‘I see. You’re not prejudiced, by any chance?’
Alexi cursed under his breath. ‘What do we do, Damo? We can’t go into the Sanctuary with Bazena there. She’ll run off and tell Gavril and he’ll blunder in and mess everything up.’
‘We’ll get Yola to talk to her.’
‘What good will that do?’
‘Yola will think of something to say. She always does.’
Alexi nodded, as if the comment seemed self-evident to him. ‘Okay then. Stay here. I will find her.’
***
Alexi found his cousin seated with a gaggle of her girlfriends, exactly as prearranged, outside the town hall, on the Place des Gitans. ‘Yola. We’ve got a problem.’
‘You’ve seen the eye-man?’
‘No. But nearly as bad. Gavril has staked out the church – he’s got Bazena begging near the doorway.’
‘Bazena? Begging? But her father will kill her.’
‘I know that. I already told Damo.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m not going to do anything. You are.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. You are going to talk to her. Damo says you always know what to say.’
‘He says that, does he?’
‘Yes.’
One of the other girls started to giggle.
Yola tugged at the girl’s breasts. ‘Be quite, Yeleni. I’ve got to think.’
It surprised Alexi that the girls hearkened to Yola and didn’t simply answer her back, as they customarily did to anyone her age who was still of spinstress rank. Normally, the fact that she was so late unmarried would have diminished her status in the female community – for some of these young women had already given birth, or were pregnant for the second or third time. But he had to admit that Yola had a particular air about her which commanded attention. It would certainly reflect well on him, were he to marry her.
Still. The thought of Yola keeping an eye on all his doings filled him with a prescient dread. Alexi acknowledged that he was weak-willed when it came to women. It was next to impossible for him to pass up any opportunity whatsoever to sweet-talk gadje girls. Yola was right. And that was all very well as things went. But once they were married, she was not the sort of woman to turn a blind eye to such proceedings. She’d probably castrate him while he was asleep.
‘Alexi, what are you thinking about?’
‘Me? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘Then go and tell Damo that I shall clear the way for us to go to the Sanctuary. But not to be surprised at how I do it.’
‘Okay.’ Alexi was still thinking about what it would be like to be poisoned or castrated. He didn’t know which he would prefer. Both seemed inevitable if he married Yola.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Sure. Sure I heard you.’
‘And if you see Gavril and he doesn’t see you, avoid him.’
29
‘Captain Calque? Please sit down. And you, too, Lieutenant.’
Calque collapsed gratefully on to one of the three large sofas set around the fireplace. Then he levered himself back-up while the Countess sat down.
Macron, who had at first been tempted to perch on the arm of one of the sofas and dangle the soles of his painful feet in the air, thought better of it and joined him.
‘Would you both like some coffee?’
‘That’s quite all right.’
‘I shall order some for myself then. I always have coffee at this hour.’
Calque looked like a man who had forgotten to buy his lottery ticket and whose numbers had just flashed up on the television screen.
‘Are you sure you won’t join me?’
‘Well. Now that you mention it.’
‘Excellent. Milouins, a pot of coffee for three, please. And bring some madeleines.’
‘Yes, Madame.’ The footman backed out of the room.
Macron made another incredulous face but Calque refused to meet his eyes.
‘This is our summer house, Captain. In the nineteenth century it used to be our winter house, but everything changes, does it not? Now people seek out the sun. The hotter the better, no?’
Calque felt like blowing out his cheeks, but didn’t. He felt like a cigarette, but suspected that he might simply set off a hidden smoke alarm – or trigger a ruckus about ashtrays – if he gave in to his craving. He resolved to forgo both and not subject himself to any more stress than was strictly necessary. ‘I wanted to ask you something, Madame. Purely as a matter of record. About your husband’s titles.’
‘My son’s titles.’
‘Ah. Yes. Your son’s titles. Simple curiosity. Your son is a Pair de France, is he not?’
