Revenant Eve (50 page)

Jaska glanced out, interrupted himself, and said, “Margit’s bride party has ended. That means it’s later than I thought. I must get to the Riding School and review a parade.”

“Will you have to do those weekly, now?” she asked as he started away.

He turned around, laughing, his expression tender. The sunlight slanting under approaching clouds caught his eyes, turning the light brown to topaz. I heard Aurélie’s breath catch as he said, “Weekly! Bonaparte did that, didn’t he? I’d forgotten. Proof that the man is mad. What could be more boring? I should know, I’ve ridden in enough of them.” He kissed his hand to her and strode away.

Alone, Aurélie went out to explore the garden with a quick glance skyward. “How horrid, to watch a military parade in the rain,” she began, addressing me as she passed under an arched trellis laden with roses of three different shades.

“Talking to your ghost?” Margit appeared from the other side of the trellis.

Aurélie paused then curtseyed silently. Her manner was grave, the gesture so formal.

“She’s a duppy, not a ghost,” Aurélie said. “Your highness.”

The clouds were boiling up fast, big splatters of rain began falling. One hit Margit on the cheek and Aurélie on the hand. The two turned instinctively toward the gazebo nearby, as the palace was a ways downslope.

“A duppy. What kind of word is that, ‘duppy’?”

“I think you could call it Creole, as the language we used was made up of parts of many languages. That’s my understanding of Creole, a whole made up of parts.”

“It sounds heathen,” Margit stated.

Aurélie did not answer.

“Do you really practice heathen ways?”

Aurélie stepped up into the gazebo, followed by Margit. She said, “My practices, such as they are, are mine, your highness. I hope you’ll pardon the liberty I take in observing that they can be of no interest to anyone else.”

“Speak plainly, please. As for no interest, that will no longer be true if you—if you stay.” Margit stood in the middle of the gazebo, arms crossed.

Thanks to Madame Campan, Aurélie knew the etiquette of royalty.
One did not sit down in the presence of a princess without invitation, though all eight sides of the gazebo sported unoccupied benches. So she walked along the perimeter, looking out as the rain began to fall in earnest, a silvery sheet.

When she looked back, she said, “What is it that you find objectionable, since you know nothing of me? Was it my wearing breeches?”

“If I said it was, I suppose Jaska will be the first one to claim I’m a hypocrite, as I used to steal his clothing when we were small. I did not want the constraints of a princess. I wanted a boy’s freedom.”

“So did I,” Aurélie said. “When I first met them, I took great care not to reveal myself to Jaska or Mord. The second trip, the masquerade was a matter of necessity.”

Margit looked away, Jaska’s same gesture when uncomfortable or disturbed, as Aurélie walked around and around the perimeter, looking out at the rain obscuring the garden. Far away, over the Dsaret mountain, lightning flashed, and on the other side of the garden, perceptible as silver etched against the slanting gray rain, ethereal figures danced.

When the long rumble of thunder died away, Margit said, “Jaska is angry with me. I’ll have to make my peace with him, but I’m angry with him for returning all these years late and bringing what we might be forgiven for assuming was…”

“Was what, your highness?”

Margit grimaced slightly. “One of
those
females.”

“Those what?”

Margit made a gesture. “I scarcely like to say. Adventuress, perhaps.”

“Are they not women, too?” Aurélie asked and passed her hands over her eyes as the wind shifted direction, blowing a draft of rain into the gazebo. “Perhaps my once being so very close to starvation renders my morals suspect, but the only difference I see between a woman who sells herself for an hour in order to get enough to eat and one who sells herself for a crown is the amount of material wealth handed over for the transaction.”

Margit was silent, then said slowly, “Sometimes the woman who is sold for a crown—I use your words, though I don’t think I would put it that way—has little choice in the matter.”

“Do you think the starving woman has more choice?”

“I think—oh, I don’t know what a starving woman faces.”

“She faces the very real possibility that the drunken lout offering her a
livre
or two for an hour might, after she completes her part of the transaction, beat her senseless instead of paying. No one will help her. They’ll say, ‘She’s getting what she deserves.’ Though there were two in the immoral act.”

“You think the woman forced against her will to marry because she carries a great dowry or her marriage secures political gain between two men—do you think she gets a better opportunity if she sits down to a poisoned meat pie or is thrust from behind to tumble down the castle stairs, once the dowry changes hands?”

Aurélie started to pace in the other direction, an abrupt alteration that shifted my perspective. And there, outlined against the climbing roses, stood Pewter Hair the seraph, smiling directly at me as Aurélie said, “I condition only for a different word. Something merciful, perhaps? That doesn’t condemn those forced between terrible choices? But I’ve yet to learn of such words in any of the languages I’ve studied.”

“I’ve no answer to make to that, but only an observation to offer. Here in Dobrenica, there are poor people, but no one starves. The churches and the temples see to that. My mother once said that there is a kind of competition among the religions, but as it benefits all, why interfere? Those who are poor are so for many reasons, just as there are also women who sell themselves here, though they do so not because they starve.”

Aurélie lifted a shoulder. “And so there are in other places. I met one younger than I am who intrigued Bonaparte. I also met women who, once they secured a husband, took as many lovers as they liked. I ask again, why is it that nothing is said about the male’s part in any of these transactions? Why should men keep the moral advantage, just because they have the stronger arm?”

“Because they make the laws.” Margit spread her hands.

“And women’s social laws? The ones unwritten in any law book, but in force all the time? What of those?” Aurélie asked. She lifted her hands.
“Perhaps it’s too large a question. When I was twelve, my Nanny Hiasinte made me promise never to sell myself, and I kept that promise. Out of ignorance when I was starving, for I didn’t know then how desperate women earn money. Now, I wouldn’t sell myself for any crown. And I was offered one, by Bonaparte himself.”

