Gypsy looked at the flame. He knew the secret message that was being given to him. The candle gave light, and light was reason, and reason was the gospel of the Illuminati. ‘For reason?’
Marchenoir smiled. His voice was low. ‘For reason, which is above the law.’
The Gypsy looked from the candle to the powerful man. For the first time the Gypsy smiled easily, his fear of Marchenoir gone. Now he knew why such an important man had sought him out. Even Gitan’s voice seemed to change. He no longer was wary, he spoke now as if to an equal because he had discovered that this most dangerous, forceful man was, like himself, a member of the secret Illuminati. ‘I sometimes feared that the brethren slept.’
‘No, my friend. So? Will you be our messenger?’
Gitan still smiled. He gestured at the candle. ‘Of course.’
Marchenoir grunted approval and struggled to his feet. ‘There will be rewards, Gitan.’ He waved his cigar at the body. ‘We’re going to strip these bastards of everything, everything!’ He stared at what was left on the floor. ‘She was going to marry your English lord, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your English lord.’ Marchenoir’s voice was suddenly bitter. ‘His mother was a d’Auxigny. I grew up in Auxigny. We had to kneel in the mud if one of the family went past. Even if the coach was a half mile away we had to kneel. Even if we were thigh deep in muck we had to kneel. All between the river and the mountain belonged to Auxigny, and that included us.’ He laughed. ‘Do you know who the present owner of Auxigny is?’
Gitan smiled at the big man. ‘You, citizen!’
‘Me!’ Marchenoir pointed at his breast with his cigar. ‘Perhaps I’ll turn it into a brothel of aristo bitches.’ He nudged the sack with his dirty boot. ‘That’s one at least I won’t have to kneel to again.’ He laughed as he walked to the cell door. ‘Good hunting, my friend. See me before you leave Paris!’ He was in the corridor now, his voice booming behind him as he walked away. ‘Come and drink to our success, Gitan!’ He laughed again, then sang a line of the new song that was sweeping through Paris. ‘The day of glory has arrived!’ The smell of his cigar lingered in the stink of blood, urine and flesh. He shouted once more, his voice fading. ‘Forward! Forward!’
The Gypsy did not move for a long time after the politician had gone. He stared at the candle. Then, at last, he stepped to the window, took the damp cigar stub from the dead girl’s lips, and threw it into the darkness.
He finished his work, tying the neck of the sack over the long, black hair of a girl who had been beautiful before this day, then he carried his soggy burden down to where carts were being loaded with the white, naked bodies of the enemies of the state.
His horse, untethered still, whinnied and came towards him. The Gypsy mounted, the sack heavy in his hand, and rode into a night that was filled with the smell of death, into a city exhausted by massacre. Yet he knew there would be more blood, far more; these deaths were just a beginning, enough to give the new men who had risen to power the taste of slaughter.
He thought of Marchenoir, of the candle’s secret message, and smiled in pleasure. He was the Gypsy, the black dressed horseman who would ride through the horrors on the secret, silent path of the traitor, just as he now rode through a silent, dark, frightened city with his burden of death. He rode unafraid through a city of fear; he was the Gypsy.
Rain threatened Lazen. Since dawn the clouds had been low over the hills that edged the Lazen valley, and the wind that came from the west was cold as though it brought the chill of the long grey waves from beyond Cornwall.
The Lady Campion Lazender, dressed in a plain blue linen dress covered with a blue cloak, was riding, in a most unladylike manner, over a newly ploughed field. She rode astride, careless that her ankles showed.
At the edge of the field she turned the horse back. The field was muddy, heavy with the rain that had fallen in the night. She kicked her heels to force the mare into a trot.
‘She’s a rare looking girl, Mr Burroughs,’ said a tall, bald man who stood at the field’s edge.
‘That she is.’ Simon Burroughs was the Castle’s head coachman, a rank denoted by the six capes of his greatcoat and by the curled whip he carried in his gloved right hand.
‘Mare goes well for her!’ The bald man was hopeful that her Ladyship would buy the mare from him.
‘Maybe.’ Burroughs would not commit himself.
Campion turned the horse again, and forced it into a canter. She leaned forward, trying to hear if the breath was whistling in the mare’s pipes. ‘Come on, girl! Come on!’ She slapped its neck.
The owner of the horse, Harry Trapp, was a farmer who had ridden this day from the Piddle Valley. He knew that Lazen Castle would always buy a decent horse.
Campion turned the horse again and this time she galloped the mare up the slope of the field, across the grain of the plough, and she kicked her heels back to see what speed the animal would show in this deep, wet ground. Mud flecked the skirts of her dress and cloak. She turned at the field’s head and cantered toward the two men. Her cheeks were glowing, her face alive with pleasure.
She swung herself from the saddle, slapped at some of the mud on her cloak, and went to the horse’s head. ‘She summered in a field, Mr Trapp?’
‘Yes, my Lady.’
That, she thought, explained the horse’s poor condition. She was newly shod, but the shoes had been put on over feet battered by a summer on dry land. ‘Has she had any oats?’
‘No, my Lady. But she filled up nicely last winter.’
Campion ran her hand down the horse’s neck, down the forelegs to the chipped knee. The farmer shrugged. ‘That don’t stop her, my Lady.’
‘Why are you selling?’
The farmer shrugged. ‘Ain’t got no call for her, my Lady. Too good to pull a bloody cart.’
‘Don’t you swear to her Ladyship,’ Simon Burroughs said.
‘Sorry, my Lady,’ the farmer said.
Campion hid her smile. All the men in the Castle, Simon Burroughs included, swore freely in front of her, but were outraged if any outsider took the same liberty.
The mare was broad and firm at the root of her neck, and was hardly blowing because of the exercise. She would, Campion thought, make a good hunter, but would never breed the foal that Campion wanted which would be as fast as any in England. She opened the horse’s mouth. ‘Six years old?’
‘Yes, my Lady.’
‘Seven,’ said Simon Burroughs. ‘You tried to sell her last year to Sir John. You said she was six then.’
‘Seven,’ said Mr Trapp.
‘What do you call her?’
‘Emma.’
