Falcon 1 - The Lure of the Falcon

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

  He paused and watched as Fersen unrolled a sheet of paper in front of him.

  'By this deed, which, in the absence of a lawyer, the chaplain of the Touraine regiment, Father Verdier here, has been good enough to draw up for me, I duly recognize and legitimize my son Gilles Goëlo, born out of wedlock, as the sole heir of the house of Tournemine de la Hunaudaye, so that he may in future, subject to the King's approval, bear the name and the arms which are his by right of birth. You, Count—' he looked at Rochambeau. 'I think you knew him before I. Will you honour us both by being the first to append your signature?'

  'The honour is mine, sir. All of us here, in our own ways, have come to know and value this young man. Not so much, perhaps, as our American friends, to whom he is already a legend, but enough to congratulate you on having such a son to carry on your name. You may die in peace for I give you my word, you leave it in good hands.'

  With that, the General took the pen which Sven was holding out to him and quickly signed his name. The rest followed. When it was done, the dying man asked them to lift him up so that he too might add his name. The effort cost him a great deal of agony but he completed it before the pen slipped from his fingers and left a trail of ink across the page. They laid him back gently.

  'Thank you—' he gasped. 'Thank you, all of you. May God – who gave you victory – be with you and keep you—'

  One by one, the officers bowed and left the tent, until only Fersen and his servant remained. Gilles knelt once more beside the bed and softly carried the wounded man's hand to his lips, not even trying to hide the tears that were streaming down his cheeks.

  'Father,' he said brokenly. 'What can I say—'

  'Nothing. There is nothing you need say. It is only justice – and it makes me very happy. And now, talk to me – I know my life is running out. I have held on to it as long as I can. Now the night is coming. It will take me, but with you here I shall fall asleep more easily. Talk to me – tell me. I want to hear it all—'

  Gilles talked for a long time. He talked about his mother, about his childhood, about the people he had known, about Brittany and about America. His quiet voice filled the tent while the candlelight threw dancing shadows on the walls. He would have liked to question his father in his turn and learn what his life had been up to that moment, and about the tragedy of his leaving France and the love which had come too late in a life already vitiated by self-indulgence, a life which Marie-Jeanne had rejected with loathing. But Pierre de Tournemine scarcely stirred now. His eyes had closed and there were moments when he almost ceased to breathe. Then Gilles would fall silent but always the hand which still clasped his would tighten faintly.

  'Go on,' the dying man would whisper. And Gilles went on, his voice sinking to a quieter and quieter note, until at last the grip of the cold fingers relaxed completely. The man breathed out and did not breathe in again. There was silence in the tent. Pierre de Tournemine had ceased to live.

  Somewhere a cock crowed. It was nearly dawn. Already, in the east, the sky was growing pale.

  Fersen, who had watched throughout the night, said huskily: 'In a little while, the English will be coming out of Yorktown to lay down their arms to Washington and General Rochambeau, but this evening we will bury your father with all the honours due to a soldier. Go and rest now, Monsieur de Tournemine.'

  Gilles looked up and met the Swede's eyes. He opened his mouth to say something but found himself unable to speak. He looked down again at the still figure in the bloodstained sheets. A sudden pang of grief stabbed at his heart and, with a harsh cry, he fell forward sobbing on the body of the man he had never had the time to love.

  PART THREE

  The Bride of Trecesson

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Inn at Ploermel

  The last light of a wet February evening was falling on the vast, solitary waste which had once been the forest of Broceliande. The rider on the raking bay horse emerged from a hollow in the hills, crossed a stretch of open ground, leaping easily over the faded clumps of bracken, grey whin bushes and purplish-coloured rocks in his way, crossed a stream, sending the water splashing under his horse's hooves, and paused for a moment to look around him. A great blue cloak of a military cut fell in stiff folds over his horse's crupper, allowing a glimpse of two long-barrelled pistols in the saddle holsters and the brass tip of a sword sheath.

