Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume

by Kit Brennan

  My heart remained in my throat for the whole long journey. Magnifique, sensing it, was ready to spook at every turn. On horseback, I was stared at with undisguised wariness and, often, a flintier speculation: a woman, alone? Damned handsome animal, that: perhaps I should take it. I rode with my pistols on display, the flick knife in my waistband always ready to hand.

  I was genuinely relieved to at last arrive in Caen—Calais—where I booked a ticket for the next ship’s crossing of La Manche. Leave the provincial French, their excitements and their woes, I thought; I need a rest from the aggressive ferment, from this continual sense of rising chaos.

  The following morning, I rode to the docks, and was leading Magnifique towards the enclosure where the horses were kept prior to boarding the ship. Just as I handed the reins to an attendant, there was an enormous noise off to our left. Objects, followed by dust and wind, flew into the air. Magnifique startled mightily, knocking the young man off his feet and then dragging him back in the direction of the avenue. I managed to run after them and, in a few minutes, to calm my horse. Thank God. But fifty yards away, where the sound had originated, smoke was still clearing and I could hear the whistles of gendarmes, approaching at a run. An explosion, surely! Who was it meant for? Near me, both men and women were snatching goods up from off the ground, where crates and boxes bound for England had smashed open, revealing food stuffs. A woman jabbed me in the elbow and cried, “Vite! Don’t let them see you—but take as much as you can!” Even some of the ship hands seemed to be hastily helping themselves. As I turned to lead Magnifique back to the ship, a burly man raced towards us and grabbed the reins, tugging my horse away at great speed and attempting to place his foot in the stirrup, ready to swing up. I lunged after him with a cry, slashing at the hand on the reins with my knife, instantly drawing blood. “Let him go, bastardo,” I hissed, threatening the thief’s narrow cheek with the blade. He turned and ran off, dripping blood onto the cobbles. Mon Dieu, I thought, get me out of this volatile country!

  Throughout the channel crossing—as the steamship Water Witch battled a rough sea and passengers lurched to the railings to noisily spew—I finally let my jangled mind return to its determined goal: to the thought of her. Shivering in my shawl, wind and spray streaming through my hair, I questioned what she would think of me. The only gift I’d ever managed to give the object of my impatient journey was a cherished pair of peridot earbobs that had traveled with me to Spain and back. When I’d sent the earrings, I’d made myself a secret promise: that I would return some day to hug her and hold her and become part of her life. Four years had passed and I’d not managed to do so—until now. She was eleven years old. What would I do? If all went well? Would I live nearby? Oh God, what will happen, I asked myself.

  Landing in Dover, we galloped onwards, bypassing London. What had begun as a desperate morsel of hope outside the gates of Montmartre Cemetery had become an urgent quest to undo years of silence, years of regret. It took another week and some days until we were cantering at last through the outskirts of my destination and entering Durham’s old town. I was calmer and steadier than when I’d set out, though nervousness about the immediate present overrode the relief I should have felt to have arrived in one piece (not blown to bits, merci à bon Dieu).

  Presumably my step-relatives were expecting me, but… What had their reaction been, upon receiving my letter? I reached behind to touch the saddlebag: a warm lump, still there. Bon. I’d picked him up in Calais as I boarded the ship. I don’t know what he was, but he certainly wasn’t royalty. It didn’t matter though, because the moment I’d set eyes upon him, I’d never seen anything so adorable. His face was furry and ridiculous and his nose appeared squashed, but there was something delicious about him, even so. I chose him out of a basket of wriggling siblings and named him Zampa, the titular hero of an opéra comique I’d seen in Paris: the white pup had the same hairdo as the actor’s blonde wig, falling over one eye in a vagabond manner.

  So, after weeks of travel, there I was, standing on the front step of my step-aunt and uncle’s two-story house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. In England, a place I thought I’d never see again. “Prepare yourself, Zampa,” I whispered, “you must storm the citadel and win the princess.” The fixed purpose of all my travel was behind that door, and my heart was beating hard with the hope that I might, just might—if I was terribly lucky—experience a new kind of love: from a little girl. I knocked.

