Chapter 10

When they had enough money to buy food, Pernelle—because she looked the most respectable—went into a traiteur’s shop and bought cooked beef and bread. Barbe led the way to a small churchyard and they ate sitting with their backs against a tree. With a sinking heart, Pernelle watched the shadows growing. The summer evening light would last hours yet, but the sun was sliding toward the horizon.

“Where do you stay at night, Barbe?”

The girl laughed and tossed her head. “Oh, me, I stay in a palace.”

“I see. Would there be room for me in this palace tonight?”

Barbe jumped to her feet and made an ironic curtsy. “Always room in a palace, madame. I’ll show you.”

Pernelle got up wearily and followed her, hoping the girl was not playing a bitter joke. As they crossed street, she glimpsed the river, and then Barbe led her around a decaying wooden fence and into a desolate wasteland. Small grassy mounds lay haphazardly everywhere, and vines and bushes grew out of scattered piles of rock and rotten boards. Across it all lay the shadow of an enormous building. Pernelle squinted at it, shielding her eyes from the sun just sinking below its roof. It did look like a palace.

Barbe grinned over her shoulder. “See? I told you.”

“But—what is it?”

“The king’s palace. Was, anyway. He started to build more of it and then went off and left it. So we took over the part he was building.”

Shouts made Pernelle turn in alarm, but the noise was only from a half dozen children racing each other to the wide dark doorway yawning in the building’s wall. As the children ran under the half fallen scaffolding above the door, some of them jumped to hang for a moment from a dangling board. The last boy to jump brought the board down with him as he dropped back to the ground, and a woman standing in the doorway hurried to pick it up. For her cooking fire, Pernelle thought, smelling wood smoke drifting in the air. When she reached the door, she stopped, suddenly afraid to go into the loud, reeking dark.

“Nothing to fear,” Barbe said, seeing Pernelle’s hesitation, “not with me bringing you.” She strode into the building.

Telling herself that whatever was inside this beggars’ palace was unlikely to be worse than what threatened her outside, Pernelle half ran to catch up. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light of the place, she saw that it had been divided into “rooms” with pieces of board and ragged lengths of canvas and other cloth. Voices rose around small fires burning on stones or in makeshift braziers, and the smells of food mingled with the smells of poverty. As Barbe led her through a chain of makeshift living places, the tenants mostly ignored their passage, though here and there Pernelle had a dreamlike glimpse of a face turned toward them and wary eyes watching.

“This one’s mine,” Barbe said, as they rounded a partition into a largish space that boasted half of a tall window with broken glass. “Mine and theirs.” She jerked her head at two elderly women sitting on the floor beneath the window and chewing steadily, like cows.

“Bonsoir, mesdames,” Pernelle said politely, but the women only stared at her. Or through her. And went on chewing.

Pernelle recoiled as one of them bent and spat a wad of something into a bucket. The woman wiped her mouth with her hand, picked up a small pitcher, and drank from it. As she set it down, the sharp smell of sour wine fought with the other smells. The woman reached behind herself and something crackled. As she turned back, Pernelle saw that she was crumpling paper in her hands. She put the crumpled ball of paper in her mouth and began chewing again.

“What are they doing, Barbe?”

The girl straightened from putting the baby down on a pile of rags in the corner. “They’re paper chewers. Me, too, sometimes.”

“But—why? What—”

“You chew old paper and the papier-mâché makers buy it. Lots of women chew for them.”

Papier-mâché. Of course, chewed paper. For theatre masks and small bowls and other trinkets. Feeling slightly sick, Pernelle went to the pile of rags and looked down at the baby, awake now and fussing.

“You said he doesn’t have a name yet, Barbe. If—when—” Pernelle’s voice faltered. She couldn’t bring herself to say if he lives. Instead, she said defiantly, “When you name him, what will you call him?”

Surprised, the girl looked sideways at her. “Pierre, maybe. After his father.”

“Oh.” Pernelle realized she hadn’t expected Barbe to know who the baby’s father was. “Does Pierre live here?”

“Did.” The girl sighed and picked up a dented brass pot. “I’m going out to the well.”

Left with the vacant-eyed old women and the infant, Pernelle hugged her cloak around herself, feeling as though she might choke on despair. This place is shelter while I find my way, she told herself. That’s all. A swallow darted across the south facing window like a tiny comet and soared upward, and something about its flight let Pernelle breathe again. She picked up the whimpering baby.

“What is it, baba,” she crooned, cuddling the small filthy bundle against her. The baby quieted, staring up at her with wide dark eyes. Then it turned its face to her bodice, pushing against her to find milk. “Soon, your maman is coming back.”

