IV. A Breaking Window

Dulcie gave a deep curtsy on Friday morning as Mrs Frothingham had instructed—then lost her balance and pitched into the bluestocking’s bosom. The lady pushed her off. “Who taught you to curtsy like that? You must put a leg back to balance yourself, then lean slightly forward. Like this.” She performed the curtsy with a sweeping curve of her arm. “Now do it.”

Dulcie tried, and failed again. For one thing, she was hampered by the costume Mrs Frothingham had made her wear: a striped poplin gown, a pair of dimity pockets, a black silk bib, a gauze cap with a lace border. “I’m not a real maid,” she declared. “Miss Mary does the greeting. I just clean up a little.”

“Really?” Mrs Frothingham said, lifting an eyebrow. “But you make an iced plum cake. That’s what I borrowed you for. And to polish the silver and the plate. I’ve royalty coming for tea. Cook is off to bury an aunt.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dulcie did an awkward half curtsy, and the mistress groaned.

A barrage of instructions followed: how to polish this, how to shine that, how to scour the pans, how to mend the fire. Then, thankfully, the lady left to tend to “business in town. I must leave you alone.” She warned, however, that she would return within two hours. “Foundling Hospital,” Dulcie heard her tell a chairman.

“Alone” meant two footmen who sat down at once to play at cards, and maids of various shapes and sizes who were at work washing, ironing, scrubbing, and gossiping. One of them deigned to help Dulcie make a fire. Another slapped down a pair of bowls to mix batter in. While the cake baked over the kitchen hearth, Dulcie moved with a feather duster about the house. “I was told to dust,” she fibbed to a suspicious parlourmaid.

Mine, all mine, she imagined as she floated and dusted past Chippendale tables and cabinets, pink-and-green satin settees; past the open door to the wine cellar—a red-faced footman was coming up with a bottle in his hand. “None of your business,” he said, though she hadn’t spoken. (Miss Mary would be amused to hear about that.) Her duster tinkled the glass droplets of the candelabrum that overhung the zebra-wood dining table. Polished stairs led her up to the bluestocking’s bedchamber, her recipe still in hand—oohhh. For Dulcie, bedchambers were the heartbeat of a house, the secret soul. It was in the bedchamber that Miss Mary did her writing, those not-so-secret revolutionary words about the rights of woman. Though of late she did more tearing up than writing down, and Dulcie knew why. The only one who did not know was the mistress herself.

This bedchamber did not disappoint: a dressing table with a hundred coloured vials and bottles, brushes, combs, and looking glasses. A basket with stuffed animals: monkey, rabbit, mouse. A child’s hobby horse that looked worn and bent from riding. A birdcage with a dozen red-and-yellow stuffed birds on gold perches. The four-poster bed with pink silk curtains and a pink embroidered counterpane, where Mrs Frothingham would bring her lovers. She flung herself full length upon it, breathed in its rosewater fragrance, imagined a dark-haired man leaning over her, whispering, You’re beautiful.

Would anyone ever say that about her round, freckled apple face? She was beginning to doubt. None of the tradesmen she dealt with were interested in her face.

She heard a scraping sound and jumped off the bed. Ha! it was only an ugly little pug dog, skittering across the hardwood floor; a long-haired silvery-grey cat, pushing its head against a wooden stool.

Papers littered the mahogany writing desk—mostly letters, written on scented paper. Dulcie examined them, careful not to get them out of order. One was from Talleyrand: I will see you Tomorrow. Be ready with the Object of my Heart. What object might that be? One was an unfinished note: Dear M. de Charpentier, I must beg you to withdraw your interest in me. I have been unable to discern a single thought in common between us. Your incursions on my person have become Most Disagreeable. Now I must ask you to

The letter ended there. Dulcie could only imagine what the lady must ask him to do. To disappear, most likely. She opened a stack of letters from one Mr Elwell H: Madam: I might Venture to Presume to Grosvenor Square tomorrow morning. Or may I flatter myself with the Hopes of seeing you in the Park or Gardens or at the Exhibition, or at the Opera some Evening, or at Ranelagh?

