Why Kings Confess (4 page)

“W
hat’s wrong with the child?” Sebastian asked as they wound through St. Katharine’s tangle of mean streets and dark, tortuous lanes. The sun was a distant golden ball in a frigid blue sky, but there was no warmth in its brittle light. Ice crusted the mud and manure beneath their feet, and the lips of the grimy, ragged children playing in the gutters were blue with cold.

“It’s a little girl of three. I’m told she was healthy enough until recently. She had the sniffles and a slight rash a couple of weeks ago but seemed to get over it. Then suddenly she couldn’t move her legs. She’s been getting progressively weaker and weaker, with the weakness slowly moving up her body, first to her back, then to her arms. Last night, she was having difficulty breathing. It sounds as if something is affecting the muscles in her body, and now it’s hit the walls of her chest.”

“Sounds . . . frightening,” said Sebastian.

Gibson threw him a quick glance. “For a parent, it would be terrifying, yes.”

They walked on in silence. This was one of the poorest sections of London, its streets crowded with low, squalid tenements built of decaying wood and mean shops that catered to the nearby docks. The wretched space known as Hangman’s Court lay not far from the spires of the old medieval church. A question addressed to an aged woman selling roasted potatoes from a rusty barrow brought them to a warped door at the end of a dark, fetid corridor. From the other side of the panels came the sound of a woman weeping.

Gibson knocked quietly, almost apologetically.

The sobs ceased abruptly.

“Madame Bisette?” he called. “Alexandrie Sauvage asked me to call. I’m a surgeon.”

They heard a soft, hesitant tread, then the sound of a bolt being drawn back.

The door swung inward to reveal a woman. She looked to be perhaps thirty-five or forty, although it was impossible to say with any certainty. Her face was blotched with tears, her eyes red and swollen, her lips trembling. Rail thin, she wore a rusty black, old-fashioned gown, relatively clean but hopelessly threadbare. The small room beyond her was icy cold and empty except for a rough pallet in the corner, on which lay a tiny form, ominously still.

“Madame Bisette?” asked Gibson, his hat in his hands.

“Oui.”

His gaze went to the child on the pallet. “How is she?”

The woman began to weep again.

Sebastian walked over to the pallet, gazed down at the dead child, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” said Gibson.

“My Cécile,”
wailed the woman, her arms wrapping around her waist, her body curling forward with the agony of her grief. “She was all I had left. What am I to do now?
What?
”

“Our apologies for disturbing you at such a time,” said Sebastian, going to press several coins into her palm and close her fingers around them.

The woman stared dully at the coins in her hand, then lifted her gaze to his face. Her English was only lightly accented, her voice cultured and educated. She might be living in extreme poverty now, but she was obviously not born to it. She said, “Why are you here? Where is Alexi?”

Her use of a pet form of Alexandrie Sauvage’s given name surprised him, hinting at an intimacy between the two women he hadn’t expected. Sebastian said, “Madame Sauvage and Dr. Pelletan were attacked in Cat’s Hole after they left here last night. Dr. Pelletan was killed.”

Madame Bisette sucked in a quick breath. “And Alexi?”

“She was badly injured,” said Gibson, “but I’ve hopes she’ll recover.” He hesitated, then added, “Do you know of any reason why someone might have wanted to kill Dr. Pelletan?”

The woman shook her head. “I never knew Damion Pelletan. The
doctoresse
asked him to look at Cécile.”

Sebastian and Gibson exchanged glances. Sebastian said, “Alexandrie Sauvage is a physician?”

“She is, yes. She studied at Bologna.” Medical schools were closed to women in both France and in England. But Italy had a tradition of female physicians that dated back to the Middle Ages.

“How long has she been in London?” asked Sebastian.

“A year, perhaps more. As a woman, of course, she cannot be licensed to practice medicine here and is only allowed to act as a midwife. But she is a good woman. She does what she can to help those in the French community.”

Again, Sebastian’s gaze met Gibson’s. “I wonder how she came to know Pelletan,” he said quietly.

The dead child’s mother began to weep again, clutching her ragged shawl about her and rocking back and forth.

Sebastian reached out, awkwardly, to touch her thin shoulder. “Again, madam, our heartfelt condolences for your loss, and our apologies for disturbing you at such a time.”

She sniffed, her spine stiffening with an echo of a pride long worn down and effaced.
“Merci, monsieur,”
she said, holding out the coins he had given her. “But I cannot accept your charity.”

He made no move to take the money. “It’s not mine. The
doctoresse
asked me to give it to you.”

He could tell by the narrowing of her eyes that she knew it for a lie. But it was a lie she was obviously desperate enough to accept, because she swallowed hard and nodded, her gaze sliding away as she said,
“Merci.”

They were retracing their steps back down the dank, noisome corridor when they heard the door jerk open behind them again.

“Messieurs,”
she called out, stopping them. “You asked about Damion Pelletan?”

They turned toward her again. “Yes. Why?”

She scrubbed the heel of one thin hand over her wet cheeks. “When he and the
doctoresse
were here last night, for Cécile . . . I heard them talking. I did not pay attention to most of what was said, but one name they mentioned several times leapt out at me.”

