I am so sorry for the delay. This chapter was mostly filler and I think it's a garbage-heap, but I didn't want to give a half-assed job.
There is a Game of Thrones reference in this chapter, as well as a few nods to 'Knightfall'.
A 'dogie' is a baby cow. A divineress is a real term, it's a fancy way of referring to a fortune-teller or palm reader.
When Adrienne D'Arracourt announced 'I have every Assassin and their profile on my desk' with the heel of a leather boot layered in sheepskin hammering into the floor with all the finality of the gavel hitting the block, she wasn't lying one bit – and she has a fossoyeur to thank for the bragging rights.
For Thomas, stunned as he is now, he isn't sure he should be saying, 'De riens.'
Less than a year ago, the woman known as Madamoiselle D'Arracourt, niece of a Prussian Margrave of the House of Hohenzollern and Knight Hospitaller, was known only by her initials of 'A.A'. Thomas hadn't an inkling of her appearance, her personality or eminence, the mystery of her identity swirling around him like silt in pond water. He didn't know where she stood in France's social strata, let alone if her Hohenzollern blood diluted her French lineage. Hell, he wasn't even sure if she was a woman had the scrawl in her letters not given it away. Though la sorciére told him she owned a château in the countryside, knowledge of the grasp of her reach eluded him. Only when he confronted her in her faded periwinkle dress, wool socks entwined with knitted red roses and honey blonde hair tied in tight braids in the Palais de Luxembourg on a dry June morning could he put his expectations aside and swallow the reality like bitter medicine.
Adrienne D'Arracourt had the wealth of landed gentry, surpassing that of the Princes and Princesses of the blood and had direct military contracts courtesy of her (now deceased) male family members. La sorciére told him she worked for the Assembly in the same way the Comte de Mirabeau did, although Thomas and by extension Veronique, who overheard the gossip in the markets, hadn't heard a smidgen about a blonde-haired Norman stalking the halls and haranguing the Third Estate. He'd gotten some tips about a 'strong-jawed' woman harassing a Beauharnais and pulling the ear of Paul Barras (literally, Veronique had said, she'd winced as much as Barras did when she watched it happen) in the gardens of Versailles, but the leads ended there. Now the knots were becoming disentangled, their tight binds wrapping around his ankles instead.
He hadn't even considered she was a Crow in totality but in name only: he figured she wore the cloak as a guest of some hidden high society, out of the way and secretive like one of the many cults bursting forth like an overflowing pitch barrel in the damp, dripping underground Parisian catacombs. The men and women of the black cloaks gave off the impression no mere plebeians could ever hope to penetrate, let alone understand, their social circle. The mighty Prussian he saw that day served as a mighty vanguard to said circles, keeping Thomas in place with his grey eyes like the smoke of wildfire. It was impossible to shove down the memory and beat it into the grooves of forgetfulness, for it felt like he crossed the Rubicon in a shanty boat, with the green grass on the other side too luscious to ignore.
Ah, human curiosity. A killer as much as a saviour. Today it was in the form of a woman in country dress sans bonnet and a man in finer, well-pressed clothing with mismatched eyes and his dark, natural hair tied back in a short ponytail. His vest and waistcoat were the same shade of teal, with a white cravat and sleeves fluttering around his hands. There were scars there, healed over gorges of split skin where metal or burns sliced, and then cauterized, the flesh. The buckles on his shoes were a fine silver, likely plucked out of the Melle silver mine itself. The heels on his shoes were around 2-3 inches, putting him near six feet in height. Even without them, Thomas could tell this man would've dominated him. Though not large in frame or muscle mass, the man was assertive without being haughty, as if he knew he was better than his rivals without having to show for it.
Thomas had not seen this man before, but another black cloak was draped over a chair – neatly, finely, without a single crease. With her own black cloak tossed over a couch in the corner, dust and filth caked on the bottom and visible tears off the shoulders, D'arracourt fit the neat, insignificant role of an out-of-country farm girl, awed and displaced in the city which crushed her brethren with crippling poverty and emaciation.
"Ah, there is le fossoyeur (the gravedigger). Did I ever tell you, François, this man can sketch an entire person in ink in under an hour, even while sitting in the dark? He memorizes them. Incroyable, n'est çe pas?"
She announced him with a waving hand, blonde hair catching in the light and her eyes half-lidded in satisfaction, expecting her male companion to think the show was grand when he likely thought it a farce. He didn't bow, didn't say hello, but put his left hand near his heart, tapping it in a form of greeting.