At the bottom of this letter the bluestocking had scrawled Over my dead body!

Most intriguing of all was not a letter but a document in a lower drawer. It was from the Foundling Hospital, where Dulcie had accompanied Miss Mary one autumn morning. Dulcie had been moved by the squall of motherless babes, and the poor women crowding the entrance with unwanted infants. “Seduced and reduced,” Miss Mary had said, and Dulcie vowed right there and then to avoid the advances of the smelly tallow chandler’s apprentice who’d been staring at her bosom.

The document was brief. It read: Brought in this day of March 7 in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and seventy-nine a healthy baby girl, aged ten days; green eyes, red hair. It was signed by that same Isobel Jane Amelia Frothingham. Dulcie subtracted on her fingers. Ten days from March 7 would be today’s date: February 25. Thirteen years ago. And today Mrs Frothingham had gone to visit the Foundling Hospital.... Why, she was going to visit the child on its thirteenth birthday! Which one of the lovers, Dulcie wondered, had fathered that child?

The secret might lie in the drawer. She lifted out another packet of letters, tied in pink ribbon. Then, hearing a male voice in the hall, she crammed papers and letters back inside, and tidied up the bed. The red-faced footman leered as she plumped up a fat pillow. “I don’t think you should be here,” he said, and sticking up her chin, she fussed a moment longer with the bed curtains. Then she plunked down the pillow and walked slowly past the fellow, not deigning to meet his lustful eye.

But, ha! if Mrs Frothingham had a secret, so now did Dulcie. One never knew when it might prove useful.

It was not royalty come for tea the next day, Dulcie discovered as she brought out the silver tea service and the muffins and the plum cake, but that lame-foot Bishop Talleyrand, along with the red-haired Monsieur Saint Something and the bishop’s lady friend, Madame de Genlis. They were seated in the drawing room that Dulcie had swept and polished till her fingernails broke off.

Madame de Genlis grimaced as Dulcie gave her awkward curtsy, but a smile formed on her lips as she bit into the iced plum cake. “I should take you home with me,” she said in her French accent. Now it was Dulcie’s turn to grimace: why would Dulcie want to go to bloody France? Though she might like to see the French ladies’ gowns. Madame was wearing a low-cut scarlet gown sewn with small diamonds, and around her neck, she announced, a stone from the Bastille. She’d had it polished and set in gold.

“Ah, to have such a memento,” Mrs Frothingham breathed inside her Grecian gown, and said she was thrilled to think of Madame’s bravery in procuring such a stone. Madame said, oh no, it was Monsieur Talleyrand had procured it for her, and the bishop winked and looked smug. Mrs Frothingham poured champagne in Venetian-red glasses and the bishop got up to toast his hostess’s beauty. When she must be forty-five years of age or more, Dulcie thought, observing the crinkles beside her eyes, the pleated lines under her nose.

“If only we could start a rebellion here,” said Mrs Frothingham, patting the red cockade in her hair, “and eliminate Mad George and his frumpy queen. What relevance have they to our lives? I say, Up with the People!” She lifted her glass high; the champagne bubbled over the top and between her upthrust breasts.

“Le peuple, la patrie!” Madame cried, hoisting her glass. Monsieur Somebody raised his glass, but slowly, Dulcie noted, like he wasn’t wholly in agreement.

Dulcie was sent into the pantry for a second platter of cake, and on her return heard the group discussing the theft of The Nightmare. This was a subject beginning to weary Dulcie. She had seen a cartoon of the stolen painting in the papers, and she did so hope the party wouldn’t mention that horrid little goblin that was squatting on the sleeping woman’s bosom. Or she might throw up right here in the drawing room.

But too late. Here was Mrs Frothingham describing the painting in sick detail, and the Frenchwoman interrupting with “Ooh! Ooh! La! Quel horreur!... I should like to paint my own version,” she cried, “with a man lying back on the couch and a female goat gnawing on his breastbone. See how he likes that, eh! I’m thinking I might write a piece about it. To sympathize with the thief of the painting.”

