Angelique - Part 6. The Inn of the Red Mask Chapter 2 - Read online

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Angelique rose at the first light of dawn and roused Barbe, Rosine and the children.
“Everybody up! Don’t forget that the flower ladies are coming to see us about the guild banquet. We must put up a good show.”
Flipot grumbled.
“Why is it always we who do the work?” he asked. “Why is that sluggard David still snoring and not going down to the kitchens till the fire is lit, the pot on the boil and the whole room swept? You ought to shake him up, Marquise!”
“Look here, boys, I am no longer the Marquise of the Angels and you aren’t beggars any more. For the moment, we are servants—maids and errand-boys. And soon we’ll be respectable citizens.”
“F !” said Flipot. “I don’t like respectable citizens. They are people
whose purses you cut and whose coats you snatch. I don’t want to become a respectable citizen.”
“And what are we supposed to call you if you aren’t the Marquise of the Angels any more?” Linot wanted to know.
“Just call me Madame.”
“Well, aren’t we grand!” mocked Flipot.
Angelique boxed his ear so resoundingly that he realised at once that she meant it. She checked the two boys’ appearance. They were dressed in the shabby clothes sent by the Duchesse de Soissons, patched and ugly, but clean and neat. Moreover, they had stout nailed boots, in which they walked awkwardly but which would protect them against the cold all winter.
“Flipot, you’ll accompany me to the market with David. Linot, you’ll do as Barbe tells you. You 11 go and fetch water and firewood. Rosine will mind the babies and the spits in the kitchen.”
Flipot sighed very sadly :
“Not much fun, this new job. As beggars and cut-purses you lead a high-class life. One day, you have plenty of money: you cat till you burst and drink enough to drown in. Another day, you have nothing. So, in order not to be hungry, you lie down in a corner and sleep as long as you like. Whereas here it’s drudgery all the time and filling your belly with stew.”
“If you want to go back to the Great Coesrc, I won’t stop you.”
“Oh no! Anyway, we haven’t the right any more. We’d be knifed. Phut!” ‘
Angelique sighed.
“What you miss is adventure, poor little lads. I can understand. But then, there’s the gibbet at the end of the road. Whereas on this road we’ll be less rich perhaps, but we’ll become persons worthy of respect. Now off with you!”
The little squad clattered down the stairs. On one of the landings Angelique stopped, drummed on the door of young David’s room and finally walked in.
“Get up, apprentice!”
The youngster popped a dumbfounded face out of the sheets.
“Up, up, David Chaillou!” Angelique repeated gaily. “Don’t forget that from now on you are a famous cook, whose recipes all Paris will be clamouring for.”
Maitre Bourjus, jostled, groaning, excited despite himself, and gal¬vanised by Angelique’s authority, consented to handing her a fairly well- lined purse.
“If you are afraid I might rob you, you can follow me to the market,” she told him. “But you’d be better advised to stay here and prepare the capons, turkeys, ducks and joints. You must realise that the ladies who’ll be coming here want to find a setting that inspires confidence. An empty ‘show-case’ or a display of dusty fowl, a dark room reeking of stale tobacco, an air of poverty or straitened circumstances, won’t tempt people who are out for a feast. Even if I promised them an exceptional treat, they wouldn’t believe me.” ,
“But what are you going to buy this morning, since these people haven’t decided on their choice yet?”
“I’m going to buy the decor.”
“The . . . what?”
“Everything that’s needed to make your eating-house look attractive: rabbits, fish, cold meat, fruit, fine vegetables.”
“But I’m not a general caterer!” lamented the burly man. “I deal in roast viands. Do you want to get the guilds of master cooks and pastry¬cooks on my neck?”
“What can they possibly do to you?”
“Women never have the least notion of serious questions,” groaned Maitre Bourjus, flinging up his short arms. “The jurymen of those guilds can sue me, haul me to court. In short, you’re going to ruin me!” “You’re ruined anyway,” Angelique told him bluntly. “So you’ve nothing to lose by trying something else and shaking yourself out of your torpor. Get started on your fowl and then take a look round the port of the Greve. I heard the wine-crier announce a fresh arrival of good vats from Burgundy and Champagne.”
