French Passion (15 page)

Not that I wanted company. My joy at being reunited with my child made every moment away from her a nag, a bother. Evenings I sewed with Aunt Thérèse, or sat with Izette. Izette, long past the stage of infecting anyone, stayed in her room, mourning her brother.

I'd climb up to her attic, trying to raise her spirits. “You'll have to get back to work,” I scolded. “I'm worn out tending CoCo.”

At this the old smile briefly split the pocked face. “If that ain't the biggest lie ever!”

“I just can't get enough of her,” I admitted. “But come on down with me to look in on her.”

It was Izette who first saw the little red dots on CoCo's plump neck.

The doctor came immediately, the same doctor who'd been too night-weary to visit servants was not too tired for the “ward” of the Comte de Créqui. He stood over the cradle, his black robes frightening my baby, telling me what I already knew.

“The smallpox,” he said. “I'll send the sisters to nurse her.”

“I'll nurse her,” I said. “And I expect you every morning.”

He blanched.

“You'll be here at ten,” I commanded, using the Comte's most haughty tone.

Later, the mornings blurred with the afternoons, and the nights blurred with the days, and there was only the bewildered wailing of a little girl unused to pain. Fevers rose and fell in her. She had very few pocks and these itched her intolerably. I cut her nails to the quick and held her small, flailing hands so she couldn't mark herself with scratches. Izette and I set up cots in the nursery, spelling each other. I cannot remember sleeping, yet I suppose I must have. That week, I suppose, I slept.

It was after midnight, when illness worsens and death stands waiting. CoCo tossed in her brass cradle, her lips pressed on her battered gold locket. She'd insisted on keeping it with her during her illness. Lightheaded with weariness, I sat next to her, watching, wondering if she somehow knew it was the Comte's first gift to her and for this reason she held on to it. Was her need for the locket the sign that she was the Comte's child?

In a towel-covered bowl at my feet was some ice that the fat cook had managed to buy, though God knows how, after this hot summer and autumn.

CoCo's hair, darkened with sweat, clung to her head, and her closed eyes were sunk in two lavender circles. The rest of her face was so red with fever that the pock-marks barely showed. The sight of her transfixed me with guilt. For in the deepest recesses of my soul, I knew the Comte was right. My first responsibility had been not to infect my child.

The door opened quietly and Izette came in, holding her skirts to keep them from rustling. We glanced at each other, she nodding toward my cot. I shook my head, no.

The nursery swam with shadows, and my head jerked forward.

I couldn't have slept more than five minutes. When I woke, Izette was bent over the cradle, sponging CoCo.

“The fever shot up suddenlike. She's convulsing.”

I reached frantically for the rigid, quaking little body, holding her in my lap, moving towel-wrapped ice everywhere on her face and plump torso. CoCo wailed a feeble protest. I didn't stop. Please, God, she's only got seven teeth—no, there's the new one, I prayed as I sponged ice on her, she's only got eight teeth. Let her be all right.

Izette gathered dirty linens from the cradle, and put on fresh.

CoCo stopped wailing. She smiled, showing her teeth. “Mama,” she whispered. I touched my lips to her forehead. It felt cooler. She snuggled against my breasts, giving a little sigh. The convulsions stopped, and she was still. Dropping the ice back in the bowl, I wrapped her in a shawl.

“Izette,” I whispered, “the fever's broken. She's going to be all right.”

We smiled at each other over CoCo, our eyes shining. I stayed in the low chair, rocking the baby. The kind of joy that comes only once or twice in a lifetime filled me. After a few minutes Izette came to take CoCo.

She pulled back, then said, “Oh, Manon, my poor Manon.…”

CoCo was no longer moving at all. My mind blocked the knowledge. “She's sleeping,” I said. “She's better.”

Izette's face twisted into a scarred mask. Her mouth and chin trembled.

“She's better,” I repeated.

“Yes, much better,” Izette said. “Let me take her.”

“No.” I gripped the small body tighter.

“I'll put her in the cradle.” Izette's arms went around my shoulders. “Let me?”

“No.” I was whimpering a little. “As long as I hold her she'll be better.”

