Honour and the Sword (50 page)

He said ‘That man, the one who was holding you when I came in. Did he touch you?’ He turned to see my reply.

I knew what he meant. I remembered Luiz’s hands on my chemise and the sudden hardness of his body as he pressed against me. I said quickly ‘No. I think he would have, but you came in time.’

His face relaxed, and his arm seemed to tighten about me. I remembered the way he and Luiz had stared at each other, and the expression on André’s face as he looked at the body. Something else caught in my mind, and I remembered that strange conversation between Luiz and Carlos, when they talked about being recognized.

I said hesitantly ‘You knew him, didn’t you?’

He did not answer immediately, and I thought he had not heard, but then he said quietly ‘Had I known he was with you at the Château I think it would have driven me mad.’

The horse was slowing again, and we were approaching an opening in the forest, dominated by a rocky outcrop with sides like cliffs. There were people in the clearing and to my amazement one was my dear Jeanette, waving her handkerchief and smiling so widely I thought her face would split.

‘This is where the first stage ends,’ said André. ‘You will need to change your clothes before you proceed, then our guides will take you on to Lucheux. You will have to wait there a day, I’m afraid, but on Monday there will be a coach to Paris, and you will soon be home.’

I was so startled I started to fall forward, and he had to catch me back with his arm.

I said ‘Don’t you come with us?’

He reined the horse to a stop. ‘Your brave Jeanette is to accompany you, if you will allow it, but you will be safe with our guides.’ He lowered me carefully to the ground, and dismounted himself.

I said ‘I do not doubt it.’ They were strangers and all men, but they were André’s men, and I would have trusted myself to them anywhere.

He said ‘Then don’t worry, Mademoiselle. Any of these men would give their lives to protect you. There is nothing to fear.’

I spoke quite fiercely. ‘Do you think I am afraid?’

He regarded me seriously, then took a little step towards me. ‘No.’

I turned away quickly and began to pat the horse.

After a moment he said ‘I would like to come with you. I really wish I could. But I have responsibilities here I can’t abandon. I have friends I can’t leave.’

I remembered what I’d seen as we rode away from the Château. ‘The man with the black hair and blue eyes.’

His own eyes seemed to widen. ‘Yes. That’s Jacques. How did you know?’

I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know. I began hurriedly to pet the horse again, but he came and stood beside me to stroke him too.

He said ‘I will come as soon as Dax is free. Will you speak for us in Paris, Mademoiselle? Will you tell them we have been fighting a long time and need some sign we are not forgotten?’

I said ‘I will tell everyone who will listen. For myself, I will never forget.’

I heard him catch his breath a little, but he went on stroking the horse. His little finger just brushed against mine as he did it, so I moved my hand at once, but then he gave an exclamation and reached up to where my other arm rested on the horse’s flank. My sleeve had fallen back, and he was looking at my scar.

I moved to cover it, but he caught my hand to stop me. He said ‘Do you really not know how beautiful that is?’

He cannot really think so, it is a little patch of foreign white skin and I hate it.

I heard him say ‘Anne …’

Colette called ‘Anne!’ I turned and saw a blanket rigged between two trees to make a screen, and Colette’s head sticking out of the top as she changed her clothes. Jeanette was beside her, waving me to join them.

I turned quickly to go to her, but then realized Marcel and the one called Stefan were standing by their horses, and clearly ready to leave. I could not possibly allow them to go unthanked, and poor Florian was in no condition to do anything, so it would have to be me.

I went first to Marcel, and said ‘M. Dubois, I am so glad you survived,’ which was an
unbelievably
stupid thing to say, because I would hardly have been glad to find he was dead, but he smiled at me so nicely I knew he understood. I reached up as I used to as a little girl and kissed him on both cheeks, and he gave me a respectful little bow.

Then I turned to the big one called Stefan, and it would have looked rude not to embrace him as well. I hesitated, and he regarded me with his eyebrow raised as if to say ‘Now kiss
me
, Mademoiselle, if you dare.’ Well I do dare, I won’t have that kind of challenge from anyone. So I reached up to kiss his cheek, and he suffered me with a good grace. His face was rather rough and bristly.

