Emilie's Voice (3 page)

“Mademoiselle Jolicoeur, I want you to be fully aware that what you are about to undertake will not be easy,” Charpentier said, drawing her attention back to the center of the room.

Émilie had no idea what Monsieur Charpentier was talking about. She had been so busy looking that she had neglected to listen. She naturally assumed they were still discussing the violin, but clearly the subject had changed.

“Monsieur Charpentier would like you to become his student,” explained Marcel, who knew his daughter’s ways well enough to understand that she hadn’t been paying attention. “He proposes that you should come here every day early in the morning, and he will teach you to use your voice, to read and write, and to read music. He will also see that you are given instruction in comportment and dancing. If this goes well, he will one day allow you to entertain the guests at the salon of the Duchesse de Guise, where you will sing his songs before the ladies and gentlemen.”

Émilie smiled. Nothing seemed more fabulous to her than that she should be able to come to this delightful place every day, and spend her time singing and learning to be ladylike, surrounded by beautiful sights, sounds, and smells.

“Then I gather, Mademoiselle Émilie, that you agree to come?”

Émilie looked at her father.

“You must decide,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, I do agree.” Émilie could barely speak, she was so excited. It was a wonderful, frightening thought, to do something so completely different from anything she could possibly have imagined. And yet she knew that she wanted it, more than she had ever wanted anything before.

They left after Émilie consumed three more cakes and a dish of tea. She was convinced that God must indeed have singled her out for special blessing, and she decided she would sing a prayer to him every night for giving her the voice that had so miraculously opened this door before her.

Marcel, having seen more of the world than had his only child, knew that there were perils ahead and that it would take the strongest of wills to avoid them. He wanted to trust Charpentier, and yet the composer was a man. Marcel saw how he looked at Émilie. He did not share his wife’s certainty about the fate that awaited his daughter if she became a singing ornament in the salons of Paris, but he knew that her innocence would be short-lived in that setting. Although she was still young, Marcel could see that Émilie would be beautiful, and beauty, talent, and poverty combined usually produced one thing: a courtesan. Innocence was a great treasure, to be sure, but people as poor as he and his family could not afford the luxury of protecting it beyond its time.

Four

“That woman must be stopped … She continues to lead the king down immoral paths … He flaunts his unlawful love before the court and the world … His Majesty does not yet realize it—he is too blinded by love—but such actions put everything—everything—in peril.”

St. Paul went over the widow Scarron’s words in his head as his carriage bumped along the rutted roads to Paris. She wants to get rid of Montespan. Well, so do half the women in France, if the truth be told, but no one had yet succeeded. He had been charged with an almost impossible task, St. Paul thought. It was no simple matter to turn the king’s attention away from the wittiest, most intelligent, most beautiful woman in Christendom. And supposing he achieved this extraordinary feat? Then what? Then the widow Scarron might step in and take her place—no, the idea was too absurd. Yet the void would be filled, of that St. Paul was certain.

First, he thought that it might be a good idea to try to dig up some scandal on Montespan. It shouldn’t be too difficult. He was going to visit his godmother, the Duchesse de Guise. She was no partisan of the court, and if he were going to hear anything really damaging about the king’s mistress, he might well hear it there. And besides, his finances were in a more than usually disastrous state, and he could normally cajole the old lady out of a few louis. It was worth the risk of going to Paris and being accosted by his creditors. It would do him no harm to get away from court for a while too. He could think at the Hôtel de Guise just as easily as at Versailles—perhaps more easily, without the constant pleasures and distractions of the court to woo him, and with his belly full of his godmother’s famously ample provisions.

He had agreed to the widow Scarron’s terms most reluctantly. In exchange for his services in arranging the events that would deflect the king from Madame de Montespan, she would ensure that he would receive a generous pension. It irked him to be subservient to someone who had been born in a prison, although her father was of an ancient family. Despite himself, he could not help admiring her intelligence and wit, the qualities that had helped her overcome her failings to become the governess to the king’s illegitimate children, but there was something sanctimonious about her unwavering piety. St. Paul had grown up inside the court, and this early training had taught him not to trust anyone who seemed to be sincere.

Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, otherwise known as the magnificent Madame de Montespan, was altogether a different sort. She should have been queen, St. Paul thought, if her parents hadn’t bartered her off in marriage at a young age to that idiotic Marquis de Montespan. He wondered if she knew that the widow Scarron—the woman who used to be her closest friend—was now plotting so desperately against her. St. Paul was more than willing to take the opportunity the widow Scarron offered him, assuming that he would be able to claim some support and compensation for his trouble along the way. But what or who could possibly distract a man with such legendary appetites from the marquise? She had swept in, practically annihilating her predecessor, the demure Duchesse de La Vallière. If there was any weakness at all, any chink where one might find a place to drive a wedge, it would be within the character of Madame de Montespan herself. She had one flaw: her temper. If he could find a way to make her use it to her detriment, then there was the faintest glimmer of hope that they might be able to succeed.

But first, St. Paul thought, it was necessary to eat, drink, and pay his tailor. As his carriage drew up to the door of the Hôtel de Guise, he adjusted his features into a suitably obsequious smile, straightened his brocade coat, and prepared to spend a boring day playing cards with his elderly godmother.

What Émilie did not realize when she agreed so readily to becoming Monsieur Charpentier’s pupil was that learning how to sing would be only one of the tasks the composer would set her. Parisian society was elegant and sophisticated. The ladies and gentlemen were well read, appreciated art and music, knew how to dance the minuet flawlessly, and possessed sharp wits and knowledge on a vast variety of subjects. For Émilie to make her mark in that setting would require more than just a pretty voice. Half of every day was, therefore, devoted to other lessons: dancing, drawing, elocution, etiquette, and—most difficult of all—reading.

At first, when Charpentier realized Émilie found the reading and writing so daunting, he tried to make it a game. He would reward her with cakes and tea if she could learn the words he set her and use them in sentences. The results were not spectacular. When the lesson did not end successfully, Émilie stared longingly at the treats she was to be denied, until Charpentier relented and let her have them anyway. He could not bear it when her radiant smile faded, when her eager, dancing eyes turned away from him and tears gathered beneath her lashes.

It was another matter altogether when they turned to Émilie’s singing lesson. Sometimes the look that spread over Émilie’s face when she was lost in the music almost took Charpentier’s breath away. That, and the magnificent sound that gave him chills, made him forgive her just about everything else.

And there were a few things to be forgiven. Émilie had never met an adult who was so eager to please her, who, for fear of losing her trust, did not discipline her. At first she was a little suspicious. But it did not take long for her to realize that in Charpentier’s apartment, she was the one with the power.

“I’m not sure I feel like reading today,” Émilie said, when Charpentier’s insistence that she attend to a passage from a small book of children’s stories was beginning to annoy her.

“Are you unwell?” Charpentier asked, immediately putting down the book with such an expression of concern that Émilie could not help laughing.

“I’m sorry, really, I feel fine. But I truly don’t want to read anymore. When can I sing?”

Charpentier looked at Émilie from across the table. “I too wish that you could sit here and sing to me all day long. But that is not what will give you success, not that alone. I don’t know what else to say to you to convince you that this is very, very important. It is worth the effort.”

“My mother said it is idle foolishness to teach me to read, that I won’t need to read in order to keep a household and raise children.” Émilie knew she was testing Charpentier, knew in her heart what he would say to that, but she wanted to hear it from him.

Charpentier leaned forward. “If you do as I ask, you will not have a life like your mother’s. You will be admitted to the highest circles. You will be showered with costly gifts. But most of all, you will spend your life perfecting the art that God meant you to practice, or he would not have given you such a voice.”

Charpentier’s look melted Émilie’s determined resistance. He had eyes like deep, clear pools on an overcast day. Émilie opened the book in front of her and began to read aloud to Charpentier. There were several words she did not know, but he helped her along. In an hour she made it through the entire story, which took up three pages.

“That’s more like it, Mademoiselle Contrary!” Charpentier said when they finished.

Émilie could not help smiling. She had read a story, all by herself. Well, almost.

