Page 54 of Souvenir Heart

At the next gate, his escort waved away an effort to search Marcus’s art box and the tube, saying “They’ve been thoroughly searched, I haven’t got all day. Let us through.”

The gate’s two guards, not wanting to cede too much of their authority, insisted Marcus remove his shoes, inspecting the interior of each, but avoiding the heels, which he’d smeared with an extra coating of street muck. The left one contained the bit of a key David had made according to drawings and a lucky opportunity to imprint the shape in a piece of soft wax.

When, at last, they reached Captain Laurent’s office, Marcus made a show of asking his escort to wait. “The special delivery,” he said, hefting tube and box straps over his shoulder and spreading his hands with an apologetic smile.

The guard’s lips flattened in a disapproving line, but he stepped aside as Marcus ducked inside. The ruddy-faced captain with the bushy eyebrows was seated at a small wooden table. “Tisset, Tisset, my friend, you’re back again,” he said, gesturing for Marcus to sit.

“Just wanted to drop off a token of my appreciation for your assistance the other afternoon.” Marcus kept his back to the door, as he opened the case in the event that the guard noticed he only withdrew one bottle.

“So very good of you,” Laurent said, reaching for it. “The missus was most grateful for the miniature. You’ll join me for a glass?”

“Alas, I still have work to do,” he said, striving for a suitably regretful tone.

“You’re a busy man, Tisset.”

“Thanks to you and your men.”

“Just serving the Republic,” Laurent laughed. “You’ll join me later, then?”

“But of course.” He pulled an assignat out of his pocket and slid it surreptitiously across the stained wooden table. “You will help me again…”

“But of course, I’m a patriot and a lover…” He slipped the note into the pocket of his waistcoat, then picked up the bottle and waved it at Marcus. “Until this evening, then.”

“Until this evening,” Marcus agreed. Back under the disapproving eye of his parrot-nosed escort, he reflected that timing would be critical for his plan. Everything hinged on how long it would take for him to get Marguerite out of her cell, through the gates and into the coach that Andre and David would be driving along a pre-planned route.

At the thought of the coach, Marcus wondered what misstep had connected him to the skirmish in Rouen. Then he banished the thought; he needed to focus on one problem at a time.

“Citizen Descombes?” he called as they reached a familiar row of cells.

A haggard-looking man, his blond hair hanging in greasy tangles, pressed his face between the bars.

“Your wife asked me to deliver this.” Marcus opened his artist’s box and pulled out a fabric-wrapped miniature. He lifted an edge to make sure it was the correct one—a round-faced woman with wide-set blue eyes and a snub nose. The painter who transformed his sketches into miniatures had an over-fondness for pink tint and white highlights, but overall, it was a fair likeness. He placed it in the man’s outstretched hand.

Descombes studied it for several long moments after he unwrapped it, his mouth working. “Can you get a message to her?”

“I can try,” Marcus said, wishing he had time for this small kindness.

“Tell her to have a good life. And to forget me.”

But would it be a kindness? The lady had been distraught when he’d sketched her and when he’d shown her the miniature. Marcus doubted she’d have much success following either of her husband’s instructions.

“Keep moving, Tisset,” his escort ordered.

Stepping through the last wicket separating him and Marguerite de Rouvroy, Marcus began silently counting cell doors.

Five, four…

He opened his artist’s box, checking for the miniature of the hairdresser. There was the packet, the wrapping marked with her initials: MAA.

Three, two…

“Here we are.”

One.

“You have a visitor, citizenesses,” Parrot Nose announced, unlocking the cell door and swinging it open.

Adjusting the strap of his art box on his shoulder, Marcus stepped inside, his body thrumming with the taut-spring excitement he always felt before battle. Things were falling into place. He was prepared.