Spirit of Lost Angels (16 page)

The following afternoon I scurried across the courtyard. Yes, this pale November light would be perfect cover. I glanced about, hoping my excitement, my trepidation, didn’t show, but nobody paid me any attention. I tapped on the cell door.

‘Good, you are here,
ma chère
.’ Jeanne smiled and pressed her lips to mine. I detected no hint of embarrassment about the previous afternoon. It was as if it had been the most natural thing.

A bottle of red wine sat on the commode
next to four glasses. Engraved with lovebirds and flowers, the glasses were as delicate and handsome as those of the Saint-Germain house.

‘It is so kind of Sister Superior to lend me glasses from her own collection,
n’est-ce pas
, Victoire?’ Jeanne wrapped a pale hand around each opaque, twisted stem as she filled the glasses. ‘A full-bodied, strong wine you see, to mask laudanum of the deepest red and the wildest odour.’

I held my breath as Jeanne
plink-plinked
drops of laudanum into two of the glasses. ‘I’d best not mix the glasses up, eh?’ she said, stoppering the bottle just as the tap came at her door.

She opened the door a slit and the two keepers sauntered in like cocks in a hen coop.

‘
Eh bien, comtesse
, I see we’ll not have to share you this afternoon,’ one of them said, grinning at me and groping for my breast. ‘If it’s not Victoire, our pretty child murderess.’

I tried not to cringe or move. I was even able to smile, as I recalled the small bruise that lay beneath his hand — the place on my breast Jeanne had kissed a little too hard yesterday.

Jeanne smacked his hand from me and mock-frowned. ‘Not yet, frisky boy. First we’ll make a toast and drink this delicious wine that was so kindly acquired for me.’ She handed the glasses around.

‘To a most special afternoon,’ Jeanne said, as we raised our glasses. 

I lowered my eyes from the keepers’ lust-darkened gazes.

Jeanne drained her glass quickly, and I supposed she was urging the keepers to do likewise. My stomach was such a tangle of knots I could barely sip mine.

As we had rehearsed, I positioned myself on the bed beside Jeanne, who crooked her forefinger, beckoning the keepers. Slowly we began removing their uniforms. The one before me grabbed at my breasts again.

‘Not so fast,
mon garçon
,’ Jeanne said. ‘Savour the moment.’

I kept glancing at their glasses. Surely they had not drunk enough for the laudanum to take effect. I was petrified they would recognise its pungently sweet smell, its acrid taste. Or worse, that I would have to pursue their lurid advances before the drug worked.

Soon their speech began to slur and their gestures became slow and listless. I felt my shoulders and neck relax as they sank, swan-like, to the floor.

‘Quickly,’ Jeanne said, the vein in her temple pulsing. ‘We don’t have long.’

We finished removing the keepers’ clothes, and tore off our own dresses and chemises. I kept my petticoat on, with its concealed papers, as we dressed in the keepers’ uniforms.

‘Hurry, tie my hair up, Victoire.’

I fumbled with Jeanne’s hair all the while searching the keepers’ faces, certain they would stir any instant.

‘My hair … it’s not all under the hat,’ I hissed.

The blood rushed through me as Jeanne fiddled with wayward strands.

‘Now for the finishing touch.’ Jeanne reached into a drawer and drew out two moustaches. ‘Courtesy of an actress friend.’ She pasted one above my lips, then her own. She span around. ‘Don’t we look the perfect keepers?’

‘He moved,’ I said, pointing at one of the keepers. ‘He blinked.’

‘Don’t be anxious,
ma chère
, we’re going now.’

Her cell was too small to step around the slumbering keepers, so we were forced to step over the prone bodies.

I held my breath, certain the faint sweep of air from our feet would waken the men. My eyes fixed on the dozing faces, I lifted my first foot over. I raised the second one.

Something cold gripped my ankle. I screamed, and Jeanne was yelling and swearing.

