Emilie's Voice

by Susanne Dunlap

  This encounter was her first, but not her last. The stinking men, whose drunken embraces she endured in corners of taverns and in ill-lit alleyways, disgusted her. Yet she did not think of herself as a whore. She was able to shut off some part of her and accept her fate, counting the coins she amassed day by day.

  After a time Sophie learned the ropes enough to attract a higher class of clients. She knew the ways of the court and the gentry and was quick-witted and entertaining. Word spread among the gentlemen who roamed the Paris streets looking for a good time that Mademoiselle Sophie could be counted on to provide one. Gradually her life improved. Her quick thinking and luck made it unnecessary for her to join a “stable” or to stay in a whorehouse surrounded by other prostitutes, most of whom died before reaching their fortieth birthdays, either from the English disease, at the hands of inept abortionists, or at the hands of men who thought that women who forfeited their virtue also forfeited their right to live. For Sophie, disease and death were unthinkable. She had to stay alive and well if she were to succeed in her plan. She was determined to set the record straight, to reclaim her position and move on in her life.

  It was only a month or so before Sophie had saved up enough money to rent a squalid room in a house on the wrong side of the rue St. Antoine, where she could actually sleep alone if she wanted to.

  “The cat comes with the room,” said the old landlady, a pipe hanging from the corner of her mouth. “Rent’s due in advance.”

  Sophie gave her enough for the first month, then shut the door on her. She was alone at last. Well, almost alone. There was the cat. A mangy-looking, orange-striped tom who dug his claws into the straw of the bed and glared at her. It was the only place to sit in the small room, whose other furnishings consisted of a washstand and bowl and a tiny cracked mirror. A piece of dirty linen hung across the window, which faced an alley that ran with sewage. Sophie sat on the bed. The cat opened his mouth and hissed.

  “We have to share, you and I.” Sophie stared hard into his yellow eyes. “Is there a devil in there? Yes, that’s what you are. Monsieur le Diable. We shall get along just fine, I think.” After two minutes of an unblinking gaze, the cat looked away. Sophie felt that her first victory was auspicious.

  Nine

  The greatest ability consists in knowing the price of everything.

  Maxim 244

  Charpentier dropped the sheets of music on the table in his study and walked to the spinet. He sat on the bench and picked out a tune that he had composed for Émilie, one that she had sung at her début. Despite his determination to find a way to bring Émilie back from Versailles, he had been able to achieve nothing. He had no connections at court, and all his inquiries had led him up blind alleys. Émilie might as well have been transported to China as transported fourteen miles away. Charpentier was so lost in his own thoughts that it took him several moments to hear the polite tapping on his door.

  “Come!” he said, as he straightened up and picked up a quill that was on the floor by his feet.

  “Monsieur Charpentier,” said the valet with a bow. “This letter just arrived for you.”

  “Put it on the table,” he said, without looking up.

  The valet looked at the pile of papers strewn across the surface, shook his head, and placed the letter on a footstool nearby.

  Charpentier assumed it was some instructions from the princess and left the note where it was so that he could return to his daydream. He thought about what might have happened if Émilie had not gone away, if he had been able to present her in a new opera. He’d have found a way to get around Lully’s restrictions about musicians. And then he would have become famous, and the king would command a performance, and his fortune would be assured. And then, once he had made his name, and Émilie was a little older, who knew what might happen?

  The sun set, and Charpentier found himself sitting in the dark. He stood up and stretched, added some fuel to the fire to bring it back to life, and lit a candle. Then he remembered the letter. He thought he’d better read it, but when he looked where he had told the valet to put it, it was not there. Charpentier searched through the whole pile of music, but still no letter. He looked everywhere near the desk, even turning out the drawers, until the floor was completely strewn with music paper. He was ready to give up the search when he noticed the footstool that was tucked almost out of sight next to his chair and saw the note resting on it.

  The handwriting was vaguely familiar, but he could not place where he had seen it before. Charpentier opened the letter and looked at the signature. “Émilie!” he cried out loud, and then lit another candle, sat in his chair, and read.

  Mademoiselle Émilie Jolicoeur requests that Monsieur Charpentier, who lives at the Hôtel de Gise, should read this leter.

  I don’t much like it here. I miss everyone. My parents should know that I am well. We must take great care. I need to tell you something important! I wish we could sing together.

  Émilie Jolicoeur

  Charpentier could not stop smiling. Émilie was well! She thought of him, and wrote a letter! The poor grammar and bad spelling gave him a lump in his throat. Suddenly all her little characteristics and mannerisms came flooding back to him. He rang for a servant. A moment later a valet arrived.

  “I received this letter earlier,” said Charpentier, almost out of breath. “Who delivered it?”

  The valet looked at it and shrugged his shoulders. “One of the footmen answered the door.”

  “I need to send a reply, by the same courier. Do you think you could find the footman?” Charpentier pressed a shiny coin into the valet’s hand.

  “Certainly, Monsieur,” he replied, and then bowed out of the room.

