by A L Berridge
‘It will one day,’ she said. ‘You’ve chosen your road, Mademoiselle, and you know it’s the right one. You have only to stay on it to the very end.’
Albert Grimauld
We kept moving. All we could do, see, just get our heads down and keep moving, even if we hadn’t the glimmer of an idea where.
Soldiers, that’s why. The woods were full of them, they’d of had us the first day if it wasn’t for André. He was an old hand at this woods game, he knew about leading the horses down the streams and keeping to the hard paths to stop anyone tracking us, he knew about stifling our little bits of fires. But we couldn’t dodge them forever, not that number. They was going to catch us sooner or later without we spent the whole day in trees like ruddy birds.
So out we come and on to the roads to bluff it out. It seemed safe enough, the laddie wasn’t so recognizable these days, and soldiers weren’t going to stop law-abiding folk riding open about the country. We’d find a farm every couple of days, get fodder for the horses and bread for ourselves, then it was back to the woods, a bit of fire, and another meagre mouthful of rabbit. We hadn’t the money for more, see, we were stretching Bernadette’s bit of gold all we knew. Sometimes a farm would give us a day’s work weeding the winter corn, but there’s not much that time of year and we weren’t the only vagabonds abroad by a long stretch.
What we were was the most noticeable. Two men and a woman, that’s nothing, but them horses, oh my word. There we are hats in hand begging for a day’s work in the fields, and behind us two warhorses worth a thousand livres apiece. We had ‘thieves’ writ round our necks like placards on the pillory, and after three weeks we was going to sleep hungry.
André handled it like a soldier. He’d had good training in that past life of his, someone had toughened him like ox-hide. He’d work in the fields, he’d take the cussing and doors shut in our faces, he’d skin rabbits and gut fish like he’d done it all his life. The one time I saw him angry was when a farm set dogs on us, and that was only for Bernadette. She was knocked clear off her feet by one of they mastiffs, and André turned back, flattened the farmer, and made him apologize for abusing a woman.
He was still smouldering inside. I’d see him sometimes of an evening, stripping wood to make a spit for supper, and know he was thinking of it then. There he’d be, cutting down with knuckles white as the blade, knife slicing savage down the bark, t’chunk, then again sharp hard, t’chunk, and all the while that darkness in his eyes.
Ah, but there was something else darkening over that spring. We were seeing soldiers again, more every day, thousands of them and on the march. There’s a muster somewhere north and things is waking up in Flanders, rumours buzzing all over. We did a day’s work near Lassigny, and heard the Comte de Soissons had been ousted as Governor of Champagne. ‘It’s coming, Grimauld,’ says André. ‘This is it, it’s coming.’
I’d have known it anyway, even without his talk of conspiracies. If there’s one thing a man like me can smell it’s war.
Jacques de Roland
It was coming, we were sure of it. Bouillon and Soissons were making warlike noises, and when it was announced Châtillon’s army was off to join la Meilleraye in Flanders I wasn’t the only one betting he’d end up in the Sedan instead.
Everyone in Paris knew about it now. They were calling themselves the ‘Princes de la Paix’ by then, Soissons and Bouillon and Guise, and coming out with a lot of guff about wanting peace with Spain so people wouldn’t have to pay such high taxes. They didn’t mention more power for themselves, of course, or inviting Imperial forces into France, that sort of got lost in the general enthusiasm. And there was a lot of it, actually, someone was stirring things up in the city, and we’d a pretty good idea who.
I didn’t care much now André was dead. The Comtesse still banged on about clearing his name for the honour of the family, but all I knew was it was my chance to bloody fight. The Comte made sure I got it, he went to see Châtillon himself and had me and the Puppies all signed on as Gentleman Volunteers attached to a cavalry squadron of the Orléans.
We spent the last day getting ready. Charlot was coming with me as my aide, but I chose Philibert as my lackey. He wasn’t a brilliant cook but he’d always wanted to be in the army, he kept clippings from the Gazette and could tell me every single regiment at every action France had fought in the last ten years. He went all Gascon with ecstasy when I told him, he kissed my hands and promised to serve me ‘to the death, Monsieur, to the very death!’
