Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (10 page)

‘Nothing,’ said Barnaby curtly. ‘Only fame. I have never asked you for anything, Mâchefer. I shall soon be returning to my own king, the Cockleshell King. How would you like it if I told Jacquot-de-la-Mer that Mâchefer-the-One-Eyed is interested only in his profit and won’t help out a friend?’

This discussion was exasperating to Catherine, who was wild with impatience to see them get down to the task in hand. What was the point of all this talk when all that had to be done was to go round to Mère Caboche’s house and take Loyse away by force?

Mâchefer’s meditations were gradually drawing to an end. Sitting on the lower step, he rumpled his hair and pulled his ear, then hawked and spat five paces off. He rose to his feet and said:

‘Very well. I am your man. Have to talk it over and see what can be done.’

‘I knew we could count on you. Let’s go and have a flagon of ale. We can go to Greedy-Ysabeau’s and talk about this while we wait for nightfall. It’s the Feast of St John, and there will be more money to be made tonight, round the bonfires, than during the day.’

The two men went off to the tavern in the square kept by a wild, unkempt creature who nevertheless had an enviable knack for bringing in the clientele. Jacquette watched them go, eyes round with horror, repressing a violent urge to weep.

‘How can I entrust my daughter to a man like that?’

‘The main thing is to get her back,’ Catherine said firmly.

Sara intervened once more. With a smile she drew the girl toward her and started to stroke the magnificent tresses that she had fallen into the habit of tending since Catherine’s illness. The gypsy woman seemed to derive an almost sensual pleasure from handling the thick red-gold braids, brushing and smoothing them with gentle caressing movements.

‘The child is right,’ she said. ‘She will always be right, especially where men are concerned. Because she will be beautiful enough to make a man die of love!’

Catherine stared solemnly at her without speaking. She was astonished to hear that she might be beautiful, because until then no-one had ever suggested such a possibility to her.

People went into raptures over her hair, of course, and sometimes her eyes, but nothing more. Even boys had never mentioned the fact to her. Not Landry … nor Michel! The thought of the young man’s death suddenly threw a dark shadow across the happy astonishment into which Sara’s words had plunged her. After all, what difference would it make whether she was beautiful or not, since Michel would not be there to see her? He was the only one for whom she would have liked to be really beautiful. Now it was too late. She struggled against the desire to weep, which swept her whenever she thought of him. The memory of the young man still hurt. It was a wound that would no doubt leave a sensitive scar.

‘I don’t care whether I am beautiful or not,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t want to be beautiful. Men run after beautiful women and they hurt them … so much!’

In spite of the look of astonishment she read in Sara’s eyes, she did not explain herself further. She blushed suddenly, remembering the nocturnal scenes she had watched through the skylight, the brutish violence with which the more beautiful girls had been treated. Sara’s eyes did not leave hers, as though this daughter of faraway tribes was able to see clearly what was going on in her young friend’s mind. But rather than question her, she merely smiled and said slowly:

‘Whether you want it or not, you will be a great beauty, Catherine. You mark my words. Too beautiful for your own peace, perhaps. And you will love only one man, but you will love him passionately. For him you will starve and go thirsty, leave your bed and house. You will search for him along the highways and byways without even knowing if he will be there to welcome you in the end. You will love him more than yourself, more than anything on Earth, more than life itself …’

‘I won’t! I will never love any man like that!’ said Catherine, stamping her foot angrily. ‘The one man I could have loved is dead.’

She broke off, afraid that she had given herself away by what she had just said, and looked nervously across at her mother. But Jacquette had not heard.

She had returned to her seat by the hearth and was sat there telling her wooden rosary beads. Sara seized Catherine’s hands in hers, pinioned her legs between her knees and lowered her voice several tones till it became a soft, insistent, soothing murmur.

