Floats the Dark Shadow (29 page)

That was when his cousin reappeared, sliding into the chair beside him. “For words such as those,” Luc said, “Kropotkin was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.”

He looked a little like Michel’s true father, with finer bones and a more olive coloring than Michel had inherited. Luc’s easy surface charm barely concealed an inner ferocity. Michel responded to both instantly. The past was not dead. It was alive, here, now, with this man. Michel had found his true family again.

Luc filled him brimful of tales of woe and triumph. He told Michel how he’d fought at
Père
Lachaise
cemetery, the final bastion of the Communards. Michel envisioned the thick early morning fog that gave way to drizzling showers. He saw the cherry trees dripping rain like tears. Then the army blew open the gates and rushed upon them. The Communards fought hand to hand with the enemy amid the tombs. Most died in the battle. Those captured were lined up against a wall and shot. Luc claimed he was the fabled last man on the barricade, that he fired the last shot before he walked off into the mist. Paris wasn’t safe, so he took a new name and vanished.

“Where did you go?”

“Many places, Algeria, Madagascar, Dahomey. I was dealing guns two years ago in Abyssinia. I had a partner, but he took sick, Arthur Rimbaud.”

“The poet?”

Luc smiled. “A poet? Oh, I doubt that. Rimbaud was a cold-blooded, mercenary creature. He read nothing but books on engineering.”

Filled with hero worship, Michel believed him. Now he thought his cousin knew what stories would thrill him, as he had when Michel was a child. Of course, Luc told him stories about his parents, things he barely remembered, things he never knew. And, of course, they talked politics. The dream of anarchy—the triumph of the honest poor over the corrupt rich.

“What would be the perfect revolutionary act?” Luc asked him one day.

“For me? To rescue Louise Michel.”

Luc smiled. “And how would you achieve that?”

“She goes to trial in June.” Michel had fantasies, but he knew they were just that. “She will be heavily guarded.”

“In shackles.”

That stirred his anger. “We could organize—”

“—and be gunned down in the streets, as always.”

“A distraction then. A disruption.”

Luc waited.

“A bomb.” A spear of ice pierced Michel. He knew that Luc had led him to the idea.

“A bomb in the Palais de Justice.” Luc’s eyes glittered.

Michel hesitated. “An explosion to cause panic and in the chaos rescue Louise Michel?”

“Yes, of course.” Luc leaned closer. “And how would you do it? Do it and escape?”

They argued about various targets within the Palais de Justice and about the structure of the time bomb. Michel could visit his adoptive father at will. He could saunter off and explore various parts of the building. Luc suggested the Café Louis, where the lawyers gathered for lunch. Somehow, he even acquired an advocate’s robe. “I will walk unseen among them.” He laughed. Michel argued that an empty trial room would be the ideal target. But there were seldom empty rooms. Cases piled up endlessly. Reporters flocked the halls along with the accused and their lawyers.

Luc shrugged. “We can send a warning.”

“They would clear the building, but what if they searched for the bomb?”

“Stupidity can be fatal.”

Michel had imagined killing. In fantasy, he’d climbed the ramparts, fighting to the death and taking the enemy with him. But even at the height of his rebellion, he was by then enough Guillame Devaux’s son not to want to murder anyone. Perhaps Marcel Calais’s son had also seen enough horror. He’d watched his mother starve to death. He’d seen bloody, bloated corpses in the street, crawling with maggots. He’d seen his sister raped and bayoneted. The soldiers had threatened him with the same before Guillame Devaux entered the abandoned building and saved him.

He was also enough Guillame Devaux’s son to know of the million things that could go wrong when carrying out a crime.

Luc scoffed. “Do you think we’ll blow ourselves up? We are not idiots.”

The longer they talked, the more Michel resisted. The heroine of the Commune might be freed by a well-executed plan with many participants, but the most likely outcome would be slaughter in the streets. He felt both a coward and a fool when he expressed his doubt, but Luc only said, “I believe you are right. Rescue is impossible. Louise Michel might even refuse us. She is willing to be a martyr to the cause—to take that lump of lead into her heart.”

“You thought all along it was a crazy idea,” Michel accused.

Luc grinned at him. “I believe in crazy ideas. How else can I be an anarchist?”

Without his glorious plan, however futile, Michel felt bereft.

Leaning forward, Luc lowered his voice. “We cannot rescue Louise Michel, but nothing else needs change.”

It had all changed for Michel. For a second he felt only confusion, then a cold weight sank to the pit of his stomach. “The bomb.”

