The Last Banquet (34 page)

My study is at the back of the chateau on the floor below the attics. The room’s shape is awkward since it is part of a tower, but windows let out on three sides giving a sweep of the river. I swam there once with Virginie in the very early days. The peasant girls swim there still in the heat of high summer, tiny specks believing their nakedness hidden by bushes. I listen to them, their excited voices and loud laughter, until someone from the castle goes to quieten them in case I might hear, and they scramble for their clothes and hide. They are tiny at this distance. It is like watching flies. ‘My lord . . .’

The woman was still waiting.

‘This came with the letter.’ As succinct and informative as any other information given in this house. Since the door was half shut and she hid herself behind it all I could see was her anxious face and a greying bun of hair. I had no hope of seeing what
this
was.

‘Bring it in then.’

She edged her way through the door clutching something the size of a cat and the colour of a fox but with huge eyes made larger by patches like a mask either side of a long, slightly shrew-like nose. The eyes were screwed tight against the light. Instinctively I rose to shut the blinds, casting the study into gloom. ‘It must sleep in the day,’ I said.

The woman looked at it doubtfully and held it a little further from her body. Perhaps she twisted it, perhaps it was simply distraught at being sent halfway round the world: whatever the reason, it turned and bit her. The obvious happened. She yelped and dropped the creature and it hit the floor and yelped in its turn. It was as well Tigris was asleep in the sun on the terrace or she’d probably have eaten the thing.

‘Get that cut treated.’

She looked from the bite on her wrist to the creature on the floor, dropped a low curtsy and hurried from the room. Maybe she washed the wound. Maybe she didn’t bother. Maybe she simply didn’t wash it thoroughly enough. Within an hour she had a fever and by nightfall servants were clustered in corners whispering to each other and I sent a man for the village priest. An old man at the end of his tenure. The choice of candidate had been mine. She died before morning, her body rigid and bathed in sweat. I should have sent for a doctor, the village said. I’ve seen death and I’ve seen fever; living near marshes, who hasn’t? And I knew the moment I saw her she was beyond a physician’s help and only a priest was needed. All the same, perhaps they were right. She was buried two days later and I ordered every servant in the chateau to take that morning off and attend her wake that afternoon. And with the kitchens deserted, I cooked the loris in peace, having killed it as cleanly as I could.

Fifteen inches in length.

I noted the details in my book.

Twenty ounces in weight. More, I imagined, in the wild.

The creature was half starved and I wondered what the man who brought it to my chateau had been feeding it. The stomach sac contained apple pulp, also the rotted remains of a spider. The only thing of real interest was a strange gland in the elbow that opened onto the surface like an unhealed wound. It had been licking its elbow before it bit the woman. Skinned, it looked human enough to have me filleting it swiftly and sweeping the guts, skeleton and skin into a sack.

I fried it with unsalted butter and seasoned it with black pepper and a little paprika. It tasted a little like cat, but the meat was stringy from starvation and I ate only enough to determine the taste, being worried the poison might spread to the rest of its flesh. Some mammals are poisonous to eat, very few admittedly, but there are some and I was not sure if this was one of them.

The early sun of the next day told me I’d survived. The gardeners found bits of its corpse half burnt in the ashes of a bonfire. I’d been so furious it killed my servant that I tortured the creature to death and chopped it into pieces myself. So they said anyway. They looked at me a little more kindly for a while . . .

Laurant is in the Indies, an easy-going naval officer with warm brown eyes and a string of conquests behind him. He writes briefly but often, enclosing leaves and pebbles and shells and dried-out insects of the strangest shape. Whatever he thinks will interest me. He sees me as a scientist, a naturalist, a philosopher. A man who writes to Voltaire and has his letters answered. I’m always amazed how little children know their parents, and suspect we know our children no better. I like his letters, his casual disregard for what others would write. Occasionally he remembers to tell me where he is. Now and then he mentions promotions, awards or prize money from privateers taken. I had to find out from the son of a neighbour that Laurant had been made captain. I’d still thought him a commander.

Most of all, I’m glad my children are where they are. Safe in London, or safe on the way to whichever wild island my son is due to visit next.

