Spirit of Lost Angels

by Perrat, Liza

  Of course, there is the other rumour too — that it is someone else buried in St. Mary’s and the countess has simply disappeared.

  Whatever the case, I suppose we will never know the truth about that mysterious woman!

  Jeanne dead! It seemed impossible. She had always struck me as too clever, too good for something as banal as death. The grief settled like lead on my breastbone, as I continued reading.

  I am well pleased to hear you still bask in the success of your new theatre company and that your plays are enjoyed by a wide audience. Such a great chance you are giving the villagers of Lucie, especially the women, of pursuing new and exciting actress lives. And, as you say, it cannot be a bad thing that brings visitors, and money, to a village in these difficult times.

  Your ever loyal friend,

  Claudine

  47

  I did not learn the truth about my dear friend until three years later. When the letter arrived, I cried out in surprise.

  My dear Victoire,

  In the pursuit of your success as the Scarlet Enchantress, I am not sure you have time for a thought for your old friend.

  I think of you often, and the days we spent together at that unique Parisian establishment. You must be glad that bloody revolution is, finally, over. Not that the Queen can harm us any longer, n’est-ce pas? Ha!

  Contrary to the Queen’s, my head remains firmly on my shoulders. True, I was injured, and incapacitated for some time, after an unfortunate accident, but I am now healthy and happy, living a peaceful existence in a cottage on the shores of the Crimea.

  The people here are charming, the men especially, and we all have such fun when I amuse them with my tales of masked balls, jewel thieves and daring prison escapes!

  I do hope to see you again one day, ma chère Victoire. Time and events have cruelly separated us for too long.

  Your dear and sincere friend,

  Jeanne

  I laughed aloud as I folded the letter.

  ‘Ah yes, my friend … too clever for death.’

  ***

  The summer sun painted the countryside in rich shades of green and blue, white clouds drew bold gestures in the sky and everybody on la place de l’Eglise laughed and chatted, celebrating the death of Robespierre.

  The scent of pies and cakes drifted from the baker’s oven, the smell of fresh fruit and sizzling sausages rippling on the soft air. The blacksmith’s son played a flute, his brother juggled, and Madeleine chased about with the other children and the yapping dogs.

  The girl who stepped down from a carriage stood still amidst the crowd. I stared at her, and my hand flew to my heart when I saw the necklace she wore was an angel, carved from bone. A few years older, but it was the same girl I had seen the night the Bastille fell — the child I had so desperately tried to find.

  I think the girl became aware of me, because she smiled and took a step towards me, her hair curling in pleats, like the tug of wind on the river.

  ‘Bonjour, madame,’ she said. ‘My name is Rubie Charpentier. I’ve come here to find my mother.’

  She too, must have noticed the resemblance — the same small features and heart-shaped face rimmed in hair the hue of chestnuts — and understood who I was, because her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply.

  Neither of us moved or spoke at first, and I reached for her hand.

  ***

  In the shade of a willow, we sat together on a rock beside my favourite spot on the Vionne River — the place where the water cascades over a stony ridge into a wide, deep pool.

  Over the gentle rush of the water and the tick-tick of insects, the air hummed with my timorous expectation. But it was not uncomfortable, as if we’d always sat here — my daughter and I — and it was the most natural thing.

  ‘How did you find me, Rubie?’

  ‘With the letter you left in my basket,’ she said, without a speck of scorn or accusation in her voice. ‘That is how I knew my name and who I was. I had wondered for a long time about you — the mother who left me this.’ She fingered the angel pendant, turning it over in her small hand. ‘Finally I found someone to read the letter to me. Then I went to the rue du Bac, knocking on all the doors, and met Claudine.’

  ‘How is my friend?’

  ‘She’s old, but her health is good. She sends her love and hopes you are well. She and her charming husband were kind, taking me in. She cooked delicious meals, said I needed fattening up, and gave me money for the fare to Lucie.’

