The Bee and the Orange Tree

by Melissa Ashley

  She met Claude’s eyes. ‘You’re early …’

  How could she have been so foolish? How could she have taken such an enormous risk?

  She controlled her voice. ‘You forgot to lock the back door to my room. Jacques noticed. Can I not have a bath at my own leisure?’

  Claude stared at her, black brows drawn over his deep-set brown eyes, his nostrils widened. He plucked at a lock of his hair. Pushing himself off the table, he began to pace the kitchen. ‘I doubt the door was left unlocked. In fact, I recall instructing my valet to check it had been fastened, not once, but twice. Why are you lying to me?’

  Nicola swallowed, casting her eyes over the flower petals floating on the water. ‘Why do you lock me in my rooms at night? It’s no way to treat your wife.’ She shouldn’t provoke him, but she couldn’t help herself: speaking to Marie Catherine had returned the old fight to her. If he pushed, she might be antagonised into battle, though quarrelling with her husband was always a mistake.

  ‘Who sent the flowers?’

  ‘They’re from Mathe.’ Nicola swallowed the dry lump in her throat. ‘It’s the anniversary of Clotilde’s passing.’

  Claude pulled at the ties of his cravat, glancing away at the mention of their daughter. He seemed to consider her explanation. Undoing the complicated knot, he unwound the tie from his neck and tossed it onto the kitchen table, where it landed across a plate of soup. Annoyed, he drew it out and wiped it on a towel. ‘You think to make a fool of me?’

  Nicola’s toes pushed against the walls of the tub.

  He walked over to the fire and lifted the poker from its stand, shoved it at a stray piece of charred wood. Sparks flared, the popping of a hot coal as he broke it in two with the tool. Claude hung the poker up. From the corner of his eye, he spied the bag of soap and towels. He picked it up and drew open the strings, scattering the oil, the rose water, and – most damning of all – the pessary for her vagina onto the kitchen table.

  ‘Montgeorge,’ he muttered, picking up the pessary and throwing it at the wall, where it bounced against a pot and fell to the floor, breaking into clods. A piece of dirt. He crouched by the bath and whispered into her ear, so close she felt his hot breath. ‘How dare you.’

  She would not be intimidated. Saliva pooled inside her mouth and, before she could think to stop herself, she spat, thickly, in her husband’s face. She glared at him, defying him to do his worst. She saw the emotions shift across his features. Shock, hurt, and then a slow-mounting rage. Claude stood tall, looming over her cowering form. She had nowhere to go. He reached for her shoulders, wetting the cuffs of his dinner shirt. She could only push with all her might against his hand as it caught her by the hair, thrusting her under the bath water. The breath was expelled from her lungs and she was thrashing and kicking against the hard walls of the tub, her dress catching around her legs. She was ready to swallow water, anything to stop the sensation that her burning chest was about to explode from the pressure to inhale. But then, suddenly, no more resistance was needed. She thrust her head and shoulders above the surface of the water, opening her mouth and drinking down the sweet, dry air. More and more she gulped, her fingers wrapped around the edge of the bath.

  ‘That’s enough!’ Jacques was holding Claude in a shoulder lock. He kept his large arms around the smaller man’s chest until Claude’s heavy breathing subsided.

  Having caught her breath, Nicola rose to her feet, blowing the water out of her nose. Looking away from her husband and servant, she stepped carefully out of the bath, accepting the towel Beatrix held out for her. She buried her face in the fabric, her fury and terror and shock absorbed by the rough cloth. She could hear the voice of her son’s nurse, calling down from the top of the stairs. What was all the commotion? Jean Paul had been woken up.

  ‘Almost finished,’ said Monsieur Côte.

  She had never warmed to her physician. If he were a decorator, or an author scribbling for le Mercure galant, then maybe his squinting gaze stumbling over her wall hangings, her bear-skin carpet, her tapestries and armoire might be acceptable. He was constantly calculating and collecting, fattening his tongue so as to entertain his friends, his wife, his housekeeper – she knew not whom, only that the greed of the gossip in him was obvious. Côte roamed her own person too, glancing a little too long into her eyes, brushing her ear, turning her chin this way and that, dispensing advice while he prodded and poked at the flesh of her forearm for a vein.

