Angelique - Part 1. Marquise of the Angels Chapter 5 - Read online

IN MAY THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF THE REGION, the former with green ears of com on their hats, the latter adorned with flowering flax, went dancing around the dolmens, those vast stone tables set up in the fields in prehistoric times. On the way back they paired of f to enjoy themselves in the grasses and undergrowth.
In June, old Saulier married ofFhis daughter, and there was a great feast. He was the only tenant-farmer of the Baron de Sance, whose other farmers were all m&ayers, who had to turn over half their produce to the Baron. He was, moreover, the village tavern-keeper and very well of f indeed.
The small Romanesque church was decorated with flowers and great thick candles. The Baron himself escorted the bride to the altar.
The meal, which lasted for several hours, was sumptuous with white and black pudding, chitterlings, sausages and cheeses, and there was wine.
After the meal, according to custom, all the village ladies presented their gifts to the bride.
The bride was in her new home, sitting on a bench behind a large table on which crockery, linen, copper and tin cauldrons were piling up. Her round, somewhat bovine face shone with pleasure under an enormous daisy-wreath.
Madame de Sance felt almost embarrassed to be bringing such a modest gift: some fine earthenware plates which she kept for such occasions. It suddenly occurred to Angelique that at Sance they were eating out of peasant bowls. She was both indignant and pained by this lack of logic; people were odd! Wasn’t it a safe bet that the village girl, too, would never be using these plates but would store them away care¬fully in a coffer and go on eating out of her bowl? And at Plessis there were so many marvellous things kept buried as if in a tomb!
Angelique’s face grew sombre and she kissed the young bride without feeling.
The young men of the village had meanwhile assembled around the wide conjugal bed and were making bawdy jokes.
“Oho! my wench,” cried one of them, “one need take but one look at you and your bridegroom to guess that the caudle will be mighty welcome when it’s brought to you at crack of dawn.”
“Mamma,” asked Angelique as she was going out, “what is this caudle they always talk about at weddings?”
“It’s a village custom, like dancing or bringing gifts,” answered her mother evasively. The explanation did not satisfy her daughter, who promised herself she would not miss the ‘caudle*.
The dancing had not yet started under the big elm on the village square. The men were sitting around the tables that had been placed on trestles in the open air. Angelique heard her elder sister sob and ask to be taken home to the castle, because she felt ashamed of her simple, patched frock.
“Bah!” cried Angelique, “how you complicate your life, poor girl! Am I complaining about my dress? Yet it is too tight and too short. My
shoes really do hurt, though. But I brought my dogs along in a bundle, and Г11 put them on for the dance—I have dedded to enjoy myself!”
Hortense, however, insisted on being taken home, complaining that she felt too hot and was not well. Madame de Sance went to tell her husband, who was sitting with the village notables^ that she was returning home but was leaving Angelique with him. The girl sat down with her father for a moment. She had eaten a good deal and was drowsy.
Around them sat the vicar, the mayor, the schoolmaster, who was also an occasional cantor, surgeon, barber and bell-ringer, as well as several farmers who were called ‘smallholders’ because they owned ox-driven ploughs and employed some farm-hands, thus forming a small rural aristocracy. Also in this group was Arthemus Callot, the surveyor from the next hamlet, temporarily commissioned to help drain the near-by marsh. He fancied himself as a learned man and a foreigner, although he hailed from no farther away than the Limousin. And finally there was the bride’s father, Paul Saulier himself, breeder of cattle, horses and donkeys.
This corpulent Poitou peasant was in fact the most substantial of the small farmers and though the Baron Armand de Sance was ‘the master’, his tenant was certainly a much richer man than he.
Angelique, watching her father’s furrowed brow, had no difficulty in guessing his thoughts.
‘One more sign of the nobleman’s decline,’ he must be thinking sorrowfully.
Meanwhile, there was a commotion around the big elm in the square, where two men, each carrying under his arm a sort of inflated white bag, hoisted themselves on barrels. They were the bagpipe-players. A flute- player soon joined them.
‘‘We’re going to dance,” cried Angelique, and she rushed towards the mayor’s house, where she had hidden her clogs.
Her father saw her emerge skipping from one foot to another and clap¬ping her hands to the rhythm of the ballads and rondos. Her burnished gold hair was bobbing on her shoulders. Perhaps on account of her short, tight dress, he suddenly realised how much she had grown during the last months. She, who had always been rather frail, now looked all of her twelve years; her shoulders had broadened, her breasts strained gently against the worn serge of her dress. Under the golden tan of her cheeks her full-bloodedness shone with a rosy glow, and her moist lips were half- opened in a laugh which revealed her small perfect teeth. Like most of the young country-girls, she had slipped a big bunch of mauve and yellow primroses into the opening of her bodice.
