The Last Banquet

by Jonathan Grimwood

The man spat. He translated my words for his companions and they muttered among themselves. Héloïse was watching me and there was a message in her eyes; unfortunately I had no idea how to read it. She had her hands clasped behind her head as she knelt in the road and the position exposed sodden circles beneath her arms and pulled her breasts high. She was swaying in the heat. Armand had his eyes shut and the movement of his lips told me he was praying. Only our carter seemed untroubled, for all his awkward position and his face in the dirt he lay as silent and still as a man asleep. Looking at him, I wondered if he really was asleep and envied him if he was. The wine from the harbour inn had been heavy as well as sour and there was nothing I’d have liked more.

  ‘Come here,’ the man demanded.

  ‘You come here.’

  He raised his pistol and I looked into its muzzle. From this distance the ball would pass without trouble through my head. Such a death would be instant or as near as made no difference. I took a mouthful of hot Corsican air and savoured its scent. If I were to die it might as well be with the scent of wild herbs in my nostrils. The crickets were loud, the cicadas a constant background hiss like tiny steam engines. A kite called high overhead. Falco milvus Linnaeus had named the Corsican variety in his Systema Naturae.

  ‘Jean-Marie . . . ’ Héloïse was staring at me.

  ‘What?’

  Her throat rippled. ‘He’ll kill you if you don’t.’

  I was going to shrug but her eyes were so blue and when I looked back the black circle of the muzzle somehow looked bigger. I could remonstrate, demand the man find his manners and remind him he dealt with a French noble sent by the king. That’s what Charlot would have done. But I had a headache and Héloïse’s expression told me she feared the outcome of this. So I climbed down from the cart and walked to where he waited.

  ‘A Frenchman?’

  I bowed politely.

  ‘Come to talk to Pasquale Paoli?’

  I nodded, and the man muttered to his companions. The last thing I remembered was that he spat, before saying ‘Traitor.’ And then the barrel of his pistol slashed towards my skull, bringing darkness.

  Arrest

  I wake to the rocking of a cart, the stink of dog shit on somebody’s heel and my face hard against the cart’s rough floor. My hands are bound behind my back and my head is trapped inside a sack that smells of wind-dried ham. Men are talking somewhere above me. Lingua corsa mixed with mainland Italian and borrowed words of French. My head hurts from the pistol blow and the after-effects of wine. My best hope is that I’ve been abducted in return for ransom. I try to remember if Corsica has that tradition too. Its neighbour Sardinia certainly does. I imagine I’ll be murdered.

  When my cart stops suddenly I draw breath and look for my courage. A man growls a question from several yards away. The man sitting above answers in a tone brutal enough to say this is no friendly conversation. The cart rocks forward, the first man shouts and the cart halts again, my head slamming into wood from the abruptness of the stop. There is shouting and then a shot. Above me someone jerks, gurgles and slips down as someone else fires. To the ham smell of the sack, and the stink of shit from the dead man’s heel, is added the acrid tang of gunpowder smoke that thickens as other pistols discharge. In the end, only ringing silence remains. And then the cart rocks as someone clambers onto it. That person grunts as they drag a body off me and a scrabble of stones says they’ve tossed it over the edge of some slope. Two other bodies from within the cart follow, after which the cart begins to trundle through the heat of the Corsican afternoon, the only noise being the creak of its wheels. When it stops occasionally, as if its driver is deciding this way or that, a wild symphony of crickets reaches me on a wind that smells of herbs. We stop an indeterminate time later. Maybe an hour, maybe no more than ten minutes. Time runs differently when you have a sack over your head. Well, so it seems to me.

  The next thing I hear is Armand’s voice, then hands drag me upright onto a seat, remove the sack and I find myself staring into the soft face of a light-haired stranger with startlingly blue eyes. His mouth is full and his nose broad and his hands small, with long narrow fingers and perfectly clean nails. I see all of this in a second, perhaps because an hour earlier I’d been expecting to meet death and this man has taken his place.

  ‘Monsieur le marquis d’Aumout?’

