“What was it you wanted to talk to me about, then?”
“Oh. I just wanted to know if you needed any money. I have quite a bit put by.”
“That’s kind of you, Luc. But we’re all right. If I’m ever in trouble, I’ll tell you.”
“Just so long as you let me know.”
They drank their beers in silence, until Luc got up to use the privy.
Thomas measured the carpet with his eye. He wondered how much too big it was. It suddenly occurred to him that if there was a spare strip, he might take it for the passage in their lodgings. Taking out his knife, he cut the string that was tied around the carpet, and began to unroll it.
Then he stepped back, and stared in horror.
Luc gazed at him sadly.
“Why did you do that?” he said.
Thomas did not answer.
“I was only gone for a moment.” Luc sighed. “I never meant you to see. I didn’t want you to know.”
“What happened?”
“An accident. It was awful.”
“Didn’t you get the police?”
“I couldn’t. They mightn’t have believed it was an accident.” He shook his head. “It didn’t look right.”
“You killed her?”
“Of course not.”
“People will look for her.”
“I don’t think so. She was just … a young lady of the night. If they asked me, I could say that she left. But I don’t think they’ll even ask. I just have to get rid of the body.”
“Why did you kill her?”
“I didn’t. I swear it. There was an argument … She fell. It was an accident. That’s all.”
“Oh mon Dieu!”
“You mustn’t tell anyone, Thomas. Not even Édith. Especially Édith.” He paused. “Unless you want your brother …”
Executed. Or at least in prison.
“And now I’m party to it,” said Thomas.
“You opened the carpet. I never meant that to happen.”
“How will you dispose of the body?”
“That’s a secret. Unless you want to help me.”
Thomas was silent. He had two choices. One was to go to the police at once, and betray his brother. The other was not to betray him. If the latter, then he wanted to be sure the body was never found. The poor girl was dead anyway.
He weighed the options.
“I never knew what was in the carpet. You understand? If you’re ever caught and it’s discovered I brought the carpet up here, I had no idea what was in it.”
“That was always my plan.”
“How will you hide her?”
Luc glanced out of the window. Dusk was already falling.
“You’ll see soon enough,” he said.
It had been a year ago, Luc explained, that he’d been in the privy and heard a sound of rock and earth falling just behind him. Investigating afterward, he’d discovered that there had been a little landslide on the slope. And as he probed further, he realized that a small fissure, a few inches wide, had appeared. When he pushed a stick through, he found a cavity. The rock was quite soft. Widening the fissure, he was soon able to step into the cavity, and the next thing he knew, he was in a tunnel.
“It wasn’t a great surprise. You know the hill of Montmartre is riddled with old gypsum mines.”
“So did you explore?”
“Oh yes. There’s a network of tunnels in there.” He nodded thoughtfully. So I rebuilt the privy with a shed beside it. The back of the shed slides open. The opening’s just behind it.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Not a soul, except you.”
Although the little garden wasn’t overlooked, Luc waited until darkness had fallen before he led Thomas out to the privy. He gave Thomas a covered lamp to carry. While Thomas waited, Luc entered the little shed beside it, and Thomas heard a wooden partition slide open.
“Bring the lamp,” Luc whispered. Thomas stepped into the shed and felt Luc’s hand guiding him through into the tunnel. “Turn left,” Luc whispered, “and walk twenty paces. Then you can uncover the lamp.” The surface under his feet felt stony.
When he uncovered the lamp, Thomas saw that he was in a high passage, about six feet wide, that led away into the distance. The walls were quite smooth and it was dry.
“Leave the lamp here,” Luc said. “Nobody can see the light from outside. We’ll go back for the girl now.”
She clearly had been in her early twenties. A fair-haired girl. She’d been hit in the face, but that hadn’t killed her. More likely the blow to the back of her head had done that. She must have fallen hard against something. Thomas wanted to ask, “How did it happen?” but he decided the less he knew the better.
There hadn’t been too much blood, and Luc had wrapped her tightly in several large tablecloths to keep it from spreading. The blood there was dry and black.
“You’ll have to get rid of the cloths. And the carpet might be stained,” Thomas said.
“I know,” said Luc. “If there’s a stain on the carpet, I’ll cut it out. Use the good bits. Burn the rest. No one will ever see.”
It was completely dark when they took the girl’s body out. They used straps to carry the corpse, which made it easier. It was a little tricky getting her into the shed and closing the door behind them, but they managed. Once they were in the passage, Luc closed up the entrance. After that, walking along the tunnel was relatively easy. When they reached the lamp, they put the body down. Thomas picked up the lamp and retraced their steps. He wanted to see if there were any drops of blood on the ground. He couldn’t find any.
“Where to now?” he asked.
Without a word, Luc looped the strap over his left shoulder and, holding the lamp in his right hand, led the way. They made three or four turns down similar passages before coming to a larger, higher one. It was hard work and they paused several times. Thomas wasn’t sure of the distance, but he thought they must have walked nearly three hundred yards.
“Are you sure people don’t come in here?” he asked.
