The Porcelain Dove (24 page)

I heard a low, hoarse murmur from the bed. "François l'oiseleur, bird-man, man-bird. Look hard, yes, hard. . . . Find her, poor child. Oh, look there—
poor
children. So young. So fresh. So . . ."

A cough like the rattling of bones shook her, and M. Berthelemy turned her so she'd not choke on the effluvium. Snatching up a clean basin, I pushed him aside and held it under her mouth.

"Well, girl. 'Tis time you got here," snapped M. Berthelemy in a furious undertone. "Where is all the world? I shouted out the door until I was hoarse, and after a goodly while, was answered by a blackamoor that fled when I addressed it. Tell me, where are the lackeys? Where is M. le duc?"

The doctor's voice was like the ghost of Doucette's barking in my ears—a noise without a trace of substance. I'd removed the basin and tucked another pillow under madame's shoulders before I even understood he'd spoken. "Where is M. le duc?" I repeated. "Did you not hear the beggar?"

"Beggar?" M. Berthelemy's voice rose. "I inquire of ducs and you answer with beggars! What beggar?"

"You slept soundly last night?"

"Bien sûr, I slept soundly—I am in perfect health, me, unlike the inhabitants of Beauxprés. What has my sleeping well or ill to do with M. le duc?"

I opened my mouth to explain and shut it again helplessly. "M. le duc de Malvoeux is in the library," I said at last. "I beg your indulgence, M. le médecin. Ill news came in the night, and the household is disarranged."

"Disarranged? Deranged! Where is this library, girl?"

I looked at Peronel, who was standing at the bed-foot with her knuckles pressed against her mouth. "Peronel, M. Berthelemy wishes to speak with monsieur. Pray have the goodness to lead him to the library."

Peronel's eyes went wide as a frightened horse's before she bobbed an obedient curtsy and trotted out of the room. At the door the physician turned and shook his finger at me.

"My patrons will hear of this, you mark my words. My faith! Beggars!"

"Beggars," echoed madame weakly. "Famine. Pestilence. War. Death."

I leaned over her. Her eyes gazed over my shoulder, filled with tender welcome. I looked behind me to see who might have entered and saw only the flickering shadows cast by the fire brushing the walls with small dark wings. I heard a low twittering. Had madame's lovebirds escaped their cage? Surely lovebirds do not fly in the dark. And lovebirds have no reaching hands, no pain-filled eyes. Lovebirds do not weep.

The room was full of children. I blinked; I shook my head. When I looked again, they were still there, thronging the shadows: nurslings and babes old enough to creep and stand; little girls and boys no bigger than Linotte. They beat the air with beseeching hands, and their cries were like the singing of a thousand nightingales.

"Poor babies," murmured my mistress. "Poor little birds. Yes, yes, I shall stand godmother to all of you, every one. Stop crying now, mes petits, or my heart will break before 'tis done."

She sketched a cross in the air with one shaking finger. "
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritu Sanctu
." She reached into vacancy and groped frantically over the coverlet, searching for I knew not what. When I took her cold hand in mine, she looked at me at last. "What shall I do, Berthe? There's no holy water."

"No, madame." Panic and grief were thick in my throat. "Pompey," I called over my shoulder. "Pompey, come quickly!" And when he appeared in the doorway: "Pompey, run at once for M. le curé, and tell him madame requires last rites. Hurry!"

As though he'd not heard me, Pompey stepped over the threshold into the midst of the ghostly children. A shadow among shadows, he crossed from door to bed, the children parting like a dark mist before him. Between his hands he held a wine glass filled with black liquid.

"Pompey! Bête! Imbécile! Can't you see madame is dying? Go for the curé!"

Solemn and absorbed as a priest at Mass, he came towards the bed step by step until his foot hit the basin of blood, which slopped a little, releasing a salt-sharp perfume. The children stilled their weeping; their presence weighed heavy upon me and heavier still, a rock upon my breast. Madame gripped my fingers.

"The blood will do," she whispered. "Let them approach."

"Their time is not yet, Adèle," said Pompey gently. "Nor thine. Thou hast sworn and blessed them. For now, 'tis enough."

"No."

"Yes." He brushed past me, lifted my mistress upright with one arm behind her shoulders, held the wine glass to her lips. "Drink, Adèle," he said, and to my amazement, my mistress drank what he gave her, sip by sip to the very dregs. He laid her back upon the pillows, then squeezed my arm and nodded towards the antechamber.

