The Iron King (21 page)

‘Ah, how wonderful youth is!’ said Dame Eliabel. ‘Only to look at you, I wager you enjoy every moment of it and profit by every opportunity it offers.’

Guccio dressed himself as decently as he could. Madame de Cressay fell silent for a moment and he could hear her breath coming in gasps. Then she said in the same tone of voice, ‘Well, my dear Messire, what are you going to do about our debt?’

‘Here it comes,’ thought Guccio.

‘You can ask us for what you please,’ she went on. ‘You are our benefactor and we bless you. If you want the gold that you made that thief of a Provost give us back, it’s yours, take it away: a hundred pounds if you like. But you have seen our circumstances and you have already shown that you have a heart.’

As she said this, she was watching Guccio buckling his breeches, and it did not seem to him a suitable moment to discuss business.

‘The man who saved us cannot destroy us now,’ she went on. ‘You people who live in towns cannot understand how difficult our life is. If we haven’t yet repaid our debt to the bank, it is because we cannot do so. The government officials thieve from us: you have shown this to be the case. Serfs no longer work as they did in the past. Since the Orders in Council,
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the idea of freedom has gone to their heads: one can get nothing out of them these days, and really the clodhoppers are almost on the point of thinking themselves of the same species as you or I. For though you are not noble,’ she said to underline the honour she was doing him by placing him on her side of the divide, ‘you certainly very much deserve to be. If you add the fact that whatever we may harvest one year, bad weather deducts it the next, and that our menfolk spend the little one is able to save at the wars, if they don’t go and get killed into the bargain.’

Guccio, who had but one idea in his head, and that to find Marie, tried to evade the implication.

‘It is not I but my uncle who decides these things,’ he said. But he already knew he was beaten.

‘You can show your uncle that this is no bad investment; I can only wish for his sake that he never has less honest debtors. Give us another year; we will pay you interest. Do this for me! I shall be most grateful to you,’ said Dame Eliabel, seizing his hand.

Then, with a certain modest confusion, which nevertheless did not prevent her gazing into his eyes, she added, ‘Do you know, sweet Messire, that since your arrival yesterday – a woman doubtless should not say these things, but there it is – I have felt a peculiar friendship for you; and there is nothing I would not do to give you pleasure?’

Guccio had not the presence of mind to reply, ‘Well then, pay your debt and I shall be happy.’

From all the evidence it appeared that the widow was prepared to pay in her own person, and one might well have asked if she were submitting to sacrifice to evade the debt, or whether she was merely using the debt as an opportunity of personal sacrifice.

As a good Italian, Guccio thought that it would be extremely pleasing to have both mother and daughter at the same time. Dame Eliabel still had many charms, particularly for those who did not mind a certain fullness of figure, her hands were soft and her bosom, abundant as it might be, seemed nevertheless to preserve a certain firmness; but this could be no more than an additional amusement. To risk missing the younger in order to linger with the older would destroy the enjoyment of the game.

Guccio managed to get away by pretending that he was touched by Dame Eliabel’s advances and by assuring her that he would most certainly arrange the matter; but that, in order to do this, he must go at once to Neauphle and confer there with his clerks.

He went out into the courtyard, found the lame man, persuaded him to saddle his horse, leapt into the saddle and went on his way towards the town. There was no Marie upon the road. While he galloped along, he asked himself if the girl were really as beautiful as he had thought her to be the day before, if he had not counted too much upon the promise he had thought to see in her eyes, and whether indeed the whole business, which was perhaps but an after-dinner illusion, were worth his haste. For there are women who, when they look at you, seem to surrender to you in the first instant; but that is merely their natural expression; they look at a piece of furniture, at a tree, in exactly the same way and, in the end, give nothing at all.

