It was also, admittedly, ridiculous. Rossignol, for his part, had not killed anyone in years. Jean Bart (for this had to be Jean Bart) probably did it more frequently, but never in rich people’s houses. If it had somehow come to swordplay, they’d have been civil enough to take it outside. And yet they did not know each other. There was no harm in taking precautions, particularly if they were as inoffensive as standing in a certain position, and maintaining a certain distance. These measures did not even require conscious thought; Rossignol had been thinking about something he had read in one of d’Avaux’s letters, and Bart (he could safely assume) was thinking about fucking Eliza, and both men had relied upon habit to plan and execute all of these maneuvers.
Bart was dressed in the habit of a naval officer, which was not terribly different from what any other civilian gentleman would wear, viz. breeches, waistcoat, Persian coat over that, periwig, and three-cornered hat. The costume’s color (tending to blue), its decoration (facings, piping, epaulets, cuffs), and the selection of plumes that erupted from the folds of the hat marked him as a Lieutenant in the Navy. He was not a tall man, and Rossignol belatedly saw that he was not a slender one either (the tailoring of his jacket had concealed this at first). Bart was, by the standards of this part of France, swarthy. According to rumor he was of very common extraction—his people had been fishermen, and probably pirates, around Dunkerque for æons. If so, there was no guessing what mongrel ichor pulsed in his veins. Like many who were short; many who were stout; and many who were of questionable ancestry; he paid close attention to his appearance. He affected the great Sun King mane-wig (a bit out-moded, but no more so than Rossignol’s rapier) and the ridiculous tiny moustache, like a pair of commas cemented to the upper lip, that must cost him an hour at his toilette every morning. In his costume there was rather too much of lace and of hardware (buckles and buttons) for Rossignol’s taste; but by the standards of Versailles, this Jean Bart would not even be rated as a fop. Rossignol made a conscious effort to ignore the clothes and the cologne, and instead concentrated his mind on the fact that the man standing before him had recently escaped from a prison in England, stolen a small boat, and, alone, rowed it all the way back to France.
Bart made a half-turn on the balls of his feet so that he could look Rossignol in the eye. Still his right arm was wrapped across the front of his body. His eyes popped down to Rossignol’s left hip and, spying a rapier, checked Rossignol’s left hand for a dagger, or the intention to draw one.
If Rossignol had been dressed en grand habit it might have gone otherwise, but as it was, he looked no better than a highwayman. So he spoke: “Lieutenant. Pray forgive my interruption.” He had prudently drawn up short of cutlass-backhand range, but now, as a sort of peace-offering, he drew back an additional pace, so that Bart was no longer in range of a long rapier-lunge. Bart noted this and responded by turning more fully towards him, causing his right hand to become visible, and then raising that hand a bit, so that his arms were crossed over the barrel of his torso.
“I have not had the pleasure of meeting you, and you will rightly wonder who I am, and what is my business in this house. As I am a visitor in your town, Lieutenant, I beg leave to introduce myself to you. I am Bonaventure Rossignol. I have come here from my home in Juvisy in the hope that I might be of service to Mademoiselle la comtesse de la Zeur, and she has done me the honor of suffering me to cross the threshold of this house and bide here for some hours. It is, in other words, my privilege to be an invited guest here, as she would tell you, if you were to go and ask her. But I beg you not to do so while Monsieur le comte d’Avaux is present, for the matter is—”
“Complicated,” said Jean Bart, “complicated, delicate, and dangerous, like Mademoiselle la comtesse herself.” Both of his arms sprang free, which made Rossignol jerk; but those hands were moving towards Rossignol, away from the weapon. Rossignol let his own hands drift farther from hilts, pommels, &c., and even allowed Bart a glimpse of his palms.
“I am Lieutenant Jean Bart.” Bart advanced a step towards Rossignol, venturing within rapier-thrust range. Rossignol rewarded Bart’s gesture of trust by extending his hands farther and showing more palm, then glided to within cutlass-backhand range. Like two men groping through smoke they found each other’s hands and shook—a double-handed shake, just to be extra safe. “Though I am admittedly disappointed,” said Bart, “I am in no way surprised, that a gallant gentleman has ridden out from Paris to place himself at the lady’s service. Indeed, I had been wondering when someone of your description would show up.”
This was triple-edged, in that Bart was admitting to an interest in Eliza, conceding Rossignol’s priority in the matter, and needling him for having been too long getting here, all at once. Rossignol tried to think of a way to defuse this little granadoe while they were still safely gripping each other’s hands. “I have heard some in the same vein from the lady in question,” he admitted drily.
“Ha ha, I’ll bet you have!”
“I do all in my power to satisfy her,” said Rossignol, “and when that fails I can do no more than throw myself upon her mercy.”
“It is good to meet you!” Bart exclaimed, seeming genuine enough, then let go Rossignol’s hands. The two men burst asunder. But there was no more of furtive glancing at hands. “Now we wait, eh?” Bart said. “You wait for her, and I wait for d’Avaux. You have the better of me there.”
