The Porcelain Dove (3 page)

I remember my wonder, for example, upon discovering that the greater part of M. le baron's household was like a painted scene in a theater, for show and not for use. Oh, the kitchen-boys worked hard enough, as did the grooms and cooks, and monsieur's valet Saint-Cloud. His forty lackeys, however, spent their days lounging and dicing in the antechambers, gossiping with M. le baron's petitioners, admitting the favored and the generous to the master's presence while barring the despised and the miserly. When I remarked that five men would be sufficient to these tasks, Olympe laughed and said that a superfluity of lackeys was simply a sign of monsieur our master's great wealth and power, just as a succession of lovers was a sign of madame our mistress's beauty and wit.

I cannot say I entirely understood this explanation, not at my tender age. I did, however, understand that M. le baron's consequence needed all the ornament he could afford. Bien sûr, I saw very little of him—maids, if they're lucky, are not well-acquainted with their mistresses' husbands. Yet from time to time I'd encounter him: a great, red pudding of a man who stumped over the polished floors with his head bowed and his heavy cheeks falling in worried folds over his jabot. When he saw me, he'd pinch my bum, wink prodigiously, exclaim, "Hmph! Pretty piece, but you won't hear it from me!" and stump heavily on again. A coarse man. And yet—according to Olympe—clever enough to have risen from the Third Estate to the Second, from plain M. Fourchet the banker to M. le baron du Fourchet, Farmer General, collector of his Most Serene Majesty King Louis' taxes, customs, tithes, and levies, purse-keeper to the Crown of France.

As for madame's lovers, her "dear friends," well, M. le baron was often from home and not at all attentive even when present. And backstairs gossip soon taught me that 'twas as à la mode for highborn ladies to have dear friends as it was for actresses to have noble admirers. In all conscience, they seemed harmless enough, full of poems and sighs and pretty little gifts, no less civil to madame's maids than to madame's husband when they chanced to encounter him upon the stairs. No, Louise Duvet's daughter was not shocked by madame's lovers. Madame's indifference to her children, however. That shocked me to the heart.

There were three scions of the house Fourchet: three daughters.
I remember, not long after I entered service, Olympe telling me of them: the two oldest who were off at a convent learning the skills proper to young ladies of noble blood, the youngest who was still in the nursery. Of course I wanted to see them, to know their ages, their natures, their statures and tastes, whether they missed their mother or thought their father a comical fellow.

Olympe laughed at me. In those days, it seemed she was forever laughing at me. "What a funny little shop-girl you are, Berthe! I declare, I quite love you. See them? Why, Mme la baronne herself hasn't seen them above six times since they were christened. Noble ladies aren't like lingères, Berthe. They have better things to do than dance attendance upon their children. Why, I dare say you think she suckled them at her own breasts!"

Not wishing to appear more foolish than I'd already made myself, I shrugged and forbore to ask Olympe whether 'twas accomplishing her toilette or entertaining her lovers that kept madame from her daughters' company.

I think 'twas the next day, though it may have been later, that Olympe made me known to the youngest du Fourchet's nursemaid. I'd often seen her upon the stairs, carrying possets and gruels and such invalid's fare—a sallow, quill-nosed, creak-voiced piece in a shabby apron. She eyed me unpleasantly while Olympe accosted her in her best Mme du Fourchet drawl. "Ah, Christophine. Permit me to present to you my cousin's child, Berthe Duvet. A pretty thing, is she not? And monstrous clever, too. I'm training her up as a femme de chambre."

Christophine's long nose turned pink; she gave me the briefest of nods. "Fancy," she said. "An infant like her, to wait upon madame."

"An infant femme de chambre, and under my eye. Never fear. She's a lot to learn before she's ready to wait upon Mlle Adèle. I'd say you have perhaps two years before you need think of finding new employment."

How Christophine received this shot I don't know, for I was busy goggling at Olympe on my own account. Olympe, having successfully astonished us both, laughed her throaty, careless laugh and flounced away with me chasing behind, pelting her with questions. Was I really to wait upon Mlle Adèle? What was she like? Was she a monster, that she must spend her days hiding from the sunlight? Why had I never seen her?

Olympe, who liked to tease, answered lightly that I needn't
concern myself what the girl was like. She was only seven, after all, and me, I had my work cut out learning my new profession.

"I don't understand why I haven't seen her," I persisted. "We live under the same roof, after all. Is she a monster, or is she not?"

