Walking through the corridors, with my hollow eyes staring back from every tarnished glass I can no longer believe the mirrors lie. These are the last days of my life. Schoolmasters say to children start at the beginning. When writing stories people say begin where it begins. François-Marie Arouet, who wrote as Voltaire, began his
Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations
by tracing human development from its earliest days. But how does anyone know where anything really begins? Did this story begin the day I met Virginie, the day I arrived at the military academy to be greeted by Jerome and Charlot, that day, years before, I first met Emile, or did it begin with the dung heap, when I sat in the sun eating beetles? Looking back on the days of my life I can’t think of any time I was happier. So let me say it began there, as good a place as any.

Jean-Marie d’Aumout

1790

1723
Dung-heap Meals

M
y earliest memory is sitting with my back to a dung heap in the summer sun crunching happily on a stag beetle and wiping its juice from my chin and licking my lips and wondering how long it would take me to find another.

Beetles taste of what they eat. Everything edible tastes of what it eats or takes from the soil, and the stag beetles that fed on the dung in my father’s courtyard were sweet from the dung, which was sweet from the roadside grass. I had fed the horse the last of the hay and knew it was in a ramshackle stall behind me so the clip clop echoing in the courtyard’s arch had to come from another.

I could stand and bow as I’d been taught. But the sun was hot that summer and my mother and father were still asleep in their room with the shutters closed and I’d been ordered not to disturb them so I stayed where I was.

Luck brought me another stag beetle as the stranger cleared the arch and I popped it into my mouth before he could demand that I share. The stranger swore and the two men with him trotted forward on either side.

‘He’ll poison himself.’ The stranger had a deep voice and a lined face and eyes shaded by the wide brim of a hat with a feather in it. He looked sterner than anyone I’d met. ‘Stop him, vicome . . .’

The man addressed slid from his horse and knelt in front of me. ‘Spit it out,’ he ordered, holding out his hand.

I shook my head.

Irritation flickered across his face, although he kept his voice kind and crouched a little lower until we were almost level. He had blue eyes and smelt of wine, garlic and cheese. Just smelling him made my mouth water.

‘You’ll poison yourself.’

I chewed quickly and swallowed, spitting the beetle’s broken shell into my hand and dropping it beside the others. His eyes followed my movements and widened at the sight of a dozen little owl pellets that had to be mine.

‘Your Highness . . .’

Something in his voice made the stern man dismount to crouch opposite me, although he crouched less low and winced at a pain in his leg. He too looked at the scrunched beetle shells and their eyes met. Together they glanced at the door leading to my parents’ house.

‘A week,’ the man said. ‘Two?’

‘When was the letter written, Highness?’

The old man pulled folded paper from his pocket and skimmed its contents. ‘A month ago,’ he said, voice grim. He looked around and scowled at what he saw. To me it was home, the courtyard of a crumbling chateau, which I would later realise was a chateau in name only. A crumbling farmhouse then. On the slopes of a vine-clad hill that had been sold to a local merchant to raise money for my brother’s commission.

‘Go check,’ he said.

The vicome scrambled to his feet.

It was now that the third man decided to dismount, and as he came close I realised he must be little more than a boy to them, though he looked a man to me. Whatever he was about to say died at a warning glance from the stern man. There was a family likeness between them. Father and son? Grandfather and grandson? Brothers if the gap hadn’t been too great. ‘Help the vicome,’ the older man ordered.

‘Help him with what?’

‘You will address me properly.’ The voice was sharp.

‘My apologies, Highness. With what should your servant help your aide de camp?’

‘Philippe, you are my son . . .’

‘I’m your bastard.’ He shut the door into the house with a slam and silence fell, although it held a different quality, being the silence of people who were there, rather than the silence that comes with being alone. The sun was warm and the horse dung smelt sweet and a smaller beetle chose that moment to venture from a crack between the cobbles. My hand flicked out and was locked solid as the old man’s hand closed on mine. He was staring at me intently, eyes dark and hooded.

‘Mine,’ I said.

He shook his head.

‘We share?’ I offered. I didn’t believe he would. Grown-ups never shared but it was worth trying and he seemed to consider it. At least his grip lessened and he looked thoughtful and then sad.

‘It’s not very big,’ he said.

‘I’ll find you another.’

‘You like eating beetles?’

‘Black ones,’ I said, pointing to the line of chewed carcases that had dried to sharp crackle in the summer sun. ‘Brown ones taste sour.’

