Emilie's Voice (23 page)

The count told Lully of his suspicions, of the planned abduction on the night of
Alceste
, and of his own failed attempts to apprehend the couple. “So you see, Monsieur Lully, where things stand.”

It took Lully a moment or two to digest what St. Paul told him. After a brief silence, he said, “I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to bring Mademoiselle Émilie back to Versailles, so long as it will not compromise my own position.”

“Oh, I hardly think it will. After all, we are only dealing with a peasant.”

“A peasant, yes, but what of Charpentier?”

“What of him?” asked St. Paul. “He is only a composer.”

“Do not forget, Monsieur le Comte, who is paying for this project.” Lully drew himself up and pulled his waistcoat down a fraction of an inch over his paunch.

“And do not forget, Monsieur de Lully, who is pulling the strings.” St. Paul looked once more in Pierre’s direction. “But let us not quarrel. The first thing we must do is engage a spy.”

“I am acquainted with a certain person who is particularly adept at seeing people without being seen. Shall I ask him to watch the Hôtel de Guise?”

“No, I think Charpentier will be too careful. Let us, rather, keep an eye on the Atelier Jolicoeur. It would not surprise me if Mademoiselle Émilie were unable to resist the call to visit her family.”

The two men agreed and then parted, each of them certain he had the advantage over the other.

One evening a few days later, just after the maid had cleared away the dinner dishes and Madeleine was preparing to work at her embroidery frame by candlelight, Marcel cleared his throat.

“I received a letter today,” he said, walking to the chimney breast and reaching down his pipe.

“Oh? What did it say?”

Marcel waited until his pipe was lit and he had sat comfortably in his armchair before replying. “I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you take it to the market to be read?” Madeleine was a little irritated.

“No. I didn’t like to.”

“Why ever not?” she asked, looking up from her work.

Marcel pulled the letter out of his pocket and held it out to his wife. Madeleine walked over and took it, turning it around in her hands, looking at the fine paper with the meaningless scrawl covering one surface.

“I was afraid. It looks important. If it was about money, I did not want the clerk to lie to me and make up some story about what is in the letter.”

He had a point, Madeleine had to admit. You just couldn’t trust anyone these days. “Still, you must find out what it says … Will Monsieur Lully come soon to collect his lutes?”

Marcel nodded his head. “Of course! He will be here in a day or two. I shall ask him to read it for me. At least I know I can trust him.”

That settled, Marcel and Madeleine sat absorbed in their own worlds until the candle burnt down and it was time to go to bed.

Three days later, when Lully arrived, François’s letter was nailed to the wall of the Atelier Jolicoeur, still undeciphered. After he and his patron had finished their business with the lutes, the luthier cleared his throat.

“Pardon, Monsieur de Lully,” he said, “but I wonder if I could impose on your kindness. I have received a letter, and … you understand …” Marcel saw the puzzled look on Lully’s face. Although he had never missed the ability to do so before, having never needed any knowledge that he could not carry around in his head, Marcel wished at that moment that he could have spared himself this embarrassment by reading his letter himself. He released the folded paper from its nail and held it out to Lully.

“What does it say?” asked the composer.

“That’s just it. I do not know.”

“Ah! I am so sorry. Forgive me. Of course I would be delighted to read it for you.” Lully took the letter and cast his eye over it quickly.

Marcel waited patiently. Since he had no idea how long these things might take, he did not notice that Lully had read the document several times before clearing his throat and saying, “It says that there are some of your daughter’s effects at Versailles, which François forgot to give to you when you visited the other week. They will be sent to you when a suitable messenger can be found. Indeed, had I known, I would gladly have brought them myself!”

Marcel thanked Lully and reached for the letter.

“If you would permit me to keep it, I can be certain to collect all these effects for you and bring them back when I come for the consort of viols.” Lully held the letter by its edge, as if it were of little consequence.

The letter was no use to Marcel since he could not read it, and so he agreed. He was a little surprised that its contents were not more important, but he had no reason to assume that Monsieur Lully had not faithfully conveyed them to him. He would tell Madeleine all about it later on. It was a relief to know that it did not bear still more ill tidings.

Twenty-three

Émilie began to draw curling shapes all over the little picture she had just finished sketching. She took her cue from the tail of a bird that flipped upward with insouciance, extending and extending the line, following the arc and then bending it and twisting it, and soon all the white space on the paper was covered with arabesques. She held the picture up at arm’s length to examine the end result. The riotous effusion of lines and spaces made her feel nauseated. She had to close her eyes for a minute and think about the clear blue sky. Émilie thought she had spent too much time indoors, and married life disagreed with her, literally. She had lost all her appetite and was frequently in a bad temper—although she tried hard not to be sharp with her husband. Her only consolation was that, now that she had been married for a while, she was no longer troubled by the inconvenient descent of her monthly flowers.

