Baudelaire's Revenge by Bob Van Laerhoven

Author:Bob Van Laerhoven
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781605985893
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2014-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

35

LEFÈVRE LAY ON THE COBBLESTONES close to L’Arche du Diable with his arms around a tree as if he was in love with it. He could still hear the clip-clop of hooves on the street, laughter, shreds of sentences: An officer of justice in a land without justice … Fought like a savage … Respect …

Then the fleshy thud as they’d tossed him out of the cart.

Lefèvre could smell the Seine, which seemed more and more like an open sewer every day, full of factory filth and the grime discharged by the ships that carried their cargoes to the four corners of the world.

His bones ached. Lefèvre tried to get to his feet, held on to the tree as if it was a lifebuoy, waited until the nausea in his stomach had settled, and then shook his head like a dog trying to shake off an irritating fly.

He felt miserable, but the storm in his head had subsided. Women couldn’t be trusted, especially whores. Claire de la Lune was worth ten women. So, he would screw twenty, and he would do it tonight, in spite of the twinges of pain in his chest.

The massive vaulted pillars of the L’Arche du Diable that bridged the Seine seemed to be on the point of keeling over and falling on top of him. He blinked. The beating he had taken from the franc-tireurs had had a strange effect on his eyes: the bridges crossing the Seine had turned a pale shade of grey, the gas lamps into blinding stars with halos of light, and the water into an enormous, heaving, gritty mass.

The sound of horses made him turn around. The cart that was coming toward him was full of barrels. Lefèvre hurried to his feet, his legs trembling, straightened his undershirt and picked up his hat. Where was his cane?

He held up his balled fist and stood his ground, stony-faced. But he heaved a sigh of relief nonetheless when he realized that only the young man with the scar and another with wavy hair were still in the cart. Six franc-tireurs had been a bit much, but he could handle two, no problem at all.

“So you’re up for a fight?” the older man jeered when he caught sight of Lefèvre’s hostile stance. “I was just saying to my young comrade in arms here that it made no sense to come back. But he was afraid that the absinthe and the terrible things he had told us about you might have caused us to exaggerate a little when we took you on.”

The young man with the aristocratic appearance smiled. “Don’t believe a word he says, sir. I bet my friend Ferdinand here that you would be back on your feet and ready for another fight.”

“And Henri was right. Frenchmen fighting Frenchmen? Is there anything more idiotic? But try to look at it as a selection procedure, sir: After a good fight we know that a man like you shouldn’t be wasting his time in the service of our pathetic government and its puppet emperor.

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