From Sido’s vantage point, not only did she have a perfect view of the proceedings, but she could hear equally well all that was being said, for many of the guests came to gossip under the round dome of the temple, where their voices echoed.
By late afternoon the sky had turned the color of iron. Sido watched as the guests floated off in their swan and peacock boats and the footmen surrounding the lake opened baskets, letting out hundreds and hundreds of butterflies that in the eerie light of the oncoming storm looked like jewels taking flight.
The highlight of the afternoon’s entertainment was the arrival of an Italian singer who was enjoying a great success at the Paris Opera House. Her voice soared through the gathering clouds, calling to Zeus himself, who answered in his deep bass voice with a mighty rumble of thunder as lightning forked its way toward the lake, followed by a sudden downpour of torrential rain.
The guests hastily abandoned their tables, spilling wine and knocking over chairs as they ran for cover, tall wigs flopping in the rain. Servants rushed here and there with umbrellas while the guests, like hissing geese, took flight back toward the château. They were followed by the musicians and the opera singer, who waddled behind like a flat-footed duck, her dress trailing in the mud.
Sido watched as the rain washed away the cakes, their pink icing running down damask tablecloths, the weight of the water half sinking the wooden boats that were illuminated, electric white, against the inky darkness of the waters. The scene, so wonderful, so magical at the beginning of the day, lay in ruins.
She was just opening the door of the temple to leave when, to her surprise, she heard her father’s voice above the sound of the rain. He was deep in conversation with a lady. They were taking shelter in the temple—she could see them all too clearly through the crack in the door. Sure that at any moment she would be discovered, she decided that it was best to stay where she was.
“I have no money to repay the count,” said the lady.
“Surely Monsieur Perrien can help you out of your little difficulty,” replied the marquis.
“My husband’s château was destroyed last week by a fire. He has lost everything, and after all he has been through I dare not tell him about my gambling debts. I am terrified of what the count will do. He wrote me a letter on black paper with white ink. You know what that means.”
“There has been a little misunderstanding,” said the marquis. “It signifies nothing.”
“It is no misunderstanding,” said Madame Perrien. “I implore you to lend me the money. You are my last hope. If you do not, I am as good as dead. I promise to repay you.” She reached out to take his hand, but the marquis quickly pulled it away, disgusted.
“Madame, this is no way for a lady of your rank to behave,” he said curtly.
She laughed a hard laugh. “I tell you this, Monsieur le Marquis, not inviting the count was a grave mistake. Do you really think it will be that easy to have nothing more to do with him? I think you will come to regret this oversight bitterly.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about, madame. I advise you to pull yourself together.”
“This is no child’s game we are playing.”
“It is, alas, one of the faults of the weaker sex to take matters of little consequence far too seriously. Madame, my advice to you is that this will resolve itself. Let us go back to the château for a glass of champagne. I find that champagne always lifts the spirits when one is feeling a little flat.”
Madame Perrien was not listening. “The count could destroy all of us if he wanted to!”
“Madame,” said the marquis stiffly, “this has gone far enough.” He tried to step away but was stopped by Madame Perrien, who grabbed hold of his gold costume and collapsed to her knees.
The look of revulsion on the marquis’s face would have been comical if it were not for the seriousness of what Madame Perrien was saying.
“At the beginning I thought, like you, that it was just a silly game. I had to give him something precious in return for the loan. When I explained that I could not give him jewelry as security, he said he wanted no such trinkets, he was after just a few little secrets. I gave him letters; letters which I now fear incriminate me. When I asked for them back he laughed and said he had them under lock and key and would use them to his own advantage if I did not repay him.”
Madame Perrien now had the marquis’s full attention. He took off his gold mask as a flash of lightning skimmed the lake. She let go of his coat and pulled herself up, leaning on the pillar.
“What secrets did you give the count, I wonder, in return for his generosity? They must have been worth a king’s ransom that he should have lent you so much. I dread to think what he will want in return.”
The marquis pursed his lips. “This does not apply to me. He did it purely out of friendship.”
Madame Perrien made a mirthless sound. “What folly! Tell me this, then. If he did so much for you as a friend, what do you think he would do if you were to become his enemy? He once told me what his private motto was. Shall I tell you it? ‘Show no mercy, have no mercy.’”
The marquis, who had swum all his life in the shallow waters of polite society, avoiding at all costs any meaningful conversation, suddenly realized that the largest pike in the river was after him. He straightened his back and looked at Madame Perrien coldly.
“I cannot speak for you, madame, though I would say that your dealings with the count have been unwise. Now, if you would excuse me, I must join my other guests.”
Sido watched her father turn his back on Madame Perrien to walk down the steps, where two footmen were waiting with umbrellas to escort him to the château.
“We made a pact with the devil,” she called after him, “and the devil is coming to get us!” The marquis did not turn around. Madame Perrien called louder this time, not caring who heard her. “Count Kalliovski has bought our souls!”
