The Bee and the Orange Tree

by Melissa Ashley

  ‘You enjoyed pleasures,’ said Defitter, sadly. ‘What a difference between your past comforts and your state on this day. You must summon all fortitude, Madame, to receive with humility this bitter cup. Salvation lies within it. You should throw yourself into the arms of God and beg his mercy, invoke his name that he might help you bear the weight of your cross. Though your punishment is dreadful, it need not frighten you. Consider that sincere repentance will make it short. Please, Madame, for the sake of your soul, confess to your crime.’

  She gathered her strength. ‘I kneel before you as a supplicant. You have known me, sir. You used to admire me, in those days of pleasure. Do you remember?’ He broke from her gaze then, and she felt some small moment of satisfaction. ‘As to the rest, I am not aggrieved by my punishment. The day that terminates my life will also put an end to my misfortunes. I do not pretend to brave death, but I know that I can support it. I shall answer from the platform with composure. I shall attend my fate with steadiness and not be disordered on the scaffold, or at the last gasp of my unhappy life.’

  ‘You must confess, Madame Tiquet,’ said Defitter, his voice low and urgent. ‘Do you not understand? You are to be tortured. And then put to death. I exhort you to admit your crimes.’

  ‘But I am innocent.’

  ‘Then you leave the Crown no choice,’ said Defitter. ‘May God be with you.’

  She used the last of her strength to reply. ‘If you are finished, then leave me be. Permit me to return to my prayers.’

  A clank of chains. The door locked shut. Calls from the other prisoners as Defitter and his guards made their solemn way down the long corridors.

  Punched in her body; punched in her lungs. The world ceased to move. Like in a game of chess, the last gesture in a long series of manoeuvres had been made and she was defeated. Outplayed by Claude, by the city and its foul systems of justice. Father Étienne had visited more than a week earlier, secretly delivering what she realised might be her last message from the outside world: a letter from Marie Catherine. Her friend was writing petitions, gathering signatures – a small comfort – but she sensed a desperation in her words. The letter was more heartfelt wishes, condolences even, than a firm plan to have her freedom restored. She could only hope Marie Catherine’s efforts might be rewarded at the last hour. There had been no news regarding Jean Paul, although what could she expect? Marie Catherine was no friend to Claude, and it would be risky for her to contact him when she was battling his case so furiously. Nicola sighed, blinking away a bitter tear. Her attempt to improve her circumstances had come to naught: Jean Paul sent to his father; Claude to inherit her fortune; she had lost everything, struck by blow after blow. She could not tell if the harshest beatings had already been carried out or if they lay in wait.

  She steadied her shaking limbs and crept down from the bed. She stood before the barred window, watching the murky grey pane of the insensate river. Again, she crouched before the candle and rosary, bringing the beads to her lips. The cold floor stung her knees, but she ignored it, drawing her reddened fingers over the cover of the Holy Book, opening it to where she had folded back the page.

  The walls of her cell, smeared with the agony of mortals stepped into chains long before herself, seemed as flimsy as the paper upon which her sentence had been written. Was she becoming mad in her abandonment? She imagined Gilbert, pacing the grounds of Versailles, tearing at his hair. Should so much as a snigger reach him from his ranks, his peers, he would whip around, sword drawn.

  For an exquisite moment, she saw the faces of Jean Paul and Clotilde, their limbs as pale as marble sculptures. No, her mind was not functioning. Children, rats, spiders, all were ghosts. The soft black beat of wings she could not see in the dark, the feathery breath of angels whispering in her ears.

  Marie Catherine

  17 June

  Marie Catherine had left the meeting with Abbess Duret burdened with a heavy weariness. The formidable head of Saint Mary’s, one of Paris’s oldest orphanages, to which Nicola Tiquet annually donated a considerable sum, had refused to stamp the institution’s support on her petition. The Abbess expressed her sincere regrets – privately agreeing with Marie Catherine’s complaints about judicial bias against wives – but explained that she could not risk upsetting her donors. If she was seen to publicly question the court ruling, she might lose funding from some powerful sources. It was a situation she could not countenance; the orphanage’s survival was precarious enough.

