2020/109: Madame Two Swords -- Tanith Lee

Up to that we went, to the – what had the sly carter told me those eight years in my past? – the musical boxes made of skulls, the tarot cards, death-masks. [loc. 479]

When the anonymous narrator was fourteen years old, browsing a second-hand bookshop in the French city of Troy, she discovered a small volume of the writings of revolutionary Lucien de Ceppays, two centuries after his execution. There's also a little watercolour of the author, tucked into the pages. The book and the painting become her talisman. 

 Eight years later, in abject poverty after the death of her mother, she finds herself in desperate straits and is rescued by the ancient Madame Two Swords, curator of a Museum of the Revolution. Somehow she knows about our narrator's secret treasure; and Madame, too, is obsessed with the life and death of Lucien de Ceppays. 

 Beautifully written, as one expects from Lee, and very atmospheric: there isn't much to the story, save the plain-but-principled narrator's despair and newfound hope, but the Parisian ambience of Troy and the brooding violence of la Canaille, the mob, is vividly evoked. And this may be a France where the Revolution failed and the English came in: the common 'language' is Frenish, a pidgin French-English; few characters speak pure French; there are mentions of British redcoats, and an Anglicised feeling to the city. Intriguing hints, which I expect are picked up elsewhere in Lee's vast legacy of fiction. 

 Read partly for the 'under 100 pages' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2020.