Bitter Greens (6 page)

‘Perhaps you will teach me. I have had dancing-masters and fencing-masters but never a flirting-master … or mistress.’

‘Well, you seem to need no instruction in the art,’ I said. ‘You are doing very well all on your own.’

‘No, no,
mademoiselle
. I am just a novice, a mere apprentice. Will you not teach me the art? I promise I will be a willing student.’ He was laughing at me, his eyes on my bare shoulders and décolletage.

Haughtily, I drew myself away, unfurling my fan with a quick turn of my wrist. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I have no time to be a wet-nurse for a bantling.’

To my surprise, he did not flush or draw away in embarrassment. He grinned and winked at me, as if to say I could suckle him any time, and to my horror I felt myself grow red.

The song had come to an end; the lines of couples were all bowing to their partners. I gave the barest hint of a curtsey and went to turn away. He stepped forward and seized my wrist, as the musicians began to play a lively
bourrée
. ‘Don’t be angry with me. Come dance with me again.’

‘I’d best not,’ I replied, all too aware of the avid eyes in the crowd, the fans lifted to hide malicious whispers.

‘You cannot condemn me to dance with someone else. All the other girls will seem so heavy of foot, so devoid of grace after you.’

‘And he says he has no knowledge of the art of gallantry,’ I said to the air over his shoulder.

‘I told you I was a quick learner,’ he replied at once. I could not help but laugh.

‘
Encore plus belle
,’ he said, and I raised one eyebrow, not sure what he meant.

‘Your eyes,’ he explained. ‘Their light pierces my heart.’

I rapped him across the knuckles. ‘You are a trifler.’

‘Not at all,’ he protested. ‘I mean every word.’

I could think of nothing to say, so I just flashed him a look, half laughing, half in warning, as the steps of the dance took me away from him. I could not help but look for him as I turned. He too was looking for me. Our eyes met in a single, long, charged glance. Once again, I felt my heart give that treacherous lurch. I scolded myself silently. He was only a boy, barely out of short trousers. I was a mature woman in my thirties, and one who could afford no more scandal.

Yet, when he caught my hand and drew me out of the drawing room and down the hall, I went without demur. The roar of conversation fell behind us. He opened a door at random and led me into the dark room beyond. As soon as I was inside the room, he slammed the door shut and pressed me back against it. I laughed. When he bent his head to kiss me, I rose eagerly to meet his mouth. Without hesitation, his tongue tangled with mine in a sweet familiar dance. I felt his hand searching for the shape of my bottom through the layers of my skirts, his other caressing the curve of my breast through the stiff boned fabric of my bodice. I gasped and arched my back, and at once
his mouth was on my neck, his body pressing me hard against the door. All I could do was cling to him, close to swooning, as he rucked up my mantua and underskirts. When his eager hand found my bare skin, he groaned aloud. I had to stiffen my legs to keep from falling. His fingers slid higher, plunging into the slick wetness between my legs. ‘
Mon Dieu
,’ he gasped.

I gripped his head with both hands and pulled his mouth down to mine again. He fumbled at his satin breeches. Laughing, I helped him, my skirts crumpled about me like the petals of an overblown rose. In seconds, his breeches were undone, and he lifted me against the door and drove hard into me. It was all I could do not to cry out with the intense pleasure of it. His big hands were cupping my bottom, his mouth was on my throat, my ear. Suddenly, I felt a golden explosion deep inside me. I gasped and clung to him. He shuddered. For a while longer, we rocked together, unable to bear the thought of parting, then slowly he eased himself away.

‘
Mon Dieu
,’ he whispered again, letting me slide down his body so I was again standing on my own two feet. He did not let me go, though, which was a good thing as I was not at all sure I could stand. I buried my face in his shoulder. He lifted my chin so he could kiss me tenderly.

‘I don’t even know your name,’ I said, when I could speak.

‘I am Charles de Briou,’ he answered. I almost groaned. The son of the president of the Treasury courts. His father was a powerful and ruthless man, I had heard. Not a man to cross.

‘My name is …’ I began, but he bent and pressed his mouth against mine again, taking all my breath away.

‘I know who you are. I saw you ride to the hounds with the King yesterday. I’ve never seen a woman ride like that. You were as much a daredevil as any young blood. I wanted you then, more than I’ve ever wanted any woman. I asked someone your name. They told me who you were and said that you could ride a Barbary stallion with nothing but a silken ribbon from your hair to control it. Is that true?’

I smiled and shrugged. ‘An exaggeration, perhaps. I’ve never attempted such a thing. I’m prepared to try, though.’

‘They also told me you’ve had many lovers, including acrobats and lion-tamers.’

