by C. S. Harris
“You say Miette was never captured?”
“Never. He simply disappeared. Some of the smaller stones were recovered in Paris in the days and weeks following the theft. But the major pieces—the French Blue, the Bazu, and many, many others—have never been seen again.”
“Do you know the names of any of Miette’s colleagues?”
Francillon frowned with the effort of memory. “Let me see. . . . There was Cadet Guillot; he is probably the best known, along with a man named Deslanges. And, of course, Collot.”
“Collot?” said Sebastian sharply. “You mean Jacques Collot?”
Francillon looked at him in surprise. “You have heard of him?”
“I have. He claims he comes from a long line of Parisian lapidaries.”
Francillon threw back his head and laughed. “I suppose he can certainly claim to come from a long line of ancestors with a marked interest in jewels. But I’m afraid the Collots’ talents have never been those of a lapidary.”
“Meaning?”
“The Collots are thieves,” said Francillon, his lean features hardening. “And they have been for a hundred and fifty years or more.”
Sebastian was in his dressing room rubbing ashes into his face when Hero came to stand in the doorway behind him, the black cat perched regally in her arms.
He looked over at her and smiled. “So, where was he?”
“He’d somehow contrived to get himself shut in the tack room in the stables.”
“Someone needs to tell him about curiosity and the cat.”
With a contemptuous lashing of its long, fluffy tail, the cat jumped from her arms and ran off. “I did,” she said. “He didn’t appreciate it.”
She brought her gaze back to his worn breeches and leather waistcoat, the disreputable coat and grimy shirt gleaned from the secondhand clothing stalls in Rosemary Lane. He’d also wrapped padding around his waist that effectively altered both his silhouette and his gait. “Do I take it you’re not planning an evening at your club?”
He leaned forward, his gaze on the mirror as he dabbed more ashes mixed with grease from the kitchen onto the dark hair at his temples. “I’ve just had an interesting conversation with the lapidary, Francillon.”
“Oh?”
“He tells me there’s a strong possibility the theft of the French Crown Jewels was actually engineered by the revolutionary French government.”
Pushing away from the doorframe, she wandered the room, fiddling first with a box of collars, then with one of the ragged coats Calhoun had assembled for Devlin’s selection. “What makes you so certain this blue diamond is in any way connected to Eisler’s death?”
“At this point, I’m not certain it is. I’m also hearing credible stories about the man’s cutthroat lending practices and certain aberrant sexual practices that could very well be what ended up getting him killed.”
She glanced over at him. “Define ‘aberrant.’”
“Compelling attractive young women to lie with him when they—or their husbands—fell behind on interest payments.”
A wave of revulsion flickered over her face. “I’d say that goes beyond aberrant, all the way to downright evil. The more I hear about Eisler, the more I think whoever killed him deserves a reward rather than punishment.”
Sebastian wiped his hands on a towel. “I might agree, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Whoever murdered Eisler is about to let an innocent man hang for what he did.”
“True.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “So why this continuing interest in the French Crown Jewels?”
“Because for some reason, the more I look into Eisler’s affairs, the more the French Blue keeps coming up. It obviously fits into all this somewhere; I just can’t figure out where or how.”
“Which is why you’re dressed like a fat publican down on his luck?”
Sebastian reached for a battered black hat and settled it low on his forehead. “I’ve decided I need to have another conversation with my friend Jacques Collot. A candid conversation.”
Hero smiled. “And what do you expect him to tell you?”
“Mainly, what happened to the French Blue between the time it disappeared from the Garde-Meuble in Paris and when it reappeared in Daniel Eisler’s possession shortly before his death.” Propping one foot on the edge of a bench, Sebastian loosened the dagger he kept in a sheath in his boot, then straightened to slip a small double-barreled pistol into the pocket of his tattered greatcoat. “And maybe—just maybe—where the bloody diamond is now.”
Chapter 31
B
y the time Sebastian reached the parish of St. Giles, the darkness of the night was complete, the sickle moon and few dim stars that had been visible earlier at dusk hidden now by a haze of coal smoke and scattered clouds. The smell of cook fires and a pervasive dampness left from the day’s rain hung heavily in the air, underlain by the inevitable stench of effluvia and decay. As he paid off his hackney driver, a tousle-haired woman in a tawdry, low-cut red gown emerged from the shadows of a nearby doorway to smile archly. “Lookin’ fer some fun, gov’nor?”
Sebastian shook his head and turned to push his way through the raucous, drunken crowds of costermongers and day laborers, thieves and pickpockets, doxies and beggars, his gaze carefully scanning the sea of rough, dirty faces.
The East End of London was choked with men like Collot: raised in want and desperation, uneducated, angry, and long ago cut loose from the moral underpinnings that typically anchored those who looked askance at them. Most were English or Irish, but in their midst one also found many French, Danes, Spaniards, even Africans. Living precariously from day to day, subsisting largely on potatoes and bread and crammed as many as five or ten to a room, they wreaked their own kind of vengeance on a system that viewed them as a permanent “criminal class,” impervious to improvement and suitable only for containment. Those who didn’t die young or violently could generally look forward to being either hanged or transported to the nasty new penal colony at Botany Bay that had replaced the earlier hellholes in Georgia and Jamaica.