Thomas gave a slight bow in return, saying, "Madamoiselle is very kind to me with her patronage."
"C'est bien peu dire (That's an understatement). He's never failed me, and I will show you I mean everything I say when you see those Assassins on paper, staring at you in the face."
The newly named François hummed, but whether it was in interest or to placate Adrienne was unknown. "But not with paints?" he asked. An eyebrow was raised at the edge, a subtle movement. It gave nothing away and yet showed everything.
Thomas didn't answer at first. He kept his eyes low, demure. Adrienne tittered. Her toes tapped the floor with a clack clack, cutting through the late morning din. Dust motes fluttered around a thick heel.
"Speak up," she barked. "Don't be miserable as a dogie with a lost mother. It would be impolite for you not to answer, and Monsieur François does not like to waste his time with ingrates."
"Non, I have no skill with paints," Thomas said quickly, meek as a battered hound looking at the mismatched eyes. They scrutinized him head to toe and spine to tail bone, a trait second nature to a man with insatiable desires and a personality to match. "I am better with inks, and it's cheaper for me to use them. I only have to focus on shades, not colours. Production is...easier," he finished quietly.
"I see...," François inclined his head at him, the light dancing across his blue and brown irises, before turning back to Adrienne. "What about this one subject you kept speaking about? The one who condemned that playwright to death."
"Oui." She looked at Thomas, sticking out her hand. "Give me the sketchbook. I know you said you kept the portrait in a small glass frame."
Blinking, then swallowing once, Thomas reached into his bag without pause, pulling out the book with fidgeting fingers, the leather strap and button keeping its russet and scarlet inlay surface shut. It bulged with drawings, with some of the more precious ones kept in a cover of thin glass he commissioned from a glassmaker in Faubourg Saint-Antoine before the riots closed the factories. She popped off the latch and opened it, peering through its contents. She turned her back and François closed the gap, eyeing the drawings.
Adrienne D'Arracourt looked and dressed like a country girl, with a heart shaped face splotched with freckles. She could have posed on a postage card sent overseas, welcoming foreigners to the beauty of the French countryside – he could've depicted her on one if she so chose. Her powder blue eyes were wide and large, her pupils growing large as a hawthorn when interested or annoyed. The Germanic inflection in her French was strong, sounding almost Belgian, but she sounded pleasant enough, if the crude edges in her voice didn't sharpen her otherwise soft image.
Yet her demanding and disagreeing tone with François proved this was no simple farm girl whose faded cowpox scars along her arms regaled her to a simple life. It was clear she was used to getting what she wanted and had the gold, livres and lettres des caches to pave the way. If she could empty the Palais du Luxembourg in the height of court session and public tourism, surely a task like bribing a hobby artist to create a sketchbook of her enemies was as simple as cutting off the dead ends of her hair.
And Madamoiselle D'Arracourt was not fond of split ends. She had chosen a simpleton and not the artists of the esteemed Collège des Quatres-Nations, and should she desire it, she could've put him at the front of the line and ordered the instructors to flagellate themselves if they protested her decision. She would have them at her feet, naked and backs bleeding, spitting out communion and begging forgiveness as if she were Mary Magdalene. Should men like Jacques-Louis David have anything to say about it, she would dump barrels of vermin into his rooms at night so they could tear at his paintings with claws and teeth and ruin all his work.
If one thought Thomas was exaggerating, he wasn't. Adrienne actually promised this when he voiced his doubts.
"David is a brilliant man, but arrogant. He knows his limits, especially when I can pull his carpet of funds right from under his entitled feet,"she had said.
Thomas still wasn't sure if he should say de riens after that statement.
Her patronage, on the other hand, was wholly welcome, adding funds to his constantly depleted bank account and assisting him with issues at the Hôtel des Invalides. If there was a lack of clean linen, a shipment would arrive the next day. If there was a lack of pots to make stews and soups, she would have some sent in a carriage that evening. If there wasn't enough medicine and the apothecaries refused to treat patients for lack of funds, she would have them dismissed and hire new graduates from the universities to take their place.
One thing she was adamant on above all else was Thomas's artistic skill. Due to necessities, art supplies were crumbs on a constantly emptied plate. Debts, purchases, and a new pantry to store food in case shortages arose burned larger holes in his bank notes. He appreciated the funds she sent him for food and rent – indeed, he always forwarded notes expressing his utmost gratitude and obedience to her goodwill, but Adrienne would keep insisting he fill his sketchbooks, and eventually, the dossiers of her targets started pouring in.
