Minuet (12 page)

“Don’t think to marry an Englishman,
petite.
You know the sort of life Harlock led your mother.”

“I know what a merry chase
she
led
him.
No, don’t pout. She behaved very badly to Papa.”

“A Frenchman would have understood. You want to marry a handsome French rogue like Henri Mérigot. He is ready to understand and forgive all to a rich wife. Oh, did you manage to get some money?”

“Only two hundred. It is all Papa had in the house.”

“I thought you possessed a fortune!”

“It is all tied up in a trust or something stupid, as though I were a child.”

“All nice and safe for your husband to squander for you. Never mind, give me the two hundred.”

She handed it to him. “Can we leave tonight?” she asked.

“We?
I thought I had made clear you stay home. I shall take Jacques, but the two hundred will be a welcome companion. How does one procure
assignats
nowadays?”

“There, you see? How will you manage without me?”

“More to the point, how will I manage
with
you? A young, unmarried lady would be a distinct inconvenience.”

“Then I go as a boy. That is no problem.”

“A problem raises its ugly head,
quand même,
when we return, and the world hears Lady Céleste has been jauntering off to Paris with the disreputable Henri Mérigot, without benefit of chaperon.”

“Henri Mérigot is not disreputable! Only poor, and the world will
not
hear it. I have left Papa a note with instructions how he should proceed during my absence. I am to have a very bad cold, and be confined without visitors for a week. And if the world
does
hear of it, then Papa
must
accept you, to save my reputation.”

“He’ll be sure I talked you into this, and hate me worse than ever. He’ll find that note and come after you. He will know where to come, too.”

“He is gone to bed. He won’t know till tomorrow. I mean to go, Henri. You know you can’t stop me. You waste precious minutes in trying. Are you quite sure you want to leave me behind with Parson Degan?” she asked with an arch smile.

“What a saucy piece you have grown into, Mademoiselle Sally. Very well, if you have the gall to attempt it, I shan’t offer any more objections. But I think you would be much wiser to remain safely here.”

“Much wiser, and much more unhappy. I go. Now, let us make preparations. Is there any reason we cannot leave tonight? Just you and I? No need to go tracking a whole army through France. You have assorted
cartes civiles.
I’ll take a boy’s, and wear boy’s clothing.”

“Very well, I’ll stuff a few things in a bag for you. And Minou, take along Agnès’
carte
too, just in case. It at least is not forged. I wish I had arranged for horses at Calais, but it can’t be helped.”

“We can take your carriage as far as Dover,
n’est-ce pas?
It will be faster.”

“It was my intention.”‘

“Good.
Allons.”
Already she was standing.

“A glass of wine first to drink to our success?” he suggested.

“Why not? It will be the last decent thing we have to drink for many days. The wine, how it has gone bad at home, Henri. Some are saying it is God’s judgment on the government. And the food—impossible! Take bread with you. We shall gorge like the bears before we go, to fortify ourselves for the long starvation.”

“I have been starved for seven years, dining on dry English mutton and potatoes, with no decent sauce. And what they call a
ragoût
one would not serve to a dog at home. Always they pass it to
me,
considering it quite a kindness I believe.”

“These days one is happy for any
ragoût
in France. The dogs are fortunate if they don’t end up in it.
Ragoût au chien—
a new treat.”

They drank two glasses of wine, chatted very amiably the whole time, then went together in the dead of night, two dark figures in a light, open carriage with a very small suitcase containing their supplies for the perilous journey. They sat huddled together for protection from the cool, damp breeze, and for companionship. At Maidstone, Sally’s eyelids began to flutter, and she leaned against Henri’s shoulder.

“Sleep, Minou,” he commanded, putting an arm around her to hold her on to the open seat.

She felt cozy and safe, with Henri to look after her, as he used to, long ago. How good it was to be with dear Henri again. Soon they would all be together as they used to be in France. Better, because they would be with Papa too.

Chapter Nine

At five minutes before eight the next morning, Degan was impatiently pounding the knocker of the mansion on Berkeley Square. Sally was careless of time, but on this occasion he trusted the exigency of the matter would assure her punctual presence. He was a little disappointed that she had to be called, but accepted a cup of coffee and resigned himself to the wait. It was a very brief one. The servant reappeared within three minutes to tell him she was gone from her room.

