The Fugitive Colours (Genevieve Planché Book 2), page 1
THE FUGITIVE COLOURS
by
NANCY BILYEAU
Copyright © Nancy Bilyeau 2022
This edition published in 2022 by Lume Books
The right of Nancy Bilyeau to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
To the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
PROLOGUE
December 1764
Covent Garden, London
“Long live the knife!”
It’s been at least an hour since I was dragged through Covent Garden and pushed into this long, dark room in the magistrate’s courthouse, but the chanting on the street has not died down. The crowd is still enraptured by the singing of Giovanni Manzouli, the Italian castrato. It’s bitterly cold on Bow Street, and a swelling army of thieves and lawless creatures prowls the darkest shadows, hungry for spoils. Yet, this group of operagoers simply refuses to disperse long after the curtain descended. I don’t have the slightest idea what Manzouli sounded like, what thrilling notes he reached tonight. At the same time that he was acting out a story of love and hate on the stage of the Theatre Royal, I found myself in a far different type of establishment in Covent Garden, standing in a room filled with mahogany furniture, gleaming oil portraits and gold-and-pink wallpaper matching the colours of the porcelain vase.
And sitting behind that exquisite Chippendale desk was a dead man, a knife driven deep into the lapel of his embroidered coat. It was the end to a real story of hate – and only the most twisted and empty kinds of love.
The knife in that expensive coat was mine, and I told them as much. That’s why I am here, in the courthouse up the street from the opera house, slumped on a bench, a rough blanket flung around my shoulders.
A weak fire hisses. Sitting on this hard bench, I can smell the lingering odours of those who waited their turn at justice today: damp wool clothing and dirt-caked boots and sour winter sweat. A whiff of mutton from someone’s dinner turns my stomach. The only other person in the room at present is the implacable young man who brought me here and stands guard. I know the others will follow soon with their questions. I must decide what to tell them, how much to admit to and how much to conceal.
I haven’t killed anyone, I want to scream. More than anything, I long to be home in Spitalfields. My family, my friends, are they asleep now? If it goes badly for me in the next few hours, my loved ones will wake to find me missing. Yet every time I form a rational sentence, I hear, “Long live the knife,” the cry honouring the sacrifice of the castrato. It reaches through the wall in dreadful mockery, and my explanation dissolves.
Is that the key turning to the door onto Bow Street? My throat closes in panic. I don’t know what to say yet. I know I must fight as hard as I’ve ever fought in my life to save myself. It’s just that there are so many secrets to protect…
One Month Earlier
Chapter One
It might come as a surprise to learn that a conversation about the shade of a particular flower that grows on an island four thousand miles away could bring work to a halt in Spitalfields on a cold October morning.
But such is the delicate state of my business, a silk design workshop that I run from the third floor of my Fournier Street house, that when the clock chimes nine, the musical notes are drowned out by an argument between the two young artists I employ. They growl at each other as if they were a pair of truculent terriers, and as usual, I can’t seem to find the words to calm them.
“Jean, you are so easy to predict,” says Caroline Mowbray, my head artist, clutching her paintbrush so tightly, her fingertips whiten. “But tell me, why is it this important to dim a scarlet to dullness?”
My assistant artist, Jean Orgier, shakes his head. “You are the predictable one, set on indulging yourself when you know it’s the customer to be pleased, not yourself.”
I have to put an end to this, or I’ll never finish the new designs for delivery to Monsieur Nicolas Carteret in two days’ time.
“Come now,” I say, using the firm-but-fair tone of voice I’ve cultivated for exactly these moments. “Absolutely no need to quarrel. Let’s examine the book. It always helps to return to the source.”
To reach this book, I ease past our work table, dotted with paintbrushes, specially ordered grid paper, dishes of water and the different colour cakes. Spread open on the table is the chart created by naturalist Richard Waller that displays all one hundred and nineteen known colours. It’s difficult to match some of them in watercolour, but I always urge Caroline and Jean to try.
On the bookshelf, beside the French and English pattern books to be found in every design shop, stands a slim, unbound volume obtained for me by none other than my husband, Thomas Sturbridge. He secured it from a friend who is a fellow at the Royal Society. The Flora and Fauna of Le Grenade offers twenty detailed colour plates of its native flowers. When England won the West Indies isle of Le Grenade from France in the peace treaty, we became privy to its exotic delights. Resources such as this volume give my workshop an advantage over competitors, who copy designs from boring pattern books or must haunt London’s gardens and greenhouses for ideas.
With a flourish, I open the volume to the intended page, propping it on the table as I nudge the candle closer. Our painting table is set perhaps five feet from a wide lattice window facing Fournier Street in the middle of Spitalfields, but the sun, as usual, sulks behind low-hanging greyish-brown clouds. There is not enough natural light. Our artistic efforts demand candles all day long.
