Sedition (12 page)

His scoldings over the music were careful. Everina and Marianne might not know the difference between making music and making a din, but—and apologies to poor Herr Bach’s celestial variations—what did it really matter? When the time came, the girls would be deflowered after the manner of their playing: coarsely and without compunction. All the composers they had traduced would have their revenge. Even so, sometimes he could not help lecturing. “My father, who has been Kapellmeister to emperors, told me when I was still a baby that instruments must be coaxed like shy choirboys, not slapped about,” he barked at Marianne when her thumping hit him directly behind the eyes. He wanted to beat her like a carpet. He would enjoy it.

He worked them all hard and, to his relief, found as much to amuse as annoy. Harriet, for instance, often wore an expensively simple rose-colored muslin sack dress, no whalebone, no stiffening, no decoration, her hair loosely bound up. The effect should have been pleasing, but Harriet, nervously unconstricted, moved as though caught in the street in her nightdress. Still, as Monsieur coached her through the crossing hands, arpeggio patterns, and finger swapping needed for the concert piece, her garments made appreciation of her lovely neck, downy below the hair line, very easy. “Duckling hair,” he murmured to himself. “How did la Frog produce such a creature? Nature performs miracles.”

He thought about Mrs. Frogmorton more than that lady could have imagined. Principally, he thought how to get rid of her. No seduction could reach its grand finale with a chaperone hovering. But sometimes, when she came over to exchange a word, he found himself amazed that there was one word for both her flesh and Alathea’s. Not that he had experienced Alathea’s flesh as yet. A hand is not flesh. Yet Madame Frogmorton’s hand would not do. Had la Frog once been like Alathea, he wondered? Take away a chin or two, thin the cheeks, cut away the belt of neck fat, and rake off twenty years, he thought, and yes, la Frog could have passed muster. She had good round eyes and her one eyebrow had presumably once been two.

Harriet practiced well. Monsieur was pleased with her. “Feel every finger as a cog in a weaving machine,” he told her. “Each part has its own job, and together all the parts weave the cloth.” He encouraged her to think of their relationship as a contract. “Partners,” he suggested after Harriet had told him rather wistfully that had she been a boy she would have been in her father’s office. “You will be my little businesslady and I your office manager, your chief clerk, your steward.” It had been a good conceit. Harriet had shaken his hand with a twinkle and swished out, leaving him appreciating, through her gown, the slight overflow of flesh from the tops of her stockings.

Then there was the day when Everina turned up sporting frizzed hair and an absurd dress of slashes and frills. “And what book have you been reading today, young lady?” he asked as she tripped toward him.

“Classical mythology,” Everina told him.

“Are the stories moving?”

“They’re silly. I like flesh-and-blood heroes. Who wants to be loved by a god dressed up as some horrible bird? And I’d be furious if any husband of mine flapped off leaving me with a scrawny baby who was going to grow up to kill me.”

Monsieur Belladroit’s laughter was genuine. Everina began to drill out some preludes he had given her: small works, easy on the fingers, of no musical importance. She paid no attention to Monsieur’s instructions so he seated himself on her right and began, with malice, to copy exactly what she did, two octaves above. The faster and louder Everina played, the faster and louder he played. Everina began to giggle, her tongue protruding, a flash of grayish pink, thin as a hen’s. Faster and faster she played. Faster and faster Monsieur played. More and more percussive grew the sound, with Everina working the pedals like treadles on a sewing machine. Monsieur felt the pianoforte cry out for mercy. “Not yet,
mon petit
,” he muttered. When the final chord rolled, Everina was sweating like the Stratton Street step scrubber. She mopped her brow with her sleeve. Mrs. Frogmorton clapped. Monsieur tilted. Everina braced, anticipating a scolding. Monsieur surprised her. “Again!” he whispered, his breath like sulfur on her cheek.

The volume increased. Frilly began to whine, and then to howl. Monsieur grinned. This might be the way to get rid of la Frog. “
Continuez
,” he ordered Everina, and poked his head around the screen. Mrs. Frogmorton’s sewing was abandoned. She was half out of her seat. Monsieur waved and shouted above the din. “Apologies! Mademoiselle Drigg does play a little loudly, dear madame. That is her style. My ears are of no consequence but I worry for you. It cannot be good to sit so close.”

