The Story So Far

Chapter 1 - The Stench

Versailles,

May 1789

It took half an hour to saw off the heavy metal padlock.  By then, the rising stench had made it clear what we were going to find. Although the palace was full of ripe smells, this one was sweet and putrid and coated the back of my throat. When, eventually, the lieutenant began to open the lid my mother wretched and took a few steps backwards until she was cowering behind the door. I covered my mouth and nose with my handkerchief.

“If you must be here don’t look, mademoiselle,” the Lieutenant instructed me gruffly. “I don’t want to have to deal with fainting women as well ….”
He wrapped his scarf around his face and looked down. As he lifted the lid of the trunk the putrifying flesh and bulging eyes of Piotre Palovna’s head popped up.

“Oh dear,” the lieutenant muttered. “Poor sod.”

The once beautiful face of the young Russian kitchen apprentice was bloated. His eyes bulged and a wide welt around his throat had turned green and was oozing puss.

The Lieutenant wiped his brow. “He was garrotted.”

“Obviously.” 

The word out before I could stop it. The Lieutenant gave me a sharp look. I tried to simper. He stared at the corpse for a moment and then bent down to gently prod it.

“He was a big lad. How did they get him all folded up in this trunk? And why? I can't imagine the Princess knew he existed."

I closed my eyes – there was something, some small thing that I couldn’t quite remember. I began to think aloud.

“Wasn’t the princess wearing a …?”.

But I was interrupted by a fit of coughing from behind the door. “My God, let’s go,” my mother groaned. “Surely Sir needs to fetch the Master of the Provost and we should …..just … go.  Athenais? It’s not right for us to be here.”

“Yes, Maman,” I said, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice.

Maman disappeared into the parlour.

“Has anyone reported him missing?” I asked.

“The head pastry chef. Very distressed. Said he was the best apprentice pattissiere he’d had pass through his kitchens for a long time. Had high hopes for him. He made those swan puff pastry pies, you remember, stuffed with pigeon and almonds, at last Friday’s lunch. Everyone said how good they were.”

The lieutenant gave a deep sigh and suddenly his red face turned a little green as the smell of the corpse hit him again.

“Don’t think I’ll be able to eat pigeon pie for a while.”

“No,” I agreed.

“Anyway, you mother is right, I must fetch the authorities.”

He stood up and took a last look at the body stuffed into the Princesses’ trunk.

“And I’d appreciate it, mademoiselle, if you didn’t mention to anyone that I had allowed you … you shouldn’t have been …”

He had been recently promoted to the rank of lieutenant within the palace police. I knew it must have cost him a small fortune to secure such a position.
“Of course, sir. Not a word.”

I turned and walked out of the bedchamber to the parlour where Maman was leaning against the window frame, fluttering an old lace handkerchief about her nose. The lieutenant followed me.

“Poor lad,” he said again. “He was so happy to have come here. Such an achievement for a boy like him. Said to me himself, he did, how happy he was to be here.”

Happy? I cringed to think anyone’s life on the outside could be so awful that they would volunteer themselves for existence here. Those of us born in this snake-pit were desperate to find a way out. The lieutenant flung open the double doors that led from the Princesses’ apartments to the main corridor which ran the length of the palace. From those quiet airy rooms, now filled with the stench of a rotting boy, we stepped out into the echoing highway crowded with servants, nobility, thieves, courtiers, gamblers, hangers on, lovers, politicians and at least one murderer.

God, I thought to myself - am I trapped here forever? 

Chapter 2- Piotre and the Princess

My mother is both a bastard and a bitch. She’s a bitch because she has to be. You can’t survive at Versaille, let alone prosper, without being prepared to stab your best friend in the back. She’s a bastard because her father, some monk from Tourville, left her mother to die in childbirth. To end up at the Parc aux Cerfs was her good luck. It might have been a brothel but at least it was the king’s brothel. Set at the edge of the palace grounds, the young women were for the king’s pleasure only. It was a comfortable life for a whore. Many royal bastards came out of the Parc aux Cerfs. Not me though. I might a bastard, but I’m not the King’s. That was my mother’s bad luck. My father is the Comte de Viel, once a royal favourite, now just a petty and rather cash-stricken nobleman at court. In fact the Comte was born the wrong side of the sheets too; his title was a reward to his mother for her help in the repayment of the old King’s mistress’s gambling debt. So we are all bastards. I like to think that, if I absolutely had to, I could be a bitch too.