"She's often ill," said Olympe shortly. "Never you fear. She'll be a credit to your skill, if she lives."

Mlle Adèle recovered of her fever, and a few days later I caught my first glimpse of a small figure swaddled in a fur manteau wandering up and down the pebbled paths of the formal garden. Thereafter I saw traces of my future mistress everywhere: a scrap of pink satin skirt whisking around a corner; an echo of childish sobbing in a stairwell; a wooden cat on wheels abandoned in an antechamber. Shamelessly, I crept upstairs to see whether I might catch a closer look at her. Christophine, jealous creature, made sure I did not. All I could learn from listening at doors was that Mlle Adèle was a weepy little thing, prone to agues and fits of languor, biddable as a lamb and quiet as a louse. As for her sisters, when Mlles Pauline and Hortense Fourchet visited the rue Quincampoix for a week at Christmas, I learned that Mlle Pauline, the eldest, was the image of her mother, while Mlle Hortense, poor girl, strongly favored her plain, stout father. Mme du Fourchet paid them little attention. I paid them little more. They were nothing to me, not like Mlle Adèle.

A year passed. Knowing that one day I'd be femme de chambre to a baron's daughter (if she lived), I painted and coiffed, laced up and let out, tucked and draped with a will. Mme du Fourchet gave me a castoff robe battante of Lyons silk. Olympe made me free of the society of femmes de chambre, who drank cheap wine in the Palais-Royal and told tales to make me shudder of masters who fumbled at their breasts and mistresses who threw hairbrushes at their heads. I learned to starch fine lace and sponge brocade. By the end of my second year in the Hôtel Fourchet, maman and the shop on the rue Montorgueil had faded into a comfortable memory. My present was Olympe and Mme du Fourchet, her lovers, and her toilette. My future was Mlle Adèle.

What dreams I spun around that unknown child! By what means I forget, I had collected some five or six second-hand volumes of the bibliothèque bleu, which added Charlemagne and Roland, Gargantua, the Princesse Printanière, Chaperon Rouge, and assorted good and evil fairies and sorcerers to a head already crowded with Medea and
Jason, Le Cid and Donna Anna. From this hodge-podge of phantasms I conjured up a fairy child, frail as a cobweb, black-haired, jewel-eyed, with skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood. Tenderly I yearned over this poppet, imagining how she'd bloom under my care, how she'd love me as a sister and share her secrets with me. My own loneliness spoke in these fantasies, I fear, as well as my youth and naïveté. Yet they were closer to the truth than Mme du Fourchet's complexion, as I learned in the summer of 1756, when I met Mlle Adèle du Fourchet at last.

Madame was at her levée, I remember, attended by a young poet and one abbé Pinchet. For some time the young poet had been courting madame with sonnets and sighs, and today he'd brought her his chef-d'oeuvre, a composition in the classical manner. Madame listened politely enough at first, but when her hair had been powdered, her face painted, her garters tied, her gown laced, and the poet still not done declaiming, she took up a letter from the jumble on her dressing-table, beckoned her page to her, and murmured in his ear.

The poet fell reproachfully silent.

Madame was all pretty contrition. "I cry your pardon,
dear
chevalier," she fluttered. "A matter of family business that cannot be put off. So tiresome. I am confident that I may depend upon your understanding."

The poet was still assuring the baronne that her confidence was not misplaced when a lackey opened the door to admit Christophine and a little girl clinging to her skirts. The child hung back a moment, clearly overcome with shyness, then ran and threw her arms about my mistress' neck.

"Ah, sweet child," said madame. "Yes, mignonne, I know you love me, but have a care for my rouge, 'tis only this moment applied. Come, let us look at you." Unwinding the child's arms, she smoothed her dress as though she had been a doll, then gave her a little shove towards the center of the room and bade her turn around slowly. "Ah, abbé, is she not a pretty creature? Much prettier than Hortense, of course, or even Pauline. What do you think?"

"Exquisite," murmured the abbé, and put up his eyeglass to look at her more closely. "Such a sweet naturalness in her dress. The chemise dragged through the lacing—is that the new mode for children?"

Madame gave him a hard look, then took the child by the hand and drew her against her shoulder. "Mignonne, your appearance is so
unworldly that I fear the good sisters will think we intend to pledge you to a life of prayer. Alas, 'tis my fault, for forgetting you are grown to be a young lady who needs a maid of her own to attend her.

