Versailles, 1773
The fight was over in a matter of minutes. The palace
guards put a stop to it, but only when it became evident
that the melee was no boyish prank but a contest which was
as deadly as any duel fought on the field of honor.
Adam was dragged from the other boy, then he darted away
before the guards were aware that he was an outsider, a
boy on the periphery of court life. In his best suit of
clothes, he had been taken by the guards for one of their
own, or a page attached to one of the great noblemen who
was present at the king's masquerade that evening. The
other boys had known better. They were used to seeing Adam
come and go as he pleased. No one was his master. Adam
Dillon waited on no man unless it suited him, and the
other boys hated him for it.
He'd been expecting trouble, but when it came he'd been
taken off-guard. It wasn't the pages who had ganged up on
him. The attack, a verbal one, had come from Philippe
Duhet, the young heir to the Comte de Blaise. Duhet was
older than Adam by a year or two, but in many a fight,
Adam had outmatched boys of far superior weight and build.
Adam was no coward. He also had the advantage of
experience. In Paris, among his own kind, Adam's
reputation as a fighter went unchallenged.
Whore, Duhet had called Adana's mother, and for some few
seconds, surprise rootect Aoam to me spot. He had no
quarrel with young Duhet: Their paths seldom crossed. The
only rime they had exchanged a few words was when Adam had
delivered a note to the boy's father in the fashionable
Rue St. Mederic. Yet, on reflection, Adam had to admit to
a vague uneasiness whenever he had found Duhet's eyes
trailing him of late. He had shrugged it off as a figment
of his imagination. As far as he was aware, he had done
nothing to earn the boy's hostility. He was coming to see
that he was in error. From the snickers and catcalls of
the pages, it seemed that he and Duhet must be sworn
enemies.
In the next breath, Duhet had flung the word bastard in
his teeth, and Adam had launched himself at the bigger
boy. In the fray, he had taken a black eye, but Duhet had
not had everything his own way. Adam had bloodied the
young aristocrat’s nose. An icy blast of March air stung
his cheeks, and Adam turned up his coat collar and bent
his thin shoulders into the wind, his swift steps taking
him farther away from the palace environs to the less
elegant quarter of Versailles where his mother had taken
up lodgings.
Versailles. The town was too staid for Adam's liking.
Paris was his milieu. The capital was dirtier, noisier,
more crowded. In Paris, he had friends, boys like himself
who knew how to earn a living by their wits, boys who
skirted the law and stopped short, barely, of embracing a
life of crime. For the most part, they were the sons
of "actresses" or kept women who had fallen on hard times.
The succession of men who passed through their young lives
were shadowy figures and temporary at best. When the
word "father" came to Adam's mind, his first thought was
of Mother Church.
Ducking into the doorway of an elegant town house, Adam
felt in the pocket of his breeches and withdrew his
night's earnings. The gold ducat glinted wickedly in the
light of an overhead lantern. He bit down on it and
grunted in satisfaction. The ducat was real. He grinned,
thinking that it was the easiest money he had ever made in
his young life. He had earned it by acting as courier for
the elderly Maquis de Narvenne and the young Madame Caron,
the wife of one of the town's foremost citizens, Caron the
church warden. Versailles, Adam was thinking, had one
point in its favor. It was where the aristocrats hung out.
An aristocrat bent on pleasure was easily parted from his
money.
One day, when he reached manhood, he thought he might like
to be an aristocrat. From what he had observed, they had a
soft life. The pages always had plenty to fill their
stomachs; their masters wore fine clothes; they rode in
gilt carriages; they lived in elegant chateaux; they
pursued a life of ease and pleasure. An aristocrat's life
might be quite the thing, thought Adam idly.
With a surreptitious look over his shoulder, he carefully
eased the ducat under the top of his silk stocking,
knowing full well that the coins in his pockets would be
confiscated by his mother the moment he walked in the
door. Every sous, every livre was needed to pay off their
mounting pile of debts, so his mother avowed. Adam did not
doubt it. Everything in Versailles was more expensive.
Even so, he knew of his mother s fondness for cheap
cognac. A ducat would put food on the table for some weeks
to come, if they were careful. He wasn't sure how much
brandy it would buy, nor did he care.
As he entered the courtyard of the Chasse Royale, his eyes
unerringly found his mother's room in the unheated garrets
of the inn. A candle flickered at the window, the signal
that his mother was entertaining company and must not be
disturbed.