At last I was putting my training into action. I became like a wraith in the night, keeping her just in sight, silently tracking her as she used the light of the moon to navigate her way along the lawn and to the perimeter of the sports fields.
They were an open expanse, and I scowled for a moment – then did what my mother and Mr Weatherall had always taught me to do. I assessed the situation. Madame Levene with the light of the moon behind her – her old bespectacled eyes versus my young ones. I decided to stay behind her, keeping her in the distance, so that she was little more than a shadow ahead of me. I saw the moonlight glint on her spectacles as she turned to check she wasn’t being followed, and I froze, became part of the night and prayed my calculations had been correct.
They were. The witch kept on going until she reached the treeline and was swallowed up the harsh shapes of tree trunks and undergrowth. I sped up and followed her, finding the same path she’d taken, which cut through the woods, and became a ghost. The route reminded me of years spent taking a similar track to see Mr Weatherall. A track that used to end with my protector perched waiting on his tree stump, smiling, unburdened then by the weight of my mother’s death.
I’d never smelt wine on his breath back then.
I banished the memory as ahead of us I saw the small groundsman’s lodge and realized where she was heading. I drew to halt and from my position behind a tree watched as she knocked gently and the door was opened. I heard her say, ‘I couldn’t wait to see you,’ and there was the distinct sound of a kiss – a kiss – and then she disappeared inside, the door closing behind her.
So this was her lover in the woods. Jacques the groundsman, of whom I knew little other than what I’d seen as he attended to his duties in the middle distance. One thing I did know was that he was much younger than Madame Levene. What a dark horse she was.
I returned knowing the rumours were true. And, unfortunately for her, not only was I the one in possession of that information, but I was not above using it to get what I wanted from her. Indeed, that was precisely what I intended to do.
25 January 1788
Just after lunch, Judith came to see me. The very same Judith from whom I’d heard the rumour about Madame Levene’s lover. Neither one of my enemies nor my admirers, Judith held her face impassive as she delivered the news that the headmistress wanted to see me in her office right away, in order to talk about the theft of a horseshoe from above the dormitory door.
I made my face grave as if to say, ‘Oh God, not again. When will this torture ever end?’, when in fact I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Madame Levene was playing right into my hands. Handed to me on a plate was a golden opportunity to give her the good news that I knew all about her lover, Jacques, because while she thought she was going to cane me for stealing the dormitory’s lucky horseshoe, in actual fact I’d be leaving not with the usual smarting palm and a seething sense of injustice, but with a letter for my father. A letter in which Madame Levene informed him that his daughter Élise was to be leaving for individual English tuition in … guess.
If all went to plan, that was.
At her door I knocked smartly, entered and then, with my shoulders flung back and my chin inclined, strode across her office to where she sat before the window and dropped the horseshoe to her desk.
There was a moment of silence. Those beady eyes fixed on the unwelcome bit of rusted iron on her desk then rose to meet mine, but instead of the usual look of disdain and barely masked hatred, there was something else there – some unreadable emotion I’d never seen in her before.
‘Ah,’ she said, a slight tremor in her voice, ‘very good. You have returned the stolen horseshoe.’
‘That’s what you wanted to see me about, wasn’t it?’ I said carefully, less sure of myself all of a sudden.
‘That was what I told Judith I wanted to see you about, yes.’ She reached beneath her desk and I heard the sound of a drawer scraping open, and she added, ‘But there was another reason.’
I felt a chill and hardly dared speak. ‘And what was that, madame?’
‘This,’ she said, placing something on the desk in front of her.
It was my journal. I felt my eyes widen and was suddenly short of breath, my fists flexing.
‘You …’ I tried, but could not finish. You …’
She levelled a trembling bony finger at me and her eyes blazed as her voice rose, her anger matching mine. ‘Don’t come the victim with me, young lady. Not after what I’ve read.’ The pointing finger jabbed at the cover of my journal. Inside it were my most private thoughts. It had been taken from its hiding place beneath my mattress and pored over by my hated enemy.
