The following evening was my last in Paris. George Sand had invited me to supper at her wonderful apartment in the Square d’Orléans, promising that it would be a very quiet event. When I arrived, the only other guest apart from George’s family was Alexandre Dumas.
During the meal, animated conversation ensued. Solange, now a headstrong and sulky almost-eighteen, was still making Chopin’s life a misery with her flirtatious nature. Now she included wild talk of marrying someone—anyone! as soon as possible!—into her repertoire, and the agony this caused in the heart of Le Chopinet was painfully obvious.
Afterwards, Solange coaxed Chopin and Maurice off to the billiard room, where their game could be heard from afar: cries of delight and moans of despair.
George swirled cognac in her glass, gazing thoughtfully into the fire. Dumas stretched his legs, resting a bowl of nuts upon his waistcoated belly. He was reflecting upon his unenthusiastic reception by the people of Rouen.
“I cannot say that I am surprised,” he mused. “They burnt Joan of Arc there, didn’t they? No sense of humour, obviously. Not a grunt or a giggle. They thought I was a buffoon, I think!”
George laughed quietly at her friend. “Never mind, Alex. We all love you, and that’s what counts.”
He looked over at me, his large face troubled. “I have a story for you, mademoiselle… Mademoiselle Lola. It is a strange one. But, I think, important.”
“What is it?” I asked, with caution. What now, from this man?
“Henri’s mother, Madame Dujarier, kept this information back. Until after the trial. Why, I couldn’t tell you for certain. She came to me this morning, showed me a note. Henri had attached it to his will—the one he’d written the night before the duel.”
“My God.” George and I exchanged glances. “What did it say?”
“The words were this: ‘My love, my Lola: B has convinced me to go to the field. There, I will also meet this man with one leg. I would do anything to protect you, darling. B claims that one meeting will satisfy the man, and that he will then leave France at once. Pray God that is so. I love you forever.’”
We sat in silence for a moment; my mind raced, trying to work out what this meant. What had Henri hoped he could do? The black cabriolet barrelling out of le chemin de la Favourite, hot on the heels of Beauvallon and d’Ecqueville, carrying the phantom second… And Koreff, the attending physician, as planned in advance: he was their henchman, their poisoner. Pretending to be there for Henri.
“Madame Dujarier nearly destroyed it,” Dumas continued softly, “because of its loving tones to you… But she did not. And it troubled her, finally. And now, it troubles me.”
I took a deep breath. “The man with one leg is a Jesuit priest, a Spaniard,” I said, “and an evil madman. All of you were right to be afraid of the influence he’s been spreading. He’ll stop at nothing. Henri was afraid for your son; I think he did everything he could to save Alex, and all of us.”
Dumas sat up, put his hand on his heart. “I was wrong. I believed Beauvallon would act like a gentleman when I urged Henri to fight. I regret it utterly. Please believe me that this is so. My dear, best friend…”
Silence again, as we mourned Henri’s good heart, his reckless courage.
“I have something I wish to give you,” Dumas said suddenly, looking at me with sad eyes. “Can you guess what it is?”
This enormous man who had insulted me so many times… What on earth could he want to give me? I decided to play the high card first—it was something I’d been thinking about for months, since I’d finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I’d say it, and then maybe he’d think better of chucking any insults my way—intended, or accidental.
“First, Monsieur Dumas, I’d like to tell you something,” I said. “Last year I had an idea—and I tried so very hard, for many days—months, even—to do it. I meant to write, to write a novel, using a nom de plume. I had it, too: the story was to be penned by the dashing, mysterious Lorenzo Milagros, young Spanish nobleman in exile. My other self, you understand. I was enthralled with the thought of it.”
George was looking amused, the glow from the fire warming her face.
Before I regretted revealing so much, I went on. “But I found it too difficult. The writing part—the sitting still—but also, the ideas. The thrill, the adventure, the largeness of life that a story must portray, both bright and dark. How to get it down on paper. It looks so easy, but I know now that it is anything but.”
Saying this, the realization came over me: this giant man was so attuned to everything going on in the world, every twitch, every new interest or idea or craze, that he simply had to record these impressions, work them into his books. A noisy, gregarious magpie, building his nest. This was his immense talent and his joy.
“And I’d like to tell you,” I went on, “Well… that I am in awe of your work. That I love it. And I’d like to thank you.”
Dumas looked dumbfounded. Then, astonishingly, his eyes filled with tears.
“Oh Alex,” chided George, “don’t blubber.” She patted his arm. “He’s a huge blubberer, you know. Absolutely foolish about it.”
The writer wiped his cheeks. “Don’t fuss, George. I just… I’m thinking also of Henri—notre cher ami, Henri. And this love of his…” He put out his hand again. I took it cautiously, then felt my small one squeezed in his large one. “I am sorry for what I said—the pronouncement. About destiny. I was a jealous friend and a stupid man. I can be, sometimes.”
I saw George wink at me.
“And what I wish to give you—is Henri’s, and should be yours. The horses—Magnifique, Enchanté. Please, have them, take them with you wherever you are going.”
Well, we all began to blubber at that. But with time and another cognac, we sorted out a happy solution. I asked George to please take Enchanté, for Nohant and the Forest of Fontainbleau; a fast, steady riding mare to perhaps replace her girlhood joy, Colette, so long gone. I accepted the gift of Magnifique with warm delight. My own horse, a beautiful creature to love and to care for, a living connection with Henri and symbol of what we’d had together.
“And where are you going to go, Lola, with Magnifique?” Dumas asked.
I was vague because I didn’t know. Now, with a horse of my own, my travel plans would have to adapt—not a hardship, but a new development.
“Will you dance again?”
I told them I thought I probably would.
Just before we parted, George took me aside. “I think you’re right about the nom de plume—to abandon it, I mean.”
“For now,” I said.
“Not sure you’re a writer. But you are an original.”
Our hug was tight.
“Parbleu! Live large, why not?” Dumas proclaimed.
He saw me back to my apartment, and we arranged for me to be able to go to the stables for Magnifique early in the morning. The grooms would be made aware of the change of ownership; the horse would be ready.
“Be safe; stay well,” he said, then thumped the roof of the cab he’d hired, and the vehicle moved off, taking him back to the arms of whichever mistress he was currently bedding when staying in the city overnight.
*
I was up very early again, relieved and excited to be on my way. Lying in bed in the dark, I’d decided to head east, maybe to the Black Forest. A way to expiate my guilt over the death of the gentle doctor, perhaps? I didn’t know. Not Spain, certainly not, and not England, land of a million cups of tea—so why not a place I’d never yet been? It was reputed to be quiet; I could disappear there for a time.
Magnifique seemed as excited as I to leave his stable and pursue his fortunes along with me. Giddy with romantic notions such as this, I realized I was eager to see things in the new light of a new day. Henri—my Bon-bon—was so wellborn and so wise. He’d loved me just the way I am, but he’d also given me his best advice: he’d told me not to let anger or envy—or even sorrow—warp me out of all alignment. Enjoy what others have to offer, and tell them that you do. I was glad I’d done so the previous night; I’d expiated a black ball that had sat there, inside my gut. Enjoy life, Bon-bon had said—my darling. Live large, why not?
