The Black Tower

by Louis Bayard

  “But, Marie,” he says, in a hush. “What am I to do with all these?”

  “Sell them,” she answers, simply. “Piece by piece, as needed.”

  With one stroke of her finger, she tightens the drawstring.

  “There is enough here to keep you for life, Charles. As many gardens as you”—her eyes graze over the bandaged vacancy at the end of his arm—“as you wish.”

  Except for the slosh of the river against the landing, all is quiet, and all is dark—not even a single lighterman on the nearby barges. Which means that Charles’ trembling registers as a vibration in our skin.

  “I can’t,” he’s saying. “I don’t have a right to all this.”

  “Who has more right than you?” retorts the Duchess. “And what use do I have for jewelry? Ask anyone, I’m the least fashionable woman in France. Baubles are wasted on me. You will get far more use out of them than I ever should.”

  “But you could come with us!” he cries, springing up on his toes. “We could all cross the ocean together. We could even bring Hector. Wouldn’t that be splendid?”

  She studies him very hard. And this is the first (and last) time that I will append the predicate laughs to the subject the Duchess. Although even that requires a proviso, for it is the kind of laugh that drags sorrow behind it.

  “Forgive me,” she says. “I was just imagining how I would compose my note to the Duke. ‘Very sorry. Bound for America. Please begin the whist without me. Oh, and tell the King I will send along his embroidered stockings next year.’ No,” she says, patting his cheek. “I’m afraid it won’t do, my dear. You to your world, I to mine.”

  “And will you be happy in your world?”

  “More so than in a very long time. More so knowing you are well and cared for.”

  Her poise has carried her this far. How surprised she must be to have it desert so abruptly.

  “Marie,” he says, fluttering his hands round her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, it’s—they said I was to take care of you. Mother and Aunt Élizabeth. Before they were taken away, they said—that was my charge—to…” She drives her fists toward her eyes.

  “But you have,” he says. “My whole life I owe to you.”

  Through red-rimmed corneas, she stares at him. No more than twenty seconds, I’d venture, but it feels much longer.

  “And to think I must lose you twice over,” she says.

  “Not lost. Never that.”

  Wordlessly, she nods.

  “I’ll write you when we land,” he says. “Would you like that?”

  Another nod. Then she makes a quick sign of the cross on his forehead and seals it with a kiss, and in a hoarse whisper, she says:

  “May God travel with you always.”

  Every fiber of her will is enlisted in the act of turning away. But once she does, she never turns back. Any more than she notices Vidocq bounding forward.

  “Well, then, young man!” he says with a headmaster’s chortle. “I don’t mind saying I envy you. I’ve always wanted a go at America myself.”

  “Oh, then, you can come, too. You could disguise yourself as a seagull.”

  This is tendered in all seriousness, which is how Vidocq receives it.

  “Next spring,” he suggests. “I’ll come as a swallow.”

  The evening is drawing on, the departure time has come, and the farewells are complete. Except for one.

  “Hector…”

  Charles searches for me in the darkness, but I make a point of staying where I am, arms crossed.

  “Keep yourself bundled,” I call out. “It’s cold out there on the ocean, and we’ve all worked too hard to lose you to pneumonia.”

  By now, of course, he’s used to being passed from owner to owner. He took the news of Monsieur Tepac’s death the way one might learn of a detour in a road. And it is too much to say he is moved by this latest parting. Disarranged is more like it. A shifting of the inner plates, only faintly seismic.

  “Good-bye,” he says.

  He takes his place next to the Baroness in the rocking dory. The muslin bag he drops into the space between his boots—passes it back and forth, twice, and then squeezes it into stillness. The boatman drives the oar-blade into the shore, the black water folds round the hull, the tide takes hold. And as the boat draws away, Charles’ eyes, on impulse, flick back toward the landing. Where the only pair of eyes waiting to meet them is mine.