‘Yes. That is correct.’
‘But I understood there to be only twelve Pairs de France. Please correct me if I am wrong.’ He held up his fingers. ‘The Archbishop of Reims, who traditionally conducted the Royal crowning. The Bishops of Laon, Langres, Beauvais, Chalons and Noyons, who, respectively, anointed the King and bore his sceptre, his mantle, his ring and his belt. And then there were the Dukes of Normandy, Burgundy and Aquitaine (also known as Guyenne). The Duke of Burgundy bore the crown and fastened the belt. Normandy held the first square banner, with Guyenne holding the second. Finally there were the Counts: Champagne, Flanders and Toulouse. Toulouse carried the spurs, Flanders the sword and Champagne the Royal Standard. Am I not correct?’
‘Extraordinarily so. One would think that you had just this minute looked these names up in a book and memorised them.’
Calque fl ushed. He could feel the blood churning through his damaged nose.
‘No, Madame. Captain Calque really does know his stuff.’
Calque gave Macron an incredulous stare. Good God. Were we talking class solidarity here? That had to be the answer. There could be no other possible reason for Macron to defend him so sedulously and in so public a manner. Calque inclined his head in genuine appreciation. He must remember to make more of an effort with Macron. Encourage him more. Calque even felt the vestige of a slight affection clouding his habitual irritation at Macron’s youthful brashness. ‘And so we come to your husband’s family, Madame. Forgive me.
But I still don’t understand. This would surely make them the thirteenth Pair? But no record of such a Pair exists, as far as I am aware. What would your husband’s ancestor have carried during the Coronation?’
‘He wouldn’t have carried anything, Captain. He would have protected.’
‘Protected? Protected from whom?’
The Countess smiled. ‘From the Devil, of course.’
30
Yola felt that she’d timed her two interventions just about perfectly. First she’d sent Yeleni to wake Gavril and tell him that Bazena needed to speak to him. Urgently.
Then she’d allowed five minutes to go by before hurrying to tell Badu, Bazena’s father, that his daughter had just been seen begging outside the church. The five minutes were to allow for the fact that Badu and Stefan, Bazena’s brother, would undoubtedly hit the ground running the moment they heard the news. Now Yola was running herself, unwilling to miss the unravelling of her plot.
Alexi saw her coming. ‘Look. It’s Yola. And over there. Gavril. Oh shit. Badu and Stefan.’
To Sabir it seemed as if the scene had been loosely modelled on the car chase from the original Pink Panther fi lm – the one in which the old man, bewildered by the plethora of police cars and two horsepower Citroens circling the square in front of him, finally brings out his armchair, plumps it down in a prime location and watches the outcome in comfort.
Gavril, entirely unaware of Badu and Stefan, was hurrying towards Bazena. She, caught in flagrante, with a cloth laid out in front of her covered in coins, had just noticed her father and brother. She stood up and called out to Gavril. Gavril stopped. Bazena motioned him violently away. Badu and Stefan saw the movement, turned and recognised Gavril. Gavril, instead of standing his ground and simply pleading ignorance, decided
to do a bunk. Badu and Stefan split up – a move that they had obviously practised on numerous occasions before – and came at Gavril from opposing halves of the square. Bazena started screaming and pulling at her hair.
Within a span of ninety seconds from the start of Yola’s plan, maybe fifty gypsies, of all sexes and ages, had converged, as if from nowhere, on the centre of the square. Gavril was backing up in front of Badu and Stefan, who had their knives out. People were flooding out from inside the Sanctuary to see what all the commotion was about. Two policemen on motorcycles were approaching from another part of town, but gypsies were already impeding them and making sure their view of the fight was spoilt. Bazena had thrown herself around her father’s neck and was hanging on for dear life, while her brother was circling Gavril, who also had his knife out but was still busy fiddling with the metal locking ring.
‘This is it. This is my moment.’ Alexi darted away amongst the crowd before Sabir could question his intentions.
