Treason's Spring

by Robert Wilton

  At the door again, again he hesitated.

  He walked to the chair, brushed a hand over the seat, and sat. He thought about the man downstairs; about the name he’d said.

  He thought about Henry Greene.

  Raph Benjamin entered the tavern through its back door, a lithe figure swaying deftly between the swinging pots and the servants who bustled to and fro, a salute to the cook who glanced at him indifferent, a finger placed on the lips of a maid about to complain, bending to kiss the hand of his hostess and so into the main room at the front of the building.

  Mid-morning, trade was slow. There was one man hunched over the counter, gazing at a beaker of wine as at his cheating lover. An ancient sat stiff against one wall, breathing in long gasps and intermittently lifting a cup of water two-handed to his lips. Benjamin nodded as he passed. Silhouetted against the front window was Ned Pinsent, a big stiff shadow.

  A tuft of his hair was standing up unruly, and Benjamin felt a moment’s fondness for the shadow. He clamped his hand down on its shoulder, and Pinsent jumped.

  And subsided. ‘Oh. What ho, Raph.’

  Benjamin slipped down into the chair adjacent. ‘Any sign of our bird?’ His eyes were adjusting to the contrast between the interior and the daylit street outside.

  ‘Punctual to the minute.’ Across the street, builders were swarming up and down a timber scaffold. ‘Give me a Scotch grocer for punctuality. Few minutes ago now.’

  The woman placed a beaker down in front of Benjamin, held his eyes a moment too long, and he grinned at her.

  Then back to the blaze of daylight. ‘Excellent. Any activity since?’

  ‘Not a flicker. No sign of t’other fellow.’ Benjamin grunted, indifferent, and took a mouthful of wine, and grimaced. ‘What are you anticipating to happen, Raph?’

  ‘Almost certainly nothing. I don’t trust any messenger, but I don’t much trust the efficiency of the crapaud police spies either. Nine chances in ten nothing happens and he gets bored and he’s gone inside the hour. But him blundering around Paris prattling about old Henry takes the attention away from us. That’s all I’m after.’

  Pinsent watched him for a long moment. ‘You ain’t in touch with old Henry, are you, Raph?’

  Benjamin glanced at him, then back to the street, and Pinsent started to scowl. ‘Raph, you – hallo!’ His head came forward and he pointed upwards out of the window.

  The workmen were bricking and plastering a new window frame into place in the facade opposite. Now a leg appeared on its sill, and a body swung out onto the scaffold, and stood for a moment blinking in the shock of sunlight.

  In the tavern opposite, cheerful laughter from two Englishmen sitting at the window. As they watched, Kinnaird exchanged stares with the workmen on the scaffold, then pushed past them and clambered uncomfortably down the ladder and looked about himself and hurried away up the street.

  Benjamin’s hand was on Pinsent’s shoulder again, and he was still chuckling.

  Pinsent said, ‘You got things arranged in St-Denis?’

  ‘Most tidily, my dear fellow. A couple of gifts for our friend.’ And he glanced out of the window again, and along the street to where a figure could still be seen hurrying for the corner, dust billowing from his boots as he went.

  Over the course of his weeks in France, Keith Kinnaird had come to feel comfortable in the rooms at the Tambour. He had no interest in luxury, and in this the Tambour could match his needs more than adequately. It was kept tidy, the air was fresh, and it was his.

  But now, for the first time since his early cautious exploration of the rooms, they felt alien. They felt like Henry Greene’s rooms again.

  For the first time in those weeks, Greene’s face came clear to his mind, and he wondered at the man.

  He watched the Tambour for an hour or more before he brought himself to go near. It wasn’t fear, or a calculation of risk. It was Greene. Greene was present again, Greene was around him somewhere, and Greene’s rooms seemed to belong again to their former inhabitant.

  Kinnaird felt more temporary, less certain in this place.

  The door to the rooms stuck for a moment. It felt different even just to stand on the threshold. He was back where he had started: a stranger; an unfamiliar place; a friend who was everywhere and could not be found.

