The General's Mistress

by Jo Graham

  The King of Chalices looked up at me, his red hair garish on the printed paper, a golden cup in his hand. Behind him was the sea, and in his other hand was a sword ornamented with pearls.

  “A red-haired man,” Louisa said.

  “Quick in emotion, in anger or love,” I said, peering at the picture carefully, the storm waves tossing behind him. I felt distinctly odd. “That’s what the waves mean. Generous and dangerous too.”

  I flipped the second card over. “Fortune’s Wheel,” I said. “See, Louisa? How the poor souls bound to the wheel go up to fame and riches and then tumble down to the grave, only to go around again?”

  “That doesn’t look very nice,” Louisa said. “Do you think your fortunes will tumble? Does your husband have any risky financial transactions?”

  I shrugged again. “Not that I know of. But with the revolution in France and all, even kings are going to the guillotine. And peasants are coming up.” My eyes ran over the wheel. Up, up, up on the wheel of fortune to the dizzying pinnacle, and then suddenly tumbling over. Over and over, up and down, cradle to grave.

  “Elzelina?” Louisa touched my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” I said. I felt odd, as if the pictures were drawing me into them, unnaturally bright. I smiled at Louisa reassuringly. “I’m fine.” I turned the last card over.

  An emperor rode in triumph in a chariot, his hair wreathed in victory, his arms extended, holding the reins. One black horse and one white horse drew the chariot, fine, prancing steeds, but they pulled in different directions, the black one stamping at the ground. Only the Emperor’s strength kept them yoked together. Behind him the artist had suggested the slave at his shoulder, the one whose task it was to whisper that all glory is fleeting.

  “The Chariot,” I said. “That’s why. The wind through the world. It’s starting again. It’s already started.”

  “What are you talking about?” Louisa said.

  . . . A pyre on a beach, the flames rising to the sky, a prince of a people who were no more, his face washed in firelight.

  A pyre glittering with gilded ornament and bright with silks beginning to smolder while elephants trumpeted and incense fumed, the smoke rolling over his body beneath its magnificent pall, his eyes weighted with coins, long red hair swept back from a face that was still young.

  A red-haired girl turning suddenly, her face lit by flaring torches, illuminating the pale lines of her throat and her old black velvet dress—

  Louisa’s hand on my wrist. “Elzelina? Are you all right? I think we’d better put the cards away.”

  I focused on her face. It was real and close, concerned blue eyes, skin a little blotchy along her chin. “Yes,” I said. “I think we’d better. I’m sorry. I just felt a little faint for a moment.”

  I scooped the cards together and put them in the box without looking at them. I should have been frightened, but I wasn’t. I wanted to touch them again. I wanted to see. “Would you mind if I kept these for a while, Louisa?”

  She shrugged, though she still looked at me a little strangely. “Not at all.”

  I went back to my room. Mother was asleep in hers. She would never wake, not with her laudanum every night.

  I lit one candle and took off my shoes and stockings, garters and all. I unfastened my dress, removed it, and hung it neatly. The stays were next, and then my chemise. In the candlelight, the body in the glass certainly did not belong to Charles. Honey-blond hair fell over my shoulders, not quite covering white breasts, rose-tipped and soft. My thighs were long and muscled, my stomach rounding forward just a little over a mound of Venus covered in gold curls. One hand rose, traced the circle of my navel. I traced it with my finger, round and round. My hand slid lower, entangled in soft hair. I bit my lip.

  Abruptly, I turned from the mirror and opened the box, shaking out the cards onto my white bed. Gold and scarlet, garish blues and greens, falling like leaves. Crossed swords entwined with roses. Cups ranged in rows. The golden sun shining over boy and girl twins who stood together hand in hand. A tower fell and the sea lapped about it.

  I threw myself on top of them. The soft paper crinkled under my weight. I shook the covers, and the cards fell around me like blossoms.

  “Tell me,” I whispered, but I did not know what question I was asking.

