Part Twenty-Six: Saint-Denis, Franciade
He couldn't stay in Paris. He couldn't stay in France.
Élise...
He didn't know what he felt, but he just knew he couldn't stay.
He had loved Élise. Loved her with every fiber of his being. Back when he was a houseboy, he knew he never had a chance, but he would sometimes dream of what his future would be like, and it was always married to Élise. After Monsieur de la Serre's death, Arno was no longer a houseboy, and he had hurt Élise without any intention of doing so. When he tried to picture his future, it was lonely. After he was Attainted, and had lost himself in Versailles, when Élise and he had gone back to Paris, he had often thought of what married life with her would be like. They lied and said they were married, they shared a bed, and Arno pictured idyllic life.
That wasn't what he had. His time with Élise wasn't the painting of perfection he had dreamed of. It wasn't the same as what he'd seen with Charlotte and Augustin, or Jérôme and Camille, or even Élise's parents. Those couples worked together, cared for one another, radiated love. That's not what life with Élise was at all. She was cantankerous, condescending, moody, spiteful. She held the smallest transgressions against him for weeks, would bring them up in fights even months later. She never took the time to understand what it was he could do and where the limitations were. Always, her refrain was "You're an Assassin, aren't you?" and he could never seem to get her to listen to what that meant. When she was hit hard by the malaise, she would strike at every weak point he had with viscous vitriol.
But there were times.
When the malaise wasn't overpowering her, when he was able to provide something she asked for that actually lead somewhere, Arno could see the briefest of glimpses of what married life might be like after Germain. When the cause of her malaise had passed. When he had fixed his mistake. Fixed her.
He kept telling himself that those brief snatches were worth it. That it was fine that he preferred working late as a gens d'armes to avoid going home. That it was fine that he left early to get a start on the day to leave her sooner. That it was fine that he never mentioned which friends would visit him because it was safer for him if she didn't know.
It was fine.
Because once Germain fell, it would all be well again.
Now Élise was dead.
Arno was supposed to be sad. Upset. Angry. The shock of it had certainly hit him hard.
But he felt...
Relief.
And that was so wrong. Élise was the love of his life, so why was he relieved that she was now gone? And that feeling of relief twisted with regret because there was so much of what could have been that came in small moments. So many if onlys. If only he had delivered the letter, if only he wasn't ten minutes late, if only he had kept Élise with him, if only he hadn't been hit by the electrocution of that damn sword, if only...
And twisted with the relief and regret, was also loss. Because Arno had loved Élise for so long, he couldn't remember not loving her. And despite the relief and regret, there was still loss.
He was so messed up.
What the hell was he feeling?
What was he supposed to feel and why wasn't he?
Why had she not waited for him?
Why did she value killing Germain over loving him?
Whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy...
He couldn't stay in Paris. He couldn't stay in France.
He had once investigated a murder over hot chocolate. The son was in charge of his money and estate. He had a shrew for a mother and he had wondered why the son just didn't see her anymore if she was going to be cruel to him all the time.
Now, he wondered if there were small happy moments that kept him going back.
"Nom de dieu!"
Arno looked up. He had been sitting in the dark waiting for them to come down. He didn't know where else to go.
"Bonjour," he said tiredly. He had been crying so he coughed, to clear his throat. "Desolé. Ah, I didn't know where else to go."
Tissot frowned heavily, then lit more candles since the sky was only just starting to lighten.
"Dorian," Tissot greeted, clearly on guard. Once there was more light, Tissot took a look at Arno and his guarded face softened the barest of touches. "You look like hell."
"I've been damned there, might as well look the part," Arno replied dryly. His eyes sagged again. So damn tired. He took a breath, forced his eyes open. At his feet was his small bag. He had gone to the rooms he had rented with Élise and grabbed what he could. Clothes, of course, his box of letters for his father... he would have to start them to Élise now... all weapons he had... all the food that was there... "I can't stay in Paris anymore," he said quietly, staring down at his feet. "I can't stay in France."
For a moment his throat clogged, and then it was gone.
"You're a weaver. Or some sort of textiles trader. Get me somewhere far away from here. I can't... I can't stay here."
Tissot sat in front of him, measuring him closely, eyes slightly narrowed. "Your other friends?"
His vision misted. He blinked, then he could see again. "Cosette doesn't have an assignment that I know of yet, Fabre is the Roi des Thunes and won't have access to that sort of thing, and Marc—Pontmercy has made it clear he doesn't want to see me." He shook his head. "I'm not looking for an Assassin way out. Normal, mundane means. I'll work on a ship if I have to... Just..." His eyes were drooping again.
He pressed his palms into his eyes.
Tissot was still measuring him. "Why?"
Arno winced. Heavily. "Élise... she's dead..." he choked out. "All I want is more wine... S'il vous plaît, I can't stay here."
Tissot leaned back, and let out a heavy sigh. "Come on. Once the children are awake, we can get you to bed. I'll see what I can do."
Arno nodded, even as his eyelids once again started to drag down.
14 Thermidor, Y2 (August 1, 1794)
He had been woken up once to get some food in him, but otherwise Arno slept most of the day and subsequent night away.
Thus, the following morning Tissot brought Arno to the family parlor at sat him down, Camille by his side. The children weren't there, but Arno had no doubt that they were either hiding somewhere, or the oldest had taken them out somewhere.
"Je vous remercie," Arno offered first.
"I think we should be saying that to you," Camille said softly. "You saved my life and kept my husband sane. We owe you a great deal."
Arno shook his head.
Tissot snorted. "We owe you. Don't bother denying it. You are a Brother. We will help you."
Arno sighed, not even bothering to try and say he had never been an Assassin.
"I do have a shipment of fabrics heading to Egypt from Marseille," Tissot said. "You will be my guard to make sure they get there and don't suffer from pirates. The ship leaves in six days on the twenty-first."
Arno nodded. He doubted he'd get passage immediately. Waiting just under a week would be fine.
He hoped.
He was such a mess.
Camille studied him, as her husband had measured him, and nodded to herself. "Since you are here, can we ask for your help with something?"
"Bien sur."
"It's Assassin, in origin."
Arno winced. "I'm Attainted."
Tissot scoffed. "We aren't what we were, Dorian," he said softly. "Between Tuileries, the guillotines, riots, even those of us who have been incredibly careful have been killed. We number barely over a hundred."
Arno winced again. When he had joined, there were just over two hundred. Five years and now the Assassins were at half strength?
"You won't be dealing with Templars, you won't even be fighting. But we need you to fetch something one of our allies hid before he was guillotined."
Arno paused, thinking. It would just be fetching something. No investigating, no intrigue. But...
"Won't you get in trouble? For having an Attainted man like myself doing this?"
Camille frowned at him. "That doesn't matter, Citoyen Dorian. We know the content of your character. We trust you. That's enough for us."
His eyes misted again.
"I... Thank you. I will help."
Both nodded as one.
Tissot leaned forward. "What do you know of Condorcet?"
