by A L Berridge
The faces of the others shifted suddenly into sharp relief as they moved. The first straightened so fast he dislodged a basket of narcissus from the stall, the second stepped abruptly backwards, and the third clapped his hand to his sword.
‘Where did you get this?’ said André, and I did not know his voice.
It was the one with the thin moustache who answered. ‘An inn somewhere. An inn. There’s no crime.’
The voice of the man with the sword was louder than the others. ‘Or if there is, it’s not ours.’
André swung round on him. ‘Do you say it is mine?’ The paper dropped to the ground as his left hand slid to his scabbard.
I could see none of our friends in the crowd, no one to intervene and save him. I moved to his side and said ‘André,’ but he did not even turn. He saw nothing but the man and the sword and the chance to fight his own shame. He said again fiercely ‘Do you say it is mine?’
‘Perhaps,’ said another voice. A plainly dressed gentleman stepped from the crowd, holding a copy of what looked like the same bill. ‘This is Picardie, this monstrosity shames us all. Do you know it is to be seen by our neighbours in Champagne?’
André flushed. ‘And you would blame me for that?’
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ said a woman at the lace stall. ‘That’s you on your knees to a Montmorency?’
André swung round again but he could not fight a woman, least of all when what she said was truth. ‘It was the King’s order …’
‘King’s order!’ said the man with the little moustache, finding courage among so many allies. ‘A gentleman would die before doing such a thing.’
They were baiting him, he was turning round and round like a bear at a fair and meeting with nothing but derision. Again I moved towards him, but people were pressing up behind me, something banged into the back of my knee, I stumbled and half fell, my basket of flowers flying out of my hands to scatter on the stones.
People said ‘Shame!’ and a gentleman assisted me to rise, but André had already seen it and was half mad with fury. He whirled back on his accusers and now his sword was out and in his hand.
‘Is this your honour?’ he said. ‘In God’s name –’
‘Honour?’ said the loud-voiced man. ‘This Montmorency’s still alive, isn’t he? One can only wonder –’
‘How long for?’ said a deep voice behind me.
Relief snatched away my breath as I saw it was the Comte himself, standing tall and straight as if he had never huddled into a blanket in his life.
He said ‘Because the creature hides himself, do you question the courage of my nephew?’ and his black-gloved hand rested openly on his sword.
Jacques de Roland
I’d heard of him, Hugo, Comte de Vallon, one of the deadliest swordsmen in Paris, and now here he was, like an old legend coming to life. He spoke in my father’s voice, he stood and even looked like him, and my chest swelled with pride.
André felt it too, it flashed on his face as he spun round, but there was something else underneath it, an uncertainty like fear. He said in a low voice ‘Monseigneur, I beg –’
‘No, Chevalier,’ said the Comte, pitching his voice to the crowd. ‘These men have insulted my family, this is my quarrel now.’
That got them, that bloody got them, everyone knows what’s meant by ‘quarrel’. The crowd backed off at once, and I didn’t blame them. Even if one of them had the guts to fight André, whoever seconded would have to take my uncle, and there wouldn’t be two swordsmen like that here, there wouldn’t be two like them anywhere.
But the loud-voiced man seemed determined not to lose face. He leaned against the stall, pushed back his hat, and said ‘I seek no quarrel. I merely asked a question to which I have yet to receive an answer.’
There bloody wasn’t one and he must have known it. Of course we knew Bouchard had got to be killed, it wasn’t André’s fault he wasn’t dead already, but there aren’t any excuses for a gentleman. It was stupid and unfair, the frustration on André’s face was suddenly boiling inside my own head, I’d got to relieve it or burst.
I stepped forward and stood at my uncle’s side. I couldn’t remember the proper stance, but found my body sort of doing it for me, my feet square like a fencing lesson, my hip already tilted and the hilt of my sword brushing my hand like an invitation.
I said ‘What right have you to question the Chevalier de Roland?’
I was nobody really, but the crowd still murmured and more of them sloped away. André looked at me, his eyes went bang on mine, and suddenly I wasn’t nobody, I knew exactly who I was and all I wanted was the chance to prove it. I looked back to the man causing the trouble and something inside me was saying ‘Draw, you bastard, draw.’
