Tripotte nodded and slowly turned on his heel, heading towards the staircase that spiralled inside the column.
“The north, the north of the world station …” he muttered under his breath before disappearing.
Savnock turned to Brentford and smiled. “Good riddance,” he said. “D’Ussonville will be angry with me, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to put that crown to good use.”
He came closer to Brentford, and knelt at his side. “Mr. Orsini, you saved my life and my city. Here,” he said, taking a medal from his pocket, with a wince of pain he did his best to hide. With his bloodstained glove, he pinned it to Brentford’s lapel. “It’s all I have to offer you. It was given to me by the King of Patagonia, and is totally valueless—until someone like you wears it, that is.”
From below a cloud of dull, relentless pain, something like happiness made its way into Brentford’s head. Had he not saved Savnock, there would have been no city for any of them to return to. Now he could die, his duty done.
Savnock got up and stood surrounded by his Ravens. “Mr. Orsini. This charming lady told me you that wish to be left alone. I’ve detained you too long and besides, it’s high time I changed shirts. Perhaps we’ll meet again. That would be my honour and pleasure. Goodbye, Miss …? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your last name again.”
“Lake,” Lilian said.
“Lake. I’ll try to remember it.” He put a finger to the rim of his hat, and with a sweep of his cape went down the staircase.
“Do you want me to stay?” Vialatte asked.
Brentford shook his head: No, he wished to be left alone with Lilian. Vialatte put a hand on Brentford’s shoulder, nodded a slow farewell, and then followed the other Ravens down the stairs.
Brentford and Lilian were alone. Brentford shivered, and occasionally went rigid from a burst of pain. Lilian passed a hand over his forehead. It seemed odd to them both but there was, unmistakably, something vaguely pleasant behind the tragedy of it all—something like adolescent fantasies, Lilian decided, when you dream you’re suffering agonies on a hospital bed but you don’t care because your hand is in the hand of Someone Who Loves You.
“The Colonel—” Brentford suddenly said, his mouth sweet with blood.
“The Colonel is in good hands. He’s with Morgane and Pirouette. They’ll take care of everything.”
“And the … others?”
“Thomas is with Blanche. They’re going to the Sacré-Cœur. Something to do with a wax roll. I’m not sure I understood.”
“Gabriel?”
“I don’t know, really.”
“Do you see it?”
“What?”
“The Black … Aurora …”
Lilian lifted her eyes to the sky. “Let’s say it helps to know there is one,” she said eventually.
A thorny pain shot out through Brentford’s body, as though his veins were choked full of crystals.
“I’m slipping away, Lil,” he said. With a nervous gesture, he clutched something in his watch pocket, keeping his fist clenched. Lilian sat near him and, holding his hand, started to speak softly.
“You remember that day, a few weeks after the coup, just before we got together? It was the last night of the season, the day before the sun came out for good. It was barely night, more like a dawn or a dusk, but still very cold, so that we shivered constantly, a bit like tonight. We’d been drinking and talking all night. We were walking up to Great Pan Place, and we stopped to look at the vista, the sleeping city, all in shades of blue, the sun coming over the horizon—do you remember?”
She didn’t know whether she heard a sigh or a yes, but she chose to think it was a yes. “You were behind me, just a few inches, and any other man would have put his hands on my shoulders right at that moment … but you just stood there, silent except for your chattering teeth. In my head, I called you an idiot, but at the same time I was there, listening to your clacking teeth, so happy that you didn’t move, that by your restraint, you made that moment last forever, and … Brent? Brent?”
The hand holding hers had gone limp, and his other hand had unclenched to reveal a small glass eye, full of whirling snow. She leaned over him and saw his wide-open eyes reflecting the Black Aurora.
“Idiot,” she said, biting her lip. Very softly she closed his eyes, before her sobs took her over.
V
The First Death of Colonel Branwell
It was while she was locked up in a closet in her mother’s flat that Pirouette overheard Loupart. He had come in the morning, looking for Marie-Honnête, who sometimes brought Pirouette’s mother some trinkets from her burglaries. After one or two glasses, Loupart had confided that something big was planned for the evening, near the Arsenal, and that the Canadian swell who had kidnapped Pirouette would also be dealt with. He himself, he added, was going to the Sacré-Cœur with Hébert. Something was happening there, too, but he wouldn’t say what.