Then came a sketch which put his situation on a rickety carousel, spun it into reverse, and knocked off all the horses.
Initially, there was a pause in her responses, a curious thing given Adrienne wrote to him almost every week and if there was ever a reason for delays in her letters she'd explain why. Once, he hadn't heard from her in a month. That month carried a lingering silence, a reprieve in the newfound attention he'd been getting for his new employer. When he thought his new patronage had ended as quick as it began, a snap of the lifeline like the trout escaping from the lure, a messenger intercepted him when he was travelling in the Île de la Cité and plopped a sealed envelope in his palm.
Needless to say, the gift wrapped sketch paper with top-of-the-line charcoal, replete with the silver English fountain pen he still owned, was a sure sign she was completely enthralled with him. She was so impressed with his work, she wrote, that she trusted him above even established court painters to achieve fantastic results. Though he didn't work with paints, which was far more extensive and required much more time to master and learn, his ink drawings struck such a chord with Adrienne he soon found a few of his background sketches in political pamphlets.
People were becoming interested, which in turn would require more of his services, thereby ensuring higher pay. But that gave Adrienne an advantage over the rest: knowing that a mere fossoyeur was at her side like the hound at a huntsman's call was a matter of convenience. Knowing he could complete sketches within 24 hours was a matter of skill. Eventually, impressed with his abilities and assured he would complete whatever job she set him on, she tasked him to accompany Thérése Cabarrus to her social events as her de-facto personal artist.
He never asked what it was about the drawing of his muse aroused her so. Had her uncle, the Prussian Margrave he saw that day with the Crows, filed it away in his thoughts and told his niece to look after the issue? Had the lines and whorls of rich black ink, then drawn with his (now old) English metal pen, flowing across the lines of white aroused her to such a ferocious attention? Had the special coloured ink he added to the eyes struck her as 'That's the one'?
His muse escaped rationality and explanation, crept across the lines of napkins and wooden tables, begging to be drawn but escaping form and shape. But there it would be, snaking into the coils of his brain from the early hues of dawn to the bleakness of the night, pestering, pestering, pestering.. The frost that accumulated on the windowpane reminded him of a phantom's breath, blown from the lips of a person he couldn't see or touch. He could not exorcise his thoughts to a priest, nor could a divineness read his palms or look through a glass globe to see where his future lay.
His inks were his confession, his altar of belief. As May turned to June he found he couldn't leash his thoughts which strained at the ropes like a caught rabid fox.
Then the murder of Luc Comtois happened, and he discovered his muse wasn't limited to paper anymore.
When he first heard the use of 'assassin', it brought him back to the days of La Voisin: though her crimes occurred a half-century before his birth, she was an assassin by right, poisoning people on behalf of others and pocketing coin as a sign of a job well done. The term carried the connotation of a coward who worked in the shadows, disposing people on the whims of another's dislike. Whoever was 'innocent' was up to the scandal. Whoever was guilty was up to the autopsy.
That was the lowercase variant. When he heard the uppercase variant, 'Assassin', Thomas knew it extended well beyond the reach of poisoners and court intrigue.
Then they were known as 'moving shadows': men who melted into the eaves of dawn and dusk, deeds quiet as the whisper of their bodies through the night. There are women among them, but they are seldom: whether it is from a purge or from innate bias Adrienne did not say. But Thomas had already completed her task of drawing all the main Assassins, and he knew that for every ten men there is one woman. If they are a threat, they are no longer, for Adrienne knows who they are and what they can do to people like her.
This is what he heard from Adrienne as she spoke to François, adamant in her victory over him. They spoke in hushed tones, out of Thomas' hearing, but he could grasp words here and there: 'That is a Mentor', 'This is a recruit', 'This one knows where others like her are' and on and on. The fossoyeur learns quickly.
The moving shadows are part of a long lineage, stretching back millennia, to the days of the Pyramids and maybe earlier – but the sands of Egypt was where they were born formally, like sand fleas emerging from the hide of a camel. During the Third Crusade they were pushed back, fighting a bitter war with the Crusaders and the Templar Knights. The Templars, the fossoyeur hears, are also from a long lineage, birthed from a cult much like the former. But the Knights reformed it, dedicating their lives around the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, ancient Biblical stories he believed were happy relics of the Holy Land.
