At center was a big round stage with spotlights and a group of musicians playing wild, frenzied music of a sort I’d never heard before. There were long oval drums in brass, big bagpipes made of animal skins with the fur still hanging from them, flutes, clarinets, and chimes of every variety. The musicians danced about in a strange, circular stepping motion as they played.
Solarin and I were seated in a deep pile of cushions near a copper table just before the stage. The loudness of the music prevented me from asking him any questions, so I ruminated as he yelled out an order into the ear of a passing waiter.
What was this formula Hermanold wanted? Who was the woman with the pigeons, and how had she known where Solarin could find me to return my briefcase? What business did Solarin have in New York? If Saul was last seen on a stone slab, how had he wound up in the East River? And finally, what had all this to do with me?
Our drinks arrived just as the band took a break. Two big snifters of amaretto, warmed like brandies, were accompanied by a pot of tea with a long spout. The waiter poured the tea into shot glasses he held far away, balanced in tiny saucers. The steamy liquid flew through the air from spout to glass without spilling a drop. When the waiter left, Solarin toasted me with his glass of mint tea.
“To the game,” he said with a mysterious smile.
My blood ran cold. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied, trying to remember what Nim had said about turning every attack to one’s advantage. What did he know about the goddamned game?
“Of course you do, my dear,” he said softly, picking up my snifter and touching the rim to my lip. “If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here having drinks with you.”
As the amber liquid slid down my throat, a little trickled onto my chin. Solarin smiled and wiped it away with one finger, setting the glass back on the tray. He wasn’t looking at me, but his head was close enough that I could hear every word he whispered.
“The most dangerous game imaginable,” he murmured so softly no one could overhear us, “and we were chosen, each of us, for the parts we play.…”
“What do you mean, chosen?” I said, but before he could answer there was a crash of cymbals and kettledrums as the musicians trotted back onto the stage.
They were followed by a cadre of male dancers in cossacklike tunics of pale blue velvet, the pants tucked into high boots and blossoming out at the knee. Around their waists were heavy twisted cords with tassels at the ends that swung from their hips and bounced as they stepped about in a slow, exotic rhythm. The music rose, sinuous and undulating from clarinets and reed pipes, like the melody that brings a cobra in a stiff, swaying column from the basket.
“Do you like it?” Solarin was whispering in my ear. I nodded my head in affirmation.
“It’s Kabyle music,” he told me as the music wove patterns around us. “From the High Atlas Mountains that run through Algeria and Morocco. This dancer at center, you see his blond hair and pale eyes? And the nose like a hawk, the strong chin like the profile of an old Roman coin. These are the markings of the Kabyle; they are not anything like the Bedouin.…”
An older woman had risen from the audience and danced onto the stage, much to the amusement of the crowd, which coaxed her on with catcalls that must have meant the same in any language. Despite her dignified bearing, her long gray paneled robes and stiff linen veil, she moved with a light step and exuded a sensuality that was scarcely lost upon the male dancers. They danced about her, swinging their hips in and out toward hers so the tassels of their tunics touched her fleetingly, like a caress.
The audience was thrilled by this display, and ever more so when the dignified silver-haired woman danced sinuously toward the lead dancer, extracted some loose bills from the folds of her gown, and slipped them discreetly between the ropes of his belt quite near the groin. For the benefit of the audience, he rolled his eyes suggestively toward the ceiling with a wide grin.
People were on their feet, clapping wildly in time to the music, which escalated as the woman danced to the stage rim in circular steps. Just at the platform’s edge, with the light behind her, her hands aloft clapping out a farewell flamenco, she turned our way … and I froze.
I glanced quickly at Solarin, who was watching me carefully. Then I leaped to my feet just as the woman, a dark silhouette against the silvery light, stepped from the stage and was swallowed into the jumbled darkness of mingled crowd, ostrich plumes, and palm fronds. The palms moved in the glittering flash of mirrored light.
Solarin’s hand was like steel on my arm. He stood beside me, his body pressed the length of mine.
“Let me go,” I hissed between gritted teeth, for a few people nearby were glancing at us casually. “I said let me go! Do you know who that was?”
“Do you?” he hissed back into my ear. “Stop attracting attention!” When he saw I was still struggling, he wrapped his arms around me in a deathlike embrace that might have appeared affectionate.
“You’ll place us in danger,” he was whispering in my ear, so close I could inhale the mingled scent of mint and almonds on his breath. “Just as you did by coming to that chess tournament—just as you did by following me to the United Nations. You’ve no idea what risk she’s taken by coming here to see you. Nor what sort of reckless game you’re playing with other people’s lives.”
“No, I don’t!” I practically cried aloud, for the pressure of his grip was hurting me. The dancers were still whirling to the wild music onstage, which was washing over us in waves of rhythm. “But that was the fortune-teller, and I’m going to find her!”
“The fortune-teller?” said Solarin, looking puzzled but not loosening his grip. His eyes gazing into mine were as green as the dark, dark sea. Anyone watching us might have thought we were lovers.
