On the rue Ravignan, he came across the Zut!, a drab little tavern off the tourist circuit whose name (which meant “Damn!”) sounded familiar. Wasn’t this where, what were their names, Raymond and Lucie, the anarchist couple he and Brentford had met at the cemetery, had said they could sometimes be found in the evening? He pushed open the door to find himself in a fuliginous dump, bare of all ornaments, except the word “Zut!” scratched on the wall and trembling in the uncertain light of wick lamps. The bar was a row of wooden casks, and it served unhealthy drinks to a clientele that was on a par with the decoration: the lower dregs of bohemia, black-nailed and thinly clothed, bellowing dubious anarchist rants through the thick fog of cheap pipe tobacco, while tousled-haired muses applauded them, vibrant with alcohol-fueled love. Charming place, thought Gabriel, as he made his way towards the bar.
Having ordered a Putois demi-fine absinthe, he slithered towards the back room, whose ceiling looked as if seawrack had been glued to it and now dangled in enamelled stalactites. Lucie and Raymond were indeed there, drinking wine with a heavyset, long-haired man, whose soft voice and unctuous courtesy did not quite hide a tough, almost brutal, streak. They introduced him to Gabriel as Olivier Deligny, the publisher of a respected anarchist newspaper, Le Niveleur—“the Leveller.” He had a book in front of him that immediately triggered a warmth on Gabriel’s tattooed arm.
“May I have a look?”
“Be my guest. I have just bought it second-hand,” Deligny said. “It has become rare.”
It had been published in 1872 and written by Auguste Blanqui, the famous—for some, infamous—French conspirator. The title alone—L’Eternité par les astres, “Eternity Through the Stars”—made Gabriel salivate. He flipped through it rapidly but cautiously, sensing that Deligny was a rather fastidious fellow when it came to books.
“It was written in jail, at the Fort of the Bull, as it is called. It’s the work of a desperate man,” Deligny elaborated.
To Gabriel, it looked like some kind of Gallic version of Poe’s Eureka. From what Deligny explained, this cosmic speculation was founded on a rather simple line of reasoning: if the elements of matter are in finite numbers, and if the universe is truly infinite, then all combinations of material bodies have necessarily to be repeated endlessly along with all their possible permutations. For the convict that Blanqui was, this made the universe itself a gigantic jailhouse, full of eternal routines, but it also allowed the possibility of what he called “happy variants”: brother-stars where lost loves were found again and failed revolutions were successful for once. It suddenly dawned on Gabriel that perhaps this was for the Most Serene Seven a better theory than that of time travel; it could at least explain why this Paris was different—its climate, for example—from Jean-Klein’s Paris of 1895. But how they might have found themselves on a brother planet was another matter altogether.
Seeing that Deligny was getting slightly impatient for the return of his treasured book, Gabriel closed it softly and started to tell his own story.
“I was at the morgue this morning,” he said grimly. “One of our friends has been beheaded.”
The French anarchists looked at each other and expressed their deepest sympathy, simply but seriously. They regarded these murders as acts of war and the victims as fallen comrades.
“Yes, I’ve read this in the papers, where it was labelled as an unfortunate accident,” Raymond said with a sigh. In the next room, a certain Frédé had started playing a lullaby on his guitar, by tone-deaf public demand. “As usual, the journalists would rather write about the so-called anarchist menace, and not one of them dares touch what’s behind the beheadings. There are deep ramifications, you know, up to the highest levels.”
“The president?” Gabriel asked, between two bitter sips of his rather louche absinthe.
“Perhaps.” Lucie began to explain, “Or at least, Faure is a staunch supporter of the Franco-Russian alliance that was signed in ’Ninety-three. The price of the alliance has always been that France gets rid of its troublesome foreigners, including, of course, Russian refugees.”
“Ah!” Gabriel said. “The Russians again. Someone at the Canadian Commission said that Tripotte was on the Okhrana payroll.”
The three exchanged looks. “It is quite likely,” Deligny replied, in his soft, edgy voice. “Since Rachkovsky took over at the Okhrana, he has always employed people from the Sûreté—some retired and some not. He has a whole brigade of them. I hear that the Sûreté is divided about the cooperation, but, nevertheless, the Okhrana provocateurs are always very well informed, and it is more than probable that files from Notebook B are copied and transmitted to Rachkovsky.”
