In the Name of the King Page 12

  ‘You can keep the sword,’ says Molin soothingly. ‘We just want the baldric.’

  The other says nothing, just slides his hand in his coat. I snatch his arm and tell him to leave off, but he don’t want to hear it, see, he’s up and swiping with the knife, so I sock him one to teach him better, then curl round the old leg to trip him down smack on the stones. Molin springs up while I’m still off balance, he’s whipping out his own dagger and it’s all I can do to duck the slash, but then comes the slide of steel behind him, and there’s the gentleman propped up on his elbow, his eyes wide open and the sword in his hand.

  ‘Get back,’ he says. ‘Drop the knife and get back.’ The voice ain’t up to much, but the sword’s something can prod holes in you before you get near knife range.

  Molin hesitates. He was a Marseilles water rat if I remember right, all cunning and no balls. He looks at the gentleman sliding himself up the wall, he looks at his mate on his hands and knees, he looks at me with my fists up, ready for him and his mother, and he sees it’s not worth it. He says something I won’t repeat, sticks his knife in his belt, and turns to go.

  ‘Stop,’ says the gentleman, full upright now. I ain’t sure what’s holding him up, tell you the truth, the only steady things about him are the hand and the sword. He says ‘My purse.’

  Molin’s eyes measure the distance between them. He says ‘Fuck you,’ and turns away. Next second the gentleman’s lunged with the sword, and there’s Moulin yelping like a girl, blood pouring down the back of his hand.

  ‘My purse,’ says the gentleman.

  Moulin throws it down on the street, coins spilling out and bouncing away. He says ‘Buy yourself a good piece of armour, friend. You’ll need it next time I see your back,’ then swaggers himself off, his friend hobbling after him like a broken-backed spider.

  I chase up as many coins as I can see in the dark and give him them back, yes, the whole lot, what do you take me for? I say ‘You make friends wherever you go, don’t you?’

  He looks at me and smiles. ‘Maybe I do,’ he says.

  Jacques Gilbert

  When we got home the authorities were waiting. There were Gardes-Françaises because of it happening in the Royal Gardens, Cardinal’s Guards because of it being his party, Musketeers because it was one of theirs who was killed, prévots des maréchaux because of it being a crime, we’d got half Paris crashing round the courtyard and wanting to search the house.

  But she was strong, my grandmother. She got a surgeon to stitch up my knee, sent Bernadette to her room with Robert and Jean to guard her door, then graciously admitted the whole invasion and instructed the kitchens to offer them wine. By the time I was bandaged and carried upstairs it was starting to feel like a bloody party. None of us could sleep through it, so the Comtesse took Charlot, Suzanne and me into the big salon with the sky ceiling and sat us down at three o’clock in the morning to play triomphe.

  A whole stream of people poured in to search round us, but the Comtesse still kept us playing. Just the sight of those pictures now, David, Charles, Alexander, Caesar, I can’t see them without remembering how they blurred into a mess of colour in front of my eyes and hearing the Comtesse saying teasingly ‘Now, Monsieur, you do not concentrate.’

  None of us were, and trumps changed from spades to hearts in the middle of a hand without anyone saying a word. The second the guards moved out of earshot the Comtesse said under her breath ‘The Chevalier, how seriously is he hurt?’

  She was fumbling the deal, a card fell face up. I flipped it back over and said ‘He was well enough to run, he’ll be all right.’

  Charlot gave me a tiny nod of approval. ‘Will His Eminence help us, Madame?’

  ‘If he can,’ she murmured. ‘He was certainly grateful for our information. But it will be difficult now the King’s Musketeers are involved.’

  I said ‘We’ve got witnesses.’

  She ordered her hand. ‘And who are they, Monsieur? A serving girl compromised by her friendship within this household, and an engineer of fireworks who has disappeared.’

  ‘And a stable boy,’ I said bitterly. ‘Don’t forget him.’

  She glanced at me over the top of her cards. ‘Naughty temper,’ she said, but there was a flash in her eyes that was almost warm.

  I declared the ace of trumps and went to pillage the pack. ‘There’s that young Musketeer, I’m sure he saw.’