  She lay on the chaise longue in her bedchamber, dressed by Beatrix in a clean nightgown. She was dry-skinned, feeling like a smoked hock; an overripe peach. When she would not divulge her reason for the late-night call, the physician insisted she let him bleed her.

  Nicola touched the spot where he had nicked her skin with his sharp knife. The wound had already closed, the blood hardening into a small lump. On the table where she kept playing cards and dice sat the bottle of her blood, near black in the candlelight, ready to be bundled into his trunk. She always wondered what he did with it. Did he sell it on to alchemists? Did he keep it for experimentation? Did he toss it onto the fire?

  ‘I’ve finished my sleeping draught,’ said Nicola. The bleeding had cleared her mind a little.

  Côte opened his case and removed a bottle filled with brown fluid. ‘Just a drop, no more.’ He took out his quill and prepared a receipt.

  She bade Beatrix to fetch her purse. This was her secret weakness, which she indulged privately, drawing payment from her personal funds. Côte charged extra for his silence, which enabled him to touch his flesh too near to hers, to admonish her, should he be in the mood, like a hated tutor. His departures left a sour coating on her teeth.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ said the physician, putting on his plumed hat and bowing deeply. In his perfumed gloves sounded the chink of the small pile of coins Nicola paid for the consultation.

  After Claude had slouched from the kitchen, leaving her dripping by the bath, she had sent Jacques to call the physician and Beatrix to instruct the porter to turn Gilbert away. Only then had she turned her attention to her husband’s behaviour. He was seated in the living room, in his brooding chair, head in his hands, brandy by his side, weeping in shame. He begged her to take a drink with him, it would clear the air; she must forgive his rash temper. Could she blame his jealousy? After all these years, she still made his heart quicken. It would never happen again, he promised. She had no idea how he regretted losing control of himself. If he could only take it back.

  Soaking wet, a towel around her shoulders, she had declined his offer. She needed to check on Jean Paul, she’d told him. While Claude might not give a fig, Nicola added, she preferred her son to remain unaware of their quarrelling. After that, if it was all the same with him, she was going to bed. She had a thumping headache.

  Whether intentionally or not, Claude had neglected to lock her door again. A small mercy.

  ‘Is there anything else, Madame?’ Jacques stood at the entrance to her chamber, the shoulders of his jacket damp from the light drizzle outside. He’d seen the physician to his carriage.

  ‘Did Montgeorge come?’ she whispered.

  Jacques scratched his hair. ‘I’m afraid not, Madame.’

  She glanced at the rings on her hands, concealing the disappointment that squeezed at her heart.

  ‘I’m sorry, Madame,’ said Jacques.

  ‘All’s well for now.’

  Her servant lingered, his presence intrusive. She did not wish to be witnessed in such pain. He had seen enough already. She turned, meeting his gaze, intending to dismiss him. But despite herself, she felt her agony rise up, passing from her glance into his. For the shortest moment, it was as if he glimpsed the secret matter of her soul.

  ‘Very good,’ said Jacques.

  ‘We’ll speak tomorrow.’ Nicola turned back to her dressing table. She needed to be alone, to put away her pretty things. She needed to take a second dose of the sleeping draught: the numbing effects of the bleeding were already wearing off and
the dull burr of her cares threatened to swarm again. She would lie in bed, waiting for its oily thickness to suffocate the hive of her concerns and deliver sleep.

  Angelina

  6 April

  There was a six-year age difference between Angelina d’Aulnoy and her sister Theresa Anne Beauvais. Theresa was married to the scion of a wealthy glass-printing family and took great pleasure in her work with the family’s firm. It was an unusual marriage for a woman of her rank – a love match, and to a man with no title – but their mother had raised no objection and the decision had proven quite beneficial. Angelina had been permitted a day’s leave from Saint Anne’s to attend the wedding and had been warmed to see her sister so happy.