No, Adrienne confesses, they are not: the Templars themselves were split into two factions before their Great Purge, with half of their members fleeing across Europe and possibly to the New World by way of the Norse route. Those who remained were of course burned for heresy, but those who retained knowledge of the scattering of their members were interrogated by the Assassins for what they knew. Their refusal to relinquish information on the lost Grail and sacred relics was met with harsh retribution. The Assassins did not forget the siege on their original castle, their homelands. In so driving a wedge with the Templars, they strengthened their ranks much the same way the Templars strengthened them when they drove them to the edges of society's mind.
The hunt for said relics continues, but what Thomas heard repeated like a hushed incantation is the term 'displaced'. It, too, was not the lowercase variant, but uppercase. The Displaced, whether they are a wandering people like the Gypsies or the Jews, or some other nefarious force, could not be explained yet.
Thomas sat like a rejected student in an upholstered chair, the red fabric still clean with silver inlay gleaming crisp in the afternoon light. A stuffed peacock stood on the table next to him, its magnificent plumage tucked under its body like a folded Oriental fan. He eyed the bird, wondering if he'll be stuffed in the future and put on display, a relic of the past for the future to prod at. There is a reason why Adrienne and her fellow Crow are allowing him to be in the same room as they speak about sensitive topics: she intended to use him as a bargaining ploy, a way for her to ensure she meant every word and how he will not go running to the Assassins if his situation deteriorates. She was reminding him that she alone is giving him money, food and security, not a group of hidden shadows who bribe street urchins and bakers to spy for them.
From his sketches, he now knows he's been watching at least one Assassin in the Bastille: Pierre Bellec. Imprisoned based on a lettre de cache – who sent it, or why de Launay approved it, could be the result of an expert forgery. Thinking about it sent a chill up his spine: he has spoken to the man, offered him distilled beer from a German distiller when he was on good behaviour. Monsieur Bellec offered nothing out of the ordinary, but Thomas recollects the days when Bellec began to eye him differently: the minute la sorcière entered the prison.
There the older man's eyes narrowed, the wrinkles under his eyes seemingly disappearing with his newfound focus. His jaw tightened, but irritation wasn't the cause. A few days after la sorcière was locked in the calottes, Bellec called out to him before he was about to leave. When Thomas approached the bars of his cell, Bellec lowered his voice, speaking conspiratorially as if trading secrets at the gaming table.
"That girl of yours...doesn't happen to have green eyes, does she?"
Thomas raised an eyebrow. "Peculiar thing to ask."
"I'll take that as a 'yes'." Bellec nodded, taking a minute to look behind him. His younger, half-Austrian companion was too busy fumbling with his watch, trying to get the minute hand to obey for the umpteenth time. Despite the hushed tones between them, it was obvious the young man was listening in, using his broken watch as an excuse. If Bellec disliked an eavesdropper, he gave no indication of it – or he thought the half-Austrian was better off guessing.
"You know how to get easy answers, don't you?"
Bellec snorted. "You're ex-military. I could tell right by the way you don't give a damn about the others. No room for nonsense and loose lips. No room for idiots, that's for sure."
Thomas nodded, once. "I appreciate the compliment."
"Then you'll appreciate my need for information," Bellec continued. He fixed Thomas with a narrowed gaze. "She doesn't just have green eyes, she has black hair. Tall, bit on the frosty side. Half-Russian. Lived in an apartment near the Sorbonne. Pretty expensive for a woman with no identity."
There Thomas' eyebrows crawled to his hairline like a pair of curled caterpillars. "Where did you learn this? De Launay told me nothing -
"No, he wouldn't, because he doesn't know," Bellec interrupted. The lettre de cache was given to him the night before she got here. I want to know who wrote it." The prisoner – Assassin, Thomas had to remind himself now – eyed him with a scrutinizing glare, as if to say, 'You'll give me what I want and I'll hear no ifs, ands, or buts'. "I need that letter by tomorrow."
"What for? You know de Launay is not going to let me pluck it off his desk like a missive," Thomas protested. "Plus, don't you think as a prisoner you're demanding more than you're allotted? I can give you your letters and give you things to write them. I cannot give you the letters from le gouverner. It'd be the stocks for me, and the moat for you."
He was given a sardonic smile, a feature which appeared natural on his weathered face. He expected the response. He didn't care. "I know you're creative. Find me the letter, and I'll find a way where we can speak more freely about our...situation."
"'Our' situation?"
"Oui. You'll hear from me in a few days, but until then...tell that girl not to wear white when she's trying to sneak around. Would've told her myself, but she's fast. Got to give her that." Bellec shrugged. "Off you go, then."
