But her eyes were not ordinary. Her eyes were deep and sardonic and knowing. Mocking. “If you stand in the street gaping the guards will come to ask what you are doing, loitering beside a prison for the enemies of the Republic.”
Adrian said, “I’ve seen you before.”
That particular tone meant he might draw his knife and do something drastic. Guillaume was not here to stop him, so she must. “Be quiet, Adrian. Do nothing unless I tell you.”
“Yes, boy. Be quiet.” The girl dimpled. “You saw me scrubbing a doorstep, perhaps. I have been interested in you for a while.” Slanted brown eyes turned to her. “I will say, very quickly, that one may smell the roses in the gardens nearby, if the wind is right, before this bloodthirsty boy attacks me.”
She is one of us. A member of La Flèche. “The roses are lovely, but it is forbidden to pick them. Who are you?”
“I am Owl. I was told to help you, if it seemed necessary. It now does. I know more passwords, if you would like to exchange them as well.”
Owl. She is one of Jean-Paul’s. He has spoken of her. I had not thought she would be so very young.
Adrian said, “I don’t like people who take an interest in me, Owl.”
“Then you must strive to be more boring, must you not? And you, citoyenne.” She shifted her gaze. “If you permit, I will find a fiacre and take you to a hiding place. We will send for the Gardener.”
Jean-Paul. Yes. I need Jean-Paul.
What was she to do with Adrian? La Flèche had saved dozens of Englishmen over the years. Harboring English spies was altogether different. He shouldn’t see Owl or hear the passwords or go to a safehouse. She couldn’t begin to think of what he should not be hearing.
How much of a spy could he be, a boy this age?
But they would arrest even a boy this young. Someone might have seen him with Guillaume.
What are they doing to Guillaume?
“The stable loft in the house of women is empty,” the girl said. “We can go there. Only a few of our havens are empty today.”
Adrian said, “Anyone could know six or eight words. I know them myself now. That doesn’t make you anything special.”
“And you are a great fool. If I wished you harm, I would raise my voice and call that guard to denounce you. It is the work of a minute. I do not have to waste my time exchanging passwords with a fool.”
They would argue for an hour. “Enough. We must leave. Owl, go first, so they do not ask why we are meeting here.”
“Bien. The guard looks this way.” Owl nodded and pointed down the street, as if she had been asked a question and answered it. “I will lead. Don’t come too closely after me.”
She bounced off cheerfully, the ribbons on her cap streaming behind her.
“She thinks she’s clever.” The boy glowered. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Tell me where.”
Victor would already be searching. Every moment on the street, they were in danger. “We will trust her.”
“You trust her. I’m not going to.” They stayed till the girl was almost out of sight before they walked after her, down the street.
Thirty-three
DOYLE SET HIS BACK TO THE WALL AND LET HIS legs collapse out from underneath him and slid down to sit on the floor, hugging his knees.
No one was looking. He put his head on his arm and took some breaths. His skin pulled tight over a core of ice inside. Damn, but he was afraid.
I’m going to die.
He picked the knowledge up and looked it over. His death. Here in France. Soon. Everybody has a time and place waiting for him. This is my time. My place. Now I know. Funny in a way. His father always said he’d hang. Looked like he was wrong about that.
No love lost between him and the earl. When he was a boy, he’d do some damn fool thing. Some typical boys’ nonsense. He’d get called to his father’s study and caned till he couldn’t lie on his back in bed. He always wondered what he’d done to make his father hate him so much.
One day they’d been about to go through that exercise when he’d looked at his father . . . looked down at his father. The earl was shorter than he was. Neither of them said anything about it, but he never got caned again.
It had been five or six years since he’d talked to the old man. I wonder if he still calls me “that papist mongrel.”
When he had his face blank and stupid, he lifted his head. No privacy here. No way to make any, not with men packed like herring in a barrel. They were sleeping on pallets on the floor, with just barely room to walk between. Men piled valises and clothing at the foot, marking off a bit of territory.
Twenty-five straw mats. So, about that number of men, more or less. They’d set themselves in groups with some of the pallets edged up close to each other. Friends. Factions. Tonight, when everybody lay down, he’d get a feel for the men. Figure out who the leaders were.
If he could get to the guardroom in the middle of the night and kill two or three men, he might live to get out. There might be a couple of these prisoners willing to try it.
At least they’d go down fighting.
They were handing out bread in the corridor. Men came back carrying a black-colored loaf and hunched down on their pallets to eat. Aristos on that side. Common criminals on this. He had to wonder which side they’d sort him to.
This was the refectory of the old convent, a room thirty-by-fifty feet. The paintwork and bosses on the ceiling were sixteenth century. No one had bothered to climb up to destroy any of that yet. The walls were older than the ceiling, built with limestone taken out of the quarries that ran under Paris. Big blocks of stone, an arm’s-length thick, covered with a coat of plaster and whitewashed.
I am not going to gnaw my way through that.
Only one door into this room, currently open to let air in. They’d lock it at night. The lock was nothing. He could get through the lock. That would put him in the corridor outside. Whether that would do him any good remained to be seen.
What else? Four windows, high overhead and barred, which was a right discouragement any way you looked at it. He thought about the map he was piecing together in his head. Getting through one of the windows put you in the cloister garden, where you ran up against twelve-foot walls with spikes on top. And guards on the other side. Any plan that started out in the cloister was a plan that needed a bit of work.
He wiped his mouth. His beard was rough as wheat stubble. The fake scar was going to start peeling off if he kept sweating. He had three replacements in the pocket of his jacket. Maybe he’d stay alive long enough to need them.
He wished he’d had more time with Maggie. Even one more day. There was something wrong with her and he’d left her alone—
Don’t think about that.
He closed his eyes, feeling the space around him. For four hundred years nuns had been eating in this room, doing needle-work, keeping accounts, peeling apples. There should have been prayers lingering in the walls. The stones should have been thick with serenity. Layered deep in contemplation.
Whatever had been here once, it was stripped away. Too many men had waited for death right where he was sitting. The walls whispered desolation. The air was heavy inside his lungs, like dead men had been breathing it.
He pulled his hat off and let his head fall back against the plaster. His hair was wet with sweat. And his shirt, under the waistcoat. Fear sweat. He was used to being dirty when the job called for it, but this felt clammy and filthy.
Hell of a way for a spy to end, done in by a jealous little Frenchman, protecting his family honor.
Maggie could take care of herself. But not when she was sick. Her eyes were strange, the pupils all dilated. Something wrong. Something very wrong. He had to get out of here. Had to get to Maggie. Had to—