The Black Hawk Read Online Free PDF Page A

Cleopatra’s jewelry, the gold and the gilt, chimed as she lifted her glass and drank. “But three of us willing to lie and send a man to the gallows. Is there a hotter hell reserved for the murderer?” A sly look. “Will you save me a seat by the fire, Amy?”
    “I didn’t kill anyone.”
    “You’d say that if you had the knife stuffed in your corset. Shall we take it in turns, protesting our innocence?”
    “I swear, I didn’t—”
    “We are all so very good at lying,” Cleopatra said. “Swear, if it makes you feel better.”
    The Templar held his hand up, silencing. He wore a chain mail hood and mask the color of steel. His armor was rings of silvered tin, bright and mobile as fish scale. When he moved, metal clicked against metal like the gears of a clock. “What do we know?”
    “Military Intelligence saw nothing.” Cleopatra rolled the wineglass back and forth between her hands, gazing down into it. She was the most discreet of expensive courtesans. One of her men held a position high in Military Intelligence. “Their man who watches Meeks Street didn’t like the rain and had taken himself off to a tavern. They have heard only rumor. No one’s made the connection between Meeks Street and the killings. Do you know the name of the man we’ve been accusing?”
    “Don’t.” The Templar spoke sharply. “We know. All of us know.”
    “It is the Head of the British Service. The Black Hawk.”
    “And that is why we will fall.” The executioner leaned on his ax, head bowed, gripping the two-sided head. “Justine DuMotier and the Black Hawk were lovers once. When she dies, he’ll hunt us down like dogs.” He raised his eyes, going from one to the other. “Perhaps he should. Gravois and Patelin deserved what they got. DuMotier didn’t.”
    “She was Police Secrète. Like them.” Cleopatra shrugged.
    “Like us.” Under the mask, under the helm, the Templar’s mouth drew a grim line. “She was a soldier fighting for what she believed in. She shouldn’t die like this.”
    “We tell ourselves we have no choice.” Carnevale Mask followed one bright figure through the pattern of the dance. Her oldest daughter. “They’ve won, you know. We’ve become the monsters they tried to make us. We—”
    A man dressed as Henry VIII paused at the curtains to the alcove and peered in. Cleopatra wore thin folds of pleated linen. Her pale body with its gilded nipples was clearly displayed beneath. She had become wealthy selling that beauty. Henry VIII gave a long, appreciative, lip-licking smile.
    The executioner lifted his ax and tested the edge. Henry VIII decided to stroll onward.
    When he was gone, Cleopatra said, “It’s too late. It’s always been too late. What can we do?”
    The executioner said softly, “We can stop.”
    They held a long conversation with their eyes. Four French spies, pretending to be the grandson of an earl, the widow of a baron, the bluff military gentleman, the notorious courtesan.
    “I will stop this. Here and now,” the executioner said. “For me, this is the end. When the next letter comes, I’ll ignore it.”
    “The end.” Carnevale Mask still watched her daughter. “No more. Whatever it costs.”
    The Knight Templar bowed his head.
    “Justine DuMotier will be the last to die.” Cleopatra went back to watching the dancers.
    “If she dies,” Amy said.
    Cleopatra said, “We were well taught. That knife will have been poisoned. She won’t live through the night.”
    “I can’t believe one of us did this.”
    “I believe it very easily,” Cleopatra said. “We’ve all killed. Even you, sweet Amy. And you always used a knife.”

Five
     
    TWENTY-FOUR YEARS BEFORE
    July 1794
    Paris
     
    JUSTINE HAD TOLD THE BOY TO MEET HER AT THE guillotine. It was not because she was bloodthirsty—indeed, she was not—but because they would be inconspicuous here.
    She was dressed as a housemaid today, in honest blue serge, white apron, and a plain fichu. In this, she