CHAPTER 10
The meal was, of course, superb, for that is where my mother keeps her strength, or at least part of it. There was also the strength she showed every day, in her love and support of her new daughter, but it was in the kitchen where she shone.

I had explained that Margot had, by one means or another, been allowed into our circle, and instinctively Maman glared at Elle, who blushed. Margot, however, stepped forward and embraced them both.

“Mme Laplace, I have known this little one many years, and she is a true friend, has always been a faithful one to me. If I may flatter myself, I owe her the good faith to try and be the same in return, and that is also true for this girl here. I am a girl, and I know what boys are like…hold your tongue, Elle. This is no boy, and if I may speak freely, she never has been one”

She looked around us, and smiled. “We are all friends here, no? The best of friends?”

Rollo stepped forward and nearly crushed her, but not quite, and I saw her face past his shoulder. Crimson, flushed, but ecstatic. Maman waited just a few seconds for propriety, then clapped her hands.

“Our banquet will be on the table in but a few minutes. Rollo, go and wash, you do not know where this girl has been!”

As I have said, a wonderful meal, made more wonderful by the company. My family shared a few vital anecdotes of how I had suffered, how I had emerged, and then we closed those avenues as not suitable for a day in the sunshine, at table, with a breeze pushing the long branches of the willow in the corner and playing with our hair.

Rollo told stories of his new job, the silly things he found and the odd answers that the smugglers or illegal people would offer him in excuse, and we girls dutifully giggled or gasped in turn. The cider was cool, and the Muscadet that the older ones drank smelled divine. Margot told us about the horse that she loved, and Elle returned our secret with stories of her mother’s grace, as well as a few slightly shocking stories of her rather more peculiar acquaintances.

Maman in turn kept us in giggles with stories about tourists, and menus, and the odd things they asked for, particularly the Americans, who all seemed to think our cuisine consisted entirely of snails and amphibians and…

“So I have worked at the sauce, yes? I have the brochettes just so, the chicken glazed SO, a little caramelisation, and the rice, it is cooked the way I like, dry enough to fall apart into grains with the fork, yet moist enough to stay as a single shape, and the sauce, it is piquant, it is just right, and out it goes, and Henri, he comes back in and he says you will not guess, those Americans, you will not guess what they have asked for, and I say what is it, and he tells me, and it is tomato ketchup, some species of red sugary exudation of the good Lord knows what, and so we have none of this in my kitchen, why would I ever have such a thing, and so Henri, he sends his boy to the grocers’ and buys the shittiest bottle of red filth he can find, and they give it to Madame, and she pours it EVERYWHERE, for I watch, from the kitchen door, and then she puts what was once my food in her mouth and tells Henri it was trezz bonn and the boss, he sees me, and he laughs and just says ‘money in the bank, money in the bank’ “
We sat at last round the wreckage of the meal, the smell of chocolate hanging heavy and rich as Maman poured a round of coffees, and Rollo leant back in his chair, in the sunshine, another shirt button loosened, and he smiled.

“There was once, in a country not too far away, a Queen. She was a beautiful Queen, as these things must be, and she had a son, whom she called her Prince. He was said to be a good Prince…”

My mother snorted at this, and Rollo sent a smile her way, at which I felt Margot grasp my knee just below the hem of my skirt.

“Yes, a good Prince, nothing too special, but dutiful. One day, however, the Queen woke, and she had given birth to another child. This one looked out from his cradle, and he saw that he was no Prince, but a mighty Emperor, a very Alexandre and ruler of all of the world that he could find about him. His smallest cry was law, and servants, including the Prince, who was, as I have said, dutiful, hurried to answer to his every whim.

“There is another story, one with which we are all familiar, are we not, ladies? The story of the Emperor who believed, was flattered to believe, that he was a man of unparalleled grace and refinement”

Rollo leant forward to take a sip of his coffee, eyes twinkling. I glanced to Maman, and I could see a hint of a tear there, waiting in her eye to begin the fall. Rollo smiled again, and took her hand.

“That Emperor was a fool, and a dupe, and he set out in imperial procession before his court, and his subjects, in his marvellous clothes, and we all know that, in reality, he was naked, but nobody could dream that an Emperor could lack taste, miss refinement of the highest quality, and so they all applauded his magnificent raiment while pretending that they, too, were of sufficiently elevated breeding to see past the wrinkles and the dangling parts of his nakedness”

Elle snorted at that, but Margot was rapt. Rollo donated another smile to the table, and once more I could see why so many of the girls at school had worshipped him, for at that moment he shone with beauty.

“Our Emperor, though, our mighty Alexandre, was different. He wore a suit that was heavy and coarse, ugly in the extreme, he felt. As with the Emperor of the story about fairies, though, nobody else could see that fact. That Emperor wore nothing but his own skin, and it was a child, a young boy, who pointed out to the world about him that the old man was parading in his nakedness, not a shining suit of beauty and splendour. Our own Emperor…

“Our own Emperor walked each day in a suit so ill-fitting that it hurt. He was like the other character in the Tales, that mermaid who had to walk so many miles on feet that burned because she could not speak of her love, and every step our Sacha took cut his feet and his soul to ribbons. He knew that all was ugliness and illusion, but there was no child to shout out his nature to the world, or even to the Prince, nor to his beautiful Queen. But they loved him, nonetheless. They were just blind, for a while.

“One day, our Emperor had had enough of his ugliness, and he felt that things must change. He had thought of destroying his ugliness, but that would have meant his own soul being lost with the drab greyness he dwelt in, and he loved his mother the beautiful Queen too much for that, and then he was shown that there are more things that are in this world than the visible, the tangible, for his brother the Prince had finally, even in his slowness of wit, seen that the Emperor was a shell. Inside dwelt a Princess, the most beautiful the world had ever known. More elegant then the Beauty of the Woods, fairer than the one with the skin of snowy whiteness, and at that, the ugliness fell away, and she was reborn. The Emperor, the ruler of the whole world, had never existed. He had been like the raiment of that storyland ruler, seen only in the minds of the vain or the dull. And so the Princess was born to life and beauty, and the love of her family and all who saw her”

He paused, sipped, and then grinned.

“But this one, she does not disappear at midnight, no?”

I was in tears by then, along with the other girls, the other women, and Maman leant across to her son my brother, my Prince, and kissed him fully on the mouth. Margot squeezed my knee again, and whispered.

“Please, Sophie, please: tell me he is free!”