That night the Comtesse took me out to show me off. I hated going out those days, we kept bumping into people I wanted to kill. Desmoulins was in all the salons, soaking up attention because he’d got a new regiment and was off to war any day. I’d seen d’Arsy too, but at least he’d got a stiff arm and a bloody great scar down his neck, and I just knew in my heart who’d given it him. We never saw Lavigne, and Raoul heard a rumour he’d died of a chest complaint, but I bet I knew what kind.
But that night we went to the Hôtel Rambouillet, and when we walked into the Chambre Bleue the first person I saw was Bouchard. I was so shocked it took me a second to notice he was chatting to Florian du Pré, and even longer to realize that the woman with them was Anne.
I shouldn’t have been surprised really. We’d been making enquiries ever since her letter, I’d worried she might be a prisoner or something, but people said she’d been around at church and stuff, and I’d begun to think it must have been Jeanette sent the letter herself. Now I knew it. Anne seemed perfectly happy to be where she was, and when Bouchard said something she even gave this gay kind of laugh. Anne du Pré, who André had loved since he was a child, standing laughing with his murderer. She was part of it too, all the things André had believed in that turned out to be worthless and wrong.
Then I looked again at Bouchard basking in the light of the copper chandelier, and everything else got swamped with the hate. The Marquise brought him over to be introduced, and I remember the tiny lift of his eyebrow and tucked-in smile at the corners of his mouth as he said ‘Delighted, M. de Roland,’ while his eyes said ‘I killed your brother, stable boy, what are you going to do about it?’ I already knew what I was going to bloody do about it. We were going to beat the rebel armies, then I was going to come back and kill him.
We left the next day, Tuesday the 7th of May. I’d pooled the money for a baggage wagon with the Puppies, and they came to the Hôtel de Roland so we could leave together.
I remember Raoul was all excited because people were lining the streets to see us off. ‘You’ll see, Jacquot,’ he said. ‘The ladies won’t look at anyone who doesn’t fight this season. They want a man of war, warm and sweaty from the battlefield.’
‘How disgusting,’ said Gaspard. ‘Personally I do not intend to sweat. I shall look magnificent on my new mare, and the ladies may throw flowers as I pass.’
Philibert led me out Guinevere, the best horse in the Roland stable, and the servants cheered as I mounted her. I felt self-conscious and wrong, but then Crespin whispered ‘You’re doing it for André, you know, Jacquot. He’d be awfully proud.’
I wasn’t sure for a moment, then turned to see Charlot formally presenting me with my new battle sword. I hadn’t held one like it since the Battle of Dax, and just the touch brought it all back in a shock of blood and musket fire and screaming horses. Crespin was right. This was André’s fight, clean and free of politics, the only kind that really mattered. When I slid the sword into the scabbard it made a decisive click that was like a door shutting on Paris.
Albert Grimauld
There weren’t much spring where we were, and that’s a fact. It wasn’t just the being hungry and the money running out, it was the bone-aching endless weariness of it and the not having nothing to hope for next day nor the next.
But it wasn’t even that stuffed us in the end, it was my own ruddy neck. The thing wasn’t healing, see. André had this notion it needed to be kept clean, said he’d heard it off a friend
of his called Stefan, so every night Bernadette was washing and dressing me, and very discreet she was too, she never said one word about what she found there. But the wound’s getting puffy, and one night André says ‘That’s it, we’ve got to get you to a surgeon.’
So what he did, if you’ll believe, what he did was take me into Beuvraignes, find me a surgeon, get us a room, and put me to bed till it’s healed. What he did was sell his shirt, his hat, and the buttons on his coat, and when that wasn’t enough he sold his ring. He didn’t even get much for it, the crest made it dangerous, he had to deal with a dodgy customer in a cabaret to get it off his hands at all. But that’s what he did, he went round with his coat held together with a belt and left himself nothing but his knife and sword.
