MAISON BEAULIEUAB ÉDITIONS · CUISINE & LETTRESMAISON BEAULIEUAB ÉDITIONS · CUISINE & LETTRESA staging post along the Rhône artery, the France through which one journeys. The capital of *bouchons*, the beating heart of the French table—a gourmet respite before the mountains and the night.
Beneath gleaming cobblestones and the greasy mists of the Rhône, the shoemaker Picaud tastes the bitterness of state secrecy before the frozen hell of Alpine snows.
It is two of the clock in the morning, in that clammy autumn of 1807, when a carriage bearing no armorial crest crosses the Vaise barrier. The horses steam in the biting air, flank to flank, spent after two hundred leagues of forced gallop from the capital. Within the body of the coach, padded in black serge, the irons scarcely rattle: they have been wrapped in greasy rags to muffle the faintest clinking of chains. The orders of Minister Fouché brook no negligence. The captive must possess neither voice, nor countenance, nor lawful existence. This captive is François Picaud. Three days earlier, he was a humble Parisian craftsman, a bridegroom intoxicated with joy who counted the hours separating him from his nuptials with the fair Marguerite Barget; tonight, he is no more than a parcel of State consigned to oblivion.
Through the narrow ventilation slit of the iron-clad door, the man with battered hands discerns the brooding mass of the Fourvière hill looming over the confluence. Lyon sleeps beneath a winding-sheet of river moisture. The city does not yet smell of the warm bread or braised pork of its industrious alleyways; it reeks of cold silt, soot, and secrecy. The carriage rattles across the deserted peninsula, striking the round cobblestones of the Place des Terreaux before veering toward the banks of the Saône. The clandestine traveller knows nothing of his crime. No magistrate has examined him, no clerk has inscribed his name upon a stray leaf of paper. A single whisper breathed into the ear of the Duke of Rovigo by three envious wretches had sufficed: “An agent of England, a royalist conspirator suborned to plunge a dagger into His Majesty.”
The conveyance grinds to an abrupt halt beneath the low vault of the Roanne prison, that ancient seigneurial palace transformed into the antechamber of oblivion. In the paved courtyard, two elite gendarmes leap to the ground, muskets held to their breasts, bicornes pulled low over their eyes. The head gaoler, a colossus in an apron of tanned hide named Guichard, descends the spiral stair with a tinplate lantern that screeches at every step. The bolts shoot back with a dry, barking snap that makes the centuries-old ramparts shudder.
« Ask him nothing, Guichard. He has neither family nor advocate, and on the day he dies, the sun itself shall not take notice. »
Upon the clerk's tall desk, the committal register lies open, bound in scuffed sheepskin. But the scribe’s quill falters. The gendarmerie officer lays upon the virgin page a letter sealed in red wax, stamped with the imperial crest. No family name is inscribed. In the column reserved for the accused, the clerk traces with a trembling hand three sinister letters: “N. S. P.”—Ne Sera Point nommé—Shall Not Be Named. The shoemaker is flung to the depths of an underground dungeon, hewn flush with the river waters. The stench within is suffocating: the clinging reek of dried river mud, of straw rotted by successive freshets, and the sulphur of torches. When the heavy oak door, studded with diamond-headed nails, slams shut, the latch engages with the dull thud of a tombstone being cemented into place. François Picaud finds himself seated in a darkness so impenetrable it seems to press upon his eyelids like molten lead.
For eight-and-forty hours, Lyon becomes for Picaud an auditory riddle, a torment of every passing second. Directly above his dripping vault, through an airhole constricted by a triple grating of wrought iron, filter the sounds of human life. At daybreak, the wooden clogs of the silk-weavers clatter upon the stone steps of the traboules; at noon, the rich aroma of poached sausages, crisped tabliers de sapeur, and mulled wine wafts from neighbouring taverns to taunt the dry palate of the outcast. The great epicurean city feasts, bustles, and drinks to the glory of the victorious Emperor, whilst ten feet beneath the earth, an innocent wretch licks the stagnant water trickling down the ashlar stones to quench the fever gnawing at his vitals.
It is during this Lyonnais waystation that the first profound transformation occurs. In the gloom of the dungeon, Picaud ceases his weeping. The numbed agony of the betrayed lover hardens; it condenses into a cold, methodical, absolute fury. Listening to the oaths of the turnkeys sharing a Lyonnais cervelas and a jug of Beaujolais at the end of the corridor, he catches stray fragments of talk through the spy-hole: “The convoy will not linger… Tomorrow morning, over the mountains… The icebound fortress… None ever returns from up there.” He understands then that this is no clerical error to be dispelled by the morning light. It is judicial murder. His fingernails claw into the saltpetre of the wall until they bleed; upon the limestone, in his own still-warm blood, he traces the profile of Marguerite and three crosses for the traitors he does not yet know, but whom his instinct already begins to hunt.
At dawn on the third day, ere the market-women have lit their first charcoal braziers, the iron door shrieks upon its rusted hinges. Picaud is dragged from the foul straw. The blacksmith of Roanne stands waiting, bare-armed, sledgehammer in hand. Upon a portable anvil resting directly on the muddy flags of the courtyard, he rivets a transport chain with two reinforced links about the shoemaker’s ankles. Each blow of the hammer reverberates through the prisoner’s skull like a funeral knell.
He is shoved with musket-butts toward a cart draped in tarred canvas. The convoy crosses the bridge over the Rhône beneath an October drizzle that turns the river into a ribbon of grey ink. Through the canvas, Picaud casts a final glance toward the quays illuminated by the flickering lanterns of carters. Lyon dissolves into the peat of watery mists. Before him, toward the East, the road ascends inexorably toward Savoy, toward the dark defiles of the Maurienne and the eternal snows of Piedmont. The nameless traveller departs from France to enter, while still living, the tomb of Fort Fenestrelle. He does not yet know that he will encounter there a dying priest possessed of fabulous treasures; but already, beneath his rags soiled with Lyonnais mire, the simple artisan has perished, yielding his place to the most pitiless avenger Europe would ever behold.