Ashes (Ch1) - revised

[igenlode]

After about six months, I made another attempt at the first chapter for "Ashes" (and it's just as well that I did write down my intended titles for the other two chapters, because after this length of time I couldn't remember them! I was vaguely thinking that I'd decided on "Resurrection" for Ch3, but apparently it was "Revelation", which is definitely better...)

I've largely rewritten the opening section and set it in a new context, and beyond that simply omitted certain bits of backstory from the later scenes; the whole thing now runs about eleven hundred words shorter even with the added material at the beginning. Which is, objectively speaking, less than I had remembered -- it just felt like an awful lot at the time because such a very high proportion of it consisted of crossings-out :-(

---

“Where Roland’s sword had failed utterly, de Brencourt, despite everything, had brought them all off to safety as well as could be managed”: AU in which the rescue plans succeeded. Two years later, Roland has an unexpected encounter, and an inspiration.

Chapter 1 — Reunion

“Anyone would think,” Marthe observed pertly, “that nobody in London had ever seen a Frenchwoman before.” But it was said with a toss of her pretty head, and Roland de Céligny knew better than to believe for a minute that his wife was in any way displeased with the attention. Her eyes were sparkling with mischief and she was more enchanting than ever... and after all, up to now neither of them had so much as set foot in their lives outside their own country.

France had been in constant conflict since his childhood, for what seemed almost as long as he could remember; indeed, young as he was, two years ago he himself had taken part in that failed uprising in the West that was now being called the Chouannerie. But Napoleon Bonaparte and his conscript armies had humiliated half the crowned heads of Europe on the battlefield, and in this year of grace 1802 even England, weary of war, had been induced at last to sign a tentative treaty.

Peace with England! It was almost outside his experience... and though the cessation of hostilities was a betrayal of the Royalist cause in which he had been brought up, and which seemed now more hopeless than ever, this journey overseas would not otherwise have been possible, and he could not altogether regret that.

It was hard, all the same, not to look askance at the conduct of the British Government, when for their part he and his friends in Brittany had fought to the last under the Duc de Trélan; not when Marthe’s own brother, Artamène de la Vergne, had been terribly wounded in the infamous final skirmish of that campaign, when the Duc their leader had been arrested and condemned to death on his way to sign the surrender, and least of all when it was on that account in the first place that Roland and Marthe were here. Marthe, with her usual magnificent scorn, held strong views on their so-called allies, who had promised so much and delivered so little, and had not, in the end, lifted one finger to prevent disaster... but with or without English aid, the Duc had made his escape and was safe and well in exile, and in Roland’s devout belief that was all that really mattered.

So he was able to laugh back at Marthe and slip his arm around her waist in the rattling darkness of the hire-carriage that was bearing them along London streets, still so foreign to his eyes, towards Lady Blaymere’s soirée at which he had promised they would put in an appearance. Whatever one thought of its politics, in the few days since they had arrived London society had proved quite inexplicably welcoming, and they had found themselves very much in demand. Marthe’s vivid dark beauty and enchantingly fractured English had already won her a bevy of followers among the young fashionables, all of them eager to proclaim their undying admiration. Roland himself, entirely unconscious of his own good looks and trailing the tragic aura of one known to have taken up arms in vain for his exiled King —an aura made all the more interesting by the fact that the young man was clearly so reluctant to talk about his part in that doomed campaign— had likewise discovered himself the object of invitations on all sides. Indeed he was regarded as something of a social catch, to a degree that he could not in the least account for.

“Really, one might as well be a performing bear,” Marthe protested, leaning her head against his shoulder. But at heart they were both of them young enough to be delighted by the whirl of it all.

“Do you suppose,” she said a little anxiously a few minutes later, “they will think us very provincial for being so late?”

In the wake of Roland’s youthful exploits against the authorities the two of them had perforce been living very quietly, scarcely stirring from their home with his grandfather at Kerlidec and her mother’s neighbouring estates of La Vergne near the Breton coast, while the single week the young man had spent in Paris, with their leader in mortal danger all the while, had hardly been of a nature to endow him with town-polish. In the course of the past few days, however, he had learnt one thing at least.

“On the contrary, it’s highly fashionable to arrive late... Anyway, we’re here — look.”

