The Shadow Queen A Novel (7 page)

“Quite a bit—nine livres?”

A lot, certainly, but not an impossible sum—especially now with coins in my poke, Gaston’s winnings.

Suddenly Madame Catherine whistled—shrilly, like a man. Gaston looked our way. “Call your brother back,” she told me with some urgency.

Puzzled, I gestured to Gaston, and he shambled toward me grinning. Approaching, he opened his fist, revealing a gold louis.

I’d never seen a coin so big. It hadn’t even been clipped. “Where did you get this?” I asked uneasily. Sometimes Gaston took things. He wasn’t a thief, he just didn’t understand.

“No doubt from that tall man,” Madame Catherine said starkly, “the one with the children.”

A break in the carriage traffic parted to reveal an elaborately dressed man standing with three girls. The tallest one stood staring at us. She had a large birthmark on her cheek. “With the girls?” I asked, weighing the gold piece in my hand.

“They’re boys—but dressed as girls.”

It took me a moment to understand.

“The Bird Catcher, we call him,” Madame Catherine said, signing herself.

I recalled the country boys who had stayed with us in the cave near Poitiers, headed for the city. Winter Swallows, Mother had called them.

“Friend,” Gaston sang.

HEADING HOME, GASTON
in tow, I stopped abruptly. “You are never to take anything from a stranger!” He was such a trusting soul, it frightened me. The city was rife with predators. “The coin that man gave you was like honey: he was trying to lure you into a trap.”

Gaston’s eyes rounded.

I should have flung the coin in the river, as a lesson to him, but we needed it, needed the beans and bread it could buy. “Do you understand?”

He blinked his eyes at me (meaning “oui”) and made a rabbit nose (meaning “non”).

So:
oui et non.
I sighed.

A coachman called out in warning as a four-horse berlin turned into the street. The horses stopped to avoid upturning a fish cart. I glimpsed the face of a young woman inside, her golden earlocks adorned with ribbons, a single strand of pearls tied at the back of her neck. Gaston sang a troubled note, taking off his woolen cap. She looked like a creature from another world—yet a creature who was somehow familiar.

The heavy horses trotted smartly on, their harnesses glittering with brass, their headlocks beribboned and tails braided. The coat of arms painted on the door was intricate, a shield of red, blue, and white designs, a coiled blue snake in one quadrant.

The carriage slowed to turn onto another street, followed by two lackeys. “Tell Maman I’ll not be long,” I said, giving my brother the satchel of stones to take back. “I’m going to buy food.”

THE CARRIAGE HAD
stopped in front of a trimmings shop on the rue Vieille du Temple. It was not far from our room, yet another world entirely, a world of luxury trade. There was even something of a walkway, so that people might more easily stop to examine the fine goods offered for sale: a yellow-tinted collar edged with needle lace, a leather hat adorned with an ostrich feather, a bolt of silk satin worked with gold thread.

I watched from the corner as a footman in a buckram-stiffened cloak opened the carriage door and set down a carpeted stool. He extended his gloved hand to help the young woman step down. With a fur muff under one arm, she extended her booted foot, turning her toe out as if dancing. I caught a glimpse (just that) of her ankle. With a little hop, she alighted and handed her muff to the footman. She turned her back as an elderly servant with a crooked spine climbed down after her.

I could not take my eyes off the young woman.
Could
it be her? She was wearing a blue velvet traveling cloak, its satin-lined hood lightly covering her head. She fussed with the muff the footman held, and I realized that there was a little dog inside. She touched its nose with her gloved hand.

Behind me, there was the sudden thunder of rubble being tipped out of a cart. Startled, she glanced my way. I caught my breath. A froth of golden curls framed her white, oval face. Her beauty was heart-stopping, her large blue eyes intelligent and curious. She looked to be a few years younger than I was, so perhaps nineteen? That fit, too.

My princess.
Could
it be?

She swept into the shop, followed by her creeping waiting woman.

It began to rain again, a soft drizzle. Men in elegant dress pressed to pass. I stood close against the wall. The footman looked in my direction, regarding me with suspicion.

I turned, bumping into a woman coming out of a milliner’s shop. “Nom de Dieu,” she cursed me with scorn, as if touched by the plague.

