Chapter 1 of the story
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Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story
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Chapter 1
The noise was savage, overwhelming. It filled the darkness with a bronze throated roaring, a deep, continuing clamouring of bells. The night shook with it; the balcony under her feet vibrated, the tall, open windows beside her, the thick walls of the house, as if they were trying to ring in answer. Wave on wave of sound like a storm. A dozen of individual voices in the uproar and then one peal lifting high above the others for a moment, a high wilderness of ringing; now one, now another and another; far away, near to, across the river, and again almost beside her so that the rooftops shivered. Every church in Ishe sounding the alarm, gone mad with warning. Out to the distant hills and back again. Wild, deafening, making her blood sing with excitement of it, as if the heart of Ishe was singing the wildness of the Revolution. And under the clamour of the bells and drumming. Deep and throbbing, beating the assembly, drumming, drumming, drumming like blood, thick and dense. Far away, but calling, calling 'Come, come, march with us! Ca ira ca ira! Beat of blood.'
She felt dizzy with the storm and throbbing of the noise, and had to grip the edge of the balcony to keep herself steady. Leaning over it, leaning in the dark, into the waves of sounds as if they could support her by themselves, like the force of gale. Shadows hurried in the street below, along the dark, narrow channel of the chateau. A man keeping close to the wall beneath her balcony, his head bent as if he was afraid of being recognised. The glisten of steel, two soldiers, the ring of nailed boots in an instant of almost silence, and then the bells drowning out their footsteps, seeming to drive them on like shadows on the wind.
"Messieurs! What's happening, what is it?"
But they did not hear her, or did not bother to answer woman's stupid question in such a time. Lights in the house opposite, candles, lamps lit, behind the dark curtains. The silhouettes of people moving, as if they were hurriedly dressing, against what ever the emergency. War? Invasion? She leaned out further still and looked towards Loretta's balcony. Surely she must be also awake. Even she could not have slept through this? But her window was dark and shuttered. Was she too frightened to open it?
Adele went back into her room and knocked at the connecting door. "Loretta? Are you awake? Lifting her candlestick to see better. How could anyone sleep in this atmosphere? She could feel the sweat start on her. "Loretta!"
Her cousin's eyes opening with heavy sleep, then widening, alarmed. "What is that noise? The bells?"
"That is what I mean to find out. I'm going to call Papa. I came in to see whether you were alright?"
Loretta reached out to her, gripped her wrist. "Don't go! What is it? Where is Ester? Ester! Are they going to kill us?"
"Don't be silly. No one is going to hurt you. It is only an invasion, the war has begun, something like that. I'm going down to the street to ask someone."
"No! Adele are you mad?" Lifting herself from her nest of goose feathered cushions and pink, blue and ivory satin, her hair falling like spilled honey on her shoulders; the scents of warmth, sleep and her luxurious bed. She was blessed or cursed with the soft youngness and cream white flesh and womanhood seeming to pulse out of her, so that Adele wanted to shake her, her own puritanism, her own almost masculinity revolted but her, as if she herself was a young man looking at a temptress. She had to run quickly away; pull the curtains open, and the shutters, and the tall imported windows that opened like doors onto the balcony. The noise of the bells that had been muffled and yet loud enough came flooding in like thunder, and Loretta gave a small scream of terror, burying herself among the cushions and the silk sheets and the eiderdown. "Ester! Adele, for pity's sake! What is it? Are they down below?"
"It must be the Mixerians. Do you hear the drums? They're calling the army to defend Ishe! Ca ira ca ira! That is what they sing! Can you hear it?"
"Ester!"
From the other door appeared a slim oriental young lady with long black hair, her eyes dark blue, pulling the belt of her nightgown round her waist, knotting it. Kneeling down by her mistress, putting her arm around her. "Ma cocotte! Little sweet one, don't be afraid, Lalitte is here, Ester is here, I'll look after you."
"Make her shut the windows. Make her."
"Madame, please Madame Adele. Madame Adele please my mistress is frightened." Gently but firmly she took the handles of the windows from her mistress' cousin and pushed the two casements shut. Then the shutters and curtains, until by comparison there was almost quietness. The storm shut out. Loretta was crying, allowing the tears to fall like crystal drops. Ester dried them with her fingertips, whispered in Creole so that what she said was incomprehensible to Adele. Her fingertips golden against the white velvet of Loretta's skin, the honey gold of her hair, smoothing, comforting, cosseting; a head with its long silk strands like delicate vines, which were almost hidden under a red silk cap, red satin nightgown tied at the waist. As if the two of them were making a picture deliberately, white, gold and yellow scarlet. And the scent, and the stifling heat of the room, like a blood beat of sensuality; and the cushions, and the curtains, white muslin and dark velvet; and the clothes scattered and heaped and piled on the chairs, sofas, and even the end of Loretta's bed. Silk chemises, satin gowns, scarves, ribbons, sticking, bodices, all heaped and thrown where the two of them must have spent ours the night before they went to bed trying on new clothes in front of the cheval glass.
I could strike them both, Adele thought, and wanted to catch hold of Ester and pull her upright and make her do something, even though there was nothing to so. And at least she was keeping her mistress quiet.
"I'm going to call Papa," she said. "And then I shall go and find out some news."
But her father was already awake, and half dressed, trying to put on his boots, this thin grey hair and his shirt was still unbuttoned. Adele instantly looked away so that her father could finish buttoning the rest of his shirt.
