“Hello,” called Monsieur Aulard, his heart beating so fast that he thought it might give out altogether. There was no answer.
“You been popular,” said his neighbor, a lady with a face like a ferret, sticking her head out of her front door. “A big man with a cloudy eye came looking for you and your friends.”
“What friends?” said Monsieur Aulard.
“The boy and that there dwarf. He said he knew them.”
Monsieur Aulard took out his wine-stained handkerchief and wiped the snow away from his face.
“He said he knew where to find you.”
Monsieur Aulard, dry-mouthed and terrified, pushed open the door. The apartment looked worse than it had this morning. His possessions had been thrown across the room, papers scattered, the table knocked over, and glasses smashed. Even his mattress had been pulled from the bed. Iago, his feathers all ruffled, was hiding in a cupboard. He looked wretched. Monsieur Aulard stroked the parrot’s head and put him back on his perch. Then he sat down in his armchair, and, feeling a piece of paper beneath him, pulled it out to see that it was a poster for the greatest show on earth, with Topolain and the People’s Pierrot, the first walking, talking, all-knowing automaton.
“I am ruined,” wept Monsieur Aulard. “The only time I have a success in my theater, it vanishes in a puff of smoke.”
Finally, exhaustion overcame him and he fell fast asleep. He woke with a start, changed, and made his way miserably back to the theater, terrified of telling the count that this time he truly did not know the whereabouts of the boy and the dwarf.
Monsieur Aulard arrived at the theater just before seven to be told that he had had no visitors and that no one had asked after him. He went up the stairs to his office and opened the door. The room was dark. Why had no one bothered to light the lamp? he thought irritably, fumbling for the tinderbox. He stumbled, steadying himself on his desk. In the dark he could see an unfamiliar shape.
“Who’s there?” he called.
He lit the wick.
Slowly and terribly, the dead body of Topolain was revealed, sitting in his chair. Around his neck was a thin line of dried beads of blood. In his lap was the sawn-off head of the Pierrot, its glass eyes glinting in the lamplight.
Monsieur Aulard’s scream could be heard all the way through the theater and out on the rue du Temple.
chapter nine
Têtu and Yann had left the apartment earlier that morning, not long after Monsieur Aulard, for they knew that was the first place Milkeye would look for them.
The apartment block was never quiet. The lives of its inhabitants seemed to spill out onto the landing rather like the stuffing of Monsieur Aulard’s chair. A terrible fight was taking place between a husband and wife on the floor below, witnessed and commented on by the other tenants. There was a cacophony of sounds: shouting, screaming, babies crying, dogs barking, the background noise of lives lived on the edge of existence. In such chaos Yann and Têtu went down the stairs almost unnoticed.
At the bottom sat a child of about seven, who looked older than his years, thin and half frozen.
“Best you go inside,
mon petit
.”
The boy stared at the dwarf, terrified. He didn’t know what to make of the strange fellow who conjured up a loaf of bread from out of his coat. He looked at it in disbelief before grabbing it and running up the stairs. Only when safely out of reach did he lean down over the wrought-iron banister and shout, “Thank you, monsieur.”
It had been one of those twilight days when the gloom of night still lingers on. The sky was so heavy with snow that it appeared to have collapsed under its own weight onto the buildings below. It was not a day for having your sleeve come adrift from your coat. Even the church bells had a muffled half-heard sound. No one was out by choice in these icy streets, with the snow piled high against the sides of the buildings, so that the walkways were narrow and treacherous.
The months of December and January had produced a bitter harvest, a crop of starved and frozen corpses, the money it brought in lining the pockets of the coffin-makers.
The lights and smoky warmth of Moet’s Tavern seemed like a slice of heaven in this frozen city. As usual, it was full of hot-headed youths and men arguing over the state of the kingdom. Têtu found a table tucked away in the corner out of sight. Here he ordered the dish of the day for himself and Yann. Only when his fingers finally felt that they belonged to him again did he begin to sew the sleeve back onto the boy’s coat.
Yann felt not only that his coat had come apart but that his world had been torn to pieces. Everything had changed the minute the pistol had gone off, killing Topolain.
