Finding Emilie

by Laurel Corona

  The drawer was filled with a jumble of papers that hardly appeared worth the effort of locking it at all. On top was a draft of an essay by Voltaire covered with comments in another hand, and Lili’s heart leapt at what she knew must be her mother’s writing. Farther down in the drawer were some sheets of foolscap filled with carefully drawn graphs of parabolas covered with calculations so long the page had been turned to continue up the margin. A few unpaid bills were scattered near the bottom of the drawer—for jewelry, perfume, clothing, renovations to her rooms. Lili smiled. Apparently the man laying the marble floor was still waiting for his payment.

  Taking out the next layer of papers, she heard the thunk of a hard object at the bottom of the drawer. She pulled out an ovalshaped picture frame in ornate silver, facing down. Voltaire. Lili thought as she turned it over.

  She stared in confusion at the face looking out at her. It was not Voltaire, but a handsome man in his thirties, wearing an immaculate white wig with a black velvet ribbon securing the tail at the back of his neck. His eyebrows were arched and his head slightly cocked to one side, as if he was waiting for an answer to an interesting question. His eyes were as round as hers, and he had the same pronounced bow in his lip.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Lili whirled around so quickly that the frame flew from her hand and clattered across the marble floor. The marquis stood in the doorway of the library, his eyes flashing in anger.

  “I—you gave me permission to come in, sir.”

  The man she had seen slumped in a chair earlier that day now pulled up his chest and thundered at her. “Do you think I can’t figure out why you wanted me to come home so quickly? Do you think I believe that after all these years you’re suddenly filled with desire for me?” His lip curled and his voice dripped with scorn. “Have enough servants and villagers seen me, and have enough guests come to dinner to report that I’m here?”

  “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, of course. That’s always a good thing to say when you have something to hide. I suppose I should be grateful your pretense averted a scandal, and I won’t be ridiculed as a cuckold at court, but if you and Monsieur Voltaire are quite finished with my services, I’d like to return to Lunéville.”

  Lili’s mouth was agape and she stared at him, speechless. Then, almost as if he were a leaking bag of air, the marquis’s shoulders began to slump and he was once again the frail old man she had seen that morning.

  “Emilie,” he said in a voice now more petulant than angry. “I’ve been most forgiving, most tolerant—how could you repay me like this? How could you get yourself with child at your age? And by that little dandy Saint-Lambert? He is so unworthy of you.”

  Lili’s eyes darted to the portrait on the floor. Saint-Lambert. The one for whom the coachman had taken a beating. The man with her eyes, her mouth. “No,” she whispered to herself. “It can’t be true.”

  The marquis came closer and peered into Lili’s face. “You’re not my wife.”

  “No—I’m not,” she stammered.

  “Who are you, then?” He seemed more frightened than curious. “And why are you in my house?”

  “Sir, I’m your daughter, Stanislas-Adélaïde. I’m—” Lili’s voice was hoarse with tears she was too terrified to shed, and she was shaking so badly she had to force her knees not to buckle and send her toppling to the ground. “I’m the child you were referring to just then.”

  His eyes flickered again. “You’re the one who killed her,” he spat.

  “It’s not my fault!” With a sob that seemed to come from deep in her entrails, Lili rushed toward the door. He grabbed her by the forearm with a grip so strong it hurt through her sleeve. “Isn’t what I’ve done sufficient for you?” His face was scarlet. “I’ve given you respectability, money—do you ask for more from someone who’s not even your father?”

  He pulled her close again and examined her features. Then he began to laugh, at first softly and then growing to a roar so loud, Lili thought she would be shaken to pieces. “It’s written on your face,” he said. “You have her nose and chin, but the eyes and mouth belong to a man so reckless with his cock that he destroyed my wife.” He squeezed her arm so hard she cried out. “Destroyed me too, that little prick.” He released his grip and threw down her arm. “What do you want from me? You’re their daughter, not mine.”

