The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

by Susanne Alleyn

3

  The sole advantage of his icy drenching, Aristide thought, between curses, was that it instantly washed the greater part of the mud off him. Spluttering, he returned to the gate, climbed it with rather less speed than before, and dropped soggily to the pavement.

  "Lord help us," Brasseur said, eyeing him as he pushed the lank, dripping hair from his eyes and shook himself. "You're a sorry sight, aren't you? Did you find your purse?"

  "Thanks to you, Monsieur Brasseur."

  "Hmm, that's all very well, but from the look of you I'd say I do owe you that supper after all, since you've spoiled your clothes. Come on, then. Papillon's cabaret isn't far, if Papillon can spare a seat beside the fire, and out of this damnable rain."

  "Don't let me keep you from your own fireside," Aristide began, but Brasseur waved him away.

  "Trust me, friend, with a three-year-old child just back home from the wet nurse, I'd much rather be sitting at somebody else's fireside!"

  He led Aristide through the streets to a large establishment that combined the functions of wine shop, workingmen's caf?, and cheap eating-house. Aristide ordered half a bottle of good Burgundy wine for him, as amends for his dip in the gutter, and stepped in front of the fire to warm his own sodden backside.

  At last, in the flickering firelight, he had a good look at his companion. Brasseur was a big man in his late thirties, two or three inches shorter than Aristide, but broad and muscular enough to make two of him. He must have been in the American war at one time, Aristide thought, noting the scar-probably the work of a bayonet-that slashed from eyebrow to hairline, and another that had glanced across his jaw, seaming a face that had never been handsome but which radiated a stolid good humor.

  "So, Monsieur Ravel," he inquired, when the wine arrived, "what part of the kingdom do you hail from?"

  "From Bordeaux-"

  "Bordeaux, eh?" he echoed him. "Thought I recognized the accent. We're countrymen, then, or almost-I'm from Libourne, myself."

  "-but I've been living in Paris for the past year."

  "Pursuing a literary career," Brasseur concluded, shaking his head. He poured out a glass for each of them, despite Aristide's protestations. "Like forty thousand other ambitious young scribblers. What else is new, I wonder?"

  Aristide took a cautious swallow of the Burgundy, savoring the warmth of it on such a frigid evening. He did not quite know what to say to Brasseur; one did not, as a rule, freely volunteer information to the police. Brasseur saved him the trouble of thinking of something to say by continuing.

  "If you really want to make a living as a writer-what is it you're aiming for? Poetry, plays, novels? Or essays?"

  "A little of each," Aristide confessed.

  "Well, then, as I told you earlier, you ought to go out and study people more. You can't write successfully about them until you know why they do what they do. Now, you might have been wondering what I was doing in the back streets alone after dark?"

  Aristide nodded and he continued. "To be sure, I was on my way home; but I generally take a roundabout route. See, we inspectors are each in charge of a district of Paris, but we also each concentrate on a particular category of police duties, and mine and that of three other fellows is crime. Criminals, vagabondage, thievery, arson, assault, murder?crimes against property and against persons?you get my drift. So as I said earlier, in order to ferret out the right people, you need to know them, to know how they think."

  He took a swig from his glass, settled more comfortably into his chair, and went on. "I met a curious little fellow a couple of years ago, wandering the streets alone after midnight, and I was ready to take him in, because he looked suspicious to me, going about so late. But one of the other inspectors told me that he's a writer, a bit eccentric of course, writes naughty novels and such, and one of his favorite subjects is what he sees while he's strolling through the city at night."

  "That wouldn't be Restif de la Bretonne?" Aristide said, surprised. "The author of Les Contemporaines?"

  "That's the fellow. Well, the next time I ran into him, I struck up a conversation with him, and he said something to me I've never forgotten: 'I like to think of myself,' he said, 'as a student of mankind. I observe people, all manner of people?in the streets, in the lodging-houses, in the churches, and in the slums of the faubourgs?I observe them in the gilded salons of St. Germain, when I get the chance?I watch them in the workshops, at the carnivals, at the cabarets, at the processions on holy days, and in the middle of the Pont-Neuf. I observe their joys, their woes, their vices, their virtues, their amusements, their disasters-in short, everything. You'll never learn so much about mankind and all the aspects of human nature, monsieur, as from taking a stroll through Paris between six in the evening and six in the morning on any night of the year.' And he was right. It's the best way to learn about people, and knowing about people is the most useful tool in your bag of tricks when you're trying to catch them out at their misdemeanors. Or, I expect, when you're trying to write novels about them, eh?"

  He stretched and brushed some of the drying mud from his culotte and stockings. "That's better?what about you? Are you drying off? I'd hate to be the cause of your ruining your only suit of clothes."

