Emilie's Voice

by Susanne Dunlap

  Mademoiselle’s guests expressed their appreciation loudly and long, except for one person: St. Paul stood in a far corner of the room, the faintest suggestion of a smile on his face. His arms were folded across his chest, and he leaned against a pillar, watching as his godmother kissed Émilie on the cheek and pressed a small velvet bag into her hand. Soon after, the nobleman left, unnoticed by any of the other guests.

  Émilie sang a few more times over the course of the evening, and the audience was enchanted. She wished that she and her tutor could have performed their duet, but he refused, saying that he did not want the guests to hear any voice but hers that night. When it was time for her to go, at one in the morning, Mademoiselle de Guise sent for her own coach to take her home, with its four black horses, its footmen in livery, and soft, velvet cushions. Émilie felt very grand.

  Monsieur Charpentier held the door open for her and she climbed into the carriage. “I’m very proud of you,” he said taking her hand for a moment. The gentle pressure of his fingers sent a little thrill through her, and Émilie looked down in confusion. It was then that she noticed the borrowed slippers, still on her feet. She paused for a second knowing that she should go back and return the shoes to Sophie, but she didn’t want to spoil the moment. It was something, to be handed into a vehicle that had been summoned just for her. Until they heard her destination, the footmen would think she was a fine lady. For just a moment, she believed it herself.

  I can return the slippers tomorrow, she thought, as the coach lurched forward and finished its arc around the courtyard, and then passed through the gate and turned left onto the rue du Chaume.

  Before long, Mademoiselle de Guise’s carriage stopped in front of Émilie’s door. The footman helped her out, and Émilie saw him sneer at her humble surroundings. She was determined not to let him ruin her evening, so she walked to her door with her chin held high.

  When Émilie thought about that moment months later, she felt ashamed that she had been so proud. If she had not been concerned about what Mademoiselle’s servants thought, about what they would tell the other domestics at the Hôtel de Guise when they returned, she would have walked carefully, looking down, and she would have seen the large puddle that lay directly in her path to the door. But because she did not do so, Émilie stepped right into the middle of it, breaking through the thin film of ice that had formed over it once the sun went down. Émilie drew her breath in sharply. For an instant she balanced with her other foot in the air, trying to find a way to step clear of the puddle. But dry ground was too far away, and she ended by standing with both feet in two inches of freezing cold water, which her long skirts quickly wicked up, soaking her to the knees.

  “Damn!” she whispered. She heard the coachman snicker. Trying to act as if nothing had happened, Émilie sloshed the rest of the way to the door, longing to turn around and stick her tongue out at the impudent servants. She fumbled for her key, which she had hidden in her bodice, not wanting to look like a housekeeper with it dangling around her waist, and so it was somewhat awkward to retrieve. When at last she got it, the lock on the door stuck. “Damn, damn! Just open, will you!” Émilie’s feet were so cold she could no longer feel them. But after a moment or two the door finally gave way. She slammed it behind her and leaned against it, listening to the sound of coach wheels and clopping hooves slowly dying away, struggling against the urge to cry. The borrowed slippers were surely ruined—not to mention her beautiful gown, a precious gift from Monsieur Charpentier.

  Émilie walked through the dark workshop, leaving wet footprints behind her and picking up the fine wood dust with her heavy, dragging skirts. She opened the door to the stairs at the back and began the long climb.

  When at last she arrived and let herself in, the fire in the grate had only a glow of forgotten warmth in it, and her teeth chattered audibly. Both Marcel and Madeleine were asleep, but not deeply. It was her father who awoke first and parted the curtains around their bed.

  “How was it—” he began, stopping at the sight of her. “Émilie, child! You are cold!”

  “I’ll be all right. I just want to go to sleep,” she said.

  Marcel’s exclamation roused Madeleine.

  “Did they pay you?” Madeleine sat up in bed and beckoned Émilie to come closer.

