Spirit of Lost Angels (15 page)

‘All those festoons, pendants and tassels of diamonds. Nothing but an inglorious tribute to the vanity of man,’ she said. ‘The vanity that began when the previous king asked Boehmer and Bassenge — the jewellers, you see — to create a diamond necklace to surpass all others, as a gift to his favourite mistress, Madame du Barry. It cost two million livres. Can you imagine, for one piece of jewellery, and such a hideous one?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, it took these jewellers several years and a lot of money to assemble the diamonds, but in the meantime the old King died of smallpox and the du Barry woman was banished from court.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, I heard the story of the old King’s death.’

‘The bankrupt jewellers then tried to sell the necklace to the new king,’ Jeanne went on. ‘But Marie Antoinette refused because it had been designed for her enemy, Madame du Barry. Well, that was my cue, Victoire. Of course, my scheme was not without risk, but there was every chance I could succeed. I told the Cardinal the Queen secretly desired the necklace. He paid the two million livres to me, believing I would hand the money to the Queen.’ She swiped at a fly, fidgeting around my cap. ‘I then collected the necklace from the jewellers, who thought I would give it to the Queen, who would then pay them. When the time came to pay and nothing happened, the jewellers complained to the Queen, who told them she had never received or ordered the necklace.’ She waved an arm. ‘Then followed the
coup de théâtre
which you no doubt heard about.’

‘I think the whole of France was talking about it,’ I said.

‘Well,
ma chère
, you know the rest — how they whipped and branded me and threw me in here. That bitch Queen fixed it all. She will suffer, as I have. I am finished with the rich trampling the poor. And I would hope you are too, Victoire.’

She pointed her cane at a tree. ‘Look at those leaves, already on the turn. Do you want to spend another winter here, flirting with death? You are twenty-four, and still ravishing. You may still have a good ten years left, out of this madhouse.’

‘I stopped thinking of a life beyond these walls long ago,’ I said. ‘Nobody could get past the guards.’

Jeanne laughed. ‘My sweet love, so naïve. I told you, I have an idea to get past those imbeciles.’

‘Visitor for you, countess,’ an approaching keeper shouted.

Jeanne raised my hand to her lips. ‘Return to the dormitory. It is safer for you if you know nothing. That way they cannot torture you.’

***

So accustomed I was to the shouts, steam and clatter of the kitchen, I’d almost forgotten the daily silence of the cell. Since I had become Jeanne’s maid, they only made me cook in the mornings. The afternoons I spent with my mistress, learning the ways of Parisian society. I never questioned why this good luck had befallen me. The wise never asked questions at la Salpêtrière.

The women were hard at work — knitting, weaving, embroidery, lace work and spinning — as they would have been since morning prayers. Sister officers strolled amongst the quiet clot of women, all clothed in identical ash-grey dresses, bonnets and clogs.

Religious in nothing but name, the sister officers tapped their sticks on the stone floor, rapping the knuckles and shoulders of anyone who slackened off from the incessant labour, or who made the slightest sound.

‘Don’t think your hands will stay idle,’ one of them hissed, as I entered the dormitory. She threw me a pile of cloth. ‘No special privileges when you’re not with that con woman.’

Agathe raked her festering lips into a smirk and blew me a kiss.

At four o’clock work ceased briefly as we said the rosary and prayed again. A little later, I knew it was five-thirty, because I heard the children and old women outside — the only ones, apart from the insane, permitted to leave their dormitories to take the courtyard air for an hour.

Five-thirty was also the one hour of the day they permitted us to talk, but not to stop working. We were never to stop working except to sleep, eat or pray — that same monotonous cycle.

‘How is our personal maid, then?’ Agathe twisted my arm behind my back, but I refused to cry out with the pain. ‘When are you going to find out about those diamonds?’

‘I told you, I am only her maid. I know nothing.’

‘Careful, Agathe,’ Marie-Françoise said, ‘Remember last time you gave her those bruises they locked you in the dungeons with the crazies for two days. Our Victoire is well connected now.’

‘But the countess woman must still have the diamonds, or the money,’ Agathe said.

‘Yes,’ Toinette said, ‘how else could she afford a private cell, a maid and proper food?’

‘And afternoon strolls, outdoors,’ Julie said.

I raised my hands. ‘Please, I know nothing.’

Agathe sneered and spat a glob of phlegm at my face as the sister officers distributed the evening meal of black bread,
potage
and wine. I dared not wipe my cheek, and the phlegm slid down my face. ‘You’ll talk, my lovely,’ Agathe went on. ‘You’ll tell me everything before I’ve finished with you.’

Agathe could threaten me all she liked, but the woman no longer frightened me. Since Jeanne shared her simple, but adequate, meals with me, I felt stronger and more able to bear her intimidation, her beatings, and her resentment of my privileged role.

The meal over, Sister Superior rang the bell for evening prayer and recital of psalms. Afterwards, the sister officers performed their nightly dormitory inspection, checking nobody was hiding anything illegal. At ten o’clock they snuffed out the sole candle.

