If he’d given us more time to think about it I’d have told him to fuck off. But the lodge guards were already hovering to close the gates, so I said ‘All right’ like a good little soldier and dropped myself in it right up to the balls.
We weren’t all going in, Abbé, just those with the best chance. Lelièvre couldn’t, he’d never have bluffed through his report to d’Estrada, and de Chouy couldn’t, he was too refined to pass for a foreign mercenary. We needed men on the outside anyway, people free to move without three hundred dons watching every step.
André briefed Lelièvre at speed. ‘Tell them you don’t need all your men, you’re going to leave half here. Say I’m your abanderado and I’ll look after them, but they’re due a rest day after hard campaigning and have to be rostered off till you get back. That’s crucial, Gaspard, it’s no use if they start giving us duties. Can you do it?’
Aristocratic sang froid has its moments. Lelièvre said ‘Relax, Dédé, I shall be both persuasive and eloquent. I shall also give him two pistoles, which may help more than either.’
André grinned. ‘Make it five.’ He turned to the rest of us, said ‘Don’t worry, we’ll say you’re Walloons or Germans,’ then started confidently after Lelièvre towards the lodge.
I watched them deciding our fate with the guards, and wasn’t even sure what to hope for. Oh, I’m all for audacity, and André had enough for a regiment, but I’d rather have had a day to work it out than approximately one minute. The others didn’t look too confident either, especially those without the gift of tongues. It was all very well to pretend we were foreigners, but we’d still come from a don regiment, we’d be expected to understand a bloody order.
‘We’ll be all right,’ said Jacques feebly. ‘I understand Spanish, so does Charlot, just watch us and do the same.’
‘Ah,’ said Grimauld, and spat unattractively. ‘But what if they wants us to do something different?’ He shouldered his piece, caught sight of our lone musketeer attempting to do the same, muttered ‘Dear, oh dear,’ and went wearily over to help him.
It did seem a bit much to rope in the one German from my musketeers. I said ‘Go with the others, Henne, we’re all right with six.’
He looked at me reproachfully through his eyeglasses. ‘But the Chevalier has chosen me, M. Ravel. Out of all our number he has chosen me.’ Poor sod. He hadn’t much brain and no sense of humour, I doubt he’d been picked first for anything in his whole little life.
Well, it was too late now. André and Lelièvre came back with a mounted cabo in tow, Lelièvre and the lucky ones galloped off with suspicious haste, and we were left in the hands of the Spanish army. They weren’t very enthusiastic, I’m bound to say, the cabo just muttered something in don speak and started morosely down the drive, but I can’t say that bothered me. What mattered was that he was leading us right into the château itself.
We followed him through a stone archway to a grassed courtyard with a fountain, and in through a side door to the ground floor where the military and livestock were housed. Not us, of course, nothing so useful, the cabo told André all the inside billets were taken and we’d have to go under canvas in the grounds, but at least our horses would be comfortable.
We handed ours to the gloomy horse-master, loaded ourselves with baggage, and followed our cabo across the courtyard to the main administration area. It was like a lot of these big châteaux, with no passageway, just a lot of rooms leading each to the next. We went through a nest of pen-pushers, a police office with defaulters’ cells, a barber’s room with a spiral staircase rising out of the back, then finally into a sub-office of the fiscal militaire where we were presented with a quill and a dirty piece of paper and invited to sign our names. I watched André writing his, and suppressed a smile when I saw he was calling himself ‘de Castilla’.
Next was the anteroom to the furiel mayor’s office, and off it the stores. A yellow-faced don handed us out a six-man tent and talked a lot of gibberish which apparently meant it was coming out of our pay, but he wouldn’t give André his own till the kid forked out gold. That’s the one good thing about Spanish domination, there isn’t anywhere in Europe that doesn’t accept the pistole. It was just as well, as it happened, since the tent was all we were getting, and everything else we’d have to buy from the sutlers in the grounds.
