The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  I set the coin the Comtesse always gave me next to the others. At the bottom of the purse, the napoléon I had first received from her glowed. I took it out and rubbed it for luck.

  I knelt then and prayed for guidance, the coin still in my hand, and when I was done, I knew my purpose.

  This coin, it had been joined by another, and another, and with this next task, perhaps a flood. This had been the first in a trail of coin I hoped I might someday lay down, leading to a world without the Tuileries, without the Empress. Without the Comtesse.

  This work was not my ruin, then, but providence, a test that, if I passed, would provide a way for me to finally go to my mother’s family in Lucerne. Seeing her that first day in Paris now seemed like a sign from God that she would put me back on my path. And so I blessed the day I’d been brought to her and counted the coins until I was calm.

  Four

  THE DAYS OF preparations leading up to Compiègne passed very slowly. For weeks, in addition to keeping up with the Empress’s daily schedule, we also set ourselves to the business of packing the Empress for the retreat: a month of furs, shoes, hats, crinolines, costumes, robes de chambre, tea gowns, evening gowns.

  In the dark of the morning on the day of our departure, we found a special breakfast of café au lait and a piece of toasted bread with butter and cinnamon on it floating in the coffee. This was a rich surprise and lent the work of overseeing the final details of the packing of the trunks the feeling of both a holiday and a conspiracy; I and the other grisettes conducted it in an unusual, even solemn, silence.

  I’d never thought for a moment of what the Empress looked like in the dresses before this, but now that I had seen her, little scenes of her cast themselves in my head. As I laid the dresses in tissue in their trunks, I thought, Oh, this will look quite fine on her or She will want to wear this with these, and so on. I had never felt this way before.

  To feel a small pleasure in it.

  Previously, I had been like the abbess of her furs. A solitary mission. Now, dressed in the green and gold uniform dress of the autumn palace, I kissed my friends in the basement good-bye and left, as if off for war.

  Her luggage was by comparison to the Emperor’s the greater. The trunks were made by Louis Vuitton in a pale gray known as Trianon gray, her favorite gray. It was as if the Empress were secretly something enormous, disassembled in the morning dark, her various parts in the neat rows of boxes and trunks we’d prepared and brought up to the surface.

  She was to be there for a month. Her lady guests each week were required to bring twenty-four distinct toilettes, changing three or four times a day, and could not repeat a dress or gown or piece of jewelry in the Empress’s presence during their stay. And as Her Majesty could not repeat, either, and required choices, that morning we departed for Compiègne with two hundred toilettes, each of them new.

  I stood near the trunks while the imperial train cars were loaded, testing the feeling of my new uniform with my hands along my hips. The crowd around us seemed to communicate an automatic respect for me, as if I were a Cent-Garde of the Emperor’s, not the Empress’s grisette.

  The train gave its signal.

  Eugénie appeared then. A veil covered her face, falling down from the brim of a tweed cap, but she wore the diamond known as the Regent, a diamond the size of a sparrow, and in the sunlight coming through the station, it flashed so brightly I almost expected there to be a sound. I wondered why she wore it, as it seemed dangerous to me—watching her cross the station I imagined a thief snatching it from her neck in a dash or the clasp coming loose and the diamond rolling along the floor. But I saw the people around her looking on with pride at the flash of the Regent in the morning sun of the station; at the trunks; at her careful procession, all heavily guarded; at me, waiting by the train, and I knew it was very much what they wanted of her. I’d thought of it as her own greed for these things, but that morning I understood it was also theirs.

  Her guards in a phalanx around her repeated, L’Impératrice, l’Impératrice, l’Impératrice, and the men in the station doffed their hats and bowed, the women made half curtsies. As she approached the car, I threw myself to the ground in my now-customary way. Vive l’Empereur, vive l’Impératrice, vive la France! shouted the men and women in the station, and then I felt her steps on the stairs, and with her safely inside, I stood and made my way to my own car with the other servants, brushing the dirt from my skirt as the people cheered and the doors closed behind us.

