Spirit of Lost Angels (14 page)

‘Why have you never told me of this scandal,
ma chère
?’

I was still far from discovering everything about Jeanne de Valois, but I had learned much about her in the three months as her personal maid. I knew this look, reflected in the mirror, and the way the vein bulged in her temple — the signs that belied her mute rage of all the violations, every malfeasance occasioned against a commoner, which Jeanne seemed to suffer as her own.

As she twisted about to face me, her swathe of dark hair knocked the hairbrush from my hand. The brush clattered to the floor. I bent to retrieve it and began brushing Jeanne’s hair again, my strokes charged with rhythm and purpose.

Jeanne clasped my free hand. ‘Don’t tell me you never said anything because you felt ashamed, Victoire? That you believe the behaviour of this marquis was your fault?’ 

‘Perhaps I never spoke of it,’ I said, still brushing, ‘because I was trying to forget. I had hoped it would fade with time, but whenever I let myself think back, the memories of those nights are as fresh as ever.’

Barely pausing for breath, I told Jeanne the rest, my voice faltering only when I reached the part about abandoning Rubie.

‘I wrapped her in kitchen rags.’ I put the hairbrush aside and folded my arms. ‘I left her in a basket on the church steps.’

I felt Jeanne’s hand on my shoulder. ‘I am glad,
ma chère
that you have shared this with me. Now, give me the name of the vile libertine.’

I shook my head. ‘Claudine — that’s Cook, my friend — said I must not think of vengeance, but how can’t I? He strangled a girl. Perhaps if I’d spoken up that maid would still have her life.’

‘I understand why you said nothing, Victoire, you needed to keep your position, but that’s no longer the case and this depraved man must be stopped,’ Jeanne said. ‘I am certain you don’t wish him to go on murdering innocent girls. Now you must tell me, who is this so ignoble noble?’

‘Alphonse Donatien Delacroix, Marquis de Barberon,’ I said, through gritted teeth. ‘
I despise him; I hate all nobles, and what they stand for, but as much as I crave revenge, I fear it is impossible. Claudine says commoners will never triumph over powerful nobles.’

Jeanne tossed her head. ‘
Ppfft
. Times are changing,
ma chère
. Those aristocrats will soon topple from their mighty pillars, and I am sure, like me, you will be there, laughing when they fall flat on their powdered noses. Besides, there is none more powerful in this country than la Comtesse Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy!’

Her smile, bent with irony, revealed straight, polished teeth. I’d always thought they were so white because of the ivory-mounted brush she used, or the toothpaste, which cost an outrageous three livres. Now I understood they must be the same, expensive porcelain teeth of the Marquis.

She kissed the back of my hand, and rubbed the rough skin.

‘Let me smooth those working hands with my special salve,’ she said, massaging her rose-scented cream into my skin. ‘Then we’ll stroll in the courtyard. We must continue your French lessons and try to rid you of that dreadful provincial accent. Besides, the fresh air might colour your cheeks.’

***

Jeanne batted at flies with her walking cane. She twitched her nose at the smells rising from the drains, and the waste rotting in piles in obscure corners. I could almost pretend, on our afternoon strolls, that Jeanne — ever poised and elegant — was a real countess roaming the grounds of her vast country home, and I her dedicated maid.

As Jeanne instructed me on the words and phrases of the language of Paris and the manners of a respectable city woman, I forgot my dormitory cell and the fellow prisoners I had to endure.

‘You have never told me your story,’ Jeanne said, twirling the cane. ‘Everybody has one. Why won’t you tell me yours,
ma chère
?’

‘Oh it’s not very interesting, the usual peasant-girl childhood.’ I fingered the lavender and the pale blue hydrangeas, which had folded themselves against the burning heat. The leaves on the sparse trees hung low, the shrubs too looked thirsty, their colour bleached out in three months of scorching sun.

Jeanne hooked her arm through mine and as we walked on, I found myself telling her about the fun of the harvests, Carnival and Saint John’s bonfire night.

