AFTER WORKING AS AN UNDERCOVER AGENT for the DEA for twenty-five years, Robert Thomas Lawton (1943– ) devoted himself to writing mystery short stories in five different series, producing more than a hundred tales for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Easyriders, Outlaw Biker, and other magazines and anthologies.
One series of historical mysteries features an Armenian trader who solves crimes set in a dangerous region of tsarist Russia, one is set in the France of Louis the XIV with the despicable leader (self-proclaimed “king”) of the criminal underworld of Paris, and another sequence of stories features the Twin Brothers Bail Bond firm, which accepts only special clients who must put up very high-value collateral that may not be entirely legal. Oddly, its clients seem unusually accident prone and seldom claim their goods.
On his use of initials for his byline, the author tells this story: “Being named after both grandfathers, the R. stands for Robert and the T. stands for Thomas. I started going by my initials decades ago while working with state and local drug task forces and every outfit had their own radio call numbers which was too confusing, so we used first names for radio call signs. But we had too many Roberts and Bobs. The case agent would come on the radio to say the bad guy was leaving the house and for Bob to follow him. At that point, all the surveillance cars would leave. So, I became R.T.”
“Boudin Noir” was first published in the December 2009 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
I HAD LOVED Josette ever since she first showed me how to pick a fat merchant’s pocket on the busy streets of Paris. And no doubt she would have loved me in return, had it not been for that damned Chevalier, the one we called Remy. He was a thief, a trickster, and a well dressed popinjay, who had no right to deprive me of her affections. No matter that she was nineteen at the time, and I a mere several years younger. Someday, I swore, I would make an end to Remy for having robbed me of my dreams. I would find a way to turn the tables on this fallen son of nobility and see how he liked it. Then my sleep would be much more at ease. Or at least without his constant interruptions.
“Boy, you’re wanted.”
Ah, that voice again. The very devil himself calls me from my slumbers. No doubt he has new torments to inflict upon my young life. I thought to pretend sleep longer, but that never seemed to work. Better to answer and get it over with.
“Leave me alone. It’s barely morning.”
“Morning? The sun’s past midday. Get up.”
I soon felt the toe of Remy’s leather boot prodding through a ragged hole in my shirt, nudging several of my bare ribs as he continued with his tirade.
“King Jules requests your presence.”
King Jules, he says, as if this second devil in my life were the anointed ruler of France and all its holdings. Even the least of us knew this so-called king was nothing more than a base-born tyrant who had seen fit to crown himself with a lofty title. At most, he ruled our motley underworld of thieves, beggars, counterfeiters, and trollops, and did it through fear of his personal wrath. That, and his grim bodyguard of muggers and dark-faced assassins used to enforce his every dictate. All souls within his grasp paid tithes out of their hard earned coins that each managed, by one means or another, to separate from the unwary citizens of Paris. It seemed the compass of Jules’s fiefdom stretched from the old Roman ruins atop the Buttes Chaumont down to the River Seine, on across the bridges and deep into the shadowed backstreets of Paris. Even so, Jules was no king of royal blood like our young Louis the XIV, our Roi Soleil, our true Sun King.
To avoid another nudge in the ribs, I opened one eye and glared at Remy, but my tormentor was not one to be put off that easily.
“What, I wonder,” he mused aloud, “could Jules possibly want with an orphan pickpocket? Especially one who is so…”
“I pay my share at tithing time,” I quickly interrupted, “just like all the rest.”
“…so incompetent,” he finished. “One who barely graduated from Mother Margaux’s School for Orphan Pickpockets. I suspect that Mother threw you out rather than suffer further embarrassment from your lack of talent.”
“I can pick a pocket as well as any other.”
The Chevalier rubbed his chin. “The fact that you believe so troubles me.”
He shook his head slowly, then stepped out through the open doorway of our hovel, a simple structure consisting of nothing more than three remnant walls of a small storeroom in one of the villa’s outbuildings. A scrap of oiled canvas stretched overhead served to keep out rain and some of the wind. Just beyond the rubble doorway, the Chevalier paused long enough to give parting words.
