Minuet (16 page)

“You can look vulgar without wearing red. Trust me, Minou. I know the habits of French strumpets better than yourself.”

“Then you have learned very quickly, in one day. You were eighteen when you left France.”

“A man of eighteen is already informed on such matters, eh, Philippe?” Henri asked Degan with a laugh, then he left.

“I feel itchy,” was Sally’s first comment when Mérigot had left. “I think there were bugs in my bed. I had a wretched sleep.”

“You were snoring within five minutes,” Degan contradicted.

“I do not snore!”

“Breathing deeply,” he countered.

The bruiser and his girl came to the dining room while they still sat, awaiting Henri. The newcomers were regarded closely to learn something of the role soon to be adopted. The female hung on the bruiser’s arm, and her chair was placed so close to his that she lolled on his shoulder while they ate in a manner that appeared even more uncomfortable than vulgar.

“How does he eat with that woman sitting on him?” Degan wondered aloud.

“That bowl of fresh eggs I could eat with an elephant sitting on me,” she answered wistfully.

“If we offer the proprietor money, I think—”

“Non!
You are not at all wise, Degan. How did I used to think so? Recall we are
sans-culottes,
you and I. Till you turn bruiser we eat garbage and pretend to like it. Where would such rabble as we get money for eggs? Imagine, two days ago I sat at my father’s table, and could have eaten a whole dozen eggs if I wanted. I had only coffee and bread. What a fool!”

“One day ago I was chained to a rapist, and thrown into a jail. This is not so bad.”

“No, no, complaining is the only luxury we are allowed. Let us both complain to our hearts’ content. You must have regretted a hundred times already your reckless move in coming here. Let me hear how you have suffered over your one bout with madness.”

“I have not regretted it at all,” he replied, looking to see the bruiser’s girl bestow a kiss on her patron between bites.

“Don’t stare,” she warned. ‘The boxer is taking note of us. He will be jealous.”

“Good God, I hope he doesn’t think I have designs on that trollop.”

“But he does think so, and so does she. See how she smiles, strumpet. We had better wait upstairs. To sit too long might attract attention. Come, we go.”

They went up to the room to wait, to consult their map, to count their money, and to worry whether Henri had run into difficulties. He soon joined them, and there had been no difficulty in the purchases, which were already stowed in the wagon. It was not much after seven-thirty when they set out down the road for Abbeville. By nine they were passing from Pas de Calais into Somme, and at a stream with some concealing trees they stopped to change clothing.

“I bet you forgot petticoats,” Sally said to Mérigot. “Must I put this clean shirt and skirt on over rags, without even a petticoat and camisole?”

“How you underestimate me,
ma mie.
You will find all that is necessary in your bundle. It was not our Père Degan who made the purchases, after all.” As Degan had already darted behind a clump of trees, he missed hearing this slur.

“I must wash off in the stream, and get the mud out of my hair. Did you buy soap?” she asked.

“No,
chérie,
I did not observe the bruiser’s whore to be noticeably clean.”

“You will observe Degan’s whore to be clean. Keep him away while I bathe.”

“Don’t call yourself that!” he said sharply.

“It was your idea,” she pointed out with a saucy smile, then ran to the stream. The water was very cold, but removed the itch occasioned by sleeping at the inn so well that she reveled in it. She dipped her head in the stream and washed her hair as well as she could without soap, then had to dry it on her petticoat.

In fifteen minutes she returned from behind the bushes in a totally new style. She wore a low-cut white peasant girl’s blouse, with a black waistcoat tightly laced about her small waist. From below it a brightly colored flowered skirt billowed, and on her feet she wore a pair of dainty black patent slippers and white stockings. “You like?” she asked, whirling before her audience.

“Authentic. The fit is good,” was Henry’s mild praise.

“You’ll freeze in that shirt,” Degan said, showing no admiration at the pleasing sight before him.

“There’s a shawl in the wagon,” Mérigot said, and went to fetch it.

“Is that all you have to say?” she asked Degan. “Don’t I look pretty? Prettier than the trollop you were smiling at over breakfast?”

