A Desperate Fortune (13 page)

Protect the friends of your father: and remember the chiefs of old.

—Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book Four

Paris

February 1732

The man had returned to the window.

She saw the faint glow of his pipe in the dimness beyond the glass, fading and burning in time with his breathing. She hadn’t seen
him
yet, not clearly, but she’d seen his shape at the window on no fewer than three occasions this evening while she’d been arranging her things in this chamber that was to be hers, at the front of the house. The man’s house stood opposite, which on this small narrow street meant that there was not much to divide them. Had he tossed a stone to her she could have caught it with ease, she decided, especially as his room was on the first floor of that house, straight across from the lodgings that had been secured for herself and the others in rooms on the first floor of theirs: six fine rooms, fully furnished, with two rooms on the ground floor underneath that gave them private access to the street, so they were not obliged to use the common stairs shared by the other tenants. The rooms below were also where the maid, the cook, and the cook’s boy would do the best part of their labor, for Sir Redmond having dealt with every hazard had arranged things so that Mary and the man whom she’d be helping to protect would have no cause to leave their house to seek their meals.

That sounded over-grand to her, now that she thought of it: “the man whom she’d be helping to protect.” She was not truly a protection for him, merely a small piece of his disguise. Those who were searching for him would be looking for a man alone, she had been told, not one with family.

“When he does arrive,” Sir Redmond had explained, “you’ll greet him as his sister, and the servants will assume that is the truth of your relationship.”

“And then?”

“That is the whole of it, my dear. You’ll stay there with him until we are given word where we’re to send him. That may take some weeks, I fear.” He’d stressed the need for secrecy. “His liberty depends upon it. There are many who would seek to find him and so claim the rich reward that’s offered by the English.”

“Would it not be safer,” Mary had suggested, “if he were concealed somewhere away from Paris?”

“Men are better hidden in a crowd than in the country. It is yet the time of Carnival in Paris, when all within that city are well occupied with feasting and with revelry, and we have found you lodgings in a house in Saint-Germain, where you will further be protected by the Fair that does begin a few days hence.”

Mary had looked at him, confused. “In Saint-Germain? But—”

“Not in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, my dear, but Saint-Germain in Paris.” He’d explained it was a quarter of the city that had nothing to connect it to the palace or the town where she’d been born and where her brother had returned to live, except that they both honored the same saint and so did partly share his name. Sir Redmond, being then with Mary in the room that held his books, had found a map in one to show her. “See now, this is Saint-Germain. It takes its name from this old abbey at its center, Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It’s now primarily a prison, I believe, although the ancient church and abbey palace yet remain in use. And here”—he’d moved his finger slightly—“is the place where every year they hold the Fair, beginning on the day that follows Candlemas and lasting till the eve before Palm Sunday.”

Mary had begun to feel excitement at the prospect of a fair, until Sir Redmond had reminded her that she would not see much of it. “I’d rather that you did not venture too far from your lodgings, and then only when it cannot be avoided.”

It was not, she thought, the way she had imagined seeing Paris.

She had dreamed of a city of beautiful buildings and gardens and bridges that gleamed in the sunlight, and churches with bells that rang over the river that wound past tall houses and streets paved with stones. She had dreamed of the salons and lively discussions, of places of learning and shops filled with wonderful things. She had so far seen none of it.

All the way in on the road from Chatou she’d been closed in a chaise with Madame Roy, the dour-faced woman who had been selected to serve as her chaperone. They had been shuttered away, kept from seeing the things they were passing until they’d arrived in this tight narrow street and had entered these rooms where she had to take Sir Redmond’s word for the fact that the old abbey church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés even stood where he’d shown her it did on the map, a mere few streets away, for outside her own window the tight line of houses leaned so high that she could see nothing beyond their walls.

Only the slow-burning glow of the pipe of the man in the grimy house opposite.

Mary yanked at the calico curtains that hung at her window and drew them together to gain herself privacy.

