Angelique - Part 2. Marriage in Toulouse Chapter 2 - Read online

ANGELIQUE RODE BACK THROUGH THE FRAGRANT PATHS, absorbed in her thoughts, seeing nothing.
Nicholas followed on his mule. She no longer paid heed to the young groom. She tried, however, not to examine too closely the feeling of fright that kept stirring in her. Her mind was made up. Whatever happened, she would not look back. So the best was to look forward and grimly reject anything that might cause her to waver in carrying out such a well-planned programme.
Suddenly a male voice called out to her:
“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle Angelique!"
She pulled on the reins mechanically, and her horse came to a stop.
Turning round, Angelique saw that Nicholas had dismounted and was motioning to her to join him.
“What's the matter?" she asked.
Rather mysteriously, he whispered: “Get down, I want to show you something."
She obeyed, and the groom, after tethering both mounts to the trunk of a young birch-tree, preceded her into the shelter of a small wood. She followed him. The light of spring shining through the tender leaves was the colour of angelica. A chaffinch whistled ceaselessly in the thicket.
Nicholas walked with lowered head, carefully looking around. Finally he knelt down, and as he got up again he held cupped in his open palms some fragrant red fruit.
“The first strawberries," he murmured, while the malice of his smile lit a flame in his chestnut eyes.
“Oh, Nicholas, this isn’t right," protested Angelique.
But emotion made tears rise suddenly to the edge of her eyelashes, for with this gesture he was proffering her all the charm of her child¬hood, the charm of Montcloup, the races through the woods, the dreams scented with hawthorn, the coolness of the canals where Valentine used to take her, the brooks in which they fished for crayfish—-Monte- loup which resembled no other place on earth, because in it mingled the sickly-sweet mystery of the marshes, the pungent mystery of the forests. . . .
“Do you remember” he murmured, “what we used to call you? Marquise of the Angels . . ."
You arc silly,” she said in a brittle voice. “You oughtn’t to, Nicholas . .
But already she was picking, with an old familiar gesture, the small delicious berries out of his of fering hands. Nicholas stood quite close to her, as in the old days, but now die lithe, lean boy with his squirrel face towered over her by a head, and through his open shirt-front she breathed the rustic smell of manly skin, tanned and covered with black hair. She saw his powerful chest slowly rise and fall, and she felt so stirred she did not dare to raise her head, certain that, if she did so, she would meet his bold, burning eyes.
She continued to taste the strawberries, concentrating on this delight, which for her was priceless indeed.
‘For the last time Monteloup !’ she thought. ‘I am savouring it for the last time! All that I ever loved best is contained in these hands, in Nicholas’s brown hands. . . .’
When she was finished, she suddenly closed her eyes and leaned her head against an oak-trunk.
“Listen, Nicholas . . .”
“I am listening,” he answered in dialect.
She felt his hot breath, with its tang of cider, on her cheek. He was so close, almost pressed against her, that the radiance of his massive presence enveloped her entirely. Yet he did not touch her and, looking at him, she suddenly saw that he had put his hands behind his back to resist the temptation to seize her. She met the shock of his steady gaze, in which there was no trace of a smile, but only a brooding prayer that left no room for doubt. Never had Angelique sensed so strongly the attraction of the male; never had she heard a clearer confession of the desire aroused by her beauty. The whim of the Poitiers page-boy had been but a game, an astringent experiment by two young animals testing their claws.
This was something else, something powerful and hard, as old as the world, as the earth, as the storm.
The pure young girl took fright. More experienced, she would not have been able to resist so potent an appeal. Her flesh stirred, her legs trembled, but she shrank back like a doe before the hunter. Fear of the unknown that awaited her, of the peasant’s contained violence, held her back.
“Don’t look at me like that, Nicholas,” she said, trying to make her voice firm, “I want to tell you . . .”
“I know what you want to tell me,” he interrupted her moodily. “I can read it in your eyes and in the way you hold your head. You are Mademoiselle de Sance and I am a farm-hand . . . and now it’s all over with us two, even looking each other in the face. I’ve to keep my head lowered! Very good, Mademoiselle, yes, Mademoiselle. . . . And your eyes will pass over me without even seeing me. ... No more than they see a rock, less than a dog. There are some noble ladies in their chateaux who let themselves be washed by their lackey, because what’s a lackey? What matter if you show yourself naked before him? . . . A lackey isn't a man, he’s a thing . . . a thing that serves. Is that how you are going to treat me from now on?”
