French Passion

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “We followed a prisoner here.”

  “Indeed. Did you let him escape, then?”

  “He slipped our noose, yes, your ladyship. Tall, young. Without a coat, but gentlemanly looking. Have you seen him?”

  “No gentleman would intrude upon my gardens,” I rebuked coldly.

  “This’s a dangerous criminal. Then you haven’t seen him?”

  The black-dressed skeletal one was doing the talking. The fat little man sweated and nodded agreement.

  “Of course not! And take my advice. Continue on to the Palais Royale. Around there, shops and cafés make excellent hiding places.”

  “We’ve got men stationed in the area already, your ladyship. A clever one, this. He could’ve hidden without your seeing him.”

  “All things are possible, of course.” Mimicking the Comte’s most overdrawn polite tone, I dipped my brush into the pewter mug. “Now. I’m sure you’ll have the kindness to let me finish my picture?”

  “We must search these grounds.”

  “Must you, indeed?”

  “We’re on the King’s business, your ladyship.”

  “King Louis never would condone such an intrusion. His friend, the Comte de Créqui, owns this house.”

  At this, the short fat man woefully clapped his kerchief to his dripping forehead.

  The skeleton face changed to obsequiousness, but the voice persisted. “A dangerous criminal, your ladyship. He could’ve gotten into your house. If he harmed one hair of your head, we’d get the blame.”

  “Am I to take it, then, that you insist on rescuing me in advance from some dangerous character you’ve already let give you the slip?” My sarcasm had changed to ice.

  “If your ladyship pleases,” he replied with a bow even more awkward than his first.

  I rounded the hedge, leading them into the stables.

  While the fat man prodded straw with a pitchfork, the skeleton questioned the frightened stable boy. He kept protesting he’d been working, sir, working all along, sir, and nobody could’ve sneaked in without his seeing, sir.

  I watched with a suitably haughty smile. But my heart was tripping with fear, and I tried to imagine what André’s life had been since his return to France. Pursued. Haunted by the fear of pursual. What, I wondered, was his place in inciting a revolution? For his verse he’d hardly be hounded. Others wrote against the monarchy and were censored, no more. How odd, I thought, I feel none of the barriers with André that I’ve always felt with Comte. André’s so open with me. Yet I know so little of him, not even his family name. Did it matter? I loved him, feared for him, and that was enough.

  “Show us outside,” the bony man ordered the stable boy.

  The four of us circled the stables. The black-sleeved arm pointed at the toolshed. “That. What’s that?”

  “The pesthouse, sir,” replied the stable boy, crossing himself.

  “The what?”

  “In there,” I explained, “two of my servants lived through the smallpox. One died. Since then, naturally, we’ve kept the place locked.” Sweat broke out all over me, but my voice remained calm. “If you wish, the boy’ll show you.”

  “Never!” His pimpled face contorted with terror. “Mademoiselle d’Epinay, never!”

  “Well, you police are capable. And far more used to danger than we. Search the pesthouse yourself. The key’s in the stables. Come.”

  The three of them trailed me to the stable door. “There.” I pointed. “It’s the large rusty key on the end. You’ll excuse me if I don’t handle it.”

  “Take a look,” said the thin policeman.

  His fat little associate didn’t move. Horseflies buzzed in lazy circles.

  “Go!”

  So the fat little man, using his dirty kerchief, managed to lift the key without touching it. He lagged along the dirt path. Sweat soaked my bodice. I held my arms to me, hiding the worst stains. The fat figure stopped in the shade of the plane tree.

  “Padlock’s on the door,” he called. “Shut up tight.”

  “Make sure it’s not open.”

  “But how could he’ve replaced—” the fat little man started.

  “Look!”

  Three more slow steps. “Never been opened.”

  “Good,” his superior said.

  As the fat man bounded back along the path, the bony man said, “We’ll have to search the gardens now, your ladyship, and the house.”

  “If you must,” I said, “then you must. However, you’ll excuse me.”

  “The boy’ll do, your ladyship.”

