Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  The woman won.

  Zoé Moline had a lush, big-hipped, big-breasted body. She moved decisively like a man. With her strong jawline and bold, commanding eyes, it was clear that she did not normally expend a great deal of time on trivialities.

  “Martha, you’ve come home!” she cried in a deep, throaty voice. “Oh, let me have a look at you!”

  Zoé stepped back a pace to take this look, and Marc Moline found his opportunity to embrace Martha as well. “Darling, darling,” he said.

  Monsieur Moline was quite thin, handsome in a pale sort of way, vaguely dashing in silk cravat and satin cape. In England, he would have been called a fop. He placed an unexpected stress on certain syllables when he spoke and only shrewd, mercenary eyes belied the pleasantly irresolute, comfort-loving man he otherwise seemed to be.

  “Martha! You are here. I hope you have come for a complete wardrobe. Let us go back into my working chambers and I will show you designs that will make you swoon.”

  This was the sort of reception that Martha Marguerite had been waiting for, which flattered her presumed status even as it salved her vanity. In her ecstasy, she almost forgot to introduce Selena, but did so as the four of them entered Moline’s designing and fitting parlors.

  Zoé, who had first assumed that Selena was perhaps a companion or even a maidservant, now made a closer inspection. It was very thorough and not at all discreet.

  “With the right clothes,” she said, “I think you might turn more than a few heads at court, young lady. Are you married?”

  “No, but I—”

  “Oh, very good.” She turned to Martha. “You are going to pay your respects at Versailles?”

  “Of course.”

  Martha studied Selena some more, as if a plan were forming in her mind. “Hmm,” she mused, but that was all at the time.

  Marc proceeded to show Martha and Selena sketches of his most recent work, which Selena had to admit was exquisite.

  “I’ll take two of each,” said Martha. “No, three. You choose the colors, monsieur. I trust your taste implicitly. And do the same for my friend, Selena. She needs a trousseau.”

  “Oh, is that right?” asked Zoé. “Who is the man?”

  “Jean Beaumain.”

  “I’m afraid I…that I do not know of him.”

  “He’s a fine man. For Selena,” said Martha, somewhat apologetically.

  “A comte?” asked Zoé.

  “No,” replied Selena.

  “A vicomte then?”

  “No, he’s—” Selena did not care for this kind of ranking with its air of privilege and class. She was just about to say, “Jean Beaumain is an outlaw and a privateer,” but Martha, thinking of her own reputation more than of Selena’s comfiture, stepped into the breech.

  “Monsieur Beaumain is a tremendously wealthy entrepreneur, don’t you know?”

  Zoé didn’t know, but she accepted wealth as a sufficient criterion for a prospective bridegroom. Things might have been worse. Nevertheless, as Marc brought out his tape and began to measure Martha and Selena, Zoé persisted in her questioning, as if a plan she seemed to have involved Selena quite directly.

  “Your French is raw; I know that,” Zoé said bluntly. “There is an accent behind it. What?”

  “Scots,” answered Selena. Monsieur Marc was lingering over her bust measurement. He winked at her conspiratorially.

  “Indeed,” nodded Zoé. “Scots indeed. I have met several of your countrymen at court over the years. In fact—I’m not certain of this; it is only a rumor—Marie Antoinette has recently taken a Scot or an Irish or a Brit—beg pardon, Selena, but they’re all the same to me—as her newest lover.”

  “Oh, please!” implored Martha, standing there in her corset and awaiting Monsieur Marc’s sure fingers, “Please tell me the news at court. I have been dying to know. The rest of the country is in a shambles, but how fine the court must be still!”

  By news, of course, Martha meant gossip. Zoé was full of it, and Selena did not denounce herself too harshly for the attention with which she listened.

  “Well, of course you’ll recall,” Madame Moline began, “that the King, upon his marriage to the Austrian woman, proved quite incapable of being a man to her. Thus, in the early years of their marriage, she took her pleasures with others.”

  “Some of the men at court are very depraved,” commented Marc happily.

