French Passion

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “Manon d’Epinay.”

  “Ma-ano-on d’E-ep-i-nay,” he repeated in that same whisper, his head drawing deeper into his hood like a turtle’s as he laboriously scratched into a huge leatherbound volume.

  “Let’s see. Three of the morning of September 10, 1788.” Again the whisper. He wrote slowly. Handing me his plume, he turned the huge book toward me. The page was almost filled. “Sign here.”

  I wrote my name, he sanded it.

  “Possessions?” he whispered.

  By now I accepted the whispers, like the shading hoods, as another aspect of anonymity. Nothing in this fortress was permitted to remain human, individual.

  “Just the clothes I’m wearing.”

  “No jewelry? Money?”

  “None.”

  “Empty your pockets.”

  I’d forgotten my tiny oval box with the braided lock of CoCo’s fine, pale hair, Jean-Pierre’s brown, and Aunt Thérèse’s white.

  “The box is gold. Take it,” I said. “I’ll keep the hair.”

  “You won’t. Prisoners aren’t allowed property.”

  “Of what am I accused?” I wondered that I’d never asked myself the question. “When will the trial be held?”

  The two turnkeys who had brought me in were lounging near the door. Now they straightened, watching.

  The registrar asked, “Don’t you know how you’re here?”

  I shook my head.

  “See this?” He pointed to the great blob of crimson wax on the letter. “It’s the King’s seal.” He shook open parchment, pointing. “And this is the signature of one of King Louis’ secretaries. This is a lettre de cachet.”

  I took a deep, trembling breath.

  “Then you understand? With this letter you have been imprisoned without committing a crime. The letter’s dated July 28, 1788. Six weeks ago.”

  The morning after Alexine had brought André to my house! Is that why the Comte had wooed me so persistently? To protect me from his own fury?

  The whisper continued, “… no crime, so there is no need for a trial.”

  “How long will I be here?” I cried.

  He shrugged. “You’re simply here.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Sometimes there have been releases. But let’s say you belong in the Bastille.”

  I belong to you, I’d told the Comte.

  “But my aunt and my brother don’t know where I am!”

  “Mmm. Let’s see the terms of your imprisonment.” He held the lettre de cachet near the candle. “Due care and consideration,” he read, then fell silent. I tried, unsuccessfully, to make out his expression. Finally he said, “I’m sorry, mademoiselle, you’re in Secret.”

  “In secret?”

  “In Secret means as it says. No visitors. No paper. No letters. No conversation with other prisoners. No talk with the turnkey.”

  If any other man came near you, it would kill me, and I would punish you until you’d wish you were dead, too, the Comte had told me.

  “Ah, here’s something better, especially for a beautiful girl like you.” He paused before he read, “No torture.”

  “Oh, such generosity!”

  I began to laugh. Hysterical peals rang louder and louder, disturbing the tomb silence. The turnkeys appeared ready for outbursts. Quickly a gag was placed in my mouth, and my hands were manacled behind my back.

  Like this, I was led through a dark maze of stone. One escort held a torch, the other prodded me. The chain dangling between my wrists clinked. At one turn I stumbled, the chain rang on cobbles, but the turnkey stopped me from falling. In a narrow ell we stopped. A ring of keys was produced to unlock a low door. The door closed behind us. We climbed curling, steep steps. Twenty-five I counted. Reaching the top, the turnkey stuck his torch in a wall holder. We were in front of a barred door.

  “What’s this stopping?” whispered a turnkey.

  “Ain’t it a crime, wasting this wench?” A hand trailed on my hair. “Soft as the finest down, and such a pretty moon color. Only some great pasha, or that Comte, could afford to throw such a piece in the Bastille. What’s say we give her something to remember?”

  “The lettre de cachet said all due care and consideration.”

  “Who’ll she tell? The idiot?” An insectlike titter. “Due care’s what I’ll give this pretty little wench.”

  Hands shoved under my bodice, gripping my breasts, mashing roughly. I shouted. The gag muted my cry. My hoarse grunts were anonymous, inhuman, like everything in this place. Between them, they lowered me onto the stone floor of the narrow passage. I jerked up. One stepped over me, kneeling to hold down my shoulders.

