The General's Mistress (4 page)

“You did not distress me, Colonel,” I said. “I was intrigued by your friend.”

“He will be amused to think that he can cause a lady to faint at a distance,” Meynier said. “Usually he needs to be in the same room to cause offense.”

“He is not a ladies’ man, then?”

Meynier blushed beneath his moustache. “Not really, no. I mean, I’m sure he does well enough, but . . . he is not much given to graces. He is a plain soldier.”

“Ah,” I said.

We were at my door. Meynier helped me up the step, and I took my leave and went inside. My maid hastened to help me out of my wet clothes, but I dismissed her and sat in the darkness in my chemise. Outside, the rain was pouring over the windowpanes, rolling down into darkness. I did not light a candle. There was some light from the window.

“Michel Ney,” I said. “I have no idea why your name hits me like a sounding bell.”

I remembered something, and rummaged in my drawer. Wrapped in a silk shawl were Louisa’s Italian tarot cards. I opened the box and spread them on the bed. Kings and knights and the Devil, queens and coins and staves.

“Michel Ney,” I whispered. The King of Chalices in my hands looked up with printed blue eyes. “I do not know how I know, or even what I know. But I know you.”

J
an and I returned to Amsterdam for the holidays. Their nurse brought the children from Utrecht, and my mother returned from the spa. It was all very domestic. As long as we could stay at our house, it wasn’t terrible; but unfortunately the day before Christmas my mother went into one of her spells again, and I had to set foot in her house.

There were no decorations. My mother did not celebrate holidays, and the house was as dark and cheerless as possible. Night came at barely four in the afternoon.

Berthe met me at the door. “Madame, she’s calling out for Charles again.”

“I had anticipated that,” I said, taking off my cloak and handing it to her. Beneath it I was wearing breeches and a man’s frock coat, riding boots, and a cravat. My hair was swept back in a tail instead of pinned up. “I’ll go straight in.”

“You do make a handsome young man,” Berthe said.

I turned on the stairs. “Thank you,” I said. “I wish I
were
a man.”

“And what would you do, Madame?” Berthe asked.

“I should go to war. And I would be better at it than most men.”

Berthe laughed. “Oh, you are something else, Madame!” She dried her brow on her apron.

A little piqued, I went up to my mother’s chamber. She was lying in half-darkness as usual, with only one candle lit. “Mother?”

“Charles?” She smiled when she saw me and her hands lifted.

I went and kissed her. “Hello.”

“Charles, I have to warn you,” she said, clinging to my hands.

I sat down in the chair beside the bed, gently disengaging her. “Mother, I’m fine.”

“There is evil in this house. Evil that waits for you.”

“Mother, nothing is going to happen to me,” I said patiently.

“You aren’t taking this seriously,” she said, pouting a little. She was still a very pretty and charming woman. “If Elzelina had lived, she would be able to hear them.”

I was startled. This was the first time she had ever said that she wished I lived. Even when she knew me and knew who I was.

“It’s the women who can hear the voices,” she said. “It’s the women who are always the Doves in this family. That’s how it started. Johan van Aylde killed his own virgin daughter to make a pact with the Devil. Because she was a Dove, and she could see things in the mirror.”

A shiver ran down my back, though I did not move. I did not look up at the mirror above her dressing table. “Mother, that’s perfectly ridiculous,” I said in my best Charles voice.

“I knew something terrible would happen to your father if we came to Amsterdam. And nobody listened to me.”

Tears started in my eyes. “Father’s death was an accident,” I said.

“I warned Leo, but he didn’t listen to me!” she said, and rolled over in her bed, her back to me. “You’re just like Leo.”

I stood up. “Good night, Mother,” I said.
I don’t know why I even came,
I thought.
It always hurts to no purpose.

Temptations

S
pring arrived as it always did, warm and temperate. One of the men associated with the liberal parties was holding an elaborate fête at his country house not far from Brussels. Jan had been unable to wangle an invitation; but as this gentleman, M. van der Sleijden, was a distant relation of mine, a cousin in the third degree, Jan felt that if we simply arrived he would feel that we had some claim upon his hospitality. Not only were the leading men of the liberal party to attend, as well as many of the revolutionaries who had led the rebellion in Brussels a few years past, but also there should be the celebrated French general Pichegru and other military men.

I looked forward to the party and the lively company. I did, however, feel some discomfort with Jan’s assumption that we would be welcome because of my tenuous claims of blood with M. van der Sleijden, a man whom I had met perhaps once in my life and could not have picked out of a room full of strangers. Still, Jan was not to be deterred. I smoothed over the awkwardness of our arrival as best I could.

Jan’s latest passion was public education, the radical notion that the state should pay for rudimentary schooling for all boys, regardless of their fathers’ positions in life. He was attempting to make it his great issue, and we made admirable props. I came in with the children while Jan and the gentlemen were drinking port in the library, knocking politely before I entered. Klaas held my hand, and the nurse followed with Francis in her arms.
He was prettily attired in a white dress with blue embroidery around the neck.