  I bow as best I can, realise my forehead is sticky and find blood. It tastes fresh and I understand the cart’s earlier abrupt halt opened a cut that was already there.

  ‘We’ll have that dressed,’ he tells me. He peers more closely. ‘Perhaps stitched. I’m Pasquale Paoli. My cousins tell me you have an offer from the king? They wanted to tell me themselves but I thought it would be best to hear it from you.’ Héloïse and Armand look at me impassively from a yard or so away. There is a family likeness between the three. ‘Second cousins,’ Paoli says, seeing my gaze.

  ‘They are your spies?’

  ‘Friends,’ he says. ‘Family. Their father was French, true enough. A dreadful man. Luckily for me they take after their mothers. This was their chance to come home.’ He says this easily, in an entirely friendly tone, and I wonder if they were always Paoli’s spies or if he is simply lucky. Some men are.

  ‘What went wrong?’ I ask.

  He understands my question. ‘A faction not friendly to me heard of your arrival on our island and decided to interfere. They intended to discover what I might have to discuss with France. I must admit,’ he smiles slightly, ‘I’m at a loss to know what you think you could say to me that might change my mind.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Remaining independent.’

  ‘That is what you are?’

  He looks at me and his gaze hardens. Then the fierceness goes out of his eyes and he makes himself smile and keeps his voice light when he answers, ‘You know, as well as I do, that Corsica has been independent for many years.’

  ‘Genoa didn’t agree.’

  ‘The Genoese could barely hold a quarter of our coast. That’s why they sold their supposed rights in my country to you. Now, I must send my friends away . . . ’ He hugs Armand and Héloïse and they head in different directions, going downhill on red-earth paths, with armed men in front and behind. ‘My soldiers found them by the road. My enemies didn’t dare kill them. I suppose I should be grateful.’

  ‘Your soldiers?’

  He stops for a second, looks at me. ‘I’m president,’ he says. ‘As such I’m commander-in-chief of the Corsican forces. I have generals but they report to me.’ He shrugs. ‘This is how it should be in a democracy.’

  ‘I’ve heard your women vote.’

  ‘In local elections. In time I can see no reason why they should not vote in the national elections or stand for the general assembly. We have a tradition of strong women here. When men die in vendettas the women take over.’

  ‘And run the farms?’

  ‘And the bakeries and breweries, and the fishing fleets and olive presses. And continue the vendettas.’ Paoli sighs. ‘I need to find a way to stop those. What would you think of civil courts, arbitration before a panel of equals and binding rulings?’

  ‘It sounds like something Voltaire might suggest.’

  ‘We write to each other. I don’t wish to boast but I suspect François-Marie takes ideas from me in his turn.’

  As we talk, he leads me along a terrace of olive trees towards drystone steps to a terrace above. We climb through the summer heat, Signore Paoli apparently unaffected by the sun beating down on our heads. After the sixth or seventh terrace, I stop to wipe my skull and he suggests I discard my frock coat and offers to carry it if I find it too heavy and the slope too steep. Pride demands I carry my own coat and I try to steady my breathing. When we stop, it’s on a road along a ridge, and I look down over purple gorse towards Calvi, and the sea is a blue spread beyond. The view is beautiful and b
rutal, unlike even the wildest stretches of southern France. It is a country worth loving. On the ridge road a carriage waits. Not a cart but an open-top carriage with leaf springs and leather seats so hot they burn my legs through my hose. Signore Paoli sits more slowly, being a man used to life in this heat. I am impressed by him and I suspect he means to impress me. For my part, I say little and listen often, trying to judge who he is and how he will greet my offer. Jerome told me little enough about the man and what he did say was partial. In Paoli’s face I see no sign of the sybarite Jerome said I would meet. He could be a minor noble, a successful lawyer, a rich merchant who’d turned his thoughts to good works; except a fierce intelligence far back in his blue eyes suggests something more.

