by A L Berridge
‘What’s that?’ said the boy before I could hide it.
I showed him. ‘It’s just a flower, to keep it fresh.’
He reached out and took it. I watched him apprehensively as he turned it over in his hands then smelt it.
‘It’s not,’ he said decisively. ‘It’s too new for that. It’s this year’s.’
I quickly slapped the new dressing on his back. ‘You think Mlle Anne is sending you flowers?’
‘Of course not,’ he said, reddening. ‘That’s silly.’ He laid his face back down in the blanket.
I stared down at the back of his head. I’d always known he liked Mlle Anne, he liked her even more after what she’d done about the Pedros, but this was the first time the thought of her made him blush. Something inside my chest gave a single soft thump.
I should have seen it coming. He was fifteen, his body had changed, of course he was going to be thinking about women. There hadn’t been any obvious signs of it, he never talked about them or anything, but then I suppose he wouldn’t, he’d think it dishonourable. He’d always been romantic that way. He wasn’t interested in Stefan going on about all the women he’d had, he liked books like Amadis de Gaul about knights being faithful and saving ladies in distress.
And now here was a girl imprisoned in a sort of castle actually smuggling him out a rose. It was bound to appeal to him whoever she was, and this was Mlle Anne, the only girl of his own kind he’d ever known. I tried telling myself she was only like a childhood sweetheart, then I remembered that so was the heroine of bloody Amadis de Gaul and I could have groaned aloud. She was so obviously perfect for him, perfect in every way, except that she was locked up in the Château and he’d only go trying to rescue her and getting himself killed.
I forced myself to go on with the dressing. I said ‘You’d better not tear this any more, André, you’ll end up with more scar than back.’
‘Mm,’ he said into the blanket. He reached out for some bits of straw and began twisting them in his fingers. ‘I wonder how old she is now. She wasn’t much younger than me, she must be at least fourteen. What do you think? Did you ever see her?’
I had a sudden memory of the two of them sitting side by side on the wall of the sunken garden, their heads close together as they talked.
I said ‘She’s still a little girl. Lift up a bit, I need to get the bandage round you.’
He hoisted himself a few inches off the straw. ‘Girls can marry at twelve.’
I pulled the bandage as tight as I dared. ‘Not when they’re stuck in the Château Petit Arx.’
That was a mistake, I knew it as soon as it fell out of my mouth. The boy sucked in his breath and said ‘You’re right, it’s cruel leaving them there. At her age, it’s just cruel.’
Panic prickled me all over like pins and needles. I said ‘Their father doesn’t seem to mind, he could ransom them if he wanted, but he knows they’re all right there. They’re probably safer than anyone in Picardie.’
He sank slowly back down. ‘That’s what Stefan says too.’
I finished the dressing and gave it a little pat. ‘All done. We could fence now if you like, as long as you’re careful.’
He didn’t get up for a minute, he kept his head down and started making the straws into plaits. ‘I wonder what she looks like now.’
‘Probably fat,’ I said quickly. ‘They’re being looked after with the officers, aren’t they, I’ll bet they eat a lot better than we do.’
He rolled on to his side so he could look at me. ‘She had beautiful hair,’ he said. ‘It was brown, but there was gold in it and flashes of red like little flames. There was so much of it, Jacques. It was thick, and looked soft and heavy, like silk. I wanted to play with it, but she wouldn’t let me.’
I said primly ‘You were only children.’
‘Not any more,’ said André, and suddenly there was a flash of his old grin, only with something in it I’d never seen before. ‘Not any more.’
This was bad. If he was just romantic about Mlle Anne that could still be harmless, it could be a nice little dream, he could even go singing slushy songs outside her window if he wanted, but if he was thinking about her with that look in his eye he wasn’t going to be content to adore her through three feet of solid wall, he was going to want her out and in his arms and in his bed.
