by A L Berridge
Mother gave a high-pitched little ‘oh’ of disappointment. ‘But why, darling?’ she said. ‘You haven’t fallen out with André? You seemed all right this afternoon.’
Father gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Of course they did, nobility will put a face on anything. You think he wants it known he took a beating from the son of his groom?’
My cup sort of jumped in my hands, it slopped wine all over the table. Mother stared at me, then back at Father.
‘But that was the horse,’ she said reasonably. ‘Jacques told us. It was the horse.’
‘Horse!’ snorted Father. He took a gulp of wine and looked at her impatiently. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, if Tonnerre had kicked him that hard, he’d be dead.’
I said ‘I didn’t, it wasn’t me, I didn’t touch him,’ but Father stopped me.
‘Of course you didn’t. But next time you tell that story, have the sense to keep your hand out of sight.’
I looked down and saw my knuckles were grazed where I’d punched the side of Stefan’s jaw. I opened my mouth to explain, then I met Father’s eyes and he just nodded.
‘It’s all right, boy. He drew on your father, didn’t he?’
Mother was aghast. ‘You didn’t, Jacques? How could you, that little boy?’
Father said patiently ‘He’s not a little boy, he’s thirteen and he’s nobility. In another year it won’t just be swords, it’ll be women as well.’
I drink more wine. It’s sort of numbing that ache inside, I can understand why Father likes it so much.
‘Don’t talk like that,’ says Mother. ‘Nobility are people, same as us.’
‘Oh, maybe in the beginning, you can turn a child into anything if you get the bringing up of it. Look at our Jacques here, he’s his father’s son, isn’t he?’
Mother looks at me throwing back the wine and turns away quickly. I close my eyes and drink and try to bring back the nice pictures I’d had in my head, only now they won’t come.
‘But André’s too old for that,’ Father says. ‘We’ll need to be careful from now on. He won’t talk, but he’ll take it out of us if he can.’
‘Of course he won’t,’ says Mother, and her voice sounds hard and angry. ‘As if André would ever do anything to harm Jacques. Look at everything he’s done for us.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ says Father, and his good mood’s gone out like a snuffed candle. ‘The brat’s never done anything that didn’t suit himself. People like us, we’re nothing to him, we’re less than one of his horses.’
The pictures are back, only this time they’re different. The boy this morning, saying ‘I’d like to make sure everything’s all right.’ The boy laughing and clapping at Georges with his stupid toadstool in the Hermitage. The boy trying to put his cloak round Jean-Marie. We weren’t nothing to André. We weren’t.
‘I’m sorry, I won’t have it,’ says Mother, and I have to come out of my head and look at her. This is my Mother, who always needs a man to tell her what to do, but here she is standing up to Father all by herself. ‘I know you’re annoyed about this morning, but André was only trying to protect me.’
Father says quietly ‘It’s not his business to tell me how I can treat my own wife.’
‘I was his nurse,’ says Mother. ‘And this is his house, isn’t it? We work for him.’
‘Thank you for reminding us of that,’ says Father, and walks over to where she’s sitting. I want to scream he’s getting dangerous, but then I look at her face and see she knows. She knows, but she’s fighting him anyway.
The boy running back into the Manor to fight a hundred soldiers by himself. The boy fighting Stefan when he knows he hasn’t a chance. The ache inside me is almost unbearable now and I drink more wine to deaden it.
‘Taking sides against your own family, Nell?’ says Father, and starts playing gently with her hair.
‘It’s not a case of taking sides,’ says Mother, trying to move her head away. ‘It’s about what’s right.’
But it is, it’s all about sides. Me talking to the boy about honour and him thinking I understand. Me sitting here now, getting credit for having beaten him. Me sitting back while Father bullies my Mother right in front of me, like he knows I won’t do anything because I never do.
‘What’s right is standing by your husband,’ says Father. He winds her hair round his knuckles, drawing her closer.
Me standing by and watching while a big man beats the shit out of a boy I’m meant to be looking after.
‘It’s natural for me to be fond of André,’ pleads Mother. ‘I nursed him for five years.’
