Afterward, it was dark for a minute or two; something had gone wrong with the next rocket. The guests began to murmur; some started to drift back inside. Sophie stood, her hand on the rail. She knew the fireworks were not finished; Pauline had told her they would end with a fire-fountain accompanied by music. She had seen the servants setting out the chairs for the orchestra halfway between the palace and the trees. Right below her, in the light spilling out from the palace, there were four men with trumpets, looking at each other uncertainly.
She looked back toward the artificers. They were running back and forth with lanterns, pulling more rockets from one of the wagons. It was only by accident that one lantern swung wide, into the trees, and showed her the soldiers standing there, hands on their weapons, with an officer gesturing to them. Not yet, said his gesture. Wait.
They could be part of the ceremonies, she told herself. Perhaps they were to fire a salute. She tried to squint, to pierce the darkness again. The artificers had set up a new series of rockets and were lighting them; she could see the fuses. The guests who had gone inside were hurrying back out; the musicians headed purposefully toward their assigned places.
The soldiers had not moved. They were not going to fire a salute; how could she have been so stupid? They were not in dress uniforms; they were not lined up in formation. They were half-crouching, waiting. Waiting for the fireworks to be over, for the guests to go home. She was pulling on her slippers, tearing off her nightgown. She grabbed the first dress she found in her wardrobe and threw it over her head.
Where was he? Was he out in the garden, with the other guests? No. He was with Pauline, she was sure of it. And Pauline was wearing white. She would have seen her. She scanned the garden again, to make sure. The music had started, and the rockets were arching over the flowerbeds. The ladies in white stood out like little candles below the shooting stars overhead. Too fat, too tall, the dress had sleeves, the dress was flounced. No, no, no, and no.
She ran across the hall. The doors to Pauline’s suite of rooms were closed; there was no light showing beneath them. Footsteps—on the stairs. Was it the soldiers already? She gasped and then heard the reassuring sound of a flint striking. A servant was relighting one of the sconces. Cautiously, she tried the door handle. It was not locked.
Once she stepped inside and closed the door, the noise of the music and fireworks suddenly dimmed, as though she had sunk underwater. The sitting room was dark; the curtains had been drawn. Sophie stood still, afraid she would break something if she blundered into a chair or table.
“I heard a noise.” It was Gian Andrea’s voice. Sophie stopped breathing.
“The fireworks.” Pauline, of course. The voices were coming from Pauline’s bedroom. Now that Sophie was looking, she could see a tiny, tiny thread of light under the door.
“No, like a door opening.”
“They’re all out watching the show. And if you are worried about Camillo, I assure you he would never abandon his guests.” There was a sound of something rustling; clothing, perhaps, or bedsheets. “Come over here.”
Sophie felt her way toward the inner door. Chair, chair, small table, carpet, side table. She slid her hand along the back of the table. This one. It was red-and-gold, if she remembered correctly. And not too big to lift. She picked up the vase and hurled it against the door. It broke with a huge crash, then fell, with a little tinkling sound as the smaller pieces hit the bigger ones.
“My God, what was that?” Gian Andrea.
The door flew open, and Pauline stood facing her, holding a candelabrum. In the room behind her, Gian Andrea was lurching out of a chair. They both still had their clothes on, and the bed was smooth and undisturbed. Only later did Sophie realize how different things would have been if she had seen something else when that bedroom door opened.
“Sophie!” He started to stammer something—excuses, explanations, apologies. Pauline silenced him with a gesture. She was looking straight at Sophie and there was no apology in her glance at all.
“Soldiers,” choked Sophie. “Militia. All around the garden. I think they are waiting for the guests to leave.”
“Do you see well in the dark?”
“Yes.”
They both ignored Gian Andrea completely.
“Go to the window—carefully—and pull the curtain aside and tell me if there are more soldiers out in the piazza.”
There were.
“Back in the bedroom,” Pauline said to Gian Andrea.
“They can arrest me,” he said, eyes flashing. “I won’t hide behind your skirts.”
“They can arrest you somewhere else,” Pauline said coldly. “Not in my husband’s house, after he lied in front of half of Turin to protect you. Get in there and shut the door, and wait until we tell you to come out.”
When the door had closed again, she lit a lamp and surveyed the broken vase.
“Now we ring for a maid,” Pauline said.
“What?”
“We ring for a maid. And send for Carlo and Nicola.” These were two of the older pages. “If you are stopped on the way out, you are a guest. You broke the vase accidentally. You are taking the pieces with you when you leave, to repair it.”
“But—” Sophie looked at the red-and-gold fragments. No one would ever be able to repair that vase.
“Go get dressed.” Pauline shoved her toward the outer doors. “In something you might have worn to the banquet. Not the blue dress—it is too conspicuous.”
“I don’t understand,” muttered Sophie as she went back across the hall. She put on one of her girlish white dresses with the square necklines, found a pair of white-and-gold slippers, and scurried back across to Pauline’s suite.
The maid had arrived and was sweeping up the larger pieces of china into a napkin. One of Pauline’s pages ran in, listened to something she said, and ran back out.
