Angelique - Part 7. Versailles Chapter 6 - Read online

ON THE WAY BACK TO PLESSIS she felt perturbed, and her heart beat faster when she recognised the Marquis’s carriage in the courtyard.
The lackeys told her that their master had arrived over two hours ago. She hurried towards the chateau. As she was mounting the stairs, she heard children screaming.
‘Yet another tantrum from Florimond or Cantor,’ she said to herself, annoyed. ‘The country air is making them unmanageable.*
It was important that their future stepfather should not come to look upon them as insufferable creatures. She rushed towards the nursery to restore order with some severity. She recognised Cantor’s voice. He was yelling in a tone of unspeakable terror and fierce barking mingled with his screams.
Angelique opened the door and stood petrified.
In front of the fire-place, in which a big fire was blazing, Florimond and
Cantor, huddling against each other, were held at bay by three huge wolfhounds, black as the devil, who were barking ferociously and tugging at their leather leashes, which were held in the hand of the Marquis du Plessis. The latter seemed to be much amused by the children’s fright. On the stone floor, in a pool of blood, Angelique recognised the corpse of Parthos, one of the little boys’ own mastiffs, who must have been savaged when trying to defend them.
Cantor was yelling, his round face bathed with tears. But Florimond’s white face wore an extraordinary expression of courage. He had drawn his little sword and, pointing it towards the animals, was trying to protect his brother.
Angelique had no time to utter an exclamation. A reflex made her seize a heavy wooden stool, and this she flung at the dogs, which yelped and recoiled with moans of pain.
She clasped Florimond and Cantor in her arms. They clung to her. Cantor immediately fell silent.
“Philippe,” she said, panting, “you mustn’t frighten the children in this way. . . . They might have fallen into the fire. . . . Look, Cantor has burned his hand. . . .”
The young man turned his eyes, hard and limpid as frost, upon her.
“Your sons are as craven as females,” he said in a thick voice.
His complexion was darker than usual, and he was tottering slightly.
At that moment Barbe appeared. Out of breath, she was holding a hand over her breast to contain her beating heart. Her eyes passed with an expression of horror from Philippe to Angelique, then stopped at the sight of the dead dog.
“May Madame excuse me,” she said. “I went to fetch milk from the pantry for the children’s supper. I left them in Flipot’s саге. I didn’t imagine . . .”
“It’s nothing serious, Barbe,” said Angelique. “The children aren’t used to seeing such fierce hounds. They’ll have to get used to them if they want to hunt the stag and the wild boar like true gentlemen.”
The future gentlemen cast an unenthusiastic glance at the three hounds.
“You are little sillies,” she said to them, in a gently scolding tone.
Standing with his legs apart, Philippe, in a bronze velvet travelling costume, was looking at the group of mother and children. Suddenly he cracked his whip over the dogs, pulled them back and left the room.
Barbe hurried to close the door.
“Flipot came to fetch me,” she whispered. “The Marquis had chased him out of the room. You’ll never get the idea out of my head that he wanted the children to be devoured alive by his dogs. . . .”
“Don’t talk rubbish, Barbe,” Ang$ique stopped her curtly. “The Marquis isn’t used to children; he wanted to play . . .”
“Yes, yes! The games of princes! We know how far they can go. I know a little fellow who paid dearly for it. . . .”
Angelique shivered at this reminder of Linot. Had not the blond Philippe, with his nonchalant bearing, been among the tormentors of the little cake-seller? Had he not, to say the least, remained indifferent to his entreaties? . . .
Seeing the children were calm again, she went into her apartment. She sat down before her dressing-table to rearrange her curls.
What was the meaning of what had just happened? Should the incident be taken seriously? Philippe was drunk, that was plain as daylight. Once sober, he would apologise for having caused such a hubbub. . . .
But one of Marie-Agnes’s words rose to Angelique’s lips: “A brute!”
... A cunning, covert, cruel brute. . . . “When he wants to avenge himself on a woman, he stops at nothing.”
‘Still, he wouldn’t go so far as to attack my children/ Angelique thought to herself, throwing down her comb and rising with agitation.
At that very moment the door of the room was flung open. Angelique saw Philippe on the doorstep. He fixed a heavy look upon her.
