The Forbidden Rose

by Bourne, Joanna

  “Marguerite . . .”

  “I have decided, Jean-Paul. It is this or nothing. We are committed.”

  They did not discuss it, but none of them moved from the spot. They would look further, but they all knew it was pointless.

  A wind exhaled from the quarries, beginning who knew where, and leaving through that hole far above. The thin flowing of air would have been imperceptible anywhere else. Here, she could hear it whisper past her ears.

  This is the kingdom of utter silence. Noise is a visitor here. In her hand, the candle flickered as she exhaled.

  And she knew.

  She said, “A well is not merely a hole in the ground. It is for bringing up water. The chain clinks of metal. The bucket splashes at the bottom. The load squeals going up again. We’ve been wrong. We do not look for the well. We listen for it.”

  Perhaps they were not cautious. Perhaps they raced too quickly from one chamber to another, to listen, with ears to the rock. But no harm came of it.

  Justine was the one who heard. Less than thirty feet from where they had dropped their packs she heard the faint, sharp creaking of the chain behind a wall of mortared stone blocks.

  Adrian ran for the picks and crowbars. It took five minutes to break the mortar and pry a stone loose. Carefully. Quietly.

  Jean-Paul whispered, “If this is the well, they can hear us down here. I don’t want them wondering why the frogs are talking.”

  He took the block out and stepped back. In that hand-width of opening, they saw the void behind. There was the most fragile and imaginary suggestion of light.

  “We’ve done it,” she said.

  Forty-three

  WHEN THE OPENING WAS LARGE ENOUGH, SHE leaned into the well and twisted around to look upward to the coin-sized circle of light above. Only a sou-sized coin, but it dazzled. Contrast is everything.

  They spoke in whispers. Every few minutes, the bucket came down the shaft and went up again, full.

  She chose a spot away from the opening of the well so her candles would not spill light into the well shaft, in case someone should look down. There was a corner where a block wall met another wall. This was where she would wait.

  “I want to say you can’t stay here.” Jean-Paul sighed. “But you’ll do exactly what you want.”

  “There is nothing useful for me to accomplish above ground. Victor is on the hunt for me. I’m in danger from him every step I take on the street. I endanger anyone with me.” That wasn’t why she had to stay. Jean-Paul would know that.

  “In La Flèche, we don’t make grand gestures, Marguerite.”

  “This one, I will make.”

  He knew the futility of arguing with her.

  She settled in to wait. Poulet came and kissed her on both cheeks and left his coat behind for her to wrap herself in and sit upon. He unpacked candles and flint and tinder and set them next to her. Also his flask of wine and all the food they had not eaten.

  Jean-Paul left his gold watch, his father’s watch, putting it into her hand as if it were a casual nothing. He unrolled a ball of twine, beginning at her feet, that would lead all the way out. “In case,” he said. He left his coat also and would not be talked into keeping it.

  Papa gave her the sticky dates he had found in the bottom of his pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief. He had been struck by several interesting observations of the magnetic waves beneath the ground. He began to describe them to her.

  But he proved perfectly willing to talk about his list of geniuses. The very one he gave Robespierre. Yes. There was a copy in the library at home. Not in his desk. He had left it in a book . . . He would find it for her.

  She pointed out that Victor had tried to poison her. Victor was very likely the man who had set assassins on his trail. And Victor was currently encamped at Hôtel de Fleurignac.

  “I see.” Papa absentmindedly ate one of the dates he’d given her.

  Justine, wide-eyed and unafraid, small and competent, took charge of Papa and led him away.

  Adrian stayed till last. “Don’t worry if we’re late.”

  “I am not addicted to worrying. I have a number of candles to keep me company.”

  “We have to fetch rope and the ladder rungs from the workshop in the Jardin des Plantes. Get them across town to the café. Bring everything all the way down here. It’ll take a while.”

  “So I should think.”

