The Porcelain Dove (33 page)

Monsieur looked thoughtful. "Ten livres, hein?"

Madame was clearly regretting her attack. "Let the vicomte keep him, François. He looks a sober lad."

"The boy's name is Alain Reynaud," said M. Léon, "and he's as sober as rain water. He's clever as well, and monstrous deft with a razor."

"Ten livres," said monsieur, rising. "And a suit of clothes. If we wait until the New Year to pay him, I make it thirty livres saved. I begin to hope for you, Montplaisir."

The farming of money being a highly civilized pursuit, the funeral of the baron du Fourchet was consequently a highly civilized affair, and the bankers and politicians crowding the church of Sainte-Catherine were solemn rather than grief-stricken. Mme du Fourchet
may have shed a tear or two behind her widow's veil, but if she wept, she wept alone. Me, I felt only so much grief as any mortal creature must feel in the presence of a coffin and a grave.

After the funeral, certain mourners accompanied Mme la baronne back to the hôtel Fourchet, where over wine and cake they gossiped and flirted as usual. Before long, M. and Mme de Poix had begun exchanging their usual shrill pleasantries, the abbé was pale drunk, and I was seeking refuge in the lavender-scented quiet of the linen-room.

When I opened the door, what should I see but Peronel struggling in the vicomte de Montplaisir's embrace?

"M. Léon!" I exclaimed.

Grinning with all his teeth, he released her, pushed me aside, and loped away down the hall, leaving Peronel backed up against the cupboards, her face flushed, her bosom heaving, her breath ragged.

"Pauvre petite." I went to her and drew her into my arms. She shook her head and pulled away.

Overcome with shame, I thought. Poor girl. "He should be ashamed, not you," I scolded her gently. "And ashamed he shall be, when I tell madame how her son forces his attentions upon her servants."

She seized my hand in both of hers. "Oh, no Berthe! Oh,
please
, no! Not a word to madame, I entreat you. Why, she could decide that the best way to protect me is to send me away, and I couldn't
bear
that, Berthe, indeed I could not! Besides, 'tis all my fault for coming to Paris."

"Never blame yourself for M. Léon's goatish ways," I began, but Peronel interrupted me with her arms about my neck and her voice in my ear.

"Dear Berthe," she murmured. "Thou canst not be mother to all the world." Then she kissed me upon the cheek and fled, leaving me entirely bewildered.

Next morning, she was nowhere to be found. She left behind all her small possessions, with the exception of a silver cross and the little scarlet purse in which she was storing up her wages.

Madame was furious. "Wretch," she exclaimed when I told her of Peronel's disappearance. "Ungrateful. I always thought the girl both shifty and sly. You, you saw some promise in her, and I entrusted her with my daughter's well-being. Le bon Dieu be thanked she's stolen nothing."

Because I was coming to know this mood in my mistress better than I liked, I saved my breath to inquire after Peronel among the servants of madame's friends. I even ventured to visit a house of accommodation in Saint-Antoine whose matron, as a young whore, had bought peignoirs of my mother. No one had heard of a fresh young country girl newly taken into service or gone upon the game. And when I came upon Reynaud lurking by the closet where the maidservants slept and demanded of him where Peronel might be, all the answer he gave was to stare at me with sly, bright eyes, lick his white teeth, and slink away.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

In Which the Vicomte Proves Himself a True Son of Malvoeux

Soon after the funeral, monsieur returned to Beauxprés, taking Linotte with him. Madame and I remained in the rue Quincampoix, this time at her mother's request. Mme the widowed baronne du Fourchet felt old and tired and desired her children about her. Pauline had become a trollop and a harpy; Hortense was, as ever, impossible. Surely Adèle knew that she had always been her mother's favorite child.

Had I been my mistress, I'd have laughed in her nose and taken myself elsewhere. Madame wept and stayed.

During the six months following the baron's death, madame could not go abroad, nor did that part of society she loved best care to call upon a house of mourning. Our only company was M. le baron's cronies—Farmers Général, officials of the Contrôle Générale, bankers, financiers—who came to the hôtel Fourchet to console their old friend's widow and stayed to eat her excellent dinners and gloom over the everlasting war with England and the upstart Necker's draconian reforms. 'Twas all as dull as hemming sheets.

