Andrew Miller - Pure

Once it has become too dark for any useful activity, the men sit by the openings of their tents. They have been fed a second time, have been given drink. Jean-Baptiste — who has eaten only because Jeanne insisted on it, standing beside him with bread and bowl — makes a last round with Lecoeur, the pair of them bidding the men a good night and receiving in reply a few guttural responses. Impossible to know what they are thinking, whether half of them intend to run away in the night. Can they be trusted? There were, on occasions, incidents at the mines, violent incidents. Imagine the minister’s face when he is told that the men have absconded and are ravaging Paris!

Away from the tents, Lecoeur reassures him.

‘You are paying them considerably more than they received at Valenciennes. And they are decent sorts in their way. One might raise a very creditable company from them.’

‘With you as their captain,’ says Jean-Baptiste.

‘You, dear Baratte, are our captain. I think you should look quite dashing atop a white horse.’

‘I would need to improve my Flemish.’

‘Advance, attack. Ten sous for every enemy head. That would be enough, I think.’

They are crossing the corner of the cemetery towards the sexton’s house. Lecoeur has a burning torch, though they hardly need it. There is lamplight from the windows of the house and a broad, red light from the big fire.

‘My first view of this place,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘was from the window of my room, up there. I looked down at night and it was a region of the most impenetrable dark. Now it is almost festive.’

‘Festive? Forgive me, but I do not think such a place could ever be festive.’

‘How do you find the stink now?’

‘Tolerable, just. I have no large sense of stinks. Some effect of the mines. My skull is packed with coal dust.’

‘There is said to be an animal,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘part dog, part wolf, that has its lair in the charnels on this side.’ He gestures ahead of them to the south wall, the archways leading into the galleries.

‘I would not allow such a story to get among the men.’

‘No, you are right,’ says Jean-Baptiste.

‘But should it prove more than an old story, I have come prepared.’ Lecoeur stops and pulls a shape from the pocket of his coat. ‘You see?’

‘Is it loaded?’ asks Jean-Baptiste.

‘I have powder and balls among my things. And I have practised with it. I can hit a coal scuttle at thirty paces.’

‘Lecoeur’s wolf-destroyer,’ says Jean-Baptiste. They laugh, softly. Lecoeur extinguishes the torch with the side of his boot and they enter the sexton’s house.

The old man is asleep by the grate, the silver curls of his beard crushed against his chest. Armand is at the table with Jeanne. Jeanne stands as soon as the others enter. ‘We have been waiting for you,’ she says.

‘We have been making our rounds of the camp,’ says Lecoeur. He is looking at the brandy bottle on the table by Armand’s elbow.

‘How is your grandfather?’ asks Jean-Baptiste.

‘Weary,’ says Jeanne, smiling at the top of the old man’s head. ‘Yet glad, I think, that it has begun. And he sees that I am content.’ To Lecoeur she says, ‘Your men are very nice.’

Lecoeur makes a little bow. ‘You have become a favourite of theirs already, mademoiselle.’

‘Now,’ says Armand, yawning, ‘perhaps we will be permitted to have that drink. Jeanne, we will need two more glasses.’

The glasses are fetched, filled, raised. Even Jeanne takes a little; the heat of it makes her cheeks burn. Armand tops them up. Jean-Baptiste puts his glass aside.

‘We start to dig tomorrow,’ he says. ‘It would be best we do not sit up with the bottle. I shall be here very early, Jeanne. And I believe Madame Saget will be coming?’

‘Lisa will be here,’ says Armand. ‘It seems she is quite reconciled to you.’

‘I will go to the market for bread as soon as it is light,’ says Jeanne. ‘Grandfather will come, and perhaps Madame Saget.’

‘And I have arranged for fifteen nice old hens to join us for dinner,’ says Armand. ‘A sack of potatoes, a sack of carrots, a man’s weight in green lentils. Onions. And I took the liberty of ordering a hundred and twenty litres of Burgundy wine. Chateau Nothing-in-Particular. I suggest we keep the wine locked in one of the church offices. I doubt Père Colbert will drink it.’

‘Good,’ says Jean-Baptiste. ‘Thank you.’

‘We are a machine!’ exults Lecoeur, whose glass, emptied twice, is somehow full again. ‘We have been wound and now we are running!’

‘Tick, tock, tick, tock,’ says Armand. Jeanne giggles.

‘Are you coming?’ Jean-Baptiste asks Armand.

‘I think perhaps I shall stay a while,’ says Armand.

A pause.

‘Very well. Then I wish you all a good night.’

He goes out, irritably tugging at the collar of his coat. Is Armand trying to make a fool of him? Is he up to something with Jeanne? He can only hope that Lisa Saget keeps him on a tight rein.

At the door to the rue aux Fers, he turns back to look at the strange, flickering stage he has created. From one of the tents comes the sound of singing, something muted and repetitive, a ballad, perhaps a lament. He listens a few moments, then goes out onto the empty street, shuts and locks the door. If Armand intends to leave at all, let him fumble his way out through the church.

At the house on the rue de la Lingerie, he avoids the Monnards, goes with his candle as quietly as he can past the drawing-room door. They, like everyone else, will have seen the fires — they could hardly have a better view of them — and given their inexplicable opposition to his work, the sight is unlikely to have occasioned any celebration. If he sits with them, they will rebuke him with silences, batter him with sighs. He has no idea any longer what to tell them.

In his room, he tugs off his boots. The brandy sits in a little stinging pool in his chest. He belches, then leans over the bed to look out of the window. A light rain has started to fall. There is nothing to see but the points of fire, the darkness close around them.

He closes the shutters and sits at the table, draws his notebook towards himself. He has had, this last week, some thoughts of starting a journal, a record of the destruction of the cemetery, something technical but also philosophical, witty even, that he could one day present to Maître Perronet at a small ceremony at the school. He toys with the pen, turning it round in his fingers. He should have stayed with the others, drunk more brandy, laughed a little. It would have done him good, would have been better than sitting up here on his own, oscillating.

He takes the cork from the ink bottle, dips his nib, writes at the top of a new page the date, writes below it, ‘They came today, thirty poor men led by one whose presence I may have cause to regret. Already the work disgusts me and we have not even begun it. I wish to God I had never heard of Les Innocents.’

He closes the book, pushes it away, sits there blankly like a man under sentence. Then he draws the book to him again, opens it, reads through what he has written, dips his nib and, working methodically across the page, scratches a glistening X over each letter until the lines are hidden, unreadable, buried.

One of them speaks; the others listen. It is raining still but not heavily enough to douse the fires. A dull red light finds its way through the open flap of the tent. It illuminates their lower bodies but leaves their faces in shadow. The one who speaks is dressed all in pale clothing, sits upon a throne of logs; the rest squat or kneel in the straw. A sermon? A story? Anyone unfamiliar with that language, which even spoken softly is like the rubbing and tapping of shale on shale, might guess at some manner of law-giving, the soft issuing of orders. Now and then the listeners offer a response, a hummed assenting. The speaker moves his hands, joins them, parts them. The third finger of his left hand is absent above the middle joint, ends in a blunt nub of bone and wrapped skin.