The Black Tower

by Louis Bayard

  CHAPTER 43

  The Dead Moth

  VIDOCQ IS TRUE to his word. Before twenty-four hours have passed, he has secured the promise of an audience with the Duchesse d’Angoulême. A day later, he has a time.

  “Thursday afternoon,” he announces. “One o’clock. At the hôtel of the Marquis de Monfort.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ve already met him, Hector. In the crypt of Saint-Denis. He was the fellow threatening your life.”

  At once it comes back to me: the voice of civilization. Move another inch, and you will die.

  “The Marquis is a bosom companion of the minister of justice,” adds Vidocq. “And a ferocious defender of the Duchess. And just so you don’t get your balls in a cinch, a bitter enemy of the Comte d’Artois. Oh, don’t think I’ve forgotten your grand conspiracy theory. Now we’ll need to find our boy Charles some nice clothes. Nothing too grand, we don’t want him looking presumptuous. But we don’t want him looking like a peasant, either. You might have a go at those nails of his. And for the love of God, Hector, get him to take a bath, will you?”

  Prefecture funds are appropriated for Charles’ new suit and polished boots and doeskin gloves. As for me…well, one of Vidocq’s old black suits is speedily adapted to my frame, but without the original owner’s heft to cling to, the fabric falls away in pouches of protest. I am deeply conscious of these pouches as the carriage pulls into the porte cochere of the Hôtel de Monfort. I am even more conscious of them when a servant in dove gray livery shows us into an interior apartment, walled round in Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries. A tapestried armchair, a velvet settee. Voluptuous curtains, folded as elegantly as women’s gowns. By the fireplace, an epic screen with nine panels of Attic warfare.

  “Is this a museum?” asks Charles.

  “You might say,” says Vidocq.

  He turns in that instant to find the museum keeper himself, with a fresh vest of white piqué and two diamond pins on his frill. If the Marquis recognizes Vidocq from their previous meeting, there is no sign of it. No sign of anything, really, but distaste. Warring with duty.

  “Before we begin, Monsieur,” says the Marquis, “I must beg of you a word in private.”

  “You may speak freely before these gentlemen,” Vidocq answers. “They are as concerned in the matter as I am.”

  No sign he remembers us, either. Or wishes to.

  “If this matter had been left in my hands,” he intones, “none of you should be standing here today. I have opened my home to you strictly as a personal favor to the minister. I would bid you remember that.”

  “Duly noted, Monsieur le Marquis. In turn, I would bid you recall that three people have been killed in order to prevent this meeting. Doesn’t their sacrifice make it worth a little bit of your time? And the Duchess’s?”

  As it did in the crypt, the Marquis’s right leg advances into the pose of a duellist. His voice, though, retreats by just a fraction.

  “Monsieur Vidocq,” he says, “you must understand. I have known the Duchess since she was a little girl. She has weathered three lifetimes of suffering. I wish only to spare her more.”

  “And I hope only to bring her joy, Monsieur.”

  A little flash of reckoning in the Marquis’s brown eyes.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he says. “No more. And the Duchess retains the right to terminate the interview at any time. As do I.”

  “Agreed,” says Vidocq.

  Such an air of confidence in him. I wish I had a tenth as much, but I can’t seem to find a happy ending to any of this. I see the Marquis, tawny and inviolable. I see Charles, passing something between his feet. (A tennis ball! Where did he get it?) And then, a minute later, sweeping in like a winter storm: the Duchesse d’Angoulême.

  Niece to the current king, daughter-in-law to the Comte d’Artois. A more complete vision than she was in the crypts of Saint-Denis but smaller, too, and more crabbed. No white cashmere or scarlet velvet for her. It’s corsets and black crepe, thank you, and how are you proposing to waste the next chunk of my life?

  “Good afternoon, Madame. I am Chief Inspector Vidocq of the Brigade de Sûreté.”

  “I have heard report of you,” she says, in a voice every bit as chilly as her extended hand.

