Giroud, the spy, Eslée noted, appeared to have discovered a cure for his watery bowels.
As his physician, Eslée should have been happy; but even if it bent his oath a bit, he’d welcome one more night of hasty trips to the facility for the spy.
It was growing late. He was afraid that if Marianne was forced to wait much longer, she’d change her mind.
He stood at a window in darkness, watching the figure in the tanner’s doorway opposite his consulting room. Nearly two hours had passed since the so-called records clerk had relieved Blaq at his post, and Giroud had shown no sign of physical distress. Was he wearing a diaper?
This explanation, indelicate as it was, had just occurred to him when Giroud emerged from the doorway and started round the corner to the tavern, his feet moving with grim urgency.
Eslée waited a moment, in case it was a ruse, then swung into action.
He had on a cloak and hat. He went out, unlatched the door of the carriage house, and brought the dog cart and mare, hitched already, to the back door. He found his patient sitting up on the couch, wearing his own hat and coat over a shirt and breeches from his valise. His courier’s belt was buckled round his middle, loosely to avoid chafing his fresh bandages, and his dagger was in his belt-sheath.
He held his pistol in one hand, pointed at the doorway. Eslée froze in his tracks.
Meuchel—or whatever his name was in truth—tucked the weapon under his waistband. “I had to be sure it was you.”
He started to rise. He looked pale in the light spilling from the consulting room, but he wasn’t perspiring. When the doctor stepped forward to help, he waved him away. He pushed himself upright.
“How do you do it?” Eslée said. “It’s been only four days.”
“I have a good doctor.”
Once outside, he accepted help climbing onto the seat of the cart. Eslée started to join him.
“My valise.”
Eslée went back for it and put it behind the seat. The man’s obsession with his bag was mysterious. It contained nothing but clothing and books and a kit for cleaning and oiling his pistol.
The horse was obedient; probably it had become bored with inaction. They hadn’t far to go, but they moved slowly to avoid jolting the recovering passenger. God, let Giroud’s session on the toilet last long enough for our purposes! When they passed through the light from a window, Meuchel’s jaw was clenched, but still he made no sound of pain.
At last they took the turning that brought them behind Marianne’s house, dimly illumined by a single lamp. The back door opened the moment he drew rein. He saw her silhouette briefly inside the frame, and knew by the way she held her left arm that she held poor León’s bayonet.
When Eslée helped his patient inside, she set the blade down on the table where she and the doctor dined and played chess, and came forward to take his other arm.
“Thank you, Madame. I regret the imposition.”
She hesitated, possibly surprised by his flawless dialect. No doubt she’d expected bad French with a coarse Teutonic accent.
“At least you’re polite.”
Eslée shared her curiosity. To his dying day, he would wonder about Major Meuchel’s ethnic origins. Through all the turns in his life, the small victories and great tragedies, the man would seldom be far from his thoughts.
She hadn’t expected a man so well set up. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but his features were regular, and though she was sure he was suffering, his posture made him look taller than he was. Perhaps he was a military man after all. His eyes were a smoky color she associated with meadow frost, and their expression was frank.
If this was the impression he made when ailing, she regretted not having met him in the peak of health.
He slept in her bed. This was no hardship. When she worked late, she simply drew a blanket over herself in her rocking chair. She didn’t sleep well under the best circumstances; had anyone, who’d seen what she had, done what she’d done to survive? Poor León had rescued her from all that, but she’d never expected that situation to last, and she’d been right.
For the stranger, at least, it would be an improvement over the stiff couch in the doctor’s examining room. She had painful memories of spontaneous passion there, followed by a week of spinal purgatory.
That first night outside her room, Charles seized her hands. “I have to go. You’re a saint.” He kissed them.
“And to think a few hours ago I was only a heroine. It must be a battlefield promotion.”
“If he wakes up hungry, let him eat what he wants. He’s strong enough now for solid food.”
“He’ll eat what I give him. I’m not running an inn.”
After he left, she looked in on her guest. His eyes were closed, his breathing even. He didn’t snore or talk in his sleep. A gentleman even when insensible.
She would have to watch this one.
Eslée drove back as quickly as he dared, detouring onto a side street to approach his house from behind. He lost no time unhitching the mare and putting it and the cart away in the carriage house. He was eager to get back to his window and learn if Giroud was still indisposed.
“Dr. Eslée.”
He was fumbling out his latchkey when the speaker stepped forward from darkness. His heart lurched.
“Citizen Giroud! You gave me a turn.”
