The Black Hawk

Twelve

SHE WAS NO INFANT IN THIS BUSINESS OF SPYING. She was on the rolls of the Secret Police, working for Madame and the great spy Soulier. For them, Justine became the servant girl, passing without notice, lingering and listening, gathering up whispers and rumors. For them, she had crept into the confidence of the tariff smugglers of Paris and kept their lookout and walked their secret ways. She had become a trusted member of La Flèche and plucked men and women from the very shadow of the guillotine. For two years, she had been a spy.

This was the first mission she had planned by herself. This time, there was no one to turn to for advice and direction. When she stepped her way silently downward, she was on her own, and her stomach was filled with spears of ice.

The stairway wall held samplers worked by the Cachés. There was sufficient light coming from the hall below to read the stitching. I live to serve France. The next one said, I will die to do my duty to France. The house was filled with such cheerful mottoes.

She felt Hawker’s silent comments follow behind her as she descended. She ignored him. She carried her gun exactly as if she had killed battalions of men. It was comforting to play the role of an experienced spy, even if she fooled no one but herself.

Hawker broke into the Coach House with a panache that spoke of many houses invaded, many schemes brought to illegal fruition. She had no such confidence. But everyone must begin somewhere. He had no special monopoly on death.

The stage was set, the curtain rising. The Tuteurs of this Coach House, Hawker and his comrade Pax, the Cachés . . . they were all committed to the drama she had plotted. She was committed as well. There was no going back.

Hawker’s job was to prod the Cachés on their way. He would be impatient and sarcastic and uncaring, what the English would call “damn your eyes.” The Cachés would believe him because rudeness is always convincing. Those who wish one ill are all amiability.

She was their last defense. If they were discovered, she would delay pursuers and give the others a chance to get away.

She had come to the bottom of the stairs where the banister ended in a soft curve, worn by many hands. She took the last steps carefully, her muscles thick and slow with fear. Her heart thudded inside the tightness of her chest, as if her whole body were a fist squeezed around that beat. Her mind was sharp as broken glass.

She was sourly afraid. Sick with it. Some dispassionate part of her spirit looked at herself, being afraid. I will not let fear control me. If I do, I will become nothing. I will not do that. Never again. She wrapped up the fear to be a small, whining bundle tucked away inside herself. She had learned to do this in moments of great danger. This was why Madame had taken her as protégée.

To the right, down the long corridor, forty feet away, a dim lamp cupped a yellow glow that sketched out the doors on both sides of the hall in oblong shadows. To her left, in a mirror beside the front door, the lamp reflected like a tiny star, hung deep and distant. The mirror was not here to set a hair ribbon straight or comb the hair. It held a view of the upper and lower halls. One would see every movement in the house. The mirrors in the halls of the Pomme d’Or were given the same work.

The gun she carried felt natural in her hand. Endless hours of practice made it so. Perhaps I will kill tonight. I have told Madame she may use me for such work. I am ready.

She was young. Thirteen. But someday, she would become the kind of woman who walked in the dark and carried a gun and performed great acts. Someday, she would not even be afraid.

She rounded the newel post. The reflection of the candle in the mirror disappeared and reappeared as she crossed the hall.

There were no obstructions to avoid on her way to the front door. No cabinets or cases or chairs to rest in. No small tables carrying a graceful statue or a Chinese vase. The masters of the Coach House were men of grim ideology and small, meager vision.

At the front door of the house, she slid the bolt, disengaging metal from metal in utmost silence, and lifted the latch. The door swung in well-oiled discipline, making no noise, playing its part in her schemes. The night slid past her into the hall.

The open door was a deception and a distraction for the Tuteurs. It would send them searching the courtyard before they went upstairs and found the gaping hole in the plaster. She gained three minutes of delay and confusion to cover their retreat, just by opening the door. If the worst happened, she would run this way.

She slipped down the hall to stand beside the parlor door, her back to the plaster, the gun fully cocked now, upheld in both hands, cradled between her breasts, muzzle upward. Her clothes were soaked in dirty sweat. Inside her, she was an endless ocean of cold.

Hawker went about his work with due care. There was no sound from the upstairs hall and no light fell upon the stairs. There was only the distant night candle, twitching in the great dark, and the infinitesimal answering light in the mirror.

She set her ear against the plaster. She could make out a buzz in the parlor, a slow rhythm of exchange, back and forth. She heard the masculine voices, not the words. She did not know—and Madame had not been able to ascertain—how many of the Tuteurs still survived and were in Paris. But Gravois and Patelin, the Tuteurs who oversaw the daily running of the Coach House, would be here. Tonight, they would be on edge. They were familiar with every creak of every board of this house. No one could be more dangerous.