Then it was André, and I know I should have kissed him too, but somehow at the last minute I couldn’t do it. So I curtsied and gave him my hand, and he kissed it. His lips felt warm on my skin, but I expect my hand was cold after the ride. He said he had to thank me also for saving his life, but that was only politeness, for I know he would have killed his man without me. I said I was sure Papa would write to express his own gratitude, then returned him his cloak and went quickly to join Colette.

There was a pretty riding habit in dark green laid out ready for me, but as I was about to change I suddenly remembered this diary was still in André’s pocket, and rushed out behind the screen to find the men already mounting up to leave. André’s boot was in the stirrup, but when he saw me he stepped down and waited.

I asked for my book, because I didn’t want him to know what it was he carried. He exclaimed as he remembered it, and quickly returned it, the cover still warm from having been pressed so close against his body. He did not immediately turn again to his horse, and for the first time since he came into our apartments I thought him ill at ease. Finally he jerked his head up quite abruptly and said ‘Tell me, Mademoiselle, why you would not kiss me as you did my friends?’

I began ‘Because …’ but could not think how to finish. Perhaps my face told the story for me, for he suddenly took a step towards me, put the palm of his hand up to the side of my face to turn it towards him, and kissed me. It was a gentle and respectful kiss, a very little one, but it was on my lips. Then he stepped back and bowed, and looked at me a little nervously. He probably expected me to slap his face, and of course I should have, but I didn’t, I just stood like a complete
idiot
, and did nothing at all.

His expression changed. He glanced round to make sure no one was watching, then stepped up to me again, and took me in his arms as if he meant it. I don’t think it was so very wrong, because really we were no closer than we had been on the horse, but I stared very hard at his shirt all the same. Then he said ‘Anne,’ again, and it’s strange, because his arms about me felt so strong and confident, but his voice was humble, it was almost trembling. I looked up at him in wonder, and it was there again in his eyes, what I had seen the first time, and then his face was moving closer, and then he really did kiss me.

It is nothing like as difficult as I thought. You tilt your face one way, and he tilts his the other, and then it is easy. He opened his lips a little, so I had to open mine to stay with him, and then of course I found I was kissing him too. I was so ashamed I pulled right back, and he opened his eyes to look at me, and there was something almost startled in his gaze. He was breathing rather quickly, then I felt the pressure of his hand on my back to draw me to him again, but I heard Jeanette calling me from behind the screen and knew I was behaving quite dreadfully, so I turned and fled, and never once looked back. While I dressed, I heard them riding away.

I know what will happen. We will go to Paris and it will be years before I see him again, and then he will not remember, or if he does, he will not care. But I am writing this at the Poulet Noir at Lucheux, it is a day since I have seen him, and I still have butterflies in my stomach and a dreadful emptiness in my heart.

Jacques Gilbert

I didn’t risk the back meadow, I was being very careful. I stayed in the forest all the way down to the orchard, then cut across through the Home Farm. Tonnerre’s hooves seemed very loud in the dark, so I dismounted and led him round the big barns to keep him on the grass all the way to the paddock, then hid him in a little patch of trees with his muzzle on in case of a passing patrol. I was being so careful you wouldn’t believe.

I walked the last bit along the edge of the drive. I remember I was thinking about Anne. I’d not seen much of her, I’d been too worried about the boy, but there was just one moment when we were both under the flambeau and I saw her face really clearly. There was still that hair, of course, and under the flickering light it blazed like a bonfire all its own, but it was the first time I’d really seen her face. She didn’t have a big nose, she wasn’t ugly, she wasn’t even plain, she was just beautiful. If André got a good look at her in any kind of light he was going to be in real trouble.

As I passed the last bushes, they seemed to come alive and rush at me. I made to run, but my legs got tangled, something tripped me, and I fell forward heavily, losing my hat and knocking my head on the ground as a great weight landed on my back and pressed me down into the gravel. I heaved backwards to push it off, but there were men all round me, and someone was kneeling on my back and grinding my face down into the dirt. I was dizzy from the blow on the head, and could hardly breathe from the weight on my lungs. I felt gravel in my mouth.

