The Star of Versailles Read online

  “What you reckon?” He held out one of the frock’s dirty sleeves and Sylvie closed her hand around it, her eyes narrowing as she rubbed the fabric between her fingertips as though it was the finest silk.

  She paused to chew her bottom lip, frowning before she lifted the other sleeve and examined it closely. Finally, an almost conspiratorial smile spread across her face and she asked, “Do you think anyone told this poor bugger where he was headed? From the state of this, he’d dressed for a summer ball, not the scaffold!”

  “If they did it to me, I’d take my britches off,” Bastien announced with a nod of satisfaction, raising his head to peer down his nose as he adopted more aristocratic tones. “You can chop off my head, my good man, but here’s my arse to kiss while you’re doing it.”

  “Watch that mouth.” His mother laughed, picking up a shawl that was more holes than fabric. “I’m not having people say I brought you up to swear.”

  “That Sylvie Dupire,” he replied, still in his theatrically plummy tones, “has brought her son up to say ‘arse’—what a bloody scandal.”

  Sylvie shot him a warning glance, pointing in his direction momentarily, and he went back to the task in hand, tearing the sleeves from the frock and throwing them to the pile of so-called ‘good’ rags. He dismembered the garment expertly and dropped the panels onto the various piles, ready for his mother to take with her when she went out selling, building her meagre empire.

  Here on the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, safe in the house and heart of Thierry Charron, Sylvie and Bastien no longer slept in the gutter. As Charron spent his days in the cabinet workshop downstairs, she made the apartments comfortable, kept her lover and her son well cared for and finally gave up sleeping with one eye open and a knife in her hand.

  ‘Always have a way out,’ she’d told Bastien more than once. ‘Put a bit of money away and don’t be beholden to nobody, they’re all bastards in the end.’

  That’s fair enough, Bastien thought, but you just took mine off me, so how can I tuck it away?

  They worked in silence for a while, sifting and sorting through the rags until he slid down from his perch on the table and went to the window, looking out into the glaring sun.

  “You off?” Sylvie asked, not glancing up. “If you’re going to pinch, make it worthwhile.”

  Bastien gave a sullen nod then, with a quick peck at Sylvie’s cheek, darted from the kitchen and onto the landing. He took the stairs two at a time, pausing to shout a passing farewell to Charron, who called, “Keep away from the square, your mother doesn’t like it!”

  The boy pulled open the door and ran into the street, swept up in the tide of people. Even if the rain had finally stopped after what seemed like endless days and nights of deluge, the ground was still a bog, sucking and dark. Where others did their best to edge around the quagmires as though they were bottomless pits, Bastien darted through gaps in the thickening crowd without any care for the mud that splattered his feet and legs.

  By the time he reached the Rue Saint-Honoré, the jeering spectators were virtually at a standstill, their catcalls and whistles echoing through the street and drowning out the rumble of wheels and the sound of hooves. As the tumbrel rolled into view, he peered at the two men aboard, one carelessly holding the reins whilst the other was stooped, an old man who seemed ready for his grave. A stern-faced priest followed as he had a hundred times before.

  “Who is it?” Bastien looked up at the old woman beside him, her hand raised to jab furiously at the sky. “Oi!”

  “Plamondon.” At the word, his eyes widened in surprise. Philippe Plamondon was a man in his thirties, tall and confident who shared Charron’s air of unshakeable solidity. Could the Conciergerie really have transformed him into a man more than twice his years, small and frail on his way to the scaffold?

  Seized by the need to see if this really was Plamondon, Bastien crouched as he ran along the line of dark-uniformed soldiers who separated the crowd from the street. Within seconds, he had drawn level with the tumbrel and recognized the man who had kept so many late-night appointments in the cellar of Charron’s workshop. They thought Bastien ignorant of their politics, of course, believed that he had slept whilst they had plotted, but though he might not have known what they had been saying, he knew what they were about.

