Angelique - Part 6. The Inn of the Red Mask Chapter 1 - Read online

As ANGELIQUE was sneaking as quietly as possible into the courtyard of the inn of ‘The Brazen Cock’, Maitre Bourjus, armed with a ladle, emerged and hurled himself upon her.
She had been expecting something of the sort, and just had time to dodge behind the small well.
“Get out, beggar wench, trollop!” bawled the landlord of ‘The Brazen Cock*. “What sins have I committed to deserve this invasion by fugitives from the General Hospital, Bicctre ... or worse. I know what a shorn head like yours means. ... Go back to the Chatelet, where you come from—or else П1 have you sent back there. ... I don't know what prevented me from calling the watch last night. ... I am too kind- hearted. Ah! what would my sainted wife say if she saw her shop thus disgraced!”
Angelique, while dodging the ladle-thrusts, began to shout louder than he:
“And what would your sainted wife say of such a disgraceful husband . . . who starts drinking at the crack of dawn?”
The innkeeper stopped motionless. Angelique seized her advantage.
“And what would she say to her shop covered with dust and to a window-dressing of six-day-old chickens, shrivelled like parchment, and to her empty cellar, and to her unpolished tables and benches? . . .”
“Why, the devil !” he spluttered.
“And what would she say to a blaspheming husband? Poor Madame Bourjus looking down on such a mess from up there in Heaven! I can assure you that she doesn’t know how to hide her shame before the angels and all the saints in Paradise!”
Maitre Bourjus’s expression became ever more bewildered. He finally slumped down heavily on the lip of the well.
“Alas!” he moaned, “why did she have to die? She was such a sprightly housewife, always gay and resolute. I don’t know what keeps me from seeking oblivion at the bottom of this well!”
“I can tell you what it is: it’s the thought of her greeting you up there and saying: ‘Ah! So it’s you, Maitre Pierre . .
“Maitre Jacques, if you please.”
“ ‘So it’s you, Maitre Jacques! I can’t say I’m proud of you. I always
said you didn’t know how to manage on your own. Worse than a child . . . ! You ve certainly proved it! When I see what you have done with my shining, beautiful shop, so spick and span during my lifetime, when I see our beautiful shop-sign all rusty and creaking so loud on windy nights that it keeps the neighbours awake, and my pewter, my pie-dishes, my fish-kettles, all scratched because your fool of a nephew cleans them with ashes instead of using special soft chalk. . . . And when I see you letting yourself be cheated by all the rascally poultry-mongers and wine- merchants, who sell you de-combed cocks for capons and barrels of verjuice for fine wine, how do you expect me, who used to be a devout and honest woman, to make the most of Heaven? . . .* ”
Angelique stopped, out of breath. Maitre Bourjus seemed entranced. “It’s true,” he stammered, “it’s true—she’d talk just like that. She was
ft
so . . . so . . .
His heavy jowl quivered.
“It’s no good snivelling,” said Angelique roughly, “that isn’t the way to avoid the broomstick-thrashing that is waiting for you up there. The only. way is to get down to work, Maitre Bourjus. Barbe is a good girl, but slow by nature; you’ve got to tell her what to do. Your nephew seems to me a rare half-wit. And customers don’t walk into a shop where they are welcomed by a growling watch-dog.”
“Who growls?” asked Maitre Bourjus, assuming a threatening air.
“You do.”
“I do?”
“Yes. Your wife, who was so gay, would not have stood you for three minutes with that scowl you have, sitting, before your pot of wine.”
“And you think she would have tolerated an insolent, dirty wench of your kind in her yard?”
“I am not dirty,” Angelique protested, pulling herself up, “my clothes are clean, look at them.”
“Do you think she would have stood for letting your cut-purse breed of impudent ragamuffins help themselves in her kitchen? I caught them gorging themselves with bacon in my larder and I am sure that they were the ones who stole my watch.”