They had clearly reached Bulimer-street and the address he had given the driver, for the horses had pulled up already outside a tall house with all its lights ablaze. Roland sprang out to let down the step for Marthe and pay the man off, and took a moment, suddenly self-conscious, to adjust the set of his coat.

When he turned back to his wife, her eyes, as ever, were dancing. She laid one gloved hand on his. “Shall we?”

Side by side, they ascended to the front door, and were admitted.

~o~

“Monsieur de Céligny!” Almost before the two of them had set foot in the entrance hall Lady Blaymere herself was surging towards them, her amiable face beaming and both hands held out. She descended upon Roland wreathed in delighted smiles. “So very good of you to come, monsieur — Vicomte, is it not?”

That title was his... only it was not, and Roland de Céligny, caught unawares, flushed and became entangled in a confused attempt to intimate that “Monsieur” was quite all right — was in fact, being in England, to be preferred.... His command of the language was entirely inadequate, and he could not in any case possibly explain to his hostess the scruples that had betrayed him into that impulse of embarrassment.

For in amongst the turmoil of that lost cause of two springs ago he had learned that he was not, after all, the son of that distant and morose Vicomte de Céligny from whom he had inherited, but of a long-gone indiscretion between the Vicomtesse Laure and Gaston de Saint-Chamans, Duc de Trélan.

It had not shaken his adoration of his military hero, even then under sentence of death, or the desperate urgency with which he longed to see him set free. Only afterwards —when with the aid of Royalist agents in Paris an escape had been contrived, and the Duc had vanished forever from the shores of a France to which he could not now return— there had been time at last for Roland to think about his own situation, and the position in which he was left.

His father was proud of him, he knew that, and he was not ashamed to be such a father’s son. Given the chance, he would rather have carried the blood of Gaston de Trélan, even if that meant illegitimacy, than of any other man on earth.

All the same, it had occurred to him uncomfortably that he had no more right in truth to the title of Vicomte than he had to his father’s name of Saint-Chamans. He could not very well divest himself of it at home, where his grandfather —who had adored his daughter Laure and did not see why his beloved grandson should suffer for what the old man perceived as entirely the Duc de Trélan’s fault— would have told him in no uncertain terms not to be such a fool. Artamène, in whom along with Marthe he had confided, had made light of his qualms and teased him with the old nickname of “Roland le preux”, after his chivalric namesake. And since their Charlemagne was safely in England —and Artamène, who had suffered far worse in that cause than he, had only just been promoted from his sickbed to a chair in the garden— Roland had taken the teasing in good part, and in the time since the matter had been let drop. But he had hoped that, at least while they were overseas....

He could feel Marthe, beside him, brimming over with suppressed laughter, and made haste to say all that was proper to their hostess. If Lady Blaymere had noticed his discomfiture she was too kindly to say so, and at any rate could not have guessed its cause. Even now she was tucking her hand into Marthe’s arm and pressing a hundred assurances upon her in voluble English: “And Miss Atkinson has just given us the most delightful ballad— you will sing for us, Madame de Céligny, will you not? Do say yes, for French songs have the most romantic air, do you not find— or no, perhaps for you, of course, they are most dreadfully ordinary...”

“But naturally I shall sing,” Marthe promised slowly and carefully, turning back in the doorway to bestow one of the smiles that held so much charm. From the salon beyond, tinkling pianoforte music could already be heard. “It is that— tiens! Mille pardons, monsieur—”

In her preoccupation she had all but collided with a gentleman in a dull-coloured coat who was at that moment about to make his exit, and who now stopped short abruptly.

Lady Blaymere beamed. “Ah, a compatriot of yours. And one but recently come from Paris, a month or two back. He has been telling us all about it.... Comte, must you really leave so soon? Here, I must present to you—”

The Comte, who had hitherto been thunderstruck into silence, broke in: “As it happens, Monsieur and I are already acquainted. And Madame also, I believe... though I do not suppose she recalls the occasion.”

He made a slight bow in the direction of Marthe, whose expression made it very clear that she did not recollect him in the slightest.

