The Launching of Roger Brook (20 page)

‘Please forgive the untidiness,’ Mou-Mou said, on seeing the look of repugnance on his face. ‘I have to share this chamber with another girl. We use it turn and turn about, and she is a veritable slut; but I will soon make thee forget all about that.’

As she spoke she undid a single hook at the top of her bodice and her striped blue and white frock slid to the ground revealing her stark naked.

There was a big bluish bruise on one of her hips and a vivid scar disfigured her stomach. She held out her arms to Roger but he knew now that he could not go through with it. His whole soul revolted at the very thought of touching her.

Swiftly turning his back he pulled out his purse and by the light of the candles fished a guinea from it. Tossing the coin down on the bed he turned, wrenched open the door and fled from the room.

He had hardly gained the stairs before she had sprung out on to the landing after him.

‘Come back!’ she cried. ‘Of what are you afraid? How dare you treat me thus!
Ce n’est pas gentil
!’

Then, as he did not heed her, she began to shrill in louder tones: ‘
A moi! A moi
! We have a rat in the house! Stop him! Bar the door!’

Blindly Roger crashed his way down the rickety stairs as though all the devils in hell were behind him. By the time he reached the second landing doors were opening on every side and heads poking out to see what all the commotion
was about. Mou-Mou’s cries, now mingled with the foulest abuse, had roused the house. The doors of the salon were flung aside and the ‘Widow Scarron’ came lumbering through it followed by half a score of her girls and patrons.

As Roger made to dive past her she grabbed him by the arm and with surprising strength jerked him towards her whilst screaming obscenities in his ear.

‘Let me go!’ he yelled. ‘Damn you! Let me go!’ and wrenching himself free he bounded towards the last flight of stairs.

‘Zadig!’ she shouted over his shoulder. ‘
En garde
! Don’t let him go until he has paid! A
louis
, and no less! Do you hear?’ And Roger saw that he now had to get past the big negro down in the hall.

For an instant he thought of drawing his sword and attempting to fight his way out into the street, but he realised at once that in such confined quarters he would have little space to use it. Zadig was half crouching there below him with a stout cudgel held ready in his hand, and with bitter fury Roger realised that unless he wanted a smashed pate he must pay up. Pulling forth his purse again he counted out eight
crowns
and thrust them into the hand of the negro.

‘And one for me, Monsieur,’ said Zadig, now grinning from ear to ear once more.

Hastily Roger paid the toll, and the big black unbarred the door.

Out in the street he gulped in the fresh air with indescribable relief; but he had not yet either felt or smelt the last results of his unpremeditated visit to this house of ill-fame. Mou-Mou, whom he had thought so kindhearted and of better instincts than her companions, was waiting for him at her attic window. Immediately he appeared in the street below, with a gutter-bred yell of derision, she emptied the contents of her chamber-pot out on to his head.

The main douche missed him by a couple of feet but he was splashed by the disgusting mess from head to foot and took to his heels with rage and hatred in his heart. The length of the sword proved his final undoing as he had covered only a hundred yards down the nearest side-turning when it got between his legs and sent him a cropper into the gutter.

Picking himself up with a curse he went on more slowly,
but his night’s adventures were far from over as, having walked the length of two short streets which he thought would bring him to the Arsenal, he then discovered that he was hopelessly lost and had not the faintest idea how to get back to
Les Trois Fleur-de-Lys
.

In those times the civic authorities had not yet taken upon themselves the responsibility for either maintaining a proper street-lighting system or for clearing away refuse. The only light came from dimly burning lanterns on occasional street corners or over the porches of the richer private houses, and most of the latter were extinguished when their inmates went to bed. At this hour long canyons of pitch blackness separated the widely-dispersed little pools of yellow light; so the midnight wayfarer had to grope his way from one to another, as best he could, through pavementless streets often so narrow as to permit the passage of one coach only at a time and all littered by the accumulation of household rubbish that had been thrown out into the gutters.

Few honest citizens ever ventured out at night, unless compelled to do so, and Roger knew that the only people he was likely to meet were drunken roisterers or lurking thieves, so it would be an added peril to show himself unnecessarily and there would be a certain risk in asking his way of anyone he might come upon.

