In the Name of the King Read online

  Stefan was called first. He could testify to what had happened at the baggage train, his story would prove Desmoulins was a traitor and a liar, it should tell anyone what had really been going on at Le Pomme d’Or. We hoped it would nail the whole thing.

  The judges said it was irrelevant. They claimed anything at La Marfée came under the general amnesty and Desmoulins’ being a traitor didn’t prove a conspiracy against André back in 1640. They said ‘And do you suggest that the Duc de Bouillon was also plotting to murder the Chevalier de Roland? Or the Comte de Soissons?’ Stefan looked them in the eye, said ‘How the fuck do I know?’ and was put out straight away. My uncle didn’t say anything when he brought him back. He just looked out of the carriage window and shook his head.

  But next day they summoned Grimauld, and he held his ground like a leech. He said over and over again that he saw Dubosc go for André first, nothing they said could shake him. They asked sneerily ‘And what do you know about swordsmanship?’ and he said ‘No more than you do about fireworks, Messieurs, but you’d know if one went off in your face.’ My uncle said he had the nobles in the gallery laughing, the judges couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

  That’s when I knew we’d got a chance. The judges couldn’t go against written evidence and the records showed Grimauld had beaten them. He was strutting about next day acting out his testimony in front of the servants, but nobody grudged it him, even my grandmother laughed. Only Bernadette sniffed and said ‘There is still my evidence to come, Jacques, and that will be even better.’ She was so fierce about it all, Bernadette. That night she pinned me down on the bed, clamped her hands on my wrists and said ‘Now, Monsieur, tell me you think I will break before your old men.’

  Monday morning I was woken by shouting outside my window. There were guards in the courtyard, maybe a dozen, and more clustered by the kitchens. I hurled on my breeches and slung on my coat as I ran, but by the time I got down Grimauld was already being dragged from the servants’ quarters, digging in his heels and shouting at them to get their hands off. Charlot was standing imposingly in the centre of the courtyard saying ‘Not without permission from Madame la Comtesse,’ but they streamed round him like waves breaking over a rock. Then a calm little voice said ‘And will someone tell me the meaning of this?’ and there was my grandmother in her nightdress with nothing over it but a shawl, but her hair was immaculate, her control was absolute, and everyone went dead quiet.

  The lead guard held out a paper. ‘I have an order from the justices to remove the person of Albert Grimauld to give further testimony.’

  My grandmother read the paper and lifted her head. ‘To put him to the question?’

  The guard looked embarrassed. ‘He has been declared a suspected accomplice.’

  Torture. That’s what they meant, they were going to bloody torture him till he said what they wanted. I looked at the Comtesse, but she was hesitating, and I realized with sudden shock that she didn’t know what to do.

  ‘It’s all right, Madame,’ said Grimauld. He jerked himself out of the guards’ hands, yanked his breeches up higher and wriggled his shoulders in a manly, independent sort of way. ‘Don’t fret yourself. I’ve told no lies and nothing to fear.’ He looked up at the lead guard, said ‘Right you are then, let’s get it over with,’ then swaggered after them to the gate.

  It felt unbelievably wrong to let him go. André would have tried to fight them, but we couldn’t, these were our own people and our own laws. Stefan stared accusingly, Bernadette looked ready to cry, and all I could do was say ‘But they can’t, can they, they can’t do that.’

  ‘They can, Monsieur,’ said Charlot. ‘He has not the Chevalier’s protection of rank.’

  ‘No rank,’ echoed my grandmother. She dragged the wig off her head, and underneath was her own silver hair, dishevelled and tangled from sleep like an ordinary person’s. ‘No rank, but a man for all that.’

  Albert Grimauld

  Nothing heroic about it, was there, just no bleeding choice. It’s the law, ain’t it, and nothing else to it. It’s the law.

