The Black Tower Read online

  The Black Tower

  Louis Bayard

  In memory of my dad

  To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

  —JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

  Contents

  Epigraph

  France: Before and After the Revolution

  The Bourbons

  Part 1

  Saint-Cloud

  Chapter 1

  The Beggar at the Corner

  Chapter 2

  Death of a Potato

  Chapter 3

  The Chamber of the Dead

  Chapter 4

  The Missing Fingernails

  Chapter 5

  An Astounding Reemergence

  Chapter 6

  The Incident of the Hobnailed Boot

  Chapter 7

  From Beyond the Grave

  Chapter 8

  A Spy Unmasked

  Chapter 9

  A Journey to Luxembourg

  Chapter 10

  The Double Eagle

  Chapter 11

  The Lost Dauphin

  Chapter 12

  The Reeducation of a Parrot

  Chapter 13

  An Ancient Relic Rediscovered

  Chapter 14

  Treasures of a Reliquary

  Chapter 15

  The Black Tower

  Chapter 16

  A Fatal Disease Is Diagnosed—at the Very Precipice of Death

  Chapter 17

  The Case of the Headless Woman

  Chapter 18

  In Which a Great Man Is Threatened with Extreme Violence

  Chapter 19

  The Sad Fate of a Seagull

  Chapter 20

  In Which Tourism Is Shown to Be Hazardous

  Chapter 21

  A Garden Grows in Saint-Cloud

  Part 2

  Saint-Denis

  Chapter 22

  The Fox and the Rabbit

  Chapter 23

  A Scene of Great Carnage Involving Pistachios

  Chapter 24

  A Vicomte Expires Unexpectedly

  Chapter 25

  Mama Carpentier Stands Firm

  Chapter 26

  In Which a Corpus Is Exhumed

  Chapter 27

  A Boy Named Hector

  Chapter 28

  A Disappearance Solved

  Chapter 29

  The King of France Is Held Hostage

  Chapter 30

  Vidocq Takes an Overdue Interest in Art

  Chapter 31

  Dead Bones

  Chapter 32

  Germany to the Rescue

  Chapter 33

  A Lilac Grows in the Tuileries Gardens

  Chapter 34

  Not Since Waterloo

  Chapter 35

  In Which the Vulnerability of the Hamstring Is Clearly Demonstrated

  Chapter 36

  Vidocq’s Confessional Booth

  Chapter 37

  The Proper Disposal of Worms

  Chapter 38

  A Case of Domestic Espionage

  Chapter 39

  The Dire Fate of Charlotte’s Chickens

  Part 3

  Place de Grève

  Chapter 40

  The Rebirth of Junius

  Chapter 41

  The Trojan Hobbyhorse

  Chapter 42

  The Birthmark

  Chapter 43

  The Dead Moth

  Chapter 44

  A Rupture of Etiquette

  Chapter 45

  The Fate of Parricides

  Chapter 46

  Foiled Hopes

  Chapter 47

  In Which the Nature of Hector’s Research Is Revealed

  Chapter 48

  A Confession

  Chapter 49

  The Muslin Bag

  Chapter 50

  The Making of a Forger

  Chapter 51

  Postlude

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Louis Bayard

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  France: Before and After the Revolution

  1770

  Marie-Antoinette, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, marries the French dauphin, Louis-Auguste.

  1774

  Louis-Auguste, upon the death of his grandfather, becomes Louis XVI.

  1778

  Marie-Antoinette gives birth to her first child, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte.

  1785

  Marie-Antoinette gives birth to her second son, Louis-Charles.

  1789

  A mob destroys the Bastille, triggering the outbreak of the French Revolution. Parisian marketwomen march on Versailles and force the royal family to live under guard in the Tuileries palace in Paris.

  1790

  The royal family attempts to flee France. They are stopped near the French border and returned to Paris.

  1792

  Revolutionaries imprison the royal family in the Temple.

  1793

  January King Louis XVI is executed.

  July Louis-Charles is separated from his family.

  October Marie-Antoinette is executed.

  1795

  Louis-Charles’ death is announced. Body is buried in unmarked grave in cemetery of Sainte-Marguerite.

  1799

  Napoleon installs himself as First Consul.

  1804

  Napoleon crowns himself Emperor.

  1815

  Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo culminates in his exile at St. Helena. Louis XVIII (younger brother of Louis XVI) is now permanently installed as King of France.

  1821

  Napoleon dies.

  1824

  Louis XVIII dies. His younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, becomes Charles X.

  1830

  July Revolution forces Charles X to abdicate. Charles’ cousin, Louis-Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, is proclaimed king.

  The Bourbons

  PART I

  Saint-Cloud

  13 THERMIDOR YEAR II

  1st meeting with Prisoner: shortly after 1 A.M. Prisoner alone in cell. Dinner had not been eaten. Nor breakfast.

  Stench extreme, cd be detected thru grating. Must speak to Barras re conditions. Piles of excrement everywhere. Urine, sweat, mold, rotted skin. Surfeit of rats. Maggots, cockroaches, lice.

