Emilie's Voice (16 page)

Fifteen

The ladies were all gathered in the queen’s apartments playing cards. Even though she knew that the Marquise de Montespan had become her husband’s acknowledged lover, Queen Marie-Thérèse could not give up the pleasure of the company of the most beautiful woman at court. It was the only way, indeed, to ensure that the ladies attended her in the evening, since everyone followed where Montespan led. Although she did not much like knowing that she had lost her husband’s affection, the queen had no desire to languish alone. And besides, her taste for gaming was indulged most willingly by the courtiers.

Her command of French was still somewhat patchy, and so the queen did not understand that her foreign ways and unattractive appearance made her a laughingstock in society. The marriage was the result of a political alliance; there was little passion on the side of the king. He did his duty and fathered several children by her, but Marie-Thérèse was deemed to have no style, no esprit. In the cruel world where the ability to turn a phrase was the ultimate measure of social value, she was fair game for any jest or scheme. Only her estranged husband, ever chivalrous toward all ladies, treated her with any respect. He had just returned from a successful campaign in Belgium, and was feeling particularly kindly disposed toward her. She was in an excellent mood.

And so the most shocking things happened right under the queen’s nose, and she was none the wiser. That evening was no different.

“I need you to arrange for some money to be sent to someone in Paris.” Madame de Montespan spoke to one of her own ladies-in-waiting, who stood next to her at the card table the night before
Alceste.
Her eyes were ablaze with the pleasure of winning enormous sums from the queen, which she would return to her later. It was not seemly to take advantage of poor Marie-Thérèse’s hopeless inability at cards.

“How much?”

“One hundred louis!” It was the queen, who overheard the lady and assumed she was asking her the amount of her wager.

“Twenty louis,” murmured Madame de Montespan, smiling across the table at the queen. “One hundred and ten,” she said aloud, and the queen licked her lips, preparing to bet again. The marquise opened her fan and spoke behind it to her lady. “See that it gets to the Hôtel de Guise tomorrow.”

St. Paul, who attended the evening at the behest of Madame de Maintenon (who never wagered, considering it immoral and wasteful), walked past the queen’s table just in time to hear the tail end of Madame de Montespan’s aside. After completing his circuit of the room, he slipped away unnoticed.

Madame de Maintenon was already in her nightclothes, and had finished her hour of prayer before preparing to sleep, when she heard the scratch at her door.

“Who is it?”

“St. Paul. I must speak with you. It’s urgent.”

The widow Scarron put on her black shawl, then unlocked the door. “You had better be quick. No one must see you here at this hour!”

“I heard something, just now. La Montespan is sending money to the Hôtel de Guise. I think it must be for the musician.”

“The musician?”

“The one who receives Mademoiselle Émilie’s letters.”

“But François told me there was nothing important in the correspondence.”

“There hasn’t been. They must have some other way of communicating. I fear, Madame, that they are planning an abduction. I think it will take place after the performance tomorrow night.”

Madame de Maintenon lit another candle, bringing her small room into a little less obscurity. “Thank you for telling me this, Monsieur de St. Paul.” She held out her hand to the count.

“But Madame, we must do something!”

“You have performed a great service to me, and to His Majesty. Thank you.”

There was nothing for St. Paul to do but to kiss her hand and leave.

Once she was alone, the widow Scarron went again to her prie-dieu and knelt. Her features, so often in a state of tense concentration, relaxed. If what St. Paul said was true, the matter was conveniently out of her hands. No longer would she be forced to risk discovery as the person who had taken extreme measures to deny the king his pleasure, nor even the one who had chosen a method that would be sure to implicate Madame de Montespan in that occurrence. The marquise had played right into her hands. Tomorrow she would reverse her instructions to François—provided St. Paul’s suspicion proved to be true. She could find a way to make the moral lesson just as strong, even if the king did not hold the dying object of his passion in his arms.

“Thank you, my Lord. You have truly heard the desires of my heart.” Never had Madame de Maintenon’s prayers been more sincere.

St. Paul returned to his chamber on the lower floor of the château in a state of disbelief. He had been dismissed by the widow Scarron again! And after bringing her such important information.

“Monsieur, allow me.” Jacques, the retainer St. Paul had inherited along with his father’s debts, held his hands out in readiness to help him undress.

Lifting his arms to the side to facilitate the process, St. Paul asked, “What is it, Jacques, that the king desires more than anything in the world?”

“It is not for me to say, Monsieur,” he answered, easing the count’s heavy brocade coat off his shoulders and down his arms.

