The Red Necklace (15 page)

Sido read aloud, "’Give me a sign you are still alive and I may breathe again.’ It’s part of a love letter,” she said, looking at its burned edges.

After Lucille had gone, Sido sat by the light of the candle for a long time, thinking about all that she had been told and wondering how it would change the future. And suddenly the image came to her of all the love letters from the Bastille, raining down over Paris like tears from the sky.

The next morning the marquis took his time dressing for an audience with the king at Versailles, making sure that he was properly wigged and powdered. He had decided to wear his finest dusty pink silk brocade coat, embroidered with small diamonds. The silver buckles on his soft leather shoes were decorated with diamonds and pearls. Finally, dressed and perfumed and meeting with his own personal approval, he called for the lawyer.

He was an imposing sight as he looked down his curved aristocratic nose at Maître Tardieu.

“I have decided to agree to the count’s request,” he announced. “I see much that is agreeable in this marriage, and leave it to you to discuss terms.”

“Sir,” said Maître Tardieu, “forgive me, but last night I thought—”

“Count Kalliovski is a very presentable choice, and there’s an end to it,” interrupted the marquis.

Maître Tardieu followed him out through the main entrance. His hip was hurting. He hadn’t slept from worry.

The marquis said to his valet, “My daughter is to be brought down from her chamber.” Then, waving a dismissive hand at Maître Tardieu, he said, “I leave it to you to inform her of my decision.”

He walked out to his waiting carriage, passing the footmen who stood lined up like toy soldiers, and was helped up inside, his coat rearranged with much fuss so that he would not arrive creased. “I think I should wear the king’s cockade,” he said, leaning out of the open carriage door.

Luc clicked his fingers and a footman went rushing back indoors to fetch it.

Maître Tardieu stood on the gravel, silent and watching. He wondered if foolish men ever became wise. If the marquis was anything to go by, the sad answer had to be no.

The marquis, only half looking at him, said peevishly, “You have not noticed the buckles on my shoes. What say you to their elegance?”

The lawyer stared down at them, baffled. The Bastille might have fallen, France might be standing on the brink of civil war, but all the marquis could think of was buckles. Maybe, in the end, all that would be left of his great fortune would be buckles.

“I thought of wearing the ruby ones, but I felt they might clash with the brocade.”

“Quite,” said Maître Tardieu. “Quite.”

The footman came back and handed the white cockade to Luc, who pinned it onto the marquis’s coat. As he did so, his master stuck his chinless head forward like a turtle coming out of its shell.

“The queen’s black cockade,” said the marquis, “would of course have complemented my coat better than the king’s white one. But I am not about to support the insupportable.”

With this, the carriage door was finally closed. Maître Tardieu and the servants stood and watched the coach disappear into the distance.

Lucille had brought Sido a message to say that Maître Tardieu wanted to see her. Madame Gournay, the seamstress, came in carrying a white muslin gown run through with blue stripes, and a red sash.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Sido clapped her hands with delight. “It’s lovely! It must have taken hours to make.”

Madame Gournay, who was employed solely to look after the marquis’s wardrobe, had found his daughter to be an altogether more delightful model.The marquis was forever changing his mind, ordering bolts of silks and satins that were immediately discarded, demanding alterations that, when made, were never satisfactory. She found in Sido an appreciation that her master never gave.

“Making clothes for you feels as if I am playing my part in the Revolution. There,” said Madame Gournay, standing back. “You look beautiful.”

Sido stared at herself in the mirror. Beauty she did not see, only that her leg appeared stiffer from lack of exercise.

“Perhaps,” said Sido, turning and smiling at the seamstress, “if I were to be pulled along on a cart I might be passable. The moment I walk I am afraid all is lost.”

“No,” said Madame Gournay firmly, “you make too much of it. A little hesitation in a lady adds to her charm.”

Maître Tardieu saw before him an anxious-looking young girl with large blue eyes, dark hair, and pale porcelain skin. It made the count’s letter and what he had to impart all the more distasteful.

