by Kate Forsyth
Gratifyingly quickly, the covers were whisked off the furniture in the front parlour and a fire lit in the grate by the eldest daughter, a plump girl with a face like a currant bun, remarkable for its profusion of dark moles. She looked rather like a fine court lady unable to choose where to put her patches, except that she wore a coarse brown gown with a long apron tied over the top and clumsy wooden sabots. A linen kerchief was tied up over her hair, the knot in the front a rather pitiable attempt to copy the fashion à la fontanges.
‘Thank you,’ I said, when she sat back on her heels, dusting off her ash-smeared hands. ‘What is your name?’
‘Paulette, mademoiselle,’ she answered shyly.
‘Paulette, I am Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force. I’m sure you would have heard of my grandfather, the Duc de la Force, who was the Marshal of France. I need your help.’
‘My help?’ Paulette was round-eyed and round-mouthed. ‘You want my help?’
‘Indeed, yes. You see, the cruel Baron has separated me from my one true love and holds him captive in the castle. I must help him escape!’
‘Oh, mademoiselle, it sounds just like a story!’ Paulette cried, clasping her red chapped hands together. ‘I’ll do anything I can!’
But, willing as Paulette was, she could do nothing.
It was no use bribing the Baron’s servants. I did not have enough money to tempt them, and, besides, Paulette said they were all too terrified of the Baron to ever risk his anger. ‘He’s a right Tartar,’ she said.
It was no use trying to blackmail anyone. Paulette told me that the castle’s servants never came to the village and certainly never seduced a milkmaid, or cheated at cards, or stole a hen, or did anything at all they would wish to keep concealed from their martinet master.
It was no use smuggling myself into the castle disguised as a laundry-maid. The castle maids did all the laundry themselves and had apparently been employed at the castle since before the Flood. Any stranger at all would be looked at with suspicion, and strangers in Survilliers were as rare as a two-headed calf.
It was no use disguising myself as a peddler. The Baron’s servants would just set the dogs on me, Paulette said.
Nor was it any use trying to scale the walls, or dig under the foundations, or creep through a side gate left conveniently unlocked. The Château de Survilliers had withstood many an attack from generals far more versed in warfare than me, and, as Paulette said, ‘Why would they leave the side door unlocked? The Baron would have their hide!’
‘So, is there a secret passage of some sort?’ I asked.
Paulette looked bewildered. ‘Secret passages? No. At least, I don’t think so.’
‘There must be! It looks just the place to have a secret passage.’
‘It wouldn’t be so secret if the innkeeper’s daughter knew about it,’ Nanette said sourly, knitting by the fire.
‘There must be some way in!’
But there wasn’t.
COILS
Paris, France – February 1687
‘So, shall we go back to Versailles now?’ my long-suffering Nanette asked, three days later, as I at last admitted defeat and called for a carriage.
‘No! I could not stand it. All those malicious gossips, whispering behind their fans, and all those detestable devotees with their upturned eyes and clasped hands. Faugh! We’ll go to Paris.’
‘Paris in February,’ Nanette moaned. ‘Save me!’
‘It can’t be worse than Survilliers in February. At least the coffee will be drinkable.’
‘And where do you intend to stay?’ Nanette said, as if fully expecting me to return to the Bastille and beg them for a room.
I bit my lip. I could not return to the Louvre, having lost my quarters there when I was dismissed as lady-in-waiting to the Queen. I could not stay at the Palais-Royal, having never forgiven Liselotte for her scandal-mongering after my affair with the Marquis de Nesle. I could possibly stay with Madeleine de Scudéry, except that her house was already overflowing with impoverished poets and ambitious young playwrights. Besides, Madeleine de Scudéry was rather fond of working real-life dramas into her novels and I had no desire to fan the flames of scandal. All I wanted was to leave my disreputable past behind me and marry the man I loved.
‘I’ll go to Henriette-Julie’s,’ I declared.
Nanette shut her eyes, leant her head back and moaned.
‘It’s a very good plan,’ I said, reviving some of my spirits. ‘Henriette-Julie will have some good ideas.’
