by Perrat, Liza
The executioner braided the man’s shattered limbs through the wheel spokes and hoisted it up a tall pole. As the birds swooped to peck at the remains, I clenched my eyes shut but I still saw the bloodied face, the mouth open in a soundless scream. The horror — the fury — of my parents’ senseless deaths tore through me again.
I hurried away from the gruesome square, and came upon a vast market place. The stench of decaying fruit, vegetables and meat flared my nostrils, along with the odour of the excrement of hundreds of horses and mules. The vulgar cries of the fishwives — the poissardes who seemed loathe to part with the smallest scale or fin before it began to stink — filled my ears. Grains of all kinds overflowed from sacks and the pink carcasses of skinned hogs, speckled with black flies, hung from hooks. Never could I have imagined such an expanse of produce and wares in one place, not even at the village fairs.
The smell only worsened as I trudged on, not the stink of rotting food, but a powerful stench rising from a shocking expanse of tombs and charnel houses.
‘Careful, lovely, you don’t want to end up in there.’ I spun around to a toothless man, his gaze travelling across my face and down to my breasts. ‘The Innocents Cemetery. They’ve been stacking the dead here, bone upon bone, for eight hundred years.’
I quickened my steps, anxious to be away from both the man and the cemetery. Above the street noise, I didn’t hear the thundering coach until it was almost upon me, the velvet-nosed horses so close I could see the sweat glistening on their flared nostrils. I flattened myself against the sooty wall of the narrow street and held my breath as the coach screamed past me.
The liveried footman hanging from the back waved his arms. ‘Out of our way, whore!’
On impulse, I picked up a stone and hurled it at the footman. ‘I hope you fall off the back of your murderous coach!’ I screeched, but of course, he didn’t hear me, and my stone dropped well short of the disappearing vehicle.
I took deep breaths and looked about me. The street was seething with women opening their garments for passing men, who snagged them against the wall and groaned and thrust into them. Nobody seemed to have noticed my outburst, or paid me the slightest attention.
Where were the grazing cattle, the clucking hens, the perfume of spring flowers and new grass; the soft sigh of trees swaying in the breeze sweeping off the Monts du Lyonnais? I had been in Paris only a few hours, but already I missed the kiss of country rain on my face, the warmth of fresh sun on my cheeks, the silence of snow in the woods. I wanted to fall in a heap and cry.
But I knew homesickness was a luxury I could ill-afford; this awful place that killed the poor and was trampled upon by the rich was now my home — the home in which I would tear out the roots of my peasant poverty.
Père Joffroy’s words came back to me.
The suburb of Saint-Germain is on the left bank.
I realised this was the right bank, and I had crossed the Seine needlessly. I cleared my throat, held my head high and pushed on, recrossing the river on the first bridge I reached.
I soon began to glimpse neat gardens and handsome coaches, through elegant wrought-iron gates. Over high walls came whiffs of coach leather, the powder of pages’ wigs and the scent of hedges, freshly trimmed for the coming winter. Faint with fatigue, thirst and hunger, I felt relieved to have found the district of Saint-Germain.
***
Columns boasting the sculpted faces of wild animals decorated the front of the house. In the courtyard, I glimpsed two sleek horses hitched to a crimson-lacquered carriage bearing a black and red coat of arms with a wolf crest.
A maid opened the door and as she closed it behind us, the crystal beads of a chandelier jingled with the light sound of small bells. She led me up a wide staircase into a parlour, where a straight-backed woman in a pink gown sat in a tapestry chair.
‘Mademoiselle Victoire Charpentier, your Ladyship,’ the maid announced with a curtsey.
Never had I seen a room like it; never could I have imagined people living in such luxury. Paintings of richly dressed aristocrats — ancestors I imagined — hung from the walls and the faint smell of coffee, powder, and some cloying perfume hung in the air. Gold-embroidered drapes of silk framed two tall windows. Patterned paper the colour of green apples hung on the walls. A marble fireplace bearing the same wolf crest as the carriage occupied the centre of one wall. Bookcases covered most of the other walls.
I swallowed hard and curtseyed, bowing my head as Père Joffroy had instructed me. ‘Your Ladyship.’