Mrs. Frogmorton resented a charge of weakness. “My ears will manage perfectly well,” she said, and sank down again. Frilly whimpered.

“But the little dog suffers, no?”

Mrs. Frogmorton eyed Monsieur, picked up her embroidery, and stabbed it. “You leave the dog to me.” Monsieur bowed and returned to the pianoforte. A different approach must be taken and taken soon.

Of the girls themselves, Georgiana troubled him most, floating tremulously toward him, a wisp of pale foam amid folds of indeterminate color and texture. At least, after that first lesson, she remained untrammeled by hoops or stays, her hair usually down, a lick of honey loosely gathered by a gauze ribbon. Unlike Harriet, Georgiana was more comfortable in this ethereal state, imagining that floating clothes rendered her almost invisible. To Monsieur’s delight, she had no idea that the almost invisible is also the almost visible, and the almost visible shouts “look at me” very loudly. When he sat beside her on the pianoforte stool, Monsieur made the happy discovery that there was more flesh than he imagined within the foam.

He won her confidence with a pretty untruth. “We are both perchers if I am not mistaken,” he said at their third lesson, Georgiana still too paralyzed with shyness to play more than simple scales.

“Perchers?”

“Yes, perchers. Birds for whom no position is ever comfortable. I do not know about you, mademoiselle, but perching came to me early. My father died when I was a baby, you see. I never knew him. It was always only my mother and myself, perching together, never sure enough of anywhere to make a home. During our early perchings, I had no instrument on which to play and barely a stool on which to sit. In the end, my mother gave up struggling for a perch. She died when I was ten, with nothing.”

Georgiana, wide-eyed, said, “She had you.”

“I was not enough, mademoiselle.”

Georgiana’s eyes filled. “It’s not nice, not to be enough.”

“Not nice, no, mademoiselle.” Monsieur let her droop a moment. “I was enough for another, though, a girl of great talent whom I taught as I teach you. She was taken from me by a fever.” Georgiana’s tears sparkled.

“I fear my confidences make you sad,” Monsieur said.

“We’re sad together,” she replied.

After that, he got her to play her initials, G and B, in various combinations, then his own, C and B, then put the two sets of initials together. Georgiana was unable to resist. Soon, she was playing music carefully chosen by Monsieur not to frighten, and she proved to have more natural musicality than Harriet, though it was a pity, Monsieur thought, that she would never play like Annie. Annie. What a terrible shame. If only she could offer the world her music out of sight. Monsieur supposed it would be possible, but it would take some arrangement and he did not have the inclination. Georgiana had no need to play out of sight and she would at least do Herr Bach more justice than Marianne and Everina. When he told her that the instrument liked her, he was speaking sincerely.

He remembered little of his verbal exchanges with Alathea, but he remembered clearly the purple satin open robe with the paler under-dress, the cross-over handkerchief covering her shoulders caught at the neck by the nondescript brooch—each individual constituent demure, yet the girl emerging through the green gloom like a ripe plum. Her hair, too wiry for conventional beauty and uncovered by any cap, was a nimbus of Muscovado sugar. Monsieur breathed her in, like brandy.

Alathea never offered any greeting or acknowledgment of what happened between them—or, more accurately, what she did to him. Usually, she filled the hour uttering almost no words at all. But oh! Oh! One day she played Bach’s gentle aria again, this time making it peep like a courtesan through a grille. When she spread the chord of the eleventh measure, Monsieur’s mouth was dry. Then it was wet. Then it was dry again. The fingers and the beringed thumb now feathering those notes absorbed all his attention. He could not help imagining them feathering a different place entirely. Only Mrs. Frogmorton’s infernal presence prevented him from grabbing those hands. At the final Gs, he was reduced to quiet panting. He would never forget what happened next. She turned to him, then turned back to the keys and played Variation 1. He hissed. Then Variation 2. This time, no repeats. She did not begin Variation 3. Instead, “Play,” she ordered.

“What shall I play?” he asked, his voice husky.

“Whatever you please.”

