Part 10: "Le Deluge"

India,1792


The heat of India was like nothing he had ever known, and Lucien mused upon it idly as he lay in bed. The air that flowed in from the open windows was as a heated breath on his naked skin. It was unlike the heat of the brilliant summer sun that shone so intently in his native Brittany, unlike the drenching, heavy, memorable heat of a long ago August, when he had marched with Washington, Lafayette, and Rochambeau to the town of York, in a place called Virginia. Here the heat felt as if the air had been warmed in some vast oven, for it touched every part of him the same. There was no hiding from it, no shade. Seeking shade was of no help, for the sun had no especial strength. This was the heat of the stones, of the land, collected, and stored, year after year, and he felt that he had absorbed it completely, and that now it radiated back outward from his bones.

He stared at the ceiling, at the swirling dots of white light that danced upon the clay tiles and he knew their source from the sound of jingling bells and the cacophony of horns and calls of the mahouts as they paraded their elephants through the square below. The hundreds of tiny mirrors that decorated the headdresses of the great beasts would catch the glint of the sun and send their myriad reflections to riot and play above his head.

"Dormes-tu, mon amant?" Slender brown fingers were kneading the insides of his thighs, and he heard in the inflection of the soft, curiously accented French a hint of annoyance and frustration. He smiled lazily, and reached down to dip his fingers into the heavy black silk of her hair. Iyela Shakuntela, Raj Kumari, was the first daughter of the Rajah of Maipur, his latest employer. He knew he was not her first lover, nor, he suspected was he even her only one of the moment. Still, they'd have his balls first, and then his head, he supposed, if the liaison were to be exposed. He found himself smiling again. Or at least they might try. Judging from the number of times he had deliberately offered himself up for the killing in battle over the past dozen years, only to have his offering remarkably and inexplicably spurned by whatever fates now ruled his despised and cursed life, he had cause to doubt they would be successful.

His even more direct attempts at self-destruction had proved similarly futile, so much so that he had begun to find the situation somewhat comical. On the most recent occasion when he had held his pistol to his head, the all too predictable misfire had amused him so greatly that he had been sufficiently heartened as to go and get drunk rather than make further efforts to die that day.

"Non," he said softly. No, he was not asleep. He could remember, almost to the day, the last time he had truly slept, a peaceful, restful sleep, a night without headache or wakeful, disturbing dreams. Imogene could comfort and soothe him like no other, but not even she could keep the evil away. He never understood it, but he had only slept thus when he had lain with Melusine, and perhaps that was why he had needed her so, and why he had kept her with him for so long. That, and the fact that she would never have gone had he tried to send her away. But gone she had, finally. Why, he thought he could imagine. Where, he never knew.

He was not asleep, but his cock most assuredly was. It was the arrack, he fancied, an evil tasting brew, but splendidly numbing to the senses when drunk in sufficient quantity. He glanced down when he felt the warmth and the tickle of Shaku's lips as she gathered him into her hot little mouth. The rise of his belly partly obscured the view of her nodding head. He was getting fat. That was probably the arrack, too, for certainly it was not the disgusting food, much too heavily spiced, unsubtle and strange to his palate for him ever to have developed much of a taste.

The ministrations of her hands and her mouth felt good, soothing and relaxing if not necessarily arousing, and he let his head fall to one side. On the floor were scattered the pages of a letter he had received that morning from his old friend Charette. He had tried to read it once, but without comprehension. Another of his headaches had been coming on. He would look at it again later. For a few moments he watched as the pages skittered across the floor, lifted by the hot breezes that breathed and whispered through the room. His eye then traveled to the far corner where sat a large, round, tightly woven basket, its lid secured with a lock.

On the night of his arrival at the palace at Maipur, among the entertainments on display was a snake charmer, a thing of which Lucien had heard, but had not yet seen. "A vulgar thing of the bazaar, but a thing that fascinates, yes?" the Rajah had said, smiling his indulgence on his new general, a coveted French officer, acquired at great expense to train his army of forty thousand men. And this one, it was said, was a true tiger of war, with a formidable reputation among the mahrattas for ruthlessness and cruelty, a warrior proven in the fight against the British in the American war, and one, who it also was said, carried either his God's protection, or his curse, for it seemed he could not be killed.