‘Yes, you did, didn’t you? With my little Pierre back here crying for his mother, you were always over at the Manor with the Seigneur’s brat.’
Me sitting in the boy’s room while Mother sings softly, ‘Rencontrai trois capitaines, avec mes sabots, dondaine, oh, oh, oh …’
She says ‘We needed the money.’
‘You didn’t do it for the money. You don’t now. What is it, Nell? Is he getting old enough to be interesting?’
‘That’s disgusting.’ Mother wrenches her head away and stands up.
‘I agree.’ He’s blocking her way to the bedroom. ‘It’s filthy. Fawning over another man’s child under my roof. How do you think that makes me feel?’
She turns wearily to face him, pushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘It should make you ashamed.’
Shame. I know what that is now all right. Shame.
‘No, you don’t give me that,’ he says, and seizes her by the arm. ‘You to talk about shame?’
She’s crying out, he’s dragging her towards him, and suddenly it’s easy and there aren’t any choices to make at all, I realize I’ve already made them.
I stand up and say ‘Stop it.’
It doesn’t come out deep and manly, it’s actually a bit squeaky, but it makes my Father look round all the same, and his expression is so surprised it’s almost funny. Then it clouds over and isn’t funny at all.
‘Shut your bastard mouth and get out.’
Mother cries out in protest, then it’s a sudden sob of pain because he’s twisting her wrist. I can’t take it, I’m yelling ‘Stop it, I won’t let you!’
He really does laugh at that, a great loud rumbling laugh from his chest. Then he goes quiet and looks at me with something like pity. ‘Stick to hitting children, boy. It’s all you’re good for.’
‘I didn’t,’ I say, and the relief is wonderful. ‘I never touched him. Why would I?’
‘Why?’ says Father, and there’s no pity about him now, his eyes look almost hot. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Pierre!’ says Mother desperately. She pushes in front of him, but he shoves her aside, hand up to smack her, then I’m moving, I’ve caught his arm, and pulled him right round to face me. He shakes free and his fist’s coming up, so I hit him in the face, and I’ve knocked him down.
I’ve hit my own Father.
Everything goes silent as he stands up. He wipes his mouth deliberately with the back of his hand, but never takes his eyes off my face.
‘You poor, stupid bastard,’ he says.
Then he’s on me. I try to defend myself, but he’s just hammering into me and I can’t seem to stop him. I’m young, I’m strong and fit, but he’s bigger and heavier, and it’s somehow hard to hit him, it’s hard to see my Father’s body and drive my fist right into it. And I’m not André, I’m not this unbeatable force, and when he’s got me down I bloody stay down, and now he’s kicking me, his boot in my belly, my ribs, my thigh, and Mother’s screaming at him, then Blanche starts crying and I can hear Little Pierre too, and finally he stops, and everything’s going quiet and dark.
Mother’s footsteps, her feet in front of me, and her voice, very low, ‘Please, Pierre.’ Father’s soft laugh. ‘Look at him, Nell,’ his voice says. ‘And that other one in the barn. Not very impressive, is it? Why can’t you stick to your own kind?’
There’s a pause, hea
vy footsteps, and he’s gone.
Then Mother’s cradling my head and saying I mustn’t listen, he doesn’t mean it, and it’s all her fault, but I can’t bear it, I push her away. My body hurts all over and I want to be on my own.
But I can’t be, of course, not these days. I stagger out on to the cobbles, and there’s the boy pelting towards me, barefoot but with his sword in his hand. He stops short then runs to me in horror. I shove him away and say I’m all right, leave me alone. He looks past me at the house, and his face goes very cold, and his grip tightens on his sword, and he’s striding towards the door. I’ve got just enough strength left to grab his arm to hold him back.
‘No,’ I manage to say. ‘He’s gone, he’s gone out. He won’t hurt her any more tonight.’
