Goddess

Prophet of doom, by the look. First man I’ve sighted in two months, and what do they send me? I’m not entirely sure it was worth the wait. Still, I like to see a new face, and you’re handsome enough. For a priest.

What a waste.

But then, you could say the same of me.

Did the Abbess send you? That’d be just like her. Can’t they let me rest?
Requiescat in pace
, as it were.

I suppose they’ve told you to take my Confession, have they?

I must be dying. I thought as much.

Sit down, then. Sit down. Let’s get this over with. I’m afraid I can’t offer you a glass of cognac, but you look more like a mother’s milk fellow to me.

Did they warn you about me, Father, before they pushed you through that door? Have you heard all the gossip—in the cloisters, in the kitchens, all over Provence? I know what they’re saying. I know what you’re thinking, too. The oldest story of all—scarlet woman turns her face from sin at the end of her days, takes the veil, finds humility and salvation.

Pig’s arse.

I’m sorry to disappoint you but I’m not really a nun. I’m only here for my health—fat lot of good it’s done me. So this won’t be a nun’s Confession you hear. If I can get up out of this damned—sorry, Father—this bed, I’ll go to Mass, like everyone, but for the beauty of it, the wonder—for that moment, when they hold the chalice aloft, of connection with Heaven. For the drama of it, you might say.

That’s the point, isn’t it? Otherwise nobody would bother, surely, week in and week out. Don’t scoff at me like I’m some kind of heretic. We all need a little music in our lives, the touch of
tragédie
—mysteries and soaring voices and a shot of sunlight through blue glass. It’s a spectacle, more like the old days at the Palais-Royal than you’d care to admit, Father—a reflection of the moment the orchestra begins to tune up and the house falls silent, ready to believe anything that happens on that stage. There’s magic in it, in the ritual and the riches, that I love. It has nothing, unfortunately, to do with faith.

That’s why I like it here. It’s comforting. My city friends would laugh their hats off if they heard me say that. If I could laugh myself, without coughing up my entrails, I would. Here in this white cell I have found comfort. A chair. A bed. Treetops through a high window. Bells calling everyone to Vespers. The soft sounds of sweeping. It’s not comfortable, but it is comforting. There’s a difference, do you see?

The heart—perhaps the soul, I’m not sure—is at rest. Not peace. Oh no. My body, faithless thing, aches and rumbles and twists in pain in the cold hours of the morning. But the essence of me is soothed. Here.

Or at least it was until you turned up.

So. Brace yourself. What shall I confess? Over which of my many sins would you like to salivate?

Good grief, man—suck those lips in any further and you’ll swallow them. You’ve a mouth on you like a hen’s backside.

Not quite what you expected, eh?

Good.

Now, then—how old do you think I am?

I beg your pardon?

If I wasn’t dying, I’d kill you for that. How absurd. I’m no older than you—thirty-three or so. No older than Christ.

Do I look that bad? I have no idea. They don’t go in for mirrors much here, I’m afraid. I must look a fright.

Death’s door. Heaven’s gate. Maybe. You’re all so certain. But my life has been a series of slender escapes. I am famously elusive. Are you listening? Famous, I said. Elusive. Pay attention. I might elude you all—elude death—yet again. I’ve done it before, many times, you know. Although I agree it doesn’t look likely.

I’ve always managed to escape somehow, but never without a scar or two. Some wounds have been mortal—that’s obvious now—deeper than I cared to admit, bleeding away quietly inside so that nobody notices except, of course, me.

And God. Yes, if you insist.

Are you writing this down? All of it? Very good. It’s about time somebody did. Here, nobody listens to a word I say. Perhaps they think I’m making it up. But I couldn’t. Nobody could—not this life. It is known throughout Europe, if I say so myself. The duels, the stardom, the Opéra triumphs, all the escapades. The escapes. You can read about me in the pamphlets, any day, on the streets of Paris.

At least you could—then.

I was a star, once. Did they tell you that? I was a goddess.

Or am I just another sinner to you?

I was a monster, once. That was my real sin. That was my downfall.

Well, shut up and I’ll tell you.

Act 1, Scene 1
Recitative

W
HERE DO YOU WANT ME TO START
? Do I have to confess my entire sordid life, or do you just want the highlights?

Very well. We begin at the beginning. You’re a stickler for detail and process, I can see that. You sure you’re not a Jesuit?

So. I was born—

Eh? Yes, all right, if you insist. I was born, like all women, with the stain of Eve, with the Original Sin imprinted on my body. From that moment I was doomed.

Is that what you want to hear, Father? Is that why they sent you?

Always please the audience, that’s my motto. Give them what they want, or they’ll tear you limb from limb. You think you’re special—appointed by God to be my audience today, whether you like it or not. But you’re no different to the standing-room crowd at the Opéra or the punters in the cask-room at the Saint Nicholas tavern. Perhaps a little less forgiving, and certainly more sedate—but I’ll put on a show, if that’s what you’re after. If you want a doomed heroine, you have found her.

I digress. You wish to start with Original Sin, pedant that you are, and so I shall, though the original sin was not mine.

I was born. Don’t ask me how, since I have no mother. Don’t ask me why that is, either. Perhaps she ran off. Perhaps it killed her, bringing me into the world. I have no idea, and nobody ever bothered to tell me. There was just the old man. He was hard, my father. No harder than most, I suppose, but possibly drunker and a little too free with his hands. In every sense.

But, by God, the man had such a way with the blade. People mistook him, in an inn or in the street, for some kind of oaf, and in a way he was. Face like a pudding. I get my looks from my mother’s side, obviously. He was big, with fists like ham hocks. But I’ve never seen anyone with a faster counter-riposte.

