Falcon 1 - The Lure of the Falcon

by The Lure of the Falcon (v1. 0) (lit)

  Manon, delighted with the effect produced, was watching the expression of surprise upon her companion's face.

  'You like it?'

  'Indeed I do! Only I was not expecting—'

  'To find a room like this in the humble home of a poor girl like me? I don't let Yann Maodan maul me with his fat hands for nothing! At the Hermine Rouge I am his servant, but here, I am the mistress. And I have some fine dresses, too, you know. Wait, and I'll make myself beautiful for you! Sit down and close your eyes.'

  She flung off her cloak and, running to a painted coffer like a captain's sea chest in a corner of the room, she pulled out a cloud of rose-coloured material and began feverishly tugging off her embroidered fishu. Gilles stopped her.

  'Listen! I haven't come for the reason you think.'

  Manon's hands fell like stricken birds and she lifted great sad eyes to his.

  'Oh? Why, then?'

  'Because of my friend – the boy who was with me the other night. I searched for him all day and all night. I wanted to tell him not to go to meet the Nantais. And I couldn't find him.'

  The disappointment in the girl's eyes was replaced by suspicion. She shook her head, as if to drive out some unwelcome thought.

  'Then forget him! Immediately!' she cried. 'No one in the world can do anything for him now. And I shall not say another word on the subject.'

  'But—'

  She moved towards him so quickly that he recoiled instinctively. But she only clasped both hands on his raised arm.

  'Hush! Not another word. I want to live, do you hear? Live! Yann Maodan is rich. He gives me gold and with gold one can get anywhere, even out of prison. I am putting money away against the day when, God willing, I shall be free and can forget the Hermine Rouge. I gave you some good advice because I liked you and because it hurt me to think of you beneath some blackamoor's lash, but don't ask any more of me. It's too late!'

  'He is my friend,' Gilles protested hotly, yet with a kind of relish also. It was the first time that he, the bastard whom even the humblest looked down on, had felt able to use those words. And he could not resist the pleasure of saying it again, a second time, more quietly: 'He is my friend.'

  'You will have others. You are the sort that easily wins men's friendship – and women's love. How many women have you had already?'

  Gilles stared at her in amazement and a good deal of shock.

  'Women? Why none! I am a pupil at St Yves,' he added austerely, as if that alone were sufficient reason. But if he had hoped to impress Manon, he was disappointed because the girl from the Hermine Rouge broke into a peal of laughter as natural and unforced as his own surprise had been. She laughed so much that she was forced to double up, her hands holding her middle, while the tears started from her eyes and fell upon the chest. The boy reddened slowly as the joyous waves of mirth flowed over him.

  'I don't see what's so funny about it,' he muttered angrily. 'The fathers at St Yves teach us that woman is the instrument of the devil, false, treacherous and dangerous, and that—'

  'And that is why certain of those same worthy fathers sneak out into the alleys of the harbour and the arsenal at night, dressed like lawyers with their tonsures hidden under a wig, just to see how dangerous those girls are who traffic in their bodies. Really, though? You've not had a woman? Never?'

  'Never! And as to what you just said, I don't believe it. Or, if it's true, the reason must be a holy one. The fathers are used to confront the devil and face up to perils. They must go where Satan lurks!'

  'Well then, let's see if you can be as brave. You look to me as if you, too, were made to face up to perils?'

  As she spoke, Manon took off her cap and began quickly pulling out the pins that held her hair. She unfastened the scarf at her neck and slipped out of her dress. In a twinkling she was dressed only in her pale blue stockings clasped about the knee by pink garters with lace rosettes.

  Her body gleamed like pale silk in the warm glow of the candles and the firelight. Not so slender as Judith's, it was more rounded and disturbing in its femininity. The swell of her hips was soft above her rather strong legs, her full breasts just yielding enough to hint at a long familiarity with caresses. Manon took them in her hands and stroked them gently so that the nipples hardened, then she laughed.

