The Last Banquet (27 page)

‘It’s all stabbings, ambushes and abductions,’ the colonel says. ‘The merchants are thieves, their peasants are worse than ours. Pasquale Paoli’s parliament is proof of what happens when you let lawyers loose. I’ll give you soldiers for your protection.’

‘We go alone,’ I say. ‘That is the agreement.’

Colonel Montaubon looks briefly querulous, opens his mouth to object and decides to fill it with wine instead. So I thank him for his advice, nod to Héloïse and Armand to say we should go, and leave the colonel what remains of my bottle. Eyes watch us leave. I can feel them as we move through a dusty square towards a dry fountain, with Armand leading the way. ‘There,’ Armand says.

Three donkeys and a ragged boy wait by the fountain, beyond which a handful of old men stand one side of a line scratched in the sand and throw heavy wooden balls in looping arcs to drop onto a smaller ball several feet away. The old men barely glance up as Armand hails the boy. ‘Spies,’ Héloïse mutters.

‘I expected a coach . . .’

‘Later,’ she promises. ‘A donkey is better for reaching the citadel.’ She means the huge fortress perched on a rocky outcrop and overlooking the harbour.

‘That’s where we’re going?’

She smiles and shakes her head. ‘That’s where we’re pretending to go. You only have to travel by donkey for a mile at most. Then we’ll change to a cart. It’s all worked out.’

‘By whom?’

‘The signore.’

I take her word for it. There is little else I can do. As he’d said his goodbyes, Jerome had told me that Armand and Héloïse know where I should go and when. My job is simply to impress Pasquale Paoli with my sincerity when we arrive. I am a marquis, a friend of the great and beloved by the dauphin, yet I dress plainly and talk quietly of simple things. I’d started to tell Jerome that there was nothing simple about taste, but he moved on to how impressed Signore Paoli would be to meet me.

Very occasionally the boy leading the donkeys would drop back to swipe one of the animals across its rear but mostly his turning towards them was enough to have them pick up their hooves. The sun was hot overhead and the air rich with the scent of herbs: thyme, marjoram, mint, juniper and honeysuckle. Even my own kitchen garden lacked this wild and casual abundance. At the back of the citadel we kept climbing rather than enter the heavy arch that lead to the headquarters of the French forces in this area. ‘Soon,’ Héloïse promised. Sweat beaded her forehead and dark patches showed under her arms. Since there was no one to see, I removed my wig and held it like a dead thing as I let the donkey carry me into an olive grove and over a small bridge to where a horse and cart stood. It would have blocked the traffic had their been any for it to block. Around us was red earth, rocks like weathered bone, sharp-leaved plants and coarse grasses. I wondered how far French authority really ran.

Fifteen minutes later I found out. As our cart turned a corner, it hit a rock and the carter swore, dropped his reins and lifted his hands in one fluid movement. His cart came to a trundling halt, one wheel dangerously askew. Three masked men stood in our path with drawn pistols while two others with muskets were silhouetted on a slope above. At a barked command, the carter clambered from his seat and prostrated himself in the red dirt, face-down and with his hands stretched in front of him. The man in charge spoke again.

I thought Armand would answer but it was Héloïse, her words fierce and her accent strange. If she was speaking
lingua corsa
she knew more than the few words she’d mentioned. She nodded at Armand, nodded at me and finally said something I understood. Pasquale Paoli. The man looked at me, looked at Héloïse and Armand and waved his gun to indicate they too should clamber down. When Hélöise shook her head, he raised the pistol and his hand tightened on the trigger.

‘Wait,’ begged Armand. He practically dragged his halfsister from the cart while the man stood there laughing. After which, he examined me slowly, asked a few questions of the two now keeling on the road and began a heated conversation with his companions. They were obviously arguing about something and, after a particularly fierce glare, I began to suspect it was whether or not to shoot me. There comes, in such moments, a sweeping fatalism. Well, it comes to me in those moments when the world waits on the edge of change. I can remember red flowers like tiny blood splatters standing out against a grey rock. Every boulder in the wild fields around us was topped by a rough pyramid of stones, an offering to the god of high places or maybe a memorial to something.