‘Thus it is written, nevertheless. Strange things are written in these small hands. I see a great, great love that will cause you much suffering and yet give you such raptures as the human heart can rarely have known. Many men will love you, and one in particular. Oh!’ She turned the girl’s hands palms upwards and examined them closely, her brow furrowed by lines. ‘I see a prince … a real prince! He will love you and help you in many ways. But it is another whom you will love. I see him! He is young, handsome, of noble birth … but hard, so hard! You will often wound yourself on the thorns around his heart, but blood and tears are the bricks and mortar of which love is built. You will seek this man as a dog seeks its master, you will follow him like a hound on the scent of a great stag. You will have fame, fortune, love and everything … But you will pay dearly for it all. And then … how strange! You will meet an angel!’

‘An angel?’ Catherine repeated, open-mouthed.

Sara let the girl’s hands drop. She looked suddenly weary and old, but her eyes, which seemed to see far beyond the grimy walls, shone with light, as though a bundle of tapers blazed in them.

‘An angel!’ she repeated ecstatically. ‘A warrior angel carrying a flaming sword …!’

Feeling that Sara was losing herself in regions too remote for her to follow, Catherine shook her arm gently to bring her back to earth.

‘And you, Sara? Will you return one day to your island at the end of the blue sea?’

‘I cannot read the book of the future for myself, my pretty. The spirit forbids it. But an old woman once told me that, though I might leave my country forever, I would find my own people once again. She said that the tribes would come to me.’

When Barnaby returned he seemed in a high good humour. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the plan is drawn up, and everything has been decided. As soon as a favourable occasion turns up we will get Loyse back from Caboche.’

‘Why wait? Why not tonight?’ cried Jacquette. ‘Hasn’t she waited long enough already? And haven’t I too?’

‘Peace, woman,’ said Barnaby, somewhat roughly. ‘We want to get her back without being killed ourselves. Tonight they will be lighting the bonfires for the feast of St Jean. The biggest bonfires are the one in front of the palace and the one on the quay. It will be impossible to do anything in the city itself, only a few yards from the bonfire and all the people who will come to see it. Besides, Caboche is captain of the Charenton bridge. He has men and weapons at his disposal there. He is more powerful than ever. Anyway, there are more preparations to be made. Once we have put our plan into action the town will become too dangerous for us. Caboche will be searching for us everywhere, even in the Cour des Miracles, where he has spies. Once we have found Loyse we shall have to leave Paris.’

‘We?’ said Catherine delightedly. ‘Will you be coming too?’

‘Yes, little one. My time here is coming to an end. I am a Cockleshell Man. It’s time for me to join my leader. The Shell King has summoned me to Dijon. We will travel together.’ He then outlined the plan he had worked out with Mâchefer.

They would wait till a disturbance in some distant part of the town had attracted most of the local people away, and then find some pretext for bringing old Mère Caboche out into the street, or at least making her open the door. Then, with the help of a few trusty companions, it would be child’s play to kidnap Loyse. They would hurry to a warehouse beside the river and board a boat there, which would take them up the Seine and Yonne rivers into Burgundy.

‘I shall need your help till then, Sara,’ Barnaby added. ‘But afterwards you will be free to return …’

The gypsy shrugged:

‘I will stay with them if they want me to. It wouldn’t be a great sacrifice. I’ve had enough of Maillet-le-Loup. He has got it into his head that he wants to sleep with me now, and I have to fight him off every night. He gets more and more angry, and now he has started threatening to make me dance for Mâchefer. You know what that means …’

Barnaby nodded, and Catherine just stopped herself doing the same. She felt a righteous anger surge up in her. She had grown very attached to this strange doctor of hers, and she realised that, for all her dark skin, Sara was beautiful enough for Mâchefer to want to add her to his harem. Slipping her hand into her friend’s, she turned a gaze on her as warm and golden as a summer day.

‘You will never leave us, Sara? You will come with us to Uncle Mathieu’s? Won’t she, Maman?’

Jacquette smiled sadly. It seemed such a short while back that she had been carefree and lively. Now the plump Burgundian woman seemed to grow more transparent-looking every day. Her cheeks were losing their colour and bloom and deep lines had appeared in her face, which had been so smooth and fresh till tragedy had struck her. Her laced bodice hung loosely over a shrunken bosom.

