Текст книги "Rook"

Автор книги: Sharon Cameron

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

The sun was high when Justin came again, saying he’d found a landover driver willing to take them to the coast, though the driver would not enter the Lower City. So they would borrow a trader’s cart to get Tom to the Seine Gate.

“But the gates are all open,” Justin said. “No gendarmes anywhere. And there’s a crowd outside.”

Sophia looked back to the fire. René was on his knees beside her, tending the cut LeBlanc had put on her arm, while Tom sat up in the bed, cleaner now but still with a beard, wearing René’s gendarme coat to cover up some of his prison raggedness. She didn’t want to think about a crowd. She was no deity, and certainly no saint. She winced as René tied the cloth tight. At least she had not needed stitches.

Justin said, “They’re also saying in the market that LeBlanc has been taken.”

Sophia frowned. She’d hoped LeBlanc was lying crushed beneath the rubble of his own prison. “Who has taken him?” René asked.

Justin shrugged. “The mob. The Lower City. They say they have him locked in a loo.” Justin glanced at Sophia once, before he looked to Tom, shifting his feet. “Do you want to see him, before you go?”

Sophia met Maggie’s quick gaze, where she sat rocking her baby. Justin was asking if Tom wanted an eye for an eye, so to speak. It was Lower City justice.

“René?” Tom said. “You have as much reason as me.”

René paused his tying and looked around at Tom, and shook his head. Tom turned back to Justin.

“Who is in charge of the city?”

Justin shrugged. “No one knows. But in the market they’re saying that the Rook has given them leave to choose a new leader. That we will choose a new leader.”

Tom said, “Then let them keep on choosing. And let the people of the city decide what to do with him.”

Sophia hugged Maggie and kissed Justin’s cheek before climbing into the cart. Blackpot Street and its alleys were swarming, gathering even more bodies as they wound their way up to the Seine Gate. But it was a quiet multitude, introspective rather than raucous, and Sophia found it uncomfortable to be the center of their undivided attention. She was relieved when they switched to the landover and could close the curtains, but René leaned over and opened them again.

“I think your brother would like to see the sun,” he said.

So Sophia watched the passing streets of a quiet Upper City from the shelter of René’s arms, which she seemed unwilling to do without for very long. One or two people were on the streets, repairing doors and sweeping up the mess, but it was like the city was at rest after a sickness. Or maybe like a field after the battle: a needed pause, almost blissful after the chaos, but with the ramifications of all that had happened still yet to be understood. They passed a young gendarme, the first she’d seen all day, uniform covered in dirt and mud, walking down the sidewalk with a small pack over one shoulder.

“Wait,” Sophia said. “Stop! That’s Cartier!”

Tom leaned forward to look out the window and René banged hard on the roof, signaling for the driver to stop. The landover slowed, pulling to the side of the road, and Sophia opened the door to wave Cartier in. He trotted down the pavement.

“Thought I’d been left behind,” he said, crawling in beside Tom.

“You nearly were,” René replied. “Did my uncles forget you? Or was it Maman?”

“Your uncles, I think, Monsieur.” Cartier seemed unfazed. “Not much blame to them, though. It was a mess down at the prison.”

“And they all left for the coast? Uncle Émile, and Benoit?”

“Oui, sir,” said Cartier, mixing his Parisian and his Commonwealth.

“Was Spear with them?” Sophia asked, settling back beneath René’s arm.

Cartier looked at her, confused and a little stricken. “But … I thought …” He didn’t go on. Sophia sat up again.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “Cartier, what’s happened?”

“It was the prison,” Cartier said. “Well, it exploded, didn’t it? And Mr. Hammond? Wasn’t he the one that exploded it?” Cartier had switched fully into Commonwealth now, and was speaking quickly. “I was with Monsieur’s uncles, all of us dressed as gendarmes, and we were ready to nab the two of you as soon as you came out the prison doors, but you came from the other way, and there was no way to get to you, not with all the people, and … Miss Bellamy went up the scaffold and I didn’t want to look …”

Tom nodded. “Go on.”

“So I looked down, and I was standing on a drain, and way down below me, there was Mr. Hammond, in one of the tunnels, and he was dressed like a gendarme, too.”