I lay prone on the straw mattress. There was no room to curl up, though every lonely night I did silently thank Jeanne for buying me this bed by the window. At least I shared it with only two others, instead of the usual five.

I listened to the women’s exhausted snores, their shallow night breaths, and I felt their loneliness, their desperation. As I began to drift into my own restless sleep, a single cry from the Insane Quarter broke the quiet. Then another, and another. The cries spread, louder and louder; inhuman shrieks, which penetrated the night silence and rose over the stone walls. Woken by the noise from the lower
loges
, several prisoners cried out, like some instinctive reply to an ancestral code. I clamped my hands over my ears.

The light from the zenith moon slanted through the dormer window, casting criss-cross shadows on the wall. I’d resigned myself to an existence in la Salpêtrière, death my only way out, but as the illusory warmth of that feeble moonlight flooded my face and neck, a glimmer of hope shone through the shadows of desperation. I could almost believe in Jeanne’s claim of another life for me beyond the bars.

I scuttled through the crisp autumn breeze, across the courtyard, from the kitchen to Jeanne’s cell, and tapped on the door.

It opened a crack and I was surprised to see the smirking face of a guard. A muffled giggle and another, deeper voice, came from inside.

One of Jeanne’s sleek dresses was heaped on the floor, along with her undergarments. The keeper who had opened the door was reaching for his uniform. The second keeper lay naked, sprawled on the bed beside Jeanne; she too, was unclothed.

Her skin so pale it was almost translucent, Jeanne reminded me of the nymph creature painting in the Saint-Germain house. The dark curls between her thighs recalled to me those grape clusters, draped across the creature like forbidden fruit. I swayed back, averting my eyes from the male bodies.

‘What’s eating the emerald-eyed princess?’ the still-naked keeper said. ‘Never seen a cock before? Come here, I’ll show you mine!’ He laughed, waggling his penis at me.

‘Now, now, boys, enough amusement for one afternoon,’ Jeanne chided. ‘Put your jewels away, get dressed, and come back another day.’

The keepers laughed as they crept away from Jeanne’s cell, their hair still dishevelled.

‘How can you do that, Jeanne? Surely you cannot enjoy them … those hideous men?’

Jeanne patted the bed, inviting me to sit beside her. ‘Oh it’s not too bad. Quite fun, even. How else am I to alleviate prison boredom? Besides, they’re my friends now, our allies, Victoire.’

I clasped my hands in my lap. ‘Sometimes I wish I was more like you,’ I said. ‘So free; so unbound by rules and tradition.’

‘You may find it hard to believe, Victoire, but I envy you — your morals, your virtues.’ She took my hand and placed it on the veined mound of her left breast, over the sign branding her a thief. ‘Feel it,
ma chère
. Trace the V with your finger.’

She rolled down my shift, exposing my left shoulder. ‘They have burnt you too,’ she said, her fingertips tracing my
fleur-de-lys
burn. ‘How dare they brand us like common cattle!’ Her hand slid down and she rested her palm against my breast, which rose and fell like a river swell. ‘Those keepers will pay for that.’

Jeanne sat up and I fastened her stays, helped her put her petticoat on, and the black dress.

She reached under her bed, brought out a wooden box and inserted a gold key into the lock. She flipped the lid and withdrew a small glass bottle, holding it as if it were a diamond.

‘What is it?’ I took the bottle of red-brown liquid and lifted it to my nose. ‘Such a strange smell … sort of fierce and tart, but at the same time sweet and earthy, like cut grass. Oh yes, I remember now, Armand would use this for the calves with colic.’

Jeanne nodded. ‘This,
ma chère
, is laudanum — remedy for pain, insomnia and diarrhoea. And, possibly, calf colic.’ She took the bottle from me. ‘But two or three teaspoons could kill a man … or a keeper.’

‘No, but — ’

‘Don’t fret, we’re not going to murder them,’ she said with a laugh. ‘We just want to make them sleep long enough to steal their uniforms and dance right out of la Salpêtrière.’

***

‘We leave tomorrow afternoon,
ma chère
,’ Jeanne said. ‘Our favourite keepers are on duty. Twilight will have fallen before you have to be back in your dormitory — the perfect cover.’

A tingle flitted down my spine. I dared not cry out with joy; dared not hope we might soon be gone from this most ungodly place.

Jeanne took her wooden box from under the bed. She lifted the compartment containing the hidden phial of laudanum and drew out a scroll of papers.

‘This,’ she said with a smile, ‘is your new life. You will call yourself Mademoiselle Rubie Charpentier — I know you like that name. Your father is the recently deceased, and wealthy, Monsieur Maximilien Charpentier.’ She handed me two sheets of paper. ‘Here are recommendation letters for positions I am certain will suit you.’

‘Positions?’

‘Why, an independent woman with no husband or lover must work, Victoire! Besides, it will be beneficial for you to mingle with society, get to know people.’ She held up one of the pages. ‘Here, your literacy skills are commended for work in a printing press. A contact of mine owns it.’

‘Why am I to work in a press?’

‘You read and write well. Surely you can understand we revolutionaries must print out a multitude of pamphlets to help the people’s cause to bring down the monarchy? After the death of your father at the hand of a noble, and then this barbarous marqu — ’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I certainly do want to fight for the commoners’ rights.’