  The other stared down at me. “Spirited, ain’t she?” he whispered, undoing his breeches. “Secret’ll take the spirit out of her. Give me the torture dungeons any day over Secret.” He knelt, and I kicked, giving him a blow in the shins.

  I have no idea why I struggled. It had nothing to do with mental processes, for my mind was already chilled into numbness. Possibly the body always rebels against violence. I don’t know. I was in the middle of a vast stone fort, my hands secured behind me, my shoulders held to the ground, yet I kicked and squirmed. There was, of course, no way I could stop them. My embroidered green skirt was pushed up and my petticoats, my undergarment yanked down. My naked flesh shrank from icy, dank stone. The turnkey lowered himself onto me, his weight pressing the manacle iron into my back. I continued a feeble kicking until he finished.

  They stepped over me, changing places. As this second hooded thing knelt over me, I gave a wild kick.

  All at once I saw blazing brightness, then my body went limp.

  I’m dying, I thought. Thank you, God.

  I came to on a straw pallet. The gag was gone, and so were the manacles. It was still dark, and I couldn’t see. I felt a rough blanket covering me. They hadn’t put on my petticoats or undergarments. Where the manacles had cut, pain oozed wetness into my skirt. I rolled over on the pallet. Something crawled on my cheek, and I was too miserable to brush it away. Earlier tonight, I thought, I lay in André’s arms. The memory seemed as remote as if it had happened in another lifetime. I began to cry.

  And crying, thought very clearly of the Comte as I’d last seen him, one hand covering his face to hide his tears.

  Chapter Five

  I scrubbed the fichu against my undergarment, slapping and sloshing in the cold water. The tattered lawn of the fichu was dingy, as were my drawers, but at least the water hadn’t been frozen, and red, puffy chilblains no longer ached on my knuckles. Without keeping track of time, I knew I’d been imprisoned for almost a year. The outside world was bathed in summer.

  The narrow unglazed window set high in the wall admitted little light, and bars cast no shadows. A massive stone building blocked the sun. A straw pallet and a low stool were my only furnishings, unless one counted the pitcher and bowl, the battered tin chamber pot in the corner.

  A bird had strayed into the narrow stone path. A bird was an unusual treat. Running to the window, I stepped onto the stool to grasp the bars, raising up on tiptoe to follow its flight. The bird, a swallow, curved up to the stripe of blue, disappearing. I waited several minutes, but it didn’t return. My stomach growled with hunger. I was always hungry. Sighing, I returned to kneel by the bowl. The slosh of water on fabric was the only sound.

  Solitary confinement can cause madness, for one is locked into one’s own mind. As I scrubbed, questions, unanswered, unanswerable questions, like icy hands, clutched at me. Aunt Thèrése, Jean-Pierre, and Izette must think me dead, mustn’t they? Old Lucien surely hadn’t told them I’d been brought here—or had he? Did Aunt Thérèse have the opals? The past winter had been cruel. Without the gems to sell, how had she survived? Had Jean-Pierre been stripped of his commission because of me? Had André been captured? Was he dead? For all I knew, he could be imprisoned inside that ugly stone heap opposite. If he were alive, did he wonder about me, or did he, too, think me dead?
/>   Was I condemned to the Bastille forever?

  Would I remain forever in this empty silence?

  “Please, God,” I whispered, “let the Comte suffer.” As the creaky words came out, I thought of him opening the gate of the paupers’ graveyard, walking to stand by my side as if he surely were CoCo’s father. I sighed. As much as the Comte had always been an enigma to me, so was I bewildered by my emotional response to him. I knew only that I could no more hate him than hate my own liver—or heart. If hatred were impossible, though, rage was easy. And inwardly I fumed at him now as I had through the frozen and starving winter. (Who knows, maybe the heat of my anger had kept me alive.)

  My fichu and undergarments were clean as they’d ever get in cold, soapless water. I wrung them, hanging them to dry in the iron ring. Gray, dispirited, they resembled ghosts of prisoners who once had been chained to the ring.

  I cleaned my teeth with a straw pulled from the ticking, combed my hair with my fingers, and walked up and back, six paces, back and up, six paces, listening. Waiting.

  The lock below turned. Steps shuffled up twenty-five stairs and along the hall. Two keys fumbled. Two bolts grated back. The door creaked open.

