by Aubrey Flegg
‘You bastards, you bloody French bastards. Will you look where my f…ing cart is? How am I going to get out of here? Give me the Austrians any time, even the f…ing Spaniards. Do you know what is good about them? They’ve bloody gone away, and the sooner you bloody go away the f…ing better.’
Louise gazed down into the coarse face of the peasant. His blackened teeth were gapped and, in his fury, spittle trickled through the stubble of his Friday beard – he would shave once a week on Sunday and come to church nicked and bleeding. Louise realised that Gaston could only guess at what the man was saying although the meaning was obvious enough. But the south Dutch patois, foul-mouthed though it was, stirred Louise’s patriotism.
‘How is he going to get out?’ she asked.
‘He was in the way,’ Gaston growled, turning away from the man in disgust.
‘That’s not what I asked. How is he going to get out?’
‘That’s his problem, c’est la vie.’ Gaston was moving forward, prepared to leave the man behind.
Louise was annoyed. She urged her horse past him and wheeled across his line.
‘Gaston Morteau, you may not understand what this man is saying, but I do. He is cursing you – the French – as in my day he would have cursed the Spanish, and since then apparently the Austrians. He’s a peasant! Where is your noble revolution? Do you leave the people you are supposed to have liberated rotting in the ditch?’
Gaston shook his head and she could feel him trying to clear her image from his mind, but she resisted.
‘Get out of my way, or I will ride through you!’
‘You could try. But that doesn’t sound like the noble lieutenant who fished me out of a canal.’
‘I did that for the boys, as an example,’ Gaston replied shortly.
Louise didn’t move, and finally he shrugged in a resigned way. ‘All right, Mademoiselle, what am I supposed to do?’
‘Call Pierre. Look, he’s waiting for the carriage to move forward. There are spare horses … remounts you called them. Get him to organise your men to pull the cart out, and France will have one less enemy in the Netherlands.’
‘I will be a laughing stock.’
‘No. No more, Lieutenant, than you were when you dived into a canal to rescue a mere picture.’
‘I should have let you drown!’ Gaston said, with more conviction than Louise would have liked.
‘Well, do this for Pierre then, as an example!’
Gaston shrugged, but he cupped his hands and called out to Pierre, ‘Ici! Viens! Cadet Colbert.’
CHAPTER 7
The Pont de Chasse
‘Never interfere again!’ Gaston was furious; he had heard Marcel scoffing at Pierre over the incident of the cart. ‘You made me look foolish, and Pierre too. What will the soldiers think: that we are a charity?’ Gaston was lodged in a small hotel on the outskirts of Brussels. Louise was refusing to appear, so he was addressing the darkness where her portrait stood at the end of his bed. ‘Never…’ he began again … but at that moment there was a knock on the door. He strode across the room and snatched it open. A maid stood there holding a warming pan. She bobbed a curtsey and walked in.
‘I thought you had someone with you, sir,’ she said, looking around. Gaston, recovering from his surprise, rose to his full height.
‘Au contraire, Mademoiselle, alas, I’m alone … but do I have to be?’ With a glance towards the portrait, he swept his moustaches and aimed a kiss at the girl’s cheek. The maid dodged him with a laugh and plunged the pan of hot coals into his bed. She worked it deftly into the four corners of the bed and then drew it slowly up the middle. When she turned, he barred her way and raised his shoulders pleadingly: ‘Mademoiselle, you cannot leave me now … and look!’ he glanced innocently towards the bed. ‘You have started a fire.’ The girl turned back involuntarily.
‘Where?’
‘Why here, my princess, the fire is in my heart!’ He had his arms held out, ready for her. For a second Louise thought the maid was going to succumb, but then, just when she seemed to be about melt into Gaston’s embrace, she gave a sharp thrust of the hot warming pan to his stomach and was out of the door with another laugh before he could recover.
‘Do you always behave like that?’ Louise said, appearing beside her portrait and trying to sound disapproving as Gaston dusted the ashes from his trousers.
‘Mais oui! Why not? She is pretty. Also it is expected of me.’
‘Like driving peasants’ carts into ditches?’
