The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

by Susanne Alleyn

  * * * * *

  Aristide, with Derville in tow, arrived at the Caf? Vachon shortly after eleven o'clock. Desmoulins signaled to him from the back of the crowded common room and gestured to an open doorway.

  "I g-got us a private room for an hour-hope you don't mind the expense."

  Derville hung back a moment to order coffee from a passing waiter while Aristide followed Desmoulins into a small, unheated, dismal chamber. A few tallow candles smoked and sputtered from wall sconces. Two men were waiting for them at the table inside, a young, fair-haired man of Desmoulins' age, wearing a neat black suit with frock coat and clerical cravat, and an older man in his forties. Desmoulins introduced them as Varenne and ?taillot, both junior members of his own lodge. Derville sidled in a moment later, after hesitating at the door, introduced himself, and pulled out a chair.

  "You wanted to know about someone named Saint-Landry," said ?taillot, when the waiter had brought their coffee and Varenne had made sure the door was securely closed behind him. "Well, I don't know him personally, but I believe that Saint-Landry is the name of the Worshipful Master-that's the president, so to speak-of the Lodge of the Sacred Trinity."

  Aristide stared at him. "So he's not only a Freemason, but a highly placed one?"

  "Very highly placed."

  "And yet he has no claims to nobility, has he?"

  "Freemasons elect their officers without regard to social rank," Varenne said, with a smile. "Pure democracy. That's one of the reasons why we're considered so subversive."

  "The Lodge of the Sacred Trinity," Aristide repeated, intrigued. "It sounds more like the name of a religious order."

  "You'd think that, wouldn't you? And plenty of ecclesiastics like me, the ones who aren't narrowminded traditionalists, are Masons. Officially the Church forbids it, of course, but if you keep it quiet?"

  "But the Sacred Trinity doesn't have anything to do with the Holy Trinity," Desmoulins interrupted, "unless you like to c-call it the holy trinity of Masonic ideals. You could say our sacred trinity is liberty, equality, and brotherhood; ask any Mason. That's what the lodge name means-it's nothing to do with the Church."

  "And I've heard it whispered," said ?taillot, "that the Sacred Trinity people, at least the higher ranks, are a little dodgy."

  "Dodgy?" Aristide said.

  "Well?questionable." ?taillot pushed aside his empty coffee cup and continued, keeping his voice low, despite the clamor in the outer room. "The Lodge of the Sacred Trinity, according to all I've heard, is concerned less with charitable works and the general improvement of mankind than it is with having a clandestine finger in all sorts of pies, if you know what I mean."

  "For one thing," Varenne broke in, "they don't have a set lodge, an official meeting place, like us. The Lodge of the Nine Sisters, which concerns itself with the arts and sciences, is ten years old now, and quite respectable; we meet in the old Jesuit novitiates' hall on Rue du Pot de Fer-"

  "Excuse me?" said Aristide, who was moderately familiar with the narrow and squalid Rue du Pot de Fer, which led off Rue Mouffetard. "Jesuit buildings on Pot de Fer?"

  "The former novitiates' hall, near St. Sulpice."

  "St. Sulpice! But that's nowhere near Rue Mouffetard."

  "I think we're talking about two different streets with the same name," Desmoulins suggested with a grin. "Aren't there about three Rue Traversines and half a dozen Rue Pav?es in Paris?"

  "Anyway," Varenne continued impatiently, "it's no secret where our lodge meets, nor is it with most lodges. The Sacred Trinity, though, is a relatively new lodge, and they don't give out details. Only the members know where they meet-perhaps in a back room at Zoppi's, or in the house of one of the members, or upstairs in one of those new houses at the Palais-Royal-the Duc d'Orl?ans might have offered it rent free, he being Grand Master and sympathetic to liberalism-or heaven knows where. For all I know, it could be in this very room."

  ?taillot nodded. "The point being that they're extraordinarily secretive about themselves and what they're up to. But I gather they're probably responsible for quite a lot of the filthier libels and the nastier political broadsheets and pamphlets that have been spread about lately."

  "You mean they're actively working against the government," Aristide said.

  "I wouldn't say that. Working to reform the government. We're all loyal subjects of the king here, aren't we?" ?taillot glanced about him, with a quick look in the direction of the door as someone outside bumped against it, and continued. "Nobody wants to see Louis dethroned or assassinated; he's a decent enough fellow."

  "Maybe you don't," said Varenne. "If it were up to me, and quite a few other people, we'd happily put Louis out to pasture in favor of Orl?ans."

  "But not if everything else stays the same," said Desmoulins. "Absolutism is a c-crime against nature. We need a c-constitutional monarchy, and the laws have to be reformed; privilege has to end, the nobility has to start paying taxes, the Church has to stop dictating to the state-"

  "Understand, please," ?taillot added hastily, before Desmoulins could continue along what was undoubtedly a well-trodden path, "that we're not asserting any of these things at our own lodge. It's only what we've heard from rumors about members of the Sacred Trinity."

  "And some lodges-meaning the Sacred Trinity first of all-are working harder for reform than others."

  "And if the only way to bring about reform is to stir things up a bit-if you have to tear down the house before you can rebuild it-then that's what they'll do."

  "Easy, ?taillot!" Varenne muttered, with a sideways glance at Aristide and Derville. "You don't know either of them."

  "Desmoulins vouches for Ravel."

