Two men carried in a throne chair—no doubt used as a stage prop—and placed it facing the group. Another man helped Monsieur Pierre to it and offered him an ear-trumpet to speak into, but he waved it off.
Vigorous applause fell away to an attentive silence. Monsieur Pierre began to speak, and then stopped to clear his throat. Someone jumped up to give him a jug of wine, which he theatrically raised in toast before pretending to down it.
“Well,” he said, feigning to be drunk, “that’s just what I needed.”
It was a silly jest and he delivered it rather lamely, but I laughed along with all the others.
“Madame Babette?” He held out his hand. The old woman in the wig sprang (with surprising agility) from the bench with a stack of parchment secured at one corner with twine: a script.
“Since many of you are already familiar with The Golden Fleece, I’m just going to explain the highlights,” Monsieur Pierre mumbled, looking over the pages. “It begins with a prologue, an allegory played out by War, Peace, and Victory. You can guess who wins.”
A few people laughed. Monsieur Pierre was not a player, clearly—he was bumbling and spoke with a slight stutter—but might he possibly be the author of the play? I tapped the shoulder of the man sitting in front of me. “Excuse me, Monsieur, but … who is Monsieur Pierre?” I asked under my breath.
He glanced back at me with incredulity. “That’s Pierre Corneille.”
The Great Corneille?
I sat back, stunned. I did not believe it. Could not! For one thing, the great playwright was said to have retired. For another, this old man was endearingly humble, pathetically stooped, painfully awkward, tongue-tied, and stumbling. I’d been raised by his heroic, resounding words, learned to read from his scripts. He was, as my father had irreverently joked, our family saint.
I sat in a daze, unhearing, as the man who was, apparently, the Great Corneille, stuttered through a boring summary of The Golden Fleece. Everyone began to fidget.
How could a writer of such great lines mumble? It was difficult to hear half the words he spoke. There was polite but heartfelt applause as he finally described the closing scene.
“Thank you, Monsieur Pierre,” Monsieur la Roque said, standing. “We are honored beyond measure to be the means by which you return to the Paris stage—and in triumph.”
And with that, everyone jumped to their feet, applauding wildly, I among them. I could not believe what I was witnessing!
Monsieur Pierre carefully stood, and, one hand on the arm of his “throne,” smiled gravely and tipped his hat.
I blinked back tears. If only Mother and my brother were with me now. I couldn’t wait to tell them.
“Excusez-moi,” a woman said, standing to get by. The meeting was over.
I stumbled down to the entry and pressed my way through the standing clusters of people toward the door. I felt dizzy and needed air.
But—stars!—he was standing at the door, clasping people’s hands.
A quaking overtook me. I looked to see if there might be another way out.
“There she is,” he said, spotting me.
I dipped into a deep curtsy, not daring to meet his eyes. I feared that my left leg was going to give out. “Monsieur Corneille,” I said at last, managing to rise.
“I was hoping you’d still be here,” he said amiably. He turned to Monsieur la Roque, who was standing near. “This is the young woman I was telling you about—the daughter of Alix des Oeillets.”
Monsieur la Roque regarded me with interest. “And you are …?”
I must not faint! I took a slow breath. “Claude des Oeillets.” My cheeks were burning, my heart pounding, my mouth dry.
“I’d very much like to see your mother again,” Monsieur Corneille said. “How long has it been? Twenty-three years?”
“And perhaps,” added La Roque, “we might discuss the possibility of her playing the occasional minor role? We are in need of someone at the moment. It’s only a walk-on, but …”
CHAPTER 16
Mother pressed her hands to her throat, her eyes wide. “Claudette, I’m sorry—but I … I can’t.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying! This was the most amazing opportunity! All our cares over, all our struggles—never to worry about the next meal. We’d be able to take Gaston to a healer who would know how to set him right. We’d hire him a tutor and eventually buy him an apprenticeship. I might even be able to save for a dowry—marry. “But, Maman, it’s the Marais, your theater.” I wouldn’t have to scrub down tavern outhouses anymore. “The play is a new one by Corneille, and it’s about the sorceress Medea, your favorite.” The murderess Medea who kills her own children—as my mother was killing me!
