He looked at his reflection in the mirror, added a touch of rouge to his cheeks, and picked up his hat and the box that contained the pistol.
“Are we ready to amaze, astound, and bewilder?”
“Wait, wait!” pleaded Yann. He pulled Têtu aside and said quietly, “When I went to clear up this evening I heard a voice speaking Romany, saying, ‘The devil’s own is on your trail. Run like the wind.’”
“What are you whispering about?” asked Topolain. “Come on, we’ll be late.”
Yann said desperately, “Please, let’s not go. I have a bad feeling.”
“Not so fast, Topolain,” said Têtu. “The boy may be right.”
“Come on, the two of you!” said Topolain. “This is our destiny calling. Greatness lies ahead of us! I’ve waited a lifetime for this. Stop worrying. Tonight we will be princes.”
Yann and Têtu knew that it was useless to say more. They carried the long box with the Pierrot in it down the steep stairs, Yann trying to chase away the image of a coffin from his mind.
At the bottom, fixed to the wall, was what looked like a sentry box. In it sat old Madame Manou, whose task it was to guard the stage door.
“Well,” she said, leaning out and seeing that they had the Pierrot with them, “so you’re going off in that grand carriage, are you? I suppose it belongs to some fine aristocrat who has more money than sense. Dragging you off on a night like this when all good men should be making for their beds!”
“Tell Monsieur Aulard where we’re going,” said Têtu, and he handed her the card that Milkeye had given Topolain.
All Topolain was thinking was that maybe the king and queen would be there. The thought was like a fur coat against the cold, which wrapped itself around him as he walked out into the bitter night, Yann’s and Têtu’s anxieties forgotten.
The carriage, lacquered beetle-black, with six fine white horses, stood waiting, shiny bright against the gray of the old snow, which was now being gently covered by a fresh muslin layer of snowflakes. This carriage looked to Yann as if it had been sent from another world.
Each of them was given foot and hand warmers and a fur rug for the journey ahead. Topolain lay back enveloped in the red velvet upholstery, with its perfume of expensive sandalwood.
“This is the life, eh?” he said, smiling at Têtu. He looked up at the ceiling. “Oh to be rich, to have the open sky painted inside your carriage!”
Effortlessly the coach made its way down the rue du Temple and past the Conciergerie, and crossed the Pont Neuf. Yann looked along the frozen river Seine out toward the spires of Notre Dame outlined against a blue-black sky. He loved this city with its tall lopsided houses, stained with the grime of centuries, stitched together by narrow alleyways.
The thoroughfares were not paved: They were nothing more than open sewers clogged with manure, blood, and guts. There was a constant clamor, the clang of the blacksmith’s anvil, the shouts of the street criers, the confusion of beasts as they were led to slaughter.Yet in amongst this rabbit warren of streets stood the great houses, the pearls of Paris, whose pomp and grandeur were a constant reminder of the absolute power, the absolute wealth of the king.
The inhabitants, for the most part, were crammed into small apartments with no sanitation. Here sunlight was always a stranger. Candles were needed to see anything at all. For that the tallow factories belched out their stinking dragon’s breath that hung tonight and every night in a menacing cloud above the smoking chimneys. It was not hard to imagine that the devil himself might take up residence here, or that in this filth of poverty and hunger grew the seeds of revolution.
On they went, out toward St. Germain, along the rue de Sèvres, where the houses began to give way to snowy woods that looked as if they had been covered in a delicate lace.
Topolain had fallen asleep, his mouth open, a dribble of saliva running down his chin. Têtu had his eyes closed as well. Only Yann was wide-awake. The farther away from Paris they went, the more apprehensive he became. Try as he might, he could not shake off a deep sense of foreboding. He wished he had never heard the whispering voice.
