by Louis Bayard
“Oh, yes…”
“What I mean is: Do you think you might fit me into your schedule?”
“Into my—”
“Please don’t be coy, Doctor! The word is out. You effect the most remarkable cures in all of Paris.”
Very carefully I set down my teacup.
“Forgive me, Madame, but who has told you this?”
“Why, the Duchesse d’Angoulême! Just the other night, she was singing your praises to anyone who would listen….”
A WEEK LATER, an invitation to the Tuileries allows me to thank my benefactress in person—but the Duchess is in no mood. She wants only to know if I’ve had news of Charles or the Baroness. She received word from them in Le Havre that they’d been delayed and would take the next ship to America. Since then, no word.
“I’m very sorry,” I tell her. “I’ve heard nothing.”
When we part, she says, in a confidential murmur: “We needn’t worry, Doctor. God has gone to great lengths to bring Charles back to us. God will not abandon him a second time.”
IN THE END, Charles and the Baroness fail to keep their appointment with the Lioncourts of the Hudson Valley, and the Duchess, starved for news, receives none. She never, in fact, hears from Charles again.
But her belief in him, this remains steadfast, which is why she declines to meet any of the other “lost dauphins” who come to press their claims on her. And there are dozens. One, a German clockmaker by the name of Karl Naundorff, goes so far as to sue her for recovery of personal property. For his temerity, he is deported to England.
In 1824 comes the long-awaited death of gout-ridden old Louis the Eighteenth. The Comte d’Artois gets the crown he has long craved and, as Charles the Tenth, the chance to practice the absolutism he believes France needs. France disagrees. After six years, he is replaced by Louis-Philippe, a less objectionable cousin. Once more, the royal family is expelled; once more, the Duchess is obliged to leave her native land. This time for good.
Her wanderings take her from Edinburgh to Prague to Slovenia, but she is ever my most faithful correspondent. And if her letters rarely mention Charles, he is the figure that lurks behind every line—and, indeed, the wellspring of our intimacy, for what else do she and I have in common?
Other than my career. Within weeks of her public endorsement, I am besieged with inquiries from all over the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Women, exclusively: countesses and marquesses and ambassadors’ wives and bankers’ mothers, complaining of palpitations, insomnia, frigidity, avidity. Many of them believe they are dying; one is convinced she’s a grouse. All of them have francs for the flinging, and before another year has passed, I have my own clinic in the Rue de Richelieu and a reputation as a man with rare (and, by some lights, indecent) powers of suggestion.
I’ll let you in on a secret. Bring a certain kind of woman into a dark room, look her in the eye, and, where necessary, apply the simple physic of touch…you will find few ill humors that won’t yield to that. And if this same woman should wish to cure you, who are you to say no?
After several years of this—and more than a few mistresses—I reach the conclusion that my specialty has wandered too far from the Hippocratic ideal. In a volte-face that startles even me, I dedicate myself to venereal disease. It’s a specialty calculated to offend my previous constituency, and yet my very first patients are the noblewomen I used to treat for sluggish blood flow.
Soon, too, the men find their way to my door. Mariners, caulkers, deputy ministers, dukes…I make no distinctions, except that I charge according to capacity. One August morning, I am visited by a distinguished gentleman in a ruffled white silk shirt under a light summer jacket. He follows me into the consultation room, and when I ask him about his condition, he answers, in the most courtly of cadences:
“Got the wrong stuff coming out the dick.”
I look up. A large gray-blue eye is winking back at me. Vidocq.
We haven’t spoken in many years, but I’ve followed his progress through the newspapers. I know, for instance, that he married Jeanne-Victoire—“held up his end,” after all. Surely she would have held up hers, too, except that she died within four years. Mama Vidocq followed six weeks after, and according to scuttlebutt, the great policeman consoles himself now with the charms of a comely young cousin. That is, when he’s not chasing actresses, artists’ models, soubrettes…the wives of his own officers….
