Chapter Twenty-Four
At half-two in the morning two nights later, Inès sat on a rough bench in a bateau tied to a small dock beneath the old palace wall of the Conciergerie.
Evan had refused to take her inside. “Too dangerous.”
Rafe had agreed. “You are better here, Inès. Evan and I will run quickly.”
The boatman knew only that he was being paid well, to follow their orders and afterward to guide them silently away from the ancient building that housed one of the famous jails of Paris. Few had ever escaped from it. Most, like Marie Antoinette, had been led from it to their deaths.
Inès drew up the collar of her French woolen coat.
It was not as heavy as the solid Scottish weave of the one she had worn to cross the Channel, the one they had burned along with their other English clothing back near Le Havre to ensure they appeared to be merchants from Toulon.
She felt a cough coming on and sought to cover her mouth.
She could not become ill now, when she had such work to do.
But the truth was that she had been chilled the past few nights.
Curling against her husband’s long, hot torso had warmed her, but not saved her.
She buried her face in one of the blankets they had brought along for their guests and allowed herself to sneeze.
Their boatman cursed beneath his breath.
She eyed him with a silent apology.
Then the clatter above her told her she and the boatman were about to have company.
#
Evan ran with Rafe behind him along the long hall of the underground prison.
He could not believe the disgusting conditions of the cells of the infamous Conciergerie.
When they had made their way past the sleeping director, they had walked on cat’s feet.
Evan had pulled up the kerchief around his neck and covered his nose and mouth, but it was far from useful. His gorge rose, but he fought it.
The other problem was that the informant whom they’d met earlier at the base of the Pont Neuf was a simpleton.
Money was the only thing he understood. Evan had paid him double what he had intended for the help.
He and Rafe had little trust in him, but they had no alternative but to follow his instructions.
The man whom Cecily had arranged for them to meet yesterday was no better.
He was a burly, hard-drinking fellow from the docks near Passy.
He made his living, so said Cecily, with a group of men who had done her a few favors over the years.
If Evan had his right mind, he’d say that “Armand” had done too many favors for others and drunk the money away.
Evan prayed the fellow had wits enough to give them the right information about the routine of the prison director and his wardens.
He and Rafe had to get through the night with Luc Bechard and the female prisoner the countess required they bring with them.
“Zephora Burton is a spirited young woman.” Those had been the words of the lovely lady who had acted as mother to Gus and Amber.
She had met them hours ago in Montmartre and demanded of Inès that they remove this friend of hers from the old prison.
It was the countess’s price for aiding them with information.
Luc, she had told Inès, was transferred by Vaillancourt from La Force to the Conciergerie.
She knew not why. But she knew of this young girl, “only twenty-two and fresh as a red rose.”
Afterward, Rafe had scoffed to Evan in private. “That means that in the best of times, our ‘Zephyr’ is not a gentle breeze but a tornado. God help us.”
Evan predicted the poor woman had had all the wind knocked out of her in the prison. He was not so worried about her attitude as he was about her health.
Suddenly, a warden with a set of keys came his way.
Evan slid into an old crevice, his body flat to the cold stones, his eyes finally adjusting to the hellish depths of gloom down here.
The warden took his damn time, heavy-footed bounder that he was.
What he was doing inspecting the cells at this hour dismayed Evan.
They had been told that they could catch him at his post in the middle of the night.
Instead, here he patrolled. Evan and Rafe needed no silliness tonight.
It was bad enough to try to take one prisoner from this sordid place, but to take a woman, too?
If she even lives.
The countess had confirmation from her sources that Luc survived, although he had recently suffered from dysentery.
As for the young woman, the countess had no idea where she was in the prison, or how she was.
Rafe and I will search for her…unto our peril.
But what crimes were committed on women and children in these places by craven creatures, Evan did not want to imagine.
The words of Countess Nugent had been bad enough.
“Zephora is a plucky girl. All red hair and fire, she recites Homer one minute, and the next devises bawdy poetry. She reminds me too much of Gus and Amber when they were young and impulsive.”
“What is Miss Burton’s crime, madame?” Evan had asked her.
“She stole a little book in which Vaillancourt recorded names of those who owned him money in his casino.”
Evan had snorted. “He could not have that get out, could he?”
The lady gave him a gracious but baleful smile. “He clapped her in irons for her failure to give it to him. But Vaillancourt’s problem is that the contents did get out to the gossip sheets.”
Evan did not care who knew the contents now. He silently feared the girl suffered disease, at best, and at worst, was only a whiff of what she had once been. Rafe, blunt to the bitter end, expected to find “no bones, no skin, no breath of life.”
The warden stepped before a cell and bellowed at the inmate. The French he uttered was fast, furious, and beyond Evan’s ability to translate, so he just waited.
Then a warmth approached Evan’s side. Two taps on his shoulder and he knew it was Rafe who had joined him.
