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Chapter 9
Madeline's brother took a turn for the worse a week after the telegram arrived detailing his senseless dual. Our blissfully predictable routine spiraled into chaos as she prepared for her trip back to London-and as she paid me one last hasty visit, I shared in her grief.
"There is talk of removing his leg." Her voice trembled as she placed a bag on the table and furiously began removing provisions. Despite the obvious stress she was under, Madeline made certain I had enough food for a week. I felt a sense of guilt in preoccupying her time, though I was glad to see her once more before her long absence from the Opera House.
"Infection?" I questioned, although I already knew the answer.
"In his leg all the way to his hip from what my father said," she confirmed. "The surgeon said removing his leg might be of some help, but the risk…"
I shuddered at the thought of a surgeon sawing off her brother's leg at the hip. In the early months of traveling with the gypsies I had seen a man lose his hand following an accident erecting the tents. The sight of blood had nauseated me, and his screams of pain seemed to echo through my bones long after the hand was removed with a nail clear through his palm. For Madeline's sake, I hope she arrived after the surgery was complete.
"What choice is there?" Madeline asked absently. "He will die from infection or he will die in surgery. That is his fate."
My heart dropped on her behalf. If he had been shot in the hip and the physician wished to remove his whole leg, I feared Madeline would indeed return to England to bury her brother.
"The train leaves in an hour," she stated, more to herself as a reminder than to me. "I have not yet begun to pack."
"I will do this," I insisted as I reached for the supplies and pushed her hand away from the table. I knew full well she would unpack and organize everything she brought for me unless I made her leave. "Return to the dormitories before you miss your train."
Madeline hesitated and wrung her hands. "I have already missed the earliest train leaving for London. If I am not at the train station in an hour, my last opportunity is at nightfall."
"Then you must not miss the next one. Please, you must go."
"Of course, I must return for rehearsals in five days or I forfeit my place in the next show." She looked at me and frowned. "I have no idea what I will do if my family needs me longer."
"What happens if you miss the next rehearsals? You would wait until the next opera?"
"No, it is not that simple. I would forfeit my contract, which means I would not be allowed to stay in the dormitories unless I paid room and board. Ideally I would need to find a flat outside of the Opera House and hope I have the funds to survive for three months until the start of the next season. And then I would have to audition again and hope I was hired once more."
"You could stay here," I offered.
Madeline forced a smile. "You are very kind, but it is a great deal more complicated than housing. If I were to forfeit my contract, I would no longer be considered for ballet mistress when Madam Covert retires in two years."
"You wish to be the ballet mistress?" I asked, wondering what had become of her earlier dream of moving to southern France.
Madeline shrugged. "The position of ballet mistress makes the most sense," she replied.
That seemed hardly a suitable answer, but before I could ask about her dream of moving to Southern France, her shoulders dropped and she released a heavy sigh. I wondered if she was disappointed by her own reply.
"I will return in five days. You will be comfortable here until I return?"
I very much doubted it, but nonetheless I nodded. Given her brother's grave condition, she did not need to fret over me as well.
She took my hand before she left and tears flooded her eyes. "Please do not leave here," she said. "Bouquet has been slinking around more than usual and I fear he would find you if you went to the rooftop alone. Swear to me you will stay put?"
With a great deal of hesitation I agreed. Although we had only visited the rooftop twice, I looked forward to the change of scenery and the fresh air. Being above the city proved exhilarating, a forbidden playground complete with two Pegasus statues, three domes, and of course the wildly overgrown garden that sweetened the evening air in an intoxicating aroma.
The break between performances meant Madeline had more time away from the stage and she chose to spend much of it with me. She was the only person I spoke to, my only source of human contact. Without her I was little more than an animal left to languish in a forgotten cage.
"I will miss you," Madeline said before she left. "I mean that sincerely."
"I will miss you as well."
She had no idea how much her leave of absence would devastate me. The lump in my throat grew, and as the door closed behind her, I released a single sob of agony and fell to my knees. The silence around me gripped tight, the weight of my loneliness almost more than I could bear.
Five days, I told myself. You need only to survive five days and then she will return.
