by A L Berridge
But no, there wasn’t anything wrong in it, Abbé, I’d say there was a lot right. The Porchiers brought us barrels and boards to make tables in the barn, and it was almost like a meeting of the old Occupied Army. Charlot was still resting but the rest of us were there, all ten together for the first time. We had servants next to ladies and none of it mattered a fuck. We’d got a purpose. There was no more talk of taking André to England, we were going to stay in France and fight, and all we had to do was work out how.
Oh yes, I know it was ridiculous, I saw it myself just looking round those boards. Lelièvre was worth having, the man had a level head and steady trigger finger and I’ll tolerate even an aristocrat who’s got those, but de Chouy was bouncing on his stool like a child playing horses, and the rest of us … well. André was a disgraced nobleman, Jacques a jumped-up stable boy, Anne the daughter of a corrupt baron, I was a soldier with a wounded arm, and all we had to support us were a lackey, a ladies’ maid, a serving girl, a valet with a wounded shoulder and a thief with a crippled foot. But you know what, Abbe? That night I thought maybe, just maybe, we could change the world.
Jacques de Roland
Anne changed everything. I’d been dashing round fighting and never achieving anything, but Anne had stuck it out where she was and found out everything we needed to know.
Bernadette was doubtful at first. She whispered ‘Why do we make this fuss about a lady who has been warm and safe while the Chevalier has been chased for his life?’ But as Anne went on talking she ate slower and slower and finally put her knife down altogether. Others were doing the same, till even Grimauld stopped slobbering and the clatter of plates faded to silence as we all went still.
She told us all of it, and I remember an odd kind of stirring in my stomach as I understood what we were really up against. They were all in it together, maybe even the Queen, they wanted rid of Richelieu and didn’t care if they had to bring the Spaniards in to do it. But I knew what that really meant, so did Stefan, so did André and Anne, we’d seen it first-hand and never wanted to see it again. We had to beat these people anyway if we wanted to save André, but there was a bit of me started to wake up while Anne was talking, a bit that wanted to save France as well.
‘And we will,’ said André. ‘We only need the evidence so His Eminence can act.’
‘Only?’ said Gaspard. ‘It will need to be quite some evidence to convince His Majesty. I do not think these canaille are likely to commit anything to paper.’
Anne said ‘But they have, Monsieur, Fontrailles has already set out with a treaty. They are making an addition to be witnessed by Don Miguel d’Estrada himself.’
I was lucky I was still on the soup, I heard horrid whooping noises as Crespin choked on the mutton. André looked like he’d been hit by a hammer.
‘They’re signing it?’ said Stefan. ‘When? Where?’
Anne looked contrite. ‘I’m sorry, they didn’t say.’
He leaned forward over the board. ‘Could you find out?’
She hesitated. ‘I don’t know, I …’
André woke up and glared at Stefan. ‘Do you want her to go back and ask them?’
Stefan shrugged. ‘That’s the evidence you need, isn’t it?’
There was a little silence.
‘No,’ said André, laying his hand firmly on Anne’s. ‘There’ll be another way.’
‘Like what?’ said Stefan.
‘We can watch them, can’t we?’ said André. ‘We could get someone in as a servant, perhaps listen at a door …’
‘I do not know His Eminence the Cardinal Richelieu,’ said Gaspard, pouring more wine. ‘But I would rather think he has these options covered already.’
André swung round on him. ‘We know things he doesn’t, we’ve got –’
‘A woman right in the house,’ said Stefan. ‘She’ll know when and where, she –’
‘I said no!’ said André, leaping to his feet. ‘She’s just escaped. She can’t go back now.’
There was a rustling of straw as Anne got to her feet beside him. ‘Yes, I can,’ she said. ‘And I will.’
Stefan Ravel
I’d always said that girl had guts.
Oh come on, Abbé, she was our only hope, and even André saw it in the end. Her charming relatives were hoping to attend the signing themselves, so obviously she was going to hear about it. All right, she’d escaped, but they’d trust her more than ever if she’d had a chance of freedom and deliberately chose to go back. It was perfectly safe, perfectly reasonable, and the only fucking way.