"Berthe, come forward and curtsy to your new mistress. You may begin your service by doing something with her hair—it much resembles a bird's nest."

My knees bobbed of themselves into a curtsy; Mlle Adèle nodded shyly in return. Her eyes and hair were luxuriantly black, of course, but she was less delicate than I'd imagined her and less ethereal, her mouth being full and rosy and her chin strong and round. Under my nervous scrutiny, she pouted and turned her eyes to madame.

"Isn't Christo to take care of me anymore, madame mère?" I'd never heard her speak before. She had a sweet, high voice, trembling now on the edge of tears.

"Don't be silly, my pet," said madame, giving her a little shake. "You can't take a nursemaid to school, and the girl's not trained for anything else. So say goodbye to Christophine now, and thank her prettily for taking care of you. Then run away with Berthe and tell her what you'd like her to pack. Tomorrow after dinner you go to Port Royal."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the nursemaid wringing her apron in her hands. "Oh, madame mère!" cried Mlle Adèle, and threw herself into the baronne's arms. The tableau held for a moment. Then madame put her daughter from her and commenced to hunt amongst the boxes and vials on her dressing-table.

"Olympe, where
are
my patches? No, not those, dear girl—the stars of black velvet.
You
know, the new ones?"

"Stars to echo those in your eyes, Mme du Fourchet?" said the young poet daringly. Madame smiled at him under her lashes. We were forgotten.

The hapless Christophine stretched a quivering hand towards her former charge, who cast a piteous look at her and ran headlong from the room.

Well. I'd no desire to assist at the scene brewing in madame's boudoir. And my new mistress needed me, just as I'd dreamed she would. Why then was my heart knocking in my throat, my feet dragging as I followed her? I loved her already, me, had loved her for two years. Only now did it occur to me that my mistress did not yet love me; that she might, in fact, hate me for displacing Christophine.

I remember all too clearly how I trembled as I came up with Mlle
Adèle in the antechamber, and how she rounded on me, her face flushed and her little hands fisted. It crossed my mind that she might strike me.

"She's going to cry," she said passionately. "She's going to weep and moan and talk about the mercy of God and la sainte Vierge. That's what she always does when she's unhappy. You won't talk about la sainte Vierge, will you, Berthe?"

"No, mademoiselle," I said, astonished. "I will not."

Well, this was beyond question the right thing to say; for "Good!" said she, and smiled up into my face. "Come and see my doll. Christo said I couldn't have her at school, but
you
won't tell madame mère if I take her, will you?"

"No, mademoiselle," I said. Whereupon she vowed that she loved me, seized my hand in hers, and fairly dragged me up to the mysterious nursery. In a daze of relief, I admired her doll, her coral beads, her brocade shoes, her swansdown muff, gratefully accepted the rather stained ribbon-knot she pressed upon me, and coaxed her into letting me brush the tangles from her black curls. At the first touch of the brush, she winced. How well I recall how astonished she looked when she realized I wasn't hurting her, and how she begged me not to stop even when I'd worked out the last knot and her hair fell down her back in smooth, glossy skeins. Glad to please her so easily, I brushed on, and she began to arch her neck luxuriously against each long stroke and half-closed her eyes, for all the world like the kitchen cat when I scratched behind his ears. She's always liked having her hair brushed, my mistress, as much as I liked brushing it. Sometimes 'twas the only link between us, the pleasure we both took in her beautiful hair.

That night, I slept upon a pallet at the foot of her bed. Next morning, I packed up all her clothes into bandboxes and trunks, and duly after dinner, Mme du Fourchet saw us bestowed in the baron's carriage, patted my cheek, kissed my mistress, raised a lace kerchief to her eyes, and waved us on our way.

A long-faced novice welcomed us at the convent gate. Welcomed, I say, though the word's more charitable than her greeting. Hands firmly corked in the wide sleeves of her habit, she nodded to mademoiselle, said "I hope you're quieter than your sister," turned, and entered the gate.

Memory shows us pursuing her swaying black-and-white back down endless miles of wintry corridors set with a thousand tightly
closed doors. In truth, Port Royal was not so large a convent, and it could not have been long before the novice was unlatching one of those doors and informing us that mademoiselle's apartment was not a cell or a dormitory such as less fortunate girls had, and devoutly hoping that three rooms of her own would not encourage mademoiselle du Fourchet to think that pensionnaires de luxe were better than anyone else.