The Porcelain Dove (28 page)

'Twas spleen made me rant thus. Yet Pompey agreed that the young man stank of self-love. One day he came to me with his mouth primmed up as though he'd eaten alum.

"This is the chevalier's latest gift." He held out a box—silver filigree, with the inevitable slip of parchment tucked under its amber latch.

I shrugged. " 'Tis pretty enough."

He slipped the parchment free, unfolded it, and declaimed aloud:

"'
While my love from me is parted
,

Cruel hours, swiftly flow.
But, that time's law be not flouted,
When I'm with her, journey slow
.' "

"No worse than usual," I said. "What has upset you so?"

Gingerly, Pompey opened the box, revealing two dead spiders on a bed of salt.

I poked one of the little corpses curiously; a threadlike leg broke off. "What grotesquerie," I said. "What could he mean by it?"

"I asked the same of Mme Réverdil's coachman, who informed me that the haut monde has contrived a language of flowers and objects for the purpose of sentimental communication. In that language, salt signifies 'I love you night and day.' "

"And the spiders?"

"'I love you until death.' Dear Berthe," he said, shutting up the little coffin. "I am sorry for thy pain."

I did not know whether to rage or to weep. So I pulled his woolly hair and sent him away.

'Tis clear enough, I suppose, why my memory of that sojourn in Lausanne remains so sharp when other, happier journeys have faded like watercolors in the sun. Jean laughs when I swear that I've forgiven madame her chevalier, and speak of him only in illustration of the change that came over her after the beggar's curse. I'm still angry, he says, like the beggar himself, cherishing my grudge through more than two hundred years, and for nothing more grave than a few silly gifts, some bad verses, a kiss or two, perhaps a brief embrace. I record his opinion because I've sworn to be honest: Colette must judge which of us is right. And while she's judging, she should take into account how strangely madame's children comported themselves in Lausanne. For 'tis my opinion that the family de Malvoeux took advantage of the absence of monsieur to step one by one upon the stage and, like the persons of a harlequinade, declare their characters and their destined rôles: Coquette, Rake, Monk, Sorcerer Maid.

M. Léon, of course, was the Rake, although his dissipations were limited by his tender years. He bought himself an arbalest, with which he shot at every cat, dog, and goat unlucky enough to cross his path until mère Boudin took it from him. Then he took to disappearing for hours at a time, walking, he said, exploring the beauties of the natural world. Entranced with this evidence of her son's sensibility, madame never questioned his absences, and we'd never have known what he was really getting up to had not Linotte run into the garden one midsummer's day to tell us that Léon was fighting with Bernarde in the laundry.

"Bernarde?" asked madame blankly.

"The goat-girl, madame," I answered her, and on the instant, madame started up and ran towards the house. Scattering her silks, I hurried after, calling for mère Boudin to come and remove Linotte, who was trotting curiously behind.

We all reached the laundry at once—Boudin, Linotte, and I—ten steps behind madame, who was clutching the lower half of the door and staring in through the open top. I caught Linotte and thrust her, protesting loudly, into Boudin's arms, then looked over my mistress' shoulder into the laundry.

I scorn to soil this paper describing what I saw. All I'll say is that Marie was wrong. Child as he was, the vicomte was able to do a man's work. As for how he chose to address his mistress, I can only conclude that he'd learned his technique from her goats.

"Oh, my son," moaned madame. "What will monsieur your father say?"

At the sound of his mother's voice, the vicomte started and groaned, and Bernarde gave a great shriek and buried her head in a tumble of sheets. Madame flung her arm across her eyes. The vicomte disengaged himself, did up his clothes, and floundered out of his nest of linens. His cheeks were scarlet with exertion; his expression was half-proud, half-sullen, and wholly unrepentant. Bernarde turned over onto her back, pulled down her skirts, and howled.

Madame lowered her arm. "Slattern!" she cried. "Putain! To seduce an innocent child!"

Bernarde commenced to wring her hands so hard I thought she'd wrest them from her wrists. M. Léon laughed aloud. "Ah, ma mère," he said. "You must not call my Bernarde hard names. For all of me, she's a virgin yet. And as for being a whore, why, I offered to give her five livres towards her dowry, but she'd not take a sou."

