The Accidental Keyhand (19 page)

AT THE PORTE DE NESLE

Finally, after three long days, Savi returned. His mind seemed elsewhere as he watched Dorrie practice, coming back only to chastise her. “You look like a monkey poking a stick into a termite mound. If you're going to hold a sword, then hold it! Do you think your enemy will wait and write a poem while you pick up your sword if it falls?” When Dorrie stopped for a moment, exhausted, Savi drummed his fingers on the bench he sat on.

“The time for you to face your little unmannerly nemesis fast approaches. I know that you have received a good deal of excellent, perhaps inspired, instruction in the art of the sword.” He picked up his own rapier. “I'd like to see some proof of that by watching you go one minute with me without dropping it.
Allez!
”

Dorrie cried out with gleeful pride when she'd managed the feat.

“There,” said Savi, as Dorrie worked to get her breath back. “I'd say your chances of beating her, though still dismal, are now infinitesimally greater.” He fiddled with the hilt of his rapier. “I understand that there's an apprentice field trip to Geneva this afternoon, and that you won't be going.”

Dorrie colored. “Francesco won't let us.”

“Meet me at the Paris, 1643 CE archway at noon.” He strode away.

Her heart beating fast, Dorrie got to the Paris, 1643 CE archway early. It stood in an intolerably hot, low-ceilinged little room. The brick back side of some other Library chamber blocked the room's one window, and the only light came from the archway. Dorrie gently touched the black and gold clock that stood on its stone ledge. Its face, painted with Roman numerals, sat beneath the arm of a sculpted woman in a long dress reclining on a bench. Her other arm held open a book on her knee.

Savi arrived at the appointed time. His wavy dark hair looked carefully brushed. A great broad-brimmed, feathered hat cast a shadow on his face. An embroidered blue cloak hung over one of his shoulders, and he carried a dress made out of an immense amount of flowered fabric.

“What's that for?” asked Dorrie.

“You can't walk around the streets of Paris in that,” said Savi, looking out across and down his nose at Dorrie's late-nineteenth-century dress.

Dorrie's heart began to race.

“If you're still willing, I would like to take you up on your offer of assistance in the little matter of my poetry.”

“You would?” Excitement seized Dorrie at the thought of walking into the France of centuries ago. “Of course I will, but what will Francesco—”

“No need for him to know,” said Savi. “I'll wait in the hallway while you change.”

With trembling hands, Dorrie pulled on the seventeenth-century dress. The skirt dragged on the ground, and the stiff sleeves entirely covered her hands. She rolled them up and gathered up a wad of material in each hand so that she could walk without tripping.

Savi sniffed when he returned. “Perhaps a stable boy's outfit would have been better. Well, come on! Are you waiting for me to throw down my cloak for you to walk upon?”

“Of course not,” Dorrie said. She held up her skirts with as much dignity as she could muster and joined Savi in front of the archway. Beyond it lay an airy little hall, the polished wood of tables and floor and bookshelves reflecting back sunshine from two tall windows.

“We're going into Gabriel Naude's private library.” Savi caught her in a piercing gaze. “One must never let go of the keyhand when going through an archway, or you will dissolve into an unrecognizable puddle formerly known as Dorothea. Do you understand?”

Dorrie nodded quickly, all the while thinking back with horror to when she'd hauled Marcus through the Athens archway. She hadn't taken any special care at all. It had been dumb luck that they'd held on to each other and she hadn't killed him.

Savi took firm hold of Dorrie's hand.

“Wait!” said Dorrie.

Savi looked at her impatiently.

“Will I be able to understand you out there?”

“The more instant translation of a language your ears have done inside Petrarch's Library, the better you can understand that language outside Petrarch's Library. I've shouted an immense number of corrections at you in the past weeks. You'll be fine.”

As they stepped through the archway, Dorrie felt as she had going into and out of Athens, a force first pushing against her and then pulling her forward. Emerging on the other side, she experienced a powerful head-spinning exhilaration. When they'd gone to Athens, there had been no time to soak in that fantastical reality. Now, her feet seemed to tingle where her shoes met Gabriel Naude's floor.

