Angelique - Part 6. The Inn of the Red Mask Chapter 5 - Read online

ANGELIQUE PUT DOWN HER PEN on the writing-desk and re-read with satisfaction the account she had drawn up.
She had just returned from ‘The Red Mask', where she had witnessed the arrival of a noisy party of young noblemen whose Genoa-point lace collars and wide ‘canons’ spoke well of their solvency. They were masked, which was further proof of their high rank. Certain high-placed personages at Court did indeed prefer to remain incognito when visiting the taverns.
As would frequently happen nowadays, the young woman had left it to Maitre Bourjus, David and the scullions to receive these high-class customers. Now that the inn’s reputation was established and that David’s hand had become practised in concocting its culinary specialities, Angelique did less of the work herself, and devoted more of her time to purchasing and to the financial management of the establishment.
It was the close of the year 1664. The situation had gradually progressed to a state of affairs which would have made the whole rue de la Vallee-de-
Miscre burst with laughter had one predicted it three years earlier. Without as yet having bought up Maitre Bougus’s house, which was her secret intention, Angelique had in fact become its hostess. The innkeeper remained its owner, but she paid all the expenses and her share in the profits had increased in proportion. In the end, Maitre Bourjus was the one who received the smaller share. He was quite satisfied to be rid of worries and to live opulently in his own inn, while putting aside a little nest-egg for his old age. Angelique was free to amass all die money she liked. All that Maitre Bourjus asked was to stay under her wing, and to feel himself surrounded by her far-sighted and peremptory affection. Speaking of her, he would sometimes say ‘my daughter* with so much conviction that many customers of ‘The Red Mask* did not doubt their relationship. Inclined to melancholy and always convinced that his end was near, he would tell all and sundry that his will, without disregarding his nephew’s interests, would gready benefit Angelique. David, anyway, could not take offence at his uncle’s decisions in favour of a woman who continued to dazzle him completely.
Angelique shook the sand off the sheet of paper on which she had drawn up the accounts. She gave an indulgent laugh.
“I am in a nice fix, with my three tender-hearted cooks all doting on me for different reasons! Their profession probably accounts for it—the warmth of the kitchen-fire makes their hearts melt like turkey grease.”
Javotte came in to help her undress and brush her hair.
“What’s that noise?” inquired Angelique.
“I don’t know. It sounds like a rat that keeps nibbling at the door.”
The noise increased. Angelique went into the vestibule and realised that the gnawing sound did not come from the bottom of the door but from the little spy-hole half-way up. She pulled the shutter aside and gave a little cry of horror, for a small black hand slipped through the grating and reached towards her.
“It’s Piccolo!” cried Javotte.
Angelique pulled back all the bolts, opened the door, and the monkey rushed into her arms.
“What’s die matter? He’s never yet come here on his own. It’s as if— why yes, he looks as if he’d broken his chain.”
She carried the little animal into her room and put him down on the table.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed the maid, laughing. “He has got himself into a state! His fur is all red and sticky. He must have fallen into the wine- barrel.”
Angelique, who was caressing Piccolo, found indeed that her fingers were stained and sticky. She sniffed them and immediately felt herself go pale.
“This isn’t wine,” she said, “it’s blood!”
“He’s hurt?”
“I’ll see.”
She removed his embroidered singlet and his hose, both of which were wet with blood. But the little animal showed no trace of wounds, though he was shaken by convulsive trembling.
“What is the matter, Piccolo?” said Angelique softly. “What’s happened, little friend? Explain yourself!”
The monkey stared at her with his bright, dilated eyes. Suddenly he jumped back, caught hold of a little box of sealing-wax and began to walk with grave steps, shaking the little box in front of him.
“Oh! the little rascal!” cried Javotte, giggling. “First he frightens us, and then he starts aping Linot with his tray of scones. Isn’t he extra¬ordinary, Madame?”
