A/N: Being the story of a merchant of disguise haunted by the specter of a missing father, this story is partly inspired byThe Changer by Geheymer Maggid. I've been interested in that Cap Brun guinguette for a while, but it was only recently I started headcanoning the owners as a husband-and-wife couple, with the husband in the pègre and the wife a daughter of a forçat.
Also, thanks to Trompe-la-Mort for finding a passage in Les Mystères de Paris that gave me a reasonable idea of how much Valjean would have owed the Sarteurs.
As she was preparing to go to bed one mid-November night in 1823, Madame Pénélope Sarteur heard a knock on the door. If that knock had been preceded by a much larger and deeper sound—the boom of a cannon off in the harbor—then she would have greeted it with glee and with the jangling of coins echoing somewhere in her ears; but as it was, her blood chilled in her veins. Without a boom, the only reasons for a knock at night were sinister ones. Pénélope Sarteur's mind immediately seized on the worst of them all: they had been discovered.
"Ghislain,"she said as she shook awake her already-sleeping husband, "There's someone knocking."
He bolted upright. "Who the devil can that be? There's been no escape."
"I know," she said. "Maybe it's to do with your business. It could be urgent."
"Maybe so; but whatever it is, it's not good—that's for damn sure."
Pénélope took the candle she had been about to snuff out and descended the stairs. This was how it had happened to her father, too. A dark night in the fall, a knock, one person less at home. With a trembling hand, she undid the latch on the door; with a trembling mind, she recited her list of alibis and false realities. Her husband was a joiner. She was a seamstress. That accounted for the stockpiles of clothing filling many chests of drawers throughout the house. Why only men's clothing? Why was she not known in town as a seamstress? These were questions to which she had never been able to invent a plausible answer. She had simply lived, from day to day, in the hope she would never be asked them by an agent of the authorities.
She opened the door, expecting to be spoken to first; but there was only silence. The night was moonless; she saw no one. "Who's there?" she said. "This is a late hour for honest people!"
"Is this the 'dressing-room'?" asked a voice in the dark.
"Who wants to know?" she cried.
"I need your services."
"I don't know what you mean," said Pénélope. A customer? But how? Surely this was a trap.
"Please, I beg of you. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. I don't know if there is some password. No one sent me whom I can name. Even if I did remember a name, they've vanished like the dust; I heard the rumor of this place many, many years ago. But I need your help."
"But how can I—"
"Let me inside and then you will see without a doubt that I am not a police spy. But don't take your candle outside, I entreat you—I can't be seen."
There was nothing immediately incriminating in the entryway to the cottage. In spite of her better judgment,
Pénélope stepped aside, holding the door open. "Come in, then."
He was a hideous apparition in the candlelight, more dead than alive. He had, indeed, been telling the truth; unless the police had put an extraordinary amount of effort into disguising a spy as an escaped forçat, this unexpected visitor was the real thing. Pénélope's eye, practiced in both physiognomy and vestiognomy, scanned the man from head to toe: stocky, barefoot, medium height, completely white hair, shivering violently. He'd gotten rid of his red coat and vest, keeping only the white chemise and button-studded trousers; normally the letters stamped on the shirt, and the buttons and garish yellow color of the trousers, would have given him away, but they were so filthy with mud and seawater that the most telltale object was the shackle that his trouser leg didn't quite cover, along with the sores that had cropped up on his ankle in spite of the rag tied around it. His cap being missing, Pénélope had no way of knowing whether it was a finite or lifetime sentence the man was running from. No matter the sentence, however, he was running from it with a limp; return horse or not, the man had clearly spent a good length of time in the bridle.
"Could you give me a drink?" was the first thing he said. "And food? I'll pay."
"Where did you come from?" Pénélope asked, hardly hearing him. "They didn't fire the cannon. I wasn't expecting you."
"They think I'm dead," he replied, and didn't elaborate.
"Wait," said Pénélope. "I heard about this. The drowned forçat? The mayor who saved the sailor? That was you?"
The man didn't reply.
"That was well done, monsieur! I'm honored to have you in my home!"
A face battered by the sun, with eyes dulled by hunger and lips dry with thirst, gave a hint of a smile.
"Please," he said, "water."
She led him to the kitchen and put a pottery jug and a loaf of bread in his hands, then went upstairs where her husband was sitting fully clothed at the side of his bed, waiting to be either arrested or summoned for some underworld emergency. "It is a customer," she said.
"How can that be? There was no—"
"Clever bastard escaped without them knowing it. They think he's dead."
"Do you mean to tell me he's that hero who fell off the mast of the ship?"
"Yes, that's precisely what I mean to tell you."
"So he saved someone's life while escaping," Ghislain said in awe.
"Or escaped while saving someone's life. One of the two."
Ghislain got up and followed his wife down the stairs. "I'm very curious to see what this fellow looks like."
"He's older than I thought," Pénélope said. "Or perhaps younger. One of the two. His hair is white, but he doesn't look old; he doesn't look old, but just look at him—I bet he feels old." It made her feel giddy to be talking about a stranger in such intimate terms. "I'm going to give him a discount," she added, "for being so bloody clever. We've got a bloody hero on our hands, here."
"Does he even have money?" asked Ghislain, slightly jealous.
"He says he does."
When they entered the kitchen, the man turned white as a sheet. "Who is—"
"This is my husband, monsieur. Don't worry, he's not of the police. We don't want that here any more than you do."
"It's just—there's the reward, you know," said the guest, his color returning slightly.
"Yes, one reward, and then what do you think happens to my business?"
The visitor gave an appreciative nod of the head. "May I see your merchandise, madame?"
