by Yves Fey
The Raven turned to him. “Turn her. I want to watch her face.”
Gilles loathed being ordered but he complied, kneeling and embracing Alicia. She struggled, but it was futile. The other dropped a low necklace of wax drops along her throat and down her budding breasts. Her keening was sweeter than choir song. When the wax hardened, Gilles peeled off a few rounds. “Moonstones and pink sapphires.”
“You and your poetry.” The Raven sniggered.
Fool. “It is a light in the darkness, like your candle.”
“My candle has better uses.” The Raven laughed again.
“Show me,” Gilles murmured.
Chapter Seventeen
The spell of stifling night and heavy dream
~ Paul Verlaine
PANTING, coughing, Michel took cover in the bombed ruin of a bakery. He had to get back to his sister. His father was dead—shot by the soldiers. They would have killed him if he hadn’t run—they killed children too. He had to have sense. That was what his father said. How much sense did his father have, getting shot?
Hot tears ran down his face. Michel scrubbed at them ferociously. Only babies cried. Tears helped nobody. He lifted his head, searching for a safe way back. There was none. His world was on fire. Everywhere he looked, flames climbed into the sky. Black smoke climbed above them. The vast dark cloud filled the sky like a soldier’s helmet—or an executioner’s hood. It looked like the shadow of the devil looming over Paris.
“The soldiers were supposed to join the workers,” Michel whispered. “Join them—not kill them.”
The sharp crack of a carbine merged with the crackle of burning wood. A bullet shattered plaster at his shoulder. Michel dodged and ran.
His eyes, his throat, burned from the smoke. Grey ash drifted down like filthy snow. It covered the ground and coated the piles of rubble in the streets—barricades erected by the people against the government army invading from Versailles. The workers were retaliating against Paris herself. The monument in the Place Vendôme had been pulled down, a hollow thing filled with rats’ nests. The Tuileries were ashes. Now the Palais Royale was burning—the rue de Rivoli was a boulevard of flame. He knew people were trapped in the burning buildings. Some were still screaming. He could smell their charred flesh. Sometimes he heard their skulls exploding.
The Communards were running past him toward the Palais de Justice. An old woman scuttled through the wreckage, swinging a can. Une pétroleuse. They threatened to burn Notre Dame and La Sainte Chapelle, to pour gasoline over the rooftops and ignite it.
His mother had loved La Sainte Chapelle. She would not want it to burn.
Then he was inside the church. His mother’s corpse lay on an altar, emaciated from starvation. Her open eyes stared upward. Michel looked above him, where the tall windows of stained glass glowed. But now all their colors were the hues of fire. They throbbed. Crimson. Orange. Gold. Yellow. Blood red. Then the glass broke and the fire rained down, cutting him to pieces….
Michel woke gasping. He trembled in the aftermath of the nightmare, trembled with fear, then with fury, to be so overcome by the corrosive images that ate into his soul.
It was not the Charity Bazaar fire burning in his brain. It was the Bloody Week—the Paris Commune of 1871—the great insurrection of the Paris working class after the ignoble defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. That brief reign of the proletariat had ended in carnage. More people died in that urban civil war than had been executed in the Revolution. Thirty thousand men, women, children, or more. Most shot without trial.
He had been six years old. Had helped his father and his cousin Luc load guns when the government troops attacked and the Commune had recaptured Paris.
Michel got up, splashed water on his face, scrubbed his body. But he couldn’t scrub the memories from his mind. It had been May then, too. Le Temps des cerises. At Père Lachaise cemetery, in the last days, Communard heroines tucked the ripening cherries behind the ears of their lovers. Then they went to the slaughter. The poignant love song had taken on a deeper pain after that.
But cherry season's all too brief a time
when, dreaming, one goes out to pluck
two pendants for the ears
cherries of love in skins like
blood drops dripping down beneath the leaves….
