The Black Hawk (13 page)

It was so simple. Why did he not see? “’Awker, I am a whore. I have been a whore for two years.”

“Then leave that damned brothel and stop being one.”

“I do not mean yesterday and the day before. They do not touch me at the Pomme d’Or. No one, not in the least instance. Not one finger.”

“Then you’re not a whore.”

“It does not change anything. It is too late. I cannot become clean again. I cannot be—”

He snorted. “You can be any damn thing you want to be. Go to England. Change your name. Lie through your teeth.”

“For some things, there is no lie big enough.” Did he imagine she had not thought of this? The knowledge of what she was lay down at night to sleep beside her. Stared at her from the mirror every morning. “I was a child whore in the most fashionable and degenerate house in Europe. Many men came to me while I was in that dreadful place. There will always be men who know me.”

That silenced him. It was the truth, and they both knew it.

She said, “I can escape France, but I cannot escape what I am.”

Hawker raised his hand as if he would touch her, but stopped, deliberately short. He let his hand drop. “What about Séverine?”

“I will take care of her. I have always taken care of her.” She knew what she must do, of course. She had made her decision. The sorrow of it expanded in her chest so she could barely breathe, it was so huge. Before she turned and left she said, “I will protect Séverine. I will do whatever is necessary.”

Fourteen

WHEN THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN CRAWLS OUT OF bed and staggers over the horizon, evildoers head off home and solid citizens take to the streets. In his disreputable past, Hawker would have been yawning his way back to his own den of thieves as the sun came up, having finished a long night of assault with intent or maybe breaking and entering.

He’d reformed, even if he still headed home at daybreak. Last night, he’d disposed of a corpse, picked himself a heavy pouch of coin off the dead man, and palmed a packet of documents, some of which might turn out to be interesting. It wasn’t much different than his old life, when you came right down to it.

He walked harmlessly alongside Doyle and Maggie and their bits and pieces of baggage and the donkeys. The sky was turning milk white, with most of the light coming from the east, behind them. The air was stuffy and flat. It was going to be scorching hot later on. The city was just going on the griddle.

Doyle had decided to leave Paris, since there were a number of men thirsting for his blood right now. He was also getting Maggie away safe, the political situation having become unsettled. Every time the good citizens of Paris got unsettled they started pulling aristocrats out of the houses and hanging them from the lampposts. Maggie was an aristo. Time for a cautious man to take his wife home to dull old England.

Doyle strolled at donkey pace, his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets, portraying stolid and stupid to anyone who might take an interest. He kept an eye behind them and to the right, motioning Hawker to scout ahead and watch the left-hand side.

When they turned the corner and left the Rue Palmier, Owl was ahead, waiting for them.

She sat on the steps of a big respectable house, getting away with it because they were still in the damp and poorly lit dawn and the householders hadn’t come out to chase her away. She dressed like a housemaid—neat, with a big white mobcap on her head and a thick, plain fichu knotted on her chest. Owl had shoved a brown leather bag to the side of the steps, which might be important. She held Séverine on her lap.

Owl said, “Good day to you, citoyens. It is a pleasant day to be walking free under the sun, is it not?”

“Very.” Doyle came up beside him. “You’re waiting for us?”

“For Marguerite, though this is a matter of interest to you as well.”

Owl was . . . wound tight. She cradled her sister, gentle-like, but look close and you’d see her hands clamped like iron on the kid’s dress, as if any minute Séverine was going to fall off her lap and get eaten by rats.

The streets were empty as a beggar’s pouch. Nothing out of place and no tick of movement. The donkeys weren’t twitching their ears. But Owl was scared of something, or angry about it, or both.

Maggie went over to Owl, and they settled in to chat like market women passing the time of day. Looked like everybody was going to pretend like the donkeys and the bags were just decorative and nobody had anywhere in particular to go, least of all to the gates of Paris, and there was no hurry to get out of this town before something untoward happened.

Doyle’s hands kept being unconcerned and innocent, down near his knives. He gazed idly across the windows everywhere and kept close to Maggie.

