She stole a glance at the bailiff perched like an eagle on his carved eyrie, the wooden surface littered with ink pot, quills and papers. The magistrate and procurer general conferred to his left at the bar, their heavy wigs and detested scarlet robes signalling officialdom, the punitive authority of the state.
She was marched past the empty public benches and brought to a halt several steps from a chained convict. Tall and broad-shouldered, the fabric of his ill-fitting tunic thin with overuse, his exposed scalp a patch of black-grey stubble. A guard crouched at his ankles, twisting a lock in the fetters attached to an iron ring mounted in a stone pillar. Two more police perched at his side, their bodies tense as sheepdogs, trained on their prisoner’s movements.
She was close enough to count the moles on his bare arms, the long black hairs on the backs of his hands. Even from behind, and without his expensive livery, she had recognised immediately the form of Jacques Mouer. He had possessed an eye for detail, laundering his doublet and breeches from his own purse, his cravat impeccably knotted, his cheeks and chin close-shaved and rubbed with pomade. In her service, he had overseen the male serving staff, navigating the intricacies of directing the men of his rank.
The police investigation had somehow sniffed out his whereabouts. Had already subjected him to private interrogations – green and purple shadows darkened his eyes, a handprint marked his throat and there was swelling beneath his cheekbones.
She fought to conceal her emotions, staunching the self-pity that threatened to betray her with tears by wrapping the rosary tightly around her knuckles. She found his eyes; his expression seemed to plead with her, a secret communication in which she imagined he asked her forgiveness. For appearing before her broken and reduced, for failing in his duties – both large and small. Nicola had not instructed him to disappear and had certainly not known his location. If only he had come to her, taken into her into his confidence.
Jacques, whose towering height had helped her sleep, who had protected her during her husband’s rages. She recalled the night he had entered her bedchamber, wishing to personally deliver the key he had forged so she might regain a small degree of freedom. He had contrived to steal the original from under her husband’s nose, called in a favour from a locksmith friend to have it duplicated.
She longed to turn her head and watch her former servant being led from the courtroom, but disciplined herself to submit to being chained to the dock in his place. She made a study of the portrait of King Louis, his podgy cheeks and pouting pigeon’s chest, his blue hose and ermine-trimmed gown, his oil-black eyes seeming to return her gaze.
Their prisoner secured, the guards retreated to the back of the room. Able to think, without their foul breath in her nostrils, she readied herself to answer the bailiff’s address. The trial was resuming. A court official held out a bible, upon which she stated her name, age, and rank, as well as her pledge to speak the truth, so help her God. Acting on some unseen directive, another official entered the courtroom, delivering to the bailiff’s desk a thick dossier, inside which was collected the evidence pertaining to the charges that had been laid against her.
Besides the criminal court, the Grand Châtelet operated three other offices of the law: the civil, municipal and presidential chambers. Her husband was employed as an official in the civil court and daily carried out this duty of searching through depositions, warrants, inventories and interrogations brought to the magistrates and procurers for inspection, before being passed onto the busy bailiff.
Although this was her first appearance in a criminal court, some years before she had lodged a suit in the civil chamber against Monsieur Tiquet, for fraud and the mishandling of her finances. Despite Claude’s familiarity with the judicial bureaucracy, the findings were awarded in her favour. Along with vindication and the protection of her inheritance, the experience provided affirmation of her personal conviction that her husband would not rise through the ranks of his employment. It brought a new suspicion too: that her husband was as thoroughly disliked in his place of work as he was in her household.
Now she wondered what damning testimonies they had amassed against her good name. What had Jacques been forced to admit? She glanced at the judge, trying to ascertain his mood, but it was futile. The tall, elderly man was fussily officious, his expression opaque.
The dossier would most certainly hold a record of the separation of the Tiquets’ effects. Perhaps a maid or kitchenhand had spoken of her demanding temper. But if she knew her husband, it would not contain any mention of the lettre de cachet he had brought to her chambers, signed by the hand of the King.
