by Jo Graham
“Almost twenty-four,” he said. “I was born in Thermidor too.”
“You’re not too old for me,” she said. “Not if you wait.”
He did laugh then, and she thought it was a very nice laugh. “You’ll have forgotten all about me by then. Come on, little Victory. The people are starting to go into dinner, and your nurse will be looking for you.”
He helped her up. Or maybe she helped him up. After all, he had a bad arm. They went up the lawn to the party, Victory skipping a little to avoid the peacock shit. He stepped in it, but he didn’t notice and she didn’t tell him.
Her father came down and swooped her up. “Where are your shoes?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Victory shrugged. When she looked around the young man was gone. “Where did he go?” she asked.
“Where’s your nurse?” her father said. “You need some dinner too. And then it’s your bedtime. And how do you get such snarls in your hair?” He started trying to work a tangle out of her long dark curls.
“I don’t know,” Victory said. She looked after the young officer, but she didn’t see him anywhere. “I’m going to marry him,” she said.
It was ten years before she saw him again.
The ballroom of the Tuileries was hot and stuffy, even this early in the evening. The candles and the press of bodies made that inevitable. Victory carefully lifted her skirts as she climbed the stairs, trying not to trip. She had told her stepmother it was too long at the dressmaker's, but she'd insisted it was fine. Now Victory would spend all night trying not to fall on her face. If she ever got a dance, which wasn't terribly likely. This was only the second time she'd attended an Imperial ball, and the first time she hadn't danced at all, only stood around with Marianne, looking more and more stupid as the evening went on.
Victory knew she wasn't pretty. Golden girls with pink and white complexions were pretty, girls with large breasts and curving shoulders and décolletage that invited a second look. She was short and sallow, at barely sixteen still boyish and too thin, with lank brown hair that wouldn't take a curl no matter how much time she spent on it. She could singe her hair off with irons and it still wouldn't curl. The only feature she liked were her eyes, dark and smoky brown, fringed with long lashes, deep and (she hoped) mysterious. Unfortunately, anyone would have trouble seeing them, as the curls had already fallen out of her bangs and lay in a sodden mass across her forehead that she had to peep out under.
They were announced at the top of the stairs. Fortunately, no one would see her anyway, behind her father and stepmother and her older sister. At the bottom of the stairs her sister was claimed by her fiancé, and her stepmother was already making a beeline for Madame la Marechale Lannes, who had recently come out of mourning and could always be counted on to know everything.
Her father turned to her, one eyebrow raised.
"Don't you dare," Victory whispered urgently.
"All right then," he said, and gave her a wink as he headed off to join Marechal Berthier, who no doubt had something stronger than punch to drink.
There could be no fate worse than to be the kind of girl who doesn't get anyone to dance with her but her own father! It was better to sit it out, fanning oneself, looking like the kind of girl who was too exhausted from all her previous dances to dance this one.
Marianne was standing in the corner behind the punchbowl, an enormous painted fan held right up to her nose. Victory sidled over and joined her. "What's the matter with you?" she whispered. "That fan's eating you!"
Marianne dipped it momentarily, long enough for Victory to see the enormous spot on her chin, rendered more conspicuous by a vast quantity of powder and some sort of creamy concealer meant for someone with much darker skin.
"Oh no!" she whispered sympathetically.
"I wanted to stay home," Marianne replied, "But my father said I shouldn't act like a little fool, so here I am!"
"I'm so sorry!"
"If I just keep the fan here, maybe nobody will notice," Marianne said miserably.
Victory nodded, and refrained from saying; nobody will notice the huge spot on your chin because they'll be wondering why that crazy girl's hiding behind a fan. "I'll stand with you," Victory said. "Nobody's going to dance with me anyway, and we can look like sophisticated women who have much more interesting things to talk about than dancing."
Across the room, the pack of unmarried men were clustered around the buffet table instead of the punch bowl, their brilliant uniforms glittering with gold braid. A few pairs of tall boots gleamed.
"Aren't they supposed to be wearing evening shoes?" Victory said. Her father certainly was.
Marianne nodded. "Of course they are. But they wear boots to show they're cavalry. It's so much more romantic."
"Oh." Victory cocked her head at the gorgeous pelisses, the pants so tight they looked as though they might split, the velvet and gold lace. "We'd know that anyhow."
There was a burst of laughter from the group, and a smaller man stowed what looked like a flask in his breast pocket. "Onward, men!" he laughed. "If I dance with a debutante, we all have to!"
"Onward!" another agreed, and the whole pack of them came across the room, sizing girls up like so many horses on a picket line.
"Oh God!" Marianne moaned.
The man who had spoken stopped in front of her. "If I might have the honor, mademoiselle?"
Marianne cast a desperate look at Victory, and put her un-fanned hand in his. "Yes."
He blanched when he saw her chin and tried not to laugh. Which made Victory mad. She stood along the wall seething.
"If you would, mademoiselle?" A hand in an immaculate white glove had appeared in front of her.
