The man spat again.
“I’ve told you to ask no questions. I had my orders to bring you ’ere and I don’t want no money from any cursed Duke – à bas les tyrans!”
The woman looked apprehensive.
“Be careful,” she warned. “It’s never safe to say too much, you never knows who may be listenin’.”
The man took a swig from a bottle of wine that stood on the table and then got to his feet.
“You are right, Renée. I’ll be takin’ myself off before I says no more.”
“And what do you think I’m goin’ to do with ’er?” his wife asked, pointing her thumb at Amé.
“She won’t be no trouble to you,” François said, more jovially now, perhaps because he had some wine inside him. “I’ve got somethin’ ’ere that’ll stop ’er bein’ a bother to anyone.”
From a cupboard in the corner of the room he brought out something that rattled.
As he turned towards Amé, she instinctively shrank away from him. Retreating as he advanced, she finally found her back against the wall and could go no further. It was then that he laughed at her helplessness and, as his bold cruel eyes flickered over her frightened face, her dishevelled hair and her torn dress, she felt suddenly humiliated. Looking down, she saw what he carried in his hand.
A heavy spiked stake joined to a steel cuff by a long chain. He knelt down and held the stake against the wall and with a piece of brick which was lying on the floor he hammered it in, his brawny arm raised again and again until the stake was driven in firmly.
Then, as Amé still stood shrinking on one side of him, he reached out his hand and seized her by the ankle.
She would have screamed then had she not felt nauseated by his touch to the point of fainting. She felt him clasp the steel cuff round her leg over the gossamer fineness of her silk stocking.
Then there was a click as he turned the key in the lock and made her a prisoner.
“She won’t run away from you now, Renée,” he chuckled to the woman watching from the table.
“That’s all very well,” the woman retorted, “but what am I to do if any of the neighbours comes round?”
“Keep ’em out,” he replied. “Don’t make any difficulties, woman, you know what our orders are. We must obey without question.”
“And how am I to feed ’er with nothin’ in the ’ouse and you not givin’ me any money since Friday?”
“Feed ’er?” the man echoed incredulously. “Let ’er starve. Our instructions are to keep ’er ’ere till we’re told what to do with ’er. That be all! They didn’t say anythin’ about a feather bed or a roast goose, so we needn’t trouble as to ’ow to provide them.”
Laughing at his own joke, François took a cap from the peg, put it on the side of his head and opened the door. He waved to his wife good-humouredly and went off whistling. As he walked down the street, the tune grew fainter and fainter in the distance.
It was then that Amé felt that her knees would carry her no longer. Slowly she sank down to the floor and crouched there, her eyes closed with sudden faintness.
When she opened them again, the woman was still staring at her.
Her face was in her hands and she was paying no attention to her baby who was crying in the attic.
“Had you been to a party last night?” she asked curiously at length and now her voice was not so hostile.
“Yes, at the Trianon Gardens,” Amé replied.
“The Queen’s party?”
“Yes, it was the Queen’s party.”
The woman spat violently on the floor even as her husband had done.
“The Queen!” she screamed and added a string of lewd words that Amé had never heard of before, but the meaning of which there was no mistaking.
It seemed hopeless to protest, so Amé said nothing and after a little while the woman lapsed into silence.
Now her hostility had obviously returned and she looked at Amé from under lowering eyebrows.
“It’s the Queen who is responsible for all our misery,” she went on, when Amé did not speak. “Money is stolen from the national coffers to dress ’er in diamonds, to decorate ’er Palaces, to spend on ’er gardens but we, the people of France, can starve! Our children can die for want of food and all she does is to laugh and then buy ’erself more diamonds and more gowns to pursue her immoral and vicious desires in.”
“The Queen is neither immoral nor vicious,” Amé said, speaking not because she felt it would do any good, but because she felt she must reply. She knew what this wretched uneducated woman had expressed was not her own thoughts or her own ideas but those that had been implanted in her mind.
“You know the Queen? You’ve spoken with ’er?” the woman asked.
There was curiosity again in her tone.
“Yes, I spoke with Her Majesty last night,” Amé said. “I assure you that she is by no means the monster you make her out to be. Who told you such things about her?”
“Everyone knows what she is,” the woman retorted angrily. “Ask anyone in Paris. Not the cursed aristos, of course. It’s they who fatten on the poor even as the Queen does. But ask the real people of Paris, the men who work like my ’usband does, the women who toil and slave as I do. They’ll tell you who is responsible for all our miseries.”
Amé would have said something, but at this moment the shrieks of the child upstairs became so deafening that its mother could ignore them no longer. Climbing the ladder with the ease of someone who is accustomed to such an uncomfortable manner of ascent, she disappeared into the darkness above.
Looking round with a sinking heart, Amé saw that it was morning. The dawn had broken and through the dirty broken windows daylight was percolating into the room, showing it to be even more unprepossessing than it had been in the candlelight.
The walls were cracked and peeling and in many places mildewed with damp. The ceiling was black with smoke and its beams creaked and moved as the woman walked over them in the garret above. It was a hovel such as Amé had never seen before and there was a smell of dirt and putrefaction about it that was almost suffocating.
