Emilie's Voice

by Susanne Dunlap

  Charpentier ran up the stairs to his apartment and flung the door open, an abject apology ready to burst from his lips. But he did not see Émilie in the parlor. From the bedroom, he heard a sound of someone being sick. He rushed in and saw Émilie retching into a basin.

  “What’s the matter? Are you ill?”

  Émilie looked at him sadly. “I was so worried, and so sorry. I don’t know what I did!”

  Charpentier put his arms around her and cuddled her like a child. “It’s all right. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just a foolish man. Will you forgive me?”

  Émilie looked up at his eyes and smiled. Suddenly a wave of nausea overcame her, and she rushed back to the basin.

  “But Émilie! You are ill! Has this happened before?”

  She nodded her head yes.

  “I’m going to fetch a doctor.”

  “No, please!” said Émilie. “I feel better now, really!”

  He looked at her for a moment, and the color returned to her cheeks. But still, he was concerned and insisted on sending Lucille to get the doctor.

  “She’s in perfect health,” the doctor said after poking and prodding, putting his ear to Émilie’s chest, and feeling her forehead to see if she had a fever.

  Charpentier breathed a relieved sigh. “But then why?—”

  The doctor interrupted him. “Which is a good thing, because in about five months, there will be another little member of this household. My felicitations to you both!” He beamed.

  Émilie’s and Charpentier’s eyes met. At the same instant they rushed together and wrapped themselves around each other, leaving the doctor to let himself out.

  St. Paul gave his name to the footman outside Madame de Maintenon’s apartment at Versailles. After a moment or two the servant returned.

  “I regret to say that Madame is praying and may not be disturbed.”

  He looked at his pocket watch. “Nonsense. She never prays at this hour. Announce me.”

  Before the servant could protest, St. Paul pushed past him and entered the widow Scarron’s sitting room. He found her with her auburn hair streaming down her back, wearing a black dressing gown that was trimmed with fur. She was at her desk writing letters. With a look she dismissed the footman.

  “Ah, St. Paul! So good of you to call. I’m feeling much better now, thank you.” Madame de Maintenon cleared her throat and coughed a little.

  “Of course, that is the purpose of my visit. I thought you might need a little cheering up. I have some interesting news for you.”

  “Pray, be seated. I’m sorry I cannot offer you tea, but the servants are much occupied with bringing me my medicine.” Another cough punctuated her speech.

  “I trust this information will hearten you, and perhaps thereby speed your recovery.”

  “What information is that?”

  “Only that Mademoiselle Émilie Jolicoeur still lives, and might be found by inquiring of a certain Parisian composer what he has done with her.”

  Madame de Maintenon stood and turned around quickly. She walked to her prie-dieu and looked up at the crucifix on the wall above it. “You toy with me, Monsieur de St. Paul. The girl is dead. She cannot come back to life.”

  “I submit, Madame, that she is not dead! We were duped, that is all. There was an ab—”

  “I will hear no more!” Madame de Maintenon whirled around and glared at St. Paul. “I know not whence your ‘information’ comes, but it is absurd, it is macabre! Please do not trouble me further with this nonsense.” She picked up a little bell and rang it peremptorily.

  “As you wish, Madame, but I have proof,” said St. Paul, and he retrieved François’s letter from his pocket. “If I were you, I would question who around you I could really trust.” He tossed the letter onto the floor between them and bowed before he turned and left, almost colliding with the footman who came in answer to the widow Scarron’s bell.

  Émilie rubbed her hand in a circle over her belly. It had not yet started to swell, but there was a firm fullness about it. She rocked back and forth slowly as she stood in front of the window, watching the world pass by in the twilight.

  “When shall I be able to sing?” she asked. “Surely no one would mind if I just sang a little, to myself?”

  “You must wait a while longer, now that we have to worry about the baby too,” said Charpentier.

