“I – I’d had so much wine. I’m not accustomed to it.” I lowered my eyes, and then gasped. On the white of Harlequin’s shirt-sleeve that protruded from his jacket cuff, there appeared to be a large dark bloodstain. “Are you injured?” I pointed to his sleeve.
He quickly tucked the hand with the bloody sleeve into the bosom of his waistcoat. “It’s nothing.” He avoided my eyes. “The wagoner came from the village to deliver supplies, and there were fresh skins and carcasses in the courtyard that I helped him load into the cart to take back. I must have gotten some of the blood on me. I’ll go and change my shirt.”
He strode off toward the far end of the gallery, pulled aside a hanging tapestry, and opened a hidden door behind it that he went through and pulled shut after him.
I shook my head, wondering. It struck me he didn’t seem to think the Marquis would be angry with me for what I had done at the edge of the woods with Séléné. It was imprudent of me to tell him, but wouldn’t he have let me know if he thought I had done the Marquis a grave wrong?
In the late afternoon I was saved from boredom by taking tea and a light meal with Aurore and Clio. I admitted to them I had drunk too much the night before and had a headache. Aurore worriedly felt my brow with the back of her hand, and her motherly touch and manner soothed me.
“I just hope it’s nothing worse,” Aurore said. “It’d be too much of a shame to fall ill here at Boisaulne.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” I closed my eyes for a moment. “I think the tea will help.”
“I’m exhausted, too,” Clio said. “I’m so glad it rained. I’d made rather too many plans for today, and it was good to have an excuse to stay in my room and set up my painting supplies.”
“Do you mean to paint while you’re here?” Aurore asked.
“But of course. A day in which I don’t do any painting feels wasted to me. And I have to keep practicing what I’ve learned or else I’ll forget the techniques.”
Aurore plopped a sugar lump into her tea and passed the bowl to me. “Have you learned painting from anyone besides your father?” she asked Clio.
“I’m to begin an apprenticeship in the fall with a lady painter who takes young women as students. I admire her work a good deal and I think she’ll be a fine teacher. I shouldn’t like to disappoint her by forgetting too much before then in idleness.”
“Do you have enough room in your chamber to paint?” I asked.
“It’s a perfect space,” Clio said. “If the sun ever comes out again, it’ll have excellent light. I’m a bit fanatical about light.”
“Donatien calls this place the Castle of Enlightenment, the Forteresse des Lumières,” I said. “I suppose if there’s any place to be fanatical about light, it’s here.”
Clio laughed “But I hope there’s not too much light. I need plenty of shadows too, or else nothing will work. I’ve experimented with two different ways of painting. One way is you start with a light-colored background, and then you put in the pastels and grays, and over that you add a layer of the bright colors, and last of all the shading, the darker colors, dark grays, and black. Another way, that’s harder and uses more paint, is to start with a black background, and paint the dark and then the bright colors over it, and last of all the lightest colors and bits of pure white, as highlights and glints of light. Leonardo da Vinci claimed it was the true way to paint, to begin every canvas with a wash of black, since all things in nature are dark except where exposed to the light. Papa never used that method, but I prefer it. Either way, it makes you see everything differently, in your mind to be always calculating how you’d paint it. In the sunniest meadow landscape, or the fairest skin for a portrait, you see the black. And in the night, your eye picks out the white.”
Aurore nodded agreement. “I like the way you describe it. I should like to see your paintings.”
“I’d like to paint you – to paint everyone here, in fact. But I wouldn’t ask it of you, or the others. It’s a lot of dull work, sitting for a portrait, and most are here to amuse themselves, I think.”
“I bet any of the gentlemen would sit for you,” I couldn’t resist saying. “I think you’re very admired. They’d be glad to have an excuse to talk with you and pay their regards.”
Clio looked at me quizzically, as if examining my remark for any hint of jealousy or malice.