“Two years ago, en effet”—he slipped back into their mutual French, with a glance for Lady Blaymere—”you and your mother gave me hospitality, however reluctant, when I could go no further. And later, when Roland returned —by the by, it is Madame Roland de Céligny now, I presume? My felicitations— returned with news of disaster, your mother came with us as far as Hennebont, where—”

“Monsieur de Brencourt! But of course... now I remember.” Marthe had changed colour a little, as if those old memories had drained the freshness from her cheeks. She threw a reproachful glance at Roland, who had been of no assistance at all.

For his part he had been quite as astounded as the Comte de Brencourt, whom, until he spoke, he had not recognised in the least. They had not seen each other since that memorable night of his father’s escape, when the Comte had remained behind in Paris. De Brencourt had looked gaunt and worn even then, for he had been a sick man barely recovered, and had laboured for days to ensure that escape. Whatever life he had been leading in the months that followed, it had not dealt kindly with him. Since they last met the Comte had cropped his hair after the new fashion, as Roland himself had done despite his grandfather’s complaints, but it had not given him a youthful air — on the contrary.

Marthe dug a sharp elbow into Roland’s side, and he became belatedly aware that he was staring.

“Forgive me, monsieur. I had no idea— that is, I had not thought to find you here in London...”

“Or so much changed?” The Comte’s expression tightened for a moment. “Oh, I’m not blind, boy— and the mirror tells me the same tale I can read on your face. It has not been pretty work in Paris, these last two years, that is all.... Well, I am out of it now; out of it and out of France for good, perhaps, if things continue as they are. At any rate Paris at present has become a little too hot for comfort and for the foreseeable future. The Peace of Amiens has no provision for Royalist spies. Hyde de Neuville himself is in hiding, and others have been taken. I received warning, two months back, barely in time to leave my lodging with the clothes I stood up in— no more.”

Marthe caught at the name, glowing. “You were with Hyde de Neuville, monsieur— working for the King?”

“And achieving very little — save to pass information to the English, for all the use that has been.” He caught himself visibly back from the savage undertone of that last, conscious perhaps that they were still in the wide space of Lady Blaymere’s front hall, with their hostess hovering, and such sentiments less than wise.

But Lady Blaymere was beaming in kind incomprehension. “So nice that you know one another,” she said brightly in response to Roland’s rather anxious glance. “And always such a happy surprise to meet again, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Madame,” Roland agreed in accordance with the dictates of politeness. Only it came to him almost as a shock that this was no more than the simple truth. He had not set eyes on de Brencourt since that nightmare week when his father’s life had lain on the line, while as second-in-command during their failed campaign in Brittany the Comte had been brusque and at times actively unpleasant... but those days of action in Brittany, however bitter their outcome, had been the great adventure of his existence, a memory cherished with an ache of longing, and if the Duc de Trélan was at this moment free and well and even now on his way to London, then that was in large part owing to the efforts of the Comte de Brencourt.

De Brencourt had not been with them in that final hour, when the coach with its false escort stopped for a moment outside Paris and men stripped off purloined uniforms and slipped away into the night, while Valentine de Trélan flung herself, half-laughing, half-crying, into her husband’s arms as the step came down and was received there as if she had been once more that long-ago bride of seventeen. For Roland too there had been the strong grasp of his father’s embrace, and tumbling words of relief and joy and all that had never been said between them — for he was not to travel with the Duc and Duchesse to the coast, for safety’s sake, and it must needs be farewell, though not, God be thanked, so final a farewell as had been feared.

In that brief, treasured reunion there had been neither time nor place for the Comte de Brencourt, or any outsider, and Roland had scarcely spared him a thought, then or after... and yet without him it would not have taken place. Roland alone, bewildered and inexperienced, could have achieved nothing, even if he had succeeded somehow in reaching Paris with Madame de Trélan; but where Roland’s sword had failed utterly, M. de Brencourt, despite everything, had brought them all off to safety as well as could be managed.

It was a pity Artamène could not be here, and their friend Lucien, who had been to see them only once since he, too, had been wounded, and M. du Ménars, who was dead, and all the others who had fought with such high hopes in Finistère... but the Comte de Brencourt, of all people, was in London, where Roland would least have dreamed to find him, and the sight of those worn, bitter features was quite unexpectedly welcome.

“Yes, Madame.” He returned Lady Blaymere’s kindly, solicitous smile. “To meet again — it is a most happy surprise.” A glance back at the Comte. “Vraiment.”

