“Vous-êtes?”
The boys knew who they were. Immediately, Philippe was on his feet crying, “Papa! Maman!” with Nicolas at his heels. The boys engulfed their parents in an embrace of such affection, Laurette turned away, both from the reunion of the family and the unmistakable longing in Gagnon’s eyes.
“Come in, come in,” he bade them, indicating Laurette’s seat and sending her to bring stew and bread.
She pulled him aside and spoke low, hoping he would overlook the hint of resentment in her voice. “There’s no fire to warm it up.”
“Look at them,” he whispered. “I believe they will suffer eating it cold.”
He was right, of course. The couple—which was the man and which the woman determinable only by their clothing, as they were equally gaunt, and the mother’s hair shorn within an inch of her scalp—took the bowls in shaking hands. They shunned the proffered spoons and gulped the tepid stew straight, mopping the sides of the bowl with the last of the bread.
“Would you like more?” young Nicolas asked, as if man of the house. “There’s enough, isn’t there, Mademoiselle Laurette?”
“Of course there is,” Gagnon answered for her, because there wasn’t enough, really.
Laurette scraped the pot and gave their guests all that was to be the next day’s dinner, along with three cups of water and the last of the cheese.
“We went into town,” Monsieur Choler said, “and someone told us our boys were here. That you’d taken them.”
“Taken them in,” Madame Choler clarified, only to be silenced by her husband’s hand.
“Had them here slaving for you, is how I see it.” He looked to his boys, squinting one eye as if bringing them into focus. “Tell me what this Monsieur Gagnon has had you doing of a day?”
Philippe and Nicolas spoke over each other in their excited rendition of a day’s labor. Rising with the sun, calling to the dogs, chasing wayward lambs, games of pirate and soldier in the fields, Laurette’s good food at night, Gagnon’s stories, each a bed of his own in the loft. Monsieur Choler, however, grew only more bitter in his expression at the tales.
“And what’s he paid you in wages?”
“Wages?” Philippe looked from his father to Gagnon and back. “What’s wages?”
“Did you not hear?” Gagnon said, calm in the face of accusation. “I fed them. Sheltered them. Taught them a trade. Just look, you can see how healthy they are.”
“I can see that they’ve been working for nearly three months and don’t have a sou to show for it, that’s what.”
Laurette managed to catch a glimpse of the mother’s eyes before she looked away in shame at her husband’s rant.
“I figure two francs to be a fair price,” Monsieur Choler continued, “each. Though I might be talked down a half for Nicolas, as he’s younger.”
Gagnon laughed and instructed the boys to wish their parents a good night and take themselves off to bed. The comfort and ease with which they obeyed brought a new pain to their mother’s eyes, but having been silenced once, she did not speak again. Instead, she embraced them, kissing both and telling them how fine and handsome they’d grown before releasing them into the night.
“Now,” Gagnon said after closing the door, “it appears you are attempting to sell your own children to me, and I’ve sent them away to spare your dignity.”
Laurette poked her head from the kitchen. “Why, if anything they owe us. If we calculated the cost to feed them—”
“Non,” Gagnon said, gently interrupting, “we do not calculate the cost of food when we offer someone a home.” He turned back to Choler. “That is what we did, monsieur. The boys were given a home, as theirs abandoned them. And they are welcome to stay, as long as they like. But I’ll pay them no wages, as I have none to pay. And I’ll give you nothing for the privilege.”
“Keep them.” Madame Choler found her voice at last. “We cannot—we can barely feed ourselves. We’ve lost our farm, and there’s no work.”
“There’s work plenty,” Choler sneered. “Just not a man willing to pay for it.”
“Not able,” Gagnon corrected. “I can either pay the boys or feed them. I cannot do both. It seems to me at their age, food is more important.”
“Seems to me, then, that boys that can work might fetch a price from someone more willing to pay. You’re not the only man’s kept his land, Monsieur Gagnon. If we can beg a bed off of you for the night, my family and I will be gone by morning.”
Laurette stormed in, tasting bile at the back of her throat, sickened at Choler’s suggestion.
“You are going to sell them?”
