The Star of Versailles Read online

  Without pause he made for the staircase. As he climbed, he stripped off the gloves, the two men who guarded the door leaping to their feet, straight-backed and silent.

  Tessier acknowledged them with a nod and took the key from his waistcoat, about to slide it into the lock when Jacquet told him, “Citizen Morel is already inside, sir.”

  Still silent, Tessier pushed the door open and stepped into the room, where he saw Morel before the boarded window, hands knitted behind his back and his eyes fixed on the new arrival. His face wore an expression of annoyance at the interruption and he asked, “Monsieur Tessier?”

  “I have come to see our Monsieur Gaudet,” Tessier replied with a lightness that belied the slam of the door. “Paris is quite dazzling today—it seems as though a beautiful evening is in store.”

  He tilted his head to one side and regarded the man who was, once again, in the chair, arms behind his back. Tessier fully expected that his words would find no reaction. He was right, there wasn’t even a twitch. Gaudet was bent forward at the waist as far as his painful position would allow and his head hung as though his neck was snapped in two. The shirt that had once been carefully tailored for this so-called gentleman was now torn and stained more crimson than white. Deep black bruises bloomed where his skin was visible, welts and weals showing up a furious red.

  Tessier smiled thinly and told his prisoner, “I bring good news, sir.”

  He crossed the room and took Gaudet’s hair in his fist, pulling his head up to stare into the blackened eyes, hardly recognizing the face that had once been considered so handsome.

  I always hated your sort.

  Gaudet opened his eyes. He peered at Tessier with no trace of emotion, his gaze moving back and forth as though trying to focus as Tessier said, “It seems your fame is not limited to the theater.” Tessier darted his eyebrows up and added, “Robespierre has taken a personal interest in you.”

  “Robespierre,” Gaudet muttered through what was left of his voice and the prosecutor recognized a flash of fear in his eyes. “I don’t—”

  “Tomorrow you return to the Conciergerie,” Tessier confirmed. “And from there, it is a short journey to the scaffold.” He released Gaudet’s hair and addressed Morel. “He has told you nothing?”

  “Nothing,” came the confirmation. “I have seen nothing like it in all my years.”

  There was a creeping sense of admiration that anyone could resist both Morel and himself, that a supposedly dandified playwright could show such fortitude.

  “Very well, very well,” Tessier said, dismissing Morel with a curt bow as he turned back to his prisoner and said, “Our time is limited, Monsieur Gaudet, and we have so much left to discuss.”

  Chapter Six

  The night drew on, bringing rest in some degree to all who slumbered in the house, from the prisoner on his sorry mattress to Tessier, who slept soundly in the once marital bed. Yet the man they called Yves Morel was wakeful, making his way through the building as silent as a shadow, escape the only thing on his mind

  He was not Yves Morel, of course—the commander who had terrorized the south of the land now lay rotting in a pit with a hundred of those he had sent to their death. That politician, brutal and uncompromising, had run into an equally dedicated figure in the shape of Viscount William Knowles and it was the peer who had put him in his grave, his identity an easy and convenient one to assume.

  There were always hazards with taking the name of another, he knew, but when it put a man one step closer to the Star of Versailles, the risks were worth the reward.

  And with a diamond like that, a man can be done with adventuring, with danger and having nowhere, no one to call his own.

  With a diamond like that, a man can start again.

  Retrieving Alexandre Gaudet from the Rue Saint-Honoré was never going to be an easy task, he had known that from the start, though it was a world away from the Conciergerie. Here he had two guards and a madman to deal with and yet, until word reached him from Dee, he dared do nothing to act.

  As the hallway clock struck two, William made his way to the dark kitchen, where Bastien waited behind the kitchen door. He greeted the child with a coin, thinking how unnoticeable Dee’s people had become, how deep in the fabric of Paris they were woven.

  “You found your buried treasure yet?” the little boy asked with a cheeky smile. “I know you’ve got a playwright in your nursery with no skin on his back, but what about this diamond?”

