Impossible once they get outside to find a cab. They trail through the little streets, almost careless of where they are headed, find themselves (just as the women’s shoes are starting to pain them) on the Ile de la Cité, eat bowls of tripe from a night-stall beneath the walls of the Conciergerie, then hire a skiff and are rowed along the black scarf of the river to the steps under the Pont Neuf.
They stumble up the treacherous steps, and on the rue Saint-Honoré, with embraces and promises of doing it all again — soon! soon! — they finally part.
At the house, Jean-Baptiste lights a candle, and with Héloïse behind him, both of them yawning extravagantly, they start up the stairs to bed. As they pass the drawing room the door swings open. Marie comes out. ‘A girl called for you,’ she says.
‘A girl?’ asks Jean-Baptiste. ‘What girl?’
‘Well, it wasn’t Ziguette,’ says Marie. She lets out a squeak of laughter. In the candle-shadow her face looks like a mask she has put on in a hurry.
‘It might be best,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘not to let Monsieur Monnard know you’ve been at his wine. Though God knows how you managed to get drunk on it.’
‘You’re a fine one,’ she says. She turns to Héloïse. ‘Before you came, he used to talk to himself all night. Mutter, mutter, mutter. Drove poor Ziguette right out her brains.’ She sniffs.
Héloïse steps closer and takes one of the maid’s hands.
‘But who was the girl?’ she asks. ‘The one who called here?’
‘Oh, I sent her away,’ says Marie. ‘He’s got you now, hasn’t he.’
‘Yes,’ says Héloïse softly. ‘Yes.’
He had intended — had planned as much as they skimmed over the river — to spend the night, or a good part of it, diligently plundering his Héloïse, but within a few minutes of climbing into bed (he is lying on his side watching her disrobe and listening to her speculate about the identity of his mysterious caller) he has fallen asleep, and for the first time since the attack he starts to dream.
He is back in the theatre, walking on the frayed red carpeting in the corridor behind the boxes. He is looking for the minister’s box. He has a message for him, an important message, one that he must deliver in person, but the little polished doors to the boxes have no numbers on them and there is no one to ask. And then, in the sudden way of dreams, there is someone, a lanky figure lounging against the wall under a branch of candles. . Renard? Renard the foundling? There is no mistaking him. Scrawny neck wrapped in a collar of greasy fur, a tight little grin on his face. He bows to Jean-Baptiste, points to the door opposite him, turns and hurries away down the empty corridor. Quietly — no knocking or scratching — Jean-Baptiste opens the door and slips inside. The only light is a dull, red pulsing, as if from some conflagration in the stalls below, but it is enough to show him the minister and Boyer-Duboisson, their chairs side by side at the front of the box. Have they really not heard him? Are they so engrossed? From his pocket he takes out the message. A message with weight, a point, an edge. He steps behind the minister’s chair, puts a hand gently but firmly across the minister’s eyes, feels the fluttering of his eyelids. No nerves now. No more uneasiness. He is a boy from the country; he has seen this sort of thing often enough; has sat with his brother watching the pigman come over the winter fields with his ropes, his canvas roll of blades. As he sets to work, the minister’s feet kick like an excited child’s. .
Waking, coming to the surface of himself as though flung into a place more confusing even than the dream, he is already trying to explain, to excuse. He stares at his hands, at the sheets, but they are perfectly clean, freakishly normal. Héloïse is pressing his shoulders. He blinks up at her, still babbling, but she is not listening to him. She is trying to tell him something of her own, her own dream perhaps.
‘Hush,’ she says. ‘Hush and come now, Jean. Come. They are waiting for you.’
He sits up. Marie is in the doorway with a candle. She is, apparently, fully dressed. From behind her a draught of cold, sluggish air flows in from the landing.
Héloïse gives him his breeches. Obediently, he puts them on. Odd how he cannot properly wake up. Is he ill? Is that it? A tainted oyster at the theatre? The chicken? No. He does not feel ill.
Kneeling, she buttons the legs of his breeches. He buttons his waistcoat. His watch is on the floor by the bed. He leans for it, flicks up the lid.
‘It’s half past four in the morning,’ he says, a remark that should occasion some sort of explanation but doesn’t.
‘Very well.’ He stands, wipes a hand across his face, accepts his hat from Héloïse, then follows Marie onto the landing. He does not ask her any questions. He knows her well enough now to know she is quite likely simply to invent something.
On the floor below, Monsieur Monnard, nightcap askew, is standing outside his bedroom door. ‘Are we to have no peace?’ he asks huskily, tearfully perhaps. ‘My wife, monsieur, my wife is very—’
‘Go back to your bed,’ says Jean-Baptiste.
In the hallway, a tall, gaunt figure is restless in the dark. Jean-Baptiste takes the candle from Marie, holds it up.
‘He doesn’t speak any French,’ says Marie.
‘Of course he does,’ says Jean-Baptiste, but when Jan Block starts, at great speed, to try and explain what he is doing there at half past four in the morning, it is only with the greatest difficulty, and by drawing on his small though slowly growing reserves of Flemish, that the engineer is able to follow him. There has been an accident in the cemetery. Yes. An accident or an incident of some sort. Jeanne has been hurt. Monsieur Lecoeur is looking after her. . or no. Monsieur Lecoeur is not looking after her. Monsieur Lecoeur has in fact — what? Run away?
‘Enough,’ says Jean-Baptiste, putting the candle on the hall table and stepping towards the street door. ‘I will see it for myself.’
Outside, a milky pre-dawn vapour hangs in the street, something like the shed skin of a cloud, damp, miasmic, coating their faces with droplets of moisture. Block is already at the corner of the street. He looks back, silently urging the engineer on. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to run,’ says Jean-Baptiste, though more to himself than to Block. He is trying to imagine what manner of accident could possibly have befallen Jeanne in the middle of the night. As for Lecoeur, why the devil should he disappear? Or did Block mean he had gone to fetch help? Perhaps even to find Guillotin or Thouret. That would make some sense of the story, though even as he thinks it, he knows the truth’s something quite different.
The cemetery door, when they reach it, stands wide, but once they are inside the walls, everything looks normal enough. The fire by the preaching cross burns as it has for weeks. The church is the same mad shadow as always. Then he sees, over by the south charnel, the movement of torches, hears the rumbling of men’s voices.
Block runs towards them. Jean-Baptiste, cursing under his breath, jogs after him. The miners are gathered on the ground between the charnel and the sexton’s house. Block calls to them and they fall silent, look at him, look past him to the engineer; then the talking resumes, louder now, more urgent. Some of them point to the charnel, wave their hands at it, their fists. He has not known them like this before. Block he has lost sight of. He sees Jacques Everbout, asks him where Jeanne is.