Sometimes he forgot that he hadn’t always been Michel Devaux, son of Guillame Devaux, brigadier of the Sûreté. Before his rescuer took him home, covered in soot and blood, he was Michel Calais, son of the Communard Marcel Calais, executed by the firing squad, and Agnès Calais, starved to death during the Prussian bombardment. Brother of Marie Calais, raped and bayoneted by Versailles soldiers. A fate he barely escaped.
I'll always cherish cherry season
a time I keep within my heart,
an open wound….
With a sigh, Michel put on fresh clothes. The others would have to be cleaned.
A smoky pall clung to them. And to him as well….
The victims of the Commune were long dead. The victims of the charity bazaar fire awaited his attention. It was time for Michel Devaux to take his place in the world.
~
It was a hideous day. Grief and despair covered them all like a heavy shroud, slowing movement, thought, breath. More than 125 bodies had been removed from the wreckage and carried to the Palais de l'Industrie. Identifying them was another matter. All were carbonized—black, twisted forms burned beyond recognition. Michel, like many of the Sûreté, helped with the aftermath. He met with Cochefert, but the officer in charge of the investigation was the Prefect of Police, Monsieur Lépine. The National Guard was given the chore of sifting the ashes for what belongings might be salvaged.
“Not long ago, these walls were covered with the paintings of the Salon.” Cochefert stared around the bleak interior. With a huge sigh he returned to the list he held and marked off more names of those who had been identified. Michel was grateful that Cochefert was bearing the news to the families. Michel had done so as well, but for now he was helping to examine the corpses, making note of possible ways to identify them.
Cochefert was especially good with the grieving relatives. His compassion was huge, as sincere as a stranger could offer. Michel appreciated it all the more because it wasn’t a quality he possessed. He tensed and seemed cold while simply trying to retain his composure. He did not find it difficult to be calm in the midst of violence. It was dealing with emotional wreckage that ate holes in his belly. Here especially, where a terrible hysteria of bewilderment and rage churned beneath the mournful surface.
Noise jarred the constrained conversations around them. Another body had been claimed and was being nailed into a pine coffin. Or mahogany, perhaps. The undertaker had hurriedly returned with more expensive housing for the wealthy cadavers. The stink of the scorched corpses, which Michel had forced himself to ignore, invaded him again. He caught himself trying to hold his breath. Foolish. He inhaled deeply. The odor was nauseating, overwhelming, clotting every sense. Then, then after a moment, it faded. Michel returned to the task at hand, searching for some scrap of identification on the pathetic corpse of a young girl. He found a comb with jeweled butterflies annealed to her skull. Sensing someone watching, he looked around. Saul Balsam waited quietly, head cocked, pencil in hand in hope of an interview. Bonjour seemed ludicrous on such a gruesome morning, so Michel simply said, “Monsieur Balsam.”
“Inspecteur Devaux,” Saul greeted him then took out his notepad. “I have been interviewing Monsieur Gomery, the butcher who broke the window of the Hôtel du Palais to reach the bazaar. He told me you helped with the rescue effort?”
“Yes, but not in an official capacity.”
“Why were you at the bazaar?”
“Like everyone else, I wanted to see the cinema presentation. I decided to have some wine first, to fortify myself before squeezing through the crowds. When the fire broke out, I thought there might be a way through the walls and went in search of it.�
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“So you organized the men?”
“No, the rescue was already underway. I helped, that is all. I would rather you do not mention my name.”
“It never hurts to have a police hero.”
“Perhaps, but I would prefer the working men get full credit.” Saul nodded. Michel knew he would take him at his word, not presume it was false modesty. He’d made a couple of quick suggestions, no more. A curious pride linked him to these workers. They had been caught up together in a resoluteness that transcended the fear and horror. For once he had felt part of a whole that had nothing to do with his chosen profession.
“You and your compatriots must have saved a hundred people.”
“Close to two hundred,” Michel told him.
Saul looked around at the terrible display. Michel saw his jaw tighten. “How many of these bodies were men?”
“Only five.” Michel was being generous, one was an adolescent groom.