  We were met at the station at Compiègne by imperial carriages that took us to the palace quickly, cutting past the town’s enormous cathedral and humble rain-stained square.

  The palace was nearly plain by comparison with the Tuileries, cut of a stone of the color of bone, though not of ivory but a bone found in the woods. From the coach, it resembled a library or a tax office, not quite the rich retreat I’d imagined from my glimpse of the imperial retreat at Biarritz. The single greatest feature was the long park that extended into the imperial forests, where the hunts were to take place.

  Orderly rows of chestnut trees, their leaves turned to gold by the new cold and beginning to fall gently in the hard autumn sunlight, bordered the palace, a bank of color high above the black iron fences with their gilt dragon’s teeth, which seemed to surround any place the Emperor and Empress were to stay the night. More than the Tuileries, this place seemed prepared for some attack—black cruel spikes feathered the walls and entrances.

  This palace’s chamberlain stood in wait, with pages in court dress in lines to either side of the entrance. The colors were the same as my own. They took no observable notice of me, though, which was its own kind of notice—if I’d looked wrong, only then would they have glanced at me directly—and then quickly unloaded the carriages and brought us in. I followed the luggage and the other lady’s maids, and left the chamberlain to his observances with the Empress.

  The imperial apartments here were more familiar, hung in the same red and gold as the Tuileries, as if we’d taken the trains and cars all this way just to find ourselves back home.

  In her dressing room, we waited for her, preparing for her first change from her traveling costume to her riding one; she wanted to go for a ride before the Emperor arrived. A bell rang and we stood quickly while she walked in. The dressing room was circular; an enormous pendant chandelier hung above us radiating an unearthly sparkling light. White silk hangings draped the walls and ceiling so that it was like standing in a tent, if a very well-appointed one. She looked at us expectantly but I hesitated, as no one had briefed me on my duties, mistaking me, perhaps, for the girl who always came. I waited for a moment as she stood there, her arms aloft. The first girl glared at me, an eyebrow raised with contempt, and then made a yanking gesture with her arms.

  You are the new girl, said the Empress, quite suddenly. She said it in the same Spanish-accented French that was familiar to me from Pepa.

  I nodded, instantly blushing.

  This duty, it was once the duty of my ladies-in-waiting. But no longer. Not since Marie Antoinette.

  The other girl was blinking quickly, as if whatever the Empress had said had stung her eyes.

  You used to dress my dummies at the Tuileries, yes?

  I nodded again.

  Treat me a little gentler than that. And then she smiled softly.

  I hadn’t thought she would speak to us. I imagined us beneath her, not worthy of her conversation. The earlier, nascent affection I’d felt for her budded, and while I let the other girl lead in taking her jewels, which I didn’t know very well, much less how to handle them, I helped her with her riding costume and found her green velvet tricornered riding hat and her coat with the Emperor’s badge for his hunt. I set the hat on her head gently and pinned it into place, careful not to look at her eyes directly all the while.

  She left with a quick thank-you, spoken to the walls, and only when she was gone did we relax our postures, at which point the anger in the other girl returned.<
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  How stupid you are, she said. You should have asked someone to tell you your duties. I nodded, as if this were true.

  We were walking swiftly now along the back passage. I was passing by dark mirrors, walking over ancient creaking wooden floors.

  Here, as at the Tuileries, no one was going to tell me what they expected from me, and they would be sure to punish me for what I didn’t know. What’s more, my identity as a mute was not commonly known here. As the chamberlain had forbidden me my little scarf—it was not part of the uniform—I lacked its protections, and one had been that it kept me from speaking as well.

  The first result of this, then, was that the impulse to speak rose up, to explain myself, to protest, and I suppressed it with a panicked start, catching my opening mouth with my hand.

  §

  While the Empress was away on her ride, we were given a tour of the palace by the Compiègne chamberlain and shown our quarters.

