The Porcelain Dove Page 32

  I said nothing to her, of course. Femmes de chambre do not comment upon the morals of their mistresses, be they unchaste as she-wolves or evil as cats—not if they wish to keep their places. A thousand times, I decided to follow Noël Songis and Jacques Ministre to freedom. A thousand times, I bit my tongue. Where (I asked myself as I tugged the brush through her graying hair) would I go?

  As many plans as I conceived, so many objections rose like mère Malatestes to abort them. Paris? Upon the boulevards of Paris, lady's maids are as common as brambles in the Forêt des Enfans. It went without saying I'd get no letter of character, and without a letter, I'd end up like poor Peronel, or worse, being older and unsuited to the work. Not Paris, then.

  Lausanne? I knew the comtesse Réverdil, and she knew any number of bankers' wives. I needed a change of scene, and Lausanne would be most pleasant. Ah, beautiful Lac Leman, I told myself. The mountains! The air! The damp, myself answered glumly. The cold! The snow! As well stay in Beauxprés. And mon Dieu, the Protestants! Lausanne was in the middle of a Protestant canton—not a priest for miles. Where would I hear Mass? And bankers' wives are fat and vulgar. Not Lausanne.

  As far as I could see, all roads leading from Beauxprés ended, sooner or later, in Hell. For a practical woman of middle age, the choice between unhappiness and starvation is not a choice at all. I was miserable, bien sûr, but I was also passably well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed. And when I tried to imagine life without my mistress . . . Well, my imagination failed me, and that's the truth of it.

  So there I was, feeling like a prisoner in the Bastille, and there were Artide, and Jean, and M. Malesherbes, and Dentelle, and Malateste, and Carmontelle, and Clauda, and the rest of them, all fretting and cursing and bemoaning their lot, but only when Sangsue wasn't by to hear them. There were Mlle Linotte and M. Justin, the one too young, the other too closely watched to run away. There was monsieur, who'd no desire to leave Beauxprés. And there was my mistress, who could not, though she tried.

  In November, Mme de Bonsecours sent word of the death of the baronne du Fourchet. The weather had cleared a little, the roads were passable in a sleigh, winter traveling was hardly new to us—of course madame would attend her mother's obsequies. In less time than it takes to tell, the boxes were packed, the sleigh at the door, and we tucked into it with furs and a brazier, gliding over the milk-blue snow towards the chestnut drive.

  The bare limbs of the chestnuts arched around us, black filigree against the pale sky. My mistress peered suddenly upwards. "There, Berthe," she exclaimed. "Did you see it? No, 'tis gone. But there was something: I know it."

  "Madame has seen a bird," I said. "There are always birds around Beauxprés."

  She objected that 'twas too big for a bird, far too big, and stared and fidgeted all the way to the foot of the hill. I thought she'd settle when we passed into the meadows, but she only grew more and more tetchy, until by the time we made the Forêt des Enfans, she was like a duck who sees the cook's boy approaching. The first ranks of firs opened to us, and we passed slowly among them. There was no sound in the forest save the scraping hiss of the runners, the muffled clop of the hooves, and then, suddenly, my mistress' voice shrieking at Carmontelle to turn around at once.

  "Children, Berthe," she panted when at last he'd managed the feat of turning four horses and a sleigh on a narrow forest road. "On the road. Didn't you see them?"

  I'd seen long aisles of trees, shaggy and dark, with the prospect of Paris shimmering like heaven beyond them. Now I saw nothing at all. "No, madame," I said coldly.

  "A dozen or more. Beggars, like the ones . . . you know. I expected to see them, but not so close to Beauxprés. They're everywhere, aren't they, so many of them, so hungry. . . . Surely they can't expect me to feed them all. And if I feed them today, they'll only be hungry again tomorrow."

  "The poor are always with us, madame."

  Well, she said nothing to that: indeed, what could she say? She did not mention the children again. Nor did she attend her mother's funeral, or visit Paris, or Versailles, or Lausanne. She did send gold to Baume-les-Messieurs to buy Masses for the baronne's soul, wept like a fountain for a month and wore black for a year. Me, I mourned for Olympe, who had doubtless received Mme la baronne's dying breath, closed her eyes, bound her jaw, bathed and arrayed her outworn body for its journey to the grave. Olympe, who called herself a cautious woman but could never resist a bit of lace or a fashionable hat. I feared she'd saved little enough of her wages, and she was now too old to find another position and too proud to enter an almshouse. I prayed she'd not starve or freeze in some Saint-Antoine doorway. I much fear she must have.