‘Alexi! For Christ’s sake! Keep out of it!’
But it was too late to stop him. Alexi was already sprinting around the periphery of the crowd in the direction of the church.
31
Alexi had been a master thief all his life – and master thieves know how to use happenstance. To benefit from the moment.
He was certain that the watchman would eventually be tempted out of the Sanctuary. How could he not be, when the entire congregation of the church had exited in a drove before him, spurred on by curiosity about what might be happening above them in the square?
Alexi could imagine the sequence of thoughts that would be passing through the security guard’s head. His duty, surely, lay outside? Sainte Sara could look after herself for a few moments, could she not? There was no formal threat against her that he knew of. Nobody had warned him to take especial care. What harm would it do to break up the morning’s monotony with a breath of fresh air and a riot?
He had just secreted himself on the right-hand side of the main door when the watchman burst through at the tail of the crowd, his face alight with anticipation. Alexi darted in behind him and straight down to the Sanctuary. He had been coming to this place all his life. He knew its geography like the back of his hand.
Sainte Sara was standing in a corner of the deserted crypt, surrounded by votive offerings, photographs, candles, knickknacks, poems, plaques, blackboards with people’s names inscribed and flowers – many, many flowers. She was dressed in at least twenty layers of donated clothing, interleaved with capes, ribbons and hand-stitched veils, with only her mahogany-brown face, dwarfed by its silver crown, peeping through the stifling density of the fabric surrounding her.
Crossing himself superstitiously and casting a ‘please forgive me’ glance at the nearest crucifix, Alexi upended Sara-e-kali and ran his hand across her base. Nothing. It was as smooth as alabaster.
With a desperate glance at the entrance to the crypt, Alexi muttered a prayer, took out his penknife and began scraping.
***
Achor Bale had watched the rapid unfolding of events in the square in front of him with keen interest. First the hasty appearance of the blond idiot – then the two angry gypsies, bearing down on the begging girlfriend. Then the begging girlfriend crying out and drawing everyone’s attention to the blond boyfriend, who would otherwise have undoubtedly noticed what was happening before anyone had a chance to see him and been able to make himself scarce before the shit really hit the fan. Which it was doing now.
The two motorcycle cops were still trying to force their way through the crowd. The blond boyfriend was facing off against the younger of the two men and, if Bale wasn’t mistaken, he was waving around an Opinel penknife – which would undoubtedly break the first time it encountered anything more substantial than a wishbone. The older man – the father, probably – was busy fending off his hysterical daughter, but it was clear that he would soon succeed in struggling free, upon which the two of them would fillet the blond long before the police had a dog’s dinner’s chance of getting close.
Bale glanced around the square. The whole thing seemed somehow contrived to him. Riots almost never happened organically – of their own accord. People orchestrated them. At least in his experience. He’d even stage managed one or two himself during his time with the Legion – not under the Legion’s particular aegis, needless to say, but merely as a means of forcing their involvement in a situation which, without them, might simply have resolved itself with no recourse to violence.
He remembered one riot in Chad with particular affection – it was during the Legion’s deployment there during the 1980s. Forty dead – dozens more injured. Word from the Corpus was that he had come perilously close to starting a civil war. How Monsieur, his father, would have been pleased.
Legio Patria Nostra – Bale felt almost nostalgic. He had learned a great many useful things in the Legion’s ‘combat village’ in Fraselli, Corsica – and also in Rwanda, Djibouti, Lebanon, Cameroon and Bosnia. Things he might have to put into practice now.
He stood up to get a better view. When that failed, he climbed on to the cafe table, using his hat as a sunshield. No one noticed him – all eyes were on the square.
He glanced over towards the entrance to the Sanctuary just in time to see Alexi, who had been lurking behind the main door, dart in behind the emerging watchman.
