Emile scowled until he realised he was being teased.
Our first month became a second, and half of that went before we began to talk about returning to the academy and how we should spend the last few weeks. Virginie remained unkissed by any of us. Whether by intention or design, Margot, Virginie and Élise had spent much of their summer with an aunt in the Loire. Charlot simply shrugged when I asked him about this, saying the ways of his mother were beyond the wit of man. They returned eventually, however, and Charlot invited them hunting.
The day came and Margot declined, having already said she thought it unlikely. Élise was not allowed to go, retiring to her chamber to sulk furiously. That left Virginie, who came down the steps of the chateau with her chin up, looking uncomfortable and red-eyed, obviously aware she was outnumbered four to one by boys, even if one of them was her brother. I discovered later she’d had a furious argument with her mother immediately before. An argument so serious her father intervened, requiring Virginie to apologise to her mother for rudeness, while decreeing she could join us after all.
We’d been warned to be careful. We’d been advised that the temper of the jacques was sour. We’d been told they’d burnt a manor in the next province. We’d been exhorted and instructed so comprehensively that half the pleasure was leeched from the day before we even left Chateau de Saulx. We carried boar spears like lances, rising to the trot and then beginning to canter as we tried and mostly failed to stick cabbages as we passed cottages and fields. And found our humour again in the lunacy of our play.
Charlot, being Charlot, took us beyond the second wood, the first wood being as far as we’d been told we could go. There was a boar apparently. And if not a boar then a five-point stag. His thrust was we’d find something in the old forest better than anything we could find in the woods. Charlot led us down the track, while Emile and Jerome reluctantly rode side by side when the path was wide enough. Reluctantly, because that left me to ride beside Virginie, who stared straight ahead.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘For what?’ Her face was unreadable.
‘That you had to come with us. That we’re here.’ I gestured at the canopy of oaks above us, the mulch and loam beneath our hooves, which should have been drier at this time of year, even this far into the forest.
‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in weeks.’ Her face hardened. ‘It’s the only beautiful thing I’ve seen in weeks. Have you met my aunt? No, of course you haven’t met my aunt . . . ’ Up ahead, I could see Jerome and Emile trying to hear what made Virginie so unexpectedly impassioned. They could catch her tone but not her words. ‘I’ve spent my summer being introduced to one fool after another . . . ’
‘Why?’ I asked.
She sighed. ‘Why do you think? My aunt is helping my mother choose me a husband. He has to be rich. He has to be grand. He should have a position at court, or the expectation of one . . . What?’ she said, seeing my expression. ‘Did you think it would be different?’
As the path narrowed I let Virginie edge forward and fell back to take the rear, which was as well as I had no answers to her question. All I could do was try to look at the cathedral oaks with her eyes and see them as beautiful. And they were in their way, huge branches like beams above our head, trunks rising like pillars, the greatest trees buttressed by lesser oaks that tumbled against them. We’d begun to pass charcoal clearings within a few minutes of entering the forest. Wide circles of hacked-back undergrowth with smouldering earth-covered mounds where the charcoal baked. Naked children watched us pass, filthy as animals. Their faces black with soot, their hair matted and grown together in the way hair is if it’s never washed. We saw hard-eyed charbonnière women with wooden shovels in their hands. Occasionally they worked topless so the brats bound to their chests could feed. The youngest children sat naked in the doorways of earth huts, slightly older ones scavenged the undergrowth collecting twigs, their shifts and filthy shirts too short to cover their buttocks.
‘Gods,’ I heard Virginie mutter. She dropped back to bring her horse closer to mine. Emile looked nervous, Jerome blind to the ragged misery around him. Charlot . . . ? Who knew what he thought. He rode ahead humming some song to himself. After the charcoal clearings we reached a wide river and a ford where the depth of the water and speed of the flow made me fear for our horses. I was beginning to wonder how much further Charlot intended to take us when he splashed through the ford, pulled up on the far side and turned back, grinning. ‘We’re here,’ he said, his first words since leaving Chateau de Saulx.