I knew I’d got to do something, but couldn’t think what. The obvious answer was to distract him with another woman, but I wasn’t very hopeful about that. I’d watched him help Giles train the loaders while he was convalescing, and he’d never shown the slightest interest in the women, not even Simone. She and I had sort of fallen out when the boy was ill and I never felt the same about her afterwards, but she was still a beautiful girl, and she really tried hard for André, she wanted a go at a real live Seigneur. She’d leave her blouse unlaced and sit there sort of panting, pumping the ramrod in and out the muzzle, her eyes full on the boy’s face, but he never responded, he just went pink and looked away. Stefan said ‘What’s the matter with him? She’s practically begging for it,’ but Marcel just sniffed and said ‘I think André’s looking for something more meaningful than a roll in the grass with Simone Lefebvre.’
That was the problem. The boy was too chivalrous to go pouncing on people, he wanted love and romance, that’s why he got so excited about Mlle Anne and her bloody rose. I tried to think of anyone I could push him into falling in love with instead, but the only girl he had any kind of feelings for was Margot, and that wouldn’t do, I mean Margot was Margot, even Giles hadn’t tried. The one thing beautiful about her was this lovely soft skin, but when I said that to her once she laughed and said it came from working up to her neck in flour, which I wished she hadn’t actually, it kept me awake nights wondering what she’d taste like. But André never thought of her that way, he liked her because she used to gob in the pies she made for the soldiers. He wasn’t going to go falling in love with Margot.
I think the truth is he’d already decided to fall in love with Mlle Anne and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I did my best to keep him busy with fencing and stuff and changed the subject every time it looked like he might mention her, but none of it was any good. That evening he said casually ‘When does Jean-Marie next come on duty?’ and looked hard at the wall like he wasn’t in the least interested in the answer. I said ‘Oh, not for a couple of days. Why?’ He looked at the floor instead and said ‘Oh, just wondering.’
Jean-Marie Mercier
I enjoyed guard duty at the Hermitage, it was always very sociable. I was particularly looking forward to today because Jacques was spending time with his family for Christmas, so André would be especially glad of my company. I thought we might play boules.
Only I hadn’t even reached the steps when Jacques himself came hurrying towards me, and began steering me forcefully away and down the track to the stream. I said ‘What’s happened? Is anything wrong with André?’ but he only pushed me along more urgently and said grimly ‘Not yet. But he’s going to ask you about that linen from the Château, he’s going to ask you about Jeanette.’
I saw at once what he was afraid of. Stefan had already said quite unequivocally that if I allowed Jeanette within a mile of André he would personally do something very nasty. I sat down rather abruptly and said ‘What shall I do?’
‘Lie,’ said Jacques, really quite bluntly. ‘Tell him she’s dead or left the Saillie, tell him what you like, but don’t let him think he can see her or talk to her.’
I knew what was at stake, but I’m honestly not very good at lying. I said ‘He might find out.’
‘He won’t,’ said Jacques. He sat beside me on the bank and patted my arm reassuringly. ‘He can’t move from the Hermitage, you and me are his eyes and ears, he won’t know anything we don’t tell him.’
I think perhaps I was a little agitated. I said ‘I’ll try, Jacques, honestly I will, but I really don’t know if I can lie to André. He’s been so good to me, I don’t –’
There was movement behind him, and I looked up to see André stepping out from the trees. I realized how loudly I’d been talking, and my tongue seemed to shrivel in my mouth.
He stood and looked down at us, tall, relaxed, his left hip leaning slightly outward to point his sword hilt towards his hand.
‘Hullo,’ he said lightly. His eyes flicked from one to the other of us, and there was a strange little half-smile on his face. For a moment I glimpsed what he might look like to someone who didn’t know him, and it was really rather frightening. ‘Hullo, Jean-Marie. What is it you don’t want to lie to me about?’
I simply couldn’t speak. Jacques scrambled to his feet and said ‘It’s nothing, André, it’s just …’
André didn’t even look at him. He said ‘I was speaking to Jean-Marie.’
The hurt on Jacques’ face was quite terrible. I said quickly ‘It’s nothing, it’s only we don’t know what’s best for you.’
André said ‘Why don’t you let me decide?’