In the Place du Pilori, Angelique did her shopping, trying hard not to get too badly cheated. David complicated things by constantly repeating : “This is much too fine! This is much too expensive! What’s my uncle going to say? . . .”
“Dunderhead!” she finally threw at him. “Aren’t you ashamed, you, a lad of the south, to look at things so pettily, like a cold-hearted miser! Don’t tell me you are from Toulouse.”
“But I am!” protested the apprentice. “My father was Monsieur Chaillou. Doesn’t that name mean anything to you?”
“No. What exactly did your father do?”
The lanky David seemed disappointed, like a child deprived of his sweet.
“But you know, surely! The big grocer, in the Place de la Garonne! The only one who sold exotic herbs to enhance the fragrance of dishes!” ‘In those days I didn’t do the shopping myself,’ Angelique thought.
“He brought back all sorts of unknown things from his voyages, for he had been a cook on the King’s vessels,” David went on. “You know ... he was the one who wanted to start selling chocolate in Toulouse.” Angelique made an effort to extract from her memory an incident which the word chocolate conjured up in her mind. Yes, there had been talk of it in the drawing-rooms. The protest of a Toulousian lady came back to her. She said:
“Chocolate? . . . But that’s what Indians drink!”
David seemed much upset, for Angelique’s opinion had already assumed outstanding importance in his eyes. He moved closer to her and said that he would tell her a secret which he had never yet entrusted to anyone, not even to his uncle.
He assured her that his father, a great traveller in his young days, had tasted the chocolate of various foreign countries where it was manu¬factured from beans imported from Mexico. Thus he had been able to convince himself, in Spain, Italy and even in Poland, of the excellence of this new product which had a pleasant taste and remarkable medicinal qualities.
Once David had launched out on this subject, he seemed to be in-exhaustible. In his eagerness to retain the interest of the lady of his thoughts, he began to expound, in strident tones, all that he knew about the question.
“Pshaw!’’ said Angelique, who was listening with only one ear, “I have never tasted this stuff and I don’t feel tempted to. They say that the Queen is crazy about it. But the whole Court is embarrassed by this peculiar fancy and makes fun of her."
“That’s because the people at Court aren’t used to chocolate," argued the apprentice cook. “My father thought so, too, and he obtained letters patent from the King to make this new product known. But alas, he died, and as my mother was already dead I’m the only one left to make use of this patent. I don’t know how to go about it. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it to my uncle. I am afraid he might make fun of me and my father. He always says that my father was crazy."
“You have those letters patent?" Angelique asked suddenly.
David almost fainted under die radiance of those green eyes.
“You have the patent?" Angelique repeated.
“Yes,” he breathed.
“What date does it bear?"
“28th May 1659, and the authorisation is valid for twenty-nine years."
“This means that for twenty-nine years you alone are authorised to manufacture and market this exotic product?"
“Well, yes. . . ."
“We’d have to find out whether chocolate is dangerous,” murmured Angelique musingly, “and if the public would take a fancy to it. Have you tried it yourself?"
“Yes."
“What do you think of it?"
“Well," said David, “I find it rather sickly sweet. But adding a little pepper or pimento gives it a stronger flavour. Still, I personally prefer a good glass of wine any time," he added with a swaggering air.
“Mind the water!’’ cried a voice above them.
They had only just time to jump aside to avoid a foul-smelling shower. Angelique gripped the youngster’s arm. She felt him tremble.
“I wanted to tell you,” he stammered hurriedly, “I have never seen a . . . a woman as beautiful as you.”
“Of course you have, my poor boy/* she said, exasperated. “You need but look around instead of biting your finger-nails and shuffling along like a dying fly. Meanwhile, if you want to please me, tell me about that chocolate of yours instead of paying me superfluous compliments.”
Then, seeing his pitiful expression, she tried to comfort him. She told herself that she’d be unwise to snub him. He might turn out to have possibilities, with that patent of his. She said laughingly:
“I am no longer, alas, a girl of fifteen, my lad. Look, I am old. I have grey hair already.”
From under her bonnet she pulled the strand of hair that had so strangely turned grey during the terrifying night at the Faubourg Saint-Denis.
“Where is Flipot?” Angclique went on, looking around. “Is that little scamp playing truant by any chance?”
