The Maze

by A. J. B. Johnston

  “Ah,” Simone nods then shrugs. The name does not seem to mean a thing.

  But it will, Thomas knows, when it’s repeated to Marguerite. “If you’ll excuse us,” he says, stepping out into the aisle. With his outstretched arm he moves Simone back. He takes hold of Hélène’s hand. She moves out to join him where he stands. They turn at once toward the back of the Opéra, wanting nothing more than to get out to the street. As they push through the crowd of theatre-goers coming the other way, coming back to take their seats, Thomas notices the great roaring noise the swirl of conversation makes during the intermission. It adds to the roar of blood pounding in his ears. It is so very difficult to think.

  —

  Even before Simone comes back up to the box to tell her mistress that she has met the widow Kharlamov, Marguerite recognizes the woman beside Thomas.

  It takes Madame Dufour a little longer, but when the same recognition comes, she places a hand on her cousin’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Marguerite.” There is a pause. Then, “though not surprised.”

  Marguerite flexes her shoulder to get her cousin’s hand away from her. “We have to go,” she says.

  —

  “What did he say?” Hélène asks Thomas. Since the incident at the Opéra three nights ago, Thomas is staying with her on the upper floor of the tailor shop. Hélène gives up possession of it in five days.

  Thomas closes the door. He leans against it as a momentary support. Then he pushes off and brings himself to stand before Hélène. She is seated on the well-worn divan and is in the middle of darning socks.

  “That he understands.”

  “That he understands?” She places the socks down beside her, and slides over to give Thomas room to sit. She peers into his unreadable face.

  “No, he said a bit more than that. He says he’s seen similar cases, more than I might think. In his opinion, when it’s not the first time, but the second or third, there’s not much point in even trying to patch things up with the wife.”

  “Well, I knew that. Isn’t a magistrate judge supposed to be smarter than the rest of us?”

  “He recommended I take a leave. Not quit, but an open-ended leave. That I go away from Paris for a year, maybe two. That I add more experience to my already illustrious career.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, he didn’t say illustrious. He didn’t use any adjective at all.” Thomas shrugs. Hélène flexes her eyebrows.

  Thomas continues: “Later on, after Marguerite is out of the picture—”

  Hélène snorts. “Poor woman. Everyone wants her dead.”

  “Later on, I can come back. He said he’d be pleased to have me work for him again. That he did say.”

  “Well, that’s something. For later on. For you.” Hélène holds out a hand. “How much did you tell him about it?”

  “Enough, though I did not give your name. I told him Marguerite will not even let me in. Had a locksmith come to change the locks.”

  “That says it all.” Hélène retrieves the wool socks and the darning needles.

  “He gave me this.” Thomas reaches inside a pocket of his coat. He pulls out a folded-over piece of paper. “A letter of recommendation. Let me read you the best part. Here it is. ‘Thomas Pichon is as loyal, hard-working, careful and clever a scrivener and clerk as there could be.’ I can’t complain about that.”

  “I’d say not.” Hélène gives him a suspicious look. “Did you write that yourself?”

  Thomas pretends surprise, then allows a reluctant smile. He nods. “He asked me to draft the letter. He signed it without reading a single word.”

  “But it’s not sealed. Don’t you need his official seal?”

  “I’ll add that tomorrow. It’ll be my last day.”

  “So, the only thing left for you to decide is where you’re going to pass your year or two away.”

  Hélène picks up the socks and needles from the divan and places them in the wicker basket at her feet. She pats her thighs, inviting Thomas to lay his head in her lap. He carefully lowers his refolded letter of recommendation to the floor and does as she asks.

  “Did I ever tell you I like your eyes, Hélène?”

  “You did, along with a few other parts.”

  “It’s true.”

  “So, where will you go to advance your already illustrious career?” Hélène arches her eyebrows. “Lyons? You often say you’ve never been to the south.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “You’d rather not? What does that mean?”

