Read Online The Twisted Sword by Winston Graham - Free Book Online Page B

and bustle. The Poldarks had accommodation reserved at the best-known and largest inn, in Dessein's famous hostelry, which claimed to have a hundred and thirty beds and sixty servants, and presently, though so late, they assembled in their sitting-room and ate a breakfast of fresh mackerel, roast veal and gulls' eggs and drank between them a flagon of red wine. Then everyone tumbled into bed and slept heavily but fitfully amid the shouts and the tramp of feet and the movements of other travellers coming and going. The next morning it was necessary to apply for fresh passports, and by the time this was done and the bill paid it was ten o'clock and the diligence was waiting for them. Two shabby moth-eaten coaches were drawn in tandem by three great carthorses which proceeded at a walking pace over the broken rutted-streets. The driver was a dark little man in a ragged army-blue uniform wearing brass earrings and a heavy moustache; the postilion, in a long blue blouse, sheepskin apron and enormous muddy boots, looked as if he had been wading in the harbour. At a lumbering crawl they moved out into the open country with a thin snow still falling. There was no proper stop for several hours except to change horses, and they passed through Boulogne, Samer, Cormont and reached Montreuil where they spent a second night and where both Bella and Henry were bitten by bed bugs. Henry - or Harry as he was more frequently called - was the most placid of children, and, to Demelza, most nearly resembled Clowance in babyhood. He had none of the nervous tensions of Jeremy, nor the constant rebellious self assertion of Bella. But he didn't like itchy red spots and whimpered through most of the next day's journey, which began at six in the morning and ended at five in the afternoon at Amiens. Here the hostelry was cleaner and the host offered them some lotion which helped to soothe their wounds. Demelza had stayed awake throughout all the bumpy lurching journeys, staring out of the window beside Ross, watching and listening, and occasionally, hands under armpits, shivering with excitement. She said: 'I can't follow a word, Ross. 'Tis worse than double Dutch. And they are all so shabby! The war must have cost them dear. But the country! It is just like England, is it not! Little difference at all!'
    'Did you expect one?'
    'Oh yes! This is France. You have been here before and you know what it looks like. But I expected the countryside to be different-like a foreign country.'
    'It is a foreign country.'
    'But you could close your ears and think this is England - except it is a poor part of England, a shabby part. The trees look the same, except thinner, the cows look the same, except thinner, the dogs look the same.'
    'Except thinner?'
    'Well yes, I suppose that too. And everywhere more dirt. When shall we reach Paris?'
    'About four, I think.'
    They were in Chantilly, a pleasanter village, with tall trees lining the roadside and chateaux visible here and there among the massive darkness of winter woodland. As they rattled and rumbled on they passed between acreages of small stunted shrubs, no more than two feet high, which Ross said were vineyards, came to St Denis and stopped for refreshments and just before dark sighted the formidable gates of Paris. Tall wooden palisades flanked the gates, which were guarded by soldiers; urchins and ragged hangers-on stared inquisitively at the newcomers, and dirty women stood and shouted in the doorways of mud huts and wooden shanties. Here passports were scrutinized, and they had to change to a smaller private carriage as the diligence was going on to Notre-Dame. So off again and through narrow crowded streets that made London almost spacious by comparison. Traffic confusion and noise and struggling crowds all pressed between crumbling medieval houses which shut out the darkening sky. Children ran begging beside the coach, and horses reared and slithered on the melting snow, and upturned carts and fighting,