The Forbidden Rose

by Bourne, Joanna

  “Don’t get up. I will join you, if you don’t mind. We have a shortage of chairs, so the ground must serve me.”

  The hand that clamped down to take the support of Doyle’s shoulder was surprisingly firm. There was something wrong with the man’s legs, though. The weight of the priest was nothing at all—the bird bones and the tough leather flesh of the old.

  Doyle reached up and grasped forearms with the man, helping him down to sit next to him. The cassock was ragged at the hem but made of heavy black silk. He’d been an aristocrat among priests.

  “Father.” Doyle settled back down.

  The priest took three or four shallow breaths before he spoke. There was pain inside the man. You could see it in his eyes. Not much life left in him. Hardly enough to be worth the Republic’s while killing him. Maybe they were hoping he’d die in prison. The priest said, “Yes. Thank you.” Another breath. “Your name, my son?”

  “Guillaume, mon Père. Guillaume LeBreton.”

  “By your voice, you’re a long way from home, Guillaume LeBreton. I am accustomed to write letters for men who wish to send them. I’ll attempt to send one for you even as far as Brittany, if this would comfort you.”

  “There’s no one left to send it to. No one’s expecting me back.”

  The priest touched his sleeve with a stick and tendon of a hand, half scarecrow. “Then no one there is afraid for you. It is a poor comfort, but a real one. I am Father Jérôme, a priest of Saint-Sulpice, paying for a misspent life with an uncomfortable ending.” He carried a black box under his arm. When he set it across his lap it was topped with a black and white inlay of squares. Not a book. A chessboard. “I discovered, in the end, that I possessed a conscience. A most inconvenient appendage. And you? Why are you here, my son?”

  “A mistake.”

  “We are fifty mistakes in this place.” Under the murmur and cough of the other men, the priest chuckled. “Except possibly a few of our criminal brothers who admit to some small errors in honesty. We have our thieves, and our whores, and one poor forger who was unwise enough to print political writings when he was not forging. If you are a thief, I have some fine sermons about thievery.”

  “I’m not so lucky. Seems I’ve committed a crime against the Revolution. I’m that buffle-headed, I can’t remember doing it.”

  “That is unfortunate, Guillaume. But you will find the invention of the Tribunal is nearly infinite. You will be amazed at what you’ve been up to.” Father Jérôme shifted and sighed with the dry breath of old age. “I take confession in the hall upstairs in the evenings. The guards look the other way for an hour. You’re a big block of a lad. You will help me up the stairs tonight. The pair who have been assisting me left this morning.”

  “They left” meant they’d gone to the Conciergerie and trial. They’d be dead by now, or on their way to it.

  “Glad to. I’ve a broad back for it.”

  “We will put your back to good use then. When they count us tonight and bring the bread and soup, collect an extra loaf to be the Host. The guard will pretend not to see. Bring it upstairs with us. We will pass the climb discussing your sins, which are doubtless numerous.”

  “There’s a few.”

  “You shall be my first absolution of the night. My penances are light these days. Leave me in the dark at the top of the stairs. It serves as my confessional. Those who have been called to trial tomorrow will come last. When they’re finished, come for me again. I say Mass on the stairs. How long has it been since your last confession, Guillaume?”

  “Years.” Maybe he’d believed in a benevolent God when he was a child. Not for a long time. “That’s a chessboard.”

  The priest sat up straighter. “Do you play?” He touched the box he held. “They allow me to keep this and my breviary. I hate to admit they’re both comforts to me. My last chess partner, alas, has moved on.”

  “I play.” He watched in silence as the priest opened the box and set the chessmen on the floor. It was an old set. Venetian papier-mâché, painted and gilded. Each man was detailed and delicate, with banners and bright robes. What was it doing in this godforsaken place? “Beautiful.” He lifted the white knight.