They descended a narrow set of stairs into a vestibule. Dorrie's heart began to pound as Savi laid his hand on the knob of the door that led out into France.

“Are you ready, then?” said Savi, an expression of understanding on his face. Dorrie nodded. Outside, she blinked in awe. A narrow, cobbled street ran in front of Gabriel Naude's door. Horses and carts and crowds of people moved in both directions in noisy confusion.

Staring at the houses and the hats and the cobblestones and the raggedy children shouting and running after a wagonload of apples, Dorrie felt her senses pulsing. She sniffed tentatively. The air seemed full of ten kinds of rotten, mixed with the sweetness of flowers and the salt of sweat.

Savi drew in an enormous breath. “Yes. Paris has a way of crawling up one's nose.” They stepped down into the street. “Do not get lost, mademoiselle. For that, Francesco would not forgive me.”

With that, he set off at a brisk pace down a crooked street. Being careful to stay in his wake, Dorrie let her head swivel hungrily around as they turned into another crooked, crowded street full of signs hanging over doors, and then along a broad river and then up a set of stone stairs and into a grander avenue where fewer people shouted and jostled. In an alley to one side of a forbidding-looking house, Savi paused before a little iron gate.

“My Madeleine made arrangements to have the gate left unlocked.”

He pushed it open, and they found themselves on a flagstone path that wound among some birch trees and gave out on a great swath of lawn. Taking a deep breath and straightening his hat, Savi hurried toward the lawn. At its edge, a bush not being conveniently located, he installed Dorrie behind a pile of steaming garbage and hurriedly handed her a copy of his poem. “The words have already flown from my head.”

Dorrie looked over the page. “If you get stuck, I'll whisper the next words.” She smiled at him shyly. “You can do it.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, turned, and then called softly toward a balcony that hung from a solid-looking three-story stone house. “Madeleine.”

Dorrie eyes watered as an invisible cloud of noxious vapors from the garbage pile enveloped her.

When Madeleine appeared, or at least the small bit of her forehead not obscured by a lacy fan of immense proportions, Savi's face flushed the red of a dark wine. He did not greet Madeleine but stood stock-still in stiff, panicked silence. The moment stretched painfully until Madeleine finally shifted her fan so that Dorrie could see her face for a moment, framed in cascades of red-gold hair. Her plump lips were drawn together in an annoyed pout. Dorrie glanced wildly down at her papers, wondering if she should begin. She glanced back at Savi's frozen face and whispered, “Since.”

“Since!” cried Savi, the word exploding from his mouth with the force of a popping champagne cork.

“We must all become slaves to beauty,” hissed Dorrie.

“We must all become slaves to beauty,” repeated Savi, gulping visibly halfway through the sentence.

Dorrie took another breath. It seemed that Savi couldn't even bring himself to look at Madeline. “Would it not be better to lose our freedom in chains of gold, than chains of hemp or iron?”

Savi repeated the line without gulping between any of the words, but said “lions” instead of “iron” which Dorrie thought ruined the whole sense of the thing, but she didn't have time to dwell on it. “All I desire…”

“All I desire…” said Savi, throwing out an arm too late for his gesture to be interpreted as having anything to do with his words.

“Is that in wandering at liberty amongst those little labyrinths of gold you have for hair,” Dorrie found herself saying in tandem with Savi.

“I should soon lose myself there,” Savi finished by himself, looking triumphant. But the look faded in a moment. His lips rummaged about, making desperate preparatory motions but nothing came.

“Monsieur!” hissed a voice from the iron gate they'd passed through. Dorrie glanced around and saw a boy about Kenzo's age in stained clothing, his hands around the bars of the gate.

She turned back to the page she held. “And all that I wish for,” Dorrie began again in a whisper, but Savi was already off.