‘Don’t start that again!’ He banged the table. Then realising that he had shouted, he put his head in his hands. ‘Look what you are doing to me, Mademoiselle Louise; my reputation will be ruined. First there is Pierre laughing behind my back, then I fail to get my arms around the prettiest girl in Brussels, and now I am talking to myself.’
‘Shouting at me actually,’ said Louise. ‘Would you like me to go again?’
‘Yes, go away. Life with a soldier is clearly not for you.’
‘Soldier?’ Louise hadn’t meant it to sound scornful, but that was how it came out.
‘What do you think I am, then?’ Gaston blazed. ‘A philanthropist with a mission to rescue carts from ditches! You are damaging my pride… my dignity. Look at me, woman,’ he said, and he hit his chest with his fist. ‘I am a lieutenant of the Hussars of Auxerre, a soldier of France. I am not just moustaches and swagger, I have my honour, and inside this chest beats a heart of steel. You know nothing of the soldier in action; when I draw my sword it is pour la France, la gloire!’
Louise looked around, there was little furnishing in the room apart from a chair, turned aside from the fire, and a foot-stool for the tired traveller. Louise went to the stool and sat down.
‘Sit, Gaston, I want you to tell me about the engagement at the Pont de Chasse. I heard it was a great fight. Perhaps I will understand then what it means to be a soldier.’
Gaston started towards the chair, and then hesitated. ‘How did you hear about the Pont de Chasse?’ he asked.
‘You were talking to Raoul, but I’m afraid you were rather drunk.’
‘Raoul doesn’t know what happened.’
‘But you do; you were there. Take me there, too,’ she said.
‘Take you there?’ Gaston repeated. ‘But it happened a year and a half ago. How can I take you there?’
‘It’s something my father used to do, from when I was quite little. Whenever he came back from his journeys I would ask him to tell me all about the places he’d been to, all the things he had done and seen. I would say: “Take me there,” then I would hold his hand, and he would remember, and tell the story for me, and it would feel as if I was actually there.’ Without thinking, she held out her hand, but Gaston thrust his hands into his pockets. When he began, it was to address the floor.
‘It sounds like a lot of nonsense to me, but if it will stop you meddling in my affairs it will be worth it.’
Louise rested her hands in her lap, closed her eyes, and tried to focus her mind on Gaston’s. He padded up and down the room a few times. She could feel him getting ready, like an actor preparing for a performance. When he began to speak the room faded, and Gaston’s voice became an echo in some other part of her mind. She was with him now, riding unseen, as she had so often ridden with him over the past weeks. It was early morning and she was watching a small troop of hussars filing through the trees towards a forest’s edge.
The smell of stirred beech leaves mixed with the scent of meadow grass rising from the sloping fields below. Gaston – his moustaches a mere promise of their present glory – looked ridiculously young. She saw him hold up his hand. The troop halted as one, and Gaston rode out into the sunlight that flooded the forest shore. Louise urged her horse forward so that she could watch. Below them, broad meadows swept down to where a river, silver in the morning sun, snaked through the grass. Beyond the river was a modest chateau, and in front of the chateau arched a bridge. A hunting horn began to toot from th
e chateau walls. Louise could see figures pointing up at them in alarm. She could hear the thud of hooves as the horses moved out of the forest behind them. They blew and shook their heads in the pollen-laden air. A group of peasants was frantically manoeuvring a hay-wain on to the bridge. Men with scythes and pitchforks were converging on it from the chateau and the nearby cottages. As she watched the scene unfold she could hear Gaston reciting his account of the encounter as he remembered it.