If the winter of 1778 had been a whirligig of cicisbeos and entertainments, the winter of 1780 was an altogether more staid affair. Black did not become my mistress, convention barred her from balls and soirées, and there were now beauties on the town more piquant, more complaisant, and far more witty than she. I'd no cause for jealousy—quite the opposite. 'Tis the nature of a glass to reflect, and if there's no belle or beau present, then it must reflect whoever is—
crêpe-faced mother or whey-faced banker. 'Tis not astonishing that my mistress preferred to reflect me.

Save that we were older, she and I, we might have been back at the convent. A quiet, close six months, like a meadow among mountains of activity; a time of sitting by the chamber fire, she in an armchair, I on a low stool, she embroidering, I mending, she writing to Mme Réverdil, I reading aloud to her from popular pamphlets of art and science, favorite fairy tales, chapters of
La Nouvelle Héloïse
and the comtesse de Malarmé's new
Mémoires de Clarence Welldone
, a cleverly naughty broadside. Dressing and undressing, planning new heads for when she was out of mourning, and the sweet nightly ritual of brushing her hair while she sat, eyes closed and smiling, sighing gently now and again as I drew the brush through and through the springing ebony mass.

Sometimes I'd wake in the night from a dream of wizards or dunghills or beaked and feathered children and take comfort from the familiar rumble of cart-wheels upon the cobbled street. I'd even smile to think myself so far removed from cursing beggars, bird-mad ducs, and the cries of ghostly children.

What a fool I was, to be sure.

'Twas three o'clock of a chilly spring night. Madame, now in demi-mourning, was at a soirée. I was awaiting her return in the back kitchen, half-dozing over a poem on gardens I'd bought of a peddler just that morning. The hôtel Fourchet was very silent: I could hear the rain rattle when the wind caught it like pebbles thrown against the windows. Once the wind whipped up hard, and the pebbles rattled so fiercely I thought the glass must break. Then the wind faded, and I realized that what I heard was not the rain at all, but a hand tapping, tapping at the kitchen window.

I hesitated—only a fool would act without hesitation on such a night, at such an hour—then took my candle to the window. A figure like a drowned corpse stood without, white-faced and staring. The figure raised its hand to tap again, the mouth shaped my name, and I saw 'twas Peronel, wet as a rat and thin as famine, but alive.

In less time than it takes to tell, I had her in the kitchen with the fire stirred up and a blanket around her shoulders, her feet to the blaze, and a chunk of bread and cheese in her hands. She was dressed in a green-striped polonaise with a fichu covering her bosom—not new, not a la mode, but respectably clean. For twenty minutes or so,
she nibbled at the cheese and stared silently into the fire. Fearing my mistress would return, I asked, "Where hast thou been, child? I half-thought thee dead."

"Dead? I've wished to be dead. Death could be no worse than the Hell I've suffered."

"Hell?" I echoed, bewildered, and bent to look into her face. No, this was indeed Peronel, a little puff-eyed and bruised about the mouth, but beyond doubt the same goosish girl who had talked to madame of laundry while the beggar cursed outside.

"A very particular ring of Hell disguised as a pleasure-house in the Bois de Boulogne. O Berthe, how I am stupid!"

In this judgment I concurred, though I did not think it kind to say so. "Softly, softly, petite," I said. "The vicomte de Montplaisir, did he steal thee away?"

"Yes. Well, no. I went with him willingly. He was so handsome, you see. And he promised me jewels and fine gowns and exquisite pleasures, and vowed that he loved me. He took me up in a closed carriage, just like a fine lady, and made love to me as we drove, paying me pretty compliments on the slenderness of my neck and the roundness of my buttocks. Unless you've labored under the attentions of our so-dear maître d'hôtel, Berthe, you cannot imagine the pleasure to be gained from a sweet breath and smooth hands and a perfumed body.

"We might have driven so forever, fondling and kissing like true lovers. Yet all good things end at last, they say, and after a space, we alit. He led me through a garden into a little house—a cottage, almost, no more than a vestibule and two salons, with two chambers above. 'Twas vastly elegant."

I thought she sounded wistful, and said shortly, "This is not Hell, but the Elysian fields you describe. I wonder you troubled yourself with escaping."

She turned her red-rimmed eyes to me as gently as the silly Peronel of old. "A devil may wear a beautiful face, Berthe. May not Hell also?"

"Yes, yes: I suppose it may," I answered, a little shamed. "So. The vicomte de Montplaisir took you to a petite maison, and where he came by the gold to pay for it, the Devil alone knows. Oh, how monsieur his father will rave when he hears of it!"

Peronel fell forward upon her knees and seized my hands. "No one must know of this, Berthe, or I shall die of shame. You must
promise me to keep what I say secret, or I'll say no more. Upon thy mother's salvation, Berthe."