In the period between Hélène’s marriage and now, Georges Duras has re-made his life and re-written his history. He studied Voltaire for himself, became able to talk easily about politics, reform and the law. Always he combined reform with law, so the authorities would know he was law abiding. He gave up control of his father’s firm to a manager who increased its profits and began to open branches in other cities. Georges, himself, stepped away from the people he’d been trying to impress, people like me, and began to make very different friends. His election to the provincial assembly as a member of the Third Estate, representing the bourgeoisie and the peasants, made him a man of local importance. His essays and pamphlets and speeches have spread his influence far wider.

Ten years of famine have made France hungry for change, and the Treaty of Paris in 1783, in which the English recognised America’s right to independence, convinced the Georges of this world that the future is theirs. They want freedom, not from the English as the Americans did, but from us. We are their English, they are their own Americans.

The irony is that if the king had not supported the Americans their conspiracy would have failed and London would have its colonies still. We defeated Pasquale Paoli’s army in Corsica, but the constitution he wrote influenced the Americans when the time came for them to write theirs. The soldiers we sent to fight beside the Americans brought back a revolutionary fervour borrowed from their allies. They have seen first-hand that change can happen. If we had not supported America, France would not be bankrupt and the king would have had no need to call an Assembly of Notables. It was the failure of that assembly in 1787 that led to the calling of the Estates General two years later. Georges was a representative of the Third Estate. He is one of those who, on 17th of June last year, declared the Estates General a National Assembly and voted themselves ruling powers. A month later the prison at Bastille was stormed by the mob and the massacres in Paris began. 1789 changed everything. We are their English and they are the revolutionaries.

Their war for independence has begun.

1790
Revolution

T
he rest is history or will be for those who come to write it after us. I doubt they will be kind and why would they? They will see our sins and forget our graces. It is a year since the Estates General became the National Assembly and the Third Estate, led by men like Georges, decided they could do without the First and Second Estates; the church and nobility having been outgrown. Last summer’s riots saw the burning of dozens of chateaux and the massacre of thousands like me. Many of my friends have become
émigrés
, fleeing to London or Vienna or Berlin. Others have adopted the tricolour and sworn their allegiance to the new regime. I doubt it will be enough to keep them alive.

The news when it comes is always old, and something else is always happening as we learn about what has gone before. The provinces are now
departments.
Monasteries have been shut, as have nunneries. I have no idea if the tales of raped nuns are true. Georges’ club in Paris, the Jacobins, contains nobles and bourgeoisie and even peasants. They call each other friend and embrace the rights of man. I am no longer the marquis d’Aumout. Last year we gave up our feudal rights, this year we give up our titles. The decree nailed to my door a month ago made that clear.

1) This day 19th June 1790 the National Assembly declares that nobility by descent is forever abolished. Consequently, the titles of Prince, Duke, Count, Marquis, Viscount, Vidame, Baron, Knight, Lord, Squire, Noble & all other similar titles shall neither be accepted by, nor bestowed upon, anyone.

2) A citizen may use only the real name of his family. No one may wear livery or have them worn, nor may anyone use a coat of arms. Incense shall be burned in churches only to honour God and shall not be offered to any person.

3) The titles of Your Royal Highness and Your Royal Highnesses shall not be bestowed upon any group or individual, nor shall the titles of Excellency, Highness, Eminence, Grace, Lord, etc. . . .

In my forties and fifties I was out of fashion, lacking the embroidered cuffs and flamboyant coats then becoming fashionable. Now I am à la mode again, my simple dress reflecting the concerns of the age. Peacock is out, owlish seriousness is in. So it goes. My clothes were always simple unless where I found myself absolutely demanded something more ornate. The world changes around me, sometimes in my favour, sometimes against. They say Jerome is murdered, and his sister and Charlot émigrés, self-exiled in London, a place they detest. It occurs to me that my daughter, Charlot’s goddaughter, is in London also. I wonder if it influences his choice. They were close, I gather, in those few years following her elopement. In someone less influential than Charlot it might have attracted muttering.

