Her daughter shrugged. “A foreigner from somewhere.”
“No, not her,” Lili said. “The other one. The one she had just before—”
“Oh, that one. Don’t rightly know,” the old woman said. “I guess I just assumed she’d died, since we never saw her at Cirey.”
“Did you know her name?”
“Can’t say I did.”
I’m less real to them than a cracked egg, Lili thought. And probably little more to the man I’ve come so far to meet.
The sound of horses’ hooves and squeaky carriage wheels in the road outside gave her no time to nurse her bruised feelings. She heard the driver admonish the children to be careful around the horse. “I’d best be going right away,” Lili said, surprised at the gloom in her voice.
“You’ve had nothing to eat!” the woman protested. “We can’t have you going off saying we didn’t feed you!”
“I’m quite fine, thank you,” Lili said, doubting that even water could have made it past a throat suddenly paralyzed with apprehension.
LIGHT STREAMED in through the windows and reflected off the glowing wood and crimson wall paneling in the gallery of the Marquis du Châtelet’s ancestral home at Cirey. The doors were open, and a slight breeze wafted up from the lawn and stream below. Songbirds whistled in gilded cages, while next to a lacquered desk strewn with papers and scientific tools Voltaire sat holding court. His throne was a small upholstered armchair, because with his frighteningly thin frame, Voltaire had ordered only furniture that did not make him look even smaller. Overweight guests complained about having not a single comfortable place to sit, but no note was taken of their whispered grumblings.
The owner of Cirey was one of those who could not sit comfortably in Voltaire’s gallery. Though not corpulent, the marquis was a tall man with a barrel chest, who relished the wine from his cellar and the food from his estate, especially when he had hunted it himself.
Even when Florent-Claude was at home, Voltaire did not relinquish the role of grand master of the morning gathering. Other than dinners, often followed by readings or a play in the attic theater, the main entertainment for guests at Cirey was an hour and a half of socializing over coffee before Voltaire and Emilie disappeared for a long day of work. From Voltaire’s command of the room, a stranger walking through would almost certainly conclude that the scion of this quiet estate in Haute-Marne was the birdlike, middle-aged man wearing an old-fashioned wig with rows of tight curls, rather than the gallant silver-haired gentleman fond enough of his military uniform to sport it even at home.
The marquis was willing to look the other way at some of Voltaire’s high-handedness. After all, the gallery—in fact an entire wing of the château—had been built with the writer’s money. Someday Voltaire would move on, and the beautiful house, hopefully with the second wing completed, would be the marquis’s alone. A château from a nearly uninhabitable ruin, and all for no more than having given a famous man shelter and allowing him to sleep with his wife? Let people gossip. Far better to laugh it off and remain Emilie’s and Voltaire’s champion, since they both needed one, God knew, and therefore needed him.
Though Florent-Claude was more discreet than his wife, he had no grounds for sanctimony. He had already decided to leave earlier than necessary to go back to his regiment via a town house in Nancy where his beautiful new mistress would keep him entertained for a week or two. He would grow weary of her too, as he had long since tired of Emilie, and he would rush off again to the world of men and war, two things he understood without having to work at it.
And now it seemed that Emilie had exhausted Voltaire, just as she had Florent-Claude, not just with her mind but with her endless relish for imaginative and almost interminable lovemaking. Of course she had never gotten that from Florent-Claude. Married sex was perfunctory. Lovers were for kissing, for undressing slowly, for sweet whispers of adoration. He had never felt inclined to give Emilie any of that, nor begrudged her getting it from someone more willing. Well, perhaps he begrudged it a little. After all, he was a man, and no man relished the thought of his wife’s enthusiasm for such things.
Florent-Claude had to admit there was a degree of satisfaction in seeing Voltaire nagged and criticized as if he were the spouse. Just the other night, Emilie had told Voltaire his shirt was trimmed with too much lace. He had responded in English, the language they used when they were aching for a fight. Voltaire had stormed off and had only been persuaded to return by Madame de Graffigny, an overly so ciable houseguest who had convinced him that her life was over if he would not read scenes from his newest play that evening after supper.
