My vague dislike of the Marquis sharpened.
“That is just what the National Convention says the émigrés do,” I said. “Plan and influence the enemies of France. They call that treason.”
And it had always seemed a rather hysterical accusation to me, until the Marquis had so calmly confessed to it. My mother shot me a freezing glare, which I ignored. The Marquis looked at me in surprise.
“True treason is to strip the king of his power to rule!” he exclaimed.
“But how would the English help the king?” I couldn’t help myself. I had to provoke him. “Louis supports the National Convention.”
The Marquis stared at me, his mouth agape and his face reddening.
“King Louis is a prisoner in all but name! What choice does he have but to wear a tricolor cockade and say whatever the rabble wish him to?”
The rabble. A vile way to talk about his own people, who were starving and desperate. Talking to enough aristocrats like this Marquis could make me a revolutionary more than Will ever had.
“So you would stir up the English to do—what—invade? Your own country?”
“Est-que c’est vrai?” asked the Marquis, turning to my mother in astonishment. “Is your daughter a Jacobin?”
“Certainly not, Phillipe,” said my mother. Her own color rose as well, and a bead of sweat quivered on her forehead like a tiny, molten jewel. Her eyes were strangely glassy. “This is not her talking at all, but a worthless boy I employed as my apprentice for a time, before I realized he was a snake and a liar. He filled her head with this nonsense, and I have not yet shaken it out.”
Adrien cleared his throat, cutting me off before I could retort.
“I have thought of leaving, naturally,” he said. “Marguerite and I have discussed it. But she refuses to return to England.”
“Ah, but you are a British citizen, are you not?” said the Marquis, turning to my mother. “And your daughter?”
“We are,” said my mother.
“Then why?”
“England had its chance with me,” she said, lifting her chin. Her eyes cleared with the defiance, and she looked more like herself. “I will not give it another.”
The servants brought the fish course, sole in sizzling beurre blanc. My mother must have ordered the dinner to suit the Marquis’s tastes. So much butter gave the Comte indigestion. I looked at her to confirm my suspicion, and found her looking into the corner with an expression of fear that made me glance there as well. There was nothing there.
“But Marguerite, ma chère,” said the Marquis. “Surely it is better to swallow one’s pride and return home to England than to die here in France?”
“Die?” I asked with disdain. “Who is going to kill us? The National Convention does not care what we do.”
“Oh, but they will,” said the Marquis. “Once Britain declares war, they will care a great deal about British subjects within French borders. Especially such a skilled one as your mother.” I wanted to scoff again; indeed, I opened my mouth to do so. But as I did I caught the Comte’s eye, and saw he was not scoffing. His taut, worried look stilled my tongue, as his fears about the violence of the Jacobins had often stilled my enthusiasm for them.
The Marquis went on. “And think, Marguerite, once we are at war, the revolutionaries will come for you, force you to make armor and weapons for them. You hate such work.”
My mother had made her reputation with alchemical armor for the French king before the National Convention had taken away any of his responsibilities. It didn’t seem such a terrible thing to me to make more of the same for him now. But I had never minded that quotidian work, however much more thrilling it was to pursue alchemy’s highest prize—the Philosopher’s Stone. Mother, on the other hand, had only ever seen metallurgic contracts as a means to an end. When unending life and limitless wealth beckoned, who could blame her?
“Perhaps, but the English would do the same, the moment I set foot on their shores,” said my mother. The Marquis opened his mouth to argue, but my mother cut him off. “No, my dear Phillipe, I will not go.”
And with that proclamation, my theory of her purpose for the Marquis collapsed. She could not be grooming him to be her next patron if she refused to go to England with him. Unless she simply planned to make him convince her, and feel he had won a great victory. I looked at her and wondered.
“But you are quite correct, of course, of the dangers. I understand that.”
“Think of your daughter, ma chère, if you will not think of yourself!”
My mother glanced to the corner again, then turned her icy blue eyes on me. They were unnaturally bright, her color still high.
“My daughter…” she said in a low voice.
I drew back, startled. There was a strange intensity and a calculation in her gaze I did not recognize. My mother did not look at me this way, as though she were assessing my talents, my worth. She always looked at me as though she knew everything in me, and had always known it, and had no need to seek anything further.
“I should not like to part with her,” said my mother, again in a low voice that was unlike her own.
“Then you must both come!” The Marquis glanced at Adrien. “Er—rather—you must all come! I have let a place in London with plenty of room—”
The Comte’s jaw tightened. He looked at my mother with anger I did not understand.
“It is kind of you, most kind,” said my mother. “I shall think on it. Not for myself, but as you say, I must think of my daughter.”
“Your daughter has a father in England,” said Adrien with forced calm. “And a mother who could go there tomorrow. There is no need for her to go unchaperoned with a man she does not know at all.”
I straightened in my chair. The edge in Adrien’s voice told me that this was not the first time this topic had been broached. I glanced at my mother, who was carefully ignoring the Comte’s gaze, and I understood. The Marquis wasn’t for her at all. She intended to send me away with him.
For all that she had turned on me and shut me out, I never imagined this. We had never been parted. She had never allowed it, nor had I wished it.
