“Well, sir, as far as I see it, we’re all housed in the same skin, be it black, white, or brown. The same blood pulses through all our veins, the same heart beats. Yet some men believe that through birth and privilege they stand above everyone else. I don’t believe that. I think that kings have had their day, and the future should be in the hands of the people.”
“These are revolutionary views indeed,” said Sir John Randall, taken aback by Yann’s zeal.
“And views I violently disagree with!” exclaimed Madame Claumont. “There must be order, otherwise society will collapse. People only thrive when they know their place. Absolute monarchy is the only possible way to ensure this.”
“Too late, my dear madam,” said Cordell. “Your good king didn’t seize his chance to put down the Revolution. Now it is too late. With Marat as leader, the Revolution has given birth to a reign of terror that is growing in power day by day. I believe that in the end it will rule everything, destroy everything.”
It was shortly after this that Madame Claumont disappeared. Her body was retrieved at low tide, half buried in the Thames mud near Cheyne Walk, her little dog whining beside her.
Henry Laxton accompanied Sir John Randall to identify the body. Madame Claumont was wearing a necklace that was caked in mud, like the rest of her. A red garnet caught Mr. Laxton’s eye. He took the necklace away with him, washed it until its color was restored, and studied it carefully. It was, as he had suspected, a necklace like those Charles Cordell had described to him, and the sight of it made him feel sick to his stomach. Madame Claumont had been a good client of the bank. What part, he wondered, had Kalliovski played in her murder?
A terrible, undeniable truth struck him. This was the man Sido was to marry. How could he possibly stand by, knowing what he did, and let her be sacrificed to this monster? Something must be done before it was too late.
chapter twenty
These days Yann was feeling that the past was well behind him. Then, with three simple words, the world that he thought was his to inherit slipped through his fingers like sand. It was what Orlenda had predicted, and what Yann had chosen to bury somewhere deep in his unconscious mind: His destiny and his fate lay across the water.
On a hot summer’s evening, with the study door open to the garden, Mr. Laxton had read him a letter he had just received from Cordell. The three words that stood out, illuminated diamond-bright, were: “Têtu is alive.”
It seemed that Têtu, after three years working in provincial theaters where he knew Kalliovski would not find him, had returned to Paris, confident that with all his other activities the count’s interest in him had waned. He had been to see Cordell, and was proud and delighted to hear how well Yann had acquitted himself.
Cordell had asked Têtu if he knew anyone who could be trusted to get Sido de Villeduval safely to England, and Têtu had suggested Yann. If Sido refused to abandon her father, then the last resort would be to try to get them both out. For that they would need papers and passports.
As Yann listened, he knew that his future lay not here, but in France; and he remembered with a shudder Orlenda’s three predictions and realized that one, if not two, had already come true. Orlenda had told him that he was to take comfort that Têtu was still alive. The next thing she had predicted puzzled him greatly and made him sure that she must be wrong about the dwarf. She told him he had already met the only person he would ever love.
“What is her name?” Yann had asked.
"It begins with S.”
All he could think to ask was, “Will we be happy?”
“This love could be the death of both of you,” said Orlenda.
Only now could he acknowledge that she had meant Sido— not Sophie Padden. Perhaps, if he was honest with himself, he had always known it, even from the very first moment he had seen her.
The last of Orlenda’s three predictions had been the one that had terrified him the most and made him run away. It had been the reason he had wanted no more to do with magic. Finally he realized that there was no more running to be done; he would have to go back and face the bullet. Perhaps, like the magician, this time he would be able to catch it.
Mr. Laxton put down the letter and said firmly, “These are very dangerous times. You don’t have to do this.”
“But I do,” said Yann. “I can’t explain why. All I can tell you is that I have known this day was coming. I have been waiting a long time for that letter to arrive.”
His determination to give up all that he had earned took Henry Laxton completely by surprise.
“What about university?”
“It can wait. But Sido can’t.”
