The following extracts are taken from an extended project provisionally entitled Into the Labyrinth. The setting is a Paris that could belong to the 1870s, though features such as the underground railway which is currently under construction are anachronistic. The pervasive, occasionally farcical humour and the rich interweaving of characters and stories recall my very first novel Euphemia MacFarrigle and the Laughing Virgin. The project as a whole should run to 50 chapters.
[1]
At the very moment when the head of Princess Calasipari’s firstborn child popped out into the world, the prima ballerina at the opera got her steps mixed up, throwing the entire corps de ballet, who were busy impersonating rejoicing Thracian shepherds and shepherdesses, into disarray, and running a genuine risk of colliding head on with the male lead as he leapt from the wings onto the side of the stage which ought to have been opposite hers.
Given that none of the characters in this narrative - with the possible exception of the newborn baby, but that remains to be seen - has the faculty of being present in two places at one and the same time, no-one was in a position to notice the coincidence. Reviewing the events of that remarkable evening many years later, in the company of one of the female lovers she still had no difficulty in finding at a relatively advanced age, Madame de la Poupillinière broke off in mid-sentence and began counting on her fingers. Arithmetic had never been her strong point. Despite spending a significant part of her life in attendance on the Empress, she would have been at a loss to say exactly how many ladies-in-waiting her mistress had been in a position to call upon at any one time. And nonetheless her cheeks turned pale with excitement as she reached the appropriate conclusion. Unwilling to push her listener’s credulity beyond the point of endurance, Madame de la Poupillinière decided to keep this latest discovery a secret, and contented herself with itemising, one after another, the repercussions which these simultaneous events had had.
The prima ballerina, a woman of Greek origin named Léonide Papamelindros (shortened to ‘la Meli’ by her numerous admirers) was incapable of making any movement which could not be characterised as elegant and gracious. Aware that something had gone far wrong, she struggled to work out what it might be. When the male lead seized her in his arms and ferried her across the stage, depositing her exactly where she ought to have been, her body assumed the pose of a delicate flower, which wilts slightly when plucked. By the time her feet touched the ground, once more in full possession of her faculties, she was able to whisper her gratitude into the ears of the man who had proved be her saviour in fact as well as fiction.
The disarray of the corps de ballet was harder to camouflage. Antoine, the special effects man sitting in the wings, who would have been pensioned off years ago if his second daughter had not been engaged in a torrid, apparently interminable affair with the Opera Intendant, had the brilliant idea of releasing a couple of thunderclaps in advance of the agreed cue. Once that was done, he felt obliged to pull heavily on the lever which would set the rain machine in operation, drenching the rear section of the stage. Unforeseen events, he reflected, still have to follow a logical sequence. Antoine’s noble supposition will again and again turn out to be unfounded in the course of the narrative which follows.
The emergence of the baby’s head had been preceded by several hours of torment. At her side when the waters broke, just as the bell rang for lunch on that momentous day, and the Princess’s sister Juanita stayed there till the child was successfully delivered in the course of the evening. It felt like watching her darling Carmela being subjected to torture before her very eyes. Sometimes it was more than Juanita could bear to observe this suffering without being able to offer assistance mitigate the pain in any way. While she refrained from spelling the idea out in words, Juanita decided she would take all conceivable precautions to avoid facing a similar predicament at any future stage in her own life.
The two sisters had been living in the capital, received into polite society, long enough for people to tire of gossiping about the nomadic existence they had led before that time. The fastidiousness she exhibited from an early age, and the unaccountable reverence she showed for all the wayside shrines they came upon during their wanderings, whether dedicated to the Madonna or to a local saint, foreshadowed her subsequent resolve to take the veil. If she had not witnessed the birth of her sister’s first child, she might still have felt that no merely human husband was capable of living up to her lofty standards. And there was need for argument. The Son of God was hardly likely to get her into the sort of trouble a man of flesh and blood almost inevitably would. But the convent, alas, is far from constituting the secure refuge many fond believers conceive of it as being. Again and again the veil has failed in the task attributed to it of defending the wearer’s heart against the incursions and vagaries of human passion. Juanita’s determination to consign her maidenhead to the keeping of a heavenly bridegroom would to be crowned with success on only a temporary basis. It was not her fate to carry that particular treasure to the grave.
Rumour had it the girls’ mother had never spent three successive nights under the same roof. She did her best to live up to this reputation. Nobody could understand how she got word of her elder daughter’s pregnancy, or managed to time her arrival for the very moment when the waters broke. The love she felt for the Princess was as unbounded and uncritical as her contempt for Juanita was vicious and undisguised. Like any self-respecting patriarch, she refused to enter the room in which the birth was taking place, instead striding up and down the adjacent reception hall while puffing at a long clay pipe she refurbished at regular intervals by grubbing about in the tobacco pouch slung at her hip. Bystanders who got in the way were treated to a torrent of oaths. That at least was the interpretation they put upon her words. Since nobody present understood the gypsy language, they might equally have been expressions of anxiety about her daughter’s fate, or else impassioned and melancholy reflections on the sorrows the sons of Adam have visited upon the daughters of Eve ever since the far-off day on which her people once and for all turned their backs on their Indian homeland.
Occult practitioners of every known description filled the room. Palmists, cartomancers, scrutinisers of coffee grounds, astrologers and soothsayers had gathered together to pronounce on the character and future feats of the Princess’s child as soon as it saw the light of day.
The Princess’s mother was taking considerable interest in the efforts of a Tarot card reader who had set up her table next to the bedroom door. This was a system of divination she knew inside out. She spat and swore in disgust when, in spite of repeated attempts to secure a better augury, Death, the Hanged Man and the Wheel of Fortune surfaced in spread after spread. The only notes of relief were provided by the Ace of Cups and the Seven of Pentacles, which appeared now at one corner of the layout, now at another, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, like guests one ought to have invited to a party but forgot about, who come along out of a sense of duty only to find that their rightful places have been assigned to strangers, and are left hovering nervously on the edge of the proceedings,.
The Princess’s husband was sitting in the Opera all the while, in a box two doors away from the royal one which, of course, occupied the prime location opposite the stage. Prince Calasipari had seen that particular production many times before, and was absolutely convinced la Meli had made a mistake. When two of his cronies suggested she might have conceded herself the liberty of a delightful improvisation, he merely guffawed in response. There were grounds for his contempt. No other pair of eyes in the theatre followed each quivering of the ballerina’s legs with an attention equal to his own, thanks to a pair of miniature binoculars he invariably carried on his person, in an exquisitely chiselled silver case.
The Prince had not set foot inside the splendid apartment he and his wife shared since late that morning. He therefore had no idea what was going on at home. If thoughts of the beautiful young girl he had carried off from a gipsy encampment two years previously entered his head, they did nothing to alter the vapidly narcissistic expression of his perfectly symmetrical features. The portrait he had had done in oils upon inheriting the family fortune still set people gasping when they saw it. But his eyes and nose, as Madame de la Poupillinière never tired of pointing out, were undoubtedly too small for the rest of his face, just as his legs were too short for the rest of his body. This strain of grossness in his appearance was borne out by the man’s behaviour.