My temper began to rise. I fought to control my breathing and my shoulders rose and fell, fists still clenching and unclenching.
‘How … how much did you read?’ I managed.
‘Enough to know you were planning to blackmail me,’ she said tersely. ‘No more, no less.’
Even in the heat of my anger I couldn’t miss the irony. We were both caught – hoisted halfway between shame at our own actions and outrage at what had been done to us. Myself, I felt a potent brew of fury, guilt and sheer hatred, and in my mind formed the image of me diving across the desk at her, hands fixing round her neck as her eyes bulged behind her round spectacles …
Instead, I simply stared at her, barely able to comprehend what was happening. How could you?’
‘Because I saw you, Élise de la Serre. I saw you creeping around outside the cottage the other night. I saw you spying on me and Jacques. And so I thought, not unreasonably, that your journal might illuminate me as to your intentions. Do you deny that you intended to blackmail me, de la Serre?’ Her colour rose. ‘Blackmail the headmistress of the school?’
But our fury was at cross-purposes.
‘Reading my journal is unforgivable,’ I raged.
Her voice rose. ‘What you planned to do was unforgivable. Blackmail.’ She spat the word as though as she couldn’t quite believe it. As though she had never even encountered the concept before.
I bridled. ‘I meant you no harm. It was a means to an end.’
‘I dare say you relished the prospect of it, Élise de la Serre.’ She brandished my journal. ‘I’ve read exactly what you think of me. Your hatred – no, worse, your contempt – for me pours off every page.’
I shrugged. ‘Does that surprise you? After all, don’t you hate me?’
‘Oh, you stupid girl,’ she said furiously, ‘of course I don’t hate you. I’m your headmistress. I want what’s best for you. And, for your information, I don’t listen at doors either.’
I gave her a doubtful look. ‘You seemed gleeful enough when it came to the thought of my impending punishment.’
Her eyes dropped. ‘In the heat of the moment we all say things we shouldn’t, and I regretted that remark. But the fact is, while you’re by no means my favourite person in the world, I’m your headmistress. Your guardian. And you, in particular, came to me a damaged girl, fresh from the loss of her mother. You, in particular, needed special attention. Oh, yes, my attempts to help have taken the form of a battle of wills, and I suppose that’s hardly surprising, and, yes, I suppose the fact you think I hate you is to be expected – or was, when you were younger and first arrived here. But you’re a young lady now, Élise, you should know better. I read no more of your journal than I needed to in order to establish your guilt, but I read enough to know that your future lies in a different direction to that of the majority of the pupils here, and for that I’m pleased. Nobody with your spirit should settle down to a life of domesticity.’
I started, hardly able to believe what I was hearing, and she soaked it up before continuing, her voice softer. ‘And now we find ourselves at a difficult juncture, for we have both done something terrible and we both have something the other wants. From you I want silence about what you saw; from me you want a letter to your father.’ She passed the journal across the table to me. ‘I’m go
ing to give you your letter. I’m going to lie for you. I’m going to tell him that you will be spending part of your final year in London so that you can do what it is you need to do, and when you have exorcized whatever it is that compels you to go, I trust it will be a different Élise de la Serre who returns to me. One who has held on to the spirit of the little girl but abandoned the hot-headed juvenile.’
The letter would be with me by the afternoon, she said and I stood to leave, feeling mollified, shame making my head heavy. As I reached the door she stopped me. ‘One more thing, Élise. Jacques isn’t my lover. He’s my son.’
I don’t think Mother would be very proud of me just now.
7 February 1788
i.
I am a long way from Saint-Cyr now. And after a fairly tumultuous last two days I write this entry in …
Well, no. Let’s not give anything away just yet. Let’s go back to when I took my carriage away from the dreaded Le Palais de la Misère, when there was no backwards glance, no friends to bid me Bon voyage and certainly no Madame Levene standing at the window waving her handkerchief. There was just me in a carriage and my trunk lashed to the top.
