French Passion

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “I didn’t know that the one who mounted me was Zeus himself! How could I be aware you were in line to the throne? You never trusted me enough to tell me.”

  He flushed, catching his underlip between his teeth. His jaw was covered with dark stubble. Men weren’t permitted their razors here, and the Conciergerie barber made his rounds twice a week. My mention of André’s secrecy had touched a raw nerve in him.

  I stared aghast into his stricken face. What was I doing? We had so little time, dearly bought. How could I be wasting it in recriminations?

  “André,” I murmured in a low, shaky whisper, “it doesn’t matter. You had no obligation to tell me.”

  He paled, the flush remaining to patch his high cheekbones. “I gave you as much information as any man owes his courtesan.” He spoke in a clearly audible, peremptory voice.

  A deep and private pain wounded me. Despite André’s quick, hot temper, he’d been cruel to me only twice: when he’d come to an elaborate mansion to discover me married to a man he hated, and again when I’d gone to his fifth-story lodgings to get him back. The past few months, in his anguish, he’d been brusque, yet even so there had been a sweetness, a decency about him.

  Added to my private misery was the lesser evil of public humiliation.

  The gentlemen on André’s side of the iron railing, the ladies on mine, were covertly peering at us. Their circumstances had altered cruelly, and their surroundings, but these patricians clung to what they had left—the old forms and the elaborate etiquette of Versailles. My own experience had taught me their malice. The Comte, smiling at their love of gossip, had told me that boredom drew these nobles to pry and peer into the most intimate moments of the royal bedchamber. Now that André was known to be the legitimate son of Louis XV, he came into the focus of their scrutiny. So with lowered lashes, through scandal-hungry eyes they peered at us. They were ghosts. I pitied them their proximity to death, I admired their light-hearted bravery. I couldn’t deafen myself to their whispers.

  “Beautiful little whore … orgies … nobody much.…”

  “De Créqui’s mistress, faithless ’tis said.”

  Tears stung behind my eyes, and I moved away. I couldn’t force myself to go inside and leave André completely, so I went to an empty spot near the slimedampened stone wall. In the distance a flock of pigeons swooped toward the spire of Sainte-Chapelle, roosting in the crevices. The horrors of the past months hadn’t inured me. Here I was, with André and these others, in the antechamber of death, and shouldn’t all else be as naught? Yet my pain and humiliation were as great as ever, and I was foolish enough to want to hide them.

  I stared up at the shadowy pigeons.

  “Comtesse,” André called. He had moved along the rail near to where I stood. His anger gone, he called tenderly—and too loudly. He must have heard the whispers and realized what he’d done. Using my title was his means of setting matters to rights.

  His pity was the last thing I could bear. I continued gazing upward at the slender spire.

  “Comtesse de Créqui.” He called the name of his old rival with obvious difficulty.

  The whispers rose, lowered. And all at once it came to me how utterly ridiculous, now, were such goings on. Why was I letting a stupid and shallow pride keep me from André? I went to the railing.

  He reached between iron bars for my hand. At the touch of his warm breath, his lips, on my naked palm, a weakness overcame me and I leaned toward him. Cold iron pressed on each side of my forehead. The tears I’d struggled to hide were falling.

  “Don’t,” he whispered huskily. “Darling, please don’t.

  “I’m happy.”

  “I never intended to speak to you like that. But do you know how I hoped I wouldn’t see you in this yard? I could scarcely bring myself to come outside.”

  “But I was hoping even harder to see you.”

  We stared at each other, mutely acknowledging the reason behind our differing hopes. Instead of releasing my hand, he held it to his stubbled cheek, and for a minute we were oblivious to the others around us, and to the slender iron bars separating us.

  “Why in the name of God, darling, did you stand up like that? You must have known you couldn’t save me.”

  “On the contrary,” I said, managing a smile. “I believed I had.”

  “So I’ve destroyed you, too,” he said bitterly.

  “The charges against me have nothing to do with you, or your trial. I’m a returned émigré. I mourned my husband.”