The physical pain she suffered was not Princess Calasipari’s only cause of distress that night. It was accompanied by a significant degree of mental anguish. The couple had been estranged since the previous summer. Where the pleasures of the bedchamber were concerned, with the exception of a monthly exercise of conjugal rights he considered essential if he was to produce an heir, the Prince went his way and she hers. His led from one to another of a bewildering succession of women, society hostesses, cocottes, vaudeville actresses, a lion tamer from the circus, a singer or two, and a ballerina. The latter was not la Meli, already linked to Princess Calasipari by inalienable bonds of friendship at the time this narrative begins, but Sophie Husslerová, the daughter of a Bohemian charcoal burner and the Greek celebrity’s most mortal enemy.
Even though the Princess had only one lover to set beside the numerous adventures of her lawful husband, that was enough to fill her with painful uncertainty as she rocked her head to and fro on a lace-fringed pillow, moaning and gazing pleadingly into the eyes of Juanita, who was busy mopping her brow. To say that the Princess experienced the pangs of a tormented conscience would be inexact. Such feelings were alien to her nature. While struggling with all her might to propel her child into the world, she could not wait to get a glimpse of its head, so as to learn whether the evidence of her infidelity would be written across its face for everyone to see, though it was more than she could do to imagine what steps might have to be taken were her darkest premonitions to prove well-founded.
The thunderclaps and shower of rain had been intended for the entracte, during which the stage was supposed to be empty, while an expressive orchestral intermezzo would accompany this brief spell of inclement weather. The rain was to fall on the rear part of the stage, which would then be concealed by a middle curtain, allowing a squad of servants to mop the boards and leave them safe for the singers to tread on in the following scene. Given Antoine’s precipitation, these carefully laid plans went to pot.
The male lead’s curls were already bedraggled when la Meli drew herself erect and approached him, wearing a fixed, glassy smile, spinning her body round in a neat circle with each step. The idea of an umbrella flashed incongruously through her mind. But it was too late. Though she managed, heroically, to maintain her poise, the slippery floor gave an added impetus to her movements. She knocked her partner off balance and both of them disappeared behind a projecting piece of scenery, representing a mossy bank, for all the world as if they had been diving for cover in the wake of an unexpected enemy attack. The corps de ballet followed at breakneck speed. Their leader did her best to put the brakes on, but the wet floor was too much for her. The orchestra made a start with the entracte as the front curtain came down with a resounding thud, not quite rapidly enough to muffle the cries of indignation and groans of pain as the dancers disentangled themselves from the jumbled heap where they had finished up.
[2]
Though he was generally a perspicacious individual, in this case Daniel O’Hara refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Since he is fated to assume a role of considerable importance in the progress of our narrative, it will be worth taking time to account for his presence at the opera on the night la Meli made her mistake as well as for the wilful blindness which prevented him ascribing even a minimal error to the woman he adored above all others in the world, namely Léonide Papamelindros.
It continues to be a moot point, to this day awaiting satisfactory clarification in the salons of the capital, whether the man sitting at his side is correctly to be referred to as Sándor Tóth or Tóth Sándor. Nobody will dispute the fact that on this occasion both were guests of Prince Calasipari who, due to limitations of space and minute considerations of social precedence, had chosen not to accommodate them in his own box.
Travelling in disguise was one of a range of unconventional hobbies which characterised the Prince. As has already been hinted, he was ready, like the kings of old, to throw off the cares of state at a moment’s notice, in order to chase after a bewildering variety of women. The two years following immediately upon his marriage were a puzzling parenthesis in what turned out to be a lifetime dedicated to indiscriminate philandering. Madame de la Poupillinière once observed, with her usual mordacity, that the only requirement the Prince made his amours was that their object should still walk and breathe. Much as she detested the man, to accuse him of necrophilia would have been going too far.
Beyond the gaming table, at the time of which we are writing, the list of his hobbies included an unbounded enthusiasm for the innovations in technology which had begun transforming Europe’s capitals. This led him to seek out an internationally renowned engineer of the stature of Daniel O’Hara. His idea was that Daniel should draw up plans for an underground railway which would transport citizens from one end of the capital to the other at an unprecedented speed, while at the same time multiplying the Prince’s already incalculable personal fortune several times over.
The final meetings concerning the initial stages of the project, before squads of men made a start on digging the tunnels, were scheduled to take place in the coming days. In the meantime, Daniel was staying, at the Prince’s expense, in an extraordinarily plush hotel, overlooking a cast iron bridge of his very own design. As a sign of the benevolence with which he looked upon his protégé, the Prince arranged for the Irishman to be welcomed in the most exclusive area of the Opera’s auditorium every night there was a performance, for as long as he resided in the capital. When it transpired that he was accompanied by an old friend of uncertain nomenclature, credited with saving his life under circumstances familiar to anyone who read the daily newspapers, Prince Calasipari lost no time in extending his offer of hospitality to the new arrival.
The night la Meli made her mistake was Daniel’s third visit to the Opera. Three nights were, however, sufficient to win the ballerina a place in his heart from which he swore she could never be dislodged. By nature averse to frivolous pursuits, he had not attended either an opera or a ballet before arriving in the capital, though in all his born days he had never missed Holy Mass on a Sunday or a Holiday of Obligation.
In the interests of accuracy, two exceptions to this statement must be brought to the reader’s attention. One was an extended voyage he made to the East Indies on a British vessel. The Catholic priest who smuggled himself on board was discovered and set ashore in Central Africa, where he proceeded to amass a fortune in the slave trade. The other exception was an alarming episode when Berber camel merchants captured Daniel and held him to ransom on the left bank of the Nile.
It has to be admitted (whether to his eternal shame or glory is for the reader to decide) that Daniel had reached the age of thirty-six with his virginity still intact in every respect. His notorious devotion to the Mother of God explained the exaggerated reverence with which he treated every representative of the fairer sex whose path crossed his own, no matter how depraved or beggarly her condition. If Daniel had got himself a wife and started a family at the stage generally considered appropriate to such undertakings, he might never have pursued his calling with such ardour or succeeded in it so brilliantly. Nor would he unthinkingly have exposed his body to the dangers which were an inevitable corollary of travelling in four continents.
A Berber woman, tending his wounds at the conclusion of the armed combat which led to Daniel’s above mentioned spell in captivity, composed a song in her dialect, unknown to anyone beyond her immediate circle, taking the colour of his hair as its subject. She could not make up her mind whether it was red, gold or brown. This dilemma so perplexed her that she brought the oil lamp with a floating wick whose faint beams provided the sole illumination in the tent where Daniel languished close enough to his head for a drop to spill onto his cheek. Daniel did not wake and discover her, as happens in the fable of Cupid and Psyche. He was too far gone for that. All he did was moan, parting his generously sculpted lips in a brief, suppressed sigh. Which is when the woman made her song.