‘
Merde, merde
! Let go. Let go of me you great oaf!’

The keepers were wide awake, spitting out mouthfuls of the laced wine, and grasping our ankles. In that instant I understood they’d not drunk a drop of the laudanum. The trick was on us. I couldn’t move, and Jeanne was still yelling and kicking at the keeper.

He let her ankle go for a second, sprang up and punched her in the face.

‘
Foutre de la garce
,’ he said.
‘Fucking bitch.’ Over and over he hit her and swore, until blood streamed from Jeanne’s lips.

I tried to rush to her, but the keeper only tightened his grip. Jeanne stumbled backwards under the repeated blows, her lip gaping and red. I saw the rage in her black eyes, each blow fuelling her fury a little more. I feared the vein throbbing in her temple would explode.

‘Pig!’ Jeanne spat, through bloody lips. ‘You’ll pay for this!’

He twisted her arms behind her back. ‘You take us for fools, Jeanne de Valois, greatest con artist of all time?’ He restrained her with one hand. In the other, he held a sodden piece of cloth, stained a reddish-brown. ‘Such a shame our handkerchiefs, and not our lips, absorbed that delicious wine — and the purest of laudanum,’ he said. ‘Apart from that one, delicious mouthful.’ He waved an arm at the wine puddle on the floor.

‘As if we’d trust Jeanne de Valois, and risk our jobs,’ the keeper holding me said. He too, sprang to his feet and twisted my arms behind my back.

‘Risk our heads, more like it!’ Jeanne’s captor shrieked. ‘They would whip, torture and break us on the wheel — tomorrow’s public spectacle on la place de Grève, if we let la Salpêtrière’s most infamous inmate escape.

‘Sister Superior will be livid with you, countess,’ he continued. ‘She will see this attempted escape as a personal slight to the tight ship she boasts.’

‘And you,’ Jeanne said, her words thick through swelling lips. ‘I bet Sister Superior’s tight ship pays you keepers no more than a pittance?’

‘What are you suggesting?’ Jeanne’s captor said with a smirk.

‘I suggest you both get dressed,’ Jeanne said. ‘And go far away from my cell, and nobody has any notion of what went on this afternoon.’

The keepers looked at each other.

‘I think we could manage that,’ the second one said. ‘As long as Madame la Comtesse makes it worth our while.’

***

I dabbed Jeanne’s lip with cool water.

‘Merely superficial injuries,’ she said, beating a fist against her chest. ‘In here, they cannot touch me.’

‘Hush now.’ I held the cloth against her lip. ‘It must hurt to speak.’

Once the bleeding had stopped, I dressed in my prison garb and sat on the bed beside Jeanne. She drew me close and I felt the rapid beating of a heart and supposed it was mine, but it was Jeanne’s. I began to weep, my tears coming fast, onto her face.

‘I’m so afraid,’ I said.

‘Of what?’

‘I don’t know. Of never getting away from here. And, at the same time, of one day succeeding, and then being alone, without you.’

‘Once on the outside you will find the strength to fight, Victoire. A strength I know is inside you.’

‘You have paid the keepers off,’ I said. ‘But how can you be sure they’ll not keep asking for money?’

‘Oh, they will,
ma chère
, they will, but we won’t be staying here much longer.’ She held me at arm’s length, and met my eyes. ‘You surely don’t imagine that little laudanum party was my only plan?’

She sat up. ‘Now, help me put my clothes back on.’

‘But why didn’t you simply give the money to Sister Superior, as you’ve done since you were imprisoned?’ I said, helping her dress.

‘I may be wealthy,’ Jeanne said, ‘but the woman is getting beyond even my means. Aside from the wealth she possessed before acquiring this position — the money that
got
her the position — her enormous income allows her to live in such opulence,
ma chère
.’

‘Why is a woman of such wealth obliged to work at all?’ I said, smoothing down the full skirt of her
robe à l’anglais
, puffing up the sleeves at her elbows.

