The Ruins of Lace (3 page)

I have two names.

One of my masters, my bad master, calls me Chiant. But I refuse to come when I hear it. That must be why he keeps me in the box that has no holes.

The other master, the good master, calls me Moncherargent…or sometimes just Moncher…and I like that best of all. When he says Moncher, he speaks it in a whisper. He says it in a sigh that feels to my ears the way his hand feels as he strokes my fur.
Moncher
,
Moncher
,
Moncher
, he says as I sit in his lap by the fire.

He frees me from my burden of lace, and he feeds me all I want and then just a little bit more. And he gives me milk to drink. Cream he calls it. And it’s that cream I miss the most. Especially now, as I wait in the box. Especially now that I am Chiant once more.

I wish I knew how to keep from being sent away by the good master.

I was so careful last time.

I didn’t yelp. I never yelp. Not at the good master. Not after that first nap in his lap. And never after my first taste of cream.

No. I had not yelped.

I had not nipped, either. Not at him. I could never bite the hand that tended my wounds. That fed me and caressed my fur.

No. I had not nipped.

But had I whined?

Perhaps.

I pushed to my feet and set my nose to work, trying to sniff out a hole. A big one. One bigger than the cracks through which the ants came in. If I could just find a hole, then I could make it bigger. And then I could get a taste of the rain my ears told me was falling on the box. And perhaps, if I were lucky, then I could find a way out. And I could run to my good master. And maybe this time I could stay.

But it was no good. I could not see, and surely if there were a hole, there would be light. What’s more, my nose never failed me. And it had sniffed no moving air. No scent of forest or wind. The only thing I could smell was my own filth.

I pressed my back against the corner and curled myself into a ball.

No. There was no way out.

I whined.

I could not help it. The memory of fires and laps and cream was too fresh in my senses. I could feel the warmth. Taste the milk.

I whined again.

Yes. Perhaps I had whined at the good master. But could I not be forgiven such things? And how else was I to tell him what had happened to me? How else was I to make him understand? To keep him from sending me away?

For if he knew, surely he would not return me to the bad master.

If only he knew.

If only people could talk.

•••

I woke.

How long had I been asleep?

I raised an ear. Took a listen.

The rain had stopped.

I let my ear flop back down against my head. I didn’t like the rain. I couldn’t hear the birds sing, and the squirrels weren’t about their business. Someday…one day…perhaps one day I could pause for just a moment on my race through the forest. Maybe one day I would be able to see what those squirrels were doing. And know why those birds were singing.

But just now…just now I needed to think.

I needed to figure something out.

I wish I remembered what it was.

Something whined.

Something that sounded a lot like me.

I lifted my ear once more.

Nothing.

My stomach growled.

Maybe the whine had been me.

I was so hungry. But the only way to cure hunger was to not think about food. I would not think about the meat the good master fed me. And how it was always warm, and how the juices trickled down my chin. And I would certainly not think about the cream. I would not think about cream so thick I could almost chew it. Cream that coated my throat with lovely fat as I drank it. No. I could not think about cream.

I licked my nose, hoping for a drip or two.

Nothing.

It was dry. Dry as my mouth. Worse even.

I closed my eyes. I did not know why I had bothered to open them. I couldn’t see anything, open or closed. The only thing to do was wait. I would not think about food. Or drink. I would not think about my belly or how it gnawed at me from the inside. Or the fleas that gnawed at me from the outside.

I rolled onto my side. The hunger shifted within me. I would rather be too hot or too cold than too hungry. There was no escape from hunger.

•••

I woke.

But I woke with fear.

If only I could see.

I lifted an ear.

Silence.

There was, perhaps, a wind. And underneath it…a sound. I put an ear to the floor of the box. Underneath the sound of the wind…the sound of footsteps.

I curled into myself. It would go easier that way. And I made sure to tuck my nose beneath my paws.

“Chiant, pain in the ass!
Espèce de crétin!
I am coming. I come for you…”

My box slid out from underneath me. I splayed my legs to keep from bouncing against its walls. I began to growl but stopped it up in my throat. If I said nothing, if I did nothing, perhaps he would think I had escaped.

The box rose up at one corner and tipped over onto its side. I closed my eyes. Open or closed, I could see nothing. And if I could not see him, then perhaps he would not see me. Memories of other shouts, other shakings, tried to invade my thoughts, but I did not let them.

Again the box turned over. This time, the top ended up on the bottom. And all my filth ended up on top of me.

Something struck the box. Something hard, something sharp.

This was it then.

