Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  She didn’t question him further. It felt tactless.

  The historic town of Blois, home to French kings and dukes of Orléans and their murderous royal intrigues, rose with frayed majesty on its hill overlooking the Loire. The grand river of the region was a commercial artery as busy as the Seine and noisier. Steamboats hooted, jostled with barges and fishing skiffs. All manner of building materials, not to mention the seasonal riches of the valleys – apples and pears, asparagus and artichoke, melons and pumpkins and wine – made their way up-and downriver, stopping at any of the many points between Orléans and Angers and further afield.

  Her father had rarely taken her the distance of Blois and as a result she hardly knew the town, but she still remembered the high stone walls of the cloister on its outskirts and the massive spiky towers of St Nicholas, which seemed to puncture the clouds in their dramatic ascent towards the heavens.

  The streets at the base of the town were narrow and gloomy, with the weight of their houses huddled beneath the hilltop grandness of the castle. A square of brick and stone opened before them. The traces of the morning market were still in evidence. Farmers and hawkers emptied their stalls. Old, bonneted women, large woven baskets at their feet, gossiped in the pale sunshine. A knife-sharpener shouted his services. At the far end of the square a gaggle of children gathered to watch what, from their gawking, could only be a procession.

  It was as Georges stopped the carriage and opened the door to her that Marguerite took in that this was no procession of the usual kind. Moving slowly up the incline of the square was a woman on a broad-backed mare. She too was large, her garments of a maroon red somewhat tattered and spattered with mud. She moved regally, like a queen, her body echoing the rhythm of the mare in slower motion. Her face was covered with a heavy veil of what might have been fishnet. It only partly obscured the milk chocolate hue of her skin, the deep, dramatic eyes, the brilliant red of the lips.

  Leading the horse by a rope, as carefully as if he had in tow the Virgin and her unborn child, was a P’tit Ours transformed by his charge. His eyes were fixed directly in front of him. There was no shuffling. His clogs hit the ground with a steady, almost military gait. His shoulders were proudly high. When he glanced up at the woman it was with an expression that brimmed with love. Was it that which made him oblivious to the sporadic taunts of the children? Marguerite could now hear them clearly as she and Villemardi approached. They too stopped to watch the spectacle of this odd couple’s steady progress.

  For a fleeting second, Marguerite felt Amandine Septembre’s eyes fall on her. The woman raised her hand in a half-wave, as if she recognised her. And then they had moved past.

  ‘I wonder where they’re going,’ she murmured.

  ‘To the pier, I imagine. To take a boat somewhere.’ Paul Villemardi urged her forwards. ‘According to Georges, we have to go down this way.’

  Marguerite turned to catch a last glimpse of the fugitive couple. She now noticed that in his left hand, P’tit Ours held a strongbox. She was tempted to race after them and forget about Louise. But she forced herself to stay on course. She recognised the wish to avoid the murky matters that implicated her more nearly.

  The heat and clanging of their destination reached them even before they had glimpsed it. The old stone forge was tucked into the bottom of a narrow, sloping street the coachman had preferred not to enter. There was a horse tethered to the ring beside its open half-door. Through it, they could see a burly, aproned man, his face gleaming with perspiration. In his hands he held a large hammer, which he aimed rhythmically at the glowing metal of the horseshoe he was working. Sparks flew upwards.

  Marguerite restrained Villemardi until the smith had finished this stage of his work.

  ‘Monsieur Limbour?’ Villemardi then addressed the man.

  There was an answering grunt, but the smith didn’t turn towards them. Instead they heard the hiss of molten iron in water as he lowered the shoe into a barrel.

  ‘We’re looking for Louise.’

  ‘Louise!’ The man veered round, anger in his heavy face. ‘You’re not going to find her here, are you?’

  His tone and face changed as he took them in. Marguerite was half ashamed of her finery in these workmanly surroundings. The man made a small gesture of the head that could have been taken as a bow. ‘You’ll not find her here in the middle of the day,’ he said, his voice barely audible now.

  ‘Where will we find her, Monsieur?’ Marguerite used her most gracious tone.

