by A L Berridge
‘No,’ he said, fingering it doubtfully. ‘No.’
I scooped up my own, scrunched it back behind my neck and said ‘Look, if you tied it back, no one would know …’
‘Maybe,’ he said, brightening and pushing his own hair back. ‘Maybe it’s long enough for …’
His voice trailed off, and I looked sharply from my reflection to his.
The colour was draining from his face, but not so much I couldn’t see what he was seeing. Not when it was literally staring back at me, something we’d never, ever seen before, the two of us side by side.
Colin Lefebvre
So there we all were, right, sitting outside the Corbeaux, having a quiet drink, discussing how we were going to send off the Seigneur next day. Mercier’s first day out and about since the battle, as it happened. Hadn’t got his wooden leg yet, nothing but a stump and a stick, had to be carried about in a chair, but he was doing all right, Mercier, lot of respect on account of what he’d done that day, people coming and clapping him on the back all the while. Doing all right in other ways too, Seigneur getting his family business set up again good as new. Marin Aubert said Mercier’s leg must have been the most expensive in Picardie.
Someone else perky that day was Leroux. Going to be verderer at Ancre now, and well pleased about it too, him never being able to stand the Baron. Not so pleased with the state of old Gauthier’s cottage, if you ask me, filled with rotting animals from all accounts, old Jacques said he could still hear Leroux’s shout of ‘Jesus Christ!’ when they opened the door. Not that he’d need to clean it himself, that was plain enough. There he was, hand in Big Margot’s, and expression on him like a cow with bloat. Told us they were getting married, and about time too in my opinion, a man couldn’t so much as cross a field without falling over those two at it somewhere, about time they did it regular and with the bed shriven.
Still no one feeling much like celebrating now the Seigneur’s going. Knew he’d be off some time, stood to reason, but him gone, we’d have a new Steward in, they’d be wanting the cens again, say nothing of the taille and the gabelle. Naturally we’d miss him himself, not saying we wouldn’t, done a fair old lot for Dax one way or another, everyone sorry to see him go. Then we heard someone laughing behind us, and there was Ravel, dressed up like a soldier on account of being off to Arras in the morning, and finding us all very funny.
‘Just listen to yourselves,’ he said, sitting down on the last chair and spreading his boots right under the table. ‘Fawning over a sprig of the nobility who’s probably already forgotten you exist. The sooner we’re shot of him the better.’
Bit of a nasty silence after that one. We all knew Ravel had taken against Seigneur for some reason, but he could be a right touchy bastard if you’ll forgive my language, so no one said nothing, just watched as he lit his pipe. Then there was this odd rumbling sound, and there was that Bernard Rouet looking constipated, and we suddenly realized he was going to speak. Didn’t happen often, so we all looked at him expectantly, then he looked right at Ravel and said ‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’
Ravel was that startled he bit clean through his pipe, sat looking at the pieces as if he couldn’t see how it happened. Leroux started laughing, and Margot, she put her meaty great arm round Rouet’s shoulders and looked at Ravel like to say ‘Argue with that if you dare.’
Did dare though, this was Ravel. He said ‘With which intellectual contribution to the discussion I think we can consider the subject closed. Now is it worth my staying for a drink, or are you just going to witter on about André?’
Silence again, with nothing but that Rouet still rumbling ‘fuck off’ like he’d got stuck and couldn’t get any further, then Mercier pulled himself upright in his chair, looked Ravel smack in the eye and said ‘You didn’t think so little of him by the gorge,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten that?’
Ravel didn’t flicker so much as an eyelash. He said ‘Blessed are the meek?’ he said, which is the Bible, as you know. He said ‘I took your advice, Mercier. I asked, and I didn’t get.’
Meant bugger all to Mercier, looked quite confused to me, but he held his ground for all that, kept his head high and said ‘Well, it can’t have been possible, that’s all.’
‘Oh, it was possible,’ said Ravel, standing himself up to go. ‘No, that debt’s paid. The next time I meet André de Roland we’ll be on equal terms. And you know what? I’m quite looking forward to it.’ Crammed his hat on his head, nodded at us under its filthy old brim, then turned and took himself off, jaunty as a magpie, swaggering away to war.
