by Perrat, Liza
‘What’s eating the emerald-eyed princess?’ the still-naked keeper said. ‘Never seen a cock before? Come here, I’ll show you mine!’ He laughed, waggling his penis at me.
‘Now, now, boys, enough amusement for one afternoon,’ Jeanne chided. ‘Put your jewels away, get dressed, and come back another day.’
The keepers laughed as they crept away from Jeanne’s cell, their hair still dishevelled.
‘How can you do that, Jeanne? Surely you cannot enjoy them … those hideous men?’
Jeanne patted the bed, inviting me to sit beside her. ‘Oh it’s not too bad. Quite fun, even. How else am I to alleviate prison boredom? Besides, they’re my friends now, our allies, Victoire.’
I clasped my hands in my lap. ‘Sometimes I wish I was more like you,’ I said. ‘So free; so unbound by rules and tradition.’
‘You may find it hard to believe, Victoire, but I envy you — your morals, your virtues.’ She took my hand and placed it on the veined mound of her left breast, over the sign branding her a thief. ‘Feel it, ma chère. Trace the V with your finger.’
She rolled down my shift, exposing my left shoulder. ‘They have burnt you too,’ she said, her fingertips tracing my fleur-de-lys burn. ‘How dare they brand us like common cattle!’ Her hand slid down and she rested her palm against my breast, which rose and fell like a river swell. ‘Those keepers will pay for that.’
Jeanne sat up and I fastened her stays, helped her put her petticoat on, and the black dress.
She reached under her bed, brought out a wooden box and inserted a gold key into the lock. She flipped the lid and withdrew a small glass bottle, holding it as if it were a diamond.
‘What is it?’ I took the bottle of red-brown liquid and lifted it to my nose. ‘Such a strange smell … sort of fierce and tart, but at the same time sweet and earthy, like cut grass. Oh yes, I remember now, Armand would use this for the calves with colic.’
Jeanne nodded. ‘This, ma chère, is laudanum — remedy for pain, insomnia and diarrhoea. And, possibly, calf colic.’ She took the bottle from me. ‘But two or three teaspoons could kill a man … or a keeper.’
‘No, but — ’
‘Don’t fret, we’re not going to murder them,’ she said with a laugh. ‘We just want to make them sleep long enough to steal their uniforms and dance right out of la Salpêtrière.’
***
‘We leave tomorrow afternoon, ma chère,’ Jeanne said. ‘Our favourite keepers are on duty. Twilight will have fallen before you have to be back in your dormitory — the perfect cover.’
A tingle flitted down my spine. I dared not cry out with joy; dared not hope we might soon be gone from this most ungodly place.
Jeanne took her wooden box from under the bed. She lifted the compartment containing the hidden phial of laudanum and drew out a scroll of papers.
‘This,’ she said with a smile, ‘is your new life. You will call yourself Mademoiselle Rubie Charpentier — I know you like that name. Your father is the recently deceased, and wealthy, Monsieur Maximilien Charpentier.’ She handed me two sheets of paper. ‘Here are recommendation letters for positions I am certain will suit you.’
‘Positions?’
‘Why, an independent woman with no husband or lover must work, Victoire! Besides, it will be beneficial for you to mingle with society, get to know people.’ She held up one of the pages. ‘Here, your literacy skills are commended for work in a printing press. A contact of mine owns it.’
‘Why am I to work in a press?’
‘You read and write well. Surely you can understand we revolutionaries must print out a multitude of pamphlets to help the people’s cause to bring down the monarchy? After the death of your father at the hand of a noble, and then this barbarous marqu — ’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I certainly do want to fight for the commoners’ rights.’
‘As I thought,’ she said, squeezing me arm. ‘Our revolution needs people like you here in Paris. People who are passionate about the cause, and intelligent enough to instruct the minds of others, with the decorum and education of the most educated Parisian woman,’ she added, with a wink. ‘As for me, I shall continue my own private battle from afar — ’
‘Afar? You will leave me, alone?’
‘I have done all I can in France, discrediting Marie Antoinette’s abominable reputation and the Bourbon monarchy even further. Now I must go where the Queen can no longer touch me, ma chère,’ she said, kissing my cheek.
