The Silver Blade (4 page)

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Authors: Sally Gardner

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BOOK: The Silver Blade
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‘
Maman
, please come,’ said Louis, throwing his arms round his mother’s neck. ‘I don’t want to leave you alone.’
‘My darling,’ said his mother, ‘we are doing this so that one day we can all be together again.’
The Duke interrupted. ‘I’m damned if I’ll let this land be given to the Convention to be wasted and squandered. It has been in our family for generations.’
‘Still, it’s lunatic—’
‘Quiet, Didier,’ said Yann, seeing tears roll down the faces of the little boys. ‘Perhaps the children should go to bed.’
The Duchess rang a bell. It was answered by a maid whose wooden clogs sounded loudly on the parquet floor.
Louis and Hugo clung to their mother. Yann knelt beside them and from behind Louis’s ear he conjured a spinning top.
Louis’s eyes lit up. ‘Do it again!’
‘Now, watch carefully and you might learn something, ‘ said Yann. And from behind Hugo’s ear he brought out a wooden soldier.
‘More, more!’ shouted Louis and Hugo, clapping their hands.
‘In the morning,’ said Yann softly.
The Duchess kissed the two boys. ‘Be good and go to bed.’
After they had gone, the Duke stood up unsteadily. He looked like a bowed willow, bent by the strong winds of troubled times.
‘My wife,’ he said, taking the Duchess’s hand and kissing it, ‘is determined to stay here, and all I will add to that is “God bless her”. We will leave in the morning with you, sir. I see that we have no choice but to put our trust in you. Until then,
adieu
.’
He left the room, leaning on his wife’s arm.
Didier stood, bewildered, while the clocks started to strike the half hour.
‘She can’t possibly mean it,’ he said, finally, as the last chime died. ‘Lord knows why I should care one way or the other. What angers me is that we risked everything to get here, to be insulted, and now we’ll be late getting back, leaving Tetu and Citizen Aulard in a predicament, for the sake of a couple of numbskulls, with whom I have no sympathy. For that matter, I’ve no sympathy with any aristocrat foolish enough to put more store in property than people.’
‘Be careful, Didier, it’s not that simple. The word “aristocrat” has been redefined; it includes merchants, bankers, tradesmen, clerks, lawyers. I tell you this much: soon the
sans-culottes
will have you arrested for addressing someone as “monsieur”.’
‘For a slip of the tongue?’ said Didier.
‘You think not? Use the word “monsieur” in public and I assure you that you’ll be arrested for hankering after the old regime. “Citizen” is after all the most honourable of titles; the definition of a virtuous man.’
‘Look, it’s simple. This is a battle between the haves and the have-nots.’
Yann laughed. ‘I think it’s much more complicated than that, and the green-eyed monster plays a larger part in this drama than you give him credit for.’
‘What green-eyed monster?’ asked Didier.
‘Mr Trippen, an actor and my tutor in London, loved quoting Shakespeare. One of his favourites was
Othello
: “Beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” Most men, if they’re honest, would like to live in this house, to have servants, to own land.’
‘Not you, not me.’
‘We, my friend, might well be the exceptions,’ said Yann, going over to the window and opening one of the shutters.
Outside the storm raged and the rain slashing at the windowpane made it impossible for Yann to see anything but his own reflection.
Didier shrugged. ‘I would choose life over property any time,’ he said, unbuttoning his coat and hanging it over one of the many chairs in front of the fire. He took off his boots and rested them on the grate to dry.
‘You should do the same,’ he said, looking at Yann still wrapped in his sodden greatcoat. ‘I’ll go and find something to eat.’
Yann stood by the fire. Steam rose from his soaking clothes.
How many times have I arrived at a chateau just like this one, he thought to himself, to be greeted in the same dismissive manner? I suppose everyone’s idea of a saviour is different. I am never what anyone expects. The Duke spoke the truth.
My mother was a gypsy, she told fortunes, had the gift of working the threads of light. She danced for fine gentlemen. What was the rhyme Tetu used to tell me?
O, I am not of the gentle clan,
I’m sprung from the Gypsy tree,
And I will be no gentleman,
But a Romany free.
It matters not. No, it matters. It always has mattered.
Yann leaned forward, his forehead cooled by the marble mantelpiece. Looking down into the burning city of coals, he knew his airs and graces had been hard won.
‘He is a good man,’ came the soft voice of the Duchess. She was standing behind him. ‘It’s just that we had been expecting the Silver Blade. Foolish, I know. It’s only a name, but his reputation had led us to believe that once he arrived we would be safe.’
Yann didn’t move. He kept his eyes fixed on the burning coals.
‘The Silver Blade is just a name on the street. He doesn’t exist.’
‘I believe he does. For all our sakes, I pray he does,’ replied the Duchess. ‘I am told that when someone escapes or disappears from under the eyes of the police, they look frantically for the small silver blade, suspended as if by a spider’s thread.’
‘A fairy tale, nothing more,’ said Yann.
‘We need fairy tales, to have some belief in magic. Without that, aren’t we all lost?’
‘Perhaps,’ replied Yann.
