The Rising Storm

by Dennis Wheatley

  Promptly he resolved that nothing short of actually finding his life in jeopardy would induce him to squeal to Mr. Pitt for help. If there was no escape it would be better to endure a spell of prison, and leave it to Dorset or Hailes to ask for his release when they felt that sufficient time had elapsed for King Louis to be mollified enough to grant him a pardon on normal grounds. But the thought that it was unlikely that the King would be inclined to do so for at least a year was anything but a rosy one.

  For the better part of two hours Roger strove to interest himself again in de Vaudreuil’s books, but he found that his mind was not registering the words he read, and that on their pages horrid visions of thick stone walls with iron grilles set high in them kept intruding themselves, so he decided that he would take advantage of the Count’s permission to go out.

  First he wandered disconsolately for a little while through some of the lofty public rooms and corridors, but their rich furnishings and intricately woven tapestries made no appeal to him today; and he did not even raise or lower his eyes as he passed through the Galerie Henri II, to admire again the exquisite workmanship by which long-dead craftsmen had mirrored the elaborate design of the ceiling—the royal arms of France entwined with the moon-centred cipher of the King’s mistress, the beautiful Diane de Poitiers—by an inlay of rare, richly coloured woods which formed the parquet of the floor.

  After a while he turned back, stood gloomily for a few minutes on the balcony where Madame de Maintenon had induced Louis XIV to sign the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had outlawed all the Protestants in France, then went down the main staircase and out into the garden.

  Still unheeding his surroundings his footsteps carried him round to the Fountain Court, and he noticed idly that a group of ladies at its open end were gathered at the edge of the pond amusing themselves feeding the carp. As he approached one of them turned, caught sight of him and, leaving her companions, began to walk in his direction. Even at that distance he needed no second glance to recognise the lady’s intensely black hair and striking eyebrows as those of the Señorita d’Aranda.

  When they arrived within a few yards of one another she rippled her full skirts of lilac silk in a graceful curtsy and he swept his tricorn hat past the ground in an arc that paralleled his forward-thrust leg. From the instant he had recognised her his quick brain had been speculating on whether she might have good or ill news for him, and how he might gain some advantage from this chance meeting in view of her closeness to the Queen; so it was only on lifting his head from his bow that he noticed a strange little figure that had come to a halt a few feet in her rear.

  It was a boy of about ten, but a boy the like of which Roger had never seen. The child’s eyes and hair were as black as those of the Señorita, his nose was considerably more hooked, and they both had high cheekbones; but there the resemblance ended; his lips were thick and his skin a deep red-brown. He was clad in a kilt and mantle beautifully embroidered with an assortment of strange intricate symbols in rich colours, wore ahead-dress of bright feathers and carried a thin-bladed, dangerous-looking little hatchet stuck in his gilded leather girdle. Although Roger had never set eyes on one before he knew from pictures he had seen that the little fellow must be some kind of Indian from the Americas.

  “Good day, Monsieur de Breuc,” said the Señorita, regarding him with an amused smile. “You seem quite taken aback at the sight of my page. Do you not think him a handsome poppet?”

  It was true enough that the boy had distinction in every line of his thin, eagle-beaked face and proud bearing. Quickly recovering his manners, Roger replied hastily: “Indeed he is, Señorita. I trust you will forgive me for having stared at him, but ’tis the first time I have ever seen one of his race, and it took me by surprise to see a lady like yourself accompanied by such an unusual attendant.”

  She shrugged. “Madame du Barri had her Blackamoor, so why should I not have my Indian? Though fittingly, I feel, her Zamore was a vulgar little imp, whereas my Quetzal is an admirably behaved child and the son of an Aztec Prince.” Turning, she spoke in Spanish to the boy, telling him to make his bow to the handsome gentleman.

  Instead of returning the bow Roger held out his hand English fashion. After a slight hesitation Quetzal placed his small red hand in Roger’s long one, and said something in Spanish to his mistress.

  “What did he say?” Roger asked.

  The Spanish girl gave a low, rich laugh. “He says that he admires your blue eyes, Monsieur, and wishes he had jewels of their colour to put into his head-dress.”

  “Tell him then, please, that I find the velvet blackness of his own surpassed only by your brown ones, Señorita.”

  Her olive complexion coloured a little as she translated. Then she said to Roger: “Our meeting is a happy chance, Monsieur, for but ten minutes back I asked Monsieur de Vaudreuil to seek you out and bring you to me.”

  Roger caught his breath. “Señorita. Spare my suspense, I beg. Can it be that Her Majesty has relented towards me, and that you are the bearer of these happy tidings?”

  She shook her head. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Monsieur; but I bear no message from Her Majesty. I wished to see you again only from the interest that you inspired in me yesterday.”

  To cover his disappointment he bowed; but he had difficulty in keeping it out of his voice as he replied. “I am fortunate indeed, Señorita, in having aroused the interest of a lady so charming as yourself.”

  Fluttering her lace fan to hide another blush, she said with slight hauteur: “I fear that my command of the French language is still far from perfect, and that I expressed myself badly. I refer to my interest in your story, Monsieur.”

