The Bee and the Orange Tree

by Melissa Ashley

  ‘I try. I do. Thank you for listening,’ she said. ‘I feel better for having unburdened myself. What power you have, wheedling my secrets from me. But not a word of it to anyone, do you promise? Should Maman get wind of it she’d turn me out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t think so,’ reflected Alphonse. ‘Her friend is accused of attempting murder and for some reason your mother’s determined to help clear her name. I think she’s a little less conventional in thought than she might seem. After all, she’s risking her reputation, which is something she’s fought hard to earn.’ Alphonse scratched his chin. ‘Why are they so close? It’s a strange friendship, if you ask me. They couldn’t be more different. Madame Tiquet is frivolous. Such a conformist, regarding the expectations of her class. It’s hard to really admire that.’

  ‘They have a long history,’ said Angelina, unsure of how she felt about the abrupt shift in conversation. ‘Perhaps it’s their bad marriages – that seems to unite Maman with certain women. The griping and complaining they all do. They’ve put me off for life.’

  ‘But why does Madame Tiquet come to the salons? I see the way everyone looks at her. They seem to regard her as a joke.’

  ‘The salon’s fashionable, and Madame Tiquet adores a part. She even pays for the food and drink, so I suppose Maman feels indebted to her. Being a writer, even a bestselling one, doesn’t pay all the bills.’

  Abruptly, Angelina climbed down from the high bed, walking to the dressing table and replacing Madame Tiquet’s wig. She could have screamed in frustration. How could she let herself grow confused all over again? She took out Nicola’s hairpins, putting them on a dish. Efficient, concentrated. She let the prayers repeating inside her head continue without interruption, a sort of incantation. She checked her reflection in Nicola’s mirror, relieved that the roil of emotion swaying and swelling beneath her skin did not show. Now to control her voice.

  ‘Might this help?’ asked Alphonse, holding up a brocaded case.

  ‘Where did you find that?’

  ‘Under the bed.’ He deposited the small chest on the duchess. Angelina took a cloth from Nicola’s handkerchief drawer and wiped the dust from the catch, lifting open the lid. Inside the fabric-lined box was a velvet bag. As she undid the buttons, she could feel something hard inside – a gift box for a pendant or earrings, maybe. Her instinct was right, the wooden case held a bouquet of red roses fashioned from silk.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Alphonse, touching one of the petals. Diamonds, imitating dew drops, were mounted on several petals.

  ‘Perhaps we should take it?’ Angelina wondered aloud. ‘At least it’s something. Maman can have it exchanged.’ Their search for money had proven fruitless, nor was there any jewellery – Nicola always made a show of wearing different pieces – in the cases and trays on her dressing table.

  Angelina glanced around Nicola’s sumptuous chamber, which they had restored to a modicum of order. The windows and doors secured, they went downstairs to inspect the kitchen. Most of the filth had been cleared away. Unsure what to do about the servants – her mother would have a clearer idea – she allowed them to stay, charging them with maintaining the rooms that were not locked in Madame’s absence, with a stern warning that a burly porter from her mother’s household would be over in a few days to check on them.

  Alphonse insisted on accompanying her back to Marie Catherine’s apartment. Parting from him on the corner of Rue Saint-Benoît, she affected an air of civility and grace. She ignored the ambivalent yearning that threatened to upset her carefully restored equilibrium, turning her thoughts to the report she would make to Marie Catherine.

  The porter had been awaiting her return, and she was directed to Marie Catherine’s chamber. Angelina blinked at the unexpected daylight in her mother’s customarily dark and stuffy rooms.

  ‘Are you expecting a crowd?’ Angelina joked. The curtains had been drawn all the way back – as if in preparation for a salon – the chaises longues and chairs pushed against the walls. Sophie and Lise were rolling up the winter rug. How shabby and faded her mother’s furniture appeared, when compared to the opulence of Nicola Tiquet’s room. She could hardly blame Marie Catherine for keeping the place in perpetual half-darkness.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ said Marie Catherine, giving a tired smile from behind her writing desk. ‘Making me find all the accounts.’