“Be silent, Nicholas.”
“Yes, I shall be silent.”
Me breathed violently, but with closed lips, like a sick animal.
“1 want to tell you just one last thing before I am silent,” he resumed. “And that is that there’s never been anyone but you in my life. I under¬stood it only after you had gone, and for several days I was as though mad. It’s true that I’m lazy, a touser of wenches, and that I loathe the land and beasts. I am like something that’s not in its place and that keeps wandering here and there without knowing why. My only place is you. When you came back, I couldn’t wait to know if you were still mine, if I’d lost you. Yes, I am bold and speak freely. Yes, if you’d been willing, I would have taken you, here on the moss, in this little copse that is ours, on this earth of Monteloup that is ours, ours alone as it used to be!” he cried.
The frightened birds had fallen silent in the trees.
“You're raving, my poor Nicholas,” said Angelique gently.
“Don’t,” said the man, growing pale under his tan.
She shook her long hair and a spark of anger flashed in her.
“How do you expect me to talk to you?” she said, also speaking in dialect. “Whether I wish it or not, I am no longer free to listen to shepherd’s gallantries. I am shortly to marry the Comte de Peyrac.”
“The Comte de Peyrac!” repeated Nicholas, dumbfounded.
He stepped back and considered her in silence.
“So it’s true what they say in the village?” he breathed. “The Comte de Peyrac. You! . . . You are going to marry that man?”
“Yes.”
She did not want to ask any questions. She had said yes, that was enough. She would say yes, blindly, to the very end.
She took the little path that led her back to the road, and her whip lashed the tender shoots along the roadside nervously. The horse and mule were browsing together at the edge of the forest. Nicholas untied them. With lowered eyes he helped Angelique to mount. Suddenly she gripped the groom’s rough hand.
“Nicholas, tell me . . . do you know him?”
He raised his eyes and she saw in them a gleam of vicious irony.
“Yes . . . I’ve seen him—he’s been to these parts a number of times. He is so ugly that the girls run away when he passes on his black horse. He’s lame like the devil and just as wicked. . . . People say that he lures women to his castle in Toulouse with philtres and strange songs. . . . Those who follow him are never seen again, or else they go mad. . . . Ha! Ha! Ha! What a fine husband, Mademoiselle de Sance!”
“You say he’s lame?” repeated Ang£lique, whose hands were growing ice-cold.
“Yes, lame! lame! Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: The Great Lame Devil of Languedoc!”
He began to laugh and walked towards die mule, imitating an ex¬aggerated limp.
Angelique whipped her steed, which flew into a gallop. She fled through the hawthorn bushes away from the sneering voice that kept crying: “Lame devil! Lame devil!”
She arrived in the courtyard of Mon teloup just as a rider crossed the old drawbridge behind her. His perspiring dusty face and his hide-bottomed trunk-hose showed at once that he was a messenger. At first no one understood what he was asking for. His accent was so extraordinary that it took some time to grasp that he was actually speaking French. To Monsieur de Sance, who arrived at the run, he handed an envelope that he pulled out of a small iron box.
“Good Lord, Monsieur d’Andijos is arriving tomorrow!” cried the Baron, greatly excited.
“And who may that be?” inquired Angelique.
“He’s a friend of the Comte. Monsieur d’Andijos is to marry you . . .”
“What, he too?”
“. . . by proxy, Angelique. Let me finish my sentences, child. Ventre Saint-Gris, as your grandfather would have said, I wonder what those nuns have taught you, if they haven’t even instilled into you the respect you owe me. The Comte de Peyrac is sending his best friend to represent him at the first marriage ceremony, which will take place here in the chapel of Monteloup. The second blessing will be given at Toulouse. That one, alas, your family will not be able to attend. The Marquis d'Andijos will escort you on your journey to the Languedoc. These southern people are awfully quick. I knew they were on their way but I did not expect them so soon.” .
“I can see it was high time I accepted,” murmured Angflique bitterly.