And there we were, Abbé, soldiers in the army of glorious Spain herself. André led us back outside, reported to an alférez, which is the dons’ idea of a lieutenant, was told to bugger off and not bother him, then cheerfully chose our pitches as close as possible to the château and got us to erect our tents. He was sharing one with Philibert, whom he’d had the sense to introduce as his servant, but the rest of us had a single tent between five, of which one was bloody Charlot who needed half a field just for his legs. We were supposed to be what they called las camerados, a bunch of men who sleep and mess together and bond for the greater good of the tercio, but all I could think was if the rest of las camerados were as ill-assorted as we were then Spain had better surrender right now.
It’s a strange thing, the illusion of security offered by a few feet of flimsy canvas, and it was remarkably tempting to stay hidden right behind it. But our only safety was in a good solid plan, so I braved the open lawn to find the man who’d talked us into this madness.
There he stood, legs apart and arms folded, watching critically as Philibert and Jacques struggled to erect his personal tent. He looked every inch the kind of arrogant young bastard you find in officers’ ranks anywhere.
I muttered ‘You ought to take the plate off, no one wears it off duty.’
He never varied his imperious expression. ‘I can’t, my shirt’s bloody under it. Give them a hand with the tent, will you, then I can get changed.’
He couldn’t muck in himself while the occupants of the next tent were watching, but I still suspected he was enjoying it. When I next looked round he gave me an encouraging grin and told me to put my back into it.
I wandered back up to him when we’d finished, saluted respectfully and said ‘This isn’t a fucking game.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ he said, and for a moment something fierce flashed in his eyes. He turned to look at the château, and I saw it then, Abbé, what was boiling underneath. His freedom, the future of his country, the woman he loved and the chance to destroy the man who’d humiliated him, all those things were to be had if he could just get through those walls, and it’s possible in his place I’d have felt a little strongly myself.
I said ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a plan, have you?’
He turned and looked vaguely at me, so I said it again.
‘I’ll think of something,’ he said dismissively. ‘I’ve got to, haven’t I?’
I looked at Philibert standing anxiously at the entrance to the tent, then at Jacques trying hard not to look towards the watching soldiers. I thought of the others in our own tent, Henne’s trusting gaze, and the underlying smells of blood and sweat and fear.
I said ‘Yes, little general. I think you have.’
Oh no, Señor, I’d never deny it was a very bold thing to do. To join our own army right under our noses, well, you can only laugh, can’t you? Not but what it wasn’t rather foolhardy when you think about it, but there, it’s all down to luck in the end, isn’t it?
But we knew there was something up all right, there was no fooling my Capitán. It was your young lady gave it away, as ill at ease as she was, and all but shuddering whenever her fiancé looked at her. My gentleman says ‘We’re right about this, Carlos, she’s here for her own reasons and we need to find out double quick what they are.’
He never let it show, though, not my Capitán, he greets her warm as an old friend. ‘Satisfy me on one thing, Mademoiselle,’ says he, holding both her hands. ‘De Roland could never have raided your château without help from the inside, and I’ve always had my suspicions that help came from you. Am I right?’
She lowers her lashes demurely. ‘We all helped,’ she says. ‘But it was André de Roland who deserves the credit and no one else.’
There was no shuddering when she said that name, Señor, she blushes pink as a rose, and very fetching it is too. My gentleman smiles.
‘Perhaps,’ says he. ‘But I know who was my most worthy adversary, and am so very glad we are now of the same side.’
Now there’s nothing in that a lady could take offence at, but her blush deepens dark red and she hides her face fast. Over her head my Capitán’s eyes meet mine, and there’s triumph in them, Señor, his old hunting look when he knows he’s got a scent. She’s no more on our side than Richelieu his own self, and she still loves de Roland to boot. If that isn’t trouble in a nest full of conspirators such as we’d got here, well, I ask you, Señor, what is?
I never let her out of sight after that, or not in a manner of speaking. I watched her to her room and saw she had no one in with her but her maid, and she never stirred hand nor foot outside of it all morning. Her companion wandered around a little, that I did see, the one called ‘Jeanette’, is that right, Senor? She walked up and down the gallery taking notice of everything, but there was nothing untoward in it, I’m sure. She was a very friendly lady, Mlle Jeanette, stopped to talk to me more than once, and I’m guessing she hadn’t much in the way of presentable male company at home.
