Angelique - Part 5. The Court of Miracles Chapter 8 - Read online

ONE SUMMER EVENING, Rotten Jean slipped into Calembredaine’s lair at the Tower of Nesle. He came to see a woman called Teeming Fanny, who had ten children whom she hired out by turns to all and sundry. She had setded down comfortably to this sinecure, engaging in begging only for the fun of it, and in prostitution only out of habit, which after all did not hamper her breeding aptitude. Quite to the contrary.
Rotten Jean came to ‘book in advance’ the child she was expecting. She told him, as the shrewd business woman that she was:
“You’ll have to pay more for him, for he’ll have a club-foot.”
“How do you know?”
“The fellow who made him had a club-foot.” *
“Oho!” Polack mocked her, laughing loudly, “aren’t you lucky to know what he was like, the fellow who made him! Sure you're not getting mixed up?”
“Vm free to pick and choose,” was the dignified reply.
And she went on spinning a distaff of dirty wool. She was an active woman and did not like to stay idle. The litde monkey Piccolo jumped on to Rotten Jean’s shoulders and quickly pulled a tuft of hair from his head.
“Horrible beast!” shouted the man, trying to ward him off with his hat.
Angflique was rather pleased with her pet’s exploit. The monkey did not hide his repugnance for this tormentor of child martyrs. But as Rotten Jean was a creature to be feared, and since the Great Coesre, whose den he shared, held him in high esteem, she called the monkey back to her.
Rotten Jean rubbed his skull, growling abuses. He had already warned the Great Coesre that these men of Calembredaine’s were an insolent, dangerous lot; they were lording it over the others, but there would come a day when the other bandits would rebel. And then . . .
“Come and have a drink,” said Polack, to soothe him.
She poured him out a ladleful of boiling wine. Rotten Jean always felt cold, even in midsummer. He seemed to have cold blood in his veins. He had the glassy eyes of fish and their sticky, jelly-like skin.
When he had finished drinking, a rather frightening smile parted his lips over a row of black, rotten teeth. Thibault the hurdy-gurdy man was just coming in, followed by little Linot.
“Ah! here’s the pretty little darling,” said Rotten Jean, rubbing his hands. “Thibault, this time it’s settled, I buy him from you and I’ll give you—now hold tight!—fifty livres. A fortune!”
The old man cast an uneasy glance through the slit of his straw-hat.
“What do you want me to do with fifty livres? And besides, who’ll beat my drum if I haven’t got him any more?”
“You can train some other lad.”
“But this one is my grandson.”
“Well, then, don’t you want to do the right thing by him?” said the odious fiend with a crafty grin. “Just consider that your grandson will be dressed in lace and velvets. I’m not telling you any lies, Thibault. I know who I’ll sell him to. He’ll become a Prince’s favourite and later, if he’s clever, he’ll be able to aspire to the highest positions.”
Rotten Jean caressed the child’s brown curls.
“Would you like that, Linot? To have fine clothes, eat your fill out of gold-plate, and suck sweets all day?”
“I don't know,” said the boy, with a pout.
A yellowish ray of sunshine through the open door lit his golden-brown skin. He had thick long lashes, big black eyes, cherry-red lips. He wore his rags gracefully. One could have taken him for a little lord disguised for a masquerade, and it seemed astonishing that such a flower could have bloomed on such a dunghill.
“Come on, come on! We’ll get on very well together, we two,” said Rotten Jean. And he slipped his white hand round the child’s shoulders. “Come, my pretty one, come, my lamb.”
“But I don’t agree,” the old man protested, and he began to tremble. “You’ve no right to take my grandchild away.”
“I’m not taking him, I’m buying him. Fifty livres, that’s fair, isn’t it? And anyway, you keep quiet, or else you get nothing, so there!”
He brushed the old man aside and marched towards the door, dragging Linot after him. In front of the door he found Angelique.
“You can’t take him away without Calembredaine’s permission,” she said very calmly.
And, taking the child by the hand, she brought him back into the room. Rotten Jean’s waxen skin could blench no further, but he remained speechless for three long seconds.
“Well, I ” he raged, “well, I !”
And pulling up a stool:
“Very well. I’ll wait for him.”
“You can wait till doomsday,” Polack told him. “If she says no, you won’t get the brat. He docs whatever she wants,” she added with a mixture of bitterness and admiration.
Calembredainc and his soldiers never returned before nightfall. He would call for a drink before attending to anything else. They would talk business afterwards.
While he was quenching his huge thirst, there came a knock at the door. This was not customary among the beggars. They all looked at one another, and Peony went to open, with drawn sword.