  Marie Catherine made a valiant effort to turn around her defeated spirits. Sophie was helping her to change into her evening gown, fussing over her hair and complimenting her, playing her small but significant part in showing support. But pressing concerns continued to dance and weave in her mind. Had she gone to the meeting at the orphanage secretly knowing that it would not be successful? Was she taking a kind of dark pleasure in all this, rubbing salt into the wound of Nicola’s imprisonment? If she’d had her wits about her, she might have sent a messenger to the orphanage and cancelled the scheduled appointment, not wasted the Abbess’s precious time, for inside her heart, she was only too aware that this last attempt at help was futile.

  Although she had gathered significant funds during the past week, and a few signatures for her petition, it was not nearly enough to cover the printing of the pamphlet. Nor, she feared, to sway the magistrates’ final decision. She had heard nothing back from Cornelius Alberts, despite writing him two pleading notes asking for an answer to her proposal. Perhaps his response lay in the silence of his indifference; perhaps it was time that she admitted her powerlessness, her defeat.

  Alphonse and Angelina were debuting Alphonse’s fairy tale at Mademoiselle L’Héritier’s salon and she needed to be in attendance to show her support. If it were any other evening engagement, she would have cancelled her plans, turning early to bed to nurse her disappointment.

  Stepping into the carriage behind Angelina, she gave herself a firm talking-to: she must stop thinking of herself and Nicola. She had barely slept all week and was in sore need of respite. Surely the salon and its guests would shake away her preoccupations, lift her glum mood? After all, she’d had to cancel her own salon. With Nicola’s funds channelled into the police guarding her apartments, she simply could not afford to hold it. Had she not earned an evening of pleasantries?

  Marie Catherine watched Mademoiselle L’Héritier, seated near the stage. The salon’s hostess inclined her head towards her uncle, Monsieur Charles Perrault, and was whispering into his ear. The famous fairy tale writer nodded in reply, his pouchy eyes fixed on the object of their contemplation. Embellishing her comment, Marie-Jeanne waved her thin arms, only pausing when Charles turned pointedly towards her. His silver brows drew down over sharp brown eyes as he delivered a small but unmistakable reprimand.

  Marie Catherine let her gaze travel towards Alphonse and Angelina, who were about to resume their performance. Perhaps the salon’s hostess was making a note of how suitable Alphonse appeared to the task of recital. His elbow rested across a high-backed chair, an index finger touched his temple, a stockinged knee was lost behind the folds of Angelina’s gown. Or Mademoiselle L’Héritier might have been complimenting Angelina, seated in the chair, her shoes propped on a velvet footstool with tiny gold tassels fringing the legs, plucking her lute with the confidence of a court entertainer.

  Eventually Angelina opened her eyes, passing the lute to a waiting servant. The musical interlude concluded, she affixed a veil over her hair. Alphonse sprang to action, plopping a baggy, feathered cap over his wig. Speaking in false voices and using exaggerated gestures, the duo performed the final act of the fairy tale Alphonse had written, introduced by Mademoiselle L’Héritier as ‘The Clever Deception’.

  Although she had been the one to suggest Alphonse add another fairy tale to his manuscript, Marie Catherine wondered if her advice had been misconstrued. While she had re-read Alphonse’s revised stories, in her eagerness to submit a fresh voice to Cornelius an
d earn his favour, she had ignored a niggling intuition of disappointment. In her marginal criticisms she had been clear, indicating when he failed to develop a plot, or swerved too closely to another conteuse’s interpretation of a tale. While Alphonse had indeed addressed all her concerns, his revisions to the manuscript lacked depth, as if he had grown impatient with finessing its finer points. Perhaps she had made an error, delivering it to Cornelius before it was quite ready.

  And another matter pricked at her thoughts: the fairy tale, as performed, seemed to possess a layer of meaning that she had not picked up on the page. The story unfolded with a noblewoman feuding with her father, upon discovering he planned to marry her to a duke to whom she felt little more than indifference. Convinced that her future lay in composing verses, the noblewoman fashioned the disguise of a poet and ran away from home. It was a strong premise. Arriving at the court of a provincial king, the poet discovered there was a competition being held, to invent the best verses in praise of the kingdom. The prize was the hand of the king’s daughter in marriage. There followed some confusing business with the princess having already chosen her preferred suitor, a duke who was dunce-headed but handsome.

