Into the World Read online

  These women were caricatures, she realised, pantomime women. Living outside society and despised for their freedom, for the power they held over men. Yet proud, unashamed. Could she wear this mask, she wondered, if her life depended on it?

  ‘Oh, he likes what he sees!’ the woman simpered, slipping her breasts back within the bodice. ‘If you want any more than that you’ll have to pay for it.’

  Pierre gripped her arm. ‘Louis, come with me!’

  ‘Don’t forget me, Louis!’ the whore called out, laughing. Marie-Louise glimpsed plugs of cork in her mouth instead of molars before Pierre yanked her away.

  Marie-Louise followed Pierre, dodging a splash of grey water as a barmaid sluiced vomit from the tavern wall. She pressed her hand to the parchment in her pocket, feeling the rapid pounding of her heart.

  The letter she carried was for Madame Le Fournier d’Yauville, a friend of Olympe de Gouges, and the sister of a naval captain. Their plan was simple: to gain her a position on board a ship. Olympe had been excited. ‘I have heard of women who have disguised themselves before. Think of Jeanne Baré.’ It had all seemed possible in the weeks before her son was born. It was not forever, she had told herself. She would return for her baby. She had not imagined this wrenching loss would feel the same as the death of a child, like a hole that opened her inside out.

  A young boy with a wad of papers in his arms cried out from a street corner, ‘Père Duchesne is fucking angry today!’

  Marie-Louise froze.

  ‘Our father is damn angry!’ the boy called.

  The Paris papers, even here, Marie-Louise thought with a tremor of disgust. Père Duchesne was an invention, a caricature father of the nation, styled by a man who could not be trusted. Looking around her, she wondered if these people knew that their crass-mouthed, straight-talking hero of the revolution was a figment of the imagination. That the writer of these words, Jacques Hébert, was a man who still wore silk culottes and rode about in a carriage like an aristocrat. She felt the tide of people turn towards the boy.

  ‘The King flees! The King flees!’

  Elbows jostled against her. The mob snatched for the papers. The great mound of sheets tilted. The boy vanished from her view as he was pushed into the muck of the street.

  Around her the voices grumbled.

  ‘He means to abandon France.’

  ‘Flees to Austria to raise an army against the people!’

  ‘Disguised themselves like common servants. Even dressed the Dauphin as a girl!’

  Marie-Louise held her breath. She pictured the King trapped in his study at the Tuileries Palace, gazing at the paintings of ships with their white sails puffed like pregnant bellies. He had always wanted to sail around the world.

  ‘At least they caught the traitor!’

  A gob of phlegm splattered against her boot. She looked up, eyes wide. A grey-whiskered man breathed stale garlic and tooth-rot into her face. ‘You’re not welcome here.’

  Marie-Louise held her cloak tight around her, aware her naval uniform marked her out as a supporter of the King. Pierre shouldered the man aside, dragging her towards an alleyway.

  Marie-Louise pulled back. ‘Wait,’ she cried out to him, reaching for one of the papers trodden into the manured cobbles. ‘I must know.’ She stuffed the paper in her pocket.

  Pitiful light filtered between the tall buildings. The shadowy doorways stank of urine and most were filled with dark shapes, the round humps of bodies sheltering beneath rags. Her breath was short. Surely the air here was too thin to support life.

  A woman in a long skirt and tattered shawl brushed past Pierre. Even in the low light, Marie-Louise saw her hand flicker and snatch the handkerchief from Pierre’s pocket. Their eyes met. The woman showed no fear, no alarm; her eyes were hollow. Who was she to deny this woman a square of fabric? What might those simple threads buy for her or her children? Pierre turned back, aware that Marie-Louise had stopped behind him. He looked impatient, nervous. The woman had deftly balled the handkerchief into her fist. I will keep your secret, Marie-Louise said with her silence, and hurried past her.

  The stinking alleyways opened out to the stately homes of the Recouverance. Before long they found the house of Madame d’Yauville on Rue Saint-Malo. It was an imposing structure. The grey block walls were stained black where water dripped from the slate roof. Stone steps led up from the street to a thick oak door flanked on either side by iron-barred windows. From the dormer windows on the top floor, Marie-Louise saw a woman’s face peer down at her. She shivered.

