Spirit of Lost Angels (20 page)

Claudine and I walked back to the Quai des Tuileries without a word, for I could not find words for how bereft, and enraged, I felt.

Night had fallen when I kissed Claudine goodbye, and she stepped into a cabriolet to return to Saint-Germain. I waved at the disappearing vehicle and my gaze turned to the rising moon — a slim waxing crescent above the city dust. The bells of Saint-Roch Church struck the hour, a madman’s shriek punctuating the low drone of a day’s end.

As I turned into a dark narrow street to reach the rue Saint-Honoré, a soft, croaking noise seemed to rise straight from the dank cobbles. I stopped still as if struck, tremors of fear rippling through me.

I knew that sound, the sad croak of the Night Washerwoman who’d killed her infants. Now I knew the tale was simply a means to incite children to hurry home after dark, yet my pulse galloped. Perhaps it was the execution unsettling me still, or was it something that plunged deeper — that day on the Vionne with Blandine and Gustave?

I looked around for a lantern-man, not only to light the way to my door, but to protect me against the thieves and muggers skulking in the darkness. It was too early for the lantern-men though, who didn’t come out until after ten, supplementing the hanging street lanterns with their welcome cries of, ‘Here’s your light.’ I quickened my pace through the blackness.

The croaking noise grew louder, and I stumbled over the prone figure of a man. I cried out, and stared at the motionless man, whisky vapours hot on his rasping breaths.

I almost laughed with relief as I hurried away from the drunkard, though my pulse quickened again, as the fog closed in on me. Relieved to be home, I almost ran into the townhouse courtyard. An ominous sort of quiet, though, hung over the stone walls, the creeping ivy-like fingers reaching blindly into the darkness.

No welcome candlelight shone from the second floor. Aurore was not home, which was usual, with the late theatre hours she kept — the girl whose friendship and cheeky smile continued to comfort me beyond those first lonely weeks out of captivity.

I hurried up the steps, lit a candle and immediately saw the letter lying on the small parlour table, addressed to Mademoiselle Rubie Charpentier.

I recognised the bold, flourishing hand, sat in an upholstered armchair by the candlelight, and unfolded Jeanne’s letter.

My dear Rubie,

I hope this letter finds you well and happy. You will be pleased to hear I have arrived safely on the other side of the Channel, and let me tell you that never were two neighbouring cities — Paris and London — so utterly different. Nature has contrived a moral separation too, which goes even deeper than the physical boundary dividing them.

I reread her words, trying to decipher what she was trying to tell me. Moral separation? Surely she can’t be referring to us — to her and me?

Anyway, all talk of separations aside, Rubie, I wanted to thank you for our wonderful time together in Paris. Didn’t we have such fun at the ball? I will remember our last, angelic dance for the rest of my days.

It must still be cold in the capital, so don’t forget to keep your shoulders covered, you don’t want to catch a chill. Besides, you know I cannot bear those new dress styles, with the shoulders dropping right down, revealing a woman’s bare shoulders. Some things I believe we should keep hidden from others,
n’est-ce pas
my sweet lily flower?

And I’d like to remind you too, Rubie of another purpose of your stay — to amuse yourself with anyone you desire.

The page quivered in my hand. Jeanne was urging me to amuse myself with others, with … with men! Despite my efforts to forget our love, I still ached when I imagined her with someone else, and I saw how readily she was casting me off into the beds of unknown men.

I also knew she was right; this is how it must be.

As for me,
ma chère
Rubie, I pass my days happily pursuing a newfound delight for story-telling. I am working on a kind of fairy tale about a wicked queen and a blighted woman, who brings the queen down, in the end. I am confident many will be eager to read my enchanting story.

I look forward to your reply, Rubie, and don’t forget to tell me when that black furniture arrives, the one you ordered. I am certain it will well suit your new lodgings.

I have the honour to be your friend,

Madame J. Collier

That black furniture. I knew she was referring to the black cabinet —
le cabinet noir
division of the police who read and copied private letters.

‘You’re too clever for all of them, my Jeanne.’ I laughed aloud. ‘Madame J. Collier indeed!’

The sallow light tapered and flickered, throwing angular shadows across the walls. I hugged the letter to me as if, through the ink and paper, I could feel Jeanne’s caresses again.

I tucked her letter close to my breast and went to prepare supper, planning my reply laced with the coded secrets of sweet, noble revenge.

I tucked the last stubborn chestnut curls under the dark wig Aurore had lent me from the theatre wardrobe. I checked my face in the kitchen mirror, and saw excitement, and nervousness, but I was certain no one would recognise me beneath my disguise.

I threw my mantle across my shoulders and crept from the back entrance of
Le Faisan Doré
around to the front, and joined the crowd in the Western Arcade of the Palais-Royal. Hundreds of people strolled beneath the ordered rows of trees in the gardens — favourite
rendez-vous
of nobles, bourgeois, artists and free thinkers. Many more — dark Africans, turbaned Indians and wealthy businessmen — lurked in the shadows of the arcades, in the shops and restaurants.

