The Black Tower

by Louis Bayard

  “At least I think that’s what it was. Too late to duck.”

  Taking advantage of his stupor, they trussed him like a horse in a rope and martingale, dragged him down the steps, and locked him in the Marquis’s wine cellar.

  “That was the cruelest stroke of all, Hector. Leaving me a foot away from all those vintages and no means to drink.”

  The wine, however, was his salvation. With his bound feet, he was able to pull one of the bottles from the racks and shatter it against the stone floor. The shards of glass he used to cut his ropes.

  Before him and freedom stood only a locked door. A small barrier indeed, once he’d located a corkscrew. After reviving his spirits with a bottle of the Marquis de Monfort’s best Burgundy, he proceeded to overpower the man assigned to guard him. Two more soon followed, at which point Vidocq seized the hammer and started swinging freely. Another three picked up their heels and ran.

  “And then I turn round—and there stands our Monsieur, real as life. A pair of blackguards on either side of him. And in each of his hands, a fisticuff pistol, wrapped in a monogrammed handkerchief. Well, I was treed, I don’t mind telling you. Calm as I could be, I said, ‘You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble, Monsieur.’

  “And he said, ‘Oh, I’d hoped to avoid all this mess, but I can’t have you taking someone else’s rightful throne. It won’t do, you know.’”

  “What happened then?”

  “Well, I figured my only chance was to prick the bugger’s vanity. ‘Come now,’ I said. ‘Shooting a man’s not the way for you. Aren’t you one of the premier swordsmen in the land? Why don’t we settle this, just the two of us? Let’s take the buttons off your foils and have at it.’”

  “You challenged him to a duel?”

  “Well, what I failed to mention is I’m a bit of an old hand with the foil myself. Learned when I was a kid, roistering with the soldier boys in Arras. First man I ever killed was a fencing instructor.”

  Never mind, Monsieur accepted the offer straightaway and set the time and place. Now. In the courtyard.

  Strange sort of duel. Not pistols at dawn but blades in the middle of the afternoon. No seconds present, unless you count the two hired knaves cheering Monsieur on—even threatening to tilt the contest in his favor.

  Vidocq had the advantage of being younger and larger. Monsieur, on his side, was spryer and, having fenced more recently, possessed the more dazzling technique. (“The footwork was a joy, Hector.”) Round and round they went on the parterres, as evenly matched as combatants could be. Every parry led to its natural riposte. Counterparry followed counterriposte. The sound of the blades resounded against the white plaster walls, the rooks cawed from the roofline, Monsieur’s knaves cheered and booed…and Vidocq soon realized he was running out of time.

  “Oh, I was breathing hard, my friend. Then, out of nowhere, Monsieur comes out with the rose couverte. Wings me in the side, knocks me on the back. Next thing I know his foil’s jabbing into my neck. You can see the scab right there.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, the thing that saved me is this. I’m no gentleman. Many years ago, in the galleys, Goupil taught me a little savate move called the snapping turtle. Came back to me in a trice. And when I heard Monsieur’s leg go, I suddenly remembered: ‘That’s where the snapping part comes from.’

  “So there he lies, poor devil. Leg broken clean. Groaning and gasping. ‘You might as well kill me,’ he says.”

  “And did you?”

  “Didn’t have to. One of his own men went and took a carving knife to his throat. There’s loyalty for you. Bastard thought he’d get a reward out of it, too. I said the only reward you’ll get is a free stay in an educational institution of my choice. Unless you tell me where they took my friends.

  “Well, out came the whole plan. The ringleader of those mugs goes by the name of Cornevin. Oh, I know him well. When Monsieur came asking for his services, Cornevin told him, ‘I’ll do it for free if you can help my brother. He’s set to meet Old Growler this very week.’ Well, Monsieur saw his chance. If he could switch Charles with Cornevin—not too hard for a man of his connections—and then switch you with the other man…well, that would take care of all his problems in two strokes of the blade.”

  To the memory of that blade I shut my eyes. It’s then I realize how dry my mouth is. I haven’t been able to salivate since four o’clock this afternoon.

  “Changelings,” I say, taking another swig of wine.