“Tarry at your own peril, boy. Jules does not brook delays of his grandiose schemes, and it seems you are to have some involvement in his latest one.” Then he turned and started off.
“I’m not afraid of Jules,” I retorted as I threw a rock at the Chevalier’s back, but that meddling popinjay was already beyond my range. He had no idea how lucky he was. Bah, enough of him.
Now that I was fully awake, with no chance of returning to sleep, hunger pains gnawed at my belly. Pushing myself up into a sitting position, I scrounged through a leather pouch kept tied at my waist. Tucked somewhere in this bag, among all the other small objects of value to me, was a wrapped length of blood sausage recently liberated from a common laborer who had obviously intended it as part of yesterday’s noon meal. Had the man been more vigilant of his possessions, no doubt it would still be his. Of course, in thinking back on the incident, the lingering scent on the man’s lunch basket should have warned me that my victim spent his days toiling in the endless sewers of Paris. I had been better served to have found a victim with a less fragrant job and a more decent lunch.
Preparing now to break my morning fast, I almost bit deeply into this meat delicacy when its slightly off aroma tickled my nostrils. I held the sausage closer to my nose and sniffed. That one quick whiff warned I had waited too long in this autumn heat. The meat was slowly turning. Still, I was hungry and my next meal could be a ways off. I sniffed again. No, not good at all. My appetite fled. Wrapping the blood sausage back in its scrap of cloth, I returned the package to my leather pouch. If nothing else, I’d find a way to slip the tainted sausage into the Chevalier’s evening soup and let him be sick for a couple of days. It would serve him right for all the trouble he dealt me.
Still scheming on ways to even the score against Remy, I made my way to the enclosed yard where Jules usually held his private court. And there his majesty lounged upon his throne, a high-backed wooden chair that had seen grander times. Its cushioned seat of once-rich fabric was now threadbare and faded. Stuffing poked awkwardly out of rents in the cloth. Yet, Jules sat with his left leg resting over one arm of this declining chair as if the whole world were his. A wine goblet dangled from the fingers of his right hand.
“I am here as requested,” I blurted out with small attempt to restrain my sarcasm. My resulting bow was much exaggerated.
Jules’s eyes went narrow. He appeared to study me closely. I feared I’d gone too far this time, but then his face gradually creased in a smile, and I assumed I was safe after all. I grinned back.
“It was good of you to come so quickly,” said Jules. “I have a very important job for you.”
An important job. Ah yes, if no one else, Jules had a true appreciation for my light-finger talents.
“What would you have me do?”
Jules motioned me closer and lowered his voice. “I have it on good notice that the Abbess of the Benedictine Convent currently has a purse of gold coins in her possession.”
“I see,” I replied, but I really had no idea as to what he had in mind, other than he desired to somehow separate the Abbess from her gold and I was to play a part in this separation.
“The Abbess,” he continued, “has business matters to attend in the city. As such, she will walk along a certain street this afternoon. In doing so, she is always careful to let few men, other than the Monastery Door Keeper, get close to her person.”
Jules paused and appeared to have a weighty decision working on his mind. “What I need is a young boy, someone with a look of innocence, but one who has the proper skills to relieve her of her purse.” He spread his hands as if to embrace me. “Without her knowledge, of course.”
There came a long moment of silence between us. His eyes gazed into mine with a look of expectancy.
Oh.
Suddenly I realized this was my chance to prove myself to all in our little community. I moved quickly into the void. “I will not fail you.”
Jules smiled again, but I must admit such contortions of his facial muscles always seemed to give a wolfish cast to his countenance. I was tempted to remark to him on this aspect of his appearance, but he can sometimes be touchy about the slightest comment, and I had no wish to lose the prospect of earning a few gold coins.
“I know you won’t fail me,” he replied, “and as your payment for this job, you may keep one fourth of all you acquire from the Abbess.”
“One half is a better amount,” I bargained.
Jules raised his right hand, palm forward, and curled his fingers. Immediately Sallambier, a hulk of a man, appeared out of a nearby nook and stepped to the right of Jules’s throne. The hulk’s mangled nose had the appearance of having once collided with the sharp edge of a paving brick. It was said that Sallambier had afterward lost his sense of smell. No matter to me, he was merely one more of King Jules’s killers. I had no business with this man.
