She looked at him with a half smile. "To protect my sensibilities, Christian?"

"It is dangerous," he protested, and leaned forward to whisper with his face twisted into a slightly disgusted expression, "and the people."

"Yes, Christian," she said, as though letting him into a secret, "just people. Now please, go back inside. Your next customer values her exclusive time with Paris's most attentive shoe salesman as highly as I do, and would no doubt be most put out having to share her time with two strays awaiting their negligent coachman."

Knowing my mother as a woman who rarely changed her mind, and knowing she was right about the next customer, Christian bowed acquiescence, bid us au revoir and returned to the shop, leaving us alone on the street, where the barrows were being removed, where people dissolved into shapes moving within the murky fog.

I gripped her hand. "Mama?"

"Don't concern yourself, Elise," she said raising her chin. "We shall hire a carriage to return us to Versailles."

"Not to the villa here in Paris, Mama?"

"No," she said, thinking, chewing her lip a little, "I think I should prefer that we return to Versailles."

She was tense and watchful as she began to lead us along the street, incongruous in our long skirts and bonnets. From her purse she took a compact to check her rouge and we stopped to gaze in the window of a shop.

Still as we walked she used the opportunity to teach me. "Make your face impa.s.sive, Elise, and do not show your true feelings, especially if they are nerves. Don't appear to hurry. Maintain your calm exterior. Maintain control."

The streets were thinning out now. "At the square they have carriages for hire, and we shall be there in a few moments. First, though, I have something I need to tell you. When I tell you, you must not react, you must not turn your head. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mama."

"Good. We are being followed. He has been following us since Christian's. A man in a tall felt hat and cloak."

"Why? Why is the man following us?"

"Now that, Elise, is a very good question, and that is something I intend to find out. Just keep walking."

We stopped to look into another shop window. "I do believe our shadow has disappeared," she said thoughtfully.

"Then that's a good thing," I replied, with all the naivety of my unburdened eight-year-old self.

There was concern on her face. "No, my darling, it's not a good thing. I liked him where I could see him. Now I have to wonder if he really has gone or, as seems more likely, he's sped on ahead to cut us off before we can reach the square. He will expect us to use the main road. We shall fox him, Elise, by taking another route."

Taking my hand she led us off the street, first onto a narrower highway, then into a long alleyway, dark apart from a lit lantern at each end.

We were halfway along when the figure stepped out of the fog in front of us. Disturbed mist billowed along the slick walls on either side of the narrow alley. And I knew Mother had made a mistake.

iv.

He had a thin face framed by a spill of almost pure white hair, looking like a dandyish but down-at-the-heel doctor in his long black cape and tall shabby hat, the ruff of a shirt spilling over his collar.

He carried a doctor's bag that he placed to the ground and opened with one hand, all without taking his eyes off us as he took something from it, something long and curved.

Then he smiled and drew the dagger from its sheath, and it gleamed wickedly in the dark.

"Stay close, Elise," whispered Mother. "Everything's going to be all right."

I believed her because I was an eight-year-old girl and of course I believed my mother. But also because having seen her with the wolf, I had good reason to believe her.

Even so, fear nibbled at my insides.

"What is your business, monsieur?" she called levelly.

He made no answer.

"Very well. Then we shall return to where we came from," said Mother loudly, taking my hand and about to depart.

At the alley entrance a shadow flickered and a second figure appeared in the orange glow of the lantern. It was a lamplighter; we could tell by the pole he carried. Even so, Mother stopped.

"Monsieur," she called to the lamplighter cautiously, "I wonder if I might ask you to call off this gentleman bothering us?"

The lamplighter said nothing, going instead to where the lamp burned and raising his pole. Mama started, "Monsieur . . ." and I wondered why the man would be trying to light a lamp that was already lit and realized too late that the pole had a hook on the end-the hook that they used for dousing the flame of the candle inside.

"Monsieur . . ."

The entrance was plunged into darkness. We heard him drop his pole with a clatter and as ours eyes adjusted I could see him reach into his coat to bring something out. Another dagger. Now he, too, moved forward a step.

Mother's head swung from the lamplighter to the doctor.

"What is your business, monsieur?" she asked the doctor.

In reply the doctor brought his other arm to bear. With a snicking sound a second blade appeared from his wrist.

