Angelique - Part 6. The Inn of the Red Mask Chapter 7 - Read online

THE MARQUIS DE LA VALLIERE, realising that his turn would come, decided to confess to his sister, at the Hotel Biron, where Louis XIV had settled his favourite. Though frightened and appalled, Louise de La Valliere advised her young brother to make a clean breast of it to the King.
This he did.
“It would pain me, if I chastised you too harshly, and brought tears to a pair of lovely eyes that arc dear to me,” said His Majesty. “Leave Paris, Monsieur, and join your regiment in Roussillon. We shall suppress the scandal.” .
This, however, did not prove a simple matter. The scandal did not care
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to be suppressed. Despite arrests, imprisonments and tortures, each day, with the regularity of a natural phenomenon, a new name would appear. Soon now would come the turn of the Marquis de La Valliere, of the Chevalier de Lorraine, of the King’s brother! All the printing-houses were searched and watched. Most of the paper-sellers on the Pont-Neuf were locked up in the dungeons of the Chatelct.
But the pamphlets still found their way right into the Queens bedroom!
A watch was kept on the comings and goings at the Louvre, the entrances were guarded like those of a fortress. Any person entering in the early morning hours—water-carriers, milkmaids, footmen—were searched bodily. The windows and passages had sentinels posted before them. It was impossible for any man to leave the Louvre or enter it unnoticed.
‘Any man, yes, but perhaps half a man?* Desgrez wondered, strongly suspecting the Queen’s dwarf, Barcarole, of being Angelique’s accom¬plice.
The beggars at the street-corners were her accomplices, who would hide a bundle of sheets under their rags and strew them on the steps of churches and convents; as were the armed ruffians who, at night, after stripping a belated citizen of his valuables, would give him ‘in exchange’ some leaflets to read ‘as a consolation*; as were the flower-women and orange- sellers of the Pont-Neuf; or Big Matthieu, who, under the pretext of offering prescriptions free of charge to the honoured customers, dis¬tributed the latest versifications of the Gutter-Poet.
And, last but not least, there was the new Great Coesre himself, Wood- Bottom, into whose hide-out, on a moonless night, Angeliquc had dis¬patched three cases filled with pamphlets which revealed the names of the last five guilty persons. A police raid in the stinking lairs of the Faubourg Saint-Denis was most unlikely. It did not seem an opportune moment to besiege a district whose surrender could not be obtained without a pitched battle.
Vigilant though they were, archers, constables and sergeants could not be everywhere. The night still reigned supreme, and the Marquise of the Angels, helped by her ‘men’, was able to transfer the cases, without a hitch, from the university district to Wood-Bottom’s stronghold.
Two hours later, the police came to arrest the printer and his em¬ployees. A paper-seller, jailed in the Chatelet, was made to swallow five kettles of cold water by the hangman’s hand, and revealed the master- printer’s name. At the printer’s they found evidence of his guilt, but no trace of future denunciations. Some people nursed the hope that no fresh sheets had yet been printed, but in the morning Paris learned of the cowardice of the Marquis de Tormes, who, instead of defending the little cake-seller, had left his boon-companions, saying:
“Good-bye, gentlemen. I’m off to bed with the Marquise de Raque- neau, according to my little habit.”
The Marquis de Raqueneau was perfectly aware of his conjugal mis¬fortune. But hearing it shouted from the roof-tops, he found himself obliged to go and challenge his rival. The duel was fought and the husband was killed. Monsieur de Tormes was putting his cloak on, when the Marquis de Gesvres appeared and showed him the warrant for his arrest. The Marquis de Tormes, who had not yet seen the incriminating pamphlet, thought he was being taken to the Bastille because he had fought a duel.
“Only four more! Only four more!” the street-urchins chanted as they formed a dancing chain.
“Only four more! Only four more!” the mob yelled under the win¬dows of the royal palace.
The guards dispersed the booing, jeering crowd with whips.
Harried and hunted from hiding-place to hiding-place, Claude Le Petit eventually took refuge with Angelique. He was paler than ever, though a beard blackened his face.
“This time, my sweet, there’s a smell of burning in the air,” he said with a contorted smile. “I’ve got a feeling I won’t be able to slip through the meshes of their net.”
“Don’t talk like that! You yourself told me a hundred times that you’ll never be hanged.”
“That’s the way one talks as long as nothing has yet impaired one’s strength. And then, suddenly, there is a crack, your strength is slipping and you see clearly.”
He had been injured in escaping through a window. He had had to break the panes and twist the leaden frames. She made him He down on the bed, bandaged him, fed him. He followed her movements attentively, and she was perturbed not to see the usual mocking glint in his eyes.
“ You are the crack,” he said abrupdy. “I should never have met you . . . nor loved you. Ever since you woke me up in that hay-boat I knew that you’d made a valet of me.”
“Claude,” she said, wounded, “why do you try to pick a quarrel with me? I ... I felt that you were very dose to me, that you’d do anything for me. But if you like, I’ll become more ceremonious.” .
She sat down on the edge of the bed and took his hand, and cupped her cheek in it tenderly.
