by C. S. Quinn
I came here by way of the grand houses that characterize Paris. They dropped away to ramshackle wooden dwellings, leaning into one another for support, jumbled in with the piedsà-terre of wealthy men-about-town – the Montmartre district I knew well ten years ago. Music drifts out, violins, soulful singing. Through candlelit windows I catch snatches of naked flesh, laughing faces, wine being poured.
I notice many shop signs swinging overhead. The shaped kind are now illegal in London – the huge plaster tooth for the dentist, a great iron key for the locksmith, a barrel for the cooper. Too many heads have been broken from falling signs.
I guess in Montmartre this wouldn’t be a problem since a disproportionate number are hanging coffins and trios of gold spheres: pawnbrokers for the poor to raise capital; funeral houses where they can loan accessories to bury their dead – a rough-woven pall to cover the body, perhaps handles for the coffin.
A little group of table-dancing girls walk by in corsets and stockings, swinging their collection bucket as they decide the next inn to try. Somewhere I can hear a play being performed.
From deeper in the city, shouts rift the air. Something began happening as darkness descended, something violent, and I’ve a bad feeling it’s headed to the unconventional area I’m currently failing to navigate.
I ask a maid scurrying to work where I might find the Place Louis XVI. But she only looks at me blankly and runs on, muttering something about it being dangerous to speak of the King. My address is for Rue Monsieur-le-Prince but I can’t find it anywhere.
The shouts have become noticeably louder now. Light on the near horizon has taken on a peculiarly luminous hue, as though a lot of torches were assembling only a few streets away.
I pass a large white-stone house with a plaster crest above the wide wood door and something draws my attention. The surname has been painted over. I can still make out the gold letters beneath. Artois – one of the wealthiest houses in France.
I stop for a moment and stare, trying to tune out the ominous growing crowd noise which comes from every direction.
It’s not vandalism. The painting-over is neat, as though the family themselves have paid for this to be done.
A drumbeat starts up and with it a great round of ugly cheers. I hear the sound of glass shattering and a boisterous drunken sort of melody. It can only be a street or so away.
I force myself to concentrate. Why should the Artois family paint out their own name? There’s a nameless threat here, floating on the air.
I can hear the song now – near, too near. I listen. They’re singing the same two words over and over. ‘Ca ira!’ they shout. ‘Ca ira!’
I translate the meaning: ‘It’ll be fine.’
This itself is bizarrely threatening. A mob raging the streets, breaking glass, chanting at the top of their lungs that all will be well.
Once again I regret my choice of dress. The silk pinstripe marks me out as noble. And just as I’m thinking this there’s a rumble that is no longer on the distance. The drumming is joined by screams and shouts. I need to get inside.
A school memory floats back to me from my time in the French convent, a bawdy sort of joke song that the local merchants sometimes sang. About the King’s lack of virility and Marie Antoinette’s sexual proclivities.
The roads of Paris
Are a Hanover Royal marriage
The Queen joins the King,
The Prince comes a long time after!
Something occurs to me. I take out my fan and follow the streets with my finger. Just as in the song, the Rue de la Reine spirals out from the Place Louis XVI and Rue Monsieur-le-Prince runs beneath that. The shapes of the roads match the ones I’ve walked down, I’m certain.
I think back to the defaced noble home. Could it be that the streets themselves have received the same treatment? The royal names painted out?
Quickly I look back at my fan. If I’m right, I’m almost on Angelina’s street. I run for it, just as torchlight spills around the corner. More glass shatters and I hear a door being beaten in.
‘This way!’ shouts a man with a rough voice. ‘There’s a lady out of doors!’
I turn to see a tall figure is pointing in my direction.
‘Make ’er pay ’er taxes!’ decides an unseen drunk voice behind him that could be male or female.
I break into a run. I think I can see Angelina’s house now: four storeys, with a view across the rooftops. But I see it’s all wrong, just as a mob bursts on to the street.
My heart sinks. Angelina wrote to me as a kept mistress in a fine townhouse. She must have moved without telling me. This residence is a huge, gaudy brothel.