It was only just enough even then. Bernadette rationed our food all she could, but it still took more than two weeks before we were on the road again and down to our last sou. André said we’d keep heading north and his own people would hide us, but he was reckoning without a little something that puts the pox on a man’s prospects like nothing else. Rain, boy, I’m talking about rain. Kipping under the stars on a fine evening’s one thing, huddling on a mudbank with half the Seine down your neck’s another. We were cold, wet and hungry, we’d no money and no means of getting it, the only thing missing was plague.
We spent the last night outside Roye. The rain hadn’t let up since daybreak, we was breathing it as well as feeling it, and the ache in our bones was telling us time to call it a day. We found a wood to bivouac, but the rain had wheedled its way into my tinderbox, I couldn’t have got a spark out of it in the devil’s own drawing room. André got a handful of tinder under his coat and chafed it and breathed warm air on it, he kept saying ‘That’s done it, try again, I’m sure it’s dry now,’ but his hands were wet and so were mine, we were flogging a horse so dead it was rotting. I said ‘It’s not going to happen, laddie, give it up and let it go.’
There was a spark then all right, it flashed up in his eyes like a powder-pan, and then slowly I saw it fade and go out. He sat back on the sopping ground and said ‘You’re right.’
I said ‘Come on, one night in the cold’s not going to kill us, is it?’
‘Not us,’ he says, and there’s his eyes sliding over to Bernadette wiping her sleeve over her cooking pan, bravely confident there’ll be meat for it and a fire to cook it on. ‘She can’t go on like this, Grimauld, I’m killing her.’
Females. That’s what drags a man down in this life. There she was, shivering wet in her rag of a cloak, and André’s spirit dying out of him just looking at her.
There’s no arguing with him neither, and in a minute or two he’s got himself a plan. He’ll take us into Roye and sell the big horse called Tonnerre, then me and Bernadette will get lodgings on the proceeds and sit it out while he goes on alone to this place called the Saillie where he says he’ll get help.
Yes, yes, a-course I told him, what do you take me for? I said ‘All right for the girlie, but I’m coming with you, you’ll need someone to watch your back,’ but he says Bernadette’s got to be looked after and the only one to do it is me. I says ‘She’ll never let you go alone,’ but he says ‘So we don’t tell her. I’ll give you the money and slip off once she’s settled.’
It wasn’t just his back wanted watching, it was his front as well. I said ‘Give over, you’ll get yourself killed.’
He grins at me. There we are, sopping wet in a patch of nettles with no food and no fire, and he goes and ruddy grins. ‘No, I won’t,’ he says.
We went into Roye good and early. The rain had stopped, we was drying out nice, and there’s the city smell about us again, bit of colour, bit of life, bit of anything other than mud and trees and rain. We scraped together our last deniers to buy a loaf of rye bread and a mug of bouillon, and leaned against a wall in the sun to share our breakfast. Ah, burn me to Bremen, but that bouillon was good. Hot and wet, and the meat tang in the back of the throat, it even put colour in Bernadette’s cheeks. Life looked brighter after that.
Not for André. It was a sad old business for him, leaving his friends, not to mention selling his dad’s old horse. He was soft over that animal, kept stroking it like telling it sorry all the walk into Roye. But we’d ate our last meal, there was no more for no one till the horse was traded, so off we went to the livestock quarter to do the deed. And that, my poppet, is where things started to turn turnip.
We found a place with a big yard and the coper looks proper impressed. This ain’t your ordinary animal, see, it’s what André calls a Mecklenburg, and the fellow’s eyes are popping just at the sight of it. He goes running over its points, having himself a good look under the saddle in case there’s something we’re not telling. André’s scowling at the floor, but I’m watching, I’m on to it, and when the coper’s hand stops sudden in mid-air I see it right off.
‘Wonderful animal,’ says he, face gleaming with sudden sweat. ‘I’ll talk to my partner, see how high we can go.’ He backs out the yard, wiping his hands on his apron and leaving a smell of fish worse nor Marseilles.
I’m in and up with the saddle, and there it is, plain as paper, a crest on the cloth with a big gold ‘R’, same as the one on the ring. Call me a fool for not seeing it before, but I never had the saddling of that horse, never, the fucking thing would have had me in seconds. I grabbed its bridle, jerked it round, and said ‘All of us, out now.’
