The Last Banquet (7 page)

‘Up here,’ I say. ‘We’re almost there.’

She takes my word for it and doesn’t complain when up there turns out to be another half mile of scrub and hedge. Silhouetted in the darkness, a dead oak separates its trunk into branches and spreads those branches into twigs. Like veins in the flesh of the sky. I marvel at my thought. The thought of any twelve-year-old who considers himself a thinker. But to me it feels original. ‘In here,’ I say, pointing at a bank of thorns. ‘I heard them yesterday.’

Jeanne-Marie stops and stares at a woven mass of twisting tendrils, each one studded with nail-length thorns. ‘How do we . . . ?’

‘Under there.’ The entrance is low and worn to grit by the feet of animals forcing a trail through the bushes. I doubt anything larger than a badger has tried to come this way before. ‘I’ll go ahead.’

She nods doubtfully.

Thorns snag my shirt and I crouch lower, realising I’ll have to crawl on my belly if I’m to reach the cat. It’s a slow process that sees a thorn scrape my temple. Blood slithers on my cheek and drips like slow tears on the broken leaves in front of my face. I can hear Jeanne-Marie’s sour muttering behind me and hope we find kittens. This seemed such a good idea when I suggested it, but with my face in the dirt and thorns tugging at my back and Jeanne-Marie’s sudden ouches behind me I’m close to deciding it was really stupid. And then, somehow, I see moonlight ahead and crawl out into a tramped circle set in the middle of the thorns. A slab of fallen wall stops their growth. And though they reach in it’s too large to let the thorns close over the top. Jeanne-Marie looks around her.

‘Heavens,’ she says. ‘How did you find this?’

I didn’t, I almost tell her. I simply heard the kittens mewling from outside. But she’s looking round with a grin on her face and I can see why. We’re protected from the world by a razor-sharp circle of thorns. This is a place where magic happens – and we’re the contents of the magic basket. ‘Hush,’ I say, putting my finger to her lips.

We listen for the kittens and I hear squeaking, slightly back the way we’ve come. So I turn until I face the other way and crawl into the tunnel, stopping to listen again. They’re to the side and sound loud enough to be within reach. I push my hand between branches and feel fur, the kitten tiny and noisy. I expect the mother to savage me but am allowed to remove a kitten without being attacked. There are five, six if you count a dead one. All thin and mewling and too weak to stand. My fingers reach again and I touch the mother’s side, ribs thin as bare bones. Dead, I think . . . She stirs, however, and tries to snap but something stops her reaching me. It’s dark inside the thorn tunnel, the moon slivers of yellow lighting brief lengths of brutal branch. I have the kittens; I have the key back into Jeanne-Marie’s heart. All I have to do is take them.

Jeanne-Marie’s voice calls me.

‘Wait,’ I whisper, reaching again. The cat’s front leg is trapped between strands of thorn that have hooked their claws into her. She could be snagged in a snare given the mess they’ve made of her. She explodes into hisses as I touch the wound and tries to fight free. ‘I’m trying to help,’ I say. Thorns scratch my wrists as I push one strand away, freeing her leg. Breaking off the sticky spikes smoothes the branch, and then I pull the other branch towards me, breaking its spikes in turn. Very slowly her leg comes free.

‘Follow me,’ I say to Jeanne-Marie, and tuck the kittens into my shirt and crawl down the dirt tunnel until I’m out in the moonlight and the thorn bank is behind me. Jeanne-Marie struggles to her feet a moment later, her face furious.

‘Why did you . . . ?’ She stops at the sight of the injured cat, her eyes widening as I pull the five kittens from inside my shirt.

‘Take your pick.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘She trapped herself on thorns.’

‘And so did you.’ Jeanne-Marie wipes blood from my chin.

My face is a mess where I stretched for the twisting branches that trapped the cat; a long thorn dips under the skin of my wrist and reappears half an inch later. She watches intently as I pull it free and check for others. There’s a stream a hundred yards behind us and I wash myself there, splashing water on my face and rinsing my hands until blood stops welling from a dozen different cuts. I wash the cat’s back leg and she barely protests. All the flesh is gone from her sides and her hips are hollow, her teats sucked sore by starving kittens. As I lift her free, a single drop of milk spills onto my finger. It tastes of sadness and despair.

‘Food,’ I say. ‘She needs feeding.’