“Precisely, good fellow. But supposing,” St. Paul continued, lifting his chin so the valet could untie the knot of lace and remove his collar, “one were to make a lucky guess. And that then,” St. Paul turned to allow the valet to untie his breeches, “one were able to supply it in a manner that would be unforgettable to him. What do you think might happen?”

Jacques smoothed out his master’s clothes and laid them on the chair. “Then the king must surely be extremely grateful.”

“Exactly.” The valet approached St. Paul with his nightclothes. The count held out his hand to stop him, as if he had heard a voice from far away. After a moment, he said, “Jacques, dress me.”

The valet’s arms dropped and his mouth hung open for just an instant before it snapped shut. “Yes, Monsieur,” he said, and then carefully unfolded each item he had removed from his master only moments ago and helped St. Paul back into his clothing.

When the process was complete, St. Paul instructed his servant to let anyone who asked know that he had gone to Paris to visit his godmother. Then he snuffed the candle with his fingers, leaving Jacques in the dark when he closed the door of his room.

The next morning Madame de Maintenon summoned François.

“Madame.” He bowed deeply.

“I had a visit from St. Paul last night,” she said. “He tells me that there may be an abduction after the performance. Do you know anything about this?”

François went hot and cold at the same time. It had been his idea to promote a correspondence between Émilie and Charpentier, and he had carefully vetted all the letters. Did he miss something that he should have reported to his mistress? He knew that, just as she had the power to make him comfortable and secure for the rest of his life, Madame de Maintenon could also manage the reverse. “I swear to you, Madame, that there was nothing in the letters that indicated this possibility.”

The widow Scarron brought her eyebrows together almost imperceptibly so that only the hint of tension was visible in her brow. “And there have been no other letters? You are certain?”

“None, Madame. I don’t know how to prove it to you, but the girl is incapable of plotting, of that I am certain.”

“I believe you, François,” she said. “I just wanted to know for sure. You are clear about your instructions?” she asked.

“Yes, Madame,” François said. He was altogether too clear. He had become quite fond of Émilie, despite knowing where his interest lay. Her candor and innocence had taken some getting used to, but now he generally believed what she said, and knew that she considered him her friend. If there were any way to avoid delivering the tainted wine, he would have leapt at it. Any way, that is, except putting his own head into Madame de Maintenon’s metaphorical noose.

“Remember, you are not to take her to the king’s apartment a moment before the appointed time. And once she is there, you must wait for her outside His Majesty’s door. I have reason to believe she will not remain for very long.” Madame de Maintenon walked to her window. “Thank you, François. And now, would you please tell Monsieur de St. Paul that I wish to see him?”

“I beg your pardon, Madame, but the count is not here.”

She turned. “Not here? When did he leave?”

“Sometime last night.”

“Do you know where he went?” she asked.

“To his godmother’s, in Paris.”

“Thank you. You may go.”

François closed the door behind him.

“Fool!” said Madame de Maintenon to her empty parlor. His actions seemed to confirm that he was no longer trustworthy. Certainly she had more cause to believe her faithful servant, whose future rested securely in her hands, than the opportunistic Comte de St. Paul. Still, it was vexing. Her dangerous plan was not to be altered after all. The widow Scarron sat at her desk and began reading her morning correspondence. The frown she wore persisted for the rest of the day.

Sixteen

In her heart, Émilie knew she could do it. She knew she was ready to enter fully into the role of Alceste, to breathe the tragic heroine’s sufferings and triumphs into life and lay them—whole, deep, and round—before an audience. While the outcome of her own drama was far from certain, Émilie wandered around in Alceste’s dilemmas safe in the knowledge that the opera would go well. This was one thing that being at Versailles could not change. No matter what intrigues they tried to create around her, the moment of performance itself was completely inviolable.

Surrounded by the rest of the cast, Émilie marked her part on the wooden stage that had been erected over the black and white marble surface of the courtyard, walking through the positions and gestures that would accompany the notes and words that her heart knew and had long since made her own. The costumers were busy making the final adjustments to the splendid robes she would wear, and at one corner of the stage, Lully coached the chorus of soldiers, who had to look as though they were doing battle while they sang.

Over in another corner, the corps de ballet—which was composed entirely of men, whether they were meant to be fairies or demons—was trying to figure out how to translate the leaps and turns they had practiced indoors to this capricious, damp surface. Monsieur Dubuffet yelled “Soft knees!” every few minutes, so that his words began to sound nonsensical. Émilie watched Monsieur Chicanneau try to execute an
entrechat quatre;
when he landed, his feet went out from beneath him on the slick floor. He ended up on his behind. The others laughed but extended their hands to help him stand. Émilie knew that if she fell, no one would pull her up again.