As soon as Pirouette’s punishment was over—her mother needed her on the street that night—she ran to the rue Delambre, hoping to talk to Lilian, only to find the Grand Hôtel des Écoles surrounded by policemen. Before she could leave she saw Tripotte and a dozen of his men, furious and empty-handed, hurrying towards a paddy wagon. As they opened the door, she caught a glimpse of wolf disguises hanging from the pegs inside.
By chance she had in her blouse pocket a very precious treasure: a business card that she had stolen from Lilian’s own coat while she was staying at the hotel. Morgane Roth, Médium Mécanique, 42 rue Montgallet. That was awfully far from Montparnasse, but she had no choice but to try. Jumping from cart to omnibus, taking purchase on everything her small cold hands could grasp and crouching at the rear to hide herself from the drivers and controllers, she finally made it as night fell.
Morgane’s apartment was warm and cosy, a heaven on earth after her afternoon of being out in the cold. She found the Colonel and a dark-haired lady playing checkers near the fire while Lilian nervously paced up and down, casting dark looks at the mantelpiece clock.
After an enormous hug from Lilian and in front of a warm chocolate that was unlike anything she’d ever had before, and that greatly revived her, Pirouette explained what she knew of the plot being hatched by the Wolves—who, by the way, consisted of not only Butcher-Boys, but policemen as well. In short, she said, something was going to happen in the Arsenal, and something at the Sacré-Cœur, but she didn’t know what. Weapons, however, were being gathered.
It didn’t take long for Lilian to decide what to do: she had to go to the Arsenal to warn Brentford. She put on her Monte Carlo coat immediately.
“If I don’t come back,” she said, “would you be so kind as to help the Colonel? All he needs is a quiet, high place.”
Morgane and Pirouette looked at each other.
“I know one,” said Pirouette.
The Astrological Column raised its slender, enigmatic silhouette above Les Halles, just beside the Bourse du Travail, in a circular street of its own that had no beginning or end. Built by a foreign queen for her astrologers, it had remained impervious to the centuries, charged with so much superstition that it had in effect protected itself.
Thanks to lessons in the general sciences she’d been given by Marie-Honnête and Swell-in-the-Sack, the ancient lock on the heavily emblazoned door proved no match for Pirouette. It was what came next that turned out to be difficult: carrying the Colonel in his big Gladstone bag up the 150 steps of one of the narrowest, darkest spiral staircase ever built. The Colonel’s muffled protests about being mishandled did not make things more pleasant.
The platform at the top was encased by a curious, curlicued, spherical, metal structure, open to the October winds and topped by a needle that would have pleased Thomas Paynes-Grey. But as Morgane—a heavy smoker trying to catch her breath—looked around at it, the structure began to make sense: it cut the night sky into neat quadrants. For a moment she regretted not having taken up astrology instead of spiritualism—for
when the spirit fad faded, the night sky would still be there, magnificent and dependably mute. Looking long enough over the balustrade that faced north, she thought she could make out curtain-like folds of pure darkness: the Black Aurora Lilian had told her about? Farther off, in the east, she thought she could glimpse in the dim moonlight a silhouette moving upon the Saint Jacques tower, but when she looked again, it seemed to have disappeared. Despite the wind she tried to light a cigarette with her Magicienne-brand lighter, but every attempt failed miserably.
Giving up, she helped Pirouette carefully take the Colonel out of his bag and put him on the edge of the balustrade, his face to the north.
“Miss Roth?” the Colonel said. Morgane started at his creaky voice. Medium or not, it was taking her a while to get accustomed to this … creature. She would like to have seen Lilian’s face when she first encountered it. But there was no denying that the Colonel was as human as human could be, and she did not especially care to be a witness to his demise.
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Would you be so kind as to leave me alone with Pirouette?”
“Certainly, Colonel. I was about to go down for a quick puff.”
“Tssk,” the Colonel said after she left and he was alone with Pirouette. “Women who smoke …”
“Is it true you’re going to die?” Pirouette asked abruptly.