  ‘Yes, she helped me too,’ I said with a smile.

  I hesitated, unsure I truly wanted to hear the truth, which could be nothing but grim, but I couldn’t help myself, I wanted to know everything about my lost child.

  ‘What about before, Rubie? Before Claudine took you in?’

  Rubie’s eyes clouded, and she looked across the water bubbling across the stones, folding over ferns, twigs and errant flower heads as if taking them on a whim, not quite knowing why.

  Perepp, perepp, pereep, a bird sang. Coop, coop, coop, another answered, each note clear and defined.

  ‘I was too young to remember before Madame Coudray,’ she said. ‘But she took children into her big house in an alley near the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine.’

  ‘I know that place. I went there, several times. To think I was so close …’

  ‘Madame Coudray really did try, but she had so many young ones to care for, and a drunkard husband who would knock her to the ground, so she was ill sometimes and found it hard to look after all of us. But I got to sleep on a mattress with the other girls, not on the floor, and we were warm … mostly.’ She spoke rapidly, hardly taking a breath, as if getting it all out at once would mask the bleak truth. ‘Well, sometimes it was a bit chilly in winter, but not too many of the little ones died, only about three or four each year.’

  Mon Dieu. I could picture the swarm of children lying on the straw, dirty, undernourished and huddling together to leech out the slightest bit of human warmth from the next person — like my la Salpêtrière prison dormitory. The breeze brought a gust of coolness to my face, and the guilt prickled me again.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rubie, I never wanted you to live like that. I truly had no choice. The Marquis would have thrown us both on the street. We’d both have died — ’

  ‘I know,’ she said, laying a hand on my forearm — this sensitive girl who had everything to blame me for, and nothing for which to thank me. She squeezed my arm, as if it was I who needed comfort and reassurance. ‘But it truly wasn’t so bad, Mam — ’

  She stopped, a smile curving her lip. ‘I practised saying “Maman” with Claudine, but should I call you that?’

  I took her hand — a rough, scarred little hand that revealed all she was reticent to tell me — and brought it to my lips. ‘I am not certain I deserve such a title, Rubie but I’d be … I’d be honoured.’

  ‘That’s good then, Maman.’ She smiled, as if pleased at the sound of it. ‘So, as I was saying it was really not too bad. I had friends — Louise and Belle. We were always together, sharing our secrets, and one day we decided poor Madame Coudray really did have too many children, so we ran away.’

  ‘Ran away? And lived on the streets?’ I recalled, with horror, the filthy beggar children who skulked in the dankest alleyways of the capital, and under bridges, with drunk old men.

  ‘It was not easy at first, but we got used to it. Louise became an expert at getting food and clothes for us. Belle always seemed to have a lump of firewood to keep us warm. I was the best pickpocket of us all.’ Rubie laughed, but her grey-green eyes seemed heavy with the memories of all the tricks and ploys she’d been forced to master to survive.

  ‘Where are your friends now, Louise and Belle?’ I kept reminding myself to slow down, not to overwhelm Rubie with my eagerness to know everything at once.

  ‘Gone,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Dead from some sickness or other … I don’t know what.’

  She turned her face to the sunlit crowns of the Mon
ts du Lyonnais that blanched the blue from the sky. I knew she was trying to hide her pain and I yearned to fold her in my arms and squeeze away the ache and hardship of fifteen years.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, my hand reaching across, gently, tentatively sweeping loose strands of hair from her face. ‘I hope you will make many new friends here in Lucie. You would like to stay n’est-ce pas, Rubie?’

  She nodded. ‘That would be nice, Maman, if it is what you want.’

  ‘Of course! Nothing would delight me more than to have you here with me, and with your half-sister, Madeleine. She’s a sweet girl and will love you.

  ‘I imagine Claudine told you about your father?’ I said, not sure I could bear to hear more about her childhood.

  ‘I’m glad to say I no longer have a father,’ Rubie said. ‘I would not have wanted one like him, anyway, even if he had survived the revolution.’

