“I am on strike,” Veronique pronounced. These were words that struck terror in a Parisian heart, for they suggested a disruption of normal routines that would go on for some time.
“Go away! I have a newspaper to print,” Marat shouted when Marcus came to urge him to go and celebrate a revolution that he had helped to create. “You are an overgrown child, Marcus, playing with toys instead of occupying your time with serious work. It will be all over for us, if we let creatures like you take charge. Now leave me be.”
Marcus had decided not to press matters with Jean-Paul. It never worked—not when he was in this kind of mood. So he went alone to the celebrations, and enjoyed eavesdropping on conversations between Paine and the king about what constituted freedom and what was instead a sign of anarchy.
When Marcus pushed open their apartment door—dry and cracked on one side, and swollen with moisture from a dripping balcony on the other so that it was difficult to budge—he discovered that Veronique was waiting for him.
So was his grandfather.
“Philippe.” Marcus stood, frozen, in the entry.
The presence of the de Clermont patriarch in their small flat only served to emphasize its shabbiness and discomfort. Philippe dwarfed most people, and his size made it seem as though he occupied more space in the room than one person should. At the moment, he was perched on the edge of a low stool, his legs stretched out and his ankles crossed. Instead of his usual fine clothes, Philippe was wearing brown linen, and if not for his size he might have been mistaken for a sans-culotte. His hands were clasped behind his head, and he was staring into the flames that were burning in the fireplace as though he was waiting for an oracle.
Veronique moved to the window, and stood biting at her nails and fuming.
She whirled around to face him. “Where have you been?”
“The Champs de Mars,” Marcus said, stating the obvious. “Is something wrong with Ysabeau?” He could think of nothing else that might make Philippe show up here, unannounced, alone.
“You must choose, Marcus.” Veronique put her hands on her hips and adopted a challenging posture. “Them, or me.”
“Can we have that argument later?” Marcus was tired, and sodden, and he wanted something to eat. “Tell me what you want, Philippe, then go. You’re upsetting Veronique.”
“Madame Veronique summed it up quite nicely, I think.” Philippe’s hands dropped to his lap. He pulled a clutch of paper from his pocket. “Your friend Marat is violating the covenant by fomenting rebellion among the people of Paris. This would be reason enough for concern. Now, however, he plans to print this call to murder hundreds of aristocrats in order to purge the nation of potential traitors. Marat will place this call to arms on every wall and door in Paris.”
Marcus snatched the papers from his grandfather. His eyes raced over the lines, which were in Marat’s unmistakable, spidery script, complete with thickly ruled-out corrections and changes made between the lines and in the margins.
“How did you get this?” he asked Philippe, dazed.
“And you call yourself a defender of liberty and freedom,” Philippe said softly. “You just read Marat’s demand that we decapitate five or six hundred aristocrats in the name of peace and happiness, and your only reaction is to ask me where I got it. At least you did not insult me by pretending it was a forgery.”
Marcus, like Philippe and Veronique, knew it was genuine.
“Marat would have your friend Lafayette—a man of honor, who fought and shed blood for the freedom of your native land—executed. He would execute the king, and the dauphin, though he is only a child. He would kill me, and your grandmother, and Fanny.” Philippe let his words sink in before continuing. “Have you no loyalty, no pride? How can you defend such a person? Either of you?”
“You are not my father, and I owe you no allegiance, sieur.” Veronique used the ancient term for the head of a vampire family. It was a sign of the seriousness of the situation—and its potential deadliness—that she would rely on such a courtesy now. “You have no right to come into my home and question me.”
“Ah, but I do, madame.” Philippe smiled at her amiably. “You forget, I am the Congregation. I have every right to question you, if I feel that you pose a danger to our people.”
“You mean you are one of the representatives on the Congregation,” Veronique said, though she sounded unsure.
“Of course.” Philippe grinned, his teeth showing white in the dimming light. “My mistake.”
But Philippe de Clermont did not make mistakes. It was one of the insights into his grandfather that Fanny had been at pains to share with Marcus, back when he was younger and still getting to know the family and how it operated.
“I think you are ready to attend the university in Edinburgh, Marcus. The anatomy lectures there cannot possibly be more bloodthirsty than the company you are keeping in Paris.” Philippe handed Marcus a key. “Matthew is in London, and will be expecting you.”
Marcus stared suspiciously at the ornate metal object.
“The key to your house. It is near St. James’s Palace. Outside the city walls, where the air is less polluted and where you can have more privacy than you do here. There is a park nearby for hunting,” Philippe continued, still holding out the key. “Mrs. Graham and her husband have a house nearby. She is not well, and you will be a comfort to William when she dies. When classes resume, you will travel north to Scotland. You will be useful to me there.”
Marcus still didn’t take the key. There were, he felt sure, more strings attached to it than assisting William in the hour of Catharine’s death.
Philippe tossed the key in the air, caught it, and placed it on the corner of a nearby crate that was serving as a chair or a table, as the occasion warranted.
“I trust you are old enough to find your own way to London. Take Fanny with you, and make sure that she stays away. Paris is no longer safe.” Philippe stood. His hair brushed the low ceiling. “Don’t neglect to write to your grandmother. She will worry if she doesn’t hear of you. Thank you for your hospitality, Madame Veronique.”
Having laid out the terms of Marcus’s surrender, Philippe vanished in a flash of brown and gold.
“Did you know about this, Veronique?” Marcus held up the papers.
His lover’s silence said more than words could.
“Jean-Paul is calling for a massacre!” Marcus cried. This was not his idea of liberty.
“They are enemies of the Revolution.” There was something fanatical in Veronique’s flat tone and fevered eyes.
“How can you say that? You don’t even know whom he plans to kill,” Marcus retorted.
“It doesn’t matter,” Veronique shot back. “They are aristocrats. One is much like another.”
“Lafayette was right,” Marcus said. “Marat only wants to stir up trouble. There will never be enough equality to satisfy him. His revolution cannot be won.”
“Marat was right,” Veronique said angrily. “You’re a traitor, just like the rest. I can’t believe I let you inside me—that I trusted you.”
Something dark and terrible had been unleashed in Veronique with all this talk of death and revolution. Marcus had to get her out of Paris, too.
“Gather your things,” Marcus said, thrusting Marat’s manuscript into the fire. “You’re coming to London with me and Fanny.”
“No!” Veronique dug into the flames with her bare hands to retrieve the pages. They were curling and blackened, but not yet totally destroyed.
Her hands, however—her beautiful, slender, agile fingers and soft palms—were a blistered, charred mess. Horrified, Marcus went to her.
“Let me see,” he said, reaching for them.
“No.” Veronique snatched them away. “No matter where I say it—in my bed, or in my tavern, or in my house, or in my city—you respect it as my final word, Marcus.”
“Veronique. Please.” Marcus held out his hand.