  The World of Men

  After two weeks at the spa, I returned home. My husband had secured an appointment in Lille that he thought would advance his career, and of course I traveled with him to take it up.

  “Do you mean to send for the children?” I asked.

  Jan shrugged. “There is no need. My mother is with them.”

  “When did your mother arrive?” I asked between gritted teeth. This was the first I’d heard of it.

  “A few days after we left.” He shrugged and spurred up to the front, ostensibly to talk with our coachman.

  I was sure he had arranged her arrival so that he might avoid telling me that she was coming. And once again the children were left behind. Which I supposed was for the best, for what would we do with them if they were there? The travel and the new house would be unpleasant for them, would disrupt Klaas, who hated such things, and really there was no point.

  Lille in the fall was lovely. The weather was agreeable and warm, but it was cold enough at night that all the trees turned brilliant colors. It was quite dry, and I could ride every day in the parks, leaving home before sunrise and galloping through the first light of morning before others were about.

  The second week in November, we were invited to a dinner party at the house of the French minister, a man named Legros who had somehow managed to keep his footing despite all the changes of government in the last two years.

  Since the storming of the Bastille in Paris six years ago, France had gone through one tumult after another, government after government rising and falling. There had been the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre and other radical leaders of the Revolution, who had put the king and queen to death before their own fall and execution. Now there was a new government in place, less than two months old, the Directory, in which two houses of representatives elected five men to hold executive power. How that would fare we did not know, but it could scarcely be worse than the Committee of Public Safety. Overall, more than thirty thousand people in France had died in the Terror.

  Half the world was at war with France since they had done away with monarchy, but in Holland we were France’s allies—their only allies except the United States, but that little republic was too weak and too far away to be of any importance. Our new revolutionary government had replaced the autocratic rule of the Prince of Orange and enjoyed wide popular support. Our new leaders were to be elected, and the first written constitution we had ever had was in the works, promising a national assembly that would govern with the consent of the people. My husband hoped to be among its members when it convened in a few months. However, achieving that required a great deal of playing politics, because though he spent freely from my dowry, he was not particularly distinguished as a jurist. In fact, he had not gained any notability at all on his own merits.

  For the dinner party I wore a dress that my new dressmaker in Lille had sworn was the latest style from France, a white gown with no panniers or frame at all, with nothing beneath it but a soft corset and a chemise. While it certainly covered everything my older clothes had, it was so much lighter that, standing in front of the mirror, I bobbed and swooped like a little girl. I could move my legs! I was in no danger of falling over! The little flat slippers that went with it were nothing but thin leather drawn together and embroidered. I could have climbed trees or ladders in those shoes. I could run.

  My maid put my hair up in the newest fashion, two gentle knots at the back of my neck, a tendril on each side escaping and curled with an iron to cascade over my shoulder in artful disarrangement à la Lucréce.

  I went down and met Jan, who characteristically had nothing to say except on the subject of
politics.

  “I am going to talk with Citizen Legros,” he said. “Pray be charming and keep others entertained who might have the same idea.”

  “I will,” I said, “as much as the seating arrangements will allow. If I’m half the table away from you again, there won’t be much I can do.”

  And of course, I was. Jan was up at the top of the table to the left of our hostess, with Legros opposite. I was two-thirds of the way down, next to our host’s son, among the younger, gayer people who reigned supreme at that end of the table. Our host’s son was much taken with the girl to his left, and spent all of dinner leaning into her plate and giving her pretty compliments in a low voice. The man to my right was a Dutch Reformed minister who did not talk much but applied himself to every course with great enthusiasm. I wondered if my décolletage was incommoding him.

  For conversation, this left me the man across and one down, a handsome Franconian officer named Colonel Meynier, who fulfilled his duty admirably. He was dark-haired and moustached, with his left arm prominently in a black sling pinned to his coat.

  “And how did you acquire your wound, Colonel?” I asked, helping him to the salt during the game course.