I laughed. ‘Now that is definitely an exaggeration.’

‘I watched you all night. I watched you dance and laugh and tease the Dauphin. You were at home in all company. You even mocked the King, which no one else dares to do.’

‘It’s bad for him to be too indulged. He begins to believe his own myth.’ I lifted my hands to tidy my hair, making sure my
fontanges
was straight, and then tugged up my bodice again, hardly able to believe I had allowed myself to be seduced only a few feet away from the worst gossips in the world.

‘I thought about you all night long. I rose this morning determined to make your acquaintance but I could not find you anywhere. Someone said you had gone to Paris. So
voilà
, I too came to Paris.’

‘You followed me here, to Paris?’

He nodded and kissed me again, so passionately I felt my body stir again.

‘When can I see you again?’ he asked urgently. ‘Where do you stay?’

‘At the Louvre, of course.’ As maid of honour to Athénaïs, the Marquise de Montespan, I had a closet of a room at the royal palace for my own use, close to her own luxurious suite.

‘Good. I’m there too. I will come to you tonight, yes? Have you privacy?’ As he spoke, he was rapidly tying up his breeches again, straightening his coat and his wig, shaking out his crushed lace.

I nodded.

He stroked one finger down my cheek. I leant into his hand. ‘Where are your quarters?’ he murmured.

I told him, even though my heart was pounding with fear as much as with desire. What was I doing, entering into an affair like this? Had anyone seen us leave the ballroom? Were my lips as red and bruised as they felt? Had the nip of his teeth left marks on my throat and breast? How badly was my dress crushed?

He bent his head and kissed me, and I felt the ground sway under my feet, my soul leave my body. ‘Till tonight,’ he whispered, then he parted the curtain and was gone.

I seemed to be falling, down into an oubliette.

It was such a vivid sensation that I put out my hands and gripped the back of the pew in front of me. I felt as if I did not know myself any more. This plain old woman in a novice’s black gown was not me, not Charlotte-Rose de la Force. The salon had nicknamed me ‘Dunamis’, which meant ‘Strength’, for my force of character as much as for my name, but now I felt as weak and helpless as a dragonfly caught in a gale. Above me was the vast weight of the dark vaults, below me nothing but a pit of despair.

I had thought I could bend the world to my will. I had thought I could break free of society’s narrow grooves, forging a life of my own desire. I had thought I was the navigator of my soul’s journey. I had been wrong.

At last, the bell rang. Wearily, I rose, all too aware of my red swollen eyes. Just one more black-clad figure in a long line of black-clad figures, I filed out of the church, passing from shadow to light and back to shadow as I shuffled past the thick stone pillars.
Is this my life from now on? Day after day, each the same, until I die?

Sœur Emmanuelle’s cane caught me a sharp crack across the shoulder as I moved out of line. I was too miserable to care.

One by one, we filed into the refectory, taking our place at the long wooden table, ready to break our fast, if not our silence. No one was
permitted to speak at meals, as I had discovered to my cost on my first morning at the abbey. Tired, rumpled, chilled to the bone, I had spooned up a blob of the cold congealing gruel and said sardonically to my neighbour, ‘Surely we’re not meant to eat this? It looks like pigswill.’

My punishment had been to scrub the floor of the lavatorium till it  gleamed.

One of the sisters mounted a small pulpit, where she proceeded to read aloud a depressing tale of some saint or another, martyred by having both her breasts cut off – a charming vocal accompaniment to our meal.

Sœur Olivia made a stirring motion with one downward-pointing finger, and obediently I passed her the cauldron of gruel, first ladling myself some. It was thin and grey and tasteless. I glanced at Sœur Emmanuelle and laid one finger on my tongue, the signal to pass the honey. She met my eye, smiled maliciously and passed the honey down the table, away from me. I sighed and stirred the mess with my wooden spoon, unable to bear the thought of putting it to my mouth. I imagined I was at Versailles, eating fresh-baked sweet rolls with plum jam and a cup of steaming chocolate …

Someone nudged my hand with the pot of honey. I looked up and saw Sœur Seraphina nodding her head at me, her thin brows drawn together in concern. I jerked my head in thanks and ladled some honey onto a slice of rough brown bread, but my throat was too dry, my chest too tightly constricted with misery, for me to eat. After a few nibbles, I let it lie on my plate. The littlest novice, Sœur Mildred, had scraped her bowl clean and picked up all the crumbs left on her plate with one small moistened finger. Now, she eyed my untouched food longingly. I passed her my plate and she devoured the bread and honey in seconds.

