Pam Rosenthal

by The Bookseller's Daughter

  Still, what mattered was that he’d treat her and the baby decently—and this she refused to doubt. She would simply ignore her fears, she told herself, while she endured the rigors of the nine-day journey: the bumping and jolting of the coach, the all too-infrequent rest stops, the dubious quality of the food and beds at the inns where they stopped.

  Discomfited by the idea of a young woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy undertaking such a trip, her fellow passengers stared disapprovingly at her. On the second day of the journey, Marie-Laure awoke from a nap to hear Monsieur du Plessix “explaining” her situation to their coach mates. Pretending to doze, she listened in astonishment as he spun out the story’s details. Deftly, effortlessly, like a fortune-teller in a carnival booth, he conjured up a husband away on important military maneuvers, a contested inheritance, and a family tendency toward difficult births.

  “And so you see, Messieurs and Mesdames,” he concluded, “how absolutely necessary it is that the young lady be confined in proximity to a certain eminent Paris physician, under the patronage and protection of the gracious and generous Madame la Marquise de Machery, a distant relative who has interested herself in the case.”

  Absurd, she thought, that anybody would believe this fatuous concoction when she was so evidently a seduced and abandoned kitchen maid in clogs and a stained apron. But her fellow travelers seemed quite satisfied with Monsieur du Plessix’s version of the facts, and began to treat her with increased sympathy and affection.

  “Travelers enjoy sentimental stories,” the lawyer told Marie-Laure and Baptiste over a dreadful mutton stew that evening. “Would you begrudge them their entertainment?”

  “I’ve ordered a freshly killed and roasted capon for tomorrow from the market stand down the road,” he continued, “so we won’t have to depend on what we get from the next inn.

  “Happily, the beds at this place are not as bad as the food. Well, your bed is all right anyway, Marie-Laure. But what’s the matter, petite?” he asked, for she’d suddenly turned pale.

  “Just a headache.” She gasped, surprised by its intensity. “I think I’d better go to bed. Could you help me up the stairs, Monsieur?”

  He was already at her elbow. Smiling as they mounted the stairs, he assured her that there was nothing to worry about: his wife had had just such headaches with their third, a vigorous eight-pound boy. His volubility and matter-of-factness were so comforting that by the time they’d reached her room she’d decided that the headache must not be so bad after all. And it was only after a miserable, sleepless hour that she remembered he’d told his lies in the coach that afternoon with the same cheerful certainty.

  Her head felt a little better the next morning, but the ache never entirely disappeared. Her vision was sometimes blurred, and the coach’s jolting made her dizzy and fretful. She tried to ignore it, sleeping fitfully as the pastures and vineyards of Burgundy rolled by. As they drove through the majestic forest of Fontainebleau the next day, she couldn’t remember ever having been free of the insidious pain flickering behind her eyes. Still, she was determined to stay awake. For they were approaching the city gates of Paris.

  Joseph felt as though he’d never sleep again.

  Pregnant with his child! He paced the cell, trying to absorb the wonder, the enormity of it. The baby would look like her, of course—though if it were a boy, he supposed a little of his height might be a good thing. He tried to imagine its face, its limbs. And failed utterly. How big were babies anyway? Could they smile? He’d seen very few of them in his life; the women of his acquaintance bundled off their offspring to wet nurses as soon as possible, returning to society a week after the birth as though nothing had happened.

  Well, that wouldn’t be the case with this baby. And even if he were still locked up when it arrived, he knew that mother and child would be safe with Jeanne.

  Safe. His eyes grew hard. According to Jeanne, du Plessix said very little about why Marie-Laure had been running away from the chateau. Well, he could guess readily enough what must have happened.

  I should never have allowed her to stay with those monsters, Joseph thought. When I get out of this place, I’ll…

  But would he ever get out of this place? He resolved that he would. No more cynicism about his chances. With Marie-Laure and the baby on their way to Paris, he couldn’t afford the luxury of cynicism.

  The stewed partridge on the table in front of him had grown cold an hour ago. The candle sputtered out. He shrugged. He’d been living in a sort of semidarkness anyway: his success in maintaining faith had been intermittent at best.

