The Song Peddler of the Pont Neuf

by Laura Lebow

  “Did you know Bricon, Marie?” I asked.

  She fluttered her lashes at me and smiled. “Yes, we kept company sometimes,” she said. “We had a lot in common, being about the same age. He’s a lovely man.”

  “Have you seen him lately?”

  “No. Not in about two weeks.”

  “Was he worried about something? Did he mention that he was about to take a trip?”

  “No. No, monsieur. He didn’t say much about himself.”

  “Did he ever mention a man named Duval?”

  “Not that I can remember. He keeps his secrets to himself. But he is very good company, and generous, too. He always had a plug of snuff to share with his friends.” She laughed. “Some days it seemed like he was growing tobacco in his cloak, he had so much to share. And he is a very funny man, with a quick wit. Sometimes it got him into trouble.” She gestured toward the café across the street. “There’s a young nobleman, about your age, I’d say, who frequents that café. Gaspard made up songs about him, making fun of his fancy airs and shabby clothes.”

  My ears pricked up.

  She grinned. “Not that Gaspard could talk. He had charm, but he wasn’t the most attractive of men. Not with that large nose of his, and that forehead.” She pointed to the wall of the bridge. “His forehead was shaped like one of these bricks. It was as if when God was making him, he let a mason take over when he got to the forehead.”

  “This young nobleman—what did he do when Bricon teased him with his songs?” I asked.

  “Oh, he became furious. But still, he kept coming back, sitting over at that table right there, the one at the very edge. On the last day I saw Gaspard, two weeks ago, I thought they would come to blows.”

  “What does this nobleman look like?” I asked.

  “Ooh, very handsome. Blue eyes and red hair. But awfully shabby for a man with a title. He seemed to be a bit down on his luck.”

  I dug a few coins out of my pocket and handed them to her. “Thank you, Marie,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “You might want to come back another time and try to talk to Vincent again, monsieur,” she said. “He’s often in a bad mood. But he and Gaspard were good friends. They always had their heads together, talking about who knows what. And sometimes they made up songs to sing together.”

  “I’ll try that,” I said. “Thank you.” I turned to leave.

  “Monsieur?” she called.

  I turned back.

  “If you find Gaspard, please tell him old Marie is waiting for him. Winter is coming and my bed is getting cold.”

  “I will, Marie. I will.”

  • •

  CHAPTER THREE

  After a hurried dinner at a catering shop on the Île de la Cité, I passed the rest of the afternoon waiting on a hard chair in the office of the locksmiths’ guild, until I was summoned to turn in my report on the errant journeyman and receive my payment. I then went home and changed into my darkest breeches, waistcoat, and coat—the suit I keep for night surveillance. I put on a worn old cloak, wrapped a heavy scarf about my neck, and pulled a black woolen cap onto my head.

  Once outside, I headed over the Petit Pont, across the Île, and then onto the Right Bank. After I reached the hotel in the rue des Bons Enfants, I loitered on the street for fifteen minutes until my Austrian quarry emerged, and then followed him down the rue Saint-Honoré. As he strolled past the entrance to the Palais Royal and then by the looming Church of Saint-Roch, I groaned, for I knew that Cobenzl was headed to the Place Vendôme, my least favorite place in the city at which to keep watch on a subject.

  If a visitor to Paris saw only the Place Vendôme, he would leave believing the city was the richest place on earth. Even though the expansive square had been laid out at the beginning of the century, the buildings that wrapped around it gleamed as if they were brand new. The tall windows of the hôtels, home to many of the kingdom’s wealthiest bankers, merchants, and noblemen, blazed with light. The square itself was filled with the carriages of the rich, rumbling in and out, taking ladies and gentlemen to the theater, to dinner, or to a salon. At its center, a monumental statue of Louis XIV, the Sun King, astride on his steed, observed all of the comings and goings.

  I hung back by the statue as Cobenzl approached a mansion in the northwest corner of the square, waited while his name was located on the doorman’s list, and disappeared into the vestibule. It is easy to note a man’s activities when he enters a public space: he is obviously eating dinner if he goes into a restaurant, or watching a play if he attends the theater. But when he is admitted into a private house, I must use my wiles to get the information I need for my report.

