It was the times they lived in that complicated the matter. “One day I will make my fortune,” he said out loud to a silent carriage, “and then . . .”
He stroked Sido’s cheek and bent down to kiss her, whispering what his heart had always known, what he had never said before to anyone. “I love you. I always will.”
Sido didn’t stir. For the first time in days she had felt safe enough to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
She woke just as they were coming into Dieppe and sat up dazed for a moment, not knowing where she was; then, remembering, she smiled and straightened herself out.
“You’ve slept through all the changes of horses and a lot of shouting, and you didn’t once stir,” said Yann. “Do you feel better?”
“I think so.”
Yann handed her a flask and she took a drink. Then he took from his knapsack a small package of letters tied with ribbon, and the letter the marquis had written to Kalliovski.
“What are these?” asked Sido.
“They are for you to read when we get to Dieppe, and then you will understand, and realize that you were very much loved by your mother and your father.”
“No,” said Sido. “You’re wrong, very wrong. My father hated me. He said he would have preferred me dead.”
“Why do you think he hated you?”
“How can you say one minute that he loved me and then the next ask me why he hated me? It was because of my limp. He liked things to be perfect.”
"It wasn’t because of your limp. What if the marquis were not your father?” Sido sat there thinking. It was an idea that had never occurred to her, yet it made more sense than anything else had. It explained her father’s hatred of her. It explained why he never mentioned her mother, and why she was not buried in the family tomb.
“Oh dear,” she said at last. “I thought it was just to do with his insanity, but I see now why he was bellowing at me. He thought I was my mother. No wonder he told me to take my bastard and be gone.”
She was quiet for some time.
“I have a strange memory of him, the only happy one I have,” she said at last. “It doesn’t fit with anything else. Maybe I dreamt it. I remember we were at the château, and he was with my mother.”
“That would have been your real father, Armand de Villeduval, the marquis’s younger brother.”
Sido gasped. “Are you sure?”
“Certain. When you’ve read the letters you’ll understand. The marquis wrote to Kalliovski, asking him to have you all murdered. Kalliovski obliged—but you survived. Your grandfather suspected foul play. He had his will changed and left you a large proportion of his estate, which will go to your husband on your wedding day. The marquis must have thought he would have control over your money if he chose a suitably stupid husband for you, someone he could manage. What he hadn’t bargained for was Kalliovski.”
It was very late when they finally arrived, exhausted. They were pleased to find that Charles Cordell had waited up for them.
“You made good time,” he said. “I got them to leave some food out.”
They sat over their supper talking about what had happened in Paris.
"The messenger from Têtu told me that they hadn’t stopped the killing, though they ran out of prisoners at L’Abbaye and made their way to the Conciergerie, among other places,” said Cordell.
“There would be no hope for the marquis,” said Sido. It was the first time she had not referred to him as her father. It was a great release, a heavy cloud lifted.
“No. I gather his mind had gone. I should think it would have been quick; he wouldn’t have been aware of what was happening. I am most terribly sorry that you have been through such a dreadful ordeal. Tomorrow, if the tide is right, we should be away from France by mid-morning.”
Sido said good night. On the stairs she turned and looked back at Yann. "Will you be here tomorrow?”
He said nothing, just smiled.
“Well,” said Cordell, “I suppose you are wanting your bed as well. Shall we talk in the morning?”
“No, sir, I shall be leaving early for Paris. Could we talk tonight?”
“How is your shoulder?”
“It throbs, but it is healing.”
“I have called for a surgeon to examine it.”
“There was no need.”
“You might think not, but I can assure you that Têtu would kill me if I didn’t ask someone to look at it.”
“It won’t stop me from going back.”
“You are still young and I thought that maybe . . .”
Yann took out Kalliovski’s Book of Tears. Cordell looked at it, stunned.
“What is this?”
“Open it and see.”
Tentatively Cordell opened it at the first page and read the words The Red Necklace.
He sat down, and burst out laughing. “Yann, you are good and no mistake. Where did you find it?”
“Inside one of the automata. Kalliovski has a collection of them, the Sisters Macabre. One of them was the keeper of this book. She called it the Book of Tears.”
Cordell flicked through the pages of names. He looked up, and taking off his glasses, rubbed his temples.
“This is beyond anything I thought possible. All these people and the terrible sums they owe him! Many, I may say, the bank’s clients. You have indeed turned over a stone and found a deadly viper there. Tell me, has Kalliovski created a near-human machine, as he claimed?”
“No, he was not even halfway there. What knowledge he has he can’t use properly. Did you know that Mr. Tull works for him?”
