The Porcelain Dove (8 page)

I broke a nail on the latch of the dressing-case. The long-case clock struck four. I laid a silk gauze négligée ready upon the bed, noticing that the curtains were burgundy silk embroidered in black, more suited to a catafalque than a bridal bed. I tucked them back, thought about going in search of another candle to brighten the room, decided my mistress might be happier not seeing it clearly. Would they never come?

Suddenly in the hall below I heard a great banging accompanied by muffled shouts and cheering and then a man's voice shouting, "Good night to you, my friends, or rather, good morning! You're all very kind, but I can see her to bed myself!"

If that is the duc, I thought, his voice is a measure less merry than his words. I waited. The front door creaked and closed. I heard an obsequious murmur that could only be Dentelle, my mistress' soft voice responding, steps mounting the stairs. A silence, a rustle, and a hoarse whisper in the hall: "I'll come to you soon, madame. Prepare for me."

Timidly, I opened the door. My mistress, very dark around the eyes, entered and sank into the bergère with a most un-bridal sigh.

However strange and melancholy I might feel, I knew where my duty lay. "Come, madame, and let me unlace you," I said gently. "You'll feel much more comfortable without the false hair and the heavy corset. Be of good cheer, madame. 'Tis your wedding night."

"Yes," said my mistress. " 'Tis my wedding night, and I promise
you, Berthe, I've heard enough pleasantries on that head to last me until this time next year. As you love me, no more."

Though she spoke very sharp, her lips trembled. I chattered brightly, as I undressed her, of how Mme Hortense had feared she'd drop her child in the vestry and other such nonsense. Gradually she held up her head again and began to look more cheerful.

"'Tis the long day and the wine and that monstrous corset, Berthe. I'll soon be myself again." She smoothed the folds of her négligée and surveyed her new bedchamber. The hangings catching her eye, she shook her head and sighed. "Tomorrow I shall ask monsieur my husband to order new bed-curtains. And surely"—glancing nervously towards the long-case clock—"he cannot expect me to sleep with that horrid ticking." She gathered her lace ruffle to her throat and glanced again towards the clock. Following her gaze, I saw she was looking at the gilt outline of a door in the paneling.

There was a silence, and then, "My mother has told me a little of what must happen this night," said my mistress in a small voice. "I cannot think what Stéphanie-Germaine found so distressing in it. If the man is skilled, maman says it can be very pleasant." She looked up at me pleadingly.

What, pray, did the child think I knew about it? I was visited by a sudden wild vision of a shrewdness of lady's maids sitting bare-shanked before a convent fire, comparing the manhood of one lover to an anchovy, of another to a battering ram. To conceal my confusion, I bent my face above her head and busied myself with her hair. "So I've heard, madame," I said, very prim. "And consider: why should so many women take lovers to their beds if what they did there were distasteful?"

"Because 'tis à la mode." She flung her arms around my waist and pressed her cheek to my bosom. "Long ago dids't thou swear to stand by me. Surely, Berthe, thou wilt not leave me here alone?"

I rested my cheek against her fragrant hair. "Not alone," I said a little sadly. "Never alone."

She nodded and released me, only to clutch at my hand when the door in the paneling opened in a blaze of light. My heart began to pound painfully and though I could not bring myself to shake her off, I turned away, thus by unhappy chance bringing myself face-to-face with my new master's reflection in the mantelpiece mirror. Night-capped and gowned in dark brocade, he looked more skeletal than
ever, and his dark eyes were hungry as a vengeful ghost's. I do not think he saw me.

"My wife," he said, his harsh voice quivering. "My darling little bird, how your heart beats—why, I can see the lace trembling at your breast. Come to me, ma mie, ma chère, ma colombe blanche."

My mistress released my hand and, breathing fast and shallow, rose and took a faltering step. It might have been towards her husband or it might have been away: I did not see, for I ran like a mouse for the dressing-room and latched its door behind me.

How the habits of youth die hard! I've not laid out a gown nor mended so much as a ruffle for a hundred years or more, except by my own will and desire. My former mistress and I sit down at the same table and address one another as "chérie" and "thou." In fine, I am a free woman, me, who may speak her mind to whom she likes. Yet, recounting the days of my service, I find myself haunted by Olympe's lessons in comme il faut.

