Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [133]
I look around. We’re on the Rue du Grand Chantier. I’ve never heard of it, but that’s what the street sign says.
“You live here?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he says. He’s busy trying to hold me up and open the outer door. He gets his key in the lock, turns it, and we’re in the courtyard.
I know the Marais—my mother grew up here and we used to stroll the streets together whenever we visited Paris—but this house doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen here. It’s shabby and dark. Instead of the electric light above the door, there’s a lantern. I can smell horses. We go inside and walk up the stairs to the third-floor landing. His apartment is big and cold and smelly, with cracked walls and cobwebby beams in the ceiling.
“Please, you must sit. You really are not well,” Amadé says.
He leads me to a huge wooden table, pulls out a chair, and lights a candle. I sit down and close my eyes, trying, again, to make the dizziness stop.
“Do you have any coffee?” I ask him.
He says he does and that he just needs to heat it. I hear him clattering around. A few minutes pass. I grip the edges of the table, take a deep breath, and open my eyes.
There’s a quill in front of me. A pot of ink. And an old newspaper, the National Gazette. I see the date—14 Prairial III. I try to work out the date in my head and come up with the second of June, 1795. The day after Alex died. Six days before Louis-Charles did. It’s just a prop, I tell myself.
Amadé puts a steaming bowl of coffee down in front of me. I thank him, sip it, and set the bowl down carefully. It looks like an antique. So does the table. There’s sheet music spread across it. It looks handwritten. My eyes follow the notes. It’s a rondo. A very old piece. There are two initials at the top of the first page—A.M. And suddenly I know where I’ve seen him—in a painting. A portrait. Hanging in an ancient mansion by the Bois de Boulogne.
“You’re Malherbeau, aren’t you?” I ask, afraid of his answer.
He smiles. “Yes, I am. Pardon me for not giving you my full name earlier. It’s a careful habit I have. You never know who is listening. I’m Malherbeau. Amadé Malherbeau.”
“No,” I say, my voice shaking. “No, you aren’t. You can’t be. Because Amadé Malherbeau lived two hundred years ago.”
And then I feel myself topple forward. Amadé shouts. He catches me, picks me up, and carries me across the room to a bed.
What’s happening to me? I feel weak and helpless. It’s the Qwell. I’ve taken too much. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe someone spiked my wine. I feel Amadé unlacing my boots. Sliding them off my feet. I’m so scared. What if he’s the one who did it?
I hear a clock strike the hour. The ceiling is swirling above me. Amadé is leaning over me. He’s talking to me, shouting at me, but he sounds so far away. His face is blurring, melting, fading.
I’m so afraid. “Somebody help me. Please help me,” I whisper.
Right before everything goes black.
69
I hear music. Someone’s playing a guitar. Working at a phrase. Over and over again. Not getting it right. It should be beautiful but it’s not. It’s annoying. I wonder who it is. G? Lili? I didn’t know they played.
I’m itchy. My chin itches. My neck itches. My ear does, too. I’m thinking there must be a mosquito in the room but there can’t be. It’s December, all the mosquitoes are dead. I’m sore, too. Hurting all over.
I open my eyes, groan at the pain in my head, and shut them again. What happened last night? I remember being at the Eiffel Tower—and what I almost did there. I remember Virgil and his friends. The beach. The police. I can’t remember how I got home but I do remember a weird dream about guys in eighteenth-century costumes, and dead bodies in the catacombs, and eating at the Café Chartres with Amadé Malherbeau.
I roll over, open my eyes again, and gasp. There’s someone next to me. A really hairy someone.
“Yo. Hey. Wake up,” I say, prodding him.
The guy turns to me. He has brown eyes and a long snout. As I’m staring at him in disbelief, he sticks out his tongue and licks my face.
“Dude! Gross!” I say, sitting up. It’s a