Emilie's Voice (11 page)

Although at Versailles she did not learn what it was really like to be a whore, Sophie acquired many other useful scraps of knowledge, including how to unseal a letter, read it, and seal it again so that no one would know it had been tampered with. In her room, after sliding the warmed blade of her pocket knife under the wax seal, she unfolded the paper and cast her eye over the childlike writing. “How did that bitch manage to get herself to Versailles!” she exclaimed. She read on. Émilie’s letter contained nothing particularly important. It was only an account of a music lesson, and it mentioned that she was going to take part in a masquerade. At the end, though, Sophie thought she detected a note of warmth:

Sophie had to restrain herself from tearing the paper into shreds. If she had had any doubts before that Émilie deserved to be punished for betraying her kindness, they were all gone now. Not only had the vixen stolen a pair of valuable slippers and been the cause of Sophie’s dismissal from a position that suited her, but she was no doubt poised to reap the rewards of being the new flavor at Versailles. Sophie threw the letter on her bed and walked around her tiny room ten times in succession, breathing deeply and clenching and unclenching her fists. When she had worked off enough of her violent anger and felt it was safe for her to handle the letter again, she sat on the edge of her bed and examined it closely. Clearly Émilie and Charpentier had been carrying on a secret correspondence for some time. The fact that the letter itself contained nothing particularly damaging was irrelevant. It had already occurred to her that the composer’s interest in Émilie might have been more than professional, and Sophie was convinced she could use even a faint whiff of scandal to ruin both of them, if she chose to. But for now she decided simply to keep an even closer watch on Charpentier, to see if this exchange of letters continued, perhaps to try to disentangle the route the correspondence took from Paris to Versailles and back again. Sophie knew, from her own time at court, that to succeed, any scheme had to be very carefully planned and executed.

When Charpentier received the letter the next day from a different young delivery boy, he had no idea anyone’s eyes had seen it other than Émilie’s. He pressed his lips to the untidy handwriting, not realizing that it was the scent of Sophie’s body, not Émilie’s, that he inhaled.

Ten

Madame de Maintenon rose slowly from her deep curtsey, as if reluctant to forgo the pleasure of abasing herself before the king.

“Come, Madame, you know that we are friends. There is no one here to see you standing before me!” Louis held out his hand to assist the widow Scarron to her feet. They were alone in an almost hidden corridor of the palace, and they walked together slowly, heads toward each other, deep in quiet conversation.

“Forgive me, sire, but I must speak.” Madame de Maintenon always prefaced her remarks to the king in this way. It gave her the deepest thrill to know that speaking to him honestly—or as honestly as she dared—was a privilege she had won through careful stratagems and a patient campaign of calm strength. Unlike the royal mistress, she took care never to be insistent, never to raise her voice, never to demand recognition or privileges.

“You know that I count upon you to do so,” said the king, stooping a little lower to hear his companion’s words.

Madame de Maintenon cleared her throat and continued. “Now that you need even more help from the Almighty to prevail in the Low Countries, I believe it is imperative that you look to your salvation.” She referred to a recent dispatch that informed the king that, contrary to all he thought, things were by no means over in Belgium, and he may soon be forced to lead a campaign there again.

“I am always mindful of such things, whether I am at war or at peace. I attend mass every day, and under your tutelage I have come to understand the requirements of the pious life much more thoroughly,” the king said, with a little bow of his head in recognition.

The widow Scarron returned the bow as if almost overcome with gratitude. “Understanding them, and acting upon them, are two different sides of the same coin,” she said. “You have a queen—”

The king interrupted her. “And I have done my duty by her! I have fathered heirs to the great throne of France, and she wants for nothing, including my respect.”

Madame de Maintenon turned a corner, leading the king onward but appearing only to have wandered as though she were following a train of thought. “You know that your confessor does me the honor of hearing my own confession,” she said. “And he has alluded to me of late that his conscience is troubled by administering the sacraments to a king who, although great beyond measure as a monarch, refuses to curb his appetites as a man.”

Louis’s face darkened. Madame de Maintenon thought for a moment she had gone too far and rapidly began to think how she might soothe the king. She paused, and in the silent interval she could hear clocks chime eleven in the morning. With a swift glance around she checked their location. They were in the corridor just behind the Salle de Bal, and soon Émilie would begin her lesson with Monsieur Lully. She stopped walking so that they would not pass beyond that place without hearing the young girl’s voice, which had been the object of this conference all along.