  'What shall we do, boy?' the man said, smiling as he patted the animal's neck. 'You'd like to stay here, I daresay, but you must remember that Viviane departed long ago.'

  The blue pepper-pot towers of a small chateau showed above the trees and welcoming coils of smoke were rising from it. Gilles hesitated for a moment. He had ridden Merlin a long way and no gentleman would be likely to refuse hospitality to the Chevalier de Tournemine of the Queen's Dragoons. But he did not feel like meeting new people tonight. Even though it was still a good two leagues to Ploermel, it would be better to go on. A good inn might be found there for horse and rider where a welcome would not have to be paid for in conversation.

  'Courage, old lad,' he said finally. 'We're going on. But I promise you a good ration of oats.'

  He had no need to use the spurs. Merlin was off like an arrow, and actually pulling as he raced through wood and heathland to the gates of the little town that crouched shivering beneath its mantle of sleet. He was obviously in a hurry to reach the promised oats. He thundered in among the houses and at the crossroads his master was obliged to rein him in with a firm hand.

  The place was deserted. The only signs of life came from a few flickering lights and clacking sabots of an old woman drawing water from the well. Gilles called out to her.

  'My good woman, can you tell me the way to the inn?'

  'A little farther down, sir. Just by the church. You'll have no trouble finding it. It's a posting house.'

  She was right. A square tower loomed massively against the evening sky and next to it some gothic gables. A dim light alongside illumined an arched entry and fell faintly on a sign proclaiming that the Duchesse Anne was able to supply post horses.

  The horseman rode under the archway. The clatter of hooves and the horse's glad whinney brought a stable boy running. He cast a knowledgeable eye over man and beast.

  'Shall I find good lodging here?' the man asked.

  'Yes, indeed, sir. And a good dinner also. See, here comes the landlord now.'

  A short man, somewhat oddly dressed in boots and a postilion's jacket under his large white apron, came hurrying out to greet his customer, who had finally made up his mind to dismount.

  'Have my saddle and my baggage brought up,' he said to the boy, 'and see to it that my horse has good fodder. And above all, no wet straw! And don't forget to rub him down well. And plenty of good litter, eh?'

  A coin flicked from Gilles' hand to the boy's, who caught it deftly.

  'Have no fear, sir,' the landlord said. 'We know how to care for horses here. Will your honour please to step this way.'

  A moment later, the traveller was taking possession of a large, whitewashed room in which the only decorative items were a black wooden crucifix, a portrait of the graceless features of his majesty, King Louis XVI and an immense red eiderdown perched like a swollen strawberry on the white bed. It was cold and distinctly clammy but the landlord hastened to light the fire which was ready laid on the hearth, and in another minute the room was looking almost festive.

  'Will your honour dine downstairs, or will you have it brought up to you here?'

  'No, no. I will come down. Tell me, my friend, do you know of an estate in these parts called Le Frêne?'

  The landlord's naturally cheerful countenance shut up like an oyster.

  'Some five or six leagues from here, on the road to Dinan, on the verge of the forest.'

  The man spoke with evident reluctance and only after some hesitation.

  'You do not seem to care for the place?' Gilles remarked idly.

  'It's not for me to be saying one way or the other, sir.
Le Frêne is a great house and I am only the landlord of a posting inn. But you'd not catch me going out there after dark – or even in broad daylight – not for any money. It's a bad place.'

  'Why? Is—?'

  But the landlord was already bowing his way to the door.

  'You'll excuse me, sir, but I'm stayed for below. You'll not be best pleased if your dinner's spoilt, and no more shall I.'

  He departed, leaving Gilles to his own speculations which were far from pleasant. Clearly, time had done nothing to improve the Saint-Mélaines' unsavoury reputation. He drew a chair up to the fire of dried bracken and whin which gave the room a scent of outdoors and, settling himself in it, stretched out his long, booted legs and got out Judith's letter once again. He sat there, staring at the eager, sprawling hand. He had no need to read it. In the week since it had reached him, he had got its contents by heart.