I made one quick stop, then cantered to Montmartre Cemetery. It was a strange location for a cemetery, nestled as it is in the crater of an old quarry, and therefore slightly below the roads around it. The place often contained early morning fog, like milk in the bottom of a bowl. It did, on this day.
I had to search around for the first one. It was such an extensive place with tombs and crypts stretching off into the unseen distance, as well as row upon row of headstones. I rode up and down the cobblestone paths through curling mist, lost as usual, but finally found what I was looking for. An elaborate gravestone and ironwork fence had been erected around it. Fenced even now, I thought to myself. Dismounting, I placed a camellia on Merci’s new grave. Camellias had always been her favourite flowers because they had no scent; she’d surrounded herself with them wherever she was. Rest, sweet one.
I knew the way to my final stop because I’d been there once before on my own, long after the funeral. Henri’s grave. A clean, spare headstone; he’d been buried to the left of his father’s. It was hard to believe that he was here, that all that was left of him lay under this ground, and would turn back into earth—slowly, too slowly. Burial is an odd, a disquieting ritual, I think. I’d rather be burned, I told myself as I gazed upon the site. The way it’s done in India: a sharp, hot fire, smoke rising into the atmosphere, bones cleaned by heat. The heart burns last because it’s so dense, because it still has so much it wishes to feel and do. Fanciful thought, perhaps. But yes, I’d rather burn.
I dismounted again, dropping one rein so that Magnifique would know to stand, and approached slowly. A tall, white stone, about as tall as a man. His name engraved upon it, the name I never wished to leave my lips: Henri Dujarier. I remembered the day at Olympe’s salon, when I first realized that he was the one. He’d retrieved the champagne and flowers he’d given to the maid, then turned to face me across the room, in the full flush of young male beauty, and my heart had known. Henri Dujarier. I will never say that name often enough… its heartbreaking moan… Henri Dujarier. I adore you, I will never forget you. I bent and put my lips to the carved letters, but the stone was cold. Blinking back tears, I looked about at this final location. Not the ocean, no sand beach. No salt to curl our hair or sun to brown our skins… But it was a peaceful place, on a balmy spring morning. I’d brought one of his favourite flowers, a variety that has a gorgeous scent, a vase of which had perfumed our bedroom every day in season. Would he know? Was there anything of my Bon-bon here? I bent and gently placed the perfect white rose upon the earth.
Suddenly, I was shoved from behind with a hard, painful object and thrown to the ground, barely missing cracking my head against the stone. I twisted around, and—oh my God, how my heart flails about with fear—it was Father Miguel de la Vega, bald and quite insane, on his one leg, with two half crutches that he leaned upon like a three-legged spider. He advanced upon me in a trice. With one of the crutches hard against my bodice, he pinned me to the stone.
“At last,” he said, “at last it comes. I’ve waited far too long for this… expiation.”
I hardened the muscles beneath my rib cage, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t push any more fiercely or I might faint—a terrible beginning to what I knew would be a terrible end. If I fainted there would be no hope for me—so breathe!
Should I try to get him talking, distract him? Just looking again at the fearsome devil was making me dizzy—as tall as ever but even thinner, if that was possible. He was wearing a regular coat rather than his priestly robes, but was garbed all in black nonetheless. His concave cheeks were grizzled with a short, greying beard; he’d lost all the hair on his head, which glistened like a slug in the early morning light. How had he grown even paler than before? Dark black eyes glittering in that hateful head, teeth small and sharp in his vile mouth, with its lips like a tiny letterbox into which nothing hopeful would ever be dropped. His white hands with their long, ganga-smelling fingers were curled around his two crutches, one of them poking at me in short, sharp jabs. Thank God the ends of the crutches were finished in knobs, for walking, and not in something pointed. The one leg he stood upon made him look even more like a snake—all one sinuously deadly line of active muscle and venom.
“Whore!” This was, of course, his leitmotif. As far as I had been able to understand it, the Society of the Exterminating Angel—the cult at which he worshipped—was deeply moved to exterminate all those who stood in the way of conservative, monarch- and church-centred societies. Their particular hatred was for freedom of expression, free styles of living—in which case, Paris and its demi-monde of artists was a natural, a prime feeding ground.
“Succubus and spawn of Satan!” Its other obsession, as I knew, was the termination of wild women—or any woman, perhaps, who knows? And of course, for de la Vega, the battle against me was an even more prejudiced one.
Jesús, how could I have let down my guard? How could I have relied for even a moment on the system of justice and its prisons, with all the loop-holes that a smart villain can utilize? Justice—where murderers go free. My trusting, my deadened instincts had tried to warn me… Oh fool, idiot—almost certainly dead fool… My reticule, with Maurice’s pistol, was tucked behind Magnifique’s saddle; the rapier, too. The gelding was standing ten paces away, cropping grass. Occasionally he raised his head to regard us thoughtfully, jaws munching and crunching away, ears swivelling in the skirling mist, as the sun warmed and tried to burn its way through.
This wouldn’t last long, I thought, this calm before the carnage. Do something, Lola, something smart!
My hand lashed out and shoved the crutch sideways, away from me. I rolled immediately, as de la Vega staggered, off balance. I kicked at his one leg and—mercies and hallelujah!—it went out from under him, and he fell hard to his knee. Leaping up, I was racing for Magnifique when, from the corner of my eye, I saw the priest pulling at the end of the crutch, and a gleam of metal flashed. Flinging his arm back, he made ready to throw it. “Magnifique!” I yelled. The horse jerked up his head, snorted and cantered off—just as one of the crutches, now revealed as a swordstick, whizzed through the air directly to where the horse’s chest had been but a second before. It thudded into the earth, then swayed on its tip, appearing and disappearing in mist as it rocked.
The demon was up on his leg in an instant, leaping after me on his one crutch. I was trying to snatch the sword out of the ground, but he was coming too fast, so I decided to run instead—believing that I would be faster than him, that I could catch up with and mount Magnifique before he got near us.
But I was wrong—Jesus, how that reptile could travel! He hitched and leapt—yanking the sword free from the ground as he came—now on one leg and one crutch, and waving the bared weapon with uncanny ferocity. Perhaps startled by the unorthodox human’s modus operandi, Magnifique galloped off, this time much further away along the cobbled path through the sepulchres. His ears and wide eyes showed that he was deeply uneasy, and an uneasy horse is a horse that can vanish at a moment’s notice.
Shit on a stick, help! There were a series of tall, and some wide, headstones and vaults in my path—so I ducked and wove among them, hoping to slow the Jesuit down, or perhaps cause him to trip—some tree root? Some heavenly bucket with dead flowers, strategically placed? Why was there nobody else in sight on this fine April morning? Jesus, where were the mourners, was there no new funeral cortège with its priests and its carriages that could come to my rescue? No! There was nothing and nobody. We were all alone in a sunken graveyard, the priest and me, tendrils of fog expanding and separating between our hurtling bodies—with one of us to die and my soul overpowered with dread to think which one it would be.