Frisque, who’d been battling the fringe of a carpet in front of the clothespress, turned now with a wag of his tail as the chaperone entered their room with a purposeful rustling of linens and silk.

Madame Roy was a tall, middle-aged woman, healthily formed, with an unsmiling face deeply pitted from smallpox and straight hair the color of pewter confined by a cap with long lappets that hung to her shoulders. She spoke perfect French, though her accent was one Mary hadn’t been able to place. Mary couldn’t be sure Madame Roy was the woman’s real name, because Mary herself had been given the alias “Mademoiselle Vasseur” for her time here, so she would match “Monsieur Vasseur,” the man who would pose as her brother.

The chaperone held in her arms the two new gowns Sir Redmond had ordered for Mary. Both were finely made and of the latest fashion called the
robe
volant
—unstructured at the front and with a long front seam that, instead of dividing over the petticoat as in the old style, stayed closed nearly all the way up, parting only above the waist to show the ribbons and ties of her stomachers. Both gowns had lovely broad pleats spreading down in the back from the shoulders, and full sleeves gathered at the elbows into soft cuffs trimmed with scalloped falls of lace, and both were styled in bold damask prints, one a richly olive green and one the color of ripe plums.

Madame Roy explained her entrance with, “I have to hang them in the clothespress.”

“Here, let me,” Mary said too quickly, for she’d left her journal and the pen case lying in an open drawer within the clothespress, being too distracted by the pipe smoker to properly conceal them. As she gathered up the folds of gowns and petticoats from Madame Roy, she added, “I fear I’ve not been a very sociable companion. Do forgive me.”

“I have rarely been accused of being sociable myself.” A twist that might have been a smile turned up the corners of the older woman’s mouth. Her eyes looked pewter gray as well, and Mary found them difficult to read. “It is a tiring thing to travel. I expect you’ll feel more settled once your brother has arrived.”

The man who was to be her brother came by coach next afternoon.

He was, to her surprise and pleasure, rather like her brother in appearance—of the same age and the same build and of middle height like Nicolas, and with an oval face as frank and friendly. He wore a short white-powdered wig that made a contrast to his darker eyebrows, and his eyes were hazel green and large, inclined to narrow slightly when he smiled. He smiled often.

He spoke educated French, a scholar’s French, and had the manners of a gentleman.

“My dear Marie,” he greeted her as smoothly as an actor, with a warm embrace as genuine as if he had in truth been her own brother. “It is good to see you well.”

He gallantly removed his cloak and passed it to the waiting maid together with his gloves, and climbed the stair with Mary to their suite of rooms where he proceeded to warm every corner of that space with personality. He charmed the servants, one and all, made Mary laugh, and even coaxed a proper smile from Madame Roy. Frisque, being not as fond of male companionship, was harder to impress, but by the week’s end even he was coming round a little.

Mary played her part as well as she was able. She knew nothing of this man but that his name was Jacques, or so she had been told, and she could hardly ask him questions in this house where they were never on their own together, but she nonetheless reached some conclusions of her own.

She did not think that he was French. He spoke without a hint of accent, but his choice of words was often not in keeping with the words she would have chosen, and at breakfast on the third day he stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence with a sudden look of vague surprise, as though he either had forgotten what he was about to say, or did not know the phrase for it. She finished off the thought for him and teased him for becoming so distracted, hoping humor would keep any of the servants from perceiving his small stumble, and he smiled at her in gratitude, but from that moment on she was convinced he was not French.

And while he clearly did not labor with his hands, he had the faintest callous on the middle finger of his right hand as a man acquired from daily taking up a pen or pencil.

She herself was gaining something similar from writing in her journal every evening, after supper but before Madame Roy came to bed. It was a peaceful moment she looked forward to, alone with pen and candle and the blank page of her journal as she worked the simple cipher Mistress Jamieson had made for her, to write her thoughts in private.

