“There are no secrets.” Pax might have been having a conversation that bored him.
“The boy showed me Il Gatto once, in Mantua, drinking coffee at a café on the other side of the square. I was surprised and not surprised to find the man who so annoyed the French was a thin brown scholar no one would notice, harmless and unmemorable. You were reading a book at the time. I was told later it was Virgil.”
“A scholar’s choice of reading.”
“I think, if you rolled up your right sleeve I would see a scar on your forearm.”
Indifferent, Pax said, “And if you did?”
“Then I would know you for certain.” Uncle Bernardo looked left and right, to study first one end of the street and then the other. “It happened that once Il Gatto was stealing arms in the town of Varallo. It was typical of him that he paused to empty the guardhouse as he left. One of the men he saved from execution was the friend of a Baldoni.”
She was tired of standing between men being subtle and unrevealing and both of them very good at it. Enough. “Then you owe him a debt, Uncle.”
“Which I acknowledge. I suspect I owe him several. I will think upon how to repay them.” Her uncle looked from her to Pax. “Mr. Paxton, we will speak again someday. You will not find me ungenerous. Call upon the Baldoni in any need and we will answer. But, for now, it’s best that you leave and do not return. There is nothing here for you.”
Good Lord. He’s protecting me from Pax.
“He stays,” she said. “Or I leave with him.”
That brought Uncle Bernardo’s attention to her with an almost audible snap.
“You haven’t asked why I’m in London.” For a little space she’d almost forgotten the Merchant, who planned to kill her and had experience in such matters. “Or why I need someone like Lazarus.”
“Whatever difficulties you face, your family will serve you.” Bernardo frowned and gestured. “You have no need of Lazarus. Or of Mr. Paxton. Sara, what is this man to you?”
“A friend.”
“He is British Service. To befriend the police is to lay your hand in the mouth of a rabid dog.”
“I knew him before he was British Service. Long ago.”
Her uncle looked on her soberly, obviously searching for the right words. “There is much to admire in Mr. Paxton. He is a hero in Italy. When the French offered extravagant rewards for his death, there was no farmhouse in Piedmont or Tuscany where he could not hide and be sure of safety.”
“I’m not surprised.” And she wasn’t. She had seen him gather the Cachés around him and transform them into a band of brothers and sisters.
Her uncle, with almost visible reluctance, went on. “He is an assassin, Sara. He has killed many times. There is an emptiness in the soul of such men.” Uncle Bernardo paused. “What is he to you?”
Pax gave no sign he was being discussed in this depth. He stood in that relaxed fighter’s stance that meant he might pull out his watch and consult it for the exact time or he might attack, without warning, in any direction. He had his hand negligently on his knife and was exactly one lunge from Uncle Bernardo’s waistcoat buttons. He was also keeping an eye on her cousins. Who could blame him?
She said, “He is a friend.”
“Friend” was wholly inadequate to describe Pax. He was bastion, shield, and implacable protection. He was a friend as a stone castle is a house.
“Baldoni use the word ‘friend’ carefully,” Bernardo said. “It is an obligation second only to family. We do not—”
“I understand what that means.” It is at such moments one chooses loyalties.
“Whatever this Paxton has been to you—”
“You cannot imagine what he has been to me, Uncle Bernardo. When I was alone in Paris, without family, abandoned—”
“The family never abandoned you. It was Francesco. Only Francesco pursued your father.”
“Vendetta.”
“Not vendetta. Never vendetta. My child . . . My child . . . Cesare sent your father into exile to prevent a bloodbath that would have destroyed us all. Francesco acted in evil madness, in unforgivable betrayal.” Uncle Bernardo was pale, breathing heavily, his voice harsh with suppressed anger and pain. “When you knocked on the gates and begged for help, every Baldoni was gone from Paris. Francesco sent lying words to you. Lies. An hour later he hanged himself inside the house.”
Pax said, “She was a child. She was alone. With all the resources of the Baldoni, you didn’t find her.”
“We shook that city like a rug, street by street. A dozen of us, for weeks.”
“You didn’t find her,” Pax said.
“For which there will never be sufficient recompense.”
“Then pay her back now,” Pax said. “She doesn’t need a hearty convivial dinner or more cousins with babies. She needs . . .” He faced her. “What do you need, Cami?”
She started with the blackmail letter delivered in Brodemere and ended with the address on Semple Street. Some secrets—the Mandarin Code, the Fluffy Aunts’ profession—she omitted.
Tonio and the cousins returned and drew in close, listening.
She ended with, “If I can’t find where the Merchant has hidden Camille Besançon and free her, I will walk alone on Semple Street into the hands of the Merchant. With your help, I am hoping to do that and still live.” She looked from one face to the other. They were so intent, so eager, she could smile.
“I’d like to kill the Merchant.” Giomar said that. “I’d like to be the man who did that.”
“You will be the man who holds the horses. I’ll do the killing.” Tonio suddenly didn’t look much older than when she’d known him in Tuscany.
Pax, in a voice of calm reason, said, “The kill is mine. My choice whether he lives or dies. This is not open to debate.”
They were all speaking Tuscan. This, in itself, was an incitement to extremity. From the Medici onward, she could not begin to imagine the number of murders that had been planned in that language.
Cousin Alessandro suggested drawing cards for the privilege.
Pax cut him off. “The British Service wants him taken alive. That’s a good deal harder than just shooting him.”
Tonio grinned, all but rubbing his hands together. “This sounds like fun.”
“We do not undertake a hazardous game because it is ‘fun.’” Under half-closed lids, Bernardo regarded Pax, then her. “Nor do the Baldoni annoy the British Service unnecessarily. So long as someone destroys the Merchant it does not matter which hand holds the knife. Cami, let us come inside and you will tell us your exact plans. Mr. Paxton, join us. Perhaps you will feel safe in drinking wine with us this time, having been declared a friend.”
Thirty
If you do not have the rope to hold your ass, do not weave a halter to catch him.
Mayfair belonged to the decorous, well-groomed rich and their deferential servants. The City of London was public buildings, the mint, the great banking houses, and many boring, self-important men.
Soho was considerably livelier. It housed most of the French of the city, rich and poor, royalist and radical, a congregation of every sort and condition of French humanity. If the Merchant wanted to be inconspicuous, this was where he’d come.
Cami visited Soho Square when she was in London with the Fluffy Aunts. This was another neighborhood of bookshops, Italian and French. It occurred to her, as she walked past familiar shops and cafés, that she knew London chiefly by its bookshops.
Pax walked beside her. He slid his thumb along the brim of his hat, turning it downward a fraction of an inch, perfecting his disguise. He’d made himself look entirely French, somehow, by putting on an artist’s neckerchief and a faint smell of turpentine. He carried a large sketchbook—borrowed from her cousin Maria—against his chest.
The half-pleasant, half-uneasy buzz of desiring hadn’t left her. If anything, it was growing stronger as they went about this workaday task together. He distracted her. Part of her attention was stuck to him like glue, pulling significance from every ordinary gesture. She looked at his careful, clever fingers wrapped around the book and wanted them on her skin.