They should be safe. Owl would never, under any circumstance on earth, put her sister in danger. But what the hell was going on?

Owl passed Séverine over to Maggie and they discussed the sprat for a while. Nobody in any of the houses coughed. Nobody came walking by. It was so bloody quiet they could have been standing in a painting. He distrusted quiet, just on general principles.

Funny how Owl looked different, sitting there without the kid in her arms. She looked alone, folded in and closed up with her arms around herself. She said to Maggie, “You were right. A whorehouse is no home for a child,” which was what everybody had been telling her. She said, “A war is coming.”

There was another giant revelation for you. War, riot, mayhem . . . It was all coming. Owl and him would be on opposite sides.

He eased his way back to keep an eye up and down the street since everybody else was talking single-mindedly and not paying attention to the surroundings.

Owl looked back and forth from Doyle to Maggie, making quick, brittle little comments. Maggie held the kid. It looked natural, like they fit together.

Then, word by careful word, staring into Maggie’s face, Owl said, “You will take Séverine as your own. You will take her away from France and keep her in safety. You will watch over her. You, yourself.”

Take Séverine? What was this?

“She will be no trouble on the road.” Owl was talking fast now, not giving Maggie a chance to answer. Owl’s hands pushed at the air as if she was shoving objections aside. “She has learned to be quiet. She will go with you willingly when I tell her she must. She knows to say nothing at all and to answer to any name she is given.”

Doyle got grave and quiet, deep voiced and dead serious. “You’re giving your sister to us?”

“I give her to Marguerite.” Owl fumbled around for the valise she’d stowed away. That would be clothes for the kid in there. She pulled the bag out and held it, looking at Séverine.

There was no way to say what he saw in Owl’s face. Once he’d watched a man get knifed in the belly and know he was going to die. It took him a while to get it done. That was how he’d looked the whole time.

Maggie and Doyle talked low, back and forth. Doyle nodded. Then he put his hand on the sprat’s head. “Séverine is mine. I’ll treat her no differently than a child of my blood, born in wedlock. I’ll set her welfare before my own life. I will love her as a father. You have my word.”

Back in London, back in the gang he’d lived with, they called that a blood oath.

Owl knew what she’d done. That flat, black, blank behind her eyes was her knowing exactly what she’d done. No telling how much Séverine understood of all this. Might be a lot. She was a smart little kid.

Maggie put her hand out toward Owl. “How can I take your sister and leave you behind? Do you think I wouldn’t welcome you? Come with us.”

Hell. Hell and damn. That wasn’t going to happen. If Owl wasn’t on the rolls of the Police Secrète, she reported to somebody who was.

He didn’t stay to listen while Doyle told Maggie why Owl couldn’t come to England. Lots of things to do that didn’t involve watching that. The load on the donkeys had to be shifted and balanced and tacked down to take account of a new bag. He had to make a place for Séverine to ride.

They talked. He tried not to listen too much. After a while, Owl came over, walking like a marionette, stiff and awkward. She lifted the bag to where he’d made a place for it. “I have packed clothing for her. Things she will need. Her . . . doll.”

“Some people wouldn’t leave this to the last minute. The kid’s going to make them conspicuous.” He wasn’t gentle. Owl didn’t want to break down in front of Séverine. She was close to doing that.

“What is more inconspicuous than a child? Would anyone suspect a family traveling across the countryside with a small child? No and no. Everyone should take an infant or two with them upon their missions.”

He shrugged and made a clicking with his lips, which was one of those French noises he was practicing.

“She is a better companion than you, in fact, because she has been trained to keep her mouth closed and follow orders, which you have not.”

He’d made her angry. Good. She didn’t look as dead inside. “I follow orders.” He hauled out the blankets, rolled them, and tied them on the donkey, making a sort of half-moon shape where Séverine could ride. “It’s that hair of hers. Might as well attach a red flag. That has to . . . Here.” He took a string of leather and went to braid up the sprat’s hair and tie it. “That’s better. But she’s dressed too well. You should dirty her up. Put some mud on her.”

“I am pleased to know she will not be in your hands, Citoyen’Awker.”

