“Is this the child?” the man asked in Italian and broken English. He reached out to Angelique.
She stepped back, sickened by the scent of his rancid clothes, and breath that reeked of garlic.
Edwina shoved her inside the house and toward the man. “She’s the child.”
“The angel, huh?” the man asked, placing a crinkled hand on Angelique’s smooth cheek.
The Davidsons entered the dank farmhouse, the Italian man closing the door behind them. The interior of the home was as ravaged as the exterior. The plank floors were scuffed and dusty, the furniture’s upholstery worn and ripped, and the walls smoke-stained yellow. Angelique almost gagged at the rancid scent of cigarette smoke lingering in the air.
“Open your mouth, child,” the man demanded.
Angelique refused and stiffened her stance.
“Open your mouth!” Edwina Davidson ordered with a scowl. She smacked her on the back.
Angelique reluctantly obeyed. The old man pulled a penlight out of his pants’ pocket. He aimed the thin stream of light into her mouth, his fingers prying inside to inspect her palate.
“Most unusual,” he growled. “She has a most unusual mouth. The palate is very high and the way it curves could be the reason for her vocal power and control. Girl, sing the scale for me.”
Angelique frowned, but did as he asked. She didn’t see where she had a choice. The Davidsons were glaring at her and Edwina had her hand poised for another swat. She sang the scale as directed. The man stood analyzing her every note. After, he continued to test her by having her repeat his vocal exercises until she was exhausted.
“Her voice needs no improvement.”
During the next week, the Davidsons proceeded to drive her from one vocal coach to another. They all drew the same conclusion: Angelique did not need further training, just a repertoire. Shortly after she had learned a set of songs, they secured singing engagements for her on the dusty stages of small, musty auditoriums and concert halls in dot-on-the-map Italian villages. Her lilting voice singing in fluent Italian mesmerized her audiences. As word of her talent spread, the towns and the venues grew larger. Concert halls filled to capacity as she awed audiences.
Angelique realized what her life would hold from that moment on. Life was only a stage. The stage was her home and she ruled it with her presence and decorated it with her voice. On stage she possessed the power to move others, to play with their emotions, to muse, and amuse. She could captivate and hypnotize the audience. During each performance she could feel their warmth radiating up to the stage. It was the closest feeling of love she could find. Love was being on stage. Love was a song.
• • •
Italy, a country renowned for opera, welcomed her as if she were one of its own. From Calabria to Milan she traveled, singing to discriminating audiences. At the age of sixteen she made her debut at Teatro alle Skale. The famed La Scala opera house was sold out, all 3,500 seats filled with those eager to hear her. Within the walls of the simple neoclassical building her voice reverberated off the many tiers of the ornate interior, enchanting an audience of formally attired men and women. Resounding applause and standing ovations ended her triumphant performance and marked the beginning of her fame.
Angelique was overwhelmed by the response while the Davidsons counted the box office receipts. Soon she was thrust into the international spotlight, performing in the world’s greatest concert halls. As her music reached the masses, people clamored to purchase tickets to her performances. The sound of applause spread around the world.
Her guardians negotiated a lucrative deal with a famous European record label on her seventeenth “birthday,” the date she had been discovered in the woods. Angelique spent weeks in a glassed-in studio recording sounds with and without full orchestral accompaniment. In an era of synthesizers and overdubbing her recordings were vocal only. With her proficiency at learning languages she recorded her songs in many, including English, communicating and forming a bond with many nations.
Her debut album reached gold status. The mass media soon hounded her for interviews and photographs. The Davidsons kept tight control over her and denied all requests. The cloak of mystery surrounding Angelique added to her fame.
As the media became more persistent the Davidsons became more protective and controlling. With the notoriety and increased income came a burly security force.
The guards not only kept Angelique from an unruly public, but also kept her from enjoying any freedom. She felt like a prisoner kept under lock and key by Edwina and Morris Davidson.
Chapter 5
2013, France
The medieval town of Arques was known for its crystal, fine beech groves, famous 1540 battle, boatlift, and the Benedictine Abbey of St. Paul.
For more than a century the abbey had been housed in the vast Eighteenth-century chateau of Wisques. A dense forest surrounded the silent, solitary abbey, the forest where the cloistered nuns found Angelique.
Brian approached the massive iron gates at the entrance. He pulled the leather cord attached to a brass cowbell and waited, hoping for someone to answer his summons. He paused, rang again, and waited.
After what had seemed like a half an hour, a lone, robed figure appeared. The woman looked a little too young to be a nun. Her height barely reached his chest and her face still had baby fat on the cheekbones and chin. She approached the gate with cautious steps. Her round, cherub face peered through the iron bars with a stern yet placid demeanor. After meeting Brian’s intense gaze, she looked away.
“Monsieur, we are a passive order and ask others to respect our privacy and our silence,” she said in lilting French.
“I apologize, mademoiselle, but I am a visitor who has traveled far to visit your abbey. I only wish to ask a few questions,” he explained, trying to translate his English thoughts into the French language. He stepped closer, his face almost touching the gate’s cool bars.