“I am certain that Monsieur le comte will not tarry in Dunkerque, if that will cheer you up.”
“It must be wonderful to know so many things,” said Bart—a way of stating that he knew what Bonaventure Rossignol did for a living.
“Many of those things are very tedious, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, but the power, the understanding it gives you! Take this painting.” Bart extended a blunt, thick hand toward the landscape he had been pretending to inspect a moment earlier. It depicted rolling countryside, a village, and a church, all seen from the garden of a manor house. In the foreground, children sported with a little dog. “What does it mean? Who are these people? How did they end up there?” He indicated another landscape, this one in a dark mountainous country. “And what significance do all of these sieges and battles have to the d’Ozoirs?” For, despite the occasional pastoral landscape, the art in the gallery was heavily skewed towards massacres, martyrdoms sacred and sæcular, and set-piece battles.
“Forgive me for saying so, Lieutenant, but given the importance of the Marquis d’Ozoir to the Navy, it strikes me as remarkable that you do not know everything about his family.”
“Ah, monsieur, but that is because you are a gentleman of Court. I am a dog of the sea, oblivious. But Mademoiselle la comtesse de la Zeur has instructed me that I must attend to such matters if I am ever to rise beyond the rank of Lieutenant.”
“Then as we are both doomed to cool our heels as we await our betters,” said Rossignol, “let me do what would most please her, and spin you a little yarn that will tie together all of these paintings and plaques and busts.”
“I should be in your debt, monsieur!”
“Not at all. Now, even if you are as deaf to politics as you claim, you must know that Monsieur le marquis d’Ozoir is a bastard of Monsieur le duc d’Arcachon.”
“That has never been a secret,” Bart agreed.
“Since the Marquis cannot inherit the name or the property of his father, it follows, by process of elimination, that all of these paintings and whatnot are from the family of—”
“Madame la marquise d’Ozoir!” said Bart. “And that is where I want instruction, for I know nothing of her people.”
“Two families, very different, forged into one.”
“Ah. One dwelling in the countryside of the north, I’m guessing,” said Bart, nodding at the first landscape.
“De Crépy. Petty nobles. Not especially distinguished, but middling affluent, and fecund.”
“The other family must have been Alp-dwellers, then,” said Bart, turning to
regard the gloomier and more horrid of the two landscapes.
“De Gex. A poor dwindling clan. Die-hard Catholics living in a place, not far from Geneva, that had become dominated by Huguenots.”
“So the two families were quite different! How did they come to be joined?”
“The family de Crépy were tied, first by proximity, then by fealty, and at last by marriage, to the Counts of Guise,” said Rossignol.
“Err…I am vaguely aware that those Guises were important, and got into some sort of trouble with the Bourbons, but if you could refresh my memory, monsieur…”
“It would be my pleasure, Lieutenant. A century and a half ago, a comte de Guise distinguished himself so well in battle that the King created him duc de Guise. Of his aides, squires, lackeys, mistresses, captains, and hangers-on, several were of the de Crépy line. Some of these developed a taste for adventure, and began to conceive ambitions beyond the parochial. They lashed themselves to the mast, as it were, of the House of Guise, which seemed like a good idea, and served them well. Until, that is, a hundred and one years ago, when the two leading men of that House—Henry, duc de Guise, and Louis, cardinal de Guise—were assassinated by the King or his supporters. For they had waxed more powerful than the King himself.”
There was a pause now to look at some rather sanguinary art-work.
“How could such a thing happen, monsieur? How could this rival House become so powerful?”
“Nowadays, when le Roi is so strong, it is difficult for us to conceive of, is it not? It may help you to know that much of the power that so appalled the King was rooted in a thing called the Holy Catholic League. It had its beginnings in towns and cities all over France, where local priests and gentlemen had, in the wake of the Reformation, found themselves engulfed in Huguenots, and so banded together to defend their faith from that heresy and to oppose its spread.”
“Ah, here is where the de Gex family enters the picture, no?”
“I am almost to that part of the story. You are correct that the de Gexes were typical of the sorts of men who in those days founded local chapters of the Holy Catholic League. The House of Guise had forged these scattered groups into a national movement. After the assassinations of Henry and Louis de Guise, the decapitated League rose up in revolt against the King—who was himself assassinated not long after—and there was chaos throughout the country for a number of years. The new Huguenot King, Henry IV, converted to Catholicism and re-established control, generally at the expense of the ultra-Catholics and to the benefit of the Huguenots. Or so it seemed to many fervent Catholics, including the one who assassinated him in 1610. Now, during this time the fortunes of the de Crépy family went into eclipse. Some were killed, some went back to their ancestral lands in northern France and melted back into bourgeois obscurity, some scattered abroad. But a few of them ended up far from home, in that part of France that borders on Lake Geneva. It was the best, or the worst, place for Catholic warriors to be at the time. They were directly across the lake from Geneva, which to them was like an ant’s nest from which Huguenots continually streamed out to preach and convert in every parish in France. Accordingly, the Catholics in that area were more ardent than anywhere else—the first to create local branches of the Holy Catholic League, the first to swear fealty to the House of Guise, and, after the assassinations, the most warlike. They had not assassinated Henry IV, but only because they could not find him. The leading nobleman of that district—one Louis, sieur de Gex—had gathered around him a small, ragged, but ferocious coterie of like-minded sorts who had been driven out of other pays, and gravitated to this remote outpost from all over France as the fortunes of their party had declined.”
