The Forbidden Rose

Two

SHE WAS A LITTLE DIZZY, SO SHE SAT A MOMENT longer, looking down the parting in the grass where the rabbit had disappeared, wondering whether it would live to a ripe old age and become a patriarch with grandchildren at its knee or be eaten, almost immediately, by a fox.

Then, from beneath the rustle of rain, voices slid like snakes. Men’s voices.

She grabbed up her skirts and ran.

There was no time to get to the woods. She ran toward the chateau. Down the long path of the flower garden, lavender and foxglove and marigold caught at her. Pebbles scattered under her clogs. She was making noise. Too much noise.

It wasn’t men from the village walking up the back lane. Men from Voisemont wouldn’t come this late in the day, in the rain. They could pick better weather to loot the chateau. They’d roll up in squeaking carts she could hear a hundred yards away. Crow’s messenger, when he came to find her—if he came—would be silent.

She ran across the courtyard to where the stable door hung open and ducked inside. Her sabots clicked down the rank of stalls where each window stood open to the gray outside. No whicker came. No click of a hoof. Only the dry commentary of barn swallows, nesting in the eaves. The stable was empty and desolate under the high roof. The heart had gone out of here with the horses.

The villagers had come, thrifty and sharp-eyed and acquisitive. There was not one small valuable object left in place. Not a blanket. Not a jingling bit or rein or a braided rope. Not a scrap of worked leather. They’d even emptied the feed bins into sacks and carted the oats away, all but a handful in the bottom of the bin. The chickens of Voisemont would eat well this summer.

At the last stall, she stopped below the hayloft where the ladder slanted down. She stood ankle deep in straw, well back in the shadow. The shutters were open everywhere, creaking in the light wind, dripping with the damp congealed on the boards. It would have taken three minutes to close them, but no one had bothered. Perhaps it was a revolutionary principle that good straw should spoil in the rain.

There was a clear view of the courtyard. She would make certain this was not the messenger from Crow. Then she would slip away out the back door and leave them to occupy themselves with looting.

In the courtyard, voices separated into a deep, heavy rumble and answers, lighter and higher. Two men, at least.

They could be chance travelers, looking for a dry spot to spend the night. They could be philosophers or scholars, knights-errant, pilgrims, heroes in disguise, wandering minstrels. They might be veritable princes among men, bent upon good works, full of benevolence.

She had become skeptical of benevolence.

The high bushes of the lane were hazy under the desultory scatter of raindrops. They emerged. A tall man, dressed like a prosperous tradesman but brown as a farmer, strode ahead. His servant boy lagged behind, struggling with a pair of donkeys.

The big man stopped in the center of the courtyard and stood with his back to her, his head tilted to look up at the streaked black and gray facade of the chateau. He was not a man of fashion, certainly, but he was no shabby vagabond. He dressed substantially and practically, outfitted for hard travel with a plain coat and high boots. His hands, heavy and motionless, hooked into the waist of his trousers. His wide-legged stance was calm and meditative.

He could have been a soldier, surveying a captured city, preparing to raze it and salt the earth, or a builder, inspecting the blocks of a fallen Roman villa, calculating tonnage, planning to buy and transport the marble. As she watched, he pulled his hat off and slapped it against his thigh. There was decision in that motion. The whisper of great force, held easily in check.

I do not like this at all.

He carried no sign to say he was Crow’s messenger. A red ribbon with a knot in it, any bit of red cloth, knotted, would be enough. He was only a stranger in her domain, pointless and useless to her.

You have no business here. Go away.

He did not, of course. He set his hat back, low over his forehead, and flipped the collar of his coat up. He turned slowly, taking in the dairy house and the coach house, working his way around. At this distance, she couldn’t make out his features. Weak, gray light slid across his face, drawing a suggestion of high, flat cheekbones, a jaw dark with stubble, a jutting nose. His hair was brown and hung raggedly on his neck.

If he had inhabited a fairy tale he would have been the giant, not the prince. Giants are more chancy to deal with than princes.

This was what came of clinging to the stones of the chateau like damp moss. She had not gone to seek danger on the Paris road, so danger had come to her, stalking her right to her own doorstep. She was like the man who ran away from Death, all the way from Baghdad to Samarkand. Death found him anyway, because it was his fate.

The stranger surveyed his way around the outbuildings. When he came to the stable, for an instant he seemed to look directly at her. The force of his concentration grabbed her breath and twisted it in her lungs. Knowing she was invisible, knowing she was wrapped in shadow, she froze.

His attention moved on. To the stone wall that hid the fishpond garden. To the tall iron grille of that garden, standing open. To the kitchen plantings beyond, with that gate left open as well. Perhaps there was some unwritten rule that mobs and looters did not close doors after themselves.

The servant boy tied the donkeys to a post, swearing a staccato chain of annoyance. A trick of wind blew the words to her. “Donkey feet in butter. Donkey en croûte. Donkey soup. You just wait.”

He spoke with a Gascon accent. He looked Gascon also, dark haired, with the smooth, dark skin of the south of France. He was a servant many miles from home.

