Angelique - Part 5. The Court of Miracles Chapter 4 - Read online

HE PICKED HER UP IN HIS ARMS and started up the stairs of the Tower. He climbed slowly so as not to stumble, for the wine fumes were befog¬ging his brain. Thus his ascent had a kind of solemnity.
Ang&ique abandoned herself to the embrace of his powerful arms. Her head was swimming. When he reached the top, Nicholas kicked open the door leading to the room that harboured the spoils of their thefts. Thenhe walked up to the litter of coats and dropped Angllique on to it like a parcel, crying:
“And now, the two of us.”
The gesture as well as the triumphant laugh that widened the man’s mouth pulled her out of the listless lethargy into which she had sunk ever since the last tavern. She roused herself with a jerk and ran to the window, where she clung to the bars without quite knowing why.
“Well,” she shouted angrily over her shoulder, “what about the two of us, you nitwit?”
“I . . . but ... I mean,” he stuttered, completely dumbfounded.
She laughed insultingly.
“Did you by any chance imagine that you would become my lover— you, Nicholas Merlot?”
With two noiseless strides he was at her side with darkened brow.
“I’m not imagining anything,” he said flatly, “I am sure of it.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Nothing to be seen about it.”
She stared at him defiantly. The red glow of a bargeman’s fire, down on the river-bank at the foot of the tower, illuminated them. Nicholas took a deep breath.
“Listen,” he said in a low, threatening tone of voice. “I shall talk to you once more, because it’s you and because you’ve got to understand. You have no right to refuse what I am asking. I have fought for you, I have killed the man you wanted me to, the Great Coesre has joined us: it’s all in order with the underworld. You are mine.”
“And suppose I won’t have anything to do with the laws of the under-world?”
“Then you’ll die,” he said, and there was a flash in the depths of his eyes. “Of hunger or some other cause. But you won’t come out alive, don’t have any illusions on that score. Anyway, you no longer have any choice. Haven’t you got that through your head yet?” he persisted, putting his clenched fist against the young woman’s temple. “Hasn’t this stubborn little ladylike mind of yours grasped what burned to cinders on the Place de Greve together with your sorcerer of a husband? Everything that used to stand between us. Footman and Comtesse, that no longer exists. I am Calembredaine, and you . . . you’re nothing any more. Your people have deserted you. Those, over there. . . .”
He lifted his arm, pointing to the other side of the dark Seine, at the outlines of the Tuileries and the Louvre where lights were twinkling.
“For the people over there you no longer exist. And that’s why you belong to the underworld . . . because that’s the home of those who’ve been abandoned. . . . Here, there’ll always be something for you to eat. You’ll be protected. We’ll avenge you, we’ll help you. But don’t ever betray us. . .
He fell silent, a little out of breath. She felt his burning breath on her shoulder. He brushed her lightly, and the ardour of his desire aroused in her an uneasy thrill. She saw him open his big hands and raise them to touch her, then he stepped back as though he did not dare.
He began to implore her very softly in dialect:
“My treasure, don’t be mean. Why do you sulk at me? Isn’t every¬thing so simple? Here we are, both of us . . . alone ... as in the old days. We’ve eaten well, drunk well. What else is there to do now but love each other? You’re not going to have me believe that I frighten your
Angelique gave a scornful little laugh and shrugged her shoulders.
He went on:
“Well, then? Come on! . . . Remember. We always got on so well together. We were made for each other, my baby. There’s no getting around that ... I knew you’d be mine. I was hoping it. And now it’s happened, you see! . . .”
“No,” she said, obstinately tossing her hair back over her shoulders.
Beside himself, he screamed:
“Take care! I can take you by force, if I must.”
“Just try, I’ll scratch your eyes out with my nails.”
“I’ll have you held down by my guards,” he yelled.
“Coward!”
He broke into a torrent of abuse.
She hardly heard him. With her forehead leaning against the icy bars of the narrow opening like a prisoner who has no hope left, Angelique felt under the sway of an overwhelming weariness. “Your people have abandoned you . . .” Like an echo of the sentence Nicholas had uttered, others rang out, cutting as a knife:
“I want to hear no more of you. You must disappear. You will no longer have a rank, a name—or anything.”
And Hortense arose harpy-like, with a candle in her hand.
“Go away! Go away!”
