by A L Berridge
‘The Seigneur,’ I said.
He nodded, pleased, a grown-up approving a child’s intelligence. ‘Of course the Seigneur.’
I think there was a part of him actually glad to tell me. He’d almost told the truth lots of times, it’s like he’d been finding it harder and harder to keep it in. He’d called me a bastard to my face.
He started to reach in his pocket, then stopped and raised his eyebrows in a kind of exaggerated way of asking permission. I felt embarrassed, it was all wrong him asking me, I just nodded, yes, yes. He took out his pipe and box, and lit up.
He said ‘I fell in love with your Mother when she was thirteen years old. Everyone did, she was the most beautiful thing you ever saw.’ He looked oddly young when he said that, he had a look in his face that reminded me of Little Pierre. ‘I’d nothing then. I was stable boy, same as you, but my dad worked the Pagnié farm, he was nothing. Not that Nell was much more, she worked as maid up at the Manor, but I courted her like a lady all the same. Never laid a finger on her, never so much as kissed her, I did it properly and by the Church, because that’s what she deserved.’
He took his pipe out of his mouth and spat.
‘Then he took her. Your father. He came across her one day in one of the bedrooms, fancied a bit of it, and took her just like that. That’s how you were made, boy. Droit de seigneur.’
I said ‘I don’t believe it. She liked him, she’d never have felt like that if it was how you said. I think he loved her.’
‘Oh call it what you like, boy,’ said Father, waving it away with his pipe. ‘Your Mother deluded herself long enough, why shouldn’t you? What does it matter anyway? There she was at fifteen with a baby on the way. Your father couldn’t help even if he’d wanted to. He was sixteen back then, old enough to marry, but old Michel got himself killed, Hugo was off to Paris as Comte de Vallon, so Antoine was our new Seigneur, and his mother betrothed him to a rich woman in Paris.
‘And there was the snag. In the normal run of things a bastard or two wouldn’t bother the Rolands, Hugo had plenty in Paris, but the Delacroix girl came from different stock. Nothing noble about them, only rich and religious, and if they’d found out about Nell there might have been no wedding, and no money to pay Hugo’s debts.
‘The old Comtesse came down herself to make me a proposal. I married Nell and brought up the child as my own, and in return I got the job of stable-master for the whole Ancre estate. The fools. They were offering me everything I’d ever dreamed of, and the only price I had to pay was your Mother coming to me second hand with another man’s child in her belly. So I married her, God help me, the Seigneur married his rich girl, the Comtesse went back to Paris with no one the wiser, and there we all were.
‘Then you came. You had that dark hair right from the start, like an animal, a devil, nothing to do with us. When Nell suckled you it was like seeing another man at her breast. I used to dream of smothering you. I’d watch you sleeping and think about pressing your face into the crib until you died.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ I couldn’t look at him, I didn’t want him seeing my face.
‘I don’t know,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It’s hard to kill a baby. But there was never any doubt whose son you were, not from the start. You liked the horses, but you didn’t want to groom them, you wanted to use them. You wanted to play with swords, you wanted to go for a soldier. You used to sneak off and watch the Seigneur fencing, I saw you, more than once. You started carving little animals, and God knows how you picked that up, it was something he did too. Maybe you watched him. Maybe you and your mother spent time with him I never even knew about. I used to wonder.
‘Then we had my Pierre, and things could have been so perfect, but she went as nurse to the Seigneur’s brat instead. I met you once, the four of you. Her carrying that mewling brat in her arms, the Seigneur walking beside her like her husband, and you running along behind, with him sometimes reaching out to ruffle your hair. He was always touching your hair, because it was his. You looked like a family.
‘I stopped her going, but that wasn’t the end of it. You were always there, you were going to inherit everything. I thought if you went for a soldier you might be killed, then everything would be the way it should be. The Seigneur didn’t need you, he had a boy of his own. Nobody wanted you. You should have died.’
His voice was all conversational, like this was just a story he was telling me. I suppose that was natural, I mean it wasn’t new to him. Just to me.
He said ‘When the Spaniards came, I thought you really had, and for the first time I was free. I’d picked up a few bits and pieces at the Manor, I was going to take my wife and children, walk out of the Gate, and find somewhere we could start again. Then suddenly there you were. All those good men who died that day, but you came out of it without a scratch. If you’d been alone, I don’t know, I might have killed you myself, but you brought that boy with you, and the whole nightmare began again.’
‘It was your idea,’ I said. ‘You can’t blame me for that, you wanted him.’
‘Oh, I did, I really did. And not just the money. That man’s son reduced to living in my barn and dressing in your old clothes, depending on me for the very food he ate. I liked that. I wanted to watch him going under, I wanted him degraded, just as I’d degraded you. I used to take a lot of pleasure with you in the old days, I’d let your father see you spitting and swearing and filthy, with the marks of my fist on your face, because you were my lad now. I thought I’d do it with André too. But you didn’t degrade him, you looked up to him, and the brat didn’t spit on you, he started to lift you up.
‘And you got more like him every day. You started to talk like him, act like him, think like him. The bastard was dead, but I had two of his sons right in my house, looking down on me, treating my own son like a servant. I’d come home and there you’d be, the two of you with Nell like you were the family, and I was the outsider.
