‘I smell the whiff of nuns,’ observed François.
‘Come now, Papa.’ Theresa glanced at Angelina, apologetic.
‘I’m sure in time it shall disperse,’ Angelina said, smiling. ‘I’m working with Maman, helping with her writing. A more fitting occupation, surely?’
‘You may do as you please.’ A smirk lifted the corners of François’s mouth. ‘But perhaps, if you wish to make a splash in Parisian society, you might take some lessons from Theresa, eh?’
‘I learn quickly,’ replied Angelina. Why did she feel like a mute child before him? He was teasing, and yet she felt the sting in his words. But then, she wholeheartedly agreed with him. Her clothes were a problem; thus far her desire to improve her style had only manifested in nightly prayer. Perhaps it was time to take more worldly action.
Luncheon was brought to the table on a wooden tray; clay bowls of steaming hot soup, a loaf of bread and three tiny cups of coffee.
‘How is the dragon?’ François raised an eyebrow at Theresa. ‘I presume she’s behind this lovely little surprise.’
‘I’m afraid she is. I promise we won’t keep you.’ Theresa drew a letter of credit from her purse. ‘I’m told you’re familiar with the terms. Mother’s banker has sent three notices. Which she claims you’ve ignored. She wishes to know when the funds will be paid into her account. This is your final warning, she said to tell you. Or she shall send others, not as pretty faced as we two, to settle things.’
‘Is that so?’ François laughed. ‘Well, this is a surprise. I’d like to see her try.’
‘She’s come upon difficulties,’ said Angelina. ‘Don’t be unfair.’
‘Yes, daughter.’ The Baron turned to Angelina. ‘Much as I’d like to help Marie Catherine, I have my own financial affairs to tend.’
‘Such as?’ asked Theresa.
Grimacing, François touched his ribs. ‘The surgeon, for a start. I have bone pain, back pain, carbuncles, mucus of the throat, dropsy, three teeth to be drawn. Need I continue?’
‘I’m sure you’ll feel better when you’ve slept off the wine you drank last night,’ said Theresa. ‘What shall I tell Mother?’
‘Tell her I’ll settle it with Deidre,’ said François. ‘When are you gracing me with a grandchild?’
Theresa’s poised act faltered. ‘I’ll not be diverted by your dancing around the topic, Papa. It’s none of your business. Perhaps I’m wholly absorbed painting pretty vases. I barely have the time for my own upkeep, let alone a child’s. Our order book is full for months.’
‘Forgive me,’ said François. ‘There’s no call for cheap comment. Don’t you feel a little queer, toiling for your husband’s family? If you were under my control—’
Theresa caught Angelina’s eyes: I warned you.
‘Not at all,’ replied Theresa. ‘I enjoy it immensely. As I’m sure I would enjoy children, should God grant his blessing on me.’
Angelina sipped from an earthenware cup, her tongue curling at the bitter-tasting coffee. ‘Surely you’re familiar with Theresa’s painting talents? It’s dull, not having an interest, some passion to direct your thoughts.’
‘But no more the Church?’ François addressed Angelina. ‘Isn’t it altogether odd to find yourself freed of the cloister, roaming about Paris?’
‘Perhaps,’ replied Angelina. ‘I cannot yet tell.’ She was lying. Her father had put his finger on her problem and was pressing down on the infected spot beneath her skin.
‘That damned woman!’ said François. He took Angelina’s hand in his. ‘Remember, you’re not under the gaze of God’s narrow-eyed army anymore. There are many pleasures to be enjoyed in this city.’
‘Father,’ said Theresa. ‘Can we return to Mother’s bill? Angie’s perfectly capable of adjusting to life beyond Saint Anne’s. She needs no rushing. Nor corrupting, I might add.’ Theresa’s eyes glinted; now she was teasing him.
Angelina finished the last spoon of her onion soup. She pushed her chair back, pleasantly full, refreshed by the coffee. Her father’s flippancy was a welcome diversion from her mother’s fretting. She was quite enjoying escaping Marie Catherine’s under-heated, poorly aired chamber and her continual complaints about unpaid accounts.
Leaving the coffeehouse, François put his pretty shoe in a mound of dog excrement, letting loose an invective about ruining the brocaded toe. Angelina made herself busy securing two palanquin-bearers to carry him back to his apartment. She told him to rest, to try and sleep.