‘But we also hear the Queen’s behaviour has improved as she’s grown older,’ I said. ‘That she is generous with money and charity, and devoted to her children.’
‘I do concede she is liberal with her funds, and has begun to dress with more restraint,’ Jeanne said. ‘But that is far from sufficient. Did you know she built a fantasy farm at Versailles, where she plays at being a peasant? Of course, the million francs annual expense of it is met by the public purse.’
‘But why would she do such a thing?’
‘Oh for the simple reason that it is fashionable among aristocratic ladies to experience a rural idyll whilst remaining cloistered in the comfort of their estates. Many view the Queen as a clueless money squanderer playing at shepherdess — a mockery if you will, of the desperate and inhumane peasant condition. And not to mention those ridiculous, metre-high wigs adorned with jewels, feathers, ships and whatever else tickles her royal twat.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Did you ever set eyes on that pouf à l’inoculation head-dress?’
‘Vaccination pouf?’
Jeanne nodded. ‘A serpent wrapped around an olive tree stuck on her head. She wore it to boast of her success in persuading the King to be vaccinated against smallpox.’
‘I know nothing of any head-dress,’ I said, as Jeanne handed me another sheet of paper.
‘This second letter recommends you as a reputed chef for a position at Le Faisan Doré restaurant. The owner is an ex-lover. He also, is expecting you.’
‘You believe I should cook in a restaurant? But can’t I return to Lucie? My little Madeleine must be missing her mother.’
‘It is my greatest wish to see you reunited with your family, Victoire, but first you have things to do, business to finish. Besides, don’t forget, as an asylum escapee, you’ll not be able to show yourself in public as Victoire Charpentier. Now, this restaurant is located at the Palais-Royal and I am certain, once there,’ she went on with a knowing smile, ‘you will understand why you must stay in Paris for a time.’
‘What else do I take?’ I asked. ‘Not that I have anything to take.’
‘Everything you need will be waiting in your apartment. You shall have the address on a slip of paper, once we are beyond these walls.’
‘My apartment? You’ll not be with me, even for a moment, before you go … go afar?’
Jeanne pressed my hand to her lips. ‘You no longer need me, ma chère. You must stand alone now; forge your own personal battle, and our country’s struggle, but one day, when both of us emerge triumphant, who knows?’
I gripped the letters. ‘I’ll sew these into my petticoat. The cloth is coarse and thick, and will mask the rustle of the paper.’
Jeanne nodded. ‘You learn quickly.’
I stitched the papers into my petticoat hem, feeling Jeanne’s eyes on me, as if they were burning through my clothes, searing the layers of my skin. I felt my cheeks blush with the rising heat.
‘I shall miss you, my friend.’ Jeanne took my hands, massaging them again with her rose-perfumed salve. ‘And don’t forget to keep these peasant hands hidden within gloves or beneath a muff,’ she said. ‘People notice such things.’
She leaned close, and her hair, falling against my face, made me quiver. I shut my eyes and suddenly I was, no more, a prisoner of la Salpêtrière.
Jeanne’s simple bed became one of oak, carved with angels and inlaid with diamonds. We lay on silken sheets, so slippery the fabric felt damp. Jeanne reached up from our warmth, drawing heav
y crimson drapes, concealing us from prying eyes.
I could not see her. I could only feel her and taste her lips, warm and insistent on mine. My mouth was still at first. I think it was the shock of her touch. Then my lips moved against hers, and opened. I felt her tongue, tentative for a moment, then thrusting, exploring the inside of my mouth. It tasted like wine, which made me more and more drunk. I felt dizzy and my heart — frozen for so long — thawed with her heat and gushed like a waterfall from my breast.
She touched a corner of our wet lips, my cheek, my brow, a fingertip trailing across my eyelid. Her hand moved down, across my neck, my shoulders and to my breast.
When Jeanne reached between my legs and her hand began to move, sliding wet and gentle, it was as if she had touched a raw wound, and exposed a nerve. I felt a longing so great, so sharp, it was painful. It mounted and mounted until I thought I would go mad. I feared it might even kill me.
She wrapped her hips about my thigh and pressed over and over, opening me to the throb inside. I think I murmured or groaned, but maybe it was Jeanne.
