The Last Banquet (14 page)

I could have caught her rabbit or wildcat or water rat but I knew trout would make her happiest so that was what I offered. I would love to write that we stripped and I took her in the clearing in the sight of the sun and the trees, or that we kissed and pleasured each other as we discovered secrets hidden to us before this, or even that we lay naked in each other’s arms and kissed. But the truth is we kissed once, right after we landed, the slightest kiss for all the touch of her lips skewered through me like the lightning that blasted that beech tree. And though we held each other through the night we were dressed by then, and we huddled together for warmth, and when she slept I held her so she wouldn’t fall.

Who knows what another day alone in the forest and a night in the trees might have brought us. But the next morning, before I could even catch us breakfast, a large boat filled with soldiers sailed down the river, with the duke himself in the prow shouting for us to show ourselves if we were within hearing. Emile had delivered our plea for help. Charlot and Jerome had put ashore further downstream than us at the first sight of soldiers. Charlot had a cracked shoulder and Jerome a split head but both would be fine. Since Emile had saved us, I was unsure why the duke spoke his name with such distaste. I was to discover the reason soon enough.

On our trip back to Chateau de Saulx we passed gibbets filled with slowly twisting charbonnieres and peasant cottages burning and carts full of blank-eyed prisoners, as silent and solid as the animals with whom they shared the land. The fire in their eyes was gone, extinguished by the sight of the soldiers around them and the ropes that fixed their hands behind their backs. Cows lay dead in the fields. Crops had been trampled. In a town square on the way home a half naked woman was being whipped, her rags ripped from her shoulders and her breasts bare to the jeering crowd. She was gagged, probably against the risk of sedition, since her cries wouldn’t have worried the soldiers. A small child at her feet sobbed loud enough for both of them.

Virginie saw none of this. She sat next to me in her father’s carriage, her face buried in my neck and her fingers twisted so hard into mine that her knuckles were white. She would not let go of my hand or move further from me despite her father’s silent gaze. As we entered the courtyard at the chateau she ground her face into my neck and wrapped her arms tight around me as if she would never let go. But she did without being asked and was the first from the carriage, greeting her mother with a kiss.

‘That’s the second time he’s saved me.’

The duke of Saulx looked at me. ‘We must talk.’

They took Virginie in one direction and the duke walked me in another towards a knot garden he’d planted when he first married. He told me about the planning and the planting of the garden as we walked. So far as I could tell his story existed only to fill the silence until we reached the middle of the garden and a circular pond filled with gold fish.

‘D’Aumout,’ he said, and it was unlike him to use my name so formally. ‘Did you take a bet with your friends as to who could be the first to kiss my daughter? Who could do more than simply kiss her?’

‘No.’ I said with such fury that he blinked.

‘I require your word on this.’

‘You have my word on this. I did not take part in any such wager. Nor would I ever take part in any such wager.’

‘You love her, don’t you?’

‘Since the first moment I saw her.’

The duc de Saulx sighed. ‘And from the moment you saved her from that wolf she’s loved you . . .’

‘Before, perhaps.’

He looked at me strangely and I blushed. ‘Charlot teased her about liking me that first summer I was here. Before the wolf.’

‘My son told you this?’

‘Your daughter.’ I didn’t offer when she’d said it or that she’d been in my room at the time, with the rest of his family at supper. He thought I meant in the day and night just passed and I let him think it. The duke nodded thoughtfully and looked beyond me to a man I recognised. It was the doctor who’d treated me for the wolf bite.

‘Wait here,’ the duke said.

The two men spoke quietly and briefly and then both bowed and the doctor retired while the duke returned to where I waited. ‘My daughter has been examined,’ he said. ‘Her mother insisted and I’m not sure Virginie will ever forgive her, or me for agreeing. The doctor says she is intact. That she is untouched. So I ask you honestly, have you been . . .’ He chose his words carefully. ‘Close to my daughter?’

‘We kissed,’ I said. ‘Once, when we climbed from the river. It was a small kiss.’ I touched the corner of my lip. ‘Here.’

The duke smiled at me. ‘Oh, to be so young again.’

‘May I ask . . . About that wager?’

