Bitter Greens

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Yes,’ I said, helping him rip away the lace. ‘So wrong.’ I drew his head down to my breast.

  And so, willingly, eagerly, I surrendered to him my maidenhead – in the eyes of the world, the only thing of value I owned. Yet I have few regrets. I had never felt so acutely alive, the night I watched a man die and made love for the very first time.

  A MERE BAGATELLE

  Palais du Louvre, Paris, France – March 1674

  It was our passion for words and our ardent desire to write that drew me and Michel together, and the same that drove us apart.

  Michel wanted to be a great playwright, like his former master Molière. He had high ambitions and scorned what I wrote as frivolous and feminine.

  ‘All these disguises and duels and abductions,’ he said contemptuously, one day a year or so after our affair began, slapping down the pile of paper covered with my sprawling handwriting. ‘All these desperate love affairs. And you wish me to take you seriously.’

  ‘I like disguises and duels.’ I sat bolt upright on the edge of my bed. ‘Better than those dreary boring plays you write. At least something happens in my stories.’

  ‘At least my plays are about something.’

  ‘My stories are about something too. Just because they aren’t boring doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy.’

  ‘What are they about? Love?’ He clasped his hands together near his ear and fluttered his eyelashes.

  ‘Yes, love. What’s wrong with writing about love? Everybody longs for love.’

  ‘Aren’t there enough love stories in the world without adding to them?’

  ‘Isn’t there enough misery and tragedy?’

  Michel snorted in contempt.

  ‘What’s wrong with wanting to be happy?’

  ‘It’s sugary and sentimental.’

  ‘Sugary? I am not sugary.’ I was so angry that I hurled my shoe at his head.

  He caught it deftly and tossed it into the corner. ‘I’ll give you that. You’re not sweet at all. Too much pepper in the brew. But sentimental. You’re definitely sentimental.’ As he spoke, he advanced on me, undoing his coat.

  ‘I am not sentimental.’ I took off my other shoe and threw it at him, and he caught it and hurled it into the other corner, then flung his coat down on the chair, unbuttoning his cuffs.

  ‘Don’t you cry at the end of a play? Don’t you sigh when the hero kisses the heroine?’ Michel laughed at me and untied his shirt laces.

  ‘That’s not being sentimental, that’s having a heart.’ As he stripped off his shirt and flung it on the floor, I cried, ‘Don’t do that. We’re not making love, we’re arguing.’

  Michel pushed me back against the bed.

  ‘No,’ I protested, leaning up on both elbows. ‘I’m talking!’

  ‘You talk too much,’ he replied and pressed me down with his weight, stopping my indignant words with his mouth.

  And I let him. I was so enchanted with this new game of love that I was in thrall to him. When I was with him, he made me feel as if I was the most important thing in the world. We did not need to speak. All he had to do was lift that black sardonic eyebrow and I knew we were sharing a secret current of amusement at the world.

  I had determined long ago not to marry. It seemed to me that marriage was just a way of selling a woman into slavery. A woman could not choose who she married, or protest if her husband beat her with anything thinner than his thumb. It made me angry.

  Yet our society did not take kindly to women who wished to live their own lives, to have a small corner of the world in which they could be their own mistress, as the King’s cousin Anne-Marie-Louise said to my mother all those years ago.

  My poor mother. The very thought of her brought tears to scald my eyes. She had died in that convent, and we had never seen her again. Marie had inherited her title and the chateau, but at the beginning of the year she had been married to a man she had never seen, the Marquis de Théobon, who had cut down a great deal of the oak forests to raise money to pay his gambling debts. I had not seen her since, though we wrote careful letters to each other, trying to read between the lines.

  My small corner of the world was to be found in the salons of Paris. There, women ruled and willing men fell at our feet. We created secret societies with passwords and hidden handshakes, where we could discuss politics and religion without fear of being betrayed to the King’s spies. In the salons, I met wise and witty women, many of them writers, and there my own secret ambition to write had burst into bloom. Letters, poems, fairy tales and scandalous love stories flowed from my quill. I dreamt of being published, like Marie-Madeleine de la Fayette and Madeleine de Scudéry.