“Here’s your watch,” said Angelique, disdainfully pulling it out of her pocket. “I found it under the staircase. You must have lost it when you went up to bed last night, dead-drunk.”
She held out the watch to the innkeeper across the well, and added:
“You see I am not a thief either. I could have kept it.”
“Don’t let it fall into the well!” he said, frantically.
“I’d be glad to hand it to you, but I am afraid of your ladle.”
Muttering a curse, Maitre Bourjus flung his weapon on the ground. Angelique came closer to him, with a roguish air. She had the feeling that her night with the captain had taught her a few things about the art of winning over curmudgeons and standing up to brutes. It had given her an ease of manner which might be useful in the future.
She did not hurry to return the watch but examined it with much interest.
"It’s a beautiful watch/*
The innkeeper's face lit up again.
“Isn't it? I bought it from a pedlar from thejura, those highlanders who spend the winter in Paris. They have real treasures in their pockets, but, mind you, they won't show them to everybody, not even to princes— they want to know whom they are dealing with/'
“They prefer to deal with real business men rather than with gullible fools . . . especially for these mechanical gadgets which are genuine works of art."
“That's just it: genuine works of art," the innkeeper repeated, as his silver watch-case gleamed in the pale sunshine. He put it back into his pocket, fastened the numerous chains and charms to his button-holes, and again cast a suspicious glance at Angelique.
“I really wonder how this watch could have dropped out of my pocket, as you insinuate. And I also wonder where you get that ladylike talk, when only the other night you were rattling off thieves’ cant to make one’s hair stand on end. I've a feeling you are trying to bamboozle me like the strumpet you are."
Angelique remained unruffled.
“It’s not easy talking to a man like you, Maitre Jacques," she said in a tone of gentle reproach, “you know women too well."
The innkeeper crossed his short arms over his paunch and looked fierce.
“I know them and they can't pull the wool over my eyes."
He allowed a heavy silence to settle, his eyes fixed on the guilty woman, who hung her head.
“Well, then?" he said, peremptorily.
Angelique, who was taller than he, thought he was very funny, round as a barrel, with his cap over one ear, and Iris frozen gaze. However, she said humbly:
“I'll do whatever you tell me, Maitre Bourjus. If you turn me put with my two babies, I shall go. But I don't know where to go, nor where to take my little ones to shelter them from the cold and rain. Do you think your wife would have turned us out? I am staying in Barbe's room. I am not disturbing you. 1 have my own firewood and food. The boys and the
girl who arc with me could render you small services: carry water, scrub floors. The babies will remain in the attic. ...” .
“And why should they stay up in the attic?” bawled the innkeeper. “Children don’t belong in a pigeon-coop, but in the kitchen, by the hearth, where they can keep warm and toddle around. These beggar- wenches are all the same. Less heart than wild beasts! You get those nippers down into the kitchen, if you don’t want me to get cross. Besides which, you’re likely to start a fire there any moment, with those wooden tiles up there! . . .”
Angflique mounted, with elfin nimbleness, the seven storeys that led to Barbc’s attic. On a landing, she passed a furtive figure whom she re¬cognised as the landlord’s nephew. The kitchen-boy flattened himself against the wall and cast a resentful glance at her. She smiled at him, determined to make friends in this house where she was anxious to resume a respectable life.
“Good morning, little one.”
“Little?” he growled, giving a start. “I’d like to point out that I could comfortably eat patties off the top of your head. I was sixteen last Michaelmas.”
“Oh! excuse me, Monsieur! What a shocking mistake on my part! Would your gallantry go so far as to forgive me?”
The youngster, who was visibly unaccustomed to such talk, shrugged awkwardly and stammered:
“Might be.”
“You arc too kind. I am touched. And would your good upbringing likewise go so far as not to talk so familiarly to a lady of quality ?”
The poor apprentice cook seemed on the rack. He had rather fine black eyes in his thin, white face. His self-assurance was completely gone. Angelique, who had started to climb the stairs again, stopped.