“One third to you for your services,” concluded Jules as he watched for my reaction, “and no more.”
Standing silently at Jules’s side, Sallambier removed a long knife from the leather belt at his waist, using its pitted blade to slice chunks off a large red apple held in his other hand, and then stuffing those chunks into his maw of a mouth. No emotions showed on his pockmarked face, but his eyes seemed to linger on the vicinity of my bare throat.
Ha. The meaning of that look came quite clear to me. Even I knew that further bargaining on my part was obviously at an end.
“Done,” I said, figuring I had already gotten more than I had hoped for when the day began.
“We are agreed then. Sallambier will take you to a place of advantage along the Abbess’s route. All you need do is acquire her purse and bring it to me.”
“And then we’ll divide the coins?”
“Of course.”
I waited to see if there was more, but my audience with King Jules was evidently over. Although I did notice him occasionally wrinkling his nose and glancing about as if something faint were in the wind.
Sallambier grabbed my elbow and led me onto the dirt path winding down from the Buttes Chamont and on past ancient stone quarries in the lower land. These open pits and underground tunnels from Roman times were now used as refuse pits by the citizens of Paris. A place for garbage and human outcasts. A hiding place for deserters from the army. I pulled my elbow free of Sallambier’s grasp and fell into step behind him. Twice, he looked back over his shoulder to be sure I still followed.
After a long walk, we crossed a stone bridge over the Seine and passed by the great chains which would be stretched across the road by the nightwatch when curfew fell. Moving deeper into the city, where we were mostly ignored by the throngs of farmers, wives, and tradesmen going about their daily business, we made our way to a house near the building where the Abbess had business to conduct. Here, we waited in a doorway shadowed from the sun by the building’s overhanging second story. Citizens crowded the street, parting once for a drover moving a few sheep to market, and once for a line of chained convicts being prodded along by stern-faced bailiffs. We averted our faces from the convicts lest one call out in recognition and ruin our scheme. Their passing gave a flutter to my stomach.
Hours dragged by. Gradually, I became bored and found myself nodding off in the autumn heat, when Sallambier suddenly reached over and flicked my ear with his thick index finger.
I started to yelp in protest but caught the warning in his face. He pointed at the doors to the building across the street. My gaze went to the Abbess and her Door Keeper descending upon the paving stones and proceeding in our direction. We waited until they passed. Then quickly, we stepped out of our doorway and moved into position, me behind the stout Abbess, while my newly appointed warden, the hulk with the mangled nose, edged closer to the elderly Door Keeper.
“Now,” whispered Sallambier in his grating voice which seemed seldom used.
“In a minute,” I muttered back.
I took a breath and prepared to steel myself.
“Now,” he whispered again.
“Not yet,” I murmured.
All would have gone well in the next couple of minutes, except Sallambier shoved me forward before I was truly ready. My right hand was barely reaching for the purse at her waist when his abrupt push from behind caused my left forearm to crash into her plump right hip.
She squawked in disgust and whirled in my direction.
My right hand had already lightly encircled her purse, but her sudden turn toward me drew the purse strings taut against her belt, and she felt the tugging at her waist. She quickly seized my right hand with both of hers, holding on with all the fervor of a drowning woman. And then she filled her lungs and screamed.
That high pitch split my eardrums.
Farmers and housewives, all the passing citizens of Paris, stopped their activities to see what was causing such a commotion.
I struggled to get free.
The Door Keeper rushed in to help his employer, but someone in the crowd jostled the old man, knocking him to the street. That’s when I saw Sallambier stepping forward to politely assist the Keeper up from the paving stones, brushing him off and apologizing for any mishap. Several times, the old man tried to break away from Sallambier’s helpful grasp, but he only succeeded in barely brushing the left shoulder of his Abbess with his outstretched fingertips.
At this new touch to her person, the Abbess paused in surprise, swiveled her head away from me, and drew in another deep breath.
