Too bad the letters were so painfully boring.
Dearest Lisse. We are pleased to know that you made it safely to Lyon, and can only hope the city remains in the hands of the Republic. Austrian invasion remains a fear….
And on it went. Vive la République. Vive la France. The glories of democracy, as Monsieur Franklin espoused. It was all about as seditious as the tricolore flag—which is to say, not at all. Carefully turning the pages with my cotton-gloved hands atop an acid-free mat, wearing a dust mask to keep my breath’s moisture off the letter, I searched in vain for any sign of why these Marians would have been executed. This letter remained unsigned, as if unfinished. The others had been addressed to “Chère Isabeau,” “Chère Manon,” and “Chère Alinor.”
“Something is missing,” I told Rhys, after he’d sent the students to have copies made so that we could store the originals in an opaque, dust-resistant box with acid-free tissue interleaving. We did know what we were doing. More or less.
“With the letters?” he asked. “How?”
“For one thing, they are too easy. I do not trust them.”
Rhys seemed intrigued, now. “And things must be difficult?”
“For people about to be guillotined? I should think so.”
“This Friday, then,” he suggested.
Eyeing the newly discovered key, unsure whether I wanted to risk another depressing vision, I said, “This Friday, what?”
“Go to dinner with me on Friday. Please.”
Now he had my full, sharp attention. Finally. The date I had wanted for so long, and on my terms. “Yes,” I said.
But that, too, seemed far too easy to trust.
Even counting the year-long wait, the explosion, the wandering of the catacombs and the near death, it somehow felt too easy.
My date that night, however, felt unusually difficult. Everything should have been perfect. We went to Le Jules Verne, 125 meters above the sparkling city in the Tour Eiffel. The done-all-in-black restaurant is no tourist destination. In fact, it usually had a two-month waiting list, which said impressive things about my escort. More impressive things than did he. Léon Chanson had not had the easiest week himself—being overworked, finding his home had been robbed in the looting and surviving a minor auto accident. And he spoke of it in tedious detail.
Because what was my tale of catacombs survival, against a minor auto accident? In fact, he so dominated the conversation that we’d left the restaurant, in its tiny private elevator, before I could truly pursue the question for which I’d contacted him.
That being the unsigned note in my hospital room.
“Are you certain last week’s quake wasn’t deliberate?”
Léon Chanson slid an amused gaze down to me. “Poor Catrina. Is that what distracted you during dinner?”
True, a great many things had distracted me. Thoughts of bombs, earthquakes, dead grandmothers, Adrianos, Black Madonnas and lynched teddy bears. And mostly, thoughts of Rhys Pritchard.
Despite all logic, I felt guilty being out with another man. This was foolish. At the moment, my stomach swooped from nothing more than the elevator’s descent and my need to be done with this night.
“Earthquakes are part of what distracted me,” I assured Léon, reluctantly taking his arm as we left the elevator to descend stone, canopied steps outside the massive south leg of the Tower. I did not add, as opposed to your incessant complaints. About the service. About the food.
“But how could an earthquake be deliberate?” he demanded. “Who could cause it?”
Good question.
Paris is particularly beautiful on soft spring nights, with its elegant architecture, wrought ironwork and the flowering trees of the Parc du Champ de Mars. It is indeed a city of romance. And Léon Chanson was the kind of man I would once have adored. Not only did he have an understated charm about him, with his planed cheeks and gentle gray eyes and short, light brown hair. He was older. For a long time, I’d only dated older men. They have real confidence, not youthful bluster. They’ve had practice with women, in and out of bed. Or should have had. And one need not feel as responsible for an older man, somehow. As guilty.
We headed in the direction of the River Seine, where the Pont de Grenelle crosses the Île des Cygnes—the island with the miniature Statue of Liberty. Our date would soon, thankfully, be over. But my time for questions was running short. I could see the ornate trestle of the Bir-Hakeim Métro station rising ahead of us.
“But could it be done?” I asked, tipping my head just so.
As I’d hoped, he crumbled. “There are such things as induced earthquakes. But they generally come from underground stress. Dams, mining, drilling for oil—all these can affect an area’s seismic stability. But none apply to Paris.”
“So you believe last week’s quake to be…?”
“A fluke. I can assure you, Catrina.” He stopped as we reached the base of the railroad bridge, with its gray stone-work and soaring iron girders, to slide a hand onto my shoulder very near my neck. Not in a threatening way, unless I’d felt threatened by the possibility of a kiss. Just…touching. “You need not worry. To the best to my knowledge, there should be no more earthquakes in Paris.”