  I was to share a room at the back of the palace with my unhappy partner from earlier and another girl. The window had a view of a ditch and the wall and the kitchen entrance at the back.

  I hadn’t understood the excitement in the other staff at leaving for the country. But as I unpacked in my small room, listening to the conversations taking place around me, I understood that as our wealthy charges exercised themselves, as they planned their musicales, tableaux vivants, operettas, hunts, and masked balls, we also plotted our own entertainments. Each week, to make sure the one hundred guests had their fill, there would number nearly nine hundred of us between the attendant valets, lady’s maids, footmen, cooks, grisettes, and guards. Some of our company came and left with the guests, some were of the Tuileries, and some were of Compiègne. Subsequently, much the same as on the other side of the palace among the official guests, there would be affairs, singing and dancing, feasts, terrible fights and feuds. And the separation was not by any means complete; there were guests whose tastes ran toward the servants, just as there were servants whose tastes ran toward the guests. The term for the gratuity usually exacted from guests just prior to their leaving, and which the chamberlains kept in large part for themselves but were meant to distribute among the rest of us, was also what you might say if you’d stumbled into and out of an apartment with a guest. Pour boire.

  If the guests were satisfied, they were absorbed entirely in their satisfaction, and they were not concerned with our whereabouts. And so we worked to their satisfaction in order to remain invisible and unheard and at play where possible. And in the shadow of their satisfaction, we set about our own.

  The bell for dinner rang and we ran quickly from the room for our first meal.

  §

  The Cent-Gardes at the Tuileries had told us of how the women the Emperor had brought to him were asked to come to him naked; they left their elegant toilettes behind and were told that they could do anything with the Emperor except kiss his mouth.

  I thought of this often, I found, now that I was around the Empress so frequently. I wasn’t allowed to meet her eyes unless she specifically asked me a question, and even then it made me nervous, and so I looked at her mouth.

  And as I did, I wondered who it was who kissed her. Or if the Emperor saved this part of him for her alone.

  I had very little patience for this new job. I was extremely uncomfortable to be so very much in the imperial presence in the day and in the company of my fellow grisettes at night. A bench in the hall was for me or whomever was on duty to rest on as we waited for the inevitable bell—this was my only solitude.

  I found outside the Empress’s apartments a secret passageway that led to the Emperor’s library, the door hidden by a design to give the appearance of a shelf of books. While at first thrilling, it was hard to believe it would fool either the serious invader or the unserious one. And as the Emperor would never use this to call on the Empress, I did not know why it was there, so I explored it.

  There was a daybed there, in the secret passage, and doors to the back stairs and passageways that led to the kitchen, the stables, and our quarters. A servants’ passage, then, for the footmen. I could doze lightly here, springing forward at the bell in any direction needed.

  I was bored that first week, cross in a way that seemed new. I wanted some kind of adventure, something forbidden but harmless. The guests had yet to arrive that morning and so, after the Empress left for a morning ride, I stood up from the daybed and pushed open the Emperor’s library door.

  The ceiling was painted with friezes of women gods I didn’t know. I had a view out to the pale gravel yard, the garden, and the forest beyond it. The chestnut trees’ golden leaves took the light of the morning, glowing in their rows. The room’s handsome wooden quiet spooked me. but I was relieved to feel so alone. The walls were so thick, nothing of the activity of the servants could be heard.

  The velvet-backed chairs gleamed in the pale autumn sunlight, and it was easy to imagine the young Comtesse there, just nineteen or twenty, a little older than I was now, her beauty like a furnace the room warmed itself on.

  The Empress had been a famous beauty herself, but hers was a queenly froideur, as if she could cover the windows and mirrors in frost as she passed. The Comtesse, ten years her junior, newly arrived from Italy, with her wild red hair, must have seemed more than a rival—more like a demon of pure desire.

