Watching as she slept, unscathed by pistol shot, vanishing in the flare of the tinderbox; the disembodied spirit of a living man. Such things as he had heard tell of and never could bring himself to believe.
Until now.
The smiling eyes, the gentle curve of her throat ... how easily she had deceived him. And the child in her womb – that unhoped for blessing – would be forever tainted now. For even if he was the father how could he ever believe it.
He saw it now: the incubus watching his wife, waiting for him to succumb to sleep ... saw it and yielded to the madness of the idea.
How the two of them must have laughed at his expense. He snatched open the carriage door and tossed the miniature on to the floor beside his pistol box. Then he pulled out both guns and wheeled towards the stable archway.
He had discovered that Louise was missing after he had finished questioning the servant Ursula; gone without a word to anyone. He could guess the truth of it – that she had somehow been forewarned of his discoveries and flown here to her lover.
Ambassador Herries’ house on Pall Mall, he had said, the driver knew the one.
A cat stalked across the empty yard. There was a stir of horses; someone whistling a French folksong he vaguely recognized; the cackling laughter of low women. A door stood ajar. With the tip of his boot he pushed it and peered inside. It was a scullery, empty but the cackling came again, this time closer by.
He planted his feet firmly on the stone cobbles and raised his right arm. The report of his pistol exploded in the enclosed courtyard. Horses whinnied and shied. A man lumbered from the stables brandishing a hayfork. In the stable doorway behind him a boy appeared, his face pinched with fright.
In the kitchen adjoining the scullery, where Margot and three of the other women had been preparing food and sharing jokes, the laughter gave way to startled silence. Margot was swift to recover her. She pressed a finger to her lips. With one hand she pointed towards the source of the shot, with the other she gestured for the other women move away from the scullery door. Then she went to the high shelf where François had deposited a spare musket for emergencies.
Warding off the stableman with his second pistol, Arnaud Chevalier had his back to the scullery. Margot butted him in the small of his back with the muzzle of her gun.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
He spun round and stared at her for a moment. Behind the flour-dusted apron and bared forearms was a handsome young woman. Spots of colour spread over the fine bones of her cheeks, her stare so unflinching that under any other circumstances he would have admired her spirit.
He lowered his pistol.
‘My business is with Lord Herr‒’
As he spoke the master of the house appeared at Margot’s shoulder. Pressing the barrel of her musket down towards the ground, Herries steered her aside.
‘I am Charles Herries,’ he announced, gesturing at the stableman to fall back.
Chevalier lifted his chin. ‘I sir, am Arnaud Chevalier, a man of respect in the business of importing fine plants and rare bulbs.’
Herries assessed him coolly. ‘What is a nurseryman doing discharging a weapon on my property?’
Chevalier scanned the windows overlooking the courtyard, turning about as he searched for his wife’s face among those now staring down at him. But she was not to be found – neither she nor her lover. At length, he threw his arms up and declared:
‘You, sir, harbour a sorcerer by the name of François Jeakes.’
And The Red...
Pierre found his sister in her room. Isabelle was kneeling by the hearth attempting to revive the fire with a set of leather bellows. At the sight of him she sank back on to her heels with a careworn smile and wiped her brow leaving a sooty trail across her forehead.
‘Where is the servant?’ he asked, squatting beside her and taking over with the bellows. He had been out all night; first making the necessary arrangements, afterwards taking his pleasure between plump white thighs in a back room at Tom Brewster’s. Alongside his sister he became conscious that the reek of stale beer and sweat clung to him still.
Isabelle sighed deeply. To her it seemed that she had been alone in the house for hours; that her whole world had fallen apart – suddenly and without explanation.
Firstly, Ursula had walked out in a flood of angry tears. Then her father had come to her in a rage – such anger as had turned her bowels to water, her mouth to sand – and demanded to know where Louise had gone, where she might be, what she had last said ... before storming out of the house himself. She knew his tempers of old but she had never known him this incensed – not even the time when Pierre eloped with Eleanor de Breuille. And the worst of it was she did not have an inkling what Louise, Louise of all people, could have done to provoke Arnaud to such an extent.
‘Ursula has gone,’ she said raggedly. ‘Father upset her, I think ... and Louise is missing. Father has gone out to find her‒’
Pierre was banking up the fire with a pyramid of fresh logs, so intent on the task that her words seemed lost on him. After a moment he glanced sideways at her:
‘I’m going back to France.’
Bemused, Isabelle’s eyes searched his face. She twisted her hands together among the folds of her skirt soiling the pale blue material with soot.
Unable to hold her gaze, he turned back to the pyramid of logs. ‘It is only you I will miss, Belle.’
‘But you can’t go back,’ she choked, ‘it is too dangerous.’
‘I have friends in the south – a place I had intended to take her to.’
He did not need to utter the name of Eleanor de Breuille, between them it went unsaid.
‘When‒?’
‘I take a barge for the port tonight.’
‘Does father know?’
He shook his head. ‘Nor must he.’ He turned to her then, took her limp hands in his and pressed his lips against each one in turn. Looking into her eyes he murmured; ‘There is something you must know, sister.’