Excellent. Bale was having his work done for him again. He looked around the square for Sabir but couldn’t mark him. Best head down to the crypt entrance. Wait for the gypsy to come back out. In the maelstrom that was the Place de l’Eglise, no one would be in the least bit surprised to find a second corpse with a knife-wound in its chest.
32
Calque was having difficulty with the Countess. It had begun when she had nosed out his resistance to her assertion that her husband’s family were responsible for protecting the Angevin, Capetian and Valois Kings from diabolical intercedence.
‘Why is this not written down? Why have I never heard of a thirteenth Pair de France?’
Macron looked on in incredulity. What was Calque doing? He was here to investigate a pistol, not a bloodline.
‘But it is written down, Captain Calque. It is simply that the documents are not available to scholars. What do you think? That all history happened exactly as historians have described it? Do you really suppose that there are not noble families all over Europe who are keeping private correspondence and documents away from prying eyes? That there are not secret societies, still secret today, about whose existence no one is yet aware?’
‘Do you know of any such societies, Madame?’
‘Of course not. But they certainly exist. You may count on it. And with more power, perhaps, than might be supposed.’ A strange look came over the Countess’s face. She reached down and rang her bell. Without a word, Milouins entered the room and began clearing up the coffee things.
Calque realised that the interview was on its final legs. ‘The pistol, Madame. The one registered in your husband’s name. Who possesses it now?’
‘My husband lost it before the war. I distinctly remember him telling me. It was stolen by a gamekeeper who had become temporarily disenchanted with his position. The Count notified the police – I am sure the records still exist. They conducted an informal inquiry but the pistol was never recovered. It was of little import. My husband had many pistols. His collection was of note, I believe. I do not interest myself in firearms, however.’
‘Of course not, Madame.’ Calque knew when he was beaten. The chances of there being records still in existence of an informal inquiry about a missing fi rearm during the 1930s were infinitesimal. ‘But you married your husband, as I understand it, during the 1970s? How would you possibly know about events that took place in the 1930s?’
Macron’s mouth dropped open.
‘My husband, Captain, always told me everything.’ The Countess stood up.
Macron levered himself to his feet. He enjoyed watching Calque fail in h
is first attempt at lift-off from the sofa. The old man must be feeling the accident, he thought to himself. Perhaps he’s a bit more fragile than he lets on? He’s certainly acting bloody strangely.
The Countess gave her bell a double ring. The footman came back in. She nodded towards Calque and the footman hurried to help him.
‘I’m sorry, Madame. Lieutenant Macron and I were involved in a vehicle collision. In pursuit of a miscreant. I am still a little stiff.’
A collision? In pursuit of a miscreant? What the Hell was Calque playing at? Macron started towards the door. Then he stopped. The old man wasn’t as stiff as all that. He was putting it on.
‘Your son, Madame? Might he not have something to add to the story? Perhaps his father spoke to him about the pistol?’
‘My son, Captain? I have nine sons. And four daughters. Which of them would you like to talk to?’
Calque stopped in his tracks. He weaved a little, as if he were on his last legs. ‘Thirteen children? I’m astonished, Madame. How can that be possible?’
‘It is called adoption, Captain. My husband’s family have funded a nunnery for the past nine centuries. As part of its charitable work. My husband was badly injured during the war. From that moment on it became impossible that he should ever procure an heir for himself. It is why he married so late. But I persuaded him to rethink his position on the succession. We are wealthy. The nunnery has an orphanage. We took as many as we could. Adoption is a well-established custom in French and Italian noble families in the case of force majeure. Infinitely preferable to the name dying out.’
‘The present Count, then? May I know his name?’
‘Count Rocha. Rocha de Bale.’
‘May I talk to him?’
‘He is lost to us, Captain. For reasons best known to himself he joined the Foreign Legion. As you know, Legionnaires are forced to register under new names. We never knew what that was. I have not seen him for many years.’
The Nostradamus prophecies as-1 Page 21