9. Dec, 2020

'Love Child'

The two figures, one spindle legged, bowed above buckled satin shoes, the other with hooped panniers whose width meant the bewigged heads had to stoop confidentially towards one another to be heard, tottered ahead of me.  Was I now, I wondered, in the possession of a valuable overheard secret, or just another piece of recycled gossip?  It was impossible to say, there was so much venery and intrigue rife in the court.  I watched the two advance across the parterre and imagined them transformed, dryad-like, into a further couple of avenue trees either side of the long walkway leading into the vista, their wigs now poplar canopies, nodding and whispering together in perpetuity.

For, you see,  I was educated, to an extent, in the classics, enough to entertain those I would have to serve.  I sighed.  Had I been the child of a Venetian courtesan, I would perhaps have played the violin for Vivaldi, trained as part of the girls’ orchestra.  I had heard tell of this.  I was not, though.  I was the natural child of one of the lesser nobles. The court was full of us, brought into various service duties, for we had to be made use of somehow.  We must have been an unwelcome reminder, we vigorous mongrel progeny,  of the possibilities repeatedly denied the legitimate dynastic lines, where so many failed to thrive.  

So what was I doing now?  Following to pick up lapdog droppings, because, whilst you might have barely a curtain across a chamber pot on the palace stairs, the King’s gravel paths, where visiting princes and statesmen trod, must not be publicly besmirched.  If you fancy the courtiers to have been beautiful, seeing the creamy rose cheeks of their portraits, think again.  Between the various poxes, deleterious childhood complaints, uncorrected deformities and so on, to find someone with as small a thing as a turn in only one eye, was virtually to have them accounted radiance itself.  You can see a portrait of me, too, in the palace.  A small oval painting, it’s entitled ‘unknown young lady, approximately fourteen years of age’.  My dewily bright looks there do not, in fact, reflect me, my mother having commissioned it in the style of a youthful miniature of herself.  

It was done to remind my father of her erstwhile charms, of my existence and of the need for some purpose to be found for me if possible.  He was a reasonably benevolent voluptuary and so he placed me in the court train of a dowager cousin.  A relative of the ruling dynasty, he had, like them, a heavily asymmetrical physiognomy, especially about the mouth and chin, which attribute I (thankfully to a lesser extent) shared.  I watch you all, you visitors, from my corner by a great fireplace, as you gaze in wonder at the magnificent ceilings and surrounding grandeurs, talking amongst yourselves about how wonderful it must all have been.  Sometimes one of you spots me, with my purple fluff of powdered hair, archly frank gaze and pearlescent face and you exclaim:

“Oh, how pretty!”  

I wasn’t, you know.  As I have said, barely any of us were.

The days were onerous with waiting for entrance to one fashionable salon clique or another, so that, whilst languishing in between them, spying, eavesdropping and betrayals were very much a constant activity.  I soon learned how to make myself useful.  I was a discreet bearer of messages, which in turn made my mistress useful in the same way, as she became party to more knowledge of affairs through me.  I earned a sobriquet, “La Petite”, which she gave to me.

“If you need someone,” she would say.  “I will send La Petite.  She’s very reliable.”

I was no more French than she was, of course, but it was still a language of court fashion. So, I flitted through the malodorous back corridors and the more scented tapestried ones, bearing my whispered messages (no need for dangerous notes, for I had an excellent memory and was always wordperfect).  We rarely saw the King and Queen, except at a distance, perhaps on a dais at a masque or a banquet, because we were not amongst the highest ranking circles.  The King was small, swarthy and portly, the plain Queen, without issue (unlike him), alongside.  Dressed in their jewelled best, though, between candle lit chandeliers and everyone’s poor eyesight, they appeared to be magnificent enough.  

Many a card table I dealt for then, or saw a poisoned oyster served at, its arsenic pearl unsuspected until too late.  Gastric flux was common, purgings as like to kill as not and death was frequent.  My whisperings were valued as warnings and many left court for country on some hastily made excuse after getting that word through me.  Accusations of murder did not go down well at court and whilst the immediate royal family’s food was tasted, the rest must take their chances and use common sense.  The stakes were always high but this, you must remember, was just how it was.  Without court and favour, there was only the dullness of country living, rolling through empty villages in your carriage, with barely a soul to admire your standing.  So the court was always crowded with the social climbing brigands of the day, in and out of each other’s beds.  We by-blows, however,  had to be wary of our dalliances, due to consanguinity, for who knew who might or might not be a half brother or sister in such a place?  My mother had forewarned me of this before I arrived and of the necessity for caution.

I did not mind, for where we dwelt, if I had not been carrying down the slops of my lady’s pot in the morning, I had like as not been treading urine into leather as a tanner’s wife.  I would probably be married off in the end anyway for some political advantage of my patron father’s.  For now, though, we returned from the lavender scented gravel walk, with me at a respectful distance.  Before we entered the chamber, my mistress bade farewell to her companion and said to me,

“Did you hear our talk earlier, La Petite?”

“Why, no, madam, “ I assured her.  “Unless you require me to have done so?”

“Between ourselves only, for now,” she told me.  “Take the dog away and I shall take tea served in my small chamber.  Go and ask Lady S. to join me.”

I took the message and found myself, coming back, the object, not for the first time, of another courtier’s attention.  He had decided that I might be useful to seduce for pillow talk but being wise to this, I played my demure game and talked to him some more of my indecision about becoming a novice and leaving the worldly place for a nunnery.  I was exceedingly wearisome on the subject and so, once more, he desisted, as I was not so valuable to him as all that, perhaps.

I greeted Lady S. and showed her into my lady’s small chamber, which had a daintily sunny aspect still much admired by visitors, with its turquoise and golds and Chinese birds.  I powdered my mistress’s sallow cheeks again and rouged her mouth afresh to disguise the lack of teeth her lisp gave away and she sighed a little, tired and elderly for court life.

“I shall seek you a marriage position, soon,  La Petite.  Best settle you.  Your father is old, I am old.  You have served us well and I am failing now.”

She did often complain thus and it was true, too.  I could see the weary sag of skin on her arms as I puffed the silk sleeves of her gown and assured her that she looked quite charming.  I stayed in the little chair behind the boudoir door, where I could listen without being seen as she passed through to greet her guest and the servant brought tea.  I was pleased with myself.  My time there building up my small reputation was likely to do well for me and perhaps a good match would soon be mooted, so that I would be assured of some safe future.

Unfortunately, my mistress made a rare error of judgement over the information passed to her on the parterre that day and shared it with Lady S., who turned out to be an enemy. Her time at court ended abruptly and being allied to her and in her service, so did mine. We went abroad, a restless twilight occupation of rented rooms amongst the haunts of other emigres, (for she had money, this widow).  When she died, her hope of reconciliation still unmet, my own life’s flicker in the fandango of the day expired too, without influence by then and still unwed.

It is so long ago, now, that I hardly recall what later transpired in my life, or how the end came for me, but perhaps that’s why I find myself back here, looking out at you all from the painting of me as a girl, when I was, almost, a part of something.  People say that the lively eyes of my picture follow them about the room, so vividly are they drawn, and they do, because I am watching them pass by.  The day I always see again daily, though, is the one that began the end here, in the formal garden and with the secret I witnessed, shared between the old nobles.  If there ever was, finally, an extra pair of poplar trees nodding heads at the end of the avenue, they could talk of that secret all their days long here now, for it would mean nothing to anybody today, least of all, as it did then, treason.