  “I don’t know if Monsieur quite grasped the symbolism, but yes. So there it was, Hector! Not much time, eh? I locked Cornevin and his pals in the wine cellar, and then who should come knocking but the Duchess? Had a special locket she wanted to give her brother—so he could put it under his pillow tonight. I said, ‘Your brother won’t be needing pillows unless you get to the Place de Grève as fast as you can.’”

  “You didn’t leave with her?”

  “No, I already had another plan in mind. See, there was no way I could call off the execution, and frankly I had doubts whether anyone would listen to the Duchess—she doesn’t fill a body with fear, does she?—but they’d have to listen to the King’s younger brother. And it just so happens I look like the gentleman in question.”

  “I’ve noticed,” I say, summoning back the image of Vidocq (or so I thought him) staring out from the King’s carriage.

  “Well, of course, I didn’t have my usual clothes, so I had to make do with the Marquis’s. Had to draft a fake writ. And being banged about, I had to clean myself up a bit. Oh, but you should have seen my coachman’s face when I climbed in!”

  “So you dressed up as Artois while the real Comte was lying dead in the courtyard?”

  “The real…oh, Christ, Hector, are you still going on about that? Artois wasn’t Monsieur.”

  “Who was, then?”

  A moment of pure exasperation now, as though I’ve missed the whole point of an epic-length joke.

  “Our host! The Duchess’s dear friend. The Marquis de Monfort.”

  THERE REALLY ARE advantages to being an intimate of the minister of justice. When you die under shameful circumstances, your friend makes sure that nothing is left to stain your memory. Vidocq is duly instructed to alter his report of the Marquis de Monfort’s death; all known accomplices are banished to their cells; and the next day, Parisian newspapers bruit the shocking and unexplained murder of a peer of the realm by unknown assailants.

  The palace declares itself saddened, and the Marquis is buried with all appropriate pomp. His eulogists praise his loyalty to the Bourbons during their long exile, and the Chamber of Peers votes to erect a tablet in his honor.

  “They’ll never give me a tablet,” grouses Vidocq, tossing the newspaper in disgust.

  We’re sitting down to breakfast. It’s been a long night for Charles—and a bleary morning for me. I’m on my third bowl of coffee, and I’m still waiting for the lint to burn from my brain.

  “What I don’t understand,” I say, “is why the Marquis faked his own attack. I could have sworn I saw him knocked to the ground.”

  “It was all a ruse, Hector. If his plan fell through—if, by some chance, you escaped—he could pretend he wasn’t behind it. It’s why he didn’t have me killed, probably. He figured I’d tell everyone about the big bad men who broke into his house.”

  “And he went to all this trouble to ensure Artois’ succession? You told me they were mortal enemies.”

  “They were.”

  Vidocq covers his mouth, but there’s no hiding that motile eyebrow.

  “Oh, come,” I say. “We can’t have any more secrets after all this.”

  “Well, it seems yesterday morning, my boys were going through the Marquis’s belongings, and they made an interesting find.”

  Behind a false panel, hidden by a round-bellied bureau in the Marquis’s bedroom, the men of Number Six found a small shrine. Relic after relic, hoarded like ladies’ fans. At first the object of devotion was u
nclear—until someone pulled out a tricolor flag. Then came a handful of bee napkins. Pamphlets and placards. Maps of Austerlitz and Jena.

  And, in an inner recess, a whole host of effigies. Napoleon plates. Napoleon teacups. Napoleon busts. Coins, engravings, ivory cameos, rolled-up oil portraits. The totems of a savior, patiently awaited.

  Further inquiries found that the Marquis had, in the past, voiced sentiments of a troubling and antiroyalist nature. More than one salon hostess had been startled to hear him say that Napoleon had schooled France to be great—and that the Bourbons were still truant. Waterloo was lost, the Marquis liked to say, because that peasant Lacoste didn’t know about the sunken road to Ohain. With a better-informed guide, Napoleon would never have ordered the charge of Milhaud’s cuirassiers…a third of Dubois’ brigade would never have tumbled into the abyss…France would still be the envy of the world.