Nicholas was right. He was right, this Calembredaine, this Hercules with the wild, heavy blood, who was trembling behind her and swearing loud enough to make the old stones of the Tower of Nesle crumble. His ragged clothes had the awful smell of the city, but his flesh, perhaps, if you hugged it tight, if you bit into it fiercely, might yield a little of the un¬forgettable flavour of Monteloup? . . .
With a sudden resignation, she passed in front of him and, near the litter, began to unfasten her brown serge bodice. Then she let her petti¬coat slip to the ground. In her shift, she hesitated for a moment. The cold was biting on her flesh, but her head was burning. Quickly she removed this last garment, and lay down naked on the stolen cloaks.
“Come,” she said calmly.
He had remained breathlessly silent. Her docility seemed suspicious to him. He approached, watching her closely. He slowly stripped himself of his own rags. On the verge of reaching the climax of his most extravagant dreams, Nicholas, the former farm-hand, stood trembling. The flickering light of the fire on the riverside below projected his gigantic shadow on the wall.
“Come,” she said again. “I am cold.”
She too had begun to tremble, from the cold perhaps, but also, before this tall, naked, expectant body, from impatience mingled with fear.
With a wolf’s bound he was upon her. He crushed her in his arms as if to break her, and he gave great bursts of spasmodic laughter:
“Oh! This time it’s real. All! this is good, you are mine. You won’t escape me again, you’re mine. . . . Mine! Mine! Mine!” he kept repeating, punctuating his virile delirium.
And with violent haste he possessed her.
A little later, she heard him sigh like a sated dog.
“Angelique,” he murmured.
“You hurt me,” she complained.
And, enveloping herself in a coat, she fell asleep.
He took her twice again during the night. She would emerge, numbed, from a heavy slumber to become the prey of this creature of darkness who grasped her, cursing, and had his will with her as he uttered loud, hoarse sighs, then fell in a heap at her side, mumbling disjointed phrases.
At dawn a whispering voice woke him.
“Calembredaine, get up,” Pretty Boy was urging, “we’ve some accounts to settle at the Fair at Saint-Germain with the witches of Rodo- gone the Egyptian, who threw Mother Hurlurette and Father Hurlurot out on the street.”
“I’m coming; but don’t make any noise. The girl’s still sleeping.”
“No wonder. What a racket there’s been in the Tower of Neslc this night! Even the rats couldn’t sleep a wink. You certainly had your
bit of fun. Funny, the way you ve got to bellow when you make love.” “Shut up,” growled Calembredaine.
“The Marquise of the Polacks didn’t take it too much to heart. I must say I carried out your orders to the last detail. I’ve been petting her all night so that she wouldn’t get the idea of clambering up here with a knife. And the proof that she doesn’t hold it against you is that she is waiting for you downstairs with a basinful of hot wine.”
“All right. Get out.”
When Pretty Boy had gone, Angclique ventured to cast a glance between her eyelashes.
Nicholas was up already, at the far end of the room, clothed in his uniform of unspeakable rags. His back was turned and he was leaning over a case in which he was foraging for something. To a woman gifted with shrewdness, the attitude of that back was highly significant. It was the posture of an extremely embarrassed man.
He closed the case again and, grasping something tightly in his fist, he came back to the bed. She quickly pretended to be asleep.
He leaned over her and called her under his breath:
“Angeliquc, do you hear me? . . . I’ve got to go. But before I go I’d like to tell you ... I’d like to know . . . Are you very cross with me about last night? . . . It’s not my fault. I couldn’t help it. You are so beautiful! . . . Is it true that I hurt you? D’you want me to send for Big Matthieu of the Pont-Neuf to see to you? . . .”
He put his rugged hand on the pearly shoulder that peeped out of the blanket, and she could not help shivering.
“Answer me. I can see you’re no longer asleep. Look what I’ve chosen for you. It’s a ring, a genuine one. I had it appraised by a goldsmith on the Quai des Orfevres. Look at it. Don’t you want it? Here, I’m putting it beside you. . . .
“Tell me what you want, what would please you. Would you like some ham? A fine ham? They brought in a fresh one this morning, pinched from the pork-butcher in the Place de Greve while he was watch¬ing one of our chaps being hanged. ... Do you want a new dress? . . . I’ve got that, too. . . . Answer me, or I’ll get angry.”