“No, I didn’t, but I am afraid it doesn’t surprise me.”
“There are people out there making money by double-selling their clients. I should think they will make a tidy sum from such unscrupulous work.”
“You are right, Yann. After today there will, I believe, be a flood of desperate people who will risk everything to escape from France. I’m not just talking of nobles. I mean anyone who supplied goods to the aristocracy, anyone who looks intelligent enough to ask the unanswerable question: What happened to this great and glorious idea?”
“That’s what I think. Têtu and I can help these people. We have the perfect setup in the theater. No one would suspect what we’re up to.”
"Mr. Laxton and I have been discussing this very matter,” said Cordell. “You have already proved that you can get people out of Paris. You and Têtu between you could save a lot of souls. You have unique talents, Yann, which I believe will be much needed in the months to come. Tell me, before we part, are you certain Kalliovski is dead?”
“The last time I saw him he was in the hands of the mob. I am sure they will have murdered him.”
“Good,” said Cordell. “For all our sakes, I hope so.”
The two of them shook hands.
“Have a safe journey back. I will be in touch,” said Cordell.
That night in the city of the slaughtered, while the massacres still continued, the devil went walking. He could never resist the call of fresh blood, and now there was a rich harvest amid the blighted victims of the carnage. He was searching as always for one cursed soul into which to breathe his fiery life. He was not to be disappointed, for lying amongst the broken and the near-dead was one Citizen Kalliovski, with his dog, Balthazar.
Kalliovski was raging at his own demise: that he, a gambler, should have been cheated by the Queen of Hearts and her bastard, the Jack of Diamonds. For Anis had had his child, and it was Yann Margoza.
chapter thirty-six
The next morning Yann woke early. He had told Cordell he intended to leave before anyone was awake, by which he meant before Sido was up, for he had decided in the carriage that he would not trust himself if he were to see her again. His mind, so fixed on returning to Paris, did not need a moment of doubt.
He washed and got dressed. The fever he had had yesterday was gone. Picking up his knapsack, he made his way down to the hotel lobby.
Sido stood waiting for him.
“You were going to leave without saying good-bye,” she said.
“I just didn’t want to upset you.”
“You see, I sometimes know what you are thinking too. If you had done that I would never have had a chance to thank you. I read the letters.”
“Now you know how much you meant to them.”
“Yes, they were going to England to start a new life. I wish . . . I wish . . .”
What she wanted to say she couldn’t. Instead she said, “I wish you didn’t have to go back.”
He took her arm and they walked out into the garden.
An early-morning mist hung over the lawn. The air smelled of sea salt and leaves. Once the sun was up it would be a bright day. They walked on in silence, both lost in their own thoughts.
"The truth is,” said Yann after a while, "that if I were to come to London with you, I would find it impossible to say good-bye and return here. But there is so much more that needs to be done, so many people to be saved. And I could do it, Sido, I could do it.” He took the shell from around his neck. “This was given to me by a Gypsy called Tobias Cooper. It is a talisman, a lucky charm. It will keep you safe, and one day I will come back to collect it. I promise.”
She looked at it carefully. It came from a land she would never know, and yet she understood. Holding it tight, she said, “You must go.”
Lifting her face up to his, he kissed her. If a promise had a taste, Sido’s sweet mouth would be it. It was a kiss that sealed both their fates, interweaving the threads of light that had bound them together since they had first met.
“Live your life, Sido, whatever happens. Live in the moment, don’t live with regret.” He took his last kiss.
She stood there for a long time after he was gone, and thinking that he could not hear her, not now, she held the shell to her lips and whispered all that she had felt too shy to tell him. Her words were caught on the breeze and though she did not know it, they would find him, would travel with him, they would haunt him and become the magic charm that one day would call him home to her.
Our story is over, though in its end lies its beginning.
Some Historical Background
The Red Necklace is a work of fiction. I am a storyteller, not a historian; though I have immersed myself in the period, I am aware that some details may not pass the scrutiny of a specialist historian. A vast number of excellent books have been written on the Revolution, and I have consulted a great many of them, as well as eyewitness accounts and letters of the time. Any historical inaccuracies are my own responsibility as storyteller.
While the Revolution is well documented, the history of the Gypsies, whose story is woven into my book, is less so. Their suffering and persecution has continued throughout time and in all countries.
Paris in the eighteenth century was the epicenter of intellectual thinking, of fashion, of taste. While in the countryside feudal lords held sway, the city was the birthplace of the Age of Enlightenment. Meanwhile, the king still ruled by absolute power.
