The Silent Boy. Andrew Taylor

advances towards the alcove and stares at Charles, who looks back at him because he doesn’t know what else to do.

      ‘Where’s your mother?’ Luc demands.

      The boy says nothing.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Marie says. ‘He was covered with blood.’

      ‘Take him back. We don’t want him here.’

      ‘I tried,’ Marie says. ‘I sent a message to the Rue de Grenelle but Madame isn’t there any more. The concierge said she and the boy moved out a month ago.’

      ‘They are traitors,’ Luc says suddenly. ‘She’s been arrested. If we shelter him, they’ll arrest us too. You know where that ends.’ Luc makes a blade of his right hand and chops it down on the palm of his left.

      He means the guillotine. Charles has heard his mother and Dr Gohlis talking about the machine, and Dr Gohlis said that it is a humane way to execute criminals. But, he said, the people do not like it because it is too swift and too clean a way to die. They prefer the old ways – hanging on wooden gallows, or death by sword or breaking on the wheel. They last longer, Dr Gohlis said, and they are more entertaining.

      ‘They’ve set up the machine at the Tuileries now. At the Place du Carrousel.’

      Marie pours her brother wine. She stands, hands on hips, in front of the alcove, with the boy behind her.

      Luc takes a long swallow of wine and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Throw him out. In the gutter. Anywhere.’

      ‘I can’t. He’s only a child.’

      ‘If they find out he’s here, it’ll be enough to bring us before the Tribunal.’

      ‘But he couldn’t hurt a—’

      Luc throws the beaker of wine at his sister, catching her on the face. She gives a cry and turns. Charles sees the blood on her cheek.

      ‘You will do as I say,’ Luc says. ‘Or I’ll break every bone in his body, and in yours.’

       Chapter Two

      Marie holds tightly to Charles’s arm. She pulls him from the shadowy, urine-scented safety of the alleyway leading to the court and into the crowded street.

      She tugs him along, jerking his arm to hurry him up. He is a fish on a line, pulled through a river of people.

      It is the first time he has been outside since the night he came to Marie’s. Everything is brighter, louder and noisier than it should be – the clothes, the cockades, the soldiers, the checkpoints, the swaying, seething parties of men and women. There is urgency in the air, an invisible miasma that touches everyone. He wants to be part of it.

      Before they came out, Marie combed his hair. He is wearing his shirt and breeches, which she washed the day before, though her best efforts could not remove all the blood from them. They do not go north towards the river but west. They pass Saint-Sulpice and turn into the Rue du Bac.

      Marie drags him across the street, threading their way through the coaches and wagons by force of personality and a steady stream of oaths. She stops outside a great house with black gates, studded with iron.

      The black gates are shut. Marie mutters under her breath and tugs on the bell handle with her free hand. She does not let go of Charles with the other hand. She grips his wrist so tightly he fears it will snap.

      The bell clangs on the other side of the gates but no one comes. Marie bounces up and down on her little feet. She rings the bell again. A passer-by jostles Charles, wrenching him from Marie’s grasp. He sprawls in the gutter and grazes his knees. Marie swears at the man and hauls him to his feet. She pulls the bell a third time, for longer and harder than before.

      A shutter slides back in the wicket. A man’s eyes and nose are revealed in the small rectangle.

      ‘The house is shut up,’ he says. ‘Go away.’

      ‘Where’s Monsieur the Count?’ Marie demands.

      ‘Gone. All gone.’

      The shutter slams home. Marie rings the bell again. She hammers on the door. Nothing happens.

      She knocks again. By now a crowd has gathered, watchful and silent.

      Marie turns from the gates and asks the bystanders what they think they’re staring at. Such is the force of her authority, of her anger, that they drift away, shamefaced.

      Muttering under her breath, Marie leads Charles away from the gates in the direction of the Grand École. He starts to cry.

      A slim gentleman is coming towards them on foot. His left leg drags behind him. He is dressed plainly in a dark green coat. Charles recognizes him and so does Marie.

      She leaps forward into the man’s path and pushes the boy in front of her. ‘Monseigneur!’ she cries. ‘Monseigneur!’

      He stops, frowning, his face suddenly wary. ‘Hush, hush – I am plain Monsieur Fournier now. You know that.’

      ‘Monsieur, you came to Madame von Streicher’s.’

      He frowns at Marie. ‘I am sorry. There is nothing I can do for you. Whoever you are.’

      ‘Monsieur.’ She shoves the boy forward, so forcefully that he bumps against Monsieur Fournier’s arm. ‘This is Madame’s son. This is Charles. You must remember him.’

      Monsieur Fournier has large brown eyes that open very wide as if life is a matter of endless astonishment to him.

      ‘This?’

      ‘Yes, monsieur, I swear it. On my life.’

      Fournier motions them to move to one side with him. They stand by the outer wall of the great house. The passers-by ebb around them.

      Fournier takes Charles’s chin in his hand and angles it upwards. ‘Yes, by God, you’re right.’ He bends closer, bringing his head almost on a level with the boy’s. ‘What happened? Are you hurt?’

      Charles says nothing.

      ‘He won’t speak, monsieur,’ Marie says.

      ‘Of course he can speak.’ Monsieur Fournier touches Charles’s shoulder with a long white forefinger. ‘You know me, don’t you?’

      ‘He won’t say anything, monsieur. Not since that night.’

      ‘Are you saying he was actually there? When …?’ His voice tails away, rising into an unspoken question.

      ‘Have you seen Madame?’ Marie says. ‘Is she …?’ She runs out of words, too.

      Fournier looks at her. ‘You weren’t there yourself?’

      ‘No, monsieur. I was at my – my brother’s house. Charles came to me in the night. He was …’

      ‘He was what?’ demands Fournier.

      ‘There was blood all over him.’ She paws at the faded stains on Charles’s shirt. ‘See? Everywhere. On his clothes, in his hair.’

      ‘Dear God.’

      Her voice rises. ‘He won’t even tell me what happened. He won’t tell me anything. I can’t keep him at home. My brother will throw him out.’

      ‘You did well to bring him.’ Monsieur Fournier takes out a handkerchief and wipes his face. ‘We can’t talk here. Follow me.’

      He sets off in the direction he came from, walking so rapidly despite his limp that Charles and Marie have to break into a trot to keep up. He takes the next turning, a lane running along the side of the house. There are no windows on the ground floor, only small ones high up in the wall, far