The Porcelain Dove (30 page)

In Which Monsieur Fouls His Nest

When we returned to Beauxprés, 'twas more than six months since the beggar had shown his beard, yet the rumor of loups-garous still lurked behind each tree in the Forêt des Enfans and omens of plague and famine fouled every breeze that blew. Unsure whether to fear for their lives or their souls, monsieur's servants went about in groups of three or four armed with cudgels and pieces of the Host wrapped in clean linen while the villagers hung wreaths of Saint-Jean's wort over their doors and kept a sharp eye out for omens.

Now, curses batten on omens as maggots on spoiled meat, and no man can tell whether the maggots rot the meat or the meat spawns the maggots. A cow dying, a new tax levied, a summer hail-storm, martins flying south before harvest: were these signs of the curse, or signs of the seigneur's uncharity that had inspired it? And if the misfortunes were curse-brought, could a bowl of milk or a consecrated Host left in the byre protect the cows that remained, or were they doomed whatever a man did or left undone?

In the tavern and the church-porch, by the well and in the bakehouse, Estienne Pyanet, Just Vissot, Claude Mareschal, their kin and their wives and sisters argued the point until they were hoarse. Most of them stuck to the old wardings. If a Lenten egg placed on the roof protected it against hail, they reasoned, then well; if it did not, what was the harm? Even Mme Pyanet, who I'd always thought a sensible woman, took to baiting her kitchen garden with a little dish of ashes
balanced between the rows of beans, just where a malicious imp would be sure to knock it over. For (she told me when I asked her why) if an imp scatters ashes, he can't do anything else until he's picked them all up again.

When I heard
that
, I hooted with laughter and said that imps of Hell must all be Maindurs, thus to be enslaved by nothing.

"Could be," said Mme Pyanet. "Many's the true word spoke in jest, they say. Laugh if it pleases thee, Duvet. I'm a practical woman, me. Owls mean storm and crows mean famine, and a person can't deny there's been more of both about since the beggar's curse."

To each horse his own stall, as Jean always said. Like the ancients, the villagers sought their auguries in the erratic flight of birds. I sought mine in the erratic moods of M. le duc de Malvoeux.

I'd always thought my master mad, but in the early years of his marriage, the glass of his madness had generally hovered at fair-to-changeable, with only occasional drops to storm. Now he seemed set at rainy-to-foul, and the quarter he blew from varied from hour to hour. If he swept my mistress off to the aviary to nurse a clutch of fledgling widow birds in the morning, at noon he was likely to sweep her out again.

"I vow and declare, Berthe, 'tis too bad," madame exclaimed one morning. "Only see how he uses me, his own faithful wife!" She shook back her sleeve-ruffle to display five purple marks imprinted upon her arm. "He said my voice would curdle new cream, and then he thrust me out, Berthe, flung me out the door so that I all but flew into the duck-pond, and all because I'd walked too close to a souimanga's nest. 'Tis too bad, I say. I should have stayed in Lausanne, where there are those who value women over birds."

"Yes, madame," I said, and almost wished it true. Le bon Dieu knows I'd not wanted to remain in Lausanne. Yet no sooner had I caught sight of Beauxprés glittering at the crown of its green mound than I'd been moved to leap from the berline and flee—to Paris, to Lausanne, to I cared not where, so long as 'twas far from that rank and gilded midden. But Paris was a long walk. And I couldn't leave my mistress.

Madame turned her attention to a bleeding scratch upon her shoulder. "What does he think I am?" she asked me bitterly. "A dog, to be called and dismissed at will? No, not a dog—M. le duc de Malvoeux has no use for dogs. I remember when Doucette died, how he laughed at my tears. I do believe he loves me not at all."

" 'Tis only one of his freakish starts. Madame will recall he's had them before, and madame has always been most understanding."

"'Tis no more than my duty. And surely you must acknowledge that Louis-Marie's death was ample cause for agitation."

"Bien sûr, madame, although I think beating the mother a curious way of mourning the child. But I refer to the time when the vicomte de Montplaisir dismembered the popinjay, and two years past, when that bird-merchant sold M. de la Varenne the American bluebird he'd promised to monsieur. On both occasions, madame suffered most cruelly."