I heard the outer door open. A voice—M. Berthelemy's—shouted: "Softly, M. le duc! Softly, I say!"

Pompey scooped up the basin of blood and faded into the shadows.

Monsieur strode into the room. "Pah! What a stink of blood." He jerked back the curtains and, with a great rattle of bolts, threw open first the shutters and then the casement to the cold, clean air.

"Have a care, M. de Malvoeux," wailed M. Berthelemy. "A
draught is of all things the most injurious to the health of an invalid."

Monsieur spun on his heel. "An invalid? You told me my wife was dying, perhaps already dead." He was pale and red-eyed, clothed in a cream silk gown over yellow velvet breeches, with a black nightcap over his shaven poll. Confronting the doctor with his chin in the air and one hand cocked on his hip, he might have been own cousin to the African cranes stalking under the orange trees in the aviary.

"Not dead, but certainly dying. Pray close the window, m'sieur, and call a priest, if you believe in such things. Medical science cannot save her."

"Medical science has killed her."

M. Berthelemy drew himself up as tall as he'd go, which brought his eyes almost level with monsieur's nose. "I'll not bandy insults with a man bereaved," he said. "Neither will I burden a house of mourning with my entertainment. Pray order a carriage for me—or a sleigh, or whatever vehicle may safely hazard these mountain roads in winter. I wish to be in Besançon before nightfall."

"Out," said monsieur.

M. Berthelemy bowed and left.

Rubbing his face wearily, my master came to stand by the bed and looked down upon my mistress. Me, I studied him. He'd a rigid face, not like madame's, which reflected the complexion of her heart and mind like a glass. For all the emotion my master showed, he might have been watching a dull play; and yet I felt an energy of rage and grief in him that might, had he released it, set off a storm of fire. I'd opened my mouth to say something, le bon Dieu knows what, when he frowned and touched my mistress' wrist, then uttered a noise like a bark. Reluctantly, I lowered my eyes to the woman lying between us, and my heart emptied.

As I knew myself mortal clay, I knew that my mistress was dead. She lay among the pillows just as Pompey had left her, her face calm and young, with no furrows of pain to age it untimely. Her cracked lips were parted, their low muttering stilled, and her breast no longer heaved with labored breathing. Was she with the children now, I wondered, comforting them? I'd pray for them too, when I offered my prayers for her soul.

A strand of hair that had escaped the nightcap lay lank across madame's sunken cheek. I smoothed it back gently; she sighed and turned her head into my hand.

Tears welled in my eyes. I looked up at my master, who threw
back his head and laughed. "Alive, by damn! No thanks to our fine M. Berthelemy, who cannot distinguish a sleeping woman from a corpse. I'm minded to pay him half his fee, and let the other half be forfeit to his unseemly haste. But then he would stay to argue, and I've no time for arguments. No time, no time at all, if I'm to find the Porcelain Dove."

And out he went.

Pompey popped his head around the dressing-screen and said, " 'Either the patient will turn up her toes or she'll return your love. I'll stake my reputation as a doctor on it.' " Then he flourished me a bow and began to caper about the room.

I gaped at him. Here I'd been weeping for a tragedy. Had the play been a farce all along? Hastily I stooped to my mistress' mouth to assure myself she breathed. A faint warmth touched my cheek. I stood upright.

"What did you give her?" I asked.

At the open window, Pompey halted his dance in mid-spin to pull the casement shut. "The fresh air smells sweet, but enough's enough: no need to freeze the poor lady's blood."

"Nom de Dieu!" I whispered furiously. "I asked you what you gave her, Pompey."

"Oh, nothing out of the way. Just a glass of red wine laced with three drops of blood from the left ear of a black cat."

"Nothing out of the way! And why did you not bleed this cat before and save madame the torment she's been suffering? Did her coughing amuse you, hein? Was it revenge for wearing a silver collar like a dog and being called ape and baboon? Madame the mother of my mistress was right: you belong in the stables!"

By this time I was trembling in every limb as though madame's fever had leapt from her veins into mine. Sobered, Pompey answered me gently. "I learned of the physick only yesterday, from an old man I met in the Forêt des Enfans."

"Another sorcerer, no doubt," I snapped. "You're a kind of wizard too, aren't you? Tell me, M. le sorcier, what do I smell of now, eh?"

Pompey shrugged. "Grief and peppermint. You are very tired, Berthe. Go to bed, or lie down in the dressing-room. I will watch by madame."

