Angelique - Part 5. The Court of Miracles Chapter 13 - Read online

AT THE CORNER OP A MUD HOUSE stood the statue of the god of the argotiers: a Heavenly Father stolen from the church of Saint-Pierre-aux- boeufs. Blasphemies and obscenities were the prayers that his people addressed to him.
Beyond it, through a maze of repulsive, stinking lanes, one entered the kingdom of darkness and horror. The statue of the Heavenly Father marked the boundary beyond which no solitary archer or policeman could venture without risking his life. Nor would respectable people cross this frontier. What would they have been doing anyway in this nameless slum, where crumbling black houses, mud hovels, decrepit carts and carriages, old mills and barges, transported here goodness knows how, served as homes to thousands of families who were themselves nameless and roodess and had no place of refuge except in the underworld.
Angelique knew she had entered the realm of the Great Coesre by the even deeper darkness, by the silence of a different quality which suddenly shrouded her. The songs from the taverns faded into the distance. There were no taverns here, no lights, no songs. Nothing but unadulterated squalor, with its filth, its rats, its roaming dogs. . . .
Angflique had been here before, in this reserved district of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, but only in day-time and with Calembredaine. He had pointed out to her the Great Coesre’s own stronghold, a strange house of several storeys, which must have been a former convent, for one could still see bell-towers and the ruins of a cloister among the mounds of earth, old planks, poles and pebbles with which it was shored up to prevent it from collapsing. Propped up on all sides, wobbling and rickety, displaying the gaping wounds of its arcades and vaulted windows, cocking with a swagger the plumes of its turrets, this was indeed the castle of the Beggar King!
The Great Coesre lived here with his court, his women, his arch¬henchmen, his idiot. And here too, under the wings of the great master, Rotten Jean stored his merchandise of stolen children—bastards or legitimate.
The moment Angelique stepped into this fearsome district she began looking for that house. Her instinct told her that Florimond was there. She walked, protected by the pitch-black darkness. Passing figures took no interest in this ragged woman who resembled the inhabitants of the wretched hovels. If anyone had approached her, she would have got off without rousing any suspicions. She was sufficiently familiar with the language and manners of the underworld.
She wore the only disguise that could enable her to pass through this hell with impunity: the disguise of poverty and degradation.
She had to be careful, however, not to be recognised. Two gangs that were rivals of Calembredaine’s were living in this district. What would happen if rumour got around that the Marquise of the Angels was loitering here? The nocturnal hunt of wild beasts in the heart of the forest is less ruthless than men are when in pursuit of one of their own kind, in the heart of a city!
For greater safety, she stooped and smeared her face with mud.
At this hour the house of the Great Coesre distinguished itself from the others by the fact that it was lit up. Here and there at the windows one could see the russet, star-shaped glow of a meagre night-light, made up of a bowl full of oil into which an old rag was clipped. Hiding behind a boundary-post, Angelique watched it for quite a while. The house of the Great Coesre was also the noisiest one. It was the meeting-place of beggars and bandits, as the Tower of Nesle used to be. Calembrcdaine’s men were being received here. As it was a chilly night, all the doors had been boarded up with old planks.
Ang6lique at last approached one of the windows and looked through a slit between two boards. The room was packed with people. She recognised some faces: the Little Eunuch, Jean the Greybeard, the arch¬henchman with his flowing beard, and finally, Rotten Jean.
He was holding his white hands out to the flames and talking to the arch-henchman.
“Now that’s what I call a successful operation, my dear dominie. Not only did the police do us no harm, but it greatly helped us to scatter the gang of that impudent Calembredaine.”
“I consider you are somewhat wide of the mark in saying that the police did us no harm. Fifteen of our men were hanged, practically without a judgment, at the gibbet of Montfaucon! And we aren’t even sure that Calembredaine was among them!”
