For the King by Catherine Delors

Roch.
    “Oh, yes, I shod her a week ago. Three men brought her to the smithy. Her old shoes were all worn out, see.”
    “Can you describe these three men?”
    “One of them was a short fellow, not much over five feet, I’d say. Fat, he was, with a round face and flattened nose. Funny-looking, if you get my meaning, Citizen Chief Inspector.” Roch was thinking of the man whom Fouché, in his note, had called Short Francis .
    “In what way was that man funny-looking?” asked Roch.
    “He was ugly, for one thing, and he had a funny scar on his eye.”
    “Which eye?” The blacksmith only knit his brows. “What kind of funny scar was it?” continued Roch. He imagined that, if it had not been so cold in the courtyard, beads of sweat would have formed on the man’s forehead at the unwonted effort of putting his thoughts into words.
    Roch sighed. “Show me, Citizen,” he said.
    “Like this.” The blacksmith pulled on his eyelid with a fat finger, next to his left temple.
    “How old would you say that man was?”
    “Oh, I’d say forty.”
    “And what about the other two men?” asked Roch. “Were they funny-looking too?”
    “Guess not, ’cause I can’t remember them. They looked younger than the short one, maybe. Taller too, specially one of them. But it was the short one that was doing all the talking.”
    “Did one of the men wear spectacles?”
    “Well, Citizen, now that you mention it, could be. The tall one.”
    “What kind of spectacles?”
    “Well . . . you know, spe’tacles.”
    “Were the frames made of steel? Of gold? Round? Oval? Square?”
    The blacksmith stared at Roch as though he had never before considered the existence of so many kinds of spectacles.
    “How were those three men dressed?” Roch asked.
    “Oh, like reg’lar bourgeois. Nothing out of the ordinary, really.”
    “Were you not surprised to see three bourgeois bring a draft horse to your smithy, when one groom could have done just as well?”
    The man hit one of his palms with his closed fist. “Yeah, of course, I was surprised!” He beamed at Roch and shook his head up and down with undisguised admiration. “See how clever you’ve got to be to work for the police! At the time, I knew there was something peculiar ’bout those three fellows, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now, seen in that light, that was funny, wasn’t it, Citizen?”
    Roch took the blacksmith inside, where the man signed his statement with a cross.

9
    R och could never look at the emaciated, worried face of his superior, Citizen Dubois, Prefect of Police, without deep animosity. This was odd, because the man was quite unremarkable. Dubois had been an attorney under the Old Regime. During all the years of the Revolution, he had never expressed any political opinion, defended any noteworthy case, been a member of any club, participated in any event of any import. He had simply avoided being noticed. Absent some extraordinary mishap, men of such stubborn, deliberate mediocrity survived the stormiest of times.
    Bonaparte, it was rumored, had designed the new function of Prefect of Police, though in theory subordinate to that of Minister, with the specific intent of curtailing Fouché’s influence. Roch had not been surprised when Fouché had warmly supported Dubois’s appointment as Prefect. For weeks Roch had heard the Minister repeat with great conviction that “Dubois was a man who knew Paris well, very well indeed.” That might be true, but it was a distinction Dubois shared with the remainder of the 700,000 inhabitants of the city.
    The Minister’s purpose in wanting a man of such limited abilities for a rival was obvious. And Roch had no reason to complain, because, when the Prefecture had been created, Fouché had ensured his promotion to the rank of Chief Inspector.
    When Roch entered Dubois’s office on the 4th of Nivose, he saw all of the Division Chiefs already gathered there. Piis, the Secretary General, Dubois’s