  William stood quietly for a few seconds and absorbed all that, brushing an unseen speck of something from his sleeve. He turned the words over in his head, eventually telling Bastien, “Supposedly it’s as big as your fist. If Madame Plamondon is carrying that in her petticoats, she’d better keep an eye on her skirts.”

  “What happened to Morel?” Bastien enquired casually as they strolled away from the house. “And how it is nobody so much as questions you?”

  “He had the misfortune to come home to meet me.” William shrugged. “And he came off worse. I took his correspondence and sowed the seeds as I traveled north—he is known to Robespierre and Saint-Just alone. As long as I avoid the two of them for the next few days nobody need be any the wiser.”

  They walked on in silence to the cabinetmaker’s shop, then, with a glance back at the street, William slipped inside. Here, he was greeted by Charron and Sylvie as though he were an old friend, their hospitality warm and welcome after the frozen horror of Tessier’s house. Over a welcome ale, he told them of the playwright, of the torture and the sure knowledge that Gaudet must know something, that nobody would be stupid enough to come into the heart of the Terror without possessing the knowledge of how to escape again.

  As he outlined his plans to help Gaudet escape, Charron studied William more closely than he had ever been studied before. He saw a slight twitch in Charron’s hand, his fingers tightening around Sylvie’s. The cabinetmaker chewed at his lip and turned to consider the woman who sat beside him, his eyes searching her face for something.

  “Sylvie,” Charron said finally. “What would you have me do?”

  “I would have you take me to Vienna.” She smiled, her face lighting up with mirth. “And dress me in silk and diamonds, but if we can’t do that, I would have you do whatever you believe is right.”

  “I can’t endanger Sylvie and Bastien,” Charron concluded, returning his eyes to William. “I am sorry.”

  Sylvie pulled her hand free and reached out for William, catching his arm as he went to stand. “If this man dies, what is lost?”

  “He is searching for his sister and her child,” he explained with a shrug, well aware that might not be enough to sway Charron. “But it seems he holds the key to the whereabouts of the Star of Versailles.”

  Sylvie’s eyes widened and she asked urgently, “So it’s true—it’s here in Paris?”

  “So it would seem,” William answered. “Dee believes it is held by Madame Plamondon.”

  And if he believes it, then it is true.

  “I won’t put you and Bastien in danger for a bloody trinket,” the cabinetmaker told them, leaving no room for argument. “But I would do it for Madame Plamondon and her son if you would give me your blessing, Sylvie. Philippe was one of the finest men in France.”

  Say yes, William silently prayed, so much depending on the woman before him. Candlelight danced in her eyes and something sparkled in the gloss of her black hair as she looked from William to Charron and back again.

  “Bring your Monsieur Gaudet here,” Sylvie told him finally, squeezing his arm in a gesture of support. “What do you need?’

  “I’ll fetch a sleeping draft from Madame Masson,” Bastien exclaimed. “You can walk him straight out of there and bring him and his diamond to us!”

  “It is miraculous, as though God himself created it,” Tessier had told him that morning. “Every angle exact and it shines so brightly that there might be a flame within its very heart.”

  And yet the Prince of Wales
would scream and rave about it being the rightful property of the British crown, yet destined for France.

  “Bring him,” Charron agreed as Bastien turned to William with a grin of triumph. “And do it tonight, if you can.”

  There was nothing William wanted less than to re-enter the stinking cell, the memory of his last visit there all too fresh in his mind. He closed his eyes briefly, opening them again at the sudden and vivid reminder of Gaudet’s face. The expression in the broken man’s eyes when the playwright had clung to him had been like a drowning man, the barest flicker of hope he had seen more painful than the grip on his hand.

  “Get home,” Bastien said excitedly, the little boy alive to the possibilities of the drama. “And I’ll be there in an hour with your draft!”

  Returning to the house, he wondered what it would have been like when the elusive Madame Plamondon had lived there, a flicker of irritation again that her brother had not seen fit to be slightly more useful during their brief encounter. He would not be sorry to leave that shell of a household behind and it should not, he was sure, be too hard to extract the Frenchman, if only his luck would hold.

