Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (17 page)

Somewhere inside me I am crying out
Isabella
–

I open my eyes and set the swirling heavens alight in a glorious golden rush.

We are remaking the world.

Or so Mémé says, and we are supposed to believe.

As Maurepas leaves he kisses me, his mouth sloppy and redolent. “I feel alive again,” he whispers in my ear. “Like I was twenty years younger. Marvelous, Claire, simply marvelous… ”

I hate this time, after, when he is once more just a debauched minister and I his whore. Yet I cannot bring myself to tell him the truth: he has gained nothing. If anything he looks older, older and tired. How can they delude themselves, that a taste of my blood is the elixir they crave? Do they honestly believe they are the first to try, that no one has dared to taste a woman’s courses before?

Or perhaps this too is part of what we create, when we make the symbol appear on our ceilings: this irrational belief in their own renewal.

I wash my face and my mouth, wash between my legs, and bind myself in fresh linen. Only when I feel clean do I creep, barefoot, into the hall. The air is hot and thick; everywhere I hear sighs, panting cries, the grunting of the men. I was lucky tonight: Maurepas is a quick one. Some of the others will be at it till dawn.

A quick one, and I was already on the brink before he arrived, as we are told to be.
You must feel pleasure, real pleasure, or it will not happen,
Mémé had said.
I make them wait before going to you, so as to give you time. Bring yourself as close to the moment as possible.
From a box she had pulled out objects, feathers and patches of soft fur and ivory carved to look like a man’s organ, all while I blushed and squirmed.
Imagine you are with a lover, or would you prefer one of these? You can try anything you fancy. Or is there something else you like? Louisa, peasant girl that she was, used to use marrows, and Aimée has a little embroidered pillow, very firm…

But I have no need of toys, or imaginary lovers. All I need is to envision the door across from mine, and what lies behind it, and what might happen should it one day open for me.

Isabella’s door.

I crouch before it now, humble with longing. I know every inch of its surface, every whorl of the grain. The key is always in her lock so I can only listen. The space between door and floor glows brightly; Turgot likes to see her and I cannot blame him, were it myself I would fill her room with candles, to see every inch of her–

She mewls like a kitten, gasping and crying theatrically, and I grin at the parquet. Poor old baron. He probably thinks himself a great lover; he is always preening when he leaves.

But then her noises change.

I press my ear to the door. My hand drifts
between my legs yet again; every sound of flesh against flesh leaves me breathless. I can even
smell
her, not marigolds but something sweet and tangy and peppered all at once, like the rush of air on a spring morning, everything blooming and blossoming–

When at last she cries out I shudder in turn. A moment later Turgot makes a barking cry that trails off into a pathetic bout of coughing.

Isabella
.

When her door finally opens I am back in my room, watching through the keyhole as the fat ass laps at her neck, then gropes between her legs one last time. Shoving his red-tipped fingers in his mouth all at once, like a child.

Isabella watches him go – and then she looks at my door. Does she know I’m watching? Is she truly looking, or is she merely lost in blissful recollections of the Baron de Laune’s gouty mass?

I dare not move, I cannot even breathe, until she closes her door once more. The hall silent and dark now. Lifeless.

What does Isabella imagine, while she waits for Turgot to arrive?

“…Maurepas,” Mémé recites, sliding her finger down the page of the ledger spread open on her lap. So many names and only eight of us, have there really been so many? “Sartine. Vergennes. Diderot. Forbonnais. Malesherbes. Albert.” She smiles down at the page. “And of course Turgot…”

We all look at Isabella, who blushes. She is Turgot’s favorite, which makes her Mémé’s favorite. Bread at more than three
sous
a pound, the prices driving people to protest – you can see the joy in Mémé’s gaunt little face when Turgot arrives. The tangible result of all our perverse couplings. He comes now in a plain carriage, to avoid the crowds that each month are becoming a little more violent, a little less reasonable.

Not that reason ever had a place in this.