  The Comtesse nodded. ‘I shall speak to de Tréville in the morning.’

  A couple of Cardinal’s Guards came muscling in, so we played in silence till they went down the far end to poke behind the tapestries. I said ‘There’s Anne. Even if she didn’t see the end of it, she saw us being attacked.’

  The Comtesse studied her cards. ‘And will she say so, I wonder?’

  I said ‘You don’t suspect Anne?’

  ‘Do I not?’ she said. ‘Who made this appointment at which the Chevalier was ambushed?’

  I remembered walking André back from the enclosure, his whisper of ‘She loves me, Jacques, she wants to see me alone.’ I remembered what I’d seen outside the hut, Anne comforting one of the enemy. I said ‘She got us out. I told you, she fetched the axe.’

  ‘And brought you out where assassins were waiting.’

  ‘We were shouting, they followed the noise, that’s all.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, and played a card.

  I tossed another on top of it. ‘And she went for help, you know she did.’

  ‘She fetched another assassin.’

  ‘How could she know?’

  The Comtesse took the trick. ‘Aren’t they her brother’s friends?’

  The Maréchaussée were coming in for their turn, but I couldn’t answer anyway. The truth was banging in my head like a bell and nothing I could think of would make it stop.

  It was nearly dawn when I got back to my room. It was strange thinking how happy I’d been last time I’d slept here, almost like remembering myself as a child. The bed felt as cold as it had that first night.

  The door creaked open. A girl in a long nightdress came in with a candle, and when she put it down I saw it was Bernadette.

  I said ‘You’re meant to be guarded. Where’s Robert and Jean-Luc?’

  She sat on the bed beside me, careful not to disturb my leg. ‘I climbed out of the window and came back in through the courtyard.’

  I couldn’t say anything, but she reached out her arms and leaned me against her chest, and I think maybe I cried a bit. But it was all warm and soft in her arms, and she was kissing my head, then after a while she opened her nightdress and gave me her breasts. They were as beautiful as I’d imagined, but I’d still got to be fair, so I made myself draw back and say ‘I’m going to be a gentleman, I won’t be allowed to marry you.’ She giggled, then kissed me so hard I felt giddy and said ‘That is because you even thought such an impossible thing.’ So I slid back the covers and rolled her into bed, then she straddled me so as not to hurt my leg, and I made love to her and she to me. She was soft and moist with wanting me, she made joyful little squirming movements and funny little noises like pleasure, she was innocent and lovely and loving, there wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t let me do.

  Afterwards, when we lay side by side, exhausted and slippery with sweat, she said ‘Say it again about not being allowed to marry me.’ I asked why, and she looked at me so seriously and said ‘Because it is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me in my whole life.’ I looked at her face, all pink and flushed and trusting on the pillow, and said ‘I’m free to love you, Bernadette, no one can stop me doing that,’ and she caught her breath and reached for me, then we made love again and it was even better than before.

  I held her snuggled into me, and the warmth of her helped when I thought about the boy. Last time I’d lost him he’d just come back like nothing had happened, and I was sure in my heart he’d do it again now. So I slept at last, but I dreamed I was back searching for him in that maze, calling his name over and over, bu
t there was never any answer, just silent hedges and dead ends, and paths that wound into nowhere in the dark.

  Anne du Pré

  Extract from her diary, dated 14 October 1640

  I can’t believe I have been so slow. When Florian hurried me away to our carriage I thought he wished to save me further distress. When Father ordered me not to say what I had seen I thought he feared others would wonder why I had been there at all.

  I said ‘André’s life is at stake, Monsieur, we must forget reputation and tell the truth. You too, Florian, you must say who else knew about our meeting.’

  He coloured dreadfully and insisted that he had told no one. He said ‘Why should you think you were attacked at all? De Roland would start a fight with anyone, look how he challenged Bouchard.’

  I said ‘It’s Bouchard who’s behind this, André said so. Did you tell him, Florian?’

  The noise of the gardens receded behind us and everything seemed suddenly very quiet. The seat creaked as Father leaned forward across the carriage.

