CHAPTER 12

I drifted with the tide, taking lovers for pleasure and profit, to supply my needs, and feed my children. But, in moments of quiet, when I was being completely honest with myself, I often lamented that there was no real love in my life except that which my children gave me. The faces of the men were always shifting, blurring, changing, as they came and went in and out my bedroom door; there was never one steady, solid masculine presence in my life. As much as I embraced my freedom, I sometimes found myself longing for a husband—someone rich, good, and kind, who would truly love me and keep me safe, someone I could still be myself with and not lose myself in. Truth be known, I think it was security as represented by a husband that I was truly longing for, more than any actual man.

Though I readily embraced the new philosophy of living only for the moment, there were times when I could not help but think of the future. The lines I saw on my face when I sat down at my dressing table with it scrubbed clean, ready for a fresh application of powder and paint, made me think about it.

I was now running with a pack of girls nearer my daughter’s age than my own. I was thirty, a full ten years older than Theresa, and some of the reigning beauties of the day were as young as seventeen. I was living my life at an exhausting pace, a dizzying whirl that stilled only in slumber, falling into bed at dawn and rolling out of it at noon to breakfast and a stinging douche calculated to keep my womb empty, spending the afternoon shopping and socializing in sidewalk cafés over cups of coffee or chocolate, and getting ready to start all over again, to dance and love through another reckless night. This way of life, I knew, could not go on forever; there is only so much candlelight, cosmetics, charm, and bedchamber talents can do. Time was running out for me and it was foolish to deny it.

* * *

I thought my worries were over when Theresa introduced me to Paul Barras, the new man in power, the most formidable of the five directors of France’s latest form of government—The Directory. He was forty, tall, dark, and handsome, and very rich, but he was also dishonest, debauched, and diabolical. I soon found out not only was I playing with fire; I was also sleeping with the Devil on his black satin bed in a chamber of mirrors, the better to show him my every weakness, failing, and flaw.

But when one makes a bargain with the Devil one had best keep it. Both my children were completing their educations in the finest schools. Eugène was intent upon a military career and Hortense was the darling of Madame Campan’s school, delighting all with her sweet temperament and talent for music and painting. I had a house of my own on the rue Chantereine and was regarded as the lady of Barras’s own town and country abodes where I reigned as hostess over every gathering. I had clothes and jewels, the most exquisite décor and rosewood furniture upholstered in sky-blue and rose silk, Etruscan urns filled with fresh flowers every day, crystal chandeliers, silver plate and crystal goblets for my table, servants, a personal maid, a carriage and coachman, and finely bred horses, everything I could possibly want. All my bills were paid without a murmur or even a lift of an eyebrow. Barras never called me a spendthrift or accused me of being lavish; he merely paid my bills without comment. It was heavenly!

I should have been happy, but I wasn’t. Barras often expected more of me than I wished to give. He was not above sharing me with other men, to cement a business deal, or just for the pleasure of watching. He liked to watch and he liked to have me watch when he bedded other women, and sometimes even other men or young boys. My stomach would turn sickly somersaults whenever I was called into his bedchamber to be his audience, surrounded by mirrors so I would not miss anything, always dreading the moment when he would beckon for me to take his place or come and join them on the black satin bed. I tried to pretend to be sophisticated and blasé, to feign enjoyment, but I hated every moment of it. I couldn’t bear what the mirrors were showing me; I never hated my reflection more. Such evenings could never end soon enough to suit me, but they always seemed to go on forever.

Whenever I tried to decline or showed even a sign of hesitation, Barras’s anger would flare. He would show me the Devil hiding inside the man and remind me just how much I owed to him. He was determined to break down every single one of my inhibitions, to make me just like him. He would see me with women, dwarves, giants, or even Negroes if such was his pleasure, and it was.

He even ruled my wardrobe. Clothes, he said, did not exist for me unless he said so; I would wear them only when he allowed it. Even my transparent white muslin gowns were judged too modest by Barras and he would have me parade around nude before his guests, wearing nothing but a smile, the jewels he bought me, or a chaplet of roses in my hair.

There were days when Theresa, Fortunée, and I would all pile into a carriage, naked save for sandals, shady broad-brimmed hats, and parasols to protect our skin from the sun, and drive out into the country to picnic with Barras and his guests. There would be gauzy tents and canopies set up to further protect our complexions, but nothing to preserve our dignity; that was already lost. We would play blindman’s buff and whichever man caught us won our body as his prize; we would never know who was on top of us, inside us, until the blindfold was ripped off at the climactic moment. Other afternoons there were Barras’s famous naked hunts with the gentlemen in dapper riding vestments mounted on horses pursuing us as we ran naked through the trees. When they caught us, we were theirs to do with as they pleased. Some nights we dressed as Vestal Virgins and told bawdy fortunes for Barras’s guests and promptly dropped our veils and white robes to make them come true. Other nights we painted our bodies white and powdered our hair and posed like living statues. When Barras snapped his fingers we would come to life, writhing lewdly, shedding our scanty sheer white draperies as we danced. Then the orgy would begin.

I was not as uninhibited as Theresa and Fortunée, who would happily walk down the street naked, but I tried. I drank champagne to give me courage because it went straight to my head, quicker than wine. Drunk, I could be free of my inhibitions, free of my conscience, free of me; I could become the woman Barras wanted me to be.

There were mornings when I would wake up to the warm feel of sunlight on my face and the dew on my back. For one sweet moment I would think I was back in Martinique. Then I would sit up and look around me and find myself naked in Barras’s garden, surrounded by wine bottles and other slumbering bodies, my clothes nowhere in sight. I would fight back the bile that rose in my throat as I remembered the night before when, to please my all-powerful protector, Theresa, Fortunée, and I had come in to supper nude. It had become something of a ritual. We would go around the table, which seemed a mile long, bending over and dipping a breast into each guest’s champagne glass, then offering it to him, or her, to suckle, letting them draw us onto their laps if they wished to fondle, or enjoy like attentions from us. I despised myself and how far I had fallen! I was never lewd before I met Barras!

While society might have celebrated Barras’s mistress, I loathed and despised her. I was all for fun and free and easy love, but this was a sort of servitude that had nothing to do with love and it certainly was not fun, though everyone else seemed to think it was. I often wondered if I was the only one who was pretending. I had become someone I had never meant to be. But I didn’t know how to break the chains. I would be ruined without Barras. He ruled the republic and society, king in all but name, and I was his uncrowned queen.

Maybe this was what Euphemia David had meant all along? I wasn’t married to Barras, at least not yet, but he did cover my body with diamonds and ardent kisses. I was his consort—famous, celebrated, talked about, admired, and imitated. When he claimed me as his own I thought all my worries were past, but that happiness, hard won, fast paled when I found out the price I had to pay for it—the degradation and humiliation of being passed around and partnered with those I would never have chosen of my own free will. In private I did shed many, many tears, and yes, I never thought I would say it, but I did miss Martinique. Sometimes I revisited it in my dreams. But there was no going back. That life was gone forever.

I kept Aimee’s miniature in a drawer now, facedown. I didn’t want her to see what I had become. She would be so ashamed of me.