Emilie's Voice

by Susanne Dunlap

  “Then I am no better than you, François, for my father is only a humble luthier. Can’t we be friends?”

  François shifted a little nervously from one foot to the other and glanced around him.

  “I think we’re alone here. Everyone else has gone out hunting!” said Émilie, trying to put him at ease. It was François himself who had told her that the king was so passionate about stag hunting that all the courtiers, whether they wanted to or not, went on the hunt with him.

  “Mademoiselle, humble you may once have been, but you have been chosen to be elevated to a different class, and you must seek your friends among those who are much better than I.” He bowed again and was about to retire, when Émilie’s entreaty stopped him.

  “Please wait, François. They do not care about me. They only take care of me because I can sing. Have you heard me sing, François?”

  “No, Mademoiselle Émilie,” he answered, preparing to withdraw again.

  “No! Don’t leave,” she begged, and then, before he could protest, she began to sing a little folk song, one that reminded her of Paris.

  Émilie started out quietly, but before long the generous tones of her voice filled the large, vacant space of the Salle de Bal. Everything she consciously withheld from Lully’s music she poured into that simple ballad. She fixed her eyes on François, pinning him to his spot with her song. As she warmed to her performance, Émilie ornamented each verse more and more lavishly, so that by the seventh and final one, she enhanced the contours of the melody with her own twists and turns, with spine-tingling flourishes and astounding feats of vocal gymnastics.

  François had never been the focus of anyone’s attention in this way before in his life. In fact, he possessed the capacity of being almost invisible when he chose to be, and it was this quality that had caused the widow Scarron to single him out as her eyes and ears at court. She was not a wealthy woman, but her influence had made his life in the king’s retinue as comfortable as anyone’s. He had a private room that was ample, warm, and well-furnished, and he ate not with the domestic servants but with the personal valets and maids, many of whom were from good families in straitened circumstances. In exchange, he made it his business to be in a position to know the sordid affairs of everyone who ever got close to the king, and to report back to Madame de Maintenon. Of all the tasks his mistress had ever given him to perform, spying on this young singer was certainly the most pleasant. She did as she was told, and was too young and innocent to make it likely that he would ever have to burst in upon some intimate scene “by accident,” or intercept some poison-pen letter destined to stir up trouble among Louis’s intimates. Émilie, who was barely more than a child, was like a fresh breeze blowing through the château. And here she was, singing for him. He had never heard anything more lovely in his entire life.

  When the song was over, François made Émilie a low bow but this time did not turn to leave.

  “Can we be friends now?” she asked, suddenly seeming like a little girl again. For a moment François wondered if the girl really knew what she was asking. It would be useful to have her confidence, but something in him shrank from abusing it in such a way. There was no way to deny her, however, especially when agreeing would so easily suit the purposes of Madame de Maintenon.

  “It would be my honor,” answered François. “I fear it is too cold to walk in the gardens. Would you like me to escort you through the château?”

  As Émilie and François strolled aimlessly through the public reception rooms of the great palace, she talked about her father, her mother, making violins, and mending by the firelight.

  “My father makes the best stringed instruments in Paris, you know,” said Émilie. Her eager smile faded and her lower lip began to tremble.

  Oh dear, François thought. He was supposed to make sure she was content, so that she would not cause trouble or try to leave. “Please don’t cry, Mademoiselle,” he said, holding out to her a large, white cambric handkerchief. He watched her wipe her eyes and then blow her nose into it. Then he had an idea. “Would it make you feel less lonely, Mademoiselle, to write to your parents?” A correspondence might be just the thing. A girl at her age would undoubtedly pour out any secrets upon the page, especially one so unused to the treachery of court. Thus he could remain acquainted with everything she was thinking without even having to ask.

  Émilie’s face brightened for a moment and then clouded. “They cannot read.”

  “Is there no one you could ask to inquire after them, and who would bring them your news?” Having once hit upon this clever stratagem, François was unwilling to give it up at the first hurdle.

