We were walking swiftly now along the back passage. I was passing by dark mirrors, walking over ancient creaking wooden floors.
Here, as at the Tuileries, no one was going to tell me what they expected from me, and they would be sure to punish me for what I didn’t know. What’s more, my identity as a mute was not commonly known here. As the chamberlain had forbidden me my little scarf—it was not part of the uniform—I lacked its protections, and one had been that it kept me from speaking as well.
The first result of this, then, was that the impulse to speak rose up, to explain myself, to protest, and I suppressed it with a panicked start, catching my opening mouth with my hand.
§
While the Empress was away on her ride, we were given a tour of the palace by the Compiègne chamberlain and shown our quarters.
I was to share a room at the back of the palace with my unhappy partner from earlier and another girl. The window had a view of a ditch and the wall and the kitchen entrance at the back.
I hadn’t understood the excitement in the other staff at leaving for the country. But as I unpacked in my small room, listening to the conversations taking place around me, I understood that as our wealthy charges exercised themselves, as they planned their musicales, tableaux vivants, operettas, hunts, and masked balls, we also plotted our own entertainments. Each week, to make sure the one hundred guests had their fill, there would number nearly nine hundred of us between the attendant valets, lady’s maids, footmen, cooks, grisettes, and guards. Some of our company came and left with the guests, some were of the Tuileries, and some were of Compiègne. Subsequently, much the same as on the other side of the palace among the official guests, there would be affairs, singing and dancing, feasts, terrible fights and feuds. And the separation was not by any means complete; there were guests whose tastes ran toward the servants, just as there were servants whose tastes ran toward the guests. The term for the gratuity usually exacted from guests just prior to their leaving, and which the chamberlains kept in large part for themselves but were meant to distribute among the rest of us, was also what you might say if you’d stumbled into and out of an apartment with a guest. Pour boire.
If the guests were satisfied, they were absorbed entirely in their satisfaction, and they were not concerned with our whereabouts. And so we worked to their satisfaction in order to remain invisible and unheard and at play where possible. And in the shadow of their satisfaction, we set about our own.
The bell for dinner rang and we ran quickly from the room for our first meal.
§
The Cent-Gardes at the Tuileries had told us of how the women the Emperor had brought to him were asked to come to him naked; they left their elegant toilettes behind and were told that they could do anything with the Emperor except kiss his mouth.
I thought of this often, I found, now that I was around the Empress so frequently. I wasn’t allowed to meet her eyes unless she specifically asked me a question, and even then it made me nervous, and so I looked at her mouth.
And as I did, I wondered who it was who kissed her. Or if the Emperor saved this part of him for her alone.
I had very little patience for this new job. I was extremely uncomfortable to be so very much in the imperial presence in the day and in the company of my fellow grisettes at night. A bench in the hall was for me or whomever was on duty to rest on as we waited for the inevitable bell—this was my only solitude.
I found outside the Empress’s apartments a secret passageway that led to the Emperor’s library, the door hidden by a design to give the appearance of a shelf of books. While at first thrilling, it was hard to believe it would fool either the serious invader or the unserious one. And as the Emperor would never use this to call on the Empress, I did not know why it was there, so I explored it.
There was a daybed there, in the secret passage, and doors to the back stairs and passageways that led to the kitchen, the stables, and our quarters. A servants’ passage, then, for the footmen. I could doze lightly here, springing forward at the bell in any direction needed.
I was bored that first week, cross in a way that seemed new. I wanted some kind of adventure, something forbidden but harmless. The guests had yet to arrive that morning and so, after the Empress left for a morning ride, I stood up from the daybed and pushed open the Emperor’s library door.
The ceiling was painted with friezes of women gods I didn’t know. I had a view out to the pale gravel yard, the garden, and the forest beyond it. The chestnut trees’ golden leaves took the light of the morning, glowing in their rows. The room’s handsome wooden quiet spooked me. but I was relieved to feel so alone. The walls were so thick, nothing of the activity of the servants could be heard.
The velvet-backed chairs gleamed in the pale autumn sunlight, and it was easy to imagine the young Comtesse there, just nineteen or twenty, a little older than I was now, her beauty like a furnace the room warmed itself on.
The Empress had been a famous beauty herself, but hers was a queenly froideur, as if she could cover the windows and mirrors in frost as she passed. The Comtesse, ten years her junior, newly arrived from Italy, with her wild red hair, must have seemed more than a rival—more like a demon of pure desire.
I walked to the far window. The chestnut allées crisscrossing the property framed the horses returning from the hunt. I could imagine the imperial displeasure if I was late, so I turned to go back through my passageway to where I knew I was to be expected, but when I heard the noise of someone moving, someone who had been at rest in the next room, I stood still.
For a moment, the silence in response seemed to suggest I’d been successful in avoiding notice. Then a high, soft piano note sounded, followed by others, chords. A slowly meandering, carefully beautiful piece of piano music.
In the musical education waiting for me, I would learn that this was a nocturne, a piece of music said to have the qualities of night, usually written for piano and performed solo. Nocturnes often don’t sound right by day; listening to them then is sometimes confusing. This, though, my first one, was Chopin’s op. 55, no. 1, which still sounds to me as it did that day, like someone walking through the dark quietly searching for something loved and lost, and the morning light didn’t undo this. Instead, it was haunting, instantly so. I could not bear to go until it was finished. And as I was convinced somehow of being hidden for being still, I stayed and listened, deciding it would be safer to move once it was over.
The playing became louder briefly, as he moved to the music’s conclusion. I was sure that this music had to require all of the attention of the person playing, certainly enough to keep him from noticing me. I thought I was safe enough then to peer around the corner into the room beyond the library, and so I crept to the far entrance and peeked around the corner.
A young man sat at a pianoforte, dressed in a beautiful dark green frock coat, a pale green tie knotted at his neck, and the strange short white pants the imperial court found fashionable then gleaming along his muscular legs. He was dark, as if he spent considerable time in the sun, and had the sharp, handsome features of a Gypsy, all set off by the strict white and green of his clothes. The effect was nearly narcotic.
He turned as if he knew he was being observed and looked at me, his eyebrow crooked, over the top of the piano. He smiled as he continued the piece’s conclusion, which he let fade away gently. But he looked directly at me, and our eyes met.