The Last Banquet (28 page)

‘Here we can talk,’ he says.

I can understand why. There are men with guns in every direction. Shepherds with muskets across their backs in the fields. A boy leading goats along a track has a pistol hanging from a lanyard around his neck. Two hunters carry a belt full of rabbits, one has his musket slung, the other has his muzzle forward. I doubt the colonel from Calvi could get his men within five miles of this place without running into an ambush.

‘Come inside,’ Signore Paoli says, ‘you must be thirsty.’

I fear he is about to offer me wine but he produces a glass jug filled with cold fresh water obviously drawn from a deep well and joins me in finishing first one tumbler and then another. Only then does he take me into his study, sit himself in a heavy chair on one side of a simple desk and indicate I should take the chair on the other.

‘So,’ he says. ‘Tell me about this offer.’

I begin, as Jerome had suggested, by telling him how much we respect Corsica. How being part of a great kingdom like France would be entirely different to being the colony of a poor and near destitute Italian city state. That the island would be granted the status of a province, with all the rights and privileges that brought. Corsicans would have the right to an assembly, the right to their own courts. Corsica itself would be the equal of Normandy or Burgundy, both great countries that became part of the France.

‘And to sweeten this . . .’ His voice was light. ‘What does Paris have in mind for me?’

‘Armand and Héloïse really didn’t tell you?’

Pasquale Paoli shakes his head. ‘I wanted to hear this from you myself. I already understand you’re a friend of the duc de Saulx and the marquis de Caussard, and that when you speak it is with their voice, and when they speak it is with the voice of the king of France. The only thing I don’t understand is why you came. I mean . . . I understand why they sent you. I’m simply not sure why you agreed to be sent.’

I tell him I came for brocciu di Dónna
.

He looks puzzled, and when I explain he looks a little cross, as if he thinks less of me now than when we first met. ‘And you believe this exists? You believe we make cheese from the milk of our women and keep it hidden in caves to eat in secret?’ He sees my face and sighs. ‘Héloïse tells me you’re a good man. That your life reflects your writings. She says you saved her life one day in the woods when her horse bolted. For that I can forgive you this ridiculousness. Tell me what they told you to tell me. Make their offer.’

‘I am to offer you the title of marquis di Bonafacio. If you do not accept that I am to offer you duc de Bastia. If you refuse that I am to offer you prince of Corsica, with all the rights of a prince of France who is not of the royal blood.’

‘And my men? I’m sure you have something for them.’

‘Such titles as you think fit. A handful of comtes, more vicomes, as many barons as you need. I doubt the king will be fussy about those.’

‘Why would I accept this offer?’

‘Because the alternative is war. The king will send soldiers and this time you will be fighting France. You will find it very different to fighting Genoa.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. He pours himself a glass of wine and then pours one for me as an afterthought. I can see from his face that his thoughts are turned inward. ‘Do you expect me to accept?’

A silence stretches between us, broken only by footsteps on wooden boards overhead and a fiddling of crickets so loud it reaches through shuttered windows. There are two answers to that and they depend upon to whom he addresses the question.

‘Who are you asking?’ I say. ‘Me? Or the French envoy?’

‘Do you expect me to distinguish?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then you mistake me. I am Pasquale Paoli and I am the president of Corsica, the two are indistinguishable. There is no difference in the views of one and the views of the other. However, for you . . . What does the French envoy think?’

‘He expects you to accept. Your acceptance is the only way to avoid war. The rewards of becoming part of France are great, and the rewards offered to you personally, and through you to your followers, will make you the equal of the great nobles of France.’

‘And this other you?’

‘You will refuse,’ I say simply. ‘You have no interest in titles or desire for your country to be ruled by Louis and have your children learn French.’ He stares at me for a long while and asks a question that haunts me still.

‘What would you die for?’

I give him the obvious answers. ‘My family, my children, my wife . . .’ I add
My king
as an afterthought, not knowing if it is really true. But those are not the answers he wants. He means what
idea
would I die for. And I realise I do not know. Standing, I bow to show I accept his decision and tell him I will return to Calvi. With luck I will be in time to board the vessel that brought me.