As we stepped into the corridor, Maman glanced to her left and muttered,

“Merde”.

Marching towards us was group of five small women, all with the same sour expression on their faces that you might expect from someone about to step onto the gallows. Leading the pack was a stocky blonde, somewhat older than me but with much taller hair. Her heavily decorated pale pink dress did not enhance her sun reddened skin or cover enough of it, as I noticed when she raised her arm to point at me.

“At-en-as!” She hollered my name in her heavy Polish accent. “What is going on? I have been hearing all sorts of horrible things.”

I bobbed a small bow.

“Oui, Mam’selle” I said quietly. “There has been a tragedy. I will speak to Madame Campan’s lady and see if we can find you other apartments for your stay here.”

Princess Elizabeth tilted her head so she was looking at me sideways, from the corner of her eye.

“What has happened?” She was trying to speak gently but her voice rasped like a comb going through dirty, powdered hair.

The Lieutenant stepped forward.

“Your Highness. A most regrettable incident. We have found a … deceased person in your rooms.”

“Eh? You mean there is a dead body in my apartments? “

“Yes, Madame.”

The princess seemed unmoved by this news. She flicked her eyes to me.

“Is that the cause of the disgusting smell?”

She glanced over her shoulders and gave her ladies a curt little smile.

“And we thought it was just the natural stench of the French court!  But…” she returned her gaze to mine. It was unnervingly intense. “… a dead body, eh? Where?”

I kept my eyes lowered.

“In your trunk, Madame.”
“In my wedding trunk? With my trousseau?”

I could have kicked myself. Of course, the trousseau! Where was it? There was no way the well-built Piotre could have fitted into a trunk that was already stuffed full of brocade gowns and frothy lace chemises. Where had the clothes gone? The lieutenant gave me a worried look.

“I’m afraid, Madame, that your trousseau has disappeared.”

“My God, do you know how much that lot cost?” her voice took on a shrill edge. The ladies bunched up behind her and began to mutter angrily under their breaths. “Who is this damned body then?"

“Oh, Madame, no-one you would know of. He was not important…” the Lieutenant tried to evade answering and began to walk backwards, eager to be away.

“His name was Piotre Palovna.” I said clearly. My mother put her hand on my arm and gripped it.

“Mam’selle!” reprimanded the Lieutenant. “Her highness does not need to know…”
But the princess has lost her rosy glow.

“Who?” she whispered.

“Piotre Palovna,” I repeated steadily. “He was apprenticed to the pastry chef. A young Russian …”

But I didn’t finish. The princess had fainted. 

Chapter 3- Pistoles for the Queen

My mother and I share a draughty, two roomed apartment at the back of the Grand Master’s Building. She is a lady-in-waiting to the King’s aunts, les Mesdames, Adelaide and Victoire. Somehow I became attached to their retinue.  It was a good job when the Comte fixed her up with it twenty years ago but little rivalries and jealousies and a chronic tendency to pick the wrong side in any dispute means Maman has not progressed as she might. Les Mesdames made enemies of Queen when she first arrived from Austria. This morning, before we found the corpse, we were preparing the Aunts for their promenade through the Hall of Mirrors, then a card game in the pink salon where they hoped the Queen or at least one her gang might grace them with their presence. They didn’t of course. The Queen takes very little notice of anyone outside her tight knit group of friends. Since being dragged back from her little chateaux, with its fantasy hamlet where she could pretend to be a shepherdess or milkmaid, the Queen holes up in her apartments with the few people she feels she can trust. You can’t blame her. The aunts would spit in her eye if they got the chance. So we all fester back here, our furnishings growing ever more shabby, our gowns ever less fashionable.

Maman didn’t name me Athenais after the Greek goddess of wisdom but after Madame de Montespan, the Sun King’s mistress. She was famed for being greedy, rich and fat. My poor old mother has been disappointed on all counts. I’m quite skinny and past marriage at the advanced age twenty seven. I’m not likely to catch anyone’s eye for the job of mistress.

My mother, Héléne, is only sixteen years older than me and most of the time acts as though she were my daughter. When not tending to the Aunts she spends her time arranging her curled, powered tower of hair. It takes so long and costs so much in decorations she can only have it re-dressed once every two months. I have to powder it every day for her. Close up it’s a nauseating mix of flour and grease but that’s just the same as everyone else at court. Only the Queen and her pretty little band of princesses can bathe and wash their hair on a regular basis. Now, I’ve tried to powder my hair and follow my mother’s instructions when it comes to creating one of these monstrosities but honestly, I look as though I have a pillow balanced on my head. It doesn’t suit my rather sharp features. I think I probably look better dressed simply. I like to be able to move around easily, which is impossible in such enormous skirts so I dress, to Maman’s disgust, like a servant.