“Is never to recover my freedom once lost,” he nearly shouted. Dorrie looked anxiously at Madeline to see if the mangled sentence had made an impression on her. She looked neither particularly confused or particularly comprehending, but a movement in a window to her right caught Dorrie's eyes. A man who could have been Madeline's brother stood there looking with affectionate amusement at Savi.

“If you would but promise me,” Savi continued clearly, his hands locked in an imploring clasp, “that my life will not last longer—”

“Monsieur,” hissed the voice again from the iron gate.

Savi whirled in a towering temper and gnashed his teeth at the boy. “This is a difficult enough endeavor without the contributions of an urchin chorus!”

“But you are needed,” said the boy. “Monsieur Naude sent me.” Savi's face seemed to electrify with attention. “There is an ambush forming somewhere on the Quai Conti for Udo Gurren.”

Savi's eyes flashed. “Back through the gate,” he ordered Dorrie. “And do exactly as I tell you.”

Leaving the boy, they dashed through one street after the next, until Dorrie's lungs burned and a stabbing stitch developed in her side. The heavy skirt dragged. Dorrie forced her sweat-blurred eyes to focus only on Savi's back. An alley let them out onto a broad expanse of cobbles that overlooked the river. Savi skidded to a stop near a heavy building, its front wall lined with market stalls and wagons, where crowds of people milled about, buying and selling. Great, round towers soared upward on either side of the building.

“He would have—” Savi began. He broke off his sentence, unsheathing his sword. Where the footpath of a nearby bridge met the broad quay on which they stood, two much smaller stone towers marked the connection. Against them, a motley assortment of men lounged. On second look, Dorrie realized that each held a club or a heavy stick or a blade or a knife, and they appeared anything but relaxed.

Slowly, Savi's eyes traveled up the highest of the building's towers and then focused on the gate embedded in the building's center. Dorrie watched him pale and just as quickly recover his color. “The Porte de Nesle it is, then,” he murmured.

In another moment, Savi had thrust Dorrie behind an unattended wagon heaped high with hay not far from the gate. “Do. Not. Move.” At that moment, a lone figure in dusty black clothing came into view from between the two bridge towers, carrying a sack over one shoulder, his head bent.

“Udo!” Savi shouted, too late to warn the figure. One of the lounging men had sprung to attention. He sent Udo staggering forward with a blow to his back. Another leaped on him, knife flashing in the sun. In the next moment, Savi had traveled the breadth of the quay. His sword aloft in one hand, he shouldered the man with the knife sideways and pulled Udo up from where he'd fallen on the cobbles.

“Look out!” Dorrie shouted, as the horde of other armed men swarmed toward Savi. Dorrie felt terrifying dread. So many!

Thrusting Udo behind him, Savi engaged the first of his attackers and sent one man's sword flying. It bounced and grated against the cobbles. With a leer, the man lunged for Savi with a knife he pulled out of his belt. Savi jumped backward, pushing the dazed Udo along with him.

“I wouldn't,” said Savi, backing up farther, his sword extended, “unless you want to pay full price.”

Two other men joined the man with the knife, one with a long rusty blade and the other with an ugly club. The man with the knife lunged again and this time shrieked, dropping the knife as Savi's blade flew through the air, slicing open the man's arm. Dorrie felt as though she might faint as Savi sent the other two whirling away with painful-looking slashes across their buttocks. Shoppers and stall-keepers shouted and milled, trying to get away from the flashing blades.

As another wave of attackers drove Savi farther back toward the gate, he thrust Udo into the wedge of open space between the hay wagon and the tower wall. Udo fell to his knees, his hand against his neck. Dorrie tried to catch him. As Savi drove forward again out of sight, Dorrie and Udo fell together in a tangle. A sheaf of papers bound with a wide strap of leather slid from the sack. Dorrie gasped, catching sight of two words in large, looping script: “Cornelius Loos.” She looked at Udo. Though he wasn't bleeding much, he seemed dazed. She snatched the bundle of papers from the ground in a panic and jammed it inside the hay wagon.