  “I’d rather go to Londres.”

  “To London?” Hélène jostles her thighs, bouncing his head. She pulls him up into a sitting position. “Is that a jest?”

  “It’s not. I’m free, as free as I’ve been in a long while, so why not do as I please? I’d rather go with you.”

  Hélène’s face goes as serious and rigid as she can make it. She will not grant this man a glimmer that so much as hints at whether she is either pleased or saddened by what he’s said.

  “Would it be all right,” he asks, “to come along? To England with you?”

  Hélène looks down at her hands. They’re cupped in her lap, her thumbs twirling round. Only when the thumbs stop does she look up into Thomas’s eyes.

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “Because I like you. I’d like to see if we could live together, openly for once.” He leans over and kisses her lightly on the lips.

  She kisses him back, just as lightly. “All right, but it’s going to be a new start.”

  “Which means what?”

  Hélène hunches her shoulders. “Just what it says. I’m free too. I have my money left me by Pierre and from the sale of this place. You have whatever you have. We are two, not one. It’s a new start, for both of us.”

  Thomas seems to study her face like he’s never really seen it before. “Do you not trust me, Hélène?”

  That brings what she knows is a slow, wide smile. “Oh, please.” Hélène gets to her feet. She holds out her hands for Thomas to take hold. When he does, she pulls him to his feet. “Let’s go somewhere nearby. Let’s get something to eat.” She crooks her elbow with his.

  “Then come back here and....” Thomas gives her a knowing look.

  “We’ll see. We have a lot of things to do to get ready, don’t we now?”

  “We do.”

  V

  Across

  En route

  November 1731

  “Sixteen seventy-four,” Thomas mumbles to himself as he catches a first glimpse out the window of the approaching Porte Saint-Martin. “I think that’s what it is.”

  He glances at Hélène to see if it’s worth his while to make her pay attention to him and to the gate that’s coming up ahead. They’ve been bouncing and swaying in the diligence since they and a half dozen other passengers climbed aboard a quarter hour earlier in front of Paris’s Hôtel de Ville. Thomas and Hélène each have a satchel up top on the coach’s roof, as well as a trunk that contains possessions belonging to them both. Clothes and shoes, hats, canes, parasols and wigs, and, heaviest of all, a good portion of Thomas’s library and archives. He pleaded through the door at Marguerite’s for these last two. He asked that they be put out on the landing. Marguerite must have had her servants do the work. When he came back the next morning everything was there in wooden boxes beside the locked door. He couldn’t take it all, but he made his picks. He imagines Marguerite burned or gave away what he left.

  Neither Thomas nor Hélène would get into the diligence until they’d made sure that their two satchels and the single trunk were well tied down with a rope. They represent all they own in this world. Well, that’s not quite true. They each have certain other valued items with them where they sit. He understands that Hélène has a good quantity of coins in a poche hidden awa
y under her dark-blue linen travelling dress, but of what total value he does not know. Nor does he know the amount of the letter of exchange she has hidden in the lining of the dress. But he knows it must be a goodly sum. It would be for the bulk of what she received from her late husband’s estate and the sale of his shop. She will take the hidden promissory note to a banking house when she arrives in London.

  “You are not my husband,” she said when he asked how much the note was for.

  What could he say? He will not ask again, but if she would ever like to confide, he will not object.

  They are a couple in certain regards, but not in other ways. How much money each has in this world is at the top of both their lists of what they keep to themselves. The world is filled with risk, countless menaces and threats. They both understand the need to look out first and foremost for their own interests.

  Like Hélène, Thomas has a pouch of coins, and a few particularly high value coins where his socked feet rest in his shoes. It’s an old trick that once served him well as a boy coming away from Vire. He has not one but two documents sewn into the inside of his dark brown justaucorps. One is a letter of exchange for seven hundred livres, which he will convert to British currency when he gets to London. The other is the signed and sealed letter of recommendation given to him by the magistrate judge. Thomas doubts it will be useful in London. The English would only raise their eyebrows, or maybe even mock him, if he brought forward a letter from a French judge for a position having to do with the law in their land. Nonetheless, he has to safeguard it for when he makes an eventual return to France. Doors to good positions do not open by themselves. That letter will be a knock too loud to be ignored.

