He spread his hands. "All I know is that there was an attack by sansculottes at the Calvert chteau this morning," he said. "Both Jean-Jacques and his father perished in a fire. Of the others, I know nothing."

My blood ran cold. To Burnel I said, "A purge. This is a purge." Then to Pimdan, "And below? Are my killers waiting for me below?"

Now he turned a little in the stairwell. "No, mademoiselle," he said, "there is nothing down there save for some doc.u.ments in need of your attention."

But as he said it, staring back up at me with wide, craven eyes, he nodded. And it was a crumb of comfort, I suppose, that a last vestige of loyalty remained in this cowardly man, that at least he wasn't going to allow me to descend the steps into a pit of my killers.

I whirled around, bundled Jean Burnel back up the steps, then slammed the door behind us and threw the bolt. The manservant remained by the double doors in the dining room, a look on his face as though he were bemused by the sudden turn of events. As Jean and I rushed across the floor, I drew my pistol and aimed it at the manservant, wishing I could shoot the supercilious look off his face but settling instead for gesturing for him to open the doors.

He did, and we stepped out of the hotel and into the dark courtyard beyond.

The doors closed behind us. Call it a sixth sense but I knew something was wrong immediately, and in the next instant I felt something around my neck.

They were catgut ligatures, dropped with precision from a balcony above. In my case, not perfect precision: caught by the collar of my coat, the noose didn't tighten straightaway, giving me precious seconds to react, while by my side Jean Burnel's a.s.sa.s.sin had achieved a flawless drop and in a heartbeat the ligature was cutting into the flesh of his neck.

In his panic, Burnel dropped his sword. His hands scrabbled for the tightening noose around his neck. A snorting noise escaped his nostrils as his face began to color and his eyes boggled. As he was lifted by the neck, his body stretched and the tips of his boots scrabbled at the ground.

I swung for Burnel's ligature with my sword, but at the same time my own attacker pulled sharply to the side and I was yanked away from him, helpless to see his tongue protrude from his mouth, his eyeb.a.l.l.s seeming to bulge impossibly as he was hoisted even higher, out of reach. Pulling back on my own ligature, I looked up, saw dark shadows on the balcony above, operating us like two puppeteers.

But I was lucky-lucky, lucky Elise-because although the breath was choked out of me my collar was still wedged and it gave me presence of mind enough to swing again with my sword, only this time not at Jean Burnel's ligature-for he was out of reach now, his feet kicking in their death throes-but at my own.

I severed it and crumpled to the ground on my hands and knees, gasping for breath but rolling onto my back at the same time, reaching for my pistol and thumbing back the hammer, aiming it two-handed at the balcony above and firing.

The shot echoed around the courtyard and had an instant effect, Jean Burnel's body dropping like a sack to the ground as his ligature was released, his face a hideous death mask, and the two figures on the balcony disappearing from view, the attack over-for the time being.

From inside the building I heard shouts and the sound of running feet. Through the gla.s.s of the double doors I swear I could see the manservant, standing well back in the shadows, watching me, as I scrambled to my feet, wondering how many there were, counting the two balcony killers, maybe another two or three killers from the cellar. To my left another door burst open and two thugs in the clothes of sansculottes burst out.

Oh. So two more elsewhere in the house as well.

There was the sound of a shot and a pistol ball split the air by the side of my head. There was no time to reload my own gun. No time to do anything but run.

I ran for where a bench was inset into a sidewall, shaded by a courtyard tree. I bounded, hit the bench, and with my leading foot propelled myself upward, finding a low branch and thumping messily against the trunk.

From behind me came a shout and a second pistol shot, and I hugged the tree trunk as the ball embedded itself into the wood between two splayed fingers. Lucky, Elise, very lucky. I started to climb. Hands scrabbled at my boot but I kicked out, blindly heading upward in the hope of reaching the top of the wall.

I reached it and stepped across from the tree to the top of the wall. But when I looked down I found myself staring into the grinning faces of two men who'd used the gate and were waiting for me. Grinning up at me with huge "got you" smiles.

They were thinking that they were below me, and that there were other men coming up behind me, and that I was trapped. They were thinking it was all over.

So I did what they least expected. I jumped on them.

I'm not big but I was wearing devilish boots and wielding a sword, and I had the element of surprise on my side. I speared one of them on the way down, impaling him through the face and then, without retrieving my blade, pivoted and delivered a high kick to the throat of the second man. He dropped to his knees with his hands at his neck, already turning purple. I retrieved my sword from the face of the first man-and plunged it into his chest.

There was more shouting from behind. Over my head, faces had appeared at the top of the wall. I took to my heels, pushing my way into the crowd. Behind me were two pursuers doing the same, and I pushed farther on, ignoring the curses of people I shoved, just surging forward. At the bridge I stayed by the low wall.

And then I heard the shout. "A traitor. A traitor to the Revolution. Don't let the redheaded woman escape."

And again, the shout taken up by another of my pursuers. "Get her! Get the redheaded bint."

Another: "A traitor to the Revolution!"

"She spits on the tricolor."