  And in the instant that the boat disappears round the river’s bend, I can feel Father standing alongside me. For the words that form in my mind are addressed directly to him.

  We’ve done it. We’ve finished the job.

  CHAPTER 50

  The Making of a Forger

  WELL, AT SOME POINT, a physician requires his own lodgings.

  It’s true, Mama Vidocq would let me stay as long as I wish, but I can no longer impose on her—and her son wouldn’t allow it. Accordingly, he petitions the Ministry of Justice to grant me a reward for my services to the crown. The response is swift: two hundred francs, in a crisp envelope. Before another week is out, I am in possession of three rooms, two suits, a gold chain, and a new pair of calf-length boots. And—my proudest possession—yellow evening gloves.

  The one thing I’m missing is a future. But the present, all in all, is agreeable. For several hours altogether, I wander my rooms, taking in every feature. Painted woodwork, gilded moldings. A worktable inlaid with pearl. In the dining room there’s an old Persian rug, bought from Mother Gaucher’s in the Rue du Figuier-Saint-Paul. I give up an entire morning to studying this—every arabesque and palmette—lingering with special relish on the Tyrian purple of the medallion.

  At first I think it’s the novelty of my belongings that attracts me. Then I realize that their novelty is what troubles me. Couldn’t they all vanish as quickly as they came?

  One afternoon early in June, I’m admiring my Japanese-porcelain dressing table when I receive a surprise visit from Vidocq. He has put his own reward money to good use: a gray summer suit of lightweight English cloth; a silver-capped cane. Eau de cologne has kept his natural musk at bay. And there’s something else about him: Call it belief. He carries himself like a man who belongs to these things.

  With a tiny scowl, he tours my lodgings, poking the merchandise as heartlessly as a hog butcher.

  “Not bad,” he allows. “Walls are a bit bare. Never mind, I’ve got some art dealers I can fix you up with.”

  Smiling, I pass him a cordial of brandy.

  “Why don’t you just sell me the Baroness’s portrait?” I ask him.

  And to my surprise, I’m met not with an answering smile but a grimace.

  “Not yet,” he mutters. “I may still need it as evidence.”

  “Evidence?”

  Seating himself at my new dining table, he takes a draft of brandy, holds it for a few seconds in his mouth, then swallows it down in a single gulp.

  “I’ve been undertaking some inquiries, Hector.”

  “About the Baroness?”

  “No, not exactly. Félicité Neveu.”

  I look at him. “The washerwoman?”

  “With the sickly child, yes. Virgil, wasn’t that his name? Well, I don’t mind saying we’ve had the devil’s own time tracking her. When she left Paris back in ’95, she managed to drop off the map. The boy, too. But we did learn something rather interesting about her prior career. Seems that, before she was a washerwoman, she was employed as a lady’s maid. With a very distinguished family. Care to guess who? No?” He gives me a quizzical smile. “The Baron and Baronne de Préval.”

  My first reaction is to laugh. The second is to weep.

  “That’s impossible,” I say.

  “So I would have thought. But there are old servants of the Prévals who remember Félicité quite well. Pretty thing. Of course, she left the Baroness’s service after a short time. No one seems to recall the circumstances, but they do remember this. She was carrying a baby with her when she lef
t.”

  Half smiling, he stares into his glass.

  “Now who the father was, we’ll never know that. Then again…” He shrugs. “We’re not even sure who the mother was. No one remembers seeing Félicité in a family way.”

  Turning now, I stare out the window. The year’s first heat wave has left a pall in the streets. Two apprentice bakers are hurling buckets of cold water against their storefront to cool the plaster, and an old man, his blouse streaked with sweat, is hawking fried potatoes with a crackling, famished cry.

  “You can’t believe it was the Baroness’s child,” I say.

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Even if—even if one could conceive of such a thing—a woman of her station bearing a child out of wedlock…”

  “It’s happened before.”

  “…one can’t imagine her abandoning the child. Leaving him in direst poverty. That’s the act of a monster.”