Sophia sat back, thinking of the uniform Spear had used so often when they came to the city, but René’s red brows came down. “How could you see him?”

“He had a lantern, and … he’s just not so hard to recognize, is he? But the thing is, I was looking at him when the Razor came down. I know he thought you were dead, Miss. I did, too. Until I saw you climbing on top. And when I looked back into the tunnel again, Mr. Hammond was gone. That’s why I went looking for him … after …”

Sophia sat forward, her face in her hands. She felt an ache take residence in the center of her chest, a piercing pain that was going to be difficult to bear. Had Spear gone back into the Tombs to unset the firelighter, or to set it again? She would never know. But either way, it had been for her. Right or wrong, everything he’d done had always been for her. Perhaps the guilt was going to be just as hard to live with as the pain. She looked up from her hands and met Tom’s eyes, wondering if her face looked as wounded as his. “How many died at the prison today?” she asked Cartier.

“There were a fair few hurt, Miss, but I only helped bury Mr. Hammond.”

She made sure the boy was looking at her before she said, “Thank you, Cartier. For everything.” She stared out the window as the city passed, silent but for the tears streaming down her face.

They drove straight through the Saint-Denis Gate, no guards, not even a pause through the cemeteries, where most of the flowers and the black and white masks of the Goddess had been pulled down. Cartier went to sleep almost instantly, leaning his peach-fuzzed cheek against the velvet-lined wall. Sophia laid her head in René’s lap, soothed by the rocking motion and the wheels and René’s hand in her hair. She closed her eyes. But she could not sleep. She ached too much. After a long time of stillness, she heard Tom say, very quietly, “When did you see him last?”

“Last night at the cliffs,” René replied, “climbing out of the Lower City. He cut my rope when I was about halfway up. But it was my rope, placed there for a reason. I knew where to fall.”

She could hear Tom rubbing the unfamiliar hair on his chin. “I take it he had the Bonnard denouncement forged.”

“Yes. I saw the original. He was carrying it with him after your arrest. You requested it, am I right? Because you thought the Hasards would choose to remove the Ministre of Trade from his post? To keep their fortune?”

“I wasn’t going to let my sister marry just anyone, you know.”

“You were right to look. We are not all we seem, that is true.” After a moment René said, “Someone hired the hotelier of the Holiday to attack me. He knew where we were hiding, knew what room I slept in. I had thought it was Hammond. But he said no, in the prison, and now I am inclined to believe him.”

Sophia stayed very still beneath the safety of René’s hand.

Tom said, “I told him to look. To go to LeBlanc and offer himself up, if he needed to. See if we couldn’t flush someone out of the shadows. Did he find out …”

“I do not think he ever stopped believing it was me.”

“I don’t want you to think …,” Tom sighed. “Spear wasn’t a bad man.” She could hear the grief in her brother’s voice. It started her tears again, leaking onto René’s lap.

René said, “I think, perhaps, that he loved her too well.”

The landover wheels rattled over ruts. She could almost hear Tom thinking, choosing his words. “I wouldn’t have sanctioned it, you know. We never had the conversation because I knew Sophie didn’t … and Spear was family to us.” Tom took another moment. “But he would never have been happy with my sister. It was like … like he thought there were two Sophies: the one she is now, and the one she would be just as soon as she decided to settle down with him. And it was the Sophie to come that he loved too well, not the one she was. That she is. But Sophia isn’t going to change. You know this?”

René laughed without humor. “Oh, I know this.” He stroked her hair just a little. “I should tell you that the Hasard fortune is lost. I do not know what will happen in the city, but I would guess it will take some time, years perhaps, to put our finances back in order. There will be no fee. Not in time.”

“And she says she will have you, anyway.”

“Yes. She does.”

Tom adjusted his bad leg. “A lot has changed since I crossed the Channel Sea.”

“That is so.”

“The Commonwealth won’t recognize it.”

“We could go to Spain,” René suggested.

“They won’t recognize it, either, not with her citizenship.”

“Ah, but it is so much easier to lie about such things in Spain.”

“What would you do there?”

“No bloody idea.” He paused. “It is my new phrase.”

