Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume (26 page)

“La Favourite, mademoiselle—just over there.”

I cursed myself: was it la Favourite, was that where they were fighting?

“But do not go in that direction, let us help you away,” one of them began saying, with a quick glance at the other.

At that moment, two other horses and their riders came charging onto the path from that very place and bore down upon us with frightening speed. The horsemen were laying on the whips—there was the crack of leather against the animals’ flanks—and almost before I could distinguish the men’s features or anything else, they tore past. But I recognized one of them: it was Beauvallon. I reined Magnifique again and we changed direction, about to race after them. Before I could do so, there was another sound; I twisted in the saddle to see a horse and black cabriolet with its hood up come tearing down the path and past, the black horse labouring, a long whip cracking out from the hidden interior, over and over, snapping upon the creature’s hindquarters with vicious accuracy.

Magnifique, rattled and jumpy, was turning himself in circles, as was my frightened mind. Follow those devils? Or ride to my love, who must be there in the field, just round the corner, pray God he’s safe. “Mademoiselle,” the two who’d spoken to me urged, trying to catch at my horse’s bridle. No, let go of me! Ride! I nudged Magnifique with my heels, and we galloped onwards.

The path through the woods ended abruptly, and the space opened up. At the other side of the field, silhouetted against the far trees, I saw a carriage with two horses in harness, and the pale beauty of Enchanté, neck drooping, standing off to the side. There were a group of men gathered around… Something. On the ground. Urging Magnifique towards the group, I felt the sky was going dark again, and from my throat I could hear a strange, low sound, growing, spreading… There were two men standing and two on the ground. The men standing I didn’t recognize; one of the figures on the ground was short and stumpy, and as I approached I could make out the features and balding head of Dr. Koreff, as he bent over the other slumped upon the frozen snow. But—the other…? No… No.

One of the standing men looked up and saw me, then began to try to wave me away. “Don’t come any closer, mademoiselle, I beg you—”

“Is it Henri?” I cried, “Henri Dujarier?”

Dr. Koreff looked up quickly as he heard my voice.

“Doctor,” I called, dismounting and casting the reins onto the ground, then running towards him. “For pity’s sake!”

And that is the moment I laid my eyes upon the figure, lying there in the doctor’s arms.

“I regret, mademoiselle,” said Koreff, looking now at the man in his lap, “that he has just this moment died. From a bullet that entered his head at the lower right corner of his nose.”

I threw back my head and screamed, then flung myself down onto the snow mixed with Henri’s blood, a large amount of which was leaking, congealing and freezing there beneath him. A large blue-black duelling pistol lay off to the side. My darling! His body looked so small, and his brow so very pale, as white as the snow itself. But below his brow, a large black hole, oozing with blood, had torn apart the left side of his beautiful, his gorgeous face. The face I’d loved and kissed—the rasp of his dear cheeks over every part of my body, the cheeks I’d shave for him afterwards, while we laughed and talked… His thick clumps of dark hair springing forth, now soaking wet; the crease between his brow that I’d try to rub smooth, now smoothing. The eyes that gazed upon me with all of the warmth in the universe: one now covered in gore, the other open. Inside that wonderful face—whose desecration was even now being dusted with white—behind that too smooth marble brow and the open eye, gathering snowflakes? There was nothing. He was gone. How could this be true?

Blood began flowing in a bright, red stream from his mouth and onto the snow as Koreff lay his dear head upon the ground. I reached out to touch Henri’s hand, the one closest to me.

It was warm, but barely perceptibly. It was also wet. How could his beloved hand already be so cold, if he had just that moment died?

I leapt up again and ran to the gelding, smelling of blood, so that the horse skittered and backed away before I was able to grab hold of the reins. Throwing myself into the saddle, I kicked him into action—to follow the murderer—to kill him myself! Or die, as well, and follow my love. Charging wildly across the field and back onto the path, I was panting and crying over Magnifique’s neck, and the low strange sound at the back of my throat had become a full-voiced version of what it had always been: a keening of death, of love cut short, of the brutality of time and fortune. I howled and screamed and cursed like a banshee, flying at breakneck speed after them.

And of course, though I galloped to the edge of the Bois once more and along other routes, wailing and sobbing for vengeance, there was no sign of Beauvallon, or his second, or the unknown witness in the black cabriolet. There was only blowing snow, freezing cold and the end of the world.