On the world stage France’s great enemy was England. Humiliated in 1763 by the English conquest of Canada, the French in the 1770s saw rebellion in America as a chance for revenge. King Louis XVI raised huge loans and sent a fleet out to help the fledgling nation. In 1781 the British surrendered at Yorktown, a victory for the Americans that secured their independence. The French hoped to profit by driving the English out of trade with their newfound friends, but the Americans preferred to do business with their old partners. As the king’s loans fell due, the country was plunged into crisis.
France’s territories at this time were divided into hostile provinces and its population into rival classes. The nobles and the clergy had all the privileges and paid no taxes. The people possessed no rights and were taxed heavily. The country was now facing bankruptcy. The king, in hope of finding a solution to the worsening crisis, called a meeting of the Estates General. The First Estate was the church, the Second was the nobility, and the Third Estate the peasants and the middle class. It was the Third Estate that paid all the taxes. If anything, it did little but illustrate the injustice of the situation.
As France looked toward the Estates General, in the summer of 1788 there was a terrible hailstorm that flattened the wheat and spoiled the olive and the grape harvest. It was followed in November by one of the worst winters on record. Everything froze; people began to starve. When the people stated their grievances for the Estates General, they looked for sweeping change, but the king and the nobility resisted. The result was the forming of a national assembly by the members of the Third Estate, determined to have power for the people.
Louis XVI, fearing he was losing his grip, gave orders that the hall where the national assembly met should be closed. The assembly moved themselves to a nearby tennis court and swore an oath that they would not be separated until France had a constitution.
The king and his court plotted to defeat the national assembly, beginning by firing Necker, the Swiss banker appointed as Minister of Finance. Necker was wildly popular, and had blocked other attempts to halt the national assembly’s work. The people of Paris, seeing their last hope of salvation gone, took matters into their own hands and stormed the Bastille. Three days later the king visited the city, surrendering to the Revolution.
In August 1789 the feudal system was abolished, as were the many privileges given to the nobility and the clergy.
In April of 1791 Louis XVI’s true feelings were revealed when the royal family attempted to escape and were brought back to Paris in disgrace.
The following year war was declared on Austria and her allies, who were sheltering noble counterrevolutionaries and plotters.
The monarchy was finally abolished in August 1792, and on September 2 the massacres began. Around 1,500 people were slaughtered, but at the time many believed that tens of thousands had perished.
The guillotine, the symbol of the terror, was modeled on two earlier devices, the Halifax Gibbet and the Scottish Maiden. What made the version that bears the name of Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin unique was the efficiency of his modifications, with the angling of the blade and the head brace.
My story covers the beginning of the French Revolution. It was fired by noble ideals of equality and freedom, from men such as Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, who were frustrated by the injustices of society. Once the terror started, these fine ideas were lost and no one was safe any longer from the insatiable appetite of the guillotine. It was to become a horror story that today still makes us shudder at the cruelty and stupidity of mankind.
As Danton said: “You have seen nothing yet but roses.”
Acknowledgments
I would like to start by thanking Jane Fior for all her support and help in getting out a polished first draft; Judith Elliott for her tireless editorial work and support, and her husband, Donald Davis, for doing without her through the last very intense months; and Jacky Bateman for having done all the spelling corrections, and understanding my terrible grammar.
I also want to thank Diana and Bruno Costes Brook at La Puisaye, Auve, Normandy, for feeding and looking after me in great style, arranging for me to see chateaux and places of interest and making my time in France a complete pleasure; Mary Stewart for taking me around eighteenth-century Paris; Lauri Hornik for all her astute and helpful notes; my agent and dear friend Rosemary Sandberg; Dr. David Andress, reader in modern European History at the University of Portsmouth for taking the time and trouble to read the manuscript and correct historical inaccuracies; Thomas Acton, professor of Romani studies at the University of Greenwich for sharing his extensive knowledge with me.
Finally and not least I would like to thank Fiona Kennedy and all her team at Orion, as well as the sales and marketing departments, for all their hard work.
It seems to be a fashion among authors these days to thank absolutely everybody and everything; but I am truly grateful to all those mentioned. All have had an enormous inpu
t and impact on the writing of this book.
Please allow me one indulgence. Oscar, my dog, deserves a mention for all the hours he has sat beside me while I ticker-tacked away at my laptop, for his patience while I read the book aloud to him, for sacrificing walks when things were going well, and putting up with me when they were not. I am still waiting to hear what he thinks of The Red Necklace.
Sally Gardner, The Red Necklace
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