Something hit the other side of the chamber’s flimsy wall and someone groaned, then began to laugh.

“All right! All right, then, stay. I need a model. And you, I don’t have to pay.”

Pernelle went to the partition’s edge, still holding the baby, and looked around it. The chamber on the other side had half the window, and in its light, she saw an impossibly tall and thin young man sitting on the floor. He had a piece of board on his lap and was drawing at lightning speed with a lump of charcoal. Then she saw what he was drawing and caught her breath with a small shriek.

“Yes,” the artist said without looking around. “Rats. I couldn’t get them to leave, so I decided to draw them.”

Two large rats were nosing at a pile of rags like the one in Barbe’s chamber. One of them turned its head to look at the artist, who nodded happily and drew even faster.

“Yes, yes, just right, hold that. Good!”

In spite of her fear of the rats, Pernelle took a step beyond the partition to see the drawing. The rats scuttled away through a crack in the wall.

“Oh, monsieur, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose you your models.”

The young man shrugged, put a few more touches to his work, and stood up. “No matter. They’ll be back.” He held out the board for her to see.

Her eyes widened with pleasure. “But it’s wonderful—you’ve made them exactly rats. Only—somehow even more rats than rats are! How do you do that?”

The artist swept off his battered plumed hat. “You are a lady of great discernment, madame. Your humble servant thanks you.” His bow was like his drawing, so full of grace and laughter that it was somehow the essence of all bows. He straightened and his sad hound’s eyes regarded her questioningly. “I know this brat.” He put out a finger and lightly touched the baby’s tiny nose. “He’s Barbe’s. But you I have not had the pleasure of seeing before.”

“No. You weren’t here when we walked through your—your chamber.”

“Then let me do the honors of my petit palais, madame.”

He swept an arm toward the walls and Pernelle realized that most of them were covered with drawings, some in colors but most drawn with charcoal. She stared in amazement. There were women clothed only in draperies or nude, parrots, cats, ragged children, ancient ruins, a crucifixion of Christ, drawings of the artist’s half of the broken window with swallows flying beyond it.

“They’re beautiful,” she breathed. She looked searchingly at him. “What are you doing here? When you can draw like this?”

“You sound almost offended, madame. And I might ask you much the same question, mightn’t I? Even if a man can draw, he still may not have the means to live. Especially if his father refuses to acknowledge his being alive unless the man ceases to be alive by becoming a magistrate like his father.”

“Oh.”

“As you say. Oh. So I live here in my petit palais and peddle my drawings here and there. And hope for a patron who will see them and catch his—or her—breath in wonder and delight as you did. And offer me means to live and draw and do him—or her—honor.”

Pernelle laughed. “If I myself had means to live just now, I would gladly be your patron.”

The irony fell away from his smile, leaving it merely sweet. “May I ask why that is? You have not long been a resident here, that is easily seen.”

Pernelle tensed, remembering suddenly that David had once told her that police spies were everywhere in Paris. “I think it is better not to ask.”

“Then, madame, questions shall not come near you, and neither shall rats if I can prevent it.”

The baby began to wail, and the artist held out his arms. “Here, I’ll take him. I can’t help his hunger—I mostly can’t help my own—but he likes me.”

He was dancing around the dirty floor, holding the baby high over his head, and Pernelle was wandering along the walls, examining the drawings, when Barbe came back with her pitcher of water.

“Ah, give him here, Alain. You’ll make his stomach sick!” She set the pitcher down, plumped down beside it, and put the baby to her breast. “She likes your pictures,” Barbe said, watching Pernelle.

“She is a lady of great taste. And speaking of taste, would you ladies care to share my evening wine?”

The artist spread a surprisingly clean blanket on the floor and the three of them sat together, leaning against the most solid of the walls, and watched the sky darken outside as they passed Alain’s not-too-sour wine back and forth. The baby slept on Barbe’s lap. Before the light was gone, Pernelle picked up a piece of charcoal from the floor.

“May I try to draw a little on your wall?”

The young man’s eyebrows rose, but he nodded, and he and Barbe watched with interest as Pernelle began to sketch, racing the light. She’d always had some skill at drawing, but it wasn’t something most Huguenot families encouraged.

“It’s Pierre!” Barbe cried out, peering over Pernelle’s shoulder. “But—no, it’s bigger than him.”

Pernelle nodded, sketching in the wide-eyed infant’s wrappings. Then there was no more light to work by and she handed the charcoal to the artist. Sitting back, she watched her drawing disappear into the darkness. It was Pierre, but it was also Lucie as a baby, Lucie whose eyes were as nearly black as Pierre’s. It was also a kind of magic, a small benign spell she hoped God wouldn’t mind, a talisman toward keeping both children alive. A talisman that Lucie was safe, waiting for her in Geneva.