She was a little worried, fearing that Flipot, stimulated by the dense crowd, might again put into practice the teachings of Jactance the cut- purse.
“You oughtn’t to pay any attention to that rascal,” said David, in a tone of intense jealousy. “I saw him just now exchanging a sign with a beggar, covered with sores, who was asking for alms before the church. Then he made off . . . with the basket on his back. My uncle will fly into such a temper!”
“You always see the black side of things, my poor David.”
“I never have any luck!”
“Let’s turn back, we’ll find that little scamp.”
But the urchin was already reappearing at a rim. Angeliquc liked the look of him, with his bright sparrow eyes, his red nose, his long, lank hair under his big battered hat. She was getting attached to him as well as to young Linot, whom she had twice wrested from Rotten Jean’s claws.
“Guess what, Marquise of the Angels!” panted Flipot, forgetting her orders in his excitement. “Do you know who is our new Great Cocsre ? Wood-Bottom, yes, our Wood-Bottom of the Tower of Nesle!”
He dropped his voice and added in a frightened murmur:
“They said to me: ‘Beware, kids, hiding as you are in the petticoats of a traitress !* ”
Angelique felt her blood turn to ice.
“Do you think they know that it was I who killed Squat Rolin?”
“They didn’t say anything. And yet . . . there was Black-^rcad talk¬ing of how you went to fetch the policemen against the gipsies.”
“Who was there?”
“Black-Bread, Lightfoot, three old women of our gang and two ‘epileptics* of another.**
The young woman and the child had been exchanging these words in thieves* cant which David could not understand, but he readily recognised the terrifying intonations. He was both perturbed and awed to find his new flame so uncannily familiar with that ubiquitous and elusive scum that played such an important part in the life of Paris.
Angelique did not speak the whole way back, but as soon as she had crossed the threshold of the inn she resolutely tossed aside her appre-hensions.
‘It may well be, my girl,* she told herself, ‘that you will wake up one fine morning with a slit throat, floating in the Seine. It's a risk you’ve been running for a long while. When the princes aren’t after you, the beggars are. Nevermind! You’ve got to fight, even if it’s your last living day. You can’t get out of difficulties without tackling them resolutely and doing your share. . . . Wasn’t it the steward Mobiles who said that to me a long time ago? . . .’
“Come, children!** she cried aloud. “Those ladies of the florists* guild must melt like butter in the sun when they step over this threshold.**
The ladies were charmed indeed when, at dusk, they walked down the three steps leading to ‘The Brazen Cock*. Not only was the air permeated with a delicious smell of scones, but the appearance of the room was both appetising and original.
The big fire in the hearth crackled and spread its golden light. With the aid of some candles placed on the neighbouring tables, it shone on the pewter plate and utensils, artistically set out on the sideboards: pets, pitchers, fish-kettles, pic-dishes. Moreover, Angelique had requisitioned the few pieces of silver-plate Maitre Bourjus kept jealously locked up in his coffers, two ewers, a vinegar-cruet, two egg-cups, two rinsing bowls. The latter were richly decorated with fruit—grapes and pears—and set out on the tables with beautiful decanters of red and white wine which sparkled with ruby and gold glints in the firelight. These were the details that most surprised the flower-sellers.
Having often been called upon to bring their wares to the princely homes of the great, they found the arrangement of the silver, fruit and wine vaguely reminiscent of the parties given by the nobility, and they felt secretly flattered.
As shrewd business women, they did not want to display their satis¬faction too openly and cast critical glances at the hares and hams hanging from the rafters, sniffed distrustfully at the dishes of pork-butchery, cold meat and fish covered with green sauce, prodded the poultry with ex¬perienced fingers. The doyenne of the guild, who was called Merc Maijolaine, at last found some fault with this perfect picture.
“It’s lacking flowers,” she said. “This calf's head would look quite different with two carnations in its nostrils and a peony between its ears.” “Madame, we did not attempt to compete, by means of even a spray of parsley, with the skill and gracefulness which you display in this realm where you reign supreme,” Maitre Bourjus replied very gallantly.
The three sprightly ladies sat down before the fire and a jug of the best wine was brought up from the cellar. The charming Linot, seated on the hearth-stone, turned the handle of his hurdy-gurdy, while Florimond played with Piccolo.
