Goddess (23 page)

A
NOTHER SIN.
I
JUST REMEMBERED.
Anger. There. I confess it. I do. It may not be a mortal sin, but it is a failing of mine. From time to time, I have been guilty of slightly precipitous behaviour.

Oh, I’ve been scolded for it, don’t worry. Punished. You’re not the first to knit his eyebrows and scowl at me as if I was, once again, a scamp in the King’s stables. D’Albert will do it at the drop of a hat, nowadays, since he has grown complacent and flabby.

It was sometimes his fault, anyway. I swear it. Ridiculous boy. He can’t look after himself. Someone else has to step in—me, usually, or d’Uzès. Or both, God help us. So many scrapes. The worst, the darkest time, was when he took up with the Duchesse de Luxembourg. It wasn’t as if he even loved her. How could he? She was a plaything, nothing more. It was one of those affairs you have when you are bored, and everyone is out of town for the season, and the world seems just a little ordinary. How could it have been anything more? He wasn’t betrothed then and she was only a little bit married.

I had other matters weighing on my mind—a small legal entanglement with my landlord, nothing to bother you with—and hardly took any notice, though I’d never liked her much—such airs and graces, such a fiendish tongue in her; after a few weeks, I’d have happily ripped it from her mouth.

But then—I don’t know all the details—it all got out of hand and the whole world knew, even her mad husband, and they were all at a ball—d’Albert and d’Uzès and Luxembourg and her husband the Duc, and some friends of theirs—some fools, I should say—should have known better, all of them, but the nobility just don’t think like you and me. There was a fight, and a challenge. A duel. D’Albert and d’Uzès, together as always, against Count Rantzau and that tedious Schwartzenberg, who decided to defend the lady’s honour, even though that was long gone.

We’ve all done it. Tempers go missing. Manners escape us. Before we know it we’re trying to skewer some fellow with any blade that comes to hand. We risk everything for that one moment of fury—or obligation—or sometimes just a tepid dislike. I know—I festered in Brussels all those months, paying penance for a few moments of swordplay, legendary though they may be, or so I hear.

But of course Schwartzenberg got himself killed. Some toady told the King about it. He lost his royal temper. Called for d’Albert and d’Uzès to be clapped in irons and disinherited and stripped naked and flogged like mules and whatever else popped into his aged head. Louis may turn a blind eye to affairs and bastards and even fraud, but when it comes to duelling, he’s livid. Takes it personally. The highest standards apply, after all, to the great men of the realm. And their sons. Decrees go out. The Hôtel de Ville is notified.

D’Uzès surrendered to the Conciergerie. His brother talked him into it. D’Albert should have given himself up straight away, too. But, no. He hid in a bolthole in the country—out near Montmartre.

But I knew who to blame, even if the King didn’t. So I went hunting that vixen Luxembourg.

M
ORNING
M
ASS.
I
T’S GLOOMY
as ever inside Saint-Roch—winter sun falls chilled on the flagstones. The priest faces the tabernacle, intoning the Sacrament. It’s his favourite moment. The perfect union with Christ.

Someone snores. It echoes through the church. People sit scattered across the nave on spindly chairs, staring or praying or talking in hushed voices. In one of the chapels, in an old family pew, there’s a pretty young noblewoman in black lace. Alone. No husband. No children. Not today. Not for a while. Some of the parishioners have noticed it’s a long time since they saw her going in to Confession, too. They pretend not to stare. What Her Grace does is her own affair. Literally.

Another woman—tall, and in a dark cloak that sweeps the floor—slips in through the side door. Dips a dutiful knee, crosses herself, takes a seat in the second row. It’s reserved for the nuns from the convent next door. She doesn’t care. She shuffles along slowly, sideways, until she can lean forward and whisper into an ear enfolded in black lace.

‘Stay away from him.’

The Duchesse de Luxembourg sits upright, not breathing. She knows the voice well enough, even as a disembodied whisper.

‘How dare you come here, to threaten me in God’s sight?’

