Dodger of the revolution, p.25
Dodger of the Revolution, page 25
But now, the Cupidon family lawyer had placed on some pince-nez spectacles and was reading very different material. Celeste had shown him the document what Nick had found inside a desk drawer in Hugo DeFarge’s wine shop soon after we’d shown it to her. Across the top of this document was written CERTIFICAT DE MARIAGE in big letters and further down, where it mentioned the betrothed, was the names Jean-Phillippe Lamoreaux and Cessette Cupidon, both with accompanying signatures. After staring at it for some time, he raised his head and spoke to Nick in French.
‘He says it proves things beyond all doubt,’ Nick turned to me, as I sipped at the apple juice I’d been served and looked over the now empty paddock. ‘Celeste and Jerome was never bastards. So JJ up there can inherit the entire Lamoreaux estate if he wants it.’
There was an open window above where the three of us was sitting and out of which we could hear the inconsolable JJ sobbing, as one who is in captivity would do. The boy knew he was destined to be rich anyway. He had boasted to Nick during their short time together in his father’s home and had even told my assistant where the document was kept. But he was reacting to the news that his hated mother had arranged its theft with very little grace, as he had wanted to share the wealth with his father instead. We could hear Celeste in his bedroom, trying to sing him lullabies and convince him of her love, but he continued raging against her.
Soon his mother’s voice was replaced by Francoise Regnaudot’s, who did a better job of soothing the angry little boy to sleep. When Celeste at last joined us on the veranda, we had lit several lamps and the air was heavy with mayflies. She looked overcome with exhaustion and I wondered when the last time she had slept was. Nick poured her some of the juice from the jug into a glass and she sat between her lawyer and myself as they conversed for a few minutes in French. Her voice sounded strained. At length, Max stood up with the document in his hand and retired into his study to peruse it further. He wished us all a bon nuit and then Celeste was left to discuss business with her two thieves.
‘Did Maximillian not offer you any wine?’ she said when she saw my glass.
‘Yeah, but I ain’t always in the mood to be drunk,’ I told her, and was surprised by the truth of it. ‘Now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, the time has come for my assistant and myself to raise the delicate matter of our fee.’
‘You were promised an awful lot of money to recover that paper for us, weren’t you boys,’ she said.
‘Indeed we was.’
‘But by my brother. Not by me.’
I glared at her. The distant booms of the Paris cannons could just about be heard even then.
‘Don’t toy with us, Celeste,’ I told her as I placed my glass down on the table and leaned in closer. ‘Because if there is one lesson you French should have learnt by now, it’s don’t upset the workers. I went through a lot of aggravation to get that document.’
‘And from what I gather, much of it was needless,’ she smirked. ‘While you were risking your life up on the barricades, trying to steal keys from my reckless husband, your assistant here was the one who succeeded in his task.’
Nick lifted his own glass up to his lips and smiled, as if he had been waiting for someone to point that out.
‘Be that as may be,’ I conceded. ‘He never would have been left alone in that wine shop to explore its rooms unhindered without my inveigling. And you never would have hired him without me on account of his age. So you still owe us what was promised.’
‘Oh, do not fear,’ she raised her palms in a defensive way and smiled. ‘I have every intention of honouring the bargain you made with Jerome. As soon as Paris becomes safe again, Max will present the document to the Lamoreaux lawyers and, once all the tedious legal matters have been taken care of, you will be paid the figure you were both promised. However,’ it was her turn to lean further in. She lowered her voice to a whisper even though nobody else on the premises spoke English, ‘I have been doing a lot of thinking since our conversation earlier, Jack.’
It was dark now and the longest day of the year was nearing its end. I had the strangest feeling that I was not going to like the turn this conversation was about to take.
‘I wish to make a new bargain,’ she told me. ‘But with you alone, Jack. Not with Nicolas.’
‘Why not with me?’ he asked.
‘Because what I am about to ask is far too perilous for one of your age.’
