“Oh, naturally. I would like to hit you a little, too, just to relieve my feelings.”
He stripped out of his jacket, setting the scene of elegant depravity in the afternoon, in case anyone should come. Because he was Jean-Paul, he arranged his coat carefully upon the back of a chair. It was a habit to drive one insane.
He was strong and slender, of course. To be a chief botanist of the Jardin des Plantes was to move heavy exotic plant specimens all day long. He was—he had always been—beautiful to look upon, blond and fine-featured, though he was deeply scarred upon his back, of course. Uncle Arnault had done that to him when he had caught them together. Still, if she had come to the baths for dalliance, she would certainly engage in it with him.
He had not been skilled in lovemaking when they were fifteen. Probably he improved later. She had never known quite how to ask that question of Gabrièlle.
His waistcoat followed his jacket to the chair. “We have nothing but rumors here. What happened in Normandy?”
“What did not happen? The chateau burned. That is first.”
“I hoped that wasn’t true.”
“It is wholly gone. Invading Visigoths could not have wrought a more thorough destruction. The servants are safe. The mayor will care for them. I have sent money.”
He paused with his hand on the back of the chair. “You’ve lost your writings. Your records. Your books. I am so sorry.”
“I have copies of most of it, here in Paris.”
“Not all,” he said.
“Not all.” He knew what she had lost. Jean-Paul had gone with her to peasant huts to listen to the old women tell stories. He’d taken her seriously, when everyone else laughed. “I remember some of it almost word for word. I have already started rewriting my notes.”
He slipped free the knot at his throat. “I’ll help, if I can. I don’t have your memory.” He held the ends of his cravat, half undone, and looked at her. “When the men came to the chateau, to burn it, did they . . . Did anyone . . .”
“I was not hurt.”
“You would say that, but—”
“I will intervene before you ask in plain words what will embarrass us both. No harm came to me. Not in the least. Wren was there, you know, and we fought like Amazons. Truly. Wren will tell you about it someday. Make her dwell particularly upon the moment where I slashed the man with a letter opener. I was intrepid and resolute beyond measure.”
He laughed. He sounded young as a boy and very relieved. “I don’t doubt it. Where’s Wren?”
“I have sent her to England. No, do not complain. She has become too well known. It is time for her to retire.”
“You’re taking away my right hand.” He loosened his shirt and sat to take his boots off. One cannot hold a convincing rendez-vous in boots. “But it’s time to send her away. You always know.”
“We are not greedy. That is why we’re alive after four years of running these risks.”
“Five years. It’s been five years.” He grunted, struggling with his boot. “Good God. Remember how we thought this would be over in a month? How everybody would come to their senses and the deaths would stop?”
“By October. I remember you said October. We met with the others in that coffee shop, seven of us, whispering like schoolgirls, to set up the first waystations. One line to take them from Paris to the coast. We’d move fifty or sixty sparrows and disband. We’d never need to do more than that. Here. Let me.” As she had done a hundred times, she knelt in front of him and took hold of his boot and pulled. She rocked back on her heels because it came off suddenly. She had tumbled backward a hundred times.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that.” He sounded testy, but he shifted to put the other boot in her lap.
“Gabrièlle does not pull your boots off for you in the evening?”
“Gabrièlle is seven months with child, which you would remember if you came to see us more often. I keep a husky servant for the express purpose of carrying coal and water and removing my boots at night. Will you please get up?”
“Of course.” It was a pleasure to tease him. He was so respectable these days. She tied her robe with great modesty and precision, so he would notice her doing it and be exasperated at her. “What you may not have heard yet is that Jacobins from Paris led the men to the chateau, having bought them many brandies and harangued them into a mob. It is said they had official papers. We were not on such cordial terms I could ask for them.”
“There’s no arrest order. You know that? Even in all the confusion of the committees, they wouldn’t have lost yours. I set our man to looking everywhere. There’s nothing.” He was up, stalking the length of the bathing cabinet. She had drawn the hanging cotton curtains all around the bathtub. He brushed his hand across the curtain each time he passed, setting it billowing. “No official papers. Not for you. Not for any of us. No denunciation to the Committee of Public Safety.”
“That’s what Victor says. I do not generally listen to him. But in this case—”
“He would know.” Jean-Paul rolled his sleeves as he walked, to up above the elbow. One could see the thin lines of scar on his upper arms. “I hear he’s moved his mother out of their rooms, into your house.”
“Which charms me beyond measure. And my father has disappeared. It says much about my life that that is the least of my worries.”
Jean-Paul pulled his shirt from his trousers. “I thought he’d gone to Voisemont. I assumed you had him in hiding somewhere.”
“It is one of those false doctrines. I have no idea where he is. One of the few blessings of this last week is that I did not have Papa on my hands. But now he is missing and that becomes worrisome when the rest of this inexplicable disaster happens. And it is inconvenient.”
“I’ll let our people know. We’ll try to find him for you.”
“I suppose we must.” She began to untangle her hair, using the carved wood comb Papa had brought her back from England. “Victor is fiercely annoyed that the chateau is gone. It seems I am a poor guardian for the wealth of the de Fleurignacs that will someday be his.” She made a face. “I should not have survived the fire, apparently, or walked across France on my own. I now have no more reputation than a stray cat in an alley.”
“Your reputation is pure gold and your cousin is a pig. He was a pig when he was twelve and enjoyed beating me up. He hasn’t changed.”
Jean-Paul had raked his fingers into his hair. He wore the simple cravat of an artist or intellectual. It hung loose on either side of his neck, down the front of his shirt. They were a fine disheveled pair. They would look entirely guilty of adultery if anyone should come upon them.
She said, “Men came to arrest Egret. Did Crow tell you?”
“I have word from Egret himself. He’s in hiding. The man has a hundred blood brothers along the coast. He’d be safe in the floods of Noah.”
“They came for Bertille.”
“My God. No.”
“I would not sit here smiling if any of us were taken. She escaped, and the children, and Alain. None of them was hurt. She is determined to work again. Always, the same Bertille.”
She had carried the knowledge for days. Now she would give him the burden of it. “The soldiers who came to take her knew her name. They knew where she lived. They knew us all—Wren, Egret, Crow. Me. Twelve of us who work in Normandy. But no one in Paris.”
“Oh, Marguerite.”
“It is not just one of La Flèche.” Her stomach was like lead. “The traitor is mine.”
“It’s one of the sparrows. They go to England. They chatter.”
“There is no sparrow who could put so many names together on so many different routes. Only one of us.” She had hung a towel across her shoulders to keep the wet of her hair from soaking into the robe. She took it off to rub at her face. “It’s someone as close as my eyelids. Who do I trust the most? That’s the one who betrayed me.”
“We knew this might happen someday. We’re ready. Your people have taken new names. New stations. We’ll start replacing the passwords. We go on.”