For the King (15 page)

Roch read the list twice, his heart pounding, expecting the name
Antonin Miquel
to jump at him from the page. Fortunately, no, it was not there. But, as the newspaper pointed out, more deportations were to follow shortly. This was but a respite.

Roch looked up when he heard a triumphant chuckle. Sobry’s adversary was rubbing his hands, where prominent blue veins pulsated under loose skin. The old man seized one of his “ladies” and flew over three of Sobry’s pieces.

“Now what do you say to this, Citizen Commissioner?” he asked, beaming.

“What can I say? I cannot move. You won, Citizen, as usual.”

The elderly man pulled his watch. “Time to head home,” he said. He grasped his hat and umbrella and wished the company a good evening. Sobry pushed the board towards Roch.

“Want to take your turn trouncing me, Miquel?” he asked, smiling ruefully. “You are more skillful than I with the ‘ladies.’ ”

“No, thank you, Sobry. I am in no mood to play tonight.”

Sobry became grave. “I can imagine.”

“You heard about my father, then?”

“The Prefect didn’t make a mystery of it. I am sorry, Miquel. What about you? Are you making any progress in the investigation?”

“Not much. Do you know of the Mayenne Inn?”

“Of course. No Chouan comes to town without setting foot there, or being connected to the place in some manner or other.” Sobry looked into Roch’s eye. “There you go again with your Chouans. This won’t help your father.”

“On the contrary, the only way to help him is to find the assassins.”

“In any case, leave the Mayenne Inn alone. The owner, Gillard, has friends in high places.”

“You mean Dubois?”

“Yes. And the Prefect has grown bolder in protecting his friends. He must think that it is only a matter of days before Fouché is dismissed. Dubois hopes to be appointed Minister of Police then.”

Roch stared at Sobry. “Dubois? Minister of Police? You can’t be serious.” This would be the worst news of all. Dubois would then make sure that Old Miquel be deported immediately.

Sobry nodded gravely. “Oh, I am quite serious, and so is Dubois. He never liked you and, mind you, he is not alone.”

“I know.”

“And you underestimate the Prefect’s determination. Once again, Miquel, leave the Mayenne Inn alone, for your own sake and that of your father.”

“Yes, of course,” muttered Roch.

There was no point in arguing with Sobry. Roch drained his glass of wine and bid his colleague a good night. He was more intrigued than ever by the Mayenne Inn and its proprietor. The place warranted further investigation. Instead of going home directly, Roch decided to drop by the Mighty Barrel to borrow a few things of his father’s.

23

A
t this time the common room of the tavern would be busy, though it was not the same crowd as during the day. Now the patrons would be the habitual drunkards, purple-faced and dull-eyed, who took large gulps from their mugs, and those, wide awake, whose business kept up at night.

Going through the common room would require exchanging a few words with Alexandrine. Roch struggled to think of what he was going to say. It was always awkward to talk to her, and now, after having been so rude to her the other day, he had to thank her. This was not going to be easy. Even with the best of intentions, nothing he ever said to her sounded right.

He decided to go through the back alley. Pulling a key from his pocket, he climbed the outside stairs that led directly to his father’s apartment. Once inside, he undressed to his shirt and underwear and threw his clothes on the bed. He opened the squeaky doors to an ancient oak wardrobe and pulled breeches and a jacket made of coarse cloth, along with a pair of hobnailed shoes. Roch buttoned leather gaiters around his legs and donned a round hat. Finally, he squatted by the fireplace, rubbed his hands inside the cold hearth and smeared soot on his face. On the top shelf of the wardrobe he found his father’s knife. Old Miquel must have been arrested early in the morning, before he had time to put it in his pocket. Roch looked around the room one last time and also seized his father’s staff. Instead of fastening the strap to one of his jacket buttons, he slipped his left wrist through it.

Before leaving the apartment, Roch, from the corner of his eye, caught sight of the image reflected in the mirror above the fireplace mantel. He started. Of course this was not a ghost, and thankfully Old Miquel was still alive, but the image in the mirror was, down to every detail, the memory Roch kept of his father twenty years ago. Old Miquel was a rag-and-bone man then, and one of the lowest description, for society knows gradations of rank, even among those who survive on its refuse. He was a
pelharot
, as they say in the Roman language, a rabbit-skin man.

