The Volcano Lover (23 page)

In September she began to sit for a formal portrait by Romney to be titled
The Ambassadress
—the first time she was painted as herself, no longer a model but a subject, at last. In the background is a dark, fiery Vesuvius—signifying Naples, where her husband-to-be was the envoy; signifying the Cavaliere as well. And, to ratify the picture, the third day after the sittings began, there was a marriage ceremony at the small exclusive church of St. Marylebone in the presence of five of the Cavaliere's relations and friends and Mrs. Cadogan. When Charles arrived, paler than usual, he took his seat in the third row of the church. His mother, the Cavaliere's favorite sister, had refused to attend. This was not a marriage for England—the Cavaliere could not avoid seeing the condescending smiles—but for his other, second life, such as remained to him (another twelve years, if he believed the sibyl's prophecy), in Naples. Even the Fair One, who loved to please and thought she usually did, could not deceive herself into thinking the Cavaliere's relations were anything but disapproving of the marriage, however happy she made him. The only relation who seemed to like her was the immensely rich cousin whom the Cavaliere had told her was very eccentric and, as a result of his eccentricities (which the Cavaliere promised to describe some other time), was himself shunned by the rest of the family and unwelcome at court; and so, the Cavaliere explained, although he had been a great admirer of his dear Catherine, was perhaps a natural ally of their marriage, one of the few. For he had several friends, Walpole for instance, and his young cousin, who knew what it was to defy convention in the interests of happiness, and would not find scandalous the Cavaliere's seeking his happiness with her.

At the reception following the ceremony, this cousin, a young man hardly older than herself, was particularly gracious, taking her hands in his and looking into her eyes—he had fine curly hair and a full mouth—and said in his high, strange voice that he was glad to hear she had made the Cavaliere happy, and that in this life it was important to follow one's dreams. And the Cavaliere's bride said politely, a little timidly, that she hoped the Cavaliere's cousin would be moved to visit Naples again, where she could have the pleasure of entertaining him and coming to know him. And of course she extended an invitation to Charles, but really meant it, who knows when she would see him again. She said, roguishly, Now you can keep your promise to come to Naples.

On the following day, the very eve of their departure, she extracted a promise to visit them from several of the Cavaliere's friends. She felt fluttery about going back. It seemed odd to be the same person as the one who had gone abroad for the first time, sent to a faraway country to visit her lover's uncle, an innocent girl, already (unbeknownst to her) betrayed, and now a woman with everything a woman could want: a distinguished husband, life, world. Oh, please come and see it!

Once they had crossed the Channel, most of these London feelings vanished: the wish to include everyone in her happiness, her triumph—and the budding pro-republican sympathies Mr. Romney had inspired in her, for during their stop in Paris she had the unexpected honor of being presented to Marie Antoinette and entrusted by the queen with a letter to give to her royal sister. An instant re-convert to the cause of monarchy everywhere, the Cavaliere's wife devoutly carried the letter back to
her
Queen.

*   *   *

1793. They had been back a year. His contentment bloomed, unfolded.

Not that he hadn't been happy before. Not that he hadn't almost always been happy. But the Cavaliere's command of gratification had depended on his being able to take up the right distance from himself and from his passions. His happiness had had the self-consciousness of a view claimed at the top of a mountain, and the deliberate contrasts of one of those busy paintings of a scene, observed from a high angle, in which some people are sowing and tilling, others are bringing harvest to market, others are getting drunk in the village square, children are playing, lovers are fondling each other …

Of course he had known happiness! But his happiness had been composed of many small parts, like a portrait in mosaic that doesn't read as a face until you stand back. Now he could stand as close as he wanted and see both the tiny fragments and the large bewitching face. He still had the same tastes, still liked to read, fish, play the cello, climb the mountain, examine marine specimens, have a learned conversation, look at a pretty woman, acquire a new painting—the world was a theatre of felicity. But now it had one person at the center, unifying it. His heart's choice was as affectionate as ever—her warm flesh against his, she was ripening. And she was interested in everything. She accompanied him to the new excavations at Paestum (she had entirely concurred with his disparagement of the brutal, primitive Doric columns of the Temple of Neptune), she was studying botany so she could help him advise on the completion of the English garden at Caserta, she adored the life of the court, she seemed fascinated by his vases and rock collections. He had only to stretch out his hand to something and it was his.