Then at noon your Mademoiselle’s safe under my own eyes again as they all come into my Capitán’s rooms for the signing of the treaty. Our job was easy enough, to witness the arrangements they’d made among their own selves and sign to say Spain would respect them, but it’s a nasty business to my mind, nothing a gentleman would want to put his name to. Your Mlle Anne’s father, he’s the worst. ‘Where’s my name?’ says he. ‘Two hundred thousand livres I’ve given, and there’s no mention of du Pré in this whole document!’ ‘Oh, there is, Papa,’ says Bouchard, his voice sweet and sour like a Moorish delicacy gone off. ‘Here, where it says “family dependants of the Duc de Montmorency”. When I become your son-in-law I believe that will be you.’ Your poor Mlle Anne closes her eyes in shame, and I can’t say I wonder at it. My Capitán’s of the same mind himself, which makes it all the more pity we have to break her as we do.
Oh yes, Señor, we’re all but sure of it now. When my gentleman takes the paper to the éscritoire the company’s eyes are burning on it at every move. They all watch the lid closed, the lock turn, even the key dropping into my Capitán’s doublet, all but your Mlle Anne, who sits with her head resolutely turned away as if she’s not the slightest interest in the matter. And no more she might have, Señor, if I hadn’t been watching close enough to see her following the whole business in the glass.
That’s what she’s after, that document. Not that she’s a chance of getting it with guards on the door every minute, but it casts what you might call a serious light on our situation. She won’t be alone in it, not a slip of a girl like that, and for all we know there’s a force outside planning an assault on the château itself. My gentleman says no, there’s not a French army big enough in the region, but he still has the guards on the gate doubled for what he says is ‘just in case’, and takes a little extra precaution to protect his own room.
He doesn’t like not knowing, Señor, and that’s the truth. I put a couple of men on to watching Mlle du Pré’s door with orders to follow whoever comes out, but it’s my gentleman prowling up and down like an animal that’s caged. ‘We have to force her hand,’ he says to me. ‘She’ll lie low and wait till our guard’s down, we have to make her act now.’
I said ‘We can wait, can’t we, Señor? They’re only staying a few days, she’ll have to make her move soon.’
‘And what if we can’t counter it?’ says he. ‘What if she’s only gathering intelligence for a raid after she’s gone?’ He picks up her empty Madeira glass and runs his finger silky-soft round the rim, for all the world like reading her thoughts from her touch. ‘No, it has to be on our terms and at a time of our choosing.’
I knew that look on him, I’d seen it often enough when he was playing chess, but this was a woman, and no more predicting them than a cat. I said ‘A girl like this, who knows what can push her into something rash?’
Round the rim his finger goes, and then it stops. ‘A girl like this,’ he says, and puts the glass down in the exact same spot he took it from. ‘Well, I think we know what she’s afraid of, don’t you?’
We sort of clung to the tents to begin with, but by noon Grimauld was sitting with our neighbours telling funny stories about chasing fellow Walloons at the Battle of Honnecourt. He’d got it from our own troops, of course, but you’d never have known it, he was saying ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong, see,’ and had them laughing at every word. Henne was with them too, nodding and not saying much, but Grimauld rolled his eyes and said ‘German,’ and people laughed kindly and patted him on the back.
It was harder for me and Charlot because we weren’t sure how things worked in the ranks, but we sat and polished muskets like I did in the Occupied Army and it felt comfortable and familiar. Philibert was even more at home. I saw him haggling furiously with the sutlers over the price of a cooking pot, his voice getting shriller and his gestures getting wilder till they just threw up their hands and gave in. Stefan was just Stefan of course, like he’d probably been in every regiment he’d ever belonged to. He lounged by our tent smoking his horrible pipe and telling everyone to fuck off.
Even the language wasn’t a problem. Most armies have got mercenaries, they’ve been in occupied towns and fought alongside foreign allies, there’s hardly a soldier doesn’t speak a bit of at least three languages. There was even a bunch of Italians from the Strozzi a few tents down, and they weren’t having any difficulty getting by. Everyone was friendly and chatty, it started to feel like this was our own army and we were perfectly safe.
