Across the Fields
genarti
In December of 1829, Combeferre goes home with Enjolras to Auvergne.
(See the end of the work for notes.)
Work Text:
Combeferre's first impression of the Enjolras household was one of deep confusion, followed some while later by awkwardness.
It was not the fault of the household. Enjolras and Combeferre had arrived late, after the stars had emerged, and they were obliged to knock loudly before the housekeeper, who was a little deaf, came to let them in. They had managed with difficulty to find a fiacre to carry them through the steep and silent streets of Le Puy-en-Velay. Before that, several days aboard a diligence. Moreover, Combeferre was susceptible to illness when traveling in jouncing vehicles. The diligence is the dinghy of the mountains. It induces its own sea-sickness. Enjolras was immune. He spent the journey reading. Combeferre passed his hours in private misery, attempting to sleep and struggling not to resent his companion's ease, with indifferent success at both. By the time they arrived at the modest house, Combeferre wanted nothing more than to sleep on a proper bed rather than a carriage-seat. He prepared himself to be sociable instead.
The housekeeper, a round and rosy old woman named Mother Reynaud, greeted Enjolras by tugging him down to kiss his cheeks. Combeferre, in the haze which exhaustion and sudden warmth produce after a chilly journey and the lugging of bags, was too tired even to be much amused at the absent air with which Enjolras returned the caress. He woke enough to be astonished, however, when the good woman did the same to him. He was further astounded when she told them that the elder Enjolras was in his chambers. Combeferre, returning home, would have been greeted at any hour by parental embraces, fraternal exuberance, a household tumult. It seemed inconceivable to him that any father would not emerge from his bedroom to greet an only son, an only child returned after months -- more than a year! -- at university.
Enjolras showed no surprise. "His leg pains him in cold weather," he explained briefly. He instructed Mother Reynaud that he would visit his father shortly.
Combeferre had no desire to introduce himself to a friend's father with either party in nightclothes. He allowed Enjolras to guide him without protest to the bedroom appointed for his use, and was fast asleep in moments.
In the morning he awoke early, as was his habit, and much refreshed. He had leisure now to examine the room which would be his home for a week.
The chamber had belonged to Enjolras's grandmother, who had passed away (he had been told) some years before, and was still decorated in a style befitting its former occupant. She had clearly possessed a fine and old-fashioned sense of decoration which she had not bequeathed to her Spartan grandson: the furniture was in a provincial style, upholstered in dainty green, cabriole legs, the bedclothes topped with a finely worked quilt, the curtains edged with lace, more lace on the chest of drawers, flowers on the wallpaper. Combeferre felt extremely out of place. His bundles were heaped by the door, untidy and incongruous, a splash of dried mud on one corner of the carpetbag.
He determined to go see Enjolras, who would wake blearily but without objection. Then he remembered that last night he had been too tired to inquire after the location of Enjolras's rooms. He could have found it easily enough, for the house was not large, but he was disinclined to skulk about at dawn on the first morning.
Instead, he dressed and began to read. The morning light was cold and clear. Outside, birds were singing. Among the familiar larks and orioles and nuthatches, there was one whose song he didn't know. He reflected briefly and with tolerant amusement on the probable utility of asking Enjolras, and decided to inquire with Mother Reynaud, or perhaps a neighbour.
Some while later, Enjolras came to collect him for breakfast. His Grecian face bore the particular look of remote abstraction which meant he was half asleep still; his face was freshly washed but his hair still rumpled, his cravat a little askew as it often was without Courfeyrac or Bahorel's intervention; he knocked, entered, leaned his shoulders back against the door, smiled. Familiarity entered the room with him.
In the dining room, they found already seated a man whose silver hair and grave manner instantly proclaimed him to be Enjolras père. His face, once handsome, now dignified, was seamed with lines of middle age and pain, as well as two old cuts from a saber's blade receding into his hairline on the left. His hair was scattered with a collection of reddish gold among the silver, like birdseed on snow. His features were not much like his son's. In the moment before the old veteran noticed their arrival, however, Combeferre had seen him sitting with hands folded in exactly the manner he had seen a hundred times on the younger Enjolras, and a distant, thoughtful gaze that gave Combeferre a disquieting impression that he had caught a glimpse of his friend at fifty. He shook off the feeling to bow, as M. Enjolras rose stiffly to greet them.
