Emilie's Voice (18 page)

Émilie started to feel light-headed. She knew that the sudden attention had nothing really to do with her, only with what she might be able to get if she were ever in a position to influence the king. To influence the king! The idea was absurd. It made her want to laugh out loud. She asked François to try once more to herd the crowd of spectators out of the room, promising that she would soon join them at the festivities upstairs. With some reluctance, they all departed, and François shut the door on them and leaned against it, exhausted.

Once she was on her own, Émilie began walking around and around in a little circle, at first slowly, but then faster and faster until she was almost running.

“What is the matter, Mademoiselle Émilie?” said François. “You have had such a great triumph, and the king is much pleased with you. You see how everyone praises you!”

“Oh, François, I don’t know what to do!” Émilie burst into loud sobs.

“Please, Mademoiselle Émilie! Stay calm!”

François fluttered around her helplessly, offering her his handkerchief and looking at the door. He had no idea how to deal with such hysteria. The contents of the note he had destroyed earlier that day weighed on his mind, as did his instructions from Madame de Maintenon. He knew why Émilie was so disturbed. And yet he wondered if she truly realized what a dangerous game she was playing. If she did not appear in the king’s apartment as arranged, she could be charged with treason. Her failure would not technically be illegal, but it would be a simple matter to trump up charges by accusing her of passing court secrets to an informant outside. The widow Scarron was fearsome when thwarted. Émilie did not have friends powerful enough to prevail on the king’s sense of honor. François had seen it happen before, and now, if the abduction succeeded, it would be difficult to persuade his mistress that it had not been arranged through the secret correspondence that he, François, had facilitated. Émilie was not the only one who could be endangered by her actions.

François tried once again to calm Émilie, but before he could approach her, something extraordinary happened. She stopped crying suddenly and became very still. Her eyes, almost painfully open and vulnerable most of the time, had lost their expression, as if the flame that lit them from behind had been extinguished. François, although relieved that she was no longer sobbing, was a little frightened.

“Shall we go to the party?” he asked, motioning Émilie toward the door.

She smiled at him. “It’s all right, François. I’m quite calm now. I realize what I must do. But it can wait until afterward. Shall we?”

Émilie led the way out the door with François following behind, proud but sad. She looks taller, and very beautiful, he thought. She has grown up since she came to Versailles.

Seventeen

St. Paul was so hungry that it took little convincing on his godmother’s part to make him stay for dinner and cards. They made an odd pair: the aging dowager in black silk and heavy jewels, and the young courtier in bright yellow brocade, a red sash, and high, red-heeled shoes. The princess was small and seemed almost to have to reach up to play her cards. St. Paul was on the tall side and curved over the table like a bird of prey. He was a little thinner than he liked to be, but that was because he was never quite certain when he would next enjoy a proper meal.

“
Excusez-moi
, Mademoiselle, but I have a note for Monsieur de St. Paul.”

The housemaid who was a friend of St. Paul’s coachman gave him a folded piece of paper. He opened and read it.

“I am very sorry, Godmother, but urgent business calls me away.”

“What a pity,” she said, holding her hand out for St. Paul to kiss.

“À bientôt.”
He bowed and departed.

St. Paul’s coach waited for him outside the front gate. “Where did he go?” he asked as he climbed in.

“North on the rue de Grand Chenier. He was walking.”

“Let’s catch up to him, but stay enough behind so that he does not see us.”

“Yes, Monsieur le Comte.”

Trusting his coachman to spot Charpentier, St. Paul reached beneath his seat and pulled out a wooden box. He released the catch, lifted the lid, and ran his fingers lightly over the polished wood and chased gold handles of an exquisite pair of dueling pistols. He had been tempted to sell them a few months ago, when his godmother was away and he was feeling the pinch of poverty rather severely, but he was glad he had withstood that urge. Although he might not have to use a pistol, it was best to be prepared. With a firm grip, St. Paul lifted one of the flintlocks from its velvet cradle. Then he grasped a little round brass knob and raised the lid of a small compartment between the depressions that housed the pistols, and removed from this cavity a delicate gold powder horn. Balancing the pistol carefully on his knee with one hand, he measured out a quantity of the black powder and poured it into the muzzle. Then he replaced the powder horn and took out a round lead slug and a little piece of linen. He spat on the linen, and placed the ball in its center. Wrapping the cloth around it, he pushed the missile into the end of the muzzle. Once it was securely seated, he reached back into the pistol box and removed a slender ramrod, which he used to push the linen-wrapped slug home until it sat firmly on its bed of gunpowder. That accomplished, St. Paul rested the pistol carefully on his lap, raised the frizzen, lowered the hammer, then added a few grains of priming powder from a slender gold tube to the flash pan. The coach jolted as it stopped. Some of the fine black powder spilled. “Damn!” St. Paul whispered, cautiously tucking the loaded pistol in his sash before dusting the grains off his yellow breeches.

