“My cousin has a garden in the city where the most beautiful violets grow. Would you like me to bring you a box? You could care for them and watch them grow.”
He frowned uncertainly. “I know nothing of growing flowers.”
“Then I’ll teach you. I have a garden even bigger than the one at Versailles. It’s called Vasaro and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Eagerness illuminated his features. “I think I’d like that.”
“I know you will.” She stood up. “And I’ll tell you all about my friend Michel. You’d also like Michel. He’s only a little older than you and knows all about flowers and perfume and—”
“Could he come and see me? We could talk and play ball in—” The enthusiasm faded from his expression. “I forgot. No one can come to the Temple.”
“But I can come here,” she said gently. “And at the least I can tell you about Michel. I have another friend who knew your mother much better than I did and you as well. Her name’s Juliette and we’ll talk about her too.”
He nodded, smiling tentatively. “That’s very kind of you. I know I mustn’t ask too much.”
Catherine felt the sting of tears. “I’ll come to see you day after tomorrow, Louis Charles.”
“Charles,” he corrected her gravely. “Only Charles.”
Catherine turned away and moved toward the group gathered by the stove.
She sat down by Madame Simon, who casually glanced up from her knitting. “You were talking a long time to Charles.”
Catherine stiffened. Had her absorption in the boy appeared suspicious? “He’s a sweet-natured lad.”
Madame Simon nodded. “Everyone always wants to stare at him and touch him. The baker’s wife even offered me an extra loaf if I’d cut a lock of his hair for her.”
Catherine relaxed and leaned back in her chair. “Did you give it to her?”
“Would I do that?” She shook her head. “The poor lad would be bald in a week if I gave a lock of hair to everyone who wanted it. Besides, they want the hair of a king, and Charles isn’t a king any longer. He’s only a good republican.” Pride and affection shone in the woman’s face as she glanced at the boy in the corner. “We’ve done a fine piece of work with the boy, if I do say so myself.”
Catherine avoided looking at her. “I see he’s reading Rousseau.”
“A republican book. I can’t read a word myself, but what Citizen Robespierre likes is good enough for me.”
“He doesn’t know his mother is dead.”
Madame Simon glanced at her anxiously. “You didn’t tell him?”
Catherine shook her head.
The woman looked relieved. “My husband wanted to tell him but I said there was no sense in making the lad unhappy.”
“I promised to bring the boy a box of violets. Would that be all right?”
She shrugged. “Why not? As long as he cares for them himself. I’m too busy to bother and my husband’s in his cups most of the time.” She smiled tentatively at Catherine. “I’m glad you’ve come to join François. A man needs a wife, even if he thinks he doesn’t.” She cast a sour glance at her husband. “It will be right pleasant to have another woman to talk to.”
Catherine smiled. “I hope we can become friends.” She carefully kept her gaze from straying to the boy across the room. “Very close friends.”
“I want to do something, François.” Catherine nestled closer to him, her eyes staring blindly into the darkness. “That poor child.”
“We’re doing all we can.”
“I want him away from here. Children are so helpless. First Michel and now Louis Charles. But at least Michel is happy and free. I want Louis Charles to be free too.”
François stroked her hair. “Soon.”
“How soon?”
“I have a few ideas. I need to talk to Jean Marc tomorrow and then go to the Café du Chat. Perhaps before the end of next month we might have him free.”
“Dear God, I hope so.”
“So do I, love.” François closed his eyes. “Now go to sleep.”
“Now?”
His eyes opened again. “You don’t want to go to sleep?”
“I thought we might … I know you weren’t happy last night.” She drew a deep breath. “I thought we might try again.”
He lay still, his hand stroking her hair stopped in mid-motion. “You don’t have to do this.”
“It was pleasant. I like being close to you.”
He slowly drew her to him. “Then I believe we’ll make a valiant attempt to get very, very close indeed, my love.”
“It’s like a flower releasing its perfume, isn’t it?” Catherine asked dreamily. “This is what you wanted me to feel?”
François chuckled. “Trust you to find a comparison that would bring us back to Vasaro.”
“Is it like that for you too?” She raised herself on one elbow to look down at him. “Is that what you feel?”
“Yes.” He kissed her shoulder, his voice husky. “An entire field of flowers releasing their perfume, sunlight shining and soft rain falling.”
“Is it always like this?”
“No, sometimes it’s only pleasant, a way to ward off the loneliness.”
She stared at him thoughtfully. He must often have been lonely in the years when he had lived two lives and never been able to trust anyone. “Did you—” She stopped. She didn’t have the right to question his past, yet she desperately wanted to know about those secret years. She wanted to know him. All of him. He had told her once that he was many people and she knew only Danton’s angry François, the François of Vasaro, and François, the lover. Now she wanted to know William Darrell. “Was there someone who helped you to—” She didn’t know exactly how to put the question into words.
He stiffened. “What is it, Catherine?” When she didn’t answer, his gaze intently searched her face. “There’s never been anyone but you since Vasaro. Not like this.”
“But there was someone?”
He nodded. “Someone.”
“Who?”