‘Let it go,’ he ordered. And his voice was so firm and certain of being obeyed I released the insect and watched it scurry away to hide beneath a broken cobble. It waited, perhaps feeling itself watched. After a while it ran for the safety of another dip in the cobbles, hesitated on the edge of stopping and kept going. We lost it in the shadows where the roof of the stables obscured the sun and put that corner of the courtyard into darkness.

A shutter was opened behind me. Without looking round I couldn’t see if it was the vicome or the sulking youth, or both. The old man looked up and words must have been mouthed because he nodded grimly, then forced a smile when the time came to face me again. He didn’t say anything and the noise of crows filled where his words should be. Since I knew that grown-ups spoke and children listened I waited.

Crows kept quarrelling, a dog barked in the village, and behind me shutters clanged as the men inside opened every window they could find, and the old man and I squatted in the sun and waited patiently. A beetle shook itself free from the dung heap and my hand twitched to catch it but I didn’t and the old man nodded approvingly.

‘Are you hungry?’

I nodded.

‘Come with me,’ he ordered, climbing slowly to his feet.

Instead of mounting his horse, he gripped its bridle and led it under the arch with the other two horses following, as if they’d been trained to do so. We walked slowly, because my legs were short and his were bad and it obviously hurt him to walk. He was a big man, dressed in a long red coat decorated with strips of gold, his hose was black and his shoes had red buckles. I decided he’d once been bigger because he didn’t quite fill the clothes he wore. There were food stains on one sleeve and his nails were dirty. I could see lice in the folds of his long wig. You can eat lice. I didn’t know that then but you can. They are best fried and hidden by the taste of other ingredients.

As we walked under the arch and into the sun I discovered he’d brought an army with him. A dozen soldiers on horses stood silhouetted to one side. Directly in front of us were fifty more men, all with swords but lacking uniforms – unless frock coats and wide-brimmed hats with feathers counted. One kicked his horse forward and the old man raised a hand so abruptly his friend almost tripped his mount bringing it to a stop. A small man in a brown coat ran forward when summoned.

‘Food,’ the stern man ordered.

A wicker basket was bundled from the back of a pack horse and a carpet – a real carpet – rolled across the dirt of the track leading to our house. They used the track because the banks on either side were too steep. I recognised bread and cold chicken but the rest was simply unknown to me. The man in the brown coat, who had to be a servant but a very grand one, bowed low as he presented the spread to the old man.

‘Not for me, fool. For him.’

I was pushed forward and stumbled, falling to my knees in front of the food, with my fingers landing on a cheese that squished stickily. Without thinking, I licked my fingers and froze at the taste of a sourness so perfect the world stopped. A second later it restarted and I nibbled another fragment from my knuckle. The flesh of the cheese was white and the blue of the veining so deep it belonged to a jewel.

‘Roquefort,’ the old man said.

‘Roffort . . .’

He smiled as I stumbled over the word and tore me a piece of bread before his servant could do it. He wiped the bread up my fingers to clean away the cheese and seemed unsurprised when I reached for the scrap. The bread had a lightness I’d never met and went perfectly with the cheese. A second piece of roffort followed the first and then a third, until the loaf was half its size and the cheese was gone and my stomach hurt. A hundred courtiers, soldiers and servants watched me eat. A hundred peasants watched them from the vineyard slopes, too far away to see what was happening, but transfixed by the largest group of men on horseback the area had seen in years.

‘Highness . . .’ The man speaking was the one he’d called vicome.

‘What did you find?’

The vicome glanced at me and the stern man nodded, his face resigned. ‘Take the boy to clean his hands,’ he told the brown-coated servant. ‘And his face while you’re at it.’

‘Into the house, Majesty?’

‘No,’ the old man said sharply. ‘Not into the house. There’s a stream behind us. You can use that, and this . . .’ He held up a napkin.

The water was cold and fresh and I drank enough to take the richness from my throat and then let the grand servant clean my fingers in the stream and wash my face, rinsing his cloth out between washes. Tiny fish danced below us and one came into my hand and wriggled inside my fingers. It was still wriggling when I swallowed it.

The servant looked at me.

‘Do you want one?

He shook his head and wiped my face one last time, brushing crust from the corner of my eyes and snot from beneath my nose. When I returned to where the others waited they were more solemn than ever. The one called vicome knelt in front of me, despite the dirt, to ask what had happened to the things in the house. ‘They were taken,’ I said.

‘By whom?’

‘The villagers.’

‘What did they say?’ He looked serious. So serious, I understood he wanted me to understand he was being serious.

BOOK: The Last Banquet

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