“Our father might have something to say about it.”

“As will Sophia, and as will my maman. We can all gamble on that.”

“Sophie lied to me about our father, when we were in the prison. I would guess this means he’s not well.”

“He is grieving. And he blames his daughter for his grief.”

“I see,” Tom sighed. “And now he’ll go to prison, grieved or not, and we are going to lose the house. Unless we find another Parisian suitor for my sister in the next … what is it now? Five days? I’m afraid I’ve lost track.”

“Three, I think.”

“Right you are. But I suppose everyone involved will object to that plan now.” Sophia almost smiled.

“And what about you, Monsieur? Do you … how did you say, do you ‘sanction’ this?”

Sophia tried to relax her body, to not alert René to just how very awake she was. She waited for Tom’s answer, René rhythmically stroking her head.

Finally her brother said, “Why don’t you call me Tom?”

Sophia rocked with the movement of the landover, eyes still closed, sure she was failing at hiding a little bit of her smile. She was torn between grief for the man who wasn’t there, and love for the two who were. But what were they to do now? René didn’t want to go to Spain. There was nothing for him there. And what about Tom? She wouldn’t be leaving him behind with no house, no inheritance, and the responsibility of their father. Neither Tom nor René would be sacrificing for her. Not if she had anything to do with it.

Then she felt René go tense beneath her. Tom hit the landover roof, and the vehicle slowed. She sat up, wiping her eyes. They were on the cliff road, nearly to the sea, and Cartier had startled awake as well, looking at them all blearily. It took a moment to see what Tom and René had, but when she did, Sophia opened the door of the landover before it had even slowed to a stop and went running toward an open green field. The trees bordering the field had been broken, a line of splintered branches showing a path from the air, and in the grass there was a burn mark, like a long, blackened rut made from a giant wheel. And at the end of this lay … something.

She approached it carefully, a giant chunk of gray, twisted metal, a large tank of some sort, and other parts sticking up and out that were completely unfathomable, all of it showing the warp and stress of intense heat. It was still warm, smoking or maybe even steaming in the cool air, pieces and parts scattered beneath her feet; the grass around burned in a giant ring. She touched the metal gingerly with a finger. This was a satellite, an Ancient machine fallen from the sky, and it was also, she guessed, what had flown over the prison yard when she stood on top of the Razor. What possible use could this thing have been, so high over anyone’s head? And why had it returned to the earth now? She heard the others coming through the unburnt grass, and bent down to pick up a piece of metal near her feet. Just discernable were four small, stamped letters: NASA.

“How many people alive right now have ever seen such a thing?” Tom asked from behind her, sitting down carefully in the debris-strewn grass. He was breathing hard, either from excitement or exhaustion. It had taken his strength to walk that field.

“I don’t know. But I’ve been seeing lights in the sky since the night I went to the Holiday,” Sophia replied.

“There were dozens while you were in the prison,” René said. “Many at once. Perhaps the satellite was much bigger, and now it is broken. Coming down in pieces.”

“Cartier,” said Tom. “Can you run back to the landover and see if you can find paper and a pen? See if the driver has anything …”

René sat beside Sophia in the grass, staring at the smoking machine while they waited for Tom to finish his frantic sketching. René said, “What happens in the past does not seem to ever go away, does it?”

“I suppose not. Or not all of it,” she replied. “But we can always make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Or that it does.”

“Ah. But then we just cannot forget that it happened in the first place, can we?”

She thought about this, fingering her piece of scavenged, Ancient metal. “Is that the real reason you steal the plastic?” she asked. “So that we cannot forget?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

“I will not be forgetting Spear.”

“No, my love. I do not think you will.”

When the landover reached the end of the cliff road, Sophia saw two ships anchored beyond the surf, in the deeper part of a natural harbor. Three masts each, their sails down, the occasional wave breaking white against a hull. They were beautiful, and they were real, and they had been here, waiting. How could she have thought otherwise?

By the time they got down the cliff path and a boat rowed out to them, the nethersun was bleak and nearing the end of its time, shining slanting rays on a full and busy deck.

“René,” said Madame, lifting a painted cheek to receive his kiss as he swung his legs over the rail. “You are very late. I have nearly told Andre to sail without you.”