  He lit a new candle. Perhaps it was time to learn to live secure in the light of someone’s love.

  Paris began even before its city walls. Marie-Laure stared at the outcroppings of small, temporary-looking dwellings: shanties for the poor souls who’d come to escape their misfortunes in the countryside. She supposed she should feel saddened, but instead she was energized by the city’s force, attracted to its center like a bit of iron leaping to a magnet.

  The customs officials at the gates were rude, canny, and quick to make personal remarks. She didn’t mind in the slightest. They were city people, their attitudes laced with the ironic intimacy engendered by urban crowding and anonymity. She returned a wink with a haughty nod. And then a grin.

  An open carriage—it belonged to the Marquise, Monsieur du Plessix told her—awaited them at the city gate. Low and elegant, upholstered in plush velvet, its outside was painted gaily in blues and violets and trimmed with gold. A fairy coach, she thought wryly, to bring a sooty, pregnant Cinderella to her prince—if he could spare a moment from his mistress. But she wouldn’t worry about that just yet. She turned her attention to the city: the tall, narrow buildings that sometimes blocked the sky, the noise and the crowds, carriages, peddlers, beggars, dogs, children. She wanted to know these streets.

  “Look,” she cried excitedly, “there’s a bookshop! And oh, what a beautiful church. Is it Notre Dame? No, it can’t be, for that’s on an island, isn’t it? And oh my goodness, look at the cakes in that shop window, the bonnets in that one.”

  They drove close by a coffee seller, a tall man dispensing steaming cups from a tank on his back. It smelled delicious. She wished they could stop and buy some; maybe it would help her headache.

  They were approaching the river now, the Seine. She peered at the boats and barges, at the people unloading crates of fruits and vegetables, rabbits and chickens; she gaped at the marvel of Notre Dame, its lacy towers and the soaring buttresses supporting it.

  The river disappeared as they crossed over a bridge densely lined with buildings. She couldn’t see it anymore but she could still smell it. A blind person could probably navigate Paris quite well, she thought, with only his nose to guide him—his nose, and a sharp ear for approaching carriages.

  Their own carriage jerked to a halt, and Baptiste jumped from his perch on the back to argue with the servant from a similar equipage. Somebody would have to back up and move aside. She enjoyed the volley of insult and invective; Baptiste was the more creative combatant, in her opinion.

  And indeed, the other carriage finally allowed them to pass. They zigzagged through a warren of narrow streets, past more crowds of people, including some bearded men in wide fur hats. (“Jews,” Monsieur du Plessix explained.) They drove through a large, symmetrical square, with graceful redbrick buildings ranged around the green, manicured lawns at its center.

  “We’re almost here,” Monsieur du Plessix announced. “The Hôtel Mélicourt is just around the corner.”

  The coach turned and stopped in front of an enormous stone facade. It took Marie-Laure a moment to grasp that it was a single building, its yellow-gray stone decorated with sculpted bas-reliefs, and going on for hundreds of feet on either side of imposing wooden doors large enough for the carriage to drive through.

  Her excitement dissolved. And her headache felt very bad indeed.

  “This is her house?”


  Her voice sounded small and thin, even to herself.

  “But do you really think she wants me here? I appreciate her assistance, but perhaps it would be more tactful to take me to an inn where I can speak to Joseph alone. Don’t you think so, Monsieur du Plessix?”

  The lawyer cleared his throat and fixed his eyes on her.

  “You will be meeting the Marquise today, Marie-Laure,” he said. “And she’ll be very kind to you and give you everything you need. But I’m afraid that the Vicomte can’t be here to receive you at this time.”

  For the first time since she’d made his acquaintance his voice sounded neither glib nor confident.

  “Because, Marie-Laure,” he continued, “I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you that Joseph is in prison. He’s been in the Bastille for the past ten weeks, falsely charged with the murder of the Baron Roque.”

  She thought—for a moment she hoped—that she might faint. But when the vertigo passed she found that she was painfully alert, if strangely chilly. It was as if a heavy curtain had descended over her emotions, isolating them from her sharpened senses and disjointed perceptions. The sun shone just as brightly as it had a moment ago, but it was a cold glare, reducing everything to abstract form, lifeless diagram.