I was bent over by the side of the road, retching, as the carriage with two horses emerged from the Bois, carrying the body of Henri. Enchanté was being ridden by one of the men who’d been standing in the field. He told me his name was Charles de Boigne and that he was an old friend of Henri’s from his youth.

“This was a disgraceful affair, mademoiselle. I am most deeply sorry for your loss.”

I rode back in the carriage, for I couldn’t bear to think of Henri lying there with only Koreff to watch over him. I held my darling’s hand, which grew steadily colder. I held myself steady, for his sake. For the sake of everything we’d had.

Directly after Henri’s body had been placed upon our bed and his death had been reported, officers of the king arrived to begin the murder investigation. I’d retreated into my own room and lay upon the silent, cold bed, where the sheets and covers were still flung back from my early rising. From a time when there was still a future.

In the course of the investigation, a note was found, left on the table for me, which I hadn’t seen in my haste to arrive in the Bois before dawn.

It said, “My dear Lola, I am fighting with pistols this morning. At nine, it will all be over and I’ll run to hold you in my arms, unless…” So he feared, and still went ahead? Why, oh why? “A million kisses, my darling Lola, whom I love and who will be uppermost in my mind at all times, and forever. Your Bon-bon.”

So I’d been jittering about in Dumas’ apartment when…? Oh, misery… Oh, evil, selfish man, for delaying me! And what had my darling’s night been like, alone in the dark with his madeira and his pen and ink? A new codicil to Henri’s will was found behind the locked door in our bedroom, leaving me a large bequest, including shares in the Théâtre du Palais-Royale. In the codicil he asked to be buried beside his father. Oh God… All night he must have been wracked with a feeling of doom… Why couldn’t he tell me? Why on earth didn’t he? He’d left a letter for his mother, asking her that if it went badly, to weep for him as a man who’d tried to live his life honourably, and to forgive him for their estrangement. Oh, Henri, oh, my dearest love… What could have made you do it?

Dr. Koreff prescribed me powders. I took as large a dose as he could recommend, and the empty world fell away. In this way, I lay in my room for the next several days. I don’t remember much except the excruciating agony of coming to consciousness, recalling the senseless catastrophe, and reaching for another dose. Then oblivion again.

The funeral was held on March 13
^th
, and I was unable to face it. In fact, his mother, too, could not attend, for she was also prostrate with grief—a woman I’d never met. Henri had been hopeful of reconciliation eventually, but now, like everything else, that would never be. The funeral was held at the church of Notre-Dame de Lorette; he was laid in the ground beside his father, as he’d requested, in Montmartre Cemetery. The pallbearers were Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac, Émile de Girardin, and Joseph Méry—who had laughingly asked us to invite him along on our honeymoon in Spain, that night at Dumas’ dinner party.

Girardin and Méry had the grace to visit me after the funeral, and they tried to console me as much as they knew how. Henri’s partner was always a taciturn man, very shy, so he sat off in a corner and mopped his brow, quietly mourning, while Méry urged me to think practically.

“Beauvallon and his second, d’Ecqueville, have fled to Spain,” he told me. “My thought is that they’re waiting it out, letting the scandal die down. Also, they probably wish to avoid paying the usual hefty fine to the widow of a slain opponent—that would be you. But as you weren’t officially married, it’s likely you wouldn’t see that money anyway.”

I shook my head—what did I care?

Méry put a comforting arm around me and whispered, “This may sound harsh, my dear, but a mistress is expected to get what she can from her lover while he’s alive. You must look out for yourself now—think of the future.”

“There is none.”

“Now, now…”

The next time Dr. Koreff came, I badgered him for details about my darling’s last morning—what had happened, why had it gone so terribly wrong? You were there, you must have seen…? The toady fellow was a nervous nose-picker: whenever he was forced to talk about something unsavoury, his fingers—and sometimes both hands—would wander to his bulbous protuberance and begin to worry the nostrils, outside and in. He seemed to believe that he was doing it only when no one was looking, but didn’t understand that no one was looking
because
he had his fingers rammed up, busily digging. Ugh. I kept my eyes turned away and listened intently.