‘We’re here,’ the coachman said when we arrived at the docks in Calais. It was late and the sea was a dark, undulating shimmer beyond the cobbles of the harbour and the bobbing masts of moored ships. Above us, squawking gulls, and around us, the people of the docks staggering from tavern to tavern – the night in full swing, a rowdy hubbub in the air. My coachman took disapproving looks left and right then stood on the running board to free my trunk before laying it on the cobbles of the dockside. He opened my door and his eyes boggled. I was not the same girl he’d picked up.
Why? Because during the journey I’d changed. Off had come the accursed dress and I now wore breeches, a shirt, a waistcoat and a frock coat. I’d cast aside the dreaded bonnet, unpinned my hair and tied it back. And now, as I stepped out of the carriage, I plonked my tricorn on my head, bent to my trunk and opened it, all under the speechless gaze of the coachman. My trunk was full of the clothes I hated and trinkets I planned to throw away anyway. All I needed was in my satchel – that and the short sword that I pulled from the trunk’s depths and tied round my waist, allowing my satchel to fall over it so it was hidden.
‘You can keep the trunk, if you like,’ I said. From my waistcoat I took a small leather purse and proffered coins.
‘Who’s here to escort you then?’ he said, pocketing them as he looked around, scowling at the night-time revellers making their way along the dockside.
‘Nobody.’
He looked askance at me. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’
‘No, why would it be?’
‘You can’t be roaming the docks on your own at this hour.’
I dropped another coin into his palm. He looked at it.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I can’t allow it, I’m afraid.’
I dropped another coin into his palm.
‘All right then,’ he acquiesced. ‘On your own head be it. Just steer clear of the taverns and stay near the lantern light. Watch the docks, they’re high and uneven, and many an unfortunate has fallen off them from getting too close for a peek over the edge. And don’t catch anybody’s eye. Oh, and whatever you do, keep that purse hidden.’
I smiled sweetly, knowing I intended to take all of his advice apart from the bit about the taverns, because the taverns were exactly where I wanted to be. I watched the carriage draw away, then headed straight to the nearest one.
The first one I came to had no name, but hanging above a set of windows was a wooden sign on which was a pair of crudely drawn antlers, so let’s call it the Antlers. As I stood on the cobbles gathering the courage to go inside, the door opened, allowing a blast of warm air, exuberant piano and the stink of ale to escape, as well as a man and a woman, rosy-cheeked and unsteady on their feet, each holding the other up. In the instant of the open door I got a glimpse of the tavern inside, and it was like staring into a furnace before the door shut quickly and then it was quiet on the dockside once more, the noise from inside the Antlers reduced to a background babble.
I braced myself. All right, Élise. You wanted to get away from that prim and proper school, the rules and regulations you hated. On the other side of that door lies the exact opposite to school. The question is: are you really as tough as you think you are?
(The answer, I was about to find out, was no.)
Entering was like walking into a new world fashioned entirely from smoke and noise. The sound of raucous laughter, squawking birds, the piano and drunken singing assaulted my ears.
It was a small room, with a balcony at one end and birdcages hanging from beams, and it was packed with drinkers. Men lounged at tables or on the floor and the balcony seemed to heave with people craning over to heckle revellers below. I stayed by the door, lingering in the shadows. Drinkers nearby eyed me with interest, and I heard a wolf whistle cut through the din, then caught the eye of a serving woman in an apron, who turned from setting down two jugs of ale on a table, the ale thankfully arresting the attention of the men sitting there.
‘I’m looking for the captain of a ship leaving for London in the morning,’ I said loudly.
She wiped her hands on her apron and rolled her eyes. ‘Any particular captain? Any particular ship?’
I shook my head. It didn’t matter.