  He suppressed a smile, for experience had taught him that where women were concerned interest in such stories of his past as he chose to tell, and in himself, amounted to much the same thing. Again, with a critic’s eye, he took in her features and decided that she was by no means beautiful. Her soft, dark eyes were as large as, but lacked the sparkle of, Georgina’s; her hair was no more lustrous, and in all other points she was by a long way inferior. The malicious might have described her complexion as sallow; her mouth, though full, was not a very good shape, her teeth were slightly uneven and the heavy brows were a mixed blessing, for though they gave her face great character they were somewhat overawing when seen close to.

  “I had not flattered myself that your interest was in any way personal,” Roger declared, to spare her further embarrassment, “but I am entirely at your disposal, Señorita.” Then, offering his arm, he added: “While we converse shall we promenade for a little?”

  She laid her fingers lightly on it and allowed him to lead her away from the group of other young women—who, since their meeting, had covertly been taking more interest in them than in the carp—and round the corner of the Palace theatre into the parterre designed for Louis XIV by his famous gardener, Le Nôtre.

  After a short silence she said: “The principal reason that the story of your running away from home intrigued me so much, Monsieur, is because it would be quite impossible for such a thing to occur in Spain. I mean, of course, for a boy of good family to do such a thing. There children are made much more of by their parents than they are in France, but all the same they are brought up very strictly, and kept under constant supervision until the young men are of an age to go out into the world, and the girls to marry. I think things must be very different in England, but I know little of your customs there. Pray tell me of them.”

  It was a subject that presented no pitfalls, so Roger willingly launched out on an account of the Public School system and the type of life led by boys of the upper classes when they were living at their homes during the holidays.

  The Señorita showed the most intelligent interest in all he had to say and led him on to speak of his own home and his family; then, when she learned that he had an allowance of only £300 a year from his father, she enquired why he had not entered the service of his King to carve o
ut a career for himself.

  Not wishing to give the impression that he was altogether an idle good-for-nothing or, worse, an adventurer, he said that he had a passion for seeing new places and new faces, so travelled for the love of it as far as his means permitted; but that to eke them out and at the same time indulge his taste he had, on occasion, acted for his Government as a special courier, carrying despatches to the Baltic countries and Russia.

  At that her interest quickened still further and she asked if his coming to France had arisen from some commission of that kind.

  He told her that it had not, and that but for his arrest he would have remained entirely his own master for some time; adding the easy lie that, an aunt having left him a nice legacy, he had decided to spend some months making a leisurely tour of the great cities of France with the object of inspecting the historic monuments they contained.

  They had, by this time, walked right round the eastern end of the great Palace and entered the Garden of Diana to its north. Roger knew that the Queen’s apartments looked out on it and the little town that lay immediately beyond its wall. He had wondered at her choice until he had been told that all the apartments facing south and west had at one time or another been lived in by the mistresses of past Kings, and that she was so proud that she preferred the comparatively sunless aspect to making use of rooms in which immoral women had received their royal lovers. Now, Roger glanced up at the first-floor windows and added bitterly:

  “However, it seems that Her Majesty has other plans for me.”

  His companion slightly increased the light pressure of her fingers on his arm. “Be not too despondent, Monsieur. Did I believe that you had committed the heinous crime of which you were at first accused, you may be sure that I would not be talking to you now; and I can vouch for it that, although Madame Marie Antoinette allows her impulses to make her appear harsh at times, she is in reality one of the tenderest-hearted women alive. When she has had time for reflection I cannot think she will prove over-severe towards you.”

  “I pray you may be right,” Roger said somewhat doubtfully. “Yet I understand that several of her gentlemen approached her on my behalf this morning, and she refused to listen to them.”

  “ ’Tis true, and I was the witness of it. But at the time she was much occupied with other matters; for tomorrow the Court leaves Fontainebleau to return to Versailles. On that account, too, I fear I must leave you now, as I still have many matters to attend to.”

  Roger accompanied her to the staircase leading to the Queen’s apartments, thanked her for having distracted him from his anxieties for a while, received her good wishes for a better turn in his fortunes, and then made his way back to de Vaudreuil’s rooms.

  This unsought interview had put him in a slightly more cheerful frame of mind. He felt that he had gained another friend near the Queen, who would do what she could on his behalf; but he now feared that the imminent departure of the Court might prejudice the issue against him. In the bustle preparatory to the move the Queen would have little time for quiet consideration of his case, and her impulsive nature might easily lead her to not even discuss it with the King, but simply scribble a line to the Lieutenant of Police, instructing him to fill in a blank lettre de cachet to the effect that M. de Breuc was to be imprisoned during His Majesty’s pleasure.

  Such a procedure was often adopted instead of ordering imprisonment for a definite period, and it was one of the bitterest complaints of the bourgeoisie that such sentences sometimes led to people who had been incarcerated for quite minor misdemeanours, and had no influence at Court, being forgotten and left for years to rot in a dungeon.

