“Don’t try any tricks,” he said.
“We don’t understand what’s happening, monsieur,” said Angelo politely.
“Where have you come from and where are you going?”
“We are from Gap,” said the young woman, “and we are going home.”
The lieutenant stared at her for a long time. He appeared to be studying her from head to foot, but in reality one felt that he was on the watch for things taking place inside him. He was puffing like a horse over dirty water.
“He won’t last an hour,” thought Angelo.
“There’s no going home, madame,” said the lieutenant. “All traveling is forbidden. Those on the roads must go into quarantine.”
“It would be better to let us go home,” said the young woman softly but very gently.
“It is not for me to know what would be better,” said the lieutenant; “I don’t question orders.”
He wanted to make an impeccable about-turn, but he suddenly clutched his hand to his side.
“Eight men,” he said to the corporal, without turning his head. “Dupuis in charge. Two groups of four; one for the woman, one for the man, five paces apart. Take them to Vaumeilh. It is not for me to know what would be better,” he repeated, looking at Angelo.
He went back to a bed of straw that the soldiers had made for him in the doorway of a barn.
“Keep calm, messieurs-dames,” said Dupuis, a huge sergeant-major, redder than his dolman. “Don’t make things difficult for me. I admired your performance just now. Congratulations, little lady, you know how to place a nag ready to charge. You’re no young recruit and neither am I. All the more reason for us to see eye to eye. An hour from now the lieutenant’ll be far away and this place’ll be full of flies. Come along with Papa Dupuis. I’ll take you to the Hôtel du Roi d’Angleterre.”
He began to draw up his men.
“Try nothing without being sure,” said Angelo under his breath. “If you get a chance to escape alone, take it. I’ll keep them busy. Hide your pistols.”
“I could only hide one, they’re too big. But it’s done.”
A cart was turned round to make way for them and they left the rustic redoubt with their escort.
Angelo rode ahead, flanked by four dragoons. When the little troop began to trot, he felt a great pleasure at seeing the uniforms dancing by his side. They were trotting over a plain of lean fields on which all the crops had turned black, but the morning was gay, drenched in yellow sunlight, and clouds of larks could be heard even above the hammering of hoofs upon the road. This peaceful bird-song, these soldiers, these broad expanses over which the light rebounded, this trotting rhythm to whose cadence he had so often listened before giving an order—Angelo exulted in them all.
Dupuis shouted that they were going too fast in front.
“Got to keep going,” he said through his white mustaches, “but not going like this, my dear sir. And you four,” he added to the soldiers, “haven’t you seen that he’s the kind who can tie you in knots whenever he wants to? Can’t you see the way he sits his nag? In five minutes he’ll have you charging, if he goes on with it. Why was I saddled with these f—g fools?”
The road was approaching a hill, in any case. They dropped to a walk. They climbed through yellow heath land, wholly barren, dotted only, at wide intervals, with tall leafless poplars, so white that the light made them invisible, substituting for them sheaves of sparks. Against the mild sky the mountains enclosing the horizon on every side raised their crests, iridescent in the sun.
Angelo was astonished to see multitudes of butterflies dancing. The road was bordered with centaury and those yellow honey-scented flowers that curdle milk. Swarms of little blue butterflies, which normally only fly near pools of water, were whirling above the flowers, together with others, yellow, red and black, white ones spotted with red, and huge ones, almost as big as sparrows, with wings like the leaves of the ash tree. He saw that, on the heath, what he had taken until now for the shimmering of the morning air was the fluttering of a vast throng of butterflies over the ground.
He used the excuse of pointing this out to the young woman to see how she was doing, five or six paces behind him. He felt sure she wouldn’t try to escape in this open country, where anyone could pursue her or bring her down like a rabbit.
She was getting on very well and had started a conversation with her guards, who were playing the half-gallant.