I pushed off my feet, crouching. If I shoved off hard, if I acted quickly, then perhaps I could make my escape now. The last time I had tried to dodge him, but this time I would run straight toward him. I would aim for the place where his knees stuck out. And if I could not run through them, then I would scamper up over him.

I pulled my ears in toward my head.

I could hear the wood splinter.

With a squeal of nail against wood, the wall came off. I was blinded by beautiful light. And I was struck by a switch. It must have been a switch. Only a switch could tear through my fur that way. Only a switch could lay open bare flesh.

Too late I remembered I must protect my nose.

Too late I remembered to curl into a ball.

Too late I remembered my plans for escape.

Too late. I was too late. I was always too late.

“Chiant!
Tu
m’fait chier! Quelle chierie!
”

As he stood there over me in his shimmering gray clothes with his glinting cap, I gave up.

I rolled onto my back.

He struck me anyway. “If you didn’t bring us such a sum of silver, I’d kill you now and be done with the bother.”

Why could he not see I had surrendered? That I meant no threat?

“
Cher
argent
, all that lovely money you bring us!”

I turned my neck so he could see the length of it. Perhaps this time he would kill me. I would gladly give up fires and laps and cream for the pleasures of oblivion.

But still he beat me. Still the switch searched out every hidden place.

As I lay there in the mud, I looked up at the sky. I imagined birds. I imagined the squirrels that would return with the warmer season. They would jump along the top of the house, carrying things between their teeth. Maybe someday they would carry me away, too.

•••

I woke.

I was back in my box.

I was shivering, but I was also hot.

I sniffed at the air. The air was cold.

If the air was cold, then it was I who was hot.

I was hot, and I hurt.

I hurt all over.

I tried to whine but gave it up, putting my tongue to work instead. I tried to lick my wounds, but my tongue would not obey. It had no moisture. Even if it had, my fur clung together so tightly I could not reach the sores. And so I gnawed at the knots. I pulled the fur from my skin with violent tugs. And then I lay down on my belly, put my head on my paws, and settled down to wait.

I do not know how long I waited. When I heard the master return, I could barely lift my head. I did not have the strength. He pried the wall off my box and raised it on end, dumping me out on my head.

I was too tired, too miserable, and too sick to complain.

But outside the box in that light, after a while, I could see again. Even if my eyes did not work quite so well as normal.

The master leaned in close to take a look at me. Reached out a finger and poked it at my eye. “
Emmerdeur!
I should have taken better care. You cannot run for me if you go blind.”

I wished I could see better. If I had any strength, if my eyes had been working, I would have chomped at his nose and torn it from his face.

He threw a pail of water at me.

I put out my tongue to lap it up.

“Stop! It’s for washing, not for drinking!” He threw three more pails at me and dabbed something onto my eye with a stick before shoving me back into the box.

There was the peace of silence then.

And the knowledge that if I could survive, eventually I would be free, running through the forest on the way to the good master. And this time, I would try to be so good he would never send me back.

I saw it again, in my dreams. That exquisite, fabulous lace. I marveled at the meticulous and perfect regularity of its pattern, the gorgeous repeating roses. My fingers itched to stroke its luster. And, oh, how I admired the lavish folds of those cuffs. They reminded me of
Maman
, and I wanted them.

I wanted her.

She too had worn cuffs of lace. They had not been so grand; there had hardly been a flounce to them at all. But seeing that pair brought to mind her cool, gentle touch and the way her hands always seemed to be dancing along to the rhythm of her words.

But
Maman
’s hands had been stilled when she died of lung fever. And her cuffs had been entombed with her. She lived now only in my dreams.

Such sweet, though fleeting, dreams.

I watched as my seven-year-old self entered our guest’s chamber, shuffling through the rushes on the tips of her toes. I saw her kneel beside the visitor’s trunk and slowly open the lid. I heard her gasp with delight at the magnificent treasure nestled inside.

She ought never to have done it.

She knew she had no right to inspect a visitor’s belongings. And there had been many visitors to the château through the years, many guests stopping for a night, as was customary, or even a week’s lodging on their way to or from Bordeaux. So many nobles with their sparkling coats and shimmering gowns.

But this visitor was different.

He was a noble, to be sure, a count. And he was the most beautiful person that young girl had ever seen, with shiny locks of dark hair falling in curls past his shoulders, and rings glittering from his fingers. He wore blue rosettes on his heeled slippers, and a hat that was both larger and floppier than her cousin, Alexandre’s. He was all dark and very tall.

