The Launching of Roger Brook

by Dennis Wheatley

  He was following her in this way one afternoon in mid-October, when he saw that her groom’s horse had cast a shoe. After a short colloquy with her the man turned back, and it was obvious that Athénaïs meant to finish her ride alone, so Roger continued to follow her at a distance.

  Some twenty minutes later a peasant child ran out of a hedge, causing the mettlesome mare that Athénaïs was riding to shy violently. Next moment the mare had bolted.

  Roger’s heart seemed to leap up into his throat with apprehension, but it was just the chance he had been waiting for to show his prowess and devotion. Spurring his own mount into a gallop he set off after her in wild pursuit.

  But for the double hedge, bordering a lane, from which the child had run out, the country was open pasture land. Both horses made good going, but Roger’s was the more powerful animal and after covering half a mile he was already gaining on Athénaïs. She had lost her three-cornered hat and her golden ringlets were flying in the wind, but she seemed to have a good grip of her saddle.

  As Roger decreased his distance to her he saw that she was pulling hard on her right rein. Evidently she was trying to steer her runaway mount in the direction of a belt of woodland that lay some three-quarters of a mile away. He imagined that she was counting on the mare slackening her pace, or coming round in a circle, when she saw the barrier of trees. It flashed upon him that Athénaïs might be carried in among them and dashed from her saddle by one of the low branches.

  Spurring his own horse to fresh efforts he came charging up on her right. Heading her off from the trees he forced her mare towards the open country, which continued to the left.

  Athénaïs shouted something to him but her voice was drowned in the thunder of the hoof-beats. Leaning forward he made a snatch at her bridle. At that moment the mare veered still more towards the left, and he missed it.

  Again Athénaïs shouted, but again he failed to catch her words. For two hundred yards they raced on neck to neck. Suddenly he saw a break in the ground ahead. Instantly he realised what Athénaïs had been shouting at him. Her cry had been a warning: The river! The river lies ahead!’

  He remembered then that a tributary of the Ranee made a wide loop there, running along a concealed gully that threaded the flat plain. Next instant he saw it. The sluggish stream lay between two steeply shelving banks and the horses were now no more than a dozen yards from the verge of the nearest.

  There was no time left to bring Athénaïs’s mare down to a canter. Leaning forward again Roger seized her rein and jerked upon it with all his strength. The mare, too, had seen the water. Splaying her forefeet she suddenly stopped dead. Athénaïs was shot straight over her head and landed with a resounding splash in the river.

  Roger was flung forward on his horse’s neck, but managed to regain his saddle and, still holding both bridles, slid to the ground. With horrified eyes he watched Athénaïs. She was in no danger, as the water was shallow, yet had been deep enough to break her fall. Drenched to the skin, her lovely face blotched with mud and her hair hanging in damp rat’s-tails she had picked herself up and, struggling with her long sodden skirts, was plodding through the slimy mire back to the bank.

  He knew that it was his own misdirection of affairs that had led to her receiving this ducking, yet he could not even go to her assistance without risking her horses bolting and leaving them stranded there, miles from home.

  Still clutching her riding-switch she staggered from the water and up the slope. Then, her face chalk-white beneath the smears of slime and her blue eyes blazing, she flared at him.

  ‘You miserable fool! I’ve checked a runaway before now! I would have had my mare under control a mile back, had not the hoof-beats of your horse following behind urged her to gallop faster. And then, of all the senseless idiocy, to ride me into the river! This comes of your spying upon me. Oh, don’t deny it! Of recent weeks you’ve done naught but lurk behind corners and goggle at me from the windows. Think you the servants, too, have no eyes to see such things. I doubt not there is many a jest coupling your name with mine cracked in the kitchen. Oh, ’tis intolerable! I die for very shame to think that such scum should bandy my name about on account of a nobody like you. I hate you for it!’

  For a second she paused for breath. Then, lifting her riding-switch, she struck him with it, as she cried: ‘You wretched upstart! Take that, and that, and that! Then go back and show them your miserable face with the marks of my displeasure.’

