Secrets. How I hated the taste of them. Vérités cachées. All my life.
‘I know exactly who my father was, Arno. And I know who yours was. I suppose it was inevitable. You an Assassin, me a Templar.’
I watched the realization slowly dawn on his face. ‘You …?’ he began, his words faltering.
I nodded. ‘Does that shock you? My father always meant for me to follow in his footsteps. Now all I can do is avenge him.’
‘I swear to you I had nothing to do with his death.’
‘Oh, but you did …’
‘No. No. By my life, I swear I didn’t …’
To hand was the letter. I held it up now.
‘Is that …?’ he asked, squinting at it.
‘A letter intended for my father the day he was murdered. I found it on the floor of his room. Unopened.’
I almost felt sorry for Arno, watching the blood drain from his face as it dawned on him what he’d done. After all, he had loved Father too. Yes, I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
Arno’s mouth worked up and down. His eyes were wide and staring.
‘I didn’t know,’ he said at last.
‘Neither did my father,’ I said simply.
‘How could I have known?’
‘Just go,’ I told him. I hated the sound of the sob in my voice. I hated Arno. ‘Just go.’
And he did. And I barred the door behind him, and then took the back stairs down to the housekeeper’s study, where I had made my bed. There I opened a bottle of wine. All the better to help me sleep.
20 August 1789
i.
Shaken awake, I blinked blurry, bloodshot eyes and tried to focus on the man who stood above my bed, crutches under his armpits. It looked like Mr Weatherall, but it couldn’t be Mr Weatherall because my protector was in Versailles and he couldn’t travel, not with his leg the way it was. And I wasn’t in Versailles, I was in Île Saint-Louis in Paris, waiting – waiting for something.
‘Right, you,’ he was saying, ‘I see you’re already dressed. Time to get out of your cot and come with us.’
Behind him stood another man, who lurked uneasily by the door of the housekeeper’s study. For a second I thought it was Jacques from Maison Royale, but no, it was another, younger man.
And it was him – it was Mr Weatherall. I shot upright, clasped him by the neck and pulled him to me, sobbing gratefully into his neck, holding him tight
‘Hold up,’ he said in a strangulated voice, ‘you’re pulling me off my bloody crutches. Just wait a minute, will you?’
I let him go and pulled myself up to my knees. ‘But we can’t go,’ I said firmly. ‘I need to be ready, when they come for me.
‘When who comes for you?’
I gripped his collars, looked up at him, into that bearded face creased with concern, and didn’t want to ever let him go. ‘The Carrolls sent killers, Mr Weatherall. They sent two men to kill me for what I did to May Carroll.’
His shoulders slumped on to his crutches as he embraced me. ‘Oh God, child. When?’
‘I killed them,’ I went on breathlessly. ‘I killed them both. I put a wooden stake into one of them.’ I giggled.
He pulled away, looking deep into my eyes, frowning. ‘And then celebrated with a couple of hundred bottles of wine, by the looks of things.’
I shook my head. ‘No. Only to help me sleep, to help forget that … that I’ve lost Arno, and my father, and what I did to May Carroll, and the two men who came to kill me.’ I began to sob now, giggling one second, sobbing the next, dimly realizing that this was not normal behaviour but unable to stop myself. ‘I put a stake into one of them.’
‘Right,’ he said and then turned to the other man. ‘Help her to the carriage, carry her if needs be. She’s not herself.’
‘I’m fine,’ I insisted.
‘You will be,’ he said. ‘This young man here is Jean Burnel. Like you, he’s a newly inducted Templar, though, unlike you, he isn’t Grand Master and he isn’t drunk. However, he is loyal to the La Serre name, and he can help us. But he can’t do that until you’re on your feet.’
‘My trunk,’ I said. ‘I need my trunk …’
ii.
That was – well, the truth is, I don’t know how long ago that was, and I’m embarrassed to ask. All I know is that since then I’ve been confined to bed in the groundsman’s lodge, perspiring profusely for the first few days, insisting I was going to be okay, getting angry when I was denied a little wine to drink; then after that sleeping a lot, my head clearing enough to understand that I had been in the grip of some dark fugue – a ‘disorder of the nerves’, Mr Weatherall had said.
iii.
At last I was well enough to get out of bed and dress in clothes that had been freshly laundered by Hélène, who was indeed an angel, and who had as expected formed a strong relationship with Jacques during my absence. Then Mr Weatherall and I left the lodge one morning and walked in near-silence, both of us knowing we were heading for our usual place, and there we stood in the clearing where the sun fell through the branches like a waterfall, and we bathed in it.
‘Thank you,’ I said, when at last we sat, Mr Weatherall on the stump, me on the soft floor of the copse, absent-mindedly picking at the ground and squinting up at him.
‘Thank you for what?’ he said. That growly voice I loved so much.
‘Thank you for saving me.’
‘Thank you for saving you from yourself, you mean.’
I smiled. ‘Saving me from myself is still saving me.’
‘If you say so. I had my own difficulties when your mother died. Hit the bottle myself.’
I remembered – I remembered the smell of wine on his breath at the Maison Royale.
‘There is a traitor within the Order,’ I said next.