  He stepped forwards into the living room, seeing it as for the first time again, looking to see Greene sitting in a chair, or slouched against the doorway to the bedroom.

  He did one circuit of the room, touching the things that he knew to be his: the few books huddling at one end of the shelf; a shirt drying on the back of a chair. He’d left the front door open, and through the gap the day outside shone bright and free onto the walkway. The doorway seemed narrower; constricting.

  The threshold didn’t only feel different: it was different. The doormat – a failed attempt at a rectangle, cut from a sack – was askew and riding up onto the door sill. That’s why the door had stuck; that’s why it had felt faintly unfamiliar to stand there. He took two steps and pulled the mat straight, and saw the corner of paper underneath.

  A single page folded in half, and then a sliver of it folded again to close it.

  Kinnaird stuck his head out the door, looked left and right along the Tambour walkway, and down into the yard. He straightened the mat, closed the door, and looked down at the paper again.

  His surname was written on the outside, in rough capitals. Inside, in the same lettering:

  DEAR KINNAIRD – COME TO PETIOT, GALERIE

  MARILLAC. OUR PLAN PROGRESSES. H. G.

  [SS K/1/X1/6]

  He placed the letter on the table, stared at it a moment, and then made another circuit of the room. Not touching anything this time, just looking at each object. He looked down at the mat again.

  Then he looked towards the bedroom, and walked to the connecting door. He stared around the room, and made a similar patrol. He sat down on the bed, and looked warily around again. The door to the living room; the open window and the trees beyond.

  He stood, and there was a thumping at the front door.

  He stood rigid, no breath, and then craned his head round to see the door. Again it thumped, and its panel vibrated and the light caught dust coughing from the cracks. ‘Police du Commune! Ouvrez!’

  Thumping, and thumping, and Kinnaird crept dreamlike into the sitting room. On the table was the note from H.G.. ‘Ouvrez!’

  ‘Hey!’ A new noise, a new voice, a new direction, and Kinnaird twisted round in confusion. ‘Hey British!’ It sounded like – like Lucie, and it came from the bedroom.

  ‘Ouvrez!’

  He recoiled from the door, edged backwards into the bedroom, clutching for sense anywhere. The bedroom was empty. Lucie’s voice was desperate, a restrained shout: ‘Quick, British!’ It was coming from the window. In two steps he was there, saw her below him on a horse, heard the front door to his rooms slamming open with a crunch somewhere behind him and first one leg was out of the window and then the other and he was flailing for a hold, and swung in the void a moment, am I to spend my life panicking out of windows? and then dropped to the ground. He staggered, stood, found himself next to the horse’s flank and swung himself up behind the girl and immediately the beast was moving and he was swaying and fighting for balance and they were away.

  Fouché was wolfish. As he appeared in Roland’s doorway, eyes shining and jaw set fervent and smile full of appetite, the Interior Minister felt himself pulling back slightly. ‘It seems we have an English conspiracy not a Prussian, Minister!’ He had a set of papers rolled in his hand.

  Warily, Roland beckoned him into the office.

  ‘You will recall, Minister, that a few weeks ago we had reports of a Britisher of name Kinnaird in St-Denis, asking for another Britisher named Greene.’ Roland did not recall, but Fouché was invariably right on these points. ‘He moved into Greene’s rooms in St-Denis. Then we had the affair of the Garde-Meuble, and the report by one witness that an E
nglishman named Greene was close by and observing. So we set to hunt him down. Investigation of Greene shows a man of diverse contacts in Parisian society and the foreigners in the city.’ Roland nodded. It sounded credible, though he hardly –

  ‘Now, Minister! This morning we learn that this Greene has invited two men to a rendezvous. One is a Dutchman. Questioned, he acknowledges receiving the message but says he ignored it. Only a vague memory of the name Greene, no intention of accepting such a brusque and informal summons from someone with whom he has no relations. The other, though . . . ’ Again the smile. It really was rather alarming. ‘Kinnaird did go to the rendezvous. We rushed men to the place. Our postern reported his arrival. But for some reason, before the man Greene could arrive, Kinnaird decided to escape by a window. Our people were too late to surround him there. But they went immediately to his rooms. On a table, a note from Greene repeating details of the rendezvous. Folded in a book, a letter from Greene to Kinnaird. Under the mattress . . . ’ He placed one of his papers on the desk. Roughly square, it was not text but a hand-drawn map. ‘A sketch of the streets around the Garde-Meuble, and the entrances.’