‘In which case it’s far too perilous for me ‘n all,’ I told her. ‘What is it?’
‘I want, if it is still possible, for you to help me rescue my husband from the firing squad.’
Nick and I looked at one another. I cannot recall which of us started laughing first, but we did not stop until Francoise leaned out of the open window above and told us to shush.
‘I’m not one of the Three Musketeers, Celeste,’ I shrugged. ‘I’m a thief. You’ve got the wrong man.’
‘I’ll double your fee if you agree to help,’ persisted Celeste.
‘Double of everything is worth nothing if you’re dead.’
‘You think it cannot be done?’ she asked. I considered this, as the orange cat jumped from my lap to Nick’s.
‘Most things can be done,’ I admitted. ‘It’s only a lack of daring what makes people think otherwise. But the risk is too great and I’m happy with my earnings as it is.’
I leaned back and swirled the last of my apple juice around as if it was a glass of brandy.
‘I cannot do this without you, Jack,’ she pleaded. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. But I truly feel that the only way I can earn forgiveness for abandoning my son all those years ago is if I can save his father’s life. And there isn’t time for me to go to anyone else about it.’
I found myself troubled then by the way in which Nick was looking at me. It was with a worrying air of misplaced faith and I hoped he was not thinking that I ought to agree to so lunatic a suggestion. On his lap, meanwhile, Cardinal Richelieu was regarding me as if he thought I was an imbecile either way.
‘Triple my fee,’ I said at last, once I’d drained the last of the juice. ‘And I’ll consider it.’
THE FRIENDS OF DEFARGE
Wherein I attempt an improvement on French cuisine
By the time I returned to the backstreets of Paris, the June Days Uprising had been raging for three days. The same city what had struck me as so majestic when I’d first arrived, had since been reduced to a right old rubbly, pitted and smoking mess. The revolution had not yet been defeated but there was a marked change in the street warriors I passed as I negotiated my way through the urban battleground. Gone was the celebratory spirit what had carried us all onwards when the fighting had been first declared. Gone was that sense of a fun day out for the poor. The insurgents was still out in force, but they was halved in numbers and all looked as if they would welcome defeat, if only for the chance to rest. A great many of the houses what I’d passed when entering the Saint Antoine vicinity a few days before had now had most of their plaster shot off by stray bullets, exposing the timber, the pipes and even many of the rooms behind. It was like walking past a giant set of open doll’s houses, so visible was all the decoration within. Meanwhile, straw was scattered over much of the streets to cover the blood and uncleared bodies, while many of the front doors had been kicked in. Evidence of looting and vandalism was everywhere as criminals of all stripes, most of them doubtless without a single revolutionary thought in their head, had taken advantage of the chaos around them.
It was early evening by then, and almost a whole day had passed since Celeste had tried to convince me to act against my natural inclinations and save the life of a man who she now claimed she had never stopped loving, despite everything. And yet it was still not dark. I could feel the shadows around the room lengthening though and heard the sounds of fighting in the distance get fainter. Night was creeping up slow again and this would bring about another ceasefire, until morning. I peered out of the first floor window to see who, if anyone, would be returning from the barricades after a hard day of battling the militia.
Before long, I saw a man turn the corner at the end of the lane and, even from this distance I knew he was the one I’d been waiting for. He had a musket slung over his shoulder, a cartridge belt strapped around his tunic and he walked with his shoulders slumped. Every so often he would adjust his pair of spectacles as if they was threatening to fall off and he spoke to nobody that he passed. He cut a very lonely figure. I moved back from the window, dropped the cigar what I had been concealing from view onto the floor and snuffed it out with my foot. I wasn’t concerned about starting a fire anyway, the room was already gutted and charred from the arson of yesterday. I had spent the past hour exploring every room of the now vacated wine-shop and there was a strong smell of ash even as high up as the garret.