  I walked to the far window. The chestnut allées crisscrossing the property framed the horses returning from the hunt. I could imagine the imperial displeasure if I was late, so I turned to go back through my passageway to where I knew I was to be expected, but when I heard the noise of someone moving, someone who had been at rest in the next room, I stood still.

  For a moment, the silence in response seemed to suggest I’d been successful in avoiding notice. Then a high, soft piano note sounded, followed by others, chords. A slowly meandering, carefully beautiful piece of piano music.

  In the musical education waiting for me, I would learn that this was a nocturne, a piece of music said to have the qualities of night, usually written for piano and performed solo. Nocturnes often don’t sound right by day; listening to them then is sometimes confusing. This, though, my first one, was Chopin’s op. 55, no. 1, which still sounds to me as it did that day, like someone walking through the dark quietly searching for something loved and lost, and the morning light didn’t undo this. Instead, it was haunting, instantly so. I could not bear to go until it was finished. And as I was convinced somehow of being hidden for being still, I stayed and listened, deciding it would be safer to move once it was over.

  The playing became louder briefly, as he moved to the music’s conclusion. I was sure that this music had to require all of the attention of the person playing, certainly enough to keep him from noticing me. I thought I was safe enough then to peer around the corner into the room beyond the library, and so I crept to the far entrance and peeked around the corner.

  A young man sat at a pianoforte, dressed in a beautiful dark green frock coat, a pale green tie knotted at his neck, and the strange short white pants the imperial court found fashionable then gleaming along his muscular legs. He was dark, as if he spent considerable time in the sun, and had the sharp, handsome features of a Gypsy, all set off by the strict white and green of his clothes. The effect was nearly narcotic.

  He turned as if he knew he was being observed and looked at me, his eyebrow crooked, over the top of the piano. He smiled as he continued the piece’s conclusion, which he let fade away gently. But he looked directly at me, and our eyes met.

  I stood still, unable to look away. When the music was gone, I remained a moment longer, and then it was I felt the entirety of my trespass. I quickly turned and left, curtsying as I went before anything could be said.

  Unknown to me then, he was both a pianist and composer. He was young, handsome, reckless, enormously talented. He could stand while playing mazurkas on the piano and turn to face the crowd and continue playing backward while he smiled into the audience. I
t was ridiculous and thrilling to watch, and he didn’t make mistakes. He had a young wolf’s face, and his eyes looked hungry, his dark hair rising in curls. When he smiled, his huge teeth flashed. Shortly after arriving in Paris from Argentina, he was invited everywhere, including, now, Compiègne. But it was unusual for him to be early and alone with a piano, left to himself in the music room off the Emperor’s library; there was to be a week for distinguished artist visitors, but it had not yet come.

  Later, when we knew each other, he would tell me he had been waiting for me to leave before playing. That he had sat down and, hearing the door open, realized he was not quite alone.

  He was, at this time, accustomed to using the piano to get his way with women.

  §

  Here then was the last one, the one who knew all, but could not betray me as he was dead. I had watched him die. He was the one I had promised to marry, the only man I would ever consider. The hôtel in the Marais had been his, the room there his, that ruby rose left for him.

  On the evening at the Luxembourg Palace when a man approached me and told me he’d found that rose, it was as if he’d told me he’d found his grave.

  Five

  OUR ROOMS HERE were cold stone, cold enough to make me miss the warm stink of the Tuileries. I was sure the bed was smaller, but it didn’t matter, full as it was with three girls desperate to stay warm.

  Out the window, I could see bright moonlight coloring everything a silvery blue and black.

  I reached out to touch the stone wall next to me, and my eyes followed my hand, and I briefly rested it as long as I dared on the cold stone, staring as if I could push out the mortared stones with my gaze like a sorceress, to walk free out to the fields and whatever lay beyond the edge of the forest. I shivered finally and drew my hand back, warming it on my leg. The single advantage to dressing the Empress over my previous position, was the time spent in the warm rooms of her apartment.