But we weren’t, of course, we’d got a job to do and not much time to do it. We’d be found out as soon as Gaspard didn’t come back, and André maybe even sooner. He was an officer, d’Estrada was bound to want to meet him, the alférez said he’d probably have been invited for dinner already if the château hadn’t been busy with guests. As soon as we heard the treaty was signed we’d do the raid and get out.
We started by making a way to communicate with Gaspard. There hadn’t been time to arrange anything clever, he was just going to come back at midnight and slink round the outside for a letter, but André’d promised to hang something over the wall to show him where to look. I wasn’t sure about that, I mean the wall was twelve feet high and people were sort of bound to notice us shinning up it, but at the rear of the château we found an orchard of apple trees that seemed perfect. Soldiers were camped round that side too, but they couldn’t pitch tents where the trees were so close and we were able to get right to the back without anyone looking. André tied his handkerchief to the tip of a branch growing over the wall, then scribbled a note asking Gaspard to be here at six tomorrow, wrapped it round a stone and simply chucked it over.
We gathered dead branches to look like we’d been collecting firewood, then set off to walk round the château itself. That was more depressing, because it actually looked easy to break into. There was a door on every side, and only two pikemen guarding each of them. All the rooms on the upper storeys had open balconies like extra bits of floor stuck out into the air, and it would have been the simplest thing in the world to get a grapnel hook on the railings and nip up a rope. There were twenty different ways into that house, but the second you turned round you realized there were none at all.
The soldiers. They were camped on every side with nothing to do but lounge round their cooking fires and watch other people. They looked up even when we just walked by, we couldn’t have put a hand on the walls without fifty of them giving an alarm. They’d be maybe less suspicious on our own side of the building where they knew us by sight, but they were so bloody friendly they’d have probably come after us to see what we were doing.
André said ‘All right, we’ll do it from the inside. The spiral stairs off the barber’s room, they’ve got to lead up to the living quarters somehow.’
‘The block’ll be locked after dark,’ said Stefan. ‘There’s money in there, stores, supplies, they’re not going to leave that lying around for the taking.’
Grimauld snorted. ‘Locks,’ he said. ‘You leave it to me, laddie, I’ll do you your locks.’
We all looked at him. He seemed to realize what he’d said, went red and stared at his feet. ‘Locks,’ he said. ‘Just saying, that’s all.’
He wanted wire to work with, so we unravelled the decoration on the grip of Charlot’s rapier and he spent all afternoon making it into little hooks and loops and thick bits twisted together he said were ‘hammers’. None of us asked how he knew, not even Stefan. André did say ‘Jacques, do you think it’s possible Grimauld …’ and I said ‘Of course not, it’s just a soldier’s skill, that’s all,’ and he said ‘Yes, of course,’ and went away.
Next he needed to examine the lock, so at dusk we strolled round to the courtyard we’d gone to when we first arrived. It was dark in the administration block, so we stood casually in front of the door and started talking loudly about nothing. Henne began telling this long joke in German which no one understood, then I heard Grimauld cursing behind him.
‘Locks?’ he said. ‘There ain’t no ruddy lock. What’s keeping this shut is buggering bolts on the inside, that’s what.’
We’d have to smash it, and everyone would hear. I looked in alarm at André, but he shook his head. ‘There’ll be another staircase on the other side, it’s probably symmetrical. Let’s look.’
We went back to the stables and through the indoor billets. Officers raised irritated eyebrows, married soldiers stood quickly in front of their women, but we walked calmly through them all, and the boy was right, there was another spiral staircase exactly opposite where the barber’s would have been. It was wooden and very creaky, but we set off up it like we’d a reason to be here, and there was a pikeman round the second bend, saying ‘I’m sorry, Señor, no entry past this point.’
‘Ah,’ said André, leaning against the wall and smiling lazily at him. ‘Sorry, soldier, my mistake. Château living quarters, is it?’
‘That’s right,’ said the man, showing willing to an officer. ‘I’m very sorry, Señor, but …’
‘No, you’re quite right,’ said André. ‘My fault, I got lost, that’s all.’
The soldier beamed at us in anxious relief. There was sweat on his balding head and I remember hoping it wouldn’t be him on duty tomorrow night, it wouldn’t be him we’d have to kill.