  “If you’d left the country before the trial—”

  I interrupted, “We both know I returned to be with my husband. Now stop flattering yourself.”

  Again his lips pressed into my palm, and again I felt that melting thrill so at variance with our situation.

  “André, we’ve always been so open with each other,” I said, my voice, I hoped, too inaudible for our audience, which kept at a respectful distance. “Why did you never tell me?”

  “Isn’t it apparent? It’s always been a shame too deep to speak of—can you imagine having a father so debauched as to enslave little girls, and have them trained for his pleasure?”

  “But he loved your mother.”

  “Love! My father was a monster!”

  “Just a man, aging, lonely, afraid.”

  “I’ve spent my life trying to right his evils—and in the end I’ve brought about evils just as great. Our blood is accursed.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “The Comte told me that the late King—your … nephew—was a good, most ordinary man who loved his own wife, and sent much money to aid the Americans in their War for Independence. And as for your father, he was able to love your mother, and acknowledge her son as his own.”

  André’s lips softened. “You’ve always seen people as better than they are.” He looked more cheerful. “Manon, you were magnificent. When you threw your arms out toward the gallery, I wanted to throttle you. And also I wanted to jump from the platform, take you in my arms, and yell, ‘She’s mine!’”

  “That would have been a fine and poetic gesture—the second, not the first.”

  We both laughed. Others around us smiled. Marriage had cloaked my past with respectability, and I was, in their eyes, one of them, a Comtesse loved by the Duc de la Concorde, son of Louis of France. Beyond these Gothic walls and towers, France saw us as a tyrant and a traitress. To ourselves, we were a poet who’d dreamed of freedom and a girl who’d grown up in a leaky farmhouse.

  Though the day was cold, and clouds had swept over the sky, everyone remained outside to dine. The food, purchased by the women at exorbitant prices, was laid out on stools set close to the fence. The dark bread was stale, the wine thin and sour, some of the cheese green and the rest maggot-infested.

  The conversation, however, was sharper and more witty than any in Europe, for conversation had been a high art at Versailles, and the flower of the Court was imprisoned here. Nobody alluded to the Conciergerie. The Revolution was ignored. Jokes were thrown subtly. Laughter fell in showers.

  After we dined, André and I stood by the fence, unashamedly holding hands. The cloud-mottled sky grew dark. We clung together, not parting until a weary guard strolled over to inform us exercise time was over.

  André said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Tomorrow, yes.”

  I kissed each knuckle of his hand, wondering if he would be here tomorrow. He, doubtless filled with the same agonizing question, raised my palm to his lips.

  Inside the doorway, a pair of jailors awaited me. Assuming they were taking me to Goujon, I willed a curtain of numbness. I’ll procure us another day of happiness, I thought, following one of the armed men as closely as his partner followed me.

  We echoed through empty halls of the Palais de Justice. A guard opened one of the numbered doors. “Inside,” he said.

  I found myself standing behind a waist-high wall of varnished fruitwood. On a low dais opposite me sat the Tribunal, five men in
plumed hats.

  I’d conferred with no lawyer, there was no public prosecutor, no jury. The stenographer was a narrow-shouldered rabbit of a man. The candle that shadowed him and threw elongated replicas of plumed hats onto the walls.

  The President of the Tribunal asked was I the Comtesse de Créqui?

  I was.

  Had I committed the crime of grieving for my traitor husband?

  I had. As had soldiers who had served under him.

  The last was irrelevant. The stenographer was not to record it. Had I emigrated?

  Yes. To England.

  Therefore the charges against me were correct?

  The charges were correct.

  They leaned toward one another. The flame danced and shadows moved wildly, enormous. Fingers were raised, and this, I knew, was the prison signal that meant death.

  The President rose and in a tone of bored weariness said, “According to Article One of the First Chapter of the Penal Code, you are condemned to death in the Place de la Révolution. Long live the Republic.”