‘In God’s sight, I’ll blow your brains out if you go near d’Albert ever again.’

‘Blasphemer.’

‘Bitch. I’ll cut your throat, I swear it. You understand me?’

The Duchesse nods ever so slightly.

‘I’d do it, too. You know I would.’

There’s little doubt of that.

Somewhere the friars begin their chant.

The Duchesse glances around. People are watching but nobody can hear—nobody will be able to help her until it’s too late, until her blood runs across the flagstones, until her lifeless body falls—

She dares to look behind her.

There’s nobody there.

Montmartre. An inn. Outside, the apple-growers bring in the harvest. The horses’ heads hang low as they strain against the leads, the load. Their forelegs are thick with mud. Clouds pile onto the tops of the hills around.

Inside, in the gloom, they argue. Again.

‘Émilie, what have you done?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Julie bites into an apple. It smells of autumn in Provence.

‘You’ve made it worse, you know.’

‘For whom?’ she says. ‘Your
duchesse
?’

D’Albert runs his fingers through his hair. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

‘Why not? She has caused you nothing but pain. I thought I’d return the favour.’

‘She’s told the whole of Paris.’

‘That’s priceless.’

‘Even my mother heard of it.’

‘La! It was a lark.’ She throws the apple core into the fireplace and it hisses in the embers. She watches it sizzle and shrink. Remembers another fire—an elderly nun, a young girl, a lifetime ago.

D’Albert frowns like a child. ‘I’ve been forbidden to see you.’

She doesn’t look up. ‘Again?’

‘Don’t laugh. You can’t go around threatening your betters.’

‘My what?’ Her anger bubbles so close to the skin nowadays. He has no idea. Nobody does. So tiring, keeping it in, keeping it from exploding everywhere.

‘You heard.’

‘I heard, Joseph, but I don’t believe you said that. To me. After all these years.’

‘Don’t take it the wrong way.’

‘I won’t. That’s your preference, I recall.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Does she do that for you, too, your pretty
duchesse
?’

‘You can be so nasty. Are we going to fight now? Just when I’m about to leave Paris forever?’

‘It’s not forever.’ She sighs. So weary. ‘Don’t be dramatic.’

‘You don’t even care.’

‘God’s oath! If you weren’t my dearest friend I’d throw you out the window. In fact, I might do it, anyway.’

She grabs at his arms. He tries to shrug off her grip.

‘You couldn’t.’

‘Want to bet on it?’ ‘I can’t. I’m too poor.’

She lets go. ‘You’re pathetic when you’re sober.’ Shoves him backwards. He stumbles.

‘Will you miss me, Émilie?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Just a little?’ He comes closer, nudges her with one arm. She ignores it.

‘You’ll be gone six months,’ she says. ‘Less. I promise. Then all will be forgiven.’

‘You don’t know that for sure.’

‘Want to bet on that, instead?’

D’Albert sits down heavily in the chair by the fireplace. ‘What will become of me?’

‘Your friends will die of boredom and you’ll be all alone. That’s all.’

‘I am nothing,’ he says, his head in his hands. ‘I don’t even have a proper title. My brother inherits everything.’

‘So? He doesn’t have your handsome face. Or me.’

‘I wish I was dead. I wish he was dead.’

‘I wish you were both dead,’ she says. ‘For the love of God, stop whining.’

He looks up. ‘Come with me!’

‘To Brussels? Never.’

‘You know people there.’

‘Too many.’ She drags a chair close to his and sits down.

‘It’d be splendid.’ He smiles at the thought. ‘We’d be together.’

‘In Brussels.’

‘So?’

‘It’s not quite the same as Paris,’ she says. ‘You’ll understand when you get there.’

‘I don’t want to go alone.’ The smile fades.

‘You are never alone for long, Joseph.’

‘Please?’

She shakes her head. ‘Forget it.’ She means it. He knows that tone.

Silence. He sighs.

She can’t help but smile.

‘This is for you.’ She holds out a letter. Sealed.

He takes it from her slowly, as if it might be a trick. ‘To the Elector?’