With each step he took, Sebastian allowed himself to sink deeper and deeper into a persona he had affected often during the war, when he’d served as an exploring officer in the hills of Iberia. It was Kat who’d first taught him, long ago, that there was more to carrying off an effective disguise than a dirtied face and old clothes; successful deception lay in recognizing and altering the subtle differences in movement and posture, mannerisms and attitude that distinguish us all. Gone were the upright carriage, the easy confidence and demeanor of the Earl’s son. Instead, he moved from one public house and gin shop to the next with the stooped shoulders, ducked head, and furtive sideways glances of a man who had never known command, who had been forced to claw and bluff his way through life, who could rarely be certain where his next meal would come from, and who always knew that the heavy hand of vengeful authority could fall upon him at any moment.
It was in a public house just off Great Earl Street that Sebastian finally spotted his quarry in earnest conversation with three cohorts huddled around a battered table. Ordering a pint of ale from a barmaid who couldn’t have been more than fourteen, Sebastian stood with his back to the counter, one knee bent so that the sole of his boot rested against the rough planking behind him. The close atmosphere smelled of spilled ale and tobacco and unwashed men. Narrowing his eyes against the smoke, he watched Collot nod to his cohorts and rise from the table to walk toward him.
Sebastian held himself very still.
But the Frenchman brushed past Sebastian without a flicker of either recognition or suspicion and pushed open the door. His companions remained at their table.
Setting aside his tankard, Sebastian followed Collot out into the dark coolness of the night.
He trailed the Frenchman down a crooked lane lit only by a rare torch flaring in a rusted sconce fastened high to the side of a crumbling wall, or by whatev
er dim light filtered through the thick, grimy panes of old glass in the windows of the occasional coffeehouse or gin shop. Quickening his pace, he caught up with Collot just as the Frenchman was passing a narrow alley between a pawnshop and a tallow-candle maker.
As if sensing the danger behind him, Collot half turned as Sebastian plowed into him.
“Mon Dieu!” he cried as the force of Sebastian’s momentum carried the two men deep into the fetid darkness of the alleyway.
Sebastian slammed the Frenchman face-first against a rough brick wall, one hand tightening around Collot’s right wrist to yank his arm behind his back and lever it up, effectively holding him pinned in place.
“Bête! Bâtard!” swore Collot, his gray-whiskered face twisted sideways, his hat askew, his one visible eye opened so wide Sebastian could clearly see the white rimming his dark, dilated iris as he struggled against Sebastian’s hold. “Put a hand on my purse, you whore’s son, and I’ll—”
“Shut up and listen to me very carefully,” hissed Sebastian, every affectation gone from his manner.
Collot stilled. “You?”
Sebastian drew his lips back into a smile. “Yes, me.”
“What is this? What do you want?”
“Two rules,” said Sebastian softly. “Rule number one: Don’t even think about lying to me again. Lies have a tendency to make me cranky, and I’m already not in the best of moods at the moment.”
“But I did not lie—”
“Rule number two,” said Sebastian, increasing the pressure on the Frenchman’s arm in a way that made him grimace. “Don’t waste my time. There’s an innocent man in Newgate who’s liable to hang for a murder he did not commit. Which means that when you waste my time, you’re helping to kill him.”
“Are you so certain, monsieur, that he is indeed innocent of what he is accused? Perhaps you—”
“You’re forgetting rule number two,” said Sebastian evenly.
Collot fell silent.
Sebastian said, “I learned something interesting today. It seems that, far from coming from a family of Parisian lapidaries, you are actually descended from a long line of Parisian thieves.”
Collot huffed a nervous laugh. “Jewel thieves, jewelers—is there such a difference?”
Sebastian was not amused. “Tell me about the theft of the French Crown Jewels from the Garde-Meuble in Paris.”
“But I never—”
Sebastian tightened his grip. “Now you’re forgetting both rule number one and rule number two. You told me you sold jewels to Daniel Eisler in Amsterdam in 1792. What I want to know is, was one of them the French Blue?”
Collot gave a snort of derision. “You think they would allow us to keep something as valuable as the Emblem of the Golden Fleece?”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“Danton.” Collot spit the word out as if it were a bite of tainted old mutton.
The name caught Sebastian by surprise. A coarse, physically ugly mountain of a man, Georges Danton had initially fled the Revolution, only to return and rise to prominence as one of the architects of the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Reign of Terror. “Danton? Not the Minister of the Interior, Roland?”
“They were both in on it—the two of them, Danton and Roland, working together.”
Sebastian said, “It was Danton who eventually sent Roland to the guillotine.”
“Eventually, yes. But in September of 1792, Danton and Roland were allies. Danton and Robespierre were also allies at one time; remember? Only, that didn’t save Danton’s head when Robespierre eventually decided to move against him, now, did it?”
Sebastian shifted his grip to swing Collot around to face him. In the flickering light thrown by a distant torch, the Frenchman looked pale and slack-jawed, his wayward eye more noticeable than ever. “Why should I believe you?”
