Thomas, A Secret Life

by A. J. B. Johnston

  Hélène can also see that she is going to miss having nearby the little outdoor laundry she had back at the inn. It was hard work, but at least it was convenient, to wash clothes and keep clean. There is not even a mirror in this attic room, no matter where she looks. So she squints at herself in the window reflection and first brushes her hair then bundles it up in her little white cap as best she can. She does everything in a rush. Hélène doesn’t know why, but she feels it important to get up and on her feet before Thomas comes back and catches her still around. They’ll speak later on, but first she wants to see a bit more of the city on her own. With luck, she’ll find work and he’ll stop worrying about that. It’s clear that Thomas’s pockets are not as flush with money as she once thought. She thought she’d be more than a servant in Paris.

  At the last moment, in a second thought before she leaves the attic room, Hélène decides to take along her sack with all her possessions. She is going to lock the door but who knows if that is going to keep thieves out of this room. Better safe than sorry, her aunt often said. Though she was talking about what Hélène should and should not do when the fertile days of her cycle come around.

  Out on the streets below, Hélène wanders wherever her gaze chooses. She is not ten minutes gone from the attic room when she stops to look through the window of a bookshop. She’s not read a book in her life, but she would like to someday. She knows all the letters and has read a few prayers under the sisters’ instruction. But she likes the look of books, especially the ones in this bookshop window. The golden leather covers tinged with a bit of red look particularly important. She imagines they contain the histories of great kings or maybe the poetry of love songs from far away and long ago.

  Does she stay too long gazing through the bookshop window? Maybe. A skinny fellow with a long wig and a perpetual grin comes to stand on the other side of the glass. He too is drawn to the window display, though in his case he wants to see if any of the books might happen to bear his name. He glances up to see a pretty country girl gazing in. He likes the way she looks, not the slightest style at all, a farm girl in the city, yet with a pretty face. He beckons her to stay right where she is. Hélène smiles back, quite charmed. She noticed the man before he saw her. Fine clothes, an impressive wig, a wrinkled smile, and posture like a noble. Everything about the young man suggests confidence. And with confidence, as far as Hélène knows the world, comes comfort and standing.

  The young man comes outside the shop. He invites her to come with him for a stroll. She sees no harm in that. He asks if he might carry her sack. She smiles and holds it up. He tosses its weight over his shoulder, letting it dangle down his back.

  “Would you like to dine together one day?”

  “If you mean right now, I’d say yes to that.” She is so hungry and tired of the stale bread and wooden cheese she took in a rush from her uncle’s inn.

  “Well,” he says, charmed by the directness of a girl and the mischievous twinkle in her eyes, “it would not be called dining at this hour, would it?”

  Hélène touches a finger to her chin. “Well, no, I suppose not.”

  “My name is François.”

  “Oh,” Hélène makes a face, “my uncle has that name. He’s not the best man there is.”

  “Ah. Well then, I have other names. François Marie Arouet.” He bows, as if she were a lady at a ball.

  “And I’m Hélène.” She curtsies in return.

  —

  The streets twist and turn endlessly. Almost all are cobbled though there are still a few of packed earth. When it rains, Thomas can imagine, they must turn to mud. Which, added to the horse paddies and stream of human excrement in the gutter that runs down the middle of each street, will make things pretty rich.

  There is hardly a street name posted anywhere that Thomas can see. That was all right back in Vire because there were only a few streets and he knew them all by heart. But in Paris it’s an impossible task. He tries to note landmarks as he goes past them – the facades and spires of striking churches and some unusual signs for fish shops, butcheries and jewellery stores – but after a while it all becomes too much. He wonders more than once if he’ll ever find his way back to the building with the attic where he and Hélène are lodged. Of course he will, he concludes, because he can always ask for the Hôtel de Ville and find his way back to their grenier from there.

  As he wanders, Thomas notices that the signs of the inns and other businesses hang higher up than back in Vire. There must be some regulation at work. He approves. An ordered world is better than one that is not. He also observes that all the houses, regardless of their size or design, have bars in their ground-floor windows. This confirms what he has heard: that Paris has lots of thieves about. His meandering path takes him by several great houses, each with a porte-cochère. Those wide gate openings make a statement about wealth and standing. As he admires a particular opening just off the rue des Rosiers, he hears the clattering rumble of a carriage coming fast. He steps aside before the coachman’s horses run him down. The coach goes underneath the arch, into the courtyard within. He cannot help but wonder why he didn’t come into the world in one of those families of style and ease instead of to the one he did.

  “Born wrong,” he mumbles to himself.

  After an hour of exploring this way and that, through rivers of people streaming by, and finding no sign for the street Strombeau wrote down, Thomas decides it’s time to speak to someone. The first passerby that deigns to stop and answer his raised hand and mumbled query is an old lady with a limp to her stride. He sees in her expression that she takes pity on his plight. Better still, she is able to point him on his way. After that it’s a bit of a loop and backtrack, no doubt about it, but it’s an exploration he mostly enjoys. The city is becoming his Paris with every step. His feet have to learn it sooner or later, so it might as well be now.