  Poor Aunt Catherine was a ball of nerves, welcoming me inside. Uncle Herbert, grounding his agitation with frequent glimpses at the floor, looked even older than his years. He went to the street to see to my horse. In the flurry of setting down the saddlebag to hug Catherine, Zampa wiggled free and frolicked across the room to sniff the hem of a bright yellow day-gown that appeared in a doorway.

  “Praise be, it’s Betty!” came from a shrill, over-excited voice inhabiting the dress. “My darling, my precious, let me take you in my arms!”

  Gob-smacked I was, clutched by the canary-coloured woman whose exclamations rang through the house, and my hope exploded, falling to the earth in tatters. This was not the she I’d come so far to find.

  We have never seen eye to eye, my mother and I. Even when I was a tiny thing in India, I’d done my best to avoid her—and she me. When we were forced together, it always ended in tears or a tantrum, and sometimes both. She could cry like a waterworks, and anything at all might set her off—someone else’s pretty baby, a sentimental song, or my little face glaring at her defiantly over some piece of mutual stubbornness over which we were at odds. “Go away, Betty, I don’t like you staring.” (I’d been christened Eliza, her name—I’m not remotely like her!—but she’d always called me Betty, which I hate.) At each rebuff, I’d trail off fiercely, and kick something on the way. She’d been lucky: my step-father had given her a life of comfort. But two years ago, dear Craigie died, and she’d sent a black-edged letter from India, summoning me. I didn’t respond, for without him I wanted nothing to do with her.

  Now, here she was, the original Eliza Gilbert, her formerly mouse-brown hair in bouncy ringlets, dyed a defiant shade of improbable black. ¡Diablo!

  *

  For the next hour the woman never stopped talking. I have no idea what she said; my ears were ringing, the anxiety unbearable. Catherine tried to smooth a sociable path, but I could sense the strain in the sharply edged lines upon her brow. Finally, the gabbling, ringletted creature proclaimed she must retire for her afternoon nap (thank Christ), and I was able to breathe. To prepare my shattered self as well as I could.

  I met Emma upon her return from school. I waited in the drawing room, wringing the material of my skirt in nervous anticipation. The outer door opened, I could hear soft footsteps in the front hallway and a high, silvery voice calling, “Mama, I’m home!” Catherine bustled out to meet her, there was a flurry of whispering, then Emma entered the drawing room, one hand clasped in Catherine’s.

  Face to face, at last. It was a shock, a very strange sensation: like looking in a mirror, back through time. At the very first glance, my heart was smitten; the sight of her made it clench into a tight ball of love and longing. She was tall for her age, and willowy, with that curly black hair and the dark sea blue eyes. She was quiet, much calmer than me; elegant, not the wild child I had been when I’d briefly resided with Catherine and Herbert years before. They’d been trying to run a school and, as her brother’s six-year-old step-daughter, I had served as one of their test cases. When they’d reprimand me by closing me into a closet for half an hour to consider my behaviour, I would burst forth like a tigress kitten, unrepentant.

  In contrast, Emma displayed a deep thoughtfulness in her demeanour, though I suspect this masks an unquenchable imagination. After tea, I took her with me—with Catherine’s nervous permission—to check upon my horse, stabled down the street. Emma confidingly placed her small hand in mine as we walked; I was amazed at the lift in my spirits that this caused. Oh, I will have to be ter
ribly careful, I thought… We petted Magnifique (“he’s beautiful,” she sighed, eyes wide) while I spoke (breathlessly, from nearness to her more than anything else) about my journey—the Balloon, rising!—and a bit about Paris. In turn, she confided some of her dreams of the future: she wanted a horse, very badly—but “not just for the carriage”, as she put it, “for me. To love, the way you love your horse. But they’d be too worried,” she added, already aware of how over-protectively she was cosseted. I believed this longing of hers for an animal to look after was a lovely segue for Zampa, the pup—who, after sniffing the hem of my mother’s gown, had been captured by the maid and taken to the garden shed.