As she reached to my core, I let the ecstasy swamp me, drowning my every sense, until I burst from her hand and shattered on her wet thigh.
We cried out together, and I barely heard the clanging bell that signalled supper, and the return to my cell.
26
The following afternoon I scurried across the courtyard. Yes, this pale November light would be perfect cover. I glanced about, hoping my excitement, my trepidation, didn’t show, but nobody paid me any attention. I tapped on the cell door.
‘Good, you are here, ma chère.’ Jeanne smiled and pressed her lips to mine. I detected no hint of embarrassment about the previous afternoon. It was as if it had been the most natural thing.
A bottle of red wine sat on the commode next to four glasses. Engraved with lovebirds and flowers, the glasses were as delicate and handsome as those of the Saint-Germain house.
‘It is so kind of Sister Superior to lend me glasses from her own collection, n’est-ce pas, Victoire?’ Jeanne wrapped a pale hand around each opaque, twisted stem as she filled the glasses. ‘A full-bodied, strong wine you see, to mask laudanum of the deepest red and the wildest odour.’
I held my breath as Jeanne plink-plinked drops of laudanum into two of the glasses. ‘I’d best not mix the glasses up, eh?’ she said, stoppering the bottle just as the tap came at her door.
She opened the door a slit and the two keepers sauntered in like cocks in a hen coop.
‘Eh bien, comtesse, I see we’ll not have to share you this afternoon,’ one of them said, grinning at me and groping for my breast. ‘If it’s not Victoire, our pretty child murderess.’
I tried not to cringe or move. I was even able to smile, as I recalled the small bruise that lay beneath his hand — the place on my breast Jeanne had kissed a little too hard yesterday.
Jeanne smacked his hand from me and mock-frowned. ‘Not yet, frisky boy. First we’ll make a toast and drink this delicious wine that was so kindly acquired for me.’ She handed the glasses around.
‘To a most special afternoon,’ Jeanne said, as we raised our glasses.
I lowered my eyes from the keepers’ lust-darkened gazes.
Jeanne drained her glass quickly, and I supposed she was urging the keepers to do likewise. My stomach was such a tangle of knots I could barely sip mine.
As we had rehearsed, I positioned myself on the bed beside Jeanne, who crooked her forefinger, beckoning the keepers. Slowly we began removing their uniforms. The one before me grabbed at my breasts again.
‘Not so fast, mon garçon,’ Jeanne said. ‘Savour the moment.’
I kept glancing at their glasses. Surely they had not drunk enough for the laudanum to take effect. I was petrified they would recognise its pungently sweet smell, its acrid taste. Or worse, that I would have to pursue their lurid advances before the drug worked.
Soon their speech began to slur and their gestures became slow and listless. I felt my shoulders and neck relax as they sank, swan-like, to the floor.
‘Quickly,’ Jeanne said, the vein in her temple pulsing. ‘We don’t have long.’
We finished removing the keepers’ clothes, and tore off our own dresses and chemises. I kept my petticoat on, with its concealed papers, as we dressed in the keepers’ uniforms.
‘Hurry, tie my hair up, Victoire.’
I fumbled with Jeanne’s hair all the while searching the keepers’ faces, certain they would stir any instant.
‘My hair … it’s not all under the hat,’ I hissed.
The blood rushed through me as Jeanne fiddled with wayward strands.
‘Now for the finishing touch.’ Jeanne reached into a drawer and drew out two moustaches. ‘Courtesy of an actress friend.’ She pasted one above my lips, then her own. She span around. ‘Don’t we look the perfect keepers?’
‘He moved,’ I said, pointing at one of the keepers. ‘He blinked.’
‘Don’t be anxious, ma chère, we’re going now.’
Her cell was too small to step around the slumbering keepers, so we were forced to step over the prone bodies.
I held my breath, certain the faint sweep of air from our feet would waken the men. My eyes fixed on the dozing faces, I lifted my first foot over. I raised the second one.
Something cold gripped my ankle. I screamed, and Jeanne was yelling and swearing.
‘Merde, merde! Let go. Let go of me you great oaf!’
The keepers were wide awake, spitting out mouthfuls of the laced wine, and grasping our ankles. In that instant I understood they’d not drunk a drop of the laudanum. The trick was on us. I couldn’t move, and Jeanne was still yelling and kicking at the keeper.
