Pam Rosenthal

by The Bookseller's Daughter

  She nodded, watching his expression change while he considered what she’d just suggested to him. He was hardly a logician, she thought, but he’d work it out. Best, though, to offer a little assistance.

  Her voice became warmer, more confiding. “After all,” she said, “he’s gotten so much attention all these years, so much of everything that should have been yours. What difference will it make if he spends a little time in prison, while events here take their natural course? Nothing serious will befall him; he’ll slide by, as he always has. It will probably be resolved quite easily, without any assistance from you or me. Someday soon I’ll answer Fat Jeanne’s letter though; some sympathetic, sisterly clucking, just to be polite.

  “But what’s important,” she added, “is to be sure that no news of this comes into the house.”

  The fashion magazines and scandal sheets had stopped arriving by post, much to Marie-Laure’s relief. At least, she thought, there wouldn’t be any more of those items about Joseph’s mistress.

  Nor, it seemed, would there be any more letters from him.

  Not that she expected to receive one. She’d stopped hoping to hear from him some weeks ago.

  No, she corrected herself, she’d thought she’d stopped hoping, but her heart had leaped when Nicolas had handed her a letter this morning.

  But it had only been from Gilles. It was thicker than his usual communications, though—and uncharacteristically lively and voluble, she thought.

  Well, he’d been working so terribly hard, she reminded herself; it was nice to see him enjoy a moment of self-congratulation now that his prosperous, productive future was finally coming into view. The school term would be over in a few months. He was studying hard for his examinations, but confident of passing them; he was already planning his medical practice. He and Sylvie would be married at the end of June. The dowry would help him rent an office, as well as a place for all of them to live.

  And then (he’d written) you’ll be able to come home, Marie-Laure. (She could construe his satisfaction from his even handwriting, with its sturdy capitals.) It was a shame, he continued, that she’d had to spend a year at the beck and call of some damn aristocrats. But she shouldn’t lose heart, things would soon be comfortable and well ordered again.

  She smiled wryly, imagining herself bringing an aristocrat’s bastard into Gilles’s well-ordered world.

  Not that he’d turn her away: Gilles was incapable of family disloyalty; he’d care for her and the baby both, and defend her stoutly to anyone who might hazard a disapproving glance. But he’d be saddened and humiliated, and during his first month of marriage and his new professional life, too—for it was in June that she expected the baby to arrive.

  She had no way of fixing the date exactly, but Marie-Laure suspected that she’d conceived almost immediately. Such a shame, she thought: all that maddening, frustrating care Joseph had insisted upon—and for all the difference those damn sheathes had made, they could have made blissful, unprotected love every night.

  She figured that she was about four and a half months’ pregnant—well, she was the right size for that, Louise had told her, with the authority of the oldest child of a brood of ten. And her exhaustion and queasiness had disappeared completely right after the New Year, which was what was supposed to happen, according to Bertrande, at the end of the first three months.

  Not only had she stopped feeling dull and depressed; the absurd truth was that—physically at least—she felt wonderful: strong as an ox and hungry as a bear. She could tell that she looked wonderful, too, with all that energy coursing through her veins. In fact, she rather wished she didn’t look so vibrant, at least during those unpleasant and mysterious sessions, every few weeks, when she was summoned to serve the Duc and Duchesse their tea. But she’d usually forget the couple’s humiliating stares as soon as she closed the library door behind her, because her optimism and determination had returned as well. Which, she told herself, was certainly a good thing in her present difficult circumstances—not to speak of the endlessly detailed demands the Duchesse had been making on the entire household.

  “Never,” as Nicholas summed it up, “in all the history of the French nobility, has there been a more pampered and cosseted expectant mother.”

  Louise and Marie-Laure were still stitching their yards of satin into an endless array of loose, comfortable gowns and peignoirs. And Monsieur Colet found his ingenuity sorely taxed by requests for menus that were mild and sustaining “yet elegant and varied too, to tempt a delicate appetite.” His mouth twisted sardonically as he repeated the Duchesse’s words.