The cool night air had at first refreshed him after the sickly heat of the brothel, but it now began to affect him unexpectedly, and he realised that owing to his having consumed the best part of a bottle of indifferent champagne he was now a little drunk.

Pulling himself together on the corner of the street which he had believed would bring him back to the Arsenal he decided that, although it had already been dark when he left the inn with De Roubec if he could regain the waterfront he should be able to find his way back. After trying two streets he came out on a quay and turned in what he believed to be the right direction. The faint sound of violins caught his ear and soon guided him back to the ‘Widow Scarron’s’. Giving the house a wide berth he continued onward but, having visited Monsieur Tricot’s gaming-rooms before going to the brothel had confused him in his bearings, so he was now actually walking away from the inn instead of towards it.

The docks and quays of Le Havre are very extensive so he went on quite confidently for some twenty minutes before he began to suspect that he had somehow gone wrong. Now and then he had heard footsteps in the distance or seen a lurking figure momentarily emerge from the shadows, but nobody had attempted to molest him as, in the gloom, with his long sword sticking out from under the skirts of his coat he had the appearance of a well-armed, if somewhat short, man. But now he felt that he simply must chance an encounter to find out where he was and, some five minutes la coming on a party of sailors belatedly returning to their ship, he hailed them in as gruff a voice as he could manage. To his relief, though hilariously tipsy, they proved friendly enough and gave him verbose directions how to find the
Bassin Vauban
.

At length, fairly sober again now, but tired and still seething with anger at his night’s misadventures, he recognised the sign of
Les Trois Fleur-de-Lys
. Then, with the cessation of his own footsteps as he paused before the door he heard others, and realised that someone must have been walking along behind him. Turning, he looked in the direction from which he had come and saw a lanky figure approaching. With a fresh wave of anger he recognised De Roubec, the author of all his troubles.

After a moment the Chevalier saw him too, and his greeting showed that he was in an equally ill humour. ‘So ’tis you, my little cock without spurs,’ he remarked acidly. ‘Methought that failing a mother to tuck you up in bed you would have gone to spend the night in a convent.’

‘What the devil d’you mean?’ Roger exclaimed, flushing hotly, although he knew perfectly well at what De Roubec was driving.

‘You know what I mean,’ declared the Chevalier, mouthing his words thickly. ‘And a fine return you made for my interest in you. Not only do you insult a poor girl and upset a well-conducted house to which I introduced you; but by going there as my friend and behaving as you did you put a shame upon me publicly.’

‘If you consider that thieving rabble a public worthy of consideration, God pity you,’ flared Roger.

‘So now you have the impudence to call in question the company I keep?’

‘Yes, when ’tis composed of whores, bawds and lechers. And what blame to me if, having no stomach for such scum. I choose to leave it?’ Roger was now speaking in mangled French and English but anger sent enough scarce-remembered French words to his tongue for his meaning to be clear.

‘Well enough, my little anchorite,’ came the swift retort, ‘But no gentleman occupies a wench’s time, then leaves his friend to pay for the dish he leaves untasted.’

‘I did no such thing. I gave the girl a guinea before I left her room, and that old bitch of a Madame made me disburse a further
louis
before they would let me out of the house.’

‘I find it difficult to believe that, since I am an old habitué of the place and they made me pay up on your behalf.’

‘D’you call me a liar?’

‘What of it, if I did? You are but a tom-tit dressed in the fine feathers of a peacock, and have not the guts to tumble a woman, let alone fight a man.’

‘I’ll not suffer being called a liar, though,’ Roger stormed. ‘I tell you I paid that trollop.’

‘And I tell you I did.’

‘Why should you have done so? ’Twas not your affair.’

‘’Tis you who are calling me a liar now,’ cried the Chevalier furiously. ‘If you carried that long sword of yours as anything but an ornament,
Corbleau
, I’d compel you to use it!’

‘’Tis not an ornament,’ yelled Roger, half-mad with rage.

‘In that case apologise or draw it, you ill-mannered brat!’

