I stood on tiptoes to give him a kiss then stepped out into the night, darting across to where the carriage waited with Jean in the driving seat. Mr Weatherall had been right about Jean. Yes, he was definitely smitten but he was loyal and he’d worked tirelessly to rally support for the summit. His aim, of course, was to win a place in my favour and become one of my advisors, but that hardly made him unique. I thought of the Crows and remembered their smiles and whispers when I had returned for my induction; the suspicion that now swirled around them; the presence of this King of Beggars.
‘Élise …’ Mr Weatherall had called from the door.
I turned. Impatiently he motioned me back and I called to Jean to wait and ran back. ‘Yes?’
He was serious. ‘Look at me, child, look into these eyes and remember that you’re worthy of this. You’re the best warrior I’ve ever trained. You’ve got the brains and charm of your mother and father combined. You can do this. You can lead the Order.’
For that he got another kiss before I darted off again.
Glancing back at the house to give a final wave I saw Hélène and Jacques framed in a window, and at the door of the carriage I turned, swept my hat off my head and gave them a theatrical bow.
I felt good. Nervous but good. It was time to set things right.
iv.
And now Jean Burnel and I made our way over the Pont Marie, dark but lit by the bobbing torches of the crowd, and came to the Île Saint-Louis. I thought of my family’s villa, deserted and neglected nearby, but put it out of my mind. As we walked, Jean stayed by my side, his hand beneath his coat ready to draw his sword if we were accosted. Meanwhile, I kept a hopeful eye out, wanting to see other knights of the Order in the crowds, also making their way towards the Lauzun.
It seems funny to relate now – and by that I mean ‘funny’ in an ironic sense – but as we approached the venue there was a part of me that dared to hope for a grand turnout – a huge, historical show of support for the La Serre name. And though it now seems fanciful to have thought it, especially with the benefit of hindsight, at the time, well … why not? My father was a beloved leader. The La Serres a respected family dynasty. Perhaps an order in need of leadership would turn out for me, to honour the legacy of my father’s name.
Like everywhere else on the isle the street outside the Lauzun was busy. A large wooden door with a smaller wicket entrance was set into a high wall overgrown with ivy, which surrounded a courtyard. I looked up and down the thoroughfare, seeing dozens and dozens of people, but none who were dressed as we were on their way here.
Jean looked at me. He’d been quiet since I gave him the dressing-down and I felt bad about that now, especially when I saw his own nerves and knew they were nerves for me.
‘Are you ready, Grand Master?’ he asked.
‘I am, thank you, Jean,’ I replied.
‘Then, please, allow me to knock.’
The door was opened by a manservant elegantly attired in a waistcoat and white gloves. The sight of him, with his embroidered ceremonial sash at his waist, gave me a lift. I was in the right place at least, and they were ready for me.
Bowing his head he stepped aside to allow us into the courtyard. There I looked about me, seeing boarded-up windows and balconies around a neglected central space littered with dried leaves, overturned plant pots and a number of splintered crates.
In different times a fountain might have been delicately tinkling and the sound of evening birdsong providing a peaceful end to another civilized day at the Hôtel de Lauzun, but not any more.
Now there was just Jean and me, the manservant, and the Marquis de Pimôdan, who had been standing to one side, attired in his robes and with his hands clasped in front of him, who now came forward to greet us.
‘Pimôdan,’ I said warmly. We embraced. I kissed his cheeks and, still encouraged by the sight of our host and his manservant in their Templar garb, allowed myself to believe that my pre-meeting flutters were for nothing. That everything was going to be all right, even that the apparent quiet was nothing more than a custom of the Order.
But then, as Pimôdan said, ‘It is an honour, Grand Master,’ his words sounded hollow and he turned quickly away to lead us across the courtyard and my pre-meeting flutters returned tenfold.
I glanced at Jean, who pulled a face, unnerved by the situation.
