Читать книгу White Horses - Joan Wolf - Страница 11

The other wagons fell in behind Gabrielle and drove out of the field and onto the road. They would pass through Lille and then take the road south to Amiens.

“I wish you would let me drive,” Leo said. “I’m supposed to be helping out as best I can, remember?”

“You can drive when we get to the main road on the other side of Lille,” she said.

It sounded to him as if she didn’t trust him to get them through the city and Leo’s mouth set. He refrained from comment, however, and instead tried to make his legs as comfortable as he could.

“So, Leo, tell me about yourself,” Gabrielle said as they drove through the early-ploughed land on either side of them.

He looked at her. Her own eyes were on the road and her profile was so delicate and pretty that he was momentarily distracted. She turned her head to catch his eye and gave him an encouraging nod.

He had no intention of talking about himself to this girl. “There’s nothing much to tell,” he said stiffly. “I grew up, went to school, and when I got out I joined the army. End of story.”

After a moment she said wryly, “It’s a good thing you didn’t want to become a novelist. You’d have trouble filling up the pages.”

“What about you?” He tried turning the tables. “You must have led a far more exciting life than I.”

She shook her head. “Oh, no, don’t think you’re going to get off that easy! Where did you grow up, the country or the city? What school did you go to? Why did you join the army?”

Those things are none of your business. He thought the words but restrained himself from speaking them. He would have to stay on good terms with this girl; it would look suspicious if they were at odds with each other. He said grudgingly, “I grew up in the country, in the part of England that is called Sussex. It’s very pretty there, with rolling hills we call the Downs. My father had an estate and we had a lot of horses. I lived there until I was eight, then I went away to school.”

She turned to him and her brown eyes were full of pity. “You English! It is terrible how you push your children off to school when they are so young. You must not like children very much.”

He had never thought about such a thing. “I am sure English parents love their children quite as much as French parents,” he said defensively.

“Then why do they send their children away to school so early?”

They had left the farmland and were now driving along a city roadway, with gray stone residences on either side. A man walking a dog stopped to watch as they went by. Gabrielle waved to him.

Leo answered, “For the education, of course. It would be impossible to get as good an education at home. Schools have masters who are experts in a variety of fields of study.”

She clicked to the horses, which had turned their heads to observe a man painting an iron fence close to the road.

“That may be true for older children, but young children can learn all they need to know from a good tutor at home. Eight! Mon Dieu, that is outrageous.”

Leo didn’t think this remark merited a reply.

Gabrielle went on. “It is only the upper class who can afford to do such a thing, yes? Is your father a noble?”

He hesitated for a moment but could find no reason for not telling the truth. “Yes.”

“Ah-ha!” She gave him a triumphant grin. “I guessed that you were the younger son of a noble. Wasn’t I clever?”

“Very clever,” replied the eldest son of an earl.

“Is that why you went into the army, to make a career for yourself?”

He frowned. Was this interrogation ever going to end? “Yes,” he said shortly.

She nodded, as if satisfied.

He folded his arms. “Now it is your turn to tell me about yourself. Have you always traveled with the circus?”

“It has been my life for as long as I can remember. Papa had to find something to do when the king fell, and he didn’t want to stay near Paris, where everyone knew he had been the king’s horse master. A traveling equestrian circus seemed to be a good idea, and we have been very successful.”

“And your father was against Napoléon?”

“Papa was a royalist, through and through. He himself was the grandson of a noble, you see.”

“And you are a royalist as well?”

“Not like Papa was,” she said. “I think too many people were poor under the ancien régime. But Napoléon is as bad. How many men did he lose in Russia? Half a million at least. And now his men are all over the country, conscripting a new army to go on fighting. Even the peasants are resisting this conscription—everyone is sick of war. We are sick of Napoléon, if the truth be known. A return of the monarchy would be better than what we have—if the monarchy was like the English one and responsible to a parliament.”

A shock of hair had fallen across his forehead in the breeze and he pushed it back. He was impressed by her intelligence and conviction. “If Louis is restored it will be more of a constitutional monarchy—I’m sure of that.”

“It had better be. To have gone through what France has gone through and to end up as we began—that would be a tragedy.”