  I pulled a scrap of paper from my cloak pocket and wandered to the mansion’s door. I stood a few feet away from the doorman and looked up at the building, then down at the paper in my hand.

  “May I help you?” the doorman asked. He looked down his long nose at my scruffy clothes. For my part, I thought he looked like a trained monkey in his fancy uniform. The tasseled gold fringes on the epaulets were especially silly.

  “Yes. I have a message for a Monsieur Duparc. I was told ‘Place Vendôme’, but not the number. Is this the place?”

  “Duparc? No, this isn’t the right number.”

  “Are you certain?” I asked.

  “Of course I am certain,” he snapped. “I’ve never heard that name before. This is the home of the botanist, L’Héritier de Brutelle. He’s holding a salon tonight. There is no one named Duparc on the invitation list.”

  I touched my cap and backed away. “All right. I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll check across the way,” I said. I returned to my station on the steps below the right hoof of the Sun King’s horse. A botany salon. Good. I’d never attended a salon, but it was my understanding that the food and drink served were seldom of generous quantities. My man would be out soon, perhaps moving on to find some sustenance. I wouldn’t have to wait here long.

  I disliked working here, for obvious reasons. The square was large, with no nooks and crannies in which to conceal myself. The only people hanging about were those who serviced the needs of the affluent residents: footmen, friseurs, dressmakers, and fancy caterers. There was no chestnut monger who would let me warm myself near his small brazier; no lantern men with which to pass away the time in idle gossip; no jugglers or orators or musicians to entertain me. None of the coachmen racing in and out of the square paid any attention to the few pedestrians about—their eyes were fixed on the doorways of their destinations. I could easily be run down if I did not remain alert. And of course, there was invariably someone like the well-dressed man who had just emerged from the mansion next door to the botanist and was heading in my direction. I gritted my teeth and steeled myself for the abuse.

  “You there, what are you doing?” He waved an embellished ivory cane at me.

  I ignored him.

  “I said, why are you standing there?”

  “I’m sorry, monsieur,” I said, putting on a meek voice. “I am looking for—”

  “I don’t care what you are looking for. We don’t allow vagrants here. Now go along, before I summon the Watch.” He scowled at me and turned away. I shuffled obediently toward the Church of the Capucines. When I reached the corner, I stopped and turned. My tormenter was being hoisted into a carriage by a footman. As the carriage sped away, I headed back to my spot by the statue.

  I hate being talked to like that, as if I were a piece of dung. But my job requires me to play many roles, and the man had been correct, I did look like a vagrant in my attire. Being shouted at and talked down to was just part of my profession, as was the tiresome sitting in the cold and waiting. Nevertheless, I found my work much more enjoyable than the alternative my father had planned for me. I’d been a curious child, nosy even, some would say. My mother had spent every evening searching the neighborhood for me, while I was either in a tailor’s shop chatting up an apprentice, or in a fancy house asking a housemaid to describe t
he clothing her master wore, or following a friendly member of the Watch as he went about his tour of the streets. Both of my parents had despaired of me and my future, but I thought I had turned my natural inquisitiveness to good use. I made a decent living working for the guilds and tailing foreigners, and enjoyed solving the occasional mystery that came my way. Best of all, I worked for myself. I answered to no master, to no guild. Unlike the men who lived in these fancy mansions, I didn’t have to toady to anyone, to curry favor with this courtier or that merchant. I didn’t have to be constantly working to get ahead, to be richer than the fellow next door. Every man in Paris, no matter what his class, had someone above him who had to be fawned upon or groveled to. Except the king, of course. But he and I were the only ones who didn’t have to play those games.

