* * *
The funerals took place two days later. Initially, he considered waiting a week to allow himself time to find Charles and Isabelle, but soon thought the better of it. He had no idea where Charles even lived, and no desire to go trailing after Isabelle while leaving her husband’s body in the crypt, unblessed. In truth, he would have buried them sooner if he could. Although he had moved to another room at the inn, everything about the place reminded him of his mother – the smell of the corridor, the view outside, even the leek pottage the owner’s wife made for lunch. Desperate to occupy himself, he set about organising the ceremony: arranging for pallbearers and a priest, incense and candles, flowers and coffins. He even tried inviting some people from the village, but gave up after knocking on a few doors, disgusted by the usual laughter and abuse.
The service itself was dour. An hour stood in a damp church listening to a bored and droning priest. It should have been longer, but everyone wanted the proceedings over as quickly as possible. The conveyance and cycle of prayers were ignored; the rites restricted to a brief mass, absolution and antiphon. It didn’t even bring finality, if anything the opposite. Sebastian simply knelt in the silence, contemplating a life without the only person who had ever cared about him. They might not always have been together, but he had always known she was there for him – a refuge in time of need. Now there was no asylum or shelter – only her face screaming for release.
Once the bodies were in the ground and the pallbearers had gone, Sebastian handed the priest his money and made his final request. He had hoped for Père Jean, but he had died long ago and his replacement was some limp youth just out of the seminary and barely able to pronounce his Latin.
‘I want flowers on her grave every Sunday for a year. There should be more than enough there.’ Sebastian handed over a fistful of coins, which the priest checked before giving a nod.
‘You are going to do this, aren’t you? I will check one day.’ Sebastian locked eyes with that same hard little stare which had so unsettled his predecessor.
‘Of course.’
‘Say it. I need you to say it.’
‘I’ll make sure there are flowers by her grave. Every week for a year.’
Sebastian held his gaze a moment longer, his pupils as emphatic as full stops. It was a lie, of course. He knew he would never come back. All he wanted to do was to return to Paris. To sit in the coach for seven days with the window open, feeling the sun on his face, staring into an empty horizon and letting the memories burn into the past. Now there was just one last piece of business to attend to and then he would be free of it all.
* * *
The first thing Sebastian tended to notice about people was their legs. But with Isabelle Morra, it was her hands. Over the years, her hands and feet had come to resemble preserved meat, all the water sucked out from tramping pools of brine or raking pans of salt. Their withered and crinkled skin sat oddly with her face, that of a thirty-year-old woman still pink with youth. She was dressed neatly in a woollen dress, shawl and headscarf, and the only evidence of her poverty were patches on the hem and elbows. Like many nu-pieds she wore sabots, the wooden soles being the only material capable of withstanding her feet.
On noticing Sebastian, she gave the usual look of confusion, but with a subtle difference. Most people greeted him with a sidelong glance, unsure if his appearance was some kind of joke or insult. But she looked upwards, trying to recall something forgotten.
‘You’re Sebastian, Audrien’s brother.’ She crouched down, conscious of her height. ‘I’ve heard about you, of course, but I don’t understand . . . Why are you here? I thought you worked for the King.’
Straight-backed, Sebastian nodded awkwardly, grimacing a smile in an attempt to disguise his unease. ‘We need to speak somewhere quiet. Do you live close by?’
She seemed to guess what had happened and drew a sharp breath, steeling herself for the blow. ‘There’s an inn near here. They’ll have a room.’
The only place available was the barrel store at the back. It was cold and draughty, but it was at least private. As they stood in the thin light from the open door, Sebastian was acutely aware of the need to speak and stared at her with vacuous horror. He had spent the previous three hours agonising over what to say. Nothing seemed right. Telling her that her husband was dead seemed far too blunt, but anything else struck him as affected or rehearsed. The man had not passed over to the other side or joined our lord in heaven. He was dead and that was the end of the matter. Then, and to his considerable relief, she pre-empted him.
‘It’s Audrien. He’s dead isn’t he?’
