I stare at his hand, at those long, perfectly manicured fingers.
He’s not asking me to hurt her. Arabella has no need for the collar. She has a thriving business and many other beautiful, precious jewels. And all this talk about it being good luck is just a story. If I take it from her, then I can save Jacob and break free of Lucien’s hold over me.
I clasp his cold fingers in mine. “We have a deal.”
The hostess at the door of La Petite Mort recognises me as one of Lucien’s men. She waves me through the velvet curtains without a word, and Arabella Macquart’s enchanted world embraces me like a long-lost child.
I scan the room but don’t see Arabella anywhere. It’s still early in the evening, so there is hardly anyone about. A man with a jagged scar across his face hunches in the shadowed booth in the corner, his pain-soaked gaze fixed on the stage. One of Arabella’s girls sits at the piano, singing in a soft, sombre voice while her fingers dance over the keys. More women rush around, lighting the oil lamps and buffing the tables, ready for the night’s festivities to begin in earnest. I hear laughter from backstage, a cork popping. Excitement and trepidation fizz down my spine.
I’m here to do a job, to finally free my brother and myself of this wretched, evil man. That has to be more important than a woman I barely know.
As I walk past the velvet-lined booths, I’m aware of eyes on me. I feel as though I’m the fly trapped in the web, and the spiders are about to fight to the death over who gets to tear off my wings. I approach the bar and order an absinthe, not to drink, but simply to hold, to make myself fit in. Most of the tables are still being cleaned and set, so I approach a velvet-lined booth near the stage where a group of men and a woman are involved in a rowdy discussion, their table invisible beneath a thick layer of sketches and charcoal studies.
“I was sitting beside the Seine, happily painting away, when several passing Communards took issue with the ‘mysterious signs’ on my canvas,” one of the men is saying, waving a paintbrush around his head for emphasis. “According to them, no one who calls themselves an artist paints like I do, with such free strokes or imprecise lines! They conclude I must be a spy detailing the quays of the Seine to aid in the landing of troops, so they drag me away to be shot. If the Commune’s police chief hadn’t recognised me, I would have more holes in me than a wedge of Emmental cheese. I was lucky to leave the city soon after.”
“I cannot believe you fled to the countryside when the cause needed you!” An older gentleman slams a beefy fist on the table as he glares at his younger companions. The lapels of his jacket are splattered with splotches of red paint.
“As well I did,” the younger man shoots back. “For if I stayed, I would have been like you and Victor here, eating my favourite horse to survive.”
“You must not knock horse until you have tried it.” A man with an impeccably curled moustache refills his absinthe glass with a double measure, places the sugar cube on the silver slotted spoon, and pushes the glass beneath the elaborate fountain standing at the centre of the table. “It is delicious in a shallot sauce.”
“Is it only me who wonders what they did when the horses ran out?” pipes up the woman, her attention not wavering from her hurried sketch of the pianist.
“My dinner guests were always well-fed, Berthe, courtesy of the zoo in the Jardin des Plantes. We dined on bear, antelope and elephanttrunks in saucechasseur. And when the zoo animals ran out, we served a rat pâté.” The man swirls his absinthe. “It was surprisingly delicious.”
“After spending three days on the latrine following the elephant trunk, I decided to skip the rat course. It was one of my wiser decisions.” The older man slumps in his seat, losing interest in the discussion. He catches me out of the corner of his eye. “Ah, you there, who are you?”
“Gideon Rougon, Monsieurs, Mademoiselle.” I give a deep bow. “I wondered if I might join your lively table, although if the prerequisite is sampling the rat pâté, I may have to pass.”
“Greetings, Monsieur Rougon. I am Édouard Manet. You may have perhaps heard of me?” He says this in the way of a man who is certain you have heard of him.
Even I, a philistine when it comes to art, know of Monsieur Édouard Manet, the upstart artist upsetting the establishment withOlympia– a portrait of a naked and self-assured courtesan reclining like Titian’sVenusthat caused a fistfight to break out at the Paris Salon. I’ve often heard the dockworkers and shopkeepers of the city joking that they must check behind every barrel in case Manet is crouched there, painting their foibles.
“It’s an honour, Monsieur Manet.” I shake his hand.
“I’m certain it is. Here you have my esteemed colleagues, the painters Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and the writers Émile Zola and Victor Hugo. Do you still wish to join our merry group of misfits?”
“Certainly, although I must warn you, I make no art of my own, unless you count the poetry I speak between a woman’s thighs.”
Berthe snorts, not looking up from her sketch. The others laugh.
“What is your business in Paris, Monsieur Rougon?” Victor (the rat chef) twirls the end of his moustache as he sizes me up. “I hear a trace of the South in your accent.”
“I’ve come to the city from the countryside to seek my fortune.” I came for a fortune, that much is true, but only because my brother was foolish enough to gamble away a fortune of Lucien Vega’s money.
“Then you shouldn’t be hanging about with the likes of us. When it comes to finances, we’re a sorry lot. My father threatens to cut meoff if I don’t commit myself to a studio.” Claude Monet bows his head unhappily. “But I have tried that, and it is anathema to me. I don’t want to be inside, copying the works of older masters. I want to be outdoors, painting light and colour and movement andlife, but my father finds the very idea of it undignified. He says that’s not how art is done.”
“Then why don’t you change the way art is done?” I say boldly, swept up in the man’s passion. “Declare that you are an early pioneer of the technique ofen plain air. Give it an official title, such as, hmmm…” I glance down at the rough sketches and pastels Monet has spread across the table, taking note of the way he uses dabs of colour to suggest a scene, rather than painting every detail. “Call it ‘impressionism’, and instead of being an artistic failure, you will be the founder of a movement.”
Claude’s eyes light up. “That is a brilliant idea. What say you, Pierre-Auguste? Berthe? Édouard? Would you join me in my new movement of impressionism?”
The artists grow animated, sifting through their sketchbooks. Victor lights his cigar and tells tales of writers’ quarrels. Auguste Rodin’s eyes sweep hungrily over me as he sketches me in fast, furious strokes. Édouard buys another round of absinthe for the table (and something red and foul-smelling for himself).
I’m enjoying myself so much that I almost forget the true purpose of my visit to La Petite Mort, until, without warning, several of the gas lamps are snuffed out at once, plunging the theatre into near darkness. The music shifts into something slow and sultry – flute and a deep, booming drum that matches my heart beating against my ribs. One of the dancers, a slight white girl with feathery golden hair, places incense burners on either side of the stage, causing smoke to curl around the room like snakes rousing themselves from sleep. A lone oil lamp is trained on the centre of the stage, where a round steel pole extends through the centre of the floorboards into the heavens.
The drum beats faster. The flute dips and swells. From the smoke emerges a lone figure, hands raised like a goddess demanding worship.
Arabella.