The five-day supply of food barely lasted forty-eight hours. I stared hopelessly at the barren pantry and empty bag that had held a substantial amount of food only two days prior and sighed to myself. While reading for hours on end I had absently eaten every apple, pear, bunch of grape, loaf of bread, and slice of cheese. The salted pork was gone, as were all of the root vegetables. I had a few spoonfuls of jam left to scrape from a jar and that was the extent of my sustenance.
I could not help but think of how disappointed Madeline would have been that I did not pace myself better given her absence. However, she would have been even more disappointed when I pulled on my boots, leather gloves, and cloak and slipped out of the fifth cellar.
Candle in hand, I heard her voice in my thoughts as she asked me to swear I would remain underground. Perhaps she would have reconsidered her request had she known I would spend three days starving. I was not disobeying out of spite but out of self preservation. After all, she herself had said I looked healthier than the day I had first arrived and with a steady diet would fill out even more.
There was not a soul around when I exited the cellar and crept through the doorway leading up to the rooftop. Somewhere in the distance a bell tolled eleven times and signaled the late hour, which I hoped would mean the Opera House inhabitants were sound asleep.
Aside from the stairway leading to the roof, the servant's hall split into three different directions, each leading to different parts of the vast theater. Madeline had spoken of ornate paintings, regal statues, marble floors and gilded ceilings as majestic as a palace. The servant's hall, however, was a winding passage of narrow, plain walls and floors that all looked the same.
While on our second trip to the rooftop, Madeline had quickly spouted off information about one hall leading to the manager's offices and apartments, another to the stage, and the last one to the dormitories, laundry and kitchens.
Each hall was designed for bustling servants to deliver costumes and linens to the stage and dormitories and to hasten dry goods to their respective places without the upper echelon ever seeing the lower class.
I stood quite dumbfounded by my surroundings as each passageway looked exactly the same and I feared losing my way. Anxiety threatened to end my quest for sustenance, but the growl in my belly would hear nothing of it.
Eyes closed, I imagined Madeline beside me rattling off the information she had memorized from years of living in the theater.
"Stables and storage, the stage and managers offices, dormitories, laundry and kitchen."
The hallway to the right beckoned me.
An eternity passed in the longest hall I had ever seen. I noticed several doors labeled A, B, and C which I assumed led to the dormitories belonging to dancers as I vaguely recalled Madeline saying she lived in Dormitory A.
Beyond the dorms were a series of three doors with gold engraved lettering. These rooms were designated for the ballet Mistress, Senor and Senora respectively. Further down was a door that simply read honored guest.
The hallway split into a T, which I was certain Madeline failed to mention. Hands on my hips, I looked in both directions and found what I hoped was a clue on my grueling treasure hunt: a service cart in the middle of the hall to the right.
I smiled inwardly at my good fortune and headed toward the cart with a spring in my step. Quiet as a mouse, I pushed open the door and discovered a dry goods pantry with bags of beans, sugar and flour stacked from the floor to the ceiling. With a frown I shut the door and opened the one next to it, hoping for something to sate my growing appetite.
As soon as I opened the kitchen door, a mouse leapt off the table and ran between my feet where it disappeared into the hall. Startled, I slammed the door much harder than I intended, which rattled the dishes on a long table in the middle of the room and sent a door on a double hinge swinging back and forth. Startled, I ducked down as though somehow it would save me from being seen.
My heart raced as I remained crouched down inside the doorway, eyes wide and chest heaving. My heartbeat thrummed in my ear, every muscle taut and prepared to take flight if I heard the slightest noise indicating someone had heard me. A long moment passed before I stood upright and looked around the room.
The remnants of a fire in the hearth and long gave off enough light to view the kitchen, which was well enough considering my candle had gone out the moment I slammed the door shut.
The kitchen itself was much bigger than I had expected, complete with large, rectangular windows that I assumed flooded the work space with light during the day. There were several stations set up for food preparation as well as cabinets for storage. The room was divided by the double hinged door, and I craned my neck as I looked around at my new surroundings. Various pots and pans hung from hooks against the wall while shelves held more dishes and mugs than I had ever known existed in the world.