Because this was our way in, there wasn’t any doubt. I wasn’t sure about the getting out bit, I mean we’d have the women with us and maybe hordes of guards in pursuit, but André said ‘We don’t need to go back through the billets, we’ll go down the other stairs and open the bolts from the inside.’
We all felt more confident now we’d got a plan. We went back to our tents and lit a fire like everyone else, then Philibert made casserole out of our beef ration, given to us free by the Spanish army. André had to eat by himself, but it was only for this one night and tomorrow we’d be on our way home with the treaty.
‘Provided they’ve signed it,’ said Stefan, chucking down his empty dish. ‘Provided the women find out where it is and how the fuck we’re going to get to it.’
That sobered us. We could pass in a crowd of Spanish soldiers, but we were planning to burgle a grand château full of guests and servants who’d scream at the first sight of us.
‘It’ll be all right,’ said André. He was standing in the entrance to his tent, his figure a black blur above the firelight. ‘We’ve got three brave women in there, they’ll manage it between them.’
I thought of Bernadette, how she’d saved herself from being abducted, what she’d done under fire at La Marfée. Of Jeanette, who’d risked execution in the old days just to get our messages to Anne. Of Anne, who’d fought two Spanish officers all by herself to save her sister, and gone back among them now to save André and France.
‘That’s right,’ said André. ‘The women will find a way.’
Indeed, Monsieur, we had done very well. Anne had found out exactly where the treaty was kept, while Jeanette had walked over the entire gallery and made the most beautiful map.
But yes, I remember, this is how it worked. Ours was the east wing of the château, with a number of grand apartments set about the main staircase down to the great salons of the first floor. A railed gallery ran all about the stairwell so a person might walk round and see into the anteroom of each apartment, and although Don Miguel’s was closed with an oak door we still knew what lay behind it. Anne had seen the treaty signed there, and told us the inner door was flanked by two soldiers with crossed pike.
Anne wrote all this in a letter for the Chevalier and we hoped he would see a solution. He had arranged to meet me at half after ten this evening and we hoped he would achieve that too, though how he would penetrate the grounds we could not imagine. He had told me to look for a rose garden, and if there was none for an orchard, and if there were neither I was to walk as close as I could to the stables and he would find me.
But I was just placing the letter in my bosom when we heard raised voices in our anteroom. We heard Jeanette saying that her mistress was indisposed, but M. du Pré was arguing with her, and the third voice was Bouchard’s.
She was quick, our Mlle Anne. She pushed me at once to the connecting door of her brother’s room, saying ‘If he is here he cannot be there, you can pass through unseen,’ and of course she was right. I walked out and through M. du Pré’s antechamber, round the gallery to the back stairs, then out into the dark to look for a rose garden as arranged.
There was none, as doubtless Monsieur already knows, but there was an orchard to the rear and I made my way towards it past the ranks of soldiers’ tents. Yes, there were men still about and all inclined to be gallant with a woman walking alone after dark, but I did not think they would dare touch a guest of Don Miguel’s. My fear was more for André, for he too must somehow pass through all these enemy soldiers and his danger was greater than mine.
Yet still I believed he would have managed it, and remember a sense of disappointment when at last I lost myself in the apple trees and saw no figure of a man waiting. Then a twig cracked behind, I turned to see a young Spanish officer entering the orchard after me, and a voice I knew said ‘It’s all right, Bernadette, it’s only me.’
I said ‘You startled me, Chevalier.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking my hands. ‘But I couldn’t let you go by those soldiers alone, I’ve been walking behind you all the way.’
He did still care, Monsieur, the coming of Mlle Anne had not changed that. I was woman enough to find pleasure in it, and when he asked if I had run any other danger I told him truthfully how near I had come to being caught by Bouchard.
In this I was a fool, for he caught fright at once. ‘In Anne’s room?’ he said. ‘Dear God, what was he doing in there?’ He turned wildly to the château as if he would storm it alone, and I hastened to assure him that there could be no danger, since both M. du Pré and Jeanette were present.
He subsided and looked indeed a little shamefaced. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘But I couldn’t bear it if harm came to either of you, you must see that.’
