VII

 

 

 

He took my hand in his then and kept hold of it, stroking the back of it with his thumb. It wasn’t a beast’s claws I felt, nor an ogre’s gnarled grasp, nor an Erl-King’s blood-stained hunting gloves. I thought then that my Marquis was only a strange, kind man who had come to hate himself, haunted by the unhappiness in his past. He was lonely and odd, and he longed for me. After a time he let go of my hand with a final squeeze and bade me goodnight.

After this, he began to visit me often at night. I told him the small observations of my day, its delights and occasional frustrations. We spoke of books, poems, and paintings. I gleaned little of how and where and with whom he spent his days, or where he went on the nights he didn’t come to me. The ritual of questioning was reversed. Where before he had asked me in his nightly letter if I would meet him, now I was the one who asked him the same questions without fail. Would he reveal himself to me? Would he show me his face, at last?

I traced the outlines of his face like a benediction, with the loving hands of an Isaac seeking to know his eldest born, to give him the birthright that was his. At first the Marquis would only kiss my fingers and hold my hands. One night he went further, kissing my wrists and the soft underside of my forearms. I sensed in his shyness he was afraid of doing more.

I came to love his quiet way of speaking. There was something calm and self-possessed in it, despite his restraint and reticence with me. I came to love his enthusiasm for anything that gave me joy or pleasure, and his sorrow over anything that pained me – even when what pained me was what he himself had forbidden me. So one night, instead of feeling his face, I took it between my hands and kissed it. His forehead, his cheeks – first one and then the other. His mouth.

Did my kiss transform him and free him from whatever curse made him walk in the dark? Does a kiss turn a beast into a man, or a man into a beast? In this case, more the latter, for he kissed me back with ferocity, with ravening hunger. He opened my mouth to his and I felt his teeth (a man’s teeth, neither sharp nor cruel, but teeth all the same). Those teeth bit my neck after kissing it and buried themselves deliciously into the crook of my shoulder. My embroidered satin robe and my chemise were taken away, and he removed his clothes and stretched me out naked under his warm skin, pinning me down, looking with his night-sight into my unseeing eyes that looked back in helpless fear and surrender. They inspired no mercy in him. He moved down the length of my body, opened my legs, and ate me until I was near utter abandon. I had read of such things in the hidden mauvais livres in Pastor Bergeret’s shop, but it never would have entered the Pastor’s imagination to treat me in this way, like a succulent fruit. When my shuddering, trembling, and moans had reached a pitch that satisfied him, he drew back, kissed me again, and thrust into me.

I too was transformed by his kisses into an animal unrecognizable to myself, more beast than woman. Only a small part of me was aware that my fingernails raked his skin. I wanted this to go on and on, I wanted … I wanted … and there it was, unexpected, the shivering convulsion, and I cried out. Still it went on and on, and then at last he pulled out. He spilled his seed on my stomach.

He fell against me, spent and sweating, and rested. I reached out my hands to feel over his body and assure myself it was in the form of a man, two arms, two legs. The only fur was over his damp groin, where it should be. His sexe was a man’s. I cupped it gently, affectionately in my palm. Then I ran my hands over my own body to reassure myself that I, too, was still human and hadn’t become furred and four-legged, or feathered and winged, or scaled and finned. I was still myself, but I felt changed, made new in learning the act of love was capable of giving me pleasure. It needn’t be a painful chore. Instead, under my lover’s hands I had been awakened, sated, saturated with delicious perfumes of musks and flowers.

“Violaine,” he whispered. “My Violaine, jewel and flower and fruit of my darkness.” For the first time he used my Christian name and the intimate pronoun tu instead of the colder vous.

“What should I call you now?” I asked him, using tu as well. Monsieur le marquis seemed too formal if he was going to call me Violaine.

“You can call me Thérion.”

“Is that your Christian name?”

“No, it’s a family name. My Christian name is Prosper-Aloyse, but no one ever calls me that.”

“Doesn’t Thérion mean ‘beast’ in Greek? Like the beasts in the Book of Revelations?”

“Exactly, I’m the Beast. The Anti-Christ who ushers in the end times in scripture. It was a joke amongst my school friends when I was younger, so that’s what they all called me.”

