Angelique - Part 4. The Doomed Man of Notre Dame Chapter 2 - Read online

WHEN SHE WOKE UP, a smoky dawn was stagnating in the tavern-room.
Angelique stirred and noticed that her cheek was resting on a hard pillow, which was in fact the lawyers knees. The rest of her body was stretched out on the bench. Above her she saw Desgrez’s face. With half-closed eyes he was still smoking with a musing air.
Angelique sat up quickly, which made her grimace with pain.
“Oh! excuse me,” she stammered. “I ... I must have been an awful nuisance.”
“Did you sleep well?” he inquired in a drawling voice in which fatigue was mingled with a little drunkenness. The pitcher in front of him was almost empty.
Cerbalaud and Gontran, with their elbows on the table, presented a similar picture. The young woman glanced towards the window. She had a vague recollection of something horrible. But she saw only the reflection of a wan, rainy morning moistening the window-panes.
In the back-room could be heard Monsieur Corbasson’s voice giving orders and the rumbling noise of several big barrels being rolled over the stone tiles. A man kicked the door open and came in, his hat pushed back on his head. He held a little bell in his hand and wore over his clothes a sort of faded blue overall, on which could be vaguely seen a pattern of fleurs-de-lis and the shield of St. Christopher.
“It’s me, Picard, the wine-crier. Do you have need of me, taverner ?”
“I do, my friend. They have just brought me from the Grcve six barrels of Loire wines. Three white, three red. I broach two casks today.”
Waking with a start, Cerbalaud sat up and suddenly drew his sword.
“Gendemen, listen, all of you! I’m going to war against the King!”
“Be quiet, Cerbalaud,” Angelique begged him, frightened.
He glanced at her suspiciously, with the eyes of a half-awake drunkard.
“You don’t believe I’ll do it? You don’t know the Gascons, Madame. War against the King! I invite you all to join! Up and at him, rebels of the Languedoc!”
Brandishing his sword, he rose, tottered across the steps of the threshold and stumbled out. Indifferent to his ravings, the sleepers went on snoring, and the innkeeper, as well as the wine-crier, kneeling before their casks, tasted the new wine with much lip-smacking, before fixing the price. A fresh, heady smell replaced the stale odours of cold pipes, alcohol and rancid sauces.
Gontran rubbed his eyes.
“Lord,” he said yawning, “I haven’t eaten so well for a long time—to be precise, not since the last banquet of the St. Luke’s brotherhood, which unfortunately occurs only once a year. Isn’t that the Angelus they are ringing?”
“It may well be,” said Desgrez.
Gontran got up and stretched.
“I must be off, Angelique, otherwise my master will scowl at me. Listen: go and see Raymond in the Temple with Maitre Desgrez. I’ll drop in at Hortense’s tonight, even if I get insulted by that charming sister of ours. I tell you again, leave Paris. But I know very well that you are the most stubborn mule of all those our father reared.”
“Barring you,” retorted Angelique.
They left together, followed by the dog, who answered to the name of Sorbonne. It had rained. The gutter in the middle of the street was carrying away a stream of muddy water. The air was still laden with moisture and a humid wind made the iron signs creak above the shops. • *
“Fresh from the boat! Fresh shell-fish!” cried a sprighdy oyster-seller.
“A good awakening! A bellyful of sun!” shouted a brandy-seller.
Gontran stopped the fellow and emptied a goblet of alcohol in one gulp. Then he wiped his Ups, paid, and after doffing his hat towards the lawyer and his sister he disappeared in the crowd, looking like all the other workmen who at this hour were starting their long day.
‘Look at the two of us !’ thought Angelique, watching him disappear. ‘The de Sance heirs have done well for themselves! I myself have got into these straits merely by the force of circumstances, but why ever did he choose to fall so low?’
A little shamefaced for her brother, she glanced at Desgrez.
“He always was an odd bird,” she said. “He could have become an officer, Uke all young noblemen, but he only liked mixing paints. My mother used to say that, while she was expecting him, she spent a week dyeing all the family clothes black in mourning for my grandparents. Perhaps that accounts for it?”
