Minuet (2 page)

“What is impossible?” he asked, fascinated.

“Que tu es mon père,”
the urchin replied, rising to a point below Degan’s chin and straining the neck up.

“I certainly am not!” Degan shouted, on his high ropes. “What is the meaning of this? Do you speak English?”

“Mais oui,”
the urchin said, making no move to do so.

Harlock meanwhile was staring at the apparition with an interested, questioning face. “If you speak English, suppose you tell us your story, my young fellow,” he suggested.

“Je veux
... I want to see my father,” the child stated, with an accent not so very pronounced.

“You’d better tell us his name then, lad, and I assure you I am not he,” Degan said haughtily, still stinging under the impertinence of the former suggestion that he was.

“Il s’appelle
Lord Harlock,” the rags said, looking from one to the other saucily, a question in the eyes.

“Good God! It’s never
Edward!”
Harlock shouted.

“Non,
Papa! It is I, Minou.” The intruder laughed, and instantly hurled itself into the amazed father’s arms.

Degan stood back, frowning in disbelief and disapproval. “Call the Bow Street Runners,” he said, suspecting chicanery, and looking sharply to the youngster’s fingers for a weapon. He had never seen such filthy fingers. They held no gun or knife, however.

Harlock disengaged himself and stood back, examining the newcomer with a careful scrutiny. She looked back, unblinking, the big topaz eyes wide with excitement. “Bless my soul, I believe it is,” he said.

“Meenoo? Surely the child’s name was Sally,” Degan pointed out.

“Yes, yes, but Marie called her Meenoo for a pet name. A kitten I believe it means in Bongjaw. Is it you, Sal?”

“You don’t know me too neither, Papa!” She laughed. “We are much changed,
non?
I thought this one was you,” she told him, with a jerk of her head toward Degan. “Allow me to present Mademoiselle Céleste Imogene Marie Augé Fawthrop,” she went on, dropping a dainty curtsy, the graceful movement rendered ludicrous by her tattered ensemble.

Regarding the awful outfit more closely, Degan said, “He’s wearing trousers. This is not your daughter, John. Do as I say and send for the Runners. There is some trick afoot here.”

“Qui est-il?”
Minou demanded of her father in a saucy tone, with another jerk of her head toward Lord Degan.

“Eh, what’s that you’re saying?”

“She—he—
it
asks who I am,” Degan told him.

“Ah, just so. I wish you will speak English, Sal. This is your cousin, Lord Degan.”

“On ne doit pas...”
She stopped and took a deep breath, preparatory to expressing herself in English. “Better to call him Citoyen Degan,
hein?”
she asked with a wise and cautious light in her eyes.

“Better not if you know what’s good for you,” her father replied with a laugh. “You ain’t in France now, gel. We still hang onto our handles, and our heads.”

“If you have any words to address to me, you will pray call me Lord Degan,” Degan said with a toplofty examination of the creature.

“C’est à vous,”
she replied with a thoroughly Gallic shrug of her disheveled shoulders.

“Speak English if you can,” he added, thoroughly angered at such impertinence. Even if this walking rag bag turned out to be Lady Céleste, which he doubted very much, she was but a child, and ought to be taught to address her elders with respect.

A loud sneeze shattered the air. Degan was quite sure he saw some flying insect leave the area of the person’s head, and took a step backward. Unconcerned, the child pulled an extremely long and extraordinarily dirty piece of material from around her neck. It had once been red, but was now a spotted sooty shade of uncertain hue. She applied it to her nose, then tossed it to the floor.
“Mon bonnet rouge,”
she explained, giving it a kick with a foot shod in crumbling black leather.

“What does she say?” Harlock asked Degan.

“Her red bonnet, I believe,” he answered, regarding the piece of dirty material for traces of its being either red or a bonnet.

“Mais oui.
What we call in France a liberty cap.
Depuis...”
She frowned with the nuisance of translating her every thought, but braced her shoulders for the task. “Since the Revolution, you know, one must wear the red liberty cap, or risk being taken for an enemy of the Republic.”

