“Do you know who I am?”
The lizard-man studied him carefully, from his immaculate black coat and high necktie right down to his shiny black boots.
“Well-heeled,” he said, slamming the door.
Kalliovski did not take kindly to such treatment. His blood boiled at the injustice of it. After all he had done for this miserable crew, he had no intention of waiting. Carefully brushing off any trace of the hand on his coat, he knocked again loudly. The same man opened the door.
“I have come for the release papers for Sidonie de Villeduval. I was told that they would be ready by now.”
“Then you have been misinformed, citizen. Look around you. You’re going to have to wait like everyone else. You’re no bleeding different. Equality, remember? That’s what it’s all about.” And once again the door was slammed shut.
Kalliovski was outraged. Such rudeness would not have been tolerated under the old regime. The man would have found himself in the Bastille for his impertinence. He went to knock on the door a third time. No one dismissed him like that.
“Sir, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a thin, anxious-looking man, getting up from his chair. “They’ve already arrested one person for being impatient. I am hoping to get my son out of prison. They took him in the middle of the night—for what, we haven’t been told. My wife . . .”
He stopped, seeing the look of indifference on Kalliovski’s face, and quickly returned to the safety of his chair.
Once more Kalliovski took out his pocket watch to check the time. His well-constructed plan must not fail at this last important stage. As soon as he had Sido’s release papers, he would go straight to the prison and have her freed, and then without further delay they would be married. He had even found himself a Catholic priest, one of the very few who was not languishing in prison, to carry out the deed. He wasn’t going to risk having a revolutionary wedding, not with the Duke of Brunswick so close to victory. He wanted the certificate to be aboveboard, to hold Papal weight, for then and only then would the considerable fortune finally be his. He might not have had the mother, but fate would give him the daughter and her inheritance. Revenge becomes all the sweeter, he thought, when it has been ripened by misfortune and then served cold, icy cold.
He smiled to himself. If the Duke of Brunswick were to invade Paris, he would have no hesitation in changing sides again. He was well aware that to have allegiances, to take a stand, to hold a firm political view, was the recipe for a short life. When the winds are liable to change quickly, it is best to be a reed and know how to bend. He had one motto, and it had not failed him yet. Have no mercy, show no mercy.
He walked back and forth, Balthazar by his side. Still the door remained closed. He had not bargained on this delay. He had planned to have Sido out of prison by now.
Time was dragging its feet, refusing to go any faster, as if it were hoping to keep night pinned to the stars. At last it let go and the inky dark sky gave way to the bloodred dawn.
The door of the antechamber opened. Everyone turned to see who the new visitor was. One of Kalliovski’s henchmen entered the room.
“What is it?” Kalliovski asked brusquely.
“I’m sorry to report, sir, that there’s been a break-in at your apartment.”
“You must be mistaken. Milkeye wouldn’t have let anyone get past him.”
“I am afraid I’m not, sir.”
“Where is Milkeye?”
“Out cold, sir. We can’t wake him.”
“Anything taken?” Kalliovski’s voice was like the hiss of a viper.
“No, sir. Milkeye must have shot the intruder. There’s blood all over the place.”
“Any sign of a body?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that we can see.”
Kalliovski felt a warm rush of relief. Now, if the Book of Tears were to have gone, that would be a different matter. At least the Sisters Macabre wouldn’t give up their secret so easily.
“There is one other thing, sir, but it’s not important.”
“What?”
“It’s the automata, sir.”
“What about it? Speak, man.”
“Two of them have been opened.”
“Did you look inside?” asked Kalliovski in a menacing whisper.
The man trembled. “Yes, sir. They were empty.”
Kalliovski brought his fist down hard into his gloved hand. He paced back and forth, his eyes wild. He knew that only someone who could work the threads of light would have been able to open the secret chambers, but Têtu had been at the theater and there was no one else capable of doing such a thing.
“Are you sure?” His hands automatically went toward the man’s throat and he began to strangle the life out of him.
The people in the room, shaken from fitful sleep, now did their best to separate the pair. Kalliovski shook himself free and looked down at the man on the floor, who was crimson in the face and gasping for air. Terrified, he pulled away from his master.
Kalliovski’s eyes sparked with flashes of pure rage. He kicked hard at the wall.
“Go and wake Milkeye. I want to know who did this, and I want them found and brought to me alive. Everything must be returned to me. Do I make myself clear?”
At that moment the door to the meeting room was opened. “Wait!” said Kalliovski. White with anger, he pushed his way to the front of the line to ask for his document.
“There’s no one by the name of Sidonie de Villeduval on the list,” said the lizard-man, with some relish.
Kalliovski scribbled a note and handed it to him.
“This is for Citizen Danton, and if you value your life you will give it to him.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yes,” said Kalliovski, “and if you don’t do as I ask, I will kill you and take pleasure in it.”
“A good joke, citizen,” said the man, blowing smoke through his nose like a dragon. But a shiver went down his spine, and he took the note and closed the door behind him.
All those waiting shifted uneasily on their feet. Only a few had left with the documents they needed.