“Why, Doctor? Have you something to hide?”
The records clerk was androgynous, with a high voice, womanly hips, and a suggestion of breasts under his frilled shirt. He wore the same flat-brimmed hat and tailcoat in all seasons.
“I thought I was alone. Only a few days ago, two men were slain just outside the village in a falling-out between thieves or somesuch. It puts a man on edge.”
“So Monsieur Blaq informed me. You were quite interested in the case.”
“Constable Malroux asked me to examine the corpses.”
“Where were you just now? I knocked at your door.”
“Why? Are you ill?”
“My question first, Doctor.”
“If you must know, I came out for air.”
“Is the air in your house staler tonight than usual?”
“Is your stomach in distress, Giroud? I can give you apricot oil.”
Giroud blushed. “The, ah, effect of that particular treatment has been rather the opposite of its purpose.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps you should change your diet. I advise patients who complain of constipation to leave off eating boiled fruits. If you were to reverse that prescription—”
“That doesn’t seem very different from apricot oil.”
“I’m a physician, not a scientist. I don’t always know why the treatments I suggest work, only that they do.”
“Or don’t, as in my case.”
“What have you to lose? And stewed pears can be quite tasty.”
“We’re drifting off the subject, Doctor. There’s a war on, and a curfew’s in effect. I should report you.”
“What makes that the duty of a records clerk?”
“Upholding the law is every citizen’s responsibility.”
“War or no war, there’s no law against strolling in one’s own backyard.”
“I heard a hinge squeak a few moments ago. Were you in your carriage house?”
Dangerous to deny it. Any curiosity on the part of this spy might lead to a search of the building, and a connection to the wheel tracks at the scene of the double killing.
“I looked in on my gelding. Madame Jote is expecting any day. It’s a long ride out. I can’t afford to have the animal take sick in the damp.”
“Did you find it well?”
“Very much so, thank you.”
“Still, perhaps I should have a look. My uncle was a very fine veterinarian, you know. I served as his apprentice for a year. It turned out I didn’t share his gift, but I learned some things.”
“Thank you, but it’s not necessary. The horse is fine.”
“But as long as I’m here.”
The tips of Eslée’s ears burned. He riffled through his card-box of excuses.
A long, ominous, gurgling rumble issued from Giroud’s stomach. He doubled over; and to his credit managed to turn it into a bow of leave-taking, marred ever so slightly by a Homeric fart.
“I just remembered I have work that can’t wait. I must offer my services another time. Good night, Doctor.”
“Good night, Citizen. Consider those stewed pears.”
He was speaking to Giroud’s coattails, flapping above clenched buttocks.
A temporary reprieve. Eslée fretted about that cart and horse throughout the night. It was evidence that could put him to arrest and torture.
But where else could they be hidden?
Marianne had no outbuildings. The carriage house would be searched, that was inevitable, and when its contents were exposed, both households examined. He’d placed Marianne in his own dangerous position, just as she’d suggested.
He sat up abruptly before dawn, determined to come clean and warn her. It would mean the end of their relationship; but what of that? A monk’s life was light penance.
Dressing, he realized he was being selfish. He was only trying to clear his conscience. She was better off ignorant. Innocence was difficult to pretend, and Fouché’s interrogators were practiced in detecting lies and excavating the truth, ruinously and at great length.
The burden was his alone. He dared not share it, even with the woman whose life meant—
More than my own; was that where he was headed?
“Charles René Eslée,” he said aloud, “if you’re not married to this woman by the end of Thermidor, you’re a donkey, and I want no more to do with you.” He went back to bed, to sleep the sleep of the guilty.
Marianne found herself humming over her sewing.
It annoyed her greatly. She was a woman who concentrated on her work, neither enjoying nor disliking it unless something went wrong. Work was work, and complaining about it or taking pleasure in it didn’t shave a second off getting it done. Whenever she heard some lout whistling as he dumped out a bucket of slops or shoveled horseshit into a pile, she knew him for an idiot. She would whistle when she was paid.
Why, then, was she humming? And an insipid little romantic jingle from her childhood at that?
There was a man in the house, to be sure. One comely enough, with a spice of danger that brought back memories of her romantic youth, which she’d thought buried with the victims of the guillotine. How could mere fancy survive the events since 1793?
The weeks succeeding the King’s execution had been harrowing. Brigands swarmed the countryside, believing that the natural order of society had broken down and all laws were suspended indefinitely. She’d caught one of the scum leering at her through the window of her bedroom when she was undressing, and had chased him all the way out to the street, wearing nothing but her stockings and brandishing a pair of shears for a weapon.