I
am
inclined
to
think
, she wrote,
that
Jacques
may
be
a
poet
or
a
satirist, and persecuted by the English for his bold attacks on them. In truth he has a cutting wit and keeps us all amused
.

The candle dipped and danced, caught in a stray draught that had seeped with stealth around the window frame, for outside it was growing colder from the darkness and the bitter wind that chased between the houses, down the narrow street. The street, she knew now, had a name: the rue du Coeur Volant. The street of the flying heart. Quite a romantic name for such a mean and deplorable thoroughfare; and yet at night all its ugliness faded, subdued by the light of the lanterns that caught the bright clothes of the revelers passing beneath on their way to and from the great Fair Saint-Germain in the next street but one.

Mary rose now and crossed to the window to watch them a moment and tried not to yearn quite so strongly to follow them, telling herself there would be other years, other fairs, other chances. She leaned on the glass so she would not be forced to see her own reflection in place of the wider world, much like the linnet confined to its cage might press one eye close up to the bars and so fool itself.

Frisque whined at her feet as though sensing her mood and she bent low and lifted him up so that he could see, too. Through the glass and above the hard wind she could hear mingled shouting and music.

“It’s all right,” she told the dog, holding him tightly. “It’s still an adventure.”

A tale for her memoirs.

A small speck of light caught the edge of her gaze from the dark of the tall house across the street. Turning her head just a fraction, she watched till she saw it again, to be sure: the faint glow of a pipe held by someone who stood at the opposite window, now fading, now burning, in time with his breathing.

* * *

“I’m certain,” said Jacques the next morning, “there’s nothing at all to be causing concern.”

She had broken her strict rule of keeping in character, speaking of nothing but trifles. She’d risen yet earlier than was her custom and waited for Jacques in the breakfast room so she could ask him to speak with her privately. No easy thing in this house, but they’d managed to find a small passage between rooms with no one about and the servants well busy below.

“He was at the window on the day before you came as well,” Mary went on. “I did think nothing of it then, for people often take an interest in new neighbors, but I’ve thought about it since, and I do fear he may be watching us.”

“Watching you, possibly. And who could blame him?” Jacques smiled in his charming way. “No, I have faith in our friends. I have lasted some months without being discovered, I’ve truly acquired an instinct for possible danger. And here, I sense none.”

But she still felt uneasy.

He told her, “I’ll prove it. I’ll take you to Mass.”

Mary shook her head forcefully. “No, we are not meant to leave the house.”

“My orders were not to leave it unless it could not be avoided,” he answered her smoothly. “And I’d be a very poor brother indeed if I put you in peril of losing your soul. You are Catholic, I take it?”

She paused, and then nodded.

“Well then. I shall order a chaise,” he assured her, “to carry us safely to church and then home again. We will be perfectly safe.”

And they were. Madame Roy went as well, and although it took Mary some minutes to quell the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed, the great beauty at last of the church with its frescoes and colored-glass windows and music that filled the whole soaring interior, fit for a choir of angels, allowed her to conquer her fears.

They returned the next week also, and in all the days between she saw no sign of the man watching from the window of the house across the street. The days settled into domestic routine, and she ceased writing anything down in her journal because there was nothing of note to record.

So on Wednesday the thirteenth, when Jacques said at dinner, “The cook’s boy says there is to be a new play in the rue de Bussy this night, just round the corner. An excellent pantomime. Shall we attend?” Mary managed no more than the smallest of protests, her own faint misgivings soon calmed by the thought of Sir Redmond’s advice that a man could hide best in a crowd.

And oh! The relief to be out of the house. Mary had to contain herself, trying to act with a confidence that would befit Mistress Jamieson were she to walk in a Paris street, here in the snow with the joy of the Carnival atmosphere spilling on all sides around her, the sounds of the Fair and a gentleman guiding her through it, her hand safely held in his arm with Madame Roy an ever-watchful presence just behind.