  “There might be gusts of wind coming out of that well shaft, the way it comes down a chimney sometimes. Set some of the candles where they can’t get blown out.” He pointed. “Over there.”

  “That is wise. Thank you.”

  “Don’t wander off and get lost. You need to piss, do it here.” Earthy, practical words in the lyric, slurring pronunciation of the South.

  “That is good advice, Adrian. I am sufficiently afraid of this huge darkness that I will not be careless with it.”

  “Put those coats over you before you feel the cold. You don’t notice it, but it’ll eat your strength up if you don’t cover up.”

  “I will.”

  “Probably not. I know I can’t make you.” His lips quirked. “Nobody tells you what to do but Doyle. And not him, much. I’ll let him know you’re here, waiting, keeping the gate. It’ll give him incentive. I’m leaving this coat behind because it’s got bloodstains inside. I can’t be seen in something like that. You want a knife? I got extras.”

  “You are kind, Adrian, but it would be of no use to me.”

  “My friends call me Hawker.”

  “Then I will call you Hawker.”

  He stayed an instant, looking at her closely, then followed the others, leaving her in this empire of dark and uneasy silences.

  Sound travels a long way in the rock. She heard their footsteps for a long while before the quiet closed over everything and she was alone. Poulet’s coat was the warmest. It smelled strongly of the musky scent he wore, but she did not mind. She wrapped herself in it and put Jean-Paul’s coat and Adrian’s—Hawker’s—under her and lapped them around her legs and was comforted. Time passed slowly.

  Sometimes the bucket fell with a splash, came up with the chain rattling, and fell again. It was a connection with the world above. Sometimes, when the bucket was quiet a while, there came a sudden, astonishing plink as a single drop fell all the way down to the water.

  It wasn’t fear of Victor that kept her here, or common sense of any kind. She kept a vigil, as if she had lit candles in a church and waited beside them the night through. Guillaume was a hundred feet away. She sat on his doorstep, with leagues of dark around her, keeping him company.

  From the brown cloth bag she had carried with her, she brought small matters to keep herself occupied. A book. Knitting. One does not need a great deal of light to knit stockings. One does it by feel and by counting. The sonnets were by the Englishman, Shakespeare, and so familiar she did not need to see the writing well.

  She had also brought a small bottle of glue and two brushes and papers of gold leaf. She took off the boots and began the business of gilding her toenails. The small toe, she did first, since it required the most contortion. Then the next toe. This was an exacting process and long, since everything must dry thoroughly before she applied the next layer of gold. She went about it with great patience.

  If Guillaume lived through the night and escaped, and she lived, she would surprise him with these gold toenails. It would drive him mad with passion. It would be very satisfying to be in bed with Guillaume when he was mad with passion. It was a thought to keep one warm even deep underground.

  Forty-four

  IN THE ATTIC ROOM OF THE BROTHEL, THE SMALL fry slept on top of the covers of the bed, sprawled out like a drunk soldier, limp as a dead fish. She’d probably spent a long day doing whatever it was kids did. Digging holes under the bushes out back. Eating worms. Getting underfoot of the horses and narrowly escaping death. Hard work.

  “Is she supposed to look like that?” Hawker said.

  “Yes.
You may be grateful she is not snoring,” Justine said. “What are you thinking, ’awker? Are you worried about tonight?”

  “Trying not to be. I’ll learn to love bumping around in the dark, eventually. Go down there for a stroll on Sunday afternoons.”

  “I will not join you there myself, thank you. They are putting old bones in those caverns, did you know? It is only in a single spot out of many miles of quarries, but one would not wish to stumble upon it by accident. They have taken bones from the ancient churchyards and put them in a cavern, piles and piles of them. I believe they sometimes stack them neatly.” She thought about it. “For some reason that is even more distressing. They move them in carts in the middle of the night.”

  “You could tell me anything about this city and I’d believe it.” He’d taken London for granted all these years. It might be damp and filthy, and the next time he poked a nose in London, Lazarus was going to have him killed. But at least they didn’t go carting the dead around like cord-wood. And London was solid underfoot. “Do you really eat donkey?”

