The next morning Madame de Maintenon summoned François.
“Madame.” He bowed deeply.
“I had a visit from St. Paul last night,” she said. “He tells me that there may be an abduction after the performance. Do you know anything about this?”
François went hot and cold at the same time. It had been his idea to promote a correspondence between Émilie and Charpentier, and he had carefully vetted all the letters. Did he miss something that he should have reported to his mistress? He knew that, just as she had the power to make him comfortable and secure for the rest of his life, Madame de Maintenon could also manage the reverse. “I swear to you, Madame, that there was nothing in the letters that indicated this possibility.”
The widow Scarron brought her eyebrows together almost imperceptibly so that only the hint of tension was visible in her brow. “And there have been no other letters? You are certain?”
“None, Madame. I don’t know how to prove it to you, but the girl is incapable of plotting, of that I am certain.”
“I believe you, François,” she said. “I just wanted to know for sure. You are clear about your instructions?” she asked.
“Yes, Madame,” François said. He was altogether too clear. He had become quite fond of Émilie, despite knowing where his interest lay. Her candor and innocence had taken some getting used to, but now he generally believed what she said, and knew that she considered him her friend. If there were any way to avoid delivering the tainted wine, he would have leapt at it. Any way, that is, except putting his own head into Madame de Maintenon’s metaphorical noose.
“Remember, you are not to take her to the king’s apartment a moment before the appointed time. And once she is there, you must wait for her outside His Majesty’s door. I have reason to believe she will not remain for very long.” Madame de Maintenon walked to her window. “Thank you, François. And now, would you please tell Monsieur de St. Paul that I wish to see him?”
“I beg your pardon, Madame, but the count is not here.”
She turned. “Not here? When did he leave?”
“Sometime last night.”
“Do you know where he went?” she asked.
“To his godmother’s, in Paris.”
“Thank you. You may go.”
François closed the door behind him.
“Fool!” said Madame de Maintenon to her empty parlor. His actions seemed to confirm that he was no longer trustworthy. Certainly she had more cause to believe her faithful servant, whose future rested securely in her hands, than the opportunistic Comte de St. Paul. Still, it was vexing. Her dangerous plan was not to be altered after all. The widow Scarron sat at her desk and began reading her morning correspondence. The frown she wore persisted for the rest of the day.
Sixteen
Usually one praises in order to be praised.
Maxim 146
In her heart, Émilie knew she could do it. She knew she was ready to enter fully into the role of Alceste, to breathe the tragic heroine’s sufferings and triumphs into life and lay them—whole, deep, and round—before an audience. While the outcome of her own drama was far from certain, Émilie wandered around in Alceste’s dilemmas safe in the knowledge that the opera would go well. This was one thing that being at Versailles could not change. No matter what intrigues they tried to create around her, the moment of performance itself was completely inviolable.
Surrounded by the rest of the cast, Émilie marked her part on the wooden stage that had been erected over the black and white marble surface of the courtyard, walking through the positions and gestures that would accompany the notes and words that her heart knew and had long since made her own. The costumers were busy making the final adjustments to the splendid robes she would wear, and at one corner of the stage, Lully coached the chorus of soldiers, who had to look as though they were doing battle while they sang.
Over in another corner, the corps de ballet—which was composed entirely of men, whether they were meant to be fairies or demons—was trying to figure out how to translate the leaps and turns they had practiced indoors to this capricious, damp surface. Monsieur Dubuffet yelled “Soft knees!” every few minutes, so that his words began to sound nonsensical. Émilie watched Monsieur Chicanneau try to execute an entrechat quatre; when he landed, his feet went out from beneath him on the slick floor. He ended up on his behind. The others laughed but extended their hands to help him stand. Émilie knew that if she fell, no one would pull her up again.
Her eyes left the group of dancers and returned to Lully, who now instructed Mademoiselle de La Garde concerning where she should walk during her big scene with Monsieur Langeais. Lully was so different from Charpentier. Although Émilie knew that her former singing teacher craved a court appointment and had ambitions to be more well known and successful, she could not imagine him in this setting. He was too honest and open—at least, he appeared that way to her. Here no one said what he really thought, and she had come to understand that it was hazardous to take anything at face value. Every day she heard courtiers contradict one another behind each other’s backs, all jockeying for a position close to the king in a court where being invisible was worse than being dead.
The attitudes of the courtiers seemed to infect everyone at Versailles. The singers in Lully’s troupe, for instance, were unyielding in their refusal to accept Émilie because she had jumped the queue, had usurped a prize place where royal notice was guaranteed. And Lully himself—propinquity had not improved Émilie’s opinion of the composer. He had a secretive air, and she particularly disliked the pretty valet who followed him about like one of the queen’s lapdogs. Sometimes, simply out of loyalty to Charpentier, Émilie wished she could withhold her finest singing from Lully’s music for Alceste. But once she started, she became the character whose words she sang and could no longer hold back the overwhelming flood of emotion that possessed her. Whatever his personal vices, Lully had an unerring instinct for the rhythm latent in the words, the shifting, breathing meters, and the expressive lines, and the resultant airs were too adept for Émilie to mishandle. Despite her wishes, the sound that emerged when she opened her mouth ennobled the music to a degree that even its composer had never imagined before.