“What did you do with the other outfit?” Mérigot asked her, placing a green woolen shawl over her shoulders and draping it with an eye to aesthetics.

“Behind the bushes. Oh, and I’ll need Agnès Maillard’s card. We had better all sort out our cards now.”

“Before you dart off, let me add the
coup de grace
to your ensemble. Your cockade,” he said, sticking the ribbon amid her moist curls. “There,” he said, standing back and looking her over judiciously. “What do you say, Degan? You like our traveling companion? I almost think we are inviting trouble to have such a pretty wench with us. We must be on our guard to fight off the competition,
hein?”

Degan managed to suppress all his admiration and most of his ire at the speech
.
“Sally had better hang on to François’ card, in case we have to switch back,” was his answer.

“Good idea,” Henri said, then turned his critical eye on the new bruiser. Degan looked a foot wider across the shoulders in his padded jacket, and much better in a stylish tricorne with a cockade on its left side. “I’m afraid
you’re
going to give us trouble too, in that get-up. The girls will be all over you. Aye, what a handsome party we are. I think it is the stage we should have chosen instead of the ring.”

“The hat is worn so,” Sally said, reaching up to give it a dashing tilt.

Mérigot actually presented the most stylish appearance of the three. He had got for himself a well-cut black jacket and the accouterments of an upper-middle-class gentleman. His patriotism was limited to a modest cockade in his hat. It was a much more stylish trio that stood at the stream than had approached it some while before.

“Just before we go,” Henri said, “we should invent a fighting name for our bruiser.”

“How about Beau Ferrier?” Sally asked.

“How about Le Taureau?” Henri asked, smiling. “Ferrier is from Limoges, you know.”

Degan wondered that they both agreed to this so readily, and with such laughter. “Limoges is where fine china is made,” Sally explained. “Bull in a china shop, you see, Le Taureau de Limoges. Ah, you were never any good at a joke, Degan,” she chided him.

“It is not required in a boxer,” Mérigot told her.

They piled back into the carriage, with Degan sitting aft this time, covering his outfit with a blanket to protect it from dust. At Abbeville, Degan and Sally went to order dinner while Henri tried for a closed carriage.

“We are making wretched time,” Sally worried. “One o’clock, and we’ve only come twenty miles. At this rate we’ll never get to Paris.”

“The closed carriage and better horses will speed us up. Only a hundred miles to go, as the crow flies,” he consoled her.

“Don’t speak to me of crows. We have no wings. It is more like one hundred and thirty.”

Degan pulled a chair for Sally in the dining room, and went to take a seat across from her. She looked at him, startled. With a good audience sitting all around them,  she posted and said in a loud voice and common accent, “
Chéri
, why do you sit away over there?”

Reminded of his new role, Degan returned to her side. “Pull the chair closer,” she whispered. When he sat, she took his arm, taking care that it was done above the cloth, for the room to see the relationship between them. He sat stiff and embarrassed at the public exhibition.

“Try to look less like a disapproving parson,” she said in low, loving accents, smiling up into his face. “I warned you in that other place that we do not mention you needed a ladybird. Why did you not find yourself one, so that you would know how to behave?”

A private, reserved person, he felt a perfect fool, and began to foresee a whole new series of problems opening before him. He should be making love to her; men would be making up to Sally in this cheaply seductive guise she wore, and he would be expected to take offense and put them in their places. “I am not a total stranger to dealing with ladies,” he said.

“That I know,
mon
chou,
but please to remember that I am not a lady now. Pretend I have been caught, by you. Remove the stick from your neck, if you can, and lean your head toward me. I won’t bite. I am straining my neck till it aches. The more I approach you, the more you pull back.”

He leaned his head forward an inch, till their heads were nearly touching. “That is a little better. Now if you could manage to wipe that frightened look from your eyes no one would know you perform under duress. Ah, here comes the waiter. Remember we are vastly important persons. Better let me do the talking.”

“Citoyens?”
the waiter asked with a bow.

“Chéri,
what do you wish to eat?” Sally asked Degan, but was careful to rush on with the answer before he was required to speak. “You have a boxing match this afternoon—you require I think a
biftek”

“Ah, the
citoyen
is a boxer!” the waiter exclaimed with a congratulatory smile.

