The Magician's Wife (10 page)

Emmeline shook her head and was about to speak when, with a blast of hunting horns, the hounds were released to devour their reward. Emmeline, staring ahead, saw the hounds tear apart the sack of skin, heard yelps and growls and the horrid noise of crunching bones as the pack fought over the bloody entrails. Unable to watch she turned to her companions, seeing the ladies’ faces, masked in tight smiles, the gentlemen openly laughing. The Emperor’s hand no longer caressed her. Instead, he stepped forward magisterially to the railing of the balcony and raised his arms in a gesture of triumph. The hunting horns sounded in a new and deafening fanfare, the whips cracked, the hounds, having devoured all but the head and antlers, were quickly brought to heel and leashed. The Emperor turned to her, smiling. ‘We can go in now,’ he said. ‘I hope you did not catch cold?’

She shook her head. Her trembling had nothing to do with the cold. At any moment she felt she would vomit. She tried to smile, for at that moment the Empress came up and nodded to her, whereupon the Emperor gallantly claimed his wife’s arm.

‘At least it was short,’ he said to Emmeline. ‘Would that
our
banquets took so little time.’

Next morning in the shuttered darkness of their bedroom, she woke to a sound of knocking. She heard her husband get up from his couch in the living room and go to answer. It was not as she expected the valet with their coffee, but Françoise, her maid, coming into the bedroom, drawing the shutters and laying a black lace veil on her bed.

‘I am sorry to disturb you, Madame, but Madame must wear this to Mass this morning. It is
de rigueur
. Ladies must wear mantillas in the Spanish style as Her Majesty is Spanish and prefers it this way. And if Madame will permit me, I must begin to pack Madame’s toilette.’

And so, that last Sunday morning began with Emmeline wearing a black veil as if in mourning and Lambert sending Jules to borrow missals for they had forgotten to include prayer books in their luggage. Then, after their morning coffee, they followed a lackey through endless corridors to arrive at the château’s private chapel where Mass was to be said. There, as Emmeline’s maid had predicted, the ladies attending the
série
appeared in headdresses of black lace, draped in the Spanish fashion. The Empress, who wore her mantilla with the ease of long custom, entered and knelt alone above the other worshippers in a private alcove overlooking the altar. The Emperor was not present. As soon as the Empress entered the alcove a priest and two acolytes appeared on the altar. The Mass began.

Emmeline knelt at her pew and put her head down as if in prayer. But she did not pray. After a few moments she looked at the congregation and saw that, as so often at Mass, she was not alone in this absence of prayer. The ladies in their lace veils were covertly studying their neighbours. The gentlemen perused their missals like inattentive students and everyone from time to time looked up at the alcove where the Empress knelt, her hands entwined in a rosary, her eyes fixed on the altar. Emmeline glanced sideways at her husband and saw that, as always in church, he read his missal carefully, from time to time studying the movements of the priest on the altar as though by paying close attention he might one day solve the mystery of changing bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. What
did
he think of miracles; did he, who had said that all such things were illusions, include in his condemnation the mystery and miracle of the Mass? She had never thought to ask him but this morning, her mind filled with the brutal tableaux of last night’s
curée
and her memory of the Emperor’s hand on her thigh, she felt herself now, more than ever, her father’s daughter for it was often rumoured that Dr  Mercier was a freemason. Of course no one knew if this was true, for it was certain that if he proclaimed these beliefs his medical practice would suffer. Freemasons, like Jews, were frequently cited as the enemies of religion and although Napoleon III was known to be more liberal than his predecessors the Church had lost none of its power to punish transgressors.

And yet in her early years Emmeline had emulated her mother’s piety. She was a child who did not fidget at Mass but often lost herself in a dream of one day becoming a nun, young and pure in a white veil, kneeling before an altar filled with candles, flowers and incense, a nun who tended to the sick, following in her doctor father’s footsteps, but, unlike him, toiling only for the greater glory of God, a nun who might one day be beatified like the nun-martyr-saints the Sisters spoke of at school, a nun who, when she died, would go straight to heaven to sit at the side of God the Father, no longer Emmeline Mercier, but Blessed Sister Anne Marie, of the Order of the Sacred Heart.

All of that was long ago. In her last year at school she had begun to see nuns as jailers, reproving distant figures, not women as her mother and aunts were women, but childless, shut away from life, obedient handmaidens in a male church. One could heal the sick as a nurse, or teach poor children how to read and write without submitting to the harsh rule of a religious order. And, of course, one could marry.