Arno shrugged. "Mathematician."
"Philosopher," Camille replied. "He was an ally of ours. He disappeared for two days before his guillotining. Granted, he'd been hiding for months here in Paris, and he spent that time writing some sort of manuscript. Jérôme was the one who brought him supplies."
Tissot nodded. "Back in March, before this new calendar, Nicolas told me he didn't feel safe anymore. I told him I could arrange for safe passage, but he didn't wait and fled. He made it all the way to Clamart and that surprised me."
"Oh?"
"He had always told me he'd go north. It would be quicker to get to a ship."
Arno blinked.
"I went back over my notes from all the times I spoke with him. I think he wanted to get to Saint-Denis. Excusez-moi, Franciade."
Something about Saint-Denis tickled the back of Arno's mind, but he set it aside.
"And?" Arno asked politely.
"Nicolas, he had a pet project that he wanted passed when he was on the Assembly. It was rejected, but he liked to talk about it. He wanted another aristocracy, but this time for savants and intellect instead of bloodlines. I didn't care for it. It would have been based on reforming education, making a hierarchy of experts, guardians of the Enlightenment and grantors of liberty or some such. He did get a lot of education reforms in, but his idea of favoring brains over blood..." Tissot sighed, rubbing his face. Suddenly, Arno realized that Tissot looked older. That in the years of the Revolution, Tissot had aged. Between the cloak and dagger of Assassin work, having all those children, running a business, there was more grey in the hair. More lines on the face.
Did Arno's face reflect the same? From all the stress and worry and uncertainty?
Tissot sat up again. "Nicolas, he was a marquis. But he only made anything of himself through his brains. Twenty-two and publishing how to do integral calculus... Anyway, I went back over some things. He was all in favor of Louis's trial, but he was opposed to the death penalty. It got me thinking. Saint-Den—Franciade, that's where all the Kings of France are buried. He always made a point of mentioning Saint-Denis."
Arno's jaw dropped and his eyes widened. Then he offered a flat look. "That's over one thousand years of kings and queens," he said just as flatly.
Tissot shrugged. "It's the only thing I can think of. It makes sense, and if you knew Nicolas, it would too. It's not something I can articulate, but it's the only thing that works. Between always mentioning Saint-Denis, then being found in Clamart, the opposite direction, his holding to aristocracy in a different form..."
"So you want me to search a necropolis."
Tissot shrugged. "It's a three day ride to Marseilles from there. That gives you three days to poke around. Worst case scenario, I can arrange for different passage."
"Please," Camille said, "we're stretched too thin. Will you help us?"
... How could Arno refuse?
He couldn't stay in Paris. He could at least get to Saint-Denis – rechristened Franciade to remove more stains of the Church from the country – and not be in Paris. He couldn't stay in France, but that would take longer.
"Bien sûr."
Saint-Denis, now Franciade, was originally named after a Bishop of Paris who was beheaded for his faith as he tried to convert the Gauls to Catholicism. The oldest records of the town were from the second century, when it was a Gallo-Roman town named Catolacus, until Saint Denis came. After Saint Denis's beheading, it didn't take long for the name to change to the venerated saint. It was the French King Dagobert I that rebuilt the small chapel to a monastery and granted many privileges, including holding a market that would, over time, have travelers as far as the Byzantine Empire come to trade their wares. After Dagobert I's death, he was buried in Saint-Denis, and just about every French king after him was buried there as well. In 1140, Saint-Denis was granted more privileges when Abbot Suger was counselor to the king, and the basilica was enlarged, an early example to the start of Gothic architecture. As history marched on, Saint Denis was almost depopulated by the Hundred Years' War and the Religious Wars were hardly kind. But Louis XIV granted favor to Saint-Denis and the next Louis did the same, particularly since his daughter was a nun there.
Saint-Denis had history, much as Paris did, and Arno was immune to most of it.
All he cared about was the Basilica of Saint-Denis. Over forty kings and thirty queens, to say nothing of princes, princesses and those close to the family where buried there. That was a lot of grave robbing.
Naturally, Arno waited till night fell. He had already, discreetly, climbed up the north tower and had sequestered himself in the belfry. Unsurprisingly, the bell had been removed, likely to be melted for coins given how much France's economy was all over the place. As darkness fell, he slipped through a door and started descending the stairs. He had been cautious in his approach. He had the clothes of an abbot, but it would be suicide to wear them on the streets, so he waited until he was heading down the stairs to don them. Most of the looser cloth hid his actual clothes underneath. Under his robes he had a pistol, just in case things went bad. After all, this was France. Things had been going bad for a long time.
Too much death...
Candles were still lit down in the knave, and Arno looked around carefully.
This was... not what he was expecting.
Arno hadn't been in a church since he had killed Sivert. He knew that Notre-Dame had suffered under the pushback against all things religious, but now, years later, it seemed even outside of Paris was the same as inside Paris. The Basilica looked ransacked, any hints of gold or relics were gone or broken. The recumbents, life-sized statues of the deceased lying at rest, had clearly been hefted or moved in search of treasures.
Merde.
Arno raised his single candle, looking around and trying to decide where to start.
"Ah, you're an unfamiliar face," a wizened old voice said.
Arno turned to see an ancient Benedictine monk shuffling over to him.
"Bonsoir," Arno greeted politely. "I apologize for arriving so late, but I just arrived in town this evening."
"Hmmmm," the old monk squinted at him. "I'll admit, I'm surprised to find such a young man as you wearing your robes so openly. Most of us don't dare with all the hubbub going in. It's been years since we were forbidden to wear our robes outside of church and last year all churches were shut down."
Arno shrugged. "I'm on a pilgrimage. More for myself than all the chaos."
"Unorthodox," the old monk nodded. "I am Dom Germain Poirer."
"Arno," he replied, offering with a bitter smile, "no title available."
"Hehn. I've had students like you before," Dom Poirer replied. "Come on. I'm almost done here. I can offer you dinner and you can question me."
"Question you, monsieur?"
"You're either going to pay proper respects or you're one of those rapscallions trying to grab anything of value from this place. I'm archiving everything that's taken, so I need to know what you're looking for."
Arno blinked, not quite believing his luck.
"You'll have to help me. These old eyes aren't what they were, young Arno." Dom turned, gesturing for Arno to precede him. "Seventy-years does a lot to a man's eyes."
Arno snorted. "I doubt much escapes your eyes, monsieur."
"Go ahead. Keep flattering me. I hope you don't mind chicken. I don't have much else worth eating."
"I've survived worse offerings," Arno replied blandly.
Unsurprisingly, Dom Poirer guided Arno to the shabby abbey where he was staying, decay and destruction having been distributed here as well. It seemed the Church wasn't in good standing here anymore than back in Paris. Not that Arno was surprised. He hadn't really known anyone who liked the Church.