As she sat on the floor, tethered to the chain by which François had made her prisoner, she saw a rat run from one corner of the room towards the table in search of crumbs. She gave a little cry and it disappeared into a hole by the fireplace.
The woman heard her for a moment later she came climbing down the ladder holding the baby in her arms.
“It’s no use your shriekin’ for ’elp, no one’ll ’elp you and if you makes too much noise, François will bind up your mouth when ’e returns.”
“I was not screaming for help,” Amé answered, “a rat frightened me. It came from the hole there.”
She pointed as she spoke.
“It’s no use worryin’ about them. There’s ’undreds of ’em. One bit little Jean when ’e was lyin’ by the fire the other evenin’. It may be that what ’as given ’im a fever.”
She rocked the child in her arms as she spoke and for the first time her face was tender. Jean was an ugly child, Amé thought from what she could see of him and yet his ugliness was undoubtedly due to the fact that he was waxen pale and his face was shrunken and abnormally thin.
“How long has he been ill?” Amé asked.
“About four days,” the mother answered. “I can’t get ’im to eat. All ’e does is cry.”
“How old is he?” Amé asked.
“A year last month,” Renée answered.
The child was very small for his years and Amé could see that. She had helped to tend the children in the Infirmary at the Convent and she remembered that most children of a year old were far bigger than little Jean.
The child went on wailing.
“I expect ’e’s ’ungry,” the mother said. “I’d go out and buy ’im some milk but’ ow can I when I’ve got to stay ’ere and look after you?”
She poured a little wine into the glass, soaked a piece of bread in it and thrust it
against the child’s mouth. He choked and spat it out and started to cry more loudly than ever.
“Give him to me,” Amé suggested. “I will hold him while you go out to buy the milk.”
“Connu! That be a likely story and as soon as my back’s turned you’ll escape and a nice row you’ll get me into with François when he returns.”
“How can I escape?” Amé asked. “Your husband has taken the key of the chain with him. Besides, if you really want some milk for the child, I will give you my word of honour that I will not try to escape or attract attention to myself until you return.”
The woman stared suspiciously at her, but something in Amé’s eyes convinced her that she had nothing to fear in accepting the word of this aristocrat, much as she might despise her.
“All right, then,” she said ungraciously, “but if you try to escape François’ll kill you when’ e catches you again. And ’e will.”
“I have given you my promise,” Amé pointed out. “I will sit here quietly until you return. Put Jean beside me in his cradle if you like.”
Renée lowered the baby into a cradle. It was made of a rough unpolished wood, but it had a rocker and would have been an adequate bed for the child if the blankets inside it had ever been washed. Sodden and stinking, it was little wonder the baby cried at being laid down on them.
Renée, however, paid no attention to his protests and, dragging the cradle across the room, she placed it beside Amé.
“You can rock him if you like,” she said condescendingly. “Best not pick ’im up, ’e mightn’t take to you.”
Obediently Amé put out her hand and began to rock the cradle to and fro. Renée pulled a dark shawl over her head.
“I shan’t be long,” she said. “I’m goin’ to lock the door so you needn’t try any monkey tricks.”
She slammed it to behind her before Amé could reply, but there was no sound of a key turning in the lock, only Renée’s footsteps receding down the street and Amé guessed that there was no key.
The baby went on crying.
After a few minutes Amé picked him up and wrapping a tattered blanket around him, rocked him in her arms. He was so light that it was obvious that he was no more than skin and bone.
His helplessness and blue-veined hands waving in the air, made her feel a throb of compassion. It was not the child’s fault that his parents were dirty and illiterate.
He must accept life as he found it. It was obvious that he was going to find it very hard indeed if he ever survived his infancy. Rocking him to and fro against her breast, Amé found herself thinking of the Convent, of the long corridors, clean and sweet-smelling and of the floors, polished until one could see one’s face in them. The food was plain and homely, yet always edible and she remembered how as a child she had run eagerly to her meals, enjoying them because her appetite was keen.
How fortunate she had been in so many ways! She had not known the love of a father and mother and yet there had been nearly a hundred nuns to take their place, They had petted and spoiled her when she was little, many of them finding an outlet for their own hungry childless hearts in loving her.
For perhaps the first time in her life Amé realised that there were worse things than being an orphan. This little Jean, hungry and cold while his parents were nurtured on hate, venting their spleen on the Queen, charging her with all their ills and not seeing that they themselves were responsible for most of them.
Was it really impossible for men and women like François and Renée to be educated to a higher standard of living and to be taught at least cleanliness in their homes?
Amé felt suddenly very young and very helpless. What, she asked herself, did she know of the world? The places where she had lived had been so very different from this.
She thought again of the Convent with its indescribable atmosphere of peace and aloofness, where all the fragrance of a spiritual intensity hung in the air and a happiness touched with the Divine seemed to envelop everyone from the Mother Prioress herself to the youngest postulant.
She thought of the fine mansion to which the Duke had taken her in Paris, of the great rooms with their crystal chandeliers, of the gilt-ornamented walls and soft carpets and of the brocade-hung bed that she slept in, which was so soft that she had thought at first that she was lying on a cloud.