With a medium-sized headstone between us, I summoned my courage. “Leave me alone! You’ll never get away with it; just leave me be and I will leave you!” Frail, foolish words when hurled at a madman. But he bared his evil teeth and lashed out with the blade, slashing across the top of the stone. I ducked sideways, ran forwards and yanked at the crutch in his other hand, then ducked away quickly again. Yes, he fell, unbalanced as he was, from the mighty exertion to get at me. And no, he hadn’t slashed me—yet. My yank at the other crutch, though, had revealed that it too was a swordstick. Now he unsheathed and bared it fully.
The only advantage to this hideous truth was that suddenly he had no crutch—just two razor-sharp swords. Jesus, fuck! I took to my heels. Behind me, a grunt as he flung one of them—destined to land between my shoulder blades, his specialty, the hair on the back of my neck told me so—but I swiftly threw myself sideways onto the ground. The sword hissed past, burying itself into the earth ten feet beyond.
I skittered across the grass and grabbed it by the knobbed hilt, then jumped to my feet and turned to face the snake—already hopping and leaping on its one leg, swinging the other sword from side to side as it came. This was no human, this was—abominable! Like a tornado, it was upon me and battering me with thrust after thrust, as I parried and gave ground, both of us panting and hissing and grunting; the fury of the insane against the strength of the completely cornered who must—somehow, in some way—defend its small life.
I darted around a family vault, craving its bulk to hide behind, and then realized that it was so big that I wouldn’t know from which direction de la Vega would come: would he follow after me the same way, or stop and creep round to the other side, to ambush me from there? Damn, oh damnation! I couldn’t hear anything, had no idea where he was. I was so terrified. So I faced away from the vault and raced as fast as my legs would run in a direct line away from the whole thing, shoulder blades clenched with the fear of the sword impaling me between them.
Instead, I was still running. Then I heard something strange, a whistling kind of sound, a ‘whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo’ coming through the air, but before I could register any more than that, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something black at either side of my fleeing legs, with what looked like a stone at each end. Then sharp pain! A final ‘whoo-whoop’, as something else wrapped itself tightly around my legs at the calves. I fell with a horrible crash, knocked off my feet, my legs and skirt bound securely with what I could now see to be leather cords.
Winded, I lay where I was, desperately trying to breathe and think. A crackly, horrible sound from behind, approaching. It was the priest, laughing.
“Wonderful invention, aren’t they?” he said, looming over me. “Very helpful to someone in my condition. They use them in the New World, call them ‘bolas’—for rounding up cattle. Cows. Perfect for what I had in mind.” He’d hopped onto the swordstick I’d dropped in the fall, so I couldn’t snatch it up, then jabbed at my skirt with the other sharp blade. “Move away from it. Now.”
I rolled, then tried to sit.
“Stand up.”
I used my arms to help me into a standing position. Then we stood there, facing each other.
“Very amusing, isn’t it?” he said, picking up the second swordstick while guarding my movements with the other. “Can you see yourself? You look like me. See how easy it is to function on one leg?” Then, exploding with rage, face twisted in a kind of rictus: “You bitch! You succubus! Get over there! There!” And he pointed to another tall headstone.
I had to hop. It was immediately exhausting and unbalancing, made me feel so vulnerable, and the impossibility of escape had never loomed larger. What a sight we must have been, had anyone been there to see it—but at that moment, Montmartre Cemetery held only the dead, and the two of us, hopping.
When I was beside the headstone, he barked, “Stand against it.” My heart was hammering as if it was about to burst, but I did so. I couldn’t think what else to do; I was trussed, couldn’t run. Was this the end? Oh Dios mío, what kind of end?
He yanked a cord from a pocket and tied me at the waist with one loop of the rope around the stone, jerking it tight. The rope also encompassed my arms, binding them at the elbow. I wished then that I could will myself to die, and if I could have, I would have done so. It was all over for me.
But not for him. One thing about Father Miguel de la Vega which I’d learned two years before is that he cannot simply kill: first, he has to tell his victim all about it. All about why, and then—if his hatred is particularly roused—about how.
And so he began.
“They wanted you to die quickly, as soon as I’d made my way to Paris,” he hissed. “But I promised the society I would find a method of punishing you more than you could bear. To kill you through the heart first, before killing you through the body. In that way I could also punish you for the agony you have inflicted upon me. The bullet wound in the thigh—I’m sure you recall the circumstances? It didn’t heal. When I was captured and taken to prison… it festered. Gangrene set in. The prison surgeons didn’t like me, didn’t care that I knew it. Finally, the leg was sawed off. Not even a stump remains, for they dislocated the femur from the hip joint, like cracking open a chicken. Sawed everything away. No pain killer of any description, fully awake and aware for the entire ordeal.”
I shuddered at the terrible images he’d painted.
“So you see, I vowed to myself that I would have the pleasure of killing you twice. That’s why Koreff’s experiment caught my attention and why I agreed. I could do it then, while you were in the same state that I’d been, when they sawed off my leg: awake, but unable to stop what was happening, what I was going to do. But he’d used a drug, too, and because of that, I didn’t think you would have suffered enough. His simple brethren, as well, were getting in the way. Too sentimental, all of them. Useless to us.”
He was making small hops, like a crow. It looked painful as well as tiring. But the mad light was in his eyes, and I guessed what was coming. He reached into a pocket again and drew forth his vice: a little cigarette, tightly rolled, containing his drug of choice—ganga. His yellowed fingers reeked of it; his teeth were stained with it. His own, particular painkiller. He sparked a match upon the headstone and sucked the smoke deeply into his lungs.
“You got away, in Bonn… Somehow you did, yet again. So I told myself, maybe even… Three times,” he said, eyes slitted, the ganga getting into its stride. “Killing you thrice… You deserve it.” He smiled. “Let me tell you how.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“¡Cállate!” he screeched, and slapped me hard across the face. “You are going to know, because that is part of the reparation!”
My head rang from the blow. I closed my eyes; if I kept looking at him, I wouldn’t survive. Well, I wouldn’t survive anyway—but I couldn’t bear to witness his triumph. At first, this seemed to suit him fine.
“The first way that I killed you? Let me explain. Cassagnac was deeply in debt; he was easy to convince. He joined because I promised to help him absolve himself from his obligation; the hot-headed brother-in-law was also game. Beauvallon set up the fraudulent motivation for the duel, and Dujarier was gullible enough—honourable enough?—to take the bait. He’d gotten it into his romantic mind that the avenging angel—the note he’d found on the whore—had something to do with first-born sons like Dumas fils, and so he’d been determined to guard that supercilious young man from being struck down.” I could hear de la Vega’s tongue rasp across his dry lips, perhaps aiding a smirk, before the high-pitched recitation began again. “Dujarier knew his Exodus 12, but he didn’t know enough, or else he forgot: that he was a first-born son, too. The avenging wing travelling over the land—yes, it had come for them. But him first. With Dujarier dead, Cassagnac’s debt… disappeared. It was a very satisfying first death—for you.” He came closer, I sensed it, and his voice dropped into a deep whisper. “Did you suffer? I know you did. You who are first-born, too.”
I could feel the vile heat of him, as well as smell his smoke-filled, cadaverous breath. He was so close. Only inches away.
“Those who are privileged, those who inherit the old world order, must be struck down. The society may be breaking apart, but I never will. I will be the old warrior, a Father Merino—faithful to the death, the last Exterminating Angel…”
I was swallowing salty tears. Tears couldn’t help Henri. Nor could they help me.
