The Porcelain Dove (21 page)

So Jean went to the library, reluctant but obedient, and scratched politely at the door. Monsieur himself opened it, wearing such a look as would curdle a man's blood like milk, vastly displeased that the impudent beggar of whom his son had told him had not been pursued and brought to justice. Leaning over a desk, his nose thrust forward and his eyes glittering, monsieur had informed Jean of his laziness and his cowardice and his striking personal resemblance to a turkey-vulture. Jean, recounting the scene, had added that monsieur had looked uncommonly like a bird himself, although Jean did not pretend to know exactly which one.

"He wasn't sacked, though," said Marie thoughtfully, "and he
wasn't thrashed, and
that's
a riddle, if you will, given monsieur's temper and all. Such a fuss about a beggar, and he didn't even
do
anything, not like that horrible woman and her baby, do you remember, all those years ago?"

I exclaimed properly, but kept my own counsel on the subject of beggars and the past. Yes, I recognized my beggar in Jean's beggar, and yes, I fretted over it. Even in an Age of Reason some ancient rules hold true. "That's twice" promises "That's thrice" as a round apron promises a new mouth to feed by and by. However, I couldn't prevent the beggar's return by revealing that I'd seen him too, and such a revelation would bring up my having hidden it at the time: all in all, it hardly seemed worthwhile to mention it. So I held my peace and waited for the third time to wind up the charm.

I waited four months. The first month I looked about me constantly; the second and third, less often. By October, I was on the way to forgetting the entire incident. And then one chill November morning, monsieur burst into the China antechamber carrying Linotte in his arms, dropped the child into madame's lap, and stalked out again without a word.

Linotte was whooping and sobbing like a mad thing. "No hawks, no, no, no," she wailed, and my heart turned over in my breast. Pompey hummed soothingly, I chafed her hands with cologne to draw the heat from her brain, and still she sobbed and sobbed until madame began to weep in sympathy. I was nigh beside myself between them when Artide entered, as swollen with importance as the frog in the fable.

"Madame's servants are summoned to the forecourt," he announced shortly. "We are all summoned, from LeRoi to the bird-boy. Monsieur has a thing of the greatest importance to convey to us, and the stocks await any who absents himself."

"You'll be of no use in the stocks," said madame, wiping her eyes. "Go, go, both of you."

So Pompey and I hurried off to the forecourt to take our places among the uneasy throng of grooms, bird-handlers, gardeners, lackeys, cooks, laundry-maids, porters, and servingmaids already gathered around the fountain of Latona.

Pale as death, his wig askew, monsieur emerged from the front door and advanced to the top of the steps. He clutched the hilt of a sword under his cloak and declaimed the following in a pinched, harsh voice:

"If any one among you should see an elderly beggar-man, a cripple with a black staff, possessing peculiar yellow eyes and wearing a black cloak he's obviously stolen from a gentleman—if any one of you should find such a vagabond in the seigneury of Beauxprés, then he is to bring him without delay before M. le duc de Malvoeux. Furthermore, if M. le duc were to hear that any one of you have failed to bring this felon to judgment, he will consider that ingrate the felon's accomplice or familiar, and use him accordingly."

Then he stalked back into the château and we scattered, each one cursing the duc or blessing himself as the fancy took him.

Pompey and I returned to our mistress to find Linotte asleep upon her knee and madame herself aglow with triumphant motherhood and in no need of either our help or our company. Annoyingly, Pompey retreated to his closet with a volume of Mme d'Aulnoy, forcing me to go in search of someone else to talk to.

The laundry was empty and, as far as I was concerned, the kitchen also; for I was not on gossiping terms with the sous-chef grumpily directing two kitchen-boys in the preparation of dinner. The occasion of his ill-temper was not far to seek: all the world had decamped, leaving him alone with no one to help him save two idiots who'd as soon drool into the soup as stir it, and what did I make of the scene in the courtyard, hein? I shrugged and exclaimed sympathetically and hurried out.

All the world—or that part of the world in the service of the duc de Malvoeux—was at the inn, of course. If decorum forbade the discussion of monsieur's peculiarities under monsieur's own roof, where else could they find a fire, wine, and reasonable privacy? 'Twas their good fortune that this was not a market day, when the place was packed to the walls with belligerent peasants. No sensible domestic would risk his head in Yves Pyanet's inn on a market day. No sensible servingmaid would risk her virtue there any day of the week, though it was not uncommon for the village women to take a mug of mulled wine there with their husbands of a Sunday after Mass. I'd gone in once with Mme Pyanet and her husband Estienne: once, and never again. The chimney smoked villainously, the food wasn't fit for pigs, and the wine would've burned your gullet raw had Yves Pyanet not watered it down to nothing.