Next day, a little before noon, the courtyard filled with creaking carriage-wheels, neighing horses, resounding shouts and garrulous voices.
The south had come to Monteloup. The Marquis d’Andijos, very swarthy, his moustache trimmed to ‘dagger-points*, with glowing eyes; wore petticoat-breeches of yellow and orange silk which gracefully concealed the paunch of a bon vivant. He introduced his companions who were to be witnesses of the marriage, the Comte de Carbon-Dorgerac and little Baron Cerbalaud.
They were ushered into the dining-room, where the de Sance family had set out, on trestle tables, their greatest riches: honey from their hives, fruit, curdled milk, roast geese, wines from the hills of Chaille. The new arrivals were dying of thirst. But the Marquis d’Andijos had hardly taken a sip before he turned round and spat with precision on the tiled floor.
“By Saint Paulin, Baron, your Poitou wines revolt my tongue! What you’ve poured out is a tooth-grinder as tart as they come. Ho, Gascons! Bring in the barrels!”
His forthright simplicity, his singsong accent, the smell of garlic on his breath, far from displeasing the Baron, actually delighted him.
As for Angelique, she had not even the strength to smile. Ever since the night before, she had worked so hard with Aunt Pulcheric and Fantinc to give the chateau a presentable appearance that she felt stiff and aching in all her bones. It was better that way: she could not even think any more. She had slipped into the finest dress made for her in Poitiers, which, though still grey was enlivened with little blue bows at the bodice. She did not know that her warm face, firm but soft like a fruit that is not yet fully ripe, emerging from the wide stifflace collar, was in itself the most dazzling ornament. The eyes of the three gentlemen turned continually towards her with an admiration which their temperament was unable to conceal. They began to pay her countless compliments. She grasped only half of them on account of their rapid talk and that incredible accent which made even the flattest words ricochet in a shower of sunbeams.
‘Shall I have to hear this kind of talk all my life?’ she wondered with annoyance.
Meanwhile, the lackeys were rolling into the hall huge barrels, which they hoisted on to trestles and which were promptly tapped. Hardly had a hole been made than they stopped it with a wooden spigot. But die first jet left big puddles on the floor which shone with a transparent pink and golden-brown light.
“Saint-£milion,” commented the Comte de Carbon-Dorgerac, who came from Bordeaux, “Sautemcs, Mcdoc. ...” *
Used to their apple wine or sloe-juice, the inhabitants of the castle of
Monteloup tasted these different wines with circumspection. But soon Denis and the three youngest boys became very gay. The exhilarating aroma went to their heads. Angflique felt pervaded by a strong sense of well-being. She saw her father laugh, open his old-fashioned jerkin with¬out bothering about the threadbare linen underneath. And die southern gentlemen were already unfastening their short sleeveless waistcoats. One of them even removed his periwig to wipe his brow; he put it back somewhat askew.
Marie-Agnes, gripping her elder sister s arm, was shouting into her ear with a piercing voice:
“ Angelique, do come! Angelique, come and look, up in your room, such marvels! . . .”
She let herself be dragged upstairs. Into the vast room, in which she had slept for so long with Hortense and Madelon, had been carried big iron- and-leather coffers which were called \garde-robes\ The maids and man¬servants had opened them and had spread their contents out on the floor and on some rickety arm-chairs. On the enormous bed Angelique saw a taffeta dress of the same green tint as her eyes. An exquisitely fine lace trimmed the boned bodice, and the front of the busquiere was entirely covered with diamond and emerald embroideries in the shape of flowers. The same flower pattern was reproduced on the cut velvet of the mantle, which was deep black. Diamond clasps kept it in place at the sides of the skirt.
“Your wedding dress,” said the Marquis d’Andijos, who had followed the two girls. “The Comte de Peyrac searched for a long time among the dress materials he had ordered from Lyons, for a colour to match your
if
eyes.
“He has never seen them,” Angelique protested.
“Monsieur Molincs described them to him with care: the sea, he said, as it looks from the beach as the sun plunges into its depths.”
“Molines be damned!” cried the Baron. “You won’t have me believe that he is such a poet. I suspect you, Marquis, of embellishing the truth in order to bring a smile to the eyes of a young bride, flattered by such attention on the part of her husband.”
