Daughters of the Storm (5 page)

‘Careful,' he said. ‘You might injure me.'

She gave it back.

The twig had been laid bare ‘I don't want you to go,' he admitted.

‘Don't be silly, Jacques. I must go. I want to go. You should be pleased that I shall see more of the world. It's what you always said I should do.'

Jacques' neck mottled a painful red. ‘Your place is with me.'

Marie-Victoire looked up at him in genuine astonishment.

Jacques' stomach contracted at the sight of her heart-shaped face framed by light brown hair curling damply round her cap. Marie-Victoire was not beautiful and her small body would probably grow sturdy with age, but her gold-tipped eyelashes and bright cornflower eyes were lovely, and she exuded a freshness that stirred his pulses.

‘I mean it,' he said. He cleaned the knife blade on his sleeve. ‘I want you for myself. We could run away to Paris and live cheaply. I'll find work.'

He sensed rather than saw her recoil.

‘I see,' he said sullenly. ‘You don't want me. You would rather spend your life with those
cochons,
running about emptying their slops from morning to night or darning their chemises or whatever you do. What will you have at the end of it? Nothing.'

‘I will have my work and a place in the house for as long as I am useful. It counts for much in my eyes,' she replied, shrinking away from him.

‘Don't make me laugh,' said Jacques savagely. ‘They'll suck you dry and fling you out with the night-soil, like they do everyone round here. Look around you, Marie-Victoire! People like us don't count. We die early, and worn out. Have you been to the village lately? Obviously not, or you wouldn't be talking like this.'

There was enough truth in what he said to give Marie-Victoire pause.

‘I shall see you often enough when I return,' she said.

‘No, you won't. That's what I wanted to talk to you about.'

He flung the words out into the evening air and waited for a reply.

‘I never promised you anything, Jacques.'

Marie-Victoire spoke sadly because she would never wish to hurt him. Nevertheless, like an animal sensing danger, she wanted to run for home.

‘I did not think I had to. Is it not plain what I feel?'

‘What is it, then, that you want?' she asked – which was stupid because she knew.

For an answer, he pulled her towards him, ignoring her protests. Marie-Victoire's small, work-roughened hands beat at his chest.

‘Stop it, Jacques. I am too tired to be teased.'

But Jacques, intoxicated by the smell of her body, bent his head and buried his lips in the nape of her neck.

‘You shan't leave me,' he muttered thickly into the curve of her shoulder, tasting the warm skin with his tongue.

Marie-Victoire struggled harder. Suddenly, she was very afraid. The stranger who was showering her with kisses in places she had never been kissed before had nothing to do with the boy with whom she had gone fishing on summer evenings, or pelted with snowballs on winter afternoons. She twisted frantically in his grasp.

‘Stop it,' she managed to say. He had got his hands under her dress but her genuine panic stopped him in his tracks.

‘Don't be stupid, Marie-Victoire,' Jacques said, his eyes narrowing. ‘You want me really.'

Marie-Victoire disentangled herself and backed away.

‘No. No. NO. I don't.' There was no mistaking her fear. ‘Leave me alone, Jacques.'

For a moment he was disconcerted and she seized her advantage. She turned and stumbled up the path towards La Joyeuse. Jacques stared after her and bent to pick up his knife. He turned it slowly in his hands and then, with a sharp blow, drove it deep into the barrel of the gate, where it stuck, quivering. He began to run.

When she heard him behind her, Marie-Victoire's pace quickened. The long grass whipped at her legs, her heart pounded and her breath came in sobbing gasps. He was too fast for her, she knew that, but fear lent her speed and she skimmed through a line of trees by the side of the meadow.

She stumbled on a tuft of grass.

‘Marie-Victoire,' shouted Jacques. He lunged forward and caught at her skirts, and with one quick movement felled her to the ground. The earth rose up to meet her with a sickening thud. In an instant, he was on her, blind with passion. Marie-Victoire lay beneath him, feeling his body hard against hers, its familiar contours now changed into something quite alien.

