Scarlet, page 15
“I didn’t see any—the place was stripped bare.” She saw the disappointment in his eyes. “He said—he said there were cemeteries of people he’d killed buried in the garden. And . . .” Her conscience struggled with her panic. “When he spoke to one of the men who brought me there, he said he was paying off the local Committee of Public Safety.”
“Would you testify to that in court?” Chauvelin asked.
Eleanor realized she might just have condemned people to death. “I can only speak to what I saw and heard, monsieur,” she said. “He didn’t say their names.”
“No matter. An accusation is enough, these days. You’ve done the right thing to confess.” Finally, his voice suggested. “I will investigate this. In the meantime, you will go to Paris.”
Eleanor gaped. “Paris?” she finally said.
“Indeed. If we can bring the Marquis to judgment, your testimony may be useful. Also, we must ensure that you are kept safe from your father. A woman on her own can fall into serious trouble.”
“But, monsieur, what am I to do in Paris?” Eleanor asked, bewildered.
He raised his brows. “Does the prospect displease you? I thought all young women from the provinces wanted to reach Paris.”
“Yes, but . . .” Eleanor spread her hands. “I have no money, no employment, no references—”
“Easily resolved,” Chauvelin said firmly. “I need a new housemaid. My household will take care of you until we can determine what else should be done with you.”
Eleanor’s stomach curdled. She tried to think what might disarm his suspicions.
“If I do a good job as your housemaid, would you give me a reference, monsieur?” she asked. “I like needlework; I’m good at it. I’ve always wanted honest work.”
His cold stare seemed to pierce through her deceptions like a needle through coarse calico, but he nodded. “I’m sure that we can arrange something for a citizen of the Republic who’s done her duty and proven her loyalty. And who—let me remind you—should be addressing her fellow citizens as citizen, not monsieur. But first, Paris.”
“I’m very grateful for the chance to . . .” The words stuck in Eleanor’s mouth. “Prove my loyalty.”
“A much more reasonable attitude,” he said approvingly. “Desgas, we have finished here. Organize the carriage. You will be escorting Citizen Dupont, alongside certain letters for me. While you’re at it, find some local woman who can see this young lady has the necessities for travel. And . . .” He plucked the embroidered handkerchief from Eleanor’s fingers. “You have stopped crying, I think.”
As it fluttered, Eleanor saw the initials embroidered on it—AC in careful unenterprising whitework. It was something of a comfort, though not much, to think that there was someone in his household who cared enough for him to embroider his initials.
After all, it was very evident that she hadn’t escaped imprisonment. She’d merely traded one captor for another.
11
THE JOURNEY TO Paris was something which later came back to Eleanor in nightmares, an endless jolting and tossing half-sleep where her head throbbed and her mouth was full of the taste of laudanum. She knew that something dreadful awaited her at the end of her travels—but could never quite wake up to confront it.
She had been hustled into a waiting coach along with Chauvelin’s secretary Desgas—a rabbity man, with sharp eyes and a mouth that stayed resolutely shut whenever she tried to speak to him—and half a dozen members of the Revolutionary Guard as outriders. Her head was still aching, and the single tankard of water had done little for her thirst. The air was full with the tension of an oncoming thunderstorm; outside the soldiers were laying bets on their chances of outrunning the weather.
Eleanor prayed desperately that they’d fail. After all, if there was a really bad storm, then they couldn’t travel, and the League might have a chance of finding her. But that would lead them straight into Chauvelin’s path too.
There was a part of her, however, that was grateful to be in the Revolutionaries’ hands rather than those of the Marquis de Stainville. She had never seen such bloodlust—and what he had said still haunted her. If Lady Sophie was hungry enough, desperate enough . . . would she . . . ?
The coach was faster than the stagecoach in England, and the dry countryside rolled past beyond the windows in shades of gold and brown. The few flashes of green were arid and parched, slain by the sword of heat.