The bathroom, with its gilded taps, the flower-filled garden and the panelled library where Hugo worked in the sunshine, it was all so rich and so lovely that she had imagined that all the world outside the Convent was like that.
And now she was seeing a very different aspect, something that made her weep at the pity of it.
“Doucement, doucement, mon pauvre petit,” she whispered to little Jean.
Presently, because he was warm and comfortable in her arms, he ceased wailing and his eyelids drooped wearily.
Both Amé and the baby were asleep when Renée opened the door about twenty minutes later.
For a moment she stared at them, the girl with her elaborate white dress spread out on the dirty floor, her naked shoulders pressed against the filthy wall behind her and her head drooping a little sideways but her arms still cradling cosily the sleeping baby.
Amé woke with a little start.
“I am afraid we have both been to sleep,” she smiled. “Did you get the milk?”
“Half a pint,” Renée replied, producing a bottle from under her shawl, “and pitiable stuff it is too. They say the cattle are weak for want of grain and ’ay last winter. A man was tellin’ me at the market that the Queen ’ad it all sent to Austria to ’er own people.”
“I am sure that was not true,” Amé said. “What sort of man was he?”
“Oh, just a man,” Renée replied. “He works at the Palais Royal, I believe.”
“A servant of the Duc de Chartres!” Amé exclaimed. “Then you can be sure that anything he tells you is a lie.”
“The Duc de Chartres be a very fine man,” Renée retorted hotly. “There are those who say ’e’ll be King of France and when ’e is we’ll see vast changes, you can be sure of that.”
“I am sure of one thing,” Amé replied. “The Duc is a bad man. I have met him and therefore I know.”
“You’ve met the Duc de Chartres!” Renée’s eyes were suddenly round with astonishment. “So I must tell François that. He too ’as met ’im. He says that ’e’s wonderful, a real Prince, a man whom other men would willingly follow.”
Something warned Amé not to say too much against the Duc. She was saved from replying by Jean, who woke from his short sleep and started to yell even more loudly than before.
“Let me give ’im the milk,” Renée said, snatching him from Amé’s arms as if she almost resented the fact that he had been quiet with her.
But the milk was of as little use to Jean as the wine had been, he managed to swallow a few mouthfuls then sicked it up again. After trying patiently every way she could think of to get him to take the milk, Renée began to cry.
“He be ill,” she sobbed. “You can see ’e is ill. Oh, mon petit bébé, what shall I do if you die?”
“He is weak and under-nourished,” Amé said, “but there is no reason to believe that he will not get better with care. I know a little bit about medicines because sometimes I have helped the Apothecary at the Convent where I was brought up. If you could get some tilleul from the lime tree, orange flower water, a little elm syrup and two herbs that I will write for you on a piece of paper, I believe we could make him sleep and afterwards you should give him a nourishing broth, not that cold milk that he does not like.”
Rene listened to Amé for a moment and then her expression turned to one of sullen despair.
“Sacre Mère! And where do you think I can get such things?” she asked angrily. “Medicines cost money and as for a nourishin’ broth, ’e must make do with what we ’ave and there’s nothin’ but bread in the ’ouse.”
Amé thought quickly for a moment. She had no jewellery and, although her dress h
ad cost a great deal of money; she doubted if it would fetch much in this quarter of Paris. And then she remembered her shoe-buckles. They were not of diamonds like the Duke’s, but they were made of Spanish crystal and had cost several Louis at the shoemaker’s. Bending down she pulled them from her shoes.
“Take these,” she said, holding them out to Renée. “Someone will give you money for them, enough at any rate to buy the medicines and perhaps a chicken for the broth.”
“Do you mean – ?” Renée asked incredulously and then even as her hand went out claw-like towards the buckles she drew it away. “What will Francis say?” she asked. “If anyone should have them, it is ’e.”
“François need not know,” Amé replied, “If you hurry you can sell them and be back with the medicines before he comes home. Besides they are for little Jean who is ill.”
“It might save his life,” Renée muttered as if she spoke with her conscience and then hastily, as though she feared Amé might change her mind, she snatched the buckles from her.
“Give me a piece of paper,” Amé said, “and I will write down the names of the herbs.”
The piece of paper that Renée produced was, she saw with a start, a lampoon of the Queen. Vulgar and unpleasant, it was cleverly drawn and printed in crude colours. And even to Amé, who knew so little of such things, it was obvious that it was bound to be read, if only through curiosity, by those who received it.
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
“François gets paid for deliverin’ them,” Renée replied carelessly.
Amé said nothing for the moment. She turned the lampoon over so as to be able to use the plain back to write down the herbs. Renée brought her a piece of burnt charcoal from the hearth.
“So François is in the pay of the Duc de Chartres?” Amé remarked quietly when she had finished writing.
“Not always, worse luck,” Renée replied. “Sometimes ’e ’as orders from the Palais Royal and then ’e gets well rewarded for what ’e does, but ’e’s only one of many. Sometimes we go for weeks and there’s not so much as a sou comin’ into the house.”
Love Me Forever Page 19