  “Ah, but you’re presuming she had a choice. The Revolution came along, remember? She had to flee the country. Her lands were seized, her jewels were lost. She would’ve had no way to send money back, even if she’d wanted to.”

  “It’s absurd,” I say, shaking my head, unequivocally. “Anybody might have been the mother of that child. Anybody might have…”

  And then I’m struck dumb by a memory. The Baroness’s final words, just as she was being handed down into that boat.

  I’ll watch over him, she said. As if he were my own son.

  As if he were…

  “No,” I say, in a low, hissing voice. “No, it’s all just a bizarre coincidence. Nothing more.”

  Vidocq just clucks his tongue. Gives his brandy a swirl.

  “Well, I’ll say only this. I’d dearly love another crack at that Baroness of ours.”

  “And what would you ask her?”

  “I’d start with this. How did your old friend Leblanc learn about Charles in the first place? Did you tell him? And if so, how did you know about Charles? And, come to think of it, why did you mention him to the Marquis? Just to pass the time? Or were you hoping to get him an audience with the Duchess? Was that the goal all along?”

  Every emphasis in his voice has a sensual intensity now. How he desires her! It makes me shudder, imagining the Baroness in that windowless room in the basement of Number Six. No duchesses or doctors to save her. Just Vidocq, in all his savagery, bearing down.

  And chasing a fantasy, I tell myself. Noblewomen don’t hand over their own sons to washerwomen. And then try to plant them on the throne of France.

  But then a voice rises up inside me: Why is that any more a fantasy than your Swiss gardener?

  Yes, Vidocq could press the Baroness all he liked, but he would come, finally, to the question that no one—no one alive—can answer. Who was the boy my father carried out of the tower that night? And what happened to him?

  I take a bottle of raw Burgundy from the armoire. I pour myself a tall glass. Behind me, I hear Vidocq’s trailing sigh, and I turn to see him draw a pipe from his pocket.

  “Got any matches, Hector?”

  Such a painstaking quality to how he fills his pipe now. Measured and cool, like a sniper taking aim.

  “The thing is,” he says, “we can’t lay everything at the Baroness’s door, hard as we try. After all, the piece of evidence that really carried the day—well, she had nothing to do with that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That little note of your father’s! The one we found in the back of his journal. All that business of the birthmark—I mean, that’s what got us to the Duchess, wasn’t it? It’s what set everything in motion.”

  “I suppose so.”

  By now the smoke has formed a nimbus over his head, and the fumes come rolling toward me, they crawl up the cavities of my head.

  And then, out of nowhere, Vidocq sets down his pipe and reaches for a leather satchel. Snaps open a compartment and takes out that piece of aged stationery, still bearing its creases. Still bearing those familiar words…

  To Whom It May Concern:

  You may verify the merchandise via the following particular: a mole, black-brown…

  “Funny thing,” says Vidocq, tracing the letters’ outlines. “The stationer is Bromet’s. I’m sure you know the shop, Hector. Venerable firm, very close to the medical school. But you see, when I showed Monsieur Bromet this particular example of his handiwork, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, dear me, he said. Such an old piece of paper, but that particular watermark—why, we’ve been making that one less than a year. Oh yes, he was quite sure of it. He registered the watermark himself last September.”

  Vidocq rests his finger on the edge of the paper, gently pushes it away.

  “Well, you could’ve blown me out to sea, Hector. Your father died—more than a year and a half ago, wasn’t it? Now I may be missing something, but I believe that makes this document of ours—well, I hate to be crude, but most people would call it a forgery.” He nods, very slowly. “Yes, indeed, someone has played us a pretty little trick, it seems. And, of course, being the sort of fellow I am, I had to ask: Who?”

  He taps his pine stem against his nose. Once, twice.