‘Maximilian.’

‘Your lover?’ His voice is edged with suspicion.

‘Once.’

‘I thought you hated him.’

‘I was a little cross with him for a while,’ she admits. ‘But you know me and my temper. I recovered my wits, and he remembered his manners. It’s a letter of introduction. He’ll take you into the army. Keep you out of trouble until the waters here are calmer. He promised.’

D’Albert smooths the paper between his palms. ‘You are the dearest, sweetest friend.’ He is close to idiotic, childish tears.

‘And you are a fool.’

She moves towards him, reaches out a hand—both hands—and unbuckles his sword belt. Unlaces his blouse. His boots. His waistcoat. His breeches.

She is alone in the city. But everyone loves her—everyone who counts. Monsieur, Francine, the Comtesse. The oyster girls. The stagehands. Thévenard. Lamplighters. Dancers. Salon ladies. Card players. Tinkers. Everyone.

Those that don’t—the house of d’Uzès, Duménil, a certain family in Marseille, a housemaid, several jilted lovers, the Countess Marino, defeated duellists, a few elderly nuns in Avignon—they don’t matter. Not to her. She does not acknowledge hatred. A waste of time.

Life is music. Light. The poetry of the sword, the city. The candles, the paint, the applause.

Triumph. Again and again.
Tragédies en musique
,
opéra-ballets
, even a
pastorale-héroïque
.
Canente. Hésione. Amadis. Aréthuse. Omphale.
Role after role. Night after night. She is a priestess of the sun, a nymph, Grace. A queen, a river sprite. Each evening, each new character, she is different, better, mercurial. The crowds come week after week—she is divine, a bird, the earth, a lover, a fishwife. She is theirs. They are hers.

She works hard, too hard. Francine worries that she takes the music too seriously, that the roles consume her. Thévenard tells her to slow down, to enjoy her wealth, to rest her voice—her soul. He brings her minted tea with honey. Monsieur sends fruit from his
orangerie
. D’Albert sends letters filled with pity and pleas, and returns like a lost dog after a few months to share a cell with his friend d’Uzès in the Conciergerie, awaiting the King’s justice. Julie doesn’t visit.

She lives alone, just behind the church of Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais, in an old pile of a house, right at the very top of the stairs. Getting home drunk is an adventure in itself. Her room is up in the clouds, almost, level with the church bells, so that in the waking hours they frighten her clear out of bed. She can see the river—her river—and the buttresses of Notre-Dame.

While the neighbourhood sleeps, before the moneylenders and duellists meet for their dawn exchanges at the Crossroads of the Elm, she slips in through the back door of the church to have a quiet word with God. Just the two of them. It’s so silent she can hear the candles burn. Dark. Restful. She finds herself praying sometimes—for her father, for a girl she once knew down south. She prays for peace, seeks it everywhere, finds none.

The court composer François Couperin plays the organ in Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais—like his whole family, for generations, even the women—and the cousins take turns rehearsing in the early mornings. If nobody’s about, they ask Julie to sing with them. Other times she sits and listens to them, or to the monks and their chants.

She tells no-one. Couperin tells no-one. It’s a world away from the palace, where he fights with other composers for the King’s attention, and the Opéra, where she fights for breath.

No-one hears them, no-one sees but a few monks and parishioners crawling from station to station. No-one knows how the cold mornings creep into her bones, how black the nights seem, that she dreams of a girl in a country lane, wakes alone, walks the streets in the dark, creeps into the church, sits. For hours.

Until she buckles on her sword, sweeps a cloak around her shoulders and steps into sunlight and glory.

Y
OU AGAIN?

You’re a brave man, Father, coming back today. I’ll grant you that. Or a foolish one.

I hope you aren’t falling for me. My life is difficult enough as it is. So you must try to curb your impulses, natural though they may be, at least in my presence. I suppose you’ve made a career out of that. Never understood the appeal of it, myself—denial of the flesh, of desire. It’s not my natural state. But please do your best.