“I don’t know if she tells fortunes,” he said, “but she certainly knows the future. It was she who summoned me to New York. It was she who had me follow you to Algiers. It was she who chose you—”
“Chose!” I said. “Chose me for what? I don’t even know this woman!”
Solarin took me off guard by loosening his grip. The music swirled around us like a throbbing haze of sound as he grasped me by the wrist. Raising my hand, palm up, he pressed his lips to the soft place at the base of my palm where the blood beat closest to the skin’s surface. For a second I felt hot blood coursing up, up through my veins. Then he lifted his head and looked into my eyes. My knees felt a little weak as I stared back at him.
“Look at it,” he whispered, and I realized his finger was tracing a pattern at the base of my wrist. I looked down slowly, not wanting to take my eyes away from him just at that moment.
“Look at it,” he whispered again as I stared at my wrist. There, at the base of my palm just where the large blue artery pulsed with blood, two lines twisted together in a snakelike embrace to form a figure eight.
“You’ve been chosen to unravel the formula,” he said softly, his lips barely moving.
The formula! I held my breath as he looked deeply into my eyes. “What formula?” I heard myself whispering.
“The formula of the Eight …” he began, but just then he stiffened, his face freezing into a mask again as he glanced once, quickly, over my shoulder, his eyes focusing upon something behind me. He dropped my wrist and stepped back as I turned to look over my shoulder.
The music was still beating out its primal rhythm, the dancers whirling in exotic frenzy. Far across the stage, against the glittering glare of floodlights, a shadowy form was watching. As the spotlight trailed around the curve of stage following the dancers, it fell upon the dark figure for an instant. It was Sharrif!
He nodded to me once, politely, before the light passed on. I glanced quickly back at Solarin. Where he’d stood only a moment before, a palm frond swayed slowly in space.
THE ISLE
One day a mysterious colony quitted Spain and settled on the tongue of land on which it is to this day. It arrived from no one knew where, and
spoke an unknown tongue. One of its chiefs, who understood Provençale, begged the commune of Marseilles to give them this bare and barren promontory on which, like the sailors of ancient times, they had run their boats ashore.…
—The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexander Dumas,
describing Corsica
I have a premonition that some day this little island will astonish Europe.
—The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
describing Corsica
PARIS
SEPTEMBER 4, 1792
It was just past midnight when Mireille left Talleyrand’s house under cover of darkness and disappeared into the smothering velvet of the hot Parisian night.
Once he understood he could not overcome her resolution to leave, Talleyrand had provided her a strong, healthy horse from his stable and the small pouch of coins they’d been able to scrape together at that hour. Attired in the mismatched pieces of livery that Courtiade had assembled to serve as her disguise, her hair bound up in a queue and lightly powdered like a boy’s, she’d departed unobtrusively through the service court and made her way through the darkened streets of Paris toward the barricades at the Bois de Boulogne—the road to Versailles.
She could not permit Talleyrand to accompany her. His aristocratic profile was known to all of Paris. Furthermore, the passes Danton had sent, they’d discovered, were not valid until the fourteenth of September—nearly two weeks hence. The only solution, they’d all agreed, was for Mireille to depart alone, for Maurice to remain in Paris as though nothing had happened, and for Courtiade to leave that same night with the boxes of books and to wait at the Channel until his pass permitted him to cross to England.
Now, as her horse picked its way through the close darkness of the narrow streets, Mireille had time at last to consider the perilous mission that lay before her.
From the moment when her hired carriage had been stopped before the gates of l’Abbaye Prison, events had engulfed her so she’d only had time to act instinctively. The horror of Valentine’s execution, the sudden terror for her own life as she’d fled through the burning streets of Paris, Marat’s face and the grimaces of the onlookers as they watched the massacre—it was as if a lid had been lifted for an instant from the thin eggshell of civilization so she could glimpse the horror of man’s bestiality beneath that fragile veneer.
From that instant, time had stopped and events were unleashed that swallowed her like the wild rampaging of a fire. Behind each wave that assaulted her was a backlash of emotion more powerful than any she’d known. This passion still burned within her like a dark flame—a flame that had only been intensified by the brief hours spent in Talleyrand’s arms. A flame that fired her desire to grasp the pieces of the Montglane Service before anything else.
It seemed an eternity since Mireille had seen Valentine’s sparkling smile across the length of that courtyard. Yet it was only thirty-two hours. Thirty-two, thought Mireille as she moved through the deserted street alone: the number of pieces on a chessboard. The number she must collect to decipher the riddle—and to avenge the death of Valentine.
She had met few people on the narrow side streets of Paris en route to the Bois de Boulogne. Even here in the countryside under the full moon, though still far from the barricades, the thoroughfares were nearly empty. By now most Parisians had learned of the prison massacres, which were still under way, and decided to remain within the relative security of their own homes.
Though she must head east to Lyons to reach her destination at the port of Marseilles, Mireille had gone west toward Versailles for a reason. The Convent of St.-Cyr was there: the convent school founded in the prior century by Madame de Maintenon, consort of Louis XIV, for the education of daughters of the nobility. It was at St.-Cyr that the Abbess of Montglane had stopped en route to Russia.