“And this! And this! Look, Angelique!,# repeated Marie-Agnes, whose shrewd little mouse-face shone with excitement.
Together with her two young brothers Albert and Jean-Marie, she lifted up the dainty lingerie, opened boxes in which lay ribbons and lace ornaments, or parchment and feather fans. There was a delightful travelling-case of green velvet lined with white damask, mounted with silver gilt, and fitted with two brushes, a gold box with three combs, two small Italian mirrors, a square pin-cushion, two bonnets and a fine linen night-gown, an ivory candlestick and a green satin bag containing six candles of virgin wax.
There were also some simpler but very elegant dresses, gloves, belts, a small gold watch and no end of things whose use Angelique could not even guess at, among them a small mother-of-pearl box which contained a selection of black velvet patches lined with gummed taffeta.
“It's considered good form,” explained the Comte de Carbon, “to affix these little beauty-spots to certain parts of your face.”
“My complexion is not white enough to need stressing,” Angelique declared, closing the box.
Overwhelmed, she wavered on the verge of childish joy, of feminine delight, as, with an instinctive taste for ornaments and beauty, she became aware of them for the first time.
“And this,” asked the Marquis d’Andijos, “docs your complexion refuse to share its sparkle, too?”
He opened a flat jewel-case, and in the room thronged with maids, lackeys and farm-hands there rose a cry followed by murmurs of admiration.
On the white satin gleamed a triple row of pearls of a very pure, slightly golden hue. Nothing could have been more becoming for a young bride. Ear-rings completed the set, along with two rows of smaller pearls that Angelique at first took for bracelets.
“They are meant to adorn the hair,” explained the Marquis d’Andijos, who, despite his plumpness and his warrior’s manners, seemed very well up in ladies’ fashions. “You put up your hair. But, to be frank, I can’t exactly tell you how.”
“I shall dress Madame's hair,” broke in a tall, sturdy maidservant, stepping forward.
Though younger, she strangely resembled the nurse, Famine Lozier. The same Saracen flame had burnished her skin. She and Fantine were already casting hostile glances at each other out of the same dark eyes.
“That’s Marguerite, called Margot, the Comte dc Pcyrac’s foster-sister. This woman has served the great ladies of Toulouse and for many years followed her masters to Paris. She will henceforward be your chamber¬maid.”
The maid skilfully lifted up the heavy auburn hair and imprisoned it in the interlacing pearl ornament. Then, with an unrelenting hand, she removed from Angelique’s ears the modest little stones the* Baron de Sam^ had of fered his daughter for her first communion, and fastened
the sumptuous jewels instead. Then it was time for the necklace.
“Oh! this calls for a more low-cut neckline,” cried little Baron Cerba- laud, whose eyes, as dark as wild blackberries after rain, tried to divine the young girl’s graceful form.
The Marquis d’Andijos hit him lightly on the head with hisstick.
A page rushed forward, holding a mirror.
Angelique saw herself in her new splendour. Everything about her seemed to shine, even her smooth skin, faindy tinted pink at the cheeks. A sudden glow of pleasure rose in her, flushed her lips, which opened in a delightful smile.
‘I am beautiful/ she said to herself.
But then everything grew hazy, and from the depth of the mirror seemed to rise the horrible sneer:
“Lame devil! Lame devil! And as ugly as sin. What a fine husband, Mademoiselle de Sance!”
The marriage by proxy took place a week later, and the festivities lasted three days. There was dancing in all the neighbouring villages, and on the wedding-night there was a display of fireworks and rockets at Monteloup.
In the courtyard of the chateau and in the surrounding fields large tables had been set up and covered with pitchers of wine and cider and all sorts of meats and fruit, which the peasants came to eat, making merry at the expense of the noisy Gascons and Toulousans, whose drums, lutes, violins and nightingale voices mocked the village fiddlers and pipers.
On the eve of the bride’s departure for the distant land of Languedoc, a great dinner was laid out in the courtyard of the castle. Among the village notables and the neighbouring gentry who attended were Molines and his wife and daughter.
In the large room where Angelique had so of ten listened to the creaking of the huge weather-vane at night, Fantine helped her to dress. After lovingly brushing the gorgeous hair, she held out to her mistress the turquoise bodice and fastened the bejewelled centre-piece.