“It is a great scandal. The men—if you can call those rich brats men—beat their way to safety over the women and children.” Saul sneered. “It was the simple workers who risked their lives to save strangers.”
“The duchesse d’Alençon acted with the courage her class claims. One of her servants begged to carry her out. She told him her rank gave her the privilege of entering first, and so she would leave last.”
“Yes. She was valiant,” Saul admitted, then added, “The duc escaped unscathed.”
“Baron de Mackau returned to the fire seven times and saved seven women. There was a doctor—curator of the wax museum of the Hôpital Saint-Lazare—who ran back into the building to try and save his daughter,” Michel said.
“Tried?” Saul asked.
“Both died, but he had already saved his wife.” He gave Saul the man’s name, and one or two others he’d learned. “Many of the bourgeoisie joined in the rescue attempt.” When Saul frowned, Michel conceded, “But the butcher, the plumber, the street sweeper were heroic. You have your story in them.”
Saul glanced at his notes. “Many were saved by being doused in a water trough?”
“You can add a cabdriver to your heroes. He grabbed General Munier as he ran down the street with his clothes ablaze, and flung him into the watering trough of the Rothschild stables. The Rothschilds opened their doors when other families shut them against the burning victims.” Michel watched Balsam scribble the information.
“Did you hear the explosion?”
From down the aisle came a wrenching cry. “No! No, monsieur! Stop!”
Michel turned to see one of the white sheets covering a body swept into the air, swirled, dropped—like a magician flourishing a cape during a magic trick.
It was Vipèrine.
Surprise and anger stung Michel like vicious slaps. He had not seen Vipèrine since his release. Today he was not dressed in an outlandish occult costume, but in mourning so elaborate it might as well be one. He had uncovered half a dozen bodies, displaying them for his quavering band of followers. No one searching for family or a friend would do that. Another gendarme, angrier than the first, muttered, “Bougre de canaille.” Michel could only agree. Buggering dog. The insult was audible to Vipèrine. He smiled.
Michel’s nostrils flared with disgust, as if the avowed Satanist emitted a sulphurous stink worse than the stench of burnt flesh. Vipèrine probably wanted to steal fragments of the dead for some ludicrous spell. As Michel moved forward, Cochefert was there, blocking him. He lifted an eyebrow, looking like a mournful walrus. Michel realized that he had let his anger rise to the surface. Instantly he swallowed it back. Tempers must be controlled or there would be violence. Cochefert nodded and stepped aside.
Vipèrine departed, trailing acolytes. Michel recognized one of the Revenants, the shabbiest one, and made a mental note that they were connected in some fashion.
“We’ve had too much of this nonsense,” Cochefert said. “Sightseers visiting the catastrophe.”
“Ghouls,” Michel muttered.
“In Vipèrine’s case, perhaps literally,” Cochefert muttered back. “We must expect the curiosity seekers. He wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. We had another case earlier. The count de Montesquiou.”
“Ah…the hero of À Rebours,” Michel said. The aristocratic dandy was much satirized in the press, and Huysmans had filched many of the count’s eccentricities for his decadent novel. Michel had read about parties where liqueurs were matched to wafted perfumes. There had been an unfortunate tortoise which had jewels glued to its back to provide amusement for the guests. It didn’t survive the embellishment. “The horror tantalized him?”
“Yes. He minced along the line, lifting the sheets with the tip of his cane, with much the same result as Vipèrine. Someone nodded at his cane and asked if he had been at the bazaar.”
“If he had, we would have heard. Montesquiou is always conspicuous.”
“True, but many of his ilk are alive today by virtue of just such a cane applied to women and children. Sensing he might find his own used to thrash him, the count scuttled off like a crab.” Cochefert’s satisfaction made Michel smile, his first since the fire. It was another gift his boss possessed, to leaven with humor without making light of what was important.
Michel went to the line of exposed corpses to help replace the sheets. Bending down to cover a body, he stared into a blackened face locked in a scream of agony. Inside the gaping mouth, the stub of tongue looked like a shriveled mushroom. And deeper, a hint of gold glinted. He crouched beside the body, staring intently.