Sœur Seraphina frowned. She caught the eye of one of the lay sisters and rhythmically stroked her right forefinger and thumb up and down her left finger, as if milking a cow. The lay sister brought her a jug of milk and poured it into a cup, which Sœur Seraphina then passed to me with an emphatic nod. I scowled at her but drank a mouthful, not wanting to suffer any more punishments for disobedience. I was too tired and too heartsick to bear any more.

The milk was frothy and warm. I drank the cup down and felt better for it. Sœur Seraphina nodded, pleased. The bell rang – how I hated the sound
of that bell – and we rose as one, the bench loudly scraping over the paving stones as we pushed it away from the table with the backs of our knees. One by one, we filed away from the refectory, our steps ringing hollowly on the stone, to the chapterhouse. Vaulted and pillared, the chapter room was hung with heavy tapestries to try to keep out the cold. I had to sit with the novices on a hard wooden pew at the back of the room, though I was so much older than them all. Sœur Emmanuelle sat with us, her cane in her hand in case any of us dared to whisper or fidget or cough or fart.

I did not really listen, fixing my eyes on the nearest tapestry, which showed a white unicorn sitting with its front hooves in the lap of a fair-haired maiden in a gorgeous medieval gown. The embroidered grass was studded with flowers, and the two overarching trees were hung with pomegranates. Small beasts – rabbits and squirrels and badgers – watched from the shelter of the forest, not noticing the hunters creeping closer with their dogs and their spears. I stared at this tapestry for an hour every day and still I found new things in it – a nest of baby birds, a hunter who looked sad, a ladybird on a leaf. As usual, I let my thoughts drift away … to Charles, always to Charles.

I thought of that time at Fontainebleau when I had crept away from the ballroom to meet with Charles in the moonlit garden. He had seized me from behind and whirled me under a tree, flinging me down on the warm grass and rucking up my skirts before I had time to catch my breath.

‘It’s been so long …’ he had whispered in my ear.

‘What, four hours?’ I had laughed …

My attention was jerked back to the present by the sound of my own name – or at least the name that I had been given upon my induction in the novitiate a week after my arrival. Sœur Charité. Subtle.

‘Sœur Charité rolled her eyes during the reading of St Lawrence’s martyrdom at prandium last night,’ a meek little voice was saying. This was Sœur Irene, who sought to win favour by constantly telling tales on the other novices. Normally, I would have impaled her with a glance and then scandalised the other nuns by saying, ‘Well, it just seems unlikely to me that a man being roasted alive would have told his torturers to turn him over so he could be cooked on the other side.’

Instead, I just shrugged and said, ‘
Mea culpa
.’

‘And she spoke during the Great Silence,’ Sœur Irene said.

‘What did she say,
ma fille
?’ Mère Notre asked.

‘Oh, I cannot possibly repeat it,’ Sœur Irene said.

‘You must,’ Sœur Emmanuelle said. ‘How else can we judge the depth of her infraction?’

‘Oh, sister, I cannot. Such foul words! Such blasphemy!’ Sœur Irene pressed both hands to her flat chest.

‘I said “
sacré cochon
”,’ I said. ‘I dropped my clothes-chest on my toe. I’m sorry, it just slipped out.
Mea maxima culpa.
’

‘We know you are having difficulty adjusting to our life here in the abbey,
ma fille
,’ Mère Notre said. ‘However, this is a serious infraction. Is it not said that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”? Proverbs eighteen, twenty-one. St Benedict is clear on this point. He says, in chapter six of the rule, “But as for coarse jests and idle words that move to laughter, these we condemn everywhere with a perpetual ban, and for such conversation we do not permit a disciple to open her mouth.”’

‘Yes, I know, Mère Notre. I’m sorry.’

‘Sœur Emmanuelle, it is up to you to discipline our postulant. May I suggest long hours spent in prayer and reflection?’

‘A good whipping would serve her better,’ Sœur Emmanuelle said.

‘Another night spent in prostration before the cross?’ Sœur Theresa suggested.

My heart sank right down into the toes of my ugly sabots. Anything other than that! I’d rather scrub a thousand potatoes. I’d even rather be whipped. At least it’d be over quickly.

‘Mère Notre, may I voice a need of my own?’ Sœur Seraphina said.

‘You may speak,
ma fille
.’

‘Today is the first day that the earth has been warm enough for turning. I have much to do in the garden in spring. The garden beds must be hoed, the compost turned, the bees unswaddled, the first seeds sown. It is heavy dirty work, hard on the back and on the knees and on the hands. I am not as young as I once was. May I ask for the assistance of one of our young novices? She will need to be strong and used to rough work, though.’