As we nipped out the yard I saw a boy already pelting up the street for a provost. Maybe they guessed he was de Roland, maybe they thought we was horse thieves, but it was the gallows either end of that question. I was up on the big stallion and yelling André to up on the other to get somewhere healthier fast.
But the coper comes running after us yelling ‘Stop!’ and others take up the shout all round. A couple of bored soldiers at the end of the street hear it and go to put the chains across, they’re a-blocking of the road. Round we go and fast, but the other end’s got a huge carriage fat-bellied in the middle of it, footmen scurrying round and yelling at whatever poor honest tradesman’s got in the way. I’d maybe slip past on foot, but we’ve two ruddy horses laden with baggage, we’re good and trapped.
‘This way,’ yells André, turning down a cobbled passage and near scraping his leg off as he goes. It’s narrow all right, and me on the bigger horse, I have to flip the saddlebags atop the beast’s back to get us through at all. Behind us I hear yelling and the pounding of feet.
We squeeze through into a bigger road but you’d never know it, we’re wedged in a crowd of people and carts, hardly room to get a hoof down nowhere, and down the far end a block of soldiers marching right this way. I can’t think what’s up, but I know what to do about it, and so does de Roland, he’s off his horse and lifting Bernadette down with him, and I’m on the ground already. When people are looking for you in a crowd, the place to be is in among it, see, not stuck on the biggest horse around.
We struggle forward together. There’s others leading horses in this mob, even a couple leading oxen, I’m feeling a touch less like a spire sticking out of a village, but the whole crowd’s shuffling slowly on like one big stream and us with no choice but to go with them. We’re being squashed together, see, there’s market stands either side narrowing the passage, then I get a glimpse of the square a-front of us and see why. There’s soldiers lined up, one on a box reading off a bit of paper, men and horses clustered to one side, and above the crowd babble I hear the sound of a drum.
Recruiting. The street’s blocked because the military’s took over the square, they’re on the racolage, and looking to lure some nice new men to the flag. They may be more than luring them too, the soldiers behind are herding vagabonds and driving them right this way. We’ve got a hue and cry after us, troops behind us, soldiers in front, we’re trapped like rabbits and not a hole to run for.
‘Leave the horses,’ I yell at André. ‘We can dodge in a cabaret and out the other side.’
He backs up against
a wall, arm round Bernadette to keep her safe in the press. ‘We need the money, they’re all we’ve got.’
I say ‘You’ve still got your life, laddie.’
He knows it, he’s looking this way and that for a way out, seeing nothing but crowds and soldiers and the girlie needing protecting. Then he thrusts his reins at me and says ‘Take Héros. They didn’t see him, he’s safe and nearly as valuable. Sell him, Grimauld, everything as we said. I’ll take Tonnerre and ride my way out.’
But Bernadette’s on it now, she’s clutching at his arm like a blind woman. ‘You can’t, André,’ she’s saying. ‘You can’t, they’ll shoot you.’
He tries to unpeel her fingers. ‘Stay with Grimauld, you’ll be all right, I promise.’
No one’s going to be all right, he’ll be caught or dead in a minute. His foot’s in the stirrup, then the drum starts another roll, I see it at last, and grab him back down.
‘Whoa there,’ I tell him. ‘Whoa now, boys. There’s maybe another way.’
Bernadette Fournier
It was everything we needed. It was safety and food and shelter, it could give André the chance to fight the very enemies we now fled. Grimauld too was eager to return to the life he knew best, while Monsieur already knows the army had been my own first home.
There was no time to lose, for the troops were marching closer and we all saw the militia heading purposefully towards a man who led a horse. But the crowds were slow, we could only take the tiniest steps for fear of treading on the heels of the people in front and drawing the very attention we wished to avoid. It was like the horror of a nightmare, when one tries to run and does not move. Then at last there were smooth, hard flags beneath our feet, we were in the square, and the crowd thinning and spreading as they went about their business. We walked so quickly to the recruiting enseign I think we almost ran.
He looked at the horses, said ‘Awfully sorry, this is for infantry,’ and waved us back to the crowd.