, poisoners, witches, priests and conjurers; that entire realm working away industriously beneath the world, like worms and beetles beneath the forest floor. Yes. Why not? The treasure had been as plentiful as he had hoped, and, with it, there would be no need for him to help La Voisin or Guibourg or any of them. He might escape their nasty domain. He had been fortunate to be sentenced to the galleys on the last occasion instead of being executed, but if he were caught engaging in such impieties again, not even God himself – let alone Madame Picot – would be able to summon him back to the world of the living.

  There was, of course, the matter of Catherine, who was highly sensitive to even the merest hint that she was being spurned; he had seen her roused to inarticulate fury at the slightest suspicion a customer was thinking of visiting another sorceress in Paris. Those who facilitated betrayal in others were often the most sensitive to it. God alone knew how she would receive knowledge of his intended departure, but he could always attempt to mollify her. He would buy her a gift. Some wine, perhaps? No, he would need something more than that. A bonnet or some perfume from one of the luxury stores? New shoes? He shook off thoughts of her. He would consider that particular problem later.

  They emerged from the forest into
bright sunlight and crossed a muddy stream. The house was a short distance away, its tall windows shining in the sun. Lesage and Willem approached and mounted some stairs. At the top, in the shade of the large house, bright red geraniums tumbled over the sides of large pots with nymphs carved on their rims. From nearby drifted the reassuring noise of a fountain. A servant wearing blue livery and carrying a large silver platter under one arm nodded to Willem in greeting as he trotted around a corner. Willem opened a side door and ushered Lesage through a warren of humid kitchens and storerooms in which cooks and maids bustled about, none of whom paid them the slightest attention; obviously Willem was a familiar sight.

  Willem tugged on a rope hanging by one wall and presently a footman appeared. The two of them conversed in low tones. When they had finished, the footman spun on his heel and walked away. Willem indicated for Lesage to follow and together they walked through more tunnels until they arrived at a cellar stocked with dried meat and barrels of wine. Braces of rabbits and pheasants hung from ceiling hooks. Lesage’s anxiety was only barely allayed by the promise of finally securing the boy’s release – and freeing himself from Madame Picot’s power. He sensed the twitch at his cheek.

  The footman turned to Lesage, acknowledging him for the first time. ‘He says you have money for one of the boys?’

  ‘Yes. The one called Nicolas.’

  ‘Two hundred livres? Show it to me.’

  Lesage opened his satchel and pulled out the smaller sack into which he had placed the amount needed to buy Nicolas’s freedom. He began to explain who the boy was in relation to him and why he, Lesage, was here, but the footman silenced him with a wave of his hand.

  The footman sighed and began counting out the coins on a low table. This took a long time. When it was done, he slipped several coins to Willem and took up a three-pronged candelabrum. Without another word, he led them up a dim stone stairway until they emerged into a room with a parquetry floor that squeaked beneath their shoes. The footman handed the candelabrum to Willem while he drew aside the corner of an enormous coloured tapestry bearing the scene of a boar hunt. Men on horses, dogs with spiked collars, a tusked boar running for its life across a clearing. With a huge key on a ring taken from his pocket, the footman unlocked a door hidden behind the tapestry. Lesage recoiled. From the dark passageway that had been exposed there emanated a powerful and all-too-familiar dungeon smell.

  Lesage’s eye was drawn to a painting of King Louis high on the opposite wall. In the scene, the King was wearing buckled black shoes, white hose and a luxurious black wig that tumbled over his shoulders. A magnificent blue and white ermine-trimmed cloak cascaded like a foaming sea on the carpet around him. His right hand rested on a gold sceptre and a gold sword hung at his left hip. Red curtains embroidered with gold thread billowed behind, an intimation of a thick black column. Power and restraint, beauty and terror. France’s king was known to be wise and witty, to have an enormous appetite for women and food. Those who had met him all agreed he was charming company, but from the painting he gazed down upon Lesage with an expression of benign disapproval. Lesage wondered what King Louis was doing at that moment. Entertaining courtiers, eating vast mouthfuls of suckling pig, lounging naked in bed with one of his lovely mistresses? He might have been put on the throne by God Himself, but did he have the slightest clue, this king, about what happened across his vast realm? Did he know about Catherine Monvoisin and her sorceries or of the lengths to which Athénaïs de Montespan had gone to swell his heart – not to mention his cock? Did he know how many men and women of his own court journeyed from the palace at Saint-Germain to a pavilion in Villeneuve where they paid the drunken wife of a failed jeweller to cast spells, fashion amulets or organise black masses to secure his continued patronage?

  The footman bade them enter. Willem crouched low and indicated for Lesage to follow. Then he disappeared from sight. Lesage felt sick. He glanced away and muttered a prayer. The clacking of the footman’s shoes on the wooden floor grew faint as he attended to duties in other parts of the huge house. Outside, glimpsed through the window’s rippled glass, he saw a young woman on a gravel path playing with a brown terrier. He heard the dog’s yelp and her soft laughter, saw lawns stretching green to the darkness of the distant forest.