I threaded through the people, towards the theatre, beneath the tiny lights coming from windows above the arcades, from where the Palais-Royal indulged every taste from gambling club to gaudy brothel. As I reached the theatre, the shops began to close their shutters.

Amidst the smells of powder, the shuffle of feet and the rustle of cloth, I squeezed into the theatre. I gazed up at the wealthy women in their private boxes, reclining on cushions with their spaniels, their foot-warmers and their pet imbeciles with spyglasses, informing them who was in the audience and on the stage. I could have afforded the yearly rent on a private box, but the chatter and gossip of the pit was so much more interesting than the bored, idle chatter of the rich.

I joined the fidgety pit audience, the engraved handle of my pistol pressing cool and hard against my flesh. I’d wondered wherever I could procure such an item, but purchasing a pistol in Paris had proved as simple as selling diamonds. Money, it seemed, could buy whatever a woman desired.

‘I have the perfect model for madame,’ the dealer had said, showing me a tiny pistol. ‘Look at its mock ivory grip and gold-toned barrel, such elegance,
n’est-ce pas
, madame? Very light to carry too, and easily concealed under a lady’s muff. That’s why we call it the muff pistol,’ he said, and explained how to fire it, as it must have been obvious I had never used such a weapon.

I flushed with pride as I watched Aurore amuse the audience with cartwheels, handstands and backflips across the stage. As always, she exuded boundless energy, passion gleamed in her black eyes and a roguish smile kinked her lips.

Then came the acts of her variety entertainer friends: The Strongest Man in the World, The Rubber Lady, and the flamenco dancer from Spain — a land far to the south whose exotic dancers we were just discovering.

I felt safe, hidden beneath the wig, though I still trembled as I searched the faces of the audience for a man with a beaked nose and a scar on his temple. I would be so disappointed if the Marquis didn’t come tonight, though Claudine did assure me he frequented most post-production theatre parties.

The crowd was hushed as a drum roll heralded Aurore’s high-wire act. She appeared from the wings, proud as an eagle in her figure-hugging outfit of sparkling gold. As she sprang onto a platform I was so breathless with her beauty I almost forgot the reason I’d come tonight.

A trumpet sounded from the orchestra and Aurore stepped onto the tightly-stretched wire. The audience held its breath, the silence charged with anticipation, perhaps a hint of fear, as she held her body rigid. Like the outspread golden wings of an angel, she stretched her arms and, with silken ease, slid her feet across the wire.

On the orchestra’s final note, Aurore smiled, her teeth glinting in the footlights as she leaped down onto the stage. She waved and threw kisses to the audience and we all rose in a roar of applause.

I clapped louder and faster than anyone, the last vestiges of possessiveness over Jeanne winging from me as entirely as a fledgling fleeing the nest.

***

Aurore had said to meet her in the palace hall, where her theatre company was renting a room for the party.

Breathless from the glitz, the excitement, the trepidation of the night, I stepped into the vast room. Hundreds of candles in sconces around the walls lit the mass of revellers chatting in groups or dancing in colourful swirls to the beat of tambourines.

I glimpsed Aurore across the crowd, her curly head thrown back as she laughed with her theatre friends, the babble of their voices rising above the music.

‘You were magnificent,’ I said, kissing her on both cheeks.

She grinned, dipping her head and took two glasses of wine from the tray of a passing waiter.

‘Come, Rubie, let me introduce you to my friends.’ She handed me a glass, took my hand and giggled. ‘How funny you look with black hair. Nobody would ever know you.’

As Aurore whirled me through the dancers, greeting her fellow entertainers, and accepting compliments with her mischievous grace, I spotted him.

In a black silk suit of the finest quality, the Marquis de Barberon was drinking brandy with a group of distinguished-looking people dressed in the latest style — the women in narrow-waisted full skirts and towering hats adorned with feathers and silk ribbons, the men in embroidered pastel coats with matching breeches.

I stayed close to Aurore, chatting about the performance with a circle of admirers. From the corner of my eye, I observed the Marquis. How to get near him without any obvious manoeuvring? I burned with the glow of vengeance and, beneath my scarlet robe with its coquettish black lace trim, the pistol rested comfortingly against my thigh.

‘There’s someone I know from the restaurant,’ I said, drawing away from Aurore.

My hands clammy, I strode — seductively I hoped — towards the Marquis. As I reached him, I bent to retrieve my handkerchief, which had fallen to the floor beside his leather shoes. As I straightened, with languid grace, I brushed my fingertips along the back of his hand, feeling the hard gold of his signet ring.

I stood upright, looked into his face, and saw in the flare of his nostrils and the quiver of his lip, that the Marquis had understood my brief, but unmistakable invitation.

I smiled, trying not to recoil from the touch of his skin and the lecherous grin leaking across his ruddy jowls. I breathed too, to stop myself from shaking, terrified he might recognise me.