Eleanor knew that she should be making plans to escape, but her head hurt, and the rocking of the carriage was unsettling her stomach with every passing mile. She had to beg Monsieur—no, Citizen—Desgas to stop the carriage so that she could throw up after a couple of miles, and he was clearly only persuaded by the thought of traveling for days in the smell of vomit if he didn’t let her empty her stomach outside.
The soldiers, at least, were glad of the pause. One of them was kind enough to offer her his water bottle to rinse her mouth out with, and he patted her shoulder as she climbed back up into the carriage. Eleanor knew in an abstract way that someone like Lady Marguerite would have identified him as a weak link, charmed him and used him to escape . . . but all she could do was collapse back into the seat, conscious of Desgas watching her.
They changed horses several times along the way. At one town, Desgas ordered a local doctor to examine the bandages on her head. The elderly man whom the soldiers hustled over to Eleanor tched over her injuries, shook his head and muttered something about “if the situation wasn’t so urgent.”
“She’s required in Paris,” Desgas said. “The business of the Republic.”
“Oh well then,” the doctor said quickly. “She may be a bit uncomfortable, but this should help her for the pain.” He gave a brown glass bottle to Desgas. “One spoonful—a small one—when she complains.”
“The Republic appreciates your assistance,” Desgas answered, pocketing the bottle. The doctor hesitated, as though hoping for some payment, then slunk away with the air of a man grateful for his escape.
Desgas rejoined Eleanor in the carriage, and one of the soldiers handed up a basket of food and bottles of water. “We’ll be traveling through the night,” he said, the first time he’d actually spoken to her. “You may as well try to sleep. Do you want some laudanum?”
Eleanor knew what laudanum was—ladies of quality took it to get to sleep. Lady Sophie disapproved of its use on her estate, but then Lady Sophie disapproved of most drugs and medicines. Her ladyship would go on about how healthy workers should be able to throw off illness without the need of medication, but the quiet understanding—never spoken publicly—was that Lady Sophie objected to the taste when she was drinking their blood.
But if it would help with the way Eleanor’s head ached . . .
“Yes please, citizen,” she said in a pitiful voice that was only half pretense. She wanted him to underestimate her—but she also desperately wanted to sleep.
He poured out a single dose into the bottle’s cap.
It was bitter—but she slept.
* * *
• • •
PARIS ROUSED ELEANOR from her drugged sleep. She wasn’t sure how many times Desgas had dosed her with laudanum to keep her unconscious—but there was no way she could sleep through this.
Even before they arrived, Eleanor could hear the rising throb of sound ahead. The carriage drew up past enormous queues that led to the gates in the walls, with members of the National Guard checking every new arrival for their papers. The sheer presence of so many people made her shrink into the carriage seats, as though she could somehow hide herself in the upholstery.
London had been a whirling, confusing storm of people when she’d arrived there by stagecoach—was it only a month or two ago?—but at least London was somewhere safe, in the middle of other English men and women. Here nobody was on her side. She was a foreign spy, and she was on her own. The only cord which held her suspended above a fatal abyss was Chauvelin’s interest in her, and she knew very well that the moment she was no longer useful, she’d be in jail. She didn’t even know what French jails were like. Well, she didn’t really know what English jails were like either, but she’d spent so much of her life trying to be a good girl, to do what she was told and get a safe position . . .
Tears of self-pity leaked down her cheeks, and she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. A closer look at it showed just how dirty it was. She hadn’t washed for days, and she’d been filthy ever since escaping the chateau. The taste of repeated doses of laudanum was sour in her mouth. All this was hardly a recommendation for work as a housemaid in Chauvelin’s household.
Desgas leaned out of the window to show his papers to one of the guard. The man practically clicked his heels together with eagerness—or panic—to respond, yelling to his fellows to clear the way. The carriage slowed to a crawl again; it seemed even the authority of the Committee of Public Safety couldn’t do anything about city traffic.
