Angelique - Part 3. The Corridors of the Louvre Chapter 3 - Read online

THE COURT returned towards Paris through the flowering orchards and countryside. Through the new wheat the long caravan trailed out its six- horse coaches, its carts carrying bed, trunks and tapestries, its laden mules, its lackeys and mounted guards.
As they approached the towns, deputations of aldermen advanced in the dust towards the King’s coach, carrying the civic keys on a silver platter or on a velvet cushion. Thus Bordeaux, Saintes, Poitiers were left behind. Angelique hardly recognised the last-named town in the din and confusion.
She too was going to Paris, was following the Court.
“Since nobody has told you anything, behave as if nothing were the matter,” had been Peguilin’s advice. “Your husband intended to go up to Paris, so you go there too. Everything will explain itself there. After all, it may all just be a misunderstanding.”
“But what do you know, Peguilin?”
“Nothing, nothing . . . I know nothing.”
He hurried away, with troubled eyes, to play the fool for the King.
Eventually, after asking Andijos and Cerbalaud to escort her, Angelique had sent part of her entourage back to Toulouse. She kept with her a carriage and a cart, as well as Margot, a little maidservant who attended to Florimond’s cradle, three footmen and two coachmen. At the last moment, the wigmaker Binet and the little fiddler Giovanni begged her to take them along.
“If his lordship the Comte is waiting for us in Paris and I am not there, he will be most displeased, I assure you,” said Francois Binet.
“To see Paris! Oh, to see Paris!” the young musician kept repeating. “If I can only meet the King’s music-master, that Baptiste Lulli that one hears so much of , I am sure he’ll advise me and I’ll become a great artist.”
“All right, get in, great artist,” Angelique finally yielded.
* She smiled, kept up appearances, trying to cling to Peguilin’s words: “It’s all a misunderstanding.” Actually, barring the fact that the Comte de Peyrac had suddenly vanished into thin air, nothing seemed changed, no rumour had spread of his disgrace. The Grande Mademoiselle lost no opportunity to have friendly chats with the young woman. She could hardly be dissembling, for she seemed a very naive person with not a trace of hypocrisy.
Everyone inquired after Monsieur de Pcyrac in a very natural way. Angelique ended up by saying that he had gone ahead to Paris to prepare for her arrival. But ever since leaving Saint-Jean-de-Luz, she had been vainly trying to reach Monseigneur de Frontenac. He had, however, returned to Toulouse.
There were moments when she thought she had been dreaming, and she would buoy herself up with false hope. Joffrey, perhaps, had merely gone back to Toulouse. . . .
In the vicinity of Dax, as they were travelling through the sandy, broiling Landes country, a macabre incident brought her back with a jolt to tragic reality. The inhabitants of a village appeared and asked if some guards could not help them in a search that they were organising to round up some terrible black monster that was putting the region to the sword.
Andijos galloped up to Angelique’s coach and whispered that this no doubt referred to Kouassi-Ba. She asked to see the villagers. They were shepherds, walking on stilts to enable them to pass over the very loose downland soil.
They confirmed the young woman’s fears. Yes, two days ago the shep-herds had heard shouts and pistol shots on the road. They had arrived in time to see a coach assailed by a black-faced horseman, who was brandish¬ing a curved sabre like those of the Turks. Fortunately, the people in the coach had a pistol. The black man must have been wounded and he had fled.
“Who were the people in the coach?” asked Angelique.
“We don’t know,” they answered. “The blinds were drawn. There was an escort of only two men. They gave us a coin to bury the one whom the monster had beheaded.”
“Beheaded!” repeated Andijos, aghast.
“Oh yes, sir, and he did it so cleanly that we had to retrieve the head from the ditch into which it had rolled.”
The next night, when most of the travellers were obliged to camp in the villages around Bordeaux, Angelique dreamed she was hearing again the sinister cry:
“Medeme! M£deme!”
She tossed and finally woke up. Her bed had been put up in the only room of a farm-house whose inhabitants were sleeping in the stable. Florimond’s cradle stood near the fire-place. Margot and the litde serving-maid were stretched out on the same straw pallet. Angelique saw that Margot had got up and was putting on her petticoat.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s Kouassi-Ba. I’m certain of it,” whispered the big woman.
Angelique had already jumped out of bed.
Cautiously the two women opened the rickety door. Happily the night was pitch-dark.
“Kouassi-Ba, come here!” they whispered.
Something moved, and a big reeling body stumbled over the threshold. They made him sit on a bench. In the light of a candle they saw that his skin was grey and hanging loose. His clothes were smeared with blood. For three days he had been roaming, wounded, over the downs. Margot foraged in the trunks and made him gulp down some brandy. Only then was he able to speak.
“Only one head, Mistress. I could only cut of f one head.”
“That is quite enough, I assure you,” said Angelique with a little laugh.
“I lost my big sabre and my horse.”
“I’ll give you new ones. Don’t talk . . . You have found us, that’s the main thing. When the master sees you, he’ll say to you: ‘Well done, Kouassi-Ba.’ ”
“Will we see the master again?”
“We’ll sec him again, I promise you.”
While she talked, she tore some linen into strips for a bandage. She was afraid that the bullet had remained in his wound, lodged under the collar¬
bone. But she discovered another wound beneath his armpit, which proved that the bullet had gone through him. She poured brandy over the two wounds and bandaged them energetically.
“What are we going to do with this man, Madame?” asked Margot, frightened.
“Keep him with us, of course! He’ll take his place in the cart.”
“But what will they say?”
“Who—they? If you believe that all these people around us care about the exploits of my negro . . . Good food, good horses at the relay station and comfortable lodgings, that’s all they worry about. He’ll stay under cover in the cart, and in Paris, once we are established, everything will work itself out.”