Perhaps the proctoress would give Mireille shelter there—help her contact the Abbess of Montglane for the funds she needed—help her escape from France. The reputation of Montglane’s abbess was the only pass to freedom Mireille possessed. She prayed it would work a miracle.
The barricades at the Bois were piled with stones, sacks of earth, and broken pieces of furniture. Mireille could see the Place before it, thick with people with their ox carts, carriages, and animals, waiting to flee as soon as the gates were opened. Approaching the Place, she dismounted and stayed within her horse’s shadow, so her disguise would not be penetrated in the flickering light of the torchéres that illuminated the square.
There was a commotion at the barrier. Taking her horse by the reins, Mireille mingled with the large group that filled the Place. Beyond in the torchlight, she could see soldiers clambering up to raise the barricade. Someone was coming through from outside.
Near Mireille a group of young men milled about, craning their necks for a better view. There must have been a dozen or more, all dressed in laces, velvets, and shiny high-heeled boots pasted with glittering glass stones like gems. These were the jeunesse dorée, the “gilded youth,” whom Germaine de Staël had pointed out to Mireille so often at the Opéra. Mireille heard them complaining loudly to the mixed crowd of nobles and peasants that packed the square.
“This revolution has become quite impossible!” cried one. “There really is no reason to hold French citizens hostage now that the filthy Prussians have been driven away.”
“I say, soldat!” cried another, waving a lacy handkerchief at a soldier high above them on the barricade. “We’ve a party to attend at Versailles! How long do you intend us to be patient here?” The soldier turned his bayonet toward the waving handkerchief, which quickly disappeared from view.
There was commotion in the crowd about who might be coming through the barricades. It was known that highwaymen plied the roads through every forest region now. The “chamber-pots,” groups of self-deputized inquisitioners, traveled the highways in strangely designed vehicles from which they derived their nickname. Though acting in no official capacity, they were instilled with the zeal of newly appointed citizens of France—halting a traveler, swarming over his coach like locusts, demanding to see his papers, and, if displeased with the interrogation, making a “citizen’s arrest.” To save trouble, this might include stringing him up from the nearest tree as a lesson to others.
The barricades opened, and a cluster of dust-coated fiacres and cabriolets passed through. The crowd from the square closed around them to learn what they could from the weary passengers who’d just arrived. Holding the reins of her horse, Mireille moved toward the first halted post chaise, the door of which was opening to release passengers.
A young soldier, dressed in the scarlet and dark blue of the army, leaped out into the midst of the crowd to help the coachman remove boxes and trunks from the roof of the post chaise.
Mireille was close enough to observe firsthand that he was a young man of extraordinary beauty. His long chestnut hair was unbound, swinging loose to his shoulders. His large dark eyes of blue-gray, shadowed with thick lashes, intensified the pale translucence of his skin. His narrow Roman nose turned down slightly. His lips, beautifully molded, curved into an expression of disdain as he glanced once at the noisy crowd and turned away.
Now she saw him helping someone to descend from the carriage, a beautiful child of no more than fifteen years who was so pale and fragile that Mireille felt frightened for her. The girl resembled this soldier so perfectly that Mireille felt certain they were brother and sister, and the tenderness with which he helped his young companion from the carriage supported this. Both were of slight build but well formed. They made a romantic-looking couple, thought Mireille—like hero and heroine in a fairy tale.
All the passengers coming from the carriages seemed shaken and frightened as they brushed the dust from their traveling clothes, but none more so than the young girl near Mireille, who was white as a sheet and trembling as if about to swoon. The soldier tried to help her through the crowd as an old man near Mireille reache
d out and grasped him by the arm.
“What is the state of the Versailles Road, friend?” he asked.
“I should not attempt Versailles tonight,” the soldier replied politely, but loudly enough for all to hear. “The chamber-pots are out in force, and my sister is badly shaken. The trip has cost us nearly eight hours, for we’ve been halted a dozen times since we left St.-Cyr.…”
“St.-Cyr!” cried Mireille. “You’ve come from St.-Cyr? But that is where I’m headed!” At this, both the soldier and his young sister turned to Mireille, and the child’s eyes opened wide.
“But—but it is a lady!” cried the young girl, staring at Mireille’s costume of livery and powdered hair. “A lady dressed as a man!”
The soldier looked Mireille over with appreciation. “So you’re bound for St.-Cyr?” he said. “Let us hope you did not plan to join the convent!”
“Have you come from the convent school at St.-Cyr?” she said. “I must reach there myself—tonight. It is a matter of grave importance. You must tell me how things stand.”
“We cannot idle here,” said the soldier. “My sister is not well.” And hoisting their one bag onto his shoulder, he parted the way through the crowd.
Mireille followed close by, tugging the reins of her horse. As the three of them reached the edge of the crowd, the young girl turned her dark eyes upon Mireille.
“You must have a powerful reason for reaching St.-Cyr tonight,” she said. “The roads are unsafe. You are brave to travel, a woman alone, at times like these.”