The General's Mistress (22 page)

“But you were my friend.” I just stood there dumbly.

Thérèse almost shrugged. “Victor is the one with the power, Ida. Without him, you’re nobody. Don’t you understand that?”

“I see,” I said. My jaw clinched, but I would never cry in front of her again. “It’s been nice knowing you, then.” I stalked back to the carriage.

“No hard feelings,” Thérèse said. “You understand. It’s politics.”

“Yes,” I said, and slammed the door.

Thérèse shrugged and went inside.

The driver leaned back. “Where to?”

I gave him Lisette’s address.

I
had never been to Lisette’s house before. She had never wanted to meet me there, despite the fact I knew she didn’t live with a man. When I saw it, I understood why. It was a fourth-floor walk-up in a run-down building near Porte de Clichy, a neighborhood full of workingmen and Jews.

I went up and knocked while the carriage waited. It took a long time for her to answer the door.

“Hmm?” she said. Her hair was mussed and she was wearing a robe in the early afternoon. “Ida?”

“Can I come in?” I asked, my voice breaking a little.

Lisette took a longer look at me and her eyes opened wide. “Ida? What happened to you?”

“Moreau threw me out,” I said bitterly. “Literally. With the
clothes on my back. And then threw my things after me. They’re downstairs in a hired carriage, and, Lisette, I swear I wouldn’t have come here and I would never have presumed, but I don’t have anywhere to go and Thérèse . . .”

I started crying again as she put her arms around me. “Oh, Ida! Of course it’s all right! Come in. Or hold on a minute—I’ll dress and help you bring your things up. Things like this happen!”

I returned her hug. She was little and round, unwashed and smelling of last night’s perfume and last night’s sex. “I can’t even start to thank you. . . .”

Lisette patted me on the back. “There’s plenty of room. I used to have a roommate, but she moved out with her man. Are you flat or do you have a little put by?”

“I have some money in the bank,” I said. “I can split costs with you. I promise I wouldn’t take advantage of you that way.” There were two bedrooms and a sitting room between, with a fireplace in the sitting room. In the winter, the bedrooms must be freezing. Her furniture was newish, but obviously inexpensive. The gilt was gold paint.

Lisette bustled around helping me bring in my things and hang my clothes. Some of them were ruined, but most were salvageable. “One option is to go on the stage. That’s what most women do. There are some bit-part trials at the Théâtre de la République next week. But they aren’t going to pay much.”

“I still have some money,” I said. “I can make it stretch. Not a lot, but for a little while.”

Lisette looked me up and down. “You might do for one of the Greek extras. And you don’t have to have experience for that.” She met my eyes. “And I always have a friend of a friend. There are always plenty of people willing to pay for an introduction to a woman with your looks.”

“For an introduction?” I said cynically.

“That’s what you call it,” she said. “After that, you work out your own terms. But you don’t mind kink. There’s a lot of demand for girls like that.”

I nodded. “If I need to. But I’ll try the stage first. I’m sure I can get parts, once I get a chance.”

Lisette smiled gently. “That’s what everyone says.”

Auditions

I
wrote to Victor two days later.

Dear Victor,

You have been very unjust to me. You know perfectly well from the letter you received by accident that I have never slept with Ney, nor indeed kissed him or been alone with him or exchanged any tender words. You can see perfectly well that I have never been unfaithful to you with him.

Your reaction is completely out of proportion to my supposed crime.

Yes, I should not have written to him. And I will humbly apologize to you for that. But for you to act as though I have been unfaithful is beyond reason.

Ida

He did not reply.

I
went for the trials at the Théâtre de la République the next week. There were nearly a hundred young women there for six parts—six lovely Greek slaves who were supposed to fill out the background and go about pretending to serve at the couches in the symposium scene.

I did my recitation from
Phèdre,
the seduction of Hippolyte. Three other girls did the same piece. I sat in the hot theater
watching them. The youngest must have been about fourteen, the oldest well over forty. They wore everything from schoolgirl frocks to pseudo-Greek drapery. There were blondes and brunettes, one stunning redhead with a thick Breton accent and skin like cream, a dark girl with gypsy looks, and one girl who was actually African with tightly curling black hair, who spoke her lines (Ismene, from
Antigone
) with the very best Parisian accent. She must have been brought here as some aristocratic woman’s pretty slave years ago. The Revolution had freed her but given her no livelihood.