She no longer needed a brawny champion, to barter his services for ten sweaty minutes abusing her snatch. The Revolution had made everyone equal, genders included, and put an end to the rite of the caveman; the stranger’s strength, obvious despite his present condition, wasn’t why she felt happy sharing her roof with him.
Or was it?
A woman wearied of being self-sufficient, and longed to lean against a firm breast and feel safe. Eslée was a good man, an attentive lover, but she could no more see him dispatching two bandits in the space of as many heartbeats than she could imagine a faithful terrier vanquishing a pack of wolves. He would try; but it would end in tragedy.
“Ouf!” She pricked her finger; rare event. She prided herself on her concentration. She sucked at the wound, tasting salt and iron.
“You’ve hurt yourself. May I help?”
She looked up sharply. She’d heard fewer than a half-dozen words from Eslée’s patient, and his faultless French had so distracted her she’d failed to note the pleasing timbre of his voice.
He stood in the bedroom doorway, wearing the same shirt and breeches: A hasty cleansing of his wound and changing of bandages had been all Eslée could manage considering the restraints of time. With one foot placed before the other and a hand bracing his weight against the doorframe, he looked like one of those heroic Renaissance statues the First Consul had brought back from Italy and scattered throughout Paris.
He wasn’t wearing the bulky belt she’d noticed when she’d helped him to bed. Perhaps he’d put it in the valise Charles had brought in. Such belts always contained something valuable.
Which explained the pistol and dagger still in his waistband.
She snatched off the spectacles she used for close work; they weren’t flattering.
“Thank you, monsieur, but no. It’s a hazard of my occupation. You shouldn’t be up. Are you hungry?”
“That can wait. I’m bedsore and bored. If you’ll let me sit here with you, I promise I won’t disturb.”
She inclined her head toward the chair Charles always sat in.
“They say boredom is as good a sign as hunger. If so, I am in the best of health. I welcome the disturbance.”
He made his way to the seat, touching the back of her rocker briefly for its support. She had the queer feeling he was play-acting, and not as weak as he appeared.
A lock of hair had fallen over his right eyebrow. He wore it long, against current fashion. She found it a relief from the shorn heads that filled the village. Ears that stuck out like jug-handles offended her taste.
As she sewed, she found herself looking up from under her lashes at his hands resting on the arms of the chair: large hands, with thick veins like ship’s rigging on the backs. One could sense a great deal about a man from his hands (not that old charwoman’s legend about proportions in one area echoing those in another; she was a woman of the world, and had seen the flaws in that theory), but things like strength and endurance were to be found in a man’s hands. Charles’s were narrow and delicate in appearance, well-suited to healing, but in other areas he was a sprinter rather than a long-distance runner. In bed she invariably finished second, when she finished at all.
“You’re a machine, Madame.”
She looked up quickly, her cheeks warm. Without her glasses she’d been working almost entirely by feel, her experienced fingers moving swiftly, making up for shortsightedness, like a blind man’s hearing and touch. It was this display of industry that had caused his remark, not her impure thoughts: No man could read a woman’s mind. In self-disgust she hooked the spectacles back on, and saw immediately her stitches were crooked.
“Not a bit of it. I’m vain of my aging eyes; and now I must undo all I’ve done.” She bit off the thread and tugged it free.
“Strong teeth, too. I admire a woman who takes care of such things.”
“You’re very observant for a man.” She threw away the tangle of thread and reloaded her needle.
“Have you and Dr. Eslée been friends for long?”
“Not in terms of years. I did some dress work for his former wife, and he set my late husband’s leg when he fell off his ladder—he was a house painter before he became a soldier. I consoled the doctor when his wife left him, and he comforted me when poor León was killed.”
“You’re lovers?”
She concentrated on her sewing for thirty seconds. “You’re presumptuous, Major.”
“I didn’t mean to offend.”
“I don’t offend that easily; but I’m jealous of my privacy.”
“Then you are lovers.”
“That language is old-fashioned. We fuck, monsieur.”
He smiled; or so she thought. The muscles of both his face and body seemed to reserve their power for more important things.
A dangerous man. She felt the downy growth rise on the nape of her neck.
“I find you refreshing, Madame Deauville.”
“You may as well call me Marianne, if there’s to be no pretense between us.”
He smiled in truth, exposing strong teeth of his own.
“And I am Franz.”