  “Naturally,” Zoé continued, “the news got out among the public. Marie Antoinette was disliked anyway, being a foreigner, and the financial excesses at Versailles, combined with her illicit loves, left her with an unsavory reputation she has not been able to shake until this day!

  “Surgeons, however, were able to correct His Majesty’s…ah…inability. They had a son, Louis, born in…what was it?”

  “Seventeen eighty-one,” said Marc, still ignoring Martha but doing a very careful job on his measurement of Selena’s waist and hips. “But he died last year.”

  “There is a second son and a daughter, though,” said Zoé. “The children seem to have calmed the Queen somewhat, but naturally it is de rigeur to have at least a few lovers.”

  Here she gave Selena a searching look again, and this time, given her previous conversation, its meaning was more obvious. Zoé saw a certain advantage for herself in Selena’s beauty, and it had something to do with life at court.

  “…at least a few lovers,” Zoé laughed, “so affairs proceed apace. Martha, do you recall the Comtesse de la Motte?”

  “Jeanne? Why of course I do. She is the Queen’s best friend.”

  “She was. There has been a terrible scandal. More than anything else, it has fired the people with fury over excesses at Versailles. You see, there exists a fabulous diamond necklace, worth one million, six hundred thousand livres. The comtesse wanted it for herself, but she did not have the money. She knew, though, that a certain Cardinal Rohan was out of favor at court and wished to be readmitted to the royal circle. She approached him, telling him that Marie Antoinette wanted the necklace for herself, and that if only he, Rohan, procured it for her, he would once again be accepted.

  “Now the cardinal did not have that kind of money, but he was desperate—to be out of favor is almost to be dead—so he approached the jewelers with a promise to buy. He never actually took possession of the necklace, but he reneged on the first payment, which angered the jeweler, who went with his complaint to the Queen, who of course didn’t know anything about it.”

  Zoé was laughing now; she thought it all very funny.

  “What happened?” asked Selena.

  Zoé was choking with glee so Marc, who had finally begun to measure Martha, finished the tale.

  “The cardinal,” he said, “was disgraced and sent to a monastery to live out the rest of his days. Comtesse de la Motte was sentenced to flogging, branding, and life imprisonment, but she managed to escape to England, where she has published memoirs very unflattering to the Queen. Marie Antoinette herself, although innocent in this particular affair, has succeeded in further discrediting the monarchy, thus throwing more faggots on the revolutionary fires.”

  “What do you think will happen in France now?” Selena asked.

  “Nothing.” Marc shrugged. Finished with Martha, he draped the tape around his thin neck. “Things will go on as always.”

  Martha cast Selena a look that said, I told you so!

  But Selena knew these three—Marc and Zoé and Martha—were whistling in the wind. She knew what it was like to want and not to have, to feel the fury of desperation and gut-hungry need, to be scorned and hunted by those who presumed to be the aristocrats of earth.

  She knew that things would not “go on as always” because she had seen the eyes of Pierre Sorbante.

  After a long morning’s work, the Molines provided their customers with a fine, gay lunch of champagne and lobster salad. They were all friends. Money was not mentioned once.

  “Our seamstresses will begin work immediately,” Zoé declar
ed expansively. “You two will be the new Queens at court. And,” she added, glancing at Selena, “perhaps the King may look favorably upon a new delight.”

  “He has always been pleased with your choices before,” said Marc proudly.

  This woman procures for the King! Selena realized.

  Martha looked mightily pleased, as if a child of hers had just been admitted to study at the Sorbonne.

  Selena said nothing. She did not intend to whore for anyone, King or no, but she had an embryonic scheme of her own. Zoé had mentioned a Scot at court. It was chancy and tenuous of course, but perhaps—just perhaps—he might give her news of events in her homeland.

  He might be a first step in her dream of reacquiring Coldstream Castle.

  “By the way, Selena,” oozed Monsieur Marc, as he helped her up into Hugo’s buggy, “that little cross is a canny piece of work.”