All at once I was on the edge of tears. "I don't understand what's happened here. I'm not even sure I know what's happened. Beggars,
doves, black cats, curses, ghosts: 'tis more than I can bear, Pompey. By Saint Colette and all the angels, 'tis more than I can bear."

To my great astonishment, the boy put his arms around me. To my greater astonishment, I laid my head against his shoulder and wept there as comfortably as if he'd been my own son. He said nothing, did not hum or rock or pat my back, just stood and held me until my sobs grew less. Then he released me and went to madame's bedside.

How present and near that scene is: as present as the books and tables of this library, as near as the cramp in my hand, or as Colette, reading with her dark head inclined towards the page and her dark eyes blind with concentration. Watching her, 'tis hard to credit that she was one of those same ghostly children I have just described.

What does she recall of that scene, I wonder? Did she take comfort from madame's blessing? Did she rejoice at monsieur's ravings? Did madame's return to life enrage her vengeful soul? Did she observe these things to remember them, or was she insensible to all save her own animating pain? I feel it is indecorous to ask her outright. Yet I long to know what memories we share; if among them is this vision of Adèle asleep, her wasted hands and face bone-white against her pillows, and my lost Pompey watching tenderly over her, still and precious as an ebony statue.

I slept for a day and a night. When I woke the second morning, much restored, I sent for Peronel to help me change my garments from the skin outwards and brush out my lank hair with flour. She was agog to talk over M. Berthelemy's sudden departure and madame's no less sudden return from the foothills of death. I fear she had no joy of me, for I had as little to say as I had much to think on.

In the sober light of a new day, I found I could not believe in magic. I know better now, bien sûr—I know many things I didn't know when I was young and pig-headed and reasonable. Then, I discovered twenty explanations for my vision of the ghostly children —lack of sleep, fear for madame, the close, fetid air of the sickroom —all of them very, very reasonable. As for Pompey's tincture of cat's blood, madame's fever had run its course, and 'twas surely chance that caused it to break just when he gave her to drink.

And the beggar? Well, the beggar remained. Pig-headed as I may have been, I could believe in one sorcerer, particularly when I'd seen him twice.

Of a surety monsieur believed in him. Like St. Paul upon the road to Damascus, his eyes had been dazzled by faith, and he lived by the beggar's gospel from that day forth. Oh, he called it scientific curiosity and common prudence, but you may trust me 'twas nothing of the kind. Is it prudence to send a groom posthaste to Marseilles in the middle of February when the roads are deep in snow over treacherous ice? Is it prudence to offer a reward of ten thousand livres for the capture of a single bird? Of course not. Nor is it any kind of science to consult a pie of prophesying birds and a homunculus in a glass jar about where that bird might be found. Yet while he waited for Jean to fetch his most favored bird-hunters from Marseilles, monsieur did both. I can't remember whether I was surprised or not when Artide told me that the birds had refused to prophesy. As for the homunculus, although monsieur fed it the bloody heart of a black hen, all it did was laugh and laugh until he shut up its jar again.

A week passed, then another. Madame grew a very little stronger. Monsieur sent lackeys scuttling upstairs and down to gather this thing and that from the collections of Maindurs long turned to dust: sextants, celestial globes, an orrery, obscure charts of the seven seas, books of natural philosophy and travel and venery—anything, in short, that might help find a Porcelain Dove. He arranged these things in the library in orderly rows and waited impatiently for the bird-hunters.

There were three of them, the best that money could buy, celebrated throughout France and Spain for their tight nets and their clever traps. Guided by Jean, they arrived in the teeth of a storm, cloaked in snow and shod in ice and mud. Monsieur embraced them in greeting like brothers and drew them into the library before they'd even had time to put off their soaked garments. And in the library they remained, mysterious as wizards, while those of us who had no call to wait upon them took turns squinting at them through the keyhole.

I was among the squinters, I do confess it, and remember thinking the bird-hunters monstrous villainous types. Pompey told me they smelled of sea wind and pride, which made me laugh and answer that I imagined them more likely to smell of horse dung and tobacco. Yet I understood what he meant. Monsieur's bird-hunters cared not a pinch of snuff for M. le duc de Malvoeux and his sixteen quarterings. They didn't even really care for birds, only for hunting them. They spat upon the Aubusson and cocked their mucky boots upon the inlaid tables. They emptied their pipes into their half-eaten food and their
bladders into a Sèvres vase. They had only contempt for science, philosophy, beauty, and wealth.