He’d been told often enough that his own face was an open book. He’d never surprised quite such an unguarded look on that of the Comte de Brencourt.

“Oh, I’m so glad.” Lady Blaymere beamed at them all, but her hands fluttered in indecision as the tinkling piano came to an end. “Forgive me, I must— my guests— but you will want to talk, I expect. Let me see... perhaps... the library?”

She darted past an impassive footman to tug open a door beneath the balustrade on the far side of the hall, guarded by a severe-looking bust of Pallas Athene. Almost without volition, at least on Roland’s part, the three of them found themselves with another distracted gesture swept into the privacy of this retreat, and there left to look at one another among the bookshelves while their hostess vanished, trailing a cloud of distracted goodwill.

Marthe, irrepressible, met her husband’s gaze and began to laugh. “A kind lady — she talks too much and she is far too English, but still she has a kind heart.”

The room was lined with heavy old-fashioned panelling, and, though the fire had been kindled at some point this evening, it was still far from warm. The Comte de Brencourt had gone to the fireplace and stood staring down into it as if to gauge the effectiveness of the flames.

“It would appear,” he observed tightly after a moment, “that M. de Céligny has not yet lost his talent to invoke the sympathies of women of a certain age.”

His tone was a biting one, and Roland, flushing, was jolted out of nostalgia by the memory that the edge of the Comte’s tongue could, where he chose, be exceedingly unpleasant.

“Indeed?” Marthe had flashed back before he could draw breath, her earlier fervour quite forgotten. “In that case, monsieur, I can scarcely imagine it to be a problem that has ever afflicted you!”

It was a sally that bit home in the sudden pallor of the Comte’s sallow cheeks as he swung round. And Madame Vidal who had been so inexplicably kind to Roland, two years ago, had not after all been the emigré widow he had thought her, but the Duc’s missing wife, Valentine de Trélan herself... who had been kind also in the case of M. de Brencourt, but not in the way the Comte might once have desired.

That last was knowledge half-heard, half-guessed, and wholly uncomfortable where one’s elders were concerned. He thrust the thought of it hastily down and broke in a little stiffly to intervene before Marthe could take up the cudgels any further on his behalf.

“My wife means to say, monsieur, that one is naturally very grateful to milady Blaymere for her hospitality...”

“‘But’?” Marthe prompted, with a dimple of mischief as he hesitated.

“But...” Roland began obediently without thinking, and caught himself back. “Oh, Marthe, you know very well—”

“But,” Marthe went on, glancing up through impertinent lashes, “perhaps it is just as well that she finds Roland’s manners pleasing...”

“Meaning, I take it, that I have none?” The Comte yielded with a harsh bark of humour, and unexpected good grace. “Forgive me, Madame de Céligny. You are quite right. I have spent too long in the company of spies and plotters, waiting for a stab in the back — but that is little excuse for ingratitude and discourtesy.”

He had turned from the fireplace; now he inclined himself towards them both in a brief, punctilious bow, an echo of that Court which neither Roland nor Marthe had been old enough to know, and took up her hand to kiss it in an equally formal farewell.

“Oh, but monsieur, you must not leave on my account.” Marthe looked stricken, her anger, so quickly aroused, ebbing as always to swift remorse, and Roland added his voice to hers. He had contrived to cut a foolish figure tonight and he was all too aware of it — and in front of de Brencourt of all people, to whom he was sure he must still appear as that rash boy of barely twenty who had achieved so little in his father’s defence, when the older man had achieved so much and, it occurred to him now, had so very little acknowledgement in return. Of course there had been no time on that last evening, and no doubt the Comte, who he knew to have quarrelled in some way with M. de Trélan, would not have wished...

“Monsieur de Brencourt”—he did his best to adopt the tone of a man of the world—“you really cannot turn up out of the blue after two years and then disappear again with barely a word...”

Dignity abandoned him with a rush, and he was glad of it.

“We want to hear all about where you’ve been, and what has been happening. And even if the outlook for our France is as dark as you say it is —and I can’t believe it— I’d looked forward at least to sharing stories of the past and of absent friends.”