  The man met her eyes briefly. ‘She’s working with the chocolates. If she’s not up to worse.’

  ‘Chocolates?’

  Villemardi tapped her arm and gestured her away, thanking the blacksmith as he did so.

  ‘Poulain’s. She must have got work at Poulain’s chocolate factory, La Villette.’

  ‘Is it far?’

  Villemardi shook his head. ‘Quicker with the carriage, though.’

  As they emerged into the small square, they all but collided with P’tit Ours and his charge coming from the opposite direction. The youth’s lopsided face took on a frightened look as he recognised her. But Amandine Septembre maintained her regal calm and addressed her from behind her veil.

  ‘Do you know where we might find a blacksmith, Madame?’

  Her voice had a music all of its own. It took Marguerite a moment to separate out the individual words and then she turned to point behind her.

  ‘Right at the end,’ she said and paused, before rushing on. ‘Has your horse lost a shoe?’

  Amandine Septembre shook her head. ‘No, Madame. I have lost a key. A key to my strongbox.’

  P’tit Ours yanked the horse along.

  Marguerite swallowed hard. Again she wanted to race after the two, interrogate them. But she couldn’t. Not now. Instead she called, ‘Be careful that the smithy doesn’t singe any papers.’

  A throaty laugh came from Amandine. ‘That’s a good warning, Madame. I thank you.’

  ‘Do come and see me if you encounter any problems. Do…’ Her voice bounced off stone walls and came back to her.

  Villemardi was looking at her strangely. She returned his gaze, head on.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur Villemardi. We have strange ways in Paris. You said so yourself. We talk to all and sundry.’

  He chuckled, a little too familiar. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t report back to Olivier.’

  The chocolate factory was a long narrow stone building set round a courtyard and back from the street. Smoke sprouted from its many chimneys. Its side sported the familiar blue Poulain sign with its majestic, sprawling ‘P’. All the posters she had seen advertising the chocolate maker’s products, all that repetition of ‘goutez et comparez’ – ‘taste and compare’ – over the years now leapt into Marguerite’s mind. Yet she had never taken on board that the factory was in Blois and, from the extent of it, a major employer.

  A man stopped their progress as soon as they opened the door. Wafts of rich, bitter fumes came in his wake.

  No they couldn’t see Louise Limbour, he told them emphatically. Out of the question. She wouldn’t be finished for another two hours.

  It took all of Marguerite’s authority, her insistence on talking to Monsieur Poulain himself, if necessary, to convince him that the young woman had to be called away from her vat, whatever the loss of time. Marguerite even offered to pay for her time.

  When she was finally ushered through to them from the heat of a side door, Louise Limbour looked frail and fearful, not at all the buoyant young vamp gossip had led Marguerite to expect. Nor, in her large, ungainly, blue work-smock, was she the nymph of Villemardi’s stonework. Was this what the loss of baby Gabriel had done to the girl?

  With a flourish of hauteur which she saw frightened the girl even more, Marguerite asked the foreman if they could be shown to a room. They had a private matter to discuss.

  Louise Limbour trembled visibly. Her pretty face had an unhealthy pallor, despite the heat. When she took in Villem
ardi’s presence, she touched a delicate hand to the golden loaf of her pinned-up hair, then resolutely looked down at the floor.

  The foreman ushered them into a tiny airless cubicle. Marguerite, in the hope that it would reassure her, pointed Louise to the only chair. The girl sat at its very edge.

  ‘You don’t know me, Louise, except as the absent Comtesse de Landois, I imagine. But I’d like you to believe that I intend you no harm. There is a delicate issue between us.’

  The girl looked up at her with a start, intelligence glimmering in her blue eyes, colour mounting in her cheeks.

  ‘The matter of a child.’

  ‘A child?’ she echoed.

  ‘Yes, Louise,’ Villemardi intervened. ‘It’s a little late to play the innocent prude. Madame is a saint and wants to adopt your bastard. So no games now. Just tell her everything.’

  ‘Monsieur Villemardi,’ Marguerite cut him off. ‘You’ll wait for me in the carriage, please. I want to speak to Mlle Limbour in private. Thank you.’