And then there was the satisfaction of the purloined lines of doggerel someone had copied and sent to the marquis, in which Voltaire begged off as Emilie’s lover because his member was too limp for good use, a state he believed was likely to be permanent. Emilie seemed to have taken the matter in stride, and though she insisted the poem was a cruel joke by one of Voltaire’s detractors, she and Voltaire did seem more like old friends than bed partners now. Perhaps her attention had already strayed elsewhere—and as long as she didn’t embarrass the marquis and his family, who cared?—but it was more likely she was pleased not to be distracted from the science that now consumed her every waking moment.
“Listen to this.” Emilie brandished a scientific journal as the servant refreshed the guests’ coffee. “Do you want to know the size of the people who live on Jupiter? It’s all terribly mathematical, so it must be true. Since the eyes are in proportion to the body, and we know the size of the pupil of the eye and the distance from Jupiter to the sun in comparison to the distance from the earth, it works out to …” Emilie thought for a moment before giving a number precise to several decimals.
“Let me see that.” Françoise de Graffigny reached for the paper from which Emilie had read. She looked up, confused. “This is in Latin,” she said, “and I don’t see any numbers at all.”
“I translated as I read,” Emilie replied. “And the equations were simple enough to work out in my head.” She looked puzzled. “I meant it to be funny. Men on Jupiter? Did you think I was serious?”
Their houseguest suppressed a sniff of indignation as she caught the marquis’s eye. When Emilie wasn’t boring them with science, she was ridiculing them for not being as agile-minded as she was. Isn’t that what these little performances were about? If no one else but Voltaire understood, why did she inflict her physics, or whatever it was, on everyone else?
The marquis knew the vapid and tedious Madame de Graffigny’s mood well. He really should talk to his wife about being better company, her eyes said. Cirey would be such a pleasant place if only the marquise’s intelligence didn’t make things so difficult. Well, let her think that. Did Madame de Graffigny give her husband—or her fop of a lover for that matter—anything to be proud of? Florent-Claude had a wife he could boast about, even if he didn’t understand or care about the things that excited her.
Voltaire rose from his chair. The socializing was over. The coffee was cold. It would be a good day to go hunting, the marquis thought. It was usually a good day to go hunting.
1767
THE CARRIAGE left the front of the cottage, turned onto another village street, went a few meters, and stopped. A grove of trees had hidden the château from Lili’s view before, and she realized she had waited at least an hour to ride a distance she could have walked in a few minutes. Despite her nervousness, she smiled at Anton’s insistence that she arrive in proper style.
The driver opened the gate, and the carriage made a short climb on a path that swept around the side of the château. The house was smaller than she expected and seemed lopsided. The roof was higher in some parts than others, with a flat terrace on top of one section where an attic and mansard roof would normally be. The main section, with a stone-carved arch over the door at its center, was flanked on the right with a taller structure that had no counterpart on the left. The monochromatic yellow of the stone gave t
he building some appearance of harmony, a look of being both finished and incomplete at the same time.
Lili heard a voice in the garden behind her. An old man in a military uniform was leaning heavily on a cane, yelling into the empty air. She hesitated before taking a few steps in his direction. “Sir?” she called out.
He turned around as quickly as his aged body would allow. “Where is my regiment?” he shouted. “They were camped here last night.”
“I—I don’t know,” Lili said. “I’ve just arrived.” She looked around, trying to imagine a regiment bedded down between the sculpted hedges.
“Damned lieutenant!” he spat. “They send me a boy when I need a man! There’s a war to win, you know!”
France isn’t at war right now. “Monsieur le Marquis?” Lili asked, not sure what to say to someone who had taken leave of his senses. He looked more closely at her, and for a moment Lili thought he might recognize her. Just then his attention was distracted by the cries of a middle-aged woman running across the lawn toward the garden. “Monsieur!” she cried out to him. “You’re not to go out like this! You could get lost!”