‘It was better when you left. Then that day at the church. You walked in wearing clothes like your father’s, your hair dressed like his, I saw the expression on Nell’s face. Then in came the other one, same clothes, same walk, same arrogance, and he went and sat in the Seigneur’s place. Her face then. When she looked at you, she saw Antoine’s son. When she looked at him, she saw Antoine. I should have killed him years ago. He was dangerous, he always was, I needed to put a stop to it right away.’
I remembered that day. I remembered him being nice to me in the churchyard after the service, and how happy I’d been.
‘You were planning this even then?’
‘Of course,’ he said, looking at me in surprise. ‘That’s when I decided. I knew I’d got to make it up with you, and persuade you to come and visit, I was prepared to say and do anything, but I didn’t need to, you fell for it right away.’
‘And that’s why you wanted me at Christmas? And those other times? All those things you said, they were all lies?’
‘That’s right,’ he said patiently. ‘I did hesitate at times, don’t think it’s been easy, but it had been so good that last year, just the four of us, I had to protect that. I still do.’
I looked up then, because his voice had changed, and I saw he’d picked up the pistol from my side. I never even saw him do it.
Jean-Marie Mercier
There were six soldiers, and they all went into the cottage, we watched them from the paddock. They didn’t draw their swords or make any attempt to cover the back entrance, they simply walked in, and Stefan called them a disgrace to a fine army. André was less sure. He said it looked as if the Spaniards couldn’t believe we were really here yet, and were planning to sit and wait for us to arrive. When five minutes passed and they still hadn’t come out, we thought he must be right.
We set off at once for the Ancre stables. There wasn’t a great deal of urgency, because Jacques quite obviously knew the danger already, but we did need to intercept him before he could walk back into the ambush at the cottage.
André led us up a little track to a slope from which you could look down on the Manor. We peered rather carefully round the last bend, and saw them sitting out in the open in front of the stables, but the older man had a pistol in his hands, and it was pointed straight at Jacques.
All the tension was back in André’s face. ‘Can you take him, Jean?’
I had to say no. I could make the shot, but I’d have to step clear round the bend to do it, and Jacques’ father needed less than a second to pull the trigger.
‘All right,’ said André. ‘We’ll go round the other way.’
He led us off the track and through the wooded undergrowth towards a copse on the other side of the stables, where I could shoot without coming out of cover.
As long as Pierre Gilbert didn’t shoot first.
Jacques Gilbert
I said ‘What do you want with that?’
‘Think about it from my point of view. I wouldn’t want this story getting about.’
‘I’m not going to tell anyone,’ I said bitterly. ‘Why would I? The Rolands don’t want me, do they?’
He laughed. ‘You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you? To be a noble bastard? Poor Jacques. You even ask them, they’ll drown you like a farmyard cat.’
‘I’m not going to ask them, am I?’ I said fiercely. ‘Do you think I want to be somewhere I’m not wanted?’
‘Then this is the kindest thing, isn’t it?’ He pulled the dog back into the firing position, and I realized the gun must be already primed. I could still flick up the sword in time, but there was this awful kind of lethargy coming over me, like the sword would be just too heavy to lift.
He said ‘You do understand, don’t you?’
The awful thing was I did. I could see how dreadful it must have been for him all these years. When he was speaking, I almost forgot it was me he was talking about, it felt like someone else, someone it was all right for him to hate.
I said ‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘Wasn’t mine either,’ he said. ‘Neither of us asked for you to be born.’
‘No,’ I said. I wished I hadn’t been. I sat there with fat tears rolling down my chin, and wished I’d never been born at all. I rubbed my sleeve across my eyes, and the sword slipped and ran down his arm.
‘Careful,’ he said mildly, and put it aside.
I said ‘I’m sorry,’ and laid the sword down on the grass.
He watched me. ‘What’s the matter, don’t you want to kill me any more?’
I shook my head.
‘What do you want then?’
I wanted him to comfort me.
He said ‘Look at the state of you. My Pierre never cries.’
‘He never needed to cry, you were always nice to him.’
A little flash of anger flared up in his eyes. ‘You resented that, did you? You were going to inherit everything that should have been my son’s, and you wanted me to like you as well? I hated you from the moment you were born.’
Everything was very quiet. There weren’t even any birds.
I said ‘You should have told me.’
‘Why?’
‘At least I’d have understood. I thought it was my fault, I thought it was me.’
‘It was you.’
‘It was my father.’
‘Same thing,’ he said.
I felt something strange washing inside me, like a kind of relief.
I said ‘It’s not. That’s why you didn’t kill me, isn’t it? When I was a baby? Because you couldn’t blame a baby for something its father did.’
‘You’re not a baby now.’
‘It was my father you really hated. When you beat me, it was my father you wanted to hurt, not me.’
‘Was it?’
‘Yes.’ I was suddenly so sure. I could see my whole life all in one piece, and for the first time everything in it made sense. ‘You didn’t want to hurt me at all. I remember times you were nice to me. When we started working in the stables together, and you showed me how to do it, we were close then, weren’t we?’