He licked his lips. ‘None, Monsieur. My concern was for the family’s reputation, for which I naturally have great respect.’
‘And you doubt is in safe hands?’ said the Comte, unmoving. Behind us I heard the Comtesse muttering ‘Good, Hugo, good.’
‘Not I,’ said the man quickly. ‘I wish the Chevalier godspeed in his quest and assure him he has all Picardie behind him.’
‘Behind him,’ said the Comte, his mouth twisting in amusement. ‘Quite so.’
The crowd rippled with laughter. The man coloured with irritation, but he was practically on his own now, his friends were already retreating. He said stiffly ‘Then we are in agreement,’ made the quickest bow I’ve ever seen, and turned to follow the others.
I felt oddly flat for a moment. I’d loved the feeling of the three of us standing together, I’d wanted it to go on, but they were all bloody going and it was over. Then I looked round at André sheathing his sword and knew we’d done what we needed to, there was no trace of that awful lonely desperation I’d seen when we first arrived. He squeezed both our hands, said ‘For God’s sake, Uncle, what if they’d called you on it?’ and went past us to Anne.
I was puzzled. I said ‘We’d have fought, wouldn’t we?’
My uncle grimaced. ‘I’d have tried.’ He saw my blank expression, sighed, took my hand and guided it to his upper arm. ‘Here, feel that.’
He had a coat on and something beneath it like a padded gambeson, my fingers were sinking through for ages before I felt anything hard. His arm was like a stick.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’d have been sliced veal if it had come to it.’
He patted my arm and swung away to the Comtesse, saying ‘Now then, Mother, the show’s over, where’s the damned carriage?’ He walked with such confidence, the beautiful rapier jingling cheerfully at his hip, but I felt only an awful sadness as I began to understand.
I looked for André to share it with, but he was standing by Anne and I saw with alarm he was poring over that vile handbill. I shot up to him and said ‘Give it here, André. Let’s burn it and forget it.’
‘Forget it?’ said André. His head came up, but there wasn’t the fury I’d expected, he looked almost excited. ‘Jacques, have you read this? Do you see what it means?’
I said ‘It means Bouchard’s a bastard and we already knew that.’
‘But to plant posters about it in Picardie?’ he said. ‘Don’t you see? No more hiding in Flanders, Jacques, the bastard’s coming out.’
Stefan Ravel
So he was, Abbé, but unfortunately not alone. The poster claimed France’s exiled heroes were returning to bring peace and prosperity to the world, which was all very fine and uplifting until you realized ‘heroes’ meant ‘traitors’ and ‘the world’ meant ‘Spain’.
Oh come on, think about it. Even exiles like Guise hadn’t the muscle for a comeback like this, and Bouchard hadn’t enough to get in the gate of Amiens. Someone was backing them, and it wasn’t hard to guess who. André’d always said Spain would never give up, and for once in his life he was right.
Yes, yes, we checked it. The countryside was slathered in these papers, so we talked to every innkeeper displaying one. They said the man who brough
t them was foreign, some even said half-Spanish, but two went further and gave us a name. Corvacho, Abbé. Carlos Corvacho, the little friend and bedmaker of Don Miguel d’Estrada. That irritatingly persistent bastard was at it again.
It was imminent too. There were other things moving in Champagne that spring, and one was the young Duc d’Enghien. In our little hunting trips for Bouchard the one thing we heard loud and clear was that he’d got the army of Picardie strung out along the Champagne border between Albert and Saint Quentin. We weren’t the only ones expecting invasion.
That put a different colour on it. I’d as soon be wringing Bouchard’s fat neck as not, but if he was in the middle of an invading Spanish army I could see a rather more worthwhile target right there. There was only one obvious way we could get near either of them, so the Comte trotted off to Brichanteau at the Picardie to ask if he’d a place for André de Roland among his Gentleman Volunteers, along with a few assorted followers such as my good self.