“Mmm. Thérion. My Beast. I like that.”

I fell asleep with his kisses in my ear.

 



 

 

When I woke it was light, and he was gone.

After I’d had my morning coffee, I found a new room on the third floor. The eastern end of the passage, with its many doors leading to private apartments like my own, had appeared to end in an alcove with an elegant little inlaid-wooden table, a pretty porcelain vase, and a large painting on the wall above. Now I realized that what I had taken to be wooden paneling on the side of the alcove was in fact, all along, another of the manor’s cunningly hidden doors, for it stood open. From the room beyond came the clinking of glass and silverware.

I approached the open door and, peering around the doorframe, was dumbfounded at the vision before me. The place was, I supposed, what might be called a morning room in the books on architecture I had leafed through. Six chairs surrounded an ornately carved and gilded rectangular table in the center, and a buffet on the side was laden with an engraved silver coffee service and trays of food. A fireplace, sofa, and several armchairs lined the walls. It was one of the prettiest rooms I had seen yet in the manor. Everything about it evoked morning, from the paintings of clouds, blue skies, and sunlit green landscapes that hung on the walls, to the blue-and-white fabric of the upholstery and drapes, to the gilt edges of the furniture. Most astonishing of all was that an elegantly dressed woman sat at the head of the table before a gleaming place setting, enjoying a hearty breakfast. Her blue satin saque dress, with Oriental embroidery in gold threads over white muslin ruffles, matched the room almost perfectly. Her face, as she chewed contemplatively on a bite of diot sausage, glowed with good health and happiness. She had rosy cheeks framed by short blond curls and a few wrinkles around her blue eyes, so that I took her to be somewhere between thirty and forty years of age.

My approach on slippered feet over rugs on the parquet floor had been silent, and a minute went by before she looked up and saw me. She started and dropped her teaspoon with a clatter. Then her face broke into a delighted smile.

“Why, good morning. We haven’t met before. I’m Aurore. How nice to see a new and charming face here at Boisaulne.”

I curtsied. “Madame … Aurore, enchantée. I’m called –”

“Ah-ah-ah.” She held up a hand to stop me. “No ‘Madame Aurore’ here. It’s simply Aurore. This must be your first time visiting the château?”

To avoid a complicated explanation of how I had come to live here, I simply answered, “Yes.”

“Well, if no one’s told you yet, it’s become something of a custom that no one uses their real names here. It’s part of the fun. It’s like a masquerade in a way. Have you already got a surnom?”

I shook my head. No one had ever called me by a nickname before. She rubbed her hands together delightedly.

“Then I’ll claim the honor of giving you one. How about simply … Belle? Because you’re so lovely. Will that do?”

I blinked. “But … you’re very kind, but I don’t think that would suit me.”

She frowned and shook her head. “No, no, you’re right. Forgive me.” She tapped her lips with her index finger. “If you’re here, surely you’re a woman who’d like to be more than merely beautiful.”

I inclined my head to the side, gratified by her quick understanding. “I like to think of myself as a person who cares more for the beauty of the soul.”

“Which is a sign that you must have a beautiful soul. That could be a better surnom for you. How about Belle-Âme, then? I like it. It’s the kind of name I’d give to a girl in a fairy tale. But come, sit down. Have you eaten yet?”

I took a seat in one of the comfortable padded chairs. “I’ve only had coffee. You’re visiting then? As a guest of the Marquis?”

“As it were. Of course, it was Harlequin who invited me. None of us has ever met the Marquis in person. Don’t tell me you’ve seen him? I’m dying to know what he looks like.”

“I … no, in fact, I haven’t seen the Marquis. I’m also very curious to know how he looks.”

“Then I take it Harlequin invited you too.”

I paused to consider how much I ought to reveal to this strange new visitor about my position at the manor. In the joy of finding a lover in the Marquis, I had entirely forgotten others would likely think me of the lowest character if they knew I’d been brought here to be his mistress. So I answered, “No, it was a gentleman by the name of Monsieur du Herle who arranged for me to come. He knew my father and my late husband from Annecy.”

“Ah, then yes, Harlequin invited you too. That’s his surnom, just as mine is Aurore.”