  ‘The Marquis is dead?’

  The breeze strengthened, rustling the willow leaves, and a crow flapped away, cawing a bleak ark, ark, ark.

  ‘He and his silly wife,’ Rubie said. ‘Claudine told me they fled Paris, just after the Bastille fell.’

  ‘Yes … yes, I knew that.’

  ‘Their countryside estate was attacked and burned down during la Grande Peur,’ Rubie went on. ‘They returned to Paris in disguise but someone recognised them — the sister of a scullery maid the Marquis had burned at the stake. They were both guillotined, without a trial.’

  I stifled my laugh. The Marquis’s death was possibly the only one I could celebrate. I had long since gained my revenge through satire and personal success, but there was nothing like death, for ultimate vengeance. And I was pleased poor Margot had finally reaped her own, albeit posthumous, revenge.

  ‘The Marquis de Barberon was not a father to be proud of, Rubie.’

  ‘I do not care a bit. I have a mother I’m proud of.’

  ‘Proud of me?’

  ‘Claudine told me about the Scarlet Enchantress, and how she made a success of herself, even though the odds were against her. I only wish I could read the plays.’

  ‘I’d love to teach you to read and write,’ I said, feeling almost dizzy with the joy, the gladness, and realisation, in that instant, for whom I’d penned my memoirs. ‘That’s if you’d like me to?’

  ‘Oh yes, I would like it very much. Claudine told me about my grandmother too,’ she went on. ‘Your mother, and how she was a midwife. It seems such a noble profession. I would like to become a midwife too … one day.’

  ‘But you shall, Rubie! You will do whatever you want.’ I couldn’t stop smiling, and I saw my mother again, bustling about the village, birthing babies and tending the sick. I recalled sitting on her lap, her smell of musk and lavender in my nostrils, as she read from Les Fables de Jean de la Fontaine, and following each magical word and dreaming of princesses and fortune. ‘Your grandmother would be so pleased to know your wish.’

  As the sun poured down onto the countryside, we were quiet — a small span of moments in which I felt the passionate happiness of which I’d only dreamed.

  I stood, brushing leaves and bits of dirt from my skirt. ‘You must be thirsty, hungry and tired, and there’s so much to show you. And you must meet Madeleine and your cousins, and see your new home — L’Auberge des Anges. There’s my theatre company too, and the village, and oh, everything!’

  I reached across and took hold of the angel pendant resting against her pale skin, my fingertip tracing the halo, the wings, the streaming gown. I rubbed the carving, the old bone warming beneath my thumb and forefinger.

  ‘I prayed this angel would keep you safe on your journey, Rubie.’

  ‘So it did, Maman.’

  ‘It sent you the force of all those who wore it before you — the spirit of the women of L’Auberge des Anges.’

  ‘What kind of bone is it?’ Rubie asked.

  ‘Oh, probably seal or ox, or walrus tusk, or perhaps even mammoth bone.’

  ‘Mammoth! How thrilling.’

  As Rubie laughed, I felt the angel burning my fingertips, branding me with the energy of all those who had left my world. The spirits of angels lost, but never gone.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction, a work that combines the actual with the invented. All incidents and dialogue and all characters, with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  My grateful thanks to the following people, without whom this book would not have been possible:

  Lorraine Mace, Gillian Hamer, JJ Marsh, Barbara Scott-Emmett, Catriona Troth, Tricia Gilbey, Sheila Bugler and Sharon Hutt of the Writing Asylum for expert advice and support; Pauline O’Hare for the Barry’s tea, for weeding the garden and for always being there; Judith Murdoch for her wisdom and expert editorial advice; Claire Morgan and Gwenda Lansbury for their input on early drafts; Jane Dixon-Smith for her wonderful design; the very helpful people from Araire (historical research group of Messimy, France); and Jean-Yves, Camille, Mathilde and Etienne Perrat for their infinite patience with an absent wife and mother.

