The Star of Versailles Page 4

  “Where is the Star of Versailles?” Tessier asked with an insane calm, the whip connecting a second time.

  Gaudet couldn’t have answered had he wanted to, teeth clenched when the leather crop slashed his skin again and again. A cool breeze chilled his spine where his shirt hung in tatters and warm rivulets of blood drew webs where the whip found them. Gaudet was conscious of nothing but pain, of the sense that his whole body was being hung on hooks, burned above hot coals.

  “Before I kill you, you will tell me,” Tessier promised as minutes and hours stumbled together. “And before I put you to the blade, you will watch your sister and her son die.”

  Gaudet said nothing, his breath coming in harsh bursts and his head hanging below the level of his shoulders, every nerve ending exposed and raw. Heartbeat crashing, he was aware of the sickly stench of claret when Tessier’s face filled the space where the meagre light had been.

  “You will tell me everything, Gaudet,” Tessier told him in a tone as cold as night. “And when Morel has finished with you, you will beg for my kindness.”

  I know nothing, Gaudet screamed inside, hot tears stinging and blinding him behind his clenched eyelids as one set of feet receded and two more returned.

  “Poor bastard,” he heard one of the soldiers say, then the rope was unfastened and the manacles closed over his wrists once more, every movement hot needles in the fresh wounds. This time there was no struggle and they dragged their rag doll prisoner across the cell, dropping him down onto the straw. Then there was a calloused hand supporting the back of his head and a tankard at his lips for a few moments as the guard shared the few remaining sips of beer with him. Gaudet gulped the bitter alcohol down, but it swam in his body. If it hadn’t been for the man who held his head up, he knew he would have choked.

  “Tell them what you know, son,” an older voice told him. Gaudet’s head fell to the straw as though made of lead. He barely registered the guard’s next words. “Morel won’t muck about like Tessier does.”

  There were too many footsteps to count then, comings and goings until the door closed. Somewhere in the fog of pain Gaudet sensed the presence of another. In so far as he could think of anything, he knew that there would be more suffering. There seemed little else in his life anymore. Behind the bars, he had no sense of night and day, just cruelty and the pain it left behind, the angry words and agonizing touch of Tessier.

  Now Gaudet lay in the darkness and listened to his ragged breathing, tasting a foul mixture of beer and blood in his throat. He hardly dared move for the agony in his upper body. It felt as though every muscle was smoldering, his skin a mass of tiny flames that burned still. The world around was all darkness, the pain that consumed him without end. He heard a groan that couldn’t have been his welling in his throat, low and barely human

  “Alexandre Gaudet,” a man said and he flinched, unconsciously, anticipating more punishment. “They have summoned me to torture your secrets from you—have you any to tell?”

  At the sound of the voice, Gaudet drew his tongue over his lips and realized that they had split, a tang of blood still lingering there. The unseen man’s boots trod across the floor and Gaudet opened his eyes. He watched the shadows on the wall grow and change as the new arrival lifted the candle and walked toward the straw. Laid on his side, Gaudet was surprised to hear the man give a gasp of something that he supposed must be horror at his wounds, setting the candle on the floor and placing something heavier beside it.

  “Where is your sister?” The words were low, even, the sound of a cloth being wrung out following a moment later.

  “My sister,” he heard a voice that didn’t sound like his own rasp. “Please—”

  “If you want to see her again”—the unexpectedly gentle press of a wet cloth to his tormented skin almost made him cry out—“you must tell me everything you know.”

  The straw shifted when Morel sat beside him, one hand still on the cloth and the other coming to rest on his upper arm. A few moments passed, then he wrung the cloth and applied it again, touch assured and firm, but there was gentleness there, too. He worked at the slashes in silence, dabbing the solution across the whip-straight slices that crisscrossed Gaudet’s spine in a map of suffering. The only sound came from the water that wrung into the bowl and the grating breaths that escaped his bloody lips.