As his gaze travelled across my body and hovered over my breasts — the place where he’d once fondled my angel pendant — I knew he had no recollection of me.

The Marquis bowed. ‘Since madame almost knocked me down, I think I deserve the pleasure of her acquaintance?’

‘Certainly, monsieur.’ I stretched my hand, sheathed in black lace, for him to kiss.

‘And such an elegant gown,’ he said, his eyes already stripping the robe from me. I tried to ignore the sickness rising from my gut as his lips lingered, his tongue flicking, snake-like, over my gloved hand.

A smatter of powder from his wig had whitened the silk on one shoulder, and I brushed it off, giving him an almost imperceptible nod in the direction of the garden. With a gentle swing of my hips, I walked away, certain the Marquis was following me.

My fingers damp around the pistol hidden, once again, beneath my muff, the blood thundered in my head as I held the Marquis’s clammy hand, feeling the familiar bump of his signet ring.

We were outside the party hall, and he almost skipped alongside me, his breaths short and fast, as I lured him further and further from the crowd, beyond the light of the oil lamps, and into the darkest reaches of the grove.

As we slid through the trees, I saw other couples had the same idea. A woman was leaning against a tree trunk, her skirts lifted high, her thighs wrapped around a man thrusting into her, and grunting. A little further on I glimpsed a woman’s bare breast, milky white in the pale moonlight. Another woman kneaded her flesh, her tongue toying with her lover’s nipple. The woman gripped her partner’s head, her head arched, her moans softly ecstatic, in the darkness.

I thought of Jeanne, which both calmed and spurred me on, in my deadly mission.

We hadn’t gone much further when the Marquis grabbed my shoulders, turned me to face him, and pushed me up against a tree trunk.

‘It seems you want this as much as me, lovely lady,’ he said, ripping open his breeches, and I almost fainted at the sight of his swollen penis jerking free of its cloth restraint.

As he went to lift my skirt, I flicked out my hand that held the pistol. The weapon gleamed in the moonlight as I levelled it at his face.

‘Don’t scream,’ I hissed, gracing him with my loveliest smile, enjoying the raw fear springing to his eyes. ‘Or I’ll explode your ugly face.’

His lust quickly paled to shock. ‘W-wha, what?’ He frowned, his intent gaze searching my eyes.

‘Monsieur does not recognise me?’

He shook his head, still speechless.

I ripped the dark wig off and shook out my hair. ‘Perhaps now, then?’

He kept staring at me, then slowly, like the ticking hand of a clock approaching the hour, I knew he’d understood the woman before him was no elegant lady offering her body, but the girl who’d cried herself to sleep in his attic bed.

‘Ah, the sweet scullery maid,’ he said, his tone mocking. He looked down his hooked nose and sniffed at me as one might some diseased dog.

‘You wouldn’t dare pull the trigger,’ he said with a laugh.

‘Oh believe me, I would. I’d do it for me, and for my daughter — the bastard child you forced me to abandon. And for the girl you raped and strangled; for Margot, burned! I’d kill you for my father, and for every other crime you rotten aristocrats have committed against commoners.’

My trigger finger itched. I felt I might explode with the desire to watch him suffer and die. I should hurry though, anyone could come along.

Pull the trigger. Come on do it. Now, before it’s too late!

My fingers clenched the trigger, paralysed.

In the instant I stood still, willing them to work, the Marquis lunged at me. He knocked the pistol from my hand and wrapped his hands around my neck.

My loathing fuelling me, I lifted my knee and thrust it into his groin.

The Marquis yelped like an injured dog and reeled backwards, tripping over a fallen branch. As he sprawled on the ground, I kicked him hard. Twice, three times, harder and harder.

I cast about in the dark for the gun, but couldn’t find it.

The Marquis lurched upright.

‘Vile pig!’ I hissed, as I turned and fled.

‘Fucking bitch!’ he screamed. ‘I know who you are, you murderous slut. I’ll find you. You’ll not stay alive another week on the streets of Paris!’

His voice faded as I ran, faster and faster, the panic unfurling and making me shake with a violence I couldn’t control.

A shot rang out in the darkness. The Marquis must have found the pistol. People appeared from the shadows, shouting and stumbling in all directions. I hoped they would assume I was fleeing, like them, from an enraged noble firing a pistol blindly into the night.

Was he following me, shooting as he went? I didn’t dare slow down to glance over my shoulder. I flicked my tongue over my parched lips. On I ran, the scent of perfumes, of wig powder and body odour catching in my throat.

It seemed I’d never reach the exit, but finally I hurried past a watchman, dozing under a pair of oil lamps burning on the wall, and out of the Palais-Royal.

My chest heaving, I waved my arms wildly at the first cabriolet, and slumped, breathless, beneath the hooded cab. The driver cracked his whip on the horse’s back and as we sped away from the palace, the Marquis’s words hammered in my head in perfect cadence with the horses’ hooves.

I know who you are. You’ll not stay alive another week on the streets of Paris.