  “I could write to Monsieur Charpentier!” said Émilie. “He could go and read my letters to my parents.” And then, she thought, she could also explain to him about the shoes and get him to tell Sophie how sorry she was.

  François stopped in his tracks. This wasn’t quite what he expected. “Is there no one else? Really, anyone else would do.” They had reached the Ambassadors’ Staircase. He looked around quickly and then steered Émilie into a little antechamber that would not be quite so public, where their voices would not resonate so dangerously.

  “Why?” asked Émilie.

  How was he to explain the complicated factors and nuances that led to being out of favor at court? For that was precisely Charpentier’s position. Yet if the musician was really the only person Émilie knew who could read, perhaps there was a way to make it work without really being disloyal.

  “Monsieur Lully fears no one so much as Monsieur Charpentier. You see, word of his great talent has reached Versailles, and he is the only one who stands a chance of displacing the court composer. Monsieur Lully has tried to convince the king that Charpentier is not to be trusted, that Charpentier was a traitor.”

  Émilie’s already large eyes grew immense at this. “How could anyone believe it of him?”

  How indeed, François thought. The poor man was only guilty of being talented. “He went away to Italy for some years. And now he works for the Duchesse de Guise, whose family has always been a threat to the throne. Although these things prove nothing, to his enemies they are, shall we say, suggestive?”

  “I suppose, then, for you to take a letter to Monsieur Charpentier would not be wise?” Émilie inquired.

  François bowed his head to think. Émilie’s eyes filled with tears again.

  “There, there, Mademoiselle! Perhaps there would be no harm …” François made a decision in that moment to take a chance. Madame de Maintenon might not approve. But she wasn’t in the habit of questioning how he came by the information he transmitted to her. “If you would permit me, I will make some enquiries, and then let you know tomorrow if there is a way to manage it so that a letter can be delivered to your friend.”

  “Oh, thank you! A thousand times!” Émilie went down on her knees before the astonished François, who waved her up nervously.

  “As I said, I shall inquire. But remember, I promise nothing.”

  Jean-Baptiste de Lully—he insisted on the de, even though his claim to it was tenuous and based on a distant relation in Italy, the place of his birth—had been brought to court as a mere boy to entertain the Grande Mademoiselle, the king’s first cousin, and teach her Italian. No one paid much attention to him for several years, until one day when a young King Louis XIV discovered the extent of Lully’s talent entirely by chance. Someone heard the young lad playing the violin in the kitchen quarters, and after that, his rise to position of favorite was meteoric. Luckily for Lully, he was also smart enough to know when to switch loyalties, and so as soon as the Grande Mademoiselle was in disgrace after the Fronde, he made sure to attach himself to the king’s retinue. Once in place, he set about pleasing his powerful patron until he became nearly indispensable to France’s great monarch.

  “Pierre!” Lully called when he reached the door of his comfortable apartment on the ground floor of the château shortly after he finished trying to teach Émilie
, who had been thrust upon him by Madame de Maintenon, the right way to sing.

  The door opened, and a lithe valet of about seventeen bowed and ushered him in. “Monsieur de Lully, would you care for a cordial?”

  “No, I just need to rest a bit before I attend the king,” Lully sighed, as he sank into an upholstered chair and put his feet up on the stool that Pierre brought over to him. He closed his eyes when the young man removed the tight, high-heeled shoes he wore and began to massage his feet. “You are too good to me,” he said. “Come, sit by me here.”

  Pierre shifted his position so that he was by the side of Lully’s chair, and then leaned his head upon the composer’s knee. Lully stroked his blond curls.

  “I am heartily sick of being used to further the schemes of that woman!”

  Pierre turned his head to look up through his long lashes at Lully. “What woman?”

  “Who else could I mean? The widow Scarron, of course. Daily she seems to rise in the king’s esteem, and he doesn’t even notice how she’s manipulating him.”