Once her wave of nausea had passed, Émilie looked around her at the home that she and Charpentier shared, and whose walls had become the boundary of her life. Although they had traded her tiny room for a larger apartment on the rue des Écouffes, and Lucille now came to them for the entire day, Émilie itched to go out of doors, to roam freely through the Paris streets. But it was too dangerous. Even if no one really cared about her, she knew that Charpentier’s actions, if discovered, might ruin him. So she made the time pass as best she could and stayed out of sight of everyone except her husband and the maid, who had been trained to rebuff nosy neighbors and was rewarded handsomely for not gossiping.

Émilie picked up her pen and a fresh sheet of paper.

“Dear Marc-Antoine,” she said aloud, writing the salutation at the top of the sheet. She stopped and ran her fingers over the words she had just written. Then she blushed, remembering the first time they were together, the night of their wedding. It was embarrassing, not knowing what to do. And it had hurt. Marc-Antoine had tried to be gentle, but there it was. By now she had grown used to it all, to the fact of his nakedness beside her in bed. In fact, she often welcomed it. Thinking of him, now, gave her an indescribably warm feeling, deep inside her. Sometimes she spent hours remembering what Marc Antoine had said and done with her the night before. It made the time pass pleasantly when she was on her own.

Émilie sat very still, listening to the tick of the mantle clock her husband had given her as a wedding present. In the complete stillness, the ticks became almost deafening. The other day she counted them, from the time Marc-Antoine left until the time that Lucille returned from the marketing to prepare the midday meal. Six-hundred forty-seven thousand and sixty-three seconds. The exercise so enervated her that she fell asleep in front of the fire that afternoon.

“I wish you didn’t have to go to work.” Émilie’s voice and the scratch of the pen broke the silence of the empty room once more. When Charpentier returned at the end of each day, Émilie drank from his experience like someone dying of thirst. He had had contact with the outside world; he had things to report on and joke about. She would sit on the floor at his feet and listen to him, making sympathetic noises and little comments that encouraged her husband to continue talking until it was time to go to bed, and then he would begin to do all the things she had learned to enjoy so much, before they finally fell asleep in each other’s arms. Émilie crossed off the sentence she had just written, and instead wrote, “I wish that I could go to work with you.” Then she crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the fire.

Émilie waited impatiently for Charpentier to return that night. When he walked through the door, she wanted to run up to him and throw her arms around his neck, but Lucille was still there, and she was not yet comfortable enough with her new relationship with her husband to be able to ignore the maid’s presence.

“I’ve started on my needlework. I decided to work this picture.” She held up one of her drawings, of a bird flying from an open window.

“Very good,” he said, patting her on the head. Émilie blushed and glanced at Lucille, hoping she had not noticed this gesture. She did not like it when Marc-Antoine treated her like a child.

“What did you do today?” she asked, hoping he would begin his usual recital of frustrations and woes so that she could comfort him.

But instead he replied, “Oh, just the usual.”

Émilie was surprised. She tried to make small talk, but every conversation she started dropped like a stone into the lake that suddenly yawned between them. They sat in silence for most of the evening. Émilie stitched her cushion cover, but it took a long time to do even a tiny patch. She interrupted herself dozens of times by looking up at Marc-Antoine, who sat and stared into the fire.

It was quite late, and Marc-Antoine had made no move to draw her into the bedroom. She yawned. “I’m tired,” she said, when the fire became too low to give off enough light to work.

“You go to bed. I’ll be in presently.”

A hard lump rose from Émilie’s chest into her throat. This was not right at all. They always went to bed together, facing away from each other as they undressed, and then slipping their naked limbs under the cool, soft linen sheets. There was a little game. It started with Émilie pulling the covers up to her chin and lying there like a virginal corpse, staring at the ceiling above her. After only a minute or two, Marc-Antoine would reach over to her and gather her into his arms. The warmth of his skin against hers comforted her; it made up for all the hours alone, the endless stretches of time when she was assailed by doubts about what they had done. He would whisper silly endearments to her as he explored her body with his hands.

It was all wrong, to be in bed by herself. She left the candle burning and lay there, awake.

After about a half an hour, Marc-Antoine entered the room and began to undress. He sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from Émilie. He would not look into her eyes, which were still wide open, waiting. Before he finished undressing, he walked around to Émilie’s side of the bed and snuffed the candle. When he climbed in next to her, she could feel that he still wore his shirt.

Émilie swallowed hard and tried to form words in her head so that they would come out sounding right when she finally worked up the courage to say something.

“Marc-Antoine?” she said. He turned toward her but did not answer. “Is something the matter?”

He rolled on his side, reached over to her and stroked her head, then leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

“We don’t have to make love every night, you know,” he said.

“We don’t?”

“If you don’t want to, you should tell me. I can’t guess.”

“Oh. I mean—” Émilie was confused. She thought she was doing what she was supposed to do. And she liked it. Did he not know? “I don’t mind,” she said, not knowing how else to tell him that she wished they would make love that night too.

“You don’t mind,” he repeated with a short laugh. “You don’t mind.”

