by John Jakes
“Not because of Monsieur Diderot and company, I trust.”
Phillipe shook his head. “But there are some more questions I want to ask you, Girard. Half of that business about politics, I just can’t understand.”
“But that’s the purpose of education! To begin to understand! Then to want to understand!”
“I know, you’ve said that before. I got a little of what some of those writers were talking about. Enough to tell me that what they’re saying doesn’t—doesn’t sound right, somehow. All that about kings no longer having God’s authority to run other people’s lives—”
Girard’s emphatic nod cut him off. “Exactly.”
“But we’ve always had kings!”
“Always is not forever, Phillipe. There is absolutely nothing inherent in the structure of the universe which dictates that any free man should be expected to obey authority unless he wishes to—for his own benefit, and by his own consent. Even the best of kings rules by tradition, not right. And a man must make up his own mind as to whether he’s willing to be ruled by the authority in question.”
“Yes, I got that much.”
“Our mad Swiss was even more blunt about it. He once observed that if God wished to speak to Monsieur Jean Jacques, He should not go through Moses.” Girard paused. “Scandalous stuff I’m teaching you, eh?” he said with a twinkling eye.
“Confusing, mostly.”
“Well, save your questions until we devote a little attention to something more conventional. When you return we’ll try an English play. There are witches in it, and old Scottish kings who murder one another. You’ll find it stimulating, I think. Learning ought not to be dull though God knows it is the way the priest peddle it.” With mock seriousness, he concluded, “I consider it not just my job but my sacred obligation to sweeten your preparation all I can, my young friend.”
At the inn door, Phillipe turned. “Preparation for what?”
“That, dear pupil, is for madame the actress to tell you.”
Phillipe frowned. “Why do you always speak of her as madame?”
“For one thing, she insists upon it.”
“But she has no husband. I’ve no father that I know about.”
“Nevertheless, I consider your mother a lady. But then”—Girard shrugged, smiling again—“when she’s in a bad mood, she herself calls me an unconventional, not to say dangerous, fellow. And she’s not the only one! Pity I can’t force myself to stick to sums and English where you’re concerned. I can’t because you’re a bright lad. So before you keep on pestering me with questions, remember what I’ve told you before. Some of my philosophical ideas could land you in serious trouble one day. Consider that the warning of a friend. Now hurry along for the cheese, eh? Or I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe from Mademoiselle Charlotte!”
iv
So, on a gray November morning in the year 1770, Phillipe Charboneau left Les Trois Chevres. He had never, as a matter of record, seen a single goat on the premises, let alone the three for whom Marie’s father had named the establishment.
He set off up the rock-strewn road in the direction of Chavaniac. As the morning mist lifted gradually, the sun came out. Far on the north horizon he glimpsed the rounded gray hump of the Puy de Dome, a peak, so Girard had informed him, that was surrounded with pits which had once belched fire and smoke. Small extinct volcanos, said the itinerant scholar.
Phillipe walked rapidly. On the hillsides above him, dark pines soughed in the wind blowing across the Velay hills. The air of Auvergne could shiver the bone in the fall and winter months. The inn was seldom warm this time of year, except when you stood directly at the fireside.
He wondered what it would be like to dwell in a splendid, comfortable chateau like the one near Chavaniac. The Motier family—rich, of the nobility —lived there, his mother said, usually hinting whenever the chateau was mentioned that he would experience a similar sort of life one day. In the stinging wind, Phillipe was more convinced than ever that she was only wishing aloud.
His old wool coat offered little protection from the cold. He was thoroughly chilled by the time he turned up a track through the rocks and emerged on a sort of natural terrace overlooking the road. Here stood the hovel and pens of du Pleis, the goatherd. Higher still, behind a screen of pines, bells clanked.
A fat, slovenly boy about Phillipe’s age emerged from the hovel, scratching his crotch. The boy had powerful shoulders, and several teeth were missing. Phillipe’s eyes narrowed a little at the sight of him.
“Well,” said the boy, “look who graces us with his presence today.”
Phillipe tried to keep his voice steady: “I’ve come for the week’s cheese, Auguste. Where’s your father?”