‘Are the others assembled, Pimôdan?’ I asked, as we made our way to a set of double doors leading into the main building. The manservant opened them and ushered us in.
‘The room is ready for you, Grand Master,’ Pimôdan replied evasively as we stepped over the threshold into a darkened dining room with boarded-up windows and sheets over the furniture.
The manservant closed the double doors, then waited there, allowing Pimôdan to lead us across the floor to a thick, almost ornamental door in the far wall.
‘Yes, but which members are in attendance?’ I asked. The words were croaky. My throat was dry.
He said nothing in response, but gripped a large iron ring on the door and turned it. The chunk sound it made was like a pistol shot.
‘Monsieur Pimôdan …’ I prompted.
The door opened out on to stone steps leading down, the way lit by flickering torches bolted to the walls. Orange flames danced on rough stone walls.
‘Come,’ said Pimôdan, still ignoring me. He was clutching something, I realized. A crucifix.
And that was it. I’d had enough.
‘Stop,’ I commanded.
Pimôdan was taking another step as though he hadn’t heard me, but I whipped back my overcoat, drew my sword and put the point of it to the back of his neck. And that stopped him. Behind me Jean Burnel drew his sword.
‘Who’s down there, Pimôdan?’ I demanded to know. ‘Friend or foe?’
Silence.
‘Don’t test me, Pimôdan,’ I growled, prodding his neck, ‘if I’m mistaken then I’ll offer you my most humble apologies, but until that time I have a feeling that there’s something very wrong here, and I want to know why.’
Pimôdan’s shoulders heaved as he sighed, as though about to throw off the yoke of a huge secret. ‘It’s because there’s nobody here, mademoiselle.’
I went cold and heard a strange whining noise in my ears as I struggled to understand. ‘What? Nobody?’
‘Nobody.’
I half turned to Jean Burnel, who stared, unable to believe his own ears. ‘What about the Marquis de Kilmister?’ I asked. ‘Jean-Jacques Calvert and his father? The Marquis de Simonon?’
Pimôdan inclined his neck away from my blade to shake his head slowly.
‘Pimôdan?’ I insisted, nudging it back, ‘Where are my supporters?’
He spread his hands. ‘All I know is that there was an attack by sans-culottes at the Calvert chateau this morning,’ he said. ‘Both Jean-Jacques and his father perished in a fire. Of the others, I know nothing.’
My blood ran cold. To Burnel I said, ‘A purge. This is a purge.’ Then to Pimôdan: ‘And below? Are my killers waiting for me below?’
Now he turned a little in the stairwell. ‘No, mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘there is nothing down there save for some documents in need of your attention.’
But as he said it, staring back up at me with wide, craven eyes, he nodded. And it was a crumb of comfort, I suppose, that a last vestige of loyalty remained in this cowardly man, that at least he wasn’t going to allow me to descend the steps into a pit of killers.
I whirled round, bundled Jean Burnel back up the steps, then slammed the door behind us and threw the bolt. The manservant had remained by the double doors in the dining room, a look on his face as though he were bemused by the sudden turn of events. As Jean and I rushed across the floor, I drew my pistol and aimed at him, wishing I could shoot the supercilious look off his face but settling instead for gesturing for him to open the doors.
He did, and we stepped out of the hotel and into the dark courtyard beyond.
The doors closed b
ehind us. Call it a sixth sense but I knew something was wrong immediately, and in the next instant I felt a sudden tightening around my neck. I knew exactly what it was.
They were catgut ligatures, dropped with precision from a balcony above. In my case, not perfect precision – caught by the collar of my coat, the noose didn’t tighten straight away, giving me precious seconds to react, while by my side Jean Burnel’s Assassin had achieved a flawless drop and in a heartbeat the ligature was cutting into the flesh of his neck.
In his panic Burnel dropped his sword. His hands scrabbled for the tightening noose round his neck and a snorting noise escaped his nostrils as his face began to colour and his eyes boggled. As he was lifted by the neck his body stretched and the tips of his boots scrabbled at the ground.