What he knew about the past amounted to no more than a few facts, bright beads from an unthreaded necklace, reluctantly given to him by Têtu, who refused to join them together. He had no father that he knew of; his mother had been a dancer in a circus, and had died soon after he was born; Margoza, his surname, was the name of a village of which Têtu had fond memories. His survival had been due to Têtu, and Têtu alone.
What he knew about the dwarf was not much more. He had once been a jester to a king; which king, he wouldn’t say. He had traveled the world with a dancing bear. All that had happened a long time before he had found himself with a baby to care for. Never once had he mentioned Count Kalliovski, or who he might be. So why now had the count tampered with the pistol? What exactly was it that Topolain and Têtu knew?
The more Yann thought about it, the more certain he was that there was one question that, if answered truthfully, might string together all the beads on the necklace.
“Who is Count Kalliovski?”
Têtu shrugged his shoulders.
“One day I will tell you,” he said finally, cutting the thread with his teeth. He shook out the coat and handed it back to Yann.
“I’m old enough to know right away.”
Some secrets are best kept, Têtu thought to himself. “Yannick, you know I love you as if you were my son. Don’t you trust me?”
“I do.”
“Then believe me, I will answer all your questions, but not now. Now is not the time. Now is not the place.”
The food arrived and they set to eating.
Three tables away sat a group of young men, one of whom had a nose that looked as if it had been in an argument with a fist. His skin was pockmarked and he was talking loudly about the rights of citizens. He had no doubt drunk more than a skinful of wine, for he kept standing up and shouting out: “Citizens, the wind is changing! The old regime will be blown away. All is dust, all is dust!”
His friends quickly pulled him back down onto his seat.
“I have the right to say what I damn well please,” he shouted, glaring at another man sitting alone at a table. “Don’t you agree, citizen?”
Yann had been watching all this intently and did not at first notice Têtu wrapping his scarf about him and putting on his hat.
“Where are you going?”
“I have someone to see. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You are to wait here for me. If Milkeye comes looking for us, make yourself scarce.”
Têtu set off purposefully, walking away from the Marais across the Pont Marie toward the left bank, where he stopped as he had done several times before to make sure that no one was following him.
He knew that he had to get the boy out of Paris. It was too dangerous for him to stay. The only hope of doing so lay with a friend of his, the English banker Charles Cordell. He walked on, remembering the night all those years ago at the theater in Le Havre, a memorable evening all around, for it was the first time that Topolain had successfully performed the bullet trick and the first time Têtu had met Cordell. The two of them had struck up an unlikely friendship. Their mutual interest, to begin with at least, was magic, for Cordell fancied himself something of an amateur conjurer.
Cordell soon realized that prejudice made people underestimate the dwarf. Têtu was not taken seriously, so he was told things other men would never have heard. Ladies confided in him, young men spouted their views. The dwarf listened to the gossip of the coffeehouses, the prittle-prattle of the salons, and the oratory of the clubs. Cordell, like Têtu, knew that these places were where the real intrigue lay.
The two would meet regularly at the Café Royal, where Têtu would tell Cordell all he had heard and seen. This information gave the banker a clearer idea of what was going on and how best to advise his clients.
The snow was still falling as Têtu made his way toward the rue du Dragon, with its grand, imposing houses. They had a smug quality, as if they had folded their arms across their frilled façades, and looked down judgmentally from tall disapproving windows onto the tree-lined boulevard below.
Têtu stood waiting for what felt like a lifetime before a housekeeper came hurrying out, carrying a lantern.
“Is Monsieur Cordell in?”
“Is he expecting you?”
“No, I came on the off-chance. I need to see him urgently. Will you say that Têtu is here?”
The housekeeper went inside, closing the door behind her. Têtu stood waiting, stamping his feet and blowing on his frozen hands. The door opened again and he was shown into the hall. His teeth were chattering as the housekeeper took his coat, hat, and scarf. The snow that had formed itself into frozen clumps on his stockings was melting onto the wooden floor. He stamped the rest off his shoes as he heard the door above him open, and looked up the stairwell at Charles Cordell.