‘As I thought,’ she said, squeezing me arm. ‘Our revolution needs people like you here in Paris. People who are passionate about the cause, and intelligent enough to instruct the minds of others, with the decorum and education of the most educated Parisian woman,’ she added, with a wink. ‘As for me, I shall continue my own private battle from afar — ’

‘Afar? You will leave me, alone?’

‘I have done all I can in France, discrediting Marie Antoinette’s abominable reputation and the Bourbon monarchy even further. Now I must go where the Queen can no longer touch me,
ma chère
,’ she said, kissing my cheek.

‘But we also hear the Queen’s behaviour has improved as she’s grown older,’ I said. ‘That she is generous with money and charity, and devoted to her children.’

‘I do concede she is liberal with her funds, and has begun to dress with more restraint,’ Jeanne said. ‘But that is far from sufficient. Did you know she built a fantasy farm at Versailles, where she plays at being a peasant? Of course, the million francs annual expense of it is met by the public purse.’

‘But why would she do such a thing?’

‘Oh for the simple reason that it is fashionable among aristocratic ladies to experience a rural idyll whilst remaining cloistered in the comfort of their estates. Many view the Queen as a clueless money squanderer playing at shepherdess — a mockery if you will, of the desperate and inhumane peasant condition. And not to mention those ridiculous, metre-high wigs adorned with jewels, feathers, ships and whatever else tickles her royal twat.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Did you ever set eyes on that
pouf à l’inoculation
head-dress?’

‘Vaccination
pouf
?’

Jeanne nodded.
‘A serpent wrapped around an olive tree stuck on her head. She wore it to boast of her success in persuading the King to be vaccinated against smallpox.’

‘I know nothing of any head-dress,’ I said, as Jeanne handed me another sheet of paper.

‘This second letter recommends you as a reputed chef for a position at
Le Faisan Doré
restaurant. The owner is an ex-lover. He also, is expecting you.’

‘You believe I should cook in a restaurant? But can’t I return to Lucie? My little Madeleine must be missing her mother.’

‘It is my greatest wish to see you reunited with your family, Victoire, but first you have things to do, business to finish. Besides, don’t forget, as an asylum escapee, you’ll not be able to show yourself in public as Victoire Charpentier. Now, this restaurant is located at the Palais-Royal and I am certain, once there,’ she went on with a knowing smile, ‘you will understand why you must stay in Paris for a time.’

‘What else do I take?’ I asked. ‘Not that I have anything to take.’

‘Everything you need will be waiting in your apartment. You shall have the address on a slip of paper, once we are beyond these walls.’

‘My apartment? You’ll not be with me, even for a moment, before you go … go afar?’

Jeanne pressed my hand to her lips. ‘You no longer need me,
ma chère
. You must stand alone now; forge your own personal battle, and our country’s struggle, but one day, when both of us emerge triumphant, who knows?’

I gripped the letters. ‘I’ll sew these into my petticoat. The cloth is coarse and thick, and will mask the rustle of the paper.’

Jeanne nodded. ‘You learn quickly.’

I stitched the papers into my petticoat hem, feeling Jeanne’s eyes on me, as if they were burning through my clothes, searing the layers of my skin. I felt my cheeks blush with the rising heat.

‘I shall miss you, my friend.’ Jeanne took my hands, massaging them again with her rose-perfumed salve. ‘And don’t forget to keep these peasant hands hidden within gloves or beneath a muff,’ she said. ‘People notice such things.’

She leaned close, and her hair, falling against my face, made me quiver. I shut my eyes and suddenly I was, no more, a prisoner of la Salpêtrière.

Jeanne’s simple bed became one of oak, carved with angels and inlaid with diamonds. We lay on silken sheets, so slippery the fabric felt damp. Jeanne reached up from our warmth, drawing heavy crimson drapes, concealing us from prying eyes.

I could not see her. I could only feel her and taste her lips, warm and insistent on mine. My mouth was still at first. I think it was the shock of her touch. Then my lips moved against hers, and opened. I felt her tongue, tentative for a moment, then thrusting, exploring the inside of my mouth. It tasted like wine, which made me more and more drunk. I felt dizzy and my heart — frozen for so long — thawed with her heat and gushed like a waterfall from my breast.

She touched a corner of our wet lips, my cheek, my brow, a fingertip trailing across my eyelid. Her hand moved down, across my neck, my shoulders and to my breast.

When Jeanne reached between my legs and her hand began to move, sliding wet and gentle, it was as if she had touched a raw wound, and exposed a nerve. I felt a longing so great, so sharp, it was painful. It mounted and mounted until I thought I would go mad. I feared it might even kill me.

She wrapped her hips about my thigh and pressed over and over, opening me to the throb inside. I think I murmured or groaned, but maybe it was Jeanne.

As she reached to my core, I let the ecstasy swamp me, drowning my every sense, until I burst from her hand and shattered on her wet thigh.

We cried out together, and I barely heard the clanging bell that signalled supper, and the return to my cell.