Time's Convert

by Deborah Harkness

  There he stood, clothed in the dark robes of a medieval prince, his arms crossed before him and a slight smile on his face.

  Watching.

  “I know he’s there. I can feel him, too.” Fernando jerked his head toward the corner. “Ysabeau might drive his spirit away with her need, but not I. I would have liked Philippe’s acceptance, of course, but I have never needed anything from him.”

  Hugh was always Philippe’s favorite, you see,” Fernando continued. “That never changed—not even after Hugh mated with a man with skin too dark to pass as white, a man who could not be useful to the family except as a servant or a slave. I could never sit down at the table next to Hugh, or join him in the corridors of power where Philippe was so at home.”

  Whatever hurt Philippe had caused Fernando had been tempered with bitterness over the course of many centuries, and his voice remained steady and even because of it.

  “Do you know why Hugh was so special to his father?” Fernando asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Because Philippe could not figure him out,” Fernando said. “None of us could. Not even me, though I drank from his heart vein. There was something mysterious and pure in Hugh that could never be touched or known. One felt it nonetheless, always waiting to be discovered. Without possessing that missing piece of Hugh, Philippe could never be sure of him or what he might do.”

  I thought of Matthew’s decision not to probe into the twins’ DNA for genetic markers of magic and blood rage. Fernando’s story made me even more confident that it was the right one.

  “You remind me of Hugh, and have that same aura of holding a secret you are not yet ready to share,” Fernando mused. “I think Philippe would have had a devil of a time keeping up with you. Perhaps that is why he made you his daughter.”

  “You’re saying Philippe took me as his blood-sworn daughter because he was bored?” I said with a hint of amusement.

  “No—it was the challenge. Philippe loved a challenge. And there was nothing he admired more than someone who stood up to him,” Fernando replied. “It is why Philippe was so fond of Marcus, too—although he figured out what made Matthew’s son tick faster than a clockmaker. He proved that in 1790, and after that, too.”

  “New Orleans,” I said, thinking ahead to the revelations that were yet to come.

  Fernando nodded. “But only Marcus can tell that story.”

  * * *

  —

  MARCUS’S ROOM AT LES REVENANTS was, like most of the bedrooms, tucked into one of the round towers. Because I had wanted all of Matthew’s family to feel welcome and at home here, I’d consulted each of them on what we could do to make the space comfortably and uniquely theirs. Marcus wanted nothing more than a bed with plenty of pillows so he could read in it, a deep chair by the window for watching the world go by, some thick rugs to keep the room quiet, and a television. Today the door to his room was slightly ajar, and I took it as a sign that he was receiving visitors.

  Before I could rap on it to request entry, Marcus opened it.

  “Diana.” Marcus ushered me in. “We thought you might come.”

  Matthew and Ysabeau were with him.

  “You’re busy,” I said, withdrawing slightly. “I’ll come back later.”

  “Stay,” Marcus said. “We’re talking about heresy and treason. Typically cheerful subjects for members of the de Clermont family.”

  “Marcus is telling us what it was like for him after Philippe sent him away.” Ysabeau was watching her grandson closely.

  “Let’s not mince words, Grand-mère. Grandfather banished me.” Marcus had Common Sense in his hand. He held it up. “I left with this book, Fanny, and a sack of letters for Matthew. And I wasn’t asked to come back again for half a century.”

  “You made it clear that you didn’t want us to interfere in your life,” Ysabeau said, her face stony.

  “But you did interfere.” Marcus paced the edges of the room like a caged animal. “Philippe was still directing my life. Grandfather spent most of the next hundred years dogging my footsteps. Edinburgh, London, Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans. No matter where I was, or what I was doing, there were always reminders that he was watching. Judging.”

  “I didn’t realize you knew,” Ysabeau said.

  “You can’t have thought I was that oblivious,” Marcus said. “Not after those last days in Paris, with you turning up at Gil’s house—with Tom Paine, no less. Then Fanny appeared at the Café Procope. Finally, Philippe himself appeared in Veronique’s flat. It was all a bit orchestrated.”