A woman’s voice inquired from outside:
“Is Rotten Jean here?”
“Come in,” said Peony.
The torches of resin, fixed in iron rings on the walls, illuminated the unexpected entrance of a tall girl draped in a cloak and a lackey in red livery, who was carrying a basket.
“We went to sec you at the Faubourg Saint-Denis,” the girl explained to Rotten Jean, “but there they told us you were at Calembredaine’s. You’ve made us walk our legs off when it would have been just a hop from the Tuilcries to Nesle.” ' *
While she spoke, she dropped her cloak and puffed up the lace frills of her bodice, righted the little gold cross that was dangling on a black velvet ribbon round her neck. The men's eyes sparkled at the sight of this buxom wench, whose flaming red hair was ill-concealed by a handsome bonnet.
Angelique had shrunk back into the shadow. A pearly sweat had broken out on her temples. She had recognised Bertille, Madame de Soissons's chambermaid, who only a few months ago had acted as her go-between for the sale of Kouassi-Ba.
“You’ve got something for me?” asked Rotten Jean.
With a promising air, the girl lifted the napkin from the basket which the lackey had deposited on the table, and pulled a new-born baby out of it.
“There!” she said.
Rotten Jean scrutinised the baby with a dubious mien.
“Fat, well built,” he said, pursing his lips. “I could give you thirty livres for him.”
“Thirty livres Г she exclaimed, indignantly. “Do you hear that, Jacinthe? Thirty livres! Why, you haven’t even looked at him! You’re incapable of appraising the goods I’m bringing you.”
She tore off the swaddling that covered the baby and exhibited it naked in the glow of the flames.
“Have a good look at it.”
The little creature fidgeted vaguely.
“He’s the son of a Moor,” the maid whispered, “a blend of black and white. You know how beautiful mulattocs are when they grow up, with golden-coloured skin. One doesn’t often come by them. Later, when he’s six or seven, you'll be able to sell him as a page for a high price.”
She gave a malignant guffaw.
“Who knows? You might even be able to sell him back to his own mother.”
Rotten Jean’s eyes were gleaming with greed.
“All right,” he decided. “I’ll give you a hundred livres”
“Hundred and fifty.”
The infamous creature flung his arms up.
“You want to ruin me! Can you imagine how much it will cost me to bring up the brat, especially if I’ve got to keep him fat and strong?”
A sordid squabble followed. In order to haggle more effectively, with her fists on her hips, Bertille had put the baby down on the table, and everybody was crowding around and looking at it, a little fearfully. He was in no way different from any other new-born baby—his skin was perhaps just a trifle redder.
“And anyway, how do I know he’s really a mulatto?” said Rotten Jean, having run out of arguments.
”1 swear to you that his father was blacker than the bottom of a cooking- pot ”
Teeming Fanny gave a terrified cry:
“Oh! I’d have been stiff with fright. However could your mistress...”
“Don’t they say that a Moor need only look a woman in the eye to make her pregnant?” Polack inquired.
The servant gave a foul laugh.
“That’s what they say . . . and even what they all keep repeating from the Tuilcries to the Palais-Royal, ever since my mistress’s condition attracted attention. It even got round to the King’s own chamber. His Majesty said: ‘Oh really? Then it must have been a very deep look!’ And when he met my mistress in the ante-room, he turned his back on her. You can imagine how upset she was. When she’d been hoping all along that she might get him into her clutches! But the King has been furious ever since he’s suspected that a black-skinned man was treated by her on the same terms as himself. And, worse luck, neither the husband nor the lover—that cad of a Marquis de Vardes—is prepared to assume the paternity.
“However, my mistress has more than one trick up her sleeve. She’ll know how to put a stop to the tittle-tattle. To begin with, officially she won’t be confined till December.”
Bertille sat down, casting a triumphant glance around her.
“Pour me a drink, Polack, and I’ll tell you how it’s done. Now then, it’s simple, you’ll see. All you have to do is count on your fingers. The Moor left my mistress’s service in February. If she is confined in Decem¬ber, he can’t be the father, can he? So she’ll let out the hoops of her dress a little and complain: Oh! my dear, this child does fidget so. He paralyses me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to die King’s ball tonight. And then, in December, the confinement in great style, right in the Tuileries. That’ll be the moment, Rotten Jean, to sell us a brand-new day-old baby. They can toss for who’ll be the father. The Moor will be ruled out, that’s all that matters. It’s common knowledge that he’s been rowing on the King’s galleys ever since last February.”
“Why was he sent to the galleys?”
“For a nasty affair of witchcraft. He was the accomplice of a sorcerer who was burned on the Place de Grevc.”