Travelling in a rented carriage, Theresa expressed frustration at her father’s slippery behaviour. They had come away from lunch minus the cost of the two-course meal they had shared, and not a single sou of their mother’s owed coin. François had given one concession: he promised to honour his debts when Deidre’s child was born, if he were permitted to visit her.
The carriage rolled to an abrupt stop on Rue Saint-Germain. A commotion was taking place up ahead as a package from a carriage was unloaded onto a cart. Angelina peered at two merchants – dressed in exquisite magenta and indigo capes, wigs scrolling down their shoulders like exotic bird plumage – in the middle of conducting a heated argument.
‘I’m sorry about Papa,’ said Theresa.
‘You don’t have to apologise for him. It was my idea to join you,’ said Angelina.
Theresa offered her a snack of nuts and marzipan. ‘You look pale.’ She touched Angelina’s chin, forcing her to turn from the carriage window. ‘Are you feeling well?’
‘Papa’s right. I have few charms.’ She sighed.
‘You shall find a friend. Don’t you remember our discussion? You must stop moping over Henrietta.’
Angelina nodded. She would do her best to not feel sorry for herself. ‘There is a little something. Though I’m not sure what to make of it.’
‘You must share!’
Angelina removed the letter she had tucked into her bodice and handed it to Theresa. Returning to her seat after speaking with Nicola Tiquet at the salon, Alphonse had teased her for not listening to the conclusion of his tale. His performance must have been truly terrible for her to leave the room. She had blushed and, to cover her embarrassment, offered to make amends. ‘I asked him to send me a copy, so that I might scribble a comment or two of encouragement. And he’s taken me up.’
‘You must have made a favourable impression.’
‘He’s like Maman, hungry for attention. It’s nothing more, I assure you.’
Her maid, Lise, had delivered the letter on her mother’s tray that morning. Inspecting the unfamiliar seal, she’d torn open the envelope. Two small pages. On the first, a sonnet. She counted the lines and metre without thinking. An Alexandrine. A finger to her lips, she studied the crowded letters. The rhymes were fresh – feminine vowel structures following the masculine, a brilliant couplet for the envoy that made her nod in surprise and recognition. The sonnet was an adaptation of the myth of Psyche and Eros, describing the scene in which Eros’s monstrous identity is revealed in the light of the curious girl’s lamp. Alphonse had given Eros the form of a silver serpent, a novel twist on Apuleius’s tale. Psyche, unfortunately, was a little dimwitted for Angelina’s tastes. She preferred Marie Catherine’s resourceful heroines. Perhaps Psyche might challenge the serpent, put him on his guard, rather than gleefully submit to his coiled embrace.
The second page was a short letter: Tell me your thoughts, I would love to hear your response. Alphonse had composed the verse after the salon, quickly dashing it off. She must tell him if it failed, for now it was but an exercise. He planned to add more stanzas, to work his way deeper into the story, although it was this scene that gripped his imagination.
Angelina smiled, wondering if Alphonse was familiar with ‘The Great Green Worm’,her mother’s interpretation of the same Roman love story, in which the monster also assumed the form of a charming, rich and slithering green serpent? Marie Catherine’s tale contained elements of the fairy story ‘Parslinette’, by Charlotte-Rose de La
Force, including a princess locked away in a tower by a wicked fairy. But in The Great Green Worm seclusion was chosen by the heroine, Laidronette; the fairy, not invited to the princess’s christening feast, had cursed her with ugliness. The girl preferred to hide away rather than offend those who loved her most with her hideous appearance. At its heart, the tale was of course a love story, like its predecessor. Green Worm and Laidronette, by the device of long, intimate conversations, learned to love each other and their once-despised selves. They worked together to undo the spells that kept them locked inside false appearances, returning to their original human forms. Perhaps the princess’s banishment was the feature that made The Great Green Worm one of Angelina’s favourites, but she was also thoroughly enchanted by the wonderful fairy battle it contained, the tiny pagoda people of Green Worm waging war with the wasp and butterfly army controlled by the wicked fairy.