  News of Plamondon’s arrest had shaken Charron and Sylvie to the core. If their fear went unspoken, their eyes told him all, the starts and jumps every time there was a knock at the door or a sound in the street. Vincent Tessier had taken Plamondon and now they expected him to come for them, to round up those who had joined the meetings in the cellars and carry them all off to face the blade.

  Yet nobody came.

  Eventually, his mother seemed less tired and Charron spent more time working rather than haunting the windows, back to his cabinets and hearth. Soon enough, life returned to normal, even if the meetings in the cellar seemed to occur with less frequency.

  Plamondon’s arrest was big news on the streets, of course, because his wife and son had been nowhere to be seen by the time Tessier’s men had come knocking.

  And now Vincent Tessier lives in your house.

  As they passed the building, Plamondon lifted his head to look at the place that had been his home, and in eyes that had once been full of life, there was nothing but despair. Bastien followed his gaze and caught sight of Yves Morel in a lower window, his face a shadow on the glass. He had seen Morel about the streets since his arrival from the south and was always struck by the man’s strong features, more adventurer than bureaucratic torturer. He was a commanding figure, tall and broad in a way that the men of the Convention never seemed to be, lacking their fastidious neatness or the studied chaos of Danton. He was a solitary one, too, even setting himself apart when he was in the company of others.

  As Morel turned away from the glass, Bastien dashed along the grim procession to where Vincent Tessier rode at the head of the column on a sleek black horse, no emotion showing on his face. Behind him came another man who Bastien didn’t recognize, stumbling along uncertainly with his wrists fastened behind his back and a soldier flanking him on either side.

  Whoever this was, his fine clothes suggested that he hadn’t been a prisoner for long, though his left eye was swollen shut, ashen skin blooming black and purple. If Philippe Plamondon seemed broken then this stranger was lost, good eye darting back and forth as he took in the baying figures that hemmed them in on either side. In his eleven years, Bastien Dupire had seen everyone from beggars to monarchs make this trip to the Place de la Révolution and none of them had appeared as bewildered as this well-dressed stranger.

  Beats thinking about what’s up ahead, I suppose, Bastien decided as he walked alongside the procession. Not a bad turnout for the merchant Plamondon.

  Still, nothing surprised him as much as Vincent Tessier.

  The so-called Butcher of Orléans enjoyed a reputation so fierce, so horrifying that Bastien had expected much more. He had imagined a bear of a man, a figure whose physical appearance would match the stories of titanic cruelty that had arrived in Paris long before he had. Yet where there should have been the devil there was just, as Charron observed, a bloodless provincial clerk.

  But make no mistake, there’s blood on that man’s hands. It doesn’t matter what he dresses like.

  For now, Tessier seemed to be exactly what he was, the man in charge. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead and he was a pale shadow all in black, the bright silver buttons on his coat catching the afternoon sunlight to spark like flint on tinder. One gloved hand held the reins and the other rested on the pommel of the sabre he wore, while his face was a white mask, thin lips set in a dead straight line. There was a sharpness to his features, a suggestion of cruelty in the hard lines of his face that made Bastien instinctively dislike him.

  At the sound of a bang, Bastien jumped back into the present and looked over at the tumbrel to see that the driver was huddled low, one hand holding his hat on his he
ad as rocks rained down on the prisoner, the priest spattered by mud and worse. Even now, Plamondon was unmoving, and Bastien wondered whether he even knew where he was, what was happening.

  It’s better that way.

  At the Place de la Révolution the crowds pressed in even more tightly and Bastien dropped almost to his knees. There, low to the ground, he moved through the sea of skirts and breeches. The smell was acrid and a couple of times he found himself coming up for air, stomach lurching at the metallic tang that stung his nostrils and burned the back of his throat as he neared the heavy wooden scaffold. On days with smaller crowds, he would climb as high as he dared on Liberté, but today the spectators were too tight to move back so instead he pressed forward, closer and closer to the platform.