  “I am much obliged, Madame,” he said. “It was a trifle, and hardly bears repeating. My arm was broken when I was kicked by a horse at Strelnitz. It was not an affair of honor.”

  “If it were, I am sure you would acquit yourself admirably,” I said. He, at least, seemed to appreciate my décolletage.

  “I should do so for you, Madame,” he said, laughing. “But I fear I am but a pale shade of gallantry compared to the French officers with whom I have the pleasure of serving.” He nodded to the young hussar down the table, who returned the salute in kind. “There are some whose exploits rival the Paladins of Charlemagne.”

  “Surely you give the gentlemen too much credit,” I said. “While I am sure they are gallant indeed, your approbation suggests endeavors of an extraordinary kind, such as are never seen in this late and fallen world.”

  “Fallen, Madame?” he queried, lifting his glass.

  “Say, rather, modern,” I amended. “The modern world does not lend itself to poetry. We are no longer allowed to be numinous beings, but rather products of reason. Or so I am told.”

  “You sound like my friend Ney,” Meynier said. “I have a letter from him here, and he tells of his endeavors firsthand.”

  “You have letters?” interjected the minister to my right. “Why did you not say so before? We are all starved for news.”

  “Yes,” agreed the young lady beside our host’s son. “Please, may we prevail upon you to read them aloud?”

  “The papers are sporadic in their reporting and boring in the extreme,” our host’s son said.

  Meynier fished a packet out of his coat pocket with some little straining and opened it. “Some of it is quite dull, I assure you.”

  “Pray go on,” the minister said. “If it is from the front, we want to hear it.”

  Meynier shrugged. “Very well then.” He cleared his throat.

  “‘Written at Bamberg, this twenty-sixth of August or, as I must style it, 9 Fructidor of the Year III. I can never keep it straight, my dear Meynier. Can anyone?’”

  There was a general laugh around the table.

  Meynier smiled and resumed. “‘It is, as you know, a pretty town, well situated and not damaged by our latest clashes of arms. A damned good thing, too. It’s good to be somewhere peaceful, where there is no stench of blood. Of course, now there is the stench of our latrines—’” He stopped. “Your pardon, Mesdames. I shall skip the part about the latrines.

  “‘. . . You’ll be glad to know that I did manage to purchase a suitable remount. He’s a fine bay stallion three years old, with a white blaze and white stockings on his forefeet. I have named him Eleazar ben Yair, after that wily rebel of Josephus’s who led the Romans such a chase. He certainly seems clever enough, and like enough to take the arm off any groom who mistreats him. He’s large and heavy, but still light on his feet, which is my preference in a horse. And clever enough that if I lack for partners, I shall teach him to play chess.’”

  This drew an appreciative laugh from the listeners.

  “‘We do not lack provision. Which is one advantage of billeting in unspoiled land. We are purchasing our supplies rather than taking them outright in order that we shall engender respect among the populace, who have no particular love for the Austrians. I am endeavoring to demonstrate that the Devil’s Frenchmen have no horns—at least not on their heads—’” Meynier stopped, coloring. “I beg your pardon, Madame. I believe that’s the essence of the letter.”

  Our host’s son leaned forward. “A wit, but not a hero,” he said. “I do not see this conspicuous gallantry you spoke of.”

  “You should have seen him at Mainz,” Meynier said. “The French and a few allies, such as my humble self, were supposed to take the town. Now, as you may know, Mainz is defended by a star of fortifications, and we were mostly composed of cavalry. Which is not a good situation in the least. I was detailed, with the rest of the allied infantry, to make a skirmish at the outer ring of defenses. My friend Colonel Ney and his cavalry were then to cross into the rear of the defenders while they were occupied with us, and come upon them from the rear. A neat and tidy plan.”

  “Indeed,” the minister said, taking a long gulp of his wine.