She began by comparing the indefinable shadings of his hair to the fur of a range of different animals native to the desert and the mountain ranges at its edges. Then came the dyes of both vegetable and mineral origin Berber women use to colour their nails, hair and skin, dyes whose precise effect can never be gauged until the individual has applied them. There followed the changing aspect of the desert sands, as unpredictable and multifaceted, in the eyes of those who spend their life amidst them, as the ocean is to an experienced mariner. In conclusion, she referred to the dancing shapes evoked along the horizon when the sun sets in those torrid climes, claiming that the precise shade of Daniel’s hair eluded definition as consistently as all the phenomena which she had cited.
Once she had finished she bent over and pressed her lips against the Irishman’s. His magnificent whiskers, untrimmed for several days, tickled her cheeks and, though the stench of camel dung pervading the tent would have stopped anyone except a Berber woman from remarking it, the fragrance of his pale skin filled her nostrils. She drank so deeply of it that the memory haunted her for the rest of her life. She carried a lock of his hair around her neck until the day she died.
Having helped Eugenio McWhirter (a name celebrated in the annals of the native peoples of South America) organise a successful armed rebellion of the peasants in the mountains of northern Paraguay, Daniel was returning home to Cork when the boat on which he had taken a passage was shipwrecked in the Bay of Biscay. No-one, least of all Daniel, has the remotest idea of how long he floated on the surface of the ocean, a lone survivor clinging to a shattered wooden beam which, when it was still in one piece, had served as the rear mast. Nor could he explain why, when all the other passengers succumbed to the fury of the waves, he alone should have been spared.
He was washed up on a rocky beach in Brittany. Coming upon the senseless body of the Irishman, the local lighthouse keeper, out on a morning constitutional which allowed him to collect a jug of frothy milk and a freshly baked loaf from the nearest peasant hovel, carried it back to the lighthouse with the assistance of that peasant family’s eldest son. Daniel beng stark naked, the lad, painfully shy, indicated through gestures that no time ought to be lost in hiding his private parts from view. The lighthouse keeper (none other than the old friend who sat at Daniel’s side on the night when la Meli got her steps mixed up) being Hungarian and a freethinker, scoffed at the idea. Not until he had given the Irishman’s chill body a vigorous rub with a towel and anointed it with copious quantities of the peach brandy his mother sent him a cask of every Christmas did he lay the poor fellow out on a pallet in front of the fire, covering him with a blanket.
Sándor had become a solitary drinker as an inevitable consequence of his chosen profession. But then, the corrosive qualities of his mother’s peach brandy were such that any stomach not inured to its onslaughts from an early age would not have tolerated even a minimal dose. Its effects on Daniel were not long in manifesting themselves. The Irishman opened his eyes, glanced around the room then, clutching in his right hand the medal of the Blessed Virgin he wore around his neck, which had miraculously survived both the storm and his long hours afloat, struggled to his knees in front of the blazing fire (the peasant lad, who was watching, averted his gaze) and exclaimed:
‘Holy Mother of God! Is this not one of the greatest miracles since the sun rose into the sky on the fifth day of creation?’
Rising unsteadily to his feet, he hugged Sándor as vigorously as his returning strength permitted.
‘And are you, my friend,’ he proceeded, ‘my saviour from waters I languished on the surface of longer than any human creature should be expected to tolerate?’
Sándor welcomed the Irishman’s show of emotion with the stoical bearing which was natural to him. Once Daniel calmed down, however, and had been persuaded to participate of the peach brandy in the customary way, via his mouth, the Hungarian embarked on a regular presentation.
‘Tóth Sándor,’ he said, standing up, extending his right hand, and cocking his curious, wedge-shaped head to one side, for all the world like an inquisitive bird. ‘Native of the Great Hungarian Plain.’
One of the Irishman’s more enviable qualities was an ability to extract the essential elements from whatever welter of information he might find himself confronted with. It did him sterling service in this case. He hit upon a foolproof method of resolving the uncertainty about the lighthouse keeper’s name which plagued Sándor’s relations with everyone he met outside his native country.
‘More pleased to meet you than I can rightly say, Sandy.’
A second quality which served Daniel well in unpropitious circumstances was his readiness to down beverages the merest whiff of which would have set a hardened trooper retching. Among the unusual tipples he had sampled were fermented bamboo juice (in a forest in the Philippines), clarified seal fat (in an Eskimo igloo on the Greenland coast), the bile of a castrated albino goat, filtered through its stomach lining and then reduced by the heat of the sun to a gleaming, viscous paste (in an encampment in the Yemen) and, lastly, an infusion of yam-yam juice, bird droppings and powdered snakeskin (in the Paraguayan jungle). He did this with signs of spontaneous enjoyment which never failed to win him the hearts of those who were offering the drink, whether they viewed him as an honoured guest, a national hero or, on the most memorable and perilous occasion, their only likelihood of getting a square meal for several days to come.
Belying in this the stony self-containment which characterised his bearing, Sándor was no more indifferent than a lesser man to the virtues of his favourite drink. Refilling Daniel’s glass with barely disguised enthusiasm, he clinked his own against it in a wordless toast, then settled back to continue the conversation.
[4]
La Meli had refused to set foot upon the stage since making her mistake, alleging a sprain in her left ankle as the reason. The truth was that she was terrified her memory might fail her again, in full view of the Emperor and the public. Though composed largely of her own admirers, the latter contained a significant minority who regarded the talents of her rival Sophie Husslerová as superior, and were as vociferous in support of the Bohemian dancer as they were merciless in crticising la Meli. One lapse of this kind was forgiveable. A second could have meant the end of her career.
Houdry had given instructions that he was not to be disturbed except in circumstances of considerable urgency. Those whose job it was to watch over his repose knew this meant nothing less than a summons from the Opera Intendant or from the Emperor himself. La Meli, however, was confident that, given the predilection he had always shown for her, an intrusion on her part would be regarded with indulgence. And indeed, when the housekeeper announced that Léonide Papamelindros was sitting at the front door in a horsedrawn carriage, wearing a hat decorated with peacock feathers and begging to be admitted, Houdry’s first reaction was relief. Solitude had begun to weigh upon him. He was bored and in need of entertainment.
In his capacity as choreographer to the Emperor and to the state opera house, Gaston Houdry had supervised the transformation of Léonide Palamelindros from anonymous member of the corps de ballet to an international star. He was her second father, and she never failed to seek out his advice in the crises which punctuated her professional career. While doing nothing to dim his mental alertness, a series of strokes had confined the poor man to a chair from which it was his custom to direct his dancers, with an inspired severity the passage of the years had done nothing to diminish.
