Goddess (12 page)

S
HE WAS AS GOOD AS HER WORD
, you’ll be pleased to know. She did speak to d’Armagnac—no doubt in that subtle way she had, that I grew to know so well, although I could never quite master it. Nobody could refuse her slightest whim.

So we met every afternoon in her boudoir. In that sweet room, heavy with the fragrance of tuberoses and jonquils, she brought me into the embrace of womanhood. She taught me—ah! So much.

Yes, Father, that’s right. She was a corrective influence on my young soul. Exactly so. D’Armagnac approved. So do you—I can see it in your face. Good, good. For some strange reason, I want you to think well of me—of her. My Comtesse. Bless her. I’m satisfied, then. So we are all content with that story. That’s something. We’re making progress, you and I. At last.

I was initiated into a new world of women—of sensation. She did teach me about fabric and slippers, and all the latest hairstyles at Versailles, and how to make conversation—to laugh like a courtesan instead of a stableboy—and … la! She taught me many other pleasures we need not dwell on just now.

But don’t imagine it was all civil intercourse—wigs and corsetry. Oh, no. It was training, no less exacting than that of a postulant in one of these great houses of God—although, I grant you, a lot more fashionable.

All the time—every morning, every evening—I rehearsed for the Opéra, and for the world. She prepared me, just as Francine did, for my debut—for my ascension. I was plucked and primed, dressed up and fussed over, powdered and polished. Between the two of them, my voice grew hoarse and rough from use, instead of finely tuned and refined. The Comtesse ordered tailors and bootmakers and jewellers to attend me in her boudoir—I believe, to this day, that d’Armagnac paid for it all, bless his sentimental soul.

She invited a few friends for supper once—all women, all young and pretty—but I could barely speak. Ever since, I’ve had a policy of smiling a great deal and appearing nonchalant under such circumstances. It usually works. After all, most people prefer to hear their own voice above anyone else’s, and a silent listener is surely the best company. Don’t you think?

Be quiet. Who asked for your opinion?

Now you’ve interrupted my thoughts.

What was I saying?

Yes, of course. The Comtesse. Once I grew a little more accomplished, she escorted me to a salon, to practise my arts—or so she said, but I realised a few moments after we arrived that I was merely the curiosity for the evening, presented like a bonbon on a platter, to be admired and somehow—I couldn’t shake the feeling—possessed.

Not like that, Father. Don’t shudder so. I was simply trying to describe a sensation. Although there were times … but that’s beside the point. The salon. Don’t try to distract me again.

D’Armagnac was there, with his wife. He pretended he didn’t know me, but stared at me a great deal. I saw, for the first time, how deeply everyone bowed to him, offered him a seat, a compliment, a pretty face to admire. To me, he’d always been the boss of the stables, then later the old man in bed slippers. But there he was, in great state, pompous as the King himself, powdered and posing like a maiden at a court ball.

And the Comtesse? She watched it all. Smiled. Knew, I think, that I had left him and his bed and his benefaction well behind me. Knew, I’m certain, that I was now her creature, not his. Perhaps d’Armagnac realised it, too.

I don’t know.

But I felt, that night, that Paris would be mine; that the city—I don’t deny it, even if it sounds like conceit—would adore me.

That’s what she told me, my Comtesse. She would stroke my hair and hold me to her bosom and whisper it to me. I believed her, too. I could feel it.

One day, the city would be mine. Yes.

But in a way, it always has been. It’s my blood. My bones. How I miss it.

Have you ever been to Paris?

Seen the moon rise beyond the city walls? The fishing boats set sail in the river? The markets? Heard the tinkers and oyster girls crying out their wares? You should go, once in your life. You should die there. So should I, come to think of it. Everyone should. No better place.

In Paris, you are surrounded by people. Old women wasting away before your eyes.
Mousquetaires
brawling in the taverns. Everyone living their lives in the streets, in the courtyards. To this day, I’m as curious as I was as a child—I peer through windows in the evenings, after the candles are lit, into gardens, through half-open doors. I watch the flower-sellers tying nosegays. The wreckers pulling down old buildings. The stonemasons building the new.

Don’t get me wrong. Like my father, I don’t approve of some of the latest developments—all those new mansions, those triumphal arches. Not at all. We are great, it’s true, but we are not Rome. Louis is not Caesar. We are not gods—not even beloved of the gods, or how could there be such plagues of sweating sickness and typhus and the children dying of hunger in the streets? I’ve seen them. Many times. Fed them, too—not out of any sort of piety, but because we are bound together, the orphans, the misfits. We recognise each other. Although they are disgusting little creatures.