  At my easel, I began daubing. Colors ran on the perfect roses I’d previously sketched for Aunt Thérèse. The two policemen circled trees and statues, peered into shrubs and hedges, finally entering the open glass doors to the music room. The stable boy, kicking off his wooden clogs, followed them.

  I counted to twenty, then flew along the path behind the stables.

  “André,” I whispered. “They’ve gone inside.”

  “Let me out then.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Can they see from the house?”

  “No, but—”

  “Let me out!” His voice came muffled and urgent. “Every minute I’m here endangers you.”

  “This is safe.… People died from the smallpox here. Nobody comes.”

  He said louder, “Manon—”

  I interrupted, “They said a lot of others were searching. It’s not safe for you to be out in daylight.”

  “I know places—”

  “André, I can’t stand here arguing. They would notice I’m not painting. I’ll come back tonight.”

  “Unlock that door!”

  “Tonight.”

  “Now!”

  “Later.”

  After a minute I heard his laugh. Light. Happy. “You had my heart all along. Now you’ve captured my body.”

  I laughed, too, and still laughing, ran back to my painting stool.

  The light of a half-moon shone, turning the garden silvery. I kept to the shadows. If Izette was right—and I still couldn’t quite believe her—if the Comte paid one of the servants to watch me, this was a necessary precaution. The Comte, of course, was at Versailles Palace for the great outdoor party honoring Emperor Joseph. Jean-Pierre was at a card party, Aunt Thérèse slept.

  To hide my pale dress, I wore my brother’s old black traveling cape—later I planned giving it to André. On my arm I carried a basket. Pleading weariness, I’d asked Izette for supper in my room, and this was the meal she’d brought.

  Izette knew nothing. I’d pretended fury at the police search, loudly wondering about the man they sought. If Izette knew of André’s presence, she would have insisted it was too dangerous for me to go to the toolshed. She would have insisted on taking on the danger herself, giving him the food, the bottle of white wine from Champagne, and the three gold coins I carried in a small purse. So I hadn’t told her.

  Instead, I’d dressed myself in my favorite gown. It was the simple summer style that became me, made of a lovely fabric that Monsieur Sancerre had woven especially for me, a fine lawn of the pale green that intensified the green of my eyes. The skirt was embroidered with sprays of white lily of the valley. So here I was, hurrying through a summer night in my prettiest frock, on my way to love.

  A twig snapped behind me.

  I stopped, hardly daring to breathe. Silvery light spilled on foliage, an owl hooted, a neighbor’s dog barked.

  There was no other sound.

  Sighing with relief, I hurried through the opening in the hedge, ducking into the pitch-black stable. I’d given the boy the night off, along with some money, his reward for “helping the police.” He’d gone off to a wineshop, and, I hoped, a brothel. Anyway, he’d be gone for hours, and would return fuddled. A horse whinnied, stamped, and I grabbed the key, hurrying along the path. Here, hidden from the house, I moved freely, not clinging to the shadows.

  At the door I set down my basket.

  “And
ré?” I whispered.

  “Manon. Are you all right? It’s been dark for hours.”

  “The servants just went to bed.”

  “I’ve been terrified for you.”

  A finger of a cloud had passed in front of the moon, and I had trouble with the big rusty key. Then the lock clicked. I lifted it.

  André pushed open the door.

  The cloud faded, and moonlight touched his proud arch of nose, shadowing his eyes. Moonlight gleamed on the loose shirt that billowed from his wide shoulders to his narrow waist. As I gazed at him, he gazed back with the same intensity.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

  “You are, too.”

  And we were in each other’s arms. Our kiss, long and tender, merged us. I clasped his waist with all my strength, his hands moved down my sides, lingering at the roots of my breasts.

  When the kiss ended, we were both trembling.

  “Since you locked me in, I’ve been thinking of this.”

  “And all this time I’ve been afraid.”

  “Of the police?”

  “No. That you weren’t thinking of this.” I touched his lips. “I’ve brought us a picnic supper.”

