The Song of the Siren (38 page)

“What of all the mistresses he has had?”

“Hush. He likes discretion. None of them had half your beauty. Praise the gods that he is an old man now working a quick passage to heaven.”

“Be careful. You may jeopardize your position.”

“You are right,” he whispered, pressing my arm. “Now you may go to court. The King has acknowledged you.”

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There was a press of people walking in the gardens and Hessenfield said to me: “Let us go now. Our mission is accomplished. I want to get back to Paris as soon as possible.”

As we were about to step into our carriage a woman came up to us. I recognised her at once as the elegant Madame de Partiere who had spoken to me in the Oeil de Boeuf.

She was clearly in some distress.

“Madame ... I wonder if you would help me. I must get to Paris without delay. Are you going back there now?”

“Yes,” I answered.

She said: “It is most unfortunate. The wheel of my carriage is broken. ...” She lifted her shoulders. “I do not understand. ... But my coachman tells me that it will take some hours to put right ... even if he can get it done this day. I must return to Paris.” She looked very apologetic. “I was wondering if ... if you would take me there with you.”

Hessenfield had come up. She explained to him. “I saw you in the Oeil de Boeuf. I noticed Madame ... who would not notice Madame? I spoke to her ... I could not restrain myself. Now ... I am asking this favour of you. If you could let me travel with you to Paris.”

Madame de Partiere’s eyes filled with tears. “It is such a relief to me,” she said.

So we travelled back to Paris with our new acquaintance. She had a house in the rue St. Antoine, and she was very unhappy at the moment.

I said to Hessenfield: “Her husband was killed at Blenheim.”

“Madame, my condolences,” said Hessenfield.

“You are too kind.” She turned away and wiped her eyes.

After a while she went on: “So kind ... and so brave. I know that you came over here

... exiles from your country ... fighting for a cause. That is noble.”

“Madame,” said Hessenfield, “you speak such good English.”

“Oh, but there is the accent, eh ... the intonation.... It is amazing how the French can never truly master the English tongue.”

“Nor the English the French,” said I.

“There is always something to betray it,” said Hessenfield.

“My mother was English. Her people had been over here during

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the days of Cromwell. She was a little girl then but her family met my grandfather’s family. The two young people fell in lo\e and married and after the Restoration she stayed in France. Their daughter, my mother, was taught English ... by her mother and I was taught by my mother. . . . That is why I have knovv ledge of your English.

But I am afraid it is not always as good as it should be.”

“Are you living in Paris?”

“For the time. The death of my husband has ... how do you say it? ... stunned me.

I am at this time a little uncertain.”

“Have you any children?”

She was silent and turned her head away.

“I have a son,” she said.

“And shall you live with him?”

“He is dead,” she said.

I said I was sorry and realised that we had been asking too many questions.

We talked then about Versailles and the wonders of the palace and the gardens, the groves and the waterfalls and the bronze statues.

Had we seen the basin of Apollo, she wanted to know, with the god represented in his chariot drawn by four horses and the water spouting from the fountains?

We had, we told her.

“How I should love to see one of the displays on water,” she said. “I have heard that that is like a visit to another world.”

“I have seen it,” said Hessenfield. “With the Venetian gondolas all decked out with flowers, it is quite fantastic, particularly at night, when there is a display of fireworks.”

Then Hessenfield discussed the merits of the Orangery, the Rockery and the waterfall.

He was much more knowledgeable about Versailles than we were.

“I feel,” said Madame de Partiere, “that I have been given not only a ride home but a tour of the palace.”

She turned to me and picked up one of my gloves which was lying on the seat beside me.

“I cannot but admire it,” she said. “What exquisite embroidery and this delicate tracing of tiny pearls. It is so beautiful. Tell me, where do you get your gloves?”

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“I have an excellent couturiere,” I said. “She scarcely allows me to choose anything myself. She brought these gloves in the other day and said that she thought they would be suitable for this occasion.”