He began immediately, though he could not have said what he began. (It was Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No. 2 in C minor—Alathea recognized it at once.) Without blinking, she undid two buttons of his breeches. His hands shook. He could not think how he kept on playing. She pushed back his coat and undid a third button. He was released. Relief and terror on his part. There he was, Monsieur Belladroit, playing Bach while fully exposed. He thought, “If that dog barks now, I’ll have to kill it.” Was it the fugue he reached before Alathea bent over? He recalled no sound. He recalled only hair, hand, lips, then lips, hand, hair. At the crucial moment, the fire crackling, the heat rising, his face contorting, she gave him her thumb and he bit down on the ring. As soon as practicable, she withdrew her thumb, thanked him for the lesson, nodded to Mrs. Frogmorton, and left him winded and speechless, his heart hammering, a host of nameless sensations rampaging, and sweat crackling in unexpected places—the backs of his knees, the crooks of his elbows, behind his ears.

After that, she took to missing lessons. Mrs. Frogmorton said she was probably unwell but after her fourth absence, Monsieur wondered whether she was waiting for him to shift the great mass of the chaperone before she returned. Surely she must return? He must get rid of la Frog.

One sunny Friday in May, as Mrs. Frogmorton was leaving for her lunch, Monsieur seized a candelabra and spilled wax onto the floor. He shouted aloud at his clumsiness. “Oh no! Oh
mon Dieu
!”

Mrs. Frogmorton, alarmed, appeared around the screen.

“So sorry, madame. What a clot. Is that what you say, a clot? Yes? No?”

“For goodness’ sake, Monsieur, don’t dab at the wax like that. If you leave it to dry, it’ll peel off and the servants can polish over the mark.”

“Indeed, but I’m sorry. Your beautiful floor in this beautiful room.” He got up slowly, picking wax out of his nails.

Mrs. Frogmorton frowned. She thought at first that he was making fun of her. Then she thought he seemed downcast. “The floor will recover, and the girls are getting on well,” she said, since it was hard simply to turn her back. He nodded. “I hope your pay has been left for you every Friday on the table in the hall? The servants are honest, I believe, but I trust you still count it.”

Monsieur made no comment. The reminder that he was hired displeased him.

Mrs. Frogmorton blew out the candles. She thought Monsieur looked a little overcome. She felt kindly, and kindliness led to confidentiality. “It’s a great worry, having daughters to marry,” she said. “Do you have daughters yourself?”

“I have—” A heartbeat as he considered whether a daughter might be useful. “I have not,” he amended. He made a motion of regret. “The fact is…” He looked up, as though gauging her trustworthiness.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Frogmorton. She hoped this was not going to take long.

Monsieur took a deep breath. “The fact is, madame, I am not as other men.” Frilly growled. Monsieur narrowed his eyes.

Mrs. Frogmorton caressed her pet. “Of course you’re not as other men, Monsieur. You’re French.”

Monsieur stared at her. What did the old fool mean? Did she seriously think Frenchmen constituted differently to Englishmen?
Mon Dieu
, but he could show her. He clenched and unclenched a fist. Back to the task in hand. “Not just because I’m French, I am sorry to say.”

“Oh? Why then?”

You could always rely on women’s curiosity. He dangled. “I cannot tell you, madame. The story is too horrible.”

Mrs. Frogmorton took the bait. “Horrible?”

Monsieur did not waste his chance. “I was orphaned as a baby, and at five years old was taken in by a choirmaster on account of my beautiful soprano voice.”

From Monsieur’s emphasis on the final words, Mrs. Frogmorton gathered she was supposed to learn something, although what, she had no idea. “You never knew your parents?”

“No. Had they lived, they never would have allowed what occurred to occur.”

“And what did occur, Monsieur Belladroit?”

Monsieur’s lips pursed. “That is what I cannot tell you.”

She spread her feet. “Monsieur, you’ve begun, so you must finish. I doubt you can tell me anything I haven’t heard before.”

Monsieur shuffled his music. “I think I can.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” She cast a huge shadow over the pianoforte.

“Very well. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps you will not find it so shocking, being a lady of experience. Perhaps it is even common practice among you English. Many odd things are.” He coughed. “My beautiful soprano voice made money for the choirmaster. When I reached a certain age, he did not wish to lose his income. Do you follow?”

“He sounds a very practical man.”

Monsieur bit his lip. This woman! “He was frightened of my voice, how do you say, cracking.”

“Breaking,” Mrs. Frogmorton corrected.

“Thank you. Breaking. Do you know how he made sure my voice would not break?”

“I cannot…” A pause as Mrs. Frogmorton’s imagination began to grind and her jaw to drop. “Monsieur…”