  One of the Marquis’s mistresses blushingly confessed that he had once secured a private audience with Bonaparte himself—and had come away with a silver signet, a small token of the emperor’s affection that was affixed to a chain and worn round his neck. He wore it to his dying day and was, by his own charge, buried with it.

  And now it seems to me that no amount of coffee will make me lucid.

  “He went through all this—he killed all these people—just to keep the throne warm for Napoleon?”

  “Well,” says Vidocq, “look at it from his angle. Louis the Seventeenth, if he were to come back, would be a far harder fellow to topple than Louis the Eighteenth. No one cares about an old man in gaiters, but the orphan of the Temple? Raised to life again? We’d drown him in rosary beads. And never let go.”

  “And the Marquis honestly believed Napoleon would return? And France would welcome him back?”

  “Pick your messiah,” says Vidocq, shrugging. “There’s never any accounting for people’s faith. Is there, Hector?”

  CHAPTER 47

  In Which the Nature of Hector’s Research Is Revealed

  THE ONE CONSPICUOUS absence at the Marquis’s funeral is the Duchesse d’Angoulême. Word circulates among mourners that she is ill, but at the precise moment of her old friend’s interment, she is actually sitting in a bedroom in the Rue de l’Hirondelle, tearing up Mother Vidocq’s linen sheets for the purpose of making bandages.

  Before her lies the man she calls brother. No longer plumped on pillows. Flat and still and pale.

  “Has he awakened since last night?” she asks.

  “No,” I say. “But his pulse is steady, and his breathing is free. At present, we can only keep dressing the wound and making him as comfortable as we can.”

  She nods and carries on with the rending of sheets. Surprising strength in those white veiny fingers.

  “If you have any pressing obligations, Madame, I should be glad to send word when his condition changes.”

  “Actually, I should prefer to stay. If you don’t mind.”

  She stays the whole day. And nothing about Charles’ wound or the dressing of it stirs the slightest revulsion in her. So quietly and methodically does she go about her work that I find myself more than once thinking she’s missed her true vocation.

  And then I recall that this was her objective all those months in the Temple: to nurse her brother. And now, at last, someone is letting her.

  She has never once asked for a court physician.

  AT FOUR IN the afternoon, Mother Vidocq arrives with a tray nearly as large as her.

  “Here, Madame la Duchesse. I’ve brought you biscuits and a lovely pot of chrysanthemum tea. Just the thing to keep your strength up. Here’s some water for our patient to sip when he wakes up. And for the doctor, a nice glass of cassis. Drink up, my dears. I’ve also brought more sheets. Tear them to shreds for all I care, a body doesn’t need more than one at a time….”

  A few minutes later, Jeanne-Victoire wanders in, coolly nodding her respects.

  “You ought to open his shirt,” she says. “He’ll breathe better.”

  Having so advised me, she leaves. Mindful, though, of the woman in black silk, she pauses in the doorway and abruptly drops into a curtsey.

  It’s not her awkwardness that makes me smile. It’s the confluence: a duchess and a baker’s wife and a thief’s mistress gathering in the same room to tend to a lost king. You don’t find that every day in Paris.

  The next morning, the first signs of suppuration appear through the crust of Charles’ wound. I do everything that comes to mind. Chlorinated lotions, nitrate of silver. Bleeding, leeches. The infection continues to spread.

  Several days later, the Duchess, removing her brother’s dressing, is sent reeling by the odor from his wound. Reaching for a handkerchief, she gazes down at freshly blackened skin, oozing humors.

  “Gangrene,” she says.

  For half a second, I think of lying, but then she looks me in the eye and says:

  “What do you propose to do?”

  I don’t know if I can convey it, the tone of her voice. No outrage, no altitude. She genuinely wants to know, and she thinks I’m the man to tell her. I don’t even pause to ask what Father would have done.

  “In my opinion, we should remove another length of bone.”

  “Another…”

  She glances back to see if the patient has heard.

  “The necrosis has spread too far,” I explain. “By removing another two inches or so, I believe we can cut away the festering tissue and, with luck, save the rest of his arm.”

  “And him?” She holds my gaze. “Will you save him?”