Hesitantly, I pushed open the door and slipped into a thick fetor made up of equal parts of raw wine, turned cheese, damp smoke, and filth. Through the gloom, I made out a crowd gathered around the
fire, ten or so men, I thought, and a few women, looking as uncomfortable as the subject that had brought them there.

"Ah, Mlle Duvet," said Yves Pyanet. "You were expected. Right devil's Mass it is, and no mistake. Wine?"

I shrugged acceptance and picked my way through the maze of crazy benches towards the crowd. A devil's Mass? Why, the only devils present that I could see were Menée LeRoi and mère Boudin. Surely Philiberte Malateste considered himself a God-fearing soul, and the rest of the company were no more wicked than any child of Adam. Artide, Jean, and Pierre Arroseur the head gardener looked very much at home, as indeed they ought, having been drunk in that tavern every Sunday since they'd been weaned. M. Malesherbes' lip was drawn up with disgust, and Jacques Ministre's eyes dwelt uneasily on the baker Estienne Pyanet, who was the host's brother and the only villager present besides père Boudin—who, living off his wife's milk, hardly counted for a man—and the host himself.

"M. le duc de Malvoeux is a fair master," Menée was saying. "But once he stands to a thing, he's harder to shift than a bull at stud."

He gave the pretty girl on his knee a lewd wink and held his cup to her lips. She sipped, sputtering when he tipped the cup too far.

Marie beckoned me to sit beside her. "LeRoi's new hobby-horse," she hissed in my ear. "Peronel Mareschal. A week in the laundry, and she still don't know a sleeve-ruffle from a fichu. She's well-shaped, though. I'll give her that."

I wasn't interested in Menée's little friends. "That was a fine scene monsieur played us in the court this morning, eh, Jacques Ministre?"

The steward sighed. "I was just telling friend Pyanet, here, that old man's likely to get a short shrift and a shorter rope should he show his face again."

"Not only the old man." Pierre Arroseur took a pull of wine and made a wry face. "Anyone shelters him'll hang alongside 'till the pair on 'em drop from the tree like rotted plums."

"Ah," said Jean boldly. "But who'd protect such a one as that? A sorcerer, beyond doubt, who's sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for unclean powers."

"What do you know of it?" demanded Malateste. "Beware how you boast, boy, and remember that bearing false witness is as great a sin as fornication."

Jean looked pained. "By my hope of salvation, M. Malateste, my witness is true. For I, Jean who speaks to you, was present when this
very demon threatened the lives of the vicomte de Montplaisir and his noble brother."

"Noble, my ass," mumbled mère Boudin. "The boy's a milksop, wouldn't say boo to a goose. Wets himself when I look at him cross-eyed."

"I don't doubt it, ma mère," said Jean, and took a gulp of his wine to give her time to think about it. We all laughed, père Boudin like a maniac until his wife clipped him over the ear with her cup. Then he moaned while Menée bellowed for silence, after which Jean began his tale.

"Mesdames, messires, this was the way of it. We're in the cornfield, out after rabbits, y'see, when all of a sudden, this sorcerer comes out of the corn, cloaked in a thunder-cloud and shooting fire from his goatish yellow eyes. The young sieur challenges him, whereupon the sorcerer curses to sear the air and spits a flaming gobbet like a dragon. The spit withered the grass it landed on, and left a bare spot where nothing grows. You can see exactly where he stood, too—the earth's gone gray. Anyway, the horses shied like nuns passing a whorehouse, and the dogs tucked their tails between their legs and whined like—like M. Justin." There was a little laughter, but Jean only shrugged and went on. "I cannot blame any of them, me, for I myself was so afraid that every single hair upon my body stood up at attention."

Menée made a sly remark that caused Peronel to giggle and blush. Malateste clicked his tongue like an old biddy hen, and M. Malesherbes said primly, "I thought you dragged me down to this midden to parley, Menée, not to wallow in bawdry."

Estienne Pyanet stirred upon his bench and opened his mouth, no doubt to object to the chef de cuisine's description of his brother's inn.

