Minuet

by Joan Smith

  “A friend of Hanriot’s—cousin I think, on the wife’s side. He goes to Paris to be a juror in one of the new courts. They like them not too good of hearing, you know what I mean?” She emitted a saucy laugh. Degan, straining his ears, could envision the look that went with that laugh.

  “What was he doing at the Cap, asking for two strangers and handing out gold?” the man asked, scanning his list of prisoners and crimes.

  “Not too bright, mon ami. Me and my cousin he was supposed to meet here at Boulogne, but one town is much like another to that one. They should have sent a keeper with him. As to the gold, the wife is brighter than the husband—a hoarder. But he should have kept a tight hand on the money, the fool. How much has he lost, or been robbed of? Hanriot will put him to the ax.”

  The garde was nervous to hear of an association with Hanriot, commander of the national guard, and important henchman of the Incorruptible himself, Robespierre. “We took no money from him, if that is what you mean to imply,” he said, becoming defensive.

  “The garde at the Cap? You think he dipped into the purse? What is his name? If a sou is gone there will be trouble.”

  “Meunier is his name,” he answered readily. If there was to be any denouncing done, he would do it himself.

  “Meunier. I’ll remember that. A counter-revolutionary, likely as not, arresting a juror. You think we should report him?” she asked in a conspiratorial voice.

  “Menard is not arrested—only being taken for questioning. I leave to you what you wish to do, citoyen. I trust you will do what you think best.”

  “Let me speak to my cousin. I’ll see what he has to say. Where is he, eh?”

  “I’ll bring him at once,” the garde said, and within the space of a minute a key was being put into the cell door, and Degan beckoned forth. Aware of his deafness, his lack of articulation and his new role, he put a dull look on his face and assumed an injured attitude. Agnès—that was what he should call Sally.

  He was confused to see her in boy’s gear, but nodded sheepishly and muttered, “Bonjour, cousin.”

  “So, Michel, already you have fallen into a muddle,” she jeered merrily. “Boulogne you were supposed to come to. Boulogne!” she repeated in a hollering voice. She turned to the guard and said, “Deaf as a doorknob. I’ll get rid of him for you before I shout your ear off. Merci, citoyen. Michel, give the man a pourboire.”

  He looked at her, uncertain. “Money,” she shouted. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sovereign. She took it herself, muttering, “Not gold, stupid.” He had nothing else, so she extracted from her own pocket a couple of assignats and shoved them to the guard. He was so happy to have extricated himself without even revealing his name that he pulled his hand away.

  “A pleasure to have served Hanriot’s cousin.” He smiled, and bowed awkwardly.

  “What was that fellow’s name at Cap Gris?” Sally asked again before leaving. “Meunier, you say?”

  “Yes, citoyen.”

  “If there is one sou gone I’ll see his neck stretch. Allons, Michel. We must be on our way to Paris. How is Tante Marie?” she asked Degan as they went out the door. “Tante Marie!” she hollered more loudly, for the benefit of the guard.

  As they walked out into the street, Degan put his hand on her elbow, in an instinctive gesture. She jerked away angrily. “Do you want to give us away? How did you get yourself into such a predicament?”

  “Where are we going?” he asked, his impulse to take to his heels and get as far away from the prison as quickly as possible, before offering any explanation.

  “We’ll dally a while looking in shop windows, in case the cochon is suspicious. We have a room at the inn, Henri and I. We mean to leave very soon for Paris.” She then sauntered along slowly, pointing in to shop windows.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Yes, we haven’t time to take you home to England, but you are going to be one very big nuisance, citoyen. Now, tell me all about it.”

  He told her his story briefly, not without embarrassment. “Mon Dieu—had they decided to take you via Lille you would have sneezed in the basket before we knew you were here. How could you be so stupid, Degan?”

  “You should have told me what you were up to.”

  “It had nothing to do with you. Come, we have wasted enough time.” She directed him toward the inn, and together they mounted the narrow, dark staircase to the little room, where Mérigot had a bottle of wine and three glasses on the table waiting.