I recognised the same stillness and calmness I felt when I realised Virginie was dead. If I could have fought them I might have done, having my training and a certain skill with a sword; but the three on the road had pistols and the two on the hill above had muskets and I was unarmed. That had been part of the conditions. I was to come unarmed. Without even my sword. Glancing up, I found one of those on the road examining me. ‘Your name,’ he demanded in French, his accent as thick as a Marseilles innkeeper.

I bowed. That was the first thing we were taught at school. When you need to make an impression, always bow. ‘Jean-Marie, marquis d’Aumout. Here to meet Signore Pasquale Paoli, president of the Corsican republic.’

The man spat. He translated my words for his companions and they muttered among themselves. Héloïse was watching me and there was a message in her eyes; unfortunately I had no idea how to read it. She had her hands clasped behind her head as she knelt in the road and the position exposed sodden circles beneath her arms and pulled her breasts high. She was swaying in the heat. Armand had his eyes shut and the movement of his lips told me he was praying. Only our carter seemed untroubled, for all his awkward position and his face in the dirt he lay as silent and still as a man asleep. Looking at him, I wondered if he really was asleep and envied him if he was. The wine from the harbour inn had been heavy as well as sour and there was nothing I’d have liked more.

‘Come here,’ the man demanded.

‘You come here.’

He raised his pistol and I looked into its muzzle. From this distance the ball would pass without trouble through my head. Such a death would be instant or as near as made no difference. I took a mouthful of hot Corsican air and savoured its scent. If I was to die it might as well be with the scent of wild herbs in my nostrils. The crickets were loud, the cicadas a constant background hiss like tiny steam engines. A kite called high overhead.
Falco milvus
Linnaeus had named the Corsican variety in his
Systema Naturae
.

‘Jean-Marie
. . .’ Héloïse was staring at me.

‘What?’

Her throat rippled. ‘He’ll kill you if you don’t.’ I was going to shrug but her eyes were so blue and when I looked back the black circle of the muzzle somehow looked bigger. I could remonstrate, demand the man find his manners and remind him he dealt with a French noble sent by the king. That’s what Charlot would have done. But I had a headache and Héloïse’s expression told me she feared the outcome of this. So I climbed down from the cart and walked to where he waited.

‘A Frenchman?’

I bowed politely.

‘Come to talk to Pasquale Paoli?’

I nodded, and the man muttered to his companions. The last thing I remembered was that he spat, before saying ‘
Traitor
.’ And then the barrel of his pistol slashed towards my skull, bringing darkness.

Arrest

I
wake to the rocking of a cart, the stink of dog shit on somebody’s heel and my face hard against the cart’s rough floor. My hands are bound behind my back and my head is trapped inside a sack that smells of wind-dried ham. Men are talking somewhere above me.
Lingua corsa
mixed with mainland Italian and borrowed words of French. My head hurts from the pistol blow and the after-effects of wine. My best hope is that I’ve been abducted in return for ransom. I try to remember if Corsica has that tradition too. Its neighbour Sardinia certainly does. I imagine I’ll be murdered.

When my cart stops suddenly I draw breath and look for my courage. A man growls a question from several yards away. The man sat above answers in a tone brutal enough to say this is no friendly conversation. The cart rocks forward, the first man shouts and the cart halts again, my head slamming into wood from the abruptness of the stop. There is shouting and then a shot. Above me someone jerks, gurgles and slips down as someone else fires. To the ham smell of the sack, and the stink of shit from the dead man’s heel, is added the acrid tang of gunpowder smoke that thickens as other pistols discharge. In the end, only ringing silence remains. And then the cart rocks as someone clambers onto it. That person grunts as they drag a body off me and a scrabble of stones say they’ve tossed it over the edge of some slope. Two other bodies from within the cart follow, after which the cart begins to trundle through the heat of the Corsican afternoon, the only noise being the creak of its wheels. When it stops occasionally, as if its driver is deciding this way or that, a wild symphony of crickets reaches me on a wind that smells of herbs. We stop an indeterminate time later. Maybe an hour, maybe no more than ten minutes. Time runs differently when you have a sack over your head. Well, so it seemed to me.

The next thing I hear is Armand’s voice, then hands drag me upright onto a seat, remove the sack and I find myself staring into the soft face of a light-haired stranger with startlingly blue eyes. His mouth is full and his nose broad and his hands small, with long narrow fingers and perfectly clean nails. I see all of this in a second, perhaps because an hour earlier I’d been expecting to meet death and this man has taken his place.