  “I do not, though one never knows what adventures await one in life. I will give you warning if I plan to serve you donkey.”

  Doyle was going to feed him donkey. He just knew it. “Some folks go eating their way through the animal kingdom without any regard for common sense or decency. They’d dine on griffins and bats if somebody didn’t stop them.”

  “I will not serve you bats, either.” She cleaned the table where they’d been eating, brushing crumbs into her hand and walking over to toss them out the window. There wasn’t a scrap of food left. There was good food in Paris, at least in the whorehouses.

  It was a well-run house. He’d only seen the back end of it—the kitchen and the stable yard and the stairs up to the attic—but everything looked rich and smelled clean. The girls laughed a lot, even when there weren’t any men around.

  Justine was the youngest of the women by a couple years, so it wasn’t that kind of brothel. The kid on the bed, Séverine, would be left alone. Made his stomach heave, what they did with little kids, some places.

  “Who takes care of . . .” He waved his hand at the bed but didn’t say the name. The ruckus downstairs wouldn’t wake her. Saying her name might. “. . . the sprat while you’re out gallivanting around the city?”

  “You need not concern yourself about Séverine.” Justine unfolded a strip of white silk embroidered with flowers, snapped it briskly, laid it down the center of the table, and stroked it smooth. “We all watch after her.”

  You’d kill for the kid, wouldn’t you? Die for her. Cheat, steal, lie, whore yourself. You’d do anything. Lazarus would call that kid your ruling weakness. So now I know.

  “You and the whores are raising her.”

  “I do not let her see any of what happens in this house. She would not understand anyway. You do not need to reform us.”

  “That’s Maggie does that. Not me.”

  “Then do not. I have the greatest dislike of being reformed.”

  She’d rousted a dozen books off the table so they could eat. Now she set them back standing in a row, pushed up against the wall. She studied the effect. “Séverine is young. She will forget.”

  “She won’t.” He could say that, because he knew. “Don’t fool yourself. She sees everything that goes on here. Ask her, if you don’t believe me.”

  She kept at her tidying and ignored him.

  Her books were substantial, with leather covers, not the cheap bound paper they hawked up and down the streets. They’d been looted from some nob’s library, maybe, when the mob tore it apart. “LeBreton says the revolution heats up the kettle of idealism by burning books under it. He always has something pithy to say.”

  “Well, no one will burn these.”

  “Where’d you get the books? Steal them?” He liked to think she’d had the initiative, but she probably just bought them. He came over to open one. Lots of writing. He recognized some of the words.

  “They are lent to me by a friend. You will be careful with that.”

  “My hands are clean.” For God’s sake, she acted like he wasn’t good enough to even touch one.

  “I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . . no one comes here. I have lost the knack of hospitality.”

  No. Men didn’t come to this narrow broom closet of a room. No sign of it. Whatever Justine did in this house, it wasn’t making the beast with two backs in this room. Interesting to speculate on just what she did do for a living. If Doyle was alive tomorrow, he’d ask him what he thought.

  He held the book up, asking permission.

  He felt silly, sitting on the froufrou, dainty bit of a chair she had, so he took the book with him and sat with his back to the wall under the window where the light was good.

  She’d set him a mat here, last night, on the clear space under the window. He didn’t need watching over for a few scratches on his arm, and he didn’t need it washed and rebandaged this morning. But if a girl offered, he wasn’t going to turn it down. That was what you might call one of the guiding principles of his life.

  He’d found out last night that Justine snored. A burring, feminine little snore. Kind of pleasant.

  The book he’d picked had small print, but there were pictures. That helped. He couldn’t figure a lot of words. Pictures let him know the general territory he was walking around in.