Desgrez smiled.
“Let’s go and see the Jesuit brother,” he said, “the fourth specimen of this strange family.”
“Oh, Raymond is quite a type.”
“I hope so for your sake, Madame.”
“You must not call me Madame any more,” said Angelique. “Look at me, Maitre Desgrez.”
She raised her pathetic Utde face with its waxen pallor. Fatigue had lightened her green eyes and given them an almost unimaginable hue, that of spring leaves.
“The King said: ‘I don’t want to hear of you any more.’ Do you know what such an order means? That there is no longer a Madame de Peyrac. I must no longer exist. I do no longer exist. Do you under¬stand?”
“What I understand above all is that you are ill,” said Desgrez. “Do you still hold to the assertion you made the other day?”
“What assertion?”
“That you have no confidence in me?”
“At this moment you are the only one in whom I can have any con-fidence.”
“Come, then. I shall take you to a place where they’ll take care of you. You cannot approach a formidable Jesuit without being in full possession of your faculties.”
He took her arm and pulled her through the throng of a Paris morning. The din was deafening. All the merchants were coming out at the same time and crying their wares.
Ang£lique had great difficulty in protecting her wounded shoulder from the jostling crowd, and she clenched her teeth to stifle the groans that rose to her lips.
In the rue Saint-Nicholas, Desgrez stopped in front of an enormous sign which displayed a copper basin on a royal blue background. Clouds of steam were drifting out of the first-floor windows.
Angelique realised that she was at a barber’s hairdressing and bathing establishment, and relished the thought of plunging into a tub of hot water. Maitre Georges, the owner, told them to sit down and wait a few minutes. He was shaving a musketeer with wide, round movements of his arm, discoursing all the while on the misfortunes of peace, which is surely one of the worst calamities that can befall a valiant warrior.
At last, leaving the ‘valiant warrior’ to his apprentice with orders to wash his head, which was no minor matter, Maitre Georges wiped his razor on his apron and approached Angelique with an eager smile.
“Но! Но! I see what’s the matter. Yet another victim of gallant diseases. You want me to freshen her up for you, don’t you, you in¬corrigible skirt-chaser?”
“It’s not that at all,” said the lawyer very calmly. “This young person has been wounded and I would like you to give her some relief from pain. Afterwards she’ll want a bath.”
Angelique, who had blushed at the barber’s words, felt terribly em-barrassed at the thought of undressing before these two men. She had always been attended to by women and, never having been ill, was un¬familiar with medical examinations, and even less with those by shop¬keeping barber-surgeons. But before she could make even a gesture of protest, Desgrez unfastened her bodice in the most natural manner and with the ease of a man for whom feminine garments hold no secret. He then untied the band that held up her chemise and let it slip down to her waist.
Maitre Georges leaned forward and delicately removed the plaster of ointment and the bandage which had been placed over the long gash made by the Chevalier de Lorraine’s sword.
“Hm, hm,” muttered the barber. “I see what’s the matter. A gallant lord who found the price too steep and paid in ‘iron coin’, as we say. Don’t you know, pretty one, that you must hide their swords under the bed until they’ve put their hand to their purse?”
“And what do you think of the wound?” Desgrez inquired phlegmatic¬ally while Angelique writhed in pain. . *
“It’s neither good nor bad. I can see the briny ointment dispensed by an ignoramus. We’ll dean the wound and replace the ointment with a cool¬ing arid regenerating pomade.”
He went to fetch ajar from a row of shdves.
It was agpnising for Angdlique to be sitting there, half-naked, in this shop where the smell of drugs mingled with that of soaps. A customer came in to be shaved and exclaimed on glandng at her:
“Oh! What beautiful rose-buds! Would I had them under my hand to fondle when the moon rises!”
At an imperceptible sign from Desgrez, the dog Sorbonne, which had been at his feet, rose and with one leap planted his fangs into the new¬comer’s calf.
