The Porcelain Dove (17 page)

And then, when she was fourteen or fifteen to look at, four hundred years dead and fifty years resurrected, she brought Adèle a play she'd written—a foolish scrap not two scenes long, cobbled together from an old hearth-tale of a peasant girl and a frog. Adèle read it through with cries of delight at the cleverness of it, praising Colette for having thought of it, for having invented, all out of her own head, such clever words for a frog and a peasant girl and her mother to say to each other.

"We must act it at once," said Adèle. "I shall be the mother, you, Colette, shall be the peasant girl, and Jean shall be the frog."

That was the beginning of Colette's plays. They've grown with her learning and ambitions, throwing out new characters and plots and conceits as saplings throw out shoots, and our skills have grown to accommodate them. I am dresser to our little troupe, which rôle tests my ingenuity more than a little. For Jean will not play women nor Adèle men, and so Colette plays both, wearing breeches under her petticoats as confidante or soubrette and stays under her jacket as messenger or young lover.

Justin too is content, or at least as content as his nature will allow. Beauxprés is for him a hermitage, an antechamber to Purgatory, and mightily does he labor to purify his soul. Each day he reads his daily offices, tends the enchanted garden, performs his rituals of meditation and contrition. By my reckoning, he's achieved about two-thirds of sainthood: his faith in the grace of le bon Dieu and the rule of St. Benedict is as unshakable as his hope of one day winning to a less earthly Paradise. Charity, though—he's somewhat lacking in that. Within the last few years, however, he's begun to watch Colette's plays with me, and has even consented to hold the book and hear his mother's lines. Of late, I have seen him smile at one of Colette's jeux d'esprit. I begin to have hopes of Justin.

And M. Léon—is he content, I wonder? He has what he wished for, just as we all do. Yet once in twenty years or so I see him at his chamber window, looking out over the enchanted garden, his face sharp and sour. Envy, it looks like, tempered with pride and wrath. His other look is lust, wet-lipped and leaden-eyed. When that gaze by chance lights on me, my skin crawls and shrinks as from a leper's touch. Haunted by the specters of Léon in his tower and M. le duc in his aviary, how can I be wholly content?

Jean, who is as sensible as any man could be after two hundred years in cloud-cuckoo land, Jean thinks me a great fool. He's said so, often and often. And now that I am writing this history, he thinks me a greater fool for setting my foolishness down where anyone may read it. Colette has asked for a history of Beauxprés, he says, hot a sermon. And I answer that this sermon is part of the history of Beauxprés, and Colette wants to hear everything, doesn't she? And Colette, who is reading in the garden, leans in the window and laughs and agrees that she wants to hear everything, so long as 'tis true. Jean sighs and mutters
about some things being more important than others, and why do I ask his advice when I've no intention of taking it?

To tell true, I wonder myself why I have asked Jean for his opinion, for to this point, he's done little but complain. I must learn to consider my audience, he says, and not simply my own tastes. I am writing for Colette. Bon. I must ask myself whether a maid, even a sorcerer maid, will find anything of interest in birds and birthing pangs. Youth, he says, craves excitement. What about the time monsieur went hunting with the king, and that quarrel between Saint-Cloud and Dentelle that ended with Saint-Cloud kicking the little valet ass over ears down the stairs? Now that's the stuff they like to hear, he says. And why have I left out monsieur's friendship with Mme la présidente de Baudeville that drove my mistress frantic with jealousy until she realized 'twas the lady's birds her husband lusted after and not the lady at all? At times I've been tempted to dump paper, pen, and ink in Jean's lap and tell him to write it himself, he who has never met Saint-Cloud or Mme la présidente, nor even so much as seen Paris. But Jean can neither read or write, and so is safe in his role of critic.

Now that I've come to the events he himself witnessed, he carps worse than ever. Tell about Marie and the beggar woman, he commands me. That is sure to make Colette's ghostly heart race. And surely she'll want to hear how I found the chests in the old donjon. Do I intend to leave out the magic altogether? Has all my reading taught me nothing of the art of telling stories?

"She'll be bored witless," he says, shaking his finger under my nose. "Mark my words, old woman. Tell the full tale of Beauxprés, and thou'lt be so long in the telling that le bon Dieu Himself would lack the patience to hear thee out."

Well.

