Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume (20 page)

At almost the same moment, Dumas returned from the kitchens (I presumed) and began waving a grease-laden wooden spoon in the air, declaiming, “I’ve decided! I cannot keep it in a moment longer! I hope I have your blessings, Émile and Henri, but if not it doesn’t matter. I am signed, sealed and—almost—delivered!”

“What?” everyone asked, “What has happened, Alex?”

“I’m signed to another book—this one with
La Presse
. It’s replacing Balzac’s.
Les Paysans
has been boring the customers right at the crucial point when they should be renewing their subscriptions, so it’s been dropped! Who wants to read about the hardships of peasants?”

Henri was looking extremely alarmed. “Alex, for God’s sake,” he called out, but Dumas was charging onwards.

“So I’ll have another one on the go! Starting in a week! Look for
La Reine Margot
, in serialization in
La Presse
! But now! Come eat!”

And he turned on his heel, splattering grease everywhere, oblivious to the quiet oaths and glaring looks that were ricocheting amongst his guests.

*

Dinner continued at this break-neck speed; I was sure it would end in a collision of some description and found myself almost holding my breath. We were seated near Beauvallon and Cassagnac; Beauvallon kept trying to catch my eye, but I steered clear. Pier-Angelo was sitting opposite us, which was nice; Alex
fils
, Merci and the squat doctor were nearby. Dumas’ wife, Ida Ferrier, was beside Dumas at the head of the table, but she looked decidedly out of sorts—as well as perceptibly fatter than ever. She’d always been fat—she certainly had been large when I’d first seen her, two years before—but now she was enormous, and didn’t seem happy inside her skin. Her eyes were red and it appeared that she had been crying.

Servants brought in trays loaded with meat, Dumas introducing it all by declaiming, “Dig in,
mes amis
! My
dindon à la Sainte Menehould
is made from only the right legs of the turkey—the left leg is too tough, because that’s the one they use to scratch themselves with!”

A roar of laughter went up at this, and then
tous les artistes
dug in with the gusto that Dumas demanded.

Once the first fury of chewing and consuming started to slow down, the stories began—of course, led by Dumas. He couldn’t help himself; he simply had to be the source, the centre of the evening. And poor Ida seemed to be the bait.

“No, no! Roger,
mon ami
, can vouch for me—it was uproarious!” The writer’s voice was climbing in volume. I’d noticed that he never drank spirits, so that couldn’t have been the reason—no, it was simply the man himself, uninfluenced but immoderate. “Ida, as most of you know, has an Italian lover—a count! He’s very handy. In the good days, we shared her. Now I don’t want her.” Ida whacked Dumas, but he fenced the blow and put her hand aside. “She’s going to leave me for him, she’s promised. The sooner the better. I need to trade her in for a young one—any takers?”

“Oh God, Merci, here he goes again,” moaned Alex
fils
. Merci downed another glass of champagne; her eyes were beginning to glitter, her body to sway.

“But let me tell the story!” Dumas resumed. “Roger and Ida were in bed together one afternoon—God’s truth! Before she got so damned fat!—and I came home.”

The friend, who was Roger de Beauvoir (so Henri told me, in my ear), began to roll his eyes, and reached over to pat Ida’s shoulder.

“I came home,” said Dumas, “entered the bedroom, and she was sitting there with the sheets pulled up, looking guilty as hell.”

My heart jolted at this, remembering myself in the same position. I glanced down the table at Marie d’Agoult, whose baleful eyes were fixed upon me. Fuck a flaming duck
à l’orange!

“So of course I knew,” Dumas was continuing, “and it was a cold day, sometime in the winter. I crawled under the covers with my dear wife, let the fire burn down, wouldn’t let her out of bed… The room grew colder and colder. And finally he had to give in! Roger peeked out of the closet, teeth chattering like icicles in a breeze. He started to sneeze uncontrollably. So I said to him, ‘Roger, you idiot, get in here before you catch your death!’ Soon we were all tucked up together, with a fire raging, sleeping happily!”

“It’s all true, God help me,” Beauvoir concurred, tears of merriment running down his cheeks.

Hailstones of laughter! Gusts and waves of hilarity rippled around the table. Poor Ida was crying and shaking her head, covering her eyes.

“But never mind that, dear friends,” Dumas finished, wiping his own eyes from his enjoyment of the tale. “How do you like my
dindon
?”

Sounds of approbation from all sides.

“Good, good. I only wish that I could cook you my favourite delicacy of all time, but it’s almost impossible to acquire.”

“And what would that be, Alex?” asked Beauvallon, wiping his lips.