  Prisoner discovered in cot, approx. size of cradle. (For reasons unknown, Prisoner refuses to sleep in bed.) Ankle protruding at unnatural angle. Knees & wrists extremely swollen, blue & yellow.

  Prisoner wears only scraps of filthy cloth, ragged trousers. No longer bothers to dress or undress. Ribs clearly visible thru skin. Arms & legs entirely fretted w. sores, purulent. Body covered, head to toe, w. vermin. Bugs & lice to be found in every fold of sheet, blanket.

  Prisoner started when door was opened. Turned head slightly twd us, made no other move. Eyes opened a fraction when I lowered candle to face, immediately closed again. Light acutely painful. Appears Prisoner has not been exposed to light of any kind in at least 6 mos, may be considered functionally blind.

  No initial reply from Prisoner when I bade him gd morning. Did not respond to questions. Faint exhalation detected thru lips (coated in yeast). Lge black spider crawling up neck. Rat was found chewing Prisoner’s hair, extricated w. difficulty. This occasioned Prisoner’s first words, which were to thank me.

  I asked Prisoner to stand. Prisoner declined. After repeated requests, he attempted to rise but wanted strength. W. assistance, he was able to take 2 steps—extrmly painful, by all appearances. Prisoner collapsed as soon as I removed my arm. (Guard, who was present thruout interview, dec
lined to assist me in raising him up.)

  Having returned Prisoner to cot, I promised to return next day A.M. to begin treatment. Upon hearing this, Prisoner, in barely audible voice, begged me not to bother. Prisoner observed it was his fondest wish to die. As soon as God would allow.

  Must speak to Genl Barras re cleaning cell, obtaining more light for Prisoner. Knee most pressing medical concern. Prisoner wd benefit fm bath, exercise—contact with family, friends, anyone. Must speak to Must also

  What have we done

  CHAPTER 1

  The Beggar at the Corner

  I’M A MAN of a certain age—old enough to have been every kind of fool—and I find to my surprise that the only counsel I have to pass on is this: Never let your name be found in a dead man’s trousers.

  NAME, YES. MINE is Hector Carpentier. These days, Professor Carpentier, of the École de Médecine. My specialty is venereology, which is a reliable source of amusement for my students. “Come with us,” they say. “Carpentier’s going to tell all about the second stage of syphilis. You’ll never screw again.”

  I live on the Rue du Helder, with an orange tabby named Baptiste. My parents are dead, I have no brother or sister and haven’t yet been blessed with children. In short, I’m the only family I’ve got, and at certain intervals of calm, my mind drifts toward those people, not strictly related, who took on all the trappings, all the meaning of family—for a time, anyway. If you were to pin me down, for instance, I’d have to say I recall the lads I went to medical school with better than I recall my own father. And Mother…well, she’s present enough after all these years, but from some angles, she’s not quite as real as Charles. Who was perhaps not real at all but who was, for a time, like family.

  I THINK ABOUT him every time I see a penta. One glance is all it takes, and I’m standing once more in the Luxembourg Gardens, somewhere in May. I’m watching a pretty girl pass (the angle of her parasol, yes, the butter brightness of her gloves), and Charles is brooding over flowers. He is always brooding over flowers. This time, though, he actually plucks one and holds it up to me: an Egyptian star cluster.

  Five arms, hence its name. Smaller than a whisper. Imagine a starfish dragged from the ocean bottom and…never mind, I can’t do it justice. And, really, it’s not so remarkable, but sitting there in the cup of his hand, it lays some claim on me, and so does everything else: the Scottish terrier snoring on a bench; the swan cleaning its rump feathers in the fountain; the moss-blackened statue of Leonidas. I am the measure of those things and they of me, and we are all—sufficient, I suppose.

  Of course, nothing about our situation has shifted. We are still marked men, he and I. But at this moment, I can imagine a sliver of grace—the possibility, I mean, that we might be marked for other things. And all because of this silly flower, which on any other day, I would have stepped on like so much carpet.

  HE’S BEEN ON my mind of late, because just last week, I received a letter from the Duchesse d’Angoulême. (She is staying at Count Coronini’s estate in Slovenia.) The envelope was girt round with stamps, and the letter, written in her usual shy hand, was mostly an essay on rain, sealed off by prayers. I found it comforting. Word has it that the Duchess is penning her memoirs, but I don’t believe it. No woman has clutched her own life more closely to her bosom. She’ll hold it there, I expect, until the coroner assures her she’s dead.

  Which may be a long time coming. God’s funny that way. The more his servants pine for his presence—and make no mistake, the Duchess does—the longer he keeps them shackled to the old mortal coil. No, it’s the blasphemers he’s aching to get his hands on. Take Monsieur Robespierre. At the very height of the Terror, Robespierre decided that the name “God” had too much of an ancien régime color to it. In his capacity as head of the Committee of Public Safety, he declared that God would henceforward be known as the Supreme Being. There was some kind of festival, I believe, to celebrate God’s promotion. A parade, maybe. I was only two.

