***
SERENA WAS GLAD THEYwere going directly to the catacombs that very moment. If she’d gone home, she would have been unable to keep the plan from her grandparents, and they might have forbidden her. However, as long as she didn’t ask, they couldn’t tell her no.
It was a rather underhanded way of keeping her independence, but she knew this task was important. And she was, in fact, rather honored to have been asked. It seemed a more important role to play than any she’d had so far. As long as she didn’t have to go underground, she couldn’t see the harm in flirting with a soldier for a good cause.
And now she understood why Monsieur Branley had asked her to bring two bottles of wine that didn’t carry her family’s label.
They approached the main public entrance that had been closed ever since she’d arrived in Paris the year before. Malcolm disappeared somewhere behind her into the shadows awaiting an opportunity to enter the gated stairwell. She would lure the guard — onlyoneif the intelligence had been correct — a little way away so her English spy could slip inside the iron gate in the stone archway and descend to the ossuary below.
She shuddered again at the thought. When she was younger, and they’d traveled to France during times when the war was not raging and her mother was desperate to see her parents, even then Serena wouldn’t go down into the catacombs when invited, not even with her Pépère. Malcolm was right, though. It was a caper which most every Parisian engaged in, looking at the massive collection of bones and the limestone carvings, and the so-called Quarryman’s Bath.
A few feet from the guard, she nodded to him and smiled as if passing by. Assured of his attention, she tripped on a stone of her own imagination.
“Oh,”she cried out, stumbling, nearly dropping her basket and making sure to push one of the bottles out so it crashed to the ground. “Sweet mother!” she exclaimed.
The guard rushed over immediately.
“Mademoiselle, are you hurt?”
“The emperor’s wine,” she said, gesturing to the broken bottle and the blood red liquid seeping into the dirt. “I am so clumsy.”
“The emperor’s wine,” he repeated.
“Our family calls it that now,” she said, “because His Imperial Majesty is so fond of it. I go to the Tuileries every other day with a shipment.” However, what she had with her was her grandparents’ friends Charles and Sophie’s wine since they were safely out of the city.
“You are a long way from the Tuileries,” the guard pointed out, but his eyes took her in from head to foot, as well as noticing the other bottle in her basket.
“Yes. Today, I was at the Halle aux Vins,” she gestured back toward the Quai Saint-Bernard, as the sun began to set. “Then I met a friend in the gardens of the Palais du Luxembourg.”
“A lover?” the man asked with impudence.
She ignored the question but smiled coquettishly, unsure whether having a lover made her less or more desirable while she tried to keep his interest.
“I thought the catacombs were closed,” she said, taking a few steps away from the mess at her feet. As she’d hoped, the guard followed her. “Why do they make you stand here all day?”
“You know how people like to go down there,” he said and shrugged.
“Do they?” she asked innocently, still not able to imagine why there was such a fascination. “Whyever for?”
“To see how the bones have been stacked up. Not just the skulls, but also the femurs — the legs, you know. It’s done in an artistic way.”
He stopped walking, and she knew he would venture no farther from his post. In fact, he began to turn back toward the entrance.
“Wine,” she offered to keep his full attention, “since there is no one here.”
The guard grinned at her. Over his shoulder, she saw Malcolm already creeping toward the iron gate. Serena could only hope it didn’t squeak.
“Why not?” the guard asked. “It would be churlish of me to turn down a lovely woman.”
She smiled again and drew from her pocket a simple brass corkscrew that she nearly always had with her since sometimes buyers came to the Halle aux Vins and wanted to taste the wine.
“I have no glasses,” she said, holding out the bottle.
“That’s no matter,” the guards said, “but ladies first.”
She took a small sip, wiped the top with her sleeve and handed it to him. He took a healthy swallow, and by then, she knew Malcolm had made it through the gate and must be already descending the steep, circular stairwell.
The guard handed it back to her, but she only pretended to drink more.