  “Do you think she’s really pregnant?” Robert asked. “Maybe she’s stuffing pillows under her gown and plotting something.”

  “What, to steal a baby from somewhere?” Nicolas laughed and Marie-Laure’s stomach lurched. “Don’t be ridiculous, Robert.”

  “She’s not pretending,” Louise told the group. “I peeked into her chamber one day when she was having her bath. She does have a big belly—I saw it, all shiny and soapy.”

  “She’s clever,” Monsieur Colet said. “She probably figured out a way to bribe our little Monsieur Hubert to do his job.

  “Which means,” he added, “that I now may do mine.” He winked at Marie-Laure. “And feed an expectant mother as best I can.”

  So Marie-Laure had enjoyed delicate, delicious, and wonderfully digestible meals these past months, along with lots of support and advice from the rest of the servants. Except for spiteful Jacques and prudish Arsène, most of them had been as nice as possible. And a few of them had taken her and the baby on as a joint project.

  Monsieur Colet supervised her plans for future employment. He was keeping an eye on the market for cooks in small households in the region. She’d have no trouble finding a new job, he assured her, with his recommendation.

  And as February drew to a close, and she was about to enter her fifth month of pregnancy, Bertrande helped her find lodgings with cousins in the village of Carency. For a deposit of five livres, the cousins had promised to hold the room until Marie-Laure needed it. She hoped to be able to work another three months before she had to start living on the remainder of her money.

  If things went as planned, she’d spend two months in the village—one before the baby’s birth and one after—before going to her new job and boarding the child with a wet nurse.

  She hated the idea of her baby taking nourishment at someone else’s breast. She’d always despised the custom of putting a baby out to nurse, entrusting its care to an indigent, overworked woman who was only doing it for pay. And she knew the dangers: children—rich and poor alike—often died as a result of the indifferent care they received.

  In fact, she could recite by heart a passage from one of Rousseau’s novels, about certain mothers who, “having got rid of their babies, devote themselves gaily to the pleasures of the town.” Ruefully, she remembered her indignant adolescent response when she’d first read those words. How passionate, how ready she’d been to ignore the plight of mothers who had no choice in the matter. Like the great philosopher himself, Marie-Laure had not given a moment’s thought to what it would feel like to send your baby away and hope for the best.

  Just another example, she shrugged, of life teaching you what books did not. She’d have to be vigilant in her choice of a wet nurse. Surely some of them must be more generous, less harried, than others. With luck, she’d also find a job that afforded her some occasional free time; she’d accept lower wages in exchange for the chance to visit her child now and then. And during the month before she returned to work, she’d simply have to give the baby so much love (and so much milk of her own) that little Sophie or Alexandre (for she didn’t care whether it was a boy or a girl) would be sustained through the separations to come.

  The bookstall, of course, was postponed indefinitely. What counted was maintaining herself and the child, staying independent, and never (she only let herself think of this for moments at a time, when
she woke up in the middle of the night) being reduced to cleaning some horrible innkeeper’s privy for room and board.

  Time passed surprisingly pleasantly. She seemed to have locked away all her sadness and disillusionment with Joseph into some dark, inaccessible place. She’d misjudged him, she told herself; well, all right, that was that. Oddly, she was quite sure she still loved him—perhaps because of a private notion that it would be better for the baby if she felt that way. She didn’t suppose medical science would agree, but Marie-Laure was sure that a baby would be happier and healthier if it spent its nine months of gestation curled up close to a loving heart. What was important was that the baby never felt a lack of love. She and the baby, she told herself, were lucky to be safe and well cared for. Even the weather had agreed to be gentle; it was March now, and Provence was enjoying a mild, wet early spring.

  The almond trees had just begun to blossom. Robert showed Marie-Laure a knobby black branch he’d broken off, with a few blooms forcing themselves through the hard buds.

  “Let’s put it in the chipped pitcher on the windowsill,” she suggested, looking up from the young green beans she was snapping. “It’ll be nice to watch it come into flower, a little more every day.”

  They smiled at each other over their work, in honor of spring and new life.