I was still holding CoCo when paleness showed at the windows and Izette opened the curtains. A flight of sparrows whirled around the church steeple. Their wings turned to thin curves as they rose upward into the dawn. I was remembering.

“Here, let me take her,” Izette said. Her voice shook with sobs. Izette had loved and lost her pale, crippled brother. Izette had loved and lost CoCo.

“Not yet,” I said.

I remembered the midwife holding up the squirming red baby with the funny bald head. That had been sixteen months ago. Sixteen months is so little time, and yet so much time. Enough to learn to walk and say words and cut eight teeth. Not long enough to learn fear. CoCo never was afraid. Remember the small, imperious lift of chin. Remember her reaching for gilt buttons. Remember her holding up her arms to the Comte, never learning he wouldn't pick her up. Remember the laughter as she explored the Tuileries Gardens. Yes, remember.

“Manon, it has to be done.”

“Later.”

I hadn't wept, and I didn't think I would ever weep. There was a pain that held my body tight, as if my blood had turned to lead, and I decided I'd never be able to walk or talk or weep again.
It's a law of nature … I suggest you don't tamper with the natural order
, the Comte had said. I had done what seemed to me inevitable, and in the doing, had tampered with some immutable laws concerning the human estate. For this, CoCo had been punished. I knew in some timeless place where I'd never been before that I never would, never could forgive myself. My pain never would heal. I never again would be complete. Always I would carry this guilt wedged in my heart.

Izette took the small body from me. My eyes were dry.

That evening Aunt Thérèse came into the nursery. I sat by the small, closed white coffin in which CoCo already lay. Aunt Thérèse's wrinkles were blotched with tears. She'd wept all day. I'd listened to those sobs with numb envy.

“The priest just left.” She put her handkerchief to her eyes. “CoCo must be buried in potter's field.”

I looked up. “A pauper's burial?”

“It's the law for victims of the smallpox,” she said with a sob. “To prevent infections.”

“Prevent the rich from catching it,” I said tonelessly.

“What?”

“She's gone. What does it matter?”

“Oh, Manon, how I wish Jean-Pierre or the Comte were with us. They'd know what to do.”

The Comte remained in England. Jean-Pierre's regiment was still on duty.

“There's nothing to be done,” I said.

It had rained. Clouds sagged like wet purple coverlets as if it would rain again, Around the mass grave stood ragged mourners in small groups, generally two people, sometimes three, never more.

Izette and I were alone. Aunt Thérèse, just as we were about to leave, had collapsed into a dead faint. Much as the servants had loved CoCo, they'd been terrified to come to this place. My friends who visited on Friday nights had sent graceful notes of condolence, excusing themselves with a variety of reasons from the funeral rites. As if it mattered.

Gravediggers unceremoniously lowered shrouded bodies, eleven of them. I counted. This, I thought numbly, is how Joseph was buried. Maybe in that grassless patch over there.

I watched a cheap pine box descend, and then the gravediggers easily handed down the small white coffin. CoCo, who had loved the sunshine, loved gilt buttons and her battered gold locket, loved everything bright and beautiful. What an awful grim place this was. Even grass didn't grow properly.

I held my hands at the sides of my forehead to deaden the pain behind my eyes.

The pockmarked priest hastily mumbled, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.…”

A man was opening the low gate to the graveyard, and I watched him. Elderly, short, handsomely dressed in dark wool, almost like a lawyer, yet I could tell by his bearing this was no bourgeois. He took off his hat, coming toward me.

It took a full minute before I realized it was the Comte. He's in England, I thought dully. I'm imagining him.

But it was he. He stood next to me. A large raven stalked up the mounded wet dirt of the huge grave. I shuddered. The Comte bent for a pebble, throwing it at the bird. Evil glossy black wings rustled overhead.

“… Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen,” came the thin, rustling response. And the services were over. Pairs of mourners drifted away. Touching my arm in farewell, Izette started in the direction of the house.

I stood there long after the others had left, not crying, hardly blinking. A few large drops of rain fell. The Comte took my elbow, leading me to his carriage. He sat facing me. Neither of us had spoken.

As the carriage jolted forward, I said, “The King's business is concluded?”