  All very polite and proper they was about it too. They shoosh me in the Hôtel de Ville through a side door, down a corridor to a room with a priest and clerk at a table, and there’s one of they judges saying ‘Now you understand why this is, fellow, we’re not totally satisfied with your answers.’ I says ‘Well, I’m not totally satisfied with your questions,’ but that don’t go down so well, that don’t, the judge nips up his mouth very thin and reads me a lot of rigmarole about the decision to have me interrogated, then the clerk shows me where to put my mark to say I agree. There don’t seem to be a space to say ‘Fuck off out of it’, so I signs, then a skinny little doctor tells me to get my shirt off so he can see I’m fit to be tortured.

  It seems to me there’s a slide-by in this, so I gets up wheezing and coughing while the doctor pokes me up and down, then he turns to the judge and gives it his opinion it’s not safe for me to take the estrapade as I might end up dead, which ain’t allowed at all. The judge says ‘Then we’re authorized for the question extraordinaire,’ but the doctor says no, the water torture’s even worse for the lungs than having your arms yanked up behind your back to pull your shoulders half out your body.

  The judge glares, but the clerk’s writing it all down word for gospel, so he sweeps out to talk to someone in the corridor, then comes back and says they’ll use the brodequins. That’s the laced boot they normally use on females, see, but the little doctor still don’t look happy, and reminds them on his way out they can’t do no more than half an hour. Ah, he was a decent chap, that doctor, for all he looked like a fishbone with clothes on. The priest’s more of a slipperer, he asks wheedling if I’d like to give a statement to himself instead, and I say ‘No, I’ll take my chance with the court,’ and he don’t say another word.

  So we waits a while, me standing on parade and the priest slumbering on a chair with dribble coming out his mouth and crumbs from his breakfast down his front, then it’s in with the guards again and off to the torture chamber itself. There’s the judges on raised chairs, there’s the clerk at his table, and there’s the executioner with the planks propped against the stool, and a little pile of rods right by them.

  I weren’t sure, not even then. They play games sometimes, see, they’ll show a man the instruments to scare the skin off him, and if he holds out fair they take them all away and let him go. So I stick it out, I swears the oath to tell the truth under torture, and the executioner swears to keep his gob shut, then the guards strip off my breeches and hose and slap me down on the stool, and I know they’re going to do it for real.

  The clerk glances at the clock and makes a note, and I think of that doctor and get a good squint myself. It’s five past ten and only half an hour to last.

  It’s a cold business in more ways than the one. The executioner sticks the planks round my legs and ties them at knees and ankles and says to me ‘Comfortable?’ like he means it, and I say ‘Yes,’ because I’ve got skinny shanks, see, it don’t hurt much at all. Then it’s in with the first rod, out with the hammer, and down it goes, bang, bang, bang, scraping against my shin, the wood sides drawing tight so they’re squeezing my ankles, my legs pressing inwards on themselves, the skin scrunching itself up till I’d swear the wood’s scraping right on the bone.

  It’s the shock, see, it wipes out your mind so there’s nothing but your own voice saying ‘That’s enough now,’ like this is a civilized situation we’re all in. But the hammering goes on till it’s all the way in, and the sweat’s sprung out in beads on your face and your mouth’s breaking back from your teeth till you’re grinning like a skull, and you look up at the judges and they’re leaning forward to see better, then the lead one starts again with the questions.

  You know what goes first under torture? The ‘s’. A man tries to say ‘yes’ like he’s done since a babe, but it comes out bleeding ‘yesssss’. You need it a lot too, the questions are all simple as a catechi
sm. Is this his name? Did he work as engineer of fireworks in the gardens of the Luxembourg? Was he present when the Musketeer Dubosc was killed? And it’s ‘Yessss, yessss, yessss,’ then in like a knife with ‘And will he confirm the Chevalier de Roland stabbed the Musketeer before he was offered any violence?’ By then you’ve said so many yeses your mouth’s almost stuck, it takes everything in your brain to change and say ‘No,’ loud as you bleeding can, ‘No!’ and let them write that down wrong if they can.

  The judge nods, then in comes the second shiv, bang-bang-bang, quicker this time and your shin going to snap like a rotten branch, you see it in your head, the leg, the bone, the snap, your head’s going to blow like a rocket with the pain. You don’t even hear the questions start again, all that’s out there like it might be bloody Belgium, there’s only the pain and your mind screaming at you to make it stop. Your kneecaps are being squeezed with it, dug out and it feels like peeled off, and now there’s something else steering your body, trying to make you run away from your own leg. You’re half off the stool, but there’s hands pushing you back like there’s no escape, and you’re shaking and whimpering like a little girl.

