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 vicomte.
‘What did you find?’
The vicomte 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 vicomte 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.
‘That my father owed them money.’
‘They told you not to go inside?’
I nodded in answer. They’d told me my parents were sleeping. Since my father had already told me I was not to go in because he and my mother would be sleeping this had been no surprise. That the villagers had gone in and returned carrying my parents’ few possessions had been strange. But most things I asked about came down to ‘That is how it is’, and I imagined this was the same.
‘Where did you sleep?’
‘In the stable if it rained. In the yard if it was fine.’
He thought back and maybe it hadn’t rained in his last few days but it had rained on at least two of mine and I’d been grateful for the shelter the stable offered. Its roof leaked, because every roof in the house leaked, but the horse slept in the corner that got most of the wet and I liked the company. Before the vicomte climbed to his feet, he said, ‘He is le Régent. Call him Highness.’ He was looking at the old man who stood supporting himself on the neck of his horse, watching us in silence while everyone else stayed back.
‘And bow,’ the vicomte said.
I bowed as ordered, the best bow I’d been taught and the old man smiled sadly and nodded his head a fraction in reply. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘Stolen by peasants,’ the vicomte answered.
‘Do we know their names?’
The vicomte knelt again and asked me the same question – despite the fact I’d already heard it. So I told him who’d come to the house and the old man nodded the answers towards the brown-coated servant to say he should pay attention. The servant spoke to one of the soldiers who rode away with three others following after.
‘Your name?’ the sullen young man asked me.
‘Philippe,’
‘We should know his name.’ The young man’s voice was as sulky as his face. ‘He could be anybody. You don’t know who he is.’
The old man sighed. ‘Tell me your name.’
‘Jean-Marie,’ I replied.
He waited and then smiled indulgently and I realised he was waiting for more. I knew my name and I knew most of my letters, I could count to twenty and sometimes to fifty without getting any of them wrong.
‘Jean-Marie Charles d’Aumout, Highness.’
He looked at the vicomte at the last and the vicomte shrugged. I could see that the old man was pleased and that the vicome was pleased with me. The boy called Philippe just looked furious but that was all he’d looked since I’d first seen him so I ignored it.
Le Régent said, ‘Put him on the baggage cart.’
‘We’re taking him with us?’ the vicomte asked.
‘Until we reach Limoges. There must be an orphanage there.’
The vicomte leant forward and spoke too quietly for me to catch the words but the old man looked thoughtful and then nodded. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘He can go to St Luce. Tell the mayor to sell the manor and the horse. He can remit the money direct to the school. Make sure they know my interest in the child.’
Bowing low, the vicomte sent a soldier for the mayor.
The soldier and the mayor returned but – before they did – the other four soldiers who’d been sent into the village earlier came back with the first three of the men I’d named as taking things from the house. They were hanging from trees before the mayor even appeared at the bottom of the road. I tried not to look at them kick and when the vicomte realised I was watching he sent me to sit in a cart and stare in a different direction.
I couldn’t see them with my back to the trees.
Their protests were loud enough for me to hear though; and their begging, when they realised protests were not enough. Finally they