  “Félicitations, citoyens,” he said with an elegant bow, strangely at odds with his ragged appearance, “And welcome to the enterprise. I notice you decided to do a spot of window shopping before coming here. Cool as a cucumber, eh, Minou? Did they take your gold?” he asked, turning to Degan.

  “No, I have it in a belt around my waist, except for a little I carry in my pocket for convenience.”

  “Thank God for that. We are damnably short of gold. Give it to me,” he said, reaching his hand. Degan, still in a state of shock, handed it over without a word of protest. Henri poured three glasses of very bitter, cheap wine, and they raised them in a toast. “Liberté is appropriate under the circumstances, I think,” he said.

  “Egalité,” Degan added, with some premonition that he had become a very unequal partner in the affair.

  “Then to complete it, Fraternité,” Sally said, with a wink behind Degan’s back to Henri. He shook his head very slightly, disapproving. “As we are all three fellows in it together I mean,” she added.

  They drank, then settled down to hard planning over the rest of the bottle. “What are we to do with Degan?” Sally asked the first question. “His French is execrable. I said he was deaf—do you think it will do, Henri?”

  “A deaf mute would be bettor.”

  “A vintner, his card says. He should be nearly a gentleman, and clever. The carte civile is wrong for him,” Sally worried. “Henri—you are Philippe Ferrier, a printer’s helper— exchange cards with Degan. You play the vintner. Let Degan be the printer’s helper. Little will be expected of such a one. And you shouldn’t have worn such an outfit with that card either, Degan. Did de Rasselin not tell you it is only the lower orders who affect these outfits? A plain dark jacket would be better, and a chapeau bras, with of course a cockade.”

  “I’ll be happy to exchange jackets,” he offered.

  “Yes, but you will not exchange jackets; you will exchange identities. Henri will become the vintner, and get the new jacket and hat. We shall be his cousins, you and I, accompanying him to Paris to arrange for the sale of his harvest.”

  “What card do you use, Sally?” Degan asked.

  “I am François Blanchard, son of a small farmer. Only fifteen—I have no stated occupation. A pity we don’t have at least two of us with the same name, as we are all cousins together.”

  “You and I could be stepbrothers,” Degan suggested to Sally. “That would account for the different names.” Her startled expression surprised him.

  “We don’t look enough alike for that. We’ll leave it at cousins, if anyone should ask. So, Henri, you are the patron, we your underlings. Go out and buy yourself a half-decent jacket and hat. Come back right away. Oh, what of transportation? Do you think with all Degan’s gold we might buy a little cart, or would mounts be better? They would be faster.”

  “I’ll see what is available,” he said, and took up his bonnet rouge to go out into the town.

  Degan, who had taken up a seat on the edge of the bed, turned to Sally. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  “One good turn deserves another. You were trying to help me. I appreciate the thought, though it was not at all necessary. En effet, it is one great nuisance. But we shall protect you, Henri and I.”

  He wished to be the protector himself. His masculine pride desired it, and disliked particularly to be beholden to Mérigot. But it was not a time for pride. “I’m sorry,” he said, quite humbly.

  “What made you do such an i
mprudent thing, my cautious Degan?” she asked, taking up her glass and sitting beside him on the bed. She spoke fondly, like a mother to a foolish but lovable child.

  “Caution proved ineffective in the past. I wanted to help you.” With the immediate fear for his safety allayed, Degan glanced around the room, and suddenly became aware that it held only one bed, and the two had passed the night in it. Henri had replaced the blanket and pillow on the bed. The matter bothered him considerably. Not so much as it would have two nights ago. Matters had changed a great deal since then. Already he realized that survival was the thing, but still minor moralities had not entirely vanished. He cleared his throat and asked, “Ah, Sally, what were the sleeping arrangements? I see there is only one bed.”

  “Yes, so there is, but it is a good large bed, you will notice. You must not worry for our comfort,” she replied blandly.