“Touché!” said the bluestocking, laughing out loud, choking on her bubbly, wiping her lips and neck with her serviette.

“Who do you think stole it?” asked Bishop Talleyrand, leaning back in his gilded chair, slurping his wine, his big, misshapen foot stuck out on a stool.

“Mr Fuseli has thrown young Peale in Newgate,” said Mrs Frothingham. “But in my opinion, Mr Peale had nothing to do with it.” She lowered her voice. “Personally, I think it was a woman who stole it.”

“Non, vraiment? Quelle bravoure!” cried Madame, clapping her hands.

“Hmm,” said the bishop, grinning, “a woman getting back at the fellow for getting her with child?” He sucked on the knuckles of his left hand, then coughed. He knew a thing or two himself about child-getting, Dulcie had heard.

“Exactly,” said the hostess. “And we all know whose child he begot and then denied. Though I understand he pays the rent for her house.”

“Ah,” said Madame de Genlis, fanning herself vigorously. “A sure sign of guilt. And is this woman capable of theft? That is, alone, without male help of some kind?”

“No, she would not.” It was Monsieur Somebody speaking, his face as dark red as his thatch of hair. His tone was sharp; they all turned to stare at him. Madame, like the bishop, was smirking; Mrs Frothingham, too.

These women eat men, Dulcie thought. They are chewing on the plum cake like it’s a male heart.

There was a silence, and then Mrs Frothingham laughed her full-throated laugh. “We did not mention any names, did we? How then can you speak for her?” Madame laughed, too, and stroked her Bastille stone. “Oh,” said the bluestocking, “we all know who it is Monsieur St Pierre loves, do we not? I heard he has vowed to protect her to the death—even to help her lover escape his prison. What do you say to that, monsieur?”

“I did not say that!” cried St Pierre (Dulcie had the name right now), turning a hot pink. Couldn’t he see, Dulcie thought, that they were laughing at him? But true, she had happened to overhear a plan of escape when Mrs Guilfoy dropped by Store Street for tea.

“Help,” he croaked, “but not help to escape. Why would I endanger myself?”

“Of course not,” said Mrs Frothingham in a sugary voice, like she was speaking to a child. “You would never sacrifice your neck.Why else did you escape from France?”

“But I support, well, the ideals of the Revolution!” said St Pierre, colouring again, looking at the bishop for agreement. “Even though I am an émigré, I am only from the petite aristocratie. I had an English grandparent, recently passed on. I support the people, absolument.” He looked again at Talleyrand, and the bishop cried, “Mais oui!”

“A wise decision indeed,” said Mrs Frothingham, patting her cockade again. “And the lovely Mrs Guilfoy was already here in England, was she not? With her pale young artist? He, too, is a close friend of yours?”

She was playing cat and mouse, Dulcie saw. She was trying to pull out secrets—though Dulcie wagered she would keep her own secret hidden to the death. Did even the child’s father know about the girl in the Foundling Hospital? And what would happen if he found out? That could open up a Pandora’s box! Dulcie would like to see that.

St Pierre was a shiny red, from his nose to his scarlet stockings. He was stammering something but could not get it out. Madame de Genlis said it for him. “Because he is a gentleman. A gentleman in love would give up everything for his lady. Even when what he must give up is his lady. Is it not so, monsieur?”

St Pierre’s lips quivered; he nodded.

A footman announced the arrival of Monsieur le Comte Alfred de Charpentier, and the fun was over with St Pierre. Now the new arrival would be given the inquisition. Though Mrs Frothingham did not seem overly pleased to see him. Dulcie remembered that letter she’d read of rejection—had he received it yet? But the bluestocking was polite in front of company. This was an age of “make-believe,” according to Miss Mary, who spoke her thoughts plainly, without all the crooking of little fingers, so to speak.

Now Dulcie had to bring in cake when there was no more to be had. She whispered this embarrassing fact into the hostess’s ear.

“Then find something else and be quick about it,” the bluestocking snapped.

Dulcie marched back down into the kitchen and had a shouting match with the parlourmaid, who was munching the last biscuit in the house, and marched up again, with empty hands. No wonder the lady took in lovers, she thought. For here was the French count, arguing that he would send Dulcie out to the market for a cake and fruit—he held out a handful of coins.