"What a damnable uproar. Can they do nothing quietly? What is it Adele, What are they on about now?"
"I don't know Papa. I'm going down to find someone to ask. Do you ear the drums? I think it must be an invasion. What a sight you're, I'd best brush your hair before you let anyone see you."
But she could not wait to do it and was at the door again before her father called after her, "You are in your nightgown, child! What would your mother say? Put something on."
But it was not a time for thinking about clothes. She ran through the anteroom that served them for a hall and opened the doors to the first floor where Madame de Martinique lived in a welter of cats and clocks and the remembrances of her husband, the general. There was not a sign of life from her or her servant, not a glimmer of light. Down the main stairs to the entrance hall. She had the chain unfastened and the bolts drawn back before she heard the knocking.
The man's hand was still raised to knock again as she swung back one of the heavy leaves of the great wooden doors. The shadow shape of a tall man in a riding cloak which had a hood, Adele could see just a few strands of blood red hair coming out at odd angles under the hood. A tall, taller than herself, his fist still raised as though he was about to strike her. She stepped back by instinct, and caught her breath.
"Do not be frightened, Madame. I have a message for his house, for someone here. May I come inside?"
"I'm not frightened. Who is your message for?" And then as he came in still hesitating, perhaps in the natural fear of frightening a woman at such a time of night, or morning, and such a morning it was. She said, "What is happening? Why are they ringing the bells? And the drums? Is it war? Have the Mixerians invaded?
"No Madame. It is the people. Have you any light?" He had closed the door behind them and they were in total darkness of the hall. He was no longer even a shadow. The bells themselves muffled again by the closed door. Growing quieter still for a few moments as the nearest churches stopped for breath or exhaustion, the sounds now coming from afar. The surging nearer and nearer, filling the street outside, beating against the doors.
"What do you mean? The people?" At such an extra ordinary time it seemed quite ordinary to talk to a stranger in the dark of the hall in her nightgown.
"They're marching against the King, Madame. They're tired of him, even of a King who does nothing." He sounded as though he was grinding the words between his teeth. But whether his position was with the people or the King it was impossible to tell.
"But I'm pressed for time," he said. "Otherwise I should not have-and I saw your light. Are you Madame Baltimore perhaps?"
"I'm Miss Baltimore. How do you know my name? And who is your message for? Who sent you?"
"If your father is above, may we go up to him and I shall answer everything." He took her arm without waiting for her agreement and began to guide her up the broad stairs as if he could see in the dark. He had begun to speak in Talmish as soon as she had told him who she was. Not at all a commoner's stumbling and mangled Talmish, and yet not a citizen of Talmond. A strange accent that she recognised but couldn't put her finger on it.
"Who are you?"
"Wait Madame." Hurrying her is grasping of her arm more powerful than polite. She tried to free herself but he held her without effort, without seeming aware that she wanted him to let go of her. On the landing above her father was waiting with a lit candle, his hair still on end, none of his clothes laced or buttoned as though should be, one of his boots in his other hand, the candlestick raised up.
"Adele? Adele? Is that you child? Fetch that damned rogue of a valet down to me. He cant be asleep in all this racket, devil take him. Kevin! And get your girl up to make us tea. What? Who's that? What in blazes? Who the devil is this fellow?"
"Inside if you please. Mr Baltimore? I have a message for you. From the Count Dominic de Martinique, two in fact." He brought both of them inside the apartment, closing the doors again behind him. He took out a folded and sealed paper from inside his cloak. Indoors he seemed even taller. A man of thirst or so a pale lean face carved out by candlelight in strong shadows of cheekbone, nose and jaw. He looked at Adele and bowed. Not an elegant, court bow of this who still used it, nor a servant's bow, but a stiff bob of the head as if it was a waste of time to be got over quickly.
"You had questions for me? Who I am doesn't matter. I'm just a simple messenger, nothing else. I know your name from the Count." He did not say 'the Count, my master.'
"As for the bells and drums, I told you the people are marching. They are tired of having a King."
There was something, in fact a great deal, about his manner that she did not like. Her father had turned away to a table in the small anteroom to read his letter and Adele became conscious of her nightgown, and the man's eyed looking her up and down.
"You called me Madame, not citizeness. You're not in favour of the people of Aserythe? She said.
He didn't take it as an insult, or a challenge, or even look surprised at such a remark from a foreigner. Instead, and to her surprise, he seemed to take the question seriously. He was stripping off his long riding gauntlets. His hands were slightly tanned like his face but it still was quite pale. He gripped his long jaw between a thumb and forefinger rasping at the night's stubble of beard there. "Not of these people," He said at last.
Mr Baltimore turned round, waving the letter in his fist. "Impossible! Nonsense! Forgive me sir but I have not yet thanked you. Thank you, Thank you but this is utter foolishness - Adele, the Count says in this that we are to return to Talmond! Good grief man, we just got here! Did he so much as read the letters that I've business, my niece's business, her inheritance, estates. I must see to them for her, in times like these more urgently than ever. Go back to Talmond? And without delay, he says! Does he think that I'm a madman to come all this way, leaving my home, wife and my niece's parents and put up with all we have gone through these last past weeks just to go home again? 'Without delay.' Is he mad?"
He had taken the messenger's arm in his hysteria. The man detached Mr Baltimore's hand as if he was dealing with a child.
"If you'll listen to me, sir. I have not much time to spare. I'm to add to the letter .If you could leave Ishe today, so much the better. Tomorrow may be too late. The Count wrote that more than a week ago. I've been delayed in reaching you and every day that has gone strengthens the arguments for your leaving."