Sido stood frozen to the spot, not daring to move. She could see Madame Perrien holding on to the pillar with her white hand, watching as the marquis walked away. A low rumble of thunder seemed to shake the earth, followed by a flash of lightning that snapped a rope that was holding up one of the glass chandeliers. It crashed down onto the table below, knocking the ice sculpture into the lake. Unforgiving raindrops of glass showered onto the painted marble floor.
Oblivious to everything, Madame Perrien started to walk slowly down the steps, her Pierrot costume soaked through, her white makeup running, her skirt of watered silk trailing in the mud through the broken glass, the wasted food, the spilled wine.
Sido had heard every word Madame Perrien had said. She had sounded lifeless, stripped of all hope, as if she had seen into the eternity of darkness and knew it to be waiting for her.
She had said, “I am done for, I am dead.”
chapter eighteen
At the beginning of October the marquis received a letter from Madame Claumont, who wrote to inform him that after the dreadful business with poor Madame Perrien she had decided to cross the Channel and go to visit her friends in London. She advised the marquis to do the same.
What dreadful business? The marquis had no idea and immediately sent a servant to Paris to inquire after Madame Perrien’s health. The man returned with a letter from Monsieur Perrien. It made shocking reading. Madame Perrien had been murdered. It was, wrote her husband, unimaginable to think who could have done such a terrible deed. She had been found wearing a necklace of red garnets. Her maid said that she had never seen it before. The matter was now in the hands of the police, although, since the country was on the brink of ruin, he doubted that much would come of their inquiries.
The marquis was shaken to the very center of his being by this news. He remembered with terrifying clarity what she had said that day of the fête: “We have made a pact with the devil!” No, he wouldn’t think about it, he would put this unpleasant subject out of his mind. It had nothing to do with him. What could he possibly have done? He was in no way respo
nsible for her death.
Still, he felt ill, plagued by some malady that had upset his nerves, making him jump every time wheels were heard crunching on the gravel outside. He even started to see the ghost of his dead wife wandering silently around the house.
Finally, he took to his bed, complaining of a headache. A doctor was called for and he was bled. Despite all the treatments he was given, he still found little rest from the uncomfortable thoughts that kept tormenting him.
The marquis’s health recovered somewhat when he received an invitation to a banquet in the Opera House at the Palace of Versailles. The guest list included the officers of the Flanders Regiment, the Montmorency Dragoons, the Swiss Guards, and other officers and noblemen. It convinced the marquis that at last the counterrevolution had begun. He dressed in his finest suit, his tallest wig, and shoes with red heels and diamond buckles, and set off for Versailles in his gold-painted carriage. To Sido he looked like a canary in a gilded cage.
In the early hours of the next morning the marquis arrived home shouting “Vive le Roi!” at the top of his voice, waking up the whole household. Sido got sleepily out of bed to see what the commotion was about and looked over the banisters to see her father in the hall, swaying from side to side and bellowing.
“The counterrevolution has started! The monarchy is to be restored to its former glory!” He lurched toward Jacques, the butler. “Then you peasants will know your place once and for all.”
He stood in the hall, swaying like a full-rigged galleon on a sozzled sea of red wine.
“You should have heard how we drank to the king, and how we cried out with one voice, ‘Long may you reign! Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine!’ You should have seen the queen holding up the little Dauphin, a symbol of the continuation of kings, as the tears rolled down her cheeks! I tell you, we will deal with the rabble! We will bring down their Revolution! Vive le Roi! ”
He spat the words in Jacques’s face. “No one toasted the nation—the royal bodyguard would have none of it . . .” His voice was carried away in a wave of passion.
For a moment Sido thought the marquis was about to capsize. Two footmen rushed to steady him, and he pushed them aside angrily, holding on to the banister as he slowly righted himself, though his wig, like the rigging of a ship, was starboard bent.
Sido watched as Jacques and the footmen did their best to help her father up the stairs. As he passed Sido on the landing he stopped and said, “Who are you?”
Sido didn’t answer.
“As I thought,” said the marquis. “A ghost. Away with you.”
The news of what had happened that night at Versailles spread to Paris and beyond like a forest fire on a hot summer’s day, but it was not until three days later that the full impact of that disastrous banquet was felt.
It started in the afternoon when Michel Floret, one of the few gardeners who had not left the marquis’s employment, had come into the kitchen to take shelter from the rain. He was warming himself by the stove, for these days the kitchen had become a meeting place for all the remaining staff.
Bernard, the coachman, was sitting there too. “I’ve been thinking,” he said gloomily.
“Well, don’t,” said Jean Rollet, the chef, who with one look could reduce a cabbage to compost. “Thinking isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
“Go on, Bernard, take no notice,” said Michel. “You have the right to think. Cooks aren’t kings yet.”
“That’s it. That’s what I think. If the king had agreed to the declaration of human rights, we’d all love him, wouldn’t we?”
Jean sniffed. “You might. I have a more discerning palate myself. You can’t change an old cockerel into a spring chicken. Anyway, he doesn’t believe in human rights. He’s made that clear enough.”
“Shh,” said Agathe, the scullery maid, “not so loud. What if the marquis were to hear you?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Michel. “What did he call the footmen? Furniture? He thinks we don’t even exist when he’s not around, let alone have a thought in our heads.”