“How right she was. I am interested because I congratulate myself that I have one of the best glove makers in Paris. It is true it is a small shop. It is in the carrefour near the Chatelet. A very small shop, but the owner is an artist. He has four or five girls stitching and embroidering for him but the design is his. It is that which counts, of course, and he is a master. This, though, equals what I have had from him.”

She smoothed the glove and replaced it on the seat.

So passed the time until we reached Paris.

Hessenfield said that we should take Madame de Partiere to her house and then we should go home. When we reached the rue St. Antoine, Hessenfield alighted from the coach to help her out and as she was about to step down she gave a cry of dismay.

She stooped and picked up something. It was my glove which had been lying on the seat. She had swept it to the floor as she rose and had stepped on it.

I thought she was going to burst into tears as she picked it up and gazed at it.

There was a dirty mark on the embroidery and some of the pearls had broken away.

“Oh, what have I done!” she cried.

I took the glove. “No matter,” I said. “Madame Panton will probably repair it.”

“But I have spoilt it! You have been so kind to me and this is how I repay you.”

Hessenfield said: “Madame, I beg of you. It is nothing ... a bagatelle.”

“I shall never forgive myself. After all your kindness.”

The concierge had come out to bow to Madame de Partiere.

“Please,” I said, “do not distress yourself. It has been a most enlivening journey and we have enjoyed your company.”

“Indeed yes,” said Hessenfield, “and we have done nothing. We were coming back to Paris in any case.”

“How kind you are.” She lapsed into French. “Vous lies tres aimable “

Hessenfield took her arm and led her towards the house. She turned and gave me a woeful smile.

281I laughed. “Good-bye, Madame de Partiere,” I said. “It has been a

pleasure.”

“Au revoir,” she said.

And that was my visit to Versailles.

I missed Mary Marton. She may have been a spy but at the same time she had been an excellent nursery governess. Clarissa asked after her a great deal.

It was hard to put off a child who had such an enquiring mind with explanations which could not sound plausible, for I could not tell her the truth. I wondered what her child’s mind would make of this account of spies and plots.

Jeanne emerged as a great help to me. She had more or less taken on the duties of looking after the child. Clarissa loved her and she had a way of dealing with the numerous questions, which were constantly plied, with answers which satisfied.

She spoke French constantly to Clarissa, who was now speaking both English and French with perfect accents so that she could have been taken for either nationality.

“It will stand her in good stead,” said Hessenfield. “And the only way to speak French is to learn it as near the cradle as possible. You never get round those vowels otherwise.”

Since she had slipped so naturally into the nursery I spent a certain amount of my time with Jeanne too, which was good for my French as it was for Clarissa’s, for Jeanne had scarcely a word of English.

She was an interesting girl in her early twenties. She had been delighted, she told me, to find a post in a fine house like this. She had been very poor before. She had been a flower seller. The cook used to buy flowers from her to decorate the tables.

“Ah, Madame,” she said, “it was my lucky day when Madame Boulanger came to buy my flowers. She was a hard one . . . and paid me very little. She was one for a bargain.

I lived with my family . . . there were many of us. A sad part of Paris that. You do not know it, madame. It is not for such as you. It is not far from Notre Dame

. . . behind the Hotel Dieu before you get to the Palace de Justice. The streets there . . . they are terrible, Madame . . . dangerous. We had a room in the rue de Marmousets... . The gutters were pretty, though. I used to stand and look into the gutters. The dyers were there, and

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their colours flowed through the gutters. Such colours, Madame, green, blue, red

. . . the colours of my flowers. We used to beg from the great lords and ladies.

But I never stole . . . never, Madame. My mother said ‘Never steal, for though you have money for a while they will catch up with you. You will end up in the Chatelet or the Fort

1’Eveque. Then your fate will be too terrible to speak of.’ “

“Poor Jeanne,” I said, “you have had a sad life.”