  Pierre turned and put his hands on Lully’s knee, then rested his chin atop them. “What has she done now?”

  Lully traced the contours of the valet’s face with his forefinger. “She has foisted a young singer upon me, a little younger than you, I imagine! A girl with a very pretty voice, but still untrained. She was a protégée of that upstart, Charpentier.”

  “And now you have got her, n’est-ce pas?” Pierre smiled.

  “You’re a smart lad! Yes, indeed. And I may be able to make something of her, if she is not pushed along too fast. But mark my words, Pierre, she is not here merely to sing. Madame de Maintenon must have plans to dangle her before the king.”

  “Ah, so she must be pretty.”

  Lully lifted Pierre’s chin and gazed into his eyes. “If you like that sort of pretty, I suppose she is.” He bent toward the servant, who rose up higher on his knees to meet him. Just before their lips touched, there was a loud knock upon the door. Pierre stood quickly and smoothed down his satin uniform and Lully sat back in his chair. “Go and see who it is, Pierre,” Lully said, loudly enough so that whoever was waiting would hear.

  The boy opened the door to a black-liveried servant of the widow Scarron. “Madame de Maintenon wishes to see you, if you are free to attend her.”

  Lully said nothing for a moment, then kicked the footstool out of the way and stood up from his chair. “I was taught never to keep a lady waiting. I shall come in half an hour.”

  The servant bowed and left. As soon as Pierre shut the door, both he and Lully burst into peals of laughter.

  After a week of being turned away by Madeleine from seeing Émilie, Charpentier decided it was better to give Madame Jolicoeur some time to cool off before renewing his attempts to get his pupil back. He threw himself into his work, trying to put Émilie out of his mind. But even so much feverish activity did not prevent him from dwelling on the fact that his talented pupil had been taken away from him, and for no apparent reason. The last time he went to the atelier, Marcel had told him she was making a good recovery, although still unable to stay awake for very long, and Charpentier was concerned that perhaps she might have had a relapse. So he decided to return to the workshop on the Pont au Change and make one last attempt to see Émilie, so that he could begin the process of persuading her parents to allow her to return to her lessons. He did not think that Marcel shared his wife’s feelings that Émilie’s illness was his fault, and so Charpentier hoped that perhaps a little effort would mend things. He was fully prepared to have to convince them all over again that it was in Émilie’s best interest that she continue to study. The key was to see and talk to Émilie. If only he could do that, he knew he could persuade her, and Marcel was not likely to stand in his daughter’s way.

  Charpentier knocked on the door of the atelier and Marcel let him in.

  “I have come to see Émilie. She must surely be better now, and you must know that I did not cause her illness.”

  Marcel did not meet his eyes. “She is not here, Monsieur.”

  Charpentier staggered backward as if he had been struck. “You can’t mean …” he said.

  “Oh, no, Monsieur! I am so sorry. Émilie is still alive, and completely recovered. She has just gone away.”

  It took a moment for Charpentier to adjust to this news. At first his relief was so great that he wanted to embrace the luthier. But then there was this other information. She was not there. There was a quiet emptiness in the atelier, and Marcel was not his usual cheerful self. “Where is she?”

  The luthier put down the knife he was still holding and wiped his hands on his leather apron. “She has gone to Versailles.”

  “Versailles? Why on earth?”

  “Monsieur de St. Paul said they would be able to look after her there, and she would have lessons with Monsieur Lully.”

  Lully. There it was again, that name that stood between Charpentier and all his fondest ambitions. It was simply too much. “And you believed him? Do you know what kind of a place it is to which you have sent your only daughter?” Charpentier raised his voice. Although making a brilliant début at court could assure anyone’s future, it was also a dangerous place, especially for pretty young girls.