  Charpentier looked closely at the letter. It bore no official frank and looked as though it had been crushed, perhaps hidden away, before it reached him. With no date, he could not tell how long ago it had been written. Perhaps this correspondence was secret. He would have to be careful, until he discovered the whole story. He would find a way to get a letter to Émilie without anyone’s knowing. And so Charpentier fished through the mess of papers on his floor to find a blank sheet and penned a note to his former pupil. At last he might discover what had happened and perhaps start the process of getting her to return to Paris.

  For a while, Sophie was generally too occupied with earning a living and trying to save up enough money to dig herself out of her current living situation to do much about remedying the debacle with the slippers. And surviving on the streets was proving more difficult than it had seemed to her at first, because the house she used for her more reputable clients demanded more and more money from her each time she availed herself of the lodgings there. In addition, she found that in order to attract better clients, she needed to upgrade her wardrobe a bit.

  But despite this business, Sophie kept her ultimate goal clearly in mind. At first she thought it would be an easy matter to return to the Hôtel de Guise and quiz Charpentier about Émilie’s whereabouts, find the girl, and get the slippers back—or at least get her to provide some kind of explanation to Madame Coryot so that Sophie’s good name could be reclaimed, possibly even her position in the Guise household, if the housekeeper was willing to overlook her unfortunate outburst. But she tried twice to gain access to Charpentier, and both times was practically thrown out on her ear by one of the footmen.

  “So, you think you’re better than I am, do you?” Sophie shrieked the second time, when Gaston, the young lad whom Mademoiselle had brought up from the country when he was an adolescent, pushed her roughly out the servants’ entrance. This rude treatment made her furious, but when she stepped back and realized the extent to which her recent life had changed her outwardly, she began to realize that she could expect little more. No more the pert, saucy lady’s maid, Sophie was now quite obviously a denizen of the night, wearing clothing and face painting that announced her trade all too clearly to any who passed. Her one decent gown had had to be cut and tied up to get her
the first few customers, and she had not seen a need to change a successful tactic. And Sophie did not want to spend any of her hard-earned money for finery that was unrelated to her lucrative new trade.

  Dressed thus, she would not be able to gain access to Charpentier at the Hôtel de Guise. So she had taken to following the composer discreetly, looking for an opportunity to approach him where he would not be too startled and where they could have a quiet conversation unobserved by any nosy gossips. The opportunity presented itself as Monsieur Charpentier hurried along the rue St. Antoine in the middle of a pleasant afternoon. The crowd miraculously filtered away for a few moments, and Sophie decided to seize the moment.

  Charpentier was so deeply engrossed in thinking about what Émilie had written in her last letter to him, and how to respond to her with sensible advice that might help her survive in that snake pit they called Versailles, he did not notice he had been followed for quite some time. At first the figure kept her distance. But as Charpentier turned onto the rue St. Antoine, she shortened the space between them until she was within arm’s reach. The young woman tapped him on the shoulder. Startled, Charpentier looked around. He frowned when he saw this creature of the streets and pushed her away, assuming she was just looking for a customer.

  “Bah! Monsieur Charpentier!”

  The woman spat out his name. Charpentier halted in his tracks and looked again. There was something familiar about the reddish-blond curls and the fullness around the lips. But the whore’s face was so covered with paint and her clothing so outlandish that he could not make her out. How did this person know his name? He did not patronize her type.

  “Where is she, Monsieur Charpentier? Where are they?”

  The whore was trying to steer him into a small alley. Charpentier looked around him for a policeman. “Stand back!” he yelled. “I know not of what you speak.”

  As if he had said some magic words, the creature stopped in her tracks and let him go. He rushed away from her, relieved to have been spared any more embarrassment, but as he went, he heard her yell out after him, “I curse you! I, Sophie Dupin, send a thousand curses upon your heirs!”

  “Sophie!” Charpentier cried, suddenly realizing who this whore was. But by the time he turned to look for her, she had whirled around and run off, melting into the monochrome, workaday crowd. What did she want of him? He knew, of course, that she had been dismissed, and was mildly curious about why. She had certainly changed. For a moment an image of Émilie flashed through his mind. He shivered. Surely she was not in danger of sinking to such a low state. She was too young, he hoped, even to recognize flirtatious advances. But what if she had no choice? What if she was being corrupted in that place where sexual favors were simply part of the social commerce? Until that moment, Charpentier had not allowed himself to imagine the worst. He had kept his most specific fears at bay, hiding behind his trust that Émilie’s essential innocence might protect her from any more egregious transgressions. Now, however, he was not so sure. He quickened his pace back to his apartment, determined to find some way to get to Émilie, to warn her. He did not want to ruin her chances of a brilliant career at court, but he was desperate to protect her from harm. Yet in his heart Charpentier knew that Émilie’s were not the only interests he had in mind.

  Sophie’s hope of getting a straight answer and civilized cooperation from Charpentier vanished with his response to her approach. She had thought he was a nice person, kinder than most. Yet he could not see beyond her appearance any more than could the lackeys at the Hôtel de Guise. That left only one course open to Sophie. She would have to discover for herself what had happened, and make the wrongdoers pay for her shame. Although she still had no idea where Émilie had gone, and whether the slippers were still in her possession, Sophie made an important decision. Rather than try to vindicate herself, she would redirect her energies toward another goal: revenge on Émilie and Charpentier, the two people she held responsible for her downfall.