"I've no intention--"
"Sir, you may do as you wish, but you must first listen. You have your daughter and your niece with you. Things may soon happen here, very soon happen, that will put every family like you're in danger."
"Preposterous! Who the blazes are you or that damned old ninny of a Count to tell me what I must do? Where the devil is my fellow? Adele, fetch him down, the rascal, and that girl of yours. The deuce knows what they are at, you had best not go yourself, and I will go. No send up Loretta's creature, let her frighten them. What was I saying?" He begun to brush his hair with the letter, making an odd crackling sound against the background thundering and pealing that had grown so constant that Adele had almost put it from her mind. Then... silence. The rasp and rattle of the stiff folds of paper in Mr Baltimore's plump white hand. A clock ticking. All three of them listening, holding themselves still, a hush of quietness.
"You see?" Mr Baltimore said, "They've stopped it at last. After waking the entire city and ruining my sleep, they've stopped. Like this whole rubbish revolution. I tell you sir, you haven't told me your name, but if you're the Count's messenger I assume that you share his feelings. I don't like any of it, its nonsense. I came here full of sympathy, I believe in Liberty, in Constitutions. Privilege is a damnable immoral thing, I was prepared to see good here, to find you all talking fine, sensible roads towards the sort of government we have in Talmond. But this, ringing bells, running out to the streets, shouting at your king, invading the palace and demolishing everything in the way is monstrous. By heaven sir they'll go nowhere like that, and you let them, the filth! If I had your king's ear for five minutes I'd tell him what he should do."
"Let me shake your and on that," the messenger said, his voice and expression calm.
"There are a great many of us who share your feelings exactly but the answer is simple that you think. There is going to be a deal of blood spilled before there is another king. It is all likely to begin today, that is why you should go home without delay. Is there a window we can go to for a moment?"
They went into Mr Baltimore's room and stood side by side on the balcony. Dawn had com turning the sky a blood red and at first they could only hear the silence. Like emptiness, as if the sky and city had been emptied and drained by a storm. Within the quietness, sounds beginning to make themselves heard, to fill the immensity of silence was a murmuring indistinct formless like the sea.
"They have begun," the stranger said. "They're marching against the King"
Adele leaned out above the street as she had done an hour ago listening. She imagined she could hear the rhythm of their marching and drums. Ca ira Ca ira. It began to beat within the rhythm of her heart beat, pulse with her blood.
"I think it is wonderful," she said, "A whole crowd marching united against tyranny; God grant they win!" she looked sideways to see how the stranger would answer her but he was gone. After a moment the door opened and shut below her and she saw his tall shadow striding away down the dark channel of the building.
"Such damned nonsense," her father said, and she couldn't tell for a moment whether he was referring to her opinions or the messenger's. "Marching against their King indeed! Even this poor fellow wont sand for that twice. I think we should take a stroll across to see this palace. We'll go after breakfast and see what happens when these wretches come up against the elite guard and see a few drawn weapons. I'll wager you that they'll march pretty fast in the opposite direction. Have seen my valet? My tea? Kevin damn you, are you there, bring my razors. Ha telling us to go home without delay! Did you ever hear such rubbish? That fellow must be an imbecile."
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Even now at half past six in the morning the crowds in the street across the city, into the garden of the Taleries (name of palace). All making their way in the same direction towards the palace. Poor people for the most part workmen, tradesmen from their shops, butchers with bloody aprons wielding cleavers, market women with baskets, some of them with red bonnets. Shop boys and apprentices, women in bright rags with painted cheeks and haggard mouths were also amongst the crowd.
It wasn't a pleasant crowd to be amongst and she needed all her energy of mind to tell her that she was glad to be jostled by them, and stared at in that brutally offensive way they all had of looking at a stranger.
"I'm with you!" She wanted to cry out to them. "In my heart!"
They knew no better, they were scarcely a year freed from slavery, from the brute beast oppression, and how should they have manners and know any better to behave like gentlemen and ladies of Talmond. Heaven knew that a Menos crowd was almost as bad, worse even more violent, more unpredictable, and more drunken and without a glimmer of an ideal of freedom to excuse hits violence.
"We've come as your friends?" she wanted to cry to a woman in a sacking apron with hell in her face and a knotted club sloped across her shoulder like a soldier's musket. "Stare as much as you were doing citizeness. That is your freedom; you have won the right to stare."
But the woman stank like a drain and Adele had to cling to her father's arm to prevent him fending her away from them with his cane. "Ca ira! Liberty!" The woman spat, measuring Adele with her eyes, her tallness, her cleanliness, the gloss of her air under her hat brim; as if all those things were an insult. They measured Mr Baltimore from the high waves of the grey hair to the shine on his boots, his gold chains and satin waistcoat.
"How they stink!" Mr Baltimore said in his customary loud voice, making no concessions to Aserythe or the Aserythian language. "Get away from us you rascal, how dare you push in front of me like that?" He lifted hi cane in threat against a carpenter with sawdust in his fair hair. Astonishing enough the man did back away from them and lost himself in the crowd among the trees.
"Papa! They can't help the way they smell and you'll get us in trouble if you-"
"Trouble? What trouble? I shall need to change my shirt when we get back. I'm filthy with them as it is, get away from me Madame, haven't you seen a gentleman before. What am I saying, of course not?"