“My poet . . .”
Не pulled his hand away and closed his eyes.
“Ah!” he sighed, “that’s what’s so bad for me. Near you, I start to dream of a life in which you’d be there all the time. I begin to reason like any fool of a worthy citizen. I say to myself: ‘I would like to come home every night to a warm, bright house where she’d be waiting for me! I’d like to find her in my bed every night, warm and plump and yielding to my desire. I would like to have a respectable pot-belly, stand on my door¬step at dusk and say ‘my wife’ when talking of her to the neighbours.’ That’s what knowing you does to a fellow. And I begin to notice that the tables in the taverns are hard pillows to sleep on, that it’s chilly between the legs of a bronze horse, and that I am alone in the world, like a master¬less mongrel.”
“You talk like Calembredaine,” said Angelique, dreamily.
“You cracked him, too, for, at bottom, you are only an illusion, fugitive as a butterfly, ideal, transparent, intangible. . . .”
“You’re going to leave Paris,” she decided. “Your task is finished, since the last pamphlets are written, printed and safely stored.”
“Leave Paris? I? But where would I go?”
“To your old nurse, that woman you told me of, who brought you up in the Jura mountains. It will soon be winter, the roads will be snow¬bound and nobody will look for you there. You will leave my house, which isn’t safe, and hide at Wood-Bottom’s. At midnight, this very night, you’ll make for the Gate of Montmartre, which is always very poorly guarded. You’ll find a horse there, and in the saddle-bag you’ll find money and a pistol.”
“All right, Marquise,” he said, yawning.
He got up to go.
His submissiveness alarmed Angelique more than any rash recklessness would have. Was it tiredness, fear, or the effect of his injury? He seemed like a sleep-walker. Before leaving, he gave her a long, unsmiling look.
“Now,” he said, “you are very strong, and you can leave us by the roadside.”
She did not understand what he meant. Words no longer penetrated her mind, and her body ached as if it had been beaten. She did not wait to see the slight, black figure of die Gutter-Poet walk away in the fine drizzle.
In the afternoon she went to the catde market at the Fair of Saint- Germain, bought a horse which cost her part of her savings, then went to the rue du Val-d’Amour to ‘borrow’ a pistol from Pretty Boy.
It was arranged that towards midnight Pretty Boy, Peony and a few others would take the horse to the Gate of Montmartre. Claude Le Petit would meet them there, with some of Wood-Bottom’s trusted men. This small escort of armed men would accompany him through the suburbs till he reached the countryside.
Once her plan was mapped out, Angeliquc found some calm again. In the evening she went up to the nursery, then to the garret where she was lodging David. The youngster was running a high temperature, for his wound had begun to fester for lack of proper care.
Later, back in her room, Angclique began to count the hours. The children and servants were asleep; Piccolo the monkey had settled down on the hearth-stone. With her elbows propped on her knees, Angelique gazed into the fire. In two hours, in one hour, Claude Lc Petit would be out of danger. She would breathe more easily, and then she would go to bed and try to sleep. Since the fire in the tavern of ‘The Red Mask’ it seemed to her that she had forgotten what it was like to sleep.
The steps of a horse resounded on the cobble-stones, then stopped. There was a knock at the door. With beating heart, she pushed the small shutter aside.
“It’s me, Desgrcz.”
“Do you come as a friend or as a policeman?”
“Open the door. I’ll tell you afterwards.”
She pulled back the bolts, thinking that a policeman s visit was most unpleasant, but at heart she was glad to see Desgrez rather than to stay alone and feel every minute of her watch fall like a drop of molten lead on her heart.
“Where is Sorbonnc?” she asked.
“He isn’t with me tonight.”
She noticed that under his wet cloak he wore a red cloth singlet trimmed with black ribbons and adorned with a neckband and lace cuffs. With his sword and his spurred boots, he looked very much like a minor provincial nobleman, proud to find himself in the capital.
“I have just left the theatre,” he said gaily. “Quite a delicate mission with a beautiful lady. . . .”
“You’re no longer tracking down gutter-pamphleteers?”
“It was realised, perhaps, that on this occasion I wouldn’t quite give my all ”
“You’ve refused to have anything more to do with it?”
“Not exactly. I am given every freedom, you know. They know 1 have methods of my own.” .
He stood before the fire, rubbing his hands to warm them. He had put his black gauntlets and his hat on a stool.
“Why didn’t you become a soldier in the King’s army?” asked Angelique, admiring the dashing figure cut by the formerly shabby lawyer. “You’d be considered a handsome man, and you’re far from dull. . . . Don’t move—I’ll get you a jug of white wine and some scones.”
“No, thanks! Despite your gracious hospitality, I think I’d better with¬draw. I still have an errand over at the Gate of Montmartre.”
Angelique started violently and cast a glance at her watch: half-past eleven. If Desgrez were to ride to the Gate of Montmartre now, there was every likelihood that he might run into the Gutter-Poet and his accom¬plices. Was it a coincidence that he wanted to go to the Gate of Mont¬martre, or had this devil of a man had wind of something? No, that was impossible! She made a sudden decision.