He yielded gratefully to the experience of satiety. Inevitably, some of his collecting zeal began to abate. It was no longer the chase that obsessed him, but the sheer joy of ownership. He derived no less pleasure from looking at the things he possessed and showing them to others and seeing their admiration and envy. But his need to add to his collections had slackened. Financial interest more than desire now drove him to continue to acquire new pictures, vases, bronzes, ornaments. The collecting desire
can
be enfeebled by happiness—acute enough, erotic enough happiness—and the Cavaliere was happy, as happy as that.

Reports on the newlywed couple went back to England. The Cavaliere, people said, is as amorous as ever, his lady no less vulgar, with the accent and manners of a barmaid, braying, bawling, cackling. Few deigned to add that she seemed extremely goodhearted. They were a most improbable couple—the reformed kept woman and the unapologetic, elderly aristocrat with his exquisite manners and indefinitely expanding horizons of appreciation—and, thanks to the unique demands and generic permissions of this southern setting, a very successful one. She had become a wife without forfeiting the attentiveness and charms of a mistress. She helped him, not just as a wife (or not just as Catherine did) but as a collaborator. Her talents twinned with his. For he always had to spend a great deal of time with the King, and now she spent a great deal of time with the Queen. Their tasks are symmetrical: he to be first in the King's favor and she to be first in the eyes of the Queen.

The Cavaliere must keep up with the King's diversions. She must keep up with the Queen's burdens. Moderately intelligent, which makes her far more intelligent than her husband, the Queen has all the cares of an immoderate number of births and a partial understanding of political realities to add to her normal duties, frustrations, and distractions. The Cavaliere's wife, with her great capacity for taking in information and for identifying with someone, quickly became an ideal confidante. She and the Queen write each other every day. Rowing vigorously in the polyglot sea of the era, the Austrian-born Queen writes not in German or in Italian or in English but in an ill-spelled French. She signs herself Charlotte. There are visits several times a day as well as daily letters.

Secret Jacobin sympathizers in Naples added to their defamatory portrait of the royal couple the charge that the Queen and the Cavaliere's wife are lovers. And the charge has been vigorously denied by beauty snobs, who cannot imagine a physical relationship between the Cavaliere's wife and a woman of forty with a dramatically homely face and a body abused by fourteen childbirths—grounds of denial that are as much a cliché as the allegation. (The Queen had real power, and a woman in power, feared as virile, is often accused of being a slut. An ampler anti-royalist campaign in France had featured charges of incest as well as lesbianism against her sister.) The charge was false. The effusive sentimental temperament of the Cavaliere's wife rarely flowed into the erotic. But she did have a great need for the affection and friendship of women—indeed, she enjoyed the company of women more than of men. She loved being unbuttoned with women, as she could be in her bedroom with five or six of her maids on a hot afternoon, gossiping, trying on her clothes, having a glass or two, listening to their love griefs, showing off the latest dance or a new cap from Paris with white feathers. That was when she felt most like a woman, surrounded by her adoring maids and by the mother whom she kept by her side the older woman's entire life. Their prattle calmed her. And then she would make them fall silent and hold their breath, make their eyes shine and go moist—as hers would too—with a song.

*   *   *

Autumn 1793. The Queen, her dear Charlotte, cannot help conjuring up the scene.

Portrait of a woman condemned to death. In the cart transporting her to this, this, this … machine, this new machine, her hands tied loosely behind her, her hair cropped short to expose her nape. Portrait of a martyr. She is all in white: a simple dress, coarse stockings, a shapeless bonnet on her head. Her face is old, tired, and drawn. The only trace of her former glory is her strict and upright posture.