“I tell you, the king had better watch out,” said Jean, “otherwise he’ll find himself abolished.”
“And the marquis too,” added Bernard.
Just then the door to the kitchen opened and four of Count Kalliovski’s grooms came in, their coats trailing water on the floor. No one in the kitchen said anything, for the count’s men looked as mean and as brutal as their master. Jean snapped his fingers, and Agathe went to get wine, bread, and cheese for them.
“It took us an age to get here. The road to Versailles is blocked,” said one of the grooms.
“What do you mean, blocked?” asked Jean. “Blocked by what?”
“Women. Women, heaven help us! Maybe ten, twenty, thirty thousand of them.”
“Why? What are they doing?”
“Gone to get bread, and to kill the queen while they’re about it.”
Agathe was so startled by this that she dropped the lid of an iron pan on the flagstones with a deafening crash.
“Where do all these women come from?” asked Bernard.
“Women from the market in Paris started it, outside the Hôtel de Ville. Then other women joined them, thousands of them, all armed with pitchforks, swords, guns; they’re even dragging a cannon.”
Jean looked around at the kitchen staff. “We’d best be on the lookout. I’ve heard stories of lootings, burnings, and suchlike. We don’t want them taking a fancy to this château as they march past.”
Michel started to chuckle.
“What’s so funny about that?” asked Jean.
“Nothing,” said Michel. “It’s just that he went and made that there wall with too much sand, didn’t he?”
“What do you mean?” asked Agathe.
“I mean,” said Michel importantly, seeing that he had everyone’s attention, “that the thing will fall down when it’s pushed, like children’s building bricks, and serve him right.”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t tell the master,” said Jean.
One of the count’s men helped himself to another glass of wine and sat back in his chair. “Don’t worry. I overheard him say he didn’t think they’d bother with you today.”
“Is that a threat or a promise?” asked Jean.
Upstairs in the library, the marquis, like a startled stag caught in a forest of books, was taken completely off guard by Kalliovski’s unannounced arrival. It took him a moment or two to take in the count’s appearance. His hair, instead of being powdered white, was black: The marquis would never have supposed the man to have such dark hair, and so much of it. Instead of his usual finery he was wearing a plain black woolen jacket and woolen breeches with black riding boots that did not even have a red heel. As he placed his hat on a table the marquis saw that pinned to it was the revolutionary cockade. He stared at it in disbelief. Could all that he had heard about the count be true?
“What foolish things you all did at your party this week, citizen,” said the count, helping himself to a glass of cognac. “Drinking to the health of the royal family, in short forgetting your loyalties to the nation. Really, citizen, was this wise?”
“Citizen, citizen,” repeated the marquis. “What nonsense is this?”
Kalliovski clicked his heels. “I am Citizen Kalliovski, a friend of the Revolution, at your service.”
“Impossible!” said the marquis. Then he laughed out loud. “Very good! It is so long since I’ve seen you that I’d forgotten what a wit you are; you’ve come in disguise! Oh, very clever indeed.”
“I am in deadly earnest,” replied Citizen Kalliovski. “I am here on business. As soon as the papers are signed, I will be gone.”
“What papers?”
“Have you already forgotten my very generous offer to you?”
The marquis said nothing. He was still trying to take in Kalliovski’s new appearance.
Kalliovski rang a bell and a footman entered. “Fetch Mademoiselle Sido,” he order
ed. He turned his attention back to the marquis. “You have heard of the death of Madame Perrien, I imagine?”
The marquis had not encountered this bluntness in Kalliovski before, and it worried him.
“Why, yes. Dreadful.”
Kalliovski smiled.
“She asked you for your help, I believe.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the marquis hurriedly, his color changing. Even under the makeup his cheeks glowed red.
“Then let me enlighten you. Madame Perrien asked for your help with her gambling debt. The foolish woman asked the wrong person, of course, for you possess nothing but unpaid bills.” He smiled again, the corners of his lips curling mockingly. “There are angry craftsmen in Paris still waiting for their money for your ridiculous fête.”
“They will be paid in due course.”
“Not by me,” said Kalliovski, and he took from his pocket a necklace of red stones that he played with in his hand like a rosary.
The sight of it made beads of sweat appear on the marquis’s forehead.
“Madame Perrien paid the price for disloyalty,” said Kalliovski. “Madame Claumont believes that by emigrating she will escape me. If she thinks she can get rid of me that easily, she is very much mistaken.”
The marquis bit his lip. The full impact of what had happened to Madame Perrien hit him like a blow to the stomach. He put out a hand to steady himself. With as much dignity as he could muster, he sat down heavily on a chair.
“Do you remember what we agreed when you last borrowed from me?”
The marquis said nothing.
“Then let me remind you. You have a choice, albeit a limited one, but a choice nevertheless. I could let certain papers find their way into the right hands. I am sure there are people who would be most interested to know how your wife died.”
“No,” said the marquis. His lips were white. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“Without a moment’s regret,” said Kalliovski.