“Charpentier is inside,” whispered the coachman, who leaned down from the box and spoke into the open window.

St. Paul nodded to him and climbed out of the coach. “Pull just ahead there, a little out of sight. I’ll wait for him to come out and persuade him to join me.”

The coachman did as he was told, and St. Paul stood to one side of the stable door. He drew his pistol out of his sash, cocked it, and stood at the ready.

The public reception rooms of the château had never been so beautiful. For the first time since she had come to Versailles, Émilie did not feel diminished by her surroundings. She was part of them, and yet distinct: a mural come to life; a marble statue animated. She blended with the air, thick with the smoke from thousands of candles and torches. It was her natural element, this rich soup of perfume and body odor, food and burning fuel. She dove into the atmosphere and swam through it, flashing and sparkling like an exotic fish in a pond, smiling, smiling.

Émilie ached with tenderness when she beheld the gorgeous plenty of the Salle d’Abondance and the Salle de Vénus. She could see beyond each delicate morsel of food, every one a perfect product of culinary art, to the hundreds of laboring hands that had produced it.

The Chambre du Billard glittered with the forced gaiety of people losing money and pretending not to mind. In the Salle de Bal dancers so skilled and controlled in their movements that they looked as if they were made of wax performed a stately minuet. And in the next room, ladies fanned themselves and yawned at card tables set up around the state bed, the scene of the birth of all the royal children. Émilie had a vision of the queen, screaming with the pangs of labor, blood-soaked sheets clenched in her fists, while all around her courtiers laughed and told secrets.

All eyes followed the ingénue as she glided from room to room. Some even called out to her or touched her on the arm or face as she passed, but she did not notice. She looked out on everyone from somewhere else, protected, secure. Even François’s furrowed brow and occasional questions and comments did not penetrate her cocoon.

It could have been years or a moment ago that she had sung her heart out upon the stage. She paused in the midst of her progress to look out over the three fountains, playing exuberantly in the torch-lit garden. The autumn wind tossed spray irreverently at a few brave pedestrians, who scurried away from this unwelcome benediction.

Arching jets of water created sparkling, fluid architecture, as ephemeral as it was miraculous, the backdrop to a living stage set upon which the drama of court life was constantly rehearsed. But none of that mattered now. Émilie wallowed in a state of delicious oblivion, letting herself imagine that it all happened magically, that no vast system of hydraulics was necessary to make the water flow against its will, but that some sprite had enchanted the entire acreage of Versailles, and that she too had been caught in the spell, frozen in time and space.

When Charpentier arrived at the stable, the groom was nowhere to be found and his horse dreamily munched hay in his stall, more ready to settle down for the night than to spring into action.

“Hey there!” At the sound of his voice, the horse lifted his head suddenly. After a moment Charpentier heard a shuffling and a loud
“Ssshh”
from the direction of the hayloft. “Where are you, boy? I need my horse!” A stifled giggle filtered down from above his head. He scrambled partway up a ladder to see where it came from.

There, sprawled amid the bales in a state of undress not easy to remedy quickly, was the young groom, and with him a common prostitute. Because she faced away from him, Charpentier did not notice that it was the same whore who had announced herself to him as none other than Sophie Dupin, but he realized that no matter what he did, the lad would not be fit to help him with his horse for some minutes. So without a word, he climbed back down, fetched the tack himself, and did his best. He was not accustomed to the job, and although he knew what to do, it took him much longer than it should have. He lost twenty precious minutes in the process as he grappled with his horse, who had caught the mood of urgency and would not stay still.

Once he was finished, Charpentier leapt onto the beast even before he left the stable.

St. Paul saw the doors fly open, and he lowered his pistol to take aim. Charpentier galloped out at full speed and sent pedestrians scurrying as he wove through the evening crowd of coaches that clogged the rue de Grand Chenier. St. Paul pulled the trigger, but instead of a bright flash and a loud explosion, there was only a soft click.