  Through these months, my affair with Michel Baron ebbed and flowed, sometimes filled with gaiety and laughter, sometimes a thing of bitter tears. I was of no real use to him, being poor, but I could make him laugh and I could fill him with tenderness, and both these things moved him. He had other, more beautiful, mistresses and many a rich patroness who expected him to dance at her heel, yet somehow we would find ourselves nestled together at the back of some fine lady’s drawing room, laughing at a particularly precious line of poetry.

  I began to have secret dreams of marriage. I imagined a life spent writing and arguing and making love and going to the theatre. I would no longer need to sit all day with Queen Marie-Thérèse, playing cards and grooming her smelly little dogs and pretending to laugh at the grotesque antics of her dwarves. I would no longer have to smile at people who were not amusing, and flatter people who were not kind, and gossip about people who were not interesting. Michel and I would lie abed in the mornings, drinking hot chocolate and reading, and then we would spend our days writing. I’d write stories of love and magic and adventure that would take Europe by storm; he would write magnificent plays that would make the audience weep and bring carriages of rich patrons to our door. At night, we would go out to dinner or visit the salons or go to the theatre. We’d dance till dawn in Ménilmontant, and then make love till we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  One night, I put the idea to him, phrasing it as a spur-of-the-moment notion, a mere bagatelle. We had finished making love and I was tucked into the curve of his arm. Both of us were naked but Michel wore his nightcap, which he had brought rolled up in his coat pocket as a joke, after complaining about how cold my room was. He looked down at me in surprise. ‘Get married? But why on earth would we do that?’

  I smiled and waved my hand in the air. ‘Oh, you know … so you didn’t have to sneak into my bedroom at midnight with your nightcap rolled up in your pocket.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind that,’ he replied. ‘It doesn’t take up much room.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t have to sneak out before it was light.’

  ‘Oh, well, if that’s the price I have to pay to spend the night with you …’

  ‘But if we were married, you wouldn’t have to sneak about at all. We could have a nice little house in Paris …’

  ‘And how would we afford that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. If you wrote a hit play … if I wrote a bestseller …’

  ‘With ifs, Paris could be put into a bottle,’ he answered sourly, taking his arms away from me and crossing them over his chest.

  ‘We’d find a patron.’

  He huffed out his breath. ‘I’m finding it difficult enough to find a patron without being encumbered by a wife.’

  I sat up, clutching the bedclothes to my breast. ‘I wouldn’t be an encumbrance.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Charlotte-Rose,’ he said. ‘Women are always encumbrances. You’d want me to stay home and fawn all over you when I should be out keeping my patrons happy. You’d want a squalling baby, women always do …’

  ‘I would not,’ I cried, though it was true; I had sometimes imagined a sweet rosy-faced baby in my dream house, laughing and holding up chubby arms to me.

  ‘My troupe will need to go out on the road at some point, travelling the provinces. You have no idea
how hard life is on the road. You’d never cope.’

  ‘I would so.’ Tears were rising quickly in me, and I clenched my fists and gritted my jaw, determined not to start weeping.

  ‘Could you kill a rat with your broom and then skin it and pop it in the pot for dinner?’

  I stared at him, biting my lip.

  ‘Could you walk twenty miles in the rain and then sleep in a ditch?’

  ‘If I had to,’ I answered gamely.

  Michel laughed. ‘I don’t think so, duchesse.’

  I had always liked him calling me ‘duchesse’ before, as a joking reference to my noble lineage, but it sounded ugly in his voice now. ‘I … I wouldn’t mind … rain … and rats … and things, as long as we were together.’ My voice shook revealingly.

  Michel gave a sarcastic snort. ‘And what use would you be to me on the road anyway? You can’t sing, you can’t act …’

  ‘I can act.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘I can! Telling stories is like acting. You need to be able to conjure up different characters, you need to hold your audience and sway them with your voice, you need—’

  ‘You can’t act, Charlotte-Rose.’