She burst into tears. “You don’t understand.”
“You’re right: I don’t!” I slumped down beside her on the rushes. I felt at a loss when my mother wept. I should be the one to weep! “Monsieur Corneille asked for you himself.” A prayer come true! But now it seemed it was all for naught. “He remembered you—you and Father. He remembered your names.”
Mother made tight fists. “There’s something you don’t know.” Her voice was reverent and tremulous. “I vowed to forsake the theater on your father’s grave.”
“But Father wanted this, Maman,” I said, pleading now. Never mind that he had no grave! “He said acting was your God-given gift.”
The terrified look in my mother’s eyes broke my heart. I put my arm around her thin shoulders, pressed my cheek against her frizzled red hair. “Those were his very words.”
Mother wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron. “But it’s been such a long time.”
“I’ll go with you—and Gaston too,” I said. “We’ll all go together. It’s only to talk about a walk-on role. You won’t have to do anything.”
MOTHER HAD FRIGHTS in the morning, of course. I made her a calming lemon balm to take with her morning gruel. “I’m putting your little Virgin in my bag,” I assured her, refreshing Gaston on proper etiquette: stand tall, at least try to lock eyes (he was so shy), dip with a sweep of his hat. “Monsieur Corneille looks like a clerk, but he’s the greatest man in the land,” I said. “Treat him as if he were king.”
“Oh Mary!” Mother sighed, fanning herself with her chicken-feather fan (in spite of the bitter cold). The very mention of the Great Corneille stirred up her humors, put her in a state of profound disarray.
OUTSIDE, THE WORLD was frozen but bright. The sun was high, and everything seemed unearthly. Mother began dragging as we approached the theater, turning in a trance of memory. “I remember that shop. But oh, that’s new. Look how this tree has grown.”
I took advantage of her reverie to glide her through the theater doors, which had been propped open with a paving stone.
“This isn’t it,” she said, coming to a stop in the entry, her hands on her hips. “This isn’t the theater of the Marais.”
Now what? “Maman, this is the Marais.”
“It’s completely different, except for—” Mother gazed down at a star design set into the stone floor. “Except for this,” she said, running the toe of her boot over the points of the star. “This, I remember. Gaston, Claudette, look! Your father, he proposed to me … right here. My beloved Nicolas stood on this very spot.” She blinked to keep back tears.
“It’s all that is left of the old theater.”
We turned, startled by a man’s voice. The Great Corneille was plainly dressed: still looking like a weary accountant whose sums didn’t add up.
I gestured to Gaston to wipe his chin as I sank into a curtsy.
“I’d raise my hat if I could.” Monsieur Corneille held parcels in each hand. “Would you care for a beignet, Madame Alix … des Oeillets now, is that correct? I recall you had a fondness for them. These ones are cheese,” he said, extending a hand.
“You know me too well, Monsieur Corneille,” Mother said with a smile, accepting the offer.
“Monsieur Pierre, please.�
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“You’ve met my daughter?” Mother asked, biting into the treat with relish.
“And this must be your son,” he said, insisting that Gaston take a beignet as well.
Only one, I motioned. And say thanks.
“I was saddened to learn that Nicolas is no longer with us, Alix,” the great playwright added, helping Gaston get one out of the sack.
“I was just telling my children that he proposed marriage right on this spot.” Mother glanced back down at the floor. “But everything else seems different,” she said, pressing a finger against her quivering lower lip.
“Th-th-th-th-th-anks!” Gaston managed in a high, anxious voice. I smiled at him. Well done.
“The theater burned down and had to be rebuilt,” Monsieur Corneille said, offering Gaston another beignet. I nodded: Go ahead. “This stone floor is all that remains. I’m grateful to have some remembrance of those days. Just this morning I was thinking of that opening performance of The Cid. I was so young, so nervous—”
“We all were!”