“My dear husband,” I said, “I hope that you will permit me and your sons to say good night before we retire?” I bobbed a polite curtsy to the gentlemen. The simple white lawn with blue ribbons I wore was becoming and matched the boys’ clothes.

“My dear!” Jan rose and led me forward. “Monsieur de Boers, General Moreau, Monsieur van Flecht, allow me to present my wife. Elzelina, these gentlemen are engaged in the great work of assuring liberty for all mankind.”

“Charming,” said M. van Flecht, bending over my hand. He was the only one wearing a wig, and perspiration showed along the edge of his forehead in the summer warmth.

“What lovely children,” M. de Boers said politely. “My felicitations. You have a beautiful family. I can see what inspires you to work so assiduously on behalf of the youth of our fair nation.”

“Indeed,” agreed M. van Flecht ponderously. “All of our boys should learn to read and write, and to make such mathematical transactions as are necessary for the preservation and enhancement of trade.”

I smiled sweetly at him. “And our daughters as well, of course. Don’t you agree?”

Jan stepped forward and took my hand from his. “Elzelina, dearest, don’t bore the gentlemen with your views on female education.” He squeezed my hand rather too tightly. “My wife feels the ardent fires of revolution with the same passion that I do. Only, as is to be expected, it is pure emotion untempered by reason.”

“Indeed,” said the Frenchman. He looked at me over Jan’s shoulder and gave me a sardonic smile. “Is that not the way of women? But in this lies their charm—the ardor of their feelings.”

I glanced at him, startled. He was not a tall man, perhaps Jan’s height, and perhaps five years older, soberly dressed, with dark hair tied back with a black ribbon. He had been introduced as a general, but he was not in uniform. His black coat was finely made but far from ostentatious.

“Indeed?” I said coolly. “Do you believe the fair sex incapable of reason, then?”

Moreau made a perfunctory bow over my hand. “Perhaps I find reason unworthy of the fair sex,” he said. “After all, are not women made by nature to be the guardians of emotion and mystery? Does it not degrade our Vestals to be reduced to the calculation of coins in a till?”

“The Vestals are eternal virgins,” I said. “And I fear that I am rather a matron, a wife and a mother. My service must be pledged rather to the Bona Dea than to Vesta.”

Moreau smiled and turned to Jan. “I see your wife is an educated woman. I compliment you. It is through the learning of their mothers that sons gain precocious wisdom.”

“Quite,” said Jan with a pleasant smile. “Elzelina, perhaps you and the boys should retire. I am sure they are fatigued.”

Francis was looking at the gentlemen with interest, one pudgy hand reaching for M. van Flecht’s diamond stickpin. I took him somewhat awkwardly from his nurse. “Come then, children. Good night, gentlemen.”

“Good night, Madame,” M. van Flecht said.

“Until the next time, Madame,” Moreau said. As I turned away I felt his eyes on my back, lingering a little too long.

“Good night, Elzelina,” Jan said. “Don’t wait for me.”

As though I expected him. Once I had, but those days were long gone by.

I
t was early spring in 1789, the spring after I had turned twelve. My father was two years in his grave.

Jan was supposed to be waiting at the bottom of the garden, just where the arbor led off among the trees. For a moment, breathing in the warm spring night, I thought that he was not there, that he had forgotten me. Then a shadow detached itself from the shade of the arbor and beckoned to me. I broke into a run across the grass, the dew splashing my shoes and hem, the heady fragrance of the early roses climbing the trellis almost intoxicating me. Somehow I had stepped out of the ordinary world and into a dream of silence and roses and night.

“Be quiet, Elzelina,” he said, a little irritably. “There is no need to make so much noise. Do you want them to hear us up at the house?”

I stopped in front of him, my cheeks stinging with shame. “I am sorry, Jan. I didn’t think.”

He stepped back into the shadows of the arbor. “Perhaps you should begin,” he said, turning to walk through the tunnel of trellises.

I ran after him, my little bag of belongings bouncing against my back. “Please forgive me! Please don’t be angry with me! You know I can’t bear it when you’re angry with me!” He didn’t turn around. “I know I’m stupid and young, but oh, Jan! Please forgive me! It was wrong of me to ruin what should be the happiest night of our lives.”

On the other side of the arbor, two horses were tethered beside the stone wall, cropping grass placidly. Jan turned, his handsome face bathed in silvery moonlight. “Of course I forgive you. I’m just concerned that someone will hear us. There are those who would try to prevent us from being together,” he said quickly, with a glance back toward the sleeping house. “Now, be quiet.” He cupped his hand for me to step in and swing up, as I was still too short to mount alone in skirts without a mounting block.

“I wish I had worn pants,” I whispered. “We could go faster.”

Jan frowned. “You must get out of that habit, Elzelina. Riding about in boys’ clothes is disgraceful enough in a young girl, but you are about to be a married woman, and you must put aside hoydenish ways.”