The Maze Read online

  So Thomas is a little light-headed and has a spring in his step as he takes in all the other feast day cavorters swirling about him as he comes to the Pont Neuf. With a full hour to fill before the rendezvous, he will meander back and forth across many of the city’s bridges, stopping when and where he chooses. He can savour Paris in a way he’s not done in a while.

  His first stop is to listen to a street singer standing atop his moveable step. Wearing a giant paper hat and with a fiddle in one hand and a pointer in the other, the brightly dressed fellow points to the images on the canvas he has strung up and sings out naughty couplets to the rhythm of a catchy tune. It’s an air Thomas recognizes yet cannot name. He winces and the crowd in front of him groans to hear the pun about the great cardinal and an unnamed courtesan playing mortar and pestle in the kitchen at Versailles. Thomas takes a step back. It’s best not to be associated too closely with humour like that. The kingdom has it spies, as he well knows, having once practised that trade. It would not do for him to be seen laughing at the court. He does not want to do anything to jeopardize his new position with the magistrate judge.

  Yet Thomas does not distance himself too much. There’s a definite pleasure in lingering near something taboo. He glances at all the smiling faces laughing at the singer’s barbs. Nonetheless, he would be willing to make a small bet there’s a tell-tale taking mental notes. How can there not be? The stability of the realm is everything to those on the upper rungs. Thomas would be the same, if ever he had the chance. So, he understands, if the king and his ministers are too often mocked and maligned, they will be undermined. Chaos will reign instead.

  His gaze goes to the singer’s assistant. While not exactly pretty, she is good at what she’s there to do. Her low-cut chemise and bright smiling eyes are helping to sell trinkets and booklets of the singer’s songs. Thomas crooks his head. Wouldn’t it be funny if it was her, the singer’s assistant, who was the spy? She’s someone the singer would never expect. Who better to betray than someone as close as one can get to the source? God knows, they’d be privy to near everything. What do women not know, and better and deeper than any man? We men are easily duped, Thomas concludes, once a woman lifts her jupe and puts her delightful body in play.

  Thomas sighs. He looks to the blue sky overhead then pulls out his pocket watch. Three quarters of an hour until the rendezvous. This time they are to meet on the garden paths of the Tuileries – her choice. He has more than enough time to get there, but he’d better move along in that general direction.

  With the sun on his face and warming his chest and legs, Thomas feels content. The arrangement – that’s what the two of them have taken to calling it – is good for all involved. Well, less for the two who do not know about it, but the lift it gives the two principals undoubtedly has a positive impact on the other two as well. How could his wife and her husband not be pleased to see what better moods they’re in when they get back home from their Sunday and feast day walks? Thomas chooses to think that even if the other two were now to find out, they’d likely shrug. They’d have to admit, would they not, that the little rendezvous does no one any real harm? Besides, with their deteriorating health, don’t his wife and her husband have bigger things to worry about than what their spouses are doing out of their sight?

  Ah, poor Marguerite. Where her gout was bad for a couple of years, it’s now much worse. No longer does Thomas hear her boast about having a royal malady, one that saves and protects her from getting any other disease. That perspective on her illness faded as the gout spread. There are days when she can hardly walk. It started with a single toe, large and inflamed. Now it’s an ankle and a knee, both on the left side. She hardly ever leaves the apartment. Only occasionally will she agree to go with her cousin to a concert or a play. That’s when the left leg allows, and when the two ladies are not having some kind of spat.

  As a result of the gout, Thomas and Marguerite do not often share the same bed for sport at all. Sex between them is a little like the snow that only occasionally dusts the city. It doesn’t happen often, nor last very long. Nonetheless, Thomas tries to do his best, once a month or so. He is beginning to think that maybe she’ll soon want to give that up as well. Besides the gout, Marguerite is showing her age in other ways. She complains occasionally of a racing heartbeat. Sometimes there are sudden flashes of heat. Though at other times she’s chilled to the bone.

  As a boy, he used to hear his mother make similar complaints. He would sometimes sit with her in the kitchen and listen. Now he makes a point to sit and talk with Marguerite in the salon. Not every evening, but several times a week. He sits in a chair while Marguerite prefers the divan, her left leg propped up and a blanket pulled up to her chin. Sometimes she asks him to read aloud. Her preference is for the latest novels. She loves a world where the good are good and the bad so clearly bad, and love triumphs in the end. Thomas supposes that must be fiction’s edge. Unlike people’s real lives, everything has a chance of working out in the end. Though, truth be told, he has no complaints – at the moment.

  Thomas studies the contour of the roof of the Louvre. Surely his husbandly duties with Marguerite should grant him credit. She must see how relatively young he still is, compared to her. She must have mellowed when it comes to whom he might seek for a tryst, no? No, maybe not. Marguerite does seem to know how to hold on to a grudge.

  As for his lover’s husband in this situation double, well, Thomas knows how he might feel. He would not be pleased. Men are so possessive of their wives. To wear the antlers, as it were, is judged a great shame.

  Thomas looks away from the Louvre. It’s especially delicate, is it not, that his lover’s husband is someone Thomas likes and respects, someone he counts as a friend?