“But now it is a good one, madame. I have a good position and I like so much to care for the little one.”

And care she did. She used to tell her stories of old Paris, and Clarissa was enchanted with them. She would sit entranced, eyes round with wonder; there was nothing she loved more than to walk through those streets and listen to Jeanne describing everything to her.

Jeanne was extremely knowledgeable and I felt I could trust Clarissa with her. That was what I liked most. If I had to go to Versailles or St. Germain-en-Laye with Hessenfield I could safely leave her.

I sometimes sat with her after Clarissa was in bed and we would talk together. She knew so much about the stories of the past which had passed down through her family.

She was most interested in the great poison scandal which had rocked Paris some thirty years ago and had brought Madame la Voison and Madame de Brinvilliers to justice.

It was so notorious because many well-known people had become involved and suspicion had been cast even on the King’s mistress, Madame de Montespan.

Her grandmother remembered the day Madame de Brinvilliers had been taken from the prison of the Conciergerie, where she had been submitted to cruel torture, to the Place de Greve and there lost her head.

“It was a terrible time, Madame, there was not an apothecary in Paris who did not tremble in his shoes. There was fear in high places. Husbands had removed wives and wives husbands, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers who had lived too long and by whose death there could be profit. Paris was in a turmoil. It was the Italians, Madame.... They had their strange poisons. We had had arsenic and antimony ... but it was the Italians who produced the finest poisons. Poisons which were tasteless, colourless, poisons which could

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be breathed’in the air. It was an art with them. People were talking about the Borgias and a Queen of France too ... an Italian woman, Catherine de Medici. They knew better poisons.”

“Jeanne,” I said, “you have a morbid mind to dwell on these things.”

“Yes, Madame, but they say there is an Italian near the Chatelet who has a beautiful shop and many noble customers ... and behind his shop he works with strange substances.

He is very rich.”

“Rumours, Jeanne.”

“Maybe, Madame. But I make the sign of the cross every time I pass the shop of Antonio Manzini.”

It was interesting talk; and I was grateful to Jeanne.

When Clarissa grew older we should have to have an English governess for her, I thought.

Then I paused.

When she was older should we still be here? Should we still be trying to bring a conclusion to this adventure?

Somehow I could not imagine it. I could not think ahead.

The future was perhaps too fraught with difficulties. How could I return to England?

I had made everything too complicated there. At Eyot Abbass there was Benjie, the husband I had used and wronged. At Eversleigh there was Damaris, whose lover I had taken for a whim and ruined her life.

You do not deserve to be happy, I told myself.

Yet I was. For I loved Hessenfield so completely; and that intense burning passion which had flared up between us was becoming a deep and abiding love ... an enduring love, I told myself.

So though I could be happy in the present, I could not look ahead.

Well, wasn’t it a good plan to live in the present? Not to look ahead; not to look back. That was what I must train myself to do.

One day one of the servants brought two parcels to me. One was addressed to me, the other to Hessenfield.

I opened mine and found inside an exquisite pair of gloves.

They were beautiful-in grey leather so soft that it looked like silk. They were embroidered with pearls and were something like the ones I had to discard because Madame de Partiere had trodden on one of them. I guessed who had sent them. And I was right.

There was a note with them.

284My dear Lady Hessenfield,

I have been some time in sending you an acknowledgement of my gratitude. Forgive me but this was no fault of mine. It has taken so long to get the leather I particularly wanted. Now I trust these will please you. I have sent a similar pair to your husband.

I want to say thank you for being so kind to me in bringing me back when I had that mishap with my own carriage. I was so grateful to you and how ashamed I was when to repay you I ruined your beautiful gloves.

I trust we may renew our acquaintance when I return to Paris. I am called away to the country just now and may be away for more than a month.

Dear Lady Hessenfield, in the meantime please accept these gloves and wear them so that I may have some satisfaction in doing something for all you have done for me.

I shall have the temerity to call when I return from the country. Many thanks once more.