The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

by Susanne Alleyn

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  Trembling with impatience, he set off through the crowds of workmen, street peddlers, and hurrying servants, intent on morning errands, toward the faubourg St. Germain. Twenty minutes later he reached Rue St. Dominique and the H?tel de Beaupr?au. At the gates he paused, with a wary glance about him, but at last decided that his mysterious assailant, while he might still be spying on him, was not about to threaten or attack him in the full light of day.

  The porter, recognizing Aristide, waved him through toward the hidden servants' entrance. An undersized scullery maid answered his knock and stood gaping at him in the shadows, not knowing what to make of him.

  "I need to speak with Monsieur Moreau, the valet, right away," Aristide told her. "Is he here?"

  "Yes, monsieur."

  "Then could you fetch him for me?" he said, when she did not move, but continued to stare at him. She blinked. He felt in a pocket and came up with a few coppers, which he held up in front of her. "If you bring Monsieur Moreau to me within five minutes."

  She hastily curtsied and scuttled away. He walked as far as the end of the tunnel that gave into the kitchens and waited, beneath the suspicious glare of an elderly lackey who was polishing brasses. Moreau arrived shortly and Aristide paid off the scullery maid and turned to the valet.

  "Moreau-do you know the name of the man who preserved the monkey?"

  Moreau stared. "I beg your pardon, monsieur?"

  "The monkey! His sister's pet monkey that died, in Monsieur de Beaupr?au's collection of curiosities. Do you know whom Beaupr?au hired to preserve its body?"

  "Oh, that," Moreau said, his face clearing. "For a moment there, I thought you'd gone mad, monsieur! No, I can't say I remember the name, if I ever knew it. Is it important?"

  "It may be vital," Aristide began, then recalled that it would be wiser to say as little as possible about Beaupr?au's role in the affair of the missing corpse. "It may be the clue we need to finding Monsieur de Beaupr?au. Do you remember anything at all about the man?"

  "Well?not much, monsieur?you see, Monsieur Alexis went himself. He didn't want to entrust the errand to a servant. So I never saw the man or talked with him. I think monsieur said he was quite a learned gentleman, though, a doctor of some sort who'd had some ill fortune." He brightened and snapped his fingers. "That was it-he wasn't a doctor, he was a horse doctor, but not your common butcher from a livery stable. Knew everything about anatomy, Monsieur Alexis said: animals and people alike."

  "A horse doctor, but a man of learning, evidently fallen on hard times," Aristide repeated, scribbling in his notebook. "Now how do I find one particular horse doctor, I wonder?"

  "You could start with Godart, the coachman," Moreau suggested. "He's a fine hand with a horse. This way."

  Aristide followed Moreau down an alley of sculpted trees to the far end of the garden and the stables, where they quickly located Godart. The coachman, who was idly smoking his pipe in a patch of weak sunshine by the water trough, was willing enough to sit and gossip.

  "Horse doctors? What d'you want to know about those quacks for?"

  "Surely they're not all quacks," said Aristide. "Doctoring domestic animals should be just as much of a science as doctoring human beings, shouldn't it?"

  The coachman shrugged and pulled thoughtfully at his pipe. "Well, you might have a point there, though I wouldn't trust most of the folk who call themselves doctors for people, neither! They do say there's a proper school for horse doctors somewhere, though, in the South it might be, to train up people to look after the cavalry horses for the armies." He started forward and waved his pipe at Aristide. "Ha-come to think of it, I hear they started one here in the ?le-de-France, too. Maybe they could tell you who the man you're looking for is. Hey, boy! Joseph!"

  "M'sieur?" said a scared-looking stable boy, peering from a stall.

  "Come out here and answer the gentleman's questions. Didn't you say something once about a school for horse doctors near where you come from?"

  The boy gaped at him. "That place? They're all mad there, m'sieur; they belong in the madhouse across the river."

  "Mad?" said Aristide.

  Joseph shifted his feet uncomfortably, rubbing one manure-crusted wooden sabot against the other. "They cut up dead animals, m'sieur. Horses and sheep and cattle and such. Rotten carcasses out of the fields and off the roads, sometimes, or they'll buy an animal that's about to drop dead, cheap, off a farmer. Not to eat, mind you-just to look at their insides, especially when they're sick. Disgusting, my papa calls it, and sinful. God never meant us to be rummaging around anybody's innards; it's as bad as the hangman." He hastily made the sign of the cross.

  "Where is this school?"

  "Alfort, in the old ch?teau, the Baron de Bormes's that was."

  "Where on earth is Alfort?"

  "It's my village, m'sieur, beside the Marne, just before it runs into the Seine."

  "About six miles southeast from Paris," said Godart. "Just across the river from Charenton and the lunatic asylum, like the boy says. You're never thinking of paying those madmen a visit?"

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