The Terror Time Spies (30 page)

Marius just stood staring back, in his huge turban, saying nothing more.

 “Well, hello to you too,” said Spike cheerfully.   

“And how old are you, Marius?” asked Henry.     

A confused look came into Marius’s dark eyes, and at last he shrugged. 

“No knowledge, Monsieur,” he answered sadly.

“No knowledge?” cried Spike, in disgust. “Don’t be a silly ninnee.  How could you not know how old you are?”

The black boy looked rather miserable now and Henry noticed Malfort padding stealthily across the hall, with his tail raised.  The cat seemed to be watching them.  Spike smiled at it and rather wanted to make friends.

 “I do not know,” said Marius, “Mes parents.  They were taken away, from our home in Benin. 
Slaves
.  Though now all are free, en France.  La Revolution.”

“Slaves,” gulped Spike.    

In his extraordinary attire the servant didn’t look free at all and Hal and Spike were staring at him in bewilderment, but with that Justine reappeared up the stair. 

Henry asked her to come with him outside, to show his friends the way, but once again Justine stood back, as she opened the front door.

“No, Monsieur,” she whispered rather fearfully.

“Don’t worry,” said Henry confidently, “it’s all right in daylight, and we’ll protect you.”

“Justine does not,” said Marius suddenly, “Go outside, I mean.  I will come instead.”

So they called Armande and Francis, while Marius hopped up on the top of the carriage, to show Skipper to a little cobbled mews, just around the back of the house.

Soon the Club were all upstairs in another room, with a huge broken down four poster bed, where Henry was to sleep, if Justine ever found any sheets that had not been destroyed by moths. 

It had the same decrepit feel as Geraldine’s chamber, although a portrait on the wall of a French aristo, in dandified lace clothing, had such a superior expression that it seemed he might faint, with all he was looking at now. 

There were several clicking clocks in the room too, even if they were covered in dust.

The rooms where the others were to stay were just as threadbare as Henry’s, also filled with clocks as well, and Spike had looked at her own chamber as if it was some horrid prison, promising herself to sneak in with Henry, as soon as possible. 

Francis and Armande had their own rooms too. 

Only poor Skipper was expected, in Geraldine’s grand home, to rest in the servant’s quarters, downstairs.   

Which is why Marius and Justine both gave Skipper such a strange, disapproving look, as they retreated themselves, since it was clear that their coachman had no intention of leaving the others. 

These strange English visitors, and a French one too, wanted to talk privately.

As the two young servants closed the door, Henry noticed that Spike was on her hands and knees, looking under the bed.

“Oh, what are you doing now, Nellie?”

“Looking for Spies?” grinned Francis approvingly. “Or ghosts.”

“No, Ninnees,” answered Eleanor, poking up her head again, although she had just decided she might sleep here instead, under Henry’s bed. “I’m looking for a huge pile of Huguenot gold, of course.”

 “Oh get up, Spike,” snapped Henry, “and stop being silly.”

“
She’s
silly, H,” said Nellie, though getting up, “Granny’s completely mad.”

“Yes, Nell,” said her brother softly. “Or half the time.  Perhaps eccentric’s the word though.  Like the English.”

“You think she’s really a witch though? Her cat Malfort, and her dead husband.  An Alchelist.”

 “No, Nell,” answered Henry.  “And it’s all a stroke of luck, really.”

“Luck?” said Francis doubtfully.

  “It seems to me that we have the run of the whole house now, haunted or not.  Which makes this a perfect headquarters for the brand new Pimpernel Club.  Central Paris branch.”

“Where the Pimples set to work, Henry makes a Prophecy, Couchonet talks to some Mutton, and a fire starts.

“If we can trust the servants,” said Armande, in Hal’s chamber, looking warily towards the great, old door and at all the dust in the room in disgust. 

The Count’s dislike of dirt seemed to have returned tenfold. 

“They seem so nervous,” he added.