‘Oh she doesn’t
need
to work,’ Jeanne said. ‘It is simply to maintain her social standing. She loves the power she wields over all of Paris; the people who clamour for invitations to her buffets to play games, dance and sing to grove-filled violin music. And that’s not forgetting all the other benefits
la patronne
of la Salpêtrière is entitled to.’

‘Like what?’ I wrapped Jeanne’s soft, full shawl about her shoulders.

‘Oh, her chic apartment with its fashionable furniture and many servants. A vast garden with vegetables and gardeners and, of course, the private coach, horses and coachmen.’

‘But however are we to get away?’

‘Unfortunately,
ma chère
, we are bound to remain here over the winter. Our chance will come again at
la fête de Carnaval
.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘And this time, my plan will not fail.’

‘Carnival? As if we, in the asylum, will be allowed to celebrate that!’

‘Indeed, Victoire. In a recent conversation, our new, well-connected Sister Superior informed me she is to hold a Carnival ball here at la Salpêtrière, before the penitential dullness of Lent.’

‘A ball for us — the criminals, the poor, the insane? I can hardly believe such a thing.’

Jeanne shook her head. ‘Of course not. Sister Superior would never risk her precious Parisian public mingling with us
idiotes
,
maniaques
and
hystériques
. Apparently though, she wishes for the most presentable of the mad and criminal fiends to be present. She wants to boast to her hierarchy; her fawning society, what a marvellous job she’s doing here at la Salpêtrière; how well we are treated, how graciously we are reformed.’ She laughed. ‘Reform, what a joke! Though I am certain of one thing, Victoire. Sister Superior will make an exception for you and me — for all prisoners offering healthy donations.’

‘You can get tickets for us? For
me
? But aren’t they worried about prisoners escaping?’

‘Of course,’ Jeanne said with a nod. ‘Sister Superior will take every precaution to thwart escapees who might try and take advantage of the festivities — the usual mounted guard of two corporals and eight soldiers will be increased two-fold. She’ll hire extra keepers, spies and so on, but I know she wants this ball to be a special celebration. I think she sees it as the beginning of an enlightened-thinking annual ritual that will mark her as new head of la Salpêtrière.’

I helped Jeanne slip on her shoes. ‘The curious public will buy tickets at exorbitant prices,’ she went on. ‘With the money, Sister Superior claims she will improve the asylum, get rid of the dungeons and set up proper medical care.’ Her fingertips felt like feathers on my cheek. ‘Of course, she really only wants to impress people in high places so they compliment her and continue paying her fine salary.’

Jeanne traced around my lips with her index finger. ‘This ball is already the talk of the capital,
ma chère
— marquises, countesses, the idle wives of bankers, lawyers and doctors — awaiting this one special
soirée
to escape their dull daily lives. The one night their cheeks will blush, not with modesty or shyness, but with heat and longing.’ Her bright gaze held mine.

‘The night they can play at being chameleons — throwing aside modesty and pretension — to dance for hours, and speak of men, love and sex. And, as they experience their most depraved desires, they will amass a mind full of memories and pleasures because, Victoire, the night is short. Too soon morning will come and they’ll be back to their stifled lives.’

‘But however will we escape?’ I said.

‘Well.’ Jeanne’s face crimped in a wide smile. ‘Fortunately for us, Sister Superior’s grand spectacle is to be none other than a masquerade ball.’

Jeanne fingered the pale green gown she’d had made for me by a renowned seamstress on the rue de Richelieu. She took a few paces back. ‘Always wear this shade, Victoire, with your hair and eyes. Now, you have everything — your letters, your new identity?’

I nodded and finished helping Jeanne dress, running my trembling hands through her silk gown of dark turquoise, shot with gold embroidery.

‘Exquisite as ever,’ I said, a tingle sliding down the cleft of my breasts. ‘Of course,’ I went on with a wry smile, ‘the countess Jeanne is only too aware of how her costume ripples about her like some gentle sea against the ivory sands of her skin.’

