Hearts Beguiled (37 page)

❧

Earlier that morning, Abel Hachette had stood at his library window, feeling the satisfaction of a man who believes all is right with his world.

Someone had planted red flowers in the windowboxes across the way, which gave the neighborhood a nice touch of spring. In front of the house next door a carriage was being loaded with bandboxes and trunks for Monsieur Costaine's annual trek to take the waters at Vichy. Monsieur Costaine was a silk merchant with an income of five hundred thousand livres a year, and dropsy.

Hachette heard the tinkle of a cowbell and looked up the street. There, as he did every morning, came a drover poking along with a stick his tiny herd of six mangy cows. Hachette wondered, as he did every morning, why the drover found it necessary to drive his animals down this particular street. Where did the man come from, and where was he going with his pathetic herd of—

Just then Hachette spotted a familiar figure dodging in and out among the usual crush of carriages and carts. He actually had to blink several times—the first to be sure he wasn't seeing things', the second time because he didn't want to believe what he saw. Unconsciously his hand drifted to his throat; suddenly his cravat felt tight and he had difficulty swallowing.

During the past year and a half, Hachette had spent many a sleepless night worrying over what would happen if his Black Angel ever discovered that he, Abel Hachette, had tried to betray that damnable nuisance of a woman to her enemies. It didn't matter that the fool Louvois had somehow bungled it, or that the woman and the boy had somehow escaped on their own. What mattered was intent. And if his Black Angel ever discovered what his intent had been that hot August day, then Hachette was doomed. For Maximilien de Saint-Just was a man who never forgot, and never forgave.

The final irony was that, in spite of the fact that the girl had mysteriously disappeared from Max's life, Max had refused to come back to the cabal. Hachette had put one of the other angels to spying on Max, and the angel had reported Max to be interested in nothing but drinking and gambling and occasionally, when he sobered up enough, those foolish experiments with inflammable air-filled balloons. Then four months ago, the girl had just as mysteriously reappeared. No more drinking or gambling, the reports had said lately. But still Max would not return.

Until today.

Why? Hachette wondered. Pulling out his perfume-scented handkerchief, he patted his sweating brow and walked stiff-legged to the fortress that was his rosewood desk. He had just managed to get himself safely barricaded behind it when the lackey swung open the double doors and the Vicomte Maximilien de Saint-Just strolled through.

Hachettc quickly scanned the young man's face. He saw the drooping lids, the lazy, mocking smile. They did nothing to reassure him.

"Good morning, Max."

The smile deepened. "You've always been a master of understatement, Abel. We haven't spoken to each other in nineteen months, yet you act as if it were only yesterday."

Hachette shrugged, pretending indifference. "You said you no longer wished to work for us. I've respected your decision."

"Bloody hell you have. You've been spying on me. Not that I've minded. It's been rather flattering."

Hachette didn't need to glance at his reflection in the mirrored panels to know that disgusting color had flooded his cheeks. He started to reach for his quizzing glass, noticed his hand shaking, and pressed it flat on the desk instead. "Is that—" he began, then stopped to clear his throat. "Is that why you're here?"

Max came forward and leaned over the desk, bracing his fists on the polished surface. Hachette stopped himself from shrinking down into his chair.

"I've come for the key to your grain warehouse," Max said.

Hachette's mouth fell open. "You what?"

Max's voice was slow and silky and it brought the hairs up on the back of Hachette's neck. "The people are starving, Abel. They're paying ten sous a loaf for bread made from rotten grain that makes them sick, and you sit here with a full warehouse waiting for prices to rise even higher."

Hachette smiled thinly and shook his head. "You know profit isn't the real reason why I haven't released that grain, Max. We want liberty, and the only way we're going to get it is through revolution. There can be no revolution if the bellies of the people are full. It may not be an easy thing to accept, but for a just cause some sacrifices must be—"

"No!" Max slammed his fist down on the desk and Hachette jumped. "You don't want liberty. It's power you're after. You want to take the power from those who have it and keep it for yourselves—you and that damned cabal. You're only using the word 'liberty' as a cloak for your own brand of tyranny. And like a naive fool I believed in you once, Or maybe I was simply lying to myself. No, not maybe. I was lying to myself. I liked the excitement of the games you played, and I liked the money you paid me. But no more. I'm going to make amends, Abel, and you're going to help me do it."