  Robert was making madeleines for tea today. Carefully, he measured out flour, sugar, salt. The little tea cakes shaped like seashells were easy, especially compared to puff pastry, but Robert was a perfectionist. He beat three large fresh eggs into the batter and began blending in half a pound of melted butter. “Merde,” he muttered, skinning a knuckle as he grated the lemon rind.

  “Have you decided about middle names yet?” he asked as he poured the mixture into the aspic molds that gave the cakes their shape.

  “For a boy I have,” she told him. “If it’s a boy it’ll be Alexandre Joseph,” she added. “The Alexandre is for my papa, and the Joseph”—her voice became careful, controlled—“well, you know who that’s for.”

  Robert shrugged and went to put away the butter. Someone brought in a pile of greasy pots and Marie-Laure hauled some fresh hot water from the hearth. Jacques passed by, made a lewd gesture at Marie-Laure’s belly, and laughed harshly as Robert chased him away.

  “And for a girl?” Robert asked sometime later.

  “What? Oh, a middle name, you mean. No, if it’s a girl, it’ll be Sophie, for Mamma. But I don’t have a middle name for her yet.”

  “You’ll find one,” he said.

  He held up a newly baked madeleine. “Have a bite.”

  “Mmmmmm.” The bite of cake dissolved slowly against her tongue, light and rich at the same time, with just a breath of lemon to keep it from being insipid.

  “It’s wonderful, Robert,” she said. “It’s perfect, you’re going to be an artist like Monsieur Colet.”

  He blushed. “Oh no, Marie-Laure.”

  “And you’re a good friend too,” she added.

  A teasing light appeared in her eyes. “In fact, if the baby is a girl, I’m going to name her after you, to remember you at just this moment.”

  “Sophie Roberte?” He looked as though it didn’t sound very mellifluous to him.

  “Sophie Madeleine.” She smiled triumphantly. “Isn’t that pretty?”

  He agreed that it was pretty, and Marie-Laure dove into the rest of her chores with a sense that she’d accomplished something, if only in her mind. Sophie Madeleine or Alexandre Joseph, she thought, you will be a lucky child, for you are sure to inherit some of your papa’s gifts. While from your mamma—well, my gift to you will be a certain tenacity. And the capacity for an abiding love.

  Chapter Twenty

  April arrived in a gorgeous flurry of cherry blossoms, loud choruses of calling birds, brilliant days and warm starry nights. And no letters for Marie-Laure, except a brief, embarrassed-sounding note from Gilles, announcing that Augustin Rigaud had married his cousin Suzanne from Nîmes.

  After Easter the Duc and Duchesse demanded a series of elaborate feasts to make up for their Lenten privations. And suddenly Marie-Laure found it difficult to keep up. She felt swollen, enormous, weighed down by her increasing bulk.

  Her clothes barely fit, even with the ugly new panels she and Louise had sewn into them. Even her shoes and stockings felt too tight. And her back hurt devilishly.

  She took it day by hard, slow day. Soon she would quit, she told herself. Any day now. She woke slowly in the mornings, struggled into her clothes and thrust her bare feet into wooden clogs someone in the house had lent her. The only thing within her control seemed to be her hair, which she tried to keep pretty and shining.

  She murmured encouragements to herself and to the baby. “We’ll get along without him,” she repeated patiently. “We don’t need him. We’ll take care of ourselves. We have our own money.”

  She tried not to count her stash of coins too often. But sometimes the seventy-eight livres in their little sack were the only thing that comforted her. And one bright April morning she couldn’t resist the temptation.

  No one was about, though she could hear Robert and Monsieur Colet bustling around the storeroom. Just a quick little peek before they returned. She wiggled out the loose brick to find—nothing.

  She blinked. No, nothing at all except some loose straw. All right, she told herself, willing herself to be patient in the face of rising panic, don’t worry, it’s the wrong brick, that’s all. She tried another. And another still. She tried every brick on the left side of the hearth and then for good measure every brick on the right. None of them even budged.

