The Porcelain Dove Read online

  For their part, the villagers seemed equally content to see nothing of us, and shunned the hill as religiously as Jean and I shunned the valley. Even the curé had not ventured up the path for a year or more, so that I started as though I'd seen a ghost when I came upon him one day lingering by the horse trough.

  He was a little fatter than he had been, and had given up his cassock and priest's bands for a brown coat and a patriotically-striped waistcoat. His height and his uncertainty were unmistakable, however, as was his answer to my greeting.

  "Yes, yes, citizeness, I am enchanted to see you well. Ah, is Mme la du . . . That is"—he looked about him anxiously—"is the citizeness, ah, Maindur, is she by any chance receiving visitors today?"

  It took me a moment to recognize madame in this novel form of address, though not so long as 'twould have taken the curé to recognize madame herself, hunting insects in the dirt not a stone's throw from his feet. Sternly I stifled the urge to introduce him, asking instead what had brought him to the château.

  His eyes flitted uncomfortably from the château to the ruined gardens to the brassy sky to me. "Ah," he said. "Oh, dear. What the mayor will say if he comes to know I've been here, I daren't imagine. Aristos, you know. Anti-revolutionaries. If they're still alive. And the letter. I shouldn't have accepted it in the first place, but I just can't see my way clear to giving it to citizen Desmoulins. A personal letter, after all, quite harmless, I'm sure."

  To endure so long without news, and then to be approached by this white rabbit of a curé twitching his nose at me and talking nonsense—why, 'twould try the patience of a saint. I cocked my fists upon my hips. "Then you're more sure than I, citizen," I snapped. "What mayor? What aristos? What letter?"

  Humbly, he pulled a small packet from his pocket. "Of course, citizeness Duvet. I beg your pardon, I'm sure. A peddler gave it me. He said he'd had it of a vagabond, le bon Dieu only knows how he came by it. It could only be from the marquise, you see—from citizeness Bonsecours."

  My heart rose in my throat. "To be sure," I said. "Just a letter from, ah, citizeness Bonsecours to her sister. What could be more natural?"

  "If I thought 'twas political, or seditious, or anything of the like, I'd feel compelled to give it over to citizen Desmoulins. He's mayor now, did you know? A great patriot, too great a patriot for an out of the way place like Beauxprés, I fear. God willing, he'll soon be off to Besançon where he can do some real good."

  I looked at him narrowly. "Yes," I said. "Of course he will. I always knew Artide Desmoulins would go far. Well. Thank you for bringing us the letter."

  The curé looked down at the packet he still held in his hand. "I don't quite see my way," he began unhappily.

  "Bah!" I snatched it from him. "So. You did not give it me. Now, mon père, go away."

  The curé opened his mouth as if to protest, closed it again, shrugged, blessed me, and left me with the precious packet, directed in Mme de Bonsecours' familiar, sprawling hand to citizeness Maindur, Beauxprés near Champagnole, department of Jura.

  Judging from the state of it—tied up with a bit of grimy string and stained with grease and candle-drippings—it had had a hard journey. Miraculously, the wax seal was unbroken. I broke it, unfolded the thick, coarse sheets, and read.

  20 Floréal, year II of the Republic

  Beloved sister:

  I write you from Port Royal.

  No, I've not taken the veil, though I'm a widow now and apt for the cloister, were there any left to retreat to. As you may know, there are not, not even Port Royal, which is no longer either convent or Port Royal. Still, 'tis a house of detention, and I once more among its detainees.

  I am here upon suspicion. Suspicion of what they do not say, save of being the daughter of a Farmer Général, the wife of a treasury official, and the mother of an émigré. With such familial ties, I must surely harbor anti-revolutionary sympathies. Most especially as the revolution, in the persons of a handful of zealous sans-culottes, murdered my poor husband last September while he was visiting a friend in the Conciergerie. The butchers, the Septembrists, broke into the cell with axes and pikes and slaughtered them both out of hand. Hundreds died that day—forgers, prostitutes, malcontents, priests, nobles, patriots of all persuasions. I cannot weep for them. Some of them were surely guilty, if not of anti-revolutionary plots, then of other crimes. I save my tears for my husband, innocent as an hour-old babe, and for myself, who am become the citizeness widow Bonsecours, whose husband died in the Conciergerie.

