She watched him work for a moment, disquieted by the edged beauty of his face. Lines of his hair fell in thin slashes of black. His lips were strongly marked. He was like one of the old Celtic spirits who still lived deep in the woods in the province she came from. They appeared in twilight of high summer and tempted girls to lie with them. Her nurse had told her the old stories. Someday soon, Hawker would be admirably suited to tempting silly young girls.
She said to him, “You will bring the Cachés this way. Not down the stairs. Through this opening. You understand?”
“Right.”
They had discussed this already, but it did no harm to repeat instructions. “And out to the street. Get across the street and around the corner. You will be met. That’s the end of your work. My friends take them onward.”
“Where?”
“They will be safe. I would not spend this much time and trouble to be careless at the end.”
“I’ll find out. You might as well just tell me.” He chipped away.
“You do not need to know.” All was prepared. The Cachés would leave Paris in hidden compartments of the barge now tied to the quay at the Jardin des Plantes. They were not the first human cargo smuggled out of Paris in that barge.
They worked in silence for a few minutes. The loft was stifling. Sawdust from old carriage-making clogged her nose and lay on her tongue like cloth. The single flame in the lantern added to the suffocating closeness.
Sweat from Hawker’s face dripped on her arm. His knee pressed into her side. He did not fidget, though he must be as uncomfortable as she was. He was a steady comrade for this work. Curled up, cramped, and hot, his concentration was absolute. Most obviously, he had dismantled many walls and broken into many houses. It was not an admirable history, but it reassured her at this moment. She had chosen him well.
“Last row,” Hawker whispered. “We pull them out starting from the top.”
Of course, he would try to take charge. “And you will be altogether silent, if you please. Starting now.”
“Wait.” He stopped her hand. Released it. He reached out to open and close the door of the lantern, covering and uncovering the light.
His friend materialized, crawling without sound from the dark, dressed in black, his hair darkened in an unconvincing way and his face smeared with dirt. Perhaps they thought she would not recognize him again. They were overly optimistic.
“Go over it one more time,” Hawker said. “This breaks through into the upper hall.”
“If I have calculated correctly. You will find the door to the attic. The Cachés sleep there, up under the roof. I have seen them looking out the window at dusk.”
“And the door’s to the right.”
“So I believe. When I was working here, doing this,” she touched the ranges of exposed brick of the wall, “I heard them pass. That way.” She gestured. “The door will probably be locked upon them. I have lockpicks.”
“I brought my own.”
“That does not amaze me. You and your friend—”
“He’s not my friend,” Hawker said shortly.
She let her eyes run over the British spy who had been foisted upon her. “You and your associate will convince the Cachés to leave. That is the whole of your work, to get them out of the house. Mine is to see that you are not disturbed while you do this. I will be downstairs.”
“Those two men that I saw—the Tuteurs—they’re downstairs.”
“Those two men at least. Maybe more.”
“You’re going to stop them.”
“If it becomes necessary. I have a gun. And I have brought a knife.” She swallowed the chalky air. In this small space, a great, hot silence closed around them and they breathed each other’s hot breaths, like animals.
Hawker regarded her without favor. “Did you ever actually fight anybody?”
“That is not your concern.”
“It is when you’re guarding my back.”
“I have killed.” She did not say that it was not with her own hands. “I know how to fight. I have trained with a man from the army.”
“Lessons. Now I’m impressed.”
“Matters are as they are. I suggest you accommodate yourself.”
Hawker said a single word, very rude.
“We will follow the plan as I have laid it out.” She waited. The single candle was hidden within the dark lantern. Hawker was compounded of various sorts of shadow—inky black, shadow like smoke, ash-gray shadow. The knife he held did not reflect the smallest particle of light. It was as if he held darkness itself.
At last he turned away and touched the center of the upper row of brick. He did not answer directly. He flicked a last bit of mortar away. “Let’s break through.”
He used a lockpick to make the first small hole and put his eye to it. “Good. They’re not dancing minuets on the other side. It’s dark and quiet.”
They removed the bricks. Hawker’s skinny, untalkative comrade made himself useful. He accepted bricks from her and from Hawker in turn and stretched to the eaves to stack them out of the way.
Eleven
THERE’S A WAY INTO ANY HOUSE. YOU CAN KNOCK on the door and talk your way in, pleasant-like. You can kick the door down and tromp in with clubs and a gang at your back. Or you can crawl on your sly, silent, dusty belly for sixty feet, scrape some bricks loose, and chew your way in like a rat. Hawker preferred the sneaking route to open and brutal force, which was why he’d become a thief instead of joining the army.
The hole they’d gnawed through the wall came out in an empty hall—Owl was right about that—about six feet up from the floor. You couldn’t take a hold onto the bricks themselves, getting down. That was asking for the whole place to fall apart. You had to jump. Six feet wasn’t what you’d call a long way down, but it was a long way to drop and land soft as cotton, which was what they had to do.
He went first, ignoring some gesticulating from Owl. He didn’t trust either of his cohorts when it came to the fine points of being quiet. He trusted himself. He hit the floorboards loose and springy and turned it into a roll and came down at the end, flat and limp as a doll. He didn’t make any noise.
He was alone in a long corridor with closed doors. No sound of breathing behind any of them doors, which was what you might call an indication they were empty, but not a promise you could take to the bank. Light leaked out of the hole they’d made in the wall. He braced himself on the plaster wall, making a ladder for Owl. Letting her put her feet on his shoulders and climb down, hand and foot, over him. Then Pax did the same thing, only heavier. Nothing like breaking into a house together for getting to know somebody.
Owl dressed right—head to foot in black, boy’s trousers, hair pulled back and braided, covered with a dark scarf, soft boots. She’d left her woman’s clothes in a bundle outside when they first came in. She wouldn’t pass as a boy, not close up, not to a blind man, but she could move fast and easy and nobody cared how she looked anyway.
Pax brought a lit candle with him and left the lantern behind in the attic where it’d be useful in the escape. That was showing a modicum of common sense. Hawker’s old master, who’d taught him to thieve, used to say, “Always take pains over your escape route. It’s never wasted.”
The minute she was down, Owl slipped off to the left, going from door to door, looking in, and leaving everything open behind her. Bedrooms. Men’s clothing. Lots of books and papers. They’d have those rooms to hide in and leap from ambush if they were hunted along this corridor. Pax ghosted off to do the same down the right side, setting his boots to the floor silent as philosophy. All of this with no need for a word between any of them. That was a good sign.
This was a barracks-looking sort of house. No carpet in the hall. No furniture. No place for a cat to sit. Ten or twenty framed samplers on the wall. Not like anybody lived here at all. Not like it was somebody’s home.
The door to the attic turned out to be next-to-last on the right-hand side. He went straight to it, which was half figuring out where it must be from long experience in the way houses were laid out and half luck. He hoped he impressed everybody.