Ben Franklin once told me something said to him by the Swedish ambassador:
The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.
As I approach the final foothills of old age I wonder if anyone has had time to write what the last few seconds of the evening know. Maybe that duty falls to me. I have sent Manon to London with the best of Virginie’s jewellery for Hélène. She took also a box of valuables – miniatures, enamel snuffboxes, loose diamonds, and as many gold coins as she could carry. The box was drab and she wore servant’s clothes, leaving quietly without saying her goodbyes. Shortly afterwards, I sent her a letter with an émigré I knew was leaving, told him Hélène’s London address and begged him put my letter into Manon’s hands himself. It told her not to come back. I loved her, I wrote. She had given me a peace and a happiness that no other woman had managed and I had certainly never managed to give myself. I apologised for my unkindnesses, of which I was sure there were many, and begged her to take my order seriously. If she returned she would die. Hélène was to have her mother’s jewellery but everything else in the box was for her. I would remain at Chateau d’Aumout with my kitchens and my notebooks. Tigris would be here to protect me, as I would be here to protect her. I had no doubt an end would come, and I would try to face it as bravely as I could, but I was too old, too tired and too much of a coward to change countries and begin my life again. She would forgive me, I hoped, and remember me fondly. Laurant would mourn me and – if he had any sense – get on with his life. I doubted Royalist officers would be welcome back in France but some of our colonies must have remained true and there was always America. They liked French aristocrats in America, we’d helped them defeat the English. And if she could persuade my daughter to forgive me, then that was more than I deserved . . .

The servants have gone, sent home or left of their own accord. The chateau is empty and echoing, and strangely peaceful for the first time in years, although I suspect that is about to change. Last night a young man arrived at my door and pounded hard on the wood until I abandoned my study and went to see why he bothered me. The guttering wicks of my candelabra lit the face of a village boy I vaguely recognised. He looked at me and held out a sealed paper, letting it drop the moment I reached for it. The letter hit the cobbles and ruffled at the edges in the night wind.

‘You will pick that up,’ I told him.

He glared at me like the child he mostly was and shook his head. He wore a floppy cap with a three-coloured cockade, and a grubby sash made from a strip of red ribbon. A brace of pistols were pushed into his wide leather belt.

‘Your father would be ashamed of you.’

He spat on the cobbles.

‘And your mother, if you behave like that.’

‘Read that,’ he said. ‘Obey it.’

I looked at him, then glanced at the dropped paper and began to shut the door. I saw no reason why he couldn’t return his letter the way it had come, tucked in his grubby pocket, to whomever sent it in the first place. I doubted it was anything I wanted to read.

‘You have to take it.’ He dipped to the cobbles, grabbed the letter and pushed it at me, his face suddenly anxious. ‘Go on. Take it.’

I shook my head and kept shutting the door. That was when he grabbed for my sleeve to stop me disappearing. There was a snarl as Tigris materialised out of the darkness of the hallway behind me. The door pushed open as she bundled through so fast the boy stepped back, tripped over his own feet and tumbled down the stone steps behind him, the back of his head connecting hard with the edge of the bottom stair.

She went to sniff at the boy.

‘Good cat,’ I said. ‘Old cat.’ What else was there to say? She glanced back, although what she really did was turn to listen, her eyes as milky white as the day I first saw her in the zoo at Versailles. She purred as I told her the gardens were hers. The night was hot, the weather close enough to sour milk, so I dragged the boy up the steps, along a corridor, through the kitchens and into a larder, which, with its thick walls and cold stone floors was the coolest place in the chateau. I left him under a shelf on which sat a Parmareggio that Charlot’s eldest boy had sent me a few years earlier.

Did I make a mistake, or was Georges Duras always the man who wrote the letter now open on my desk? Worse still, did I make Georges that man? I can see his face that day he whipped his hunter, his eyes fierce with the fury of being shamed. I have not heard he has mistreated a woman or an animal since. His reputation is for ruthlessness and probity. He does not drink, he does not whore, he wears simple clothes and lives with his half-sister, a homely woman who does his cooking and darns his clothes and scolds him if he works too late into the night. He is dedicated to change, they say. A staunch Jacobin of the most incorruptible kind. I would go to see him myself but what is the point? Georges has not bothered to come to see me. He simply sent a sullen messenger to sneer and drop his message at my feet when I reached to take it. Georges would never be that crude. But the messenger was young and needed a man like Georges to tell him what to think. Just as I once needed Charlot to teach me where my loyalties lay.