It was late morning when Lesage met his countryman Willem outside the tavern where they had encountered each other the previous evening. They travelled in a hired carriage as far as La Porte Saint-Antoine, then walked along a broad road into the nearby countryside. Farmhouses loomed here and there over fields and orchards in which the heads of field workers bobbed around in the heat haze as if on green and fragrant seas.
The day was growing hotter and they conversed little as they walked. This Willem was a scraggly, ill-built fellow – a scarecrow broken free from his post – and Lesage trusted him even less in the daylight than he had the previous night. He held a hand protectively across his satchel containing the money. What if this were an elaborate ruse to rob him? Away from the shadows and alleyways of the city, he felt alone and rather exposed. The sunlight, all these birds, strangers, the horizon. A carriage rumbled past, leaving in its wake a drift of woman’s laughter, like petals strewn along the road; doubtless some nobles on the way to their country estate.
‘Where is this place?’ Lesage asked, stopping for a moment to wipe his face with his scarf. ‘Is it much further?’
‘Perhaps another league or so. Do you see that hill over there?’
Lesage squinted into the distance. He saw stands of cypress trees, occasional huts and houses, windmills endlessly churning. A man on horseback moved through a field and Lesage was reminded of the tale he’d told the stupid tavern keeper Scarron – of monkeys riding on the backs of dolphins. Eventually he made out the low, wooded hill Willem was pointing to, a patch of green darker than its surrounds.
‘And can you see the house to the side? It’s there, monsieur.’
‘You’re sure Nicolas will be at the house? It’s most important to me that he is safe and well.’
‘If you have the money, they will have the boy. I have already sent them word. They are waiting for us. Across the field there. Not far now, monsieur. Don’t worry – they will provide a carriage for our return.’
Willem must have noted the puzzlement in Lesage’s eyes, for he went on: ‘Sometimes the children resist being taken. They expect something terrible to happen to them. And we do not wish for anyone to notice boys coming and going, do we? Especially in the condition they are sometimes in.’
They left the road and tramped through a wood of birch and maple trees, their trunks bristling with glossy ivy. It was cool and peaceful after the harsh sun. Bees lumbered in the dappled light and bracken crunched underfoot. Lesage wanted to lie down and rest in the shade, but felt the nagging urgency of his task. Soon, he thought. Soon he would be free at last. Free of Madame Picot and – thanks to the treasure – free of La Voisin, too. Then he could lie down in glades as much as he wished.
After telling Madame Picot about his sons at La Filastre’s, he had started thinking; perhaps he could return to Normandy and be finished at last with La Voisin, Mariette and the rest of those scoundrels – those vile abortionists, poisoners, witches, priests and conjurers; that entire realm working away industriously beneath the world, like worms and beetles beneath the forest floor. Yes. Why not? The treasure had been as plentiful as he had hoped, and, with it, there would be no need for him to help La Voisin or Guibourg or any of them. He might escape their nasty domain. He had been fortunate to be sentenced to the galleys on the last occasion instead of being executed, but if he were caught engaging in such impieties again, not even God himself – let alone Madame Picot – would be able to summon him back to the world of the living.
There was, of course, the matter of Catherine, who was highly sensitive to even the merest hint that she was being spurned; he had seen her roused to inarticulate fury at the slightest suspicion a customer was thinking of visiting another sorceress in Paris. Those who facilitated betrayal in others were often the most sensitive to it. God alone knew how she would receive knowledge of his intended departure, but he could always attempt to mollify her. He would buy her a gift. Some wine, perhaps? No, he would need something more than that. A bonnet or some perfume from one of the luxury stores? New shoes? He shook off thoughts of her. He would consider that particular problem later.
They emerged from the forest into bright sunlight and crossed a muddy stream. The house was a short distance away, its tall windows shining in the sun. Lesage and Willem approached and mounted some stairs. At the top, in the shade of the large house, bright red geraniums tumbled over the sides of large pots with nymphs carved on their rims. From nearby drifted the reassuring noise of a fountain. A servant wearing blue livery and carrying a large silver platter under one arm nodded to Willem in greeting as he trotted around a corner. Willem opened a side door and ushered Lesage through a warren of humid kitchens and storerooms in which cooks and maids bustled about, none of whom paid them the slightest attention; obviously Willem was a familiar sight.
Willem tugged on a rope hanging by one wall and presently a footman appeared. The two of them conversed in low tones. When they had finished, the footman spun on his heel and walked away. Willem indicated for Lesage to follow and together they walked through more tunnels until they arrived at a cellar stocked with dried meat and barrels of wine. Braces of rabbits and pheasants hung from ceiling hooks. Lesage’s anxiety was only barely allayed by the promise of finally securing the boy’s release – and freeing himself from Madame Picot’s power. He sensed the twitch at his cheek.
The footman turned to Lesage, acknowledging him for the first time. ‘He says you have money for one of the boys?’
‘Yes. The one called Nicolas.’
‘Two hundred livres? Show it to me.’
Lesage opened his satchel and pulled out the smaller sack into which he had placed the amount needed to buy Nicolas’s freedom. He began to explain who the boy was in relation to him and why he, Lesage, was here, but the footman silenced him with a wave of his hand.
The footman sighed and began counting out the coins on a low table. This took a long time. When it was done, he slipped several coins to Willem and took up a three-pronged candelabrum. Without another word, he led them up a dim stone stairway until they emerged into a room with a parquetry floor that squeaked beneath their shoes. The footman handed the candelabrum to Willem while he drew aside the corner of an enormous coloured tapestry bearing the scene of a boar hunt. Men on horses, dogs with spiked collars, a tusked boar running for its life across a clearing. With a huge key on a ring taken from his pocket, the footman unlocked a door hidden behind the tapestry. Lesage recoiled. From the dark passageway that had been exposed there emanated a powerful and all-too-familiar dungeon smell.
Lesage’s eye was drawn to a painting of King Louis high on the opposite wall. In the scene, the King was wearing buckled black shoes, white hose and a luxurious black wig that tumbled over his shoulders. A magnificent blue and white ermine-trimmed cloak cascaded like a foaming sea on the carpet around him. His right hand rested on a gold sceptre and a gold sword hung at his left hip. Red curtains embroidered with gold thread billowed behind, an intimation of a thick black column. Power and restraint, beauty and terror. France’s king was known to be wise and witty, to have an enormous appetite for women and food. Those who had met him all agreed he was charming company, but from the painting he gazed down upon Lesage with an expression of benign disapproval. Lesage wondered what King Louis was doing at that moment. Entertaining courtiers, eating vast mouthfuls of suckling pig, lounging naked in bed with one of his lovely mistresses? He might have been put on the throne by God Himself, but did he have the slightest clue, this king, about what happened across his vast realm? Did he know about Catherine Monvoisin and her sorceries or of the lengths to which Athénaïs de Montespan had gone to swell his heart – not to mention his cock? Did he know how many men and women of his own court journeyed from the palace at Saint-Germain to a pavilion in Villeneuve where they paid the drunken wife of a failed jeweller to cast spells, fashion amulets or organise black masses to secure his continued patronage?
The footman bade them enter. Willem crouched low and indicated for Lesage to follow. Then he disappeared from sight. Lesage felt sick. He glanced away and muttered a prayer. The clacking of the footman’s shoes on the wooden floor grew faint as he attended to duties in other parts of the huge house. Outside, glimpsed through the window’s rippled glass, he saw a young woman on a gravel path playing with a brown terrier. He heard the dog’s yelp and her soft laughter, saw lawns stretching green to the darkness of the distant forest.