He stepped around the barrier of the rosewood desk and hauled Hachette to his feet. His voice went low and soft. "Give me the key."

"I can give it to you," Hachette squeaked, "but it won't do you any good. The overman won't open the doors unless I'm there in person. Those were my instructions."

Max smiled. "Then get your hat, Abel, because you're coming with me."

❧

The crowd began to run and Gabrielle was carried with them, the way a twig is carried downstream by rushing rapids. Once, she tripped over a bundle of fagots set out at the curb for sale. She went sprawling down on her hands and knees and would have been trampled underfoot if Simon hadn't again hauled her to her feet.

The mob spilled into the Place Maubert. Normally filled with the stalls of fishmongers, greengrocers, and butchers, the square looked eerily empty this morning. The rioters spotted a bakery and began to take up the chant—"Cheap bread! Bread for two sous!"

French Guards, in their fringed cocked hats and blue coats with furled skirts, with bayonets fixed in their muskets, had ringed the shop. A group of men in the forefront of the mob, armed with pikes and shafts, surged forward, and the soldiers lowered their muskets. Everyone could see by the looks on their faces that they were more frightened of the people than the people were of them.

The baker had shoved a barricade of chairs in front of the door to his shop, and he climbed up on it to address the crowd.

"Please!" he tried to shout above the clamor for cheap bread. "I've no bread to give you. I don't even have any flour to make it with!"

"To the warehouse!" someone shouted, and soon the shout was taken up by others. "To the warehouse!" The crowd surged forward again, pulling Gabrielle and Simon with them like so much flotsam:

The warehouse was a massive, rectangular building, three stories high, made of brick, and with a sloping slate roof and iron-grilled windows. It covered the entire south end of a tiny square that was known for its pastry shops. The square had been turned into a fortress by a troop of French Guards, a hundred strong, ordered there by the governor of Paris to maintain order and protect private property.

The captain of the French Guards, however, had no sympathy for the aristocrat who supposedly owned this warehouse and was speculating with the grain stores inside it, and he had a lot of sympathy for his hungry fellow Frenchmen. "Open the doors, monsieur," he growled to the warehouse overman.

The overman, a plump fellow with a head that bobbed up and down on his thick neck like that of a turtle, swayed back and forth on his feet, moaning and wringing his hands. "I can't, mon capitaine. I haven't got the key."

The captain thought he could feel the earth shuddering beneath the thin soles of his fancy officer's boots. The din of the ringing church bells seemed to be causing the very air to vibrate. There was a strange roar in the distance, like the low growl of a lion. It was the roar of the approaching mob.

"To hell with the key!" he shouted. "Break down the doors, if you must, but get the goddamned doors open before we all get ourselves goddamned killed!''

The overman didn't want to be killed. He also didn't want to account to Monsieur Hachettc for a pair of damaged doors and an empty warehouse, the cost of which was sure to come out of his salary. Dieu! Didn't he have six children, all under the age of ten, and four of them girls too puny to work?

He gnawed on his lower lip, drawing blood. "Perhaps Monsieur Hachette should be sent for."

The captain whirled around, swearing, and kicked at the brick wall with his boot, ruining the glossy polish. "We haven't time to send for anybody!" He pointed down the length of the square. "Listen!"

The roar had grown steadily in volume. The captain had never fought in an actual battle, but in his daydreams of glory he had imagined the thunder of artillery would sound just like this. But this wasn't a dream; it was a bloody nightmare. "I'm going to get an ax and break down the door," he said, though he stood with his feet welded to the ground and watched in horror as the first wave of the mob poured toward him.