Her eyes left the group of dancers and returned to Lully, who now instructed Mademoiselle de La Garde concerning where she should walk during her big scene with Monsieur Langeais. Lully was so different from Charpentier. Although Émilie knew that her former singing teacher craved a court appointment and had ambitions to be more well known and successful, she could not imagine him in this setting. He was too honest and open—at least, he appeared that way to her. Here no one said what he really thought, and she had come to understand that it was hazardous to take anything at face value. Every day she heard courtiers contradict one another behind each other’s backs, all jockeying for a position close to the king in a court where being invisible was worse than being dead.

The attitudes of the courtiers seemed to infect everyone at Versailles. The singers in Lully’s troupe, for instance, were unyielding in their refusal to accept Émilie because she had jumped the queue, had usurped a prize place where royal notice was guaranteed. And Lully himself—propinquity had not improved Émilie’s opinion of the composer. He had a secretive air, and she particularly disliked the pretty valet who followed him about like one of the queen’s lapdogs. Sometimes, simply out of loyalty to Charpentier, Émilie wished she could withhold her finest singing from Lully’s music for
Alceste.
But once she started, she became the character whose words she sang and could no longer hold back the overwhelming flood of emotion that possessed her. Whatever his personal vices, Lully had an unerring instinct for the rhythm latent in the words, the shifting, breathing meters, and the expressive lines, and the resultant airs were too adept for Émilie to mishandle. Despite her wishes, the sound that emerged when she opened her mouth ennobled the music to a degree that even its composer had never imagined before.

All at once a commotion began in the downstage right corner. It seemed to Émilie as if all the singers and coaches and dressmakers were stalks of wheat, and a wind had arisen out of nowhere that bent them, in a wave, to the ground. The instant before the wave reached Émilie and carried her with it, she saw the cause of this phenomenon. It was the king, resplendent in golden robes embroidered with diamonds. The stage cleared for his passage, and he took his stately way through the midst of the players. Lully came forward to greet him.

“It is Apollo, come to bless our endeavors,” said the composer, with a deep, reverent bow.

To Émilie’s amazement, the king put one hand on his hip and with the other gestured to the crowd of actors, and then began to sing the lines of the god Apollo from the tragedy:

The members of the orchestra quickly shuffled their sheets of manuscript paper to find the place in the score where the king had started singing, but because he began without them, he chose the key that was most comfortable for his voice, and it was not the one in which the part was written. The clash was excruciating. Lully gestured to the orchestra to stop playing. But Louis had a decent voice and certainly appeared most godlike. When he completed his
récit
, from the first act of the opera, in which the sun god descends to tell Admète how to avoid the fate that has been written in the stars, wild applause and loud bravos erupted from the crowd.

“Your Majesty,” said Lully, bowing again, “your musical instincts are so fine, so superior. Could you give me the note you commenced with, so that I may rewrite the key which I so mistakenly chose? I can see that the music does not achieve true grandeur when it is pitched too high.”

A scribe hurriedly appeared from nowhere and wrote down the note the harpsichord matched as the king sang it once again, then scurried off to recopy all the orchestra parts in the few hours remaining before the performance.

So that was it, Émilie thought. She had often wondered why the role of Apollo was only marked by one of the older singers. The king himself was to perform. She wondered how he knew the part so well. She suspected that perhaps he had sung it before.

After the rehearsal was over, Émilie made her way slowly back to her room. The voices of Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan echoed in her head, arguing back and forth with each other.

“You must go to the king’s bedchamber and throw yourself on his mercy,” said the voice of Madame de Maintenon.

To which Madame de Montespan countered, “Don’t be such a fool! Take your chance now, and go away with Monsieur Charpentier. Then you will be free.”

But then the widow Scarron would crowd in again, saying, “If you do not do as I say, your soul will be eternally damned, and the king will not have his chance of salvation.”

“If you do not do as I say, you will be the cause of my destruction and forfeit any chance of happiness in your life.” Madame de Montespan’s argument, even in Émilie’s imagination, tugged at her heart almost irresistibly.

“God will punish you if you do not do as I tell you!”

Madame de Maintenon always had the last word in these imaginary arguments. It was difficult to refute the claims of the Almighty. Émilie was frightened. Whatever action she took would provoke the wrath of one of the ladies, either of whom was powerful enough to make things very unpleasant for her as a result. She could not decide what would be worse: to find herself alone with the king for God knew what purpose, or to be caught in the act of trying to escape, and therefore condemned for some unspecified time to the horrors of Pignerol or the Bastille—or worse. More than anything, Émilie just wanted to close her eyes and then open them and find herself back at home on the Pont au Change.