  The later afternoon was rendered no more pleasant for Roger from the fact that de Vaudreuil’s garrulous servant was dismantling the sitting-room and packing up his master’s things; then, after dinner, instead of enjoying again the gay society that had borne him company the evening before, he found himself left alone with his worries, owing to it being the night of the Queen’s weekly card-party.

  The jeu de la Reine had long been an institution at the Court of France, and the Queens were provided with a special allowance to support it. In addition to play the occasion was used by them to show special favour to distinguished visitors, one or more of the Ambassadors, or others that they wished to honour, by inviting them to sit near them. Maria Leczinska, the Queen of Louis XV, had always insisted on keeping the games down to modest stakes in order to protect the players from heavy losses; but a few years after Louis XVI ascended the throne Marie Antoinette had developed a taste for gambling, partly perhaps to distract her mind from her unhappiness at being unable to produce an heir for France.

  Once bitten with the fever she had played nightly and for increasingly high stakes, so that at the end of 1777 she had lost £21,000 in excess of her income, and had been obliged to ask her husband to pay her debts. The sum was insignificant compared with those that the royal mistresses had thrown away at the tables in the past; but her gambling losses had been made much of by her enemies. It was this which, when the French Treasury had become near bankrupt, had caused the people to accuse her of having emptied it and christen her with the opprobrious name of “Madame Déficit”.

  Since the birth of her children her character had changed. She had longed for them for so many years in vain that when at last they came they absorbed her interest to the exclusion of all other pleasures. She had given up frequenting the gay entertainments given by the younger set at her Court, reduced her lavish expenditure on clothes, and both her stakes at the gambling tables and the frequency with which she played.

  But she still enjoyed a game and naturally continued to hold her official card-parties as a part of the Court ceremonial; so that on this evening Roger, finding himself deserted and knowing that her reception was unlikely to be over before ten o’clock, decided to go early to bed.

  He hoped that sleep would soon banish his anxieties, but in that he was disappointed, and he found his wakeful mind playing round the Spanish girl with whom he had talked that afternoon. Although she was not strictly beautiful he admitted to himself that she possessed a certain subtle attraction, and after some thought he decided that it lay largely in her voice. It was peculiarly soft and melodious, and her slightly broken French with its Spanish accent added to its fascination. Perhaps too her nationality played a part, for Spain, shut away as it was from the rest of Europe by the barrier of the Pyrenees, was still almost unknown territory, which endowed it with a glamour all its own. Very few foreigners ever visited it, but travellers’ tales described it as a land of dazzling sunshine where great sterile deserts were interspersed with areas of vines, olives and orange blossom, and in which the most degrading poverty existed cheek by jowl with fabulous riches. He hoped that one day his travels would take him there, so that he would be able to witness the fiestas and bullfights for which the country was renowned.

  Having got so far in his musings, he made another effort to get to sleep, but again it was not to be. A heavy knocking came on the sitting-room door. It was followed by footsteps inside the room, then a sharp knock on the door of his bedroom. He had hardly called out “Entrez” when it was opened, and by the light from outside he recognised one of his previous night’s visitors. It was M. de Besenval, the Commander of the King’s Swiss Guards.

  “I regret to disturb you, Chevalier,” said de Besenval, in his heavy Germanic voice, “but I bear orders from Her Majesty. I must ask you to get up, dress, and accompany me.”

  The fact that it was de Besenval who had come to fetch him immediately confirmed Roger’s fears that he might be condemned unheard and sent to eat his heart out in a fortress. He felt certain that had the Queen decided to give him a chance to justify himself she would not have used the Colonel of the Guards, but de Vaudreuil, or some other of her gentlemen, to bring him to her.

  With a low-voiced assent he got out of bed; and, as he began to dress, determined to put as good face as he could on his misfortune. De Besenval went b
ack into the sitting-room and Roger rejoined him there some seven minutes later. On entering the room he saw that the Colonel was accompanied by two stolid-looking German-Swiss privates, who were standing rigidly to attention, facing inwards on either side of the door. At the sight of them Roger’s last faint hope vanished, but he smiled at de Besenval and made him a graceful bow before placing himself between the two soldiers.

  The Colonel gave an order, on which the little party left the room and began to march with measured tread down the corridor. De Besenval brought up the rear, and he had evidently given his men their instructions beforehand, as they continued on in silence past the first stairway, round the inner curve of the Oval court and along a gallery that gave on to the royal reception-rooms.

  As the Queen’s card-party was just breaking up a number of ladies and gentlemen were leaving them to return to their own apartments. All of them looked at Roger as he passed with sympathy, and here and there among them one of the men he had met bowed to him with respect.

  Having been brought round to this side of the Palace gave Roger a sudden flicker of new hope that he was, after all, to be taken before the Queen; but almost as soon as it had arisen it was quenched. His escort turned away from the tall gilded double doors and led him down the staircase opposite to them. Outside the entrance a two-horse carriage stood waiting; one of the soldiers got on the box beside the coachman, the other scrambled on to the boot; de Besenval ushered Roger into the carriage, got in beside him and pulled down the blinds. Then they set off.

  After they had proceeded for a few minutes in silence, Roger said: “Is it permitted to ask, Monsieur le Baron, whither you are conducting me?”