‘Sara knows that wherever we are there will always be a place for her. Don’t I owe my life to her?’

With one accord the two women, so different in every way, threw themselves into each other’s arms and wept for each other’s sorrows. Misfortune had made them akin. The solid bourgeoise felt as up-rooted as the child of the wind and great open spaces, the nomad of the world’s great travel routes whose ancestors had followed the hordes of Genghis Khan. Feminine solidarity, which can be such a powerful force when there is no question of rivalry, was movingly demonstrated by these two women. Jacquette would gladly have welcomed Sara as a sister.

‘That’s enough tears and pretty speeches for one day!’ said Barnaby. ‘I’m hungry. And since we are all one big family now, let’s sup as a family. I stole some cakes off Ysabeau-la-Gourmande. They are for you, my pretty,’ he added to Catherine, taking some appetising golden cakes out of his pocket. It was a long time since Catherine, who was quite as greedy as the celebrated Ysabeau, had seen any like them. She bit into one eagerly, then swiftly pressed Barnaby’s unshaven cheek with her honey-smeared lips.

‘Thank you, Barnaby.’

The old fellow was so astonished by this gesture that he almost dropped Catherine. He put her down and hurried across to the dark corner where he kept his fake relics. He was heard to snort frequently …

‘Tomorrow,’ he said eventually, ‘they are taking the former Provost of Paris, Pierre des Essarts, to the gallows. The whole town will go to Montfaucon. That will be the moment …’

Mâchefer’s shaggy head, without the false boils, poked round Barnaby’s door. The Cockleshell Man was busy wrapping fragments of bone and putting scraps of paper with a few gothic characters on them into little brass boxes.

‘Come in,’ he said. Catherine was stood beside him, fascinatedly watching him at work. It was too late to hide her. Mâchefer had seen her.

‘Who’s that one?’ he said, pointing at her with a large, dirty finger.

‘Sister of the Loyse whom Caboche has got. Hands off, Mâchefer! She is what you might call my adopted daughter!’

The Beggar King looked at the girl clinging to Barnaby’s shoulder, his face registering astonishment tinged with anger. Sara had just finished arranging Catherine’s hair, and in the firelight the braids shone like coils of pure gold. Her eyes gleamed too, and she stood with her head thrown back as proudly as a little cock, determined not to let Mâchefer see she was afraid. He stretched out a hand hesitantly, touched one of the plaits and grumbled:

‘Old fox! I suspect that you have tricked me. If the older sister has fulfilled the promise of the younger one she must be a proud beauty.’

Barnaby’s gnarled hand removed Mâchefer’s.

‘She doesn’t look like her,’ he said curtly. ‘And this one is too young. Let’s leave it at that, Mâchefer. You had some news to tell me. Do you want a drink?’

‘I won’t refuse,’ said the other, lowering himself heavily onto a stool. ‘But it’s a bit of luck for you that you belong to Jacquot-de-la-Mer’s band. Otherwise I wouldn’t have thought twice about cutting your throat to get my hands on these two chickens. I like them young myself, they are tenderer then …’ One of his hands played with a dagger passed through his belt. The firelight reflected in his bloodshot eyes made him look like a demon in human shape. Catherine stepped back in terror and crossed herself. Barnaby shrugged and went on with his work.

‘So you go about frightening children now? Be quiet, Mâchefer. We have more important things on hand, and you know you are not as bad as you like to make out. Give him a drink, little one – some wine.’

Not taking her eyes off this alarming personage for an instant, Catherine filled a goblet of wine from the cask in the corner. It was a magnificent Beaune wine, one of the casks that Jean-sans-Peur had distributed among his butcher friends and other allies in the flush of his demagogic zeal. This particular barrel had originally been destined for the master-butcher Saint-Yon but had somehow fallen into the hands of the wily Barnaby, who reserved its use for special occasions. Mâchefer drained two goblets straight off, wiped his mouth and clucked appreciatively:

‘Superb! I have nothing to touch it!’