‘Don't do this,' she begged, her mouth crushed against his shoulder, but he did not, nor did he want to, hear her. His knee forced its way past her twisted legs and jerked into the softest part of her. She screamed with terror but her scream echoed uselessly among the trees and disappeared. No one heard.

Jacques pinioned her with one arm. With the other, he forced her skirts up to her waist and found the places he was seeking.

‘You will be mine,' he whispered. ‘I will make you wish you had never heard of Héloïse de Guinot. They have taken you from me, but they shouldn't have done. You were not theirs to take.'

She wrenched her head away from those magnetic eyes and struggled harder. But it was no use. Jacques fumbled at the laces of his breeches and she felt him thrust between her legs. He ripped into her and her neck arched in anguish.

It was all over in a minute. No sooner had he invaded her shrinking flesh than he jerked, groaned and lay still, his face buried on her breast. Marie-Victoire lay motionless, except for her fingers which scrabbled at the grass beneath her body. Never again will I be able to enjoy the smell of hay, she thought, or the sight of scarlet poppies in the grass. They are tainted now with the smell of lust and the memory of an unwanted body on mine. She felt the pain that comes with violation, a pain that invaded the spirit as well as the body, and she knew, as she lay there with the wetness between her thighs drying in the hot air, that she hated Jacques Maillard. Hated him for his animal weakness and for his betrayal of their childhood loyalties, and would do so for as long as she lived.

Presently, Jacques rolled over on to his side and lay without saying anything, his arms huddled over his head. Free at last, Marie-Victoire inched her way to her feet and tried to staunch the blood that ran down her legs, but found herself unequal to the task. Her bruised flesh protesting at each step, she began to walk away, holding her torn bodice together as best she could. Jacques moaned.

‘Marie-Victoire, forgive me,' he muttered into the ground. ‘I never meant this.'

She paused.

‘I will never forgive you,' she said bitterly, without looking at him.

‘Have you no pity?'

‘Had
you?'
she replied.

He raised his head and tears mingled with the dirt smeared on his face. Marie-Victoire did not bother to pick up her cap, which lay crushed in a patch of flattened grass, nor did she give him a backward glance.

‘Marie-Victoire.'

Jacques' piteous voice floated up at her for the last time. Marie-Victoire gritted her teeth and concentrated on the interminable way home.

At the entrance to the stable yard, her knees gave way and she clung to the gate-post, surprised out of her trance by the sight that greeted her. Instead of the quiet evening routine of grooms settling horses, the yard was alive with activity. In the middle stood a foam-flecked horse, its rider nowhere to be seen. The stable-boys fussed round it with hay and water, and a group of de Guinot servants were talking agitatedly. No one noticed the small, crumpled figure that stood swaying by the gate. They were too busy discussing the news from Paris.

Apparently, a huge mob had marched through the city to the old Parisian fortress prison of the Bastille and, after a day of fighting, had succeeded in storming it. They had killed the governor and released the prisoners who lurked in its gloomy cells. There were seven in all. One of the de Guinot agents had ridden, hot-foot, to inform the marquis.

Chapter 3

The beating had been a harsh one and it had been administered by his own father. From the moment Héloïse had discovered Marie-Victoire in a faint outside her door and had demanded to know what had happened, Jacques' punishment had been unavoidable.

‘Filthy pig,' his father had said, raising the whip high. ‘Couldn't you have chosen a sensible wench, not a pampered favourite?'

Since Jacques' father was notorious for his indiscriminate lusts, the question was a formality.

‘Like father, like son,' Jacques ground out between bitten lips.

‘Stupid bastard,' said his father, bringing the whip down. ‘Stick to the village next time. They throw their skirts up without fuss and, if you pay them, they're delighted.'

The whip lashed on to his back, tearing it into ribbons, and with each blow something was driven out of him, never to return. When at last Jacques staggered upright, he felt as though all traces of the boy had gone and in his place stood someone infinitely more dangerous.

‘Fuck off,' said his father indifferently. ‘Mind you don't put a foot wrong again. I don't want trouble.' He laughed coarsely. ‘It ain't your feet that's the problem.'

Jacques clung to the lintel of the stable door and waited for the first agony to subside. Then, moving like an old man, he reeled inside and flung himself on to a pile of hay.

