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The Ruined Abbe	By : pip Category: M through R > Quills Views: 2537 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Quills, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from this story.

Chapter List
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- 18
Author’s Note: A short chapter this time: sorry about that. There’s actually not much more to go now, though in time I might have a few original fics that make up some of the stories feature here and in the next couple of chapters.
Feedback encouraged, concrit especially welcome.

Chapter Seventeen
A little sunlight would have been welcome during the day, but the sky outside remained a leaden grey. What little he could see through the bars of his cell window was singularly uninspiring. Still, at least there was daylight of a sort, and he used that to make himself feel better.
Though he was desperately hungry, and still terribly thirsty, after Madame LeClerc had gone, Coulmier used a little of the water she had brought with her for washing. As if the enforced period of drunkenness without cleanliness wasn’t enough, this latest nightmare had left him feeling even dirtier. His skin itched with it, real or not, and so he spent some time cleansing every inch of himself while his stomach dealt with the sudden intake of water.
After that, with the care and patience usually reserved for the inmates, he ate a little. Not enough to assuage his hunger, but enough so that his body would not reject it. It was simple fare, and that suited him well. A little bread, some honey, fruit, carrots and cold meat. When that was done he drank of the water again, less deeply.
The food, water and cleansing revived him somewhat, so that he spent the day tired but wakeful, thinking about his dreams and the reason for them: his guilt for the part he’d played in what had happened at Charenton. In vain he tried to reason with it, tried to feel some compassion for his side of the story. It was of no use. The Marquis was dead, and he had died in torturous circumstances. Coulmier knew that his courage had failed him, that if he had truly believed in the benevolence he claimed, then the worst of those tortures would not have come to pass.
There was so little to occupy him. He made his bed with the clean linen, and after that there was nothing. He tried to pray but faltered. All of his things had been put outside, and though the reason was sound, it bothered him. They were probably not even there now, removed by some frightened orderly who would quickly spread the word – the Abbé has lost his mind! Exactly what Royer-Collard needed to justify whatever horror he had planned.
It didn’t matter. What did matter was that eventually he found himself sat at his desk with a quill in his hand, a pristine sheet of parchment ready for his thoughts, or worse. His mind returned to the insistence of Sade in his dreams. If you don’t want to dream it, then you must write it down. Write it down? Could he? And what if he did? Didn’t it make those things more real than when he merely dreamed them?
Coulmier thought on it for a while, the ink dripping from the nib back into the pot. The irony of being a subject of his own ‘treatment’ wasn’t lost on him at all. Then, eventually, he began writing…
Our story begins with a young and foolish man, a priest, who lost control of an asylum with tragic consequences.
Coulmier frowned, displeased. It didn’t have to be about him – the Marquis hadn’t bothered to make that stipulation. With one hand he scrunched the ruined sheet of paper and let it fall onto the floor. After some minutes, he began again, and for the first few sentences, it almost seemed as though it was dictated to him…
An avid reader and writer of the worst sensational stories to be found on Parisian streets, Mademoiselle de Sauveterre nevertheless had an angelic countenance. Only twenty years old, she seemed so guileless that no one who knew her could ever suspect that she was responsible for such shocking missives as were circulated and read aloud in the more bawdy taverns. Even her unscrupulous publisher was convinced, upon her insistence, that she merely delivered manuscripts for an older gentleman, her uncle.
So it was that she went about her everyday affairs, until the day when the family priest, as cloaked in respectability as she was, took his chance to abuse her. In the dark and quiet of the confessional, he thought to make her speak of sins she couldn’t dream of, to make her cry with shame and beg for pity, while he frigged himself on the other side of the screen. It was somewhat of a surprise therefore when she turned the tables upon him…
With a disgusted sigh, Coulmier stopped writing and read it back to himself. Crumpling the paper again, he lay down the quill and leaned back in his chair. That couldn’t be a representation of Madeleine, not in any shape or form. Yet... she had loved to read Sade, hadn’t she? With a growl of frustration at being made to even attempt it, Coulmier pushed himself away from the desk and flounced down onto the freshly made bed. Perhaps, he’d rather dream these things. He sat up, suddenly sure that he wouldn’t rather that at all.