From their tone, the men in the parlor spoke of some serious subject. Perhaps they made plans. There was a sense of purpose and organization in the shape of speech and response.

She listened for any pause in the give and take of men’s voices. That would mean they had heard something.

Her finger was a light caress on the trigger guard. She would kill the first man through the door, easily. Then she would be left with only her knife. She was no dreamer. She could not win in a knife fight against the trained killers who ruled the Coach House. They were twice her size, three times her age, with a thousand times her experience.

A vision filled her mind. Her own death, vivid and red. Falling under knives and gunshot and the blows of boots, messily splattering her blood in this spartan hallway, across these well-scrubbed boards, onto the whitewashed walls and the trite political cross-stitch.

She shut the thought away. She would picture only what she must do. If they came out of the parlor, she would shoot, drop her gun, and run. She’d planned her path across the courtyard. The best route up and over the wall. She would escape into the streets and leave them shouting and bewildered behind her.

She did not fidget. She knew how to stand long hours without moving. She relaxed each muscle except those she needed to hold the gun. She did not burn up her strength.

When she was eleven and her parents had died and she was betrayed into the child brothel by her parents’ friend, she had learned to stand perfectly still. It had been a fancy of that house that the children played nymphs and fauns. They stood naked beside the dinner tables, draped with woven garlands of flowers, holding a lamp or a tray. Sometimes they were covered with fine white powder so they would resemble statues. They stood still as statues, hour after hour.

She was not beaten when she trembled from weariness and failed in this game. They whipped Séverine instead.

This was another house where children were beaten when they did not please their masters. She would enjoy killing Citoyens Patelin or Gravois or whoever was unwise enough to walk through this door first. The blood spattering these walls would be theirs.

They did not deal with the innocent daughter of the noble house of DeCabrillac. That child was gone forever. They faced Justine DuMotier, agent of the Police Secrète. She had not been destroyed. She did not give her enemies that victory.

Outside, the wind shifted and nosed into the hall with a sound like breathing. She narrowed her mind to this moment only and then to the next moment that came after it and did not think any more about dying or the failure of this mission. Madame said, “There is a mighty army of what could be. Do not exhaust yourself fighting it.”

Time passed. And passed.

Her eyes had become so accustomed to the darkness that she saw when the empty, dark space at the top of the stairs grew faintly light. She heard, not voices, but the softest shuffle of feet. A scrape against a wall. The Cachés were climbing into the hole in the wall. Escaping. Good. Good.

Minutes passed, heavy as if they were cast in lead.

Inside the parlor, a chair grated on the floor. The voices fell silent.

They’d heard something. She swallowed. Gathered herself to fight. Tensed her legs, her arms, her shoulders. Prepared to spring and shoot the instant the door opened.

Evil chances poured through her mind. Her death, Hawker’s death, and terrible revenge upon the Cachés. Madame disgraced. Séverine alone in a country at war.

My fault. Everything. My fault. Suddenly and completely, she understood what it meant to be the one in charge.

Don’t think of that. It’s almost time. Be steady. She laid her finger beside the trigger with immense care. The pistol was perfectly still in her hands. She listened for the scrape of the door. Soon, she would turn and fire. I am not afraid.

When she ran, they would follow her out into the street. Hawker and his friend could kill at least one man. She was sure of it. Maybe two. Hawker’s reputation said he could kill a man.

Blood pounded in her ears. She held her breath, listening.

In the parlor, the rhythm of speech began again.

So it was not discovery. Not disaster. Not yet. She removed her touch to the trigger. This was worse than fear, this reprieve. She was filled with nausea and cold, trembling. It was hard to keep her breath even and quiet. Words of a psalm repeated in her mind, stately, full of weight. I will fear no evil. I will fear no evil. She held on to those words. She, who had given up belief in God long ago.

Then Hawker was at the top of the stairs, casting a gray, stepped shadow, coming downward on its path, making no sound. He was beside her, unexpected because he moved so quickly, as if there were no distance across this hall.

He set his fingers on the barrel of her gun to say, “Put that down.” Made a motion to say, “We’ve finished here. Come,” and, “Good job. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

She lowered the gun, uncocked it, and tucked it away in the pouch under her shirt. The Cachés were on their way. It was done.

There was light outside.

Hawker turned the same instant she did. The window and the open space of the door lit up. Someone was in the courtyard, carrying a lantern, walking quickly toward the house, making little noises.

There was time, barely time, to throw herself across the hall to the far wall. To take one side of the front door as Hawker took the other.

The hall filled with light. A man stepped into the doorway.