The Coral Thief (26 page)

17

WO DAYS LATER
, on the fifth of October, one of the pair of red-necked ostriches died in the Jardin menagerie. Fifty-two years old, born amid the sand and grass plains of Senegal, having survived captivity in three menageries in Holland and France, and having laid hundreds of eggs that failed to hatch in the climate of northern Europe despite the increasingly eccentric incubating skills of her keepers, Antoinette had finally died by choking on a coin thrown to her through her fence by a Prussian soldier who had ignored the entreaty on the gate not to throw objects. The ostrich had always had a passion for coins—the shinier the better. This one had proved fatal.

I had begun to set things out, piece by piece, as best I could, keeping my secrets to myself, taking calculated risks, being opportunistic. Cuvier wanted new assistants in his laboratory; there were several new animals that needed to be dissected and stuffed, including the red-necked ostrich. I had resolved to ask Fin if he wanted the work, as I thought it might help to have another pair of eyes in the Jardin. Of
course, no matter how much I longed to, I had no intention of actually telling Fin about the plans to break into the museum. I did not want Fin or Céleste to become caught up in Jagot’s investigation or Lucienne’s planned theft.

That afternoon was brighter than most, the kind of brightness that hurts your eyes. Fin and I found Céleste drinking with her friends in the café in the Marché des enfants rouges. The market of red children. These were orphaned children who wore red cloaks and who had lived there once in a school built by Margaret of Navarre. The red children were now gone but their name lived on. All the names of these streets in Paris seemed to retain vestiges of their past. However many laborers the Bourbon government hired to remove Napoleon from the streets and his insignia—the bees and the eagles—from the buildings, the Emperor remained everywhere.

Céleste’s friends laughed at us as we approached, nudging her and rearranging their hair. She led us away from the café up a metal spiral staircase to a balcony overlooking the market. Laid out below, stalls covered in white cloths were arranged in rows, as if by species, I thought: clusters of fish stalls over to the right piled with shellfish in shallow glass tanks; over to the left, flower stalls behind which women in white aprons tended vases of lilies, delphiniums, and late sunflowers; at the far end spice stalls where the Moroccan and Arabic traders drank tea at brass tables behind boxes of spices.

“It’s more private here,” Céleste said. “You can’t hear yourself down there.”

“What were your friends saying,” I asked, “that was so funny?”

Céleste laughed. “You’re pretty, M. Connor, with your curls and your blue eyes and your smile. They were saying what they would do with you.
Non, non, vraiment
, you don’t want to know.” From her basket, she produced us a bottle of absinthe, a glass, and a small cake that smelled of tamarind.

“Thank you,” Fin said. “I’m hungry and my head hurts.”

“You’re always hungry,
chéri
. Always eating, eating. There was
nothing left in my cupboard this morning. You know, M. Connor, your friend here, he ate all the bread and all the chocolate. I had to go shopping.”

“I am mortified,” Fin said with mock shame. “I must have had too much wine. Let me give you…” He reached inside his jacket for money.

“You gave me plenty of your coins last night,
citoyen
. Enough to buy more brandy and eat a queen’s breakfast. Now you’re blushing. How funny you are.” She laughed, placing her hand against his cheek. I looked away.

At the same time the smell of her, the perfume on her clothes, the absinthe, and the heat unsettled me. I watched her as she ran her hand up Fins leg absentmindedly. In an old life, I might have asked for strength to conquer such desires; now the thought no longer even occurred to me. Even the language of prayer seemed false and euphemistic here in this beautiful secular city where the priests had not yet regained their foothold after their return from exile.

Daniel Connor was shedding another skin. What would be left of him?

I turned away to look down into the square beyond the market. Out there everything came and went: artists sketched, beggars begged, horses stood in shade, vendors leaned up against lemonade stalls piled high with lemons, people queued talking in the sun. A cat with one ear sat on the edge of another balcony close by, watching us. Its eyes closed slowly, then opened again.

“Stop it, Céleste,” Fin said without conviction. “My friend is here…”

“It’s hot, Fin. And I need a siesta. Perhaps I will find a friend for Daniel—for a siesta. It won’t be difficult.” She smiled at me. “My friends. Which one do you like?”

“No, thank you,” I said, thinking of Lucienne.