“How lovely you are, oh! how lovely, my little treasure!” Fantine sighed, as if regretfully. “Your breasts are so firm, they won’t need all those stays to support them. Mind those bodice fronts don’t flatten them. Let them be free and easy.”
“Isn’t the neck cut too low, Nounou?”
“A great lady must show her breasts. How beautiful you are! And for whom, good God!” she sighed under her breath.
Angelique saw that the face of the old Poitou woman was streaked with tears.
“Don’t cry, Nounou. You will take my courage away.”
“Alas, you will need it, my child. . . . Bow your head so that I can fasten your necklace. As for the pearl head-dress, we’ll leave that to Margot: I can’t make head or tail of that tangle! . . . Ah, my treasure, what a heartbreak! When I think that this big gawk of a woman, who stinks of garlic and die devil from a hundred metres away, will wash and pluck you on your wedding night! Ah! it breaks my heart!”
She knelt down on the floor to arrange the long train of the dress- mande. Angllique heard her sob. She had not expected such despair, and the anguish that gripped her own heart increased a hundredfold.
Fantine Lozier, still bending on the floor, murmured:
“Forgive me, my child, that I was not able to defend you, I who suckled you. But I’ve heard of that man for too many days now; I can no longer close my eyes.”
“What do they say of him?”
The nurse straightened up. She had assumed her seer’s black, fixed gaze.
“Gold! Crammed with gold is his casde. . .
“It’s not a sin to possess gold, Nounou. Look at all the presents he has given me. I am delighted with them.”
“Make no mistake, my child. This gold is cursed. He creates it with his retorts, his philtres. One of his pages, Henrico, the one who plays the long drum so well, told me that in his palace at Toulouse, a palace red as blood, there is an entire building where no one is allowed to set foot. Its entrance is guarded by a pitch-black man, as black as the bottom of my cooking-pot. One day, when the guardian was away, Henrico saw through the half-opened door a big hall full of glass-bowls, retorts and pipes that whistled and boiled! And suddenly there was a flame and a clap of thunder. Henrico ran away.”
“That boy is full of imagination, like all the people of the south.”
“Alas, there was a note of truth and fear in his voice that one could not mistake. Oh, he’s paid the devil’s own price for his power and wealth, has the Comte de Peyrac. A Gilles de Retz, that’s what he is, a Gilles de Retz who doesn’t even hail from Poitou!”
“Stop babbling nonsense!” said Angelique harshly. “Nobody’s ever said that he eats little children.”
“He lures women by weird spells,” whispered the nurse. “There are orgies in his palace. It seems the Archbishop of Toulouse denounced him publicly from the pulpit, and spoke of the scandal and the Evil One. And that heathen of a groom who told me of it last night in my kitchen roared with laughter, and said that after that sermon the Comte de Peyrac gave
orders to his men to thrash the Archbishop’s pages and porters, and that there had been batdes right in the cathedral. Can you imagine such outrages taking place here? And all this gold he owns, where does he get it? His parents left him nothing but debts and mortgaged lands. He is a gentleman who never pays court to the King or to the great lords. They say that when Monsieur cT Orleans, the Governor of Languedoc, came to Toulouse, the Comte refused to bend his knee before him on the pretext that this fatigued him, and when Monsieur pointed out that he might obtain great benefices for him in high places, the Comte de Peyrac answered that ”
Old Fantine broke of f and busied herself with pinning up the girl’s skirt here and there, although there was no need for it.
“What did he answer?”
“That . • . that stretching out his arm wouldn’t make his leg less short. Such insolence!”
Angelique looked at herself in the small round mirror of her travelling case, ran a finger over her eyebrows, which had been carefully plucked by the maid Margot.
“So it’s true what they say about his limping?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level.
“Alas, it’s true, my baby. Oh Holy Mother, how beautiful you are!”
“Be quiet, Nounou. You tire me with your moaning. Go and fetch Margot to dress my hair, and don’t speak of the Comte de Peyrac any more in the way you just did. Don’t forget that from now on he is my husband.”
