Why Kings Confess

by C. S. Harris

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Not if you know what you’re doing.”

  Sebastian glanced over at Gibson. “Is it possible?”

  Gibson shrugged. “I’ve heard tales of such a thing being done. But are they true? I don’t know. I’ve never spoken to anyone who’s attempted it.”

  “I have done it,” said Alexandrie Sauvage, leaning forward. “It doesn’t always work. But you must allow me to at least make the attempt. If the babe doesn’t turn before its time comes . . .” Her voice trailed off, and Sebastian felt a renewed yawn of terror open up within him.

  He said, “No.”

  She flopped back in the chair, her hands gripping the worn, rolled leather arms. “What do you think? That I would deliberately harm an innocent child and a woman I have never met? Simply to get back at you?”

  “Yes.”

  She pushed to her feet, her face white, her arms trembling with the effort. “Your friend is a fool,” she told Gibson, and left the room.

  Gibson stared after her.

  Sebastian said, “You didn’t tell me she was better.”

  “She isn’t better. Her fever has broken, but I meant it when I said she shouldn’t be up.” He brought his gaze back to Sebastian’s face. “Care to tell me what the bloody hell that was about?”

  “You mean to say she hasn’t told you?”

  “No.”

  Sebastian drained his wine and went to pour himself another glass. “You remember I said I’d seen her before, in Portugal?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was on a mission for Colonel Sinclair Oliphant when I was taken captive by a troop of French cavalry. She was with them. Her lover was a lieutenant named Tissot. When I escaped, I killed him.”

  There was more to the tale—far more. But Gibson had been back in London by the time of the incident, and Sebastian had never told his friend any of the wretched details.

  Gibson said, “You think she holds a grudge against you?”

  Sebastian looked over at him. The wind blew the snow against the windowpane, like a soft whisper from a long-vanished past. “What do you think?”

  Gibson went to throw more coal on the fire. Then he simply stood there, one hand braced against the mantel, his gaze on the fire before him.

  After a moment, Sebastian said, “I’ve discovered something that may or may not be relevant. Damion Pelletan’s father was one of the doctors who performed the autopsy on the little Dauphin when he died in the Temple. He also treated the boy before his death.”

  Gibson turned to stare at him. “You can’t be serious.”

  “The Comte de Provence himself confirmed it.”

  Gibson shook his head. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Neither do I. Particularly when you consider that Damion Pelletan was murdered on the anniversary of Louis XVI’s death.”

  Gibson pushed away from the fireplace. “How much do you know about the death of the last Dauphin?”

  “I’m not sure how much anyone knows about those days. But there’s a courtier who is close to Provence—a man by the name of Ambrose LaChapelle. I think he knows considerably more than he’s letting on. About a lot of things.”

  “Do you think you can convince him to talk?”

  Sebastian finished his wine and set the glass aside. “I don’t know. But I intend to try.”

  Chapter 26

  After Devlin left, Gibson went to stand in the doorway to the inner chamber.

  Alexandrie Sauvage lay, still dressed, atop the bed. She had her head tipped back, her eyes closed. He could see what the effort of rising even for those few moments had cost her in every fragile line of her being.

  He said, “That was not wise.”

  She turned her face to look at him. “I am getting better.”

  “You won’t if you keep pulling stunts like this one.”

  A ghost of a smile touched her lips. She had a full, generous mouth, gently curved in a way that made a man long to rub the pad of his thumb along its soft lines.

  She said, “He hadn’t told you? About Portugal, I mean.”

  “No.”

  Her slim throat worked as she swallowed. “And does it alter your opinion of me, to know that I once took a lover?”

  “Why should it? I’ve had a few lovers myself, you know.” He’d never had a wife, though, and no woman at all since he lost his leg. But he didn’t see any reason to tell her that.

  “That’s different.”

  “I don’t know why it should be.”

  “You know why. Our society expects—no, demands—very different conduct from women and men.”

  He said, “What happened to you, after your lover was killed?”

  He thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer him, and if he could have unsaid the question, he would have. It was too personal, too much a betrayal of his interest in her, and he knew by the pinched look around her eyes that those days had been bleak.

  She said, “I took up with a British captain—Miles Sauvage. He—how do you English say it? Ah, yes; I remember. He made an honest woman of me. It’s a curious expression, don’t you agree? An ‘honest woman’ is a very different creature from an ‘honest man’ and has nothing to do with the truth or lack thereof. Just as a woman’s honor is a very different thing from a man’s. It’s as if when it comes to women, all possible virtues—honesty, honor, even virtue itself—are reduced simply to whom we allow between our legs.”

  When he said nothing, she gave a crooked smile. “Now I have shocked you.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t shock as easily as you may think. Although that was your intent, was it not? To shock me?”

  She tilted her head, her gaze on his face. And he knew he’d read her right. But he was unprepared for her next assault.

  She said, “I wonder, does your good friend Viscount Devlin know of your taste for opium?”

  Gibson sucked in a quick breath. “He knows I take laudanum from time to time. He was with me when they cut off what was left of my leg—held me down while the surgeon went at me with his saw.”

  “How long ago now?”

  “Four—five years.”