I did and do, Monsieur, I understand a man’s pride. So I made no more of our risks, but gave him the letter and map, and explained it all myself since it was too dark to read.
He seemed elated to hear the treaty was signed, and surprisingly untroubled to learn it was in a locked desk. That it was in Don Miguel’s own room gave him more difficulty, for while this was placed next to our own apartment there was no connecting door and the only access was through the anteroom with the guards.
‘Only two,’ he said thoughtfully, tapping the letter against his teeth.
‘No, Chevalier,’ I said at once. ‘There are many public rooms down the staircase, and below them the soldiers’ billets. The pikemen would only have to shout to bring fifty men to their aid.’
I thought his eyes gleamed in the gloom. ‘We could do it quietly.’
‘And invisibly?’ I said. ‘Even to reach the inner door would take perhaps three strides, and that alone would be enough for the pikemen to give the alarm.’
He was silent, and after a moment his head turned back towards the château as if drawn there by a string. Above us the trees rustled softly.
‘Then we’ll do it from the balcony,’ he said. ‘The soldiers won’t see us after dark.’
He was right, Monsieur. The château was lit by great sconces on the walls, but the very brightness of the lower levels served only to darken the thick shadows above the protruding balconies.
I said ‘At night Don Miguel will be in his rooms. He is there now.’
‘Then we’ll do it when he’s dining,’ said André. ‘Do you know when that will be?’
I could say only that the gentlemen had remained downstairs until after ten tonight, but who knew when it might be tomorrow.
He nodded. ‘It’s dark by nine, we’ll come up straightaway. We’ll get you and Jeanette out immediately, and if Anne’s at the dinner I’ll wait to bring her down myself. Does that sound all right?’
Naturally it did, Monsieur, I could not have known anything else. So I said ‘Yes,’ and committed us, and the memory of it troubles me even now.
O God, God, help me, I cannot think what to do. I can hardly think at all.
Perhaps I should have guessed. I was so anxious to hurry Bernadette away I did not stop to wonder why Florian wished to do this unprecedented thing and bring Bouchard into my room. Only when they entered did I feel the impropriety, for it did not seem right to have Bouchard so near my bed, gazing about the room with unashamed interest.
‘You have been writing, Mademoiselle,’ he said, observing the ink-stained quill that lay on the paper and the fine scattering of sand over the inlay of the desk.
‘Only my diary,’ I said.
‘Ah, the famous diary,’ he said, and sat heavily on a silk-embroidered chair. ‘I shall enjoy reading that when we are married.’
‘Of course, Monseigneur,’ I said. ‘When we are married.’
Florian cleared his throat. ‘That’s actually what we want to talk about, Anne. Monseigneur has asked for a little chat with you, and I want you to know he’s doing it with my blessing.’
My alarm was growing. ‘Blessing?’
‘And our father’s, of course,’ he said. ‘I know you’ll be sensible about it and not make a fuss, so I’ll just wait outside and let Monseigneur speak to you himself.’
I said ‘Florian, it’s not seemly,’ but he waved his hand, said ‘I’m just outside, for heaven’s sake,’ and quickly went out. I know Florian. I know he is only angry when secretly he is ashamed, and the thought terrified me. There is so little he is ashamed of now.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ said Bouchard, leaning back comfortably in his chair. ‘It’s just about the wedding. I think I’d like it a little sooner.’
I sat down to face him. ‘It cannot be thought of until you have your title. We have had this conversation before.’
‘You want to rise from your knees as Mme la Duchesse, do you?’ he said. ‘Then so you shall. I am Duc here, so it is here we will be married.’
‘Don Miguel suggested it,’ he said. ‘He thinks it would set the perfect seal on our agreement. Your father is delighted, since without the alliance the paper we have signed today awards him precisely nothing. Your brother is delighted because he’s my friend, I’m delighted because I’ve waited rather longer than I’m used to for something I want, and you too will be delighted because it’s what you said you wanted. It’s to be tomorrow evening, and Don Miguel has arranged a feast to follow.’