  The real story, Marie Catherine gathered, took place between the princess’s lady-in-waiting and the poet. The princess learned of the poet’s reputation for composing verse and hired him, passing his words as issuing from the quill of the duke, using the lady-in-waiting as intermediary. Marie Catherine heartily approved of the princess’s resourceful interference in her father’s plans to choose her husband. Captivated by how effortlessly and brilliantly the poet composed his stanzas, the lady-in-waiting declared an inclination towards him, which was all well and proper, according to fairy tale convention. But, rather than delight the audience with supernatural tricks, Alphonse’s story lingered on the conversations between the poet and the lady-in-waiting, who passed their time together inventing character portraits of the royal family and discussing the finer points of courtly etiquette.

  The tale concluded with the princess marrying her favourite, the bard’s true identity unrevealed to the king and his court. Rather, the king awarded the honour of court verse-maker to the poet, who not only maintained his deception, but commenced a romance with the lady-in-waiting, who had discovered that he wore a mask at the beginning of the second act.

  Marie Catherine did not understand why Alphonse flouted the fairy tale form. Perhaps it did not matter, for the salon audience had leapt to their feet, waving their handkerchiefs at her daughter and protégé, who stood holding hands and smiling proudly, bowing until the crowd’s enthusiasm ran its course. Perhaps the fault lay with herself, and she had failed to detect a hidden nuance. Had she become too constricted by the formulae she had developed to shape her own tales? The rules she set out, the twist she always delivered in the last few lines?

  Angelina had revealed a fully developed talent for acting before a crowd. Marie Catherine had attended several of her daughter’s musical recitals at Saint Anne’s, but the performance she had just delivered to Mademoiselle L’Héritier’s salon – her voice, her costume changes, her facial expressions, and perhaps most of all, her self-assurance – was an unexpected treat. She observed her youngest daughter, penned near the stage area, conversing with a simperingly attractive young woman. The mademoiselle was petite, her hair curled beneath a high fontange, and she moved her hands about in exaggerated affectation. Angelina, in comparison, seemed almost regally reserved, lowering her eyes and gently shaking her head, resisting and then suddenly yielding as the woman took her hand and pulled her away from Alphonse. She was dragged through a warren of closely arranged chairs, towards the far corner of the salon.

  Ah, Angelina had been invited to meet the guests at Madame Henriette-Julie de Murat’s table. The fawning young woman who had delivered the summons must be Henriette-Julie’s lover. The women’s entanglement garnered murmurings of disapproval and speculation where their families were concerned. But at the salons, their intellectual home, they were accepted without question, adored even. Marie Catherine was impressed when Madame de Murat cut off her conversation to greet Angelina, standing to her full height of almost five feet and offering a deep curtsey, indicating to her circle of friends that a fascinating newcomer was in their midst. Madame de Murat was beautiful, though not from any single feature – arched black brows, small mouth, a pointed chin and slightly large nose – but because of her irrepressible sense of humour, which belied an intimidating character.

  Marie Catherine had certainly admired Madame de Murat’s courage in the face of the court scandal that engulfed her family. Indeed, she had gone out of her way to champion the younger writer’s first collection of fairy tales. Madame de Murat had paid her a priceless compliment in response, nominating Marie Catherine as the living embodiment of the fairy tale spirit of the age in the foreword to Contes desFées. But when Marie Catherine wrote to her, asking her to sign her petition to restore Nicola Tiquet to freedom, she had been disappointed to receive a polite decline:

  If I were anyone else, I would not hesitate to support her case. I must admit, too, that Madame Tiquet has not been a contributor to the society of French letters, which makes me somewhat less inclined to put my already damaged reputation at risk. But there is another consideration: in all truthfulness, a signature by my hand might attract the wrong sort of attention when viewed by the King, harming, rather than serving your good cause.

  A group of younger guests walked past Marie Catherine, their laughter cutting through her thoughts.

  ‘I dothink she’s innocent,’ said a woman in a yellow dress. ‘I spoke with her once and I can tell you, she does not have the brains to conceive of such a scheme.’