  Halebarde. He put his finger under the text and started working his way along. Arme offensive composée d’un long bâton d’environ cinq piéds, qui a un crochet ou un fer . . . And there was one of those words that didn’t seem to mean anything much. Even if he could figure out how to say it, likely as not he’d never need it.

  Justine sat down beside him and took the book away. “You cannot pronounce French at all. You speak as if you came from the smallest hill village of Gascony. I think you are very stupid. And whoever sent you to France is even more stupid. Listen to me.” She read it off, making the words sound Parisian. “This is Diderot. The Encyclopédie. Everything there is to know is in here.”

  Now that was interesting. He’d like to know everything there was to know. “Read some more.”

  It turned out a halebarde was a stick with an iron hook on the end. Not useful just at the moment, since no one was waving one in his face, but it might come in handy someday. He said the words after her, memorizing and trying to get them right.

  She didn’t sound like Daisy, who’d taught him to speak French. From Gascony, Daisy was. He could learn two accents. He’d sort them apart in his head when he was talking.

  He put his arm behind Justine’s back so she could lean on him, instead of on the wall, him being softer and warmer than plaster. He wasn’t pushing. She could take him up on the offer or leave it.

  After a few minutes, Justine leaned against him and set the book half in her lap, half in his.

  They’d got to “halibran,” which was a baby duck and another word he was going to have only moderate use for, when she stopped and looked sideways at him. “Guillaume LeBreton was well when you went to see him?”

  “Well enough.” Doyle had got himself beat up in prison, but he was walking around. He’d do. “We didn’t take time to chat.”

  They’d had three minutes’ meeting in the open corridor. Time to pass over a ball of twine and tell him to send it down the well. To say the rescue was planned for midnight. That Maggie was waiting for him in the dark. Time to point out that nobody on earth was going to talk Maggie out of doing whatever she set her mind to and they were all just helpless corks bobbing in her wake and Doyle might as well get resigned to it.

  Then he’d slipped off to deliver another puzzling communication to the merchant they’d made use of before. More questions about inheritance from a relative he had never heard of, this relative being a figment of the imagination.

  “Will this work? Can your LeBreton do this?” Justine asked.

  “If he can pick two locks and get to the courtyard and he doesn’t come across somet
hing more interesting to do. He said he’s bringing other people out with him.”

  “That is unwise.” Justine frowned. “And it makes our part more difficult.”

  “Which I am sure is an object of great importance to him. Anyway, I didn’t have time to talk him out of it.”

  “You think he will be there, at midnight.”

  “I think he has to be.” There was no one else he could say this to, so he said it to her. “He told me his name was read out. They’re coming for him in the morning. If we don’t get him out tonight, he’ll die on the guillotine tomorrow, round about teatime.”

  Forty-five

  MARGUERITE PUT THREE LAYERS OF GOLD LEAF upon each toenail, stopping in between to knit and read poetry and let everything dry. She heard the voices before the tramp and shuffle of boots because they did not trouble to keep themselves quiet. Then the click and clank of metal they carried also announced their coming.

  When she held Jean-Paul’s watch to the candle she saw that it was eleven o’clock. Time had passed more quickly than she had thought.

  They were stars in the dark, the men who came with their lanterns, and there were a dozen of them. Two of them hefted huge coils of rope. Others carried lumpy sacks.

  “My Marguerite.” Poulet came in front of the others and dropped down to sit cross-legged beside her. “You must put your shoes on or my friends will go mad with desire. You have the most exquisite feet.”

  “I am told that,” she said. “It pleases my vanity no end.” His friends were young, all of them. Her own age, or younger. They dressed with great aplomb and style, expensively, in an extravagance of fashion that put large brass buttons upon their coats and spread lapels like wings across their breasts. Two of them wore gold hoops in the left ear, like pirates.

  They were not very good at being silent. They had dined well and smelled of wine and some of them were a little tipsy. When she listened to them speak, it was obvious that every one of them had been in these caverns many times before. They came to the quarries for the adventure of it. Because it was forbidden and dangerous.