A good femme de chambre, she taught me, is the soul of discretion and the heart of good temper. She never addresses her mistress uninvited; she neither weeps nor sighs save in sympathy for her mistress' woes. With her fellow femmes de chambre she may unbend, but not so far as to gossip of her mistress' private affairs. For a tittle-tattle's indiscretions will always be discovered, and the brothels are full of maids who could not learn to hold their tongues. Her favorite maxim was: "Better to die of grief unspoken in a noble hôtel than of disease and starvation in a ditch." A cautious woman, Olympe, despite her bright and fluttering ways. How shocked she'd be at this history of mine!

To be sure, I'm half-shocked myself, a little at the liveliness of my memories, more at the anger that curdles my breast as I inscribe them. For Mme de Bonsecours had not been altogether mistaken in fearing that the duc de Malvoeux might drive me from my mistress' side.

Not that he worked against me, you understand—on the contrary, he scarcely gave himself the trouble of acknowledging my existence. I was of less account than Doucette: a pair of hands to dress his wife and disappear. Oh, how slighted I felt! For seven years, I'd awakened my mistress every morning, borne her company every day, lighted her to her bed every night. Suddenly, I was barred from her room until
she called for me, often not until eleven or even twelve of the clock. And even then we were not alone, for monsieur her husband loved to watch her toilette, and would lounge on the bergère with his stockings ungartered and his shirt agape, exclaiming upon the pearliness of her skin and the trimness of her ankles while she simpered and preened until I could hardly keep my countenance. Before, we'd often read and talked together. Now all I did was dress her, twice, sometimes four times in a day, for rides in the Bois and walks in the Tuileries, for expeditions to the cabinet du roi to examine birds and to the salon of the baron d'Holbach to converse with famous wits and philosophes. He was monstrous fond of philosophes, M. le duc de Malvoeux, and less fond of balls and musical evenings. Nevertheless, madame seldom laid down her head before three in the morning, which meant that I was forever short of sleep. On the occasion of her formal presentation to His Most Serene Majesty, King Louis XV of France, neither one of us retired until dawn.

The presentation at Versailles—that was the one scene in my fairy tale of wedlock that adhered to the playbook. My mistress has never, save once, been so beautiful. Her gown I remember as though I had it before me—black and silver as custom dictated, with court sleeves and lappets of Alençon lace. The train was two ells long, and so heavy that the little black page monsieur had bought her was hard put to keep it from the floor. Her coiffure was stuck with silver bees. Alone with me in her dark, cavernous bedchamber, she glittered with diamonds and excitement like a starry night. And she insisted that I accompany her to Versailles, where I waited in a hot and gilded antechamber with the other maids while my mistress traded pleasantries with the king and danced with princes of the blood royal.

Her presentation itself I need not describe—Colette has heard it from her own lips often and often, from her first trembling curtsy to monsieur's declaration, as he handed her into the carriage, that she was a bird of paradise among poultry. Decorated or plain, Adèle's account must be truer than mine, for my own memory of that night is painted over with images of a thousand other nights, a thousand other entertainments. When first I walked under the painted ceilings of Versailles, did I think them splendid and astonishing? Or did I judge them immediately as being gaudy, overgilded, overheated, overcrowded? To say true, I don't recall.

For the rest of my romance, well, 'twas false as a gypsy's fortune. Freedom and honor, bah! Bien sûr, I was free to wander Paris as I
would, but I had no friend to wander with. Monsieur kept no maidservants in town, and all the conversation the lackeys had with me was my beauty and their desire to plunder it. As for Pompey, madame's little black page, though he ran willingly upon my errands, he did not speak, and when he wasn't fanning madame or bringing her bonbons, kept very much to himself. Often in my loneliness I was reduced to taking Doucette on my lap and fondling her curly ears and hard, round head until she lost patience with my caresses and snapped at my fingers.

For me, the only bearable hour of the day fell between dinner and the evening's entertainment. Dentelle attended to monsieur, and I pinned fresh ornaments in madame's hair while she, as often as not, pored over a volume of Brisson's
Ornithologie
. In those quiet moments, she'd confide in me as of old. Well, not quite as of old; for now her confidences were all of her husband.