  THE TRUNKS HAD scarcely been unloaded before they were back on the carriage. Berthe was in tears, but Lili was as dry-eyed as the dead. “Please forgive him,” Lucien said, as Justine and Stephane settled into the backseat. “He’s not right anymore. He says terrible things he don’t mean.”

  “I imagine that’s true,” Lili said in a brittle voice. “But tell me one thing. Was he in his right mind when he said I’m not his child?”

  Lucien and Berthe exchanged glances. “I wish I could say otherwise, but with God watching, I can’t,” Lucien said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Monsieur Lambert visited Cirey nine months before you were born,” Berthe added. “He and madame stayed alone for a week or more. Monsieur Voltaire and madame took great pains to bring the marquis here as soon as she missed her monthly blood.”

  Voltaire? That didn’t make sense. “She was carrying someone else’s child, and he wasn’t angry?”

  “Monsieur Voltaire …” Berthe shifted her weight as she pon dered how to answer. “He was always complaining about his health, and one day he decided he weren’t fit for—I don’t know how to say it any more delicately, mademoiselle—fit for serving her needs as a woman. Not that he told us that, but people in a house have a way of knowing.”

  “No one else understood all their books and their experiments,” Lucien added. “I think they stayed together to have someone to talk to.”

  Berthe nodded. “And once you’ve been together a long time,” she said, “there’s no letting go.”

  “YOU’RE IN LUCK, mademoiselle,” the man at the inn in Bar-sur-Aube told Lili. “Coach from Geneva to Paris comes through this day every week just before nightfall and leaves at daybreak.” Relieved, Lili paid for herself, Justine, and Stephane. “We won’t unpack,” she said. “Just load all our things on the coach when it gets here.”

  Had it really been only two days earlier she had gone into the same inn, wondering how she would get to Cirey? Lili pondered all that had happened as she separated out the bones in the stewed chicken the innkeeper put in front of her. It was just as delicious as the meal she had when she arrived, but her mood was too grim for her to do any more than move the food around in the bowl.

  What was I thinking? she asked herself, tearing off a piece of bread and chewing it angrily. Why did I believe I could defeat Baronne Lomont with this foolishness? All she had accomplished, she decided, was to destroy her illusions about her father. The man who’s not my father after all, she corrected herself. And when the baroness finds out what I did…

  Tears of defeat and humiliation stung her eyes. She would have to go back to Paris and choose a husband, back to a place where no one, not even Maman, had told her the truth. Lili pushed the bowl away and stood up. She needed to get upstairs before the men in the tavern saw her cry.

  * * *

  JUSTINE WAS STILL out having her meal with Stephane, so Lili took off her dress herself and lay down in her petticoat and chemise. Though she tried to focus her thoughts, her mind refused, and soon she drifted off to sleep. When she woke again, night had fallen and the town square was quiet except for the off-key singing of a few men staggering home after too much to drink. When they were gone, the silence was total except for Justine’s soft breathing in the alcove.

  Lili stood at the window looking up into a sky white with stars. It’s the same sky over Paris, she thought, and over Etoges. Her heart twisted with longing to pour out her heart to Delphine. Even if the marquis was a doddering old man, it would be nice to bask in Delphine’s outrage over the way she had been treated.

  It’s the same
sky wherever Voltaire is too, she thought, wondering if he still loved her mother, and if he had ever given any thought to the child she had died after giving birth to. He had cared enough to help falsify the parentage of her unborn child, hadn’t he? And who was this Saint-Lambert, and why had he never come forward to meet her? What would her life have been like if he had? What would her name be? No question of it: she owed her existence to this Saint-Lambert, but a larger debt to Monsieur Voltaire. Without his efforts to help her mother hide the truth, she might be talked about openly as a bastard child.

  She wondered if Voltaire was also at a window at that moment, looking at the stars. He had settled somewhere near the Swiss border, she had heard, so he could hurry to safety if any new work displeased the French censors. After she had read her story in the salon, Buffon had said in jest that he should write to Voltaire about it.

  What was it he said? “I should write to Voltaire at …” Lili struggled to make her mind release the memory.

