El Dorado, Baroness Orczy [read the beginning after the end novel .TXT] 📗

sign from the chief agent the soldiers stood at attention. He then called de Batz and the lantern-bearer to him.

He took a key from his breeches pocket, and with his own hand unlocked the massive door. He curtly ordered the lantern-bearer and de Batz to go through, then he himself went in, and finally once more re-locked the door behind him, the soldiers remaining on guard on the landing outside.

Now the three men were standing in a square antechamber, dank and dark, devoid of furniture save for a large cupboard that filled the whole of one wall; the others, mildewed and stained, were covered with a greyish paper, which here and there hung away in strips.

Héron crossed this antechamber, and with his knuckles rapped against a small door opposite.

“Holà!” he shouted, “Simon, mon vieux, tu es là?”

From the inner room came the sound of voices, a man’s and a woman’s, and now, as if in response to Héron’s call, the shrill tones of a child. There was some shuffling, too, of footsteps, and some pushing about of furniture, then the door was opened, and a gruff voice invited the belated visitors to enter.

The atmosphere in this further room was so thick that at first de Batz was only conscious of the evil smells that pervaded it; smells which were made up of the fumes of tobacco, of burning coke, of a smoky lamp, and of stale food, and mingling through it all the pungent odour of raw spirits.

Héron had stepped briskly in, closely followed by de Batz. The man Dupont with a mutter of satisfaction put down his lantern and curled himself up in a corner of the antechamber. His interest in the spectacle so favoured by citizen Héron had apparently been exhausted by constant repetition.

De Batz looked round him with keen curiosity with which disgust was ready enough to mingle.

The room itself might have been a large one; it was almost impossible to judge of its size, so crammed was it with heavy and light furniture of every conceivable shape and type. There was a monumental wooden bedstead in one corner, a huge sofa covered in black horsehair in another. A large table stood in the centre of the room, and there were at least four capacious armchairs round it. There were wardrobes and cabinets, a diminutive washstand and a huge pier-glass, there were innumerable boxes and packing-cases, cane-bottomed chairs and what-nots everywhere. The place looked like a depot for secondhand furniture.

In the midst of all the litter de Batz at last became conscious of two people who stood staring at him and at Héron. He saw a man before him, somewhat fleshy of build, with smooth, mouse-coloured hair brushed away from a central parting, and ending in a heavy curl above each ear; the eyes were wide open and pale in colour, the lips unusually thick and with a marked downward droop. Close beside him stood a youngish-looking woman, whose unwieldy bulk, however, and pallid skin revealed the sedentary life and the ravages of ill-health.

Both appeared to regard Héron with a certain amount of awe, and de Batz with a vast measure of curiosity.

Suddenly the woman stood aside, and in the far corner of the room there was displayed to the Gascon Royalist’s cold, calculating gaze the pathetic figure of the uncrowned King of France.

“How is it Capet is not yet in bed?” queried Héron as soon as he caught sight of the child.

“He wouldn’t say his prayers this evening,” replied Simon with a coarse laugh, “and wouldn’t drink his medicine. Bah!” he added with a snarl, “this is a place for dogs and not for human folk.”

“If you are not satisfied, mon vieux,” retorted Héron curtly, “you can send in your resignation when you like. There are plenty who will be glad of the place.”

The ex-cobbler gave another surly growl and expectorated on the floor in the direction where stood the child.

“Little vermin,” he said, “he is more trouble than man or woman can bear.”

The boy in the meanwhile seemed to take but little notice of the vulgar insults put upon him by his guardian. He stood, a quaint, impassive little figure, more interested apparently in de Batz, who was a stranger to him, than in the three others whom he knew. De Batz noted that the child looked well nourished, and that he was warmly clad in a rough woollen shirt and cloth breeches, with coarse grey stockings and thick shoes; but he also saw that the clothes were indescribably filthy, as were the child’s hands and face. The golden curls, among which a young and queenly mother had once loved to pass her slender perfumed fingers, now hung bedraggled, greasy, and lank round the little face, from the lines of which every trace of dignity and of simplicity had long since been erased.

There was no look of the martyr about this child now, even though, mayhap, his small back had often smarted under his vulgar tutor’s rough blows; rather did the pale young face wear the air of sullen indifference, and an abject desire to please, which would have appeared heartbreaking to any spectator less self-seeking and egotistic than was this Gascon conspirator.

Madame Simon had called him to her while her man and the citizen Héron were talking, and the child went readily enough, without any sign of fear. She took the corner of her coarse dirty apron in her hand, and wiped the boy’s mouth and face with it.

“I can’t keep him clean,” she said with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders and a look at de Batz. “There now,” she added, speaking once more to the child, “drink like a good boy, and say your lesson to please maman, and then you shall go to bed.”

She took a glass from the table, which was filled with a clear liquid that de Batz at first took to be water, and held it to the boy’s lips.