“Oh, shut your mouth! You’re nothing but an old nag.” The woman ignored him. “Come along,” she said, taking his limp arm. He allowed himself to be led back to the house without complaint, and when she had handed him over to a tiny young chambermaid, she turned to Lili.
“You must be the niece we were just told about. Which one are you?”
“I’m Stanislas-Adélaïde,” Lili said. The servant looked momentarily confused, as if she was trying to place the name. “I’m not really his niece,” Lili added. “I’m his daughter.”
“Oh dear,” the woman said. “I’m not sure this is good.” She looked around. “Come with me.” She took Lili around the house and down a slope to the basement entrance to the kitchen. “Wait here,” she said. “If someone asks who you are, say you’re my cousin.” She looked at Lili’s dress, which despite being crumpled and soiled was still obviously fashionable and expensive. “No one will believe you, but just keep saying it until I get back with Lucien.”
Left alone, Lili looked around the spacious kitchen. A huge fireplace filled most of one wall, surrounded by shelves and hooks loaded with gleaming copper pans of every imaginable size and shape. The aroma of wild boar wafted from a stew pot hanging over a fire in the hearth, and on a worktable in the center of the room a loaf of fresh bread lay on a rack, next to a neat pile of vegetables still covered with bits of dirt. A larder door led to a room filled with an array of preserved and dried food, bags of flour, baskets of apples and onions, and special cupboards for cheese and pastries. In a separate area, eight places were set at the servants’ table.
Just then the woman returned with a man of the same age. They hurried through the door and shut it behind them. “I’m sorry to be so disrespectful to a daughter of the marquis,” the woman said, “but he rages so terribly now that we try not to upset him.” She gestured to the man. “This is my husband, Lucien,” she said. “And I’m Berthe. We’ve both worked here most of our lives. We knew your mother, God rest her soul.” Berthe crossed herself.
“Knew the marquis in his better days too,” Lucien added, “not like you was seeing him when you arrived.” His eyes were steeped in melancholy. “He’s not fit for visitors now, so far from his right mind.”
Lili looked at the fading light through a small window. If he weren’t able to have company, perhaps she would be asked to leave, which would mean returning to Bar-sur-l’Aube in the dark. But she was the marquis’s daughter after all, so that would not happen, at least not tonight. “I have a valet and maid,” she said. “They’re waiting at the cottage of a man named Anton.”
“I’ll go now and bring them here,” Lucien said, and without another word he was gone.
Berthe turned to Lili. “We’ll put you and your maid in the guest room in the attic of the old wing. Your valet can stay with us tonight. It’s best to keep him out of sight until the marquis has a chance to get used to him. Last month he thought the new coachman was Monsieur Saint-Lambert, and he knocked the poor man senseless with his cane.”
Lili smiled courteously. “Come,” Berthe said. “Let’s get you up to your room before the scullery maid comes back to put the vegetables in the stew. There will be gossip enough tomorrow, I’m sure. No need to get it started tonight.”
Lili followed behind her up to the main floor, then up another flight of stairs, and another. A short hallway led to an attic bedroom. “I hope you find your quarters satisfactory.” Berthe scowled at a sudden memory. “That Madame de Graffigny was always complaining about how Madame la Marquise and Monsieur Voltaire spared no expense for themselves, but stuck her in the attic and couldn’t be bothered to finish her room properly.” She sniffed. “Her room. As if she had a right to it.”
She unlatched the door to a room similar in size to Lili’s bedchamber at home but more sparsely furnished and in need of a new carpet and a touch of paint on the wainscoting. “I think it’s rather nice,” Berthe said, opening the curtains. “And the viewpoint is the highest in the house.”
Lili was only half listening as she looked out the window. To her right, through branches that had obscured the château when she had looked up from the village, she could see Lucien bringing Justine and Stephane to the château on foot. None of them would have as much as a change of clothes until their trunks could be fetched from Bar-sur-Aube tomorrow, but Lili was relieved that they were all at least safe for the night.