He’s stouter and grayer now, more polished in his manners, but every bit as easy with his body. As he spreads his half-naked frame across the examining table, conversation spills from him in a perfect cataract.
“Damn me, Hector, you’ve done well for yourself. Love the candelabra—porphyry, is it? With some malachite thrown in? Beautiful piece. The velvet hangings are a nice touch, too. Must have come from Lyon. Hey, are you married? No? Get on your knees and thank Christ. Here I am, one wife barely cold in the ground, and Fleuride-Albertine badgering me every day to take her to the Bureau of Registry. What’s the point, I ask her? Ah well, there’s a bright side to the clap after all. No one’s going to drag you to the altar with a weeping cock. Not that it keeps me from doing the old heave-ho. Ha! I was born erect, it’s the Lord’s truth….”
My proddings do nothing to stanch the words, but a new quality does steal into his voice: vulnerability, let’s call it. I realize he’s talking because he’s nearly as uncomfortable as I am.
“What’s that you’re mixing?” he asks at last.
“Mercury and silver nitrate.”
“Goes right up the old pee hole, does it?”
“Afraid so.”
From his silence, I assume he’s bracing for the syringe. Truth is, he’s already drifting back to our common time.
“Strange business, wasn’t it, Hector?”
“Yes, it was.”
“The part I really regret,” he says, “is we’ll never know what happened in that tower all those years ago. And it’s too damned bad.”
ONE NIGHT IN December, I come home to find an envelope addressed to me from the United States of America. It contains a brief news item from the City Gazette and Daily Advertiser of Charleston, South Carolina. My English is just adequate to making it out:
Baroness Préval, the celebrated Lecturess, has arrived in the City, and is giving an Exhibition of her wonderful powers. Having had the pleasure of witnessing her in person, I cannot but give to this extraordinarily elegant and gracious French Gentlewoman the due praise which true talents are entitled to. Her theme is “Sufferings of a Peeress Under the Reign of Terror, At the Hands of Atheistic Jacobites.” Particularly thrilling is the dramatic reenactment of the attempted guillotining of the Baroness’s son, who, in actuality, barely escaped the event with the loss of his right hand. That part in the tableau is played by the gentleman himself, who also contributes a delightful talk on orchid varieties in Europe vis-à-vis the Americas. I sincerely trust that the Baroness and her collaborator will meet the encouragement such individuals deserve.
—A CONNOISSEUR
I never show this to anyone—Vidocq, least of all—but I do take it out from time to time. Seeking clarity, I suppose, but finding only more muddle.
I ask myself: Has Charles simply attached himself to a new protector—squeezed himself into a new pair of shoes? Or is he really the Baroness’s son? How, then, did he know all those intimate details of the royal family’s imprisonment? The bells…the death’s-head hawkmoth in the princess’s shift…the letters bound in white ribbon…how could anyone but Louis-Charles have known these things?
So here I sit, a man of middle years, no closer to certainty—and forced, finally, to make my own. Vidocq said there’s never any accounting for people’s faith, but there is. We make what we long for. Jesus was the son of a carpenter until a group of believers, contemplating him long after the fact, decided he was more. So, too, Charles, under the pressure of our hopes, became the man we yearned for. He’s that man now. However imperfectly we come to believe something,
the belief is its own perfection.
Which is to say: Against all evidence to the contrary, I believe that Charles Rapskeller is Louis the Seventeenth.
And even as I assert that, I dance away again. Maybe I’ve reached an age where not knowing is actually richer than knowing.
Or as Vidocq said on my clinic table, watching that syringe advance on him:
“We never solve a damned thing, really. We just make more questions. Now get my snake working, will you, Hector? There’s a flower girl over in the Rue Saint-Claude. Ready for pollinating….”
Acknowledgments
My account of the dauphin’s final months in the Temple is about equal parts history and invention. For the real deal, the reader is advised to consult Deborah Cadbury’s excellent The Lost King of France.
Special thanks to Marjorie Braman, for breathing Vidocq’s name in my ear, and to Vidocq himself, for giving me a reason to go back to Paris.