“Nana Sarpelier.”
“The woman you told me about who works at the Café du Chat. Juliette says she’s a fine woman.” Catherine was silent a moment. “You … cared for her?”
“I cared for her as a friend, as a comrade, Catherine. She helped me. There were dark days and sometimes she made life brighter.”
“I see.”
“What are you thinking?” François’s hands cradled her face in his hands and forced her to look into his eyes. “You’re my love. She’s my friend. There’s a difference. Please believe me.”
“I believe you.” A thoughtful frown wrinkled her brow. “I’d like to meet her, François. Will you take me to the Café du Chat?”
“I told you—”
Her fingers on his lips stopped his words as she smiled suddenly. “I’m not angry. I may be jealous of her. I’m not sure about that yet. But I’m grateful she helped you and I think I should become acquainted with her.”
He chuckled. “You do realize your attitude is extremely unwifely?”
She settled down beside him and cuddled close to his naked strength. “I love you. I trust you. I want all that’s best for you. How can that be unwifely?”
The box measured approximately two feet by two feet and was filled to overflowing with deep green leaves and white violets just starting to bloom.
Louis Charles gently touched one fragile blossom. “It feels like velvet, like the skirt of one of maman’s gowns … only cooler.”
Catherine sat down at the small table. “Robert, my cousin’s gardener, says you must not water these more than every four days or they may die.”
“I’ll be careful.” He sat down beside her. “But there’s not much sunlight in here.”
“Violets like the shade. At home at Vasaro we plant them in great beds beneath the trees. Their scent is greatest in the middle of the night when it’s darkest.” Catherine drew closer. “You’ll see what I mean
if you wake some night and smell the fragrance. Michel says the fragrance is the soul of the flower.”
Louis Charles’s solemn gaze was fixed in fascination on her face. “What a peculiar idea. Is he mad?”
Catherine laughed and reached out and gave him a quick hug as she might have done with Michel. “Not in the least. He just doesn’t think like anyone else.”
Louis Charles frowned thoughtfully. “You mean he doesn’t believe what people tell him to believe?”
“No.”
“It must be pleasant to be able to make up one’s own mind,” he said wistfully. He touched the blossom again. “Tell me more about this Michel.”
“Shall I tell you how I first met him? I was most unhappy about something that had happened to me and I awoke one morning and went down to the geranium field …”
It was dinnertime and Pierre Barshal was a man who had infinite respect for the joys of the palate, as was evidenced by the rolls of fat straining against his linen shirt and the rosy paunchiness of his cheeks. He sat at the counter of his apothecary shop devouring a full loaf of bread and a quarter pound of cheese, and washing it down with a bottle of wine. He looked with disfavor at Dupree as he walked in the front door.
“You have it?” Dupree asked eagerly, drawing nearer to the counter, his gaze on Barshal’s plump face.
Barshal reached under the counter and drew out a small green bottle.
“How fast?”
“Half a minute, perhaps.” Barshal shrugged. “But it takes effect immediately. He won’t be able to scream, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“Excellent.” Dupree handed him the money. “You’re sure it’s stoppered tightly?”
Barshal nodded. “You won’t lose a drop.”
“How much do I need to use?”
“Only a few drops. I don’t know why you ordered so much.”
“I always like to be prepared for any eventuality.” Dupree smiled with satisfaction. “You’ve done well, Citizen.”
“The poison is not without pain.”
“No matter, as long as it’s quick. That was the most import—” Dupree broke off, collapsing against the counter, flinching with pain. “Mother of God!”
Barshal looked at him with no expression. “What’s wrong?”
“My leg,” he gasped. “I’ve been walking too long on it today. Laudanum. Prepare a potion …”
“It will cost you extra.”
Dupree’s face contorted. “I don’t care. The pain …”
Barshal shrugged and went into the preparation room in the back of the shop. He came back a few minutes later with a glass of milky fluid.
Dupree grabbed it quickly and drained the glass. “Merci, Citizen.” He lowered his head and took several long breaths. “It’s already helping.”
“Four francs.”
Dupree lifted his head. “You overcharge me.”
Barshal lifted one shoulder. “You said you’d pay.”
Dupree reluctantly handed over the francs. “I’ll take care not to fall ill in your shop again.” He turned and limped toward the door. “Bonjour, Citizen.”
Barshal grinned at his departing back before putting the money away in the cash box. Served the ugly bastard proper, he thought with satisfaction. The man’s face turned his stomach and put him off his food. He reached for his bread and cheese and took a sizable bite of each before reaching for the bottle of wine and finishing it with three swallows.
Dupree’s hand closed caressingly on the bottle Barshal had given him as he hurried down the street. It was a pity he’d had to dispose of the apothecary. An amoral man of his profession was very useful, but Barshal was known to others in the city beside himself. The comte must be made aware how sharp was his new tool and how ruthlessly it cut.
He hefted the tiny bottle, such a light, lethal weight. Yet, even with the drops of poison he had put in Barshal’s wine, he was sure he would still have more than enough for his purpose.