  Tessier dismounted his horse and climbed the steps, gesturing for the manacled man to follow. The prisoner stumbled after him and, as he stood before the guillotine, Bastien almost saw him snap into the present, his wits returning in the shadow of the National Razor.

  The man with the black eye turned in a full circle and took in the scene, stepping back to get a glimpse of the instrument of punishment before him. His mouth fell open, slack and terrified. He spoke then, and though his words were lost in the racket, Bastien saw very clearly what he had said.

  ‘My God.’

  If one of the soldiers hadn’t made a grab for the prisoner’s arm, Bastien was sure he would have fallen, but instead he was wrenched upright and a rope was lashed through the chain of the manacles and knotted tightly to the rail on the side of the scaffold. Only then did Philippe Plamondon make his way up the steps, eyes downcast yet he walked to the bascule without any sign of struggle or emotion. A buzz of expectation passed through the spectators as the straps were fastened. Bastien leaned closer, swallowing hard.

  “You’re Charron’s messenger?”

  “Bloody hell!” Bastien started, twisting to look up at the new arrival. He found his efforts frustrated by the press of the crowd, the man’s heavy-collared coat and large hat incongruous in the summer heat.

  “Give this to your master.” He passed a sealed letter to Bastien, a hand on the boy’s shoulder keeping him staring straight ahead. “Tell him it is from the ninth Scholar.”

  Bastien kept his eyes on the scaffold. He pushed the letter into his sleeve with a nod, the mention of the Scholar leaving him in no doubt that this was a man to be obeyed. Bastien swallowed hard and shuffled to keep his footing, the crowd pushing forward just slightly to watch the bascule being moved into place, securing Plamondon beneath the blade.

  “People of Paris, let this be a lesson to all of you,” Tessier announced, clasping his hands behind his back as he trod the scaffold. “Enemies of the Republic will never be tolerated, no matter how much wealth and influence they believe themselves to wield.”

  “They call me the Butcher of Orléans, and make no mistake, I will become the Butcher of Paris if the Republic demands it of me. Today we witness the execution of Philippe Plamondon, a man who is an enemy to us all—a man who has brought into our country a spy in the pay of the British crown.”

  “My brother-in-law has had no trial.” The man who had seemed so lost protested uselessly, blinking as if waking from a nightmare. “Have we no rights?”

  “You gave up your rights, sir, when you entered France as a spy.” Tessier gestured to the well-dressed prisoner. “See how the celebrated Gaudet returns to Paris! I deduce no reason for a playwright to come to this city, sir, but I see every reason for a spy to do so.”

  Gaudet stared at Tessier, his mouth opening slightly as though he meant to speak, then he looked wildly about himself, tugging once more at the rope that bound him. Whatever he said was lost to the wind and Bastien edged forward. Now he was so close to the scaffold that he was virtually among the furies, the man’s hand on his shoulder carrying him along, too.

  Many years ago, his mother had taken him to watch a carnival and he thought of it now, remembering the way the audience had whooped and cheered, and the atmosphere of a party about the gathering. He had only felt that in one other place and it was here in the Place de la Révolution when the condemned stood before the great guillotine and the thousands who gathered here became one great colossus, a surging, amorphous beast that bayed for blood from the pit of its stomach.

  And here I am at the head of it.

  I am its eyes today.

  “So welcome home to Paris, Monsieur!” Tessier went on, warming to his performance. “Your public is glad to have you back!”

  “You cannot do this,” Gaudet reasoned, as though that could do any good when faced with the righteous fury of Vincent Tessier. “Think of his wife and child!”

  Tessier shook off the pleas with a toss of his head. The words were evidently nothing but the buzzing of an irritating fly. Then he crossed the scaffold to the guillotine and stooped to peer at Plamondon. For a moment, the prosecutor regarded his prisoner with all the fascination of a man watching a new species of exotic insect, a second before he stamped on it with his boot. “Have you anything to say, Monsieur Plamondon?”

  The crowd took in a breath as one, listening intently as the man on the bascule licked his cracked lips and turned his eyes to the figure who stood beside him.

