The Porcelain Dove Page 22

  Well, that put the cat among the pigeons and no mistake. Such a weeping and a calling upon the saints and a praying for death to end her torments I'd not witnessed since Boudin had felt a swelling in her armpit and imagined it the plague. The vicomte soon had cause to repent his sauciness if not his lechery, for within two days, he was on the road back to Beauxprés, chaperoned by two stalwart Swiss grooms and the comte Réverdil's own secretary.

  'Twas mère Boudin had the last word about M. Léon. "Boys'll be boys," she said as we packed his clothes. "The less fuss made about such games, the sooner he'll forget 'em. All that shrieking and moaning's more like to set him on than put him off, if you take my meaning." She lowered her voice confidentially. " 'Tis not as though the slut can charge him with a bastard, come March. Mère Languelonge salved Bernarde's back when her da thrashed her, and mère Languelonge told me that Bernarde had told her that the vicomte knew all sorts of pretty tricks. She'd not catch a round belly from any of 'em, she said, though to be sure 'twas a little painful at first. Ah, he's a fine lad, the vicomte de Montplaisir. A Maindur to the bones."

  After that, things grew quieter for a while. Madame announced her intention of devoting herself to her children's education and received the chevalier less often, and more coolly, than she had. Whenever she was at home, she required Linotte and Justin to attend her, though she hardly knew what to do with them or how to instruct them, or, indeed, what to instruct them in. She was so awkward in their company, so intolerant of Justin's inattention and Linotte's restlessness, and so snappish when they questioned her, that I was almost relieved when the chevalier, in a brilliant change of tactics, began paying court to her through them.

  Suddenly when he called, 'twas for Linotte and Justin he asked, and spent his calls in finding out their studies and their plays. When Justin admitted sulkily that he liked Latin, the chevalier gave the boy a volume of Catullus and lectured him on the essential purity of passionate love while madame sat by listening with her embroidery in her lap and the tears standing in her black eyes. Then he teased from Linotte the information that she liked birds, and next day brought her a mechanical nightingale made of silver-gilt and studded with bits of colored glass masquerading as sapphires and rubies. It sang only one song, but it sang it very beautifully and glittered blindingly all the while. Linotte stared at it open-mouthed while it chirred and twitched, and when called upon to thank him for it, silently hid her head in the beribboned billows of madame's skirts.

  The chevalier contemplated the pretty picture they made together in a kind of rapture. "Petite précieuse," he exclaimed fondly. "I beg you not to scold her, madame. Her wonder is thanks enough. See how she peeps at me, the darling! The image of her beautiful mother."

  "Ah, chevalier, I protest you flatter me. I am no more than an ordinary woman, whose growing children announce her own advancing years."

  "Never say so, my jewel. Aphrodite, too, was a mother. Like her, you will never age, but remain a goddess of love and beauty when your daughter is faded and gray."

  Madame smiled and stroked Linotte's silky black curls. "Do you wish on me an early death, then, chevalier?"

  "O madame," he cried and fell to his knees beside her. "Eternal life! Eternal happiness! Your beauty and virtue deserve nothing less."

  "Silly boy," said madame tenderly. "Linotte, my love, do thou take thy pretty bird and show it to thy brother. Here, 'tis heavy for thee; Berthe will carry it, will you not, Berthe? And, Berthe, you may stay within and mend the vive bergère gown."

  You may imagine that I listened to this exchange with something less than perfect joy. Indeed, I sat locked in a rage so profound 'twas almost calm. Had madame required an answer of me, I'd certainly have thrown the workbasket at her or smashed the nightingale to bits. As she did not, I only heaved the ugly thing into my arms and stalked off with it, stiff as clockwork and as cold about the heart. That was the first time she'd been alone with him.

  Next morning, madame received an invitation from Mme de Charrière for a pique-nique at her chalet, an intimate affair of ten or twenty old friends in honor of the chevalier de Faraud's coming of age. He'd particularly requested that Mme la duchesse bring her two enchanting children on the outing.

  As I dressed her, madame plotted nervously. "You'll come to look after the children, Berthe, for mère Boudin is quite impossible and it won't do to have them underfoot all day. They cannot be left behind, for the chevalier has said that he particularly wishes to see me with Linotte in an alpine meadow gathering flowering grasses, like Demeter and Persephone. 'Tis a pretty conceit, is it not? The chevalier is such a dear boy." She smiled at her reflection and tilted her chin to a more becoming angle.