“I would have enjoyed that also,” de Brencourt said with unexpected gentleness. “But it is already past time that I should go. The hour is growing late, and it is a long walk to my lodgings.”

The import of the Comte’s shabby coat, and of the state of his linen, were borne in upon Roland for the first time, and for a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to offer to pay the fare; but before the words left his mouth he knew the older man’s pride would not endure it.

“So you are lodging in London, then, for the moment?” he put in rather hastily instead. “We shall only be here a few more days ourselves, but I hope—”

He broke off, an entirely new idea beginning to dawn at the remembrance of his own joyous anticipation of tomorrow, and the days to come. “In fact, monsieur... would you attend the assembly on Friday at the house of the Comtesse of Carnforth, as my guest? There will be cards played, and refreshments”—he had an idea that the latter inducement might weigh more heavily, and flinched from the implied humiliation—“as well as the musical entertainment, and plenty of chance to talk in private.”

He hesitated. “Call it foolish nostalgia if you like, monsieur, but it would mean a good deal to me.”

Of his own additional reasons to bring the Comte there he said nothing just yet. After all, it might not be possible... and moreover he was not entirely certain how de Brencourt would react.

But for the moment the Comte’s face had relaxed into a rather grim smile that held genuine amusement. “It seems to me you are a trifle young as yet for nostalgia, de Céligny. And those of us who are old enough for it do not have quite such rose-tinted memories... but yes, that world of Chouans and hedgerows seems a very long while ago now, and a cleaner, more simple time.”

“Then you’ll come?” Roland seized upon the implication, and de Brencourt’s mouth twitched a little at the corner. But any wry humour was at his own expense.

“I’ll come — and gladly.” He bent once more over Marthe’s hand. “Goodbye, Madame. And think of me, if you can, with a little less scorn than at our first meeting.”

“Oh, but that was a mistake,” Marthe said quickly, stricken. “Naturally we thought— But of course it was a purely private matter between you and Monsieur de Trélan. Roland has told me all about it.”

De Brencourt said nothing at all in response to this guileless assurance. But Roland had the impression that the Comte had stiffened as if to ward off a blow.

“All that I know, which is very little,” the young man added hastily. “Only that the... disagreement was personal, and not a question of loyalty to the Princes. M. le Duc did not take me into his confidence in the matter.”

That was the right answer, it seemed. And if after all there had been a good deal of somewhat irreverent speculation among the three at La Vergne over the long months afterwards, the Comte did not need to know that.

~o~

“What a strange man,” Marthe observed, marvelling a little, when the Comte de Brencourt had received his hat and coat and cane —nondescript articles, all of them, brought by a footman whose opinion had been schooled to a careful lack of expression— and had made his departure. “I wonder what cloak and dagger deeds he was really up to in Paris with M. Hyde de Neuville, that he was so reluctant to speak of... Was he always like that, Roland, when you knew him before?”

For indeed she had seen very little of M. de Brencourt in those days of enforced convalescence, two years ago, when he had perforce been her mother’s guest.

“De Brencourt?” Roland looked up from a rather abstracted inspection of his seal ring. It had been given to him by his grandfather on his twenty-first birthday, and it was a fine piece of engraving. But it did not merit quite the level of concentration to which he had just been subjecting it. “I suppose he was always like that — always irritable and impatient, at least. If anything I should have said his behaviour tonight was more amiable than it used to be; he was making an effort at any rate. And of course he has aged a good deal... he always did look grim, but not quite so much as that!”

“He must be fifty, at least,” Marthe pointed out, with all the dismissive pity of a girlhood yet to attain one-and-twenty, and to which forty had already one foot in the grave.

Roland, remembering those early months, shook his head. “A little less, I think, even now. But then he was never precisely cheerful, right from the start, and after all suffering does not make saints of all of us, like—”

He hesitated a moment. “—Like Madame de Trélan.”

Marthe’s face lit up at the mention of the Duchesse Valentine, as he had known it would. And indeed Valentine de Trélan had suffered greatly —had lived through the worst of the Terror, believing herself bereaved of the husband she had never ceased to love— and yet it had not made her bitter, or drawn harsh lines across a face no longer young.

