Javert had ridden hard all morning, arriving at Hesdin in the height of the afternoon market.  Dust swirled, thrown up from a hundred foot- and hoof-steps, casting a sallow powder over everything: the lowing cows, the salted pork hung up in a butcher’s stall, the dried fruits, herbs, bits of lace and buttons for sale, as well as the Inspector’s boots.  The air was filled with sound, the creaking of wooden axles, the cry of hawkers, voices high and parched, the cry of children, the sounds of pigs and cattle and chickens, all the sounds of bustling commerce.

He stood, surveying the square with the slitted eyes of a predator, a hawk or wolf, his nostrils wrinkling in a sort of distaste at the loss of the trail. A temporary setback, he thought—no, he knew.  He’d followed the thief, known only as Le Sonneur, from the rumor that years ago, he had been the bell ringer in the church at Etaples, here from Montreuil, and he would be damned if he lost his man. 

Le Sonneur was a brazen villain, his last crimes escalating from theft to brutality and extortion, and such fear he had struck into the victim’s souls that they could give no name, only the scantest of descriptions.  But Javert had worked with less, and a crooked nose and the eyebrows of a bear were details enough to find a trail. 

But the trail seemed to end here, growing cool in the heat of the afternoon’s baked marketplace.  His hand tightened on his stick, mouth curling into something like a snarl as he looked around the square, up the dun-colored buildings, the few parched trees attempting to elevate one street into an avenue. 

A setback, merely, he repeated. He would find Le Sonneur.  He would find him here. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would set to his left, the surety of a man who put his faith in his only deity—Justice.  God had created Javert for this purpose: to hunt out crime, to be a terrier and a dragon, following it into its burrows, flaming it out with righteous fury.  He would do God’s work on Earth.

“Attention!”

The voice, a startled cry from his right, and he whirled, stick in hand, eyes keen for danger, a viper ready to strike.  But that gaze, that stick, might have worked against a cutpurse or pickpocket: it was no avail against the heavy cart that rollicked dangerously over the cobbles, barreling straight for him, crossbrace banging uselessly behind, bearing down upon him like an avalanche of the Alpine mountains.

The last thing he saw was a flash of the afternoon sun, and his hat tumbling down from his head, and then the hard cobbles of the pavement struck his head and the world went night-dark.

***

“M l’Inspecteur, s’il vous plait.” The voice reached him, dimly, his mind feeling swathed with cotton. He blinked, swiping a hand before his face as though to clear his vision. The world was cloudy, still­, foggy and muddly. Javert felt something like a lance of pain through his head, his eyes crunching closed abruptly against the shock of it, his hand spidering over his head, feeling, through the disheveled, disarranged hair, a sticky mass of hair and blood. 

His vision resolved itself, finally, to the glass being pressed into his other hand. “Please, this will help.”  A face, above the glass, the broad shining cheekbones of a prosperous innkeeper, the type he’d seen in town after town. “It’s our local herbal wine, very restorative.”

Javert’s hand wrapped around the glass, steadying it as he raised it to his lips. “The cart,” he said, surprised that his voice sounded so hoarse.  He took a sip from the glass, the liquid dark amber and sweet over some bitterness, but right now, he welcomed the strength, the fire it sent through his veins.

The innkeeper nodded, ingratiating.  “It was an accident, M’sieur.  The blocks slipped and, well, as you saw, it was a very steep hill.” 

“The carter. I need his name. He shall be fined.” Javert shifted his weight, pushing up from the settle-bench from which they’d lain him, his boots finding the floor.  Le Sonneur, he thought, vaguely. Every minute that passed, le Sonneur got farther away.

“Please, Inspector, you need your strength. We can talk later.”  The thick fingers pushed the glass back toward him.

“I am fine,” he said, despite the fact that the room took a hard lurch to the left as he tried to rise. Very well, he could rest…for a moment.  “I am here on official business.”

“Of course, of course,” the innkeeper said.  “But M’sieur, it was an accident, and if any blame is to be laid, is it to the carter? Or to the lazy boy who unhitched the oxen? Or to the designers of the roads, who retained the steep cut of the hill?” He tsked. “It was unfortunate, and we will do our best to make it right by you, but surely, this is no crime.”

No crime. The phrase stung like an insult, like a bee under a horse’s blanket. It was not some innkeeper’s purview to decide on crime. And then there was the refusal to give names, a little too staunch to be protective of friends. His gaze fixed on the man’s face, noting, suddenly, the slight crook to the nose, the heavy shelf of his brow, eyebrows one thick line under a low brow. 

“Le Sonneur.”  The words punched out of his lungs, which felt quivery, all of a sudden, as though breathing was a rickety, tremulous enterprise.  He felt his face pale, and the glass begin to tumble from fingers which throbbed with a strange kind of numbness, that buzzed its way up to his head, filling his ears like a din of hornets. 

The innkeeper’s mouth split into a grin, the ingratiating act falling off like a cloak, at the sheer animal joy a being recognized, a sort of beast’s pleasure in fame. “We meet face to face at last, Inspector Javert. I must say you were far harder to shake than I expected.”

“Gloat all you want,” Javert said, but the words came out garbled, indistinct, and he placed, suddenly, the bitterness under the liqueur: laudanum.  “I will get you in the end.” He knew it; he felt sure of it, even as the world spun the colors of the inn's back room in a muddy, dizzying mess, and he fell back heavily against the settle.

"I hope you try," le Sonneur said. "Remember this, though, Inspector." And he leaned closer, to make certain his words penetrated the opium-fog overtaking the Inspector's brain, "I could have killed you today." 

He could have--Javert knew it. He was helpless right now, should the criminal change his mind. He could barely speak, much less raise a hand to defend himself. But the shame of it burned, even deeper than the laudanum, and he knew that if it took until the end of time, he would bring the Bell Ringer of Etaples to the gallows.