For the King (11 page)

“Indeed, Sir, it is time for those who lost entire fortunes, and sometimes family members, to the horrors of the Revolution to receive justice at last.”

Roch frowned. In his opinion, the laws that made it a crime for an émigré to return without prior permission were still justified. Many of those men and women came back to France with the sole purpose of stoking the unrest in the West, spying for the benefit of England or brewing trouble of some kind or other. His dislike for Madame de Nallet returned in full force.

“What returning émigrés are receiving,” he said dryly, “and it is already a great deal, is a pardon. They should expect no more. I, for one, am all in favor of national reconciliation. It behooves France to be generous in victory and open its doors to its misguided citizens, provided that they agree at last to abide by the laws of their country.”

Madame de Nallet’s smile had frozen on her lips. Roch turned his attention to the figures on Mulard’s canvas.

“So, Mulard, what is your subject?” he asked.

“
Virginius Showing Appius The Dagger With Which He Just Killed His Daughter.
”

“Daggers, blood, killings . . . You like the same subjects as David.”

“Oh, these days David has no time for history painting. He is busy finishing his portrait of
General Bonaparte Crossing the Alps
, and I spend much of my time upstairs, assisting him. Believe me, it will be a masterpiece. Madame de Nallet can tell you about it: David showed it to her the other day.”

Roch felt a great desire to escape the young woman’s company. “Is that so? Would you mind showing it to me?”

“Let’s go then.”

Roch bowed rather stiffly to Madame de Nallet and followed his friend up a flight of stairs to a brighter room, better lit and painted white. In the far corner stood a wooden horse, on which sat a mannequin dressed in a blue uniform coat, its arm extended. A matching hat, trimmed in gold braid, covered the blank head. The next thing Roch noticed, resting on an easel, was a life-size portrait of the First Consul on horseback.

Roch drew closer and gazed at the image of Bonaparte, riding a prancing black-and-white horse and pointing to distant snowy summits. A column of soldiers pulling a cannon climbed a mountain pass in the background. They seemed minuscule under the horse’s hooves. That gave Bonaparte’s figure a gigantic, heroic dimension. The horse’s nostrils flared, the veins of its belly seemed to throb with the contained emotion of the scene. Roch remained motionless, fascinated by the power of the painting.

“Bonaparte looks dashing here,” he said, now gazing at the face of the portrait. David had given the First Consul angular, handsome features, and dark hair that was blown into his face by the wind. Roch had seen the First Consul from afar on the occasion of military reviews, and he remembered him as a man of average height, thin to the point of emaciation.

“I am not struck by the likeness,” said Roch. “Does Bonaparte come here to sit for David?”

Mulard laughed. “Bonaparte, come here? No, he has neither the time nor the patience to sit for anyone. That’s why he invites David to the Tuileries almost every day. In that fashion David has become familiar with his features and can paint them from memory. Frankly, I don’t think Bonaparte cares much about the likeness. But, as for the clothes,” said Mulard, nodding at the mannequin, “you are looking at the very uniform he wore on the battlefield of Marengo.”

Roch grinned. “So the uniform might be truer to the original than the face.”

Mulard nudged Roch’s elbow. “Don’t repeat it, but I tried the hat the other day, when David was gone to lunch at the Tuileries. It is so large that it came down to my eyes. Bonaparte has a huge head!”

“Your secret is safe with me. Speaking of lunch, I am hungry. Let’s go to the nearest tavern. My treat.”

Mulard’s face brightened. “Thank you, Miquel, you are a true friend. Madame de Nallet brings a lunch basket every day, and she insists on sharing with me her cold meats, fine pastries and hot-house fruit. It embarrasses me not to be able to return the favor.”

After the two men sat down to a dish of salt cod and potatoes, Mulard asked, “So how is your father?”

“Very well, as usual, thank you. Still managing the Mighty Barrel with an iron fist. But tell me more about this new student of yours.”

“Madame de Nallet? She is charming, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she seems pleasant enough. Did you hear her talk about her brother receiving
justice
? Does it not strike you as an odd coincidence, this Nallet woman trying to become David’s student, coming to his studio daily, and doing everything to ingratiate herself with him, just at the time when she is seeking permission for her brother to return to France?”