  Ferney. It came to her like a whisper in her ear.

  “Coach from Geneva to Paris comes through this day every week,” the innkeeper had said. And, Lili realized with a start, the coach in the other direction was the one she’d been on a few days before.

  Once you’ve been together a long time, there’s no letting go.

  Impulsively, Lili got up, put her dress back on, and rushed downstairs. The innkeeper was wiping the tables in the empty tavern. “Is Ferney near Geneva?” she asked in a breathless voice.

  “About an hour by carriage,” he replied, rinsing his wet rag in a bowl of dirty water.

  Lili grinned broadly. “Thank you,” she said. “And would you please make sure our bags aren’t on that coach after all? Have someone bring them up to our rooms tomorrow, and change our booking as well. We’ll be traveling the other direction instead.”

  AS THE moon neared the horizon, the carriage cast a moving shadow over the snow-covered fields of Champagne. Inside, under thick lap rugs and furs to protect them from the February cold, Emilie and Voltaire curled up together.

  She slid her hand over her stomach. “At least somebody’s warm.”

  “I don’t know why you couldn’t have waited until spring to leave Cirey,” Voltaire said. “The roads are safer then, even with the mud. And with your trunks lashed to the roof, the horses can’t go faster than a trot without toppling us into a ditch.” He pulled the curtain aside and looked out on the darkness. “We could walk to Paris almost this fast.”

  “You didn’t have to come,” Emilie sniffed, looking away in feigned indifference.

  “Of course I did! If you insist on getting yourself killed by traveling in winter, I’m afraid I’m foolish enough to feel required to do it with you. I wouldn’t let you travel alone in your condition, although getting chilled like this is likely to give me a fever.” Voltaire gave her a grave look that invited her to imagine the worst. “You’re likely to come out of this far better than I.”

  “The books I must have are in my apartment in Paris.” She was so tired of repeating herself. “And the people I need to consult are not likely to come to Cirey on a road as unfit for travel as you say.”

  “You could have sent for the books, couldn’t you?”

  “I have to look through them to know which ones I want,” she said, emphasizing each word to convey her annoyance. “And once we’re in Paris, there’s no point in going back until the last snow has melted and the mud is truly terrible, so you’ll have something else to complain about.”

  Trying to lighten the mood, Emilie gave Voltaire a playful pinch on his chin, although almost immediately her expression darkened. “I can’t afford to wait two months to get started on the Principia,” she said, feeling her voice stick in her throat. “It’s not just a translation, you know. I’m going to have to rewrite it so people can understand, and add commentaries as I go along.”

  She sat up, scarcely noticing the winter air creeping down her neck. “I’ve decided to add a supplement with nothing but calculations too. Mathematical proof is essential for the French to accept the Principia and Newton didn’t supply enough of that.” She shuddered, only partly from the cold. “I have less than seven months to figure it all out and get it written, before my time comes. That’s why I’m on this infernal coach crawling toward Paris.”

  “You’re shivering,” Voltaire said, pulling her close to him and adjusting the covers. “You drive yourself too hard, my diamond-encrusted genius.” He squeezed her tight. “There will be time after your time, will there not?”

  It was best not to say what she was thinking. He would scoff at her premonitions, but they were as real to her as the jarring of her bones on this coach. He knew as well as she did that childbirth was dangerous, especially at her age, but he didn’t seem to want to admit that the forces of nature applied to her. She was beyond their grasp, he often said to flatter her when she worried about a crease on her brow or a sagging fold of flesh. And sometimes she thought he really believed it, as if some people could have too much in their minds, too much to offer, to be permitted to die.

  Voltaire knew her better than did anyone, and even he could not comprehend what she meant when she said her time was coming. She had a few months to make her mark on the world, or die trying. That was the problem. To die, still trying.

