Emilie's Voice (25 page)

But she should not be moved for a week.” The doctor handed a bill to Charpentier and waited politely while he counted out the coins to pay him.

“What about—children?” Charpentier stopped the doctor on his way out of the door.

He turned with his hand on the knob and said over his shoulder, “I wouldn’t advise it. She was lucky this time, but who knows what might happen the next. And if she should go to term …” He did not finish, but nodded to Charpentier and then left.

Charpentier sighed deeply, then returned to the bedroom. He began to walk back and forth, every once in a while casting a glance in Émilie’s direction. Her face twitched now and again, and twice she murmured something and then awoke with a start, only to fall asleep again the next instant. Charpentier felt his pocket. In it was the pouch full of money François had given him, and a piece of paper with the address far out in the country where he was supposed to send Émilie so that she would not be discovered. He had been told that he could not remain there with her. It would be too suspicious. But now everything had changed. Émilie was too ill to be moved right away: the doctor said a week. And he did not want to leave her alone with Lucille, who was too young to deal with any potential difficulties.

And with Mademoiselle’s fête the next night, it would arouse suspicion if Charpentier left town suddenly. If they were to get Émilie away undetected, he must continue his life as if nothing were planned. That would mean leaving Émilie at home alone and unprotected. He had to think of something else, yet every idea led to a dead end.

“Beg pardon, Monsieur Charpentier, but there’s a lady downstairs says to give you this.” Lucille entered the room and handed Charpentier a pasteboard card. On it a small but confident hand had written “Sophie Dupin.”

Sophie … Charpentier could not place the name. All at once he stopped pacing. Sophie! Of course! “Please ask her to come in.”

Lucille stood where she was.

“Go on, do as you’re told!”

The maid turned, shaking her head as she went down to the street door. “Won’t even let me bring the landlady in for a cup of tea …”

Sophie had gone to some trouble to make herself look decent. She had washed the paint off her face, run a comb through her hair, donned a dress she had purchased in preparation for the end of her career as a prostitute, and doused herself in lavender water. Altogether she did not look too bad.

“What brings you to my home?” Charpentier greeted Sophie in the parlor, having closed the door to the bedroom so that she could not look in and see Émilie.

“Well, I, uh, I’m looking for a position, as lady’s maid.”

“A lady’s maid? But as you know, I am a bachelor.” Charpentier was aware that Sophie had been let go without references. And he remembered her approach to him on the street. He thought it odd that she should just turn up like this, although he could not blame her for wanting some other employment than that of prostitute. He wondered how much she knew.

“I beg to differ, Monsieur. Not only are you married, but your wife is a person who, you recall, is known to me. I have seen her. I know she lives here. But I am able to keep a secret.”

Charpentier looked Sophie up and down, and then directly in the eyes. She drew herself up proudly and met his gaze without flinching. Could this be a solution to his temporary difficulties? “That does not mean—if it is true—that we actually need the services of a lady’s maid. If I were to engage you in this post, what assurance do I have that I may trust you? I know that you were dismissed from the household of Mademoiselle de Guise. I never discovered why.”

“My dismissal—there was a misunderstanding. Had I been able to tell the entire story, Monsieur, I do not think that it would have been I who was dismissed.”

“Perhaps you’d care to tell me that story?” Charpentier remembered Sophie’s kindness toward Émilie on the night of her début and thought perhaps she was telling the truth.

“I don’t think it is important right now. If you do not need a lady’s maid, I shall trouble you no longer.” She turned to go.

“Wait!” Charpentier gestured toward a chair. “Please sit down. You were good to my wife once. I owe you some hospitality.”

Sophie paused, then took the seat he offered. “My life has not been easy since we last met, Monsieur.”

“We have little money. The wages would be very small.”

“It has been difficult to find a position, you understand. In short, Monsieur, beggars cannot choose their relief.”