Dinner was small and not overly palatable, but filling. Other monks stared at Arno, but kept their distance. Despite all of his acting as a pious monk on a pilgrimage, it seemed no one believed him. But then, given all the hatred the Church had earned and how much of that hatred was being loudly declared by the Revolution, it wasn't really a stretch to say that any clergyman would be dubious and skeptical.
He should have chosen a different approach.
"Ah, you see that things aren't all that welcoming here," Dom Poirer observed, leaning back. His sharp eyes were observing closely. "You're good at acting like a man of the cloth, young Arno, but your soul is in too much torment. We're all a little bitter here, but yours isn't the same."
Arno gave a wry, broken laugh. "Bitter is bitter, isn't it? Does it matter why?"
"To me? No. I don't much care for all the hullabaloo going on. I've lived through one war within the Church. I'm sure I'll survive another war on the Church."
Arno raised a brow and drank from another glass of wine. He wasn't sure which number this was. "You have advice on survival?" he asked blandly.
"Oh yes," Dom Poirer chuckled. "Starting with don't stick your neck out, but I suspect it's too late for you on that score."
"Maybe just a little," Arno said wryly, looking down at his drink. "I've already bottomed out once. I'm trying not to at the moment."
"Ah, an avoidance of temptation." Dom Poirer smiled warmly and kindly. "Shall I recount the story of Jesus fasting for forty days and forty nights and the devil constantly offering him temptation after temptation?"
Arno offered a flat look, even if his lips were curling at the edge. "I rather think everyone's heard that story once or twice."
Dom Poirer chuckled. "True. But it doesn't stop having meaning just because you've heard it many times before. Forty days and nights, that's almost a month and a half. But if you look at it in terms of language, it simply means a really long time. We don't actually know how long Jesus fasted and how long the devil tempted him. It could have been a week, it could have been months. I haven't found anything in any of the archives here in France to answer that question. But that's not the point of the story."
"Oh no," Arno said dryly, "the point is to just have faith in God and there is no more temptation ever."
"Balderdash." Dom Poirer pulled the wine away before Arno could pour another glass. "The point of the story is that temptation is difficult. Jesus faced temptations that we can't fathom. But we, as humans, face temptations every day. Do we cheat someone because they are unsavory or rude? Do we agree with hatred and cruelty for a cause? For how long? France has been facing temptation for years now. And it all starts with men."
Arno raised a brow. "I fail to see how the Third-Estate wanting to have some sort of say in how it's treated is a temptation."
Dom Poirer shrugged. "That may be how it started, that may be a noble goal, but what has it gotten us? I've guarded the archives here for twenty years before we started publishing volume after volume of the Collection of Historians of Gaul and France. The science of observation tells us that while France appeared stable on the outside, the inside was clearly churning. That churning has overcome the stability and still has not settled. An upset stomach churns, but eventually fades. The same will be for this. What form that will take, only time and observation will tell."
Arno snorted. "Careful, you sound more like a philosopher or a scientist, than a monk."
"Please, young man," Dom Poirer replied. "I'm an archivist. I'm compiling as much as I can for the National Archives. I once fought for all the knowledge the church held to be shared for the joys of studying, and was taken from my congregation as a result. All anyone can do now is keep doing what they're best at and let the rest blow over."
"Doing nothing means you don't have a say in how things end up."
The old monk shrugged. "Do I look like that matters? I'm almost seventy-one. Whatever settles isn't really going to affect me. Young men like you likely care more. I met a philosopher a few months back. We talked a great deal about science and history and religion. But he cared too much about the Revolution and the direction it was heading. I understand he was guillotined a few days later. Philosophers don't matter much in this Revolution if they have the wrong political alignment. The Church no longer has a place in politics. So now, we wait and see what's to become of us. So I keep archiving. It's the only thing I know how to do."
"Well, at least you provide a skill that the Convention still wants."
"And you have no skills?" Dom Poirer raised a brow. "To any outside observer, you'd pass as a monk in a heartbeat. You're built strong enough that you could be a policeman or a soldier. You're polite and well-spoken and could be any merchant or trader or educated man. You're a chameleon. You should be on the stage."
That actually had Arno burst out laughing.
The stage. What a horrible idea.
"Well, it's time to toddle off to bed." Dom Poirer eased himself up. "I'll show you where you can sleep."
Arno snuck out in the middle of the night and once again snuck back into the Basilica. With only his candle for a guide, he took a deep breath and called for his eagle, concentrating on what Condorcet would have done. He saw fireworks over four crypts, spread out in the necropolis. Right. Those were going to be heavy to open. But as he approached the first one, he realized that it had already been opened. Carefully, he lowered his candle and tried to look inside in such poor light. Hmm, nothing here. The next crypt was the same. The next crypt was untouched and Arno had to push. His back screamed at him as he shoved and shoved, until at last, he was able to see inside by candlelight. This crypt was untouched! Good!
It's not here...
Arno growled.
Then he heard voices coming down the stairs. Merde! He blew out his candle and ducked behind the crypt, listening intently.
"When will we return to Paris?" asked a tenor's voice, young sounding.
"Once it is found," replied a grizzled voice. "Don't ask what it is, we won't be told. It will be finished when the general says so."
"Then where is the 'it'?"
"Damned if I know. The temple door is supposed to be nearby. Did you even read the map?"
"Desolé, Capitaine Rose, but I thought it said—"
"You've wasted my time with this. If you can't read a map, you're no use to me!"
"Sir!" the young tenor hissed, "you're questioning my honor!"
Rose growled. "You're free to break your contract. But I am also free. All of France is free now. And with my freedom," the growl dropped to menacing, "I have savage tastes."
The young tenor audibly gulped. Arno risked a glance. Thick-necked, heavy brow-ridge, so pale so that he looked like he hadn't seen the sun in weeks. That was Rose. The young infantryman beside him had a weak chin and was trembling.
"I... I misspoke, capitaine. Ah—I have heard that an archivist has a list of all the relics looted from the necropolis here. I believe I can take you to him. This Dom Poirer has been keeping records of everything taken from the crypts. It will be a lucrative alternative to this... temple."
Arno ducked back down and listened.
"That's not what I want," Rose growled back. "Do you want, what I want?"
"... Oui."
"Bien. Then we are in agreement. Find that temple."
"Of course, monsieur."
They turned to head back up, and Arno risked moving from behind the crypt and hurried forward on silent feet. They had mentioned a map, that might be useful down here... He closed the distance, could smell tobacco, reached out...
Got it.
They left and Arno waited for a while before relighting his candle.
Now, back to my own grave robbing.
He called on his eagle again and saw two more crypts as possible. Sigh.
The first one he went to was unadorned, no recumbent upon it. He held his candle carefully, looking at it and wondering why this crypt was a possibility. If Condorcet was aiming to hide his manuscript in irony of the crypt of the kings, this grave wouldn't—
Louis IX.
The only king of France to be canonized as a saint.
Arno let out a low chuckle.
Condorcet couldn't get more ironic than that.