“What name is that?”

“Marie-Thérèse, the Duchesse d’Angoulême.”

Gibson stared at her. “You mean the daughter of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI of France?”

“Yes.”

Sebastian said, “What about Marie-Thérèse?”

The woman shook her head. “I did not hear most of what was said—my attention was all for Cécile. But I believe they were discussing a meeting between Damion Pelletan and the Princess. A meeting that worried Alexandrie Sauvage.”

“H
ow much do you know about Marie-Thérèse?” Sebastian asked Gibson as they walked up St. Katharine’s Lane toward the looming bulk of the parish’s decrepit medieval church.

Gibson frowned. “Not much. I know she was thrown into the Temple Prison with her parents during the Revolution and kept there even after the King and Marie Antoinette were sent to the guillotine. But that’s about it. Her brother died there, didn’t he?”

“So they say. But for some reason I’ve never entirely understood, the revolutionaries allowed Marie-Thérèse to live. When she was seventeen, they released her to the Austrians in exchange for some French prisoner of war.”

“And now she’s here in England?”

Sebastian nodded. “Most of the French royal family is here—or at any rate, what’s left of it. Louis XVI’s youngest brother, Artois, has a house on South Audley Street. But the rest live on a small estate out in Buckinghamshire.”

“What’s the older brother’s name—the one who’s so heavy he can hardly walk?”

“That’s Provence.”

Although princes of the blood, the two surviving brothers of Louis XVI were both generally known by the titles given them at birth, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d’Artois. Both had fled France early in the Revolution, but whether one saw their flights as cowardly or wise tended to reflect one’s politics.

As a female, Marie-Thérèse was barred by French law from inheriting her father’s crown. But after her release from prison, she had married her first cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême, third in line to the French throne behind his childless uncle and his own father. Thus, as Angoulême’s wife, Marie-Thérèse would someday become Queen of France—if there was a restoration.

Earnest and plodding, Angoulême was said to be not nearly as bright as his wife. The last Sebastian had heard, the young French prince was off with Wellington in Spain, while Artois was with his latest mistress up in Edinburgh. But there were more than enough Bourbons and their hangers-on around London to cause mischief.

“So what’s she like, this princess?” Gibson asked.

“Very devout, like her father, Louis XVI. Arrogant and proud, like her mother, Marie Antoinette. And slightly mad, thanks to her experiences during the Revolution. She has devoted her life to the restoration of the Bourbons and the punishment of those she holds responsible for the deaths of her family. I’ve heard it said she’s convinced it is God’s will that the Bourbons will someday be restored to France.”

“And the Revolution and Napoléon are—what? Just an unpleasant interlude?”

“Something like that.”

They paused before the church of St. Katharine’s, Sebastian tipping back his head to let his gaze drift over the west end’s soaring buttresses and delicately hued stained glass windows. Time and shifting politics had not been kind to the graceful old structure. The roof beams sagged; tufts of moss and grass grew from the crumbling stone facade, and black holes showed where visages of saints had in better days smiled down upon the common people. Once, this had been the chapel of a religious community founded and patronized by the queens of England. Then had come Reformation, civil war, revolution, and neglect.

“What?” asked Gibson, watching him.

“I was thinking about revolutions and queens.”

Gibson shook his head, not understanding.

“If England were to make peace with France now, then Napoléon would remain Emperor. I can’t see that going down well with Louis XVI’s daughter. She wants revenge on the men who murdered her mother and father, and she has ambitions of someday becoming Queen of France herself.”

“So what the bloody hell was she doing meeting with a man who formed part of a French peace delegation?”

“It is curious, is it not?” Sebastian turned away from the ancient, soot-stained church. “I think I’d like to have a chat with Madame Sauvage’s servant. Where did you say she lives? Golden Square?”

Gibson nodded. “You can tell her that her mistress is doing as well as can be expected.”

“When will she be out of danger?”

Gibson stared out over the rows of mossy tombstones in the swollen churchyard beside them. “I wish I knew,” he said, his face looking bleak and drawn. “I wish I knew.”

•   •   •

Lying some blocks to the east of Bond Street, Golden Square had never been particularly fashionable. Built in the waning days of the Stuarts, its varied rooflines were more reminiscent of eighteenth-century Parisian hôtels or the decorative gables of Amsterdam than of London town houses. Once, it had been home to foreign ambassadors and artists. But a dull, dingy look had long ago settled over the area, with many of the seventeenth-century brick and stucco houses broken up into lodgings.

Sebastian spent some time talking to vendors and shopkeepers around the square, including a butler, an apothecary, and one stout, middle-aged woman with a gummy smile who sold eel pies from a stall. Madame Sauvage seemed to be a well-liked figure in the neighborhood, although no one knew much about her.

“She’s a deep one,” said the eel seller, giving Sebastian a wink. “Friendly enough, but keeps herself to herself, for all that.”

The Frenchwoman’s rooms lay on the attic floor of a four-story, gable-fronted house near the corner of Upper James Street. Sebastian’s knock was answered by a plain, heavyset woman with iron gray hair and a knobby nose who peered at him suspiciously, her gaze traveling over him with obvious disapproval.