  Roland nodded. He looked up into the hungry eyes. Nodded again. What does he expect me to say?

  Fouché gestured to a chair, and the minister beckoned him to sit, with some relief.

  ‘Minister. Would you oblige me by telling me what we know of British Government secret activities in Paris?’

  They rode for two miles at a canter, until St-Denis was lost behind them and they had been swallowed by open country and then trees. Kinnaird had started with his hands clamped on Lucie Gérard’s upper arms, until she’d shaken them off, and then clutching uneasily at her hips. After the first mile his body, if not his mind, had relaxed a little and he became aware of her body: the bones of her pelvis in his hands, how slender her back was.

  By a river she pulled the horse up, and guided it off the track into the trees.

  Kinnaird slipped off the back of the horse as soon as he could. Lucie followed, and led the horse by the reins to the water’s edge, and it dropped its neck and began to drink. Lucie patted the mare’s shoulder, her hands small against the sheeny muscle. At last she turned to Kinnaird. He was standing stiff among the oaks, staring at her, hands very slowly clenching and unclenching.

  ‘Deep breath, Monsieur.’

  He stared hard, and then did as he was told. She nodded approval.

  He took another.

  ‘Why – ’ He shook his head; tried again. ‘What – ’

  She frowned in pity.

  Kinnaird took another breath.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said; ‘I think.’ Lucie nodded indifferent. ‘Though I might have been better talking to the police than running from them.’

  ‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t.’

  She’d never seen a man look more lost. Still so cold, still so buttoned-up. But, in this glade of sunlight and green life, so out of place in his dull clothes. And that cold face so powerless and so confused.

  ‘This is the Paris of the Commune. Easy to get arrested. Very hard to get freed again.’

  ‘But I – ’

  ‘No one likes to admit a mistake, do they? Better just agree you’re guilty of something and keep you locked up.’ Her voice was flat, humourless. Her weary world.

  She began to recite to him, more insistent. ‘Henry Greene has always been danger; always suspicion.’ She saw him reflecting on this. ‘Now he has been seen right where the crime of the year was happening.’

  ‘Seen by you!’

  She shrugged. ‘I was supposed to be silent? You want me to join his conspiracy too?’

  ‘What con- Is there a conspiracy?’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ She turned away, feeling his stare against the back of her neck, and pulled the horse up and around.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  She mounted. He hadn’t moved. ‘I know a place.’

  Pieter Marinus prowls his house a full hour, a fretful fidgeting hour, an hour of quick breaths and forgotten resolutions and familiar objects touched and rejected, an hour in which his shoulders, his knuckles, never seem to relax.

  On the shelf in his salon, the violin waits. He knows he cannot touch it yet. He’s utterly out of tune with its perfection; he knows that any sound he produces from it would squeal or stutter. Great God, the clumsy alarm in his hands might break its fragile neck.

  He wants to see Arnim. He needs the Prussian’s eternal solidity in front of him, needs Karl’s hand on his shoulder, needs the breath of his kiss on his forehead. Karl is certainty. Karl is rightness. Great cold stubborn Karl is something warm in this mad world.

  Of course, the one thing he must not do is go anywhere near Karl Arnim.

  The act of a fool. The act of a Judas.

  As Marinus tells himself this for perhaps the tenth time, he starts to feel some flicker of professionalism and sense inside himself.

  I am panicking. I must not panic. If I do not panic, then I am no longer a man who panics. If I am not a man who panics, then there is no need for panic.

  It was not the first time he had been interrogated by the police of the Commune. The lot of a foreigner, and a man of affairs. It is the frequency of his contacts with official Paris, the trivial encounters with its bureaucracy, that makes him such an unlikely intermediary of spies, and therefore such a good one.

