by Karleen Koen
When the last candle was extinguished, and no trace left of what had gone on in the room, the footmen shut and locked the door and went to bed. The room was now silent and dark. It needed the light of the candles to show off its beauty, for by candlelight it was exquisite. The walls, painted a cream color, were separated into different panels whose outlines were with a thin layer of pure gold. Within the panels were perfectly carved figures of nymphs fleeing from fauns and satyrs against a backdrop of dark forest and winding rivers. An artist had painstakingly painted each tiny figure as if it were real. The flesh of the nymphs was as glowing, as pink, as those of the opera dancers who had earlier been there. The paneling itself was interspersed with large mirrors and paintings by the great Italian and French and Dutch masters, the subject of each, naturally, being love. The room was a reflection of the best and finest in French craftsmanship.
* * *
In another mansion in Paris, a mansion as beautifully furnished as the Palais Royal, in which Orléans lived, a French princess tossed and turned on her bed. She was twenty, with olive skin and chestnut-colored hair, a petulant mouth and blue eyes that bulged slightly. And her small, childlike body had just miscarried a fetus because she had gone to her favorite abortionist. Her personal maid had changed the bloody sheets and taken the clotted blood that had been the beginnings of a child away to burn in the furnace. It was not the first infinitesimal fetus the furnace had burned. If it had lived to be born, the maid would have packed it naked and squalling in a basket and taken it across the Seine River to be sold to the beggars that specialized in child buying, in child slavery. If the princess felt anything, she did not show it. Abortion was the price she paid for living as she pleased. She had no intention of changing her way of life, though she did try to change the price. She had experimented with every method of birth control available: drinking man's urine and willow tea; raising her thigh; coughing and sneezing after sex; seaweed plugs and various douches, from rock salt to lye water to pomegranate juice. Coitus interruptus, which her sisters swore by, was too uncertain. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, she forgot to insist. Now her maid suggested a new method. It seemed that a household servant from Turkey said the women there tied a piece of thread to a small sponge, soaked the sponge in lemon juice, inserted it inside the vagina before the act, and afterward pulled the thread to retrieve the sponge. The princess pulled her legs up to ease some of the sharp cramps which still seized her. Outside her windows, the sleet beat itself against the panes, and finally, tired from the loss of blood and from the pain, she slept.
* * *
It was January in Paris and a bad winter; fires burned day and night in the houses of those who could afford firewood; the bodies of those who could not were stacked up in the street, frozen, like so much human firewood. The great king, Louis XIV, who had fought all of Europe for over thirty years, who spent his reign building the massive palace of Versailles, who said, "I am the state," whose symbol was Apollo, god of the sun, had died in September of 1715. He left a nation bankrupt from wars; and he left a great-grandson of five to rule in his place, governed by a regency made up of his nephew, Orléans, and his bastard sons by one of his mistresses. His palace of Versailles was shuttered, left to the caretakers and mice. The grandeur, dignity, order, and authority it stood for died with its creator. The other attributes it had fostered—greed, envy, malice, passion, and ambition—moved on to Paris, where the regent lived, and the court followed. He set the tone for the times, one of wasted talents, dissipated pleasures, cynical boredom, and open display of vice and perversion.
* * *
The next evening, Barbara pushed her way through a crowd of revelers at a masked opera ball held at the theater in the Palais Royal. Thirty violins were playing as laughing, costumed people danced on the new marvel, the large space created in the opera house by special machinery that raised the floor of the auditorium to the level of the stage. Anyone who dressed properly could attend; it had been hoped that holding public balls at the Palais Royal would stop some of the scandals erupting at other, more private ones in and around Paris.
Barbara was searching for Roger. This morning, she had slept so late that she had missed him, even though she had given Martha orders to wake her. "I thought you needed your sleep," Martha had said to her when she raged at her. She spent the rest of the morning as she had spent every morning since they had arrived in Paris five days ago, in her rooms. When Roger had returned for dinner (he held an open table, which meant that anyone who wished to might dine with them, and the places around the dining table were always filled), she had to act as hostess and concentrate on her French and try to make intelligent conversation. Among the guests were John Law, the Scotsman who had some theory of money and credit and was the current darling of French society, and the Duc de Saint-Simon, a tall, dignified man who seemed mainly concerned about precedence among the princes of the blood, a subject Barbara found completely confusing. And then she had to dress for a reception and the opera ball following. The only time she had been alone with Roger was in the carriage. As soon as they had gotten to the ball, Roger had chucked her under the chin and told her to behave herself. She had watched his red–cloaked back disappear into the crowd. Behave herself indeed! She was beginning to feel angry at his casual treatment of her. A woman standing near her said, "Care to follow me, dear? I can show you things a man would never think of."
Barbara pulled her cloak closer about herself and reached up to make sure the intricate headdress she wore, drooping pearls and feathers attached to a velvet face mask, was straight. She wove her way through the crowd, back toward the dancing. Men continually grabbed her hands, but she pulled them away. How could Roger abandon her like this? A woman ran shrieking past her, followed by two men, costumed as birds of prey. Barbara found a chair and sat down amid a circle of old women, their mouths going like magpies as they shredded the reputations of everyone they thought they recognized.