Mémé counts out our money, each coin washed clean. It’s more than any other brothel in Paris, even the finer ones. But I barely glance at the coins in my hand; I no longer study Mémé’s odd ageless face, her hands at once lined and strong; I no longer wonder at the strange circular scoring on her floor, how every room is arranged so the beds point west. All I can think on is her desk, where she draws the symbols and hands them over one by one, almost careless in her gestures. Nothing more than circles and lines and curves, the whole twisted so as to seem a knot; yet each time it is a different symbol, never quite the same. Each time too we must paint it on another’s ceiling. We never see what is on our own.

Isabella balancing on my bed that first night, frowning at the slip of paper in her hand, the brush in her other dripping that queer cloudy liquid, and the straining arch of her bare leg–

Somehow the symbols and our blood make things happen. Sometimes Mémé has us paint them even when we are not bleeding, but in the moment they merely brighten a little, there is no blinding flash.
Without our blood, all we can do is nudge matters along
, she explained.
But when our blood comes: that is our time. Our ancestors knew this; they secluded their women when the moon waxed, lest they inadvertently ruin the crops, or kill a man through lovemaking. Only I learned to control our power through the sigils. With a clear sigil before us, a powerful man to take from, and our blood flowing? That is when we can lay our hands upon the tiller of the world, and change its course for good.

Save that I no longer want to go where Mémé says, if ever I did. I no longer care about Paris, or bread, or power. The only world I want to make is one where Isabella holds out her hand to me as she did the first day I saw her, except this time she doesn’t let go, she instead draws me close and presses her lips to mine–

All I need is the right symbol, the right
sigil
as Mémé says, only I do not know how to make them.

Not yet.

Our week may be done, but we cannot relax; we still have the rest of the month to survive. There is our own bread to earn, the shopping to do. We change the lantern outside from red glass to clear; we dress plainly to run our errands, our hair tucked into mobcaps and worn muslin aprons over our skirts.

We go out in the world, and see what we have wrought.

We go in threes, three and three and then a pair with Mémé. She takes whoever she feels needs encouragement, the better to exhort them at length.
This is not for our own gain, this is for everyone, for France herself. I have seen them at their estates. I have watched them dance and screw, drunk on their own gluttony, while children die of starvation at their gates. It is not right, it is not right. But we have the power to change this – the power and the understanding.

Today, however, there is no Mémé and her philosophizing; today there is only Isabella at my side. Aimée too, but she stops to peer in every shop window, she dawdles and hurries after us and dawdles again. She has kept her little
mouche
on, the red drop below her lip that we all wear during that week, the mark of our specialty; she only tossed her head at Isabella’s tut-tutting. Men eye her as they pass – after so many months word is getting around – they eye her and she simpers and flirts, loving the attention.

I try my best to ignore her, to imagine that it is only Isabella and me. Our list in her careful print: soap, pigeons for our supper, more cognac for the gentlemen. Her arm in mine, her laughter sweet in my ear. Would that it could last forever.

Aimée draws close to us, peering over Isabella’s shoulder and giggling. “Does your wild girl even know what cognac is?”

“Aimée,” Isabella scolds, but says nothing more.

But it is true: I was a wild thing when Isabella found me. Digging through the garbage at the waterfront for anything I might eat or barter, begging in the Marais, hand to mouth and day to day, unable to think on anything save making it through one more night…

Your wild girl
. Wild with despair, wild with hope, at the sight of Isabella’s beckoning hand. Her hair perfectly curled and pinned and powdered, her dress so creamy and bright it seemed to glow against the filth of the street. The shimmer of her décolletage, her lips rouged scarlet, and just beneath that single red drop.

I took her hand and I looked into her brown eyes and I thought,
I will follow you anywhere
.

And then I realized: I was making a
choice
. For the first time in my life I was
choosing
my fate.

No one else could have brought me to this. No one else could make me part my legs for these men.

As soon as Isabella took my hand, I would have followed her to hell.

Our own neighborhood is as peaceful as on any day, but as we draw near the market the mood turns ugly. Everywhere voices thick with discontent. Hats are pulled low, hands raised over mouths as people mutter to each other. There is even an outright duel in an alley, despite the laws: swords flashing, the young men furious as they lunge at each other, scrabbling for purchase on the slop-covered cobblestones. Barefoot, lean children run past us, tormenting a mangy cat. Half-lidded eyes running over us. The very air making my stomach churn.