Collot turned his head and spat. “Why should I care whether you believe me or not? I am telling you, Danton and Roland wanted to sell the Crown Jewels because the government needed the money. Only, the other members of the government would not agree. So Danton arranged to have the jewels ‘stolen’ instead.”
“And the French Blue? What happened to it?”
A distant burst of laughter jerked Collot’s attention, for a moment, to the lane at the end of the alley. Then he brought his gaze back to Sebastian and smiled.
“You don’t know anything, do you? That was September of 1792, when the combined armies of Austria and Prussia were camped at Valmy, just a hundred miles from Paris. Together, they outnumbered the French troops facing them nearly two to one. If they had advanced on the city then—in the middle of September—they could have taken Paris. The Revolution would have been over. Finished. That’s what Danton was afraid of. He knew what his life would be worth if Louis were restored to the throne.”
“What are you suggesting? That Danton used the French Crown Jewels to bribe the Prussian and Austrian armies not to attack Paris?”
Collot gave a harsh, ringing laugh. “Not the Prussians and the Austrians; their commander.”
Sebastian’s eyes widened, for Collot’s words opened up an entirely new angle on Eisler’s murder. He took a step back and released Collot so suddenly the Frenchman sagged and almost fell.
For the man commanding the Prussian and Austrian armies at Valmy was none other than Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, husband to George III’s sister, the English Princess Augusta, and father to Princess Caroline. . . .
The estranged wife of George, the Prince Regent.
Chapter 32
F
inding himself unexpectedly free, Collot took off in a stumbling trot down the alley, his hands splayed out awkwardly at his sides, the tails of his tattered coat flying in the damp breeze.
Sebastian let him go.
He was remembering a dark carriage looming out of the night, a frightened young man running toward those whom he believed were his allies, the deadly spurt of flame from the end of a darkened rifle barrel. Who would do something like that?
The obvious answer was, people without conscience or scruples.
People who see their own agents as expendable.
People with far more at stake than a mere diamond, however big and rare.
Still turning Collot’s revelations over in his mind, Sebastian emerged from the alley into the raucous turmoil of the street beyond. Someone was scraping on a fiddle, and half a dozen Irishmen were dancing a jig, cheered on by a circle of laughing, ragged women. Beyond them, he could see a lithe, pockmarked man wearing a small-brimmed, dented hat and standing by himself on the far side of the street. He had one shoulder propped against a rough brick wall, his hands thrust in his pockets, his gaze seemingly directed toward a saucy redheaded bit o’ muslin who was smiling at him. But when Sebastian turned south, toward Covent Garden, the man readjusted his hat and pushed away from the wall to follow him.
As he wound his way up the crowded street, Sebastian was aware of the pockmarked man behind him. The man hung well back, always careful to keep some distance between them. But when Sebastian paused to gaze through the misted window of a coffeehouse, his shadow paused too. The man had a lean, sharp-boned face with a small nose, a pointed chin, and dark hair. His clothes were those of a day laborer or apprentice. . . .
Or someone considerably more unsavory.
Whistling softly, Sebastian continued on.
The pockmarked man fell into step behind him.
As they neared Long Acre, the crowds became more scattered, the neighborhood less depraved. Sebastian quickened his pace, his footsteps and those of his shadow echoing dully in the narrow streets. He turned right onto Long Acre, then immediately drew back into the darkened doorway of a button shop. The pockmarked man rounded the corner and continued past Sebastian some three or four paces before becoming aware that his quarry had suddenly vanished. He abruptly drew up.
Sebastian stepped from the doorway into the light of a street lamp and said, “Who are you and why the
hell are you following me?”
The man whirled. Rather than dissembling or startling in any way, he whipped a nasty knife from beneath his coat and lunged forward to slash the blade across Sebastian’s stomach with enough force to have disemboweled him if the steel had cut flesh. Instead, the knife ripped through the covering of the bolster Sebastian had used to pad his torso. A cascade of white feathers spilled around them, fluttering in an airy flurry to the wet pavement.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” For one unguarded moment, the man stared at him, confused.
“You son of a bitch,” swore Sebastian, his boot lashing out to smash into his assailant’s wrist.
The impact sent the knife careening into the darkness. Sebastian followed the kick with a jab of his right fist that caught the man high on the cheekbone and spun him half around. A second blow glanced across his ear and knocked the dented hat flying.
With an angry roar, the assailant lowered his head and charged, fists flailing. But the feathers were slick underfoot, the soles of his shoes slipping, throwing him off balance. Sebastian landed another punch against his assailant’s temple. The man broke and ran.
Leaping off the flagway into the street, he nearly collided with a hackney drawn by a skittish chestnut. The horse reared, neighing in alarm as the man dashed down the narrow lane that led to St. Paul’s and Covent Garden Market.
Sebastian pelted after him.
They erupted out of the lane into the broad market square, its stalls now shuttered in the darkness. During the day, the piazza before St. Paul’s was the site of London’s largest produce market. But at night, it was given over to the city’s demimonde. Painted women in low-cut gowns hissed and whistled as the two men pelted across the square, sliding awkwardly on the mushy cabbage leaves and smashed rotten fruit underfoot.