  Émilie’s throat felt a little scratchy, so she didn’t want to talk. She was so tired it felt like an enormous effort to walk across the small room to her parents’ bed. When she got there, she simply dropped the velvet bag of coins into her mother’s outstretched hand, then returned to her corner and let her damp dress drop to the floor. As she stepped out of the gown, Émilie saw the extent of the damage to the slippers and could no longer hold back her tears, which trickled down her cheeks, picking up color from the rouge Sophie had so expertly applied to them hours before. Her lovely evening was spoiled. Émilie slipped under her blanket, but not before she had unthreaded the pretty ribbon from her hair and tucked it under her pillow. By the time Marcel came over to make sure her covers were warm enough, she was already in a deep, exhausted sleep.

  “You might have asked her if she had a good time,” Marcel said to his wife when he climbed back into bed.

  “Better that she didn’t. I don’t like it, all this mixing with the wealthy folk. It won’t do for her to be getting ideas. She’ll only be hurt in the end.”

  Marcel sighed and turned over. He wondered why Madeleine was so hard on her only surviving child. She seemed to take no interest in Émilie’s talent and never even asked her to sing. He thought perhaps his wife was too afraid to become attached to their daughter, after losing so many other babies. It seemed a shame, as though she were cheating herself out of the one consolation of life. But there was nothing he could do to change Madeleine. And they were happy in their own way. Perhaps tomorrow she would let Émilie talk about all the fine clothes and jewels and tell them how the guests had clapped and fussed over her. Then maybe Madeleine would be able to take some joy in her daughter’s triumph.

  The next morning, when Émilie failed to be roused by the noise of logs being dropped onto the fire and the smell of breakfast, Madeleine went to prod her into action.

  “Oh, let her sleep a little longer!” Marcel begged.

  “What? Just because she was out making merry with the rich folks to all hours, she should lie in bed all day?” Madeleine asked. “Come on, time to be up!” she said, clapping her hands as she marched over to Émilie’s bed.

  But Émilie didn’t so much as budge. Madeleine nudged her daughter in the shoulder. “Émilie, wake up! It’s a beautiful day, and breakfast is waiting.”

  Émilie’s eyes opened halfway but did not see.

  “Marcel!” shouted Madeleine. She noticed beads of sweat on Émilie’s forehead and realized that she was unconscious with fever. Marcel came running.

  “Émilie! Émilie!” They shouted and rubbed and patted, but all Émilie could say was “Shoes … shoes.” Without knowing the manner in which she had come by the slippers, which Madeleine found on the floor by her bed, soggy and water-stained, the two parents quickly came to the conclusion that she blamed the inadequate footwear for bringing on the fever.

  “Damned flimsy—! If that Monsieur Charpentier has murdered my girl—!” Madeleine’s face was pale and her eyes bright.

  Marcel was beside himself, but he realized that his wife must feel even worse. She had been so unkind to Émilie the night before. He continued to rub Émilie’s wrists and call to her, trying to rouse her out of her delirium.

  Madeleine picked the slippers up off the floor. They were a mess, and no substitute for Émilie’s practical leather boots, although she could see that they must have been very beautiful once. No wonder she’s caught her death, she thought. They must have made Émilie walk home in the cold. Madeleine was about to hurl the offending footwear into the now blazing fire when she noticed that the pattern on their toes was defined by tiny jewels that had been sewn carefully in place. She paused in mid-ges
ture. Madeleine looked to see that her husband was completely engrossed in trying to rouse Émilie, then took the slippers to her workbox, swiftly cut out the jeweled bits, and tucked the precious scraps away beneath the coils of thread. Then she threw what was left of them onto the flames.

  Marcel’s efforts to get a response from Émilie were futile. He approached his wife, who stared absently into the fire, watching it flare up in magenta and blue as it gobbled the delicate satin.

  “I cannot wake her. I’ll fetch an apothecary,” he said, already putting on his cloak.

