Joanna Bourne - The Forbidden Rose

“Then we stick close. Keep up, or I swear I’ll leave you behind.” He gave her a single, impatient look.

She did more than keep up. She knew this city, as Adrian did not. Knew when the carriage turned toward the Pont Neuf. They slipped through the slow traffic of the quay and crossed the bridge ahead of it.

At the Conciergerie Prison, the carriage stopped outside the gate. One garde descended. He returned in only a minute and the carriage started off again. They had been turned away. There was not room for even one more prisoner at that great stronghold.

Then deeper into the oldest parts of Paris. A long way. She knew the Sorbonne and the Section Sainte-Geneviève as one knows the tiles of one’s kitchen. She took small streets in the labyrinth, making guesses how the carriage would turn. A coach could go no faster than walking pace here, and the driver wore a Phrygian cap, bright red, visible for a quarter mile.

The carriage stopped again. On Rue Tessier. This time the man returned nodding and satisfied. They were admitted. She had a glimpse of Guillaume, in the middle of gardes, every path of escape blocked, hurried along, into the prison.

She left Adrian outside the prison gate and staggered away, out of sight, around the corner. In the alleyway she put a hand on the wall to hold herself up and was sick once more. Her heart beat so hard, it shook her whole body.

“They took him inside.” Adrian came back to report, limping and tight lipped.

She was shaking. Whether it was fear, or running so fast across Paris, or being so sick, she could not say.

The boy said, “The carriage left. The men from the Garde went with it.”

She pressed the heels of her hands hard into her belly. “I must . . . I must go into the prison and tell them it is a mistake. Convince them.”

“You try to go in there, I’ll hurt you.”

“You don’t understand.” Her head was filled with a roaring darkness where she could not think or remember or make herself speak. “If I wait till he is charged and the papers are filed at the Tribunal, there will be no way out for him. For an hour, now, there may be something I can do. I will talk to them—”

Adrian put himself in front of her, inches away, grim and unboylike. “What is that place?”

“A prison. Once a convent. Now it is a prison. Wait. Don’t speak for a minute. I must think.”

She breathed deep, trying to set aside the fear and the sickness. Victor had done this. The accusation had already been filed, the arrest order prepared last night. It was too late to bribe and reason and plead.

“You’re sick as a dog, ain’t you?” the boy said. “Your eyes look funny. All dark. You eat opium?”

“No. Of course not. Let me think.”

It had been too late before she drank coffee this morning. Before Guillaume escorted her home. Before Victor walked into the streets to instruct the gardes. The soldiers had been lying in wait. Victor expected Guillaume to come to her house, sooner or later, and had set his trap and waited.

“You pregnant?”

“What? No. It is—” Another pang hit her stomach. “I ate something that does not agree with me. Anyone might do that.” She staggered when she pushed herself away from the wall. “This is the Convent of Saint-Barthélémy. They are using such houses now for prisoners, since we have no more nuns and a plentitude of prisoners.”

She went to the end of the alley to see this prison where Guillaume had been taken. Where he would be held until Victor had him killed.

This was a very old convent, built like a fortress. A long, blank stone wall faced the street. Over it, she could see the roof of the church and a chapel window of red and blue glass that had escaped destruction. Spikes topped the wall. A man with a long gun patrolled the streets.

“No matter how many die, the prisons are always full. There is a dreadful mathematics to this.” Her eyes hurt with the light so that she could not see clearly. Inside her, though, everything was dark and cold. “Guillaume’s name is already on the rolls of the Tribunal.”

“Don’t faint. I’ll hit you if you faint. And don’t cry.”

“I am not crying.” She closed her eyes. “Though I may be sick again. Very possibly.”

“You do that and I’m gonna walk off and leave you. I swear it. Damn it to hell and back. That old bitch is going to fry me like a kipper. She’ll never believe I didn’t do this on purpose.”

What old bitch? But it did not matter. “This is my fault. Victor did this.”

“I saw. Cod-swallowing bugger.” The boy’s face was blank and terrifying in the inhuman stillness that had settled there. “But Doyle’s the one who stepped in it. He shouldn’t have gone anywhere near your house. You want to blame somebody, blame Doyle.”