“In bed snoring drunk, as a matter of fact.” Auguste grinned. But the grin, like the mealy dark eyes, carried no cordiality. The boy executed a mock bow. “Permit me to serve you instead. Sir.”
Phillipe’s chin lifted and his face grew harder. “Enough, Auguste. Let’s stick to business—” He took out the coins, just as another, taller boy came outside. He carried a wicker-covered wine jug.
The new boy belched. “Oh. Company, Auguste?”
“My cousin Bertram,” Auguste explained to Phillipe, who was studying the older boy. Bertram bore a faint scar on his chin. From knife fighting? He wore his hair long, not clubbed with a cheap ribbon at the nape of his neck, like Phillipe’s. Bertram had dull, yellowish eyes, and he swayed a little as Auguste went on:
“This is Phillipe Charboneau, Bertram. A noted innkeeper from down the road. And far better than any of us. The little lord, some people call him.”
“A lord of the horse turds is what he looks like,” Bertram joked, lifting the jug to drink.
“Oh, no!” Straight-faced, Auguste advanced on Phillipe, who suddenly smelled the boy’s foul breath. “Though his mother’s place isn’t prosperous enough to have even a single horse in its stable, he’s a very fine person. True, he’s a bastard, and that’s no secret. But his mother brags and boasts to everyone in the neighborhood that he’ll leave us one day to claim some fabulous inheritance. Yes, one day he’ll brush off the dirt of Auvergne—”
Auguste swooped a hand down, straightened and sprinkled dirt on Phillipe’s sleeve.
“Don’t laugh, Bertram!” Auguste said, maintaining his false seriousness. “We have it straight from his own mother! When she lowers herself to speak to lesser folk, that is.” He squinted at Phillipe. “Which brings up a point, my little lord. At the time my own mother died—just last Easter, it was—and yours came up to buy cheese, she didn’t say so much as one word in sympathy.” He sprinkled a little more dirt on Phillipe’s arm. “Not a word!”
Tense now, Phillipe sensed the hatred. Bertram shuffled toward him, swinging the jug. Phillipe knew that what fat Auguste said was probably true. But he felt compelled to defend Marie:
“Perhaps she wasn’t feeling well, Auguste. That’s it, I recall it now. At Eastertime, she—”
“Was feeling no different than usual,” Auguste sneered. To Bertram: “She was an actress on the Paris stage. I’ve heard what that means, haven’t you?”
Bertram grinned. “Of course. Actresses will lie down and open themselves for any cock with cash.”
“And for that she’s not allowed inside a Catholic church!” Auguste exclaimed, hateful glee on his suet-colored face. “Very unusual for such a woman to be the mother of a lord, wouldn’t you say?”
Bertram licked a corner of his mouth. “Oh, I don’t know. I hear most of the really grand ladies at the court are whores—”
“Damn you,” Phillipe blurted suddenly, “I’ll have the cheese and no more of your filthy talk!” He flung the coins on the ground.
Auguste glanced at Bertram, who seemed to understand the silent signal. Bertram set the wicker jug at his feet. The cousins started advancing again.
“You’ve got it wrong, little lord,” Auguste said. “We’ll have your money. And perhaps some of your skin
in the bargain—!” His right foot whipped out, a hard, bruising kick to Phillipe’s leg.
Off balance, Phillipe fisted his right hand, shot it toward Auguste’s face. The fat boy ducked. A blur on Phillipe’s left indicated Bertram circling him. The taller boy yanked the ribbon-tied tail of Phillipe’s dark hair.
Phillipe’s head snapped back. But he didn’t yell. Bertram grabbed both his ears from behind, then gave him a boot in the buttocks.
The blow rocked Phillipe forward, right into Auguste’s lifting knee. The knee drove into his groin. Phillipe cried out, doubling. Bertram struck him from behind, on the neck. The ground tilted—
A moment after Phillipe sprawled, Bertram kneeled on his belly. Auguste started to kick him.