“Madame Sauvage is not here,” she said in a heavy accent typical of the Basque region of France, and made as if to close the door.

Sebastian stopped it by resting his forearm against the panel, then softened the aggression of the move with a smile. “I know. My friend Paul Gibson is caring for her at his surgery.”

The woman hesitated, her instinctive wariness at war with an obvious desire to obtain information about her mistress. Concern for her mistress won. “You know how she does?”

“The surgeon is hopeful she will recover, although she’s not yet out of danger.”

The woman’s lips parted and she exhaled sharply, as if she’d been holding her breath. “Why has she not been brought here, to me, so that I may care for her?”

“I’ve no doubt you’re more than capable,” said Sebastian. “Unfortunately, she can’t yet be moved.”

The woman folded her arms beneath her massive bosom. “Well, you tell that surgeon that as soon as she’s well enough, he’s to send her home to Karmele.”

Sebastian said, “Have you been with the
doctoresse
long?”

He saw a flicker of surprise, followed by a return of her earlier wariness. “How do you know she is a
doctoresse
?”

“Madame Bisette told me. I’m trying to find out who might have wanted to harm her or Dr. Pelletan, the man who was with her last night.”

“And why should you care, a fine English gentleman such as yourself?”

“I care,” he said simply.

She pursed her mouth and said nothing.

“When did you last see her?” he asked.

“Five—perhaps six o’clock last night. She left to visit some patients.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, of course.”

From one of the floors below came a child’s shout, followed by a trill of delighted laughter. Sebastian said, “Do you know if she had any enemies? Someone with whom she might have quarreled recently?”

The woman was silent, her lips pressed tightly together, her nostrils flaring on a deeply indrawn breath.

“There is someone, isn’t there? Who is it?”

Karmele cast a quick, furtive glance around the dark corridor, then beckoned Sebastian inside and quickly shut the door behind him.

“His name is Bullock.” She dropped her voice as if still wary that she might somehow be overheard. “He’s been watching her. Following her.”

“Why?”

“He blames her for his brother’s death; that’s why. Said he was going to make her pay, he did.”

“She treated the man’s brother?”

Karmele shook her head. “Not his brother, no. His brother’s wife.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died.”

Sebastian let his gaze roam the attic’s low, sloped ceiling and dingy, papered walls. The space was fitted out as a small sitting room, but judging from the rolled pallet in the corner and the cooking utensils near the hearth, it also served as the kitchen and Karmele’s bedroom. Through an open door on the far side he caught a glimpse of a second chamber, barely large enough to hold a narrow bed and a small chest. The few pieces of furniture in the two rooms looked old and worn; a thin, tattered carpet covered the floor, and the walls were bare of all decoration except for one small, cracked mirror.

As if aware of Sebastian’s scrutiny, the woman said,
“C’est domage—”
She caught herself, then carefully switched to English. “It is a pity, what she is reduced to. She was born to better than this.”

“I understand she came to London last year?” said Sebastian in French.

The woman blinked in surprise but answered readily enough in the same language. “October 1811, it was. She came with her husband, the English captain.”

“She was married to an English officer?”

“She was, yes. Captain Miles Sauvage. Met him in Spain, she did.”

“And where is Captain Sauvage now?”

“He died, not more than six weeks after we came here.”

“You were with her in Spain?”

“I was, yes.” Her tone was once again guarded, her jaw set hard.

Rather than press her on the point, Sebastian shifted to a different tack. “Tell me more about this man you say has been threatening her.”

“Bullock?” Her heavy brows drew together in a thoughtful frown. “He’s a tradesman—has a shop somewhere hereabouts. Big bear of a man, he is, with curly black hair and a nasty scar running across his cheek, like this—” She brought up her left hand to slash diagonally from the outer edge of her eye to the corner of her mouth.

“And apart from Bullock, can you think of anyone else who might have wished her harm?”

“No, no one. Why would anyone want to hurt her?”

“And did you know Dr. Damion Pelletan?”

She hesitated a moment, then shook her head.
“Non.”

“You’re certain?”

“How would I know him?” she demanded, staring belligerently back at Sebastian.

“Do you know if Madame Sauvage had any contact with the exiled Bourbons?”

A slow tide of angry red crept up the woman’s neck. “Those
puces
? What would the
doctoresse
want with them? She hates them.”

“Really?” It was an unusual attitude for a French émigré.

“Well,” said the woman hastily, as if regretting her harsh words, “I suppose the Comte de Provence is not so bad, when all is said and done. But Artois?” Her face contorted with the violence of her loathing. “And that Marie-Thérèse! She is not right in the head, that one. She lives still in the eighteenth century, and she wishes to drag France back to the past with her. You know what the
doctoresse
calls her?”

Sebastian shook his head.

“Madame Rancune. That’s what the
doctoresse
calls her. Madame Rancune.”

Rancune.
It was a French word meaning grudge or rancor, and it carried with it more than a hint of vindictiveness and spite. He’d heard Marie-Thérèse called it before.

Madam Resentment.