But I feel young despite being ancient here at court. I still have many of my own teeth and although smallpox scarred quite a large area on my left temple I can cover that by allowing my unfashionable unpowdered hair to fall, just so, across my forehead. You see, I am a little vain and ashamed of it but sometimes I still think maybe some man might….

No, I am far too old. I read too many books and know too much about philosophy, politics and economics, which may be admirable in a queen but not in a bottom rank lady in waiting. When not required by Les Mesdames or my mother, who is as bad as they are when it comes to suddenly wanting a macaroon or a different pair of earrings because she’s just seen Princess de Lamballe pass by in a pair she likes, I like to walk in the gardens and read a book. Voltaire, Hobbes, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Condorcet - with every word of theirs I read I make myself less desirable to the men at court.

Princess Elizabeth’s ladies rushed to her side, heaved her prone, rather solid little body upright and dragged her across the black and white tiled floor towards her apartments. As they opened the doors, the smell of the decomposing corpse wafted through. One of the ladies wretched and almost immediately they began to turn and drag the princess out again. Her head lolled forward, bobbing violently and her surprisingly tiny feet, encased in shiny blue satin heels, scraped behind her. My mother began to titter indelicately. The lieutenant and I raised an eyebrow at each other and we were just about to step forward to assist when a stern voice rang out behind us.

“My god, what is happening here?”

I turned to see a tall thin man who was soberly dressed but cursed with messy locks of bright auburn hair sticking upwards. He strode towards us and brushed myself and the Princesses’ ladies aside.  

“What has happened to this poor lady?” he asked, taking her in his arms.

“Not in the apartments, sir,” said the lieutenant quickly, moving to bar his entry to the Princesses rooms. “There has been an incident.”

“An incident eh?” the man replied. He looked around at the panting ladies. “I should say.”

He carefully knelt and laid the Princess on the floor. She was beginning to come around (I think she had been conscious for a good few minutes but had chosen, for her own reasons, to pretend otherwise).

“Ssh, ssh,” the man said. He looked up “I believe this lady requires a cushion to rest on until she is feeling better. You -“ he pointed at me. “Go into the rooms and fetch one.”

“But sir,” the lieutenant began to protest but the man waved him quiet. “It is only a chamber maid, she will touch nothing and not mind whatever mess she may find. I’m sure she’s used to it.”

My mother swelled in indignation.

“My daughter is not –“ but I put a hand on her arm.

“Of course, sir,” I re-entered the Princesses rooms. The lieutenant followed me. We both put our handkerchiefs to our faces. The smell seemed to have increased considerably during the few moments we had been in the corridor.

“Do you know who that is?” he asked, his voice muffled and irritable.

“I have not had the pleasure,” I answered wryly.

“Sulpice Debauve. The Queen’s chocolate maker. Quite the little lapdog, I hear.”

“Oh, yes.” I had heard of Debauve, the chemist. He had created a type of chocolate called a pistole in which the bitter taste of her Majesties’ many medications could be disguised. I had also heard he was a dry, solemn man unimpressed by the fripperies of court. I had imagined him to be much older.

There were many cushions littering the chairs and chaise longues of the apartments and I picked up the first one which came to hand. In the corridor I handed it to Monsieur Debauve who tucked it behind Princess Elizabeth’s head. She was smiling up at him in a rather soft fashion but he seemed oblivious. He beckoned to one of the ladies-in-waiting.

“Come and hold her. You,” he pointed to another. “Find a little wine from somewhere.”

He stood up, the princess letting go of his arm rather reluctantly.

“What is this incident, then?” he asked the Lieutenant. “May I see, sir?”

The Lieutenant hopped from one foot to the other.

“I really must fetch the Master of the Provost, Sir. You see, in there – the princesses’ apartments … in her bed chamber…There has been a murder.”

“A murder!” The chemists’ eyes suddenly light up and for a moment he almost seemed a little agreeable.  

“Well, Lieutentant. Let us go to find the Master of the Provost together. And you can tell me all about it.”

He turned on his heel and marched off along the corridor, the Lieutenant chasing behind.

My mother appeared at my elbow, still sniffing into her handkerchief.

“What a simply awful man,” she said.

But, for some reason, I could not agree.