Since such reassurance warranted a kiss, I did not turn my cheek when he began to incline his head, his gray eyes softening. I lifted my lips toward his, obligated…
But Léon stilled and frowned over my shoulder. What now?
I turned, but could not make out who or what, in the dark scattering of pedestrians, might have distracted him.
“Wait here,” he commanded sharply and left me, beneath the echoing expanse of the elevated bridge.
My annoyance warred with relief. Wait here? Unlikely. Hearing a train approaching overhead, I made a decision. I pushed through the glass doors onto the street level of the otherwise-elevated station and climbed the long, open-air stairway to the elevated platform. I sped my step as the train screeched into the station with a metallic stop just above me. I fed my Carte Orange pass through the turnstile, retrieved it on the other side and gained the platform.
The train was Line 6, as I’d hoped. But an old man stood in my way. An old man I recognized.
“Restore the Black Madonna,” he said.
Despite that the train began to broadcast its warning beeps, announcing the closing of the doors, I took a better look at this stranger. He was gray-haired, frail but well dressed, thin enough that his nose and ears and hands seemed large on him. His eyes gleamed, bright and clear. And I had to know more.
So I let the train pull away, let the handful of people who’d disembarked exit down the stairs, and waited, now alone with this man, for more information. Without the sunlight that usually filtered through the roof windows, the station seemed seedy. The usually dramatic, barred archway over the double tracks was almost invisible against the black sky.
Still, I would have no difficulty knocking Grand-père off his skinny old legs if he threatened me. “What did you say?”
He made a polite bow and repeated, “You must restore the Black Madonna, Catrina Dauvergne.”
Which is when I saw who had stepped onto the platform behind him—and, with a lunge, I slammed the old man against the white-tile wall. But not merely for fun.
A burly man who’d just crossed the platform behind Grand-père had raised a gun. A gun. In Paris!
Between me and the wall, the old man said, “Oof!”
Something whistled by us, and I spun to see a small burst of yellow appear against the broad chest of a second, equally large man, one who’d apparently approached behind me. His hand flew to the bright plastic fringe that plumed from his chest, and he tugged out what I now recognized as a dart.
He then dropped to his knees, blinking blearily, and toppled onto his face there on the Métro platform.
I spun and faced the first attacker, who seemed to be reloading his gun as he closed the distance between us. A tranquilizer gun, obviously with a strong dose. Against an old man whom even I could have taken? Or against me?
I did not plan to be taken anywhere without a fight. So I closed the space between us and grabbed the gun.
He tried to yank it free, and he was of course very strong. I only managed to hold on by allowing myself to be slung about, along with the gun, like a rat terrier in the grip of a bear. My dress heels scrabbled for footing on the tile platform. And the whole time his thick hands, so clearly suited to brute force, fumbled to finish reloading his gun. When he raised his hand to strike me, I plucked desperately at the fringe of yellow that still protruded from the half-loaded chamber.
As his free hand crashed down, I stabbed it with the dart.
He froze.
“Tag.” I smiled icily. “You are it.”
Of course, the large man did not respond. He was too busy collapsing backward, his eyes glazing over. I winced as his head impacted the platform.
Quite a powerful tranquilizer, indeed.
I looked at the gun, now in my hand. It seemed to be made of fiberglass, the better for avoiding metal detectors. I quickly threw it into the trash bin, resigning myself to calling the police, and looked at the old man who, for all I knew, merited being hunted like an escaped gorilla.
He did not help matters. “It is true,” he marveled, speaking educated English. “You are your mothers’ daughter.”
This hardly proved his sanity. “Why are you following me?”
“You must restore the Black Madonna!”
I made a rude noise. “There are Black Madonnas in Chartres, in Aix-en-Provence, in Lyon. None of them are mine to restore, and I have no cause to do so. Why are you—”
A gaggle of tourists reached the elevated platform, saw the two bodies, and ran back down. I was just as glad I did not still hold the gun—though less so when the old man hesitated. “That part…it is not for me to say.”
“You’re stalking me to say that you cannot say?”
“Take this,” he insisted, catching my hand. “Look for more of them. They will help you understand.”
Before I could stop him, he pressed something into my palm—
The young noblewoman races through cobbled streets, breath lurching, hair trailing into her face. She tries to hold her brocade skirts high, so as not to trip. The air smells of blood. Her head is filled with screams, some of them her own.