  Bibliography

  Many fictional and factual books, films and other material were useful in creating the atmosphere of Spirit of Lost Angels.

  Books:

  Anderson, James M.: The French Revolution

  Doyle, William: The Oxford History of the French Revolution

  Hibbert, Christopher: The French Revolution

  Janin, Jules: The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman

  Lever, Maurice: Beaumarchais a Biography

  Mercier, Louis-Sébastien: Panorama of Paris

  Moore, Lucy: Liberty

  Rice, Howard C, Jr.: Thomas Jefferson’s Paris

  Rattner Gelbart, Nina: The King’s Midwife

  Robb, Graham: The Discovery of France

  Xenakis, Mâkhi: Les folles d’enfer

  L’Araire booklets (Groupe de Recherche sur l’histoire, l’archéologie et le folklore du Pays Lyonnais):

  Foires et Marchés en Pays Lyonnais: N° 148 — March, 2007

  Soins et Santé en Pays Lyonnais: N° 157 — June, 2009

  Coming next in

  L’Auberge des Anges series …

  WHERE THE

  WOLFSANGEL TREADS

  Family separation, ill-timed romance and world chaos irrevocably change the lives of the women of L’Auberge des Anges, but their tragedies and triumphs represent a new generation.

  1943. France is under the heel of the Nazi occupation and rebellious farm-girl, Celeste Charpentier dreams of escaping her bitter mother and the provincial village of Lucie-sur-Vionne.

  Eager to help rid France of the occupier, she begins working for the Resistance. However, Celeste walks an even more lethal tightrope when she falls in love with a German officer.

  In a hut in the woods, Celeste discovers the Wolfs — Max, Sabine, Talia and Jacob — who escaped a German roundup. She hides them in the attic of L’Auberge des Anges, exposing her family to great danger.

  When people close to Celeste are arrested and deported to unknown destinations in the Reich, she must choose which battle to pursue: her passion for an enemy officer, or her fight to free France and release her loved ones.

  The march of the SS into Lucie-sur-Vionne one hot summer day has such far-reaching implications that Celeste wonders if she will ever be able to forget, and forgive. Least of all herself.

  Also from Triskele Books

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  The legend of The Royal Charter is almost as famous as the story of the dead girl who wanders the cliffs at Point Lynas – a victim of the 1859 shipwreck.


  After more than a decade away, Sarah Morton must return to her childhood home in Anglesey to bury her father. It’s her chance to say goodbye, and good riddance, to her past.

  Yet her father leaves her a legacy. A letter. And a safe full of documents about the ancient shipwreck.

  The Royal Charter had been carrying gold. Huge amounts of it. And her father’s death suddenly looks like murder.

  Determined to discover the truth, Sarah is dragged into a dangerous journey, discovering she and the girl on the cliffs have more in common than she could ever believe.

  “Fast paced and compelling. With its rich landscape of shipwrecks, murder, lost gold, faith and forgiveness, The Charter is storytelling at its best.”

  Amanda Hodgkinson, New York Times Bestseller

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  BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

  Suicide – the act of taking one’s own life.

  Homicide – the act of taking someone else’s.

  An unethical banker suffocates. A diamond dealer slits his wrists. A media magnate freezes in the snow. A disgraced CEO inhales exhaust fumes. Four unpopular businessmen, four apparent suicides. Until Interpol find the same DNA at each death.

  Beatrice Stubbs, on her first real case since ‘the incident’, arrives in Switzerland to lead the investigation. But there’s more to Zurich than chocolate and charm. Potential suspects are everywhere, her Swiss counterpart is hostile and the secretive world of international finance seems beyond the law. Battling impossible odds by day and her own demons at night, Beatrice has never felt so alone.

  She isn’t. Someone’s watching.

  Someone else who believes in justice.

  The poetic kind.

  “Original, well written, absorbing and ingenious.”

  Jessica Mann, crime writer, reviewer and journalist