The nun took a step back. “I am sorry. We do not accept visitors. Our lives are private and not open to questions. We speak to no one.”
“Mademoiselle, it is of utmost importance. It is not my desire to interfere or even enter your gate. I ask only for a moment of your time.”
“You have already had a moment and now it is time for me to return to the work of God. I am sorry,” she said, turning on her heels.
“Please! Is Angelique a work of God?”
The nun spun around to face him.
“Angelique?” she asked, her face frozen in startled awe.
“Yes, the angel your order found in the forest and raised in your abbey. Tell me about her. It is very important.” He fixed his eyes on hers.
“Sir, I cannot speak of this,” she said, lowering her gaze and blushing.
“You know, don’t you?”
The young nun stood in stony, still silence. Brian knew she was too young to have had personal contact with Angelique, but she had to have heard of her.
“Tell me about Angelique,” he insisted.
“Sir, you must take leave!”
A portly nun waddled down the gravel path. She was probably in her sixties and had an authoritative dignity about her in the way she held her head high. She wasn’t tall, yet her erect stance gave her height. Her habit covered her in head-to-toe white with black accents, black framing her plump, wrinkled face. She took a place next to the young nun like a penguin protecting a chick.
“Sister Bernadette, is something wrong? You’re shouting,” the older nun reprimanded.
“I’m sorry, Mother. This gentleman is inquiring about Angelique and the Davidsons,” the young nun unwittingly said, turning to face the elder nun.
Brian smiled. He loved slippery tongues. Persistence always paid off.
“Sister, I don’t wish to cause you alarm,” Brian assured. “I have traveled far in search of answers about Angelique and Edwina and Morris Davidson.”
The elder nun seemed to cringe at the sound of their names.
“Mo
nsieur, we cannot be of assistance,” she said, regaining her firm demeanor.
“Did you know her? Did you help raise her? What was Angelique like as a child? Who are the Davidsons? What relationship are they to her?” he shot out the questions.
“Sir . . .”
“It’s very important.”
“Sir . . .”
“Surely you want to help her?”
“Angelique is in God’s hands. She has always been in His hands. Whatever His plan we must honor it and not interfere,” the Reverend Mother said, and turning to the younger nun added, “Come, Sister, we must return to prayer.”
She cast a penetrating icy glare in Brian’s direction before turning and leading the younger nun up the gravel path toward the abbey.
“God bless you, Sisters,” Brian called out to them as they walked away.
• • •
Brian lay awake in his bed in his homey hotel room at Les Grandes Arcades in Arras, France. Though he hadn’t gathered a great deal of information, what he had learned was unsettling. Out of desperation he had blurted out emotional, unsubstantiated questions. Yet, the Reverend Mother had answered as if he had touched a raw nerve, a secret heartache. He suspected she knew more than she had revealed. Her true feelings had shone in the depth of her blue eyes. And that’s why he had a gut feeling the Davidsons didn’t have Angelique’s best interests in mind. What if they had entered her life and taken advantage of her? What if they had entered her life only to live off of her earnings and her fame?
The next morning, Brian strolled through the town of Arras, a modern town with the architecture of its eighteenth-century Flemish past. As he passed the street level arcades, he looked closely at the old sandstone pillars. Local guides had told him about trap doors leading to cellars several stories deep hidden behind the pillars. The cellars had been used to hide people during times of war. Could Angelique have been hidden deep within one at one point in time?
After buying an apple at a local market, he sat in his car to eat it. There were still so many unanswered questions. Somehow he was missing an important clue. How did Edwina and Morris Davidson discover Angelique and lure her away from the abbey? Why would the nuns let her go? He laid his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes to think.
He tried to envision the fourteen-year-old waif with the mesmerizing voice singing her heart out in the magnificent Basilique at Saint Omer cathedral. Until that singing debut, she had been sheltered from the outside world in the abbey. Could the Davidsons have happened upon the recital while passing through town? Had they viewed Angelique as a meal ticket? Had it been possible for them to have deceived the nuns in removing her from the abbey?
Brian opened his eyes and shook his head. What was he, a private eye or a reporter?
Chapter 6
2003, United States
The Davidsons lived the life of jetsetters, spending her money. As the unknown couple in the background they had, indeed, discovered that elusive pot of gold. Theirs was a life filled with excess and the very best of everything. They toured the countryside shopping, fine dining, and cavorting at her expense.
While the Davidsons painted the town, Angelique sat cloistered in her hotel room with armed guards posted outside her door to prevent her escape. There was a world outside, some of the greatest cities, yet she wasn’t permitted to venture out into them. She could only sit at the window gazing out over the rooftops at the cityscapes, automobiles, and people below. Life was just outside her window yet out of her reach. She confronted them before they left one morning. “I’m being held a prisoner,” she protested.
“Come now, child, it’s only for your own safety,” Edwina Davidson replied.
“No, for your own safety you mean.” She stood, with pent-up anger.
“Honey, I’m the safest I’ve ever been in my life,” Edwina said, hands on her hips, head held high, nose in the air.
“Yeah, protected by my money and my silence!”
