Angels of Music

by Kim Newman

  Jules, their pop-eyed boatman, grumbled and gnawed his beard. Kate wondered if he’d be done for price-gouging. Profiteers were hated more than looters. A centime on the price of a loaf of bread was cause for lynching.

  The dam didn’t completely block the way. A narrow gap was left for vessels to pass through once they’d been looked over.

  ‘Welcome to Suez,’ Kate said.

  Two young men with hooks on poles pulled the boat towards an improvised quay.

  ‘What treasure have we here, Max?’ said one. ‘A cargo of fair rewards for our hard-working lads?’

  ‘Indeed, Oscar, indeed,’ responded Max. His straw hat was probably not suitable for the weather. ‘A most welcome relief.’

  Kate recognised the badges on their breast-pockets. Max and Oscar were Camelots du Roi. The fellowship of rowdy conservative students was affiliated to L’Action Française, a well-connected, wealthy faction of Catholics, anti-Semites and Bourbon restorationists. Before this week, the Camelots were best known for affray masquerading as patriotism. To defend the honour of Joan of Arc, they disrupted the lectures of a Sorbonne professor who dared suggest a girl who heard voices was more deranged than saintly. During the flood, the Camelots had sobered up and volunteered to help police, fire brigades and army. Usually intent on overthrowing the Republic with flung beer bottles and obscene songs, the students had won over a sceptical public by tirelessly rescuing old ladies from sinking tenements (except Jewish old ladies, who could drown like cats) and delivering food to convents and orphanages. That said, Kate wondered what right they had to set up a road-block and quiz people about their business.

  Besides their student insignia, they wore green armbands.

  ‘Seven lovelies in a boat,’ said Oscar. ‘A rich prize, to be sure.’

  He consulted a leather-bound book, as if looking up rules of conduct for this situation.

  ‘Where are you going this fine afternoon?’ asked Max.

  ‘The opera house,’ said Kate.

  ‘Alas – there is no performance tonight,’ said Oscar.

  ‘We are aware of that, my good man,’ said Mrs Eynsford Hill.

  Thi Minh made a sad, determined face.

  ‘You’re not French,’ said Max.

  ‘I’ll say we’re not,’ said Irene. ‘I am American… my friends are Irish, English, German, Annamite and Bohemian. Olympia was made in France, I suppose.’

  ‘Olympia?’ asked Max, craning his head. ‘Which delight is she?’

  The Angels parted to let the Camelots see the doll. Her end of the boat sat lower in the water. Her works weighed more than human insides.

  ‘It is a pleasure to meet you,’ said Olympia. ‘I hope we shall be the best of friends.’

  Max and Oscar laughed. If old enough to grow proper moustaches, they’d have twirled them like stage roués. Oscar snuck a peek at his book.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ said Max.

  Olympia was blankly pretty. Kate remembered her crushing grip.

  ‘I’ve an idea, Max mon brave,’ said Oscar, snapping his book shut.

  ‘An idea, Oscar! Do tell.’

  ‘I believe this boatman guilty of foul offences against the city… to whit, the crimes of looting and hoarding. He has carried off these young ladies and now keeps them to himself. Do you call that social behaviour?’

  ‘Indeed not, Oscar, indeed not. His name should be taken down. Lists must be kept of the enemies of France, foreign and domestic.’

  Kate had little patience with silly young men in any country – and the glint of delight in bullying brought her colour up.

  ‘I propose we tithe the fellow, Max. We should relieve him of two of his ill-gotten girls… the fair flower of France, of course, and… the sausage-eater with the lovely hair.’

  Alraune shrugged. Kate suspected that if she were handed over as tribute, Max and Oscar would be floating face-down within the hour. That sort of thing happened often around the Angel of Ill Fortune.

  Irene looked piqued – at being passed over.

  Jules lowered his head and kept quiet to avoid a dunking. Kate began to feel protective of the boatman. He might be a profiteer, but he was their profiteer. And he only wanted money.

  These Camelots du Roi were unreformed rotters, it seems. How disappointing.

  There was something else. Oscar and his mysterious book, for a start. Max kept darting glances over his shoulder, as if a superior – not the gendarme on the dam – were monitoring him and harsh punishments were dished out for bungling.