She repeated as if to convince herself:
“You must realise, Margot, all this is just a misunderstanding.”
The carriage rolled through the forest of Rambouillet. Angelique was drowsing, for the heat was dreadful. Florimond was asleep on Margot’s lap. The noise of a sharp explosion suddenly roused them all with a start. There was a violent shock. Angelique had a vision of a deep ravine. In a cloud of dust the coach turned over with an awful cracking noise. Florimond screamed, half crushed by the nursemaid. They could hear the wild neighing of the horses, the coachman’s shouts, the cracking of his
The same dull report rang out again, and Angelique noticed on the coach-window a peculiar star, like frost-flowers in winter, with a tiny hole in the middle. She tried to straighten up inside the overturned carriage and take hold of Florimond. Suddenly the coach-door was wrenched open and the face of Peguilin de Lauzun bent over the aperture.
“Nobody harmed, at least?” he said, his southern accent coming to the fore under the stress of emotion.
“Everybody’s screaming, so I expect everyone’s alive,” said Angelique.
She herself had a small scratch on her arm from broken glass splinters, but it was nothing serious.
She handed the child to the Due. The Chevalier de Louvigny also appeared, held out his hand and helped her to extricate herself from the carriage. Out on the road, she quickly grasped Florimond again and tried to calm him. The baby’s shrill cries rose above the din, and it was im¬possible to hear a word.
While soothing her child, Angelique saw that the Due de Lauzun’s entourage had pulled up behind her cart, as had the coach of Lauzun’s sister, Charlotte, Comtesse de Nogent, and that the two carriages of the 
Gramont brothers, with their ladies, friends and valets, were hurrying towards the scene of the accident.
“But what happened, anyway?” asked Angelique, as soon as Florimond subsided enough to allow her to open her mouth.
The coachman looked badly frightened. He wasn’t a very reliable man: a garrulous braggart, with a constant song on his lips, he had above all a penchant for the bottle.
“You were drunk and fell asleep?”
“No, Madame, I assure you. It is true I felt hot, but I was holding my horses firmly. They were moving well, when suddenly two men came out of the cover of the trees. One of them had a pistol. He fired into the air, which frightened the horses. They shied and reared back. At that moment the coach turned over into the ditch. One of the men had seized the horses’ bit. I lashed him with my whip as hard as I could. The other was loading his pistol again. He came close and fired into the carriage. At that moment the luggage-cart arrived, and then those gendemen on horseback. . . . The two fellows made of f. . . .”
“That’s an odd story,” said Lauzun. “The forest is guarded and protected. The sergeants have tracked down all the highwaymen in anticipation of the King’s passage. What did these ruffians look like?”
“I don’t know, Your Highness. They weren’t highwaymen, I’m sure. They looked well dressed, well shaven. The most I can say is that they looked rather like household servants.”
“Two sacked footmen, up to some mischief?” suggested de Guiche.
A heavy carriage was driving up among the groups of standing people and finally came to a stop. Mademoiselle de Montpensier put her head out of the window.
“Are you Gascons making all this hubbub? Do you want to scare the birds of the Ile-de-France with your trumpeting voices?”
Lauzun ran up to her, bowing energetically. He explained the accident that had befallen Madame de Peyrac and that it would take some little time to right her coach and get it on the move again. ►
“But let her come in with us!” cried the Grande Mademoiselle. “Go and fetch her, my little Peguilin. Come, my dear, we have an entire banquette unoccupied. You will be quite comfortable with your baby. Poor angel! Poor treasure!”
She herself helped Angelique to get in and settle down.
“You are hurt, poor dear. As soon as we get to the relay station, I’ll send for my doctor.”
Angelique realised with confusion that the person sitting in the back of the carriage, next to Mademoiselle de Montpensier, was none other than the Queen Mother.
“May Your Majesty excuse me.”
“There’s nothing to excuse, Madame,” replied Anne of Austria very graciously. “Mademoiselle did well to invite you to share our carriage. The seat is quite comfortable and you’ll soon recover. What bothers me is what I’ve been told on the subject of those armed men who attacked
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you.
“Good Lord, perhaps those men were out to harm the King or the Queen?” cried Mademoiselle, clasping her hands.
“Their carriage is surrounded by guards and I don’t think we need fear for them. Nevertheless I’ll mention it to the lieutenant of police.”
Angelique now felt the reaction from the shock she had suffered. She felt she was going very pale and, closing her eyes, she leaned her head against the well-upholstered back of the seat. The man had shot point- blank into the window. It was a miracle that none of the occupants had been hurt. She was hugging Florimond against her. She realised he had got much thinner and reproached herself for it. He was tired of these interminable travels. Since he had been parted from his nurse and his little blackamoor, he was constantly whining and refusing the milk which Margot managed to obtain in the villages. He sighed in his sleep, tears hanging on the long lashes that cast a shadow over his pale cheeks. He had a very small mouth, round and red like a cherry. With her hand¬kerchief Angelique softly dabbed his white, round forehead, on which drops of perspiration had formed.
Angelique felt alone. She could not confide in anyone. These pleasant Court relations were worthless. Everyone, greedy for protection and bounties, would turn away from her at the least hint of disgrace. Bernard d’Andijos was devoted, but so flippant! Once he was within the walls of Paris, he would disappear, would be dashing from one Court ball to another with his mistress, Mademoiselle de Montmort, on his arm, or else—in the company of fellow-Gascons—haunting the taverns and gambling-dens at night.
It did not matter, really. All that mattered was to reach Paris. There she would have solid ground under her feet. Angelique would setde down in the beautiful town house which the Comte de Peyrac owned in the Saint-Paul quartier. Then she would begin to make investigations to find out what had become of her husband.