The downstairs bar though, where the fire had been lit, no longer resembled anything other than a burnt out shell. The saloon bar itself was now like a lump of black charcoal, the panelled walls blackened and weak, the barrel tables now burnt to a crisp. All the bottles what had not melted had been removed and stored down in the cellars. The thick iron posts what acted as columns had all had their paintwork burnt off. There was no good reason for anyone to enter this bar now, other than to pass through it to the rooms above and there was not much reason to go up there either. However, my exploration of the various upstairs rooms and their possessions had revealed to me that one person was still living here.
The Irishman entered through the dark main bar, as I had expected he would. I watched him from deep with one of the hidden nooks, as he removed the cartridge belt from his shoulder and lowered the musket. It was not until he had rested the weapon against the wall and taken several steps away from it that I at last cleared my throat to alert him of my presence. He almost died on the spot from fright.
‘Mother Mary!’ he exclaimed when he saw me emerge from the shadows with Celeste’s silver pistol in my hand. ‘I didn’t spend the day getting shot at by the cavalry to return home and get felled by a burglar. Lord, let me go with more dignity than this!’
‘Cool yourself, Brendan,’ I said and pointed the pistol away from him. ‘This barker is just for security. I came here to talk, not to pop a ball into you. And my guess is that there ain’t no more ammunition in your musket anyway, so lets not even pretend this is going to turn into a shooting party.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘Why must you Englishmen continue to torment me? Is it about that wretched wedding certificate? I tell you, I don’t know where it is and I don’t much care! I’ve my own problems.’
‘Ain’t we all,’ I said and placed the pistol down onto what remained of the bar, stepping away from it in a generous gesture of trust. He was stood as rigid as the iron post beside him. ‘My problem is that I’m an opium fiend, Madame DeFarge’s problem is that her son hates her and your problem seems to be that you live in an ashtray by night and fight for a country that ain’t even yourn by day. Answer me this, what do you care if the French government shuts down the National Workshops? You ain’t from here, you can just move on to somewhere else if you don’t like it.’
‘I’m a rebel and I’ll die a rebel,’ he answered. ‘I’d oppose the ruling classes in their infamy, no matter where I was.’ He held his chin high although this could have been on account of the slippery spectacles. ‘And I fight because I’m one of the few surviving members of the Club of a Thousand Jacks. Most of the others are dead or captured by now and I daresay that one of those fates will befall me if I keep heading out with my gun every morning. But, damn, I have little else to live for. My job here, when the revolution began, was to guard the women and children and defend Hugo DeFarge’s shop. I failed on both counts.’
‘What have you heard of DeFarge?’ I interrupted, growing bored of his self-pity already. ‘They shot him yet?’
‘Not yet, but they will. More importantly, what have you seen of his son? You’re still in league with that bourgeois bitch that took him, aren’t you? Is he safe?’
‘He’s living with some very nice people on a horse farm just north of Paris,’ I answered. ‘About an hours ride away. He’s better off there than he would be in the middle of all this mayhem, so don’t go beating yourself up about letting him go. He has everything he needs. Trouble is, he misses his Papa. I’m here to see what can be done about that.’
‘What does that mean?’ Brendan asked, with a cold expression. ‘His Papa is soon to be killed and his mother only wants him for his fortune. Don’t come around here and start pretending you’re any friend to the boy, you’re his kidnapper’s accomplice and nothing more.’
‘Au contraire, as the French say. I’m his fairy godfather,’ I replied as I stepped even closer to him. By now, we was close enough to punch the other if we cared to and it was possible that either one of us might try at any moment. ‘Because I’m going to grant him his dearest wish. By which, I mean that I’m going to rescue Papa DeFarge from out the mouth of death.’
Brendan’s spectacles was almost slipping off his face. I noticed now that only one of the eyeholes still had glass in it, the other had been smashed away in battle. He raised a finger and pressed the ridge of the glasses back up his nose. Only then did he smile at me.