She deigned to slip a glance through her tousled hair and said haughtily: “I want a big tub with plenty of hot water.”
“A tub?” he repeated, dumbfounded.
He peered at her suspiciously.
“What for?”
“To wash myself, you big hog.”
“All right,” he said, reassured. “Polack will bring it up for you. Ask
for anything you like. And if you aren’t pleased, just let me know when I come back.”
He turned towards a small Venetian mirror that stood on the mantel¬piece, and began to stick on his cheek the coloured wax pellet that helped to disfigure his face.
Angelique sat up with a jerk.
“That I won’t stand for!” she said categorically. “I forbid you, Nicholas Merlot, to appear before me with that repulsive face of a rotten, lewd old man. Otherwise I should not be able to stand your touching me ever again.”
An expression of childlike joy lit the brutal face.
“And if I obey . . . you’ll let me again?”
She abruptly pulled up a coat flap over her face to hide the emotion produced in her by this gleam in the eyes of the bandit Calembredaine. For it was the familiar look of the little Nicholas, so frivolous and unstable, but “not bad at heart”, as his poor old mother used to say. Nicholas, as he stooped over the ravished body of his young sister, calling her softly “Francine, Francine . . .”
So this is what life can do to a little boy, a little girl. Her heart swelled with pity for both of them. They were alone and abandoned by all.
“You’ll let me love you again?” he murmured.
Then, for the first time since they had so strangely found each other again, she smiled at him.
“Perhaps.”
Nicholas solemnly stretched out his arm and spat on the ground.
“Then I swear. Even if I risk getting nabbed by the sergeants and archers by showing my cleancd-up face right on the Pont-Neuf, you’ll never see me as Calembredaine again.”
He stuffed his wig and bandage into his pocket.
“I’ll go and put on my disguise downstairs.”
“Nicholas,” she called out. “I’ve hurt my foot. Look. D’you think this Big Matthieu you talked about could do something about it?”
“I’ll look in and see him.”
Abruptly, he took the small white foot in both his hands and kissed it.
When he had left, she snuggled herself up and tried to go to sleep again. It was very cold once more but, well covered up as she was, she did rot feel it. A pallid winter sun was painting rectangles of light on the walls.
Angelique’s body was tired and aching, yet she felt a kind of well-being.
‘It’s good,* she thought to herself. ‘It’s like feeding one’s hunger or quenching one’s thirst. One no longer thinks of anything. It's good not to think.’
Near her the diamond ring was sparkling. She smiled. Anyway, she’d always be able to twist this fellow Nicholas round her little finger!
When, in later days, Angelique thought back to this period of her life, when she had fallen to the lowest depths and mingled with the worst scum, she would murmur, dreamily shaking her head: “I was mad.”
And that is indeed, perhaps, what enabled her to live in that terrifying and pitiful world—madness, or rather a numbing of her sensibilities, the slumber of the beast defending itself against the harsh winter.
All her gestures and deeds responded to the very simplest reflexes. She wanted food, warmth. A chilly need of protection brought her back to Nicholas’s hard chest and made her docile to his brutal and possessive embraces.
She, who had loved the finest linen and embroidered sheets, was sleeping on a bed of stolen coats in whose wool there lingered the smell of all the men of Paris. She was the prey of an oaf, a farm-hand turned bandit, who was jealous and madly proud to be her master, and not only did she not fear him, but she even found pleasure in the overwhelming attentions he paid her.
The objects she used, the food she ate, were entirely the fruit of larceny if not of murder. Her friends were wretches and criminals. Her home the ramparts, the comers of the river-banks, the low taverns; and her entire world consisted of this feared and almost inaccessible sphere of the Court of Miracles, where the officers of the Chatelet and the sergeants of the Provost Marshal did not dare to venture, except in full daylight. Too few in numbers in face of the dreadful army of outcasts who then com¬prised one-fifth of the population of Paris, the forces of law and order abandoned the nights to the scum.
And yet, after murmuring “I was mad”, Angelique would sometimes become dreamy as she thought of those days when she had reigned, at the side of the illustrious Calembredaine, over the old ramparts and bridges of Paris.
Calembredaine had turned the Tower of Nesle into his headquarters. And the other captains of the underworld became aware that this new¬comer among the ‘brothers’ encircled the entire university district, held the approaches to the former gates of Saint-Germain, Saint-Michel and Saint-Victor, right down to the banks of the Seine in the substructures of the Tournelle.