Luc’s smile was hard. “Propaganda by deed.”

Michel argued fiercely, “In
Le Révolté
Kropotkin says a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite.”

“A few kilos are a beginning. Wave after wave of us will crash down on them. In the end, we will obliterate them.”

“Or they us,” Michel said.

Finally, Luc just laughed at the idea of no one dying. “What does it matter? I will try to stay alive, but if I die killing them, I will become a martyr for those who follow.”

“Many are innocent,” Michel protested.

“There are no innocent bourgeois,” Luc said scornfully. Then, quoting Robespierre, “Pity is treason.”

“Robespierre was a monster.” Suddenly Michel was furious. “Pity is human.”

“You haven’t the belly for a revolutionary,” Luc sneered. “Your father would be ashamed of you.”

“My father fought to build a new world. All you want is to destroy.”

They argued and Michel stalked off in a rage. When he went back to Luc’s room the next day it was empty. Luc was gone. There was crumpled paper thrown away, bits and pieces of wire scattered about. There was a grainy substance Michel knew must be gunpowder. Luc planned to bomb the Palais de Justice. But when and where?

His cousin had acquired an advocate’s robe. Luc had a sense of drama. He would not be able to resist walking invisible amongst the enemy. Michel knew where his father kept his extra weapons, knew the location of the key. He ran home, unlocked the drawer, and took out the weapon. His adoptive mother stood in the doorway, crying, not understanding what was wrong, only that something was. Then Michel looked up to find Guillame Devaux standing in the doorway. His father did not look perplexed at all, and Michel realized that he knew about Luc Calais. His belly became a black bottomless pit in the knowledge of his own stupidity and the enormity of his betrayal.

“Where has he gone?” his father asked him.

“The Café Louis.”

“Stay here,” his father said. “Give me your word.”

Michel almost refused. He almost lied. Yet to have his word trusted was a terrible gift. “I give you my word,” he whispered.

And then Guillame Devaux was gone.

Five minutes later he heard the explosion. From half a mile away, it was no louder than a gunshot. His word made no difference now. He ran to the Palais de Justice. The street outside and the courtyard leading to the
café
were almost impassable. But the police knew him and let him through. His father lay scattered in pieces—a bloody arm, a leg, the agonized head still attached to the cratered torso. He had found the bomb and carried it out of the
café
, hoping to fling it into the Seine.

The police took Michel to the detective’s station. Overwhelmed with guilt, he went silently, but he did not think he could endure trial and prison. Dying would be easy, a cage unbearable. He told them he had warned his father. That at least was true. His father’s compatriots did not arrest him. They brought him brandy. They offered sympathy. At first, he wondered why they did not suspect his involvement, for he must have been seen among the anarchists. But no one treated him like a leper. Finally he realized that they thought he’d been acting as a spy. His father had covered for him.

Michel thought his culpability would come out when they arrested Luc, but they did not capture his cousin. No one knew his true name. No one had seen him in Paris since the explosion. There were endless places Luc could have gone, but Michel only knew where he’d already been—Abyssinia, Algeria, Madagascar, Dahomey. Running guns, he’d said, but those names suggested a stint in the French Foreign Legion. Their troops had been used against the Communards, but after the slaughter, many desperate rebels had fled there.

So Michel lied his way into the Legion.

Chapter Twenty-Six

THEO stood for a moment, stunned, then ran after Averill. The hall was empty, but she heard the front door slam. She would not chase him into the street. Clenching her fists, she sagged against the wall. She felt scraped bare, inside and out. Emotions raced along her nerves like fever chills, hot and cold ripples of anger, fear, and fierce desire.

Closing her eyes, Theo drew a deep breath. She could not continue to prop herself up in the back hall. The dinner invitation would give her another chance to talk to him.

She went upstairs to the guest room. Exhausted but too agitated to sleep, she paced and fretted, tried to read, paced again. “He loves me too,” she whispered fervently.

Whatever problems there were could be dealt with if they faced them together. At last she managed to doze fitfully until Bettine came to tell her it was time to change. After a sponge bath, she put on one of the dresses she kept here, a gift from her aunt. The taffeta skirt and bodice were striped in tints of pink and draped with fine net and white lace. Over them was a little corset of cerise satin embroidered with pink roses. It was a pretty dress and Theo knew she looked pretty in it, if more girlish than she liked. Bettine added some of the fragrant tea roses to her hair.