"Even so," said Jacques Ministre hurriedly. "Let us return to our muttons."

We all sat in silence, and then I said, "Jean's beggar appeared three months ago. What inspired monsieur to speak of him today?"

Pierre Arroseur cleared his throat. "I were pruning the espaliered apricots," he said, and stopped.

"Go on, grandpère," said Menée. "Spit the dirt from thy mouth and speak up."

Like all gardeners (at least like all gardeners I've ever seen), Pierre Arroseur is as brown and wrinkled as a tree and only a little more
conversable. He mumbled his lips, rubbed his crack-nailed hands against his culottes, and sighed deeply. "Monsieur went out with the little lass, then came back through the pergola carrying her," he said at last.

"Yes," said Jean. "But what happened between the time he went out and the time he returned?"

Pierre Arroseur shrugged.

"He met the beggar, of course," I said, having long since lost patience. "And we'll never know what passed between them, not if we sit here until our bellies rot and our bottoms grow into the benches. The question, it seems to me, is what it all
means
."

"Sorcery," said Malateste.

"Buggery," said Menée. "No one sells his soul to the Devil nowadays—y' don't get enough for it. What else?"

"Poverty," said Artide, so loud that we all started. He'd been brooding over his sour wine, his brows a brooding knot over his eyes. "Hunger is what it means, and injustice."

Pyanet banged his tankard on the bench. "Desmoulins has got the right on it, livery or no. Since they brought back the corvée in '76, we've known what to expect from the likes of the seigneur, and 'tis all of a piece, I tell you, all of a piece."

"Aye," said Artide. "When the duc de Malvoeux hunts down a starving cripple, 'tis not to feed him and give him a place by the fire, you can be sure of that."

"Softly, Desmoulins," said Philiberte Malateste. "Remember that the duc de Malvoeux feeds you."

Artide glared at him so fiercely that a fight seemed inevitable until Peronel burst out, "My grandam said," and threw her apron over her head like a duck dabbling for weed.

"Speak up, little cabbage," said Jacques Ministre. "What said thy grandmother?" We all encouraged her, and Menée pulled the apron down from her face and held her hands so that she couldn't replace it. Finally she realized that she'd get no peace until she spoke.

"My grandam was laundress in the days of M. le duc's grandsire, he who liked fans. Anyway, once grandam was approached by a beggar in the lane between the château and the village, and she sent him about his business—as well she should, he being toothless and sore-ridden and plague-ridden too, like as not, for that was in '20, you know, when the plague came to Marseilles."

"Thy grandam," said M. Malesherbes between his teeth.

"Very well. Grandam said she'd sent the beggar away with a flea in his ear, and was walking on her way when she was stopped by the duc on his brown horse. 'And what was that man I saw thee a-talking with, my dear?' says he, and 'a beggar-man,' says she, and 'dids't thou give him alms?' says he, and 'no,' says she, thinking the answer please him. Well. Down with his riding whip across her shoulders and a look on his face, said grandam, like there was a hound of Hell at his horse's feet and not my grandam at all. So she screams and cries for mercy, and he draws back the whip and wipes his face with his kerchief and says that no beggar is ever to be turned from his door, but fed and warmed and offered whatever'd please him."

Philiberte Malateste nodded heavily. "My mother once told me a like tale concerning monsieur's father. Louis-Alexandre François Guillaume Maindur de Malvoeux was a godly man, a saint among men. 'Tis said that he wept when his carriage ran down a peasant's child and gave the father a whole livre in compensation."

"The old duc," said Pierre Arroseur suddenly. "The old duc was a great man for plants." He sighed again, a sigh of such longing as Adam might have sighed when he held little Cain and Abel on his knee and told them tales of Eden. "Ranunculus," he said. "Tulips."

"There," said Jacques Ministre. "Perhaps, Artide, monsieur means well by this beggar after all."

"Buggery!" Menée blew his nose into the fire. "I'm with friend Desmoulins here: our duc means to hang him, even if the old cow-skin's the prince of sorcerers in disguise."

Mère Boudin sat up very straight. "Happen he is. The Forêt des Enfans is thick with fairies and spirits still. Why not a sorcerer? Happen he's kin to that ogre lived there once, who ate his way through six villages—the one our own Jorre Maindur cut into pieces four hundred years since."