Neither Jean nor Colette need fear an endless catalogue of gowns and balls and small domestic occurrences. To be honest, even the mnemonic powers of a magic inkpot cannot redeem from oblivion every event that befell us between 1765 and 1776.

To be sure, a great deal happened in those years. The library contains a dozen accounts of those events—the dauphin's marriage in 1770, for example, and the death of the old king in 1774—events, which though great in themselves, affected our lives not one whit. Parliaments might be dissolved and their members sent into exile, new taxes might be assessed and new alliances made, new ministers might
rise and fall like comets, and the duc and duchesse de Malvoeux would continue to amuse themselves as always with their birds and their journeys and their evening entertainments. In Paris, the hôtel Malvoeux was bright with company. In Beauxprés, the seasons turned peacefully in their appointed rounds and the peasants paid their tithes without excessive complaint. Mme Pyanet had a son, her sister-in-law the in-keeper's wife died of a fever, Artide's mother became one of the village grannies. Monsieur sponsored a birding expedition to India that netted him a live pair of secretary birds, a clutch of eggs taken from the nest of a bird-of-paradise, and any number of honey-bird skins. Maidservants married; lackeys moved on to positions in Dijon and Besançon.

One incident I do recall is that Jean mentioned of the beggar woman, and to please him, I will recount it here, although I cannot imagine what Colette will make of it.

'Twas before the birth of Mlle Linotte, I'm sure, in chilly weather—say the autumn of 1771, then. Madame had had a sudden yearning for a tisane or a bowl of milk—pregnancy always made her monstrously thirsty—and sent me down to the kitchen to fetch it.

In the general way, the kitchen was quiet after dinner, with M. Malesherbes off in his closet pondering new dishes and the kitchen-boys off gaming or sleeping or flirting with the village girls or whatever it is kitchen-boys do when not turning spits. That day it swarmed with craning, pushing domestics, above whose jabbering I could hear a woman's hysterical whooping.

The woman was Marie. She was half-lying on the settle, drumming her feet and clawing at her hair like a madwoman while Jean knelt before her, swearing and grasping helplessly for her hands. I leaned over his shoulder and slapped her smartly across the cheek, whereupon she stopped whooping.

Jean launched himself at me, snarling.

"Peace, Jean," said M. Malesherbes, whom I'd not seen enter. "If Berthe'd not boxed her ears, I'd have done as much myself. Artide, brandy. Finette, a measure of sugar in the pot, and stir up the fire a bit. Jean, sit. The rest of you—out!"

Well, I knew he couldn't be addressing me, so I sat down by Marie and gave her a corner of my apron to wipe her eyes upon. Her own was liberally caked with what looked (and smelled) like dung. Straws peeked here and there from her clothes, her hair crept down her neck in raveled hanks, her bodice was half-laced, her smock was
awry, and all in all, she looked like a girl who's been tumbled in a horse-stall. Jean looked no better, with a button torn from his breeches and horse dung smeared across his face.

"Well?" said Malesherbes. "What happened?"

Marie sniffled and gulped. Jean picked dung from his cheek and stared glumly at Finette, who was excitedly rattling pokers and pothooks.

Malesherbes sighed. "I presume 'twas not rape, or you, Jean, would be halfway to Champagnole by now."

"Oh, no," said Marie, tucking up her hair with trembling fingers. " 'Twas nothing like
that
! I wouldn't have been in the stable at all, only I needed fresh horse piss—for bleaching madame's sheets, you know—and Jean most kindly offered to help me get it."

"Yes, that's it," said Jean eagerly. "Horse piss. So there we were in Thunderer's stall with a bucket, waiting for him to oblige, and talking of this and that, passing the time. You can't rush a horse even when he's been recently watered, which is why I picked Thunderer in the first place, as well as him having the largest stall, where there's plenty of room for two people to stand without crowding and scaring the horse, like as not, when there's no telling what he'll do, but nothing to the purpose, you can be sure. . . . "

"Bon." Malesherbes stood up. "I'll not waste time or brandy on a tale of a cock and a horse. Either you, like the horse, produce something to the purpose, or come along with me to Philiberte Malateste and explain to him how you use his horse-stalls."

