Authors: Kelly Gardiner
H
AVE YOU EVER SEEN
the ocean, Father?
Here in the south, I mean. You’re from Normandy. I can tell by that wretched accent of yours. The ocean is a different beast altogether up north. I’ve seen it. It thunders. It’s grey and wild. I don’t know how anyone ever has the courage to set sail on it.
But in Marseille the sea sparkles. There’s no other word for it. Really. You can stand on the cliffs and look out towards Africa, towards paradise itself, it seems. You can see through the depths—in the inlets, in the harbour—to the sand and the seaweed and the fishes. Mermaids, even; I wouldn’t be surprised.
You should go. Feel the sun on your face, the sea breeze. It’d do you good.
Or I should. That would be better. Let the Mistral clear out these festering lungs, this grieving soul. But it’s too late for me. I should have tried. I should have kept going. But I got only as far as Avignon, and here I stopped.
I returned to convent life, at the end. Perverse though it may seem to you, to my friends, this is as close to a home as I know now. It’s appropriate. Strangely. I was drawn here. I don’t know why. God knows, my last appearance here was not a success.
I’ll get to that. All in good time.
But first, Marseille. I was free there. I loved it, felt the sea in my blood from the first time I saw it. Mercurial. Unknowable. Like me.
The sea, the forts, the Opéra, the city. The women. We loved each other, Marseille and I. The city embraced me, celebrated the wildness in me, saw the woman in spite of the breeches—it heard my voice. For the first time, someone saw me, heard me. But I can’t go back there, ever. I’ll never see the ocean again. It’s a city of shadows to me now, of threatening ghosts and regret. I’m sure she doesn’t miss me, Madame Marseille, but I miss her.
But then—ah, then—Marseille and I were in the throes of first love. I fenced when I needed to pay for a room, a meal. I sang in cabarets for a few coppers. Séranne followed me there, traced me somehow, turned up on my doorstep like a spaniel. I took him in. More the merrier. We didn’t pretend that he was in charge. Or even that we were together. Although some nights, after the show and a bottle or two of wine …
But I stray from my tale.
They let me sing real music in Marseille. At last. I wasn’t a star there, I admit. I knocked on the stage door of the Opéra and begged for a spot in the back row of the chorus. I suspect they employed me for my face, not my voice. But by the end of the season I had a few airs to sing on my own—nothing too taxing.
The first time I sang by myself, to a crowd, it felt like—impossible to capture it now—like leaping from a cliff top—like the wildest passion—like giving birth to a god. Apollo. No! Eros. I played Nyx, goddess of night, surrounded by smoking candles and gold cloth, layered in white paint and sweat-soaked silk, raised up by a heavenly chorus of drunkards and whores and angels. Dear Lord. I feel something thumping in my broken chest just at the thought of it, even after all these years.
You open your mouth—your throat—your soul—and let beauty escape. That’s all there is to it. Everything else is craft. But the essence of singing—the point of it—is that freedom, the song-thrush taking flight in your heart and winging its way to life. Can you hear it?
Ah. I can’t sing now. I don’t have enough breath. But then—then, I could sing notes as pure and clear as ice, as ocean. My voice was a fledgling, although at the time I believed myself a genius. We all did. Séranne sang, too, or at least he did a very good turn standing about; he was always Fifth Guardsman or Peasant Waving Scythe. He was a fine-looking fellow, so why not?
It was still early days for the Opéra there—Gautier was the
directeur
, even then, and struggling to make a go of it. They had only local voices and second-hand costumes sent from Paris. It didn’t matter. The crowds loved every performance, every tattered thread of the company—perhaps treasured it even more because it was their own. They felt less provincial, I suppose, as if Paris had shifted south for the winter.
It’s a city of knives and tempers so we understood each other’s dangers and delights, Marseille and me. I appeared under my old name, my real name—Mademoiselle d’Aubigny. Opera singers are always called mademoiselle, you know, even if they’ve been married for forty years. Don’t ask me why. I suppose the men prefer to think we are available. As, indeed, we so often are.