‘Monsieur le marquis d’Aumout?’

I bow as best I can, realise my forehead is sticky and find blood. It tastes fresh and I understand the cart’s earlier abrupt halt opened a cut that was already there.

‘We’ll have that dressed,’ he tells me. He peers more closely. ‘Perhaps stitched. I’m Pasquale Paoli. My cousins tell me you have an offer from the king? They wanted to tell me themselves but I thought it would be best to hear it from you.’ Héloïse and Armand look at me impassively from a yard or so away. There is a family likeness between the three. ‘Second cousins,’ Paoli says, seeing my gaze. ‘They are your spies?’

‘Friends,’ he says. ‘Family. Their father was French, true enough. A dreadful man. Luckily for me they take after their mothers. This was their chance to come home.’ He says this easily, in an entirely friendly tone, and I wonder if they were always Paoli’s spies or if he is simply lucky. Some men are.

‘What went wrong? I ask.

He understands my question. ‘A faction not friendly to me heard of your arrival on our island and decided to interfere. They intended to discover what I might have to discuss with France. I must admit,’ he smiles slightly, ‘I’m at a loss to know what you think you could say to me that might change my mind.’

‘About what?’

‘Remaining independent.’

‘That is what you are?’

He looks at me and his gaze hardens. Then the fierceness goes out of his eyes and he makes himself smile and keeps his voice light when he answers, ‘You know, as well as I do, that Corsica has been independent for many years.’

‘Genoa didn’t agree.’

‘The Genoese could barely hold a quarter of our coast. That’s why they sold their supposed rights in my country to you. Now, I must send my friends away . . .’ He hugs Armand and Héloïse and they head in different directions, going downhill on red-earth paths, with armed men in front and behind. ‘My soldiers found them by the road. My enemies didn’t dare kill them. I suppose I should be grateful.’

‘Your soldiers?’

He stops for a second, looks at me. ‘I’m president,’ he says. ‘As such I’m commander-in-chief of the Corsican forces. I have generals but they report to me.’ He shrugs. ‘This is how it should be in a democracy.’

‘I’ve heard your women vote.’

‘In local elections. In time I can see no reason why they should not vote in the national elections or stand for the general assembly. We have a tradition of strong women here. When men die in vendettas the women take over.’

‘And run the farms?’

‘And the bakeries and breweries, and the fishing fleets and olive presses. And continue the vendettas.’ Paoli sighs. ‘I need to find a way to stop those. What would you think of civil courts, arbitration before a panel of equals and binding rulings?’

‘It sounds like something Voltaire might suggest.’

‘We write to each other. I don’t wish to boast but I suspect François-Marie takes ideas from me in his turn.’

As we talk, he leads me along a terrace of olive trees towards drystone steps to a terrace above. We climb through the summer heat, Signore Paoli apparently unaffected by the sun beating down on our heads. After the sixth or seventh terrace, I stop to wipe my skull and he suggests I discard my frock coat and offers to carry it if I find it too heavy and the slope too steep. Pride demands I carry my own coat and I try to steady my breathing. When we stop, it’s on a road along a ridge, and I look down over purple gorse towards Calvi, and the sea a blue spread beyond. The view is beautiful and brutal, unlike even the wildest stretches of southern France. It is a country worth loving. On the ridge road a carriage waits. Not a cart but an open-top carriage with leaf springs and leather seats so hot they burn my legs through my hose. Signore Paoli sits more slowly, being a man used to life in this heat. I am impressed by him and I suspect he means to impress me. For my part, I say little and listen often, trying to judge who he is and how he will greet my offer. Jerome told me little enough about the man and what he did say was partial. In Paoli’s face I see no sign of the sybarite Jerome said I would meet. He could be a minor noble, a successful lawyer, a rich merchant who’d turned his thoughts to good works; except a fierce intelligence far back in his blue eyes suggests something more.

The house to which he brings me is not the ruin I expect. It is low and long and sunk into the side of a hill, its red stucco faded to blend invisibly into the pink dirt behind. The gates, which are sturdy, are drawn back by two dark-skinned boys with coal-black hair and pistols in their belts. A groom rushes from inside a stable block to see to our horses and Signore Paoli helps him unfix the harness.