“Impossible!” was his first word, but he was soon altering it to request an audience with the father. She had decided to go to La Forge alone—or more probably with Mérigot. Maybe she meant to fetch Mérigot here for them all to go together. She might better have sent him a note—not the thing for her to go to a gentleman’s apartments alone. In his vexation, he dashed up to Harlock’s room without further waste of time.

“Ah, Degan!” Harlock said, rubbing his eyes. “You are come looking for Sal? She’s gone off with Mérigot this morning. Told me last night she was to go. They are taking money to some French family that are in the basket.”

“What family? Where can I find them?”

“Lud, how should I know? They’ll come back here later, I trust. Go downstairs and have some breakfast. I’ll be with you presently.”

Degan had not taken a seat, nor did he take his leave. “When was all this settled? She was to meet me at eight this morning. Why did she not let me know?”

“She said nothing to me about it. Must have forgotten. She is a shatter-brained little baggage—but kind. It was kind in her to want to give her own money to the émigrés. Took every penny I had in the house.”

This sounded highly suspicious to Degan. “She hasn’t given the money to any émigrés. It’s for Mérigot. He’s gone to Paris to rescue her mother.”

“Good God!” Harlock leaped from his bed, his nightshirt falling to his knees. “Is it possible you’re right? I wondered last night when she came back and told me she loved me... I thought it had a final sound to it. Fair shook me up.”

“You don’t think
she’s
gone to Paris with him?” Degan shouted. He knew at once it was true. That nagging impatience he had felt, without quite knowing its cause—this was what he had feared. That she would dash off to Paris, and he’d never see her again. Like a dream, she’d vanish and he’d never see her again. It was unthinkable. “Which is her room?” he asked in a hollow voice.

He bolted into the hallway without waiting to hear, and opened a few doors till he recognized her gown from the night before, hanging on the wall. He stood a moment, looking around, feeling her presence in the chamber. A faint lingering scent of
muguet des bois
brought her nearer. Then he began to notice other things. A small likeness of Marie and three children. Herself and Mérigot—the other would be Édouard, of course. Mérigot had an arm around her shoulder possessively. He knew they had shared the same roof in Paris, but it angered him to see this reminder of it by her bed.

There were other items that surprised him. A little toy guillotine that actually worked—that had, in fact, a toy doll’s head in the basket. A pile of French newspapers, well read, underlined in red. A calendar with strange days and months on it—the new revolutionary calendar. This was a side of Sally he had hardly been exposed to. Occasionally she had spoken to him on those experiences, but how greatly it had influenced her he had not realized. In her mind, she was always half in France still, living under the shadow of the national razor, as she casually referred to that infernal machine of execution.

“Maybe his lordship should have this now that he’s awake,” a servant said. Interested in the room, he had not heard her approach. “Lady Céleste left it with me for her father,” the girl went on, handing an envelope to him.

“Thank you.” He snatched the envelope and dashed back to Harlock’s room.

It was torn open anxiously by the father. “We’re right. She’s gone off to Paris with Henry,” he said resignedly. “Left last night. They’re beyond catching now.”

Degan tore the letter from his hands and read it closely. A towering rage consumed him. “This is all your doing!” he accused, rounding on the distracted father in wrath. “If you had done something about saving your wife, it wouldn’t have been necessary for Sally to do this. My God, to France!” The vision of the toy guillotine reared up in his mind, in the shadow of the larger, life-sized one. The head in the basket—it could be Sally’s. A sick, empty feeling was in the pit of his stomach.

“She’s with Henry. She’s safe enough.”

“Safe with that damned French gigolo! That’s the worst part of it. Even if she gets out alive, she’s ruined. Have you no
sense,
no responsibility?”

“You don’t understand, Degan.”

“You’re damned right I don’t. I don’t understand how you can be such a fool, or me either.”

He turned and strode swiftly from the room, taking another look into Sally’s chamber on the way down the hall. He snatched up the newspapers, thinking he might discover something of use in them. As he was now on his way to France, it would be as well to discover what he could of recent doings there. He went to his carriage and directed his driver to La Forge.