  Again and again her swift-cutting strokes descended on Roger’s face, head, hands and shoulders. Letting go the bridles of the horses he strove to protect himself from her furious onslaught, but he could neither fend off nor evade her slashes.

  There was only one thing to do. Stepping forward he grabbed her arm and twisted the riding-switch from her grasp.

  ‘How dare you lay hands on me!’ she gasped. ‘’Tis a crime to lay hands on one of noble blood. I’ll have you flogged for that! I’ll have the hand that touched me cut off at the wrist!’

  ‘Then have my head cut off as well!’ cried Roger, angered beyond endurance. ‘By God! I’ll teach you that you can’t strike a free man with impunity! What’s more, you arrogant little fool, I’ll punish you in a way that will be a lesson to you. Aye, even if I die for it.’

  Seizing her round the waist he pulled her to him. Grasping her chin with his left hand he forced up her face. Then, he kissed her hard and full upon the mouth.

  15

  The Dream

  For a long moment she lay passive in his arms, then she wrenched herself away and stood staring at him. Her eyes were round, not with fright, but with some emotion that he could not analyse.

  Slowly drawing the back of her hand across her mouth, she whispered: ‘You shouldn’t have done that. No man has ever done that to me before.’

  ‘Then there is less chance that you’ll forget it,’ he said harshly. His face and hands were stinging abominably and thin red weals were springing up in the dozen places where the switch had lashed them. He felt not a twinge of remorse as he went on: ‘However many Dukes and Princes may kiss you in the future you’ll always remember that your first kiss was given you by a servant, an upstart, a nobody. That is, unless you have the sense to realise that if we both cut ourselves your blood would show no bluer than mine; and that ’tis no disgrace to be kissed by a man who loves you.’

  ‘If I tell my father of this, he will have you branded with red-hot irons and thrown into prison afterwards,’ she said slowly.

  His bruised lips pained him as he gave a twisted smile. ‘I know it. I’ve lived here long enough to realise that the nobility has devised the most fiendish punishments for anyone who lays a finger on their womenfolk. So it seems that my love for you must be mighty desperate for me to have risked that kiss.’

  ‘’Twas not love, but hate, that inspired you at that moment.’

  ‘Maybe, you’re right. Maybe, though, ‘twas contempt for all you stand for; coupled with the wish to melt that stony heart of yours.’

  ‘Mount me on my mare,’ she ordered suddenly.

  Obediently, he held out his hand about two feet from the ground; she placed a small foot in its palm and, as he took her weight, sprang into the saddle.

  ‘My whip,’ she demanded, and added as he gave it to her: ‘You are not to follow me for an hour.’ Then, turning her mare, she galloped away.

  Left to himself Roger descended to the river’s edge and bathed his smarting face and hands. When the pain had eased a little he sat down to consider the possible outcome of his rash act.

  Soon after his arrival at the château Athénaïs had had one of the footmen thrashed for spilling a cup of chocolate down her gown; so he felt that she was quite capable of having him branded and imprisoned for his infinitely more serious offence.

  At the moment he was still a free man, and so not compelled to return to the château. Twilight was now falling, and he had a good horse upon which he could put many miles between himself and Bécherel during
the night. But he had only a little silver on him and if Athénaïs requested the authorities to arrest him there was little chance of his being able to get clean away.

  He felt, too, that it would be the act of a coward to attempt to run away. By returning to face whatever fate she might decree for him, he could at least show her that he was not lacking in courage; and there was always the possibility that, furious as she might be, she would shrink from humiliating herself further by telling anyone what had occurred, and, rather than that, let the matter drop.