  'Well? What do you think of the serpent? It is all yours now—'

  She stepped out of the circle of her dress and came towards him where he stood in silent fascination, watching her, and reached up on tiptoe to brush his lips with first one light kiss, then another and then a third, whispering against his mouth: 'I don't think much of your clothes. Let's see what you have underneath—'

  With the ease of long practice, she slipped off the black coat and the long waistcoat, undid his shirt, which had more darns than embroidery, and slid her hands down the boy's body. They were warm and rough-skinned and their touch was like an electric shock to Gilles. At the same time Marion's belly, pressed against him, began undulating gently, awaking the boy's manhood with a suddenness that brought a smile to the girl's face.

  'Well, well,' she said mockingly. 'It was high time I took you in hand—'

  But he did not even hear her. The unknown devil within him which had been making such strange turmoil of his nights was suddenly unleashed. Grabbing the girl round the waist he threw her on to the bed and fell on top of her and began kissing her with clumsy eagerness, while his hands kneaded whatever flesh came their way.

  Pinned down and half-smothered, Manon pushed him off vigorously and protested, laughing:

  'Mercy! How you do go at it for a novice! Let me breathe, at least!'

  He drew back, flushing.

  'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you,' he said with contrition.

  'You didn't hurt me. It's just that you're in such a hurry. You don't know anything about lovemaking – but the first thing is that if you are to do it properly you must take your time. Tell me, do you play any musical instrument?'

  'No. But I'm fond of music,' Gilles said, not seeing the connection.

  'Well, never forget that a human body is like an instrument. You have to learn how to play it – and I am going to teach you.'

  Young as she was, the little serving girl from the Hermine Rouge was an excellent teacher. She was both active and sensitive and Gilles enjoyed his first lesson so much that he had no sooner roused himself from a moments blissful unconsciousness following on an altogether novel sensation than he was demanding a repetition, which was generously granted him, and then a third. Only this time the pupil took charge and justified himself so admirably that Manon, still gasping, whispered in his ear:

  'You had better not come here too often, for I should not be safe if I were to fall in love with you.'

  'But I want to come back. There are some lessons one can go on learning for ever,' he said happily.

  'You've little enough left to learn already. What will you do when you have to go to confession? They say they're very strict about that at St Yves.'

  With a careless gesture, Gilles swept away a whole vista of floggings and painful sessions on the stone flags of the chapel.

  'I shan't say anything, that's all! Better to say nothing than to promise not to do it again – and then break my promise. But tell me, Manon? Did you learn all these pretty arts from Yann Maodan?'

  Instantly, the look of happy relaxation faded from the girl's face.

  'You ought not to have reminded me of that brute. Of course it wasn't him! My first lover was a cornet in Walsh's regiment. He was young – and handsome, like you. And he was kind, too. I was madly in love with him, and of course I thought nothing of Yann.'

  'What happened?'

  'The tide washed him up one morning. He had been stabbed—They never found out who did it.'

  There were tears in her eyes and all at once she flung herself on Gilles and pressed her lips to his.

  'I don't want to think about it any more. Love me again. And come back – whenever you want to, come bac
k! I'll wait for you every night after work. I need only say that my sister is ill and I must nurse her.'

  When, very late that night, Gilles left the flax spinner's house at last, his legs felt weak and his body very tired, but his mind was extraordinarily clear and liberated. He could not understand in the least why it was the fathers should make a crime of anything as simple, as natural and as delightful as love. And for the girl who had revealed this to him, he felt a gratitude not far from love.

  It was very quiet and the cold bit more keenly than ever. Gilles began to run to keep warm. But just as he came to the Porte du Boureau, invisible hands seized him and flung him down on the hard snow, while others rained a hail of blows upon him while he strove vainly to defend himself. Blinded, his head ringing, he tried to kick out at his assailants, but to no avail. At last a heavy body reeking of dirt and rum, crashed down on him. Hands, rough as pumice stone, caught him round the neck and began to squeeze slowly, a blast of evil-smelling breath took him in the face and a muffled voice hissed at him.

