‘And even when the advantage is only one card, that’s a lot in piquet!’
‘Added to which, he was winking at his partner, which gave the game away. Anyway, there was a challenge, and a quarrel. Insults were exchanged and knives were brandished. The owner of the place had to call the watch to break up the fight. In short, the young man is now in the guardroom in Saint-Roch. I was planning to go there, as I assume you want to wait for news of that mysterious cab.’
Left alone, Nicolas was overcome with exhaustion. He sometimes yielded to this impulse, wearied by the agitation that had led him, for so many years, from one place to another like a caged animal. At such times, everything, especially the city he loved so much, appeared sad, dismal and dirty, the grim-faced people around him all seemed to bear the marks of vice and crime, and he would feel a rising disgust at the spectacle offered by this modern Babylon. This would quickly be followed by the temptation to retire. He thought of the Château de Ranreuil, which now belonged to him. Many happy memories from his childhood were connected with the place. Just thinking of it brought the roar of the ocean to his ears. Would he not find there a peace that would distract him more than his own endless activity? And then suddenly a ray of sunshine illumined the gloomy office and revived his energy. It was always thus. Sometimes, out in the street, the grinning mascarons on the fine façade of a new mansion would smile at him and the city would reassert its grip, offering him, yet again, its splendour, its life, its excess. It continued to grow, bursting out of its ancient boundaries, encroaching ever more on its suburbs and their stretches of waste ground. The faces of those he loved brought him gently back to reality, however harsh that reality might be. The face of the young King, for example, whom he so fervently wished to help, out of loyalty to his grandfather and attachment to a principle. His depression was lifting, and he let himself be carried away on a happy wave of certainties, abandoning himself to his fate.
Old Marie drew him from his meditation. A little errand boy had just brought a message from Tirepot. The cab that had followed Nicolas had entered a house in Rue de Vendôme, near the boulevards, next to the Intendance, and opposite the convent of the Filles du Sauveur. Nicolas rummaged in his desk drawer and took out one sheet of the street map. He noted with interest that the house in question was situated near the outbuildings of the Temple enclosure. Deciding to go straight there, he asked Old Marie, who could not conceal his joy at being given these new responsibilities, to collect all incoming information and make sure that the most urgent messages were conveyed to him without delay.
The bells of the chapel at the convent of the Filles du Sauveur were tolling noon when he had himself dropped discreetly at the entrance to Rue de Vendôme. He spotted Rabouine and Tirepot in the shadow of the wall. He approached them and told them to fetch the watch. A group of wagons was blocking the way. The smell seized him by the throat. He immediately realised what it was, and was pleased that this chance occurrence would create a diversion from his approach. The guild of cesspool emptiers was at work. He recognised the widow La Marche, mistress of the guild. This was not the first time he had met her. Some time earlier, Lenoir had sent him to deal with a sordid case. A fetid odour had been rising from a house belonging to a cavalry colonel named Monsieur de Chaugny, who had to be forced to do something about his cesspool, which was clogged with stones. There had been a fierce dispute between the widow La Marche and the old soldier, who, claiming that such negligence was common, had complained about the high cost of the work. It was true that you could easily find casual workers who would offer to do the job at a lower price – even though the noxious vapours they were obliged to breathe in during the course of this filthy, backbreaking labour often killed them.
He noted, in passing, that the widow La Marche was in contravention of the latest edicts. Not only were the stinking contents of the cesspool being poured into barrels with holes in them, which caused a great deal of spillage, but the work should have been carried out between ten at night and dawn, not to mention the fact that they were obliged to wash the soiled ground, which they were not doing. He was too busy at the moment to sanction the widow. All he could do was wag a threatening finger at her, to which she responded with a blown kiss and a wide, toothless smile.