I swung for Burnel’s ligature with my sword, but at the same time my own attacker pulled sharply to the side and I was yanked away from him, helpless, to see his tongue protrude from his mouth and his eyeballs seeming to bulge impossibly as he was hoisted even higher. Pulling back on my own ligature, I looked up and saw dark shadows on the balcony above, operating us like two puppeteers.
But I was lucky – lucky, lucky Élise – because although the breath was choked out of me my collar was still wedged and it gave me enough presence of mind to swing again with my sword, only this time not at Jean Burnel’s ligature – for he was out of reach now, his feet kicking in their death throes – but at my own.
I severed it and crumpled to the ground on my hands and knees, gasping for breath but rolling on to my back at the same time, reaching for my pistol and thumbing back the hammer, aiming it two-handed at the balcony above and firing.
The shot echoed around the courtyard and had an instant effect, Jean Burnel’s body dropping like a sack to the ground as his ligature was released, his face a hideous death mask, and the two figures on the balcony disappearing from view, the attack over – for the time being.
From inside the building I heard shouts and the sound of running feet. Through the glass of the double doors I swear I could see the manservant, standing well back in the shadows watching me as I scrambled to my feet. I wondered how many there were, counting the two balcony killers, maybe another two or three killers from the cellar. To my left another door burst open and two thugs in the clothes of sans-culottes burst out.
Oh. So two more elsewhere in the house as well.
There was the sound of a shot and a pistol ball split the air by the side of my head. There was no time to reload my own gun. No time to do anything but run.
I ran for where a bench was inset into a side wall, shaded by a large courtyard tree. I bounded, hit the bench and with my leading foot propelled myself upwards, finding a low branch and thumping messily against the trunk.
From behind me came a shout and a second pistol shot, and I hugged the tree trunk as the ball embedded itself into the wood between two splayed fingers. Lucky, Élise, very lucky. I started to climb. Hands scrabbled at my boot but I kicked out, blindly heading upwards in the hope of reaching the top of the wall.
I reached it and stepped across from the tree. But when I looked down I found myself staring into the grinning faces of two men who’d used the gate and were waiting for me. Grinning up at me with huge ‘got you’ grins.
They were thinking that they were below me, and that there were other men coming up behind me, and that I was trapped. They were thinking it was all over.
So I did what they least expected. I jumped on them.
I’m not big but I was wearing devilish boots and wielding a sword, and I had the element of surprise on my side. I speared one of them on the way down, impaling him through the face and then, without retrieving my blade, pivoted and delivered a high kick to the throat of the second man. He dropped to his knees with his hands at his neck, already turning purple. I retrieved my sword from the face of the first man – and plunged it into his chest.
There was more shouting from behind. Over my head, faces had appeared at the top of the wall. I took to my heels, pushing my way into the crowd. Behind me were two pursuers doing the same, and I pushed further on, ignoring the curses of the people I shoved, just surging forward. At the bridge I stayed by a low wall.
And then I heard the shout. ‘A traitor. A traitor to the revolution. Don’t let the red-headed woman escape.’
And the shout was taken up by another of my pursuers. ‘Get her! Get the red-headed bint.’
Another: ‘A traitor to the revolution!’
Then: ‘She spits on the tricolore.’
It took a minute or so for the message to spread through the crowd but gradually I saw heads turn to me, people noticing my finer clothes for the first time, their gaze moving pointedly to my hair. My red hair.
‘You,’ said a man, ‘it’s you,’ and then he shouted, ‘We have her! We have the traitor!’
Below me on the river was a barge crawling under the bridge, goods covered with sacking on the foredeck. What goods they were, I didn’t know, and could only pray that they were the ‘soft’ kind, that might break your fall if you were jumping from a bridge.
