The Star of Versailles

by Catherine Curzon

  Better an orphan.

  So, he’d left her sleeping as the church bells had struck midnight and set out alone, a child without parents on the streets of Paris.

  And it was the making of me.

  In the mind of the boy, the church door had been as impregnable as the Bastille, open yet barred to him, and though he’d passed it many times as he had grown from an innocent child to a young man whose belly was filled with the fire of revolution, he never again uttered a prayer. On the day he’d turned his back on the God he had once believed in as fervently as he now believed in the Republic, he’d rejected the miraculous. It was simply luck, good, bad or otherwise that had brought him to the Champs-Élysées on the August afternoon that would change his life.

  The dappled gray horse had been fractious all the way down the road and the slight woman who’d ridden it struggled and shifted in the saddle, panic twisting her face as she’d careened through the other riders and pedestrians, who had scattered in her wake. There had been nothing heroic behind his instinctive reaction to reach up and seize the dropped reins, no intent to save anyone beyond himself as the beast bore down on him, eyes rolling and nostrils flaring wide. With his hands as they had become, he would have no hope of taking control of the animal, but there had been no scars to tighten and stiffen in those days and though the horse had bucked and snorted, the crisis appeared to have been averted by nothing but the quick thinking of the lowly milk seller’s apprentice.

  And life had changed in that moment, everything turned on its head by the sobbing woman who’d slid from the saddle. Never once did she reject the filthy child before her or stare through him as though he was litter at her feet, but instead she’d looked him in the eye and taken his hand, gasping her sympathy when they had seen that the reins had flayed the skin from his palms.

  Josette and Hugues Tessier had taken the boy from the milk seller and his brutal thrashings and apprenticed him to their own groom. The work had been hard and the hours long but the groom had been kind and the horses fine and he’d settled into this life as he had no other, his mother’s face invading his conscience less and less as the days had passed.

  In fact, the boy who was known simply as Vincent had made more of an impression on the childless Josette Tessier than anyone had guessed and she had become ever more attentive to her savior. By the time he had grown to be ten years old, the Tessiers had given him their name and he’d left the stables for a life of education. This boy who’d had so little was now learning not only the fundamentals of education but also what it meant to be human, to really think.

  For Hugues there had been no simple decisions, no required learning and no prescribed rules, there had simply been the desire to install in the boy a sense of what was right and what was, fundamentally, wrong.

  ‘No man should bow before another, Vincent. That is the first thing you should learn.’

  ‘And we are all humans, no matter what our station.’

  These people had made him the man he had become, nothing left of the boy who’d kneeled before the church and stared at those exotic, immoral women and their braying, politicking men. Within the walls of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Tessier had found himself with friends, something entirely novel for a child who had always been solitary.

  Those friends have served me well, he thought with a smile, and France, too.

  Hugues had been the first to die, falling from a horse ten years earlier, and in 1790 a disorder of the lungs had taken Josette as Tessier had held her hand, bitter tears coursing down his face and a hundred useless words of adoration pouring from his lips. He had never felt more alone, a lost child once more, just as he had been in that Parisian hovel.

  She was all a woman should be—no rouge and powder, no paint and horsehair beneath which to shelter.

  She was all that was good and beautiful in a world without color.

  Those enormous church doors had been diminished when Tessier had returned as the silver-buckled rulers of Paris stumbled before the onslaught of revolution. He had flung them wide open, incense mingling with a less holy smoke as they put that den of immorality to the flames. The whole place had been stained with decadence and idolatry, too tainted in his memory to serve as a Temple of Reason. Instead he had folded his arms and closed his eyes as the building had burned before him, a warm orange glow dancing behind his closed lids. The priest who had flung that ragged child from the church into the gutter had long since gone, but another had stepped into his worthless shoes, and even as the defenders of reason filled his church he had fallen to his knees before the altar and prayed, fancying himself another Beckett.

  And who am I to disappoint?