At his desk again, he dipped the quill into the ink and again began to write…
In these uncertain times, being in the employ of anyone, but especially a personage as well-known and respected as Madame Duval was a sure stroke of good fortune. Monsieur Desrochers was overjoyed at nineteen to be accepted as a young apprentice in that lady’s house, and until the first day of his service began he was quite certain that God had looked kindly upon him and his family. The wages he brought back would ease the burden on his parents, who had to provide for five younger brothers and sisters as well as himself.
The other servants were somewhat too familiar for civility: a pat on the shoulder here, a hand on his arm there, a comradely hug in the passageway. What it was he couldn’t quite put into words. They watched him very closely, but not for a mistake, and there were too many of them, though Madame Duval was a wealthy woman, and could no doubt afford her staff. He put it out of his mind until such time as she rang for him.
Heart beating heavy, nervous, he went into the parlour, his head down respectfully as he had been advised. The pointed smirks of the other servants as they had instructed him in this played on his mind. “Madame,” he said quietly, wondering what task she had for him, and raised his head to see her –
No. He couldn’t write that. Coulmier discarded the newest draft without even reading it and then, rebellious, decided to eat some more of the food Madame LeClerc had brought, ignoring Sade's instructions.
Afterwards, he lounged on his bed wasting time until the shadows lengthened and the dull, dreary day outside turned to evening. He offered a prayer to God, uncertain if he was even heard and closed his eyes to rest, but found only the dream waiting for him, as promised.
When he opened his eyes he was bound to the bed again, this time resting on his back, while Sade went around the place lighting candles, humming that maddening tune that had haunted him once so long ago. Was it possible to be haunted by the dead? He didn’t truly believe it, and he knew that Sade hadn’t, and so he had to accept that somewhere inside him he could imagine and envisage these things even if he couldn’t consciously write them.
Coulmier simply watched, saying nothing, the Marquis turned away from him, dressed again like a dandy. Sade lit a candle on his desk, the crumpled up papers smoothed out on the top of it. Would he have to bear criticism too? And then he noticed something else. It had almost escaped his attention since it belonged there. Or at least, it had, until very recently. The statuette of the Virgin was in its place, unbroken, pristine, only really recognisable in the semi-darkness because of its shape. Coulmier gasped audibly.
“Oh,” the Marquis said without turning around, and tutted. “Did you really believe you could hide anything from me?” He glanced sideways at the statue and tilted his head as if to study it. “It is rather… phallic.” At last he turned and faced Coulmier, with a smirk, the candlelight shining up from below so that it cast wicked shadows on his face. “For shame, Abbé.”
In Sade’s hand, another candle, unlit, and Coulmier felt his body tighten in dread, his face drained of warmth and colour, and his hands and feet shifted minutely as if he would try to get free. Coulmier closed his eyes. “Don’t,” he said, “please.”
“And what kind of monster would I be if I didn’t follow anticipation with deed?” Sade queried rhetorically, as if the violation was inevitable. The teasing made Coulmier dare to look at him again. Sade sighed, and shrugged, and smiled.
“Well, as it happens I have something else in mind entirely,” Sade said then, after letting him suffer for a minute or two, and lit the candle he held by way the other flame he had kindled on the desk. He advanced on the bed. Coulmier relaxed in relief despite the promise of ‘something else’ and he simply couldn’t imagine what the Marquis’ intentions were, until the first drop of wax landed on his exposed midriff.
Coulmier jumped, and an undignified little squeak of pain and surprise escaped his lips. But the wax cooled quickly, leaving only a lingering sensation of heat.
“Save your voice,” the Marquis said, and flashed a look of such hunger Coulmier’s way that he felt a flare of panic, and shook his head mutely. “We have a long, long way to go.”
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The Ruined Abbe