‘We thought as much. Lafrenière’s letter …’
‘But now I am more sure. His name is the King of Beggars.’
‘The King of Beggars?’
‘You know him?’
He nodded. ‘I know of him. He isn’t a Templar.’
‘That’s what I said. But Ruddock insists.’
Mr Weatherall’s eyes blazed at the mention of Ruddock’s name. ‘Nonsense. Your father would never have allowed it.’
‘That was exactly what I told Ruddock, but perhaps Father didn’t know?’
‘Your father knew everything.’
‘Can the King of Beggars have been inducted since?’
‘After your father’s murder?’
I nodded. ‘Perhaps even because of my father’s murder – as payment for carrying it out, a reward.’
‘You’ve got a point there,’ said Mr Weatherall. ‘You say Ruddock was hired by the King of Beggars to kill your mother, maybe to curry favour with the Crows?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, he failed, didn’t he? Perhaps he’s been biding his time since, waiting for another opportunity to prove himself. Kills your father, finally gets what he wants – an initiation.’
I considered. ‘Maybe, but it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to me, and I still can’t understand why the Crows would want Mother dead. If anything, her third way was a bridge between the two sets of ideals.’
‘She was too strong for them, Élise. Too much of a threat.’
‘A threat to whom, Mr Weatherall? On whose authority is all this happening?’
We shared a look.
‘Listen, Élise,’ he said, pointing, ‘you need to consolidate. You need to call a special meeting and assert your leadership, let the bloody Order know whose hand is on the tiller, and root out whoever it is that’s working against you.’
I felt myself go cold. ‘What you’re saying is that it’s not just one individual, it’s a faction?’
‘Why not? In the last month we’ve seen the rule of a remote and disinterested king overthrown by revolution.’
I frowned at him. ‘And that’s what you think I am, do you? A “remote and disinterested” rule
r?’
‘I don’t think that. But maybe there are others who do.’
I agreed. ‘You’re right. I need to rally my supporters around me. I shall host the gathering at the estate in Versailles, beneath portraits of my mother and father.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes, all right. Let’s not run before we can walk, eh? We need to make sure they’ll turn up first. Young Jean Burnel can begin the task of alerting members.’
‘I need him to sound out Lafrenière as well. What I’ve learnt gives his letter even more credence.’
‘Yes, well, you just be careful.’
‘How did you recruit Jean Burnel?’
Mr Weatherall coloured a little. ‘Well, you know, I just did.’
‘Mr Weatherall …’ I pressed.
He shrugged. ‘All right, well, look, I have my network, as you know, and I happened to surmise that young Burnel would jump at the chance to work closely with the beautiful Élise de la Serre.’
I smiled my way through an uneasy, disloyal feeling. ‘So he’s sweet on me?’
‘It’s the icing on the cake of his loyalty to your family, I’d say, but yes, I suppose he is.’
‘I see. Perhaps he would make a good match.’
He guffawed. ‘Oh who are you kidding, child? You love Arno.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, don’t you?’
‘There’s been a lot of hurt.’
‘Could be that he feels the same way. After all, you kept some pretty big secrets from him. Could be he’s got just as much right as you to be feeling like the injured party.’ He leaned forward. ‘You ought to start thinking of what you have in common rather than what separates you. You might find that one outweighs the other.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, turning my face away. ‘I don’t really know any more.’
5 October 1789
i.
I have written before that the fall of the Bastille marked the end of the king’s rule and though it did in one sense – in the sense that his power had been questioned, tested and failed that test – in name at least, if not in reality, he remained in charge.
As news of the Bastille’s fall began to travel around France, so too did the rumour that the king’s army would wreak a terrible revenge on all revolutionaries. Messengers would arrive in villages with the dreadful news that the army was sweeping across the countryside. They pointed to the sunset and said it was a burning village in the distance. Peasants took up arms against an army that never came. They burned tax offices. They fought with local militia sent to quell the disturbance.
On the back of it, the Assembly passed a law, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, to stop nobles demanding taxes, tithes and labour from peasants. The law was drafted by the Marquis de Lafayette, who had helped draft the American Constitution, and it killed noble privilege and made all men equal in the eyes of the law.
It also made the guillotine the official instrument of death of France.
ii.
But what to do with the king? Officially he still had power of veto. Mirabeau, who had so nearly formed an alliance with my father, argued that the protests should end, and that the king should rule as he had done before.
In this aim he would have been joined by my father had my father lived, and when I wondered whether an alliance of Assassins and Templars might have changed things I found myself sure it would have done, and realized that was why he had been killed.
There were others – chief among them the doctor and scientist Jean-Paul Marat, who, though not a member of the Assembly, had found a voice – and felt that the king’s powers should be stripped away from him altogether, that he should be asked to move from Versailles to Paris and there continue purely in an advisory role.
Marat’s view was the most radical. As far as I was concerned that was important, because not once did I ever hear talk of the king being deposed, as I had overheard growing up.
Put it another way. The most passionate revolutionaries in Paris had never proposed anything quite so radical as that suggested by my father’s advisors at our estate in Versailles as far back as 1778.