Not long after their financial holdings were divided and they took up separate apartments in her home, Claude had travelled to Versailles to speak with the sovereign about a private matter. He had lined up with the hoard of petitioners gathered in the hope of being granted a royal intervention into a business or domestic dispute. Following his audience, of which she was unaware, Claude had asked to meet with her privately to discuss their son’s tutor. Her lady’s maid was asked to leave, although Jacques was requested to stay outside the door, as was their arrangement, for Claude could not always master his temper. Barely able to contain his excitement, her husband waved the letter, with its distinctive royal seal, under her eyes. His voice raised to a pitch. Guessing he had tricked her, she refused to read its contents. He removed himself to a chair near the fireplace, resting his foot on its upholstery – deliberately invoking her ire – and ceremoniously unfolded the document.
The lettre de cachet detailed a sentence: that she be sent to a convent for the duration of two years, in punishment for conducting an affair with a favourite of the King’s Guard, Monsieur Gilbert Montgeorge. When she understood what Claude had set in motion, she was so angry that for a moment she could not take a breath. After everything she had done for him! His entitlement – she permitted him to remain living in her home – was staggering. Again, she was shocked at his lack of foresight, and mortified that it had taken several years to realise she had married – of her own volition – a fool. If Claude were a nobleman with bushels of coin perhaps his inspiration might have succeeded. But on his wage he could not hope to afford the fee of consigning her to a convent. And she would not put a souof her personal funds towards her own imprisonment. Never would his idea have succeeded. And then it dawned on her that his true intention had been simply to provoke her into a rage, the only power he retained in their marriage. Secure in the knowledge that Jacques listened at the chamber door, she pretended a desire to examine the King’s correspondence with her own eye, and when the paper was given to her she threw it onto the fire and watched it burn to a shrivelled crisp.
She had folded her arms and faced him, proud that she had managed to bite her tongue. Proud that she did not dress him down about his shortcomings, her myriad disappointments in his conduct. She would not give him the satisfaction of watching her so reduced. Empurpled with fury, he strode from her chamber in a sulk. Come the next petitioning day at the palace, he again took his place for an audience with King Louis. But the sovereign had been unimpressed with his lack of control over his wife and he was sent from the chamber empty-handed. Thoroughly humiliated.
She rubbed her sweating hands against the rough stone pillar. The procurer general collected his papers, preparing to address the courtroom: ‘Madame Nicola Carlier Tiquet, you are to be tried today under the Law of Blois for organising a conspiracy of men to murder your husband, Monsieur Claude Tiquet.’ He read a statement detailing the charges that had been brought against her by Claude, as reported to the lieutenant criminal, on the 6th of April 1699. ‘While the state has failed to gather evidence to tie the defendant to the murder attempt on that date, a new charge involving another plot against the life of Monsieur Claude Tiquet has been filed in your name. The witness in the case turned himself in to the city police on the 20th of May, citing a troubled conscience. The evidence tendered in these new charges, which you must answer in this cour
t, has enabled your trial to proceed.’
Nicola cast her eyes to a shadowy corner of the room, where the bailiff gestured with his hand. She had been so preoccupied with her terror that she had not noticed the witness, waiting patiently for his evidence to be presented. The fellow had been in the courtroom all along, coiled in the poorly lit stand, quiet as a vole. It would be his word against hers. Perhaps she still stood a chance, she thought, taking in his form. He appeared a thorough ruffian: thinning grey hair, a stout, muscular body. He had a wild light in his eyes, for he had come alive hearing his name called, and uncurled himself, standing tall and rigid, as if in some tired bone of his dilapidated old body he recalled a prior military training. His chin raised, his face appeared to glow. He spoke his name, meeting the eyes of all in the courtroom, affecting the pride of the fanatically religious, or perhaps a common lunacy. He dramatically rolled his shoulders – it was ridiculous how he comported himself. A debonair seriousness came over his face, destroyed by the single yellowing tooth that remained in his hole of a mouth. He was unshaven, his clothes patched and resewn until they resembled no more than rags. Perhaps if he acted in line with his appearance, he would not be so discreditable.