  'We'll let you go this time, my young whelp,' said his attacker, 'but if you ever dare to visit this house again – or even to mention the name of a certain tavern, it'll be the end of you. And of that slut Manon also. One word from you, just one, or even so much as a look, and you'll both be in the river with a twenty-pound cannon ball tied to your feet! There are some things—'

  'That will do,' broke in another man whom Gilles could not see at all except as a darker shadow on the snow. 'Not so much lip! Hurry! He knows now he'd better keep his mouth shut.'

  The hands were loosed from about his throat but before Gilles had time to appreciate the change a violent blow to his chin plunged him into instant, if somewhat less than blissful unconsciousness. So that the two men carried an unresisting body to the edge of a ditch some small way off, and there abandoned it to the cold night.

  Chapter Three

  The Open Door

  That first night of love and its unfortunate ending left Gilles with little worse than a protracted stiff jaw, a great many bruises and a certain difficulty in swallowing, all minor discomforts which he was able to ignore. But the effects on his mind were deep and irremovable. In the short space of a few hours he had discovered the most uplifting of human pleasures and the most abject humiliation. He had learned what it was to be a man with a woman – and a mere boy in the face of a gang of ruffians. That, at least, was how it seemed to him, although if he had had a little more experience, been a little less innocent, he would have realized that Yann Maodan's men had treated him as no negligible foe.

  Barricaded into his room and only opening the door to let the maidservant give him his bowl of broth and jug of water, he brooded on his anger and mortification. The injunction laid upon him never more to cross Manon's threshold weighed on him like lead, and if no one but himself had been involved he would have gone back to the house by the Porte du Boureau that very night. But it did not seem to him that he had any right to bring what he divined to be a terrible danger on the girl. He could not repay the hours of pleasure she had given him with such perilous coin. Besides, would Manon dare to open her door to him again?

  Hour after hour, he indulged in feverish dreams of leading an attack on the Hermine Rouge, of descending on Yann Maodan and the Nantais, sword in hand, and cleaning out that rat's nest once and for all, although as to the flaming sword, he could barely handle an ordinary hanger competently.

  There was, of course, the possibility of laying a complaint with the city provost, but the role of informer, even against a lawbreaker, was not one that appealed to him. No, what he needed to do now was to learn how to pay them back in kind, to fight and to become the kind of formidable man, like certain famous privateers, respected equally by the law and those outside it. And in order to achieve that he was going to need more help than a pail of holy water and a sprinkler.

  Like a traveller examining the condition of his baggage and the state of his purse before taking to the road, Gilles sat down with his elbows on his knees in front of his meagre fire and reviewed his assets. His scholarship, though mostly derived from books, was sound, if not brilliant, except for an excellent grounding in English which he had from his godfather. On the practical side, though, the account was virtually a blank. He could certainly swim like a fish and could sail a boat as well as any fisherman's son, and his strength was well above the average. But he could not ride – he, who adored horses! He knew nothing of the art of war, could not even fight with his bare hands and had never touched a weapon in his life. His mother, continually obsessed with her own mystical ideas, had even forbidden him to take part in the age-old Breton sport of wrestling, which involved no weapons at all.

  Concluding from all this that it was high time he changed his way of life, he then wrote two letters, one to his mother and the other to the Abbé de Talhouët, in which he begged to inform them both, very respectfully, that he desired to abandon the Church and prepare for the entrance examination to some military college, such as the artillery school at Metz, which would accept boys of no birth.

  This was not a decision he had arrived at light-heartedly, for if he went to Metz he would undoubtedly be condemning himself to something not far removed from purgatory. He would certainly have to spend a long time kicking his heels in some lowly rank, even supposing he was far enough from home to conceal his shameful birth from his fellows. But what had happened to Jean-Pierre Quérelle had given him a sharp lesson regarding the perils of rash adventuring. Before he set out to conquer the world, he meant to acquire those skills which at present he so sorely lacked.