I admit I was looking forward to it. Oh, it was all very comfortable lounging around at Ancre, and almost worth it to see the look on Jacques’ face when I stuck my feet on the furniture, but I’m a soldier, Abbé, there was a campaign to be fought and that’s what I do best. Grimauld felt the same. Jacques and Charlot fussed about organizing horses and a wagon, Lelièvre sat down to polish his pearl-handled pistols, while André sharpened his sword and whistled.
Then the Comte came back. I’d love to have heard how tactfully they’d put it, but the gist seemed to be that the Picardie needed to be careful of its reputation, and there were a few ‘uncertainties’ about André’s recent history. Oh, fuck knows, maybe because he’d never been publicly cleared, maybe because he still hadn’t avenged Bouchard’s insults, who knows how the nobility think? I only know that if I’d ever doubted Bouchard was worth it, André’s pinched face as his uncle said the Picardie wouldn’t have him was enough to put steel in a Carmelite.
We waited till the Comte and Comtesse had retired then slipped over to the château for a council of war. It was quite a little problem we had now, winkling Bouchard out of the ranks of the Spanish army without the slightest help from our own, but we were every one of us up for it. We sat round a table eating oranges in an atmosphere of pure venom. ‘He is a coward, this Bouchard,’ said Bernadette, spitting out pips. ‘He will not be with the army, Chevalier, you will find him hiding at the back.’
Anne shook her head. ‘Not if anyone can see. He has too much pride, that’s all he thinks about. That’s why he set out to destroy André in the first place.’
‘Pride,’ said André. He looked up from his plate with a light in his face I found ominously familiar. ‘You’re right, that’s his weak point. So let’s hit it.’
André de Roland
Cartel issued to Henri Bouchard, dated 4 May 1643
To HENRI BOUCHARD, who falsely takes to himself the name of MONTMORENCY, and is currently believed HIDING in FLANDERS
Monsieur,
You have defamed my honour and I will meet you to discuss the matter anywhere in Europe you choose to name. You have SEVEN DAYS to respond to the Chevalier de Roland at Dax-en-roi in Picardie, and fail at peril of being exposed to all France as a LIAR and COWARD.
No man of HONOUR would refuse such an invitation. No man of honour will conceal or harbour a man who does so. Prove your honour by responding, and give me the opportunity TO PROVE MINE.
A. de Roland, Chevalier, Sieur of Dax
Stefan Ravel
It seemed a lot of balls to me. I wasn’t even sure it was legal, but André said Bouchard was the non-person now, and no one would mind if he killed him. I rather thought Bouchard might, but knew better than to say so.
De Chouy had hundreds of the things printed off in Paris, and we dutifully trailed round Picardie and Champagne sticking them up everywhere there’d been one of those bills. André and I even rode across the border to Ossu, found an alehouse packed with Spanish soldiers, wrapped the cartel round a stone and smashed it through the window. Childish, possibly, and we had a hell of a race back to Éspehy, but it was the best way of ensuring d’Estrada heard about it, which naturally meant Bouchard would too.
It still didn’t fetch him. André watched for couriers like a condemned man waiting for reprieve, but the seven days stretched to ten, then eleven, and no word came at all. I thought we were wasting our time.
And there I was wrong, Abbé, as perhaps I should have guessed. Me more than anyone, as it happened, since I was the only one who’d heard that conversation in the chapel of the Château d’Escaut. I was the only one who could have guessed that if the cartel didn’t fetch Bouchard there was a fucking good chance it was going to fetch someone else.
Bernadette Fournier
We were to dine in the manor that night. We did not normally do so while the Comte and Comtesse were staying, but the wedding was only a week away, tomorrow would come grand relatives from Paris, and the Chevalier insisted on spending this night with his friends.
I had only a short walk from the home of Mme Gilbert. It was growing dark as I crossed the lawns but the sound of an approaching horseman did not trouble me, for M. de Chouy was expected from Paris. I waited by the drive to greet him as he arrived.