He, who had always thought it would be desirable if France returned to the old ways, thought for a minute about what she had said. Then he surprised himself by saying, “Yes, I suppose it would be.”

They had been driving through the main part of Lille as they spoke and people on the sidewalk waved to them and called out greetings.

“I’m surprised you don’t start your tour in Lille,” Leo said.

“We end our tour in Lille,” she explained, waving back to a little boy who was jumping up and down and crying, “Gabrielle! Gabrielle!”

Leo asked, “Do you go to the same places every year?”

“We have several different routes, and we have done the southern route before, so it won’t look strange for us to be traveling toward Spain.”

“That’s good,” Leo said. “The more normal this circus looks, the better.” He looked around. “Where is Colette?”

“Inside the wagon sleeping on the sofa. That’s how she usually travels. I give her a good run before we leave and she runs again when we arrive, otherwise she sleeps.”

“She’s a beautiful dog,” he commented.

She smiled. “Shall I tell you a secret? She’s not really a dog—she’s a princess in disguise.”

He laughed. It was the first time she had heard that sound and she turned her head to look at him. He looked younger when he smiled, she thought.

“How old are you, Leo?” she asked.

All of the amusement left his face. “I should have prepared a letter of introduction for you,” he said.

She gave him an annoyed look. “I am trying to be polite and to make conversation. And I should know how old you are if we’re supposed to be married.”

“I am twenty-eight,” he said evenly. “You seem young to have the responsibility for a circus like this.” He tried to steer the conversation back to her.

“Yes, but I spent many years watching what Papa did. I can handle it.” She looked at him. “That is, I can handle it if we don’t come under suspicion for carrying this gold. Frankly, I think the English government was mad to insist I take a noble’s son along on such a mission.”

“I don’t plan on telling people that I’m a noble’s son,” he said in annoyance.

“There’s something about you…an air of authority…that makes you stand out. That could be dangerous.”

“Nonsense,” he said.

“It isn’t nonsense. You saw the reaction of the rest of the circus members. You don’t fit in.”

He was aware of how clipped his voice had become.

“I am here to make certain that the gold gets delivered to Wellington and I intend to do my job.”

“I know!” she exclaimed, not listening to what he had been saying. She turned to him and her large brown eyes were sparkling. “You can be our ringmaster!”

He looked at her as if she was insane. “I am not going to be a ringmaster—or anything else! I am not here to perform in your circus.”

“But it would be such a clever disguise,” she said excitedly. “You’d make an excellent ringmaster—there’s that air of authority, you know. And it would be a great camouflage. It would make you part of the circus, not just a suspicious addition.”

“I am not going to perform in your circus. You might as well get that through your head,” he said in his coldest voice.

She looked at him with a combination of surprise and disappointment, then turned her head back to face the horses. They continued the journey in silence.

They reached the outskirts of Amiens at about five o’clock, and Vincent, the advance man, was waiting for them at the Coq d’Or inn on the main road. He came over to Gabrielle’s wagon and told her that they had secured the same field as last year.

“Wonderful!” She turned to Leo. “This is Vincent Duplay, our advance man. Vincent, meet my new husband, Leo.”

Vincent looked at Leo in surprise. “I didn’t know that you had remarried, Gabrielle. When did this happen?”

“A few weeks ago,” Leo said smoothly. “We are still newlyweds.”

Gabrielle shot him a glance. His face was perfectly grave.

He is the most humorless man I have ever met, she thought. I wonder if he is like this with people of his own class or is it just us peasants who rate that somber expression.

She looked back at Vincent. “Where have you booked us to stay, Vincent?”

“The same place as last year. Is that all right?”

“Fine,” she reassured him. “It was quite a decent hotel. Have you put notices around town?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then you can help put up the tent.”

“Yes, madame.” He gave her a mock salute. “Nice to have met you,” he said to Leo.

Leo nodded. Soberly.

Gabrielle sighed as she took the reins back from Leo’s hands. “Better let me drive. I know where the field is.”

It was large and flat, sparsely covered by grass and surrounded by trees.