At nightfall torches were lit in the courtyard. The musicians, grouped on the steps in front of the castle in an orchestra of two hurdy-gurdies a, lute, a flute and an oboe, softly accompanied the noisy conversations. Ang£lique suddenly asked that the village fiddler be sent for so that the villagers might dance in the vast meadow at the foot of the castle. Her ear was not yet accustomed to the daintier music written for the Court and its lace-clad lords. She wanted to hear once more the gentle musettes of Poitou and the bold sound of the pipes keeping time with the muffled rhythm of the peasant clogs.
The sky was starry but veiled by a light mist that put a golden halo round the moon. Dishes and fine wines passed unceasingly. A basketful of warm round rolls was placed before Angllique and stayed there until the young woman raised her eyes to the one who was of fering it. She saw a tall man dressed in stout doth of a light grey that identified him as a miller. Since flour cost him little, he had powdered his hair as plentifully as any member of the landed gentry. His collar and canons were of fine linen.
“Here is Valentine, the miller’s son, who’s paying his respects to the bride,” cried Baron Armand.
“Valentine,” said Angelique with a smile, “I have not seen you since my return. Do you still go up the canals in your boat, to pick angelica for the monks of Nieul?”
The young man bowed very low, but did not reply. He waited till she had helped herself, then lifted the basket and passed it on. He was soon lost in the crowd and the darkness.
“Taste this, you simply must,” said Marquis d’Andijos into her ear.
He was of fering her a dish that looked unprepossessing but had a most subtle smell.
“It’s a ragout of green truffles, Madame, freshly come from Pcrigord. You must know that the truffle is divine and magical. There is no dish more sought after to prepare the body of a young bride to receive her husband’s homage. The truffle warms the body, enlivens the blood and makes the skin more receptive to caresses.”
“Well, I see no necessity for tasting them tonight,” said Angelique coldly, pushing the silver bowl away. “Considering I shall not meet my husband for several weeks . . .”
“But you should prepare for it, Madame. Believe me, the truffle is the best friend of Hymen. On this delicious diet you’ll be all tenderness on your wedding-night.”
“In my country,” said Angelique, looking him full in the face with a little smile, “we cram geese with fennel before Christmas to make their meat tastier for the night when they’ll be eaten as a roast.”
The Marquis, slightly tipsy, roared with laughter.
“Oh! How I’d like to be the one who’ll gobble up the little goose that you are!” he said, bending down so close that his moustache brushed her cheek. “May God damn me!” he added, straightening himself, his hand over his heart, “if I let myself be carried away to utter any more unseemly words. Alas, I am not entirely to blame, for I have been deceived. When my friend Joffrey de Peyrac asked me to fulfil the role and formalities of a husband at your side without enjoying his delightful rights, I made him swear that you were hump-backed and cross-eyed, but I can see that once again he took no trouble to spare me torment. You really won’t try these truffles?” .
“No, thank you.”
“Then I shall eat them,” he said with a pitiful grimace which, in any other circumstances, would have made the young woman laugh, “though I am a bogus husband, and a bachelor to boot. And I hope that nature will favour me by bringing me on this festive night some ladies or damsels less cruel-hearted than yourself.”
She made an effort to smile at liis follies. The candelabra and torches were producing an unbearable heat. There was not a breath of air. People sang and drank. There was a heavy smell of wines and sauces.
Angelique passed a finger over her temples and found them moist.
‘What’s the matter with me?* she thought, ‘I feel as if I were going to burst all of a sudden, shout words of hate at them. Why? . . . Papa is happy. He’s marrying me of f in almost princely fashion. The aunts are jubilant. The Comte de Peyrac has sent them big necklaces of Pyrenees stones and all sorts of frippery. My brothers and sister will be well educated. And why should I complain? They warned us at the convent against romantic day-dreams. A rich and titled husband, is not that the first aim of a woman of quality?’
A shiver seized her. Yet she was not tired. It was a nervous reaction, a physical revolt of all her being, which was yielding at the most unexpected moment.
“Am I afraid? Those tales of Nounou’s again, gleefully seeing the devil everywhere. Why should I believe her? She always did exaggerate. Neither Molines nor my father concealed the fact that the Comte de Peyrac is a scientist. It is a far cry from that to imagining goodness knows what devilish orgies. If Nounou really believed that I might fall into the clutches of such a creature, she would not let me go. No, I am not afraid of that. I don’t believe it.”