I felt dreadful. I couldn’t look up at him, I could only see his legs stretching above me, but I didn’t dare stand and face him as Jacques had done. Then his legs seemed to foreshorten in front of me, he was crouching down to my level and looking in my face, and it was still André whom I loved.
He said ‘It’s all right, Jean-Marie, don’t be upset. Just tell me and everything will be fine.’
I said miserably ‘But you want to know about the linen and Jeanette.’
‘Jeanette?’ he said. ‘Is she the maid who gave it to you?’
I explained. She wasn’t really a maid, you see, she was an independent dressmaker who used to make clothes for the ladies at the Château, only they couldn’t afford dresses now, so she pretended to be a lady’s maid just to go on seeing them.
André’s eyes seemed to widen as I talked. ‘What a splendid lady. Could you arrange for me to meet her, do you think?’
I knew this was the moment I was meant to lie, but I honestly couldn’t do it, I felt my face quite throbbing with heat. I turned in distress to Jacques, and he took a deep breath and said ‘It’s not Jean-Marie’s fault. It’s Stefan’s.’
‘Stefan?’ said André.
Jacques nodded firmly. ‘He said no one was to talk to you about the Château.’
‘He did what?’
Jacques explained Stefan had only meant it for André’s own good because he didn’t want him upset, but André didn’t seem to take it very well. He stared hard at the ground and his breath came out in snorts like a little bull.
At last he said ‘All right, I understand. Stefan thinks I’m so stupid I’ll go trying to rescue people who don’t need rescuing. But you don’t think that, do you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Jacques quickly.
‘Then you won’t mind my meeting Jeanette, will you?’
Poor Jacques. He swallowed and said ‘No, not at all. We’ll set it up right away.’
Jacques Gilbert
There’s a little glade in the Dax-Verdâme woods with a fallen tree in the middle, and we arranged to meet Jeanette there on New Year’s Eve. I remember waiting in the December sunshine and feeling sort of nervous, like I was going into a fencing bout with someone I’d never met. I watched Jeanette walking towards us in a yellow and black dress that made her look like a giant wasp, and had this awful urge just to scoop up the boy and run.
She looked harmless enough when she got closer, she had frizzy blonde hair, bright pink cheeks, and a pointed chin so tiny her smile had to wrap round the corners, but her eyes were bright and sharp like she saw more than you’d think, and I guessed from the first she wasn’t going to be easy.
I was right. She began a bit timidly, and was obviously hugely in awe of the boy, but the minute she started talking about the hostages she warmed up till there was no stopping her.
There were three of them. There was Florian, who was seventeen, Colette, who was sixteen, and Anne, who’d turned fifteen last week. They were all cooped up together in the Château, and that’s where they’d been living ever since the soldiers came, more than two years ago.
‘But why?’ said André. ‘What can the Spaniards possibly want with them all this time?’
‘Well may you ask, Sieur,’ said Jeanette. ‘Mlle Anne says her father would pay the ransom if he could, but he’s clearly not a penny to spare.’
I don’t think Jeanette believed that actually, and neither did I. Everyone said the Baron was mean.
‘Then surely in humanity they must let them go,’ said André. ‘If they’re no use, why hold on to them?’
Jeanette seemed to realize for the first time how young he really was. She said gently ‘Well, Don Francisco says it’s a matter of principle. He says if hostages are let go every time people refuse to pay, why would anyone ever pay at all?’
There was no answer to that, and even André knew it. After a moment he said ‘But they’re looked after all right? They’re comfortable?’
I said quickly ‘M. Pollet says they’re very comfortable, he says they’re in their own apartments.’ I stared really hard at Jeanette as I said it, I tried to make her understand.
But Jeanette wasn’t M. Pollet, she didn’t even flinch. She held my gaze and said levelly ‘That’s right, Monsieur, they’re in their poor dead mother’s rooms. My ladies share their mother’s bed, M. du Pré sleeps in the dressing room, and they live the rest of their lives in the little parlour.’
‘They can’t go out at all?’ said André. His head was down, like he felt ashamed to look at the trees and the sunshine that was clear and bright around us.