‘You’re an amusing one, London Jack, I’ll give you that,’ he patted me on the arm. ‘But I’m exhausted, so, if you don’t mind, fuck off and bother someone else with your nonsense. I’m going to what remains of my bed so I can be up bright and early for the slaughter tomorrow.’
‘Where is DeFarge being kept?’ I persisted. ‘Under the Tuileries palace, yeah? That’s what we’ve learnt so far. In situations like this, the government puts all their prisoners down in these cells below the palace on the waterside terrace. That’s where they locked the captives up during a similar uprising in February, that where they’re likely to be putting them now. Are we right?’
‘Who is we?’ Brendan asked in irritation.
‘The heroic trio what are going to rescue him,’ I answered. ‘The Three Musketeers I like to think of us as.’
‘You’re insane and you belong in an asylum,’ he said and turned to walk away. ‘All three of you. Goodnight, Dodger.’
‘You told me yesterday that they was planning on shooting the leaders of revolutionary clubs as an example to others. That means that they’re doing it somewhere visible to the public. That therefore means they ain’t done it yet, or you’d have heard about it and that, in turn, means he can still be rescued. Stands to reason.’
Brendan turned back to me and snapped.
‘D’you think that he’s some sort of romantic highwayman from the last century? D’you think that you can simply turn up to his hanging, fire off a few shots and dash off with him in the back of a carriage? He’s a political prisoner with a famous name. The republic will be guarding him and the other leaders tight. They’ll expect a rescue attempt to be made and they’ll have a whole battalion to cut down anyone who tries.’
‘A whole battalion?’ I scoffed. ‘For a handful of troublemakers? When there are tens of thousands of revolting Parisians, marauding about the place, laying siege to all the important buildings, trying to kill the men in charge of the cavalry? If Hugo has more than six people guarding him, I’ll be amazed. Most serving soldiers will be otherwise occupied.’
‘But those six will be armed and waiting for you.’
‘Nah, they’ll be waiting for revolutionaries,’ I countered. ‘They’ll be waiting for club-members, for an angry mob. It’ll be people like the late Armand or Father Pierre who they’ll expect. They’ll not be waiting for me.’
‘You flatter yourself.’
‘I’m a thief,’ I explained. ‘And back in London I’m considered a top-class one. I’m going to slip in behind them and run off with DeFarge like he’s Marie Antoinette’s final jewel-box. They won’t even know he’s missing until they go to fetch him for the firing range. Not only that,’ I held up a finger to stop him from pouring more scorn upon my reputation, ‘they will not be expecting someone like Celeste.’
I could tell from his expression that he had not been expecting her involvement.
‘Madame DeFarge?’ he said. ‘She’s one of your three musketeers?’
‘The rescue was her idea.’
‘But she hates her husband, she made his life a misery when they were married and betrayed him at every turn. She’s not even on the side of the revolution, so why would she do it?’
‘She has her own reasons for wanting Hugo alive what neither she nor I need to explain to you. The point is, as you was correct to note earlier, she’s a bourgeois bitch what has no sympathies with the revolution. That is why she’s been able to find out information about where they’re keeping him and what sort of security he’s under, which is more than any spy among your ranks ever could.’
I moved over to the bar window so I could see if anyone else was approaching from behind him. A full white moon was hanging above Paris by then and many desperate figures was seen darting about this way and that. Nobody was approaching this shop, however.
‘Celeste spent this morning visiting some old friends of hers what are high up in the Second Republic. They all know her to be a staunch conservative, so suspected no underhand motive what might harm them.’
‘How high up?’
‘The highest, so she says. You ever heard of a cove called Napoleon Bonaparte?’
‘Yes, and he’s been dead for over twenty years.’
‘Well, Celeste reckons she’s been on intimate terms with his nephew and heir.’
‘Louis-Napoleon?’ Brendan was more incredulous than impressed. ‘Of the National Assembly? When you say intimate terms, do you mean . . .?’