  The door to the botanist’s mansion opened and several men stepped out into the night. I didn’t see Cobenzl among them, but I expected that he would be out soon. I sat on a step. As I waited, I thought through what I had learned this morning on the Pont Neuf. Montigny had told me that the song peddler had recognized someone he knew on the bridge late in September. He had disappeared a few weeks later. Bricon was involved in some nefarious activity. The blackmail letter was evidence of that. I made a mental note to visit my client and ask him if his friend had ever mentioned the police inspector, Duval. Of course, the blackmail might not have been the reason for Bricon’s disappearance. Why had the man Vincent, the other song peddler, become so hostile when I had asked if he sold anything besides copies of his songs? Were he and Bricon involved in some illegal activity? And the old woman, Marie, the cabbage seller—I resolved to follow up tomorrow on what she had told me about Bricon. It would involve a trip to the Marais, which I avoided as much as possible, but—

  The mansion door opened once again and another group of men came out into the square. This time Cobenzl was among them. I stood and bundled my scarf around my neck. I pulled my cap down around my head as he bid good night to his companions and then walked away across the paving stones to the rue Saint-Honoré. I lingered for a minute and then followed him out to the street.

  • •

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Church bells were striking ten as I crossed the Petit Pont the next morning and walked through the Île de la Cité toward Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, the church Bricon’s landlady had told me he frequented. Once I stepped off the Pont Notre-Dame onto the Right Bank, the streets were filled with masons, carpenters, roofers, and painters who had been turned away from the nearby Place de Grève, where day laborers congregated early each morning hoping to hire onto a construction crew and earn a few sous to put away before the bitter cold of winter shut the industry for the season.

  Ahead of me rose the Châtelet, the city’s sprawling prison and court complex. The strip of land that fronted it on the river’s edge bustled with lawyers, their clients, policemen, and magistrates. Several colporteurs were hawking pamphlets to the crowd.

  “The Estates General! Read all about it!” one close to me shouted. “Should commoners have double the number of deputies?”

  He shoved a pamphlet in my face. “Read how taxes can be made fairer for working people!” he yelled in my ear.

  “No thank you,” I said, pushing his arm away.

  He planted his feet and thrust his chin in my face. “You don’t want to buy one? Why not? Do you enjoy paying taxes, while rich nobles pay nothing? Don’t you care about what’s being planned for the Estates General?”

  I pushed my way past him, and then cut over a block and made my way down to the end of the street, where the Church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois stood facing the Louvre palace. When kings had lived in the Louvre, before Louis XIV had moved the court to Versailles, the church had been the center of the royal parish, and its congregation was still among the city’s richest. But the church also bore a blot of infamy. It was here, on a hot August night in 1572, that the bells had rung out to summon the Catholics of Paris to massacre the thousands of Huguenots, including pregnant women and infants, who were visiting the city to celebrate the marriage of the king’s sister to Henri of Navarre, a Protestant.

  A small group of raggedly dressed beggars, which included a young woman trying to comfort two wailing toddlers, huddled on the porch of the church near the entrance. I walked past them, pulled open the heavy wooden door, and stepped inside. The church’s tall, vaulted ceiling soared above me. Sunshine streamed through the stained glass windows that lined the top part of the nave, and played off the light-colored stone arches below. I don’t usually like churches, but I had to admit that this was a beautiful one.

  A tall gaunt man with a joyless face, wearing the robes of a vicaire, came out of a chapel on my right. I knew that in these wealthy churches the curé, the parish priest, only appeared when his most prosperous parishioners were in attendance, so it was more likely that his assistant, the vicaire, would know Gaspard Bricon, a humbler member of the flock.

  “Excuse me, Father,” I called. He stopped and turned. A scowl flashed over his features and then disappeared.

  “Yes, what is it?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for information about one of your parishioners, a man named Gaspard Bricon. He is missing and I’ve been hired to find him. Would you know him?”

  He laughed harshly. “It’s unlikely. Do you know how many parishioners we have here? Hundreds, possibly a thousand. I can’t know everyone by name.”

  “He’s an old man who works as a song peddler. His landlady told me he comes here nearly every day.”

  He pursed his lips. “A lot of old people are here every day. They have nothing better to do but sit around here. I’m sorry, but I cannot help you.”

  He didn’t seem at all sorry to me.

  I thanked him and turned to the exit. As I reached the door, he called to me. I stopped and waited as he approached.