And realizing that sent a chill down my spine as the day of the Templar council approached. The Crows had been invited, of course, although I was going to have to stop using that nickname for them if I was to be their Grand Master. What I should say is that eleven of my father’s close associates and advisors had been requested to attend, as well as representatives of other high-ranking Templar families.
When they were assembled I would tell them I was in charge now. I would warn them that treachery would not be tolerated and that if my father’s killer came from their ranks then he (or she) would be exposed and punished.
That was the plan. And in private moments I imagined it happening that way. I imagined the meeting taking place at our chateau in Versailles, just as I’d said to Mr Weatherall that day at Maison Royale.
In the end, however, we’d decided more neutral territory would be preferable, and chosen to meet at the Hôtel de Lauzun on the Île Saint-Louis. It was owned by the Marquis de Pimôdan, a knight of the Order known to be sympathetic to the La Serres. So not totally neutral. But more neutral at least.
Mr Weatherall demurred, insisting on the need to maintain a low profile. I’m grateful for that, the way things turned out.
iii.
Something had happened that day. These days it felt as though something happened every day, but that day – or to be precise yesterday and today – something bigger than usual had happened, an event for which the wheels were set in motion when, just a few days ago, King Louis and Marie Antoinette drank too much wine at a party held in honour of the Flanders regiment.
The story goes that the royal couple, while making merry, ceremonially trampled on a revolutionary cockade, while others at the party had turned the cockade round to display its white side, considered an anti-revolution stance.
So arrogant. So stupid. In their actions the king and his wife reminded me of the noble woman and her groom on the day the Bastille fell, still clinging to the old ways. And of course the moderates, the likes of Mirabeau and Lafayette, must have been throwing up their hands in disbelief and frustration at the monarch’s thoughtlessness, because the king’s actions played right into the hands of the radicals. The people were hungry and the king had thrown a banquet. Worse, he had trampled on a symbol of the revolution.
The revolution leaders called for a march on Versailles and thousands of them, mainly women, made the journey from Paris to Versailles. Guards who fired on the protestors were beheaded and, as ever, their heads raised on pikes.
It was the Marquis de Lafayette who convinced the king to speak to the crowd, and his appearance was followed by Marie Antoinette, whose bravery in facing the crowd seemed to defuse much of their fury.
After that the king and queen were taken from Versailles to Paris. Their journey took them nine hours, and once in Paris they were installed at the Tuileries Palace. The event put the city in as much tumult as it had experienced since the fall of the Bastille three months before, and the streets thronged with troops and sans-culottes, men, women and children. They filled the Pont Marie as Jean Burnel and I made our way across the bridge, having abandoned our carriage and decided to reach the Hôtel de Lauzun on foot.
‘Are you nervous, Élise?’ he asked me, his face shining with excitement and pride.
‘I would ask that you address me as Grand Master, please,’ I told him.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And no, I’m not nervous. Leading the Order is my birthright. Those members in attendance will find in me a renewed passion for leadership. I may be young, I may be a woman, but I intend to be the Grand Master the Order deserves.’
I felt him swell with pride on my behalf and I chewed my lip, which was something I did when I was nervous, which I was.
Despite what I’d said to Jean, who was way too much like an obedient and lovelorn puppy for his own good,
I was, as Mr Weatherall would say, ‘Shaking like a shitting dog.’
‘I wish I could be there,’ he’d said, although we’d agreed it best he remained behind. His pep talk had begun as I presented myself for inspection.
‘Whatever you do, don’t expect miracles,’ he’d said. ‘If you get the advisors and, say, five or six other members of the Order, that will be enough to swing the Order in your direction. And don’t forget you’ve left it a long time to go in there and start demanding your birthright. By all means use the shock of your father’s death as a reason for your tardiness but don’t expect it to be the medicine that cures all ills. You owe the Order an apology, so you best start off contrite, and don’t forget you’ll need to fight your corner. You’ll be treated with respect but you’re young, you’re a woman and you’ve been neglectful. Calls to take you to trial won’t be taken seriously but then they won’t be ridiculed either.’
I looked at him with wide eyes. ‘ “Taken to trial”?’
‘No. Didn’t I just say they wouldn’t be taken seriously?’
‘Yes, but then after that you said –’
‘I know what I said after that,’ he said testily, ‘and what you have to remember is that for a period of several months you’ve left the Order without firm leadership – during a time of revolution to boot. La Serre or not. Birthright or not. That fact won’t play well. All you can do is hope.’
I was ready to leave.
‘Right, are you clear on everything?’ he asked, leaning on his crutches to remove fluff from the shoulder of my jacket. I checked my sword and pistol, then shrugged an overcoat on top, hiding my weapons and Templar garb, then pulled my hair back and added a tricorn.
‘I think so.’ I smiled through a deep, nervous breath. ‘I need to be contrite, not overconfident, grateful for whoever shows their support –’ I stopped. ‘How many have pledged their attendance?’
‘Young Burnel has had twelve “ayes”, including our friends the Crows. It’s the first time I’ve known a Grand Master call a meeting in such a fashion so you can depend on there being a few there out of curiosity alone, but then that could work to your advantage.’
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