Morris, who was standing nearby, approached his wife, puffing up his chest. “You don’t talk to your mother like that. Show some respect.”
“She’s not my mother. You both lost my respect the first time we were introduced.”
He turned red with anger before he reached out and slapped her across the face. She drew her hand up to her cheek trying to suppress the sting. This wasn’t the first time he’d hit her and she knew it wouldn’t be the last.
• • •
Her popularity in America was soaring, and predictions were that her debut there would be the biggest musical event in North America, surpassing the invasion of the Beatles decades earlier. To heighten interest and to create a media frenzy, the Davidsons leaked information creating a story that would rock the world and almost spawn another religion.
As expected, the American media devoured the fable of Angelique, the story of a baby found by cloistered nuns in the forest surrounding their abbey. Accounts of her mystical and spiritual power flooded the newspapers and television talk shows. Because of her unusual beauty and electrifying voice the public fell for it and adoration turned into worship. If there were skeptics, the protective shield the Davidsons built to surround her was impossible to penetrate.
When Angelique read the published accounts she grew confused. She didn’t know who she was or where she had come from. Memories of the abbey and the reality of life under the Davidsons’ control was all she had ever known.
The nuns may have found her in the forest, but where did she come from? Who had abandoned her? All she had was a shred of pink blanket, the only reminder of the first moments of her life.
She celebrated her eighteenth “birthday” alone. Where had she had been cloistered more, in the abbey or in strange hotel rooms, she wondered. Being in America hadn’t made any difference. New York City seemed so alive when she caught a glimpse of the vibrant city through the window of the limousine as it had whisked from the airport to her hotel. People hustled, automobiles honked, store windows were aglitter with the latest fashions and wares. The world outside her tinted car window was full of life. She didn’t feel alive. The Davidsons were out spending her earnings as was customary while she waited for evening and her American debut. Alone again.
Angelique shuffled into the tiled bathroom and stood before the full-length mirror. She studied her reflection, trembling. She analyzed her alabaster complexion, piercing eyes, and platinum hair. Stepping back, she untied and opened her robe. She inspected her petite frame, noting the perfection of her skin, the firmness of her body, and the delicate curves of her small breasts. With a sigh and tears glistening in her eyes, she closed the robe and knotted the belt.
After traveling the world and reading numerous publications she had never seen anyone who even remotely resembled her. No one in the world looked like her. No one sounded like her. She couldn’t understand why. Maybe she wasn’t a human being. Maybe she had indeed been dropped in the woods like some sort of miracle. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t treated like a human being. Drawing her hand up to her cheek, she wiped away cascading teardrops.
Was she a woman or quirk of nature? From the anatomy books she had read she had the physical characteristics of a human female. She had progressed from childhood through puberty to womanhood. There were monthly periods to contend with, and the roller coaster of emotions that went with it. Yearnings she couldn’t quite describe and fantasies the nuns would have punished her for having often entered her mind. From romance novels she gleaned lessons in love and conflict, of passion and sex. Love. Could anyone ever fall in love with her? Would someone ever want to touch her, hug her, kiss her, and make love to her? She sighed. Weren’t angels chaste and holy? One thing she knew: she wasn’t normal.
As she stared at her reflection she screamed. The mirror shattered.
• • •
Angelique made her American singing debut to a full house at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. On stage she was pure perfection: prepared, composed, self-assured. Si
nging in several languages, including English, she covered a repertoire of music from operatic arias, romantic ballads, show tunes, smoky blues, and inspirational.
Winning over an American audience was like winning over the world. Succeeding in America was every performer’s dream. She peered up into the balconies and down into the orchestra. Everyone was silent, their eyes focused on her. For the first time in her career she realized what power she held and the impact her song had on others. Under the sweltering spotlight she poured out her heart and her emotions. Through her song she communicated with the audience. Freedom was only through her music.
After the successful performance, Angelique flung herself on to a chaise in her dressing room. Shaken and exhausted, she ignored the scented roses, carnations, and gardenias overflowing the room and the gifts and cards sent by adoring fans. Performing was an emotional experience more potent than a drug. Afterward, the low was as deep as any withdrawal. She covered her face with her hands to mask the tears drizzling from her eyes.
She watched the Davidsons as they sat at a far table in the dressing room ignoring her. They gloated over their percentage of the box office receipts. Their voices were nothing, just annoying chatter.
She uncovered her eyes and glared at them. Every performance ended the same way. Restless, she cleared her throat and they looked over at her.
“Please stop. I’ve had enough of your greed at my expense,” Angelique said. “I’m tired of being held as your prisoner and money machine.”
“The security is for you,” Edwina replied, holding a neatly wrapped stack of hundred dollar bills.
“No. You’re afraid I might escape and go to the authorities and the press to reveal your nasty charade. You might lose your steady income.”
“We’re your parents, honey, like it or not. It’s our duty to keep you well protected.”
“You’re no more my mother than a stranger on the avenue and you know it. You never looked upon me as your child. You never legally adopted me. No, I am only your money tree.” She glared at them, poised to attack.
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