Henriette-Julie was the daughter of my mother’s cousin, the Baron de Castelnau, but had grown up in Brittany, so we had never met as children. Like me, she had been sent to court at the age of sixteen in the hope of making an advantageous marriage. Unlike me, she had succeeded, marrying the Comte de Murat a year later. It was after her marriage that I had made her acquaintance, and we had found we had a great deal in common, in particular a love of books and the theatre. Although only seventeen, Henriette-Julie had already caused a great stir by making her first court appearance dressed in the traditional peasant costume of her homeland, a less-than-subtle rebuke to the King, who seemed to think that any place outside of Versailles existed for the sole purpose of paying him taxes. By all accounts, her elderly husband was impotent and she had already taken a few lovers, but that could merely have been gossip. As I knew full well, gossip had a way of taking a glance and turning it into a caress.
‘So you have not given up this mad idea of rescuing Monsieur de Briou?’ Nanette asked.
‘Of course not! I just need to think of a plan.’
But what could I do?
I needed some kind of disguise.
A disguise that no one, no matter how suspicious, could possibly guess hid me, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force.
A disguise that would give me access to Charles.
A disguise that would somehow allow me to smuggle Charles away.
All the way to Paris, I thought and thought and thought, until my brain felt like it was about to burst. Hundreds of ideas came to me; all of them were too deeply flawed to occasion me more than a few minutes’ pause.
It was sleeting in Paris. The sky was the colour of a dead toenail, the snow on the street churned into muddy grey slush. The carriage jolted forward over the filthy paving stones, the smell coming through the windows so strong that both Nanette and I pressed scented handkerchiefs to our noses.
A man in a long muffler was roasting chestnuts on an open fire and selling them in a twist of paper. My mouth watered at the smell, and I called to the coachman to buy me two twists. He passed them in the window, and Nanette and I devoured the sweet white kernels, the hot shells in their paper warming our frozen hands.
Ahead, there was some kind of commotion. Putting my head out the window, I could see a corpse being dragged along the street by a mule. It was the body of an old man, dressed only in a nightgown, a rope tied around one skinny bare ankle. An old woman, dressed in the plain modest style of the Huguenots, wept in the arms of a young woman, who stared blankly before her, ignoring the hoots and jeers of the mocking crowd that had gathered. A boy, no more than twelve, struggled furiously in the arms of two laughing dragoons, sobbing and shouting, ‘Grand-père! Grand-père!’
‘Réformés,’ Nanette said, looking out beside me.
‘What has happened? Why are they doing such a thing?’ My voice shook.
‘He’d have refused the last sacrament,’ Nanette said, her face twisted in pity. ‘Poor old man. His grandson will be sent to the galleys, his wife and daughter to prison.’
‘All because he refused Extreme Unction! That’s … that’s barbaric.’
‘It is hard, sometimes, to conceal one’s true beliefs at the time of death.’ Nanette sat wearily back in her seat. ‘That is why the King demands that everyone must have a priest called to the deathbed to perform the last rites. Anyone who doesn’t is called a heretic and their bodies dragged about the streets. The King pockets any legacy th
at’s left, of course.’
‘It’s wrong! That poor family!’
‘Perhaps he felt salvation worth the cost,’ Nanette said. Her conscience was still badly troubled by our abjuration. No matter how many times I reassured her that God would understand, she felt that we had done wrong and wished that we had at least tried to flee. But I would not go, and she would not leave me.
Our carriage jolted forward, leaving the pitiable scene behind us. Our progress was slow, for the spectacle had drawn a crowd. Pie-men pushed their way through, shouting, ‘Pies! Hot pies!’ A girl carried a tray piled high with ribbons and fans and silver pins; another was calling, ‘Hot gingerbread! Hot gingerbread! Try my hot gingerbread!’ Beggars held out imploring hands. One was a friar in a coarse brown robe and sandals; another a ragged soldier who had lost one leg in the wars.
