Emilie's Voice (21 page)

The wedding was set for three days later, at midnight.

“I feel like a criminal,” Émilie said as they went over the arrangements.

“Nonsense! You’re not doing anything wrong. You have never done anything wrong.”

Émilie was not so sure. She had never told anyone about the evening slippers, not even Charpentier. Somehow committing her misdeed to the permanence of pen and paper was too frightening, and so she did not relate the story of their demise in her letters, as she had intended to. And Charpentier still did not know about the diamond brooch. It remained hidden, wrapped in a handkerchief, in the little cabinet that contained her personal belongings. When he was not there, she sometimes took it out just to look at it. It was her only link with a life that seemed now to have been no more than a dream. She would ponder for hours at a time the idea that everyone she knew at court presumed that she was no longer alive. She had in her possession the only evidence that might prove them wrong, and it fascinated her.

“We’ll have to do something about your hair, for a while at least.”

Émilie shook herself out of her reverie and tried to attend to all that Charpentier said.

“We’ll try a wig, just to be sure.”

“But I still don’t understand why midnight,” she asked, having followed her own train of thought despite her attempt to pay attention.

“I’ve told you before. We need to do it when there will be no one in the church.”

Émilie feared, from something he said, that Charpentier had laid down large sums of money to keep the records hidden. He had gone over everything several times, but try as she might, she could not keep it all straight in her mind. Every time she asked him about it, she hoped that the circumstances had somehow magically altered, that there was no more need for secrecy. But his answer remained always the same. He explained to her that she was not to be “Émilie Jolicoeur,” but “Marcelline Sansvoix”—only for a few hours, because she would return to the apartment as Marcelline Charpentier. That was very difficult for her, losing her name. Émilie could not accustom herself to the idea. Charpentier promised her he would still call her by her given name when they were alone. It was only necessary for the sake of the parish register that she not be Émilie.

The court of Versailles seemed a lifetime away at that moment, and yet it loomed like a threatening presence over everything they did. Émilie tried to picture what was happening at each moment in her absence, and only then realized how much her existence there had been centered upon her own activities. She had no idea what everyone else did while she was engaged in singing, drawing, reading, writing, walking in the garden, or learning fancy needlework. And yet, there were hundreds—thousands—of people, continuing whatever occupations and business had previously taken up the hours of their days, as if she had never existed. Just as they would have if she had truly died. Perhaps François missed her; perhaps he was the only one whose life would be different without her there.

When she took Charpentier’s name tomorrow, she would cease to exist again, or at least a part of her would no longer be, that part of her that identified her as the daughter of her father. There too, her parents’ life would not change at all. She wondered who had told them that she died. It grieved her to think they would believe they no longer had a child. That would be the first thing she would do when she could. She would find a way to tell them that she was still alive. Being dead to everyone else was bearable. Being dead to her parents felt too real.

Twenty-one

Less than three blocks away from where Émilie waited in chaste near-solitude to become a married woman, Sophie continued to sell the rights of consortium several times a night. Circumstances had made it necessary that she put her plans for an acting career aside for a little longer. Although she had counted on being finished with her vengeful meddling by now and therefore able to move on to a more respectable lifestyle, nothing had gone according to plan. She waited outside the Hôtel de Guise early the morning after she had waylaid the stable boy, hoping to be present either when Charpentier returned disappointed or when the bailiffs arrived to arrest him for his part in the plot. To her dismay, neither of these events occurred. A courier came to the door with a note just after Charpentier showed up at around dawn, the distracted elation in his eyes telling of the success of the previous night’s adventure. Sophie was smart enough to realize that someone at Versailles must have intercepted her letter before it could reach Madame de Maintenon. And clearly, interfering with the stable boy had not delayed Charpentier enough to spoil the abduction. If only she could have thought of some way to meddle with the horse. But she was afraid of horses and did not know what she might have done that would have rendered the animal unfit to ride.