  He was on his feet at once, the minor morality having assumed a major importance once again. “Are you telling me you shared it with Mérigot?” he demanded.

  “No, citoyen, I tell you nothing, for it is none of your damned business,” she answered pertly, enjoying his outrage.

  “Tell me!” he said, seizing her arms and pulling her bodily from the bed, while his eyes burned like live coals.

  She blinked at him in surprise, then tossed her head, “Oh, if you mean to be stupid about it, Henri slept on the floor.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “Don’t call me a liar, you filthy-minded English moralist! And don’t call Henri a libertine either. He is a gentleman.”

  He stared at her hard, but saw only anger and defiance in those yellow eyes. Frustrated, he dropped her arms and turned away to look out the window, blind to the scene going forth there.

  “Is the wagon of prisoners leaving yet?” she asked in a normal, conversational voice, having forgotten the interlude already.

  “No, not yet,” he said, focusing on the street below.

  “Who was the old man all in black who was with you? I wish we could save him.”

  “He raped a shopwoman,” he answered. “Or is accused of it, at least.”

  “At his age! He must be seventy.”

  “He’s not that old. Frenchmen never leave off sex,” he answered, still angry.

  A little trill of laughter came from the bed. “It’s the English who never cease talking about it. I never thought to hear Père Degan speak so broad before a lady.”

  No more had he, but this violent atmosphere changed everything. “It is Michel Menard who speaks.”

  “No, citoyen, it is Philippe Ferrier. Don’t forget who you are. Do you want to rest while we wait for Henri? I shall remove my presence from the bed, to make it nice and safe for you. I shall go out and see if I can find a newspaper.”

  “You’re not going out alone.”

  “Non? Who is going to stop me?” she asked, springing up from the bed and making directly for the door.

  He wheeled around from the window in time to grab her arm before she got out. She wriggled free and took a quick step toward the door. He pulled her back forcibly with both hands, then found himself in the ungentlemanly position of holding a squirming lady determined to get away from him. He tightened his grasp, till he had her firmly in his arms, pulled against his chest. This was a new position for Degan to find himself in, and he found as well that he felt a strong compulsion to kiss her, which would make him no better than Mérigot. He pushed her back, still holding her wrists.

  She had soon jerked them free. “You don’t give the commands here, Degan,” she said loftily. “Henri is in charge, and I am second in charge. You will do exactly as we say if you want to stay alive. I am going out, and you will stay in. If you are gone when I get back we don’t bother rescuing you again. You have caused enough bother for one day.”

  She strode out the door and slammed it after her. Tired, worried, frightened and confused, Degan lay on the bed, and slept not a wink. He wished he had kissed her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sally returned before Mérigot, a newspaper under her arm. “Guess what has happened!” she said, excited.

  “What is it?” Degan asked, jerking to attention.

  “Robespierre has applied a maximum to wages. There has been a maximum on certain things for ages, but prices are very high, and salaries not allowed to rise. Even put back to levels a year old in some cases. This will mean great trouble for him. There will be rioting in the streets. I dread to think what state Paris is in. Bad as the Incorruptible is, he is some rule, some authority. We will have anarchy if he is dethroned.”

  “You have anarchy now. I should think you’d be glad to see him topple.”

  “Only if I knew what was to replace him. You don’t understand these things, how he operates. To ensure his authority now, he will clamp down. Have another purge, a repeat of the September massacre. Mon Dieu, what will we find when we get to Paris? Blood running in the streets, and four guillotines erected to accommodate the four courts.” “Sally, you’d better go home,” Degan said.

  “I am home. You run back to England if you’re afraid.”

  “Henry and I can go on to Paris. We’ll free your mother and brother.”

  “Don’t be an ass. Henry couldn’t do it without me, and you would be no help to him. Au contraire.”

  Henry arrived at this time. “You have seen the papers?” he asked at once.

  “We’ve just been discussing it,” Degan answered.

