The imperial apartments here were more familiar, hung in the same red and gold as the Tuileries, as if we’d taken the trains and cars all this way just to find ourselves back home.
In her dressing room, we waited for her, preparing for her first change from her traveling costume to her riding one; she wanted to go for a ride before the Emperor arrived. A bell rang and we stood quickly while she walked in. The dressing room was circular; an enormous pendant chandelier hung above us radiating an unearthly sparkling light. White silk hangings draped the walls and ceiling so that it was like standing in a tent, if a very well-appointed one. She looked at us expectantly but I hesitated, as no one had briefed me on my duties, mistaking me, perhaps, for the girl who always came. I waited for a moment as she stood there, her arms aloft. The first girl glared at me, an eyebrow raised with contempt, and then made a yanking gesture with her arms.
You are the new girl, said the Empress, quite suddenly. She said it in the same Spanish-accented French that was familiar to me from Pepa.
I nodded, instantly blushing.
This duty, it was once the duty of my ladies-in-waiting. But no longer. Not since Marie Antoinette.
The other girl was blinking quickly, as if whatever the Empress had said had stung her eyes.
You used to dress my dummies at the Tuileries, yes?
I nodded again.
Treat me a little gentler than that. And then she smiled softly.
I hadn’t thought she would speak to us. I imagined us beneath her, not worthy of her conversation. The earlier, nascent affection I’d felt for her budded, and while I let the other girl lead in taking her jewels, which I didn’t know very well, much less how to handle them, I helped her with her riding costume and found her green velvet tricornered riding hat and her coat with the Emperor’s badge for his hunt. I set the hat on her head gently and pinned it into place, careful not to look at her eyes directly all the while.
She left with a quick thank-you, spoken to the walls, and only when she was gone did we relax our postures, at which point the anger in the other girl returned.
How stupid you are, she said. You should have asked someone to tell you your duties. I nodded, as if this were true.
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.
§