“With that accent of yours, you’re bound to be a southerner, aren’t you?”
“Yes . . . M’dame . . . I am from Toulouse.”
“Toulouse!” she cried. “Oh! a brother countryman!”
And she jumped at his neck and kissed him.
“Toulouse!” she repeated.
The kitchen-boy was red as a tomato. Angelique said a few words to him in the langue d’oc, and David’s excitement knew no bounds “You, too, come from there?”
“Almost.”
She was ludicrously happy about this encounter. What a Contrast! To have been one of the great ladies of Toulouse and to have come down to hugging a kitchen-boy because he had that sunny accent on his tongue, with a whiff of garlic and flowers!
In the garret she found Rosine scratching her head while looking with cow-like eyes at Florimond and Cantor as they played. Barbe was down¬stairs. The boys had gone ‘for a stroll*. In underworld slang, that meant that they had gone begging for alms.
“I don’t want them to go begging,” said Angelique categorically.
“You don’t want them to steal, you don’t want them to beg. What do you want them to do, then?”
“I want them to work.”
“But that is work!” protested the girl.
“No. Now rouse yourself! Help me take the children down to the kitchen. You'll look after them and help Barbe.”
She was happy to leave the two babies in this vast, warm, fragrant domain. The fire was blazing in the hearth with a new ardour.
‘Never again shall they be cold, or hungry!' Angelique said to herself again. ‘Upon my word, I couldn't have taken them to a better place than a cook-shop!’
Florimond seemed stiffly awkward in his little grey-brown muslin frock, his yellow serge top and green serge apron. A bonnet, also of green serge, covered his head. These colours made his frail little face look even more sickly. She felt his forehead and put her lips in the hollow of his little hand to see if he was feverish. He seemed well enough, though a little fretful and grumpy. As for Cantor, since morning he hadn't stopped trying to undo the swaddling-clothes into which Rosine had wrapped him. In the basket into which he had been put he stood up, naked as a little Cupid, and tried to get out to catch the flames.
“The poor child hasn't been raised properly,” remarked Barbe with concern. “Has he even had his arms and legs swaddled and bound, as they should be? He will never hold himself straight and may even get hump-backed.”
“At the moment, he seems rather sturdy for a nine-months-old,” said Angelique, who was admiring the plump thighs of her younger child.
But Barbe was not reassured. Cantor’s freedom of movement worried her.
“As soon as I have a free moment, I’ll cut some strips of linen to bind him. But it is out of the question this morning. Maitre Bourjus seems in a frenzy. Imagine, Madame, he has ordered me to scrub the floors, polish the tables, and even run down to the Temple to buy soft chalk in order to give his pewter a shine. I’m at my wits’end. . . .”
After she had got all her family settled, Angelique set out gaily for the Pont-Neuf.
The flower-woman did not recognise her. Angelique had to remind her of the day when she had helped her make up bouquets and been com¬plimented by her.
“Well! How do you expect me to recognise you!” the woman ex¬claimed. “That day you had hair on your head and no shoes on your feet. Today you have shoes and no hair. Still, your fingers haven’t changed, I hope? . . . Come along and sit down with us. There is no lack of work, with All Saints’ Day in the offing. There’ll be flowers wanted soon for the graveyards and churches, to say nothing of the pictures of the departed.”
Angelique sat down under the red parasol and set about her task con-scientiously and skilfully.
But the Pont-Neuf was very quiet that day. She did not even hear Big Matthieu’s roaring voice, for he had moved his wheeled platform and his band to the fair-ground of Saint-Germain. The Pont-Neuf was in eclipse. There were fewer strollers, fewer mountebanks, fewer beggars. Angelique was glad of it.
