Reign of Fear: Story of French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (Cantiniére Tales) (7 page)

Then, on a Friday, mother came home, apparently beaten, and bloody from a gash on her forehead. I asked her what had happened, as I administered cold water on the small cut. She did not say, but insisted she must sleep. She was sore, very angry at first, and then silently fey, until she fell asleep, but she cried bitterly as she slept.

Next day, Florian told me Colbert had put Adam forth as a candidate for a vacant mastership of the Paris Book Guild. I spied Gilbert on a road, running a desperately swift errand for his father. If possible, Gilbert looked like a balloon, one of the new wonderful things you could see during the feast days being flown across they sky, the globe aérostatisque. He was so proud, I saw it on his glowing, determined face, but I wanted to run along with him, and cursed, as I could not. I spied him coming back, and Adam slapping him, shaking him so hard his head flew back and forward and Gilbert wept, as he went back out to fetch something he had apparently forgotten. I hated Adam.

That evening we heard the crowds had freed some mutinous French Guards by brute force from a prison near us. There were loud demonstrations on our street too. People in dirty clothes were protesting with angry tones, and marching around loudly with seemingly no purpose and mother and I were on the open window, enjoying the crisp air and wondrous sounds of the rowdy people. She eyed the raucous crowd, and I saw longing in her eyes. ‘If it were not for you, love, I would join them and things would be different,’ she said. I felt lonely after those words, and she saw it, regretting her words. She hugged me fiercely, turned me to face her. ‘No matter what Jeanette, I have you, and that is most important.
The little monsters too. I will do anything to keep you safe, and think of myself when it is so.’

That night, she would prove her fateful words
, for at midnight, I heard footsteps on the stair and the demons came out to play.

I knew Gilbert’s padding steps, but there were heavier steps following him. A man was laughing with a voice of a madman, and I thought they were going to Adam’s apartment, but instead they passed it ominously, the steps determined and they came to our door, and mother slowly got up, shaking in fear while pulling on a shirt. The lock turned. In came Colbert, but not the Colbert I knew. This one was utterly drunk, his powdered wig askew, a piece of white cake in his wine stained hand. He was eating the fine cake frugally, cherishing it and I felt anger, for we were starving, while he enjoyed the luxury. Behind him stood Adam, and Gilbert was peeking from behind
his father, his face nervous, but somehow different. He walked in after Adam, and I noticed he also was drunk, very drunk, smiling foolishly at things we could not see, mumbling to himself. Colbert saw my appraising look, and grinned, while he ogled at the twins, who were asleep, and then he looked at my pale mother, and thumbed my direction. ‘She has to go. Gilbert can keep her company.’

Mother looked at me, worried. ‘Why does she have to go?

Colbert burped and smiled apologetically. ‘It is God who has blessed us. We are here because of him and because our talented Adam is now a Master in the Paris Book Guild, and I want to give him a mighty present, something he has long desired. It is a fruit I own, have tasted and savored and wish to taste again, tonight, in good company.’

I cursed him and his God, for there was something happening I could not fathom, and I was afraid. Henriette shook her head in denial, and Adam walked slowly forward, looking at me, his eyes strangely intense. ‘Jeanette, go and play with Gilbert,’ he said, his face flushed with expectation.

‘I will not…’ I started, but mother eyes were pleading for me to obey. Even Gilbert was hesitant.

He looked ill as he took hesitant steps towards me. ‘Father...’ He started, but Adam whirled on him.

‘Take her out, you boy-loving rat,’ Adam yelled at Gilbert, who blanched. ‘Remember what I told you. Do so, and I will forget your many offenses.’

Colbert waved his hand
at me. ‘It is all good, love. Your mother will be fine. She works for me and Madame Fourier, you see, and Adam is just another welcome customer, tonight.’

‘You want her to wash his shirt?’ I asked, and after an awkward pause, they stared at me incredulously, and then burst into laughter. Adam was holding his belly.

‘Florian told you she works at the Seine?’ Adam asked me, but I glowered at them, not enjoying the mocking attention. Mother gripped my shoulders, shaking in fear as she pushed me out, Gilbert following me, uncertainly. I did not understand it then, I was young, but Gilbert pulled me after him and I saw mother’s eyes, haunted and full of terror, as she closed the door.