“Monsieur du Herle is called Harlequin? But is he here then? He’s come back to Boisaulne?”

“I should think so. I only just arrived from Paris late last night, by the usual way. I expect we’ll see him at dinner tonight in the great hall, if not before. I’m not sure who else is coming this summer. The invitation was a little last-minute this time round. You might meet Séléné, Donatien, Ulysse … There’s a circle of us from Paris, who’ve been coming the past three summers in a row, mid-July through the end of August. This’ll be my fourth time here. The mountains make such a fine escape from the stink and heat of the city. Have you been to Paris?”

“No, never. Did you meet Monsieur du Herle – I mean, Harlequin – in Paris?”

“Oh yes, he’s something of a fixture at my salon, and at my dear friend Séléné’s, too. I organize a regular little gathering on Wednesday afternoons, and Séléné has hers on Thursdays so they don’t conflict. Before I started the salon, I used to see him at Madame Dufaud’s, which was where we first met. You said you met him in Annecy? I hear it’s a beautiful town.”

“I suppose it is. I was so busy when I lived there, helping my late husband with a bookshop he owned and looking after my children, I didn’t get to walk along the lakeshore much, which was the prettiest part. After my husband passed away, we went back to my home village, on the other side of the mountain from here.”

“Oh, I see. That’s a shame. But do you know, from your accent I’d hardly guess you weren’t Parisian. There’s only a hint of savoyard there. You must have been fortunate in your education.”

I was on the alert for condescension in her words, but could detect only sincerity and kindness. With her open, friendly manners, she was not at all what I might have expected of a Parisian lady. I explained to her how, after my mother had passed away, back when my father’s fortune was still intact, I had a governess who had tutored my sisters and me and had been strict about requiring us to speak the French she had learned in the convent growing up near Paris. But in our village the people spoke patouè, the local dialect.

“But you’ve come here for several summers,” I said, “and you’ve never met the Marquis de Boisaulne. How does that come about?”

She cast a quick glance around the room, as if fearing to be overheard, and lowered her voice. “I don’t know how much Harlequin has told you, but as I’ve heard him tell it, the Marquis is a relative of his, fifth cousin once removed or something like that. Harlequin manages his affairs for him because the Marquis is an eccentric and doesn’t go into society. But he permits Harlequin to invite any friends he wishes to Boisaulne as his guests. Where the Marquis hides himself while we’re here, nobody knows. It’s all exceedingly odd, but we come because we like Harlequin. And it’s magical here. Really and truly. Perhaps you’ve already discovered that.”

I smiled and nodded, and she beamed back at me. “We keep it a well-guarded secret amongst our acquaintances,” she said. “Everyone would want to come here if they knew, and it would be spoiled. But tell me, you must have a special talent of some kind, or Harlequin wouldn’t have invited you. Do you draw or paint or sing?”

“It’d be a great exaggeration to call it a talent, but I have written some poetry.”

“A poetess! I knew it. How delightful. Perhaps you’ll let me read some of your verses one of these days. My friends Ulysse and Donatien both write poems, too. With any luck you’ll meet them.”

“I hope so. And what’s your talent?”

Aurore gave me a sad little smile. “Ah, I’m the exception to the general rule of Harlequin only entertaining men and women of brilliance. I’m only good at bringing bright spirits together, to draw sparks off each other while they educate and enlighten me. Unless you count my little fairy tales, mes contes de fées.”

“You make up fairy tales?”

“It amuses me, and sometimes my friends are dear enough to listen, and I read them out loud when we’re gathered in the salon. It’s not such a bad way to while away a rainy afternoon. I also collect tales, when and where I can.”

“I think you’re too modest. Surely that’s an art, as much as poetry.”

“I enjoy it in any case, and some have told me I ought to find a publisher for my stories. Imagine, what a silly idea!”

“I always found it difficult to make up stories, and my children always wanted me to tell new ones. Do you have children?”