Jeanne laughed and brushed my lips with hers. ‘
Oh là là, ma chère
, I did say you’d be the next Voltaire, didn’t I? Now remember, all you have to do is employ everything I’ve taught you and, above all, forget you were a peasant from the poor provinces. Dressed as we are, nobody will mistake us for anything but groomed Parisian ladies out for a night of fun.’

She fixed her peacock mask in place. ‘Think of it as a final dress rehearsal for your new bourgeois life. Now hurry, Victoire, put your mask on and let’s go and dance with the devil.’

We linked arms and stepped out into the cold February evening. We crossed courtyards, hurrying by the different buildings of la Salpêtrière rising so grandly — the gilt dome and marble facades that splendidly belied the catacomb of living bones. By the time we reached the ballroom entrance, I was quivering.

Jeanne squeezed my arm. ‘Relax, the night will be unforgettable.’

I inhaled as deeply as my stays would permit, as we strolled along the entrance hallway, through the dim light flickering from gold-painted leaf sconces.

Once inside the ballroom, my mouth dropped open. Black velvet tapestries covered the ceiling and fell in heavy folds to a plush carpet the same bloody hue the windowpanes had been tinted. Six cloth-clad caryatids, one breast exposed, formed a rectangle around the perimeter of the room. Each brandished a burning flambeau.

‘Never have I seen anything so magnificent,’ I said.

‘Yes, Victoire, so bold, so … fiery!’

The chandeliers drew my gaze upwards. Throwing the gaudy masqueraders’ costumes into a fantasy of angular shadows, the golden light cast its magic on the women’s diamonds and rubies.

‘
Oh là là
, such a graceful, macabre lustre Sister Superior has created,’ Jeanne said. ‘Sometimes I think that woman is madder than half the women here. Come, Victoire, we need sustenance.’ She led me through the crowd to the grand buffet at the end of the room.

‘I’m sure I’ll gorge myself silly on all this food,’ I said.

‘Tonight is an exception,
ma chère
. Everybody gets to eat the same food, but Sister Superior has planned it all cleverly.’ Jeanne nodded at the people behind the buffet table.

‘Those women dressed as maids, in white tulle caps, serving drinks, are all sister officers. And those,’ she pointed towards the chefs offering sweets and cakes, ‘are keepers, watching to make sure we prisoners don’t stuff ourselves, or hide food within the folds of our clothes, to remove to our cells.’

‘There are the keepers who stopped us escaping,’ I hissed. ‘The one who made your lip bleed.’

‘
Eh oui, ma chère
, I haven’t forgotten them.’

‘But how welcoming they all are,’ I said. ‘What a turnaround.’

‘Don’t fool yourself, it is nothing but an illusion,’ Jeanne said, as we found places alongside other guests, on the bench seats lining the walls. ‘Tomorrow those smiling keepers and sister officers will be as evil and nasty as ever.’ She sipped her wine and bit into her cake.

‘Not that we care what happens tomorrow, eh?’ she whispered, beneath the cadenced murmur filling the room.

The crowd fell silent as Sister Superior appeared, the hem of her rose-coloured silk gown sweeping across the floor like the sound of rain.

‘
Merci à tous
,’ she announced. ‘With immense pleasure I declare the ball open. Let this spectacle begin — eat, drink, dance and enjoy! And don’t forget the mask game. We all must try to guess the identity of each and every guest.’

The orchestra started playing and people began to dance in a swirl of fabric, which glittered and shivered like spring water. The music quickly mesmerised me, as Jeanne swept me onto the shiny floor and I played out all the dance steps we’d practised together —
le menuet, l’allemande, le cotillon
— for when I was a free woman.

We danced on, Jeanne taking the male role, like many of the women, who vastly outnumbered the men.

