In the Name of the King Read online

  ‘You might want to tidy yourselves a touch before going in,’ he said. ‘Just saying.’

  He was right. The rapiers marked us as gentlemen but nothing else matched. Our clothes were tatty from battles and things, we were covered in dirt from the roads and our hair was much too short for the fashion. We brushed each other off a bit, but we couldn’t brush our clothes newer or our hair longer, we’d just have to do as we were.

  We went in. It wasn’t like the Quatre Corbeaux in Dax, with old men playing chess and drinking cider, this was the main road to Paris, the customers were all strangers and it felt as friendly as a foreign barracks. Soldiers lined the walls and sat on the boards, the air was full of gruff laughter, and the only woman I could see was a big-breasted girl barging men out of the way with her hip as she swept by with bowls of steaming lentils.

  We wriggled through to a counter at the far end and waited to get served. Other men yelled and banged their fists on the wood and got given jugs of wine and beer, but we stood politely and no one noticed us at all. I whispered to André ‘I think we’ve got to shout,’ but he said ‘Isn’t that rude when they’re busy?’

  I’d done this. I’d taken a young nobleman who used to shout and stamp with the best of them and turned him into someone as polite and humble as me. I said ‘We’ll starve otherwise.’

  He shrugged and turned back to the counter, but someone else spoke first. A man’s voice behind us said loudly ‘Nice sword.’

  Something flashed in André’s eyes, and there it was, everything I’d been trying to wake up in him and suddenly wished I hadn’t. He turned slowly, rested his elbows on the counter and said ‘Thank you.’

  Someone sniggered. A flabby-faced soldier said ‘Whose is it?’

  André let the laugh rise and die away. Then he let his hand drop casually to his belt and said ‘Who says it’s not mine?’

  Everything went horribly quiet. The flabby-faced man looked him up and down, but André didn’t move. Everything about him seemed relaxed except for the unnatural stillness of his face. His legs were slightly apart, his left hip thrust to point the guard of his rapier to the hand on his belt. He was a swordsman and looked it.

  ‘No one,’ said the flabby man at last. ‘Just asking.’

  André allowed a slight dip of his eyelids. ‘As long as there’s no misunderstanding.’ He turned again to the counter and gave the man his back.

  The chatter broke out again behind us, but the nape of my neck was cold with sweat. I hissed ‘For God’s sake, André, don’t do stuff like that. What if he’d taken you up on it?’

  He looked surprised. ‘I’d have fought him. He insulted me, didn’t he?’

  I ought never to have brought him in here, not till he looked and sounded right and no one would dream of insulting him. He ought to have had like a bubble of nobility all round him, but I’d gone and broken it and this was the result.

  I said ‘Sod this place, we’ll eat in Paris.’

  His eyes widened. ‘But I’m hungry.’

  I took his arm and bloody well pulled. ‘Your grandmother will feed us, it’ll look rude if we’ve already eaten.’

  He was laughing in protest as I hauled him through the crowd. ‘Oh come on, Jacques, I’m not going to start anything.’

  Someone already had. I heard yelling and jeering down towards the door, a man protesting his horse had been stolen and soldiers saying he ought to be grateful for the chance to contribute to the war effort in Flanders. I kept dragging André past, and hoped to God our own horses were safe.

  ‘Damn your Flanders,’ said the man, with the kind of authority that makes you shuffle your feet and say ‘Sieur’. ‘I need another horse, and if there’s a gentleman in this disgusting place he’ll help me find one.’

  André’s head shot up at once. No one else responded, someone was telling the man to watch his language and others just laughed. It sounded bad, I was expecting to hear a sword rasp out any second, but then we were through the screen of bodies and I saw the man wasn’t noble at all, just a huddled figure in the brown robe and hood of a Capuchin monk, turning this way and that to confront his tormentors. His face was shadowed by the heavy cowl, but his head was stooped anyway by the deep curve of his back.

  I tugged at the boy’s arm. ‘It’s just a hunchback, come on.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said a soldier. ‘Give us a rub of the hump for luck and I’ll let you pat my horse, how’s that?’ The others howled with laughter.