When she took her seat in the dining room, Averill offered one apologetic glance then avoided her gaze. The first course of tomato aspic looked like jellied blood and quivered unpleasantly. Theo forced herself to eat it. Aunt Marguerite chattered. The cocaine had left her a mass of jitters. She hushed under her husband’s cold stare. Francine made an attempt to draw her father out, sulking when rebuffed. He frowned at Theo but refused even to look at Averill.
Grand-mère
looked disapproving of everyone, especially the son-in-law who had banished her new puppy from the dining room. Theo was grateful for the uneasy silence. Her headache had returned full force. The clink and scrape of silver against china grated on her nerves. The candle flames flickered too brightly, distracting as snapping fingers.

Cod with pearl onions in a pale, bland cream sauce came next, valiantly garnished with parsley. Her uncle roused himself and began speaking of such current events as he deemed worthy for ladies’ ears. He looked at Theo pointedly, even as he continued to ignore Averill. Had he learned of their trip to the morgue? Or the murder? Getting embroiled in such events was considered crude by society—not mischance but inherent lack of character.

As the fish course was removed and sweetbreads placed before them, Uncle Urbain addressed her directly. It was an accusation, if not the one she expected. “You could not resist joining the furor at the École des Beaux-Arts today, could you, Theodora?”

“Yes, I was there.” She prickled with defiance.

Her uncle seized the argument. “You seem quite proud of your selfish indulgence when you should be ashamed. Because of you and your ilk, the École has been closed for a month.”

“The male students started the protest. They are the ones who should be ashamed.” Theo kept her voice level, but under the table she dug her nails into her palms. “They assaulted the two women students and ran them out of the school.”

“You see, only a meager two were even able to pass the test.”

Averill spoke up. “The women are held to a higher standard than the men.”

Her uncle swiveled, furious that Averill had taken her side. “You—”

Theo interrupted him. “Many women tested higher than the men but were not admitted.”

“You cannot know that,” her uncle sneered.

Theo drew breath to argue, but Aunt Marguerite chirruped her distress.

“If you say so.” Theo attacked the sweetbreads. Arguing with her uncle was always pointless, and for whatever reason he’d taken up the incident as a cause. He was glaring at her and at Averill, probably planning retaliation.

Her aunt struggled to find a topic to distract him. “Francine was asking if we would go to the country this summer.”

He frowned. “Have we not always?”

“Yes, but she hoped we could go to the estate and I believe it still needs repairs.”

“Wasn’t there a fire?” Theo asked, helping her aunt along.

“Yes, perhaps six months before you came to stay with us. It was quite terrible.”

There was a brief pause, and Theo presumed they were each remembering that fire.

Averill gave her a tight smile. “It remains in ruins. Brambles are overgrowing the stone—very picturesque.”

“As picturesque as the baron’s decrepit estate?” Theo asked.

“Not at all picturesque.” He turned his attention to
Grand-mère
then, said something to make her giggle.

“Next year, I will attend to the repairs.” Her uncle’s voice was sullen.

“But why postpone the work again?” Marguerite asked him, earning a deeper frown. Theo could see her struggle. The cocaine had left her skittish and argumentative, but she had too much experience of her husband’s wrath to persevere. Instead she sat, her eyes darting around the table, her hands moving spiderlike from one bit of jewelry to the next then scuttling up to twist her hair.

“I chose to invest in my laboratory instead,” Uncle Urbain explained as if to a moron. “I needed to expand the space, modernize the equipment, and improve the soundproofing.”

“That was far more important, of course,” her aunt murmured.

Far more important to have a place to vivisect his specimens, Theo snarled inwardly. Did he really need soundproofing? Averill said he cut the poor animals’ vocal cords. She pushed the sweetbreads around with her fork, unable to take another bite. After a few moments, they were replaced with a sampling of cheeses.

For some reason, her uncle considered the discussion a triumph. He turned to his daughter and said in a cajoling tone, “Perhaps this year we will go to Deauville. You would like that, of course, Francine?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And you, my dear?” he asked, turning to his wife. “Deauville would appeal to you this summer, would it not?”

“Of course.”

Uncle Urbain did not turn and ask her, but Theo thought she would be invited eventually. If she did not go, she would not see Averill for a month. That would be impossibly painful. Yet it would be misery to watch him subdued under his father’s domineering presence, day after day. But they could escape together. Averill could take her to paint the cliffs over the sea and the boardwalk. And Deauville meant the race track. That would be exciting. Or perhaps Averill would beg off. They would have Paris to themselves alone. Theo felt a flush of excitement radiating between her thighs, hot and sweet. Feeling her cheeks heat as well, she glanced at Averill. He was studying his food in a most determined manner.