  Most of the Angels could have trounced Max and Oscar by themselves – but a fight would escalate. Plenty more Camelots were around. At best, a skirmish with posh vigilantes would be a waste of time. At worst, the Agency’s real enemy would have another opening to strike.

  But they were held up.

  Oscar, marginally in charge, relaxed his grip on his leather book. A bookmark fell out and fluttered down into the boat.

  Kate picked it up and was shocked. It was a photograph of her – taken recently, outside a London restaurant. She hadn’t known she was posing.

  ‘I wish that hadn’t happened,’ said Oscar.

  He put away his book and produced a revolver. Max was surprised by the appearance of the gun.

  ‘These are the Angels,’ Oscar told him.

  Max didn’t understand. Kate, with a lurch in her stomach, did.

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said Unorna.

  ‘Ho, who spoke up?’ asked Oscar, waving the revolver.

  ‘The blonde,’ said Max, cheerfully. ‘Perhaps we chose unwisely. What do you say we tithe this rascal three out of seven?’

  ‘Forget that,’ snapped Oscar. ‘We’ll need them all.’

  ‘We aren’t the Angels you seek,’ said Unorna, low and even.

  There was a pause. Kate fancied she heard a humming sound. Unorna made a small, precise gesture which drew the eye in.

  ‘These aren’t the Angels we seek,’ said Max, waving them on.

  ‘You should let us pass freely,’ said Unorna.

  ‘We should let them pass freely,’ said Oscar, pocketing his gun.

  Kate felt Unorna in her mind too. She radiated persuasiveness.

  ‘You should mend your manners,’ said Mrs Eynsford Hill.

  ‘We should mend our manners,’ said Max, slightly puzzled.

  Jules – asking no questions – used his oar to shove off. The boat slipped through the narrow gap in the dam. There wasn’t room to row so Jules used the oar like a punt pole. The gendarme ignored them.

  Alraune whispered in Unorna’s ear. The witch laughed.

  ‘It looks like a pleasant evening for a swim, gentlemen,’ Unorna shouted back. ‘You should take a refreshing dip.’

  Oscar and Max immediately began unbuttoning their blazers. Thi Minh applauded and whooped silently.

  ‘It looks like a pleasant evening, Max,’ said Oscar.

  ‘…for a swim, Oscar,’ said Max.

  Jules had rowed into Boulevard des Italiens before splashes and yelps sounded out. The water was freezing and filthy. And shallow enough that divers risked bashing their brains out on submerged cobbles.

  ‘That was a low trick,’ said Irene, smiling.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Unorna.

  ‘Well done,’ said the American.

  Kate thought it down to Alraune, who pouted in self-satisfaction. The German was a bit of a snake.

  ‘They had my picture,’ said Kate. ‘Probably all of our pictures. We are wanted women. The Camelots du Roi and Fantômas are against us. Monarchists and an anarchist. How does that make sense?’

  ‘We are peace-makers,’ said Alraune, bitterly. ‘Deadly enemies set quarrels aside to come after us. Erik should be flattered. He has united France.’

  ‘There has to be more than that,’ said Kate.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Irene. ‘A proper explosive device at the Persian’s grave or a Maxim gun on that dam would have scotched us wholesale. Orders are to
bring us in, not bump us off.’

  Thi Minh signed that she wouldn’t be taken alive.

  The boat ran aground. The Angels climbed out and waded to a dry spot. Kate would have been happier to have feet on solid ground if it were a little more solid. The pavement was springy, as if a layer of squishy mud lay beneath the hard surface.

  Jules rowed off swiftly, in search of a less troublesome fare.

  Place de l’Opéra was in a sorry state.

  As Oscar said, the Palais Garnier was dark. The Opéra had soldiered on for a few days, keeping La Cenerentola on stage despite failing power and dwindling audiences. For one performance, prima donna Margarita da Cordova had to take the leading role of Angelina and fill in as a wicked stepsister when a mezzo-soprano was delayed by a capsizing barge. After that, the Management announced that the week’s thin proceeds would go to flood victims and shut up shop.

  The house was commandeered by the authorities. As National Academy of Music, it was notionally a government building. Kate trusted it wouldn’t become a prison, as during the Commune. Soldiers with rifles stood guard where commissionaires usually welcomed audiences. Stagehands had packed sandbags around the foundations. Men in sou’westers patrolled the roof, shivering in the shadows of the statues of Apollo, Pegasus and the Sphinx.