Yes, the city is filth and sickness. But still, I love to wander the streets just before dawn. Always have. The city is a different world at that hour. Night noises give way to day—babies cry, mothers sing to them, bakers pound dough, dogs and pigs rifle through refuse in the streets; you can hear roosters, the night watch on patrol, the ferrymen. Notaries take breakfast in the coffee house. Drunks wake up. There are carts filled with fish or geese or apples from up north. Shutters creak open. Church bells.

Without all the people, without horses and wagons, you can see the poetry in the buildings, glimpses along an alleyway of ships in the Seine. If you look up—it astonishes me how few people do that; they’re all too anxious about stepping in something foul—but when the morning light reaches the rooftops of Paris in the autumn, there is no place closer to God. Look up, away from the rats in the gutters and the puddles of horse piss, and you’ll see, instead, the silhouette of Notre-Dame de Paris against the stars. The sublime rising from shadows. Just like me.

You may think me sacrilegious, even corrupt. Well, well. Time will tell. Not long now. But that cathedral, that holy place, that is where my soul belongs. There was a time—one moment—when just the sight of it stopped me from throwing myself in the river. If the city was my stage, the cathedral is my mother—or, at least, the only one I’ve known. Even now, if I could, I’d crawl back there, into its dark corners, like a whipped dog—it beckons me, hides and comforts me in its immensity, its stained-glass glory, its candles and statues.

For a part of me is pure. You must believe that.

A part of me is just like Jeanne, Maid of Orléans. She is my saint, my own icon, she of the sure arm and the pure heart. I’ve done nothing so worthy with my life—I haven’t saved France or fought in battles or led the people to hopefulness. But there are the visions. She whispers to me. Yes, she does. I become her, and she enters my heart, this fragile heart. I carry her likeness around my throat, always. It was my mother’s. See? Don’t tell the Abbess. It’s all I have of my mother. Whoever she was. One of the few truly precious things, now, that I possess.

Here’s Jeanne, her hair about her fine face—look at the determination in those eyes—the sword raised high. I pray to her memory, and I believe one day she will be sainted by the Church, recognised by the people of France as the saviour she tried to be, just as she is my refuge now, in the darkness. Since I was little, she has been my strength—Jeanne, and that cathedral on the island. She rallies the hearts of the misbegotten, the queer, the sons of the soil—a pinprick of light in the French soul.

For we have had our dark moments, Paris and I.

What am I doing here, so far from home? God help me. I can almost see it, smell it, hear it. The coffee houses and pickpockets, the alchemists’ shops and the crowds and the tailors’ apprentices smoking on the quay. Students crowding around the booksellers’ stalls near the Sorbonne. Windmills on the hill. As if—almost as if I was there. As if I could reach out and touch the stones of the cathedral, the bark on the trees in the Place Royale. As I once could. Then.

Then—as I was saying. Yes. Sometimes I do need to be guided back to my story. But you are really quite relentless, do you know that?

Very well. I learned so much in those first few months back in Paris. In the Comtesse’s boudoir. At the Académie. In the streets and the salons and the fairgrounds. It was as if the world had been made anew. The city seemed to be overflowing with perfume and enchanting women and magic. Filled with music—with songs. And, oh, how I sang.

T
HERE’S A NEW SINGER
. An old song. The crowds are always huge for
Cadmus et Hermione
—it is, after all, Lully’s first, greatest,
tragédie
. But now there’s this new girl, this Pallas Athéna.

It’s dark inside the Palais-Royal. People mill about the theatre, shout to their friends, wave over everyone’s heads, bow, gossip, drink a toast or two. Cutpurses work their way through the crowd. Someone hails an oyster seller. There’s a cheer when the music begins, but nobody listens to the Prologue. They never do. The guards near the orchestra thump their spears on the floorboards for silence. Nobody listens to them, either.

They like new blood, the Paris crowd, in the same way a butcher admires a herd driving through town to the market. They call out, hoping for an off note, a nervous waver in the upper register. They pray for a missed cue, a dropped flower—even better, a crooked wig.

But most of all they wish for that rare, heavenly moment—that thud in the chest, that prickle of the scalp, that glimpse of perfection that brings you to tears, to laughter, to worship.

And then she appears. Descends. A creature from the heavens, from a fresco, from legend. A goddess. An Amazon. A statue come to life—but not marble, not bronze. Auburn hair and majestic bearing. Fine wrists, strong arms, her throat the colour of cream, her voice dripping like nectar from Olympus—rich and pure and certain.

The goddess smiles, she weeps, she storms. She sings. Oh! She soars above mortals, looks down on their perfidies with disdain. She changes the world. Forever. And that’s just the first act.

The voice is not a true soprano. There’s a little more depth, more emotion. The range perhaps slightly lower than is usual here in Paris—it takes a few moments to get used to it, but then—its beauty, its sheer power, carries them to the heavens—beyond. She is immortal—she is Artemis, she is Aphrodite, she is—who is she?