“They look nice enough to me,” said Spike.  “Poor Marius though, H.  I wonder what it’s like to be a
slave
.  Golly.  I bet we can trust him though.”

Armande looked at Eleanor rather patronisingly now.

“Petite innocent,” the Count whispered.  “In Paris everyone
seems
one thing, but
is
another.”

 “Just like us, you ninnee.  The Pimples.  Here in disguise.”

Armande St Honoré almost blushed, in his fisher boy outfit.

“This is serious, ma petite,” he said though. “Each day people are denoncé.  Just a word is enough to have you arrested, and thrown into the Temple, or the Bastille.”

 “The Temple,” said Hal eagerly though, “How close is it now, Armande?”

 “Not far on foot, ‘enri.”

Henry was suddenly lost in thought, remembering something that the strange American Obediah Tuck had said about trying to be exceptional.

 “I didn’t tell grandmother about Juliette,” he whispered, “it just didn’t seem to be the right time.  Perhaps she’ll try to help, if we do, but we should start with a visit to the Fauberg prison ourselves.  In the morning.  Scout it out, at least.”

The Pimpernel Club, Paris branch, looked extremely nervous. 

Until now the inevitability of everything that had happened had given them so little time to think, and almost swept them to Revolutionary Paris on their own, like corks on a rushing stream.

But now they were really here, acting entirely as free agents too, without any grown ups to guide or aid them, the children were forced to face the enormity of whatever lay ahead;  if they were really to help Juliette St Honoré. 

Francis was wondering what his parents were thinking, back home in England.   Praying for him probably, he thought, with some embarrassment.

“Come on then,” said Hal, “Let’s get cleaned up.”

They went to their rooms and after a few hours Justine reappeared, with a rather resentful curtsey, to inform the Pimples that Madame Geraldine was waiting for them downstairs for dinner, all except Skipper, of course.

Spike felt sick again as they approached that eerie, candle lit room, to see Madame Guillotine once again. 

They were even more surprised though because, at the head of that ornate gold table, perpetually laid with its dusty silver cutlery, Geraldine was out of her death bed now, sitting bolt upright in a great gilded chair, like an ancient throne.  She looked like a moth-eaten Queen.

She had a decaying  lace bonnet on, that reminded Henry of those images in the firelight and, tightly wrapped in a shawl, she looked like a waxworks herself, as she waited for the brave Pimples to be seated.

The Death Mask was in the very centre of the table, as Spike sat down, and never before had the little girl felt so intensely the threat of an enemy grown up.

 “Your amis Anglais, Henri?” enquired the old lady, as Hal sat beside her and Francis Simpkins approached the French Granddame too.

 “Yes, Grandmere.  This is Francis Simpkins.  My best friend.”

 “H-h-hello,” whispered Francis, getting his stutter back and blushing deeply, as he seated himself too.

 “And this is Armande…”

 “Count St Honoré,” corrected Armande, bowing his head in a most adult fashion.   

Geraldine Bonespair turned imperceptibly and her glassy eyes cleared, as Armande blushed.  He still looked like a common fisher boy.

 “But we know each other, Count?” said the old lady.  “I met you that delightful Summer’s day at Les Jardins Royale.  With your lovely wife, Constance.”

The fifteen year old looked suddenly very anguished indeed.

“Ma pere,” whispered Armande sadly, “That must have been my father, Madame.  And my mother.  Mother’s safe in England now though.  The Eighth Countess.”

The old lady looked rather confused, at the head of the table.

“And the Count, your father?”

“The Revolution, Madame,” said Armande bitterly, “it swept papa away too.”

“Dead?” hissed the Countess, glaring at the Death Mask as if it had just opened its eyes, but sighing too.  “Well, no matter.  It comes to us all.”

The children sat there silently.

“Yet here we will keep it out, Count. 
Their
Revolution.  They don’t bother an old lady, dying in the house of her dead husband.  They couldn’t find my fortune.”