Students with a fancy for duelling on the Pre-aux-Clercs, lower-class
citizens happy to go fishing in the old moats of a Sunday, fine ladies on their way to visit their women-friends in the Faubourg Saint-Germain or to see their confessors at the Val de Grace, now had to hold their purses ready. A swarm of beggars would rise before them, stop the horses, bar the passage of the carriages in the narrow alleys of the gates or little bridges thrown over the moats.
Peasants or travellers from outside had to pay toll a second time to the threatening drilles whom they found posted in front of them when they had already been inside Paris for a long while. By making the passage as difficult as it was in the days of drawbridges, the men of Calcmbredaine revived the old city wall of Philippe-Auguste.
This had been a master-stroke in the kingdom of the underworld. The sagacious, greedy midget who ruled over it, Squat Rolin, the Great Coesre, did not interfere. Calembredaine paid in princely fashion. His love of open fighting, his bold decisions, placed at the disposal of an organising genius like Wood-Bottom, made him daily more powerful. From the Tower of Ncsle he took the Pont-Neuf, the prize of Paris with its stream of goggle-eyed strollers, who let their purses be cut so easily that artists like Jactance got disgusted with stealing them. The battle of the Pont-Neuf had been terrible. It had lasted for several months. Calembre¬daine won eventually, because his men occupied the approaches. In abandoned flat-bottomed boats, moored to the arches or piles of bridges, he posted his beggars, who, though seemingly asleep, were in fact as many watchful sentinels.
Sallying out into tliis subterranean Paris in the company of Lightfoot, Barcarole or Wood-Bottom, Angelique gradually discovered the network of squalor and ransom, so carefully set up by her former playmate.
“You are smarter than I thought,” she said to him one day. “There are some good ideas in that pate of yours.”
And she lightly brushed his forehead with her hand.
Such gestures, with which she was not lavish, would bowl the bandit over completely. He took her on his knees.
“That surprises you, ha? . . . You wouldn’t have expected that from a clodhopper like me? But I’ve never been a clodhopper, never wanted to be one. ...” ■
He spat scornfully on the flagstones.
They sat before the fire in the big room below the Tower of Neslc. Calembrcdainc’s henchmen were foregathered there with a crowd of ragged tramps, come to pay court to the potentate of their gang. Every night, this stinking, vociferous rabble swarmed all over the place amid the screaming infants, the belchings and invectives that resounded under the domed roof, the clatter of tin tankards, and the unbearable stench of old rags and wine.
Wood-Bottom was perched on the table with the arrogance of a trusty manager and the sombre air of an unappreciated philosopher. Barcarole, his crony, gambolled from one group to another, exasperating the card- players. Rat-Poison was selling his day’s hunt to some famished old hags. Thibault was turning the handle of his hurdy-gurdy while casting mock¬ing glances through the slits in his straw-hat, and Linot, his little follower, a mudlark with angel’s eyes, was beating his cymbal. Mother Hurlurette and Father Hurlurot began to dance and the firelight threw their grotesque, lumbering shadows on the ceiling. This beggar couple, Barcarole said, had but one eye and three teeth between the two of them. Father Hurlurot was blind and scraped a kind of box with two strings strung across it which he called a fiddle. His wife was one-eyed, heavy, with an enormous mane of grey hair falling from under her dirty linen turban; she played the castanets, while jigging her big, bloated legs, wrapped up in several layers of stockings. Barcarole said also that she must have been Spanish ... a long while ago. All that remained were the castanets.
In Calcmbredaine’s immediate suite there were also Lightfoot, the ever- brcathless former runner; Tabclot the hunchback; Jactance the cut- purse; Prudent, a very timorous and whining thief, whose fears did not prevent him from being a party to all the burglaries; Pretty Boy, a barbillon, that is to say a pimp, who, when he rigged himself up as a prince, would have deceived the King himself; prostitutes, as uncaring as animals or yelling like harpies; a very few mountebanks (for most of their kind paid homage to Rodogone the Egyptian) and several rogues of lackeys who, between jobs where they robbed their masters, looked for receivers to buy their spoils. There also were disreputable students whom poverty had brought to the corruption of the underworld and who had finally thrown in their lot with it. In exchange for small services, they came here to play dice with the rogues. These talkers of Latin were called ‘arch- hcnchmcn’ and they drew up the laws of the Great Coesre. Such a one was Big-Bag, who, in a monk’s disguise, had lured Conan Bccher into an ambush.
