Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [39]
My father and uncle continued to argue about the puppets. My mother wept. My brothers, all five of them, joined her. My grandmother scolded.
And I? I decided to try my luck reciting Shakespeare at the Palais-Royal. I would do Juliet, Rosalind, and Kate, then pull on a pair of britches and do Hamlet, Romeo, the young King Henry.
The Palais is a sad place now—the empty rooms gather dust and vagrants sleep under the trees—but once it was the very heart of Paris, a dazzling pleasure arcade of shops, card dens, restaurants, and brothels. It was a place where one could buy a glass of lemonade, or the girl selling it. A place to see an Amazon in naught but a tiger skin. A place where a duchess might pass by, trailing furs and civet, and a beggar would show you his rotting wounds for a sou. A place where acrobats, all bosoms and bare legs, tumbled and jumped, and painted boys strolled, and quacks displayed dead monster babies with two heads and four arms in pickling jars.
How I loved it.
The Palais was owned by the Duc d’Orléans. I had never seen him, for he lived in rooms high above the broiling courtyards, but he was known to be the richest and wickedest man in all of France.
I hoped to get a few coins there. I would not find them elsewhere. I had auditioned the day before at the Comédie and the Opéra. I’d tried out for farces at five boulevard theaters, too, but I’d got nothing. Not even a maid’s part. I could do more than maids’ parts, even then. I could do leads. But I am a plain girl, not pretty, so it mattered not.
I was just putting on my jacket when my sister went to the wall to admire herself in a cracked glass. She thought no one was watching, but I was and I saw her fish something out of her pocket and stuff it into her mouth.
It was cake. The fat pig ate cake while the rest of us ate cat soup. I saw her sneak another morsel. My brother Émile saw, too. He reached for a bite, but she slapped his hand away. He screeched and my vexed mother, not seeing what transpired, slapped him again.
I saw Émile, who cried because he could not get enough to eat. And my mother, who cried because she could not give it. And then I went to Bette and ripped open her pocket. A chunk of butter cake fell to the floor.
Look! She has cake and shares none of it! I shouted.
Tattling bitch! Bette hissed. You’ll be sorry you ever opened your mouth, I swear you will!
My father and uncle, still arguing, did not hear us, but the rest did. My grandmother looked up from her soup, my aunt from her sewing.
My mother turned white. She picked up the cake. Where did you get this, girl? she said.
From Claude, Bette said, her cheeks reddening.
Claude was a kitchen boy in a noble’s house, a gangling clotpole whom Bette fancied.
Claude’s cake has made Bette fat! I taunted.
Be quiet, you fool. It’s not Claude’s cake that’s done it, my grandmother said.
He’ll marry you! my mother shouted. If I have to drag him to the priest by his ear!
He cannot! Bette cried.
Why not? Has he someone else? Answer me, you little trollop!
No, Mama! He has a year left on his indenture. He swears we will marry the day he is free. The very day!
The shame of it, Bette, my mother said. You with a big belly and no husband. How will we show our faces in the street? How will I feed another mouth?
Bette ran sobbing to my grandmother and put her head in her lap. Because she and my mother had stopped shouting, we could hear my father, who had not.
And if I make these farting puppets of yours, what then, René? he yelled. What good will it do? No one comes to watch us. And even if they did, even if we made a thousand livres a day, there’s no bread to be had for it. Here in Paris we starve, while at Versailles they eat cake!
Bette picked up her head. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. Cake? There is cake at Versailles? she said. Why do we not go there? We shall have plenty!
* * *
Bette was wrong about Claude. He never did marry her. She was