  “It was given to me by the young man who was my chess partner for a while. He had it from another man, who had it from yet another. No one knows how long the set has been moving from prisoner to prisoner.” The priest lay the box flat, opened facedown, to make the board. “We will play chess on the edge of doom, you and I. There’s some Christian moral in this, my young Breton, but I cannot find one that does not sound sententious. Take white, if you will.” He set red men on the board with practiced speed.

  “I don’t mind opening the game.” What’s happening to Maggie? She’s sick and she’s alone in that house with her cousin. I can’t get to her.

  If he thought about that, he’d tear his hands apart, clawing at the stone. He had to put it away for now. Put it away.

  Doyle moved out a pawn. “Tell me about the men they got guarding us. Anyone I should watch out for?”

  Thirty-four

  MARGUERITE SAT ON THE MAKESHIFT BED, LEANING against the wall, feeling dizzy and sick in waves. It was better when she lay down flat, but she would not give in to this inconvenient illness. Sitting up was a small victory. She needed such small victories.

  She let Jean-Paul take her pulse. “I will probably lose my stomach soon. Upon you.” She did not stand on ceremony with Jean-Paul. Quite aside from having been lovers, they had played naked in the fishpond at Voisemont when they were four.

  Jean-Paul counted, holding the gold pocket watch he had from his father.

  “You do not impress me and you are not a physician.” She rested her head on the wall and held her knees close to her so she would not slip sideways. “I will go tomorrow and see what is what. It will not be impossible. For every box, there is a key. I will find the key to that prison. If I did not keep being sick and fainting, I would go today.”

  She endured Jean-Paul putting the back of his hand on her forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” he said.

  “Thank you. Perhaps you will spare me an accounting of the diseases I do not have. Leprosy. Gout. The pox. I find it does not cheer me up at all.”

  He frowned and demanded to see her tongue. Then he held his hand to her face, covering and uncovering one of her eyes and then the other. “Have you started taking opium? It’s not good for you, you know.”

  “Why is everyone asking if I eat opium? I do not have time to fuddle my mind with—”

  “Your pupils are dilated. You’ve taken something. Do you still grow foxgloves in the garden behind your house?”

  “They grow in abundance. And, yes, I know they are poison. But I do not graze upon the garden like a goat, so it does not matter.” She pushed him away. “If you wish to convince me I am too sick to go to the prison, it’s not working. Tomorrow, very early, I will go to see Guillaume and look about the walls and bars of that place.”

  “If your Guillaume were here, he’d tell you not to go.”

  “I would not listen to him, either.”

  “Listen to common sense then.” Jean-Paul was finished poking and prying at her. He tossed his hat aside, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and fell into the armchair beside the bed that had been made for her. The chair had feather stuffing coming out everywhere and was covered with a large blanket to hide this fact. The footstool was a small crate. “Victor’s going to be there, waiting for you.”

  “He cannot know which prison Guillaume has been taken to. Not yet. The paperwork will not come to the Tribunal until tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon, I think.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “Sometimes, one makes educated guesses.”

  “And sometimes one makes stupid guesses. Lie down before you faint.”

  She would lie down when she had convinced Jean-Paul to do what she wanted.

  The bed she sat upon was a wooden door, laid across benches and chests and pushed close to the
wall. The padding beneath her was fresh hay, piled thick and covered by the coarsest of blankets, scrupulously clean. It was comfortable enough and smelled beautifully. She had slept in worse places. She did not regard the bits of hay that stuck through, into her.

  Owl—her name was Justine—had brought her to one of the most secure refuges of La Flèche, a place reserved against great need. The hiding hole was up a ladder, above a shed in the stable yard of the most fashionable whorehouse in Paris. In this loft, artfully placed disorder concealed the nest within. Boxes, old trunks, and huge storage barrels lined the walls between stacks of discarded furniture. The storage room behind a notorious brothel looked very much like any other attic, in fact.

  Justine had needed only ten easy, practiced minutes to set the door flat on its supports, carry hay from the stable to make a soft bed, spread cloth on a trunk to make a table, and hide the decrepitude of the large armchair under a cover.