  She stared down the startled face he turned to her. ‘Right away, Monsieur.’

  She waited for him to go, then smiled at Louise. ‘These matters are better discussed between women. Madame Germaine tells me you want to work with her to become a midwife.’

  The girl nodded, once. Then the fearful look came over her again.

  ‘I can help you to do that. But first I need to know about the baby. The baby you left by the Loir.’

  ‘No, Madame, no,’ the girl protested.

  Marguerite was surprised.

  ‘So you didn’t leave your baby by the river?’

  ‘I have no baby. I have no baby.’ Louise burst into tears. They flooded down her face and seemed to suffocate her. She started to hiccough violently.

  ‘You have no baby?’ Marguerite repeated. ‘No baby that you took to the river and waited for Monsieur le Comte to pick up? No baby that was the result of an encounter between you and Monsieur le Comte?’

  The girl shook her head so hard that the pinned-up hair tumbled down. But the crying didn’t cease. The sobs had taken her over, as vehement as spasms. They wracked her shoulders, contorted her delicate face.

  Marguerite put an arm around her, but the tears didn’t abate. She felt helpless. This utter denial was the one response she hadn’t expected. She gave the girl her handkerchief and tried again.

  ‘You had a baby, Louise. You had a baby by the count. You couldn’t keep the poor mite, because he was illegitimate. I understand. I understand the scandal it would have caused. Your inability to find work, because of it. I promise I won’t publicise the fact. I just need to know. Need to know, if I am to be the baby’s adoptive mother. You could even come back and live with us, Louise. I wouldn’t mind. I would be quite happy for you to take on the care of the child, if that’s what you wanted. Your relation to him could remain a secret. Only we would know. I’m sure Monsieur le Comte would agree to that. You understand?’

  Through all this the girl only sobbed more and more fiercely. Now and again, she shook her head, and repeated almost incoherently. ‘No child. I have no child. No child.’

  At last Marguerite realised she couldn’t break through the girl’s resistance. Some fear so powerful had taken her over, that she could only deny the fact of Gabriel. It was possible she even believed she had never had him. She had heard of cases like that. At the Salpêtrière with its terrible complement of sufferers – people driven mad by the agony of their lives.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to talk to Madame Germaine about it all,’ Marguerite said when she could think of no other approach.

  The girl raised haunted, red-rimmed eyes to look at her. ‘It’s not my child,’ she repeated. It came out like a mumbled response in a catechism lesson. The sobs shook her again.

  Between them, Marguerite thought she heard her say, ‘My stepfather will kill me. Kill me. He’ll send me back to the sisters.’

  With that the girl rushed from the room, leaving Marguerite to stare at the empty space that had so briefly held her adamant fragility.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Marguerite sat alone in front of the blazing fire in her upstairs rooms. It was evening. She had wanted to be alone to think and had taken her supper here. But her thoughts moved only in one obsessive direction. She watched the flames coalesce into Louise’s face, leap at her heaving shoulders, splutter out her repeated denials, echo the wail of her sobs.

  An expectant Olivier had baulked when she said she was tired and needed to be alone. But in the battle between curiosity and contrition that played itself out on his face, the latter had won a temporary victory. He didn’t press her. She knew he would talk to Villemardi to get news of the meeting with Louise.

  To Villemardi in the carriage home all she had said was, ‘Louise insists she had no child.’

  The sculptor had made no reply. He barely spoke to her. He was still smarting at the brusque manner in which she had ordered him to leave. She, in turn, was angry at the high-handed, insulting way he had addressed the young woman. As if, when she wasn’t his model, she was less than a servant – an inanimate, earthenware container, first for seed, then for the babe. She wondered if it was his presence that had utterly skewered the interview.

  Only later did it occur to her that Paul Villemardi might feel a burning jealousy towards the Louise with whom Olivier had created a child. Had she already suspected what had become clear to her on the way to Blois, she would never have allowed him to accompany her.