Mr. Laxton paused. “Yann, as I said, this is not going to be easy. Kalliovski will not take kindly to anyone trying to steal away what belongs to him. You are dealing with a very dangerous man.”
“That makes it all the more important that we succeed.”
“In that case I will need a couple of weeks to get all the papers in order; then you can go.”
Mr. Trippen sat back at the table after a good Sunday lunch and listened to all Yann had to say about his decision.
“Well,” he said, “if the fates are calling you, then go you must. ’There is a tide in the affairs of men . . .’ ”
“Do you think,” interrupted Yann, well-versed in his tutor’s love of Shakespearean quotes, "we’re simply puppets in the hands of destiny, or do we have the power to change our fate?”
Mr. Trippen contemplated the question, while the youngest of the Trippens played on the floor with a ball Yann had bought him. His sisters sat listening, looking adoringly at the young man in his fashionable coat, each one wishing that his black eyes would rest on her and twinkle, if only for a moment.
“It is a question,” replied Mr. Trippen, “that philosophers, playwrights, poets, and artists will go on asking until the world stops spinning and the sun is snuffed out like a candle. A question, my dear sir, that your Mr. Trippen has struggled with and has no answer for. Though I did once know a man in the Queen Anne Tavern who claimed he had the solution, if not the answer.”
“What was it?” asked Yann.
“Aha!” laughed Mr. Trippen. “It lay, according to him, at the bottom of a good tankard of port wine. In other words, my young sir, the question is king, and the answers are different for all men.”
“Why don’t you do magic tricks anymore, Yann?” said the eldest girl impatiently. “You used to be able to make apples appear from nowhere and do card tricks. Now all you do is talk like Papa and use long words.”
“My pudding blossom,” said her father, “you have a very good point. Well, young sir, we are all ears.”
“I stopped believing in magic,” said Yann softly.
Mrs. Trippen came into the room, gathering up the children to take them to visit her mother.
“Don’t be long,” called Mr. Trippen, “oh flower of my life, apple of my eye, the reason my heart keeps on beating!”
Mrs. Trippen smiled cheerfully. She enjoyed owning furniture weighted down with the gravity of a healthy income. Life was good.
The front door closed and the babbling-brook voices of the children disappeared, leaving only the muted sounds of horses’ hooves outside, and inside, the ticking of a clock and the chirping of the two canaries whose cages hung in the window. Mr.Trippen brought out his snuffbox.
“Many men,” said Mr. Trippen, taking a large pinch of snuff, which immediately brought on a bout of sneezing, “spend their lives living in the wrong corner of their souls, mainly out of fear of what they might find on the other side.”
He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
“When I first met you, I would say that you were the most mysterious, magical young man I had ever had the privilege to run into. In the last couple of years it has struck me that you have been merrily trying to board up that side of yourself, close the shop, put up the shutters, so to speak, and old Trippen has noticed the effect it has had on his young
Hamlet’s countenance. The ‘To be or not to be’ question has brought about a lopsided quality to your gait. Instead of standing up straight, your right shoulder slopes as if one part of you is in constant disagreement with the other half.”
"Yes,” said Yann, "I recognize that. What should I do?”
“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer being ordinary or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing them . . . except that you are extraordinary. Celebrate the magic that you have at your fingertips. Stand up straight, put your head above the parapet.”
“Aren’t you disappointed that I won’t go to Cambridge?”
“No,” said Mr. Trippen. “I never thought you would. Doesn’t mean I didn’t think you could. My advice, for what it is worth, is this: Face your demons.”
chapter twenty-one
If ann knew what Mr. Trippen meant. While there was still time, he must go back and find the Gypsies.
Early the next day he took his black horse and rode out to Hainault Forest, to the Fairlop Fair. Here, each year, Gypsies from all over the country gathered under a huge oak tree, making the most of the chance to gossip and trade in the horses and ponies penned in a hastily erected corral. Beneath its canopy of leaves they set up stalls selling trinkets, food, and drink, and the local farmers and their families crowded the little booths to see the puppet shows, to watch the boxing matches, bear-dancing, and sword-throwing, to bob for apples, and have their fortunes told.