  A chasm had opened up on one side of the square, allowing water into the half-built, now-abandoned Métro Station. The police roped off the site, but curiosity-seekers were drawn to peer into the muddy pit. Charles had shared reports of mysterious frog-men who had become active during the disaster. They raided sunken basements and bank vaults, then escaped through flooded tunnels. The current Grand Vampire denied responsibility. This was a gang with a new gimmick, not a sub-aqua branch of Les Vampires. Perhaps followers of Fantômas or some new flamboyant criminal genius. Every bubble or eddy was taken for a sign of the frogs.

  In dramatic twilight, the streak of the comet was visible.

  A uniformed, death-faced man on horseback – with an extra helping of gilt braid on his peaked cap and epaulettes – trotted into the square at the head of a column of bedraggled soldiers. They wore drab greatcoats and muddy wading boots. Their shouldered rifles had bayonets fixed. A sputtering open-top staff automobile brought up the rear, overstuffed with junior officers and Paris officials. They argued over soggy maps.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ said Kate. ‘Assolant!’

  Irene looked at her, amused by her outburst.

  ‘General Assolant,’ Kate explained. ‘I’d know that scratched face anywhere. Last of the Légion d’Horreur.’

  Unorna made the Devil’s horns sign and Thi Minh nodded agreement.

  ‘The General is in charge of the relief operation,’ said Mrs Eynsford Hill. ‘He is strict about looting and brigandage.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be in charge of a pastry kitchen,’ said Kate.

  Paris bitterly remembered the occupation which followed the fall of the Commune. Having held out against Prussians, the populace were served worse by their own troops. Assolant got his start executing civilians in that action. The Dreyfus Case hadn’t added lustre to the army’s reputation either. Generally, Parisians preferred to cope with floods by the long-established practice of Système D – what the English called ‘muddling through’ or ‘winging it’. This season’s deluge was so devastating the government had to call out the troops. Like the Camelots, the army had done much to earn public goodwill through heroic actions against the elements and looters… but if Assolant was in command, that would change.

  Besides being lucky to come out of l’affaire Guignol with only his face mangled, the man was proud, pompous, cruel and inept. From following British Empire news, Kate knew that assigning such an officer to any outpost was lighting fuses on the next mutiny, native uprising and independence movement.

  The old legionnaire’s scars were a white tangle over one side of his face. Kate remembered when Lady Yuki did that to him. She could still hear the slicing, the fine edge of the sword scraping bones and parting flesh.

  ‘It’s a wonder he doesn’t wear a mask,’ said Irene.

  The Angels kept back under the awning of a shuttered souvenir shop. It was best to avoid attracting attention. Kate didn’t know if Unorna could convince a whole troop of armed soldiers to take a refreshing dip.

  ‘The General’s politics are extreme,’ said Kate. ‘He’s one of those guillotine-the-lot-of-them merchants, which is a laugh when you know what his ghastly friends and he got up to at the Théâtre des Horreurs. Our wet, sorry friends Oscar and Max are in a club which has been connected with several conspiracies to dismiss the Assemblée National and put someone like Assolant in charge until they can scrounge up a king or queen to run the country.’

  ‘If they even mean to restore that monarchy they go on and on about,’ said Irene. ‘My guess is they’d settle for a military dictatorship which keeps extending the “State of Emergency” and stays in power until they’ve finished robbing the treasury blind. I toured South America, and I can tell you it wouldn’t take much to turn France into Guatemala with croissants.’

  Thi Minh pointed a gun-finger at the mounted General.

  ‘I bet Assolant gave out our pictures and ordered we be detained,’ said Kate. ‘He’s waited a long time to pay the Agency back for his face.’

  He couldn’t do it alone. Only a sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation could get hold of photographs like the one of her. So, General Assolant – Creature of Fantômas? Nouvelle Légion d’Horreur?

  Several small boys cheered the little parade. Assolant glared at a gendarme struggling with a poster he was trying to pin up on a board outside the opera house. A warning against drinking polluted water. The policeman let the poster sail into a big puddle and attempted a salute, but tipped over and sat down in water instead. The small boys cheered the pratfall more enthusiastically than the soldiers. Assolant was not amused. Neither was the gendarme.