  ‘But I could learn. I make you laugh with my stories. Why couldn’t I make an audience laugh?’

  ‘That’s not enough.’

  ‘But why? What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not enough to be funny and clever to succeed on the stage, Charlotte-Rose. You need to be pretty.’

  My protests died in my mouth. A flame of humiliation swept over me, scalding my skin.

  Michel got out of bed. He pulled on his clothes. ‘I’m sorry, duchesse. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. But it’s true. If I’m to get married, it’ll have to be to someone who’s rich or someone who’s beautiful. Both, preferably. And you, unfortunately, are neither.’

  Numbly, I remembered one of my guardian’s favourite axioms. ‘A poor beauty finds more lovers than husbands,’ the Marquis de Maulévrier used to say. So what if you were both poor and plain? I saw my future open up before me, filled with boredom and loneliness and mockery.

  Michel dragged on his boots and stamped towards the door.

  ‘Do you intend to wear your nightcap through the palace?’ I said icily. ‘That’ll cause a snicker.’

  He threw me a furious look, snatched his nightcap off his head and flung it on the ground. Then, he seized his wig, crammed it on his head and went out, slamming the door behind him.

  I curled up into a ball, pressed my face into my pillow and cried.

  The next day, I received a visit from Françoise Scarron, a lady of my acquaintance who had only recently come to court but was already causing a great deal of comment because of the King’s decided partiality for her company. Yet she was not young. She was not blonde. She was not voluptuous. She was not even vivacious. Françoise Scarron had olive skin and dark eyes, though I am sure, like me, she longed for a hurluberlu of pale golden ringlets and cerulean blue eyes like the King’s favourite mistress, Athénaïs.

  Worst of all, Françoise Scarron was not only low born but also governess to Athénaïs’s bastards. The King had housed them all in a secret location, where he could go and visit his children without causing a scandal. A few months earlier, after the birth of Athénaïs’s third royal bastard, the King had decided to legitimise his children and bring them to court, and so, of course, their governess had come to court too.

  I had been eager to know her, for Françoise was the granddaughter of the Huguenot writer Agrippa d’Aubigné. Born in Pons, only a hundred miles from the Château de Cazeneuve, he had written one of my favourite childhood books, Les Aventures du Baron de Faeneste, about the comic escapades of a Gascon in Paris.

  Born in a debtor’s prison, Françoise had married the crippled poet Paul Scarron at the age of sixteen. She looked after him till his death eight years later but was then left impoverished. She had seemed the perfect choice to look after Athénaïs’s children, leaving Athénaïs free to look after the King.

  Except the King seemed to enjoy Françoise’s company. She did not flirt, she did not flutter her eyelashes, she did not trill with laughter at his every ponderous witticism. Instead, Françoise talked to him about the children, and whether it was wise for Athénaïs to shower them with sweetmeats and toys. The King was observed seeking out her company more and more, and Athénaïs responded with catty remarks about her dullness and her dowdiness.

  When Françoise scratched on my door, I considered shouting ‘Go away’, but it was not wise to be rude to someone to whom the King was showing favour. I sighed, wrapped a dressing gown around me, and quickly flicked my haresfoot over my face and pinned up my hair, calling for her to enter.

  Françoise was not alone. The Duchesse de Guise was with her, a thin, bent, sour-faced woman renowned for her devoutness. The King’s first cousin, she would not permit her husband to sit in her presence, since he was only a duke and she had been born a princess. As if in protest, he had died of smallpox only four years after their marriage, leaving her with a small and sickly son. She was greatly committed to good works and spent so much time in prayer that her back was permanently bowed. I had made Michel laugh once by calling her ‘pickled with piety’, and indeed it was a good description.

  ‘Pardon us for disturbing you, mademoiselle,’ Françoise said. She was, as always, soberly dressed in a dark grey dress, free of ribbons, lace or puffed sleeves.

