The Black Tower

by Louis Bayard

  You dont think me mad? he said.

  On the contrary, I said, I consider you ingenious. But do flowers like to play piquet?

  With that, I presented him pack of cards. (Had been saving it for this moment.) His eyes grew quite large & he began to rub at them w/fists. At 1st I supposed him to be angry, but I recalled that’s how he looks when he is trying not to cry. I have yet to see a tear from him.

  You know how to play? I asked. He nodded. But for sevrl mins, he was unable even to touch cards. As w/flowers, he seemed to doubt evidence of senses.

  If you dont mind, he said, Id like just to hold them a bit.

  7 VENTÔSE

  Yesterday afternoon, Leblanc & Charles were stopped in act of playing piquet by Commissioner Leroux, who informed them they were engaged in unlawful acts.

  Unlawful? said Leblanc. Just a little game, Citizen.

  Little game! cried Leroux, snatching up cards. Queen of hearts! King of clubs! Hast thou not heard, Citizen? France has rid herself of hereditary monarchy.

  Leblanc reiterated it was “all in good fun.” Commissioner refused to relent. Said boy cd only play cards if he referred to “queen” as “citizeness” and to “king” as “tyrant.” At which Charles pushed away his cards, wanting nothing more to do w/them. Cards have now been confiscated by state. Confiscated by state.

  Upon hearing this, I told Leblanc that tomorrow I shall bring Charles 2 new packs of cards. If Citizen Leroux wishes to confiscate these, he will 1st have to confiscate me, which he cannot do w/o express consent of Genl Barras.

  8 VENTÔSE

  On way to Charles’ cell this A.M., I was pulled aside by Commissioner Leroux, who asked if I was guilty of restoring card-playing privileges to Prisoner. I confessed I was. Leroux told me he does not like my “presumptions,” which he hastened to call “aristocratic.” I told him I do not like his manners, which are not greatly improved by his drinking. I believe he was ready to strike me. I am glad he did not, for I wd not have been answerable for my own conduct.

  12 VENTÔSE

  Charles asked if he could go to top of tower again. He was quite concerned re condition of his ornamental cabbages & was relieved to find them still flourishing. In course of “conversing” w/plants, he asked if I had not incurred a great deal of wrath on his account?

  I assured him it was not on his account but on mine. I have never cared for bullies, regardless of what office they hold.

  For some time, he persisted in tending to plants, occasionally humming to them. He then asked if I might point out my house to him.

  From here? I said. Oh, you cannot see it. Notre-Dame gets in the way. We live on other side of Ile de la Cité. In the Latin Quarter.

  We, he said, rather shyly. You have a wife?

  Yes.

  A child, too, perhaps?

  A boy named Hector.

  And is he my age?

  No, he is but 3. Although (I cdnt help but add) he knows at least 200 words.

  I shd like….

  Here Charles stopped.

  To meet him? I conjectured. Someday you will.

  No, he said, I shd like to take care of him. As you have me. If you took me home w/you, we cd be brothers, he and I, and I’d keep very close watch on him, youd never have a moment’s worry.

  God willing, I said, you shall enjoy far greater comforts than my humble home cd offer.

  No, he said. Yrs wd do very well.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Fox and the Rabbit

  THE INTERROGATION OF Tepac’s assassin takes place in the dead man’s scullery. I am not invited in, and so, like a child straining to hear his parents, I press my ear to the door. This is what I hear.

  NOTHING.

  NO, THAT’S NOT quite right. A series of tiny soft implosions, the sort a kettle might make on a wet hob. The door opens then to find our counterfeit sailor bound by the feet to an old spindleback chair. Vidocq, his cravat loosened, stands over him; off to the side leans Goury, whose hands, for reasons mysterious, are coated in flour. On the assassin, no obvious signs of violence, except for the droop of his head, just outside the normal axis, and a roiling afterecho, as though the air itself had been singed.

  Later I will learn just how Vidocq did it.

  Remembering the man’s name was the easy part. Just a quick rummage through his inner archives, and out it pops.

  “Monsieur Noël, isn’t it?”

  A twitch is all the confirmation he needs. From there, he reconstructs Noël’s dossier card, line by line.

  “Stole twenty-three streetlamps in the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi…. Fifty-eight pieces of calico from Trouflat’s Novelties…Oh, that’s right, you’ve got a mother. Distinguished artiste, with a charming apartment on the Rue Saint-Claude. Gives piano lessons, doesn’t she? Ooh, I’d hate to see her lose her livelihood.”

  Amazing. You take out one brick, the whole wall falls. In the very next second, Noël has coughed up the other assassin’s name.

  “Herbaux, eh? That’s funny, I thought he was still counting cockroaches in La Force.”

  Turns out this same Herbaux managed to stroll out of prison two months ago, dressed in his sister’s petticoats. (“That old trick,” mutters Vidocq.) A few weeks after that, he approached Noël about a job in Saint-Cloud.

  “And who was the brain behind it?” asks Vidocq.