  “I think we can raise his chances to—roughly even.”

  She draws in a long breath and then, as she studies Charles’ form thrashing beneath the blankets, expels the breath.

  “As you wish,” she says.

  We operate that very afternoon. Jeanne-Victoire braces Charles’ legs. Vidocq grips the torso, and his mother holds the lantern. The Duchess volunteers, against all attempts to dissuade her, to hold the tenaculum artery forceps.

  I’ve dosed Charles liberally with laudanum, but once the bow saw gets to work and the dead flesh gives way to living bone, the drug’s effects soon evaporate. His body begins to buck. Blood gorges his throat, his jaw drops open to reveal the full extent of his soft palate, and screams emerge in an unbroken sequence.

  “Hector,” mutters Vidocq, sweating from the effort of restraining him. “Will you hurry up?”

  This time, at least, we dispense with the tar. A tourniquet slows the bleeding enough to allow ligatures to be applied, and Charles, with the help of another dose of laudanum, eventually falls into a vexed sleep.

  Through the better part of two days, his fever builds, dropping only to rise again. More bleeding, more leeches. The Duchess tears up more sheets for lint, changes more dressings. Holds a damp towel to Charles’ brow, meets his wildest ravings with a raspy coo. She doesn’t even flinch when, late in the second day, he sings—three times—the ditty with which he favored our Palais-Royal prostitutes.

  Mainly, though, his repertoire consists of groans and wails. One night, a particularly strenuous cry jars me from my cot, sends me flying toward his bed, where I’m astonished to find him, for once, in a deep sleep. A second later, an even louder cry rends the darkness.

  Lighting a lamp, I creep into the hallway. The door to Vidocq’s bedroom stands open about a foot, and in the aperture I see the satiated face of Jeanne-Victoire, sprawled naked across the bed. Driving into her from behind: the great Vidocq, mossy-chested and omnivorous, a deity in human form.

  I’m too astonished to look away—or even conceal myself. In a voice decidedly suave, Vidocq drawls:

  “Close the door, will you, old boy?”

  The next morning, he comes down to find me picking at an omelette of chives and cheese. When he asks me how the patient is, I answer in two words, and I decline to meet his eye.

  “Ohh,” he says. “Sulking, are we? I didn’t realize I needed your say-so to fuck a woman in my own bed
.”

  “She’s not just any woman.”

  “That’s the truth,” he answers, exploding into a grin.

  I slide him a bowl of cream for his coffee. Toss him a napkin.

  “Just promise me one thing,” I say.

  “Name it.”

  “You’ll do right by her child.”

  “Child?”

  “The baby. The one we found in Poulain’s apartment.”

  He stares at me. “The baby died of smallpox, Hector. Not ten days after we saw her.”

  “But she—no, Jeanne-Victoire said the child was staying with her brother. In Issy.”

  “Well, yes, that’s where they’re both buried. I should know, I paid the expenses. Oh, come, don’t look like that. Jeanne-Victoire’s made of tougher stuff than either of us. She’ll get through.”

  It flashes across my mind now: her face as I saw it that night in the alleyway, standing over Herbaux’s crumpled form. Small white teeth shining in the moonlight. A feral prettiness. Still very much with the living.

  “The question,” says Vidocq, dropping his head into his hands, “is will I get through?”

  THAT EVENING, INSTEAD of retiring to my cot, I fall asleep in my chair. A comprehensive sleep, dreamless, trackless. The next morning, Mama Vidocq has to shake me a good five minutes before she can wake me.

  “Doctor,” she says. “The fever’s broken.”

  An hour later, when the Duchess arrives, Charles is, for the first time in his convalescence, sitting up in bed. A potted geranium rests in his lap. Orange pulp shines from the crevices of his teeth. His eyes are a Persian blue.

  “Good morning, Marie.”

  She lowers herself onto his bed. Takes his palm and presses her forehead against it.

  “I CAN SCARCELY believe it,” she tells me later that morning. “He’s his old self….”

  How strangely the phrase sounds on her lips. His old self. A man she’s known but two weeks. A boy she last saw twenty-four years ago.