by A L Berridge
Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu
Note to Elisabeth, Comtesse de Vallon, dated 11 April 1641
Madame,
Our friend B left Paris this morning in the company of d’A, L, and one servant.
I regret he did so sufficiently early to avoid the attention of my agents. I have, however, obtained information from his household that their destination is Compiègne, so you may choose to act yourself.
Be careful.
R
Jacques de Roland
The first I knew was Charlot’s fist smashing against my bedroom door. Years of sleeping in the Hermitage listening for the roof-guard came walloping back like living a dream. I was out of bed and groping for my breeches before he even appeared in front of me, a huge black shape behind a lighted candle.
‘A note from His Eminence. Madame wishes to see you at once.’
I reached for my boots, but they skidded away over the floor. ‘He’s caught, isn’t he, they’ve got him.’
‘Not yet.’ He explained while I dressed. I couldn’t take it in properly at first, my head was screaming questions louder than his voice.
I said ‘How can they possibly know he’s at Compiègne? We’ve been so careful.’
‘Who knows?’ said Charlot. ‘Perhaps they have intercepted our letters.’
I followed him out into the gallery, my mind whizzing round in panic like a squirrel in a cage. ‘But they’ve all gone through Crespin, and they can’t know about …’
I stopped as I remembered. My uncle had said not to use Crespin and I hadn’t listened. He’d told me to get André out of bloody France, and I hadn’t listened to that either.
I said ‘Will they kill him, Charlot?’
He opened the Comtesse’s door without knocking. ‘Mlle du Pré seemed to suggest so.’
Someone else I hadn’t listened to. ‘Oh God, were we wrong about her too?’
A voice said ‘That is possible, and we shall consider it when there is time.’ My grandmother was coming towards me, her hair arranged in a neat plait over her nightgown.
I said helplessly ‘I don’t know, I don’t understand.’
Her hand was on my arm, white and delicate, but steady as a man’s. ‘Charlot, wine for Monsieur. The boy is shocked.’
I said ‘Never mind that, I need a horse saddled, I’m going after them.’
Her hand curled round my arm and actually held it. ‘Robert is already seeing to it. Charlot goes with you.’
I’d guessed that. She’d called him first as usual. I said ‘It’s all right, I’ll save him.’
‘If you can,’ she said, as Philibert came dashing in with my cloak. ‘But if you can’t you must keep your distance. You must not be involved in an escape that fails.’
I grabbed the cloak, thinking ‘Sod that, I’m not leaving him no matter what.’ I bowed and turned for the door, but her hand was still on my arm.
She said ‘Be careful, Jacques.’
I said ‘Yes, yes, all right,’ and went out after Charlot.
It wasn’t till we were out the gate that I realized she’d actually called me ‘Jacques’.
Bernadette Fournier
It is strange, but of all the times in my life I would wish to recall, the day I know best is this one I would rather forget.
I woke early. We needed no cock, Monsieur, we were in the forest and the singing of birds makes a great chorus while the sky is yet dark blue. I waited until the grey light formed pale lines about the edges of the shutters, then rose and dressed myself for the day. My aunt slept soundly on the bed, for she had been busy with Grimauld half the night, and there he still lay, on his back and snoring with a smile on his face like a child. I was not sure of Grimauld back then, I knew he spent the Chevalier’s money as if it were his own and took from my aunt all she had to give, and yet I sometimes thought he gave her something too. The Aunt Martine I remembered from my childhood was a sour thing with tight lips, but this one had the laugh and pink cheeks of a girl and I knew it was he who made her so.
I revived the kitchen fire. The wood was piled ready for me, beech as I liked it, for my aunt found the oak too acrid for her chest. André always remembered these things. I heard the clanking of buckets in the yard, and knew the familiar sounds that would follow. Why must men make such a performance of their washing, Monsieur? A woman dips her hands in the water and pats it on her cheeks and round her neck, but a man scoops up great handfuls so that it splashes through his fingers and sluices down his chest, he slaps it on his face as if he would hit himself, and blows air through his cheeks in a determined gasp. This morning I leaned against the doorway to watch the Chevalier put himself through his ritual. He shook his head so vigorously the water sprayed off his hair in a great arc of tiny droplets, and I laughed, Monsieur, for he looked like nothing so much as a wet dog.