“But I don’t think they’d be very pleased if they tried it,” she said. “When I paint, I’m all business. I don’t like to talk much since I’m concentrating on my work. I find if people talk there’s a temptation to accompany their speech with gestures, which spoils the pose.”
“Well, I’d sit for you,” Aurore said. “I’d be flattered to have my portrait painted.”
“What if I read aloud to you sometimes while you sat for it?” I asked. “Perhaps that would help make it less tedious. Clio, would it distract you too much?”
“Not at all. I won’t hold you to it if you change your mind,” Clio said, “but I’d like that very much. If it pleases you, we could start tomorrow morning. It’ll be far more amusing for me than painting still lifes.”
“Only don’t read me anything too funny,” Aurore cautioned me. “Not The Indiscreet Jewels, or any books by Voltaire, or Molière plays. Or else I’ll come out looking like a gargoyle from laughing the whole time.”
“Very well,” I said, “only serious and lofty things that give you a faraway noble look in your eye.”
She nods solemnly. “Racine tragedies.”
“Perhaps a scientific tract of Bouffon, or a d’Alembert essay on mathematics,” I suggested.
“If you mean for me to look constipated,” Aurore said, “then certainly.”
Clio had to swallow to avoid spitting out her tea before she burst out laughing. “But you know, if you’d like a quicker portrait in ink or charcoal, you could always ask Harlequin to sketch you. He’s not bad, unless he’s trying to make a caricature of someone on purpose.”
“Harlequin draws too?” I asked.
“Didn’t you know? Of course his style’s as different as could be from mine. He doesn’t work in oils much but does drawings in ink on paper. His alter ego’s rather notorious in Paris. If the authorities found out who he was, I bet they’d throw him into prison in the tower of Vincennes.”
“Why? Are the drawings obscene?”
Clio laughed. “No. Well, mostly not. They’re political.”
Aurore nodded. “My friend’s gazette publishes his caricatures. They can be quite cutting toward the ministers and courtiers. It’s a good thing he signs them Harlequin, instead of his real name, or there could be trouble. But most of the gazette’s authors write under noms de plume to be on the safe side. A woman I know whose father is in the book policing ministry told me the gazette is on the list of the most illegal titles, but as long as it’s all anonymous, they can’t do much more than confiscate the copies wherever they find them.”
I remembered the police raid on my late husband’s bookshop and shuddered.
Since our tea was almost a light supper and my headache was only just beginning to recede, I skipped going down to the evening meal in the great hall and resolved to go to bed early. I blushed, too, at the thought of seeing Séléné at dinner and preferred to avoid her, at least for the day. I dozed off quickly in my room before it was even quite dark.
I woke again in the night. I lay there a while, trying to fall back asleep, thinking of Thérion and missing his arms around me. I heard the clock strike half past something. If he was coming to me that night, I didn’t know how much longer I still had to wait for him. But I was wide awake, restless, impatient, anxious I wouldn’t see him.
I put on my slippers and tied my dressing gown around me. The hall was dark, so I lit a candle and took it with me. My pacing brought me to the end of the hall (was it really the end or was there another hidden door behind it?) and I turned around and paced back to the morning room. Back and forth,
from one end of the floor to the other I went, several more times, until a sound from one of the rooms stopped me.
It was the sound of someone slapping someone, of skin striking skin. As I came closer to one of the doors in the hall the sound grew louder. Light came out of a large keyhole in the door. I crouched down, peered through the keyhole, and found it gave a full enough view of the inside of the room to see the source of the noise. It was Donatien and Séléné. Séléné was naked except for her stockings and ribbon-trimmed garters. Donatien wore only his shirt, which was bunched up around his waist as he perched on the bed with one foot on the floor. Séléné’s hands had been bound to the bed post by cords, and she knelt on her elbows and knees with her face to the wall. Donatien was slapping her bottom with the flat of his palm. With each slap she cried out, with what sounded like pleasure as much as pain. I was horrified, embarrassed, and aroused, and I couldn’t look away.