  A few months later, with half his jaw shot off, groaning toward the scaffold, was Robespierre already composing apologies? We’ll never know. There was no time for memoirs.

  ME, I HAVE acres of time, but if I were to write up my life, I don’t think I could start with the usual genuflections—all those ancestors in halberds, I mean, the midwives catching you in their calloused mitts. No, I’d have to start with Vidocq. And maybe end with him, too.

  A strange admission, I know, given that I spent no more than a few weeks in his company. Fifteen years have passed with virtually no word from him. Why, then, should I bother revisiting the terrible business that brought us together?

  Not from any hope of being believed. If anything, I write so that I may believe. Did it really happen? In quite that way? Nothing to do but set everything down, as exactly as I can, and see what stares back at me.

  AND HOW EASILY the time slips away, after all. I need but shut my eyes, and two decades vanish in a breath, and I am standing once more in…

  The year 1818. Which, according to official records, is the twenty-third year in the reign of King Louis XVIII. For all but three of those years, however, his majesty has been reigning somewhere else entirely—hiding, an unkind soul might say, while a certain Corsican made a footstool of Europe. None of that matters now. The Corsican has been locked away (again); the Bourbons are back; the fighting is done; the future is cloudless.

  This curious interregnum in French history goes by the name of “the Restoration,” the implication being that, after senseless experiments with democracy and empire, the French people have been restored to their senses and have invited the Bourbons back to the Tuileries. The old unpleasantness is never alluded to. We have all seen enough politics to last us a lifetime, and we know now: to take a hard line is to take a hard fall.

  I know it, too—although I am young when this story begins, so young I scarcely recognize myself. Four years shy of thirty: thin and pink and inclined to catch cold. My father has been dead for some eighteen months. He left me and Mother the house I grew up in, as well as some undeveloped land in the Chaussée d’Antin, which I have already lost through bad speculations. To be specific, I was the chief investor in a pretty, bony dancer named Eulalie. She had dark eyes and a stealthy sort of smile, it seemed to climb round from the back of her head, and a way of softly clicking her wrists in and out of joint which never lost its charm.

  I’ve heard it said that dinners and plays and carriages and gloves cost nothing in Paris. This is certainly true if you’re not the one paying for them. And Eulalie, in the time I knew her, never paid for a blessed thing—it was part of her allure—and when, under duress, she admitted that she owed two thousand francs to the dressmaker and another thirteen hundred to the upholsterer and, oh, God knows what else, it was the most natural thing in the world to sell my father’s land and walk about in muddy bluchers and a single black suit.

  I learned after a time that the money was going to a law clerk named Cornu, who had been keeping company with Eulalie through five years and two children.

  Scenes always disgusted her, so we never had one. She left me a cellar of memories, which is where I spend most of these early days of the Restoration. Rummaging. My mother and I reside in the Latin Quarter, and to make up for the lost assets, we’ve begun to take in lodgers—students, mostly, from the university. Mother, in her tulle cap, presides over the dinner table; I fix leaks. Squeaks, too, if I can. (The joists are a bit rotten on the third floor.) In my spare time, I haunt the university’s laboratories, where Dr. Duméril, an old friend of my family, suffers me to carry out experiments, the nature of which no one is quite clear on. I tell people I am halfway through a monograph, but in fact, I’ve been halfway through this monograph for about two years. The only part I’ve finished, really, is the title: “The Therapeutic Efficacies of Animal Magnetism in Conjunction with Divers Orientalist Practices of Ancient….”

  Oh, I won’t go on. I once rattled off the whole thing to my mother, and her
face assumed a look of such bottomless misery that I resolved never to speak of it again—and nearly resolved to drop the project altogether. If I’d been braver, I would have.

  Why did I mention the monograph? Oh! Because I am coming home from the laboratory on the morning in question. No, that’s not quite right. I am coming home from Le Père Bonvin.

  It’s Monday. March the twenty-third. Spring, to be exact, although word is late getting to Paris. About a week ago, a front of green-gray drizzle-ice settled in like a malevolent houseguest. The old distinctions between air and water no longer hold. Everywhere you hear splashing—your own, the man behind you, the woman ahead—and everywhere a roiling liquid darkness, as if we’re all frogs in a sunken kingdom.

  Umbrellas are useless. You clap your hat on as firmly as it will go and pull up your lapels and carry on. Even if you have nowhere to go…go!

  Yes, that describes me pretty well as I turn into the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève: grimly resolved and going no place in particular. Except home. The street is empty, except for Bardou, who lifts his head a bit by way of greeting. Bardou is my chief coordinate, for he keeps his corner vigil no matter what the conditions. Long ago, they say, he lost his arm in a paper mill, and though he works now and then as a church beadle, he always comes back to his station by the old condemned well, and whenever I pass, I try to drop a coin or two his way (more copper of late than silver), and he shows his appreciation by tipping his head an inch to the side. It’s our ritual, obscurely comforting in its outlines.