  ‘What else did de Roland tell you?’

  My words seemed to dry in my throat and I looked at my father as if he were a stranger.

  Florian said pleasantly ‘It’s important, Anne.’ He was swaying gently from side to side with the movement of the carriage, but his eyes stayed on my face.

  I forced myself to speak. ‘He only said it was dangerous. And it is, isn’t it?’

  Father sat back. ‘Not if one has the right connections. Has he told anyone else?’

  I said ‘Only his grandmother. Please, Monsieur, he is our friend. We could go together to the Cardinal and put things right.’

  ‘The Cardinal?’ said Florian.

  The wheels rumbled as we entered the Porte Saint-Germain and the swinging lanterns flicked light through our window, casting fleeting shadows over both their faces.

  Father said ‘Attend me, Anne. André de Roland is not our friend, and you will have nothing to do with him ever again. Do you understand?’

  I said ‘But you invited them tonight. It was Florian’s idea and you …’

  My own words gave me the truth. They are not merely embroiled in this, they actually planned it. There is nothing innocent about their involvement, and the only dupe in this whole affair has been me.

  Albert Grimauld

  They patched him up in the abbey’s infirmary. Fr. Anselm and Fr. Dominic were proper Christians, they never asked no questions, just sewed him back up like new.

  He needed it too, oh my word, there was enough blood gone out of him to float a barge. Still he was tougher nor he looked, that laddie, and been in the wars before if the musket hole in his back was anything to go by. Some not very classy language we had out of him while they was stitching, but never a bleat, not one.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ says Fr. Anselm. ‘Nothing vital’s pierced. He needs to rest to let the blood make itself up, but he’ll heal with time.’

  ‘Ah,’ says I, ‘but that’s just what we ain’t got, see? This ain’t your everyday in-and-out-thief, this is your actual murderer, or so they’ll say. The provosts won’t hold off for ever, we’ve got to move him on.’

  Fr. Dominic and Fr. Anselm look at each other, and even the gentleman sees their doubt.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he says, looking like a day-old corpse. ‘I’ll leave now if you like. I can go back tomorrow anyway, my grandmother will have sorted it out by then.’

  Green? You could have ate that boy as a salad. I said ‘Not unless she’s the bloody queen, she won’t. You need a horse to the coast and a boat out of France.’

  What little blood he’d got left in his face faded clean out of it. ‘I can’t go home?’

  ‘Not unless you want them took for harbouring,’ I said briskly. ‘Now about that horse …’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m going to be married.’

  ‘Not this year,’ I said. ‘Maybe your friends can get you brought back in two.’

  He was quiet as he took it in. I braced myself for the weeping and wailing, but he rummaged in his clothes, said ‘Can you get me a horse?’ and offered me his purse.

  I don’t know, I’m not a bad man, there was something I couldn’t understand holding me back. I said ‘Listen, laddie, you don’t just go handing purses of money to strangers. How do you know I ain’t going straight off with it and you’ll never see me again?’

  He looked at me smack on, and bugger me to Breisach, it was like taking a kick off a mule. He said ‘I’ve already cost you your job. You’re not even safe here now you helped me against those footpads. So you can take the money and run, or you can help me and trust I’ll take care of you afterwards, but either way I owe you and at least you’ll get paid.’

  You ever heard a gentleman speak like that? No, nor likely to neither, and if you were to pass over that bottle I’d drink my life on it.

  I stowed the purse safe and said ‘What do I call you anyway?’

  He said ‘My name’s André.’

  Real names in a business like this? I said soothingly ‘Right you are, my poppet, André it is.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘André’s fine, but call me “poppet” and I’ll kill you.’

  The monks twittered with alarm, but I saw the glint in his eyes and couldn’t help but laugh. He laughed too, only a little, but a sight better than the dying girlie look he’d been giving me earlier. I gave him my hand on it, and he took it like a man my own kind and said ‘You might want to make it two horses,’ and I said ‘You might be right.’