From there, the usual roll of debt: Christopher Schelling, Peggy Hageman, Sharyn Rosenblum, Abby Yochelson.
To these, add: Dan Mallory (whose talents now extend to book jacket design), Jean-Luc Piningre (French translator nonpareil), Paul Bayard (pro bono medical consultant), Denny Drabelle, Dan Stashower, Sheryl Kroen.
Top it all off with Don.
About the Author
LOUIS BAYARD is the author of the national bestseller The Pale Blue Eye and Mr. Timothy, a New York Times Notable book. A staff writer for Salon.com, Bayard has written articles and reviews for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Nerve.com, and Preservation, among others. Bayard lives in Washington, D.C.
www.louisbayard.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
ALSO BY LOUIS BAYARD
The Pale Blue Eye
Mr. Timothy
Fool’s Errand
Endangered Species
Credits
Jacket design by Ervin Serrano
Jacket photographs: wall © by Miguel Angel Muñoz/Arcangel Images; man's shadow created from photograph by Dod Miller/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE BLACK TOWER. Copyright © 2008 by Louis Bayard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Mobipocket Reader July 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-169997-9
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Table of Contents
Epigraph
France: Before and After the Revolution
The Bourbons
Part 1 Saint-Cloud
Chapter 1 The Beggar at the Corner
Chapter 2 Death of a Potato
Chapter 3 The Chamber of the Dead
Chapter 4 The Missing Fingernails
Chapter 5 An Astounding Reemergence
Chapter 6 The Incident of the Hobnailed Boot
Chapter 7 From Beyond the Grave
Chapter 8 A Spy Unmasked
Chapter 9 A Journey to Luxembourg
Chapter 10 The Double Eagle
Chapter 11 The Lost Dauphin
Chapter 12 The Reeducation of a Parrot
Chapter 13 An Ancient Relic Rediscovered
Chapter 14 Treasures of a Reliquary
Chapter 15 The Black Tower
Chapter 16 A Fatal Disease Is Diagnosed—at the Very Precipice of Death
Chapter 17 The Case of the Headless Woman
Chapter 18 In Which a Great Man Is Threatened with Extreme Violence
Chapter 19 The Sad Fate of a Seagull
Chapter 20 In Which Tourism Is Shown to Be Hazardous
Chapter 21 A Garden Grows in Saint-Cloud
Part 2 Saint-Denis
Chapter 22 The Fox and the Rabbit
Chapter 23 A Scene of Great Carnage Involving Pistachios
Chapter 24 A Vicomte Expires Unexpectedly
Chapter 25 Mama Carpentier Stands Firm
Chapter 26 In Which a Corpus Is Exhumed
Chapter 27 A Boy Named Hector
Chapter 28 A Disappearance Solved
Chapter 29 The King of France Is Held Hostage
Chapter 30 Vidocq Takes an Overdue Interest in Art
Chapter 31 Dead Bones
Chapter 32 Germany to the Rescue
Chapter 33 A Lilac Grows in the Tuileries Gardens
Chapter 34 Not Since Waterloo
Chapter 35 In Which the Vulnerability of the Hamstring Is Clearly Demonstrated
Chapter 36 Vidocq’s Confessional Booth
Chapter 37 The Proper Disposal of Worms
Chapter 38 A Case of Domestic Espionage
Chapter 39 The Dire Fate of Charlotte’s Chickens
Part 3 Place de Grève
Chapter 40 The Rebirth of Junius
Chapter 41 The Trojan Hobbyhorse
Chapter 42 The Birthmark
Chapter 43 The Dead Moth
Chapter 44 A Rupture of Etiquette
Chapter 45 The Fate of Parricides
Chapter 46 Foiled Hopes
Chapter 47 In Which the Nature of Hector’s Research Is Revealed
Chapter 48 A Confession
Chapter 49 The Muslin Bag
Chapter 50 The Making of a Forger
Chapter 51 Postlude
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Louis Bayard
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