It took a minute or so for the message to spread through the crowd but gradually I saw heads turn to me, people noticing my finer clothes for the first time, their gaze moving pointedly to my hair. My red hair.

"You," said a man, "it's you." And he shouted, "We have her! We have the traitor!"

Below me on the river was a barge crawling just below the bridge, goods covered with sacking on the foredeck. What goods they were, I didn't know, and could only pray that they were the "soft" kind that might break your fall if you were jumping from a bridge.

In the end, it didn't matter whether they were soft or not. Just as I jumped the enraged citizen made a grab for me, and my jump turned into an evasive move that sent me off course. Flailing, I hit the barge, but the wrong side, the outside, smashing into the hull with a force that drove the breath out of me.

Dimly I realized that the cracking sound I'd heard was my ribs breaking as I slapped into the inky black River Seine.

v I made it back of course. Once I'd got to the bank, heaved myself out of the river and used the confusion of the king's journey to Paris to "liberate" a horse, I took the debris-littered road in the opposite direction of the crowds, out of Paris and to Versailles, and as I rode I tried to keep as still as possible, mindful of my broken ribs.

My clothes were soaked and my teeth were chattering by the time I got back and slid out of the saddle and onto the doorstep of the groundskeeper's lodge, but whatever the poor shape I was in, all I could think was that I'd let him down. I'd let my father down.

EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF ARNO DORIAN.

12 SEPTEMBER 1794.

Reading, I find myself catching my breath, not just in admiration for her audacity and courage, but because when I follow her journey I realize that I am seeing a mirror image of my own. Mr. Weatherall was right (and thank you, thank you, Mr. Weatherall, for helping her to see that) because we were so much the same, Elise and I.

The difference was, of course, that she got there first. It was Elise who first trained in the ways of her . . . ah, I was going to write her "chosen" Order, but of course there was nothing "chosen" about it, not for Elise. She was born to be a Templar. Groomed for leadership, and if at first she had embraced her destiny, as she surely did, because it gave her a way to escape the life of gossip and fan-wafting she saw at Versailles, then she had come to distrust it as well; she had grown to question the eternal conflict of a.s.sa.s.sin and Templar; she had come to ask herself if it was all worth it-if all this killing had achieved anything, or ever would.

As she knew, the man she'd seen me with was Bellec, and I suppose you'd have to say that I fell in with him; that he turned my head, made me aware of certain gifts that were within my grasp. In other words, it was Bellec who made me an a.s.sa.s.sin. It was he who had mentored me through my induction into the a.s.sa.s.sins, he who set me on a course of hunting down my surrogate father's killer.

Ah yes, Elise. You were not the only one who mourned Francois de la Serre. You were not the only one who investigated his death. And in that enterprise I had certain advantages: the knowledge of my Order, the "gifts" I had been able to develop under Bellec's tuition, and the fact that I had been there the night Francois de la Serre had died.

Perhaps I should have waited and allowed you the honor. Perhaps I was as impulsive as you are. Perhaps.

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF ELISE DE LA SERRE.

25 APRIL 1790.

i It is six months since I last wrote in my journal. Six months since I took a dive off the Pont Marie on a freezing October night.

For a while of, course, I was bedbound, suffering a fever that came on a few days after my dunk in the Seine and trying to mend a broken rib at the same time. My poor, weakened body was having difficulty doing both those things simultaneously, and for a while, according to Helene anyway, it was a close thing.

I'd had to take her word for it. I'd been absent in mind if not in body, feverish and hallucinating, gabbling strange things in the night, crying out, my emaciated body drenched in freezing sweat.

My memory of that time was waking up one morning and seeing their concerned faces above my bed: Helene, Jacques and Mr. Weatherall, with Helene saying, "The fever's broken," and a look of relief that pa.s.sed across them like a wave.

ii It was some days later when Mr. Weatherall came to my bedchamber and perched himself on the end of my bed. We tended not to stand on ceremony at the lodge. It was one of the reasons I liked it. It made the fact that I had to be there, hiding from my enemies, that bit more bearable.

For some time he just sat, and we were silent, the way old friends can be, when silence is not to be feared. From outside drifted the sounds of Helene and Jacques teasing one another, footsteps scampering past the window, Helene laughing and breathless, and we caught each other's eye and shared a knowing smile before Mr. Weatherall's chin dropped back to his chest and he continued picking at his beard, something he had a habit of doing these days.

And then, after a while I said, "What would my father have done, Mr. Weatherall?"

Unexpectedly, he chuckled. "He would have called for help from overseas, child. From England, probably. Tell me, what is the state of your relationship with the English Templars?"

I shot him a withering look. "What else?"

"Well, he would have tried to rally support. And before you say anything, yes, what else do you think I've been doing while you've been in here screaming the place up and sweating for France? I've been trying to rally support."

"And?"

He sighed. "Not much to report. My network is slowly falling silent."

I hugged my knees and felt a twinge of pain from my ribs, still not fully healed. "What do you mean, 'slowly falling silent'?"