Fourteen miles away, St. Paul walked back and forth in front of the servants’ entrance of the Hôtel de Guise, stewing about the way Madame de Maintenon had used him. He had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense and put himself in some peril of losing whatever ground he had gained at court by allying himself exclusively with a woman who, however astute, was not yet in the position most coveted by any lady. It was a great risk to turn from Madame de Montespan. She was more adept than anyone else at plunging a knife into her enemies’ backs.

When he revealed what he felt was certain evidence that La Montespan had been working to remove Émilie from court, St. Paul expected Madame de Maintenon to fly into action. Instead it appeared that she was content just to let the girl slip away from them. It made no sense at all. Everything they had talked about depended on inserting Émilie into the king’s bed. How else was she planning to put a wedge between His Majesty and Montespan? And getting rid of Montespan was the idea, at least of that he was certain.

“The woman has lost her mind,” St. Paul muttered. And with that possibility, he imagined his future no longer looking as rosy as it once did. Madame de Maintenon could as easily plunge him into obscurity as assist him to great fortune. He did not like being in a position where he was not in control of his own fate.

There was only one answer. He must take control again, even if it meant turning Madame de Maintenon against him. The groundwork had been laid. It was up to him to make sure that Émilie ended up in the arms of the king, and now it seemed that the way to do so was to prevent an abduction. St. Paul was prepared to take whatever measures were necessary, no matter how extreme. He ground his teeth as he paced. In his mind he enacted a scene where the widow Scarron apologized to him, acknowledging the brilliance of his foresight, the ingeniousness of his plans. At the end of his recital, he always imagined the king entering, and Madame de Maintenon telling His Majesty how clever he, St. Paul, had been. Then Louis would demonstrate his gratitude by endowing him with rich lands and a post that carried with it a handsome pension.

St. Paul’s carriage was stationed around the corner, out of sight. His coachman, who only remained in St. Paul’s employ because he was owed a king’s ransom in wages and did not want to relinquish altogether any hope of getting them, watched the main gate. St. Paul was certain that Charpentier planned to act that day: if the couple waited, it would be too late. After tonight, what would be the point? The deed would have been done; Émilie’s flower would have been plucked. He assumed that Charpentier’s motives were, like everyone else’s, base and self-serving. What other reason would the composer have for kidnapping Émilie and bringing her back to Paris if his ultimate aim was not to take her into his own bed?

He took out his pocket watch. It was only three in the afternoon, and his stomach growled audibly. Just at that moment a ragged young boy skipped by.

“You there!”

The boy stopped.

“Come here. I won’t hurt you.”

He approached St. Paul but stayed just out of the count’s reach.

“How would you like to earn a few liards!”

“No way! I know your type!” The boy started to run off.

“It’s not what you think, and I’ll make it a silver écu.”

The lad, who could not have been above ten years old, stopped again. A silver écu was a great deal of money. “What do you want?”

“I only want you to go and get me some bread to eat.”

“Why can’t you get it yourself?”

St. Paul thought for a moment. “I’m waiting to see someone very important, and I must stay here.”

The boy shrugged. “I’ll get you some bread.”

“And a bit of cheese. And some wine. This should be plenty.” St. Paul tossed the lad a few liards, barely enough to purchase a loaf of bread.

“I thought you said I was to get a silver écu.”

“When you come back with the food.”

“How do I know you’ll pay?” the lad asked.

“I’m giving you money now, aren’t I?”

For much of the day Charpentier stayed in his apartment and tried to keep his mind off the coming evening. He tidied up his papers and organized the parts for his new cantata, which was already neatly recorded in one of his notebooks. However chaotic the rest of his life, Charpentier was scrupulous about keeping his notebooks in order and dated. It was his legacy to the world, since he feared by now that he might never achieve the notice that would result in fine printed editions of his works. Even this comforting exercise, though, could not keep his mind off what was ahead. It had been almost a year since he had seen Émilie, and his image of her had simplified in his memory, had become distilled to the essential features: pale blond hair, light blue eyes, a build that was slight and straight, and a voice that, when it was raised, made everything else about her fade into the background.

For the twentieth time since breakfast, Charpentier mentally ran over the list of things he had arranged. His horse was to be saddled and ready at nine. He had a dark cloak in which to wrap Émilie so that she would not be cold on the midnight ride from Versailles to Paris. The key to the room was in his pocket. Charpentier had to force himself not to think about Émilie sleeping in the bed. Every so often, he picked up a letter that lay atop his desk, and read it again.