The particular flower we scrutinise takes up a whole page. We ignore its tiny Latin name. It doesn’t matter what it is, only how it looks, and such a beauty. Its lush scarlet petals burst from a black pistil and hang down in a gorgeous carousel of long spikes. Our challenge is capturing the character of the flower in a design pattern that can be woven into silk fabric, intended for the gown of a customer of discriminating taste. This may sound like a speculative, even fanciful, idea for a business. But be assured, if there’s one thing to count on in 1764, it’s that there are many, many wealthy English women who are mad for gowns of flowered silk.
My eyes drift from the flower to the young faces studying the page with near frightening intensity. My irritation melts. How dedicated they are, my two protégés. It’s all that unites them, for they are such opposites.
Jean is the younger at twenty-one, his face round, his lips rosy, his brown eyes fringed with long lashes. One might say he has the look of an innocent boy were it not for the jagged scar running down the left side of his face. Jean was injured while rioting last spring, aflame with ideas of liberty. Just the sort of bellowed ideas sure to bring a constable’s truncheon down on his skull. Or perhaps, it was a blow from a drunk jostled on the street. Jean himself doesn’t know. His brothers discovered him senseless and carried him to the hospital.
As for Caroline, she’d no sooner take to the street to cry for freedom than storm a stage to play Polly Peachum. Art is her passion, her sole passion so far as I know. Twenty-three years of age, she is a woman with no family, no husband. While Jean’s garments are coffee-stained and reeking of tobacco, Caroline is immaculately dressed under her work smock. Tall and slender, she has a pale complexion. Her thin lips press together as if holding in a storm. Only her green eyes betray what she’s feeling, and at present, they meet mine with puzzlement.
“You have a question, Caroline?”
“Mrs. Sturbridge, you have often said you support free discussion of our designs, that we should never feel pressed to keep silent.”
“Very true,” I say.
What rich irony.
I was once an eager protégée, employed in the workshop of Spitalfields’ leading silk designer, Ana Maria Garthwaite. In the most obvious way, I have modelled my little business on hers. But I’ve also copied the standards of the workshop at Derby Porcelain Factory, where I worked for nearly six months. The head of the porcelain painters, a capable Quaker named Joshua Holcroft, earned my respect. However, I did chafe against his rule of silence. That could never be the way I would rule a workshop, I’d vowed. Art requires an open airing of ideas.
Now, much too late, I see the wisdom in Mr. Holcroft’s rule.
I say, “This flower is certainly unique enough to be a huge success on silk. It’s a matter of how we distil its special quality to the medium of fabric and—”
“Oh, really?” counters Jean. “The shape of the petals, the size of the petals? It’s different in a dozen ways.”
“But why ignore such a rich, splendid red?” asks Caroline, her voice rising again. “It’s compelling!”
Jean folds his arms and says, “Because it will do nothing but jar the eye if it were woven into silk in a repeating pattern. Yes – of course – the shade is beautiful, but it’s not the correct red for a rich Mayfair wife, it’s not correct for a Virginia colonist’s wife, either.”
I say, “Slightly muted shades may be the very latest fashion, Jean, but remember, it’s the originality of our colour choices that sets us apart. I believe there may be a market for a vivid red.”
“In a brothel, perhaps?” jokes Jean. “It would nicely suit some well-fixed harlots.”
“Now, Jean, that’s enough of that,” I say sharply.
“No.” Caroline rises from her stool, so distressed, she cannot say another word.
“Enough of this!” I declare. “I’m going downstairs for tea. During this time, I don’t want to hear a word from either of you – and trust me, if one is uttered, I will be close by enough to know about it.”
I march to the door, pausing to look over my shoulder and deliver a stare meant as the severest reproof. Caroline doesn’t even notice because she’s staring out the window. The foul air outside is a match for her mood.
As for Jean, slouched on his stool, he says, completely unintimidated, “But, Mrs. Sturbridge, what is it that you want?”
My hand on the doorknob, I say, “When I return, we will discuss it.”
I descend the stairs, my head throbbing. I am equal parts angry with Caroline and Jean and with myself for such weakness as a workshop mistress. What do I want? A quiet, well-ordered room, occupied by artists committed to keeping to schedule. If we were to lose Monsieur Carteret’s business, within a month, I’d be pressed to pay Jean’s and Caroline’s wages and the butcher bill. Oh, but how I loathe thinking about money in the morning. It is bad enough that such worries robbed me of a restful sleep last night.
My steps quicken. This escape from workshop squabbling will not only fortify me with tea and sugar but also give me a few minutes with Pierre. Where is he? I don’t hear my son chattering within the second-floor room we share. He must be downstairs, watched over by Sophie, our maid. He’d be playing with toys in the parlour now.
Once I reach the first floor of the townhouse, the sweet, high voice of my three-year-old meets me, but faintly. Not coming from the sitting room but from the ground floor, the kitchen, which is, happily, where I intend to take tea.