His mind had travelled far away. “With Beauvallon’s acquittal, the two of them may flee the country, back to Guadeloupe, perhaps. But I’ll find them. I always do. They have a new debt, and they will pay.”
His grin was stretching his lips into an even thinner line, I could hear them elongating. “Your second death—now listen how it comes…”
I opened my eyes and looked straight into his. Black, nothing in them that I could recognize as earthborn. He had one arm out now, touching the stone for balance. His thin chest heaved with barely repressed ferocity.
“I asked myself, as I stalked you this morning—perhaps there’s a third, is there a third? Of course there is. My signature, a happy little finale… Usually they’re dead first—but not this time. Not for you, jezebel. For you, something unique. Uniquely brutal. As a way to thank you for my one leg. The whole time they were sawing, I was thinking of you. My dreams of retribution, all those months in prison—oh, they’ve kept me going.”
I blinked. I couldn’t take a breath, hadn’t breathed forever.
He dropped one of the swordsticks and raised the other, its sharp point nearing my bodice, then resting upon the material, about to cut the laces that bound me in.
“Have you guessed?” he whispered. “Have you guessed the second death, before the ultimate third?”
I had to make him say it. “No. I haven’t, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Despite my best intentions, my voice quavered: I did know, I had understood—it was to be like the young dancer that Henri had found on our doorstep. Pray God she’d been dead first—but I’ll be alive…
“You’ll be begging to die, believe me, puta. You’ll beg for it.” He took a drag of his little cigarette, then threw it down. “Do you want to know?”
I nodded, staring into that alien face.
“I will cut it off.” He leaned in, close to my ear, and said deliberately, “The one that sits over your heart. Your useless, worthless heart.”
As he said this, my right hand was slowly approaching my waistband. I was tied so tightly, just under my rib cage, to the stone! The priest’s mad eyes were fastened upon my breasts, the tops of which were evident in my tight bodice, and which were—no doubt—revealing the thundering heartbeat that was now suffusing me with lightheadedness. With all of my fiercest concentration, and with my eyes locked upon his thin, slavering lips—showing nothing whatsoever in my face—I felt for the flick knife, easing it free, touching the handle. His vile head swooped towards my breasts, jaws open!—as I pulled, flicked it—shhhtttt!—and with utmost speed, stabbed straight up and into the demon’s jugular, shoving the four-inch blade as hard as I could up through the artery to the knife’s very hilt. At almost the same time, with a swift jerk, I jack-knifed my legs and kicked him away from me with every atom of strength fueled by terror, still gripping the handle.
The Jesuit reeled on his one foot before falling backwards like an enormous tree crashing off its hewn trunk, the swordstick clattering after him. With the fall, as my knife pulled free of the artery, blood began to cascade out of his neck—fountains of it, spurting into the air. On his back, his arms started scrabbling around, bubbling noises began coming from his throat. Then one hand went flailing to his neck, attempting to staunch the blood, but it was hopeless. It was everywhere, gallons of it, coursing out of him at unbelievable speed. Before I could fully believe that I’d actually done it, his body jerked with a dreadful conclusiveness, and then was still.
I sagged against the rope at my waist, trembling all over. Then, fingers shaking, I used the slippery knife to saw at the cord binding me to the headstone. When it finally cut through, I simply tumbled onto the ground in shock. I suppose it was no more than a few minutes later, though I genuinely don’t know—at any rate, after some time I was able to concentrate on cutting the leather cords of the bolas, to release my bound legs.
There he lay, my mortal enemy and the most dreadful fiend ever imaginable. Flat on his back, lips curled in a snarl. Upper and lower row of savage teeth revealed, like those of a lamprey eel. But everything coated in thick scarlet blood, as if—having sucked the souls of his victims for sustenance—the eel had been torn loose and was lying, as if on a fishmonger’s block, in its gore, dead as dead can be, with its eyes filming over.
Everywhere around was blood—but I was not covered in it. The shove I’d given had swivelled him, and the opened artery’s cascades had gushed everywhere else. There had been an initial spatter—a streak across my bodice, and upon my hands—but, with luck, I would be able to find Magnifique and he wouldn’t gallop away in fear of the dark, fresh scent.
I wiped my hands on the grass, over and over. Finally, I stood. What now? Should I take myself to the police station, to tell them what had happened? Not likely. Would they believe me? Even less so. Did that make me like Beauvallon? A murderer, who left the scene of the crime? My breath hitched in my chest: no, it did not.
I staggered off on trembling legs. I had no choice, I would leave the body there. This is a place of death—so let him lie here, dead. I needed to be gone, needed my horse. Felt no remorse—oh, not a jot. Just a wild soaring joy to be alive, when such a very few minutes before, I had prayed to die quickly—from fear if nothing else. Praying for a heart attack such as a rabbit or a deer, about to be devoured, may expire from, if they’re lucky; the kiss, perhaps, of a higher being whose love may be unknowable but offers a kind of brutal mercy. Instead, against all odds, I was alive.
Steps away from the bulky stone family vault, I found Magnifique nervously cropping grass. I moved towards him, hand out and palm flat. He wasn’t sure… My hand began to shake; I concentrated upon holding it firm. No doubt it reeked, so I daren’t go too near like this, but the gesture itself, I hoped, was reassuring. As I cautiously approached, the gelding’s nostrils flared out and then in, he feinted a leap away, then—thankfully, oh beautiful one—decided against it and let his rein be taken.
“Oh, lovely horse, my brave fellow…” I rested my forehead against the strong, warm curve of his neck. “Merci, mon amour. Come, come with me.”
I swung up onto the saddle, and gingerly stroked his neck from there. Breathing deeply and slowly, I tried to keep my body from giving away its shattered nerves. He was smelling it, though—the blood—and was quickly aware of my clenched shuddering, up on his back. He began dancing sideways, snorting. I took one last look at the splayed crimson heap on the ground—to be sure the monster was truly dead—then turned Magnifique’s head, gave a gentle nudge with my heels, and off we went.
We found the entrance to the cemetery, and from there, cantered into the street. There were still very few Parisians out and about, thank God. I clung as hard as I could to the saddle, the muscles in my thighs feeling like water. Calm, I counselled myself: keep breathing deeply. A block or two further along, I wiped at my cheek and discovered a smear of blood upon it. Shite, what do I look like? Am I covered in it? Will I be stopped? I glanced down at my bodice, my skirt, trying to gauge my dishevelment. From what I could see, now peering more closely and with growing dismay, there were a few spots and streaks here and there upon the fabric—from a distance, not alarming, surely? But then a lurch of fear: is it in my hair? On my chin? Then I spied a drying spatter upon my bosom, which had trickled down between my breasts—oh God! The idea of having the fiend’s essence upon me, anywhere—burning a hole through me by association alone—was suddenly hideous. I wanted to rip off all of my clothing, jump into a scalding bath with strong soap, and scrub and scrub. As soon as the thought of the blood’s taint had leapt into my head, it was all I could do to stop myself from screaming. Is he all over me? Oh Christ! Will I never get clean, will I never be free?