Just now they were discussing how badly dressed one of the regent's daughters was. Roger had already taken her to the nearby palace of the Tuileries, where the boy king lived with his bodyguards, his tutors and governess and household. She had liked the king's shy manner, his dark eyes, his dignity. It was a far contrast to his uncle, the regent, who had been drunk the first time she was introduced to him. He sat, fat and red–faced, under a canopy in a reception room at the Palais Royal. One of the attendants announced them. He jumped up and embraced Roger, kissing him on each cheek. But when he bowed over her hand, she could smell the brandy and see the red, broken veins on his nose, and he would have fallen over, dragging her with him, if a footman had not caught him. She did not know what to do. Roger's face was impassive. She could not tell what he was thinking.
The regent burped and pinched her cheek. He held her arm, for support most likely, and led her to a stately woman with fat cheeks whom he introduced as his wife. The Duchesse d'Orléans was surrounded by young daughters in varying stages of ugliness. Of them, the only one who made an impression on her was the widowed Duchesse de Berry, who was quarreling with her mother.
Roger had been amused by her reaction to it all. He tried to explain to her, "Orléans is a libertine, a dissolute cynic, and the most intelligent man in France. He knows more of science and music than any man I know. His problem is one many royal princes share. He was never given any power, Barbara, never given anything useful to do. So he became a drunk and a lazy wastrel to pass the time, and now it is his habit. He cannot help himself. As for his wife and family, I will make no excuses for them, except to say that they have always done as they pleased. They consider themselves above the rules of ordinary conduct. It is something you must accept if you are to understand the French."
She tossed her head.
"Do not be a prig," Roger said to her. "As you grow older and more experienced, you will learn that most things in life are neither black nor white, but a shade of gray. Never make judgments upon people, Barbara, because they may come home
to roost."
Barbara leaned her head against the wall. The old women's chatter was giving her a headache, either that or her headdress was. She wanted to go home. And there was Roger, standing near a far wall in his red cloak with his back to her. She went up to him and when she was behind him, she slipped her arms about his waist and whispered, "Will you take me home? I am so tired."
He turned in her arms, his mask different from the one Roger had worn.
"But of course, mademoiselle. Yet if I take you home it will not be to sleep."
"Forgive me, monsieur," she stammered, backing away. "I thought you were my husband."
The man followed her. "Your husband? How disappointing."
Whatever I answer, thought Barbara, I will appear foolish. So she said nothing, but stared at him, her chin lifted, until he bowed and moved to one side so that she could pass by.
I am a married woman, she was thinking to herself. I do not have to be escorted home like a baby. I can order my carriage and go. Roger will have to find another way home. She did not realize that the man in the red cloak was following her and heard her give her name to the Swiss Guards so that they might call her carriage.
"Henri!"
Someone tugged at the man's sleeve, a small, child-sized woman with olive skin and a petulant mouth, made more petulant by the vermilion rouge coloring it and by the black mask she wore. Her hair was chestnut-colored and her eyes were blue.
"I am bored, Henri. Dance with me."
"Bored, Louise-Anne?" he said. "How can this be? Have you broken with Armand?"
"Oh, no." She pouted. "But I am incapacitated just now, and Armand finds consolation in the arms of some little opera dancer. Nothing is fun when you cannot fuck."
He laughed. "Louise-Anne! You shock me."
"Pooh! Nothing shocks you. Dance with me before I die of boredom."
* * *
Barbara was silent as Martha untied the laces of her gown and unpinned the headdress and her hair. It was not simply that she hated Martha, though she did…it was Roger. Outside, sleet began to beat against the windows as she burrowed under the eiderdown in sheets that had been warmed and shivered anyway. Once again, Roger had either decided to stay in his own apartments or he was still out. She had no idea which. This was not the way she had thought to begin her marriage.
On the journey, he had been very kind, but then, he was always kind. She had been seasick as they crossed the channel, and he left her to Martha's care. Then she got a headache from the jolting sway of the carriage; the roads to Paris were rutted, muddy ribbons of dirt that rattled her head until her teeth shook. Then her flux began (it never came with the regularity of other women's). She kept up a pretense of good spirits, because the men (White, Montrose, and Roger's valet, Justin, traveling with them) seemed not to mind the cold or the carriage or the discomfort of the flea-ridden inns. They stayed downstairs near the fire drinking hot wine while she shivered upstairs under moldy, damp sheets and suffered from cramps.