  When the hour was up he rode slowly back through the deepening shadows, handed his mount over to a stable boy and went up by the back stairs to his room. On looking in the mirror he saw that his face was a network of angry red weals and he wondered how to account for its condition to the servants. The easiest way seemed to give out that his horse had bolted with him and carried him full tilt into a grove of alders, the springy shoots of which had whipped fiercely at his face as he was swept wildly through them. As the weals were straight, short lines and not the least like scratches the story was somewhat thin, but he was too tired and depressed to worry further over it and decided that it must serve.

  However, instead of going downstairs for his supper he went straight to bed, with the idea that the bedclothes would serve to partially conceal his injuries, and that he would remain there till they were better.

  In due course, Henri came to inquire why he had not come down for his evening meal, and Roger gave his explanation, adding that he had also hurt his leg, so would probably stay in bed for a day or two. The man brought his supper on a tray and, after eating it, while still wondering what the outcome of the afternoon’s events would be, he dropped asleep.

  After his petit déjeuner he spent the morning hours in considerable anxiety, listening for any heavy footfalls in his lonely corridor which might herald the approach of a group of servants sent by Athénaïs to apprehend him. At last, just before midday, the footfalls came.

  There was a knock on his door, then, to his amazement, Athénaïs’s clear voice called: ‘Monsieur Breuc, may we come in?’

  ‘Come … come in,’ he stammered, wondering what on earth was about to happen.

  Followed by Madame Marie-Angé, she walked in and said calmly: ‘I am told that you met with an accident when out riding yesterday. I trust that it is nothing serious, and we have come to attend to your hurts as well as we can.’

  There was not a trace of expression in her eyes or voice and with a muttered, ‘No, no, Mademoiselle, it is nothing serious, I assure you,’ he went on to tell them his version of how he had come by his now empurpled face.

  ‘My, my! How those alder shoots must have stung you!’ exclaimed Athénaïs, after one close look at his injuries. ‘But this will soothe the angry places they have made,’ and taking a pot from Madame Marie-Angé she began to apply some of the ointment it contained.

  The sympathy of her words was swiftly belied by her actions; as, with her back turned to Madame Marie-Angé, she proceeded to rub the ointment into his cuts as though she was scrubbing a floor.

  When she had done, both of them talked to him for a little, then, bidding him stay where he was until he was fully recovered, they left him to his thoughts.

  One cardinal fact emerged from this visit. Athénaïs had evidently decided that it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie; so he was not yet destined to have his hand cut off, be branded on the shoulder with a red-hot iron, or cast into a dungeon. Yet he felt that he could hardly regard her ministrations as the offering of an olive branch. They had been much too painful for that. On thinking it over he came to the conclusion that she was very far from being a little fool and having decided to keep her humiliation to herself, had realised that she must continue to behave towards him in a normal manner; and, in consequence, had treated him just as she would any other member of the château staff who had been reported to her as in bed as the result of an accident.

  Nevertheless, he now began to feel a slight twinge of guilt at his own behaviour, and, as the day wore on, it grew. He did not believe that most girls of sixteen would have been so shattered by a kiss, even if it was their first. He knew that, as she saw things, she had a perfect right to strike him, and he realised now that he had given her real cause for anger by dogging her footsteps, as he had. It had never occurred to him at the time that his actions would be noticed and commented on by the servants, but, of course, they must have seen him lurking in the corridor outside her boudoir and riding out after her in the afternoons. Naturally they would have talked among themselves, and she had good cause to resent that. In view of the traditional chastity in which young French girls of noble birth were brought up she no doubt regarded his kiss almost in the nature of a rape, and that was far beyond anything that he had intended.

  By the following day he had reached the conclusion that she had really acted with extraordinary forbearance in not sobbing out the truth on Madame Marie-Angé’s broad bosom, and, without anyone else knowing the cause of the matter, leaving her duenna to order his locking up until the Marquis could be informed of his crime.

  Inspite of its harsh application, the ointment Athénaïs had applied to his cuts both soothed and healed them rapidly; so, on the third morning after his whipping, on looking at himself in the mirror, he decided that he might show his face downstairs without arousing undue comment.