André still insisted that she’d got to be able to communicate with us at all times. Philibert would establish himself as a follower of Jeanette’s so he could call every morning, but we’d also have a system of signals at Anne’s window which de Chouy was to check three times a day and Lelièvre twice at night. I said ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like us all to sleep on the Place Dauphine?’ but he just said ‘If we have to, yes.’ Love, Abbé, there’s nothing like it for rotting the sense of humour. He and Anne were hard put to keep their eyes off each other and their minds on the plan, and I’d a suspicion they wouldn’t last the night.
So I was rather surprised when I finally went to my truckle bed in the room set aside for wounded heroes and found André there ahead of me, kneeling on the floor by Charlot’s side. I watched until the sentimentality got too much for me, then shut the door with my boot.
‘Hullo, Stefan,’ he said, without turning round. ‘How’s your arm?’
‘Sore,’ I said, and laid my lamp on the chest. ‘But I’ll live, and so will Charlot.’
He’d been lucky, the old man. He’d been sprawling forward when the ball hit so it only scorched its way up his back and out his shoulder, but if he’d been standing it would have been straight in the heart. If he hadn’t been there at all, it would have been André’s face.
‘He took the ball for me,’ said André. ‘He did it on purpose.’
‘Very stupid,’ I agreed. ‘You want to have a word with him about that when he’s better.’
He sat back on his heels, bringing his head into the pool of lamplight. ‘Why did they come anyway? What was the point?’
I shoved the lamp along and sat on the chest. ‘Put yourself in Bouchard’s place. Does he really think you’ll take today lying down? I’d bet good money he checked behind his curtains before he went to bed tonight.’
Lamplight’s a funny thing when it’s above a man, Abbé. It made black shadows of his eyes. He said ‘It’s not going to save him.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Maybe you can have a little duel at the signing.’
He didn’t move. ‘You think it’s funny, don’t you? Gentlemen and their pride.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I’m laughing myself sick. I doubt he is, though, unless he’s got a bloody good surgeon.’
He turned to look at me. ‘I don’t …’
‘Look,’ I said, and thrust my grazed hand in front of him. ‘Bouchard’s teeth, probably. Maybe the gravel when I rubbed his face in it.’
He reached out and touched the scratched knuckles. ‘Tell me.’
I made a pretty good tale of it, if I say so myself, and didn’t hear so much as a breath out of him while I talked. When I’d finished he sat back and said ‘I wish I’d seen it.’
‘You will,’ I said. ‘You’ll have him on his knees where he belongs.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, with a casual conviction that wouldn’t have done much for Bouchard’s sleep if he’d heard it. ‘Yes, I’ll certainly do that.’
We sat in companionable silence a while. Charlot was sleeping peacefully, his face as smooth as a baby’s, his breathing soft and steady.
I said ‘Go to bed, André. We’re all right here.’
Anne du Pré
Extract from her diary, dated 12 February 1642
I cannot sleep. I am sat by the window with a book propped open to mask the candle, and there in the bed is André.
He looks so young in his sleep, his cheek flushed, and his hair sprawled over the pillow. One hand lies on top of the blanket, and my skin tingles with memory where it has touched. My legs are trembly, my face prickly from being rubbed so close against his cheek, and there is a little hollow ache inside me, as if it will always now feel empty when he is not there.
It did hurt, I have to write that, but at last even the pain became only a soft ache with ripples of something so glorious that I pushed and strained for it even as he did, as if the pleasure were not something we chased but something we made together. It was almost frightening to lose myself so utterly I had to cry out with the release, but André was lost with me, so that a moment later I was full and warm and wet, and that was so beautiful a feeling it made the ripples come again, only now they were great waves that pounded until there was nothing but my own heart hammering in my aching throat and the tears on my face that were his as well as mine, because we both of us died together.
