Game of Patience (34 page)

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The jury was out only half an hour.

They filed back to their benches, casting uneasy glances at the empty prisoners’ dock. The accused would not be recalled into court before the jury’s verdict was read. Aristide felt his stomach turn over.

“What is the decision of the jury?”

The foreman rose, clutching a sheet of paper.

“Séraphine-Juliette-Marie Vaudray, widow Ferré, called Rosalie Clément, is convicted of having of her own free will, without any necessity of personal defense, and without any provocation received, but with full premeditation, perpetrated the homicide of Marie-Célie-Josèphe-Élisabeth Montereau and Jean-Louis Saint-Ange, on the evening of the tenth of Brumaire, at Rue du Hasard, Section de la Butte-des-Moulins, in Paris.”

When the spectators’ excited babble had died down and the president had rung his bell for the last time, the gendarmes returned from the waiting room, Rosalie between them. She had not changed her clothes.

“Séraphine-Juliette-Marie Vaudray, called Rosalie Clément,” said Gohier, “you have been found guilty of premeditated murder.”

You would think, Aristide brooded, that the world would shift slightly—that the earth would tremble underfoot, perhaps, or all the colors change their tint a little. But nothing remarkable happened that he could discover, except that the crowd let out a little hiss, as if expelling an indrawn breath.

“For the crime of premeditated murder,” the president continued, “the Criminal Tribunal of the Département of the Seine condemns Séraphine-Juliette-Marie Vaudray, widow Ferré, called Rosalie Clément, to death. She shall be taken to a place of public execution, clothed in a red shirt, and there be decapitated as the law ordains.”

Silence.

Won’t she say something,
Aristide wondered.

She inclined her head toward the judges. “I thank the court for its patience.”

“Mercy!” someone cried. No matter how heinous the crime, some crackpot would always cry it. And others, jaded voyeurs with a taste for blood, would as noisily demand—

“Death!”

“Mercy!”

“Death!”

“The accused reserves the right to appeal her sentence,” Maître Tardieu shouted above the growing hubbub.

Condemned prisoners were allowed three days to register an appeal, Aristide knew. He flinched at the shouts assailing his ears. The clamor was intolerable.
Mercy mercy mercy
and
death death death
mingled into a single chaotic roar.

Three days … the Terror was two years past and the Criminal Tribunal would cling for dear life to the civilized system of appeal and delay and formalities.

Three days.

It was more difficult to gain access to prisoners under sentence of death, but with Brasseur’s help Aristide obtained it and, three days after Rosalie’s trial, once again hurried through the chilly corridors.

“How is she?” he asked the turnkey who led him to the condemned cells.

“The citizeness?” The man pushed aside his woolen cap and scratched his head. “Calm. She doesn’t seem to mind it a bit.”

They had taken her back to the Conciergerie, but not to her old cell. She was lodged on an upper floor in a cell separated from the corridor only by steel bars, the better to keep watch on her. A little midday light gleamed from a window somewhere down the corridor, and the cell had its own small high window with a pot of crimson geraniums some well-wisher had sent her. Aristide was grateful she had been granted the additional light, though he could not suppress a queasy twinge as he saw the cot, table, and chairs set up in the corridor for a twenty-four-hour guard.

The guard sat with palms on thighs, watching her with a phlegmatic stare. “Just ask Gilbert here if you want anything,” the turnkey said, elbowing the guard, and disappeared.

Aristide glanced into the cell. Rosalie sat with a shawl and blanket wrapped about her as she ate the last morsels of a mutton chop on a well-laid tray. She had donned her pink gown again. Though part of Aristide’s mind rebelled against the idea of a woman dressed as a man, another part of him had found it somehow alluring. In women’s clothes Rosalie, though tolerably pretty, was no conventional beauty; in redingote and breeches she had possessed a certain sharp, alien grace.

“Rosalie,” he began, “I need to talk to you.”

She blew on a spoonful of soup and cautiously tasted it. “By all means. I hope you don’t mind if I eat my dinner before it gets cold. In fact, why don’t you join me?”

He clutched at one of the bars. “I didn’t come here to share your dinner. I’ve spoken with your defense counsel, with Maître Tardieu.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“He’ll speak with you tonight, when your appeal is ready to be signed.”

“My appeal?”

“Your appeal for clemency. The public prosecutor exceeded his authority by demanding that you wear those clothes. You must appeal—I’ll pay any necessary costs.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” Aristide echoed her, bewildered.

“Why should I appeal? I did it. Let’s get it over with.”

He clutched harder at the cold metal, steadying his hands. “Rosalie … you didn’t tell the court one word about the murders that I hadn’t told you first. Why did you kill Saint-Ange?”

She dimpled. “If you’d just murdered a rival, would you allow a witness to the murder to go free? Saint-Ange, of all people! He would have been demanding hush money from me within five minutes.”

“How did it happen?”

“Happen?” She paused, infinitesimally. “Just as I said in court. I shot him as he tried to get away from me.”

“How did you shoot him?”

She looked at him as if he had asked an especially stupid question. “What part of him did I shoot, do you mean? I shot him in the head.” She pointed to the center of her forehead. “Right there.”

“Was it so easy, then?”

“It was a lucky shot. I just—shot him.”

“How far away were you?”

“I don’t know … a few paces?”

Rosalie,
he said to himself,
if you had truly murdered him, you would have hit him with your pistol, watched him strike his head against the marble-topped buffet, seen him fall stunned to the floor. You would have known that you had held that pistol against the center of his forehead and fired it in icy, vengeful anger, as the exploding powder scorched and blackened his skin like that of a chicken roasting on a spit.

“Where did you get the pistol?” he added.