“I am happy to see you, too, Maman,” René said.

“And Miss Bellamy,” Madame added, an afterthought as Sophia clambered up the rope ladder. “You appear to have been rolling in mud.”

“How very pleasant to see you, Madame.”

René sighed, and then helped a sailor lower a rope for Tom. Émile kissed her hand before hurrying on to his own business, Andre gave her a small smile, but Benoit took her by the shoulders and kissed both of her cheeks. “I am happy to see you well and whole, Mademoiselle.”

“And I you, Benoit. Do you know how many we have on board?”

“One hundred and twenty-three refugees between the two ships …,” Benoit began.

“So few?”

“There were eight lost on the way. They have been buried on the cliff side. Others chose not to board, but to make their way to family or friends in other places.”

“I see.” Sophia clutched the rail, still finding her sea legs. René and a sailor were hauling up Tom, his head just cresting the deck. “And is Jennifer Bonnard on this ship?”

“She is in a cabin below. Water and food have been a help, and I have had Peter inject her with penicillin …”

Sophia looked again at Benoit, impressed. Penicillin good enough to inject was expensive. Very expensive. Benoit gave her a self-satisfied shrug. She saw Cartier helping Tom across the deck, to the hatch that led below. Probably he’d just received the same information about Jennifer that she had. “Are we ready to sail?” she asked Benoit.

“We have waited only for you, and now we wait for the destination.”

“Oh, well, Bellamy House, of course. Don’t you think? If we aren’t going to have it much longer, then we might as well put it to good use while we do. Straight west across the Channel, then a half mile sail up the coast.”

Andre, who had been listening to this, nodded once and moved quickly to the helm while Benoit looked at her curiously. “And what will you do when you get there, Mademoiselle?”

Sophia let out a long, slow breath. She didn’t quite know how to answer him. But she had been thinking.

Benoit said, “I see that you are scheming.” She gave him a look of innocent surprise, and Benoit made a little Parisian pfft sound. “Of course you are scheming. But may I offer you advice?”

She waited. Benoit’s advice was generally very good.

“Do not try to please her.”

Her gaze jumped to Madame Hasard, lifting her elegant dress to go belowdecks. “And why would you say that, when I am in need of her approval?”

“Because she will not respect it. It has always been her way.”

Now it was her turn to look curiously at this nondescript, enigmatic little man who spoke no Commonwealth and seemed to be in charge of the ships and, to some extent, the Hasards. “How long have you known her?”

Benoit mimicked her look of innocence. “Why, since the day she was born, Mademoiselle.” He smiled. “Perhaps you did not know that Madame is my sister?”

Sophia felt her eyes widen, sure her mouth must be hanging open. “But I thought … you were a …”

Benoit tilted his head at her. “And why would you think that?” He was smiling genuinely now while Sophia’s mind swept the deck, mentally counting uncles. Émile speaking quietly to René, Andre at the helm, Peter, Enzo, and Francois presumably on the other ship. What a prat she’d been. René had told her his mother had six brothers. Why had she never noticed that she’d only been introduced to five? Or even considered that their surname could not be Hasard?

“In any case, what sort of uncle would I be, Mademoiselle, to allow René to run about the Commonwealth, getting engaged on his own? He might get into trouble. Do you not agree?”

Sophia closed her mouth and returned the man’s smile. “Of course I agree. And so, what exactly is your name, Benoit?”

“Benoit is our family name, Mademoiselle.”

“Then what is your first …”

“I prefer Benoit. Just Benoit.”

She wondered what given name could possibly be so bad that Benoit would prefer his own family not to use it. Surely it couldn’t be worse than “Francois Benoit.” Or perhaps it could.

Benoit took her hand and kissed it. “Do not try to please her, Mademoiselle. It is my best advice.”

“Call me Sophia,” she said, before he melted away into the shadows.

The middlesun was hidden behind thick clouds when Sophia’s boots hit the shallow water of the Bellamy beach. She splashed and ran across the pebbly sand, leaving René and Benoit and Tom to get out of the boat. Orla was standing at the end of the cliff path, waiting for her. She must have spotted the ships and come running herself.