But the monkey, after walking all round the table imitating the little biscuit-seller, now seemed perturbed again. He turned, glanced around, shrank back. His little snout puckered, with a piteous, frightened ex¬pression. He lifted his face to the right, then to the left. He seemed to be imploring some invisible persons. At last he appeared to struggle, to fight. He abruptly dropped the box he was holding, contracted his two hands over his belly and fell backward with a shrill scream.
“But what’s the matter with him? What’s the matter?” stammered Javotte, bewildered. “He is ill. He’s gone crazy!”
Angelique, who had watched the monkey’s performance very atten¬tively, strode quickly to her wardrobe, took her cloak from the peg and put on her mask.
“I believe some harm has come to Linot,” she said hoarsely, “I must go to the tavern immediately.”
“I am coming with you, Madame.”
“If you like. You carry the lantern. But take the monkey up to Barbe first, so that she can clean him and warm him up and give him some milk to drink.”
The forebodings of a tragedy assailed Angelique. Despite the comfort¬ing words which Javotte kept murmuring, she never doubted for a moment that the monkey had been present at a dreadful scene. But the facts surpassed her worst fears. Hardly had she reached the entrance to the Quai des Tanneurs, when the impact of a rushing shape almost knocked her over. It was Flipot, wild with horror. '* .
She gripped his shoulders and shook him to make him recover his wits.
“I was just going to fetch you, Marquise of the Angels,” stuttered the boy. “They've . . . they've killed Linot!”
“Who, they?”
“They . . . those men, the customers.”
“Why? What happened?”
The poor kitchen-boy swallowed and said hurriedly, as if reeling off a lesson learned by heart:
“Linot was in the street with his basket of scones. He was singing: Scones! Cakes! Who's calling for the cake-man . . . ?' One of the customers in the tavern, one of those masked gentlemen, you know, with a lace collar, said. ‘There’s a pretty voice. I feel a sudden fancy for scones. Let someone fetch the fellow.' Linot came. And the gentleman said: ‘By Jove, the boy's even more attractive than his voice.’ He took Linot on his knees and began to kiss him. Then others came and wanted to kiss him too—they were all as drunk as fiddlers. Linot dropped his basket and started to shout and kick them. One of the noblemen drew his sword and thrust it into Linot’s belly. Another one also drove his sword into him. Linot fell; and there was blood spurting out of his belly all over the place.”
“Didn’t Maitre Bourjus try to come between them?”
“He did, but they killed him.”
“What? What are you saying? Whom?”
“Maitre Bouijus.”
“You're going mad!”
‘‘No, it’s not me, it’s they who are mad. When Maitre Bourjus heard Linot scream, he came out of the kitchen. He said: ‘Gentlemen! Please, gentlemen!’ But they jumped at him. They were laughing and bashing him and shouting: ‘Big barrel! Big vat!' It even made me giggle. And then one of them said: ‘I recognise him, he’s the former landlord of‘The Brazen Cock' . . . !' Another said: ‘You don't look very brazen for a cock to me, I'll dress you for the oven.' He took a big meat-knife, they all rushed towards him and they . .
The boy ended his tale with a forceful gesture which left no doubt about the horrible mutilation which the poor innkeeper had suffered.
“He was braying like a donkey! But you can't hear him any more. David, too, wanted to stop them. They took a lunge at his head with their swords. When we saw that, David and I and the other kitchen-boys and the maids and Suzanne, we all ran like the devil!”
The rue de la Vallee-de-Misere had an unusual air. Always bustling in this carnival season, it was still full of customers who packed the eating- houses, singing and clinking their glasses. But towards the far end of the street there was an abnormal crowd of white figures with high caps on their heads. The neighbouring innkeepers and their scullions, armed with larding-pins and skewers, were massed outside the tavern of ‘The Red Mask’.
“We don’t know what to do!” one of them shouted to Angelique. “Those devils have barred the door with stacked benches. And they’ve got a pistol. . . .”
“We must send for the watch.”
“David has run to call them, but . . .”