He instructed the housekeeper to prepare a tisane with carefully selected leaves from the herb garden, and to serve it beneath the elm tree by the pond, situated at the far end of his property. Deftly negotiating the twists and turns in the path, then the gentle rise in the ground beyond which lay the pond, two lads carried him down to its shade, seated in a wicker armchair with abundant cushions to support his back. A further chair was fetched for the ballerina. Houdry was in a mood for conversation.
Appraising her from an angle with a practised eye as she approached beneath her parasol, the old man concluded, rather to his bafflement, that Léonide was more beautiful now than she had ever been. Certain women improved with age. Léonide indubitably formed part of this group. Houdry was of a gallant disposition, and could boast a range of sentimental attachments as colourful as those of any comparable figure in the theatre of his day. But his relations with both pupils and protégées had always been kept to a strictly professional basis. Gazing at la Meli that late autumn afternoon, as a gentle breeze ruffled the branches of the elm tree at her back and and sent a dappled dance of sunlight and shadows across her cheeks, he could not help regretting his uprightness of earlier years. He might have chosen to be more lax now he was old. But his body was no longer in a condition to offer physical expression to whatever passions she might inspire in his mind and his heart, not to mention other parts of his anatomy.
Despite the season of the year, the afternoon was almost oppressively warm. Since descending from her coach, Léonide had begun to perspire ever so slightly. She carefully removed her priceless gloves of spotlessly white lace and laid them side by side on the wickerwork table to her right. Without realising it, she had performed a gesture of considerable intimacy, one that memories of long hours spent working together rendered natural. Her first words, however, were formal in tone.
‘Dear Monsieur Houdry, may I enquire after your health?’ she began.
Though she ached to broach the incident which had prompted her visit, this would be better done once they were finally alone. The housekeeper bustled over them, her brow pearled with sweat. She carried a tray with two glass tumblers and a large teapot, from whose spout there rose a thin column of steam. The tumblers contained globes of ice. With a care which sat oddly with her buxom build, the housekeeper tipped a portion of the teapot’s contents into each of the tumblers. A tang of mint filled the air, mingled with other aromas Léonide was at a loss to identify. Turning back to face her former teacher, she noted with dismay that he had aged visibly since she last saw him. His face had altered shape. How many little attacks had the poor man suffered since arriving here? When he spoke, his voice was more querulous and gentle than she remembered it being. To be subjected to critical appraisal by Houdry in the presence of the entire troupe was an ordeal the most experienced dancers contemplated with dread.
‘How kind of you to bother with me, Léonide!’ he answered. ‘Though I was promised that silence and repose would be of benefit to me, I fear that my condition has declined during this last week. I sleep passably well but am unable to concentrate to any useful purpose. It is as much as I can do to sit and watch the varied pursuits of the birds here in the garden. My attention wanders repeatedly when Madame Aubert is good enough to read to me in the evenings. That never used to happen.’
‘Yet barely a month has gone by since you directed the entire company, both soloists and corps de ballet, in a new spectacle of your own devising, one which encountered the Emperor’s especial favour. How can you possibly be so much weaker? Is this a temporary affliction? Or are its effects likely to persist? I am told the Empress’s personal physician was despatched to examine you.’
‘That is true, my dear girl, and I was deeply honoured by the solicitude of our ruler’s generous spouse. But with age, one loses faith and interest in the verdicts of physicians. Since the beginning of summer I have been increasingly aware of the approach of death. The soft tread of his footsteps is more easily discerned in a sylvan retreat like this than amidst the clamour and confusion of the city. I struggle with all the equanimity I can muster to greet him as a friend rather than an enemy. He does not engross my attention so completely, however, as to make me forget the doings of the capital. Offer me some titbits of gossip about the grander figures among our patrons. Treat my neglected ears to a little scandal, my dear Léonide.’
‘The Princess Calasipari,’ she began hesitantly, for she had not come with the purpose of retailing anecdotes, ‘gave birth to a male child the week before last. The birth has brought about a reconciliation with her husband, though nobody is willing to predict how long it will last.’
‘And does that mean the Prince has put an end to his philandering, at least for the time being?’
Conversion to Roman Catholicism from the Orthodox religion she was brought up in had been a milestone on Léonide’s journey towards celebrity. As a result, though fascinated by the details of the private lives of whatever artists and aristocrats she came into contact with, she affected a tone of virtuous indifference when speaking of them.
‘I have not had the opportunity to discuss the matter with my dear Carmela. She is recovering from the aftermath of her labours in bringing forth an heir. The birth was not an easy one. Her sister Juanita impressed the fact upon me.’
‘Ah,’ put in the old man, ‘I had forgotten that she was a friend of yours. Has her sister taken orders yet? Such a sad ending for a girl with her exceptional good looks. There is no reason why she should fail to make a match quite as advantageous as the Princess’s. Let us hope,’ he mused, without expecting a response from the ballerina, ‘that the latter’s conduct has been less opprobrious than the Prince’s since the time of their estrangement. It would indeed be unfortunate were the child to bear no clear resemblance to its legal father.’
A mischievous smile flitted across his lips. Léonide coughed awkwardly. She was struggling to find a way of diverting the conversation towards the subject closest to her heart.
‘I made the journey from the capital,’ she began, ‘to discuss a very different matter with you, Gaston.’
There was a pause.
‘I do not wish to conceal the fact that it has caused me considerable anguish, so much so that I feel able to raise it with you, and you alone.’
Overcome with emotion, the ballerina rummaged in a fashionable little pouch which dangled from her shoulder on a silver chain, extracted a handkerchief and dabbed with it at both eyes.
‘My goodness,’ said Houdry, genuinely alarmed and sitting up in his chair. ‘What on earth could cause you such distress?’
The first thought that occurred to him was that she had struck up an amorous liaison which was working out badly. He realised rather sheepishly that the idea of her having a lover was distasteful to him, while the notion of things not working out in that particular sector produced a corresponding degree of satisfaction.
‘Ten days ago, it was Thursday, in the course of the divertissement which precedes the end of the second act, something occurred which I am at a loss to explain. At the time I had a feeling of exultation, of being swept along a different path, one never trod, of giving way to inspiration such as I had never before experienced. To put it in a nutshell, I changed the steps... forgot them... made a mistake. I don’t know which!’
She hid her face in her hands, sobbing unrestrainedly. Houdry was moved to lean across as far as he could and pat her gently on the shoulder. He did not regard the incident as important, or even unusual. But the terms in which she had described it intrigued him.
‘What happened? How did Liutprand handle it?’
Liutprand was the Christian name of the male lead.
‘Liutprand saved my life, or at any rate, my reputation. He picked me up in his arms and ferried me over to the spot where I ought to have been. By the time my feet touched the ground, I was myself again.’
‘So no harm was done?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. An incompetent old man sitting just offstage set off the rain machine. The floor got so wet I could easily have fallen flat on my face, in full view of the Emperor himself! But I managed to get as far as Liutprand without collapsing. A prop extending from the wings concealed what happened afterwards.’