  "I shall wear the painted silk caraco, and the English hat trimmed with roses. Pink stockings, I think—the ones clocked with flowers will do—and the rose satin slippers. The party is to gather at the Charrières', and we'll all leave together at ten o'clock precisely. I've commanded a pony cart for half-past nine. Tell Boudin to see to it that the children are properly dressed and at the front door. The blue for Justin, no lace on his shirt, and a simple robe chemise for Linotte, with a rose, no, a blue sash."

  When I relayed madame's message, Boudin's nose glowed an indignant red. "Half-past nine!" she cried. "The Devil fly away with half-past nine. I'll be until half-past nine catching Mlle Linotte, never mind getting her brushed and dressed."

  "Start chasing her at dawn, then. They must be ready at half-past nine, or you'll wish the Devil had flown away with you."

  At sunrise, mère Boudin burst into my closet. "He's not there!" she squealed.

  "Chut," I said. "You'll wake madame."

  She lowered her voice to a thick rumble. "He's not in his bed. Nor not in anybody else's bed either, nor the garden, nor the goat-shed, and somebody's let out all the goats."

  "Bugger the goats," I said, none too patiently. "Who isn't in his bed?"

  "Justin. The little toad. More girl than his sister, for all he's a prick between his legs. I'd not be astonished for M. Léon to stay out all night. But Mlle Justin?" She shook her head in wonder.

  "They're both Maindurs," I said. "I must think what to do. Sit down and hold your noise."

  While I pinned a lace cap on my hair, Boudin grumbled gloomily to herself like a sow that's overlain her last piglet. Were the occasion not so serious, I could have been amused. She'd always been so proud of being nurse to Malvoeux: so high with mère Malateste's old gossips, so mighty with the servingmaids. A careful nurse indeed to let her charges run wild, I thought, one to debauch the goat-girl in the laundry, another to stay out all night, le bon Dieu only knew where. And the third . . .

  "Ah, mère Boudin," I said sweetly. "Have you checked upon Mlle Linotte this morning? If you cannot produce at least one of her children at half-past nine, madame may begin to wonder whether another nursemaid might prove more vigilant."

  "Cent mille bougres!" Boudin exclaimed and lumbered out of the room, Justin for the moment entirely forgotten.

  As it happened, Linotte too was nowhere to be found, although her bed, unlike Justin's, had been slept in. More annoyed than worried, I sat down on a chest to think where she might be. If 'twere madame missing, I'd know where to look. But Linotte was only five years old. What was there to know?

  Well, I knew that she stuck to Pompey like a leech. And I knew that Pompey was likely to be in the kitchen at this hour. Which is where I found him, eating cheese and drinking ale in the company of the French sous-chef.

  Without preamble I announced that M. Justin Maindur had disappeared from the house during the night, and Mlle Linotte as well. "You'll need to find them quickly," I said, "or madame will be horribly put about. Mlle Linotte's too little to have gone far, and I doubt M. Justin's done anything very terrible, but we don't want either one of them drowning in Lac Leman or falling down an Alp."

  "The boy's in no danger of falling down an Alp," the chef assured me through a mouthful of cheese. "The poor half-wit may have run afoul
of a cow, though, or been frightened by a pigeon or some such foolishness. Someone will have to go fetch him."

  I could hardly believe my ears. "A cow? Fetch him? From where?"

  "Sant'âme, of course."

  "Of course? What's in Sant'âme? Answer me posthaste, fool, or I'll give you Sant'âme, and painfully, too."

  The sous-chef swallowed and took another bite. " 'Who,' Duvet, not 'what.' Père Michel is who."

  "And who the great horned devil is père Michel? And what has M. Justin to do with him?"

  "Ah," said the chef, wiping his lips. "That I've sworn not to tell."

  I glared at him, my ears buzzing with fury. Pompey caught me by my sleeve-ruffle and drew me down on the bench.

  "Softly, Berthe," he said. "M. Justin has made us swear, the cook and I, that we wouldn't tell a soul where he goes at night. I think his carelessness releases us from our oath. Père Michel is chaplain to an elderly Catholic gentleman who lives on the rue de Faubourg Saint-Laurent in a house called Sant'âme. Most evenings in the week, M. Justin goes there for instruction in Greek and Latin. Usually he's home by midnight."