He ran a hand through his hair and stared at me. ‘Jesus Christ. You don’t understand a word I’ve said.’
‘But I do, that’s what I’m saying. All these years I thought you didn’t love me, but you did, you proved it by not killing me. You didn’t even want to kill me this time, did you? You said it yourself, you thought they’d let me go. You don’t hate me at all.’
‘Poor Jacques,’ he said. ‘Do you know why I gave you that name? Because that’s all you were, the extra one I never wanted. I saved my own name for my own son. I never gave a fuck what happened to you.’
‘You must have. I couldn’t be wrong about my whole life, could I?’ I knew that, I knew that, it was singing inside me like a bird. ‘There were loads of times you cared. When I was tiny, and you used to throw me up in the air and catch me, don’t you remember? Then later, you’d put me on your shoulders and run with me, ‘Bransle des Chevaux’, you must remember that. You can’t tell me you never loved me. You can’t.’
‘Is that what you really want?’
‘I want you to be honest,’ I said. ‘No one’s ever going to know about any of this, we can say what we like. Can’t you just admit you loved me?’
He looked up, and an extraordinary expression came over his face. I don’t know how to describe it except it was happy.
‘Did you love me, Jacques?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I always did.’
‘The Seigneur’s son, and he loves me. Now there’s a thing.’
‘Tell me,’ I said.
His shoulders moved, I leant forward for the hug, then there were two shots one after the other, and a scorching pain at my waist and I fell back. I scrambled up, and there was my Father lying on his side, half his face just a mess of blood and bone, and he was dead.
Jean-Marie Mercier
With the pistol where it was, it had to be a head shot. We so hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but I’m afraid it was. Jacques’s father suddenly gave him this awful, evil, triumphant look, then I saw him bringing up the gun. Jacques wasn’t even looking. André said ‘Now!’ and I fired.
I was only just in time. His finger must have been already pressing the trigger, but my shot knocked him sideways and the pistol ball only just grazed Jacques’ side, instead of going into his stomach where his father had aimed it.
Jacques screamed ‘Daddy!’ and grabbed his father up from the ground, but I knew he was dead, I must have shot half his face away.
I think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.
Stefan Ravel
Poor Jacques, down in the dust cradling his worthless father in his arms and howling like Martin Gauthier’s dog. André ran down to him straight away, but Jacques turned to him almost gibbering, saying ‘It’s my dad, it’s my dad, it’s my dad,’ over and over again, his voice getting higher and higher until André got his arms round his neck to quiet him. Then Jacques laid the body down carefully as if it was precious, and screamed at him ‘Why?’
I didn’t hear what André said, but it seemed to have some effect, and at least that awful howling stopped. André knelt and took him in his arms, and after a while Jacques was silent, and there were just those two dark heads close together, and the faint murmur of André’s voice, the words indistinguishable in the distance.
Marcel was speaking. ‘We have to move, that shot will bring the dons out of the cottage.’
I expect they’d heard the screaming too, it was certainly loud enough. I hauled myself up out of it, left Mercier twitching in shock, and the two of us went to join the happy little party in front of the stables.
Jacques heard us coming, and wrenched away to huddle over the body. André was left kneeling alone in the dirt, but he lifted his head when Marcel spoke, nodded obediently and climbed to his feet. His eyes were red, and his face wet with tears, but he didn’t hesitate and went loping off at once towards the bend.
There was the tramp of b
oots coming up the track. Marcel said ‘Get him out of it,’ and ran after André. The kid peered round the bend, signalled ‘Two,’ and drew his sword.
Jacques seemed quite content to crouch in the open clutching his dead father and not caring if he got killed or not, but there wasn’t time to fuck about, so I grabbed up his sword then wrestled him back to the trees. I slung him down on the grass beside Mercier and drew my pistol. I’d lent my sword to Marcel, who seemed to have mislaid his own, but I can’t say I was worried. Only two of them, and Marcel and André lying in wait, it didn’t look a problem.
And there I was wrong, dear Abbé, which goes to show how even the most experienced soldier needs to be reminded not to underestimate the enemy. There was only a rustle to warn me, and then they were on us, another two of the bastards. They’d done exactly what we’d done, and crept round the other way.
I had my pistol levelled and fired in one movement, bringing the first man down. Beside me Mercier jerked up his musket for the other, but there was only that horrible little click which is all you can expect when you’ve forgotten to reload your bloody gun. I couldn’t believe it. After all the training I’d given him, he’d forgotten that most basic thing.
It was too late now, the bastard was already on us, sword slicing down at Mercier. I parried him with the pistol barrel, then ducked my head and charged him, there was nothing else to do. The bastard jumped back to bring his sword up, which would have been the end of me if Jacques hadn’t come to himself and stuck his own blade up and in the don’s thigh. He crashed down on one knee, and Jacques slashed out at him, all but severed the man’s throat with one blow, then slashed again the other way, he was for cutting the poor sod to ribbons. I pulled him back after the second cut, because the man was more than dead, and I didn’t see the need for mutilation. He turned and glared as if he couldn’t remember who I was.