The opera house of Toulon could not have had a more carefully curated collection of costumes than the one Pénélope Sarteur had in her cottage. The opera's stock was more diverse, certainly—Pénélope's clients had no need of dressing up as kings or ancient gods. But within the cross-section of society that these clients wished to embody, Pénélope's costumes certainly displayed greater variety and precision. Curly blond wigs, straight black ones and vice versa—no red ones, though, because who would willingly go about as a redhead? An immense range of frock coats and greatcoats and waistcoats, of stockings and cravats and hats, of shirts and trousers and knee breeches. Some garments were purposely frayed and tattered, little more than rags; others were more respectable, allowing the wearer to pass for a farmer or even a bourgeois. Every item was secondhand or bought from receleurs; if Pénélope were ever forced to prove to the police that she was truly an honest seamstress, she would have been better off making a full confession on the spot, for she could barely sew a handkerchief.
"I will need to acquire several different disguises, changing between them as I pass from one region to another," said the client. "Is this possible?"
"Anything is possible here, monsieur," said Pénélope, "although with your build, our choices may be limited, I'm afraid. Many of my clothes will be either too small or too long on you."
The man blushed slightly. "It doesn't have to fit perfectly. I don't intend to draw much attention to myself, I can assure you."
"Then I shall certainly be able to assist you. What in particular are you looking for?"
"For the first part of my journey, I will need peasants' clothing. This is what I will wear throughout the Midi and what I intend to change into immediately—a long vest, and those knee-breeches with gaiters tied under the knee with a red garter, and those woolen waist-sashes, I don't know what they're called..."
"A taillole," said Pénélope.
"Yes," said the visitor. "You'll excuse me, I've spent a good deal of time in the Côte d'Azur, but not among people wearing such garments."
"Understandable," said Pénélope. "I'm not from Toulon originally, myself."
Neither one asked the obvious question.
"After that," the client continued, "I don't know where my journey will take me. I must fit in among Pyrénées-dwellers in Aquitaine and Alps-dwellers in Savoy, among farmers in the country and merchants in the cities. There, again, I will be striving to create the impression of absolute invisibility."
"I can make that happen."
"For my last disguise," the man finished, "I wish to look a bit like a struggling but honest man—neither a peasant nor wealthy. This may be the most difficult effect to create."
As he spoke, Pénélope had been darting around the room, a handwritten catalogue in her hands, and peering into the crates and cabinets where her wares were folded. By the time he had finished, there were several stacks of clothing waiting for him, along with a good selection of wigs. "Try the clothes on behind that screen, and let me know what you wish to buy." Although he had not asked, she added, "They are priced according to what I had to pay for them, not according to their actual value, so it is rather arbitrary. I've paid more for wool than for silk before."
"That won't be a problem," the client assured her.
"One more thing, monsieur," Pénélope said, as he picked up the clothes and made his way over to the screen. She was anxious to put this delicately. "Begging your pardon, but—you may wish to visit a trustworthy blacksmith. My husband can help you with that."
"I was hoping to resolve that during this visit, yes," the client said, glancing reflexively downward. "I could do it myself, if I only had the correct tools."
"Have no fear; the man's a professional, and quite discreet."
The client nodded and disappeared behind the screen. He came back out a few minutes later, dressed as a Provençal peasant. "These will all do nicely," he said, "except...do you have a coat like this in any other color?" He held up a yellow-ochre redingote. "The way it's frayed, it's perfect for the last disguise, but..."
"I'm sorry, but that's all I have at the moment," said Pénélope. "Don't like yellow, do you?"
"No," he said simply.
"Where are the clothes you came in with?"
The client shuddered. "Behind the screen. What will you do with them?"
"Wash them and sell them," said Pénélope. "Not to clients like you, of course; but there are uses for such things in the pègre."
They went back to the kitchen, the client holding his soon-to-be purchases in a bundle under his arm and Pénélope telling him where he could most easily buy a pack to carry it all. Her husband was waiting for them, with a cashbox at his elbow, a ledger at his hand and a skeptical look on his face.
"That will be fifty francs," Ghislain said, after looking at the list his wife had drawn up.
"No, Ghislain, take ten percent off," said Pénélope.
"Very well," her husband sighed. "That will be forty-five francs."
The client carefully removed a hundred-franc note from his new pockets and laid it next to the ledger.
"Diantre!" said Ghislain. "Where on earth did that come from?"
"It was honest work," said the client.
"No," said Ghislain, "Not how did you earn it; where did you hide it? You must have brought it into the bagne with you. I've never seen anyone pay with anything above a napoleon."
The client blushed furiously, and Ghislain abruptly dropped the note as though it had burned him. "Oh, for Christ's sake! Don't tell me you had it up your—"
"My money is clean," the client said in a barely audible voice, "in every sense of the word."
"Leave the poor man alone," said Pénélope hotly. "I know what he's talking about. You should be minding your own business, anyway."
The client stayed silent as Ghislain handed him his change and directed him to an address where the shackle on his ankle could be struck off. He nodded politely, then took his bundle and walked out of the kitchen. Pénélope followed him. "Good luck, monsieur."
"Thank you, madame," he said quietly.
"I must say, I was quite impressed that you paid with a hundred-franc note! You must have a marvelous amount of money on you, monsieur."
He turned back and gave her a look that she felt go to the very depths of her. "Madame," he said, "if money were my only cross to bear, then my troubles would be over. But surely you must know that there are a thousand obstacles in the path of a pilgrim seeking freedom and salvation. As for me, I would not even have sought my freedom if I did not have a duty to do so. But I owe a debt to God, and I have a promise to keep."
And he tipped his hat and left her, a confused little girl in an incense-filled church yearning for her father. Painted saints were before her eyes, and relics. In a haze, she wandered back to the changing room and looked down at the cast-off bagne clothes; suddenly she was not so sure whether she would sell them after all.