A Slight Revision
June 17th, 1815, early evening to June 18th, early morning
Young Smith stared in perplexed fascination at the small, thin back that nearly pressed into his chest. The skin on this back was slightly yellowish, sickly-tinted and pulled taut over a knobby, protruding backbone. He skimmed his hand lightly in the air over the ribcage where with each breath, the skin pulled tight and then released over the clearly visible ribs. Smith pulled his hand back, but feared to shift too much in the small cot and disturb the sleeper.
His caution had not been enough, as the sleeping figure stirred and turned, and slowly opened one eye. The other eye followed suit. Smith smiled, and ran his hand down the chest which bristled with dark hair in startling contrast to the pale skin. The thick hair continued down the hollow stomach, and lower. "I must go soon," Smith's bedpartner said in rough French, scrubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw. "It would not do for me to be found here."
"You will not," replied Smith in his best remembered tutored French, and shifted slightly to lean over and kiss the rough cheek, while his hand continued its descent down the trail of hair. The other man's mouth turned upwards into a slightly feral smile as he returned the kiss on the plump, youthful lips.
"Now, now, my little one. Are you sure you wish to do that? You should sleep," the small yellow man said, running one hand through the boyish Englishman's riot of long, dark hair. The young man bumped his head against the hand like a puppy, and pulled himself closer, throwing an aristocratically pale arm over the other man's chest. His head pillowed on the other man's bony shoulder, Smith continued teasing his lover, amused by how he could rouse this strangely fascinating yellow creature.
He had tried many times to figure out what it was about the man that was appealing. In all honesty, he wasn't really sure that there was anything all that enticing about him. The possibility of being caught in bed with another man was not a particularly wise thing to risk for a young officer, although surely not unheard of in this godforsaken wartime. But being caught in bed with a Frenchman was not something that even the most understanding superior would overlook as a wartime aberration.
And it wasn't even as if the small yellow man was that attractive or skillful. He seemed to know a bit about many things, but to execute them all badly. As a young, pampered and indulged member of the upper class, Smith had had much more practiced lovers of both sexes, and certainly ones that were far more physically attractive. Perhaps it was the risk of being caught, not only the danger of being discovered, but the sense that behind those jaundiced-looking eyes was a plot, a game to be figured out. Yes, there was something exhilarating in the danger, the young man thought, something exciting in pretending helplessness and excessive boyishness before this ruthless yellow man who also pretended, to some unknown end.
"Must we sleep?" the Englishman asked quietly. "There will be battle tomorrow, and I could use comforting."
"Comforting?" chortled the other man, his eyes going dark with unknowable thoughts. "Have you not had enough this night?" He ran his rough hands down the nearly hairless chest of the younger man, feeling the Englishman tremble next to him. His callused hands traced over Smith, rendering him nearly wordless beyond a murmur for more. As he continued, the lean yellow man strove to tease words out of his lover with the same pretense of skill, as the boy's already low sense of caution abandoned him in the danger of the moment.
When at last the demands of the young English officer were met and Smith lay sleeping, the yellow man eased carefully out of the cot. Comforting before tomorrow, eh? Any fool could see that something was happening tomorrow, but to earn his keep, he would have to learn more than that. The boy's mumblings had not been helpful this time; something more substantial was needed. He quietly made his way to the small camp desk, and rustled through the papers.
His English was negligible, but several of the sheets in his hands gave the impression of being more important than others. The question was, was the game played out? Should he take the papers with him in the hope that whatever they contained would be worth alienating the boy past redemption? Was what was coming tomorrow so big that he did not need the boy any further? He did not have much time to decide.
With one glance at the young figure slumbering in the cot, a glance perhaps not entirely filled with disdain, the yellow man quietly slipped on his clothes, peered furtively outside the tent, and, seeing the way was clear, padded silently outside the English camp perimeter. His other appointment of the night was waiting.
It was a French tent to which he made his way while the dark of night still reigned, this time to enter by the front of the tent. "Message for the Captain," the man said to the sentry in his best official tone, and stepped inside. The serious-faced young man sitting in the tent looked up from his folding desk.
"You have returned." The tone was neutral.
"Was there doubt?" said the yellow man, his voice carefully respectful. His senses told him to be especially careful with this one on this night.