  But what was that, almost covered with cinders in the front corner of the large fireplace? It sparkled—well, there were actually two kinds of sparkles—the glitter of broken glass and the gleam of thin gold wire…

  She knew what she’d find, even before she dug Papa’s ruined spectacles out of the ashes.

  Her finger was bleeding. She must have cut it on a sliver of glass, but she couldn’t feel any pain. She felt, instead, a sort of movement within herself. As though something solid had given way: all her months of plotting and planning, of looking on the bright side and keeping up her hopes and optimism, seemed to crumble into dust and ashes. She curled up on the hearthside and wept.

  “It’s the Duchesse. It’s Jacques. I know it is,” she wailed to Robert and Monsieur Colet when they found her there.

  Feebly, Monsieur Colet tried to reason with her. There was no point making accusations with no proof to back them up, he told her. She glared at him as though he were an enemy.

  “And what do you suggest I do?” she asked. The disrespectful tone she heard in her voice shocked her. And the fact that he didn’t seem offended alarmed her. If he were allowing her to speak so rudely, she thought, her predicament must be every bit as awful as it seemed.

  He shrugged, poured himself a glass of wine and offered her one as well. She shook her head. The silence in the room felt hollow, hopeless.

  “Well,” Robert offered timidly, “you might still hear from Monsieur Joseph.”

  Her eyes blazed. “Thank you, Robert.”

  Her mouth twisted into a cruel smile. “Indeed, he might appear this very morning carrying a glass slipper. Having somehow dispatched his wife and mistress both. And having found the only pair of glass slippers in all of France to fit my swollen feet. Quite the modern fairy tale, don’t you think?”

  “That’s enough, Marie-Laure. Don’t taunt Robert.” The wine had restored some authority to Monsieur Colet’s voice.

  She nodded. “I’m sorry, Robert. And please pardon my disrespect, Monsieur Colet.” She rose unsteadily to her feet.

  “But I can’t just sit here weeping and wondering,” she continued. “And so I’m going to have to go demand my money back from that bitch—”

  “Marie-Laure!” Monsieur Colet’s voice rose.

  “…that Gorgon, that hyena of a boss lady.”

  “Marie-Laure,” he repeated, “th
is is not a good idea.”

  It probably wasn’t, she thought as she mounted the stairs. But she didn’t have any other ideas and neither did her friends in the kitchen.

  She needed to do something definite. Something audacious. She didn’t actually suppose she’d get her money back, but perhaps she might finally find out what these awful people had wanted of her, and why they’d insisted she’d spend all those humiliating hours giving them their tea.

  There were a lot of stairs between the kitchen and the Duc and Duchesse’s wing of the chateau. Panting as she climbed the last of them, she nonetheless kept up a brisk march through the plastered and gilded hallways. She grimaced at her repeated reflections in the hallways’ large mirrors, and blinked in the sunlight flooding through recently enlarged windows and dancing on delicate chairs and inlaid tables.

  Purposefully as she could, she strode through the Duchesse’s antechamber and tapestried bedchamber.

  Her clogs made a racket on parquet floors and sank into thick rugs. She hurried through splendidly decorated spaces, afraid she’d lose her courage if she slowed down.

  Until finally, pausing at the doorway of an elegant little boudoir, she took a few deep breaths, knocked, didn’t wait for an answer, and threw open the door.

  To be greeted by a low laugh that chilled her flushed cheeks and made her wish she’d stayed downstairs in the kitchen.

  She knew I’d come. She planned this.

  The Duchesse was drinking tea behind a long low table, in an armchair upholstered in apple-green silk. There was a low fire in the grate, its warm air currents wafting the steam from the Duchesse’s teapot across the room to Marie-Laure’s nostrils. Peppermint and elderberry leaf. It should have been a soothing smell, but it wrenched her stomach.

  She stared at the elegant clutter on the table: the gay Sèvres tea service, a half-eaten meringue, a leather folder thick with correspondence. A silver tray held a tooled ebony box and a perfect white rose in a tall crystal vase. The Duchesse’s soft white hands emerged gracefully from the flounced sleeves of her ivory satin robe. Ivory—or Goose Shit satin, if you preferred.