The Black Hawk

Thirty-five

SHE WOKE. LIGHT CAME THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF the café. What woke her, though, was the scritch of broom on pavement and the clatter of pails. The sweepers were out, raking up the fallen leaves, making the Palais Royale fit for another day.

Happiness rested in the small of her stomach, like coals in a hand warmer. I have been unwise again. With Hawker.

It felt very good. When she woke up after having been with him, she felt clean. She felt as if he had touched every part of her and burned it clean with fire.

Sometime in the night Hawker had raised himself to sitting and eased her head into his lap. She had slept so deeply she had not noticed. Or if she woke momentarily, it was with the knowledge she was safe and she let herself slip into sleep again.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. They had not undressed altogether last night, but Hawker was half naked. She had kissed his chest again and again, following the lines of his muscles.

He slept sitting up, his head leaned against the wall, his eyes closed. His right arm was lax at his side. His left arm lay across her and held her.

He had a face like those carved on ancient Greek coins, with straight nose and strong, full lips. His skin was dark with sun, brown even on his chest. In Milan he had passed himself off as a fisherman and worked on the boats, wearing few unnecessary clothes. His beard had grown diligently in the night, as it did. This was not the first time she had awakened beside him.

He could not be of English blood, not with that face. Pole, Gypsy, Lascar, Jew, Greek, Italian, or some joining of nations. He disappeared into a crowd in the Milanese market like a sparrow into a flock of sparrows. His mother had been a whore, he said. His father might be anyone. Hawker might be half French and his father a man from Marseille or Nîmes.

“I’m awake.” He did not open his eyes.

“I know that.” She followed that lie with a truth, just to keep him guessing. “I was admiring you.” She told him the truth fairly often. Not from principle or calculation, just for the simplicity of it.

With that he smiled down at her. “I’m like a porcupine.” He stroked the stubble. It was a wholly masculine gesture, that. Men never really stopped being proud of the ability to grow a beard.

She took his forearm and used it to pull herself up to sitting. Then she held his hand in her lap. She could have read his palm, if she’d been a Gypsy.

The thought of Gypsies and fortune-telling had come to her in the night and stayed with her, past waking. She must talk to him about that, later. “What time do you think it is?”

“Before six.”

Footsteps shuffled. Voices gradually filled the arcade outside. She could not make out the words, but the tone was comfortable, unexcited, discussing small, ordinary things. Men and boys and some women too were on their way to work in the cafés and shops of the Palais Royale. The creak and clank of a pushcart was fruits and vegetables being delivered to the cafés and restaurants. Outside, at the door of the café, came a faint thump. That would be the earliest newspapers of the day, dropped at the door.

She had slept solidly for two hours, but it left her only a little rested. Her brain was full of the smell and taste of Hawker until she had very little room to think. She wished they could make love again, now, in the daylight.

I have tried and tried to make myself a woman who is not ruled by her emotions. I have failed, somewhat.

“The owners of this café will arrive soon. They must clean or restock or squeeze lemons or some such thing. I will admit I have not the least idea what one does in a café when the doors are closed.”

“Water the wine. Cut the bread thin. Chop up cats for the paté.”

He’d taken his hand from hers to hold her forearm, so they were linked, arm to arm. She had seen this on old vases taken out from under the earth in Italy. It was the way antique warriors greeted comrades.

She said, “We do not eat paté of cats in Paris, whatever may be the custom of London.”

“London. Cat-eating capital of Europe.”

It was natural as sunlight to wake up and talk to Hawker this way. She was warm through her whole body because their hands were wrapped upon one another’s arms. Neither of them wanted to be the first to let go.

It was always left to the woman to be wise. She opened her hand and drew away from him. She untangled her knees from the complexity of skirts and squirmed herself off the benches. They were separate now.

She said, “I must find water and wash and become civilized.”

“Me too.” His eyes had become like the points of knives. “I have an unpleasant interview to get through.”

He had spent some of the night while she slept, planning. He would not turn Paxton over to his superiors without a fight.

Hawker rose and angled his way across the room, around the end of the counter, and into the storage room behind. With each step, under her eye, he transformed into a man surrounded by an aura of cold. Adrian the spy. The Black Hawk.

“The owners of this café,” she raised her voice, “will hope to find me gone, without trace, when they arrive later this morning. No one wishes to see the Police Secrète cluttering their place of business.”

He replied from the storeroom, “Try being a thief. Now, that’s a profession that makes you unwelcome.”

She located her stockings, which had gone their stocking way along the floor last night. Her garters had accompanied them, companionably, and could also be found. She sat to draw them on.

Metallic clatter came and the sound of water pouring from the cistern and trickling into a pan.

“I have had a thought.” She said this loudly, so Hawker could hear. “It is clever, but it confuses the issue. You must tell me what you think of it.”

A soft tap from the storeroom. “Let me shave first. I can’t think when I’m doing this.” A pause followed, for the space it would take a man to finish a stroke, shaving. “I put the kettle to heat. Ten minutes and you can wash.”

“While you shave yourself in cold water. I am touched.”

There are great heroisms in the world. Hawker had saved her life once or twice, performing them. There are also small heroic acts that pass unnoticed. He was full of such attentions.