‘It was the second year of the Republic, Floréal – the month of Blossom – or May as it used to be called,’ his voice intoned. ‘Our mission was of the utmost importance. That day I was in command of my first patrol, a mere sub-lieutenant, but the whole regiment was depending on our success. I rode forward from the darkness of the forest. Below was the bridge and I realised that I was looking at the only access to the chateau. Perhaps the sun had flashed on my accoutrements, as there wasn’t an unpolished piece of metal about me; at any rate a horn started to blow a frantic warning from the chateau walls. I realised at once that we had happened on a nest of vipers, a force of Royalists resistant to the Republic. Here at last was an opportunity to prove myself in battle. I called my men forward and lined them up in full view along the edge of the forest. A substantial force was fast gathering at the bridge. I could see the sun flashing on their weapons. If we didn’t act quickly they would succeed in barricading the bridge against us. We were outnumbered, of course, but that was a challenge, not a deterrent. I encouraged my men; now was a chance to strike a blow for the Republic. Oh, Mademoiselle Louise, the excitement …’ She could indeed hear the thrill in Gaston’s voice. ‘If you have never been in a cavalry charge, you have never lived, if you have never ridden with the Hussars of Auxerre you can have no idea of heaven. We drew sabres and swept down on them like the wolf on the fold. As we approached we let out a yell that echoed off the chateau walls beyond the bridge.
‘Their leader was the one I was after. I singled him out: a big black-visaged Royalist on a mighty horse. We closed; I parried his blow. His horse reared. I saw that he was losing his seat so I threw myself out of my saddle and bore him to the ground. Above me the battle raged. I staggered to my feet. It was over. Their leader lay dead at my feet, and the enemy, seeing their leader slain, fled. We crossed the bridge and the chateau was ours.’
The story was over. Louise sensed that this was the moment in the re-telling when glasses would have been charged in a toast to the Republic … But it was taking her some time to return from the field of battle. She had never seen a man slain before, and the sight had shaken her. She looked up. Gaston was standing, still glowing from his account. The firelight flickered on his wind-burnt face, framed by his four braids. This for him was how it had really happened. But it was not the battle that Louise had just seen.
Dare she challenge him? Or would it be kinder to let him continue in his dream? But if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a well of unhappiness behind his bravado. She thought of Annie, her old nurse back in Delft, and felt a sudden pang of regret for her – brave little Annie, with her unrelenting Calvinistic truthfulness. And sometimes there was a need for truth.
‘So you got your hay,’ she said softly.
‘Hay? What are you talking about?’ Gaston demanded.
‘I mean that you were … what do you call it? … a foraging party looking for hay for your horses.’ She had heard the men talking while they waited for the advance. It was not the glorious spectacle that Gaston had described, but a humble enough troop in their foraging clothes. ‘There was really no need to attack the chateau.’
‘What absolute nonsense!’ Gaston declared, but the bluster was leaking from his voice. Louise was encouraged and at the same time saddened. She watched him as he gradually deflated, and remembered an occasion when she had seen children playing with a ball, a blown up bladder from the butcher’s. It had landed on a thorn, and she recalled the children’s disappointment as the ball had slowly collapsed.
‘You shouldn’t talk to Raoul,’ he muttered defensively, but all the swagger had gone and his shoulders were slumped.
‘Raoul doesn’t know that I exist, Gaston. I asked you to take me there, to the Pont de Chasse, and that’s what you did. You showed it to me as it really was. I saw it all, Gaston: they were peasants with scythes.’
Louise gestured to the chair beside her; Gaston took it cautiously as if uncertain that she could be trusted. Then he took a deep breath, and began to talk. His eyes, turned inward now, were no more than dark smudges on his face, but his voice had its own authority.
‘Yes, Louise, we were a foraging party – horses need hay, and we could have got it elsewhere, but there was rebellion in the air. We were in that area to establish order. The men were thinking of fodder, of course, but to have turned our back on resistance of any sort would have just encouraged further resistance.’ He put up his hand as if Louise was going to interrupt. ‘I heard what you said, and yes, they were “peasants with scythes” but scythes, though they may be good for cutting hay, make very bad weapons. Those peasants were a danger to themselves. You saw how we advanced, with a lot of yelling, head on. If we had wanted to kill them we’d have stopped at a few paces off and used our pistols, and then come out through the smoke with sabres drawn. They wouldn’t have known what was happening. No, my idea was to scare them; you saw how they broke and ran.’
‘Except for one,’ said Louise bitterly.
‘Except for one.’ Gaston stared at the floor, his eyes retreating deeper and deeper into their sockets. He whispered, ‘I loved that man, Louise.’