‘You are hired on a yearly basis with lodgings and board,’ the Marquise said. ‘You will receive twenty-five livres per year, one pair of clogs and two ells of cloth.’ Her eyes roved across my crumpled peasant rags. ‘And you shall wear my cast-off clothes, which are at the disposal of all servants. That way at least, the Marquis and I are certain our domestics maintain an acceptable appearance.’ The hint of a smile curved the corners of her painted lips.
‘You are granted one half-day off per week,’ she continued, ‘and providing your work is completed, you may have an hour at your leisure each afternoon.’ All the time she spoke, her head never moved, nor did the layers of ringlets jutting from each side of her head.
A man in yellow satin breeches and a heavily embroidered white vest appeared, a sword dangling from his side.
‘Ah, my husband,’ the Marquise said. ‘Alphonse Donatien Delacroix, Marquis de Barberon.’
The Marquis de Barberon’s powdered wig was brushed back and tied with a black silk ribbon, revealing a small scar on his left temple. His hooked nose, high brow and grey eyes reminded me of a regal raptor.
‘Welcome, mademoiselle, I hope our humble abode is to your satisfaction.’
He took a pinch of snuff from an engraved box and his smile showed a complete set of white teeth. Nobody I knew had all their teeth, especially such white ones.
‘Your Lordship.’ I curtseyed, my head bowed.
The Marquis drew so close to me, I almost jumped backwards.
‘Don’t be afraid, my dear,’ he said, taking my angel pendant, the signet ring on his left little finger glinting in the chandelier light, as he turned it over.
‘What a strange, but delightful thing,’ he said.
‘It was my mother’s, monsieur.’
The Marquis smiled and let the pendant go, patting it against my skin.
Of course, I’d heard the stories of rascal lords who treated their servants worse than dogs, but this marquis seemed friendly and charming. Besides, I had promised Père Joffroy I would not judge every noble like the baron who killed my father.
As the maid reappeared and led me from the parlour, I already felt much better about my new life in Paris.
***
In the centre of the kitchen stood a solid wooden table. Pots and pans hung above it, and a rack of knives and several cabinets for other utensils and tableware lined the walls.
‘This is Cook,’ a young girl said. ‘And I am Marie, the kitchen maid.’
Cook held a plucked chicken by the fire, burning the remaining feathers off. She looked quite old — forty perhaps — with silvered hair and a wide, wrinkled face. A fat orange cat crouched on the floor beside her.
‘Bonjour, madame.’ I nodded to the woman and bent to stroke the cat. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Roux. Best mouser in all of Paris,’ Cook said. ‘Not a single live mouse has been seen here since the Marquise ordered the carpenter to put in swinging panels for mon petit Roux.’
As I petted him I realised Roux — true to his reputation — was toying with a limp mouse.
‘You are poorly paid and not of high rank,’ Cook said, cutting the chicken open and removing its giblets. ‘But watch and learn from me and you may make something of your wretched life.’
I nodded, meeting her black eyes that I sensed hid a wealth of wisdom.
Roux bit hard into his prey, breaking the mouse’s neck in a sharp snap, and as Marie took me through to the scullery,
the cat stalked from the room, the rodent dangling from its jaws.
9
I rose from my attic bed at five-thirty, as every morning. I slipped out into the December gloom to empty the chamber pots, my breath forming icy jets of fog, which vanished quickly.
The edges of the wind snapped at my face as the hooves of mules pulling produce-laden carts towards the market squares clattered on cobbles stained with churns of snow, dung and soot.
I smiled at the boy I saw most mornings, a water-carrier hurrying up from the river, leaning into the weight of his brimming buckets. He gave me a nod.
Two sous a load, he earned. How was anyone to cast off the shackles of poverty on such a miserable wage? I was barely better off.
My fingers numb, the piss quivered as I emptied the pots, and scurried back inside to light the fires and fix breakfast — coffee, chocolate, jam, cream or gruyere cheese, sausages, bacon, biscuits and pastries — whatever their noble appetites craved that particular day.
Later in the morning, Marie and I took vegetables from the sand bins in Cook’s cellar, which also housed her jams and liqueurs, and where hams hung in the dark corners.
