The Porcelain Dove (12 page)

A low murmur from the dressing-room, then Pompey appeared, sunshade in hand and a wild look in his dark eyes.

"Come, Pompey," called my mistress. "What a dull creature thou art, to be sure! Come here, I say!"

"Oh, mistress." At the sound of the soft, hoarse voice, I started and madame stared, first at the cockatoo Bébé, and then at Pompey. "Oh, mistress. I cannot."

Madame wavered for a moment between anger at being thwarted and surprise that Pompey had spoken. Anger won. "Cannot? Pray tell me, monkey, why not?"

"Oh, please, mistress." He dropped the sunshade and, running to kneel at her feet, plucked piteously at her apron. "Pompey does not want to go to the glass house again."

If his face had been silent before, it was eloquent now. Well I
knew the language of quivering lips and wrinkled brow, shaking hands and welling eyes, for I'd seen them often enough in my mistress. The child was clearly terrified.

Madame, one eye upon the ormolu clock, snapped, "Silly baboon. 'Tis thy place to go wherever I go and obey my commands. Otherwise I'll send thee away, and although I do not know where disobedient black pages are sent, I fancy 'tis a more unpleasant place than monsieur le duc's aviary."

"Please, madame," I said. "The child is not disobedient but terrified. See how ashen his cheeks have grown."

"Don't be impertinent, Berthe. There is nothing for him to fear."

"No, madame. But I am reminded of how Doucette trembles and whines when she sees a broom, and how madame sends Pompey to check whether some maidservant may be sweeping the hall before he takes her outside."

My mistress pouted a moment, then shrugged. "Oh, very well, Berthe. If you think Pompey is afraid, then I won't insist he accompany me. I'm not a monster, after all."

"Mistress is an angel," said Pompey gravely.

"No doubt," said my mistress. "Berthe?"

I smiled at the boy, who smiled shyly in return and ran to retrieve the sunshade from the dressing-room and to snatch up a pair of gloves and a light shawl, which he presented to me with a little solemn bow.

Madame stamped her foot in an agony of impatience. "
Quickly
, Berthe, or 'twill all be for nothing."

I rolled my eyes at Pompey and was rewarded, as I hurried after madame, with the sound of a child's delighted giggling.

Because of the ducks, the aviary of Beauxprés had been built at the edge of a large ornamental water some little way from the château. Led by my master, we crossed the formal gardens, passed under a pergola, and followed a graveled path through a copse to a meadow in the center of which was set a lofty, sunny structure built of wood and glass. As we neared, I saw orange trees through the glass and bright forms darting through its upper reaches like colored lightning. Monsieur bent his head reverently to the lock and let us into an antechamber like a small cage with doors at either end, one to the outside, the other to the building itself. The outer door tightly closed, monsieur opened the inner upon Paradise.

Now, recall to yourself that I was a child of cobbles and tall
houses and parks in which not a flower dares bloom without a gardener's permission. The only birds I knew were sparrows, pigeons, crows, and chickens. Bien sûr, I'd seen peacocks at Versailles, larks in pies, and pheasants roasted whole in their feathers. But the birds of M. le duc de Malvoeux were a higher order of being, the angels and fairies of bird-kind. Fire-breasted widow birds, all jet and flame, bright taffeta honey-birds, toucans with painted beaks, cranes and herons and storks. Parrots—hundreds of them, gaudy as whores and contentious as fishwives. Indigo buntings from the New World. Golden pheasants from Cathay. Black swans from the Antipodes. Their movement and color surpassed the most brilliant ball imaginable, and their calls made a music at once harsh and melodious that I found altogether enchanting.

A low chuckle at my ear brought me to myself. "Your Berthe is bouleversée, my love. I am glad she attends you and not that blackamoor page, whom I half-repent of buying. Ah, chérie"—to a small cockatoo with a top-knot like a coiffure poudrée that had alighted on his shoulder and was nibbling his ear—"Have patience, little one. Thy master has brought thee grapes."

Thus a ritual was established. Each morning at seven, I scratched at madame's chamber door and brought in her chocolate. Then I pulled back the crimson curtains to waken her and her husband, who slept beside her with his nightcap rucked over his ear and his arm thrown across her breast.

