Chapter 8: : Chapter 7

Charles landed on the hard-packed ground with a thud. Manon was halfway across the yard, her faded blue skirts billowing about her. Charles ran after, dodging round barrels and slop buckets and piles of refuse. He was still a half dozen paces behind as he stumbled into Maiden Lane and then rounded the corner into Southampton Street.

A jumble of carts and barrows clogged the street. A donkey’s bray split the air. Manon plunged into the throng of costers and apple women, flower girls and greengrocers. She veered right round a donkey barrow. Charles flung himself to the left, into a narrow gap between an excursion van and a whitewashed step piled high with rhubarb and broccoli. The move gained him a pace on his quarry.

‘Thief!’ Charles yelled in his best Harrovian accents, with a mental apology to Francisco’s friend. He couldn’t protect her if he couldn’t stop her. ‘The woman in blue.’

Heads turned. Hands reached out. A man in a green-stained apron caught Manon by the arm. Manon twisted, gold hair tumbling about her face, and delivered a jab to the aproned man’s ribs. The aproned man staggered backward into the arms of a stout woman wearing a head basket.

Charles lunged at Manon. Manon hurled herself toward the nearest doorway and kicked over a stack of turnips. The turnips careered into a sack of potatoes. The potatoes struck a pile of cabbages. The whole mess of vegetables spilled over the cobblestones.

Manon dodged round a bricklayer’s cart. The horse pulling the cart neighed and skidded to a halt as the torrent of produce rolled into its path. The cart swung sideways, blocking the road. Bricks thudded to the ground. Someone screamed. Someone else let loose a string of invective. Charles jumped over the stream of vegetables, dropped to the cobblestones, and rolled beneath the cart.

He scrambled up from the slimy, green-stained cobblestones and fought his way through the crowd to the square. Covent Garden Market spread before him in all its tumultuous glory. He sprang up into the back of a nearby donkey barrow, amid crates of apples and bunches of carrots, tossed a coin to the startled coster, and scanned the likely avenues.

His gaze honed in on the blue dress and bright hair against the basket-hung railings of St. Paul’s. Manon must have paused for a moment to get her wind back. Charles sprang down from the cart and set off at a run, dodging, twisting, pushing through the crowd. Past the chirp of the bird catcher’s stand, past the whir of a knife grinder, past the sweet violet scent of a flower seller.

Manon had seen him coming and was off again, along the west side of the square, toward the Piazza. Oranges and turnips sailed overhead. People shouted. Charles banged his knee into something hard and shouldered on, not stopping to look, to wonder, to apologize. Manon started up the steps of the Piazza, a dozen paces or so ahead, with a press of people between them.

A line of coffee stalls ran beneath the shelter of the Piazza. Manon made straight for the nearest one. A knot of people were clustered about the entrance, but she didn’t waste precious seconds picking her way through them. She hurled herself at the makeshift cloth wall, ripping through the sheet and tipping over the wooden clotheshorses that supported it.

Charles lunged after her, through the broken wood and torn linen, into the wreckage of the stall. The floor was strewn with spilled coffee, soggy slices of brown bread, slimy pats of butter. The steaming air was thick with the scent of chicory and angry voices. A fist slammed into his head, accompanied by a curse in Irish Gaelic. He skidded on the slick floor and grabbed hold of the nearest support. It proved to be someone’s arm; he didn’t look to see whose. Manon was a half dozen feet away on the opposite side of the stall, half concealed by a man in a gray coat, her escape blocked by a deal table. A knife flashed in the man in gray’s hand, aimed at Manon’s ribs.

Charles hurled himself forward in a desperate attempt to reach Manon before the man could stick the knife in her back. As he moved, a stream of scalding coffee caught the man in gray in the back of the neck.

The man screamed. Manon twisted away. Charles glimpsed his wife, holding a coffee can. The man in gray plunged through the white sheet of the near wall. Charles skirted a broken chair and an overturned can and ran after him into the next stall. The would-be assassin knocked over a paper screen, tipped over a can of coffee, and fought his way through the angry customers, back toward the Piazza steps.

Charles ran out the back of the stall after his quarry. He dodged round one of the pillars of the Piazza, narrowly avoiding another blow to his head. He reached the steps in time to see the man in gray make a flying leap into the back of an apple cart in the square below.

Without hesitation Charles jumped after him. It was a wild jump, but he might have made it. Yet even as he sprang forward, he felt the sole of his boot, slick with butter, slip out from under him. He had a moment to realize he did not have enough distance and to curse himself for a bloody fool. Then he crashed into the steps.

