The Porcelain Dove (29 page)

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 as 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.

"Pompey, you'd best run for M. Tissot," I said softly. "He can see to Mlle Linotte's foot at the same time, so we can kill two birds with the one stone. Mon père?" I looked about me for the priest, though what I thought he could do, I don't know. To my profound relief he was gone, and Justin with him, hair shirt, missal, and all.

Pompey had set Linotte upon the nearest chair, where she sat quietly bleeding over the straw-colored silk. "Brother's gone with the black man," she said unnecessarily. "Is my mother dead?" She sounded only mildly interested at the prospect and not in the least upset.

I rounded upon the heartless chit. "No, she is not dead, gypsy, small thanks to thee. Where the devil hast thou been in thy nightgown and bare feet?"

Linotte's face set in a stubborn pout. "I was only looking for a bird," she said.

"To be sure. Thou art thy father's daughter for birds," I said, "with thy father's cold heart in thy breast, and not a thought in the world for the trouble thou'd'st bring upon thy nurse. Only regard thy foot! 'Tis cut to the bone. What bird could repay all this pother?"

"A nightingale," she said.

"Did not the chevalier du Faraud give thee a nightingale only yesterday?"

"That stupid thing?" She waved away the mechanical bird with fine disdain. "I only wanted to see if 'twere true, as Pompey told me,
that real nightingales sing all the night long without once stopping or singing the same song two times over. So I asked the goats, and they said there were nightingales a-plenty in the high forests and they'd take me there if I liked, but they went too fast and I got lost, and then I fell down and then they found me, but I couldn't walk anymore, so I sent them to find Pompey and they did."

"Ah, bah," I said. "Dost think me as great a fool as the chevalier? I will not believe such lies."

"Tisn't lies," she said. "Tis truth. Ask Pompey."

Which I fully intended to do. But then M. Tissot arrived at a trot, examined madame, pronounced her overtired, prescribed a tonic and a week of solitude, and assured her that he'd make her apologies to Mme de Charrière himself. He bathed Linotte's foot with hot brandy, sewed up the wound with a length of clean silk, and told Boudin that if she so much as thought of anointing it with stable litter to prevent putrefaction, he'd have her ears for watch-fobs.

"Filth" he declared. "Filth breeds filth, and putrefaction is filth. Change the bandages daily and wash the wound with wine and I warrant the child'll be running about within a week. Mlle Duvet, keep your mistress in her bed for two days, no less, and then let her take some gentle exercise. She may eat what she likes, but as you value her health, let her not drink tea."

We tarried in Lausanne only long enough for madame to recover her strength and for M. Tissot to pronounce Linotte's foot fully healed. We occupied the time with packing and arranging two journeys: M. Justin's to Einsiedeln and ours to Beauxprés. You can't conceive of the letters to monsieur, to the Father Abbot, to the elderly Catholic gentleman who was père Michel's patron begging him to allow his chaplain to convey Justin to Einsiedeln. I played secretary, for madame's nerves were still quite overset. One letter, however, she wrote herself and showed to me, by way of apology.

The letter, to the chevalier de Faraud, was a masterpiece of its kind. The chevalier had been prodigiously amiable, she wrote, to serve as her escort while she was in Lausanne, and she'd vastly enjoyed his company. Equally vast was her regret for the imminence of her return to France, the preparations for which must command all her attention between that time and this. She was confident he'd kept copies of his delightful poems, but in case he had not, she was returning the orig
inals. She beseeched him to display them before a wider audience, and to believe in the continuing good wishes of his grateful friend, Adèle de Malvoeux.

This missive madame instructed me to pack up with the chevalier's poems and gifts—the filigree box, the ribbon posies, the satin heart and all—and convey the whole to the chevalier's lodgings, with the information that she'd not be at home to him when he called.

He called anyway, of course, sent notes and flowers and haunted the rue Devant de la cité Dessus at all hours hoping to catch her as she went out or came in from some necessary errand. It took one week of her returning his notes and gifts unopened to make him go away.

Just before we left, my mistress gave a small soirée, during which Mme de Rivière mentioned that the chevalier had returned to his father's house in Vevey and was rumored to be engaged to marry a rich widow.

"She's fully forty years old," said Mme Bell the Englishwoman, "and plain as a grisette's apron. But all the world knows marriage to be the surest antidote to lovesickness."

"Better to marry than to burn," said Mme de Rivière slyly.

My mistress flushed and the comtesse Réverdil patted her hand. "I hope you do not think yourself ill-used, my dear. We are only congratulating you on your escape. I have it from a reliable source that, as bad as his poetry is, his lovemaking is worse."

CHAPTER THE TENTH