Heartland

'He-' I tried again.

'Tell me later,' she said. 'It doesn't matter right now. You are safe. That is good enough.'

My chest tightened, the Chorus grabbing my heart. I tried to speak, and found myself as tongue-tied as a ten-year-old boy with a crush on his babysitter.

'Can you find the grave of the painter?' she asked. 'The one who shares a name with my godfather?'

David. Jacques-Louis David, the late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century painter who had been the herald of a new neoclassical style. He had a tendency to pick the wrong team politically, first Robespierre and then Napoleon, which made him rather unpopular in his death. Still, art was art and a number of his paintings hung in prominent places in the Louvre.

'Yes, I think so.' I glanced around the shed. There had to be some sort of reference chart. If not here, then near any of the entrances. Through the tiny window of the shed, the light was russet and gold. Sunset already. The gates were closing soon, if not already.

'Meet me at the entrance nearest his grave,' she said, reading my thoughts. 'Half-hour.'

On a shelf near the door, I found a dog-eared guidebook to the cemetery. Once I figured out where I was, finding David's grave and the nearest entrance was easy.

The guidebook offered the trivia that David's grave only held his heart. The rest of him was buried in Brussels. I knew how that felt.

Marielle showed up in one of the ubiquitous smart cars that were everywhere in Paris. A tiny two-seater that wasn't much more than a bubble of glass and aluminum lashed on top of an engine and drive chain. We rubbed shoulders, and every time the car went over a bump or a hole in the road, I nearly fell into her lap. In other circumstances, I would have found the constant physical contact terribly distracting, but as it was, I kept feeling like I should apologize.

'You need to stop that,' she said while we waited for a light to change.

'What?' I asked.

She was wearing Escada. It was a scent I would always associate with her, and trapped in the tiny cab of the car, it became a narcotic. She was wearing a sienna-colored v-neck sweater beneath her long coat, and a slender strand of pearls lay across her clavicle and the hollow of her throat like a chain of moonlight. 'That hangdog expression,' she said. 'It's like you've got more bad news.'

'Sorry,' I said.

'That too.' She glanced at me, light dancing in her eyes. 'I'm a big girl, Michael. I'm not a glass figurine.' The light changed and she took her foot off the brake. 'I'm going to need your strength. Not your sympathy.'

'Okay.' I swallowed heavily, pushing down the weight of the-call it what it is-the guilt. The Chorus took the weight in, swallowing it as easily as they swallowed the dreams and fears of other souls. 'Did you know,' I said, changing the subject, 'David's body isn't buried in Pere Lachaise?'

'I know,' she said. Glancing over her shoulder, she changed lanes. I shifted my gaze to the steering wheel, but not before she caught me looking at her throat. 'He was declared a revolutionary after his death. He wasn't allowed back in France.'

The car slowed and she turned a corner, slipping off the main road onto one of the tiny side streets of Paris. In the smart car, the road seemed wide enough, but with the two rows of parked cars it would have been a tight fit for any American-sized car. I was always amazed at how much denser the cities were in Europe, especially after spending a few months in Seattle. It was a constant topic of conversation in that city about the tight navigation of the hilly streets, but they were wide open compared to Parisian streets.

'There's a regulation actually,' Marielle continued, 'concerning the distribution of body parts in Pere Lachaise. Since David's heart is buried there, they had to remove the heart of another person.'

'Seriously?'

'Chopin's. His heart is buried in a church in Poland.'

'But his body is here? Because David's isn't?'

She laughed at my expression, and after a moment, I joined her. 'I can't believe I fell for that.' The laugh knocked something loose in me. Like ice falling off a roof in early spring. A thaw coming to the old, cold country.

'It's true,' she said. 'About Chopin.'

'But there isn't a law.'

'No,' she admitted. 'But some say the heart is the seat of the soul, and that the rest of the flesh is just raw meat.' There was still a mischievous note in her voice, but the Chorus felt an echo beneath it, a sub-harmonic tone that reminded me of the psychic pulse she had manifested earlier.

The Chorus resurrected a memory of the painting in the narrow hall at the Chapel of Glass, the watercolor study of Christ and the flaming heart. The gift to Mary.

'Do they?' I said cautiously. 'Well, they say a lot of things. In fact, they are always talking. Mostly gossip and innuendo, really.'

'Is that so?'

'Absolutely. You can't trust them. Nothing but conjecture and speculation. Internet forum talk. All baseless.'

'Really? What if they said you and I were sleeping together?'

'That was a long time ago, and no one knew.'

She looked at me.

'Okay, Antoine knew. But he's not the gossipy type.'

She turned the wheel and the tiny car slid through a gap between two parked cars. A narrow gate blocked our path, and with a mental command much like the opening spell she had used on the train, she exerted her Will on the barrier. It responded, rolling back on tiny wheels, and she eased the tiny car through the portal into the inner courtyard of the building. There were several other cars parked in the octagonal courtyard and she backed into an open space. The front pointed toward the gate. Quick escape, if we needed it.

Switching off the engine, she leaned toward me as she opened her door. Her eyes were dark pools, and the Chorus pulsated in time with her heartbeat. 'It wasn't that long ago,' she said quietly.

She led me up a flight of stairs to a tiny second-floor apartment. The living room looked out over the courtyard, and judging by the lack of a television and how empty the pair of bookcases were, as well as the position of the only comfortable chair in the room, watching the neighbors was the primary source of entertainment. A stub of a hallway led to a bathroom and a single bedroom. Around the corner from the door was a tiny nook and kitchen.

Marielle filled a teapot from the tap and put it on the stove. 'There should be fresh clothes in the wardrobe,' she said. 'You can take a shower too, if you'd like.'

I nodded. 'Where are we?'

'Somewhere safe. A friend's.' She nodded toward the picture window. 'The others are across the courtyard. We'll join them when you're ready.'

'The others?'

'Loyalists. People who we can trust.'

I wandered over to the window and lifted the edge of the curtain. The window of the second-floor apartment across the way was lit, though the curtains were drawn. 'How many?' I asked.

'Eight.'

'That's all?'

'Here, yes. Things have gotten bad, and we don't know who we can trust. We can't afford to meet openly.' She opened the cupboard and took down two plastic mugs with lids.

'How bad?' I asked.

'We're not sure. It has been difficult to get accurate information. Some of the rank have just gone into hiding-we hope-and they're waiting out this whole affair. The rest-' She didn't finish, and she didn't need to. The rest were ending up like Father Cristobel.

'What are they doing?' I nodded toward the other apartment

Marielle snorted. 'Talking, mostly.'

I let the curtain drop. 'I guess I'll go get cleaned up.'

She nodded distractedly, busy spooning loose tea into each of the two mugs.