  Pierre had already climbed the steps and rapped on the door. He was eager to be relieved of his charge, she realised.

  Suddenly, she remembered the pickpocket from the alley. Fumbling beneath her cloak, she felt for the letter, pulling the pamphlet from her pocket instead. She glimpsed the cartoon of Père Duchesne, an old man clutching his groin and leering at her. A footman opened the door. Pierre was looking at her now. She pushed her fingers deeper in her pocket. Her fate lay with the reception of this letter. Her fingers grazed the raised edge of a wax seal. Retrieving the neatly folded parchment, she placed it into the upturned palm of the footman.

  Chapter 3

  MARIE-LOUISE CHEWED THE CORNER OF HER THUMBNAIL, HER pale brows drawn together. Her hair was damp on her forehead. They had been shown into a salon to wait. Tapestries and portraits cluttered the pastel yellow walls. Here, the ancestors of Le Fournier d’Yauville were displayed for all to see and she ducked her eyes from the condemnation in their oily gazes.

  Marie-Louise flattened the pamphlet she had taken from the marketplace against her thigh. The King and all his family made it as far as Varennes before being recognised and seized. His escape had failed. She folded the paper into ever-decreasing squares and clasped it in the palm of her hand.

  The doors of the salon swept open and Marie-Louise leaped to her feet.

  It was only the servants, delivering coffee. She returned to her perch on the edge of her chair.

  Pierre attempted a lopsided smile. ‘All will be well,’ he said, but his expression was unsure. She smiled back, grateful for his concern, and tried to relax her shoulders and loosen the stiffness of her spine, for his sake. Whatever the outcome of this meeting, she could not be a burden on this boy.

  When Madame d’Yauville eventually appeared, she was not what Marie-Louise was expecting. Madame wore a black gown of mourning. Her thin lips were pinched and her forehead deeply lined. Marie-Louise felt her hopes plummet. Mourning women had no sympathy to spare for others, as she well knew. Widows treated the world as fiercely as they themselves were treated. Marie-Louise stood with her hands gripping one another.

  Madame’s black skirts inflated and deflated like a breath as she sat on the edge of her chaise. Her face was severe. ‘Please, sit.’ On the wall behind Madame, the portrait of her dead husband glowered down.

  Marie-Louise sank back into the hard chair.

  Madame dismissed her servants, waiting for the sound of retreating footsteps before she spoke. ‘What makes you think I will help you?’

  She won’t help, Marie-Louise thought. Why would she? ‘I need to support myself.’

  Madame retrieved Olympe’s letter from her black skirts. ‘For the child?’

  Marie-Louise dropped her head. She slipped her thumb beneath the sleeve of her shirt and rubbed the blistered welt, still sore to the touch.

  ‘But surely this plan, this scheme, is ludicrous? The danger! And if you were to be discovered—’ Madame leaned closer ‘—I cannot bear to think of the consequences.’

  Marie-Louise took a deep breath, feeling her bandages cut into her ribs. ‘I am prepared.’

  ‘Have you no family to turn to?’

  She thought of the night she had returned to her father’s doorstep. She saw her stepmother’s sour-sucked face and her father in his brocaded waistcoat, stroking his belly in front of the fire. Her stepmother’s condemnation was shrill. A bastard child! What curse did she wish upon this
house? At thirty-six years of age had she not learned the meaning of shame? The top of her foot ached where her father had leaned upon his cane to pin her to the floorboards.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Is there no other way? A position as a maid?’

  ‘I have no references.’

  ‘But that is easily fixed! I can provide you with one.’

  Marie-Louise paused. Could she go back to that life? Could she empty chamber pots and scrub linen for the rest of her days?

  ‘But how will I reclaim my son?’ she asked. ‘What household would employ an unmarried mother and let a bastard child under their roof?’

  Madame d’Yauville could not answer her. Marie-Louise saw her flick her eyes towards the door, suspecting the servants might be listening. Indecision played across her face.

  ‘It is my only hope,’ Marie-Louise pleaded.

  ‘There is another way.’ Madame raised her chin. ‘A wealthy patron?’

  Marie-Louise shook her head, just once. ‘I am no beauty,’ she said, surprised Madame could not see that for herself. Had she not been told that so many times in her life, by her father, her stepmother, her lover? ‘And I no longer have youth on my side.’ Besides, Marie-Louise promised herself, I will not be another man’s whore.