As she leaves the stage for a scene or two, murmurs sweep the theatre. The other singers can barely make themselves heard over the din. In his box, the
directeur
, Francine, smiles to himself. She may be worth the risk, after all, this wild child of the gutters. That magnificent voice is surely a lesson from God to never, ever, judge the voice by the clothing.

Consider his crew of misfits and angels: Le Rochois, Lully’s greatest ornament, still as beloved and graceful as ever; Duménil, the fool, the lazy, sly prick—a cook, for God’s sake, but such a pure high tenor; pretty Fanchon with her suitors and her reliable soprano; and now this new fellow, Thévenard, and his low tones that tremble with pathos and authority; and the girl—the tall girl with the breeches and the sword, with her majesty, and her smile, and her range matching any of those Italians.

His wife nudges him. ‘Who is she, your new Pallas Athéna? Everyone wants to know.’

‘She, my dear, is the future of French opera.’

At the first interval, the foyer is filled with men shouting, laughing, a little light-headed and they’re not sure why, but something is different here, now; something has changed forever tonight, in this theatre—something to do with the new singers—Thévenard, the baritone … and the girl. Who is the girl?

The men elbow each other out of the way to get closer to the young Comte d’Albert, who, it is said, is her lover. A rumour washes from one side of the theatre to the other—they fought, with bare blades. She nearly killed him. She dresses as a man. She slaughtered four men in Avignon. Or in Marseille. There was a girl. A nun. But surely not? She was d’Armagnac’s mistress. One of the many. She is the protégée of the Comtesse. Or perhaps the baritone’s wife. Or perhaps the illegitimate daughter of the Duc d’—. All over the Palais-Royal there are young men who grew up with her in the stables, in the dormitories, who have lost to her in bouts in the fencing halls. They boast now of her wit, her skill, her legs.

The King is not present tonight—nobody expects him; he rarely leaves Versailles nowadays, such a pity, though at least you don’t have to behave—but his brother, Monsieur, is here, in the royal box, as always. Wouldn’t miss it for the world, even on a normal night—with the tight press of silk-clad bodies and the candles and the shouting and the piss buckets and the painted scenery and all the world present—but tonight, he knows, he feels it, is not a normal night.

Something is happening here. Something strange and marvellous. The birth of a new world, a new star—two of them. The baritone is sensational, but the girl—the girl is a creature such as nobody has ever seen—heard—before. Everyone talks at once, not bothering to whisper—asking her name, her history. She sang in Marseille—she fought with d’Albert—that one? The swordswoman? Can it be possible?

When he has heard enough speculation from the gorgeous young men around him, Monsieur sends to the
directeur
’s box for an answer.

‘Is it true, then? This new girl? She is the infamous duellist?’

Francine bows low to his patron. ‘I cannot vouch for her history, Your Grace. She does wear a sword to rehearsal, but I have never seen her use it.’

‘And breeches?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

The young men further along the bench snigger.

‘Extraordinary.’ Monsieur silences his entourage with a look. ‘And her training?’

‘With Gautier in Marseille.’ Gautier can take the blame if required.

‘The tone is unusual.’

‘But not unpleasant?’ asks Francine.

‘Not at all.’ Monsieur smiles at the memory of her first few notes.

‘She is an authentic
bas-dessus
, Your Grace—what the Italians would call contralto. Although, as is the case tonight, she can sing as a soprano if required.’

‘I am familiar with the contralto, of course.’ He waves a hand at the crowds in the
parterre
. ‘But I fear many of these barbarians are not.’

‘They are shocked,’ says Francine. ‘It’s only natural. But I hope they will come to appreciate it. Indeed I hope one day to showcase her true range.’

‘Nothing Italian, I hope.’

‘Of course not, Your Grace. But we will have to find—or write—something appropriate.’

Monsieur nods his assent, without which nothing so radical, so innovative, could occur. The King, they both know, would never agree to such a thing.

‘Her name?’

‘Madame de Maupin, Your Grace. Julie-Émilie de Maupin.’

‘She is married?’

‘So I understand, although I have never sighted the husband.’

‘A lucky man.’

‘Perhaps. Or a lonely one.’

Monsieur nods. Francine is dismissed. He thinks in retrospect he should have asked her more questions about her life—her real life. His guts lurch—he has no idea what secrets she may have, what crimes she may have committed with that damned sword, and now everyone will want to know everything about her. Perhaps he should locate the husband. Buy her a few gowns.

He listens to the whispers, the gossip.

Mystery, he decides, may be the most dignified option. And the safest.

On the short walk back to his own box he is stopped a dozen times. The same questions. The same answers. He gives them nothing more.

