Cadoville (unfinished)

Chapter VI

VI

Winter 1793

Paris

I still dreamt with two eyes, re-living auctions at Maison Cadoville, reading forgotten stories on my grandmother's knee, alpine cattle parading through Fribourg with bells and colourful headdresses..., at the same time they were like fuel to my fire and fresh salt in the wounds that wouldn't heal – the invisible pains no one could bandage, the unrelenting agony that just wouldn't fade.... I missed uncle Stefano. Perhaps the first time I felt truly on my own.

Suffice to say my return to Paris hadn't rolled out as smoothly as I was hoping.... House arrest – that's what I called it, and regrettably for my own security too. Stranded on in the middle of an angry city tied up with tricolours and Revolutionary rosettes, unable to get to Gruyères, unwilling to join my uncle and pushing the patience and hospitality of a hard-hearted doctor desperate to get me off his back.... He lent me some books to keep me quiet – technical ones about anatomy and medicine. Not my idea of a good book but I liked the illustrations.

Paoletta had to vanish altogether – Dr Spice saw to that. My flat chest, my arguably deeper than average voice..., these became my attributes. He cut and reshaped my hair one afternoon, and ordered me to wear only his old lab assistant's wardrobe. It was pure luck that I was able to slip comfortably into most of his clothes, evidently a rather petite fellow when he had pulse.... His feet were a touch bigger than mine though – I had to pad his shoes out with rolled up socks. The young boy in the mirror was soon set to work washing the glassware in the lab, only after dark when Dr Spice's surgery was quiet.

The flags billowed with more pride and vigour than ever before from the steeples and belfries one icy but seemingly unremarkable day. Bells gonged and chimed across the rooftops and the cheering in the street lasted long into the night. Washing up the flasks and tubes by candlelight in the lab, I just had to live with the mystery of what all the noise was about on the other side of the bolted shutters.

The big door to the street cracked and grinded. A spectre boasting Dr Spice's gait breezed between the auburn gaps in the shadows, hurrying upstairs and behind a small, narrow door on the landing. It wasn't the first time I had caught Dr Spice coming back late or indeed disappearing behind that door, far from it in fact.... The customary series of creaks and woody groans overhead again.... Curiosity got the better of me and led me through the little door, up a painfully tight spiral staircase to a musty attic. Pitch-black except for a single lantern illuminating Dr Spice's face, chewing his bottom lip and pouring over a handful of letters. Treading softly over the noisy floor, I joined him at the table, not that he so much as flinched.

"My apologies if I kept you from sleeping...."

His voice was tired but sharp, and his eyes focused on the parchment in his hands.

No, no..., I had just finished in the lab...." Dr Spice didn't respond, shouting and laughter in the street filling the silence between us. "... Not that I could've slept anyway with that racket outside.... I wonder what's got them in high spirits...."

"They've killed the King."

Dr Spice's words were little more than a mumble, stifled by concentration. A strange chill flooded my belly and fingertips. The man whose face was on coins, bank notes, buildings, plates, you name it....

"You're not serious...."

"This morning. Place de la Revolution." Dr Spice lifted his eyes to mine. "Welcome to the Republic...."

"What about the Queen?"

"Still in prison...,"

His voice was beginning to clip as though I were bothering him. I remembered the Queen from the garden party, albeit vaguely.... I never spoke to her but she was striking, loud and giggly in equal proportions – rather fun I thought.... My father had a ten-minute audience with the King, and spent the rest of the evening talking about the auction house with men flashing silk handkerchiefs and wearing enormous powdered wigs, all for Maison Cadoville.