  ‘Perhaps you should take a break from trying to write every day. It’s making you very grumpy. Surely if an idea comes, you shall recognise it.’

  ‘That’s not how it happens, my dear.’ Her working area had been completely rearranged, the writing set polished, the empty ink bottles and broken quills removed, the rings from cups and glasses wiped away. Though Angelina begged her to let the maids clean, Marie Catherine insisted on a maintaining a vigilant guard over her personal papers. The accounts, which Angelina could not bear facing, sat in a neat pile under her ledger, a fresh notebook on top. She wished Marie Catherine would hurry up and invent a new story. For ten years, she had unfailingly sent Angelina drafts with nearly every letter, working without fuss on several pieces at once. Angelina could never understand how she managed to move from one book to the next, as if each story was a carriage, and all she had to do was take the porter’s hand and climb the little step inside. Angelina was growing bored of waiting for the editing position she’d been delivered from her former life – her former home – to begin. In especially depressed moments, brought about by the task of making sums, she wondered if there had perhaps been some mysterious method between her mother and her former secretary that enabled her to work with ease, some trait or trick that she did not possess.

  Marie Catherine asked how she had got on at the Tiquets’. She expressed displeasure but no surprise to learn that the stash of coin Madame de Senonville instructed them to recover had disappeared. Angelina offered the box containing the diamond-encrusted roses, relieved to be told she had made the right decision in taking them. Marie Catherine laid the bouquet out on the leather writing pad, touching it with a tender finger.

  ‘We’ll have to use this,’ she said, echoing Angelina’s earlier thought. ‘I don’t know how she’ll react, but she has no choice. She always feared Claude will steal them back from her.’

  ‘They were from him?’

  ‘Yes, from their courting days,’ said Marie Catherine. She narrowed her eyes. ‘Like the Baron, apparently Claude Tiquet was devilishly good-looking as a youth. Charm to burn. I scolded her many a time for following her loins. But she views herself as having been taken advantage of. Though she made the bed for herself. But what does one know of the world at sixteen? If I think harshly of her, it’s only in comparison with my own experience. She was made an orphan. Her mother died when she was a girl and when her father followed a few years later, she was delivered into the care of a senile old aunt. Nicola was accustomed to having her way – she was spoiled and beautiful – and rebuffed all the ageing, monied suitors that were presented to her. Despite his similar age, not to mention the fact that nobody knew his background, Claude Tiquet convinced her to give her heart to him. He was determined – there was even a rumour he fought a duel over her – but his greatest feat was to present her with a bunch of roses with diamonds worked into the petals. You know Nicola, she was smitten by the novelty of it all. She told me she kept the real ones, dried them out and hung them above her bed, before deciding to have the diamonds made into this piece.’

  ‘He loved her, once. That’s something,’ said Angelina.

  ‘Perhaps he did, but he also saw an opportunity. Not long after Jean Paul was born, she visited her banker to withdraw money to build a new nursery for him, to discover that Claude had committed a fraud. He had presented himself as a fellow of means during their romance, but it was all show. He had in fact swindled the old aunt to withdraw money from Nicola’s own trust fund. He had the bouquet made, and provided a small financial gift as well, if I recall, using Nicola’s inheritance.’ Marie Catherine curled her f
ingers into a fist. ‘She was never able to forgive him. To make matters worse, some years back he tried to have her locked up in a convent.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Some spurious charge of adultery.’

  ‘Surely that would not be possible.’

  Marie Catherine gathered herself, clearly settling in for a lecture. ‘I’m not sure how much of the law they taught you at Saint Anne’s …?’ she said, pausing to look questioningly at Angelina, who shook her head, lips tight. ‘After the Fronde, Louis gave the state excessive powers over marriage. Shameful act. He needs our class’s riches to fund all his wars. He certainly doesn’t want wives withdrawing their inheritances from their husbands’ grips and away from his own war chest. So a marriage, however poisonous, is to be protected at all costs. There are no grounds for separation. Not adultery, not cruelty, not even fraud. Women are minors in the eyes of the law. Either they’re owned by their parents or their husbands. You are aware that you’re still a minor, Angelina? That I could have you thrown into prison for running off with a lover? Not that I should make a joke about such matters. But you must be thankful I have no such designs on your future. Others are not so lucky, married off to the first eligible suitor that can be found. After that, a man may beat his wife and visit half the beds in Paris and the law will not lift a finger. But should a married woman seek consolation elsewhere, just once, a judge will happily send her to rot away in a convent.’