They lay there in the dark, each staring into black nothing. Émilie wished she knew what had happened. Suddenly she felt she would die if he did not touch her, if she did not feel the slightly damp warmth of his hands on her skin. And yet she could not extend her own hand. She could not even make herself speak, or utter some word that would draw him to her. Wounded, Émilie rolled away from him and pulled her knees up, hugging them to her so tightly that her feet fell asleep before she did.

Émilie was stiff when she awoke the next morning. There was an empty space next to her. Marc-Antoine was already up, sitting in the other room, ready to leave her for the day.

“Won’t you have tea?” she asked, trying hard not to cry.

“No, I have much to do. I won’t trouble you. They’ll give me tea at the Hôtel de Guise.”

Émilie pictured herself running to him and wrapping her arms around his waist, begging him to forgive her for whatever it was that she had done. She was working up the courage and strength to ask him, again, what was wrong, when he rose, came to her and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and then left. The sound of the door shutting behind him released her from her stupor, and she ran into the bedroom, flung herself on the bed, and sobbed until she started to cough.

Charpentier walked more quickly than usual, pounding the heels of his boots into the cobbles so hard that they left little curved marks as he went. The night before was the first night since their marriage that they had not made love. He knew that if he had started it, everything would have transpired as usual. But he had been afraid that Émilie just went along with whatever he wanted, that she did not really love him. He was afraid that he had forced himself on her and that she simply lacked the courage to resist, to assert herself. He knew the conjugal rights were his, but the circumstances, the way they had married out of necessity—and she was so young, perhaps he really had no right. He tested her last night, to see how much she wanted to be with him, truly. And now it seemed that he was right. After all, what did he bring to her? Only furtive imprisonment.

Charpentier gradually slowed his pace, and when he reached the Hôtel de Guise, he did not go around to the servants’ entrance but continued walking for another five minutes. He could not shake the image of Émilie’s face that morning. His bride did not look bored or uninterested. If he really thought about it, really imagined her face when he left that morning, she looked hurt. Perhaps he had misjudged her. Perhaps she was too young to understand her own feelings. Perhaps he just needed to encourage her, to show her how he loved her, and not just the physical part. He stopped suddenly when he was almost at the Temple, turned around, and walked straight back home again. The musicians could wait.

Charpentier ran up the stairs to his apartment and flung the door open, an abject apology ready to burst from his lips. But he did not see Émilie in the parlor. From the bedroom, he heard a sound of someone being sick. He rushed in and saw Émilie retching into a basin.

“What’s the matter? Are you ill?”

Émilie looked at him sadly. “I was so worried, and so sorry. I don’t know what I did!”

Charpentier put his arms around her and cuddled her like a child. “It’s all right. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just a foolish man. Will you forgive me?”

Émilie looked up at his eyes and smiled. Suddenly a wave of nausea overcame her, and she rushed back to the basin.

“But Émilie! You are ill! Has this happened before?”

She nodded her head yes.

“I’m going to fetch a doctor.”

“No, please!” said Émilie. “I feel better now, really!”

He looked at her for a moment, and the color returned to her cheeks. But still, he was concerned and insisted on sending Lucille to get the doctor.

“She’s in perfect health,” the doctor said after poking and prodding, putting his ear to Émilie’s chest, and feeling her forehead to see if she had a fever.

Charpentier breathed a relieved sigh. “But then why?—”

The doctor interrupted him. “Which is a good thing, because in about five months, there will be another little member of this household. My felicitations to you both!” He beamed.

Émilie’s and Charpentier’s eyes met. At the same instant they rushed together and wrapped themselves around each other, leaving the doctor to let himself out.

St. Paul gave his name to the footman outside Madame de Maintenon’s apartment at Versailles. After a moment or two the servant returned.

“I regret to say that Madame is praying and may not be disturbed.”

He looked at his pocket watch. “Nonsense. She never prays at this hour. Announce me.”

Before the servant could protest, St. Paul pushed past him and entered the widow Scarron’s sitting room. He found her with her auburn hair streaming down her back, wearing a black dressing gown that was trimmed with fur. She was at her desk writing letters. With a look she dismissed the footman.

“Ah, St. Paul! So good of you to call. I’m feeling much better now, thank you.” Madame de Maintenon cleared her throat and coughed a little.

“Of course, that is the purpose of my visit. I thought you might need a little cheering up. I have some interesting news for you.”

“Pray, be seated. I’m sorry I cannot offer you tea, but the servants are much occupied with bringing me my medicine.” Another cough punctuated her speech.

“I trust this information will hearten you, and perhaps thereby speed your recovery.”

“What information is that?”

“Only that Mademoiselle Émilie Jolicoeur still lives, and might be found by inquiring of a certain Parisian composer what he has done with her.”

Madame de Maintenon stood and turned around quickly. She walked to her prie-dieu and looked up at the crucifix on the wall above it. “You toy with me, Monsieur de St. Paul. The girl is dead. She cannot come back to life.”

“I submit, Madame, that she is not dead! We were duped, that is all. There was an ab—”