  That winter, the winter of 1784, was terrible—not as bad as the winter of '88, mind you, but bad enough. The cold seemed endless, and the suffering also. In the village, the peasants burned dung or froze, for monsieur had exercised his right of triage and claimed all the dead wood for his own use. The aviary furnaces roared night and day, and still, without Noël Songis to nurse them, parrots and macaws, toucans and honey-birds fell sick and died by the dozen.

  Because of the warmth, I went there whenever I had an hour to spare—provided I knew monsieur to be occupied elsewhere—and often I would discover a feathered corpse among the drooping greenery, or two, or three. Once, a small, bright bird dropped right into my lap, jerked its claws, spread one wing, and stiffened. Dead, it looked too lapidary to have ever been alive: its tail was peridot, its wings lapis lazuli and turquoise, its body burnished gold, its head carnelian. Folding the wing, I gathered it up, half thinking to find it as cold and heavy in my hands as the mechanical nightingale the chevalier du Faraud had given Linotte. But its body was still warm, and its feathers softer than swansdown. I remember thinking one day I'd find my mistress like that, still and soft and broken, or Linotte, or even the magpie Justin, freed at last from Beauxprés and the vigilance of the tutors his father had procured for him.

  Tutors. Bah! Jailers, rather: thick-necked, iron-handed, gimlet-eyed jailers. If they were masters of mathematics and philosophy, why then I was Voltaire's mistress. They stuck as close to the boy as his shirt. Closer. I doubt he could turn over in his sleep or fill his chamber pot without one or both of them taking note of it. And the tutors were not the worst of the torments his father forced upon him.

  One day, passing the library, I heard a scream. I jumped. Well, anyone would have: a screech like a crow's alarm, and me not expecting it.

  "Damned! Damned! Damned!" the crow mourned. 'Twas more than flesh and blood could bear not to hear who was being damned and how, so when my heart had calmed somewhat, I stood close by the door and listened.

  "Superstition!" monsieur was shouting. "Hell is only a nursery tale, and damnation a goblin to frighten infants into good behavior. Your precious monks had you for five years, and look at you—no strength, no will of your own, no accomplishments, good for nothing but praying day and night. And what good's that, I ask you?"

  The answer came very firm. "To praise Him who is our Creator and our Savior. And to purify our souls."

  I heard the smack of flesh against flesh, then monsieur's voice: "I'll tell you what comes of purifying your soul. Nothing save a puling weakness. You shame me, Justin. You shame the name of Maindur."

  "Hearing Mass is not nothing," said Justin, and I vow there was no weakness in his voice.

  "'Tis less than nothing—less than the twittering of birds."

  "I beseech you, monsieur, to beware how you place your soul in jeopardy."

  "My soul, if indeed I have such a thing, is no concern of yours. You will obey me. Does not the rule of Saint Benedict enjoin you to obedience? Does not your God Himself command you to honor your father?"

  "The Devil quotes scripture."

  "Call me Devil, will you?" Smack.

  A pause, and then Justin's voice again, growing as he spoke ever stronger and more passionate. "Saint Paul has written that if a man would serve God with his whole heart, he must leave behind his father
and mother, his home, his wife and children. As I'd leave you, monsieur. Yet I swear upon the bones of Christ that I'll not seek to return to Baume-les-Messieurs, that I'll obey you cheerfully and dutifully in all you ask of me, if only you'll let me be confessed and hear Mass. If you do not trust my vow, at least allow the curé to come to me here. Once a week is all I ask. Monsieur—Father—I beg you."

  This last was said so earnestly, so reasonably that the Devil himself must have been moved. Monsieur was not. His answer came through the door as the whistle and thwack of a crop or a stick. I did not hear Justin cry out, but then I did not listen long. My store of pity, as of patience and loving-kindness, was more barren than Mme Pyanet's larder.

  And what's pity, after all? A poor, threadbare emotion, of no more use to its object than a cloak of sighs to a freezing man. Yet a cloak of sighs may warm a soul. And I was so angry in those days, so troubled in my heart and unquiet in my mind, that I begrudged madame even that thin comfort.