  Madeleine reached up and took down a pot that was on the wooden mantelpiece. It was where they kept what money they had for emergencies and to buy items they could not barter for. Out of it she took the velvet bag Émilie had given her the night before. Madeleine’s rough fingers untied the silk cord that held it closed. She upended the bag. The shiny, irregularly shaped yellow disks, stamped on one side with the image of a young King Louis XIV, clinked softly against each other as they poured into the palm of her hand. Madeleine stared at them for a moment. She had never held gold coins before.

  Marcel scooped the money up, charged down the steps, and flung open the door to the street, in the process nearly crashing into a very well-dressed gentleman who had his fist raised in preparation to knock.

  “Out of the way! My daughter is ill!” Marcel gasped, too distraught even to ask the stranger’s name.

  “Mademoiselle Émilie?” asked the gentleman.

  Marcel nodded and was about to push past him, but the visitor stood his ground. “Monsieur Jolicoeur, if I may be of service. I have it in my power to procure the very finest physicians. Come with me, if you will.”

  “Who are you—begging your pardon, Monsieur?” Marcel asked, finally noticing that the caller was a person of quality.

  “I am le Comte de St. Paul, godson of Mademoiselle de Guise,” St. Paul answered with a flourish of his hand.

  “Then you heard Émilie sing last night?” Marcel shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked past St. Paul, afraid of delay but eager to hear something about his daughter’s triumph the night before.

  St. Paul smiled. “Yes. A rare talent. But we are wasting time.”

  He gestured for Marcel to climb into his coach, and the two of them took off toward the right bank.

  When Marcel and St. Paul returned about an hour later with three bearded men who, she was told, were His Majesty’s own physicians, Madeleine was nonplussed. “We cannot afford their fees!” she whispered to Marcel, knowing that the money she had given him earlier would never cover everything.

  Marcel shrugged. “Monsieur le Comte is the godson of Mademoiselle de Guise. He insists that we are not to trouble ourselves about the cost, that it will all be taken care of.”

  Madeleine narrowed her eyes, and went to prepare a fresh bowl of vinegar water. She and her husband watched as the physicians laid on poultices and compresses and measured out drops of mysterious liquids from ominous-looking bottles.

  “What are you giving her?” Madeleine asked. She did not like to relinquish the nursing of her daughter to these strangers.

  “Only something to help her rest,” one of the doctors answered.

  The other one uncovered a bowl with leeches, shiny and black and squirming.

  Madeleine recoiled at the sight of them. “Must she be bled?”

  The doctor did not look at her but turned to St. Paul. “This room is very small. Perhaps you would clear it of distractions?”

  “Well, I—” The color rose into Madeleine’s cheeks when she realized they were pushing her out of the way.

  St. Paul took her by the elbow and steered her in the direction of the table. “I think the best thing you could do is make us all a nice tisane.”

  Marcel stood silently by the fireplace, his brown leather clothes almost blending into the wooden walls. He could not bear to watch the doctors examine and then bleed his daughter. “Will she be all right?” he asked St. Paul.

  “The doctors must watch her closely. I think it would be best if we left them to their purpose.”

  Madeleine tried to occupy herself by making a tisane, and Marcel reluctantly retired to his atelier. He realized he was completely incapable of contributing anything more to Émilie’s well-being, and their apartment was so small, he felt as if he could not move around it without bumping into someone or something. But down in his workshop Marcel found it hard to concentrate on what he was doing. He kept imagining Émilie there with him, peeking up at him every once in a while from beside the table. Sometimes he even thought he heard her sing, but it was just the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls.

  The doctors stayed around the clock. They had brought their own candles, and they refused Madeleine’s offers of tisane and bread. St. Paul came to visit again the next morning. When he was there, Madeleine became a little nervous, and blushed—things that rarely happened to her. They had let this elegantly turned-out nobleman into their home and were suddenly on the most intimate footing with him. It seemed indecent, and yet somehow thrilling. When he arrived, St. Paul greeted her with a smile and gazed deeply into her eyes, before bowing over her hand and kissing it. Madeleine brought the best chair over to Émilie’s bedside for him to sit in, and she stood next to him. As they spoke in whispers, St. Paul let the back of his hand accidentally brush against Madeleine’s thigh, and when he stood to confer with her about Émilie’s health, he placed his fingers lightly upon her shoulder.