“Someone must do something,” Fin said, kissing her. “My friend M. Connor is losing his heart to the beautiful widow who lives with
her cats and pigeons. He needs to be distracted. Quickly. I speak as a doctor of course.”

“Daniel’s dark lady,” Céleste said, placing her back up against the wrought-iron railings of the balcony and crossing her legs. She passed me the bottle again and smiled knowingly.

“Have some more absinthe, Daniel,” Fin said. “Its good for your head. Last week, Céleste, when Daniel was very drunk, he talked about the widow all through the night. He was confused—sometimes she was a woman, sometimes a man. This is serious, you see. We have to do something. Being in love is one thing, losing your mind is another. He can’t even sleep properly anymore. And I hardly ever see him.”

“I haven’t lost my mind,” I said. “I was drunk, that’s all. That dreadful brandy of yours. She’s in trouble,” I added, the absinthe searing the back of my throat. “I’ve promised to try to help.”

“Daniel Connor is not
losing
his heart,” Céleste said, “he has already lost it. What will I tell my friends?”

“I think you are jealous, Céleste,” Fin said, winking at her. “You are jealous of Daniel’s woman. If I talked about a woman like Daniel talks about this one, would you be jealous? Perhaps I should be jealous of Daniel. Perhaps we should all be jealous of Daniel.”

“Eh bien,”
Céleste said. “I’m listening. Tell me about her.
Un peu. Un petit peu.”
She brought two fingers up, making a little gap between them, and peered through, squinting as if she was looking through a peephole.

“I don’t want to talk about her,” I said, clumsily, suddenly afraid that I would drop my guard and tell them everything. “You are both impossible. You take nothing seriously. I won’t talk about her. But I do have a proposition for you, Fin.”

“A proposition? How very exciting that sounds.”

“An ostrich died in the Jardin yesterday. That’s three animals in the laboratory, what with the bull and the llama. Cuvier wants them to be dissected, drawn, and stuffed quickly. I put your name forward. I hope
you don’t mind. I thought it would be good experience. A reference from Cuvier could be valuable. M. Rousseau wants you in there tomorrow morning. What do you think?”

“Hey, Fin,” Céleste said. “You can bring me ostrich meat. If its not turned too much, of course. I don’t want to be sick. We will have an ostrich dinner.”

Fin agreed, of course. He agreed to give up his position at the hospital and transfer to the museum, not because of the promise of stolen ostrich meat, but because he knew, as I did, that working in Cuvier’s laboratory, even as a temporary dissector, would take him several rungs up the ladder, the ladder that might end in a job that would get him out of Paris and back to a prestigious position at Saint Bartholemew’s Hospital or at the Royal College of Surgeons. For me, having Fin in the laboratory had to be of use—some use—in the impossible task I had agreed to.

The absinthe and the lack of sleep had made me delirious.
Everything is upside down
, I wanted to tell Céleste,
and I don’t know how to get it back the right way up. And no, I can’t sleep for thinking of the map and Lucienne’s swollen face, for thinking about him, the nameless man in the shadows who is making her work for him, and now this other man, the coral trader who is the father of her child
.

“You’ve had too much of that absinthe,
citoyen,”
Céleste said as Fin headed off to buy coffee for us all. “It will make you ill. You’re not used to it. Did your mother never tell you about the dangers of strong drink?” She began to lean toward me.

“You’re Fin’s girl,” I said.

“I am not Fin’s girl. I don’t belong to anyone,” she said, her chin tilted upward. “We are in France, monsieur. Here you can own things, but you can’t own people. I own myself. I can kiss who I like. I can do what I want. Fin knows that. He is not like other men.”

“I think he is,” I said. “I think we are all the same.”

Céleste’s eyes were remarkable. They were blue-green, but when the sun brightened, her pupils narrowed into small black dots and a ring of gold appeared around them like the sun rising behind a storm cloud. I was suddenly mesmerized watching that gold ring appear like a fugue around the black.

“Someone should warn your dark lady,” she said. “That Daniel Connor is in love with her.”

Love. That was startling. Bald. Uncompromising. Céleste watched me closely. Whatever this thing was that had lodged in my flesh, it did not feel like love any longer. I had been in love before, I wanted to say to Céleste, with a pretty girl, a cousin who was demure, accomplished, and well groomed. I had loved her. Or at least that’s what I had told myself. But this was now something else. Something dark, something with feathers and claws.

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