"Papa, papa be quiet! Someone may understand us. You wanted to come out and here we are. You even wanted to come the long way around didn't you and I'm so glad. I wouldn't miss this for anything in the world."
"The devil take them soap is cheap enough. Where is Loretta and that girl of hers? If these creatures want to stare let them stare at her."
Adele turned and looked; even in that crowd and they had fallen far behind she could see them at once. Loretta's honey gold hair shone like the sun, with ribbons. Their heads bobbed up and down in the wave of people and Adele caught sight easily.
"Oh heaven's sake. Papa! They're miles behind us. I must go back. Why on earth did we bring her? Certainly she didn't want to come, not even get up on her own. Only the fear of Mr Baltimore and being lifted almost bodily out of bed by Adele had made her do it.
"She'll be terrified!" Adele said, and began cleaving her way back against the crowd like a powerful swimmer against a strong tide.
"Let me by, let me by please." She towered above most of them by a head or more and swept the last barrier of ragged starers surrounding her cousin and Ester. Don't cry, there's nothing to be scared of but I told you not to dress like this. No wonder why they are staring at you." Blue silk and chiffon, like she was going to meet with the royal court or have her portrait painted and Ester was as bad, in a scarlet redingote.
"She sets me off," Loretta said, as though it suited the occasion, "Do you want her to go naked just because her background is not like ours? Am I a monster that I should dress her properly?"
"Come on! Papa will be furious with you, we shall miss everything."
"I want to miss it. I want to go home, please Adele, and please take me back to the house. Let me lie down, I feel faint."
"You don't, how can you not be excited? Such a day, listen to the crowd outside the palace, listen to their chanting!"
They couldn't make out the words but it was like birds warbling in the early hours of the morning. A deep throbbing, and then a high voice alone as if a street singer was leading a chorus. They reached Mr Baltimore against, standing with his back to a tree.
"Loretta, don't dawdle so you're making us late!"
"My head hurts with pain, oh uncle may I go back to bed?"
"Stuff and nonsense there's no such thing as a headache, it's all imagination, vapours. Take three deep breaths and it will go away. Now out of my way you scoundrel, what are you looking at? Make way for the ladies sir." If the mad didn't understand the words he understood the fierce expression of Mr Baltimore's huge blue eyes and stout pink shaven cheeks and silted away from him like dirt before soap.
"These people should work," Mr Baltimore said, "What do they mean by flocking about the place like this?"
"But this is what we have come to see papa. These people are the revolution, they are the new Aserythe."
"If they are, then it is going to be a damnable dirty future here. Hold my arm Loretta...hold it, I say, take a grip of me and you girl, mind your mistress's whatnot before one of these villains makes off with it." Pointing his stick to Loretta's indispensable, that Ester was dangling negligently on her wrist by a coloured string. "Hold it properly; don't swing it about like that. Dear heaven I shall tell Whitmore to his face that he is mad. What are they shouting Adele?"
There were at the railings of the palace by now, those of the crowd who were closest were shaking the bars screaming, "Down with tyranny, down with the dirty pig! Down with Monsieur Veto!" More of the crowd flowing round to the place behind the palace. The press so thick here that it was impossible to move except as the people surged and flowed. Stench of dirt, stale wine, sweat and filthy rags. Unshaven faces, women with lice infested hair and blackened teeth in savage mouths, screaming insults in the blank windows and the balconies, the empty courtyards. Soldiers drawn up on the steps, more soldiers on the roof top, at the parapets. The white coats of the regulars, and the red of the Aenslad, and the navy blue of the elite guards.
They had come to a kind of haven beside one of the massive gate pillars, sheltered there by Mr Baltimore's bulk and his free use of his cane. "Get away from us damned you, give these ladies air, can't you see what you are doing, blast your eyes?" Fending off men, women, a hag with a basket of fish that even in that crowd stank astonishingly and who seemed determined to push her way in beside Loretta.
"Get off with you Madame and your horrible basket."
"Look at him!" the woman screamed suddenly. "Dirty aristocrat pig! And his fancy girls, look at 'em, some of the King's friends come out to jeer us!"
People began to turn towards them making a circle.
"Three of the Queen's whore women! Here, friends, let's teach 'em a lesson, strip them naked, an' one of 'em's yellow like sickness. Here's a good fish to begin with!" She had her fist deep in her basket, pulled out a slithering, limp handful of bloody silver, and hurled it at Loretta. It struck her on the breast and fell, and Loretta opened her mouth in a pitiful scream of horror, staring down at her ruined silk, at the thing lying at her feet. Adele leapt forward before her father could move and seize hold of the woman's basket, taking it out of her hands like a toy.
"Citizeness," she cried. "We're here as your friends, and are you going to treat us like this? Look there is enemy, in there!" She lifted the basket effortlessly and threw it over the mass like a declaration of war on the courtyard. "Ca ira ca ira!" Adele cried, "Liberty, fraternity."
The woman stared open mouthed as if the sight of Adele, her height, size, foreign handsomeness, the suddenness of the attack and the casual strength of flinging a loaded basket over a ten foot railing had taken ask power of speech from her. Before she could recover it a man better dressed that most of the crowd, tall and stooping, had gripped the woman's shoulder and swing her around towards him. He bent down and shouted something in her ear, pushing her deeper in the mass of people by the gate as if he had given her orders. Another stampede of the crowd pressed him almost in Adele's arms.
