Gaston had bought almost all the vegetables he needed and was making his way through the morning crowd at the market when suddenly he heard a voice that gave him a chill on his skin, as if a bucket of ice water had been poured on him:
"Bonsoir, Gaston!"
He turned around and saw Jeannette leaning against the wall of the house in the dark gap of the houses, so inconspicuous in the motley crowd of the town. She made a sign to him with her hand to approach. As if in a dream, the man moved toward her, dropping the basket. Apples scattered across the sidewalk and some inattentive passerby flopped down behind Gaston's back.
Gaston stepped into the semi-darkness of the narrow street and leaned against the wall as well. His worst suspicions were justified - Jeannette looked pleased, happy; she was enjoying his confusion and bewilderment, gazing intently into his face. Her thin, clawed hands clenched tightly around something like a beak or a stick on which she was leaning.
"How are you, Gaston? How's the wife? Still pregnant? Is she all right? How's your aristocrat friend, also well?"
They were watching them. Gaston felt nausea rising in his throat. The very thought of Jeannette or Paul staring at him and Belle for any length of time seemed disgusting. Strangely, he hadn't noticed the stalking, though he'd probably stopped being careful at all in his hometown.
"Yeah, people talk. Well boys for a few ecus can follow you around for a while. Paul and I have been here for a couple of weeks, Gaston," Jeannette laughed, showing her sharp, fine teeth.
"What do you want?" Gaston asked.
"Oh, I like that - straight to the point," the woman smiled again. "In short, the Marquis de... well, the name doesn't matter. The Marquis is suffering from migraines for the second month after your dear wife almost crushed his skull, and he wants to punish her according to the law. We would have come to see you sooner, but my leg-" Her face went from feigned friendliness to a mask of hatred. "My leg wasn't in the best condition. So, when I was able to get around, Paul and I started making inquiries, which was easy. And here we are."
The hunter held out his hands as if he were going to wring her neck, and Jeannette jerked back.
"No, no, no, don't be such a fool. Don't you think we didn't prepare before we told you anything?" she said quickly. "Paul is waiting for me at the conditional location. If I am not back in half an hour, he will tell Bernard, and he will come here with the military marshals* and the Marquis himself. You don't want that, do you?"
"Do as you please," said Gaston carelessly. "It will be our word against yours. Are you not afraid? You're human traffickers, so you don't want to go to prison yourselves."
"You poor innocent sheep!" Jeannette exclaimed. "If that's the case, if you're not robbers, return the diamond bracelet and the silk dress from the best dressmaker in Paris. What? Nothing to say? The loan shark recognized you, Gaston, when you gave him the bracelet. With your height and looks, it was stupid to turn it in by yourself. You want me to tell you who you and your wife are? She lures elderly decent people on her pretty face, and when she is in their homes, she robs them with your help!"
Jeannette twisted the events so that Gaston had nothing to say. He only clenched his fists.
"Maybe you're right," Jeannette said after a moment's silence. "You must hope for the best. Maybe justice will be on Little Belle's side. But..." she waved her hand theatrically. "Two or three days of continuous interrogation, a night locked up on a cold floor, rough marshals... Do you really want her to go through all that, Gaston? Especially now? What if she walks away from them with her good name intact, but not with your heir?"
Since there were still no military marshals or marquis here, Jeannette wanted to avoid that too.
"So what must I do to get you to leave us alone?"
"There! At last you've gotten your tiny brain to think properly. Look... The fact that we found you, we haven't told anyone yet. Paul and I want to quit. Bernard too. We want to buy a little house in Paris."
"It's expensive."
"Yeah. Think how you can help us with that. I'm not forcing you, you're offering everything yourself," Jeannette laughed again, as if she'd said something witty.
"Well... I can sell my tavern and my house... Sell my guns, I also have good rare knives. It would make a nice house, but-"
"...but not in Paris, you fool. Think again."
Gaston thought for quite a while, but he couldn't think of where he could get the money for a house in Paris.
"All right, I'll give you a hint. You have an aristocrat friend. Lives in a huge place that's probably full of expensive stuff inside."
"Well..." Gaston frowned. "He really would do anything for Belle..."
For some reason Jeannette got angry and waved her arms so that her beak fell down.
"I don't need him to do anything! I need you to do it! You bastard... You like everything to be your way, you like everyone to jump in front of you... Listen to me... " she bent down and picked up her stick. "You will do as I tell you, and if you try to do as you want, without any unpleasant things for yourself, be kind enough to wait for the marshals on your doorstep in the morning."
"What difference does it make-" Gaston trailed off. "What difference does it make to you how you get the money?"
