An Affair of Poisons(68)

As soon as my boots sink into the muck, I cough at the vile stench. After a few weeks aboveground, I had forgotten how the vaporous fingers reach down your throat. I step forward to make room for the others and walk directly into a cobweb. While I bat the sticky strings from my face, a rat the size of Rixenda’s rolling pin scampers along the side of my boot.

I can’t do this. Especially knowing the foulest creature of all waits for me at the tunnel’s end. There must be another way to appease the people. Something, anything, else we can try.

I pivot, ready to bound back up the stairs and run far away from this hellhole, when two high-pitched voices trill down the tunnel like birdsong.

My heart stutters at the sound.

My girls.

Their laughter pulls me into the dark and dreck. I place my hands against the dripping walls and push into the blackness. Desgrez and Mirabelle follow.

Anne’s and Fran?oise’s voices grow steadily louder; my heart beats steadily faster. When we round the final bend and torchlight from their chamber illuminates the pits and holes in the ground, I break into a run. Needing to see them. Needing to hold them.

“Anne! Franny!” I shout.

There’s a beat of silence, followed by delighted screams and claps as I burst into the chamber.

“Josse!” Anne fists her filthy skirt and runs for me. “You’re back!”

I kneel down and catch her in my arms. Fran?oise crashes into my side a moment later and we three topple over sideways and splash into a puddle, laughing too hard to care about the cold and wet. I rain kisses on their cheeks and smooth my hands over their hair, inspecting every inch of them. “Are you well? Have you regained your strength?” I can’t stop babbling and my eyes sting with tears, which is slightly mortifying, but it’s so good to see them alive and well and warm and solid and—

“Stop!” Fran?oise giggles and bats my hand away. “We’re fine. Where have you been? We were beginning to worry you’d never return.”

“Some of us were beginning to celebrate,” Louis calls from his corner.

Marie shoots him a disapproving look as she crosses the chamber to where I sit with the girls. “This is a happy moment, Louis. No need to sully it with old quarrels. We’re glad to see you’re safe,” she says to me.

“I’d hardly call them old quarrels!” Louis’s voice rises as Desgrez and Mirabelle duck into the chamber. “He brought the poisoner back! Captain Desgrez, how could you allow—”

“Mirabelle!” the girls shriek over Louis. They scramble up and attack her with only slightly less gusto than they did me. They jostle for position in her lap and laugh like they haven’t since the attack on Versailles. Something squeezes in my chest, seeing the three of them together. Desgrez shakes his head at the smile creeping across my lips.

“You look different,” Anne says, studying Mirabelle’s close-cropped curls.

“I had to disguise myself,” she explains, “and your brother thought this would be the best way.”

“But your curls were so big and bouncing and lovely!” Fran?oise laments, swirling her arms around her head just as I did outside the Louvre.

Mirabelle chuckles and cuts me a glance. “I don’t think anyone has ever called my hair lovely, but thank you. How are you both feeling? I’ve been longing to check on you. Have the spots faded? Have your coughs ceased?”

Anne holds out her arms for inspection, and Fran?oise bobs her head, insisting she’s never felt better.

“So what have you been up to, now that you’re well?” I say, plopping down beside them.

“We’ve been hunting rats,” Anne pronounces.

“Rats!” Mirabelle glances at me, trying not to look disgusted.

Fran?oise nods eagerly. “They like to chew our skirts, so I ripped off bits of material and put them in the corner, and when the rats came, I trapped one all by myself. I hit it with my shoe and cooked it on a stick and ate it for supper.”

“You ate it?” I laugh. Foul as it sounds, I’m brimming with pride. Spoiled, pampered princesses would never stoop so low. My girls are strong. Resilient. A new breed of nobility.

“We gobbled it up, even the tail. Just like our kitten who lives at the palace,” Anne tells Mirabelle. “When we return, I am going to help her hunt. I would make a good kitten, don’t you think?”

“You would be a wonderful kitten,” Mirabelle agrees.

“Enough of this blessed reunion.” Louis stamps to where we sit. “I demand to know why you’re here. And why you would allow it, Captain.” He glowers at Desgrez. “Josse betrayed me. And assaulted you. He can’t come parading back after weeks of carousing with our enemy and expect to be received with open arms.”

I regain my feet and draw a deep breath. Heaven help me, it will take every morsel of patience I possess to survive what comes next. “So lovely to see you, brother,” I say. “Before you run me out, you might be interested to hear we’ve devised a new plan to see you out of the sewer and reinstalled on the throne, but we need your cooperation to carry it out.”

Marie lets out an uncharacteristic squeal and claps her hands to her chest. “Thank goodness. I was beginning to fear—”

Louis silences her with a look and turns back to me, his face crumpled with distaste. “Not another one of your ill-conceived plans. We’ve been through this before.”