Goddess (3 page)

The orange blossoms, the benches, the King’s dais, even the painted clouds and damp curtains, are carried into the Grande Écurie and arranged, just so, until the place of Julie’s childhood—of stone and hay and horsehair—is transformed into a sylvan dale, a mirage, a miraculous world just like those described in the romance novels, the old sagas, of midsummer magic and deception and young women in breeches riding through the Spanish hills in search of adventure.

The performers arrive that evening. Their carriages pull right up to the door and the child waits and watches closely as the groups of girls, boys and old men climb down, stretch, glance around the forecourt, and sweep upstairs to their chambers. One man, a pudgy mountain of a fellow with thin ankles, screams at the footmen, the drivers, the bumpy road, the blinding rain.

Julie watches as he strikes a porter around the head. ‘My wig is ruined!’

‘Forgive me, sieur.’

‘Let me past, you oaf.’

D’Aubigny appears, offers an arm. ‘Here. Let me help you.’

‘Get your hands off me.’ The stranger shoves him away.

Julie watches closely—if Papa has had a few ales, this could get interesting.

But no. He bows. ‘Welcome to the Grande Écurie, sieur.’

‘My God,’ says the mountain. ‘I thought we were performing at the palace, not in a stable.’

‘A stable was good enough for our Lord.’

‘He didn’t have to sing.’

The rain keeps splattering—the horses, the cobblestones, the fat man’s silk stockings.

Julie tugs at the sleeve of a ballet dancer. ‘Who is he?’

‘Nasty piece of work,’ the dancer whispers. ‘You stay out of his way, dearie.’

‘Is he a singer?’

‘Aye, God help us. An
haute-contre
.’

‘A what?’

‘It’s a high tenor voice—almost like a woman’s.’ The dancer bends down so his face is level with hers. ‘His name’s Duménil. You won’t forget what I told you? Stay away from him.’

‘I won’t forget.’

She never does.

One carriage arrives after all the rest, just on supper time. It carries a woman, alone. Comte d’Armagnac rushes out to welcome her, to offer his hand. She walks past Julie, past the musicians and the dancers, smiling graciously. Julie stares after her. They all do.

‘Who is she?’ she asks.

‘She is our star in Heaven, that’s who,’ says a man with a drum slung on each hip. ‘Le Rochois. Our Marthe. Blessed be thy name.’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘You’re too young,’ he says, though he doesn’t look more than fifteen himself. ‘If you knew anything at all about music, you’d worship her like the rest of us.’

‘Truly? She sings?’

‘She doesn’t just sing. She consorts with the angels.’

‘Now you’re exaggerating.’ But Julie’s eyes dart to the door through which Le Rochois has vanished.

‘Perhaps a little. But you’ll see. Or at least you’ll hear. If you’re lucky.’

That night, Julie tucks her skinny body in between the orange trees, where the King and d’Armagnac and—most fearsome of all—her father will never see her. The King and his brother Monsieur arrive, surrounded as always by women and feathers and tiny dogs, trailed by courtiers and architects and distant cousins. Julie barely notices. She’s seen the mistresses and the sycophants and the royal brothers many times before. Instead, she watches the show.

Afterwards she wonders if she really did hold her breath for the entire three hours, but doesn’t recall breathing at all and her lungs hurt like blazes so maybe it’s true. But who could possibly breathe in the presence of such glory, such beauty, such fire and misery and power?

Power. She feels it swirling through her veins like quicksilver.

The machinery, the trees, the thunderbolts and silks and feathers and King don’t matter. She sees none of it. Only the faces, the tongues of the singers—the spit in the corners of their lips, the teeth at the back of their mouths when they reach for a long note—their eyes flashing at the audience, their feet striking the newly shaved pine, their painted faces white in the torchlight. They are all that matter. They are everything. Music is, theatre is, Le Rochois is—everything.

Majesty is on stage, not on the throne.

She sees that now—the truth.