That was enough prodding to get her spine stiff. To let her blink back tears. She walked with Maggie, saying good-bye to Séverine without saying it. Touching her sister’s back once.

Last thing, before she left, she handed over their real name. DeCabrillac. Their father was a count, which it was just as well he hadn’t known when he was shoving her arse out of his way back in the Coach House.

When Owl left, she walked away fast and didn’t look back.

Doyle motioned him over. “I wish I could take that girl with me. It’s a shame and a sin sending her back into that shambles.”

Nothing much to say to that.

Doyle said, “She’s going to be dangerous in a few years. On their side.”

“She’s dangerous already.”

“You go follow her. Make sure she gets back to that damned brothel safely.”

No hardship. He would have done it anyway.

He found her two streets away, sitting on a doorstep, her head in her hands. She didn’t look up to see who it was that stopped in front of her. Probably she recognized his boots.

He said, “We can go get her back if that’s what you want.”

That was a lie. He wasn’t going to take the sprat away from Maggie. Owl had done the right thing, and she knew it.

“You know very well there is no going back.” She took her hands away from her face and put them together on her knees, a pair of fists, facing each other.

“Just so you understand.”

“I have kept her safe for more than two years. Clean and cared for and well fed. That is not a small thing to do. I was eleven when I started.”

“You took care of her fine.”

“I taught her the letters. And to speak some German and English.” Her fists tightened in her lap. “Babette is teaching her . . . Babette was teaching her to cook.”

“Useful stuff.”

“It has never been right, never, that the child of my father should grow up in a brothel.”

“I can see that.”

“She is not safe in Paris. There could be fighting again. Any disaster at all. If I am killed, there might be no one left to protect her. I have to send her away.”

He sat down beside her, one step up, so it’d be like he was taller. She needed somebody taller, and he wasn’t yet. There was plenty of room on the step, but he sat close and put his arm across her shoulder. “I know.”

“There is no one better on this earth than Marguerite to care for her. Séverine will be safe in England. They will have a house for her where everything is pleasant and . . . English. With a dog.”

“Doyle likes dogs. Big ones.” Not the right thing to say. “And little ones. He’ll get her a . . .” He didn’t know a damn thing about gentlemen’s dogs. He knew about alley dogs and fighting dogs. “. . . hound.”

She wasn’t paying attention. “It is not possible for me to be with her. You understand that. I will never, never, never permit it that someone points to her and calls her ‘sister of the whore.’ I will not let that happen.”

“Well, now it won’t. You’ve done what you had to.”

She gave up on trying not to cry. She put her face against him and shook. She kept it muffled on his shirt. There wasn’t a damn thing he could say.

Fifteen

1818

Meeks Street, London

THEY WAITED BY HER BED, DRINKING TEA, THEN coffee as it got later. For a few hours, Hawker thought she’d escaped the poison. After sunset, he knew she hadn’t.

It came over her like cold mist lying down on a hill. The restless, nervous, pained movements stopped. She lay on the bed in a limp, unnatural stillness. Her breathing changed. Caught. Ratcheted. Became shallow gasps. She was dying, and there was nothing he could do.

A shudder. Then another shudder ran through her. A strangled sound in her throat.

He put his hand on her chest.
This isn’t happening. I won’t let this happen.

He heard Luke’s footsteps in the hall. At last.

Luke dropped his medical bag by the door. Strode to the foot of the bed. He stripped the blankets off her in a single motion.

“She can’t breathe,” Doyle said. “It’s getting worse.”

“Tremor? Jerking in her muscles? Stiffness in her neck? Her back?”

“Not that.” Doyle pulled the cover the rest of the way off.

Luke felt the muscles of her calf. Hooked her ankle up and flexed her foot back and forth. Ran his finger along the bottom of her foot. “Not responsive. Paralysis.”

Her lips had gone blue. Panicked, half-conscious, she convulsed, trying to suck air in. She gurgled ugly, shallow pants.

Slowly, painfully, horribly, she was suffocating before his eyes. And she couldn’t move.

“Help her, damn it.”