  "Mon Dieu," I said weakly.

  "Exactly," said the chef. " 'Tis freakish and foolish both, but 'tis a freakish and foolish child, after all, the second son of the mad duc de Malvoeux. I'll send a lackey for the prodigal as quick as may be, but I doubt he'll be in time for madame's pique-nique."

  I turned on Pompey. "And what about Mlle Linotte? I suppose the baker has taken her on as an apprentice, with your signature upon the articles?"

  Pompey frowned and shook his head. "She's in no danger, that I'm sure of, but I do not smell her in Lausanne. Never fear. I'll find her soon enough." He smiled at me then, mischief and compassion mingled in his face. "Yours is the harder task by far."

  Telling madame is what he meant: a hard task to be sure, and one I was in no hurry to perform. I put it off as long as I could, but when madame had drunk her chocolate and neither Pompey nor the lackey had returned, I told her how matters stood.

  She slammed the cup down on the breakfast-tray with such force that the thin porcelain cracked. " 'Tis too bad!" she exclaimed. "I vow and declare, Berthe, 'tis too bad of them to serve me like this. Here's the chevalier counting on them being at the pique-nique, talking of bringing the fables of Aesop for Justin and how sweet I looked with Linotte in my arms, and now it will all be spoiled and he'll never come to my bed, and I'll have endured listening to all that silly verse to no purpose!"

  I stared at her. Her children lost, whom she professed to love, and all she could think of was her precious chevalier! Was this some working of the beggar's curse to harden her heart?

  "It won't come to that," I said coldly. "The children will soon be found."

  "No, no. 'Tis spoilt, Berthe, and were they both miraculously to reappear this very minute, I still should lack the heart to go. No. I must write to Mme de Charrière immediately and send my regrets. I'll say I have the headache, or better yet, that Linotte is sickening for a grippe and I must stay home and nurse her."

  "Yes, madame. That's best, I think. You won't enjoy the pique-nique if you're all in a worry."

  "Just so. I can't think how the child could be so selfish. I've always been a good mother to her. And Justin, the sly creature. Have I not always said, Berthe, that he was a sly creature? He's at Sant'âme, you said. What's Sant'âme?"

  "I've made inquiries, madame. Sant'âme is the home of an elderly Catholic gentleman who keeps a chaplain to say Mass for him, Mass being a hard thing to hear in Vaud, which is a Protestant canton, as madame knows."

  "Yes, yes, Berthe. Do come to the point, if you have one."

  "Certainly, madame. Pompey says M. Justin scraped acquaintance with this père Michel and persuaded him to instruct him in Greek and Latin. He also persuaded him to keep the whole a secret and to give him lessons in the evenings."

  Madame had grown increasingly agitated as I spoke. "Pompey says! And why does Pompey know all this when I, Justin's mother, do not?" Madame's voice rose hysterically. "Why is my son sneaking off to study with some strange gentleman's chaplain? Why are my servants conspiring with him to keep it from me? I can't bear secrets, Berthe, and I can't bear conspirators. Pompey must be dismissed at once, without a character. And you. You knew, did you not? Of course you did. And kept it from me out of spite and jealousy. There's no one here wants me to be happy. And to think I believed that you loved me!"

  Well. I stood with my mouth stupidly ajar and my blood freezing in my veins. What I might have said when I recovered, I'm sure I don't know—something unforgivable, I fear—had I not been saved by a scratching at the door. I opened it to one of the Swiss lackeys, he who'd been sent after Justin.

  "Please, madame," he said blandly. "A priest, madame. In the blue salon with M. Justin. Requests the favor of an interview, madame."

  Before he'd quite finished speaking, "Peste!" screamed my mistress, and pelted out the door, clothed only in her corset and petticoat and a white taffeta négligée that left her white bosom largely exposed. I snatched up a long India scarf from the armoire, and pelted after.

  Somewhere between her chamber and the blue salon, madame must have bethought her that she could hardly berate a gentleman's chaplain as she would a cook who'd burned the roast. When I entered the salon, she was giving her hand to a broad man in a black cassock and smiling on him with chilly graciousness. Any French priest would have known to kiss the hand and tremble at the smile. Père Michel only held the one gingerly between his thumb and forefinger for a moment and briefly returned the other. He was a lumpish man, all pendulous jowls and eyes that retreated under his brows from the sight of so much bare flesh.