The landlord of ‘The Plucked Capon*, the neighbour of ‘The Red Mask*, said, lowering his voice:
“Footmen stopped the watch in the rue de la Triperie. They told them that the customers who were making merry at ‘The Red Mask* were very high-ranking noblemen, lords of the King’s suite, and that the constables of the watch would find themselves in a devilish mess if they put their noses into this business. David nevertheless went right on to the Chatelet, but the footmen had already warned the guards. They told him at the Chatelet that he should straighten things out with his customers himself.”
An appalling din issued from the tavern of‘The Red Mask’: uproarious laughter, bibulous songs and such savage shouts that the good innkeepers* hair stood on end under their tall caps.
Tables and benches had been piled before the windows. It was im¬possible to see what was going on inside, but one could hear the sounds of breaking glass and crockery and, from time to time, the thudding report of a pistol-shot, probably aimed at the fine flagons of precious crystal with which Angelique had adorned the tables and the mantelpiece.
Angelique caught a glimpse of David. He was as white as his apron, and the napkin tied around his forehead was stained with a star of blood. He went up to her and told her, stammering, the complete story of the dread¬ful saturnalia. The noblemen had behaved with overbearing arrogance from the start. They had already been drinking in other taverns. They had started by upsetting a full, almost boiling, soup-tureen over the head of one of the kitchen-boys. Then there had been no end of trouble chasing them out of the kitchen, where they had wanted to seize Suzanne, not¬withstanding her being an unprepossessing prey. Finally, there had been those tragic happenings with Linot, whose sweet face had filled them with odious desires. . . .
“Come on,” said Angelique, gripping the young man’s arm. “We must have a look. We’ll go through the courtyard.”
Twenty hands held her back.
“Arc you crazy? . . . They’ll run you through! They arc wolves!”
She tore herself away and, pulling David along, went into the yard. From there she passed into the kitchen.
The kitchen door leading to the dining-room had been carefully bolted by David before he had run away with the other servants. Angelique heaved a sigh of relief. At least the substantial provisions which she had stored there had not been subjected to the blackguards’ destructive fury.
With the young boy’s help, she pushed the table against the wall and hoisted herself up to the fanlight which, half-way up, made it possible to look inside.
She saw the devastated dining-room, strewn with plates and dishes, soiled cloths and broken glass. The hams and hares had been unfastened from the rafters. The drunken wretches were stumbling over them, shoving them aside with kicks of their boots. The obscene words of their songs, their curses and blasphemies could now be heard distinctly.
Most of them were grouped around one of the tables near the hearth. From their attitudes and their increasingly thick voices it could be guessed that they would soon collapse in a heap. In the firelight, the sight of those gaping, bawling mouths under the black masks had something sinister about it. The sumptuous clothes were spattered with wine and sauce, perhaps with blood.
Angelique tried to see the bodies of Linot and the innkeeper. But as the candles were knocked over, the back of the room was in darkness.
“Which one was the first to attack Linot?’’ she asked under her breath.
“The little man over there, at the comer of the table, the one with the flow of pink ribbons on his lavender singlet. He seemed the one who set the tone and got them all going.’’
Just then, the man whom David had pointed out scrambled to his feet with difficulty and, raising his glass in a shaking hand, cried in a falsetto voice:
“Gentlemen, I drink the health of Astree and Asmodee, the princes of friendship.’’
“Oh! that voice!’’ exclaimed Angelique, recoiling.
She would have recognised it anywhere. It was the voice which, in her worst nightmares, still woke her at times: “Madame, you’re going to die!”
So it was he—always he. Was he chosen by hell to incarnate unceasingly for her the demon of a malevolent fate?
“Was he the first to strike Linot with his sword?” she asked.
“Perhaps—I don’t remember. But the tall one behind him, with the red rhinegrave, he struck him, too.”
That man, too, hadno need to remove his mask for her to recognise him.
The King’s brother and the Chevalier de Lorraine! She was now certain that she could put names to all the other masked faces!
