Lesage cowered as the voices drew closer. More hideous cackling. Presently, a man and woman stumbled from the tunnel’s gloom, growing larger as they approached, their features becoming more distinct. They were a rough-looking pair indeed, wild-haired and grinning at some private joke as they lurched along arm in arm. Upon seeing Lesage and Madame Picot, however, they halted their carousing and drew apart, but shakily, as if only by holding each other had they stayed upright at all.
The fellow was fat and greasy-cheeked, wigless, but with a cloth cap on his head. In contrast, his companion was pinched, with the waxy complexion and demeanour – cringing, but defiant – of a woman much used, doubtless in assorted unpleasant ways. If Lesage did not know the two strangers, he was at least familiar with the type of dangerous and unpredictable people they had undoubtedly been when alive; the drunken boor and his boorish whore, each made bolder by the villainy of their crony.
The man scratched his face and looked unsmilingly back and forth between Lesage and Madame Picot. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. Then, when he received no answer: ‘What are you doing down here?’
‘We might ask the same of you, monsieur,’ replied Lesage after a short silence in which it was clear Madame Picot was not prepared – or not able – to answer.
‘No business of yours, my friend.’
‘As is ours here none of yours.’
The unpleasant fellow nodded at this – as if Lesage’s response accorded with the unfavourable impression he had already formed of him. Then he snorted energetically and turned aside to spit thickly against the wall. He wiped spittle from his mouth before again regarding Lesage and Madame Picot with a wary contempt. He peered over Lesage’s shoulder. ‘Who else is with you two?’
‘Nobody,’ said Lesage.
This was true, and yet, quite unnerved, Lesage glanced behind. There was nothing, of course. Only the darkness, their own shadows juddering along the wall in the candle’s light, the door through which they had come.
He waited for Madame Picot to perform her banishing spell – to do or say anything – but it seemed she had been struck dumb in the presence of these two curious fiends. He elbowed her, but could elicit no response. The crow wedged under his arm, which had been silent until this moment, squirmed and squawked forlornly.
The strangers flinched and exchanged nervous glances. ‘What have you under that cloth, monsieur?’ the woman asked. She affected a gruff tone of voice, but it was plain to see she was afraid.
‘It’s only a bird,’ Lesage said.
‘A bird? A bird? What for? Who are you people?’
Still Madame Picot was silent; clearly it was up to Lesage to deal with these horrible creatures. Thinking to ingratiate himself somehow, he bowed. ‘I am the magician Lesage and this is Madame Picot, the Forest Queen.’
The woman snickered and wiped her nose along her chalky wrist. ‘The Forest Queen, eh? I see. Which forest would this be? Up to mischief, I’ll bet. Well, this is my patch down here, sweetheart, not the fucking forest. No trees in these tunnels that I can see. Anyway, I don’t remember seeing you here before.’
Silence followed. Lesage sensed a cool breeze emanating from the darkness behind the strangers. He glanced at Madame Picot, who was as immobile as a statue. Her lips were cracked and strands of hair had unravelled from beneath her scarf and hung loose around her temples. In one hand she clutched her black book. Why would she not do anything? Perhaps these demons had already performed some diabolical trick on her? Either that or Madame Picot was lying about her book containing a spell to evict them, even though she had boasted of it. She blinked, and something throbbed in her neck, but in all other ways she was inert.
With a nod of her bony chin, the woman indicated Madame Picot. ‘Why does this Forest Queen of yours not say anything? Tongue stuck in her pocket, eh? Eh?’
Perhaps emboldened by the whore’s witticism and by Madame Picot’s continued inaction, the fellow produced a pistol from his belt and, brandishing it in front of him, took several steps towards them. ‘I’ll shoot you in the face and then cut out your tongue and stick it in my pocket if you don’t say something, bitch.’
Terrified, Lesage took a step backwards, almost stumbling in his haste. ‘Say it, madame,’ he hissed. ‘Do something.’
The fat fellow holding the pistol hesitated – puzzled, somewhat fearful. ‘Say what?’ A pause. ‘What is it exactly you are doing down here?’
His whore grabbed his upper arm and pointed to the ground at Lesage and Madame Picot’s feet. ‘Look! They’re standing in a circle. Be careful, Louis. I think they are witches.’
The fellow nodded assent, then wrestled with the flintlock of his pistol before aiming it at them. ‘No. I think they look more like devils. Are you devils?’
The man waved the gun around and, as he took another step towards him, Lesage felt his guts slacken. A groan escaped his lips. Pater Noster, he thought, don’t let me come so close to my treasure only to have me killed at the final test.
‘Are you devils?’ the man repeated.
‘No,’ Lesage stammered. ‘I am a . . . man.’
The woman grinned. Her teeth glinted like tools when she spoke. ‘Prove it to us. Prove you are a man.’
Lesage opened his mouth to speak, but could make no sound. He stared at the pistol’s long and narrow barrel. What could he say? How to prove he was a man? How to itemise for them the myriad ways he felt pain, or love, or fear – if indeed these were signs of mortal life? He thought of his parents, of his wife Claudette. He recalled, inexplicably, a summer’s afternoon when he was a boy and he tried to jump a low fence and failed, how his brother had laughed and laughed. The earthy flavour of bruised grass in his mouth, a yellow bug crawling along a fallen leaf, sun hot on his back. Life, his life.
