Ethan Gage Collection # 1 Read Free Page B

of what I’d won. I knew better than to take all my winnings to the chamber of a trollop, and given everyone’s interest I decided it best to hide the medallion as well. I took some minutes to decide where to conceal it while the lantern bearer waited outside. Then we went on to Minette’s, through the dark streets of Paris.
    The city, glorious though it remained in size and splendor, was, like women of a certain age, best not examined too closely. Grand old houses were boarded up. The Tuileries Palace was gated and empty, its dark windows like sightless sockets. Monasteries were in ruins, churches locked, and no one seemed to have applied a coat of paint since the storming of the Bastille. Except for filling the pockets of generals and politicians, the Revolution had been an economic disaster, as near as I could see. Few Frenchmen dared complain too boldly, because governments have a way of defending their mistakes. Bonaparte himself, then a little-known artillery officer, had spattered grapeshot on the last reactionary uprising, earning him promotion.
    We passed the site of the Bastille, now dismantled. Since the prison’s liberation, twenty-five thousand people had been executed in the Terror, ten times that had fled, and fifty-seven new prisons had been built to take its place. Without any sense of irony, the former site was nonetheless marked with a “fountain of regeneration”: an enthroned Isis who, when the contraption worked, streamed water from her breasts. In the distance I could see the spires of Notre Dame, renamed the Temple of Reason and reputedly built on the site of a Roman temple dedicated to the same Egyptian goddess. Should I have had a premonition? Alas, we seldom notice what we’re meant to see. When I paid off the lantern bearer I took little note that he lingered a moment too long after I stepped inside.
    I climbed the creaking, urine-scented wooden stairway to Minette’s abode. Her apartment was on the unfashionable third floor, right below the attic garrets occupied by servant girls and artists. Thealtitude gave me a clue to the middling success of her trade, no doubt hurt by the revolutionary economy almost as much as wig makers and gilt painters. Minette had lit a single candle, its light reflected by the copper bowl she’d used to wash her thighs, and was dressed in a simple white shift, its laces untied at the top to invite further exploration. She came to me with a kiss, her breath smelling of wine and licorice.
    â€œHave you brought my little present?”
    I pulled her tighter to my trousers. “You should be able to feel it.”
    â€œNo.” She pouted and put her hand on my chest. “Here, by your heart.” She traced where the medallion should have lain against my skin, its disc, its dangling arms, all on a golden chain. “I wanted to wear it for you.”
    â€œAnd have us risk a stabbing?” I kissed her again. “Besides, it’s not safe to carry such prizes around in the dark.”
    Her hands were exploring my torso, to make sure. “I’d hoped for more courage.”
    â€œWe’ll gamble for it. If you win, I’ll bring it next time.”
    â€œGamble how?” She cooed, in a professionally practiced way.
    â€œThe loser will be the one who gains the summit first.”
    She let her hair drift along my neck. “And the weapons?”
    â€œAny and all that you can imagine.” I bent her back a little, tripping her on the leg I had wrapped against her ankles, and laid her on the bed. “ En garde.”
    I won our little contest, and at her insistence for a rematch, won a second and then a third, making her squeal. At least I think I won; with women you can never truly tell. It was enough to keep her sleeping when I rose before dawn and left a silver coin on my pillow. I put a log on the fireplace to help warm the room for her rising.
    With the sky graying and the lantern bearers gone,