Madame rubbed her bruises and sighed. "Yes," she said. "What you say is true, Berthe. My husband is indeed given to freakish starts. After being so happy alone in Lausanne, I'm of half a mind to leave him forever. 'Tis only that I cannot bear the thought of packing my things again when they're barely unpacked, not to mention jolting for hours in that horrid carriage. And there are so many things to consider besides! Where would I go, for example, and would monsieur allow me to take Linotte? And what of you, and Pompey, and mère Boudin? How could I afford to keep you? Who would pay your wages? Not monsieur, surely. No." She sighed again deeply, clasped her hands piously at her bosom. "Although he may use me ill, François de Malvoeux is my husband still, and I will do my utmost to be a good wife to him."

How could one breast contain so many contradictory sentiments? Did my mistress love her husband or did she hate him? I think, me, that she herself knew only that she craved attention as a sot craves wine. And if the wine she drank was poor and sour, well, it brought her oblivion as surely as a finer vintage. Time has educated her palate, and circumstance, and the air of our enchanted garden in which untruth cannot live. In those days, however, monsieur's beatings and beratings gave madame's life definition and form. Without a man to reflect, she'd have been as blank as a mirror in an empty house. As I would have been without her.

Despite her bruises, therefore, madame was content to be home. I have already said that I was not. At every step, memories rose to torment me: of madame's rasping coughs; of the beggar's amber eyes; of mère Malateste and her coven of grannies; of the ghostly children. In the village and the château, signs of magic confronted me at every turn, and I had no talisman to avert them. My rags of philosophy didn't cover ghosts; my tags of tragic verse didn't comprehend wizards. I
came close to hating, not only monsieur, but every male creature on the face of the earth. And how did I contend with my unease? I found routes through the house that avoided the cabinet des Fées. I laughed at poor Nicola Pyanet and her ashes. I was cool to Pompey and distant with Artide. I quarreled with Marie.

'Twas not a thing difficult to achieve, a quarrel with Marie. The rosy young laundress who'd embraced me so kindly when I'd first come to Beauxprés was rising thirty now, rather plumper than she'd been and not quite so kind. Well, 'twas no wonder, all betwixt and between as she was, neither wife nor maid nor widow, and Jean's departure gnawing like a rat at her heart.

All winter long she lamented, mournful as an owl, and always hooting the one note. "I'll never hold a baby to my breast," she would sob. "I'll live barren and die alone, without chick or child to weep my passing."

One night some imp of misery inspired me to challenge her. "You might have held a baby to your breast any time these last twelve years. I'd say you've gone to some pains not to. Be honest now, Marie: what you really want is a husband. I can't imagine why."

This brought up Marie's head. "What are you saying, Berthe? Any woman must prefer the company of a man to any other. And what is a woman without a man, after all, but a poor, lone, stunted sort of creature?"

"Even as I am?"

"No, no," she protested. "I didn't mean that at all." But her sidelong look suggested that she'd meant just that, though she'd never say so outright.

With an effort I curbed my anger. "Only consider, Marie. If you put what you've saved for your dowry out in the rents, the interest will assure you of a respectable old age. In the meantime, you've a full belly, a roof over your head, all the male companionship you could wish for, an undemanding mistress. What more could a husband give you?"

"Why, a house of my own, naturally. A little warmth in my bed at night. Children. His name, so that I'd no longer be called Jean Coquelet's whore."

"Oh, Marie," I said pityingly. "You'll never get that in Beauxprés. Monsieur has made it more than plain that he won't keep married servants, and the village dirt-arses will take none save a virgin to wife. If you must have a husband, look for him in Paris. A laundress of your
skill must always find employment, and in Paris, a man doesn't care if a woman's common as the public way, provided she's well-dowered."

Marie's cheeks grew white as paper, then scarlet. "Cow," she shouted. "Hedgehog! You're no friend of mine, Berthe Duvet. I pray your soul may roast in Hell!" Then she slapped me, burst into a fury of tears, and stormed away, leaving me hang-jawed with shock. After that, she'd not say a word to me, not so much as "iron" or "starch."

I soon repented of my cruelty in speaking so to Marie, for Peronel, though a sweet child, was too young and silly for a confidante, and Artide was beginning to affect an air of philosophical discontent that I found most tiresome. I'd made an enemy of my only friend without even the poor comfort of knowing myself to have been right. For in March of 1778, Marie achieved her heart's desire in marrying monsieur's head groom, the pious Philiberte Malateste. The Devil alone knows why a man who'd been known to whip the stable-boys for watching a stallion cover a mare would take to wife a woman he knew to be . . . well-used. And if the Devil has an answer to that conundrum, perhaps he'll also vouchsafe the reason monsieur bestowed freely upon Philiberte Malateste the blessing he had denied Jean Coquelet.

