French Passion

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  Chapter Four

  On the hall table stood three silver chamber sticks. Taking mine by its handle, I held the wick to one of the flames burning in the large candelabrum. As I moved up the dark staircase, shadows receded and I had the sense of being enclosed in a golden bubble. I could still feel the pressure of André’s long, hard body, the strength of his arms, still hear his breathing in my ear. The upstairs corridor was lined with a year of my watercolors. Birds, flowers, posthumous sketches of my daughter.

  I glanced in on Aunt Thérèse. Her beruffled nightcap quivered with each small, soft snore. She slept peacefully.

  No light showed around Jean-Pierre’s door.

  I went up the two steps to my room. Setting the chamber stick on the bureau, I made a purr and raised my arms, lowering them languorously.

  A chair scraped.

  Gasping, I turned.

  The Comte stood in the corner. Lit only by my distant candle, he was shadowy, black, wide. In that first instant I thought it a trick of my eyesight that he wavered.

  “My dear, I didn’t mean to startle you.” His voice was thick, slurred.

  Then I saw the glint of a goblet and decanter. He was drunk. Often he consumed great quantities of brandy, yet never before had I seen him drunk. He must’ve been sitting in the dark, waiting for me, drinking. My heart hammered with fear. The bed and armoire changed to lurking beasts.

  His arm circled and he made an exaggerated bow. “Aren’t you going to welcome me?” he asked.

  Shock had taken the breath from me. I couldn’t speak.

  “Greet me, damn you!”

  So this is how he is, drunk, I thought. Normally when angered, he grew more courteous; the physical rages of that short, brave boy had been bottled, serving to stiffen the Comte’s elaborate code of etiquette. But, I thought, remember that first night. He’d lost every control in his disappointment at my lack of virtue. He knows, I thought. Has he really stooped to having me watched?

  Don’t show fear, I ordered myself. Moving around the room to light candles in the wall sconces, I said calmly, “Good evening, Comte. I thought Emperor Joseph’s fête kept you in Versailles.”

  The candles lit, I saw his stock was open, and his lace-ruffled shirt undone so the strong wrinkled neck showed, and the black-haired chest. His eyes were bloodshot, tormented. Despite my fear, I was touched with pity for him.

  “I’ve no doubt,” he said, “that is exactly what you thought.”

  A slurred, drunken parody of his usual irony. Again I ordered myself to show a calm exterior. Sitting at my dressing table, I picked up my comb.

  “And you, my dear, where have you been?”

  “Just walking in the garden.”

  “A fête champêtre of your own, so to speak?”

  “Yes.”

  His steps unsteady, he came to me, lowering the shawl. “My dear, rid yourself of your pockmarked serving wench.”

  “I’m happy with Izette.”

  “A slut she was, a slut she remains. Like every trollop, she neglects buttons.”

  “On the way upstairs I undid them.”

  “You must be unwarrantedly weary.”

  And with this his fingers bit into my shoulder until I thought the flesh would tear. I stifled my groan. The mirror darkly reflected his cynical face. Half-closed eyes glittered. Mouth opened. His expression was that of a man being tormented beyond the limits of human endurance, the expression I’d been too young to recognize when he’d brutalized me. Love again was crushing him between its torture stones. He released me, weaving back to his decanter, pouring himself another brandy.

  He knows everything, I thought. Of course he knows He’s too clever, too sensitive about me not to know I have a lover. He knows I’ve been with André. I pressed my knees together in an attempt to stop my legs from shaking.

  “Tell me of your walk in the garden. My charming mistress, do your duty. Entertain me.”

  I never could stand to watch a cat playing with a mouse. Raising the shawl back around my shoulders, I asked, “Why did you return, Comte?”

  “I missed you. I desired to be with you. I left a king and an emperor to share your bed.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Alas, you were—what was it?—walking in the garden. These past three hours you’ve been walking in the garden.”

  That breaking twig! “Did you follow me?”

  “I?” His nostrils flared. Pride crackled in his voice. “My dear, I?”

  “But you know?”