In the end, it didn’t matter whether they were soft or not. Just as I jumped the enraged citizen made a grab for me, and my jump turned into an evasive move that sent me off course. Flailing I hit the barge, but the wrong side, the outside, and smashed into the hull with a force that drove the breath out of me.
Dimly I realized that the cracking sound I’d heard was my ribs breaking as I slapped into the inky-black River Seine.
v.
I made it back of course. Once I’d got to the bank, heaved myself out of the river and used the confusion of the king’s journey to Paris to ‘liberate’ a horse, I took the debris-littered road in the opposite direction to the crowds, out of Paris and to Versailles, and as I rode I tried to keep as still as possible, mindful of my broken ribs.
My clothes were soaked and my teeth were chattering by the time I got back and slid out of the saddle and on to the doorstep of the groundsman’s lodge, but whatever poor shape I was in, all I could think was that I’d let him down. I’d let my father down.
Extract from the Journal of Arno Dorian
* * *
12 September 1794
Reading, I find myself catching my breath, not just in admiration for her audacity and courage, but because when I follow her journey I realize that I am seeing a mirror image of my own. Mr Weatherall was right (and thank you, thank you, Mr Weatherall, for helping her to see that) because we were so much the same, Élise and I.
The difference being, of course, that she got there first. It was Élise who first trained in the ways of her … Ah, I was going to write her ‘chosen’ Order, but of course there was nothing ‘chosen’ about it, not for Élise. She was born to be a Templar. Groomed for leadership, and if at first she had embraced her destiny, as she surely did, because it gave her a way to escape the life of gossip and fan-wafting she saw at Versailles, then she had come to distrust it as well; she had grown to question the eternal conflict of Assassin and Templar; she had come to ask herself if it was all worth it – if all this killing had achieved anything, or ever would.
As she knew, the man she’d seen me with was Bellec, and I suppose you’d have to say that I fell in with him, that he’d turned my head and made me aware of certain gifts that were within my grasp. In other words, it was Bellec who made me an Assassin. It was he who had mentored me through my induction into the Assassins; he who set me on a course of hunting down my surrogate father’s killer.
Ah yes, Élise. You were not the only one who mourned François de la Serre. You were not the only one who investigated his death. And in that enterprise I had certain advantages: the knowledge of my Order, the ‘gifts’ I had been able to develop under Bellec’s tuition, and the fact that I had been there the night François de la Serre was stabbed.
Perhaps I should have waited and allowed you the honour. Perhaps I was as impulsive as you are. Perhaps.
Extracts from
the Journal of Élise de la Serre
* * *
25 April 1790
i.
It is six months since I last wrote in my journal. Six months since I took a dive off the Pont Marie on a freezing October night.
For a while of, course, I was bedbound, suffering a fever that came on a few days after my dunk in the Seine and trying to mend a broken rib at the same time. My poor weakened body was having difficulty doing both those things simultaneously, and for a while, according to Hélène anyway, it was touch and go.
I had to take her word for it. I’d been absent in mind if not in body, feverish and hallucinating, gabbling strange things in the night, crying out, my emaciated body drenched in freezing sweat.
My memory of that time was waking up one morning and seeing their concerned faces above my bed: Hélène, Jacques and Mr Weatherall, with Hélène saying, ‘The fever’s broken,’ and a look of relief that passed across them like a wave.
ii.
It was some days later when Mr Weatherall came to my bedchamber and perched himself on the end of my bed. We tended not to stand on ceremony at the lodge. It was one of the reasons I liked it. It made the fact that I had to be there, hiding from my enemies, that bit more bearable.
For some time he just sat, and we were silent, the way old friends can be, when silence is not to be feared. From outside drifted the sounds of Hélène and Jacques teasing one another, footsteps scampering past the window, Hélène laughing and breathless, and we caught each other’s eye and shared a knowing smile before Mr Weatherall’s chin dropped back to his chest and he continued picking at his beard, something he had a habit of doing these days.
And then after a while I said, ‘What would my father have done, Mr Weatherall?’
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