“Have you the poison-casket?”
“I shall hand it to you on our wedding-day, Philippe, as was agreed in our contract.”
“We are getting married tonight.”
“In that case I’ll hand it to you tonight,” she replied, trying not to show her dismay.
She smiled and held her hand out to him.
“We haven’t greeted each other yet. . . .”
“I see no need for it,” he replied, and slammed the door behind him.
Angelique bit her lips. Decidedly, the master she had chosen would not prove easy to mollify. Molines’s advice came back to her mind: “Try to subjugate him by the senses”. But for the first time she began to have doubts about her victory. She felt powerless before this frozen man. She had never sensed any desire aroused in him when he was in her presence. She herself, contracted by anguish, no longer felt any attraction towards him.
‘He said we would get married tonight. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. My father hasn’t even been advised. . . .’
She was at this stage in her thoughts, when there was a timid knock on the door. Angdlique went to open the door and discovered her sons, still pathetically holding each other tightly. But this time Florimond’s protection extended also to the monkey Piccolo, whom he held perched on one arm.
“Maman,” he said in a trembling but firm little voice, “we want to go to our grandfather. Here, we are afraid.”
“Afraid is a word which a boy who wears a sword mustn't pro¬nounce,” said Angelique sternly.
“Monsieur du Plessis has already killed Parthos. Maybe he'll kill Piccolo next.”
Cantor began to weep with stifled little sobs. Cantor, the quiet Cantor, upset! This was more than Angelique could bear. It was useless to discuss whether it was silly or not: her children were afraid. And she had sworn to herself that they would never again know fear.
“All right, you will leave with Barbe for Monteloup at once. Only promise me to be good.”
“Grandfather promised me he’d let me ride a mule,” said Cantor, already comforted.
“Pah! He'll give me a horse!” affirmed Florimond.
Less than an hour later, Angelique packed them into the light cart with their servants and wardrobe. There were beds enough at Monteloup to put them up with their suite. The servants themselves seemed glad to be leaving. Philippe's arrival had brought a breathless atmosphere to the white chateau. The handsome young man, who played the role of grace incarnate at the Court of the Sun King, thrust a despot’s fist into his lonely domain.
Barbe murmured:
“Madame, we can't leave you here, all alone with this . . . this man.”
“What man?” Angelique asked haughtily.
She added:
“Barbe, an easy life has made you forget certain episodes of our com¬mon past. Remember that I know how to defend myself.”
And she kissed the maid on her round cheeks, for she felt her own heart trembling.
When the jingling of the little equipage had died down in the blue dusk, Angelique walked slowly back towards the chateau. She was relieved to know that the children would be under Monteloup’s protective wing. But the Chateau du Plessis only seemed more deserted, and almost hostile despite its charming look of a Renaissance trinket.
In the vestibule a lackey bowed to the young woman and informed her that supper was served. She went into the dining-room, where the table
was laid. Almost immediately Philippe appeared and, wordlessly, sat down at the table. Angelique took a seat at the opposite end. They were alone, served by two lackeys. A kitchen-boy brought the dishes in.
The flames of three torches were reflected in the pieces of precious silver-ware. Throughout the meal the only sounds were the rattle of spoons and the tinkling of glasses, above which rose the strident call of the crickets on the lawn. Through the open french window could be seen the misty darkness descending upon the countryside.
Angelique ate with a hearty appetite, in obedience to the peculiar promptings of her nature. She noticed that Philippe was drinking a lot but that, far from making him more expansive, the drink only further increased his coldness.
When he rose after refusing the dessert, she had no alternative but to follow him into the adjacent drawing-room. She found Molines and the chaplain there, as well as a very old peasant woman who, as Angelique learned later, had been Philippe's nurse.
“Is everything ready, Chaplain?" asked the young man, emerging from his silence.
“Yes, Your Lordship."
“Let's go to the chapel, then."
Angelique shivered. The wedding, her wedding with Philippe was surely not going to take place under such sinister circumstances?
She protested.
“You don't mean to say that all is ready for our wedding and that it will be celebrated at once?"