Unfortunately, this crypt had also been opened. So Arno looked inside once more, being careful. It had clearly been disturbed, but recently. Very recently by the dust. In fact, it looked like the dust had been shifted by something being placed inside. Parfait. Now if only I knew who took it after Condorcet had been through all that trouble to place it.
It looked like he'd need to talk to Dom Poirer.
He was actually rather enjoying the prospect.
16 Thermidor, Y2 (August 3, 1794)
He woke up with a splitting headache. But he could still see (moderately) straight and he decided that meant he hadn't had too much wine the previous night. If he woke up and couldn't see straight and couldn't move, that was bad. However, after getting up and (albeit, slowly) getting dressed, Arno decided that on the whole, he was fine.
Really... he was fine.
... he was a mess...
He'd had another nightmare. Élise running away from him, lightning blinding everything, her screaming, either for him or at him, he was never certain... He rubbed his eyes as they misted again.
He couldn't stay in Paris. He couldn't stay in France.
He was finally out of Paris. Time to get out of France.
But he had work to do first.
He could only pray that distance would make anything better.
With a deep sigh, Arno put on the abbot clothes again, then headed down and started looking for Dom Poirer. He found the monk in a small office surrounded by papers and scrolls and books that looked ancient. Arno couldn't help but blink. "How old are these books?"
"Ah, young Arno, you're still here." Dom Poirer turned, gesturing Arno to a chair that had three hefty tombs on them. "Clear that off. How can I help you?"
Arno lifted the books and felt his back protest after pushing open crypts the previous night. He seated and rubbed at his temples, willing his headache to decrease. He'd gotten dressed, it was time to function, and a headache wasn't helping. "Sorry to disturb you," he said softly.
"Hmmm, I'm surprised you're up already. You drank far too much last night."
Arno gave a wan smile. "I'm not incoherent, so I don't think I drank as much as you say."
"Ah, one of those," Dom Poirer replied lightly, leaning back in his chair. "You drink like a fish."
"I try not to."
"You weren't particularly successful last night. But you did keep up with conversation, so that's worth something."
Arno offered a broad, wry smile. "Perhaps, but what is that something worth?"
"Hah," Dom Poirer huffed a laugh. "Something that can't be calculated though monetary calculations. Now, what can I do for you?"
He offered a conciliatory smile, "I'll admit that you had me last night. I am here under somewhat false pretenses."
"Oh, really? I never would have known," the old monk replied, his wizened voice light and amused. "Yet you still wear the robes?"
"I am a chameleon, after all."
"Touché."
Arno sat a little straighter, shed his more spiritual demeanor and affect. "I'm trying to track down the trail of the Marquis of Condorcet after he left Paris. He was found in Clamart. From what I understood from friends, he wanted to flee north. So I was left wondering why he didn't." Arno offered a brow, and waited.
And waited.
Dom Poirer just sat there, utterly comfortable in the silence.
Arno sighed. "So did you meet Condorcet?"
"Ah, there is a question you have." Dom Poirer smiled broadly, wrinkling his face further. "You'll have to forgive an old man the few amusements I have."
"However would I survive," Arno replied dryly. "Condorcet?"
"I believe I mentioned him last night."
"You did," Arno replied. "You said he was too concerned with the way the Revolution was going and guillotined a few days later. You said nothing else."
"Really? My old age must be catching up with me," Dom Poirer turned and sifted through the myriad of papers on his desk. "Ah, here we are. He actually was kind enough to ask for a tour of the tombs. He never took anything, but he studied and listened and asked questions. He had the most questions about King Louis IX."
Unsurprising.
"I never saw him again after that."
Arno nodded to himself. "I think rather than taking something, he put something within one of the tombs."
That actually surprised Dom Poirer. "Why on earth would he do that? If he wanted something hidden, he had to know that the tombs are being ransacked."
"That was the point," Arno said. "From what I understand, he knew he was going to face the guillotine. But he had been working on a manuscript. He didn't want it hidden away or destroyed, so where better to make sure it was discovered and published after his death?"
"Than in a tomb that's being ransacked for golds to repay the national coffers," Dom Poirer summarized. "Hmph. I never would have guessed. I'm guessing you're the one he was hoping to find that manuscript?"
"Yes." Or close enough. "So, did anyone take anything from King Louis IX's tomb?"
Dom Poirer chuckled. "The Lord does indeed work in interesting ways."
Arno frowned. "And what does that mean?"
"Nothing, nothing." Dom Poirer reached back to his papers again. "I've an address for you. Old red house, ask for Léon."
So it was, an hour later when Arno's head wasn't quite so bad, that he was walking down the hot, damp streets of Franciade without the clergy clothes to find this Léon person. He pulled out a handkerchief and blotted his forehead, huffing out a hot breath into the hot air.
Old red house... old red house... ah!
He stepped up to the door and knocked. Within a few moments the door opened and a middle-aged woman, dark brown and gray hair peeking out of her bonnet, answered the door. "Oui?"
Arno nodded to her politely. "Bonjour. Does Léon live here?"
The woman sighed. "Has he been arrested again?"
Arno blinked. "Not that I know of," he replied slowly.
She nodded. "A lot of people would like to see his hands cut off. He's a vicious thief, that one."
Bien sûr. "I need his help."
"He went to the windmill yesterday. I've not seen him since."
"Merci." He turned to leave, wondering how "vicious" this man Léon was.
"A moment," the woman called out.
Arno turned. "Yes?"
"If you see him, give him my name. Madame Margot."
"Bien sûr, Citoyenne," he replied, with perhaps a cheeky grin. "Merci."
"Please, tell him to come home."
Arno nodded. This Léon was probably Margot's lover. Time to go find a vicious thief.
Arno ducked into an alley and climbed the nearest roof, getting as high as he could and scanning Franciade for a windmill. The church and abbey were to the east of his location, the tallest structures in the entire of a town, one of the less important structures in a town known for the Basilica, necropolis, and the market square.
Arno pursed his lips. He had an objective, the last thing he needed was a drink.
Find the "vicious thief" Léon, bring him back to his lover Mme Margot, get Condorcet's manuscript or work or papers or whatever he had hidden, and drop it off, head to Marseille and get out of France. Away from his loss and his mixed feelings, away from Élise...
Élise...
He shook his head. Not drinking.
There, the windmill he was looking for was well to the south, small because of the distance. He didn't see a main road, and as he worked his way back down to the narrow streets he made sure to always keep track of his direction: always vaguely south, cutting alleys or under clothes lines as needed. The windmill itself stood on what passed for a hill, stone walls securing the height from landslides. As he crested to the back of the hill he saw a collection of tents, military issue; carts and barrels and an actual cannon. What...? What was artillery doing just outside of Paris? The armies were everywhere but Paris: securing the roads from Austria, south towards Italie...
Arno frowned as he crouched down. Even with a cannon there was only one man in the blue uniform, moving about the tents and collecting what looked to be reports. Everyone else was in little more than rags, riffraff laborers, hired to do... what, exactly?
"There's an intruder in the tunnels," a guard said as they walked back, Arno crouching lower by the collection of barrels he was hiding behind.