  Thomas turns back to the window on his side of the diligence. The Porte Saint-Martin looms much larger than it did before. “Sixteen seventy-four,” he says aloud. He reaches out to touch Hélène’s wrist. With the other hand he is pointing through the window.

  “What is it?” Hélène asks. She has been following the stream of bodies, faces and clothes out the window on her side ever since the coach started rolling.

  “Up ahead, the city’s northern gate, the Saint-Martin. Erected in 1674.”

  Hélène puts a finger to his lips. “Don’t say everything that comes into your head.”

  Thomas pouts. He looks away from her, back to the window where he can take in the gate, now looming larger. It’s a threshold that marks their official departure from Paris after more than a decade and a half.

  “Turning point,” he says quietly to himself.

  He turns to see if Hélène has second thoughts about listening to what he has to say. No, it seems not. She’s back looking out the window on her side.

  “Ludovico Magno,” Thomas intones loudly and deeply like a priest.

  That draws several turned heads from the other seats in the diligence. Hélène flushes with colour. “What are you doing?” she whispers.

  “Have a look.” Thomas points at the Latin inscription in giant letters on the topmost part of the gate. He has forgotten she barely reads, and what she is able to recognize does not include chiselled letters in Latin in stone.

  Hélène leans his way, low enough so she can fleetingly look out. “Oh, a gate,” she says in mock surprise, then returns to looking out the window on her side.

  The diligence rolls under and through the immense gate. The bright morning sunlight is blocked for a moment, making the interior of the coach as dark as twilight. Then it rolls back out into the sun again.

  “Au revoir, Paris,” Thomas hears Hélène say.

  “Goodbye, Pair-esss,” Thomas ventures in English, emphasizing the s.

  Hélène sends him a happy smile. Her eyes are bright. They’ve been practising their English on each other over the past few days, but this is the first time either has ventured anything with others around. It sounds fine to Thomas’s ears. How hard can that foreign language be? Gallatin mastered it. Surely he and Hélène can do the same.

  —

  “Well, when then?” Thomas is shouting in French at a burly, hairy man. The man seems to be ignoring him on the leeward side of the wharf.

  The wind is gusting strong and steady. It makes it difficult to hear and be heard. Yet the man is wearing only breeches and a chemise, as if it were summer weather. It is anything but. Thomas and everyone else on the waterfront of Calais are bundled up with greatcoats as tight as they can be. Thomas removed his wig before going out on to the wharf, just in case it sailed off into the sea. Now he has his tricorne in hand, clasped to his waist. Though the wind is blasting cold, the hairy man doesn’t seem to mind at all. He’s taking his time coiling up rope that is as thick as his arms.

  “What’s that?” the man shouts back at last.

  It dawns on Thomas that this man, were he not wearing clothes, might be mistaken for a bear. He looks to have hair everywhere. On his head the dark brown tangle is long and wild. It blows wherever the wind decides. The man clearly hasn’t shaved in weeks or maybe months. He has a beard climbing up onto his cheeks. It has spread nearly a foot down from his chin. And from what Thomas can see of the man’s chest and arms, his whole body is covered with a thick mat of even darker brown.

  “When can we go?” Thomas yells. “In your boat. Set sail.”

  “The wind,” says the man. He shakes his head at Thomas like he shouldn’t have to say any more than that. The man stoops to pick up the rope he’s just coiled. It’s a giant circle made of hemp. He hoists it upon his shoulder and back.