‘What
do
you want to do?’ her father had asked. ‘You said once that you would like to work in my clinic. Do you still want to do that?’

This made her mother angry. ‘Working in a clinic will not prepare her to be a wife. There are certain things a young lady must learn. She should stay with the nuns for a year or two more. By then, she will be of an age to decide what course her life might take.’

In the end, Emmeline defied her mother. For two years before her marriage she had worked three mornings a week as a nurse in Dr  Mercier’s clinic. And in that time her father’s view prevailed. She was Catholic but no longer devout. She no longer said her nightly prayers, she attended Mass and took communion regularly but without thought: she rarely remembered her old dream of sainthood or her adolescent fears of damnation. Religious observance became an obligation, not an act of worship. In large measure, she had lost her faith.

This morning the Mass was not, as might have been expected in these surroundings, a High Mass, sung, with a choir. Instead it was a Low Mass as it might be celebrated in any provincial chapel, the priest seeming to hurry through it, as though, as with most events in the
série
, Their Majesties would permit no dawdling. And so, within fifteen minutes, the moment came for the elevation of the Host. The little Sanctus bell tinkled in the silence, warning the congregation to look up in devotion as the priest raised aloft the wafer of unleavened bread and the chalice of wine transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. But in that moment, Emmeline, raising her head as she had been taught to do since childhood, saw the chalice and thought, not of the blood of Christ, but of the bloody spectacle of last night, the red, tarry torches flaming in the darkness, the growling hounds, their jaws flecked with blood, the crunch of bones. Above her, the Empress knelt in a tableau of devotion, hands joined in prayer, her eyes on the upraised chalice, the same Empress who last night had smiled in pleasure as she presided over the satanic celebration of the kill. The Sanctus bell rang again, signalling the end of the elevation. The congregation shuffled and coughed, relaxing as the Mass moved towards its end. Soon they would all file out of the chapel, this ceremony completed, a ceremony which, to Emmeline this morning, seemed only that: a ritual of society, a service which, in the court of Napoleon III, had no more meaning than a military parade.

When she and Henri handed their prayer books to a valet at the chapel’s exit and moved into the salon where the guests were assembling for a final procession down the great corridor past the statue-like rows of
cent gardes
to attend the last luncheon of the
série
, she saw the Emperor in the centre of the room, acknowledging the bows and greetings of guests who clustered around him. As she stood watching this scene, the Emperor turned towards her, came over, took her hand and kissed it, smiling his sleepy smile.

‘This is always a sad time, is it not, my dear? Parting. Yes, I find that on these occasions, when I make some charming new acquaintance like yourself – and your husband – then, almost before we have time to get to know each other, the train leaves for Paris and we must part.’

What should she say? When she hesitated, her husband rushed in. ‘It has been a pleasure and a great honour for both of us, your Majesty. I’m sure we’ll never forget your hospitality and kindness to us in this past week.’

But the Emperor did not even look at Lambert. Reluctantly, he released Emmeline’s hand, saying. ‘However, when you come back from Africa, I shall invite you to Fontainebleau. Fontainebleau, dear Madame, has some pretty sights which I would take pleasure in showing you. We have canoes, punts, all sorts of boats which we float on a very pretty lake. We have even a Venetian gondola. I can see you in a gondola, my dear. Well, perhaps I
will
see you in a gondola. I hope so.’

When the Emperor said this he bowed to her and signalled to the Grand Chamberlain who hovered in the background. ‘Now, we must go into luncheon.
À bientôt
, dear Madame.’

À bientôt?
But, at the final luncheon, and afterwards, on the drive to the Compiègne station and during the train journey to Paris, they had no further chance to speak to Their Majesties, who, surrounded by sycophantic guests, seemed hurried and distraught as though, the
série
ended, they must rush on to yet another engagement. And so it was that at five o’clock that same afternoon on their arrival at the Gare du Nord they watched Colonel Deniau, his luggage carried by two soldiers, striding down the platform as though he also was in a hurry. He saw them and came over, saying to Lambert, ‘We shall be in touch next week. I’ll make all the necessary arrangements. And thank you again, my dear fellow.’ Then, turning to Emmeline, he kissed her hand and oddly enough, said goodbye with the same phrase as the Emperor. ‘
À bientôt
, dear Madame.’