Father and son would go door-to-door throughout Paris. In the poor districts, they climbed many flights of creaky stairs to ask housewives whether they had any rabbit skins to sell, and even the most destitute did. Roch and his father also knocked at the service entrances to the comfortable houses of the bourgeois and the mansions of the nobles. There, the maids would sell the pelts, for that minuscule benefit was traditionally deemed theirs. After each house, the load became heavier until the backs and heads of the man and child alike disappeared under an array of all colors of fur. The rancid smell of animal grease preceded them, and dogs barked at them long before their arrival. Once in a while, a mother would point at Old Miquel, who was not old then, and tell her child: “Be quiet now, or I’ll sell you to the rabbit-skin man.”

Every night at dusk, Roch and his father would stop by the hatter’s shop to sell the skins, which would be turned into felt, except for the white ones. Those, more valuable, were used as cheap imitations of ermine fur. Then man and child repaired to the stables that were their home and stripped to their waists in the courtyard. They would wash their faces and chests in the trough from which the horses drank in an attempt to rid themselves of the tenacious stench before going to sleep.

At last, after long years of that drudgery, Old Miquel had saved,
sol
by
sol
, enough money to purchase the Mighty Barrel with the help of a loan from Vidalenc. Roch was very happy to have left those days behind. Yet tonight he looked again like a
gagne-denier
, a pennyearner, as he had done in the days of his childhood.

He left through the wooden exterior staircase. It led to an unpaved alley by the side of the tavern. There a group of men had now gathered, groping at one another for balance, bellowing lewd songs.

Roch ignored the acrid whiffs of vomit coming from the direction of the drunkards and walked away in the damp chill of the night. Certainly, as a policeman, he had been ordered to leave the Mayenne Inn alone, but nothing prevented him, as a private citizen, from paying the place a visit. Roch turned onto Rue du Four-Honoré and soon saw the Inn’s sign, representing a basket of pears. That fruit was a traditional crop of the
département
of Mayenne.

He looked around and saw a tiny figure crouching in the shadows of a carriage door. He approached softly. Pépin yelped in terror and took to his feet.

In a minute Roch caught him by the back his jacket and clapped his hand over the boy’s mouth. “Quiet, imbecile,” he hissed. “It’s me.”

Pépin nodded. He was breathing fast when Roch relaxed his grip. “Sorry, Sir, I’d never’ve thought it’d be you, dressed like this. I must’ve shit in my eyes.”

“I hope not, if you are to keep them on the Mayenne Inn. What’s happening there?”

“Nothin’, Citizen Chief Inspector. There’s nobody goin’ in or out today, save an ol’ manservant goin’ to the bakery jus’ before dark. Mighty funny for an inn.”

“You didn’t see either of the men I told you about?”

“No, Sir.”

“Well, stay here and keep watching the place.”

Roch proceeded to the inn. When he pushed the door open, he saw half a dozen men playing billiards in a common room, but the game, along with all conversations, ceased abruptly upon his entrance. A large, tall fellow put down his cue and walked deliberately to him. The man looked at Roch from head to toe without returning his greeting.

“You the clerk?” asked Roch, exaggerating his Roman accent, which was usually so slight as to be barely discernable. Now his French was but a string of guttural consonants. The men around the billiards table burst out laughing. Roch had heard those puffs of scorn often enough when he had canvassed the streets of Paris with his father, and he knew how to respond: say nothing, do nothing.

The large man grinned. “Why would a filthy
Auvergnat
want to know that?”

Roch kept his right hand inside his pocket and fingered his father’s knife. “If you were the clerk, you’d take me to Short Francis.”

Suddenly all laughter ceased.

“And what sort of business would you have with Short Francis?” asked the big man.

“I’ve a letter for him.”

“Give me the letter, and I’ll make sure it gets to him.”

“No. The man said to give the letter to Short Francis. Not to some big fat oaf who’s too stupid to know if he’s the clerk.”

The large fellow squinted at Roch. “There’s no clerk here.
I
own this inn. Now give me the letter, will you?”

So this was Gillard, the Prefect’s friend. “No. The man said if Francis ain’t around, then give it to Saint-Régent. You know, the one they call Pierrot. So if you’ll take me to Pierrot, I’ll give it to
him
.”