The menu for the festive meal was settled in the most cordial atmos¬phere, and an agreement was quickly reached.
“There, now!” moaned the innkeeper, when he had eventually ushered the flower-women to the door with many bows. “What are we going to do with all this stuff on the tables? The artisans and workmen will be coming for their beef-salad. They won’t eat these delicacies, let alone pay for them. Why this needless expense?”
“You surprise me, Maitre Jacques,” protested Angelique. “I thought you were more of a business man. This needless expense has enabled you to hook an order which will bring you in ten times what you spent today. Without counting all the extras these ladies may order once the feast really gets going. We’ll make them sing and dance, and the passers-by in the street will want to join in the fun when they see an eating-house where people are having such a good time.”
Although Maitre Bourjus did not want to show it, he was inclined to share Angelique’s sanguine expectations. The bustling activity he dis¬played in the preparations for the feast of Saint-Valbonne made him forget his penchant for the bottle. Bouncing on his short legs, he rediscovered his culinary skill and his commanding voice for use on merchants, as well as the natural, unctuous affability of all self-respecting innkeepers. Angelique having eventually persuaded him that a well-to-do appearance was necessary to the success of his enterprise, he had even ordered a complete kitchen-boy’s outfit for his nephew and another for Flipot. Enormous cooks* caps, jackets, trousers, aprons, together with tablecloths and napkins, were sent to the laundresses and came back stiff with starch and white as snow.
On the morning of the great day, Maitre Bourjus went up to Angelique* smiling and rubbing his hands.
“My dear,” he said, beaming with kindness, “it is a fact that you have brought back to my house the gaiety and liveliness with which my wife used to fill it. And this has given me an idea. Come with me for a moment.”
Encouraging her with a wink of connivance, he beckoned her to follow him. She climbed up the winding stairs behind him. On the first landing they stopped. As Angelique entered Maitre Bourjus’s bedroom, a fear came over her which had not occurred to her before. Was the innkeeper by any chance harbouring the plan of asking her, who was so auspiciously beginning to replace his wife, to extend her services in this ticklish role yet further?
The sly smile on his face, as he closed the door and walked over to the wardrobe, was not of the kind to reassure her. In a sudden panic Angflique wondered how she was going to face this appalling situation.
Would she have to give up her beautiful projects, leave this comfortable roof, set out once more with her two children and her miserable little family? Yield? Her cheeks burned at the thought of it, and with anxious eyes she looked around the shopkeeper s room with its big bed behind green serge curtains, its two small arm-chairs, its walnut cabinet contain¬ing a wash-basin and a silver ewer.
Above the fire-place there were two pictures representing scenes of the Passion and, placed on racks, the weapons which were the pride of every craftsman and burgher: two small rifles, a musket, an arquebus, a pike and a sword with silver hilt and guard.
Angelique heard him pant and struggle noisily in the small adjacent closet.
He emerged from it, pushing a vast chest of blackened wood before him.
“Give me a hand, girl.”
She helped him pull the trunk into the middle of the room. Maitre Bourjus wiped his brow.
“There,” he said, “Tve been thinking—anyway, it’s you who’ve kept saying that for this banquet we should look as resplendent as Swiss guards, all of us. David, the two kitchen-boys, and myself, we’ll all be on parade. I shall put on my brown silk hose. But you, poor girl, won’t do us proud despite your pretty face. So I’ve been thinking . . .”
He broke off, hesitated, then opened the trunk. In it, carefully stored and scented with a bit of lavender, were Madame Bourjus’s petticoats, her bodices, bonnets, neckerchiefs, her handsome black cloth hood with satin squares.
“She was a little plumper than you,” said the innkeeper in a muffled voice, “but with some pins here and there . . .’'
He wiped away a tear with one finger, and growled:
“Don’t stand there staring at me! Make your choice.”
Angelique lifted out the clothes. They were modest garments of simple material, but their velvet trimmings, brightly-coloured linings and fine linen showed that the landlady of ‘The Brazen Cock’ had, towards the end of her life, been one of the most well-to-do merchant’s wives in the district. She had even owned a little red velvet muff with a gold floral pattern, which Angelique tried on her wrist with undisguised pleasure.