“Oh! Ouch! Hdp! Mercy!” exdaimed the customer. “It’s the man with the dog. So it’s you, Desgrez, infernal roamer, who are the owner of these two divine rosy apples?”
“If you don’t mind, Monsieur,” said Desgrez impassively.
“In that case I’ve seen nothing, said nothing. Oh, Monsieur! forgive me and tell your dog to let go of my poor, threadbare hose.”
With a light whisde, Desgrez called the dog off.
“Oh! I want to get away from here,” said Angelique, clumsily trying to dress, her lips trembling.
Firmly, the young man forced her to sit down again. He said rudely though lowering his voice:
“Don’t be a prude, little fool. Must I remind you of the soldiers’ saying: war is war? You are engaged in a batde in which your husband’s life and your own are at stake. You must do everything to get out of it, and this is no time for simpering.”
Maitre Georges returned, a small knife gleaming in his hand.
“I believe I’ll have to cut into the flesh,” he said. “I can see under the skin a whitish humour which has got to be extracted. Don’t be afraid, little one,” he added, talking to her as to a child, “no one has a lighter hand than Maitre Georges.”
Despite her apprehension, Angelique had to admit that he was speaking the truth, for he operated on her most skilfully. Then, after pouring over the wound a liquid which made her jump, he told her to go upstairs to the steam-baths and that he’d finish bandaging her afterwards.
The steam-baths of Maitre Georges were one of the last bath-houses of the type that had existed in the Middle Ages, when the crusaders back from the East brought home, with a taste for Turkish baths, a taste for ablutions. Paris at that time teemed with steam-baths. People went there not only to sweat and rid themselves of dirt, but also for ‘plucking’, as they called it, which meant the total depilation of the body. Their reputation, however, had quickly become suspect, for they added to their manifold specialities those which more particularly pertained to the bawdy-houses of the rue du Val d’Amour. Perturbed priests, strict Huguenots and doctors, who saw in them the cause of skin diseases, leagued together to get them suppressed. And henceforward, apart from the squalid back¬room of some barber’s shop, there was no place in Paris where you could wash. People seemed to resign themselves to it with considerable ease.
The baths themselves comprised two spacious, tiled rooms, furnished with small wooden cubicles. At one end of the rooms an attendant was heating stone bricks in an oven.
Angelique was completely undressed by one of the maidservants, who looked after the women’s room. She was shut up in one of the cubicles, in which there was a bench and a small basin of water, into which the incandescent stone bricks had just been flung. The water steamed and released a searing vapour. Angelique, sitting on the bench, choked, gasped and thought she was going to die. She came out dripping with sweat.
The serving-woman then ordered her to plunge into a tub of cold water. Wrapping a towel round her, she led her into a neighbouring room where other women were already gathered. The servants, who were mostly old and rather repulsive-looking, shaved their customers or else combed their long hair, while cackling like a swarm of hens. From their way of speaking and the topics of conversation Angelique guessed that most of the customers were themselves of lowly condition, servants or merchants who, after hearing Mass, dropped in at the bath-house to glean the latest gossip before running off to work.
She was told to lie down on another bench. After a moment, Maitre Georges appeared, without in any way flustering the gathering. He was holding a lancet in his hand and was followed by a little girl, who was carrying a basket filled with cupping-glasses, and a stick of tinder. Angelique protested vehemently.
“You’re not going to bleed me! I’ve already lost enough blood. Can’t you see that I’m with child? You’re going to kill the baby!”
The barber-surgeon imperturbably told her to turn over.
“Keep still, or I’ll call your friend to spank your bottom.”
Terrified at the thought, Angelique calmed down. The barber scarified three points on her back with his lancet, and applied the wet-cups.
“Just look,” he said, delighted, “all this black blood flowing! How can such a white-skinned girl have such black blood?”
“For pity’s sake, leave me a few drops!” begged Angelique. , *
“I’m dying to empty you entirely,” said the barber, rolling his fierce eyes. “And afterwards I’ll give you a recipe for filling your veins with a fresh, generous blood. It’s this: a good glass of red wine and a night of love.”