It took two days for his wounds to scab over and two more days for Jacques to make up his mind. Most of the time, he lay fighting the pain while the vermin made free with his open wounds. Occasionally he fetched up at the kitchens for food, but the maids kept out of his way, repelled by the expression on his face and by his stinking, blood-matted clothes. His father left him alone.

Marie-Victoire was ill, they said, confined to her bed in the attic, and she certainly wasn't going to see Jacques. Mademoiselle de Guinot had forbidden it. Would Marie-Victoire spare a thought for him? he wondered bitterly. Did she understand that he cursed himself for the fool that he was? Had she heard his despairing cry as she fled from him? In his heart of hearts, Jacques knew that she had, and that hurt him worst of all.

When night fell he was fully clothed with his knife tucked into his belt. He eased himself upward, trying not to bend to avoid splitting his wounds, and made his way towards the kitchen wing. Once there, he shuffled into a stone passage that led between the larder and the still-room down to a small room at the end. He took out his knife and prised open the lock in the wooden door, a trick learnt long ago, and let himself in. A pile of candle-ends lay on the shelf. He picked up one and sniffed at it. It was made of the best imported myrtle wax and gave off a delicate smell. Jacques knew that the de Guinots never stinted themselves over candles, and La Joyeuse often blazed with them even if relatively unimportant visitors were expected. He rolled it thoughtfully between his fingers. Candle-ends of such quality were in great demand and he smiled to think of the chief footman's anger when he discovered that his source of extra income had been raided.

He stuffed as many as he could into a sack he had brought with him, tucked it awkwardly under his arm and retraced his steps. Outside the kitchen he hesitated, and then slipped through the door. A basket of loaves lay on the sideboard and he slid two into his sack. He turned to go and, as he did so, caught sight of a pile of silver teaspoons waiting to be cleaned. He pocketed three of them.

The dogs, who knew him well, were quiet as he hobbled silently through the yard towards the back gates. It was easy. Jacques knew every stick and stone of La Joyeuse and if he hadn't been so hampered by his back he would have made swift progress. But his spirit sang with exhilaration at what he was doing. Safe in the woods at last, he flung himself down on his stomach and gave himself up to his dreams of revenge.

He could never go back. His pride would never allow it, not even if it meant starving. No longer would he, Jacques Maillard, act as a lackey to the family he hated, and no longer would they have power over his destiny. He would find his own way and take a chance. Better death in the gutter than a life of servitude. Jacques had talked often to the carriers who came from the city to collect produce, and they had told him a thing or two. Now he intended to make use of their advice. He'd find a way of surviving somehow.

He beat his fists into the summer-dry earth.

‘I'll kill them. I'll kill them,' he vowed and raised his face to the sky. There was no answer from the trees that hid him or from the light wind that dried the sweat on his body. Jacques was alone.

A week later he joined the traffic that flowed along the road towards the northern entrance to Paris and a good-natured waggoner gave him a lift for the last part of the way. Swaying with the movement of the cart, his face transparent with suffering, Jacques clutched his sack and watched the country slip away. Deep inside him beat a pulse that grew stronger and stronger with each jolt, a certain knowledge that one day he would repay the de Guinots and claim back Marie-Victoire. Meanwhile, he would devote himself to making it possible. He didn't care how.

The city's smells assaulted him as he passed the
barrière
gates and, still weakened, he gagged. Once inside the walls, he struggled to his feet, thanked his kind benefactor and stood gazing at the close-knit houses and filthy roads. Then, following some primitive instinct, he disappeared riverwards, slipping into the tide of human flotsam that flowed down the streets and vanished into the vast pool of dispossessed humanity that washed through the capital.

Chapter 4

Héloïse awoke abruptly. She lay on the lace-edged pillows and gazed up at the silk swags adorning the bed and listened to the early-morning sounds. Outside, as the sun rose, the Hôtel de Guinot ripened in colour from night grey into its customary yellow stone. The dawn birdsong faded. Héloïse clutched the sheets, closed her eyes and trusted that the blackness would quieten her beating heart and hold her safe for a few moments longer.