Alaric Longward - Cantiniére Tales) Read online

  Georges Danton, wiping his hand around the hall grunted with deep displeasure. ‘Of course, some soldiers would join, but the king is looking to his bloodied foreign soldiers, and they don’t care about our fine ideas, only king’s filthy coin, which he does not even have, does he? Some nobles have left the country and are recruiting men outside. We need to move soon, and we need to be brave. Mirabeau is our tame noble only so long as he has not made a better deal, I know, but for now, he is who everyone looks at. If he succeeds, we can ride in his long coat tails. We need each other. Getting rabble to rise without Mirabeau and that idiot Lafayette will get the useless rabble shot. Besides, we need money to organize this rabble, but they cannot afford to pay any themselves. It is…’

  ‘Mirabeau,’ the smaller man interrupted, speaking like to an errant child, ‘thinks he does not need us. You know he hates the radical clubs. They prefer to keep a harmless king, and keep the masses silent and brooding, little caring for their simple needs. I say he must go; you think we can use him. I am right.’

  Danton smirked at him. ‘To tame a king, one needs the masses, and Mirabeau will learn to trust us, when he sees the masses as a useful tool. If not, it will be hard to dispose of him. It is no job a one man can achieve and few would dare to conspire against him. We need unity and all to stand stoically together, risking their necks if we should try something like that. It would be very hard, and I don’t know of a way to do such a deed without getting caught. And it would take so much money to replace him, should he die, anyway. Why do you hate him so? You wrote to his newspaper, glorifying him. His ugly bust is at our club. You would have sucked his small pecker had he asked you to. Perhaps you did?’ Georges laughed raucously. ‘All we need is money, friend and…’

  Camille let his temper out; he got up and pointed a finger at Danton. ‘I do not like pecker.’

  Georges Danton burst out laughing. ‘Such a statement can only come from a personal experience, no?’

  Camille twitched in anger and swallowed visibly, collecting himself. When Georges was wiping tears of mirth, finally silent, Camille continued. ‘And what about La France Libre? Eh? My latest work? They will not publish it; the bastards because I think the monarchy should be stuffed down to a shitter. Mirabeau is no longer my…’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said carefully and they turned, in alarm.

  ‘Yes,’ Camille said, looking at me incredulously. ‘What is it child?

  I went to my knees next to their table, cursing the filthy floor. ‘Excuse me sirs, but there is a man beating on mother, a terrible relative of ours who raped her and now he has her, and my baby siblings prisoners there in our room, our very home. He is drunk beyond reason, and he will hurt them, I’m sure.’

  They eyed me uncertainly. ‘Who are you child?’ Danton asked after a while, leaning over me. His brutal face scared me, but he smiled to put me at ease. He did not succeed, for he looked like one of the leering gorgons at Notre Dame.

  ‘Jeanette Baxa, my father was a journeyman to Colbert Baxa.’

  Camille’s eyes narrowed. ‘Guild master? I know of him.’

  I nodded and clasped onto his hand like an eagle to an unsuspecting hare. He flinched. ‘We need help. No police will come, you know this. I came here to see a soldier, and to get a pistol. But there are no soldiers here.’

  Georges Danton smiled, snickered nastily but went silent suddenly, brooding and contemplating the issue. Camille looked uncertain, nodding, gathering courage, patting my hand and I eased my clutch on his. ‘Guild master, aye?’ he asked. ‘Men who print what the king wishes?’ When nervous, Camille was in the habit of tearing at his cravat and he did so now.

  I nodded. ‘Colbert and Adam, both who misuse my mother called your kind the rabble, for they are immoral, and get richer while we eat only few mouthfuls of bread, their family.’

  Danton narrowed his eyes. ‘Child, we need no inflammatory speeches; we make them. But they raped her? He a rich man?’

  I nodded, ashamed at the foiled attempt to rile them up with a sorry tale. But they had asked about money, and Colbert had that, so I changed tact. ‘He has money, they say.’

  ‘Did he touch you,’ Camille asked me, growling at Georges who had mixed the topic of money into something he saw as a just cause, soiling both men.