All at once a commotion began in the downstage right corner. It seemed to Émilie as if all the singers and coaches and dressmakers were stalks of wheat, and a wind had arisen out of nowhere that bent them, in a wave, to the ground. The instant before the wave reached Émilie and carried her with it, she saw the cause of this phenomenon. It was the king, resplendent in golden robes embroidered with diamonds. The stage cleared for his passage, and he took his stately way through the midst of the players. Lully came forward to greet him.
“It is Apollo, come to bless our endeavors,” said the composer, with a deep, reverent bow.
To Émilie’s amazement, the king put one hand on his hip and with the other gestured to the crowd of actors, and then began to sing the lines of the god Apollo from the tragedy:
Today, the light will be taken from your eyes;
There is only one way to prolong your fate!
Destiny promises to return you to life,
Only if someone else will offer to die in your place.
Do you know if there is someone who bears you perfect love?
His death will gain him immortal glory:
To commemorate his sacrifice,
The arts will build a magnificent monument in his honor.
The members of the orchestra quickly shuffled their sheets of manuscript paper to find the place in the score where the king had started singing, but because he began without them, he chose the key that was most comfortable for his voice, and it was not the one in which the part was written. The clash was excruciating. Lully gestured to the orchestra to stop playing. But Louis had a decent voice and certainly appeared most godlike. When he completed his récit, from the first act of the opera, in which the sun god descends to tell Admète how to avoid the fate that ha
s been written in the stars, wild applause and loud bravos erupted from the crowd.
“Your Majesty,” said Lully, bowing again, “your musical instincts are so fine, so superior. Could you give me the note you commenced with, so that I may rewrite the key which I so mistakenly chose? I can see that the music does not achieve true grandeur when it is pitched too high.”
A scribe hurriedly appeared from nowhere and wrote down the note the harpsichord matched as the king sang it once again, then scurried off to recopy all the orchestra parts in the few hours remaining before the performance.
So that was it, Émilie thought. She had often wondered why the role of Apollo was only marked by one of the older singers. The king himself was to perform. She wondered how he knew the part so well. She suspected that perhaps he had sung it before.
After the rehearsal was over, Émilie made her way slowly back to her room. The voices of Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan echoed in her head, arguing back and forth with each other.
“You must go to the king’s bedchamber and throw yourself on his mercy,” said the voice of Madame de Maintenon.
To which Madame de Montespan countered, “Don’t be such a fool! Take your chance now, and go away with Monsieur Charpentier. Then you will be free.”
But then the widow Scarron would crowd in again, saying, “If you do not do as I say, your soul will be eternally damned, and the king will not have his chance of salvation.”
“If you do not do as I say, you will be the cause of my destruction and forfeit any chance of happiness in your life.” Madame de Montespan’s argument, even in Émilie’s imagination, tugged at her heart almost irresistibly.
“God will punish you if you do not do as I tell you!”
Madame de Maintenon always had the last word in these imaginary arguments. It was difficult to refute the claims of the Almighty. Émilie was frightened. Whatever action she took would provoke the wrath of one of the ladies, either of whom was powerful enough to make things very unpleasant for her as a result. She could not decide what would be worse: to find herself alone with the king for God knew what purpose, or to be caught in the act of trying to escape, and therefore condemned for some unspecified time to the horrors of Pignerol or the Bastille—or worse. More than anything, Émilie just wanted to close her eyes and then open them and find herself back at home on the Pont au Change.
Fourteen miles away, St. Paul walked back and forth in front of the servants’ entrance of the Hôtel de Guise, stewing about the way Madame de Maintenon had used him. He had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense and put himself in some peril of losing whatever ground he had gained at court by allying himself exclusively with a woman who, however astute, was not yet in the position most coveted by any lady. It was a great risk to turn from Madame de Montespan. She was more adept than anyone else at plunging a knife into her enemies’ backs.
When he revealed what he felt was certain evidence that La Montespan had been working to remove Émilie from court, St. Paul expected Madame de Maintenon to fly into action. Instead it appeared that she was content just to let the girl slip away from them. It made no sense at all. Everything they had talked about depended on inserting Émilie into the king’s bed. How else was she planning to put a wedge between His Majesty and Montespan? And getting rid of Montespan was the idea, at least of that he was certain.
“The woman has lost her mind,” St. Paul muttered. And with that possibility, he imagined his future no longer looking as rosy as it once did. Madame de Maintenon could as easily plunge him into obscurity as assist him to great fortune. He did not like being in a position where he was not in control of his own fate.
There was only one answer. He must take control again, even if it meant turning Madame de Maintenon against him. The groundwork had been laid. It was up to him to make sure that Émilie ended up in the arms of the king, and now it seemed that the way to do so was to prevent an abduction. St. Paul was prepared to take whatever measures were necessary, no matter how extreme. He ground his teeth as he paced. In his mind he enacted a scene where the widow Scarron apologized to him, acknowledging the brilliance of his foresight, the ingeniousness of his plans. At the end of his recital, he always imagined the king entering, and Madame de Maintenon telling His Majesty how clever he, St. Paul, had been. Then Louis would demonstrate his gratitude by endowing him with rich lands and a post that carried with it a handsome pension.