  She gazed numbly in front of her as the doors opened and the carriage clattered into a cobbled courtyard, the huge house spreading out beyond it. Stately, symmetrical, the house kept its own silent counsel behind banks of damask-shrouded windows; sphinx-like, it reached its two arms forward to the facade, enclosing the courtyard within a geometry of columns and pediments, balconies and bas-relief.

  Servants ran toward the carriage to care for the horses and lift down the baggage. They looked like the miniature figure drawings a mapmaker or architect adds to an illustration to indicate the scale of things. Monsieur du Plessix took her limp hand and tried to squeeze some warmth into it.

  “Courage, Marie-Laure,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to prepare his defense in court, and meanwhile, to keep him hopeful and comfortable. But what he most needs is to know that you’re safe and healthy.

  “And now,” he added, picking up his tricorne hat from the carriage seat at his side, “it’s time to meet the Marquise.”

  Ah yes, she thought, Joseph’s wife. Odd how frightened she’d been of meeting her just a moment ago.

  The house was magnificent, she supposed. They climbed shallow steps to large front doors that opened silently, as though of their own accord. As they entered, she could see the footmen, in lemon-yellow velvet, at each door. Such a pale yellow—her thrifty mind tried to register the cost of keeping those coats and breeches clean. The doors had swung open in such measured, simultaneous arcs that the footmen might have been automatons. Puppets.

  Another yellow puppet led her and her companions through a vast, echoing foyer. High-ceilinged, marble-tiled, it was almost empty, perhaps with the intent of directing a visitor’s eyes to the huge staircase at the right. The iron balustrade, painted black and decorated with gold, was wrought and hammered into the most extraordinarily sinuous curves.

  Her vision blurred, shimmered, regained its focus. The balustrade was like a branching forest fern. It made you imagine branches too tiny for your eyes to see, spiraling into infinity, like the wondrous seashell Mamma and Papa had once given Gilles for his birthday. She lost herself for a moment in the swooping, asymmetrical curves, nature’s dizzying fecundity cast in iron.

  “Marie-Laure!” Baptiste hissed.

  She ran to catch up with him and Monsieur du Plessix.

  The next room was of black-and-white marble, with just a few frighteningly delicate chairs set among a clutter of bronze and marble statuary and huge, lush houseplants.

  Doors opened into a room that at least seemed to have furniture to sit on, the better to survey the painted scenes from mythology that covered the walls and ceiling. Her eyes swept upward over Theseus escaping the labyrinth, Atalanta outrunning her suitors.

  A dining room now, paneled in painted leather.

  And finally an overfurnished but relatively intimate salon, thickly carpeted and hung with old tapestries.

  Two women sat near a marble fireplace, and a few spaniels and a hideous pug dozed on the hearth.

  Baptiste and Monsieur du Plessix bowed, while Marie-Laure managed a clumsy curtsy, peering at the women as though they were further instances of the mansion’s fantastic decor.

  And indeed, the younger woman might have stepped out of one of the mythological paintings. Her gown, of pale, silvery green, was like the sea at sunset, foaming with creamy lace and twinkling with pearls and diamonds. Her smile was so lovely it penetrated Marie-Laure’s baffled emotions and made her heart ache.

  Oh dear, wasn’t the Marquise supposed to be stout and plain? This sea nymph of painted rosebud lips, of dimpled cheeks and tumbling golden curls and sparkling eyes of aquamarine, was the most beautiful woman Marie-Laure had ever seen.

  “I’m the Marquise.” An amused, throaty voice issued from the other side of the fireplace. “And this is Mademoiselle Beauvoisin. You’d better sit down, chérie, you look exhausted.”

  She sank gratefully into a chair. But what was Joseph’s mistress doing here?

  “Marie-Laure’s rather in shock, I’m afraid, Madame,” Monsieur du Plessix explained, “for I’ve just now told her about your husband’s arrest.”

  The Marquise nodded. “We’re happy to have you here with us, Marie-Laure. We feel we know you a little, after all that Joseph has told us.”

  “Thank you, Madame la Marquise.” Confused by her own response, she nonetheless found herself liking this woman.