How could I swear any such thing? I know how to keep secrets, me, but there are burdens that, borne alone, may crush the bearer's heart. Peronel's secret promised to be such a burden—already I felt my heart stagger under it. I considered a moment, then, "Very well," I said carefully. "Upon my mother's salvation, I swear to repeat no word of what you say this night to a Christian soul."

She nodded but did not rise, nor did she relinquish her hold upon my hands. "His valet brought in food and wine to us, and while I ate, he told me of his conquests. He'd had a dozen women, two dozen, fifty; he'd had them perform every amorous trick known to demon or man. This one swooned from pleasure, that one near died of it, another called for a priest. 'I shrove her myself,' he says, and describes her penance to me until I weep with fear. And every so often he stops and shakes his fist in the air and, 'Lord God, I defy you,' he cries. 'Strike me dead if you dare, O Lord raper of virgins!' "

"Just heaven!" I cried. "And what happened?"

Peronel shrugged. "Nothing happened. God answered neither his prayer nor mine, not then, and not when the vicomte took me upstairs into a room like a chapel, hung in black and furnished with such paintings and statues as I blushed to look upon. Do you remember how you and Marie once jested how the heir of Malvoeux would collect maidenheads? The truth is nothing so innocent as maidenheads, which interest him not at all. He collects whips, Berthe, and silken ropes, and little, sharp razors. And with them he pursues his true vocation, which is collecting cries of pain."

"Stop!" I cried. " 'Tis more than I can bear. The monster must be complained of, brought to trial, imprisoned!"

"Hush, Berthe," she patted my hand. "I am resolved to tell all, and you must resolve to bear it."

And so I heard it, held both by her tale and by her fingers stroking my hands. That chilled me more than her words, I think, that gentle, absorbed caress.

"I've learned a new language from him, Berthe. That member Menée called his scepter,
he
named with a dozen more ungentle names: Cupid's arrow, engine, lance, rifle. My body was the altar of Venus; my secret places were the gates of Heaven. No saint ever stormed Heaven more zealously than he. Day and night he celebrated his rituals
of rope and flail and knife, his valet assisting him now as acolyte, now as surgeon. Many and varied were his approaches to bliss, but of all my gates, he favored the postern."

The fire snapped and the rain tapped at the windows. All else was silent as the grave, except my heart beating in my ears and Peronel's quick breathing. I could think of nothing to say.

"Do you know the penalty for sodomy?" asked Peronel at last. "He taunted me with it, should I dare to expose him.
He
would not burn—nobles, as all the world knows, are fireproof. The valet might die, and that would please me. But not enough to burn at his side with my sins unshriven. There were other girls, too, whom I would not betray."

"Bien sûr," I said, or croaked. "How long did this continue?"

Peronel released my hands and folded her fichu higher on her throat. "A week. Two weeks. I don't remember."

"But that was more than a year ago," I said.

"We escaped, my companions and I, down a rope made of the chapel's hangings, all knotted together and hung out the window. We fled to a place known to one of the girls, where the matron cared for us until we were healed, then took us into her employ. The work is easy enough, after
him
. Though you'd be astonished, Berthe, how many gentlemen cannot raise their noble rods without a touch of the lash upon their noble tails." As she spoke, Peronel had risen and shaken out her skirts, and now took her shawl from the settle where I had spread it to dry and wound it around her head and shoulders.

"I shouldn't have come here, Berthe; whores don't call on decent women. But I thought you might fret over me, and I only wanted to tell you there was no need. Keep the servingmaids away from him if you can. But do not betray me. I wish to go to Hell in my own way, not his."

'Tis difficult for me to remember her voice, and her pretty, foolish face. Not that I cannot recall them: her bitter words and hopeless look are etched upon my mind as though with acid. No, what is difficult is the memory of sitting by the dying fire with my mouth ajar like a Christmas pig, without a kiss for her, nor a word of farewell, nor any sign that I did not judge her soiled beyond redeeming. I'm ashamed, too, to think of my vow of silence, and how I made it intending to break it, or at least to bend it, in relating the whole to Pompey, whom a flood of holy water would never make Christian. Now I make what
amends I may. Beg he from now until the Trump of Doom, Jean will never hear this chapter of my history. Colette, however, will read it. And she will shed a sister's tears for Peronel and in her name forgive my broken oath or else set me a penance for it. For not le bon Dieu Himself has Colette's right to judge me in this matter.