‘Monsieur Cordell told us you helped Sidonie de Villeduval escape.’
At the sound of her name, Yann turned to the Duchess. His dark eyes studied her face intently before he asked, ‘You know the Marquis’s daughter?’
‘No, we knew her uncle, Armand. He was one of my husband’s best friends and instrumental in forming his philosophy towards his tenants. A kinder and more considerate man would be hard to imagine. His was a terrible loss. Tell me, was it you who rescued Sidonie?’
Yann nodded.
She went up to him and kissed his hand. ‘God bless you,’ she said. ‘I, unlike you, monsieur, believe in fairy stories.’ She turned to leave. Pausing at the door she asked, ‘Have you seen the guillotine?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am told that the blade falls so fast the mob feels cheated of the spectacle. Is that so?’
‘It is indeed very swift.’
‘How absurd is life when it is valued so cheaply,’ she said, closing the door behind her.
D
idier returned with a plate piled high with bread and meat, and carrying a jug of wine and two glasses.
‘A feast, and the good thing is there’s more where that comes from,’ he said. Pulling a chair up near the fire, he started to eat. ‘What are you waiting for, Yann? You must be famished. Come on.’
From outside, a howl like a wolf’s penetrated the room. Didier stopped eating.
‘Did you hear that?’
Yann nodded.
‘It gives me the shudders. Sounds like it comes from the graveyard.’
Just then all the clocks in the room began to chime. Father Time, who knows the hour of each man’s death, was beating out the last minutes of the day and still above the cacophony of noise that dreadful howl could be heard.
Whatever it was that lurked out there in the dead of midnight, Yann felt certain of one thing. It was waiting for him.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Chapter Three
M
r Tull sat in the corner of L’Auberge des Pecheurs not far from the village of Greville. Outside, the sign creaked in the wind and the round bottle-glass windows rattled. Such was the battering the storm was giving this humble dwelling that, had it not been for the solidity of the floor, he might have believed himself to be at sea and likely to hit the rocks at any moment.
Mr Tull, who was seated at a table beside the fire, was much changed of late. Gone was the stocky figure with the bulldog manner; in its place sat a haunted-looking man whose bulbous eyes constantly darted to the door as if whomever he was expecting might have already slipped past him unseen.
‘Another cognac,’ he shouted, as the spiteful wind hissed its way in through the many cracks, causing the tallow candles to flicker and falter.
The innkeeper, placing a bucket on the floor to catch the raindrops from the leaking ceiling, glanced at his one and only customer.
‘Be with you in a moment, citizen,’ he said, nodding towards his daughter to go and serve him.
Mr Tull, half-watching from the corner of his eye, could tell she had refused. He shifted uneasily into the shadows, realising that she was frightened of him.
‘Maybe I have the mark of the devil on me, and she can see its stain,’ he thought wretchedly. ‘My life would be good - I would be good - if only I could rid myself of my master.’
He shuddered at the thought of the man and set his mind on more cheerful subjects, such as the cottage he had just purchased by the sea in Kent, where he planned to retire and grow cabbages, a morsel of consolation for all his hard work.
The innkeeper, apologising for the delay, came over with the cognac. Mr Tull snatched the bottle.
‘Are you expecting anyone else, citizen?’
‘Two more, and we shall want dinner.’
The innkeeper was without doubt wondering what in God’s name had brought him out on such a night. What had brought him was furniture, the stealing and shipping of stolen goods, and a very profitable business it had turned out to be. Furniture, unlike would-be emigres, didn’t fuss or suffer from seasickness, furniture wasn’t prone to weeping and wailing, furniture always kept its price and could be satisfactorily explained away. He had had a tip-off from Sergeant Berigot that the Duc de Bourcy was going to be arrested tomorrow. If he wanted to break into the chateau, he had been told, best to do it before the Bluecoats decided to make kindling out of the Duke’s possessions.
His partners in crime these days were the butcher, Citizen Loup, and his unexpectedly beautiful seventeen-year-old son, Anselm. They had first met by chance at a cafe in the Palais-Royal. Citizen Loup was at the time feeling much aggrieved, for he had been reprimanded for taking a chair from a chateau that was to be burned to the ground.
‘Surely there must be some perks for tearing down the symbols of oppression? I only took what rightfully belonged to me.’
Mr Tull had bought him a drink, and by the end of the evening the three had agreed to go into partnership.
Tomorrow, thought Mr Tull, stretching his legs, he would be on his way to England, accompanying the Duke’s possessions to an auction house. He wouldn’t be returning, not for a while. His master had business for him in London. He wanted him to locate a certain young lady, one with whom Mr Tull had had dealings before - Sido de Villeduval. And locating people was what Mr Tull was good at.
He sat there, waiting, watching, drinking as another leak in the ceiling appeared. Drip-drop, drip-drop, water inside, water outside, everywhere there was water.

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