Rondo Allegro (18 page)

Not everyone felt that influence. Anna was entirely taken up
by the burden of her leading role, and even if she had not been, she remained
wary of male attention.

That wariness now extended to Therese Rose. Despite
Therese’s showers of compliments, Anna could feel how eagerly and avidly she
was watched, and when she glimpsed Therese talking to Lorette or one of the
others, Anna wondered if some of her utterances began with, “Do not breathe a
word, but . . .” followed by pungent observations about Anna.

She tried to shrug off her sense of hurt, and she exerted
herself to act toward Therese exactly as always, but she no longer felt any
desire to share her opinions. Therese was pretty, and sang well, and could be
good company, but Anna no longer trusted anything she said.

o0o

At the end of the week, they set out as the snows began to
melt. Anna rejoiced in the hills and valleys showing the first fuzz of buds,
and the flit, swoop and dive of the swallows returning for spring.

The first sign of trouble was a burned village, the
unrepaired ruin and relatively fresh gravestones the more shocking amidst the
green shoots of spring.

Within a month they knew that the west was a mistake. The
destruction of the Vendee was far worst than any of them had conceived:
everywhere were the signs of poverty. Common folk made shift to live, and few
were merchants, burned shops with broken windows marking village streets like
gaping holes between teeth.

Nobody seemed to have money for rebuilding, much less for
entertainment. M. Dupree’s auditions dwindled to those desperate to live, then
quit altogether. Shelter became increasingly difficult to find, and one by one
their musicians began to melt away, until they were left with two violins and
two woodwinds, all four relations of someone in the company. Tempers were
short.

Late one day, they were turned away for the fourth time from
quarters that even new little Helene, daughter of a laundress, would have
scorned back in their Paris days, a storm broke overhead.

M. Marsac pushed to the first carriage, stuck his head in
the door, and shouted against the roar of the rain, “A local says there is a
chateau nearby.” He pointed up an adjacent road.

M. Dupree was too distressed to wonder why no one had
offered him this information, though he was the one soaking wet from getting in
and out of the carriage. “We will try to find it,” he said. “Tell the driver!”

The chateau had once been magnificent, but had been used as
target practice for artillery, and the entire roof had collapsed. However, the
stable had largely survived. Once they discovered this, M. Dupree took one look
at his weary wife, his infant son in the arms of the newly hired nurse, and
said, “Settle in. I will ride back down to the village, and offer entertainment
in exchange for food.”

There was one area of the stable that was somewhat less
filthy than the rest, where the lambs had once been sequestered. This was taken
over by the Duprees, and the rest had to make shift as best they could.

Marsac looked around the stable in distaste.

He was not about to reveal that he had once visited the
place as a boy; by indirect suggestion he got the men to brave the chateau in
hopes of discovering an outbuilding left intact.

The women elected to remain in the stable, in spite of the
rustle and scratching of rats in the dark corners, rather than brave the storm
in the fast-gathering darkness. When the men departed with the last of the
lanterns, they shoved their trunks into a rough square barricade, and set four
of their precious candles on the trunks at each corner.

Darkness closed in as they shared out the scant remains of
stale bread and drying cheese. For a time there was general chatter, but as the
long night stretched out ahead, some fought yawns: the squeaking from beyond
the candle nimbus made Anna shiver.

“I will not lie down,” Parrette said, sitting bolt upright on
her trunk with her worn winter cloak pulled tightly around her, and her voice
thin with disgust. “I will not have rats eating my fingers or attacking my face
in my sleep.”

“I will never shut my eyes again,” Eleanor proclaimed
dramatically, and was fervently agreed with by Catherine and little Helene.

Anna silently agreed. Yet as time wore slowly on, measured
only by the melting candles in their pools of wax, her eyelids burned and she
caught herself nodding.

Each time she pulled herself upright the effort took more
strength.

Midway through the night, when the air was coldest, Ninon
rose. “
Peste!
Let us rehearse the
changes in the dance,” she said to the other dancers, cast a sidelong look
Anna’s way, and turned her back.