‘I can see that you are extraordinarily upset, nonetheless. You have no cause to feel such grief, my dear. Hardly a night goes by at the Opera without a dancer making some miscalculation. On this occasion it was you. It is not likely to happen again for months or even years. What troubles you so much about it all?’
‘I am terrified of doing the same thing. Terrified that my memory will fail me, that I will make another, similar mistake and ruin my career.’
‘My dear, you must go back on stage immediately. What is more, you must dance that scene again, in full view of the public and the Emperor, without delay. That is the only way you can regain your confidence. Look on this as an order rather than a piece of advice.’
More sober now yet sombre, too, she lifted her tear-stained face to steal a glance at the dancing master. It raised her hopes to think he might help her set things right. Yet she was less than entirely satisfied with his explanation.
‘I will do as you tell me, dear Gaston. I have always done so. But this was a very special incident, take my word for it. It did not feel as if I was making a mistake. I have done so many a time, making a botch of infinitesimal details I was able to camouflage within a moment. There were times when you yourself failed to notice. Learning to recover from such lapses, in a manner imperceptible to the audience, is an essential part of any dancer’s training. This time, however, a higher will interfered. I cannot put it more clearly than that.’
Houdry rubbed his chin, lost in thought. Léonide sat motionless for several minutes in painful expectancy. The idea that he should be unable to find words to comfort her in this predicament was terrifying. If Houdry did not have the answer, then where could it be found? At last the old choreographer shook himself out of his rêverie.
‘Strange thoughts come into one’s head at the edge of the city. I have lived all my life, dear Léonide, surrounded by incessant bustle, by noise and by commotion. The silence here unsettles me. My mental processes adopt, I could say, a different rhythm, transposed onto a plane I had no access to till now. At times it seems to me that silence does not exist, at any rate not in the sense we normally give to it, of an undifferentiated absence of noise. Silence has a texture of its own, which varies. It is not in the nature of living things to cease producing sounds. If I lie awake at nights, the crunch of a woodworm in my bedroom cabinet is capable of deafening me. The creaking of the chest of drawers as it settles into the parquet on the landing affects me as if an earthquake were taking place. When I sit out here, and the air is still, I fancy I can hear the trees growing, and the flowers straining towards the sun, greedy for light, or drawing in their petals and folding their leaves as darkness falls. If I have lost so much that was precious to me in these last years and months then this, at least, is something I have gained, the faculty of lending an ear to silence.’
‘Idle fancies,’ said Léonide. ‘You are too much alone, Gaston.’
‘Far from it, my dear. I am on the verge of finding answers to certain questions which have troubled me all my life. Should this prove to be the case, then I will rest more calmly in my grave. I am not a believer, as you know well. My contacts with ministers of the Church of Rome have been too frequent and prolonged for me to retain any illusions as to their private conduct or the efficacy of their spells. Nor do the clergy of other denominations, from what I have seen, merit more respect.’
Léonide’s expression darkened. Though nobody was close enough to catch what he was saying, she found it inconsiderate of Houdry to voice such scepticism in her presence. In different circumstances, his forthrightness might have compromised her. Her instinct was to upbraid him, using terms of conventional piety. Yet she realised that these words formed a prelude to whatever consolation he was about to offer her and she had no intention of endangering that or putting an obstacle in his way.
‘There is a passage in the gospels which claims that not a sparrow falls from the sky without the creator of all things noticing. He is even said to be preoccupied with the rate at which water lilies clog the surface of a pond. More years than I care to remember have gone past since I last attended Mass, or attended it in anything but body. But I believe this is the purport of those passages. The idea of a Christian God strikes me as no less preposterous now than it did when I was twenty-one years of age. I find, however, the notion that events taking place on different levels of reality are connected to one another, even interlinked, eminently reasonable. Certain sages speak of this as a kind of music, lesser than that of the spheres, but potent nonetheless. I prefer to view it as a dance.’
La Meli had raised her hands to her cheeks in alarm, almost but not quite shielding her ears at the more outrageous sections of this speech. She paused now, uncertain whether to keep them there, or whether it was safe to return them to her lap. Absorbed in his own speculations, Houdry did not even look at her in posing his question.
‘Have you heard the name of la Trouvère? Aimée de la Trouvère, that is?’
The ballet dancer smiled in disbelief.
‘How could I not have heard of him? He was the greatest choreographer of his age. A full-length portrait of him hangs in the vestibule of the opera, and they garnish it with flowers each year on his name day.’
‘I have reasons for believing that the portrait is not genuine. But they are not germane to the matter under discussion. What do you know about his death?’
‘A boating accident? Or a fall while hunting? I remember there was something odd about it.’
Houdry grimaced, whether in pain or exasperation was hard to tell. With one hand, whose movements struck her as peculiar, more angular than they ought to have been, he burrowed among the cushions where he reclined and extracted a duodecimo volume bound in dark brown leather.
‘This book,’ he said, holding it on high and waving it in the direction of la Meli, as if admonishing her, ‘has survived, to the best of my knowledge, in only three copies. The rest were ordered to be burnt.’
‘Good Lord!’ she exclaimed. ‘Was he a heretic?’
It troubled her that, having executed several choreographies said to have originated with la Trouvère, his heterodoxy might have rubbed off on her as a result.
‘Much worse than that,’ said Houdry, with a smirk of triumph. ‘He was a freethinker. This volume contains an investigation into the circumstances of his death. As well as being responsible for the most outstanding spectacles of his day, la Trouvère was an enthusiastic gardener. With an especial interest in mazes. Labyrinths.’
The ballerina was utterly confused, yet at the same time mesmerised.
‘What link can there be between his gardening and his choreography?’
‘Dance steps, like time, are irreversible. Or so we believe, at least. You yourself know from experience that the same movements, repeated after an infinitesimal interval, are not the same but different, and carry a different meaning. We exploit this fact constantly in our choreographies.’
‘That is true. But what possible connection can that have with mazes? And what is the relevance of all of this to my mistake at the opera three nights ago?’
‘According to la Trouvère, to dance, at the level of sophistication where you and I practise the art, means either to create a path, or to follow one which has already been traced. Let me be more explicit. You know that it is possible, by sounding a musical note of a particular frequency, to shatter a crystal goblet, and to set objects of a weightier, coarser nature trembling. For la Trouvère, a dance step was a vibration of just that kind, capable of both provoking a response from neighbouring objects and itself responding to a pre-existing vibration. If the author of this little volume can be credited, though his ideas are simply those of la Trouvère, then the infinite range of movements of the physical world, and perhaps of a world which lies beyond the merely physical, are engaged in a cosmic dance of inconceivable complexity. La Trouvère was convinced that, were he to succeed in reproducing even just a section of that dance, this would endow him with the power to model the unfolding of the universe. He may well have been crazy. The concept is an astounding one nonetheless.’
‘And the maze?’ insisted Léonide, who had barely understood a word of what went before.