  “The Star of Versailles will never be yours.”

  Tessier leaned forward to listen to Plamandon’s words.

  “You have already lost, Monsieur Tessier.”

  “A pity,” Tessier replied, “that you will not live to see my victory.”

  There was no executioner, Bastien realized, even as Tessier reached up a gloved hand and seized the déclic. When the blade thundered down, Gaudet started forward and let out a cry of protest, his words lost on the riotous exuberance from the mob that seemed to go on forever. Bastien couldn’t turn away from the sight of the body that stiffened and grew still, the spray of crimson blood that painted the wood a darker shade, as fascinating now as the circus had been in his infancy. Even the pain he’d felt when the Scholar had squeezed his shoulder did nothing to tear his attention from the sight.

  “People of Paris, take this as your warning! Enemies of the Republic are not welcome in our city,” Tessier bellowed in triumph.

  As the crowd cheered, he stooped to retrieve Philippe Plamondon’s head from the basket where it had come to rest, blood still pumping from beneath the fallen blade. He twined his fingers in hair that was matted with filth and held the head up as a macabre trophy, keeping it at arm’s length to avoid the blood that dripped from the raw neck.

  “Vive la République!”

  With that proclamation, Tessier swung his arm and hurled the decapitated head into the mob. Bastien flinched away from the scrum that erupted a couple of hundred feet away. When he turned to ask the Scholar for a few coins for the delivery, he was not surprised to find that the man was gone.

  Chapter Three

  William sat before his bedroom window and stared out into the darkness, replaying the moment when the blade had fallen again and again, even when his eyes remained open. He remembered the final spark of defiance that had lit up Philippe Plamondon’s face, heard the tone of triumph in Tessier’s words and the thud of the head as it had hit the basket, but beyond any of that, he couldn’t escape the look of terror in Alexandre Gaudet’s eyes.

  Gaudet hadn’t been watching him, of course, his was just one face amid thousands. Yet in all his adventures, all the horrors he had witnessed, he had never seen anyone look so afraid, so hopeless. How could so many be in rapture when one was so petrified?

  Because there is no humanity in the mob.

  And we can all lose ourselves as a part of something bigger.

  Behind the closed doors of his home, Tessier was a quiet man, considered and studious, yet up on the scaffold before the ravening faces he was a ringmaster, assured and flamboyant.

  A monster.

  What does Alexandre Gaudet know? he wondered, gazing at the moonlight beyond the glass. With the arrest of Plamondon, th
e last hope of recovering the Star had seemed lost, yet was it renewed in the shape of the playwright from Rouen, newly arrived in Paris from his London liaisons?

  No man would travel into the heart of the Terror to save his sister, surely, but a diamond more valuable than a king’s ransom? Well, that was something worth putting oneself in danger for.

  Sisters can take care of themselves.

  Since that evening, Tessier’s chambers had been secured day and night. From behind the locked door came the familiar sound of floorboards being lifted, wallpaper being torn away in the ceaseless search for something, the same something that Gaudet must have been searching for, too.

  Tomorrow things would be clearer, William decided—he would make contact with Thierry Charron and what was left of Plamondon’s network. If the fates smiled, he might finally hear from Professor Dee and perhaps even receive some measure of guidance in this most directionless mission.

  With that thought in his mind William rose to his feet, letting out a sigh as he stretched his aching arms and pressed his hands into the small of his back for a second. He walked across the bare boards and slipped beneath the blankets, hoping that sleep wouldn’t continue to evade him tonight.

  * * * *

  When William opened his eyes again, the gray light of dawn was creeping across the room, the street outside seemingly already bustling. With the sun came a new sense of optimism and he sprang from the bed. He dressed quickly with the intention of heading straight for the cabinetmaker’s workshop where Thierry Charron plied his seemingly innocent trade.

  A knock sounded at the door just before he reached it and one of the maids who toiled to keep the house running called, “Monsieur Tessier begs an audience in his study, sir.”