‘All right,’ said a voice in Spanish. ‘Turn him over.’

The man holding my right arm released the pressure and bent it back the other way, and the one on my back got up. I tried to jerk myself upwards as they turned me, but they had my arms fast and someone else was holding my legs, and I could only flop about like a fish on a hook. They got me on my back, and someone put a knee on my chest to keep me down. Someone else was unbuckling my scabbard.

‘Let’s have a look at him,’ said the first voice, and a man’s face appeared close in front of mine. I had this terrible urge to spit at him, but you can’t spit upwards when you’re lying on your back, it would have just flobbed back in my own face.

‘Is it?’ asked one of the others.

‘Description’s right,’ he said, studying my face like it was satisfactory. ‘Get him up, and we’ll find out for sure.’

They pulled me to my feet, then tied my hands together behind my back. I’d thought it was bad enough when I watched the boy’s hands being tied, but it’s worse when they do it behind your back, it puts you off balance, and you feel exposed to anything in front. I felt dazed and sick, and wanted to wipe the gravel off my face, but I couldn’t reach it, even with my shoulder.

They started to walk me between them, heading towards my own cottage. As we reached the cobbles, the door opened and Father came out. My heart leapt for a second, then sank back again as he just stood and watched us come nearer.

‘Is this him?’ asked the leader.

My Father looked at me as if I were a chair, a table, a piece of wood. He nodded without a word.

‘All right,’ said the leader. He gestured his men, and they started to pull me away back on to the drive. I twisted my head round away from them, and watched helplessly as Father went back into the cottage and closed the door.

Twenty-One

Jean-Marie Mercier

It felt rather jolly in the Hermitage. Many of us hadn’t been able to go home, and it really felt like being part of something. Giles came and settled next to me, and even offered to share his blanket because I hadn’t thought to bring my own.

There was a lot of chatter and laughter as we went over the raid. Bettremieu had managed to get himself wounded for the fourth time, even though we calculated the Spaniards had only fired five shots the whole night. Georges said a man could fire a shot into the sky and it would still somehow find its way into Bettremieu. It was really very silly, but Bettremieu was laughing as much as anyone, his great bare shoulders shaking up and down all the time Dom was trying to bandage him.

Colin wanted to know whose musket had gone off, but Giles said sternly it didn’t matter, it could have happened to anyone. I noticed Pepin sitting apart with a bright-red face, so asked quickly what Giles himself had been up to for so long during the action. Margot laughed and said ‘Found a woman in the fields, I expect. Your sister lives down that way, doesn’t she, Joe?’ Pinhead bristled a little, but Giles only looked consideringly at Margot and stroked his moustache. He told us he’d squeezed between a barn and the Wall to hide from the soldiers, but found himself trapped in the brambles and was forced to wade through a mound of cow dung in order to get out.

Gradually people finished talking and drinking, as one by one they drifted off to sleep. I stayed up a while, wondering what was keeping Jacques, but at last I gave up waiting and settled down to sleep with my cloak for a blanket, because I didn’t quite like to share with Giles after what he’d said about the cow dung.

I think I’d hardly more than dozed off when the door banged open and André came in with Marcel and Stefan. They were laughing and joking together, so I knew their end of things must have gone well. André in particular seemed to stand rather taller, and there was something almost self-conscious about him as he took off his cloak. He started towards the platform, gazing round at the men sleeping all about us, then slowed, stopped, and looked again. I sat up, and his eyes fell on me at once.

He said casually ‘Where’s Jacques?’

Stefan Ravel

Someone had to go with him, Abbé, it wasn’t safe for anyone wandering about alone that night with the dons swarming out like maddened bees. Marcel needed to rest after that nasty crack on the head, so good old reliable Stefan volunteered for the job, with Mercier along as marksman for emergencies. Mind you, if all we found at Ancre was Jacques Gilbert throwing back wine with his pisshead of a father I was going to kill the little bastard myself.