  In Gibson’s experience, four out of five men who lost an arm or a leg—or a hand, or a foot—suffered intermittent pain that seemed to come from their missing limb. The fact that the limb was no longer there didn’t make the pain any less “real”—or any less agonizing. Sometimes it felt like an intense, crippling cramp; at other times it was as sharp and stabbing as a knife blade thrust deep into long-vanished flesh. It could go on and on, then suddenly disappear—only to start up again without warning a few minutes or a few days later. For many men, the pains came less frequently with the passage of time until they eventually vanished altogether, usually after a few months.

  But for some, the pains never went away. He’d known men to take their own lives, simply to get away from the pain.

  He said, “The laudanum helps me focus on . . . other things.”

  “Yes. But it takes more and more every year, does it not?” She paused, then said gently, “You know where this will end.”

  “I can control it.”

  “How? By walking the stews of London when the urge to lose yourself entirely in a poppy-hued mist threatens to become overwhelming?”

  “How did you—” He broke off.

  “How did I know that’s why you were in St. Katharine’s the night you found me? Call it a good guess. How do I know you’ve taken laudanum tonight? It’s quite dark in here, yet your pupils are little more than pinpricks.”

  “I can control it,” he said again.

  “If you truly believe that, you are a fool.”

  He felt hot color stain his cheeks, but whether it was from anger or shame he couldn’t have said.

  He carefully straightened his spine. “I will leave you to rest,” he said and limped from the room, shutting the door carefully behind him.

  At various times during the evening he was
tempted to rejoin the argument. There were two small chambers at the front of his house, one leading to the other and both overlooking the street. He had given her the inner room, and he could see the glow of her candle beneath the door, hear by her occasional cough that she was still awake. But he resisted, as much because he suspected he would lose any argument on the subject as from the knowledge that the last thing she needed in her condition was a heated dispute with a delusional opium eater.

  He stood in the darkened outer chamber, his gaze on the snowy street beyond the cold-frosted window. A few stray flakes still drifted down, but for now the snow appeared to have ended, leaving the street ankle deep in a soft white layer of fluff. The sky above was dark and starless, the moon hidden behind the thick clouds pressing down on the city, the roofs of the ancient stone houses of Tower Hill shrouded thick with snow and dripping icicles that glimmered in the lantern of a passing carriage.

  For a brief instant, the lantern light played over the harsh features of a man who stood in the shadows of a doorway opposite. Then the carriage rattled past, and the man disappeared again into darkness.

  Gibson was aware of the door opening behind him, of Alexandrie Sauvage coming to stand beside him. She wore only her shift, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders for warmth.

  She said, “I couldn’t sleep. It was wrong of me to taunt you the way I did. It is difficult enough to resist the allure of opium when the pain for which it was prescribed has ended. But when the pain persists . . .”

  “You weren’t wrong.”

  She gave him a crooked smile that caught treacherously at his chest. “Not in what I said, no. But for the way in which I said it, I owe you an apology. You saved my life, and I repaid you abominably.”

  “Ach, many’s the time I’ve been called a fool—and worse. It’s not as if—”

  He broke off as a faint red glow, like tobacco burning in the bowl of a clay pipe, showed from out of the darkness. For perhaps the thousandth time in his life, Gibson found himself wishing he possessed Devlin’s unnatural ability to see in the dark.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Gibson nodded to the snow-filled street before them. “There’s a man in the arch of that doorway, across the lane. I noticed him a few minutes ago. He’s just standing there—and he’s none too anxious to be seen.”

  “You think he’s watching the house?”

  “Why else is he there? I had a quick glimpse of him when the light from a passing carriage lantern fell on him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. He’s a big brute, with long, curly dark hair and a neck thick enough to rival the piers of London Bridge.”

  “Bullock,” she whispered, her lips parting, the fingertips of one hand coming up to press against the frosted glass of the window.

  He shifted his gaze to the woman beside him. “And who might ‘Bullock’ be?”

  “He’s a Tichborne Street cabinetmaker who blames me for his brother’s death.”

  “What the devil would he be doing here?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how he found out where I am. But he’s been watching me for weeks—following me.”

  “That a fact?” Gibson pushed away from the window. “Well, I think maybe I’ll just go on out there and ask Mr. Bullock what the bloody hell he thinks he’s doing.”

  She caught his arm as he headed for the door, pulling him back around with a strength that surprised him. “Are you mad? Bullock once killed an apprentice with his bare hands—caved in the poor lad’s skull. Somehow he managed to convince the magistrates it was manslaughter and got off with only being burned in the hand. But it wasn’t manslaughter; it was murder.”

  Gibson gave her a smile that showed his teeth. “That’s me, all right: a one-legged mad fool.”

  Something leapt in her eyes. “I didn’t mean—”

  The rattle of a wagon trace jerked their attention again to the lane. A brewer’s wagon labored through the snow, pulled by a heavy team and proceeded by a trotting linkboy. The linkboy’s flaring torch played over the crumbling archway where the curly-headed man had lurked.

  It was now empty.

  “He’s gone,” she said, her hand clenching on the folds of the blanket she held tightly around her. “This is what he does. He watches me for a while, and then he goes away.”