The swindlers of public charity, the misshapen, the blind, the lame, the day-time moribunds, also had their place in the Tower of Nesle. The ancient walls which had seen the lascivious orgies of Queen Marguerite of Burgundy, and heard the dying groans of young men slaughtered after love-making, were ending their sinister careers by sheltering the worst riff¬raff in creation. There were also among them real cripples, idiots, half¬wits, monsters like Cockscomb with a strange appendage on his forehead.
An accursed world: children who were no longer like children, women who gave themselves to men on the straw flung on the stone floor, old men and women with the vacant stare of lost dogs; and yet there floated a carefree air of pleasure over this motley crowd. Poverty and squalor are unbearable only as a half-way house and for those who have means of comparison. The people of the Court of Miracles had neither a past nor a future.
Many a husky fellow, sound in limb but lazy, fattened here in idleness. Hunger and cold were the lot of the weak, the lot of those who were used to them. The uncertainty of the morrow did not worry anybody. What matter! The invaluable prize of this uncertainty was freedom, the right to crack one’s lice in the sunshine whenever one felt like it. Let him come, the constable in charge of the poor! Let diem build their hospitals and alms-houses, the noble ladies and their chaplains! . . . The beggars wouldn’t put their feet inside them of their own free will, for all the soup that was ladled out.
As if there wasn’t better fare to be had at Calembredaine’s table, re-plenished at the right places by his minions, who haunted the barges, roamed near the butcher’s shops and slaughter-houses, and held up the peasants on their way to the market!
In front of the crackling fire of stolen logs, Angelique leaned against the sinewy thighs of Calembrcdaine.
“Do you know what I have been thinking of?” said Nicholas. “All those ideas I’ve had that enabled me to succeed in Paris came to me from our adventures and expeditions as children. We used to prepare them well in advance, do you remember? Well, when I found I had to organise all this, I sometimes said to myself ”
He broke off to ponder and passed his tongue over his lips. A youngster called Flipot, who was squatting at his feet, handed him a goblet of wine.
“Good,” growled Calembredaine, downing the goblet. “Leave us to talk. You see,” he went on, “I’d say to myself: What would Angelique have done? What exploit would her little brain have thought of next? And that would help me. . . .”
He ventured a caress while watching her out of the comer of his eye. He never knew how his amorous advances would be received. For a kiss she might jump at him with flashing eyes like those of a raging wild-cat, threatening to hurl herself from the top of the tower, abusing him with a fishwife’s vocabulary which had not taken her long to pick up. ,
She would sulk for entire days, so icy that she impressed even Barcarole and caused Pretty Boy to stutter. Calembredaine would then collect his team and they would all question themselves, thunderstruck, about the causes of her moodiness.
At other moments she could show herself gentle, playful, almost tender. He had found her again. It was she . . . the dream of his lifetime! The child Angelique, barefoot, in rags, with wisps of straw in her hair, running along the paths.
At other times again she would become listless, as if absent, submissive to all he wanted of her, but so indifferent that he would leave her, alarmed and vaguely frightened.
A funny wench she was, the Marquise of the Angels!
As a matter of fact, she did not calculate at all. Her feminine instinct had dictated to her the only line of defence. As she had once subjugated the little peasant Merlot, so she was now besting the bandit he had become. . . . She avoided the danger of becoming his slave or his victim by too much docility or arrogance. She held him at her mercy, more by cajoling consents than by blunt refusals. And Nicholas’s passion became more devouring every day.
This dangerous man, whose hands were soiled with the blood of many crimes, had reached the point of trembling lest he displease her.
That evening, seeing that the Marquise of the Angels did not have her ‘black* look, he began to fondle her with pride. And she leaned languidly against his shoulder like a clinging vine. She ignored the circle of hideous, grinning faces that surrounded them. She allowed him to open her bodice, to kiss her violently on her mouth. Her emerald gaze filtered through her eyelashes, provocative and remote. Savouring inwardly the depth of her degradation, she seemed openly to display her pride at being the plaything of a feared master.
Such boldness made Polack scream with rage.