‘I’m so sorry. It was quick,’ he lied. ‘I spoke to him the day before. He said how much he loved you.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘In Camoches, next to his mother. I paid for a stone. I’m truly sorry.’
‘You’ve buried him already?’
‘Forgive me, I thought it best. I mean if you want me to . . .’
‘Please no. I understand. It was good of you to look after him.’ Despite their emotion, they were both trying to shield the other from their pain: faces locked in place, voices flat and without intonation, every passion contained. Sebastian tried to offer a comforting embrace, but couldn’t reach her shoulder and ended up grabbing awkwardly at her wrist.
‘Before he left, I promised to provide for you if anything happened. I’ll send you money every month. But I’ll need an address and a name.’
‘Really, you shouldn’t,’ she began. Not that her protestations lasted long. She had no husband, two children and a senile mother who was more hindrance than help. Pride was a luxury she couldn’t afford.
‘It’s not charity. I owe it to you.’
She asked him to explain but he refused.
‘It’s a personal debt. I’d rather keep the details to myself. Too recent. Maybe later sometime.’
She accepted, in return requesting that he eat lunch with her family. He was initially reluctant but she insisted, pointing out that he had an obligation to meet the two boys he was providing for, especially considering he might never see them again. In the circumstances, he could hardly refuse.
Despite dreading the meal, Sebastian was to recall it as one of the more illuminating occasions of his life. Seated at the head of the table, he did his best to exchange small talk with Isabelle over the screech of her squabbling children while trying to keep the stench of poverty out of his nose – a mixture of open cesspit, unperfumed skin and festering scraps. As he tried to force down his semi-edible slop he looked at her careworn, miserable eyes and remembered his yearning for normality as a child, to be just like everyone else. And now he was looking at that dream. If he had been born the same as his brothers, this would have been his existence. Perhaps slightly different, he might have been a farmer rather than a salt worker. His wife would probably have been considerably uglier and his children sicker. In other words, a marginally worse version of a less-than-bearable existence. And when it was time to leave, he gave Isabelle what money he could spare and meant it quite sincerely when he thanked her for a meal he would never forget.
* * *
Richelieu always saw the Château de Ruel as a misnomer. It was no castle; it was a garden. The two storeys of blank yellow stone, square windows and slate roof resembled something a child would draw. But he never meant it to impress. He already had more than enough places to awe his guests. Instead it served an entirely different purpose, a private retreat when he joined the King on his trips to Saint-Germain, free of the noise, congestion and foul air of Paris. There he could forget the world as he wandered the garden, its parterres planted with moresques, sunbursts and escutcheons – it was the house of Armand-Jean du Plessis, not Cardinal Richelieu.
Liberated from the necessities of court, he had dispensed with the usual finery and was dressed in simple brown pantaloons and a white smock, the sleeves rolled up to let his ulcers dry in the sun. He wasn’t expecting visitors and was sur
prised when his steward announced that someone had arrived at the door.
‘I said I wasn’t to be disturbed.’
‘It’s the dwarf, Your Eminence. He’s being extremely insistent.’
‘Don’t refer to him as the dwarf. He has a name. Use it.’ His voice had the snap of authority. ‘Very well . . . Send him in.’
The oversized doors that led into the garden diminished Sebastian’s already tiny frame, making him appear further away than he actually was. Purposeful, he marched towards the cardinal at a smart pace, eyes fixed on his host. Perplexed by Sebastian’s unannounced departure the month before and his equally abrupt return, Richelieu watched him quizzically.
‘My brother. He’s dead. Your soldiers . . . they murdered him in cold blood.’ Sebastian’s voice grew louder as he approached. ‘He was innocent. All he had was an adze, an adze for God’s sake.’
Reaching the cardinal, he continued to vent his rage, describing in considerable detail both the horrors and the sheer futility of what he had just been through – not simply the murder of his brother but the slaughter of hundreds of people whose only crime had been trying to save their families from starvation. It was only once Sebastian ran out of words and was reduced to repeating himself that Richelieu motioned him to stop.