  For all his holiness, the priest’s blood was as red as every other man from king to pauper—we are all alike under the skin. I have seen enough men bleed to be sure of that.

  And yet, I can still be beguiled in that search for something innocent, that is where true holiness lies. It is as fleeting and false as the gospels that had no room for the likes of me.

  We are all ruined.

  Tessier bowed his head until his forehead rested against the cool glass of the window, his own reflection returning his stare, dark and unwavering. For a few moments he watched himself in the glass, traced the narrow skull and dark hollows of his face where finely rendered cheekbones left him gaunt even as they had made his mother beautiful in his childish fantasies. He sucked his lips in and moistened them, watching as his face barely moved and he saw more clearly than ever the now familiar mask of the Butcher of Orléans, a figure of fright to keep children from disobeying the commands of their parents.

  The stories they must tell about me…

  I am the devil himself nowadays.

  And yet, I think, not always.

  Tessier allowed himself the briefest suggestion of joy at the memory of Sylvie’s face when the locked door to the bedroom had finally opened and she had stood before the man who hadn’t seen her in over a decade, one hand on her hip and a coquette’s smile on her face. He had long since considered her lost to him, gone off to Lyon with her strapping bootmaker as she found her charms no match for those of politics and debate. Without her, he had been adrift, mourning Sylvie as one would the dead, his life seemingly shattered by her departure. And now here she was in Paris, ten years older but more beautiful than ever, as perfect as one who had been preserved on canvas.

  His memory strayed to the sensation of her fingertips on him, the softness of her voice as she had whispered and encouraged and he closed his eyes again and breathed in the scent of her nightgown, felt the rise and fall of her breasts beneath thin fabric. In the Conciergerie, he had kneeled beside her chair as she had recovered from her time in the cell, and the need to touch her, to hear her words of praise again, was almost overwhelming. To have Sylvie so near and yet so disinterested in his presence was an exquisite agony. He’d clasped his hands behind his back and bowed his head, raising his eyes to her as though awaiting a benediction when she had run her fingers through his hair for a brief, wonderful moment.

  Tessier stepped back from the study window at the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs and turned from his unwelcome reflection, snapping into a more comfortable role as there came a knock at the door.

  “All the men are here,” Jacquet said, hardly entering the room as Tessier pulled on his gloves and prepared to leave. “They’re in the kitchen.”

  When Tessier entered the kitchen, the six men were already standing straight and silent, waiting for this general to address his troops. He paced the line back and forth a couple of times before he told them, “Gentlemen, we are fighting a war.”

  Their eyes stayed on him, every man waiting for his next words as he knew they would, each of these guards hand-picked for their loyalty, their ferocity.

  Their dedication to our cause.

  “Our country is assailed by parasites—creatures bred on our own soil seek to destroy us, to unsettle the nation we have built through blood and toil.”
r />   “We all know of the Academy and its cowardly operatives,” he went on, warming to the theme. “They come from their nests to poison the citizens of France, to attack and destroy the very fabric of our Republic. The vermin are hidden within our own walls.”

  “Those responsible for the enslavement and starvation of the sans-culottes, who have assisted the enemies of the Republic, who have murdered our own sons.” Jacquet closed his eyes for a moment, nodding in emphatic agreement, and Tessier paused before him as he concluded, “All will be found, apprehended and shown the true meaning of justice.”

  “Today we leave Paris and we will not return without the man they call Professor Dee and all of the rats who swarm around him.”

  Because, Monsieur Gaudet, you have written your last farce.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I wonder if the cabinetmaker was saved,” Gaudet mused after two more days on the road, two more nights hiding in stables and outhouses. “I hope so.”

  With that, he kicked his horse into a trot, not wanting to see the frown of doubt that he knew would be on his companion’s face. The cool wind that buffeted him as they rode was refreshing in the heat and Gaudet closed his eyes for a few moments, listening to the refrain of drumming hoof beats. Tessier would be scouring the land for them and Gaudet could do nothing more than hope that this seemingly aimless cross-country route would confuse them, because if it didn’t, they might well have run out of schemes to outfox their pursuers.