"Connard Léon I bet," the partner said.
... Of course the thief would be in the thick of whatever this mess was. Anything to make life harder than it already was. Arno only had two more days here, he couldn't afford to dally. Taking a deep breath and hoping his headache had dispelled enough, he called on a small burst from his eagle. There was the gothic entrance behind the windmill, the source of whatever presence was here, but there was a second pop of colors on the other side of the hill. Arno backed up, giving the camp with a military officer a very wide berth.
The hill had given way to a mudslide in the past, the hill just... stopping and dropping several dozen feet. Arno saw wood boards pressed into the mud – not a mudslide then, an excava—Rouille! The September Massacres two years ago. Bonaparte had told Arno that Rouille, as part of the National Guard, was heading an excavation in Saint-Denis. He had been on his way to track him down when he spotted the man in Paris, part of the prison massacres.
Now fully alert, Arno frowned, tilting his head. If Rouille had been assigned here, then Germain had wanted something here – what could it have been? And why was Rouille in Paris that night – giving a report to Germain? Then why was he a part of the massacres? What was down there...?
"... and what does any of it have to do me?" Arno asked out loud, catching himself. Whatever they were looking for didn't matter, nothing mattered, because Élise was dead and that was all he had. She made it clear how little he was worth; how little he did to support her and how bad he was at helping her. He didn't like how low she made him feel, didn't like how her malaise had oscillated between keeping her in bed or keeping her angry, unable to break free of the prisons of her mind except in small bursts. Their last night filled his mind, her insatiable appetite for him and impatient need. That, that had been Élise as she was meant to be: happy, powerful, confident. That was how he wanted to remember her.
But then he would remember all the things she would say to him when the malaise overtook her, and the relief that she could never say those things again swept over him, followed immediately by the guilt that he even felt that way. Bon sang, he wanted a drink.
He almost left, then and there, unwilling to get involved in a mystery when he knew it would end in tragedy – everything ended in tragedy – and he couldn't stomach another one.
But... that damn thief Léon was down there, and he needed that manuscript.
Arno pulled off his worn surcoat and his waistcoat, biting at the cuff of his sleeve and ripping it, getting a fist of mud and smearing it on his culottes to better look the part of a day laborer. He hadn't shaved in over a week, so he could certainly pass. Leaping down to the base of the excavation entrance, he rolled up one sleeve, hunched his shoulders, and grunted as he entered.
Below ground everything was cut into straight lines, massive slabs of stone – Arno didn't know how to identify it – covered with candles or oil lamps. Buckets of rocks or ground stone were everywhere, as were pickaxes, shovels, sledge hammers, anything to break apart the solid rock for the excavation. Wood streaked in stone powder created slopes for wheel barrels or scaffolds for further deconstruction. Bonfires were lit to give light, shadows danced everywhere. Arno didn't see any laborers yet, and he followed the path of the excavation warily, uncertain what he would come across.
After perhaps ten minutes of wandering he came across a scaffold that lead down; he peered over the edge and saw a collection of the laborers – far burlier than he could ever pass as, with their tools picking apart at every nook and cranny of the underground caverns. One or two would stop to hold something up to the light, giddy at a find but trying to be quiet, as the other laborers – raiders, Arno realized – would steal whatever was found.
Grabbing a bucket, Arno moved down to the raiders and started putting rocks inside the bucket, playing the part.
"Capitaine Rose finally caught him," one of them was saying.
"Léon? I hear the connard killed two of our men."
"Serves us right. We shouldn't be disturbing the slumber of kings."
"Oh, don't tell me you believe in ghost stories," a third raider said
"I've seen one down below. Late at night," the first said, shaking his head. "Heard the screams."
"And how much had you been drinking, I wonder?"
There was a muffle of laughter as Arno lifted his full bucket and left. The thief had been captured... where would one hold a thief, then? Back above ground? No, there was little more than a skeleton crew up there, all the work was here, below. There were probably secondary camps for the raiders, the tents above were meant for the people in charge. That meant going deeper into the tunnels. Arno closed his eyes and asked for another short burst of his eagle, hearing a clatter of fireworks and the pops of color drawing his eye to a well-hidden tunnel back up the path he had taken.
He entered, emptying his bucket as he went but keeping it as a prop. Torches lined the narrow spaces intermittently, the air always tinged with its smoke. Arno filched an oil lamp, putting it in his bucket in case he needed it later. The weight of all the earth above him was pressing, prickles of anxiety spidering along his senses. Was this how Élise felt? Always anxious, always unsafe after so many attempts on her life were nearly successful? Small wonder she was so impatient. Did that excuse her treatment of him?
Focus. Focus, merdeux.
The tunnel branched off more than once, leading to massive caverns that sometimes were filled with raiders, sometimes empty of everything but rats. Fireworks kept his path steady, though his head was starting to hurt. He wondered what time it was, but didn't dare bring out the watch to check – he would go running for a bottle if he did.
"You ever meet a noble, Léon?"
Arno froze. He could just hear the words. Above. He looked up, eyes adjusted to the dim light now, saw he was by massive planks of wood to hold up the wall of the cavern he was in. He started scaling.
"You ever heard a noble talk? Descended from God, they were. Threads of gold arched from between their blessed legs into holy chamber pots. And then, Léon? Fountains of rubies spilled from their necks and rained down upon all France. Now, a man born deep within the lowest circle of hell can rise to the very top of Olympus itself."
"Untie me, connard!"
Arno blinked as he crested the wood, moving down a short tunnel and looking over the lip, seeing the "vicious thief" Léon, not a man but little more than a boy, tied up with rope and glaring up at Rose: neck still thick and snorting something from a snuffbox. Rose was chuckling at the boy's – nom de dieu he couldn't have been older than ten – profanity, condescendingly bending down and putting his hands on his knees. Ostensibly he was meeting the boy Léon at his level, but Arno had seen that sneer before, knew Rose still held himself above the child.
"Is that what you want, petit homme, to rise up?" Rose sneered again. "I see it in you: ambition. You're just like me."
"I'm nothing like you," Léon spat, struggling against his binds. "I'm not threatening people to get what I want, I'm doing it myself!"
Well, well. The boy had spirit.
Rose straightened, looking down his nose and taking another snuff. He looked to one of the raiders. "Kill him," he said, before leaving.
"What!? No! Let me go!"
Arno growled low in his throat. The boy was innocent, he didn't deserve to die, the cold-blooded—!
... And he had Condorcet's papers, and he was a thief, and Arno needed him.
The second thought was only a faint whisper compared to the first, however, and Arno judged the distance. He only had his gun, and in these tunnels that was the same as lighting a flare announcing "trespassers here!" If he could do this quietly... He jumped down, landing on silent feet and keeping to a crouch.
"... the ghost of the kings!" the boy muttered, having seen Arno.
The raider turned around.
So much for the element of surprise...