“I wish I had happier news for you, mademoiselle,” he said, “but I have not. I think it is best that you read this yourself.” And he handed her the black letter.

Sido, unlike her father, needed no explanation. Her response was immediate.

“I can’t marry him.”

Maître Tardieu sighed. This young girl was not to be duped as her mother had been. He had known at the time that Isabelle Gautier did not love the marquis: She had been blinded by his wealth and the promise of luxury, the seduction of jewelry.

Maître Tardieu cleared his throat. “I greatly regret it, but your father has instructed me to agree to the marriage. You have no choice in the matter when his debts can be so easily solved by this union.”

Sido looked at the letter again, taking in the three words written in red ink at the bottom.

“Do you know what he means by ‘remember your wife’?”

“No, alas, I do not.”

Sido bit her lip and said, “Why have I no family to advise my father against this ill-judged marriage?” She looked up at the old lawyer, fighting back tears.

He suddenly took pity on her and said something that had been locked away for many years, something he had been forbidden to pass on.

“You have family in London,” he said quickly.

Sido stared at him, uncertain if she had heard the lawyer right.

“Family in London?” she repeated.

Poor Maître Tardieu looked appalled by what, without due legal consideration, had just tripped off his tongue.

“Oh dear. I have always been under strict instructions to say nothing on the matter. What is to be done now?”

“Where in London are they?” asked Sido, hardly able to contain her excitement. “How can I find them?”

“I have no idea. I know your mother had a sister there at the time of the accident. She married an Englishman, a Mr. Laxton. Whether she is still alive, I cannot say.”

“What is her name?”

“Please, mademoiselle, do not press me. Truly, I shouldn’t have said a word. And do not put too much store by this news. She is surely dead by now.”

“Why?” asked Sido.

“Because,” said the lawyer, floundering, “because the English have a very poor diet. They live a shorter time than the French.”

Sido looked at Maître Tardieu and felt sorry for him. He looked quite exhausted and his face was gray. She could see that he was not a well man.

“I must leave. I am too old to be doing this, too old and powerless to know how to help you. I wish it were not so.”

She knew it was no good questioning him further. He looked half terrified by what he had already said.

“Are you going back to Paris now?” she asked.

“I am. Immediately. I am worried about my wife. She is not in the best of health and with the state of things in the city . . .”

She followed him out to his waiting carriage.

“Before you go, may I ask you one last thing? Do you think the Revolution might save me? Or is it already too late?”

“I think the world we knew has gone,” said Maître Tardieu. “What that means only time will tell.”

An early-morning mist hung like a veil over the garden. Sido, still reeling from all she had been told and the joyful knowledge, for what it was worth, that she wasn’t alone in the world, lifted her skirts and for the first time in seven months ran down the grassy paths. Nearly falling, she steadied herself on the statue of Pan. At last, finding her balance, she took the walk at a slower pace, pleased to feel her leg becoming less stiff. She wandered down paths where statues of goddesses watched over her. She saw a vista of fountains, and the lake beyond. The groves were full of birdsong.

It did not take her long to discover the metal cages. Pushing back the leaves, she saw aviaries full of wild birds, thrushes, blackbirds, nightingales, wrens, chaffinches, hidden amongst the foliage. She walked back up the path and discovered that the aviaries ran along every one of the groves. What cruelty, she thought, to do this to birds that own the sky.

She was trying to find out how the aviaries might be opened when a group of people appeared ghostlike out of the mist. They were armed with pitchforks, swords, and guns. She stood still with her back to the aviaries, recognizing some of the servants.

“Where are you going?”

“To Paris,” said Jacques. “We have come to free the birds.” He pulled out a key and said almost shyly, “Would you like to do it, mademoiselle?”

