The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

10

  Thursday, 12 January

  Aristide returned to Brasseur's office on Rue des Amandiers early in the morning. As he approached the hanging sign of the boot, a small boy detached himself from a handful of urchins who were hanging about the nearby baker's shop, hopefully eyeing the passersby, and darted up to him.

  "You Ravel?"

  "Why?"

  " 'Cause the police inspector, he said you'd be coming here. Tall and skinny and a bit gloomy-looking, he said, and a black suit under a shabby overcoat. You him?"

  "Yes."

  The boy thrust a folded note at him and looked expectant. Aristide parted with a few deniers and retreated to the shelter of a doorway.

  Ravel (the note read),

  Unfortunately something's come up that I didn't expect. My superior, M. Le Roux, has learned about you from Inspector Marchand of the 11th District, whom you met yesterday and who is no friend of mine. The commissaire has plainly taken a look at your dossier and the present case file and taken it-most unreasonably-into his head that you may have had something to do with this unidentified man's death and the theft of his corpse. I expect nothing will come of it; but for the moment it would be safer, and would spare you a good deal of inconvenience, if you took yourself off for a while. Don't go to a hotel; the hotel-keepers have to show their registers every day to the police. Can you lodge a few nights with your friend, M. Derville? I will find you there, or will send the next message to you in care of M. Derville in the hope that he will forward it to you.

  G. Brasseur.

  The 12th January.

  Aristide stared at the note, his stomach tying itself up in knots. At last, getting hold of himself, he quickly turned and walked the half mile back to his lodgings. To his relief, no suspicious strangers seemed to be about. Returning to his room, he threw a change of linen and all the money he had, as well as any pamphlets and manuscripts he thought would get him into trouble if the police searched his room and perused them, into a satchel and crept down the stairs. Fortunately it was midmorning with few people about-the house was too poorly maintained to have a resident porter-and he escaped unnoticed.

  Derville, as he had hoped, was at home, though barely dressed. "I didn't come here for a stroll through the Palais-Royal," Aristide told him, as Derville welcomed him and called for his manservant to lay two places for breakfast. "I may be in some hot water. Could I presume upon your hospitality for a few days?"

  "Of course you may," Derville said, "but what sort of scrape have you gotten yourself into? Don't tell me you've already been unmasked as the author of one of those seditious pamphlets of yours! Will I be forwarding a change of body linen to the Bastille?"

  "Don't joke about it." Aristide sat gratefully on the chair Derville pulled out for him and rubbed his eyes. "It's worse. The dead man-the man with the striped waistcoat-Brasseur's superior thinks I may have had something to do with his murder."

  "You!"

  "Because they already know that I'm probably the author of some of those seditious pamphlets, and they also know whose son I am, and so obviously I'm an unsavory character. But I don't even know who the man was."

  "It wasn't Saint-Landry, then, after all? Because Madame Saint-Landry told me he hadn't been home for two days. She's growing very worried."

  "I don't know where Saint-Landry may be, alive or dead, but we can't confirm anything, because the corpse has vanished."

  "Vanished!" Derville echoed him. He sat down hard on a sofa, with a hoot of laughter, and leaned back, crossing his arms. "How does a dead body just 'vanish'?"

  "It's been stolen, Derville. And I don't know why, and I don't know who he was, and I never saw the man before in my life, and yet the police think I may have murdered him!"

  "Surely that inspector-Briseur-Brissot-"

  "Brasseur."

  "Surely Brasseur doesn't think so."

  "No, he was the one who warned me. He's on my side?I think."

  "Well," said Derville, "you can certainly stay here until this is cleared up. I'll have Renauld make up a bed for you."

  "Derville," Aristide said abruptly, "are you a Freemason?"

  "Good Lord, no," he said. "Why do you ask?"

  "Because I think this affair has something to do with the Masons, and I need to know more about them. On the dead man's body?someone had cut a symbol, which I think was a Masonic compass and square, into his chest after he was dead."

  "Good God." Derville looked away for a moment before shrugging. "I know a few people who are Freemasons, certainly. They're perfectly respectable, decent people. If you think any of them would do such a thing-"

  "I don't think anything, at this point. I'm just baffled, and I want to get to the bottom of this. If you say that no Mason would commit such an outrage, then who would? Someone who doesn't like the Masons?"

  The servant entered with coffee and rolls on a tray and Derville gestured Aristide to the breakfast table. "Come on; I always think better after a decent meal." He took a seat, poured coffee into the two bowls, passed Aristide the jug of hot milk, and began spreading anchovy butter on a roll. "Are you sure," he added, "that what you saw really was a compass and square?"

  "I'll draw it for you."

  Sighing, Derville fetched a sheet of paper and an inkwell from his writing-desk and returned. Aristide sketched the symbol, an acute angle, with a short arc connecting the two arms near its point, and crossed by a right angle below. Derville frowned at it.

  "Well, it might be a compass and square, but really it could be anything, Ravel."