I didn’t wait for the second shriek. Taking advantage of this distraction, I wrenched my hand loose from the Abbess’s clutch. Somehow, in all the turmoil, she managed to maintain hold on her precious purse still tied to her belt. No matter that, I ran for my very life, all the way to the Buttes Chamont.
At last, safely back at the ruined villa, I ducked into our hovel and collapsed on my bed, panting for breath. Sweat coursed down my heated face.
What to do now? I had escaped one trouble and was left confronting another. What could I tell King Jules? I’d obviously failed him. No purse to split two ways, even if my share was only to be a third. Of course, had I gotten the purse as planned, I could have lightened its contents a little before giving it to Jules for the agreed upon dividing. No chance of that now.
This whole mess of me being caught in the act was obviously all Sallambier’s fault, but since his intervention with the Door Keeper allowed me to escape from the Abbess, I needed to be careful laying any blame on him. He might take it wrong, plus I obviously knew who Jules would then side with. No, no, I’d have to come up with a very good story for Jules, a believable one.
Two hours later, I was still polishing the details of my excuse and wondering if maybe it might just be best to hide out in the quarries for several days, when someone quietly entered the hovel.
“You were lucky to get away.”
I quickly recognized the Chevalier’s voice behind me and tried not to flinch.
“That’s because Sallambier kept the Door Keeper from getting at me,” I muttered. “Otherwise, I’d been locked up in the prison for sure.”
“So, that gargoyle-faced assassin is now your hero?” inquired Remy in his know-it-all way.
“I didn’t say I liked him, only that he helped me out of a predicament. Unlike some who pretend to be my friend and then act otherwise when trouble comes.”
“Oh, he definitely helped you.”
I detected a faint hint of sarcasm.
“How would you know?”
Remy sat down at the far end of my bedding and faced me.
“I was curious as to Jules’s sudden interest in your pickpocket abilities, so I followed you and Jules’s assassin into the city.”
“I didn’t see you there.”
“Then you can say I did my job well. In any case, I watched Sallambier deliberately push you into the Abbess.”
“His timing was bad,” I freely admitted, but then I paused to consider Remy’s statement. This was a good turn for me, now I had the Chevalier as a witness to verify my excuse to Jules.
I continued with my narrative. “But then you also saw Sallambier help me by detaining the Door Keeper.”
“No, boy, the assassin did just as Jules no doubt instructed him to do.”
“How so? Jules gave no such instructions to the man in my presence.”
“I’m sure he didn’t, but when Sallambier helped the Door Keeper up from the street and dusted off his clothing, he was actually busy making wax impressions of keys hanging from the Keeper’s waist. You, my little friend, were supposed to be caught, a diversion to allow Sallambier to do as Jules intended. If necessary, you were expendable.”
“What?”
“Exactly, so I contemplated what purpose Jules would have for keys to the Benedictine Monastery.”
My feelings were still wrapped up in the betrayal of being taken for a fool. However, the Chevalier’s words did explain why the Abbess’s purse had felt lighter than Jules had led me to believe. That meant Jules had lied. He didn’t really believe in my stealing talents. Oh, he and that mangled-nose monstrosity of his were going to pay for their trickery just as soon as I found a means for revenge. But in the meantime, I couldn’t help being curious about the keys.
“And what did you decide about his purpose?” I inquired.
Remy gave me that arrogant smile of his. If he only knew how much I hated that look of having superior knowledge.
“The Door Keeper always carries at least two main keys on his person, one for the monastery itself, while the second key is rumored to fit the staircase door leading down from the interior of the Val-de-Grâce Church.”
“Stairs descending beneath the church?” This was new. I crossed myself. “You mean, down into the eternal fires for heretics and sinners?” For good measure, I made the sign a second time.
Remy laughed.
“There are some who would call it a staircase leading to sin, but most, like me, consider it merely to be a source of very worldly pleasure.”
I was confused. “What’s on the other end of this staircase?”
“Do you not listen to gossip in the marketplace, boy? Perhaps you are too young and it is a matter of history now.”
The Chevalier could be exasperating at times like these.
“Just tell me.”