He became at once self-conscious and gave me a little shamefaced grin. ‘Good morning, Bernadette.’
I said severely ‘Where is my cooking water?’ and watched him smile. I used often to speak so, Monsieur, it was a foolish game we played, and I only recall it now because it was the last time we ever played it. The morning was already waking, the shutters opening in the guests’ window, and Grimauld coming out for his morning piss. I returned to the kitchen and prepared the breakfast, everything as I did it every morning and would never do again.
In the afternoon André and Grimauld went to the woods to trap rabbits, but it did not trouble me as those were our quiet times. The guests would be gone and new ones not yet arrived, for travellers passing by the village at this hour had still time to reach Compiègne before night. Sometimes people came just for refreshment, and for them we were always prepared, for Adam the smith’s son was within call to help with the horses.
My only worry this day was my aunt’s shortness of breath, for it was lately giving her a troublesome cough of which I did not like the sound. I propped her with pillows in a high-backed chair and prepared an infusion of coltsfoot, but as I brought it from the kitchen I heard the distant clopping of approaching hooves. It was a sound I half expected, yet even as I gave my aunt her cup I noticed a difference. Our guests usually arrived slowly, for the inn was remote and travellers had always to stop and enquire for lodging, yet these riders came fast and with purpose, like men who have swept in at the gate and not slackened their pace as they drove to their goal.
‘Is it the Chevalier?’ asked my aunt, struggling to sit higher in her chair.
There seemed too many, and the hooves did not fall silent as they would if the riders crossed the grass to our stables at the back, but clattered instead on to the cobbles of our front yard. I went to the window and saw two men reining to a halt outside, although I had thought they sounded twice that. The horses were fine beasts laden with saddlebags, each with a musket slung alongside, while the masters wore swords on their hips and wide-brimmed hats that shadowed their faces. The boots of the first smacked loudly on the cobbles as he dismounted and turned to face us, regarding our house with as much calculation as if it were an enemy fort and not a simple country inn.
I heard the quickened wheezing of my aunt’s breath beside me. ‘Go you to the smithy, Bernadette. I think I would like a man about the house.’
I said ‘Do not open up until I am back,’ went swiftly to the kitchen and through the back door. The yard seemed exactly as it had been that morning, yet still I felt relief when I went to the gate and saw Adam already strolling down towards me. He must have seen the horsemen passing for he lifted his arm in casual salute and shouted ‘Coming!’
The sight of him calmed me, but as I crossed the yard back to the house a muffled crash ahead told me my fears were all too justified. We were being attacked and the front door broken in, and I had left my aunt alone. I dashed for the stable to fetch my gun.
The door was already ajar, but I was thinking only of my aunt. I darted inside and was brought short only at the sight of two horses in front of me, laden with ba
ggage like the ones out front. The truth struck me at last and too late, for a shadow was already closing on me, a rough hand grasped my arm and yanked me skidding across the straw, another tangled in my hair and jerked back my head so that I looked into the face of a nightmare, a half-remembered ogre with terrible teeth and bulging nose, whose muscular arms held me with the strength of some monstrous animal.
I screamed ‘Adam!’
His hand cracked into my face, spinning me away so it was only the grip on my hair that kept me from falling. I clawed upward for his eyes, but he gave a short grunt and drove his fist into my belly, so that a tearing pain ripped through my womb and wrenched away my breath. I crumpled to the floor and as his feet moved away I heard a rasp of steel. Beyond him came the gate banging and running footsteps, then Adam appeared in the doorway, peering into the gloom and saying anxiously ‘Bernadette?’
I had not the breath, Monsieur, nothing came out but a gasp of warning and then it was too late. The sword flashed out of the shadows, a great white blade smashing down on the bare neck of a country boy who had heard me scream and come to my help. I heard the bite of it and Adam’s hoarse cry, the scrabble of his feet and thud of his fall. I forced myself to look, and there was Adam lying against the wall, his head impossibly sideways and more blood than I had seen in my life pouring down from the great cleft in his throat.