Mélanie dropped the empty coffee can and caught Manon by both arms as she twisted away from the assassin. ‘Please. Trust us.’

Manon’s blue gaze raked Mélanie’s face. She jerked against Mélanie’s hold. Mélanie, used to holding squirming children, tightened her grip.

The assassin raced out of the stall in a blur of movement, Charles close on his heels.

‘It’s simple,’ Mélanie said. ‘That man wants to kill you. We want to help you.’

Manon held Mélanie with her gaze for a moment, drew a breath, and nodded. She and Mélanie ran toward the Piazza steps in time to see the man in gray jump into an apple cart and Charles crash into the steps.

By the time they reached him, Charles had pushed himself to a sitting position. His gaze went straight to Manon. ‘You’re not hurt?’

Manon gave a shaky nod. Mélanie tightened her grip on the other woman’s arm. She didn’t trust Manon not to run. God knew she had more than enough reason to do so.

Charles scrambled to his feet, winced at the pain in his head, and glanced round the square. ‘Christ. He’s gone?’

‘I think the man in the apple cart was a confederate,’ Mélanie said. Charles wasn’t staggering too badly, which probably meant he hadn’t done serious damage to his head when he fell. She’d have to wait to check for bruises, she couldn’t risk letting go of Manon.

Shouts came from the Piazza behind them. In another minute they were going to have angry coffee stall owners demanding compensation.

Of one accord, the three of them ran down the steps and slipped into the concealing chaos of the crowd. This time Manon made no protest. ‘We’ll send payment and an apology later,’ Charles said, stopping for a moment beneath the shelter of an orange seller’s stall. He looked at Manon. ‘We have to go somewhere we can talk.’

Manon’s gaze slid round the market. She was tense, poised for flight. ‘They may know where you live.’

‘We’re not going to our house.’ Charles took her arm. ‘We have friends waiting. This way.’

They made their way through the market to a narrow alley and a side door of the Tavistock Theater. Simon was waiting at the door, holding a lamp as he had been in the Albany a few hours before. His gaze went from the fresh damage to Charles’s face to the woman at Charles’s side.

‘Manon, I presume. I’m glad they found you. I’m Simon Tanner. I write plays, but I’m reasonably sane and quite good at keeping secrets.’

He led them into the darkened theater, round looming canvas flats and shadowy pieces of furniture, and opened a door onto a white-painted dressing room that smelled of face powder, lily of the valley scent, greasepaint, and wilting bouquets. He pushed aside a peacock-blue brocade robe that hung from a clothesline strung across the ceiling. Costumes were everywhere—pinned to the clothesline, draped over the Chinese dressing screen, flung across the dressing table bench. The room had no windows, but a multitude of candles were lit. David sat on a chipped gilt settee amidst this incongruous jumble with a hamper of food at his feet, brewing tea over a spirit lamp.

‘We thought you might be hungry,’ Simon said. ‘It’s all right,’ he added in response to a nervous look from Manon. ‘I own a share in the theater and the leading lady’s a friend of mine. There’s no rehearsal today. We’re quite safe.’

David got to his feet, manners undimmed by the bizarre nature of the scene. Charles murmured a quick introduction.

Manon sank down on a wicker crate, arms crossed over her chest, and looked from Charles to Mélanie. Her gaze was still wary, but she now seemed armored not against what might be done to her but against what she might hear. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? I can see it in your eyes.’

Her voice cracked on the last word. The mother in Mélanie wanted to put her arms round her. But simple comfort couldn’t ease this hurt. Mélanie glanced at Charles and thought of what might have happened if the snipers’ bullets had been a few inches closer, if Charles had been a fraction of a second less quick to jump out of the way. She thought of all the other times in the past four and a half years when he might have been killed. Her hands locked together.

She sat on the crate beside Manon, not so close as to in-trade. Simon lifted a ruby velvet robe from the settee where David was sitting and dropped down beside him.

Charles perched on a stool opposite Manon and told her, gently and succinctly, what had transpired with Francisco the night before.

Manon scarcely blinked throughout his account. Her gaze was trained on his face, her mouth set against betraying anything. When Charles finished speaking, she was silent for a long moment. The hiss of the flame from the spirit lamp filled the small room. ‘I should have known,’ she said at last. ‘He promised he’d meet me at Le Lion d’Or this morning. He was careful about making promises, but when he did he always kept them. He’s the only man I’ve ever known who did.’ She rubbed a hand over her eyes. ‘When I saw you I could only think he’d been wrong to trust you and you’d come after me. We’ve been running for so long…’

A sob shuddered through her. This time Mélanie put her arm round her. Manon seemed scarcely aware of the touch. Mélanie wasn’t sure she was even aware of her surroundings, aware of anything save the fact that Francisco Soro was no longer part of her world.