“Amazing, eh, those filthy things?” said Dupuis. “You’ll see a lot more of them. There’s as many of those devils as there are flies. They eat human meat, pretty as they are. I wouldn’t advise you to lie down in the grass, even if it was allowed. You’d soon have them even in your mouth. And what they like best, the dirty bastards, is the eyes, as usual. What the hell have we got in our eyes that makes animals so greedy for them?”
At length, round a bend, they saw the five or six zigzags of road that still lay ahead of them, and the town of Vaumeilh itself. This crowned the whole summit of the high, yellow hill, facing them on this side with windowless ramparts of gray stone. It bore no more trace of foliage or trees than the eminence on which it stood. It was surmounted by an enormous square tower, flanked by two thinner and taller ones, all three battlemented.
As they approached, they came upon more and more butterflies. They had invaded and covered the road; they floated between the horses’ legs. Their colors, endlessly darting, tired the eyes, induced a kind of vertigo. They were soon mingled with swarms of blue flies and wasps, whose heavy humming urged sleep in spite of the morning.
The ramparts of Vaumeilh plunged down to wide moats, which the little troop crossed by an earth causeway. On each side, in the depths warmed by the sun, the butterflies and flies were so numerous that their flight rose and fell like the flames of a vast brazier. Angelo saw that these whirlwinds were rising from piles of jackets, dresses, sheets, eiderdowns, blankets, quilts, pillows, pallets, and mattresses thrown down at the foot of the walls.
They entered the town through a gate that breathed out a fearful stench. The cavalcade immediately set up a loud clatter on the cobbles, but the street remained deserted. All the houses were hermetically shut; some of them had their shutters barred with nailed-up planks.
After riding down a narrow street, crossing a square on which wide stairways converged, passing through alleys where the smell was abominable, and circling around a solitary fountain in a street of old and noble houses, they entered upon a ramp rising under arched vaults.
Through the openings pierced at long intervals to light this covered way, Angelo saw that they were mounting above the roofs of this treeless town, built all of stone (even the roofs of the houses were made of flat stones); without smoke, without a sound, except that of the horses’ hoofs.
They came out onto a vast esplanade of dazzling whiteness, before the gate of a fortress. It was the square tower they had seen from the road. From here they looked out over the vast undulating circle of the mountains.
“You’ll be in fresh air,” said Dupuis.
They all dismounted in an inner courtyard of extraordinary bareness.
Angelo managed to approach the young woman and say: “Patience, I’m not asleep. We shan’t stay here long.”
The gate was shut behind them; the four walls rose to more than ninety feet and had no windows except at a level with the eaves.
“You’ve been angels,” said Dupuis. “There are those who put on airs, or cry, or offer money (which I accept) for a drink. By the way, you’d make yourself popular if you stood a few liters of wine to these good soldiers. They lead a dog’s life.”
“I’m not seeking to make myself popular,” said Angelo. “We’ve followed you here without any fuss. Now you’ll have to justify your way of proceeding. I am waiting.”
“Well, my dear sir, you’ll wait for quite a time. Exactly forty days, if all goes well. That’s the ruling. This way out.”
He took them through a low doorway. They went down a lo
ng, somber corridor. The sergeant-major knocked at a window.
“Two, sir,” he said.
“Hand them over to the sisters with the rest,” said a voice.
“In file, right turn.”
They turned into another corridor as long as the first, but lit by barred windows giving onto a courtyard down below. This courtyard stood on a terrace, for beyond and over the wall scarcely three feet high could be seen the stone roofs of the little deserted town.
“I suppose,” said Angelo carelessly, “they haven’t already ransacked our baggage.”
“It’s within the bounds of possibility.”
“Because I’m prepared to give a silver crown to the man who could get this lady’s case and my own restored to me.”
“With the saddlebags?”
“Let’s say that, with the saddlebags, which contain only cooking utensils, I’ll go up to eight francs.”