I clutch at Isabella’s arm, pressing close to her. “Never fear,” she says. “They cannot harm us.”

But she is only parroting what Mémé tells us, that our safety is part of the sigils.
You enact not only the great change but your place in it as well
. Yet who decides what our place is, other than Mémé? Who knows what she really puts in her drawings, what retribution they might invoke?

My only hope is that she would protect Isabella, for Isabella has Turgot.

The market, at least, is its usual chaotic maze of long, low tables overflowing with wares: vegetables, meats, raw fish stinking atop the shredded pages of gazettes; scraps of fabrics and old clothes that the young women crowd around, hoping for some pricey bit of lace; pots and pans and tools, rusted but serviceable or new and gleaming. I can sense, behind us, Aimée’s head darting from side to side. This is where Mémé found her, a clerk’s daughter trying to make herself appear something more. She had lost her virtue to a butcher’s agent, she was desperate for a man with clean hands; her last customer was Malesherbes, which means she has not come far at all.

As we move deeper into the market the sunlight disappears. I look up, thinking perhaps a storm is coming, but it is only the shadow of the pillory. Three bodies are silhouetted within, slumped in their stocks. The stone front of the tower is smeared with rotting foodstuffs; a man offers us some bruised fruits, would us ladies like to throw one?

Aimée reaches for his basket but Isabella grabs her arm. “Leave them be,” she says, her voice low.

“It’s just a bit of fun–”

“Leave them be,” Isabella repeats, and for the first time I hear anger in her voice. “There but for the grace of God, Aimée.”

“As if we’re like them,” Aimée says, her cheeks flushing. “Soon enough it will be your precious Turgot up there, or hanging from–”

Isabella shakes her hard, cutting her off. “For God’s sake,” she hisses. “What if someone hears? There are spies everywhere, you’ll get us all arrested.”

“Not you,” Aimée retorts. “Never her precious Isabella. Take care,” she adds to me, “this one will do anything Mémé asks, even if it means ratting on you.”

At her words Isabella recoils, as if Aimee had struck her. “I would never,” she says, a tremor in her voice. “I would
never
.” She looks at me and I see her eyes are full; before I can speak she looks away again. “Forget the vegetables,” she says to the ground. “Let’s just go back.”

But I cannot move. The tremulous
never
. The anger in her voice, her anger and her
tears
. Always she had seemed to believe wholeheartedly in Mémé’s scheme–

“Isabella,” I say. A dozen half-formed phrases tangling in my mind.

At the far end of the market a group of men suddenly appears, causing a murmur to run through the crowd. Conversations die away as everyone turns. Each man is spattered with powder–

No, not powder.
Flour
.

“Fifteen sous a loaf!”

The roar comes from somewhere in their group; it is picked up at once, the call echoing through the market, deep and furious.

Isabella grabs my hand.

Fifteen sous!

At once the space around us fills with bodies, male and female, old and young, pressing against us. They wave spoons and knives, sticks and hammers.

Fifteen sous!

We are being pushed forward, carried along in the crowd. Behind us Aimée whispers, “What should we–” But Isabella hushes her, a single hiss, her hand rigid around mine.

An older man climbs onto one of the tables, calling out for us to stop; another climbs beside him and with a polite smile punches him in the head, knocking him into the crowd that swarms over him without a glance.

Isabella twists beside me; a hand is pulling at her skirts, she pushes it away. Another chuckle, somewhere in back–

And then Aimée is gone.

I start to turn, to go after her, but Isabella pulls me close. Hands are groping me, I cannot tell who is touching me. My foot catches on a body, a woman huddled on the ground, covering her child as the mob tramples thoughtlessly over her.

The mob swells, pushing towards the rue de la Petite Truanderie. We keep our arms wrapped around each other; Isabella is stepping to the left at every opportunity and I do the same. Throughout, she keeps her head raised, keeps looking ahead, and I do the same.