Just then Magnifique laid his ears back and began to careen more recklessly down the street. He was picking up my mania, letting it infect his senses, filling him with the desire to run, to leave behind the thing that was making him so nervous. No, no—bring him back, I realized: bring yourself back, Lola! The new necessity startled me into reality, to recollection of the needs of my horse and—for the moment at least—to let go of the crime and the gore. “Look out!” I shouted at a man with a cart who was just emerging from an alley, as Magnifique lunged past and onwards. “Watch what you’re about!” the man yelled angrily, then, with concern, “Careful, mademoiselle—turn his head!”
Luckily, we met with no further incidents and within a few minutes, I was able to urge Magnifique to slow, then to stop. We stayed where we were for several minutes, in front of a pâtisserie, while I stroked his neck, patted his shoulders; while he stamped a hoof and shook his head from side to side, bit and snaffle jingling. Inside the shop there were signs of life; I could smell delicious scents coming from their ovens.
Where do I go, I began asking myself in great alarm, trying to remain calm for the sake of the horse. I need to recover—I need to sit down, or lie down, or something—for a moment, for a year. I need a bath, I must get clean. I’ve committed a heinous crime—have I? I’ve murdered a man. No, a beast in the shape of a man. But, in the eyes of the law, a man. Mon Dieu, will I be hanged for it? At this fearsome thought, I looked about, up and down the street. It was a main thoroughfare. I knew that eventually it led out of the city and carried on, going north. Should I fly, should I kick Magnifique into a gallop again and ride out now? But I have no money, I don’t have a plan. I don’t want to start all that again, all that fleeing and failing. I can’t, I won’t—and I won’t run away, like a coward. Like a Beauvallon. I will tell someone. Not the police, surely not them—but someone. I must.
By instinct, I suppose, an image flared into my brain. Large brown eyes surveying me with interest—my first glimpse of the stranger who’d become my esteemed friend. Of course. Who else? I turned the horse in the direction of the Square d’Orléans—to George’s. A line from Eugène Sue’s Mystères de Paris began rolling around in my head, repeating itself: ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ A year after Bon-bon’s tragically unnecessary death, three years after Diego’s… Was it revenge I’d just taken, for Henri? For Diego? Or was it sheerly and utterly self-defence? God, I hardly knew. Magnifique had begun cantering in a stiff-legged, arched-neck manner, as if he too was cautiously avoiding a difficult truth.
When we arrived at George’s front door, I swung down and looped Magnifique’s reins through the post at the street, then ran up the short walk and banged the knocker, looking about to see if anyone was watching. I certainly hoped not be seen. After a few minutes, the door opened a crack and Chopin peeked out. His hair was rumpled and he had slung on a silk dressing robe, which was still open, revealing purple silk pajamas.
“Mademoiselle,” he said softly, “you are so early…” He must have seen the desperation in my face, for then he added, “You are here for George?”
I nodded urgently.
“Is that… Blood?”
I nodded again, and his face blenched. “Come in.” He ushered me inside, then called up the stairs in a thin, reedy but very compelling voice: “George! Come quickly! It is Mademoiselle Lola, here for you—szybko!” He turned back to say, “She will be with you momentarily. I will take the horse to the rear, have it stabled.”
He left, closing the front door, and then I could hear George clattering down the stairs. She arrived at the bottom in a capacious silk dressing robe, with heeled slippers on her feet, and her dark hair in a tangle.
“Am I covered in blood?” I asked in almost a whisper.
Her eyes widened as she took me in, from top of my head to my boots. “Are you hurt?” she cried. “What has happened?”
“I have killed a man, George.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Mon bon Dieu.”
She took my hand and pulled me after her into the sitting room.
“But your upholstery…” I protested.
“Pish, fuck the upholstery. Sit down, my sweet, and tell me what has happened.”
So I did, and as I tried to speak, my heart began to race again and my voice to shake. “I wanted to place flowers, see my beloved’s…” I couldn’t bear it, with these words I suddenly clasped my hands over my face, bent over my knees and sobbed. George jumped up and hurried to a cabinet in the corner, where I could hear rattles and tinkles as she brought forth glasses and poured something into them. She sped back.
“Hear, take this—no, take it!” And she pulled a hand away from my face, gently closing my fingers around the glass. “Drink.”
After a moment, I did—and so did she—a large swallow of superior cognac to help give us courage. “Somewhat better?” she asked, and I nodded. “Then go on.”
Now that I was with a friend, and safe, my body had dropped its brittle, coiled response to danger and left me wobbly as a jellyfish. “The body is lying in Montmartre Cemetery. There is blood everywhere.”
A slight pause, then, “Who is it?”
There were those eyes, gazing upon me steadily: the deep brown pools of thoughtfulness that had reminded me to hope. “The Jesuit priest I told you about. He came up behind, shoved me to the ground with his crutch. He has—he had—one leg. The other…”
“The other…?”
“Had been sawn off. Because of me.”
I saw George’s eyes widen, imagined I could read what was flicking through her mind: because of Lola? How could that be? What sort of devilry is she bringing into my house? Should I call the police?
I rose. I felt faint with the coming betrayal. “Do you wish me to leave?”
“Do I—?” She seemed taken aback. “Not at all, I wish you to sit down and drink up, my sweet.”
I did both things, and felt slightly better.
“Do you need—perhaps you should lie down?” she asked.
I shook my head, tried again to explain. “I ran, but—he came after me.”
“But with one leg…?”
“He could hop, George, he could hop like a gigantic reptile.”
At this she shrieked. “Merde! Bon Dieu!” She grabbed up a sofa cushion and held it under her chin, peering at me with eyes as large as two round saucers. Then, “Sacre!” she swore, throwing the cushion to the floor and holding a hand out, imperiously. “Glass.” She took it, marched with both our glasses over to the cabinet and poured another large measure each. Once she’d delivered it, and we’d both had a sip, she sat again. Strangely, her large reactions were helping me to understand, even more fully, the horror of what had just happened to me, and the miracle of my survival.
I told her the rest as quickly as possible; as I spoke, shivering, it felt as if the match had been fated, had always awaited me. A wail, quickly suppressed, from George, when I tried to explain what he’d vowed to do to me.
“Oh my God, that’s enough. Up, Lola, let’s get you upstairs, get you out of those things and—”
Drawing the knife from my soiled waistband, I showed it, flicked it open. It fell from my nerveless fingers onto the floor. George stared at the blood-smeared object with revulsion.
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked, now almost numb. Suddenly I didn’t know what would happen, and at that moment I was almost too tired to care. Would she deliver me to the authorities? Would I have to go through another trial, only to end up…?
She slid across the sofa to clasp me in her arms, squeezing me tightly. After a few moments, she said, “You’d better put that away,” with an appalled wave at the knife. So I did. We sat in silence as my heart began to settle. Then George became very practical.
“We must find out what’s happening. I can’t send Chopinsky, he’s useless at these things, and besides, he has a cold. No, I’ll go to Alex, send him to the cemetery—right away!—so that he can discover the body if it hasn’t yet been found. He’ll know what to look for. We don’t want the authorities to be able to trace anything back to you. Do you agree?”
“Oh yes.”
“Upstairs, Lola, come on! I’ll send my maid to make you comfortable, whatever you need.”
“A bath. Oh God, a bath.”
“Of course! Of course, a bath!—with lots of soap.”