  The staff car’s engine groaned and the inhabitants argued more loudly. The vehicle stalled in a puddle which came up over the running boards. Water seeped in around the feet of officers and officials. The soldiers were torn between stopping to help and following their leader. General Assolant rode on, sword clattering on his thigh, cold eyes scanning the horizon for the enemy. Fortunately, he did not look the Angels’ way.

  ‘The authorities won’t be any use then?’ said Irene. ‘If they’re with him.’

  ‘Assolant is one of the worst men in France,’ said Kate. ‘I’m sorry he’s prospered. He’d happily accuse us of looting, then have us put against a wall and shot. Without the formality of a trial, of course.’

  ‘So noted,’ said Irene. ‘We knew we were on our own.’

  IV

  THEY REACHED THE famous terrace of the Café de la Paix by passerelle. The boards dipped alarmingly between trestles. Swinging between awnings and lampposts, Thi Minh was the only Angel to keep her shoes dry. Kate thought the Annamite girl a tiny bit of a show-off.

  Where the idle were accustomed to gossip, drink and observe the comings and goings of Place de l’Opéra, stagnant water lay six inches deep. The furled and sheathed table umbrellas were another sign of Apocalypse. A malign Poseidon had emptied a giant bucket of cold water over la vie Parisienne.

  The maître d’hôtel waited at his post just inside the café.

  ‘Mesdames,’ he said, with an insincere shrug. ‘We are not open for customers. Our kitchens are tainted with floating filth. We have shut down. You cannot come in.’

  ‘We’re not here for coffee and cake, Gustave,’ said Irene. ‘Our visit is possibly a matter of national importance. Now, let us pass.’

  Kate saw that the maître d’ was not impressed by high-handedness.

  Once, Irene could command a table at any restaurant or a box at any theatre. Even in establishments booked up or sold out six months in advance. A snap of the fingers, a flurry of attendants, a quiet ejection of paid-off nobodies and prime spots were made available for
la bella signorina and her guests. Bills would be torn up just for the privilege of having Irene Adler as a patron.

  No longer.

  It was worse than time moving on and Gustave not remembering a famous name from the last century. The maître d’ knew exactly who Irene had been… but she was no longer on the List. That unwritten document every doorman, shop manager, hotelier, bell-boy, fiacre driver and functionary in the city knew by heart. The people who had to be accommodated.

  The List Irene no longer ornamented. The List Kate had never been on.

  ‘You must leave,’ said Gustave.

  So… another man barred the Angels’ way. The last fellows to try that were nursing nasty colds.

  ‘Gustave, we are a memorial party,’ explained Alraune, swanning through the ranks.

  She attracted an attendant who relieved her of her rain-cloak. Alraune glanced over her shoulder to admire her reflection in a handy full-length mirror. Her tight-fitting yellowish silk dress was cut low front and back. Her large diamond earrings matched a pendant around her throat. She twisted, as if trying to consider the small of her back. Her hair swung, the knobbles of her spine showed, her shoulder blades shifted. The point of the exercise was to get everyone looking.

  Alraune was unwilling to stand up straight. Her walk was a matter of organised swaying and her posture was like a supple tree bending to the wind. She would not have passed muster in the corps de ballet. And her low, throaty voice was more smoky cabaret than grand opera. But, like many an Angel before her, she was a performer. She had danced and recited poetry. As an active Angel, Alraune ought to lead this troupe. So far, she had deferred to her elders – Kate, Irene, Unorna – only whispering telling suggestions when she saw fit. Which was quite often.

  Now, Alraune was centre stage. Not caring about lists, she was immune to them.

  She would not be turned away. Gustave was overwhelmed.

  The German was a strange duck. The Angel of Ill Fortune. She had a hard, ruthless glitter. Her peculiarly strong – if not unpleasant – scent evoked Wagnerian forests and earth spirits. Erik’s recruits were, of necessity, seldom nice girls. Clara Watson and Lady Yuki were, in many ways, terrifying. But Kate had understood them. Alraune was a 20th-century Angel, like the speaking machine Mrs Eynsford Hill and the agile Thi Minh. She didn’t doubt they were up to the job, but couldn’t get the measure of them – how they dressed, how they conducted themselves, what they wanted, who they were.