One of the drunks started to throw die chairs and stools into the fire. One of them seized a botde and, from a distance, fiung it across the room. The botde burst in the fire-place. It was brandy. A huge flame spurted and at once set fire to the furniture. A hellish blaze blew, roaring, through the chimney, and fire-brands crackled on the stone floor.
Angelique hurded down from her perch.
“They’ll set the house on fire. We must stop them!”
But the apprentice nervously clasped her in his arms.
“Don’t go. They’ll kill you.”
They struggled for a moment. Her anger and the fear of fire gave her added strength. She managed to free herself and push David away.
Angelique adjusted her mask. She, too, did not care to be recogni^d. Resolutely she drew back the bolts and noisily pulled open the kitchen door.
The appearance of this woman draped in a black cloak and with that strange red mask on her face caused a moment’s stupefaction among the revellers. The singing and shouting faded.
“Oh! The red mask!”
“Gentlemen,” said Angelique in a resounding voice, “have you lost your mind? Do you not fear the King’s wrath when public rumour will acquaint him with your crimes?” .
From the bewildered silence that followed she felt that she had flung out the only word—the King!—which was able to penetrate into the drunkards’ befogged brains and light a spark of lucidity in them.
Turning her advantage to account, she stepped boldly forward. Her intention was to reach the hearth and pull from it the flaming furniture in order to confine the blaze and thus avert a chimney-fire.
At that moment she saw underneath die table the horribly mutilated body of Maitre Bourjus. Beside him, the boy Linot, his belly tom open, his face as white as snow and as peaceful as an angel’s, seemed asleep. The blood of the two victims mingled with the trickles of wine that flowed among the broken botdes.
The horror of this spectacle paralysed her for a second. Like a tamer of wild beasts who, panic-stricken, looks away for a moment, she lost control of the savage pack.
“A woman! A woman!”
“That’s what we need!” ’ *
A brutal hand came down on Angelique’s neck. She caught a violent
blow on her temple. Everything went black. She was choked with nausea. She no longer knew where she was.
A woman’s voice somewhere screamed shrilly and ceaselessly . . .
She realised that it was she who was screaming.
She was lying on the table, and the black masks were bending over her with wild gasps of laughter. Her wrists and ankles were held down by iron fists. Her petticoats were brutally lifted.
“Who’s turn? Who’ll have a go at the wench?”
She screamed, as one screams in a nightmare, in a paroxysm of terror and despair.
A body flattened upon her. A mouth stuck to her mouth.
Then so deep a silence fell that Angelique thought she had really lost consciousness. Such, however, was not the case. Her tormentors had stopped their noisy revelry and stood as if frozen. Their befuddled and terrified gaze followed something at floor-level that Angelique could not see.
The man who a moment ago had climbed on the table and was about to rape the young woman had hurriedly slipped down. Feeling that her arms and legs were free again, Angelique sat up and quickly pulled down her long skirts. She was bewildered. It was as if a magician’s wand had suddenly petrified the frenzied madmen.
Slowly she let herself slide to the floor. Only then did she see the dog Sorbonne, who had knocked over the little man in the lavender singlet and was gripping his throat firmly between his fangs. The dog had come in by the kitchen door and his attack had been swift as lightning.
One of the profligates stammered:
“Call your dog back. . . . Where . . . where’s the pistol?”
“Don’t move,” commanded Angelique. “If you make but one move, I’ll order the dog to throttle the King’s brother!”
Her legs trembled under her like those of a broken-down horse, but her voice was dear.
“Don’t move, gentlemen,” she repeated, “or you will all bear the responsibility for this death before the King.”
Then she very calmly took a few steps. She looked at Sorbonne. He was holding his victim as Desgrez had taught him. At a single word, the iron jaws would crush this panting flesh completdy, make the bones crack. Indistinct gurgles escaped from Monsieur d’Orleans’s throat. His choking face was violet.