She knows. Decides. She will possess that power. She will make others feel this wonder, glimpse this Heaven. One day.

F
ROM THAT MOMENT ON
, it was all I wanted. Not much. Grandeur. Passion. Immortality. Music.

I didn’t seek fame as such, you understand. Adoration. Wealth. I was never ambitious in that way—not me. But to some people greatness comes naturally, just as inevitable as autumn after a brilliant summer. We must accept it. It’s our burden.

I didn’t know all that then, of course. I knew only that those sounds, the thousand tallow candles, the gold feathers and long white stockings, the rapture, were to be mine. They had to be.

So from that night I prepared. I had no idea of the path that lay before me, of the things I would have to do to get onto that stage—to be like her, like Le Rochois. To re-create myself in divine form. To sing. But everything I did, everything I learned, some of the men I fucked—oh please, it happens—it all led me to that first moment on stage, many years later, that blast of heat and applause I carry in my heart to this moment.

Did I know what would come of it, then, standing in the stables, holding my breath? Not really. Did I plot my course to glory? Obviously not. If I’d been sensible, I’d have apprenticed myself to the Académie in my early years, instead of—well, instead of everything I am about to tell you.

We’ll get to it, by and by. There is still time.

I sift my memories, my pleasures, my agonies, for you, winnowing them all—sometimes I remember everything, sometimes very little. I will keep nothing back—not on purpose, anyway. Not now.

But then. Then. I stuck to what I knew. The palace. The stables. The sword. I sang only for myself. But my body, my brain, my heart, composed themselves for greatness in whatever form it should come. The life. The role. The performance.

You think it’s about fame? About admiration? You’re wrong. In one sense. I prefer to be alone. No. That’s not true. There are a few people—five, at most—with whom I could happily spend days at a time. Otherwise I’ve always been a creature of solitude. Not an outcast—not always. But I am not at home as part of a throng, the way some people are.

The crowds, the audience—that’s different. I am their mistress, I reach out to touch their sweating hands. I can bend them to my will. On a good night. I learned that from Le Rochois, by watching her gestures, listening—really listening—to her breath, to the silences between the notes. She was a woman alone, too. Alone, on a stage, in the midst of thousands.

That’s how it has always been. When I was little, Versailles was like a carnival. Every day. People everywhere. Dogs. Tiny
ducs
and
duchesses
on ponies. Footmen and guards and pages. Peasants, tradesmen, Princes of the Blood, pickpockets. Thousands. All of them shoving one another out of the way, clamouring, desperate.

There’s so much need in the world. It turns my heart to granite. They are beggars out there, every one of them—from the crippled soldier crying on the corner to the street sellers and crooks and landlords. The bewigged crowd is no different. Better dressed, but desperate nevertheless. Especially at the palace. It’s pathetic, really.

I am one of them, I admit it, but also I’m not. I perform for them, but they don’t touch me, not the way I touch them.

It’s all a show, isn’t it? Life. Faith. Music. Pulling on your boots and your sword every morning. Walking down the centre of a street, picking your supper from between your teeth. Smiling at a serving-girl. Bowing to the audience in the
parterre
. It’s like Easter Sunday—like the changing of the guard at the palace gates—like a
fête
at Versailles or a holy day Mass in Notre-Dame, with a great choir of a hundred voices. A sermon, a song, which both chills and warms the soul at once.

Have you ever actually given a sermon, Father? Do they trust you to do that?

Then you’ll know what I mean. Candlelit, expectant faces, eyes wide in wonder, the hush, the gasps, the sighs. The unwavering—or at least one hopes so—attention of hundreds of God’s creatures all falling upon you, upon your bare arms, your throat, even your teeth. Well, the latter doesn’t apply to you but do try to imagine it.