  ‘Not at all. It is always a pleasure to see you,’ I replied in my sweetest manner, hoping my eyes were not swollen and red. I offered the Duchesse de Guise the chair by the fire and stood in front of my bed, wishing I had thought to straighten the rumpled bedclothes.

  Françoise stood before the door, there being nowhere else to stand in my tiny room. ‘We have come on a rather delicate matter … I do hope you will forgive us.’

  ‘I suppose that depends on the delicate matter,’ I replied, smiling. ‘Although I cannot imagine you saying anything that could possibly offend me.’

  She smiled faintly in response. ‘I know how difficult it must be for you here at court, without any family of your own. You have no one to guide or advise you.’

  I waited, my smile feeling heavy on my face.

  ‘I do hope you will not mind if I take it upon myself to warn you …’ Françoise hesitated for a long moment, making my stomach muscles clench in sudden anxiety. I did not know what to fear. The presence of the Duchesse de Guise, tapping her fingers impatiently on the arm of her chair, made me suspect I was once again being pressed to change my faith, yet I was also all too conscious of the rumpled bedclothes beside me and the faint reek of lovemaking rising from the sheets.

  I was right on both counts. Françoise expressed sympathy for me, raised like herself as a Huguenot and no doubt wishing to honour my parents’ memory by choosing to follow their faith. ‘I too felt that way, until I came to see the consolation of the true faith. I would wish for that same consolation for you.’

  ‘Thank you. I am in no need of consolation.’

  ‘You are, however, in need of correction,’ the Duchesse de Guise snapped, obviously losing her patience. ‘I warn you, it has been noted you do not take Holy Communion or seek penance for your sins. You risk the everlasting fires of hell with your stubbornness.’

  My smile was now so stiff it hurt my face. ‘I am sorry you think so. I, however, was taught that true repentance consists of looking within my own heart. Luckily, we are both free to worship as we see fit in this country, given the great wisdom of His Majesty the King’s grandfather.’

  ‘I warn you, the King will not tolerate such radical views much longer,’ the Duchesse sneered. ‘They must be purged from the land like a rotten tumour.’

  I felt a stab of true fear. I had been brought up on stories of the religious wars, when Huguenots had been cruelly persecuted for their faith. Many had been burnt alive, sometimes whole villages locked inside their plain white chapels while at worship and the
church burnt to the ground. Surely, such times could not come again?

  After my mother was banished, and the Marquis de Maulévrier was sent by the King to be our guardian, I lost all belief in God. How could God exist, I raged inside my skull, when he let such things happen? My mother had believed that God was our friend, and we could talk to Him whenever we wanted. We did not need to pay the church for His attention. We did not need saints to intercede on our behalf. All we needed was our own pure quiet faith. Almighty God, I had prayed, if you truly exist, you’ll save my mother. You’ll send a lightning bolt to earth to strike the Marquis dead. You’ll turn him into a pile of ashes. You’ll send locusts and plague and the pox and all kinds of pestilence until he is dead and my mother is home.

  My mother was not saved. The Marquis was not punished. All I was left with was an aching hollowness where God had once been. In time, I had filled that hollowness with the constant whirl of excitement and entertainment and colour that was life at the royal court. Yet, all through this giddy galliard I had clung to the pure and simple practices of my mother’s religion. Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide. I was indeed honouring her memory in the only way I knew how.

  The Duchesse de Guise continued, in her vinegary way, ‘The King is contemplating passing a law that will make marriages between Catholics and Huguenots illegal. Any child of such a union will be illegitimate. You are long past the proper age for marriage, Mademoiselle de la Force. If you do not repent soon and abjure your false religion, you’ll find yourself left on the shelf.’

  I did not know how to answer that. I am only twenty-three, I wanted to cry, but I knew she was right. I was indeed long past the usual age of marriage. ‘I am poor and ugly, that is why no one will marry me,’ I answered.

  ‘Not at all,’ Françoise protested. ‘You have a most piquant little face, mademoiselle. And, perhaps, if you were to abjure … the King is eager to reward those who return to the true faith.’