“Damn!” he said, and then yelled out, “You there! Stop!”

He thought he saw Charpentier look back. His only consolation was that if Charpentier kept going at that rate, the man’s horse would expire before he reached Versailles. He was going too fast to catch by driving a carriage, and they would never get around the other vehicles that inched along the road. St. Paul tucked his pistol in his sash again and ran to his coach. “Unharness the horses!”

Before the coachman was off the box, St. Paul started slashing at the traces with his knife. The coachman lifted the harness off one of the horses. “You’ll never manage sir, there’s no saddle!” he yelled.

St. Paul ignored him and quickly knotted the long rein he had cut over the horse’s nose, leapt on his back, and kicked the beast. The coachman watched as his master followed the path that Charpentier had taken. Once St. Paul was out of sight, he tried to arrange what was left of the harness so that the remaining horse could pull the coach.

Émilie arrived in the throne room. At its center sat Louis, in a red velvet armchair on a platform, surveying the scene around him with satisfaction. He was by far the most magnificently dressed of all the company, and his large wig added to his height. He was a very handsome man, with a bearing that left not a soul in doubt that everything the eye could see happened because he willed it. Beside him, Madame de Maintenon gave orders to servants, already more in command than the queen, who played cards in another room and was losing heavily to the Duc d’Orléans, so everyone whispered. Louis caught sight of Émilie straightaway and leaned to say something to the widow Scarron. She came forward to greet Émilie, her face full of meaning.

“The king would like to hear a selection from
Alceste.”

She did not wait for any sign of assent from Émilie but turned immediately and gestured to the servants to bring in the harpsichord. Lully himself followed it in and then took his seat, prepared to act as accompanist. Everyone in the room went completely silent; no one dared not attend to that which held the interest of the king. For one evanescent moment, Émilie imagined herself back at the Hôtel de Guise, about to make her début. There she had had to sing out to be heard above the noise of conversation, and had, by sheer force of her beautiful voice, startled the entire company into raptures of applause and admiration. Here she looked around at the absolutely still and silent courtiers, smiled, and began to sing, very quietly.

At the end of Émilie’s performance came the muted approbation of gloved clapping. Louis smiled at her, then turned and spoke into a man’s ear. It was Colbert, the finance minister, who left the room for a moment and returned carrying a black velvet box about six inches square. He presented it to Émilie. She looked at it, puzzled. François, who had stayed as close by her side as he dared, nudged Émilie and bowed deeply. She took his cue and curtseyed, then backed away and left the room.

Once she was out of sight of Louis, Émilie had the sensation that someone had let all the feathers out of her magical cushion. What before had seemed warmly enveloping now felt so close that it abraded her. The noise of the crowd hurt her ears, the brilliance of her surroundings was like needles in her eyes. Her feet were so sore that every step was agony, and it was with difficulty that she kept from crying again.

François saw her wilt and realized that she was so weak that she might drop the velvet box the king had just given her. He put his hand beneath her elbow and supported her, letting her lean on him all the way back to her chamber. He understood that she might lose heart at the prospect of what was to come later that night. He wished he were in a position to comfort her.

“Why don’t you open your present?” suggested François when he opened the door of her room, thinking that perhaps a beautiful bauble would distract Émilie from her agitation of mind. He felt sorry that such a sweet young creature had gotten herself mixed up in all these schemes. François placed the box on Émilie’s little writing table, then bowed to her and closed the door behind him as he left.

When François had gone, Émilie wandered slowly to her desk and picked up the velvet box. It had a gilt clasp with a single pearl embedded in filigree that had been designed to resemble a bird’s nest. She teased the mechanism with her fingers until it disengaged, and lifted the lid. Cradled there in a bed of satin was a magnificent diamond brooch in the shape of bird. Its mouth was open, and its throat extended. She lifted the precious object out of the box and held it before her, letting the light from the candle glint and fracture into thousands of tiny points on the walls of her room. The brooch was like nothing she had ever seen before, and yet it made her immeasurably sad. The bird was trying to sing, but since it was only a piece of jewelry, it could not. Émilie was about to replace the bird in its silken nest when she noticed that the folds of satin concealed a small piece of paper. It was a note addressed to her.

Émilie did not recognize the handwriting. Not that she imagined for one moment it was the king’s, but she knew that Madame de Maintenon had not written it. She also knew that her performance would not involve any singing at all, although she wasn’t entirely clear concerning what exactly losing her innocence would entail.