“Bertrand, one of Dujarier’s seconds, had called me to attend at the field,” he said. “So I came in the carriage with them. The duel was supposed to be at seven o’clock. It was very cold; we waited and waited, Dujarier pacing and shivering. When eight o’clock had come and gone, the other second, de Boigne, announced that—Beauvallon being now an hour late—honour had been served and we could all go home. Dujarier said no, he wouldn’t be called out again and waste another morning: it was now or never, and so he would wait. At half past eight, Beauvallon and d’Ecqueville arrived. No reason for their lateness was given. The seconds again tried to dissuade the men from duelling, but the two principals were determined to go ahead. De Boigne counselled Dujarier to fire immediately after the requisite paces so that Beauvallon would have to return fire at once—those are the rules.”

I turned back to watch the doctor’s face, intently. His fingers had returned to his lap. “This, Beauvallon did not do. There was a lapse of time—and Dujarier did not turn to the side to reduce the size of himself as target… Perhaps he didn’t know or realize… At any rate, the bullet went straight into his brain. He collapsed, as you saw, and I knew at once that he would soon be a dead man.”

I began shuddering violently, and requested the doctor to leave. He placed another packet of powders on the table beside the bed, bowing obsequiously but with a kind of fascinated intensity. He seemed at that moment to be loving my misery. I was shocked, and detested him for it. I took a large dose anyway, and soon wished that I hadn’t. The nightmares were appalling, accompanied by violent stomach pains. As I dragged myself out of that particular abyss—almost two days later, the valet, Gabriel, told me—I wondered what on earth the powders contained. And I vowed to stop taking them, come what may. In fact, I threw them out, so that I couldn’t change my mind in the middle of the night, some night when life seemed not worth living—meaning every night just then.

For my problems, my miseries, were rising exponentially. The fairy musical,
La Biche aux Bois
, was opening, and though they had put off the first night in respect of the tragedy, the show must go on and I was either in it or out of it, so what was it to be? I needed that dancing engagement—had no idea what I would do for money if I cancelled or withdrew—so I crawled out of bed and into my costume, three days after the funeral. I rehearsed, did my number, then crawled back into bed. When the production opened, I admit, my dancing was uninspired. Strangely, I could barely move, I was physically stiff as well as mentally unsound. Careening around wildly, at one point I nearly fell off the stage—but the audience was cruel, they were terrible to me! As I was finishing, an ugly bald man halfway back in the rows, thin as a post and with an abnormally loud voice, began hissing and calling for me to “Get off!” The gist of it was picked up by others: catcalls, men yelling, “Show us your legs!” I felt like a cornered, caged wild animal! I gave them a frothy glimpse of bare legs through crinolines, then, running directly down to the edge as if I was about to leap in amongst them, I thumbed my nose—directly at the bald one’s glinting dome, and indirectly at everyone else. I hated them at that moment. Hated them all with a passion! More booing, as audience members began stamping in their seats, enjoying the anarchy. I swirled off, retching, into the wings.

The next morning, a lawyer came to the apartment. Gabriel admitted him, then told me where the man was awaiting me. What now, I thought. Over the lovely walnut table where Henri and I had eaten fine meals and toasted our never-ending love, the lawyer said that Madame Dujarier had contested the new codicil. It had not been witnessed and had therefore been overruled. I was to leave the apartment within six weeks; all of Henri’s considerable fortune, as well as his stocks and shares, were to go to herself and to his sister, while the apartment’s furnishings—as well as his stable of horses—would go to Alexandre Dumas. Madame Dujarier wished me to know that she had an inventory of all objects and financial matters.

Several weeks went by, I don’t know how. I danced in
La Biche
—and somehow, nastily, for a lot of Parisians it soon became a risible, almost nightly event to go to the Théâtre de la Porte Sainte-Martin to bait and jeer at Lola Montez. To get her to charge down at the audience and stick out her tongue, or flip them the finger—for I did get worse, as the nights went on. Giddy and dizzy, I didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass! The thin man, leading the pack, was often there, though not always in the same seat. I questioned the house manager one night; he said he didn’t know the fellow, though the man had only one leg and used a crutch.
Cochon
, I thought—some twisted creep with an axe to grind, and he has to take it out on a grieving, desperate woman.
Bastardo
.