  “And did it never occur to you that this Bullock could very well be the man who attacked you in Cat’s Hole and ripped out Damion Pelletan’s heart?”

  She shook her head. “If he’d killed me, it might make sense. But why let me live and kill Damion?” An arrested expression came over her features. “Unless—”

  “Unless what?” prompted Gibson when she broke off.

  But she only shook her head, her face pale, her lips pressed tightly together as if she was afraid to give voice to her thoughts.

  Chapter 27

  That evening, as the snow continued to fall, Sebastian prowled the taverns and coffeehouses of the city.

  He began in Pall Mall and Piccadilly, targeting very specific establishments, places like the White Hart and the Queen’s Head that catered to a special kind of clientele. As he ventured farther east, the patrons became perceptively rougher, bricklayers and butchers now mingling with barristers, soldiers, and the occasional well-dressed dandy or Corinthian. They were a disparate lot, although all shared one dangerous secret: In an age when carnal knowledge of one’s own sex was a capital offense, these men risked death to meet and mingle with one another.

  Many of the men, or “mollies” as they often called themselves, adopted aliases: colorful monikers like Marigold Mistress, or Nell Gin, or St. Giles’s Jan. Sebastian was looking for a certain well-known flamboyant Miss Molly known as Serena Fox.

  But he was having trouble finding her.

  He was standing at the counter of a tavern just off Lincoln’s Inn Fields, drinking a pint of ale and watching two men—one dressed in an elegant blue velvet gown, the other a bricklayer in heavy boots—dance, when a tall, slim woman in an emerald silk gown came to lean against a nearby wall, her hands behind her back, her head tilted to one side. “I hear you’re looking for Serena Fox. Rather indefatigably.”

  Sebastian shifted his stance and took a slow swallow of his ale. The woman was no longer young, but her softly curling chestnut hair was still vibrant, the flesh of her strong, square jaw still taut, her mouth wide and full. “Hello, LaChapelle,” said Sebastian.

  She pursed her lips and shook her head, her French accent a throaty purr. “Here, it is Serena. What do you want with me?”

  “I need some rather delicate information. And asking questions of royals—even dethroned ones—tends to be both difficult and unproductive.”

  “Is there a reason why I should help you?”

  Sebastian took a deep drink of his ale. “Three days ago, a man with ties to the Bourbons had his heart ripped out by an unknown killer. I should think that would be reason enough for anyone interested in the well-being of the dynasty.”

  Serena’s features remained flawlessly composed. But Sebastian saw her nostrils flare on a quick, betraying breath. “I can tell you some things. What do you want to know?”

  “Is it true that Marie-Thérèse shuts herself in her chamber every twenty-first of January and devotes the day to prayer?”

  “Every January twenty-first and every October sixteenth.”

  “Why the sixteenth of October?”

  “That is the day her mother, Marie Antoinette, was guillotined.”

  “What about the eighth of June?”

  Serena shook her head, not understanding. “What’s the significance of the eighth of June?”

  “That’s the date her little brother, the Dauphin, died in the Temple Prison—according to Provence.”

  “Ah, that’s right.” Serena turned to signal for a brandy.

  Sebastian watched her. He said, “Marie-Thérèse doesn’t believe her little brother is really dead, does she?”

  Serena raked her hair back
from her head in a gesture that was considerably more masculine than feminine. “I suspect it would be more accurate to say she hopes he is alive. But I have always suspected that in her heart of hearts she knows he is not.”

  “Tell me what happened to him.”

  Serena lowered her gaze to the amber liquid in her glass. It was a moment before she spoke. “The Dauphin was eight years old when he was taken from the room in which Marie Antoinette and Marie-Thérèse were kept, and thrust alone into a cell directly below them. When he cried for his mother, his jailors beat him. Unmercifully. His mother and sister could hear his screams, hear him begging for them to stop. But that was only the beginning.” He paused.

  “Go on.”

  “The revolutionaries—perhaps even Robespierre himself—drew up a confession they insisted he sign. When he refused, they beat him again. Day after day.”

  “What sort of confession?”

  “In it, he claimed to have been seduced by his mother and debauched by his sister and his aunt, Elisabeth. They wanted to use it at the Queen’s trial.”

  “Did he sign it?”

  “In the end, yes.”

  “But surely no one believed such nonsense?”

  Serena shrugged. “Far too many people will believe anything of those they hate, no matter how absurd or patently fabricated it may be. And to the revolutionaries, the Bourbons became the personification of evil.”

  “What happened after he did as they demanded and signed the confession?”

  “I’ve heard his jailors had promised that if he signed, he’d be allowed to rejoin what was left of his family. But it was a promise they did not keep. His jailor was a member of the Paris Commune, a cobbler named Antoine Simon. Simon’s instructions were to erase all traces of gentility and pride in the boy. On good days, Simon and his wife taught him the language of the gutters, plied him with wine, put a bonnet rouge on his head, and taught him to sing the Marseillaise. On bad days, they beat him, just for the fun of it.”

  Sebastian took a swallow of his ale, but it tasted bitter and flat on his tongue.