Chapter 5
Five
Ignoring whoever was pounding on the door was not making them stop.
She pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart was beating so fast it felt as though each pulse threatened to shatter her ribs.
Scrambling back to the bundle of her things, she finished knotting the edges of the shawl together and shoved it beside the paint-stained settee.
Then rising to her feet, she smoothed her skirts and hurried down the stairs.
“Marguerite?” A familiar voice now accompanied the insistent knocking. “Are you there?”
“Victorine?” Marguerite opened the door and peered out. She had no time for visitors, but at least it was only her neighbor and not a mob come to arrest her.
She was in the process of formulating an excuse to turn the woman away when Victorine Seurrier pushed passed her in a flurry of red and blue striped skirts.
“Oh, thank God, you’re still here.” The matching red and blue ribbons of her cap tickled Marguerite’s cheek as they exchanged air kisses.
Odd. Her neighbor wasn’t usually so forward; indeed her polite demeanor had once inspired Marguerite to draw her as a pudding with eyes.
“I was so worried you’d left.”
“Left?” How did Victorine know she was planning to leave?
Victorine started up the stairs towards the sitting room. As she did so, her shoe struck a green and gold cup handle, sending the shard spinning. She glanced down. “What’s this?”
“Nothing, nothing at all, I dropped a cup, I just haven’t had the chance to clean up.”
“Where are your servants?”
“I gave them the day off. I wanted peace and quiet to finish my paintings,” Marguerite added, hoping Victorine wouldn’t notice that she wasn’t wearing a smock.
Victorine’s expression as she entered the sitting room suggested the cup wasn’t all she thought Marguerite hadn’t had time to clean up. Like metal drawn to a magnet, her gaze fixed on the bundle by the settee.
“Ah, you know me, I get so caught up in my painting, the house could fall into a sinkhole, like those ones in Montparnasse on the Rue d’Enfer back in ‘74,” Marguerite continued, “and I probably wouldn’t notice.
” Her taut nerves were making her babble.
She spun around. “I was just looking for my sketchbook. I could have sworn I put it down just there,” she gestured vaguely.
“Your sketchbook?” Victorine turned to look at her.
“I had it the other night when we were at the Guillot’s home. You must remember, and that awful Jaco—” she caught herself, correcting a politically sensitive reference to Jacobin, “—gentleman was droning on, and I was sketching…”
“I don’t recall…”
“It’s odd, but I just realized, I haven’t seen it since that night…”
“I’m sure it will turn up,” Victorine said dismissively.
“Silly, I know, but I feel naked without it. Some people keep a diary; I have my sketchbook. Instead of writing down my thoughts, I draw them. Need milk? I draw a pitcher and a cow…” The babbling was getting worse, she knew, but it was either that, or scream, Get the hell out of my house!
“You seem…distracted. Let me fix you a bite to eat.”
“No, no, that’s not necessary,” Marguerite said, though she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. Sometime before she’d found the note. Should she tell Victorine about the note? She opened her mouth. Tried to form the words, but no sound came out.
“Well then,” Victorine said, moving past her, uninvited, to occupy the settee. She started to spread her skirts but stopped as she noticed a smear of ochre paint on the brocade. Carefully avoiding the stain, she patted a space beside her. “Come. Sit. Let’s have a little visit.”
“No.” Marguerite struggled to keep her voice calm, to avoid looking at the bundled shawl. “I can’t. I was just about to go out…important errand…”
Victorine patted the space on the settee. More firmly this time. “Whatever it is, surely it can wait. We haven’t had a good chat in ages…”
Marguerite glanced around the room, desperate for a convincing excuse to leave. “I must get some linseed oil; I’ve gotten paint smeared all over one of my skirts—that’s why I bundled it up in the shawl there and I really must deal with it before it sets…”
Victorine studied the bulging bundle. “A skirt, you say?”
“Well, really, more than a skirt. An entire gown, fichu, shawl—I somehow managed to upset a wet canvas and when I tried to catch it, the whole thing tumbled down and…such a mess.” She gathered up the bundle and stepped back. “So, you see, I really must do something about it as quickly as possible.”
Victorine’s eyes narrowed as she considered the three canvases set on easels in front of the window.
None of them, Marguerite knew, showed any evidence of smearing.
Then her gaze shifted, moving towards a small table between the easels that held a glass full of brushes, a palette, rags and a small bottle of yellow fluid.
Gesturing towards it she asked, “isn’t that linseed there? ”
Marguerite caught her breath. “Yes, but…it’s really not enough for the mess I’ve made. Please excuse me Victorine, but I really must go now.”
“If you’re so concerned about the stain setting, why don’t we take what you have into the kitchen and set the clothes to soak in a tub first?”
Could the woman not take a hint?
As if to confirm she could not, Victorine rose and headed in the direction of the kitchen.
Margurite’s arms tightened around her bundle of clothes. If she wanted to make a run for the door, she’d have to dodge around the woman. But what other choice did she have? Her heart beginning to hammer again, she took a step forward.
There was a crash as her front door was thrown open.
A pounding of booted feet across the parquet floor.
The shards of porcelain would be nothing more than powder now, she thought madly, as the horrifying cacophony rose into the stairwell.
A troop of men, shouting as they ran. “There’s the mark upon the door. The traitorous bitch is here!”