“Mais oui,
Le Taureau de Limoges challenges Citoyen Malraux,” she replied, using the name of the boxer encountered at Berck, the only one she knew.

“He is a wicked fellow, that Malraux,” the waiter said.

“C’est un capon,”
Sally told him dismissingly. Trois
bifteks.
Our manager will join us soon. A bottle of good red wine, not that
vinaigre
you serve to the rabble, and bread without maggots, if you please.”

“Citoyenne,
for a month now we have no beef,” he answered sorrowfully. “A very nice chicken I can give you, dressed with mushrooms and onions.”

“A chicken for three? Le Taureau can eat half a dozen chickens by himself!”

“If you are not in a hurry, I bring you wine, good wine, and kill another—”

“No! We are in a hurry. Bring the chicken already cooked then, with plenty of wine and bread. And some fruit. There must be fruits this time of the year.”

“That will cost very dear,” he replied, sizing up the pair.

“Chéri,
give the
citoyen
a little something,” she hinted to Degan, who reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin of gold.

The waiter pocketed it eagerly and dashed off to the cellar to get a bottle of the best wine, purloined from the cellar of the comte de Calvados in ‘89. When Mérigot joined them later, he found Degan unbent enough to have placed an arm around Sally’s shoulder, toasting her with an excellent Burgundy.

“You don’t have to take advantage of the situation,” Henri said angrily, with a disapproving stare at the offending arm.

“Sit down and don’t be foolish,” Sally said. “Did you get the carriage?”

“Yes, with a demmed crest on the side.”

“Sacrebleu!
We can’t be seen in such a thing. It would drive us straight to the guillotine. What were you thinking of, Henri?”

“I am having the man paint over it, and install in letters six inches high ‘Le Taureau de Limoges.’ It will be ready by two-thirty. I got an excellent pair of bays—paid in gold by the ounce for them. We should make good time from now on, however.”

“If we can rent equally good teams as we go on,” Degan pointed out.

“Anything can be obtained for money.
Your
money.”

“We have obtained a real chicken,” Sally told him.

“Real wine too, I see,” he said, tasting the beverage. “This is better than being
sans-culottes,
eh?” Like any real Frenchman, he was ready to forget his worries over a glass of excellent wine.

Despite the improved viands placed before him, Degan had a perfectly wretched meal. Sally lolled against his side, occasionally even popping a morsel of food into his mouth, and at any attempt on his part to play his role, Henry glared at him. He didn’t know what to do with himself. They had as well the interest of the clients of the place, some few of whom ventured to their table to inquire when and where they might have the pleasure of seeing Le Taureau perform. “This afternoon I believe he has a match?” one asked.

Sally realized her error in having mentioned such a close date to the proprietor, but quickly changed it. “No, tomorrow morning at Amiens he challenges Citoyen Malraux,” she said, with a speaking glance to Henri, who had not been informed of this imaginary match.

“I won’t miss that match,” a man said, to their horror. It was soon being talked up as a coming attraction of great interest. She had thought Amiens a safe enough distance to mention, but it seemed there was an idle wagon that could take a dozen men.

“Where exactly is it to be fought?” the wagon owner asked.

“Just on the north edge of town. Malraux arranges it,” Henri replied.

“You ought to put up a poster. Many from Abbeville will want to go. God knows there is no work for us. We might as well have some sport.”

“Put your money on Taureau, and you will have profit too,” Sally advised, with an adoring smile at the hero of the story.

“He outweighs Malraux,” someone said.

“Malraux wouldn’t be up past your shoulder, Taureau. It seems an unfair fight,” one brave member volunteered.

It was true Malraux was a short man, smaller than Degan. Sally hadn’t realized he was known locally. “Who you want to pitch your man against is the Butcher of Lozère,” the same man suggested to Henri.

There were murmured words of delight at what a bloody spectacle this would be.”The Butcher is undefeated in these parts. Six feet and a half tall, and built like an ox. He is said to have killed a fellow in Lyons last year,” one bloodthirsty man told them.

“We are en route to Paris,” Henri said, fearing they were in danger of becoming a real party of bruisers.