  “A picnic. Darling, you’re crazy. You can’t stay. And neither can I.”

  “I’m alone tonight. The servants are in bed. The later you leave, the better.” My voice caught as I thought of his danger. “André, André. We’ve only got this one evening.”

  His jaw tightened. After a moment he nodded. I picked up the basket, and as he closed the door, I fumbled for the flint.

  “There’s chinks in the wood,” he said. “A candle’s not safe.”

  “The only one who could see anything is the stable boy, and he’s getting drunk. Besides, he’s so terrified of the place he never even looks at it. He thinks it’s haunted.”

  The toolshed was haunted, haunted with the memory of my guilts. Don’t think of CoCo, I told myself. Don’t question her paternity, her life, her death. These few hours are for happiness.

  The wick caught. He spread out the cape, I unfolded a linen napkin, laying out cold chicken breast, thin-sliced pork, glistening liver pâté, fine-milled white bread, a fragrant bosk pear, the wine bottle. We sat side by side, eating, sometimes touching each other.

  I asked André where he’d been the last six weeks. Orléans, he said. He belonged to a secret group, and they had sent him there to help the peasants draw up a list of grievances—few peasants could write, he said, and the group wanted the King to read of the misery in every corner of the kingdom. Life in Orléans was unbearable. Jobs were scarce, and even if a man worked eighteen hours a day, he could not afford bread for his family. Old people and children starved in the streets, and every morning the charnel wagon picked up the bodies. “I wrote list after list of grievances, but what good is writing when there’s no food?”

  “The treasury’s buying up grain to hold for higher prices. That’s how the King raises money.”

  “The King follows cruel advisers,” André said grimly.

  “If it weren’t the grain, it would be higher taxes, and it would end the same. People starving.”

  “No,” André said. “There’s another answer. Let the King and his Court curb their appetites.”

  At this point we both stopped eating. The food on white linen had been bought with money squeezed from starving people.

  After a long silence, I asked, “Why did you come back to Paris?”

  “To find a way to see you.”

  I blushed, shy as a very young girl with her first beau. “André, what’s your family name?”

  “That’s something I can tell nobody. To the others, I’m Égalité. To you, I’m André, the fool who cares too much for a girl he’s seen three times. Well, it’s true. Love’s a mystery even to poets.”

  “Yet it’s not mysterious between us. André, sometimes I know exactly what you’re going to say before you say it. It’s as if I’ve known you always, understood you always.” Suddenly that fear for him clutched at me. “There’s so many watching for you. They don’t intend to let you escape.”

  “I’ve been trapped before,” he said.

  “Where? By the Indian savages in America?”

  “Here in Paris. See?” He opened his shirt. In flickering candlelight I saw his chest, strong yet so different from the Comte’s barrel strength. André’s muscles were young, and his skin smelled of salt and youth.

  A fresh scar cut into the flesh below his right shoulder.

  “But when?”

  “Just after I was with you.”

  “How did you get away?”

  “I killed the man who did this,” he said bitterly. “It’s been on my conscience.”

  “But he would’ve killed you!”

  “That doesn’t matter. To me, killing’s the ultimate evil. In my group many say they’ll revel in the blood of the oppressors. Not me. I hate death.”

  I touched the red scar line.

  And felt the vibration as André said in a very quiet voice, “Where is he tonight?”

  “Versailles. The Court entertains Emperor Joseph. I don’t want to talk about anything or anyone except you and me.”

  “I don’t want to talk,” André said, his arm around me tightening as he drew me closer. Our kiss tasted of lovely pale wine. A warmth like the wine flowed through my veins, and I wanted him with every nerve.

  He whispered, “Darling?”

  “Ah yes, yes.”

  “I’ve wanted you so long, and so much.”

  “Me you.”

  We lay on the outspread cape. The ground under us was packed dirt, hard, yet I didn’t feel it. He was kissing my neck, his hands were at the tiny buttons down the back of my pale green bodice. That first time with André, I’d been innocent, ignorant, and—despite my yearning for him—afraid. Now, tutored by the Comte, my body had learned the art of pleasure, pleasure that I knew now I’d never yet fully experienced.