Charlot Injured
Sliding from his horse, Charlot drops his reins to the dirt. Anyone else’s mount would bolt at the spookiness of the river’s edge or wander off and need recapturing. His horse stands patiently while he walks back to help his sister dismount. We’re right in the heart of the forest, an hour’s ride along wooded tracks from the nearest village. The trees overhanging the river are hundreds of years old but they feel older.
‘We’ll tie our horses here,’ Charlot says.
‘And carry the damn buck ourselves if we catch one?’ Jerome demands.
‘All right, we’ll take one horse. Emile’s . . . It’s the least spirited. Mine would dislike the smell of blood and so might the others. You happy to lead it?’
Emile nods, sullen-faced. He rides less well than Charlot and Jerome, who both rode from their earliest years, although only slightly less well than me. Charlot has simply given me the better horse. No insult; at least no intended insult. Virginie’s mare might do but Charlot doesn’t want to risk her refusing.
Virginie steps closer to me and I crook my arm. She hesitates for a second, then takes it. She’s trembling. ‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘This place. Can’t you feel it?’
All I can feel is her hand resting on my arm. We have a rifled musket, two boar spears, a couple of pistols . . . And a hunting dirk each. We also have lunch in a pannier slung behind Virginie’s saddle. Charlot says we should leave this. He takes the musket and Jerome and I take boar spears, with Jerome also taking a pistol, leaving a pistol for Emile. Virginie smiles sourly as we divide the weapons among us.
‘Would you like the pistol? I can give Emile my spear . . . ’
‘Jean-Marie . . . ’ Charlot is laughing. ‘Don’t you dare arm my sister. My mother would never forgive you.’ At which Virginie mutters that her mother is unlikely to forgive me anyway. And I suffer five minutes of sideways glances from Jerome and Emile, even though I’m not part of their stupid bet.
‘This way,’ Charlot says.
We push through the undergrowth, making our own path or widening those used by deer. Charlot first, Emile always bringing up the rear. We pass a ruined charbonnière hut, the charcoal mound dead and the circle deserted. Thorns have taken back the edge and bracken shows in the hut’s doorway. A fire pit is filled with the cold bones of a wild pig. ‘Poachers.’ This time Jerome isn’t teasing, simply stating the truth. We pick up the fresh spoor of a deer a few minutes later. Its tracks lead further into the forest and we follow them.
‘I can hear something,’ Emile whispers.
Charlot stops his humming and we all listen. The sound of breaking branches comes from behind thorns to our right. ‘Wild boar,’ Jerome says. Swiftly, Charlot draws back the hammer on his musket, Jerome lowers his boar spear and Virginie drops her hand from my arm, leaving me free to lower my own spear.
‘You stay with Emile,’ Charlot tells his sister.
She looks mutinous and Emile opens his mouth to protest, then looks at me, shoots Virginie a sideways glance and decides he doesn’t mind that idea after all. Charlot, Jerome and I push our way through a cascade of thorns towards the noise and find ourselves in a clearing. A dozen charbonnières look round, and then one of them rips his knife across the throat of a struggling deer. The animal’s death frees those holding it down to stand and face us.
An old man behind them carries an ancient musket that he lowers and fires. No thought or hesitation.
The ball hits Charlot, who drops his own musket and tumbles to his knees, his hand clasping his shoulder. Jerome dives for the musket, raises it and pulls the trigger. The flint slams down and the gun misfires. The old man laughs and I throw my boar spear. It is to be the first and only time I kill anyone. Something I have no possible way of knowing then. Jerome raises his own spear as another man reaches for the old man’s musket and powder horn. We advance on the charbonnières, who retreat. All I have now is my hunting dirk, but it’s the spear in Jerome’s hand and the death of their leader that still them. Faces blank as millponds watch us.