“ Watte,” Angelique said softly.
Sorbonne lightly wagged his tail to show that he had understood and was waiting for orders. Around them, the perpetrators of the orgy remained motionless. They were all too drunk to grasp what was happening. They only saw that Monsieur, the King’s brother, was on the verge of being throttled, and that was enough to scare them.
Angelique, without taking her eyes off them, opened one of the drawers of the table, took a knife and went up to the man in the red rhincgrave, who was standing nearest to her.
Seeing her raise her knife, he shrank back.
“Don’t move!” she said in a tone that brooked no reply. “I don’t in¬tend to kill you. I only want to know what a murderer in laces looks like.”
And with a swift gesture she cut the string that held up the mask of the Chevalier de Lorraine. When she had gazed into the handsome face, ravaged by debauches, which she knew only too well for having seen it loom over her in the Louvre on a night she would never forget, she went towards the others.
Dazed and in the last stages of inebriation, they let her do her will and she recognised them all, every one of them: Brienne, the Marquis d’Olonne, the good-looking dc Guiche, his brother Louvignys and that other who, when she uncovered his face, tried to murmur with a mocking grimace:
“Black mask against red mask.”
It was Peguilin dc Lauzun. She also recognised Saint-Thicrry, Fronte- nac. An elegant nobleman, sprawled on die ground amidst puddles of wine and vomit, was snoring. Angeliquc’s mouth filled with hatred and bitterness as she identified the features of the Marquis de Vardes.
Ah! the King’s fine-young men! She had formerly admired their glittering plumage, but the hostess of‘The Red Mask’ was now entitled to see the image of their rotten souls!
Three among them were unfamiliar to her. One of these, however, conjured up a memory, but it was so vague that she could not define it. He was a tall, lanky boy, wearing a magnificent, golden-blond wig. Not as dnmk as the others, lie was leaning against one of the pillars of the room and pretending to file his finger-nails. When Angelique approached, he did not wait for her to cut the strings of liis mask but pushed it up him¬self, with a graceful, casual gesture. His very pale blue eyes had an icy, scornful expression. She was troubled by it. The nervous tension which had kept her going was at its breaking-point; a great fatigue gripped her. Sweat ran from her brow, for the heat in the room had become unbear¬able.
She went back to the dog and took him by the collar to make him lelease his prey. She had hoped that Desgrez would appear, but she remained alone and abandoned among these dangerous ghosts.* The only presence that seemed real to her was Sorbonne’s.
“Get up, gentlemen,” she said in a tired voice. “And now go away, all of you. You have done enough harm.”
Tottering and, holding their masks in one hand and dragging with the other the slumped bodies of the Marquis de Vardes and the King’s brother, the courtiers departed. In the street they had to defend themselves with their swords against the scullions, who, armed with their skewers, pursued them with angry, outraged shouts.
Sorbonne sniffed the blood and growled, baring his black jowls. Angelique pulled the little cake-seller's light body towards her and caressed his pure, icy brow.
“Linot! Linot! My sweet little boy . . . poor little seed of wretched¬ness ...”
A clamour from outside tore her out of her despair.
“Fire! Fire!”
The chimney-flue had caught fire and it had spread to the lofts of the house. The splinters were beginning to fall in the hearth, and a thick smoke filled the room.
Angelique rushed out, carrying Linot in her arms. The street was bright as in broad daylight. Customers and landlords pointed with horror at the sheaf of flames that wreathed the roof of the old house. A shower of sparks rained on the neighbouring roofs.
People ran towards the Seine, close by, to form a chain of pails and tubs. But the fire had started at the top. The water had to be carried up the stairs of the neighbouring houses, for the staircase of‘The Red Mask’ was crumbling.
Angelique, followed by David, tried to go back into the inn to pull out Maitre Bourjus's body. But they had to retreat, choked by the smoke. They then dashed into the kitchen through the courtyard and carried out at random all that they could lay their hands on.