She had loosened the this and that of her clothing last night, to be comfortable. To be . . . accessible. But what she wore, she could button and tie and lace herself into, unaided. She returned herself to order. She toed into her shoes, and she was dressed and ready. The morning had most thoroughly arrived.

Yesterday’s newspapers lay in a rough pile on the counter. She took one back to the table and spread it out where she had left her gun and her kit for reloading. She always carried what she needed to reload. So many problems cannot be solved with a single bullet. She opened the little box with its powder and brushes, set her gun on the newspaper, and began.

Hawker came out a few minutes later, wiping his face with a towel, and sat on the bench next to where she worked. He’d brought a whetstone with him, which he had found somewhere, and picked up one of her knives and began refining the edge. “Have I ever talked to you about your knives?”

“Frequently.”

“It’s all in the angle. You feather out the edge every so often, because there is nothing more dangerous than a dull knife. Armies have been brought down by dull knives.”

“That is unlikely.”

“Absolute truth.” He did not test her knife with his thumb. That was for those who wished to go about with little cuts across their thumb. He lifted the edge of newspaper and sliced that, separating an illustration of bust improvers from a column of news. “Tell me this clever thought you’ve had.”

“We have words. La dame. La tour. Le fou . . .”

He nodded. He was attending to the knife, raising a rhythmic, slow grinding as he perfected the edge of the blade. One would say he was absorbed in that unless one saw his eyes. They were thinking of other things. Whirring with calculation. “Tell me.”

“Tarot.”

The single word, and his head snapped up. He stared at her, not seeing. “Nom d’un nom.”

“The card of the queen is called ‘the lady.’ La dame. The card of the tower. La tour. The card of le fou—the fool. I do not say we are wrong about chess. But that is another possibility.”

“Tarot cards. Gypsies. Gypsies come to the Palais Royale.”

“Sometimes. Mostly they are chased away again. But sometimes they bribe the gendarmes and are left in peace for a day or two to tell fortunes up and down the cafés. I did not see any yesterday.”

He set her knife down on the newspaper. He was perfectly still, going over this in his mind. He shook his head slowly. “They don’t mix in politics. Or assassination. Doesn’t make sense.”

“It does not. And yet I must explore this. I have friends among the Rom, but they come and go. I will have to track them down in the poor quartiers to the east of Paris.”

“I’ll ask around the Palais Royale. See when and where the Gypsies have been.”

“It will take days. We do not have days.” She rapped her gun impatiently upon the news sheet. Grains of black powder peppered the schedule of the First Consul’s activities for the day.

Egyptian artifacts restored to the Louvre . . . La Dame du Nil. The Lady of the Nile, brought from England . . . incomparable artwork . . . gift to the people of France . . . celebration of peace.

It was a pity peace did not really come from gifts of pretty statues.

Hawker said, “What I need is Paxton. He’s the one who knows the Rom. They take to him like a long-lost cousin, which he’s not, with his coloring. If I had him here—”

She said, “You do.”

A man stood at the window, looking in. Monsieur Paxton, who should not be here. Who should be miles away by now. “He did not have the sense to leave. Truly, I have no fear for the secrets of France if the British Service is composed of such—”

“The key,” Hawker snapped. He found it himself, instantly, on the counter. Opened the door and pulled his friend inside.

They spoke low, being vehement. Arguing. Paxton was determined upon his course. He would not run. He would surrender himself to his superiors in some madness of honor. Hawker was to accompany him and speak for him. Save him, if he could, and be with him, at the last, if he could not.

It was altogether brave and damnable of both men.

She did not wish to see Hawker’s face as the two men spoke together. Anger, she could look upon. This pain—it shouted from both of them—she did not want to see.

She measured powder into the barrel. Wrapped the bullet in a wadding of paper. Tamped it down. The gun and her knives went back to the pockets of her cloak, ready for use.

Beneath her work, scattered with black grains, a drawing looked up at her. La Dame du Nil, a statue, stiff and Egyptian. The paper read, “The director of antiquities of the Louvre, Monsieur Julien Latour, prepares to greet La Dame du Nil in her historic journey to Paris as she is restored to French hands. Napoleon will receive the English delegation at eight o’clock in a private ceremony . . . expressions of amity and friendship between nations . . .”

Latour. La tour.

“Mon Dieu.” She grabbed the paper. Back powder spilled across the table. “Look. No. Be silent. None of that matters. Look here.” She thrust it under Hawker’s eyes. “La tour. Latour. La Dame du Nil. That is la dame. The Englishman. He is the fool. Le fou. The madman. This is the assassination. Here. Now. God help us. What time is it?”

Paxton dragged a watch out. Clicked it open. “Seven.”

“We are too late.” Too late. They would never get there in time.

“Not yet.” It took Hawker one instant to take in the whole of the article. Less than an instant to know what to do. “There’s no ceremony in the history of the world that’s started on time.” He passed the paper to his friend. “Get to headquarters. Tell her I need men. I’ll go stop it. If it’s too late, we make sure that Englishman is dead before he gets questioned.”

It would be their foremost concern—that there was no Englishman. That there was no cause for war. But she must save Napoleon. She threw her cloak about her. Set her hand upon the barrel of her gun.

Hawker followed her out the door. He said, over his shoulder, to Pax, “Go. I’ll leave a trail inside the Louvre.”