The feet trod back towards me, and beside them swung a massive edged blade, red blood dripping down its runnels and on to the straw. The sword began to lift and I closed my eyes.
‘No, Pirauld,’ said a voice behind me. I turned on my knees and saw a pair of bucket-top boots and above them full mauve breeches. I looked higher, and there was a face I knew, one I had seen many evenings in a life I thought I had long left behind. He was the plump gentleman Charlot had given the name Lavigne, and I knew we were found at last.
‘Hello, Bernadette,’ he said. ‘Is there anyone else you want to call?’
Jacques de Roland
We changed horses at Senlis. The post ones weren’t as good as our own, but we couldn’t stop to rest them. Bouchard had nearly a day’s start, our only hope was to catch up while he slept. Charlot said ‘He’ll have stopped at least one night, Monsieur, he doesn’t know we’re behind him.’ I wasn’t even sure of that any more, it felt like everyone knew everything except us.
Charlot made me drink soup while the horses were saddled, but it was hard even to sit down. All through the night we’d been pounding along, nothing but the rhythm of the hooves and my own voice praying desperately in my head, ‘Please, just this once, I’ll never ask again.’ Now all that stopped. I was sitting in an alehouse courtyard in the morning sun, with a bowl of soup in front of me and pretty brown hens pecking round the cobbles for crumbs of food. It’s all mixed up in my head now, the smell of asparagus and the sound of Charlot arguing with the ostler, church bells nearby, and a fat child playing with a blue hoop round the courtyard, sending it spinning and spinning on the stones.
Familiar voices drifted into my head like they do in your dreams, and it was the Puppies arriving, they’d managed to catch us up. I’d sent to them last night, but hadn’t dared wait, they must have ridden even harder than us to be here now. They looked quite rested and cheerful and didn’t want to bother with soup. I remember Crespin just snatching a chunk of bread and leaping on his post horse with it still sticking out of his mouth.
Then we were off again, five horses together, twice as much clatter as we galloped through the morning streets to the gate. Through the arch and back on the road, Charlot’s brown travel-coat in front of me, the Puppies a blur of colour either side. The pace picked up to the old rhythm as the road lengthened ahead of us, people in the fields looking up as we passed, a windmill, a church with an old man outside, and the voice back in my head saying ‘Let him be all right, let us be in time, please God, please God, I’ll never ask again.’
Bernadette Fournier
They led me back into the house and there was my poor aunt wheezing dreadfully in her chair while over her stood Bouchard with a drawn sword.
I ignored his smile of triumph and said ‘This man of yours has committed murder, and you will all be hanged.’
He preened himself, a man in his prime intimidating an old lady who could not breathe. ‘Lavigne, you must tell Pirauld that is very wrong of him. But since he’s to be hanged for one he may as well be hanged for two, so let’s hope these ladies will now cooperate.’
Another man brushed past me from the passage, the Cardinal’s Guard called d’Arsy. He said ‘Old woman’s room with a cot, but another looks as if it’s been occupied recently. The bed’s rumpled, and there’s a man’s cloak in the press.’
‘You have a man here?’ said Bouchard reproachfully to my aunt, and prodded her foot with his sword.
‘Adam,’ I said. ‘That’s Adam’s room. The man this creature of yours has murdered.’
‘Really?’ said Bouchard. He swung his rapier round to point at my chest. ‘And what is Adam’s other name?’
My aunt attempted to speak, but Bouchard said ‘Pirauld, if this hag opens her mouth I’d be grateful if you’d shut it.’ The monster grinned and went to stand over my aunt’s chair.
Bouchard said ‘Well, Bernadette?’
Only gossip could have led them here, and I could think of only one person whose behaviour would have attracted it. ‘Gauthier.’
He gave a little crowing laugh. ‘Oh, good girl, clever girl, but too slow by far. Describe him, Lavigne.’
He described poor dead Adam, a curly-haired and rustic young man no one could mistake for the Chevalier.
Bouchard said ‘Then this famous Gauthier is still alive somewhere, isn’t he, Bernadette?’