Yet when at last we faced each other with our breathing calm I felt a sudden foolish embarrassment as if he might respect me less for such a display. I said ‘Whatever will Jeanette think of me when I tell her?’ but he laughed with such pleasure and rubbed his nose against mine and said ‘Sweetheart, I think she already knows.’
Stefan Ravel
Oh, please. The whole of Saint-Martin must have known, it’s a wonder any of us slept at all. Even Charlot woke and muttered in panic for his Chevalier until I said ‘Relax, granddad, he doesn’t need any help with this one.’ Another shriek of girlish enthusiasm came bursting through the wall, and Charlot subsided on his pillow with the merest hint of a smile. André was clearly making up for lost time.
Well, I hope he enjoyed it. We were up early in the grey morning getting Charlot in the carriage, all of us a little worse for wear after last night’s wine, and there was bloody André strolling round singing. I told him sourly to shut his gob, but he only tipped my hat over my eyes, said ‘What’s the matter, Stefan? Bad night?’ and sauntered off with a swing in his hip like the last cock in the barnyard.
He sobered up fast when Philibert brought out the women and it was time to say goodbye. Anne looked very small swathed in a grey travelling cloak, and I’ll admit it, Abbé, I felt a moment’s qualm about what we were asking her to do. I heard André murmur ‘You don’t have to, we can go away and be together, none of it matters,’ but she said ‘It does to me’, and kissed him as chastely as if we didn’t every one of us know how she’d spent the night. I handed her into the carriage myself, but she wouldn’t let me just shut the door on her, she reached up to my bristly face as she’d done all those years ago and whispered ‘You will look after him, won’t you, Stefan?’ Her fingers were cold.
The carriage wobbled on the rutted track as it swerved away between the orangeries and vanished into the mist. I remember the silence as the rattle of the wheels died away into nothing but the cries of rooks harsh in the morning air.
Anne du Pré
We drove straight to the Hôtel de Roland to deliver Charlot to the Comtesse’s care, then continued on foot to the convent on the Rue Saint-Antoine. I spent an hour with my friends among the sisters and learned that Father had already enquired after me, but André and I had given this much thought and I had my story ready.
The walk home was chilly, but Philibert’s enjoyment coloured the journey for us all. For him it was an adventure, escorting two fine ladies through the streets, and he insisted on paying for hot sweet chestnuts from a vendor with a brazier outside the Galeries. We ate them in our fingers like ordinary people, we cooled our burnt throats at the Samaritaine like anyone else, we chatted and laughed at Philibert’s stories, then we entered the Place Dauphine and fell silent.
Clement himself opened to us, and his relief at seeing me was so overwhelming I felt ashamed to have worried him. It was hateful to have to lie to him again, but Jeanette was so wonderfully vociferous I had hardly to say a word. She gave a most spirited account of Philibert’s gallantry in saving us from a cutpurse on our way home from the convent, and Clement clearly never doubted her. He led them away to take wine in the warmth of the kitchens, but I had now my family to face, and turned with dread for the salon.
But the knowledge that I am no longer alone made an extraordinary difference. Father and Florian confronted me with shocked disapproval, but I seemed to see for the first time how small a man my father is, how ridiculous Florian’s pretence of dignity, and how foolish I have been ever to fear them. The father I respected does not exist, the brother I loved is lost for ever, and my only loyalty is to the man who before God has become my husband.
The thought of André dispelled any lingering guilt, and I told them where I had been with as much hauteur as the Princesse de Condé herself. I said truthfully ‘The sisters do not disapprove of my actions yesterday, they quite understood I was repaying a childhood obligation to André and say all Paris respects us for it.’
Father’s face brightened at the word ‘respect’ then clouded again into confusion. ‘But I sent to the Couvent, Mademoiselle, they said they hadn’t seen you.’
I didn’t flinch. ‘Naturally they did, since you refused me permission to seek spiritual guidance within their walls. I had to persuade them not to complain of you to the King.’
Father’s fingers crept up to his beard, and for a moment he looked just like Florian. ‘But you didn’t wait to ask me, you simply ran away.’