“Elephant trunk. Roasted, with potatoes and parsnips, a smattering of herbs—unbelievably good!”

“Oh!” I couldn’t help it; I let out a gasp. How dreadful, how appalling.

He focused upon me like a shot, little squinty eyes all inquisitive, peering down the table towards me. “What’s the matter, mademoiselle?”

“I love elephants,” I said, as all heads turned towards me. “I grew up around them. They are graceful, intelligent—much more intelligent than we are, I sometimes think. I could
never
eat them. That is barbaric.” I couldn’t help myself, no matter what he thought of me for it. I shuddered, just thinking of a glorious elephant, being killed so that a gourmand could devour its trunk.

Beside me, Henri took my hand under the table and gave it a squeeze.

“You are… Who are you?” Dumas asked.

The Countess d’Agoult’s nostrils looked as if they could cut glass.

“We are together, Alex,” Henri said with a smile. “Once again,
mon ami
, meet Mademoiselle Lola Montez, the love of my life. You were too busy when we first arrived to introduce you properly. But don’t forget her again.”

There was a pause.
Merde
, what now, I thought. To my left, far down the table, I saw Countess d’Agoult’s face stiffen even further, and felt George’s eyes dart from me to her erstwhile friend. I chanced a glance at Henri’s profile: he was looking at Dumas with an open but challenging expression. Heads were turning back and forth between the two men.

“Really?” Dumas said, finally. “Well, I see… It’s what I’d heard, but… I hadn’t believed it, Henri.”

“Do.”

“Well.” The writer might have been wrestling with himself, but he finally said, “
Alors
, mademoiselle. I envy you your love of elephants—and of this fine young man, whom I consider almost a son.”

Alex
fils
made a quick, contorted motion of distress at this, before Merci was able to calm him.

“Be good to him,” Dumas continued, “or you will have me as an enemy. I swear it most solemnly.”

Diablo
, this was very harsh! Henri rose, and then raised his glass. “Let us not speak of enemies. Ever.” He looked around at everyone with his affectionate gaze and then back to the writer. “To my dear friend, Alex—I thank you for your love, which I assure you is returned, and I thank you for your hospitality. And now we should return to our dining pleasures, before the
dindon
gets cold.”

Around the table, shoulders relaxed and I could hear sighs of relief. The talk moved on and I was enormously glad. I hated being in that big man’s firing range yet again. I whispered into Henri’s ear, “Do you see now? Do you see what I mean?”

The inevitable red curtain of rage had begun to rise behind my eyes but Henri patted my hand and raised it to his lips. He gave me a loving glance over my fingers. I willed myself to take a deep breath. Henri knows what he’s doing, I reminded myself, and what’s good for us: I am not solo now, I must think as part of a duo. Calm, Lola. I struggled to attain it through the waves of heat churning up through me.

Just then Pier-Angelo, after downing a large glass of red wine, leaned towards us and said, “Henri, have you heard about this?—if you haven’t, let me propose to you an article about it. Being Italian, I know about these things, from years in Naples and other nefarious places.”

“What things, dear fellow?” Henri asked. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a cult—seems to be a cult, or a brotherhood. Call themselves a brethren, I think. Quite disturbing. Preys on young, impressionable men—well, I say ‘preys,’ but perhaps that’s not the right word. Actually, the literal prey seems to be young women.”

I felt the hair at the back of my neck begin to prickle, as some of what he’d been saying filtered past my agitation. “What—what was that?” I asked.

“Pier was speaking about a group of odd brethren,” Henri told me.

“What do you mean, Pier?” I demanded.

“Well, this cult, or whatever it is—it’s hard to decipher—believes that our way of life is wrong, is hedonistic. That it’s fueled by drunken debauchery and loose women. That it’s weakening our moral fibre as men, as nations. Ridiculous.” Pier laughed, then continued more soberly, “It’s spreading like wildfire amongst certain susceptible men—Alex’s son there being one of them.” We glanced over: Alex
fils
had his eyes closed and hands linked piously in his lap. Merci, beside him, was downing yet another glass of champagne. Pier-Angelo continued, “Seems to have started in Spain, spread through Prussia and some parts of Germany last year, and now—somehow—it’s coming here.”

My blood suddenly ran cold, a shiver jolting through me like a bolt of lightning. “Through Spain? And this is a cult?” I asked, extremely alarmed. “Do you know any more? Is it… Could it be…” I could barely speak the word. “…A society?”

“I don’t know about that,” Pier-Angelo mused. “I only know that its appearance amongst us does not bode well. For us—or for our ladies.”