Dulcie was not pleased. She could see the sleet coming down beyond the window. She had come to bake a cake, not to run here and there at some foreign count’s whim.

“Here,” the man said, pushing the coins into her hand. He looked at her, like he expected a curtsy. She nodded briefly and ran down the steps. She would see that there was a cake for herself as well. She was not going to all this trouble for nothing.

Isobel loosened her stays and sank gratefully onto the sofa; kicked off the satin slippers and let her legs splay out. God, but it felt good! Visitors, servants gone—that impudent young housemaid departed after dropping one of her new blue Wedgwood plates—a hairline crack. No tears, just proud, like her mistress with that big, demanding book of hers that Isobel would never read. Isobel was not to be told what to think. She had worked too long, too hard for where she was now. For what she was.

Her own mother, sending her out her first four years to a wet nurse on a pig farm in York. Her father in debtor’s prison when they brought her home, just in time to see the furniture carried out of the house: the Linnell dining table her mother mourned like a lost child, the flowered draperies purchased from the Spitalfields weavers. A tiny girl in petticoats too big for her small frame, she had stood, mute, and listened to her mother howl. Right then as she huddled, forgotten, like a child’s toy not worth the bother to retrieve, Isobel had determined that no one would take anything more away from her.

A pretty face and body helped to achieve that goal. It was her aging lover Robert who set her up in this house, and when he died, willed it to her. After that it was a series of men, all wanting a part of her: body, brain, her creative self—for hadn’t all her friends lauded her published romance? Mary Wollstonecraft’s review in the the Analytical Review was not so favourable. Yet Isobel saved face, invited Mary to her routs. She would offer a copy of her poems. The authoress might be useful, who knew?

Isobel revenged herself on any adversaries by inviting them into her den. Once inside, she bent them to her will or confined them. She had learned that from watching the spider. A child at the wet nurse’s, she had seen a spider weave a fly into her web, squeeze it in spun silver, watch it buzz then slowly wither.

This very evening she had been the spider. The bold Alfred de Charpentier stayed on after the others had taken their leave and triumphantly pulled a bottle of her favorite Bordeaux from a pocket of his greatcoat. “Pray, remain then,” she said with her slyest smile, “we will make a toast to the Revolution.” Of course she knew that the count was afraid of the Revolution. He had lost an estate and all its treasures in Normandy. But she wanted to see his hypocrisy at work.

“Ah, bien sûr, la Révolution!” the hypocrite cried, and touched his glass to hers. He leaned towards her on the sofa. His fleshy lips touched her neck. She wiped the moist spot with a handkerchief and passed a plate of the tasteless cakes the housemaid had brought back. He waved them away—it was not cakes he wanted. He swilled down two more glasses of wine, breathed deeply for a minute or two, his eyes bulging in his large head, then lunged sideways at her, knocking her back onto a cushion. “Aha!”

But she did not cry out, no, she was still the spider.

She let him wriggle his body onto hers, unlace her bodice, and bury his ugly head there. He drooled onto her skin. “Wait!” she cried, “not here. The bed—it is far more comfortable. We’ll go up to my bedchamber. But first, Champagne! It’s in the cellar. Here,” she said when he eased up his big soft body and she gasped in a breath, “take a candle. Turn right at the bottom. The Champagne will be on your left.”

He stood there, huge, clumsy, red-eyed like a fly, in the candlelight. The golden hearts gleamed on his red-heeled shoes. “You’ll find it worth your trouble,” she teased. He wheeled about and stumbled towards the stairwell under her guidance. He never felt the thread she had drawn about his body, a thread she was about to cut. He looked back once more and she blew him a kiss, then shut the door behind him. Bolted it. Ha!

But that door did not lead to the wine cellar. There was no wine on that level, only steps leading to a door that opened to the outside. The fly was out in the cold. A lucky escape, though he didn’t realize it. She heard him buzz a while, and pound on the door. Howl his muted howl. Until finally the noise stopped and she was free to go to bed.