Reaching the old man, I rip my spear free. It’s a fearsome weapon. A long blade ending at a crossbar to stop a wounded boar forcing its way up the hilt as it tries to reach its killer. Jerome stabs the man who reached for the musket. It’s a fast, vicious and unexpected blow. One that would impress our instructors at the academy. He’s already withdrawing the blade when the man begins to fall. Another man dives for the musket and rolls away as Jerome stabs a second time.
‘This is the duke’s son,’ he says. ‘Harm him again and the duke will slaughter the lot of you, and your families.’ He has greater faith in words than me. And greater faith his words will be taken the way he wants them to be taken. He thinks he’s given them a reason to fear us. I suspect he’s given them a reason to kill us all.
‘Fall back,’ I say. Seeing Jerome’s scowl, I add, ‘We have Virginie to protect.’
‘We should lead them away from her,’ Jerome growls.
I’m about to agree when Charlot shakes his head. ‘And leave her for Emile to protect? No, I need a surgeon and we must get her home.’ Jerome dips for Charlot, and since he stands to Charlot’s right, and holds his spear in his own right hand, this is easy enough. I change my spear to my left and steady Charlot’s other side.
When Charlot says we can’t leave the muskets, I point out, briefly, that I cannot carry two muskets and a boar spear and protect anyone usefully.
‘Cover me,’ Jerome orders. He lets go of Charlot, stabs his boar spear hilt-first into the dirt, grabs the older musket, puts his heel to the barrel and strains. Wood splinters and the barrel comes free. It’s an impressive show of strength.
Two young charbonnières kneel by the one Jerome stabbed in the throat, who must be dying by now. Their uncle, perhaps their father. The others watch Jerome with flat eyes as he smashes the second musket. ‘Follow us,’ he snarls at them, ‘and we’ll kill you all.’ Reclaiming his spear, he twists it in his hand and pretends to launch it at the nearest, who stumbles back as the others scatter. ‘Now we fall back,’ he says. Virginie comes running the moment we’re clear. ‘You must take your brother back to the chateau,’ Jerome tells her.
‘That nag won’t carry both of us,’ Charlot says.
‘Emile should go,’ I say. ‘You know the way?’
He nods, white-faced.
‘Then ride back and raise the alarm. Tell the duke to have his huntsmen meet us. And he should call out the militia . . . ’
Emile looks at me.
‘This is a jacquerie—or will be. You think this ends here?’
‘I want to stay,’ he insists.
‘You can help us best by going.’
He scowls and I think will refuse; pride or fear of being alone in this forest. But Virginie touches his arm and looks pleading, and that decides it. Emile mounts the horse and trots away without a glance. All I can do is hope he keeps his head down. Most of the branches on our way here were low.
We knew we’d hit disaster when we found our mounts gone. Sabots had churned the loam so badly that the clearing where we’d left our horses could have been freshly dug. ‘Bastards,’ Jerome said.
‘Downriver,’ Charlot muttered. ‘We must follow the bank.’
‘Why?’ Jerome demanded.
Virginie folded her fingers into mine and gripped so hard her knuckles turned white. She took my hand without asking, without saying anything, for all I knew without knowing she’d done it. ‘Charlot’s right,’ I said. ‘We need to find a boat. It’s too far to walk back through the forest and we’d have to pass those encampments.’
‘You think it’s a full jacquerie?’ Virginie whispered.
I shrugged. ‘The last harvest was bad, the next will be worse. The taxes are high. Their children are starving. What have they got to lose?’
Jerome obviously disliked my choice of words but he put his arm round Charlot to support him, then hesitated. ‘Can you ride on my back? It’ll be faster.’
Charlot lifted bloodied fingers away from his shoulder and considered the wound. ‘Bind this first,’ he said, ‘then carry me.’
Having eased off Charlot’s jacket, we tore the arm from his shirt and used it to pad his wound. Then we put him back into the jacket, buttoned it tight to keep the padding in place and Jerome knelt so he could climb aboard. We did all of this in less time than it takes me to write. Charlot bore the pain in silence. ‘Will we make it?’ Virginie asked.