Church bells rang the tocsin and in the distance, cannons boomed.
Kalliovski was left wondering if it was possible that Têtu had tricked him. Had he set up that charade at the theater in order to keep him there while someone broke in? But who? No, that couldn’t be . . . they would never have known where to look unless . . . He stopped. Unless . . . whoever it was had been able to make the Sisters Macabre talk, and only a powerful shaman could do that.
He supposed Têtu might have broken in earlier. No, on second thought that was unlikely.
Then it came to him, a moment of realization just as the day was dawning. “Of course!” he shouted out. “The boy!”
Why hadn’t he put the pieces together before? The boy, the one who got away, was back in Paris. Why had he been so slow?
Anis had had a child!
That night, all those years ago, after she had run away from him, when he had found her working with Têtu and Topolain in the circus: That night, he had begged her to be his wife, promised he would change. She had refused . . . stood there, her dark hair, her eyes blazing, so mysterious in all her beauty . . . If he couldn’t have her, then he was determined no one else would . . .
He remembered the delicious softness of her neck, how he had put his hand around her throat and she had smiled at him, showing no fear. Her eyes, flecked with gold, had stared into his soul and saw who he was, what he would be capable of. He hadn’t meant to harm her; he just wanted her to close her eyes, not to look at him like that. He had pressed his hands tighter and tighter around her neck. The sense of power tingled within him; he was walking on the edge. He had shaken her like a doll, felt the flutter of her heart as it ceased beating beneath his hand.
In the silence that followed, before regret threatened to break him in two, in the last moment he had ever allowed himself to feel anythi
ng for anyone, he had heard the soft sound of a baby crying.
Only much later—too late—had he found out that she had had a child. What had happened to it he never knew. He had put it from his mind.
Now he realized, of course, of course, Têtu had taken the child, brought him up. The boy at the château on the night of the marquis’s party—that was him!
He could still hear Anis laughing from beyond the grave.
chapter thirty-two
Sido had been awake most of the night. She had lain there trying to remember how long she had been in prison, and failing. Time had become a blank, possessing no marked features. Each day was the same, played out to the background noise of weeping, clanging doors, and barking dogs. She felt that she had always been in jail, and that life outside was no more than a passing interlude.
She had seen her father only once since Yann and Maître Tardieu had come. She had gone to sit with him in the large hall that had once been a chapel. The minute she had spoken, he had exploded with rage.
“Dying was the only good thing you ever did, you wretched woman!” He was shouting so loudly that the guards had come running, and had to restrain him from attacking Sido. “Away with you and your bastard!” he yelled. “I will have no more to do with you.”
Sido had stood transfixed, watching the guards wrestling to control him. She said under her breath, “I have a right to my life. It was given to me. It is mine to cherish. It is mine to claim. To throw it away is a sin.”
She said it aloud to cut out all the vile things he was shouting. Once back in her cell it finally struck her that there was no point in trying to help a man who had always hated her. Sane or insane, his sentiments had never altered. Only when she was silent had he shown the slightest regard for her. Why? Because then she could be anything he wanted.
She let out a sigh as the moon made a welcome appearance at the bars of her window, its sad face frowning.
“What do you want?” it seemed to ask.
“Why, what everyone wants,” she replied. “To be loved for being myself rather than what someone wants me to be.”
Was that such a bad thing? With Yann she had simply been Sido and she had felt so free, as if she had feathers as white and wide as swans’ wings, ready for the wind to lift her up, to fly, to float, weightless, between the clouds.
She sat up knowing that she had arrived at a decision. If Yann came for her, she would go.
“I have a right to my life, it was given to me, and it is mine to cherish. It is mine to claim. To throw it away is a sin.” Saying it made her feel stronger. She wanted nothing more to do with the name de Villeduval. If ever she was free again, she would call herself by her mother’s name. She at least had loved her.
Just before dawn, the church bells started to ring all over the city. This was no pleasant Sunday sound, the gentle call to prayer. In the frenzy of their chimes, loud enough to wake the dead, the bells sounded a warning of oncoming danger, their clamor heightened by the barking of the prison dogs.
The bells were still ringing and the dogs still barking by the time the sun was up. This was unusual, for the dogs were normally released by this time, to do the rounds with the guards.
Normal, she thought, was such an ordinary little word. It was only when normality was gone that you realized how much you missed its presence. What would she give to see the turnkey this morning, arriving as he usually did, his voice as rough as gravel, fighting a hangover and leering into the cells, hoping to catch a glimpse of a woman in a state of undress. But this morning the corridor remained empty. And that was not the only thing that was unusual about this day.
Normally, Citizeness Villon brought breakfast to her. Like the guards, she had not turned up. The plate from last night’s supper sat on the chair, gravy stains hardened to its surface like glue.
She watched the shadows cast by the sun and thought it must be well past midday, but still no one appeared.