“They can’t. I’ve explored it all. This part of the old mines has been sealed off for decades. The little landslide behind my house opened the only way in.”
“Then why are we going so far?”
“You’ll see.”
At last they came to a high chamber, almost like a cave.
“This is it,” said Luc. They put the body down. Then he raised the lamp high. And Thomas let out a cry of fear.
For they weren’t alone.
All around the walls, the skeletons lay. Some of them were propped almost in a sitting position, staring at them in their tattered clothes, as though at some final supper in the dark.
“Do you know who they are?” asked Luc.
“No.”
“At the end of the Commune, forty years ago, there was the famous last fight of the Communards at Père Lachaise. But before that, a party of Communards at Montmartre retreated into the gypsum mines. And instead of going in to finish them off, the army dynamited the entrance of the mine. They knew there was no way out of this section. I found other skeletons in the passages, but I think these fellows made a compact and decided to shoot themselves all together.” He turned to the corpse of the girl. “Help me get her clothes off, then we’ll drag her over to the wall.”
It wasn’t pleasant work, but they did it. At one moment, Thomas gave a little gasp, and Luc said, “What?” and Thomas said, “Nothing.” When they had her propped naked against the wall, Luc carefully removed the tattered remains of a Communard’s coat and wrapped it around her.
“In a year or two, she’ll be a skeleton like the rest of them.”
“If anyone ever examines the shed …”
“I thought of that. I can cover the side of the hill up again. Close the entrance. It should be all right.”
Thomas frowned.
“Just one thing I don’t understand. Why did you ever make the arrangement with the shed and the tunne
l in the first place?”
Luc paused.
“I thought it would be a good place to hide things. That is, if I ever wanted to.”
“Oh,” said Thomas.
When they got back into the house, Luc said that Thomas should go.
“I’ll be lighting a fire in the grate tonight,” he explained. “Got to burn the clothes and the tablecloths. Then I’ll check the carpet. You need to be well away before I start.”
“I delivered a carpet, that’s all. I’ve got a family to support,” said Thomas.
“I know.” Luc looked up at him. “When I was a little boy, you came and saved me from the Dalou gang. And you fought for me. I never forgot that, you know.”
Thomas shrugged.
“You were my little brother. That’s all.”
“You just saved my life tonight.”
“I won’t do it again,” Thomas warned.
“I’ll never ask you.” He looked at Thomas with sad eyes. “Do you still love me, brother?”
Thomas didn’t answer.
“Well,” said Luc quietly, “I love you.”
Thomas left.
As he took the cart back down the hill, he reflected on all that he’d seen. It seemed Édith was right about his brother. If he wanted a secret hiding place, then he was probably a receiver of stolen goods, and possibly a thief, just as she’d suggested.
Even worse was something else he’d noticed. As they were stripping the girl in the lamplight, he’d suddenly realized that there were bruises around her mouth and nose that didn’t look like the bruising from being hit. Only one thing he knew of produced bruises like that.
If someone was deliberately suffocated.
His brother may have hit the girl. She may have banged the back of her head. But her death hadn’t come from that. Luc had suffocated her.
His brother had just made him a party to murder.
For three days he wondered whether to go to the police. But the risk was too great. What might they do to him?
A week later, Luc came by to see them, but only briefly. As he left, he signaled to Thomas to walk down the street with him.
“The police came by. Asked me if I’d seen the girl. I said I thought she’d come by late in the week, and I had an idea she spoke of leaving town. But I’ve heard that before from these girls, I told them, and they usually show up again. They asked me if I knew where she came from. Not a clue, I said. They weren’t very interested in her, I can tell you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Thomas quietly.
“Don’t worry,” said Luc, “nor do I.”
And as the weeks went by, they heard nothing more. Winter came, and the girl was forgotten. Just before Christmas, snow fell, covering all that was dark beneath the streets of Paris; and on the day after Christmas, the sun came out, and the snow gleamed as white as the church of Sacré Coeur, high on the hill of Montmartre.
Chapter Seventeen
• 1637 •
It was a December evening when it happened. Or did it? Something happened then, or close to that time. That was not in doubt. But what? Did the eyes of Charles de Cygne deceive him? There was no way of knowing, although the kingdom of France was at stake.
It began in an anteroom where he’d been waiting. Through the window, by the lamplight, he could see the bare boughs of a small tree bending in the December wind. Then the door opened, and a lackey’s head appeared.
“His Eminence wants you.”
Charles de Cygne stepped out into the passage. A moment later he was in a high hall with a stone staircase.
Cardinal Richelieu’s palace was magnificent. He had decided to build it just north of the Louvre, to be close to the king. And that was clearly convenient since, for nearly two decades now, it was Cardinal Richelieu who effectively ruled France.
People feared Richelieu. Perhaps a ruler needed to be feared, Charles thought. But he was a good master. Charles was thirty, with a young family. One day he’d inherit the family estate from his father, Robert. But in the meantime, the rewards that Richelieu had given him for his services provided income for which he was more than grateful.