‘I’m afraid not,’ he says.

‘She’s left already?’

Signore Paoli shrugs. ‘I have no idea. But I cannot let you return so swiftly. We have preparations to make at this end. The longer you are here, the longer we have to make them. In a week they will wonder where you are. In a month they will send someone to find out and that person will fail. In two months, France will begin to worry and questions will be asked through intermediaries that will be answered, although the answers will leave them uncertain. In four months . . . In four months we will be ready.’

‘You gave me safe passage.’

‘True,’ he says. ‘But I said nothing about returning you.’

1769
Freedom

S
ince I am alive to write this you already know I didn’t die in Corsica, although there were days and weeks, and finally months, when that seemed the likely outcome. First came a period of silence. I was held in cottages and fed well, moved every week or so, sometimes in the night and sometimes by day. This continued until Paoli himself appeared in the autumn to tell me his army had won a great victory over the marquis de Chauvelin. At the end of a ten-hour battle a thousand Frenchman were wounded, six hundred were dead and another six hundred had surrendered, along with enough cannon, mortars and muskets to arm an entire new army. Corsica was free and would remain so.

Pasquale Paoli was almost right. Faced with the scale of the defeat, our good king Louis XV suggested the island was not worth such losses. But such was the damage to the duc de Choiseul’s reputation as foreign minister that he begged the king to send more troops. Charlot objected and Jerome proclaimed himself appalled by the proposed cost, but the king let himself be swayed and de Choiseul got his way. At the end of winter a French army landed in Corsica, this time led by Nöel, comte de Vaux.

The cottages in which I was held became smaller, and I was moved more often, sometimes daily, sometimes not for two or three days at a time. Once I thought they’d forgotten me and the shepherd boy left to push stale bread under my door grew so frightened he unlocked it to ask if he could sleep inside. They would have beaten him, the men who turned up a week later, but I told them the boy had explained to me that if I tried to overpower him or run away the grown-ups would cut off my bollocks and hang me from an olive tree with my own entrails.

That night the boy brought me cheese in thanks. It was hard and stale and bloomed with mould but it was the first I’d eaten in three months and tasted so wonderful I almost cried. That winter was fierce. Winds howled though gaps in the walls, rain fell, food became scarce and my captors sullen and silent. They grew friendlier as the weather grew warmer and shared rabbit stew and small birds roasted over open fires. The kind didn’t matter: we ate larks and thrushes, pipits, warblers and shrikes. And then they grew sullen again, and cast black glances, and I realised they had returned to discussing my fate. These were young men, sometime very young, and I understood they were what Paoli could spare. The rest of his forces were engaged in running battles with my countrymen.

Towards the start of May, I was taken to join a ragged column of soldiers. Maybe they were retreating. Maybe advancing. From their expressions as they squatted, crouched and sat in the dirt of a village square it was hard to tell. My guard that day had one good eye, his other as coddled as a half-cooked egg. He made me walk on his right where he could see me, called me ‘old man’ and said he’d break my legs if I tried to escape. ‘Today you walk,’ he said. ‘You walk and you don’t stop.’

‘How far?’

‘You will find out.’

I asked the question again of a rough-voiced soldier who joined us a mile or so later and to whom Milk Eye deferred. He said, ‘We need to reach Ponte Novu. Twenty-five miles, perhaps more.’

‘Where do we break the journey?’

He looked at me and saw my age rather than my Frenchness. He saw a person rather than my name or position in life, assuming he knew either. I understood that for me to know that meant I saw him in the same way. His voice was sympathetic as he said, ‘No stops.’ The casual kindness of his tone undid me and I had to hide tears.

We walked, I could not believe the distances we walked, as Paoli’s peasant army sang songs around me. Some songs buoyed me on my way; others seemed so endless, I began to believe my exhaustion came not from walking but from the monotony of tunes that refused to end. I staggered, I swore openly, but I kept walking. There were women among the men and at least one of the sergeants was female. Filthyfaced and hard-eyed, she barked for her troop to keep moving and threatened a flogging for any who stopped. At about the nineteen-mile point my sides ached as if from the most vicious kidney punch. I saw one soldier stop to bend at the waist, and another stretch her leg muscles, but knew that if I did the same I’d never start again. A mile later, with the setting sun on my back and the column ahead, around and behind me I became determined to make it to the end.