The first of the rioters to spill into the square were momentarily diverted by the sight of the pyramids of iced cakes and rows of glistening tarts in the windows of the pastry shops. Rocks and stones sailed through the glass and soon the succulent desserts were being passed from hand to hand. But the windows were soon emptied and those in the back of the crowd became even more incensed and began to push forward, demanding their share of the loot. One man had found a barrel and was beating on it like a drum. Again the chant was taken up. "Open the warehouse! Cheap bread!"

Some of the rioters took to the surrounding roofs and lampposts to throw a hail of tiles, rocks, and cobblestones onto the captain and his troops. One of the pastry shops had caught or been set on fire and now a stinking, oily smoke filled the air, obscuring everyone's vision. The guards began nervously to finger the triggers of their muskets even though the captain had ordered them to hold their fire. In respect of the muskets and bayonets, the rioters had so far kept a careful distance from the cordoned warehouse.

A coach came rumbling through the alley in back of the warehouse and careened into the square. The overman tugged on the sleeve of the captain's blue coat and shouted above the chants and the screams and the crackle of flames. "It's him! Monsieur Hachette! With the key!" The captain lifted his eyes to heaven in thanks.

A tall, imposing young man alighted from the carriage, followed by a frail old man who looked positively terrified, and whom the captain took to be me nobleman's factor. He ignored the old man, addressing the younger. "I hope to God you've brought the key, monsieur, because—"

Max's hand fell on Abel Hachette's shoulder and he hauled the old man forward. "Open the doors, Abel. Now."

Hachette was mesmerized by the sight of the turbulent mob. In all his visions of a revolution he had never imagined it to be like this. The power of violence such as this was awesome. If only, he thought, if only it could be controlled, why a man truly could topple a throne with power such as this. Topple it, or seize it.

The sight of the carriage with its well-dressed occupants had whipped the mob into a frenzied rage. One woman, with sores on her face and black, toothless gums, began to shout, "Kill, kill, kill," and others took up the chant, stamping their feet, making a ditty out of it that ended with a final cry of "Hang the bloody aristocrats!"

Hachette jerked free of Max's grip and started toward the rippling edges of the crowd, which had so far left a space of about twenty feet between themselves'and the guards with their bayoneted muskets. Max started after him, only to be restrained by the captain and two of his men.

"Forget him!" the captain bellowed in Max's face, his eyes white with fear. "Get the goddammed door open before we have a massacre!"

"Kill the aristocrats!" the mob chanted. "Hang the rich!"

"No, wait!" Hachette was shouting, his palm upraised in the universal symbol of peace. "I'm not an aristocrat. I'm one of you. I'm one of the people."

The mob didn't hear him, or didn't believe him. Or perhaps they were beyond caring. A young boy who had climbed a lamppost took aim with his slingshot and sent a rock spinning for Hachette's head. It struck him directly between the eyes, driving him stunned to his knees, blood pouring down his face. When they saw him go down, the mob fell upon him with their makeshift weapons.

Max strained against the hands that held him. "Let me go, damn you!" Then he abruptly ceased his struggle and could only watch, horrified, as a pike rose in the air, flashing in the sun, and descended in a wide, slow arc—to bury its tip in the small of Abel Hachette's back.

"Max!"

At first Max thought it had been Hachette, screaming his name in his death throes. Then he caught a flash of flaming hair and heard her scream again and, amid all that press of roiling humanity, his eyes locked onto hers.

"Gabrielle!"

She stretched out an arm to him and nothing, not even three strong men, was going to keep him from her. He literally tore himself free of the soldiers' rough embrace. He ran toward her, just as the mob—made savage by their first taste of blood—surged forward toward the warehouse. The guards, outnumbered and frightened, opened fire.

A flash of bright light blinded him, and a searing pain in his head made him gasp. Sheer, desperate will carried him two more steps toward his beloved before he fell to his knees. But he kept his head up and his last image before the world was covered with a bloodied haze was of Gabrielle, his Gabrielle, her eyes and mouth open wide in terror and the mob surging around her, engulfing her.