  “Not Philippe’s finest moment,” Ysabeau agreed, her eyes glittering strangely. It looked as though there was a red film over them.

  Ysabeau was crying.

  “That’s enough, Marcus,” Matthew said, concerned for his mother’s well-being. She had still not fully recovered from Philippe’s death, nor had she stopped grieving.

  “When did this family decide the truth was unacceptable?” Marcus demanded.

  “Honesty was never part of our family code,” Ysabeau said. “Right from the very start, we had so much to hide.”

  “My contracting blood rage didn’t make the de Clermonts more open,” Matthew said, accepting part of the blame. “I often think of how different everything would be, had I not been susceptible to it.”

  He sounded wistful.

  “You wouldn’t have Becca and Philip, for a start,” Marcus retorted. “You’ve got to stop with this regret, Matthew, or you are going to damage your children in ways that you won’t be able fix, like you did for me in New Orleans.”

  Matthew looked startled.

  “I knew, Matthew,” Marcus said wearily. “I knew Philippe sent you, and that you would have let me sort it out myself if left to your own devices. I knew that he ordered us all dead—Philippe wouldn’t have made an exception for me, or for anyone else, not if our existence would put Ysabeau in danger. You disobeyed Grandfather’s orders, even though Juliette was right at your elbow, egging you on to do the ‘right thing’ and put me down.”

  I had wanted to know about New Orleans and thought it would be hard to get Marcus to talk about that terrible time. It seemed he was ready to revisit what had happened there.

  “Philippe was always more ruthless with those he loved than those he pitied,” Ysabeau said. Something in her expression told me she knew this firsthand.

  “Father wasn’t perfect, you’re right,” Matthew said. “Nor was he all-knowing and all-seeing. He never dreamed you would go back to America, for a start. Philippe did everything he could to make England attractive to you—Edinburgh, the house in London, William Graham. But there were two things he just couldn’t control.”

  “What?” Marcus asked, genuinely curious.

  “The unpredictability of epidemic disease and your gifts as a healer,” Matthew replied. “Philippe was so busy trying to keep you away from Veronique and the Terror in France that he forgot the ties you had to Philadelphia. After Marat was assassinated, Philippe gave notice to the captain of every ship that they were not to transport you across the channel for any reason. If they did, they would find their business affairs in ruins.”

  “Really?” Marcus looked impressed. “Well, to be fair, only a lunatic would have chosen to go to Philadelphia in 1793. The guillotine was less terrifying than yellow fever. Quicker, too.”

  “There was never any question in my mind which path you would choose.” Matthew gave his son a fond, proud look. “You did your duty as a physician and helped others. That’s all you’ve ever done.”

  Morning Chronicle, London

  24 October 1793

  page 2

  The execution took place on Wednesday the 16th.

  . . .

  Nothing like sorrow or pity for the Queen’s fate was shewn by the people, who lined the streets, through which she had to pass.
On her arrival at the Place de la Revolution, she was helped out of the carriage and ascended the scaffold with seeming composure. She was accompanied by a Priest, who discharged the office of Confessor. She was in a half-mourning dress, evidently not adjusted with much attention. Her hands being tied behind her, she looked around, without terror; her body being then bent forward by the machine, the axe was let down, and at once separated the head from the body. After the head was displayed by the Executioner, three young women were observed dipping their handkerchiefs in the streaming blood of the deceased Queen.

  30

  Duty

  OCTOBER 1793–DECEMBER 1799

  Marcus had lived in England for years and had gotten used to searching through newspapers for news from abroad. The first page was always dominated by playbills, advertisements for medical cures, real estate notices, and the sales of lottery tickets. News from America was usually on page three. Marat’s assassination back in July had warranted mention only on page two.