The Pimpernels glanced about and caught each other’s eyes.  Spike’s were glittering excitedly.

 “So I have my little pleasures, and my servants still, although we can’t really
call
them that, now everyone is equal.  But what a coincidence, Count.”

Suddenly Geraldine’s tiny eyes narrowed.

“Mais, non,” she hissed.  “Don’t be a fool, woman.  Nothing is coincidence, ma Cherie always said.   Life, it is bound together, always, in strange and intricate patterns, like the finest Huguenot lace.  But Marius, begin the meal.”

Grandma had lifted a feeble hand regally and Marius stepped out of the shadows once again, this time carrying an ornate silver platter, made all the more overblown by what was lying  on it. 

On to the fine, dusty china plates on the table, the servant boy began to place very feeble looking pieces of limp lettuce, and a single stick of mouldy asparagus. 

Then Marius poured some vinegary wine for the old lady, into a high goblet, and water for the others. 

Justine hovered in the background too and Spike almost wanted to giggle, as they began to eat in silence and Geraldine sipped her thin wine.  Hal kept casting his sister stern looks, between his grins, to make her behave.   

Armande wished more than ever that he was back in England, although heartened by the fact that he was so near to his sister Juliette, even in a horrid French prison.

The first course was finished more quickly than a first course should be, and Marius presented Geraldine and the Club with a small piece of cold mutton each and a single boiled potato, sprouting half cooked roots.

“EAT,” the crone commanded grandly, as if they were at some State banquet.  “Justine will read the News.”

The spotty maid stepped forwards and held up a French noosepaper.

“En Anglais, girl, for our guests.”

The quiet but rather pretty child, so like Juliette St Honoré, although taller and not as self possessed, with her terrible spots too, blushed a very deep pink.

“Zoo to ouvert - to open,” she read haltingly, feeling horrible in front of these other children, “In the Jardin Du Plante, Madame.  Many animaux – animals - of interest publique, are to be shown there…”

“Non,” snapped Geraldine, and Justine moved on.

“Citizen Roux speaks for Les Enrages, Madame?”

Geraldine Bonespair nodded, as firmly as she could.

“For the Enraged,”
translated Justine
.  “Again Citizen Roux spoke eloquently in the Paris Convention of the Government’s unfairness to the ordinary man.  Of the need to act against the rich, corrupt,  hoarders, speculators, profiteers and…”

“Corrupt?” hissed granny Guillotine suddenly, “But those fools.  Corruption is all around.  As certain as the dark.  Or Death.  It is that not what we all come to, in our poor bodies, no?   Mere corruption.  Non, girl, not the
common man
either.  Not tonight.”

Justine turned hurriedly to another section in the French paper.

“
Debate still rages over fate of Widow Capet?”
gulped the poor servant girl and the Pimpernel Club looked up immediately, as Geraldine nodded coldly and Justine went on.

“
After the execution of the treasonous Louis Capet, many calls have come for a sim….similar justice to be dispensed to the woman called Marie Antoinette,”
read Justine, clearing her throat,
“Some are saying that she may be…er, exchanged for French prisoners of war, to help La Patrie, or even a ransom from the so-called Holy Roman Emperor, to aid the Revolution.  The great Englishman, Citizen Paine, a true friend of France, has suggested that the traitor be exiled to the Americas.”

Henry thought of the plot around the Queen, but Spike of balloons and that funny man from Boston too, as she swung her little legs in her seat and her stupid dress.

“
The Capet Woman’s little son is also of interest.  Since the Committee of Public Safety has suggested that he might be retrained to understand Revolutionary Ideas
.”

“Enough , Justine,” snapped Geraldine suddenly.

“Les Libelles then, Madame?”

Geraldine Bonespair’s eyes flickered angrily, but very suspiciously too, and she looked around the chamber sharply, as if they were all about to be attacked.