Nicolas found the house easily enough, as it was just opposite the convent. The carriage entrance yielded to his push. It led to a garden and a second carriage entrance through which the carriage the spies had been following must have disappeared. A small door gave access to the living quarters. He approached it cautiously and turned the handle: it opened without any difficulty. Having learnt a lesson from his experience in Rue du Poirier, he was thinking of a way of stopping the door from closing again when he made the mistake of moving forward without noticing the three small steps in front of him. He was sent sprawling to the floor, hurting his knees, while the door slammed shut behind him. He struggled to his feet, climbed back up the steps in total darkness and tried to open the door. Too late, he realised that there was no handle on the inside and that he had been caught in a trap. He did not like being shut in and immediately felt suffocated. Fortunately, benefiting again from the lessons learnt the previous time, he had a candle with him and something to light it with. But just then, there was a sudden light behind him, and he turned and was startled to see a dark figure silhouetted in an open doorway. A monk stood there, his face concealed beneath his hood, threatening him with a pistol. Nicolas would never know by what miracle his immediate thoughts – the words of an old Breton tale he had learnt by heart in his childhood, and which suddenly came back to him – had dictated what he did next.
‘Ha yann ha mont ha darch’haouin un taol bazh houarn gantan diwar e benn, hag e lazhan hep na reas zoken na bramm!’ he screamed. (‘And Jean hit him on the head with an iron bar, which killed him before he could let out a cry.’)
The result was amazing. Assuming that the commissioner was calling to someone behind him, the startled monk turned abruptly, giving Nicolas the seconds he needed to seize the weapon concealed in his tricorn. He fired Bourdeau’s little pistol, but missed his target, the monk having again turned before throwing himself backwards and slamming the door. Nicolas found himself once again in silence and darkness. He took a deep breath to calm the beating of his terror-stricken heart. He regretted not having been able to fire a second shot: to do that, he would have had to reload his weapon. With his lighted candle, he began cautiously pacing up and down the narrow space until he discovered a side door which led straight into a vast room filled with an incredible profusion of objects: crates, brightly coloured fabrics spilling from half-torn sacks, pagan idols that stared at him with their dead eyes as he swept the candlelight across them. He became aware of a strange smell, or rather a mixture of animal odours and an unknown scent. Leaning towards one of the crates, he realised that the scent came from the wood of which it was made. In a corner, behind other crates, he discovered a number of hutches filled with terrified rabbits. A detail struck him: blackish stains on the crates suggested that they had originally borne inscriptions – perhaps the name of their owner – which had been burnt off. In another corner, he noticed a pair of thick leather gloves and a pair of big thigh-length boots of the same material.
He saw another door, and opened it, wedging it with his hat so that it could not close again. The room appeared empty apart from a tall wicker basket on a large rug and a porcelain stove that spread a damp heat thanks to a container which let off steam. The temperature here was different from that in the other rooms. As he approached the basket, he noticed – and he could not believe his eyes – that the rug seemed to be undulating of its own accord. Suddenly, the fringe of the rug lifted and a shape sprang out, casting a huge shadow on the wall because of the candlelight. Frozen in horror, Nicolas knew that he had before him the hamadryad whose presence in this case Guillaume Semacgus had long since suspected. He recognised every detail from the drawing his friend had made. The cobra, its eyes gleaming in the light
, was staring at him, its hood spread open, its body totally still. A soft repeated hissing could be heard. In a flash, Nicolas analysed the situation. He was unarmed and some distance from the door: impossible to escape. The slightest movement risked provoking the snake to attack. Would the candlelight keep the animal spellbound? He absolutely had to protect the flame, which would not last much longer. He realised at that moment what the gloves and boots were for: they presumably helped the mysterious occupant of the house to handle the reptile without danger to himself. But they were too far away for him to be able to use them.