‘Have you heard, Victoire? Finally, a royal baby,’ Marie said, as we cleaned and chopped vegetables, plucked fowl, and gutted fish — our usual morning work to prepare the main meal of the day. ‘Eight years it took them. What a scandal. They say Louis couldn’t get it up. Un mauvais fouteur! Can you imagine, the King of France a hopeless fuck?’ Marie shrieked so loudly that Cook scuttled in to see what the hilarity was about.
‘Perhaps it is not the King’s fault,’ I said, recalling Maman’s tales of barren ladies. ‘Maybe the Queen can’t have children, like the Marquise?’
‘Ah, the reason the Marquise has no children,’ Marie said with a snigger, ‘is because she refuses her husband.’
‘Refuses her husband? Surely that’s not allowed?’
‘Maybe not,’ Marie said, ‘but the Marquise refuses her husband because she is a tribade.’
I frowned. ‘Tribade?’
Marie’s tongue curled about her teeth. ‘A woman who loves the sex of another woman.’
‘Oh … oh!’ I shivered with gooseflesh, finally understanding.
‘But the Marquis doesn’t care a bit,’ Marie went on. ‘There are hundreds of places for the pleasure of a noble man — mistresses, bordellos …’
Marie flicked her gaze from me as we sat down to eat at the kitchen table, and to keep an eye on the family’s simmering meal of roast beef with chestnuts.
Cook dined with the other servants in the communal dining hall, while the Marquis de Barberon and his wife took their meal, as always, in the oak-panelled dining parlour, except when the Marquis dined out.
They sat at the fireplace end of the long table lit by two candles, the Marquis reciting le Bénédicté before they ate.
‘Such a grand table for only two people,’ I said to Marie, waving a hand in the direction of the dining hall. ‘They dine like the King and Queen.’
‘Oh, you think that’s extravagant,’ Marie said. ‘Well let me tell you, it is nothing compared with the meals of the King and Queen. Don’t you know anything about Versailles, Victoire?’
‘All I know of Versailles is the stories my father would bring home from his travels, or what passing journeymen told us.’
‘Well,’ Marie said, her eyes glittering, ‘their tablecloth is of damask, their crockery silver, with gilded cutlery, and the meal — five courses — begins when the maître d’hôtel enters the room holding a long staff crowned with a fleur-de-lys.’
‘Five courses?’ I could not imagine such extravagance. ‘How can they eat so much?’
‘They don’t,’ Marie said. ‘Well, not the Queen. She eats only a sparrow’s portion but the King, well he gobbles the lot. I’ll have you know, one morning before going to his stables he ate four cutlets, a whole chicken, a plateful of ham, half a dozen eggs and drank a bottle of champagne. You’d think all his reckless galloping through forests, hunting stag and boar, might keep the King trim, but no, he eats like the worst pig and is getting fatter and fatter!’
‘Oh là là,’ I said. ‘What gluttony. When thousands across the country are starving.’
‘Don’t be silly, Victoire, he’s the King! But you know what I would really love,’ Marie went on, a dreamy look in her eyes, ‘is to wear one of the Queen’s dresses. Just for a day.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘You know she buys a hundred and fifty different ones every year, from the great Rose Bertin’s boutique.’
I shrugged. ‘However can one person wear a hundred and fifty different gowns? Besides, court dress must be like a walking gaol, with those hoops and trains and stiff brocades. They even have to walk sideways, to get the panniers through doorways.’
‘Oh I wouldn’t mind, I really wouldn’t,’ Marie said. ‘Give me armoured trimmings any day, over these shapeless aprons and unflattering caps.’
Once the family meal was over and we’d washed dishes, scrubbed work benches, scoured stoves, sinks and pots, and swilled the floors, I was relieved to have my free hour. Marie flitted off to flirt with one of the coach boys and I traipsed into Cook’s small room, off the kitchen.
Cook sat, darning, on one of the two chairs at her small wooden table, the only furniture besides a narrow bed, which occupied the rest of the room. Roux was crouched on the wide sill of a tiny window, his head cocked at birds swooping by.