CHAPTER 28
I’M STARING AT WHAT USED TO BE ANGELINA’S HOUSE, barely able to believe what I’m seeing.
Someone has caked the outside of this large building in a strange three-dimensional sculpture, made from plaster of Paris. A great yawning devil-mouth encompasses the bottom storey and the door I stand at. Angels and devils flutter upwards. The modelling works along the full façade, as though the structure below has been gobbled up by demonic forces.
It’s the most shameless brothel I’ve ever seen. Candles wink in the windows and the high strain of pretend laughter drifts forth.
The first of the group round the corner and I feel rough hands seize me from behind. I’m too surprised even to swing my blade. Instead, I’m dragged backwards, my boots kicking impotently in front of me.
‘Stop struggling,’ says a woman’s voice, with a strong Parisian accent. ‘You’ll rip your nice dress.’
I’m being bundled into a huge immaculate hallway, lit with more candles than I’ve ever seen in one place. The door closes behind me. The firelight of the mob vanishes.
I feel myself released and turn to see a girl wearing an outrageous outfit and the slightly dead-eyed expression common to brothel workers.
‘It’s dangerous out of doors,’ she admonishes.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ I say. ‘Angelina Mazarin.’
The girl picks up a crate of candles from the hallway and hefts it.
‘She’s the mistress here,’ she says. ‘Come on. I’ll take you to her.’
I’m absorbing my surroundings and what they mean as I follow the half-dressed girl along the corridor. Angelina became a kept mistress in Paris. She never told me anything about a brothel.
We break into a cosy cavern-like room filled with young Parisian men – artists and writers, if their eccentric dress is anything to go by. Candle-holders are fastened into the walls, giving low warm lighting. And floating over it all is the unmistakable strains of Angelina singing.
It’s a sound of pure emotion and the memory of it leaves me breathless. She’s sat behind a battered pianoforte, atop of which is a squat candelabra, which hides her face. Peeking above is her auburn hair arranged in two whirls on her forehead, with exquisitely detailed silk flowers holding it in place. As always, everyone in the room is transfixed.
When Angelina sings, it’s as though there’s a silver pool of light around her.
She stops mid-line and the spell is broken.
‘Attica?’ Her eyes are fixed on me. She is small, Angelina, for such a heavy voice. Her eyes are large and fairy-like, blue pools in the perfectly white oval of her leaded face. The generous lips I remember are shrunk to an inch-wide bee-sting of vermillion lip-paint. A tiny moon of black felt is stuck to the pronounced apex of her upper cheek.
My breath catches. There’s a lump in my throat I wasn’t expecting. The memory of us stealing the nun’s sour white wine, drinking it with feet dangling into the river outside our convent school. I hadn’t realized it, until now: I’d been happy.
How could I have told Jemmy this was nothing? She was everything.
She leans forward and blows out the candelabra. Greasy smoke rises.
Angelina stands, sways, catching herself against the side of the pianoforte and resting a hand to support herself. She’s drunk, of course. I’d f
orgotten that. You can never tell when she sings.
‘Gentlemen,’ says Angelina, her consonants blurring a little, ‘here she is. The girl who broke my heart.’
CHAPTER 29
THE ATMOSPHERE IN ANGELINA’S LOW-LIT ROOM IS AS thick as the candle smoke. Faces switch back to me with interest. I cross the room towards her. Angelina’s face ripples with a hundred different expressions as I near.
She is dressed in a gauzy white dress that is almost completely transparent. It ends mid-thigh and her white stockings are tied above the knee with red ribbon.
‘Do you remember,’ she says loudly as I draw close, eyes locked on me, ‘what we did on this pianoforte?’
Behind us, I sense a little ripple of expectation travel around the room. Angelina always did play to her audience. They’re wondering if things will erupt.
‘I remember everything,’ I say, kissing her lightly on either side of the face. ‘I even remember how beautiful you are,’ I add, ‘without all this paint.’
I draw back a little, absorbing her face, taking a light grip of her forearms.
‘Do you really think I would forget my first love?’ I say.