“I do mean to say just that, Madame," replied Philippe, with a jeer. “We signed the contract in Paris. So much for the world. The chaplain here will bless us and we'll exchange the rings. So much for God. No other preparations seem necessary to me."
The young woman looked hesitantly at the witnesses to this scene. They were lit by a single torch, held by the old woman. Outside, it was completely dark. The servants had withdrawn. Had it not been for Molines, the hard, grasping Molines, who nevertheless loved Angelique better than his own daughter, Angelique would have feared that she had fallen into an ambush.
Her eyes sought the steward's glance. But the old man dropped his eyes with the particular obsequiousness which he always affected before the lords of Plessis.
Then she resigned herself to her fate.
In the chapel, lit by two thick tapers of yellow wax, a dazed peasant
boy, dressed in a choirboy’s chasuble, brought the holy water.
Angelique and Philippe knelt on two prayer-stools. The chaplain took his stand in front of them, recited the prayers and customary phrases in a mumbling voice.
“Philippe du Plessis-Belliere, do you consent to take Angelique de Sance de Monteloup for your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.”
“Angelique de Sance de Monteloup, do you consent to take Philippe du Plessis-Belliere for your lawfully wedded husband?”
She said “I do” and held her hand out to Philippe so that he could place the ring on her finger. There flashed through her the memory of the same gesture, performed years ago in the cathedral of Toulouse.
That day, she had been no less trembling, and the hand that had taken hers had pressed it gently as if to reassure her. In her bewilderment, she had not grasped the meaning of that unobtrusive pressure. Now this detail came back to her and tore her heart like a dagger-thrust, as she saw Philippe, half-besotted, blinded by the fumes of wine, vainly groping to slip the ring on her finger. At last he succeeded. It was finished.
They left the chapel.
“Your turn, Madame,” said Philippe, looking at her with his in¬sufferable frozen smile.
She understood and asked the group to follow her to her room.
There she took the casket out of the writing-desk, opened it and handed it to her husband. The candlelight played on the flask.
“It is the lost casket indeed,” said Philippe after a moment’s silence. “Everything is all right, gentlemen.”
The chaplain and the steward signed a document whereby they con¬firmed that they had witnessed the handing over of the casket by Madame du Plessis-Belliere, in accordance with the terms of the marriage contract. Then they bowed once more before the couple and withdrew with small, shuffling steps, preceded by the old woman who was lighting their way.
The panic that gripped Angelique was not only ludicrous, but baseless. Of course, it is never pleasant to have to confront a man’s furious rancour. Still, there were ways and means perhaps of reaching an understanding between Philippe and herself, of signing a truce. . . .
She darted a furtive glance at him. Whenever her eyes dwelt on him, in the perfection of his beauty, she felt reassured. He was bending over the redoubtable casket a profile of medal-like purity. His long, thick eyelashes threw a shadow over his cheeks. But he was more flushed
than usual, and the strong smell of wine he exhaled was most unpleasant.
Seeing him raise the poison-phial with an unsteady hand, Angelique said quickly:
“Careful, Philippe! The monk Exili claimed that a single drop of this poison was enough to cause permanent disfigurement.”
“Really?”
He raised his eyes towards her and a wicked glint flashed through his pupils. His hand weighed the phial. In a flash, Angelique realised that he felt tempted to fling it at her face. Though horror-stricken, she did not wince and continued to look at him with a calm and bold expression. He gave a kind of sneer, then put the phial down, shut the casket and put it under his arm. Without a word, he seized Angelique’s wrist and dragged her out of the room.
The chateau was silent and dark, but the moon, which had just risen, cast the reflection of the high windows on to the stone floor.
Philippe’s hand held the young womans frail wrist so tightly that she felt the throbbing of her pulse. But she preferred that. In his chateau, Philippe took on a consistency which he lacked at Court. That was probably just how he was at war, dropping the cloak of the handsome, dreamy courtier, to reveal his true personality, that of a noble, precise, almost barbarous warrior.
They walked down the stairs, passed through the vestibule and went out into the park. A silvery mist hovered over the pool. On the small marble landing-stage, Philippe pushed Angelique towards a small boat.
“Get in!” he said curtly.