I will not write what I felt, to write it is almost to make it real. I said we could not marry in this furtive fashion, I wanted a proper wedding in Paris with all my family present. He said I had no family to speak of, and those who mattered were here. I said it was not enough to call myself Mme la Duchesse here, I needed my title recognized by all, and he said ‘The coup is to be any day, if we linger a fortnight we can return to Paris in triumph.’ I said my trousseaux was not prepared, and he said ‘You do not care a spit for such things, Anne du Pré, and that is one of the reasons I have set my heart on you.’
His effrontery took my breath away, and with it the last of my self-control. I said ‘You have not set your heart on me. You do not love me, you do not even like me, you only marry me to hurt André de Roland.’
I remember the quiet. The singing and laughter of the soldiers drifted over the balcony, and to me at that moment they sounded as innocent as children.
Bouchard stood abruptly and closed the doors. ‘De Roland?’ he said. ‘I’ve had him on his knees begging pardon. I don’t think we need trouble ourselves about him, do you?’
He lies. He is frightened of André, I know it, his valet tells Bernadette he has always a servant with him for bodyguard and sometimes screams in his sleep.
I said ‘Then why?’
‘Ah, there’s a question,’ he said. He still did not turn, but remained at the balcony, staring at the dark glass. ‘So many answers. Perhaps you were a challenge, Mademoiselle, and I enjoyed forcing you into the pretence. But there are other things.’
He turned to look at me and I could not bear his eyes. I looked at the desk, the ink-splatters and sand, I thought of André and my letter and said ‘What other things?’
‘Your ruthlessness,’ he said. ‘You were all for de Roland as long as he could get you the tabouret, but the minute he couldn’t you dropped him.’
‘I defended him at the amende honorable.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘And even that in a way I admired. You think I care for society’s opinion? Do you know what they say of me?’
I do, but he told me anyway. Bastard, he said, filth, mongrel, jumped-up nobody. The words poured in my ears and despite myself my heart ached.
‘I could have other women,’ he said. ‘If they knew I’d be Duc I could have half Paris. I wouldn’t have them now if they begged, not even for the pleasure of teaching them better at the point of the only kind of sword they understand.’
I was shocked. Not that he should say it, but that he should think it right to say it to me. He knew it, I think, for he smiled and walked towards me.
‘Not you,’ he said. ‘You’re different, Anne.’
He stopped close in front of me, and I screwed my nails tight into my palms. ‘You really do believe in me, don’t you?’ he said, his finger tracing a snail’s trail across my cheek. ‘You argued with such passion that the escort would wait this morning, and of course you were right. Even I didn’t believe as strongly as that.’
I had never thought I could do such damage. I compelled myself to look into his face and say ‘But Monseigneur, I do not love you.’
His eyes widened, and then he laughed. ‘Why should you? This is an alliance, not an affair.’ He took my hands in his and stepped back to look at me. ‘You’ve suffered from it too, haven’t you? You’ve seen the scorn in people’s eyes, you know what they say of your father and his tradesman’s lineage. You want to throw it back at them, don’t you? To watch them squirm as you take precedence? We’ll do it together, you and I. It starts tomorrow.’
I said weakly ‘Not tomorrow, give me time to prepare. Perhaps Monday?’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, and his mouth set in a sulky line. ‘Don Miguel suggested it, and I’m not losing face in front of that Spaniard. I’ll fetch you at half after eight.’
I could say only ‘Please,’ and clutch his hands in supplication.
He smiled. ‘It’s only natural for you to be frightened, I shouldn’t respect you otherwise.’
He released my hands and leaned towards me. I could do nothing but watch his face coming closer, his mouth opening, and then my head was jolted forward and he was kissing me, his clammy lips squashing mine. I could not breathe. His palm was sliding round my face, pulling the skin taut, his lips working on mine and forcing them apart, and then he thrust his tongue inside me, his tongue inside my mouth, my throat gagging with the need to spit and expel him, but he held my head firm and did what he liked inside while my knees shook beneath me and my mind screamed.
The pressure eased and his head lifted, I pressed my hands on the desk to support myself upright and faced him with a mouthful of his saliva my body was too disgusted to swallow. He smoothed down his hair, stepped away and gave me almost a kindly smile.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘I won’t hurt you more than I can help.’