Anna had no intention of accepting that silent rejection. But
when she joined the others in the candlelit square, Ninon turned on her, hand
upraised. “Sit down.”

Anna, cold and cramped, protested. “I have always practiced
with you. No one minds. I stay in the back.”

“You can stay away altogether, unless you start to carry
your share.”

“My share?” Anna repeated, and several of the dancers looked
confused. Others smiled privately, a sign that warned Anna of something
unpleasant that had been discussed in secret.

Sure enough. Ninon tossed her artfully curled golden locks,
crossed her arms, and said, “If you want to dance with us, then you can take
your part in the farce now and then, just like the rest of us.”

Anna stared at her in surprise.

What was this really about? The farces were ancient,
everyone knew that, always bawdy, the details merely adapted to the times:
these days, the cuckolds and butts of the jokes were invariably aristocrats.
The females were still coquettes, only their dress had changed from hoops and
silk and feathers to republican rags or the extravagant costumes of the
Merveilleuses.

Anna knew what Ninon really wanted. The acting was easy. Not
much was required in the way of dance in the farce. The women were on stage
mainly to act as objects for the male clowns’ lascivious buffoonery.

The problem came afterward. While the male part of the
audiences had no problem believing that the male clowns were playing roles,
they seemed to regard the females as coquettes whether on stage or off. The
singers were able to get on and off stage without being molested, perhaps
protected by the grandness of tragedy. The dancers, especially those in the
farces performing their roles within arm’s reach of the audience, had to guard
against pinches and fondles, or being grabbed and kissed.

Even though the Terror had ended when Monsieur Talien took
his mistress’s dagger to Robespierre, the easing of Thermidor had not reached
all parts of the country. The shadow of the Terror lay in the dancers’ minds
when they had to fend off unwanted advances from drunken butchers, farmers,
carters, and the like. Everyone was afraid of being shouted down as an elitist.
They knew that mobs could form between one heartbeat and the next.

Anna studied the dancers’ faces as the candles wavered and
streamed in the stuffy slow-moving air.
Who
are you to be spared our hardship?
those unblinking gazes seemed to ask.

Anna faced Ninon. “Someone will need to walk me through the
part.”

Ninon’s eyelids lifted, revealing her surprise.
So she thought I would cry off
, Anna
thought.

“Helene can do that,” Ninon said. “It is simple enough.”

“In the morning, then?” Anna turned to Helene.

The younger girl yawned, and nodded. “Easy.”

Ninon lifted an ironic hand, and Anna took her place at the
back. Counting softly, their footsteps rustling over the dusty ground, the
dancers began their daily routine. Anna sank gratefully into the familiar
rhythms. All night they danced, and when they tired, sat and talked about
anything and everything. Nothing of consequence: mostly reminiscences,
beginning with the delicious seafood at Le Procope, laughing visits to the
cafés with dashing men, and then walking back in the hour before dawn, and
buying fresh, hot bread from street vendors just starting their day. When their
voices got hoarse and their limbs heavy, they forced themselves up, which would
cause the advancing rats to scatter. Nerves jangling, they would dance again.

When dawn’s light began to send pale shafts down through the
broken roof, the rats vanished back into the corners, and they retired to
sleep.

Parrette shook Anna awake just before noon, when M. Dupree
returned with a laden cart. “Why did you agree to that? It is a terrible
comedown. Your mother would be grieved to see you demean yourself in those
farces. They are low,” she whispered fiercely.

Anna sneezed at the dust. Her eyes ached, and every prickle
of hay was like the prod of a sewing needle in the back of the neck. “Because
it is no more than they are required to endure.”

Parrette, aware of her own conflicted views, said nothing to
that. While she understood the justice of Anna’s view, she had promised to see
the daughter of her beloved Signora Eugenia firmly established in the rank that
the loving mother had always desired for her daughter. Acting in farces was the
latest, and the worst, step down the road away from that goal, and Parrette saw
herself as foresworn.