“But,” Gabriel surmised, “it’s not Rachkovsky or provocateurs, or the Okhrana, who commit these beheadings, is it?”
“Not directly, of course,” Deligny went on patiently. “But, with the unfortunate Dreyfus affair on top of this, the hatred of Jews and foreigners has taken on monstrous proportions in this country. Some ‘true patriots,’ as these imbeciles call themselves, have decided to ‘clean up the mess,’ to use their rhetoric, and recruit Butcher-Boys from La Villette. They’re a bunch of brutes full of thicker-than-mud ‘old’ French blood, who still live in the days of guilds and paternalism, and have only hatred for trade unions and the Republic. Edouard Drumont hires them as stewards for all his anti-Semitic rallies, and we even gave them a serious drubbing in the Vauxhall back in ’Ninety-three. Their leader was a sight to see—Antoine Manca de Vallombrosa, Marquis of Morès, isn’t that a name out of a dime novel? He has now retired to the Sahara, I hear, where he wages a guerrilla war against the British. But his successors are so stupid they can’t share a thought among themselves. And of course all these people are staunch supporters of the Czarist regime. Since the interests of these patriots merge, at least temporarily, with those of Rachkovsky and his clique, I suppose that favours are done, and information exchanged, if not manpower.”
“But who runs them now, these Wolves?” Gabriel asked.
“Since the departure of Morès, it seems that his stand-ins have rooted for a certain Hébert,” Raymond answered. “The King of Garbage, as he calls himself.”
“That’s some title,” Gabriel said with a frown. “Garbage, you say? My dead friend was in this line, too. Perhaps his death has something to do with Monsieur Hébert’s business.”
“Perhaps,” Raymond answered with a shrug. “It is a business, certainly, and a lucrative one at that, and I doubt that Hébert would regard favourably any attempts at interfering with it. He has become filthy rich, literally. He has thousands of ragpickers slaving for him, and he sells Paris’s own refuse back to it at a very dear price. This is where his fortune comes from.”
“Money has no smell,” Lucie observed wryly.
“Now,” Deligny went on, “Hébert has his political ideas, but dumb as they are, he is shrewd enough to know he won’t go anywhere with an army of dustmen. So he turned to the bigger fellows.”
Well, there is a lot that can be achieved with an army of dustmen, Gabriel could testify from experience, and the memory of Blankbate filled him with bitterness and resentment. But then, what was possible in New Venice …
“Hey, look who’s here,” Lucie whispered, pointing her chin towards a corner of the back room.
Gabriel turned around to see a tall man rising from a dark corner, wearing a high-collared navy-blue coat of military cut. In the dim light, he recognized his profile and started with surprise.
“D’Ussonville,” he whispered to himself, hiding his face behind his hand.
The Sleeper nodded discreetly towards another tall man with white cropped hair who sat near the door, then went over to talk a little with him, apparently without having noticed Gabriel’s presence.
“Who’s that?” Gabriel asked his friends in a low voice.
“Captain Boulogne,” Lucie answered.
“Shh!” Raymond murmured, a finger on his lips.
“Or so the
y say,” Deligny added all the same.
The “captain” left the tavern, and the other man followed him a few seconds later—after scanning the room, Gabriel observed, as if for potential foes.
“So who’s Captain Boulogne?” Gabriel inquired after they’d gone, with what he hoped would pass for a light touch.
Raymond sighed as Lucie explained, “Some sort of anarchist legend, actually. He’s rumoured to be preparing a terrible coup. The ultimate propaganda by deed …”
“For a legend, he looks rather real,” Gabriel commented, wondering if d’Ussonville really had started as a Captain Boulogne, or was just playing his part for some end Gabriel couldn’t discern … yet …
“Oh, he’s real,” Deligny said. “It’s the coup that’s hypothetical. A lot of us think it’s a trap. Even these naifs who advocate direct action have been conned so many times by provocateurs that he may have trouble recruiting anyone who isn’t a policeman. I’m anxiously waiting the time when there are only secret agents in terrorist groups.”