Calembredaine’s former official mistress did not easily accept her sudden dismissal, especially since Calcmbredaine, with the cruelty of a true tyrant, had made her Angcliquc’s servant. It was she who had to carry hot water up to her rival for her ablutions, which were such a startling custom for the beggar world that they were talked about as far as the Faubourg Saint- Denis. In her fury Polack would spill half the boiling water over her own feet, but such was the former farm-hand’s power over these people that she did not dare to utter a word when facing the woman who had supplanted her in her lover’s favour. ,
Angelique received the big, dark girl’s services and hate-filled glances with indifference. In the underworld cant, the Polack was a ribaude, that is to say a camp-follower. She had more battle tales to tell than a hoary Swiss mercenary. She could talk of cannons, arquebuses and pikes with the same ease, for she had had lovers in all military branches. She had even gone with officers, she would explain, for their sheer good looks, for those sweet lords more often had empty pockets than the pillaging soldier had. During a whole campaign she had lorded it over a regiment of Poles, hence her nickname.
In her belt she wore a knife that she pulled out at the least provocation, and she had the reputation of handling it expertly. When evening came and she had reached the bottom of a pitcher of wine, the Polack would talk of sackings and fire.
“Ah! those good war days! I’d say to the soldiers: ‘Love me, boys, I’ll kill your lice! . .
And she would start to sing guard-house ditties and kiss any former soldier within her reach.
They would finally kick her out forcibly. Then, in the wintry rain and wind, the Marquise of the Polacks would run along the banks of the Seine and hold out her arms towards the Louvre, invisible in the night.
“Hey! Majesty! Hey!” she would cry. “When will you give us a war? A good war! What arc you doing up there, good-for-nothing, in your den? Where did we ever get such a bloody, battle-less King? A King without victories?”
When she was sober, Polack would forget her bellicose discourses and think only of reconquering Calcmbredaine. She deployed for this purpose all the resources of an unscrupulous character and a volcanic temperament. In her opinion, she would say, Calembredaine wouldn’t take long to tire of this girl who never laughed and whose eyes at times did not appear to see you. It was a fact that they were ‘countrymen’. That created tics; but she knew Calembredaine. That wouldn’t be enough for him. And, damn it all, she’d be willing, if it came to that, to share him. Two women for one man wasn’t so much, after all. The Great Cocsre had six of’em!
The situation finally reached its inevitable climax. It was brief but violent.
One evening, Angeliquc had gone to sec Wood-Bottom in the hole where he lived by the Bridge of Saint-Michcl. She had brought him chitterlings. Wood-Bottom was the only person in the gang for whom she had any esteem. She showed him little attentions, which he received with the air of a grumpy bulldog who considers them perfectly natural.
That evening, after sniffing the chitterlings, he stared hard at Angelique and said:
“Where are you going from here?”
“Back to Nesle.”
“Don’t. Stop on your way at Ramez’s Inn, by the Pont-Ncuf. Calem¬bredaine is there with the gang and Polack.”
He paused for a moment as if to give this time to sink in, then pressed her:
“Have you grasped what you’ve got to do?”
«XT »
No.
She was kneeling before him as was her habit, in order to be level with the truncated man. The floor and walls of his lair were made of mud. The only piece of furniture was a trunk of boiled leather in which Wood- Bottom stored his four jackets and his three hats. He was always very fastidious about his half-person. His lair was lit by a stolen church-lamp fastened to the wall—a delicate piece of goldsmith’s work, in silver-gilt.
“You walk into the tavern,” Wood-Bottom explained pontifically, “and when you see what Calcmbrcdainc and Polack arc up to, you grab whatever comes within your reach—a tankard, a bottle—and you bash him on the head.”
“Whom?”
“Calembredaine, of course! Never bother about the girl in a case like this.”
“I’ve got a knife,” said Angelique.
“Leave it alone, you don’t know how to use it. Besides, to give a lesson to a beggar who’s got mixed up about his marquise, there’s nothing like a swipe on the head, believe me!”
“But I don’t care a rap if that groundling deceives me,” said Angelique with a haughty smile.
The cripple’s eyes flared under his bushy eyebrows. He spoke very slowly.
“You haven’t the right . . . I’ll go further: you have no choice. Calembredaine is mighty among our folk. He’s won you. He’s taken you. You’ve no longer the right to scorn him. Nor to let him scorn you. He’s your man.”