So far, Sophie’s actions had been determined by a combination of will and serendipity. There was no question that she felt badly used by Émilie and Charpentier, but without full possession of the facts, Sophie was not entirely willing to condemn them. Now, however, calamity was piled upon calamity, and her pride was stung. As far as Sophie knew, Émilie had been handed the life she herself had craved and then had thrown it all away by running off with Charpentier. It never occurred to Sophie that the successful abduction was achieved without Émilie’s full cooperation. And yet she had seen enough of life at court not to assume that she knew everything. Therefore she felt that it was still necessary for her to guard her hand, to maintain whatever anonymity she had until she could arm herself with more information. The worst thing would be to go barging in somewhere and discover that she’d gotten everything entirely wrong.

So whenever work would allow, Sophie took the opportunity to wait for Charpentier at the Hôtel de Guise so that she could start following him again. After only two days, she managed to be there at the time he emerged, late in the afternoon. He carried a leather satchel under his arm and was far too preoccupied to notice her, and so despite his circuitous route—no doubt designed to prevent anyone’s discovering exactly where he was going—she shadowed him all the way to the apartment in the Marais where Émilie was hidden. To Sophie’s amazement, this was in the same part of Paris in which her own squalid room was located, although the house where Émilie was hiding looked nicer than hers. Not that she actually saw Émilie, but she knew that Charpentier was not the type to patronize a whore, nor was he likely to keep a mistress. In fact, from everything she had seen of him at the Hôtel de Guise, she had once presumed he wasn’t interested in women at all.

It happened that the house where Émilie was staying was known to Sophie. Although she had never used it herself, other women she’d spoken to on the streets named it as an ideal place to bring high-class customers, who might be offended by the usual rundown apartment. The landlady made a show of being respectable, but in addition to renting rooms on a long-term basis (generally to the more modest class of kept women), she was not averse to letting out for an hour or two any that stood vacant, if those who wanted them looked respectable enough and could pay.

For the moment, Sophie bided her time, waiting to see what the couple would do next. She took to loitering near Émilie’s room whenever she could, hoping to hear or see something significant.

It was not long before Sophie’s patience paid off. The day after she began her new vigil, she overheard Charpentier speaking to the landlady on his way in.

“I’ll want a closed fiacre, here, at midnight. Can you arrange it for me?” She saw Charpentier discreetly slip a few coins into the landlady’s hand.

“Easy as pie,” she answered. “It’ll be waiting for you, right here.”

Charpentier thanked her and went into the house.

That’s an evening’s wages out the window, Sophie thought. She would have to be on hand to see what Charpentier intended to do with this carriage so late at night. She would do her best to compensate, then return at about eleven-thirty. It was more difficult to get business early in the evening, before too much drink had made the men bold and horny, but it was better than nothing at all. And there was no question of her not being on hand to see what Émilie and Charpentier would do.

By midnight, with only a few additional liards in her pocket, Sophie was hidden in the shadows near Émilie’s room, watching, waiting. After a moment or two she saw the door of the house open, and through it came Charpentier leading a cloaked and hooded figure by the hand to the waiting coach. Sophie had not seen Émilie since the night she helped her prepare for her début at the Hôtel de Guise, but she had a clear, physical memory of the young girl. A year of growing, a long cloak, and a dark wig were not enough to disguise Émilie’s way of walking, her gestures, her profile.

The coach traveled slowly to avoid making too much noise, so Sophie was able to follow them easily on their course through the winding Paris streets, taking little short cuts in order to keep up. In any case, the exercise did not tire her. It was time and energy well spent.

“Pardon, mademoiselle.”

A man’s voice spoke, and Sophie quickened her pace. She did not want a customer at that moment.

“Mademoiselle! Stop at once!”

Sophie, with a sinking realization that this was not a customer, stopped where she was. Doing her best to look respectable and fierce, she turned just as she heard the heavy footsteps about two feet behind her.

“Monsieur, may I be of service?” There before her was a police officer.

“What’s a girl like you doing out here at this hour? And in a nice, respectable neighborhood like this?”

“I’m just going for my evening walk, to settle my stomach.”