  After pouring a glass of brandy, William settled in the now threadbare drawing room to await the boy’s arrival. Once again, he thought of that damned jewel, of the prince who would spend its wealth on women and the gaming table, then he thought of his own existence, of risking life and limb for rich men who had nothing better to do with their money.

  Just before nine, he left his seat and went to stand out in the empty alleyway behind the kitchen, ready for the delivery. After a few moments, he saw Bastien clamber over a wall thirty feet from where he stood and drop nimbly to the ground.

  “As requested.” Bastien smiled, handing over a small bottle of clear liquid, and William passed him his usual coins. “Half of this and they’ll be out after five minutes—you will be careful, won’t you?”

  “When”—he gave a small, rare smile—“am I not?”

  Bastien acknowledged him with a nod and darted off along the alleyway, disappearing into the shadows as William returned to the kitchen. At the sound of the heavy door knocker falling against the front door he froze, his breath catching in his throat for a moment. Quickly he dropped the bottle into his pocket and paused at the top of the kitchen steps as one of the maids hurried to answer the door.

  Robespierre.

  William stepped back into the shadows, the lawyer’s attention thankfully taken by the sight of Tessier descending the staircase. William saw then that the riding crop was tucked beneath his arm, a splash of blood staining the pale flesh of his cheek and coloring his white linen cuffs. When he saw the visitor, Tessier visibly straightened before nodding a welcome, curt and brisk.

  Pausing at the mirror, he wiped the blood away with a handkerchief and said, “Citizen, I—”

  “The playwright,” Robespierre told him, already climbing the staircase. “Now.”

  “Take this,” Tessier hissed as he tossed the whip toward the maid.

  She caught it with a grimace, her palms sticking on the bloodied leather. Barely daring to breathe, William melted back into the shadows, listening intently for any noise from above. Finally, after what felt like an excruciatingly long time, footsteps sounded once more, the two men descending and heading out into the night.

  Another pair of feet pounded on the stairs then as one of the guards thundered down, calling, “I’ll see what food there is to go with the beer and all!”

  Seeing his chance, William stepped from the shadows, seemingly in all innocence, saying conversationally, “I am due to visit Gaudet shortly. I shall bring your beer up with my own.”

  “Citizen,” the guard exclaimed with a panicky bow, “my pa said as he’d met you at the prison, it’s an honor, sir!”

  This is Jacquet’s son? This boy, the offspring of that villain? He hasn’t inherited his father’s manner.

  “Go back to your duties,” he told the young man, wondering at what the world had come to. “I shall be up directly.”

  “We was saying to each other,” the young man remarked with a smile, his father suddenly writ on his face, “he’s a funny one, never makes a sound, just takes the beating. I tell you this, I reckon I could get it out of him. Give me that sister of his to go at, he’d soon talk then!”

  William felt a flash of loathing when he repeated, “Return to your duties, citizen.”

  With a bow, the boy retreated, taking the stairs two at a time whilst William made his way to the kitchen. It took no time at all to fix the drink, thanks to the bottle from Bastien. His thoughts were firmly on the task ahead when he returned upstairs and announced, “It must be thirsty work watching a traitor. Drink, with my blessing.”

  “Much obliged, sir!” The older guard laughed, taking one of the mugs of beer as the younger Jacquet snatched his own with a greedy thanks. He guzzled at the ale, pausing to turn the key and admit William to the room that had once been the nursery of the Plamondon child, now pungent with the smell of blood and sweat, a pitch-black torture chamber illuminated by a single candle.

  “Am I to be executed?” From where he was strung up by his wrists, Gaudet tried to lift his head, yet failed, in even that simple gesture. His split lips parted for a second before any more sounds came out. “Robespierre says I die at dawn.”

  “Well, now,” Jacquet growled. He threw open the door and commented, “That was quite a draft you gave us, Morel.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” William had a split second to decide to brazen it out. “Tessier will hear of this intrusion.”

