“Nonsense,” Fanny protested. “I was on the battlefield, ax in hand, within seven hours of my transformation. It was a baptism by blood and fire, let me tell you.”
Marcus leaned forward in his chair, more eager to hear Fanny’s story than he was to retreat to the library and conjugate more Latin verbs, which was his assignment that day.
Before Fanny could begin her tale, however, Ulf arrived, ashen faced and bearing a silver salver. On it was a letter. Ulf had arranged it so that its wax seal was on top—a distinctive swirl of red and black. Nestled in the pool of color was a small, worn, silver coin.
“Merde.” Fanny took the letter.
“It is not for you, Mademoiselle Fanny,” Ulf said in a sepulchral whisper, his long face grim. “It is for Le Bébé.”
“Ah.” Fanny waved Ulf toward Marcus. “Put it in your pocket.”
“But I don’t know what it says.” Marcus studied the address on the outside. It was penned in dark, distinctive strokes. “To Monsieur Marcus L’Américain, of the H?tel-Dieu and Monsieur Neveu’s shop, who now resides at Mademoiselle de Clermont’s house, a reader of newspapers and a student of Signore Arrigo.”
Whoever had written the letter seemed to know a great deal about Marcus’s business, not to mention his daily routine.
“I do.” Fanny sighed. “It says ‘attend on me at once.’”
“It was only a matter of time, ma cherie,” Madame de Genlis said, trying to comfort her friend.
Marcus cracked the seal and freed the coin. It dropped toward the ground. Fanny caught it in midair and deposited it on the table next to him.
“Don’t lose this. He’ll want it back,” she warned.
“Who will?” Marcus unfolded the paper. As Fanny had divined, the letter contained only a single line—brief, and exactly as she had predicted.
“My father.” Fanny rose. “Come, Marcus. We are going to Auteuil. It’s time to meet your farfar.”
* * *
—
FANNY AND MADAME DE GENLIS packed Marcus, protesting all the way, into a carriage. This one was equipped with better springs than the one that had brought him from Bordeaux to Paris, but the rough city streets were not conducive to a smooth ride. Then they reached the rutted dirt path that stretched out into the countryside to the west of Paris, and Marcus knew he was going to be violently ill if the bouncing and swaying didn’t stop. He’d crossed the Atlantic with nothing more than a touch of seasickness, but carriages, it seemed, utterly defeated him.
“Please just let me walk,” Marcus begged, feeling as green as the wool hunting jacket they’d found in an upstairs cupboard, discarded by one of Fanny’s lovers after he discovered she was a vampire and fled the house in the middle of the night. The coat almost fit him, though it was too snug in the shoulders and too long in the arms, which made Marcus feel both pinched and drowning. Marcus had ruined the only coat that fit him properly at the hospital and was forced to make do with this secondhand garment.
“You are too young, and it is broad daylight,” Fanny said briskly, the feathers in her hat swaying this way and that with the movement of the carriage. “It will take too long to walk there at human speed, and Far does not like to be kept waiting.”
“Besides,” Madame de Genlis added, “what if you meet with a maiden—or a cow—and are overtaken with a pang of hunger?”
Marcus’s stomach flopped over like a fish.
“Non,” Madame de Genlis said with a decided shake of her head. “You must direct your thoughts away from your discomfort and rise above them. Perhaps you could compose your remarks to Comte Philippe?”
“Oh, God.” Marcus covered his mouth with his hand. He was expected to perform for his grandfather, like the trained monkey outside the Opéra who tumbled and danced for a fee. It reminded him of being dragged to Madam Porter’s house when he was a child.
“You should begin, I think, with a few verses,” Madame de Genlis advised. “Comte Philippe greatly admires poetry, and has such a memory for it!”
But Marcus, who had been raised in the fields and forests of western Massachusetts, where verses that were not found in the Bible were suspect, knew no poetry. Madame de Genlis did her best to teach him some lines from a poem called “Le mondain,” but the French words refused to stick in Marcus’s memory, and his constant retching kept interrupting the lesson.
“Say it after me,” Madame de Genlis instructed. “‘Regrettera qui veut le bon vieux temps, Et l’age d’or, et le règne d’Astrée, Et les beaux jours de Saturne et de Rhée, / Et le jardin de nos premiers parents.’”