  “Perhaps one day you might find out.” The response from William as Gaudet spurred his own horse on was surprisingly positive for once.

  “I cannot help but think of that poor, poor child…”

  “It is a sorry business.” William’s horse began to pull ahead. “Think of something else, Gaudet, do not dwell.”

  “That Dee character was rather a fine figure of a man.” Gaudet caught up with William. “Wouldn’t you say, Guillaume?”

  “I hardly judge men on their figures.”

  “It keeps my mind from darker thoughts,” Gaudet confessed quietly, the fineness of men’s figures being one of his main interests. “What has happened to my country? In the south, the land is scorched, in the north, drowning in blood…”

  “Perhaps the world is ending,” William suggested. “It would be about time…”

  “No, it cannot be, because I am still a virgin and that would not be fair at all!” As the mischievous words left his lips, Gaudet flashed past William on his chestnut mount, Papillon offering a cheeky bark of triumph. There was the sound of laughter before William gathered speed behind him, the two horses chasing each other along the road.

  “What a lovely view you must have,” Gaudet called, offering a wiggle of his bottom. “The finest in France!”

  “You make a bold claim there.”

  “I have the finest face in the land, so my bottom must likewise be unsurpassed.”

  There was no response from his companion as they raced down the road, one pulling ahead for a moment, only to fall behind again at the next.

  “Actually, ahead you go,” Gaudet tried a different tactic, “so that I might see your arse and appraise it.”

  “I will be too far ahead for you to see my bottom or anything else.”

  “Not the size of it. I would see it from Rome!”

  “Damn you Frenchman.” William gave chase again. “I will win this race.”

  “I am not racing,” Gaudet said, all innocence as he settled into a gentle trot. “I am enjoying the scenery, thinking about my beautiful coat…”

  “You cannot give up now.”

  “I cannot hear, drop back and say again?”

  With a growl of frustration William did so, repeating, “You cannot give up now, sir.”

  “Give up?” Gaudet frowned, urging his horse into a gallop with a cry of, “It is you who has fallen behind. Like all Englishmen I’ve known, I’ve outridden you.”

  “I am not all Englishmen, Monsieur.” William pushed his horse even further, breathing hard with exertion. The animal thundered on until, quite suddenly, it decided that snacking was far preferable to racing and veered off the road toward a patch of apparently irresistible grass. Unprepared, William barked an oath before he tumbled unceremoniously into a ditch and the horse carried on a short way without him, finally coming to a lazy halt.

  “Guillaume, chérie!” Gaudet could barely manage to call for laughing as he reined his own horse in and pottered over to the mud-soaked Englishman. He peered over the edge of the ditch and said sweetly, “I believe your enormous bottom proved too much for this delicate French horse. You are very muddy now.”

  “Of course I’m bloody muddy. I’m in a bloody ditch!”

  “Why are you in a ditch? I thought we were going to Le Havre.”

  The next few moments were lost in ranting that was, to Gaudet’s ears, rather incoherent. “I need to get up.”

  “That should be easy, just think of my stunning bottom.”

  William’s expression at that was priceless, the spluttering continuing for a good few moments.

  Finally, Gaudet slipped from his horse and, settling Pap and his red coat on the saddle, held out a hand as he warned, “Don’t you dare get mud on me, Guillaume.”

  He realized his mistake as soon as William seized his hand, but by then it was too late, he was already toppling into the ditch. For a moment, Gaudet was silent, then he let out a shriek of dismay, hands flailing in a wild fury as he shouted, “Look at my clothes. What have you done? I am filthy…my hair!”

  As Gaudet watched in shocked disbelief, William actually laughed, a sound that grew in volume until he was positively shaking with humor, overwhelmed by it.