The atmosphere in the prison was electric. Sido could feel frenzied waves of terror rushing through the cells, a sense that something terrible was looming. This nameless fear began to spread like an uncontrollable fever as the prisoners started to bang on the doors of their cells, the sound swiftly reaching a crescendo that in itself would normally have guaranteed the arrival of a guard, furious to have been dragged away from the guardhouse and his card game.
Today, it seemed, nothing was normal. She sat on her bed trying her best to keep calm, staring at the stone wall of her cell in whose uneven surface she could make out a face that reminded her of Yann. It was the memory of that one glorious hour in the café that had kept her from dwelling too much on what was happening in the present. Escaping to this imaginary place had been the only way to block out the atrocities of prison life.
For the past four days, more and more people had been brought here. Some were dragged, others walked with their heads held high. Mothers carried their children, who looked scared and bewildered, their young voices pitiful with their questions of “Why are we here? Where are we going? What have we done wrong?”
Sido’s daydream was shattered by the chilling cry that came over from the male prison: “They are going to slaughter us all!”
Now panic was given full reign, with shouting, pleading, and desperate cries for the guard to come. These were silenced by other, more dreadful noises from outside and the groans and screams of the dying at the hands of the bloodthirsty crowd. What the prisoners had feared the most had started. At about four o’clock the iron door at the end of the corridor in the women’s section clanked open to admit three persons: two sans-culottes, their sleeves rolled up, hands covered in blood, with the red caps of liberty on their heads, and one jailer who carried a torch to show them the way. They peered in at all the prisoners, their eyes wild, their voices so brutal and their accents so thick that it was hard to tell whose name they were shouting.
At last it became clear that they were calling for the Duchesse de Lamantes.
Sido heard a key turn in the lock, heard the duchess beg to be left in peace, and then a commotion as a chair was knocked over. The men dragged her out into the corridor, calling her every name under the sun, while the duchess wept noisily and screamed, “Where are you taking me?”
“To the jailer’s office, citizeness, to be tried before the People’s Tribunal as the traitor you are,” came the cold reply.
The duchess was dragged down the corridor, making one last desperate grab at the iron bars of Sido’s cell as she passed. Her eyes were wide with fright.
“Don’t let them do this to me!” she cried as a wooden truncheon hit her hard on the knuckles. Shrieking with pain she let go, to be hauled unceremoniously past the row of cells. The iron door closed with a deadly thud. For a moment all was silence, broken only by the quiet sobbing of the other terrified inmates.
We are like sheep, thought Sido, waiting to be taken to the slaughterhouse.
She slid down the corner of the stone wall, buried her head in her arms, and tried to take herself back to that magical place where there was just Yann. Only too soon she heard the sound of boots on stone again, advancing down the long corridor and stopping before her cell. She watched as the key turned in the lock.
So this was it. This was her end and she knew it. She didn’t even look up to see who had come for her. She felt their strong arms, smelled their unwashed flesh, their sweat. She was not going to let herself be dragged like the duchess. She stood up straight and shook herself free from their clutches. What did any of it matter? She was as good as dead.
“We are all equal, but I, unlike you, am not armed,” she said calmly. "Please take your hands off me.” The two brutal-looking men, astonished to be spoken to in such a manner, let go of her. Sido took a deep breath and walked down the corridor, trying her best not to limp. She didn’t want anyone’s pity.
“To La Force,” she heard as the duchess came out of another room. Seeing Sido standing on the stairs waiting her turn, she shrugged her shoulders
as if to say that it wasn’t too bad. Then the street door was thrown open. For a moment Sido was blinded by the light; then she saw all too clearly a sea of swords and pikes. The duchess, realizing what fate held in store for her, tried to pull away from the guards, only to be caught screaming by three men carrying bloodstained sabers. She raised her hands above her head.
Sido saw them lift their swords. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the nightmare cries and the loud grunts of the men as they wielded their weapons. Then the street door was slammed, leaving the stone-paved floor splattered with the duchess’s blood.
Sido’s legs were trembling as she was taken into the jailer’s office.
The room was lit by torches and in the shadowy light she could see that it was full of men. Behind a table sat a man called Stanislas Maillard. He was dressed in black, his long lank hair pulled back into a queue at the neck; he had a gaunt face and deep-set eyes. That made Sido think that if death ever had a face to call its own, it would look like his.
Maillard had been elected to carry out the duties of the President of the People’s Tribunal, a task he took no pleasure in, yet nevertheless performed meticulously. On the table before him were the prison register, a stack of paper, a bottle of wine, and a glass. Sido could tell from the men’s voices that they were from Marseilles and other parts of France, all eager onlookers of the spectacle.
“Name, age, and place of birth?” said Maillard, drawing his bony index finger slowly down the list.
Sido answered the questions clearly.
Having found her name in the register, he glanced over the charges and consulted his grim colleagues. Then he informed her that she was being held for high treason against the nation.
“How do you answer?”
“I support the Revolution and wish its success with all my heart,” said Sido. She knew that any other answer would mean death.
“Then why did you try to leave our glorious country?”
“I was born into a family where my wishes and views held no weight.” It sounded to her as feeble as it was. She knew it wouldn’t save her.