  “He’ll hear about you drugging folk, coming in here to cozy up to this molly,” the young man agreed. “I saw Morel speak in Bordeaux and I say you’re not Morel.”

  “And I say that you are mistaken, Citizen.”

  “They’ll pin a fucking medal on me,” was the guard’s response as he drunkenly lifted his gun, hand trembling.

  In reply, William took two steps forward and a smack from his elbow sent the weapon flying.

  “Call—” the guard began, though if any of the meagre domestic staff had heard, no one seemed to be rushing to answer or assist. The call for help was cut off a moment later when William’s own pistol fired once and struck true, the man crumpling to the floor.

  “Sir?” the voice of Madam Bonnay, Tessier’s cook, floated upstairs, alive with the chance of gossip. “Is all well up there?”

  “Everything is as it should be,” William called back, already working to release Gaudet.

  The rope burned his fingertips but eventually the ends of the knot were free and he tugged it away from the wall, Gaudet’s body falling against him for a moment when his bonds were finally removed. Only William’s arms around his waist stopped them both from hitting the floor and he steadied them awkwardly, limbs that must have been in agony wrapped loosely around his body.

  “I’ll get you to safety,” he told the injured man, “but you have to work with me.”

  It was at a painfully slow pace that they made their way toward the door, William taking most of Gaudet’s weight as he managed, with some effort, to get the door open. He listened to the house below, praying that their luck would hold when they stepped around the drugged guard.

  “I can’t…”

  “You can’t what?” William stared at the playwright with something akin to amazement. “Would you rather wait here to die?”

  “The nursery—” Gaudet winced, stooping at the obvious flare of pain. Suddenly he straightened, pulling against William. “I have to get the locket, Claudine is alone and nobody is there and—” His voice rose in pitch and volume before he cut the words off, shaking his head.

  “Locket?” William was utterly lost by this new twist.

  “We had a hiding place in the nursery, I didn’t think.” With that, Gaudet turned back to the cell and dragged William with him. In the darkened shell of the once cozy nursery he paused, fevered eyes roaming before the cold fingers William held slipped
free of his grasp.

  Gaudet dropped to his knees as though in prayer, patting his hands on the floorboards as William told him, “They’ve had the boards up, there’s no way—”

  “It’s not under the boards,” Gaudet hissed and there was such urgency, such conviction in his voice that William dropped to his knees beside him in time to hear him say, “I need a knife, something sharp.”

  William reached into his coat, wordlessly handing over the blade, even as he questioned the sanity of tarrying.

  “The child…” Gaudet gasped. “He cannot be left.”

  “You are not making any sense,” William heard himself mutter in exasperation, as though anything here made sense.

  Gaudet used the blade to lever up one of the boards, setting it on the ground, doubling over with a gasp of pain as his body caught up to the adrenaline-fueled exertions. “I won’t get another chance.”

  After a moment, Gaudet pressed the tip of the blade to a point in the grain and began picking at it with fingers that were already bruised black, what was left of the ragged nails catching on the rough wood. He lifted the board to reveal a small cavity, and before William had a chance to intervene, Gaudet slipped his hand into the gap.

  With utmost care, he withdrew his fingers and there was the tinkle of a delicate jewelry chain, a tiny locket safe in his palm. The treasure was no bigger than a fingernail. Gaudet put it to his lips, murmuring as he clutched it in a surprisingly strong fist.

  “Now we go,” William told him, sure they had already tarried long enough.

  Gaudet’s reply was to rise shakily to his feet and hold out his slender hand, graceful fingers curling around William’s own. Their progress out of the room was hampered by Gaudet’s obvious suffering, and William halted them at the top of the stairs, attention fixed intently on the gloom below.

  Then he heard it, the tread of footsteps climbing the staircase, accompanied by Madame Bonnay’s voice trilling a soft song on her way to bed. A dim candle flame illuminated the darkness in which they stood, both rooted to the spot with nowhere to go and every moment bringing discovery closer. Though he knew it was a futile effort, William pulled at Tessier’s locked door as the broad figure of Madame Bonnay emerged from the shadows.