Alphonse had signed and then added a postscript, hoping she had not found his recital altogether unsavoury. He would like a letter in return, if she fancied. If she was not taken with the poem, might she share her experiences of Paris since leaving Saint Anne’s? He was interested to hear her thoughts.
‘Will you reply?’ asked Theresa.
‘I’m yet to decide.’
‘Oh, you must. It’s time to enjoy life a little. Put that silly convent behind you.’
Angelina took the letter back and tucked it away. The carriage had resumed its journey and she had an urgent task: she needed to collect her impressions of Paris’s colourful streets.
Marie Catherine
6 April
The English translation of The Lady’s Travels into Spain, two small, calf-bound volumes, had been delivered with Marie Catherine’s morning correspondence. Discovering the package on her desk, she had taken it, along with her coffee, to the chaise longue before the fire. She would take a few precious minutes to linger over its touch and smell. How delightful to have her novel translated into another tongue. Opening the first volume, she traced the frontispiece, an engraving of a woman dressed in a Roman soldier’s helmet and scrolling robes seated before an imposing desk. The woman’s palm gestured towards an elegant library, while a globe of the world and a mounted lion’s head sat at her feet.
The Lady’s Travels into Spain was Marie Catherine’s most popular book, a fictional history in letters, much of it drawn from correspondence with her mother, Judith-Angélique de Gudannes, who had relocated to Madrid shortly before Theresa’s birth. The book had been revised and corrected for reissue by her Parisian publisher, Claude Barbin, the previous year. Five years after publication, it still sold in respectable numbers, a fact that had given Marie Catherine some power in suggesting a revised edition. She recalled her victory at convincing Barbin to reset the print, removing typesetting errors and revising several epistles she was unhappy with. She rewrote the foreword to include advertisements for the books she had published in the years between – Memoirs of the Court of Spain and Memoirs of the Court of England – and added another name to the author dedication.
Less than a year after its initial release in France, The Lady’s Travels into Spain was translated into English. Like its French counterpart, it proved a popular title with readers across the Channel, each reprinting selling steadily. Based on her success with Barbin, she negotiated a revision of the English text with her Amsterdam-based international publisher, Cornelius Alberts.
She was impressed with the tooling on the leather cover, a flourish the plain French version lacked. Heaving herself to stand, she walked to her library. The top row of the cabinet was reserved for her publications, and she neatened the dozen titles, pressing them to one side to clear a space. She felt grateful for her drive and imagination, for those who had encouraged her during the long apprenticeship of becoming a writer. For time, a place to craft words, an ability to narrow her attention. But she also felt unsettled: with no new book in progress, how could she call herself an author?
She recalled her thoughts during the salon. She had been intending to write a second book of fairy tales, but whenever she sat down at her desk, she would draw a blank. She had tried to press her concerns away, secure in the idea that the inspiration would arrive in its own good time, but as the months wore on, she had begun to grow concerned. She wondered sometimes if it was the fairy tales that were the problem. Perhaps she had done all she could with handsome princes in magical lands? Was she trying to support the fairy tale vogue, rather than listen to her deeper interests as a writer? She knew it was not possible to force an idea. Before the publication of her book of fairy tales, she had written an historical novel, The Prince of Carency, set in the English court. Disguised in its pages were veiled criticisms of the lack of freedom in women’s lives in France as in England. She recalled how her patron, the Princess de Condi, had loved the book, appreciating the picture she had drawn of the heroine’s thwarted agency in the court of Charles II, and asking if she might write another instalment. While her fairy tales were loved, she was never certain that her readers understood their messages of protest. Perhaps she was wasting her time advocating for women’s lives in fantastical stories. Perhaps she needed to use a more direct approach. She stepped back from the bookshelf, admiring the elegant new spines in her collection. It was decided: she would take up her patron’s invitation and pen a novel about the lives of women in France as they were that very moment, championing for increased freedoms in the weavings of its plot. She would need to cast about for a suitable heroine.
Above the fireplace was an etching of herself dressed in the robes of Clio, Muse of History. The portrait had been commissioned by the Accademia del Ricovvati of Padua, to honour her contributions to French literature. Its twin was on show in the association’s dining hall in Madrid amongst a phalanx of similarly esteemed writers. It had always been a source of pride for Marie Catherine. How grand this edified, gracious woman appeared, the linked chains of the heavy medallion she wore around her neck, the curled piles of her lustrous silver hair, her full, smooth breast, the confidence and slight defiance in her hooded eyes, the haughty set of her mouth.