Jean, to whom the subject is a wound long healed, is of the opinion that Malateste charmed monsieur with some remnant spell of his witchy mother's. Perhaps he's right—surrounded by magic as I am, I can hardly deny the likelihood of such a thing. Yet, I think it more likely that monsieur was inclined to favor his milk-brother over ordinary domestics. And I think also that the shadow of the Porcelain Dove so overcast the duc's mind that had his dog-boy desired to wed a hound bitch, he'd have given the couple his blessing and a silver écu as a bride-gift.

When Marie Vissot became Mme Malateste, I was in Paris. To my vast surprise, monsieur had insisted that we winter there as always. Once there, however, he proved more restless than usual, more inclined to quarrel than to argue reasonably, less gracious about squiring madame to balls and popular lectures on phlogiston. Furthermore, he took to clutching his sous as close as Molière's Alceste.

Bien sûr, this new meanness of my master's was not without real cause: the vicomte de Montplaisir's gaming debts, for example, and the cost of his new school, which was twice again as dear as La Flèche. A fine school, La Flèche, but altogether too serious and dull for the vicomte, who had tried to enliven it with private entertainments for
his particular friends. It was one of these revels—among whose celebrants were two young harlots—that inspired the director of La Flèche to write the duc de Malvoeux desiring him to remove his son from his establishment without a moment's delay. Monsieur raged and swore to banish his wayward heir to a Cistercian monastery until he came of age. But the end of it was that M. Léon suffered no worse a punishment than to be moved to the fashionable académie L'Epieu.

Jean, of course, holds that this disastrous party of the vicomte's was a direct consequence of the beggar's curse. The wizard foretold (he points out) that monsieur's sons should have no inheritance. Monsieur was no prince de Conti or baron du Fourchet, whose fortunes were an ocean that no expense could drain. Monsieur's wealth lay in his lands—which brought him little income—and in his collections—which brought him none. As for madame's dowry, he must have spent its sum at least on the four expeditions for the Porcelain Dove. And here was Justin, a postulant in an order that demanded a generous dowry, and M. Léon enrolled in a school as costly as 'twas fashionable.

Again, Jean may be right. Whether 'twas the curse or simple common sense, monsieur must have foreseen gold pouring from his coffers like blood from a severed vein, for he bound the wound in anticipation. When my mistress and I returned to Beauxprés, he stayed behind to shroud the hôtel Malvoeux in linen, to shutter its windows inside and out, to tie up its knocker, nail boards across its doors, and dismiss its servants down to the maître d'hôtel and my old friend the pie-faced lackey. Only then did he follow us to Beauxprés, and not a word about it to madame until a letter came from Mme de Hautebriande innocently inquiring of her dear Adèle if 'twere true what she'd heard, that the hôtel Malvoeux was to be sold.

Madame, not remarkably, took monsieur to task for his secrecy, whereupon he struck her senseless to the floor and retreated to the aviary before she'd regained her wits. When I brought her to, she crept into her bed fully dressed, and for all my pleading, did not stir for the rest of the day. Thereafter, the marital comedy embarked upon a new act in which my mistress' role was to shrink against the wall when she chanced to encounter her husband, and his was to bow and inquire politely after her health.

"What ever will I do?" she mourned one night as I brushed out her hair. "Monsieur grows stranger day by day, rejoices that he'll never have to converse with Parisian fools again, and forbids me to order a
new toilette because I'll never have occasion to wear it. If I must remain mewed up here in Beauxprés for the rest of my life, I shall die of boredom, Berthe, I know I shall."

Inwardly, I agreed that 'twas very like she would, and me with her. Then a happy thought struck me. "Quelle bêtise, madame!" I said. "Madame has only to write Mme la baronne, and we may be back in Paris within the week."

She took no persuading. Before I blew out her candle that night, she'd written to madame her mother, who responded, some ten days later, that Mme la duchesse de Malvoeux was welcome to stay with her. Armed with this letter, my mistress sought out monsieur in his aviary, returning shortly with a bruised cheek and the happy news that her husband didn't give a pin whether she stayed or went, so long as she never entered the aviary again without an invitation. Two days later, we departed.