  The turnkey’s features, shadowed by his hood, were flattened, and his lips were loose. As always, he set the dented tin tray on the stool, giving me a dull-eyed wink and raising a finger to his lax lips to show he wasn’t permitted to speak to me.

  Since my admittance, he was the only person I’d seen.

  He was an idiot.

  “Good day,” I said, delighted as I’d once been to greet the brilliant, the aristocratic, the beautiful, at my salon. “Good day, Monsieur Turnkey. This morning I saw a swallow. And yesterday afternoon a cloud floated by very slowly.”

  The idiot put a finger to his lips, reminding me that speech was forbidden to him.

  I nodded, chattering on. By his vacant smile I knew he enjoyed having someone talk to him as much as I enjoyed having an audience.

  He’d brought the inevitable pale broth in which today floated a cabbage leaf and a few unidentifiable white globs. A slab of dark coarse bread lay on the tin.

  He pointed at the bread.

  “To be sure, Monsieur Turnkey, a feast. I thank you most gratefully.”

  He emptied the chamber pot into a slop pail. The door closed. Two bolts were shot. Two keys slowly turned. As his steps shuffled away, I sank onto my pallet, rubbing my knuckles in my eyes, unable to prevent tears. Always, this one small break reminded me that I must pass my life hungry, cold, without sun, besieged by unanswered questions, engulfed by the most profound loneliness.

  “Drink your broth while it’s warm,” my creaky whisper ordered. I gulped unpalatable liquid, pretending it was creamy lobster bisque.

  The bread gave off the acidly flat odor of mold.

  Under the slab lay a folded paper.

  A letter?

  My fingers shook so I could barely pick it up. Nails, clean from washing, fumbled interminably with the thin sheet.

  If you are Manon d’Epinay, give

  your jailor a snip of your skirt

  I am a friend of

  Izette

  Tears flooded my cheeks. Throwing myself on the pallet, weeping, laughing, I kissed the scrap of paper.

  “Izette knows I’m alive,” I babbled. “I’ll be free soon, free.”

  The idiot wouldn’t return for a full day, but impatiently I lifted the hem of my skirt to my teeth. Last September, to enchant André, I’d put on this gown: the white embroidery and green background had turned almost the same grimy shade, the fragile English muslin was worn. It gave immediately. I ripped a large patch.

  All day, weeping tears of joy, I folded and refolded the rectangle of cloth. I scarcely slept. At dawn I was pacing up and down my cell, ready to depart. Being in Secret had deprived me of judgment. I should have been telling myself that a wide moat, eight tall towers, and thirty-foot-thick stone walls, not to mention sentries and jailors, stood between me and freedom. As it was, constant joy bubbled through me.

  Izette will get me out, I thought. Soon, soon, I’ll be free.

  Below, the lock turned. Immediately I knew something was amiss. The footsteps didn’t shuffle. I backed up to the window wall, sinking onto the stool. Keys sounded briskly in locks. The door swung open.

  A short, thin guard set down the tray. His hood shadowed his face, yet it seemed to me as he peered around my dank quarters his gaze remained too long on the worn scrap of cloth folded on the pallet. Was he a spy examining this grubby evidence?

  He turned to me. His eyes glittered. His crooked teeth shone. Unconsciously I rose, clasping my hands to my breasts, as if in supplication. Other than the idiot, this was the only human creature I’d seen in—how many months?

  Moving with slow deliberation toward me, he traced my cheek. My heart banged against my upheld hands, dots jumped in front of my eyes. His hand trailed down my neck, lingering at my beating pulse. His lips parted. I saw snaggled teeth, felt sour, moist breath. With a downward, cutting motion, he broke apart my clasped fingers. We gazed at each other. His eyes, black obsidian, paralyzed me. Slowly he raised both his hands to cup my breasts. He must have felt the frenzied reverberations of my heart, for he smiled. I thought surely I would faint. His fingers tightened on my flesh. Then, abruptly, he turned, emptying the slops, taking yesterday’s bowl.

  The brief scene had been absolutely silent.