The first time I discovered my master in my mistress' bed, I thought I must die of chagrin. Before I could drop the curtain and back out of the room, however, madame yawned a tongue-curling yawn and opened her eyes. Seeing me, she blushed and smiled.

"Is there enough in the pot for two?" she asked. Speechless, I nodded. "Then take one of those little blue cups from the étagère, yes, the handleless ones, and set it on the tray. If monsieur my husband wishes for chocolate, he may just as well drink it from his great-grandsire's Chinese cup as from a French one."

Never let it be said that Berthe Duvet cannot acknowledge defeat. Monsieur had won my mistress, body and soul, and if I wished to retain her heart, I must needs take her master for my own. He was, after all, her husband. A necessary evil, like rain and doing penance.

So. Every morning I set down my tray, opened the curtains and made up the fire. At the rattle of the poker, monsieur would rise, shake himself like a bating hawk, and take himself off to Dentelle to
be shaved and dressed. We were in the aviary by nine, and usually remained there until dinner at two.

In those hours madame busied herself giving the birds treats and whistling to them while monsieur went over the breeding records and checked the progress of any wounded or ailing specimens. They did no real tending of course, no cleaning, feeding, or physicking—that was all done after they were out of the way. Monsieur paid his bird-handlers handsomely and treated them almost as equals, in consequence of which they were all as proud as peacocks, if a measure less colorful. Even the seed-boy and the man who scraped the perches disdained to drink at the inn on market days, but kept their revels—if indeed they reveled at all—strictly among themselves. They were a dour lot, and I remember wondering whether their feathered charges had drained all color and animation from them.

So monsieur whistled and madame petted, and Noël Songis—the chief of the bird-handlers—lurked among the potted orange trees, making it clear he could do no real work while his master was present. My only duty was to sit quietly out of the way, holding madame's sunshade and a kerchief until she called for them. Often, watching the Second Estate work as the Third Estate idled, I fancied myself the great lady for whose sole pleasure the ruby hummingbirds flashed from branch to branch and the emerald cuckoos perched like enamelled bibelots among the polished leaves.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

In Which the Future of the House of Malvoeux Is Secured

Home to Paris! I was transported by joy. Monsieur had business, madame stood in need of a new corset, and the long and the short of it was that we were to spend the winter in the rue des Lions.

"I shall be so happy to see Mme la baronne, and Stéphanie-Germaine, and Mme de Fleuru, and the marquise de Berline. The court is quite gay now that Mme du Barry has become maîtresse en titre to the king. She's nothing more than an adventuress, of course, but Stéphanie-Germaine writes that she is the most amiable of women and so beautiful that 'tis no wonder the king forgets his advanced age." My mistress sighed. "How I should like to see her! I love Beauxprés passionately, of course, but I must confess I have missed going out into society."

My "Yes, madame," was heartfelt. Our only company that autumn having been an aged naturalist and his no less aged wife, madame was feeling rather ennuyée, and I as restless as a caged lark. So high in the mountains, the first snow had fallen in October, curtailing my visits to Mme Pyanet and renewing my longing for the Comédie Française, for the back kitchens, the peopled streets, the whirligig modes and gossip of Paris. Even the prospect of monsieur's graceless town lackeys could not daunt me; now that he'd found his tongue, Pompey was a charming companion and Marie was to accompany us as laundress-
cum
-sewing maid.

Even in the midst of our planning and packing, we contrived to
spend the greater part of each forenoon at the aviary. Monsieur had more to do there than ever, with a thousand details to attend to of fuel and furnaces, of grain and fruit and maggots and beetles. He was constantly with Noël Songis in anxious consultation over this or that, and madame obediently accompanied him although she must leave her jewels unsorted to do so.

One hard, crisp morning not long before we were to leave, we set off across the garden as usual. With the white of the snow, the black-green of the firs, and the hard, bright blue of the heavens, it was like walking through a Sèvres bowl, though amazingly cold; by the time we reached the aviary, madame was pinch-mouthed and shivering. Monsieur opened the outer door and glared back at us lagging behind. "Hurry yourself, Adèle," he said. "The air chills."

Madame stumbled over the threshold. I took her arm; unsteadily she smiled at me and I saw the sweat standing in drops on her brow. Just then, monsieur opened the inner door and the aviary exhaled a warm breath laden with the concentrated stench of charcoal braziers, potted trees, and the droppings of a thousand birds.