He looks at me, and believes me. But I’m staggering so much I can’t stand, my ribs are squeezing me, and I can’t breathe through the blood in my mouth and nose, it’s all bubbling, I can’t breathe. Then his arm’s round my shoulders and he’s lowering me to the stones, and I hear him say ‘Wait there,’ and I do, because I can’t do anything else, and it feels good just to let go and let someone else take it. I hear him go to the house, he’s calling ‘Nelly!’ loudly and clearly like he’s the master of the house just come home, and it feels safe, it feels like someone’s in charge and I’ll be looked after, and then everything goes black.
When I come round I’ve got Mother on one side and the boy on the other, and they’re getting me into the barn, and Little Pierre’s there too, looking mutinous with a basin and cloths. Then Mother’s getting my shirt open, and it hurts, and the boy’s saying he thinks I’ve got a broken rib, maybe two, then someone’s giving me water and I close my eyes.
I must have slept, because next there were voices murmuring and someone prodding me, then there was M. Pollet the barber strapping up my ribs and M. Merien the apothecary doing something nasty with leeches on the inside of my arm. I struggled to sit up, and said ‘Where’s André? Where’s André?’ but the boy’s voice said ‘It’s all right, Jacques, I’m here,’ and I strained up my eyes and saw him holding a candle for the doctors. He smiled like everything was all right so I lay back down and told myself it was.
It was really quiet. I could hear M. Pollet’s breathing as he finished the strapping, and an odd clicking in M. Merien’s throat as he checked his leeches. I’ve often wondered about leeches. I’d see the doctors fishing them out of the jar, and wonder if they picked the same ones each time that got all the blood, and if there were like tiny starved leeches at the bottom that never had anything.
If there are I think I’ve got them all, they’re taking for ever. M. Pollet says conversationally ‘Having quite a little party there, aren’t they, Monsieur? Been drinking anything nice?’ and his eyes are bright and twinkly like he knows.
M. Merien’s insisting on examining André’s injuries, and the boy’s hating it, of course, he doesn’t need doctors fussing over him, he’s not helpless like me. M. Merien’s moaning about leaving things too late, he says the ear should have been seen to long before, but the boy’s just saying ‘Damn your impertinence, it’s my ear, isn’t it?’ and I smile to myself because that’s André, that’s what he used to be in the days when it was all so much simpler and no one expected anything of me except to know what to do with horses.
When I next wake up we’re alone. It’s dark and silent outside, everything feels still, and I know it’s the middle of the night. I can see the boy sitting a few feet away watching the door. His sword is close by his hand and I know why. He’s wrong, though, Father won’t come here, not now. He’ll be sleeping it off somewhere and be fine in the morning, he always is. Maybe he’ll be sorry, maybe he’ll even forgive me. I can’t think what I’ll do if he doesn’t. I’ve got nowhere else to go now, there’s nowhere I belong.
I sit up and find actually my body feels better. Maybe my ribs aren’t broken after all, or maybe the strapping’s helped, but I can move and it doesn’t hurt much. My nose starts bleeding again so I reach for one of the cloths beside me, but then André’s there, coming to help like I’m a baby can’t even wipe my own nose. I tell him to leave me alone.
He almost smiles. ‘I let you do mine.’
I try to laugh at him, but it all goes wrong, and something terrible’s happening, blood and snot is coming out of my nose and I’m shaking all over. Sixteen years old, and I’m crying like a kid.
He reaches out to comfort me, and I can’t stand it, I shove him away. He kneels back obediently, but the cloth’s still in his hand, he’s just waiting his chance.
‘Don’t,’ I warn him. ‘Don’t. It’s stupid.’
‘Why?’
‘There aren’t any Spaniards here, you don’t need to pretend with just me.’
Blood went down my throat, I had to jerk my head back again, and before I could stop him he was holding my head and wiping me.
‘Hold still,’ he said.
I needed to talk, and he was wiping a bloody wet cloth over my mouth. I waited till he took it away to rinse it, then said ‘You’re not supposed to look after me, it’s just stupid.’
‘Is it?’ he said mildly.
‘You know it is. I’m your servant, and I’m only nice to you because I’m paid, it’s stupid to pretend anything else. I mean it’s best to be honest, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s best to be honest.’