  “I just remembered—there is an old man who is here a lot. I don’t know anything about him. You should speak with Madame Desmarets, the churchwarden’s wife. I’ve noticed him helping her arrange flowers for the chapels.”

  “Is she here now?” I asked, looking around the nave.

  “No. But she’ll be here tomorrow, to do the flowers for Sunday. Come back then.” He pushed open the door and stepped outside. I followed. The beggars, seeing him, swarmed around us.

  “Please, Father, we are hungry. Please, some bread,” an old woman croaked.

  A young man who had been holding one of the children put her in her mother’s arms and came over. “Father, God bless you. Have you news of any jobs in the neighborhood? My family is new to the city, and I cannot find work,” he said in a thick provincial accent.

  The vicaire glared at him. “Get away. We only help Parisians here.”

  The young man’s cheeks reddened. He hung his head and turned away.

  “Please Father,” his wife called. “You can see, the children are hungry, and it is so cold.”

  “Get away now, or I’ll call the police,” the vicaire snarled. The immigrants scattered toward the Louvre, the old woman hobbling slowly after them. The vicaire shook his head in disgust, nodded at me, and retreated into his church. The big wooden door banged shut.

  I ran after the young man and pressed some coins into his palm.

  A hundred years ago, the Marais was the most coveted place to live in all of Paris, its streets lined with the mansions of the wealthiest nobles in France. The houses remained, but now the rich had all moved on, down the rue Saint-Honoré to the Place Vendôme, or over the river to Saint-Germain on the Left Bank. The rue du Puits had been the site of public water wells in the Middle Ages. When I was growing up a few streets over, the houses on it had not yet begun to crumble; most had been owned by noble families from the provinces who wanted a pied-à-terre in the capital.

  I found the house I sought halfway down the block. I turned the knob on the large door, but to my surprise, found it locked. I lifted a heavy knocker and banged several times. After a few
minutes, a stooped old man in a faded steward’s uniform opened the door.

  “I’m looking for Hyacinthe de Breul,” I said. “Does he still live here?”

  He stepped back to let me enter. “Of course, monsieur. The vicomte is on the third floor, on the right.”

  Memories flooded through my mind as I climbed up the stairs. I hadn’t been allowed in this house very often when I was young, but I recalled that the stairway that I now climbed had been the centerpiece of the entrance, with wide, sparkling marble treads and an ornate, gilded iron railing. All that had disappeared, and the large reception rooms that had opened onto each landing had been walled in and broken up to make individual apartments.

  I reached the third floor and knocked on the door on the right. There was no answer. I knocked again. “De Breul! Hyacinthe!” I called. Just when I was about to turn away, the door opened, and a tall man in a scruffy pair of trousers and a worn linen shirt stared at me with sleepy, bloodshot blue eyes.

  “Yes, what is it?” he asked. He squinted at me. A slow grin filled his face.

  “You! What are you doing here?” He pulled me into an embrace. “I haven’t seen you for ages.” He ushered me into the apartment and gestured to a moth-eaten sofa. “Come in, have a seat, my friend.”

  I took a seat on the sofa. He pulled up a delicate chair, turned it around, and sat, hooking his feet around its legs. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  I hadn’t seen him in close to three years. More childhood memories returned as I studied him. He was no longer the neatly dressed boy escaped from his sickly mother whom I had met one day in the neighborhood, who had dared me to steal an apple from a nearby cart and once I had done so, took me to his bosom and showed me places I could never have seen on my own: the kitchens of the Hôtel Carnavalet, where the indulgent cooks handed us sweetmeats whenever Hyacinthe batted his blue eyes; the Hôtel de Soubise, where the gardeners allowed us to run along the manicured paths of the grounds; and the Hôtel de Sully, with its private passage directly into the Place Royale—all of which Hyacinthe strutted into as if he owned them. Looking around the room, I saw that he owned very little now. The few pieces of furniture were as shabby as the sofa on which I sat; dark rectangles on the wallpaper had replaced the family paintings; and there was no sound of a manservant moving about in the apartment.