by Hunter, Seth
Darkness complete. The darkness of the eternal abyss. A black void so absolute the eye and the mind could not comprehend it. He applied himself to the mental exercises that had sustained him in prison and when he had satisfactorily fixed the stars and their planets in their correct spheres, as clearly as he could remember them, he placed himself in his universal conveyance and considered which of the constellations he might favour with a visit. He was not entirely satisfied with the seating arrangement and made some small adjustments to the design. Then he turned his mind to the problem of music. He would have his flute of course but while he had often defended its qualities against the derision of acquaintances (and considered Mozart’s remarks upon its inadequacies to be harsh) he felt it was a little insubstantial to capture the epic nature of the universe. He had reluctantly abandoned the idea of taking an orchestra with him, or even a single musical companion, on considerations of weight and space but he did not think it beyond his powers of invention to contrive some mechanical means of expression. Bells—of a size that would fit into his small craft—were too tinkling. It needed something that boomed, something like a drum, or the sound made when the tide rushed into a cave.
Then he heard a different sound. The sound of a key turning in a lock.
Before he could make a move the door had opened and a shaft of light penetrated the darkness. But he remained hidden, huddled between the open door and the side of the cave. He congratulated himself on blowing out the candle.
A squeaking noise and through the shaft of light came a large handcart with a lantern hooked on the front and a man pushing it from behind. He trundled it off down the tunnel without a backward glance and after a moment a second man appeared with another cart. It appeared to be loaded with brown paper parcels. Nathan watched the bobbing lights proceed down the tunnel. But he had seen three men go in; it was reasonable to assume that three men would come out—and that the third would close the door behind him, thus revealing Nathan.
The third man was of course Bulbeau.
Was it better to wait for him here—or to go through the door and tackle him on the other side? This largely depended on who, if anyone, was on the other side with him. The fact that the men had left the door open indicated that either they were expecting someone to follow them or they planned to return the same way. Nathan made up his mind and moved quickly round the edge of the door with his dirk at the ready, fully expecting to run full tilt into the midget.
But no one was there.
He was confronted by a large vaulted room, like a cellar or a crypt, filled with casks and barrels, numerous wooden crates and large earthenware jars. Like a smuggler’s den. Which was almost certainly what it was. A shaft of light pierced the gloom at the far end of the room, apparently coming down from the roof. Nathan advanced cautiously into the room and saw that it came from an open trapdoor with a ladder descending from it. And he could hear voices in the room above. He stepped behind one of the brick columns supporting the roof and peered carefully round the edge. A figure appeared at the top of the ladder. Bulbeau. Nathan drew back his head and tried to stop himself from breathing. Moments later Bulbeau passed within a few feet of where he was hiding and entered the tunnel, closing the door behind him.
Nathan was left once more to consider his options.
And once more, they appeared somewhat limited.
After a moment’s reflection he moved cautiously through the vaults towards the ladder. He had heard voices so there had been at least one other person in the room above with Bulbeau—but was he there now? Nathan was almost at the foot of the ladder when he heard footsteps and before he could move the trapdoor was slammed shut and he was plunged once more into darkness.
He waited for some minutes, then groped his way forward until his hands encountered the wooden ladder. He climbed to the top and pressed his ear against the trapdoor but he could hear nothing. With infinite care he raised both hands to the door and began to push. Slowly, an inch at a time, he eased it open until he could see through the narrow gap.
He was looking into what appeared to be another storeroom. And in a pool of light at the far end were three men seated at a table.
One he recognised instantly. Le Mulet. He was sitting facing Nathan but the light was poor and there were so many objects on the floor it would have been remarkable if he could have seen the very small amount the trapdoor had been opened. The men were drinking from what looked like a bottle of brandy and appeared to be engaged in animated discussion, though they were too far away for Nathan to understand any of it. The Mule was doing most of the talking. He had his pipe in one hand and was making emphatic gestures with it as he leaned forward over the table, his bald head gleaming in the light of the lantern hanging from the roof above.
The other two men were sitting with their backs partly turned to Nathan so that he could not see their faces. One was heavily built and wore a powdered wig and there was something about the shape of his head and shoulders, or perhaps in the way he sat that seemed oddly familiar. He could almost have been Danton. But the memory of Danton obscured another. He was trying to think who it was when Le Mulet stood up and raised his glass in a toast. As the others rose with him Nathan saw their faces in the light. One was the American Minister Gouverneur Morris and the other was Gilbert Imlay.
Perhaps he should not have been so surprised but he was. He stared foolishly as Le Mulet reached up for the lantern and took it down from the beam. If they had come towards him now they could not have failed to see him but they didn’t. They left through a door at the far end of the room, the American Minister taking Imlay by the arm and leaning heavily on his crutch.
Long after they had gone Nathan remained staring into the darkness, occupied with his thoughts. Then he pulled himself together. There were so many questions in his mind but clearly the most important was to find out where he was.