In spite of the evening’s grace and the odd comradeship among the artist’s drawings, the rest of life in the beggars’ Louvre closed darkly around Pernelle the next morning. The artist went out early and came back to tell her offhandedly that notice of a thin dark-haired woman’s escape from the New Converts’ House was being cried through Paris. Which meant that she couldn’t venture out, not even to beg. After Barbe left with the baby, the artist went out, too, and Pernelle spent the day in his chamber, looking at the drawings, pinched with hunger and trying to pray. She drew David’s face beside the picture of Lucie, his face as it had been when Lucie was born, before the wasting sickness that killed him. But seeing the two faces together drowned her in a swell of grief for everything that was gone, and she covered her face with her cloak and wept. Finally, Barbe came back with bread and mutton soup in a battered pot, and they ate in silence. Barbe was tired from a not-very-fruitful day of begging, and Pernelle had little heart for talk.

When they lay down to sleep, Pernelle was long awake. Talk and singing and arguments echoed under the high ceilings, and occasionally the sounds of drunken fighting drowned the rest. She finally drifted into sleep, but it seemed like only a few moments before someone kicked her in the dark and she rolled away, screaming.

“Hold your noise, who could see you in this pitch pot?”

Pernelle recognized the speaker’s voice. He was a small, wiry ex-soldier she’d seen earlier that evening, who apparently slept in the chamber beyond Barbe’s when his wife caught him with another woman and locked him out of their rooms. As Pernelle’s eyes grew used to the dark, she saw that he was dragging a man—or a body.

“Dear God!” she gasped. “Is he dead?”

“Not yet. Shot and bleeding. Can you help me?”

She rose shakily and felt her way to the man’s feet. Staggering under the weight, she helped the ex-soldier carry the wounded man into the next chamber.

“Put him down,” the ex-soldier growled. “Wait here.”

He hurried past her and came back carrying a candle. “Belongs to that painter. He’s wandering in wine dreams and no man needs light for that.”

He felt along the floor, came up holding flint and tinder, and worked till he got the candle lit. Then he stuck it to the floor in a puddle of wax, and by its small wavering light they got the wounded man face down on a straw pallet instead of on the floor. Kneeling between Pernelle and the man, the old soldier tried to tear a strip off the robe the man was wearing.

“Cloth’s too strong. Can you tear a piece off your petticoat, madame?” He shifted his patient half onto his side. “Got to free your hurt, mon ami. But got to get your priest robe off first.”

Pernelle, who was ripping away more of her blue petticoat, looked up in alarm. “He’s a priest?”

“So he said.” He rolled the man back onto his belly. “Bring your cloth, madame.”

She didn’t move. “Is he conscious?”

“Don’t think so.”

Deciding that even if the man was conscious, he’d have no way to know her for a fugitive and was in no condition to do anything about it even if he did, she knelt beside the ex-soldier.

“Put your petticoat piece just here,” he said, and guided her hand to the man’s side.

Keeping her head bent, Pernelle pressed her cloth against the long bloody gash across the back and side of the priest’s lower ribs.

The ex-soldier stood up. “I’m going for wine to pour in the wound. And in him. If he wakes up.” The old soldier sighed. “In me and you, too, we’ve earned it.”

“Hurry, then. I want to go back to sleep.” Pernelle’s sympathy for the wounded man was rapidly fading. What was a priest doing in the beggar’s Louvre in the middle of the night with a gunshot wound in his back? If he was a priest. More likely he was a rogue masquerading for his own purposes. She turned the blood-soaked pad and pressed a drier part against the wound. Well, whoever he was, she couldn’t let him bleed to death. Seeing that he lay utterly still, she risked a more of a look at him. His tangled hair, thick and yellow as gold, caught the light. A young man, then. She could feel hard muscle under her hand where the wound was. His face, turned toward the wall, was in darkness. Suddenly wanting to see him better, she picked up the candle and held it high. And the world turned upside down.

No, she told herself. It couldn’t be. Charles was hundreds of miles away in Carpentras. She leaned over the man to see his face. As though her eyes might be lying, her fingers carefully traced the line of his forehead, his nose, his mouth, the profile of this face she’d known as long as she’d known her own. She put her hand over his heart, felt its beating. “What happened to you?” she whispered. “What are you doing here?” Very carefully, like someone in a dream, she set the candle down. She put her arms around him to keep him warm and rested her head on his bare shoulder. “Don’t die, Charles. Please, God, don’t let him die.”