Amid the bustle of guests, the swarm of porters, the piles of luggage, his military figure was quickly lost to her view. A sadness came upon her. She turned to Lambert.

‘Will we see him again before we go?’

‘Possibly not. He is leaving for Algiers next week.’

And then it was time for Lambert to pay off Françoise, the old lady’s maid, who, when she had received her money, curtsied perfunctorily to Emmeline and set off down the platform, dragging her little trunk behind her. Lambert sent Jules to hire two fiacres to bring them with their luggage to the Hôtel Montrose where they would spend the night before returning, next morning, to Tours.

It was raining. The street lamps burned bright in the symmetrical boulevards of this new Paris, created for the Emperor by Baron Haussmann, a city of thoroughfares fifty metres wide, of great squares, of green parks, of huge monuments, many moved brick by brick from their old sites to fit the dreams of the man who, that very morning, had kissed Emmeline’s hand.

But soon her fiacre turned off the broad, brightlit boulevards into the crumbling ruins behind these grand façades, back into the city she had known all her life, that Paris of ill-lit alleys, of narrow pavements, loud with the noise of pedlars, jugglers, plumbers, knife grinders and other relics of the old medieval city which had grown like a carapace, over the centuries, that Paris of
quartiers
where provincials clustered close to provincials from their own region, that warm, dark, dirty world which the Emperor’s grand plans would now destroy.

Lambert, as was his habit, retired early. In their bedroom at the Hôtel Montrose he lay, his face to the wall, asleep or feigning sleep. She walked towards the mirror in the small entrance hall, her mind filled with thoughts and memories of the week just past. On the dressing table was her jewellery box. She opened it and fingered the bracelets, the necklaces, the earrings, the brooches which she must return tomorrow before leaving Paris. And then at the bottom of the box she saw a small velvet sack and drew it out. From it she took the ring her husband had given her when their engagement was announced, a blue sapphire, set in tiny pearls. She remembered that when he gave it to her he pretended to take the little sack from between her breasts. For a moment she had wondered whether the ring was false and this was some trick. But when she took it to Froment-Meurice on the Rue Saint Honoré to have it fitted, the jeweller said, ‘Mademoiselle, this is an exceptional stone in a beautiful setting.’

Now, she put the sapphire on her finger and raised her hand, looking into the mirror, staring uncertainly at the Emmeline who stared back at her, remembering the time five years ago when Lambert had wooed her with this ring. The other day in Pierrefonds I made a joke when Deniau asked how I came to be Henri Lambert’s wife. I said he had called me up on stage. We laughed and Deniau asked if Henri had cast a spell on me. I made a joke of it, but was it a joke? Is everything in my life an accident, a coincidence, or was it fate that sent me to the theatre that evening to see a performance I’d never have seen if one of Papa’s patients hadn’t given him two tickets for a special engagement by the world-famous Henri Lambert who would be in Rouen for three nights only. And if my cousin hadn’t wanted to go with me, I’d never have gone alone. And if Henri had looked like a magician in some theatrical costume, I wouldn’t be in this room with him tonight. But, no, he looked like a gentleman and when he came down to the footlights early in the performance and pointed to me, asking if I had a scarf he could borrow, I remember I took my silk scarf from my neck as if I
were
under his spell and went up on stage, half blinded by the flickering footlights, to stand by his side, looking out into the darkness. And this strange man, the magician, took my scarf, pressed it into a ball, let it shake out, turned it in every direction to show there was nothing concealed in it, then, holding it at its apex, shook it out again and to everyone’s astonishment a long feather plume fell on to the floor. He turned the scarf around to show its other side and at once a second plume fell out, then a third and a fourth and suddenly at a drum roll from the orchestra pit a rain of plumes fell from it, covering the stage at my feet. I remember that he turned away from me and went downstage, showing my scarf from every side to prove it concealed nothing. Then he tied a knot at each of its four corners and suddenly, waving his hand over the knotted scarf, shook it out, the knots untying to reveal a bouquet of real flowers which he presented to me amid the sound of applause. And then the moment I will not forget. As he handed me down from the stage he leaned towards me and said in a quiet voice, ‘Mademoiselle, something special has happened to me tonight. I must see you again.’ And as if by magic a notepad and pencil appeared in his hands. ‘Do me the honour of writing down your address. I will send a messenger tomorrow. This is important for both of us.’