  “You flatter me beyond all reason. May I present to you the gentleman who has so graciously assisted me in these investigations?” A concerted pause, during which my trousers bunch out in ten places. “Dr. Hector Carpentier.”

  “Carpentier,” she murmurs.

  Not knowing what else to do, I stagger forward.

  “It is a very great honor to address you, Madame. I believe you had occasion to meet my father. In less happy times.”

  “Yes,” she says. Past and present wash over her, blurring her features. “I remember your father, of course, with great fondness. He was most kind to me and to my…” One of her gloved fingers tinkers with the gold cross round her neck. “Me and my—”

  “Indeed,” says Vidocq, cutting in. “You have graciously brought us round, Madame, to the theme of our inquiry. As I have informed the minister, recent events have raised the possibility—and I mean only the possibility—that the young man you see before you might—a word I cannot possibly overemphasize, Madame—might, I say, be someone not unknown to you.”

  “Is that what he would have you believe?”

  “No, Madame. About his childhood he recalls precious little. He has never professed to be anyone but Charles Rapskeller. The claim has only been made in his behalf.”

  “And who has made it?”

  “Unfortunately, the claimants have had the—the singular misfortune of dying, Madame. In rather untimely fashion. One of them was Monsieur Chrétien Leblanc, whom you may also remember.”

  Another name, whirling out of the past. She lowers her head, as if she could actually dodge it.

  “As this young man appears to be in some danger himself, Madame, we thought it expedient to bring him before you. For no other reason than his own safety. If you could absolutely and categorically deny that he is Louis-Charles, Duc de Normandie…well then, you might do him the not inconsiderable service of saving his life.”

  Appealing to her well-known vein of charity. A canny move—except there is not a drop of charity in the Duchess’s face now.

  “It seems pointless, Monsieur, to deny something so self-evident. You may recall that my brother is dead.”

  “Well, yes,” concedes Vidocq. “That is the generally accepted notion. However, in the absence of—of an actual body…”

  The Marquis rises from his chair, his mouth shaping itself round in admonition. But the Duchess is well ahead of him.

  “This insolence,” she says in a slowly simmering voice, “is too much to be borne. You tell me my brother lives. I tell you he does not. As it seems impossible to unite on this point, Monsieur, I therefore propose we conclude our interview at once.”

  And here interposes the one person in the room whom no one has been paying much attention to.

  “You have lovely hair,” says Charles. “What I can see of it.”

  In the shock of the moment, the Duchess’s hand flies toward her small English bonnet. Patches of purple bleed through her cheeks.

  “My apologies,” interjects Vidocq. “The young man is not always—his mind appears to be…”

  “Vile,” she croons. “Vile creature.”

  With a look of disdainful attraction, she advances on Charles.

  “I have already turned away several like you,” she hisses. “All claiming to be my dear brother. It shall be my great pleasure to turn you away, too.”

  “I hope you won’t,” says Charles. “We just got here, you see.”

  And by now it’s no longer a question of whether he will win her over. It’s a question of whether he will get out of this room alive.

  “Tell me,” she says, raising her voice to a crowlike register. “Tell me, Monsieur Pretender. What day was it that my father died?”

/>   The question doesn’t so much baffle as fly right over him. With a twist of a smile, he turns to me, then to Vidocq, then back to her.

  “Ah, you have forgot, have you?” says the Duchess. “January the twenty-first. Any student of history might have told you that. But perhaps you remember the firing of the cannon that followed hard upon his death. Do you? Do you remember how you reacted? Do you remember what our aunt said?”

  The Marquis places a hand on her elbow. “My child,” he murmurs. “Please…”

  “Do you remember what she and Mother did for you that night? Out of the ordinary?” Her face squeezes down into hard straight lines. “Perhaps you recall the day you gathered my correspondence for me. In what room did you leave it? In what manner?”

  For the first time, there is a look of fear in Charles’ eye. He puts out his hands, as though he were bracing for a foil thrust.

  “Oh, and please tell me what you did to me on New Year’s Day, 1793? How did you do it? In what room did you do it?”