“Perhaps you’ve just eaten something that disagreed with you?” The officer leaned toward Sophie. She stepped aside quickly and he lost his balance, falling flat on his face.
“Putain!”
He spit the word out as though it fouled his mouth to say it.

Sophie looked around. She could still hear the coach wheels but had lost sight of the vehicle. She had to think of something. The policeman struggled to stand up.

“So sorry, Monsieur, but I fear I shall be ill at any moment.” Sophie slid her foot in the way of the officer’s so that he fell down again, cursing and spitting. She tried to run off, but he grabbed her ankle. His grip was very strong.

“I think you’d better come with me.”

Marriage was something Émilie’s mother had threatened her with when she did not behave. She had never thought of it as a desirable event. Although her parents were certainly not miserable, she was more aware of their affection for her than conscious of their feelings for each other. She had left home too young and too suddenly for her mother to have fully explained all that getting married involved. Émilie knew that she and Charpentier would sleep in the same bed together and that they might possibly have children, but the connection between the two events was not entirely clear to her. Added to that, the obscurity of the night, the lonely furtiveness of the excursion, only placed another layer of unreality on the whole event.

“You’re trembling!” Charpentier held Émilie’s hand.

“I don’t know why I’m frightened. I know you will be kind.”

Neither of them looked directly at each other, instead choosing to peer out of the coach windows as they rolled quietly along. When at last they arrived at St. Louis, having taken a deliberately circuitous route to the church that was only about half a mile from where Émilie lived, Charpentier helped her out of the fiacre.

“Wait here a moment,” he said, leaving her halfway up the steps as he went on ahead to see that everything was in order.

Émilie stood where she was and removed her hood. A breeze had come up and chased away the mist that hovered at ground level. The buildings and streets were suddenly very clear, clean, and quiet, devoid of the constant bustle that normally enlivened them. Émilie filled her lungs with air that smelled of Paris, an unmistakable mix of baked bread, fish, and horse manure. She had not been outside since their arrival in the city a few days before. She looked up to the heavens and saw the remaining clouds being pulled away from the moon, and a few autumn stars twinkling weakly. Émilie let the moonbeams caress her face for just a moment, and then she looked toward the east and gasped.

There, illuminated for an instant, were the eight towers of the Bastille, silent and dark. Even in the daytime the compound was a heavy, threatening blot at the end of the rue St. Antoine. Émilie lifted her hood again as the clouds came racing back to conceal the moon. She turned to look for Charpentier, suddenly desperate for his touch. He walked toward her down the steps, smiling. She began to breathe again.

“Let me go! I haven’t done anything wrong! I was just—” a female voice shouted, rupturing the stillness of the night.

Émilie looked at Charpentier with alarm. A policeman led a whore down the middle of the rue St. Antoine in the direction of the Bastille. She struggled and dragged against the rope he had tied around her wrists.

“We’ll just let the magistrate decide in the morning, shall we?”

“Quickly,” whispered Charpentier, taking Émilie’s hand and pulling her up the church steps and into the sanctuary.

Inside, Émilie could still hear the prostitute’s voice complaining and yowling against her captor.

“It’s all right. I don’t think they noticed us,” said Charpentier.

“But the poor thing! Do you think he was taking her to the Bastille?”

“It’s of no account. Look, here is Father Dominique.”

The priest, who was a particular friend of Charpentier’s, greeted them. The small group processed quietly up the long center aisle of the church, whose nave was lit only by a few candles, leaving it mostly in deep obscurity. But the darkness felt far from empty. Whether because of the echo of worship just finished or because she felt the presence of the souls of those who were commemorated in windows and tablets, it seemed to Émilie that a crowd thronged just beyond reach of the candlelight.

The rites were very brief. Émilie was relieved to mount the coach once again and return to her little safe haven, this time as Marcelline Charpentier. Yet despite her misgivings, something about the whole affair, now that it was accomplished, gave her a glow of pleasure. To be married was to be something else. To be someone else. To belong to someone else. To be a wife. To have a husband. Émilie threaded her arm through Charpentier’s and leaned her head on his shoulder, letting the gentle motion of the coach soothe her.

He gave her arm an answering squeeze.