Best thing that could have happened, you ask me. Jacques said there’d been talk of him joining them in the army, and he could see as well as me that wouldn’t do. Under Occupation’s one thing, real life quite another. Sieur of Dax being friends with a tanner, well, I ask you. In the Bible, isn’t it? Everyone in their place.
Jacques Gilbert
He leant against the wall with his hands in his pockets, and I told him everything.
He was kind about it, he didn’t blame me at all. When I said about Father telling me, he looked up and said ‘That must have been an awful shock,’ and I said eagerly ‘Yes, it was, that’s why I was so upset,’ but he just repeated ‘an awful shock’, and went quiet to allow me to go on. When I’d finished there was just this silence.
At last he jerked himself away from the wall and started to finish his packing. There wasn’t much of it, just the few bits and pieces we’d brought from the Hermitage, his old things from the barn.
He said ‘I should have known really. I knew my father loved you, he always said I should be more like you. He used to ask if I’d seen you, and how you were. He was always asking that.’
His voice was trailing a little, and I saw he’d picked up his picture, the one of his parents that opened like a little book. ‘Sometimes, when you weren’t at the stables, I used to pretend you had been, because he always liked it if I could say I’d seen you.’ He looked at the picture a moment, shut it gently, and put it in his pack. ‘It wasn’t really lying, more like telling a story.’
‘Was that why you used to come round so often? Ask me all those questions?’
‘No,’ he said, and looked at me in surprise. ‘No, I did that for me. I liked to watch you. I wanted to see what you were doing right and I wasn’t.’
I closed my eyes. That poor lonely little boy, following me round to find out my secret, and never knowing it wasn’t his fault, any of it, only that his father didn’t love his mother and never could, not the way he loved mine. The whole thing was so bloody unfair.
I said ‘He did love you, André, anyone could see that.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said vaguely, as if it didn’t matter. ‘He was fond of me.’ He picked up his wooden horse and stroked its nose, showing it to me with something like pride. ‘He made this for me himself, did I tell you that?’
I felt a hard lump coming up in my throat. I knew I must never, ever tell him he’d made one for me too.
I said ‘That’s right. And I wasn’t that important to him really, I mean he gave me away, didn’t he?’
He packed away the horse. ‘He couldn’t very well do that with me. They needed an heir to inherit the title.’ He looked up at me suddenly, and I saw his eyes were shining wet, but he didn’t cry, he was André, Chevalier de Roland, and he didn’t cry. ‘It could have been you, don’t you realize that? If he’d married your Mother, it would have been you.’
‘He couldn’t, it was his duty …’
‘It was his duty to do what was right,’ said André. He blinked away the tears, and reached for his books. ‘We can’t have needed the money that badly, he loved your Mother, he ought to have married her. None of this need have happened.’
‘But then you wouldn’t have been born at all.’
‘No,’ he said, and there was something funny in his voice. ‘I wouldn’t, would I?’
I sat on the bed and watched helplessly as he started to shove his boo
ks into the pack, just stuffing them in like they didn’t mean anything any more. It’s an awful feeling when you know something’s done that can’t ever be undone, it felt like my whole insides were sinking slowly to the floor. I’d have given anything just to go back an hour and not stand beside him in that mirror, not let any of it happen at all.
I said miserably ‘I’m sorry, it’s a bloody mess.’
André started to close up his pack. ‘Well, we’ll just have to put it right, that’s all.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve got to acknowledge you for a start, anything else is just wrong.’
‘But your grandmother won’t do it, they wanted it hushed up.’
‘She’ll do it,’ he said grimly. ‘She must. My mother’s dead now, there’s no reason to keep it secret any more.’
I felt panic tightening me up inside like indigestion. ‘We can’t tell anyone, your grandmother would hate me for it, there isn’t any need …’
‘Of course there’s a need.’ He put his pack on the chair, then saw he’d left his tennis ball out, hesitated, then picked it up. ‘You can’t have the title of course, but you’re the oldest son, you’ve got to have rights.’