He had practised this moment of revelation: a necessary expedient, a means of ensuring no blame would ever attach itself to him. But in the face of his sister’s distress he found no contrivance was needed. With real anguish in his voice he told her the true identity of the man she knew as Captain Fuller; broke to her the news that François Jeakes, posing as her suitor, had only ever been interested in their step-mother; that he had formerly been Louise Morin’s lover and become so again. That the child Louise carried was his.
Sobbing in anguished disbelief, Isabelle tried to pull free of him – to escape the pain of his words – but he held her fast, fastened her in his arms, and whispered;
‘I cannot stay in London now. Fuller knows it was I who uncovered his deception. He has threatened to take my life. Given the chance I have no doubt he will.’
The final twist.
Pierre had not anticipated that events would follow on so quickly. That his father had such efficient lines of communication with the French police and the magistrates of Marseilles, astonished him. He had expected a protracted strangulation, a few weeks maybe in which to wind up and settle his affairs in London. A week, maybe two, in which to savour the vengeance he had long dreamed of.
Captain Fuller’s little secret more than suited his plans to spite his father ... it was providential. He could not but admire Fuller’s cunning. He had to concede that to escape the chains of the galley slave and return to one’s native land in disguise showed some panache. To insinuate oneself back into the house now occupied by one’s former betrothed and her new husband, was the stuff of storybooks. It appeared that François Jeakes was no ordinary Englishman.
As for Louise, how could she not have been party to Fuller’s secret? The concern she had shown over Isabelle’s dress before the captain’s visits; the motherly support ... what a consummate deceiver she had turned out to be. To think that all along she had him convinced that it he who was corrupting innocence; the tears, the ashen-faced
entreaties.
Were Jeakes and his stepmother lovers again? If not, it was surely only a matter of time. For what other reason would a man take such chances? Sooner or later, the bitch would confess to Jeakes what had passed between her and her husband’s son – if she had not already done so. He had no intention of taking on the strength and the weapons of a trained soldier. Better to cut and run. He had set the wheels in motion, the rest would take care of itself in his absence.
Except for Isabelle.
The rest of them could go to the devil. But as he held his sister’s quivering body to him, as he listened to her wretched pleas, he felt her hurt as he had never expected to. It stirred in him memories of childhood, innocence remembered, such things as he had almost forgotten. Tears stung his eyes.
‘Come with me, Belle.’ Unbidden words. Words that made his stomach lurch in disgust even as he uttered them – the aim was to sever all ties, to travel lightly and swiftly into his future. But he need not have worried. Isabelle was shaking her head.
‘I will not leave father ... I cannot desert him now.’
He embraced her tightly then, wiped away her tears and carried her to her bed. He wiped the streak of soot from her brow and sat with her awhile, his arm around her slender shoulders until at last she grew quieter.
As he eased himself away, her hand found his.
‘Are you going now, Pierre?’
‘Soon.’
‘God go with you, brother,’ she breathed.
François ducked into a dark passageway off St James’s Square. The house on Pall Mall was only a stone’s throw away but he was not yet ready to go back to the men, not even to Margot. He retreated from the splay of light at the passage opening into the shadows beyond and flung his head back against the wall.
All of his trials in the past five years, all that he had experienced and endured, counted for nothing in the face of Kate’s doubt. Her lack of trust crushed him. Kate, the indomitable mother who had pulled him from the flames of burning London. Kate who had followed him to France certain of his innocence, never once giving in to the belief that he was dead. Where had that Kate gone?
Head bowed, he bridged the sides of the passageway with his locked arms, grinding his clenched knuckles against the rough mortar. Coming back to help Louise, was that so wrong?
Do not misuse your strength, François.
Had he been deluding himself? Was the truth of it, as Kate implied, that he was prepared to abuse whatever power he possessed in order to clear a path back into Louise’s affections?
‘No‒!’ He voiced his thoughts with a vehemence that drew a languid laugh from the darkness of the passageway – a woman’s voice, then a man's intense whispering.
‘Don’t you fret, soldier-boy ... sounds from the street, that’s all ... no need to be so rough.’ A muffled reply, more gurgling laughter, then a hollow bumping against the brick wall....
No, Kate. Since he had held Louise that night in the lane – the night she had made him promise not to confront Pierre Chevalier openly, he knew that he could trust himself. The past was not lost on the present, but it had no hold on him now.
Louise was unhappy not in her marriage to Arnaud but with the unwanted attentions of his son. That was all.
Ah Kate‒
François’ head began to swim. He rammed his fists harder at the walls, bracing himself against the sickening swirl. The sounds from further down the passageway lost all rhythm; human voices stretched until they became animal – deep orgasmic grunts that shuddered through him.
The shadows lifted then. And in his mind’s eye he saw Louise. She was kneeling, the base of her palms pressed against a man’s thighs. A fist was twisted into her hair, rocking her head back and forth. The vision that had provoked his return, only this time the canvas was wider ... this time the blur resolved itself. He saw the tightening muscle of abdomen, clenched buttocks beneath shirt-tails, the pulsing member.