  27

  Charlotte heard scuffling noises coming from the passage outside her room. It’s Nicolas, she thought. My son. So soon, at last. She leaped up from her stool and opened the door.

  But, instead, it was the troubadour girl, Marguerite, who began to cry as soon as she saw Charlotte. ‘My mother is dead,’ she sobbed, and fell into her arms.

  Charlotte embraced her. The girl’s entire body shook as she wept.

  ‘She should have known,’ the girl was saying between breaths, ‘she should have known to stay away from the river. Lesage saw it in her cards. He warned her about water, but she still went to visit a friend who worked on the quay.’

  Charlotte recalled the scene by the river when she and Lesage had come across the poor drowned woman. Lesage seemed shocked – not only by the sight of the woman’s corpse, apparently, but at the fact that he had forewarned her of such a fate.

  Charlotte’s shoulder grew damp with tears. How terrible it was to lose one’s mother so young. She searched for the words with which others had comforted her in her own times of mourning, but they were meagre pickings: faith and prayer, life and the afterlife, where all former things have passed away. There was nothing to be said; death, after all, was the final word.

  Eventually, the girl stopped crying and Charlotte led her to the lumpy mattress on the floor. ‘Has she been buried yet?’ she asked.

  Marguerite shook her head. ‘It will be later today. My father is most distraught and has hired mourners at some expense. He is already sick from grief himself. He was out all night. This morning some friends brought him back to the fair and he was dirty, and as drunk as a bellringer. The performance cannot go ahead today, of course. We’ll have no money if we cannot work, and we’ll be ruined.’

  Charlotte had always thought of grief as a nasty unwanted visitor who encouraged the bereaved to act in ways contrary to their true natures. Grief took them carousing or goaded them to fight in the street. Sometimes he lured them to their own deaths, or forbade them to speak at all. And – this worst of all – he whispered the names of the dead in your ear, over and again; the things you should have done; the words you should have said; his bony finger tap-tap-tapping against your heart.

  When their daughters died, she and Michel retreated into their own private silences, where they remained for so long, careful with each other, barely touching, as if fearful their hearts were made of glass and might break. They didn’t speak. When at home, Michel gnawed on his pipe while Charlotte went more often than necessary to her vegetable garden, where she made a show of tending her crop, for only there could she succumb to the urge to sag to her knees. Why did you not seek help sooner? Tap. Why did you not see they were sick? Tap. Why did you not pray harder, woman? Tap. Henceforth, the smell of fresh leeks always reminded her of that bitter summer. With Philippe it was different; he was barely formed, and Charlotte herself was only seventeen years old; it was as if she didn’t have time enough to know how best to love him before he was taken from her.

  ‘Sorrow makes people do strange things,’ she murmured. ‘Your father will return to you soon enough.’

  Marguerite gazed around the room with her head angled to compensate for her bad eye, a mannerism that gave her the bearing of one listening to voices in other rooms. ‘Did you find your own son, madame?’ she asked.

  Charlotte nodded. ‘Yes. Lesage has gone to fetch him and bring him here. They will be here any moment. When I heard you on the stairs I thought you were him.’

  The girl managed a crumpled smile. ‘Ah. That is good, at least. Something good.’

  ‘Yes. It is. He is alive and well. He should be back here soon and we wi
ll return to our country.’

  They listened to the noises from the street outside. A child singing a nonsensical rhyme, a butter vendor, pigeons on the roof. ‘Beurre frais, beurre frais . . .’

  Marguerite wiped her nose. ‘Do you still remember your own children, madame? What they looked like, I mean?’

  She took the girl’s hand and stroked it. ‘Yes. Of course I do. How could I forget them? Béatrice was pale, with freckles. She hated to wear a bonnet, even in winter. A serious child. Sturdy, I would have thought, not fearful of anything. But Aliénor was – what? – she seemed older than her years. Always telling Béatrice what to do, tugging her along; you know how girls are sometimes. But cheerful, always finding something to laugh about. Clumsy as a foal, my husband used to say. I was holding her hand, like this, when she died, and looking her in the eye as if I might keep her in this world with me. We sat like that for a long time, but for one moment I glanced away at something Michel said, and when I looked back she was gone – as if she had merely slipped out the window.’

  ‘To heaven.’

  ‘To heaven,’ Charlotte said at last. ‘Yes.’ She paused until her breathing regained its balance. ‘You’ll not forget your mother, Marguerite. Don’t worry. You’ll always carry her with you.’

  Perhaps seeking to lighten the atmosphere, Marguerite fumbled beneath her blouse and retrieved the amulet containing the pigeon’s heart that Charlotte had assembled for her.

  ‘I am wearing your charm around my neck, madame. As you told me.’

  Charlotte felt a fresh surge of affection for the girl and squeezed her hand, unsure whether to be envious of her as-yet-unlived future – or fearful. Life and all its endless variations. There was no order to it. ‘Good girl. Remember to bury it where your handsome man will pass by. You need a husband now more than ever, for he can help your family.’