  “Here.”

  A young man hurrying by thrusts a square of parchment paper into Thomas's hand.

  “Read it, Pichon. Read it, memorize it and pass it on. It’s a good laugh.”

  Thomas frowns. “Happy Easter yourself,” he calls out after the disappearing figure of the young man. He folds over the paper and stuffs it deep into the pocket of his veston.

  Where a few moments ago Thomas was worried about being seen laughing at a rude song, now Mathieu-François Mairobert is giving him something even riskier to pass along – in public. Oh, the man is a talent, to be sure, younger than Thomas and active in the writers’ crowd. But Mairobert makes Thomas nervous with his enthusiasms, not to mention his penchant for composing riddles and rhymes that make fun of everyone on the rungs above.

  Thomas moves over to the stone railing so he can pretend to study the Seine. He takes notice of a half dozen small boats and barges plying up and down. He can smell the water, and there’s also the smell of fresh-cut cordwood coming from the barge immediately below. A hurdy-gurdy is tuning somewhere he cannot see. He hears its wail and groan. It’ll be some woman from Savoy, as it almost always is. He associates the sound with the group of tightrope walkers he often sees along the riverbank on days like this. Thomas wonders where they are. He inhales as he takes a peek at the piece of paper Mairobert handed him a moment ago. He unfolds it slowly.

  O bastard of the whore

  Thomas quickly refolds the paper and shoves it away. He’ll read the rest, the whole poem, when he’s back in his room at Marguerite’s. There is only risk in reading something that begins like that in front of any observing eyes. If it has any merit, which he doubts, Thomas will pass it on. More likely, he’ll watch it go ablaze upon his grate.

  Thomas pulls out his watch. Less than a half hour to go. He slips the watch back into his pocket and picks up the pace. Perhaps she’ll be early for a change. He can always hope. The plan is to meet along the boulevard beside the river then stroll upon the garden paths of the Tuileries. After they’ve done enough promenading, they’ll repair to the room he has rented for two hours. Meeting in a busy public park as they now do, and on the right bank, is a recent twist. But
given the age and maladies of their spouses, it is surely safe. Though, as Thomas knows all too well, his wife has friends with eyes. And a most formidable snoop in the form of her cousin.

  “Thomas. Thomas.”

  He hears his name being called from somewhere to his left. A woman’s voice.

  —

  Hélène is under a parasol the colour of the flax flower. It’s a colour she thinks draws out the blue tones in her dress. Blue is a colour she thinks looks especially good on her. She is making sure she holds up the dress as well as she can with her free hand, to keep it from brushing the sandy surface of the boulevard. Her cheeks feel flushed. Her face must be even redder than when she applied the touch of rouge before she left her home and Pierre.

  She sees Thomas coming toward her, closing the distance fast. She slows to a halt and turns to gaze out over the Seine. It’s important they give the right appearance, that of strangers who accidently arrive at the same place at the same time. The boulevard is crowded, as it always is, and there remains a chance, a risk, that someone might see the two of them and pass it on to either Marguerite or Pierre.

  “You’re early,” he softly says.

  Thomas is standing beside her but not too close. He too is pretending to study the slow movement of boats and barges on the water. He’s good at this.

  “Thomas,” Hélène says as quietly as she can. She allows a quick glance his way, then it’s back to the boats. “I— I don’t think I can. No, I can’t.”

  “Can’t? Can’t what?”

  Hélène glances his way. She sees that his form has gone tense and there’s confusion in the profile of his face. Yet surely he can guess what she’s trying to tell him. Oh, maybe not. Maybe she has to spell it out. “I, I think he knows.”

  “Pierre?”

  Hélène turns to stare at the man beside her. “No, Mathieu, Marc, Luc et Jean.”

  “All right, all right. What did he say?”

  Hélène’s eyes swing back to the river. She makes sure her voice is controlled and as low as it can be and still be heard. “He asked if I would consider staying home, just once. That’s what he said. He asked if I’d help him go for a short stroll on our street for a change. As if I have been abandoning him. Which I have, Thomas, I have.”

  “I see.”

  Hélène turns to see if he really does see what this means. Thomas’s head has sagged forward as though it has suddenly become a great weight.

  She will allow herself only a few minutes more standing beside Thomas, watching the river traffic, before she heads home to Pierre. It will be a long and quiet afternoon, but it will be correct. More correct than having this man she’s known since he was a boy, admiring her by pressing his body against her like she’s the one for him. Hélène takes a breath. Best not to dwell on what she’s giving up. Think too long about anything and you can find a way in or out of it.

  Hélène makes herself recall the other reason she’s deciding not to go with Thomas today to their rendezvous. In the confessional last week, the nosy priest pressed her for details when she mentioned she sometimes had “conversations” with a man who was not her husband, on the feast days of the church. The priest would not let it go. She never admitted anything more than inappropriate talk, but the priest implied there was more going on than just words being exchanged. She wondered if he could hear, in the wavering of her voice, the truth about her carnal relations with a man not her husband. Hélène had always thought – no, hoped – that the fact that she and Thomas were sinning equally at the same time, that the two sins might somehow balance each other off. A rough justice of sorts. Contrary to what people like to say, maybe two wrongs could actually make a right – the right to feel as fully alive as she can. Now, however, it seems that God, through the nosy priest, is telling her she was only fooling herself. Pleasure must not come before duty to God and her marriage to Pierre.