I did not answer.
‘He’s not here,’ said Lavigne. ‘There are no horses in the stables.’
Bouchard sighed, turned to me and said ‘Where is he, girl?’
I would like to have spat, but my mouth was dry.
‘Very well,’ said Bouchard. He slipped his blade under the shoulder of my dress and jerked up hard so that the cloth parted and the sleeve fell away. I backed away at once, but Lavigne was behind me, his plump white hands closing softly about my arms.
Bouchard said genially ‘That’s right, man, hold her there.’
It was disgusting, Monsieur, disgusting. That Lavigne was excited by it I did not need to be told, for I felt his arousal digging hard into my back.
Bouchard said ‘I’m going to keep asking questions, Bernadette, and every time your answer doesn’t please me I’m going to cut away something else. Do you understand?’
I said nothing.
He slid the blade under my arm and sliced neatly through the seam. The sleeve fell away entirely and pulled down half my dress as far as the hip, but my chemise underneath was intact. Lavigne’s breath was warm on my neck.
Bouchard said ‘Where is de Roland?’
My aunt heaved forward in her chair, but Pirauld smashed his fist into her face and she collapsed back, her breath rasping in high and terrible gasps of panic.
I said ‘You’re killing her,’ and tried to wrench away. I could not believe they would murder a woman who had done them no harm. ‘Let me go to her, you’re killing her.’
Bouchard signalled the monster but he only jerked my aunt upright and tried to pour the coltsfoot down her throat. It was not enough, she needed a doctor and the fear to go away, not to be handled by a creature out of nightmare. Her face was turning pale blue.
I screamed at Bouchard ‘Go away, go away, André is not here, you’re killing her for nothing.’ I tried again to tug free, but Lavigne’s fingers bit hard into my arms.
Bouchard addressed his point to the top of my chemise and sheered it right down to the navel. ‘“Not here” is a start, but would you care to elaborate?’
D’Arsy’s voice sounded uncomfortable. ‘The woman needs a doctor, Bouchard. Leave the girl, it’s time we went.’
Bouchard snorted. �
��And where’s the fun in that for Lavigne?’ He flicked his rapier between the halves of my chemise and opened them like curtains to expose my body. He studied it for a second, then brought his blade to circle my breasts, first one, then the other, finishing each with a delicate touch on the nipple.
He said ‘I think you’d like these, Pirauld.’
With a lady it would work perhaps, the terror of being touched by a menial, but Monsieur already knows I was no lady. I made no reaction as Bouchard stepped back.
Then Pirauld appeared in front of me, without the sword but with his large hair-backed hands in their place. He squeezed my breasts, and I told myself it was no more than a young man does before he learns better. His hands shoved between my legs, his nails scraped my skin, and still I told myself ‘It is a man, that is all, just another man.’ Then I heard an exclamation of distaste from d’Arsy, and it was that, I think, that woke me. I opened my eyes and saw the mottled face that advanced towards me with spittle glistening on its open mouth, I heard the grunt as his probing fingers pushed me apart, and suddenly I was the child I had perhaps never been and the thing that groped me was an animal. I could not help a little cry.
Bouchard smiled and leaned back against the wall. He said again ‘Where is de Roland?’
Albert Grimauld
We saw horses tied up outside the front door, but it didn’t bother us beyond wondering where Adam was to see to their stabling.
‘Perhaps they’ve only just arrived,’ says André. ‘Let’s do ours, then we’ll go and help.’
The yard gate’s open, but we don’t think nothing of that neither, we’re in and dismounting when André stops dead like a deer on a gun. I look where he’s looking, and there’s a great splodge of blood on the cobbles and a trickle leading back to the stable door.
We grabbed the guns off the horses, and pushed the door right open. Ah, sweet saints, that was bad. Young Adam’s head was half off his neck and the floor sticky-wet with red blood.
Something cold’s pressing into my hand, and there’s André passing me his pistol. I said ‘You’re going to need it, laddie,’ but he went to the back of the stables, uncovered a canvas bundle and took out his sword. His face when he turned was grim as I’ve seen, and he strode for the house without one more word.