Her maid, encumbered with parcels and her mistress’s fox-lined cloak, sneered. On impulse, I shouldered her into the muck and snatched the cloak … and then
ran
—ran for my life through the narrow, twisting alleyways.

Trembling, I paused for breath, clutching the heavy cloak. What had come over me! Cloak-thieves were executed, their heads boiled and displayed on pikes. Seeing the young woman again had bewitched me.

I promise, Father!
I won’t do it again.

IN THE MARKET,
I quickly traded the cloak for a sack of beans, three loaves of bread and a small keg of beer, watered and bitter. I could have easily bartered for three times all that, but I was in haste to have it out of my hands.

It was raining again and falling dark. With Gaston’s winnings I bought a good-sized ham, saving the Bird Catcher’s coin for the rent.

I made my way back through the labyrinthine maze of narrow alleys. In the morning, I would make amends, repent, begin anew. In the morning, I would take Gaston to the bridge, play for winnings, get the name of that miracle healer from Madame Catherine. In the morning …

Approaching our building, I stopped. A crowd had gathered. Beyond, I saw a shimmering expanse.

Water?

“The river is rising high!” a street-caller cried. From somewhere a woman was screaming for help.

CHAPTER 12

I
waded into the courtyard, sloshing through water covered with floating chicken feathers. The workers were stacking cages of squawking birds onto the slaughter table. Even the path to the privies was swamped. (I didn’t like to think about that.)

A rat swam past the winding stone stairs. Monsieur Martin and his wife could be heard yelling in their room, piling up goods. Tenants were huddled on the landing, frowning down at the water, a girl holding a squirming terrier.

“What’s happened?” I called up, alarmed.

“It’s the river,” one of men said, his accent rough. “It’s rising.”

The
river
water—all the way here?

“But it won’t come any farther,” he added. “It never does.”

“THE RIVER IS
overflowing,” I announced as I came in the door. Mother was slumped where I had left her, her knitting all around her. “I’m sorry—did I wake you?”

“Is it time to eat?” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Did you have a pleasant afternoon?”

I took in the silence. “Where’s Gaston?”

“With you?” Mother said, gathering up her needles and scraps.

“He’s not here?” How was that possible? “Maman, he must be here.”

She looked puzzled.

I leaned out the little window: the street below was a river now. It had happened so quickly! People sloshed through the yellow water with children in their arms. But no Gaston.

What had I done? “I’ll go find him.”

“I’m coming too,” Mother said. “I haven’t been out all day.”

I groaned. This was not a pleasure outing! “Maman, stay. It’s miserable out.” And dangerous. “Someone should be here when he returns.”

This, at least, she accepted.

I plunged down the stairwell, trying to contain my panic.

I waded out into the street, the muck-filled water now at my thighs. I made my way back down toward the river—back to the corner where I had last seen Gaston—crying out his name. The murky water was rushing into the narrow streets and alleys in waves. Garbage floated in a cesspool of sewage.

I dodged horses pulling carts laden with possessions. The water was inching toward my waist. The current was surprisingly strong; it took an effort to push forward.

I feared I might faint from the stench. The light was falling, the water was rising, and Gaston was not to be seen. I turned back, praying he’d somehow returned.

HE HAD NOT.
I broke down, sobbing, peeling off my disgustingly wet clothes. My teeth chattering, I stood naked in front of the fire as Mother washed me clean with a cloth, tsking all the while. “He will be fine,” she said. “His father will look after him.”

This thought made me weep all the harder.

THERE WAS NOTHING
we could do but pray. Even if I had known where to look, the water was too high, too dangerous. We set up an altar for the little Virgin, surrounding her with Gaston’s things: his bent-up, worn Saint Francis card, his two marbles, the rag doll he slept with. His favorite Mill stones. I even made a line of objects. (And discovered how hard it was. Was a glove bigger or smaller than a sock?)

Restless, I ventured back down the stairs, holding a rag over my nose to keep out the pestilent vapors. The water had reached the seventh step. We were trapped.