Lucien had watched with interest as a wiry little half-naked man had sat cross-legged on the floor, and taking a pipe from the waist of his dhoti, removed the lid of the snake basket. Ultimately the cobra had risen from the basket, swaying and hissing and spreading its strange hood, drawn, it seemed, by the pipe's lugubrious melody. Later, however, Lucien had expressed some disappointment, for it seemed to him that this serpent was after all a poor specimen, rather puny, and hardly the stuff of its fearsome legend.

Some days later, the beautiful Raj Kumari had come to him and said, "I will show you a serpent of whom you will stand in awe."

The hamadryad was the ruler of snakes, the king of cobras, and the Raj Kumari's familiar was the Queen of Hamadryads. Closing his eyes he imagined the warm, fetid, darkness inside the basket. He envisioned her thick, heavy coils, her cold, mesmerizing serpent's eye, the creamy bands that lined the inside of her massive, spreading hood. He saw Shakuntela as she had been on that first potent, insane night of consummation, lying naked on a bed of red silk shot through with threads of gold, coaxing the snake, as thick as his arm and longer than he was tall, to slither over her lithe, dark brown body, her head thrown back, exposing her soft, vulnerable throat as if to invite the strike of deadly fangs. The sight had aroused him mightily at the time, but conjuring it again seemed to do nothing to improve his current condition. Her bold carnality and exoticism had once been such an irresistible enticement to him, but he'd quickly become jaded, like a child allowed to glut himself sick on sweets.

She was moaning now in frustration, and still working him gently with her lips and tongue, she crabbed her body around to straddle his chest, and he opened his eyes to find himself presented with her smooth, shapely brown backside. Mildly annoyed, but obliging, he raised his hands to stroke and squeeze her, letting them slide between her thighs, and over the firm, rounded cheeks of her buttocks. She pushed against his hands, arching her back and opening herself to him. Her sex was completely smooth shaven, and decorated, like a courtesan's, with intricate designs, painted in dark red henna. The inner lips, slick and glistening, were strangely dark in color, purplish, and shining with engorgement, swelling outward like the open jaws of a carnivorous plant with its deadly lure of sweet, sticky nectar.  The cloying scent of jasmine, mingled with the sharp, goaty reek of her cunt filled his nostrils as she lowered herself onto his face. With growing agitation, he seized her hips, and thrusting out his tongue, ran it roughly along the length of her from tip to tail, taking some enjoyment in the sour, salty tang that brought an ache to his jaw and a gush of saliva to his mouth. He lapped at her like a tiger cleaning the bones of a kill, and when she squealed and tried to escape his ungentle attentions, he held her tightly and licked her some more, sucking hard on the tender little pebble of flesh that throbbed against his probing tongue as she lunged and squirmed and cried in protestation. His cock was now closed in her fist, and she squeezed him, her rhythm rough and jerky, but finally he was beginning to stir.

"Sucez-moi!" he ordered her, and when he was not immediately obeyed, he raised a hand and gave her a resounding spank. She let out a startled cry, and her mouth was on him again, and he groaned and thrust himself upward, as she opened her throat to take him in completely. In the hot, wet cavern of her mouth, he felt himself grow hard and long at last, and he shuddered at the stroke of her thick, muscular tongue. A wild aggression took him, and with a fierce growl he sat up and pushed her off of him. She lay sprawled on her belly as he rose above her, a ravening leopard come upon a crouching fawn. She panted softly, her head turned to one side, a glimmer of wild excitement in her black, kohl–rimmed eye, a slight tremor of apprehension about her wet, open mouth.

In one swift motion, he grabbed her leg and flipped her onto her back. With rough fingers he parted the soft labia and he fell upon her, burying his aching cock in the slick, tight maw of her sex. Almost instantly, his orgasm lanced through him, a flash of white exploding in his brain, nearly painful in its brief intensity. Shakuntela whined and writhed beneath him, grinding herself desperately against him.

"Je veux plus!" she gasped. But he had no inclination whatever to give more.

"Fais-le toi-meme," he said, rolling away from her.