Gillard clearly hesitated, his mouth open, his distrustful little eyes trying to read Roch’s purpose. The billiards players had left the table and were now gathered around him. One of them, auburn-haired and handsome, in an embroidered waistcoat and an elegant coat of English cut, seized the owner by the elbow and whispered to his ear.

“Aye, that’s right, My Lord,” said Gillard, nodding. He looked at Roch. “Short Francis and Pierrot packed their things. They left two weeks ago. That’s the last I saw of them.”

“Then tell me where I can find them.”

“You don’t understand, rascal, do you? They left town.”

“I don’t mind. I’ll go find’m. I’ll earn a gold
louis
if I give’m the letter.”

“Too bad. I don’t know where they went.”

“I find you very insolent in your persistence, Auvergnat,” intervened the elegant fellow, who took a step in Roch’s direction. “Maybe my friends and I could teach you proper manners.”

Roch snapped his knife open inside his pocket. Gillard started at the small popping noise and held out his arm to stop the nobleman.

“Don’t come close to this wretch, My Lord,” he said. “The likes of him can be nasty.”

Gillard was right. As a child, Roch had learned to fight, even when he was outnumbered. As Old Miquel had explained to his son, it was wrong to kill, but one had to be respected on the streets. Roch could have stabbed the fop without the knife ever leaving his pocket. Even a mere cut, if painful enough, sufficed. Then, when the adversary was doubled over, his breath stopped, Roch’s knee would rise to hit the man’s groin with full force. That would make anyone crumple like an empty sack. Then it was just a matter of a few kicks of the hobnailed shoes in the face and belly. One had to be careful not to be carried away by one’s bellicose mood, for sometimes, like now, there were more foes to attend to after the first one was down.

The elegant fellow was fortunate. Roch was not there to look for a fight with a
ci-devant
aristocrat. The innkeeper, breathing hard, kept his eyes fixed on Roch.

“I don’t want any trouble here,” he said. “Go away.”

Roch cleared his throat and treated himself to the pleasure of spitting on the fop’s shiny boots. Then he walked slowly backwards, mindful not to turn around until he was clear of the Mayenne Inn. He threw Pépin a coin as he passed the boy.

Roch was happy. A short but fruitful visit that had been. It was clear that Gillard, that old acquaintance of the Prefect’s, knew Saint-Régent and Short Francis, and also of their whereabouts. Perhaps the man would be worried enough to send them word that a sinister character was enquiring after them. And if shaken, the rats might leave their nest.

24

I
t was eleven, the mandatory closing time, when Roch returned to the Mighty Barrel. Still eschewing the street entrance, he climbed the back stairs and stepped into his father’s bedroom. As he undressed, he heard, coming from the common room downstairs, the headwaiter’s voice raised as the man pushed the last drunkards out onto the street. Soon the place would be empty. Roch slowly undressed. He felt the folding knife in his father’s jacket and, after a moment of reflection, slipped it into his own coat pocket. The skin of his face felt dusty and dry from the soot he had rubbed on it.

Shivering in his shirt and underclothes, he washed his face in the chilly water that remained in the basin on the dressing table. He glanced at the bed and closed his eyes. For a moment he pictured Blanche lying naked there. The image was intensely, painfully real.

It would have been so comforting to go home to his bed at night and find Blanche there, to awaken her gently, to enjoy her and then to fall asleep by her side, his arm around her waist. Or maybe not even awaken her. Just feel the warmth of her body and nuzzle her neck. How could that ever happen with Blanche, who was another man’s wife? He remembered the ring she wanted and felt again the bite of regret, of jealousy too.

Downstairs the front door of the tavern closed with a clang. Alexandrine would be alone in the common room now. What if she had heard his footsteps upstairs? It was better to go and talk to her for a little while. It would not have to be long: in a moment one of her father’s menservants would come and take her home.

Roch slipped on his clothes and climbed down the stairs that led to the common room. Alexandrine was seated at one of the tables, writing in Old Miquel’s ledger. A single candle threw a circle of yellow light on her pensive profile, the pages of the vast book and an inkwell. Alexandrine raised her eyes and put down her quill. She did not seem surprised or frightened, as though she had recognized his step in the dark. A smile lit her face, though she looked sad and tired. The memory of their last conversation came back to him in full force. He was embarrassed, but she acted in a natural, unaffected manner.