  "How well do you know this fellow, Desmoulins?" Varenne demanded. Before Desmoulins could stammer out a response, Aristide raised a hand.

  "Before you conclude that my friend and I are police spies, let me be perfectly honest with you. I'm working with a inspector of police-"

  "What did I tell you?" said Varenne.

  "-but all we want to do is investigate a murder. I'm not interested in what goes on in Masonic meetings, except as they might relate to the crime; and I am not, and will never be, a spy and informer."

  "And just how do we know that?"

  Aristide had come prepared for such a circumstance. "Have you ever read 'The True and Genuine History of Madame de Polignac'? I wrote that for Royer's press." He pulled a dozen creased and folded sheets of paper from his coat pocket and tossed them on the table. "That's the first draft. Do you want me to sign my name on it so you can compare the handwriting?"

  ?taillot snatched up the pages and glanced through them, his lips occasionally twitching into a smile. "I've a copy at home, Varenne," he said at last. "It's genuine enough. So what else have you written, Ravel?"

  "A few unimportant things, and Joubert at the Palais-Royal will be coming out with a couple of pamphlets shortly. But I'm not concerned about that. As I said, I'm aiding in the investigation of a murder."

  "So who's been murdered?" Varenne inquired.

  "I think it was this man Saint-Landry."

  "You think?"

  Aristide was about to say "the body's been stolen," but thought better of it. "We?we haven't positively identified the body yet. But something mysterious is going on. You wouldn't happen," he added impulsively, "to know the Marquis de Beaupr?au, would you?"

  "Beaupr?au?" said Varenne. "Well, the Beaupr?aus are distant cousins of mine."

  "C-Cousins?" Desmoulins said.

  "Distant." Varenne suddenly grinned. "I can't help it if my grandfather is the Baron de Mardeuil, can I? Beaupr?au's a third cousin or something on the wealthy side of the family?not that we ever see any of it beyond dinner once a year at the H?tel de Beaupr?au. And I wouldn't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure I've heard his name in connection with the Sacred Trinity, too."

  Aristide nodded. Varenne's information confirmed what Moreau had told him about Beaupr?au and Saint-Landry being members of the same lodge. "Wh
at else do you know about Beaupr?au?"

  "Oh, the usual. Full of advanced ideas. Became a soldier because it was his father's dearest wish, but then he went off to America in 'seventy-nine to join La Fayette. He came back worshiping liberty and announcing that Washington was the next thing to God, and La Fayette was his prophet. It made his father so angry that the old man finally died of an apoplexy. So now Alexis is the head of the family, even though he can't be more than thirty."

  "I hear he's got a few headaches, though," said ?taillot. "Doesn't he have an appalling black-sheep relation of some sort, a hopeless drunk, whom he's always hauling out of trouble?"

  Not any more, Aristide thought, as he scribbled down a few notes. "What else can you tell me about the Lodge of the Sacred Trinity?" he inquired. "Do you know any other members, ones who might talk to me?"

  ?taillot shrugged, but Varenne looked thoughtful. "Well, I don't know anyone besides Beaupr?au personally, but I've heard that some fishy people are connected to it: Cagliostro, for one."

  "Cagliostro!"

  The name brought forth a plethora of images, of alchemists and wizards bearing vials of shimmering elixirs, of enigmatic robed priests, of mystical figures as old as time. Everyone had heard of the great Count Cagliostro, even those who despised superstition and dismissed such self-styled masters of the occult as mere conjurors, quacks, and charlatans.

  "Cagliostro!" Derville echoed him, speaking for the first time. He leaned forward into the candlelight. "What about him?"

  "Surely you don't believe all that nonsense about him being a thousand-year-old sorcerer," Aristide said, with a glance at his friend.

  "No, of course I don't-I leave that to silly women who want their fortunes told-but I do know he's a Mason."

  ?taillot nodded. "That's common knowledge. Pretty high up, too, from what I hear. He claims to be the Great Copt of the Egyptian Rite himself, though I expect that's pure claptrap."

  Cagliostro-highly placed Mason, linked to members of Lodge of S Trinity, possibly member himself, Aristide scribbled down. The thought that the man who called himself Count Cagliostro, mystic, alchemist, and seer-or confidence artist and adventurer, as many people styled him-was somehow involved in the murder and the disappearance of the corpse was intriguing. The only flaw in such a theory was that Cagliostro had been locked up in the Bastille since August, accused of complicity with Cardinal de Rohan and Madame de la Motte in the diamond necklace affair.

  "No one else?"

  "No one else I'm sure of," said Varenne. "They keep themselves to themselves."

  Aristide nodded and was silent for a moment before glancing about the table. "Do you think," he said at last, "that a member of that lodge would be more likely than most, if provoked, to slit a man's throat, and then cut out his tongue?"

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "No one would take that oath literally!" ?taillot exclaimed.

  "What about someone a little unbalanced, who believed a fellow Mason had somehow broken a law or betrayed a secret of the fraternity? Do you think members of the Sacred Trinity would be more capable of committing such an act, in order to keep their secrets, than, say, the common run of Freemasons?"

  ?taillot looked away, frowning. "We-the Freemasons-are supposed to be honorable and charitable men who spread enlightenment among others. The thought that one of us could go so far wrong?"

  "But do you think that members of that lodge might be capable of it?" Aristide insisted. "Are they that extreme?"

  Varenne exchanged glances with the others and slowly nodded. "They might be."

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