Now, blessedly alone, her decision made to take the child—she would fetch Annie tomorrow—she went upstairs to the bedchamber, unlaced her stays, and naked, her body gratefully free, slipped between the pink satin sheets. Her Persian cat leaped up to nestle in beside her, his grey fur long and luxurious against her bare hip, his purr soothing, somnolent. She sipped the last of the Bordeaux, nibbled on a dried apricot, and read the first chapter of Charlotte Smith’s Desmond—a new book, fresh from the publisher. It was an epistolary novel like hers: she loved the sequence of personal letters. Already the writer had captured the reader: ...I have determined to relinquish the dangerous indulgence of contemplating the perfections of an object that can never be mine. Ah, pray, what object? Why dangerous? Would the speaker return? The writer knew how to toss out the hook.

She took another gulp of the wine and read on to the end of the second page. By now she had read of Geraldine. But is it possible she can love him? Then the print began to blur; the cat’s purring dulled her brain. She blew out her candle, snuggled deep into the covers, and felt sleep wash over her like a soft sea wave....

At first the crackling and crashing noise was part of Isobel’s dream. She moaned out loud; the cat knocked over her book and jumped off the bed. She opened her eyes wide and reached for the candle, but it had burned to a stub. It was not a dream. It was—aahh! her chamber window breaking! Horrified, she saw the frame lifted away with a crack. And as she screamed for her absent servants someone entered; a hand grabbed hers. She looked up at a fevered face: “What are you doing here? Go. Go!”

Dulcie had forgot not only her recipe for iced plum cake but the pan she’d baked it in, and Miss Mary ordered her back to Grosvenor Square to retrieve it. Grumpy from being waked up before six, Dulcie protested. “But the servants won’t be there yet! There was no one but Mrs Frothingham when I left. How will I get in?”

“You’ll find a way,” said Miss Mary. So Dulcie was up at the crack of dawn with no expectations beyond a miserable walk through the rank, rainy town. She had no money for a chair, and the mistress, whose nose was deep into a book, offered none.

At least Dulcie was able to get in the house. The cook was hurrying down the street with a dozen keys hanging at her waist and a squirming sack over one fleshy shoulder. “Eels,” she said, “I were lucky to come by ’em. Missus Frothingham is partial to ’em, y’know. I was buryin’ me old aunt. The mistress borrowed ye again for the day, did she?”

Without waiting for an answer she thrust a large iron key in the door, turned the creaking lock, and lunged in. Her sack of eels made a mewling noise as they struck the side of the door.

“Missus Frothingham? I got eels. I got raspberry muffins, too,” the cook cried and started upstairs towards the bedchamber. “Mercy, she’s let the fires go out,” she complained as she heaved her heavy body up the steps. “’Tis cold in here. Now we’ll have to work in the damp till we get ’em going again. Housekeeper’s late, I see.”

Dulcie despised eels—the thought of the creatures slithering through her belly made her nauseous. She hurried down the back steps into the kitchen to find her baking pan and recipe. The scoured pan was on the table where she’d left it, but the recipe was nowhere to be found. Then she recalled she might have left it on the bluestocking’s writing desk when she leafed through the letters. Though how was she to explain how it got there? If the footman had told....

“Oh lud,” she moaned, “oh saints, help me now! Mrs Frothingham will tell the mistress I been minding someone else’s business and she’ll give me a talking to’ll turn me deaf.”

Upstairs there was a scream. A long on-and-on scream that only grew louder and longer as Dulcie hurried up to the drawing room and then up again to the bedchamber, where the scream had reached such a high pitch it would wake the dead.

But the dead was not to be waked: she saw that at once. It was a sight such as she’d never in her nineteen years come upon and hoped never to again. A woman, naked as the morning light, her hair hanging off the edge of the mattress with its pink satin sheets, one arm trailing on the floor; and squatting on her breasts a stuffed monkey with a grin on its raggedy brown face. At her feet a hobby horse with a wide-open, grimacing mouth.

Dulcie opened her own mouth to let out a scream, but it crept back into her throat and threatened to choke her.