She turned about and saw what was attached to it, an apparently infinite stretch of scarlet wool trimmed with gold braid, dolman laced across his chest, a scarlet pelisse thrown over his shoulder trimmed in fur, and above that, a very long way up, a pleasant enough face with olive skin and dark eyes. She looked down, which was a mistake, as his white pants were incredibly tight and outlined all of his masculine attributes to perfection.
He offered his hand again. "Mademoiselle?"
"Oh, yes," she said belatedly and let him pull her onto the dance floor.
They rounded the first turn without disaster. He mumbled something.
"What?" she shrieked as they went round again.
He looked at her and she thought there was something vaguely familiar about his face, as though they'd met before. "I said, it's unseasonably warm, don't you think?"
"Yes," Victory said.
Which carried them through the turn.
She should have begged off, said she had a headache or something. She should have known better. Now he would think she had fluff between her ears. Which was not at all the problem. In fact, it would be something of the solution. At school until last month, it had not been the problem at all. Even the headmistress, Madame Campan, who thought that girls should have an education, had been fairly appalled by Victory.
"The applications of higher mathematics in Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion are not a suitable subject of study for young ladies," she had said, "You are a debutante, not a scientist."
"Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion," she said.
Her escort blinked. "What about them?"
Victory shrugged. "Do you like them?"
He laughed, and the smile transformed his face from pleasant to really handsome. "I like them well enough. I don't think I can name them anymore. It's been a long time since I was in school." He nodded to the glitter of decorations on his chest, all the jewelry of an Imperial Aide de Camp. "I ran away from school to join the Army of the Republic a long time ago."
Victory put her head to the side. "Why?"
He blinked again, looking almost shy. "Do you really want to know?"
"Yes."
"So I wouldn't have to take a Latin exam," he said. "I knew I was going to do very badly and they'd write to my father, and I thought, if I just run away and
join the army, I won't have to take it!"
Victory laughed and pushed her bangs back with her free hand. "That's a good story. Were you good in school?"
He shrugged. "Not bad."
"Kepler or Copernicus?"
"Copernicus," he said. "The rings of Saturn are more fun."
"Goethe or Schiller?"
"Oh, Goethe of course," he said. "Doesn't everybody write poems about dying for love when they're seventeen?"
"Arthur or Charlemagne?"
"Arthur," he said decisively. "But not Lancelot."
"He's a later addition anyway," Victory said. "In The Year 2440 or Dangerous Liaisons?"
"Impossible." He shook his head. "Time travel or pornography? I can't make the choice."
"How about time travel with pornography?" Victory suggested. "Someone could write it."
"Someone could."
"Egypt or Rome?"
"Rome," he said, coming out of the last turn as the song ended. "I've never been to Egypt."
"You weren't on the Egyptian campaign then?"
They stood by the edge of the floor.
He shook his head. "I wasn't with Bonaparte's corps then. I wasn't with him in Italy either. I was in Genoa with Massena."
"Oh!" she said, and with a rush it came back to her — the summer day after Genoa, and the young officer under a tree reading her father's book, the one she had wanted to wait for her. She felt the blood rush to her face. But how would he know? She had been not quite six. The years between six and sixteen are nearly forever. Surely he wouldn't recognize her.
People were walking around them. He put his head to the side, a curiously intent expression on his face. "May I ask your name, Mademoiselle?"
"Victory," she said.
"That's all?"
She gave him a quick glance upward. "That's all."
"No last name?"
She grinned. "Do you think you've earned my last name?"
"What do I need to do to earn your last name?"
"You'll think of it," she said, and slipped between people, making her escape. She looked back over her shoulder, but he had not moved, still staring after her.
She regained Marianne at the wall behind the punchbowl. Marianne was fanning herself feverishly. "Oh my God."
"What?"
"I just made a total fool of myself. That man there? I asked him to marry me when I was six." Victory stuck her head behind her own fan.
Marianne looked toward the dance floor. "Well, it's been a long time," she said practically. "He probably doesn't remember."
"You don't think he will?"
"Probably not."
"I think his name is Honoré-Charles," she said, wracking her brain. "I think so."
Marianne nodded emphatically. "Oh yes. My mother made me memorize them all. General Honoré-Charles Reille, Aide de Camp to the Emperor himself. He's thirty four and a bachelor. He's not a baron yet, but I imagine it's only a matter of time before he's ennobled."
"Oh dear Lord," Victory said. "Jesus Christ on toast with bacon. I can't believe I made such a fool of myself."
"It was only a dance," Marianne said. "He's probably forgotten about you already."
Victory looked out from behind her fan.
He was easy to find, even in the crowd. Now he was standing by the buffet table with the small man who had danced with Marianne. They had been joined by an enormous man with sideburns and a long moustache, who had a silver flask quite openly in his hand. He offered it to Honoré, who drank and then passed it to the fourth member of their party. She took it, laughing, and Victory's stomach clinched. Her blonde hair was piled on top of her head and fell in charming ringlets, and her red velvet and brocade dress showed every curve. She must be thirty or so, but she put her hand on the small man's arm with graceful familiarity, tilting the flask back and drinking before she gave it back to its owner. He laughed, and said something that amused everyone in the group.
"Who are the others?" she hissed at Marianne.
"Let's see." Marianne flipped her fan and gazed over the top. "The man I was dancing with is Colonel Jean-Baptiste Corbineau. He's the younger brother of General Corbineau who was killed at Eylau. He's a bachelor too. The big man is General Baron Gervais Subervie. Married. Very married."
Victory looked at them again. Subervie had said something funny, and Honoré threw his arm about his shoulders, adding another line to the joke. The woman tossed her head, laughing, and not a single curl fell down.
"Who's the woman?"
Marianne dropped her voice. "We're not supposed to notice her! She's a courtesan!"
"Ohhhhhh."
"Her name is Ida St. Elme, and she used to go with General Moreau, and then she went with Marechal Ney. She wouldn't be here at all if she weren't an old friend of Josephine's, from back in the Directory."
"Then why is she still here?" Victory asked. "The Empress is out."
Marianne shrugged. "It's very strange. I wonder who she sleeps with now."
"So do I," Victory said grimly. It must be nice to just stand and talk with those men, without wondering if one were a fool. He would have completely forgotten about her. Of course he would, with beautiful blonde courtesans hanging on his arm.
The blonde glanced in her direction, then put her hand on Honoré's, leaning toward him to say something in a low voice.
Victory tossed her head to make it clear she could care less. "Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion," she muttered.
The gavotte was ending. Honoré broke away from the group, the blonde looking after him encouragingly, and made his way around the room. He was not coming toward her. He wasn't. He was just coming to get punch. Or something. He probably wanted punch. He probably loved punch.
He stopped right in front of her as the first strains of the waltz began. "Mademoiselle? May I have the pleasure?"
"Yes," said Victory with a brilliant smile.
How the Lady of Cats Came to Nagada
8000 BC
This story comes from the first days of the world, when there were no great cities and in the Black Land the building of the pyramids was more than a thousand years in the future.
Once, long ago in the dawn of the world, when all the cities that are were no more than collections of a few houses of mud brick, there was a bride named Meri. She and her husband lived in one room on the edge of the desert, in the smallest house in the village. He was an orphan, and no one lived there but them.
Sometimes Meri found it very lonely, used as she was to the house by the riverbank where she had grown up, with her grandmother and her father and her four tall brothers and their wives and children. She missed the laughing and singing, and the babies playing underfoot on the floor while she made baskets. But her husband, Neshi, had always been alone, and she loved him.
Besides, it was not as though she could not go home. It was less than a morning's walk to her father's house, and she was always welcome. Her nieces would come running when they saw her, shouting about all the things they had been doing and telling her all of their secrets — where a goose had laid her eggs in the reeds along the river, and where the herons were fishing.
From Meri's house they could see the river, but even at the height of the floods they barely topped the small square fields that belonged to Neshi. If the flood wasn't very high their fields would not be touched at all.
That was what had happened this year. The flood had been bad, so bad that even her father, who owned a piece of bottomland, had shaken his head and muttered prayers. Further up, where they lived, the flood had not come at all. The fields that should have been deep in life-giving water baked in the sun.
And so they had carried water in jars, backbreaking work in the summer heat, she and Neshi. They had planted only one field, and watered it twice a day by hand, making the trip down to the river over and over again, pouring the water out on the soil and watching in run into cracks that should not be there.
There were sprouts. There were some that grew, no matter
how poor the soil. There were some that grew even with nothing to nourish them but the water from the bucket. Some sprouts survived. There would be some wheat, too little, but some.
By the river, her father had melons, and if every few days someone came by on chance, bringing a few vegetables, it was not charity. One of her brothers just happened to be passing by and thought he'd bring a few cucumbers.
When the wheat was reaped and stored in the shed, Meri looked at it with dismay. There was so little, and much must be left for seed in a few months. It would do no good if the flood rose and they had no seed. There was very little left for making bread, and none to trade.
Neshi knew it, and she saw the defeated slump of his shoulders. They had said he was not good enough for her, and he knew it was true. He could not keep a bride without starving her, or relying on her family's charity.
It was three months yet until the river rose.
The sun baked all the land, Black Land and Red Land alike, and they were not the only ones hungry. At night Meri or Neshi would get up and go in the storehouse with a club, laying about to startle the mice and small creatures that would come in to steal the grain. Meri hated killing them, but Neshi would flail about with a fury, the only thing in his world he could fight. For how could a man fight the river that did not rise or the grain that did not grow?
Every night they would trade, getting up and going in the dark.
That was how Meri first saw her. Coming out into the clear, cool night air, she took a deep breath. The moon was already beginning to set.
A shadow streaked across the yard, a lean striped wildcat, something struggling in her mouth. She paused at the edge of the field, and Meri got a good look at her. She was gray and tan, the better to melt into the rocks where she usually hunted, in the steep hills of the Red Land. But hunger had driven her to the river too. She must hunt. And the granaries and storehouses of the Black Land attracted the small animals she lived on. A rat was struggling in her mouth even now. She turned and looked at Meri, and Meri looked back.
"Take your fill, Sister," Meri said. "Any rat you take is one less to eat what we have struggled for."