Or perhaps you’re among those unfortunates who look out upon a congregation of yawning, slumbering faces—open mouths, instead of open eyes. Some people do have that effect on others. You may be among them. I see it now. I imagine you whining on about sin and moral rectitude while the masses fidget and snore and think about what they’ll have for dinner, or let their minds wander pleasantly across their more memorable transgressions. Not the impact you intend to have, I know, but we cannot all be stars in the firmament. Someone must be the earth. Dense. Unyielding. Very few of us soar as I have. Very few of us are granted wings of angels.

Icarus?

Very witty, Father. I’m proud of you.

You weren’t joking?

A cautionary tale, then. A fable? A moral lesson. How tedious. Do you really think me so feverish? I’m fully aware, I assure you, of the heights to which I ascended, of the machinery and faith—ignorance, whatever you wish to call it—it took to keep me there, of the angle and speed of my descent. Nobody feels it more keenly than me.

So don’t trudge in here with your grubby sandals and your fables, Father. You are talking—listening—to one of the few enduring goddesses.

I do not transgress. I transcend. I fly, with coronet and sceptre, over the heads of mortals. I amaze them. They worship at my bare feet, gaze up at me tentatively, as if the glory of my eyes might blind them.

Ah! The wonder of it!

The squalor.

T
HERE ARE DUSTY MILES
behind the horse’s hooves—long summer miles through hamlets and across rivers. The horse is weary. The rider is desperate for a drink and a roasted hare and maybe a woman’s mouth on his noble cock. In that order. Perhaps twice.

He reaches the gates of the Grande Écurie. Reins in to let the sentries see his face. They bow and wave him on, announce his name to the messenger who will race ahead of him to the palace, pass the word of his arrival through the pavilions, the kitchens and the galleries.

‘Comte d’Armagnac!’ The guards bow again.

‘Jesus save us, it’s hot.’

He hates Versailles, the fusspot orchards, the galleries, the mirrors, the godforsaken countryside. Hates the weeks wasted here, standing about in hallways, fussing with wigs and peacocks, royal mistresses and gardeners and orchestras and endless bloody
fêtes
. Miles from the city. Never understood the appeal. The King should be in Paris. Paris is everything. The King is everything. They belong together. Not here. Nowhere.

Into the courtyard, through a gateway and into the inner court, scattering young boys and dogs, twisting in the saddle to check the stables, the hay store, the tack rooms, before his staff has a chance to put things to rights.

All in order. For once. More or less. Raised voices inside the offices—that drunkard d’Aubigny shouting at someone or other.

‘He’s here! A day early.’

A girl’s laughter from upstairs—the daughter, no doubt. No reply, just the big man yelling.

Equerries run out of the shadows and pretend they’ve been at their desks all along. Stableboys furiously sweep the morning’s horse shit out of sight. They’d eat it if they had to, to get the paving stones clean. Lick it up. Swallow it. Anything.

A horn sounds. There’s a rush of footsteps from the drill room. The boys form up into ragged lines, pushing the little ones back out of sight. A pathetic lot. He doubts any of them will ever become pages. A waste of time. Years spent drilling and coaching and they’ll all end up with their brains spattered on a battlefield somewhere in fucking Flanders. Pages are for peacetime, for courts where nothing happens.

But Louis likes to keep up appearances.

The fool d’Aubigny appears, trying to look nonchalant. He fails. He struts across the courtyard, one look enough to silence the whole line of boys. He reaches for the reins, bows at the same time, tightens a lace on his shirt, tucks a wine-soaked sleeve out of sight.

‘A welcome to you, Your Grace.’

‘Rode on ahead of my vanguard,’ says d’Armagnac. ‘Thought I’d surprise you.’

‘A very pleasant surprise indeed.’

D’Armagnac doesn’t believe that for a moment. ‘I’ll stay here tonight, go across to the palace in the morning.’

‘As you wish, Your Grace.’

‘Is my apartment ready?’

‘Of course. It is always ready.’

Doesn’t believe that, either.

D’Armagnac dismounts, stretches, straightens his sword belt. A woman’s voice soars from one of the upper windows. Some girl singing a Lully air. Quite well. He listens for a moment then turns to his secretary with a grunt.