I’ll pretend I don’t notice. It’s only polite. I’m used to it.

Now.

On which sin would you like to concentrate this morning? What have I missed? I’d hate to deprive you.

Vanity, you say?

That’s a little pointed, don’t you think, for a deathbed? Here I am, covered in Sister Angeline’s foul-smelling poultices and sweating like a blacksmith, yet you call me vain.

Since you ask, yes, I am vain, as are we all, and anyone who claims otherwise is also guilty of the sin of deception. But what is vanity, after all? Not merely a love of display. The Archbishop of Paris wears more precious stones than any woman I know. Don’t give me any of that rubbish about offering glory to God. I’ve seen a priest snatch a pearl from a woman’s ear—not because she was sinning, but because he desired it. God was nowhere to be seen, believe me.

Greed is a sin, I agree, but vanity is not. Let me qualify that. Brainless vanity, I grant you, is a serious crime against Heaven. Vanity with no basis in reality—the plain painted to look like the pure, the matron made up like the Holy Mother. I worked for a woman like that once. In Spain. Hell of a place.

If you don’t mind me saying, Father, I don’t think the Church has done Spain any favours. All those centuries of the Inquisition, and what do they have? Roads barely passable. No decent inns. Nobody has any teeth, for some reason. There are cities where nobody knows my name, barely recognises a note of civilised music.

Mighty good swordsmen, though, with the finest blades.

But the Spaniards would have been better off keeping the Jews around, if you ask me. Nothing to be proud of—expelling the only cultured people in the country in favour of black-bearded priests determined to keep everyone in the mud.

Gone are the days when the Church was the garden bed of civilisation, I’m afraid, when music and painting and poetry were witness to the glory. Now you lot spend all your time banning books and tut-tutting at the world’s finest singers. Especially in Spain.

So, the cow for whom I worked in Madrid—

What? I already told you that? The radishes story? You sure?

Pity. It’s one of my favourites.

There’s no need to be quite so chronological about this, Father. I’m dying. That’s clear. If I circle about, or repeat myself occasionally and lose the odd thread here and there, the polite thing to do is nod and smile encouragingly, as if it’s all new to you.

Funny, lately I find myself becoming both more patient with others and impatient with myself.

But you—you should be grateful. Few others have had the privilege of sitting at my feet. In fact, no other person—at least, nobody living—knows everything I’m telling you, giving to you.

La Florensac knows—knew—everything, every snarl and sinew of me, but—well.

As for you, you can just write it all down. Every word, so others—more worthy than you, more forgiving, more interested—can read it.

I’ve decided. Mine is too precious a story, a moment, to be hidden away in your bishop’s archives. You will publish it. I will make you famous. Celebrated. Yes, you.

You will need more paper than that—a whole book of it, I should think. I might read it myself when I feel stronger. What a laugh.

Then you will have to scribble faster. Every word, mind. I’ll know if you leave anything out. You might not be interested, but others will be—one day. Mark my words.

Accept it gracefully, Father. Grace is all that’s left to us, all that matters. All, now, that I seek.

You could try it yourself.

So shut the fuck up.

Where was I?

Madrid. The Countess Marino. Vanity. Yes.

She was vain.

But the vanity of youth is no such thing. We who are truly beautiful owe it to the world to display our finest plumage. D’Albert is vain, but he was so beautiful when he was young. Now, granted, he looks rather too much like his father for my liking, but his vanity has not left him. It’s a lesson he has yet to learn. Vanity in a man can be draining for those around him. Vanity in a woman can be charming. Sometimes.

But we who are genuinely gifted owe it to God to parade our glories on the most brightly lit stage we can find.

Oh, don’t cross yourself like that. You’re boring me now.

Let me put it this way—if God gave me the gift of song, do you think He would rather I use it in the taproom of a country inn, or send it soaring into the
paradis
of the Paris Opéra?

Would He rather the possessor of that voice, this face, be clean and well-fed and dressed in silk, or tired and hungry and covered in dust from the road?

