Charles Eslée tipped over his queen, acknowledging defeat.
The Widow Deauville, in addition to being the most beautiful woman in Pontoise, was a chess savant, a fact she took pains to keep from the rest of her neighbors.
“It’s difficult enough, Doctor, for a woman my age, not possessing a dowry, to find a husband; impossible, if the men of this village think I’m more intelligent than they are.”
“Not precisely a distinction, Madame. The mayor himself would be hard put to use cat in a sentence.”
“Oh, Rateau the miller’s shrewd enough, and well off; but he’s niggardly. I won’t beg my husband for pin money. Poor León always turned his earnings over to me the day they were received. If you asked him the product of five times five, he’d shrug and say, ‘You must consult Marianne upon this matter.’ Also he trusted me.”
“That’s because he wasn’t a cheat, unlike Rateau. I could dismiss a handful of pebbles in the occasional sack of flour as an oversight, but with him it’s a given. The man should be in the gravel business.” Eslée sipped wine and watched her produce another of her innumerable cigarettes. “You know, in my life I’ve known a half-dozen men who smoked those things, and no women.”
“In both cases it’s because they burn monstrously fast. You can raise blisters striking flint and steel all day long.” She lit it off the lamp on the table, replaced the chimney, drew in smoke, and blew it at her kitchen ceiling, staining it further and exposing the magnificent long line of her neck.
The doctor suspected she knew it was magnificent and long. It was no wonder women made good bookkeepers: They learned early in life to take regular inventory of their assets.
He sighed. He regretted the cynical turn his philosophies had taken since his own happiness was shattered.
“You speak of your age often,” he said. “I’m fifty, and I daresay I was a grown man when you were born. I admire the way you wear your hair.” It was blue-black, cut boyishly short, and suited the elongated shape of her skull.
“The style passed out of fashion when the last head fell into the bucket. Noblewomen took pains to see the blade cut clean. In my case it draws attention away from these.” She gestured toward her breasts. It was true she was busty.
“I don’t blame you. My own taste runs to women of an athletic build. But I’m not a fanatic.”
She smiled, showing strong white teeth. “You always say what you think. It’s a wonder you have any patients at all. Poor León loved my teats.”
Marianne’s husband, a first-class painter of houses, had traded his brush for a musket and departed this life at the end of a Royalist bayonet in the defense of the Republic. She’d gotten the news in the same post that carried his effects: Rousseau’s Rights of Man and a popular romance, Paul et Virginie; the draft of a letter interrupted after “Dearest Pumpkin,” a watch, no money. Some handler along the way had taken out his fee.
Eslée, who had befriended her in her time of loss, was a good listener, but beyond her brief marriage she was close with personal information. He knew nothing about her politics. It was dangerous to ask, and more dangerous yet to answer. Giroud, who kept the village records, seemed always at hand with his pencil and block, never in the courthouse. The doctor thought it safe enough to agree with her that while the Republic would likely have endured without León’s sacrifice, the local houses had certainly suffered for lack of an experienced house painter.
He most definitely never mentioned Pumpkin. León’s pet name for his wife was “Mouse.”
She broke a quarter-inch of ash into a saucer next to the chessboard. “This bad habit of outspokenness aside, Doctor, you’re both a generous spirit and an intellectual challenge. Why have you never proposed?”
“I’m too old for you, to begin with.”
“You’re the youngest bachelor in the village.”
“Untrue. Grolier’s not yet fifty, and he lives well.”
“Creating floral arrangements. Need I say more?”
“Still, he’d be a good provider.”
“What is age? I’m talking about marriage, not moving furniture. We can hire a man for that.”
“I’m past such things, Madame. When Louisa left me I realized I had no talent for wedded life.”
“You forget I knew her a little. She did you a favor. You could no more stand life with that brainless creature than an owl tied to a donkey. Marry me, and take me away from all these rags and thimbles.” The kitchen—in fact, her entire charming cottage—was heaped with bolts of material and flimsy dress patterns.
“I don’t believe you’re looking for escape. You’re a skilled seamstress, and just as successful as you choose to be. They know you in Paris, but you effect not to know them. What do the locals have that they don’t?”
“A sense of responsibility. They pay promptly. Those harlots in society consider it a badge of rank not to have creditors howling outside their houses. A tradesman can do a hundred thousand francs’ business in summer and freeze to death in winter because he can’t afford coal.”
“Still, you can do better.”
“I settled for a house painter last time. Would you insult his memory by refusing me?”
He watched her ignite a fresh cigarette off the stub of the last. Amazing. “I can barely support myself, let alone two,” he said. “Here, people leave their medical bills unpaid not because it’s fashionable, but because they can barely dress and feed themselves. On Tuesday I accepted a brood hen in return for setting a broken leg. On Thursday, I was asked to return it. A fox ate the flock.”
“And did you return it?”
“I could hardly refuse. My practice is small enough without starving my patients to death.”
“A doctor must eat too. You should have told him you’d eaten it already.”
“You see? I’m not clever enough to keep a wife.”
“You’re a hopeless case.”
“Thank you for agreeing with my diagnosis.”
“How soon are you expected back?”
“I have no appointments. My girl knows where to find me in an emergency.”
She put out the cigarette half-smoked. He understood she took them in barter from the tobacconist’s wife, who liked embroidered handkerchiefs but couldn’t afford them.
“Well, if you won’t make me an honest woman, perhaps you’ll mount me in the style to which I’ve become accustomed.”
He finished his wine and joined her in the bedroom. She was naked already. Oddly enough, her bust was less prominent without the confinement of clothing; but wonderfully warm when he buried his face there.
The Viper fancied he could smell the French capital.