Finally Donatien lay off beating her and began to copulate with her violently from behind. She groaned and cried, begging him for more. I stood up, hot-faced, and went back down the hall, back to my own room, and climbed back into my bed. I curled up with my knees under my chin.
“Oh, Thérion, where are you?” I said aloud.
“I’m here,” said a voice from the sofa by the fireplace where the fire had gone out. I might have guessed he was there from how the room had gone completely dark.
“I missed you.”
I heard the tread of his shoes across the wooden floor and felt his weight settle onto the side of the bed as he sat and removed his shoes. I sat up and reached out and found his shoulders wrapped in his coat. I pushed the coat off him and began to undress him. At last he was naked, and I pulled off my chemise as he climbed into the bed next to me and wrapped his body around mine. I let out a sob of relief and longing. He kissed my eyes and cheeks and tasted the salt of my tears.
“Violaine, what’s wrong? It’s only two nights since I saw you last. Are you unwell?”
I told him about the night before, about all that had happened with Séléné, seeing the alder-king in the woods, and what I’d just now witnessed taking place between Séléné and Donatien. As I talked he caressed me, and when I left off speaking, he kissed me and made love to me, more roughly than before. My pleasure in it was intense, and I did as I had seen Séléné do, crying out loudly and asking for more. When it was finished, we lay in each other’s arms and he asked me how I had felt with Séléné, and when I had watched her with Donatien, whether I had felt afraid, ashamed, or aroused. I admitted I had felt all of those things.
“I know these people,” he said, “or I feel as if I do from what Harlequin has told me of his guests.”
I was quiet. One thing I wouldn’t tell Thérion was that while he had made love to me, I had imagined him as Harlequin.
He went on, “I told you from the beginning, my purpose in bringing you here was to make you more free. It’s for you to choose whether and with whom you make love. I can’t begrudge you any pleasure, though it’d be a lie to say I’m not envious of Séléné enjoying your charms. I suppose I take some consolation from the circumstances, that perhaps it was only a passing pleasure – one mad night of dancing and drinking, rather than a strong and deep liaison that might replace me. It would grieve me greatly if it were the latter.”
“It was no more than that, I swear it. I’d never want to grieve you. I care for you very much. I was so frightened you’d stay away and I wouldn’t see you again, or you’d be angry with me. I was so happy you’d granted my wish to see other people here during the day, but I worried the cost might be losing my nights with you.”
“I was going to tell Harlequin he couldn’t invite guests this summer, as he has in the past, until you said you wished for friends. I wasn’t sure you’d want anyone else intruding on your solitude here – I feared enough to do it myself until you called for me. But Harlequin draws talented and interesting people to himself. I’m glad you’re happy. There’s nothing I love more than seeing you that way.”
“Aurore told me Harlequin had made a habit in the past of introducing young women to that man Ulysse, and that Ulysse takes them under his wing and makes them his protégées. I wondered if that had anything to do with his finding me and arranging for me to come here. I thought perhaps … perhaps once you’d had me, you wouldn’t want me anymore, and I was to be passed on to Ulysse.”
He chuckled. “I have my opinion of Ulysse, but I won’t try to influence you for or against him. You should be free to form your own judgment as to what you think of him.”
“I’ve barely spoken with him so far, though we danced together a few times. He doesn’t seem interested in me, but he has the air of a rake, I think – a man who’s larger than life. He paid a lot of attention to Clio. She’s an artist, like Harlequin, and very young, but intelligent.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about Clio too. It sounds as though no one ought to underestimate her, even if she looks like an ingénue. But listen, you mustn’t doubt, I want you more than ever. You should never imagine I mean to cast you off, just because Harlequin likes to play the role of matchmaker, like an old grandmother from one of your mountain villages.”
“Is that really all it is? He’s not some kind of pimp or procurer?”
“I respect his privacy too much to tell you all I know of him. Suffice it to say he’s one of those men who’s kinder to others than he is to himself.”