"You're foreigners?" he said. He steadied himself with one hand against some stonework. "You have not chosen a good day dor sightseeing." Even shouting at the top of this voice his tone carried a sneer in it. His eyes muddy brown and red rimmed, close and deep set, is nose kind of squashed at the tip above his large mouth of pointed teeth. Ugly as he was he carried a gun like a club as if he was in charge. His coat was black and he wore knee breeches and buckled shoes and stockings.
"We're not sightseeing," Adele said, raising her own voice, while her father was shouting into her ear. "What's the fellow saying? What a damned ugly face and big ego. Ask him what's happening."
But before Adele could answer, the man was torn away from them, the stooped, black shoulders, tricorn hat, powdered hair tied in a queue, seeming to be lifted up for a moment by the mob like a black flag and then vanishing into its heart again but purposefully as if the man had things to do there. For a second Adele had the feeling that the crowd was not what the thought it was, a great ill kept and unwashed ideal of Liberty surging up from the gutters as flowers grow on rocks but something else and horrible, the man in black with his pointed teeth, sneer, close set eyes was a representation of it.
There was no time to think, she was elbowed in the chest, her breast throbbing for a moment. Someone else trod on her foot, her father's cane was kicked nearly knocking him over and she had to grip his arm to prevent him getting sucked into the whirlpool of the crowd around the gate. Loretta clung to her who in her turn was wailing about her skirts, dress, and the violence and weeping with terror.
The chanting of the mob lifted again becoming a howl of expectation. Voices yelled, "The King! The King! He's coming out! Kill the pig, kill the pig!" An organised tone said as loud as the bells. Under the shouting the trample of marching feet, ring of steel. Adele twisted herself round. She could see through the railings and over Loretta's head a column of the Elite guard making their way to the gate beside her. Men were running ahead to open it. Military shouting, orders and a clashing of iron and the chanting died let isolated shout of hatred jeers of 'Where's the Mixerian, where's the whore? Down with the Veto."
The crowd staggered as the gates swung back and me with fixed bayonets made steel huge, a laneway for their comrades and the King. The column marched through the open gateway; Adele forced herself forward using her elbows and her height and strength until she was in the front of the crowd. He father appeared beside her still trying to best his hat back into shape, shouting at the top of his voice, "The villain I'd break his neck for this."
She could see the King himself now walking uncertainly among a dozen of gentlemen of the court. All of them in the hallow space between the lines of the Elite guards, the King in his velvet coat and white silk breeches, his dazzle of jewels like a mockery of his somehow thin figure and his heavy face at once florid and haggard and his eyes peering about as it he was short sighted or could not understand what was happening or why. A thin man in black obsequious and yet triumphant beside him seemed to guide him along. Behind them came half a dozen ladies and two children clinging to the hands of one of them. A girl of twelve or so and a small light green haired boy in velvet clothes and a frilled white shirt kicking up the leaves as he walked. Adele could see him between the marching guards. A little boy of eight or nine tugging at his mother's hand
What that the Dauphin? The woman bent down to him, her face white and her eyes red from crying. Adele was so close she could almost lean over the barrier and touch the boy and his mother. The woman looked up and met the green of Adele's eyes with her own lime coloured then straighten herself with a habitual arrogance. The Queen, the Queen of Aserythe, the Mixerian. Julia Andre de Richeau. Her eyes re rimmed a slight flush mounting into the pallor of her face as if something in Adele's stare had angered her. Perhaps to see a gentlewoman looking at her humiliation was harder to support than the jeers of the crowd.
There were not so many jeers now so a quietness and tenseness spread a stillness of one the wasp swarm murmuring and surging. The trample of the soldier then the grinding of nailed boots on grave and an officer's shouted command.
"What's happening, where are they going Adele? Was that the King?" Mr Baltimore nudging Adele and then tapping a young officer in front of them on his shoulder. "What's happening, sir?"
The officer turned astonished perhaps at the sound of another realm and looked up for the first time into Mr Baltimore's then Adele's face. A short sallow faced captain with lank dark blue hair under a shabby hat and such intensity in his dark brown eyes was like seeing emptiness.
"My father asks you what is happening sir and where the King is going. We are Talmish visitors and friends."
His mouth curled at that in amusement or contempt or both. "The King is going to the Assembly to put himself under its protection." Then as if he could not contain it he said in Fagiran, "Che coglione!" not to her but to himself and he turned away like a man preparing to spit. Then he turned back to her scarcely changing his expression said, "What part of Talmond are you from?"
"From Menos," she said astonished at the question and even more the business like way he put it. "If you have heard of it, it's in the southern part of Talmond."
"I know," he said abruptly and then, "Are all women so tall in Talmond?"
"What is he saying Adele, what is he saying?" her father asked.
"He's asking whether all women in Menos are as tall as I am."
"Good grief, is the man mad? I though you were asking him about the King. What-"
She told him what he had said at the assembly and suddenly the officer gripped her by her wrist. "Come Madame," he said. "Come with me. You say you're friends of Aserythe. You shall see how we bring 1000 years of history to an end. Come." he began pulling her after him as if she could have no business in the world but to obey him.
"But sir my father-"
"Bring him, come sir we shall go to the Assembly."
"My cousin and -" Adele cried in protest looking around for Loretta but she was already beside her not by her own will but by Ester's assistance.