  Most streets have iron lanterns hanging down in the middle of the way. There seems to be one every twenty paces, with a box of glass and metal that looks to be twenty feet above the centre of the street. The coaches, even the high ones, all pass safely beneath, though some not by much. The rope that’s used to let the lanterns down when it’s time to light them is fastened to the closest building, secured with an iron funnel and a lock. Thomas will come back out on the streets at night to see how the lamplighters bring them down and go about their business. He also wants see how much the lamps glow when they are lit. He’s heard they put four big candles inside each night. He’s curious how long they last. Can they burn all through the dark or only until midnight, maybe a little past? And at what cost? If in truth there are four candles in each and every one, multiplied by however many lanterns there be and that number by the whole year long, why that’s no small cost. “City of lights,” Thomas murmurs, a phrase he often heard before he arrived in Paris. Now that he’s a resident it’s a boast he’s entitled to repeat.

  City of Lights, yes, but a city of stink as well. It’s not just the horse droppings, though thanks to all the coaches, there are more plops in Paris than Thomas has ever seen before. Worse than the horse shit is that which comes out of all the people. Who knows how many thousand chamber pots are overturned each day and night? Or how many are too lazy to make a descent and simply throw the reeking contents of their pots from windows out to the streets? Thomas picks a careful path wherever he goes, though twice already a carriage rolling past has splashed bits of spray his way. His breeches take a few squirts and his shoes are soon a mess.

  It takes the better part of two hours for Thomas to find the street Strombeau wrote upon the sheet. He wants to confirm that he’s arrived where he is supposed to be by asking a passing water carrier, a man with a long scar upon his cheek.

  “The Marquis d’Argenson, is he to be found in there?”

  The water carrier does not answer. He breaks eye contact and swiftly moves away, spilling some o
f his wet cargo as he goes. It looks to Thomas as if there’s suddenly someone after the man.

  Thomas looks again at the stone building with ornate columns and pediment. He notices for the first time that chiselled upon a stone plaque on the surrounding wall are the words Police de Paris.

  “Oh,” Thomas mutters for no one but himself. All he knows about the Police de Paris is that the city is the only place in France with such a force. Everywhere else it’s a garrison of soldiers or musketeers or nothing at all. The force is supposed to keep the city safe from cut-throats and footpads. But why would Strombeau send him here? His idea of a joke?

  —

  The atmosphere inside is quiet, reminding Thomas of the entrance to a church. Is this, the Police de Paris, yet another secret world? Two men dressed in drab middling coats and breeches, both dark in colour but not quite a uniform, come out a door down the hall to the right. Their conversation is hushed. Each man seems to be given to making sudden gestures and shooting fervent looks. Another man, a tricorn tucked under one arm and a sheaf of papers in the other hand, is coming down the grand staircase in a hurry. No one gives Thomas the slightest regard.

  From a door to the right emerges someone else. This someone’s appearance and stately posture make Thomas stand up straight. The man’s coat is the colour of a ripe plum, highlighted with silver embroidered brocade. Each sleeve has an elaborate cuff, and the man is wearing a lace neck-cloth. There is a knot of white ribbon at the shoulder, which matches the white silk of the stockings below. The shoes are square-toed with jewelled buckles and low red heels. Thomas’s eyes widen as he appreciates the full ensemble, the like of which he’s never seen before. The man’s wig consists of long grey curls that sweep off his shoulders and tumble down his back.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Thomas ventures, “can you tell me if a Marquis d’Argenson should reside in here?”

  The well-dressed gentleman touches the brim of his plumed hat as he purses his lips. His expression is as if Thomas had not been speaking French, or if it was French it was with an accent the man could not quite comprehend. The man’s eyes go up and down the lad’s clothes, which are both too large and too small. After a slight shake of the head the eyes come back up to the young man’s face. He pulls a mouchoir from a pocket of his justaucorps. He covers his mouth and nose.

  “Resides? Here? The marquis?” Each syllable comes out of the mouth well rounded, as if there is some hidden joke. Thomas hears mockery, mockery at his expense. “You are asking for the marquis?”

  Thomas’s eyes go down to his own shoes and breeches. He sees how mud- and shit-splattered they are, and realizes how he must look and smell. This gentleman, on the other hand, is giving off a scent of a sweet perfume. Orange water or something better is Thomas’s guess. For an instant, the young man’s gaze flicks past the gentleman to the framed engravings on the closest wall – fortress towns and battle scenes. Farther on there is a large painting of justice – a blindfolded woman holding a scale – and there at the end of the hall, in the place of honour, hangs a full-length portrait of the king. Thomas has heard that Louis XIV has not been well of late, though since he has been on the throne forever it’s unlikely any malady could ever kill him off. He’s outlived his children and grandchildren too.

  “Someone gave me the marquis’s name. A Monsieur Strombeau. We met on a coach.”

  The eyes of the gentleman facing Thomas briefly light up. He lowers his mouchoir. But if he was fleetingly tempted to say something, that thought does not stay. He recovers his mouth and nose and looks away. Thomas takes the expression to mean that the gentleman has nothing further to say.

