The Black Tower

by Louis Bayard

  She and I are sitting in Vidocq’s salon, taking coffee—which her state of mind has rendered her incapable of drinking. She raises the cup…lets it fall. Again and again, her very own Tantalus.

  “Curious,” she says. “My brother remembers virtually nothing of the scaffold or the guillotine, but he does recall what happened along the way. He said you made him—go to sleep somehow. Without actually going to sleep. Oh, he was very confused about it, but he was quite clear on one point.”

  “Yes?”

  “You saved his life.”

  Fragments of self-deprecation form in my throat…but she frees me of the need to use them.

  “Tell me what you did,” she says.

  I have held out all this time without discussing my research—with anyone. But now, under great caution, I raise the name of Mesmer. A Viennese physician who blew into Paris forty years ago on clouds of scandal, expounding a theory called “animal magnetism.” Working with the most hopeless medical cases, Mesmer attached magnets to their bodies, waved a wand in front of them—and somehow effected remarkable cures.

  Traditional physicians loathed him, and after the Faculty of Medicine declared him a fraud, Mesmer slouched home. The cures themselves were hard to overlook, and there arose a clique of Parisian scientists who believed that Mesmer’s therapeutics might be detached from his dubious physics.

  I was one of them. Having witnessed the effects of altered consciousness in a clinical setting, I came to believe that these same techniques could be used to reduce vascular flow. If so, then Mesmer’s once-discredited practices might one day have revolutionary impacts on surgery and on the treatment of traumatic injuries.

  The Duchess, I will give her this, listens to the whole business without a yawn or a drooping lid. Only when she’s certain I’m done talking does she ask:

  “How does one prove such a theory, Doctor? If there aren’t any dying men at hand.”

  “Well, the animal studies were inconclusive.” That’s one word for it. “I could only conclude that the administrator—me, I mean—had to be able to instruct the subject. This, in turn, required a degree of trust between both parties. Something that can be difficult to realize with a mouse.”

  “Another human, then?”

  “No. Not another.”

  And like a boy caught stealing blackberries, I roll up my sleeve and present the now-faint ladder of cuts, first remarked upon by Vidocq in Saint-Cloud.

  “You tested the theory on yourself,” she says.

  “Five mornings a week. Staring into a mirror.”

  “You actually caused yourself to bleed?”

  “Well, yes,” I say, blushing as I turn the sleeve back down. “It never went on for too long.”

  Here is what I never tell her: that the act of drawing blood seemed an apt punishment for the waste I’d made of my life.

  Here is what I am only now realizing: I don’t want to do it anymore.

  “Doctor,” she says. “You’re a very interesting man.”

  “Madame, I hope you will forgive me if I presume to ask you a question?”

  “By all means.”

  “I’m sorry, but where does the palace think you are going every day?”

  “I tell them I’m praying.”

  “And that satisfies them?”

  An enervated smile plays across her lips. “They have long ceased to be curious about me. My husband, in particular.”

  “Well, then,” I say. “That is his loss, Madame.”

  “I would agree with you.”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, I am passing by Charles’ room when I hear him start from slumber. I am about to open the door when I hear his sister’s voice calling out to him.

  “Marie,” he says. “Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I tell you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t want to be king.”

  A long pause before her voice returns.

  “I know.”

  CHAPTER 48

  A Confession

  WITH CHARLES ON the mend, I’m free to sleep as late as I like—and still I wake just past dawn every morning, and still Vidocq is at least ten minutes ahead of me. Always seated for breakfast when I descend, with his newspaper half swallowing the table, his bowl of coffee smudged all the way round the rim. He shoves over the coffeepot.

  “Sleep well?” he asks, without expecting any answer.

  Some mornings, Jeanne-Victoire is there, too, but the ritual remains the same, and in my drowsier moments, I could believe that he and I have been meeting like this for years. All the more surprising, then, when Vidocq breaks the accustomed silence one morning to announce:

  “We have a guest.”