“Cover the body, Devaux,” Cochefert urged. Then, sensing his intensity, “What is it?”
Michel turned to him. “We must find their dentists.”
The chief gazed at him numbly for a moment, then understanding sparked in his eyes. “It’s never been done, but yes, yes! We will find out the dentists of those still listed as missing. Their records can be compared to the teeth of the victims. I will go speak to the Prefect.”
Michel watched Cochefert depart then looked around for his next task. Across the expanse of bodies, he saw the American artist who had behaved bravely in the crisis, Theodora Faraday. Thee-o, she called herself. She was with an older woman in mourning whose face looked blank, as if grief were a blunt instrument that had struck her full force and crushed all other emotion. For a moment, Michel had been able to distract his mind with the fascination of the forensic questions, but watching Theo support this emotionally wounded woman brought the misery of the situation back.
He made his way through the unhappy throng and offered his help. Theo thanked him and introduced him to Madame Besset. “She knows of her daughter’s bravery in saving two of the children. I’ve told her that Mélanie did not escape.”
He remembered Theo crying out “Mélanie” when she tried to go back through the wall.
“We must try to find her here,” Theo said with grim determination.
“She would have come home if she escaped.” Madame Besset’s voice was flat despite the pathos of her words. She looked at the lines of victims, her eyes blank. “She always came home to me.”
Michel knew there would be an empty room in her heart from now until her own death. “I will help you search.”
“How could this happen?” the mother demanded suddenly. “How could they have a display that was so dangerous?”
“They have arrested at least one of the organizers of the event,” Michel replied. There must be someone to blame, and the precautions had been ludicrous. Men had been instructed not to smoke inside the bazaar, nothing more. Workmen left piles of rubbish under the pine floors. He had given this speech in various forms already, trying to adjust the details to suit the person standing before him. They all wanted a reason, but most were too shocked to digest the information. Some only wanted someone to punish.
Theo asked, “Was the cinématographe the cause of the explosion?”
Madame Besset was stunned with grief, but Theodora Faraday was quite aw
are and deserved the full explanation. “Not the projector. A lamp was ignited by a spark,” he said, omitting the stupidity of an assistant who lit a match. “Both the ether used to lubricate the mechanism and the nitrate film were extremely combustible. The bazaar itself was only a temporary structure, and too easily consumed by the fire. It was a terrible accident.”
“She always came home to me,” Madame Besset repeated, her voice hollow as an echo.
“Come with me.” He led them first to the bodies that had been identified as female. “Madame Besset, I must warn you that the victims are burned almost beyond recognition. Pieces of jewelry more than anything, have enabled us to identify bodies.”
“Mélanie was wearing a lovely white dress,” her mother said. “Her best afternoon dress, dotted Swiss, with touches of lace and a huge ruffle at the bottom.”
What little color there was in Theo’s face seemed to drain, but she lifted her chin and added, “Mélanie had a cameo at her throat, Diana the huntress, white on Wedgewood blue.”
Michel met her eyes and nodded. She knew the white dress would be ashes. One stricken man had identified his wife from the remains of her red corset. Grandparents recognized the brace on the leg of a child. One corpse had a collar of pearls embedded in her neck. The most unnerving discovery had been a wedding ring, found not on the woman’s hand but pressed into her heart. Michel took them farther down the line, checking the notes he had made. He remembered two bodies with some sort of round brooch adhered to the throat. When he uncovered the first blackened body, the mother gave a keening cry and turned aside.
Theo moved closer, looked carefully. “No. That is not the brooch. It is too large.”
She turned to him, her eyes brimming with tears—tears she did not permit to spill. She had the valor of a Communarde. Michel moved down the aisle, and Theo guided Madame Besset after him. For the next body, he found a damp cloth and wiped some of the ash from the cracked oval. It was blue and white. A woman with a bow, and beside her a deer.