  I confess to missing Bonsecours. I miss him so sorely that I've been forced to conclude that I must have loved him—if such a decorous, domesticated, half-irritable comfortableness as we shared can be called love. Certainly 'twas not the passionate and single-minded devotion described by my fellow widows in their communal lamentations. Daily they water the earth with tears and shake the air with such a storm of sighings and moanings as render the cloister walk inhospitable to all save themselves. Me, I prefer to solace my grief in the acacia court, among the young men playing whist and talking politics. Between bouts of tears, the widows whisper to one another that I am all mind and no heart, as utterly without human feeling as citizen Robespierre. So you see that little has changed at Port Royal.

  Or rather everything is changed. First there is the name—Port Libre. What a name for a prison! I can still laugh at the irony of it, and at the inscriptions they've written up on the walls of the refectory:

  "Liberty includes all the rights of man—reason, equality, justice."

  "The Republic brings society happiness: she unites all men under the banner of common interest."

  "The free man cherishes his freedom even while he is deprived of it."

  Nothing of women, of course. Women are accustomed to cloisters.

  I remember when I was a pensionnaire, beating my head against the convent wall and the convent will that barred me from the world. The wall remains, and the will to suppress individual difference. But now the world and I are on the same side of the wall. Men and women, financiers and flirts, rakes and politicians, pious and profane, young and old: all have been stripped of titles and former lives—just as the nuns had been, now I come to think of it—and set to work for the glory of a Higher Authority.

  You'd not credit, ma soeur, how whimsical that Higher Authority can be. It snatched the comb and iron from a coiffeur, replaced them with a knife and ladle, and made him our chef de cuisine. Yet he's a coiffeur still, frizzing the vegetables and scorching the soup until they're barely edible. We pray daily for his early visit to that famed coiffeuse Mme la Guillotine, for a man who thus murders food must surely be guilty of a myriad lesser crimes.

  By some administrative oversight, our maître d'hôtel is well-suited to his post, having been in his former life a Farmer Général like monsieur our father. Coaxing gold from reluctant pockets and giving it to an overlord is second nature to him, and I must say that he executes his duties with as much reverence for citizen Haly our warden as ever he felt for Louis our king. As for our musicians, our sempstresses, our femmes de chambre and our teachers of the young, they perform their duties as well as can be expected of former barons, duchesses, and marquises. At least they bring some grace and wit to their tasks, which is more than can be said for our masters, those mustached and bearded lords of creation who only two years since were carters, butchers, and wine-merchants. Their notion of equality and fraternity is to address princes as "thou," and their notion of freedom to threaten us with La Bicêtre or the Conciergerie if we seem lacking in revolutionary zeal.

  Ah, sister, here am I complaining, and I've not the smallest cause of complaint; for Port Libre is the gentlest, the pleasantest of prisons. The food is not good, bien sûr, but 'tis wholesome. We have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. Our windows are unbarred and our cells have no locks upon them. Those of us with gold or jewels to sell live in cells above the rue d'Enfer no more than four to a room, with views of the observatory, fires in the grates, a
nd plenty of fresh straw in the mattresses. For us pensionnaires de luxe, 'tis hardly like a prison at all. In the evenings, we take our candles to the old refectory and sit there reading, sewing, writing, knitting. The Salon Port Libre. Very à la mode, my dear. One amuses oneself excessively. There's music every night. Sometimes we dance and sing. Last autumn, citizen Coittant wrote a song in three parts to the vaudeville air "Visitandines." A small chorus presented it in concert. I'll give you a verse of it, just for the flavor.

  On one side you see the sage

  With his reading occupied;

  On the other, youth and age

  Laugh and talk and versify. (Bis)

  In your presence, sweet mistress,

  In your council's inmost part,

  Love doth hold a court of hearts

  And a school of tenderness.