‘The wine, the music, is making me giddy,’ I said.

‘Keep a clear head,’ Jeanne
said as yet more people approached us, trying to guess our identities. Jeanne turned away each time, laughing and dismissing the person with some vague excuse.

‘Do not remove your mask … for anybody,’ she said.

I was breathless, almost delirious, as we spun faster and faster amid the swirling mass. Snakes, bats, felines, sorceresses, princesses, Romans, Egyptians, milk maids and peasants: wealthy Parisians and wealthy prisoners brought together for this night of dreams.

‘Nobody can tell who the crazies are
.
How to guess
who is
folle
and who is not?’ Jeanne said as we rested on a bench seat with glasses of squash. ‘Isn’t that quite the bizarre irony of Carnival?’

‘Perhaps we’re all a bit mad,’ I said. ‘When we least expect it, the madness hits us as quickly as lightning strikes a peasant cottage and burns it to the ground. So vulnerable we are, to the caprices of
la mélancolie —
helpless to master wherever it takes us; whatever it makes us do.’

‘You’re right,
ma chère
, but don’t think of such things now. This is the first night of our happier, brighter lives.’ She took my hand. ‘Let’s get away from this crowd for a moment. Come and see some fun things.’

‘What things?’

‘Oh, Victoire, this is Carnival — a holiday, a game in which we oppose that ridiculous, ecclesiastical ritual of Lent,’ Jeanne said with a wave of her arm. ‘A time of ecstasy, of liberation. Sister Superior has promised her guests such dens of pleasure and debauchery you could never imagine!’

I followed her down a hallway with several private rooms off to each side. Jeanne went to open the door of the first one.

I laid my hand over hers. ‘Must we, really? You said we were to leave tonight. What of the plan, Jeanne, why are we still here?’

‘Because,
ma chère
, we must choose the perfect moment. It will come soon enough, just enjoy the ball for now.’

Jeanne opened the door and pulled me inside after her. ‘Come on, it will be most entertaining to watch the demons play.’

Muted in sallow candlelight, a tangled silhouette of naked men and women lay sprawled across a Turkish rug, limbs entwined, hands searching, fingers and mouths exploring any available orifice.

From rose and lavender-perfumed incense, smoke curled into the amber gloom. In a darkened corner, three men wearing bull masks bucked, thrust and groaned as horns dug into the soft flesh of their shoulders, their backs.

‘Welcome ladies, come and join us,’ said a fat woman, fondling the penis of a young boy draped in nothing but a snake stole. ‘Keep your masks if you wish, but remove your clothes.’ The woman cackled and winked at me as she widened her crimson lips and took the length of the youth’s penis in her mouth.

The Marquis of Saint-Germain and the keepers from Jeanne’s cell flashed through my mind. I turned and fled from that feverish beat of vice.

I leaned against the wall, my breathing fast and shallow. ‘I cannot watch those things, Jeanne. It makes me feel dirty … ashamed.’ I lowered my eyes, shuffling the toe of my slipper through the thick red fibres. ‘But at the same time, never have I feasted upon such phantasm, or felt such zest. What sort of a person have I become?’

Jeanne placed her hands on my hips. She kissed my ear, her tongue flicking in and out. ‘A warm, very lovely woman,
ma chère
. Don’t be anxious, it is only a game.’

We returned to the ballroom. The orchestra was taking a break, so we moved to the buffet area for more food and drink.

‘I was told she would be here tonight,’ we overheard a woman say, who was dressed in an arabesque outfit of flowers and foliage. ‘Which one do you think she is?’

‘Well, my dear,’ a lady dressed as a Spanish dancer answered. ‘Nobody has yet unmasked the famous Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, but I am sure we’ll know who she is by the end of the night.’ The women glanced about furtively.

‘As if, in this huge crowd, la Salpêtrière’s most celebrated prisoner might be standing right next to them,’ Jeanne whispered. We threw our masked heads back and laughed.