He’d caught the little girl’s gaze a time or two as he talked in the entrance hall with her papa, but he had promptly disregarded it. And then he had proceeded to ply her papa with news from the court. Though she had asked after the Queen, the man told her women were of little importance, and her papa had hushed her. When she drifted from the hall, neither of them noticed. It was that which had driven her to the guest’s room. She wasn’t used to being ignored. And becoming a woman like her
maman
was the only thing she’d ever wished to do.

She was quite sure the guest wouldn’t like her looking over his things, and that’s exactly why she had done it.

But now, she paused at the trunk with her fingers hooked over its edge as she stared at the lace.

The bishop had worn this sort of cuff when he said Mass on Easter day. It spumed from the cuffs of his alb like a froth on fresh milk. She stretched out a hand toward it…should she?

I watched as she bit her lip in thought.

In that gossamer world of dreams where time twists and space shifts, I was everywhere and nowhere at once. I saw the back of her head, watched that mass of golden ringlets tremble as she reached into the trunk. At the same time, I saw the glint of longing in her eyes as her hand hovered above the lace.

The two cuffs were set into a bowl made by a pair of gloves. As she slid a hand beneath them, they released their perfumes of jasmine, orange blossoms, and carnations, scents so cloying she almost gagged.

Perhaps they would dissuade her…but no. I felt tears of frustration prick my eyes.

The little girl merely coughed, took in a deep breath through her mouth, and turned toward the lace once more. The scents had done nothing to deter her. But though she wanted to touch the cuffs, though she was prodded by a nearly irresistible frisson of desire, she did not. Not at first, in any case. But soon, the inevitability of what must happen began to invade my dream.

I tried to call out. I tried to make that young girl stop. To turn, at least, and listen for one moment to reason. But she would not be swayed. She would not be swayed because of what she saw. It was so…beautiful. So lovely. A yearning to hold it, for just one moment to possess her mother once more, took hold of her.

You must not do it! Even in my dreams I felt that old, familiar weight of despair. I felt, again, the loss of all the lovely things we possessed no more: the tapestries and the Turkey carpets, the collection of enameled boxes and the jeweled crucifixes, the pairs of silver candlesticks. All of those humble comforts that had been luxuries to us, all those prized family treasures the little girl had caused to disappear.

She dipped her hands into the trunk, and they came out clutching the lace cuffs. They were even more glorious, more magnificent than she had thought. A pattern of leaves and petals, intertwined with a filigree of scrollwork, repeating again and again and again. A circle that never ended, a pattern so finely detailed that it seemed to undulate across the fine mesh into which it had been woven. She ought to have put them back right then. If she had put them back right then, none of the misery that had followed would have happened.

But she did not.

After slipping them over her wrists, she closed her eyes and imagined those cuff-draped hands to be her beloved
maman
’s. She wrapped her own arms around herself and pretended it was the embrace of her mother.

Sois sage
, be good, my sweet angel.

It’s too much trouble to be good,
Maman
.

But
it’s only the good who marry well,
ma chérie
, the bad always get what they deserve.

Then
I
shall
be
the
most
good
girl
who
ever
lived.

If only you had lived,
Maman
!

The little girl embraced herself one more time, and then she opened her eyes and made the sign of the cross. The lace swayed in the air, just as the bishop’s had. She swept her hands up and down, back and forth, watching it ripple, taking great satisfaction in the fact that it seemed to weigh nothing at all.

Weightless.

Spotless.

Priceless.

I wanted to lecture her. I wanted to plead with her. I wanted more than anything to beg her not to do it. If only I could have explained what would happen. But though my mouth was open, no sound issued forth. Though I tried to run to her, though I wanted to take her in my arms and spirit her away, my limbs would not move.

Now, she pretended she was to marry. Pushing the cuffs farther up her arms, she smiled at a groom she would never have. She imagined marrying above her station, to a prince, perhaps. Or at least to a count. She glided across the room, chin held high, shoulders pushed excruciatingly far back. She curtseyed to the King and then to the Queen. She danced what she thought was a courante. But after a while, she tired of the game, and she ached with the rigid posture she decided marriage protocol required.

Much better, perhaps, to marry Alexandre, whom she would not have to impress.

She considered returning the cuffs to the chest and searching out her cousin. She even turned and started across the room. But then she stopped.

I knew what would happen next. I did not want to watch it, but I could not close my eyes.

What was it that possessed her? What sort of familiar spirit was it that told her if she held her arms out straight like posts and then rotated them, those cuffs would spin around her wrists faster than the miller’s wheel? And what made her note the lace, when set in motion, looked like the stream in the forest as it flowed over the rocks?

Around and around and around.

Faster and faster and faster.

Until…One of them took flight.