He let her ankle go for a second, sprang up and punched her in the face.
‘Foutre de la garce,’ he said. ‘Fucking bitch.’ Over and over he hit her and swore, until blood streamed from Jeanne’s lips.
I tried to rush to her, but the keeper only tightened his grip. Jeanne stumbled backwards under the repeated blows, her lip gaping and red. I saw the rage in her black eyes, each blow fuelling her fury a little more. I feared the vein throbbing in her temple would explode.
‘Pig!’ Jeanne spat, through bloody lips. ‘You’ll pay for this!’
He twisted her arms behind her back. ‘You take us for fools, Jeanne de Valois, greatest con artist of all time?’ He restrained her with one hand. In the other, he held a sodden piece of cloth, stained a reddish-brown. ‘Such a shame our handkerchiefs, and not our lips, absorbed that delicious wine — and the purest of laudanum,’ he said. ‘Apart from that one, delicious mouthful.’ He waved an arm at the wine puddle on the floor.
‘As if we’d trust Jeanne de Valois, and risk our jobs,’ the keeper holding me said. He too, sprang to his feet and twisted my arms behind my back.
‘Risk our heads, more like it!’ Jeanne’s captor shrieked. ‘They would whip, torture and break us on the wheel — tomorrow’s public spectacle on la place de Grève, if we let la Salpêtrière’s most infamous inmate escape.
‘Sister Superior will be livid with you, countess,’ he continued. ‘She will see this attempted escape as a personal slight to the tight ship she boasts.’
‘And you,’ Jeanne said, her words thick through swelling lips. ‘I bet Sister Superior’s tight ship pays you keepers no more than a pittance?’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Jeanne’s captor said with a smirk.
‘I suggest you both get dressed,’ Jeanne said. ‘And go far away from my cell, and nobody has any notion of what went on this afternoon.’
The keepers looked at each other.
‘I think we could manage that,’ the second one said. ‘As long as Madame la Comtesse makes it worth our while.’
***
I dabbed Jeanne’s lip with cool water.
‘Merely superficial injuries,’ she said, beating a fist against her chest. ‘In here, they cannot touch me.’
‘Hush no
w.’ I held the cloth against her lip. ‘It must hurt to speak.’
Once the bleeding had stopped, I dressed in my prison garb and sat on the bed beside Jeanne. She drew me close and I felt the rapid beating of a heart and supposed it was mine, but it was Jeanne’s. I began to weep, my tears coming fast, onto her face.
‘I’m so afraid,’ I said.
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know. Of never getting away from here. And, at the same time, of one day succeeding, and then being alone, without you.’
‘Once on the outside you will find the strength to fight, Victoire. A strength I know is inside you.’
‘You have paid the keepers off,’ I said. ‘But how can you be sure they’ll not keep asking for money?’
‘Oh, they will, ma chère, they will, but we won’t be staying here much longer.’ She held me at arm’s length, and met my eyes. ‘You surely don’t imagine that little laudanum party was my only plan?’
She sat up. ‘Now, help me put my clothes back on.’
‘But why didn’t you simply give the money to Sister Superior, as you’ve done since you were imprisoned?’ I said, helping her dress.
‘I may be wealthy,’ Jeanne said, ‘but the woman is getting beyond even my means. Aside from the wealth she possessed before acquiring this position — the money that got her the position — her enormous income allows her to live in such opulence, ma chère.’
‘Why is a woman of such wealth obliged to work at all?’ I said, smoothing down the full skirt of her robe à l’anglais, puffing up the sleeves at her elbows.
‘Oh she doesn’t need to work,’ Jeanne said. ‘It is simply to maintain her social standing. She loves the power she wields over all of Paris; the people who clamour for invitations to her buffets to play games, dance and sing to grove-filled violin music. And that’s not forgetting all the other benefits la patronne of la Salpêtrière is entitled to.’
‘Like what?’ I wrapped Jeanne’s soft, full shawl about her shoulders.
‘Oh, her chic apartment with its fashionable furniture and many servants. A vast garden with vegetables and gardeners and, of course, the private coach, horses and coachmen.’