The Forbidden Rose

Forty-five

MARGUERITE PUT THREE LAYERS OF GOLD LEAF upon each toenail, stopping in between to knit and read poetry and let everything dry. She heard the voices before the tramp and shuffle of boots because they did not trouble to keep themselves quiet. Then the click and clank of metal they carried also announced their coming.

When she held Jean-Paul’s watch to the candle she saw that it was eleven o’clock. Time had passed more quickly than she had thought.

They were stars in the dark, the men who came with their lanterns, and there were a dozen of them. Two of them hefted huge coils of rope. Others carried lumpy sacks.

“My Marguerite.” Poulet came in front of the others and dropped down to sit cross-legged beside her. “You must put your shoes on or my friends will go mad with desire. You have the most exquisite feet.”

“I am told that,” she said. “It pleases my vanity no end.” His friends were young, all of them. Her own age, or younger. They dressed with great aplomb and style, expensively, in an extravagance of fashion that put large brass buttons upon their coats and spread lapels like wings across their breasts. Two of them wore gold hoops in the left ear, like pirates.

They were not very good at being silent. They had dined well and smelled of wine and some of them were a little tipsy. When she listened to them speak, it was obvious that every one of them had been in these caverns many times before. They came to the quarries for the adventure of it. Because it was forbidden and dangerous.

They were not of La Flèche. They told her their names, carelessly, openly. They made her feel old.

In a while, when they would not be silent, Poulet took them into the next chamber to lay out ropes and rungs and assemble the ladder Jean-Paul had designed for this endeavor. Jean-Paul himself came not many minutes later, with Hawker and three more of these young men, and went off to supervise.

She sat with her back to the wall of the well, waiting and listening.

Lights appeared, the furtive, faint glows of dark lanterns, and with them, a third group of men.

They approached silently, only their lights revealing that they were there. These were suspicious men who studied her and every corner of the cavern, and slid off in twos and threes to investigate the distant voices Jean-Paul supervised.

Justine was with them. “I brought friends.” She stood, frowning. First one man and then another came up to whisper in her ear. She nodded. The men, and their lights, retreated to separate, distant corners of the cavern.

None of them was well dressed, none laughed or made jokes, and none of them told their names. However, several also smelled of wine.

Justine sat beside her in a companionable way. “They are smugglers, but they are also friends of mine. They can be trusted.”

“I had thought they might be. The traders of the coast are remarkably similar to your friends.” She passed Poulet’s flask across. Justine thanked her and drank and cleaned the mouth of the flask politely against her sleeve before she gave it back.

“What is the time?” Justine asked.

“Twenty minutes short of midnight. The ladder is almost ready, I think.”

Justine nodded.

There were a few minutes to wait so she spoke of what was puzzling her. “Why did you bring me smugglers? It is not that I am ungrateful, but I do not know precisely what to do with them.”

“I am almost sure we will need them.” Justine laughed softly.