"a.s.sa.s.sin," she said with a smile as he moved in. The lamplighter was close now too-close enough for us to see the harsh set of his mouth and his narrowed eyes. Mother jerked her head in the other direction and saw the doctor, both blades held at his side. Still he smiled. He was enjoying this-or trying to make it look as though he was.

Either way, Mother was as immune to his malevolence as she was to the charms of Christian, and her next move was as graceful as a dance step. Her heels clip-clopped on the stone as she kicked out one foot, bent and drew a boot knife, all in the blink of an eye.

One second we were a defenseless woman and her child trapped in a darkened pa.s.sageway, the next we were not: she was a woman brandishing a knife to protect her child. A woman, who by the way she'd drawn her weapon and the way she was now poised, knew exactly what to do with the knife.

The doctor's eyes flickered. The lamplighter stopped. Both given pause for thought.

She held her knife in her right hand, and I knew something was amiss because she was left-handed, and presented her shoulder to the doctor.

The doctor moved forward. At the same time my mother pa.s.sed her knife from her right hand to her left, and her skirts pooled as she dipped and with her right hand outflung for balance slashed her left across the front of the doctor, whose justaucorps opened just as neatly as though cut by a tailor, the fabric instantly soaked with blood.

He was cut but not badly wounded. His eyes widened and he lurched backward, evidently stunned by the skill of Mother's attack. For all his sinister act, he looked frightened, and amid my own fear I felt something else: pride and awe. Never before had I felt so protected.

Still, though he had faltered he stood his ground, and as his eyes flicked to behind us, Mother twisted too late to prevent the lamplighter's grabbing me from behind, a choking arm around my neck.

"Lay down your knife, or . . ." was what the lamplighter started to say.

But never finished, because half a second later, he was dead.

Her speed took him by surprise-not just the speed with which she moved but the speed of her decision, that if she allowed the lamplighter to take me hostage, then all was lost. And it gave her the advantage as she swung into him, finding the s.p.a.ce between my body and his, leading with her elbow, which with a yell she jabbed into his throat.

He made a sound like boak and I felt his grip give, then saw the flash of a blade as Mother pressed home her advantage and drove her boot knife deep into his stomach, shoving him up against the alley wall and with a small grunt of effort driving the blade upward, then stepping smartly away as the front of his shirt darkened with blood and bulged with his spilling guts as he slid to the floor.

Mother straightened to face a second attack from the doctor, but all we saw of him was his cloak as he turned and ran, leaving the alley and running for the street.

She grabbed my arm. "Come along, Elise, before you get blood on your shoes."

v.

There was blood on Mother's coat. Apart from that there was no way of telling she'd recently seen combat.

Not long after we arrived home messages were sent and the Crows bustled in with a great clacking of walking canes, huffing and puffing and talking loudly of punishing "those responsible." Meanwhile, the staff fussed, put their hands to their throats and gossiped around corners, and Father's face was ashen and I noticed how he seemed compelled to keep embracing us, holding us both a little too tightly and a little too long and breaking away with eyes that shone with tears.

Only Mother seemed unruffled. She had the poise and authority of one who has acquitted herself well. Rightly so. Thanks to her, we had survived the attack. I wondered, did she feel as secretly thrilled as I did?

I would be asked to give my account of events, she had warned me in the hired carriage on the way back to our chteau. In this regard I should follow her lead, support everything she said, say nothing to contradict her.

And so I listened as she told versions of her story, first to Olivier, our head butler, then to my father when he arrived, and lastly to the Crows when they bustled in. And though her stories acquired greater detail in the telling, answering all questions fired at her, they all lacked one very important detail. The doctor.

"You saw no hidden blade?" she was asked.

"I saw nothing to identify my attackers as a.s.sa.s.sins," she replied, "thus I can't a.s.sume it was the work of a.s.sa.s.sins."

"Common street robbers are not so organized as this man seems to have been. You can't think it a coincidence that your carriage was missing. Perhaps Jean will turn up drunk but perhaps not. Perhaps he will turn up dead. No, Madame, this has none of the hallmarks of an opportunistic crime. This was a planned attack on your person, an act of aggression by our enemies."

Eyes would flick to me. Eventually I was asked to leave the room, which I did, finding a seat in the hallway outside, listening to the voices from the chamber as they bounced off marble floors and to my ears.

"Grand Master, you must realize this was the work of a.s.sa.s.sins."