She pursed her lips and took a sip of her chocolate. “That’s another rule here, though I find it a little difficult to follow. One isn’t supposed to speak of children, or even of husbands or wives, though that one’s easier for me. I’m sorry, that probably sounds terrible. It’s just, I’ve barely seen my husband the past several years. He’s been very ill and sleeps most of the time. Our valet and housekeeper and his doctors tend to him, and there’s little more I can do for him.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“In truth, he’s lived a good long life, nearly four-score years, and I think he’d be only too glad to rest in peace at last. And I – well, I’ve lived almost as a widow for some time.”

“Four-score years? You must have been very young when you were married.”

“I was only fourteen and he was four and fifty years old. My grandmother thought it a good match. Well, it made us comfortable. Of course my son and daughter are already grown, so the tales I write down are more for my friends and their children. How old are your children?” She whispered the question, as though she felt guilty about breaking the rule she had just told me about.

“I have a son who’s ten and a daughter seven years old now.” I blinked to keep from tearing up, but my voice caught a little. “The boy’s gone away to school in Annecy, and my daughter is staying with one of my sisters in the village.”

“You must miss them.” She squeezed my hand. My heart swelled with gratitude for her sympathy. I thought of the Marquis – Thérion, as he had asked me to call him – and how I had complained of never seeing anyone during the day. In allowing M. du Herle to invite Aurore, he had fulfilled yet another wish of mine. I should have preferred a hundred times over to have my children with me, but at least in Aurore I might have found a kindred soul, a friend who understood what it was to be a mother far from her family. Our eyes met and we both smiled – I through the tears that had welled up.

When we had finished our breakfast, we went for a walk in the garden together, and through our conversation and laughter, the broad outlines of Aurore’s life emerged. She had been born in the mountainous city of Grenoble in the Dauphiné, where her family had a modest estate. At the age of six, she was sent to Paris to live with her grandmother, who gave her a religious education and arranged for her marriage to a retired army officer. She proceeded to educate herself secularly as best she could by reading in her husband’s library, and at the age of eighteen began attending salon gatherings at the home of a well-known society lady of sterling reputation, Madame Dufaud. It was at Madame Dufaud’s that she had first heard about the woman who would later become her dear friend, Séléné, mainly through the terrible things that were said of her. It turned out the much-maligned Séléné lived only a few houses away on the same street as Aurore. The rumors of Séléné’s wild life had stirred her pity and piqued her interest, so Aurore had taken the rather courageous step of making her neighbor’s acquaintance and befriending her, much to her husband’s displeasure. When Séléné started her own salon on the same day of the week as Madame Dufaud’s, Aurore had abandoned the stuffy atmosphere of the Dufauds and became a regular member of Séléné’s circle.

At Séléné’s, it was a much more interesting group. Instead of proper, haughty women and their dull husbands, who talked more of hunting, court gossip, and the yields of their estates than of letters and learning, Aurore had met artists, actors, poets, musicians, opera singers, dancers, and philosophes. Séléné herself wrote novels in between her affairs with a never-ending progression of lovers.

“If you meet her,” Aurore told me, “try not to be intimidated by her. She can come across as rather brash at first, but she has a good heart.”

“I’m intimidated already,” I said with a laugh.

“You needn’t be, really. You know, when my husband took to his bed for good and was no longer there to object to everything I did, she actually encouraged me to start my own salon. That’s the proof of her good heart to me. There isn’t a shred of jealousy or competitiveness in her. She only wants to see her friends succeed and flourish as she has. So now we have our gatherings on different days of the week. There’s a good deal of overlap in our circles, but she doesn’t mind if I have my own friends and exclude a few of hers, whose conduct goes against my morals. I like to think I’m broad-minded, but there are a handful who in my eyes go too far.”

I told Aurore about the bookshop in Annecy and the philosophical evenings the pastor used to organize there, where only men were allowed and most of them dressed in dark sober suits and smoked and talked of theological disputes. I still wasn’t sure whether she would consider it “going too far” that I had come to live with the Marquis in the way I had, so I told her only about how I had fallen in love with the Book of the Rose and hidden my poems in its pages, and how I had thought them lost when the shop was sold, but then they were recovered in the Marquis’s library, which had led to my invitation to Boisaulne.