  And so Sophie became Charpentier’s shadow, whenever her business would spare her, and spent as much time as she could looking for clues in his actions and habits that would lead her to Émilie. When he was in his apartment at the Hôtel de Guise, she stood patient watch over the servants’ entrance, making mental notes of who came and went, and what hours Charpentier chose for his own comings and goings. It was while she was engaged in this dogged watching that Sophie stumbled on her first bit of information about Émilie’s fate.

  It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm afternoon. Business was not brisk; the burgeoning spring gave people thoughts of love more than lust. The birds burst their guts with song all day and well into the evening, and Sophie fairly hated the sound of them. She harbored malicious thoughts about the sparrows who sang outside her window and woke her each day at an indecent hour, wishing that Monsieur le Diable could be trained like a hawk to hunt on command. Her mind was busy imagining how she might subdue the cat as she idled across the street from the side entrance of the Hôtel de Guise, watching out of the corner of her eye for anything unusual while she pretended to cut her fingernails with a small knife.

  “I have a letter for Monsieur Charpentier that I must give into his hands only.”

  Sophie looked up from her task. Just by the servants’ entrance, a letter dangling from his hand, stood a lad who looked too young to be a clerk and too old to be a page from some other fine house. He had that air of someone who did not belong anywhere in particular, and yet he had been entrusted with some important message for Charpentier. It could be a legal document, she thought. But the letter had no official seals and ribbons. Sophie’s curiosity was aroused. She simply had to know what communication that mysterious piece of paper contained before it reached Charpentier’s hands. She swiftly tucked her knife away and sauntered across the street.

  “Young man,” Sophie said, loosening the tie of her blouse to reveal more of her bosom, and exaggerating the sway of her hips as she drew closer to the lad. “I’m a friend of Monsieur Charpentier. I could give him the letter.”

  Sophie let her large breasts brush against his arm. The boy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he swallowed audibly.

  “Come here for a moment,” she said, “I have a special hiding place for a letter, and I need you to put it there.” She drew the messenger into the alley across the way. Once out of sight of the passersby, she loosened her blouse a little more and exposed one of her breasts. “Wouldn’t you like to taste it?” she said, taking the letter out of his now trembling hands and guiding his head toward her bosom. She reached down with her free hand to the lad’s crotch. He was as hard as a rock. After one or two squeezes, he doubled over in ecstasy, and Sophie quickly hid away her tits and the letter, then scampered off toward her room, laughing at the poor fellow’s helpless confusion.

  It amused Sophie to turn the tables every once in a while. In her present line of business, she sometimes lost sight of her own power of seduction. It was having to sell herself, to compete so brazenly with the other girls, that made her forget that, if she chose, she could reduce a man to a jellylike heap. Somehow the shoe was on the other foot, and the person with the money was the one who was in control. Sophie could see some similarities with the process of trying to advance at court, but the gloss of luxury had made it all seem less vulgar.

  Although at Versailles she did not learn what it was really like to be a whore, Sophie acquired many other useful scraps of knowledge, including how to unseal a letter, read it, and seal it again so that no one would know it had been tampered with. In her room, after sliding the warmed blade of her pocket knife under the wax seal, she unfolded the paper and cast her eye over the childlike writing. “How did that bitch manage to get herself to Versailles!” she exclaimed. She read on. Émilie’s letter contained nothing particularly important. It was only an account of a music lesson, and it mentioned that she was going to take part in a masquerade. At the end, though, Sophie thought she detected a note of warmth:

  I
miss our lessons so much. I wish I was in Paris again, but they will not let me leave. I only have one friend here, his name is François.

  With love,

  Moi

  Sophie had to restrain herself from tearing the paper into shreds. If she had had any doubts before that Émilie deserved to be punished for betraying her kindness, they were all gone now. Not only had the vixen stolen a pair of valuable slippers and been the cause of Sophie’s dismissal from a position that suited her, but she was no doubt poised to reap the rewards of being the new flavor at Versailles. Sophie threw the letter on her bed and walked around her tiny room ten times in succession, breathing deeply and clenching and unclenching her fists. When she had worked off enough of her violent anger and felt it was safe for her to handle the letter again, she sat on the edge of her bed and examined it closely. Clearly Émilie and Charpentier had been carrying on a secret correspondence for some time. The fact that the letter itself contained nothing particularly damaging was irrelevant. It had already occurred to her that the composer’s interest in Émilie might have been more than professional, and Sophie was convinced she could use even a faint whiff of scandal to ruin both of them, if she chose to. But for now she decided simply to keep an even closer watch on Charpentier, to see if this exchange of letters continued, perhaps to try to disentangle the route the correspondence took from Paris to Versailles and back again. Sophie knew, from her own time at court, that to succeed, any scheme had to be very carefully planned and executed.

  When Charpentier received the letter the next day from a different young delivery boy, he had no idea anyone’s eyes had seen it other than Émilie’s. He pressed his lips to the untidy handwriting, not realizing that it was the scent of Sophie’s body, not Émilie’s, that he inhaled.