  Selena thought that he meant the craftsmanship and thanked him for the compliment.

  “No, you mistake my meaning,” he protested. “I refer to the words thereon. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. That is the revolutionary motto. It may well be that your little cross will serve as protection.

  “And,” he added in a whisper, “watch out for our friend, Martha Marguerite. She is dangerously overadorned. The people are starving and mad. One of her rings alone would feed a family for a year. So just you be careful, eh?”

  14

  Bastille

  “You may now convey us homeward,” decreed Martha Marguerite, settling into the buggyseat. Hugo and Sebastian glanced at her with narrowed eyes—they did not like her tone—but shrugged and did as they were told. Selena, after all, was paying them good money.

  As the coach moved through the city, Martha chattered away happily, exclaiming again and again over the fine clothes she had just selected. She also, now and then, made disparaging references to Vergil Longchamps, but the visit to the Molines had quite effectively restored her sense of personage, and she was oblivious to the streets through which the buggy passed, and to the people in those streets.

  Selena was not. With each minute there were more people about, as if a crowd were forming and moving toward the center of some forthcoming human storm. Selena herself sensed too late that the street down which they drove had become an angry maelstrom.

  “I think we’re in trouble,” said Hugo, over his shoulder as, turning a corner, he found their way blocked. They were in the Rue St. Stephen, a narrow old avenue of stores and little shops. Normally, it would have been crowded with people seeking whatever goods were available—and not many goods were in these hard times—but today it was jammed. For a split second, half-standing in the coach, Selena thought provisions had finally reached the city, and that citizens were here to buy, but then when she heard the crash and tinkle of breaking glass, the real meaning of this mob became apparent. A riot had begun and hundreds of Parisians, out of control, were crashing into shops to loot and plunder. Such fury, once unleashed, is well-nigh unstoppable; it does not wane until excess spends itself, the level of violence mounting higher and higher until the very emotions which fuel the outbreak are exhausted.

  “Back out of here!” she cried to Hugo. “Fast!”

  Martha, yapping away gaily about going to Versailles, looked around, stunned. “What—?”

  “There’s a rich noble bitch!” someone yelled.

  “I can’t back up,” shouted Hugo, over the rising din in the avenue. “Our way is blocked.”

  “Look at her furs and jewels! Get her!” shouted a hideous, one-armed beggar. “Pull her bloody eyeballs out!”

  “They’re…they mean me!” wailed Martha, hunching down in the buggyseat.

  Down the street came the sounds of glass shattering, people cursing and screaming, and the wrenching shrieks of doors being ripped from their hinges. Furious, maddened faces, twisted and terrible, appeared all around the buggy.

  “You take the old woman and her finery,” yelled a bearded young ruffian, shirtless in the heat, his chest hair glistening with sweat, “I want the young one with the yellow hair…”

  Me! Selena knew.

  A thick arm reached inside the buggy and closed around Martha’s wrist. In an instant, one of her gold bracelets was gone. She didn’t even have time to cry out before another rioter seized her hand, scratching and clawing, trying to get the rings off her fingers. She kicked out helplessly at her assailant, and the beautiful eye-shaped ring was gone, lost forever in a human tide of want and greed. Selena thought, in a flashing second, of the jewels and sovereigns in her greatcoat at Martha’s house, and wondered how long it would be before mobs like this invaded the homes of the wealthy. Then a hand closed around her ankle. Someone was trying to drag her from the buggy. She fought, catching a glimpse of a long, red, lantern-jawed male face, mouth open in a grimace of yellow, protruding teeth. She kicked out with her free foot. Broken teeth and blood hung in the air, and the grip on her leg was loosed. She stood up in the carriage. Sebastian was out in front of the horse, which the mob had decided to steal, and Hugo was striking every which way with his whip. The melee around the buggy was as great as that in the looted shops along the street. Selena did not know how so many people could occupy such a small space, nor how so many could be so maddened.