“I am not going to England!” I exclaimed.
“Thea has a father in England she does not know, and who does not know she exists,” said my mother, as though I had not spoken. “He is no use to us.”
“What do you mean, he does not know she exists?” the Comte demanded. “You swore to me you would write to him of her! I saw you seal the envelope!”
“I sealed it, but did not send it,” said my mother. “I had no need to, once Phillipe sent word of his plans.”
Adrien slammed his fist onto the table, sending the glasses and silver rattling. The Marquis seized his wine with both hands to keep it steady, his eyes wide with shock.
“Marguerite!” Adrien thundered. “Thea is not going to England with this man!”
I stared at him. I had never heard him raise his voice to my mother, or give her an order. He was finished now. Mother might not be leaving France, but she would certainly be leaving him. These were lines no man could cross and keep any part of my mother’s affections. Still, I was grateful.
“No,” I agreed fervently. “I am not.”
The Marquis pushed back his chair from the table, lips quivering with outrage. But instead of placating him, my mother leaned past him toward me, ignoring him completely. Venom sharpened her glassy-eyed stare.
“You will go where I tell you,” she hissed. “With whom I tell you to go! Do you think you know better than I what is best for you? I protect you! But for me, you would have thrown your virtue away on that libertine—”
“I would not!” I exclaimed, my face aflame. “And Will is not a libertine, he is an alchemist!”
“You foolish child, you think you know more than I of men?”
“Not of men,” I said. “But of Will, yes! You only hated him because he defended me from you!”
“Defended you?” My mother stood. Her cheeks were
scarlet with rage, her eyes wild. “He turned you against me with flattery, and you were too stupid to see it! No alchemist who knew anything would say you were ready for your own laboratory!”
“And that was why you really threw him out, wasn’t it?” I exclaimed, rising from my own chair as well. “Because he dared to suggest I did not need you, that I might even be better than you!”
“That was when I knew he was a liar!” Her eyes were strangely dark, pupils flaring, and her arms shook as she gripped the table. The Marquis stared at her, aghast, and so did I. She never lost control like this, not before a guest. “No one would say something so absurd without a sinister purpose! He thought to seduce you and steal my secrets through you!”
My breath caught. I shook my head, my mouth twitching and twisting around a denial.
“You thought he wanted you for yourself, I know it,” snarled my mother. “But I saw you together. You were as clumsy as a giraffe and as blunt as a bull! You have no charm for men—it is why I have no fear of sending you with the Marquis!”
“Marguerite!” exclaimed the Comte. “You are being cruel!”
“I will take my leave now, Marguerite,” said the Marquis stiffly. “I will not stay where I am so clearly not wanted. But if you should ever find yourself in need of assistance—”
My mother blinked at him, chest heaving, as if she had forgotten he was there. And somehow she had, surely, or she would never have spoken this way in front of him when she still wished to win a favor. After a long, dead moment, she held out her hand, which the Marquis bent over hastily.
I sat down again, rooted to my chair. I did not look at the Marquis as he left. My eyes and throat burned. Adrien was right. She was being cruel, and needlessly so, when it didn’t even suit her ends. When the Marquis was gone, she turned, trembling, back to me.
“See what you’ve done, Thea!” she exclaimed. “Can you never control your tongue?”
“My tongue?”
“If you had not argued politics with him—”
“You were the one screaming how stupid and charmless I am!”
“Who will take you now?”
“No one!” I cried. “Because I am not leaving! Do you think I do not know why you wish to send me away? But I will not let you, not when we are near to making the White Elixir! I will not be erased from our achievement!”
My mother gripped the table, bending over it. She was damp and trembling. She shook her head. She was ill, there was no other explanation for it all. The Comte saw it and stepped toward her in alarm.
“No, Thea,” she said. “You are wrong, entirely wrong. I do not want to send you away at all. It is only for your sake … for your safety…”
“I am not afraid of the National Convention.” I forced the words through my closing throat. I swallowed. I would not cry.
My mother shook her head. “The Revolution is not the only danger,” she said in a trembling voice.
“What then?” I asked.
She glanced into the corner again and looked away quickly. Again I looked where she looked. Again, nothing.
“Tell me, Mother.” My voice broke. I wanted an explanation more than I could bear to admit. I needed a reason, a good enough one to excuse her for banishing me.
But she did not answer, and so I turned my head away and left.
The Comte called after me, but I could bear to talk to him even less than I could bear to talk to my mother. Whatever my mother had left to say might make me angrier. Adrien’s sympathy would surely make me cry.
3
I lay on my bed in my shift, under the open window, breathing in the twilight scent of apple blossoms and swallowing angry sobs. I had cast off my green dress and left it and its ridiculous panniers where they lay. The warm spring air had turned cold with the sunset, and the fire burned down in the hearth, giving off little warmth. The hairs on my arms stood on end from the chill, but I didn’t feel it. My mind and heart were raging hot.
I could not stand it. I could not believe it. But I could not deny it.
My mother wanted to send me away.