One by one, Sido unlocked the cages. They stood there, all of them silently watching the birds thrill to find the wind once more beneath their wings. Only when every cage stood empty did they part, the servants taking one path and Sido another.

chapter sixteen

Under the shade of the oak tree Sido could see in the flickering patterns of the leaves her life already mapped out, her future decided, her husband chosen. It was to be Count Kalliovski.

To Sido he seemed soulless, with his impossibly smooth skin, his face stripped of lines and wrinkles, his features wiped clean of life’s tempests. She wondered what pact he had made with the devil, that time itself should not wish to embrace him.

She thought back to that evening of the party some seven months earlier when he and his great black hound had sat in her chamber watching her. It had felt as if the very air was being sucked out of the room, his presence as heavy as mercury.

It was after the fireworks, when she was alone again, that Sido had her dream. She was walking along snowy treetops. The road up ahead was a silvery ribbon in the starlight; it appeared to be far off, yet it wound its way toward her. There on the highway she could make out a coach standing diagonally across the road, as if it had just avoided some terrible catastrophe. The coachman was mopping his brow, looking shaken. By the side of the horses stood Yann. He was holding the bridles and she could clearly hear him talking to them in his curious language. She reached out to touch him, and in that moment he turned toward her and smiled.

Then with a jolt she was back in her room. That was when she knew, as if she had always known, that Yann Margoza would be in her life forever.

At the convent there was a nun called Sister Ignatius, whom Sido liked very much. She was kind and wholesome, her feet firmly planted in the soil. She surprised Sido by telling her that when she was nine years old she had seen a vision of the Virgin Mary standing on ripe ears of barley, holding a baby made of light. In the gentle breeze she seemed to be walking on a golden sea. Sister Ignatius had known from that day forth that she would be a nun. Maybe, Sido thought now, you could have the same certainty about a living person. Maybe her dream too was a vision, a premonition.

In the days that followed, Sido told herself her premonition was just wishful thinking. As the days and weeks slowly tied themselves into months she gave in to her fantasy, for loneliness threatened to overwhelm her, to destroy her spirit.

Sometimes she wondered if dreaming about someone you hardly knew was sinful. Then she decided she didn’t much care if it was, for thinking about Yann made the isolation bearable. She told herself the same story over and over again, and every time it comforted her like thick hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day.

This dream of Yann had idled away many desperate months, until at last he seemed so real to her that she could almost believe he was sitting on the chair by her bed watching her.

Today, though, the dream stopped abruptly, for in her mind’s eye the smooth, soulless face of Count Kalliovski smothered her vision like a black velvet curtain, snuffing out her hope of freedom.

The Marquis de Villeduval returned home that same afternoon and called for Sido. She entered the room to find him with his back turned toward her, looking out over the garden. He did not turn around, but started to describe the building of the wall and the landscaping of the terraces as if his daughter hadn’t been there while all this activity was taking place. She stood staring at him, wondering what she should say; but every word felt like dust on her tongue, so she said nothing.

Her silence had an immediate effect. For the first time in Sido’s life, it seemed that her father was prepared to show a grudging interest in her. He took her to the locked antechamber where he kept his collection of shoe buckles, as if to see them was her reward for months of solitude.

It was like the inside of an ornate jewelry box, and glimmered with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and pearls.

The marquis said with pride, “What do you think of this? My collection is priceless. Not even the king can boast of such fine buckles as these.”

Sido didn’t answer. She had discovered a treasure all of her own: the golden power of silence.

It was the beginning of a strange time in her father’s house. The marquis spent most of his time at Versailles and Sido was left alone to explore the château and read the unread books. On his return her father would talk of the parties he had attended and how well he had been received, of Madame this and the Duchess of that. He never discussed Sido’s forthcoming marriage, just as he never discussed politics or the Revolution. The closest he came to acknowledging that anything untoward was happening was when he bemoaned how many of his friends had seen fit to leave for long vacations abroad. Of Paris all he had to say was that it had become “dull, very dull indeed.” Of Versailles he talked more favorably, of balls, parties, and the card tables, though here too he had his complaints.