“As divinely appointed sovereign, surely I was given these appetites to exercise them!” Louis said.

“Or, if you will forgive me, to overcome them?”

At that moment, Émilie began her vocal exercises. The king stopped and cocked his head. The walls of the château were quite thick, and so it sounded as though the voice were coming from somewhere very far away, not from the chamber on the other side of the wall where they stood.

“Your Majesty?” Madame de Maintenon said, with an expression of curiosity on her face.

“Who is that?” Louis asked.

“Who is what?” answered the widow Scarron, pretending not to know what he was talking about.

“Can’t you hear it? That voice? I’ve never heard anything so beautiful!”

Madame de Maintenon smiled. “Perhaps, sire, that is the voice of your own conscience, for I hear it not.”

She turned and commenced walking back in the direction of the king’s apartments, trying not to hurry, but hoping that they would be out of earshot before Lully began instructing the young singer and the illusion would be destroyed by the sound of his irritating, nasal whine. The king seemed unwilling to tear himself away from listening, but Madame de Maintenon knew he was too polite not to escort her as she walked, and so after a few more minutes of strolling through the corridor they could no longer hear Émilie.

As they continued their conference, the widow Scarron tried hard not to smile with satisfaction. Her plan had worked to perfection. The king was agitated and thoughtful when she left him. And tomorrow, when he saw Émilie in the fête, the next step in her plan would be complete. Then it would only remain to orchestrate the final coup that would persuade the king that his affair with the Marquise de Montespan was divinely condemned.

At that moment, Madame de Maintenon still believed that her motive was pure, that it was her duty to turn the great monarch of France away from the path of sin, to make him be once more an example to his people of piety and justice. She was far more adept at reading the secrets of other hearts than those of her own.

The day of the fête dawned. Almost before she got out of bed, Émilie could tell that it was going to be hot, although it was only the beginning of May. Her skin prickled with a light sweat, and she threw the covers off with relief. The cold wooden floor of her room felt pleasant on the soles of her feet. She stood in just her muslin slip, looking out of her window at the slightly hazy sky above the opposite wing of the château, waiting for Marie to bring her morning tray. In a few moments a gentle scratch on her door announced the quiet young maid’s arrival.

Émilie skipped over to let her in. She turned the key and the mechanism of the lock disengaged with a satisfying clunk. It made her feel safer to be able to lock her door at night, although she had nothing of value to protect—unlike many of the courtiers, who kept stashes of costly jewels in their tiny rooms.

Marie placed the tray on her little desk, curtseyed, and left.

“Thank you!” Émilie called after her. So far Marie, who took care of all her intimate needs from bringing her clothes to emptying her chamber pot, had not said a word to her.

Tucked in next to her dish of hot chocolate, Émilie found a note.

A little thrill of excitement went through her. Today she was going to take part in a masquerade that was to involve the entire court. At last she would see the king. She imagined him taller and grander than anyone else in the world. Too bad she was not going to sing for him. Monsieur Lully said that the fresh air might damage her voice. Still, it seemed bizarre to Émilie. They’d brought her here and worked with her, taught her mountains of notes and made her memorize volumes of words, spent hours training her in movement and pantomime, and the first time she did anything in front of the king she was to be the centerpiece in an enormous tableau vivant. She would neither move a muscle nor make a sound for most of the thirty minutes she would be on display.

Although she had very little to do, Émilie’s task in the masquerade was not exactly easy. She had practiced her pose, which was not the difficult part (although she thought it might be a little tougher to hold it for the required half hour while perched on the top of a fifteen-foot ladder). The hardest thing, she thought, would be not to perish of boredom out there doing nothing.

Émilie knew better than to be late for an appointment at court, even if she subsequently had to wait for someone else to arrive. And so, when she heard the distant clocks chime the appointed time, she found her way to the Salle de Vénus. This was her chance to try to get used to her costume. Not only was it to be made entirely of feathers, but, she had been informed, she was to be naked from the waist up.