I said ‘It would be stupid to be any different, I mean what would I do when you went away?’
‘Who says I’m going away?’
‘When the Spaniards leave. You’ll be going home, won’t you?’
He was swirling the cloth round in the basin, making faint little circles of pink. ‘Yes, of course. But I always thought you’d be coming with me.’
I stared at him. Mother said that, but then it sounded ridiculous, and suddenly it didn’t, it was sort of obvious. Then I remembered everything else, and a cold weight settled back inside me.
I said ‘You won’t want me, not when you’ve got proper people round you again, you’d be ashamed. I’m not like you, it’s stupid to pretend I am.’
‘No, it isn’t!’ He smacked the cloth down into the basin, splashing up little drops of water on the straw. ‘We’ve managed all right, haven’t we? We do the same things, there’s no difference that matters.’
I remembered the contempt on his face. ‘That’s not what you thought this morning.’
He lowered his eyes. ‘I should have understood.’
‘You understood. You despised me because I didn’t stand up for my Mother.’
He started wiping again. ‘You protected her tonight.’
I risked a snort. ‘Didn’t do any good, did it? I mean look at me.’ He did, but I suddenly found I couldn’t meet his eye. I stared at the straw and said ‘He kicked me while I was lying on the ground.’
André’s hand left my face. I raised my eyes cautiously and saw him sitting back on his heels with an oddly confused expression on his face.
‘What does it matter what he did? What matters is what you did.’
‘You mean I tried.”
‘So?’ he said. ‘Isn’t that better than nothing?’
‘Not for you,’ I said bitterly. ‘You just had to win that stupid fight with Stefan, even if it killed you. Well, it’s not like that for real people. I tried to be you tonight, I tried to be a hero, but all I get is the shit kicked out of me and everyone fussing round me like a baby.’
‘You still did the right –’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I fucking didn’t. You can sit there giving it all that noble stuff about standing up for things, but we’re not all like you, André, we can’t all be bloody heroes.’
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t.’ His hands were gripping the sides of the basin, his knuckles all shiny white.
‘Then stop pretending you understand!’
‘But I do,’ he said, his voice so quiet I could hardly hear it.
&nbs
p; ‘No, you don’t,’ I said savagely. ‘I’d like to see you feel all noble and honourable if you couldn’t even protect your own mother.’
He stood up so suddenly he kicked the basin. ‘But I didn’t!’ he said, and now he was almost shouting. ‘I didn’t, did I, and now it’s too late!’
Instantly his face went taut with shock, like it was me who’d said it, not him. Then he made an extraordinary noise and turned violently away, slamming himself against the wall.
I remember hearing the Dax clock striking four in the distance. I remember hearing it while my heart slowed back to normal, and this awful heavy sadness came with it as at last I understood.
I said ‘I’m sorry.’
He didn’t answer. After a moment he turned round, but he was too far from the candle for me to see his face.
I said again wretchedly ‘André, I’m sorry.’
He glanced up. ‘You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. Only me.’ He leaned back against the wall and slowly slid himself down till he was sitting on the straw.
‘Will you tell me?’
‘If you like,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
We sat quiet a moment, then his voice began to talk. He took me right back to that hot night in July, back when I was sleeping in the Ancre stables with the straw prickling me and the horses restless, and César still alive in the coach-house next door. He never looked at me the whole time he was talking. He rested his chin on his knees, looked straight across to the other wall and spoke to that instead.
He said he’d woken to the noise of a musket being discharged nearby. He wasn’t scared at first, just interested and excited, so he sat up in bed and listened. He heard running footsteps on the Gallery and stairs, then more shots, some of them outside, and realized it was a raid.
He scrambled out of bed and opened his door. It was dark on the Gallery, but someone was bringing a lamp from the other wing, and he could see shapes of people moving about, servants and some of the Guard. He wandered out among them, then saw his father running from his apartments calling for M. Chapelle. The Seigneur was bare-chested and putting on his coat as he ran, but as he reached the stairs he saw André standing there in his nightshirt, and stopped to tell him to go back to his chamber at once.