‘At eight o’clock the Provost Marshal came for her. At her priedieu, she read in a calm voice the prayers for the dying. Members of her household knelt as she swept into the Great Hall, dressed all in black, an ivory crucifix in her ivory hand.
‘Three hundred people had assembled to watch her die. She entered through a small side door, surprising them; her face was composed. The scaffold was draped in black. There was a black cushion for her to kneel upon. But when her attendants stepped forward, and they slipped the black robe from her shoulders, it was seen that she was clothed entirely in scarlet. She had dressed in the colour of blood.’
Here Lucile put down her pen. She began to think of synonyms. Vermilion. Flame. Cardinal. Sanguine. Phrases occurred to her: caught red-handed. In the red. Red-letter day.
She picked up her pen again.
‘What did she think, as she rested her head on the block? As she waited: as the executioner took his stance? Seconds passed; and those seconds went by like years.
‘The first blow of the axe gashed the back of the Queen’s head. The second failed to sever her neck, but carpeted the stage with royal blood. The third blow rolled her head across the scaffold. The executioner retrieved it and held it up to the onlookers. It could be seen that the lips were moving; and they continued to move for a quarter of an hour.
‘Though who stood over the sodden relic with a fob-watch, I really could not say.’
ADÈLE, HER SISTER, came in. ‘Doing your diary? Can I read it?’
‘Yes; but you may not.’
‘Oh, Lucile,’ her sister said; and laughed.
Adèle dumped herself into a chair. With some difficulty, Lucile dragged her mind back into the present day, and brought her eyes around to focus on her sister’s face. She is regressing, Lucile thought. If I had been a married woman, however briefly, I would not be spending the afternoons in my parents’ house.
‘I’m lonely,’ Adèle said. ‘I’m bored. I can’t go out anywhere because it’s too soon and I have to wear this disgusting mourning.’
‘Here’s boring,’ Lucile said.
‘Here’s just as usual. Isn’t it?’
‘Except that Claude is at home less than ever. And this gives Annette more opportunity to be with her Friend.’
It was their impertinent habit, when they were alone, to call their parents by their Christian names.
‘And how is that Friend?’ Adèle inquired. ‘Does he still do your Latin for you?’
‘I don’t have to do Latin any more.’
‘What a shame. No more pretext to put your heads together, then.’
‘I hate you, Adèle.’
‘Of course you do,’ her sister said good-naturedly. ‘Think how grown-up I am. Think of all the lovely money my poor husband left me. Think of all the things I know, that you don’t. Think of all the fun I’m going to have, when I’m out of mourning. Think of all the men there are in the world! But no. You only think of one.’
‘I do not think of him,’ Lucile said.
‘Does Claude even suspect what’s germinating here, what with him and Annette, and him and you?’
‘There’s nothing germinating. Can’t you see? The whole point is that nothing’s going on.’
‘Well, maybe not in the crude technical sense,’ Adèle said. ‘But I can’t see Annette holding out for much longer, I mean, even through sheer fatigue. And you – you were twelve when you first saw him. I remember the occasion. Your piggy eyes lit up.’
‘I have not got piggy eyes. They did not light up.’
‘But he’s exactly what you want,’ Adèle said. ‘Admittedly, he’s not much like anything in the life of Maria Stuart. But he’s just what you need for casting in people’s teeth.’
‘He never looks at me anyway,’ Lucile said. ‘He thinks I’m a child. He doesn’t know I’m there.’
‘He knows,’ Adèle said. ‘Go through, why don’t you?’ She gestured in the direction of the drawing room, towards its closed doors. ‘Bring me a report. I dare you.’
‘I can’t just walk in.’
‘Why can’t you? If they’re only sitting around talking, they can’t object, can they? And if they’re not – well, that’s what we want to know, isn’t it?’
‘Why don’t you go then?’
Adèle looked at her as if she were simple-minded. ‘Because the more innocent assumption is the one that you could be expected to make.’
Lucile saw this; and she could never resist a dare. Adèle watched her go, her satin slippers noiseless on the carpets. Camille’s odd little face floated into her mind. If he’s not the death of us, she thought, I’ll smash my crystal ball and take up knitting.
CAMILLE WAS PUNCTUAL; come at two, she had said. On the offensive, she asked him if he had nothing better to do with his afternoons. He did not think this worth a reply; but he sensed the drift of things.
Annette had decided to employ that aspect of herself her friends called a Splendid Woman. It involved sweeping about the room and smiling archly.
‘So,’ she said. ‘There are rules, and you won’t play by them. You’ve been talking about us to someone.’
‘Oh,’ Camille said, fiddling with his hair, ‘if only there were anything to say.’
‘Claude is going to find out.’
‘Oh, if only there were something for him to find out.’ He stared absently at the ceiling. ‘How is Claude?’ he said at last.
‘Cross,’ Annette said, distracted. ‘Terribly cross. He put a lot of money into the Périer brothers’ waterworks schemes, and now the Comte de Mirabeau has written a pamphlet against it and collapsed the stocks.’
‘But he must mean it for the public good. I admire Mirabeau.’
‘You would. Let a man be a bankrupt, let him be notoriously immoral – oh, don’t distract me, Camille, don’t.’
‘I thought you wanted distraction,’ he said sombrely.
She was keeping a careful distance between them, buttressing her resolve with occasional tables. ‘It has to stop,’ she said. ‘You have to stop coming here. People are talking, they’re making assumptions. And God knows, I’m sick of it. Whatever made you think in the first place that I would give up the security of my happy marriage for a hole-and-corner affair with you?’
‘I just think you would, that’s all.’
‘You think I’m in love with you, don’t you? Your self-conceit is so monstrous –’
‘Annette, let’s run away. Shall we? Tonight?’
She almost said, yes, all right then.
Camille stood up, as if he were going to suggest they start her packing. She stopped pacing, came to a halt before him. She rested her eyes on his face, one hand pointlessly smoothing her skirts. She raised the other hand, touched his shoulder.
He moved towards her, set his hands at either side of her waist. The length of their bodies touched. His heart was beating wildly. He’ll die, she thought, of a heart like that. She spent a moment looking into his eyes. Tentatively, their lips met. A few seconds passed. Annette drew her fingernails along the back of her lover’s neck and knotted them into his hair, pulling his head down towards her.
There was a sharp squeal from behind them. ‘Well,’ a breathy voice said,