Her twisted mouth softens. She tilts her head, animosity melting away.
‘You were always in love with Atherton,’ she mutters. But she looks pleased, all the same. ‘My friend from England,’ says Angelina, raising her voice to the crowd. ‘Shall we toast in her honour? Some English drink? Whisky?’
She catches my expression.
‘Don’t be like that, Attica. Spirits sober me up. I have cognac with my morning rolls nowadays.’
The knot of drunken men, disappointed now, are drifting away to have more drama. Now the song is finished, they peel away on the arms of half-naked girls, heading either up the gilded stairwell or back out into the hallway.
‘Ah, but it’s good to see you,’ Angelina enthuses in her soft little voice. She kisses me hard on both cheeks. ‘I wish you had never left.’ She lifts her eyes to mine and there is the Angelina I remember. The vulnerability I always wanted to enfold in my arms and defend.
‘I didn’t want to leave,’ I say.
Angelina pouts a little. ‘Oh, him,’ she says. ‘It was only jealousy made me do it.’ She looks at me again. ‘Did you marry Atherton?’
I shake my head. Her eyes widen.
‘But you were like two fingers in a glove. Chattering away about things no one else understood. All those letters he wrote ...’
‘He married someone else.’
I must have said it more bluntly than I intended. Angelina flinches.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says softly. ‘Not even an affair?’ she adds hopefully.
‘Neither of us would compromise the other.’ How can I explain? I was different when she knew me. It was before I’d killed anyone.
Angelina notices my taking in the gaudy decorations and lurid candlelight and smiles.
‘Of course my old protector became bored,’ she explains with a brittle laugh. ‘It was nice while it lasted.’ She gives a little shrug of her narrow shoulders. ‘My house falls somewhere between an entertainment hall and a brothel, I suppose.’ She looks wistful as she says this, as though this distinction represents the death of some dream of hers. ‘It’s a little game, you see. Heaven and hell. Various rooms for different tastes. And different purses, of course.’
I make out a staircase towards the back, ostentatiously styled with gilding and white feathers as a stairway to heaven.
‘The cheap seats are downstairs?’ I guess.
‘Dancers, a little theatre and a flash of something you shouldn’t see if you’re lucky,’ she agrees. ‘Really it’s nothing more than a damp little cellar with false fire and brimstone. Upstairs is luxury. Heaven.’ She smiles to suggest this also is the barest of illusions. ‘We had local artists make the front for us cheaply. They haul plaster up from beneath the city for a few centimes a sack,’ she adds. ‘Montmartre is so riddled with gypsum mines now it’s amazing we don’t all collapse underground.’
I’m picturing the plaster of Paris excavations, running like a honeycomb under our feet, when we’re interrupted by the arrival of two men, young and laughing.
‘What about her?’ one of them asks Angelina, looking at me. ‘Is she downstairs or upstairs?’
Angelina is greatly amused by this.
‘Oh, you mustn’t trouble Attica,’ she says with a laugh. ‘She’d have you both for breakfast.’
She turns back to me as they stagger down into the cellar.
‘Come with me,’ she says, taking my hand. And she leads me up the shallow steps of the broad gilded staircase to Heaven.
CHAPTER 30
WOMEN DRESSED IN GAUZY CELESTIAL DRESSES ARE waiting to greet patrons on the first floor. They nod to Angelina as she passes.
Arrayed on plump cushions are several bored-looking girls. They are naked apart from Grecian sandals and angel wings of white goose-feather strapped under their breasts. A few stand at the windows to lure men. Sheep-gut condoms float in a gold bowl on a table, soaking in warm milk. Another dish contains honey and cedar oil – a pox-stultifying mixture for internal application.
The air hangs with the same fetid smell I always associate with brothels. Somehow, no matter how many fine fabrics and furnishings, the scent of male lust pervades.
There is a chamber pot in the corner and Angelina lifts it up and moves to the nearest window.
‘You must keep these empty,’ she tells the girls, opening the casement and heaving the contents of the pot into the street below.
‘My private room is down the hall,’ she says, setting it down. ‘This way.’