  “The whole town does the same, forecasting more massacres. We must make every haste to Paris. I got a gig and a pair of old nags to pull us. It was the best I could do. I think people are sunk to eating their horses. There’s not a mount to be had for love or all of Degan’s gold. The assignat is a joke. An old confectioner on the corner is wrapping penny candy in it to show her contempt. She’ll be without her head by morning. You’d better go downstairs, Sally. I have to change.”

  “We’ll wait in the hall,” Degan said, and ushered her out the door, wondering if this propriety on Henry’s part was a show for his benefit. In the midst of all their real problems, it seemed hard he had to worry about Henry carrying on with Sally as well, but it occupied a good part of his mind.

  They had soon paid their bill and left. The gig held two on the seat, with the third to sit with his feet trailing over the back. Her feet, as it turned out. Sally and Henry agreed it was the younger fellow who would be given this lowly position. The early heat of July was turning to stormy weather. Consulting the map, Henri decided the best route would be to continue along the coast south to Abbeville, then along the Somme River to Amiens.

  “It would be shorter to go directly southeast by Arras,” Degan mentioned.

  “The roads are better this way,” Henri informed him. “Though I would like to see Arras, Robespierre’s birthplace. It would be interesting to see if the town square has been renamed in his honor.”

  “We are not sightseeing, citoyen,” Sally shouted over her shoulder. “Lord, I am suffocating with dust. Rain would be better.”

  “Now that the gods are let back into France, they hear you and obey,” Henry replied, as a fat drop hit his nose. Soon they were in the middle of a deluge, and Sally had the pleasure of being pelted with mud instead of dust. There was no shelter nearby, so that they were all soon soaked to the skin, and with the accompanying wind brought by the rain, were thoroughly miserable.

  In spite of all this, Sally and Henry took it into their heads to sing. It was incomprehensible to Lord Degan. He pondered the possibility that the French and English were not only different races, but different species entirely. “We’re close to Etaples. Let’s stop there and get some blankets,” he suggested at the end of their song. He noticed Sally was shivering, and had her bonnet rouge wrapped around her neck again, as she had the first evening he saw her.

  They did this, then continued on their way, with the rain let up, but bringing no return of the warm weather, so that the blankets were welcome. By nightfall they had go
t only as far as Berck, forty miles covered, less as the crow flew.

  “We’ll never get to Paris,” Sally said wearily, clambering down from the cart’s tail.

  “You know those people here, the Maillards,” Henri reminded her. “Maybe they can get us some faster horses. Can we stay the night with them?”

  “No, they have only a shack. They had trouble finding room for me alone. I slept on three chairs in the kitchen. There is an inn. Besides, I was a girl there. I am now François Blanchard. Better to avoid them entirely. They have no influence.”

  They stopped at the inn. “We’ll want two rooms,” Degan said pointedly to Henri as they climbed down from the gig.

  “Why not three, citoyen, to call even more attention to ourselves? A pity you hadn’t brought your valet to warm your bed for you, and lay out your nightshirt,” Henri answered.

  “Sally can’t share a room with us. Two men.”

  “You sleep in the stable then, and she can share with me. I am not so particular.”

  “I promise I won’t lay a hand on you, Père Degan,” she said, laughing. “Henri will protect your virtue.”

  “It’s all very well to make fun of me, but you both know it is improper for—”

  “Yes, yes, fine moralizing, but you can save it for England,” Henry said angrily. “My own mind is not on love-making, and I suggest you try to rid yours of the notion as well, Degan.”

  Degan stood with his mouth open and nothing to say. It was wrong, very wrong, the whole thing, but they were determined not to see it, and in the end he was forced to accept their decision, as it was Henri who made the arrangements.

  “There was only the one room,” Henri told him after they had been shown into it. “It is large, however, with two beds. Minou will have one, we the other. And I too promise not to molest you, Degan,” he finished with a sneer.

  “See here, this foolishness must stop,” Sally said impatiently. “We have enough troubles without arguing among ourselves. We are all soaked through the skin, starving, and too tired for either fighting or lovemaking. We shall eat, and we shall sleep, and no more stupid quarreling. Compris?”