“Well, he’s recruited someone, at least,” Raymond commented.
“Well, excuse me,” Gabriel said abruptly, as he rose. “This is rather important to me. I must go.”
“Are you going to apply?” Deligny asked, and something nasty in his tone of voice implied that, for a brief second, he’d suspected Gabriel of being an undercover policeman.
“I’m just interested in legends,” Gabriel said as he saluted them. “Goodbye and good luck.”
Deligny nodded solemnly. “Good luck to you,” he replied.
For a while Gabriel thought he had lost track of D’Ussonville and his companion, until a shadow cast on a streetcorner wall gave him some hope of catching up. He hurried along the slushy pavement, walking cautiously, almost on tiptoe, so close to the wall that he could feel its humidity on his back, until eventually the two silhouettes came into his line of sight. He followed them up narrow stairs, along snowy vineyards, past derelict windmills, through winding streets with the distinct feel of a small village—a complicated route, which Gabriel understood was meant to avoid the crowd that trickled from the Place du Tertre, even at this time of night.
But their destination was suddenly hard to miss: the half-finished church of Sacré-Cœur abruptly loomed over them, bluish in the moonlight. The works were still going, and scaffolding bristled around the gigantic dummy teat that was supposed to appease God’s anger at France’s socialist tendencies. Gabriel had to admit that the whole thing had something faintly New Venetian about it—its sheer unashamed improbability, its vague dreamlike quality, the sensation that it was less a real building than some trompe-l’œil set up for a drama not yet played, or maybe a cutout glued on a trick postcard photograph.
Obviously, “Captain Boulogne” had not come here as a tourist. His accomplice in tow, he disappeared through an opening in the palisade and remained invisible for several minutes. Gabriel didn’t dare to follow them; he would have to wait until they came out. But then he saw, emerging from the shadows, a third man who had evidently been waiting surreptitously near the Sacré-Cœur. It was sheer luck that he had not spotted Gabriel. From where Gabriel stood, this man looked like a typical Parisian thug with his casquette and his neckerchief. He came close to the rent in the fence and tried to peep through it, but he didn’t enter and soon retreated back into the shadows. Moments later, the pseudo-Boulogne and the tall man accompanying him stepped out. The two men separated immediately and went their own ways off into the labyrinth of Montmartre. The spy chose to follow d’Ussonville. Gabriel saw him undoing his neckerchief and stretching it between his fists as he came up behind d’Ussonville.
“Look out, Captain!” Gabriel cried, as the man closed in on d’Ussonville, ready to jump on his back and strangle him from behind—the famous Father Francis’s trick.
D’Ussonville turned quickly and sent a perfect fouetté chausson kick towards his opponent, catching him in the ribs with a crack that Gabriel could hear across the street. The man swayed, and before he could recover his balance, d’Ussonville, a sportsman for his age, had followed up with a swift pass of his cane (Gabriel, a canist himself, recognized it as a perfect latéral croisé) that slapped the man across his ears and cheeks so violently that it cut a gash as if he had been lashed with a whip. The thug doubled up in pain, offering d’Ussonville the opportunity to kick him in the face, which he did without the slightest hesitation and with a certain prancing elegance. The mugger collapsed into the gutter with a self-pitying moan.
“Thank you, sir, and good night,” d’Ussonville called to the invisible Gabriel while straightening his clothes. Then, lightly touching his hat with the tip of his cane, he blended into the night.
To be continued …
I
The Cult of the Wolf
Things had gotten so intense that it wasn’t difficult for Gabriel to think of six impossible things that had to be done before breakfast. This particular morning was worse than usual, and he had in fact lost count after ten or twelve, his muddy mind refusing to go further. He hadn’t slept for days, not even the proverbial wink, and while insomnia had its merits—it kept the succubus at bay—in the long run, it had become clear to him that it simply would not do.
Brentford found him in the hotel restaurant, slumped in his chair, lucky to have a table to prop him up.
“I know,” Gabriel muttered as Brentford sat down. “I’ve aged ten years since we got here. I’m probably the only person who’s ever managed to get older when travelling back in time.”