  “But I’ll lose all my agility! I was getting such high notes, at Versailles,” she said, remembering, a little wistfully, the way the crowd cheered her when she sang Alceste.

  Charpentier rose from his chair and stood next to Émilie at the window. “When you can sing again, I shall create such music for you!” He paused and stroked his chin. “Let me show you something.” Charpentier went to the leather satchel that was next to his chair and withdrew a notebook. “This is only one of them. I have been filling them up, with songs for you. No one else shall sing them.”

  Émilie rushed to him and took the notebook from his hands, turning the pages and smiling. She traced the lines with her fingers and nodded her head. She could hear the music in her mind. “They are beautiful. Thank you!” Her eyes glowed. “How I wish I could sing them now.”

  Charpentier held out his hand for the notebook. “Not yet, my love.”

  She closed the volume and hugged it to her. “Let me just have this one, to look at now and again, and study, so that I know the songs when I can sing again.”

  Charpentier let his hand drop. “All right.”

  Émilie did not let go of the notebook all evening, and she placed it on the table next to the bed when they went to sleep.

  The proximity of music, even cold and unrealized on the page, was a comfort to Émilie. But it did not lift her sinking spirits. When she felt particularly lonely and frustrated, she reached into the back of her dressing table drawer and drew out the little diamond bird, the morsel of Versailles that had attached itself to her the night of her escape. It glittered strangely in the otherwise modest surroundings. Charpentier still did not know she had it. She was afraid to show him; Émilie knew it was dangerous to keep it, but she could not let it go.

  And then the idea that she would have a baby, be a mother, God willing, made her suddenly desperate to see her parents again. She longed to tell them. It gave her a cold feeling in the middle of her that they thought she was dead, especially when she was most particularly alive, alive for two.

  Without really deciding to act, only letting her instincts carry her through, one especially desolate March day Émilie donned her dark wig and hooded cloak and quickly slipped out of the apartment. Lucille had laid the fires and tidied up and had gone out to do some errands and to visit a sick relative (or at least that is what she said she was doing, but Émilie suspected she was really going to meet a boyfriend). A fine, gloomy drizzle acted like a veil. Émilie was not the only person abroad who held her cloak tightly around her, and whose face was all but hidden from view.

  Her feet felt the hardness of the cobbles beneath the soft soles of her indoor shoes. When the damp began to soak through, she remembered, with a guilty pang, that night more than a year ago when she had ruined a pair of slippers that were never meant to be worn outdoors and had ended up with a fever. That had been the start of her bizarre adventure, and so much had happened since then.

  But soon Émilie forgot all about her feet, as her nose picked up the unmistakable scent of bread baking, and the smoky tang of leather from the glove maker’s shop. She breathed the chilly, fouled atmosphere deeply, feeling it grate on her throat and slap into her lungs. Everyone on the street rushed to accomplish his business so that he could return to the comfort of a blazing fire, and no one took much notice of her slight figure, weaving along the streets, stepping aside to let coaches pass or to avoid a knot of people haggling over the price of a sausage.

  Émilie wandered gradually southward, until she came to the Seine, just east of the Pont Notre Dame. Through the mist she could see the floating mills resting atop the gr
eenish water. She heard rather than saw the pumps on the bridge, doing their work to make water flow to the fountains all over the city. She glided swiftly through the crowds, cutting through shoppers hurrying from place to place.

  I must be careful. Perhaps I should turn around now and go home.

  The words circled like plainchant in her head. But Émilie simply could not stop her feet from carrying her west along the quay toward the Pont au Change. She wandered past the fishermen spreading their catches out for the housewives to buy and paid no attention to the crowd that gathered in the Place de Grève to witness a hanging. All she was aware of was that just fifty feet ahead of her, tucked in next to the haberdashery on the west side of the bridge, was her father’s workshop. She swore she could smell the wood from where she stood. Émilie knew that she must not get any closer, but for a moment or two she was suspended between coming and going. She did not know that her parents had moved to an apartment a few hundred yards away on the Quai des Mégissiers—Charpentier only visited the workshop and shared her letters with Marcel, and never having ventured into the apartment was not aware of the change. So Émilie imagined that nothing had altered since she went away. She pictured herself looking out of the window that faced west toward the Pont Neuf, making up romantic stories to fuel her imagination through the hours of helping her mother with the chores.