“Very well. After our Sun King was born, his previously barren mother promised the Benedictine nuns that she would build them a church as thanks. But there was a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“When the original architect, François Mansart, started the foundation for Val-de-Grâce, he found a great emptiness beneath the ground.”
“An emptiness like the pits of Hell?” I tried again.
“No, this emptiness was one of the network of tunnels from the old Roman stone quarries. What better place for the Benedictine monks to store their alcoholic beverage of brandy, sugar, and aromatic herbs? Thus, the monks built a staircase from the church down to the tunnel. That second key supposedly fits the door that goes down. It’s my guess that Jules plans to steal the Benedictine liquor after Sallambier finds where it’s hidden.”
I nodded my head in understanding, but had no idea yet how to use this information to my own advantage.
Remy stood up to leave. To me, he seemed in a hurry.
“Where are you going?”
“To keep an eye on Sallambier while he makes his false keys from the wax molds. When he is almost finished, I will go before him and hide in the church to see if I am correct in my assumptions.”
I rose from my bed and headed for the door.
“I’ll go too.”
Remy blocked my way and sternly shook his head.
“No, boy, you’ve gotten yourself in enough trouble for today. You stay here, and away from Jules.”
I sat back down and played the role of reluctant, but obedient. Let Remy think what he would. For my part, the reluctance was real.
With a further warning to stay away, the Chevalier left me.
Of course I waited until he was out of sight. If he only knew that never would I force myself to be obedient to his demands. He had no claim on me.
My feet soon found the dirt path leading to the Valley of Grace. In my reasoning, if I went to Val-de-Grâce Church now, then I would be well hidden before either Sallambier or Remy arrived. And, since one must feed his stomach as well as his soul, I managed en route to acquire an unguarded crust of bread, two shriveled carrots, and a chunk of fairly fragrant cheese for my supper. By the time their shrill-voiced owner finished arguing with her husband, I doubted he would have much appetite for them anyway.
At the church, the door stood partly open with no one in sight, either outside or inside. Now the problem was to find a hiding place, one that Remy would not be likely to use for himself. As for Sallambier, he was probably busy making himself a key for the staircase door. He would come when the church was locked up and empty, assuming they locked the huge front doors at night. My knowledge of this and other facts about the actual workings of the church were sadly lacking. I felt a twinge of remorse in not having come here more often for the good of my soul, my very salvation. But, after my bread and cheese were gone, that feeling soon left me alone.
At the sound of leather scuffing on stone, I glanced hurriedly around. Someone was coming and I still had no good hiding place. I dived to the floor and crawled forward under one of the heavy wooden pews used by the rich folk. Incoming footsteps continued down the aisle. There was a pause, and then I heard the wood creak in a pew somewhere in front of my hiding place. A sinner no doubt, clicking his rosary and come to seek redemption. However, by the way this one kept sniffing loudly, I assumed he also had a bad cold and was praying for better health. For the time he took on his knees, his sins must have been many. Before his list of concerns with the Almighty had been completed, I nodded off into sleep on the stone floor.
I might have slept through until Morning Mass, but a cool chill on my backside and the grating squeak of opening and then closing door hinges brought me awake. Except for the flickering of candles set in rows along the walls, the light inside had a dim grayness to it. Still, it was good enough for me to watch the worn leather boots of a man as he proceeded down the aisle and across in front of the altar without a single drop to his knee as someone once told me you are supposed to do in a place like this. He then proceeded over to a door in the vestibule behind the altar.
This had to be Sallambier. I poked my head over the wooden pew and peeked, but the man had already unlocked the door and descended. As a precaution, I waited to see if anyone else followed. There was no other movement in the church. Remy’s plans must have gone awry, else he was somehow already in front of me down the staircase.
The partially open door beckoned.
With great stealth, I left my hiding place and crept to the top of the stairwell. From down in the tunnel came soft sounds and the yellow glow of a torch disappearing along a stone corridor. It was either hurry, or be left behind in eternal darkness. My feet flew down the stairs.