Phillipe writhed, fought, struck out with both fists. But most of the time he missed. Auguste’s boot pounded his legs, his ribs, his shoulders. Again. Again—
In the middle of the beating, one of Phillipe’s punches did land squarely. Bertram’s nose squirted blood onto Phillipe’s coat. The older boy spat out filthy words, grabbed his victim’s ears and began to hammer his head on the ground.
Phillipe’s head filled with the strange sound of the heavy breathing of his two tormentors, the distorted ring of the goat bells from up beyond the pines. They beat him for three or four minutes. But he didn’t yell again.
From inside the hovel, a querulous man’s voice asked a question, then repeated it. The man sounded angry.
Auguste scooped up Phillipe’s money. Bertram lurched to his feet, picked up the jug, brought the neck to his bloodied mouth and drank. Groaning, Phillipe staggered up, barely able to walk a straight line.
Auguste kicked him in the buttocks one last time, driving him down the track toward the road. The fat boy shouted after him:
“Don’t come back here till your whoring mother can speak to her neighbors in a civil way, understand?”
Phillipe stumbled on, the sharp north wind stinging his cheeks. His whole body throbbed. He considered it an accomplishment just to stay on his feet.
v
Exhausted and ashamed of his inability to hold his own against Auguste and his cousin, Phillipe stumbled back to the inn along the lonely, wind-raked road. His sense of humiliation made him steal past the tavern perched on the hillside—he was grateful no one was looking out to see him—and seek the sanctuary of the empty stable behind the main building.
Hand over bruised hand, he pulled himself up the ladder to the loft and burrowed into the old straw, letting the blessed dark blot out the pain—
“Phillipe? Phillipe, is that you?”
The voice pulled him from the depths of unconsciousness. He rolled over, blinking, and saw a white oval—a face. Beyond, he glimpsed misted stars through cracks in the timbers of the loft. Down on the stable floor, a lantern gleamed.
“Sweet Mother of the Lord, Phillipe! Madame Marie’s been out of her mind all day, worrying about your unexplained absence!”
“Charlotte—” He could barely pronounce her name. His various aches, though not unbearable, remained more than a little bothersome. And waking up—remembering—was not a pleasant experience.
Charlotte climbed off the ladder and knelt beside him in the straw. He licked the inside of his mouth; it failed to help the dryness. Charlotte swayed a little, braced on her knees and palms. He thought he smelled wine on her. Probably filched from the inn’s cellar—
And it seemed to him no accident that Charlotte’s position revealed her bare breasts all white where her soiled blouse fell away. For a moment, he thought she was ready to giggle. Her eyes seemed to glow with a jolly, vulpine pleasure. But her touch of his cheek was solicitous.
“Oh, my dear, what happened to you?”
“I had an accident,” he said in a raspy voice. “Fell, that’s all.”
“Down ten mountainsides, from the look of you! I don’t believe it for a minute.” The girl stroked his cheek again; he was uncomfortably aware of the lingering nature of her caress. Nor could he overlook the feel of her fingertips. She must have been in the kitchen. She hadn’t wiped off all the lard.
“Who beat you, Phillipe? Brigands? Since when have poor boys become their game?”
“Not brigands—” Each word cost him energy. But he managed to sit up, groaning between clenched teeth. “Listen, Charlotte, never mind. I came back and wanted to sleep so I crawled in here.”
She began to finger his arm. A light, suggestive tickling. Ye gods, was that what she had on her mind? At a time like this? He was too stiff and sore, end to end, to be much excited.
But for her part, Charlotte was closing like a huntress.
“Poor Phillipe. Poor, dear Phillipe.” He caught a flash of her white leg as she hitched up her skirt to descend the ladder again. “You need a little wine.”
“No, honestly, I don’t really—”
“Yes, wait, you just let me help you, Phillipe. I’ve some wine hidden in one of the horse stalls.”
So she was stealing from the inn supplies, he thought, hardly caring. He had an impulse to totter down the ladder after her, and flee. But he didn’t. Wine might not taste bad. Might help revive him—
Charlotte made rustling sounds in the stall below. Then Phillipe’s eyes popped open—a second after the yellow light of the lantern went out. From the ladder, he heard a single delighted little syllable—
My God. She was giggling.