"Citizeness," he whispered, his sallow cheeks flushed dark then went pale again. "You'll come too. Quickly follow us sir and take care that we're not separated." He renewed his grasp on Adele and began to force his way through the crowd. There wasn't any violence as the crowd separated to make a path for the officer to pass through; he towed Adele along as if he was indeed a skiff pulling a tall yacht towards the harbour. In their wake Mr Baltimore came grasping Loretta's arms in one arm and Ester in the other. They were almost one the heels of the rearguard of the King's column and perhaps the crowd thought that they were part of it. Indeed it soon became clear that it did. Seeing a young officer in his captain's uniform appearing to lead a group of aristocrats and their oriental servant towards the same destiny as the King and his family. Shouts began to lift again in the murmuring, "Its Hilary! No no! It's another whore! Hang them, hang the leeches! Hang them!"
Hedged in by the crowd, pressed against, fists raised, more shouting until it was as if they had really been arrested, faces staring jeering spitting insults, a woman reaching out to claw at Adele's face. The crowd being surging forward to see what was happening, who was being led away. Shouts of 'they've got the prostitute! Give us Hilary, give her to us! Did you suck the whore's breast last night? How did they taste?"
Adele scarcely understood the meaning of what was shouted, yet she flushed with anger as if a bucket of filth had been flung on her. She had an urge to answer whoever had shouted and in anger clenched her fists to a point where blood might seep through her skin. The officer was faster, pulling her along to between lines of guards crossing the road and climbing steps leading to a building.
"Here! The officer said, allowing her to collect herself for a moment. "Here is the heart of Aserythe, they use to break horses here but now they break kings." He looked at her as if he meant to draw her portrait from memory at some other time. He gave the impression that he could have done it to exactly copy the green of her riding dress, the sky blue of her hair, the leaf green of her eyes, the strong set of her mouth all without another glance. "The other woman, your cousin? She's not Talmish?"
"She's Creole, from Wendell, her mother is my aunt."
"Ah," the officer said, "Present me please." Suddenly glancing at himself, at the uniform, boots and a swift blush he had shown before. The coat was threadbare at the cuffs and colour; the boots were too much too large and cracked across the instep and seemed to have been greased than polished. Their tops gaped like buckets round boyish bony knees in ill fitting white breaches.
"You've not told me your name sir," Adele said, her father was occupied resettling his cravat and waistcoats, making sure that his watch was still there unstolen.
The young gave an impatient downward jerk of his head. "Granger, Captain Tyson Granger, at your service citizeness"
"Mademoiselle Loretta de Martinique," Hester said, presenting her cousin. She scarcely know why she did not day 'citizeness'. Perhaps for the sake of that vile shouting at her a few moments ago, outside when the crowd had taken her for the Queen's friend.
Loretta had put out her hand to be kissed with her usual slow languor, her eyes taking in the officer's appearance, the corners of her eyes crinkled with amusement and malice. All her terror of the past hour had vanished as if they had never existed. She was safely in a building so there was no more danger that she could see and there was a man in front of her.
'Dear me, she is a strange creature' Adele thought as she watched for the melting of the young captain's bones, it was like witnessing a candle bent in front of a fire. Loretta's amusement was too open and his face flamed then became pale and in his humiliation he drew himself to his full height.
"I have the honour of making you smile," he said. "Good day citizeness." then swung his heel and marched away into the throngs of people already filling the hallway, his boot tops sagging and gaping so that he had to walk slightly straddle legs like a horseman on foot.
Loretta laughed, clear ringing and bubbling, "He looks like Puss in boots!" she said, her voice piercing the noise, the echoes of the clattering of footsteps. The officer's shoulders quivered as if he had been shot between them by an arrow. He almost halted and seemed to turn back to them but instead went deliberately holding himself straight.
"Loretta, he heard you!"
"What does it matter? Why are we here? Where is this? Ah look at my dress! Look at what that woman did!" she held out her skirts, stained with silver and blood, the hems were torn and the chiffon ruching was hanging by a couple of threads.
Beside her Mr Baltimore was staring around the crowded hall with open contempt. "So this is their parliament. It's nothing more than a damnable circus. Well since we're here let us see what sort of jackanapes nonsense they are making it." He began pushing his way towards where the crowd was thickest, around a great open doorway. Adele took Loretta and Ester by the arms and brought them along her, of course her cousin protested but stopped with the gentle pushing of Ester.
Mr Baltimore disappeared into the main Assembly chamber. When Adele managed to shepherd her two companions after him through the doorway, into a dark corridor and then into the vast open space of the courtyard, with its banks of seats and benches, its overhanging galleries and the high dais opposite the entrance where she was standing, she couldn't see her father anywhere. The benches were half full of men who must presumable be members of the Assembly, but the floor in front of them, the corridors and the galleries were packed and crammed with people who looked like the advance guard of the crowd outside. Rough hungry faces, red clothes, lank greasy hair; women in rags and headscarves; fists and clubs shaking, voices shouting insults and men leaning over the bars of the platforms to scream at the men below.
As if the Assembly was theirs now and not the elected members of the Assembly. Only on the dais two men stood out like at least symbols of authority, one of them extraordinarily enough was the King. Adele recognised him even at that distance by his breast glittering with stars and also by the way that he sat. A man shouting just above her head leaning so far out over the balcony that looking up she could see his face. It was the same man who had spoken to her by the gates of the palace, the same crooked pointed teeth and yellow face and narrow set sunken eyes.