They welcomed me, noticed me. The Marseillais. They’d never seen anything like me. But who has? They seemed delighted that I dressed as a man, that my voice sometimes wavered out of my control, that my real fame was derived from the blade and the cabarets. They forgave it all. I don’t know why. Perhaps they are used to foreigners, to exotic delights, to sprites and storms and warm winds. They understand the elementals as well as the Muses. I sang like an angel, I appeared on stage as a deity, and I understood—we all understood, without words, without acknowledgement—that my role was to be worshipped. At first I was a clumsy, unfortunate goddess, missing my cues and straining for the higher notes. But I worked hard and they were patient, and I learned to flirt and laugh at people’s dull jokes, and to gaze into the audience each night as if I loved them. Perhaps I did. Perhaps I still do. After a time they hailed me as their Amazon queen, beloved of the ancients, like one of those old marble statues hauled up from the bottom of the sea. So they bowed low in my presence and waited in line for a smile or a nod—simple gifts I was happy to offer them. In return I adored the city and the sea. We should have known the infatuation wouldn’t end well. Such things never do.
They threw lavish parties and endless salons and we singers appeared on cue, like concubines, to provide a little titillation. Séranne seduced the mayor’s wife. I had suitors lining up at my door—men who asked permission before they slobbered all over me. Sometimes I told them no, and instead of hitting me they just looked sad and went away. It was my first taste of the sweet wines of the south, touched by summer—my first glimpse of the power of infamy. It went to my head. I sang and slept and feasted and screwed and then—
Then I saw the girl.
She was a merchant’s daughter. An Italian family, fresh from Naples, with ears and hearts full of Monteverdi and Scarlatti. Her father was a patron of the Opéra. Spent all his time trying to convince Gautier to produce Venetian music. Her mother hosted a salon on Saturday afternoons. Everyone went—everyone who mattered. I didn’t. I was usually asleep. But one afternoon Séranne picked me up and forced me into a carriage and up the front steps of this stupidly ornate mansion, so new you could smell the paint and sawdust, and there I was—standing in the centre of a Turkish rug in my breeches and boots, with a glass of wine in one hand and my heart in fragments.
She was beyond beautiful.
Fine blonde curls tucked behind her ears and falling softly against the skin at the back of her neck. Unruly hair. It betrayed a wildness of which her own family had no idea—she had no idea, until she met me. Until she was mine. My pardon, Father, I see I am making you blush, but you wanted the truth and so here it is.
Her father showed me off to the ensemble as if I were the latest addition to his stable, or an exotic piece of jewellery he’d brought all the way from Constantinople for his wife—or his daughter. I bowed. Everyone giggled.
Except for her. She sat by the fireplace on a gold chair—you see, I remember every detail. A lace shawl. Emeralds. A gaze that told me that all I had to do was reach out one hand, one finger, to her and she would be mine, she would be everything, and everything would be over.
Séranne led me away to the other side of the room, and I tried not to stare at her but I couldn’t help myself. He chattered away, entertaining the ladies. I confess they must have thought me surly. I wasn’t. I was simply trying to breathe.
Her name was Clara.
Clara. The sound is like a sigh. Even now I hear it.
She left the room—she told me later that she couldn’t keep her composure—and I stood there like a fool, waiting for her to come back, for the door latch to open, for the sun to appear from behind the clouds. She never did—not that day. In the end, Séranne had to drag me out of there, just as he’d dragged me in.
On the way home, we had an argument about her, such a fight—I could have killed him.
I wanted her. Nothing would stop me. Not her father, not Séranne, not the Opéra nor any force in the world. I knew she wanted me.
But Séranne kept it up. It’s not possible, he said. Not natural. Not right. You’re mad, he said, you’re evil.
I wanted to stab him in the street and leave him dying in the gutter. I wanted to ride with her to Paris, to Moscow, to the East Indies.
So that is my sin. Wanting. Too much.
I threw him out of the carriage. We didn’t speak to each other again.
The next night she came to the Opéra.
I sang for her, and she knew it. Her father knew it, too.
I went to the salon every Saturday. I stood outside her house every afternoon. Waited in the city, near the dressmakers, in case she appeared. Gazed into the audience every night, searching for her face.
We never met, not alone—always in a room full of people. We never spoke.
She sent an envelope and a ribbon from her hair. No letter, no sign. But I knew it was hers. Then one day, a purple velvet pouch and inside—a gold chain.
