The Porcelain Dove (11 page)

I don't know why, I'm sure—perhaps 'twas just the weakness of my knees—but I dropped the beldam a curtsy. "I hope to make your better acquaintance, Mme Desmoulins. Your son has been most kind to me, and I am much obliged to him."

Had it been a pig that curtsied and addressed her, mère Desmoulins couldn't have looked more astonished. She dropped her bucket,
crack
upon the ground, and commenced gabbling and rolling her rheumy eyes.

When she'd done, Marie turned to me. "She asks if you want to marry Artide."

Well, I liked Artide well enough, but I'd as soon wed a toad, so, "No," I said, a little quicker than was polite. Mère Desmoulins looked offended, the other women muttered, and even Marie looked startled, so I added hastily, "He's a good man, Artide, sharp as a needle and ambitious. A poor friend I'd be, to marry him and ruin his prospects for advancement."

Marie translated my answer and the women pondered it for a
while. Then mère Desmoulins, grinning toothlessly, took me to her bosom like a daughter while all her gossips laughed and patted my arms with their rough hands.

After that I went often to the village, both with Marie and alone. I can't say I found much to say to Mme Boudin or mère Desmoulins, but Nicola Pyanet the baker's wife had a sister in service in Dijon and could speak good French if she'd a mind. So my life grew less narrow than it had been. Which is why I failed to take note when my mistress began to droop and fade like a rose left too long without water.

Bien sûr, such a failure would have been impossible before her marriage, had I many companions or had I none. At Port Royal, we lived so close and so lovingly that a half-stifled sigh was enough to bring me hurrying to her side. By necessity, her marriage had made me hard of hearing, for when I heard her cry out aloud in the night, I did not dare go to her. The sounds caused by pain and pleasure are, after all, very much alike.

So. One evening I heard a knock at the door of the cabinet where I sat mending a petticoat. Thinking it might be Marie, or even Artide come to read to me as I sewed, I gathered up the petticoat and opened the door to find my mistress, white as death, the rouge showing like wounds upon her cheeks.

"Oh, Berthe," she moaned, and cast herself upon my bosom.

Well, 'twas many months since we had been on such terms as those. I stood like a post in her embrace until she sank down at my feet, sobbing bitterly.

"Am I grown so hideous that you must hate me too?" she cried. "If my husband and my Berthe both spurn me, where then shall I turn for comfort? Death is my only refuge now."

Her words were only so much wind. Her tears, on the other hand, seemed real enough, and her lovely face so pale and woebegone that I quickly knelt down and put an arm around her heaving shoulders.

With a cry of, "No! No! You hate me!" she flung me away.

I sighed. "Indeed, madame, I do not. Come, sit before the fire and I will ring for a tisane—milk and chamomile and warm sweet wine, just as madame likes it. 'Tis the country makes madame so melancholy. I myself find so much peace and quiet trying to the nerves."

She laughed at that, a small, watery chuckle, and I coaxed her to a chair, where she sat holding tight to my hand like a child and confessed to me that monsieur had forsaken her bed.

"I have thought and thought, and can only conclude that Nathalie de Fleuru and Laure de Berline and even that odious abbé Pinchet were right, and my husband has wearied of my love."

This confidence loosed a thousand conflicting emotions in my breast. On the one hand, I wanted her to myself again, maid and mistress in our old loving world. On the other, I wanted her to be happy. Even if her happiness lay with the duc de Malvoeux? My silence lengthened and, "I'm right, then," she cried. "I'm dull and silly and hideous!"

To this, my answer came easily. "Madame is exquisite, as always," I said. "No sane man could weary of loving her!"

She cuddled her cheek into my bosom, and for a time I stood and stroked her until her sobbing dwindled into hiccups.

"I'll make thy tisane myself, madame, and then I'll brush thy hair just as I did when thou wert Mlle du Fourchet and Mme Ursule had birched thee for thy spelling. Here"—taking off her high-heeled shoes and tucking a stool under her feet—"sit and repose thyself."

Making tisanes clears the mind wonderfully. Bien sûr, I wanted my mistress to be happy, and where better for her to be happy than in Paris? Before long, her pride would surely carry her back to the Hôtel Malvoeux, to furnish it anew in gilt and rosewood and, like other women of her class, to settle down to a life of keeping abreast of the mode in dress, friends, and amusements. I need only have patience, I thought, and I'd soon have her to myself again.