The maid received instructions, I was taken upstairs to a pretty bedroom, and then began an enormous amount of bustling action as my bath was readied, warm towels were placed beside the tub, and curtains were closed for privacy. Along with all of that, I could hear doors banging, George’s voice calling out, then Chopin’s wheezy coughs as he climbed the stairs and got back in under his own covers. After that, silence. The efficient maid offered (with some trepidation, I couldn’t help but see) to take care of my clothing, and supplied me with a dress belonging to the countess. She also volunteered to wield the scrub brush, but for this I thanked her and sent her away. I sank into the water with relief, scrubbed myself almost raw before calling for fresh water and more towels—greedy for them—then plunging in again to the clean, hot water and splashing my face, my breasts, my neck, scrubbing at my hands and under my fingernails like a veritable Lady Macbeth, over and over again.
As the second bath cooled, I still sat in it. What if George changed her mind, and had gone to the police instead of to Alex? What if I came out of the tub and straight into jail? Anything could happen; nothing seemed real. Yes, I was alive. I still couldn’t quite believe it. This time I had done it. I hadn’t quailed or lost my nerve at the last crucial second, and that was the only reason I was alive. If you’re faced with a poisonous rat that carries a plague, should fear or morality cause you to pity it, or stop you from killing it? How can that be a crime? That’s what I asked the harpies in my head, and with the question, they flew up into a howling, gibbering mass of recriminations. Murderess! Bad, wilful woman! Harbinger of bad luck and unfortunate destinies! Life could be over as you know it, and it would serve you right, they yammered. I fought them off, their bat-like bites and shrieks. At the back of my head: the truth of it all. The monster on its back, covered in gore, still emanating evil. I wasn’t sorry, not a bit of it—though I was frightened. I would die if I was put in a jail cell, I knew it.
Courage, Lola. It hasn’t happened yet.
I toweled myself dry with an almost steady hand, dressed in what George’s maid had given me, and brushed my hair with one hundred brisk strokes. I am ready for whatever awaits, I told myself. I won’t run.
Finally—the sounds of chaotic life downstairs. “Lola!” George’s voice called up, and then I could hear two sets of footsteps racing up the stairs. George swung into the room, followed by Alexandre Dumas, and they stood there, puffing and blowing like dray horses, staring at me.
“Lola, you will never believe—” said George, but Dumas reached out and silenced her with his hand on her arm.
“Wait,” he ordered, and “Mon Dieu, je suis—ouff!” He plonked himself into a chair at the bedside. George threw herself down beside me on the bed.
“Tell, tell!” she urged, thumping the mattress.
Dumas raised one hand, took several deep breaths, and then began.
“I arrived at the cemetery, and at first wasn’t sure where to look,” he said. “I urged my driver to go slowly and to circumnavigate the entire place. However, once well inside the gates, I could see a large group of blackbirds circling in the sky, and I told him to head in that direction, thinking that—as scavengers—they must have already found the body, but perhaps were being kept from landing by humans who had found it, too, and were taking a closer look. As we approached, however, I did not hear human voices. I heard growls and yips, and other sounds that I could not at first place. I tell you, the hair on the back of my neck was rising—I felt like a cat with its fur gone puffed, all around! Tail like a bottlebrush, fat as a fox’s!” He leaned towards us with his little eyes wide and full of fear, then reached out to clutch at George’s hand, which he squeezed convulsively. “I had no idea what was in store, just ahead—if I’d known, I would have turned tail and run!”
George, with a shiver: “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!”
Dumas continued, dropping his voice to a hushed whisper. “Never in my life… Such a horror, beyond my wildest dreams…”
George winced, retrieving her crushed hand and placing it over her lips.
“Here is what happened next. We rounded one of the large family vaults, and then—sacrebleu, I tell you, it was an arresting sight! My driver cried out, and I think I did, too! A pack of feral dogs—the kind of dogs that one sees in Paris, big, little—abandoned, all—were at the body, ripping and tearing away at the throat, and quarrelling over other sections. I could see a large mastiff, off to one side, must have chewed off the right hand and had taken it further away to devour. At the far end of the body, a little once-upon-a-time lapdog was there, yanking stoically at the foot, trying to pull off the shoe so it could get at the delectable morsels encased—”
“Alex!” George roared. “Stop that! Stay with the facts!”
“I am! Vraiment.” He looked affronted, then shrugged, hands upturned. “Zut, let me speak of the extras, circle by degrees towards the ultimate horror… This is just the apéritif, believe me… We don’t want to faint—at least, I certainly don’t…”
“Merde! Oh mon Dieu, what else?” George covered her eyes and flapped a hand in the air.
Dumas settled back upon the chair, wiped his lips and turned to me. “Well, let me deliver the good news first—if any part of this horror can be considered ‘good.’ I do not think you have any fears about discovery, Mademoiselle Lola, and I will tell you why—if our bon amie here will allow me.” He flashed a hurt expression at George, then leaned towards us again, first looking both right and left to ensure we were alone.
“I climbed out of my carriage to take a closer look. My driver was concerned, and tried to urge me away—to go to the police immediately, and leave the scene of destruction. But, though my nerves and my body still felt as puffed as a fox’s tail, I urged myself forwards, waving my walking stick in front of me aggressively. The dogs were angry at me for interrupting their meal, you see, but, well, I called forcefully—and with some fear, I admit—to my driver to come and assist me, and together we managed to persuade them off with some choice oaths and, on my part, a few hard whacks with the stick. And mon Dieu, once they’d retreated, that’s when I really registered the buckets of blood, all over the ground! It was disgusting. The dogs had made quite a mess as well, let me tell you—most of their muzzles were slick with it, and their paws.”
At this, George moaned. I thought of the many dogs she kept at Nohant, running freely around the stables, happy on their own business.
“Just at that moment,” Dumas began again, “I could hear sounds of another carriage driving along the cobbles—whether coming or going, I couldn’t tell—but knew that I didn’t have long for a private inspection.”
“Who was it?” I asked him.
“I never saw. The sounds stopped; it just—disappeared.” We regarded each other solemnly, then he continued, swiftly. “I leaned over the body. There was fearsome damage to the entire face. The nose was gone, the eyes gouged out… Not to make too fine a point of it: the face was ripped off, in fact, and the neck torn open.”
George and I both screamed at the same time. Then she jumped up and rang a bell. Dumas began wiping his face and throat with a large handkerchief. We sat there, all of us, trembling, until the maid arrived. George sent her off for the brandy bottle and glasses. None of us said another word until those items had been placed before us, and a swift shot had been sent down each of our throats. Dumas was shaking as much as the two of us together.
He shivered as the brandy scorched its way through him. “Ooff, merde!” Then: “Believe me, Lola, no one will ever see a switchblade stab to the jugular, for the jugular no longer exists.”
I swallowed hard. This was graphic—but it was true. By God, it was true!
“However—now that we are fortified,” he went on, speaking in a frenzied whisper, “I have to tell you that is not the end of what I found.” His voice dropped even lower in volume. We were all leaning in towards each other—for comfort or protection, who knew? “This is the crux of the matter. There was blood everywhere, as I say. So now, picture this: the coat had been ripped away from the chest, as had the shirt. The chest was revealed, in other words. And inside that chest—well. Zut alors, how can I say this without causing you both to be sick?”