“You could do with injections of testicular liquid. I seem to understand from the papers that it’s quite the tonic, and very fashionable now.”
“I already have more testicular liquid than I can shake a stick at, if you get my meaning.”
“It is my misfortune that I always get it, yes.”
Gabriel felt it was time to steer the conversation towards less personal matters.
“I met Thomas and Lilian on their way out. Did I miss something last night?”
Brentford told him succinctly about his meeting with Lodestone, and filled him in on Lilian’s plans for a séance with Morgane Roth.
“You’ll have to go without me, Brentford. I’m not quite in the mood for spirits,” Gabriel warned him. “Any news on Blankbate’s murder?”
“We’ve made inroads.” He took the optogram out of his wallet and passed it to Gabriel, who struggled to keep his eyes open and focussed on the luminous chaos of the image.
“According to Thomas, this thing in front of the moon is a merlin,” Brentford explained, “a butcher’s spiked hammer. It was used before the decapitation.”
Gabriel looked more closely, until suddenly the mysterious dots made sense. Brentford saw his eyes light up, like a pale Arctic sun behind a veil of clouds.
“It’s a ritual murder, Brentford,” Gabriel said. “A sacrifice. I saw Raymond and Lucy last night, and they seem to think that the Wolves are indeed Butcher-Boys from La Villette, who are longtime darlings of radical right-wing nuts. I suppose they incarnate the good old France of yore, and the sacrifices that are needed to wash away its current sins, preferably with blood.”
“Butcher-Boys … He was killed like an animal, yes. But I thought animal offerings were meant to replace human victims. Wasn’t that the metaphor?”
“Some people have an innate inability to grasp metaphors. Occultists in particular. Nationalists, of course. Some people here seem to have reverted to a mode of very primitive thinking. For one thing, look at the moon under the arch. It’s aligned perfectly with the blade of the guillotine, like an eyeball inside its socket. And this little curved mass on the left, look at its beak—it looks like a vase or something, probably to collect the blood as it spurts from the wound. And isn’t that an ivy leaf, on the top corner? As if the guillotine were wreathed in it. I don’t know for sure, but it certainly looks like the work of a twisted fertility cult, a sacrifice designed to ensure the renewal of the natural cycle o
f growth.”
“But I thought that the Wolves of the Wood of Justice were more of a political or even a racial operation?”
“What’s the difference, really? Politics and magic … basically, it’s all about ensuring that there’s enough food, and finding someone to blame if there’s not. It’s mostly what New Venice is about, too, isn’t it?”
Brentford, thinking of his stint at the Greenhouse, couldn’t really disagree.
“As to taking it out on the foreigners,” Gabriel went on, “that’s the ABC of magical thinking. It used be a time-tested feature of human sacrifices: the passing stranger whose ritual murder will bring luck to the crop. It’s not as passé as it seems. It even has a bright future, I guess. You know the Marseillaise, don’t you?”
“The fish soup?”
“That’s bouillabaisse. I mean the French national anthem. Let an impure blood water our furrows. It’s a sentence that sticks, is it not?”
“But the guillotine—it’s hardly primitive equipment,” Gabriel persisted.
“It depends on how you look at it, I suppose. But it’s turned into a myth of its own. It’s certainly a potent totem for a tribe. Don’t forget it’s usually made of oak, one of the trees most commonly held sacred, and one that was worshipped at druid sacrifices for its fertilizing power. From what I’ve heard, the butchers like to dress as druids at least once a year, when they parade an ox through the streets.”
“And the wolves?”
“Hmmm … something to do with the Luperci, perhaps—the Brothers of the Wolves,” Gabriel speculated. “They were Roman priests who would sacrifice a goat in honour of the she-wolf who had fed Romulus and Remus. Also, in old French peasant traditions the wolf is often a corn-spirit. I also seem to remember that ‘wolf’ is the name for the nonadept in the radical Wood Masonry of the carbonari—the charcoal-burners. It could be a kind of private joke. But really, anything goes in these rituals. It only starts to make sense when you’re lying trussed up on the altar.”
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