He left her alone at last, after bandaging her firmly. Two girls helped her to arrange her hair and dress. She slipped them a tip which left them goggle-eyed.
“Hey, Marquise,” the younger one exclaimed, “is it your pettifogging prince with the shabby coat who gives you such fine presents?”
One of the old women jostled her and, after staring hard at Angelique, who was trying to walk down the wooden stairs on weak legs, she whispered to her colleague:
“Can’t you see that she’s a great lady who’s come to have a change of fare from her lordly milksops?”
“They don’t come in disguise as a rule,” protested the other. “They put on a mask, and Maltre Georges lets them in by the back door.”
Down in the shop, Angelique found Desgrez, freshly shaved.
“She’s done to a turn,” said the barber, with a wink of connivance. “But don’t be rough till the wound on her shoulder has closed up.”
This time the young woman made up her mind to laugh. She felt utterly incapable of the least flicker of rebellion.
“How do you feel?” asked Desgrez, when they were out in the street again.
“As weak as a kitten,” replied Angelique, “but actually it wasn’t so very unpleasant. I’m viewing life very philosophically. I don’t know whether the energetic treatment I’ve undergone is good for one’s health, but it certainly does wonders for one’s nerves. You may rest assured that, whatever my brother Raymond’s attitude may be, he will find before him a humble and docile sister.”
“That’s perfect. I always fear a sudden bite from your rebellious spirit. No doubt you’ll drop in at the bath-house next time you’re summoned to the King?”
“Alas! Why didn’t I?” sighed Angelique, utterly defeated. “There’ll be no second time. Never again shall I be summoned to appear before the King.”
“You mustn’t say ‘never again’. Life has its ups and downs, the wheel turns.”
A gust of wind loosened the kerchief that held the young woman’s hair. Desgrez stopped and tied it again gendy. Angelique grasped the two warm brown hands, whose long fingers were not lacking in refinement.
“You are very kind, Desgrez,” she murmured, raising her coaxing eyes towards him.
“You are quite mistaken, Madame. Here, have a look at this dog.”
He pointed towards Sorbonne, who was gambolling around them. He caught him in passing, then gripped the dog’s head and bared the Dane’s powerful jaws.
“What do you think of this row of fangs?’’
“They are terrifying!”
“Do you know what I have trained this dog to do? Just this: when evening falls on Paris, we two go hunting. I make him sniff an old piece of smock, some object belonging to a ruffian I’m after. And we go for a walk; we go down to the banks of the Seine, we roam under the bridges and piles, we stroll through the suburbs and over the old ramparts, we walk into courtyards, we dive into holes full of that vermin of beggars and bandits. And suddenly Sorbonne bounds forward. By the time I catch up with him, he has my man by the throat, oh! very daintily, just enough to prevent the other from moving. I tell the dog 1 Warte, which means 1 Wait’ in the German language, for the dog was sold to me by a German mercenary. I lean towards the fellow, question him, and then I judge him. Sometimes I let him off, sometimes I call the watchman so that they can take him to the Chatelet, and sometimes I say to myself: why fill up the prisons and bother those gentlemen of the law-courts? And I say to Sor¬bonne *Z(ing!\ which means ‘Squeeze hard*. And there’s one less bandit in Paris.”
“And . . . you do that often?” inquired Angelique, who could not suppress a shudder.
“Fairly often. So you see I am not very kind.”
After a moment’s silence she murmured:
“There are so many different elements in the same man. One can at once be very wicked and very kind. Why do you follow this dreadful profession?”
“I have already told you: I am too poor. My father left me only his law office and his debts. But, from the way things are going, I believe I’ll end up in the hardened skin of a dreadful malveillant, a grimaud of the worst type.”
“What’s that?”
“The name given to members of the police by the subjects of His Majesty the Great Coesre, prince of the paupers.”
“They already know you?”
“They particularly know my dog.”