Well, that put the cat among the pigeons and no mistake. Such a weeping and a calling upon the saints and a praying for death to end her torments I'd not witnessed since Boudin had felt a swelling in her armpit and imagined it the plague. The vicomte soon had cause to repent his sauciness if not his lechery, for within two days, he was on the road back to Beauxprés, chaperoned by two stalwart Swiss grooms and the comte Réverdil's own secretary.

'Twas mère Boudin had the last word about M. Léon. "Boys'll be boys," she said as we packed his clothes. "The less fuss made about such games, the sooner he'll forget 'em. All that shrieking and moaning's more like to set him on than put him off, if you take my meaning." She lowered her voice confidentially. " 'Tis not as though the slut can charge him with a bastard, come March. Mère Languelonge salved Bernarde's back when her da thrashed her, and mère Languelonge told me that Bernarde had told
her
that the vicomte knew all sorts of pretty tricks. She'd not catch a round belly from any of 'em, she said, though to be sure 'twas a little painful at first. Ah, he's a fine lad, the vicomte de Montplaisir. A Maindur to the bones."

After that, things grew quieter for a while. Madame announced her intention of devoting herself to her children's education and received the chevalier less often, and more coolly, than she had. Whenever she was at home, she required Linotte and Justin to attend her, though she hardly knew what to do with them or how to instruct them,
or, indeed, what to instruct them in. She was so awkward in their company, so intolerant of Justin's inattention and Linotte's restlessness, and so snappish when they questioned her, that I was almost relieved when the chevalier, in a brilliant change of tactics, began paying court to her through them.

Suddenly when he called, 'twas for Linotte and Justin he asked, and spent his calls in finding out their studies and their plays. When Justin admitted sulkily that he liked Latin, the chevalier gave the boy a volume of Catullus and lectured him on the essential purity of passionate love while madame sat by listening with her embroidery in her lap and the tears standing in her black eyes. Then he teased from Linotte the information that she liked birds, and next day brought her a mechanical nightingale made of silver-gilt and studded with bits of colored glass masquerading as sapphires and rubies. It sang only one song, but it sang it very beautifully and glittered blindingly all the while. Linotte stared at it open-mouthed while it chirred and twitched, and when called upon to thank him for it, silently hid her head in the beribboned billows of madame's skirts.

The chevalier contemplated the pretty picture they made together in a kind of rapture. "Petite précieuse," he exclaimed fondly. "I beg you not to scold her, madame. Her wonder is thanks enough. See how she peeps at me, the darling! The image of her beautiful mother."

"Ah, chevalier, I protest you flatter me. I am no more than an ordinary woman, whose growing children announce her own advancing years."

"Never say so, my jewel. Aphrodite, too, was a mother. Like her, you will never age, but remain a goddess of love and beauty when your daughter is faded and gray."

Madame smiled and stroked Linotte's silky black curls. "Do you wish on me an early death, then, chevalier?"

"O madame," he cried and fell to his knees beside her. "Eternal life! Eternal happiness! Your beauty and virtue deserve nothing less."

"Silly boy," said madame tenderly. "Linotte, my love, do thou take thy pretty bird and show it to thy brother. Here, 'tis heavy for thee; Berthe will carry it, will you not, Berthe? And, Berthe, you may stay within and mend the vive bergère gown."

You may imagine that I listened to this exchange with something less than perfect joy. Indeed, I sat locked in a rage so profound 'twas almost calm. Had madame required an answer of me, I'd certainly have thrown the workbasket at her or smashed the nightingale to bits.
As she did not, I only heaved the ugly thing into my arms and stalked off with it, stiff as clockwork and as cold about the heart. That was the first time she'd been alone with him.

Next morning, madame received an invitation from Mme de Charrière for a pique-nique at her chalet, an intimate affair of ten or twenty old friends in honor of the chevalier de Faraud's coming of age. He'd particularly requested that Mme la duchesse bring her two enchanting children on the outing.

As I dressed her, madame plotted nervously. "You'll come to look after the children, Berthe, for mère Boudin is quite impossible and it won't do to have them underfoot all day. They cannot be left behind, for the chevalier has said that he particularly wishes to see me with Linotte in an alpine meadow gathering flowering grasses, like Demeter and Persephone. 'Tis a pretty conceit, is it not? The chevalier is such a dear boy." She smiled at her reflection and tilted her chin to a more becoming angle.