  A long, long silence, as the last embers of hope die out. The Duchess’s face? Well, I can only describe it as ecstatically grim.

  “It appears to me that Monsieur Rapskeller’s silence is all the confirmation that anyone could require. My brother, if he were alive, would have had an answer to each of these questions.”

  Vidocq begins to scratch his scalp.

  “He suffers—I don’t believe I’ve mentioned, Madame—amnesia. Dr. Carpentier here could corroborate—”

  “I must regretfully bid you good afternoon.”

  Flicking her black fan at us, she reaches for the bell to summon her maid. A deliberately slow and ponderous motion: She knows no one can stop her.

  No one but Charles.

  “It was a moth,” he says.

  She squints at him.

  “What did you say?”

  “I found a moth. A death’s-head hawkmoth. So strange to find one in January. I put it in a jar.”

  It’s the same dawning I witnessed in the Tuileries gardens. His face, his person are wrenched open; the light pours in.

  “And when you were napping,” he says, “I stole into your room—you were sleeping on Mother’s bed because she had a Marseilles quilt—and I put the moth down your shift. And you woke up screaming. And the moth, yes, it fluttered round inside your clothes. It was dead by the time we got it out, poor devil. I remember it left some of its—its wing dust on your skin. And you said, ‘Never mind, we’ll bury it, and it will go straight to heaven.’ And we buried it in the wood cellar.”

  Her lips moving silently, the Duchess drops onto a settee.

  “And your letters,” Charles says. “I wrapped them in a white ribbon, and I stuck a rose inside, and I wrote: These Belong to Madame la Sérieuse, because that’s what Mother used to call you. Open on Penalty of Death, I wrote. And I left them for you on that little winding stair that used to go from the wardrobe to the attic. And I didn’t think about the death business. I was just being funny.

  “And when the cannons boomed that day, I…”

  He waves his hand before his face.

  “I started to laugh. I was crying, really, but it came out wrong. Aunt Élizabeth wasn’t angry at all. She said, ‘Yes, my child. Your father is laughing, too, for he’s with the angels in heaven, where there is endless joy.’ And when I thought of Father being with angels, I really did cry, I couldn’t stop. And Mother and Aunt Élizabeth let me stay up later than usual, and they let me play at backgammon, though I hadn’t the heart for it. And they made me a sleeping draught with wine and soda water, and Mother held me—in her arms—till I went to sleep.

  “And when I woke up the next morning, you were there. Standing right over me. And you had a senna tree, I don’t know where you found it. And you said, ‘We must plant this together. For Father. So that every time we look at it, we may think of him.’”

  The Duchesse d’Angoulême wraps her arms round her ears. Lowers her head to her lap.

  Slowly, tenderly, unopposed by anyone else in the room, Charles Rapskeller kneels before her. Rests his forehead on top of her bonnet.

  “Marie,” he says. “I’ve come home. Just as I said I would. Remember? Our last night together?”

  And then, with her fan, she strikes him in the face.

  The second blow is on his shoulder. By the fourth blow, she has discarded her fan and is using only her gloved fist.

  Such is her rank that no one makes a move to stop her. Charles, least of all. No longer averse to touch, he simply suffers the blows to rain down, one after the next. A blow for every year he has been absent.

  At last he grabs her hand and presses it to his lips.

  “The Lord is merciful,” she murmurs, falling into his arms. “Gaze on His works. The Lord is merciful.”

  CHAPTER 44

  A Rupture of Etiquette

  SOMETHING I WILL always remember: the Duchess’s face as it reemerges from that initial embrace. Radiant with terror, not joy. Her fingers actually tremble as they cup Charles’ face.

  “It is you,” she says.

  And having reassured herself, the bottom drops out from inside, and she subsides into a torrent of weeping. Never before, I think, has Madame la Sérieuse mourned or rejoiced so freely.

  “Pray excuse me,” she stammers.

  The Marquis lays his hand on her bowed head.

  “No need, my child. I have prayed for this day, too.”