She came and sat in the row ahead of me when she was done. I leaned forward and whispered to her, “You were very good.”

She looked back and smiled at me. “Thank you. I didn’t hear you. I’m sure you were good too.”

I shrugged. “I’m Ida.”

“Dorée,” she said. We might have whispered more, but the manager turned and shushed us. Not wanting to make a bad impression, we were very quiet.

In the end, she was chosen. So was the redheaded Breton, and four other girls. I wasn’t. By that point in the day, I had not expected to be. I was a very ordinary blonde, with a very ordinary dress and a very ordinary recitation.

I
wrote to Victor again.

Dear Victor,

I am sorry for my fault. I should not have written to Ney. It was foolishness, the kind of childish infatuation that I should have resisted. Please forgive me.

We were very happy together, weren’t we?

Ida

He did not reply.

I
did trials at the Théâtre Populaire the next week. Summer had come, and the theater was stifling during the day. I had learned a new piece, a comic one this time in anticipation of the Molière they planned to produce. I knew I hadn’t gotten it when I left the stage. I was stiff and my comic delivery was poor. In short, I wasn’t funny. And it seemed that the more I tried to be funny, the more I was only frenetic and desperate.

I went back and threw myself on my bed. The windows were all open; if Lisette’s apartment would be freezing in the winter, at least there was a breeze in the summer. Lisette came in wearing her wrapper.

“Another late night?” I asked.

Lisette nodded and sat down tailor-style on the foot of the bed. “A private party. I take it the audition didn’t go well.”

“No,” I said, rolling over and staring at the ceiling. “Lisette, I don’t think I’m meant for comedy.”

Lisette shrugged. “You’re only auditioning for roles at the good theaters, not the burlesque in the Palais-Royal or the traveling troupes. Of course it’s hard. And you don’t have a patron. Or any experience.”

“I’m pretty.” I kicked my shoes off. “But Paris is full of girls who are pretty.”

“I’m doing a private party next week and we need one more girl,” Lisette said. “If you’re interested. I can tell my friend.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What kind of private party?”

Lisette shook her head, smiling. “Not that kind of party. It’s really an acting job. An occult ritual.”

“What?” I sat up.

“You know how there used to be laws against the occult and witchcraft, yes? Church laws? You could be burned at the stake for being a witch.”

“Are there really any such things?” I asked. “I mean, there are fortune-tellers and things like that, but who believes in witchcraft? I suppose some people out in the country somewhere. . . .”

Lisette’s face was serious. “What about the Masons?”

I laughed. “My father was a Mason. He joined when he was a soldier, and he was a Mason the entire time we lived in Italy. And I can absolutely guarantee you that there was nothing whatsoever occult about what he was doing. He was an atheist and a rationalist.”

“Not all men of substance are,” Lisette said. “There were rumors for years about witchcraft at court.”

“And there were rumors that Marie Antoinette had orgies with footmen and the Princess de Lamballe,” I said, remembering Moreau’s pamphlets. “But that’s just dirt. I’m sure people said she paid witches to ensure drought and famine too.”

Lisette didn’t laugh it off. She regarded me very steadily. “I can tell you for a fact that there are powerful men in France who take the occult very seriously. There are secret lodges all over the place.”

“If they’re secret, why do they want to hire an actress?”

Lisette looked exasperated. “The legitimate lodges don’t! But there are plenty of men who want to get into that kind of thing who can’t get invited by the great. My friend knows this man who runs a scam. It’s not really a lodge. It’s a couple of his friends who invite some marks to pay ‘initiation fees’ to join a lodge, and they pay to go to rituals for a few months before they’re told that they have progressed too far and need to go
by themselves on a quest, and that if they’re worthy they’ll be contacted by the Secret Masters. And of course they never are. But in the meantime, he hires actresses to round out the group.” Lisette shrugged. “Men are willing to pay a lot more for atmosphere that includes beautiful girls in classical robes.”

“So what’s the part? And what does it pay?”

“He’s looking for a Spirit of the Dawn. You’re supposed to light some incense and walk around with it and say a bunch of lines. I’m the Spirit of Evening. I get to asperge everyone with a sprig of rosemary and some holy water.”

“So is there the Goddess of Reason?” I asked. Everyone had heard about Robespierre’s plan a few years before to create elaborate festivals to celebrate the Goddess of Reason rather than the festivals of the Church.