The coach edged forward, the driver flicking his whip at the crowd to clear the way. I saw a thin shabby boy cut the ties of a purse belonging to a fat merchant and make off into the crowd. The merchant pursued him, shouting furiously. A footman in a tall white wig minced through the rabble, carrying a letter on a salver. A tavern was doing a roaring trade, a young blowsy woman in a low-cut dress carrying round trays filled with foaming mugs of ale. Nearby, a dancing bear shuffled its paws to the lively tune of a pipe and tabor, played by a shaggy-haired boy in a tattered coat several sizes too small for him. A barefoot little girl in a ragged brown dress did cartwheels and handstands nearby, calling out shrilly, ‘It’s warm inside! Come in for some hot mulled cider! Hot soup and a nice nip of brandy. Come along inside and get yourselves warm.’
Her feet must be so cold, I thought. I called to her, throwing a coin out the window. With a gap-toothed smile, she caught it and then, with a dexterous twist of her fingers, it disappeared inside her clothing somewhere and she did a one-handed backflip in joy.
‘We’ll have every beggar in Paris descending on us now,’ Nanette said. The little girl had been so quick, though, no one else had noticed, and we swayed our way forward and turned the corner, leaving the crowd behind us.
We passed through the towers of the Bastille, and I hunched my shoulders in an instinctive attempt to hide myself, a shiver passing over me at the memory of my time within its dreadful walls. On the far side, the Rue Saint-Antoine was wider and cleaner, the carriage trundling along smoothly. As dusk fell, lamplighters pulled down the great lanterns to light the candles within. Our carriage turned down the Rue des Tournelles, medieval houses leaning close overhead, and then we turned again and found ourselves at the Place des Vosges, where my cousin’s husband had a house. It had once been the height of fashion to live here, looking across the square with its clipped linden trees and the statue of Louis XIII, but since the King had moved to Versailles the houses were now occupied mainly by elderly noblewomen and rich bourgeoisie. It was still a pretty place, though, with rows of tall houses with steep blue-slate roofs facing onto a wide square.
Our carriage-driver found my cousin’s house, looking rather dark and shut-up in contrast to its neighbours, and carried my bags through the vaulted arcade to bang on the front door. Nanette and I stood waiting, shivering in the cold night air, for what seemed a very long time. At last, the door swung soundlessly open and a tall man stood before us. He wore a long dark satin vest, a white wig and spotless white gloves.
‘I’ve come to stay with my cousin,’ I said, too cold for any polite preamble. ‘You may take our bags, thank you.’
Henriette-Julie was lying on a chaise longue in her gloomy old-fashioned drawing room, flicking through a magazine of fashion plates. She shrieked at the sight of me and jumped to her feet, both hands held out. ‘Charlotte-Rose! What a delicious surprise. I was about ready to die of ennui. Can you believe my boring old husband insists we have Christmas here in Paris? Who stays in Paris in the winter? I think he hates me. He’s punishing me because I’m all the rage. But can I help it if people find me amusing?’
She was a slim pretty girl with a riot of chestnut curls, green-flecked hazel eyes shaded by long curling eyelashes, and a pouty-lipped mouth that was almost as large as mine. While she babbled on, she drew me down to sit, rang the bell for some refreshments and then exhorted me to tell her what I was doing in Paris.
‘Charles’s father has abducted him, to stop him marrying me,’ I said, taking off my crimson-feathered hat and tossing it on a table. ‘He has Charles locked up in his castle and won’t set him free unless he casts me aside.’
‘No!’
‘Yes! I know it’s unbelievable. I must rescue him. I’ve been to Survilliers, but they wouldn’t even let me in to see him.’
‘How medieval,’ Henriette-Julie said.
‘Exactly. I knew you’d understand. I was hoping I could stay with you a few days, until I have some kind of plan. Versailles is simply unbearable.’
‘Of course you may. And the Comte can say nothing at all about it. How can I turn away my own cousin? And I simply cannot allow you to languish from boredom. The Comte forbids me to go out at night during the winter. He says it is too hard on the horses. But now you are here, I have an excuse.’ She clapped her hands in joy. ‘We must go to one of the salons, and then perhaps to the opera. No doubt, you’ll have seen it already. It’s such a bore, that rule of the King’s. Why must we always wait for a new ballet or opera to be shown at court during Carnevale? It means we don’t get the new shows in Paris until after Easter. No wonder no one stays in Paris at this time of year!’
‘So is it Armide?’
‘Yes, have you seen it?’