  He finished his brandy. “Yes. I know. Am I correct to assume your romantic garden interlude was shared with the fervent poet, the insufferable boy who so cleverly calls himself Égalité?”

  “Yes,” I whispered in sudden fear that he’d stationed men around the house.

  “You sat on the floor, eating and drinking, then fell back in the venal act.”

  “If you didn’t follow me—”

  “Someone else did,” he said. “And, my dear, may I suggest you forget your sympathies for the serfs. Forget your poetic lover’s youthful passion to aid the lower orders. Peasants are exactly where they belong. At the bottom of the heap. It’s natural law, and the world is better because of such law.”

  “Which of the servants?”

  “The one you call Old Lucien, and treat so tenderly, always at pains to see he isn’t overworked. The one you slip extra money, give warm clothes to.”

  “He’s my friend,” I said dully.

  “Friends are from one’s own class,” the Comte said. “Your servant, my dear, comes to me whenever he imagines you’ve misbehaved. As if I care how many of my gifts you turn over to your ne’er-do-well gambler of a brother.”

  “Jean-Pierre’s thoroughly scrupulous! And he knows nothing, nothing!”

  “His ignorance delights me. But nonetheless, he’s a hypochondriac who uses imaginary ailments to evade his duties.”

  “No!”

  “Yes,” the Comte said. “Whereas you, my dear, have always had the spirit to accept what you imagine your duties to be. Him. Your aunt. Your servants—”

  “How much did you have to bribe Old Lucien?”

  The Comte made a brief, ugly laugh.

  “Bribe? I give him nothing. His pleasure is telling me. Like all his sort, he hungers to bring his betters down to his own level.”

  All my life I’d loved Old Lucien. At home he’d been good to us, and though in Paris his liking for me had waned, I’d understood. My way of living reminded him of his old shame. But to spy on me! Gratuitously! How could he? My mind sorted out reasons, and the only one I came up with was the trick of categorizing. Just as the Comte believed every peasant a lesser breed, as André saw all the nobility as unfeeling parasites, and Izette saw every man as capable of every evil, so Old Lucien loathed every woman he thought a bad ’un.

  But what was wrong with me? Why did I have to see each person as an individual? Why couldn’t I slip each into a convenient pigeonhole to love or hate? The Comte, for example, was about to erupt into some unimaginable cruelty, so why did my heart ache with pity for his wrinkled neck and the pain glinting in his eyes?

  “If you knew where we were,” I said, “why didn’t you confront us?”

  “A gentleman would never do that.”

  “Send the police, then?” My voice trembled.

  “You worry for the boy? Good. You should. The Governor of Police has twenty men after him.”

  “Surrounding this house?”

  “I’ve no way of knowing. But if you’re asking if I requested such an order, the answer’s no. I have no wish for my name to be linked with your precious Égalité.”

  I sighed with relief.

  “I have been curious about one matter,” the Comte said. “Is he the other candidate for fathering your little bastard?”

  At this, pain cut through my chest, sharp pain that brought tears to my eyes.

  After a long silence he said, very thickly, “So he is. My God, how can I spare you?” He set down his goblet, com
ing behind me, flexing his hands, and in the mirror I could see the reflection. Large hands with muscular tendons. “What thoughts are going through your head as you watch these hands?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “They’re about to inflict great pain on you, is that what you think? But I gave you my word never again to beat you. These hands can kill, you think? After all, you’re my whore, and as a whore, these hands could destroy you, and nobody would accuse me. But I won’t kill you.”

  He leaned down, breathing brandy over me. “Tonight,” he said, “you’re leaving this house.”

  “Is that my punishment, Comte?”

  He bowed. “Yes. In part.”

  “But I’ve wanted to leave … always.…”

  I faltered. This wallpaper bedroom turned my words to a lie. That was the armchair where he’d sat gripping my hands while CoCo was being born, by that window he’d held me when I mourned her. We’d shared that uncurtained bed a thousand times, we’d smiled across that little table over how many cups of breakfast chocolate? Water flooded my eyes.

  “You were saying, my dear?”