"A question you can answer better than I," replied the young man, brushing his curly hair off his forehead and standing abruptly. His long sleeping gown hung off his shoulders, making him look far more vulnerable than the cautious light in his large, dark eyes would indicate.
The yellow man knew that the next few minutes must be managed with delicacy. With an artist's love of the difficult subject, he measured and savored each moment. He moved forward slowly. "You must trust me, Georges," he said, putting his hand lightly on the captain's shoulder. The younger man didn't back away. He extended the forefinger of his other hand and trailed it down the young man's jaw, down the jawline, and continued until he cupped the back of the captain's head. The dark, curly head trembled under his touch, but did not flinch away. But just before their lips touched, the captain broke away.
"Do not use my first name." There was an unpleasant pause. "What have you found for me?" The question was slightly breathless, the yellow man noted with interest.
But perhaps this was not ultimately important. The yellow man shrugged and pushed away the memory of this pale, distant, beautiful boy beneath him, his disciplined and frightfully pure young military mind struggling to stay calm and detached but failing as his body responded to the older man's rough ministrations. A delicate line had been walked on a path that had never been revisited. How the small man had carefully navigated to a point where the young officer could not turn back, to a place where stopping was as incriminating as continuing, was a memory that titilated him even now. Breaking this one had been quite unforgettable, and its place in his memory was cemented by the fact that it had never been repeated.
As much as he relished the memory and the thought of it becoming reality once more, his quick feral mind knew that now was not the time to press the issue, and his young English friend had met any immediate carnal desires; that youth's puppydog playfulness was a wholly different and perhaps not as satisfying experience as it was so cheaply won, but it would have to do. And that was not the only thing the English officer had provided, of course. The small man smiled in a way he thought was calming, although his yellowish teeth were far from charming, and carefully pulled the sheets he had taken from the young Englishman out of his shirt.
"A gift, for you," he said, extending the crumpled pages, as his other hand deftly accepted the metallic flow of a small pile of coins. He contemplated seizing the pale hand which distributed the coins in his own, but knew this wouldn't be wise.
"Leave me," the young officer said abruptly, his face troubled. The yellow man bowed slightly, perhaps regretfully, and edged out of the tent. His last glimpse of the interior of the tent was dominated by the beautiful and worried face of the captain. As the flap of the tent swung shut, he jangled the coins in his palm and grinned. More lasting than any affair, especially a tenuous wartime affair where the game was who used who and for what end, and all bets were off once the madness ended. The yellow man left well-satisfied with this night's bounty, knowing he could adjust to any situation with a little money and his boundless artistry to ease the way.
One thing he was sure of was that these coins might well save him, especially if there was to be a large action tomorrow. Even more indifferent a warrior than he was a lover, with the same feral sense of self-preservation, he wanted no part of battle until it was over. With careful grace, he slipped past the area where he should have bunked with his countrymen, and disappeared into the fading night.
******
June 18th, 1815, evening
It only remains to describe the final meeting between these two men, the yellow man and the young French captain. The yellow man's animal senses had not betrayed him, for indeed a massive and definitive battle had been waged in his carefully orchestrated absence.
Dead or maimed, or just smarting from betrayal, he knew both wartime liaisons were probably damaged beyond their innate worth or his desire to risk and to repair. He actually had little doubt that the pretty young English fool had charged out to die with honor, but if not, he did not wish to find out in person. The boy could go back to England and play his games there, if he had survived. Just one little service to the dead of both sides, and it was time to move on.
The small man picked his way through the carnage left after the rage of battle. Carefully he ferreted through this immense grave, without reverence or remorse. His shoes soon filled with blood, and they sloshed unpleasantly. In front of him, the moonlight highlighted a pale hand emerging from a pile of ghastly dead. Beyond the refined nature of the hand, the glint of a gold ring drew his attention, and he smoothly slid the ring off the finger. An unpleasant smile lit up his face as he noted the style of the ring, and then secreted it on his person.
Like some jackal or hyena, he crouched by this grisly pile of dead, peering about for larger predators. Seeing and hearing none, he turned away, but found his progress impeded. The pale hand had seized him. While another man might have been frightened, the yellow man grinned and began pushing amongst the bodies to drag the body attached to the pale hand out of the pile.