He lay on his side, his head resting on one bent arm, and watched her, only half interested as she lay, her heaving body spread out wantonly before him. She was long and slender, her skin as sleek and brown as the cobra. Her breasts were pointed, the nipples large and dark. As he watched, one hand moved between her legs, and the other went to her breast. Her long, pink tongue slid over her lips, and her head lolled from side to side as she caressed herself, her red-painted fingers moving faster and faster, making little wet, sucking sounds as they moved, in and out and back and forth over the taut little shaft. It seemed to him to take a very long time before she finally moaned and gave a little shudder, and then was still.

*****

From his window, he had a fine view of the Rajah of Maipur's palace, sitting prettily on a low hill half a mile west of the city. An eclectic structure, it was a mix of Hindu and Mughal architecture which somehow managed to achieve a graceful harmony. The domes and pyramids of the rooftops glowed coral pink in the setting sun, and as the breeze that moved over him began to feel infinitesimally cooler, he envisioned the fountains and cascades of the Rajah's water gardens, and in his mind he heard the tranquil and refreshing tinkling noise of the water's continuous fall. It made him think of sleep.

He would dine in the palace tonight. His servant had bathed and shaved him, and dressed him in the uniform of a general of the army of Maipur, the linen gaiters, white breeches and long, pale green silk kurta, the saffron sash and curved, jeweled sword that marked his rank, and the nuisance of a turban which he would never learn to tie without assistance. In the glass, it seemed to him that he did not show his age. Except for his growing girth, which irritated and discomfited him, he thought he looked much as he always had. The hair still lustrous and deep black, his skin, though darkened by the sun, still smooth and unlined. He was past forty.

The serving girl had tidied the chamber, had brought a jug of chilled lime juice, spiked with liquor and sweetened with syrup. A bowl of fruit: oranges, peeled and dusted with ginger, finger-lengths of tender young sugar cane, and mangoes, whose, soft, peach-colored flesh and abundant juice had once seemed to him the most sensual and decadent of indulgences. Sweet, all too sweet. In Europe, he found himself thinking, the sweetness always came at the end of a feast, to be earned, so to speak, through a progression of the plain and sour. But in India there was no such coyness in pleasures, for the sweetness was everywhere for the taking.

"We have earned title to indulgence in this incarnation through preparation in earlier ones," the Rajah had tried to explain to him once. Lucien remembered having laughed, and remarking that he could think of no greater punishment than to suffer through another term of existence on this earth, no matter what compensating pleasures he might be allowed.

He looked down again at the pages of Charette's letter that he held in his hand. It was dated some six months earlier, a quite remarkable thing, in fact, as the passage to India might take some five months alone, and with the situation in France…but Pierre was no longer in France. He had resigned his commission as a matter of honor after the taking of the Bastille, rather than be associated with the traitors among the officer's ranks who had quickly thrown in with the Rebels, Lafayette and Rochambeau among them. He had taken his family first to Germany, in the company of the King's brother, Louis Stanislaus, the Comte de Provence, and then to Austria, where he had been put in command of a regiment made up of Austrian and loyal French troops.

"My friend," he wrote. " Never did I think that I would see a day such as this, for the King has been taken prisoner, captured at Varennes as he fled with his family to join us in exile. Our country is aflame, Lucien, a Republic has been proclaimed, and it is said that Louis is to be put on trial for his life, for the crime of treason to his people.

"I fear the worst, and it is with deep regret that I must tell you, I fear greatly for the safety of your own family. You know of my efforts to bring your Aunt, the Comtesse d'Agniers, and your son, Louis-Emmanuel, out of France. Anne-Louise's health has been poor, and I think, too, that I was unable to convince her of the urgency with which we must act. Emmanuel, of course, would not be induced to leave her. He was resolved to bring her to Muzillac, and I pray that he has succeeded, for I have had word that the Chateau d'Agniers has been burned by the mob, as have so many of the great houses in the vicinity of Paris. I do not believe that there is a place in France that is safe from this madness, and although my hope is that they might still be saved, again I must tell you that I fear the worst, for I have dispatched an agent to find them who has not returned, and also my contact in Paris, a Monsieur Lestocquoy, has not been heard from in some months.