  Madame sighed, then nodded. ‘I will petition my brother, Jean-Michel, for you.’

  Marie-Louise rushed to kneel before her. ‘Thank you, Madame, thank you.’ She felt a kindling of hope, like the first smoulders catching in a handful of twigs.

  ‘Do not thank me! I fear the future I could be sending you to. Jean-Michel is to leave soon for a long and treacherous journey. He will think this scheme is madness, of course. There is no guarantee that he will help you.’

  He must help me, Marie-Louise thought, with a glance towards Pierre. Olympe’s son had risked enough. He was returning to his ship and she could ask no more of him. Soon she would be alone in this port. Her new-found confidence wavered and she saw the lead-white faces of the marketplace whores, like beckoning ghosts.

  Madame d’Yauville gave her a room on the top floor and Marie-Louise endeavoured to keep away from the prying eyes of her household. For a week she waited for news. Eventually, Madame brought word from her brother, and an assortment of worn sailor’s clothes.

  ‘He cannot take you on his ship. There is no position for you.’ Madame d’Yauville helped Marie-Louise remove her shirt, stripping it over her head. ‘Thank the Lord. Imagine it—a long sea journey to the ends of the earth? I could not forgive myself if he suggested it.’

  Marie-Louise sat pale and shrunken, slumped forwards, naked above the waist except for her bandages. Her arms were crossed over the loose skin of her belly. She turned her face away from Madame d’Yauville to hide her distress.

  ‘But I have found you something more suitable instead,’ Madame d’Yauville continued. ‘A baker’s assistant on the gun ship Deux Frères while it restocks in Brest. It is only for a few months. Promise me—’ she shook Marie-Louise’s arms ‘—that you will disappear before it sails. Promise me I will not be sending you off to war.’

  Marie-Louise said nothing, her emotions in turmoil. Was she relieved? It was what she wanted, wasn’t it? A navy post. The navy would feed her, house her, pay her. But in truth, she could not see her future. Before Rémi was born it had seemed so simple. All she had thought about was running away.

  She clasped her elbows, shivering despite the warmth of the room. Madame had been so kind, hiding her these past days, keeping her secret safe. In Paris, Marie-Louise had constantly feared her father would come for her. His boiled face when he saw that she had returned to his house, pregnant and forsaken, still haunted her. She had been weak and he despised weakness. What she had done, the scandal, could ruin him. He would never forgive her. Even here, at the out-flung fingertip of France, she did not feel safe.

  Scissors scraped on bone. Behind her, Madame cut through a whalebone corset to bind her breasts made heavy by the needless milk. Gently, Madame wrapped it around Marie-Louise and then wrenched it tight. Marie-Louise gasped. Surely her heart and lungs had collapsed. The bones pinched her flesh. She began to pant. Madame tugged the laces one final time and knotted them in front of her chest. ‘You must tighten by another notch each day.’

  Marie-Louise touched her flattened chest. Obsolete.

  How many reincarnations could one life hold?

  The uniform Pierre had given her lay crumpled on the floor like a shed skin. She thought of the dress she had burned in the coach-house—once a chambermaid’s uniform and yet another of her disguises. Who she was, who she might become, was as clear to her as that first sight of the sea, a horizon smudged by fog.

  ‘Did Olympe suggest this ridiculous scheme?’ Madame asked. ‘She was always one for pranks and disobedience.’ She snorted. ‘We knew each other at school.’ She drew out the word, as though considering the definition. Marie-Louise turned to face her. ‘The convent that we were sent to,’ she explained, ‘with all the inconvenient wives and the daughters who had babies by the wrong men.’

  Marie-Louise’s heart knocked against her caged chest. So that was how Olympe had come to know Madame d’Yauville. They both had bastard children.

  ‘We have that in common,’ Madame said, reaching out to cup Marie-Louise’s jaw in her palm, her eyes full of understanding. ‘Our families took our babies away from us.’ Her hand fell away from Marie-Louise’s face. As she turned to the wall, Marie-Louise blinked away hot, welling tears. She wiped them quickly, not wanting Madame to see.

  ‘Now,’ Madame said, gathering herself. ‘Put this on.’