  But that aside, could Louise be telling the truth? Or was she lying out of fear of the consequences? Lying because her stepfather would kill her if he found out she had given birth to a child. Lying because she could lose her job, would have to leave everything that was familiar?

  She had also made a mistake, Marguerite acknowledged. She had forgotten how frightened Louise would be of her. She should have sent Madame Germaine to prepare the ground.

  The girl’s thin face formed itself out of the flames again. Could anyone that transparently frail have so recently given birth to a child as healthy as little Gabriel? A child who had been left to the wintry elements and survived?

  As the hours of contemplation passed, Marguerite veered between distrusting Olivier’s assertions and doubting the girl’s veracity. Her husband was wrong. The girl had had no child. But Gabriel was there. He existed. If not Louise, someone else had given birth to him and brought him to Olivier’s attention.

  Marguerite paced, paused in front of the mirror where the face returned to her looked like a stranger’s. Her eyes were vast, lifeless, shadowed, the skin too pale, the cheekbones too prominent, the hair dishevelled. Had she been weeping, without realising it? She must take care or havoc would invade and sweep her away.

  She sipped tea that had grown cold. She bit into a piece of chocolate. Had this come from the factory in which Louise worked? She stared into the flames, felt tears gather in her eyes and saw the walls and courtyard of the factory take shape.

  A moment later, they had given way to the walls they had passed on the outskirts of Blois. Great high walls in the grey ugliness of the plain that stretched beneath the hill town. Walls that contained the convent of the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin. The place had beckoned to her, and she had asked Georges to stop the carriage. But no amount of pounding at the door brought any response. Perhaps it was already too late for entry. As they drove away, she had imagined Olivier going there to deposit infant Gabriel in his basket. She had understood how he hadn’t been able to push the mite through the bleak stone wall.

  She asked Villemardi to describe that day, but his terse answers brought no new information.

  Well into the small hours, Marguerite sat in front of the fire and considered. If only baby Gabriel could speak and reveal his history!

  She found herself wishing for Rafael’s presence. With his demotic, American spirit, perhaps he would be better placed to understand Louise and Yvette and Martine, who had been conditioned to keep a grand lady at a dist
ance whatever her intentions. He would be better placed, as well, to confront that strange couple she had seen in the streets of Blois. She wondered where Amandine Septembre and that awkward P’tit Ours, who had led her horse so nobly along the streets of Blois, had gone. If she wished them well out of the way of the turbulence they had so far managed to avoid, she still wanted some of the answers the majestic daughter of the murdering old reprobate might be able to provide.

  Morning came sooner than Marguerite might have wanted. It came with a great torrent of distress from Jeanne, whose knock on the door she still locked rudely penetrated her cloistered dreams. There was an unwelcome pounding of rain against the window to provide a counterpoint.

  ‘I’m sorry, Madame. So sorry. But that ghastly woman insisted. I thought she might hit Madame Solange. She wouldn’t go away. She shouted and screamed. We had no choice.’

  ‘Slowly, Jeanne. Who are you talking about?’

  ‘That fat woman with the hairy lip. All those ringlets. I’m sure they’re a wig. Terrible dress, too. Flounces and ribbons everywhere. Pelletier or … I don’t remember. We had no choice, Madame.’

  ‘Tellier,’ Marguerite interpreted for her. So the police hadn’t arrested the woman yet. What were they waiting for? She searched for lucidity through the residue of dreams. ‘Yes, Madame Tellier. It will do her no harm to calm herself and wait. So help me with my toilette, Jeanne. I fear I’ve been letting myself go a little.’

  When she came into the small sitting room where Madame Tellier had been directed, the woman was prodding the logs in the fireplace. She was swathed in a long black coat and a vast boat of a black hat that shouted mourning. The logs must have taken Marguerite’s place in her imagination, for when she heard Marguerite’s greeting she turned and lunged the poker in her direction.

  ‘What did you do with them? I saw you. Saw you prowling. Stealing. You’re just a thief in good clothes. A worm.’

  The spew of words was the only greeting Marguerite was to get. Madame Tellier’s eyes were as hot and accusing as her face was red. They sent a threatening electrical charge through the room, as dangerous as the poker.