Curiosity drew Eleanor out of her depression and pushed her to peer out of the window at Paris. For a moment it felt as though someone else was looking through her eyes at the buildings, the people, everything. It seemed she was a stranger to herself, marveling at a world that was utterly foreign. Tall symmetrical houses lined the road on either side, as though someone had deliberately lined them up. Every detail matched—they were surely homes for the rich. Yet stains marred their pale walls, missing roof tiles left gaping holes, windows were boarded up like bandaged wounds and Revolutionary flags hung on them, the red stripe as vivid as blood.
Crowds thronged the pavements, a heaving mass of people busier than Boulogne or even London. Everyone wore Revolutionary colors, ranging from rosettes to sashes to skirts or trousers in red, white and blue; every greeting began with citizen, bright and cheerful but with a note of urgency to it, like a secret password whose omission might prove fatal. Lampposts were garnished with nooses and garlic, tossing in the breeze like festival streamers.
And everywhere Eleanor looked, she saw hunger. She was used to Lady Sophie’s estate, where there was always plenty to eat, and where common health was the order of the day. Paris might be free from aristocratic rule, but her people needed food. A farmer’s cart which had entered the gates just before them was surrounded by men offering the carter a good deal for his wares, while at the rear a couple of boys grabbed turnips and ran for it. Most faces were thin and lean. The few people who seemed truly comfortable or well-fed were either wearing the sash that marked them as a member of the Committee or were dressed in expensive bad taste, in silks and fine cottons that shouted their wealth to casual onlookers. And even they still wore a Revolutionary cockade on their hats.
Desgas leaned past her and drew down the window shade, cutting off her view of the world outside the carriage.
“Why did you do that?” Eleanor demanded, then hastily added, “Citizen.”
“Because you have no need to see it,” he answered in clipped tones. “You are going directly to Citizen Chauvelin’s house, and you will stay there.”
“But it’s Paris!” Eleanor protested, finding it very easy to sound like a girl from the provinces who was burning to see the capital.
He shrugged. “I daresay one city is very much like another to a prostitute.”
Eleanor flushed with anger. “How dare you accuse me of being a prostitute, citizen?”
“What else should I call a woman who sells her body to sanguinocrats? You should consider yourself lucky that Citizen Chauvelin is even giving you a chance to prove you can do honest work.”
“But I didn’t,” she protested. “Not like that!”
His shrug was all the more enraging because of his clear lack of interest in her opinion. “Selling your body, selling your blood—what’s the difference? You aren’t even honest, with your claims that your father made you do it. A proper daughter of the Revolution would have reported him a dozen times over.”
“But I was afraid . . .” Eleanor faltered, trying to stick to her cover story.
“Citizen, there are things which should have frightened you far more. But it’s too late now.” There was no compassion in his face, and not even a shadow of understanding or sympathy. “This is your one opportunity to avoid prison—or worse. I suggest you work very hard to prove that you are contrite and sincere and a good citizen, and willing to do whatever the Republic asks of you. Otherwise . . .”
He let the sentence trail off, and the carriage jolted on through the streets of Paris.
* * *
• • •
THE CARRIAGE SLOWED and stopped, and Eleanor sat up. She’d challenged herself to consider what Sir Percy would do and had been trying to make a mental map of the city, working by sound, smell and road texture—and had failed utterly. The only two things she could say for certain were that Paris was big and that it needed a lot of paving work. Or redoing. Who knew how many cobbles and paving stones had been wrenched up by the mob to break down doors or smash barricades?
“We’re here, Citizen Desgas,” one of the soldiers called from outside.
“Wait here,” Desgas ordered Eleanor. He swung the door open and stepped out, closing it behind him to shut her in the darkness again. She had a glimpse of what looked implausibly like quite a nice street. Clean houses, clean pavements, even the odd flowering shrub or vine climbing the outside of houses, and most noticeable of all, no heaving crowds. Paris itself seemed to hold its breath here and be a little quieter—but was it out of some unexpected gentleness, or rather due to fear?