  I blinked away the tears. “Comte, I’ve cared for you, deeply. And if CoCo had lived, tonight never would have happened. With all my heart I’ve wished you her father. I care for you in many ways. I respect you—everybody does. I admire your wit and intelligence. I … enjoy you.… But you’re right. After this evening, it’s impossible for me to stay in your house.”

  “Then we agree,” he said. “Excellent. I’ve made other arrangements for you.”

  He flung open my armoire, fumbling through clothes, jerking my blue woolen cape from its hook.

  “Tonight?”

  “You just agreed.”

  “Where?”

  “A little surprise I’ve readied.”

  Wherever he was taking me was bad. Very bad.

  “I’ll say goodbye to Aunt Thérèse and Izette. Write a few words for Jean-Pierre.”

  “You’ll do none of those,” he said, placing the cloak on my shoulders.

  I fumbled in my jewel box for my opals. “Comte, everything I own is yours, except this. It’s been in the d’Epinay family for generations. Please give it to Aunt Thérèse?” I held out the luminous web of stones.

  He hit my hand. The slap rang, the necklace fell, muffled by the Aubusson rug.

  His face twisted with such agony that I reached out to him. He stepped back unsteadily.

  “My apologies,” he said. “I hit you as one hits a child. No more. And you are a child, my dear. A foolish, generous child. You give on impulse, as children do. You give to your aunt, your brother, you risk your life for cripples and servants. Why couldn’t you have learned caution? Why?” He paused. “You’ve been happy here, you say. You even … care … for me. And you have clothes, tutors, jewels, parties, anything you wish. Then, just because some renegade poet smiles at you, you throw your life away. To give him a few hours’ pleasure, you throw your life away. My dear, you’ve behaved like a willful child.” He opened the door. “Come.”

  I couldn’t move. Not knowing where he was taking me terrified me. Fear rooted me to the spot.

  Don’t go, I ordered myself. Do anything else. Run. Once you ran from him, and escaped. Now you know Paris, have friends in Paris. Besides, he’s very drunk. Yes, run.

  Swiftly I pushed by him, racing along the corridor. I held up my embroidered green skirt to take steps two at a time. His feet thundered after me. I was almost to the brightly lit hall when one of my shoes skidded. Frantic, I attempted to balance myself. He reached me. Grasping my arms, he twisted them behind me. Cruel. I cried out. The cloak had slipped, and I could feel his breath on my bared neck. I struggled desperately. He pressed his lips against my nape. “Never again,” he whispered. “Oh my dearest, sweetest love, can you imagine how much I hurt?”

  I stopped struggling. He must have known restraint was unnecessary, yet he pinioned my hands still more tightly as he bent to retrieve my cloak. Our steps echoed across the hall.

  A carriage waited. It wasn’t one of his elaborate equipages. No. This was a dingy, hired berlin with mud-streaked carriage lanterns. Two thin nags drooped their tired heads between the shafts.

  The driver, perched in front, wore a shapeless hat pulled low, and a long muffler wound up to his mouth. I recognized the muffler, for I’d knitted it myself.

  The driver was Old Lucien.

  The Comte opened the door, pushing me in ahead of him. He gave no directions. The berlin’s hood prevented me from seeing where we went.

  We rocked and clattered through invisible streets. Each turn of the wheel, each splash of a horse’s hoof moved us closer to where? And what? I tried to guess our position by sounds. There were no other carriages, no horses, no dogs barking, no human voices. It was late, true, yet Paris lived by night. We moved as if through a city under the spell of some dread conjurer.

  My fear for myself was coupled with fear for André. Twenty police after him, and they all blended into that one skull-white face of the tall, bony interrogator.

  We traveled, it seemed, for hours. Yet we didn’t stop at any barrier guardhouses, so we must still be within the city gates.

  Then the sound of wheels and hooves resounded longer, a deeper echo, and I knew we were crossing an empty place, a square possibly. We ground to a halt. My teeth were jammed together. In the sudden quiet, horses panted, and nearby there was a faint, muffling sound that I couldn’t quite place.

  A man’s voice called, “Who goes there?”

  “A minister to good King Louis,” replied Old Lucien.