‘A maze is the outline of a series of dances. A frozen path. Or a collection of potential paths, a repertory of possible designs for a building in construction, a musical score demanding realisation. That is how la Trouvère died, if indeed there can be any certainty that he is dead. One afternoon in early June 1753, he led an entire troupe of dancers and musicians, along with several distinguished members of the court, who happened to be present among the audience on that occasion, into a maze from which they have so far failed to emerge. The maze was of his own construction. If he certainly knew the way in, it looks as if he had no idea, or had forgotten, how to get out again. The Queen wished to have it burned down, but the King insisted it be left untouched, in the forlorn hope that those who had vanished might reappear, when everyone was least expecting them. On his orders, the place is guarded, and carefully tended until this very day. Its location is a closely kept secret.’
The implications of Houdry’s words were becoming painfully clear to Léonide. She could see the scene clearly in her mind, with the carefully trimmed hedges of a formal garden on the south side of a country house, a curtain of trees beyond it, then a pond and the maze. Servants had nearly finished clearing the tables on which a sumptuous banquet had been offered to the guests. The King was conversing with la Trouvère, slightly riled at the man’s familiar insolence, yet also convinced of being in the presence of a genius. Dusk was beginning to fall, gathering along the tops of trees and hedges like sediment at the bottom of a glass. Dancing had got under way more than an hour ago and the musicians were warming up seriously. All of a sudden la Trouvère grasped his dancemaster’s staff, for all the world like the crozier a bishop carries in an ecclesiastical procession and, with two lads playing the pipes and a drummer in front of him, initiated a long, serpentine row dance, with more and more of the present company falling into line behind him. As if following a prearranged plan, he led them off towards the curtain of trees beyond which lay the maze, while the rays of the setting sun threw network after network of variegated shadows across the windows of the house’s garden front.
She shivered. She had been mistaken about the warmth of the afternoon. Here in the garden of Gaston Houdry’s villa a chiller air breathed than elsewhere.
‘What of my steps?’ she murmured. ‘Were those, too, of Aimée de la Trouvère’s making?’
‘My dear,’ answered Gaston, chuckling to himself, and showing not the slightest sign of being alarmed or even disconcerted, ‘incredible as you may think it, I would suggest you either reproduced, unwittingly, a fragment of that universal dance, or... How am I to put it? The comparison is inappropriate, but let us imagine you were a writer, and some unseen force had jogged your elbow. Or could one suggest, switching metaphor yet again, that you stepped into a river whose current was so powerful it swept you along in its path? There is no telling what kind of resonances may have been provoked by what you still persist in referring to as your mistake.’
[30]
The situation in which Sándor now found himself was outlandish in the extreme, and the reader is asked to make a sincere effort to picture the different elements which go to make it up. He was once again in the rather dingy room belonging to Fifine, or rather where Fifine was one of a series of temporary occupants. A single candle stood on the table, casting an illumination at once melancholy and garish on the surroundings. Sándor had taken the precaution of covering the small window which gave onto the stairway with a ragged blanket. He was anxious that whoever might happen to be passing up or down should not glimpse what was going on inside. Once more the Hungarian man had had the chance to put to sterling use the expertise in knots and bonds of every imaginable kind he had acquired during long years in the exercise of his chosen profession as a lighthouse keeper. His victim was not tied to the bed, however, but sat upright in the chair in front of him. It was Agnieszka.
Whatever kind of a tussle had been necessary to make a captive of the poor girl, no signs could be detected on her person or in her face. The truth was Sándor had hardly required to use force. Rapidity and surprise did the trick. Agnieszka was so incensed at him for immobilising her, and at herself for falling into the trap, that she had no energy left for physical resistance. As far as one could tell, she had been there for quite a while, certainly rather longer than she would have chosen had she had any say in the matter. Sándor managed to perform the whole feat with a single rope. It bound the Polish woman’s torso firmly to the back of the chair then, snakelike, looped round her forearms. These were horizontally constrained along the rigid wooden arms of the chair. That same rope fastened her wrists to the upright struts supporting the arms, with a double flourish it would be mean-spirited not to classify as elegant. What paths the ropes then followed amidst her ample black skirts, and whether Agnieszka’s thighs were similarly restricted, was impossible to make out in that pale, unsteady light. What was certain was that her calves and ankles were secured to the uprights supporting the spacious seat no less securely than her wrists above. Her feet did not quite touch the floor, and at one point she had rocked herself backwards and forwards with such fury Sándor had to apply all this strength to the back of the chair to keep it from tipping over. The expression on her face, rather than shock, fear or repulsion, betrayed intense irritation. She considered it beneath her to call out for help. And she had obvious reasons for not wanting to involve the police in any predicament she might fall into.
‘So when are you going to hand me over to the forces of order? Get on and be done with it!’ she spat at him.
‘My dear,’ said Sándor, making an effort to remain calm, a martyr to the contradictory impulses which beset him, ‘do I have to tell you yet again that betraying you is not part of my intentions? It is loyalty to my dear friend that made me do this!’
‘Your dear friend who is in turn the friend of princes and the pawn of financiers, carrying out their will without a thought for justice, or for the crimes his employers have on their consciences?’
‘Daniel came here to build a railway which will be for the good of everyone in this city, whatever class they may belong to. It will carry rich and poor alike and make all their lives easier and more beautiful. If he did not do it then someone else would, and build a poorer and less efficient system. But why do you keep bringing your damned politics into this?’
His voice was rising in desperation. His hopes of getting any information out of Agnieszka had long since evaporated. He was struggling to think how he could extract himself from the situation he had created while conserving a minimum of dignity. But he realised that, to all intents and purposes, the relationship he had managed to form with this young woman was at an end. The prospect caused him a pain so terrible he did not believe he would survive it, and this in turn made it impossible for him to think straight. He did the best he could to feel angry rather than desperate.
‘A baby, that is what it is about! An utterly innocent creature barely two weeks of age whom you and your damned brother have seen fit to spirit away from its mother, causing untold suffering now and in the future. All in the name of a cause you know is as close to my heart as to yours, but one which is utterly dishonoured when people take similar steps to support it!’
All of this had been going on for an hour or more. Both were growing weary of the parts they had to play. Agnieszka had stubbornly insisted from the very start that no harm would come to the baby. The money they were demanding as a ransom was essential to the revolutionary band’s survival, never mind the success of their enterprises. Sándor should stop meddling and leave well alone. What did the Prince or the Princess matter to him, when all was said and done?
Sándor refused to believe that, desperate as they might be, Agnieszka and her accomplices could. No-one else had been informed of Sándor’s plan to subject Agnieszka to interrogation. At the start, he had tried to frighten her, to no effect, by describing the rather more brutal methods he imagined were customary, not in the building where the police chief’s office lay, but in the cellars of another building, not far off, where those arrested for political reasons were normally taken. She gazed at him with undisguised contempt when he got onto this tack, and he sympathised with her. First of all, he knew as well as she did that he was incapable of harming her, or causing her any kind of pain that went beyond the intense irritation of being temporarily immobilised. And second, it struck them both that, when he talked like that, he sounded like the basest henchmen of a regime whose more authoritarian aspects they detested with equal vehemence.