‘Three years ago, in the summer of 1696,’ began the procurer, speaking on Cattelain’s behalf, as was the legal procedure, ‘you organised with your husband’s valet, Jacques Mouer, the amount of one hundred silver écu to be paid to Augustus Cattelain for the assassination of Monsieur Claude Tiquet.’
She locked her gaze on the back wall, moving her fingers along her rosary beads. ‘Hail Mary, full of Grace …’ she whispered as he spoke. Finished the prayer, she levelled her gaze with the judges. ‘I deny the charge, your honour.’
The bailiff continued. ‘You are accused of involvement in a conspiracy to arrange for a party of fifteen men – soldiers, lackeys and coachmen – to carry out an attack on Monsieur Tiquet, journeying on foot to his home on Thursday evening, the 7th of June in the year 1696. How do you plead to this charge?’
‘… Give us this day our daily bread…’ she prayed, feverish. When she had finished reciting the prayer, she answered firmly, ‘Not guilty.’ Her voice was clear and resolute. ‘I know not a shred of detail concerning this plot.’ She dropped her eyes, her face without expression.
The procurer put it to her that she had promised more funds to Cattelain and his band of men once the assassination had been successfully orchestrated.
‘I did no such thing,’ she said, moving her fingers to clasp the next bead.
She also denied the subsequent assertion that – with the plan to ambush the victim failed, the fatal blow fallen short of its mark and the conspiracy abandoned – she made threats to kill Cattelain should he breathe a word of the plan to any person. The procurer droned on, tabling the accusation that she had persisted in her illegal scheming, instructing the valet to communicate to Cattelain that a further sum of money would be offered to bury all talk of the attempt on Monsieur’s life. That he was to lay low for the moment but to be prepared for a future assignment.
Between every charge levelled against her – to which she was required to give a verbal affirmation or denial – she muttered the prayer for the next bead, before giving her answer, again and again, over and over: ‘Not guilty.’
The trial was nearing its conclusion. She had prayed a full decade of the rosary. But there remained one final charge to answer to. Closing her eyes, she drew in a weary, controlled breath. She was determined not to be broken.
‘In the name of God I deny everything, your honour, not a single word is true.’
Angelina
1 June
A shiver passed beneath Angelina’s skin. She studied the pair of nursing sisters who were dressed in their pitch-and-ivory tunics and headdresses, consoling the huddled queues waiting at the entrance to the city morgue. Permitted their turn to enter the below-ground viewing room, the city’s abandoned and bereaved would peer in solemn trepidation at the rows of corpses laid out on slabs, the clothing and possessions found with the deceased pegged to a post behind them, as if they had taken a jacket off upon returning home. Once, Angelina had wished to join the daughters of Saint Catherine, dedicating her life to the welfare of the poor. She would graduate from training able to assist in all matter of maladies in a large hospital, her apprenticeship starting here at the Grand Châtelet, by learning to wash and prepare the unidentified dead found in the city streets and drowned in the Seine.
She clutched Marie Catherine’s elbow tightly under her arm; lifting the hems of their gowns, they stepped over the washed cobbles, moving towards the small assembly of guards, acquaintances and friends of Nicola Tiquet at the opposite end of the courtyard. Madame Tiquet’s trial had concluded and she had been sentenced, the verdict posted to the public noticeboard outside the Châtelet courthouse.
Marie Catherine stiffened.
‘What’s the matter now?’ asked Angelina.
‘The fellow in the blue vest, do you see him?’ she whispered.
Angelina glanced in the direction her mother was pointing her cane. A gentleman of middling height and fine facial features, a shock of black hair, had turned away from the noticeboard. His gloved hand covered his mouth and his eyes raked the crowd. It took a moment for Angelina to recognise who he was, although his face had been sketched many times in the Paris broadsheets. She had never met Madame Tiquet’s husband, Claude. His companion – it must be Vilmain, the loyal cousin – was tall and graceful. She watched him bend his head and whisper into Monsieur Tiquet’s ear, which only seemed to further provoke the fellow; nostrils flaring, he whipped his head from side to side, the whites of his eyes rounded like those of a startled horse.