He’d been a
mousquetaire
in his youth, always off to the wars, with the odd month in prison after tavern brawls and early-morning duels. He was of the old school, of Viggiani and Grassi and the Italian thrust, long after it had gone out of fashion. Too shaky and too drunk for duels and fine sword work, of course, by the time I came along, though he still loved a mêlée and could stop a horse from bolting with a fist between the eyes. I saw him do it once. Mind you, he ended up flat on his back. By then he worked at the palace—the old palace, that was, until we all moved to Versailles.

He was a clerk, a dogsbody, really, for Comte d’Armagnac, the King’s Master of Horse. God knows why. They detested each other. They loved each other, too, had been through wars together. Men are like that, I’ve noticed. So are opera singers.

Papa spent his life slapping and shouting at grizzling little boys until they were fit to wear the King’s uniform as he once had. He flogged them until they were strong enough to hold a musket or wave a fan over the royal forehead, to be a page, a flunkey, in the presence of our Lord—Louis, I mean, not … Sorry, Father. You see what a sinner I am?

Where was I? Ah, yes, Louis.

O, how the Sun King illuminated every corner of our lives. Hard to imagine it now, I know. But then—ah, then—those boys would have killed to enter his service, died for him, given anything to wear his
fleurs-de-lis
.

I dressed as a boy, too—except on Sundays, you’ll be pleased to know. I trained in the dust and the mud with the lads until our toes were bruised, our thighs shuddered, and our arms could barely hold the blade straight. They taught us our letters and our Latin. They read out grand poems from the ancients and stories about Charlemagne and Philip the Fair and Louis the Fat—or was it Francis the Feeble? I don’t recall. The chapters turned endlessly, that’s all I remember. They bashed us if we fell asleep.

We rode every morning and every night, and in between I trained the horses on the long lead, running them into a lather. The boys learned dressage—I never did. Waste of a good horse, my father said, although he did teach me to ride as if for battle, with blade in hand and a short rein. We drilled and drilled, weaving in and out—stopping, turning, charging. That was my favourite part. Sword high, full canter, shouting.

Everyone else’s horse was from the King’s stable—mine was a clapped-out cast-off that kicked like a fury. When we raced to the Trianon in the dawn light, that poor old horse always came clear last. I didn’t mind—I rode alone along those lines of coppery trees, with only the odd statue for company. If I close my eyes, even now, I can see it. Smell it. Damp earth. New clipped grass. Horsehair. My own sweat. My own breath.

Papa stood in the school courtyard waiting for me to come home, half an hour after everyone else, and he’d lash me for being late. On that soft skin behind the knees, so tender it tears and bleeds under the whip. Never whipped the horse, mind. Just me.

But otherwise I was just another face. The schoolmasters didn’t mind. Perhaps they were scared of my father. They taught us how to bow and dance a gavotte and keep our muskets clean. At night the boys learned other, rougher, lessons in the darkness, and I—well, I learned I had to be tougher and faster than them all.

We fought with fists and knives and blades, bleeding from slashes and blisters and the odd swipe of Papa’s knuckles. We ate like soldiers, squatting on the ground, and occasionally we slept like that, too. Occasionally we wept.

They wept.

Not me. I don’t cry. Ever.

There were other children in the palace—other girls—daughters of equerries or guards, girls who worked in the kitchens or the laundries and came in from the township on horseback before dawn. But I wasn’t like them. I lived in a kind of purgatory. You see, I have been there all my life. It holds no fear for me. It’s an in-between kingdom, sometimes a wasteland, never dull. I was neither page nor servant, neither boy nor girl, provided with all the education and grace of nobility but without the title or riches.

Papa was harder on me than any of the boys. But I learned early that I was scum and hid in the crowd—just one more body to toughen up, among a dozen court pages and would-be
mousquetaires
, another soul to be bullied into a little learning. Except, of course, that I was a girl and never going to be a soldier. But what else was he going to do with me? Pack me off to a convent? Not him. He’d rather see me dead at his own hands. For who else was going to feed him gruel when he was too drunk to chew his bread, or drag him into his cot when he couldn’t stand? Who else would lie to the Comte when Papa was too hungover to face drill, and polish his boots and sharpen his sword and mend his damn stockings? Instead, he made me what I am—whatever that is.

Good thing he can’t see where I’ve ended up.

I can’t imagine, now, what future he saw for me. My life has been impossible. A fantasy. He didn’t envisage any of it. Nobody could have. This life—my life—has never been lived before. No woman has ever soared to such heights, circled the planets as I have done, nor sunk to these—O Father, look at me, pity me—these utter depths.

I couldn’t imagine it either. The boys all teased me, told me I’d end up married to a cattle farmer in the Dordogne. Or somewhere, anywhere, miles from the palace. While they, needless to say, would bask in the King’s light and tread the paths of his garden, carry his chamber-pot and empty his precious piss.

By the way, what do they do with royal piss, d’you know? I’ve always wondered. I can easily imagine the courtiers lining up for a swig, so serpentine and sycophantic are their minds. Big wigs; little brains. All of them.

But maybe not. Perhaps it’s the secret behind Louis’s famous
potager
. If he is the sun, then surely his piss is rain from the gods.

What?

Very well, I proceed. But you can’t expect to follow a direct path to my downfall. The way ahead is never so clear. Like Papa, I couldn’t predict the orbit of my life, nor even, in those early days, the first step—the first hint of destiny.

But one day it just rode into the courtyard and stood before me.

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