  This was the very essence of a safehouse of La Flèche. All was secret, subtle, well concealed. Lean the door back against the wall, scatter the straw, fold the blankets. There would be no sign anyone had been here.

  Adrian had stationed himself at the far end of the loft at the window there. He could see the length of this attic and the ground outside as far as the fence. Justine stood on the ladder, midway between the floors. She could see the whole of the shed below and anyone who might creep in to listen. Without instruction, quite naturally, they had put themselves as sentinels where they could watch everything. It was disquieting to deal with these two silent, knowing, unchildlike children.

  She must also deal with Jean-Paul. He looked tired and frustrated. His hands, clenched on the blanket where it draped the arms of the chair, were like the bony, well-carved fists of one of the ascetic saints. She would not allow her tenderness for him to turn her from her path.

  He said, “There’s something wrong with your pulse. I think you’ve been poisoned.”

  “I think I have eaten bad food. I will be better tomorrow. And I will be able to think again, clearly. How difficult would it be to organize a riot? A small one?”

  “On Rue Tessier? It would be difficult, and it wouldn’t work. Marguerite, we can’t get to him. I am so very, very sorry.”

  “I do not need you to be sorry. I need you to help me. We have played such games before.”

  “Even if this could be done, we have no time to plan. We’ve tried last-minute rescues before. I saw Claude and Virginie die in front of me. Have you forgotten?”

  That had been an old convent, too, the cobbled yard where Claude and Virginie had died. She swallowed. “Don’t compare battle scars with me, Jean-Paul. I’m not discussing whether I will do this. I am telling you what I will do and asking your help.”

  “This is throwing your life away. And you’ll take others with you.”

  “Then I will use only those men and women I have recruited myself. Not yours. Perhaps my people will be less prudent and cautious than you have become.” At once, she was ashamed of what she’d said. “No. I take that back. Forgive me.”

  On the upended trunk that made a table was a basket of bread, a bottle of wine, and water in a jug. She drank some water, straight from the lip of the jug, and set it down. “I will take no risks with anyone else. There will be no deaths. I promise.”

  “Except possibly your own.”

  “Not even that. I will be careful.”

  A square window opened at the corner of the eaves, over the bed. The stable yard below was noisy and reassuringly normal. This was an establishment where powerful men came to carouse. It was more private than the darkest graveyard at midnight. No one saw—and most especially, no one spoke of—anything. Certainly, they would not see a woman coming and going. There was an epidemic of blindness and muteness occurring here.

  Jean-Paul continued to scowl upon her. “You’d be safer in Normandy. If that man is worthy of you, he’d say the same thing. Get out of Paris. Go protect your people. Rebuild your network.”

  “After I finish this.”

  “Victor will be searching for you all over the city.”

  “We are experts in hiding what men like Victor want to find.”

  “We’re not experts in storming a citadel like that convent. If you try, you’ll kill yourself.”

  “I will not. I have never yet killed myself.”

  “You are stubborn as a block of wood.” She knew the exact moment she had won because he kicked the crate he was using as a footstool. “You are also stupid as a cow. How are you planning to accomplish this idiocy?”

  “I will think of something.”

  “There’s a sentiment to fill the heart with terror. And I am wasting my breath. How well I know you.” He stood up and reached his sleeve toward her. “Take this. Get me out of this coat. I can’t think when I’m stewing hot.”

  She pulled at his sleeve and helped him shrug out of the coat. He tossed it over the edge of an old screen. “Convince me it can be done. And let’s get the young minions out of here. The less they know, the better.”

  “The boy is already involved. He travels with Guillaume. I would not have brought the girl to this place, but she seems to know it well.”

  Jean-Paul shifted uncomfortably.

  She said, “I see. If Owl is employed here, we must put a stop to it.”

  He unbuttoned his cuffs and began to roll his sleeves up. “Of course.”

  “I mean this, Jean-Paul. I will not allow this to continue.”

  He sighed. “You do not change, Marguerite. And you are right. Very well, we will stop her from whoring, if that’s what she does. Can we do it after we have rescued your Guillaume and killed ourselves doing it?”