‘Why would that Tiquet bastard show his face here?’
‘Pay him no attention, Maman,’ said Angelina, forcing a neutrality she did not feel into her voice. She was tempted to say they might be attending the Châtelet on worse business, but decided it was better to keep the thought private. She had tried to talk her mother out of making an especial journey to learn Nicola’s sentence – there would be no escaping the news – but Marie Catherine was determined. A week ago she had received word from Father Étienne that an announcement by the procurer general was imminent, and so every morning for the past four days her mother had dragged her aching, complaining limbs into a carriage and set off, Angelina at her side, hoping for news.
‘You are treading on my foot,’ said Angelina.
Standing in the place Monsieur Tiquet had vacated only moments earlier, Angelina struggled to find the verdict amongst the pinned documents, all sealed with the stamp of the Châtelet. The fate of Nicola Tiquet was the subject of the month in every class of Parisian household. Bets were laid in gambling dens as to which side of justice the scales would fall; children sang and clapped rhymes dramatising her misbehaviour. But plenty more prisoners had been sentenced for misdemeanours and more. Desiring to put off confirming the worst – she was not looking forward to her mother’s reaction – Angelina let herself be caught up reading the sentences of a bankrupt surgeon found to have infected several patients with gangrene, and a boatswain who had mislaid, feared lost, no less than seventeen wheels of aged cheese.
Marie Catherine had already scanned the contents of the ruling, pulling at Angelina’s sleeve to help her make her way out of the stifling, excited crowd. Begging her mother’s patience, she began to read the magistrate’s flourishing script:
That the municipal court being satisfied with the proof of Madame Carlier, wife of Monsieur Tiquet, and Jacques Mouer, former valet to the said Tiquet, having entered into a conspiracy for his assassination; and of the said lady’s disbursing several considerable sums to the said Mouer, and other accomplices, and of their receiving such sums, and acting according to that lady’s directions; for which they have adjudged the said Madame Tiquet to suffer on a scaffold, by having her head struck off; and the said Mouer to suffer, by being hanged on a gallows, to be erected at the said pla
ce, by the neck, till he be dead, and afterwards to remain on the Gibbet of Paris 24 hours; all their effects to be confiscated, and a hundred thousand livres to be taken out of the effects of Madame Tiquet, and paid to her husband, of which he is to have the use during his life, proper security being taken that the said sum shall descend whole and untouched to his child of this marriage; that before the execution both Madame Tiquet and Mouer shall endure torture ordinary and extraordinary, in order to discover who were their accomplices, and to furnish authentic proof against those who are already suspected, and in custody. That, given the capital nature of the crime, the sentence by the criminal court be granted lawful appeal, a stay of execution upheld until the final binding judgement of the high court at Parliament.
Marie Catherine expressed her frustration by striking her cane several times against the stone ramparts of the court building, until Angelina noticed a police official hurrying towards them, a hand on the hilt of his sword. She steered her towards the stinking Butcher’s Row marketplace, where a jumble of battered carriages waited for temporary hire. Their return journey to the apartment was grim. Marie Catherine would not let her open the curtains, and neither would she part her lips to offer her opinion of Nicola’s verdict. Angelina asked if she thought Nicola had been informed of the news herself, to which she replied with little more than a rude grunt. Determined to brood, Marie Catherine drew her charcoal brows low over her slitted eyes; she pinched and squeezed her fingers with such force that Angelina dreaded tending them later. She would need to double the ointment and soak them in warm lavender water. Every once in a while Marie Catherine banged the cane against the carriage door, until Angelina feared the carriage would be stopped and they would be put out on the street in an unknown neighbourhood. She could not wait to deposit her mother home and escape her company.
The Bee and the Orange Tree Page 20