Henry was gone, but some of those fellows would be able to help him. He was recognized by one or two, and soon discovered what they knew, which was not as much as he hoped, but helpful. No one knew for sure that Henry was gone, though certainly he had been making arrangements for it. The man who had planned to accompany him was sure he had not left yet, but of course Degan knew better.

“What would I need to do to get there?” he asked.

“To arrive, that is easy, melor. It is upon arrival that it becomes difficult,” a man who was being called duVal told him.

“Let me worry about that. How can I get there?”

“By a smuggling vessel, leaving from Folkestone. A fellow named Jasper Fargé runs it. Give him my name—or Mérigot’s. Mind you his hand must be well filled, you understand?”

Degan got more precise details regarding the lugger, then asked about the civil cards and clothing, the horse for the other side he had heard Henry mention. This last could not be arranged in a day.

For a price, always a rather high price, he was issued a
carte civile
in the name of Michel Menard, a wine grower from the Midi, as well as other necessary items. For the outfit, it was necessary to go to Rasselin’s rooms, a rather pitiful apartment inconveniently removed from La Forge.

“I was used to live better,” the man said with a rueful smile. “But when my cousin the due d’0rléans sneezed in the basket, I decided my life meant more to me than ten thousand acres of choice vineyards, and a castle.
C’est la vie.”
He shrugged.

The nobleman then produced from under his bed a wicker basket containing several black jackets with brass buttons, suspenders, breeches, red
toques
and cotton shirts. The hand that tried jackets up to Lord Degan was delicate, a gentleman’s hand, with the fingers ink-smudged from his mean employment of copying letters to make a little ready cash.

“I am not so fortunate as some of my countrymen. I did not manage to bring jewelry with me, and have neither close friends nor rich relatives among the English nobility. We stayed much at home, we de Rasselins.”

Degan passed a large wad of bills into his hands. “I do not hint for the
pourboire,
Lord Degan,” the man said, offended. He scrupulously counted out the proper sum, and returned the rest. “You will require your money for what is ahead of you.”

“Ah—
assignats!
I’ll need some of that revolutionary money.”

“Do yourself a favor. Take gold. We have learned the
assignat
drops in value every day. It is virtually worthless.”

“Won’t it cause suspicion?”

“More joy than suspicion. The
assignat is
so low in value you would require a bushel of them to buy a turnip. I had once the equivalent of ten thousand pounds in them. It is worth a tenth of that now. It is all forged, however, so it is no loss but for the paper and ink.
Bonne chance,
melor.”

“Merci,” Degan replied.

“A pity I could not sell you an accent.” The man laughed. “I suggest you say little abroad, and spend much.”

Like Mérigot, Degan took his own fastest team and open carriage to the coast. He also took his groom, to look after the carriage upon arrival, and to drive for part of the way while he perused the papers. The news was very bad. Some new laws had been passed, the 22 Prairial they called it—a date from the new calendar, meaning June 9. The usual ten or fifteen guillotine victims a day had been quadrupled. In effect, the laws gave Robespierre absolute authority to execute anyone. Four courts were instituted instead of one, four times as many victims. The sentence was either innocence or death, at the discretion of the jurors, and never mind the evidence. He could hardly credit the terms of the courts. No written testimony required, no preliminary investigation, just a public hearing to please the mob. No lawyer for the defense, every citizen urged to denounce conspirators, and probably rewarded handsomely for doing so, though it was not printed. The guillotine, he read, had been moved from the Place de la Révolution to the edge of town, at the Barrière du Trône, at the edge of the Faubourg St.-Antoine. These were only names to Degan. He read of other strange goings-on that led him to believe France had lost all sense of reason.

A religious fanatic of a woman claiming Robespierre was the Messiah was sent to trial for her efforts. Meat was rationed, but it was a formality, as there appeared to be no meat in Paris. Religion reinstated—done to please the mob? Or to raise Robespierre to a deity after all? He seemed to feature prominently in the Festival of the Supreme Being. It was like reading notes from a giant national Bedlam. The Conspiracy of the Red Shirts—fifty-four meals in one day for Sainte Guillotine, dressed up in red to make a spectacular show, the crime apparently being that one of the group was caught with a portrait of the late king and queen.