To know that man is an Assassin offers Thomas a new perspective on the world around him. Before, he merely regarded him as a career criminal, but one who looked too good to be a miscreant eating disgusting foodstuffs from the market stalls outside of the Rue de la Surintendance. He was an expert fencer, knew hand-to-hand combat, and was aware of all the goings-on in the country. He was not illiterate; he knew his poets, playwrights and philosophers though he didn't much care for Voltaire or Edmund Burke. Despite a weathered face from middle age he didn't appear to be suffering from his age like Thomas was, sore back and insomnia all. Simply put, the man was too fit to be a prisoner in the Bastille; out of place, like a stuffed peacock in an empty room in the Palais du Luxembourg.
The truth about what he is and what his lineage brings made a little more sense, albeit it wasn't a truth Thomas could fully comprehend yet. He knows what 'Assassins' are; what they do is far more complex. Their feud with the Templars seems to be the clichéd 'battle for the ages', but it felt strange being a Samaritan throughout it all. He couldn't hold the sword or preach the message.
It'd been days, weeks since he spoke to Bellec. What would he think now that he was speaking to their mortal enemies? Adrienne openly stated she was not a Templar, but a Knight Hospitaller – a distant ally of the Templars but an order which operated on its own rules. François was one, for he had asked Adrienne whether she was loyal to the 'French Rite' and not the 'Prussian Rite'...which would mean by extension her uncle was a Templar. Where did he stand in their Order?
It was overwhelming. It felt like he is being subjected to swallow molten lead for a grave crime, and said crime was him bearing witness to a web he wants to disentangle himself from before the spider can sink her fangs in him. It was too late, though, for Adrienne had already made her decision: Thomas is her pedestrian spy in a cosmopolitan city. The Assassins would watch him, of course they would, but they would think little of him. What they want is information on the 'Displaced', and that is a task Adrienne has made strides on.
"Regardez ici (Look here). All of the Assassins, exposed and threadbare, like I was announcing a fashion and gossip magazine," she said. A strong note of smugness slithered past her lips. "Do you doubt my loyalties now?"
François inclined his head. Her tone is akin to irritating dust, but he does not wrinkle his nose to breathe it in. "Le fossoyeur has the portrait. This is what she looks like?"
"Down to the last strand."
"But you've never seen her yourself." François' voice is like the snap of leather, well oiled and quick across skin. "How can you know the portrait is accurate?"
" I - " Adrienne sputtered, clearly taken aback. She has been put in her place, she did not expect it, and she does not like it.. "I – He has seen her!" Adrienne pointed at Thomas, drawing his attention away from the stuffed peacock and into the target she makes of him with her finger. "Did you not tell me you wanted these drawings?!"
Ignoring her indignant cries, François-Thomas Germain fixates the lowly gravedigger with a soul-piercing stare. The blue and the brown serve as the nails which will be hammered into his wrists. There is no going back, if he ever had the choice to go back. "Thomas, is it?"
A subtle nod, as if disturbing the dust motes floating around the curtains was a crime too grave to commit. Germain beckons him closer with a sleight of hand, pulling out a silver pin from his sleeve. The engraving at the top has a peculiar cut: it is done in the shape of a cat, the tail curling around the base where an emerald is set. He holds the tip between his fingers.
"I considered giving this to Marie Levesque, but since she attends Mass having a black cat on her person would be regarded as an ill omen," Germain said. "Adrienne never mentioned this, but looking at your drawings I suspect this is a talent which keeps you up at night. A muse which dominates all corners of your mind, inhibiting all other forms of human function. You do not drink, you do not eat – these things are trivial. The creation comes first."
Without asking – and Thomas suspects Germain didn't need to ask – Adrienne opened the page where a full-page drawing of his muse is set. Behind the thin glass case lies a wave of black hair parted over a shoulder, falling to the subject's waist in a midnight plume. A white nightgown reveals the other shoulder, the sternum prominent but no longer sharp against unblemished skin. Fine, tapered fingers crossed over a lap hold a knife of a particular shape and build: too thick to be a stiletto, but not carved enough to be a Syrian dagger. The blade curled into a muscular thigh, and while it is held in a comfortable grip, it is pressed into the skin. No blood is drawn, but it could with just a twinge of added pressure.
The lips have the hint of a smile, but the serious set of the face reveals it is a guarded one. It belonged to one who does not smile often, who views showing happiness as abhorrent; a sign of weakness. There is a slight curve at the edge, almost a smirk, almost a flirtatious invitation. So much was revealed in that little slip.