"I shall wear the painted silk caraco, and the English hat trimmed with roses. Pink stockings, I think—the ones clocked with flowers will do—and the rose satin slippers. The party is to gather at the Charrières', and we'll all leave together at ten o'clock precisely. I've commanded a pony cart for half-past nine. Tell Boudin to see to it that the children are properly dressed and at the front door. The blue for Justin, no lace on his shirt, and a simple robe chemise for Linotte, with a rose, no, a blue sash."

When I relayed madame's message, Boudin's nose glowed an indignant red. "Half-past nine!" she cried. "The Devil fly away with half-past nine. I'll be until half-past nine catching Mlle Linotte, never mind getting her brushed and dressed."

"Start chasing her at dawn, then. They must be ready at half-past nine, or you'll wish the Devil had flown away with
you
."

At sunrise, mère Boudin burst into my closet. "He's not there!" she squealed.

"Chut," I said. "You'll wake madame."

She lowered her voice to a thick rumble. "He's not in his bed. Nor not in anybody else's bed either, nor the garden, nor the goat-shed, and somebody's let out all the goats."

"Bugger the goats," I said, none too patiently. "Who isn't in his bed?"

"Justin. The little toad. More girl than his sister, for all he's a
prick between his legs. I'd not be astonished for M. Léon to stay out all night. But Mlle Justin?" She shook her head in wonder.

"They're both Maindurs," I said. "I must think what to do. Sit down and hold your noise."

While I pinned a lace cap on my hair, Boudin grumbled gloomily to herself like a sow that's overlain her last piglet. Were the occasion not so serious, I could have been amused. She'd always been so proud of being nurse to Malvoeux: so high with mère Malateste's old gossips, so mighty with the servingmaids. A careful nurse indeed to let her charges run wild, I thought, one to debauch the goat-girl in the laundry, another to stay out all night, le bon Dieu only knew where. And the third . . .

"Ah, mère Boudin," I said sweetly. "Have you checked upon Mlle Linotte this morning? If you cannot produce at least one of her children at half-past nine, madame may begin to wonder whether another nursemaid might prove more vigilant."

"Cent mille bougres!" Boudin exclaimed and lumbered out of the room, Justin for the moment entirely forgotten.

As it happened, Linotte too was nowhere to be found, although her bed, unlike Justin's, had been slept in. More annoyed than worried, I sat down on a chest to think where she might be. If 'twere madame missing, I'd know where to look. But Linotte was only five years old. What was there to know?

Well, I knew that she stuck to Pompey like a leech. And I knew that Pompey was likely to be in the kitchen at this hour. Which is where I found him, eating cheese and drinking ale in the company of the French sous-chef.

Without preamble I announced that M. Justin Maindur had disappeared from the house during the night, and Mlle Linotte as well. "You'll need to find them quickly," I said, "or madame will be horribly put about. Mlle Linotte's too little to have gone far, and I doubt M. Justin's done anything very terrible, but we don't want either one of them drowning in Lac Leman or falling down an Alp."

"The boy's in no danger of falling down an Alp," the chef assured me through a mouthful of cheese. "The poor half-wit may have run afoul of a cow, though, or been frightened by a pigeon or some such foolishness. Someone will have to go fetch him."

I could hardly believe my ears. "A cow? Fetch him? From where?"

"Sant'âme, of course."

"Of course? What's in Sant'âme? Answer me posthaste, fool, or I'll give you Sant'âme, and painfully, too."

The sous-chef swallowed and took another bite. " 'Who,' Duvet, not 'what.' Père Michel is who."

"And who the great horned devil is père Michel? And what has M. Justin to do with him?"

"Ah," said the chef, wiping his lips. "That I've sworn not to tell."

I glared at him, my ears buzzing with fury. Pompey caught me by my sleeve-ruffle and drew me down on the bench.

"Softly, Berthe," he said. "M. Justin has made us swear, the cook and I, that we wouldn't tell a soul where he goes at night. I think his carelessness releases us from our oath. Père Michel is chaplain to an elderly Catholic gentleman who lives on the rue de Faubourg Saint-Laurent in a house called Sant'âme. Most evenings in the week, M. Justin goes there for instruction in Greek and Latin. Usually he's home by midnight."

"Mon Dieu," I said weakly.

"Exactly," said the chef. " 'Tis freakish and foolish both, but 'tis a freakish and foolish child, after all, the second son of the mad duc de Malvoeux. I'll send a lackey for the prodigal as quick as may be, but I doubt he'll be in time for madame's pique-nique."