I’ve worn it ever since, on the wrist of my sword arm. D’Albert used to say it would be the death of me—an opponent’s blade would slide inside it, catch, and rip off my arm. I always thought it’d be quite fitting if it—if she—was the death of me.
After all, she very nearly was.
But just in case, I always wore gloves, and tucked the bracelet inside, just so. You see?
Yes, of course I could have worn it on the other wrist, but that’s hardly the point, is it? This thread of gold has brought strength to my arm when I feared it might fade. It guides my hand. That’s as she would wish.
They tried to take it off me when I arrived here. I’m afraid I lied and said it was a gift from Cardinal de Noailles. I can’t be without it. It reminds me of … of lost things.
Of her. Perhaps me. We were both lost. Are.
I sent poems declaring my love, my desire. She never received them.
That’s probably just as well, because they were dreadful. I blush to think of it now.
But someone read them. Someone knew.
I waited. Watched.
Then she was gone.
I heard a rumour in the city. Some wit composed a ditty and soon everyone was singing it—about a pretty Italian maid seduced by a female demon and sent into God’s care.
After a few days of this, a drunken trumpet player told me the truth.
Her father had sent her away, to a convent. In Avignon. Forever.
Yes. Exactly. This convent.
Now, you may be shocked to learn that this habit you see me wearing is quite familiar to me.
You assume that my life has been entirely worldly, until now, but no—as a young woman I, too, once entered into a holy contract with our Saviour to serve Him all my days. Just like you, Father, although with a somewhat different motive. A few weeks after Clara vanished, I found myself dressing in veil and tunic and prostrating myself in the dark hours before dawn, on the floor of a chapel—right here.
It’s always dark, our chapel. Always was. I wonder why that is. Then, and now, the sisters are miserly with the candles. And the firewood. So, yes. I have been here before.
Avignon. The silent city. When I first arrived, it seemed as if a muffling cloak had settled upon it, stifling all noise but the bells. After the hubbub of Marseille, of Paris, of Versailles, it seemed almost frightening. I was too loud for the city, too big. I still am, but now I don’t fear the silence. I take it into me like air. I hear the music within it.
But then—oh, then—I blustered and banged on convent doors, seeking everywhere for Clara and the place I imagined to be her prison.
A convent in Avignon—that’s what the trumpet player had said, but the idiot didn’t tell me how many convents there are in Avignon. Perhaps it was his little joke. There’s nothing but convents in Avignon—and monasteries; pale stone walls and bell towers and shuttered windows and firmly locked gates. Glimpses of fruit trees over high walls. No wonder that it’s quiet. It’s like the hush of a great cathedral—Saint-Roch or Saint-Eustache—in the early morning.
The normal people, the working people, the silk weavers, guards, washerwomen, go about their business as if a little song, the odd joke, would bring down all the punishments of Hell. The waterwheels in the canal barely splash. Even the pigeons keep their beaks shut. Sometimes you hear children calling to one another, but you rarely see them. In these narrow alleyways, a whisper carries for miles. You hear it, but you don’t know where it came from. There is a laden donkey—a handcart—straining over the cobblestones, someone clipping a hedge, an argument—or it’s flagellation day over at the Pénitents—and the whole city can hear it, or, at least, those who listen and those who are not behind walls three feet thick.
So I quickly realised that banging on doors and shouting was not the Avignon way. The Avignon way involves the pretence of piety and an exchange of silver. I found a man who knew his way around, who had heard all the gossip—you wouldn’t believe the things he told me. Even I was shocked.
But never mind.
He found her, soon enough. It’s a small city, after all, and there are people with eyes enough to notice a rich merchant with fine horses—a foreigner—delivering his daughter to one of the less austere convents. A serving-girl said the daughter cried all night and was the most beautiful angel ever seen. Who else could it be?
So I knew where Clara was. But what next? It will amaze you to learn that I had no idea. I had come here imagining I’d scale a wall, rescue my damsel and carry her off on horseback like a chevalier in one of the romances. Faced with these endless walls, these massive bolted doors, the watchful eyes from above—no, not Him, I mean the snooping brothers in the upper floors of every monastery in town—my courage failed me for the first time.