  I shrugged. ‘Not me, no, but my father left, and my mother, they…’

  Camille got up, cursing, his face red. ‘It is time to start doing…’

  Georges pulled him down. ‘No reason for us to show our few cards so early. You want to get arrested and molested, eh? You always get like this when you are drunk, and you get drunk too easily. One day it will get you killed.’ He turned to me, and flipped his heavy jacket open. Two pistols were on his belt, simple, brass enforced, and heavy.

  ‘If I give them to you, will you return them to me? The convent? Where we meet and live?’ Georges asked with suspicion, arching his eyebrows as if to coax the right answer out of me.

  I nodded, licking my suddenly dry lips. I held out my hands for the guns to save my family, and he laughed. ‘You will really do this?’

  I kept my hands raised towards him. I eyed the tools of death, wondering how they felt. Could I even fire one? Camille gestured at me, in a rage. ‘She needs help. You know this!’ The waitress behind me was mumbling reluctant agreement.

  ‘What will you pay with, girl?’ he asked and I cursed him in my head.

  ‘With my gratitude. And eternal admiration,’ I told him and saw his savage face light up with brief satisfaction. I decided it was not enough, and so I reluctantly pulled out the watch. He looked at it in surprise.

  ‘He does not need a payment…’ Camille started, but Georges took it nonetheless, greed evident on his meaty face and I hoped we would find the money to travel, without the watch, if we survived.

  He eyed the fine gilt and silver of the watch, and finally spoke. ‘Very well.’ Camille opened his mouth again to refute him, so did the girl working in the tavern, but Georges silenced them with a furious look, and nodding approvingly, pulled the guns out. ‘Two shots, love. I am defenseless tonight, so I also am taking a risk.’ I said nothing. I kissed his dirty hands, and took the heavy guns, nearly dropping them. He smiled. ‘Cock them. Heavy, no? Yes, that, pull it back. Not now! When you wish to use them. Very hard to do. Perhaps I will do it for you after all. Not sure you have the strength to pull the trigger, but perhaps you don’t have to.’

  ‘I want to, sir,’ I told him evenly as he cocked them for me, and gave them back. I took them gingerly. No matter what he was, I would always be grateful for him for what he did for me that night.

  He put his face near mine. He was ugly but so strong, rugged and confident. I felt some of that flow into me. He poked my belly. ‘You want to, eh? Very well. Aim with both hands. It will kick, and you will fall, but aim there. Don’t let them get wet! The priming must not get wet.’ I nodded, and ran out followed by many stares and I heard the waitress and Camille harangue Georges, who was laughing heartily. He took our watch, but I did not care, for I thought about selling the pistols, should we survive.

  It was raining outside, and I hid the guns under my dress, terrified they would fire. Then, when the rain intensified, I was terrified they would not. I saw our hazy house, and forced myself to go forward with reluctant steps. I got in to the forlorn hallway and pulled the pistols out. I was shaking in indecision and started up the stairs, avoiding the steps I knew would creak. There was nobody around, nothing in sight. The door to my great uncles apartment was open, and I saw fireplace roaring. There were plush carpets and gilded ornaments framing bookshelves, velvet draperies and curtains silky and long. I hated him, the man I thought I knew, and Adam too. Up the stairs I went, slowly. Adam’s door was closed and his wife no longer sang the sad song. I came up to our door. Inside, the twins were talking their gibberish. I recognized Julie saying, ‘Mama.’

  I pushed the door open, and what I saw made my blood turn to ice.

  Adam was t
aking mother from behind. I had, of course heard of lovemaking, and even coarser, less meaningful sex, for who did not know and joke about it? But I had never seen such a thing. I had spied mother and father occasionally engaged in something suspicious that left them happy and exhausted, but now she was bent over the bed, her face suffering and shamed and Adam’s angry face was near her ear as he was pushing and pulling his bony hips tiredly against her bare buttocks, grotesquely panting and drooling on her shoulder, his hands groping at her breasts. Her eyes were closed in silent suffering; she had no clothes, her hands and legs were tightly tied and she had a gag in her mouth. Colbert was standing next to them on his shirtsleeves, wearing nothing below, no culottes, his fat, ugly ass naked, leaning on the bed, fondling himself, muttering something. The twins were playing, blissfully unaware of the activity next to them, and I briefly admired mother who was visibly struggling to keep quiet, for them. The sight was ghoulish, terrifying, primal in an ugly way, as Adam was venting his loss and rage on my family. I went to my knee, placed one gun on the floor and grabbed the other one with two trembling hands.