  There was also a practical side to the marriage. Marie Catherine had encouraged Theresa from an early age to cultivate her natural talent for painting, hiring Monsieur Thierry Beauvais as a tutor. Unlike Angelina, Theresa – and Deidre – were raised by Marie Catherine, and Angelina did not dare admit to herself the envy she felt about the freedoms her sisters had enjoyed in their girlhoods. Although Theresa had been married three years to her former tutor, she was yet to have children; instead she painted garlands and pastoral scenes on glassware for the family firm. Her hand was so delicate and fine that clients occasionally requested her by name. As part of her duties, Theresa held mock luncheons and supper parties, inviting customers to admire the tables she laid out with the luxuriously decorated platters, goblets, tureens and glasses the company produced. At least, that was what Theresa used to write in her letters.

  Theresa had asked Angelina to accompany her on a visit to their father, Baron François de la Motte d’Aulnoy, regarding the overdue payment of a loan from their mother, from whom he was estranged. According to family legend, François had been a handsome youth, so much so that he had captured the eye of César, Duke of Vendôme, the legitimised son of Henry IV and his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées. It was no secret that the Duke liked to surround himself with charming young men, and he offered François a position as valet de pied, or first footman. But François was no empty-headed beauty. He possessed a brilliant mind for finances and was rapidly promoted in the royal household, first as valet de chambre, and then as comptroller general, financial adviser to the family.

  During the years of the Fronde, François made himself indispensable fighting with Vendôme on the side of the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria, and her Cardinal, the controlling and unpopular Mazarin. The Duke had quelled an uprising of noble rebels in Burgundy in 1650 and was rewarded with the position of Governor of the province; a year later he was elevated to Grand Admiral of France. In 1653 the Duke was responsible for a major victory, helping to capture an insurgency stronghold in Bordeaux.

  Angelina had always struggled to imagine her father in such dangerous and fierce conditions. The uprisings of the Fronde allowed François de la Motte to reinvent himself as a titled gentleman. He stayed loyal to the Duke, defeating the aristocratic rebels and then looting their lands for the Crown. The Duke and his men claimed handsome rewards from the booty, such that in 1653 François was awarded the royal title of Chevalier de Saint-Michel. That same week he purchased the Barony d’Aulnoy in Bril, sold to him for the sum of 108,000 livres. The village of Aulnoy was not far from a little hamlet called La Motte, where François had grown up.

  François continued in the Duke’s service until his death in 1665. Angelina’s mother was fond of reminding her of his profligacy – he played cards, drank and frequented brothels, seemingly committed to maintaining the habits he had adopted as a soldier. How her mother lamented François’s decision, not long after the Duke’s death, to make himself respectable in the eyes of Parisian society – at least to all appearances. To that end, at forty-five years of age, he negotiated with Judith-Angélique de Gudannes to marry her daughter, Marie Catherine le Jumel de Barneville, a fifteen-year-old girl from Normandy.

  Angelina acknowledged that her parents had never developed much of an inclination towards one another. As soon as François could access Marie Catherine’s modest inheritance – she never ceased to remind Angelina of the fact – he began to spend it in earnest, as if the pot would never empty; as if he had earned it himself. Although they had lived separately for many years, they remained married, and, to the chagrin of her three daughters, Marie Catherine continued to lend her estranged husband sums of money. He seemed to be in constant need of financial assistance, despite his working many years in the service of the Condés, one of the oldest and most illustrious families of Paris.

  François rented an apartment owned by the dynasty, located opposite their palace, the Hôtel de Condé, on Rue Neuve-Saint-Lambert, but the sisters knew better than to search for him there at this time of day. At seventy-five, François was long retired, though he had never given up his love of gambling and frivolity, and the sisters had started their enquiry into his whereabouts at one of the taverns he was known to frequent. An alleyway ran alongside the sprawling post-and-beam building, and Angelina caught an unpleasant whiff of refuse. She steadied her nerves, linking her arm inside Theresa’s.

  Pushing open the blue door to the tavern, Angelina blinked in the dim, dusty light. Though it was not yet midday, the establishment was loud with card-playing and drinking games. The smell of spilled liquor wafted from the floorboards; putains in gaudy silks sat on the knees of drunken soldiers taking their leave between battles; street boys clustered behind thick beams, sharpened knives folded into their grubby palms, awaiting the opportunity to slice the cords of an unattended purse.

