The Black Hawk sl-4

by Joanna Bourne

  When the stairs circled again, light started filtering down from the top. A hundred and six steps more and they got to the trapdoor, already opened. Owl crawled up onto the platform of the bell tower. His eyes stung, coming out into the sunlight. Sparrows came out of nests tucked up in the edges of the roof and flew back and forth, objecting.

  He’d never been in a bell tower before, largely because there was nothing to steal in them. But this . . . This was prime. You could see all the way from the Seine out to the hill at Montmartre with the windmills on top. Notre Dame really was on an island. It looked like a bloody map.

  All four sides were open. Up top, over his head, the roof had a beam across it from corner to corner, thick as a tree trunk. That’s where the bell had been. You could see the grooves where it used to fit. The wood floor was scraped up where they’d dragged the bell across. They’d have taken it off to melt down for cannons. There was a square in the floor where the bell ropes must have come up. Big enough to fall through. Somebody’d set three boards across the space.

  Owl put her basket on the stone sill and leaned over, showing off a pretty, rounded arse. He didn’t take any notice of that, since she was a French agent and didn’t like being touched anyway. But when she was grown up a little, she was going to drive some man mad.

  She pointed southeast. “They are outside. You will see them.” She’d brought field glasses in her basket. “Take this.”

  What she handed over was a nice sturdy set of optics, standard issue for the English military. It was just a wonder and a mystery how the French got their hands on so much British equipment, wasn’t it?

  He wasted forty seconds thinking how much money a man earned smuggling and being wistful about it. But he was a spy now, not a member of the criminal classes, and he was reforming himself, so there was no point in thinking about profits from smuggling.

  He shook hair out of his eyes. “What am I looking at?”

  “That street. The long wall. You see it? The gate is green.”

  He was good with maps. “Rue de la Planche.”

  “It is. Do not boast to me. Look at it.”

  He adjusted the optics, set his elbows on the ledge to keep the view steady, and followed where she was pointing. Swung past. Came back again and found it. Adjusted the glasses. And he had it.

  That was another exercise Doyle kept setting him—using glasses just like these and finding his target fast as blazes. “A house. Green shutters on the windows. Iron bars. It is just a pleasure to see somebody take provident care of their possessions.”

  “Go back toward that gate.”

  The double doors in the long wall had gouged pale half-circles into the stone of the street, opening and closing a thousand times. The gates were closed at the moment.

  “In the courtyard behind that.” She brought out another pair of glasses and stood at his shoulder, mirroring his concentration. Since he was a noticing kind of fellow, he observed she had a little white-handled gun left in the basket.

  She shaded the lenses with the flat of her hand. “Good. They are all there.”

  Shade the glasses from the sun and they won’t glint and give away your position. Doyle taught him that. And wasn’t it disconcerting that Owl, who probably worked for the French Secret Police, knew the same trick.

  “What do you see?” she said.

  The courtyard was mottled brown and gray. Cobblestone with dirt. Dark boxes and crates were stacked up everywhere. One small wagon. Two handcarts. There was a big, light-yellow pile of hay. No horses. There were fourteen . . . fifteen people.

  Two men attacked a boy about half their size, whacking at him with sticks, while everybody else stood around and watched. The boy dodged and twisted like an alley dog, keeping out of reach. Just barely.

  Hawker feathered at the optics, fixing on the boy, trying to bring his face in. It was tempting to lean forward, trying to see better. Doyle had cured him of that particular bad habit by clouting him on the head every time he did it.

  And that was not a boy running every which way between the crates. That was a girl. She wore trousers and a loose shirt and she didn’t have any tits on her, but when she flipped around, dodging a kick, long braids fell from their mooring and swung on her back, pale as wheat. She was twelve maybe. Younger than he was.

  One of the men managed to hit her a good one across the back. Then the other man moved in. She got away, scrambling up over a pile of boxes. They chased her. Once, she tripped longwise and didn’t roll away fast enough and got herself kicked in the belly.

  Around the edge of the yard, a dozen boys did nothing . . . Hawker squinted into the eyepiece. No. That was probably girls and boys. Hard to tell from here.

  Five minutes. Ten. Eventually it stopped. The men backed away. The girl struggled back to her feet and leaned over, arms braced on her thighs, braids falling straight down to brush the backs of her hands.

  The two men motioned another kid over and began the creative process of beating the hell out of him in a purely instructive way. The girl limped to join the group lined up along the wall. It made him hurt, just looking at her.

  He glanced across at Owl. “Some men take their pleasure in strange ways. Is that what you brought me here to see?”

  “Yes.” She held her hand out for the field glasses, wrapped them up carefully in a checked cloth, and gave some attention to settling both pairs, and the gun, neatly in the basket. “What do you think?”

  I think there’s men better dead. “She’s a nimble little thing.”

  “She has been in training for a few years, I would think. She is good at fighting. Today, they are being taught that one may be hurt and hurt and hurt again and still continue. It is a valuable lesson. Those men, the Tuteurs who rule that house, repeat it frequently. Let us go. Someone might possibly look up and see us in this tower where we have no business being.”