  I hear the scraping of boots on the marble steps outside. The rustle of a woman’s skirt.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  “Old friend.”

  And then the mighty door opens to reveal the Baronne de Préval.

  Dressed very much as she was when I met her in the Rue Férou. A black damask dress, a well-mended fichu, yellowing doeskin gloves. But with this addition: a gauze of envy. Her eyes take in Vidocq’s Aubusson rugs, the Empire console, the marble steps…all in the hands of a former convict. Oh, it’s enough to draw her face into points.

  “The gendarme told me you wish to see me, Monsieur.”

  “That’s so. Might I interest you in some tea, Madame?”

  “You are most kind. I should consider it a greater kindness, however, if you would come at once to your business.”

  “Very well.” With a flourish, he blots his lips, flings the napkin down. “Before this morning is out, Madame, I am fully prepared to take you under arrest. As an accomplice in a capital crime.”

  Her head rocks back an inch. Her eyes flash with amusement.

  “Accomplice?” she asks. “To whom?”

  “The late Marquis de Monfort.”

  “For what crime?”

  “Murder,” Vidocq answers, easily. “To start with.”

  She knots her shawl round her. Glares him down.

  “I can only conceive you are in jest, Monsieur.”

  “In these matters I never jest. Your friend the Marquis tried to kill Dr. Carpentier here. And Monsieur Charles, the young man you glimpsed in my office. Both of them managed to survive, but at least three other bodies may be laid at the Marquis’s door.” He waits. “One of them was your old friend Leblanc.”

  This takes the wind almost entirely out of her, as he must have guessed, for he is already guiding her toward the settee.

  “Leblanc?” she whispers, sinking into the cushions.

  “Oh, yes, Madame. We have all the confessions we need by now. To keep Monsieur Charles from claiming his crown, there was nothing the Marquis wouldn’t do. But there’s one thing he couldn’t have done,” Vidocq adds, in a quieter voice. “He couldn’t have known about Charles in the first place unless someone told him.”

  She stares at him. “You believe that I was his informant?”

  “You were the only one, Madame, who knew all the parties. The only one who stood at all the crossroads.”

  “But this is outrageous!”

  “You deny it, then?”

  Her face, credit her this, remains utterly impassive. It’s her voice that begins to break down.

  “I may have—mentioned certain things—in passing….”

  But she can’t deceive herself for too long. As the memory of her actions washes over her, a look of fear steals in her eyes, and she cries out:

  “But I meant no harm to anybody! You must believe me, Messieurs!”

  “That will surely depend,” says Vidocq, “on how believable you are. Perhaps you could start by telling us how you knew the Marquis.”

  She studies her gloves a long while. Then, in a voice decidedly smaller:

  “If you must know, he was an old admirer of mine. Not long after returning to Paris—in rather a weak moment—I called on him at his hôtel
.”

  “Why, Madame?”

  “I confess I still clung to the—the entirely absurd hope, I know, that I might”—she gives her head a fierce shake—“might reclaim my former position. In what we call society. The Marquis seemed to me a useful champion in that cause.”

  “And how did he welcome you?”

  “Coldly. I believe I may once have wounded his vanity. But he did call on me two days later, and he continued to call, on the order of once or twice a week. Naturally, he never promised me anything. No invitations were proffered, no introductions. But he was at pains never to dash my hopes, either.”

  “Of course not,” says Vidocq. “He had use for you. When did you first tell him of the dauphin?”

  “It was…” Her hands query the air. “I believe it was in the course of our very first conversation. Yes, we were discussing the royal family, and I let it drop that my dear friend Monsieur Leblanc had been—approached by someone—concerning Louis the Seventeenth. I can’t remember what I said exactly, I—well, I considered it no more than an amusement.”

  “And was the Marquis amused?”