He in turn sat down in the boat and carefully placed the casket on one of the benches. Angelique heard the rope slip, then the skiff slowly glided away from the bank. Philippe had taken one of the oars. He was rowing the boat towards the middle of the pool. The moonlight gleamed on the folds of his white satin costume, on the golden curls of his wig. The frogs had fallen silent. The only sound was made by the sides of the boat rustling against the tight leaves of the water-lilies.
When they reached the black, limpid stretch of water in the centre of the pool, Philippe stopped the boat. He looked around attentively. The land seemed far away and the white chateau, between the two dark cliffs of the park, looked like an apparition. Silently, the Marquis du Plessis lifted in his hands the casket whose disappearance had haunted the days and nights of his family. Resolutely he flung it into the water. The object sank and the ripples that marked the place of its fall faded quickly.
Philippe looked at Angelique. She trembled. He changed his place and sat down next to her. This gesture, which at this hour and in this
fairy-like setting might have been that of a lover, paralysed her with fear.
Slowly, with that gracefulness which marked all his movements, he raised both his hands and placed them on the young woman’s throat.
“And now, I’m going to strangle you, my beauty,” he said in an under¬tone. “You’ll go and join your damned little casket at the bottom of the pool!”
She forced herself not to move. He was drunk or mad. In any case, he was capable of killing her. Wasn’t she at his mercy? She could neither shout nor defend herself. With an imperceptible movement, she leaned her head against Philippe’s shoulder. On her brow she felt the touch of a cheek that had not been shaved since the morning, a moving, masculine cheek. Everything went blank. . . . The moon travelled in the sky, the casket rested at the bottom of the water, the open fields sighed, the last act of the tragedy was being performed. Was it not right that Angclique de Sance should die thus, by the hand of that young god whose name was Philippe du Plessis?
Suddenly, her breath returned and the grip that was throttling her loosened. She saw Philippe, with clenched teeth, his face convulsed with rage.
“Hell and damnation!” he swore, “will nothing make you lower this damned, proud little head of yours? Will nothing make you scream or beg? . . . Have patience, you’ll come to it!”
He flung her back brutally and took the oars again.
As soon as she had set foot on firm ground, Angclique resisted the urge to flee as fast as she could. She no longer knew what she ought to do. Her thoughts were confused.
Philippe watched her with brooding attentiveness in his eyes. This woman was not of a common kind. No tears, no shouts; she did not even tremble. She was still defying him, yet he was the offended one. She had forced his hand, humiliated him as no man can bear to be without wishing the other’s death. A gentleman can answer for such a slight with his sword, a knave with his stick. But a woman? . . . What amends could one demand of these slippery, spineless, hypocritical creatures, whose touch was like that of venomous beasts, and who entangled you so cunningly in their words that you found yourself gulled . . . and in the wrong, to boot?
He gripped her arm with the gesture of a wicked jailer and led her back to the chateau.
As they were mounting the great staircase, she saw him reach out for the long dog-whip that was fastened to the wall.
“Philippe,” she said, “let's part here. You are drunk, 1 believe. Why quarrel any more? Tomorrow . .
“Oh no!” he said sarcastically. “Am I not under obligation to fulfil my conjugal duty? But, before that, I want to chastise you a little to make you lose your taste for blackmail. Do not forget, Madame, that I am your master and that I have every power over you.”
She wanted to escape, but he held her back and lashed her, as he would have lashed a recalcitrant hound. Angelique gave a scream more of indignation than of pain.
“Philippe, you are mad!”
“You will ask my pardon!” he said, through clenched teeth. “You'll ask my pardon for what you have done!”
“No!”
He pushed her into the room, closed the door behind them and began to strike her with his whip. He knew how to handle it. His office of Master of the Wolf-Hunt was not undeserved.
Angelique had put her arms before her face to protect herself. She recoiled to the wall and turned round with an instinctive gesture. Each stroke made her quiver and she bit her lip so as not to utter a groan. However, she suddenly cried out:
“Enough, Philippe, enough! . . . I ask your pardon.”