“Ah, I wondered if you might be one of Ulysse’s protégées.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ulysse. He’s my friend who also writes poetry, as I mentioned. He has a bit of a habit of finding young women of talent and taking them under his wing. I don’t inquire too closely about what else he does with them. But he rescues them from whatever poor circumstances they’re struggling in and launches them into the world.”

“Really? And do the young women succeed?” This sounded suspiciously like what my Marquis had claimed he intended to do with me.

“Well, he’s very well-connected. Ulysse knows everyone worth knowing, which makes it rather impressive that he’s managed to keep quiet about the secret of Boisaulne. So, yes, I’d say they’ve gone on to be successful. There was a stunning actress from Genève whom he helped onto the Paris stage. Then there was a girl from Lyon who painted the most delicate and intricate designs on silk. A dancer from the Paris Opera … and before her a rather odd girl who sang in the chorus but had taught herself to compose music. Ulysse helped her get some of her work performed at court under a pseudonym. It was quite the little drama.”

“What happened to the girls afterwards?” I asked, as we paused at the side of the path to admire a rosebush with flowers of an unusual lavender shade. “I suppose he didn’t marry any of them?”

“No. They went on to other lovers, or they found rich husbands. They generally ended happily, except for the dancer, who was taken with consumption and had to retire from performing. I do wonder – in fact, I remember it was Harlequin who introduced Ulysse to a few of the girls. He invited the actress and the silk girl here, specifically for Ulysse to make their acquaintance. Perhaps he intended you for Ulysse as well? It’s possible.”

I thought back to the words of Madame Jacquenod in the village of Maisnie-la-Forêt, “It’s a long time since I saw him bring a woman through here.” Perhaps those were the women she had spoken of, women for this gentleman Ulysse, rather than for his master the Marquis.

“Aurore, can I ask you something? Do you know if there’s a back way that goes out from the manor? When you came here, did you arrive by way of the village?”

“Yes, there’s a back way. If you come from Genève, or from Grenoble, as I did one summer, you might come through the village. But to go to and from Paris, there’s a shortcut that goes out from behind the stable. It goes around behind the house and then down into a little grotto under the spring that feeds into the fountain, though you can’t see it from the garden. You’ve seen how there’s magic here, so perhaps you’ll believe me that it only takes a few hours to reach Paris with the Marquis’s horses. Inside the grotto, there’s an entrance to an underground tunnel. If you ride through the tunnel for an hour or two, you end up in the old abandoned quarries under the streets of Paris. The exit from the quarries at the other end is hidden behind a stable at the back of Harlequin’s property near the Luxembourg Gardens. Of course, on the ordinary roads, in an ordinary diligence or carriage, it might take as long as a week to reach Savoy.”

“How extraordinary,” I murmured, half to myself.

We returned to the manor and parted ways, Aurore to rest and write letters and I to read in the library.

 



 

As many rooms as there were in the manor, the library was my favorite, for through the books even more rooms opened in my mind, and I felt the least confined there of all the corners in my great gilded prison, curled up on a sofa before the fire with a book. After a couple of hours of reading, though, I wanted to stretch my limbs. I went into the music room to take a turn around it, and my eye was caught by small lovely details I hadn’t noticed before in the antique instruments and paintings on display. There was a mandolin I hadn’t realized was inlaid with a design of flowers in different colors of wood, with mother-of-pearl petals that glowed in the dim afternoon light. I touched its strings, the smooth taut sinews pressing lines into my fingertips. When my eyes had taken their fill of it, I returned to the library. I was no longer alone there. A man stood at one of the windows, pushing the muslin shade aside to gaze out at the view over the garden and mountainside.

My heartbeat quickened. Could it be M. du Herle who had returned? But why did I tremble so at the thought of meeting him again? Perhaps it was that I hadn’t laid eyes on a man in weeks, in spite of Thérion’s visits in the dark.

I was almost beside him before he heard my soft footsteps on the rug. He stood up from his position of leaning over the windowsill, turned to face me, and leaned back against the sill in a languid manner, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world for him to encounter strange women in remote châteaux in the forest. I ought to have known at once it wasn’t M. du Herle, for I remembered then that M. du Herle had dressed in dark and sober clothes. This gentleman wore a suit of pale lilac embroidered with gold threads and had clearly lavished some attention on his appearance. He raised an eyebrow as I approached and quirked up a corner of his mouth in a half-smile. Though he must have been five or ten years older than I was, his face had a softness and feminine beauty to it, fair and slightly fey, that made him seem young.