  As the two locks were secured, I fell across the pallet, as quickly unhinged by misery as I’d been by joy. Had this guard attacked me like the first two, my mind would have been easier, for sexual plunder is a reason in itself. He simply had asserted his power over me. Why? The question was profoundly sinister. The note, followed by this, a break in an absolute routine, must be a plot. The Comte must have devised a yet more cruel punishment I remembered a tale I’d read, a prison door left ajar, the poor hope-filled captive sneaking through endless passages, crawling through tunnels to emerge to find his guards waiting, laughing.

  The Comte had ordered the note delivered that he might lead me through the tunnel of his scheme. I would be faced with—what? I couldn’t think what. The denouement, I decided, would be more brilliantly cruel than I could imagine.

  The following morning the idiot was back. Despite my certainty that this was the Comte’s plot, I had left the dirty cloth on my pallet. The idiot shoved it under his cape.

  Then began my torment.

  Nothing untoward happened. Nothing. The new jailor (spy?) didn’t return. There were no more notes. Only the interminable hours of light and dark, the poor shuffling idiot. I lived in a welter of hope, yet at the same time was positive that the Comte had devised a torture infinitely more painful than the rack.

  On the ninth morning the idiot arrived to find me weeping. His foolish mouth twisting in sympathy, he nodded to my soup.

  I had decided there was danger in going along with the plot. But there’s never been much caution in me. I jerked up the pewter bowl, spilling greasy broth onto a sheaf of paper.

  “Thank you,” I cried. “Monsieur Turnkey, thank you so much.”

  The overcast day washed my cell in gloom. I had to stand below the window to make out the large, rotund handwriting:

  Mademoiselle d’Epinay,

  My name is Denis Goujon. As a friend of Izette, I am setting down her words, so think of this letter as coming directly from her.

  Izette first spoke of her pleasure at finding me, and I skimmed, for I could always reread.

  The very morning you disappeared, the Comte came to say the house must be vacated. We servants must find other employment. He ordered the furnishings, your clothes, furs, jewelry auctioned. Manon, I knew that you’d been with Égalité the day before—you were that happy. I assumed you had eloped with him. And so I told your aunt. She was as pleased as me. She loved you more than anyone else in the world and your happiness meant everything to her.

  My eyes blurred and for a moment I couldn’t
read. How could Izette and Aunt Thérèse believe that I’d go off with André, however much I loved him, without a word?

  I told Captain d’Epinay—

  Captain! So the Comte hadn’t ordered my brother stripped of his commission! Jean-Pierre had given Izette the d’Epinay opal necklace. Selling it should have provided enough money to keep her and Aunt Thérèse the winter. But it was a terrible winter. Izette wrote that the Seine froze solid, rich folk had skating parties while the poor starved. Izette sold the opals one by one. The price of bread shot up to four and a half sous a pound! Firewood rose yet more drastically. Auntie needed more powders. Izette sold the last small stone, then the setting.

  Manon, never think your aunt was a bother. And don’t go blaming yourself you weren’t with her at the end. She was tired, and her death was easy, just like falling asleep. Before she was taken, though, she had a spell. She sat bolt upright and said, “I see her, Izette, I see her. My sunny little bird is shut up in a terrible stone cage.” And right after that she went, very peaceful.

  Auntie dead.…

  I leaned against the stones, weeping. The soft bosom, the comforting smell of vanilla, gone.… I remembered when I was little that she’d been the most wonderful person in the whole world, this stout old lady who paddled me when I was naughty, afterward comforting me with honey cakes. I remembered how she’d sewed me pretty dresses and had given me her own ancient, china-headed doll in the hopes of making me less a tomboy. She’d doted on CoCo, and once I had asked her to look after my baby if anything happened to me. Well, now Aunt Thérèse was holding CoCo in her soft, warm lap.

  After a long while I controlled myself enough to pick up the letter. After Auntie died, Izette set out to discover the truth of my whereabouts. In St. Antoine, the mean district that surrounds the Bastille, she’d learned from a drunken soldier that the Comte de Créqui had admitted a female prisoner about the time I disappeared. This fitted in with what she’d learned from the news sheets. The Comte, no longer financial adviser to the King, had gone into seclusion. Day after day she would tramp through snow to his palace, hoping to beg him to have me released. The gatekeepers never let her past the tall iron fence.