The Horseman on the Roof (35 page)

“I know her,” he thought at once. “But where from?”

He had surely never met and forgotten a woman of that kind. She busied herself with the girths of a man's saddle with very short stirrups and in doing so raised a flap from which the mother-of-pearl of some large horse pistols shone out.

“I'll be damned,” he told himself, “if it isn't the young woman who so bravely made me tea in that house with the remarkable attic.”

He went up and said: “Can I help you, madame?”

She looked at him sternly.

“Payment for services rendered,” he added dryly.

“What services?”

“Two bowls of tea.”

“Bowls?” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “very big bowls,
café au lait
bowls. And I think if you'd had a soup tureen handy, you'd have served me the tea in a soup tureen.”

At that moment, Angelo was cursing his peasant's jacket, but he was quite pleased with his cold manner, which he imagined to be very English. For an inexplicable reason Angelo had boundless confidence in the English manner. The young woman seemed more to be thinking of something funny.

“Ah!” said she. “I know! The gentleman!”

The word astounded Angelo. He had quite forgotten his state of mind on the stairs in the dark, and how then his chief fear had been that he would cause fear.

In spite of the little Louis XI hat set dashingly over one ear, the young woman unquestionably needed to talk. She congratulated him on having escaped the sickness during the paroxysm that immediately preceded the evacuation of the town. He described, in colorless words without any adjective, his adventures with the nun and how he had reached the almond-tree hill, then what had happened there. He did not mention Giuseppe but only the species of lightning cholera that had strewn the ground with abandoned corpses.

“We were no better accommodated on the hill where I was,” she said.

And she too described a series of horrors.

“But what are we doing here?” said Angelo.

“For three days they've been preventing us from passing into the next
département.
I'm tired of being insulted by a monster who imagines that death gives him control over me. There he's wrong. I prefer your lightning cholera and I'm going back to it.”

“It's easy to put up barricades in the little valley where we are,” said Angelo, “but there must be a way of passing through the hills over there. They just count on our being bad riders and never daring to venture over rough ground.”

“I've tried,” she said, “but they've foreseen that. They're so frightened that they tend rather to overestimate everybody.”

“Everybody, perhaps,” said Angelo, “except those they should. A moment ago there was a peasant in a big black hat here. Where is he now? He's disappeared, and with him the horse that was harnessed to that trap left standing under the willows—look. And there's no one to be seen on the roads leading back. Just now, while the monster was showing off, I caught these country people winking at each other. They must know a place where it's difficult to post sentinels; they'll slip through there one by one. And if you ask me, the big fellow over there with the pale beard, who's just drifting off with the two women in red petticoats, is another of them. Watch. The two women are looking innocent. Too innocent. There: isn't that one going to pick a sprig of mint? I never saw a peasant woman pick a sprig of mint merely to pass the time. Believe me, that's innocence invented for the occasion. There's a lot underneath the surface.”

“You have terribly sharp eyes,” said the young woman. “You're right, there is something there.”

“Do you still want to get to the other side?” said Angelo. “Here's what we must do. Oh no, not follow them! Play safe. Leave the risks to them. Let's see which way they're going. We're old enough to go by ourselves if they aren't kicked back in a short while. It's quite easy. Let's draw aside a bit and not lose sight of them. I could see those women's petticoats two leagues away, with a red like that. Even if it were in the woods, over there on the crest.”

Angelo and the young woman went and sat down on the grass near the abandoned buggy.

“People don't leave an almost new buggy like that by the roadside without good reason,” he said. “And they've taken off everything they could, down to the cords of the side racks.”

“Meanwhile our people have vanished,” said she, “I can't see the red petticoats any more.”

“There must be a low path over there,” he said.

In fact, ten minutes later, they saw a red blob under the chestnuts that covered the lower slopes of the hills.

The sun was sinking. Its slanting rays penetrated deep into the forests rising like an amphitheater around the little plain. They could easily follow the progress of the three who had escaped. They had first described a wide arc starting from the point where the road was barred; they were making for some high escarpments that appeared impassable.

“That looks to me like a passage that is just possible for people on foot,” said the young woman. “I value my life, but I certainly won't abandon my horse to save it.”

Never had Angelo been so happy. That feeling, which he understood perfectly, expressed by a voice with such charming inflections and by eyes that looked so sincere, seemed to him the most beautiful in the world. There was no question now of English coldness. He put a certain passion into saying:

“I would get myself killed for my horse. And I've only had him since yesterday evening. But,” he continued, “I noticed your shortened stirrups and I deduced from that that you're an excellent horsewoman. Besides, look carefully at that little bald patch just above the forest, below the escarpment: it must be a small grazing-ground. I can see a dark blue spot moving over it. I believe it's the bay horse and the tall peasant in the blouse who were still here, no more than half an hour ago, at the foot of that birch. The monster talks a lot; he has dark eyes that make an impression and must terrify his company, but I wouldn't want him even guarding the kitchens; he doesn't realize that there are now five carts unharnessed and abandoned around us.”

Without gestures, so as not to attract the soldier's attention, and in the terse language of a military report, he drew the young woman's attention to four or five other brown spots moving slowly over the grazing-ground in the direction of the left-hand ridge of the escarpment, round which they disappeared.

“Nothing would rejoice me more than to give that foul-mouthed officer a fine farewell,” said the young woman.

“Let's give it to him at once,” said Angelo. “We're no stupider than country people.”

He was in his element. He helped her into her saddle without even realizing that she was wearing skirts and that she rode astride.

They made a wide detour across the fields and did not take the right direction until they were concealed by a coppice of oaks.

“Your horse has a lot of spirit, but my old plug has good sense,” said he, when they had reached the chestnut forest. “Let me go first, he'll pick the best path. The secret is to head for the light reflected from the rocks, and I can sight through the leaves.”