  Émilie was so still and focused that she did not notice when passersby began to stare at her. Among the strangers who eyed her out of simple curiosity were two whose interest was more than passing. One of them was Hortense, her mother’s best friend and someone who had known Émilie as a child. The woman’s normally ruddy face went white, and she crossed herself three times before carving a wide path through the workday crowd in the direction of the Jolicoeurs’ new home.

  The other was the spy that Lully and St. Paul had placed in the vicinity of the Atelier Jolicoeur to watch for Émilie to respond to the ties of home and family.

  After no more than a minute or two of gazing at her father’s workshop, Émilie whirled around and hurried home again, not stopping to enjoy the sights and sounds, suddenly anxious to get back to the apartment before Charpentier returned and discovered her missing. On the way, though, and despite the fact that the sun was completely hidden in the mist, she had a shadow. It followed her almost to the door of her conjugal abode, where she was known as the reclusive Marcelline Charpentier, before slipping away to pass its intelligence on to its masters. Unaware that she had been followed, Émilie rushed into the apartment.

  “Madame! Where did you go? You might catch a chill in this damp, and the baby!” Lucille scolded her as she removed the now very wet cloak from her mistress’s shoulders.

  Yet by the time her husband trudged wearily through the door two hours later, eager to return to the cozy warmth of his home, the cloak was dry and had been safely put away, and Émilie was engaged in working her embroidery, which was now nearly half complete. Charpentier noticed only that Émilie’s cheeks were rosier than usual, that she looked healthy. He thought perhaps the worst was over for his pregnant wife, that there would be no more sickness in the morning, and that they could breathe a little more easily about the infant’s health.

  Émilie’s inner turmoil, the powerful effect of seeing her home again after so much time, was nothing to the disturbance her appearance caused on the Quai des Mégissiers. After her sighting of the cloaked and wraithlike Émilie, Madame Hortense Bougier arrived chez Jolicoeur completely out of breath. She did not wait to be announced but burst in upon Madeleine, who was choosing between two bits of lace to embellish a new headdress.

  “The saints preserve us!” exclaimed Hortense.

  “What is it! Get a hold of yourself!” cried Madeleine, picking up a beaker of water and splashing it in the face of her agitated friend. Although not the politest of gestures, it worked, and Hortense’s breathing slowed, the palpitations of her heart gradually eased, and she was able to explain herself.

  “I’ve just seen a ghost! Or else, or else …”

  “Or else what, for God’s sake?”

  “Émilie’s alive!” Hortense practically exploded with the news.

  Madeleine turned ashen. “That’s impossible. They told us she was dead.”

  “Well, then, her ghost has come back to haunt us!”

  Madeleine paced around the room, casting her eye over the upholstered chairs, the curtains, and the carpet, all evidence of the prosperity they now enjoyed thanks to Émilie’s brief—but brilliant—career at court. There was no such thing as ghosts, so Madeleine believed. That Hortense had seen a real person she did not doubt. That it was Émilie seemed highly unlikely. “You must have been mistaken. You saw someone who looked like Émilie, that is all. How dare you frighten me so!”

  “As God is my witness, there is no one who could possibly look so like Émilie. I swear it was herself!”

  “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

  Madeleine poured a cup of wine for her friend and made her sit down until she was calm enough to describe everything. Émilie’s mother listened patiently and asked few questions. When Hortense had finished, she sat in silence for several minutes.

  “What will you say to Marcel?” asked Hortense.