Angelique felt a shudder, in which anger mingled with an obscure sensual thrill. Her throat constricted.
“I don’t want it,” she mumbled in a stifled voice.
The cripple burst into a loud, bitter laugh.
“I didn’t want it either when a cannonball came and tore my two pins off at Nordlingen. But it didn’t ask my opinion. You can’t undo these things. You’ve got to accept them, that’s all . . . learn to walk on a wooden platter. . . .”
The flame of the lamp threw into relief all the pimples that sprouted on Wood-Bottom’s big face. Angelique thought he resembled an enormous truffle; a mushroom grown in the darkness and dampness of the earth.
“So you too had better learn to walk among beggars,” he went on in a low, urging voice. “Do what I tell you. Or you 11 die.”
She tossed her hair back with a rebellious move.
“I am not afraid of death.”
“I wasn’t talking of that sort of death,” he growled, “but of that other worse one, that of your own self. . . .”
He suddenly flew into a temper.
“You make me talk a lot of rubbish. I’m trying to make you under¬stand, confound you! You haven’t the right to let Polack crush you! You haven’t the right . . . not you. You hear me?”
He was drilling a fiery gaze into her eyes.
“Come on, get up and walk! Take the bottle and the goblet over there, in the comer. Bring them here. . .
And after pouring out a bumper of brandy:
“Wash that down in one gulp and then—go to it.. . . Don’t be afraid to hit hard. I know Calembrcdaine. He’s got a hard nut.”
As she entered the tavern of Ramcz the Auvergnat, Angelique stopped on the threshold. The fog was almost as thick inside as out. The chimney was drawing badly and filled the room with smoke. A few workmen sat with their elbows propped on rickety tables, drinking in silence.
At the far end of the room, before the hearth, Angelique saw the four soldiers who composed Calembredaine’s usual guard: Peony, Gobert, Riquct, La Chausscc, then Barcarole, hoisted on a table, Jactance, Prudent, Big-Bag, Rat-Poison, and finally Nicholas himself, holding on his knees a nude, dishevelled, half-sprawling Polack, bellowing tavern songs.
This was the Nicholas she hated, the hideous, disguised face of Calem- bredainc.
This sight, added to the drink Wood-Bottom had given her, roused her fighting spirit. With a nimble hand she seized a heavy tin tankard from a table and advanced towards the group. They were all too drunk to see her or recognise her. She found herself behind Nicholas and, gathering all her strength, she struck blindly.
There was a loud whoop from Barcarole. Then Nicholas Calcmbre- daine swayed and toppled headlong into the embers in the hearth, dragging with him a screaming Polack.
There followed a tumult. The other patrons of the inn had rushed out. They could be heard shouting “Murder!” while the narquois drew theii swords and Jactance clutched at Nicholas, trying to pull him out. Polack’s hair was beginning to catch fire. Barcarole ran across the table on which he was perched, seized a jug of water and emptied it over her head.
Suddenly a voice cried:
“Run, brothers! The police!”
The sound of approaching riders came from outside. A police sergeant of the Chatelet appeared on the threshold, a pistol in his hand, shouting: “Stay where you are, ruffians !”
But the thick smoke and almost complete darkness in the tavern made him lose precious time. Grabbing the inert body of their chief, the bandits dragged him into the back room and fled by way of another exit.
“Hurry, Marquise of the Angels Г Big-Bag yelled.
She jumped over an upturned bench and tried to catch up with them, but a hard fist grasped her. A voice shouted:
“I’ve got the hussy, sergeant!”
Suddenly, Angelique saw Polack looming before her. The slut had raised her dagger.
‘I am going to die,' Angelique thought in a flash. The blade gleamed as it slashed the darkness. The constable who was holding Angelique bent double and collapsed with a groan.
Polack knocked over a table into the legs of the policemen who were running towards them. She pushed Angelique towards the window and they both jumped into the lane outside. A shot rang out on their heels.
A few moments later the two women caught up with the party of Calembredaine’s henchmen at the approaches of the Pont-Neuf. They had stopped to catch their breath.
“Phew!” sighed Peony-Jean, wiping his sweating brow with his sleeve. “I don’t think they'll be following us this far, but this damned Calembre- daine is made of lead, confound him!”
“They haven't nabbed anybody? You there, Barcarole?”
“Still here.”