Arno straightened and advanced on the raider, the man's surprise giving Arno plenty of time to move inside the reaction radius. The man tried to lift a fist but it was woefully too late and woefully poor form. Arno caught it almost lazily, using it to twist the man around. With his back exposed, Arno kicked at a knee, forcing him to the ground and giving him the perfect angle to grab his neck and twist.
The body fell in a heap, and Arno bent down to loot it, finding a knife – it was dull but it would serve.
... Next time he went on a "simple fetch quest" he was arming himself to the teeth.
... Élise...
Not drinking.
"Stay back, monster!" the boy cried out, backing up as he saw Arno approach with the knife.
Honestly... "I'm not a ghost," Arno corrected. "Madame Margot sent me."
The boy, Léon, stilled in surprise. "Madame Margo?" He shook his head. "You are trying to confuse me!"
"Woman in her forties, dark brown hair streaked with grey, large hips, torn apron," Arno recited. "Brown eyes and a mole under her left, right here," he added, pointing. "Still confused?"
Léon blinked, and didn't react as Arno knelt down and cut the ropes. Freedom made the boy jump, and Arno had to grab his shoulder to halt him.
"Not so fast," he said, "We need quiet to get out of here. The whole reason I came is because I'm looking for a manuscript. It was taken from a tomb under Saint-Denis. Louis IX, sound familiar?"
Léon actually smiled, face lighting up. "I have it," he said confidently. "It's in my fortress, we can get it later."
"Then let's go," Arno said, taking the knife and hiding it in the small of his back. "Here," he said, taking the leftover rope. "Wrap this around your wrists, pretend you're still caught. I'll take you outside without raising suspicion."
Léon looked at the rope doubtfully. "They all know me here," he said. "Nobody will fall for that."
Arno gave a dark smile. "Watch," he said.
"No, I know a better way," the boy said, darting away from the rope and then ducking into a tiny crawlspace.
Arno frowned. "You know I can't fit in there," he said, crouching down, but the boy either didn't hear or ignored him. Stupide petit morveux... Arno straightened and took the tunnel below where he had fallen from, vaguely following the direction Léon had gone. He tried to call his eagle for help, but he had already used up all the time he had getting there, his head threatened to split almost as soon as he thought of it. Rubbing his temples, he hoped the child didn't lead him into an entire band of raiders – he could do precious little with a dull knife if they swarmed him like bees.
He heard the raiders before he saw them, making his steps slow as he tucked around a corner. The petit morveux was just barely visible, in the shadows of some barrels. Arno moved over, pushed him deeper into the shadows for his safety. "Why did we stop?" he asked, keeping his voice light to hide his irritation.
Léon pointed over the barrels and Arno straightened slightly, counting. Eight raiders, all huddled around one of the bonfires, flat bits of metal serving as plates as they ate. Perfect, they were distracted.
Arno gestured that Léon follow, the boy gulped and shook his head, unwilling to budge an inch. "They won't see us," he explained, but the petit homme kept shaking his head, unwilling to move.
"I thought that earlier," he whispered back.
Arno took a deep breath through his nose, realizing the boy wasn't going to move. He only had two days here – a day and a half, now, possibly less. He couldn't afford this...
Did Élise feel that way? Frustrated when Arno wanted to help the people of France instead of pursuing Germain? Was that why her words were always so harsh?
A low growl rumbled deep in his chest and he stood to his full height, marching boldly down to the bonfire and grabbing the first raider he could get his hands on and snapped his neck. The others jumped to their feet, shouting, some moving in to avenge their friend, but Arno pulled out the dull knife and gutted the first person who tried to move in. These were not worth the blood he was spilling, utterly untrained and laughable to him. He moved through the seven like water, and in only a dozen strikes all of them were down, bleeding or dead. He looked up to the barrels, put his hands on his hips. "Happy now?" he called up.
"How did you do all that?" Léon asked, running down. "You're the best fighter I've ever seen!"
Arno rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't go that far," he muttered.
Léon moved up one of the ramps, steps confident. "Where did you train?"
"In Paris," Arno answered.
"Whoa... I practice behind our house. I don't really have anyone to train with. All the freedom fighters are in Paris, like you."
Freedom... Arno shut down that thought, asking instead, "What about your mother?"
"Madame Margot?" the boy asked. "She's not my mother. My mother is Morisco, a Moor. She had to go back to Espagne, that's why she had to leave me at the orphanage. She'll come back when France is safe; with all the churches shut down it should be really soon."
Arno pursed his lips to prevent himself from saying the truth: the mother had abandoned him. Just like... just like Élise had abandoned him... under the Temple. She had chosen her revenge over Arno. She had chosen... she hadn't loved him the same way he loved her, and he was a fool to deluding himself that it had anything to do with the malaise or her thirst for vengeance. Élise might have had all of his heart, but he did not have all of hers, and now he wondered if he ever did. He would think back to their adventures as children, all the trouble they would get into, and all her chiding, calling him a baby and pushing him to go further. All their lovemaking, the Arno practically ritualized how to please Élise to the fullest, but he could count on one hand the times she pleased him. Had it always been like that? Had Arno always been... the lesser half of the relationship?
He closed his eyes, reminding himself of Condorcet and this boy having the papers.
Léon crawled over to an unassuming mass of stones, getting on his knees and pulling the pile apart. "You're going to need a weapon if we're going to save France," he was saying, pulling the rocks aside.
The boy had such dreams – no, they were just delusions. Just like Arno's. "Don't worry about it," Arno said. "Just leave that to the profess—where did you get that?"
"I stole it yesterday," he said brightly. "That's why they were after me."
Arno took the weapon, a sword, and pulled it out of its sheath. "This is an officer's sword," he muttered, giving it a test swing. Perfectly balanced, well made. The boy got this from the raiders? Impossible, nobody down here was rich enough or skilled enough for something like this.
The cannon above... could the military actually be here?
"It's a good weapon, isn't it?" Léon said, face bright. "See? I know what I'm doing."
Arno looked at the boy.
"And what exactly are you doing?" he asked, "Stealing this," he waved the officer's sword, "From a military man?"
"Saving France!" Léon said brightly. "I need a real sword to practice and get better at killing the bad guys. But now that you're here, it's going to be a lot easier."
"Listen," Arno said flatly. "We have to get the manuscript first."
Léon looked at Arno, suddenly guarded. "Why? Is the manuscript important?"
... Arno took a deep, silent breath. "It's the bad guys who want it," he said, hoping he sounded convincing. "We have to protect it. From the enemies of France."
And just like that, the boy brightened again. "I see," he said. "It contains secrets for the Republic!"
Arno bit his lip, the petit homme nodding to himself and moving through the tunnels again, beyond the savagery Arno had just committed and through another narrow corridor. Arno kept his eyes open in the dark, pupils dilated to their maximum and soaking every detail. Léon moved through the tunnels with the speed of someone who knew them well, ducking when he had to and always utterly still when one of the excavators was near. They reached a sheer wall, and the boy frowned, looking up. "There used to be a ladder here," he whispered.