We pass braziers burning scented oils and an ornately legged table laid with fruit, marzipans and huge tiered cakes.
Angelina turns the handle of a grand door and leads us both inside.
‘This used to be my music room,’ she explains, looking at the frenzied decadence of gold and silk furnishings. I smile. Angelina never did quite master the noble art of less is more. She can’t help but show she has money. For her, it is evidence she is loved.
‘So tell me—’ Angelina begins, then stops suddenly, her face wary. ‘It is nothing,’ she decides.
‘Angelina,’ I say, ‘I’m looking for an English girl. Her name is Grace. She’s my cousin.’
‘I think I remember you speaking of Grace,’ says Angelina. ‘Wasn’t it her idea to put firecrackers in that copper pan?’
‘She’s much better behaved nowadays, more’s the pity. I think she may have gone to the Salon des Princes, expecting a debating chamber.’
Angelina moves to the door and puts her finger to her lips. Having checked there’s no one listening outside she heaves it shut with her slender arms. She trips lightly back to where I stand and lowers her voice.
‘The Salon des Princes is different now,’ she advises. ‘Madame Roland ... She holds her own little court there, amongst the debauchery. Even last week, I might have got you inside. But it is all changing. The King has granted a constitution to the people. The nobles are less certain of things.’
This is an unexpected setback. I’d been sure Angelina could get me access to the infamous salon.
We’re interrupted by a fanfare from the street. Angelina gasps. ‘He is here,’ she whispers, horrified. ‘I didn’t think it was so late ...’
‘Who is it?’ I move to the window, frowning. Outside a ludicrously decadent carriage has pulled up. It is flanked by a number of armed men. Someone is taking no chances in this district.
‘Why, my keeper, of course,’ she says.
‘I thought ...’ I glance again at the street below. I had assumed she ran the house independently. ‘Who is keeping you now?’
‘Foulon,’ she whispers, looking sick. ‘Foulon keeps me.’
‘The royalist finance minister?’ I’m frowning, scrolling through my knowledge of French politics.
Angelina is nodding.
‘But he is an old man,
’ I say, a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. ‘Ancient.’
‘Foulon came with his guards one night,’ says Angelina, her eyes sliding to the door. ‘He told me if I didn’t ...’ She swallows. ‘If I didn’t do what he liked, he would have me thrown in the Bastille.’
‘He cannot threaten to imprison you for no crime!’ A fierce, powerless fury burns in me. I can’t stand to think of Angelina in the stale embrace of this ancient lecher.
‘This is not England, Attica,’ says Angelina. ‘Our King can lock away anyone without trial.’
A heavy door bangs downstairs and we hear Foulon’s guards enter the house. The sound sparks a new note of panic in Angelina.
‘Attica, he is so dangerous,’ she says. ‘If he doesn’t like you, he could have you tortured and worse—’
She’s interrupted by a loud knock on the door. Angelina blanches. I’ve never seen her look so afraid.
‘That’s him,’ she whispers. ‘It’s Foulon. Foulon is here.’
CHAPTER 31
IN HIS SMALL OFFICE, ROBESPIERRE SITS HUNCHED OVER his plain desk.
The light begins to flicker. He looks to see his candle has burned to a stub. Outside, the sun is rising.
Papers are piled neatly. One is written in English and annotated in French. It bears the words, Queen’s diamonds.
He moves a pile of documents and searches.
The diamonds.
It’s an image of the lost necklace of Marie Antoinette. He holds up the picture: drooping swags of jewels.
‘Two million francs,’ says Robespierre aloud, ‘that can be fitted into the palm of a hand. A trinket that could buy the King all the weapons and troops he needs,’ he concludes, ‘to rule with an iron fist.’
Robespierre pinches at his long mouth with thin fingers. He had suspected all along that the English had got hold of them.
He can’t be certain, but Robespierre guesses the diamonds are back in France. Gaspard de Mayenne was involved somehow.
There is an idea to depose the King and put the Duc d’Orléans on the throne. Orléan’s sexual indiscretions and flashy clothing are surpassed only by his strange obsession with English manners and democracy.