She nodded, looking me up and down. ‘See that table at the back there?’ I squinted through the ropes of smoke and capering bodies to a table in the far corner. ‘Go up back, speak to the one they call Middle Man. Tell him Clémence sent you.’
I looked harder, seeing three men sitting with their backs to the far wall, curtains of smoke giving them the look of ghosts, like returning spirit-drinkers, cursed to haunt the tavern for ever more.
‘Which one is Middle Man?’ I asked Clémence.
She smirked as she moved off. ‘He’s the one in the middle.’
Feeling exposed I began to make my way towards Middle Man and his two friends. Faces were upturned as I threaded through the tables.
‘Now that’s a very fetching little one to be in a place like this,’ I heard, as well as a couple of other more near-the-knuckle suggestions that modesty forbids me sharing. Thank God for the smoke and gloom and noise and the overall state of drunkenness that hung over the place. It meant that only those nearest to me paid me any interest.
I came to the three spirit-men and stood before the table where they sat facing the room with tankards close at hand, dragging their gaze away from the festivities and to me. Whereas others had leered or pulled faces or made lewd drunken suggestions, they simply stared appraisingly. Middle Man, smaller than his two companions, gazed past me and I turned in time to catch a glimpse of the grinning serving woman as she slid away.
Uh-oh. All of a sudden I was conscious of how far away I was from the door. Here in the depths of the tavern it was even darker. The drinkers behind me seemed to have closed in on me. The flames from a fire flickered on the walls and the faces of the three men watching me. I thought of my mother’s advice, and wondered what Mr Weatherall would say. Stay impassive but watchful. Assess the situation. (And ignore that nagging feeling that you should have done all that before entering the tavern.)
‘And what’s a fine-dressed young woman doing all by herself in a place like this?’ said the man in the middle. Unsmiling he fished a long-stemmed pipe from his breast pocket and fitted it into a gap between his crooked, blackened teeth, chomping on it with a pink gum.
‘I was told you might be able to help me find the captain of a ship,’ I said.
‘And what might you be wanting a captain for?’
‘For passage to London.’
‘To London?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You mean to Dover?’
I felt my colour rise, swallowed my stupidity. ‘Of course,’ I said.
Middle Man’s eyes danced with amusement. ‘And you need a captain
for this trip, do you?’
‘Quite.’
‘Well, why don’t you just take the packet?’
The out-of-depth feeling had returned. ‘The packet?’
Middle Man suppressed a smirk. ‘Never mind, girl. Where you from?’
Somebody jostled me rudely from behind. I shoved back with my shoulder and heard a drunk rebound to a nearby table, spilling drinks and being roundly cursed for his pains, before folding to the floor.
‘From Paris,’ I told Middle Man.
‘Paris, eh?’ He took the pipe from his mouth and a rope of drool dropped to the tabletop as he used it as a pointer. ‘From one of the more salubrious areas of town, though, I’ll be bound, just to look at you, I mean.’
I said nothing.
The pipe was returned. The pink gum chomped down. ‘What’s your name, girl?’
‘Élise,’ I told him.
‘No second name?’
I made a non-committal expression.
‘Could it be that I might recognize your surname?’
‘I value my privacy, that’s all.’
He nodded some more. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think I can find you a captain to speak to. Matter of fact, me and my friends were just on our way to meet this particular gentleman for an ale or two. Why don’t you join us?’
He made as if to stand …
This was all wrong. I tensed, aware of the clamour around me, jostled by drinkers and yet, somehow, completely isolated, then gave a small bow without taking my eyes from theirs. ‘I thank you for your time, gentlemen, but I’ve had second thoughts.’
Middle Man looked taken aback and his lips cracked in a smile, revealing more graveyard teeth. This was what a minnow saw – seconds before it was devoured by a shark.
‘Second thoughts, eh?’ he said with a sidelong look left and right at his two bigger companions. ‘How do you mean? Like you’ve decided you don’t want to go to London no more? Or is it that me and my friends don’t look sufficiently seafaring for your liking?’
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