As he stopped, surprised by his easy victory, she repeated:
“I do ask your pardon. . . . It’s true, I've behaved badly towards you.” Irresolutely, he stood motionless. She was still flouting him, balking his rage with a deceptive humility. Cringing bitches, all of them! Over¬weening in victory, crouching under the lash! But in Angelique's voice there had been something sincere which troubled him. Could it be that she was not like the others, and that the memory engraved in his mind of the little ‘Baroness of the Doleful Dress' was not just a mere semblance?
In the semi-darkness, where the light of the moon contended with the glow of the torches, the sight of those bruised, white shoulders, that fragile neck, that forehead buried against the wall like that of a penitent child, aroused in him a violent but unfamiliar desire, such as no woman had ever aroused in him. It was not just blind and bestial lust. There was about it a somewhat mysterious, almost sweet and gentle allure.
Short of breath, he flung his whip away, then tossed off his doublet and wig.
Angelique saw him with alarm suddenly half undressed and disarmed, straight as an archangel in the darkness, with his short fair hair, his lace shirt open over his smooth, white chest, his arms flung out in an undecided gesture.
He came towards her, seized her and clumsily buried his mouth in the burning hollow of her throat, on the very spot which still hurt Angflique as a result of his attack in the boat. Now it was her turn to feel bitterly furious. Moreover, though she was upright enough to admit her wrongs, she was too proud to be put, by the treatment just inflicted upon her, into an amorous mood.
She jerked away from the hands of her new husband:
“Oh no! None of that!”
Hearing this cry, Philippe went mad again. He stepped back, raised his fist and struck Angelique full in the face.
She reeled; then, gripping with both hands the lapels of his shirt, she sent him crashing against the wall. For a second he remained dazed. In self-defence she had used the very motions of a tavern wench accustomed to dealing with drunks.
He had never seen a lady of quality defend herself in this way. It struck him as both very funny and exasperating. Did she imagine he was going togivein? . . .
He ground his teeth, then suddenly bounded forward with crafty suppleness, seized her by the neck and savagely knocked her head against the wall.
Under the shock, Angelique half lost consciousness and slid to the ground. She struggled in order not to faint. A certainty had just come over her: at ‘The Red Mask* it was Philippe—she was sure of it now— who had stunned her before the others had grabbed her in order to rape her.
The weight of his body flattened her against the icy stone floor. She felt like the prey of a frenzied wild beast, a beast who, after releasing her, was battering her relentlessly, savagely. An inhuman pain shot through her back. ... No woman could suffer this and not die. ... He was going to maim her, destroy her! . . .
At last, unable to stand it, she uttered a heart-rending scream.
“Mercy, Philippe, mercy! . . .”
He answered with a muffled, triumphant growl. At last she had screamed. At last he found again the only form of love that could content him, the devilish glee of pressing against him a prey taut with pain, a fear- maddened beseeching prey. His lust, heightened by hatred, made him tense as an iron rod. He crushed her with all his might.
When he released her at last, she was almost unconscious.
He gazed at her, sprawling at his feet. .
She was not groaning any more, but was dimly trying to recover con-sciousness. She stirred a little on the floor, like a lovely, wounded bird.
Angllique opened her eyes. He touched her with the tip of his foot and said with a sneer:
“Well, are you satisfied? Good night, Madame la Marquise du Plessis.”
She heard him move away, knocking against the furniture. Then he left the room.
For a long time she remained lying on the ground, despite the cold which hit into her bare flesh.
She felt wounded to the marrow, and her throat contracted in a childish desire to weep. Despite herself, the memory of her first wedding, under the sky of Toulouse, came back to haunt her. She saw herself lying inert, light-headed and heavy-limbed from a fatigue she had known for the first time. Over her bed leaned the figure of the great Joffrey de Peyrac.
“Poor little hurt thing!” he had said.
But his voice rang with no pity. And suddenly he had begun to laugh, the triumphant, exultant laugh of the man who was the first to set his seal on the flesh of a beloved companion.
‘That’s why I love him, too!’ she had thought at the time. ‘Because he is Man incarnate. What does his ravaged face matter! He has the strength and the intelligence, the virility, the subde intransigence of conquerors— and simplicity, in short all that goes to make a Man, the first of all beings, the master of creation. . . .’
And that was the man she had lost, lost now for the second time! For she dimly felt that Joffrey de Peyrac’s spirit was repudiating her. Had she not just been unfaithful to him?