Accordingly, over the next days all was fair weather with me. Until I'd some hope of leaving it, I didn't realize how Beauxprés, its many rooms, its many
things
, had weighed upon me. Each time I passed through the gallery of Depositions or the Hunt closet, I could hardly keep from singing aloud, knowing that soon I'd be far from those weeping Madonnas and moth-eaten rows of withered paws and tails.

Naturally, I scorned to betray my mistress' confidence, only hinting to a few intimates, to Marie and Artide, that madame and I might soon be returning to Paris.

I remember telling Artide about the house in the Marais. " 'Tis not like Beauxprés, Artide, but 'tis a very fine house all the same. All it needs to become the finest hôtel in Paris is some life in it and new furnishings. The season is beginning, and madame is anxious to get back and see her friends again. I must confess I'm puzzled at monsieur's
continued residence here. What could possibly possess a duc, who is entitled to ride in the king's own carriage, to stay in the country while the court sits at Versailles?"

"Simple. The birds."

We were sitting in the drying-yard at the foot of the old donjon tower: a pleasant green protected by tall hedges which seemed to catch the sun and hold it longer than any other place in the grounds. I was mending a stocking; Artide was polishing a large silver salt cellar—a towering marvel of filigree and metal flourishes. He coated a blackened encrustation with an evil-smelling paste and began to rub at it vigorously.

"The birds," he repeated. I looked at him quizzically. "The birds, Berthe. You know: the present duc's answer to this monstrosity." He flicked his thumb against the salt cellar, which gave out a flat, metallic sound like a muffled bell.

"Ah," I said. "To be sure. The birds."

Artide sighed. "How blind a Paris-bred fille can be! Listen then, and I will tell you. 'Tis the curse of the ducs de Malvoeux that each is taken by some maggot of acquisitiveness that gnaws upon his mind all the days of his life. With monsieur's father, it was flowers, shrubs, and trees; with his grandsire, it was fans. With this duc, 'tis birds. His aviary is in Beauxprés, and so, therefore, is his heart." He hesitated. "I fear your mistress has no hope of attaching his interest for long unless she sprout feathers."

"Bon Dieu," I breathed—a prayer of enlightenment and horror both. "The man is mad!"

"Chut now, Berthe! You must not speak of monsieur so. He is a duc, the scion of an ancient house, and not like common folk. In you or me, such a quirk would indeed bespeak madness. In a duc, 'tis no more than a sign of nobility."

I glared at him. He winked broadly at me and we sat for a space in silence, he rubbing, I stitching. A curse! And here I'd thought monsieur's birds to be no more than the signature of idleness, like the gray Angora cats of Mme de Mirepoix that sat on her lotto table and pushed at the pawns with their paws. Why, every man of sufficient means had a craze. M. du Fourchet had money; M. Voltaire and Mme de Châtelet had experiments on the weight of fire; the marquis de Taillade-Espinasse had a vital ventilation machine; M. de Malvoeux had birds. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing to choose
among them. I wished with all my heart that M. de Malvoeux's craze were one-half so harmless as that of M. Voltaire; so wishing, I shook my head and sighed.

"It must be hard on the poor lady," said Artide kindly. "But nobles are like that; 'tis in their blood. Take my advice, Berthe, and encourage your mistress in a cheerful acceptance of M. le duc's little ways."

"Ah, bah, Artide! You sound just like Dentelle. Why should any wife cheerfully accept that her husband prefers the company of a flock of witless birds to hers?"

Artide laughed. I'd never before that moment noticed that he brayed when he laughed. "If she cannot accept it cheerfully, then she must accept it miserably. Accept it she must; she cannot change it."

For a few days after this exchange I was in poor charity with Artide, who'd presumed, I thought, far past the bounds of friendship and decorum. What business had a mere lackey to talk about the duchesse de Malvoeux as though he'd the right to pity her?

The question now was whether I should tell my mistress what all the world, except us two, knew about her husband. Half a dozen times I opened my mouth to speak. As many times I shut it again. My mistress was, after all, no more than a child, and I an old toy she'd owned for many years. The gloss had worn off me, as it were: I was no longer new. Her husband, on the other hand, fairly glittered with novelty. Furthermore, his aloofness made him hers but not hers: elusive, mysterious, desirable. In such a contest, I must always lose. I held my peace.