  “Well, last night,” he says, “I couldn’t sleep, no surprise. So, to pass the time, I started to sketch out a little profile in my head. I figured whoever our forger was, he had to be someone with—let’s say, lots of practice writing like your father. Years, even. Someone who could do it in his sleep, practically. And whoever it was—I’m guessing he truly believed Charles was the lost dauphin and knew we needed just one more piece of evidence to nail the case shut.

  “So this fellow, I imagine he sat down and asked himself: What’s the one identifying mark on Charles Rapskeller? The birthmark between the toes, yes? I’m guessing he noticed it when he was”—a soft clearing of throat—“when he was helping Charles with his boots. So now he just had to plug that little detail into a fake document. Then sit back and let it do its work.

  “And through it all—I’m convinced of this, Hector—the fellow was acting in perfect faith. With the very best of intentions, yes. He just wanted to see justice done.”

  I touch the small crust of sediment that’s settled across the bottom of my glass. I put it to my mouth, and I feel my lips shrinking back.

  “It’s an interesting theory,” I say.

  “Yes, I’m chock-full of theories today. And none of them proven, more’s the pity. Oh, Christ! I went and forgot why I came here in the first place.”

  Reaching once more into his satchel, he pulls out another document. Sets it on the table in front of me.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Just my little account of the whole affair. Everything that happened from—mm—Leblanc’s death onward. Not for public consumption, you understand, strictly for my files. I figured since you were so much a part of everything, Hector, you could look it over for me, and if everything checks out, then just”—his gloved hand grazes along the bottom of the last page—“just sign your name there, would you?”

  I pick up the first page and turn it over, but the words break down the moment I try to read them.

  “This all looks much as I remember it,” I say.

  “Are you sure? I’d hate for you to sign your name to something that didn’t happen.”

  You could put a hundred listeners in the room—no one would hear any other meaning in those words. No one but me.

  “I’m certain,” I tell him.

  “Well, then, thanks very much. You don’t have a quill about, do you?”

  “On the desk.”

  “Ah! Here we are. Fresh inkwell, too! Everything’s so new here.”

  He sets the implements in front of me and then—who knows why?—turns away. It could be he’s feeling merciful, and yet his back is somehow a worse sight than his face. And as I move my hand across the paper, I still feel him—oh, yes—in every loop a
nd slash.

  “All done?” he sings out.

  He stares at the signature with an unchanging expression. Then he sets Father’s note alongside it. Studies both documents for a few moments longer. Then, nodding, he returns them to his satchel.

  “That about does it,” he says, quietly.

  He’s nearly to the door before I have the capacity to call after him.

  “Chief!”

  And that single word creates a kind of envelope around us. For it is the first time I’ve ever addressed him by that title.

  “Why did you take me along?” I ask.

  “Take you where?”

  “To Saint-Cloud. You didn’t need me there. I was only going to get in the way. Why did you bother bringing me in the first place?”

  No way to parse the expression in his eyes now. If pressed, I might identify notes of regret, amusement, nostalgia. The barest hint of ire.

  “Well, it’s like any journey, Hector. It goes faster with a bit of company.” He tips his hat forward. “I think the journey’s over now, don’t you?”

  But still he lingers in that doorway. And in the seconds that follow, he is briefly erased by my earliest image of him: in Bardou’s rags, bristling with suspicion. And then the Vidocq of the present comes sliding back, a far gentler being, and his eyes, against all expectations, ripen into merriment. He throws back his massive head and roars with laughter.

  “Thank God you’re not as innocent as you look!”

  And then he’s gone.

  CHAPTER 51

  Postlude

  TWO DAYS AFTER Vidocq leaves, I get a summons from the wife of Brigadier-General Beauséant. By now, I’ve become leery of invitations from society ladies, and I’m no more reassured when the lady in question, a dowager of two and sixty, complains at length about the condition of her hips. At the conclusion of which she wheels on me and, in a buzzing baritone, snarls:

  “Well?”

  “Well what, Madame?”

  “It was my hope, dear Doctor, that you might favor me with your opinion on my rheumatism.”