She began to think of death, of the little pool under the water-lilies. Then she remembered what Desgrez had said to her:
“Avoid stirring up the ashes that were scattered to the four winds . . . for whenever you think of them, you’ll feel a longing for death . . . and I shan’t always be there. . . .”
So, on account of Desgrez, on account of her friend the policeman, the Marquise of the Angels once again brushed aside the temptation of despair. She did not want to disappoint Desgrez.
Getting up, she dragged herself to the door, pushed the bolts home, then slumped down in a heap on the bed. It was better not to think too much. Besides, hadn’t Molines warned her: “It may be that you’ll lose the first round. . . .”
Fever throbbed in her temples, and she did not know how to soothe the burning aches in her body.
In the moonlight there appeared the light phantom of the Gutter-Poet with his pointed hat and his pale hair. She called to him. But he was already fading away. She thought she heard Sorbonne bark and Desgrez’s step receding in the distance. . . .
Desgrez, the Gutter-Poet—she mixed them up a little in her mind, the hunter and the hunted; both were the sons of Paris; both were wags and cynics, who studded their low slang with Latin. But however much she clamoured for their presence, they were fading, losing all reality. They no longer were part of her life. A page had turned. She was parted from them for good.
Angelique woke with a start.
She listened. The silence of the forest of Nieul surrounded the white castle. In one of the rooms the handsome torturer must be snoring, dazed with wine. An owl hooted, and its muted call brought with it all the poetry of the night and the woods.
The young woman felt a great calm. She turned over on her pillow and resolutely tried to sleep.
She had lost the first round, but all the same she was the Marquise du Plessis-Belliere.
The morning, however, brought her a fresh disappointment. As she was coming downstairs, having attended to her toilet herself in order to avoid Javotte’s inquisitiveness, and after smearing her face with ceruse white and powder in order to conceal the more obvious bruises, she learned that her husband had returned to Paris at dawn. Or rather to Versailles, where the Court was foregathered for the last festivities before the summer campaigns.
Angelique’s blood boiled. Did Philippe imagine that his wife would consent to being buried in the provinces while fetes were in progress at Versailles? . . .
Four hours later, a carriage drawn by six galloping horses hurtlcda long the bumpy roads of Poitou.
Angelique, stiff and aching but with adamant will-power, was return¬ing to Paris, too. Not daring to face Molincs’s sharp-eyed glances, she had left him a note in which she commended her children to his care. With Barbe, the nurse, their grandfather and the steward, Florimond and Cantor would have all their hearts’ desires. She could set out with her mind at rest.
In Paris she asked Ninon de Lenclos to lodge her. Ninon for the last three months had been faithful to the love she felt for the Due de Gasscm- pierre. The Due having gone to Court for a week, Angelique found the seclusion she desired at her friend’s house. She spent forty-eight hours lying in Ninon’s bed, with a poultice of Peruvian balsam on her face, two alum compresses on her eyelids, her body rubbed with oils and various creams.
She had ascribed the blame for the numerous cuts and bruises which marred her face and shoulders to an unfortunate accident to her coach. The courtesan’s tact was such that Angelique herself never knew whether or not she had believed her.
Ninon spoke to her in very natural terms of Philippe, of whom she had caught a glimpse on his return, on his way to Versailles. A most delightful programme of entertainments had been planned for the Court season: ring-tilting, ballets, comedies, fireworks and other most amusing in¬ventions. The city rang with the chatter of those who had been invited and with the teeth-gnashings of those who had not.
Sitting at Angelique’s bedside, Ninon talked endlessly so that her patient might not feel tempted to speak, for she needed complete quiet in order to restore her lily-and-rose complexion. Ninon said that she had no regrets at not knowing Versailles, where her reputation barred her admittance. Her domain was elsewhere, in this little mansion in the Marais district, where she was truly a queen and not a follower. She was quite content to know that, when talking of one or another incident in the alcoves or at Court, the King would sometimes ask: “And what does the lovely Ninon say about it?”
“When you are being feted at Versailles, will you forget me, my dear?” she asked.
Angelique, under her poultices, shook her head.