The men seated around the Baron were also struck by the fire and freshness of her appearance.
“Your young lady is becoming a very beautiful girl,” said old Saulier with an obsequious smile and a wink at his neighbours.
The Baron’s pride was tinged with alarm.
‘She’s getting too big to mix with these yokels/ he thought all of a sudden. ‘We should be sending her, rather than Hortense, to die con¬vent. . . /
Unconcerned by the glances and remarks she aroused, Angelique mingled gaily with the young men and girls who came running in groups or couples. She almost knocked against a youth whom she did not immediately recognise, so well was he turned out.
“Valentine, mon doue” she exclaimed in the dialect which she spoke fluently, “how handsome you look!”
The miller’s son wore a coat that had certainly been tailored in town, and the grey broadcloth was of such fine quality that his coat-tails stuck out as if starched. Both coat and waistcoat were adorned with several rows of twinkling little gold buttons. There were metal buckles on his shoes and on his felt hat, and blue satin rosettes on the garters of his hose. The boy, who at fourteen was built like a Hercules, seemed rather gauche and ill at ease in his new clothes, but his ruddy face shone with satisfaction. Angelique, who had not seen him for some time, noticed that she hardly reached his shoulder and she felt almost shy. To dispel her uneasiness, she grasped his hand.
“Come and dance/’
“Oh no!” he protested, “I don’t want to spoil my beautiful costume. I’m going to have a drink with the men,” he added importantly, as he headed towards the group of notables whom his father had joined at the table.
“Come and dance,” shouted a boy, seizing Angilique by the waist.
It was Nicholas. His eyes, dark as ripe chestnuts, were full of gaiety.
They faced each other and started stamping the ground rhythmically to the shrill sounds and ritoumelles of the flute and bagpipes. These dances, which might have been dull and heavy, had an innate sense of rhythm that lent them an extraordinary lilt. The main instrument, besides the bag¬pipes and flute, was the thudding clogs which beat the ground in unison, and the complicated figures which each dancer performed added grace and perfection to this pastoral ballet.
Dusk fell. The coolness of evening refreshed perspiring brows. Enthralled by the rhythm of the dance, Angflique felt elated, freed from her thoughts. Her partners followed one another in quick succession, and she read in their shining, laughing eyes a message that rather excited her. Dust rose like soft pink pastel in the setting sun. The piper's cheeks were like two balloons and his eyes bulged out of his head with the strain of blowing.
It was time to stop and move to the tables which were laden with refreshments.
“What are you thinking of , Father?" asked Angelique, sitting down next to the still frowning Baron. She was flushed and breathless. He was almost vexed with her for being so carefree and happy while he was so worried that he could not even enjoy the village feast as he used to do.
“Taxes," he answered, staring glumly at the man facing him across the table, who was none other than Sergeant Come, the Revenue agent whom they had so of ten sent packing from the castle gate. She protested:
“It's not right to have such thoughts when everyone is having fun. Do the peasants think of it, they who pay more heavily than anyone? Isn’t that right, Monsieur Come?” she cried gaily across the table. “Isn’t
it true that no one should think of taxes on a day like this—not even
v*
you?
This evoked uproarious laughter. People began to sing, and old Saulier intoned the refrain of the ‘Tax collector-pilferer’, which the sergeant deigned to listen to with a good-natured smile. But soon it was the turn of those less innocent rhymes which all weddings give rise to, and Armand de Sance, more and more worried as he watched his daughter down one mug after another, decided to go home.
He told Angelique to take her leave and follow him. Raymond and the youngest children, accompanied by the nurse, had left long ago. Only the eldest son, Josselin, was still lingering, one arm around the waist of the prettiest wench. The Baron knew better than to call him to order. He was happy to see the thin, pale college boy recovering fresh colour and healthier ideas in the arms of Mother Nature. At his age, the Baron had long since tossed a sturdy shepherd lass from a neighbouring village in the hay.
Convinced that Angelique was following him, the Baron started saying good-bye to everyone. But his daughter had other plans. For several hours she had been seeking some means of attending the ceremony of the caudle at sunrise. So, taking advantage of all the josding, she slipped out of the crowd. Then, taking her clogs in her hands, she began running towards the far end of the village, where all the cottages were empty, even of old people. She spied a ladder leading to a bam, climbed up nimbly and found the soft sweet-smelling hay.
The wine and the fatigue of the dance made her yawn.
Til sleep a little/ she thought. ‘When I wake up, it’ll be time for the caudle/
Her eyelids dropped, and she fell into a heavy slumber.