Polack explained:
“They had hooked the Marquise of the Angels, but I knifed die dog. Right in the belly. That finished him.”
She showed her blood-spattered dagger.
The party got going again towards the Tower of Ncsle, its numbers swelled by all the fellow-members who at this hour were loitering in their favourite spots.
The news spread from mouth to mouth.
“Calembredaine! The Illustrious Scamp is wounded!''
Big-Bag was explaining:
“It's the Marquise of the Angels who hit him with a tankard because he was fooling around with Polack. . . .”
“That's fair enough!” they said.
A man suggested:
‘Til go and fetch Big Matthieu.” And he dashed away.
At the Tower of Nesle Calembredaine was laid on the table in the big room. Angelique stepped over to him, tore off his hateful mask and examined his wound. She was disconcerted to see him thus motionless and covered with blood; she had not had the impression of hitting him so hard; his wig should have protected him. But the bottom of the tankard had slipped and gashed his temple. Moreover, in falling, he had burned his forehead.
She ordered:
“Put some water on to boil.”
Several youngsters rushed to obey her. Everyone knew that the Marquise of the Angels had a bee in her bonnet about hot water, and this wasn’t the time to argue with her. She had clouted Calembredaine where even Polack hadn’t dared carry out her threats. She had done so quietly, at the right moment, and properly. ... It was on the level. They admired her and nobody had any sympathy for Calembredaine, for they knew he had a hard head.
Suddenly there was a fanfare outside. The door opened, and in it appeared Big Matthieu, the dentist-quack of the Pont-Ncuf.
Even at this late hour he had taken care to put on his famous Anted ruff, slip his necklace of human molars round his neck, and have himself escorted by his cymbals and trumpet.
Big Matthieu, like all mountebanks, had one foot in the underworld, and the other in the ante-room of princes. All men were equal before the tooth-puller’s tongs. And pain renders the most arrogant nobleman as well as the boldest brigand weak and credulous. Big Matthicu’s healing tooth-pastes, beneficent elixirs and miraculous plasters made a universal man of him. The Gutter-Poet had composed a song for him, which the hurdy-gurdy grinders sang on street-corners:
. . . And knowing of every bodily ill The secret source,
He prescribed the very same pill Forman and horse.
He attended rogues and whores out of an innate cordiality and to keep in their good books, and he attended the mighty out of greed and am¬bition. He could have made a sensational career among titled ladies, whom he would pat familiarly and treat indiscriminately as Highnesses, bawds or wenches. But after travelling throughout Europe, he had decided to end his days on the Pont-Neuf.
He gazed at the still motionless Nicholas with undisguised satisfaction.
“Now there’s a bloody mess for you. Did you get him into that state?” he asked Angelique.
Before she had time to answer, he had gripped her jaw with a deter¬mined fist and was examining her mouth.
“Not a stump to draw,” he said, with disgust. “Let’s see lower down. Are you pregnant?”
And he kneaded her stomach so energetically that she uttered a cry.
“No. The box is empty. Let’s see lower down. . . .”
Angelique jerked away to escape this thorough examination.
“You fat-bellied nostrum-pot!” she cried furiously. “You haven’t been brought here to paw me, but to look after that man over there. . . .”
“Ho! Ho! The Marquise,” roared Big Matthieu. “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
His laughter rose in crescendos till he almost brought the roof down; all the while he held his belly with both hands. He was a high-coloured giant of a man, invariably dressed in gaudy coats of orange or peacock-blue satin. He wore a wig under a finely plumed hat. When he descended into the underworld, among the grimy rags and repulsive scars, he was dazzling as the sun.
When he had stopped laughing, he noticed that Calembredaine had recovered consciousness. He was sitting up on the table with a wicked expression, with which he was really trying to hide a certain embarrass¬ment. He did not dare look towards Angelique.
“What have you all got to crow about, you bunch of bastards?” he growled. “Jactance, you half-wit, you’ve let the meat get burned again. This place stinks of roast pig.”
“Fool! You’re the roast pig!” Big Matthieu roared, wiping tears of laughter into a chequered handkerchief. “And so is Polack! Just look! Half her back is roasted! Ho! Ho! Ho! . . .”
And he laughed even more uproariously.
They had a lot of fun, that night, in the beggars’ lair at the Tower of Nesle, opposite the Louvre.