  Within a day Madeleine’s initial distrust of St. Paul evaporated. She was not accustomed to such attention and regard. Compared to the discreetly refined sensitivity of the count, Marcel’s gruff affection seemed coarse and common.

  The grass in the garden was brown and crisp with frost. It crunched beneath St. Paul’s feet as he walked to a secluded corner to meet the widow Scarron. She was already there waiting for him, her black garments stark against the crisp landscape. She stood with her back to him and spoke still facing away.

  “What, I wonder, could possibly necessitate such uncomfortable secrecy?” She turned and extended her hand to St. Paul, who took it and bowed over it, not even touching it with his lips.

  “I have news that will warm you,” he said rubbing his own gloved hands together.

  “Speak.”

  “Let me first ask you, what is the king’s greatest passion?”

  “Monsieur de St. Paul, it is too cold to play games.” Madame de Maintenon turned away and prepared to leave him.

  “This game, as you call it, could be the answer to our prayers.”

  “Are you a devout man, St. Paul?”

  “As devout as most,” he answered.

  “Which is to say, not at all. Pray then, do not make light of the sacred practices of our Holy Church.”

  St. Paul prepared to speak, then thought better of it.

  “You had better state your business.”

  “Very well.” The count took a step or two closer to Madame de Maintenon. “I shall answer my own question. The king’s passion is music. What if I were to say—I mean, I must tell you that I have found a voice in a million, a true novelty, a voice—”

  “Is she pretty?” interrupted Madame de Maintenon.

  St. Paul thought for a moment before answering. “She is only a child.”

  The widow Scarron looked at him. “Ah,” she said. “I think you had better tell me more.”

  St. Paul stretched out on the narrow bed in his tiny apartment at Versailles. His boots were filthy, but he was too tired to take them off.

  “Jacques!” he yelled. But no one came. “My head!” St. Paul groaned aloud to the empty room. It was very quiet, but he could hear distant voices, perhaps in the kitchens on the floor below.

  He was hungry. At the moment, unless he managed to arrive at his godmother’s in time for lunch or dinner, or happened to be in attendance upon the widow Scarron at a mealtime, he was unlikely to get much of anything to eat. His uncle was abroad and had
closed up the Paris house to save money, and St. Paul had gone through everything he had. Short of selling his clothes, his personal effects, his carriage, or his horses, he had no means of getting cash. Mademoiselle de Guise had given him twenty silver écus the night of her soirée, but he had used them up paying the court physicians and buying little presents to curry favor with the girl’s mother. It was a gamble, but this time, St. Paul thought, it would all pay off. He had nothing more to lose; half the moneylenders in Paris were hounding him. If something did not go right soon, he might have to flee to England. It was annoying, to be born with a title and position and have a father who was so fond of gaming that he wagered his son’s inheritance. When he sobered up and realized what he’d done, the old count had jumped off a bridge into the Seine.

  St. Paul was only eight years old at the time. For the next ten years, the boy and his mother lived with her brother, a prosperous banker in Paris by the name of Goncourt. But when his sister died and left him to find a career for her then eighteen-year-old son, the banker had the effrontery to suggest that the young gentleman might be useful in his business. More than that, he utterly refused to give him any money unless he earned it.

  “Damn it, Jacques! Where the devil are you?” St. Paul sat up slowly and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He reached for the almost-empty beaker of wine, which he tipped up and drained into his mouth, licking out the insides with his tongue. St. Paul felt deep within him that he was made for something greater than this meager existence, and that the way to get what he wanted was not by sitting at a desk in a bank. He was convinced that he could secure a profitable position at court, that he would prove himself to be not only useful but indispensable. There were not many at Versailles who were smarter than he was. Even the widow Scarron, he thought, was not fully aware of his abilities. Soon, however, she would be in no doubt, despite her reticence. If everything went well, that little girl’s voice would open doors for him as if by magic, and Madame de Maintenon would see to it that the king rewarded him handsomely.