(Although to my ears, it was the work of "a.s.sa.s.sins" and so I sat there thinking, Of course it was the work of a.s.sa.s.sins, you stupid man. Or "would-be a.s.sa.s.sins" at least.) "Like my wife, I would rather not leap to any false conclusions," replied Father.

"Yet you've posted extra guards."

"Of course I have, man. I can't be too careful."

"I think you know in your heart, Grand Master."

My father's voice rose. "And what if I do? What would you have me do?"

"Why, take action at once, of course."

"And would that be action to avenge my wife's honor or action to overthrow the king?"

"Either would send a message to our adversaries."

Later, the news arrived that Jean had been discovered with his throat cut. I went cold, as though somebody had opened a window. I cried. Not just for Jean but, shamefully, for myself as well. And I watched and listened as a shock descended on the house and there were tears to be heard from below stairs and the voices of the Crows were once more raised, this time in vindication.

Again they were silenced by Father. When I looked out the windows, I could see men with muskets in the grounds. Around us, everybody was jumpy. Father came to embrace me time and time again-until I got so fed up I began wriggling away.

vi.

"Elise, there's something we have to tell you."

And this is the moment you've been waiting for, dear reader of this journal, whoever you are-the moment when the penny finally dropped, when I finally understood why I had been asked to keep so many verites cachees, when I discovered why my father's a.s.sociates called him Grand Master, and when I realized what they meant by Templar and why "a.s.sa.s.sin" actually meant "a.s.sa.s.sin."

They had called me into Father's office and requested that chairs be gathered by the fire before asking the staff to withdraw completely. Father stood while Mother sat forward, her hands on her knees, comforting me with her eyes. I was reminded of once when I had a splinter and Mother held me and comforted me and hushed my tears while Father gripped my finger and removed the splinter.

"Elise," he began, "what we are about to say was to have waited until your tenth birthday. But events today have no doubt raised many questions in your mind, and your mother believes you are ready to be told, so . . . here we are."

I looked at Mother, who reached to take my hand, bathing me in a comforting smile.

Father cleared his throat.

This was it. Whatever dim ideas I'd formed about my future were about to change.

"Elise," he said, "you will one day become the French head of a secret international order that is centuries old. You, Elise de la Serre, will be a Templar Grand Master."

"Templar Grand Master?" I said, looking from Father to Mother.

"Yes."

"Of France?" I said.

"Yes. Presently, I hold that position. Your mother also holds a high rank within the Order. The gentlemen and Madame Levesque who visit, they too are Knights of the Order and, like us, they are committed to preserving its tenets."

I listened, not really understanding but wondering why, if all these knights were committed to the same thing, they spent every meeting shouting at one another.

"What are Templars?" I asked instead.

My father indicated himself and Mother, then extended his hand to include me in the circle. "We all are. We are Templars. We are members of a centuries-old secret order committed to making the world a better place."

I liked the sound of that. I liked the sound of making the world a better place. "How do you do it, Papa?"

He smiled. "Ah, now, that is a very good question, Elise. Like any other large, ancient organization there are differing opinions on how best to achieve our ends. There are those who think we should violently oppose those who oppose us. Others who believe in peacefully spreading our beliefs."

"And what are they, monsieur?"

He shrugged. "Our motto is, 'May the father of understanding guide us.' You see, what we Templars know is that despite exhortations otherwise, the people don't want real freedom and true responsibility because these things are too great a burden to bear, and only the very strongest minds can do so.

"We believe people are good but easily led toward wickedness, laziness and corruption, that they require good leaders to follow, leaders who will not exploit their negative characteristics but instead seek to celebrate the positive ones. We believe peace can be maintained this way."

I could literally feel my horizons expand as he spoke. "Do you hope to guide the people of France that way, Father?" I asked him.

"Yes, Elise, yes we do."

"How?"

"Well, let me ask you-how do you think?"

My mind went blank. How did I think? It felt like the most difficult question I had ever been asked. I had no idea. He looked at me kindly yet I knew he expected an answer. I looked toward Mother, who squeezed my hand encouragingly, imploringly with her eyes, and I found my beliefs in words I myself had heard her speak to Mr. Weatherall and to Madame Carroll.

I said, "Monsieur, I think our present monarch is corrupted beyond redemption, that his rule has poisoned the well of France and that in order for the people's faith to be restored in the monarchy, King Louis needs to be set aside."