It was worse than I had thought, worse even than Will had thought. She did not simply want to keep me subordinate to her, or keep me from sharing credit once we made the White Elixir, the substance that turned all metal into silver, the last step before the Philosopher’s Stone. Will thought she wanted to keep me for herself, to refuse to let me come into my own. But no. She did not want me at all.
Will …
It wasn’t true, what she had said, that he was only using me to get to her secrets. It couldn’t be true. She said she’d watched us together, but she hadn’t seen everything. She hadn’t seen him open himself to me, tell me about his parents’ rejection of him, his hopes for a more equal world. She hadn’t seen the way he’d looked at me before he kissed me. Still, her voice rang in my head.
You were as clumsy as a giraffe, and blunt as a bull!
I knotted my fists in the delicate white lace of my coverlet and felt it tear.
I threw myself off the bed, went to my dressing table, and opened my letter box. I lit a lamp and pulled all the letters out, searching frantically for the one that would disprove my mother best.
I found it, dated eight months ago, when Will was just settling into his contract in Prussia. I quickly scanned the first paragraphs, detailing the work and setting, and came to what I was looking for.
I miss you, Bee, and I worry for you. Do you remember when we talked of Rousseau, and the dim view he takes of marriage? I was inclined to agree with him, if you’ll recall, and you were not. But being so easily parted from you has given me another, more practical view of the matter. Your mother could not have claimed you and sent me away if we were bound by marriage. I could have severed the chains of motherhood she binds you with by chains of my own. I wish there were a way to free you from her without binding you to anything else, Bee. You deserve to be free, truly free. But even more than that, I wish I didn’t have to leave you there with her. I can well imagine how she is treating you, now that you have dared to have your own desires and goals. Don’t believe the things she says about you. You are more brilliant, more beautiful, and more full of life than she ever was or ever will be.
I read it again, and then again, searching against my will for any signs the letter was a lie. I saw none. We had no hopes of seeing each other again soon. What did he have to gain from writing to me at all, except the continuation of our friendship? Surely he could not think I would send him secrets through the mail. Still, my heart seized at the thought. I scanned the letters for hints, questions, anything that might suggest he was probing for alchemical information.
But no. There was nothing like that. I let out a sigh of relief and read the letter once more, this time letting myself believe it.
Don’t believe the things she says about you.
He had known this would happen, or something like it. And he was right. I breathed steadier. The tightness in my chest loosened. I took out my pen and yet another fresh sheet of paper, and started again.
Evening wore into night as I filled page after page with words I knew I would not send. I detailed all the cruel things she had done and said, just as he had worried she would. I poured out all the pain of the last year, of her growing hostility and his absence. I allowed myself to feel the messy, undignified self-pity I could not afford to show in front of her and refused to show to anyone else. It was a relief, but only at first. Like scratching an itch, only to find it came back worse a few moments later. This was not the sort of thing that could be made better by weeping over it. I needed some kind of plan. Some way to make my mother let me back into the work again. A way to prove myself to her, beyond any possibility of denial. But nothing came to me, and I lost myself again in recrimination.
It was late when I stood, spent, and began to drop each page of my letter into the fireplace.
And then my mother screamed. Not as she had earlier, in anger. This was a scream of terror. I stopped i
n alarm.
Silence followed. She had suffered nightmares in the last few weeks—part of her illness, perhaps?—and woken screaming more than once. I turned back to the fire, nothing more than embers in my marble hearth, and pushed the remaining pages into the glowing ashes where they caught and burned away quickly.
Then she screamed again, and this time she didn’t stop. It was her, and yet it wasn’t. It was a shrill, hysterical sound of agony I could not imagine her making. I threw on my dressing gown and ran barefoot through the halls, nearly slipping on the spiraling stone stairway. The screams had stopped when I arrived outside her room. The Comte was there already, pounding on her door and pleading for her to let him in. There was no response. He held a candle in one hand, and I could see from the disarray of his night clothes that he had jumped from his bed with as much haste as I had. His eyes caught mine in panic. I motioned him quiet, and put my ear against the door.
At first I heard nothing, and then a creaking sound of the bed sinking under a weight.
“Mother?” I called. “What’s happened? Why were you screaming?”
“It was a sudden pain,” came my mother’s voice. “But I am well enough now. Go back to sleep.”
“Marguerite, please,” the Comte objected. “You are unwell, chérie, you have been unwell for weeks. Let me call a doctor. I cannot bear you to suffer so.”
“I am not suffering at all, except from your girlish whimpering, Adrien.”
That sounded enough like her usual self to set me more at ease. The Comte’s shoulders loosened as well, and he began murmuring endearments to her in a low voice. I backed away. They had fought, no doubt, after I left them at dinner, and now he wished to make amends. Well. I would let him try.
I went back to my room and sat on the bed again, beside the still-open window. It was cold now, and the apple blossoms had closed up, withdrawing their scent. I reached to close it and caught a whiff of something else, something alchemical. Not the usual burnt-sulfur smell of an alchemist’s furnace, but sharp and energizing, and somehow rather pleasant. I did not recognize it, though it surely came from the laboratory. But I did know this: it wasn’t the smell of a failed, broken composition.
A Golden Fury Page 2