As De Roubec placed his hand upon the hilt of his own sword Roger’s impulse to continue the violent altercation suffered a sharp check. He felt certain that the Chevalier, like himself on leaving the brothel, was a little drunk, and that his own brain was still somewhat heated by the fumes of the bad wine. It was fair enough to maintain one’s own view-point in a heated argument, particularly when one felt oneself to be in the right, but very different to risk a sword-thrust through the body. De Roubec was a head taller than himself and, for all he knew, an expert swordsman; so,
although he was loath to retreat absolutely he was scared enough to attempt a postponement of the issue.

‘Hold!’ he exclaimed. ‘Take thought, I beg. We cannot fight like this. If one of us were killed the other would be taken for murder. If fight we must at least proceed like gentlemen and arrange a proper duel with seconds as witnesses, in the morning.’

‘Who spoke of a duel,’ sneered De Roubec. ‘I’ll not make myself the laughing stock of Le Havre by challenging a puppy such as you. As for killing, dismiss the thought. I mean but to cut your ears off and send them to Mou-Mou as a salve for her wounded pride. Come, draw, or I’ll slice them from your head as you stand there.’

Roger was aghast and realised that the Chevalier must be much drunker than he had at first thought him. Street brawls in which drunken rakes quarrelled and drew their swords upon one another without seconds, while staggering home in the small hours of the morning, were still quite common in all large cities; but De Roubec’s cause for offence seemed absurdly trivial and his proposal about sending Mou-Mou her recent visitor’s ears positively fantastic.

‘Stop!’ cried Roger, ‘you can’t be serious. You must be drunk to talk like this of making yourself the champion of a harlot!’

‘Drunk, am I?’ De Roubec roared. ‘We’ll soon see if I’m drunk or not. And if for naught else I’ll slit your ears to teach you manners.’ Upon which he lurched forward and wrenched his blade from its scabbard.

Roger was frightened now. An exciting bout with foils in the fencing school was one thing; to fight in deadly earnest with naked steel quite another. But there was no escape. Springing back a pace he drew his sword and threw himself on guard.

The blades came together with a clash and circling round each other shimmered in the moonlight. For a moment, with added apprehension, Roger felt that the unaccustomed length of his weapon would tell against him, but he suddenly realised that not only was the fine Toledo blade much more resilient and easier to wield than he supposed, but its length cancelled out the natural advantage that De Roubec would otherwise have had from his longer reach.

In a formal duel both of them would have spent a few cautious moments in getting the feel of the other’s steel
before going in to the attack; but the Chevalier was in no mood to waste time trifling with his young antagonist. Within a minute he had delivered three swift lunges and advancing with each strove to force down Roger’s guard by the sheer weight of his stronger arm.

Roger knew that if he allowed these tactics to continue he would never be able to stay the course. If he remained on the defensive his more powerful opponent would soon tire him out and have him at his mercy.

He was dead sober now and fighting skilfully. Almost to his amazement he found that he could hold his own, at least for a limited period, but he knew that he must attempt to end the fight before he felt the first signs of exhaustion.

How to do so was now his problem. They had twice circled round one another, their blades close-knit and flashing like living fire. Roger sidestepped twice in order to get the moon behind him and in the Chevalier’s eyes. He was almost as afraid of killing his antagonist, for fear of what might befall him later if he did, as of being killed himself; so he essayed a pass that the old Master-of-Arms at Sherborne had taught him.

With a sudden spring forward he ran his sword up De Roubec’s until the hilts met with a clash; he then gave a violent twist. The Chevalier let out a gasp of pain and his sword flew from his hand as the result of a half-sprained wrist.

It somersaulted through the air to fall with a clatter on the cobbles twenty feet away. As Roger had been taught that a disabled man might run after his weapon, pick it up and renew the fight, he dashed over to the fallen sword himself and put his foot upon it. Then, seeing that the Chevalier had made no move, he picked it up and walked slowly back.

De Roubec seemed momentarily stunned by his defeat and when he spoke his voice no longer carried any hint of the liquor he had consumed.

‘Monsieur Brook,’ he said soberly, ‘my service to you. Believe me I had no real intent to do you harm; but I was a little in wine, and a stupid impulse urged me to give a young man, whom I felt had been guilty of some rudeness towards me, a lesson. As it is I have been taught one myself.’