‘My brother, Grégoire and I, and my friend, Léon had our own special place at the river. We’d swim in the waterfall and catch fish with our bare hands.’ Remnants of song lyrics, sunlight and raked hay flitted through my mind. ‘Maman always warned us the Vionne River could be dangerous. She forbade us to go there.’

‘But that never stopped you?’ Jeanne said with a knowing smile.

‘We’d come home wet through, so she must’ve known where we’d been, but we were so happy, I don’t think she had the heart to scold us.’

‘Is your maman still alive?’

I looked away, across to where the Seine River flowed behind the high asylum wall. ‘They claimed Maman was a witch and murdered her. She was no witch. Maman was Lucie’s healing woman and midwife. My mother was also an angel-maker. As a child, I imagined she performed some magical, fairy-like thing with the tea she made from rue, vervain and her tiny blue flowers.’

I waved an arm in the direction of the nursery. ‘Seeing those hundreds of doomed babies in there, I can’t help thinking that surely an angel-maker is not so dishonourable after all?’

‘A most philanthropic calling in life,’ Jeanne said, brandishing the cane again.

‘After Félix and Félicité, then Papa died, Maman became … I don’t know, sad. A little mad perhaps, as if each separate tragedy swelled into one great crushing wad of grief. She lost her faith in God, and the Church.’ I felt for my angel pendant — an instinctive gesture I couldn’t throw off.

‘
Mon Dieu
, the barbarians,’ Jeanne said.
‘I assume she had no proper trial?’

‘There were never trials.’

‘Another victim of our unjust, archaic system, Victoire — the one we must fight to change. And your father?’

‘Papa was a carpenter,’ I said. As I told Jeanne about the fire that had destroyed our cottage, the agony of that moment still split my heart in two. ‘Since a baron killed my father, and of course, those nights in Saint-Germain, I have despised every aristocrat.’

‘I know too well life can be unjust.’ Jeanne’s arm pressed against mine. ‘You have borne terrible tragedies. I would like to hope that for the rest of your days, you will experience only pleasurable things.’

‘Nice things? In
here
? And they’ll never let me out, Jeanne, ever. All that — the peasant girl from Lucie — is so distant, so unreal. It’s as if my whole life has been this asylum.’

‘How absurd,
ma chère
! As if someone as God-fearing as you could remain in this infernal mosaic of misery, with such a wretched portion of humanity — all the country’s mad people and vagabonds, its whores, charlatans and cutthroats. A place of no gentleness, no remedy! Not likely, Victoire, as I have a plan for us. It is proving time-consuming but I will tell you of it shortly. So don’t ask questions now.

Jeanne still held my arm as we strolled alongside
le potager
where gardeners were plucking the last of the season’s garlic and vegetables for the meals of la Salpêtrière’s personnel and its wealthy, paying prisoners, like Jeanne de Valois.

‘Don’t despair, Victoire. As I said, if my plan succeeds, everything will change. I have privileges and some influence here, but still it will not be easy and requires careful planning. Besides, you need time to learn the ways of the Parisian bourgeois society if you are to blend in once you are free.’

‘Bourgeois society?’ I said. ‘Free?’

Jeanne touched a finger to my lips. ‘No questions yet, remember? Now, I notice,
ma chère
, you do not mention your little twins. Naturally, I have heard the talk here, but am I to believe such malicious gossip? How hard I find that, of someone so … so unstained — a woman who seems not to have a speck of badness in her veins.’

I breathed deeply, the tendrils of melancholy unfurling, wrapping themselves around me again as I tried to recall that day on the riverbank. ‘When I think about it, it starts coming back, but before I know what truly happened, it’s gone.’

We had reached the Insane Quarter, girdled on three sides by a lofty wall. Through the gate, I could see several women chained to benches, their grey dresses hanging from them like empty sacks. They stared at us with wide, liquid eyes.

As we approached, I shut my ears to their cries, their shrieks, and the soft whimpers of the particularly feeble.

‘The dungeon keepers would put us outside for an hour every day,’ I said, nodding towards the women. ‘To improve our mental health, they claimed. What a joke.’