  So when we returned, I broached the subject with Catherine. To my surprise, she told me that a puppy was far too noisy and smelly, that she couldn’t allow Emma to keep it. Consequently, poor Zampa has been banished, kept in the shed on the sly. I disobeyed Catherine later and took Emma to meet him, telling her the puppy was mine. They’ve bonded endearingly as we play together out of sight of the house. Oh damn. Already, I realize, I’ve become a bad guest…

  *

  Gad, and blast! The woman’s driving me out of my mind!

  I’d stepped into the garden for a smoke and a curse. Taking a deep, voluptuous drag, I held it in my lungs to a count of three. At least the dusk had was approaching quietly.

  A week had elapsed, during which I found myself reverting to immature, childish tricks (avoidance of my mother), while trying to spend worthy and pleasing time with Emma (in an organized, adult fashion—unfamiliar territory for me, I admit).

  Inside the house, Eliza’s voice was rising up the octaves with shrill outrage as she described—once again—what she’d found on her recent and tearful return to Ireland.

  “And I tell you, it was sickening!” In her agitation, her Irish lilt had returned in full force. “All of my Limerick cousins, a whole two dozen of them of every age, and the aunt on my mother’s side—dead! Starved to death. The English landlords have turned a blind eye—they can’t wait to get rid of us, so it seems.”

  Uncle Herbert’s deep, patient voice tried to cut in here. “It’s the third year in a row that the crops have failed, almost everywhere. But this year is certainly the worst of the three.” His words underscored what I’d seen on my journey; its extent, then, was even worse than I feared.

  “But how can starvation be possible for an entire nation!” was the retort. “And the English do nothing, when—!”

  He interjected with a weary persistence. “Eliza, there’s widespread distress in many countries, growing by leaps and bounds. Unemployment is rife, there’s overcrowding in every city. Rural workers are deserting the country to try to find work in the factories.”

  “But—!”

  “Taxation’s risen exorbitantly for those who stay put. Catherine and I can barely keep afloat.” I could hear him scratching the stubble on his whiskery neck: rasp, rasp. “All over Britain and most of Europe there’s frustration, despair—and governments aren’t reacting fast enough to meet the crisis.” (I thought of the railway workers’ hints at retribution—against? The owners, rich businessmen?—the French king himself?)

  “But they’re—!”

  “Everyone in power or with money is out to save their own skins, and I predict it’s going to get worse, not better.”

  My mother’s shrill utterance cut in and won out: “But they’re starving to death! Or with the last of their feeble strength my poor, dear Irish are selling their souls to raise the fare to emigrate, to America! They’ll never see their families again!”

  Herbert’s gloomy agreement: “Or they’ll all be dead. Which would you prefer?”

  A quiet admonishment came from Catherine, at this. “Herbert…”

  “When I got to Limerick—” (here she goes again!) “—to see their concave little chests, and smell that foul scent which is everywhere: the rotted potatoes! Black, oozing slime. Oh, it makes you retch! So that’s when I realized I couldn’t possibly stay there. Nobody could help me out at all.”

  A groan as Herbert rose from his chair. I hauled another drag deep into my lungs.

  Her voice sank into singsong self-pity. “I wrote to her, you know, when my dear husband died. Why didn’t she answer me, I ask you that?” A huff, then, “Selfish, that’s why. Gallivanting all over Europe, calling herself Lola Montez, indeed! Pretending she’s some Spanish dancer! She’ll always be Betty Gilbert to me, my daughter, my only one—born when I was just a tiny mite myself.” A sniffle: “Why does anyone give birth, I ask you, if you can’t count on them later?” Suddenly her voice brightened, so I could tell she was looking down at the apple of all of our eyes. “What do you think of that, precious? What do you think of your naughty Aunt Betty? Don’t you love me more?”