It was an officer of some rank, his face disfigured by a violent sabre cut. Blood encrusted his closed eyes. The yellow man's lips peeled back again in his imitation of a grin, as he pocketed the Legion of Honor cross, watch, and all the other items of worth from this injured young man. He brushed the blood-matted curls back out of the damaged face, and felt one small twinge of remorse that the beautiful features were now marred.
It came to pass that the boy stirred, and spoke. The yellow man could not resist. He conversed with the boy for awhile, sheltered in the shadow of the pile of dead, reasonably certain that the blood coating the young officer's face and the pain of the injury would muddy the captain's mind and obscure the yellow man's identity from him. But soon he knew this macabre and strangely wonderful exchange must end, as the heavy tread of the patrol came ever closer.
"Somebody is coming," the small man said, making a furtive motion to go. The officer, raising himself up painfully on one arm, prevented him from going, his eyes dull with pain but frantic with purpose.
"You have saved my life. Who are you?"
The yellow man smiled an enigmatic smile with only a trace of amusement. "I belong, like yourself, to the French Army. I must go. If I am taken, I will be shot. I have saved your life. Help yourself now."
"What is your grade?" asked the young officer, desperate to see things right and orderly in this bloody chaos.
"Sergeant," exaggerated the lean man.
"What is your name?"
The yellow man paused a moment, then said his true name. Since he had registered under a false one, this roll of the dice might prove his most profitable yet, or come to nothing at all. How he would play it if the young man ever found him to repay him was a riddle for another day, and chances were, the boy would not survive.
"I shall not forget that name," said the officer. "And you, remember mine. My name is Pontmercy."
The yellow man nodded, and then slipped off into the darkness. No, he would not forget that name, he reflected, for any number of reasons. His crafty but limited brain twisted around the current situation with a certain amount of glee, then dropped it in favor of the immediate goal of evading the patrol.
The young officer weakly closed his eyes and feigned death for the patrol, no hard task with the dead around him, their pale faces made even paler by the cold light of the moon. In his heart he thanked the man who had saved his life, a man by a name he would remember and pass on to his son if need be, in the hope of one day rewarding him.
The name was, of course, Thenardier.
June 17th, 1815, early evening to June 18th, early morning
Young Smith stared in perplexed fascination at the small, thin back that nearly pressed into his chest. The skin on this back was slightly yellowish, sickly-tinted and pulled taut over a knobby, protruding backbone. He skimmed his hand lightly in the air over the ribcage where with each breath, the skin pulled tight and then released over the clearly visible ribs. Smith pulled his hand back, but feared to shift too much in the small cot and disturb the sleeper.
His caution had not been enough, as the sleeping figure stirred and turned, and slowly opened one eye. The other eye followed suit. Smith smiled, and ran his hand down the chest which bristled with dark hair in startling contrast to the pale skin. The thick hair continued down the hollow stomach, and lower. "I must go soon," Smith's bedpartner said in rough French, scrubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw. "It would not do for me to be found here."
"You will not," replied Smith in his best remembered tutored French, and shifted slightly to lean over and kiss the rough cheek, while his hand continued its descent down the trail of hair. The other man's mouth turned upwards into a slightly feral smile as he returned the kiss on the plump, youthful lips.
"Now, now, my little one. Are you sure you wish to do that? You should sleep," the small yellow man said, running one hand through the boyish Englishman's riot of long, dark hair. The young man bumped his head against the hand like a puppy, and pulled himself closer, throwing an aristocratically pale arm over the other man's chest. His head pillowed on the other man's bony shoulder, Smith continued teasing his lover, amused by how he could rouse this strangely fascinating yellow creature.
He had tried many times to figure out what it was about the man that was appealing. In all honesty, he wasn't really sure that there was anything all that enticing about him. The possibility of being caught in bed with another man was not a particularly wise thing to risk for a young officer, although surely not unheard of in this godforsaken wartime. But being caught in bed with a Frenchman was not something that even the most understanding superior would overlook as a wartime aberration.