  “Do not laugh,” Gaudet shrieked, though in truth, it was infectious. “Stop it.”

  “You— We—” William guffawed. “Look at us!”

  “I am filthy.” Gaudet looked down at his muddy hands before, with some difficulty, he clambered out of the ditch. Safe on the grass once more, he stripped off the muddy shirt, pausing to tell Pap, “See what Uncle Guillaume has done to Papa!”

  “Don’t listen to him. I did nothing.” William was still laughing as he hauled himself out of the ditch. “That bloody horse.”

  “Mud will do one’s skin no harm—indeed, I do like the occasional mud mask at home.” Gaudet tried and failed to convince himself, hardly able to imagine how dreadful he might look. “Find me some water, Guillaume, quickly.”

  “Water?” William frowned. “Where?”

  “Swimming, Pap, lovey?” Gaudet plucked the dog from the saddle and she dashed off, leaving him to grab the reins of his horse and give pursuit, sure she would find what they needed.

  “Wait.” William could be heard shouting as he did his best to follow. “Where in the name of all things holy are you going?”

  “Pap loves to swim. If there is water, she will find it.”

  William’s sigh was audible, yet he continued to follow along, muttering darkly as they went. Eventually they crested a hill beneath which there shimmered a small yet sheltered lake, the poodle bounding down to take a flying leap into the sun-dappled water.

  “She is a marvel.” Gaudet applauded, already pulling off his boots before he remembered the wounds on his back. All good humor suddenly deserted him at the realization that his scars would be laid bare and he said quickly, “I am so very sorry, sir, I quite forgot—”

  “There is mud in my boots,” William was muttering, pre-occupied. “What are you sorry for? I have seen your back, Monsieur, and you need not be shy of it.”

  “But never in broad daylight.” Gaudet blinked. He crossed his arms over his chest and admitted, “I am ashamed of my scars.”

  “Don’t be.” William’s tone was suddenly serious. “Or he has won.”

  “You are kinder than you would ever admit.” Gaudet peeled off the shirt tentatively, careful to keep his back to William. He was sure that there was more to this Englishman than he would ever share, a mystery that was to
o deep to traverse. “Thank you.”

  “I am not a blushing girl,” William assured him gruffly. “And I am intrigued to see whether you swim as badly as you ride.”

  Gaudet forgot his apprehension, preferring instead to bristle once more at William’s tone. Without a second thought, he stripped off his breeches and performed a showy dive into the lake, the sun warming his naked skin. Only as he entered the thankfully deep water did it occur to him that, for the sake of bravado, he might well have snapped his neck. William stood as if undecided for a long moment, yet the need to get clean seemed to overtake his reticence and he pulled his shirt off, hands hesitating again at his breeches.

  “Get them off, Guillaume,” Gaudet called as he broke the surface, tossing his head back to clear the water from his hair. At the sight of his companion’s uncertainty he gave a shriek of laughter then chanted, “Off, off, off!”

  “If it will stop that dreadful noise.” William was already stepping out of his breeches, a moment later throwing himself into the water. It was a shame, Gaudet reflected, for he made a fine figure there in the sunlight.

  “Strange,” Gaudet teased, pausing for a moment before he laughed. “I didn’t think it was cold.”

  “You had better be able to swim bloody fast,” William warned Gaudet, making him laugh all the more.

  “Why so, sir?”

  “Because otherwise,” William started to move with purpose, “you are going to find yourself dunked, sir.”

  “If you want to have some sort of watery horseplay with me, be my guest,” Gaudet challenged. “Anything to get your hands on a slippery Frenchman, it would seem.”

  “More a case of wanting to silence one…”

  “Then come and grab a handful of the Pride of Paris, Monsieur.”

  With a glare that suggested a less delightful intent than grabbing, William swam toward Gaudet, who looked on appraisingly as he cut through the water. In fact, Gaudet mused as he watched, William cut a generally fine sight at most times, for an Englishman.