“I knew you were a good fellow,” said Dupuis. “I’ve got one vice: I can’t bring myself to steal. I have too weak a stomach. I get a lot of legacies, certainly, but stealing’s not in my nature. That won’t stop me from being your sole heir if things take the usual turn. Go up to ten francs and wait a couple of minutes, for I think I shall have to look sharp.”
“I’ve only got eight francs,” said Angelo. “You’ll find the rest in my legacy, but hurry up.
“I’ve been counting,” he told the young woman as soon as they were alone. “There are twenty-four of them. The lieutenant out there has the dry cholera and won’t live through the day; let’s hope he brings luck to two or three of his men; that form of the plague spreads quickly in dirty bodies. This platoon is the worst disciplined I’ve ever seen. It has nothing to do but trap civilians, yet it smells of rotten leather as if it were on campaign. At the outside I shall have seven or eight on my hands this evening, including some who’ll be scared silly, not of me but of sudden death. Now take a look at these corridors! I can maneuver so as never to have to face more than two at a time.”
“I forbid you to fight like this,” said the young woman gravely.
The cheeks of her thin, pointed face were pink with a certain confusion. Her lips were trembling. She was about to continue when a soft voice beside them said: “Why should he want to fight?”
It was a nun who had come up silently. Short and dumpy, she resembled a capable housewife with her long black sleeves rolled up to show dimpled, blood-red arms.
“He’s a child, Mother,” said the young woman, making a quick curtsy.
Angelo was still marveling at that suddenly troubled face and those trembling lips.
“She is very beautiful,” he said to himself.
The place where that face had been on fire remained as a white spot in his memory.
Dupuis arrived with the baggage. It did not seem to have been touched.
Angelo drew the huge sergeant-major into a window recess.
“Here are ten francs,” he said, “and I’m going to give you something more precious than money. The officer who arrested us out there in the valley is dead by now. And I know why. You’re clever enough to realize that civilians too sometimes know what’s what. He’s died of a very vicious sort of cholera they call dry cholera, which bowls them over like ninepins. Now, I have a remedy. I’m not asking you to take my word for it. Just wait till the patrol comes back. If I’m right, he won’t be the only one to kick the bucket. In that case, come and see me, I’ll give you something to protect you.”
To himself he said: “It’s impossible for a cavalryman, who’s had a taste of power and got such pleasure out of being in command just now on the road, full in the sun, not to be frightened of dying between four walls, especially such high ones. And I took him by the arm. That’s the way to make him think.”
He was pleased to observe that he intrigued this apoplectic man, awkward in his humors, this bureaucrat of the horse, and had even driven out of him the desire to laugh.
Angelo was just beginning to find that this prison had a most agreeable complexion and allowed one to live royally, when he noticed that the nun was feeling, with signs of the most sordid satisfaction, the folds of a little cashmere shawl that the young woman wore knotted round her neck. He was shocked by this effrontery, this undisguised greed, and gently but firmly he pulled away the scullery-maid hand.
“You seem very sure of yourself,” said this peasant woman who had given herself to God, “but we’ve seen others and it’s better we should be frank from the start. I’ve seen you put your hand in your pocket; you’ll have to do it again. We are a little sisterhood who have accepted martyrdom. But not for your sweet sake. Here board and lodging are paid for cash down and in advance. The ways of the Lord are impenetrable. All men are mortal and many are dying these days. We can’t afford to be left with food on our hands. We have our poor. Your bill for the moment is six francs, and you’d be wise to pay me at once if you want soup for your lunch. You will also sign for me, both of you, a paper so that, in case of death, we can dispose of your things, at our own risk. Your natural heirs might make trouble, and we shall no doubt be obliged to burn everything that belongs to you.”
Luckily Angelo found this speech immensely comic. He had the sense to feign great consternation and even slight cowardice. He paid with a certain studied munificence.