Master and servant were occupied with their own business. She could slip out the back door of the stable and crawl in the direction of the garden shed, pretending to be something unnoticeable. A hedgehog perhaps. Or she could wait. This pair might gawk at the chateau for a dozen moments, then leave for a warm fire and dry, comfortable beds in the village. She could climb to the stable loft and watch from there. There was always the chance they might call out and identify themselves with one of the passwords.

Or she could stand here like an idiot. She was a battlefield of possibilities.

The big man said, “There’s broken glass all over. Watch your feet. And don’t bring the donkeys in.” A Breton voice. This was a man from the oldest, the least civilized, province of France.

He didn’t start poking through the ruins. He stood and thought a great deal about what he was seeing. She did not wish to deal with a man who came here with more in his mind than straightforward looting.

WILLIAM Doyle, British spy, stood in the French rain and thought about destruction.

Decorum and Dulce balked at the gate. Laid their ears back and refused to set hoof on the open gravel in the courtyard. They didn’t like the stink of burning. They smelled death, maybe. Something they didn’t like, anyway.

Wise as cats, those beasts. The boy hadn’t learned to appreciate them.

There weren’t any remains lying about in an obvious way. No bodies hanging from the trees like ripe fruit. Always the possibility somebody was tucked away in a corner, dead.

Dulce snaked out to bite Hawker. Missed him by a hair. The boy was getting downright nimble, wasn’t he?

“Rutting bastard of a—” Hawker dodged, “sodomite monk.”

He learned that one from me. I am just a shining example to youth. The boy had come to him speaking some French. He was improving the lad’s vocabulary.

The donkeys were what he’d call a pointed lesson in how to deal with a problem you couldn’t out talk and couldn’t stab in the jugular. Sometimes it was a real pleasure to educate the lad.

Hawker hanked the reins up with a last jerk, looking like he knew what he was about, which was a tribute to his acting skills. “I’m going to boil your entrails down and make goddamn donkey glue.”

“When yer through chatting with the livestock, maybe we can reconnoiter a bit. Take the back garden, down to that shed. Then go round the west side.” He did a slice and circle, saying the same thing in hand-talk. After this, the gesture would be enough. Hawker learned the first time.

The boy stuck to the wet grass where it was quiet and let the boxwood hedge screen him from sight, taking city skills and applying them. He was beginning to move like a countryman.

They had Chateau de Fleurignac to themselves. No Jacobin radicals waved official papers. No servants clacked buckets at the well or broke dishes in the kitchen. No chickens underfoot. No horses in the stable. Not even a dog came out to discuss meum et tuum with trespassers.

No sign of the mad, old Marquis de Fleurignac or his daughter.

In the tavern in Voisemont, they said the old man had escaped before the Jacobins came to arrest him and drag him back to Paris, to the guillotine. He’d driven away in a coach and four, his pockets stuffed with jewels. He’d been seen going north to join the armies attacking France.

Another contingent claimed he’d been spirited away by one of the fraternities of heroes and fools who flipped a finger at the Revolution and rescued aristos. He was hid in the false bottom of a wagon, joggling along the road to the coast.

Then there was a lively group that said the marquis had been trapped in the fire. Oh, yes. They’d seen him with their own eyes, beating at the windows to get out. Burning like a torch. He was buried under eight feet of ashes with a fortune in gold clutched in his charred, bony fists. All a man had to do was dig him up.

Himself, he thought de Fleurignac had never been at the chateau. De Fleurignac was a city man. He’d gone to ground where he felt safe. Paris. That’s where he’d find him and his damned list.

But De Fleurignac’s daughter had been here. In the tavern there was complete agreement she’d been in the house when the Jacobins came. Nobody speculated on what had become of her. They passed quick glances back and forth and said nothing. Always interesting, what people didn’t talk about.

He looked around, writing his report in his head.

Chateau de Fleurignac was the size of his father’s house, Bengeat Court. It was the same age as Bengeat, too. Sixteenth century. Built with the local granite they’d been passing in every field all the way from the coast. The roof had caved in unevenly when the timbers went, making a gray hunchback of a ruin. Every window was topped with a fan of black soot.

They burned the hell out of this place, didn’t they?

Statues had toppled from their niches at the roofline. A stone hand, holding a scroll, lay in fragments at his feet. The broken line of marble over there was the drape of a toga. Late classical work. Roman, not Gallo-Roman. Emperors and poets, brought crashing down by the farmers of Voisemont-en-Auge. A lonely end, a long way from the sun of Italy.

In the neat formal gardens, the marble statues of nymphs had been systematically beheaded. That was the fashion in France these days. Beheading.

Hawker threaded his way across the rubble of the courtyard, deft and fastidious about where he put his feet. “What’s the word . . . that long animal?” He slithered his hand sinuously. “On the ground. With fur. The mean one.”

He meant weasel, probably. “Belette.”

“That’s it. I’m going to drop weasels down their long, furry donkey ears. Let them chew on their brains.”