“Fix her hair,” Pauline told the maid, pointing at Sophie. She was arranging the napkin and the vase fragments in a small basket.
Once more Sophie twisted her neck and held still while her hair was pinned up. This time there were no sapphires, just a gold chain around her neck. More pages ran in and out, carrying bundles of clothing. One bundle was a cloak, for Sophie. Another, taller page, disappeared with his bundle into the bedroom.
Pauline lifted her head suddenly. “Do you hear that?” Sophie listened. Below Pauline’s window, the sound of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels echoed up from the piazza. “The carriages are lining up to take the guests home. You’ll have to lead them down the back way,” she told the older page.
Gian Andrea emerged from Pauline’s bedroom. He was dressed as a footman, in green-and-gold livery with a powdered wig and old-fashioned buckle shoes. They must have been a bit small because he walked as though his feet hurt. The jacket was a bit tight across the shoulders, too.
Pauline handed him the basket with the broken vase. “My sedan chair will be waiting at the far side of the piazza,” she told Sophie.
Gian Andrea was frowning at the basket. “What is this?”
“Your disguise,” said Pauline impatiently.
Then Sophie understood.
Ladies do not carry boxes, or parcels, or baskets full of broken china. Footmen carry them. A footman escorting a lady in evening dress out of the palace would look very suspicious. A footman carrying something and walking behind a lady would look perfectly normal.
It wasn’t very difficult.
The page took them down the servants’ stair to the ground floor. When they stepped out into the entrance hall, they merged with the flow of departing guests. The page escorted Sophie; the Gian-Andrea-footman walked dutifully behind. Sophie hoped he was not limping.
Down the steps, out into the piazza. Sophie looked straight ahead, focusing on the sedan chair. She could see it, beyond the line of carriages. She could also see the soldiers, standing in two lines, scrutinizing the guests as they moved toward the waiting carriages.
No one stopped
them. No one even looked at them.
When they reached the sedan chair, the page glanced around to make sure that they were unobserved. Then Gian Andrea swung inside, the door banged shut, and the bearers picked it up.
“Wait!” His voice was muffled by the closed screens on the windows. After a bit of a struggle, he pulled one partway open.
“What about this?” He held out the basket.
“Keep it.” She gave a sour little smile. “A souvenir.”
“Good-bye, Sophie,” he said softly. “Thank you.”
She nodded.
I’ll never see him again, she thought, as the sedan chair swayed into the line of vehicles leaving the piazza. And now I’ll have to remember him in that stupid wig.
TWELVE
It had grown cool, and since this was Turin, it was already damp. A chilly breeze off the mountains was lifting stray leaves and flower petals in the piazza, the last remnants of bouquets and garlands discarded by guests as they left the banquet. Nevertheless, the young captain of the militia was sweating. He kept taking his handkerchief out and dabbing at the back of his neck under the high collar of his dress uniform.
Camillo kept his voice low and even. “I assure you that the Visconti boy has left. There is no need to search the palace, and I will take it as a personal affront if you do so.” The argument had been going on for more than ten minutes. The captain insisted that his colonel only wished to speak with Gian Andrea (“a formality”); there was no reason for Prince Borghese to protect the young man. Camillo insisted that Visconti was no longer in the palace.
“My men did not see him leave.”
The prince raised his eyebrows. “Do you doubt my word?” He drew Pauline, who was standing at his side under the arched entranceway, a bit closer. “Do you doubt the word of my wife, the emperor’s sister?”
“Of course not, Your Excellency. But—”
Pauline interposed. Giving the officer her most sympathetic smile, she said softly, “I am sure this is very difficult for you, Captain.”
What was difficult, thought Camillo sourly, was that the governor-general of a province of the French empire had no control over the troops of the imperial garrison. Those troops reported directly to Napoleon, and they had standing orders to arrest Italian nationalist agitators. He was lucky they hadn’t just closed down the ball and seized Visconti right after the toast. But as the captain had explained, they had deferred to Camillo’s obvious hint that he wished to avoid a scene. It had never occurred to the officers of the militia that Camillo would continue to obstruct them once the guests had departed.
“You must see that it would be most improper for your troops to enter the palace without my husband’s permission,” Pauline continued.
“If, as you both claim, the boy has left,” said the captain stiffly, “then I fail to see why you will not grant that permission.”
“Because,” said Camillo patiently, “I have reliable information that Visconti is gone. And after spending the entire day, at considerable expense, wooing the people of Turin, I do not propose to ruin the effect by leaving my subjects with the image of soldiers looking under beds as their final impression of this event.”
“How do you know that he has left?” the younger man persisted. “Your Excellencies, if I may say so, had many guests here this evening. No one could expect you to have kept track of every one of them.”
He was offering them an out, Camillo saw. He was damned if he would take it, though. He drew the line at letting Napoleon’s troops into his own home.
“I saw him leave,” said Pauline firmly.
The captain looked at Camillo, startled, then dropped his eyes. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking; everyone had seen the boy dancing with Pauline after Sophie had left. Everyone had seen the two of them disappear from the ballroom within a few minutes of each other, right before the fireworks.