They had finished the cheeses when Casimir was announced. With no pretense at subtlety,
Grand-mère
indicated the baron should sit beside their nubile Francine. He smiled, kissed her hand, then made small talk to everyone else with polished politeness. Francine sat hunched, casting yearning, resentful glances at him. Dessert was presented, a crumbly crusted tart with tiny wild strawberries and whipped cream. Theo still had little appetite but the fresh brightness of the berries tantalized her into a few bites. Casimir mentioned that he would soon be away for a few days, in Dieppe. This time, Averill exchanged glances with her. They knew Casimir was going to greet Oscar Wilde upon his release from prison.

Oblivious, Aunt Marguerite made pleasantries about the sea air. “It is still too early for the best weather. There will be rain. You should wait a month.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Casimir replied, as if he was actually considering it.

The baron was amiable as always, but Theo saw tension in his posture. He glanced from Averill to her uncle but avoided Theo’s gaze except when offering pleasantries. After dinner, the men went to the library for brandy and cigars. The women sat in the parlor, Theo’s tension winding tighter as she waited for a chance to speak to Casimir and Averill. She suspected the unexpected visit had something to do with the morgue. Her aunt asked Francine to continue on in
Les Misérables
. Francine read for about twenty minutes in her soft, inflectionless voice until Aunt Marguerite abruptly suggested they retire. Her eyes had a glazed eagerness. There would be a much-desired sleeping potion waiting by her bedside.

Theo loitered in the parlor, allowing her aunt and cousin to precede her out the door. When she entered the foyer, she heard raised voices behind the library doors. Her uncle exclaimed, “Murder!” But the rest was a blur of sound. She was tempted to eavesdrop, but the servants were still moving about the house. Frustrated, she went upstairs to her room and waited a few minutes for the women to settle into bed, then went to the head of the stairs. At last, she heard the library door open. Catching a glimpse of her uncle, she ducked out of sight until he ascended to his room. Returning to the overlook, she saw Averill and Casimir below. As she descended the staircase, she heard Averill say, low but angry, “Why did you tell my father we were questioned at the morgue? He was already furious about the cemetery.”

“Better he is forewarned in case the Inspecteur pays another visit. I was at the morgue with you. As a supposed suitor for his daughter, I must be forgiven—and you with me.”

“He will only blame me for implicating you.”

“He is mad. One can only do so much.” Casimir shrugged. “Forgive me?”

“As always.”

Theo did not want to eavesdrop. She wanted to be included in their conversation. Approaching, she called out their names quietly. They turned, startled. “You are talking about the interrogation at the morgue?”

They looked at each other almost guiltily. Then Casimir faced her squarely. “In part. The Inspecteur is troubled because I remembered another winged cross.”

“A winged cross?” She was completely perplexed. Casimir realized it at once and looked annoyed that he’d said anything. He glanced at Averill again. Theo was annoyed in turn. “I will not have hysterics again."

“You weren’t shown the photo of a winged cross of the back of the grave?” Averill asked.

“No.” An image teased the edge of her mind but would not take form. “I wonder why.”

“Because the Inspecteur does not think you capable of murder. The rest of us are suspects,” Averill said.

“It was a charcoal scrawl.” Casimir shrugged again. “Probably meaningless.”

“Then why was it important enough for a visit? You said you saw another?”

“By the Seine,” Casimir said. “People who scrawl on walls must have a limited repertoire.”

“Scrawls mean nothing. This mark does. Tell me.”

Casimir told her the sad story of the poodle washer. There did not seem to be a correlation, yet Theo was uneasy. “No one ever found her son?”

“He probably drowned. The Seine was right there.” Casimir frowned. “No doubt the detective exaggerates the significance of this scribble—but I was obliged to show it to him.”

“Of course,” Theo said. “There is a madman killing children.”

“If this detective even bothers to hunt for him,” Averill added. “He seems perfectly pleased to seize whoever is at hand.”

Theo shook her head. “I believe he is more competent than that. He just provokes us to see what will happen.”

She lingered, but Averill seemed determined to wait her out and continued to find questions for Casimir. He must not want to be alone with her again after what had happened in the library. Reluctantly, Theo bade them good night and climbed the stairs. Reaching the top, she paused and looked down. Averill and Casimir were still talking at the front door. Casimir stood with his well-tailored back to her, gloves in hand. He did not see her, but Averill glanced up over Casimir’s shoulder, briefly meeting her gaze.