Jeanne-Marie’s eyes are alight with an expression I don’t recognise. An inner light that makes her face glow and her expression soften. ‘Give me the kittens.’ She folds a mixed bundle of mewling fur into the front of her blouse, exposing the softness of her stomach, a softness missing the last time my hands passed that way. I put the cat over my shoulder and hold the creature in place with one hand. As is always the way, the return trip seems to pass more quickly than the trip out. The solid mass of the school rising in front of us.

‘What does she need?’

‘Eggs. Six raw eggs and chicken if you can find any.’

Jeanne-Marie leaves me with the cat and the kittens and returns within two minutes, clutching a chicken leg, and with the eggs folded into her blouse where the kittens had been. She drops to a crouch and watches while I break an egg and feed the cat, which licks overflowing white and yolk from the bottom half of the shell. A second egg vanishes as quickly. Water, I think. I should give her water. I fill two half shells with water from a butt against the school wall and she drinks those down while Jeanne-Marie peers closer.

‘Which kitten do you want?’

Jeanne-Marie squints at the squealing mass of half naked kittens and shakes her head. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. She should keep them all.’

I try hard not to sigh.

We leave the kittens under a bush at the far end of a garden where the boys are not allowed to go and rest the cat beside them, her injured leg splayed in front of her. I break the remaining eggs and shred the chicken and leave both within reach, lowering the branches we hope will keep the cat and her kittens hidden. ‘You’re brave,’ Jeanne-Marie says, the glow still in her eyes. She steps closer and lifts her face for a kiss. Her mouth opens readily and our tongues touch in a tiny spark of electricity that has her shivering. Her breasts fall readily into my hands and she smiles as I grin. So beautiful. Sometime between the kissing and the touching my hand slips down and though she freezes for a second she lets me delve.

I take two new tastes away with me. Cat’s milk and girl. Ones I’d never tried before.

The next day my life changes and for unexpected reasons. Vicome d’Anvers and the colonel reappear, without the comte this time. I am sent for, examined and asked to explain the scratches on my face and hands. Unable to find a better answer I tell the truth. I leave out the where, the when and the who with. But the kernel of the event remains. For reasons that escape me, rescuing a trapped cat and her kittens from a thorn bush at the expense of my own skin appeals to the vicome and helps convince the colonel that I’m right for what vicome d’Anvers has in mind. I’m to be offered a place at the academy, studying artillery and explosives.

‘Almost like cooking,’ the vicome says.

The colonel snorts but lets his comment stand unchallenged.

1730
Military Academy

T
he larger of the two cadets is Jerome, round-faced and pock-marked and as red-cheeked as a washerwoman who spends her days by the river. He introduces himself in a thick accent that his friend mocks, whereupon he clenches his fist and his friend raises his hands placatingly. There’s an element of ritual about the exchange.

‘He’s Norman,’ Jerome’s friend says, as if talking about a dumb beast. ‘He still has black mud on his boots.’

‘Good mud,’ Jerome says. ‘Rich mud. Acres of the bloody stuff. Better than that sticky red shit Charlot owns . . .’ They insult each other some more and then their gaze slides to Emile behind me and they wait for me to introduce him.

‘Emile Duras,’ I say. ‘He has brains.’

They look at each other and what they’re thinking goes unsaid. He might have brains but his name lacks the particule that says he’s noble.

‘A friend of yours?’ Jerome asks.

I nod. Emile is here because I am here. His father, or perhaps his mother, decided I was a good influence on their son, or perhaps a good connection, and so Emile has come with me. I have no idea how much money changed hands to make this happen. ‘We were in the same class.’

‘And will be again,’ Charlot says lightly. ‘You’re in my house, my year.’ He’s still looking at Emile, who is the smallest and obviously weakest of the four of us. Charlot nods as if this is how it should be. ‘Duras?’ he says. ‘From where?’

Emile names his town and Charlot considers his answer.

‘Protestant?’ he asks finally.

Emile hesitates a second too long. ‘A good Catholic,’ he says, ‘like my father.’

‘But your grandfather . . . ?’

As Emile admits the truth of it, I remember Marcus’s whisper – Marcus, our form leader, now left behind – that Emile’s grandfather was Protestant, true enough, but before this was Jewish. He converted so that he could change cities and convert again.

‘I had a Protestant great-aunt,’ Charlot says graciously. ‘Strange woman . . . Of course, she was a duchess.’

‘Of course,’ Jerome says.

Our new friends go back to insulting each other.