‘Sebastian, I know what it’s like to lose a brother. My brother Henri was killed in a duel.’ Richelieu winced at the memory, evidently still not over the loss. ‘And if I could have spared you the pain, I would have. However, you seem to be under the illusion that I had a choice. I take no pleasure in killing people. I agree the punishment was severe, that they didn’t deserve to die. But the fact remains that I cannot allow rebellion – least of all against tax. All it takes is for one riot to succeed, then others will follow and all will be lost . . .’
‘But why kill them? You could have had them flogged, and sent them home with their tails between their legs. He didn’t need to die.’ Sebastian realised he had not only interrupted, but raised his voice at a man who could have him executed within the hour. Richelieu limited himself to a brief and pointed pause before replying, just long enough to let Sebastian stew in his mistake.
‘I didn’t choose to kill your brother. It was he who chose to fight.’
‘That was no fight. That was a massacre. They were practically unarmed, for God’s sake.’ Sebastian spoke through bared teeth, struggling to suppress his anger. ‘You say they were going to bring down the country, but they weren’t. They were just some villagers with swords and scythes, nothing more. They weren’t a threat.’
‘I don’t care if they were armed or not. Rebellion is no different to a plague. If you let one revolt pass, you will inspire another. It’s virulent and a risk to the entire kingdom. I cannot allow it. People must fear the very idea. They need to know that even considering it will result in swift and merciless punishment . . . I see you don’t believe me. Well you’re entitled to your opinion. You may even be right. But it does not change the facts. I must do as my position demands.’
‘You still didn’t need to kill them,’ Sebastian repeated. ‘What about a trial or evidence?’
‘You aren’t listening to me. This has nothing to do with innocence or guilt. It has to do with the threat to this kingdom. I cannot allow division. If we are not united as a people, we will not survive.’
Richelieu glanced down at Sebastian and paused mid-flow, noticing his face had changed, its furious angles replaced by something more settled. He had reached a conclusion, for better or worse, and nothing was going to change his mind. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, I truly am. And I know there’s nothing I can do to bring your brother back, but is there any way I can help?’
Sebastian didn’t reply for some time. He knew nothing would make a difference but felt obliged to respond to the gesture. So he requested a tomb for them both, to replace their plots in Camoches. Observing his insincerity, the cardinal acquiesced with a sigh and gave him a stiff pat on the shoulder – the closest he could manage to an apology. They both knew it was pointless and said nothing. Instead they wished their farewells and pretended everything was the same as it had ever been. It was six months before they spoke again.
* * *
Sebastian never experienced true loneliness until after his mother’s death. She had been a constant, the thread connecting him with the mass of humankind. Strangely it hadn’t mattered that she wasn’t with him. Providing for her gave him a sense of purpose, along with the knowledge that whatever happened she would be there for him, a refuge of last resort. Even after her death he still wrote to her every Sunday, spilling his thoughts on the page in long unpunctuated streams of ink, the thoughts sometimes turbid and raging, at other times slower and more meditative. He told her of his life or lack of it, of how he missed her and Audrien, and that he knew she was with God – all the time trying to ignore the image of her death mask, still as vivid as yesterday.
Now adrift, he found himself confronted by the prospect of an existence spent completely and utterly alone. There would be no wife, no children or friends. And, as he watched life pass before his eyes, he was aware not so much of objects as the spaces that separated them: the distance between himself and the audience when he performed, the empty fields of clipped grass dividing the parterres, the blank wall opposite his bed when he woke up each morning.
With nothing else to occupy himself, Sebastian observed his own behaviour with increased fascination – how he had structured his days so as not to be noticed: always venturing out at quieter hours, avoiding busy places and keeping to the shadows. He even dressed in colours that would never catch the eye: choosing plain browns and creams. Not so much a life as a verminous existence shaped by the never-ending search for boltholes and cover.