“You always see suspicious motives behind everything, Miquel. That’s a bad habit you’ve acquired in your line of work. All I can tell you is that she is a very assiduous student. She arrives at the studio without fault every day at eight, quite a feat for a fine lady like her. If she tries by the same token to help her brother by currying favor with David, so what?”

“Bonaparte, from what you say, seems quite enamored of David.”

“The feeling is mutual. David admires Bonaparte, sincerely so. He can’t help it: he has always been in thrall to power. Before Bonaparte, at the height of the Revolution, it was Robespierre. But David, in spite of his faults, is generous and does not forget less prosperous friends, like Topino or me. He pays us handsomely whenever we assist him, and he sends us students of our own. But then he hardly needs the money these days.”

Roch easily believed it. A few months earlier, Mulard, who had received free tickets, had taken him to the exhibition of David’s giant painting,
The Sabine Women
, at the Louvre. It was the first time an artist dared charge a fee to display his work to the public, and yet all of Paris was still flocking there to admire the masterpiece.

“Say, Miquel,” asked Mulard in a lowered voice, “speaking of Topino, what is happening to him? You know as well as I do that he had nothing to do with that Conspiracy of Daggers nonsense. When is he going to get out of jail?”

Roch had met Topino on occasion, when Mulard had brought his fellow painter to the Mighty Barrel.

“Frankly, Mulard, I can’t tell. After that Rue Nicaise business, the government is in no hurry to release men linked, however tenuously, to any plan to assassinate the First Consul.”

“Well, I will tell you why Topino was arrested. He was arrested for his political opinions. He is a Jacobin, and he used to be a juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Mark my words, those are the only true charges against him. I worry for him, Miquel.”

“I understand, Mulard, but things are moving in the right direction. We are making progress on the Rue Nicaise investigation. When the bastards responsible for this atrocity are arrested, and they will be soon, the situation will return to normal. Men like Topino will be cleared of any suspicions and released. All in due time.”

Roch paid for the meals and rose. He slapped Mulard on the back and returned to the Prefecture. Whatever he did, he could not escape the investigation.

16

R
och had ordered a thorough search of every courtyard and shed within five hundred yards of the shop of the grain merchant Lambel. The little mare, according to Dr. Huzard, was old and tired, and Roch could not picture Short Francis taking her very far.

That afternoon, he repressed a cry of triumph upon hearing Inspector Alain’s report. Alain had just spoken to a woman, Citizen Roger, who had rented a shed to a short, squat man on Rue de Paradis, three hundred yards from Lambel’s shop.

Roch decided to go question the witness and inspect the premises himself. Rue de Paradis, Paradise Street, unpaved and flanked by dingy houses, did not quite live up to its name. Number 778 was a six-story building of no better appearance than its neighbors. The bony woman sweeping its doorstep grunted in response to Roch’s greeting. Her broom still in hand, she paused to squint at his Prefecture card, which bore his name, title and an eye, symbol of the police.

“I hear, Citizen Roger,” said Roch, “that you may have information of great importance for us.”

The woman, scowling, resumed her sweeping. “All I know’s that I’m bein’ bothered to no end by people that come askin’ questions that’re none o’ their business.”

“But you might be handsomely repaid for your pains. If what Inspector Alain told me is correct, you may have information on the Rue Nicaise assassins. Perhaps he forgot to mention the 2,000
louis
reward for information leading to their arrest.”

Citizen Roger’s eyes narrowed and her expression lightened to a mere frown. “Well, yer man’s a ninny, ’cause he didn’t say nothin’ ’bout no reward.” She snorted. “So yes, a stallholder, a short man rented a shed here. Fat, ugly fellow. Citizen Leblanc, he called hisself.”

“How did you know he was a stallholder?”

“He told me, course! He said he sold sugar an’ dry goods at fairs. He asked ’bout rentin’ that shed, back in the courtyard, to put his horse an’ cart. An’ he kept pesterin’ me till I showed it to him.”

Citizen Roger’s narrative was interrupted by the furious barking of several dogs. She shook her fist in the direction of the racket. “Listen to that! The Vincent woman went out, an’ she left her dogs locked in her room again. D’you want to know what the whore does with her damn dogs?”

“Not at this time, Citizen Roger. I can imagine how busy you are.”

She shrugged. “Ah, you said it! The work I have keepin’ the place halfway clean, with all that filth we have here as tenants!”

“Can I see that shed?”