‘You knew him?’ Louise was startled.
‘For thirty seconds I knew him and I loved him. Would God that I could have that thirty seconds again – wind the clock back – and start over. I will tell you now what I have told no one else. I will tell it to you as it really was.
‘As you saw, he stood his ground. I couldn’t understand it. His men had fled but he sat there on his horse, as solid as a rock, staring at twenty raised sabres. My men held back; as their officer, it fell to me to tackle this man. I had no pistols that day. If he would not surrender I would have to kill him or he would kill me – the soldier’s choice. There comes a point of no return, you see. I slowed to a walk. I shouted to him: “Throw down your sword!” He didn’t blink. I spurred my horse and yelled again. I closed on him. I had no choice. At last his sword came up. Thank God, I thought, a fair fight! I was trained for a moment such as this; a wild joy filled me. We closed, but instead of crossing my sword to parry my stroke, he left himself unprotected and prodded at me, just as a student might when fighting epée in fencing school. It was this naivety that caused me to stay my hand; but I was still wide open and it took all my skill to turn his sword. I looked into his face then, amazed – we had been taught to read an enemy’s intentions from his face. What I saw in his was fear and valour … and total perplexity.
‘Louise, in that instant the whole complexion of our fight changed. This was no black-visaged warrior. True, he had nearly killed me, but that was in error. What I saw was a sensitive, intelligent face. His clothes were those of a landowner, but not some idle aristocrat; he was burned by the sun. This man surely had been at work in the fields with his peasants.’
Gaston sighed and dropped his head. ‘What notion of honour or obligation had brought him out to hold the bridge against a troop of hussars I will never know. I hauled at the reins of my mare – she could turn on a centime. His mount, a common carthorse, was at last showing signs of life, plunging and bucking. I was beside him, holding my sword above my head to keep it out of the way. I realise now he must have thought that this was the coup de grâce – the moment when I would cut him down.’
Gaston paused, Louise could hear his knuckles cracking under the pressure he was putting on them. ‘He smiled at me, Louise. He smiled apologetically, like someone asking forgiveness for not being able to conclude a game, because right then he needed both hands to control his horse. I, like a fool, was shou
ting at him to surrender. He nodded, but at that moment his horse bucked and threw him forward. I could see that he was losing his seat. I let go of my reins and reached out with my left hand to steady him.’ Gaston’s voice dropped. ‘My one consolation in all this is that he realised at that moment that I was trying to help him. I remember the look of gratitude in his eyes – a word of thanks on his lips.’
Louise saw a glint on Gaston’s cheek and looked away.
‘We fell together. As we did so he dropped his sword; he had no loop or sword-knot to prevent it falling, and he fell on top of it. I remember the tearing sound as the blade went through him. You saw me pull a sword from his body? That wasn’t mine; it was his. I knelt beside him then and watched the life fade from his eyes.’ Gaston could hardly speak. ‘Louise, I could have been kneeling at my brother’s deathbed.’
A clock ticked laboriously in a corner of the room. The silence grew till it was more than Louise could bear; she had to do something. Without thinking, she turned and knelt in front of Gaston and rested her head and arms on his knees. He stroked her hair.
A hundred and forty years had done nothing to erode Louise’s love for Pieter, the Master’s apprentice, who had held her so tight in that dusty room above the Oosterport in her native Delft. But this was a different kind of love. Here, she was a guest of Gaston’s mind. It was as if their consciousnesses had merged. But the touch of his hand brought home to her just how much she had missed by her early death and for a moment the loss threatened to overwhelm her. She must grab at every moment: to feel, to touch, to hold and above all understand.
Gaston’s hand continued to stroke her hair but his thoughts had wandered to a countryside Louise had never seen before. The image focused and she found herself gazing at a gnarled old tree on a slope above a country road. A girl was sitting under the tree, her eyes fixed on the road below. Louise felt drawn to her, as Gaston obviously was. But here Louise checked. Was she going too far? Had she any right to invade Gaston’s private thoughts? Reluctantly she pulled her mind away and the image faded, leaving her with a mixture of longing and a deep sadness. It was some time before either of them spoke.