“It just happens, Sophie, that you have come at a fortuitous time. I cannot help but place great trust in you. My wife is ill. She has suffered a—” He could not bring himself to say it. He had to turn away. “You see, until today, she was going to have a baby.” Charpentier barely uttered the last word.

“I’m sorry, I have come at a bad time.” Sophie stood.

“No, as I said, it’s a good time. Please sit. We need your help. I too am a beggar of sorts. I have to tell you a long story, and you must swear never to repeat it.” Charpentier sat down in the chair opposite Sophie.

“So now what are we to do, Monsieur le Diable?” Sophie stroked the tom’s chin. He purred loudly and closed his eyes. She had all the information she needed to put Émilie away for good, and to ruin Charpentier’s career. She did not ask about the slippers. She had not been able to see Émilie at all, which was entirely understandable. Apparently she was still unwell.

In fact, Sophie had found out that Émilie had fallen ill once before, the night after the soirée at which she had made her début. It occurred to Sophie that it was this that had prevented the singer from returning the borrowed shoes. Yet whatever happened all that time ago did not change the consequences. She, Sophie, had been disgraced, had had to earn her living screwing dirty, greasy men who, nine times out of ten, really wanted to kill her. And she had been incarcerated for one revolting night in the Bastille, although the magistrate had let her go the next day (he was one of her customers). All because Émilie had repaid her kindness with, at the very least, disregard, if not malice.

Sophie decided she needed to sleep on the question. She stretched out on her bed, shoving to one side the cat, who growled at being displaced from the spot he had warmed up so thoroughly. Then she blew out the candle and tried to rest.

Twenty-five

Lully and St. Paul’s spy easily discovered where Émilie was living, but this knowledge was not yet converted to a plan that would succeed in getting her back to Versailles. Other than François’s letter, which only proved that she was actually alive and had been carried off by Charpentier, there was no proof of any wrongdoing on Émilie’s part, and she was not important enough for charges of a political nature to be trumped up against her. So once her whereabouts were known, the two co-conspirators had to meet to discuss what they might profitably do with this knowledge.

“For heaven’s sake, man! This is unbearable.” St. Paul covered his nose with a scented handkerchief. The location of his conference with Lully was the cellar where the garbage was thrown before being removed from the vicinity of the château altogether, and the stench of rotting flesh and vegetation (not to mention human feces from the thousands of chamber pots emptied daily) was almost overpowering. The locale had been Lully’s suggestion. He well knew that there was no other place in the palace of Versailles where they might stand a chance of being able to discuss their business unheard by anyone else.

Trying not to retch, Lully outlined the situation to St. Paul. “I think we both … render invaluable service … His Majesty—” he said, turning to gag from the necessity of breathing in order to speak.

“Yes?”

“Our man knows … couple hides,” he gasped. “Two possibilities. One—make Mademoiselle Émilie sing.”

“And what would that do?” asked St. Paul, removing the handkerchief from his nose just long enough to spit out the words before gagging and covering it again.

“She would be recognized. Bring her back. But—difficult. Something else: a valuable trinket—missing,” said Lully, drawing closer to St. Paul and forgetting to hold his nose against the smell.

“Go on,” said the nobleman.

“If the girl has it—thief—and we can arrest her!” Lully was so pleased with himself that he almost shouted his last few words.

St. Paul hushed him, although there was no one anywhere near them to hear. He had almost forgotten about the missing gift. “What … look like?”

“A bird. Diamonds.”

“Nowhere here?”

“They’ve searched. Gone.” Lully turned and gagged again.

“We know where … but she never leaves.”

“The maid. A bribe?”

St. Paul thought for a moment. “Possibly. Or landlady. I’ll go, tomorrow.”

As soon as courtesy would allow, the two men virtually ran away from each other to more congenial surroundings.