"Oh," said madame faintly, and brought up her morning chocolate and biscuits.

Monsieur held his lace kerchief to his nose and made a moue of disgust. "Why did you not say you were ill, Adèle? There is no need for you to accompany me if you are ill. What if the complaint be contagious? You know yourself how parrots are prone to fevers, particularly in winter."

Tears rose to my mistress' eyes. "Indeed, François, I'd not considered it. I'm very sorry. I was well enough when I rose this morning; I don't know what has come over me."

I bethought me of cholera, of typhus, of quartan fever. Did not the plague sometimes commence in cold sweats and vomiting? "M. le duc," I ventured, "these sudden purgings are not common with madame. Is there an apothecary in the village who might prescribe for her?"

Monsieur, who had already stepped through the inner door, lingered there looking over his shoulder like a blessed soul held back from Paradise. "Yes, yes, Duvet, I suppose so," he said impatiently. "Ask Menée or Jacques Ministre—one of them will know."

Well. In the past weeks, I'd managed to put myself in a fair way of liking the man, or at least of tolerating him. Now my most charitable thought would have earned me a beating. Even as I supported my
mistress' weak steps homeward, even as I murmured soothing nothings in her ear, I raged inwardly. Madman (thought I). Feather-wit. Parrots can catch human fevers, can they? Then maybe she'd caught her death from one of them. Did you think of
that
, M. Bird-brain?

As we entered madame's bedchamber, I heard Pompey singing to Doucette, a strange, sad little chant like nothing I'd ever heard before.

Furious as I was, 'tis astonishing that I noticed it and more astonishing that I should recall it now, so many years removed. Truth to say, I hadn't recalled it until the words appeared on the paper in the wake of my pen. Magic calling to magic, perhaps? The garden, the paper, this inkpot that never runs dry, Colette herself—ghost and sorceress, magic to her marrow—all conjuring up memories of Pompey's childish chants and spells that I could not see or hear at the time, blinded and deafened as I was by Reason.

In any case, I remember clearly that Pompey chanted, and that he broke off with a start when we entered, took one look at madame's white face, and bundled Doucette off into the dressing-room, where we heard him murmuring to her.

"I'd swear Doucette understands him," said madame, sinking down into an armchair to let me remove her shoes. "When he speaks to her, she looks almost clever. Do stop fussing, Berthe. I feel quite well now, and will by no means go to bed."

Well, I need hardly say I'd not hear of
that
, and before long, I had her stripped and tucked up snugly and was off to Menée to inquire after a medical man.

Monsieur's maître d'hôtel was in the Armament room as always, deep in research into a bottle of monsieur's best vintage oporto.

In his person, Menée was florid, bigger of belly than of brain, with a drooping eye and a drooping lip and a nose like a blood-pudding. In his nature, he was lustful, suspicious, and bibulous, and ruled the household with a hand of iron. From his likeness to our Most Serene and Puissant Majesty King Louis XV of France, he was known among the household as LeRoi.

So there sat LeRoi Menée, red-nosed and smug, and there I stood before him, wringing my hands in my apron. Madame was unwell, I said, and monsieur would like to have a doctor to her. It was nothing, just a little chill on the stomach, but at this time of year, it always paid to be careful.

Menée leered. "Unwell, ye say. Ah, yes. Unwell. A chill on her stomach, ye say?" He winked broadly and rubbed his own fat paunch. "Then ye'll be wanting mère Malateste."

I was far from wanting any such person. "I'm sure monsieur will not want some country herb-wife dosing Mme la duchesse with le bon Dieu alone knows what potions and poisons, Menée."

"Now, Duvet, don't turn up that sweet pretty nose at mère Malateste. She knows a carbuncle from a fever-blister as well as any Paris quack, and can tell a tertian from a quartan fever merely by smelling the patient's bed-linen. Monsieur never lets another near him. She was his wet-nurse, y'know. Breasts to feed a village! Glorious they were, like a cow's dugs. One of them'd make two of yours, but ye needn't pout: I like small breasts, too, if they're white and unspotted. Are thy breasts white, eh, Duvet?" Unsteadily, Menée began to rise from his chair. "I'm sure they are, such a dainty Paris piece as thou art, but I wouldn't mind seeing for m'self."

I murmured, "Thank you kindly, I'm sure," and fled.