  ‘You’ve fallen for her innocent face, then, like the rest of the fools,’ a man said. ‘If you’d heard the stories I have you wouldn’t be so sure of yourself. A deviant.’

  ‘You’re all beasts!’ said another woman, playfully rapping the man on the knuckles with her fan. ‘The poor creature is being used to warn the rest of us off murdering our dear husbands. Isn’t it obvious?’

  Marie Catherine breathed deeply, caught the eye of a servant and instructed him to fill her plate. If only Madame du Noyer had not been occupied. Marguerite never missed Mademoiselle L’Héritier’s salons but had the excuse of a publishing deadline to keep her confined to her private chamber. Her proposal to write a novel set alternately in Provence and Paris, told as a series of letters, had been accepted by Marie Catherine’s French publisher, Claude Barbin. Although Marguerite was happy to sign her name to Marie Catherine’s petition, she had been perfectly frank in her summation of the wretchedness of Nicola’s case. She had advised Marie Catherine to guard against raising her hopes, in the face of almost certain disappointment.

  The chattering of a parrot caught Marie Catherine’s ear and she glanced at the ageing poet Madame du Surat, sitting alone and unaware amidst the animated attendees. Her son delivered her to the several literary salons that operated each week throughout Paris. Madame du Surat no longer wrote and published verses; she seemed content to be left to her own devices, entertained by the performers and the antics of her pet bird. Marie Catherine fought an image of her future self, a marmoset seated in her lap, perfectly happy to be overlooked for the younger crowd.

  Attending a salon usually roused her spirits, but she felt a heavy melancholy settling about her shoulders. She determined to resist the temptation to draw its curtains over her face. She was by no means forgotten or excluded. She reminded herself that her daughter had earned these introductions to new friends. She had impressed the city’s taste-makers.

  She considered and then rejected the thought of walking over to support Angelina. It was not Marie Catherine’s custom to circulate amongst salon attendees, partly due to the difficulties of wading about in the press of excited bodies with her cane. She preferred to be approached at her table, her company sought for discussion and advice. But perhaps tonight she would treat hersel
f to an early night after all. There would be other opportunities to speak to Madame de Murat, and she had carried out her pledge to Alphonse, helping him along the course of becoming an author. It was surely more than enough.

  She wondered where the serving boy had disappeared to. She needed her drink refilled. After all, she had not quite reached Madame du Surat’s state of guileless self-sufficiency. Noticing Alphonse walking back to their table, freed of his queuing admirers, she exhaled a slow, relieved breath. She had much to talk to him about, particularly the ending of ‘The Clever Deception’. Did he realise that he risked exposing his real nature to the gossiping tongues of the close-knit salon society? That this might jeopardise him when it came time to obtain a royal privilege from the censor? Or had she missed something? Was this his intention?

  ‘You must think yourself above reproach, having your bard and his mistress express such delight at pulling the proverbial wool over the court’s eyes,’ she remarked when he arrived at the table.

  Alphonse met her gaze with a small frown. ‘The Clever Deception’ isn’t just a fairy tale. In fact, it’s barely a fairy tale. I deliberately refrained from using fantastical elements. I wanted the characters – their intimacies, the testing of their romance – to be centre stage. Not a carnival of impossible tricks.’

  ‘If that was your desire, then you’ve found success.’

  ‘But you have a reservation?’ said Alphonse, raising his eyebrow in question.

  ‘Only that salon audiences are more indulgent and obliging than the reading public.’

  ‘Oh, but I disagree!’ said Alphonse, nodding at the servant approaching with Marie Catherine’s roast pigeon. There was some confusion and the meal was placed in front of him instead. ‘Angie’s had me reading de Murat and L’Héritier. They’re concerned with exploring the inner lives of their characters.’ He spoke with a degree of seriousness, moving her food around her plate with a fork as a prop to explain how he had wanted to emphasise the arts of conversation. Why would he not just eat the blessed thing? She could not accuse him of confusing styles, he protested, because it was the conteuses themselves who invented the art of cobbling tales together from a plethora of forms – medieval romance, Hellenic fable, bloody history, courtly verse and so forth.