  "What about this one?" Aristide said. He drew the pentagram in five swift strokes and surrounded it with a circle. "Someone laid this symbol out in lines composed of human bones, not ten paces from the body."

  "Bones?" Derville echoed him, incredulous.

  "Bones. Old dry ones, out of the charnels in the cemetery. Also a skull and crossbones laid out at his head and feet. Don't tell me it's not all linked, and that something extremely nasty isn't going on here."

  "All right, I grant you that anyone who thought of that must have a remarkably bizarre imagination." Derville sighed and reached for another roll. "Look, Ravel, I don't know what sort of superstitious nonsense you may have heard, but the Freemasons are devoted to bettering themselves and their fellow men. There's nothing sinister about them."

  "What about the rituals-"

  "Half the bored gentry of Europe plays at mysterious rituals, for something to do, and charlatans like Saint-Germain and Casanova egg them on with a lot of sleight of hand and hocus-pocus. The Masons have their rituals, I've no doubt, but plenty of well-known people are members. For God's sake, even the Duc d'Orl?ans is a Mason; everybody knows that. He's Grand Master, in fact, because he's the king's cousin and First Prince of the Blood. People whisper silly rumors because the Masons consider themselves a secret society, but if they use some passwords or hush-hush gestures among themselves, it's only because most of them are in the same business you are."

  "Business?" Aristide said.

  "Championing liberty and free thought, my friend. The political pamphlets you write, the hot stuff that has to be sold out of Joubert's back room because it tells the truth that the people in power don't want to hear. The sort of writing and talk that'll get you thrown into the Bastille if you get too noisy. That's why they use passwords and secret handshakes and so on: it's just a way to get around police spies."

  Aristide nodded and busied himself with adding hot milk and sugar to his coffee bowl as he felt himself blushing.

  "You know what sort of calamitous, ill-governed mess this country is in," Derville continued, between bites, apparently oblivious to Aristide's discomfort. "Even though it's the biggest, wealthiest kingdom in Europe. Well, everyone I know who's a Mason knows it just as well as you do, and I know that what they want is nothing more than what you want, and what you've been writing about: reform, tolerance, doing away with the old, outmoded, unfair laws and privileges. The usual catchword is, I believe, 'Freedom from
the tyranny of priests and kings.' " He smiled suddenly. "I expect you'd find yourself quite at home if you applied to join them."

  Aristide shook his head. "I'm more the sort of person who prefers to work alone and be left alone." Perhaps it was owing to the harshness of his childhood after his parents' deaths, but he had found long ago that he rarely made friends easily, and much preferred solitude to compulsory camaraderie. "I'd rather choose my friends as I wish, not flock together with a lot of strangers in hearty brotherhood."

  "As you like," Derville said, pushing away the dish of anchovy butter. "But don't forget that any Mason you meet is likely to be your ally rather than your enemy. Is that the apricot jam there by your elbow?"

  "So who would slash a Masonic symbol into a dead man's flesh?" Aristide said, handing over the jam pot.

  "Certainly not a Mason. I can't conceive it; it's completely barbaric."

  "Someone who hates Freemasons, then. Who would hate them that much?"

  "Plenty of people. Anyone who doesn't like what they stand for." Derville refilled his coffee bowl and leaned back in his chair. "Anyone who'd have a lot to lose if we loosened the grip of those in power. A courtier. Some idiot third son of a nobleman who got his pension by sucking up to a government minister. Any of those parasites. Or?what would you say is the greatest obstacle to the advancement of reason, science, and liberalism? What extraordinarily corrupt institution crushes dissenters and has fought, tooth and nail, every step of the way, whenever someone tries to explain the mysteries of nature in a rational manner? When they first tried to publish the Encyclop?die, for instance?"

  "The greatest obstacle to reason?" Aristide said. "That's easy: the Church. Keep people ignorant, and you keep them credulous, chained to their superstitions, and dependent on their priests."

  "Well, I know more than a few liberal priests, but I'm sure there are just as many fanatics who think the Inquisition is a wonderful thing, and that it's a natural and desirable state of affairs to have the power of the king ready to enforce religion. Perhaps you should look for a mad monk or cur? who believes the Freemasons are agents of Satan."

  Aristide groaned. "How do I do that?"

  "Search me. I never said it would be easy."

  Aristide finished his breakfast, mulling over what Derville had told him. "You said you had friends who were Masons-could you introduce me to some of them?"

  "I didn't say 'friends,'" Derville said hastily. "Just acquaintances."

  "Still, if you could-"

  "I can't just go barging in on them with a companion who wants to know about the deepest secrets of Freemasonry, Ravel. Though if you can allow me a few days, I might be able to arrange something?" The gilt clock on the mantel chimed the half hour and he glanced at it. "Lord, is that the time? I'm rather busy today; I've an appointment with my bootmaker this morning, then I'm meeting people later for the opera and supper afterwards. Come to think of it, a fellow who might be at the opera tonight?I could try to wheedle a dinner invitation out of him."