He raised the trapdoor more fully and climbed into the room. There were no windows and it was as dark as it had been in the catacombs but he retrieved his lantern from where he had hooked it on the top of the ladder and applied himself once more to the business of striking a light. When he had succeeded he raised the lantern above his head and surveyed his new surroundings. The walls here were of brick, the floor of wood, and the ceiling supported by stout timber beams instead of vaults. He began a closer inspection of the stores stacked against the walls or arranged in irregular piles on the floor. Casks of brandy, crates of wine, large terracotta pots of olive oil and other produce, boxes containing jars of preserves . . . sugar, coffee, tobacco . . . Perhaps this was where Morris came to do his shopping on the black market though it might be supposed he would send one of the servants. Then Nathan’s wandering eye fell on a neat pile of packages, wrapped in brown paper, just like the packages on the handcarts. On closer inspection he saw that each package was tied in a neat parcel, sealed with a blob of wax and numbered. He took his knife and slit one of them open to reveal four stacks of paper assignats. The top ones were to the value of ten sous: the kind of note that might be used by families in a working class area like Saint-Antoine to buy bread, if they could get it. He pulled one out and held it close to the lantern. The background image showed two goddesses or nymphs, carrying sheaves of corn with the wording: Domaines Nationaux. Assignat de dix sous, payable au porteur. Loi du 23 Mai, 1793. Signed by one Guyon, presumably the Finance Minister at the time. A government bond secured against the value of national assets. Or as others might have it, land seized from the Church and the aristocracy.
He ripped open another package. It contained notes to the value of five livres. A hundred in each stack, worth about twelve English pounds. He was about to put them back when a thought occurred to him, or perhaps he detected a lingering smell. He picked up the package and held it to his nose.
The unmistakable scent of tobacco.
He stood there a moment as if stunned. He held one of the notes
to the light so he could see the watermark. It appeared to be genuine. The note even bore the inscription: Le Loi Punit de Mort de Contrefacteur. The Law Punishes the Counterfeiter with Death.
But there was no doubt in Nathan’s mind that it was a forgery, made in England and conveyed to France in the ample hold of the Speedwell.
He stuffed one of the bundles into his jacket and made his way to the door by which the three men had left the room. To his relief it was unlocked and he eased it open a crack so he could peer through. He was looking down a long, dark corridor. Apparently empty. He opened the door fully and stepped through. At the far end was another door and to the right a flight of stairs leading up. He listened carefully for a voice or any sound of movement but there was none. The door was locked. He bent down and applied himself to the keyhole. Nothing. And no telltale draught against his eye. He did not think he was looking at the outside world. This was either another dark room or another tunnel. He was more puzzled than ever. Were all these chambers carved out of the rock, deep underground? Was he in some vast subterranean warehouse, or a building with a great many cellars? The brick walls suggested the latter but if it was a building, what kind of building?
He went up the stairs. Another door at the top. This, too, was locked but there was a key hanging from a hook on the wall beside it. It seemed to open onto another corridor but when he raised the lantern he saw that it was formed of bookshelves. They rose high above him on both sides and above them—a long way above—was an ornate panelled ceiling. He was in a vast library. No, not a library, for there was nowhere for anyone to read. An archive. He walked through the rows of books, inspecting the titles. Books and manuscripts, all on one subject.
Astronomy.
Nathan felt as if he had entered a fantasy world composed of his own personal dreams and nightmares. He walked between the tall shelves of books and arrived at another flight of stairs. Metal stairs in a spiral with yet another door at the top. Which opened, just as he knew it would, into the main library of the Paris Observatoire.
Moonlight poured in through the long, narrow windows. Through them he could see the trees of the observatory gardens and the night sky. There were the bookshelves in alphabetical order where they kept the works of Cassini and Copernicus, Franklin and Galileo, Halley and Herschel and Huygens, Kepler and Lagrange and Newton and Pascal . . . There was the table where he had sat day after day to study the unpublished works of Tycho Brahe.
And there was the door that led to the lobby and the way out.
Locked of course and this time there was no key.
He went over to the nearest bookshelf, selected one of the thickest tomes that he could see—an edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelstium by Copernicus—lay down on the floor, took off his muddy boots, put the book under his head and went to sleep.
He slept remarkably well in the circumstances—he had slept in worse conditions at sea—but dawn came very early at that time of the year and he was roused by the sunlight pouring through the windows. He sat at one of the tables and ate the food he had brought with him in his pack while he pondered the events of the night before. It was clear to him now why the Brothers Pitt had emphasised the importance of his mission and been so opposed to petty diversions like the capture of a mere frigate. He had not been carrying tobacco as the perquisite for a spy but a substantial quantity of forged assignats. He took the bundle from his pocket. It measured about four inches by three and was about half an inch deep. He calculated that even allowing for a good layer of tobacco leaf there could have been around seven thousand bundles in each crate. Over eighty thousand pounds. And each cargo had consisted of five hundred crates.
Forty million pounds.