  André jerked his arm free and stepped forward. ‘May I be of assistance, Father?’

  The soldiers murmured and I saw it again, that up-and-down look and then the hesitation. There were more of them here, so I moved quickly to the boy’s side to let them see I’d got a rapier too. The mumbling died away.

  ‘Not unless you have a horse,’ said the hunchback ungratefully. ‘I’ve lost hours searching for a replacement and must be in Paris before dusk.’

  ‘Bets, everyone!’ cried a young arquebusier. ‘Let’s see how fast a bossu can run!’

  André’s eyes suddenly got thinner. He raised his voice over the cackling soldiers and said ‘I can’t lend you a horse, but you’re welcome to ride with me if you wish.’

  The cowled head moved as the hunchback studied us. He must have seen how shabby we were, but just said ‘Thank you, Messieurs, I accept,’ and began to shuffle purposefully towards the door. I whispered to André ‘He’s hiding his face, he might be a bloody leper,’ but the boy said ‘He’s a monk, isn’t he? He wouldn’t put us in danger without saying so,’ and walked confidently after him, ignoring the mocking grins of the crowd.

  I suppose there was nothing really wrong with it. Héros carried the two of them easily, and we didn’t even slow down. I didn’t have anything against hunchbacks either, I mean I’d never minded Nicolas Moreau at home, but there’s something sort of sinister about a man who won’t look you in the face, and this one really wouldn’t. He kept his hood right down all the time we were riding, and I felt more and more uneasy with every mile.

  Bernadette Fournier

  It was the wine, I expect, Monsieur, that and the heat of the evening. Some of the gentlemen remained both sober and civil, especially those beside the dark man with the little beard, but Bouchard and his friends drank without restraint and grew loud with merriment.

  All this while my little cat lay curled contentedly in the hearth, for she liked the warmth of the stones and fancied she felt it even when there was no fire lit. She was no trouble to anyone until Bouchard chose to relieve himself in the fireplace, but then she sprang up and spat with protest, as who would not to be woken in such a way. Bouchard jumped back with an oath, while his friends laughed as at a farce by Jodelet himself.

  Bouchard cried ‘The devil!’ and reached for my cat, but she backed into the corner, arching her back and bottle-brushing up her tail. He thrust his boot to prise her out of her corner, and I ran forward crying ‘She is only a cat, Monsieur, only a little cat!’ but he kicked her as if she had been a stone, he slammed his boot into her body so that she was crushed against the wall with a great crack and slid down into writhing contortions, crying most piteously. I struck out at his face and knelt beside my little one, but her back was broken, I could do for her now but the one thing. I put my hands to her neck and twisted the pain away until there was another crack then nothing but warm, limp fur and a dead cat and my heart that was too full even for tears.

  There was silence about me, and I looked up and saw them staring down. Bouchard wiped his cheek with his handkerchief and stared in shock at the tiniest streak of blood on its folds. He said in disbelief ‘You scratched me, you bitch. You scratched me.’

  And then, Monsieur, oh yes, very yes, I was afraid.

  Jacques Gilbert

  We weren’t much past Pierrefitte-sur-Seine when we first smelt it.

  ‘Paris,’ said the hunchback, snuffing contentedly. ‘We can’t be far now.’

  You know what the city’s like, but it
was new to me then and even André recoiled. It had a dead animal stink like M. Gauthier’s cottage, only a bit like someone had crapped in it too. The horses started sneezing and tossing their heads, and I felt like doing the same.

  ‘We’ll get used to it,’ said André encouragingly, slamming a handkerchief over his nose. ‘We must do, I don’t remember it being as bad as this.’

  I wasn’t sure that meant much, it was five years since he’d last been there. I said ‘We can’t live in that.’

  ‘Of course we can,’ he said sort of heartily. ‘The King does, doesn’t he?’

  I remembered the King was at Amiens and began to understand why.

  The hunchback produced a little glass bottle from his robes. ‘Sprinkle it on your handkerchiefs,’ he said. ‘It will help.’