  Jean called my name. ‘eanet.’

  Colbert smiled at him approvingly. ‘Jeanette will be home soon, then she will talk quickly and honestly, or suffer like your bitch of a mother, and God is watching for it is just and right to punish killers.’ Adam laughed, out of breath, still jerking and pushing at mother. I stepped closer, but I forgot in the terror of the impending confrontation a creaky floorboard and they all looked at me. Mother’s eyes were pleading, Adam got up, his erect cock hanging loose, and I aimed, my hand not trembling in the least, and pulled the trigger.

  It was hard, it was very hard, and my meager strength was not equal to the task, but Adam’s face turning from fear to a leer gave me what I needed. The sound was so loud; I flew back, and hit my head on the doorway. I begged to God I had not hit mother or the babes, and animal-like fear gnawed at me as there was a baby shrieking, howling and shrieking as I struggled to get up. Then I saw it was not a baby shrieking, but Adam, who held his lower belly, his face white, the wig askew in his head. Mother was struggling to get up, but Colbert, looking aghast at the dying man, pushed her down.

  I grasped the other pistol, and now my hand was shaking. Colbert eyed me, truly shocked and scared. ‘How could you? We are relatives!’ I screamed at him in tears. The twins were staring at us; their eyes open wide, sniffling.

  He shrugged uncertainly as he saw Adam go white, with barely a twitch in his leg. Blood was leaking profusely on to the floor. Colbert turned to me, hiding his nudity with his old hands. He scowled as he eyed the gun, concern playing on his face, and I swear he tried to tug in his belly. He gathered himself, and took a scholarly note. ‘Your father, he was a nothing, Jeanette, and his nothingness, in the eyes of God, condemned you all to servitude. What kind of servitude would one expect? Cleaning? Your mother, she is a willful, beautiful woman, so it was only natural, dear. Make no mistake; no man would pass such an opportunity. Now, you are going to jail, Jeanette. For this murder, for Gilbert, no doubt. Put the pistol away, it has gone too far.’

  No man would pass on such an opportunity, he said? ‘No! You will join him, and then you can print books for the devil!’ I yelled, and tried to pull the trigger, but it was then, when Madame Fourier in her nasty corpulence somehow sneaked up on me, and took the gun away and slapped me down. She eyed me malevolently.

  ‘Shooting him, you fool girl, will make me homeless, and devoid of a man and business partner,’ she said, as she walked next to Colbert, who, relieved, kissed her hand gently. I had never understood they were sleeping with each other, and evidently, Colbert’s appetites for other women did not bother her over much. I did not understand any of it, for I dreamt of princes and true love, though I did not know what that meant, other than what the books had taught me. They were fine stories in those pages and the ballad singers and poets told of similar, wondrous things, but I had heard no terrifying stories of things like this nightmare, and I was so confused, my will to fight them stretched and broken by the terrible demons looking down at me, and I cried bitterly, in terror. I moved for my mother, but Madame Fourier gestured at me with a pistol and I stopped hesitantly, sobbing. ‘What shall we do with her?’ she asked Colbert. ‘And the useless babies?’

  He shrugged, tired. ‘I will need to sell the useless business now, nobody left in the family.’ Adam stopped shivering on the floor. ‘We have to get rid of them, and find other pleasures in this world.’

  ‘You fancy the small one?’ She asked, gesturing at me lazily, smiling evilly, and I felt all-encompassing fear gnaw at me, as the old man glanced my way. He had always patted my head gently when I passed, and I never thought he had other motives than affection. His eyes sought mine, and likely read what I thought about.