  Such trifles comfort us, evoking happier days. When I listen to the baron de Wirbach draw sweet music from his viole d'amour or Vigeé declaim an ode, when I play charades and bouts-rimés, watch the young people flirt together under their parents' indulgent eyes—why, I might almost be at Bonsecours again, or Malmaison, or indeed any château with a house party in residence.

  There are a number of young girls here—not so many as there were, to be sure, but many of them well-born and some of them pretty enough to turn the young men's minds from thoughts of death. Our gaiety is tenuous, however, and grows ever more strained as time, money, and hope all run thin. When I came here last spring, we imagined that we at Port Libre were among the privileged, whose guilt, if it existed, would never be proved. Those whom the Tribunal summoned to trial were often acquitted, and those whom they sent to spit through the guillotine's window were more often common thieves and forgers than ex-nobles. Now, no one is privileged. No one is safe. M. Fougeret is dead, and Victor de Broglie, and the gay and gallant vicomte de Ségur, who passed the time before his trial singing airs to the ladies. New prisoners arrive daily in great numbers: informers and former revolutionaries; Mme de Simiane who was Lafayette's mistress; nuns, who are kept in such isolation that all we know of them is their voices, shrieking their innocence. And today, the newest, most innocent prisoner of all, a baby daughter born to the citizeness Malessi.

  The curfew bell sounds. I have bought an indulgence from Haly to keep my candle lit another hour, but I do not think 'twill last so long. I shall end this letter, this long and disjointed letter, direct it to Beauxprés, and send it tomorrow wrapped in my dirty linen and one of our revolutionary paper bills.

  All my life I've written letters—to our mother, our relatives, a wide circle of friends and acquaintance, to my husband, to you. Correspondence has always been as necessary to my happiness as a well-cooked dinner, and I've found it the more sustaining for its generosity: an act of charity that returned to me a hundredfold. Now my charity is sown upon the wind, for many of my friends are dead and many more are fled or in hiding, I know not where. And you, my sister. Did Beauxprés survive the uprisings and burnings? Did monsieur your husband? Did you?

  I cannot bear to think otherwise. I will imagine you in the China antechamber with your Berthe at hand to pick up a shawl or a train of thought with equal grace. She's still at Beauxprés, I make no doubt. She reads aloud as you embroider and tenderly dries the tears you shed for your unhappy sister,

  Hortense Bonsecours

  I shed more tears over this letter than I'd thought were left in me. I wept for Mme de Bonsecours, for Paris, for the beautifully dressed, beautifully mannered citizens and citizenesses who were dying with the world that had bred them. And I wept a little for myself.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH

  In Which We Hear Word of the Sorcerer Maid

  I had decided to make myself a new chemise. The thought came to me like a lightning-bolt one day while I was winching up a bucket of water from the well. Beyond the meadows, the Forêt des Enfans told me 'twas high spring in France, and here I was winter-bound in Beauxprés, wood-smoked, frostbitten, and verminous. My skin was rough as an ass's hide, and my filthy clothes chafed me unbearably. I imagined how a new chemise would lie upon my back, as white and soft as an angel's wing. I'd alter one of Mlle Linotte's, I thought, remove the point d'esprit lace, cut some off the bottom and use that to let out the sides. I might have grown thin as a needle on porridge and cabbage soup, but I still had more bosom than Mlle Linotte.

  I left the bucket on the coping and hastened up to the Cameo chamber to turn my vision into reality. Chemise, needle, and gossamer all found, I settled myself in a window seat and began to snip and sew, setting each tiny stitch carefully and neatly, as maman had taught me.