‘Don’t come back, boy, until late, you ugly fool,’ Adam called after Gilbert, who shook in anger.

We went down the stairs, Gilbert pulling me after him, forcing me to move until I grew angry with him and pushed him off. He opened his mouth in surprise, and the drunken beast took him over as he pushed me back, and grabbed me roughly.

‘What is going on in there? What do they want?’ I asked him. He was silent for a long time, glancing at me, unsure of his answer, opening his mouth, closing it, anger and regret playing on his chiseled face.

‘I told him the secret, but it was a mistake,’ he murmured.

‘Tell me, then, and then tell me what…’

‘No,’ he told me, his drunken eyes full of determination. ‘I have to make amends, I do. I have to become a man, as he asks me to. I’m sorry, Jeanette, but I have to grow up, swiftly, and obey him. Come, and I will tell you what is happening up there.’

He held onto my arm while he walked me down the chilly night street, guiding me to an abandoned, dirty alley we sometimes hid at, and I was confused, as he finally turned me around, and looked me in the eye.

‘Your mother,’ he blurted, ‘your beautiful, blissfully dutiful mother is a whore in Colbert’s whorehouse, run by that hag Fourier.’ Then he pulled out my mother’s watch. ‘Mine now. Adam says it is my heirloom, a reward for me, especially if I make him proud. And I will.’ He looked at the watch, uncertainly, at loss, drunk, bordering on melancholy.

That was the time things could have turned otherwise.

I could have been calm and wise like a sage of old, and I could have cried, and endured his words, the terrible words and accepted what had happened, but all thoughts of care evaporated to the thin air at his terrible words and the watch unsettled me greatly. Anger and panic crept in.

So I pushed him, and his face turned from blank into astonished. I accosted him, not sensing the danger. ‘You stole it from him, didn’t you?’ I mocked him while tears were flowing on my cheeks, for I knew Adam would never let Gilbert have such a thing. Mother was a whore?

‘Perhaps, but mine anyways,’ he mumbled, thumbing the beautiful thing, his eyes hard and upset and drunk.

I tried to understand it all, feeling all alone and terrified, for I was next in line for their business, when I grew up, and perhaps I did not need to grow up much. I was morbidly afraid, bes
et with fears, and I wanted our watch back, somehow feeling it would return a portion of our honor back to us. ‘It is ours, father owed him money, not mother!’ I said, pushed him again, this time angrily, and tried to grab the watch.

Gilbert’s drunken eyes focused on me, and he slapped me hard, and I fell against the wall. He looked shocked
, but then even angrier and he flew into a wild tantrum, like a rogue sprit torn free from hell as he danced around, cursing, shrieking unholy oaths and laughing and crying. ‘You! You dare push me? Is it my fault?’ He rushed for me, and grabbed me by my throat, and I could barely breathe, as his claw-like hand was holding me to the wall. I was afraid, for he was drunk, vicious and no longer my friend and somehow in his eyes, I saw it was Adam who had replaced Gilbert, and I think the boy I knew died there that moment.

‘Gilbert, I am sorry…’

He spat at me. ‘It is not yours, Jeanette, the watch. Father is right. You are from the weak side of the family. You are like Guillemin. Your father was ever the pretty, spoiled brat, and my father was hated and detested, for he was sickly. Now, it is all different, and all will be repaid. Adam takes your mother, but since you think yourself so high as to push me, the boy who has been pushed all my life, perhaps I will have you. Did they not say, you would one day work in Fourier’s beds? I will break you in, I will.’ Then he pushed me again to a dirty wall, grunting savagely, as if fighting a demonic thought. He lost and gave in to the demon as he put his hand between my legs, forcefully. I was terrified, shocked, trying to push him away desperately, but he was powerful, mad with betrayal and drink and he shoved me back and grinned, his face hovering near mine, his fingers seeking my privates, starting to tear at the skirt. He was there, so close to me, the boy I had known, finally given in to the whisperings of his father. ‘I am a grown up and father will appreciate me. One day, soon, perhaps you will be a whore, as your mother is to the rest of the family, eh? Perhaps one day, I will hump her too.’ he said, and that is when I found a drop of my courage from sea of terror, stopped trying to end his advances and raked my finger in his eye. It was not a strong move, or a calculated one, for I was shaking, afraid and out of my mind, but it was a lucky move, for he had been trying to kiss me savagely, moving forward with the filthy purpose and my finger sunk into the left eye socket, pulling at the orb as he recoiled, and it came out of the redly oozing hole to tangle on his cheek.