  “As I recall, he showed scarcely any interest, even when I showed him the teething ring. But he did—yes, in subsequent conversations, he always contrived to return to the subject. Truthfully, he never appeared more than mildly curious. I had no reason to suspect him of anything.”

  And now, at last, the implications of her acts find their way home. In a tone of naked awe, she murmurs:

  “I told him—”

  “Everything,” interjects Vidocq. “You told him of me. Of Dr. Carpentier here. You told him that Monsieur Charles was, contrary to his assumptions, alive and well in Paris. Yes, Madame, thanks to the information you supplied, we may now add the destruction of Dr. Carpentier’s home to the Marquis’s crimes.”

  Her head drops beneath the weight of each charge—until at last she is staring straight at the floor.

  “I was only making conversation,” she whispers.

  “As Parisians do,” says Vidocq.

  Breathing heavily, she begins to knead her temples. For a second, I fully expect her to faint again.

  “Oh, God,” she whispers. “I sent Leblanc to his death.”

  “Not to mention Monsieur Tepac of Saint-Cloud,” says Vidocq. “Not to mention Dr. Carpentier’s mother.”

  There is something in his manner that forestalls any idea of clemency. Quite sensibly, then, she takes her petition to me.

  “Doctor,” she says. “Please believe me. I had no idea the Marquis would—he was the Duchess’s dearest friend, how could I imagine he would—harm anyone who might be her brother. If I’d known, Monsieur, I should sooner have cut out my own tongue….”

  Well, I’m not ashamed to admit it. When a highborn woman lowers herself to pleading, it does tear a bit at your heart, no matter how democratic you think yourself. And all the same, I don’t know what I’m going to say until I hear myself say it.

  “I do believe you, Madame.”

  Whatever consolation that gives her, though, is dispelled by the sinister lightness of Vidocq’s voice.

  “Whether the Duchess will feel the same way,” he says, “well, that’s another matter. I can run and ask her, though, if you’d like.”

  The Baroness gazes at him wildly.

  “The Duchess is here?” she asks.

  “She has stayed the night at this very house. Tending to her brother.”

  The last bloom of understanding rises up in the Baroness’s eyes.

  “Brother,” she echoes.

  And here all attempts at self-control end. Her head falls into her hands, and the tears come in throngs.

  “Oh, I am done for,” she moans into her thrice-mended handkerchief. “I am done for.”

  Given her state of mind, the Baroness might easily assume that the figure now descending the steps has dropped straight from heaven, arrayed in judgment. And it’s true the Duchess is strangely radiant for so early an hour. Of all of us, she’s gotten the least sleep, and yet there is an effulgence to her that I’d wager her own husband has never seen.

  With a compressed grace, she travels the remainder of those stairs, and in a quiet voice, she says:

  “The Baronne de Préval, I believe?”

  The disarray of the older woman’s emotions, the condition of her clothes leave her almost incapable of speech. At last, bursting the bounds of propriety, she leaps to her feet and blurts:

  “I knew you, Madame. When you were a child. I was dear friends with—”

  “The Princesse de Lamballe, yes. I remember you very well. And with pleasure.”

  The spark of reassurance in the older woman’s eyes fades as quickly as it rises.

  “I fear that can no longer be the case,” she says.

  Very steadily the Duchess looks at her. Then, pressing the older woman’s hands together, she draws her over to the settee.

  “You must not be too hard on yourself,” she says. “A great many of us were duped by the Marquis de Monfort. I am part of that sad sorority myself, and so it appears I require every bit as much forgiveness as you, if not more so.” Leaning closer, she adds, in a low and clear voice: “You need fear no prosecution from me. Or from France.”

  Gently withdrawing her hands, the Baroness fingers away her tears. “Madame…” She takes a long, slow breath. “You have quite overwhelmed me. And you have given me the—the loveliest farewell gift I could imagine.”

  “Farewell?” I say.