“Not for real, Pirouette,” the Colonel answered. As always when speaking with the little girl, he felt his French was barely intelligible … but she seemed to understand him clearly enough this time.
“You promise?”
“I promise you, yes,” he said. “As it was promised to me.”
Pirouette looked at him dubiously. “And why do I have to do this to you?”
“Because we’re good friends, aren’t we? I don’t want a stranger fiddling about with my gears—all I need is a friend with very small fingers. And, this Miss Roth—she scares me.”
Pirouette gave a short laugh.
“You’re jealous because of Lilian,” she teased him.
“Not at all. It’s you I prefer.” He could see Pirouette’s face blush, red from the cold as it already was.
“All right then,” she said quickly. “If you want me to, I’ll do it.”
The Colonel straightened his head. “Fine, Pirouette. Open the gear box.”
Pirouette, on tiptoe, unlocked the door that revealed the Colonel’s workings. She looked at it all for for a moment, fascinated by the whirring of the cogs.
The Colonel interrupted her reverie. “You see those coils near the rotating ring?”
“What?”
The Colonel heaved a sigh. “There’s a thing that is going in circles, right?”
“I can just about see it,” Pirouette said, straining her ankles, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.
“You can just about see it?” the Colonel asked. “Good Lord. Now, by any chance, can you just about see some rolls of copper wire next to it?”
“Hmm … yes …” Pirouette said, though the Colonel suspected she was just saying so to please him.
He pressed on. “Now, just beside this wire, you have a little commutator, haven’t you?”
“A what?”
“A toggle, a thingummy.”
“This?” she said, reaching her arm all the way inside.
“Stop! Not now!” the Colonel yelped. He shook his head and regathered his senses. “Wait until I tell you, okay?”
“At your command, my Colonel,” she said, clowning a little.
The Colonel gave a short snort that meant that he was laughing, though it was more a snort of relief that she hadn’t killed him before he was ready. “All right,” he began again. “I’m going to close my eyes. You will count up to ten and then switch that damn thing off, understand?”
Pirouette suddenly looked terrified, and about to cry, realizing the full import of what was about to happen … but she managed to nod sombrely.
The Colonel closed his eyes.
“One …” Pirouette started.
The Colonel’s eyes popped open. “No! Silently, please,” he barked. Then, after another sigh. “Let’s start again.”
“All right,” Pirouette replied. She sounded a little vexed, and when she resumed the Colonel could still hear her whispering the numbers under her breath.
He tried to concentrate, to conjure up the memories of a vision he’d had at de Couard’s—of himself on one of the observation decks at Sson’s cast-iron Uraniborg. He didn’t know whether the scene was supposed to be based on actual memory, so he imagined Tuluk at his side … He imagined, in fact, that he was teaching his son to look through a telescope …
“What is it, Ataata?” Tuluk was asking.
“This, my son, is a Black Aurora.”
At this, he opened his eyes—just as Pirouette switched the toggle.
For a while, afterwards, she stood watching him, her head tilted, not really knowing what to do. Close his eyes? One of her friends had told her that when her little brother had died, her mother had closed his eyes. But wasn’t the Colonel supposed to be looking at the Aurora?
Finally, bracing her elbows on the ledge of the pedestal, she hoisted herself up to place a small kiss on the Colonel’s lips. His moustache was bristly and as she lowered herself to the ground, she could still feel the tingle on her upper lip, and a little sting on her cheek.
“You took forever,” Morgane said—through a cloud of smoke—when Pirouette rejoined her downstairs.
“Do we leave him up there?” Pirouette asked anxiously.
Morgane thought of the head facing the stars, and the image pleased her.
“Why not? Nobody ever goes up there.”
Pirouette was uncertain. “Are we going to go find Lilian now? She might know better what to do.”
“She’ll join us later, don’t worry. Give me your hand.”
Distractedly, Pirouette did as she was told. Poor thing, Morgane thought. They walked away, looking back at the tower every now and then.