  He was right, the sharpness went zinging into my head like it was dissolving the smell in acid. I’d never seen a vinaigrette before, but couldn’t help noticing how beautiful the bottle was or that the top was gold. I wondered more and more about that hunchback, and whether he was really a monk at all.

  But it didn’t look like mattering much longer, and within an hour we were approaching the Faubourg Saint-Denis. It was all right at first, just little stone houses and fields with sheep, and two distant windmills on a hilltop, but gradually everything grew bigger and bigger. Gardens stretched into the distance like farms, walled places with spires loomed like towns but turned out to be only hospitals. We rode in with Saint-Lazare on our right, the Hôpital Saint-Louis on our left, the walls of the city towering in front of us thirty feet high, and I felt we’d come to a country of giants.

  The Porte Saint-Denis was open, and wagons were trundling out empty over the moat as farm people went home after selling their goods inside. I was all ready to announce the Chevalier de Roland and enjoy the guards’ reaction, but a fat man in a short coat just said ‘Come on if you’re coming,’ jerked his thumb rudely over his shoulder, then went back to guiding the wagons out behind us. We passed six feet’s worth of double wall, emerged out of the tunnel of the gate, and that was it, we were in Paris.

  The noise hit us at once, like being smacked with a sack of wet sand. Wagons were creaking and jolting all about us, wheels grinding and rumbling over loose cobbles, a man with two barrels on a hoop was clanking along yelling ‘Water!’ Women shrieked abuse, shutters banged overhead, dogs barked up a side street, a man bawled from a fish wagon, and someone shouted after a little boy who pounded up the road with a clatter of clogs and ducked under Tonnerre’s belly to vanish up an alley the other side. A carriage rolled towards the gate with a man in front calling ‘Make way for Mme la Duchesse!’ while people bared their forearms to thrust fists in the air, and one shouted back ‘Fuck off!’ Crowds were flocking to the gate, scampering children were tumbling in the streets and begging pennies from the onlookers, people yelling and laughing in one great mush of sound and behind it all a cacophony of thousands of bells.

  Colours blurred in front of me, dazzling clothing that looked almost shocking after days of green fields and white skies. I felt dizzy and sick. Tonnerre walked steadily beneath me, but Héros had never been out of the country, poor beast, he was tossing his head and his eyes were rolling white. André leaned forward to murmur to him, the colt’s nose turned to his voice, and the boy rested his cheek against it like he used to with Tempête. The hubbub about us seemed to still for a moment, and I was aware of a gentler sound nearby, the tinkling of running water from the Ponceau.

  André twisted his neck to speak to the hunchback behind him. ‘We’re for the Marais, Father, is that on your way?’

  ‘Perfect,’ said the hunchback. ‘I’ll direct you.’

  I was glad of that, I wasn’t sure the boy would remember after so long, but the hunchback guided us east like he knew every stone on the way. We followed his directions to the Rue du Temple, then down a tiny backstreet and up to a door with a semicircle of bobbly glass over the top and a sign on a chain saying ‘Le Pomme d’Or’. It had a very narrow front, but went back a long way and had its own courtyard to one side. I heard men laughing in there and wondered if that was who the hunchback was meeting, but when the boy helped him dismount he just thanked us distractedly and disappeared through the door to the house in a flurry of brown robes.

  We so nearly left then, André had his foot in the stirrup to remount, but the courtyard gate opened and a potboy came out, drawn by the sound of horses. His manner was furtive and he was trying to close the gate behind him, but I could still hear raucous laughter and sounds of splashing.

  ‘The public room’s closed, Messieurs,’ said the potboy, looking the colour of cheese rind. ‘I will enquire if …’

  The laughter rose to a howl, and somewhere inside it came a girl’s scream.

  André thrust his reins at the potboy and strode forward. I said ‘No, no, we can’t interfere,’ but he just smacked his palm on the gate and shoved it wide open. I slid off Tonnerre to grab at him, but he was already through the gate and gone.

  I flung the servant money, said ‘Look after the horses,’ and bolted after him.

  Bernadette Fournier

  Oh, they found it so funny, Monsieur. They decided I was a dirty little beast and must be given a bath.