‘Something Emile said to Jerome when he thought he was alone and not overheard. To the effect they had no chance of winning now. Virginie does not know how they dishonoured her. A boy like Emile, I would expect no less. But I am ashamed for Jerome. Although he redeemed himself saving my son.’

And Emile brought you warning of our trouble. I kept that thought to myself, still cross with Emile for the original bet, and lacking the courage to defend him.

The King’s Mistress

O
ur engagement began with an argument. Of course, I didn’t know it was an engagement then. After supper, the duke and duchess and Margot having left the room, Virginie walked up to me and slapped my face, hard. ‘How dare you,’ she said, her face white. Her eyes were on the edge of crying and her temper looked barely under control. Jerome stopped what he’d been saying, Emile stared at us, and Charlot smiled.

‘She does that,’ he said.

Virginie shot her brother a look that would have turned another man to stone. Being Charlot, he simply pointed to his heavily-bandaged shoulder and said, ‘You wouldn’t slap an injured man, would you?’ Virginie stalked from the room.

‘What was that about?’ I asked.

Charlot looked at Jerome, who blushed, and his gaze dismissed Emile, who pretended not to notice. ‘I wouldn’t know.’ He stared at me. ‘Well, go after her then. Unless you’re a complete fool.’

I caught up with Virginie in a corridor. ‘What have I done?’

She swirled round and raised her hand, wrenching free when I grabbed her wrist before she could slap me again. ‘You know exactly what you’ve done.’ She turned from me and hurried though a door at the end of the corridor and out onto the terrace, leaving me to follow like a stubborn shadow, across the terrace and down stone steps to a lawn. We ended up in the knot garden where I’d talked to her father earlier. ‘Go away,’ she ordered.

‘Not until you tell me what I’m meant to have done.’

She glared at me, eyes huge in the darkness. ‘How could you?’

‘Virginie. Tell me.’

‘How could you have wagered with those . . . ?’

‘I didn’t,’ I said fiercely. ‘I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I told your father.’

‘My mother said . . . Why didn’t Charlot stop it?’

‘He didn’t know.’

‘So there was a wager!’

‘Jerome and Emile wagered on which could steal the first kiss.’

‘And you?’ she said.

‘What could I have told you?’ But that wasn’t the question she was asking. She planted her feet solidly on the gravel of the knot garden and faced me full-on.

‘Swear,’ she said. ‘Swear you weren’t part of this.’

‘I wasn’t part of it. I would never have taken that bet.’

‘Why not?’ She demanded.

‘Because I love you.’ The truth fitted the moment, and I had a sense my life was about to change here among severely cut shrubs under a cloudy night sky. ‘Because I’ve loved you since that summer.’

‘You barely noticed me. All you did was gaze at Margot.’ ‘Because I didn’t dare to look at you.’

‘A sweet lie,’ Virginie said, but she was smiling. ‘A sweeter truth.’

Sometime later, when our kisses become so deep we stopped caring if people wondered where we were, I dropped my hand to the front of her dress and closed my fingers around the slight mound between her legs. Virginie’s eyes widened and she bit her lip. A minute later she lifted her dress out of the way so I could touch her again, this time with her hand holding mine in place. Her other hand covered her mouth until her whimpers died away. ‘So much for untouched,’ she giggled.

The duke had moved swiftly to put down the riots, mobilising the local regiments and ordering courts to sit day and night to try those captured mid-riot or later arrested. The sentences were harsher than normal, far harsher than for an equivalent crime tried in the same courts a year before. Examples were made. Youths were whipped through the streets, young women pilloried for days in the town squares, with all the risks that brought them. The ringleaders were hung, the lieutenants sent as slaves to the galleys at Marseilles, or to work out their lives chained together at the arsenal there.

The duke’s personal vengeance was brutal. The charbonnier accused of leading the riots was tried for treason and convicted – even though the man swore on his soul he was innocent. He was whipped through the streets, then lashed to a wooden frame in the local town square and the long bones of his body broken with an iron bar by the sergeant of the watch. After that he was hung, dragged from the cobbles by a rope around his neck since he was no longer able to stand. Only the duke among us watched. He reported the crowd had been respectful but sullen. Which is what he would expect.