She whirled around and ran out into the rain, leaving Margit standing alone in the gazebo.

Aurélie reached the palace drenched to the skin and shivering. When she got upstairs, she asked Viorel if she could have a bath. The maid took one look and dashed off to fetch her fellows to make a hot bath and fetch something warm to drink.

They hadn’t lit the fires, as the day had started so nice. Viorel took care of that. Aurélie sat on the hearth shivering and staring into the fire until the bath was ready. When she had warmed up in the steaming water, she let out an extravagant sigh then said, “Kim, I don’t think I can stay here.”

Chill gripped me, though I can’t tell you how. “You’re going to surrender to Margit’s pettiness?”

“Won’t everyone say what she said?”

“You don’t know that.”

“This queen—”

“May surprise you.”

Aurélie frowned at the window. “It hurts, the things she said. She despises me.”

“I think some of that is her natural demeanor. But a lot of it is because she’s angry with her brother. She can’t strike out at him, so she’s striking at you instead.”

Aurélie ran to the mirror and looked into my face. “Angry with Jaska, yes. So she said. Because he was gone? But for such an important reason, having such dreadful experiences!”

“They are twins, and he left her here. I know and
she
knows she would never be permitted to go with him to war, but feelings are often illogical. And then, to make matters worse, he didn’t communicate with
her. He still doesn’t.” How to explain post traumatic stress disorder? “His experiences were so terrible he can’t talk about them to anyone who didn’t share them, and so there’s a gulf between brother and sister.”

“That grieves me,” she said. “One thing I can do: avoid their mother. I feel certain she, too, thinks of me as an
adventuress
.”

When she had dressed again, the rain had cleared up, and afternoon light slanted in.

Viorel came back to say, “Donna Aurélie, I am bid by Her Majesty the Queen to request that you honor her with your company on the ride to Mount Dhiavilyi tomorrow morning.”

As soon as Viorel left, Aurélie leaned against the mirror and whispered, “It seems the last blow. Duppy Kim, I think it better if I leave now.”

“If you do, you’ll never see Jaska again,” I said, my last-ditch argument. “Royal invitations are commands, and to leave when a queen invites you.…You know this. It would be perceived as the worst sort of insult.”

Her chin came up. “Very well. But if she insults me directly, I will jump out of the carriage, and I don’t care what they say or think.”

A
URÉLIE ATE WITH THE ROYAL FAMILY
that night. The conversation, led by the queen, was about music. The twins were largely silent; Margit subdued, and Jaska distracted.

Afterward, at the queen’s invitation, they walked down to the private theater, where a concert had been arranged. A small chamber group and five singers. The only piece I recognized was something by Scarlatti, otherwise the choral pieces were Russian, complex, and interesting.

After that everyone parted, the queen admonishing them to rise betimes. What in my time was a few hours’ drive would take two days.

Viorel had Aurélie all packed up by the time she woke. There was nothing to do but eat breakfast and get ready.

Aurélie walked out in her new traveling cloak and halted when she caught sight of the coach and six waiting in the morning chill, people’s and horses’ breath steaming, collars turned up. A company of impeccably dressed King’s Guard also waited, plumes on their helmets. The queen emerged, walking with stately dignity, a sturdy footman at either side.

As she took the first step into the carriage, the queen paused, looked around, saw Aurélie, and beckoned.

Aurélie made her curtsey then skimmed down the broad terrace
steps and climbed into the carriage, where she took up the backward seat, cramming herself into the corner in expectation of being joined by an entourage of royal servants.

But when the servants got the queen settled nicely in the middle of the seat opposite, they backed out again. The queen leaned toward the door and said, “Depart.”

Trumpets blared, and horse hooves clattered as the guards at either side began moving. A lurch of the carriage, and there Aurélie was, alone with the queen.

Except for me.

“We can speak at leisure without interruption or interference,” the queen said.

Aurélie bit her lip as she bowed from her seat. “I am honored, your majesty.”

“What do you think of the city?” The queen indicated the cathedral sliding by on one side and its park on the other.

“Very fine, your majesty.”

“And our weather? I understand you took a walk in our garden yesterday and ended up drenched.”

“I should have been more watchful, your majesty.” Aurélie glanced out at Prinz Karl-Rafael Street, along which Dobreni of every type had gathered. They were waving hats or handkerchiefs and cheering.

The queen smiled broadly out one window and then the other, until the houses got older and smaller and more scattered, and finally the road turned sharply to avoid the swamp where the city’s branch of the river dumped into the main flow. In the future, the sewage treatment plan was here and the high road planted with hedgerows to hide the swamp.

The horses picked up the pace. They were heading down into the broad plain of the valley with its many farms.

The queen sat back. “Your answers are properly demure but reflect my words back at me. This gives me no portrait of you. Did you learn that from Bonaparte’s lady?”

“From my aunt, your majesty.”

“Your aunt. We will leave that for the time being. My daughter tells me you are a heathen. Is that so?”

“Heathen, your majesty,” Aurélie repeated. “Who claims to be heathen? I understand it to mean evil, or rather, to worship evil things, which I do not. The Great Creole includes all religions that look to the goodness of
le bon Dieu
.” She slipped from her careful German to the French of the islands.

“Let me ask this, then. First, the circumstances. I was born and raised as a Lutheran. To marry the man I wanted—king of a land so tiny my parents had to summon a cartographer from the university to find out where it lay—I first had to become a Roman Catholic. If the renowned Bourbon, Henri IV, could do so, could I do less? And I try to be a good Catholic, but in my heart of hearts I still think like a Lutheran. So does that make me a woman who sells herself?”