  “Why?” There was the hint of frustration in the words. “Why will you not speak?”

  “Why,” Gaudet turned his head, the world swimming in and out of darkness, “will I not give up my sister to the Butcher of Orléans and his torturer from the south?”

  Unsteady though his vision might be, Gaudet thought for a moment he caught a flicker of disquiet in the gaze of the man who watched him, the gentle ministrations pausing as Morel weighed up his response.

  “Things are not always what they seem.”

  “Do I strike you as a spymaster?” Gaudet raised a tired eyebrow as he posed the question.

  The man considered this for a long moment, holding his gaze when he countered, “Do I strike you as a man who would torture hundreds?”

  “Tessier looks like a thin-lipped bureaucrat.” Gaudet sighed deeply, thinking of the little girl he had left lodged in Paris. “And you are Morel.”

  The careful touch resumed and Morel again stroked the cloth over Gaudet’s stinging back, his voice quiet when he murmured, “You must eat.”

  “If I do not eat, I will die all the sooner.”

  “If you do not eat,” he was informed, “you will not be the only one to die.”

  “When I am gone, you will never catch Claudine.” A tear threaded from his eye at the thought of it, of his sister and her child lost forever in France.

  “Tessier wants the Star.” As Morel spoke, Gaudet found himself being turned slightly, the cloth soft against his brow. “He will not stop until he has it in his possession.”

  Gaudet shivered at the thought of those hands, the scarred flesh stretched over gnarled bones, yet he said nothing, not willing to give in to kindness where torture had failed.

  “Tell me.” There was a pleading note now. Whatever had been added to the water eased the smarting bruises on his face. “Tell me where she is.”

  “If I knew,” he reasoned, “I would be with her, not searching for clues in her house.”

  “Are you always this bloody stubborn?”

  “You are Robespierre’s man.” Gaudet shifted to assuage the pain in his back. “And one day you will face the guillotine.”

  “I am nobody’s man.” There was an edge to the words, yet the touch remained gentle as Morel brushed the cloth lightly over his bruised eye. Gaudet let it soothe him despite himself, glad for this momentary break in the torture, for the kindness that he knew was feigned, was intended only to break him further.

  “Let me help you.”

  “Never.”

  “Never is a long time.” The words were deadpan.

  There came a knock at the door of the cell then, Gaudet tensing when Tessier ventured politely, “Morel, might I enter?”

  “One moment,” Morel called back, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and urgent. “I am on your side.”

  He turned his gaze back to Morel, reaching for his hand and for a long moment they stayed there, Morel’s expression, for one brief flicker, one of fear. With a brief nod, however, the impression was broken and Morel got carefully to his feet, bucket emptied into the corner and the cloth vanishing a moment later.

  Tessier strode into the cell, his fingers knitted together before him. He took in the scene with a cold smile and said, “Gaudet, you are to return to the Rue Saint-Honoré. I believe you and I will soon reach an understanding there.”

  “It seems our playwright is not one to speak freely,” Morel told Tessier coldly. “Even the candle flame could not induce him to talk.”

  “You will see”—Tessier crouched before Gaudet, dragging his head up by the hair—“how well I treat my houseguests, sir. Jacquet, the manacles!�
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  Morel stood aside as the guard entered with the requested chains, the memory of them making Gaudet’s entire body cry out in protest after the all-too-short reprieve.

  “And you and I”—Tessier clapped his leather-gloved hand to Morel’s shoulder—“shall enjoy an excellent claret while we wait.”

  With that, he led Morel from the prison cell as Gaudet collapsed back onto the straw, submitting to the chains once more.

  Chapter Five

  Fouquier-Tinville set down his coffee cup and steepled his fingers before his face, dark eyes fixed on Tessier’s pale gaze.

  “Saint-Just and I took a trip to the Conciergerie today, Tessier,” he said in a measured voice.

  Tessier nodded, trying and failing to read the apparently benign expression on the lawyer’s face, the silence growing more uneasy with every passing second.