“—a failed lawyer from the provinces. Do you remember my little brother Thomas? The brat, I believe you players called him.”
“Once he knotted my laces together. I almost missed a cue!”
“He’s grown now, and a playwright himself—quite successful. Writes popular pieces, but I couldn’t be more proud. He married my wife’s sister—”
“Ah, so you married. We feared you’d be a bachelor forever.”
“Oui, quite married, and settled in Rouen with a half-dozen children. I can hardly keep track of them all. I confess I don’t mind my occasional trips into Paris. But allow me to show you the changes,” he said, offering Mother his arm. “I doubt that you will be disappointed.
We have good-sized dressing rooms—”
“Dressing rooms? Really?”
“And the stage is deeper than it was before, and raked, so that even the men standing in the pit can see.”
“Doesn’t that make the players dizzy?”
“They complain, but overall it has been a great success. As well, the troupe has recently invested in some machines—”
“For changing scenery?” Mother looked confused.
“That’s only a fraction of what these new inventions can do: flying seraphim, monsters of every description, an entire cast descending from the clouds. It’s witchcraft, some claim. No wonder the machinist is called Keeper of Secrets.” He paused at the door. “I tried to retire, Alix—but I had to come back. These fantastical means of staging a play are simply too magical. I couldn’t resist. And now, with peace here at last, it seems like the beginning of a new age.”
“The glory days again,” Mother said reverently.
“Ah! Do you remember when …”
Gaston and I followed after the great playwright and our mother, listening with wonder as they chattered on, like the best of old friends.
HOLDING A CANDLE aloft, Monsieur Corneille waved away cobwebs. Critters scurried at our approach. We were in the bowels of the theater. We passed by a series of rooms. “For the players,” Monsieur Corneille said, but they were all locked. “Monsieur la Roque will be here soon. He’ll have the keys.”
A vast subterranean room was rigged with enormous logs, pulleys, and scaffoldings: the magical machines he’d mentioned. I kept Gaston near; they looked terrifying.
We climbed the worn wood stairs to the players’ foyer.
“This is where the players wait until it’s their turn to go onstage,” Mother explained to Gaston.
To one side was a slate story board, so that the players could understand how the drama was unfolding. A chalk bag hung from a nail.
I followed Monsieur Corneille and my mother out onto the stage.
The stage.
In front: the parterre, where men stood to watch, and in the shadows at the back, stalls where beer and food could be bought. Along the walls on either side I could make out the tiers of curtained loges for the wealthy. Higher up, near the roof, was the Paradis, where servants and family of the players sat.
As Mother and Monsieur Corneille talked of the past, and Gaston stood slowly relishing the last of his beignet, I climbed up to the upper stage. Such height! I touched the rail and looked out over the empty theater. I tried to imagine what it would have been like, my mother and father dressed for their roles, the theater crowded with men (and even some women), the Knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost lined up on their special bench, Monsieur Corneille—the Great Corneille—pacing and applauding.
On this very stage, in this very place: the glory days.
CHAPTER 17
That night we celebrated, drinking weak beer and feasting on fried pig ears and a roasted turnip. We ate in a blissful stupor, Mother and I now and again recalling various moments: our chat with Monsieur la Roque about all the things we could do; the charming way he pulled on a point of his beard as he explained what was needed; that moment when he glanced at Monsieur Corneille, smiling: we were in!
We’d only be paid a few sous a day, but it was a beginning. “To the future,” I said, raising my mug. We were to start at daybreak.
IN THE WEEKS that followed, all the members of the troupe frantically prepared for the ouverture, the play-day after Easter when theaters opened their doors to the public. Much of the time was spent in meetings, I discovered. The troupe did everything together, and by consensus: this required patience. Mother and I weren’t voting members—these were the full-share players, the playwright and the director, who together made all the decisions—but even as part-time workers on the overhire list, we were allowed to observe. In this way we came to understand the workings of the troupe and got to know all the people involved, the players as well as baggage-men and wig-makers, dressers and scene-shifters, doorkeepers and stagehands, call-boys and prompters. I scratched their names on the back of an old playbill with a stick of burnt willow to help me remember.