As if a little cologne behind my ears is going to damn me to the eternal flames. Believe me, that sin will come way down Saint Peter’s list. I’ll argue every item with him before the gates of Heaven, even though I’m fairly sure he’ll take a dim view of a woman raising her voice.

I don’t care what he thinks—I don’t care what you think. My sins are clear enough to me. I have my own commandments.

Thou shalt not break the heart of the one you love (though you could argue I learned that a little too late for it to be useful).

Thou shalt not diminish thy life for fear of the wrath of men.

Thou shalt not curb thy tongue.

And, of course, thou shalt never wear satin in the rain if thou can help it—ruins the fabric.

What?

For God’s sake, man, here I am dying and you want to argue the niceties of the law. I’m above the laws of men—I’ve proved that. I’ve got no interest in the laws of God, either—at least, not the Church fathers.

The Gospels themselves, I grant you, make for a gripping read, though I prefer the Old Testament for drama, for the pathos of it. But what are they, really? Poems.
Tragédies
. No different to those endless epics I appeared in on the greatest stage in Europe.

I have been a goddess many a time—Pallas Athéna (had to wear the world’s most uncomfortable helmet, but never mind), Minerve—and on occasion a queen—doomed, usually, but terribly regal, like Médée or Dido.

But even deities can fail. Falter. Apollo was muddled by Cupid. Achilles felled by an arrow to the ankle.

It feels like half a lifetime ago. One of my very worst times, and I’ve had several of those. We lost Monsieur, that dear man, in midsummer. Fell into an apoplexy after an argument with the King. Some family thing. Paris mourned for weeks, and I grieve for him still—although the King, so they say, went back to his apartments and finished his game of cards.

Our lives went on, too, although the Palais-Royal seemed a solemn place without its soul, its patron. Théobalde had produced a new work. What was it now? God help me, I’ve forgotten. I knew it only yesterday and now … My grip is loosening.

Scylla
. That’s it. I have it. Yes. Why am I telling you this?

Ah, yes. Vanity. Théobalde. And he, being the excitable sort, simply had to present it first at Versailles. A mistake. I knew it would be. But nobody asks us. We just turn up, slap on a wig and a pint of paint and sing our lungs out. So there we were, on a cool autumn evening, in the forecourt, dying in front of two thousand people.

They didn’t like it. Nobody did. Not the Duc d’Orléans, by whom all matters of taste are decided since the passing of Monsieur. Not the court. Not the
parterre
. Not even some of the singers.

They hissed us off the stage. A little unfairly, I thought. Théobalde—another Italian—took it badly. He’d wanted to try something new. You can’t blame a man for that. God knows, we were all bored to tears by endless return seasons of this or that. He had this whacking great bass violin—made a noise like a chorus of baritones, if you can imagine such a thing.

I don’t suppose you can.

I thought it was magic. Gave the strings depth, feeling, a sort of earth from which they could fly. But, no. Too radical for Versailles. It was, above all, categorically not Lully—not in any way, except for being written by an Italian pretending to be French. The King didn’t hiss, of course. Wasn’t even there. It would have been worse, probably, if Louis was present. We might have been locked up or banished.

It was a blow to my pride more than anything, but at least I wasn’t alone. We all knew we’d sung well enough—the
haute-contre
was in fine voice. Chopelet, I think it was. Couldn’t have asked for more. But it didn’t matter. They hated the music. I don’t think it’s been heard since. It never opened in Paris. One night. One performance. Not even that. We left the stage in the third act.

Thousands of
louis
spent on machinery and scenery and not a single
sol
taken in tickets. Not that I care. I get paid for the season, not each performance, and handsomely, too. But the others, the lower beings, as it were, found themselves cast back onto the streets or the fairgrounds or the whorehouses or wherever they’d come from, for months until the next show.

But it wasn’t a complete waste.

For at the party afterwards I met the vainest person on earth, and one of the sweetest—the Chevalier du Bouillon.

Did you get all that down?

Do I speak too quickly for your pen?

Then you will simply have to write faster.