My hair was to my shoulders and my beard long enough and tangled enough to need occasional combing with my fingers. My clothes were rags. So ragged that one of my captors had brought me a rancidly rotten coat the previous winter and I’d worn it gladly. I was unwashed and unkempt, hungry and thirsty and my eyes were raw from dust and that day’s brightness. In short, I was enough like those around me to attract no attention. When a boy in front of me stumbled and almost dropped his musket, I took it from him. Milk Eye stepped forward, only for the rough-voiced man to pull him back. What damage could an unloaded musket do in a crowd that size? I gave it back to the boy when we reached the end, nodding curtly when he thanked me in
corsu
rather than speak and give myself away. The rough-voiced man brought me a cup of raw wine as reward. It was a year since I’d drunk anything but water and I grinned as its taste blossomed on my tongue.

‘What will you do here?’ I asked him.

‘Die, most probably. You’re free to join us.’

‘It’s not my war.’

Unreadable eyes examined me. ‘It’s everybody’s war,’ he said.

He stayed at Ponte Novu and the boy took me on. At a church in the next village the milk-eyed boy led me through I begged leave to say a prayer and he let me go up worn stone steps and into the gloom alone. It was not God I wanted but a moment to myself. And since God probably recognised this, if he existed at all, he left me alone too. All the same, habit made me use the water in his bowl by the door to cross myself, then kneel briefly before his altar. The windows around were high and narrow, one being broken near the top to let in a ray of light so sharp it pierced the floor.

Hunger,
I told myself.
That’s why everything looks strange.
Away to one side, a marble bier supported a glass coffin. Inside it was a girl, perhaps a woman, her flesh as white as new ivory, her eyes closed and her hands crossed demurely over breasts that swelled sweetly beneath yellowing lace. I had no doubt she was wax, and was equally sure the village priest claimed she really was whichever local saint she was supposed to be. Her hair was blonde, her face serene, her toes delicate where they peeped beneath fading embroidery. She reminded me of someone so much that every time I turned to go I found myself turning back for another gaze – until the thought of Virginie finally slipped into my head and I stopped, appalled. Was this how I’d seen her? Perfect, unchanging, incorruptible? A wax girl? No wonder she’d been unhappy.

The question followed me into the brightness of the afternoon where the heat and dust drove it from my head before I could force myself to answer. That night Milk Eye left me in a narrow cave in the high central mountains, with a brick wall across its entrance and a low door and a window with bars and crooked shutters. Next day I woke to find him gone. No one brought me food that morning or night. The door was locked and the hinges strong. The shutters had been nailed from the outside. It was sheer luck this had been done hastily and using only two nails.

No one came the next morning or the one after. My diet in those first few days was mostly spiders. Spiders, beetles and water found on the cave floor. I felt that if I died here my life would have come full circle. The following morning I stopped being a fool and began hunting the bats that entered the cave at dawn through a high natural chimney to sleep out the day. There were thousands of them. Well, perhaps hundreds, hanging upside down from the rocky ceiling overhead. I took to throwing stones and enough dropped stunned or already dead for me to feed myself. I ate them raw, since I lacked kindling, flint or any wood to burn. Now, looking back, I wonder why I didn’t simply wrestle apart a shutter and try to burn that. Holding the bats by their wings to give me something to grip, I would tear out their flesh with my teeth. Sometimes they were alive and other times dead. I ate several a day for maybe a week and though I never caught enough to assuage my hunger they kept me alive.

At the end of that week I knew beyond doubt a battle was being fought because I could hear musket fire and the sound of cannon. It came and went on the wind for several hours, although I probably only imagined I could smell gunpowder. Another day passed and then I saw French troops on the road below. I shouted and they ignored me. So I shouted again. When this failed I screamed insults and that was enough to have a couple break off from the column and scramble through the scrub towards me. They came angrily and would have beaten me with their muskets had they not been stopped by the locked door.