Page 23 of Souvenir Heart

“Not the best place to be on one’s own, these days.” On this crowded street, it was as close as either one of them would come to making mention of the arrest of the Girondins.

As they reached the door of the safehouse, Suzanne placed a hand on the doorknob, then paused. Turning to look at him, she amended her earlier statement. “Truly, not the best place to be, at all.”

Seventeen

The safehouse was on the top floor of a three-story building. It had a slanted roof, a single window, and three rooms. Two of the rooms were roughly the size of closets and contained little more than a mattress, a stool, and a table whose surface could barely contain a wash basin and a pitcher. A slightly larger room furnished with a table and four mismatched chairs served as living room, kitchen and—when any members of the team were in town, a planning center.

But it was the secret compartment beneath the floorboards of one of the smaller rooms that was of greatest interest to Marcus at that moment. He sat on a little stool, considering the assortment of clothes, wigs, pistols, powder, shot, and knives contained within.

Under Suzanne’s critical eye, he dressed in buff-colored breeches, a waistcoat in a similar shade, and a red-striped jacket with wide lapels. He tucked his dark queue beneath a blond wig and topped it with a tricorne adorned with a tricolor rosette.

“That wig will be miserable in this heat, for sure, but better a sweaty head than no head at all,” she said, noticing him scratching at the edges of the hairpiece. “Ever since the assembly ordered the arrest of the Girondins, the city’s been on edge. Every old woman on a stoop, every young rowdy on the corner is hoping to be the hero who spots the enemies of the state and saves the nation.”

She stooped, searching through the pile, then handed him a pair of spectacles. They were a different shape than the ones he’d worn during the ride to the coast with the team—square frames instead of round. “Put these on, too. With your height and those broad shoulders, you’re unlikely to go unnoticed. But at least any description of you will mostly be wrong.”

She rose and stepped back, nodding at the overall effect. “You look every inch a patriotic man of business. Except for that of course,” she nodded at the knife he was slipping into his boot.

After he’d slipped a second into his sleeve, Marcus thanked her, bade her farewell, and set off at a brisk pace for the Rue de Renard.

The streets were crowded, noisy, and ripe with the smells of the Parisians, their wares, and their refuse marinating in the summer sun.

He dodged a woman offering to sell him “ribbons for your good lady.”

The plan he’d described to Dinsmore: 1. Ride to Paris, 2. Find the comte’s daughter, 3. Bring her back to England, was admittedly vague, but he’d already accomplished the first part.

“Old clothes, old clothes, buy and sell old clothes,” a shopkeeper bellowed from a rickety stand piled high with a colorful jumble of fabrics.

Marcus knew the streets of Paris well. Not only because he’d committed Étienne Turgot’s amazingly detailed 1734 map of the city to memory, but also because he’d spent countless hours wandering in and out of the bookstores and coffee houses around the Palais Royale, the scattered salons of various aristocratic friends and relatives, and the studios of the Louvre. Trying to get lost and failing.

“Latest edition of Marat’s Publicist of the Revolution, citizen?” A small boy clutching a pile of papers thrust a pamphlet at him. Marcus waved it away, turning down a winding street flanked on either side by tall buildings with arched doorways.

A stocky man in a gray suit bumped into him; in the same moment he registered the collision, Marcus felt the furtive dip of a hand into his coat pocket.

He grabbed the man’s wrist, spun him around and kicked him in the back of the knee. It all happened so quickly that only he and the pickpocket were aware that the ensuing spectacular fall wasn’t an accident.

Putting a finger to the bridge of his spectacles to make sure they were still in place, he glanced back to make sure the man wasn’t following him; the would-be thief rose unsteadily to his feet, covered in street muck, and limped off in the opposite direction.

Marcus patted his pocket as he strode on, feeling the outline of his sketchbook, the miniature, and his small silver pocket watch.

He passed the Rue de Petit Lion. He could feel sweat soaking into the crown of his wig and resisted the urge to scratch. Another block and he turned onto the Rue de Renard. It was seven meters wide, generous in a city where some streets were only one or two meters wide. As he passed Number 11, a Gothic pile with an oculus window, he thought of his sketchbook, of the drawing of the fox he’d made with the number 17 concealed in the lines of its ears.

And there it was. Marguerite de Rouvroy’s home was a neat four-story affair, with balconies on the second floor flanked by two long windows. A carved set of double doors was set beneath a curved lintel.

Mentally preparing his story—he was a solicitor with questions about the property, he knocked. As he did so, he caught sight of an ‘X’ in white chalk, smeared, but still visible about a hand’s breath above where he set his fist.

He knocked again, then paused, listening for a response, a sound of movement inside, but heard nothing. A prickle that wasn’t sweat crawled up the back of his neck. Risking a glance over his shoulder, Marcus caught sight of an old man watching him from across the street with what seemed like far more than idle curiosity.

He knocked again. Louder. Glanced back and saw the man beckon to a street urchin—a courier for the neighborhood watch? He tried the door. It swung open.

“Good day, citizeness,” he said taking a step inside the entrance hall.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the urchin set off running.

“I’m here on business,” he said as if responding to an invitation. Porcelain shards crunched under his booted feet as he turned, closed the door and locked it.

With more hope than expectation, he ventured a soft, “Citizeness Rouvroy?”

Holding his breath, he listened carefully; the only sounds he heard were the ticking of a clock on one of the tables flanking the sweeping staircase and the muffled sounds of traffic from the street outside.