Turning to the left, she looked out across the golden fields to a dense forest in the distance. The blue of the sky was deepening in the early twilight, and suddenly Lili realized how long it had been since she had eaten. She had no doubt that Anton’s wife had fed Justine and Stephane, but she had not eaten since the woman had handed her the bread slathered with butter and jam that morning. Could it possibly still be the same day that she had woken up and run in her unlaced dress across the square?
She sat down in a sudden rush of exhaustion. “Could you bring me something to eat?” she asked. “I’m afraid I’ll be asleep in a few minutes. And could you make sure my maid and valet have been fed as well?”
Berthe smiled. “It will be my pleasure, Mademoiselle Stanislas-Adélaïde,” she said, leaving the room before Lili could open her mouth to tell her that only the difficult people in her life ever called her by that name.
MOONLIGHT GLEAMED ON the white bedcovers, and when it reached Lili’s face she sat up to look around the unfamiliar room. Night had softened the white stucco designs adorning the wall panels, and on the wainscoting, the pattern of the silk brocade wall covering had dissolved into a gray blur. Through the narrow opening in the casement window, cool air stroked the dust of disuse from the creases and crannies in the room, prickling Lili’s nose until she broke the quiet with a sneeze.
As her eyes adjusted, Lili picked out the white chaise percée with a chamber pot underneath. She got up, lifting the bottom of her chemise, which had served as her nightdress since her trunk was still at Bar-sur-l’Aube. Sitting down on the wooden seat, she contemplated the soft, familiar whisper of water falling into the vessel underneath her.
For a moment she couldn’t remember why she had come. The bone-bruising journey had put the world of Paris so far behind that it seemed as formless as the Meissen figurines standing in a darkened cabinet across the room, waiting, as Lili was, for the light of morning to give everything back its shape.
A cock crowed in the village and Lili got up and went to the window. The sky was beginning to lighten, and with both resignation and relief Lili decided there would be no more sleep for her that night. She went to the desk, lit the lamp, and went back to Meadow-lark’s world.
The steps to the cathedral in Andalusia were filled with people murmuring angrily and waving their arms. Meadowlark hid Comète in a nearby garden and went with Tom to investigate. “What is everyone so upset about?” she asked a man dressed in a bishop’s robe and
mitre.
“There’s supposed to be a wedding today, but the bride has disappeared.” He scratched his head. “We think she must have been kidnapped—after all, why would she run away when she’s about to be married? Everyone’s been so pleased about the match. Her family has hoped for an alliance with the Mounte-bank-Piquedames for years …”
Lili rubbed her eyes. She had a real Baronne Lomont and a father to deal with, and her own wedding to escape. Sending Meadowlark off to Spain was not going to help with that. Now that she was here, all her ideas about what to say, what to do, had vanished. It would be best to use this quiet dawn to think, before Justine got up to help her dress, and Berthe came with her breakfast.
“All right,” Lili said aloud. “What do I have here?” She thought for a moment. A father I have to persuade to let me manage my own life when he clearly has no control of his own. A father who might not know who I was if I’d lived in this house every day of my life.” A father who said he never wanted to see me.
The hope she had carried with her from Paris, that since he had not interfered in her life to this point she could persuade him to stay out of it now, evaporated with the memory of the befuddled man in uniform looking for his troops. Perhaps I should just leave this morning, Lili thought. Leave before he throws me out for being someone he imagines I am.
She wasn’t sure why he would want to do that, or who he might think she was, but if he’d attacked a coachman over a grudge with this—what was his name? Saint-Lambert?—anything was possible. If she left now, perhaps Baronne Lomont would never know she had come, but if she stayed and failed, she’d lose any chance at all to hold off the fate looming in front of her.
The glass cover on the candlestick would make it safe to carry, so she lit the stub inside and stepped out of her room. The passageway had a plank floor that looked quite new, but the paneling on the walls was rough and had been given only a hasty coat of paint. The paneling stopped where the open timbers of the roof and crossbeams protruded from the walls, low enough for her to bump her head in the dim light.
Finding Emilie Page 31