It was mad, I mean things aren’t done that way, it was as stupid as saying his father ought to have married my Mother. I said ‘André, bastards don’t have rights.’
He threw the ball up in his hand and caught it. ‘This isn’t about the law, it’s a matter of honour, you should know that.’
I said ‘I do bloody know that, that’s why I didn’t tell you. But there’s nothing we can do, and that’s all right, I don’t blame anybody, I just want things to go on like they are.’
‘I don’t,’ he said. His face had an odd, pinched look like it did when he was so ill. ‘I don’t want anything that’s not morally mine.’
I felt like he’d stabbed me. ‘And you think I do?’
He looked down at the ball in his hand and started squeezing it like it was somebody’s neck. ‘All these years you’ve been mucking out stables when you should have been living like me. It’s only right for you to want it.’
The panic was almost choking me, I had this stupid urge to keep moving my head, twisting my neck to make it go away. ‘Well, I don’t. Why would I? I’ve never wanted it.’
He went on squeezing that bloody ball. ‘You don’t want to be a gentleman?’ For a moment he almost sounded like my Father.
I said ‘You’re already making me that, aren’t you? I’m your aide, and that’s a gentleman’s job, isn’t it?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, yes, but …’
‘You’re giving me a nice house to live in, and proper clothes to wear, what else could I possibly want? You’ve even given me the best horse in your stable, you’ve given me Tonnerre. What could I possibly have if you went and acknowledged me that I haven’t already got?’
He stopped squeezing the ball and started picking at the bit of rag sticking out. ‘You don’t understand, it’s about status. I’m talking about people recognizing you as a gentleman in your own right.’
‘I know what you’re talking about!’ I said, and suddenly I couldn’t sit any more, it’s like I was getting angry. I got up and tried to pace about the room, but it was too small, I just ended up with my head in the curtains and had to turn round. ‘I know about being a proper gentleman, I’ve heard all about it from M. Gauthier.’
‘Have you?’
‘Don’t you dare laugh at that,’ I said. ‘He loved you, M. Gauthier, he knew what it took to be real nobility, and he said you’d got it all.’
‘I’m not laughing,’ he said, and actually he wasn’t. He chucked the tennis ball on the bed and said ‘What did Martin say I needed?’
I felt a bit stupid suddenly. ‘Honour, courage, and the use of the sword.’
He stared down at the bed. ‘And that was just for me, was it?’
‘Well, it wasn’t bloody me. How could it be? I can’t live up to that stuff, people will laugh at me if I even try. Please, can’t we just stay as we are? I mean nothing’s really changed …’
‘Everything’s changed,’ he said, and looked me right in the face. ‘You’re my father’s son. I can’t just pretend you’re not.’
There was something distant in his voice I couldn’t bear, something cold in his face that was worse. I sat down again and felt my world sort of cracking around me.
‘All right, then you can’t. But it’s just between us, isn’t it, no one else needs to know.’
He sighed, and ran his hands through his hair. ‘For the moment, maybe. We can’t do anything till we’ve talked to my grandmother, and there’s your Mother, she needs to be warned. But I can’t just leave it, you must understand that.’
I did really, I could see it would be unbearable for him if he didn’t. I’d never have been able to take over Father’s old job knowing it really ought to be Little Pierre’s.
I said unsteadily ‘As long as we’re still together, that’s all.’
He reached out for his cloak, and started to sling it round his shoulders.
I said ‘Where are you …?’
‘I’m just going out for a while,’ he said. ‘Just some fresh air.’
Somewhere away from me. I said miserably ‘Are you angry with me?’
He paused at the door. ‘How could I be? It’s not your fault, is it?’
He opened the door and went out.