The only colour Thomas added to the drawing was for his muse's eyes: a sharp emerald green, cat-like in mischievousness and knowledge. Deceit swirled the centres, with the storm he wanted to capture not as vivid as he wanted it to be. Looking at it, it felt like he was being judged. By rights he should be, given the world he was stepping foot in. He started off on the beach, and emerged in the depths of the abyss.
And there, on a left hand, was a diamond ring in a snowflake cut.
"Most men don't believe in coincidences," Germain began, drawing Thomas away from the artwork, "but I'm one who believes that coincidences aren't random. Consider this: we have never met before today, but we both desired the same person. It was a plague on our minds and we could not burn it out." He tilted the pin towards him. "You saw a woman, I saw a black cat. What a coincidence that a woman described as having features like a black cat was seen wandering the Sorbonne before she burned a playwright alive." His lips twisted in a smirk. "We used to burn witches on a pyre, yet here is one burning a man of God."
"She is the only one we know of who belongs to the 'displaced'. The last one I was following drowned himself in the Seine," Adrienne said, hoping to turn the conversation back to her.
Germain clucked his tongue. "Unfortunate. But that one wasn't too interested in self-preservation, was he? He'd cry for his mother had an Assassin novice got to him."
"She said it wasn't her fault."
Germain raised an eyebrow. Adrienne tightened her jaw. Ignoring their looks, Thomas continued, "He self-immolated. She didn't throw the fire on him, he did it to himself. He said he panicked when he saw her, and she didn't know why." He looked between them, hoping one of them would be convinced. "I don't understand why she's important..."
"She's in the Bastille. I would rather her stay there until I can find the means to get her out," Germain answered. "Adrienne is working on that endeavour. But there is an already an Assassin in the same premise as her, and I suspect if he wanted to break out of the fortress, he would take her with him. I wish to avoid that scenario."
"Did you know she already caused a scene before her arrest? One of my birds told me she got into a verbal spat with some members of the Third Estate. At a play one of them made a comment about female inferiority, and la sorcière couldn't resist starting a verbal – and physical! - fight. Apparently, the Comte de Mirabeau heard the whole thing and she tried to start a fight with him as well," Adrienne said. She eyed Thomas. "Clearly, you can see how important this issue is to us. The Assassins suspect she's worth something. We want to ascertain this value first."
"Mirabeau knows about her. It is clear he has been sending letters to Pierre Bellec in prison. The letters he sends will be encoded – but there is a way we can find out which ones were sent from the hideout."
"Patrice will deal with it," Adrienne said, waving a dismissive hand. "Now, I think you know why you were allowed to hear our conversation and our secrets, Thomas?"
He stared at her in disbelief. She was asking him this, now, when she already made that assumption beforehand?
"...This is leverage. Secrets are safer. You wouldn't think an impoverished old military man would run his mouth, would you?"
Adrienne smiled. It softened her hard jaw, and her freckles bunch around the curve of her cheeks. She knew he was bought and sold. "Exactement. I would trust no one else."
"Here," Germain held out the pin to him, inviting him to take it. "I am a silversmith by trade. One artist's gift to another." He placed it in Thomas' open palm. The emerald glows around the cat's swirling tail. "Oh, one more thing," Germain added, "don't touch the tip of the pin. It's only for...unfortunates to touch."
"I think our meeting is adjourned," Adrienne announced, moving to collect her black cloak off the couch. As she fastened it under her chin, she asked, "Anything else?"
"Attente!"
It comes out louder than he intended, causing Adrienne's hands to freeze at her throat. For once, her powder-blue eyes are widened in surprise rather than anger. Germain, too, pauses. "What is it?"
Thomas licks his lips. They feel dry, cracked and immovable. He pushes his tongue past them in defiance. "She said...she said she knew you. Asked me about your name." He watched her for a reaction. "She said she worked for you...so how could you not have known who she was?"
Well, as it turns out, Adrienne D'Arracourt did not know Marceline la sorcière. Prior to that day, Adrienne only knew her as a drawing, a subject locked in a cell she could monitor. Prior to that day, D'Arracourt was a name and a set of initials, and François-Thomas Germain was a silversmith.
On this particular June day, Thomas learned two very important things: Madamoiselle D'Arracourt was a wealthy woman, a Knight Hospitaller, and all-knowing canary on the Grand Master of the French Rite of the Templar Order's shoulder.
He also learned la sorcière was a skilled liar, and had been since she arrived in Paris.
Yes, about that cognac...