“This is such a perfect place for us,” Gabrielle explained to Leo as they arrived at the field. “There is a stream just inside the woods over there. We can bring the horses to the water instead of always having to drag the water to them.”

She watched as Leo looked around. It looked like an ordinary field to him. “Very nice,” he said.

Gabrielle said briskly, “Well, before we can go to our lodgings we have to make certain the horses are comfortable. Get down, Leo,” she ordered. “There’s work to do.”

All of the wagons had emptied by the time Leo and Gabrielle reached the ground, and all the circus members gathered around her. She issued her orders.

“You know the routine,” she began, looking at each person in the group. “First we have to get the horses settled. Mathieu, Albert, Jean, Cesar, Leo and I can put up the corral. Then we’ll unharness the horses and take them for water. The rest of you can help with the tents.”

Most of the assembly turned and started to walk toward the wagon in which the tents were stored. Gabrielle went to open the back door of her wagon to let Colette out and her brothers and the grooms headed in the direction of the wagon Mathieu had been driving. After a moment’s hesitation, Leo followed them.

Mathieu climbed up into the driver’s seat and drove the wagon to a place a few hundred feet from where all the other wagons were parked. When he stopped, the two grooms jumped into the back of the wagon and started handing down long pointed wooden poles to the rest of the men who stood on the ground. When they had all been unloaded, they were followed by four heavy wooden mallets.

“We put the stakes into the ground and then we put up a rope to make a corral,” Albert explained to Leo.

“Surely you can’t put all the horses in the corral together?”

“The corral is only for our horses. The rest of the circus pickets their horses for the night under the stable tent. Gabrielle likes to give our horses a chance to lie down.”

“They don’t try to get out? A rope corral isn’t that sturdy.”

Albert shrugged. “If they wanted to get out they probably could, but the corral is where they are fed, and besides, they are used to it.”

Something rustled in the trees and the greyhound was off like a shot.

“Good God,” Leo exclaimed. “She moves like the wind.”

“Colette can run,” Albert agreed.

“I’ve never seen a greyhound run. They really are amazing.”

“What kind of dogs did you have in England?”

“My family had mostly spaniels and retrievers—hunting dogs.”

Albert said, “Greyhounds are hunters, too—they are sight hounds, not nose hounds—but Colette is a pet.”

“Most of the ladies in England have little dogs for pets,” Leo said. “Pugs or King Charles spaniels.”

“Gabrielle has always liked big dogs. Colette is her second greyhound.”

Mathieu came up to them and handed Leo a mallet. “Here you go, Leo,” he said. “You look like you’re strong. You can pound the stake while Albert holds it.”

The men had pounded the stakes in the ground more quickly than Leo would have believed, then two lengths of thick rope were looped through holes that had been drilled in the posts.

“Very neat,” Leo remarked, impressed despite himself.

Gabrielle came up to her brother and Leo. “Emma and I will start to untie the performance horses and take them down to the stream for water.” she said.

She favored Leo with a brief smile. “See how you can make yourself useful?” she asked. “There is always something to be done in a circus.”

He nodded but did not reply.

When the performance horses had been corralled, Leo helped unharness the wagon horses and take them for a drink. By the time they had finished with the horses, the circus tent was up. Leo looked at it and was impressed.

“I’ve never seen a tent like that,” he said to Mathieu.

“It was Papa’s invention, the round tent. It makes for good viewing from all sides and you can get more people in.”

“And you put it up in so short a time!”

“It’s simple, really,” Mathieu said. “First we put up the center pole, then we lace the canvas pieces together and drape them over, then the quarter poles are put in to hold the tent out, and voilà, we have a tent.”

“Very efficient,” Leo said.

“Don’t you have tents in the army?” Mathieu asked.

“Actually, Wellington has ordered tents for this last campaign. Until now the men have bivouacked in the open.”

Mathieu said, “We have two more tents to put up, the stable tent and the dressing tent. Then we will be done for now.”

Gabrielle came up to them, her greyhound at her heels. “We need to hay the horses,” she said. “Leo, you can help Mathieu.”

More orders. He replied as calmly as he could but knew his temper was showing. “Very well.”

Gabrielle stood and watched as he went off with her brother, but not before he noted the speculative expression on her face.