  Meynier leaned forward. “Only there was a problem. There was a long ditch that ran behind them, fully five feet deep and as wide. A cavalry trap, they call it. Ney’s men ran upon it, and their horses refused the jump. I hear a shout, and here’s Ney, the only one across, his horse prancing right on the edge of the ditch, yelling for them to come on and jump! So of course the Austrians all wheel about from where I have them engaged, and there he sits all by himself on their side of the ditch. He hadn’t room to get his horse up to speed to jump back, with just a dozen feet between him and them on this side. So he looks at me, gives me half a smile, draws his saber and touches his spurs, and wades straight into them. And I give a yell and we all charge in, because now we’re in their rear. It was a hot little quarrel, let me tell you! When he finally gets through to us and we to him, he’s letting the horse do the steering and he’s got his saber in his left hand because he’s shot through the right arm. It was bleeding dreadfully by the time we got back to the lines. Broken clean through the upper arm. Then he had lockjaw, and it looked like the arm would have to come off.”

  “Did it?” I asked.

  Meynier looked at my white face, and I suppose he thought he was shocking me. His face softened. “No, Madame. He came through it. He’s got an iron constitution to go with that red hair of his.”

  “How very brave!” the young girl said.

  Meynier laughed. “He’s that. And there’s more than one kind of courage in France these days.” He dropped his voice so it was not audible above the conversation at the other end of the table. “Let me tell you about the two priests.”

  “Priests?” the minister said dryly.

  “You know we’ve standing orders that when we capture certain kinds of personages, they’re not to go with the other prisoners. Émigrés, foreigners, aristocrats, and priests are to be detained separately and sent to Paris for questioning.”

  I took a breath, lifting my chin and trying to shake the ice that had gripped me.

  “They go to the Conciergerie, or worse. And then to the guillotine.”

  “After questioning,” I said. My voice sounded perfectly normal.

  “Indeed, Madame,” he said, and did not meet my eyes. “But it came to the attention of several people last summer that we did not ever seem to capture any such persons. On one occasion, however, we did capture two priests. They were being held with the others, awaiting transport, when somehow they escaped. I went and told my friend Ney about this. He did not seem shocked, and said that it would be a waste of time to look for them, as the area was densely wooded. I saw through his
pretense immediately and remonstrated with him for allowing those Agents of Religion and Superstition to escape.

  “‘Meynier,’ he said, and looked at me sideways, ‘if we are the representatives of Liberty, we should remember it.’

  “I said nothing to him, Madame, for what should I say? At last I said, ‘We have our orders.’

  “‘So do I,’ he said, ‘from a source higher than the Committee of Public Safety.’

  “‘You mean God?’ I asked him.

  “Michel Ney laughed. ‘I don’t think God is quite on speaking terms with me,’ he said. ‘I mean my conscience. If we are Liberty, then we must act like it.’ He looked at me sideways again. ‘Some say I lack intelligence. Do you think me a fool, Meynier?’

  “‘No,’ I said truthfully, ‘I think you are something out of the age of chivalry.’”

  Those around the table laughed appreciatively. I did not. I was struck dumb. It was like looking across a maddened mob, where all is senseless motion, and suddenly meeting the eyes of a friend, as though I had suddenly stumbled out of madness into clarity.

  Michel Ney. My red-haired king from the tarot cards. I knew his name and I knew where he was, some little town in Franconia where he had a new horse and they were digging latrines. I could not think or breathe.

  “Michel Ney,” I said, trying his name on my tongue. He had red hair. He was a colonel in the French army. “Like a Paladin of Charlemagne.”

  Meynier nodded. “That is what I said. Are you well, Madame? You have gone white as a sheet. Perhaps all this talk of battles is too much for you?”

  “Where is he from?” I asked.

  “Saar-Louis. He is a Saarlaender. Madame, you are alarming me. Your face is white and your hands are shaking.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. I moved, and the wineglass tilted, spilling out on the linen. The footmen mopped it up while Meynier apologized.

  Jan caught me in the hall, Meynier at my elbow. “For God’s sake, Elzelina, I have a lot to do tonight.”