After climbing for a dozen metres or so, the rubby, groaning with effort, pushed open a final trap door. A square of sky appeared above his head. In seconds they were standing in fresh air on a rectangular gallery that hung out over the balustrade of the enormous clock tower.
In the distance they could see the Jacques-Cartier Bridge leaping majestically across the flaming St. Lawrence River. Charles gave a shout of pure joy and began running back and forth on the gallery while his companion, leaning against one of the tower’s stone flanks, lit a cigarette with a huge, gold-coloured lighter.
“This is perfect. This is perfect!” Charles murmured, running his hand along the zinc metalwork on the balustrade, then sticking it out into the wind, on which was carried the sharp scent of hops and freshly ground coffee beans.
The city sprawled out at his feet towards the west, where it ran up against a hedge of skyscrapers that the sun was turning into a wall of mirrors.
Charles went up to Squeezy just as the rubby was flicking his cigarette butt over the side.
“I want to come up again tomorrow. To take some photos.”
A greedy expression crept over the beggar’s bony face.
“That’ll cost you twenty bucks, boss.”
“Twenty!”
“Look, boss, the more we come up here, the more risk there is of getting caught. The greater the risk, the higher the price.”
“But you sleep in the tower every night!”
“Yeah, but by myself. It’s not the same.”
There followed a short discussion, during which Squeezy came down by five dollars. They agreed to meet the next morning at six thirty.
“But don’t play me any tricks, boss,” the rubby cautioned. “It’s a long fall from up here!”
The next morning, at six fifty-two, pedestrians in downtown Montreal anywhere near the University of Quebec were surprised to see a long, black banner strung across the top of the venerable clock tower, on which they could read in big, white letters:
CHARLES WILL MAKE IT … EVEN WITHOUT A DEGREE!
A few people gathered here and there. Some laughed, pointing up into the air; some looked thoughtful and wondered who Charles was; some thought it was a student prank, others that it meant another strike was in the offing; everyone found the whole thing amusing. Security had the banner down in good order, but not before the photographers had done their stuff.
And so it was that the next morning, Pierre Péladeau, ruler of Québécor, nearly choked on his coffee when he saw the banner floating across the front page of the Journal de Montréal.
He showed the page to his pretty young companion, who was spreading raspberry jam on her toast.
“Take a look at this, my dear,” he said. “What a laugh! I wonder what joker had the idea to …”
Seized by a sudden misgiving, he reached for a copy of La Presse, his newspaper’s perennial rival, and confirmed his darkest suspicions: the banner floated across its front page as well, with an equally delightful effect.
Towards the end of that afternoon, in the editorial office of Artist’s Life, Bernard Délicieux stood by Charles’s desk for a half an hour deploying every trick in his book to make Charles admit that he was, indeed, the Charles referred to on the banner. But the latter was having none of it, and eluded his questions with a laugh.
“Buzz off, Bernard! You should go into the espionage business. You’d be a natural at it, I swear… Come on, do you honestly think I have time to waste climbing up clock towers?”
“It’s too much like you not to be you.”
“All right, all right, I confess, Father, I confess on my knees. Give me absolution, I beg of you… It was also me who knocked the Parthenon over and sank the Titanic. Do you think God will ever forgive me?”
Délicieux heaved a sigh of frustration and walked away shaking his head.
Charles went back to his article. The banner was still fluttering joyously in his head, a triumph of boldness and imagination. To make the front page of the two biggest newspapers in Montreal! What a coup! What revenge!
Half an hour went by. He banged away at his computer with alacrity. Suddenly his lips tightened and his fingers fell from the keyboard. A dark thought had just insinuated itself into his satisfaction and had brought the whole house of cards tumbling down around him.
“Yes,” he said to himself. “It’s all very well to plaster your ambitions across the top of a tower … But now, my friend, you have to do something about them.”
END OF VOLUME THREE
Original title: Charles le téméraire: Un saut dans le vide
Copyright 2005 by Éditions Fides
Published under arrangement with Éditions Fides, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
English translation copyright © 2009 by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Translated from the French by Wayne Grady
Translation of volume 2 in the Charles the Bold trilogy: Un saut dans le vide.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher — or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency — is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Beauchemin, Yves, 1941–
[Saut dans le vide. English]
A very bold leap / Yves Beauchemin ; translated by Wayne Grady.
Translation of volume 2 of the trilogy Charles le téméraire.
Originally published as v. 2, Un saut dans le vide, of Charles le téméraire.
“Volume 3 in the Charles the Bold series”.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-302-7
I. Grady, Wayne II. Beauchemin, Yves, 1941- . Charles the bold.
III. Title. IV. Title: Saut dans le vide. English.
PS8553.E172S3813 2008 C843′.54 C2008-900774-3
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
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