David poured a cup of tea, stirred in plenty of sugar, and gave it to Mélanie, who pressed it into Manon’s cold, numb fingers. Manon’s hand closed round the warmth of the cup. She took a sip, choked, then swallowed some more.

Charles watched her with a gaze that was warm yet implacable. ‘Talking must be the last thing you feel like doing, but we need to know the truth if we’re to protect you.’

Manon’s gaze flew to his face. ‘You didn’t protect Francisco.’

Charles’s mouth hardened. ‘No. I failed Francisco. I don’t want to fail you as well.’

Manon’s shoulders straightened beneath Mélanie’s arm. ‘Francisco knew the risks. He didn’t come to you for protection. He came to you because he wanted someone to know the truth.’

‘About what?’

Manon stared down into the teacup. ‘I don’t understand it. Not all of it.’

‘When did you meet him?’ Mélanie asked. ‘And where?’

‘Last December. At the Café des Arts. In Paris. I’m—I was an artist’s model.’ She gave a rough laugh and touched her tangled hair. ‘Difficult to believe anyone would want to paint me now.’

‘You have the face for it,’ Simon said.

She shot him a quick glance. ‘My mother was an artist’s model,’ Simon said. ‘I’m not sure which my grandparents thought more unforgivable—that my father went off to Paris to paint or that he insisted on marrying her.’

Manon gave a faint smile. ‘I’d gone to the cafe’ one evening with some friends. Francisco came in and we started talking.’ Her hands tightened round the teacup. ‘He was—kind. And clever. And—’

‘Devastatingly handsome,’ Mélanie said.

Manon twisted her head to look at Mélanie. Tears glittered in her eyes, but her mouth curved slightly. ‘Yes. I’d never met anyone quite like him. He had so many stories about Spain during the war—I knew half of them were made up, but I always suspected that the most outrageous ones were the truth.’

‘Very likely,’ Charles said. ‘I doubt even Francisco could invent anything more outrageous than a lot of the things he actually did. Did he tell you why he’d come to Paris?’

Manon’s face went closed again. ‘He said he’d come to France on business. He told me once that he’d liked the people he worked for better during the war, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.’ She stared into the teacup. ‘Things are bad in Paris now. The war’s supposed to be over, but no one can forget. Soldiers are everywhere—British, Prussian, Russian, Belgian.’ She looked at Charles, chin lifted with defiance.

‘And soldiers don’t make the best of guests in a foreign country,’ Charles said. ‘It can’t be easy to watch one’s city overrun. I didn’t find it very easy to watch as a British diplomat.’

Mélanie blinked back her own images of the foreign uniforms crowding the streets and quays and squares of Paris.

‘It’s not enough for the Royalists that the emperor’s gone,’ Manon said. ‘It’s not even enough to reclaim their land. A lot of them want revenge. For the war. For the Republic. For—’

‘Everything that’s happened since the Revolution,’ Mélanie said.

Manon nodded. ‘So many people have been imprisoned, so many executed. Friends. Men whose only crime was to fight for the emperor when he escaped from Elba.’ She cast another quick glance at Charles.

‘I worked against the French in Spain,’ Charles said, ‘but I don’t approve of what’s happening in Paris now. Even Wellington thinks the reprisals have gone too far.’

‘But he couldn’t stop them from killing Marshal Ney.’

David opened his mouth, then closed it.

Manon pinned him with a gaze that read far too much in his ingenuous face. ‘A man I was close to—a man I loved—died fighting in Russia. If he’d lived, he’d have rejoined the emperor when he escaped. And if he’d survived Waterloo, he could have been executed for his loyalty.’

Charles leaned toward her, his gaze steady. ‘When did you become entangled in what Francisco was doing?’

Manon shrank back against the wall, dislodging a beaded mask that hung from a nail. Mélanie picked it up. ‘Sometimes Francisco would leave Paris for days on end. I didn’t ask where he went. I knew it was dangerous, but—he could take care of himself. I thought.’ She choked. ‘Mon Dieu, I thought the way he lived was exciting.’

Mélanie met Charles’s gaze for a moment. It could be exciting. Headier than champagne, more addictive than opium.

‘He came to my room in the middle of the night,’ Manon continued. ‘Dripping blood all over the floor and bed. He’d been shot. He wouldn’t talk about what had happened. Even then I didn’t realize—But he said he needed help.’

‘What sort of help?’ Charles asked.