  I knew just where to get them, but by the time I got there it was sun-up and the situation changing fast. Drouart the salt smuggler was ahead of me waiting to change a broken-winded animal he’d bought earlier and saying ‘You want to ride out of Saint-Germain you’ll have to wait a week, they’re beating the bounds all round.’

  I said ‘Why’s that then?’ and he said there was cavalry ranging all over the roads, stopping and searching travellers to find a fugitive.

  ‘Big one too,’ he says wistfully. ‘Gentleman defied the King’s own orders in his mother’s own gardens, went and killed a Musketeer stone dead. That’ll be an execution worth watching, Grimauld. They’re saying it’s André de Roland himself.’

  That set the old brain whirring, oh my word it did. Everyone knew de Roland was the gentleman who’d disguised himself as a peasant and lived like one of us. They said he was a swordsman too, and I’d seen a bit of that myself, some very pretty rapier work he was dealing out in that maze. But I still weren’t fool enough to see it getting us past a whole regiment of cavalry, so I gave the horses the go-by and put my mind to something else.

  I went to a little place I know that deals in … well, never you mind what, it was the kind of place people like Molin found handy, that’s all. I got what I wanted, then it was back to the Abbey to break the news to the laddie.

  He took it like a pro. ‘Then we’ll go the other way. We’ll go back till it all dies down.’

  ‘Bang in the gold,’ says I, chucking him one of my parcels. ‘They won’t be watching for people going in the city, we’ll stroll in with the traders and no one’ll pay us no nevermind. Get yourself in that lot, and no one won’t know the difference.’

  It was a motley lot of clothing I’d got us, a man didn’t like to think too careful who it had come off of, but it was just the business to make him look the roughest kind of artisan. I’d some for myself too, I wasn’t walking about in a green uniform screaming ‘fireworks engineer’ to anyone with more hearing than a mule.

  Poor Fr. Anselm looked like I’d pissed in the chapel. ‘You can’t ask a gentleman to dress like this,’ he said. ‘He could never pass, the distinction in bearing would be far too great.’

  ‘So it might be, my poppet,’ says I, ‘for any gentleman but this one. But I think this one can do it, am I right?’

  The gentleman looks at me sharp and he sees I know. He says ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ says I. ‘But have you got a friend you can
go to ground with till the heat’s off?’

  ‘Yes,’ says André. ‘I think I have.’

  Jacques Gilbert

  The Comtesse set off for Richelieu first thing, but they told her His Eminence was too busy to speak to the family of a criminal. She said he might just be pretending in front of everybody else, but I wasn’t sure she really believed it.

  It was hard to stay hopeful, the atmosphere was just foul. The servants were going round subdued and red-eyed, and we’d got guards on the gates waiting to pounce on André if he tried to come back to his own home. I couldn’t even ride into Saint-Germain myself without them following me. We couldn’t do a thing but sit and wait.

  Then de Chouy came. We were back in the sky salon when he arrived, I could still see the cards on the table that no one had bothered to clear away. No one had cleaned yet either, it smelt of dust and early morning defeat. Then the door whooshed open so vigorously it banged against the wall, and we heard someone saying ‘Whoops!’ Robert announced ‘M. de Chouy’ in the kind of voice you use when there’s plague in the house, and in he bounded, sweeping off his hat and apologizing before he even reached us.

  He said ‘I’m sorry, Madame, but it’s about the Chevalier,’ then noticed Charlot and said ‘Oh.’

  The Comtesse said ‘You need not mind Charles, Monsieur. If you have news we shall be only too pleased to hear.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, clutching his hat and looking down at her with anxious eyes. ‘But I’ve come from him, you see. The Chevalier.’

  The Comtesse didn’t speak, and I suddenly realized she couldn’t.

  I said ‘Is he all right?’

  He turned to me with obvious relief. ‘Hullo, Jacquot, isn’t this terrible? But he’s quite all right, I’ve left him tucked up in bed and the servants won’t talk, he’s quite safe.’

  The Comtesse looked at him steadily. ‘Are you saying you have taken the Chevalier into your own house?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said in a small voice, like he was scared he’d done something wrong. ‘It’s André. I mean it’s the Chevalier.’