Despite her self-control, Angelique could not help casting a glance towards Nicholas. But he was drinking and eating with indifference. She shrank farther back into the darkness. She would have liked to be
able to leave the room, yet at the same time she was dying to hear more.
“Yes, a nasty affair,” Bertille went on, dropping her voice, “that black devil was adept at casting spells and so he was sentenced. Actually, that’s why La Voisin said it was no go when my mistress went to see her to get rid of the child.”
Barcarole the dwarf jumped on to the table dose to the servant’s glass. “Whoo! I’ve seen the lady and you, too; I’ve seen you several times, my pretty frizzy carrot. I am the little imp who opens the door at my famous mistress’s, the fortune-teller.”
“Indeed, I would have recognised you by your insolence.”
“La Voisin would do nothing about it, because the child the Duchesse was bearing was the son of a Moor.”
“How did she know?”
“She knows everything. She’s a soothsayer.”
“Just looking at die palm of her hand, she told her the whole story at once,” the maid agreed, awe-stricken. “That it was a child of mixed blood, that the black man who begot it was familiar with the secrets of magic, and that she couldn’t kill it, because it would bring bad luck to her who was also a witch. My mistress was awfully upset: ‘What are we going to do, Bertille?’ she said to me. She flew into a terrible rage. But La Voisin didn’t give in. She said she’d help my mistress with the con¬finement at the proper time and that nobody would know anything about it. But that she couldn’t do more. And she asked for a lot of money. The thing happened last night at Fontainebleau, where the whole Court is for the summer. La Voisin came with one of her men, a magician, Lesage. My mistress was delivered in a small house that belongs to La Voisin’s daughter, quite close to the chateau. At dawn I took my mistress back, and in the early morning hours, dressed in all her finery and painted up to the eyes, she presented herself to the Queen, as is customary, since she’s in command of the Queen’s household. Now that’ll baffle no end of people who are expecting to see her confined any day now. But they’ll get nothing for their pains and gossip. Madame de Soissons is still expecting, she’ll be delivered in December of a perfectly white child, and it is possible that Monsieur de Soissons may even recognise it.”
A huge roar of laughter greeted the end of the story. Barcarole cut a caper, and said:
“I heard my mistress confide to Lesage that this Soissons business was as good as finding a treasure trove.”
“Oh, she’s a grasping one!” Bertille grumbled resentfully. “She demanded so much that all my mistress had left to give me was a little necklace to thank me for my help.”
The maid gazed at the dwarf reflectively.
“As for you/* she said suddenly, “I think you might make someone I know happy who is extremely highly placed/*
“I’ve always thought that I was cut out for great things/* Barcarole replied, pulling himself up on his bandy little legs.
“The Queen’s dwarf has died, and that has sorely grieved the Queen, for anything upsets her now that she’s pregnant. But her little midget woman is downright desperate. Nobody can console her. She needs a new companion . . . of her size/’
“Oh! I’m certain this noble lady will find me attractive/’ cried Bar¬carole, clinging to the maid’s petticoat. “Take me with you, pretty carrot, take me along to the Queen. Am I not good-looking and attractive?’*
“It’s true he is not bad-looking, is he, Jacinthe?’’ she said, amused.
“I am even handsome,’’ the puny freak affirmed. “If nature had en¬dowed me with a few more inches, I’d have been the most courted pimp. And when it comes to flirting with women, my tongue never stops wagging, believe me/’
“The midget woman speaks only Spanish.”
“I speak Spanish, German and Italian.”
“We simplymust take him with us,” cried Bertille, clapping her hands. “Its an excellent business and will get us noticed by Her Majesty. Let’s hurry. We’ve got to be back at Fontainebleau by morning, so that our absence won’t be noticed. Shall we put you into the little mulatto’s basket?”
“You are joking, Madame,” protested Barcarole, assuming a lordly air.
They all laughed and congratulated themselves. Barcarole with the Queen! . . . Barcarole with the Queen! . . .
Calembredaine merely raised his nose above his bowl.
“Don’t forget your pals when you become a lord,” he said. And he made a meaningful gesture of rolling a coin between his thumb and his forefinger.
“You can bleed me if I forget you!” the dwarf protested.
And bounding towards the comer where Angelique was standing, he made a deep court bow.
“Good-bye, oh most beautiful lady, good-bye, sister, Marquise of the Angels.”
The odd little fellow gazed up at her with his quick, strangely shrewd eyes. He added, aping the affected manners of a dandy:
“I do hope, my very dear, that we shall see each other again/ I make a rendezvous with you . . . at the Queen’s.”