“You can’t see him today,” Madame Simon told Catherine when she came to the door of the cell three days later. “The boy just lies there in bed and stares.”
Catherine’s eyes widened in alarm. “Is he ill?”
“No.” Madame Simon’s lips tightened as she glared at her husband nursing a mug of wine by the fire. “It was that stupid husband of mine. He got drunk and told Charles about old Sanson choppin’ his mother.”
“He had to know sometime,” Simon said with a surly look. “Everyone else does.”
“You didn’t have to dance around singing and pretending you were holding the bitch’s head,” Madame Simon said crossly. “He wasn’t ready to hear it like that.”
White hot anger surged through Catherine, and she had to turn away so they wouldn’t see it in her expression. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“You won’t see me,” Simon said bitterly. “I’m leaving the Tower. They tricked me.”
Catherine’s gaze flew to Madame Simon. “What happened?”
She shrugged. “The Commune promised him a better position and he resigned as guardian for the boy.”
“But they didn’t give me the other position and now they won’t let me take back my resignation.” Simon drained his cup. “They’ll be sorry. No one was ever better to that boy than I was.”
“What are they going to do with Charles?”
“Do you think I’d give up four thousand a year just because my stupid husband leaves the Tower?” Madame Simon frowned. “I’m staying with the boy as long as they’ll let me, of course.”
So now, if they worked quickly, they would have only Madame Simon to contend with in freeing Louis Charles. François should know about this at once. Catherine turned away and started for the door.
“Catherine!”
She turned to see Louis Charles raised up on one elbow. “Don’t go, Catherine.”
Catherine glanced pleadingly at Madame Simon.
The woman shrugged and turned back to her seat by the stove. “See if you can get him to eat.”
Catherine moved across the room toward the small bed.
Louis Charles’s ghastly pallor made his blue eyes look enormous as he gazed at her in desperation. “They cut off her head, Catherine,” he whispered. “Like they did Papa’s.”
Catherine sat down beside him on the bed. “Yes.”
“You knew?”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“She wasn’t wicked,” he said with sudden fierceness. “They shouldn’t have done it.”
“Shh.” Catherine glanced over her shoulder at the couple by the fire but they didn’t appear to have heard. “You must be careful, Louis Charles.”
“Why? They’re only going to cut my head off too.”
“No, not you.”
“I’m the king. No one likes kings anymore.” Tears were running down his face. “But they didn’t have to cut off her head. She was only the queen. They should have killed me instead.”
Catherine’s hands gently stroked the fair hair from his face. “I know it’s hard to understand why bad things happen. I can’t understand it myself.”
“He said they didn’t give her proper burial. They just threw her body into a pit with lots of other traitors and poured lime into it so that no one would ever know she lived. He said since she didn’t have the proper rites she couldn’t ever go to heaven.” His eyes were wide with panic. “She’s lost, Catherine.”
Catherine cursed Simon beneath her breath. It wasn’t enough that he’d told the child his mother was dead, he had to condemn her soul as well. What could she say? she wondered frantically.
“Listen, Louis Charles, do you remember what I told you about some fragrances living for thousands of years? Perhaps souls are like fragrances. Perhaps they don’t really need a body or rites or hallowed ground to live on.”
Louis Charles’s gaze clung desperately to her face. “She’s not lost?”
She shook her head. She was silent a moment and then spoke hesitantly, feeli
ng her way. “I think memory must be the fragrance of the soul. As long as we remember your maman, she’ll linger with us. She won’t be lost.”
“I’ll remember her,” Louis Charles whispered, his thin fingers nervously clutching the coverlet. “I’ll remember her every day so she’ll never be lost.”
“It doesn’t have to be every day.” Catherine took out her handkerchief and gently wiped his damp cheeks. “Sometimes at Vasaro we barely notice the perfume of the flowers because it’s always with us. But then suddenly something happens to remind us. It rains and the scent becomes more powerful or there’s a strong breeze after a long stillness. You don’t have to try to remember what’s already a part of your life, Louis Charles. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I wish I had something to remember her by. I’m afraid she’ll slip away if I don’t have anything to remind me of her. They keep telling me things and sometimes I believe them. I’m not like your friend Michel.”
“You don’t have to be like Michel. You’re fine just as you are.” She kissed his forehead. The nuns would have probably condemned every word Catherine had spoken, but she had been desperate to help him and they had seemed somehow right. “Will you eat something now?”
He shook his head. “Will you bring me my violets?”
She got up and went to the cabinet and brought back the box of violets. “I see you have some new blossoms.”
He nodded, his gaze on the violets. “If they don’t cut off my head, I’ll have an entire garden of violets someday.”
“They won’t do—” She stopped in mid-sentence. How could she assure him this world would not take his life when it had taken both his parents? If they didn’t manage to get Louis Charles out of this prison soon, he could well lose his head. “I’ll bring you another box of violets the next time I go to see my cousin.”
She wasn’t sure he had heard her. His head was bent forward over the violets and he breathed deeply, taking in the fragrance. He murmured something, but she couldn’t quite catch the word.
It might have been merci.
The Wind Dancer/Storm Winds Page 87