  But you’re still a man and a part of you knows it. The next question comes like a rope to pull you out of it, but you know the answer, you looks right at them and says it, ‘No,’ then you slew your eyes to the clock and think ‘Not much longer,’ and the hands say just before ten past the hour, and you know you’ve had four minutes and the rest still to come.

  Jacques de Roland

  I dressed myself so fast I did half the buttons wrong. I gashed my hand on my belt buckle, swore like Stefan, and threw it against the wall.

  ‘I can save him,’ said Bernadette. She walked calmly in, picked up the belt and began to put it round me like a valet.

  I said feebly ‘Where’s Philibert?’

  ‘I hit him,’ she said, fastening the buckle and giving it a little pat. ‘I said today it was my job to dress you, and he disagreed, so what would you?’ She pushed me down on the bed and reached for my shoes.

  I said ‘You can’t save him, no one can.’

  ‘Not poor Grimauld,’ she said, working a shoe over my heel. ‘But I can save the Chevalier. There is still my evidence, never forget that.’

  I had, and it came roaring back in a wave of terror. ‘You can’t, they’ll torture you too.’

  ‘Then they do,’ she said. ‘But I will not break, and then they will let the Chevalier go. We owe him that, you and I.’

  She knelt up to adjust the lace collar over my doublet. Her face was serious in concentration, a tip of pink tongue showing between her lips, her hands were soft and smelt of Marseilles soap. It was impossible to believe that anyone would want to hurt her, but she could say far worse stuff than Grimauld, and they were going to rip her in bits till she took it back.

  I caught her waist between my hands. ‘It won’t come to that, Grimauld won’t break.’

  ‘Will he not?’ she said.

  Albert Grimauld

  Ah, I don’t know, you lose count. You ain’t wondering ‘Is that five they’ve put in now or six?’ Your mind’s not doing much of anything by then, there’s only your mouth saying ‘Oh Christ, Holy Mary, I’m telling you, ain’t I? It’s the truth, Christ help me, oh God, God, God,’ and the rush in your ears dies a little, and you hear the clerk murmuring as he writes, ‘Christ help me, oh God, God, God.’

  Nothing touches them. You’ve heard tears are a sign of innocence, you try all you know to squeeze out a few drops, but everything’s dry, your mouth, your skin, your eyeballs, even your blood’s buggered off somewhere and left you to face it alone. You close your eyes and slump, you think ‘Maybe they’ll stop if I faint,’ but no such a thing, there’s hands dragging your head up, then a voice speaks behind you and you know they’ve seen the ears.

  The questions stop a moment and there’s murmuring instead. Then another question, ‘And is he a convicted felon?’ and I know it’s hopeless, there ain’t anyone going to take a word out my mouth now they knows. I say ‘Yes,’ and wait for them to stop.

  But they don’t. Now it’s ‘Did he see the Chevalier strike first? Is he sure? Is he sure? Is he sure?’ and then I gets it, late but I gets it, they’re giving me a get-out, a chance to cop to a mistake. The judge says ‘It was dark, wasn’t it? You were overwrought,’ and I say ‘Yes,’ and ‘Yes,’ and then it’s ‘Will he confirm he could have been mistaken and the Chevalier could have struck first?’ I can’t work out if that’s a yes or no or even why it matters, I’m discredited anyway. The voice says soft ‘He could have been mistaken?’ and I say ‘Yes.’

  Silence and a pen scratching. Then a voice saying ‘Time,’ and I can’t bear another second, I’m begging them to get the thing off of me. The executioner cuts the ropes and the planks clatter apart like four quarters of a nut, and there’s my legs crushed and blue-white, jagged red down the shin, one ankle sticking out odd, the other pushed back into the heel. The pain’s suddenly the worst it’s been yet.