We both watched—she in astonishment, I in dread—as that cuff flew across the room and then skidded to a stop in the fireplace. There was no fire. There would be no fire until later that evening. But there had been fires. Any number of fires over the years had left the hearth a deep and sooty black. The girl approached that place, heart in her mouth, bent down, and plucked the cuff from the dingy gloom.

It was…mostly clean. Except for an area at the edge upon which it had slid through the ashes. There, it had been soiled, the scrollwork thrown into dark relief.

I watched the girl’s chin tremble and her face pucker as she thought of the
maman
who could neither comfort her nor right her mistakes. I also saw the moment when she realized it would do no good at all to cry. She had touched something that did not belong to her. She had gone where she was not supposed to go. Even her dear
maman
would have scolded her. She knew she must not be found out. She must hide the evidence of her sin. If she could do that, then no one would ever know.

I felt her guilt. I knew her panic. How could she rid the lace of its stain?

She tried to rub it along the hem of her skirts, but it succeeded only in smearing the soot’s dark edge. Perhaps…if she cut off the part that had been soiled, then no one would ever know.

No—a thousand times no!

She dropped the cuffs back into the trunk and furtively shut the lid before leaving the room. But she would be back. She would take her shears from her workbasket, she would conceal them in the folds of her skirt, and she would return to the guest’s chamber.

Was there no other way for this dream to end?

There she was. And here she came, padding through the rushes toward the trunk. She lifted the lid. She pulled out the lace. She picked up the shears.

Don’t!

She set the edge of the lace between their sharp, cold, heavy jaws.

No!

Carefully, so carefully, lip caught between her teeth, she cut away the decorative fringe of the pattern, severing the soiled part from the rest. She secreted the evidence in her slipper, hiding it with the sole of her foot, and then she put the rest of the lace back inside the trunk. As she pulled down the lid once more, she was confident no one would learn of her transgression.

But she didn’t know then what I knew now.

She didn’t understand how quickly a life can fray. How a single thread come undone can cause the unraveling of everything else around it.

But that was not the worst of the dream. The worst of it was this: I woke wanting the same thing I had wanted back then. I woke wanting
Maman
. I woke wanting to touch that lace. And I knew if I had it do all over again, I would do the very same thing. The worst was knowing I could not have done anything other than what I did.

•••

The Count of Montreau didn’t care that it was an accident. “She didn’t mean to.” I clung to my cousin Alexandre’s hand as Papa stepped between the count and me.

“I don’t care if she meant to pronounce some magic over it and increase its length threefold!” He leaned around Papa to glare at me as he yelled.

“She’s just a child. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“What she did just cost you two thousand livres.”

“Two thousand! I could buy a second estate with that!”

“That’s the exact amount it took to buy the cuffs. But…” He looked at Papa in a way that made him seem older than his years. “Perhaps I ought to charge you more. When I purchased it, such laces from Flanders were common. Now, all lace is forbidden. It would take twice as much to buy the same length today. If you dared to.”

I held my breath. No one ever dared Papa to do anything.

“I don’t have two thousand livres.”

“I don’t want two thousand. I want four thousand.”

Alexandre was tugging me toward the door. I didn’t want to go. “Come.”

“
Non!
”

Alexandre bent and picked me up. He had never done that before. He had rarely ever touched me. Though he had never been anything but gentle and kind and good, there was something about him that precluded any contact.

Papa had put a hand to the count’s arm. “I don’t have the money. Please. You must understand. I could sell all I own, and still I could not pay you.” He swiped at the beads of sweat that had sprung into relief upon his forehead.

I beat at Alexandre with my fists, but he would not let me go.

“Yes, well, it’s too bad you took part in Chalais’s conspiracy against the King’s chief minister.”

Papa swayed as if the floor had suddenly tilted.

“I know the Duchess of Chevreuse. She was the Marquis of Chalais’s lover. If you’re going to involve yourself in further conspiracies, may I suggest you choose your companions more wisely? If she who helps make the plans does not bother to guard them…? Did you truly think the King would not take offense? Or Richelieu himself would not be troubled?”

Papa was trembling. “I’d thought no one…I had hoped—”

“Truly, it would indeed be too bad if you were brought to the King’s attention. The duchess has fled the country…Chalais is dead…there would be only you to answer for their sins. And make no mistake; Richelieu continues to search for conspirators. That’s why I try always to avoid such plots—they’re so easily scuttled.”

What was a conspiracy? And why should the King himself care? It did not take long for me, a girl who never failed to satisfy her curiosity, to find the answers to all of those questions. And less time still for those answers to change all of our lives.