“Pshaw! Anyway, his head’s smashed and he won’t be able to get back where he was for a long time ... if he ever reappears, which I doubt. Rodogone has occupied all his places.”
The Greybeard sighed.
“So one day we’ll have to fight Rodogone. That Tower of Nesle, which commands the Pont-Ncuf and the Fair of Saint-Germain, is a formidable strategic position. Formerly, when I was teaching history to some scamps at the college of Navarre ”
Rotten Jean was not listening.
“Don’t be pessimistic about the future of the Tower of Nesle. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t mind a little revolution like that from time to time. What a fine haul I made at the Tower of Nesle! Some twenty brats of good quality who will yield a good profit in clinking coins.”
“Where are your little cherubs?”
Rotten Jean gestured towards the cracked ceiling.
“Up there, under lock and key. . . . Madeleine, my girl, come here and show me your suckling.”
A fat, bovine woman removed a nursing baby from her breost and held it out to the odious creature, who picked it up and lifted it admiringly.
“Isn’t he a beauty, the little Moor? When he’s big, I’ll dress him up in a sky-blue suit and sell him at Court.”
At that moment, one of the beggars began to play on his reed-pipe and two others began to dance a peasant reel. Ang£lique could no longer hear what Rotten Jean and the Greybeard were saying.
But there was something she now knew for certain. The children kid¬napped from the Tower of Nesle were in this house, and apparently in a room situated above the main hall.
She walked very slowly around the house. She found an opening that gave on to the staircase. She slipped off her shoes and walked barefoot. The winding stairs led to a corridor on the first floor. The walls and floor were covered with a rough-cast mixture of earth and straw. To her left she saw an empty room in which a small lamp was glimmering. There were chains fixed to the wall. Whom did they chain up in this place? . . . Whom did they torture? . . . She remembered that people said that during the civil wars Rotten Jean had young men and isolated peasants kidnapped for re-sale to the recruiting-sergeants. . . . The silence of this part of the house was frightening.
Angclique continued to advance. A rat brushed past her and she stifled a cry.
Now a new sound seemed to be coming from the bowels of the house.
They were groans and distant weeping, which gradually became more distinct. Her heart gave a jump; they were the moans of children. She imagined Florimond’s face with his terrified black eyes, the tears running down Ills pale cheeks. He was afraid of the dark. He was calling. . . . She advanced more quickly. She climbed another flight of stairs, passed through two rooms; small lamps shed their grimy light. She noticed there were copper gongs on the walls; together with bundles of straw scattered over the floor and a few mugs lying on the ground, these con¬stituted the only fumisliings of this sinister dwelling-house.
She guessed that at last she was nearing her goal. She distinctly heard the mournful concert of children’s sobs.
Angeliquc entered a small room to the left of the corridor which she had been following for a while. A little light glimmered in a recess, but there was nobody here. And yet that was where the sounds came from. She noticed at the end of the room a heavy door studded with locks. It was the first door she had come across, for all the other rooms were wide open.
A small barred opening had been cut out of the door-panel. She could not see anything through it, but realised that the children were locked up in that dungeon without light or air. How could she attract the attention of a terrified two-year-old?
The young woman glued her lips to the grille and called out softly:
“Florimond! Florimond!”
The sobbing calmed down a little, then a voice whispered from inside:
“Is it you, Marquise of the Angels?”
“Who is there?”
“It’s me, Linot. Rotten Jean bundled us off with Flipot and the others.”
“Florimond is with you?”
“Yes”
“Is he crying?”
“He was but I told him that you’d come and fetch him.”
“Be patient, I’ll get you out,” Angelique promised. She stepped back and examined the door. The locks seemed stout, but perhaps there was a means of loosening the hinges from the crumbling walls. She began to scratch the stonework with her nails.
Then she heard a strange noise behind her. It was like a chuckle, stifled at first, but gradually mounting, mounting till it became a roar of laughter.
Angelique veered around, and in the doorway she saw the Great ’ Coesre.