“Mademoiselle will be magnificent!” the smiling costumer had said, looking for all the world like the guardian of the gates of heaven, standing in front of a sea of mostly white feathers. “Mademoiselle must not be ashamed! Such a beautiful young body. She will be
très artistique!
”

When Émilie began to cry at the idea, they summoned François. “It is nothing to be ashamed of, Mademoiselle Émilie,” he told her. “Every morning, the king and queen dress before scores of courtiers. And you see, on the ceiling, all the naked women? It is only art. You will be like a sculpture, like the fountains in the garden.”

Émilie calmed herself but decided she would not tell Charpentier about her costume in her next letter. If word ever got back, her mother would be furious.

When the moment arrived for the celebration, Émilie was quite accustomed to being half exposed. She did not feel entirely like the same person, and so it was not so difficult to put aside her modesty. And besides, from her perch atop the ladder she could see a great exodus from the château, platoons of courtiers streaming out of every door, flowing down the steps to the garden, a splendid, glittering, human mass. They swarmed over the sets that the workmen had labored all the night before to build, and which they would demolish entirely later that day. By tomorrow, no one would ever suspect the event had taken place at all.

The royal fanfare was sounded, signaling the start of a procession of such magnificence that Émilie was completely awed. She had a glimpse of it coming past on its way to parade before the king, a full mile of richly arrayed courtiers on horseback. The platform upon which she was seated on the ladder, with children and domestic animals gamboling below her, was hidden behind an immense curtain that had been rigged to a sort of frame. At precisely noon, this curtain was to be drawn aside to reveal the tableau. Émilie was then expected to remain absolutely still while an ode, written specially for the occasion by Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld, was recited. At its end, she was to climb down gracefully, take two of the putti by the hands, and step up to a point about ten feet in front of the king before curtseying and then backing away.

Émilie had practiced her descent from the ladder several times on the days before the masquerade, but not in costume, and not atop a platform that was already eight feet off the ground. She was a little anxious but felt confident that she would be able to maneuver her feathers without a misstep. But matters were complicated by the warm weather. After only a few minutes in position, Émilie felt the perspiration gathering beneath her feather skirt and trickling down the backs of her legs to her bare feet. There was no way for her to reach them to scratch what was soon an almost unbearable itch. Although she did not suffer as much as the courtiers who had added so many heavy layers of jewels to their normal habits, soon the heat made Émilie feel a little dizzy.

Despite her growing discomfort, she managed to strike her pose before the curtain was pulled away, and the gasp of pleasure the tableau provoked was sincere. It was the image of pastoral beauty: angelic children, sheep and goats that had been washed to snowy whiteness, and quantities of colorful flowers, atop which sat Émilie, looking like a cross between a bird and a goddess about to ascend to the sky. The perspiration had added a sheen to her skin that made her almost glitter. Émilie longed to be able to look at the king, but she had been warned not to change her pose until the very end.

For the first fifteen minutes, Émilie was fine. She ceased noticing the tickle of sweat, but the glare of the sun (which she was forced to confront because her eyes were to be cast upward) and the heat made her feel increasingly shaky, and the world started to revolve around her slowly. A dull pounding in her temples gradually drowned out the sound of the actor, who savored every syllable so that the king would be sure to appreciate the delicacy and finesse of his expression. A few moments before he finished reciting the ode, Émilie began to feel that she was in danger of falling off her ladder. She feared greatly not only the harm to herself that would result, but the possibility of crushing one of the infants, all children of servants and workmen, who played so innocently beneath her. She held out as long as she could, then decided she could no longer risk waiting.

Just before the last, adulatory line of the ode, Émilie gingerly started to negotiate her descent on the ladder. The rungs of the ladder had become slippery despite having been rubbed with resin. Émilie stepped very cautiously, but on the fourth rung she lost her footing. She could feel the skin being scraped off the top of her left foot as it shot through the ladder. She grabbed the vertical poles. The ladder swayed from side to side, but her grip was strong through sheer desperation, and she managed to counterbalance the movement. The result was that, rather than float delicately down from her aerial perch, she found herself suspended, hanging upside down, her swan feather skirt around her ears, revealing her derrière most unbecomingly to the royal party. In that moment, Émilie wanted to die.

A horrified gasp escaped the crowd. There was a great clicking and whirring of fans as ladies opened them suddenly and agitated them, more to prevent anyone’s seeing or hearing them laugh than out of a sense of modesty. All Émilie could think of was that she had not had time even to glance at the king, and now here she was, not exactly showing him her best side.