  He shook his head, apparently the demon inside him exhausted by the losses he had endured. ‘No, I do not. It’s Jeanette, after all, and it is just a mess, a horrid mess worth crying over. I will not have her, but I will not let her go, and will hire some very insensitive men to take care of them. I know some, many, in fact,’ he muttered. ‘Make her immobile, then fetch some money from the cache, if you can move it, and hire that butcher’s gang,’ he said casually and pointed at me. I stiffened in fear, considering bolting for the door, but I was dizzy and Madame Fourier was coming quickly, her stiff silk dress swishing as her face had a curious look of perverse pleasure at the violence she was about to engage in. She lifted the brutal pistol, and meant to smack me with it, mother screamed muffled denial and Colbert sighed as he picked up his pants, and glanced out of the window. ‘Nobody seems to care, loves. Very good.’

  He was wrong.

  A shadow moved from the doorway, as Georges Danton pushed in. He swung a heavy baton at the surprised Madame Fourier, whose face caved in an eye blink, and she fell like a heavy tree trunk. Georges was grinning savagely as he winked at me, softening his face, but he blanched at the sights in the room, and then got truly angry at the disturbing sight of my sweet siblings looking at the whole scene. ‘You were not lying, were you Jeanette. Now, that is the printer?’

  ‘I am a master in the Book Guild of Paris, you hoodlum, how dare you…’ Colbert started, but Danton carefully walked towards him, and swiftly picked up the gun from the trembling, dying hand of Madame Fourier. Then he shot my great granduncle in the gaping, surprised mouth. The man suffocated to death, his heels thrumming the floor. While he died, I went to mother, and began to tear at her tight bonds, ignoring the twins who were both staring at the corpses and Danton, who was smiling viciously. He came to help me, and when we tore Henriette free, she spat the gag off her mouth. Danton threw her torn clothes next to her.

  She pulled them on, hastily, hugged me, eyeing the large man in alarm. ‘I am very proud of you Jeanette. Very proud.’ She grimaced in pain, doubled over and threw up.

  Danton grinned. ‘I want to do that too. What a mess. I will do it later. But your mother has a point. I hope my children will grow up to be as brave. Madame, she took the pistols as if they were simple sweets and came here, swift like an avenging angel Gabriel and I lost her, cursing, for I meant to help her after all. I managed to find the house by asking around and in the nick of time, as well! So, what are your plans now?’ I saw him eyeing Colbert’s corpulent body. He was after coin.

  Mother shrugged, and took the twins on her lap, dazed by the evening. ‘I will rob his apartment, and run.’

  He laughed, and gazed at her, moving a stray hair from her lip, and she trembled in fear. ‘They will find you. You look lovely, beautiful as a rose given by a lover, though these are not the words you want to hear in a situation like this, no. But I think you are also looking a bit ill. I think it is best you come to the safe convent, and play my cousin for a few days, relax, and rest.’

  She considered it, tears in her eye. ‘I have relatives in Lyons, and…’

  Danton slapped his thigh. ‘Very well. After I have robbed your relatives, we will th
ink how to help you best. Did they have wives, other children?’ He sounded hopeful.

  Mother nodded. ‘Adam, the dirt sack there has a wife. Sara. Next floor.’

  Danton nodded as he eyed the disgusting nude corpse of Adam. ‘Small penis, he has. I think she will be happy to be a widow and find a bigger one.’

  ‘I killed their son,’ I said weakly. ‘He was… It was an accident,’ I lied.

  He cursed, and began to load his guns, resolve and regret playing on his ugly face. ‘Let us hope she is gone. I will see how to deal with it. Now, go to the convent, and ask for sweet Camille.’ We packed our few things, as Danton knocked resolutely on the door one story down.

  We were at the street, when we heard a shot.

  Uncannily, few neighbors came to see what the shooting was about. Some poked their careful head out of the windows, but many knew Georges Danton, most loved him, we would find out. We did too, most of the time, despite him being a bloody murderer and a horrible schemer of a first class.

  Florian came out and saw me, and ran after me, confused. I stopped mother and turned, and he raised his arm, wondering what had happened, his face slack with surprise, and I ran to embrace him fiercely. Mother waited, impatiently.

  ‘Are you my friend, Florian?’ I asked miserably. ‘I love you as one,’ I added.

  ‘I am, of course,’ the gaunt boy said, totally at loss. ‘Where are you going? What was the shooting about?’

  ‘We are going away and we might not see you again. I killed Gilbert, Florian.’

  He stood there, his face astonished, and I cried as I hugged him once more and left him there. He was crying as well, bitter, child-like tears.