The figure moved fast down the avenue and I felt a moment’s unease. M. de Chouy had tinkling bells on his harness and often sang as he rode, but this man came silently and with purpose. I thought it might be one of the grand relatives arriving a day early and stepped back respectfully, but the rider shouted after me ‘You! You there, girl! Wait!’
It was not polite, but such an address is common among gentlemen, so I turned and waited as he reined up on the drive beside me. He bent from his saddle and said ‘I need a message taken to de Roland, you can do that, can’t you?’
He was little more than a dark shape in the gloom, but I knew the voice now and for a moment could not find my own.
‘Are you dumb?’ he said, and fumbled inside his coat. ‘Here, a silver écu, you know what that is, don’t you? I need a message taken to de Roland, I’m too busy to go myself.’
‘Or too afraid?’ said I. ‘You are a fugitive here, M. d’Arsy.’
Oh, but it was good to see his fear. For months I had curtsied and taken the insults of these fine gentlemen, and now it was I who stood erect with a whole estate of important friends behind me while he cringed in his very saddle and said only ‘Good God. Bernadette.’
‘Good God indeed,’ said I. ‘You had better leave, Monsieur, before I decide to tell my friends that here is a man who ducked me in a horse trough, and who sat and watched as the Chevalier de Roland paid an amende honorable he knew was undeserved.’
He was silent a moment, and I heard only the tired snorting of his mount. At last he said ‘All right, be a bitch if you like, but you’ve a brain about you somewhere, you must have had to fool us so long. Tell de Roland Bouchard is in France with the army of de Melo, they’ve already crossed into Champagne. He’ll be looked after safe somewhere, they’re to make him governor of the fort they’re taking. De Roland ought to be able to pick him off if he wants.’
He was turning to ride away, but my mind was still in confusion. I seized his bridle and said ‘Do you expect me to believe you wish to help the Chevalier?’
‘I don’t expect anything,’ he said. ‘What does a woman like you know about honour? But there’s the message, take it or not, I’ve done my best.’
The reins were ripped out of my hand as he turned. I saw the chance disappearing and cried after him ‘Where, Monsieur? You have not told me where!’
He checked the horse to look back over his shoulder. ‘Some godforsaken town in the Ardennes no one else wants. They call it Rocroi.’
He turned again and galloped away, his horse’s hooves pounding faster and fainter into the distance. I stood now with a head as clear as the moonlight and at last the news the Chevalier had sought for so long. This is where it would happen, this is where he would regain his honour.
A place called Rocroi.
Twenty-Eight
Jacques de Roland
We set out at dawn.
Anne herself came to see us off. She knew André might not be back for the wedding, but she helped tighten his horse’s girth herself and said only ‘I’ll be here when you get back. Whenever you get back. You know that, don’t you?’ He took her behind Héros to kiss her, but none of us blamed him. I felt like bloody kissing her myself.
Even the Comte was there, saying ‘Is there anything else I can do? Are you sure?’ I understood that better now and felt shit for never seeing it before. I looked at him standing with his chin up like André when he was hurting inside, then slid down off Tonnerre.
I said ‘Uncle, will you lend me your sword? André’s got our father’s, I’d like to carry yours for you, if you’ll let me.’
He didn’t speak for a moment, then reached down and fumbled with his sword.
I said ‘Let me.’
I helped him with the frogs and for a second his gloved fingers touched mine, the leather cold for a second before it was warm with the man beneath. Then he passed me the scabbard and said ‘Look after it, will you? It’s a good blade.’
I said ‘I know,’ and he understood. When I got back in the saddle he didn’t look small any more, he looked the way he had at Lucheux, tall as my father and standing by my side.
But we’d plenty of men by our side today. Charlot had the Comtesse’s permission, but I think he’d have come even if he hadn’t. Crespin was there, he’d only got in about three hours ago but looked brighter than anyone and was humming under his breath. Gaspard was there, his hat so low over his face I’m bloody sure he was asleep under it. Stefan was there, smoking his stinking pipe and scowling but at least he was bloody there. Grimauld was there, perched up on Duchesse like he thought she was going to bolt with him, but with the same obstinate look I’d seen when he picked up that axe in the Luxembourg.