Although Jean's mouth worked comically, I was not tempted to laugh. Well, consider. Here my friend's been playing pluck-my-harp with an undergroom, and me with no hint of a liaison until this very moment. The silly cow! Although he was mère Malateste's son, Philiberte Malateste was a famous prude who'd often sacked grooms without pay and without a letter of character, only upon suspicion of fornication. Should Malesherbes make good his threat, 'twould be the road for Jean and the street for Marie, with branding or the galleys and an early grave for them both at the end of it all.

Marie, very white, looked up at Malesherbes and said with dignity, "We were in Thunderer's stall, M. Malesherbes, just as Jean told you. And we were . . . much employed."

"No doubt," said the chef dryly; but he sat down again. Artide came in with the brandy and Finette heated up enough brandy-and-sugar for six. We sipped and sighed; the lovers began to breathe easier.

"Well?" M. Malesherbes repeated.

"Thunderer's stall's at the back of the stable," said Jean sullenly. "All the doors were closed—why, I'd closed them myself. That's what got my attention: hearing the midden door creak, loud and slow, like someone didn't know 'tis noisy unless you throw it open smartly. I don't mind saying it startled me more than somewhat."

"I'll wager it did," murmured Artide, but Jean did not so much as glance at him.

"I knew it had to be a stranger, or he'd have known about the door, and what stranger'd be sneaking into monsieur's stables save a horse thief? 'Twas the work of a moment to take up the hay-fork and prepare to defend monsieur's horses with my life. I threw open the stall. The stable was empty. No, there by the door, a stranger. I lifted the pitchfork and advanced. Then the stranger stepped forward into the light, and I saw 'twas only a beggar woman, bony as a rat and worse clad, clutching a bundle of filthy rags to her bosom and dangling a half-dozen bare-arsed brats from her skirts. Naturally, I told her to fuck off. She said nothing, only fumbled about in her skirts and brought out a bit of paper so grubby I couldn't have read it even if I
could
read it, which I can't. I told her as much, and recommended her to get herself and her ditch-got bastards out of monsieur's stable. Marie, a true daughter of Eve, came up to look. When she saw her, the woman began to make odd noises and pushed me aside to get to her."

"It was disgusting," Marie wailed. "She was like a skeleton, fevered, I'm sure, and she kept shoving her paper and her bundle of rags at me, babbling all the while. I took the rags—why, she thrust them in my arms." Remembering, Marie threw her filthy apron over her head. "It was a baby, M. Malesherbes—a dead baby. Long dead."

Finette gasped. Artide frowned and shook his head. I felt a sympathetic thrill of horror chill my bones, so that I shivered and gulped hot brandy to warm them.

"A terrible thing," said M. Malesherbes solemnly, "and no less terrible for being common. The poor woman was clearly mad."

Finette gave an impatient bounce like a child listening to a conte des fées. "What happened then?"

Poor Marie being by now reduced to weeping and hugging herself, Jean took up the tale. "Marie screamed and dropped the thing as if it'd bit her, and then it was like all the devils had taken a holiday from Hell. The woman screeched—I could see she'd had her tongue clipped—and the brats too, and they went for us like rats. They
knocked Marie flat on the straw, and 'tis a wonder Thunderer didn't step on her, all nervous and dancing about as he was. He did step on a child, kicked one or two more, and caught the madwoman a shrewd nip on her arm that cleared her out at last. Marie began to howl. I bundled her out of the stall, calmed Thunderer, threw a blanket over him and gave him a mouthful of grain. Then I tried to calm Marie, failing which, I brought her here."

"So what became of the baby?" asked Finette.

Jean shrugged. "Trampled? Retrieved by its mother? Who knows. There's naught in the stall save a few rags and a bone or two, but 'twas only bone and rags and a bit of hair to begin with."

"And the woman? What of her?" M. Malesherbes' voice was dangerously smooth. "Don't tell me; let me guess. You said nothing to Malateste or Jacques Ministre, but left a diseased, insane vagrant to run loose through Beauxprés, wreaking havoc and shedding children like fleas. Even now, those very children could be stealing sheets from the drying-yard or wheat from the granary, and not a soul to stop them. Have you not heard of the brigand Hulin, who sends his trollops on before as scouts? What in the name of all the saints at once were you thinking of, eh?"

For some minutes Artide had been tapping his foot and scowling. "A scout for Hulin?" he burst out now. "Quelle bêtise! Hulin is leagues from here, in the Beauce. Furthermore, if that paper is a passport, she's no more than an honest woman fallen on hard times. In any case, 'tis only Christian charity to give her bread."