“Just say it,” I managed, as George grabbed my hand.
“The heart was gone. And not eaten by dogs—or certainly, not taken from the chest by dogs. No. This is the appalling truth: there was a neat surgical incision cleaving the sternum, followed by a violent pulling apart of the chest cavity, which in turn revealed that the valves and arteries had also been neatly severed. Then the heart had been plucked out. A bloody, empty hollowness was all that was left, inside!”
We sat staring at each other for some fraught moments.
“What does it mean?” George asked.
“Someone did it,” I said, “between the time I galloped away and when you arrived.”
“Yes,” Dumas added, “and perhaps the heart was in the mysterious carriage… Perhaps the severer had just finished, and had placed it there, as I arrived…”
“Still seeping onto the carriage floor…” From George.
“Or,” from Dumas, “let me think…” His eyes were sweeping over all of the objects in the room that were within his gaze, backwards and forwards. “Of course, perhaps this… As soon as I’d stumbled back, hurled myself aboard, and my driver had whipped up the horses to carry us away, the severer could have leaned out of the unseen carriage and thrown it to the dogs… The still warm organ! One of them—perhaps the mastiff—would then have raced off with its ultimate treat, the little lapdog in hot pursuit—”
“Alex, enough, enough!—assez!” George howled. Then we all laughed, shakily, at Dumas’ final storytelling flourish and the image it had conjured: a little dog chasing a big one, yapping excitedly. Had he said it to console us? To augment and embellish, take the story almost into the realm of the absurd? Or—could it have happened? We’d never know.
“Furthermore,” Dumas added solemnly, forefinger raised like a warning beacon, “I have not told you the final matter: out on the streets, when we left the cemetery. Some sort of vehement protest was taking place—students and other angry young men. They were waving their fists, shouting. Then several bent down, picked up rocks and began hurling them at the windows of shops! And one at me! Missed me by a whisker! We galloped away with the sound of breaking glass and violent curses in our ears, hooligans running in each and every direction! I tell you, we haven’t seen the end of the unrest these dangerous factions have stirred up.”
George nodded. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we are heading towards an enormous class struggle, and it will not be an easy victory for anyone.”
“Bad times ahead.” Dumas patted her hand. “I’ve decided—just now, just this second: I will take young Alex with me on my travels. I’m heading out later this month, and I’ll convince him—get him out of Paris, keep an eye on him. Get him away from that tarty Anäis Lievenne. He’s in a weak state as it is—still in mourning for Merci Duplessis. Wants to write about her, about their love, before it went wrong. Who knows, maybe it can be the making of him…”
Silence for some further moments, during which a dawning realization—a kind of dark joy—began to percolate through my body, a bit like the familiar red gush of rage, but this time, of relief. The police would not be coming after me. I could go on with my life. It seemed—could it be?—that the hideous deed itself had died with the fiend.
As if aware of my thoughts, the big man whispered, “Vraiment, I think you are safe. Too much damage was done to ever implicate you, Lola.”
With feelings of awe and wonder at the vicissitudes of fate, I thanked them both from the bottom of my heart, and they vowed to never reveal anything of what had happened—ever.
“Not even in a story,” George added, poking Dumas’ plump thigh with a forefinger several times to push the promise home.
“Very well,” he nodded, still wiping at his brow with an unsteady hand. “Though that will be difficult—it is so damnably good!”
At this, he rose with a groan, and headed off to the nearest gendarmerie to report what he’d found.
*
I stayed that night at George’s in the Square d’Orléans. Chopin was still feeling miserable with his cold, so George invited herself into the room I was occupying, with a bottle of red wine in one hand and two glasses in the other.
“It’s just like old times, Lola,” she said with a smile. “Remember our first journey together, when you were so frightened of Countess d’Agoult?”
“I remember it well.”
“Shove over, I’m getting in.”
She slipped in beside me, and poured us each a big glass. Then she left the bottle on the table beside the bed and plumped up the pillows behind her, to lean on.
“So what does it mean, this discovery of Alex’s?” she wondered, still thrumming with the horrors of the day.
“I don’t know what to think,” I replied. “Cleaving the sternum? That sounds like a professional job—a doctor, or a butcher. Oh God.”
“Who cut the heart out?” George asked. “That’s what we need to know.”
I shuddered, then immediately thought of Eugène Sue’s butcher character in Les Mystères de Paris. Eugène was a doctor, of course, a surgeon… So was the horrid Koreff—a doctor of sorts. Other potentially violent men? There was Beauvallon, of course. Good God. “What was someone else doing there, so quickly?” I asked. “There’d been no one around when I needed them, certainly—no one at all in the entire cemetery to come to my aid!”
“But what if,” George whispered, eyes wide, “what if there was someone there all along: waiting and watching.”
“Oh Jesus, don’t say that!” I cried. “Do you know how terrifying that is to me?” Waiting and watching was the Jesuit’s stock in trade, I thought. Then I wondered: maybe it was the modus operandi for the society itself? Could it have been another member of the Exterminating Angels? Sent as back-up? And as punishment for de la Vega’s failure, they rip out his heart? Oh yes, a brotherhood of wolves—as close to a live dismemberment as they could get… But why, if so, didn’t they come after me, as I rode—so disturbed, so jangled—from the cemetery? Finish me off, once and for all. Instead, I rode away. No, nothing made sense.
“Don’t let’s talk about it anymore,” I said. “I’m leaving tomorrow, leaving France altogether, and I need to keep my nerve.”
She sobered and nodded. “Where will you go?”
“I still don’t know.”
“What about Germany?”
“My table dancing in Bonn was remarked upon in the press. Very unfavourably. I’ve already been warned out of Germany after slashing an officer.”
A brief laugh. “What about Belgium? Or Switzerland?”
“I know nothing about them.”
“They seem mild sort of countries; they like money and chocolate.” She put one finger to her lips. “What about England?”
With the word, I recalled the dapper little shit who had made my life a misery after my London début—some sort of government man, who’d been spying on me and kept me in a locked room overnight, to cool off and await questioning. He too had warned me, told me I was unwelcome on British soil: “Go away and try not to cause any more mischief in the future, or you may not be so lucky,” he’d said. Bastard! Pompous twat! “The door might be closed there, too,” I told George with a shrug.
“C’est dommage.” She reached over to the table beside the bed and handed me an envelope. “I think it’s time for this, then. For you. From Alex. He came by earlier this evening, left it with Chopinsky.”
I tore the envelope open and peeked inside. Several sheets of paper lay there, folded.
“Bank drafts,” George said. “He’s decided to sell a number of Henri’s paintings—will put them up at auction soon, but he knows at least the approximate value, and so, these are for you. With love from Henri. Alex thinks it’s only right.”
My heart filled. My Bon-bon.
George drew herself up, pursed out her lips, and gave a brilliant rendition of a Dumas boast: “‘Alexandre Dumas’ word is his pledge, and a lady in distress will never be in distress if I have something to say about it.’”
We had a laugh. Both of us had seen Alex’s generous and flamboyant promises in action: sometimes successful, sometimes with a dubious ending. Merchants preferred cash to bombast.
“It’s so kind of him,” I said.