St. Paul’s carriage was stationed around the corner, out of sight. His coachman, who only remained in St. Paul’s employ because he was owed a king’s ransom in wages and did not want to relinquish altogether any hope of getting them, watched the main gate. St. Paul was certain that Charpentier planned to act that day: if the couple waited, it would be too late. After tonight, what would be the point? The deed would have been done; Émilie’s flower would have been plucked. He assumed that Charpentier’s motives were, like everyone else’s, base and self-serving. What other reason would the composer have for kidnapping Émilie and bringing her back to Paris if his ultimate aim was not to take her into his own bed?
He took out his pocket watch. It was only three in the afternoon, and his stomach growled audibly. Just at that moment a ragged young boy skipped by.
“You there!”
The boy stopped.
“Come here. I won’t hurt you.”
He approached St. Paul but stayed just out of the count’s reach.
“How would you like to earn a few liards!”
“No way! I know your type!” The boy started to run off.
“It’s not what you think, and I’ll make it a silver écu.”
The lad, who could not have been above ten years old, stopped again. A silver écu was a great deal of money. “What do you want?”
“I only want you to go and get me some bread to eat.”
“Why can’t you get it yourself?”
St. Paul thought for a moment. “I’m waiting to see someone very important, and I must stay here.”
The boy shrugged. “I’ll get you some bread.”
“And a bit of cheese. And some wine. This should be plenty.” St. Paul tossed the lad a few liards, barely enough to purchase a loaf of bread.
“I thought you said I was to get a silver écu.”
“When you come back with the food.”
“How do I know you’ll pay?” the lad asked.
“I’m giving you money now, aren’t I?”
For much of the day Charpentier stayed in his apartment and tried to keep his mind off the coming evening. He tidied up his papers and organized the parts for his new cantata, which was already neatly recorded in one of his notebooks. However chaotic the rest of his life, Charpentier was scrupulous about keeping his notebooks in order and dated. It was his legacy to the world, since he feared by now that he might never achieve the notice that would result in fine printed editions of his works. Even this comforting exercise, though, could not keep his mind off what was ahead. It had been almost a year since he had seen Émilie, and his image of her had simplified in his memory, had become distilled to the essential features: pale blond hair, light blue eyes, a build that was slight and straight, and a voice that, when it was raised, made everything else about her fade into the background.
For the twentieth time since breakfast, Charpentier mentally ran over the list of things he had arranged. His horse was to be saddled and ready at nine. He had a dark cloak in which to wrap Émilie so that she would not be cold on the midnight ride from Versailles to Paris. The key to the room was in his pocket. Charpentier had to force himself not to think about Émilie sleeping in the bed. Every so often, he picked up a letter that lay atop his desk, and read it again.
Monsieur Charpentier, all is arranged. You are to come to the Cour Royale, and look for a small door at the right side of the Cour de Marbre. Mademoiselle Émilie will meet you there at precisely a quarter to midnight.
Every time he cast his eye over the lines, Charpentier was filled once again w
ith doubt. It seemed altogether too easy. Who would want to help them like this? Where was St. Paul? As the person who had taken Émilie from her family, he must have some vested interest in keeping her at Versailles. And then, Lully might not want to let her go. Having had the use of her voice for one of his lyric tragedies, he had undoubtedly come to understand what a jewel he possessed.
But all these worries were not powerful enough to obscure the image of Émilie seated behind him on the saddle, her arms about his waist. Together they would slice through the air that divided Versailles and Paris, their bodies and that of the horse cleaving the distance that had separated them for nearly a year. He wanted the black night to stitch itself back up behind them as they passed, hiding all trace of their path. Émilie did not belong to the court, she belonged to his music. She belonged to him.
Émilie at last reached the door of her chamber, which she was very surprised to notice was standing wide open, with a cool breeze flowing through it. She walked in and saw a man’s legs dangling into her room from the windowsill, his torso seated precariously on the outer edge of the window frame. Next to him on the outside was a long ladder that had been leaned up against the building from the Cour de Marbre, a ladder upon which another man perched.
“That’s those three all set,” said the workman whose body was half in and half out of Émilie’s room. He wiggled forward and jumped down to the floor. His hands were filthy, and his pockets were full of nails and a hammer.
“I beg your pardon,” said Émilie, not knowing how else to react.
“Hello, Mademoiselle,” the workman said, tugging on the hair above his forehead. “All done now. Had to put the torches up on the roof for the performance,” he explained as he left the room and shut the door behind him. Émilie went to the window and looked out. The ladder outside was being moved along to the next dormer, while the workman who had clung to it crept along the gutter to the next window, looking very much in fear of his life. She followed his gaze down to the courtyard below. The stage and scenery covered most of the marble squares, but they were still visible here and there. No one would survive a fall from such a great height.
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