The Red Necklace (19 page)

At one supper party he had met Charles Cordell for the first time. Madame Claumont, a lady from Paris, had also been amongst the guests, along with her friend Sir John Randall.

Yann, as he often did, listened intently rather than join in. But then Sir John Randall said, “We have heard everyone else’s views round this table except yours, sir. Speak up—they say revolution is a young man’s sport. What have you to say for yourself ?”

It was not from a lack of opinions that Yann had kept silent. “I thought when the Bastille fell that all men might truly be free,” he said. “It struck me as a good enough reason for stopping time and starting the clocks anew: a fresh beginning when all men would be equal. But what I hear and read is that the people of France are no freer than before. A whole lot of wigs, hats, and crowns will have changed heads, but it looks as if the new masters will be as bad as the old.”

“Wise words, young man,” said Sir John Randall.

"Alas,” sighed Mr. Laxton, "what bonfires we make of Utopian dreams.”

“I’m sure the poor will forever help the rich become richer,” continued Yann. “Whatever flag you fly, whatever song you sing, whatever church you worship in, it will always be the same. What’s the point of playing at politics? All that matters is people.”

“Steady on, sir, that is going too far!” said Sir John.

Charles Cordell looked with interest at this young man who spoke with such passion, and he asked, "So if you have no alliance to king or country, what does interest you?”

"What it is to be human,” said Yann.

“Go on,” said Cordell. “I’m listening.”

“Well, sir, as far as I see it, we’re all housed in the same skin, be it black, white, or brown. The same blood pulses through all our veins, the same heart beats. Yet some men believe that through birth and privilege they stand above everyone else. I don’t believe that. I think that kings have had their day, and the future should be in the hands of the people.”

“These are revolutionary views indeed,” said Sir John Randall, taken aback by Yann’s zeal.

“And views I violently disagree with!” exclaimed Madame Claumont. “There must be order, otherwise society will collapse. People only thrive when they know their place. Absolute monarchy is the only possible way to ensure this.”

“Too late, my dear madam,” said Cordell. “Your good king didn’t seize his chance to put down the Revolution. Now it is too late. With Marat as leader, the Revolution has given birth to a reign of terror that is growing in power day by day. I believe that in the end it will rule everything, destroy everything.”

It was shortly after this that Madame Claumont disappeared. Her body was retrieved at low tide, half buried in the Thames mud near Cheyne Walk, her little dog whining beside her.

Henry Laxton accompanied Sir John Randall to identify the body. Madame Claumont was wearing a necklace that was caked in mud, like the rest of her. A red garnet caught Mr. Laxton’s eye. He took the necklace away with him, washed it until its color was restored, and studied it carefully. It was, as he had suspected, a necklace like those Charles Cordell had described to him, and the sight of it made him feel sick to his stomach. Madame Claumont had been a good client of the bank. What part, he wondered, had Kalliovski played in her murder?

A terrible, undeniable truth struck him. This was the man Sido was to marry. How could he possibly stand by, knowing what he did, and let her be sacrificed to this monster? Something must be done before it was too late.

chapter twenty

These days Yann was feeling that the past was well behind him. Then, with three simple words, the world that he thought was his to inherit slipped through his fingers like sand. It was what Orlenda had predicted, and what Yann had chosen to bury somewhere deep in his unconscious mind: His destiny and his fate lay across the water.

On a hot summer’s evening, with the study door open to the garden, Mr. Laxton had read him a letter he had just received from Cordell. The three words that stood out, illuminated diamond-bright, were: “Têtu is alive.”

It seemed that Têtu, after three years working in provincial theaters where he knew Kalliovski would not find him, had returned to Paris, confident that with all his other activities the count’s interest in him had waned. He had been to see Cordell, and was proud and delighted to hear how well Yann had acquitted himself.

Cordell had asked Têtu if he knew anyone who could be trusted to get Sido de Villeduval safely to England, and Têtu had suggested Yann. If Sido refused to abandon her father, then the last resort would be to try to get them both out. For that they would need papers and passports.