Feeling trapped, he started to roll over and rise to his knees. Aches exploded all over his body. He groaned and leaned back, trying to forget the humiliation and hatred the pain produced—the residue of the morning. Once more Charlotte uttered that strange, pleased sound as she maneuvered from the ladder to the loft.
This time, she didn’t even try for grace as she tumbled out next to him—permitting him, in the process, an ample feel of her breasts against his forearm. She pressed the bottle into his hand and didn’t take her own hand away. Because his cut lower lip had swollen, he still spoke thickly:
“How did you find me?”
“Well—”
She stretched out beside him with a cheerful little wriggle of her shoulders. She turned onto her side, facing him, so that his arm nestled between her breasts. He shifted his arm. She immediately moved closer. The wench was not sober, he realized with a sudden sense of confusion.
She ran her palm over his forehead, said abruptly, “Are you warm? You feel all icy.”
“Yes, I’m warm. Very warm.”
“That’s a dreadful lie, your teeth are clicking!”
“My teeth are cold but I’m warm everywhere else. I asked you—”
“Drink some wine. That’ll help.”
She practically forced the mouth of the bottle to his lips. The inn’s wine was poor and sourish. He coughed and spluttered getting it down. But when it reached his stomach, it did indeed warm him a little, and quickly.
Charlotte hitched her hip against him. Though he was conscious of aches in his belly and groin, he was suddenly conscious of something else. A reaction in his loins. Unexpected; startling. And—God help me, he thought with some panic—not entirely unpleasant.
But he still felt like some cornered fox.
“To answer your question,” Charlotte explained in a whisper, “we don’t have a single customer tonight. Not one! The worrying in the kitchen got so tiresome—your mother and Girard saying this happened, or that happened—I just got thoroughly sick of it and crept out here for a drink from the bottle I keep put away. Isn’t that lucky?”
Her laugh this time was throaty. That alarming, exciting hand strayed to his collar, teasing his neck. He didn’t even feel the lard residue because he was feeling too much that was surprising elsewhere. What in heaven’s name was happening?
He tried to sound gruff: “Who gets the rest of what you steal? Your family?”
“No, I drink it all! Drink it—and have the loveliest dreams of—a certain young man—”
“I don’t believe that.”
“T
he dreams? Oh, yes! They are lovely!” She leaned her head in closer so that her curls tickled his cheek, accelerating the peculiar transformations taking place in his body. “What a pity they stay dreams and nothing else—”
“I mean I don’t believe you about the wine, Charlotte.”
“Well, I do take some home.” She brushed his cheek with her lips, the kiss a soft, quick, smacking sound. “You will keep my secret, won’t you? Please?”
He answered with a confused monosyllable. But it seemed sufficient to make her happy—and even more interested in his welfare, or something else. She burrowed closer.
“Phillipe, you’re freezing.”
“No, sincerely, I’m p-p-perfectly—”
“You need more wine!”
His protest ended in a gulp, as she forced it on him. The strong-smelling stuff ran down his chin. Gasping for air, he asked:
“Charlotte—you didn’t finish—how did you find—?”
“Oh, yes, that. Well, when I came in, I heard you thrashing and muttering in your sleep. Are you still hurting so much?” One of her hands slipped across his hip. “Can you move at all?”
“Uh—yes, I can move. In fact I should go inside and—”
“Oh, no!” she cried softly, pushing his chest with both hands. “Not until the chill passes. If you go out in the air, you might catch a fever. You need more wine!”
This time he hardly resisted at all. The sour stuff tasted better by the moment. It was relaxing him—except in a certain critical area over which he no longer seemed to have any control, thanks to Charlotte’s constant wriggling and stirring and pressing and touching. In the darkness, she seemed to be equipped with numerous extra hands, many more hands than were customary for a normally built human being. They were all over him. But after the first shock of fingers straying down his stomach and hesitating an instant, he got so caught up in this peculiar, half-fearful, half-exciting encounter that the torment of the beating quite vanished from his mind.
“My turn,” she giggled, prying the bottle from his faintly trembling hand. She drank. Somehow the bottle slipped, thudded to the dirt floor of the stable.