I nodded and made a small moue of distaste with my mouth. Although it had caused a sensation at court a year earlier, I had never liked it. The opera told the story of a sorceress who ensnares a Christian soldier with her magical spells, but when she raises her dagger to kill him, she finds herself falling in love with him and so casts a spell so he will love her in return. He is rescued from her coils by his friends, and she is left alone, in despair. It cut a little too close to the bone for me, so I had little desire to see it again.
‘Oh, well, we’ll see something else,’ Henriette-Julie said. ‘Though Paris in winter is dreadfully thin in company. At least Carnevale begins soon. If you stay till then, we can mask ourselves and go out and join the revelries. The Comte never needs to know. He says it’s only for the peasantry and all sorts of unsuitable things go on. He is such a bore. That is exactly why Carnevale is so much fun. And if I’m masked and in disguise, no one needs to know I’m a comtesse.’
Her words gave me the smallest inkling of an idea. Carnevale was indeed only a few weeks away. Traditionally taking place in the days before Lent, it was a time of feasting and merry-making, food fights and masks, tomfoolery and mock-battles. At the Château de Cazeneuve, such celebrations were frowned upon as pagan rituals disguised as papist nonsense. However, Carnevale had been celebrated in Paris for hundreds of years. A raucous parade, called the Promenade du Boeuf Gras, wound its way through the streets and alleyways. A young boy rode a well-fattened ox, wearing a flimsy gilt crown and carrying a wooden sword and sceptre painted with jewels. Around him marched the city’s butchers, all dressed as women with paint on their faces, beating drums and playing fifes and pipes and violins. People danced in the streets, made love in dark doorways and fought drunkenly throughout the night. I wondered idly if Survilliers celebrated Carnevale … they were all Catholics there …
‘There’s the walk of masks,’ Henriette-Julie continued jubilantly. ‘Thousands of people come, all wearing the most extraordinary disguises and masks. And then there’s the masquerade party at the Opera. We simply must go to that. Oh, say you will stay, Charlotte-Rose. You might just make winter in Paris bearable!’
The door opened and a tall stoop-shouldered man limped into the drawing room, leaning heavily on a walking stick. He was dressed in sombre black, the only colour the heavily jewelled crucifix that hung on his breast. His wig was white and heavily curled. The face beneath the wig was cavernous,
lined and malicious. He seemed the kind of man who looked forward to Lent because he gained so much enjoyment from seeing other people suffer.
‘I am sorry to hear you speak so,’ he said to Henriette-Julie, who shrank back in her chair. ‘It is unbecoming to the Comtesse de Murat. Please guard your tongue.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she answered meekly.
He regarded me with cold eyes. ‘And who, may I ask, are you?’
‘I am Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force,’ I answered haughtily, rising and giving him a graceful curtsey, exact in its depths for his rank.
‘I have heard of you,’ he said unpleasantly.
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed? I am afraid, monsieur, that I have not heard of you. Perhaps you do not frequent court very often.’
His thin brows drew together. He stared at me icily, and I met his gaze, tilting my head in polite enquiry. He answered reluctantly, ‘My health does not permit.’
‘That is a shame. The King does not care for those who shun court.’ He stared at me and I smiled. ‘And those the King does not care for notice a gradual eclipse in their fortunes. Indeed, the King is like the sun. Those who do not bask in his approval live in eternal winter, while fortune and influence are won by those who exist in his sphere. Though perhaps you have no need of influence?’ I looked dismissively around the room, which was richly, if sombrely, furnished.
His frown deepened, though his gaze was abstract, no longer focused on me.
‘Perhaps it is a good thing I have come to visit my dear cousin,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll be able to give her some hints on how to get on at court … if you should decide to remind the King of your existence.’
He nodded, cast one calculating look at his young and pretty wife, and limped out of the drawing room. Henriette-Julie stared at me, for once completely lost for words. Then she leapt up, clapped her hands and danced about the room. ‘Oh, I am so glad you’ve come! No one ever speaks to the Comte in such a way. Do you think … perhaps he will relent and let me go to court after all? I will tilt my head, just so, and remind him that the King does not care for those who absent themselves. Oh, it’s priceless. His face! All he cares for is money, and the thought that his fortune may suffer … Charlotte-Rose, I love you.’