“You never had that filthy rag on your hair!” her father demanded, though as his eyes flew to her head, he saw it was not likely to suffer from the cap. The hair was probably the worst part of the child. It was gray with dust, which had become congealed to a darker mat of tangles on top by the falling rain. It also bore the traces of excessively poor barbering, sticking out in points all over her head.

“No, I required it for a scarf. The neck, he was very cold,” she replied calmly. “May I eat, Papa? I am
very
hungry.”

“Send her to the kitchen. I’ll call the Runners,” Degan suggested.

Harlock took one last, long lingering look at the child. The eyes did the trick. Marie had such eyes as that. Cat eyes. He beckoned to the goggling butler and asked him to see Lady Sally to a chamber, to bring her hot water, a maid, and clean clothing.

“But what of food?
J’ai la grande faim,”
she protested vociferously.

“You’ll want to scrub up first,” Harlock pointed out. He began scratching at his neck as he spoke. Degan looked at him in alarm, and stepped farther back.

“Mais non!
First I want to
eat!
I die of hunger! V
raiment.”

“You can’t eat in that condition. You’ll catch hydrophobia,” Degan said sternly.

“Ah,
mon Dieu,”
the child said weakly, and sank carefully to the floor in a dead faint. Or a good imitation of one. As the butler darted forward, one large yellow eye opened a fraction to observe him.

There was an excited shouting for wine, brandy, water, feathers to be burned and a vinaigrette, which last two items were not to be found in a gentleman’s establishment. The bundle of rags was lifted to the sofa, a glass of brandy was held to the lips, and she gulped greedily, without even the customary fit of coughing expected from a female.

“C’est une bonne eau-de-vie,
ça,” she complimented Lord Harlock as she drained the glass, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. Then she sat up straight. “Now I have the bath, while you command food, yes?”

“Certainly, my dear,” the stunned lord agreed.

The slight frame, draped in hanging shreds of gray, arose and walked jauntily out the door.
“Hein, citoyen,”
she called to the butler. “Where is my room?”

She was gone, and Degan and Harlock exchanged incredulous glances, tinged almost with fright.

“What do you make of that?” Degan asked, the first to recover speech.

Harlock sat silent a moment, then put back his head and laughed. “What do I make of it, sir? I’ll tell you what I make of it. I make it I am no longer a childless father. Funny there’s no word for it. A fatherless child is an orphan but a childless father is nothing.”

“You can’t accept that fellow’s word—”

“The eyes have it. Marie’s eyes, down to the long lashes and feline slant. My little Sal had just such an eye. She is my daughter.”

“I
don’t believe it was even a female. He wore trousers.”

“Damme, Rob, if
you
wore a skirt it wouldn’t make you a woman! We’ll have to take her word for it, won’t we? Unless you want to check it out for yourself.”

Degan scowled in disapproval of such a statement. To imply that a skirt hid something different from a pair of trousers was already more ribaldry than he liked. “She must be examined by a doctor for contagious diseases, certainly. And another thing, John—this might very well be some trick to get money out of you. Some damned Frenchie who has got ashore with a half-baked story of being able to free Marie for a price—a
high
price, you may be sure.”

“No, sir, those are the eyes of an Augé. If she ain’t Sal, she’s a double. I’ll hear what she has to say.”

He soon heard milady’s first command. An upstairs maid came with a curtsy to inquire what Lady Céleste was to wear, as she had brought no gowns with her. “She says she’d like to wear one of her mother’s gowns, sir,” the maid suggested uncertainly.

“Impossible. They’re all put away in camphor. Lend her a servant’s dress for the present. It will do well enough.”

The maid bobbed and left, to return not three minutes later with the word that Lady Céleste would prefer not to wear a servant’s dress, if it pleased his lordship.

“Damme, it don’t please me!” he shouted. “Get her into a dress and send her down here at once. I want to talk to her.”

The harried servant remounted the grand staircase once more, to have a bar of soap hurled at her head, though in truth Minou missed her target on purpose, and did it only to show that she meant to be taken seriously. “Long enough I have worn rags!” she said imperiously. “Get me one of my mama’s gowns,
tout de suite.”
Though she sat to her shoulders in water and had her hair covered in suds, she emanated an air of authority.

The servant said apologetically, “They’ll
smell,
milady. And be all wrinkled as well.”