"I prevail upon you, my old, dear friend, once more, I beg you, to return. I believe I know something of the despair that has turned your heart, but how many long years has it been? Your country has need of you. The well-deserved command that was denied you on our return from the American war awaits you here, as does the greatest glory ever to fall to a noble officer of France. The might of Austria, and of Prussia has rallied to our cause, and soon Great Russia will join us. Mark me, Lucien, once we have crossed the Rhine we shall sweep aside that hopeless rabble. Victory will be swift and decisive, and we will show the rebels the same mercy that they themselves have shown.

"I fight for the birthright, for the future, for the lives of my sons, Lucien, and if your son lives, you must fight for him. If he is dead, you must fight to avenge him…

The pain in his head blurred his vision, and he could read no more.

Emmanuel would be fourteen years old, still just a boy, and yet Pierre spoke of him taking responsibility as if he was a man. Lucien tried to remember the last time he had seen his son. Five years ago, he thought it was. Emmanuel had just been enrolled at L'Ecole Militaire de Paris. A candidate for the School of Cavalry, already he could make a horse dance, and Lucien recalled watching as the master put the boys through their paces in the vast cathedral-like space of the riding school. Emmanuel's small, light body was a picture of perfect grace, his expression rapt and joyous as he rode the maneuvers of the prescribed dressage, drawing splendidly round circles, loops, and convolutions in the fine, yellow sand.

That his son must hate him, he could not doubt. The time they had spent together in all of Emmanuel's growing up must amount to not more than a handful of days, and for himself, he had scarcely been able to look at the child without pain and a resurgence of the overpowering rage he had known on the night when he had learned the truth, that his love for his wife, that his son's very birth, that his entire life, had been an abomination.

Was he safe in Muzillac? The people might protect Imogene's son for all that they seemed sullen and suspicious of Lucien. They thought him mad, he knew, like his father. He had gone mad, he had, when she died. And he had committed murder. He had mostly stayed away from Muzillac, returning only to oversee the completion of Imogene's tomb as per his orders, and occasionally to make certain that her house was being kept as he wanted it, just as she had left it. The shelves of her workroom were to be kept free of dust, but nothing was to be taken away or moved. Her easels and paints were to be left at the ready, her garden kept weeded, her bed freshly made.

Muzillac was where his death did await him. He became more and more certain of it over the years, and while it had become clear that death was unwilling to accept him in any other place, so too it would appear that she meant to take her time even in bringing him to the ground of her own choosing, and she would not be courted nor hurried. Had the time come at last? Was his son in fact dead, and he the last of his line? He only knew that he was weary, weary of being weary, weary of pain. Perhaps it truly was time, he thought, for him to start for home.

*****

When he was twelve years old, Emmanuel's world began to turn slowly upside down. He was a still a child, happy in the love of his Tante Anne-Louise, whose world revolved around him. He loved being at Ecole Militiare. He lived and breathed horses, and dreamed of a glorious career in the King's cavalry. He was not aware of the political and financial crisis that threatened to overwhelm the government of France. He knew nothing of the catastrophic harvest failures that made the cost of bread beyond the purses of the poor, and certainly he took little notice of the riots, at least at first. But then the Bastille fell, and things began to change. He still did not know quite what it meant, or where any of it would end, except that everything he had thought was secure was threatened, and everything he thought safe was in danger.

His aunt was not very well, and he was afraid she would make herself even sicker with worry. She tried to keep her worries from him, but she would say things sometimes that would reveal her fear, and make him worry even more.

"It is not safe to be rich," she had said, which was one of the most puzzling statements he had ever heard. After the Bastille, he had had to leave school, for the military was in disarray, some officers, like his Oncle Pierre de Charette resigning to emigrate, and others joining the cause of the Revolution. Oncle Pierre had wanted to take them with him to Germany, but Tante was too ill, and she was afraid and confused, and could not make up her mind what to do. She was afraid Emmanuel's father, the Marquis, would not want them to leave the chateau and the house in Muzillac to be ruined. Emmanuel thought that if his father cared anything for them then he would want them safe, or that he would come for them himself, instead of always staying away. Tante tried to send him away with Oncle Pierre, but Emmanuel refused to go.