  Don’t know.

  “Who was the bank?”

  God’s truth, he doesn’t know. The only one who ever talked to Monsieur was Herbaux.

  “Monsieur?”

  That’s what they were told to call him. No first name, no surname. Just a title.

  “Did Herbaux ever describe him?”

  Couldn’t. Monsieur was just a voice, that was all.

  “Herbaux never saw him?”

  He only ever met the man at Saint-Sulpice. Monsieur sat in a confessional booth the whole time with the curtain closed.

  “He’s a priest?”

  No idea.

  “Old voice? Young voice?”

  Herbaux never said.

  “How much did this Monsieur promise you?”

  A hundred francs up front. Two hundred on completion.

  “Ha! Knowing Herbaux, it was probably double that. This Monsieur…he never gave a reason for wanting Tepac gone?”

  Not that he knew of. A fellow learns not to be curious about such things.

  “When’d you get the go-ahead, then?”

  Yesterday.

  “Yesterday?”

  Herbaux came by Noël’s lodgings in the afternoon. Said the plan was a go. They were to reach Saint-Cloud that night and wait for Tepac in the King of France’s park. As soon as they had a clean line on him, they were to bring him down.

  “And so you did. Were you in charge of the throat or the gut, Noël?”

  The throat. Doesn’t make such a squooshy sound.

  NOËL IS DE POSITED with the local constabulary. Attention then turns to Monsieur Tepac’s maid, an Alsatian named Frieda, built along the lines of a dwarf pine, and dry down to the roots. Not a tear does she shed on behalf of her late employer…but then she hasn’t cried, she tells us, since she was three. All the same, he was a good sort, Monsieur Tepac. Wages on time. Never dragged a lot of people home, never quibbled about afternoons off. You don’t find many situations so nice.

  “Did Tepac tell you where he came from?”

  From his accent, she took him for Swiss.

  “Did he tell you what business he had in Saint-Cloud?”

  No. Wasn’t her place to ask.

  “What about the young man, then? This Charles fellow.”

  Why, Charles just came with the house.

  “Was he a servant?”

  Oh, no, indeed. Her very first day here, Tepac told her she was to treat Monsieur Charles as a gentleman. Even if he didn’t quite dress like one.

  “And what did he tell you about this Charles?”

  She figured him for some relation of Tepac’s, but he never said one way or a
nother, and it wasn’t….

  “Your place to ask. I know.”

  Oh, but the boy’s a joy to have around. Truly. Always willing to lend a hand with the dishes, loves to clip laundry to the line. Eats anything you give him. Really, the only bother is the shoes.

  “The shoes…”

  Well, he can’t tie his own laces, can he? Strangest thing.

  “Did you ever ask why?”

  Guess he never learned. And, you know, he is a bit simple, so you can’t expect too much.

  His bedroom is no different from a peasant’s. A cracked pitcher, a worm-riddled stool, a looking glass the size of a slipper. And a bed…which is, in all its essentials, a coffin, scarcely three feet wide, set on two half-barrels.

  That’s where we find him, perched on the straw mattress, his hands squeezed between his thighs. A cloud of sweat-musk rising off him.

  From the start, I notice Vidocq taking a different tack: several feet of distance, a minimum of eye contact. And an entirely new tone: not gentle, exactly, but conversational, as if they had come across each other playing chess.

  “Charles, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Dr. Carpentier. And I’m Vidocq. Inspector Vidocq.”

  If he expects the name to make an impression…well, I don’t think he does. He’s already gliding forward.

  “Do you have a last name, Charles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you could tell us.”

  “Rapskeller.”

  His head is bowed. Not from grief, as I initially think, but to better follow the shuttlecock that he’s passing between his feet.

  “Do you have a mother, Charles Rapskeller? A father?”

  “In heaven,” he says simply.

  “Any other family? Living or—anywhere?”

  “You know…” He tucks one of his boots under the shuttlecock, flips it into the air. “I think I must have family somewhere. But I’ve never met them.”

  Still careful to keep his distance, Vidocq eases himself onto the mattress, so warily that the straw barely stirs.

  “Charles,” he says. “Do you know why Monsieur Tepac brought you here?”

  “Oh, because I’ve never been.”

  “Do you understand that Monsieur Tepac is dead?”

  A small furrow in the young man’s brow.

  “Oh, I see. He’s going to meet Mama and Papa.”

  And with that, the furrow vanishes, and the shuttlecock continues its progress, back and forth.

  “Charles…”

  Whether it’s to reassure him or to lay claim to him, I’ll never know, but Vidocq chooses this moment to extend his hand. It is traveling toward the vicinity of Charles’ shoulder, but it never gets there. In a single galvanic pulse, the young man jerks upward. Backs away two steps and takes three long breaths. A kind of ritualized quality to the entire sequence, as though he had just concluded a sacrament.

  “I don’t really like that. Being touched. Out of the blue like that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s all right. You didn’t know.”

  Vidocq tucks his hands under his thighs. Lets the silence build up again.