  Thomas glances at Hélène. She’s still standing guard, so to speak, forty feet away beside their single trunk, their two satchels at her feet. She’s down where the wharf joins with the Calais quay. She raises her arms to ask him yet again: when the hell can we board that boat? Thomas spins to catch up to the bear. The man is moving quickly away, farther out toward the end of the wharf. The coil of rope he’s carrying is nearly the size of a child.

  “Is the wind too strong then?”

  “Is that,” the bear allows, and scratches the top of his head through his wool cap. “The tide’s wrong as well. Tomorrow maybe. Or maybe not. That’s the sea.” He bats a hand at Calais harbour. “Not like a road on land.”

  The man walks away from Thomas. He carries the rope over his shoulder like it’s nothing at all. Thomas sees his conversation with the man is done. He trudges back to the quayside end of the wharf.

  “Won’t be today,” he says to Hélène. “He says the wind’s too strong, too risky. And the tide’s not right. I guess he wants it fuller than it is. So the earliest he’ll consider heading out into the Manche will be tomorrow.”

  “Does he promise? Does he say for sure?”

  Thomas shakes his head. “He can’t. And that makes sense. No one controls the sea and the wind. We could be stuck here for days unless there’s a change. I noticed an inn over that way.” He points toward a stone warehouse.

  Hélène’s hands go to her hips. “Well, did he at least promise he’d save a spot for us? I want to get going. We’re this close.”

  “Have you ever been in a boat? Out to sea, I mean? Men lose their lives all the time.”

  “I’ve crossed a few rivers. I know danger. My parents, you’ll remember, they were drowned.”

  “Your real parents? Or the other ones? The noble ones you invented for Marguerite?”

  Hélène wants to look angry at Thomas but she cannot. She has to smile. “Both.”

  Thomas reaches out and taps her shoulder. “Wait here. I’ll ask him not to take us across to Dover but all the way. Right into Londres direct.”

  “London. Yes, do that.”

  Thomas hurries the length of the wharf. “Hey,” he yells to the bear.

  The man is down in his boat, checking the ropes and lines to make sure everything is fastened down. When he finally looks up, there’s a scowl on his lips. Clearly, he doesn�
�t like to be disturbed. Or maybe it’s that Thomas is shouting at him without using his name.

  “Don’t know how to address you. What’s your name?”

  “There are them who call me La Barbe,” says the captain. He strokes his beard, evidently pleased with its feel.

  Thomas nods. He might have guessed.

  “Well, La Barbe, the lady and I are wondering: can we hire you— can we arrange to go farther than Dover? Up the river that flows to Londres? How much farther would that be? I mean how much extra would you charge? What do you say?”

  “I say no and yes. I can’t take the boat that far. The English don’t permit it. But there’s a port in the estuary of their river that’s fine. Gravesend, they call it. As far as I can go. Done that a few times.”

  Thomas makes a face. Is Gravesend not English for death? A burial in the ground? “Graves end, that’s what it’s called?”

  “That’s it. High ground with marshes on either side. There’s a ferry, a long ferry. It takes people the rest of the way.”

  “To London?”

  La Barbe raises his hands to the air.

  “I’m sorry. How much?”

  La Barbe tilts his head and glances toward the open sea. He gazes beyond Fort Rouge and the Calais harbour mouth. “Could be hours or could be days. It depends on....” La Barbe tosses a thumb over his shoulder. “Any time away from here and the regular Dover run means money lost to me. You understand?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, it’s a longer run. So, five times what I told you before. Best I can do. Five times.”

  “We can’t afford that, the lady and me. How about two times?”

  “Three and we’re set.”

  “We’re set,” Thomas repeats.

  La Barbe clenches his fist and brings it to his chest. He taps it where the heart lies. Thomas’s eyebrows go up. He’s been working for years in a world where every agreement goes on paper. He hopes this agreement with the sailor will be as good. Thomas makes the same gesture as the bear, a fist tapped to his chest.

  “One-third now,” says La Barbe. “Another on departure. The last when we reach Gravesend. You hear that?”