Having reached the cellar floor, I hurried forward to the first branching out of the tunnel. It was dark to my front and dark to the right. I pressed against the left wall and peered around that corner. The man with the torch had stopped at another intersection and was using a piece of chalk to mark one of the walls. After he finished, I waited while he continued walking straight ahead. Before I could follow, he returned to the intersection and erased the previous chalk mark he’d made. Then he turned and drew a white arrow on a different wall.
Ah, I told myself, he must have run into a dead end in the tunnel. This time, when the man started off in a new direction, I let him get farther out of sight before I stepped out to follow.
I only got three steps.
A large hand covered my mouth, stifling any attempt to cry out. I tried to bite the fingers of that hand, but then another strong hand grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and lifted me off my feet. At my ear, I heard a whispered voice.
“Be quiet and I’ll put you down.”
I tried to nod my head in compliance, but my entire body was suspended by the neck and I’m not sure anything above that point could move.
“I told you to stay behind,” continued the voice.
The ground felt good to be beneath my feet again. I rotated my neck to get the kinks out.
“Jules owes me for this afternoon’s purse stealing,” I retorted, “and this may be my only chance to collect my coins, one way or another.”
“You didn’t actually get the purse,” countered Remy in a whisper.
“That was Sallambier’s fault. You yourself saw him push me, and since an agreement is an agreement, Jules owes me. I won’t let him cheat me.”
Remy gave a grunt of exasperation, then we stood there in silence.
“Sallambier is leaving us behind,” I said at last.
The Chevalier turned the setting on a bull’s-eye lantern at his feet, and a single narrow ray of white pierced the tunnel’s dark.
“Don’t worry, boy, Sallambier will probably run into several filled tunnel shafts and other dead ends before he locates the monk’s cache of Benedictine. We don’t want to be too close in case he doubles back and finds us instead.”
“He’s marking the walls with chalk so he knows which corridors he’s already searched,” I volunteered.
“That’s good to remember,” Remy replied. “Now stay behind me.” He picked up the lantern and set off down the tunnel.
To my right, I distinctly heard the skittering of little rat claws on the stone floor and thus made sure I did not linger far behind the Chevalier.
“Stay farther back,” muttered Remy, “you’re stepping on my heels.”
Occasionally, we passed by iron torch brackets mounted on the walls. All brackets stood empty, but on the ceiling above them were soot and black scorch marks from previous torches over the years. At other twists and turns, we passed chiseled inscriptions in a foreign language.
“Those are Roman writings,” remarked the Chevalier.
Twice we came upon stone engravings, and these seemed to interest the Chevalier the most. At these, he whispered to me tales of ancient gods, emperors, the history of a long ago civilization.
Bah, what did I care? I was here to collect what was owed to me. The next time Remy started one of his lectures on history and old literature, I went off on my own. After all, I could see the glow of Sallambier’s torch reflected far down the corridor and it hadn’t seemed to move for some time now. Maybe he had found the Benedictine cellar. I would go see.
Advancing noiselessly down the tunnel, I at last came to the doorway where Sallambier’s torch, now set into an iron bracket, lit the roughly chiseled room beyond. I peered carefully around the edge of the stone entrance. Only a bare side wall was in view. I’d have to move over farther in order to see what was in this room.
Two steps sideways and my vision caught the rounded top of a wooden cask. Another step and I could see several barrels and casks stacked against the back wall. We’d found it. And then my view was suddenly blocked.
Sallambier.
Even in his surprise at seeing me, his reactions were faster than mine. For the second time this night, I was grabbed by the neck and lifted off the ground, only this time it was by the throat instead of the nape.
“I had wondered where you disappeared to after your escape from the Abbess,” Sallambier grated in that raspy voice of his.
He carried me deeper into the Benedictine cellar. Then his eyes noticed the small leather pouch swinging from my belt, a place where most citizens kept money or other valuables. He turned to cast more light from the torch onto my person.
“What did you bring me?”
When he drew his knife I thought I was dead, but he merely sliced through the leather thongs on my pouch. It dropped to the floor. His fingers tightened on my throat as he bent over to retrieve the bag. I began drifting into unconsciousness, but I first remembered Sallambier stuffing my leather pouch into a pocket of his jerkin. It was later that the sudden slamming of my hindquarters onto the stone floor jolted me partially awake.