  “Now, then, Charles. There’s something I want to ask you if you don’t mind. Are you the King of France?”

  The young man stares at him for a short space—then begins to giggle.

  “Don’t be silly!” he says. “We’ve already got a king. Although they tell me he’s very fat, and has trouble walking. Poor king.”

  Vidocq laces his hands behind his neck. “Have you ever been to Paris, Charles?”

  “Sometimes. I’m fairly sure I was dreaming, though.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I flew there.”

  “Ahh.” The tiniest chuckle shakes itself from Vidocq’s throat. “Well, now, Charles, Dr. Carpentier and I would like to take you back to Paris with us. As our guest.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  His mouth twists down. “I’ll need my coat.”

  “Of course.”

  “And also…”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think Agatha would mind looking after the flowers?”

  “We’ll ask her, shall we?”

  “The bulbs need tying down, you know. After the first flower.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  He spends a few more seconds tracking the shuttlecock. Then he raises his head, and once more, that jaw angles toward us.

  “Do you suppose we might visit the Luxembourg?”

  “The palace? We could try to arrange something, yes.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I mean the Luxembourg Gardens.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Dr. Carpentier and I were strolling in the gardens just the other day. Weren’t we, Hector?”

  “Why, yes.”

  It’s the first time I’ve spoken since entering the room—and the first time Charles has really drawn me into his ken. As if to atone for the oversight, he spends the next half minute absorbing me. In all my particulars.

  “You were there?” he asks. “Were the chestnuts in bloom?”

  “The chestnuts…”

  How to tell him this? I don’t know. On every side of me lay a bank of fog.

  “Yes,” I say. “They were in bloom.”

  He studies me a while longer.

  “Doctor, you look like a rabbit I used to have.”

  “A rabbit?”

  “He was very loyal, but something ate him. A fox, perhaps.”

  CHAPTER 23

  A Scene of Great Carnage Involving Pistachios

  WE LEAVE FOR Paris late that afternoon. Not in a stage, as we came, but in a cariole personally hired by Vidocq. As punishment, he puts Goury on the driver’s box, but the only protest we hear on the way back to town is from the vehicle itself, arthritic through the rims, spitting up stones and rotten pears—even, at one crossing, a turtle, pitched on its back, waving farewell as we turn the corner.

  Next to me Charles Rapskeller slumbers. In a dead man’s clothes. The carefully brushed round hat, the old-fashioned waistcoat, the black trousers and black wool socks…these came straight from Tepac’s wardrobe. The only articles that are unmistakably Charles’ are the copper-buckled shoes and the coat, which is, providentially, the same shade of yellow as the mud. Into this coat he climbs and, as soon as the carriage is in motion, falls straight to sleep. The only sign that something lives inside that yellow carapace is his protruding face, soft and sun-reddened.

  “Is he really sleeping?” growls Vidocq.

  “I think so.”

  “Maybe you’d be so kind as to check.”

  Gingerly, I pry open an eyelid.

  “Asleep. Yes.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me. How’d we get ourselves in such a fucking mess?”

  In our short acquaintance, I’ve never seen him this glum. Two men dead. A killer still at liberty. Murderers queuing up for instructions at confessional booths…

  “And don’t forget,” Vidocq says, as if he were divining my inventory. “A so-called king. Who doesn’t know he’s supposed to be a king. What the hell am I supposed to do with him?”

  “I don’t know….”

  “Ahh.” Vidocq tips his head in mock deference. “Dr. Hector’s got something on his mind.”

  “No, it’s just that…”

  “What?”

  “He fits.”

  “How do you mean he fits?”

  “What I mean is if Louis the Seventeenth really was rescued—spirited away, as the old story says—then we would expect to find in him a certain amount of damage. Even today.”

  I’m waiting for him to stop me. But for once he’s all ears.

  “Think,” I say, “of all that boy suffered during his years in the Temple. Think of the abuse to his mind and body. He was beaten, he was shut away for months in confinement. He suffered a painful and wasting illness. He was separated from his sister.
He saw his own father dragged away, he was forced to testify against his mother. Even if he’d survived it all, the trauma might have forced some—some rearrangement….”

  “Rearrangement?”

  “Well, consider the medical literature. Bidaut-Mauger has found that children, regularly beaten, can manifest all the signs of brain damage even when the cerebellum and cerebral cortex are intact. The slowness, the inattention, all those symptoms we associate with idiocy might simply be a way of—detaching from hostile surroundings.”

  “Detaching,” he says, reaching into his pocket for a handful of pistachios. “So much so they forget what happened to them?”

  “Hypothetically.”

  “So you’re saying Louis the Seventeenth would have developed amnesia.”

  “I’m saying he could have survived only by excluding certain parts of his past from his consciousness. Parts of his identity, even.”

  Chewing, half smiling, Vidocq shakes his head.

  “Christ in heaven.”

  “What?”

  “You believe, Hector.”

  “No…”

  “I can see it on your face. You think he’s the real article, don’t you?”