"So . . . my father had a practice?"

"He was a surgeon, my child. At the Hopital d'Humanite. But his skills made him quite coveted among a-among a certain set. Oh, yes, rumor had it even-even Marat, who was a doctor himself, even he asked for your father. Ha! Might've saved the old sod's life-second opinion, eh? Out of that grimy water, you dishrag! "

"Did he ever . . . ?"

That's as far as I get until I am stopped by . . . my father himself.

The memo ry of him, I mean.

Alone, as usual. Coveted by no one. Having his late-afternoon tea. (An English custom, who knows how he came by it?) The tea he always drank quickly, down to its last leaves, and then he set to buttering his toast, with every bit as much fixity as he brought to lens grinding. It took him a good minute, usually, to drag that butter across every last square of blackened bread-to scrape it down until nothing of the original solid remained. Diligent, yes, and at the same time, furtive, like an anchorite prying an old piece of chocolate from a crevice.

The idea that this man-this man-could be the coveted Dr. Carpentier . . .

"Ne ve r mind," I say.

"Oh, but you were going to ask me something."

"It's nothing. I was just-I was going to ask if my father ever met

Louis the Seventeenth."

And as soon as it's out, I'm trying to call it back in.

"I don't really have any reason to-"

"But of course he met Louis the Seventeenth. He was the boy's

doctor."

CH APTER 15.

The Black Tower On ly late r, w hen I am shaking the webs from my brain, will I have the space to recall the look in Father Time's eye. The coolness that lingers there, a dry clarity-neither gentle nor cruel.

"You mean he never told you? Well, isn't that funny?" Though he doesn't look amused. Particularly.

Without knowing it, I've plopped myself down on his bed. I'm

smoothing out the rag that passes for his coverlet. A whirring cloud of dust is trailing after me.

"When?" I ask. "When did he ever have cause to meet that boy?"

"Oh my, it was summer of '94. Just a few weeks past the height of the Terror. I was there, you know, the day they took Robespierre. Horrible business. He was bellowing the whole way. Well, you might have complained, too, if-if you were missing half your face-"

"Please, Monsieur, I didn't ask about-"

"Oh, but the point is with Robespierre gone, people could afford to be a bit less abstract, couldn't they? The fever broke-the fever of Theory, yes-and everyone sat up in bed and looked about. Asked after friends and relations. So it was only natural someone would ask about that boy. Because nobody had seen him in-well, it felt like forever. . . ."

In fac t, i t had been two years.

I will look up the dates later, and I will find that the last time the public at large had glimpsed the dauphin, Louis-Charles, was on the thirteenth of August, 1792. On this occasion, the royal family was being driven from the Tuileries to their new prison in the Temple-escorted by what looked to be the entire population of the Parisian faubourgs. All of them shaking fists, waving pikes, raining down oaths. Pointing to every toppled marble monarch. Do you see the fate that awaits you?

A good two hours it took to travel a relatively short distance. At last a low drone of pent rage escaped the mob as the berline pulled into the courtyard and the thick iron gates of the Temple swung closed after them.

For the royal family, the respite was short-lived. Five months later, the boy's father would be dragged to the Place de la Revolution. (His neck a little too thick for the occasion: the blade had to fight its way through.) Fourteen months later, the mother would follow. Seven months more, the boy's beloved aunt, gentle Princess elizabeth, would climb the scaffold.

But he stayed where he was, that boy with the brook blue eyes and the strawberry-blond ringlets hanging to his shoulders. Immured in a great tower. Behind walls of stone, nine feet thick.

I was a boy myself when I first saw it. Late summer, and Mother and I had been walking for hours, as we often did in pleasant weather, and we'd just stopped at a chemist's shop on the Rue du Meslay (Father needed copper nitrate), and on a whim, I suppose, I veered down the Boulevard du Temple.

Mother hesitated, I can see this now. But the day was lovely, and we were in no hurry to be home, and so she followed. Still hesitating, for she remained a step or two behind me the whole way.

We speak of buildings rising up before us, as if they somehow unfurled, brick by brick. The tower that met my eyes now had unfurled many centuries ago. It was emphatically past tense-and still very much present. Silly to say you were discovering it. If anything, it was finding you.

Other towers, other turrets protruded from the medieval chateau they called the Temple (deceptively religious name!), but this tower was different. Larger-easily sixty feet in height-and black, like the inside of a chimney, and lord of all its secrets. Only after staring at it for some time could I discern the f laws in its masonry: the tiny pinpricks of windows scattered around its skin. Too small, surely, to admit much in the way of light. Or air. Whatever was in there stayed there.

I knew nothing then of the tower's history, but I do remember, yes, picturing someone, of no distinct character or color, on the other side of those walls. Looking down at me. Calling out, even, it would make no difference because-this was what unnerved me-I would never be able to see or hear. Whoever it was might just as well have been erased from this earth.

And the notion that a human being could be erased like that, so easily, so entirely, this was somehow worse than the tower itself. Or perhaps the same thing.

I felt a prickle in the back of my shoulders, and in the same moment, I saw Mother clasp her arms tightly round her chest.

"Come, Hector."

Down the street she drew me and round the corner. Neither of us looked back.

By then, the tower had already fallen into disuse, and before I was twenty-one, it had been torn down, on Napoleon's orders. It rears up again, though, at the mere mention of that name.

The Temple.

" He wen t the re every single morning," says Father Time. "Took a cab, though he hated spending the money. Always a different cab, too-different route-never knew if someone might be following you, eh? The Temple commissaries gave him a special pass-he showed it to me once-and then, of course, if you had to see one of the prisoners, why, you needed a visa, too. 'For the Tower' it said, or something like that.

"And that's right, he could stay no more than an hour. Same hour every day. Any more, he'd have to-what?-oh, petition the commissaries or else-ugh! -that awful Committee of Public Security. And everything was in utmost secrecy. Not a word."

"Why did they choose my father?" I ask.

"Mm." He weaves his fingers through his beard, as though he were carding wool. "Bit of a f luke, really. Your father had once treated General Barras' sister. For a goiter. Mightily impressed she was. Didn't hurt, I expect, that he was-such a handsome cur in his youth. Barras certainly wasn't above noticing such things, if you-if you take my meaning. Well then, once Barras was put in charge of what was left of the royal family, he realized the boy would need a doctor. Forthwith!"