“Are you Belle-Âme?” he asked. He looked me up and down. “I think it can only be you.”

“Monsieur?” I wasn’t sure whether to feel offended or not by the way his eyes lingered over my figure.

“Donatien, at your service.” He bowed. “I saw Aurore earlier, and she said she’d christened you with that nom de guerre. I should have said simply Belle, myself. You are the Savoyard girl, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m Savoyard.”

“So Harlequin’s lured a mountain poetess to us. Well done. Enchanting. I’ve been known to indulge in the occasional bit of verse myself.”

“Oh, have you published any books?”

“Me? Oh no. It wouldn’t do for someone in my position. That looks too much like work. It’d spoil my reputation, you know.”

So he was an aristocrat. Since he already knew my origins, I decided I might as well speak openly. “I don’t have a reputation to worry about, but I think I should feel embarrassed to have my poems published. It’s not that I’m ashamed of them – well, not of all of them. It’s only, I’ve put so much of myself into some of them. I’d feel … exposed, I think.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Exposed? They bare your soul, you mean. Luckily I’ve no soul to worry about being revealed through my writing. What I seem on the surface is exactly what I am. But I write my verses chiefly for the amusement of my friends, whenever I’m struck with a fit of thinking myself witty.”

We talked about our favorite poems and strolled around the library, pausing at volumes that one or the other of us had read. He favored light and humorous verses and was a great admirer of Molière’s comedies. As we moved on from one of the bookcases, he placed a hand on the small of my back. I didn’t know the habits of aristocrats, except from books in which they tended to be always either debauched or else romantic heroes. Thérion, with his nocturnal habits, could hardly be a typical example of his class. But it seemed to me Donatien was taking a liberty, so I moved away.

An inscrutable expression came over his face. Then an instant later he was pleasant again. “What do you think so far of the Castle of Enlightenment, our Forteresse des Lumières?”

“The … what? You mean Boisaulne?”

“It’s my own little nickname for the place, the Castle of Enlightenment, because the intellectual lights of Paris come here to take in the mountain air. It’s a funny place. I’ve heard the most rational talk here in summers past. It makes me think of what Saint Paul says, When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

He quoted the passage in Latin, and I translated it out loud into French to make sure I’d understood.

“Very good,” he said. “Why, you’ve studied. I’ve an uncle who’s an abbé, who insisted I learn. It wasn’t entirely dull, reading in the Vulgate. Extraordinary what licentiousness some of the men and women of scripture get up to. But at any rate, I think of what Saint Paul said, since children and families and all the irrational business that goes along with them are non grata here. And there’s the other rule, that we don’t speak during the day of the things we do in the night.”

“I hadn’t heard that one.”

He waved it off. “You’ll hear it. The point is, none of our talk is supposed to be shaped by the accidents of birth or fortune, or the vagaries of fate, since we leave our names and identities behind when we come here. We’re stripped down to our naked ideas and intellects – ‘exposed,’ as you say. And yet, and yet …” He shook a reproving finger at the fireplace across the room. “There’s so little that’s rational about the fact that this place exists at all. It’s mad and magical. We have these odd rules, and none of us has ever seen the Marquis. He could be any one of us in reality. He could be me, couldn’t he? And no one would be any the wiser. So despite the idea that our talk should be enlightening, our ideas all brought out from obscurity and examined pitilessly from every angle, the place and the people in it are shrouded in mystery. There’s a dark side to the Castle of Enlightenment. It’s my sense of irony that makes me take pleasure in calling it that. You see?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Never mind.” He laughed. “It’s not important.”

I examined Donatien anew and tried to imagine him as Thérion, my Beast who came to me in the night. But his voice was different, more purring than Thérion’s. Somehow, too, I realized I had been picturing Thérion with an ugly face, nothing like the fair, angular one before me. I excused myself to go back upstairs to my chambers to rest before dressing for dinner. At least now I would have company to dress for.