  I wondered if Emma was still sitting close beside my mother’s lap, looking up with a smile at the energetic lady who had come to stay (and stay). My mother Eliza was forty-one years old; she’d had me at age fifteen. There was a great deal of life in her yet. Catherine had told me she’d been there, in their front bedroom, for all of six months (oh, merde, to think of it!) By this point in her prolonged stay, my mother had taken Emma under her wing with a fierce, clasping neediness.

  “You look just the way Betty did when she was your age, my precious, do you know that?” she was telling the girl now. “Almost exactly. Don’t you think so, Catherine? Isn’t that strange?” Listening, I imagined Catherine’s cringe, and the frantic look she’d have darted over at Herbert. Did she know, my mother? I didn’t think so—not consciously, at any rate. But she’d always had a good instinct for finding the sore spot and pressing with a sharp finger. She’d claw it out somehow. I knew her ongoing comments about the resemblance were causing Catherine deep distress, though my step-aunt was such a polite woman and was doing her best to hide it from us all.

  Then I heard, “Just think of me as a grandmother, dear, so then I can pamper you as a grandmother would. Won’t that be fun?”

  That’s right, mother: jab, and twist.

  At this point, the cigarette burned my fingers and I was forced to extinguish it. Oh, why in God’s name did my mother have to be there before me, petting Emma and gaining her love? Triple merde! To calm my jealousy—is that what it was?—I took several deep, unadulterated breaths, observing fireflies bobbing and twinkling silently amongst the flowers. Watching them, I was again amazed to be a free woman, not a woman behind bars. The bloody deed was still with me in all its shuddery terror, and in the space of a breath, could have turned out so very differently. That I was a sadder woman than I had once been was also with me, like a subterranean river flowing slowly in the dark: often unnoticed but always there. Alexandre Dumas had proclaimed, “Lola Montez will bring the evil eye to any man unfortunate enough to link his destiny with hers.” My darling Henri Dujarier’s body lay under the ground in Montmartre Cemetery, and my heart remained with him. I had sworn that I was through with love, for I’d recognized the ugly truth of Alex’s harsh words. I did not dare to love again.

  Off to my left came a sudden noise of crackling twigs underfoot.

  “Who is that?” I cried, placing my hand above the money belt encircling my waist and easing forth the small pistol that also resided there. The hair at the back of my head was prickling sharply: a Jesuit, dark as a raven? An avenging angel? “Who’s there?” I demanded.

  A small, skinny man emerged from the roses, cursing at the thorns. ¡Jesús! Here? Are they after me again? Could they have—? Under cover of my shawl, I managed a swift, long-practised final loading of the pistol. Clanging about in my brain, unanswered mysteries flew up like a murder of crows: who was in the carriage in the cemetery that day?—and who in God’s name cut out the heart?

  The man advanced with swift steps. His bared teeth were blackened, with some missing, and his gait was rough, as if his feet or legs hurt him to walk.

  “What do you want? Who sent you?” My voice was low and firm.

  The qu
estions stopped him in his tracks. He paused, eying me up and down. “Are you Betty?” he asked.

  “No, I am not.”

  “You must be Betty. You look just like her, but younger.”

  Good God, what could this be about? One of our rag-tag relatives from Ireland, come to find my mother? But he didn’t sound Irish…

  “Pass it over then, miss, and I’ll leave you alone, I won’t hurt you.”

  “Pass what over?” I cried, astonished. “And no, I won’t let you hurt me, so be warned.”

  “You’ve a money belt on you,” he said, “and I want it. I need it.”

  How in God’s name did he know about the belt? The money Alex Dumas had given me from the sale of Henri’s paintings was all I had to live on. The only time I took off the belt was when I bathed. Watching from a treetop, peering through the window…?