“No. Your aunt wrote of CoCo's illness. The letter was delayed, but as soon as it arrived, I set out, changing horses at every post.”

“Thank you,” I said tonelessly. “You shouldn't have come to the funeral. You risked the infection.”

“I wish I could have been here all along, my dear. And as for this, it wasn't necessary for her to go into a pauper's grave.”

“Victims of the smallpox have to.”

“That law doesn't apply to the nobility,” he said. “Your brother should've arranged a proper burial.”

“Jean-Pierre's on active duty.”

“Doubtless very active,” the Comte replied smoothly.

I sighed. What did any of this matter?

Home, I went up to my room, and the Comte followed, shutting the door after us. I stared out the window at the rain. Coming down in gray lines, it veiled nearby houses.

“Would it help,” he asked, “if I tell you she was dear to me, too?”

I continued to watch the rain. After a long time I said, “You never played with her.”

“My dear, men like myself don't romp about on floors. Still, I always brought her some small thing.”

“Yes.” One of the reasons CoCo had reached up to him was for the little dolls or toys or bits of bright ribbon emerging from black satin pockets.

“She was so like you. Brave, gay, pretty. But you don't have that temper. In her worst tantrums she was dearest to me. ‘Go on,' I'd think. ‘Bravo, keep at it. You have to be mine.'”

The words weren't somber, yet there was no banter in his tone, only grief. And this grief pierced through my numbness. At least I'd known my daughter was my own.

“I'm truly sorry about that, Comte,” I said, resting my gloved hands on the window ledge. “God is very cruel.”

The Comte came up behind me. “Sometimes, yes.”

“It's my fault.”

“No.”

“I burned every scrap of clothing, I washed so much, and I kept away from her for two weeks. I was careful, so careful.” My voice rose. “I just wasn't careful enough.”

He turned me around, holding my tearless face to his wool collar. “None of us knows how it travels,” he said. “She easily could've been infected without you. Or your servants.”

“Yes. Servants. I've been thinking. I interfered with life, and CoCo was punished. You warned me, didn't you, Comte?”

“Hush.”

“Do you know what I'm going to be? Frivolous, no more. I'm going to be as all the other women like me are.”

“Cry, my dearest, cry.”

“Oh, God! If only I could!” I pressed my body closer to his. “I'm going to have Monsieur Sancerre make me more gowns. Oh, I'm going to have such fun. I'll have a box at the Opéra-Comique and the Comédie-Française. A tutor'll teach me to paint watercolors. I'll have a dancing master show me the newest dances, every one of them. I'll play cards. I'll play and play and play.”

The Comte stroked my hair, letting me talk. In my guilty grief it seemed to me that the worst punishment I could inflict upon myself was eternal pleasure.

TWO

The Bastille

1788

Chapter One

I stood in front of the pier mirror, momentarily veiled by the gown that Izette was lowering over my head, then the sheer white batiste skirt floated gracefully over my petticoats. There were no pannier hoops. Izette stood behind me, fastening the bodice, which had no ribbons, no ruffles, no fichu, nothing to distract from the deep swathe that revealed my breasts. Simplicity was very chic this summer.

Izette fastened my opal necklace, stepped back, examined me with her chin resting on a finger.

In the year since she'd had the smallpox, her scars had turned to an ugly gray, and the pits remained as deep. Any small vanity she might once have possessed was gone. She'd learned to be a skilled lady's maid. My looks were her pride. She smoothed one of my blond-silver hairs back into the artless cascade that had taken her a full hour to produce with the curling tongs.

“You'll outshine them all,” she said at last. Her tone was factual, not complimentary.

And, looking in my mirror, I saw radiance. Not a soul this Friday night would guess how long Izette and I had spent achieving the radiance. Nobody would see the creams and lotions, and nobody would realize the glitter in my eyes came from belladonna drops. Nobody would know that under this glow was a woman dead to joy and sadness. As an addict needs his drug, I needed excitement to bring me to life.

Izette handed me my nosegay. White skirts adrift around me, I floated downstairs. In the hall, diamond patterns of polished dark wood reflected a half-hundred candle flames. Our first guests would arrive soon. The house clattered and buzzed with last-minute preparations.