"Let's have an end to this farce of a monarchy!" he was yelling. "That idiot of an imbecile! Let him abdicate!" Beside and behind him other men took up the cry like soldiers shouting orders. "Abdication! Decheance! Down with the last of the Capets! Down with the Veto!" Around Adele men and women were forcing their way into the chamber, pushing her forward. She was on the floor of the chamber, but no one cared.
A group of men were on their feet shouting, "The King can't sit with us? The King out of the Assembly! Out of the Assembly! Against the Constitution!"
She was almost below the dais now and still holding Loretta and Ester by their arms. The man beside the King bent his head to listen to another man who in turn whimpered to the King. The King stood up, pale and dull faced, his eyes staring about as they had in the garden not long before. He seemed to shrug in submission and a man bowed and guided him down the steps and under the dais. Adele could see an iron grille there cutting off a small room from the chamber. The room seemed to be packed with men and women; she even thought that she saw the Queen among them. Two men with a lever and a hammer were trying to break the away, and the noise in the chamber was so great that the hammer blows and the ring of the iron were almost lost in it. The metal came down with a clash leaving the women to cover their faces with handkerchiefs and choke on the dust cloud.
At Adele's back a man said, "Miss Baltimore! What are you doing here? Where is your father?"
She turned; it was the Count's messenger of the early morning. He looked exhausted, as if much more time had passed since they last met than a few hours.
"I told you dreadful things would soon happen," he said. "They have barely begun. Where is your father?" He was looking around as he spoke, not only for her father, she thought, but for others, or other things. She had seen huntsmen with the same almost absent yet concentrated expression as they studied the countryside, hills, woods and the run of the river all while looking for the fox or a lost hound. "There he is!" he whispered. "Stay here, I'll fetch him." He was gone within a long stride and back in an instant.
Mr Baltimore was protesting loudly, "What the devil sir? Be quiet? Why? In this damned uproar?"
Until the messenger brought them together and pushed them into a corner under the dais while the noise continued around them, the broken grille lay at their feet and from where Adele stood she could see the King, the Queen and all their entourage crammed into the narrow room that the grille had protected or screened off, no more than two steps away from her. In the Assembly chamber itself the noise had grown more furious. The crowd jostled and fought its way here and there. Knots of men stopped to harangue one another or the dais or the galleries. The galleries shouted down to the floor, insults or encouragement, abuse or orders or defiance although heaven know what they might be defying. The floor returned the shouts and made enormous gestures of determination and fervour. Here in their shadowed backwater it seemed almost quiet by contrast and the messenger's urgent whispering could make itself heard easily enough against the yelling, the stamping, the banging of wooden benches and the chants of 'Decheance, Decheance! Down with the Vets an end to the tyrants!"
"The King has destroyed everything," the messenger was saying, "in another hour, by tonight at least he and the Queen will be prisoners. They are prisoners already in everything but name. There is one chance in 10000 of getting them out of this place and to safety. You're the only people who can give it to them."
"Us?" Cried Mr Baltimore, "Get the King to safety? If he is not safe here-"
"I implore you!" the messenger said, clapping is had across Mr Baltimore's mouth and staring around him as if spies and worse were at their backs. "If you shout like that we're going to be all dead. Don't you understand what is happening?"
"I understand nothing!" Mr Baltimore said furiously, struggling to free his mouth from restraint. "I don't know who you are sir or why you're telling us such rubbish or what the devil is happening except that it is more nonsense and I'm sick of it, sick to death of this damnable kennel of a place. You should see Menos and then you would know how a city be run. Liberty sir! If this is Liberty, give me clean streets instead."
The man made a harsh sound of impatience and swung round to Adele.
"They'll have his head if they can. Would you help them out of here if it was possible? Would you dare it?" He had gripped both her wrists in his hands, so fiercely that he was crushing the sleeve buttons into her wrists bone and hurting her. His eyes looked into hers as if they were burning, blue slightly bloodshot eyes, and deadened shadows under them. There was a stubble of reddish beard on his cheeks and jawbone and a nerve twitched at the tightened corner of his mouth. She had not liked him at first seeing and she liked him no better now. Heaven knew she had no prejudices of class but he had not a gentleman's face or manner or a servant's respectfulness and she didn't like to be handles by anyone gentle or simple. It was the second time he had grasped hold of her that morning as if she was something to be dragged about. It seemed to be a Aserythian characteristic and she didn't care for it, in him or the captain.
"You seem to assume that we're friends to the aristocracy sir." she said coldly. "We're not, we're friends to Aserythe and to the revolution and to progress nothing more."
He stared at her for a moment as if she had said that she was a murderer then such exhaustion came into his face as seemed to dissolve his features into a grey despair. Even the burning in his eyes went out like embers leaving grey blue ash and then he recovered himself. His mouth hardened and curved in contempt and pity.
"You're friends of that?" he said jerking his thumb towards to chamber beside them, "They're lice girl, crawled out of the panelling."
"And who make them into lice?" she cried freeing her other hand. "That family in there!" and stopped midway. The King was looking at her, vacantly as if he was looking at a tree. Someone had found him a chair and the fair green haired child had come beside hi knee and was playing with a bandalore, throwing it down and drawing it up over and over against absorbed in his game. The Queen, a score of ladies and court gentlemen, the other child - the princess, were crammed in behind the King like birds in a cage at the market, with no room to move. The ceiling was so low that one tall man have to bend his head to avoid it. The boy looked at Adele and smiled. Something patiently bewildering about the smile as if he was so tired of asking why they were there and what was happening that he had almost given up thinking about it.
