Angelique - Part 4. The Doomed Man of Notre Dame Chapter 1 - Read online

A THUNDEROUS ROAR OF SONGS BURST FROM THE TAVERN, from whose enormous sign swung three wrought-iron mallets above the heads of the passers-by. Angelique and her brother Gontran walked down the few steps and found themselves in a thick haze of tobacco-smoke and fumes from sauces. At the back of the room an open door afforded a glimpse of the kitchen, where spits heavily laden with fowl were slowly turning over the glowing hearths.
The two young people sat down at a table a little away from the rest, near a window, and Gontran ordered some wine.
“Choose a good botde,” said Angelique, forcing a smile, ‘Til foot the bill”
She showed him her purse, in which were the fifteen hundred livres she had won at the gaming-table. Gontran explained that he was not a good judge of wines. He generally made do with a good little wine from the hills of Paris. And on Sundays he would go and taste the more famous wines in the suburbs, where wines from Bordeaux and Bourgogne cost less, because no Paris toll-dues had yet been paid on them. It was customary to partake of them in guinguettes, suburban pleasure-gardens, and these Sunday outings were his only distraction.
Angelique asked him if he usually went there with friends. He said he didn’t. He had no friends, but he enjoyed sitting under an arbour, and watching the faces of the workmen and their families all around him. He found mankind pleasant and likeable.
“You are lucky,’’ murmured Angelique, who suddenly felt the bitter tang of the poison on her tongue.
She did not feel ill, but tired and on edge.
With sparkling eyes and clasping around her the coarse woollen coat borrowed from the painter’s wife, she gazed at this novel sight of a tavern in the capital.
It was a fact that, despite the absence of fresh air, one breathed a climate of freedom and familiarity here which put the regular customers very much at ease. The nobleman would come here to have a smoke and for¬get the etiquette of royal ante-rooms, the bourgeois would fill his paunch far from the suspicious eye of his crotchety spouse, the musketeer would play dice, the craftsman would drink his wages and, for a few hours, forget his worries.
Nevertheless, Angelique was getting more and more fidgety as she wondered how much longer she would have to wait in this place.
At last, the door opened once again and the enormous great Dane belonging to Desgrez appeared. A man wrapped in an ample grey coat accompanied the lawyer. Angelique was surprised to recognise young Cerbalaud, who was concealing his pale face under a hat pulled down over his eyes. She asked Gontran to go and fetch the newcomers and bring them unobtrusively to their table.
“Merciful Lord, Madame,” sighed the lawyer, as he slipped in next to her on the bench, “since this morning I’ve seen you throttled ten times, drowned twenty times and buried a hundred times!”
“Once would be quite enough, Maltre,” she said with a laugh, but she could not help feeling pleased at finding him so moved.
“Were you afraid of seeing a client disappear who pays you so badly and who compromises you so dangerously?” she asked.
He made a piteous grimace.
“Sentimentality is a disease that is not easily cured. When a taste for adventure mingles with it, one may be sure one is fated to come to a foolish end. In short, the more complicated your case, the more it fascinates me. How is your wound?”
“You already know about it?”
“That’s part of the duty of a lawyer-policeman. But this gentleman has been of great assistance to me, I must confess.”
Cerbalaud, whose eyes were drooping with sleeplessness in a waxen face, related the end of the tragedy of the Louvre, in which he had found himself involved quite by chance. He had been on guard at the stables of the Tuilcries that night, when a breathless man, who had lost his wig, had dashed out of the gardens. It was Bernard d’Andijos. He had raced along the great gallery, rousing the echoes of the Louvre and the Tuileries by the clatter of his wooden heels, which brought frightened faces to the doors of the rooms and apartments.
While hurriedly saddling a horse, he had explained that Madame de Peyrac had missed being murdered by a hair’s breadth and that he himself had just fought with Monsieur d’Orleans. A few moments later, he was tearing away towards the Porte Saint-Honore, shouting that he was off to rouse the Languedoc against the King.
“Oh! . Poor Andijos!” said Angelique, laughing. “He’d rouse the Languedoc against the King?”
“You don’t believe he’ll do it?” asked Cerbalaud.
He raised his finger gravely: , *
“Madame, you have yet to understand the Gascon soul; laughter and rage follow hard on each other s heels, but you can never tell how the matter’ll end. And when it ends in rage, mordious! Beware!”
“It’s true that I owe my life to the Gascons. Do you know what has become of the Due de Lauzun?”
“He is in the Bastille.”
“Good God,” sighed Angelique, “if only they don’t forget him there for forty years!”
“He won’t let himself be forgotten, never fear. I also saw the body of your former major-domo being carried offby two lackeys.”
“May the devil take his soul!”
“Finally, when I could no longer doubt that you were dead, I went to your brother-in-law, Maitre Fallot de Sance. I found there Monsieur Desgrez, your lawyer. We went to the Chatelct in order to inspect the corpses of all the drowned and murdered who’d been found in Paris this morning. A wretched sight, from which I still have a queasy stomach. And here I am! Madame, what arc you going to do? You must flee as soon as possible.”