By now so many years had gone by that it almost seemed normal. The idea of mixing with other people had come to revolt him. It wasn’t simply their size and noise but their pointless, repetitive talk and their polite lack of interest. They were so predictable in taste and conversation, so desperate to fit in. He wondered if they died without ever knowing who they were, or if there were other times when they too would sit in the silence of their rooms, staring at their faces and wondering if anything was left beneath.
Time passed both quickly and slowly, each day never-ending, a succession of empty hours to fill. Soon they melted into a muddle of forgotten, unrecorded thought and he would look back over the flotsam without any idea what he had done or why he had done it. Even so, for all its solitude, he was later to recall the time with nostalgia, as a brief period when he had, if nothing else, experienced something approaching peace.
Decay
(1639 – 1641)
Sebastian looked out from his room at the ragged city below. He could make out the usual tide of carts, donkeys and traders, slowed to a trickle in the crush. From above, the mob lacked individuality, its colours and forms mixing together as they moved between one nowhere to another. He was glad of the distance. The streets grew more miserable with every passing year: the animals bonier, the stalls more dilapidated, the people sicker and their stoop more pronounced. For nearly two decades, he had been observing a country in slow decline, ravaged by war, the land wealed with battlefields and trampled by armies, whole towns decimated until only women and children remained. But over the previous six months, the descent had steepened.
Cinq-Mars was the source. Since Richelieu had first introduced him to Louis, his rise to power had been spectacular. The King was infected with love for him, to the point of fever. Within a week of their first meeting, both his old mistresses – de Hautefort and de La Fayette – were forgotten and dismissed. Within a month, the marquis had been made grand écuyer, obliging everyone to refer to him as Monsieur le Grand. Cinq-Mars responded with typical ingratitude, simply demanding more. Not that this seemed to bother Louis, who dismissed his insolence, infidelity and tantrums as foibles, seeming to find them somehow endearing. Even one notorious occasion when the marquis was too exhausted to me
et Louis, having spent all night with the notorious courtesan Marion Delorme, went unpunished. If anything, his transgressions only seemed to increase the King’s infatuation.
Their relationship came to follow a familiar pattern. Exasperated by Cinq-Mars’ demands, Louis would lose his temper and scold the marquis, who invariably responded with breathtaking indignation, often insulting the King to his face and then disappearing for days on end. Wracked with remorse, Louis would then shower him with gifts and money in an attempt to win him back. Of course, whatever Cinq-Mars received was never enough: silks, braids, embroidered doublets, Semper Augustus tulips, coaches, servants, fireworks, chinoiserie, a pair of the latest flintlock pistols inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a stable of Fresian horses – nothing ever satisfied him for long. Until, having squandered away twenty fortunes, Cinq-Mars found himself with everything a person could wish for – except for one thing. Despite his fifty-two suits, he could never change the man wearing them – the world outside was simply not as large as the space within.
Now, six months later, the marquis’ triumph was complete. Untouchable, he lorded over the palace with a retinue of associates and hangers-on, demanding audiences with and often insulting whomever his caprice happened to settle on, no matter how elevated their title or position. Unable to retaliate, his victims were forced to laugh along through locked teeth. Despite their fury, as long as Cinq-Mars remained the King’s favourite, there was nothing they could do, and they were forced to invite him to every banquet, tournament or event they wanted Louis to attend.
Sebastian spent an increasing amount of time avoiding the marquis and his coterie. Unable to visit the garden or wander the palace, he passed most days shut in his room, only able to leave during the marquis’ occasional retreats with Louis to Saint-Germain. One thing he couldn’t escape were his evening performances. Previously, the marquis had tolerated them with unalloyed disdain, sitting stiff-backed in the audience and observing proceedings with the scorn of the impotent – Sebastian had even grown to delight in his sour stare. However, those same performances had since taken on an entirely different complexion. Cinq-Mars’ scowl had now been replaced by the smirk of impending revenge, and whenever Sebastian looked across at him, he met the same disquieting grin. Trapped within the confines of the stage, Sebastian would try to ignore him, but the marquis remained an angry smudge in the corner of his eye, as conspicuous as imminent and violent death.
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