  —

  Thomas’s thoughts race over the past few years. How often over the first twelve months after finding Hélène along rue Mouffetard had he been to his Russian tailor? Measurements, fittings, more measurements and fittings. Once a month he made the trek to the shop to order something and to have a fleeting glimpse or a fragment of polite conversation with Hélène. The number of items he purchased added up. Marguerite never complained, though once she did wonder aloud as to how many coats, jackets and breeches Thomas required. He explained it was for his new position. Variety was required. That made Marguerite smile. She never questioned again why he was acquiring a wardrobe far beyond what he might reasonably wear.

  “So then,” Thomas breaks the long silence and rubs his hands, “you don’t know exactly what Pierre knows? He made no specific mention of me? He does not suspect who it is?”

  Hélène turns to face him. Her eyes look as if they want to burn holes. “As long as your relationship with your tailor is safe, is that it?”

  “No, but—”

  “Try thinking of how this is for me. I took a vow. Before God.”

  Thomas manages to turn away before his face reacts. A vow? he mouths. Oh my.

  “As you did with Marguerite. Turn around, Thomas. Let me see your face. Your vow may not mean much to you, but mine does to me.”

  Thomas cannot help but flex his eyebrows. How many times have the two of them lain together? “Our vows have not stopped us before,” he says as softly as he can.

  Hélène pushes Thomas on the chest then glares at him. “I have to go.”

  “No, don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? About what?”

  “I’m sorry ... I’m sorry for ... I don’t know. I’m not sorry for wanting to be with you. I love our time.”

  Hélène allows a momentary smile. She closes her eyes. She takes in a deep breath. “Come here,” she says, though she keeps her face straight ahead, facing the river and its barges and boats.

  Thomas slides along the rail to brush against Hélène’s hip.

  “Pierre is not well. I don’t know how long he has.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Hélène holds up a hand. She steps decisively away from any appearance of closeness between two chance strollers who have come to two separate stops along the path. She readies her shoulders. She takes in a breath. She lifts her parasol higher than it was and composes her face. When she turns back to Thomas he sees by her expression that he has become merely an acquaintance she has enjoyed conversing with along the boulevard.

  “You should drop by the shop, Monsieur Pichon. My husband would love to see you. He values your friendship as much as he does the business you bring.”

  “As I do his.” Thomas has no choice but to go along with the play Hélène is composing as they walk.

  The couple moves at the same slow pace as the other strollers along the Gallerie du Louvre heading back toward the Pont Neuf. Hélène acknowledges with a smile and an incline of her head and a dip of her parasol two women passing by. They are gaily dressed in pinks and pale greens. They interrupt their sing-song conversation to consider whether or not they should reply to Hélène. They allow that they will. There come two cautious smiles and shallow dips.

  “I don’t want to lose this again, Thomas, I do not.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Respectability.”

  “Ah, no. It’s the first step. You’re as good as those women, Hélène. Better in bed, I’ll bet.”

  “Shush.” Her lips are firmly set, but Thomas sees a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. “Oh, look.” Hélène is pointing over toward a crowd of people. “Look at them. The boy with his toy sword, the girl with her little boat. Are they not cute?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Not wanting to father descendants of your own?”

  Thomas shrugs. “It’s too late for Marguerite.”

  “Ah yes, please forgive me for not asking sooner,” Hélèn
e says in a sweetly innocent voice. “How is your wife? Well, I trust?”

  Thomas looks her squarely in the eyes. “Well enough. Usual complaints of age. Which as you know with your husband—”

  “We will speak of something else.”

  “Last week’s Treaty of Vienna?”

  Hélène gives him a cold look.

  “The latest rumours from court?”

  Hélène shakes her head.

  “Well, how about ... La Camargo? You’ve heard of her?”

  Hélène’s face shines like Thomas has just spoken a magic word. She halts their promenade and turns to face him.

  “La Camargo! They say she can leap like a man. Yet light upon her feet. ‘Dazzling’ is the term people use.”

  “So they say. The talk of the town.”

  “Only twenty-one and known by a single name.” Hélène seems to toss back her head. “La Camargo,” she breathes.

  “L’Hélène?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “Well, what if,” Thomas halts their progress along the path. “What if I were to try and get tickets to see her dance? The judge sometimes goes to the Opéra. I could ask. Would that please you?” Thomas unrolls a courtier’s hand.

  Hélène smiles like it’s all she can do not to laugh. “Seriously?”

  “Why not?”

  They begin their promenade again, now holding each other’s hand above their waists, as is the style for real gentry. Each time Thomas takes a peek, he sees that Hélène is smiling at the world.

  —

  Thomas steps over to the mirror in his room to take the measure of his appearance. He’s a little startled to see the image reflected back looking so stern. He tries to tender a smile, but it looks forced. So he rolls his shoulders and rolls his head from side to side and up and down to relax. It brings a better result.