Between watching Gaston (not always easy), trimming wicks and refilling oil lamps, finding props, mending costumes, and keeping loges tidy, there was a great deal to do. I watched over Mother to see how she was managing all this. She’d been in a dream world for a long time, a world of tears and shadow. Now suddenly she was surrounded by people—loud, expressive, sometimes rather eccentric people, people whose own humors were often out of balance. Amazingly, the world of the theater seemed to have restored her faculties to some extent. She was still charmingly witless, but now she seemed more her old self, lively and spunky. (Thank you, Father.)
As for Gaston, at first he was bewildered by all the commotion. I did my best to keep him close, watching what items he “took” for one of his curious trails of objects (watching that it wasn’t a player’s shoe or prop he borrowed). I tried over and over again to get him to understand that things belonged to people, and that just because an object—a hat, a feather, a valise—interested him, it was not acceptable to simply walk off with it. I explained his obsession to the players, who were fairly understanding, calling him Turnip and treating him as a pet.
Our first production, the play by Brécourt, drew only modest audiences. The young playwright was devastated, but the players assured him that it was not his play that was to blame—not at all! The problem was competition from a new troupe now performing in Paris, a troupe that had given a performance for the King and his new bride.
“New in town and they’re already performing for His Majesty?” one of the players said with a groan.
“That’s cause for concern.”
“We have enough competition from the Bourgogne.”
The Hôtel de Bourgogne, I gathered, was a long-established theatrical troupe that performed tragedies, serious fare.
“Ay, we don’t need another rival company to contend with.”
“Especially now—”
Now with the costly production of The Golden Fleece. In addition to supplying all their own costumes—no small expense!—the players had invested a great deal in this ma
chine play.
“Don’t worry about Monsieur Molière,” Monsieur la Roque assured everyone, trying to alleviate concerns. “His troupe is good at farce, but not much else.”
Even so, we fretted. A new machine play by the Great Corneille could be expected to be a success, but everything had to be perfect. It didn’t help that the flying system didn’t seem to be working. Buffequin, the Keeper of Secrets, was constantly adjusting it, constantly testing. I looked on in horror one afternoon as Mother was being strapped into the harness.
“Take me, instead,” I said (but felt ill at the thought). Gaston looked on, sucking his thumb.
Denis Buffequin regarded me with his one good eye. “Until I know for sure that it’s working, I need someone light in weight.”
“Don’t worry!” Mother said bravely, though I could see apprehension in her eyes.
I checked to make sure the buckles were secure and stepped back, making a silent prayer to Father.
Without warning, Mother was jolted into the air and swung out over the parterre. She went higher, higher, until—ye gods!—she was level with the benches of the Paradis. Gaston grasped my hand. I closed my eyes.
I heard a curse and the machinery came to a stop. Mother was suspended up in the air. I feared I was going to lose my stomach and make water at the same time.
“Just a moment, Madame des Oeillets,” Buffequin assured her. “We’ll have you down in a moment.”
“Must you?” Mother called down from above, spreading her arms and extending a pointed toe. “This is glorious!”
The players applauded and Gaston, smiling hesitantly, brought his hands together: once, twice.
I WAS FITTING Mother for her gown when I noticed Monsieur la Roque run up to Monsieur Pierre, waving his hands in the air. I put down my case of pins. Did it signify alarm or foolery? The troupe had been working day and night in preparation for the opening of The Golden Fleece and everyone was becoming teethy.
I watched as La Roque talked with Monsieur Pierre, who frowned gravely, pulling on his chin tuft. Monsieur la Roque’s big-chested voice was often easy to hear, but there was a considerable clanging coming from under the stage, where Buffequin was working on one of the chariots that carried the side wing-flats.
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