The man pulled the trigger of his pistol. Lesage yelped and flinched, but the weapon failed to fire properly. Instead, it discharged no more than a disgruntled fizzle and flash. The man jumped back and swore as a loosed ember or shard of powder burned his wrist. The pistol clattered to the ground.
Then, finally, Madame Picot spoke, and her voice was loud and authoritative. ‘I conjure and exorcise Baicher to come to me by the three names of God, Eloy Afinay, Agla, Ely Lamazabatany, which were written in Hebrew, in Greek and in Latin, and by all the names which were written in this book, and by He who drove you from high in the heavens. I command you by the great living God and by the sainted Eucharist which delivers men from their sins that, without delay, you come and put me in possession of the treasure you own unjustly and leave without noise or smell or terror towards me.’
The two fiends stared at them in alarm, their faces like milky puddles in the gloom.
‘Take the crow and be gone,’ continued Madame Picot with a wave of one hand. ‘Venite. Venite. Ainsi soit-il.’
With shaking hands Lesage unhooded the crow and held the creature out, its claws gripping his skin like the talons of a shrunken witch. He shrank back; the crow, after all, was a clever and most sinister bird. But rather than flying off, as he would have expected, the bird merely hopped from his hand to the floor, where it shrugged its glossy black feathers back into place and looked around with displeasure, its black eyes glinting. Lesage half expected the creature to speak – pass sentence, perhaps, in a provost’s grave and scrupulous tones.
All four of them stepped backwards and stared at the crow with trepidation. The bird stretched its wings experimentally before taking several steps towards the two strangers. Then it flattened its body and opened its beak to caw its terrible caw. The strangers winced. The woman gasped and gripped the man’s arm. She pulled him away and they moved silently backwards, far beyond the candle’s wan light, as if sinking beneath black waters. The crow then cocked its head as if in silent discourse with itself before launching into the darkness after them. The clatter of its wings – the sound like that of a woman shaking out her cloak – was followed by another shriek from the far reaches of the tunnel, some distant swearing. Then nothing more.
It was a terrifying ordeal. Lesage bent down to retrieve the pistol and turned to Madame Picot. They waited, for what exactly he couldn’t be sure. Another sign, perhaps. The candle flame flickered. Lesage put his hand to his cheek, felt his own body’s anxious tremble and jerk. His apprehension was replaced by fury. ‘Why the hell did you not act sooner, woman? He might have killed me. Killed us both, for that matter. What were you doing?’
Madame Picot didn’t answer. Her gaze was fixed on her hand – the one with its wound – and on the book, as if she had been unaware of them until this moment. ‘I was too afraid to speak,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sorry.’
Lesage closed his eyes and crossed himself. ‘Ave Maria.’ Opening his eyes, he inspected the heavy pistol before jamming it into his belt.
Madame Picot closed her book. ‘That was most strange.’
‘Yes. A devilish pair. Did you notice how they travelled without lanterns, without any light at all? Horrible creatures. Do you think they have gone?’
‘Yes. It seems so.’
They waited a while longer but detected no further sign of the unwelcome pair. Finally, with trembling hands, Lesage set about shifting the stone block bearing the star and the inscription. He could scarcely believe what was happening. A dream? Dear God, who knew? But no. The rock was hard and rough beneath his hands; this was certainly a real thing, at least. Its corners crumbled as he wrestled with it, but eventually, by setting his shoulder to its rough bulk and pulling it back and forth a number of times, he dislodged it. The sound of it thumping on the ground echoed along the tunnel, prompting them both to peer anxiously into its darkness for any further signs of those they had recently dispatched.
Lesage took up the candle and peered into the space he had exposed. He thrust a hand through. Another prayer under his breath, to whomever might listen. Please. After everything I have endured, do I not deserve some wealth, some success? He touched something that felt like a leather-bound trunk. Yes, a trunk! His heart jumped.
Still with his arm deep in the hole, he swung around to Madame Picot. ‘Help me. Quickly. I’ve found it!’
Together they dragged the trunk from the gritty crawl space. It was secured with a padlock but the iron was old and corroded, and Lesage was able to break it off easily with a rock. He flipped open the lid with shaking hands. And there, anticipated but also so surprising – like a baby’s birth – were coins and other items of treasure. Money. Treasure. Freedom. At last. Even Madame Picot was pleased and they embraced clumsily with the sudden joy and relief of it.
*
Dawn was breaking by the time Lesage and Madame Picot returned with the trunk to the room on Rue Françoise. The trunk contained treasure from all sorts of countries. Thalers, Roman and Spanish coins, doubloons, an assortment of bejewelled necklaces and rings. There were also hundreds of livres in the trunk, perhaps thousands – enough to free the woman’s son, with plenty left over for him. As if he were a parched man and the coins water, he sifted them in his hands as a terrible pleasure coursed through him.