“I bought it from a man in a tavern, some time ago.” She gazed at him, her look saying
I challenge you to prove me a liar.

“And you claim you threw it in the river?”

“Off the Pont Nôtre-Dame, on the way home.”

“Where did you learn to fire a pistol?”

“An acquaintance taught me, in ’ninety-three. He said it was dangerous for women to go out alone.”

She had an answer for everything, he thought. She was a cool liar, to be sure—but she had known nothing of the blow to Saint-Ange’s temple, and the wound on the back of his head.

“And are you going to claim you murdered Citizeness Beaumontel, as well?”

“That wasn’t part of the indictment,” she said with a smile.

“But if someone asked you?”

“She saw me outside the house. It was pure bad luck that she saw me again when I was visiting the Palais-Égalité in disguise, in the same coat; she probably wouldn’t have recognized me if I’d been wearing a gown. I couldn’t run the risk.”

“You strangled her.”

“Yes. And dragged her inside the pyramid. I’m quite strong, you know.”

She was simply repeating everything he had told her on the day he had found the corpse. “So you followed her home from the Palais-Égalité? To what address?”

“I don’t remember,” she said calmly, though he saw her swallow. “Somewhere in the faubourg Honoré.”

Aristide shook his head. “No. You’d remember. You’re lying.”

“Why do you care, anyway?” Rosalie inquired. “Forget about me.
I
don’t care. What should I live for?” She poured herself wine from a small decanter, tasted it, nodded approvingly. Aristide opened his mouth to argue with her but she continued, her voice hard, before he could speak.

“Do you think I’m eager for triumphant acquittal in order to go back to life at the Maison Deluc? Please. You and I both know that I have no place and no future. Don’t you think I would rather step up to the plank and the blade and be done with it? Go on, go back where you came from; don’t waste your time.”

Aristide sighed, at a loss how to reason with her. “Are you comfortable, at least?”

“Yes, as well as can be expected.”

“I spoke to the warder two days ago,” he continued, “and offered to pay what I could for your lodging, to ensure you were in reasonably comfortable quarters, but was told that some anonymous person had already sent money for your expenses. All your expenses.”

“Did they?” she exclaimed, staring at him. “Who?”

“Your Henri, perhaps, whoever he may be?”

“Perhaps,” she agreed with a hint of a smile. “Well! So at least I need have no fear about the quality of my meals.”

“A caterer is sending them in, I imagine. And they’ll bring you the makings of a good fire, and a better bed, with a warm coverlet, if you ask for it.”

“That’s a mercy.” She returned to her dinner and ladled more soup into her soup plate. “There—it’s gone cold while we were talking. Gilbert, perhaps you would be an angel and have them set the tureen by the fire for a while?”

Gilbert bore away the tureen and Rosalie pulled the pack of cards Aristide had sent her out of her pocket.

“I do appreciate your thoughtfulness,” she said, laying them out on the table. “It’s an excellent way to pass the time.”

Aristide watched her set the cards down one by one. She had clearly deduced the necessary strategy. “People have confessed before now to crimes they didn’t commit,” he said at last. “Usually because they wish to shield someone.”

She went on with the game, silently, completed it without success, and pushed the cards together. “You don’t give up, do you? Are you implying I would sacrifice myself in order to save Philippe, because I still love him?”

Aristide nodded. She eyed him, sardonic pity in her glance.

“I think you must be the kind of contrary person who by nature refuses to believe anything that others accept as fact. I do hate to disappoint you … but I’m guilty as sin of those three deaths.” She shuffled the cards and started over.

“I don’t believe you. The tiny details—they don’t add up—”

“Enough!”

Abruptly she sprang to her feet, jarring the table and scattering the cards on the floor. In a few strides she crossed the room to seize the iron bars and stand face-to-face with him, her cheeks flushed.

“Listen to me, Ravel!” No trace of bantering irony remained in her voice. “
I did it.
I murdered her. I’m ready to accept the punishment. For God’s sake, stop meddling where you’re not wanted. I’m guilty! And I won’t thank you for dragging this out, when all I want is for it to be over!”

“I can’t accept that,” he said. “It’s not right.”

“Look, Ravel … Aristide,” she continued, more calmly, “I think you’ve made it rather clear that you’ve come to care for me. God knows why, but you have. So if you do care for me, let it be. Just let it be. That’s the greatest favor you can do me.”

He gazed at her, trying to fathom her. “I’ve not had an easy life myself,” he said at last, “but I never felt myself so utterly without hope that I wished to end it all, to cease wondering what tomorrow might bring me, hoping that it might be better than today. Aren’t you curious to know what tomorrow might bring?”

She did not answer him, but glanced at the corridor, where another guard had temporarily replaced Gilbert. After a moment of silence she suddenly turned to Aristide. “They still let me go outside to walk in the courtyard. Come with me, where we’ll have a little more privacy, and I’ll tell you a story.”

The guard preceding them, they went downstairs and out to the women’s yard, which once, during the Terror, had been busy with chattering prisoners, eager to wash their clothes in the stone basin kept filled by a ceaseless trickle of clean water. Now the courtyard was silent save for the splashing of the water and the twittering of a few sparrows perched in the branches of a solitary tree in a patch of garden. The sky hung pale pewter gray above them. Rosalie sat on a rough bench near the tree and gestured for Aristide to join her.

“That day by the river,” she began, “you told me about somebody.” She looked away at the dun-colored walls surrounding them, and the tree that flourished in the center of the courtyard as if defying its imprisonment. “A woman who wore men’s clothes, who had murdered a man in a hotel.”

Aristide felt his pulse suddenly race but said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“It happens that—somebody I know, a woman, has endured a great many cruelties, and blames men for her misfortunes. So she decided to murder them in revenge.”