At every step they found obvious signs of others having passed there recently. They were already well up the mountain when they overtook the man with the red beard and the two women in scarlet petticoats. They were resting at the edge of a vermilion clearing.

“You're very good at this game,” said the young woman when they had passed the others.

Angelo was intoxicated by the smell of the autumn woods. He naïvely showed that he didn't know what she meant.

“I mean,” she said, “that there are two ways of escaping from the charnel houses you described to me earlier on, and which I am running away from too. One of these is to ask everyone the way. I don't like doing it.”

“There was nothing to ask,” replied Angelo, even more naïvely. “I've two eyes, just like the man with the beard. So I don't need his to reach that escarpment: it's now in front of us, as plain as the sky above the sea.”

“What I said,” remarked the young woman dryly, “was only to vindicate myself in my own eyes.”

At the foot of the rocks there was, in fact, a narrow defile, but in it Angelo discovered fresh horse-dung. He could not contain his delight, and he spoke of this dung as though it were nuggets of gold. He was in earnest and his exaltation was sincere, but there was a certain charm in disporting oneself at this height, over the tops of the chestnut trees, and it began to be clear that he was disporting himself like a madman. He even used some very Italian words and gestures to describe the extraordinary landscape that one saw from this spot. The sun, now even lower on the horizon, made the vivid enamel of all the crests glitter to its light, stabbed the black forests with flaming arrows, and on the little plain below, already in shadow, sparkled from the beveled blades of all its grasses.

The young woman advanced boldly across two or three rugged places where there was danger of slipping on the loose scree. Finally they turned the corner of the escarpment, and beyond rolling spurs covered with thick forests they saw in the distance a broad valley, riverless but verdant and with a small round town in the middle of its fields.

“The promised land,” said Angelo.

From the height where they stood, however, the way was still a very long one. For more than a league they exhausted themselves holding their horses to a steep, twisting path under enormous beeches. The light was now sinking fast. They reached a defile full of gray twilight.

“During the two days I was held up by the soldiers' barricade,” said the young woman, “I heard many things, but especially that the dragoons from Valence are patrolling this whole region and arresting without mercy all who are not resident in the
département.
”

“That applies to me wherever I go,” said Angelo. “I'm not resident anywhere.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“You don't live in this region either?”

“No.”

“I know the places they put you in in such circumstances,” said Angelo. “They call it quarantine. I consented to that once. I have every respect for the welfare of mankind and the common weal, but no desire to fall into a booby trap again.”

They went down the defile, which gradually broadened and finally opened out into a lake of grass half a league wide. In the center, beneath tall sycamores, could be seen the white walls and belfries of what appeared to be an abbey. Amid the pearl-gray twilight and the muffled music of two or three huge fountains, the place was so peaceful that they left the shelter of the trees and took to the meadows. They were too far from the edge of the woods when they heard lusty voices challenging them and saw three horsemen in red uniforms emerge from a clump of willows and gallop toward them in a very pretty enveloping movement.

“Leave this to me,” said Angelo.

“Here's two more of these f—g swine,” said the horseman bearing a corporal's stripes.

Angelo replied with an insult that was too long and, before he had finished, the other shouted scornfully:

“Give him one in the snout!”

Angelo plunged his hand into his saddlebag, was lucky enough to find the little saber's hilt at once, and drew it.

“Throw that away, you poor fool, it pricks,” said one of the soldiers with a snigger.

Angelo was busy with his horse and was thinking: “The hardest thing's going to be to put some fight into this damned old nag.”

Indeed, he was holding his saber like a broomstick. The horsemen had unsheathed their long dragoons' blades and were preparing to strike at him with the flat side, when Angelo sensed that his horse was more intelligent than he had thought and was even ready to do some rather pretty work on its own account. He launched it so violently against the corporal's mare that this man, in blank astonishment, lost his stirrups, fell like a bag of spoons, and remained stretched out on the ground. The soldiers slashed at him, jabbering like rats, but Angelo briskly turned their blades and in a few adroit passes put them both on the defensive. While giving a brilliant display of swordsmanship, he voluptuously took the time to say, in a drawing-room voice:

“Do me the kindness, madame, of galloping straight on. I propose to give a little lesson in manners to these blackguards.”

He saw that his adversaries' faces were red as boiled pigs.

“Bad soldiers,” he thought; “they're dying of rage.”

In a second he contrived a magnificent backstroke that sent the weapon of one of them flying out of his hand in such lightning fashion that the rider heard his own blade whistle past his ears and lost his seat from astonishment. Angelo, standing in his stirrups, brought his saber down flat on the other's helmet as hard as he could. The two men turned tail. The disarmed one dug with both spurs; the other, stunned but in his saddle, went off with his legs flapping, like a man who has had his fill. The corporal was still lying in the grass.

“Good old Giuseppe,” thought Angelo.

He was quite surprised to find the young woman still there. She had not moved. She was blithely holding one of her horse pistols pointed at the prone man.

“Is he dead?” she inquired.

“That would surprise me,” said Angelo.

He dismounted and went to see.

“He won't die of this,” said he. “He's just a conscript who's had his first shock! But you may be sure, when he comes to, he'll tell a terrible tale. Let's make off under the trees and get away.”

They rode very rapidly for a long time under the trees, taking several cross tracks, and even wading in a stream for more than half a league.

“I think we're doubling back,” said the young woman.

“I'm sure we're not,” said Angelo. “In the first place, I've been taking care always to have the sun behind us, and in all our windings I've never stopped aiming for that big star. It rose while I was settling their hash, and it occurred to me that it was just what we needed to get us safely away from those buildings we saw among the trees, where there was certainly a platoon in reserve. If we keep straight ahead, we should come out of the wood at the side opposite where we went in.”