  One winter's night at the turn of the year, I was roused from a sound sleep by the frantic tinkling of my mistress' bell. Grumbling, I crept out of my bed, lit a candle, wrapped myself in a shawl, and made my yawning way to the China apartment. She was sitting up in her bed, shivering like a flame in a draught, her eyes liquid and her voice quavering as she bade me light the candles and build the fire high. Had I inquired, she might have told me why she'd been weeping, but I'd have sooner comforted mère Boudin. I did as I'd been told, then inquired coldly if that would be all. Indignant, she said it would not, and kept me busy with meaningless tasks until dawn.

  Next evening, she ordered me to make up my bed in her dressing-room.

  She'd taken to drinking sweetened wine before she retired, and that night emptied nigh on a full bottle of the vile stuff before crawling drink-sodden into bed. I fell asleep to a snoring like a rusty winch, and awoke some hours later to a terrified moaning. I don't know why—old habit, perhaps—but without thinking I leapt up and took her to my breast.

  She pushed me away, her eyes wide with horrors only she could see.

  "Beggars," she whispered. "Famine. Pestilence. War. Death."

  I felt a prickling down my spine, as of tiny claws—it could equally have been fury or fear I felt, and in truth, with me the two are closely allied. None too gently, I took her wrists and shook her.

  "Madame has had a nightmare," I said when sense returned to her eyes. "Little wonder, after the great quantity of wine madame drank before she retired."

  She lifted cold hands to her ashy cheeks. "Very like," she said in a child's voice, then, "I have soiled myself, I think."

  I scolded while I changed the linen on her bed, scolded while I built up the fire and heated water, scolded while I cleaned her and clothed her afresh, scolded while I emptied the slops out the window. She drank like a salt-merchant, I told her, and ate like a honey-bird. She'd grown lazy and gluttonous and forgotten all the good advice Dr. Tissot had given her. When was the last time she'd ridden Fleurette? I inquired. When was the last time she'd done anything at all?

  If she'd answered me, we might have quarreled. I might have said the unforgivable at last, she might have sacked me, and angry as I was, I might even have gone. My tale would then have been a different one, and I no longer alive to tell it.

  There are times when I regret that night, when I wish with all my heart that I had gone forth from Beauxprés to live, and to die, like ordinary folk. Eternity has made a philosophe of me, who am all unsuited to the role. Once, looking at the White Cat's dog Toutou asleep in her glass and rosewood case, it came to me that Beauxprés itself was such a case, and we the curiosities protected and imprisoned by its transparent walls. What collection are we part of? I wondered. In which Heavenly mansion are we stored? And then I laughed, for I had a fancy, like a vision 'twas so clear, of an angel's eye upon me and an angel's face lost in wonder at the art that had preserved me here so long.

  Well. Think me mad if you will. Jean has called me mad, yes, and ungrateful, too. Had I gone out into the world, he says, my body would be cold clay by now, and my soul annealing in the flames of Purgatory. Confess, he says, his gesture encompassing silver fountain, unfading flowers, Sèvres sky, Colette playing at ball with a pair of bodiless hands, a yellow-haired demoness loitering at the garden gate—confess that this is better than dying.

  Than dying? Of a certainty.

  Than death? I cannot say.

  CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH

  In Which Brother Justin Goes Questing

  By the spring of 1784, nearly three years had passed since the vicomte had set out on his quest, and a full year since his—or rather Reynaud's—last request for money. Monsieur had given up hope of him. Oh, he said nothing—adversity had not changed him so much as that—but when Just Vissot and Claude Mareschal began to plant corn-seed in their fields, monsieur began to plant hero-seed in M. Justin. He'd have had more success planting peas in a rose garden and having them grow into rose bushes. I suppose the boy had seen men grasp the hilts of a sword and wave the sharp end in the air, just as he'd seen men grasp the stilts of a plow and dig the sharp end in the soil. But he'd no more aptitude to one thing than to the other, which is to say none at all. As for skills useful for questing, he could ride—providing the horse walked slowly. And he could tell north from south—providing he had a compass. He could endure a prodigious lot of discomfort in the way of hunger and cold, and he was astonishingly persistent.