  For a moment, just for a moment, the tide seemed to turn. Martha’s fur piece was gone, true, and she had scratches on her arms and hands where the rings had been pulled from her. But Sebastian had the horse under control, and Hugo’s whip drew hellish cries of agony from those who felt its hiss and fire. The mob surrounding the buggy drew back for a moment.

  But after gathering new resolve, incensed by the resistance, the assailants came forward again, this time with incomparable frenzy. Men seized the wheels of the buggy, pressing forward in unison, snarling, shouting, lifting the little vehicle right off the cobblestones. It felt to Selena as if she had been transported suddenly to the deck of a pitching sloop. Buildings along the street swayed and tilted dizzily in her field of vision. The buggy was turning over onto its side and she was falling.

  The very mob that seemed intent upon tearing Martha and Selena limb from limb saved them, although not deliberately. Had there been only a few thugs engaged in upsetting the carriage, the two women would have been slammed down onto the paving stones. Instead, they were tossed through the air upon the heads and shoulders of the massed crowd. Selena tumbled and ricocheted above a sea of people, who pressed toward the overturned buggy, apparently in the belief that great treasures must be concealed therein. Hands tore at her dress, somebody scratched her face, but she was no longer the object of the crowd’s wrath. She slid down between the shoulders of rioters and came to her feet, gasping, pressed against the wall of a ruined breadshop. She could not see Martha Marguerite, but Hugo and Sebastian were mounted on the horse, trying to fight their way through the mob.

  Hugo saw her. “Selena!” he cried. “Over here!”

  “I can’t. I’ll be all right. Save yourselves.”

  The buggy collapsed like a child’s toy beneath the stomping frenzy of the mob.

  Then in the distance, everyone heard the thunder of iron-shod hoofs upon stone.

  “Gendarmes! Gendarmes are coming!” someone yelled. And the rioters, seeking to save themselves, poured down Rue St. Stephen, carrying Selena along with them onto a broader avenue she did not know, joining another great throng of people moving eastward through Paris. Flags of red, white, and blue fluttered above their heads. Many of them wore the cockade, symbol of the revolution, a small button with three circles of color, also red, white, and blue. Red and blue were the colors of Paris, white the color of the Bourbons, but Selena recalled another country with a flag of similar hues.

  The only thing to do is to pretend I’m one of them, Selena decided. She’d lost sight of Hugo and Sebastian as well as Martha Marguerite. She would have to survive on her own, and they as well. Fortunately, with her torn dress and the blood on her face, she looked at least as disreputab
le as anyone in the mob. Pausing for a second, she ripped a piece of cloth from her skirt and bound it around her head.

  “To the Bastille!” people were chanting. “Down with the monarchy.”

  A decrepit, shambling giant of a man grabbed Selena around the shoulders and stared into her eyes. He was a frightful sight. Selena was certain that he was mad as a loon.

  “Gold!” he cried, spying her cross, shaking his huge, longhaired head in triumph. “What have we here, a poseur?” But then he read the words on the cross and drew back a bit. “Ah!” he said. “You stay with me and all will be well.”

  With his great arm around her, Selena had no choice but to rush on.

  “Down with the Bourbon tyrants! To the Bastille!”

  She noted that, even in this mob, people around her and the giant gave way a little to make room for them.

  “Citizen, you are bleeding,” said the man, not unkindly. “Pray, are you all right?”

  “It’s only a scratch.”

  “Good. You stay with me. I think we’ve been expecting you.”

  Marc Moline must have been right about the motto on this cross, Selena thought. But if it were protection to be in the grip of this gigantic, lunatic-looking creature, she thought that the word protection must surely have different meanings for different people.

  At length, with the sun burning hot overhead, the mob came out of the avenue and swarmed about a squat, ugly, brooding fortress. Here was the Bastille, once a prison for political opponents of the monarchy and still a symbol of tyranny, guarded by a small garrison of royal troops and a contingent of Swiss mercenaries. Some of the officers, arms at the ready, stood before the fortress; the troops were inside.