I don’t know how long he was gone, but it felt like hours. I had time to pack up my own stuff, and I did it slowly and carefully, folding everything properly, trying to pretend everything was normal and nothing had really changed at all. I had time to go and have a last drink with Colin, I had time to come back and be nervous outside the door and hope the boy was feeling better, then come in and see he still wasn’t back. I had time to put myself to bed and lie there feeling miserable and angry with my Mother and the Comtesse and even André himself, because it’s like they were all blaming me for being who I was, and it wasn’t my fault at all.
I’d been doing it a long time when I heard him come back in. He was creeping about in the dark like he didn’t want to talk, so I tried to breathe regularly and pretend to be asleep. I felt him climb under the blankets beside me, but he didn’t rest against me as usual, he just lay turned away and stayed very still. His back felt sort of rigid, and his shirt was cold. There was a strange, dank smell on it too, it tingled in my nose, then slowly opened into a memory of a day four years ago, the squelch of mud under my shoes and the crack of an open door beside me, a glimpse of white stone shelves stretching back into darkness, and two shrouded bundles being laid side by side. He’d been back to the Ancre vault. He’d been to see his father.
For a moment I felt a stab of jealousy, because I’d like to have seen him too, I’d never been allowed in the vault at the funeral, and that wasn’t fair, because he was my father too. Then I caught myself actually grudging the boy the last tiny thing he’d got left for himself, and a wave of self-loathing went over me like cold water. He’d given me everything. He shared everything he had with me, he’d been doing it for years. He’d made sure I had new clothes when he did, he’d even got me a rapier like his own so I could wear a dress sword like a gentleman. Even now Tempête was dead he was only taking the colt so I could keep his father’s warhorse for my own. He hadn’t held back a single thing, all he had was being who he was, and now I’d even taken that too.
It had to stop. I’d got to do something to show him it didn’t have to be like that, he didn’t owe me anything, I wasn’t trying to take his place. I knew he’d never feel the same about me, there was nothing to be done about that, but I lay awake all night trying to think how to put the rest of it right.
There was one thing I could do straightaway, which was tiny and trivial but at least would be a start. I waited till the curtains began to look red instead of black, then got up quietly by myself and went out to knock up M. Pollet. It took longer than I’d thought, he insisted on doing i
t all properly, and by the time he’d finished I was terrified I was going to be late. The horses would be waiting in the Square at nine, and the clock was already striking when I came running through the back entrance into the barracks.
André was up and dressed, of course, and looked in a totally filthy mood. I didn’t mind that, actually, it was more like himself, and anything was better than that cold politeness he’d given me last night. He certainly wasn’t polite now, he started snapping as soon as I got in. He was saying ‘Where the hell have you been, don’t you know we’ve got people waiting, I’ve been worried sick, where the hell have you been?’ then he saw my hair and stopped dead.
His face seemed to curl up in distress and his voice dropped into a whisper. He said ‘Oh, Jacques, what have you …?’ then shut his mouth again, because it was obvious what I’d done, I could see it in the mirror behind him. My hair was nice and neat, but M. Pollet had judged it beautifully, and it was at least an inch shorter than André’s.
I said quickly ‘I had to do something. I don’t want to be better than you, I never have, I just want us to be together.’
His eyes looked huge. ‘But, Jacques, I don’t want …’
‘But I do. I’m still your aide, aren’t I? You said I could be, you’re not going to go back on it now, are you?’
He hesitated. ‘Not if it’s really what you want.’
I said firmly ‘It is.’
There was a little tap at the door.
André pulled himself together and said ‘Come in,’ but he was still looking at me.
Bertrand crept in nervously and wondered if we wanted to delay our departure.
André dragged his head round to look at him, then said ‘No. No, we’re coming directly.’
Bertrand looked at me, because of course we ought to be going down first, so I grabbed the bags, turned to André, said formally ‘We’ll be five minutes,’ and shot out the door before he could change his mind.
My confidence was rising as I went outside. It could still be all right, I was going to be allowed to stay with him, I was his aide after all. The courtyard was empty, but I could guess why, I could hear the rumble of the crowd in the Square even through the gate, and knew the whole of Dax was out there to see the boy off. That was right really, that was how it should be, he was the Seigneur.