And it wasn't even as if the small yellow man was that attractive or skillful. He seemed to know a bit about many things, but to execute them all badly. As a young, pampered and indulged member of the upper class, Smith had had much more practiced lovers of both sexes, and certainly ones that were far more physically attractive. Perhaps it was the risk of being caught, not only the danger of being discovered, but the sense that behind those jaundiced-looking eyes was a plot, a game to be figured out. Yes, there was something exhilarating in the danger, the young man thought, something exciting in pretending helplessness and excessive boyishness before this ruthless yellow man who also pretended, to some unknown end.
"Must we sleep?" the Englishman asked quietly. "There will be battle tomorrow, and I could use comforting."
"Comforting?" chortled the other man, his eyes going dark with unknowable thoughts. "Have you not had enough this night?" He ran his rough hands down the nearly hairless chest of the younger man, feeling the Englishman tremble next to him. His callused hands traced over Smith, rendering him nearly wordless beyond a murmur for more. As he continued, the lean yellow man strove to tease words out of his lover with the same pretense of skill, as the boy's already low sense of caution abandoned him in the danger of the moment.
When at last the demands of the young English officer were met and Smith lay sleeping, the yellow man eased carefully out of the cot. Comforting before tomorrow, eh? Any fool could see that something was happening tomorrow, but to earn his keep, he would have to learn more than that. The boy's mumblings had not been helpful this time; something more substantial was needed. He quietly made his way to the small camp desk, and rustled through the papers.
His English was negligible, but several of the sheets in his hands gave the impression of being more important than others. The question was, was the game played out? Should he take the papers with him in the hope that whatever they contained would be worth alienating the boy past redemption? Was what was coming tomorrow so big that he did not need the boy any further? He did not have much time to decide.
With one glance at the young figure slumbering in the cot, a glance perhaps not entirely filled with disdain, the yellow man quietly slipped on his clothes, peered furtively outside the tent, and, seeing the way was clear, padded silently outside the English camp perimeter. His other appointment of the night was waiting.
It was a French tent to which he made his way while the dark of night still reigned, this time to enter by the front of the tent. "Message for the Captain," the man said to the sentry in his best official tone, and stepped inside. The serious-faced young man sitting in the tent looked up from his folding desk.
"You have returned." The tone was neutral.
"Was there doubt?" said the yellow man, his voice carefully respectful. His senses told him to be especially careful with this one on this night.
"A question you can answer better than I," replied the young man, brushing his curly hair off his forehead and standing abruptly. His long sleeping gown hung off his shoulders, making him look far more vulnerable than the cautious light in his large, dark eyes would indicate.
The yellow man knew that the next few minutes must be managed with delicacy. With an artist's love of the difficult subject, he measured and savored each moment. He moved forward slowly. "You must trust me, Georges," he said, putting his hand lightly on the captain's shoulder. The younger man didn't back away. He extended the forefinger of his other hand and trailed it down the young man's jaw, down the jawline, and continued until he cupped the back of the captain's head. The dark, curly head trembled under his touch, but did not flinch away. But just before their lips touched, the captain broke away.
"Do not use my first name." There was an unpleasant pause. "What have you found for me?" The question was slightly breathless, the yellow man noted with interest.
But perhaps this was not ultimately important. The yellow man shrugged and pushed away the memory of this pale, distant, beautiful boy beneath him, his disciplined and frightfully pure young military mind struggling to stay calm and detached but failing as his body responded to the older man's rough ministrations. A delicate line had been walked on a path that had never been revisited. How the small man had carefully navigated to a point where the young officer could not turn back, to a place where stopping was as incriminating as continuing, was a memory that titilated him even now. Breaking this one had been quite unforgettable, and its place in his memory was cemented by the fact that it had never been repeated.
As much as he relished the memory and the thought of it becoming reality once more, his quick feral mind knew that now was not the time to press the issue, and his young English friend had met any immediate carnal desires; that youth's puppydog playfulness was a wholly different and perhaps not as satisfying experience as it was so cheaply won, but it would have to do. And that was not the only thing the English officer had provided, of course. The small man smiled in a way he thought was calming, although his yellowish teeth were far from charming, and carefully pulled the sheets he had taken from the young Englishman out of his shirt.
"A gift, for you," he said, extending the crumpled pages, as his other hand deftly accepted the metallic flow of a small pile of coins. He contemplated seizing the pale hand which distributed the coins in his own, but knew this wouldn't be wise.