I said ‘Can you wonder at it? When the courtyard was full of armed ruffians, and our home invaded by a bandit with drawn sword? Ours is hardly a respectable household at present, and you should be glad I did not tell the sisters so.’
His little eyes blinked twice in consternation. ‘Yes. Yes, you are right. We must speak to Monseigneur. He must be made more cognizant of our position.’
‘I’m very aware of your position,’ said a cold voice from the doorway, and there was Bouchard himself, waving away a cringing Denis behind him. ‘Have you perhaps forgotten mine?’
He made a ludicrous figure, for there was a dressing over his nose and abrasions about his mouth while his body was clearly bulked by bandaging under his doublet, yet his eyes seemed shallow and hard, and when their crooked gaze slid on to me I wanted to shiver at their expression.
‘Back already, Mademoiselle?’ he said. ‘Didn’t he want you after all?’
Father exclaimed ‘Monseigneur!’ and Florian made a high-pitched noise like a bleat, but Bouchard only smiled with such insolence I felt my cheeks sting red. ‘Let her answer, du Pré. I should like to hear.’
He could not know. He could not possibly know, for the men who followed André are all dead. I said ‘You are mistaken,’ and felt warmed inside to know it was true.
Father explained nervously where I had been and why I had fled, but Bouchard regarded me with such detachment I felt a spider walked over my skin. At length he said ‘No more guts than that, Mademoiselle?’ and turned dismissively away.
Even Florian flushed. ‘Monseigneur, I beg you not to insult my sister.’
Bouchard swung back round. ‘After her behaviour at the amende honorable?’
Florian’s face was all eyes. ‘It has done us no harm, Monseigneur.’
‘Harm!’ said Bouchard. ‘You let this woman back into your house and your friendship, then that’s your choice. But you can forget your titles, both of you, because from now on I go my own way.’
He turned for the door, he was going out of our lives as I had always prayed he would, but not now when we need his information to save André. I stepped in front of him and said ‘Please, Monseigneur, don’t abandon my family. If I’ve offended you that’s my own fault, but don’t punish my father and brother.’
His detachment seemed to quiver and break up as he looked at me. ‘Offended?’ he said. ‘Do you have the smallest idea what you’ve done?’
I think I did then. All this time I have seen his malice and even his sickness, but today I saw also his pain
and it struck me like a fist. I was in my own home, my feet on solid floor, yet felt I spoke directly with a man in hell.
‘This is what you did,’ he said, and his tone was almost conversational. ‘That man, de Roland, he with his inferior birth that is recognized only because his mother had the sense to marry his father. He made me look a fool. I dealt with it, I had him brought to his knees in public and made to admit I was the better man. It was my moment.’
He nodded at me, easy, polite, but I heard the air whistle as he drew in breath to continue. ‘And you destroyed it. You gave him face to get through it and played to that crowd like a whore in a play. You know what they’re saying in the streets today? “That poor Mlle Celeste. That evil man for doing this thing.” Me, Mademoiselle. They mean me.’
He turned away abruptly and began to examine the ornaments on the escritoire. ‘It was my moment,’ he said again. ‘And you took it away.’
The salon clock ticked. Florian’s face, white as porcelain. Father’s, red and confused. The bell on the table, I had only to ring for Clement and Bouchard would go away for ever. A terrible pity was growing in me, and I tried to quell it with thought of another man I know, one also born a bastard but who is as honourable and true as any man in the world. Yet even Jacques had an André to care for him, and Bouchard has had no one at all.
The clock ticked. It is so pretty, the sun in gold and the moon in silver, the whole world in a single dial. The scales at the top, heaven and hell in an easy little painting. Bouchard, Jacques and André, André who cared nothing for reputation if he could only save his friends.
I said ‘Tell me what you wish, and I will do it.’
He took the little statue of Niobe and weighed it in his hands. ‘You rely a lot on words, don’t you?’
I said ‘I will give them actions. I know this alliance is important for my family.’
He turned. ‘Then cement it. Prove your commitment and become my wife.’