‘Oh no, Sieur,’ said Jeanette. ‘But she keeps herself occupied, my Mlle Anne, she sews and she writes, oh, page after page in tiny little writing to save the paper. She used to play the harp too, but the soldiers took that last year.’
I couldn’t believe Jeanette was so stupid, she ought to have seen that was bound to upset the boy, and of course it did, he looked up at once. ‘The soldiers are robbing them? They’ve got as little as that, and the soldiers are robbing them?’
‘Well, not to say robbing, exactly,’ said Jeanette. ‘Don Miguel said there was to be no looting, and strictly speaking there hasn’t been, but of course there are other ways.’
‘What other ways?’ said André bleakly.
‘Well, the food, Sieur. In the beginning it came out of the Château kitchens, same as the officers had, and no questions asked. Then the guards said they could only have the soup the servants had, though they were welcome to exchange goods for extra if they wanted. And so of course they do, Sieur, not that they get value for it, nothing like. There was Madame’s lavender bowl from her dressing table, a very beautiful thing, cut glass and solid silver, and very precious to the girls because it had been their mother’s, but they only got three meat meals for that, then it was back to the soup and having to sell something else if they wanted more. They’ve precious little left now, Sieur.’
He leant against a tree, and I wondered if his back was hurting him. ‘The linen. They could have sold that.’
‘Oh no, Sieur, that was my Mlle Anne’s wedding linen, they’d have kept that as long as they could. But she was happy to part with it for you, Sieur, it was quite her own suggestion.’
I began to realize Jeanette wasn’t being stupid at all, she knew exactly what she was doing and she was bloody good at it too.
The boy shifted against his tree. ‘But they’re being robbed, surely they can report it to the officers.’
‘The officers,’ said Jeanette. Her mouth sort of squirmed a second and I knew she’d only just not spat. ‘Oh, the senior ones are all right, Sieur, but what do they know what goes on when they’re not there? It’s the regular soldiers have the keeping of them, and not likely to take kindly to reports behind their backs. As for the junior officers, well, they’re trouble of a different kind.’
André had his arms folded, but I noticed how tightly his hands were gripping them. ‘What kind of
trouble?’
Jeanette’s hands were starting to twist in her dress, and she seemed uneasy.
‘Well, it was that dinner for old Don Francisco, Sieur, the young officers were very taken with Mlle Colette, and now they’re in and out all the time, sniffing round her like tom-cats. There’s been nothing worse yet, Don Miguel having given strict instructions they’re not to be harmed, but he spends all his time in Dax since the governor came, so who’s to protect my ladies I don’t know.’
The boy had gone very white. ‘The guards …’
‘Them,’ said Jeanette scornfully. ‘They’re no better. There’s one Mlle Anne calls the “Slug”, and she doesn’t know it, Sieur, but he watches her, I’ve seen him at it. I’ve known him stand and watch her in the mirror while I’m brushing her hair.’
André nodded like he was deep in thought, and slowly swivelled his body round to face me. He said under his breath ‘We have to get them out.’
I’d known all along he’d say that, so had Stefan, that’s why we’d tried to stop him ever hearing this story. It couldn’t be done, the Château was impregnable, but he couldn’t be André and not want to try all the same. I thought I could still limit the damage, there was nothing wrong with saying we’d try, then quietly giving up when he saw it was impossible. I tried to look keen and said ‘Of course, but don’t promise, you mustn’t promise, you know how hard it could be.’
He nodded gravely and turned back to Jeanette. She was gazing up at him expectantly, and I bet she’d heard every word.
He said ‘Well, we must try to help them, mustn’t we, Mademoiselle?’
She didn’t so much as blink, but then she wouldn’t, it’s what she’d been after all along. She said simply ‘I knew you would, Sieur. My Mlle Anne always said so.’
He couldn’t resist it. ‘She’s mentioned me?’
‘Oh, bless you, Sieur, a score of times. She was that distressed to hear you were hurt, she cried, poor lady. She prays for you every night.’