‘Jerome will help Charlot and I’ll keep you safe.’
‘You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.’
‘Who says I can’t keep it?’
She laughed and Charlot glanced back. Something passed between them because Virginie blushed and put her head down and walked in silence for several minutes, keeping her thoughts to herself. A mile ahead, we found three small boats on a sand spit where the river turned. Trees overwhelmed the far bank but our side was clear and the boats there for the taking. I cut two free and drove my spear through other’s bottom to ruin it. Virginie and I dragged the first boat to the water.
‘Get him in,’ I told Jerome, who lowered Charlot to the ground, picked him up as if he was a child and did as I said. ‘Now go.’
Jerome looked at Virginie and hesitated.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Get him to safety.’ It was enough. Jerome nodded and all together we pushed Charlot towards fast water and Jerome clambered in as the flow caught the boat and whisked it away. ‘Hurry,’ Virginie said.
Shouts came from the trees as we reached our boat and began hurrying it down the sand. Virginie scrambled in with a flash of bare leg and I pushed her into the stream and dragged myself after, the boat rocking violently. The flow caught us and hurtled us after our friends as charbonnières reached the sand spit, screaming in anger. We’d left the boar spears and they hurled both after us.
The spears fell short and were lost.
The river narrowed and the banks rose, matted with wild scrub, dog rose and Corsican mint, and dotted with an occasional pine that peered at us from above. We came out on the far side of the ridge and chased Charlot’s boat towards a stone bridge that carried the road through the forest across the river. Charbonnières lined its side, pointing and shouting. I saw Jerome raise his pistol and watched those nearest shrink back. He and Charlot passed under the bridge and I saw Jerome jerk forward as a stone caught the side of his head.
‘Tip the boat,’ Virginie said.
She was right. We flipped the boat, cold water closing over us, and I grabbed her and held fast, holding to the bench inside the boat with my other hand. When we surfaced it was under our upturned hull. Stones clattered on the wood above our heads as we approached the bridge and again after we passed under. A musket was fired and another, the first ball missing and the second smashing a plank as it bounced away. The river widened and the current slowed and through the split the musket ball made we could see ragged men lining the bank. Some had ancient muskets, others spears, most carried wood-axes or farm implements. There were dozens of them, then hundreds, for all we knew thousands. Misery on the move. They shuffled and stared at each other blank-eyed as if trying to find a purpose. When we saw a church in flames we knew they’d found one.
; The Upturned Boat
Our shell bobbed and swirled and once bumped into the body of a gamekeeper floating facedown in the river—and we bobbed and swirled and bumped along beneath it, sometimes bruising our legs on rocks in the shallows and sometimes hanging on to stop ourselves sinking beneath its surface with exhaustion, but always hidden from watching eyes. Virginie had not then learnt to swim, and the shallowest bits of the river always seemed to have banks dotted with peasants. The gap between water level and inside keel was small but it was all the safety we had.
‘I’m cold,’ Virginie muttered. ‘My hands . . . ’
‘Mine too.’ I was terrified my muscles would cramp and I’d lose my grip and Virginie and the boat would be swept away. ‘We should land.’
‘Soon,’ she agreed. ‘We should land soon.’
Trees ran down to the river on both banks and we were back in the forest, which followed the river in a curve along one side of the duke’s domains. He had more lands than a man could ride in a day and Virginie, although certain her father owned the trees we passed through, had no real idea where we were. What worried me, although I was careful not to say so, was not where we were, but how long we’d have to stay hidden. Alone, I might have risked trying to reach the chateau. Virginie’s presence made that idea impossible.
Charlot’s sister was torn between terror her brother had drowned, been killed or died from his wound, and certainty that he was Charlot, so of course he and Jerome would reach safety. They would reach safety and raise a rescue party. And if they didn’t—not because they were dead, but because they were hiding—then Emile would undoubtedly get through. I could sense she was less convinced by that idea but she repeated it as if it were obviously true.
The Last Banquet Page 10