If Eleanor was about to be handed over to Chauvelin’s household, she should at least try to look presentable. Unfortunately, trying was all she could do. She had no shoes or stockings, no bonnet or cap or shawl; frankly, if she’d been in charge of hiring housemaids, she’d have turned herself away without an interview. Even her bandages were dirty. She tugged at the neckline of her dress, trying to persuade it up to a more modest level, and prayed that Chauvelin’s housekeeper was blind.
She fiddled with the window shade, twitching it a fraction out of place so that she could see outside. Desgas was speaking with an elderly woman on the doorstep, passing her a letter. Behind the woman—the housekeeper?—there were other people in the hallway, barely perceptible in the shadows as a mass of skirts and gleams of light on hair, probably as eager to hear what was going on as Eleanor herself. Well, at least she wouldn’t be the only housemaid.
Or did Chauvelin have a family? It didn’t seem probable. He hadn’t struck Eleanor as the fatherly type. Unless one considered God in the Old Testament, whose whole “sacrifice your only son to me, Abraham” attitude seemed quite close to the “proper daughter of the Revolution” speech which Desgas had given her . . .
Desgas returned to the carriage, and Eleanor hastily let go of the window shade. She sat back in her seat, just in time for him to throw the door open. “Out,” he commanded. “Time for you to get to work.”
“Thank you, citizen,” Eleanor said with due meekness. She noted the pavement was surprisingly clean. Small mercies . . . It said a great deal about where Citizen Chauvelin could afford to keep his residence in Paris. She pulled herself together and bobbed a curtsey to the woman in the doorway. “Madame.”
“You see, Citizen Roget,” Desgas said from behind Eleanor, “she still has the bad old habits.”
Eleanor flushed and hastily straightened again. Was curtseying out of style, in these days of Revolution, when everyone called each other citizen? The Blakeneys had never mentioned it when they gave her lessons.
“That may be so, Citizen Desgas, but if Citizen Chauvelin’s giving her a chance, then I can do no less.” The woman’s voice was as harsh as a millstone, and her hands looked red and chapped from constant cleaning. “We’ll see that she learns better manners in this household. You, girl! Anne. You can call me . . .” She hesitated, and Eleanor could almost feel the word madame hovering on her lips, before she corrected it to, “. . . Louise. I understand that you know a housemaid’s duties and that you’re prepared to clean and cook like an honest woman.”
“I can, yes,” Eleanor said. She wondered if she should try to sound penitent or cheerful. Better to wait until I know more about her—and whether she’s inclined to pity me or hate me on sight. She could feel Desgas’s eyes on her, and all the soldiers watching. “I’m a good worker. I won’t make any boasts. I just want an honest job, like you said, and to do my utmost for the Republic.”
“Then come in,” the housekeeper ordered. “We’ll start with getting you clean.”
* * *
• • •
“IT’S A GOOD thing there’s a well in the back garden,” Adele said, putting down her buckets of water. She was one of the two young women accompanying the housekeeper; her clothing was neat and clean, but her hands showed the marks of hard daily scrubbing, and her lips were thin with suppressed commentary on the world around her. “Else we’d have to send a man to one of the public fountains, and Louise doesn’t like spending any more from the household monies than she has to. Give me a hand with the tub.”
Eleanor set down her two buckets of cold water, suppressing a groan, and helped Adele haul out a battered wooden bathtub. The two of them were in the house’s kitchen, which wasn’t as grand as the Blakeney’s or Lady Sophie’s . . . but was a great deal better than any of the village kitchens Eleanor had known. Scoured copper pots and pans hung in neat order, and bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling to dry. Most of all, the place was thoroughly clean. The tiled floor had a gleam which showed it had been scrubbed this very morning.