The Marquis d’Andijos, at her side, a napkin under his chin, was raising a juicy truffle in one hand, a glass of Bordeaux in the other. He declaimed in a slightly raucous voice while his accent occasionally subsided into a contented hiccup:
“Oh divine truffle, lovers’ boon! Pour into my veins the joyous rapture of love! I shall caress my mistress till dawn. . . .”
‘That’s what I refuse,* thought Angelique suddenly, ‘that’s what I’ll never bear.*
She visualised the horrible, misshapen lord to whom she would be delivered up as a prey. In the silent nights of remote Languedoc, that unknown man would have every right over her. She might cry for help, shout, implore. Nobody would come. He had bought her; she’d been sold to him. And that’s how it would be to the end of her days!
‘That’s what they all think but won’t say, what they whisper perhaps in the kitchen, among the grooms and maids. That’s why there is a sort of pity for me in the eyes of the southern musicians, of that handsome, curly- haired Henrico who beats the long drum so cleverly. But hypocrisy is greater than pity. Only one person sacrificed and so many people contented! Gold and wine flow in torrents. Does it matter what will happen between their master and me? God, I swear it, he’ll never put his hands on me. . .
She rose, for she felt a terrible rage within her, and the effort to try to control herself almost made her sick. Amid the general hubbub nobody paid any heed to her departure. Noticing the steward whom her father had engaged at Niort, a man named Clement Tonnel, she asked him whether he had seen the groom Nicholas.
“He is in the bam, filling up the bottles, Madame.”
The young woman walked on. She moved like a mechanical toy. She did not know why she was looking for Nicholas, but she wanted to see him. Since the scene in the wood, Nicholas had never again raised his eyes to her, confining himself to his duties as a lackey, which he accom¬plished with care mingled with nonchalance. She found him in the store¬room, where he was pouring wine from the vats into the jugs and decanters which little grooms and pages were constantly carrying to him. He was wearing the yellow house-livery with braided lapels that Monsieur de Sanc£ had hired for the occasion. Far from seeming ill at ease in this costume, the young peasant was not lacking in style. He straightened up as he saw Angelique, bowed deeply in the manner in which Clement had instructed all the house-servants during the last forty-eight hours.
“I was looking for you, Nicholas.”
“Your ladyship . . .”
She glanced at the little pages who were waiting their turn, pitchers in hand.
“Bid a boy take your place for a moment and follow me.”
Outside, she once again passed a hand over her brow. No, she had no idea what she was going to do, but excitement filled her and intoxicated her, as did the heady scent of the pools of spilled wine on the floor. She pushed open the door of a near-by bam. Here too there hovered the wine’s heavy fragrance. During part of the night the bottles had been filled here. Now the vats were empty and the bam deserted. It was dark and hot.
Ang£lique put her hands on Nicholas’s strong chest. Suddenly she broke down against him, shaking with dry sobs.
“Nicholas,” she moaned, “my playmate, tell me it isn’t true. They are not going to take me away, they won’t give me to him. I am afraid, Nicholas. Hold me, hold me tightly!”
“Your ladyship . .
“Stop it!” she cried. “Oh, don t be nasty, not you too!”
She added in a hoarse, panting voice which she hardly recognised as her own:
“Hold me! Hold me tight! That’s all I am asking you!”
He seemed to hesitate, then his pQwerful peasant’s arms closed around her tiny waist.
The bam was dark. The warmth of the piles of straw gave of f a sort of quivering tension, similar to that of a thunderstorm. Angelique, half-mad and drunk, rolled her forehead against Nicholas’s shoulder. Once more she felt surrounded by man’s fierce desire, but this time she abandoned herself to it.
“Oh, you are kind,’’ she sighed. “You are my friend. I want you to love me . . . just once. I want to be loved just once by someone young and handsome. Can you understand?’’
She linked her arms around his sturdy neck, forced him to bend his face towards her. His breath was scented with hot wine. He sighed:
“Marquise of the Angels . . .*’
“Love me,” she whispered, her lips against his. “Just once. Then I’ll go. Don’t you want to? Do you no longer love me?”