  He hovered for a moment on the verge of writing a third letter, to Manon, to tell her how sorry he was he could not see her again, but then he thought that Yann Maodan had probably visited some of his anger on her already and that any such note might only add to her troubles. He therefore gave up the idea, while promising himself to return to Manon later, when things should have calmed down. In any case, it was odds on that Manon could not read.

  With his decision taken and his bruises fading somewhat, Gilles went back to school with an easier mind. He suffered without flinching the chastisement earned by being absent without excuse and flung himself into his studies, especially mathematics and geography, with an unprecedented enthusiasm, in order to distract his mind from waiting feverishly for a letter from Hennebont. By dulling his senses with fatigue, he also hoped to try and forget Manon's arms.

  When the winter drew towards its end and still he had received no answer to either of his letters, Gilles was in a fret of impatience. In an effort to overcome it, he spent more and more time hanging about the barracks of Walsh's regiment and picking up the news, which was growing daily more exciting. The American expedition was decided on, the King was sending money and a force which was to assemble at Brest under the command of General the Comte de Rochambeau, some regiments were already on their way to Brittany to embark. A fleet had put to sea on February 2nd under M. de Guichen, to replace Admiral d'Estaing's in the Caribbean. Finally, it was rumoured that the famous Marquis de la Fayette was also going, but from Rochefort, where he would take ship to rejoin Washington. There was an odour of gunpowder, spices and the sea in the air, in spite of the nasty drizzling rain which had enveloped Brittany ever since the new year.

  The smell was so intoxicating that Gilles, all his warrior's instincts roused, found himself regretting his letters. What need had there been to talk about schools when the noblest adventure of all was unfolding her great wings right beside him?

  His dreams had reached this point one tempestuous March morning as he sat in his place in the icy classroom, letting his mind wander away from St Augustine's City of God and gallop after the two regiments which had passed through Vannes the previous evening, when an usher came into the class to tell him that the vice-principal, the Abbé Grinne, wished to see him in his study immediately.

  Gilles got up in surprise and went out, amid the kind of expectant, inquisitive silence which
falls on a room full of boys when one of them is singled out, whether for triumph or disaster. In Gilles' case, the general feeling was in favour of disaster, for he was not over-popular. Besides his illegitimacy, which they all knew about and which made him somewhat shocking, a child of sin, the other boys disliked his cold reserve, his secret pride in his irregular birth and even his slightly arrogant bearing.

  Gilles, for his part, was wondering what the Abbé Grinne could want with him. For two months, he had worked as he had never done before and, as far as discipline was concerned, his conscience was clear. He had not, in fact, so much as seen the inside of the Barbin again.

  The vice-principal was, in any event, a good deal less awe-inspiring than the Principal, and so it was with no particular apprehensions that Gilles tapped on his door.

  The door, which was of oak blackened with age, creaked open. The Abbé Francois Grinne was seated at his desk, writing. At the boy's entrance he raised tired eyes behind big metal spectacles, smiled faintly and murmured, without interrupting his work: 'Sit down, my child. I will be with you in a moment.'

  Somewhat disconcerted, both by the smile and the invitation, Gilles seated himself on the edge of a rush-bottomed chair which, with the black wooden desk, the bulging bookcase and a large Spanish crucifix on the wall, constituted the entire furnishing of the room. Thereafter he employed the respite granted him in studying the man opposite him whom he had, in fact, always rather liked. At thirty-nine, the Abbé Grinne presented the appearance of a serious but not a stern man, scholarly without pedantry and wise without ostentation.

  After a few minutes, the vice-principal stopped writing, reread what he had written, uttered a little grunt of satisfaction and put down his pen. Then he took up a sheet of paper from the table and, holding it between his clasped hands, looked up and smiled at Gilles.