The flower-sellers were talking, with copious lamentations, of the battle of the Fair of Saint-Germain. Apparently, the corpses of this particularly bloody brawl were still being counted. But, for once, the police had been equal to their task. Since that famous evening, one could see flocks of beggars led by the constables in charge of the poor on their way to the General Hospital, or chain-gangs of convicts bound for the galleys. As for executions, each new day dawned on two or three hanged men on the Place de Greve.
There followed a fervent discussion of the finery the ladies of the Pont- Neuf—flower and orange sellers—would wear when, together with the fish-wives of the central market, they would go to present their com¬pliments, as Paris stall-keepers, to the young Queen in confinement and to Monsieur le Dauphin.
“In the meantime,” said Angflique’s employer, “there’s something else worrying me. Where will our guild go and feast, to celebrate worthily the day of Saint-Valbonne? The innkeeper of the ‘Bons-Enfants*, last year, swindled us like a highway robber. I’ll never put another sou into his till.”
Ang6lique joined in the conversation, to which she had listened silendy.
“I know of an excellent eating-house in the rue de la Vallle-de-Misere. The prices are moderate and they serve succulent and novel dishes.”
She quickly enumerated specialities of the table of Gay Learning, which she had helped prepare in the old days:
“Crayfish-patties, turkeys stuffed with fennel, braised lamb tripe, not to mention almond-paste with pistachio, rissoles, aniseed wafers. But more¬over, ladies, you will eat in that restaurant something that even His Majesty Louis XIV has never seen on his table: small, oven-hot, feather- light brioches with a dab of chilled liver-paste inside. A real marvel!” “Humph! wench, you make our mouths water/’ cried the flower- sellers, their faces already flushed with gluttony. “And where may that be?” “At ‘The Brazen Cock’, the last cook-shop in the rue de la Vall6e-de- Misere as you go towards the Quai des Tanneurs.”
“Why, I don't think the fare's so good there. My man, who works at the Great Butcher’s shop, sometimes goes and has a snack there, and he says it’s a gloomy, unprepossessing place.” .
“You are ill-informed, my dear. Maitre Bourjus, the landlord, has with him his nephew, only just up from Toulouse, who is a first-rate cook and knows all sorts of southern dishes. There's also a monkey at ‘The Brazen Cock’ which makes no end of grimaces. And a hurdy-gurdy player who knows all the songs of the Pont-Neuf. In short, there’s everything one's heart desires to enjoy oneself in good company.”
“Well, my girl, you seem to have an even greater gift for ‘barking’ than for making bouquets! I’ll go with you to that eating-house.”
“Oh no! Not today. The cook from Toulouse has gone down to the country to pick cabbages personally for a fried ham stew which is his own secret. But tomorrow night we’ll be expecting you, you and two ladies of your guild, to discuss the menu that would suit you.”
“And what are you doing in that cook-shop?”
“I am a relative of Maitre Bourjus,” declared Angelique. “My husband was a small pastry-cook. He had not passed his examination yet to become a master cook, when he died of the plague last winter. He left me in dire poverty, for we had contracted big debts with the apothecary for his illness.”
“Don’t we know all about apothecaries' bills!” sighed the good women, sympathetically, raising their eyes to the sky.
“Maitre Bourjus took pity on me and I help him in his trade. But as customers are rare I try to make a little extra money.”
“What's your name, dearie?”
“Angelique.”
Thereupon she rose and said she was going, in order to inform the inn-keeper at once of their impending visit.
While she walked quickly towards the rue de la Vallee-de-Misere, she marvelled at the number of lies she had told in a single morning. She did not try to understand why the idea had come over her to recruit customers for Maitre Bourjus. Had she wanted to show her gratitude to the inn¬keeper who in the end had not driven her out? Was she hoping to get a reward from him? She did not ask herself any questions. She drifted with the current which drove her to do now one thing, now another. She was impelled by the sharpened instinct of a mother defending her little ones.
From one lie to another, from one idea to another, from one bold stroke to another, she would succeed in saving herself, in saving her children.