How can I blame Pierre for liking it here? I was drawn to the kitchen when I was a child. It was and is the domain of Daphne, our housekeeper, and exudes the spirit of her lost home in the South of France. In this tiny corner of Spitalfields, the district of Huguenot emigres that hugs the east end of damp, murky London, she re-creates a kitchen of the dry and sunny Languedoc. There’s nothing as comforting as one of her biscuit pastries, soaked with blackberry jam.
“Mama!” shouts Pierre. I scoop up my child, named for my beloved grandfather, and laugh at the force of his arms flung around my neck.
He’s getting so strong.
I plant a noisy kiss on Pierre’s cheek and luxuriate in the mop of his silky red hair.
“I could hear her causing you trouble all the way down here – I expected you’d be stopping for a bit, Madame Genevieve,” says Daphne, shaking flour from a sack into a large wooden bowl. Her tongue could not easily take on “Mrs. Sturbridge”, so we’d settled on this. “A cup of chocolate?”
Ah, she never will change.
“You know it’s tea I want, Daphne.”
“Comme vous voulez.”
My housekeeper is a woman of such stubborn preferences. Tea was not popular in the Languedoc. And here, among the Huguenots, it wasn’t a common choice when I was a child, either. I faintly remember my grandfather calling for the “Chinese drink” for his ailments. But just about everyone drinks it these days. It is expensive. But without my Bohea black tea and sugar, I’d not be equal to the day.
I say mildly, “You know, Jean was causing me just as much trouble as Caroline.” Daphne shrugs. She has never taken to Caroline. I assume it’s because Jean, springing from the enormous Orgier family, first among Huguenots, would earn her trust over English Caroline without his even trying.
Pierre returns to pushing his toy across the floor under Daphne’s table. It has wheels, but I can barely make out its shape, as the kitchen, with a single narrow window, is a bit dim. My son shouldn’t play here all morning.
“Where is Sophie?” I ask.
Daphne is silent for a bit, her mouth twisting.
“Sophie is not here – she was feeling unwell yesterday,” Daphne finally says. “George helped her home.”
“Again?”
Yes, that sounds unkind. But Sophie is often ailing. And George Harris, our manservant and her husband of a year, must see to her when illness strikes. Which means they are within their home in Whitechapel rather than here, in my home, performing the duties for which I pay their wages.
Thinking back, I realise that Sophie and George most likely left before sunset yesterday, and I hadn’t even noticed. I took some pudding for supper upstairs with Pierre and then, while he played on the bed, I went over the monthly household accounts, which is akin to having a tooth pulled.
“I hope Sophie recovers and we see them here soon,” I murmur, and Daphne nods, relieved that no fury will descend on the couple she adores.
Anyone not privy to the history of my household might judge me London’s most pitiful dupe, a weaker mistress to the servants downstairs than I am to my artist protégés upstairs. But it all traces back to a pledge I made to my grandfather two years ago, the day before he died.
His voice a whisper, Grandfather asked me to take care of Daphne for the rest of her life. Of course I said yes. I was – and am – devoted to Daphne. What’s important to know is how different she is from the rest of the Huguenots, families bound together by one, two, even three generations of English exile. Daphne fled French persecution when she was older than thirty. The severe beatings in a French prison have left her with a permanent limp, and now that she is approaching sixty, her arms are strong, but she cannot climb stairs. This made hiring another maid necessary. We found Sophie, a meek young woman who somehow managed to marry George within three months. George’s truckle bed and tiny alcove weren’t fit for a married couple, thus the renting of two rooms in Whitechapel, thanks to an increase in wages I felt I had no choice but to grant. And so, here we all are.
Daphne is busy heating the water and measuring black tea leaves, but knowing her as I do, I can tell she is troubled about something besides Sophie’s health.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “What is amiss?”
“The post came yesterday afternoon, you do know that, Madame Genevieve? George gave you the letters? I think there were two.”
My stomach lurches.
“George gave me nothing.”
“That was wrong of him.” Daphne winces. “But he was so worried about his little wife, poor man.”
I search the sitting room and the kitchen, even my bedroom, but can find no letters. George never comes up to the workshop, but he does trudge up and down from cellar to kitchen, and it’s there, in the cellar, sticking out from under a dirty sack of onions, that I spot the corner of a letter.
Blast you, George.
I am going to have a serious talk with my married servants – I will put a little fear into these two – but first, I must attend to the letters. I brush off the onion dust. Even in the dank semi-darkness of the cellar, I detect that they are both of heavy paper, bearing seals. Just holding the letters, feeling their weight in my fingers, sends a cold dread through my veins. What important and possibly urgent messages have I missed?
In the light of the sitting room, I examine them. The light-grey letter is folded with a black seal I don’t recognise, just the initials “JR”, but the cream-coloured letter bears a burgundy seal imprinted with the name “Carteret”.