  Another night of solitude and reflection had reduced him to a definite state of remorse, for what he now thought of as his churlish brutality, so he determined to seek out Athénaïs and, at the first suitable opportunity, humbly beg her pardon.

  His surprise and dismay can, therefore, be imagined when he learnt that she and Madame Marie-Angé had taken coach for Paris on the previous day. According to their plans, as he had understood them, they had not been due to leave Bécherel for the capital for another fortnight; so it seemed that Athénaïs, unable to bear the thought of being reminded of the shame he had put upon her, by seeing him about the place, had devised some way of manoeuvring Madame Marie-Ange into advancing the date of their departure.

  Only too clearly he recalled the contents of the note that Athénaïs had pressed into his hand the previous April. It had said that she would not be seeing him again, as next winter, instead of returning to Rennes she was to be presented at Court. And, as he now realised, once she was established there, the chances of her returning to Bécherel for the following summer were extremely slender. Not only had he lost her but she had left before he had had a chance to beg her pardon for his outrageous conduct, and must have carried away with her a bitter, angry memory of him in her heart.

  After a few days of acute depression he flung himself into his work again with renewed energy, in an attempt to make up for lost time and keep himself from brooding over her; and soon the mass of old documents were occupying most of his thoughts. As he delved deeper into them the problem of the rightful ownership of the Domaine de St. Hilaire began to take on a deep fascination for him. In a few weeks he became a positive mine of information on the genealogical trees of half the great families in western France. Each time he unearthed a new link in the chain he felt a thrill of excitement, and each time he came upon a settlement or will that blocked the claim he was endeavouring to establish he felt as though he had lost a battle.

  Now and again the tall, black-bearded Chenou came upstairs to invade his workroom and insist that it was high time he got some exercise. Sometimes they rode together, at others when the weather was inclement, as the ex-Dragoon was a fine swordsman, they practised their skill with rapier and sabre in the tennis court adjacent to the stables. Monsieur St. Paul had taught Roger some useful thrusts in his academy at Rennes, the previous winter, but Chenou taught him more; and now that the strength of a well-set-up young man was added to his agility he was rapidly becoming a really dangerous antagonist.

  Occasionally on their rides they halted to take a glass of wine with Monsieur Lautrade, the Marquis’s bailiff who lived in a little house
in a clearing of the woods some distance from the château. Lautrade was a fat, elderly, bespectacled man, kind by disposition but firm by habit, as he had to be in order to extract his master’s rents at the dates they were due from the ever-complaining farmers.

  On one such visit Roger asked him if the case of the peasants was really so hard as it appeared, and he replied:

  ‘Monsieur Breuc, it varies greatly in different parts of the kingdom. Here in Brittany, in Languedoc and in the German provinces, things are not too bad, because the nobility have managed to retain something of their independence. That makes for good conditions on some estates and bad ones on others; but at least it is better than the rule that maintains in the greater part of France. There, the Intendants wield almost absolute power, and the thousands of petty government servants who work under them is each a little tyrant, producing nothing and living like a parasite on the labour of people who are hard put to it to support themselves.

  ‘Again different systems of tenure have grown up in various areas. In Picardy, Flanders and other provinces of the north, the nobles and clergy are accustomed to let their land in large farms. That is a good thing; such farms are the best cultivated, the farmers become men of substance and their hired labourers are paid a wage which often enables them to save enough to buy a small plot of land of their own. The peasant is always hungry for land, of course. But I am not of the opinion that its possession profits him.’

  ‘Why do you say that, Monsieur?’ asked Roger. ‘I should have thought it a good thing for a man to have a piece of land of his own.’

  ‘Experience does not go to show that as far as smallholders are concerned. ’Tis estimated that two-fifths of the kingdom consists of little plots owned by the peasants and ’tis they, not the hired labourer, whose condition is most wretched. Apart from the north all France is honeycombed with these smallholdings which have been acquired piecemeal from the nobles, either on outright payments or on the métayer system.’