  Officially sanctioned now, her tears come hot and fast, forming a membrane between her and the world, transforming that pinched red face into some approximation of its youthful bloom. At last, dazed and drained, she wobbles to her feet. Takes the handkerchief proffered by Vidocq.

  “Well,” she says. “This does change things.”

  “It certainly does,” agrees Vidocq.

  “I must…” Her eyes scatter from tapestry to tapestry. “I must tell my uncles, mustn’t I?”

  “The King, yes,” the Marquis answers. “I beg you to leave me the pleasure of informing the Comte d’Artois.”

  The meaning behind his icy smile is lost on her, for there is no irony in her world now. And no other object but this young man, crouching on the floor where she left him.

  “Come,” she says, extending her hand. “You must come with me now.”

  He takes her hand. Rises.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay with Hector.”

  Had he declared he was swimming to the moon, he might have met with the same bafflement. She doesn’t even know at first whom he’s referring to.

  “Do you mean…” Her fingers waggle in my direction. “With him?”

  “Just for tonight,” Charles says. “Hector and I have been through quite a lot, you know. And he sits with me till I go to sleep and his bones never creak, and just for tonight, I think, that’s where I belong. And then tomorrow…I’ll belong to you.”

  “We’ve so much to talk about,” she protests. “Years and years…”

  “And many more years in which to do it,” says the Marquis, advancing. “But, my dear, before we start assigning this young man a bed at the palace, we must first be sure of his welcome.”

  “His welcome? How could the rightful King of France not be welcome?”

  “I fear not everyone will see it as you do, my child. No, indeed,” he adds, with a meaningful look at us, “not everyone. For the time being, we must proceed with great caution. Now Monsieur Vidocq here and the good doctor have watched over Charles all these weeks. I think we may trust them to shelter him an additional night.”

  Vidocq quickly seconds the point, and to both their arguments, she has only her own will to oppose. Which proves not quite so formidable as her habit of obedience, even to social inferiors. (The Temple schooled her well.) It’s almost breathtaking, the humility with which she finally addresses me.

  “Do you think I might come to call tomorrow morning?”

  “But, of course, Madame!” interjects Vidocq. “You may consider
my home your personal pied-à-terre.”

  One condition she extracts before leaving: She must touch her brother one last time.

  Her hands rove round his face, rehearsing the old features. To which Charles submits gladly.

  “We have God to thank for this,” she whispers. “There is nothing He cannot do. Till tomorrow,” she says, releasing him under slow duress.

  “Tomorrow,” he answers.

  And so the Duchesse d’Angoulême leaves the room a far different woman than when she entered. The Marquis escorts her to the carriage, and as the door closes after him, Vidocq flings his hat straight to the ceiling. It never comes back. We look up to find it wrapped round the teardrop crystals of the Marquis’s chandelier.

  “We did it,” he says.

  A nice pronoun, that we. Except that for the next several minutes, he talks only of himself. The grand future that awaits him. Bounties and rewards, receptions at the Tuileries, invitations to Baron Pozzo’s salon. Before long his own division. (Watch out, Inspector Yvrier!) And if he gets the title he fully expects, what’s to stop him from laying claim to the Prefecture itself?

  This destiny floats before him a few seconds longer. Then he makes for the door.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “To celebrate, you damned fool. Just so happens I’ve got a young filly back home. Waiting to be broken in, you get my drift. Oh, she’s got a field of clover you’d—”

  “I love horses, too,” says Charles.

  “Yes,” says Vidocq after a pause. “Fine animals. Now see if the Marquis will spot you to dinner and a couple bottles of wine. Least he can do. And don’t leave the manse by yourselves. Send for some gendarmes, there’s a station house not two blocks away. Drop my name, if you must. And meet me back at Maison Vidocq, all right? Before we retire tonight, we’ll raise a toast to our triumph.”

  “Do you have champagne?” asks Charles hopefully.

  “Do flies eat shit?” he calls back, hauling open the doors.

  As usual, he takes with him a goodly portion of the room’s oxygen. The air is definitely thinner, yes, and the walls themselves seem to close round us as Charles says, in a soft tone: