“Shall I summon a fiacre?” asks Corinne.
“No. It is not far. I prefer to walk.”
Besides, I have to find a way to return the mare I arrived on to the barracks at Saint-Cloud.
The boy I asked to tend her is still standing across the street, a small circle of younger children clustered admiringly by. He allows them to pat the gentle creature’s nose in a constant rotation. A natural leader, I think. May he never rise to greatness, and know the unhappiness that goes with it.
As I approach him, he looks up and I see dawning confusion on his face. He recognizes me but sees I am not the soldier who engaged him to undertake the task. As soon as I am close enough, I open my mouth to begin my explanation.
But I am stopped when Michel suddenly steps out from behind the mare. “I’ll manage from here,” he says to the young lad, giving him a few centimes for his trouble. “Run along, all of you.”
Michel may be the son of the music master, the fop my makeshift groom made such fun of, but he speaks with authority. Reluctantly, they scatter, the more curious among them going not too far away.
“Shall we walk together a little?” Michel says.
I am too overcome with sorrow to do anything but nod.
“You must understand that my feelings for you are no different than I expressed before. I am sorry if my foolish actions have caused you any pain.” A trace of a smile plays at the corners of his mouth. “My sister is a very determined person. She has managed our household since Mother died five years ago, and will not give up her position lightly.”
We are walking so slowly that the horse has time to snatch at bits of grass growing between the cobbles on these quiet streets. “I am not certain exactly what you mean, monsieur,” I say.
Something about the way Michel speaks annoys me. He does not appear crushed, defeated, the way I felt after everything Louise said. How I wish I had that note!
“I mean, foolish Hortense, that simply because Louise says it must not be so is no reason to give up hope.”
“For me to give up hope, or for us?” I ask. Suddenly I feel as if he has taken the position of a typical man to whom the pursuit is everything. Now that I have shown myself willing to act in the most desperate manner to be with him, he has power over me. I shudder. I am behaving exactly like my mother.
He turns toward me and we stop walking. “How much of my letter did you read? You must have read some of it, because I cannot imagine what else would have brought you here. I meant to counsel patience. I wanted to introduce you to my sister tomorrow, at our soirée.”
Patience? Was it simply a written invitation for an innocent evening? Now Michel is implying that I’ve ruined everything. What good is patience in our circumstances? “I have exercised patience all my life,” I say. “I learned it at the feet of two very cruel masters, whose names are prison and threat of death.” I spit the words at him.
Michel looks down at his feet, kicking at a loose stone. After a long silence, he speaks. “I am not free simply to run away and wed. My family depends upon the income from my students as much as from my father’s. I could not establish my own household. Not yet.”
I want to scream to the heavens. Money! Why must it govern everything? I was so certain my affection was returned, that our passion was pure. But once more, money is a barrier to love.
Something digs its claws into my heart and I cannot help what I say next. “You believe I came to throw myself at your feet. But that is not true. I came because I had to tell you something before you heard it by general report.”
I start walking again, keeping myself just a little ahead of him.
“Such an elaborate plan simply to tell me something?” He smiles. It’s not an unkind smile, and I can see the love behind it, but still it vexes me. “I must admit, you were quite fetching in your uniform—”
“I am to be wed, but not to you.” I blurt it out, interrupting his pretty speech.
The color drains from Michel’s face. Instantly I want to swallow the words back in, but I cannot. And besides, in the eyes of my mother at least, they are true.
He gulps once. “I see. Why did you not tell me your affections lay elsewhere? That is a cruel joke to play upon me.”
How I wish we were not standing in the middle of the street, no doubt watched closely by prying eyes from most of the windows. “It’s not a joke. Or if it is, the joke is not on you, but on me.” I reach out and touch Michel’s cheek softly. “It is my mother’s wish. She has arranged it.”
“And you?”
It’s my turn to look down. I don’t know what to say. I am no longer absolutely certain of Michel’s love, and now I am ashamed of my actions today. “I had better return to school. The mare came from the barracks at Saint-Cloud. Can you take her back? Say that a messenger from Louis Bonaparte borrowed her and asked that you ensure her safe return.”
That’s as much as I can say. Nothing has been decided or settled for me yet. I have placed everything back in his hands now. If he truly wants me, he must decide.
“Will you still come to Father’s soirée and sing?” he asks. For a moment I cannot imagine what he is talking about.
Then I remember. Monsieur Perroquet’s invitation. “I think that would be unwise,” I say.
The look on his face stabs my heart.
Michel bows and kisses my hand, then leads the mare away. I continue to the school, wondering if I shall find Eliza and Caroline already there.
38
Madeleine
If I could have died from weeping this morning, I would have. I did not want to face a future in that depraved theater, fetching drugs for my mother and avoiding beatings, living half starved and unhappy.
And now, here I am, rescued. But not by Eugène. How curious indeed that my savior should be a girl with a foreign accent, dressed like a soldier. She has told me little, other than that she knows about my love for Eugène. And I can see that she acts not for my sake, but because she cares about his happiness. She is in love with him, in her way, although I think she is very young.
“I have never been so far from Paris,” I say. “At least, not since I first came here when I was a small child.” I want her to speak; I want to know who she is, why she has taken such a risk for Eugène’s sake and mine. “Where are we going? To Malmaison?” I only know that it is west of Paris, and that is the direction we are headed.
“We go to Saint-Germain. I am at school there.”
“Ah, at the Académie Nationale. Madame Campan’s establishment.”
“You know it?” She seems very surprised. But, then, I suppose a lowly actress would not be expected to know of such a genteel institution as that.
“I have heard of it. Some of my mother’s... friends ... have spoken of it as a place where they send their daughters to become true ladies. What is it like there?”
She thinks for a moment, then looks at me, curiosity in her eyes. “You ask me about my school, but not why I happen to be wearing a soldier’s uniform in the middle of a day when I should be attending lessons.”
“Would it be more normal to be wearing it in the evening?” I ask.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says, but I see I have made her smile.
Then I think to say, “Well, I suppose you might be dressed like this if you were going to a masked ball.”
“I have only ever been to one ball, and no one knew I was there,” she says. “I saw your mother before I knew who she was, though. And Eugène, too.”
What can she mean? I decide not to question her about it—I laugh instead. “You sound a little like me. I was at a ball once, too. Only not as a guest. My mother blacked my face and put me in an exotic uniform, made me carry a feather fan behind her. She was dressed as though she had just left a pasha’s harem, and I was her little slave boy.”
Now her smile turns into a laugh. It makes me realize how young she must be. Her feelings for Eugène must be naive. I doubt he has kissed her.
Not as he has kissed me. Al
l at once I can hardly catch my breath at the thought of his arms around me, our lips touching first, then tongues. I took him to the room below the stage, where trapdoors let actors down when they disappear as if by magic. It was the only place I knew no one would watch us after the performance was over.
“Ginger,” I say aloud, remembering the moment.
“What?” The girl is confused.
“Oh! I was just thinking of my favorite scent,” I say, hoping she does not notice my blush. What really went through my mind was the taste of Eugène’s kiss. He must have eaten a sweet before coming backstage to find me.
“We’ll be there soon,” she says, casting a worried glance out the carriage window.
“Did anyone follow us?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. The army is at Saint-Cloud. There were no soldiers or guards near the theater.”
Eugène mentioned Saint-Cloud in his letter, and Marianne told me the government had been taken there.... “What is happening today?”
“The government is changing. I saw Napoléon and the generals overtake the Directoire and the Council of Five Hundred. And Caroline—”
“Who is Caroline?” This girl intrigues me.
“Again you ask the strangest things! Not ‘How did a few men managed to vanquish five hundred?’ but ‘Who is Caroline?’ Caroline is—”
She stops herself.
“Is she your friend?” I ask. “Is she the one who persuaded you to dress like this?”
“No one persuaded me!” She is angrier than the question warrants, which makes me feel I have hit upon something. “I chose to participate in a grand adventure. Besides, if I hadn’t, where would you be?”
Where indeed? What she does not know is that despite her bold gesture, I will undoubtedly end up back at the Comédie Française, where I’ll be greeted with a beating that will keep me in my room for a week. Unless Eugène is waiting for us in Saint-Germain....
“Will Eugène meet us?” I ask.
“No. We’ve reached the village. We must walk from here.”
She knocks on the carriage roof so the driver will stop, and pays him—from a very well-stocked pocketful of coins, I notice. The flash of gold catches my eye. Perhaps even without Eugène I can release myself from perpetual slavery on the stage.
And yet, I know the thought is unworthy. I decide I must trust this girl a while longer, Eugène or no Eugène. My life has been full of unfortunate accidents so far. Mayhap it is time things combined in my favor at last.
She stops in the middle of a street, clearly undecided about what to do. “I cannot return to school dressed like this,” she says. “I shall have to send word for my clothes.”
A fine drizzle has started to fall, the kind that feels welcome on a hot summer’s day but that stings like tiny needles on a cold autumn day like this.
“Let’s see if we can get inside the château,” my new friend says.
Together we walk to it, not far from where we descended from the fiacre. But the few doors we try are locked, and it won’t do to look as though we are seeking a hiding place—especially in a deserted château.
“There’s shelter here,” I say, pointing to a deep porch that shields the door to what looks like a chapel.
It’s dry but still cold. I do my best to smile at the girl. One way or the other she will be my salvation. Best to make her believe she is also my friend.
39
Eliza
The château of Saint-Germain is deserted. No one lives here anymore. I try several doors but none are open.
“Here’s a dry place,” Madeleine says, pointing to a covered porch where we can be sheltered from the light rain that has started to fall.
Madeleine shivers. “You cannot know what you have done. But I am grateful. Perhaps now is the time to ask how you come to be dressed in this manner.”
I don’t really want to tell her my story. It seems so unimportant compared to hers. “That explanation must now wait. I should get word to the others. Stay here.”
“What others?” she asks.
“Caroline Bonaparte, sister to Napoléon, and Hortense de Beauharnais, sister to Eugène.” Something makes me resist telling her that there was a fourth, a young man.
She opens her mouth to speak, but closes it again.
Across the street is a ribbon vendor. I buy a length of purple silk from him and ask to borrow a scrap of paper and something to write with. All he has is a bit of chalk, so I make the message brief. Hortense and Caroline must help me. I pray they, too, have found their way back to Saint-Germain. I don’t know what I shall do if I must remain out here with Madeleine all night.
I send a young boy to the school, telling him to ask for Ernestine; then I return to find Madeleine humming to herself, very quietly, but I can hear that she must have a beautiful voice. Having walked away from her and seen her from a distance, now I cannot help noticing how very thin she is. Her wrist is like a bird’s. “How old are you?” I ask.
“Sixteen,” she says, which surprises me. I am much bigger than she is, and two years younger.
“You are so frail.”
“Maman ...I play the orphans in the theater, and I must look like a child. But I am not.”
I cannot help thinking that she would be extraordinarily beautiful if she had some flesh on her bones. “How did you and your mother come to be in the theater?” I ask, looking for a way to pass the time. The damp is icy, and Madeleine shivers like a birch leaf. “Here.” I take off my uniform coat and give it to her. Even without it, I don’t feel the cold as she does.
“Maman and I came here with the Vicomte de Pourtant. He found her in the islands, when he was there tending to his interests in sugarcane. I was born there.”
Madeleine stops, as if she has told me enough. But I want to know more. “He did not marry your mother?”
Her large eyes open wider than ever, and it seems almost as if she will laugh. I don’t know what I said that was so funny.
“So he claims, although my mother says otherwise. Vicomtes do not marry their slaves! Even when they are all freed by decree. And even when the vicomte has fathered a girl child,” Madeleine says and then laughs, the notes of her mirth tumbling about like tiny silver bells.
The realization hits me as hard as the slap Madeleine received earlier. Gloriande is a Negro slave—or was! And Madeleine is the daughter of the liaison between a vicomte and his slave. Whether or not her mother and Pourtant were ever married, she is a mulatto. A half-breed.
I have taken someone who might be working in the fields in Virginia into my protection. I have befriended someone who should be a slave herself.
What can I do? I cannot turn her away, tell her to go back to her cruel mother and her half-starved state at the Comédie Française. She is a girl like me.
Only not like me!
“Ah, you did not realize...,” she says, calmly now. “You speak with an accent. Where are you from? I don’t even know your name.”
“I am Eliza Monroe, daughter of a man who will soon be a member of the government of the United States of America. We have a plantation in Virginia, with many slaves to work the land and serve in our house. I am here attending school so that I may acquire the polish of a French lady.”
Madeleine is silent. I wish she would turn her enormous eyes away! Her skin has the palest tint of light caramel. Why didn’t I see it before?
“Mademoiselle Eliza, you need not protect me any longer. I have survived so far, and will make my own way. I may look delicate, but I am very strong. Thank you for what you have tried to do.”
She removes my blue jacket and hands it to me. I take it without thinking, dazed. She steps out into the rain, which has become heavier. Already I see her slender shoulders outlined by the thin fabric of her dress, which soaks through quickly even though it is just drizzling. And her slippers—made of cloth and suitable only for stepping on the boards of a stage, not sloshing through muddy streets—are completely drenched.
&nb
sp; “Wait!” I call out.
She turns her head only, casting me a sad glance over her shoulder, but my voice has stopped her progress.
“You must stay. Nothing can undo what I have done. Please let me help you.”
She smiles. Her teeth are very white against her skin.
Soon she is back underneath the porch with my jacket warming her again. What if, I think, all our slaves are like this? The same as we are? They don’t look as much like us as Madeleine does. But in her past are those who must have been every bit as black as the foreman on our plantation.
My thoughts are swirling and confused. Since I was tiny I have thought of people with black skin as less than we are, as property. I was taught not to be cruel to them, as one might be taught not to be cruel to a pet. I never imagined our slaves could be the same as I am, with the same feelings and ideas. And yet here is Madeleine, whom I would never have guessed had Negro blood in her veins, and not only is she like me, she is in love with someone I thought I was in love with. What is more, he loves her in return. If he—the noble Eugène de Beauharnais—does not think she is unworthy because of her ancestry, what right have I to think so?
Madeleine is dear to Eugène. And so she must be dear to me.
My note brings help, but not in the form I wished for. I don’t know what to say when I see not Hortense and Caroline, but Hortense and Valmont appear from around the corner that leads toward the Académie and the Collège.
“You must be Madeleine, if I am not mistaken,” Hortense says, stepping ahead of Valmont. I wonder how she can know. I said nothing about it in my note.
“Yes,” Madeleine answers. “I am the one who might spoil all your mother’s wishes for your brother.” Madeleine’s eyes flash. How does she know it is Hortense? Can she have seen her before? Or perhaps she just recognizes her because of Joséphine, or a family resemblance with Eugène.
Hortense reaches her arms out to Madeleine. “I want only my brother’s happiness.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Madeleine rushes forward into Hortense’s embrace.
The Academie Page 17