  “I can wait. I am not unreasonable.”

  “You are pigheaded beyond all reason.”

  “I am not pigheaded. I will not watch while a child that age works in a brothel. Though this particular brothel does not have the reputation of selling girls of her age.”

  “Who’s been talking to you about whorehouses? Damn it, Marguerite, if you need to know about whorehouses, you should ask me.” He stopped. “That didn’t come out right. What I mean is—”

  “I can hear you, you know.” Justine, standing on the ladder, propped her elbows on the floor of the loft. “This is a very expensive whorehouse, monsieur. If you like, I will see that you are entertained for the evening. Not the young boy, naturally. His innocence must be maintained at all costs. But you and the charitable mademoiselle who wishes to deprive me of my livelihood may come. We cater to all tastes here.”

  She heard Adrian mutter, “If breaking into prison doesn’t kill you lot, I might.”

  Jean-Paul closed his eyes briefly. “Let us proceed one catastrophe at a time. Unless you two have something to say, you should be elsewhere.” He waited, then said softly, “It is not that you are young. I’d say the same to anyone in La Flèche. You should go.”

  Justine’s chin rose. “If I have done so little—”

  We have been tactless, Jean-Paul and I. They are not children. She said quickly, “I am in your debt.”

  And it was not a child who studied her gravely. Justine said, “I will collect payment, mademoiselle. Be sure of it.” She disappeared. She could be heard, going out through the storeroom below.

  Adrian was a pace behind. He swung to the ladder, agile and silent. The two clomped noisily through the storage shed and out. It was their commentary on being dismissed. It was telling Jean-Paul they’d obeyed his order.

  It is a hard world where children become so subtle.“When I remove my Guillaume to safety, those two children must follow the sparrows to England. This is no life for them.”

  “Fine. We’ll send them to England. We will put them in school where they will astonish their classmates. May we now return to the business at hand. I’ll try to find someone who’s been in the convent. Get a floor plan.”

  “Try. But we have no time. Tomorrow, I must decide how to crack this nut.”

 
For a moment the darkness she had been holding off closed in around the edges of her vision. A soft emptiness invited her to give up. She would not, of course.

  Jean-Paul said, “Sit.” He pushed her shoulders. She was in the soft chair, among the feathers. “Don’t stand up for a while. What do we need?”

  The dizziness became manageable, though it did not go away. “Floor plans. The other houses in the street. Every house with a wall that touches the convent. Your man in the Bureau Municipal can get that. I need the distances on the street paced out. We’ve done this before. Maps, first of all.”

  Jean-Paul sat on her bed. “Maps. Distances. We can start that today. What else?”

  Thirty-five

  CARRUTHERS GRIPPED HER HANDS TOGETHER ON the blotter of the writing desk. Her face was grim. “We know where he is, at least.”

  Althea set the tray down on the small table beside the empty grate. “The Convent of Saint-Barthélémy on Rue Tessier.”

  “I’ve seen the outside. An impenetrable pile of stone. Do we have any ties to the place? Anyone who knows anything about it?”

  “Not yet. I’ve sent out word, asking.” Althea poured boiling water from the black kettle into the teapot.

  Carruthers’s face showed every one of her years. The discipline that contained her was very apparent. Her anger, close to the surface. “Look at the guards, of course. We’ll try bribery.”

  “We cannot get the accusation withdrawn. It was made by Victor de Fleurignac.”

  “This is the way we lose agents. Some fool lifts a skirt. Some pig must defend his cousin’s honor.” She crumpled the newspaper in front of her and tossed it into the basket by the desk. “Not for politics. Not for ideals. Not for useful intelligence. Just a woman. Even with a man like Will Doyle. Where is she?”

  “Not arrested. Not returned home.” Althea shrugged. “She’ll be good at hiding.”

  “Then we will be good at finding her.” Carruthers stared out into the afternoon slanting its way across the courtyard. “We have eyes inside La Flèche, of course.”