  “We thought we might look in on our Monsieur Gaudet,” he went on finally, still not blinking. “And yet the strangest thing, we could not find him anywhere.”

  “Indeed.”

  “We wondered if perhaps he had escaped or perhaps, somehow, we had missed his trial, and yet it appears not,” Fouquier-Tinville commented, his voice steely. “Where is our spy, Tessier?”

  How dare you. Tessier curled his fingers around the arm of his chair, holding himself in place before his temper erupted. Who do you think you are to challenge me?

  “With the greatest of respect, as you are left to practice law, leave me to interrogate my prisoners.” Tessier smiled coldly. “He is in a safe place under the watchful eye of Yves Morel.”

  “If Morel is in Paris then we expect to see him before the Convention—he has been silent in all but the briefest correspondence.”

  “I shall speak—”

  “And now there is an empty cell at the Conciergerie,” the other man said, standing and executing a stiff bow of thanks. “Return Alexandre Gaudet to it within twenty-four hours or the Convention may decide it suits you better than the Rue Saint-Honoré.”

  “I highly doubt that.” Tessier smiled, utterly confident in the support of Robespierre. “I think your influence will be wasted if that is your intention.”

  “My intention is simply to ensure that the country benefits from all our actions,” Fouquier-Tinville informed him. “Rather than suffering through our own desires for revenge. Good day, Tessier.”

  “Good day,” Tessier replied, standing to return the bow and staring after the figure of the lawyer as he walked down the steps of the coffee house and disappeared from view.

  Could he break Alexandre Gaudet in twenty-four hours?

  I need him in the house, right there in the place where every floorboard, every window pane is a reminder of his sister and the child, for it is that memory that will split his resolve in two. He might grit his teeth and bear a whipping, hold his breath so he doesn’t scream when I apply a candle flame to his skin, but he won’t be able to withstand the thought of his sister out there somewhere, lost and alone.

  He must give her up, for her own good.

  Tessier drank what was left of the bitter coffee and bowed his thanks to the young woman who had served him. Despite the season, he pulled the leather gloves over his scarred skin and stepped out into the sunlight, nodding to signal for his carriage. Waiting for his transport to arrive, he surveyed the packed street and those who made every effort not to catch his eye even as he saw them glance his way anxiously or even point him out to their companions, throwing a glimpse in his direction with feigned disinterest.

  And they should look—let them know me and let them fear me, every one of them.

  Let them know what happened in Orléans, whisper about it and use my name to scare their misbehaving babes.

  Vincent Tessier, the Butcher of Orléans.

  They will write that on my tombstone.

  He stepped back to avoid the filth thrown up as the ebony carriage rolled to a halt, then he climbed into the cool interior, pulling the door closed behind him. There was a pause as the usual two soldiers clambered into position on the back of the vehicle and they set off again, clattering over the surface of the streets in the direction of home.

  The day had been an unusually hot one and the stench hung in the air across the city, filthy and cloying. He would lay down his life for this country, and though Paris was the jewel in the crown of his homeland, its stink was less majestic.

  And the noise, that thunderous, rumbling racket that never seemed to fall silent. When he stood on the scaffold it was like oxygen, pushing him forward and filling him with extravagant pride, but in everyday life it was an unwelcome and deafening din.

  And there is nothing that shuts it out other than the blade and the whip, the welcome moment when a man is lost in his work.

  The carriage slowed to a halt when it passed the crowds in the Place de la Révolution. Tessier leaned forward to see Sanson on the scaffold, continuing a proud father’s legacy. He knitted his fingers beneath his chin and watched three people go beneath the blade, his heartbeat quickening as the crowd roared its approval. Tessier’s lips parted in anticipation as the fourth and final soul went to the bascule, the sun glinting on her white-blonde hair. She fought like a tiger with her escorts, even as the straps were tightened around her thin frame, mouth contorted with raging oaths. The twisting and wriggling went on until the very moment that the mouton drove the blood-blackened blade down onto that swan neck. Tessier tightened his fist and let out a wordless exhalation of triumph, his breath coming faster now.