‘Necessary,’ was all he said to me on his return. Jerome and Emile had been sent back to the academy. Charlot and I would not be joining them. Charlot was to take up his duties at Chateau de Saulx. As for me, I was waiting to be introduced to Louise, the king’s mistress, who was Margot’s age but even more beautiful. Virginie was furious about this. A fierce sulk from her produced pleading from me, which became a sulk on my part the moment she began relenting. We made up shortly before Louise arrived, in what was becoming our traditional way. ‘You look flushed,’ was all Charlot said.

‘It’s hot, I’m nervous.’

‘That’s my sister,’ he reminded me. ‘It’s as well I like you.’ We stood in the courtyard awaiting Louise. She arrived in a royal carriage, bearing congratulations from the king on the duke’s handling of the uprising. She refreshed herself and then disappeared into the duke’s study. An hour or so later she entered the drawing room, smiled at all of us and turned to me.

‘Will you walk?’ She asked this in a gentle fashion, as if she really expected me to say I was busy or had better things to do. She was beautiful, this king’s mistress. Looking, to me, little older than Virginie, and I was still an age when a few years either way really counted as a difference. I bowed and offered my arm, and she smiled as she might at a clever child. ‘This way, I think.’

She led us down to the little lake and we walked its edge, ducking under willows and watching coots steady in the water as little battleships. We stopped to marvel at an ancient trout, large to us and monstrous to the insects that kept it fed. ‘What are you thinking?’ Her question made me stutter.

‘I’m wondering if a large trout would taste better than a small one.’

‘Worse,’ she said with certainty. ‘Old things always taste worse.’

I could think of exceptions but didn’t contradict her.

‘You keep looking at me,’ she said a hundred paces later. ‘Why?’

‘You’re younger than I expected.’

She stopped, turned in a slow circle beneath a willow tree, her smile suddenly coquettish. Her cream dress was rich with brocade, its neck cut low enough to show the slope of her breasts. She smelt of rose water and musk. ‘You like what you see?’

‘How could anyone not like?’

‘Unfortunately . . . Some men are more exacting than you.’ She sounded sad and her face fell a little. ‘You think I’m beautiful?’

I blushed, but nodded all the same.

‘Is Virginie more beautiful?’

I nodded again and she laughed, taking my hand and squeezing it. We walked on while she told me what her cousin, the duke, wanted of her. That was when I first realised he intended to let me marry Virginie. He was not simply humouring his daughter while he found other ways to deal with her infatuation. ‘Do you know the marquis d’Aumout?’

‘No, my lady.’

‘So polite. We are friends. You may call me cousin . . . D’Aumout is old,’ she said. ‘Only bastards for children and none he likes. You are family.’ She glanced at me, looking doubtful. ‘Distant family. The duke is sure of it. I am to ask the king on my uncle’s behalf for permission for the marquis to adopt you.’

‘Why would he do that?’

She stopped, put her hands on my shoulders. ‘Do you really know so little of the world? He is poor, the duke is rich. Why would he not? You will become comte d’Aumout, and marquis in time. The marquis lives in Paris. But there is a castle in the south, probably hideous. But it will become yours.’

‘I will be suitable for Virginie?’

‘You are suitable already,’ she said seriously. ‘In the duke’s eyes you are already suitable. This makes you suitable in the eyes of everyone else.’

‘The duchess?’

Hélène nodded. ‘In her eyes too. Now go tell that girl of yours to stop scowling at me.’ I turned and saw Virginie watching us from the terrace. When I turned back Hélène was already walking away.

‘You held hands,’ Virginie said furiously. ‘She held your shoulders. She turned circles in front of you to show herself off. You talked and you talked. What did you talk about?’

‘She asked if she was more beautiful than you.’

Virginie went very still. Until I told her I’d said no. At which she relented, hugging me fiercely when I said I believed her father would let us marry within the year.

1738
Marriage

A
s though amazed that cooks this far south knew how to prepare something that complicated, Charlot examined the pigeon pasty, peeling strips of parchment-like pastry from its case and selecting the largest chunks of meat.

‘You have a prize bull. Those apple trees are skilfully pruned. Your servants wear shoes. There are carp in the moat . . .’ I thought him surprised to find the south so civilised, until I realised he was mocking me to hide the fact that he was surprised. At school he’d regarded southerners as little better washed or mannered than Moors.