  Footsteps. A man’s voice, very close. “Papers?”

  “Inside be the Comte de Créqui.”

  “The Comte? In that old berlin?”

  “It be him.”

  “I don’t believe it. Besides, I don’t give a damn if it’s Queen Marie Antoinette herself. Nobody gets by here without papers.”

  The Comte opened the door.

  A soldier of the French Guard raised his bayonet.

  “Governor de Launay expects us,” the Comte said. The cool voice of aristocratic power. Unanswerable.

  And in that moment, with the door open, I was able to see where I was. The flat muffling sound was water in a moat. Behind the moat stood high, awesome fortress walls and towers. The walls, I knew, were thirty feet thick and a hundred feet high, a vast and terrible pile of gray stones that appeared to have crushed all nearby that was human.

  We were in front of one of the eight drawbridges of the most feared prison in France.

  The Bastille.

  The sentry lowered his bayonet, saying, “Proceed, sire.”

  Our hired berlin rattled hollowly over the drawbridge. We entered the Bastille.

  Inside, we were halted three times. Old Lucien would call, “This be the Comte de Créqui’s coach.” Locks would grate, heavy doors would creak. We would move ahead, and the doors would clang shut behind us.

  The fourth time we stopped, the shabby equipage shook as Old Lucien descended. He opened the door. The Comte got out. I pushed myself from worn leather. My bones seemed fused. The Comte, his face pale in the light of flambeaus, extended a hand to me, courteous as if we were entering the Opéra-Comique rather than the Bastille.

  Taking his hand, I stepped from the berlin. Massive gray stones exuded a dank odor. Chill penetrated my wool cloak.

  Old Lucien watched me with his toothless, sunken smile. “This be where all bad ’uns belong,” he said.

  The Comte turned on the old man. “I’ll have you broken on the wheel,” he said hoarsely.

  Old Lucien clasped his gnarled hands, silent, beseeching. I looked at the Comte. His pallor was more deadly. In Roman times, I remembered him once telling me, bearers of bad news were inevitably put to death.

  “Comte, don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t what, my dear?”

  It was difficult to stand. My fused bones were numb, and I was positive that at any moment I’d crash forward l
ike a toppled toy soldier.

  “Let him be,” I said. “He sees me for what I am. Otherwise, he’s just an old fool. Harmless.”

  The Comte, turning away, drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Again that poor, foolish generosity.”

  His face still averted, he extended his arm toward me, I placed my hand on his, and formally we moved to the arched oak door that was set into the thick stone wall. Two French Guards, stationed in sentry boxes at either side of the door, continued to gaze at a fixed point: neither so much as glanced at us.

  The Comte raised the iron knocker, let it fall.

  Immediately the door opened. The turnkey wore a short blue cape with a hood that shadowed his face. A second turnkey stood nearby, and he, too, wore a blue hooded cape. In a theater this pair would have been high comedy. In the Bastille, though, their hidden features were sinister. We stepped over the wide threshold. One of the turnkeys shut the door behind us, a heavy, thick sound. Final as death.

  I began to tremble. Hastily I took my hand from the Comte’s, refusing to let him feel this palpable sign of my terror.

  He held out a letter. Folded parchment sealed with a great crimson blob of wax from which dangled a crimson ribbon. A turnkey took it.

  “Thank you, my lord,” he whispered.

  The turnkeys stationed themselves on either side of me. I, shaking harder, feared for my ability to walk. They’ll have to drag me through the halls of the Bastille, I thought, and for some reason this vignette, the hooded pair dragging my cloaked figure over the stone floor, struck me as funny. My lips formed a smile. Ahead of them I walked toward a lit door. Reaching it, I turned. The Comte hadn’t moved. His shoulders quaked, and he held one hand over his forehead, covering his eyes.

  Yet another door shut behind me. The room was furnished with two candle stands, several chairs in the heavy old style, a tapestry screen. A long table.

  Behind this table sat a registrar in the blue-hooded cape. (A long time later I would learn that the Bastille was manned by veterans of the French Guard and this was their uniform.)

  “Name?” he whispered.