The cobra had started moving, bringing the rest of its long, savagely beautiful body out from under the rug. Its white and beige scales glimmered in the light. ‘Your name is legion,’ Nicolas thought. Should he keep still? The adversary had come closer, arching its body. It seemed ready to strike. Nicolas felt overcome with despair. He would have liked to cry out, and had to stop himself doing so. He began praying. The snake’s mouth was opening when, suddenly, a hand was placed over Nicolas’s mouth and, at the same time, he heard the beginnings of a strange, savage chant. Before his eyes, a taut brown hand appeared, the fingers pointing straight at the beast. The chant continued, the voice becoming deeper. The cobra seemed to be relaxing, its head swaying to the rhythm of the voice. Gradually, it lowered its body until it lay stretched out on the floor, as if dead. Nicolas was pushed abruptly aside. The person who had been chanting gently took hold of the snake’s triangular head, lifted it to his mouth and breathed on it. The cobra’s body went limp. It was thrown nimbly into the basket and the lid immediately closed.
Nicolas’s saviour turned. Nicolas picked up the dying candle and lifted it. In astonishment, he recognised the tattooed face of his friend Naganda. They embraced.
‘By what miracle, my dear Naganda, do you spring up like this and save my skin?’
‘Let’s not talk of that, I owe you so much more. At the Châtelet, where I had hoped to find you, Old Marie told me you had just left for Rue de Vendôme. I jumped in a cab and, on arriving here, met Monsieur Rabouine, who added to what I already knew. He was upset to be going away, fearing that you were in danger.’
‘He was not mistaken.’
‘I hurried to the house he pointed out to me. From a distance I heard the sound of a gunshot.’
‘Alas, I only had one bullet. I missed my attacker and had to face that beast unarmed!’
‘And here I am, happy to have been of service to you.’
In the fading candlelight, the terrifying face of the Micmac chief grew soft with emotion. He was wearing a dark-blue coat of military cut, and a tricorn concealed his long hair, which was tied with a bow at the back. He crouched to adjust the wooden peg that kept the wicker basket closed.
‘Better to be safe than sorry. I don’t know this specimen. It’s quite big, and probably poisonous. Where I come from, the most dangerous kind is the marsh snake which we call in our language the makassin.5 Its bite is fatal.’
‘Does it obey you,’ asked Nicolas with a smile, ‘as this king cobra or Asian hamadryad has done? Although, coming from you, nothing would surprise me!’
Naganda placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder and looked into his eyes with his own dark eyes. ‘My people are familiar with many secrets of nature. As you know I am not only their chief, but more than that.’
This enigmatic reply reminded Nicolas of certain incomprehensible manifestations which had marked his first encounter with the Indian from New France.6 Thanks to the commissioner, he had been cleared of a charge of murder, and had been chosen by the late King to keep an eye on English intrigues on the borders of the colonies of New England and Canada.
‘To what do I owe the joy of seeing you again?’
‘Because of all this unrest, the young King wishes to hear my reports at first hand. He remembers our previous encounters, and has invited me to represent my people at his coronation in Reims.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it. Where are you staying?’
‘With Dr Semacgus … We wanted to surprise you, but you are impossible to get hold of! In fact, the reason I set off to look for you is that Kluskabe, our frog hero, sent me a vision: the son of stone was in danger! I immediately leapt into action. Incidentally, I brought our friend some plants and grains from home. I think this …’
‘Cobra.’
‘… will make him very happy. He will be able to donate it to his colleagues at the Jardin du Roi.’
As briefly as he could, Nicolas told Naganda all about the case. They searched the house. It was clear that nobody lived there. Having forced the door, they noticed that a paved path led to a third carriage entrance, which opened onto the grounds of the Temple enclosure. They went back inside and examined more closely a heap of carpets, statues, strange objects, elaborate silver dishes, copper and ivory caskets: a whole miscellany from the Indies.
‘We shall have all this confiscated and inventoried. The monk has flown the nest, and he won’t be back. We are blocking off his lairs one by one and forcing him to flee.’
They heard a noise, snuffed out the candle and hid in the shadows. After a few minutes, Rabouine appeared, accompanied by men of the watch.
‘I was really worried about you. It was only knowing that Monsieur Naganda was with you that reassured me somewhat.’
Nicolas told him what had happened. Rabouine shook hands with Naganda, then turned back to Nicolas. ‘But I have something else interesting to tell you.’