“A folly!” grunted Maitre Bourjus with an indulgent smile. “She had seen it in the Palace arcades and couldn’t stop talking about it. I would tell her: ‘Amandine, what will you do with a muff like that? It is more suited to some noble lady of the Marais district who wants to play the coquette in the Tuilcries gardens or on the Cours-la-Reine on a sumiy winter day.'—‘All right,’ she’d answer, ‘so I’ll go and play the coquette in the Tuilcries or on the Cours-la-Reine.’ And that made me go wild! I made her a present of it last Christmas. How delighted she was! . . . Who’d have thought that a few days later . . . she’d ... be dead ”
Angelique checked her emotion.
“I am sure she is happy up there in Heaven to see how kind and generous you are. I won’t wear this muff, for it’s a hundred times too beautiful for me. But I gladly accept your gift, Maitre Bourjus. I shall have a look to see what suits me. Could you send Barbe up to me so that she can help me to make the alterations?”
She made a note, as the first step towards her self-appointed goal, that she was standing there before a looking-glass with a lady’s-maid at her feet. With her mouth full of pins, Barbe too seemed to feel this, for she was multiplying her ‘Madames’ with evident satisfaction.
‘And to think that my entire fortune consists of the few sous the flower- women of the Pont-Neuf gave me!’ Angelique thought, amused.
She had chosen a green serge bodice and petticoat trimmed with black satin. An apron of black satin with tiny gold flowers completed her outfit as a well-to-do shopkeeper’s wife. Madame Bourjus’s ample bosom did not make it possible to adjust the bodice exactly to Angelique’s small, firm, high breasts. A pink neckerchief with green embroideries concealed the somewhat gaping neck-line.
In a small bag Angelique found the dead landlady’s simple jewels: three gold rings set with cornelians and turquoises, two crosses, ear-rings, as well as eight beautiful rosaries, one of which was of black jet beads and the others of crystal-glass.
Angelique went downstairs again, wearing under the starched bonnet which concealed her shorn hair the agate-and-pearl ear-rings, and, round her neck, a little gold cross held by a black velvet ribbon. The good inn¬keeper did not hide his joy at seeing how attractive she looked.
“By Saint Nicholas, you look just like the daughter we had always hoped for and never had! We dreamed of her sometimes. She’d be fifteen, sixteen years old now, we’d say. She’d be dressed like this or like that. . . . She’d come and go in our shop, gaily laughing with the customers. . . .”
“It’s kind of you, Maitre Jacques, to pay me such lovely compliments. Alas! I am no longer fifteen or even sixteen ... I am the mother of a family. . . .”
“I don’t know what you are,” he said, much moved, shaking his big, ruddy face. “You don’t seem quite real. Ever since you’ve come swirling into my house, the times don’t seem the same any more. I am not so sure you won’t vanish one day the way you’ve come ... It seems so far away now, that evening when you came out of the night with your hair hanging on your shoulders and saying to me: ‘Haven’t you a maid called Barbe?’ It rang in my skull like the peal of a bell. . . . Perhaps, it meant that you would have a role to play here.”
‘I should hope so,’ Angelique thought. But she protested, in an affectionately scolding voice:
“You were drunk, that’s why you heard bells ringing in your head Г'
The banquet of the guild of Saint-Valbonne was a success. Three baskets of flowers had served for table decorations. Maitre Bourjus and Flipot, in sparkling array, did the honours of the house and served the dishes. Rosine helped Barbe in the kitchen. Angelique went from one to the other, watched over the spits and cauldrons, gaily answered the diners’ cordial greetings, and encouraged David’s talents with alternating compliments and reproaches, for he had been promoted to master cook in southern specialities for the occasion. Actually, she had not compromised herself by representing him as a talented master of the profession. He knew a great many things, and his idleness alone, and perhaps a lack of opportunities, had so far prevented him from showing his capacities. Subjugated by Angelique’s high spirits, overjoyed by her approval, guided by her, he surpassed himself. He was given an ovation when she dragged him, blush¬ing crimson, into the room. The ladies, enlivened by the good wine, found he had fme eyes, asked him indiscreet and naughty questions, kissed, patted and tickled him. . . .