“Just a fair trade, is all. Until I get myself sorted out.”
“Please,” his wife begged, clutching at his rags, “let them stay. Here. Do you see how they are cared for?” She turned to Gagnon. “You care for them, I can tell.”
“They are good boys,” Gagnon said, the compliment rife with reassurance. “You raised them well.”
“Enough!” Choler rose, knocking his chair behind him. “They are mine, and I will do with them as I please.” He stormed from the house and could be heard shouting the boys’ names, calling them from their beds.
“Monsieur—” Madame Choler threw herself at Gagnon’s feet, clasping his hand in hers—“I beg of you, keep my boys. My husband is right in one thing: we have been everywhere, looking for work and a home. We finally found a small room in Paris, but it is so dangerous there. Crowded, you know? Everybody looking for food, fighting for jobs. My husband worked one day laying bricks, and the man next to him was killed, only for the chance to take his place. We came to fetch our boys, but who knows if what we left will be waiting for us when we get back? Please, for the love of Christ—”
“Was this your plan all along?” Laurette asked, unmoved by the woman’s display. “To extort money from whatever soul was kind enough to take your children in?”
“Laurette,” Gagnon cautioned.
“Of course not,” Madame Choler said. “Who could plan such a thing?”
“Go to my room, Laurette. In my dresser, in the top drawer, there are some coins.” He looked into the mother’s eyes. “I do not know how much, but what is there is yours to take. And to leave the boys with us.”
“Oh, how God is merciful!” She peppered Gagnon’s hands with kisses washed by tears. “I knew, when I saw the light from your window, and how the townspeople spoke so highly of you . . .”
Laurette turned and left, wondering if Marcel had been one of the townspeople to speak so highly of Gagnon. She paused just for a moment, as the door to his room was still kept shut, if not locked, and wondered if his suspicions would be aroused at the fact that she’d taken no candle to guide her. But she knew this room as well as she knew any other in the house, and not even the darkest night could confuse her. She went straight to the bachelor, straight to the drawer, and found the pile of coins, knowing the amount fell short of the father’s asking. How many days, her belly sharp with hunger, had she thought of these coins? Renée mended their dresses with patches, or tied rags around their shoes, or threw dried sheep dung on the fire—what tiny bits of comfort these coins might have provided. And now, she scooped them into a scrap of cloth, knotted it, and returned to find Madame Choler standing, drying her eyes with the fringes of a threadbare kerchief.
Laurette pressed the money into Gagnon’s hand. “It will not be enough.”
“No,” he said. “It won’t.”
He strode from the house, Laurette and Madame Choler at his heels, to find Choler and the boys in the middle of the yard, protectively flanked by Cossette and Copine.
“Your father’s summoned you to say good-bye,” Gagnon said. “It’s best you stay here with us for a while longer.”
A hideous grin spread across Choler’s face. He looked straight over his sons’ heads at Gagnon. “Come to an agreement, have we?”
“Say good-bye to your mother,” Gagnon directed, and as the boys were distracted b
y Madame Choler’s embrace, Gagnon pulled Choler equally close.
“This,” Gagnon said, depositing the money in Choler’s vest pocket. “And your life.”
“My life?”
“Step foot on my land again, whatever your intentions, I will see it as a threat to my boys, and I will kill you. Do you understand me? Our transaction is complete.”
Choler understood, if the twisted expression of fear was any indication. Still, in the face of mortal danger, Madame Choler appeared grateful, mouthing Merci over her shoulder before shuffling away behind her husband.
It was the first time for Laurette to see him refuse a night’s shelter to a stranger. Laurette ushered the boys to the loft and came out to find Gagnon standing in the yard watching the shuffling figures of the Cholers retreat into the night. She came alongside him and noticed another first—the loaded pistol taken from its place above the hearth resting in his hand.