"There is a difference. I want to teach you a lesson. I can't stand people like you, self-righteous morons. The handsomest, the strongest, the most, the most, the most, ... Everybody's favorite, beautiful wife, married two months, and his woman's already got caviar! And an aristocrat with a whole castle as a friend! Everything goes easily into your hands, others for that to have a quarter of what you have, are ready to humiliate themselves and do terrible things..."
"Do you envy me, or what?" Gaston was surprised. "Listen, I do not have the best life, and all that I have achieved, I achieved with sweat and blood!"
"But you've never broken your bounds," Jeannette said, shaking her head. "You've never done anything that disgusted you, never done anything you despised yourself for. No, you're not like that. You're clean. You work hard for a living and all that. I can see how much you despise me and Paul, how you cringe at the sound of our names. Maybe you even think I deserve to be crippled by you. Well, you'll find out what that's like. Now, if you want to keep the Marquis from finding out where the one who caused his headache is, you're going to raid your aristocrat friend's castle tonight. Take the goblets, silverware, small paintings that are easy to carry off, jewelry. Then bring it all to this address," she slipped a small piece of paper into his hand. "Give it to Paul. And then..." she looked Gaston straight in the eye. "You will spend the night with me."
"What's that for?" The man almost choked.
Jeannette looked away:
"Maybe this way... I can forget your damned face."
There was silence.
"Mind you, you must do as I tell you, not as you think," the woman repeated. "If you don't fulfill any of the conditions, or if you do what you like instead of what you've been told, you'll see what happens to Belle. Bernard has clear instructions. If you run complaining to your nobleman or the people of town, you'll see what happens too. So it's in your best interest to be obedient."
She turned and waddled away down the dark alley, and Gaston stared dumbly after her. Then he went home.
That's how it always turns out - one stupid action - a trip to the sea without preparation, and now how many problems.
Gaston was terribly angry with himself for that past naivety! And what to do now? There's no telling how many gang members these two have here in town, maybe if he goes to the castle now to warn the prince, he'll be taken and slaughtered. If the castle was being checked, it means that they were also watching the prince, who had a habit of sitting by the forest lake with Paulette, unguarded, and going to the town. They'd been seen at the market, the tavern, the flower store... God... Gaston had brought this gang into his town by his own unwise actions.
Then again, he couldn't have consulted Belle. She would have thought of something, but right now she couldn't worry at all.
He would have to do as he was told. When they got out of town, Gaston would explain everything to the prince, maybe work off what he'd stolen. At least partially, but a night with Jeannette- He's a man, not a woman.
He went into the house and tried to keep his face calm.
"Hello, Belle!" he shouted.
"I'm here!" Belle was in the kitchen, sitting in his chair reading a book.
"What's the matter with you?" She asked suddenly, looking at his face.
She read his moods as easily as she read her books. It was impossible to hide anything from her.
"What is the matter with me?" Gaston interrogated.
"You seem sad."
"Oh, that..." he began to improvise on the fly. "You know the fishmonger? Well, her husband died," Gaston shook his head. He was sick and died in two days, such a misfortune..."
God grant the fishmonger's husband good health, Gaston could not try to look cheerful now.
"What a horror," Belle exhaled.
"Of course, I didn't know him and all that, but the very thought of losing a loved one..." Gaston continued.
"If you died, I'd die too," Belle suddenly said seriously, after a short silence.
Gaston looked at her in surprise. If it wasn't a declaration of love, it was something very similar.
"Well, neither of us is going to die yet," he said with exaggerated vivacity. "You know, I've got guns to clean and knives to sharpen, and I'll go to the barn. You call me if you need anything."
"All right. Where are the vegetables? I was gonna peel them for lunch."
Belle insisted on doing something sitting down these days because she was "sick of lying down."
"Vegetables. Yeah. Vegetables... Look, I've been so upset, I forgot to shop. It's stupid, isn't it?"
"No... Not stupid at all..." she held out her arms to him and Gaston leaned on the arm of the chair so she could hug him.
No, he couldn't tell her. It would drive her white for sure and she might get sick again.
Gaston gently released himself from the embrace and said:
"Let's eat potatoes. I'll go to the barn."
In the barn, he began rummaging through the mountain of his hunting stuff, which for some reason was always in disarray, looking for a long rope. Finally, he found it, untangled it, and put it into a convenient knot. Then he started looking for a steel grapnel to make it more convenient to climb the walls to the windows. He had once needed to climb something like a small mountain for a bear hunt, and he definitely had that hook. The hook was found when Gaston jabbed his hand against it in a pile of stuff and, cursing, rewound his palm.
Now the sack. Not too big, but not small either. Gaston shook the junk out of the brown middle sack and checked it for holes. Well, that was it, he was ready.
Belle had been sleeping long and soundly lately, probably because of her condition. So, she wasn't supposed to wake up until the morning when it would be over. Gaston sighed and went back into the house, waiting for the evening.