‘Let’s get on with it, then.’

The inspection is over in an hour, thank God. Things aren’t as bad as he’d feared. The accounts are in order. Perhaps someone’s taken d’Aubigny in hand. The stable floors and walls are as clean as one of the galleries in the palace. Cleaner.

D’Armagnac offers a prayer of thanks that he’s Louis’s Master of Horse and not the Grand fucking Chamberlain. Horses are much less trouble than courtiers—or kings, for that matter. His stables smell better than the palace. Horse piss on cobblestones is a decent, hearty scent. But you can never get courtier piss out of carpet, and never convince a courtier to leave the room for a minute, even to relieve himself, if the King is present. They might miss out on something. Pigs.

He’d never cross the great forecourt if he could help it. He has everything he needs here. Apartments, kitchens, gardens, ballrooms. Quiet. Horses. Food. Women, if necessary.

The equerries bow and explain, the procurators and undersecretaries all have something urgent and nonsensical to report. Everyone chatters at him.

‘We are glad to see you home safely, Your Grace.’

‘The siege is lifted, I hear,’ says some fool who’s never been anywhere near a battle.

‘A great victory for France, for the King, for you.’

‘We heard that …’

On and on. As if he cares. As if any of it matters.

He shouts at d’Aubigny once or twice just to make them both feel better.

‘You’re supposed to be my secretary, not my mother! Stop fussing.’ D’Armagnac stomps towards the stairs. ‘Enough.’

Julie stands in the shade, just outside the door, waiting to take his hat, his gloves, his spite. She’s breathing hard—since d’Armagnac rode in the gate, she’s run clear across the forecourt to warn the cooks that the great man is here, piled a week’s worth of paperwork from her father’s desk into a cupboard, brushed her hair, winked at a stableboy, raced to her position. She is ready.

D’Armagnac stares.

She is ripe. Thirteen or so—more than old enough. Her mother must have been a beauty, because the filly is astonishing. Creamy skin and her eyes clear, unflinching, even under his gaze. She seems at once softness and steel. He sees it now—never noticed before; that foul-mouthed scamp in breeches and baggy cadet jacket has suddenly become—

He will have her. Must. It’s only right. The father is his slave, his creature. She must be, too. Tonight.

Sooner.

She sees the decision flicker across his face.

Sees the ermine trim on his riding gloves, the soft leather boots, the greying hair and the wince at pain in the base of his spine, the dust gathered in the wrinkles of his neck.

She knows she should smile. She does. This is the smile that matters. He looks at her breasts, nods, walks on, not noticing the blush that speckles her throat.

So. It will be him.

The one man in all the world with whom her father cannot argue—our Lord in Paris, as he says. Someone has to carry her out of here. Someone has to be the first. She has known that since she was nine years old. She will die here, a laundry maid or a whore. Or she will fly. Must fly. Somehow.

He will do. D’Armagnac. Who better? He has the King’s ear, runs half the palace, his own chateau near Nancy. The Hôtel d’Armagnac near the Louvre, so they say, is finer than the cardinal’s residence. She will have new clothes, perhaps a horse of her own.

He is old, it’s true. Ancient. She shrugs away the thought. That is the price. His price. Hers. And there are mistresses already. She’s seen one or two over the years—paid women who come and go, and a chambermaid last summer who was sent home to Picardie to get rid of the lump in her belly. But she can deal with them—with him.

There’s no fear: not now, not later when her father knocks on her door for the first time in his life and stands, pale, in the hallway, staring as if he’s never seen her before.

‘I’m ready.’

She’s washed her hair, changed into clean breeches. She’d wondered about a dress, but then realised there must be something about the boots, the jacket, the ambiguity, that stirs him.

Perhaps he prefers boys, after all. No matter. She’ll be whatever he wants. For a time. It’s the first step on the only possible path away from the stables.

She leaves her father standing in the hallway.