“Among them, I’m quite sure, must have been several of the de Crépy clan.”
“Indeed. So your question of how they got from here, to there,” said Rossignol, indicating the two landscapes, “is answered. The newcomers were fertile and affluent where the family de Gex were dwindling and poor.”
“I suppose most of the people in their district who knew how to make money had become Huguenots,” mused Bart.
This drew from Rossignol a sharp look, and a reprimand. “Lieutenant Bart. I believe I understand, now, why Mademoiselle la comtesse de la Zeur sees a need to instruct you in how to be politic.”
Bart shrugged. “It is true, monsieur. All the best merchants of Dunkerque were Huguenots, and after 1685—”
“It is precisely because it is true, that you must not come out and state it,” said Rossignol.
“Very well then, monsieur, I vow not to say anything true for the remainder of this conversation. Pray continue!”
After a moment to collect himself, Rossignol stepped over to a stack of portraits leaning against a wall, and began to paw through them: men, women, children, and families, dressed in the fashions of three generations ago. “When the Wars of Religion finally came to an end, both families, having nothing else to do, began to produce children. A generation later, these began to marry each other. Here I may get some of the details wrong, but if memory serves, this is how it went: the scion of the de Gex line, Francis, married one Marguerite Diane de Crépy around 1640 and they had several children one after the other, then none for twelve years, then a surprise pregnancy. This ended in the death of Marguerite only a few hours following the birth of a boy, Édouard. The father construed the former as a sacrifice to, the latter as a gift from, the Almighty; and considering himself too old to raise a boy by himself, gave him to a Jesuit school in Lyon where he was found to be a sort of child prodigy. He joined the Society of Jesus at an exceptionally young age. He is now Confessor to de Maintenon herself.”
Rossignol had found a portrait of a lean young man, dressed in a Jesuit’s robes, glaring out of the canvas in a way that suggested he could actually see Rossignol and Bart standing in this back-hallway, and did not approve much of either one of them.
“I have heard of him,” said Bart, and edged out of the portrait’s sight-line.
Rossignol found an older portrait of a plump woman in a blue dress. “The sister of Francis de Gex was named Louise Anne. She married one Alexandre Louis de Crépy. They had two boys, who died at the same time from smallpox, and two girls, who survived it.” He pulled out of the stack a gouache of two post-pubescent girls: one older, bigger, more beautiful than the other, who peered over her shoulder, as if hiding behind her. “The older of the girls, Anne-Marie, who was unscarred by the disease, married the comte d’Oyonnax, who was much older. Anne-Marie was his second or third wife. This fellow Oyonnax had originally been a petty noble, but even that modest rank had stretched his wits and his wealth thin. His ancestral lands lay just at the doorstep of the Franche-Comté.”
“Even I have heard of that!”
“Really, Lieutenant? I am surprised, for it is landlocked.”
Rossignol’s jest almost went by Bart, for Rossignol was not, by and large, a fount of clever bon mots. But Bart caught it after a few awkward moments, and acknowledged it with a smile and a nod. “It is a part of the world over which the Kings of France have been fighting with the Hapsburgs for a long time, is it not—like two enemies trapped in a longboat together and struggling for the possession of the one dagger.”
“The analogy, though nautical, is apt,” said Rossignol. “During the reign of Louis XIII—whom it was my father’s great honor to serve as Royal cryptanalyst—Oyonnax had allowed the King’s armies to use his land as a base for invading the Franche-Comté, which they did frequently. In exchange for which he had been elevated to a Count. Such was his rank when he married the young Anne-Marie de Crépy. A few years after, he performed a like service for the legions of Louis XIV, which, since it led to the annexation of the whole of the Franche-Comté to France, caused the King to elevate him to a Duke. He and the new Duchess moved to Versailles, where he got to enjoy his new status for only a few months before she poisoned him.”
“Monsieur! And you accuse me of not being politic!”
R
ossignol shrugged. “It is a harsh thing to say, I know, but it is true; everyone was doing it in those days—or at least all of the Satan-worshippers.”
“Now I think you are only pulling my leg.”
“You may believe me, or not,” said Rossignol. “Sometimes I cannot believe it myself. Such behavior has all been suppressed by de Maintenon, with the help of Father Édouard de Gex—who probably has no idea that his cousine was one of the ringleaders.”
The Confusion: Volume Two of the Baroque Cycle Page 9