  I was threading the needle, I remember, squinting at its eye that seemed to be squinting back, when a flash of scarlet snagged at the edge of my vision. If 'twere not that I'd seen no colors save gray and black and brown and white for so many weary months, I doubt I'd have noticed it, so far away and so fleeting, like a smuggler's signal lamp, there and gone. Indeed, I was hardly aware why I put down my needle and looked down the long slope to the chestnut drive. Yes, there it was again—scarlet, flashing in the barren branches of the chestnuts, again and yet again, higher than a man's head would be, too slow for a bird. If I close my eyes, I can see it even now, that scrap of scarlet moving among the naked chestnuts. And I can still see the wonder that presently emerged from the end of the drive and lurched up the slope: a great cart piled high with chests, trunks, and bundles of canvas, drawn by four oxen. A man astride a dun horse plodded on beside it; a second man walked at his stirrup. The scrap of scarlet was the gown of a woman lounging among the bundles and trunks like Cléopâtre.

  As I gaped at this spectacle, this wheeled enigma, it drew purposefully nearer. It passed below my window on its way to the fountain court, and I dropped my half-sewn chemise upon the window seat and hurried through the ruined chambers down to the hall. The hinges of the front doors were seized up with rust, and by the time I'd forced one side open and come out on the steps, the cart had halted and the man who'd been riding the dun horse was halfway to the door. Immediately he saw me, he swept off his high-crowned hat and touched his nose to his knee in a profound reverence.

  "Le Destin, your most humble servant, madame. May a simple player dare express blessings of the most heartfelt upon this most joyous of occasions? The birth of an heir! By my faith, madame, words fail me."

  Clearly they hadn't; they had, however, failed me. Utterly. When I did not reply, he lifted his nose just enough to allow his eyes to squint doubtfully up at me. "This is the château Beauxprés, is't not? Whose duchesse is just made lighter of a son and heir? My faith, beauté, tell me whether 'tis or no, that I may not stand here wagging my arse for thy sole amusement."

  He was a big man, I saw as he came upright: blunt-faced, with a mouth that curled most charmingly at the corners and an astonishing waterfall of dark ringlets. He wore a yellow velvet coat cut very long in the skirts and breeches so full they were like short petticoats tied at the knee with knots of green ribbon. A curious costume, and his shoes the most curious part of it, being a kind of patten laced up over his stockings with red ribbons. Oh, and the stockings were blue, though not the same blue as his cape.

  Observing how I goggled, he clapped his hat on his head and his hand to his heart. "My faith," he said with a lift of his chin. "I'm not such an eye-mote as that, surely? Art simple, to gape at me thus? Go to thy major-dome, girl, or the steward, or better yet, thy master the duc, and tell him Le Destin has penned a play in honor of his son's birth. A play. You understand 'play'?"

  I suppose he'd ample reason to think me simple, yes, and deaf and mute as well, for his every word threw me further into speechless confusion.

  "Le con!" he cried at last and swung around upon the steps to address his company. "Thou, La Grotte. 'Twas thou the old peddler told of a duc with a new heir, and we've journeyed two days out of our route on the strength of it. Where is this duc, madame? Produce him at once!"

  The scarlet-clad Cléopâtre
stretched upon her canvas barge and yawned in a perfect excess of ennui. " 'Twas Rosemont's peddler," she said wearily. "Let Rosemont produce the duc."

  The man who'd been on foot bounded up the steps and bowed in the same manner as Le Destin, only not so low. He was younger than the master player, and even more outlandishly clad in a grass-green tunic and yellow leggings under a cloak of cramoisi. A handsome man, with a firm jaw patchily shaven, and long, yellow hair tied up in rags to preserve the curl.

  "I'll warrant she wants a taste of our wares as bona fides," he said cheerfully. "Comedy? No, she looks a high-minded piece. Ah, I know." He looped the tail of his cloak over one arm, flung the other wide, and in a sonorous voice began to declaim:

  "'Heavens high,' he said, 'have taken my life from me.

  When I die, care thou for the sad Aricie.

  Dear friend, if my father one day disabused

  Mourns the fate of a son he has falsely accused,

  Say my blood and my plaintive shade may be stilled

  If he kindly succor his captive good-willed

  And give her . . .' On this word, the hero's soul fled.

  In my arms lay his corpse, disfigured

  By the wrathful gods' triumph; an object the eyes

  Of the tenderest father could not recognize."