The monster was slumped in a low cart mounted on four wheels. This was the way in which, propelling himself with his two hands, he moved through the corridors of his fearsome labyrinth.
From the threshold of the room he fixed the young woman with his cruel gaze. And, paralysed by terror, she recognised the fantastic ap¬parition of the graveyard of the Saints-Innocents.
He continued to laugh with guffaws and horrible hiccups which shook his crippled torso and his two short, limp and spindly legs. Then, without ceasing to laugh, he started to move again. Fascinated, her eyes followed the movements of the creaking little chariot. He was not moving towards her, but swerved across the room, and suddenly she noticed on the wall one of those copper gongs she had seen in the other rooms. An iron bar was lying on the ground.
The Great Coesre was about to strike the gong, and in answer to his call there would come rushing, from the depths of the house, towards Angelique, towards Florimond, all the beggars, all the bandits, all the demons of this hell. . . .
The eyes of the beast with the slashed throat were turning glassy.
“Oh! you’ve killed him,” said a voice.
On the same threshold on which the Great Coesre had appeared a moment ago stood a young girl, hardly more than a child, with a Madonna face.
Angelique stared at the blade of her dagger, red with bldod. Then she said in a low tone of voice:
“Don’t call, or I’ll be obliged to kill you, too.”
“Oh no! I won’t call, I’m so glad you killed him!”
She came closer.
“Nobody had the courage to kill him,” she murmured. “They were all afraid. And yet he was only an abominable little man.”
Then she raised her black eyes towards А^ё^ие.
“But now you must run away, quickly.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Rosine—the Great Coesre’s last wife.”
Angёlique slipped her dagger into her belt. She reached out a trembling hand and placed it on that fresh, pink cheek.
“Rosine, help me. My child is behind that door. Rotten Jean has locked him up. I must have him back.”
“The double key to the door is there,” said the girl. “Rotten Jean lets the Great Coesre keep it for him. It’s in his cart.”
She bent towards the motionless, repulsive heap. Angelique did not look. Rosine straightened up.
“Here it is.”
She herself inserted the keys into the key-holes, the locks creaked. The door opened. Angelique rushed into the dungeon and seized Florimond, whom Linot was holding in his arms. The child was not weeping, he wasn’t screaming, but he was icy-cold, and he hugged her so tighdy with his thin litde arms that she could not get her breath.
“Now help me to get out of this place,” she said to Rosine.
Linot and Flipot clung to her petticoats. She freed herself.
“I can’t take you all with me.”
She wrenched herself from the grimy little hands, but the two urchins ran after her.
“Marquise of the Angels, Marquise! don’t leave us!”
Suddenly Rosine, who had pulled them towards a staircase, put a finger to her lips.
“Hush! Someone’s coming up.”
A heavy step resounded on the floor below.
“It’s Bavottant, the idiot. Come this way.”
She began to run wildly. Angelique followed her with the two children. As they came out into the street, an inhuman roar mounted from the heart of the Great Coesre’s palace. It was the idiot Bavottant giving vent to his sorrow before the corpse of the royal freak on whom he had for so long lavished his tender cares.
“Let’s run!” Rosine said again. •
The two of them, followed by the panting boys, streaked through the tunnel of dark lanes. Their bare feet slipped over the sticky stones. At last the young girl slowed down.
“Here are the lights/’ she said. “This is the rue Saint-Martin.”
“We must go farther. They may be after us.”
“Bavottant can’t talk. Nobody’ll understand; maybe they’ll even think he was the one who killed him. They’ll put up another Great Coesre. I’ll never go back there. I’ll stay with you because you killed him.”
“What if Rotten Jean manages to find us?” asked Linot.
“He won’t find you. I’ll defend you all.”
Rosine pointed, far up the street, to a wan light that made the glow of the lanterns seem pale.
“Look, the night’s over.”
“Yes, the night is over,” Angelique repeated grimly.