  “My mistake,” Thomas says after a long delay. “Must have the wrong name or the wrong place. I’ll be on my way.” He spins to head for the door through which he’d entered barely a minute before.

  “No,” comes the voice of the well-dressed gentleman. It’s the voice of someone who is used to being obeyed. “You’ll wait where you are.”

  Thomas does as he is told. Maybe Strombeau’s direction to come here was not in vain after all.

  The gentleman in the plum-coloured coat lifts a hand in the direction of the two men in dark clothes in conversation at the base of the staircase. The raised hand all by itself interrupts their talk. It beckons them to come closer with a motion of the tips of his fingers as slight as slight can be. One of the beckoned men, tall, thin, with neither hat nor wig, responds to the gesture. He wears what looks to be his natural hair in a queue. His face has barely any features, no eyebrows that Thomas can see. The faceless man strides forward to where the gentleman stands waiting patiently, but patiently as if he were a king or pope, who will not wait for long. Thomas can just barely make out the following bits of their exchange.

  “Collier,” says the man with the mouchoir, looking into the distance not at the man himself. The expressionless man comes to a deferential stance a few feet away.

  So that’s the faceless man’s name, is it, Thomas surmises. Collier.

  Snippets from the distinguished one: “…young fellow asked … the marquis … paper from … Strombeau.”

  “Ah, Strombeau,” is all Collier says, Thomas is pretty sure.

  “…too young of course … but speak … what he is about…”

  “Yes, Monsieur le Marquis,” says the one named Collier, louder than before. His heels come together to make a tiny click.

  Thomas’s eyes swing from the man he’d first approached, whom he now hears is the Marquis, down to stare at Collier’s just-clicked shoes. Collier waves a hand to break Thomas’s gaze.

  “This way please.”

  Intrigued by the curious world of the Police de Paris that Strombeau’s note has brought him to, Thomas follows in the direction Collier directs. The two of them, Collier nearing forty and Thomas a mere fifteen, walk down the corridor until they reach the third door on the left. The Paris police official turns the handle and gestures for Thomas to go in first. Inside, Thomas finds a table with three simple wooden chairs. There are two on one side and one on the opposite side, with four more chairs, of superior craftsmanship, around the perimeter of the room. That is all there is: not a thing on the walls and no windows either. It suggests to Thomas a room for interrogations. Odd, he thinks, but he steps in just the same.

  “Any seat.” Collier speaks softly, as if he might have bad news he is reluctant to share. “You select.”

  Thomas’s gaze goes to the door Collier has just closed behind the two of them. Thomas stands behind a chair but is now uncertain about pulling it out to sit.

  “I ... I don’t need to sit. I was only looking for a name. Well, a man with a name. Given to me by a friend. Well, an acquaintance I suppose. A Monsieur Strombeau. I gather that you know his name.”

  Collier’s face is a blank. Just as it has no features so it has no indication of interest at all. He says nothing. Thomas feels it’s up to him to continue to make sense of the morning by himself.

  “I, I don’t know who he is, the Marquis d’Argenson. Strombeau wrote his name and that of the street outside. He said I should look him up. More than that, I don’t know. It’s all a big mistake.”

  “What’s a mistake?” says Collier, pointing for Thomas to indeed have a seat.

  “This.” Thomas waves round the room they’re standing in, the one with no windows, only a table and a few chairs and the door that Collier has just closed.

  “Oh this is no mistake. Please take a seat.”

  Thomas hesitates then does as he is told. He gives a faint protest with a loud exhale. He moves from where he is standing over to the side where there is but a single chair. If he must sit, he’ll take that one, the one all by itself.

  He thinks he sees Collier smile, but when he looks again there is no smile on the man’s face. There is nothing there. No smile, no expression, no features at all.

 
Collier sits directly across from Thomas, pushing the second chair away so that the table now has but two chairs, the one facing the other.

  “Please start over. I’ve not heard your story.”

  “Story? It’s not a story.” Thomas feels the top of his head getting light and tingly, like it might float away. If only this Collier’s face would give him some kind of clue. Not knowing what else to do, he does start to tell his story. “Well, I arrived in Paris yesterday and…”

  “No, that’s not how it’s done. You start with your name and your profession.”

  Thomas makes a face. What is this? A court of law? An inquisition? His raised eyebrows and imploring eyes have no impact on the man across the way, so Thomas thinks he has to go along. “It’s Thomas.” He blows a stream of air through his lips.

  “Is there not a family name with that?”

  “Of course.” Thomas’s mind races. Something tells him not to give out any more than he must. He’s already told Strombeau and the others on the way to Paris that he was not Pichon but Tyrell so he’d better stick with that.

  “Tyrell. Yes, Tyrell. Thomas Tyrell.”

  Collier’s face offers a hint of upturned lips. “You’re sure? You sound a little … dubious.”

  “Of course I’m sure. It’s my name.”

  “And how old are you, Thomas Tyrell?”

  “Twenty, well, nineteen, nearly twenty.” Thomas straightens his shoulders and stretches up tall.

  This time Collier allows a highly visible and obviously doubting smile.