  Firm in their footsteps, the sisters raised their chins and ignored the surly commentary that rumbled around the room. It was no secret they were collecting money from a wayward fellow; there was no other explanation for the appearance of two respectably dressed women. Whistles, table thumps and shrieks ensued.

  A jagged scar ran over the publican’s cheek, disappearing into his hairline. Theresa asked if he knew the whereabouts of Baron d’Aulnoy.

  ‘It’ll cost you.’

  Angelina caught the fellow’s foul breath and stepped back from the counter. She glanced around the room. ‘Never mind,’ said Theresa. She gripped Angelina’s hand. ‘There he is.’ She pointed to a broad-shouldered figure hunched over a pot of beer at a corner table near the fire.

  ‘Now, don’t be offended, or shocked,’ Theresa whispered, ‘at what I might say. It’s an act. You need not defend me. Just give the old goat a fierce staring down. I wish Deidre were here. She’s so much better at negotiating with him than I am.’

  ‘Papa,’ said Theresa, drawing out the low wicker seat opposite the dishevelled man. Baron d’Aulnoy’s wig was slipping; his black velvet jacket, brocaded in gold thread, glinted in the candlelight.

  The man glanced around him, rheumy eyes moving from one sister to the other. He squinted. ‘Theresa! What a blessing. Can I order you a drink?’ His gaze flickered over Angelina’s high-cut blouse, sweeping up her neck and settling on her face. ‘And your friend.’ His voice sounded gruff.

  Angelina felt herself shrivel from the inspection.

  ‘I’ve brought Angie to meet you,’ said Theresa, pushing Angelina in the ribs with her elbow. ‘She’s grown into a fine mademoiselle.’

  Angelina offered her hand.

  ‘You’re a little thin,’ said François, bending his lips to her gloved fingers.

  Angelina smiled. ‘It’s good to see you, Papa. It’s been too long.’

  ‘We cannot talk here,’ said Theresa, glancing at a prostitute seated on a soldier’s lap, inserting his hand into her loosely tied bodice. ‘Come, there’s a coffeehouse we passed on our way. You can order a nourishing meal.’

  ‘Where’s my Deidre?’ asked François.

  ‘She’s unable to travel just now. But she sends her love.’

  ‘Ah, a little one on the way again?’ François raised his brows.

  Theresa nodded. She motioned to Angelina. ‘Help me.’ Angelina moved around to her father’s left side.
It was not yet mid-morning, but their father appeared to be staggeringly drunk. They hoisted him out of the tavern and hobbled down Rue Saint-Lambert. Despite François’s dishevelled appearance, Angelina found herself admiring his fuchsia stockings. She was similarly impressed by his shoes, an arched high heel, fat ribbons tied over the buckles, and his brocaded cape; the carved scabbard in which he sheathed his sword.

  Her mother had spoken of his handsomeness, his penchant for the latest fashions. The last time she’d seen her father was on her sixteenth birthday. He had visited her at Saint Anne’s and insisted she accept the black kitten he had bought her as a companion. The memory made her smile. She’d been touched, then bitterly disappointed when the Abbess confiscated the tiny creature, and not at all amused when she discovered some months later that the old nun had kept the kitten for her own.

  They accepted a table before a window in a bustling coffeehouse, potted roses decorating each place-setting. Angelina picked up her father’s tricorn hat, black felt, grey ostrich plumes affixed to the brim. Her mother would flinch at the expense of such an item.

  Ordering their meal, François seemed to revive. The redness that flushed his cheeks as they walked to the coffeehouse had drained away. Angelina wondered if her father might not be drunk; he certainly did not smell drunk, but rather unwell. Was a valve inside his chest clogged with gum?

  As they waited to eat, François demanded she stand before him. He wanted to have a good look at her. She stood up from her chair, twirling before the fire in her light amber skirt and bodice, self-conscious about the plain ribbon that she had used to tie back her hair, the pale flesh of her ears and neck unadorned with jewellery, aside from the silver crucifix at her throat.