The odor was a pungent blend of horseshit, coal smoke, and perfume. Likely it was imagination, a lingering sense-memory from his last visit. A sign at a crossroads pointed the way to the village of Pontoise, three miles distant.
A pistol barked.
His mare pitched between the traces. The shot was so close a stench of sulfur swept Paris away from her nostrils. Her master hauled back on the lines with both hands. That kept him busy while the man who’d fired stepped into the road facing him with a fresh pistol in his right hand. The one he’d fired smoked in the left.
“Stand to! Just twitch, and it’s a ball between your eyes.”
The man wore a jerkin over a filthy shirt and trousers and a greasy tricorne hat cocked over one eye. The one visible was red as a cherry. A twisted nose ended in a hook. His bared teeth alternated gold with black, like the Indian corn the Americans were always trying to fob off as a New World delicacy.
The Viper sat motionless, still holding the lines. His pistol remained in his belt. “Stay calm. You’re welcome to my purse, such as it is. I’m not carrying anything worth my life.”
The red eye flicked toward the back of the cart. His victim crept a hand toward his belt.
Cold touched the bone behind his left ear: The steel of a musket. “A twitch, my friend said.”
He left the hand where it was. He had not heard the man’s companion creeping up from behind.
“Throw it out, friend. Let’s hear it hit the ground.”
He tugged out the pistol and flung it to the side. It struck the earth with a thud.
“I knowed he had it!” Tricorne’s tone was shrill. “I wanted to draw him out was all.”
“’Course you did, Crusher. I’m just here to shut the back door, like we agreed.” The muzzle pressed tighter against the Viper’s mastoid. “Now stand down and show us what’s in the cart.”
Crusher’s friend had a seaside drawl; the other’s was gutter Paris.
The Viper stepped to the ground, and with two firearms following his progress circled to the back of the cart and flung back the canvas covering the valise. The man with the musket looked disappointed. He was fair, younger and taller than his companion, and wore a blue uniform coat shorn of insignia, filthy breeches, and broken stovepipe boots. A military deserter, beyond doubt. “Empty your pockets.”
The Viper hesitated, for effect. Crusher’s pistol burrowed into his lower back. The Viper drew out his wallet. His hand shook, the thumb exposing the corner of a five-pound note.
Crusher snatched the wallet, lowering the pistol to dig inside.
His partner spread the Viper’s coat with the muzzle of his musket. “What’s in the belt?”
“Communiques. Nothing of value.”
“Take it off.”
He fumbled with the buckle. His fingers were like sash weights, clumsy and inert. He cautioned himself not to overplay his hand.
“Crusher.”
The man in the tricorne hat obeyed, stepping in to tug at the belt, turning his pistol aside.
The Viper jerked the dagger from its scabbard under his left arm, jammed it into Crusher’s body just above the pelvis, and jerked it upward, opening flesh to the spleen.
The bandit gasped. His partner stepped back, leveling his musket. The Viper tucked Crusher’s arm under his, gripped the hand holding the pistol, and jerked Crusher’s own finger against the trigger. Steel struck flint, flint sparked, powder ignited, and the ball struck the deserter’s chest with a thump. The impact flung him onto his back, still holding the long-barreled weapon across his abdomen, which stained quickly with blood.
Crusher, held upright only by the arm pinning his to his body, worked his mouth. The Viper leaned his ear close to the lips, taking care not to step in the pile of intestines at his feet. It was one of his ambitions to partake of the wisdom of the dying at the moment of Understanding.
He was disappointed, as always. The man gulped at the air like a landed fish, then his knees folded and his weight became too much to support. His killer released him. He fell in a twisting motion, drawing the letter S with his body in the stained gravel of the road.
The Viper wiped his blade on the dead man’s jerkin, retrieved his bank notes from cramped fingers, and stepped over to rescue his wallet and pistol from the dust. He changed hands on the pistol to put away his notes and the wallet.
A flint cracked.
He heard the pop of powder catching just in time to turn. The musket roared. Heat struck his right side, burning flesh and fabric.
The man with the musket had found strength to sit up, point his weapon, and snatch at the trigger. The flare leapt three feet, setting the Viper’s clothes afire.
He staggered back a step, aimed, and fired. It was his off hand; he shot high. The ball entered Musket’s right eye. The fulminate of mercury in the ball expanded against the resistance of gray-matter, spraying lead shrapnel and turning his head into a pink cloud studded with chips of skull.
The Viper swung open his smoldering coat and tore his shirt from his breeches. He’d bled down his hip.
He probed at the wound, clenching his teeth. His fingers found a hard knot an inch below the skin. He’d hoped it was a crease only, but the ball had entered.
Extract it himself? What if it had shattered a bone? That led to infection.
He folded his handkerchief and jammed it under his courier’s belt, binding the patch to the wound. He mounted the dog cart, holding the bandage in place and making soothing noises to calm the agitated mare. When the animal responded, settling down, he turned it toward Pontoise.
He’d planned to avoid attention by staying out of provincial villages on the way to Paris. But he was unlikely to find medical attention in rural country.
The pain had started, a dull ache that would become a lancing throb, this much he knew. He felt himself growing light-headed, the blood pouring away from his brain.
“Fool,” he said to himself. He’d been thinking miles ahead instead of a yard at a time, in a troubled nation crawling with predators. He’d made the cardinal error of considering himself unique.
Shabby fate for an international assassin, to die on a goat-path at the hands of a common highwayman, and a corpse at that.
Was there a doctor in the village? Small enough chance, but a chance just the same.
In her boudoir in Pontoise, Marianne Deauville was as skilled with her body as with a needle, but she was a difficult act to follow. Dr. Eslée came quickly. They lay side by side catching their breath when someone knocked on her front door. It was the rapid tapping of Eslée’s serving girl. He had a patient.