He decides that tomorrow he will start a dozen conflicting rumours and spread them across Paris. By nightfall the city will be in confusion, and long may it stay that way. Or perhaps—he listens to the uproar—perhaps he will not need to.

Back on stage, the great Le Rochois is fighting the crowd, the noise—they are always silent for her, but not tonight. Now she feels what the others must experience every evening—struggling to make her voice heard above the chatter, the movement of bodies. Nobody is listening to her—to her!—Le Rochois! They are waiting, restless, for something—for someone.

They are waiting for the other one.

The girl stands backstage in her goddess’s gown, breastplate and helmet. She will reappear, flying in from the painted clouds, near the end of this act. In the meantime, she watches the others sing. She notices how Le Rochois stands with her chin up and one foot slightly forward—each tilt of the head, every movement of the fingers, is precise and graceful. She sees that lovely blonde soprano wink at a dandy in the crowd. The chandeliers drip wax on the canvas. Ballet dancers stand in lines in the wings, stretching their calf muscles, ready for the next
divertissement
. Fans flutter in the dark like seagulls. People whisper. Hop from foot to tired foot. Push each other out of the way. A fight starts up the back. A flower-seller in the corner sings along, a few beats too late. Hundreds of faces upturned, lit, expectant, just beyond the pit.

Thévenard, bless him, sings like a man possessed, like a man in love, like a god. He stands a head taller than everyone else on stage, distinguished even in sandals and a blue turban, his muscles oiled. Eye makeup dribbles inky tears down his face.

She watches everything—Le Rochois winning back the crowd with her voice, her eyes, her majesty—Thévenard storming onto the stage as if he was born to it. She grins. Loves him for just a moment. No. He’s trying too hard. The crowd does not yet worship him. But they will. One day. His gestures are too wild, the voice stupendous but not quite disciplined enough. He has a great deal yet to learn.

He knows it. So does she. That is their strength, perhaps. They have failings, rough, untrimmed edges, and yet—raw as they are—they are both magnificent. And this is only the beginning.

Someone touches her arm, gently, pleading. It is time. They help her up onto the machine—only a real goddess could be comfortable in all this drapery, this armour. She holds on tight as the stagehands winch her up high into the flies, as if she was nothing but a piece of scenery.

The stagehands all adore her. She is like them—has won them over with bottles of wine and lewd stories. She knows them; they know her. They motion to her. She kisses a gold chain around her wrist and mutters to herself, to God, to a lost girl at the other end of France. Nobody hears her. She holds the sword of justice aloft. Raises her chin a little. She is ready.

The clouds part. The goddess descends. The world will never be the same.

Le Rochois watches her through narrowed eyes. Fanchon stops singing and blows her a kiss. The whole world applauds. Everyone shouts at once. She has to wait a few minutes to hear the music above the racket. The orchestra stops playing. There’s no point.

She waits. Regal. The other players wait, too, less happily, except for Thévenard, whose character is supposed to be looking stricken at this point but instead has a silly grin on his face. He loves her. Forever.

She raises a hand—waits for complete silence. Nobody—not even Le Rochois—not even Francine—has ever seen such a thing. Then she waves to the orchestra and they begin.

It’s her moment, the zenith, the minute or two in all eternity that will remain golden and dazzling no matter what lies waiting in the years ahead. She feels the paint on her face melting, pain where the armour has blistered her skin, fear in her bowels, the old scars, the bruises, the despair. She breathes the black smoke of the tallow candles, the stench of sweat and piss and unwashed costumes.

She watches it all, feels it all, breathes it all in, and spits it out as a song.

Again those glorious, warm tones fill the air and she is reborn. She flies across the stage and everyone in the place is on their feet—even the people with seats—even Monsieur—even Francine—even—especially—the Comtesse and d’Albert and d’Armagnac and an old
mousquetaire
down the back of the
parterre
, who wipes tears from his face and leaves before the Epilogue so that his daughter never knows he was there, never hears him whisper that he always knew she would conquer Paris, somehow, and now she has.

Eventually the orchestra stops playing, and the ballet and chorus take to the stage for their bows, and the players, one by one, line up to be adored, but not her—not her—because she is different, she has always been different, and just this once she will make the most of it.

In the final moments, just when the crowd looks like it will tear down the theatre if she doesn’t appear, the painted clouds open again and there she is, the goddess in the chariot, racing down from the skies as fast as the stagehands can manage it, and she pauses in mid-flight—stands.

Everyone stands. Again. For her.

She tears the helmet from her head and lets the chestnut hair fall to her shoulders.

There’s a roar. Somewhere in the crowd a woman screams. It’s too much. Le Rochois’s mouth is open—she—even she—is shouting, applauding, although later she will wonder why. Thévenard sobs with relief, with pride.

Nobody can remember such a night, such a woman, such a goddess.