But Anna was no longer a girl. She made her own decisions.
Parrette bit her lip, striving to keep her turmoil hidden.

After M. Dupree passed out some bread that seemed to be made
of more sawdust than flour, and some very withered turnips and cabbages, they
set about readying for the promised performance.

“Perhaps if they like us, they will be more generous,”
someone observed wryly.

As M. Dupree went through the props with the prop master, Helene,
impressed with her new responsibility, exhaustively talked Anna through the
simple role. Helene’s motivation, Anna could not help but notice, seemed an act
of unstudied friendship, and yet there were Therese’s derisive eyes watching.

When Anna turned her way, Therese’s gaze shifted quickly and
she began briskly brushing her hair.

Anna did not have to perform that afternoon, but Ninon saw
to it that Anna’s chance came at the next village. M. Dupree expressed surprise
that Anna was willing to appear in the farce, but as her appearance in the
opera was not until later in Act One, he did not occupy himself with the
matter.

Anna wore a low, coarse-woven blouse and a skirt shared
among all the dancers. It was not particularly clean. She followed Eleanor into
a heady atmosphere of wine in the stuffy, heated air.

The farce went much as they usually did, received with roars
of laughter and ribald commentary. They performed in a cleared space at what
had been the local church, ruined by the revolutionary soldiers. The narrowness
of the altar area had kept the performers on top of one another, after which
the players had to pass down the chancel in order to get out through the
transept perpendicular. Here the audience had crowded in with no organization.
Anna followed Eleanor out again, picking her way with arms akimbo in hopes of
warding off the fondling, grabbing hands of vinous men young and old, who
clearly thought that grabbing at them was the best part of the festivities.

Despite her best efforts, Anna was not as skilled at
sidestepping as Eleanor; she found herself cut off by a would-be swain, a
sizable man wearing a tanner’s apron.

Before he could finish his blunt proposal, a small figure
thrust her way between the men gathering in hopes of further fun.

“There.” Parrette pointed over their heads at huge Marc
Gris, who played an extra in the farce and operas, and who also managed the
horses. Jean was at that moment overseeing the shift of props to the performance
area for the opera. “That is her husband,” Parrette declared in the rough
street accent of Lyons. “If she smiles at you, he will beat her black and
blue.”

“The devil,” roared the tanner.

“
After
he kills
you!” Parrette finished, hands on her hips, a sparrow squaring off to a bantam
cock.

The other men roared with laughter, and let them both pass.

“Thank you,” Anna said, breathing in relief that the ordeal
was over. “I never thought of lying.”

Parrette grumbled, “Better you were not here at all.”

Anna did not reply, but inwardly she was committing
Parrette’s word and accent to memory as the dancers saluted her, exchanging
their own unflattering comments about the men in the audience.

Anna glanced as usual past M. Marsac, who watched her from
the side, his lip curled faintly, and his head tilted back at an arrogant
angle. He had no idea why Anna Bernardo, who reputedly had been raised in a
palace, would so demean herself as to associate with that dancing rabble.

There was another person whose reaction to Anna’s acceptance
by the dancers was more thoughtful: Therese Rose.

o0o

As the company had worked their way southward from Caen,
Therese had let drop hints about her past, or rather, the past she wished
others to attribute to her. A fine mansion—a music master from Germany (though
apparently not familiar with opera, Madame said privately to Lorette)—exalted
relations, alas, who did not survive the guillotine.

Therese Rose admired M. Marsac above all, setting out to
emulate his fastidious habits, and his avoidance of the dancers. Her long,
careful toilet of the morning had kept her from learning about Anna’s dancing
until they were on the road, and when she found out, she began to wonder if the
whispers about Anna and her palace, and ducal relation, were embroideries of
the sort she had added to her own life. Those dancers were little better than
canaille
.

But as food and quarters became more scarce, it was certain
among the dancers, having survived starvation on the streets of Paris during
the years of the Terror, who vanished quietly among those rough villagers,
returning later with baskets of extra offerings. These the enterprising dancers
shared among themselves—and with Anna, who in turn shared with Parrette.