He let go of me in shock, and suddenly all the rage I had been harboring si
nce father left burst out of me like thunder. I did not care about the fact we had been friends all our lives, nor of his shrieks as I kicked him, scratched him, and pushed him in utter rage. We were both screaming; I screamed in anger, he in pain. His hands flailed at me, but his eye injury was horrid, and he could only try to grasp at his pained face, while I let a raging banshee loose, and I beat him with my fists and seized a piece of wood, that was sturdy enough to kill a man. I hit him in the head, the ribs, the legs, losing sense of time and place.

Suddenly, he fell silently and struck his head
sickly on the cobblestones and he went still but for some gentle shuddering, and I was out of breath, the terrible anger spent. I leaned on the wall. I was standing there, forlorn and shocked, panting like a thirsty dog, and felt filthy, beyond hope. A young ballad singer frequenting the street to share his latest sentimental story of lost love was squatting at a corner of the main street and staring at us in the deep shadows with an open mouth, I noticed, and there were some rough women who were laughing, evidently approving of my humiliation of Gilbert.

I panicked, contemplating on running far away. They would throw us out like rats, if we were lucky, or rather, we would die in
a dirty prison. There would be no mercy for us, I though over and over again, as Gilbert’s eyeball tangled crazily on his cheek and I even tried to replace it in the red and raw hole oozing surprisingly bright blood. It was slippery, rubbery, impossible to replace, and I threw up on his chest. I let go of the eye, took a deep breath, dragged the boy deeper to the shadows, and squatted next to him. Should I get Florian? Would he get into trouble? Of course, he would. I had hit the man in the tavern with a bottle, now Gilbert. I cried bitterly, my tears mixing with the cold pools of rains on the cracks of the dark cobblestones, and I held arms around my head. The street was quiet.

Then, a shadow squatted near me.

I shrieked, but the dangerous shadow was but a girl my age. She put a finger on her thin lips. She was also blonde, but she was dirty, with hollow cheeks and torn dress. She likely lived in the filthy streets. ‘Hi. Marie-Louise. That is my name. A bit of a problem, this?’ She poked Gilbert as if he was a pile of rubbish.

‘Yes,’ I said, miserable. ‘I do not know what to do. They are hurting mother and I was angry and pushed him and he tried to…’

‘Shh.’ She put a hand on her cheek and pondered. ‘You mind if I loot him? Except the shirt. Could you not throw up on the side? Matters not,’ she said happily, as if one who is used to most hardships in the world and treated life as it was given.

‘Loot him?’ I asked, horrified.

She looked at me like I was a simpleton. ‘Well, yes. What do you think I should do? Let you bury him with all this finery he has?’ She said, and poked Gilbert expertly.

‘I’m not burying him!’

‘Fine! But I will help you, if I can take this stuff. What does it matter, really?’

I had a lingering suspicion she knew what I had to do, but I was not ready to face it yet. I supposed there was no real harm in letting her
do the deed, and I needed her then, more than anything. ‘The watch is ours,’ I said and grabbed it quickly from Gilbert’s pocket. She grinned enviously and rifled through Gilbert’s clothing, then stripped him expertly, leaving him practically naked, but for the vomit stained shirt.

‘Good coin for these; Madame Grenouille buys used clothes, even bloody ones for she knows how to take the nasty stuff off.
But I do detest vomit.‘

‘Does she know how to replace eyeballs?’ I asked, miserable, and she stared at me, and burst to laughter. She came over and let me cry on her shoulder, stroking me gently, until much time had passed. We stared at Gilbert, and both knew we need
ed an answer.

She cleared her throat. ‘So, I have a suggestion,’ she said, smiling, urging me to listen. ‘I say he disappears, and you go home innocent and confused, pretending not to know where he went. You cannot let him go back, for he will not forget and will do terrible things to you. Might die of infection anyway.’