"You could help them," the messenger was whispering. "I don't know what you've heard in Talmond about all this but I tell you it's noting good that's happening. Hell is opening for all of us. Please save their lives at least and one day God will reward you by letting you understand what you've done. They could walk out of here with your party only if your father gave the King his coat and hat and you walked with him. You've been seen with a stout gentleman in Talmish clothes, no one would think of it. The Queen in your cousin's hat and scarf, the two children with your lady's maid. Please for the compassion's sake do you want me to get down on my knees to be you to be human? Another hour and it will be too late."
"What is he saying Adele? What is it, what does he want?" her father demanded.
"He wants what is -" she begun to say, "Impossible" and stopped as she had stopped a minuet earlier in her accusation of the royal family. The boy was still looking at her, almost as if he was saying, "I'm tired and unhappy here. Please would you take me away?" It was the most stupid nonsense and yet she could hear the words in her head as if they had been spoken.
"It-it's ridiculous," she said, she told her father as quickly and as quietly as his interruption and the noise around them would allow what the messenger said. All this time she felt as though the messenger himself trying to influence her mind, the tone of her voice as if he was a burning glass to focus sunlight on her until it was so painful she must give in.
"But this is his own parliament!" Mr Baltimore was saying. "They're his servants! What do you mean save him? Bring him out of here? If he's not safe here-"
"Look around you!" the messenger whispered his grip now fallen on Mr Baltimore's thick arm like a hawk's talons into a plump hare. "Whose servants do they look like? Not his, please I'm begging you to help."
"And if we're caught?" Adele said.
The man shut his eyes and again his face seemed to dissolve and grow deadened with exhaustion. "I know he's not your king and that this isn't your country. I have no right to ask you and you've every rig to be afraid."
"Afraid?" Adele said in fury, "For myself I'm afraid of nothing but my father and cousin? She has estates here and you know that, we're here to see to them. What would happen- How could you ask me-?"
"I know," he put up a long hand and rasped it across his chin and up the side of his face as if he was trying to wake himself. "And even if you agreed the King would not, he has failed us this past two years. It would be too much to expect him to make a right choice now but I'm sorry," he looked at her as if he was already asleep with his bloodshot blue eyes open. She felt like looking into them to find out what she could see inside his head, into his mind and soul. It was a strange extraordinary sensation like looking into the holes in a mask and seeing another face quite different than the mask. The impression was so brief and his face altered again so quickly that she didn't know what she had seen and was no longer sure of why she thought of a mask.
She wanted to say, "I would help them if it lay with me alone." But he was turning away shrugging, there was self mockery set in his mouth and Adele didn't want to make another claim of courage. She already felt a fool enough; she looked again towards the royal family in their cage. The King still stared vacantly into space; the courtiers whispered urgently behind him, a woman was crying half hiding her great brown eyes with a lace handkerchief as the Queen sat like a statue with her arm around her daughter's waist. The dauphin still played with his toy when it hit his father's shoe, who seemed surprised to see his son and himself in such a place.
'It was madness' Adele thought, 'How could that man have imagined- The King of Aserythe wearing her father's coat and hat then escape his own parliament!'
As she thought of it there was the sound of cannon fire and for a moment the Assembly grew quiet. Then the cannon roared again and the crack of the muskets like hailstones beating on the roof filled the silence. A man rushed past Mr Baltimore and went to knell beside the King. "Your Majesty, they're fighting, the Guards-the people-they're fighting. They will be massacred, they have no orders sire."
The courtiers behind the King had come swiftly forward and caught the newcomer by his shoulders as if he had meant to attack their master.
"They must cease fire," the King said, something like a ghost of energy in his face and voice for a moment. "They must not fire on my people. No one must be killed. Bring me paper and I'll write the order which you must take to them. No one must be killed do you hear me?" Someone gave him paper and something to write with. He wrote the order on his knee, Adele could see over the kneeling ma's head the scrawl of unsteady lines like the theatre shows in Menos except that this was so close to the stage.
Her father was tugging her arm, "Your cousin is fainting," he said. "We must take her outside for air." he said it as though the fault of Loretta's weakness was partly Adele's. "Besides we haven't had breakfast. What are you gaping at child hurry up."
Outside the Manege when they had succeeded in forcing their way through the chamber and the foyer, the sounds of fighting had grown to a deafening battlefield. Clouds of smoke, the crashes of cannons and the whistle of its massive charge. There were bonfires of muskets and the men running from smoke. White coats, red and navy blue. Many men falling to their death. She saw a man fall, his body turning though the air, in fright she gripped her father's arm and could no move. Men fighting battle, she had read stories of great battles and how glorious it was to fight a battle. One man was running but collapsed on the ground then another, and another. Loretta screamed as she saw two men fall then a third, a fourth and a fifth staggered over to finally fall in front of them.
She clung to her father's arm fearing of fainting over the sight of men dying like flies one after the other.
"They're fighting!" her father said, "Good heaven's sake! What next? Look at the poor fellow."
A woman ran screaming with an axe uplifted over her red headscarf and striking the kneeling dying, dead man a tremendous blow in the back of what was left of his skull. "Liberty or Death!" the woman shrieked then ran away in the other direction possibly to find another victim but someone's bullet caught her in the back causing her to twist round and fall facing her last victim still clutching the bloody axe.
"What devils these people are!" Mr Baltimore said, "Don't look Adele, Loretta! Both of you keep a good hold of my arm. You girl support your mistress, don't faint child. Ah wait until we get home."
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