“Press it, and bring me perfume.”

“There’s no perfume in the house, milady, and the attics are all dark, with
bats.”

“Qu’est-ce que c’est que
bats?” she demanded.

The servant flapped her arms, saying, “Black bird, bad.”

“Ah,
chauue-souris,”
Minou said with a shudder. She then looked all around the room, at the brocade hangings of the canopied bed, the gold satin window draperies, a rather pretty Chinese scarf with a flowered pattern and a long fringe that decorated a mahogany bureau in the corner.
“Très bien.
Some pins, a needle and
filet.”

“Feelay, mum?”

“Thread,
vaurienne
.”

The requested items were brought while her hair was rinsed, her body scrubbed, her nails nearly rubbed from her fingers in an effort to remove the grime, till at last she emerged from the tub with a large towel encasing her from head to ankles. It was necessary to sink to servants’ undergarments, but it was soon clear to the astonished group of servants attending Lady Céleste that these ignominious cotton undergarments were to be the only decent stitch on her body.

They were commanded to yank the draperies from the windows and the Chinese shawl from the table, and insert pins and
filets
where milady directed. Considering that three orders came from belowstairs to hurry it up, milady took her time about the proceedings, standing in front of a mirror, turning over a piece of material to make a tuck here, a pleat there, as though she had all the time in the world.

While still half draped, she ordered food, insisting she could not wait a moment longer. With a wing of chicken held between her fingers, she continued her toilette. At length she stood before them swathed in gold satin draperies that began well below her shoulders, and finished three feet behind her in a train. With all this finery, no shoes could be found to fit her, and she went in the housekeeper’s best Sunday silk hose, without shoes. Her hair had been toweled dry to be brushed into a tousle of curls the shade of burnished copper. It sat in a wreath of glistening ringlets like a cap on her head.

“My, don’t you look pretty, mum,” the upstairs maid said, smiling in pleasure.

“Pas trop mal,”
Minou decided, as she took a last turn before a pier glass. She gave a little shrug of satisfaction and sallied forth to greet her father, just ninety minutes after leaving him. The lengthy interval convinced Lord Harlock the girl was indeed Marie’s daughter.

Chapter Two

While Lady Céleste prepared her toilette, their lordships sat below discussing her appearance at Berkeley Square, with the elder trying to convince Degan that she was indeed Sal, and Degan trying equally hard to warn the elder to caution.

“For your sake, I hope she is not,” Degan said curtly. “A daughter running around the countryside unchaperoned in boy’s clothing, and drinking brandy as though it were water, will do you little credit. It’s infamous carrying-on. And what the devil is
keeping
her? She’s been up there for hours.”

“She is Marie’s daughter too,” Harlock pointed out with a patient smile.

Suddenly she appeared at the doorway. Harlock turned pale and said, “Bless my soul! What a turn she gave me. The image of her mother.”

Degan arose without quite knowing he did it, to pay homage to the entrance of a lady into the room. The sex at least of the person standing before them was in no doubt. A pair of white shoulders, dainty and well formed, were not the only clue. The gold satin curtain was stylishly draped over her curving bosom, tightly cinched at the waist. No male had such a body, and no female either that Degan had ever seen. The Chinese shawl, heavily fringed, trailed from her fingers. The head was held at a coquettish angle, tilted to one side, and an arch smile was on her lips. The face, free of tangled mats of hair and dirt, was seen to be kittenish in shape, with high cheeks tapering to a small pointed chin. She took two steps into the room, then lifted her arms and did a pirouette. “You like, Papa? Yes?” she asked.

“Charming, my dear,” Harlock said warmly, and walked toward her.

She tried a step forward to greet him, and found her shoeless feet caught up in the train as a result of her turn. She would have gone falling to the floor if he had not been there to catch her. “Ah,
quelle gauchérie!”
she said, and laughed up into his face before stooping over, with a quite careless disregard for her hastily constructed gown, which plunged with the movement. Degan averted his head in alarm that approached panic, to examine a very inferior Italian painting of the Ponte Vecchio for ninety seconds, till she had regained her posture and her gown.

“At least we won’t need a doctor to tell us she’s a woman, eh, Degan?” Harlock joked.