The nun led them to the end of the corridor, opened a grill, and made them pass through a vast, echoing, but dark hall, then other rooms lit by borrowed light. All this seemed designed for mortification and prayer. On the utter bareness of the walls the body of Christ, in wood, was crucified. In the shadowy corners tall upright chairs and stalls could also be seen. Finally, there was everywhere the glacial cold and the smell of worm-eaten wood characteristic of mountain convents.
As long as quarantine had been a town or village affair, run by local people who needed to devote themselves to something in order to keep sane, barns and outhouses had been used. Sometimes camps had even been set up under trees or in meadows. Everyone escaped: either by violence or by bribery. The guards made an income wandering around with old shotguns.
Then it was decided that the cholera must be blocked up. The patrols of bourgeois, artisans, and peasants were proving insufficient to police the roads. Travelers were tending more and more to impose their way of looking at things, pistol in hand. When the government took charge, it appealed to the authority of the prefects and their garrisons. The soldiers had their uniforms and an evident need to fire into the general confusion and twirl their sabers. They had been told that they must sacrifice themselves, which would not have been enough to give them a real interest in the business, but it was more amusing to dash about the roads than to stay in the barracks, where death was moreover very easy and very frequent. Fresh air always passes for a panacea; movement changed their outlook. It was, besides, extremely comforting to arrest people at odds of twenty to one, and to see that you caused fear, when you were frightened yourself.
The small towns possessing hospitals or leper houses crammed the travelers into them. Elsewhere church schools, convents, seminaries, sometimes even churches, were pressed into use. The Vaumeilh quarantine was installed in the château, a former commandery of the Templars bequeathed at the turn of the century by Baron Charles-Albert Bon de Vaumeilh to a small sisterhood of Presentines. It harbored eleven humble women from the farms round about, who had exchanged kitchens and annual childbirth for the rule of a master who wore no velvet breeches and left them in peace seven days out of seven.
After passing through more than twenty small arched doorways that bored their way through the thickness of the walls, then under high vaults that lost themselves in shadow, and close by steep stairways without handrails, cut in saw-tooth pattern in worn stone, leading to galleries, cells stuck under the roof like nests, balustrades beyond which shone the dusty rays of a yellow daylight, Angelo and the young woman were led to a grille through which the nun made them pass, closing it behind them.
They were in a stair
well that might have held a schooner in full sail.
“There you are in your new home,” said the little fat nun from the other side of the grille, before departing.
Angelo said: “One would only have to tear off her coif and a little of her hair, box her soundly on both ears, and then take her bunch of keys, to turn her straightaway into a properly submissive country servant who’d reply ‘Yes, madame, yes, monsieur,’ to everything one said and might even prove devoted. But in that case, she’d be scared of everything, and just now of the cholera. Her teeth would be chattering. I don’t think you should make mountains of these soldiers, either. They’ll simply cave in before anyone who’s got hold of the right end of the stick.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ve been watching you examining the width of the doors, counting your paces and noting landmarks. They couldn’t have picked a more exciting quarantine for you. You are bound to escape.”
“Of course,” said Angelo. “From now on, our hands are free. I don’t intend to waste any time. I know what we’re going to find here, and hell isn’t very mannerly. I no longer need to take care of everybody.”
While he was hiding their baggage in a dark corner he said some bitter things about the “little Frenchman” and his hopeless efforts with the dying.
“The only thing that counts is to get you out of this. Have you a good place to carry your pistols?”
“The best place is in my hands.”
“They’ll tire you out; besides you’ll have to take along something to load them with. I’ve got mine in my pockets, but we ought to have a bag for the powder boxes, bullets, caps, your tea, the kettle, and some sugar. We don’t know if we’ll be able to get the horses back. At all events, when our escape’s well under way, I’ll tip the rest of the baggage out of a window, and if we’ve time we’ll go and look for it. But here inside this seemingly vast place let’s cling to our weapons. They’re our viaticum.”
He made a sort of haversack out of the saddlebags and managed to fasten it on his back without much trouble. He took the little saber in his hand, and they began to mount the staircase, which seemed to lead toward bright light.