‘As usual!’
‘As we were coming back to Rue de Vendôme with reinforcements, a carriage stopped and a man got out. I wasn’t sure who he was at first, because he had a handkerchief over his mouth because of the smell. He headed straight for the house. Suddenly, he recognised the uniforms of the watch and immediately turned tail, and although he was in everyday clothes I recognised him from a distance.’
‘Who was it, then?’
‘Our abbé from Vienna. Georgel.’
This revelation came as a surprise to Nicolas. But it strengthened his belief that what had happened in Austria was closely linked to events in Paris. What was taking shape opened such alarming prospects that the mind was sent whirling helplessly, like a bird that has lost its way. Nicolas advised Rabouine to immediately prepare his departure for Lorient. The mail coach was too slow and subject to the vagaries of the road. He should use his mission orders to obtain the fastest horses from the post houses.
Nicolas and Naganda went back to the Grand Châtelet. Soon afterwards, Bourdeau appeared, pushing before him a surly-looking young man in a yellowish wig and smoked glasses, with his hands tied and his head bowed.
‘Here is the prey we’ve been hunting,’ announced the inspector solemnly.
Nicolas recognised Caminet. He had only ever seen him before now dressed as a baker. The features of the face were prematurely withered by debauchery and base thoughts, suggesting a degree of corruption rare in one so young. Nicolas drew Bourdeau aside and whispered in his ear. He was going to try to bring the suspect round to confess the truth, by throwing out almost casual statements designed to throw him off balance. For that reason, he would not proceed directly to the main subject, the tragedy in Rue Montmartre. Caminet was staring at the commissioner as if expecting salvation from him: having known him for years, he might well be hoping for leniency.
‘What is this that we learn? You have embarked on a truly calamitous path. Is that what an honest apprentice baker should be doing, going to earth in a place of ill repute populated by fallen women and inveterate cheats?’
As if to underline these words, Bourdeau threw on the table several packs of cards of mismatched sizes. Nicolas spread them out.
‘What have we here? A rogue’s paraphernalia that’ll lead you straight to the end of a rope. Blood has already flowed, I gather?’
‘It was self-defence,’ the young man said in a pitiful voice. His wig had slipped, uncovering an unruly lock of brown hair.
‘You were wise to defend y
ourself,’ said Bourdeau. ‘You stole twenty pistoles from an innocent wretch who was playing in good faith.’
‘But … I just can’t lose.’
‘Now that’s a good excuse! How could you lose with this?’ The inspector picked up an eight and a king. ‘With the high cards being bigger than the low ones, you can easily feel them when you cut the cards! We know you cheated, and we know you used violence, hitting your opponent over the head with a stool, which might well have killed him. Thank heaven and luck that you only knocked him unconscious.’
Caminet seemed relieved. ‘I’ll make amends, Monsieur Nicolas.’
‘It wouldn’t be before time. What I’d rather hear is why you fled Master Mourut’s house.’
The apprentice’s expression turned shifty and inscrutable. ‘I don’t like the work. The master’s always breathing down my neck.’ He made a gesture with his hand. ‘I’ve had it up to here with flour and ovens.’
‘Your workmates bear the life well enough.’
‘Oh, them!’ he said with a knowing smile.
‘They seem praiseworthy to me,’ said Nicolas. ‘Always punctual, hard-working, pleasant to the customers.’
‘Much good it does them!’
‘You don’t seem to think much of them. You’d do well to model your attitude on theirs.’
‘On that …’
‘That what? Out with it! Who are you referring to? Mademoiselle Friope?’
Misunderstanding Nicolas’s words, Caminet lost his temper. ‘More of a mademoiselle than you think, that trollop!’
‘Oh, we know she’s a girl, and we also know that you were blackmailing her and her friend.’
The blow had struck home. The apprentice was sweating, clearly unsettled by the fact that they were now talking about something quite other than the reasons for which he had been arrested.
‘That was nothing. It’s normal for workmates to tease one another.’
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