She clutches to her chest a small sack, her mother’s most valued treasure. But where in the Lady’s name can she hide it? Huguenots have been suppressing Catholics for years, here. Tonight, Catholics are massacring Huguenots. Will the time of the Lady never return? Will—
Horses round the corner ahead of her—large, liveried animals, ridden by soldiers with muskets and blood-smeared swords. The noblewoman skids to a stop, almost falling. It is too late. With a clatter of hooves, horses loom over her. A soldier catches her by one arm and hauls her, painfully, across his saddle. Still she fights—kicking him, biting him. But there are too many. They grab her feet, her hands, tearing at her clothes, laughing their excitement at capturing another heretic on this night of God’s glory.
One of them gropes her chest, tries to drag her treasure from her. Even as she clings to the bag, he pours the tesserae into his gauntleted hand.
Lady help her. Lady help them all….
“The bishop will want to see these,” he breathes, and backhands her away from him and his plunder—
The vision stopped as her hand left the bag. Suddenly I again stood, not in the narrow street of a medieval château but in the modern expanse of the Métro station.
“What was that?” I exclaimed—perhaps screeched—and my fingers clamped on the old man’s frail wrist. Not only was I beyond tired of having these horrible experiences thrust into my memory, but this one wasn’t even from the days of the Revolution! To judge by the clothes, this had occurred in the late 1500s, likely during France’s religious wars.
What was happening to me?
“It is a tile,” the old man said—apparently of the stone in my hand, not of the vision. “It is key to everything else. You should understand more as you find others. This is your sacred calling, you see, not mine. You and your sisters must restore the Black Madonna, Catrina Dauvergne. You must—”
For a moment, I flattered myself that my chilling gaze was responsible for his abrupt stop.
Then I felt it, too—a crackle in the air, just as the lights of the Métro platform flickered, then went out. With a horrible, deep groan, the world seemed to sway beneath us.
Another earthquake!
Since I had the old man’s wrist already, I dragged him with me as I lunged blindly for the exit stairs—a lot harder to find without the light of the comforting blue “Sortie” sign.
But I had recent experience making my way through the dark.
I was only partway down the stairs before the tremble of the earth stopped. So, it seemed, had everything else. Stopped.
I groped in the darkness and found the railing of the high, open-air stairway. I barely noticed when the old man pulled free of my loosening grip, so unnerving was this view of Paris, block upon block lit by no more than the starlight.
Whatever had happened had not affected all of Paris. I could see lights farther away. But immediately below me?
No cars moved.
No lamps shone.
No music played.
Even the Tour Eiffel stood dark, a somehow dead shape against the night. I thought of the people trapped in its elevators in the midst of this blackout.
I shivered. What was going on?
“Catrina!” Léon ran to me when I reached street level. “What the hell—you just vanished!”
“So did you,” I noted.
So, apparently, had the old man.
Léon scowled. “I told you to wait. After what I just spent on dinner, the least you could do—”
That was enough for me. Deciding the police would surely have their hands full tonight I began walking in the direction of the Left Bank.
Léon followed. “Catrina!”
But at some point, he stopped following me. It was fifteen blocks, at least, before I reached neighborhoods that still had lights, still played music, still offered working taxicabs. The whole while, I distracted myself with thoughts of the Soeurs de Marie letters. You see, I knew somebody who might be able to help identify whatever was amiss about them. Aubrey de Lune was a friend, though not of the Scarlet Rubashka hugging style of friendship. Older than me by perhaps five years, Aubrey was one of the more brilliant scholars that I have ever known. Especially in the area of old manuscripts. And yet…
And yet I had been less anxious to see her over the last year, because Aubrey was also the fence who had helped me place the medieval chalice that I had…liberated. I had asked her for that favor. She had helped me when I asked. But now, whenever I thought of her, I could not forget the suspicions that had drawn me to ask for her help in the first place.
Aubrey de Lune was either an art thief or an undercover agent in the world of art thieves. And my instincts favored the former. Were I to ask her assistance with the Marian letters, was I further muddying my own morals? And when had I begun to care so deeply about morality?
Never had the four flights of stairs to my flat seemed so steep, even dangling my dress shoes from one hand and taking the stairs barefoot. I found the code for my new burglar alarm before I even unlocked the front door, so that I could disarm it quickly. But…when I closed the door behind me, then turned to punch in the code, I had a moment of confusion. Why was there no lit display? Why, when I pressed numbers, did they not beep?
Then, from behind me, I heard the rasping voice.
“Give me the key.”
I turned slowly, barely believing it. There stood the same dark, crazed man, easily shorter than me—but, to see him this close, hard-muscled all the same. Behind him, scrawled across my wall in something dark and shiny, was a cross and some kind of threat, just like at the hospital.
And this time, he held a knife.