His answer was a low growl and he lifted her up in his arms. He tottered through the darkness and flung himself down with her on a pile of straw.
Angelique felt strangely lucid and freed from all human ties. She had entered another world: she was floating above what had always been her life till then. Dazed by the total darkness of the bam, by the oppressive heat and smells, by the novelty of those brutal yet adroit caresses, she tried above all to overcome her natural modesty which caused her to shrink back in spite of herself. She ardently wished that it be done and done quickly. She kept repeating to herself through clenched teeth that the other would not be the first to take her. She would thus be avenged. This was the answer she hurled at the gold that thought it could buy everything.
Carefully following the urgings of the man whose breath was now coming ever faster, she gave herself up, accepting everything from him, ready to of fer herself obediently under the weight of the body that seemed to be crushing her. . . .
She was on the verge of realising her vengeance when there was a sudden lantern-flash across the bam, and the horrified shout of a woman by the door. Nicholas, with one leap, had thrown himself aside. Angllique saw a bulky shape rush against the groom. She recognised old Guillaume and grabbed at him as hard as she could as he passed. Nimbly, Nicholas had already reached the rafters and opened, a window. She heard him jump out and run away.
The woman on the threshold kept on shrieking. It was Aunt Jeanne, holding a flagon in one hand, the other placed over her ample, trembling bosom. Angelique let go of Guillaume and threw herself upon her aunt, digging her nails, like claws, into her arms.
“Will you shut up, old madwoman? ... Do you want a scandal, do you want the Marquis d’Andijos to jpack his bags, with his gifts and promises? No more Pyrenees crystal rock and other sweet trifles for you. Shut up or I’ll shove my fist into your toothless old mouth!”
From the near-by barns peasants and servants approached, agog; Angelique saw her nurse come, then her father, who, despite somewhat uncertain step, continued to watch over the festivities like a good host.
“Was it you, Jeanne, who was shrieking as if the devil were tickling you?
“Tickling Г yelped the old spinster, out of breath. “Oh Armand, I believe I am dying.”
“Whatever for, my dear?”
“I came here to get some wine. Andin this barn, Isaw . . . Isaw . . .”
“Aunt Jeanne saw an animal,” broke in Angelique. “She doesn’t know if it was a snake or a stone-marten, but really, Aunt, there’s no need to get so frightened. You’d better go back to the banquet, they’ll bring you some wine.”
“That’s right,” approved the Baron in a thick voice. “For once in your life try to be of help, Jeanne; it upsets everybody.”
‘She didn’t try to be of help,* thought Angelique. ‘She spied on me, she followed me. During all these years that she’s been at the castle, sitting before her tapestry like a spider in its web, she’s come to know us all better than we know ourselves; she feels us out; she guesses our secrets. She followed me here. And she asked old Guillaume to hold the lantern for her.’
Her fingers still dug into the jelly-like forearm of the fat woman.
“You understand me?” she whispered. “Not a word to anyone before I leave. Otherwise I swear to you I’ll poison you with the special herbs I know.”
Aunt Jeanne produced a final gurgle and her eyes rolled upward. But the allusion to her necklace, even more than the threat, had already broken her resistance. Compressing her lips, but in silence, she followed her brother out.
A rough hand held Angelique back. With no attempt at gentleness, old Guillaume removed from her hair and dress the wisps of straw that still clung to them. She looked up at him, trying to make out the expression on the bearded face.
“Guillaume,” she murmured, “I would like you to know . .
“I have no need to know, Madame,” he replied in German, with a haughtiness that was like a slap in the face to her. “What I saw was enough for me.”
He shook a fist towards the darkness and growled a curse. She straight-ened her head and walked back to the feast. As she sat down, her eyes sought the Marquis d’Andijos and found him crumpled up under his stool, blissfully asleep. The table looked like a tray of church-candles when the last wax is melting. Many of the guests had gone or fallen asleep. But there was still dancing in the meadow.
Stiffly, unsmilingly, Angelique continued to preside over her wedding feast. Exasperation at her unfinished act, at the vengeance she had promised herself and had been unable to complete, made her ache to her finger-tips. Rage and shame tore her heart. She had lost old Guillaume. Monteloup was rejecting her. There was nothing left for her but to go to her lame spouse.