  But there had been something about this interrogation: the unexpectedness of the original incident, perhaps; or the horrible expectedness of the summons after he had been given, in the public street, a message from the most sought-after criminal in France. Once again he hears the name Henry Greene in his ears, and it echoes and stabs and nauseates him like some unwashable shame. He has done so much to justify La Force or la guillotine, but he has never done anything as crass and brutish as what the man Greene did at the Garde-Meuble, and he has never in his life done anything so clumsy as to merit hearing his name linked with a known conspirator in that shocking manner. If he had sought the favours of the most ancient, wrinkled raddled whore down by the Celestins, the pox would not have been more certain than the sickening hammering at his door the following day after that ghastly encounter with the messenger boy.

  The delay had been the only surprise. The delay had made it worse.

  He reflects, again, on his performance before the policemen. Earnest. Bewildered. Honest.

  Yes, I believe I have met the man named Henry Greene on certain occasions.

  Unconsciously, he had started to fiddle with his little finger, mimicking Arnim. Once he’d spotted and suppressed that instinct, his next had been to wish that he too had a ring of poison, so that he too might be able to look down on the world.

  At the house of Mme Lavalier and . . . once at Christiansen’s.

  We exchanged courtesies, but never spoke any subject, nor yet a full sentence one to another.

  Yes, certainly I heard of the terrible incident at the Garde-Meuble. Yes, I had understood that a man of this name was connected.

  Sincerely – that had been a mistake, he keeps telling himself – I was shocked to receive an invitation to a meeting from Greene. Such were not our relations. And, of course, after his connection to the affair at the Meuble he was a most suspicious person.

  I cannot imagine what his purpose was. Perhaps as I am known as a man of affairs, of trade and intermediation, particularly in the Netherlands, which is of service to many gentlemen who find themselves restricted by the current condition of relations between France and her neighbours. Perhaps his interest was purely commercial – he’d been talking too much at this point. He winces at the memory – perhaps he had some transaction related to his crime. All I may say is that I never for an instant considered acting on the invitation.

  Of course I shall report any further contact. I am delighted to serve the cause of good order, and I trust that a time more conducive to normal business relations may supervene soon.

  He badly needs to see Arn
im. To get reassurance: from his hand; from his mere presence, mighty and enduring.

  To give reassurance. I said nothing imprudent. My tale was simple and – hilariously – honest.

  He knows he must not.

  His fingers flicker near the violin, and withdraw. He feels feverish.

  He knows that he must assume he is watched. He knows that this makes him a contagion to Arnim. His stomach lurches at the thought. Arnim must not see him. Arnim must – will – shun him now.

  It is a little death.

  In his resolution – it is a martyrdom – once again he finds professionalism. Even a little pride. Karl would honour this steadfastness, this wisdom. We are men greater than our emotions. We are men greater than our world.

  Slowly, steadily, his hand reaches for the neck of the violin, frail and exposed. He grasps it, feels and knows the weight of the instrument as it swings down to the vertical in his fingers, hangs in its beautiful symmetry, and then swings up under his chin. Immediately there is Bach, measured and mathematical and reassuring, the notes flowing flawlessly.

  Almost flawlessly. He stops, lets the bow drop a moment, then lifts it again. Damn Henry Greene.

  A stone pavilion on the edge of the woods of the Chateau de Malmaison. The stone was cool to sit on, and the cool and the thickening darkness heightened the silence.

  It was a nightingale dusk, a dusk for whispers and hints and faint melodies, a dusk for shadows of love.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘One of the adornments of one of the properties that the former King will not be using any more. He hunted from the house a few times, and no doubt came to this place for other sport. If you didn’t know the place, how and why is it one of your rendezvous?’

  Karl Arnim was a large shadow against the stones, darkness against their moonlit chill. He was an absence. ‘I identified the place for its qualities – distance, isolation, views; it is easy to observe who comes, and not be observed oneself. I cared not whether it was a royal arbour or a poacher’s privy.’