  Finally, the carriage rolled on and he caught the occasional snatch of a shouted complaint, an obscenity hurled in the direction of the postilion after yet another pedestrian jumped out of the carriage’s unswerving path.

  Once again, Tessier remembered Fouquier-Tinville’s barely concealed threat and felt a surge of annoyance that he and the upstart Saint-Just presumed to interfere in interrogations, matters that were not their concern.

  Let Fouquier-Tinville look down his nose and Saint-Just threaten me with a cell. They will celebrate me as a true hero of this Republic, the man who stole the queen’s last, bitter victory from beneath her pretty nose.

  And they will have their playwright back in prison tomorrow, because by morning, I will have wrung the truth from his contorted, screaming body.

  He will tell me his secrets. By the time we part company, he will be begging me to listen to his every sin, however slight.

  I will be his final confessor.

  Then he too will meet Sanson in the Square.

  Tessier clenched his gloved fists and stared through the dirty window, lost for a moment in a memory of a very different time in Paris, when a younger man had burned for revolution, when ideals had been all he’d possessed.

  That man had never expected to be here, had never even held a gun, let alone found the beauty in a dying man’s last confession, the perfect, unguarded moment when there was only truth.

  Had I really been such an innocent once?

  Perhaps.

  Tessier shook his head to banish all thoughts of the past and flexed his fingers again, feeling a stiffness in the joints. No warmth came from the pale summer sunlight and he shielded his eyes and squinted past his reflection at the same route that had carried the widow to her death.

  The thought of the Star of Versailles brought back a stark and clear memory of the woman who had once been queen, diminished and frail yet still she held his gaze, challenged him at every turn. How Tessier longed for his time alone with the Widow Capet, dreamed of tearing the missal from her slender fingers and showing her a little of the cruelty the world thrust upon those who did not have the fortune to be born an archduchess.

  He could not escape the feeling that she had beaten him, that through their long hours of conversation and verbal sparring, she had never been anything other than a monarch, her civility condescending and her patience an offensive mask. Her eyes had flickered just once, gaze shifting when he’d tested what he was sure could be no more
than a rumor and mentioned the Star of Versailles. The words had frozen her usually demure countenance for no more than a moment before she’d pursed her lips and gone back to her treasured book without a second glance.

  Then, after so much silence and with hours before she felt the blade, the widow had sent for Vincent Tessier. He’d found her kneeling in prayer, head bowed and hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles had been as white as her hair had become. Tessier had waited for her to talk to her imagined God, standing at the door until she’d crossed herself and risen to her feet, turning to fix him with that glittering gaze.

  ”You have asked me about the Star of Versailles, Monsieur,” Marie had stated simply, her voice clear and calm. “And I have remained silent but I can do so no more.”

  He had held his breath, waiting for her to unburden herself.

  ”It is the most precious thing in the world to me,” she’d explained, tears that never fell shining in her eyes. “And the Lord will see that you never hold it in your filthy hands—you may send me to my death, sir, but believe me when I tell you that as long as the Star remains safe, you have lost.”

  He heard her words as though she stood beside him and flinched away from the steel in her tone even now, even as he knew she was no more than an echo in history.

  ‘You have lost.’

  And it was at that moment that he’d known he must possess it, no matter what the cost—he would not be beaten by a spoiled whore.

  Again, Tessier clenched his fists and the tight flesh stretched beneath his gloves, the leather grown supple from wear until it was a second skin that hid the evidence of his infamy. He felt no shame in the scars, but the weather could be cruel so he preferred concealment nowadays. Though there was a certain undeniable frisson about the first touch of flesh when the gloves came off. Only now did Tessier realize that the carriage had halted before the house. He threw open the door and emerged, disappearing into the building.