She tightened her grip on her teacup. ‘Letters would be delivered to me at the studio where I modeled and I’d take them to Francisco. I never read them. A few times he had me go to the Conciergerie.’

Charles cast another quick glance at Mélanie, and even Simon and David looked alert. The Conciergerie, located within the Palais de Justice, had been one of the most formidable prisons in Paris for over five hundred years. Many Bonapartists were now held within its walls.

‘Whom did you visit?’ Charles said.

‘A man named Coroux, a former Bonapartist officer.’

David was several shades paler than usual. Even Simon, used to dreaming up fantastic flights of fancy with his pen, looked as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Welcome to the world your friends have been living in. Sometimes Mélanie forgot that any sort of other world existed.

‘Do you have any idea of the content of the messages?’ Charles asked.

Manon shook her head. ‘The papers were always sealed. Once he opened one and I caught a glimpse of the writing—I can’t be sure, but I think it was in a code.’

Charles looked at Mélanie and inclined his head. Mélanie unbuttoned the cuff of her gown and pulled out a drawing of the seal that she’d made while they waited at David and Simon’s for it to be time to leave for Covent Garden. ‘Do you recognize this?’

Manon studied it. ‘It’s a seal. I saw it on the letters I carried and sometimes on papers Francisco brought home.’

Charles nodded. ‘What was he like, this man you visited?’

‘Courtly. He used to kiss my hand and tell me he liked my bonnet or my shawl or the way I’d dressed my hair. He had kind eyes.’

‘When did you leave Paris?’

Her face twisted. ‘Ten days ago. In the middle of the night. Francisco dragged me out of bed and said I had to listen. He kept pacing up and down the room, saying he couldn’t believe he’d been so deceived. At first I thought he was accusing me of being unfaithful. Then I realized he wasn’t angry with me at all.’

‘Whom was he angry with?’

‘Whomever he worked for. I couldn’t make it out, because he was raging so much and he’d start saying whole sentences in Spanish, but he seemed to be saying they’d tricked him. That he’d never forgive himself for what he’d done. What he’d helped them do. He said we had to leave. He said it wasn’t safe now that they knew he knew and that I wouldn’t be safe, either. I’d have to come with him. He said it as though he was apologizing, but—’ She swallowed, then lifted her head and looked directly at Charles. ‘I’d never have forgiven him if he’d left me behind. I loved him. I don’t know what he felt for me. Affection, duty, responsibility. Maybe even love. Now I’ll never be certain.’

Mélanie flicked an involuntary glance at her husband. Even if one woke every morning in the same bed and shared morning coffee and visits to the nursery, could one ever be certain?

Manon took a sip of tea and stared into the cup. ‘We left Paris that night. I only had time to pack a small valise. We stayed outside Paris at a farm where the people knew Francisco. During the night, someone came searching for us. We had to hide in the hay bales.’

‘Who was searching?’ Charles asked.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I heard voices, but it only seemed to be one man and he spoke quietly. I couldn’t make out the words. I don’t think it was soldiers. There would have been more of them. We made our way to Dieppe and took a fishing boat for England. We landed on the coast. Sussex, he called it. We got a ride to London in a coal cart. Francisco said they had to be stopped. He said he had to get word to someone who could help.’ She looked at Charles again. ‘You.’

The failure to help sat heavily in Charles’s eyes. ‘He told you my name?’

‘Eventually. The night he sent me to find you.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s odd. For all the danger, he seemed happier those last days. Only two days ago, he said to me that it was good to know which side he was on again.’

‘Did he ever mention something called the Elsinore League?’

‘No.’

So Francisco had been working with Bonapartists. That wasn’t surprising. He hadn’t liked the French when they were overrunning Spain, but he was hardly a Royalist. Was that what he’d come to warn Charles about? A Bonapartist plot? Mélanie’s blood chilled. Surely not another attempt to help Napoleon escape.

‘Do you know the contents of the papers he was bringing us?’ Charles asked.

Manon shook her head. ‘He said it wasn’t safe for me to know more. But—’ Her gaze darted from Charles to Mélanie. ‘He took papers with him when we left. Some he gave to you. The rest—’ She reached inside the bodice of her gown and drew out a handful of creased papers. ‘He gave to me.’

Charles took the papers. In the candlelight, Mélanie glimpsed the same ancient Greek characters as on the papers Francisco had given them. ‘Did Francisco ever mention any names?’

‘No. That is, yes, I suppose it’s a name. In the middle of one of his rants.’ She frowned in an effort of memory. ‘He said with all they’d done, it was ironic that the people he worked with feared most of all for Honoria.’