François bowed to Madame de Maintenon as he placed her letters on the table near her desk. She was already busy writing replies to those from the day before, although it was only nine in the morning and others in the household were still asleep. Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Montespan, the illegitimate royal progeny, and an assortment of staff—including François—were on the rue Vaugirard in Paris. Although at Versailles the widow Scarron could minimize her contact with the marquise and concentrate only on educating her children, since Madame de Montespan had been sent away from Versailles, she had to accompany her. It was all in a good cause, however. The king’s confessor had again refused to give communion to His Majesty and a woman who was living in sin—even though it was with the monarch. Every so often, when the public mood was particularly focused on morals, the Church would take a swipe at Louis’s self-indulgent way of life. But when the furor blew over, things always went back to the way they were before. It was not easy to deny a king like Louis whatever he wanted. Madame de Maintenon knew this, and her desire to see him lead a more godly life was her principal motive for having tried the scheme with Émilie. Although it seemed as if it had ended in utter fiasco, she had information that might yet lead to producing the result she originally desired. But this time she did not enlist St. Paul’s aid. She knew, in fact, that the count and Monsieur Lully were up to something. She also suspected that the marquise had something to do with it.

The widow Scarron was nothing if not patient, and so she bore her exile from court with fortitude. The unhappy band of travelers had only been at the house on the rue Vaugirard for a day or two and were just as likely as not to be recalled to Versailles at any moment. In the meantime, she decided to start her own subtle inquiries. She summoned François to attend her.

“François, I understand you paid a visit to Monsieur Charpentier a few days ago,” said the widow Scarron without lifting her eyes from the sheet she continued to fill with words, in an apartment that differed from the one she occupied at Versailles only in its slightly smaller dimensions.

“Why, yes, Madame, I did.”

“What business did you have with the composer?” She looked up, fixing him with her dark eyes.

François was caught unprepared. He rarely conversed with Madame de Maintenon, only arriving to receive instructions, and never thought that she would ask him such a question. “Monsieur Lully desired me to deliver a message to him. He was preparing to use too many musicians in Mademoiselle de Guise’s fête.”

“The king’s ordinance only applies to public performances, François. I’m surprised you did not know that.” She lay down her quill and stood, running her finger over the back of a chair and examining it for dust. “And it was not like you to go to Paris at all. You said your father was ill?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Extraordinary. And I thought he was already dead. Or perhaps this was your other father?”

François looked down at the ground.

“You had better tell me what your real business was. I fear you are meddling in something that is more dangerous than you know.”

No, thought François, he knew just what it could all mean. “I am sorry to say, Madame, that I know nothing more than what Monsieur Lully told me. Perhaps he sought only to frighten Monsieur Charpentier.”

“Very well, François. Although I am disappointed. I thought we understood one another.”

She returned to her letters. François left the room silently.

When Sophie first went to visit the Charpentiers, she really had no idea of proposing herself as domestic help. It was an inspiration of the moment, when she found herself confronted with Charpentier alone instead of both of them, or just Émilie. Once she left the apartment, she thought a little more carefully about accepting the post but could not see how it would hurt—although she had not entirely decided what she was going to do once she was installed in the position of lady’s maid and companion to the person whom she still held primarily responsible for her own downfall.

Charpentier gave her a month’s wages in advance so she could purchase more ladylike clothes. He also brought a cot into the apartment for her to sleep on. Everything was arranged very quickly, and Sophie understood the need for speed once Charpentier had filled her in on what François had told him. But the haste and secrecy meant that Sophie had no chance to speak to Émilie until the day she took up residence with the family on the rue des Écouffes. Even then, she knew the residence there was temporary, as it was Charpentier’s intention to move Sophie and Émilie out to the country as instructed by François as soon as his wife was recovered enough and the princess’s fête was over.

The very day after Émilie’s miscarriage, Lucille opened the door for Sophie, who carried a small parcel and had Monsieur le Diable tucked under her arm. He growled and hissed, his eyes wide with indignation.

“Monsieur Charpentier didn’t say anything about a cat,” said Lucille, backing away from Sophie.