They sat. Mother Reynaud brought in breakfast: bread, jam, cold chicken, coffee, an offer of cocoa. Simple fare. Combeferre found that he was ravenous, for he had eaten little on their journey, but he was too embarrassed to wolf down his portion. He forced himself to moderation.
M. Enjolras inquired after his studies.
"Medicine. I'm in my second year."
"Ah, good."
Silence.
Did Combeferre find it interesting?
Yes, very.
"Mm. That's good."
Silence again. Oppressive now.
There were dust motes in the air, floating untroubled in a sunbeam. M. Enjolras's voice had the timbre of his son's, only a little higher, but it was more melancholy. Combeferre could imagine the father's voice ringing out across a room or a riot only because he had heard the son's do so. He took more bread. A little desperately, he complimented the house.
"Thank you. It belonged to my wife's parents."
"Oh?"
"Yes. You can see it there." He indicated with a spare gesture the wall behind Combeferre. Combeferre, bemused, turned to look, and could not repress a start of surprise.
Enjolras had said once that he favored his mother in appearance. Behind Combeferre, where he had not looked when they entered the room, hung a large portrait which proved him correct. It showed a young woman of exceeding beauty, her hair a mass of sunlit gold, her clothes twenty years out of fashion. Blue eyes gazed over the table with a limpid gentleness which Combeferre had never seen in her son, though there was no way to tell whether that expression had come from the woman's face or the painter's delicate imagination. A Phrygian cap dangling from one small white hand, and a tome which upon scrutiny proved to be by Rousseau in the other, proved beyond any doubt that Mme. Enjolras had given her only son a legacy beyond mere appearance. In the painting's background was indeed a stone house.
Combeferre turned back, searching for a way to continue the conversation. Her death was too long ago, and their acquaintance far too new, for him to express sympathy. Every other comment seemed to him stilted or banal. He was opening his mouth to say something about his own childhood home when Enjolras spoke.
"Father, how much have you heard of Polignac's latest promotion?"
In an instant, the atmosphere changed. The old man's pale eyes flashed; his gaze fixed upon his son with a fierce attention. "Not enough," he said, with a low control which Combeferre found utterly familiar. "Too much to stomach -- a worm of an ultra, leading that mockery of a Council -- but not enough." He glanced at Combeferre, who sat arrested. "The papers run slow here, and they never tell us enough of the sentiments of the people. They're too much under the despot's thumb. Legal newspapers! A sham. The independent presses are small here -- limited. I get better news from what Jean-Sébastien sends me. You're closer to the action, Jean-Sébastien. The people must be enraged. Tell me about it."
Enjolras folded slim fingers around his coffee cup, and began to do so. His Haute-Loire accent had strengthened in only a few hours home, but the unselfconscious rhetorical assurance of his speech was unchanged. All awkwardness was fled, all distance. The very light seemed warmer and more golden. Combeferre settled back in his chair. He agreed with Enjolras in his opinion of Polignac, but disagreed about the best response. He waited for the proper moment to interject.
Afternoon found the two young men rambling across fields. A casual comment from Mother Reynaud had indicated that a neighbour some few leagues away had a herd containing peculiar hairy cows from Scotland. Combeferre was instantly intrigued. Enjolras was as usual tolerant, his father more informative but likewise bemused; yes, M. Tautou did have such a herd. The bull was long-horned, the cattle furry as bears. Yes, the boys could certainly go to see. M. Tautou would not mind. M. Enjolras did not offer to accompany them, and the young men did not ask. In the December cold, he leaned heavily upon a stick to walk even between rooms, and one leg dragged. "A souvenir of Buonaparte's ambition," he said, with a twist to his lips.
"Your father's leg seems to pain him badly," Combeferre said as they crossed a field of wheat stubble, far from the old veteran's hearing and thus any chance of wounded pride. The wind gusted at intervals, but the sun kept off the worst of winter's cold, and their overcoats were thick.