Meanwhile, the Capuchins had arrived. The crowd acclaimed them. The people loved these monks, whose rules included the obligation to help the victims of fires and who had eventually come to constitute the only fire-brigade of the city. They brought with them ladders and iron hooks as well as long, leaden pumps that could send mighty sprays of water a great distance.
As soon as they had reached the site of the fire, they rolled up the sleeves of their cassocks and, without heeding the flaming splinters that fell upon their skulls, they dashed into die adjacent houses. They emerged on the roofs and started to break up everything around them with their big hooks. Thanks to their vigorous measures, the blazing house was isolated, and as no wind was blowing the fire did not spread to the rest of the district. There had been fear of one of those terrible disasters that befell Paris two or three times in a century, owing to its serried mass of old wooden houses.
A great breach, heaped with rubble and cinders, now gaped on the spot where only yesterday had stood the gay tavern of‘The Red Mask’. But the fire had been put out.
Angelique, with blackened checks, gazed at the ruin of her hopes. By her side was the dog Sorbonne.
‘Where is Desgrez? Oh, f d like to see Desgrez/ she thought. ‘He’ll tell me what to do/
She took the mastiffby his collar.
“Take me to your master.”
She did not have far to go. A few yards away, in the darkness of a porch she perceived the policeman’s hat and big coat. He was calmly shredding some tobacco.
“Good evening,” he said in an equable voice. “Bad night, isn’t it?” “You were here, only a couple of steps away!” exclaimed Angelique, gasping. “And you didn’t come!”
“Why should I?”
“Didn’t you hear me shout?”
“I didn’t know it was you, Madame.”
“Nevermind! It was a woman shouting.”
“I can’t dash to the rescue of all women who shout,” declared Desgrez, good-humouredly. “Still, believe me, Madame, had I known it was you, I would have come.”
She grumbled resentfully:
“I doubt it!”
Desgrez sighed.
“Haven’t I risked my life and my career for you before? I might well have risked them a second time. Alas, Madame, you are a deplorable habit in my life, and I am much afraid that, despite my innate prudence, it’ll some day be the death of me.”
“They held me on a table—they tried to rape me.”
Desgrez looked down upon her sarcastically.
“Is that all? They might have done worse.”
Angelique passed her hand over her brow in bewilderment.
“That’s true! I felt a kind of relief when I saw that that was all they wanted. And then Sorbonne arrived . . . just in time!”
“I’ve always had great confidence in this dog.” ’
“YOM sent him?”
“Obviously.”
The young woman gave a deep sigh and, with a spontaneous impulse of weakness and apology, she leaned her cheek against the young man’s rugged shoulder.
“Thank you.”
“You see,” Desgrez went on in the calm tone of voice that both exasper-ated and soothed her, “I’m only apparently a member of the State police. In fact, I am above all the King’s policemen. It’s not my task to interfere with the delightful sport of our noble lords. After all, my dear, you’ve surely seen enough no longer to be ignorant of the kind of world you belong to? Who wouldn’t follow the fashion? Drunkenness is a joke, debauchery pushed to the point of lewdness a sweet failing, orgies pushed to the point of crime a pleasant pastime. Red heels and Court bows in the day-time; love, gambling-dens and taverns at night. Doesn’t that make for a well-filled life? You are mistaken, my poor dear, if you imagine these people are to be feared. In actual fact, their little amusements present no danger! The only enemy, the worst foe of the kingdom, is the man who with a single word can corrode their might: the pamphleteer, the journalist, the lampooner. Personally, I am after lampooners.”
“Well! You can start hunting,” said Angdlique, straightening up, with clenched teeth, “for I promise you plenty of work.”
A sudden idea had flashed across her mind.
She moved away and began to walk. Then she turned back.
“There were thirteen of them. Among them three whose names 1 do not know. You must get them for me.”
The policeman lifted his hat and bowed.
“At your service, Madame,” he said, finding again the tone of voice and the smile of the lawyer Desgrez.