In the gloom, he saw him move his fingers before his eyes.
The signal was clear. Ah. Rafe had found the countess’s young lady and now pointed back down the way he had come.
Evan nodded, then indicated with a swish of his hand that they had to look for Luc in this corridor.
It was one of two they had left. If they did not find Luc here, the possibility of that man’s demise was great.
The warden finished his harangue and spun back the way he’d come. Evan and Rafe froze in place, eyes closed, Rafe with his hatchet and Evan with his stiletto behind their backs, pistols concealed in holsters at their sides. The warden paused and took a huge sniff of the air.
Rafe and Evan had taken great care the past two days to avoid bathing, cleaning their teeth, or combing their hair. Smelling like a gentleman of cologne and wine was not the way of the dungeon. Beer and whisky mixed best with sweat and mud and crusty clothes.
The man lingered and inhaled again.
Evan thought they were discovered—and about to die.
But the fellow muttered wild things to himself…and moved on.
Evan wanted to curse too. But held his English tongue. Then he pointed to one cell in the far corner. He moved forward on cat’s feet, Rafe right behind him.
The cell, unlike many others, was large. Its expanse, he could see, was the whole corner. He got right up to the bars and peered inside. Staring back at him was a set of large, wide eyes—and at once, the possessor of those eyes rose and charged against the bars.
“Qui es-tu? Who are you?” he seethed.
The man’s breath nearly blinded Evan. “Et tu?” he demanded of him.
The fellow scrambled backward, stunned.
Rafe whispered in a growl, “Your name, monsieur?”
“Bechard, imbécile!”
“Thank God,” Evan murmured.
“Let’s get that warden,” Rafe whispered to Evan. “Bechard, we will return.”
“But—” Luc objected.
Evan and Rafe were gone, on their way to the warden with the keys.
They approached the end of the corridor that led to two others as long, as dark, as silent, save for the moaning of those nigh unto death. Then the two implemented the plan they had rehearsed.
Evan charged out, grabbing the warden by the waist and throat. Hurrying him over to the man’s table, he bent him over it, spread out his fingers, and cooed to him about the sharpness of his hatchet. Before the fellow could answer, Rafe stuffed a woolen rag in his mouth.
The man wriggled and bucked, but he had no power over the sneering, wily, Herculean Rafe Durham.
His success in subduing the creature had Evan reminding himself to go more often to Gentleman Jack’s, and to go, preferably, with Rafe.
Then he strolled up to the squirming guard and showed him his stiletto and an imitation of how he would slide it across his throat.
The man’s bleary eyes went wide and he nodded. Often.
“Wise of you,” Rafe whispered to the man in French.
Evan nodded at him to continue. His French had not improved, and he would not risk detection because he had opened his mouth and given away his birth.
Rafe told the warden how he would hand over the keys to his friend here…
then sit in his little chair. The man gave them over, and Evan turned away while Rafe found chains or ropes to tie the man to his seat.
Evan hurried back down the corridor with the large iron keys grasped tightly in his fist. All he needed was to make a commotion with jangling keys, and they would be besieged by dozens of poor buggers behind all these bars demanding to go with him. Oh, to take them all! Alas. Not to be.
He fit the key to the lock of Luc’s cell and slowly swung back the door. Luc, he was surprised to see, stood back against the wall and stared at him.
“Come,” Evan urged him.
“No. We must take her.”
Her?
Luc stepped to one side, and there lay a slight, nearly naked figure with luminous, feverish eyes and long, violently red hair that draped over the side of her slight bed of filthy hay.
“I cannot. I must find another.” Evan could be angry at the suggestion to take this one, but how much would he gain?
“Who?” Luc snatched at his greatcoat with feeble fingers. “Who must you take?”
“Burton. Zephora, a—”
“Zeph? But this is she!” Luc vibrated with joy, anger, or anticipation. Evan knew not which.
Evan bent over the woman. He was happy his sight was poor, the cell pitch black, his hope the brightest thing he possessed.
She looked like a heap of cloth. Skin and bones, as Rafe had expected.
Only the raw power of her red hair obscuring any of her features told Evan there might be life left in her yet.
Rafe appeared behind him. “Can you walk, Bechard?”
“Oui.”
“Run?”
“Ah, for this? Oui. But she must come. They have…abused her.”
Rafe bent over her. “Ba! She is dead.”
“No, no!” Luc grabbed him.
Rafe lifted a hand to calm him. “I’ll take her. I will!”
“Know she vomits. Often.”
Rafe shook his head, then knelt and snaked his arms under the limp woman.
Luc plucked at Rafe’s coat. “We all have lice.”
Rafe ignored him and hoisted the girl into his embrace. “I loathe bigger vermin who walk the earth.”
Evan took Luc’s arm. “Let’s go!”