  “Yes,” she answers, giving me a heavy nod. “It was a mistake, I fear, coming back to Paris. I did it to please Leblanc, and now that he’s…” One last tear, fat and cumbersome, fingered away. “Well, in light of all that’s passed, I believe I must cut my losses, as they say. Before I do any more harm.”

  “But where will you go?” asks the Duchess.

  She laughs now, the Baroness. A strangely giddy sound, trailing from the long past.

  “I’ve no idea,” she says. “But women like me always manage. And with luck—with God’s blessing—I might one day be able to forgive myself for what I’ve done. If such a thing can be conceived.”

  Concentrating her forces now, she rises in a single swift motion. Extends her hand to the Duchess.

  “Permit me to thank you, Madame, for your abundant kindness. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”

  Under normal circumstances, such an affirmation would bring out all the Duchess’s awkwardness. She is famously shy—suspicious of affection. The serenity that enfolds her now is the first sign that she has her own ideas about the future.

  “No,” she says. “It is I who ought to thank you, Madame. In advance. For I am about to ask of you a very great service. And I can think of no one better suited to carry it out.”

  CHAPTER 49

  The Muslin Bag

  LEAVE IT TO the Duchess to come up with America.

  MANY YEARS AGO, at the height of the Terror, a noble family by the name of Lioncourt shipped out of Bordeaux, one step ahead of the men in red hats. Making their way across the Atlantic—first to Boston, then to the Hudson Valley—the Lioncourts were able, after many years of renting from a Dutch patroon, to acquire their own land. Forty-six acres of primeval glory.

  Through all this, they remained faithful correspondents with the Duchess and, in their letters, are ever entreating her to visit. She has so far declined, but she has at last found someone to send in her stead.

  “Oh, Doctor, can’t you imagine how happy Charles would be in such a place? All that wilderness. Not a city for miles, and not a single French partisan. Never again will he have to concern himself with affairs of state….”

  “But what will he do there?” I protest. “How will he live?”

  “The living you may leave to me. As to what he will do…” Her mouth lifts slightly at one corner. “Doesn’t every manor require a gardener? Even in the New World?”

  SO IT IS THAT, on a moonlit evening in late May, a curious party gathers at
the Quai Malaquais. Three black-bundled men, of varying sizes, and two women in black lace. Nothing about this assembly would suggest that it includes two members of the royal family and the most famous policeman in the land. Or that something perfectly historic—the quietest of abdications—is in the process of unfolding.

  Yes, in just a few minutes, an aged baroness and a man named Charles Rapskeller will step into a narrow flat-bottomed dory, manned by servants of the Duchesse d’Angoulême. They will be ferried upriver to Le Havre. From there, they will be placed on a three-masted barque to New York, with letters of introductions to all relevant figures.

  For this journey, the Baroness has stripped herself down to essentials. A crop of thinning gray hair where her wig would otherwise be. A slack white face, unadorned with powder or rouge. And yet something of her old station clings to her even now. Mark the rigid spine she maintains as she walks down the steps to the landing. Note her smile, still dazzling, and the unaffected dignity with which she accepts the Duchess’s hand.

  “Madame,” says the Baroness. “You may be certain I will watch over your brother. As if he were my own son.”

  “I know you will,” answers the Duchess.

  The Baroness is carefully handed down to the boatsmen…and now there’s nothing to keep Charles from his new life. Nothing but Charles himself.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go, Marie.”

  Stepping toward him now, she speaks in softly reasoning cadences, like a prioress.

  “My dear, you wouldn’t be safe here, you know that. If anyone were to learn who you are, you could never be happy or content again. And neither could I.”

  With a spasm of impatience now, she reaches into the folds of her cloak and draws out a bag of Indian muslin. About the size of a cabbage, lumpy and protuberant.

  “There,” she says, handing it to him with a grim satisfaction.

  “But what is it?”

  “Jewels.”

  Bracing the bag against his belly with his right arm, he uses his left hand to wheedle the drawstring apart. Even at nighttime, there is no mistaking the contents.