  “Who are they?” He stepped in front of Owl, blocking her way. Not touching. A man risked whatever part of his body he laid on Owl, careless-like.

  She looked away from him, down into the spiral of descending dark in the opening of the trapdoor. “They are called the Cachés. The hidden ones. They are being groomed to be sent to England.”

  With the last words, she went off down the stairs, as if she’d said everything that needed saying.

  Since he knew a fair amount about women, he didn’t hurry. He came along slowly after her, counting steps so he didn’t trip at the bottom, hearing her footsteps in front of him. At the bottom of the steps he could see the outline of the door. Owl was blocking off some of the light at the lower edge.

  If he’d been waiting there, he’d have stood off to the side so he didn’t give away where he was. Lots of tricks Owl didn’t know yet.

  He took the last few steps and reached past her to spread his hand flat on the door before she opened it. “What do you want from me?”

  She whispered, “We will talk outside. I—”

  “We will talk here. Explain, or I walk out and leave you.”

  She made some gesture he felt in the air. “You bluff. You will not walk away after what you have seen. You have no choice but to listen.”

  “You’d be amazed what kind of choices I have.” He opened the door an inch.

  Her fingers touched his arm. “Wait.” It was enough to stop him.

  He was looking at a smooth, pretty face that didn’t belong to a child. Determined eyes. Eyes that suggested it was probably not a good idea to cross her. He didn’t know what she saw when she looked at him.

  She stood and breathed on his shoulder long enough to make a warm, damp spot. Then she spoke, low and fast. “That place is called the Coach House. They made carriages there, years ago, in the work building behind the courtyard. There is a school now in the house where the master once lived.”

  “A damn strange school if you ask me.”

  “When one considers its purpose, it is not so strange.”

  “Are we going to stand here and play gu
essing games? Spit it out or swallow it.”

  “I am deciding what you should know.” A moment passed. “I take a great risk. In all of Paris, there are no more than a dozen people left who know the Coach House exists and what happens there.”

  “Well, I’m not one of them yet, am I?”

  “That is because you are an imbécile and keep interrupting me.” Another minute passed. “They are orphans, those children. A man of the Police Secrète searches for young orphans of a particular quality.” The long slit of light from the door fell on her face. Her mouth pulled in at the corner. “There have been many orphans in France, since the Revolution.”

  “They’re a glut on the market lots of places.” The streets of every city ran full of strays in various stages of starvation. He knew. He’d been one. “Common as lice.”

  “These children are not so common. They are the clever ones. Some are so beautiful they make the eye ache. They are brought there at eight or nine or ten years and it begins. In that house, every spoken word is English. They eat English food and learn the lessons and games of little English schoolchildren. You would not know they were born French. They are trained to fanatic loyalty to France and to the Revolution. Then they are sent to England, to be spies.”

  Interesting. “Not much use sending kids that age, if you ask me.”

  “You say that, you, who are younger than many of them. I would be amused if I had leisure to be amused with you.” She shook her head. “Think, ’Awker! Someday, they will not be children. They will be grown men and women who have worked their way into the circles of power.”

  “That’s planning a long time ahead.”

  “We speak of the Secret Police. Twenty years is a nothing. Governments rise and fall, but the Police Secrète remain.”

  “And that is a thought to take home and have bad dreams about.”

  “Do not smile at me in a superior manner. We speak of dangerous matters here, not foolery.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Probably not, but I will speak anyway.” She bent her head closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “The children are reborn in the Coach House. The Tuteurs strip away from them all they have, even their names. When a place is found for them, they are sent to England and pass as orphans, or as children lost from English families. They are so young, no one questions whether they are what they appear to be.”

  That was a satchel of news to bring home to Doyle. Kids planted in England, waiting to be let loose someday. Spies still in the pod. “You know a lot about it.”

  “It is part of my charm to be knowledgeable in many fields.” She batted his arm. “Move aside. I want to go out into the light to speak of this.”

  He didn’t budge. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “We will put an end to this. You and I. Tonight.”

  He said a couple of French words he’d learned recently. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but it was something obscene. “Don’t tell me your people couldn’t have stopped that, Chouette. Any day. Any week. If you gave a damn about—”

  Her hand twisted into the cloth of his coat. She held him, furious, snarling into his face. “We did not know.”

  “You knew.”

  “Écoute-moi, Citoyen ’Awker. You are the newly minted spy. You strut about with your insouciance and your black knife and you understand no more than a flea. This is the battle of shadows we fight here in Paris. There are a hundred factions. There are secrets the Secret Police themselves do not know. Men too powerful to be challenged.” She let go of him. Pushed him away. “The Tuteurs who rule the Coach House were such men. They were untouchable.”

  She stood, breathing heavily, her teeth gritted. If he kept quiet, she’d get to the rest of it.

  She did. “Three days ago, the Head of the Coach House followed Robespierre to the guillotine. Now, secrets creep into the daylight. Men say openly that the Tuteurs of the Coach House have committed the most evil acts.”