“The devil’s own is on your trail.”
chapter two
The Marquis de Villeduval’s debts were alarming. He took no notice of his financial advisers, who told him that he was on the verge of bankruptcy. He believed there would always be money. It was his birthright. He had been born with expensive tastes and the privileges of nobility. What matter if funds were low? He would simply raise the rents on his estate. This time next year all his problems would be over. In the meantime he would just have to borrow more from Count Kalliovski, who never blinked an eye at the outrageous sums the marquis requested.
This was how he had financed the building of his newest property, a small château halfway between Paris and Versailles, which allowed him easy access to the court and the capital. When he tired of both, he was to be found at the château on the family estate in Normandy. All that he owned was effortlessly perfect; his taste was superb, the bills always shocking.
That evening the marquis was holding a supper party to thank Count Kalliovski for his continuing generosity. The guest list included the great and the good of French society—dukes, princes, counts, cardinals, and bishops. Like the marquis, they all had good reason to be grateful to the count.
But why such generosity? What was there to be gained from it? Count Kalliovski was extremely rich, that was true, a well-traveled, cultivated, and entertaining man. His little black book contained most of the important names and addresses in French society. He was often to be seen out hunting with the king’s party, and was rumored to have helped the queen with one of her more embarrassing gambling debts. In return for his constant generosity, he simply asked for those tiny little secrets, the kind of thing you wouldn’t even say in the confessional box. All you had to do was whisper them to him and absolution was guaranteed, the money given. He kept his friends like pampered lapdogs. They never suspected that the hand that fed them had also bought their souls.
Many rumors circulated about Kalliovski, which he encouraged. When asked his age he would say he was as old as Charlemagne. When asked about his great black wolfhound, Balthazar, he would say that he had never been without the dog. One thing, though, was certain: Many were his mistresses and no one was his wife.
The secret of his success lay in the absence of emotion. Over the years he had learned how to empty himself of sentiment, to keep himself free of passion. Love he considered to be a blind spot on the map of the soul.
He had an iron-clad heart. His motto was one that should have warned all who knew him of his true nature, but a greedy man only sees the purse of gold before him. Count Kalliovski’s motto was simple: Have no mercy, show no mercy.
For the marquis’s part, he was in awe of the count, fascinated by him. If he was honest with himself, something he avoided at all costs, he was more than a little jealous of him. Tonight, though, he wanted to impress the count. Nothing had been spared to make the celebration a success. Only the finest ingredients were to be used for the banquet. The country might well be starving, but here in his kitchens there was food enough to waste.
He had even gone to the trouble of having his daughter brought home from her convent to satisfy a whim of the count’s, who had asked to see her. Why, he could not imagine. He thought little of his only child, and might well have forgotten all about her if it hadn’t been for Kalliovski’s request. For the marquis considered Sido to be a mark of imperfection upon his otherwise perfect existence.
The marquis’s splendid new château stood testament to his secretive nature and his sophisticated taste. Each of its many salons was different. Some were painted with scenes of the Elysian Fields, where nymphs picnicked with the gods. In others, there were gilded rococo mirrors that reflected the many crystal chandeliers. On the first floor all the salons opened up into one another through double doors with marble columns. The effect was a giddy vista of rooms, each one more opulent than the last, and each complemented by sumptuous arrangements of flowers, their colors matching the decoration, all grown in the marquis’s hothouses. It might be winter outside, but here the marquis could create spring with narcissi, mimosa, tulips, and lilacs, lit by a thousand candles.
But behind the grand façade of smokescreens and mirrors lay what no eye saw, the narrow, dark, poky corridors that formed the unseen and unsightly varicose veins of the house. They were for the servants’ use only. The marquis liked to fancy that an invisible hand served him. And so his army of footmen and maids performed their tasks quietly in felted slippers, like mice behind the skirting boards.
On the day of the party, the Mother Superior told Sido that she was wanted at her father’s new château near Paris.
It had been two years since she had last seen him, and for a moment she wondered if he had been taken ill. Her memory of her father was of a cold, unloving man who had little time for his daughter. Sido had grown into a shy, awkward-looking girl who walked with a limp, an unforgivable impediment that reflected badly on the great name of Villeduval. She had lost her mother when she was only three, and for most of her twelve years she had been brought up away from her father at the convent. The marquis had handed her over to the Mother Superior at the tender age of five, with instructions to teach the girl to be less clumsy and to walk without limping, if such a thing were possible.