Desgrez was putting his coat on.
“Already!” Angelique protested. “What extraordinary manners you have! You arrive at an impossible hour, pull me out of bed and you slip away as soon as you come.”
“I didn’t pull you out of bed. You weren’t even undressed. You were day-dreaming before the fire.”
“Exactly . . . I was bored. Come on, sit down.”
“No,” he said, tying the cord of his collar. “The more I think, the more it seems to me that I’d better hurry.”
“Oh, these men!” she protested, with a pout. She racked her brains to find a pretext for retaining him.
It was not so much for the poet as for Desgrez himself that she feared die encounter which would inevitably result if she let him go to the Gate of Montmartre. The policeman had a pistol and a sword, but the others were armed too, and they were numerous. Moreover, Sorbomie was not with his master. In any case, there was no point in Claude Le Petit’s escape being accompanied by a scuffle in which a police-captain of the Chatclet stood a good chance of being killed. She simply had to prevent it.
But Desgrez was already leaving the room.
‘Oh, this is too silly!’ thought Angelique. ‘If I’m not able to hold a man up for a quarter of an hour, I wonder what God’s made me for!’
She followed him into the ante-room and, as he reached for die door¬knob, she put her hand on his. The tenderness of the gesture seemed to surprise him. Me hesitated slightly.
“Good night, Madame,” he said with a smile.
“It won’t be a good night for me, if you go,” she murmured. “The night is too long . . . when one is alone.”
And she leaned her check against his shoulder.
*1 am behaving like a courtesan/ she thought, ‘but never mind! A few kisses will gain me time. And even if he demands more, why not? We are old acquaintances after all.’
“We’ve known each other for such a long time, Desgrez,” she said aloud. “Has it never occurred to you that between us . . .”
“It’s not like you to fling yourself at a man’s head,” said Desgrez, baffled. “What’s the matter with you tonight, my dear?”
But his hand had left the door-knob and he took her by the shoulder. Very slowly, as if reluctandy, his other arm came up and surrounded the young woman’s waist. However, he did not press her towards him. He was holding her rather like a dainty, fragile object that one does not know what to do with. Still, she sensed that the policeman Desgrez’s heart was beating a little faster. Wouldn’t it be fun to ruffle this indifferent, in¬variably self-controlled man?
“No,” he said at last. “No, I have never thought that we might go to bed together. For me, you see, love is something very ordinary. In this, as in many other things, I’m unfamiliar with luxury, and it doesn’t tempt me. Cold, hunger, poverty and my masters’ canings were not apt to give me a fastidious taste. I am a man of the tavern and the brothel. What I ask of a girl is to be a good, sound animal, a comfortable piece of goods that one can do with as one likes. To speak quite frankly, my dear, you’re not my type.”
She listened with a certain amusement, her head in the crook of his shoulder. On her back she felt the warmth of Desgrez’s two hands. He did not scorn her quite as much as he liked to pretend. A woman like Angelique made no mistake about it. There were too many bonds between her and Desgrez. She gave a stifled little laugh.
“You talk as if I were a luxury article . . . not comfortable, as you say. No doubt you are admiring the sumptuousness of my dress, of my home?”
“Oh! the dress has nothing to do with it. You’ll always keep that consciousness of your superiority which shone through in your eyes on that distant day when a certain shabby commoner of a lawyer was introduced to you.”
“Many things have come to pass since then, Desgrez.”
“Many things will never pass, and among them the arrogance of a woman whose ancestors were with Good King Jean II at the Batde of Poitiers in 1356.”
“You always know everything about everybody, policeman that you are!”
“Yes . . . just like your friend, the Gutter-Poet.”
He took her by her shoulders and, gently but firmly, held her away from him to look into her face.
“Well? . . . So it's true that he was to be at the Gate of Montmartre at midnight?”
She trembled, then thought that by now the danger was over. Far away, a clock was chiming the last strokes of midnight. Desgrez caught the flash of triumph in her eyes.
“Yes . . . yes, it's too late,” he murmured, nodding his head dreamily. “So many people had planned to meet tonight at the Gate of Montmartre! Among others, the Civil Lieutenant himself, and twenty archers of the Chatelet. Perhaps, if I had arrived a little sooner, I could have advised them to go and wait for their game elsewhere. . . . Or else I might have given a sign to the imprudent game to make for the open country by some other route. . . . But now, I believe . . . yes, I do believe it is too late. . . .”
Flipot went out early in the morning to fetch fresh milk for the children from the market of the Pierre-au-lait. Angelique had only just sunk into a brief, fitful slumber, when she heard him racing back. Forgetting to knock at the door, he stuck his tousled head through the opening. His eyes were popping out of their sockets.
“Marquise of the Angels,” he gasped, ‘Tve just seen ... the Gutter- Poet . . . in the Place de Greve.”
“In the Place de Greve? . . .” she repeated. “But he must be com¬pletely mad! What’s he doing there?”
“He’s sticking his tongue out,” answered Flipot. “They’ve hanged him!”