  The house to which he brings me is not the ruin I expect. It is low and long and sunk into the side of a hill, its red stucco faded to blend invisibly into the pink dirt behind. The gates, which are sturdy, are drawn back by two dark-skinned boys with coal-black hair and pistols in their belts. A groom rushes from inside a stable block to see to our horses and Signore Paoli helps him unfix the harness.

  ‘Here we can talk,’ he says.

  I can understand why. There are men with guns in every direction. Shepherds with muskets across their backs in the fields. A boy leading goats along a track has a pistol hanging from a lanyard around his neck. Two hunters carry a belt full of rabbits, one has his musket slung, the other has his muzzle forward. I doubt the colonel from Calvi could get his men within five miles of this place without running into an ambush.

  ‘Come inside,’ Signore Paoli says, ‘you must be thirsty.’

  I fear he is about to offer me wine but he produces a glass jug filled with cold fresh water obviously drawn from a deep well and joins me in finishing first one tumbler and then another. Only then does he take me into his study, sit himself in a heavy chair on one side of a simple desk and indicate I should take the chair on the other.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Tell me about this offer.’

  I begin, as Jerome had suggested, by telling him how much we respect Corsica. How being part of a great kingdom like France would be entirely different from being the colony of a poor and near-destitute Italian city state. That the island would be granted the status of a province, with all the rights and privileges that brought. Corsicans would have the right to an assembly, the right to their own courts. Corsica itself would be the equal of Normandy or Burgundy, both great countries that became part of France.

  ‘And to sweeten this . . . ’ His voice was light. ‘What does Paris have in mind for me?’

  ‘Armand and Héloïse really didn’t tell you?’

  Pasquale Paoli shakes his head. ‘I wanted to hear this from you myself. I already understand you’re a friend of the duc de Saulx and the marquis de Caussard, and that when you speak it is with their voice, and when they speak it is with the voice of the king of France. The only thing I don’t understand is why you came. I mean . . . I understand why they sent you. I’m simply not sure why you agreed to be sent.’

  I tell him I came for brocciu di Dónna.

  He looks puzzled, and when I explain he looks a little cross, as if he thinks less of me now than when we first met. ‘And you believe this exists? You believe we make cheese from the milk of our women and keep it hidden in caves to eat in secret?’ He sees my face and sighs. ‘Héloïse tells me you’re a good man. That your life reflects your writings. She says you saved her life one day in the woods when her horse bolted. For that I can forgive you this ridiculousness. Tell me what they told you to tell me. Make their offer.’

  ‘I am to offer you the title of marquis di Bonafacio. If you do not accept that I am to offer you duc de Bastia. If you refuse that I am to offer you prince of Corsica, with all the rights of a prince of France who is not of the royal blood.’

  ‘And my men? I’m sure you have something for them.’

  ‘Such titles as you think fit. A handful of comtes, more vicomtes, as many barons as you need. I doubt the king will be fussy about those.’

  ‘Why would I accept this offer?’

  ‘Because the alternative is war. The king will send soldiers and this time you will be fighting France. You will find it very different from fighting Genoa.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he says. He pours himself a glass of wine and then pours one for me as an afterthought. I can see from his face that his thoughts are turned inward. ‘Do you expect me to accept?’

  A silence stretches between us, broken only by footsteps on wooden boards overhead and a fiddling of crickets so loud it reaches through shuttered windows. There are two answers to that and they depend upon to whom he addresses the question.

  ‘Who are you asking?’ I say. ‘Me? Or the French envoy?’

  ‘Do you expect me to distinguish?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you mistake me. I am Pasquale Paoli and I am the president of Corsica, the two are indistinguishable. There is no difference in the views of one and the views of the other. However, for you . . . What does the French envoy think?’

  ‘He expects you to accept. Your acceptance is the only way to avoid war. The rewards of becoming part of France are great, and the rewards offered to you personally, and through you to your followers, will make you the equal of the great nobles of France.’

  ‘And this other you?’

  ‘You will refuse,’ I say simply. ‘You have no interest in titles or desire for your country to be ruled by Louis and have your children learn French.’ He stares at me for a long while and asks a question that haunts me still.