Eyes tracing the sheer face, Arno could see a rout. "Get on my back," he said, kneeling down. Léon did so hesitantly, and Arno straightened, getting used to the weight before backing up and taking a running start. He reached the first handhold perfectly, and started making his way up.
"Whoa... You're better than all the stories," Léon said.
"That's because the stories aren't true," Arno said, his bitterness starting to bleed through. Must be late in the day, the craving for burgundy was starting to build in him. "There aren't any heroes in Paris."
"That's not true," the petit homme said. "Look at you!"
Arno winced, desperate to get above ground. He cleared the wall and he recognized his location. He let Léon down, the boy already sprinting forward and to the exit. The air was muggy again, now that they weren't so deep underground, and the angle of the sun said they had spent most of the afternoon below ground. Arno followed the boy around the carved out land, up the hill. He realized belatedly that he was heading towards the military camp, and Arno was quickly bent down, hissing for the boy to come back.
The skeleton crew now had at least half a dozen soldiers, trained and seasoned in war and far more dangerous than the raiders below. Arno bit back a curse, wondering how he could find a uniform coat; he'd feel a lot better if he could blend in...
And then he saw him.
Bicorn hat, tricolor pinned to it. No longer in a captain's uniform – that's right, he was promoted to general after he was wounded during the Siege of Toulon. Napoléon Bonaparte. Wasn't he one of the leaders of the Army of Italy? What was he doing here?
"I take it you're Rose?" Bonaparte was saying, an adjunct or an aide de camp at his shoulder.
"Commandant Bonaparte," the thick necked Rose said, saluting.
"Any progress to report?"
"Only this," Rose said, now polite and formal in his speech. He handed over a piece of paper. "This is in the tunnels, spent the whole day making the sketch as accurate as possible."
Bonaparte nodded, pulling something out and holding it to the piece of paper. Arno could just make out the shape, a key of some kind...? Léon looked ready to run up and take it, and Arno kept a painful grip on his shoulder, pulling him closer to him, deeper into the stretching shadows.
"Find me the door that this key unlocks," Bonaparte said, voice smooth, "and I shall reward you beyond your wildest dreams."
Rose saluted again, backing up and leaving the camp. Bonaparte watched for a time, before turning to his adjunct. "No one of import has inquired after our activities?" he asked.
"Rumors, sir, about someone asking questions about a man named Condorcet; he was on the Assembly before he was guillotined."
Bonaparte narrowed his gaze. Arno had seen that before, the shrewd look he had at Tuileries, when they were both looking for treasure of different types. He never did learn what he'd found in that armoir de fer. "Then why did you summon me?" the general was asking, "with such urgency that I had to leave Nice to come here? Was it Rose?"
The aide de camp pursed his lips, measuring himself, before saying: "Commandant, if I may, why do you employ such a man as Rose to find the Temple you showed us? He cares nothing for us or our aims, he hires former brigands and petty day laborers, lets children sneak into the camp and steal things. He's self-serving and unprincipled and—"
"What does a rat want?" Bonaparte asked suddenly, magnetic eyes suddenly flat.
The adjunct frowned. "Food of course," he said finally, throwing a half-eaten apple to a pair of rats at the end of the camp, near Arno and Léon. Arno frowned, tugging the boy closer, seeing the spilled oil the rats waded through to get their meal.
Bonaparte nodded. "You appeal to their self-interest," he said. "That makes them your allies. But you've miscalculated, Lieutenant. Rats are animals, and so are humans. The human animal. I know the human animal. What they fear, what they love, what they want. Is Rose a bad man? Undoubtedly. Will he plan to betray us? Most assuredly. But what you fail to understand, Lieutenant, is that I can control him. I can control any man, and turn him to what is best for France. And if Rose is so foolish to over reach his place..."
Arno grabbed Léon as soon as he saw the motion, heard the gunshot and the flash of heat as the oil caught fire, the rats screeching as they burned, running away.
Merde, what had happened to the man? What changed him? Or was Bonaparte always this ruthless? This callous with human life? They had met with Bonaparte putting a gun to him, would he have pulled the trigger under different circumstances? Arno thought... was everyone in his life so callous to those around them? Was this always going to happen? People getting power and abusing it as soon as they have it: the king, the Girondist and their war declarations, the Jacobins, Robespierre, now the reactionaries determined to purge the Jacobins the way the Girondins had been purged, did it ever stop? One was cut down and another took his place, the cycle never ended, was there ever any point...?
"The masses will gladly renounce their freedom," Bonaparte was saying, "if all can entertain the hope of rising to the top. With the artifact inside the Temple I will bring them the illusion of hope. And I will lead us to glory. My sights, Lieutenant, are far grander than a greedy capitaine of some graverobbers. The next time you want to pull me away from unifying France, do pick a better excuse. I ride for Nice now."
Bonaparte left, the adjunct saluting as he did so.
Arno all but dragged Léon from the camp, down the hill and away from the windmill. He kept a firm grip on the child as they moved back into the Franciade proper, mind lost in the hurt.
"We have to stop him," the boy was saying. "You saw him! That little man wants to find a treasure down there that will let him... let him... we have to save the people of France!"
Arno shook his head. "Rescuing them only delays the inevitable," he said. "If we stop the Commandant, another would just take his place. It's pointless to even try."
Léon looked up at Arno as he was tugged down the streets. "What's wrong with you?" he demanded.
... More like what wasn't wrong with him. Arno was a mess, he knew it, was desperate to leave France to stop being it; needed somewhere that didn't hurt so much so he could patch what was left of him together and be... be whatever he wanted. Not a drunkard, he'd done that once and it wasn't to his taste, but damn if he couldn't taste a bottle right now, feel the burn down his throat, wish he could be whisked away to that hazy world where he was so pleasantly numb...
He looked down to Léon, unable to find the words... no, having too many words, to explain what had happened to him. He settled for the obvious: "You're going to get yourself killed for nothing petit homme."
Léon's face changed, the brightness that had lasted all through the tunnels fading away to something darker, more guarded, an echo of Arno's own face as he finally wrenched himself free of Arno's grip.
"You're not a hero at all, are you?" the boy accused. "The manuscript at my fortress, it has nothing to do with anything, does it?"
Arno gave the boy a level glare, crossing his arms. "Those papers are my ticket out of the country," he said honestly. "Away from all the bloodshed."
Léon was aghast, the petit homme stepping back in horror. "What about the future?" he demanded, voice raising. "A free France where we all take care of each other?"
Arno had had enough. "It's a lie," he said, "all of it. Everybody wants to be taken care of but nobody is willing to take care of anybody, and in the end you're alone, and everybody is gone. You need to grow up: Forget France, you're on your own."
That's what Arno needed. To be on his own. To stop needing Élise, or M. de la Serre or Mirabeau or—
"What happened to turn you into such a connard," Léon hissed.