Charpentier smiled his glorious smile at Émilie, and it sent a little thrill through her. She answered with a smile of her own, and the faintest tinge of a blush. “Is it time to sing yet?” she asked.

Charpentier rose and went to the spinet.

Émilie stood and stretched, thankful to be finished with the chore of reading. She took her accustomed place and began to sing to her teacher’s accompaniment.

The composer watched and listened as his student put her voice through its daily exercises. She had made great progress. But there was still something holding her back, something he had not managed to convey to her that would unlock everything her extraordinary instrument could do.

“That is tolerable, Mademoiselle Émilie, but your breathing is not right. You are not giving yourself the support you need to reach those notes and sustain them. Breathe from here.” Charpentier stood up and placed his hand on his abdomen, just below his rib cage.

Émilie put her own hand on her stomach, and breathed in and out a few times.

“No, it is still too shallow. You have the capacity. Here.” Charpentier came over to Émilie and placed his own hand just below her waist. “Now breathe, and move my hand.”

Émilie did as she was told. Charpentier pressed against her so that she had to push to make her stomach expand. He could feel her pulse right through the gathers of her homespun skirt.

“Now sing.”

Émilie’s voice soared through the room and seemed to push at the boundaries of the small space.

“Yes, you have it.” Charpentier let go of her suddenly and stepped back to his seat in front of the harpsichord. “Now, let us try an air.” He began to play, concentrating on the movement of his fingers over the ebony keys. He did not dare to look up at his student for fear she might notice that his simple gesture, his touch, had unnerved him.

“Please, Monsieur Charpentier,” Émilie said when she finished the air. “Can we try the duet again?”

“You mean
may
we try the duet?”

“
May
we try the duet again?”

She mimicked the tone of his voice so perfectly that Charpentier laughed out loud.

“All right,” he said, and then dug through the sheets of paper scattered around his feet for the piece she meant.

Charpentier’s beautiful, high tenor voice blended particularly well with Émilie’s rich, pure soprano. At first he had sung exercises with her, paralleling her scales a sixth lower to help her develop greater security with her pitch. She enjoyed this so much that they began to sing simple tunes together, until finally he wrote a duet for the two of them. He placed the music on the stand and stood next to her. Although Émilie memorized the words and music almost the first time Charpentier taught them to her, she leaned in close as if she were reading them off the page anew. Charpentier did not touch his student, but as they sang, every once in a while the music seemed to carry them to the same place, and the distance between them vanished altogether. The sounds they made collided in the room, beating against each other to become more than just two distinct voices, to become something else, something larger and more exquisite. When they finished, neither of them moved for a few seconds. Then Émilie looked at Charpentier.

He caught her gaze for only a moment. “I think you’ve worked hard enough for one day,” he said, turning away immediately. Neither of them said anything else while Émilie put on her cloak and went out the door.

Émilie walked a little more slowly than usual on her way home that evening. It was cold, but she did not feel it. She did not even mind very much when a fiacre rolled through a puddle and splashed her. She still felt the warm pressure of Charpentier’s hand on her stomach. She still heard their voices curling around each other, blending and touching. This intimacy warmed her all the way through, although she did not really understand why. She wanted to turn her steps back toward the Hôtel de Guise and sing again, but she knew it was time for dinner, and that her parents would worry if she did not come home.

When at long last she arrived at the Pont au Change, Émilie let herself into the workshop with her latchkey and found her way across it in the near dark. The fire had been doused about an hour earlier when the light went, and Marcel could no longer see to do his meticulous work. Odd how much smaller it looked to her now, she thought. She still loved the smell of varnish, and the faint outlines of unfinished musical instruments hanging from the ceiling and covering the walls exuded a certain potential for beauty. Sometimes she wished she lived down here, surrounded by all these curving shapes, instead of upstairs, where everything was plain and square. At the Hôtel de Guise, everywhere one looked was beauty. All the rooms were made to delight the eye. Even Charpentier’s humble apartment was draped with curtains and had beautiful Aubusson carpets on the floors. Émilie knew it was unfair to compare her parents’ little apartment with the home of a princess, but each day the contrast became more stark, and each day she walked home a little more slowly, postponing the moment when she must return to her old life.