Agnieszka having asked for a glass of water, Sándor held it to her lips while she sipped from it, then put it back on the table and paced around the room in agitation. When he looked at Agnieszka again, her face had changed. Or rather, she was looking at him with an expression somewhere between the imploring and the defiant which he immediately recognised from a different context. Only lovers have that kind of intimacy with one another. The moment he identified the look, Sándor experienced a powerful and unequivocal physical reaction. Though neither of them spoke, it was as if saying nothing were itself a declaration or a demand, even a plea. Moving with surety but unspeakable slowness, Sándor plunged his right hand into the folds of Agnieszka’s skirt, burrowing and seeking. When it reached the place he sought, he found it, as he had expected, damp. The Polish woman moaned. Her rate of breathing quickened. If beyond her bound wrists the fingers quivered, it was not with the urge to break free. They expressed a different kind of agitation.
Sándor withdrew his hand, brought it to his nostrils, without taking his eyes off Agnieszka’s, and sniffed, at length and voluptuously. Then, still holding her gaze with his, he brought it to the level of his lips and savoured that humidity with his tongue. The silence was deafening. It seemed to both of them that the candle flame was absolutely still, though that could hardly have been the case. Agnieszka gave a low cry, so low anyone standing further from her than her lover would not have detected it. For Sándor that cry was like a page from a book, or rather like several pages from a book, such was the wealth of information it conveyed to him.
He undid his shoelaces and laboriously set first the right, then the left shoe to one side then, drawing himself erect again, slipped the braces over his shoulders so that his trousers fell to the ground. As he stepped out of them he looked for all the world like the hero of a pantomime in the recognition scene, who finally steps forth as himself. Agnieszka was no longer looking at his face but at the crucial place above his groin and, when his underpants, too, were cast aside, the spectacle she had been waiting for was laid bare before her. She took one look, gave a deep sigh, and closed her eyes, her head inclining backwards.
How Sándor managed to get inside her, what with the chair and the rope and the knots and her ample skirts, defies elucidation. But he did and, as if the duress he had felt obliged to subject her to augmented in direct proportion the tenderness, or rather adoration which he felt for her, his lovemaking possessed a new energy and fire which astonished both of them. The Polish woman was transported far beyond the region of thought, comparison, or indeed, beyond any capacity for mental formulation whatsoever. As one by one the knots were undone, intense desire lapsed into conscious enjoyment, marked by a wish to prolong as far as was humanly possible the sensations they were both experiencing. The intervals between the undoing of each knot grew longer and longer. When, the last one having been untied, the rope snaked useless on the floor (though either of them would have been hard put to decide what it had really been used for) Sándor helped Agnieszka to undress. They then collapsed onto the creaking bed which was where Fifine serviced her clients. The room was chill. In the absence of a blanket, they used the ample folds of Agnieszka’s skirt to keep them warm.
[39]
Had the light breeze which set the beech leaves rustling far above her head been coming from a different direction, the Princess might have caught the words uttered by the figure in riding boots. It is possible, though unlikely, that she might have recognised the voice as that of her loyal friend and unfailing admirer, Madame de la Poupillinière. It says a lot for the aristocrat’s stamina that, after a journey which lasted three nights and two days, punctuated by the briefest of stops in order to eat and change horses, she was filled with energy, keen to settle the final details of her plan to carry Juanita off from the convent.
Madame de la Poupillinière thought fondly of the Auberge du Cerf Blanc, the hotel next to the convent where she had once stayed when a girl. On that occasion she had been accompanied by her father, long since deceased. Passing unnoticed was not in her nature, even if she had seen any earthly reason for not attracting as much attention to herself as she possibly could. No-one with a different approach to life would ever have worn the hats for which Madame de la Poupillinière had gained an enviable, indeed international reputation. But even she could see that to check in for the night as an evidently exhausted, indubitably female traveller, then leave the next day, in the costume of a Spanish hidalgo from the previous century, was likely to cause such a sensation as to severely reduce her chances of carrying off Juanita without detection and immediate pursuit. Surprise was of the essence. Her fancy dress, though deserving of the widest possible airing, had in the last analysis been concocted for Juanita’s benefit. Despite her energetic assertions to the contrary, Madame de la Poupillinière had on more than one occasion paid court to individuals whose sexual proclivities were so pronounced and fixed as to permit no wavering. Though the chances were statistically against Juanita being of that band, it was a possibility she could not exclude. Though it is difficult to attribute either coyness or diffidence to Madame de la Poupillinière, it may well be that an underlying lack of confidence made her feel presenting herself as a man was, at least in the first instance, a tactic with distinct advantages.
They lit a fire and roasted sausages Madame de la Poupillinière partook of with an unmistakable hauteur. For such an enthusiastic proponent of male virtues, she felt surprisingly ill at ease in the company of men, even on occasions when the gulf that separated them and her, in social terms, was less enormous. There would be no point in approaching the abbey before nightfall. Those tiresome creatures were in the habit of adjourning to the choir for vespers once their meagre evening repast was concluded. Only then would they retire to their cells and put all the lights out. Luckily the order was not an enclosed one. The nuns were allowed to look secular persons, males included men, in the face, and this meant that the use they made of various forms of help and labour from the town was greater than might otherwise have been the case. For a bribe that struck Madame de la Poupillinière as shamefully paltry, but which here at the forest’s edge represented a small patrimony, the gardener’s assistant, demoted several years before for drunkenness, and thus harbouring a residual grievance against the abbess, had divulged the necessary information and offered detailed instructions. He promised they would find the relevant gates unlocked, and was able to give unequivocal indications about the cell where they would find Juanita.
It was the custom of the abbess to place all new and potential recruits under the care, not to say the supervision, of an older, more experienced member of the community. Her choice of companion for Juanita raised some eyebrows. Sister Petronella was low in stature, buxom, and radiated health and energy. Her social extraction was not the most desirable, her father having kept an inn on the other side of the forest. The abbey was a snobbish place. Petronella’s frankness of speech and unceremonious ways were liable to cause offence and consternation among the other nuns, many of whom came from aristocratic or rich, bourgeois backgrounds. Moreover, she was not precisely of a pious nature. The abbess was familiar with such characters from the lower classes, of whose essential good nature there could be no doubt, but who blithely reframed abstruse theological notions in the light of their own, more mundane understanding of life. There could be no doubting her devotion to the Mother of God. Going by what other members of the community whispered, however, the abbess suspected Petronella of unconventional views regarding the said divine personage. The notion of a virgin birth sat ill with Petronella’s down to earth approach to life. By putting Juanita and Petronella in one cell, the abbess intended to kill two birds with a single stone. First of all, a simple question to Petronella, to whom discretion was an utterly alien concept, would reveal anything she wished to know about the new arrival’s conduct and her state of mind. Secondly, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that something of Juanita’s good breeding and very evident, thankfully informed piety might rub off on the other woman, given time and patience.