Arranged on the mantelpiece beneath the portrait was a collection of figurines representing characters from her tales: a glass snake, a team of enamelled frogs drawing a carriage, a carved blue-painted bird, a dwarf in a pretty yellow suit. She touched the Delft figurine of a cat, a gift from Cornelius. Next to it was propped a doll, Princess Félicité, from her story ‘The Isle of Happiness’, with moving joints made of wood and a layered skirt and petticoats, tiny stitched leather boots and real human hair in a deep shade of red. A token of appreciation from Abbess Deveraux, the former head of Saint Anne’s and her first writing mentor.
She recalled Mademoiselle Sidonie’s eager face at the salon. Had Marie Catherine been glib, instructing her about the tools needed to begin a writing career? It was not as simple a task as she had suggested. It had taken time to grow used to the convent that had become her refuge after separating from her husband, after her mother left France. But she had learned to give over the care of her daughters to the kind sisters. She found an ally in Abbess Deveraux, a relationship of saviour and dependant that slowly transformed into friendship.
In those days, she spent many evenings in the Abbess’s library, reporting her opinions of the titles she borrowed from the convent’s extensive collection. The Abbess bought all the fashionable novels, and at the time there had been a great vogue for stories featuring adventurous women. The Duchess de Longueville, who had been a driving force in the Fronde – even taking up arms against the King – had been exiled to Saint-Cloud, where she started a literary salon. She wrote of her childhood at the French court, which was transcribed by her secretary into a series of books that Marie Catherine absorbed into her skin as a template for the life a free-thinking woman might lead. Every volume she opened boasted exploits of women who eloped with their lovers, who controlled their fortunes, who dressed as men to defeat armies, who hosted intellectual gatherings att
ended by loyal patrons. The stories were such a contrast to her experiences that she would sometimes feel the most acute despair.
Abbess Deveraux encouraged her, telling her that she expressed her thoughts with wit, passion and insight. The nun delighted in the workings of Marie Catherine’s mind and reassured her that the hours she spent engrossed in a book were not wasted. Reading could be a form of healing. One evening the Abbess asked her a strange question: had she considered writing a story of her own? Marie Catherine had laughed. What a preposterous notion.
But the Abbess’s idea revealed a hidden well, and she was overtaken by the desire to sit at her small desk by the window, writing down the scenes that plagued her thoughts after hours of feverish reading. She became fascinated by the Abbess’s histories of the English and French courts, the manners and alliances of the squabbling dukes and duchesses, but she remained reluctant to share her own undisciplined scribblings on these subjects. She was teased by the Abbess: she must be working on something grand, behold her private smiles, her guarded responses. And then the notion came to her. She would tell the nun a fantastical tale, a story like the Italian fables her father had read to her as a young girl, with kings and journeys and strange, magical creatures. A conte de fées – the term had drifted into her head – yes that was it, a fairy tale. She made up the story in the Abbess’s reading alcove, which smelled of lemon tea and damp. Surprised by what she invented in response to her friend’s gentle encouragement, she returned to her room to write it down.
The hero of ‘The Isle of Happiness’ was Prince Adolph, who had been out hunting bears in a Russian forest when he became separated from his party. He found shelter in a cave, which happened to be the home of the winds – Zephyr, Eole, Boreas – and their elderly mother. Hearing talk of a beautiful princess who lived on a mysterious island, the prince persuaded the youngest wind, Zephyr, to take him there the following day. Princess Félicité, a fairy who had never encountered a human man, quickly made Adolph her firm favourite. She ruled over her magnificent kingdom without wars and fighting; the days passed with ceaseless entertainments provided by a host of musicians and courtesans. One day, recalling the kingdom he had left behind, Adolph asked the princess how long he had been residing at her castle. He was shocked and dismayed to learn that three hundred human years had passed and determined to depart the island immediately, for he had long harboured plans to leave a mark upon the place of his birth. Heartbroken, Princess Félicité granted him freedom, and he set off, hoping to carry out heroic deeds and secure his place in the history of his homeland.
The Bee and the Orange Tree Page 5