She woke with a pleasant feeling of well-being and contentment. The darkness in the bam was still thick and warm. It was still night, and from afar came the sound of the peasants’ merry-making.
Angflique did not quite know what was happening to her. Her body was filled with a great sweetness and she felt like stretching herself and moaning. She suddenly felt a hand slowly passing over her breast, then moving down over her body, brushing her legs. Someone’s hot breath seared her cheeks. Her outstretched fingers met a stiff cloth.
“Is it you, Valentine?” she whispered.
He did not answer but drew even closer.
The fumes of wine and the subtly intoxicating darkness hovered like a mist over Angelique’s thoughts. She was not afraid. She had recognised Valentine by his heavy panting, his smell, even by his hands, scratched by reeds and marsh-grass. His rough skin made her shiver.
“You’re no longer afraid of spoiling your beautiful costume?” she murmured with a naivete that was not devoid of a subconscious cunning.
He growled and his forehead snuggled into the girl’s graceful neck.
“You smell good,” he sighed, “you smell like angelica in bloom.”
He tried to kiss her, but she did not like the touch of his moist lips seek¬ing hers, and she pushed him back. He gripped her more violently, his weight upon her. This sudden brutality awakened Angelique entirely. She struggled, tried to sit up. But the boy pinioned her, panting. She then started to pummel his face furiously with her clenched fists, crying:
“Let me go, you clodhopper, let me go!”
He released her at last, and she slipped down from the hay, then climbed down the ladder. She felt furious and sad, she knew not why. . . . Outside, the night was filled with shouts and light.
“The farandolel”
Boys and girls, holding hands, passed close to her, and Angelique was carried along in the stream. The dance flowed through the lanes, jumped over fences, hurtled down the fields in the dim light of dawn. Drunk with wine and cider, they stumbled all the time, pulling others down with them amid roars of laughter. They wound back to the square. Tables and benches were knocked over as the farandole swept over them. The torches went out.
“The caudle! The caudle!” demanded the voices. They knocked at the mayor’s house. He had gone to bed.
44 Wake up, burgess! We're going to comfort the newly-wed!”
Angelique, who had managed to disengage herself from the human chain because her arms were hurting, now saw a strange procession approach.
In front marched two grotesque figures dressed in rags and bells, in the fashion of the King's jesters. Then followed two young men carrying on their shoulders a stick which was passed through the handles of a huge cauldron. Others surrounded them, carrying pitchers of wine and glasses. All the villagers who were still able to stand on their feet followed in their wake, making quite a crowd. Without standing on ceremony, they marched into the cottage of the newly-weds.
Angelique thought they were rather sweet, lying there side by side in their big bed. The young wife was quite flushed. Nevertheless, they both drank unprotestingly the mulled wine mixed with spices which they were served. But one of the visitors, more drunk than the others, tried to remove the sheet that covered them. The husband sent him flying with a blow of his fist. A scuffle ensued, during which could be heard the screams of the poor young wife clutching at her coverlet. Jolted by the sweating bodies, stifled by those peasant smells of wine and ill-washed flesh, Angelique was almost thrown to the ground and trampled on. Nicholas finally freed her and helped her outside.
“Phew!" she sighed, when she was at last breathing fresh air. “That caudle business of yours isn't very amusing. Tell me, Nicholas, why do they of fer mulled wine to the newly-weds?"
44 Well, one's got to fortify them after their wedding night."
“Is it as tiring as that?"
“That's what they say . . ."
Abruptly he started to laugh. His eyes sparkled, his black curls fell over his dark forehead. She saw that he was as drunk as the others. Suddenly he held out his arms and stumbled close up to her.
“Angelique, y're sweet, y'know, when y'talk like that . . . y're so sweet, Angelique.”
He put his arms around her neck. She freed herself without a word and walked away. The sun rose over the devastated village square. The ball was definitely over. Angelique walked with unsteady steps along the path that led to the castle, a prey to bitter thoughts.
So Nicholas too, after Valentine, had indulged in strange behaviour. She had lost them both at the same time. She felt as if her childhood had died away, and at the thought that she would never again return to the marshes or the woods with her usual companions she felt like crying.
This was how the Baron de Sance and old Guillaume, who had gone to search for her, found her stumbling towards them with a tom dress and hay in her hair.
“Mein Gott!” cried Guillaume, stopping aghast. .
“Where have you been, Angflique?” asked the Baron sternly.
But seeing that she was unable to reply, the old soldier picked her up in his arms and carried her towards the castle.
Armand de Sance, deeply worried, told himself that he would very soon have to find a way, by hook or crook, to send his second daughter to a convent.