The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
Citizen-Agent was thoughtfully silent awhile.
'It might be as well to have a talk with this Bontemps Saint-Just,' he said at last. 'He had better explain these notes.' Then he changed the subject. 'To return to Thorin, what do you know about him?'
'Nothing to his good. A ne'er-do-well, a drunkard, a wife-beater. Small blame to his wife for going off with the Citizen Saint-Just. And that's why so little has been heard of it. No one was sorry when he was laid by the heels.'
André-Louis was stern. 'Whatever he may have been does not lessen the offence of swearing away his life on a false charge.'
'I am not saying so, Citizen-Agent,' quavered the Mayor.
'What relations does he possess?'
'A married sister. She's over in Chaume, too. And there's a cousin of his in the village here.'
'Ah!' André-Louis stood up. 'Let them wait until tomorrow. It is close upon midnight. You will seek me here in the morning at nine o'clock, Citizen-Mayor. We shall have a busy day before us. Boissancourt, put these papers away in safety. Good-night, Citizen-Mayor.'
Foulard took his departure, a weary man, glad to escape at last from the presence of this terrible agent of the Committee of Public Safety.
André-Louis and Boissancourt smiled at each other.
'By God, you're brisk!' said Boissancourt.
'It's in the part of Scaramouche. He succeeds by forestalling. It was imperative to arrest Thuillier at once, so as to prevent him from communicating with Paris. The rest was the reward of virtue, and the highest reward of all was to discover the end of this thread that leads to the Citizen Bontemps. We should find there far more than ever I hoped or suspected when I came to Blérancourt.'
They did. They rode out to Chaume on the following morning, accompanied by the Mayor, the Commandant, and six troopers of the National Guard. Soon after ten they were at the gates of the diminutive but elegant château which was one of the recent acquisitions of Bontemps and wherein he had taken up his residence. Its original owner, the Vicomte de la Beauce, had been guillotined some months ago, and the legitimate heir was somewhere in exile.
Bontemps himself emerged at the clatter of their arrival in the courtyard. Dressed like a peasant, he was a young man of thirty, tall and vigorous and with a face that was everywhere full save in the chin. The result was a rather foolish and weakly expression. But there was no weakness in the terms he used, when the Commandant announced to him that, by order of the Committee of Public Safety, he was under arrest. Having exploded into a succession of vehement minatory questions, such as whether they had by any chance gone mad, whether they had counted the cost of what they did, whether they were aware of his relationship with the Representative Saint-Just, what they thought the representative would have to say with them for this egregious error, he came at last to a relevant demand to know the grounds upon which he was arrested.
André-Louis stood truculently before him. He had cocked his round hat in front and plastered the tricolour cockade upon the face of it. 'The grounds will be fully established by the time we have gone through your papers.'
The chinless countenance of Bontemps changed colour and went slack. But in a moment he had rallied.
'If you depend on that, it means you have no charge. How can you arrest me without formulating a charge? You are abusing your authority, if, indeed, you have any. You are committing an outrage, for which you shall answer.'
'You know too much law for an honest man,' said André-Louis. 'And, anyway, it's out of date. Have you never heard of the Law of Suspects? We arrest you under that. On suspicion.'
'You won't allay it by violence,' said Boissancourt. 'Best take it quietly.'
Bontemps appealed to the Mayor. The Mayor answered him in a paraphrase of the words of Boissancourt, and Bontemps, growing prudently sullen, was locked in a room with a guard at the door and another under the window.
André-Louis wasted no time in questioning the two men and the elderly woman who made up the household of Bontemps. He desired of them no more than an indication of where the Citizen Bontemps kept his papers. They spent three hours ransacking them, the Mayor and Boissancourt assisting André-Louis in his search. When it was complete, and André-Louis had found what he sought, certain notes and one or two letters relating to the purchase of the La Beauce lands, they dined on the best that the little château could supply them: an omelette, a dish of partridges, a couple of bottles of the best wine in Bontemps's well-stocked cellar.
'He's just a damned aristocrat, it seems, this Bontemps,' was all the thanks André-Louis bestowed on the household for that excellent repast.
Then he had the table cleared, and improvised a tribunal in the pleasant dining-room, which was brightened by the wintry sunshine. Writing-materials were placed on the table. André-Louis disposed himself in an armchair before it, with Boissancourt pen in hand on his right, and the Mayor of Blérancourt on his left.
Bontemps, pale, ill-at-ease and sullen, was brought in under guard. The Commandant lounged in the background, an official spectator.
The examination began. Bontemps was formally asked his name, age, condition, place of abode, and occupation, and his answers were set down by Boissancourt. To the last question he replied that he was a proprietor and farmer.
'How long have you been that?' was the inconvenient question.
Bontemps hesitated then answered. 'For the last year.'
'And before that? What were you?'
'A horse-leech.'
André-Louis looked at him appraisingly. 'I understand that your patrimony was negligible. You are a young man, Citizen Bontemps. How long did you practise as a horse-leech?'
'Five or six years.'
'Hardly the time in which to amass a fortune. But you were thrifty, I suppose. You saved money. How much did you save?'
Bontemps shrugged ill-humouredly. 'What the devil do I know what I saved? I keep no accounts.'
'On the contrary, I have a good many accounts before me here which you have kept. Don't waste my time, citizen. Answer me. How much did you save?'
Bontemps became rebellious. 'What is your right to question me? You're a damned spy of the Committee's, not a judge. You have no authority to try me. It may be within your powers to arrest me, though I doubt even that. And, anyway, when the Citizen-Representative Saint-Just comes to hear of it, you'll have a bad quarter of an hour, I promise you. Meanwhile, my friend, the most you can do, the most you dare do, is to send me to Paris for trial. Send me, then. Send me, and be damned to you! For I am answering none of your questions. Citizen-Mayor, are you going to abet this fellow? Name of God! You had better go carefully. You had better be warned. The guillotine goes briskly in Paris. You may come to acquaintance with it for this outrage. The Citizen-Representative Saint-Just will require a strict account of you. That's not a man with whom it's safe to trifle, as you should know.'
He paused, flushed now with the excitement that had welled up in him whilst he declaimed.
André-Louis spoke quietly to Boissancourt. 'Set it all down. Every word of it.' He waited until the pretended secretary had ceased to write, then he turned again to the prisoner. He spoke for once very quietly, without any of the truculence he had hitherto employed. Perhaps because of the contrast his tone was the more impressive.
'You labour under an error based on the old forms. I have said that you know too much law, but that it is out-of-date. If you are an honest man, you will give me every help in deciding whether you are to be sent for trial or not to Soissons. For that is where you will be sent. Not to Paris. The guillotine goes just as briskly in Soissons. As for the Citizen-Representative Saint-Just, upon whose protection you seem to count, you are not to suppose that under the present rule of Fraternity and Equality there is any man in the State with power to protect a malefactor.' His tone hardened again. 'I have said that your notions are out-of-date. You seem under the impression that we are still living in the age of the despots. One other thing.