“We’ll just have to wait it out,” I told Mother, looking out our little window at the scene below, searching, ever searching for a sign of Gaston. Where could he be? He wouldn’t have gotten lost; finding his way was one of his curious talents. Something must have happened.

A man calling out “Ferryman!” poled a makeshift raft of scraps. A neighbor propped a ladder against an upper-story window and carried a screaming girl onto a tippy boat. His wife handed him down an infant, then perilously climbed down herself.

I wondered where my princess lived. I imagined her asleep in a big feather bed, wrapped in the finest clean lawn chemise. Her belly was full and she slept without fear of rats. The sleep of the blessed.

As night fell, I couldn’t sleep for the howling of abandoned dogs, the ceaseless church bells ringing alarm. I felt weak knowing that Gaston was somewhere out there, alone: knowing what the virulent floodwaters could bring—cholera, fever, plague. Had Father guided us here, only to die of contagion?

Or
worse,
I thought, thinking of the Bird Catcher.

I PACED AND
prayed for days; the nights, too, were restive. I had finally drifted off to sleep when I was startled awake by a thunderous sound. I sat up, staring into the dark. Had I not felt a tremor?

I slipped out from under the covers and groped my way in the dark, creeping along the wall. I felt for the window latch and, fumbling, managed to creak open the shutter.

The light of the moon illuminated the rooftops, now covered with makeshift shanties and webbed with a maze of laundry lines hung between chimneys and turrets. The flooded street below was dark, reflecting the stars above. But for the barking of a dog, all was still and silent. Had I dreamt the explosion? Tainted food could do that, cause dreams to come to life.

From far off, I heard splashing and the low rumble of men talking. The light of a single lantern appeared, drawing near. A rowboat was making its way up the street, furnishings and crates piled high in the bow. Two men sat perched in the stern, one holding the oars, the other a lantern.

“Messieurs?”

They looked up. They could not see me in the dark.

“I heard a noise.” I did not have to speak loudly to be heard.

“The bridge,” one of them answered.

“The Pont Marie gave way,” said the other.

Goodness: the
bridge
?

“Two arches out—and all the houses on it.”

Gone?
I thought of Madame Catherine: she, her husband, and children lived on that bridge, over the jewelry shop. I felt sick at the thought that the kindly woman might have perished—but then gasped with foreboding. Had Gaston sought shelter with
her
?

DAYS LATER, I
woke to bells ringing. I fumbled open the shutters. The morning light was bright, the air cutting and cold. And there, far below, was the
street,
its cobbles dislodged. A muddy boat sat stranded. People were clustered around a bonfire at the corner, a man and a woman dancing on the stones as a boy played a fiddle.

And then I saw
him,
his lilting walk. He was with a tall, thin boy. “Gaston!” I screamed.

“Gaston?” Mother pressed behind me, weeping for joy.

I cried out again, and this time he looked up.

The boy, his companion, disappeared down an alley, fast as a whippet.

“Don’t move,” I yelled down. Don’t. Move.

CHAPTER 13

G
aston winced as we embraced him. “You’re bruised?” There was an ugly welt on his cheek. “What happened!”

He pressed his forehead against mine.

“Where does it hurt?” He was favoring one arm.

“Men,” he stuttered with difficulty. “Mill.”

I caught my breath: I recalled the face of one of the roughs Gaston had won against, recalled his threatening look as he’d slunk off with his companions. “It was that gang of boys, Gaston, wasn’t it.”

He mimed their tight fists, a kick.

“I’m so sorry!” I raged at my stupidity. He’d been attacked—and it was my fault. I’d set him up to play against strangers, knowing they would think him dim,
knowing
they would lose. I’d played them for fools and taken their money, not thinking of their outrage. Not thinking that it was not the
knightly
thing to do. And then I’d abandoned Gaston to chase after a foolish dream. Merci Dieu, he hadn’t been killed! “Who was that boy you were with?”

“Friend,” he sang.

No matter how I questioned, that’s all he could reveal. Clearly, he’d been looked after, but how he’d managed to survive would have to remain a mystery.

WE HEADED DOWN
the rue Vieille du Temple. Deep gashes in the street were filled with stagnant water, rich with the stench of waste. The sky was dark from the fires set to cleanse the air with smoke.