“But what are these—this brotherhood—what are they proposing?” I quavered.

“I’m not sure about that either. But I imagine… well, to stop us?”

I was shocked beyond all expression; I could feel that my face had gone as white as a sheet. A cult against loose women? Against a liberal or artistic way of life? Is it possible? It’s not possible! He’s mouldering in Her Majesty’s jail in London, England.

Oh sweet baby Jesus, let him be locked up in England, or better yet, have died of some lingering disease. Most horribly, though, this mysterious brethren sounded like an offshoot—or the thing itself?—of Father Miguel de la Vega’s demonic Society of the Exterminating Angel. And certainly, if it was, even with the hell-hound priest out of the way, there’d be others to leap in and take his place.

Just then, Merci uttered a piercing cry, fell out of her chair and onto the carpet.

*

Luckily, Dr. Koreff was at hand and surged into action. Merci was moved into a nearby room and laid out on the bed, while everyone clustered around, shaking their heads and whispering behind their hands: “Too much to drink,” “She’s losing her looks,” “Such a shame, for she started out such a pretty little thing.” Alex
fils
was now downing glass after glass of champagne himself, and muttering about “this dissolute life.” His father, ever the ebullient host, was patting people’s hands and ushering them back to the dining table. “Let the doctor perform his magic,” he kept saying. “Give them some room; the girl needs air, not all of you breathing your turkey breath upon her,” and so on. I saw Dr. Koreff helping Merci to sit up, then handing her a glass of water and a small white pill. She was clinging to him gratefully.

Soon after this, Dumas declared that unless some of us wished to stay the night—and we were welcome to bed down on any handy piece of furniture we could find—those who needed to return to Paris would have to hustle, for the last railway trip back to the city left in under an hour. “You know, they love me in this little town! Train revenues have increased twenty thousand francs per annum since I’ve come here!”

Henri kissed me to comfort me and we joined the throng at the door. He placed the cloak over my shoulders and the muff into my hands.

“Alex, a million thank yous,” he said to our host. “You’ll look after Mademoiselle Duplessis?”

“Of course, and she has her doctor. They’ll stay the night and all will be well.”

“And next time, my big friend, you’ll remember my darling Lola and speak highly of her?”

Dumas and I regarded each other carefully.

A pause, then he said, “I will try.”

Fuck! I swallowed my ire and gave him a sweet curtsey. “As will I.
Merci beaucoup
, Monsieur Dumas. I learned a great deal tonight.”

George was rushing to the door, and joined us. She gave my waist a quick squeeze. “You did well with the devout wafer,” she whispered. “Come along, my hearties, or we’ll miss our carriage!
Bon soir
, Alex—entertaining as always! I can’t wait to see what Dantès will get up to next in your tale of vengeance! Keep it coming,
mon amour
! Fantastic food!
Bon soir
!”

Flaming torches held aloft by servants, swirling cloaks and swirls of gaiety filling the air—the landau crowded to its maximum capacity and beyond—the demi-monde of Paris, oblivious to danger, laughed and caroused its way back to its nerve centre.

*

And though I’d been shattered by Pier-Angelo’s reportage of rumours about a mysterious cult, the whole thing—too quickly—slipped out of my mind. I let my guard down, let myself be distracted (so foolishly) because, in the railway carriage on our way back to the city, as everyone else hooted and hollered with artistic excess, I’d had an idea. I’d spoken the truth to Dumas at his doorway, that I’d learned a great deal. And yes, I was worried for Merci—who came back to the city a day or two later and seemed almost recovered (though much, much too thin and even paler than before)—but my new idea was so exciting and breath-taking that, for the moment, it drove everything else completely out of my mind. Everything except Henri, of course.

One night, a few nights later, we stayed in to enjoy ourselves in bed, revelling in a just-before-Christmas sense of occasion—and a wonderful time we had of it, too! We nibbled and kissed and gently consumed each other. He made me throb at the first touch of a finger; my insides instantly began to melt. I think I have never spent so freely and copiously, and I told him so—and some minutes later, he swore that neither had he. Of course, those pleasures were simply the
hors d’oeuvres
, enjoyed individually before the rest of the feast. Not long after, “We are made for each other,” he murmured, with the first lunge of his prick up me, and I cried, “Oh yes!” We topped off the delights of the evening in a moving, twisting dance of togetherness, skin against skin. Oh, to be so in love, to each time die with happiness, as the hot spunk spurted and my salty fluids joined with his. Henri—the sweetest confection I’d ever known, and a name of endearment simply fell from my lips as we drew apart, sated.