  The darkness closed around me, and I grasped varnished wood. I was stunned. There is no logical explanation for my absolute surprise. Since Goujon had ordered the soldiers to take me to the concierge, I’d known I would die. Indeed, I intended to die with André. All day the shadow of death had hung over him and me, and the witty, malicious, brave prisoners.

  Yet knowledge of the sentence and hearing a hasty disinterested voice say the words are two entirely different matters. The men at the long table stood, one casually raising his hat to scratch his head, another pulling on a tiered greatcoat, the rabbity stenographer shuffling together his papers. Dots jumped before my eyes, and all at once I was falling. One of the guards gripped me around the waist.

  “Is she all right?” asked one of the Tribunal, querulous.

  “We best let her sit a minute, Citizens.”

  “A minute, no more,” replied the querulous voice. “Deputy Goujon wants to question her on behalf of the Executive Council.”

  A chair grated. Hands lingered on my torso as my shoulders were eased forward and my head was bent between my knees. And then I was being led down endless corridors and up a circular staircase to the room where I’d been with Goujon.

  There was the smell of ripe winter pears. Goujon, sitting by the coal fire, rose, facing us.

  “Wait outside,” he ordered the jailors. “I’ll call when I’m finished.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I leaned against the scarred table, my every muscle trembling. “They took me before the Tribunal,” I said with dull astonishment. “They sentenced me to death.”

  “I sought to avoid this,” he said.

  “You had me arrested.”

  “Only after you made it inevitable,” he replied with complete and honest regret.

  After a second or two I asked, “They usually order the execution within twenty-four hours. No time was set.”

  “Yours is a special case.”

  “Why?” I asked without curiosity, gazing down at my hands. They trembled.

  “Because of the public testimony you gave for the Duc de la Concorde.”

  “Oh.”

  “The time and day will be set by the Executive Council.”

  “That means you?”

  “In part,” he said.

  “May I go with André?”

  “It’s already been decided. Yes.”

  “What day?”

  “I told you last night. As long as it’s in my power to stave it off.” He leaned toward me. “In this case, you see, a postponement will help rouse the crowd.”

  My muscles still quivered, yet I had no real interest in our conversation, beyond a peculiar numb satisfaction that André and I would die together. Goujon and I were speaking in the same conversational tone we might have used to discuss going to a café.

  “I brought you some pears.”

  I’d noted as I came in a small mound of ripe fruit on the table behind me. “Thank you.”

  “You can eat them later,” he said. At the word later, his voice deepened, coming like a growl from his throat.

  He crossed the room in two strides.

  As the night before, he undressed me, keeping on his own clothes: this time, however, rather than using the table, he pushed me on the floor, his great, bull-like body pounding mine into the boards until my muscles were pulp and my very bones ached. Afterward, he rose to sit in the chair. I pushed up with quivering arms.

  “No, stay there,” he ordered. He’d unfastened his shirt band. His massive neck glinted with sweat, and firelight burnished the coarse, damp hairs of his chest. “You’re exquisite,” he said. “Manon, as long as I live, two things I’ll never forget. The way you fought for the idiot’s life at the Bastille. And this.”

  As I lay on the floor a weak self-hatred rose like vomit through me. I wore only the fine chain with two rings, the Comte’s ruby band, André’s initialed gold. They burned into me. How could I permit Goujon to degrade me? Even at the price he paid?

  “May I get up?” I asked in a cold tone.

  “Not yet. I like looking at you.”

  Raging inwardly, I lay in the fire’s warmth, my eyes tight shut. Yet I sensed his eyes on me. Squirming, I covered myself with my hands.

  The modesty must have aroused him. He was again on me, and though I acquiesced, the act was as brutal as rape, more battering. He had to help me up. Then, gentle as a child’s nurse, he handed me bits of my clothing.

  And the odd part was, I knew his kindness to be as genuine as his brutality.

  His huge hands tied a petticoat string. “You’re wondering how I can let you die, and yet still be good to you?”