  “What exactly does that mean when you put it in plain words? Being as I’m an expert in evil, I take a certain interest in the variety of depravity in this—”

  “Do not play the dunce. You are not the only connoisseur of evil here. We have all waded deep in blood since the Revolution.” Her voice was brittle as glass. “You may accept my judgment. The men who placed those children in England were monsters. They have committed enormities. The Secret Police themselves are appalled.”

  “What enormities?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Go ahead. Name them. Impress me.”

  She set her fist to the wall. Just set it there and looked at it. “Many of the Cachés—most—became children built of smoke. False names and false histories. English children who never existed. But some were more solid than that. Sometimes, the Tuteurs traded a child for a child.” She hit the wall, suddenly, with the side of her fist. It must have hurt. “Stand aside. I will go out from here. I am sick of darkness.”

  He let her shove him away. When he followed her outside, she was waiting for him at the iron railing that separated the churchyard from the road, holding onto one of the bars with her free hand, looking at the ground.

  He said, “Now you tell me what that means. A child for a child? What’s that?”

  She breathed deeply. Twice. “Sometimes, the Cachés became real English children. They became orphans without close family, sent to live with distant relatives.” She let go of the railing. “How do you think so many very convenient orphans are created? Walk beside me. I must tell you what we will do tonight.”

  “Hell. Are you saying . . . ?”

  “I am not saying anything. Now, attend.” She strode down the street, every bit of her the firm, busy, basket-on-her-arm house servant. A kitchen maid in a hurry. Not one speck of spy showed. “These Tuteurs must close that house if they wish to avoid an accounting for what they have done. They must place the last children in England, and do it quickly and brutally. I will not allow this.”

  “Because you’re so concerned about England.” He lengthened his stride to keep up with her.

  “Because they will choose the easy placement. There will be no false persona prepared for the Cachés who are left. They will take them to brothels in London and sell them to important men.”

  He shouldn’t have felt it like a punch in the stomach. Kids in St. Giles sold themselves every day for food and a roof overhead. Lots of the girls he’d grown up with ended up in brothels. Some of the boys too. He didn’t like to think how close he’d come to it.

  Deliberately, he slowed down, making her slow down too. “You think this is my business, somehow.”

  “I have made it your business. You cannot forget what you have seen.”

  She’d taken him up to that tower to see that skinny girl with her braids flapping out, dodging and hiding. He was supposed to think about that girl, locked up in a brothel.

  Owl was a fool if she thought any of that made a difference to him. He said, “I can’t do a damned thing about it, anyway, so—”

  “But you can. We can. Tonight, I will go into that house and take the children out. I have laid my plans. All is prepared. You will aid me in this, or you will not, but do not tell yourself there is nothing you can do.”

  “I’m not going to help you.”

  She stopped and turned to confront him. She looked so bloody innocent. She had a face like a flower, pale and open. Fine threads of her hair fell down alongside her face, picking up sunlight, shining. “I will be at the bookstore on the Rue de Lombard at sunset. If you are there, we will together perform this little theft of the property from an arm of the Secret Police.” She smiled, all winsome, not fooling him and not trying to. “It would be a brave and wily act to take so many potential agents from the French, would it not?”

  “It would be a good way to get myself killed.”

  “Then stay at home tonight and pull the covers over your head. Perhaps you will be safe.” She considered him keenly, and she changed her basket from right to left arm. �
�I shall expect you at sunset. Wear something . . .” she twiddled her fingers toward him, “unobtrusive. Au revoir.”

  She walked away from him with a spring in her step, looking like her basket held five rolls and an apple instead of a gun, field glasses, picklocks, and God knew what else.

  Seven

  JUSTINE DID NOT GO TO THE FRONT DOOR OF THE brothel. She walked around to the back entrance, to the kitchen.

  Men come to a brothel for the women, but they stay for the food. Babette, who ran the kitchen with a spoon of iron, was worth several times her weight in whores. Senior members of the Police Secrète schemed to lure Babette to their kitchen.

  The grooms who kept the horses and swept the yard—Joseph, Jean le Gros, Petitjean, and Hugo—were sprawled at the big table by the kitchen window. René, who was an agent, very clever though he was young, was at the end of the table beside his cousin Yves, another agent, newly come from the country.

  They called to her as she walked by.

  “Justine. Ça va, petite?”

  “What’s the news, girl?”

  “Over here, love. I’ve kept a warm spot on the bench for you.”

  Their clogs scuffed the floor as they bunched together to make room for her. The plate of cheese was pushed forward enticingly. The bread indicated. Jean le Gros patted the space beside him and grinned. He was a man of many words and few teeth.

  She had topped up her basket with news sheets. One must look very innocent when carrying a gun. She tugged a Journal de Paris loose and tossed it in René’s lap as she passed by, to read aloud for everyone. The grooms loved to hear about the men who came to this house. Nowhere in Paris were politics more hotly and intelligently debated than in Babette’s kitchen.

  Many times Jean le Gros and the others passed to Babette interesting words one fine visitor had said to another in the stable yard when there was no one to hear but the horses and a stupid old groom. Political revolutionaries spoke a great deal of the equality of man, while continuing to act as if servants had no ears.