He felt again the paralysing loss of strength in her shoulders and arms; the hurt that gripped her head and chest as mind and body raged against the imposition. Through her eyes he looked upwards pleading with her abuser.
One moment he was looking into the face of Pierre Chevalier – the eyes half-closed, the lips stretched into a cruel leer – the next moment the features became warped then reformed in the image of a man he had thought long gone.
There hanging over her was the vindictive face of Vincent Martel, the man he had finally despatched from this world five years before in the catacombs of Paris. And the same sadistic grimace with which Martel had cut out the tongue of the girl Madeleine was now bearing down upon Louise – seeing not her but François himself, acknowledging him with a travesty of a smile.
The old evil.
A moment of revelation before the looming features resumed the shape, the form of Pierre Chevalier ... before that vision too began to disintegrate.
François‒ Louise’s cry echoed through the watery shreds of the fading vision to where the waking-he now crouched in the passageway.
In the darkness he slowly lifted his head. All trace of doubt was gone. He knew now what he was up against; knew too that he must act swiftly.
Before this day was out he would return to St Martin’s Lane. But first he had must clear the way.
Part 3: Consecration
Flashpoint
Arnaud Chevalier’s strongbox was bolted to the floorboards close to the head of his bed. By day the only existing key was buttoned into a specially tailored pocket in the lining of his jacket, at night it was tucked deep inside the silken slip of the bolster he slept on. He was assiduous about this. In all his life Pierre had only once been permitted to handle the key; the male child, his only son and heir being introduced to the weighty responsibilities that one day would be his. Once only, and that in the days before Pierre’s fall from grace.
What Arnaud had not told his son though, was that fearing he might lose the one key, he had a wax impression of it concealed in the secret drawer of his escritoire.
Pierre had discovered this for himself. Harbouring the knowledge for the moment he knew must come. As now it had.
Two days before he had slipped the impression from his father’s desk and taken it to a locksmith. Ensuring that no common thief should beat him to the contents of the strongbox, he was careful not to let it out of his sight; shadowing the squint-eyed creature as he cast and filed ... watching until the new key was fashioned, until both it and the wax impression were safely in his pocket.
Other than his allowance he had no money, not enough even to pay his passage back to France. What remained of the inheritance left to him by his mother, Arnaud had confiscated; the final seal on the humiliating drubbing he had meted out to him in France, an attempt to clip his wings.
The money was his. He would take it as his due.
The locksmith doubted that he could achieve a true copy; age and handling had rendered the wax cast imperfect. He produced instead a skeleton key – a master that would, or so he assured Pierre, overcome the imperfect detail.
Pierre had left Isabelle resting on the bed, the door of her chamber locked from the outside. There was a rushing in his ears as he paused on the landing outside his sister’s room to glance over the banister rail. The hall below was perfectly still; not a murmur carried there from the surrounding rooms, not the slightest movement of air. A silence that might be shattered at any moment by the return of his father, or Anton Morin. But luck was with him, it seemed; the servant Ursula had flounced out so there would be no hand to quietly admit the master, no-one to notice that he had secured the doors at the back. And the turn of a key in the lock of the door fronting St Martin’s Lane would be warning enough.
The door to the master chamber swung open under his hand. He went in, leaving his escape route open. Crossing the room, he pressed himself against the wall by the window and scanned the lane: no sign of Arnaud, no lumbering nag carrying Anton to his work at the surgery ... nothing but two mastiffs fi
ghting by Mistress Seagoe’s gate, and an elderly couple shuffling past.
Drawing the skeleton key from his pocket, he knelt at the bedside. Arnaud’s side, the rank smell of the old man lifted from the unemptied chamberpot. With a last wary glance at the door, he lifted the fitted tapestry covering off the strongbox.
The key entered the iron lock smoothly enough but as he applied a turning pressure it resisted. He pushed and pulled, coaxed and forced, but the wards did not offer to budge. With an agitated growl he dropped back on to his heels. A bead of sweat trickled from his hairline over the left temple, his neck prickled with heat. Steadying his breath, he clasped the oval bow of the key in one hand and braced it with the other.
He worked methodically then, starting with the key fully in, feeling for any change in resistance to the turn, he withdrew it in minute steps ... waiting for the slightest yield of the wards inside the lock. But there was no give. Cursing the locksmith, he tried again ... and again ... until at last his nerve gave way. This time he jerked the key out and raised it in his fist as if to throw it across the room. A button on his cuff snagged the tasselled fringe on the bedcover. The coverlet lifted with his arm. And his attention was drawn to a sudden movement in the shallow space under the bed.
He pounced after it. Flattening his head and shoulders against the floor, he lashed out into the tight space and grabbed a fistful of cloth. A muffled shriek then, a frantic scramble as the concealed body attempted to escape from the far side of the bed. He wrenched back but the cloth tore. And a foot lashed back at his chest, a dull bruising blow. He let go and pulling a dagger from his belt hurled himself over the bed.
The Sorcerer (The Witch Trilogy Book 3) Page 11