  She listened to Voltaire’s breathing grow shallow. For all his litany of ailments, he had the enviable ability to drift off to sleep in even the most uncomfortable places. The moon on the horizon cast a glow into the carriage, illuminating his face. He was in his midfifties now, and starting to look old. Most of his teeth were gone—a blessing in some ways since they had caused him nothing but pain for years—and the ridiculously out-of-date wig he always wore reminded her of the floppy, paddle-shaped ears of the king’s spaniels. Still, there was no one she loved more—not in the wild way she once had, but as a friend she could not imagine life without.

  She was fairly certain he had a mistress in Paris, but he didn’t seem to care about her all that much, and Emilie was confident no one could take her place in his heart. Still, a young woman willing to adore him as she herself once had was not an insignificant threat. After all, she had fallen victim to the charms of a younger man who adored her, hadn’t she? Emilie touched her stomach and felt the sharp ache that came from thinking about Saint-Lambert. Since he found out she was with child, he had distanced himself in the most distressing and painful way, but perhaps her latest letter would touch his heart …

  She closed her eyes, just as what sounded like an explosion erupted under her seat. She screamed, clutching at Voltaire as the carriage fishtailed on the icy road. The trunks scraped across the roof as their weight shifted, carrying the coach with them and slamming it on its side. Underneath her, Voltaire groaned loudly, pinned against one of the doors. She struggled to stand up amid the hatboxes and lap rugs, now covered with the contents of a basket of food. “You’re crushing me,” she heard Voltaire moan, as she pounded on the other door, now above her head.

  She heard the voice of Voltaire’s manservant, Sébastien Longchamp, and felt his weight rock the coach as he scrambled up to open the door. “Are you all right, madame?” he asked, peering down at her.

  “Mon Dieu,” she gasped. “What happened?”

  “An axle broke. Lucky we were going so slow.” She grabbed his arm to pull herself up onto the side of the carriage, where the driver and another servant helped her to the ground. The driver held Longchamp’s ankles as he reached down to rescue Voltaire. Within a few minutes, all of them stood, shaken but unhurt, by the side of the road.

  Longchamp had been riding ahead of the carriage since nightfall, watching for obstacles in the road as it made its way toward the nearest town, where they would rest for the night. “I’ll stay with monsieur and madame,” he told the driver. “Take my horse and go for help.” He jumped on a snowdrift to make a flat, hard platform, and then laid furs and lap robes on top. “It will be several hours before anyone comes,”
he said. “You’d best bundle up.”

  Emilie and Voltaire lay back on the rugs, pulling the blankets over them as they looked up at millions of stars burning in the clear winter sky. The only sounds in the vast, roaring silence were the nickers and whinnies of the horses, confused why suddenly everything had stopped.

  “When I was little, I thought the Milky Way looked like a horse that had galloped off to another galaxy, and all we could still see was its tail.” Emilie laughed, watching her breath cloud in the blue-black night. Voltaire pointed overhead. “It’s no wilder an idea than thinking those stars are an archer named Orion—as if objects in the heavens stay in their appointed spots to make a good story for us.”

  “And then Galileo brandishes his telescope and asks a simple question: what would happen if we preferred the truth?” Emilie said. “And voilà, that smear across the sky reveals something more wonderful than anything we could imagine.”

  She was silent for a moment. “I wonder what people who come later will think of us,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder. “The truths we’re too stubborn to accept, and the lies we’re too frightened to abandon. We’re so adamant about moving away from superstition and alchemy, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to catch a glimpse of what we’re wrong about, however hard we try not to be?”

  Voltaire laughed. “Painfully wrong sometimes, if I recall a certain on fire whose greatest merit apparently lay in giving my critics something to disparage.”

  Emilie scarcely heard. “It’s not impossible to send objects into space, you know.” She sat up, not noticing the cold. “If a projectile could be launched at a speed great enough to get beyond the earth’s gravity near the top of its arc, it would keep going unimpeded in the same direction—it would either circle the earth or go on out into space forever. I’m sure it’s so.”

  “Or until it ran into something,” Voltaire teased. “Don’t forget that, Madame Newton. Perhaps it might collide with people who’ve launched themselves out from another galaxy. I hope they’re a better creation than we’ve turned out to be.”