“He must have forgotten,” she said, pushing past the young maid. “Where does Madame do her toilette?” she asked, placing the cat on a stool by the fire and depositing her parcel in the middle of the parlor floor.

“I—I don’t know.”

“
Hmmph.
Of course. You are a housemaid.” From somewhere deep inside her, Sophie’s native snobbery emerged. It felt good to be superior to something, even if it was just a housemaid in a three-room household.

“I’m just off to the market,” Lucille said, taking her cloak and walking out with her chin in the air.

Sophie looked around at the apartment. She ran her finger over the tops of the chairs and the mantelpiece.
“Tsk.”
With her handkerchief she flicked some dust off a stool and sat on it.

“Lucille?”

Sophie heard Émilie call out from the other room. She stood, smoothed down her hair, and prepared to confront the young woman whom she had tried to help more than a year ago, and who had repaid her kindness with thoughtlessness.

“Lu—” Émilie stopped in midword when she saw Sophie coming toward her. “Sophie!” She smiled and reached out her hand. “My husband said you were coming. I’m so grateful. And so ashamed.”

Sophie stood just out of Émilie’s reach and watched as she let her hand fall back onto the bed. “I am to be your lady’s maid,” she said, and then busied herself arranging Émilie’s brushes and mirrors on the dressing table in the corner.

“My lady’s maid—and my friend, if you can ever forgive me.”

Sophie turned to look Émilie in the face. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The slippers. I should have come back that night, but I forgot, and then it was too late.”

“And the next day?”

“I—I ruined them, I’m afraid. I stepped in a puddle. And then I was ill.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Sophie was in no mood to let Émilie explain her way out of the calamity that had wreaked so much havoc on her life.

Émilie thought for a while. “I don’t know. Once I was at Versailles, it all seemed so far away.”

“Well, there’s nothing to be done now,” Sophie said, turning back to her aimless straightening while she tried to think of what to do next.

“I’m still very tired. I’m sorry. I just need to sleep for a while longer.”

Almost before Sophie turned around to face Émilie again, she heard her breathing become audible and uniform. Once she was certain Émilie was fast asleep, Sophie opened the armoire in the corner and looked through all Émilie’s shoes, thinking perhaps she might find the missing slippers among them, and, when her search proved unsuccessful, opened the drawers on the dressing table and took everything out. She wasn’t really certain what she was searching for, but it occurred to her that somewhere there might be some remnant, some note—something that would contradict the simple story Émilie had told her. If Émilie awoke while she was ransacking the drawers, she could say she was simply reorganizing things the way she liked them, so that she could find everything to help Émilie dress.

The first drawer Sophie emptied had only buttons and rouge in it. The second looked as though it was just handkerchiefs and other small items of linen. But when she reached deep into the drawer, she found something small and hard, wrapped in a hankie. She pulled it out and quietly unwrapped it.

Sophie gasped when she saw the diamond bird, and then looked at the bed to make sure Émilie had not awakened. The brooch was heavy and utterly magnificent. She had never seen anything like it before. While she stood there unable to take her eyes off the stunning piece of jewelry, Sophie heard the door at the street open and Lucille climbing the stairs. Quickly, she wrapped the treasure in the hankie and started to put it back in the drawer, then thought better of it and stuffed it into her bodice. The pin was not too large, and there was plenty of room there. The diamond bird was completely out of sight by the time the housemaid poked her head cautiously into Émilie’s room.

“She’s sleeping,” Lucille whispered.

“Oh, is that what she’s doing?” whispered Sophie, who went to Émilie’s closet, found a dress that needed mending, and brought it into the parlor. She had no idea what Émilie could be doing with such a costly bauble in her possession. She could have pawned it and paid a year’s rent in a beautiful town house. Although she still didn’t have all the facts assembled, Sophie was beginning to get a sense that things were even more complicated than Charpentier had told her.