‘Of course,’ Mère Notre said. She turned to Sœur Emmanuelle. ‘Who would you recommend?’

There was a malicious gleam in Sœur Emmanuelle’s dark eyes. ‘Why not our newest novice,
ma mère
? What better penance for breaking the Great Silence and blaspheming the Lord’s name than working for his greater glory in the dirt?’

She glanced at me and suppressed a smile at the look of dismay on my face.

‘Very well,’ Mère Notre said. ‘Sœur Charité, you will go and work with Sœur Seraphina in the garden till such a time as she no longer requires your help.’

I closed my eyes in silent anguish, then looked down at my soft white hands. I was the daughter of the Marquis de Castelmoron and the Baronne de Cazeneuve. The closest I’d ever come to working in the garden was helping my mother pick roses for our drawing room. I could not help casting Sœur Seraphina an angry resentful glance. She smiled at me.

As soon as chapter was finished, I followed Sœur Seraphina past the abbess’s rooms and through a stone tunnel in the high wall. As she opened the heavy oak door at the end of the passage, the sun slanted across her face and I saw her skin was finely webbed with lines, deepening into cracks at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

Despite her age, she moved gracefully, leading me through to a peaceful garden, with bare trees espaliered against the walls and long beds of dank straw sheltering the bases of what looked like twigs sticking out of the soil. There was a small stone hut against one wall, with a quaint thatched roof that almost touched the ground.

‘We’ll find some hoes and spades in there.’ Sœur Seraphina gave me a look of laughing sympathy. ‘Come on, don’t look so sour. It’s a beautiful day. Surely you’d rather be out here in the sunshine than being whipped by Sœur Emmanuelle?’

‘I suppose so.’ I lifted my face to the warmth of the sun, took a deep breath and felt some of the weight of misery fall away.

Sœur Seraphina went into the hut and returned a few moments later, her arms laden with tools. ‘Here are some gloves for you, to save your pretty hands.’ She tossed me two leather gauntlets and a broad-brimmed straw hat swathed with a veil, like a peasant woman might
wear. ‘Put it on. The sun can wreak havoc with your complexion.’

Gazing at her in some puzzlement, for it sounded strange to hear a nun speak of pretty hands and complexions, I pulled on the gloves and hat, tossing my white cap onto the windowsill of the hut.

‘Let me check my bees first.’ Sœur Seraphina led the way across to the south-facing wall. Recesses had been built in the wall and stuffed with straw. ‘Help me unswaddle the hives. Take care, you don’t want to disturb the bees.’

She began pulling away handfuls of straw and clumsily I helped her. A beehive made of plaited rushes was revealed beneath the straw, standing on a small round table with a single leg. ‘The straw helps keep the bees warm in winter,’ Sœur Seraphina explained. She pulled aside a stone shingle set on top of the beehive and set her ear to the hole. ‘Lovely. Listen to them hum.’

Curiously, I bent my head down. To my delighted surprise, I could indeed hear a low droning sound.

‘It was a hard winter. I was afraid I’d lose a few hives,’ Sœur Seraphina said as we busied ourselves unswaddling a dozen or so of the round woven skeps. ‘The first blossoms are just beginning to show. The worker bees will soon be out and about collecting their nectar. And then the poor old queen will at last escape the hive and fly, for only the second time in her life.’

‘Queen? Don’t you mean the king?’

She paused in her task. ‘There is no king. Only a queen, who spends her life entombed in the hive as surely as we are kept walled up in here.’

I laughed. ‘That’s not right. Why, it is said that the beehive is the best example of how a kingdom should be run, with all the workers serving the king. And we’re always being preached sermons about how His Majesty the King must rule with both sweetness and the sting, just like the king bee.’

‘It is in fact a queen bee that rules the hive, not a king. A Dutch scientist proved it more than twenty years ago, when he dissected a queen bee and found her ovaries.’

I gasped, never having heard anyone speak quite so frankly, and then began to laugh. Gusts of merriment shook me, so much that I had to lean my hand against the wall to stop myself from falling to the ground.

‘
Zut alors
. To think how I adorned myself in a dress embroidered with
bees to do homage to the King … Would he know, do you think? He only sits and smiles whenever anyone calls him the King Bee.’

‘I don’t know … he’s interested in the sciences, isn’t he? Didn’t he establish the Académie?’

I looked at Sœur Seraphina in surprise. She was knowledgeable for an old nun. ‘Well, yes,’ I replied, ‘though to my knowledge he’s never been. I’ve never even seen the King read a book, let alone go to a salon or a meeting of the Académie.
Sacré bleu
. What a joke. I must write to the Princesses and tell them. They would love to style themselves the queen bees of the court.’