Guccio saw no sign of Marie in the town square. He looked down many of the side-streets, went into the church, but only stayed there long enough to cross himself and fail to find her. Then he went to the bank. There he accused the three clerks of having misinformed him. The Cressays were people of quality, both honourable and solvent. Their credit must be prolonged. As for the Provost, he was frankly a scoundrel. As he shouted all this out, Guccio never stopped looking out of the window. The employees wagged their heads as they gazed at the young fool who changed his mind from one day to the next. They thought it would be a great pity if the bank should ever fall completely under his control.

‘It may well be that I shall come back here fairly frequently: this branch obviously requires close supervision,’ he said to them by way of good-bye.

He leapt into the saddle and the gravel flew under his horse’s hooves. ‘Perhaps she has taken a short cut,’ he told himself. ‘In that case I shall see her at the castle, but it may be difficult to see her alone.’

Shortly after he left the town, he saw a figure hurrying towards Cressay and recognised Marie. Suddenly he heard the birds singing, realised that the sun shone, that it was April and that the tender young leaves were burgeoning on the trees. Because of a girl, walking between green fields, the spring, of which for three days Guccio had been unaware, suddenly burst upon him.

He slowed his pace and caught Marie up. She looked at him, not particularly surprised that he should be there, but rather as if she had just received the most wonderful present in the world. Walking had put some colour in her cheeks, and Guccio thought that she was even prettier than he had imagined her to be the day before.

He offered to take her up on the crupper. She smiled acquiescence, and once again her lips parted like a fruit. He drew his horse into the bank, and leant down to give Marie the support of his arm and shoulder. The girl was very light; she hoisted herself up with agile grace, and they hurried on. At first they rode in silence. Guccio was tongue-tied. For once the boastful fellow could find nothing to say.

He realised that Marie hardly dared put her hands on him to retain her balance. He asked her if she were accustomed to riding thus.

‘Only,’ she said, ‘with my father or my brothers.’ She had never travelled like this before, her body to a stranger’s back. Little by little she gained courage and grasped the young man more firmly by the shoulders.

‘Are you in a hurry to get home?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer, and he turned his horse into a side road in order to stay upon the high ground.

‘Yours is a beautiful part of the country,’ he went on after another silence, ‘as beautiful as Tuscany.’

This was a lover’s compliment he was making her and, indeed, he had never before felt so strongly the charm of the Île-de-France. Guccio’s gaze wandered to the far blue distances, to the horizon of hills and forests whose outline was lost in a faint mist, then returned to the lush grass of the surrounding fields, to the great patches of the paler, more fragile green of the young cultivated rye, and to the hawthorn hedges whose sticky buds were opening.

Guccio asked what the towers were that could be seen to the south, appearing upon the far edge of the horizon out of the great green sea of the plain. Marie found some difficulty in replying; they were the towers of Montfort-l’Amaury.

She was suffering from that mingled anguish of pain and happiness which prevents speech and even thought. Where did this path lead? She no longer knew. Where was this cavalier taking her? She did not know that either. She was under the thrall of something to which, as yet, she could give no name, something which was stronger than her fear of the unknown, stronger than the morality she had been taught, the precepts instilled by her family, the warnings of her confessors. She was entirely subject to a stranger’s will. Her hands clutched his coat more firmly, grasped at the back of this man who, at this instant in time, seemed to be, when all else was chaos, the only certainty in the universe. And through the double thickness of the cloth, Guccio felt Marie’s heart-beats echoing in his breast.

The horse, ridden on a loose rein, stopped of its own accord to eat a young shoot.

Guccio dismounted and, giving Marie his arm, lowered her to the ground. But he did not let her go. He stood there with his arm about her waist, and he was astonished to find it so small and slim and firm. The girl stood there motionless, a prisoner, anxious but consenting, of his encircling arm. Guccio felt he must say something, but the trite words of seduction would not come to him: only Italian words came to his lips.

‘Ti voglio bene, ti voglio tanto bene.’
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The sense was so implicit in his voice that she appeared to understand.