  'Why have you gone so far away?' it ran. 'I feel as though I am casting this letter into the sea, to drift for ever on the face of the waters and never find you. Whatever happens, it will come too late to save me. I promised to wait for you for three years, and to myself, I swore it. Alas! I am forced to break my word to both of us. How could my father have believed for a moment that a convent walls and his sovereign will would be enough to restrain my brothers when their own interests were involved? They have decided to take me back with them and they have informed our lady abbess, Madame de la Bourdonnaye, that they are coming for me tomorrow. Tomorrow! Only a few more hours, and I shall be on my way back to the manor of Le Frêne. It frightens me so much. There is no way out. They have the law on their side and have threatened to call in the constables. I think they are quite capable of violating the sanctuary of the chapel even, if I should try to take refuge there. But I shall not do that because I do not wish to make myself an object of scandal and trouble here.

  'Tomorrow, therefore, I shall go with them. I know that they are determined to marry me to a Monsieur de Vauferrier, who is an old man and a companion in their debauches, but he is rich and owns ships. It seems that Morvan has been to America and that he met him in the West Indies and came home on one of his vessels.

  'I shall go with them, as I said, but I shall not let them give me to this man, for one of my companions here is related to him and has drawn a dreadful picture of him. I am not a slave to be sold for money. And for so long now I have dreamed of being yours. I think from that very first day when you pulled me from the river. Now that we are about to be parted and there is little hope that we shall ever meet again, I can tell you that I have loved you from the first moment. I loved you at first sight and if I was odious and horrid to you later, it was only because my pride would not give in to my love.

  'Oh God, how could I have been so stupid, so idiotically arrogant! I called you "the little priest", my love, and yet in my heart I was yours even then. I would have gone with you, followed you anywhere – even if it meant living in a charcoal burner's hut in the woods, so long as we could be together. That time you brought me back to the convent, I think I would have gone with you without a second thought if you had asked me. I could have fled to America disguised as a boy, anything – but that might have been to hinder you in your destiny. And now it is all over. Now there is no one I can cling to, for not even God can do anything to help me!

  'Farewell. I do not know where I shall be by the time you read this letter. If you ever read it. Perhaps, if there is nothing else for it, I shall be no longer on this earth. But I know that as long as my heart beats and there is breath in my body, I shall love you—Judith.'

  Gilles smoothed the worn paper very gently with the tips of his fingers. In places, the ink was smudged with tears. He would never forget the moment when that letter had hit him like a thunderclap, at the very moment when it seemed to him that he held the world in his hands. It had wrenched him from his long love affair with America and at the sight of that desolate scrawl he had found out that, underneath the successful warrior, he was still the same youth who had fished a siren from the water, although his dreams had grown still faster than himself. How could he ever for a moment have perhaps not forgotten Judith but pictured her as something born out of the mist and his own romantic imagination and his need for love? How could he ever have been mad for love of another woman?

  Over there, across the ocean, he had become another person, a real man. He had known friendship, privation, danger, war and a certain taste for liberty, and finally passion and betrayal, all in that gigantic melting pot, that fabulous witches' cauldron from which he had emerged a new man. Of his love for Sitapanoki nothing remained but a vague nostalgia, a stirring of his loins whenever he happened to think of the beautiful Indian, coupled with a somewhat selfish sense of relief at having escaped from a fatal temptation. Had he gone into the forest with her, he would have turned his back on the supreme gift which fate had offered him on the battlefield at Yorktown. He would be living by some lakeside an existence not far removed from that of the beasts, or else his bones would be whitening on Indian soil, beside the stake where he had died.