  Still, he was surprised to find the story of the trial and execution of Queen Marie Antoinette relegated to the same spot that Marat had once occupied on the second page, the two of them becoming strange bedfellows in death.

  “They executed the queen,” Marcus told Fanny quietly. It had become part of their morning routine to sit together and drink coffee and read the papers. “They called her a vampire.”

  Fanny looked up from her copy of The Lady’s Magazine.

  “Not in so many words,” Marcus hastened to add. “Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis Capet, has, since her abode in France, been the scourge and the blood-sucker of the French.”

  “Widow Capet.” Fanny sighed. “How has France come to this?”

  Every bit of news coming from France told a fresh horror story of death, terror, and betrayal. Philippe and Ysabeau had fled Paris months ago, taking refuge at the family château, Sept-Tours. They did so to avoid the mounting violence. The Jacobins pledged to give a guillotine mounted on a wagon to each regiment of the army so that they could execute aristocrats as they progressed across France.

  “Do not worry. The family has weathered worse storms within these walls,” Ysabeau had written to him in one of the last letters he had received from his grandmother. “No doubt we will survive this, too.”

  But it was not just his grandparents who were in danger. So, too, were Lafayette and his family. The marquis was a prisoner in Austria, his wife and children under house arrest in the countryside. Thomas Paine was back in Paris, and stood against Robespierre and the other radicals in the National Convention.

  And there was Veronique, about whom Marcus could discover nothing.

  “We should go back,” Marcus said to Fanny over the wide expanse of mahogany that dominated the dining room at Pickering Place.

  “Far doesn’t want us back,” Fanny observed.

  “I need to know Veronique is safe,” Marcus said. “It’s as though she has utterly disappeared.”

  “That is how vampires survive, Marcus,” Fanny said. “We appear, we disappear, we transform ourselves into something else, and then we emerge, phoenixlike, from the ashes of our former lives.”

  John Russell burst into the room. He was wearing an extraordinary buff leather coat he’d bought from a trader in Canada, decorated with brightly dyed porcupine quills and glass beads. It almost covered his long, gaitered linen trousers, which marked him as a man who had utterly abandoned decency and tradition.

  “Did you hear? They’ve killed that Austrian girl after all. I knew they would, in the end,” John said, flourishing a newspaper of his own. He paused a moment and took in his surroundings. “Good morning, Fanny.”

  “Do sit, John. Have some coffee.” Fanny gestured across the table’s gleaming surface. Since Marcus left Edinburgh and returned to London a proper doctor, she had become the de facto lady of the house on Pickering Place, hosting card parties and receiving visitors in the afternoon.

  “Much obliged.” John dropped a familiar kiss on her cheek as he went past, and tugged gently on a flaxen strand that had escaped from the intricate pile on her head.

  “Flirt,” Fanny said, returning to her reading.

  “Hoyden,” John said fondly. He took one look at Marcus and knew something was wrong. “Still no word from Veronique.”

  “None.” Every day Marcus expected a letter to come. When it didn’t, Marcus searched the newspaper for a notice of her death, and took solace that he didn’t find it—even though the fate of such a woman would not be newsworthy to anyone but him.

  “Veronique has survived plague, famine, war, massacres, and the unwanted attention of men,” Fanny said. “She will survive Robespierre.”

  Marcus had been enmeshed in revolution before, and knew the course of liberty could take sudden, disastrous turns. In France, the situation was made more complicated as vain and self-important men like Danton and Robespierre fought over the soul of the nation.

  “I’m going out,” Marcus said. He drank the last of his coffee. “You coming, John?”

  “Hunting or business?” Russell asked, hedging his bets.

  “Bit of both,” Marcus replied.

  * * *

  —

  MARCUS AND JOHN HEADED EAST from London’s fashionable residential neighborhoods, through the bordellos and theaters of Covent Garden, and into the twisting thoroughfares of the ancient City of London.