  ‘What would you die for?’

  I give him the obvious answers. ‘My family, my children, my wife . . . ’ I add My king as an afterthought, not knowing if it is really true. But those are not the answers he wants. He means what idea would I die for. And I realise I do not know. Standing, I bow to show I accept his decision and tell him I will return to Calvi. With luck I will be in time to board the vessel that brought me.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ he says.

  ‘She’s left already?’

  Signore Paoli shrugs. ‘I have no idea. But I cannot let you return so swiftly. We have preparations to make at this end. The longer you are here, the longer we have to make them. In a week they will wonder where you are. In a month they will send someone to find out and that person will fail. In two months, France will begin to worry and questions will be asked through intermediaries that will be answered, although the answers will leave them uncertain. In four months . . . In four months we will be ready.’

  ‘You gave me safe passage.’

  ‘True,’ he says. ‘But I said nothing about returning you.’

  1769

  Freedom

  Since I am alive to write this you already know I didn’t die in Corsica, although there were days and weeks, and finally months, when that seemed the likely outcome. First came a period of silence. I was held in cottages and fed well, moved every week or so, sometimes in the night and sometimes by day. This continued until Paoli himself appeared in the autumn to tell me his army had won a great victory over the marquis de Chauvelin. At the end of a ten-hour battle a thousand Frenchman were wounded, six hundred were dead and another six hundred had surrendered, along with enough cannon, mortars and muskets to arm an entire new army. Corsica was free and would remain so.

  Pasquale Paoli was almost right. Faced with the scale of the defeat, our good king Louis XV suggested the island was not worth such losses. But such was the damage to the duc de Choiseul’s reputation as foreign minister that he begged the king to send more troops. Charlot objected and Jerome proclaimed himself appalled by the proposed cost, but the king let himself be swayed and de Choiseul got his way. At the end of winter a French army landed in Corsica, this time led by Noël, comte de Vaux.

  The cottages in which I was held became smaller, and I was moved more often, sometimes daily, so
metimes not for two or three days at a time. Once I thought they’d forgotten me and the shepherd boy left to push stale bread under my door grew so frightened he unlocked it to ask if he could sleep inside. They would have beaten him, the men who turned up a week later, but I told them the boy had explained to me that if I tried to overpower him or run away the grown-ups would cut off my bollocks and hang me from an olive tree with my own entrails.

  That night the boy brought me cheese in thanks. It was hard and stale and bloomed with mould but it was the first I’d eaten in three months and tasted so wonderful I almost cried. That winter was fierce. Winds howled though gaps in the walls, rain fell, food became scarce and my captors sullen and silent. They grew friendlier as the weather grew warmer and shared rabbit stew and small birds roasted over open fires. The kind didn’t matter: we ate larks and thrushes, pipits, warblers and shrikes. And then they grew sullen again, and cast black glances, and I realised they had returned to discussing my fate. These were young men, sometimes very young, and I understood they were what Paoli could spare. The rest of his forces were engaged in running battles with my countrymen.

  Towards the start of May I was taken to join a ragged column of soldiers. Maybe they were retreating. Maybe advancing. From their expressions as they squatted, crouched and sat in the dirt of a village square it was hard to tell. My guard that day had one good eye, his other as coddled as a half-cooked egg. He made me walk on his right where he could see me, called me ‘old man’ and said he’d break my legs if I tried to escape. ‘Today you walk,’ he said. ‘You walk and you don’t stop.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘You will find out.’

  I asked the question again of a rough-voiced soldier who joined us a mile or so later and to whom Milk Eye deferred. He said, ‘We need to reach Ponte Novu. Twenty-five miles, perhaps more.’

  ‘Where do we break the journey?’

  He looked at me and saw my age rather than my Frenchness. He saw a person rather than my name or posi­tion in life, assuming he knew either. I understood that for me to know that meant I saw him in the same way. His voice was sympathetic as he said, ‘No stops.’ The casual kindness of his tone undid me and I had to hide tears.