  He drove the unpleasant thought out of his mind with an impatient little shiver, pulled out his pipe and filled it with the Virginian tobacco he had come to like and of which he had brought a good supply home with him. He lit it with a brand from the fire and then, resuming his relaxed attitude, began smoking away earnestly while he tried to sort out the problem before him and, to some extent, to clarify his mind.

  As far as he himself was concerned, fate had been wonderfully kind to him in the four months since he had left the Chesapeake. And it had all happened so fast.

  First there had been his sudden return home, in company with Lauzun. Rochambeau had entrusted the young duke with the task of carrying the news of the victory back to Versailles and with what was, considering what their past relations had been, quite unlooked-for generosity, Lauzun had promptly engaged Lieutenant Goëlo to go with him.

  'You must strike while the iron is hot,' he told him. 'Your father acknowledged you as far as it lay in his power, but now you need the King's word on it. And also, even before it I should say, that of Monsieur Chérin. You do not know Monsieur Chérin?'

  'Good lord, no! Versailles is another world to me, Duke. It's like another planet. I know nothing about it at all, or about this gentleman either.'

  'Well, you are not alone there. He shuns the company of men and keeps his favours for the old parchments, seals, blasons, labels, quarterings, mottoes and all the rest of the tangled web of armorial descents. He is the official Genealogist and Historiographer Royal. His integrity is fanatical and the scrupulous care with which he goes into claims to nobility has made him many enemies. He is completely incorruptible and if he decides that your claim will not stand, then not even the King himself can do anything about it. So you must make haste and present that document of yours at Versailles while all the signatories are still happily alive. You can always come back afterwards if you like. The way may not be quite over.'

  That was true. The surrender of Yorktown was a major victory for the United States, and one that might well prove decisive, but the English still had considerable forces at their disposal and might think it worth while to continue the struggle until one or other side was wiped out.

  And so, with the willing consent of his superior officers, Gilles shook Fersen by the hand, receiving quantities of advice as he did so, embraced his friend Tim and entrusted Pongo to him until his return. Persuading the Indian to part, even temporarily, from the master he worshipped, had been by no means the least of his troubles.

  'What if you never come back?' Pongo had asked, his face expressing a mixture of grief and offence.

  'There's no reason why I should not come back but if that should happen, then I promise you that I will send for you. Although I'm not at all sure that you'd like it in Europe.'

  'Pongo cannot be happy except where you are. If you abandon him, then he will die.'

  'You are my brother in arms. I will ne
ver abandon you. Trust me, and wait for me.'

  Three days after Cornwallis surrendered, Lauzun and Gilles went aboard the swift Surveillante, commanded by Monsieur de Cillard, and reached Brest in three weeks, a journey which had taken more than two months on the way out. From there, before Gilles had more than time enough to breathe his native air, they had posted straight to Versailles, where they arrived in the midst of general rejoicings. On October 22nd, a few days after the battle of Yorktown, the Queen had given birth to a dauphin. Paris was wild with joy. Versailles was swarming with fireworks, banners and pealing organs.

  Gilles, whose only experience of kingly magnificence had been in ships and weapons, was dazzled by the ramifications of the palace. The town, the gardens, the vast, luxurious palace, peopled with men and women dressed in silks and cloth of gold, filled him with an admiration which his pride forbade him to show. Alongside all this, Brest was no better than a village and Hennebont a molehill.

  But he would never forget his presentation to the King. He had been expecting the crushing splendours of a throne room. Instead, they led him up to the attics under the roof of the palace and into a workshop. A forge fire was burning and the place rang with the sound of hammering. He had expected a haughty ruler, decked out in brocade and diamonds. He found himself face to face with a nervous, shortsighted man of some twenty-eight years of age, but already grown a trifle stout, with hair receding from a high forehead, lacklustre eyes and very ordinary clothes which were covered by a large leather apron. But for a certain natural dignity, he could easily have been mistaken for any of his subjects. Nevertheless, the royal locksmith greeted him with the greatest kindness.