Her surprise at finding that she was going to the château just for a supper party filled her with excitement and trepidation. As the coach drove away, and the convent doors closed behind her, she hoped passionately that she would never have to see the place again, that this might be the start of a new life where her father would love her at last.
Sido’s happiness soon vanished as the coach made its way along the country roads. Peering out of the frosty carriage window, she could hardly recognize the landscape they were driving through. In the thin, blue, watery light, figures seemed to rise out of the snow like ghosts, given shape only by the rags they were wearing. They trudged silently along the side of the road with grim determination. Faces stared at her, registering no hope, all resigned to their fate. Old men, young men, women carrying babies, grandmothers, small weary children, all were ill-equipped for the bitter winter weather as they slowly and painfully made their way toward Paris.
Sido stared at this terrible vision. She knocked on the roof of the carriage, her words sounding hollow and useless. “We should stop and help,” she called to Bernard, her father’s coachman.
The coach kept on moving.
“Please,” Sido called again. “We must help them.”
“The whole of France needs help,” came the answer. “If we stop for these, there are a hundred more ahead. Best not to look, mademoiselle.” But how was it possible to turn your eyes away from such a sea of sadness?
This was the first time that Sido had seen the château. The carriage made its way up a drive bordered by trees. The road was being swept clear of snow by men who stopped to let the coach pass, doffing their hats, the bitter cold making their breath look like dragon smoke. Others were up in the snow-laden branches of the trees, hanging little lanterns that were to be lit later that evening.
Her father’s new château looked like a fairy-tale castle, complete with towers and turrets, floating free of the formal gardens that surrounded it.
The coach went around to the servants’ entrance, where it came to a halt. The marquis’s valet came out to greet her.
“How are you, Luc?” asked Sido, pleased to see a face she recognized.
“Well, mademoiselle.” Then, feeling some explanation was due, he went on, “I have been instructed to take you up the back way to your chamber. The marquis does not wish to be disturbed.”
Sido followed the valet up a set of cold stone stairs and through a plain wooden door into a long dark corridor. Luc lit one of the candles. It shone a shy light down what seemed a never-ending passageway.
“Where are we going?” asked Sido.
The valet turned around with a finger to his lips. “No talking, mademoiselle.”
Sido followed in silence. Every now and again cat’s cradles of light shone from one wall to the other, through peepholes. Luc opened a door.
“This will be your bedchamber. The marquis will call you when he is ready.”
“What are the corridors for?”
“The marquis does not like to see his servants,” said the valet, his face expressionless, and with that he closed the door behind him. It disappeared perfectly into the painted panels so that if you didn’t know it was there, it would be impossible to tell.
This was a plain room, paneled in powder blue. The four-poster bed had thick dark blue velvet drapes, a fabric screen stood near a dressing table, and above the fireplace hung a painting of an Italian masked ball. There were no flowers to welcome her, no bowls of fruits, no sweetmeats, though these were given to all the other guests.
For her part, Sido was just grateful to be away from the convent. She stared out of the window. The sky was snow-laden, her breath a shadow on the windowpane, and it saddened her that she could not recall her mother’s face.
Hours passed, so that she was wondering if she had been forgotten, when the valet reappeared. “The marquis wants to see you now, mademoiselle.”
Sido straightened her skirt, took a deep breath, and concentrated with all her might on not limping as she was taken downstairs. Through an open door she glimpsed the dining room with its seven tall windows and polished parquet floor, its walls painted with exotic birds and vistas of undiscovered lands. The long table, with its silver, china, and cut glass, looked abundant and welcoming, waiting for the fever of conversation, the rustle of silk to bring it to life. Sido felt a shiver of excitement. Tonight she would be sitting at this very table.