In the event, it was as well that I did, for if madame had mastered anything at Port Royal, she'd mastered the mirror's art of returning to the gazer his own bright and pleasing image. The sudden change of image—love-struck to bird-struck—had briefly clouded her surface, that was all. Her husband loved birds to the point of madness. Bon. So, then, did she. One morning she rang for me at cockcrow and bade me dress her in a white gauze gown monsieur had once said gave her the look of a white egret. Then she directed Pompey to supply himself with a quantity of stale bread and await her in the vestibule. Dismissed, I trailed her at a forlorn distance, reaching the great stair just as monsieur emerged from his apartment, clattered down the steps, and stalked purposefully towards the front door.

Madame stopped him upon the threshold with a hand upon his
wrist. "François, dear husband," she said. Monsieur gave no sign that he'd heard her. "François," my mistress repeated, shaking his arm. "Will you not take me to see your birds?"

Perhaps 'twas the shaking broke his trance; perhaps 'twas the mention of birds. In any case, I saw him blink, a slow hooding of his sharp black eyes, and then his other hand came up to grasp her fingers. "You are abroad monstrous early, chérie," he drawled. "My birds? They are nothing—a mere whim of mine: a few mangy specimens in a dirty glass house. You will spoil your pretty slippers for nothing."

"Not nothing, I am sure." Carefully, my mistress released him. "My cockatoo Bébé is a charming creature, as are the lovebirds you gave me on our betrothal. If your other birds are half so clever as Bébé or half so pretty as the lovebirds, then I will be well-rewarded."

Silence, and then, "Very well. You may come. But I will not have you fidgeting about. An aviary is no place for a chattering woman."

"Of course not, François," said madame indignantly. "Did I not sit quite still and quiet when you taught Bébé to take bread from my lips?"

"Hmph," said monsieur. "See that you remember." His tone was gruff, his words abrupt; but as they turned to the door, he took her hand and laid it within his arm.

Four hours later, my mistress returned. Her gauze overskirt was laddered by tiny, dirty claws and a malodorous white streak fouled her lace cap. Her forefinger had been pecked to the bone.

"Oh, Berthe, an emerald cuckoo took grain from my fingers, and I have learned to hold a bird's wings while monsieur my husband examines it, and he says that my hands are very delicate and that I may come with him every morning, and then he kissed me and said that I was a sensible little thing. The bird-handlers feed them, so I won't need the basket tomorrow. I do need an apron, and gloves, and a sunshade. I'm afraid that my pretty gown is all spoilt. Have I a plainer to wear tomorrow? Gray would do, like a wood-dove. Oh, Berthe, I am so happy!" And she embraced me.

Over her shoulder, I saw Pompey standing by the door with the covered basket still clutched in his small fist.

Now, the art of reading faces is early learned by servants, being as necessary to the proper execution of our duties as a discreet tongue and a pleasant expression. I've always prided myself upon my skill at
the art, but Pompey baffled me. Because he was small and black and did not speak, madame treated him as she treated Doucette. I, too, assumed he understood madame only as Doucette understood her—from tone and gesture and animal sympathy. For the five months I'd known him, no reflection of emotion had troubled his small, round face; he might have been an automaton, cleverly crafted of ebony and ivory and dressed in rose satin for my mistress' pleasure.

Thus, I was astonished to see his placidity distort, as I thought, into a grimace of rage. The expression lasted only so long as he imagined himself unobserved. When he felt my eyes upon him, he composed himself immediately, so that almost I could think myself mistaken. Almost. It cost me a night's sleep, that almost, turned aside my thoughts that otherwise would have plodded their well-worn track between Paris and my mistress. The shock was so great, you see, like a lady removing her domino at a masked ball to reveal a beak or a muzzle underneath. It ran through and through my head that the most docile dog may run mad. Who can say that the most docile savage might not do the same?

It was with heavy eyes that I woke my mistress at lark-song next morning. Nor was I cheered by her insistence upon being dressed in a stuff gown that madame her mother would have disdained to wear to count the sheets, with one of my own plain linen caps to cover her hair. She looked in the pier glass and made a moue. "A wood-dove indeed," she said. "I look more like a penitent Magdalene. But monsieur my husband will be pleased. Now, Pompey, my gloves and the sunshade, and then I am ready."