Charles liked to think that he and Richelieu understood each other. They were both French aristocrats. But he had quickly learned what Richelieu valued. Speed, accuracy and, above all, discretion. Richelieu saw everything that passed in France. His spies were everywhere. Working for him, Charles had seen much private information. But whatever he saw, he kept to himself. Sometimes people would ask him about his work—people he knew and thought he could trust. They might be enemies of Richelieu, they might have an interest in some matter before the cardinal, or they might be spies, sent by Richelieu to test him. Who knew? But not one of them had ever gotten a word out of him. Not a word.
He started up the stairs. Reaching the top, he turned into a reception room.
Charles liked the Cardinal’s Palace. With its big courtyards and delightful arcades, it had an Italian air. On its eastern side, work had begun on a handsome private theater.
There were a few people waiting to see the cardinal in the reception room. He walked to the door at the opposite end, which was immediately opened for him. Aware of the envious glances from the men waiting behind him, he passed through into another salon. This one was empty. But now through a small door in the far corner, a single figure emerged.
He was nothing much to look at. A simple monk, well into middle age. In fact, Charles thought, he looked pale and unwell. He saw de Cygne, and a faint flicker of the eyelids indicated recognition. But nothing more.
Father Joseph, the éminence grise, who stood like a shadow beside the cardinal. A walking conscience. A man of silence. A man whose very mysteriousness made him feared.
Father Joseph and the cardinal had one enormous project upon which they agreed. They must weaken the influence of the Hapsburg family. With Spain to the south, the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands to the east, all under Hapsburg family control, France was boxed in. The interest of France must therefore be to weaken the Hapsburg threat.
One might like Richelieu, or not; but no one could doubt his devotion to France. It was one of the reasons de Cygne was proud to serve him. Father Joseph, however, was another matter. The aging monk was against the Hapsburgs for another reason. They did not want to go to war with Turkey. That was not so surprising. Turkey was on the borders of their empire. Why should they want to stir up trouble so close to home? But Father Joseph wanted all Christendom to proclaim a new crusade against the Moslem Turks. It was his obsession. First weaken the Hapsburgs, then let France lead the West, as in olden times, against the Moslem power. Privately, Charles considered the idea of a latter-day crusade the height of folly and certain to bring ruin upon his country.
Once he had been summoned into the room by Richelieu when Father Joseph was with him, and the cardinal had remarked with a smile: “Father Joseph wants France to lead a new crusade against the Turks, de Cygne. What do you think?”
Thank God that he’d already learned the rules of survival by then. With a low bow to the monk he had replied: “My ancestors were crusading knights, Eminence. It is even believed that we descend from Roland, the companion of Charlemagne, who died fighting the Moslems of Spain.”
A clever answer. It seemed to say everything, and in fact said nothing. It appeared to satisfy the monk, anyway, and Richelieu smiled.
Rule number one of survival: Never, never tell anyone what you really think.
This evening, therefore, he bowed respectfully to the aging monk as he passed. Father Joseph really didn’t look well. Perhaps he was going to die. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, thought Charles.
He went through the small door from which Father Joseph had emerged, and found the cardinal writing a letter in his office.
“Sit down, my dear de Cygne,” he said quietly. “I shan’t be long.”
Charles sat quietly. The room was high and handsome without being sumptuous. Shelves of leather-b
ound books lined the walls—for Richelieu was a great book collector. It might have been an office in the Vatican. Patron of the new Académie française, connoisseur of the arts, subtle diplomatist: Richelieu was a Frenchman, but he was more like an Italian prince of the Church.
From his chair, Charles surveyed the great man. Tall, elegant, a handsome, finely drawn face, his small beard neatly pointed, his eyes always thoughtful. As so often in times past, thought de Cygne, God had given France exactly the right person in her hour of need.
When that likable old rascal King Henry IV had been killed by a lunatic back in 1610, his heir was only a little boy, and Henry’s widow, Marie de Médicis, had ruled the Regency council for young Louis XIII. It was strange, Charles thought, that an Italian Médicis should be stupid, but the Queen Mother certainly was, and she’d ruled badly. Indeed, as far as Charles de Cygne was concerned, she’d done only three good things for France: She’d been the patron of the great artist Rubens, she’d built a delightful little palace for herself, called the Luxembourg, about half a mile south of the river, and west of the university. And she and her council had first brought Richelieu into the royal government.
It had taken young Louis XIII a while to get power away from his mother. But though he dealt quite effectively with some rebellions, the daily administration of his kingdom seemed to bore him, and he’d entrusted more and more administration to Richelieu. It was the best thing he could have done. For nearly two decades they had made a wonderful team.
The cardinal finished his letter. Before sealing it, he carefully read it over. He looked tired.
As Charles gazed at him with admiration, he wondered: What would happen when the cardinal left the scene? Not that he was old. He was only in his early fifties, but his health was not good. Something he’d said the other day had indicated that he himself had his earthly end in mind.
“You know, de Cygne, I have already left this palace to the king in my will. It seemed the sensible thing to do.” Then he sighed. “We have achieved much, but there has never been time to tackle the country’s finances properly. That is the great task for the future.”