Yann arrived in the morning, but it was evening by the time he found out where Tobias Cooper was. He had to ride some three miles before he smelled the woodsmoke and saw the camp nestled at the edge of the forest.
Tobias walked down the green grassy path to meet him as the sun, round and red, was going down behind the trees in a burst of color. He embraced Yann.
“I knew you would return,” he said, “and I know we have not much time, because you are going back across the water.”
He took Yann to his tent and they sat down together in front of the fire, where the kettle bubbled away.
“Now let us try again,” said Tobias, as if no time had passed. A cup rose into the air and the kettle tipped and poured tea into it, without the help of a human hand. Yann had seen Têtu do this many times.
"What do you see?” asked Tobias.
“A cup having tea poured into it by an invisible hand.”
“I did not ask you to look,” said Tobias. “Looking is what all fools do. I asked you to see. That is the difference. Now try again. Look at the spaces in between the objects, then tell me what you see.”
This time a burning stick was lifted from the fire and stood on end like a torch.
"A burning stick,” said Yann, completely at a loss. “What else is there to see?”
“Everything. You see with your eyes. I am asking you to see from here.”
He pressed his thumb hard in the middle of Yann’s forehead. “This is how you must learn to see. Not with your eyes. They will only deceive you, as I told you before. They are so easily tricked. Now drink.”
Yann held the cup tight. He needed the warmth of the tea for comfort. He said, “I stopped believing.”
“That goes without saying,” said Tobias.
It was not until the moon had taken sovereignty over the night sky that Tobias and Yann left the camp and started to walk through the forest, where the trees stood like sentinels watching for intruders.
Yann kept tripping up; he had lost the basic skills that he once took for granted. Tobias, on the other hand, walked on as if it were broad daylight. At last they came to a clearing, an eerie place surrounded by oak trees on top of which the moon seemed to be balancing. It was a circular clearing, off which led seven paths. Yann had the sensation of walking not on the mossy ground but on a membrane that divided two worlds.
Tobias sat down in the middle of the clearing, Yann beside him, and started to play a penny whistle. It made no sound, or at least none that Yann could hear. After a while, lights began to appear down each path. Phantomlike figures came into focus from nowhere. They seemed no more substantial than mist. Yann watched, hypnotized, as on the path directly in front of him stood a wizened woman.
“Who called for me?” she asked.
Tobias stood up and gave a deep bow. “I did. I have brought the young man as I promised I would.”
Yann watched as she seemed to fade and then become whole again.
“Come here,” she called out to him.
Then the strangest thing happened. Without moving, without taking a step, he left his body. He could see himself still standing next to Tobias. The old woman held her hands out and he took them. He was being lifted off his feet, up into the night sky, whirling around and around, higher and higher until he was above the treetops, almost touching the moon.
Then, without a word, the old woman let go of his hands and he fell back down to earth. He felt the two parts of himself collide, become one again. So great was the blow that he remembered nothing more.
He woke the next day to find Tobias Cooper sitting at the opening of his tent, filling his clay pipe, talking to Orlenda and Talo. They greeted Yann with warm smiles, Orlenda showing him her little baby before they set off to the fair.
Had last night been a dream? Yann wondered.
“I have been thinking. Have you a talisman?” asked Tobias.
“No,” said Yann, feeling strangely different, as if some great burden had been lifted from him.
“Every tawny boy needs a talisman. You need one more than most,” said Tobias, and he took from his pocket a small bag and brought out a perfect seashell.
“Baro seroeske sharkuni, the very shell of the shells,” he said, handing it to Yann. Yann examined it closely. He had never seen one like it.
“It is the shell of a sea snail, and holds great magic. I have been waiting a long time to hand on this talisman. It is meant for you.”