‘Poor, desperate wretches.’ Jeanne beckoned me away from them with her cane and nursed my arm closer to her side. ‘You know,
ma chère
, whatever you have done, whatever happened at the river with your babes, I’ll not judge you. I, of all people, know everyone has their reasons.’

As we walked away from the dungeon women, I saw myself in the orphanage, cradling the baby girl, something urging me to press my dress down over her face. The thought both shocked and terrified me.

‘Well I’ll not press you now, Victoire, but one day I hope you can free yourself of this terrible secret trapped in your mind.’

‘And you, Jeanne, why have you never told me the necklace story? The true story?’

‘Mon Dieu
, that gaudy chunk of jewellery. Well, probably because I was so angry I’d missed my chance,’ she said. ‘But time has cleared the fog and the future shines bright and sunny,
ma chère
. I will regain my name, and our land.’

She took my hand, fondling my fingers and rubbing my calloused joints. ‘But first you must know the beginning, Victoire. Then you might understand why I did what I had to.’

Jeanne sat on a bench and patted a place next to her. ‘My dear papa, Henri de Saint Rémy-Valois, was a descendant of the love child of King Henri II and Nicole de Savigny. He was a member of Parliament. I should have lived in luxury, but they stole everything from me.

‘Who?’

‘The King’s guard came and murdered my father, and the Crown stole our property and land.’ Jeanne’s voice did not waver but from the pulsing vein in her temple I knew she was, as always, masking her fury.

‘So instead of an opulent life, we were the poorest of poor. Maman was forced to prostitute herself for our survival, and my siblings and I tramped the streets, begging for charity for the last of the Valois. Poor Maman’s heart was broken when she lost my father. She died soon after.’

‘So you too, are orphaned.’

‘My sister and I were destined for the convent, so we escaped back to our birthplace, Bar-sur-Aube,’ she said, ‘and found refuge with a family we had known. I never forgot the injustice but I knew that to regain our property, I had to be in royal favour.’

‘However does one get the royal favour?’

‘I married the nephew of the family, Count Antoine-Nicolas de la Motte, and
voilà
, I became Countess de la Motte.’

‘A real count?

‘How many of the aristocracy strutting around this country are genuine?’ Jeanne said with a smirk. ‘What with all those rich bourgeoisie buying government offices, inventing some long-lost noblesse, or the King simply elevating them to the noble class — that new Nobility of the Robe.’

‘You got into the royal court with your husband’s title?’

Jeanne nodded. ‘I hoped to become close to Marie Antoinette and get back what was rightfully mine.’

‘Rumours say the Queen ignored you?’

Jeanne flipped her head. ‘The Austrian bitch would have nothing to do with me.’ Her fingers began tracing a gentle line from my wrist, up my inner forearm. ‘All the Queen had to do was notice me, listen to my pleas, read my petition. All the rest could have been avoided.’ Her fingertips lingered in the crook of my elbow.

‘Then the goose laid me a golden egg,’ she said. ‘The Cardinal de Rohan wanted to become Prime Minister of France, but when he was envoy to Austria, his personal letters were intercepted. He bragged that he’d bedded half the Austrian court and said Marie Antoinette’s own mother, the Empress, had begged him for her turn. Of course, Marie Antoinette blocked his ministerial progress at every turn.’

She dropped my arm and gazed towards the wall behind which the Seine River curled its way through Paris. ‘So, we lay there, together, I exploding with intrigue, the Cardinal exploding with lust. I told him I was an intimate friend of Marie Antoinette’s.’ She laughed. ‘Silly, silly courtesans and royals, so caught up in their frivolous, purposeless lives. I assured the Cardinal I would reinstate his good name, and he would become Prime Minister. A kiss, a caress in the right place, and the fool was a kitten in my palm, spooning out louis d’or like honey.’ She smiled. ‘Money for the Queen’s charity work! Though it did get me into respectable society. See Victoire, you can do whatever you like with money.’

‘But what of this necklace?’ 

Jeanne took her cane and marched off. I stood too, and hurried to keep up with her brisk steps.