"Leave me," the young officer said abruptly, his face troubled. The yellow man bowed slightly, perhaps regretfully, and edged out of the tent. His last glimpse of the interior of the tent was dominated by the beautiful and worried face of the captain. As the flap of the tent swung shut, he jangled the coins in his palm and grinned. More lasting than any affair, especially a tenuous wartime affair where the game was who used who and for what end, and all bets were off once the madness ended. The yellow man left well-satisfied with this night's bounty, knowing he could adjust to any situation with a little money and his boundless artistry to ease the way.
One thing he was sure of was that these coins might well save him, especially if there was to be a large action tomorrow. Even more indifferent a warrior than he was a lover, with the same feral sense of self-preservation, he wanted no part of battle until it was over. With careful grace, he slipped past the area where he should have bunked with his countrymen, and disappeared into the fading night.
******
June 18th, 1815, evening
It only remains to describe the final meeting between these two men, the yellow man and the young French captain. The yellow man's animal senses had not betrayed him, for indeed a massive and definitive battle had been waged in his carefully orchestrated absence.
Dead or maimed, or just smarting from betrayal, he knew both wartime liaisons were probably damaged beyond their innate worth or his desire to risk and to repair. He actually had little doubt that the pretty young English fool had charged out to die with honor, but if not, he did not wish to find out in person. The boy could go back to England and play his games there, if he had survived. Just one little service to the dead of both sides, and it was time to move on.
The small man picked his way through the carnage left after the rage of battle. Carefully he ferreted through this immense grave, without reverence or remorse. His shoes soon filled with blood, and they sloshed unpleasantly. In front of him, the moonlight highlighted a pale hand emerging from a pile of ghastly dead. Beyond the refined nature of the hand, the glint of a gold ring drew his attention, and he smoothly slid the ring off the finger. An unpleasant smile lit up his face as he noted the style of the ring, and then secreted it on his person.
Like some jackal or hyena, he crouched by this grisly pile of dead, peering about for larger predators. Seeing and hearing none, he turned away, but found his progress impeded. The pale hand had seized him. While another man might have been frightened, the yellow man grinned and began pushing amongst the bodies to drag the body attached to the pale hand out of the pile.
It was an officer of some rank, his face disfigured by a violent sabre cut. Blood encrusted his closed eyes. The yellow man's lips peeled back again in his imitation of a grin, as he pocketed the Legion of Honor cross, watch, and all the other items of worth from this injured young man. He brushed the blood-matted curls back out of the damaged face, and felt one small twinge of remorse that the beautiful features were now marred.
It came to pass that the boy stirred, and spoke. The yellow man could not resist. He conversed with the boy for awhile, sheltered in the shadow of the pile of dead, reasonably certain that the blood coating the young officer's face and the pain of the injury would muddy the captain's mind and obscure the yellow man's identity from him. But soon he knew this macabre and strangely wonderful exchange must end, as the heavy tread of the patrol came ever closer.
"Somebody is coming," the small man said, making a furtive motion to go. The officer, raising himself up painfully on one arm, prevented him from going, his eyes dull with pain but frantic with purpose.
"You have saved my life. Who are you?"
The yellow man smiled an enigmatic smile with only a trace of amusement. "I belong, like yourself, to the French Army. I must go. If I am taken, I will be shot. I have saved your life. Help yourself now."
"What is your grade?" asked the young officer, desperate to see things right and orderly in this bloody chaos.
"Sergeant," exaggerated the lean man.
"What is your name?"
The yellow man paused a moment, then said his true name. Since he had registered under a false one, this roll of the dice might prove his most profitable yet, or come to nothing at all. How he would play it if the young man ever found him to repay him was a riddle for another day, and chances were, the boy would not survive.
"I shall not forget that name," said the officer. "And you, remember mine. My name is Pontmercy."
The yellow man nodded, and then slipped off into the darkness. No, he would not forget that name, he reflected, for any number of reasons. His crafty but limited brain twisted around the current situation with a certain amount of glee, then dropped it in favor of the immediate goal of evading the patrol.
The young officer weakly closed his eyes and feigned death for the patrol, no hard task with the dead around him, their pale faces made even paler by the cold light of the moon. In his heart he thanked the man who had saved his life, a man by a name he would remember and pass on to his son if need be, in the hope of one day rewarding him.
The name was, of course, Thenardier.