  Marcel was not practiced at hiding his feelings, and his eyes revealed that he not only understood Charpentier’s implications but was deeply troubled by them. “But Monsieur de St. Paul was so kind, so concerned about Émilie. And she will have many opportunities to advance herself. What could be the harm in that?”

  Charpentier was a little sorry he had frightened Marcel, who, after all, was only trying to do what he thought best for his daughter. If only they had let him in to see her! If only he could have spoken to Émilie, could have found out what she really wanted. “I am only speaking from what I have heard from others. Perhaps it will turn out all right for Émilie. They may truly take care of her, because of her extraordinary voice.” Charpentier did not hold out much hope that Émilie’s remarkable talent would protect her for long. But he could not help feeling for Marcel, whose expression only became more pathetic with everything Charpentier said to him. “What do you hear of her?” asked Charpentier, forcing himself to appear more calm. “Does she like Versailles?”

  “As yet, we have heard little.” Marcel pushed some curls of wood around with his boot, making them into a shape on the floor. “But Monsieur de St. Paul promised to stop in and bring us more news by and by.”

  Charpentier remembered that the luthier and his wife could not read and therefore must rely on a visit from some intermediary to find out how Émilie was doing. When he realized that this was probably the first time Marcel had been separated from his only child, Charpentier softened. It must have cost the craftsman a great deal to agree to part with her in the first place. But he could not rid himself of the sinking feeling that Marcel and his wife would never see their daughter again. And whose fault was it anyway? It was he who had brought Émilie to the attention of the nobility by presenting her at the princess’s salon. He could not blame Marcel for being taken in by St. Paul. All he could do now was to demonstrate his friendship by continuing to take an interest in Émilie. “I would be grateful if you would send word to me if—when—you hear anything of your daughter,” Charpentier said, bowing to Marcel and taking his leave.

  Once on the street Charpentier walked not back to the Hôtel de Guise but instead onto the island in the middle of the Seine, the ancient heart of Paris, to wander around the market near Notre Dame. It was winter, and so there were no flowers in the open-air stalls, only beautiful caged birds. People scurried and jostled and went about their business, stopping occasionally to stare at a particularly exotic specimen. Having once gauped at these refugees from distant shores, they all continued on their way, hardly breaking their conversations to register the divine miracle that created such a vivid rainbow of colors.

  To Charpentier, the human voices sounded harsh and loud. Even the laughter of
children was shrill and unpleasant to him. Only one sound could satisfy Charpentier’s hungry ear, and it was out of his reach for the foreseeable future. Still he wandered through the marketplace searching for something, anything that might take its place. His eyes combed the cages, some large and ornate, others tiny. He watched a young blade buy a bullfinch for his lady love, and followed them with his eyes as they walked away laughing merrily. Charpentier was almost ready to give up his search when, all at once, almost out of sight, a very old woman with only one bird in a cage caught his eye. This bird was not splashed with vibrant colors like the parrots and canaries that had been borne on ships from the tropics to Paris. It was mostly brown, almost plain, but with a knowing eye that peered out at Charpentier from between the bars of its simple cage.

  “Does it sing?” he asked her.

  “She does not like the cage. At home, I let her out, and then she sings.”

  “So your nightingale is not for sale?”

  “No, not for sale.” The old lady reached into a satchel and pulled out a crochet hook and the end of a ball of yarn, and started to work her gnarled fingers so rapidly that the fabric she created seemed to flow magically from her hands.

  “Then why do you bring her here?” Charpentier asked.

  “For company.”

  He looked closely at the bird, which seemed rather aloof from its surroundings. “She doesn’t seem to care about the other birds.”

  “Not her, Monsieur, me! I like the company!” The old lady started to cackle, and everyone within earshot turned to look.

  “Perhaps I can change your mind?” Charpentier suggested, taking a purse full of coins out of his waistcoat.

  The crone paused in her laughter long enough to weigh the purse in her hand. After a moment she gave it back to Charpentier, and said, “Non, Monsieur. There is not money enough for my nightingale.”