  When they reached Ludgate, Marcus rapped on the carriage roof to remind the driver to pay the toll to the lame beggar who was there at all hours of the day and night. The ruler of this part of London insisted that all creatures entering the square mile of his territory pay tribute in order to have safe passage. Marcus had never clapped eyes on the man, who was known as Father Hubbard and seemed to occupy a place in the civic imagination that was roughly akin to that of Gog and Magog, the ancient giants who guarded London from her enemies.

  Their tribute paid, Marcus and John got stuck in traffic (one of the chief hazards of London life) and proceeded on foot to Sweetings Alley. It was narrow and dank and smelled like a piss pot. They found Baldwin in New Jonathan’s, trading futures and cashing in his chits with the rest of the stockjobbers and bankers.

  “Baldwin.” Marcus took off his hat. He had stopped bowing, but when faced with one of the elder de Clermonts, it was impossible for him not to make some sign of respect.

  “There you are. What kept you?” his uncle replied.

  Baldwin Montclair was the last surviving full-blooded son of Philippe de Clermont. He was ginger-headed, with a temper to match, and underneath his forest-green stockbroker’s suit he had the muscular, athletic body of a soldier. Whether marching across Europe or marching across bank accounts, Baldwin was a formidable opponent. Fanny had warned Marcus never to underestimate his uncle—and he had no intention of ignoring this piece of advice.

  “Always a pleasure to see you, Baldwin,” John said, his voice dripping with insincerity.

  Baldwin looked John over from the tip of his fur-trimmed cap to the heels of his boots and made no reply. He returned his attention to his table, which was covered with empty wine jugs, inkpots, account books, and scraps of paper.

  “We’ve heard about the queen’s execution,” Marcus said in an effort to capture his uncle’s attention. “Do you have any more news from France?”

  “No,” Baldwin said shortly. “You must focus on the work to be done here. The brotherhood’s estates in Hertfordshire are in need of attention. There are two probate cases to settle, and the surveys are years out of date. You will go at once, and see to them.”

  “I don’t understand why Philippe bothered to send me to Edinburgh to study medicine,” Marcus grumbled. “All I do is write reports and draw up writs and affidavits.”

  “Father is breaking you in,” Baldwin said. “Like a new horse, or a shoe. A de Clermont must be adaptable and ready for any need t
hat arises.”

  Russell made a rude gesture, which thankfully Baldwin missed as his nose was buried in a ledger.

  Baldwin noticed an entry in the account book. “Ah. I wish I caught this before Gallowglass left for France.”

  “Gallowglass was here?” John asked.

  “Yes. You just missed him.” Baldwin sighed and scribbled some notes in his book. “He arrived from America last night. It really is too bad he left so soon. Matthew might have made use of this debt in his efforts to blackmail Robespierre.”

  “Matthew’s in the Netherlands,” Marcus said.

  “No, he is in Paris. Father needed another set of eyes in France,” Baldwin said.

  “Christ’s bones,” John said. “Paris is the last place on earth I’d want to see. How many deaths can one man witness before he goes mad?”

  “We can’t all bury our heads in the sand and pretend the world isn’t coming apart, Russell.” Baldwin was nothing if not direct. “As usual, that means the de Clermonts must step to the fore and take charge. It is our duty.”

  “Good of your family to always think of others before yourselves.” John didn’t like Baldwin’s sanctimony any more than Marcus did, but where Marcus was expected to remain silent and obedient, John was free to speak his mind. Sadly, Baldwin had no ear for sarcasm and took his words as a genuine compliment.

  “Indeed,” Baldwin replied. “Your mail is on the table, Marcus. Gallowglass brought some newspapers for you, as well as a letter that looks as though it was written by a madman.”

  Marcus picked up a copy of the Federal Gazette from the last days of August.

  “Gallowglass usually makes better time coming from Philadelphia,” Marcus noted, flipping through the pages.

  “He stopped in Providence on the way here to take in supplies,” Baldwin said, “on account of the fever.”

  Marcus began flipping through the paper.

  . . . services at this alarming and critical period . . .