The academy is recently built, in the baroque style and with stucco mostly unstained. Time will blend it into the hill it commands, but for the moment it looks down on Brienne le Chateau, with the River Aube in the distance, still starkly white and obvious as our destination since we first turned onto the road out of Troyes.

‘Where’s your luggage?’ Charlot demands suddenly.

Emile points to a leather trunk with wide straps and brass buckles. I see amusement flicker on Charlot’s face, and maybe Emile sees it too, because he blushes slightly. The trunk is too new, too obviously bought for this occasion. I have no doubt that Charlot’s case is old and battered, probably belonged to his grandfather, and has an earlier version of his arms embossed into the lid.

‘And you?’ he asks.

I turn a circle, displaying my pristine uniform, a long grey coat, lined red and faced at the cuffs in red with gilt buttons. ‘This is my baggage.’

‘A philosopher.’ Charlot grins. ‘Hear that, his body is his baggage.’ He turns to Jerome. ‘We have ourselves a philosopher.’

‘Better than a saint, I suppose.’

‘Can you fight?’ Charlot asks.

I look at him and remember my first day at the previous school, my fight with Emile that ended with us both black-eyed and bloody-nosed. Maybe this is how it works. Every school you go to you have to start with a fight. ‘Why?’

‘The philosopher’s question,’ Charlot says.

‘Can you?’ Jerome asks.

‘If necessary.’

Jerome smiles and nods. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Tonight our dormitory will be attacked by the class above. We have to defend ourselves well.’

‘But not too well.’ Charlot looks serious. ‘We must lose but bravely.’

‘How do you know we’ll be attacked?’ Emile asks.

‘My father told me.’ Charlot looks at us and decides he’d better introduce himself properly. ‘I’m Charles, marquis de Saulx, my father is the duke. This is vicome Jerome de Caussard, second son of the comte de Caussard. We’ll be attacked because that’s what happens. We’ll lose bravely because that’s common sense.’

‘If we win they’ll come back tomorrow night?’

‘And bring the class above with them,’ Jerome says.

A master is at the stone steps gesturing us inside. We have this afternoon and tonight to settle in. Lessons start tomorrow after breakfast, which is after chapel, which is at 7.30. Waking bell is 6.30, no one will be late for chapel, breakfast or lessons. We nod to say we understand and take his words seriously. The man grunts and then sees Emile’s trunk.

‘Mine,’ Emile says.

‘Carry it yourself. You don’t have servants here.’

I wonder if he thinks we had servants at our last school and realise he knows almost nothing about Emile and me. It’s a strange feeling. Our form room is through the main hall, left into a darkened corridor and right at a door that looks like half a dozen others before and after it. A handful of boys who arrived before us look up and Charlot makes introductions. All nod and I realise Charlot’s amused approval is enough to ensure we belong. There are desks, tables, old chairs missing half their stuffing. A suit of armour rots quietly in one corner. Since it’s far older than the school someone obviously brought it here. A deer’s skull with a spread of impressive antlers looks down from one wall. A boar’s skull, missing one tusk, sits on a desk I realise Charlot has claimed when he drops languidly into a wooden chair and leans back to examine the ceiling. ‘Killed it myself,’ he says, seeing my gaze.

‘With the help of a dozen huntsman, his father’s hounds and a musketeer on hand to shoot the beast in case little Charlot misplants his spear.’

Charlot blushes and then laughs. ‘I was eleven,’ he protests. ‘My mother was anxious.’

‘Your mother is always anxious.’

For a second I think Charlot is offended by Jerome’s comment, but he shrugs at its fairness. ‘Mothers usually are.’ He turns to me. ‘Let’s ask our philosopher. Wouldn’t you say that, in the general run of things, mothers are anxious?’

‘In the general run of things, perhaps.’

‘Yours is not?’

‘Mine is dead,’ I say. ‘My father also.’

I could have added that the only mother I’d met – apart from Madame Faure, who didn’t count – was Emile’s, and she was stubborn, ambitious, built like a brick wall, and told her husband what to do, for all she was unfailingly kind to me. To say that would have been unfair to Emile, however.

‘Your parents are dead?’

I nodded, and the room waited to see how far Charlot would push this. Already he was our leader; taller, blonder, unquestionably grander. But it was more than that. We were newly arrived at a strange school, mostly strangers to each other, and we would be required to fight to order in the dorms that night. But Charlot behaved as if he’d been here for ever. As if the coming fight was a minor inconvenience to be dealt with when it arose. His utter confidence calmed us. ‘How?’ he asked.