They stayed away from Paris. At the Chateau d'Agniers, the servants eventually wandered off, to join the rioters in the city, to seek their fortunes in the revolutionary army, as members of mobs, as looters of shops, and as spectators beside the guillotine. They took all that they could steal before they left, but Tante was happy to see it all go. Her precious possessions were a liability now, things they must dispose of as quickly as possible, things that endangered their lives. In the garden, once so perfect and pristine, the clipped hedges grew unchecked; the topiary peacocks and swans turned into ragged, unidentifiable monsters; the vegetable gardens ran to seed and the lawns grew waist high. Nature, set at liberty, ran riot, like the Nation.

People like themselves had all left France, or they had tried to cling to what was theirs for as long as they could, but now everyone was being swept away in the flood, le Deluge.

By the time the Revolution came as far as the gates of the Chateau d'Agniers, they had already moved into one of the abandoned cottages on the estate because it was safer, and because it was much easier to take care of themselves in a little house. The citizens must have thought they had long since fled when they fired the chateau, and in less than a day, the white and gold salon, the pink and silver sitting room, Emmanuel's maman's ice blue bedchamber, and all of the miraculous flushing water closets and immense copper hot water butts with their golden taps, all of the paintings and china dogs and ticking glass clocks had disappeared forever.

All Emmanuel could think of was to get to Muzillac. The people would be good to them there. Marie would care for them, he knew, and pretty Mariette was the dearest friend of his childhood. Surely they would be safe there until the armies of the King could march on Paris and put things back the way they were before.

Bu there seemed to be no way now that they could leave. They had no carriage, no horses, and even if they had, to call attention to oneself by traveling in an expensive carriage would now be the height of folly. One had to have special papers even to pass on the roads leading away from Paris, to know someone in a position of power.

The last day of the life of Louis-Emmanuel Armand de Chantonnay de Moncoutant was the ninth of September, seventeen hundred and ninety two. On that day, he traveled by farm cart with his Aunt to Paris where they were to be taken to the residence of a Monsieur Lestocquoy. Lestocquoy was the newly appointed Minister of Finance of the new government of France. He was also an old friend of the Baron de Charette. Monsieur Lestocquoy would see them out of France.

"Remember," said Tante, again and again, "If any one asks, your name is plain Emmanuel Dagnier. Citoyen Dagnier!" She was dressed in a very old gown, very plain, the color of mud. She made Emmanuel wear the red bonnet of the Revolution, and a ridiculous pair of sabots. He felt like a fool.

There was no way to have known that Monsieur Lestocquoy had been arrested and taken prisoner, and that while they were on their way to Paris in one farm cart, he, along with fifty-two other prisoners of the Constitutional Assembly, was on his way to his trial in another. Twenty miles from Paris, very near the hunting grounds of the royal chateau, they were swept up in the traffic that was headed toward Versailles.

Emmanuel's memory of that day would be forever trying to elude him. He remembered individual faces in the crowd, angry faces, sinister, menacing, waving their arms and crying out, "A bas les tetes!" The mayor of Versailles stood on a balcony and pleaded with the mob to let justice be done.

"They deserve death!" screamed the crowd, and they chanted, "La mort! La mort! La mort!" and they would not stop, even as the soldiers advanced into their midst.

Thousands of voices roared for death, and howled for blood, and on that afternoon, death did come, and blood rained down. It spurted and splashed, and ran in rolling streams along the cobbled street. The autumn sun caught the blade of a sword as it rose and fell. Men and women wielded axes, sabers, bayonets, scissors and knives.

The Massacre of Versailles lasted a little more than an hour, and when it ended, a ghastly silence fell. The prisoner's escort of two-thousand men, who had not, it seemed, come to protect the prisoners on their way to trial, but rather to lead them to Paris and hand them over to the popular rage, had vanished, as had every other living thing, and all that was left in the street that was called the Rue de l'Orangerie were the dead, both guilty and innocent, prisoner and citizen, and the blood.

"What is your name?" asked the woman who had pulled him in off the street, and was now washing the blood off his face as he sat on a low wooden stool in her little scullery behind a locked and barricaded door.

"Emmanuel Dagnier," he answered, looking down at his feet. He had lost one of his stupid sabots somewhere. "Citoyen Dagnier."

Go to Part Eleven