Madame de la Poupillinière found herself in an oddly impressionable mood as the four conspirators made their way towards the abbey under cover of darkness, slinking from bush to bush, pausing behind a wall and only occasionally encountering the vigilance of dogs or geese. In part it was the consequence of those hours of waiting in the clearing, when she had become acutely aware of all the forest noises around her, the calls and hoots of different birds, and the rustle as creatures she had no hope of identifying scuttled through the undergrowth of ferns and scrub. Partly old memories were being revived. She had been fifteen the first time she came to Beaulieu. Her passionate affair with the English governess, Miss Glimp, had been abruptly terminated when the cook discovered them, in circumstances it would be an understatement to label compromising, in a far off corner of the labyrinth of larders, where various kinds of fruit conserved in brandy, of which the two had copiously imbibed, were stored.
At that point Madame de la Poupillinière’s mother had been dead for several years. Her father regarded her with an indulgence which she returned in the form of wholesale adoration. Not so much as a sharp word ever passed between them. His only offspring’s latest escapade brought little more than an embarrassed smile to the man’s lips. Another position was swiftly found for Miss Glimp. Had the fifteen-year-old been subjected to some form of punishment, she might have found her situation less confusing. As it was, her father continued with plans for them to make the journey south and west to Beaulieu, where a distant cousin of his was about to take her vows. The effect of this spectacle on his daughter, he reflected, could not be anything but beneficial, and might go some way towards mitigating the feelings awakened, in such an unforeseeable manner, by that peculiar Englishwoman with the unfortunate name.
Once aroused, however, the fires of his daughter’s passions continued to burn with unremitting ferocity. The discovery of this entirely female community, one which appeared to have dispensed, not just with the services, but with the very presence of men, surpassed her wildest dreams. The spectacle of the nuns, immensely seductive in their rigidly starched wimples as they processed with joined hands behind their abbess, their movements carefully synchronised and with an air of submissiveness which augured well for the plans already forming in her head, made such a strong impression as to gain for convents forever after an irreplaceable role in Madame de la Poupillinière’s erotic universe.
They entered the grounds of the abbey through the door to the kitchen garden. That was the moment at which the moon emerged from behind the clouds. It was not entirely full, but bright enough to shed a pale simulacrum of day on everything around them. The way to the wing where the sisters slept led round the apse of the church. At the time of the Revolution the abbey had been desecrated and the community put to flight. The interior furnishings were auctioned, but the wonderful carvings adorning the nave as well as the exterior had not been touched. And by some miracle of fate, the stained glass windows of the apse, dating from the fourteenth century, were unharmed. Madame de la Poupillinière was not a religious woman. Whatever her private feelings about nuns, she regarded male members of the clergy, from the simplest parish priest right up to cardinals, of whom she had met several in her time, with outright derision. Even her husband expressed alarm at the contempt with which she treated them. Yet as, by a trick of its rays, the moon set the colours of the stained glass windows glimmering, and the figures of saints and prophets perched on niches and finials all along the apse came magically alive, something very similar to reverence took possession of her. It did not lead her to question the appropriateness of what she was doing. But it did add a very special quality to the moment.
The approach via the kitchen garden had been decided on because the chances of their being detected there were limited in the extreme. A getaway, however, using the path by which they had come, would have taken too long. One of their two accomplices was to wait with coach and horses at the main gate, which could be opened from the inside by simply drawing back a bolt, and which had the advantage of being situated on the main road leading westwards from the town. Speed was of the essence.
When they came within view of the wing where the treasure she coveted lay sleeping, Madame de la Poupillinière’s heart missed a beat. She adjusted the position of the hat she was wearing and flexed her hands within their leather riding gloves. It was part of the plan that a ladder should be left, as if by negligence, more or less where they would need it. The assistant gardener had been no less attentive to this detail than to the others. As her helpers positioned it beneath the relevant window Madame de la Poupillinière, drawing the pistol from her holster, prepared to ascend. Light would be needed if they were to be sure of carrying off the right person. Her coachman got out his tinder box, and soon the pitch torch they had brought along flared up in a roar. By that point she was already halfway to the top. Though climbing from rung to rung in riding boots that reached beyond her knees was not an easy business, she managed it with aplomb. Balling her fist she resolutely smashed the glass of the window in one single, rapid gesture and, opening it from inside, sprang into the room. The coachman was right after her with the torch.
Petronella gave a frightened moan, which rose into a scream before Madame de la Poupillinière managed to grab hold of her and clap her hand, in its leather sheath, across the nun’s mouth. Inwardly she could only praise the dignity and calm with which Juanita reacted. Rising from her bed in the slightest of nightgowns, she contemplated the intruders with an air of interested enquiry. There was no trace of fright in her expression. She looked bemused and curious.
‘Down the ladder,’ said Madame de la Poupillinière curtly, brandishing her pistol. ‘Otherwise I shall use this.’
The threat was hardly a sensible one. Risking injury to Juanita was out of the question, and there was no surer way of drawing attention to themselves than releasing a couple of shots into the air just for the fun of it. The smashing of the glass and Petronella’s stifled scream had, in fact, alerted the inmates of the neighbouring cells. Steps and voices could be heard from the corridor. Someone had already kindled a light, its glimmer perceptible in the crack between the bottom of the door and the stone threshold of the cell.
Juanita began descending the ladder. The coachman followed after, still bearing the torch. Petronella gripped Madame de la Poupillinière with all the desperation of a drowning man. She was no longer struggling to get free but, as far as the aristocrat could tell, begging for protection. What irrational force led her to make a decision which was to have irrevocable consequences for the future is impossible to say. It could have been the dumb helplessness of the figure she had her arm around, or else the unmistakable odour of the convent, which clung to Petronella’s skin even when she laid aside her habit.
‘You too!’ muttered Madame de la Poupillinière, as if this had always been part of the plan, meanwhile striving to make her voice as husky as she could, and pushing Petronella in the direction of the window. That stocky, rounded figure followed her instructions without protest, making it to the bottom of the ladder with a nimbleness that belied her unmistakable fondness for the fattiest and most sugary of foods.
They had cloaks and blankets at the ready, having foreseen that their captive (there ought to have been only one) would be flimsily clad. Madame de la Poupillinière insisted on taking the reins herself. She had no memory of getting through the main gate and into the coach. All she could remember later was the excitement and satisfaction provoked by her own skill in driving, the lurid shadows cast on either side of them by the lit lamps of the coach, the exultation of the horses, and the night air whistling past her cheeks once they had left the town, still with a late autumn warmth in it, yet damp and redolent of herbs and grass.
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