An astronomical sum. Presumably many of the crates had contained notes of a much lower denomination—like the ten sous notes he had seen—but even so it would explain why Robespierre was so concerned about the level of inflation.
But what did Morris and Imlay have to do with it? Were they agents of the British government or had they gone into business on their own account—with Le Mulet as a partner?
A sound at the door alerted him to the arrival of the librarians. Nathan cleared up his breakfast and his notes and replaced De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelstium on the bookshelves. He recognised the two men at the front desk from his previous visits and greeted them with a confident “Bonjour” as he headed for the front door. He heard one of them shout after him but he was already halfway down the steps to the gardens and no one chased after him.
The sun was already warm and he found a public pump and stripped to wash off the residue of the Cloaca. By the time he had finished he had formed a plan, of sorts. But first he must find Imlay.
It took him less than an hour to walk to the American Minister’s house in the Rue de la Planche. A servant answered the door. The Minister was not yet up, he said. Nathan left a message to say that Captain Turner had called with an urgent message and would return in an hour. Then he went for a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens. He stood for a while at the corner of the west wing staring up at the windows of the first floor hoping against hope that he might see Sara staring back. In fact he saw no one, not in the prison. Only a pair of gendarmes in the gardens who insisted on checking his papers. They were in order but they instructed him to move on.
He arrived back at the Rue de la Planche just before ten and was approaching the Minister’s house at number 488 when a black cab drew up in front of him and two burly men leaped out and set about him with staves. This was unusual even in Paris and he was indignant enough to knock one of them down and seize the other by the throat only to have his efforts nullified by the press of cold steel against the back of his neck and a voice that was becoming wearily familiar informing him that it was a loaded pistol and that the very slightest movement on his part would set it off and make a quite unnecessary mess in the street embarrassingly close to the American Minister’s front door.
“And we would not wish him to step in it,” said Citizen Gillet, “in the course of his official duties or, as is far more likely, on his way to the theatre with Madame Flahaut or another of his paramours.”
Chapter 40
the House of Arrest
There were curtains on the coach windows so Nathan could not see where they were taking him and Gillet’s response to his inquiries on the subject was a curt instruction to shut his mouth. But they did not travel far: no more than a couple of miles, Nathan guessed, before the coach drew to a halt and he was told to get out. He stepped down into a small courtyard from which rose the walls of a tall building with narrow barred windows. Another prison, though several religious statues—defaced or beheaded—suggested that it had once been a convent. Nathan supposed it to be one of the Maisons d’Arrêt set up by the authorities to house the growing prison population. The door was opened from within and he was propelled along a corridor and down a flight of stone steps into a large stone-flagged room in the basement.
Two items caught his immediate attention. One was the chain hanging from the ceiling; the other a metal grid on the floor.
He threw himself back against his escort, lashing out with fists and feet, but they clubbed him to the ground and he took several kicks before Gillet called them off and told them to hoist him up to the ceiling.
A pair of manacles were clamped around his wrists and they pulled on the chain until he was standing on his toes with his hands high above his head.
“I was under the impression,” he said, “that torture is forbidden since the Revolution.”
“You call this torture? We have not yet begun.”
“I am an American citizen—”
Gillet struck him in the mouth.
“Pig. You are an English spy and will be treated accordingly. Strip him.”
They slit his clothes with their knives and yanked off his boots and left him hanging naked from the chains, alone
with Gillet. The police officer walked around him slowly and stopped in front of him, his face expressionless. Nathan’s lip was cut on the inside and he could taste blood.
“Now, we will begin,” Gillet informed him coldly. “What are you doing in Paris? And do not tell me that you are studying astronomy or I will cut out your eyes.”
“I am an American seaman,” Nathan insisted. “I have business with several American merchants in the city.”
“And what was your business with the ci-devant Countess of Turenne?”
Nathan felt sick.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His voice no longer sounded like his own.
“No. Have you forgotten the lady already? We shall have to remind you.”
But he did not hit him. Instead he left the room, shutting the door behind him. Nathan took a deep shuddering breath but there was a tightening band around his chest. He recalled hearing that victims of crucifixion, who were similarly restrained, died of suffocation. He looked up at the chain above his head. It ran through a pulley on the ceiling and the far end was attached to a ring in the wall. Impossible to reach either. He lifted his feet from the ground, taking the entire strain on his wrists. The pain was excruciating and the chain did not give an inch. He lowered his legs so he was standing on his toes again.
The door opened and Gillet came back carrying something at his side.
With a horror that swamped all pain, all other feeling, Nathan saw that it was a human head.
Gillet held it by the hair and tossed it into the room so that it rolled at Nathan’s feet, the eyes glaring, the mouth opened in a final soundless scream. He felt as if he would lose his senses, was barely conscious of the convulsion that emptied his stomach and spewed vomit down his chest.
“I thought you would like some company,” said Gillet. “To your taste. Fresh from the butcher’s in the Place du Trône.”