But Pirouette was on the verge of panic. Now that she’d taken care of the Colonel, perhaps there was no use for her. “You won’t take me home tomorrow, will you?” she suddenly burst out to Morgane. “My mother will kill me.”
Morgane stopped where she was and looked down at the little girl. “Who needs a mother when you have good friends?” she said. “You’ll come and stay with Lili and me instead. By the way, do you like long white dresses?”
Startled, Pirouette admitted, “I adore them.”
“Sparkling makeup?”
“I’ve never worn makeup. But I’d like to try.”
“Do you like to play the fool?”
Pirouette, suddenly feeling hopeful, replied with a cross-eyed face that made Morgane giggle.
“Well, I may have something for you to do, then,” Morgane enthused. “You see, there are ladies who’ve lost their little daughters and come to see me, and sometimes it makes them very happy to see their little girls again, you know—like little luminous white ghosts.”
“Oh, yes!” Pirouette clapped her hands. “I’ll be the Môme fantôme.”
Morgane smiled. “The Môme fantôme. I like that. You’ll go far …”
Hand in hand, they vanished into the night.
VI
The First Death of Thomas Paynes-Grey
Just before leaving for Edgar de Couard’s studio in the early afternoon, Thomas had received a phone call from Blanche, asking him to meet her later that evening at the foot of the Butte Montmartre.
When he saw her waiting at the cosy Bon Bock, he immediately regretted that it was his duty to go back to New Venice, although her coughing, which seemed to rip through his own chest, reminded him of why he’d rather go back: he did not want to be here on the day she died. His heroism, his loyalty, his sense of duty and sacrifice were all mere cowardice in light of that decision. So be it. However hard he tried, he could not imagine himself surviving her—not in Paris, at least. And, a cow
ard to the end, he could not bring himself to tell her that tonight would be the last time they would see each other. Unconsciously, he patted the pocket where he had put his syringe, already loaded with a lethal dose of morphine.
Daydreaming about being reincarnated as the dead stoat around her neck, he found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying about the wax roll in her hand.
“I don’t know how your friend Gabriel did it, but, I listened to it, and it contains all the evidence of a plot against my uncle, and more. I must take it to him before it is too late.”
“A plot?” Thomas asked, quickly coming into focus. “Here in Montmartre?”
“At the Sacré-Cœur,” she told him. “I couldn’t locate my uncle today, but there was a note on his desk from a certain “Monsieur Froment,” making a midnight appointment in the dome of the basilica. The conspirators on the wax roll say it’s a trap.”
Thomas looked at his watch. “Perhaps we should go now, to warn him.”
“You’re right,” Blanche said, as she dissolved a spoon of granulated hemoglobine in a glass of water. “But it’s a steep way up.” And she looked so spent at the very thought of it that for a moment Thomas thought she wouldn’t make it.
But she did, and an endless flight of stairs led them closer to the basilica itself. Its silhouette grew at each step, rising in the middle of a wasteland of snowy rubble, becoming so enormous that it seemed about to burst from the scaffolding encasing the dome. At the top of the stairs, it took five minutes for Blanche to catch her wheezing breath, while Thomas at first pretended not to notice, then looked on with sorry concern, not knowing what else to do.
Once Blanche had regained her strength, they learned that of course at such a late hour the entrance was closed. But finding a loose plank in the wooden palisade surrounding the construction site was easy enough. Blanche, who had been dragged by her mother to the Blessing of the still-unfinished church a few years before, knew her way around the place, and without hesitation she led Thomas inside the building via an office that, she explained, sold tickets to tourists and pilgrims. They stopped short when they saw the office door hanging open. Thomas assured Blanche that d’Ussonville had most likely gotten there before them … but he was on the alert as they moved on. Climbing a flight of stairs that crossed what Blanche called a saut-de-loup (“A what?” Thomas asked. “A wolf’s leap?”), they found themselves inside the church proper. It was dark except for a few lit tapers, and Thomas could feel its immensity more than he could see it. What little he could perceive was bare, without any paintings, and the nave seemed to be half-blocked by an enormous framework. It was sinister and drafty, and Thomas wondered what sort of god would use this as a house. The kind of god that did not mind snuffing out a bright candle like Blanche, he decided.
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