  Madeleine knew that the news would cause the most violent reaction in her husband, whose emotions were only just concealed beneath the surface of his life. It was still just an impression, just a possibility. No use getting his hopes raised only to discover that it was all a trick of the light, or a hallucination. And Hortense admitted that the figure she saw was almost entirely hidden by a hooded cloak. “I will say nothing to him. Nothing at all,” Madeleine replied. “I would ask you to keep all of this to yourself for the present. Would you care for another cup of wine?”

  Twenty-four

  The vanity of others is insupportable only because it wounds our own.

  Maxim 389

  It had suited Madame de Montespan that Émilie was permanently out of the way, although she was, truly, sorry that she had died. She would have preferred a more romantic ending, with the young girl being carried off in the middle of the night by her dashing young lover—just as she had planned. But the end result was the same. The singer was no longer a potential rival for the king’s affections, and the widow Scarron’s plot had been foiled most effectively.

  But one day, Madame de Montespan’s usual network of informers brought her surprising news. Émilie was still alive. Thank heaven that the voice is preserved, she thought. It was necessary, however, to take steps to ensure that others did not discover the singer’s continued existence and try to bring her back to court. The last thing she wanted was to start all over again trying to get in the way of the widow Scarron’s plans. The marquise sent for François who, although she knew he was one of Maintenon’s spies, was also a particular friend of Émilie’s and might have more information that he’d be willing to share with her for a price.

  “So, I hear that Mademoiselle Émilie miraculously survived her fall from a great height.”

  François did not speak. The marquise addressed him in her formal room, seated in her velvet armchair.

  “I confess, I am pleased that she did not perish. And I have no desire to see her returned to court.” Madame de Montespan rose and walked toward François. He cringed slightly, as if he expected her to strike him. “My good fellow, you think because you are the widow Scarron’s spy—I’m sorry, I mean footman—that I would demean myself by an assault upon your person?” She laughed her liquid, golden laugh. “Come with me.”

  She led François to her private study, a small room, furnished with an ornate escritoire and a few gilded stools. “No one will hear us in this place. You must tell me everything, because I alone can protect the young woman. I have heard that St. Paul is trying to bring her back, to finish the business he started with your mistress’s help.”

  For the next hour François told Madame de Montespan as much as he dared.

  “You say you wr
ote to the luthier? Has he been reunited with his daughter?”

  “Alas, Madame. I made a terrible error. I remembered only after I sent the letter that the good Monsieur Jolicoeur cannot read.”

  “This is a complication. But it need not signify. Perhaps it is best he does not yet know of his daughter’s whereabouts. We must remove her from Paris, before St. Paul finds a way to remove her from Monsieur Charpentier’s protection.”

  “I do not understand, Madame, why the count wishes to do such a thing.”

  The marquise sighed. “Surely you cannot be so naïve. Don’t you see that he wants to present her to the king? In these past months his Majesty has not stopped talking about the beautiful young singer and what a tragedy it was that she died. I’m sick to death of the topic.”

  “But what of Madame de Maintenon? Surely she cannot wish this to happen.”

  “You may serve Madame de Maintenon in this, or you may serve me. I do not know what that woman would do if she knew that Émilie still lived, because I do not know what she might have done had the girl not been carried off the night of her performance. I want to keep Émilie alive, but out of the way.” Madame de Montespan leaned forward, fastening her bewitching eyes on François. “It’s your choice. Keep Émilie safe and betray your mistress, or be loyal to your mistress and betray Émilie.”

  François wanted to tear his eyes away from this lady, but he was incapable of doing so. Perhaps Madame de Maintenon could be kept in the dark, and Émilie would be allowed to live out her days in peace. “What can I do?” he asked.

  “I believe you have family in Paris?”

  “Why, yes, Madame, but—”

  “You must beg leave to go and see your father, who is very ill.”

  “But he died last year.”

  “Who knows this, besides yourself?”

  François acknowledged that he had shared this personal news with no one at court.