‘Who taught you the kitchen skills, Cook?’ I said, as she got up and poured tea for us.
‘I’ve told you, my child, call me Claudine. My father taught me. He worked at a grand hotel. I took his place when he died.’
‘You have no other family?’
Claudine shook her head and went back to her sewing. ‘Our only child was dead in my womb.’
‘How sad. I’m sorry for you.’
She shrugged. ‘It happens.’
I blew on my tea. ‘And what of your husband?’
‘Dead.’ Claudine’s eyes didn’t waver from her needle, jabbing in and out of the fabric. ‘A good man he was — a hardworking carter. A duke’s coach rammed his flimsy two-wheeled cart and killed him outright.’
‘Just as my father! How can they get away with such things?’
‘Nobles do as they want, my child. They don’t care for us commoners.’ She pulled her yarn taut, twisted it into a knot and bit off the thread. ‘Not that I can complain. I have food and shelter here, Roux to keep me company, and the Marquis never comes to the kitchen to bother me.’
‘Yes, the Marquis seems a pleasant man. What is the scar on his temple?’
‘Oh, some silly duel. Over a woman, most likely. What else? Women are all he thinks of. Now, my child,’ she said, eyeing the clock. ‘It is time we thought about supper.’
***
After supper, at nine o’clock, all the servants gathered in the dining hall and knelt, along with the Marquis and his wife, for prayer time.
Careful not to lapse back onto my heels, which was forbidden whilst praying, I stole a glance at the painting that always entranced me — a nymph-like creature splayed in forest verdure. Vine leaves draped across her pale, curvy body, and clusters of grapes swathed her pubic mound like forbidden fruit.
The Marquis caught my stare, the white teeth flashing in an engaging smile. I blushed, and lowered my eyes.
At last, two hours short of midnight, the Marquis stood, signalling everybody to rise. I trudged up to my attic room — little more than a closet with a table, chair and chest of drawers — and dropped onto the straw mattress.
I was drifting in that cottony place just before sleep when the sound of soft footfall on the stairs startled me. My eyes flew open. The footsteps stopped. A powdery smell flared my nostrils, and the Marquis de Barberon towered over me.
He did not look at me, but somewhere beyond, at the splice of moonlight snaking through the dormer window. I started shaking beneath my coarse blanket, prickling with a sense of danger. The Mar
quis still did not meet my eyes as he tore the blanket from my grip and threw it on the floor.
Still he said nothing as his finger traced the curves of my face, my neck, and across my shoulder. I gasped as he clutched my breast and squeezed hard.
‘Wha-what …?’
The cotton of my chemise sheared apart in his hands. The scar on his temple blanching white against red, his wine-stained lips stretched in a leer, the Marquis jerked my legs apart with his knee. The breath caught in my chest and Maman’s words batted about inside my head.
Be careful not to let a man have his way with you … his way with you.
‘No, no! Please, no!’
He locked a clammy paw over my mouth and without the least forewarning, speared into me with a single thrust, which rippled from my thighs up to my face.
‘No, stop, you’re hurting me!’
He tightened his hold over my mouth and I took frantic, short breaths through my nose.
I closed my eyes and tried to tear myself from his clutches as he hammered my flesh — a solid, unrelenting pounding that seemed to reach right to my womb with every stroke.
My body tightened into a single, rigid spasm as he battered me, my thighs aching more with each fresh stab. His breath came, hot and fast on my cheeks, and rancid as sour milk.
One hand scrabbled about, trying to reach my angel pendant, but my fingers wouldn’t work properly, my skin slippery with droplets of his sweat and drools of his saliva.
The Marquis held his breath. He gripped my hair and forced my head back to open my eyes and meet his, glowering with furious triumph. The signet ring with its wolf-crest engraving winked at me in the slant of light. He gave a single grunt and slumped, sweat-drenched, on top of me.
When his breathing slowed and I no longer felt his heartbeat racing against mine, he pushed himself off me, took my blanket and wiped a sticky sheen from his dark fuzz.
He left the attic room without uttering a single word. I was too shocked, too numb and hurt to move, as if he had flipped my body inside out and emptied me onto the floor.