  In a fairy tale, of course, his faults wouldn't have mattered. Either he counted as the youngest son, in which case he'd inevitably achieve the quest. Or else he was only the middle child, in which case he'd inevitably fail. In neither case would his ability to stick to a horse or wield a sword weigh in the balance. But monsieur (when he wasn't chasing after chimerical doves) was a man of reason, and reason told him that an adventurer is likely to survive longer and go further in the world than a monk. Justin must therefore learn to be an adventurer. Q.E.D.

  Once the original impossible premise had been accepted, monsieur's regimen seemed sensible enough: wrestling, swordplay, geography, tactics, ornithology (to help Justin keep the Dove alive once he'd found it), dancing (to make him light of foot), riding, hunting, and rock climbing. The stone-eyed tutors kept the boy at it from dawn to dusk. Whenever I chanced to look into the stable-yard, there he'd be, stripped to his shirt and gutting a rabbit or hacking his sword at a stick, his face white and set as cold porridge, while his tutors watched him with the indifferent patience of cats at a mouse hole.

  Such scenes, though painful to behold, were easily enough avoided by avoiding the stable-yard. Far worse were the dancing lessons administered by M. le duc in the Miniature salon; those, I had no choice save to witness. The progress of those lessons seemed to unfold in tableaux, like a series of etchings in the style of M. Hogarth of England, for example. I imagine them bound in red calf and untouched for a century or more, the edges stained from being much handled when new. There are four plates in the series. We may call it "The Minuet."

  The prints' common setting is a noble salon furnished in the highest style of the last century. A sofa and a rolled-up carpet weight the left-hand side of the composition. A satinwood clavichord, painted with dogs coursing a deer, balances it on the right. The curtains of the salon are drawn, and the walls are hung to the ceiling with miniature portraits whose variously gay and grave smiles give them an air of bystanders at a public spectacle.

  The first plate is titled "Révérence à la presence." A pretty woman sits at the clavichord, frowning short-sightedly at the music before her. A slightly older woman stands beside her and behind—her maid almost certainly, from her plain cap and look of bland disapproval. Her hand hovers by the music, ready to turn the page. In the middle foreground, a young man and a girl address themselves to the dance. The young man bows, leg thrust forward, hand on heart, face a mask of politesse. The girl is sunk in a graceful curtsy, her thin face a feminine mirror of her partner's, her eyes, like his, upon the
central figure of the dancing-master, who commands both his pupils' attention and the composition: a tall, upright, hawk-faced man in an outdated peruke, holding a long, beribboned cane in one hand and a copy of Rameau's Le maître à danser in the other.

  In the second plate, "Pas balancée," there has been a collision. The girl reels against the sofa; the young man steadies himself on the clavichord. The pretty woman stretches her hands beseechingly towards master and pupil, who eye one another like the archer and St. Sebastian. The maid has covered her mouth with her hand; 'tis impossible to tell whether her fingers conceal a gasp of horror or a smile.

  The third plate shows the young man fallen to his hands and knees. The dancing-master stands above him with the beribboned cane held high like a flail and his face contorted with rage. The girl, one hand upon the salon door, casts an unreadable look behind her. The pretty woman has buried her face in her hands. The maid bends to the sheets of music, which have fallen to the floor. This plate is titled "Temps de courant et demi-jeté."

  In the fourth and final plate, called "Contretemps de minuet," the centerpiece is the book lying open at the dancing-master's feet under the broken pieces of the beribboned cane. To the left, two large men bear the unconscious young man from the salon, his arms drawn over their necks and his feet dragging. Their attitude is solicitous, almost tender, but their faces are the faces of devils attendant upon the damned. To the right, the pretty woman has fainted in the arms of her maid, who stares past her at the dancing-master. He, in turn, stares after his pupil. From his face, you'd swear that he was afraid.

  An unpleasant subject, to be sure, though no more unpleasant than a Rake's Progress, and the work is very fine. See how the engraver's needle has caught each expression—the young man's martyred look of endurance; the girl's narrow face locked tight as a dungeon door upon her emotions. He conveys the tall man's rage in the curl of his nostril and lip, reveals his fear in a slight widening of the eye. And the pretty woman, when you examine her closely, is not so pretty after all, the delicate skin around her eyes ruched up by tears, the full mouth deeply tucked at the corners.