‘They say she has hidden many of the diamonds,
and
uses the fortune from the ones she’s sold to bribe Sister Superior,’ the first woman said, adjusting her hat — an elaborate birdcage in which two canaries twittered. ‘Apparently she lives in relative luxury here in the prison building.’

‘You heard she tried to escape?’ the Spanish dancer said, sipping her wine. ‘As if anybody could escape this asylum. I ask you, whatever was the woman thinking?’

Jeanne leaned towards the Spanish dancer. ‘
Oh là là,
what a thought,’ she said. ‘To try and flee la Salpêtrière!’

The woman turned to us, wordless. I tried not to gape at Jeanne’s audacity, her nerve. As she giggled, took my arm and pranced off into the crowd, I wished I too could treat everything as some frivolous game, relishing the dangerous risks.

***

We danced again. We ate, drank, laughed and kept our masks in place. Finally, the mahogany wall clock began to chime the hour of midnight, its pendulum swinging back and forth with the strangest, deepest clang. So peculiar it was that everyone stopped and listened.

The orchestra paused. I sensed a hesitation; an uneasy break in the revelry, as if nobody really knew why everything had stopped so abruptly. It seemed we were all waiting for something to happen.

‘Perhaps the bewitching hour has truly entranced us all?’ Jeanne said.

A tall figure wearing an ankle-length black cloak entered the room. Beneath the hood, there appeared not a face, but a dark cowl with white pinpoints flashing from eye hollows. Within its cloak, the figure resembled a skeleton.

I wondered how the costume had been fashioned. Perhaps the skeleton was sewn onto the outside of some dark, body-hugging outfit. So curious was I about the costume that I barely registered the beautifully-carved scythe the figure clutched in one hand.

‘Isn’t it frightening?’ Jeanne whispered, laughing softly, nudging me towards the doors.

‘What is it?’

‘That,
ma chère
, is
la faucheuse
.
The angel of death. Hard to believe it’s only a simple dress-up thing, isn’t it?’

All eyes had turned to that spectral angel of death, strolling amongst the ball guests as if searching for someone in particular.

Nobody took any notice of a regal lady in a peacock mask, leading another, clad in emerald green, towards the doors.

As the hooded skeleton stalked in beat to the clock chimes — solemn, constant and deliberate — I sensed the revellers did not know whether it interested, excited, or terrified them. They stood still, their whispers lost in the boom of the striking clock.

As the small hand of the clock made its last circuit, a low murmuring rose from the crowd and hundreds of feet began to shuffle on the spot. All eyes stayed fixed on the angel of death, slinking through the crowd.

The black drapes swallowed the dying echoes of the chimes. The angel of death had reached the buffet table, and there it stopped, turned, and faced the line of keepers dressed as chefs. It looked them all up and down, studying each face one by one. I barely had time to recognise them as the men from Jeanne’s cell, before I reeled in horror as the figure lifted its scythe and sliced the keepers’ heads off in a single swoop.

In the seconds of shock as blood splattered the finery, and the heads and their sappy gore stained the carpet a darker red, the angel of death was gone — simply another masquerader disappearing into the night.

In its mysterious wake, before anyone had the chance to react, Jeanne was rushing me from the building.

Thankfully, thick clouds obscured the moon, shrouding us in darkness, as we gripped each other’s hands and hurried across the damp cobblestones, further and further from the ballroom affray.

I soon heard the shouts behind us. ‘Quick, catch him!’

Then followed a mass shriek from inside the ballroom. I kept glancing back as I ran. In the distance, people were streaming from the building, stumbling and falling over each other in their hysteria.

Jeanne and I reached the asylum entrance just as the soldier guard must have learned of the ballroom melee.  Breathless, we kept ourselves hidden behind a thick stone column.

‘We haven’t seen him leave via the front gate,’ one of the soldiers said to his group.

‘He must still be in the grounds then,’ another cried.