  Angelina opened her mouth to protest the irony of her mother’s strange little sermon. A convent or a marriage – the twin prisons of women’s lives. She decided not to say anything, because suddenly she was remembering when Marie Catherine used to visit her at Saint Anne’s, claiming she had missed her, clutching her fingers through the bars of the visitor’s grille, passing her a treat she had bought at the market, a cake that cook had baked especially for her. Her mother’s visits left her feeling alone and confused. If her mother missed her company as much as she claimed during their time together, then why did she leave her in the care of nuns, rather than bring her up at home? She used to feel unsettled in the days following one of Marie Catherine’s rare appearances. She lingered at the gate, listening to her mother asking the footman to help her into her carriage. She often traded the cake Marie Catherine had brought for a book from one of her friends, or, spitefully, threw it into the rubbish.

  It was far more pleasant to receive her mother’s letters, even if the Abbess did steam them open and read them to herself by candlelight before releasing them into her possession. Their ink was dried and set; she could read their sentences over and over, sleep with them folded under her pillow. They did not evaporate, like kisses and fleeting touches through the bars of a grille.

  ‘A convent’s a community,’ offered Angelina. ‘You learn to fit in.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s a vast difference between being reared and educated by kind, faithful nuns imparting their knowledge, and being sent to a convent against one’s will for being a poor wife.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Angelina. She thought for a moment. ‘Don’t all these grievances give Nicola a motive?’

  Marie Catherine’s eyes snapped up. ‘No. I don’t believe so. She took Claude to court. Had herself certified a free woman. After the fraud business, she had their finances legally separated. Tore up his entitlement to her money granted by their marriage licence. She’s a very unusual case. Her independence boils down to her father’s will. He had drawn up strict protections, apparently. And the amount of money she inherited helped. Half a million livres!’

  Angelina spluttered. ‘I can hardly fathom such a sum.’

  ‘Oh, I can,’ said Marie Catherine, gently shaking her head. ‘Only too well. A twentieth of her worth would set us right for years.’

  ‘So you are quite certain that she’s innocent, then,’ Angelina said. ‘I suppose such an act would be too base, even if one were desperate. To seek to erase one’s own husband!’

  Her mother fell suddenly silent. Surprised, Angelina looked up to meet her eyes, searching the unfamiliar expression on her face. She couldn’t quite read it … was Marie Catherine afraid?

  Almost immediately, it was gone. ‘Well. Enough of this talk,’ Marie Catherine said brusquely, picking up her quill. ‘We both have work to do, do we not?’

  Marie Catherine

  3 May

  François d’Aulnoy’s valet, a fellow of few words, unlocked the entrance to his master’s apartment and invited her inside. Marie Catherine ignored the stale smell – the windows had not been opened in days. Spoiled cheeses, open bottles of cordial and spirits, rancid butter, were cluttered on the kitchen bench. The valet led her to the sitting room, where she waited to be announced. She was surprised when the Baron did not appear to receive her. Instead, she was beckoned to make a slow, painful trip to the top floor, to meet him in his bedchamber.

  The fire was dying. A croaking voice called the servant to bring a pot of coffee. She found François sitting on a chaise longue, his large, bulky body wrapped in a blanket. His bare feet poked from the edges, their toenails unclipped, curling like those of a wild beast. A wolf. A bear. She sat down on the couch. Feeling squeamish, but unable to help herself, she reached over and brought the blanket over the top of his toes.

  She had not visited the Baron in some time. Until recently, she’d been faring well enough to be able to lend him money whenever he roused his lazy, miserable hide to the task of demanding a livre. Oh, it was a bitter pleasure to make him squirm, her coin dangled in front of his greedy paws, a righteous fairy godmother.