“Well, you need a wash, don’t you?” she said in Orla fashion, pulling away from Sophia’s hug. But Sophia had seen the tension leave her shoulders when she recognized Tom getting out of the boat. She dreaded telling her who wouldn’t be getting out of the boat.

“How is Father?”

“Not well,” Orla replied.

Sophia grimaced. “Has the sheriff been here?”

“Yesterday.”

“Will he give us any extra time?”

“I think not.”

“Right. Let’s see what Tom can do, then. And, Orla …”

She saw Orla’s eyes fix beyond her shoulder, where she was certain there must be another ship coming in. “We have the entire Hasard family, including René’s mother, and one hundred and twenty-three extra people coming to stay. And some of them will be sick, and …” she met Orla’s gaze “… they will have prison lice. Most of them. Or all of them.”

Orla’s face remained expressionless. “Well. We’ll see if Nancy can bring in her husband and daughters for a few days, and if she can kill some ducks. I’ll find more coal and get the oil and the combs. How long will they be here?”

Sophia smiled. She was glad to be home. Even if it was just for a little while.

By dusk Sophia had oiled her own hair, tied it in a kerchief, bunked René in with Tom, put the uncles on the ships, Jennifer in her own room, and helped Orla fill the ballroom with pallets for everyone else. By tomorrow, perhaps they could get one or two of the better bedrooms ready. Madame Hasard she had put in the more recently cleaned north wing, though the woman had not been happy about it, making her views clear as they passed in a corridor.

“I would have thought you could make your guests more comfortable, Miss Bellamy.”

Having just left the bedside of a sick child with prison dirt still on his face, Sophia had found it necessary to actually bite her tongue.

“And your father has taken to his bed, I hear,” she continued.

“Stop it, Maman!” René had warned from behind her. He was hauling buckets of water up the stairs. Madame ignored him.

“Isn’t that considered rather … weak in the Commonwealth, Miss Bellamy?” Madame ventured. “I thought you were all for self-sufficiency here.”

Sophia had merely walked down the hall and shut a door behind her, putting a barrier between them, just as she was shutting the door to her father’s room now, attempting to block out what was on the other side. Though there were people all over the house, it was quiet outside Bellamy’s room, mostly because the prisoners were exhausted and in need of rest now that they had been fed; probably that wouldn’t be the case tomorrow. She sank down along the polished paneling until she was seated on the floor, St. Just immediately crawling into her lap.

Her father had been refusing food and he’d drunk very little since she’d left for the Sunken City; now he was as wasted beneath his blankets as Tom. Only Tom would heal, was already healing, while her father was determined not to. He did react to Tom’s voice, however, giving him a slight squeeze of his hand. Sophia had stayed back, fearful of distressing him.

She looked up as Tom came out of Bellamy’s room, still bearded and in the uniform jacket of the Upper City. He sat down beside her with a little difficulty, stretching out his bad leg. He took her hand.

“Sophie,” he said. “Father’s gone.”

She said nothing, just frowned and petted St. Just. For a few blissful moments she felt nothing but numb shock.

“I tried to do the right thing,” she said.

“I know you did.”

“Do you think he ever forgave me?”

Tom put his arms around her. “Yes, Sophie. I think he did.”

They both knew Tom couldn’t know that, but Sophia chose to be comforted by it, anyway. First Spear, and now her father. The five of them reduced to three. Her grief for both of them was flavored with guilt the way salt flavors the sea; she could taste it in the tears.

It was after highmoon when Sophia stood in the Bellamy stables, watching Cartier get Tom’s horse ready, Spear’s horse and her own beside it. Nancy’s husband had been caring for them all together in Cartier’s absence. She was grieved, still dirty, and so tired she could barely stay on her feet. Jennifer Bonnard stood beside her, not much better though her fever was gone, also unwilling not to see Tom off. Sophia held her up, and had a suspicion that Jennifer might be doing the same for her. Tom mounted from his good leg, grimacing at the pain from his bad one.

“I’ll see you up on the hill first thing,” Sophia said. They were burying their father there at dawn, like people did in the years after the Great Death. No coffins and no fuss. “And don’t start any fires!” she added.