“Yes, it is. But we all know that it is also what Henri would have wished.”
I felt the truth of that, and held back tears.
“As well, there is this,” and George pulled a small package from her skirt.
“What…?”
“Also from Alex.”
I tore the wrapping open; inside was a soft leather belt with a pouch. There was a note: “To be worn inside your clothing, against the skin. To keep the money safe. And—with permission—I will think of it there, quite often. Your friend, Alex.”
We really chuckled at this, and I was grateful for the cunning item. Those bank drafts were a lot of cash to have on my person.
“Not to change the subject… But I presume you are still into men, my sweet?” George asked after a moment.
I looked over; her face was impish.
“You’re not allowed to be melancholy. I’m just thinking,” she went on. “Who can I introduce you to? I know that young Bobby—Robert Peel junior, that is, an English baronet-to-be—has been batting around at a bit of a loss.”
“Oh bother,” I said. I had too much else to worry about.
“I’ll send him a letter, is what I’m telling you, Lola, if you want me to do so. Do you?”
“No, George. I don’t think so.”
“Le Chopinet had a thought, as well. There’s a Russian Baron from Latvia that he knows—”
“You’re sounding like a mother, or a madam,” I retorted, and at this, she threw her head back and let out a honk of a laugh.
“I am!” she cried. “How perfectly absurd!”
“I want to go somewhere on my own.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was true—and at that instant, I realized something else as well. “As a matter of fact, George,” I said, now perfectly serious and perfectly sad, “I think I am through with love.”
“Oh, one can never be through with love, dear Lola,” she protested. “Though I do think that you should give the fairer sex a chance.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“I’m not joking now,” she told me earnestly. “You’re not ready yet, perhaps. But never underestimate your own sex. Our love is vast, and equally enjoyable.” She was leaning against me, her body very warm—like a furnace, in fact, generating its own heat. I took a sip of my wine, and after a moment, she sighed and leaned against the pillows once more. “I can’t and won’t tell you what to do, dear. But one thing I do know: no one can be both a Cleopatra and an Aristotle. Use what you have, my sweet Lola—take it as far as you can.”
“I intend to.”
“Some independent wealth is the usual first step for pursuing fame, among respectable women. Look at Marie d’Agoult. Look at me, for that matter.”
“I have neither wealth, nor fame, nor respectability,” I countered.
“The beginnings of notoriety, perhaps,” she said, smiling.
“Yes, that’s true.”
I finished my glass of wine, and held it out for George to refill.
“There is no question—men can be useful,” she mused, tipping the delicious cabernet into the glasses, first mine and then hers. “To get yourself a title, if nothing else. I did, and it’s worked out splendidly.” She raised her glass in a toast. “But think about it, won’t you?—the other thing?”
I rolled my eyes, amused. She didn’t want to give up. I tried to imagine the kind of love she was speaking about. Then tried to imagine myself, in love again… It was very hard… It really was.
“I’d miss it too much,” this prompted me to tell her, thoughtfully. “You know… the prick.”
“You’d be surprised.”
At this, I snorted, and then had to be patted on the back from a sip of wine going down the wrong way. Once recovered, we laughed, clinked and both cried, “Salut!”
Later, as I lay there, George snoring quietly to my left, my mind began drifting, one thought to another. Banned from British soil? Ridiculous. It’s where I’m from, they can’t do that. And then to imagining: England. Rolling green countryside. Sheep, and their bleating; the gambolling lambs at this time of year. Long snakes of drystone fences keeping the flocks in order. The city of Durham, where Aunt Catherine and Uncle Herbert live—with their charge, their surrogate offspring, my sweet little daughter, Emma. Emma, who’ll be eleven years old this spring: next month, in fact. Emma, the very thought of whom my darling Henri had welcomed into his loving heart…
The only family I have, Emma is: the only person in the world I’m connected to, by blood. Well, except for my mother, but let’s not think of that… And further, I have no home, have never had one, though I long for the idea. Then, shockingly, is Emma ‘home’? Should I go there, and find out? But then I remembered: I murdered a demon. How would I explain what I have done, to my daughter? It puts me, somehow, beyond the pale—doesn’t it? A new kind of person. How should I think of myself? Where do I go from here?
Henri’s sweet face swam into my mind. “Lola, stop now.” His beautiful smile. I curled up around it, and little by little my limbs relaxed… You’re right. I’ll try.
*
The next morning I was off (again). Big hugs all around, including from Chopin, while George and I had a little cry. But I felt quiet and almost hopeful as I rode away on my horse.
On this morning, Montmartre Cemetery seemed tranquil; this time, there was a funeral in progress, and people about. With some trepidation, I rode to the scene of the fatal struggle, and dismounted. I couldn’t believe what I saw: nothing. There was absolutely no sign of disturbance. No trace of the buckets of blood that had been spilled, nor of trampled grass, nor of swordsticks flung into the earth. Everything was completely fresh and pristine. As if combed by a loving hand. There were even spring flowers in bloom.
Shocked, I cast around a bit, to make sure that this was indeed the site—and I knew it was. But not one single clue remained to alert a soul to what had happened, just here. Erased. What can this mean, I wondered. And with the thought—like Dumas—the hair rose at the back of my neck. Thank God that he had seen the corpse, too, or I might have doubted my senses! He had reported it: why weren’t there signs of police investigation, or…? Something. Anything.
Out of the corner of my eye, just then, a flash of movement. I looked over; behind one of the stones, there was something there. I froze. It moved again: a small, scruffy dog stepped out, little legs spread, and gave one loud bark. I nearly jumped out of my skin. After a moment of staring at each other, I clapped my hands hard, thinking to drive it away. But it stood its ground. Then bared its teeth, growling. I tried not to gorge—oh, proof enough.
I led Magnifique back to the Dujarier headstones, looking about warily the whole way. The white rose that I had dropped lay on the earth just above Bon-bon’s grave, still almost perfect. I lifted it gently; it was scented with a heavy sweetness, so deep it almost made me cry to think of the magical energy that had created it, petal by petal—tightly furled, but designed to open. These things of beauty, forming year after year, serenely determined on their wordless path, unshaken, unwavering. Following their destiny.
The scent of the rose brought him back to me, in that moment. I could hear him exactly: “I love you, everything about you. Never doubt that.”
Kissing and then placing the rose on the top of Henri’s stone, I traced his carved name with my fingertips: Henri Dujarier. The heartbreaking moan.
“Farewell.”
I turned and swung up onto Magnifique. I was leaving behind my one true love, I knew it. But Henri was gone. Whether I stayed or not, he was gone; there was nothing of him here. Remember George’s words, I told myself, as the horse moved about restlessly and I took one final look. Something solid to fall back on, something that can help me prosper. Something like… Countess. Why not?
I gave the gelding a nudge with my heels and we moved away, a gentle canter towards the gates. All around was birdsong. I wondered: how does one go about…? I had no idea, but would put my mind to it. Perhaps my mind was not that of an Aristotle… but really, Cleopatra didn’t do too badly. I’d simply avoid the heartache that had brought her down. After all, I was through with love.
So what else was there—out there—to find?
I’d go forth and see.
We emerged into the street. With a sassy flick of the whip, Magnifique and I kicked the dust from our heels and headed north at a gallop.
FINIS