As Yann listened, he knew that his future lay not here, but in France; and he remembered with a shudder Orlenda’s three predictions and realized that one, if not two, had already come true. Orlenda had told him that he was to take comfort that Têtu was still alive. The next thing she had predicted puzzled him greatly and made him sure that she must be wrong about the dwarf. She told him he had already met the only person he would ever love.

“What is her name?” Yann had asked.

"It begins with
S
.”

All he could think to ask was, “Will we be happy?”

“This love could be the death of both of you,” said Orlenda.

Only now could he acknowledge that she had meant Sido— not Sophie Padden. Perhaps, if he was honest with himself, he had always known it, even from the very first moment he had seen her.

The last of Orlenda’s three predictions had been the one that had terrified him the most and made him run away. It had been the reason he had wanted no more to do with magic. Finally he realized that there was no more running to be done; he would have to go back and face the bullet. Perhaps, like the magician, this time he would be able to catch it.

Mr. Laxton put down the letter and said firmly, “These are very dangerous times. You don’t have to do this.”

“But I do,” said Yann. “I can’t explain why. All I can tell you is that I have known this day was coming. I have been waiting a long time for that letter to arrive.”

His determination to give up all that he had earned took Henry Laxton completely by surprise.

“What about university?”

“It can wait. But Sido can’t.”

Mr. Laxton paused. “Yann, as I said, this is not going to be easy. Kalliovski will not take kindly to anyone trying to steal away what belongs to him. You are dealing with a very dangerous man.”

“That makes it all the more important that we succeed.”

“In that case I will need a couple of weeks to get all the papers in order; then you can go.”

Mr. Trippen sat back at the table after a good Sunday lunch and listened to all Yann had to say about his decision.

“Well,” he said, “if the fates are calling you, then go you must. ’There is a tide in the affairs of men . . .’ ”

“Do you think,” interrupted Yann, well-versed in his tutor’s love of Shakespearean quotes, "we’re simply puppets in the hands of destiny, or do we have the power to change our fate?”

Mr. Trippen contemplated the question, while the youngest of the Trippens played on the floor with a ball Yann had bought him. His sisters sat listening, looking adoringly at the young man in his fashionable coat, each one wishing that his black eyes would rest on her and twinkle, if only for a moment.

“It is a question,” replied Mr. Trippen, “that philosophers, playwrights, poets, and artists will go on asking until the world stops spinning and the sun is snuffed out like a candle. A question, my dear sir, that your Mr. Trippen has struggled with and has no answer for. Though I did once know a man in the Queen Anne Tavern who claimed he had the solution, if not the answer.”

“What was it?” asked Yann.

“Aha!” laughed Mr. Trippen. “It lay, according to him, at the bottom of a good tankard of port wine. In other words, my young sir, the question is king, and the answers are different for all men.”

“Why don’t you do magic tricks anymore, Yann?” said the eldest girl impatiently. “You used to be able to make apples appear from nowhere and do card tricks. Now all you do is talk like Papa and use long words.”

“My pudding blossom,” said her father, “you have a very good point. Well, young sir, we are all ears.”

“I stopped believing in magic,” said Yann softly.

Mrs. Trippen came into the room, gathering up the children to take them to visit her mother.

“Don’t be long,” called Mr. Trippen, “oh flower of my life, apple of my eye, the reason my heart keeps on beating!”

Mrs. Trippen smiled cheerfully. She enjoyed owning furniture weighted down with the gravity of a healthy income. Life was good.

The front door closed and the babbling-brook voices of the children disappeared, leaving only the muted sounds of horses’ hooves outside, and inside, the ticking of a clock and the chirping of the two canaries whose cages hung in the window. Mr.Trippen brought out his snuffbox.

“Many men,” said Mr. Trippen, taking a large pinch of snuff, which immediately brought on a bout of sneezing, “spend their lives living in the wrong corner of their souls, mainly out of fear of what they might find on the other side.”