  She held out a rough tunic. It fell loose and square over Marie-Louise’s shoulders.

  Marie-Louise pulled on wide, striped trousers beneath the tunic.

  ‘Let me see.’ Madame stood back, appraising. ‘Good,’ she said, knotting a tricolor scarf around Marie-Louise’s neck. Taking up a comb and a pair of scissors, Madame tugged the tines through her grease-thickened strands. Marie-Louise’s head jerked. Clippings littered the floor and she saw her hair, once shining honey, was now the colour of stale straw. Madame took some ash from the grate and smudged it above Marie-Louise’s top lip. ‘There. They might take you for a boy. What about your voice?’

  ‘Like this?’ Marie-Louise choked the words from the back of her throat.

  Madame screwed up her nose. ‘Tell me to go fuck my grandmother.’

  Marie-Louise recoiled.

  ‘Go on.’

  Marie-Louise grunted the insult, feeling ashamed to utter such words to this kind woman.

  ‘Deeper.’

  She tried again.

  Madame shook her head. ‘Growl. Be menacing. From your gut. Think of someone you hate.’

  The image of her lover’s face came to her in an instant, his pocked skin and eyes too close together. She remembered his sweetened, sickening, truthless whispers.

  ‘Go fuck your grandmother!’ She hurled the words. The hairs rose on the back of her neck.

  Madame d’Yauville smiled. ‘Perfect.’

  Chapter 4

  MARIE-LOUISE MADE HER WAY ALONE THROUGH THE DANK ALLEYWAYS to the port. She hovered in the shadows of the warehouses, the brim of her hat pulled low, watching a queue of men waiting to board the Deux Frères. A rat lurked at her feet, thrusting its nose and whiskers out into the light, poised as if to run. Ahead, the harbour was a forest of masts, bare of leaves, stark like winter in the pale morning light.

  She waited. Her scarf was too tight and she tried to loosen it, feeling it pull like a noose around her neck. Perhaps it was not too late to change her mind, to abandon this disguise. A door clanged open behind her. Men carrying barrels on their shoulders filed out, cursing at her to move, and suddenly she was pushed and jostled into line.

  The smell of men, their sweat and grime, overwhelmed her. Yet she moved along with them, one small discordant thread in a braid of rope, pulled along the dock. Muscled shoulders and backs banged against her.
Thick, hairy forearms were exposed beneath their sleeves and, terrified, she clasped her own fine wrists behind her. She wanted to run, but knew she could not. The cord of men came to a halt and she saw the rat sprint between the legs of the men ahead. Each man was counted into a small boat by a garde marine. She pressed close to the sweat-stained back of the man in front of her, willing herself invisible.

  The boat swayed as she stepped into it and her stomach lurched at the unfamiliar sensation. Suddenly, her neck was tugged back by her scarf.

  ‘You there!’ The garde marine was glaring at her. ‘What do you think you are doing?’

  She could not speak. How could she ever have imagined she could look like one of these men?

  He tugged again at her tricolour scarf. ‘You are in the service of the King now. Take it off!’

  She hastily undid the knot and tossed the fabric into the water. The soldier pushed her down into a seat as the rowers took up the oars.

  Trembling openly now and not daring to look up, she felt a clap on her shoulder. As the boat drew away from the garde marine in his bright uniform, she heard sniggering. ‘Good on you, lad.’ ‘Stick it to ’em.’

  On the Deux Frères, she was led below deck. Here, she was to bake bread for the crew who worked to repair the ship and ready her for sail. It was dark in the galley, the gloom broken only by yellow lantern light. The baker regarded her, unimpressed. She shrank beneath his appraisal. His arms were thick and he stood with fists on his hips. He sniffed and shrugged then tossed her an apron.

  Marie-Louise steadied her hands against her thighs, hardly daring to believe her disguise had carried her this far. In the mess hall, the baker showed her the chest for her belongings and the hammock she was to sleep in. The canvas coffin hung from the roof along with dozens of others, fourteen inches of space for each man. She began to pant, feeling her chest swell against the whalebone. How can I sleep among all these men? How will I relieve myself? What do I do when I have the bleeds? The bundle of cut rags she had tucked into her waistband seemed a feeble defence. What if they see a stain? What if they smell me out?