  "It'll do," Aristide said ruefully, glancing down at the spots and creases in the woolen fabric that had already been fading from black to a dingy dark green.

  "You'd better take some of that chink in your purse, lad, before it gets lifted again, and bespeak yourself a new suit." Brasseur leaned forward and shook a finger at him. "It's high time. I may not dress fashionably myself, but I've lived in Paris long enough to know when a coat is two years behind the times."

  "It's not two years behind the times," Aristide retorted, "it's at least half a dozen years behind the times."

  "Touch?! Well, something in black wears better than most, doesn't it. I should know. Could it be you're following the useful vogue of always claiming to be in mourning for some deceased foreign royalty or other?"

  "I wear black by choice," Aristide said stiffly. "For my parents. I care little for fashion?and even less for the opinion of spoiled, shallow fools who can think of nothing else."

  "For your parents?" Brasseur said. "Forgive me. My sympathies, monsieur." He fell silent for a moment. Aristide took a few more sips of wine and, deciding his coat and culotte were as dry as they were likely to get, pulled out a chair.

  "Ravel," Brasseur said suddenly. "From Bordeaux, you said?"

  "Yes," Aristide said, with a chill feeling in his vitals that Brasseur knew exactly who he was. He glanced about, expecting all eyes in the smoky caf? to be fixed greedily upon him, but the workmen at the tables and benches nearby were absorbed in their wine, their card games, and their pipes.

  "Relation to ?tienne Ravel, by any chance? The fellow who shot his wife and her lover and created a thundering scandal? Twenty years ago it must have been."

  Aristide seated himself and took a long swallow of wine, without looking at Brasseur. "Eighteen years ago," he said at last. "He was my father."

  "Hard luck on you," Brasseur rumbled. "You must have been pretty young."

  "I was nine."

  "Only child?"

  "I have a sister. She wasn't yet three when it happened; she remembers nothing. Except, of course, what it's like to grow up as the child of an adulteress and of a double murderer who died on the scaffold. That, neither of us will ever forget."

  He stole a quick glance at Brasseur. He was so accustomed to seeing people shrink away from him, as if they might catch some foul disease, that he was surprised when the other man said nothing, only shrugged and felt in his pockets for a pipe and tobacco pouch.

  "It must have left you with a few scores to settle," Brasseur said at last, after filling the pipe, lighting it with an ember from the fire, and puffing gently at it for a moment.

  "A few."

  "Mm."

  "Have you learned who lit the fire at St. M?dard?" Aristide inquired, eager to change the subject.

&nb
sp; "Ah, that?no, we've had no luck. There've been half a dozen more, you know, since then. Middle of the night, early morning always. All on the Left Bank."

  "I heard some commotion a few nights ago, near Clamart."

  "You're living in that quarter now?"

  "Rue de la Muette. It's quite disgusting."

  "Yes, Clamart was the latest. Whoever it was, he climbed the wall and set a fire in the middle of the cemetery?and then he daubed some of the walls and a cross or two with blood-which I hope came from the slaughterhouses nearby-and threw a few bones on the fire, for good measure. Not pigs' bones."

  "Good God."

  "Well, if the churchyards are so full of rotten stinking corpses that you've bones lying about, falling out of the charnels and sticking out of the ground in front of you, what do they expect? Some madman comes along, gets ideas, and thinks he'll do a spot of devil worship or what have you-it began on All Hallows' Eve, which is suggestive. Or it may just be people who've got it in for the Church. Heathens and freethinkers, you know."

  "What do you mean by 'heathens'?" Aristide said.

  "Like I told you the other day, there are a lot of funny people about. And in the big cities, they disappear in the crowd; a lunatic or a troublemaker'll stick out a mile away in some little village, but in Paris, he's just one of the mob. And even the aristocracy's joining the fun these days, playing at outlandish rituals and secret societies; Freemasons, you know, and folk even madder than that." Brasseur shrugged again. "Ah well, there wasn't much damage done. Fire's soon put out and the mess scrubbed away. Trouble is, folk who get away with such nonsense a few times, they keep on with it."

  "But the more often he does it, the more likely you are to catch him in the act."

  "Yes, indeed." Brasseur suddenly grinned at him. "And we will catch him, of course." He sucked a few more times at his pipe and at length knocked it out in the hearth and pocketed it, with a sigh. "Well, I should have been home an hour ago, and my wife'll be wondering where I've got to. I'll have to come up with some convincing story for her."

  "Perhaps you pursued a pickpocket, caught him, and had to drag him off to the Guard and make a report."

  "Yes, that's pretty likely, isn't it?"

  They exchanged glances and Brasseur chuckled. "Are you on your way home yourself, then? I'll go with you as far as Le Plessis; we may as well fend off the footpads together."

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~