“That’ll work.”

“I want ’em to die slow, so I can take my time and savor it. There’s nobody in the gardens, alive or dead. The grass is all churned up with carts and horses. Four different carts, since you’re going to ask. And there is nothing anywhere here worth stealing.” The broken chairs, muddy silk, and torn paintings got a scathing appraisal. “I will give you my expert opinion. You can loot a place or you can burn it to the ground. It’s a mistake trying to do both at once.”

“Bad planning on somebody’s part. See that, up there?” Lead had melted from the roof and cooled into thick black icicles.

“That’s . . . ah . . .” Hawker rubbed his forehead, tracking down the French word. “Lead.”

“Right. Lead. That’s about the third most important thing here, so I’m taking an interest in it. Why?”

Hawker didn’t know. He hated not knowing. “Reminds you of the lead soldiers you played with as a nipper?”

Very funny. “There’s a shortage of lead in France. That’s three—maybe three and a half—tons of it. They’ll hack that down to make bullets for the Republic. We’ll be dodging that lead, one of these days, on some battlefield.”

Cold eyes looked out of an unlined face. “You, maybe. Not me. It’s stupid men who die on battlefields.”

Not an ounce of patriot in you, boy. Considering the hellhole you come from back in London, I can’t think of any reason there should be. “I’d be careful, saying that. The gods have a sense of humor. Not a nice one. We’ll camp here tonight.”

Fire had played favorites with the outbuildings. The dairy house was intact. The carriage house, burned out completely. The carriages, hauled into the open, overturned, and set on fire. Nothing left of them but the wood frame and hanging leather straps. The stable was untouched.

When his father was angry with him or his brothers were on a rampage, he’d slept in the stables at Bengeat. But he didn’t like to sleep closed in, in hostile country. The orangerie was a better bet. “That way. Let’s get in out of the rain.”

The orangerie was open to the wind, a disorder with a roof over it. Every window was broken, the orange trees trampled, the planters thrown down on their sides. The hothouse plants had been stomped into the tiles. Glass covered the ground, thick near the walls, and scattered out in every direction for a dozen yards, glinting.

He made a circuit of the place. Open space on three sides. He’d see visitors coming through those big, naked windows and hear ’em walking on glass. He hated getting sneaked up on.

Hawker followed him, crunching glass into the gravel. “The boys in that stinking little village waited years to do this.”

“Did they?”

“They dreamed of it. They’d sit in those pig houses in the village with the shutters closed and the wind leaking in. They’d think about these fancy weeds in here, being coddled, all warm and happy behind glass. Down there, they were freezing in the dark. Up here, they were growing flowers.”

“That’s fixed, then. No more flowers.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hawker stoop and pick up a rock, draw back and throw. Glass fell with a thin, silver discord. The heroic revolutionaries of Voisemont had missed one pane. Destruction was now complete.

“It would have bothered me all night, knowing there was one window left,” Hawker said.

“Anything else you need to break to make it homey in here?”

“That’ll do.” The boy poked at pottery pieces where somebody’d beaten an orchid apart, pot and all. “They hated this place. Hated it more than the big house. I’m surprised they didn’t take it down, stone by stone.”

“They may yet. It’s early days.” Lots of hate in you, isn’t there? But you’re worth trying to save if you see things like that. “Put the animals in the kitchen garden. If you walk them through any of this glass I’m going to make you pick it out of the hooves with your teeth. And fetch some straw. We’ll put it between us and the ground. No reason we shouldn’t sleep soft tonight.”

“Straw. I love luxury.”

Three barn swallows shot out of the gable end of the stable, sudden as arrows. If he’d been facing the other way, he would have missed it.

It probably didn’t mean a thing. Birds pick any odd minute to get spooked. But the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. And the donkeys were nervous. Somebody’s watching us.

“What?” The boy’s hand hovered over the knife he kept hidden under his waistband.

“Don’t turn.”

“Where are they?”

“The stable. Far left end. You walk off slow and get out of the line of fire. Go busy yourself with our four-footed brothers.”

“Your brothers, maybe. Not mine.” He gave a fluid shrug for anyone watching—that was a damned eloquent French shoulder he was developing—and sauntered off, whistling, without a backward glance. The boy was born for this work. He’d make a spy of him yet. If he didn’t have to kill him.

He strolled out to the six-foot stone wall that edged the kitchen garden, adjusting his trousers like a man picking a good spot to piss. When he had a substantial boxwood between him and the stable, he boosted himself up and over the wall and dropped into an herb bed on the other side.

Basil crushed underfoot when he landed. He was going to smell like basil. Going to yell his approach to all and sundry. Couldn’t be helped. He loped along the garden wall, keeping in its cover, staying on the dirt so it was quiet. Thirty feet, and he was coming up behind the stable. He went back over the wall again. Nobody on guard. All quiet. All deserted.

The feeling that somebody waited inside got stronger and stronger.

The back door to the tack room was open. He stalked forward, hunting whatever waited for him in there.