Paris itself was a contrast of stone mansions—like the one she and Roger were leasing—broad squares and handsome gardens against dark, narrow, medieval buildings and wretched streets. It was a perpetual tumult of noise, even dirtier than London, and the beggars were more aggressive and noticeable. Signposts hung out into the streets; there were no lanterns on buildings as there were in London, so that at night the streets were dark as Hell was supposed to be. Beggars were everywhere; they dashed out in front of your carriage to beg for alms; they waited in front of house gates like human flies (blind beggars seemed to be a Parisian specialty). Church bells rang for morning, noon, and evening prayers, and, as in London, street vendors selling lavender, brooms, doormats, fish, and street ballads walked up and down the mud–filled streets, competing with the curses of the wagoners and the rattle of coach wheels.
She was homesick; Tamworth, her grandmother, Tony, her family, were too far away. It would take another miserable journey across roads and sea to reach them again. (When may I ask Roger about my brothers and sisters coming to live with me? she had questioned her grandmother the day after her wedding. Sweet Jesus, Bab, her grandmother had said, startled, give the man time!) Time…He needed time, and so did she. When was her time? She did not seem to fit anywhere in Roger's life. It was as if she were an afterthought, a piece of baggage added to the journey at the last minute.
In London, there had been two or three days of frantic activity—Roger's servants packing and covering furniture with dust covers, and she trying to spend as many hours as possible with her grandmother and family. Everything for the journey was already planned; she simply followed along. On the journey, she had the feeling that Roger had forgotten he had married her. She would catch him staring at her with a look of stunned surprise on his face, as if to say, what is this girl doing here? It hurt her feelings. Not that he was anything but kind. And courteous. As was his staff. But she had not imagined this beginning to her marriage—Roger's neglect, the discomfort of the journey, her flux, Paris itself, this house, with its huge, cold splendor.
In fact, it was hardly a house; it was more like a palace with rooms that led into more rooms that led into still more rooms, and no wall without paintings, without marble or mirrors, without intricate paneling and swags of carved this and that—cupids, violins, flowers, animals, all outlined in gilt—impossible to describe, except that one had a feeling of such immense richness, of such minute attention to detail. There was something feminine in all the ornamentation, in its excess. On every surface were fancy glass and gold clocks, vases of hothouse flowers, bric-a-brac, china dogs, cats, shepherds. Even Saylor House, for all its grandeur, was not the same. It was simpler, less cluttered. If Roger felt at home among the excess, she felt overpowered.
She pummeled a pillow with a fist. He had left her on her own again tonight. Since arriving, she had drifted like a ghost through this house, waiting for someone to tell her what to do. All week, she had tiptoed to Roger's apartments late at night and knocked on the door. If Justin, Roger's valet, had not been so kind, she would have died of shame. Justin was small and neat and precise, and he acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to appear as she did. He talked to her about Roger, about his habits, as she waited. (Roger was fussy about what he wore, but once he was dressed to his satisfaction, he never gave it another thought. He liked to stay up late, but he almost never overslept. He liked to breakfast with Montrose and White and plan his day.) And what would my ladyship like? Justin would ask her. She did not know. This was the first time she had ever been on her own.
She hit the pillow again, and settled in it and into the covers like a small, determined animal making its nest. This was her life now with Roger, and she was going to have to make it into what it should be because it seemed no one else was. Perhaps it had been naïve of her to expect to be one with him immediately. But she was not a child, and they were mistaken if they thought she was going to stay in the background quietly like one. She knew her duty. She knew her position. Her grandmother had taught her what was expected of a lady. And she was not afraid. (Well…only a little.) After all, she had gone to Roger's town house on her own, risking dishonor and her reputation, to tell him what was in her heart; she had told her grandmother her dearest desires when all seemed lost. Assuming her rightful position in Roger's household was just another step in achieving those desires. And no one could take it for her… though she had hoped Roger would help.
How was he going to be dazzled with her maturity and style if she displayed none? Think on what you want, her grandmother would have said. Well, she wanted to be fashionable and worldly and have lots of babies and surround herself with her brothers and sisters and raise them and marry them off in style and be godmother to their children, all the while overseeing Roger's household and her own children with a splendid assurance that would amaze everyone. But the one who must be amazed was Roger. He was the axis around which she spun. She wanted him to love and need her (as she loved him, f
or sometimes when she looked at him and knew she was finally married to him, her love swelled her throat and hurt her heart). She wanted to surround him with that love, with the children of her body and his—with the comfort and ease a loving wife could bring.
She had waited for him to make some gesture to show where she stood in his life, what he wished her to do. But there was none. And so now it was up to her….She closed her eyes tightly and said a series of quick little prayers, just as she used to do when she was a child and the morrow brought things she feared to face. She felt better. She opened her eyes. She smiled. She knew her position and her duties. She had been well taught. And on her own, she had begun to learn that success was sometimes simply a matter of having the courage to proceed in the direction of one's dreams.
* * *
The three of them rose like guilty schoolboys when she came into the breakfast room the next morning. She had been floating around on her own so much that they had probably forgotten who she was, she thought irritably. Well, she would remind them.
"Barbara," Roger said, smiling at her. "How nice of you to join us. I thought you would still be sleeping." He kissed her hand. Handsome liar, Barbara thought.