  I would have run, but Bouchard scooped up my feet and his friends carried me between them to the courtyard door. The shy man did say ‘I don’t think you should,’ but when Bouchard told him to run home to bed he meekly donned his cloak to leave. The silent dark man merely averted his eyes as if there were nothing happening and the rest followed his lead. I cried out for Madame and know she heard me, I saw her enter the room as we left it, but she only closed the courtyard door and went away.

  They carried me to the horse trough, swung me over and dropped me into it with a great splash. The shock of cold water was frightful. Its filth invaded my mouth and nose as I tried to scream. I breathed in only water so that my head and chest swelled with the fear of it, then the weight was released, my head came again into the air, I was lying in a dirty horse trough spluttering and coughing and retching, and around me the gentlemen laughed until almost they were sick.

  ‘Again,’ said Bouchard, and I had time for only one cry before my head was forced back under. My hands flailed at the rim, but my shoulders were held down, my legs kicked at air. There was gurgling nothingness in my ears, the sky above me was rippled with brown water and dark shapes looming beyond it, I was clawing at emptiness and the panic forced me to gasp. The pain in my chest swelled, my throat burned, and my mind screamed that this was no game, they would keep me there until I drowned.

  The pressure relaxed from my shoulders as an arm slid beneath them and hauled me up out of the water. My legs flopped down to touch solid ground, and through stinging eyes I glimpsed a man in a white shirt stepping back as I fell on my knees on the cobbles. My ears were filled with water, and I heard nothing but the rattle of my own breath as I vomited helplessly over the stones.

  And not only the stones, for as I opened my eyes I became aware of a pair of boots in front of me spattered with brown streaks. I allowed my gaze to travel upwards over the hem of a black cloak, full dark breeches, a belt and scabbard, the swept hilt of a grand rapier, a sleeveless blue doublet stained with wear, and a dirty white shirt unlaced at the neck. He was poor, perhaps, but certainly a gentleman – and I had been sick over his feet.

  I cried out, but a hand came and rested on my head and a voice said ‘All right.’ I looked up fearfully, and saw the face of a young man perhaps seventeen or eighteen, with dishevelled black hair and green eyes that regarded me with the brightness of distress.

  ‘All right,’ he said again, and the touch of his hand was warm against the wetness of my scalp. I felt that he protected me, that as long as I stayed under his hand I would be safe.

  Jacques Gilbert

  I was terrified. There were four of them, all gentlemen, the kind of people I ought to be taking my hat off and grovelling to. Then the girl turned h
er face up to André and something inside me flipped over. Streaks of dirty water ran down her cheeks, her brown hair was plastered to her head, her eyes looked red and sore, but I was holding my breath all the same.

  André kept his hand on her head, but he was looking at that blond bastard who was lounging against the trough with an expression of total boredom. There was something odd about his eyes, one seemed to be almost looking at his nose.

  André’s voice had a little shake in it. ‘This to a woman?’

  The blond practically yawned. ‘What business is it of yours?’

  André didn’t hesitate. ‘That of a gentleman.’

  They looked at us, weighing us up. We wore the sword, but I knew that next to themselves we looked like nobodies.

  The blond smiled. ‘Oh come, fellow, a gentleman would know what happens to a commoner who strikes one.’

  André looked down at the girl, but she shook her head and said ‘They killed my cat.’

  ‘Did they?’ said André lightly. ‘How brave of them.’

  The blond suddenly stopped looking bored. André stepped back on one foot, hand going to his hip, ready for the challenge.

  It didn’t come. The blond glanced at his companions and said ‘Here’s another wants cooling off. What do you say?’

  André didn’t understand, he was standing waiting for the duel, but they were on him before I could move. The girl scrambled to her feet, trying to stand between them, but the blond smacked her out of the way, she reeled back dripping wet into my arms, and for a second her eyes were on my face.

  ‘In with him!’ the blond said. I tore my eyes off the girl and saw them dragging André towards the trough. His head went down, his elbows back, he wrenched an arm free and punched that blond whack on the chin. The man teetered backwards, his legs banged against the trough and for a glorious moment I thought he’d fall right in, but he just toppled sideways, bashing his head against the trough as he went down.