"No,” said Yann firmly. “It is too precious. I cannot take it.”
"You must, for you are alone. But you have a friend, Têtu, and I believe he meant you to find us. He wouldn’t have wanted you to return until you had learned to accept your powers without fear, until you stopped hiding from what Orlenda saw in your hand.”
Yann knew then how foolish he had been. “I had hoped that the S might have stood for Sophie Padden.”
“And it didn’t, did it?” chuckled Tobias.
“No. No, indeed, it did not. Nor did it stand for Sarah Hinds.”
“Though both, no doubt, taught you a lot.”
"Maybe,” said Yann with a mischievous smile.
“You are a king amongst the Gypsies, Yann Margoza. Take the talisman, wear it with pride and it will keep you safe.”
That night they returned to the heart of the forest. This time the old woman was seated in the middle of the clearing. A fire was now burning away with a kettle above it. In amongst the trees hovered the ghostlike figures Yann had seen earlier.
“Go to her,” said Tobias, standing on the edge of the clearing.
The old woman patted the ground next to her and Yann sat down.
Close up, her face looked as wise as the earth is broad. In her eyes he could see all that was known and all that was still to be learned. It felt as though she were looking straight through him. A pain struck him in the middle of his forehead as if she were pressing a finger through his skull.
"Give me your hand,” said the old woman. Yann felt her papery skin. Her fingers looked like twigs, all twisted and gnarled, her nails like seashells. He flinched, for there was such power in her grip, and suddenly everything disappeared and he was walking across a field, toward a road lined with tall poplars. He could see the wheels of an upturned carriage spinning around and around in a ditch, and started to run toward it. The wind rustled in the trees. A young woman was lying by the roadside, all broken like a china doll. A man was holding her, his horse grazing a little way off; a flurry of autumn leaves swept across the field and there, in a furrow, he cou
ld see an infant, her leg broken, her little face contorted with pain. He knelt down beside her, wondering if she too was dead.
With a jolt he was aware of being back in the clearing. The fire and the old woman had disappeared. Yann looked around and for the first time he saw spider threads of light streaming from all the ghostly figures, over-arching him like a huge cat’s cradle, until with the sound of a violin string snapping they were gone.
Yann turned to look at Tobias. He too had threads of light coming from his fingers. And he watched, astounded, as the old man flicked them as a fisherman might cast his line to catch a fish.
“I can see,” shouted Yann, “I can see!”
“At last,” said Tobias. “Now we can start.”
It was a week later, early on a bright and sunny morning, that Yann, having made his farewells to the Laxtons and the Trippens, caught the Paris-bound coach from the strand, the perfect picture of a young English gentleman misguidedly off to visit Paris for the first time. On him were papers and passports and enough money to get out the Marquis de Villeduval and his daughter, Sido.
chapter twenty-two
On the eleventh of August, the Duchesse de Lamantes, worried for the Marquis de Villeduval’s safety, sent a messenger to inform the marquis of the serious situation in Paris, and to tell him that the throne of France had been demolished, the Swiss Guards massacred, and the royal family arrested. It was the Duchesse de Lamantes’s opinion that they were no longer safe. She also thought the marquis should know that Count Kalliovski was calling for the execution of the king.
In the light of all these developments, the Duchesse de Lamantes was sure that her friend could not now countenance his daughter marrying such a man, and she advised him to leave France at the first possible opportunity.
The Marquis de Villeduval refused to receive the duchess’s messenger. He no longer trusted the written word, for he saw it as the sword of Damocles hanging over him.The trouble was that since Kalliovski’s last visit, reality had become a stranger to him. While the frayed edges of his sanity daily unwound, he chose to remain locked away in his suite of rooms studying his collection of shoe buckles and remembering which balls, banquets, and fêtes they had been worn at. Nightly now, he walked through the château’s empty salons while ghosts danced before him, dressed in all their finery and tall powdered wigs.