  Though she had to keep her feelings hidden, otherwise he would undoubtedly remind her of the far greater debt she owed him – no less than her life – and would taunt her back with vile names. She had made the mistake once, many years earlier, and learned the lesson immediately. Naively, she had imagined they might put the past behind them and live their separate and indifferent existences, but François took a swindler’s delight in outmanoeuvring her.

  Her estranged husband coughed, a deep rattle in his lungs. She flinched, told herself to calm. Her problems were larger than the ancient war between them. Perhaps his lungs were slowly drowning him. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and spat into it. His servant helped him to sit up. He fixed the stool, the blanket dropping away so that again she was faced with his hideous feet. The man fluffed about, making a performance of seeing to his master’s comfort. François’s eyes were on her, his gaze like a snake’s, unblinking and cold, waiting for her to grow uncomfortable enough to break the silence. She drew her shawl tightly about her throat and pressed her knees together, effecting the posture of a nun; he was the only person in all of Paris who reduced her so. Old hag. Gizzard. Harpy. Scold.

  In his presence she lost her proud authority. After all this time, he still made her feel like a small child riddled with guilt.

  ‘Come on then,’ said the Baron. He tore a hank of bread, digging a two-pronged fork into a slice of meat. He opened his mouth as he chewed, a piece of vulgarity she knew was entirely for her benefit. She had seen him assume an entirely different persona in the company of men: ingratiating, flirtatious, charming.

  She drew her handkerchief to her mouth, overcome with nausea.

  Meanwhile, his servant bustled in and out of the room, as if she were not there. He brought out a tray filled with all manner of medicines and began measuring out portions of draughts from various vials. He passed them to his master, who, with rigid discipline, swallowed every drop and draught on offer.

  ‘Whatever ails you?’

  ‘The dropsy, the wasting disease, the flu, the gout, the lot.’ François dismissed the servant, pressing the plate of meat and cheese towards her.

  In her purse she had the credit bill Theresa had him sign on their last encounter, and she was determined to have him honour its terms. She repeated the message she had practised, about returning the funds he owed her. No more, no less, only that she would make no more trouble should he cooperat
e.

  ‘I have not the coin,’ he replied, with effort. ‘It’s all sucked into my thief of a physician’s purse. Much as I should delight in funding whatever whim it is you need it for.’

  ‘Your living conditions suggest otherwise,’ she protested, glancing at the gilt-trimmed frames and leather furniture, all deep browns and greens: very expensive, though lacking a woman’s touch.

  ‘You know me,’ he said, in that voice which grated on her nerves. ‘I like to keep up appearances. As you, my dear, most assuredly do not. In what year did you buy that shawl?’

  She would not take the bait. He must know that she had not ventured to see him only to chase his debt, a task with so little promise of success. ‘I have a proposal for you.’

  The Baron wiped his greasy lips, looked hard at her from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. ‘Go on.’

  ‘You do not seem long for this world. We are still married. I assume when you go to your grave I’ll receive the monies that are my due. Perhaps I can wait a little longer in the short-term, to be given what’s mine.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ asked François. He coughed, loudly and with visible pain. ‘Do not count on a golden egg for yourself in my will. Are you stupid?’ He sat up, his face growing bright red, as he tried to draw air into his lungs.

  ‘As is usual, it falls upon me to be the agent of sense. It just so happens that our daughter, Angelina, has returned from the convent a fine nurse indeed. I could ask her to have a solution made to ease your pain. I’m not utterly mean-spirited, after all.’

  François waved at the servant, who rushed over and pressed a handkerchief to his mouth. The cloth came away red with fresh blood. Several moments passed while he collected himself enough to speak. ‘I am not averse to help from Angie. She’s a fine little woman. I like her very much, despite your efforts to keep her from me. What is it you want?’

  ‘You would still have to pay for your medicine. I can put your debt on hold, though I cannot fish into my own reserves to have you die like a king. Angelina is quite the miracle-worker. Certainly, she’s lessened the pains in my feet.’