"Look, here is the picture of a jacamar, Berthe, just like the one monsieur my husband showed me at the bird-market. 'Tis not nearly so lovely as the bird itself. M. de Malvoeux says I am lovelier than any bird he has seen, and my bosom much softer than feathers." Blushing furiously, she'd break off and, stealing a sidelong glance into her mirror, stroke her haresfoot down her breast with a reminiscent smile. "Ah, Berthe, 'tis so delightful to be loved! I have only to think of him to feel myself grow prettier. Stéphanie-Germaine de Hautebriande is a great fool. There is nothing better than an exigent husband."

And here I'd thought she had always known herself loved—by me. Husbands are different—I understood that. And I understood that she did not wound me from malice, would, in fact, be vastly astonished to discover that I felt each word as an arrow to my heart. Pride and decorum both decreed that I must bleed in private, so, "Yes, madame," I'd answer coolly. "No doubt, madame. Will madame wear the pink paduasoy tomorrow or the blue lustring?"

I was happiest when she was telling me the latest on-dit, for hearing her relate the misadventures of Nathalie and Stéphanie-Germaine I might imagine that nothing had changed between us. The best stories were provided by the comtesse de Fleuru, who combined the carnal appetite of a she-wolf with a monkey's lack of discretion.

"Just think, Berthe, Nathalie de Fleuru has bestowed her favors upon the chevalier d'Emplumer!" my mistress might declare, all wicked innocence. "How she could, knowing what he is! Why, he wears the key to her summer house on his watch-chain, and now all the world is calling her the comtesse de la Petite Maison. Imagine how
she must feel when she comes to hear of it! I could not endure to have such things said of me, indeed I could not!"

Sometimes I'd catch her eye in the mirror and essay some teasing sally as, "Ah, but madame has no summer house," or "Madame would be much too discreet, I'm sure." Once such small jests had made her giggle. Now they were more likely to make her frown and scold. "Peste, Berthe," she'd pout, "but you are naughty today! You know very well that's not at all what I meant. I am devoted to monsieur my husband."

"Yes, madame."

At times like these, I was greatly tempted to pull her hair or pin her lace right through her feather-soft bosom. What had Mme de Bonsecours called the duc de Malvoeux? A famine that consumed utterly. Well, he'd certainly consumed my mistress. She thought of nothing save him, talked of nothing save him, was deaf to all voices and blind to all faces save his. In thought, in word, even in gesture and mien, she was his faithful mirror, reflecting both the good and the ill in him with unjudging fidelity.

Perhaps 'twas to try this devotion, or simply to display it, that monsieur allowed—more, encouraged—my mistress to hold levées like her mother. He would invite his own friends to attend his wife's toilette, lead them on to talk about her beauty, and watch them ogle her with a painful glitter in his narrow black eyes. Me, I'd run back and forth with pounce-boxes and aigrettes, trying to prevent this gentleman from stepping on Doucette and that gentleman from fondling my bosom, all the while puzzling over M. le duc's odd behavior. On the one hand, he seemed to be dangling my mistress before the other men like a glittering bauble: See, this is mine and not yours. Is it not splendid? On the other, he was clearly jealous of their eyes on her. And the bauble herself, my mistress, postured, preened, and chattered like the sulfur-crested cockatoo he had given her, that fanned its yellow crest and croaked "pretty lady" when you stroked it.

This uncomfortable farce ended at last one morning at the end of August, in the presence of a silk-seller, a modiste, a mariner with a monkey to sell, the baronne's old friend abbé Pinchet, and one vicomte de Tergive.

The vicomte was no friend of monsieur's, nor of madame's either, being one of those youthful lily-knights who amuse themselves with grown men's wives. Mme de Fleuru's chevalier d'Emplumer was another such, and hardly more notorious than this vicomte de Tergive, who must have oiled the lackeys' palms well to persuade them to allow
an uninvited guest into madame's bedchamber. Within a bare minute of entering, he'd sprawled himself over the bergère and embarked upon such a pointed catalogue of my mistress' charms as caused M. le duc to throw up his hands and disappear into his dressing-room with a slam.

Madame dropped her rouge-pot.

"Husbands," purred the vicomte in a tone of great sympathy. "They have no generosity of heart."

"That is not true," said madame with some spirit. "I am sure M. de Malvoeux has the most generous heart in the world, and, as I am among the silliest of women, I am very fortunate that it should be so."