Enjolras answered the question Combeferre had not asked. "Grapeshot at Albeck. The thigh was broken and the wound became infected. They were short on doctors, but my uncle was one. They saved the leg. But it scarred badly."
Combeferre could imagine it. He didn't want to; it seemed obscene to picture so clearly the blood, the swelling, the stink, the screams, the howls, the filth of infection and battle, all that misery attached to the sober melancholy man with Enjolras's way of spare contained gestures; the fierce light of those pale eyes clouded with pain and laudanum, or worse yet no laudanum to use. He felt it was cowardly for a doctor in training to flinch from such things, if picture them he must, but he did. "You never mentioned an uncle," he said to take his mind off it.
Enjolras shook his head. "He died at Austerlitz. I never knew him."
Combeferre was silent.
Enjolras glanced sideways. He slipped his arm through Combeferre's without a word. It was more difficult to navigate the hummocked field arm-in-arm, and Combeferre thought the gesture unnecessary; still, it warmed him. "It was very quick, I'm told. Here, the pasture is over this ridge. You'll know the creatures at once."
They crossed over the ridge.
Below them, a slope too steep and uneven for easy plowing, like a rumpled sheet thrown across the land, slumping its way down into one of those rolling valleys for which the Haute-Loire is justly famous. Wheatfields beyond, green in summer, gold at harvest, dull brown and close-shorn now, dotted with snow. A sturdy fence enclosed a broad stretch of hillside. Inside were several animals nearly the color of the hay they grazed upon. They were large, square, and placid. One would have thought they had been draped with sheepswool dyed the color of toasted bread. From the tops of their heads sprouted long horns. Peculiar creatures, utterly unaware of their strangeness. Combeferre was delighted.
He pulled his arm free and hurried down the slope towards the nearest, a cow, who was testing the fence's strength by scratching her furry back against it. Enjolras followed at a more sedate pace, smiling faintly now.
At his approach the cow gave off scratching to study him with dim curiosity. Combeferre pulled off a glove to touch her fur. The wind was cold, but the fur was thick, and the cow allowed him to bury his fingers in it until he could touch the warm hide beneath. It was very soft.
"I wonder if they're a more primitive breed?" he mused to Enjolras, who came to lean against the fence beside him. The cow lowed and attempted to rub her head against Enjolras's hand. He shifted slightly away. Philosophically, the cow licked her nose. "They're clearly well equipped for cold weather. Well, Scotland is reportedly a harsh land. In Scandinavia they herd reindeer; in Russia, I think the same. Do they have cattle as well? Is this the more antique breed, or the creation of latter-day breeding? I've heard nothing of such hairy cows raised by the Greeks or Romans, but they would expire under the Mediterranean sun, no doubt. This fur is astonishingly soft, you know, under the outer coat. No wonder they can be pastured even now without ill effect." He scratched experimentally at the cow's shoulder. She allowed it, or perhaps took no notice. She was regarding Enjolras lovingly. "Do they maintain this coat all their lives, or are they shorn in spring like sheep? What do the young ones look like, I wonder?"
Enjolras's brows drew together. It was the look of charming bemusement which appeared when, for a friend's sake, he attempted to turn his formidable talents to a use to which they were not meant. "Woolly," he said at last.
Combeferre burst into laughter.
Enjolras waited tolerantly for him to subside. There was a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Small," he added at length.
"Thank you," said Combeferre, when he had regained his breath. "Exceedingly useful information. We'll make a natural philosopher of you yet."
Enjolras leaned a shoulder against his, and gazed out across the pasture to the mountainous horizon beyond. Combeferre turned his attention to examining the cow's long horn, and was content.
Notes:
My only regret is that this fic doesn't contain more noble animals or scientific hijinks, but I hope the Highland cow is sufficiently dignified to make up for some of it. You may imagine how long Combeferre spends nerding out over these things before he finally gets cold enough to let himself be led away. (Spoiler: a long time.)I also hope my self-indulgent experiments in figuring out my ideas for Enjolras's backstory are of interest, whether or not they accord with yours. :)
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