  "Dinner?" Aristide said, with an involuntary glance down at his threadbare suit.

  "Hmm, that may be a snag?" Derville looked him over, with a critical eye. "Do you have any other clothes?"

  "No. Just a change of linen."

  "Well, maybe we can find you some decent clothes to wear. I do know a first-rate dealer in second-hand gentlemen's clothes?perhaps we can find a proper dress suit that would fit you, and get it altered in time."

  Aristide agreed, having plans of his own for the rest of the morning while Derville was busy with his bootmaker. When Derville had departed, he slipped out and walked to the Left Bank. Lef?vre was waiting at the caf? they had agreed upon the previous day. Aristide followed him inside and he pushed past the clientele standing about the counter, which at midday seemed to consist mostly of unemployed petits-bourgeois, clerks and the like, as well as the usual complement of shabby literary men who could not afford the higher prices at Zoppi's.

  "I thought I might find him here at Vachon's," he said to Aristide, as they reached a table at the rear, with a glance at the young man busily scrawling away at a few sheets of ink-blotted paper. "Desmoulins!"

  The scribbler, a year or two younger than Aristide, raised his head. Though possessed of a pair of remarkably fine dark eyes, the rest of him was unprepossessing; he was very much a type Aristide recognized, young, untidy, and earnest.

  "Good day," the young man said, uncertainly. He glanced at Lef?vre with a flicker of recognition in his eyes, but said nothing more. Lef?vre stepped forward.

  "Lef?vre. We've met a few times at the Caf? de l'?cole."

  "Oh, yes, of c-course!" The young man halted for an instant in the midst of his sentence and Aristide sensed that he was struggling with a slight stutter.

  "You're a Freemason, aren't you?" Lef?vre inquired.

  Desmoulins nodded. "Of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters. Why?"

  "I haven't the faintest idea why. But Ravel here needs to talk to a Mason, and you were the first one who turned up." He performed brief introductions.

  "You never saw me, by the way," Aristide said, as Lef?vre retreated. "If anyone should ask."

  Lef?vre grinned and excused himself, talking vaguely of a prior engagement.

  "Why do you need to talk to a Mason?" Desmoulins inquired, turning his gaze back to Aristide, who ordered two coffees and settled himself at the table. "Some things about the C-Craft I can't tell you, you know."

  "I?I'm not sure what I need to ask you," Aristide confessed. "But something damned peculiar is going on, and Freemasons seem to be involved."

  "Peculiar?"

  The waiter arrived with their coffee and Aristide took a swallow and proceeded to recount, in a low voice, the tale of the mysterious fires, the symbols daubed in blood, and finally the anonymous, murdered man lying in the churchyard. Desmoulins nodded when he paused for breath.

  "I heard about the murder at St. Andr? des Arts. Didn't hear the details, though. You say there was a pentagram composed of bones nearby?"

  "What meaning do pentagrams have?"

  He shrugged. "None I know of. They're not mentioned in any ritual I've ever taken part in. Maybe as an ancient symbol of wisdom, or signifying the five wounds of C-Christ, but?no, I'd say pentagrams really have no particular meaning to Masons. But I've only been an initiate for about six months," he added. "I joined the lodge at about the same time as I was called to the Paris bar; frankly, I hoped to make some useful acquaintances out of it."

  "You're an attorney?" Aristide said, hoping he did not sound too incredulous, for Desmoulins, aside from those sparkling black eyes, looked no different from most of the penniless, ambitious writers he knew, including himself.

  "I don't look much like a proper lawyer, do I?" Desmoulins said, as if reading his thoughts. Suddenly he flashed Aristide a quick impish grin. "Getting briefs in Paris is nearly as difficult as getting published. I should know. Actually I earn most of my living from copying, or clerking now and then-"

  "I ought to tell you something else about the dead man," Aristide interrupted, lowering his voice again. "At the morgue, they discovered that a compass and square had been slashed into his flesh after he was dead?and that his tongue had been cut out."

  "Good God!" Desmoulins exclaimed. "That's barbaric." Abruptly his eyes widened and he caught his breath.

  "Monsieur Ravel?how was this man k-killed?"

  "His throat was cut. That is, it looks like he was stunned first, then the murderer-" Aristide broke off as he realized that the young man had gone very still.

  "His throat was c-cut?"

  Aristide nodded. Desmoulins drew a deep breath and was silent for a moment, leaning on his elbows, fist pressed to his chin.

  "I don't know if I ought to repeat any of this," he said at length, "but do you know the oath an initiate must swear when he first joins the Freemasons?"

  "I know exactly nothing about Freemasonry except what I've picked up in the past day and a half."

 
"Well?you swear to uphold the tenets and never reveal any of the mysteries of Freemasonry?under penalty of having your throat c-cut and your tongue torn out by its roots."

  They stared at each other, paling.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~