Têtu had never been more pleased to see his friend’s grave, bespectacled face staring down at him, and for the first time since the murder the night before he felt a glimmer of hope.
“Why, my dear friend, you look half frozen,” said Cordell, coming forward with his hand outstretched.
“I need your help. I am in a great deal of trouble,” said Têtu. And before he had even been taken into the elegant drawing room he had told Cordell the story of Topolain’s death.
“This is a great loss,” said Cordell, taking Têtu over to the fire and bringing out a bottle of cognac. “So . . . Kalliovski . . .”
Têtu nodded. “I have been a complete idiot,” he said angrily. “I let my guard down, believed we were safe after all these years. Fool, fool that I am not to have known who he was. I, of all people, should have suspected. I walked straight into a trap.”
Têtu got to his feet as if sitting still was impossible, and started to walk up and down the room. “I knew he was a master of disguise, yet I too was nearly taken in by him. Do you know what gave him away? His hands, his large, ugly hands.”
He made a sound that could have been mistaken for a laugh, though Cordell heard it as pent-up fury.
“Yes, his face may be smooth and ageless, but you can never change your hands, they never lie,” Têtu continued.
“May I ask why you are so afraid of Kalliovski?”
“Sometimes you meet someone you know is touched by evil. Kalliovski is such a man. I believe he came originally from Transylvania. We met when Topolain and I were working in St. Petersburg, where he made his money by cheating at the card tables. He was a cheap trickster, a gambler. He was interested in us because of the magic; we didn’t much like him, stayed out of his way. But he became obsessed with a friend of ours, a young dancer. In the end, in fear of her life, she ran away from him and we went with her. The idea was that we would protect her, for we had seen what he was like when he didn’t get what he wanted.”
“What happened?”
“He followed us to France. He found us, and he killed her with his bare hands. I could do nothing to save her. After that he was wanted for murder, and he disappeared. Later I heard that he had made his way back east toward Transylvania, and had married. I believed—or rather I wanted to believe—that no good would have come to him. I first heard the name Kalliovski shortly after I met you, but I had no inkling that it was the same man. The Count Kalliovski I learned about was a mysterious figure, who claimed to be on the verge of creating an automaton that could pass as a human. From all accounts, he was a man who would sell his soul to the devil to learn the secret of creating life.”
“My dear friend,” said Cordell, “it seems to me that you have unwittingly turned over a stone and found there a deadly creature.”
“There is one other thing you should know,” said Têtu, and he pulled from his pocket the red necklace. “This is what Yann found in Kalliovski’s room.” He handed it to Cordell, a thin red ribbon with seven crimson garnets set into it like drops of blood.
“If this were to be worn round the neck,” said Cordell, examining it, “it would look as if your throat had been cut.”
“Precisely,” said Têtu. “The only people who have ever been found wearing such a thing, so I have been told, are dead. I am sure that Kalliovski is in some way involved. This being found in his chamber proves it.”
“Têtu, I can’t bear to see you in such a state. What can I do to help?”
“I need to disappear. I can’t take the boy with me, it would be impossible. I want him out of the way, for a while at least. I want him to go to London, be given a chance to learn to read and write. Just a few months, that’s all, then he can come back.”
“I am sure Henry Laxton, my colleague in London, wouldn’t mind looking after the boy until things are back to normal. Coincidentally, Laxton has some knowledge of Kalliovski,” said Cordell, refilling Têtu’s glass. “Laxton has a French wife, whose sister was married to the Marquis de Villeduval. Some years ago, when Mrs. Laxton’s sister was killed in an accident, he went to Normandy, to the château of the Villeduvals. It was very odd. The marquis appeared to have no interest in his wife’s death, or in what would happen to their only daughter, Sido.”
“We met the marquis’s daughter,” said Têtu. “She helped us escape.”
“What small circles we all travel in. It was Kalliovski who stopped Henry Laxton from bringing Sido back to London to be brought up by his wife. The marquis didn’t care one way or another about his daughter, yet for some peculiar reason Kalliovski did.” Cordell went over to his desk. “Tell me one thing,” he said. “What part did the boy play with the Pierrot?”