The woman sighed. She put down her broom and led him across the courtyard. There she reached the depths of her pocket for a key and unlocked the double door to a shed. Roch took a peek inside without entering. The place was large, about ten yards square, and empty. A layer of straw covered the floor. He would ask Inspector Alain to come back with a couple of National Guards to sift through it.

“That short man, Leblanc,” continued Citizen Roger, “he tried the lock several times to see if it worked. Like he couldn’t take my word fer it! An’ then he said he liked the shed, because it’s so large, an’ he’d have room to sleep in it. To tell you the truth, Citizen, I’m none too fond o’ rascals that sleep in sheds. Then he said that he’d take it fer ten days.
Ten days?
I said.
What d ’you think this is, an inn? Ness thin’, I’ll have to come an’ tuck you in bed, maybe. Don’t waste my time no more,
I said
, go talk to Citizen Ménager.
”

“Citizen Ménager is the landlord? So he rented the shed to that man Leblanc?”

“Yes. But not fer ten days, course, jus’ like I’d said. Fer three months. So the short fellow came back that night, with a horse, an’ a cart that was covered with a big gray tarpaulin. But that time he wore a stallholder’s jacket, you know, one o’ those blue ones. An’ an hour later, I saw two other fellows I didn’t know pass by my lodge an’ cross the courtyard. I was wary, course, ’cause the short one hadn’t said nothin’ ’bout no other fellows. I’d thought it was jus’ him an’ his horse, an’ that was plenty, given that one wasn’t prettier’n the other. So I come out o’ my lodge to see what’s happenin’, an’ what d’you think those two rascals do, but come an’ join the short man in here! An’ they closed the door. Like there’s not enough goin’ on ’round here, with the Vincent woman an’ her dogs!”

Citizen Roger shook her head, indignant. “
So
, I thought to mesself,
that’s why the bastard was so keen on the lock!
So I ran here, an’ I banged on the door with my fists an’ shoes, an’ I gave’m a piece o’ my mind. They opened the right away, let me tell you. They told me not to shout, that I’d have the whole district in an uproar, that it wasn’t what it looked like. But they didn’t fool me a bit. They still had their breeches on, but they looked mighty worried all the same.”

“It is indeed fortunate that you showed such presence of mind,” said Roch, nodding gravely. He could have remarked that the Revolution had abolished the crime of sodomy, but he thought it wiser not to annoy this witness with niceties. “I am certain, Citizen Roger, that you took a good look at those other two fellows.”

“Fer sure I did! One o’ them was tall, with gold spe’tacles an’ a long face. Fair-skinned an’ pretty-lookin’, with long yellow hair.
He
was the pussy, I bet.” She shuddered. “Gives me the woollies jus’ to think of it. An’ the third bugger, he had a pointy nose like a rat, an’ his hair braided in
cadenettes
.”

“So what happened that night?”

“Nothin’ happened, not so long’s I’m the porter here. I told’m that I wouldn’t let more’n one sleep in here. So they all left. Went someplace else to play their damn games, I reckon. The ness day, the short bugger came back by hisself, an’ he asked if I knew someone that’d put iron circles around a barrel. So I asked,
What’s that fer?
I was wary, min’ you, after the happenin’s o’ the night. He said he jus’ wanted to put sugar in that barrel an’ he’d pay to have the iron circles made. So I told him my husban’d do it fer fifteen francs. An’ later he asked my husban’ to drill two holes into the side o’ the cart. An’ then he asked me fer a funnel.
No, I don’t have no funnel,
I said. Course I’ve a funnel, but I wouldn’t give it to him. He said ’twas to fill the barrel with sugar, but you never know what a bugger’d do with a funnel, do you? But since he’d given my husban’ a bit o’ money, I gave him some ol’ cup to fill his stupid barrel.
An’ be sure to clean it ’fore you return it
, I said. But I needn’t tell you how filthy men are. No better’n swine, like I tell my husban’. Damn buggers still worse’n the rest, I guess. So when the short fellow returned the cup, it stank o’ gunpowder, like those fire-works after Bonaparte’s big
victories
, like they call’m. A fine waste o’ money, that, if you ask me. Keeps honest people up all night with their racket. So I washed the cup mesself, like I haven’t nothin’ better to do. That’s what comes o’ bein’ too obligin’ . . .”