"I mean that after months of sending letters and receiving evasive replies, no one wants to know, do they? n.o.body will speak to me-to us-not even in secret. They say there's a new Grand Master now; that the de la Serre era has come to an end. My correspondents no longer sign their letters. They implore me to burn them once I've read them. Whoever this new leader is, he's got them scared."

"'The de la Serre era has come to an end.' That's what they say?"

"That's what they say, child, yeah, that's about the size of it."

I gave a short, dry laugh. "You know, Mr. Weatherall, I don't know whether to be offended or grateful when people underestimate me. The de la Serre era has not come to an end. Tell them that. Tell them that the de la Serre era never comes to an end while I still have breath in my lungs. These conspirators think they're going to get away with it-with killing my father, deposing my family from the Order. Really? Then they deserve to die just for their stupidity."

He bristled. "You know what that is? That's revenge talk."

I shrugged. "You call it revenge. I'll call it fighting back. Either way it's not sitting here-as you would say-'on my a.r.s.e,' hiding out in the grounds of a girls' school, creeping around and hoping that someone will write to our secret drop. I intend to fight back, Mr. Weatherall. Tell that to your contacts."

But Mr. Weatherall could be persuasive. Plus my skills were rusty, my strength depleted-my ribs still hurt for one thing-so I had stayed on at the lodge while he went about his business, writing his letters, trying to rally support for my cause beneath the cloak of subterfuge.

News reaches me that the last of the staff have left the chteau in Versailles and I yearn to go there, but of course cannot, because it isn't safe, and so I must leave my beloved family home at the mercy of looters.

But I promised Mr. Weatherall I would be patient so I'm being patient. For now.

16 NOVEMBER 1790.

Seven months of letter writing and we know this much: my allies and friends are now former allies and friends.

The purge is complete. Some turned, some were bribed and the others, the ones who were more resilient and tried to pledge their support, men like Monsieur Le Fanu, well, they were dealt with in other ways. One morning Monsieur Le Fanu was carried feetfirst and naked from a Parisian wh.o.r.ehouse, then left in the street to be gawked at by pa.s.sersby, and for that dishonor, he was posthumously stripped of his Order status, and his wife and children, who under normal circ.u.mstances would have benefited from financial help, left in penury.

Now, Monsieur Le Fanu was a family man, as devoted to his wife, Claire, as a man ever was. Not only would he never have visited a wh.o.r.ehouse, but I doubt he would have known what to do when he got there. Never did a man deserve a fate less than the one bestowed upon Monsieur Le Fanu.

And that was what his loyalty to the name of de la Serre had cost him. It had cost him everything: his life, his reputation and honor, everything.

I knew that any member of the Order who hadn't come into line was going to do so after that, when they knew the potential ignominy of their end. And sure enough, they had.

"I want the wife and children of Monsieur Le Fanu taken care of," I'd said to Mr. Weatherall.

"Madame Le Fanu took her own life and that of the children," Mr. Weatherall told me. "She couldn't live with the disgrace."

I closed my eyes, breathing in and out, trying to control a rage that threatened to boil over. More lives to add to the list.

"Who is he, Mr. Weatherall?" I asked. "Who is this man doing all this?"

"We'll find out, darlin'." He sighed. "Don't you worry about that."

But nothing was done. No doubt my enemies thought that their takeover was complete, that I was no longer dangerous. They were wrong about that.

12 JANUARY 1791.

My sword skills are back and sharper than ever before, my marksmanship at its most accurate, and I warned Mr. Weatherall that it would be soon-that I would be leaving soon-because I was achieving nothing here; that each day I spent in hiding was a day of the fight-back wasted, and he reacted by trying to persuade me to stay. There was always a reply he was waiting for. One more avenue to explore.

And when that didn't work he reacted by threatening me. Just try leaving and I'd know what it felt like to be resoundingly thrashed with the sweaty armpit end of a crutch. Just try it.

I remain (im)patient.

26 MARCH 1791.

i This morning Mr. Weatherall and Jacques arrived home from the drop at Chteaufort hours after they were due-so late that I'd begun to worry.

For a while we'd been talking about moving the drop. Sooner or later someone would come. According to Mr. Weatherall anyway. The issue of whether to move the drop had become another weapon in the war the two of us constantly waged, the push and pull of should I stay (him: yes) or should I go (me: yes). I was strong now, I was back to full fitness and in private moments I'd seethe with the frustration of inaction; I'd picture my faceless enemies gloating with victory and raising ironic toasts in my name.

"This is the old Elise," Mr. Weatherall had warned. "By which I mean the young Elise. The one who comes sailing over to London and ignites a feud we've yet to live down."

He was right, of course; I wanted to be an older, cooler Elise, a worthy leader. My father never rushed into anything.

But on the other hand, my thoughts would return to the question of doing something. After all, where a wiser head might have waited to finish her education like a proper little poppet, the young Elise had sprung into action, taken a carriage to Calais and her life had begun. The fact was that sitting here doing nothing made me feel agitated and angry. It made me feel even more angry. And I was already a lot angry.

In the end my hand has been forced by what happened this morning, when Mr. Weatherall had aroused my anxiety by arriving home late from his visit to the drop. I dashed out to the yard to greet him as Jacques drew the cart around.