  He eased down the bodice and my chemise until I was naked to the waist.

  “You’re so much lovelier than other women—”

  I held a finger to his warm lips. “Only you and me. There’s only you and me in this whole world,” I said. I’d undone his ruffled shirt, and now I pulled it from him. “I love it when we touch, I love your smells, I love you.”

  And I pulled his face to my breasts. Then he began releasing my embroidered skirt, my stiff petticoats, pulling them off. He knelt at my feet, taking off green silk slippers, drawing down white silk stockings, lace-inset drawers.

  “We have an endless forever,” I murmured, and lay back on Jean-Pierre’s old wool cape, the remnants of food and wine next to me, watching André take off his boots, his breeches, and then he was naked.

  “You’re beautiful,” I whispered. “Very, very.”

  “Now?”

  “Please now.”

  As he went into me, I gasped, and suddenly, swiftly, was overcome by a pleasure so exquisite that my muscles and nerves and mind rose, poising at some very high peak where there was no toolshed, no André, or even my own body, for my body was shattering into a thousand sparkling, glowing bits, falling slowly, and I held onto him, calling his name.

  When, finally, I opened my eyes, he was smiling down at me. He began moving again, his mouth pressed against my ear, his breathing the only sound in the world. I was melting softness to his hardness. I caressed the long body, feeling his back, the muscles of his thighs and buttocks, moving, moving, and once again I was overtaken by that pooling, lifting ecstasy. My nails bit into him, and I cried out his name over and over, and when I fell, I clasped him. He kissed me, pushing back my moistened hair, and we moved again.

  This time, the third, as I broke and shattered, he cried, “Love, love,” and we fell together.

  Curled together, glued by passion and sweat, he pulled the edges of the cloak around us. We said nothing. There was everything to say, yet nothing to say. No promises could be made. No averments of
love were necessary.

  We drowsed, and when I woke, the candle sputtered low in the chamber stick. It was late.

  We dressed. The glow was still in me, yet my skin was cold, and I twisted, trying to do the buttons of my bodice.

  Giving up, I pulled on the paisley shawl I’d packed in the basket.

  “The cape’s for you,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “Your white shirt’ll show up in the dark. Besides, it’s cold.” Picking up the cape, I shook it, and felt compelled to add, “It’s not his. It’s my brother’s.”

  “In that case, thank you, darling.”

  I fished out the money purse.

  “That,” he said, “I’ll not take.”

  “You’ll need it.”

  “No.”

  “André, it’s a present.”

  He must’ve heard the note of anxiety in my voice. He leaned down, gazing into my face. Finally he asked, “You enjoy giving, don’t you?”

  “So do you.”

  “No,” he said.

  “But you left your big farm in America, You’re giving your whole life.”

  “It’s the circumstances of my birth. I … something inside compels me. It’s as if I’m driven by whips. Manon, don’t idealize me. I have more faults than you, far more.”

  “Don’t be silly. I live a stupid, frivolous life.” I tried not to remember the reason behind my stupid frivolity. Loss. Grief. “Anyway, you’ll hurt my feelings if you don’t take the money. You don’t want to do that, do you?”

  He said nothing.

  “You’ll make me think you’re a prig, good and noble in the extreme.”

  At this he smiled. And took the purse, tucking it into his breeches pocket. “It’ll buy bread,” he replied.

  “Whatever.”

  I left the basket and the candle in the toolshed. Many years from now, I thought, when mice have gnawed everything, even the wicker, when I’m old and my hair’s true white, then maybe I’ll have the courage to come back in here. After many, many years, maybe the memory of love won’t hurt.

  Clouds hid the moon, and I smiled. The covering darkness was what André needed.

  We kissed; I watched him disappear, and then went into the stables to replace the key, moving slowly along the gravel path to the house. Lights showed in the downstairs hall. Lights, I guessed, for Jean-Pierre’s return. The other windows at the back of the house were dark.