Prologue

It was so cold that the trees were cracking, and Paris was mourning the death of Molière. For several days, card games were played with less enthusiasm than usual: winners celebrated less ostentatiously, and those who had lost their life savings were less inclined to leap into the Seine. Pike was served in only 13 different ways instead of 17, turkey in nine, and crayfish in merely five. In Molière’s favourite restaurant, Des Bons Enfants, a group of actors dressed in black velvet took turns performing scenes from his comedies, wept, and wondered what would happen at the funeral: priests refused to administer last rites and a Catholic burial, for not only had the deceased not renounced the theatre before his death, but he had even died onstage – thus damning his soul for eternity. Now the decision concerning whether to grant him the sacraments lay in the hands of the king, who disliked rushing into things and preferred to mull over such matters at length.

The Franco-Dutch War was waiting calmly under the blanket for the ice to release Amsterdam from its embrace so that everyone could resume pummelling each other over a long-forgotten cause. Pickpockets, libertines, ruffians, thugs, philanderers, pimps, professional beggars, vagrants, wounded soldiers, whores and bankers kept themselves busy with all manner of shady dealings. Policemen were freezing; priests were not. Despite the chilly weather, Master Stefan, the former coachman of Monsieur de Verthamon, stood on the Pont Neuf, singing satirical songs in front of the equestrian statue of King Henry IV: about Molière’s final exit from the stage, the bankruptcy of Louis XIV’s East India Company, frozen Parisians, the vogue for turkey curls and sable stoles, Luxembourg’s defeat of the coalition, a tragic death whilst emptying a chamber pot, and the abduction of sixteen women from a poorhouse.

Part One

The Northern Hemisphere

In accordance with an elaborate plan, they were kidnapped in the morning, in full view of random passersby and the staff, as if to prove the power of the Company. The 16 women were taken from the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital on the left bank of the Seine at the request of the governor of a remote island, with the knowledge of almighty Colbert and the approval of King Louis XIV, on a day as cold as the hearts of those who, when the clock struck nine, entered from Saint Victor Street, named after the patron saint of Marseille. It wasn’t southward towards Marseille, however, that the women were taken – but westward. With very little protest and a visible sense of relief, as if they’d been waiting for this to happen or had been longing for it more than anything else in the world, they allowed themselves to be put in chains and led to the boat that was waiting for them.

Three soldiers belonging to Louis XIV’s East India Company marched at both the front and rear of the column. They were young boys who had recently been unemployed or were freshly discharged from military service. They had enlisted in Colbert’s small army in the hope of a steady wage and perhaps also an extraordinary adventure on the high seas, for they’d heard tales of officers becoming so rich in the colonies that their ships, overloaded with treasure, sank on the return voyage or fell prey to pirates. They dreamed of skirmishes with Spanish corsairs and glorious victories – or at the very least, a soldier’s honourable death. Instead, they were being used as guards: escorting women who had been rounded up on the streets of Paris to the poorhouse, and from the poorhouse to a boat that would set sail toward the Pont Rouge on the other side of the city.

Translated by Scotia Gilroy