  I laid the scarf around my mistress' shoulders. Impatiently, she shrugged it off again. "My servant informs me you have kindly brought home my straying son. Where is he, I pray?"

  Père Michel produced Justin from behind his back and gave him a little push towards his mother, who gaped at the boy as though he were a prodigy of nature. Indeed, I was gaping on my own account, for the child more resembled an anchorite than a French noble's son. Somewhere he'd acquired a rusty black coat that a carter would have disdained to wear, and his shirt was cobbled together out of coarse sacking that must have chafed his skin unbearably. In his bony hands he clutched a missal and—most startling of all—his weak chin was thrust well forward in a stubborn pout.

  My mistress found her voice. "Justin!" she cried. "What demon of naughtiness has possessed thee to go creeping out at night like a common thief? Dost love thy mother so little that thou would'st shame her before a stranger? And what"—this in a wail, a true cri de coeur—"what on earth has become of thy clothes?"

  Justin lowered his eyes and hugged the missal to his narrow chest as though he feared she'd snatch it from him.

  "Justin, I have asked thee a question. Where earnest thou by that . . . that hair shirt?"

  Père Michel, his eyes sternly averted from madame's heaving breast, came to Justin's rescue. "He made it himself, madame, in penance for breaking the Fifth Commandment."

  Madame crossed herself, then fell to her knees beside Justin and tried to gather the boy into her arms. Justin pushed her away, whereupon she flung herself weeping over the seat of a nearby chair.

  The priest, who'd been observing this display with stolid distaste, raised his voice to carry over madame's sobs. "There is no need for Mme la duchesse to distress herself," he said. "Madame's son is a good mind and a sensitive spirit, zealous, and apt to learning. Such a mind requires quiet and order and careful nurturing. A monastery school would most conveniently provide all three, madame, and, as I have good reason to know, the Benedictine school at Einsiedeln is among the finest. I myself, madame, am a product of that school."

  My mistress pulled herself up on the chair and dabbed at her streaming eyes with the hem of her négligée while père Michel expanded upon Einsiedeln's myriad virtues as a place of learning. At least that's where he began, moving by degrees a
s he spoke from the nurturing of Justin's mind to the nurturing of his soul, and from the possibility of Justin's making a fine scholar to the probability of his making a fine monk. Monsieur would have wrung the priest's goiterous neck before he'd uttered a dozen words, but madame only shrank back in her chair and stared at him piteously.

  "Enough, enough," she cried at last. "Let him go to Einsiedeln, then, only do stop talking at me."

  For the first time, Justin spoke. "God will reward you, madame," he said. His voice was thoroughly smug.

  I've lived in Justin's company for upwards of two hundred years, now. He is not a simple man, to be sure—no Maindur is simple. Nor is he an easy man to like. Yet he is no longer that sorry, sniveling child who was adamant as only the weak are adamant, who declared that God would reward madame for giving her son his heart's desire. In his own way, he was as proud as his brother. For what is it but pride, to do penance for a sin one fully intends to go on committing? Almost I preferred M. Léon's cheerful impenitence. But there: between his brother's attentions and everyone else's indifference, Justin had led a dog's life. Who would blame him for wanting to get as far from Beauxprés as the width of Switzerland and the height of the Alps could take him?

  While we were still goggling at Justin, Pompey entered the blue salon, muddy to the eyebrows and with pine needles starting from his hair. In his arms he bore a grubby urchin clad in a filthy, torn nightdress that smelled strongly of goat. One small, bare foot ran with blood; but she was smiling, and so was Pompey. Linotte was found.

  When madame caught sight of her daughter, her hands flew to her cheeks, her mouth gaped wide in an ugly "O," and she began to shriek aloud.

  Père Michel hastily withdrew to the window and turned a wide black back upon the proceedings. For a futile moment, I wished that I could do the same, for my mistress' shrieks took on a mechanical note, and she began to drum with her heels and flail with her arms in a perfect frenzy of hysteria. In twenty years of serving her, I'd never seen her so unconscious of how she looked. The next minutes were a chaos while Pompey and I labored to get her laid down quietly on a chaise. Once there, she promptly fell asleep.