He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.

“When I first met you, I would say that you were the most mysterious, magical young man I had ever had the privilege to run into. In the last couple of years it has struck me that you have been merrily trying to board up that side of yourself, close the shop, put up the shutters, so to speak, and old Trippen has noticed the effect it has had on his young Hamlet’s countenance. The ‘To be or not to be’ question has brought about a lopsided quality to your gait. Instead of standing up straight, your right shoulder slopes as if one part of you is in constant disagreement with the other half.”

"Yes,” said Yann, "I recognize that. What should I do?”

“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer being ordinary or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing them . . . except that you are
extraordinary
. Celebrate the magic that you have at your fingertips. Stand up straight, put your head above the parapet.”

“Aren’t you disappointed that I won’t go to Cambridge?”

“No,” said Mr. Trippen. “I never thought you would. Doesn’t mean I didn’t think you could. My advice, for what it is worth, is this: Face your demons.”

chapter twenty-one

If ann knew what Mr. Trippen meant. While there was still time, he must go back and find the Gypsies.

Early the next day he took his black horse and rode out to Hainault Forest, to the Fairlop Fair. Here, each year, Gypsies from all over the country gathered under a huge oak tree, making the most of the chance to gossip and trade in the horses and ponies penned in a hastily erected corral. Beneath its canopy of leaves they set up stalls selling trinkets, food, and drink, and the local farmers and their families crowded the little booths to see the puppet shows, to watch the boxing matches, bear-dancing, and sword-throwing, to bob for apples, and have their fortunes told.

Yann arrived in the morning, but it was evening by the time he found out where Tobias Cooper was. He had to ride some three miles before he smelled the woodsmoke and saw the camp nestled at the edge of the forest.

Tobias walked down the green grassy path to meet him as the sun, round and red, was going down behind the trees in a burst of color. He embraced Yann.

“I knew you would return,” he said, “and I know we have not much time, because you are going back across the water.”

He took Yann to his tent and they sat down together in front of the fire, where the kettle bubbled away.

“Now let us try again,” said Tobias, as if no time had passed. A cup rose into the air and the kettle tipped and poured tea into it, without the help of a human hand. Yann had seen Têtu do this many times.

"What do you see?” asked Tobias.

“A cup having tea poured into it by an invisible hand.”

“I did not ask you to look,” said Tobias. “Looking is what all fools do. I asked you to see. That is the difference. Now try again. Look at the spaces in between the objects, then tell me what you see.”

This time a burning stick was lifted from the fire and stood on end like a torch.

"A burning stick,” said Yann, completely at a loss. “What else is there to see?”

“Everything. You see with your eyes. I am asking you to see from here.”

He pressed his thumb hard in the middle of Yann’s forehead. “This is how you must learn to see. Not with your eyes. They will only deceive you, as I told you before. They are so easily tricked. Now drink.”

Yann held the cup tight. He needed the warmth of the tea for comfort. He said, “I stopped believing.”

“That goes without saying,” said Tobias.

It was not until the moon had taken sovereignty over the night sky that Tobias and Yann left the camp and started to walk through the forest, where the trees stood like sentinels watching for intruders.

Yann kept tripping up; he had lost the basic skills that he once took for granted. Tobias, on the other hand, walked on as if it were broad daylight. At last they came to a clearing, an eerie place surrounded by oak trees on top of which the moon seemed to be balancing. It was a circular clearing, off which led seven paths. Yann had the sensation of walking not on the mossy ground but on a membrane that divided two worlds.

Tobias sat down in the middle of the clearing, Yann beside him, and started to play a penny whistle. It made no sound, or at least none that Yann could hear. After a while, lights began to appear down each path. Phantomlike figures came into focus from nowhere. They seemed no more substantial than mist. Yann watched, hypnotized, as on the path directly in front of him stood a wizened woman.

“Who called for me?” she asked.

Tobias stood up and gave a deep bow. “I did. I have brought the young man as I promised I would.”