Now, more than ever, I was convinced in my heart that Harlequin and Thérion were one and the same, but something held me back from pressing him on it. If I loved him – and I believed I did – would it be kind of me to unmask this man who for whatever reason felt it necessary to play these games of hiding in the dark? If it was truly him, he must have his reasons for keeping me at the distance of night and blindness. And suppose I was wrong? Would it do me any good to learn he wasn’t the man I had pictured when we made love? Didn’t it increase my pleasure to imagine him as the one to whom I was most attracted, of all those I had seen? I was aware that I owed this pleasure to the darkness and to his gift of remaining mysterious to me. And so I became a willing participant in my own blinding.
X
I passed a pleasant morning reading to Aurore in Clio’s sitting room while Clio began work on the portrait. Out of curiosity, I chose a book by Ulysse to read, which turned out to be full of irreverent humor and mockery, so that Clio had to break off her work several times because all three of us were convulsing with laughter. We looked through Clio’s other sketches and the paintings she had stored in her portfolio. Though I knew little of drawing and painting, I was struck at once by her gift for bringing out the beauty in her subjects. There were self-portraits and sketches of still lifes – flowers, fruits, insects – and many drawings of her younger brother and of her family’s and neighbors’ pets – dogs, cats, and a little green bird in a cage. There were sketches of the neighbors too, generally young mothers, alone or with their children. The common thread among the sketches of people was the natural way her subjects were posed and dressed.
Before we went down for our dinner at midday, Aurore pulled me aside and gently touched a spot on my neck.
“You … have a few red marks. Here.” She took off the neckerchief she’d tied around her own neck and arranged it on mine. She fussed with it a good long while, trying to pin it just right, and then gave up and asked Clio if she had any ribbons we could borrow instead. When Clio had found some, Aurore wrapped a wide one around my throat and tied it with a bow in back. Only then was she satisfied.
The whole company was present for the midday meal. For a moment or two I thought a new young gentleman had joined us, before I realized Séléné had dressed herself in a man’s breeches, stockings, shirt, waistcoat, and coat, all elegantly cut and tailored perfectly to her small, compact figure. She laughed at our surprise.
“I’m much more comfortable like this. You should try it sometime. I like coming to Boisaulne because I can dress however I wan
t here.”
In truth it seemed impractical to me, to go without stays and have to unbutton breeches and pull them down every time one had to make water. But I was relieved the general excitement produced by her dress spared me the embarrassment of any reference to our night together by the standing stone. Her neck and chest weren’t covered by a handkerchief or ribbon or collar, but there were no blue or purple marks to be seen on her white skin. I supposed hers must be all below the waist. A part of me wished I could ask Aurore if she had ever been seduced by Séléné as I had been, but at the same time I was glad for the rules of Boisaulne that discouraged such conversations in the day. Although, in truth, it seemed the rules were often ignored.
When Aurore, Clio, and I told the others how we had spent our morning, everyone was eager to join in our new project. It was agreed we would take turns reading to Aurore while she sat for her portrait, and whoever else wished to hear the reading could sit in on it too.
Tristan claimed the next slot for reading aloud and offered to read us his favorite novel.
“What’s it about?” Clio asked.
“It’s the story of two noble souls, a man and a woman in a small town at the foot of the Alps, who fall in love with each other, but society places obstacles in the way of them being together. The woman must marry another whom she respects but does not love with passion. She and the hero surmount the difficulty by forming a spiritual union that allows them to be true lovers even while they’re kept apart.”
Clio screwed up her freckled face prettily. “Hmm, I don’t know. It sounds like a rather sad story, if the lovers never come together.”
“It’s total tripe,” said Ulysse. “I know the one you mean. It’s an absurd travesty of a storyline. It takes a rake and strumpet and paints them in lovely colors so she becomes a philosopher and he a prince. I’d rather read a story where a rake is admitted to be what he is and he and his strumpet at least end up happy together.”
The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment Page 12