“I will. I will also get him out of there.” Now I know his name. He is Doyle. Doyle. “I must go somewhere and sit down. We cannot stay here.”

They must go to one of the safe places of La Flèche. The wheels of her brain refused to turn, like a broken clockwork that stopped and stuck and would not start again. What is close by? What is empty? She had never permitted herself to know all the safehouses in Paris. She already carried the key to too many lives in her head.

Behind them, a voice said, “You are wise to leave here.”

Marguerite turned. A neat maidservant approached them. The girl had not appeared by sorcery. She had been so ordinary, so young, they hadn’t noticed her strolling toward them, basket over her arm, her white apron caught up in the waistband to keep it clean from the streets. She was a nursery maid, perhaps, barely past childhood herself. There were ten thousand like her in Paris. One did not see them, they were so common in the street.

But her eyes were not ordinary. Her eyes were deep and sardonic and knowing. Mocking. “If you stand in the street gaping the guards will come to ask what you are doing, loitering beside a prison for the enemies of the Republic.”

Adrian said, “I’ve seen you before.”

That particular tone meant he might draw his knife and do something drastic. Guillaume was not here to stop him, so she must. “Be quiet, Adrian. Do nothing unless I tell you.”

“Yes, boy. Be quiet.” The girl dimpled. “You saw me scrubbing a doorstep, perhaps. I have been interested in you for a while.” Slanted brown eyes turned to her. “I will say, very quickly, that one may smell the roses in the gardens nearby, if the wind is right, before this bloodthirsty boy attacks me.”

She is one of us. A member of La Flèche. “The roses are lovely, but it is forbidden to pick them. Who are you?”

“I am Owl. I was told to help you, if it seemed necessary. It now does. I know more passwords, if you would like to exchange them as well.”

Owl. She is one of Jean-Paul’s. He has spoken of her. I had not thought she would be so very young.

Adrian said, “I don’t like people who take an interest in me, Owl.”

“Then you must strive to be more boring, must you not? And you, citoyenne.” She shifted her gaze. “If you permit, I will find a fiacre and take you to a hiding place. We will send for the Gardener.”

Jean-Paul. Yes. I need Jean-Paul.

What was she to do with Adrian? La Flèche had saved dozens of Englishmen over the years. Harboring English spies was altogether different. He shouldn’t see Owl or hear the passwords or go to a safehouse. She couldn’t begin to think of what he should not be hearing.

How much of a spy could he be, a boy this age?

But they would arrest even a boy this young. Someone might have seen him with Guillaume.

What are they doing to Guillaume?

“The stable loft in the house of women is empty,” the girl said. “We can go there. Only a few of our havens are empty today.”

Adrian said, “Anyone could know six or eight words. I know them myself now. That doesn’t make you anything special.”

“And you are a great fool. If I wished you harm, I would raise my voice and call that guard to denounce you. It is the work of a minute. I do not have to waste my time exchanging passwords with a fool.”

They would argue for an hour. “Enough. We must leave. Owl, go first, so they do not ask why we are meeting here.”

“Bien. The guard looks this way.” Owl nodded and pointed down the street, as if she had been asked a question and answered it. “I will lead. Don’t come too closely after me.”

She bounced off cheerfully, the ribbons on her cap streaming behind her.

“She thinks she’s clever.” The boy glowered. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Tell me where.”

Victor would already be searching. Every moment on the street, they were in danger. “We will trust her.”

“You trust her. I’m not going to.” They stayed till the girl was almost out of sight before they walked after her, down the street.

DOYLE SET HIS BACK TO THE WALL AND LET HIS legs collapse out from underneath him and slid down to sit on the floor, hugging his knees.

No one was looking. He put his head on his arm and took some breaths. His skin pulled tight over a core of ice inside. Damn, but he was afraid.

I’m going to die.

He picked the knowledge up and looked it over. His death. Here in France. Soon. Everybody has a time and place waiting for him. This is my time. My place. Now I know. Funny in a way. His father always said he’d hang. Looked like he was wrong about that.

No love lost between him and the earl. When he was a boy, he’d do some damn fool thing. Some typical boys’ nonsense. He’d get called to his father’s study and caned till he couldn’t lie on his back in bed. He always wondered what he’d done to make his father hate him so much.