Arno winced, but he knelt down. He wouldn't condescend to this child, not like Rose did. He would tell him the truth. "You can't save her," he said, pain bleeding through his words as he admitted the cold truth. "She's never coming back. Nothing you can do will ever fix the decision she made or change the fact that she left you. The truth is she didn't love you. Not the way you wanted, not the way you needed, and in the end, she chose herself."
Léon was staring, face pale, his tiny Adam's apple bobbing as he gulped. Then, rejection.
"You are just like them," he hissed, turning and running away.
Arno was left, kneeling in the mud, having just exposed his pain, and had it thrown back in his face.
... Merde. To hell with it, he was getting a drink.
Arno glanced at his glass, trying to remember how many drinks he had had; he couldn't remember, but he was perfectly fine with that.
"She chose herself."
That was what it boiled down to. Élise put herself first, and the more Arno thought about it, the more he realized it stretched back long before the malaise, and he couldn't reconcile all the love he had for her and his unmitigated stupidity in failing to see how uneven the relationship was. All he could think about was every dark thing she had ever said, her accusations that he didn't love her, that he didn't love M. de la Serre, saying he wanted her to fail. All he could think about was the days she lay in bed, unable to get up, her impulsive acts of rage, and he didn't know what more he could have done. He had broken her, and nothing he did could fix her, and why hadn't he been enough, and all he wanted to do was forget everything.
"... I've been looking for you, monsieur."
Arno looked up, surprised he could still see straight. Surprised he could still hear straight.
Mme Margo sat on the other side of the table, bringing an extra candle to see better. It was full dark outside. "Thank you for returning Léon."
"... Good luck with him," Arno offered, unwilling to unleash his bitterness on the madame but needing to express in some way what exposure to that petit homme had done to him.
The older woman didn't leave, sat with him as he finished his cup and moved for the bottle. Empty. Bon sang.
He turned back to her, saw she was staring at him, eyes full of...
"I had a son, once," she said softly.
"... I'm sorry," he said, offering condolences.
She shook her head. "No. He's alive. Or he was, when I left him." She looked down, a ghost of a memory shadowing her face. "I began the orphanage afterward."
Arno shook his head, leaning back. "Now that's love," he said dryly.
"Sometimes love is a prison," she said, the words breaking through Arno's numbness with the accuracy of the words. His eyes widened, tilting his head to see her better. "His father taught me that," she continued, still looking down to her memory. "I loved that man with all my heart, but nothing I did was ever enough for him, and he took from me whenever it pleased him – even when I didn't want it, even when I was in pain."
What... what was she saying... why did her words echo his thoughts... what...?
"My son... as he grew older he took his lessons from his father, and that was when I knew I was nothing to either of them." She looked up, and her eyes were glassy, bright in a way that reminded Arno of Charlotte Corday. Bellec's other student had an eerie calm to her, and even through her tears Mme Margot had the same serenity as her eyes looked back to the past. "I walked to the river," she said. "Only it was frozen over, and I couldn't break the ice to go in. I didn't have anywhere else to go, and I didn't know how to escape the prison."
A dry sob escaped her, and she looked down again, pulling her dirty apron up to clean her face. Arno stared, uncertain what to say, uncomfortable that he felt so like her, so isolated, so... in prison. That was what being with Élise had been like, at the end: a prison. He dreaded going home at night and left in the morning as soon as possible, he watched her moods with razor sharp focus, hated every inch of their arguments, hated drinking after them just to settle his mind, and yet this woman knew every facet of what it was like, Mme Margot did. Just as Charlotte Corday had known about Bellec's turns, his vulgarity, his drunkenness.
Kindred spirit. That was the word Arno was looking for.
Mme Margot was a kindred spirit.
Once she was in control of herself, she looked up, and in her eyes was steel. "This," she said, gesturing, "the orphanage, this is my true calling. This is how I can make the world we live in better, by showing those children just the slightest bit of love so they can recognize it if – when," she corrected herself, "it graces them in the real world. They deserve to know happiness even when the whole of France is tearing itself apart. They're growing up knowing nothing else before the Revolution, all they hear is how people in Paris are trying to save the country, protect it from our myriad enemies, and all of them think they are heroes."
"That's not what we are," Arno corrected.
Margo leaned forward. "What does it matter if you are or aren't?" she asked. "If it gives those children – if it gives Léon – something to believe in, something to hold onto while he processes what his own mother did... why would you take that away from him?" she demanded. "Léon tells me you could have been the savior of France, and you in turn remind him exactly why his mother left him, as if he didn't already know. You couldn't even let him grieve as he saw fit."
Arno blinked, a little slow to pick up. "I told him the truth," he said.
"No," she countered. "You told him your truth. Nothing is true in these times, not the papers, not the spies from foreign countries, not the clergy; all anyone can say is what they believe, but that Declaration that was written at the beginning of all this said it shouldn't be done if it hurts another. And that's what you've done."
She leaned back, away from the candlelight. "Is there anything wrong with being a hero for a little while, if it grants a small kindness on a grieving child?"
Mme Margot stood, finally, and looked down at Arno.
"Or would you prefer to be a drunkard for the rest of your days?"
Author's Notes: Ah, the DLC.
Yet again we pull from real life. After the Escape, the two of us felt such relief that we didn't have to be around the abuse and negativity anymore, and in equal measure we felt guilty that we left because we were so convinced that our abuser couldn't survive without us, would end up killing themselves if we weren't around to assuage every negative thought and absorb it like the little sponges we were supposed to be. The first week we were gone we literally sent an email every morning explaining how to cook our abuser's meals (since we had been in charge of that since we were teenagers), where to shop for food, and how to make withdrawals from the bank and other chores that we had taken over. All because we felt obligated to do so.
As always, these kinds of things are complicated and messy. Things don't just "get better" when the abuse is over. Relationships with abusers are filled with honestly happy and good memories, and those are what sustain someone, thinking "If only x, then things can go back to Y," especially if the victim - like Arno and us - is convinced it's their job to look after the abuser.
But enough about that, the DLC itself is very well written, this is the most coherent Arno's character has ever been in the game and there isn't much we needed to add other than trim the gameplay fat (especially in the next chapter).
Among other things Arno finds yet another kindred spirit like Charlotte Corday and Urbain Fabre, this time in Mme Margot, who was so abused she tried to drown herself. Ignoring the utilitarian use of having someone who's a fellow abuse survivor share their stories, it also points out that people suffering abuse actually aren't alone. Being in that environment can be absolutely suffocating and isolating, and if anyone out there reading this fic is suffering anything like abuse - you aren't alone. There ARE other people who understand. Do whatever you can to find them. We literally went to therapy in secret to get the help we needed.
Arno meanwhile keeps acting like a goddamn Assassin without realizing he freakin' is one: he's curious for the sake of curiosity before stopping himself and asking what it has to do with him, he's a bloody chameleon going from one guise to the next with simple changes, and he actually recited the first tenet of the Creed while he was protecting Léon, did anybody notice? Gawd, how long will it take for him to notice...?
Next chapter: For I am an Assassin