She reached across and touched the young officer’s sleeve. “Captain, I know you will have to write up a report.”
That was true. Napoleon’s empire sometimes seemed to Camillo to run in triplicate and to require more clerks than soldiers.
“I would appreciate it,” she said in a low voice, “if you could omit the details I am about to give you. But I believe that your mind will not be at ease until you are certain that we are not concealing the young man.”
“No, Your Highness; that is, yes, Your Highness.”
Would Pauline really be willing to tell the captain about her latest infidelity right in front of her husband? Camillo had to force himself to stand there with his arm around her waist when every instinct screamed “step away, step away.”
“Well, the truth is, my little cousin, Signorina Leclerc, has formed a tendre for Visconti. And she was very upset after his rude and foolish speech, as we all were. You must have seen her; she was with him when he gave the toast. The girl in blue.”
Where was this going? Camillo suppressed a sigh. But the officer was nodding.
“She left after the first dance.”
Another nod.
“I asked him to dance. I was worried that he would make another speech.” She gave the captain another wry little smile, a “really, what is all the fuss about a silly toast?” smile. “But, in fact, he wasn’t thinking about politics. He was very concerned because Sophie—my cousin—had left. Evidently the relationship was not as one-sided as I had thought.”
Camillo didn’t believe that for one minute. He had seen Gian Andrea mooning over Pauline since the day he had arrived in Turin.
But the captain must have been a romantic. He was nodding again.
“I suggested that he go and apologize to her right away, persuade her to come back downstairs to the ball. But, of course, it was necessary for me to accompany him to her room.”
“What happened?” The captain was hooked. She was reeling him in.
“She threw a vase at his head,” Pauline said dryly. “One of those Chinese things, red-and-gold. And he left. I saw him go myself, down the back stair. One of my pages showed him out; I can send for him if you don’t believe me.”
It was the detail of the vase that did it. The captain sighed. “I don’t understand why my men did not see him leave. He is quite conspicuous, with that nose and his height.”
“Perhaps your men were watching the fireworks instead of the gates,” Camillo suggested.
“Perhaps.” The captain saluted. “My apologies, Your Excellency, for troubling you.” He bowed to Pauline. “Your Highness.”
Then he was gone.
Camillo waited until the captain had collected his men and marched off. He still had his arm around Pauline’s waist, and without looking at her, he said in a detached voice, “Was any of that true?”
“Most of it.” Pauline laughed. “She did throw the vase. Mother of God! I didn’t think she had it in her.”
“You mean—it really was Sophie?”
“What did you think?”
“That you slept with him, of course,” he said brutally. “And then sent him off down whatever secret stairway you have discovered in this palace to bring your lovers in and out.”
“He did go down the back stairs,” she conceded. “But no, Camillo. I didn’t sleep with him. I’ve been trying to be good.” She looked down. “You haven’t noticed.”
He had noticed. He just hadn’t believed it was real.
“I noticed that you have bombarded your brother with requests to leave me and go back to France.”
“Because you’re ignoring me!” She stepped away from him. There were footmen waiting to open the doors, two feet away, and she didn’t care. Her voice was shaking. “You just pretend I don’t exist, except when we are out in public together. I’m not a nun! I’m a woman and I’m your wife, and if you won’t treat me as your wife, I don’t see why I should have to stay here in Turin and be a puppet princess! I can go to some little town and live my own life and you can be rid of me.” She burst into tears.
They end
ed up in bed, of course. He had practically dragged her up the stairs, her dance slippers skidding on the marble floors.
“Out,” he said breathlessly to the maid, who was sweeping the sitting room. Eyes round with curiosity, she left, although not without a backward glance.
Pauline was giggling. She was so beautiful, he thought. Her eyes still had tears in them, and she was giggling and pretending to resist as he tugged her toward the bed. Her teeth were beautiful, and her eyelashes were beautiful, and her arms were beautiful.
“How does that thing unfasten?” he said, looking at her white, one-shoulder dress. It looked like it was glued to her body.
She giggled again. “Watch.” She pulled open the gold pin at her shoulder.
The dress slithered to the floor. Just like that. As usual, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it.
“You,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “have far too many buttons on your clothing.”
It was true: his jacket had buttons; his embroidered waistcoat had buttons, his shirt cuffs, his trousers. He was ripping all of them open as fast as he could.
She danced around him, completely naked, mocking him for being so slow. “Ouch!” She hopped on one foot over to the bed and sat down. Picking up her right foot, she pulled it up by the lamp so that she could see it, giving Camillo an excellent view of her crotch. “Never mind, it isn’t bleeding.” She patted the bed next to her.
He got out of his tight-fitting pants by peeling them off inside-out, then dove onto the mattress. She had changed him, he realized. He didn’t mind being naked. He didn’t want her to turn down the lamp. He looked back on his younger, more prudish self and wondered where that Camillo had gone. Good riddance, he decided, surveying his wife.
The Princess of Nowhere Page 17