  The judges go while I dress, but I still can’t leave, the guard says I’ve got to go back and say it all again in a room where I can’t so much as see the brodequins, it’s all got to be done fair. Yes, that’s what he said. Fair.

  So it’s back into the big room of last week, with the judges in place like they never moved, and others of parlement and the like perched up in the gallery like crows. I know one of them, that blue mask draws the eye in a second, that’s the Comte de Vallon himself, and I’m face to the ground and not looking up for no one.

  So they ask the questions and I give the answers, yes, I could of been mistaken, yes, the Chevalier could of struck without provocation, yes, just let me get out of here and find a hole to die in, yes, bleeding yes. Then it’s done, and the guard helping me up again, but the president says ‘Now you have heard this man’s testimony, Chevalier, perhaps you would like to reconsider your own statement?’

  Ah, Christ. My head’s turning round and there’s André himself sat bareheaded like a criminal, they’ve brought him in special to hear me sell him for a heap of nothing and legs that are fucked anyway. He’s blazing with fury, but he looks steady at the judge and says in a voice that shakes ‘I believe I should like to consult my uncle.’

  The judge says ‘An excellent idea,’ in a voice purry as a cat’s, and I know they’ve beat him and it’s me that’s done it, me he called his friend. I’m trying to say I’m sorry, but the guards are already hauling me off, and now the tears come, now when they’re no use to no one, now when they drag and chuck me out like nightsoil on the Place de Grève, with the tears down my face like a child.

  Jacques de Roland

  The great long front of the Hôtel de Ville blocked out the whole of one end of the Place, pale grey and formidable. Grimauld looked like an insect when they chucked him out of it, a crippled beetle trying to crawl away and hide itself in the vast empty space.

  I jumped from the carriage and ran, but he saw me coming and flailed out with his arm to drive me away. I banged down on my knees beside him and said ‘Did you break, what did you say, did you break?’

  He screwed his neck to avoid looking at me. ‘Yes, I broke, I bloody broke, now fuck off and leave me alone.’

  For a second the fear and anger blotted out everything else, I could have kicked him smash against the wall, but then I thought of André who loved him and the anger sort of drizzled away into hopelessness instead.

  I said ‘Don’t be silly, we’re here to take you home.’

  He looked at me then, a face smeared with tears and snot, a mouth of missing teeth, he was disgusting and horrible and he made my heart ache. He said ‘I’m sorry, laddie, I’m so …’

  His hands reached out blindly, tentative, ragged claws. Something broke inside me, then I was leaning forward and holding him, my arms round his scrawny back and his face in my coat, I was hugging him and saying ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, I’m going to take you home.’


  Stefan Ravel

  The first time, Abbé. The first time I ever looked at Jacques Gilbert and thought he really might be André’s brother.

  We carried the poor wretch to the carriage and wrapped the Comte’s own blanket round him, but he wasn’t going anywhere till he knew what was happening to André.

  We didn’t have to wait long. The Comte came out, walked straight up to Jacques and said ‘I need you. Richelieu’s offer still stands, and you’ve got to persuade André to take it.’

  The Comtesse drew herself up. ‘The case is not lost. We still have the serving girl.’

  ‘No we don’t,’ said the Comte. ‘The Chevalier says we’re to get her out of Paris and hide her. He won’t have a woman tortured for him, he’ll die first.’

  That was André. I’d seen that coming a week ago, that was André.

  ‘And will he?’ said the Comtesse. ‘Will they execute him?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s been done in effigy, Richelieu’s said he won’t let them do it twice. It’ll just be banishment and confiscation as before. Except …’ He hesitated, and behind the mask I saw his eyes shift.

  ‘Except?’ she said.

  He cleared his throat. ‘That statement of his. Accepting the verdict now means that was slander. They have no choice but to impose the amende honorable.’

  She made a hissing noise through her teeth. ‘Dear God, Hugo.’

  Jacques had gone very pale. ‘He can’t make a public apology for something he hasn’t done.’

  ‘He must,’ said the Comte. ‘Don’t you realize how far they’ll go? It’s not just his own life. They’ll torture the girl till she breaks, then execute her for perjury when she’s done it.’