She blinks her eyes. They sting because she has been so many months in prison. The cart wheels rattle and bump. The streets are strangely silent. The sun is shining. The cart arrives, she mounts the ten rough wooden steps. There is her chaplain murmuring prayers, staring at his crucifix, tears streaming down his face. And a voice, someone else's voice, saying, It will not hurt, Your Majesty. It seems to come from the man with the hood. She averts her eyes from the ladder-like structure, some fourteen feet tall, with its ax-shaped blade rusty with blood, and she feels her shoulders being pushed down on both sides, making her lean over, no, lie down, her stomach and legs on the board, lie just so. Someone pulls her by the shoulders a little forward, so her throat rests in the trough of the bottom half of a wooden yoke, and then the upper part closes down on the back of her neck. She feels a strap squeezing her waist and another being affixed to her calves, binding her to the board. Her head is over the dark-brown plaited basket, the blood rushes forward to her face. She resisted the weight of her head pulling it down, held it out to see over the platform the bobbing heads of the crowd, lifted it up to lighten the painful contact of the edge of the board with her collarbone, the yoke against her gorge, which made her gag, which was starting to cut off her breath, saw a pair of large muddy boots advancing toward her and heard the bellowing of the mob go still louder, then go silent; here's some kind of strange creaking: something rising, higher, higher; the sun getting brighter, so she shuts her eyes; the sound, higher still, stops—

No!

The Queen tossed in her bed and groaned, then woke, parted the curtains of her bed, and stood up. She had slept only fitfully for weeks, waiting for news from Paris. Because of the worsening situation in France they were now at the mercy of the British—the only country strong enough and with the will to oppose the tide of revolution. The British naval commander who had anchored in the bay for five days, Captain Nelson, had won a great victory over the French, and been most encouraging about British resolve; but the Queen placed little trust in military solutions. Though the offer of a ransom had been refused, she dared to be hopeful. To kill a king was already unthinkable. And killing their king should have sufficed them. What could they want from a foreigner, a woman; surely they would not execute her young sister.

Would not, could not …

When the news came that Marie Antoinette had been executed, there was consternation at the court. The Queen retreated to Portici, her favorite of the royal palaces. It was feared she would go mad. She refused to see her children (she had just given birth a fifteenth time); she refused to bathe or change her clothes. She howled with rage and despair, chorused by her tribe of forty German-speaking maids. Even the King was moved by his wife's grief, though he had not much luck in consoling her, since every attempt at tenderness ended in his becoming aroused and trying to mount her. Her husband's embraces were the last thing the Queen desired. She was vomiting convulsively. Doctors wanted to bleed her. The Cavaliere's wife spent every day at the palace, joining her in shrieks and cries, bathing her head, and singing to her. Only her singing calmed the Queen. Music cures. When the King's grandfather, Philip V, had tumbled into the abyss of depression, the greatest voice of the earlier part of the century, that of Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli, had brought relief. Until the appearance of the wonder-working castrato at the Bourbon court in Madrid—where he would be detained at a vast salary for nine years—the stuporous monarch would neither eat, drink, change his clothes, nor rule. For nine years Farinelli would arrive at the royal bedchamber every evening promptly at midnight, and until five in the morning would sing the same four songs over and over, interposing the songs with elegant conversation. And Philip V would eat and drink and let himself be washed and shaved, and look over the papers that his ministers had left him.

So the Cavaliere's wife, with her beautiful voice, calmed the Queen. Day after day she went to the palace to sit with the Queen in a darkened room, returning home red-eyed to the Cavaliere late each evening. Never have I seen anything so piteous, she said. The dear woman's grief knows no bounds.

With her indefatigable gift for empathy, she was almost as grief-struck as the Queen. But the Queen became calmer, between bouts of tears, and the Cavaliere's wife did too.

The Queen returned to the city and took her seat at the Council of State.

She was a woman, said the Queen. Only a woman.

(Majesty!)

But I will have my revenge.