By her own strength of will and by the strength of her body she had half-carried Roland to safety on that memorable day of their first meeting, when neither of them had known who he truly was; in the nightmare week when the Duc himself had been under imminent sentence of death, Roland in turn had held her, weeping, in the young strength of his arms. They had both of them suffered, then... but even supposing the worst had come to pass, Roland could not believe that it would have sharpened her tongue, or ever made her knowingly unkind. She was a great lady, and he loved her... and if his feelings towards the Duchesse were a little more protective and a little less reverential than Marthe’s own, it was only that he had seen her in that moment of lowest ebb.

“Chère Madame...” Marthe was glowing at the remembered thought. “And we shall see her again tomorrow, and Monsieur le Duc, after so long... It is almost hard to believe it can be true.”

For since Gaston de Trélan, a ci-devant of the ci-devants, could never now return to France, neither Roland nor Marthe had set eyes on him since before their wedding. The bride had worn the rubies bestowed upon her by Madame de Trélan, but the Duchesse had not been there to see; and while England remained at war, even the few letters they had received had perforce remained brief and circumspect.

Whatever else the Peace of Amiens might mean, it had offered this chance for Roland and his father to meet again, and the hectic days spent in London so far could be no more than a whirl of anticipation by comparison. He had been hugging the awaited joy of it to him for weeks.

“The Duc writes that they will be coming up to town by easy stages, for the comfort of Madame la Duchesse.” He did not need to draw the letter from the pocket of his coat, for he knew every word in it now almost by heart. It had reached him with what seemed —after Kerlidec, so remote from the mails of Paris— quite astonishing speed, in reply to the message he himself had sent the moment they arrived and he knew their address in London. “She and Madame votre mère endured as much as any man, on our journey to Hennebont after the Duc was taken, and made no complaint as to the hardships of that road... but no doubt the Duc takes pleasure in cherishing her, now that he can.”

It was still all but impossible, somehow, for him to imagine the leader he had only known as a brilliant, incisive general in time of insurrection settling down with his wife on foreign soil to grow old in peace. But Gaston de Saint-Chamans, who had once resided in the Court at Versailles and as Duc de Trélan had possessed vast estates —who even in exile in ’92 had inhabited the most richly-furnished London apartments, and frequented the clubs of St James’s Street— was living now as a quiet country gentleman, like some petty seigneur upon his own manoir. Indeed, from the rueful amusement with which the Duc wrote of his wife’s experiments with domestic fowl, Roland had the distinct impression that life at Brockford Place could not be so very different from La Vergne, where Marthe still went out on occasion to feed the ducks... save that, try as he might, he really could not picture his father besieged amid quacking poultry.

No doubt the Duchesse Valentine would fend off the geese with grace and aplomb. The image filled him with a sudden irrational sense of delight, and he laughed. “Oh, Marthe, I believe she is equal to anything.”

“Indeed she is,” Marthe agreed with fervour, and kissed him. The interlude that followed was mutually enjoyable, and of no short duration.

“And now, Madame de Céligny,” Roland announced with dignity, stepping back to offer her his arm, “I shall escort you myself to your next engagement.”

Marthe turned great dark eyes on him, full of enquiry, and he let mischief dance in his own. “You promised to sing for milady Blaymere — or had you forgotten? At any rate, for the sake of our hostess we should make an appearance...”

“The entry of the dancing bear?” Marthe enquired with a toss of her head. But she was very lovely tonight in her high-waisted gown, and knew it, and since she both played and sang admirably she was far from averse that the world should know of that also. Slipping her hand confidingly into the crook of his sleeve, she allowed him to guide her onwards.

Presently there was an admiring circle around Marthe de Céligny at the pianoforte in the salon, and a number of gentlemen arguing with one another as to whom should fetch her refreshment afterwards. But the fair performer herself, most provokingly, had eyes only for her husband as she sang the old air that held so many memories for them both:

“Rossignol prend sa volée,
au château d’amour il s’en va—”

Only the chateau of Mirabel into which Roland had ventured stood empty now forever, its hidden treasure poured out in a higher cause, and the fair lady —no longer young— who had lain concealed there, unsuspected, had found haven anew in the arms of him who had been her prince of the rose-hilt. The Comte de Brencourt had come there also in search of the treasure, and had found her whom he had believed lost; but he had not been fortunate enough to carry off either.