Tom rolled his eyes once. “I’m not an idiot, Sophie.” But then he smiled at her through his sadness, and smiled even more at Jennifer. He turned the horse and rode out of the stable, toward the A5 and Graysin Lane. It was going to be difficult for him to be at the Hammond farm, but there was no better place for him to hide on short notice. He might not be able to prove his ability to inherit his father’s estate, but the Commonwealth saw no problem in the world with Tom inheriting his father’s debt. They would have Mr. Halflife and Sheriff Burn on them. Soon.

“Will they arrest him?” Jennifer asked.

“Not if they can’t find him.” Her meager plans, begun in her head during the landover ride, had not changed in light of her father’s death. Now, it was just Tom she was keeping out of prison, instead of her father. And she would see her brother back in a prison cell over her own dead body.

“I knew it was you,” Jennifer said, looking over at Sophia. “I recognized you that night, when you shook out your hair. You always did that when we were children. But I told them it was him. I suppose because I knew you so much better, and …” She ran a hand over her head, the hair grown out only a little from its ragged cut for the Razor. “I told Tom what I did, when we were in the Tombs, and he said I did the right thing. Why do you think he would say that?”

Because he is Tomas Bellamy, Sophia thought, though she didn’t know quite how to express that to Jennifer.

“I think it is because he is the best man in the world,” Jennifer said. “That’s why.”

Sophia looked again at Jennifer. They’d been little girls the last time they’d spent any real time together, Sophia having moved beyond dolls and quiet games beside a fire rather quickly. She’d never felt sorry about that, not until now. Now she was wondering just what sort of friend she might have missed.

She gave Jennifer one slightly ferocious hug, careful of her bandaged arms, picked up the lantern, and hurried out of the stable without another word, St. Just at her heels. The sharp air whipped past her face, stinging her cheeks as she made her way across the autumn dead grasses of the lawn. Someone’s foxes were barking in the distance, and St. Just barked back. She rounded the corner of Bellamy House and found Émile waiting for her, his fading red hair pale in the highmoon light, arms crossed as he leaned against the house stones. He was in the fancy breeches and waistcoat of her engagement party, evidently preferring that to the stolen uniform of a city gendarme.

“I thought perhaps you were not coming, Miss Bellamy,” he said. “I was very sorry to hear of your father.”

“Thank you, Émile.” She retrieved the key and unlocked the door to the sanctuary. “It just makes our meeting all the more urgent, I’m afraid.”

He followed her light down the winding stairs, the skitter of St. Just’s claws moving ahead of them. Émile said, “I find Bellamy House fascinating, Mademoiselle. Pieces of the Time Before are everywhere. It is remarkable. And I have just discovered something else remarkable. My elder brother has confided his identity to you.”

“Yes. I was a bit peeved with your nephew for not telling me that himself.”

“Ah. I would never discourage you from being cross with René, Mademoiselle. It is good for him. But the fact that Benoit has told you is …”

He waited so long to complete his sentence that Sophia turned around on the stairs. Émile was grinning at her. Oh, dear. Daughter stealer. “I am impressed,” he said, “that is all.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it is a mark of particular trust. Benoit considers you one of the family.”

She smiled as she continued down the stairs. “Your sister doesn’t agree.”

“Adèle will not give up her place easily.”

“Her place?”

“I am meaning her son, Mademoiselle.”

“Well. I am going to outplay her, Émile. If I can.”

“And how will you do that?”

“By giving René the marriage fee, which he can then pay to me, and we can pay our debts and keep my brother from going to prison.” She glanced back over her shoulder again. “She has already signed.”

Émile was grinning from both sides of his mouth now. “So she has. Forgive me, Miss Bellamy, but if the fee is even more than your father’s debt, how do you propose to raise such a sum on short notice, when you could not do so before?”

They entered the sanctuary, and Émile’s eyes widened. “That is why I wanted to meet with you. I’m beginning to wonder what the Bellamy family has that might have been previously … undervalued. So, as an honorary member of your family, Uncle Émile …” Sophia crossed the patched floor to Tom’s display shelf. “What sort of price do you think these things could fetch?”