  Good to me? Did he mean this kindness? No. The smile in his bearded face was explicitly sensual. He must imagine the shattering effect on me of his brutal joining meant I enjoyed his famed “virility.” Good? I shuddered.

  “Manon,” he was saying, “a revolution is like farming. One has to be tender enough to nurture the yearlings and yet strong enough to slaughter the useless animals.”

  “If some more extreme group comes to power, mightn’t you be … useless?”

  “Possibly,” he said, handing me my dress. “I’ll accept what serves the Republic.”

  His reply, utterly sincere, darted me with shame. He’d dedicated himself completely to a cause. I knew I couldn’t lay down my life for anything other than sweet and mortal flesh, and this lack of philosophy seemed as weak as permitting him to rape me.

  He touched my breasts, trailing his hand down my open bodice. “We have at least two more nights,” he said.

  That means two more days, I thought as the jailors led me through the maze of locked doors and guarded corridors. I tottered past the candlelit table and fell, breathing audibly, on my cot. The ladies of a vanished Court brought me water to sip, pressing damp rags on my neck, murmuring sympathy. On my part, I told them I’d been sentenced and then questioned by the Executive Council. I could smell Goujon’s sweat on me.

  Three evenings later, after another session with him, I lay on my cot, shaking and filled with a killing rage at myself for doing what I must to stay alive, to keep André alive. The soft voices were muted by the pattering of rain. It had drizzled most of the afternoon, yet André and I, as well as several other amorous couples, had remained at the fence, holding tight to the sliding hours of our lives.

  Wincing, I rolled over and clutched a dampened, scented kerchief to my throbbing forehead. When, I wondered, would my searching heart be able to accept death? I knew the answer. Never.

  Some deep fountain of willful life bubbled within me. I could neither ignore death, as these aristocrats reared in formally rigid etiquette managed to do, nor could I find true Christian resignation in dreams of the hereafter. Every fiber of my being clung to the transitory flesh. Every beat of my rebellious heart affirmed the sweetness and pain that is life—and love. Those hours with André’ in the grim courtyard were everything. I knew
I would keep to the bargain I’d struck with Goujon.

  Far away, the grated door creaked open. I didn’t glance up.

  “A visitor,” called the guard’s voice. “Prisoner de Créqui!”

  Wondering who it was, I pushed up, making my slow way between cots to the lit table.

  With an escort of two soldiers was Sir Robert. The shoulders of his greatcoat were dark with rain, as was the three-cornered gray hat he held. His cheeks glowed, red as an apple.

  As I entered the circle of golden light, he beamed, his smile quickly fading. “Comtesse—Manon, what is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I replied. “Nothing at all.”

  “What have they done to you?” he demanded.

  The Duchess de Gramont replied for me, “The Executive Council has been, questioning the Comtesse. ’Tis rather distressing to be questioned, and most wearying.” Her voice was serene. She was stately in her violet gown—like any lady here who could, she adhered faithfully to the Court routine of three daily changes of costume.

  Sir Robert blazed, “By God! Manon, if they’ve been torturing—”

  “They haven’t,” I interrupted. “Would they dare? They know they’d have account to you. Ah, Sir Robert, how good it is to see you.” I embraced him. His bright cheeks were cool and damp from night rain.

  The ladies clustered tactfully at the far end of the table; however, both soldiers and two jailors stood breathing over us, on the lookout for notes that might be passed, for remarks that smacked of escape plots.

  Sir Robert sat facing me across the table. “Jove, what a foul state of affairs! The felons on the outside, the decent people inside!” He used English.

  “No speaking gibberish,” a soldier ordered, but not unkindly.

  Sir Robert said in French, “You’ve been weeping.”

  “It’s this place. Did you know I’ve been sentenced?”

  His hearty face moved close to mine. He smelled, faintly, of roast beef and sherry. “There, Manon, there.” He spoke with appropriate mournful sympathy, yet there was that glint of adventure in his Saxon blue eyes. “Izette sends word to cheer you. She said to remind you of that night you and she and Deputy Goujon and I had a dashed jolly time discussing her job.”