There were aprons and hats neatly kept against the opposite wall on individual hooks, and below a window a long table that had been well used and bore many deep grooves from knives, which were stored in blocks on a shelf above the table.
I opened a cupboard and found a collection of stock pots and spices. Bins beneath the long table held onions, leeks, mushrooms and potatoes. Disappointed that there was nothing actually cooked and ready to eat, I slipped through the double doors, careful not to allow them to swing back and forth, and into a room that could only be described as heaven on earth.
There was food everywhere. Pies, cakes, cookies, silver platters with silver lids, and breads of every variety stacked one on top of the other. Cured meats hung from strings and dangled in the pale moonlight shining through the elongated windows. Clearly the Opera House chefs had prepared a feast suitable for royalty.
Like a ravenous bear that had stumbled into a sleeping village, I lost every bit of self control. With both hands I dove into the sweet bread and stuffed as much into my mouth as I could fit without choking.
Crumbs tumbled down my shirt and onto the table, which I ignored as I moved onto dried meats and hard cheese, which I didn't care for, and immediately returned to another piece of dried meat.
Of all the sins a person could commit, gluttony was the most pleasurable. I ate until my empty stomach turned almost painfully full and I was certain I could not take another bite-and then I gulped down nearly a full carafe of cool water and groaned, satisfied by my feast.
A clock somewhere nearby chimed and I realized it was now midnight. I emptied a basket with fresh eggs and filled it instead with pies, cakes, and a full pound of beef, then topped it with a loaf of bread and fruit.
My stomach ached as I slid through the swinging doors and lit the candle in the hearth. A belch escaped the moment I bent forward, and I tugged at my trousers, which now seemed far too snug around my expanded belly.
I exited the kitchen and returned to the hall and waddled like a fat rat with its spoils. I smiled to myself as I navigated the halls once more, fingers grazing the lettering on the various doors I passed. The maze was much easier to navigate than I had expected, and I felt as though I had mastered my domain.
Once again I found my way to the main hallway where the passages met across from the cellar door. I wrapped my hand around the metal handle, and as I gave the door a push, I heard laughter around the corner in the servant's hall leading to the stage and offices.
Perhaps I should have simply crept out the door and safely down the stairs, but I paused and listened as it seemed quite odd for servants to be working in the middle of the night.
A woman giggled and a man told her to hush. I peeked around the corner and saw two figures crouched against the wall.
"How much is there?" the woman asked. She was short but thick with long, curly hair that was tied back at the nape of her neck and a light colored apron secured around her wide waist.
"Plenty," the man answered as he felt along the wall.
I recognized his voice as well as his portly figure. The sight of him sent fire through my veins.
"Oh come now, Joseph, how much do we have?"
Joseph Bouquet chuckled to himself. The bright red end of a cigar bobbed between his lips as he spoke. "We?" he asked incredulously.
"I gave you the key. Surely that means I get a cut of the profits."
He grunted. "You have earned half this round. Fifty francs, my love, to spend on whatever you most desire."
"You know what I most desire," she said, her voice low and deep. The woman bent and kissed his cheek as he pulled a brick from the wall and reached inside.
Wide-eyed I watched as he removed a small wooden box, opened the lid, and deposited a handful of banknotes. He gave the lid a sloppy kiss and handed it to his female companion to do the same.
"We shall live like royalty," the woman said. "The new Emperor and Empress of France."
"Better than royalty thanks to my great uncle," Bouquet corrected. "That old senile fool will regret the day he cut me from his will. By the time I'm through with him, he will have nothing left to give his favorite nephews." To accent his words, he spit on the floor.
Bouquet returned the box into the wall and fit the brick into place before the two of them rose in unison. With a forceful push, he backed the woman up against the wall and pulled up her skirts as she grabbed a handful of his shirt and gave a shriek of laughter. His hands roved up her thighs and between her legs, and as she groaned in response, I wrinkled my nose and averted my eyes at their crude display of affection.
"Now, let me have a bit of my reward, love," he said as he unbuckled his belt.
Disgusted, I turned and made my way back to my lakeside home, supplies in hand and belly full.