  She was stout and plain after all. Or perhaps, upon second glance, not exactly plain. She was a comfortable presence, almost handsome, if a woman could be handsome; squarish and thick waisted in a wide, dark, satin dress. Was she in mourning? Marie-Laure couldn’t tell. The dress was subdued; wildly expensive, of course, but also oddly functional, like a riding habit. It was as though the Marquise had no patience with style and had simply ordered herself a suit of acceptable noblewoman livery. Marie-Laure smiled into knowing brown eyes, before stealing another awestruck, jealous glance at Mademoiselle Beauvoisin.

  “I was sorry to hear about your uncle’s death, Madame,” Monsieur du Plessix was saying.

  The lady nodded. “Well, we had our differences, but at the end we managed a certain rapport. It was he who forced me to marry, you know.”

  “Jeanne chérie.” Marie-Laure wondered how Mademoiselle Beauvoisin’s low, melodious voice could carry through the galleries of a theater. “It’s a blessing that you married Joseph, because no other wife in Paris would have put as much effort into getting him freed as you have.”

  “Well, I owe him a great deal.” The Marquise sounded embarrassed.

  The other woman smiled. “We owe him everything.”

  Marie-Laure could only stare and wonder about the smile and the words, while a few faint gleams of comprehension shimmered at the edges of her vision.

  No, she scolded herself, it couldn’t be. It was too scandalous even to consider.

  But somehow she felt warmer and happier, the happiness bringing her closer to her fears for Joseph but also to her love for him. For it seemed that there was love in this world of unspeakable wealth and overwrought decoration. She could feel love’s presence, alive and well in this room.

  The Marquise laughed. “There aren’t many wives in Paris who are as rich as I am, especially now that my uncle’s dead. But have we made any progress on our case, Monsieur du Plessix?”

  “Not as much progress as I’d hoped, Madame,” he answered. “Every bookseller has denied having forbidden books delivered the morning the Baron was murdered. In fact, they each, to a man, denied ever in their lives having bought or sold an illegal book.”

  So that’s what he and Baptiste had been doing before they’d come to find her. Silly of me, Marie-Laure thought, not to ask.

  “Monsieur Vernet agr
eed to testify about the visit to his father’s shop.”

  Monsieur Vernet? But he must mean Gilles.

  “But he couldn’t in honesty swear the wounds might not have been caused by a fight with the Baron.”

  No, she supposed Gilles couldn’t in honesty swear to anything he didn’t know was true.

  “Still,” he continued, “he was willing to swear that the Vicomte hadn’t had the ruby ring on him when he and his sister here undressed him and put him to bed. An onyx ring, but definitely not the ruby.”

  “Someone must have smuggled the Baron’s ring into Joseph’s possession later.” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin sounded weary, as though this point had already been discussed many times. “But how to find out…”

  “Meanwhile, I’ve dispatched an assistant to inquire about the Baron’s chambermaid who killed herself,” Monsieur du Plessix added. “We’ve found out her name—Manon—and the name of her village—Sazarat, in the Lubéron. It turns out she was pregnant.”

  “What about the papers Joseph had to sign at each bookseller’s, in order to certify that he’d delivered the books? He signed ours with an X, but that was just a private joke to me. But perhaps he signed Monsieur Rigaud’s with his real name or at least a verifiable signature…”

  Everyone seemed surprised to hear the words tumbling out of Marie-Laure’s mouth, but the Marquise nodded vigorously.

  “Well, Monsieur du Plessix, what of those papers? How can we get hold of them?”

  While Monsieur du Plessix contemplated and considered, Marie-Laure felt Mademoiselle Beauvoisin’s bright eyes sweeping over her. She blushed, suddenly very aware of her stained, smelly, too-tight dress and the wooden clogs she’d worn since they’d left Carency.

  “Do you have a headache, Marie-Laure?” Mademoiselle Beauvoisin asked.

  Marie-Laure nodded, surprised that someone could tell. In a flash of diamonds and a rustle of silk, the woman in pale green was at her side, her sparkling eyes keen and concentrated. The pug had risen from the hearth and was watching attentively.