Looking at Marie’s face close-to in sunlight, Guccio saw that her eyelashes were not gold as he had thought the night before; Marie’s colouring was auburn with red lights, her complexion that of a blonde, her eyes large and dark blue, their outline firmly chiselled beneath the arch of the eyebrows. What caused the golden light that seemed to emanate from her? From instant to instant, as Guccio gazed at her, Marie’s presence became more precise, more real, and that reality seemed to him the perfection of beauty. He drew her closely to him, moving his hand slowly and gently the length of her thigh and then across her breast, learning the reality of her body.

‘No,’ she murmured, setting his hand aside.

But as if she were afraid of disappointing him, she raised her face a little way towards his. Her lips were parted and her eyes closed. Guccio leaned down towards her mouth, towards that exquisite fruit he so much desired. And thus they remained for a long moment clasped to each other, as birds sang to them, dogs barked in the distance, and the deep panting breath of nature seemed to raise the earth beneath their feet.

When they parted, Guccio became aware of the black twisted trunk of a huge apple-tree that grew near by, and this tree seemed to him astonishingly beautiful and alive; more so than any he had seen until that day. A magpie was hopping about in the young rye, and this boy, brought up in towns, was amazed by the love that had come to him in the depths of the countryside.

Happy at the joy which shone upon his face, Marie could not take her eyes from Guccio.

‘You have come, you have come at last,’ she murmured.

She might have been waiting for him through the ages, through the long night of eternity, and known his face for all time.

He wanted her mouth again, but this time she pushed him aside.

‘No,’ she said, ‘we must go home.’

She knew for certain now that love had come into her life, and for the moment she was overwhelmed by it. She had nothing more to wish for.

When she was again seated upon the horse, behind Guccio, she put her arms round the young man’s chest, placed her head against his shoulder, and thus rode to the rhythm of the horse’s gait, linked to the man God had sent her.

She had a taste for miracles and a sense of the absolute, but lacked the gift of imagination. Not for an instant could she imagine that Guccio’s spiritual state might be different from her own, and that their love might have for him a significance other than it had for her.

She neither sat straight nor resumed the deportment proper to her rank till the roofs of Cressay appeared in the valley.

The two brothers had come back from hunting. Dame Eliabel was not altogether pleased to see Marie return in Guccio’s company. She felt towards her daughter a certain resentment, which was less inspired by her regard for the conventions than by unconscious jealousy. Though they did their best to conceal it, the young people had an air of happiness about them which displeased the Lady of the Manor. But she dared say nothing in the presence of the young banker.

‘I met Demoiselle Marie and asked her to show me round the estate,’ said Guccio. ‘Your land seems rich.’

Then he added, ‘I have given orders that your credit shall be extended till next year: I hope my uncle will approve. It is impossible to refuse anything to so noble a lady!’

He said these last words smiling at Dame Eliabel. She bridled a little, and became less anxious.

They were very grateful to Guccio; nevertheless, when he said that he must leave, they did not try very hard to keep him. They had got from him what they wanted; undoubtedly he was a charming young man, this Lombard, and had done them a great service, but they scarcely knew him. And Dame Eliabel, when she thought of the advances she had made him that morning, and how he had left her with a certain abruptness, could not feel altogether pleased with herself. The essential was that their credit had been extended. Dame Eliabel had little difficulty in persuading herself that her charms had materially helped towards this end.

The only person who really wished that Guccio should stay could neither do nor say anything.

Suddenly the atmosphere became a little embarrassed. Nevertheless, they forced upon Guccio a haunch of roe-deer, which the brothers had killed, to take with him, and made him promise to return. He promised, but it was to Marie he gave a secret glance.

‘You may be certain I shall come back to collect the debt,’ he said lightly, though it was intended to put them on the wrong scent.

His luggage having been fastened to his saddle, he mounted his horse.

Watching him go off along the bank of the Mauldre, Madame de Cressay sighed and said to her sons, more for her own sake than for theirs, ‘Children, your mother still knows how to talk to young men. I was singularly tactful with this one, and you would have found him harder if I had not spoken to him alone.’