“I told you to stay behind me,” growled Remy. His voice came to me through a fog.
At the moment, my brain had feathers in it and my throat too sore to reply. All I could do was stare at Sallambier’s body stretched out at my feet as if he were sleeping. However, upon seeing the growing lump on the side of Sallambier’s head, I was fairly sure that if the gargoyle were sleeping, then he’d had some assistance in the matter from Remy.
A strong hand grasped my shoulder.
“We’ll have to move him to another part of the tunnels. You grab his feet.”
I wanted to protest my condition, but soon found myself struggling with a pair of familiar looking worn boots. As much as my end of the hulk weighed, Sallambier must have stuffed himself with food during all his waking hours. In the end, I have no idea which part of the labyrinth we stashed his sleeping form in, nor where Remy left me while he cleaned up any evidence of our passing. I do remember Remy coming back with a canvas bag over his shoulder. His way was lighted by the bull’s-eye lantern, and the extinguished torch was under his arm. He also paused at each turning of the tunnels to erase any white chalk marks.
At the top of the stairs, the Chevalier locked the staircase door behind us. We slunk out of thechurch like thieves in the night and headed home.
Remy quickly roused Josette from her slumbers. For a celebration is how he termed it. For my part, I didn’t know what we had to celebrate. I had no coins for my efforts, and I vaguely remembered Remy tossing Sallambier’s key to the staircase door into one of the garbage pits on our way back to the villa. No cache of holy liquor for us to sell to tavern keepers on the back streets. When I’d inquired about the key, Remy replied, “No gentleman steals from the church.”
I could have believed him better, except for the clinking of glass bottles in the canvas bag he carried on his shoulder. Sure enough, to help us celebrate, Remy dragged a couple of bottles of Benedictine out of the bag and opened the tops. I reminded him about his statement concerning not stealing from the church.
“Stealing, my boy?” He laughed loud. “No, no, these few bottles are merely payment which I’m sure the monks, had they known, would have gladly given me for rescuing their entire Benedictine cellar from the greed of King Jules.”
As I grew older, I was beginning to realize how full-grown people rationalized their behavior based upon their desires of the moment. The only distinction among them being that different persons used varying degrees of ethics in their decision making, whether it was King Jules or the King of France. Still in my youth, I didn’t have this problem yet, but it meant I’d have to keep a closer eye on the Chevalier in future dealings. As for Jules, I’d left his chief assassin lost in the long twisting tunnels of the Roman quarries. That would serve as partial payment for Jules’s debt to me. Remy was another matter.
And then I remembered. My leather pouch. I reached desperately for my belt.
“What are you doing so in such a frantic manner?” inquired Remy. “You act as if you had lost something.”
“My pouch,” I exclaimed. “It contained all my valuables.”
“What could a poor pickpocket like you possibly have of value?”
“I had a length of blood sausage,” I retorted before I recalled what I was going to use it for.
Remy laughed.
“Boudin noir? In these hot autumn days? You’re lucky you didn’t eat it. Even the ancient Greeks knew this dark pudding became poisonous if it set in the heat too long. It’s pig’s blood, cereal, and seasonings stuffed into the intestines of an animal. Better you forgo this delicacy until cooler weather.”
Well, that did explain the lingering odor it had. But since Sallambier now had the blood sausage in his possession, that meant I’d not be able to slip it into Remy’s evening soup and get some measure of revenge on him.
Then I pictured Sallambier and his constant appetite. When he awoke in the dark and spent hours trying to feel his way out of the stone labyrinth, he would no doubt be hungry. And when he rooted through my leather pouch stuffed into his jerkin, he would recognize the feel of a length of sausage.
At least I wouldn’t have to worry about making amends to Sallambier and his pitted blade one dark night. No, years from now some Benedictine monk off course in the tunnels below Val-de-Grâce Church would probably find no more than rat-gnawed bones, a rusted knife, and some tattered clothes.
I was sure that the Chevalier wondered why the sudden smile on my face, but as I saw the situation, it was one down and two devils to go. I had all the time in the world to get even.