Linot picked up his hurdy-gurdy and there followed songs, with raised glasses, then roars of laughter when Piccolo did his turn, mercilessly aping the oddities of Mere Marjolaine and her companions.
A party of musketeers, strolling along the rue de la Vallee-de-Misere on the look-out for amusement, heard the outburst of gay, feminine voices and came tearing into the inn of ‘The Brazen Cock*, clamouring for ‘roasts and pints’.
The evening then took a turn which would definitely have been frowned upon by Saint-Valbonne, if that kindly Provencal saint, who loved sunshine and gaiety, had not been naturally indulgent towards the inevitable disorder produced by gatherings of flower-sellers and gallant soldiers.
The Angelus sounded from the steeple of the church of Sainte- Opportune. With flushed cheeks, drooping eyelids, her arms aching from carrying jugs and dishes, her lips burning from a few bold, moustachioed kisses, Angelique revived when she saw Bourjus counting his gold pieces with circumspection.
She cried:
“Did we work well, Maitre Jacques?”
“We certainly did, my girl. It’s a long while since my shop saw such revels! And those gentlemen didn’t prove such bad payers, as I feared from their plumes and rapiers.”
“Do you think they’ll send their friends to us?”
“That’s quite possible.”
“Now this is what I propose,” declared Angelique. “I continue to help you with all my children: Rosine, Linot, Flipot, and the monkey. And you’ll give me a quarter of your profits!”
The innkeeper frowned.
“We’ll draw up a contract before a notary,” she continued, “but we’ll keep it secret. You don’t have to tell your neighbours about your affairs. Tell them that I am a young relative whom you have taken in, and that we are working as a family. You’ll see, Maitre Jacques, I have a feeling that we are going to do a roaring trade. The whole district will be boast¬ing of your business skill, and people will envy you. Mere Marjolaine spoke to me tonight of the banquet of the orange-sellers’ guild of the Pont-Neuf, which falls on Saint-Fiacre’s Day. Believe n\e, you have a real interest in keeping us here. Now, here’s what you owe me for the present.”
She quickly counted out the share due to her and went away, leaving the good man perplexed but convinced that he was a very bold business man.
Angflique walked out into the yard to breathe the fresh morning air. She clasped the gold pieces tightly in her hand against her chest. These gold pieces were the key to freedom. Maitre Bourjus had certainly not been robbed by the deal. Angelique reckoned that, since her little troupe would have the advantage of feeding on the leavings of the banquets, her earnings would eventually constitute a fortune. It would then be time to try and launch out into something else. For example, why not work the patent which David Chaillou claimed he held and which concerned the manufacture of an exotic drink called chocolate? The simple people would probably not take much fancy to that drink, but the fops and precieuses, always avid for novelties and oddities, might possibly stl the fashion for it.
Angllique imagined the carriages of noble ladies and beribboned lords stopping in the rue de la Vallee-de-Misere.
She shook her head to dispel these day-dreams. One must not look too far, or too high. Life was still precarious, unstable. First of all, she must save up, save up like an ant. Wealth is the key to freedom, the right not to die, not to see your children die, the right to see them smile. ‘If my pos¬sessions had not been put under seal,* the young woman told herself, Td surely have been able to save Joffrey/ She shook her head again. She must no longer think of that. For whenever she did, a longing for death would creep into her veins and she was gripped by a desire to sleep for ever.
She would never again think of it. She had other things to do. She had to save Florimond and Cantor. She would save up, save up! . . . She would lock up her gold in the wooden casket, that precious relic of sordid times where she had already placed the dagger of Rodogone the Egyptian. Next to the now useless weapon, she would pile up gold, the weapon of power.
Angelique raised her eyes towards the wet sky, where the golden glints of dawn were paling, making room for a weighty, leaden grey. The brandy-seller was crying his wares in the street. A beggar, at the entrance to the courtyard, chanted his plaintive lay. Gazing at him, she recognised Black-Bread. Black-Bread, with all his rags, all his sores, all his shells of the eternal pilgrim of poverty.
Gripped by fear, she ran to fetch a chunk of bread and a bowl of soup and brought them to him. The tramp stared at her fiercely from under his bushy white eyebrows.