Angelique gazed at her two hands spread before her on the table, near the long-stemmed glass in which the wine she had not touched gleamed like a dark ruby. Her hands looked extraordinarily small and of a fragile whiteness. Mechanically she compared them with the strong, masculine hands of her companions. She felt very lonely and very weak.
Desgrez, an habitual customer of the tavern, had placed a small horn box before him and was grinding some tobacco before filling his pipe.
Gontran said abruptly:
“If I have understood correctly, you have become involved in some shady business in which you risk losing your life. That doesn’t surprise me, coming from you. It’s just like you!”
“Monsieur de Pcyrac is in the Bastille, accused of witchcraft,” explained Desgrez.
“It’s just like you!” repeated Gontran. “But you can still get out of it. If you are short of money, I’ll lend you some. I saved some money for my tour of France, and Raymond, our Jesuit brother, will help you too, I am sure. Pick up your things, and take the public coach to Poitiers. From there you’ll reach Monteloup. Once at home, you’ve nothing to fear!” "
For a moment, Angelique conjured up a picture of the casde of Monte-loup, the calm of the woods and marshes. Florimond would play with the turkeys on the drawbridge. . . .
“And Joffrey?” she said. “Who’ll see to it that he obtains justice?”
There was a heavy silence, which was quickly drowned by the bawling of a tableful of drunkards and by the clamours of late diners, drumming on their plates with their knives. The appearance of Maitre Corbasson, the innkeeper, holding high a crisp, brown goose, appeased his noisy patrons. The din subsided, and amid the growls of satisfaction could be heard the rattling of the cup and dice.
Suddenly Angelique’s eyes grew fixed, and her face congealed with horror. A hideous vision had just appeared in the window-pane in front of her: a nightmare face, blurred by long strands of greasy hair. The pallid cheek was marked by a violet wen. A black bandage concealed one eye; the other shone like a wolf’s, and the horrible apparition was looking at Angelique, grinning.
“What’s the matter?” asked Gontran, who, with his back to the window, had seen nothing. Desgrez followed the terrified stare of the young woman and suddenly bounded towards the door, whistling to his dog.
The face disappeared from the window. A few moments later the lawyer returned.
“He vanished like a rat in its hole.”
“You know that peculiar specimen?” inquired Cerbalaud.
“I know them all. This one is Calembredaine, the notorious rascal and king of the coat-snatchers of the Pont-Neuf, as well as the biggest bandit chief in the capital.”
“He’s pretty bold to come like that and look at honest folk dining.”
“He may have an accomplice inside whom he wanted to signal. . .
“He was looking at me,” said Angelique, whose teeth were chattering.
Desgrez gave her a quick look.
“Pah! Don’t be frightened. We are not far from the rue de la Truan- derie and the suburb of Saint-Denis. It’s the headquarters of the beggars and of their prince, the Great Coesre, king of the vagabonds.”
While talking, he had slipped his hand round the waist of the young woman and was pulling her firmly towards him. Angelique felt the warmth and vigour of this masculine hand. Her shattered nerves relaxed. She nesded against Desgrez unashamedly. What did it matter that he was a common, penniless lawyer? Wasn’t she herself on the point of becoming an outcast, a hunted woman, without roof or protection, perhaps without even a name?
“By Jove,” Desgrez broke out in a genial tone, “we don’t settle down in a tavern to indulge in such lugubrious talk! Let’s drink, gentlemen; afterwards we’ll devise plans. Hi, there! Corbasson, you devil’s roaster, are you going to let us perish from empty stomachs?”
The landlord hurried towards them. - *
“What can you recommend to three great lords who’ve only dined on thrills for Jie last twenty-four hours, and to a frail young lady whose appetite needs to be encouraged?”
Corbasson cupped his chin in his hands and assumed an inspired air: “Well, for you, gentlemen, I shall recommend a big fillet of beef, nicely underdone, stuck with cucumbers and gherkins, three small chickens roasted on ashes and a pan of fried cream. As for Madame, what would she say to a lighter menu? Boiled veal and salad, bone-marrow, apple jelly, a candied pear and a bag of biscuits. To finish, a little spoonful of fennel comfits, and I am convinced the roses will return to mingle with the lily whiteness of her complexion.”
“Corbasson, you are the most indispensable and most lovable man in creation. Next time I go to church, fll pray to Saint-Honore for you. Moreover, you are a great artist, not only as a maker of sauces, but also as a wit.”
But, for almost the first time in her life, Angelique was not hungry. She merely pecked at Master Corbasson’s culinary concoctions. Her body was fighting the after-effects of the poison she had absorbed the night before. Centuries seemed to have passed since that dreadful adventure. Numbed by her malaise and also, perhaps, by the coarse, unfamiliar smell of the smoke-infested den, she was overcome with drowsiness. With closed eyes, she told herself that Angelique de Peyrac was dead.