L’épisode 11
Renée
* * *
VERSAILLES
* * *
The workroom is a landscape of silk and wool and linen, great spools of each in every color beyond creation. There are patterns and florals and stripes, and a bin the size of a feeding trough filled with scraps. It is from this bin that I have pieced together my own clothing, creating a paneled skirt and vest made from the same materials that dressed the most important woman in our country. But I know better than to flaunt my theft. Everything Marie Antoinette wears has been designed by the famous Mademoiselle Bertin and meticulously recorded by the court’s scribes; I fear I would be taken to task for the few inches of fabric featuring the sprigged pattern of peonies the queen wore to receive the archduke of Provence. So I strip the fabric to unrecognizable proportions and wear it with the reversed side out to further disguise its origin.
I carry all the tools of my trade with me. Three scissors—the largest sharp enough to cut through velvet without leaving a hint of thread; the smallest can reach between fabric and flesh to snip a wayward stitch. They are wrapped in silk and housed in a leather pouch I wear around my waist. Inspired by all the guards and soldiers milling about, I fancy these my weapons, though I pray I never need to use them. My sleeves are full, not only because the style is cooler in the heat of summer but because I’ve fashioned a special hem wherein I store spools of thread. On my wrist I wear a boar’s hair cuff festooned with needles of various sizes. Other pockets have been stitched into my patchwork skirt, filled with measuring silks and sticks of chalk and thick paper packets speared with pins.
The result is something that makes me look somewhat like a gypsy, according to the women who share my duty.
“Ridiculous,” Madame Gisela sneers the first time I don the garment after snipping the last thread. “You look like someone more suited to living in a tent and stealing horses than stitching garments for a queen.”
Behind her criticism, though, lurks a grudging respect for my skill. I crafted the garment in only two days, working blindly without a pattern, sewing every stitch myself. She declares me to be a fine little seamstress. Une couturière. From that moment, I have no other identity at Versailles. When, in the chaotic hub of activity in the queen’s dressing room, a call comes out cherchez la couturière, the call comes for me. My hands are small, my work is fast, and my stitches precise. I can finish a hem on a sleeve with the queen’s arm inside of it, and not come close to nicking royal flesh. I can tack fallen lace on a gown’s train while the gown itself is in motion, racing through the maze of halls on its way to a royal engagement. More than once I’ve been summoned midstep, on my way to another task, to mend the stocking of a notable man set to have his audience with the king, or to stitch in a kerchief for a woman whose dress exposes more bosom than her father will allow. I’ve had powdered wigs in my lap as I stitch ribbons and bows into them. I can thread a glass bead and anchor it to a bodice before it drops to the ground.
I do not know the idleness of a moment. When I am not engulfed in silk, I am running through the endless passages of Versailles on one errand or another. To the king’s apartment to mend the tear in his favorite hunting jacket. To the chapel, where a clumsy altar boy singed the cloth on the table of the sacrament. It seems the tiniest mishap earns the cry of “Cherchez la couturière!” And I am sought out, found, and escorted.
And my reward? A coin, usually, or two—especially if I’ve mended the garment of a gentleman. Silver coins, too. The first I ever held came into my possession the day I reattached the sleeve of an archduke’s shirt after he had some unfortunate encounter with one of my queen’s ladies. I hadn’t held out my hand. In fact, I’d barely been able to look him in the eye, only worked as quickly as I could to escape his hot breath and grumbled insults at the young woman who had put up such a fight against his advances. It was he who said, “Here, girl, and be off without a word,” holding out the coin as if something distasteful. Part of me wanted to refuse taking silver from such a pig of a man, but something Gagnon used to say slipped into my mind. “The wages of sin is death. Wages for the pure of heart are fairly gained.” I had committed no sin. I’d performed my task as I would whether or not I was complicit in some unrighteous deed. So I took the coin and slipped it into a long pocket I’d hidden in the panels of my skirt. The first time I touched silver, and the first time I sewed a secret. But far, far from the last.
I ask Madame Gisela why these people would bother with my work. Any man or woman who could drop a coin into my hand could surely purchase something new. Surely the woman whose sleeve I altered to hide a bloodstain of which she would not speak had a dozen other gowns in her own home.
Madame Gisela wrinkles her nose. “Squatters. They don’t want to lose their spot.”
Their spot, meaning their chance. The opportunity to hold the king’s ear and unleash a complaint, or plead a case, or beg a favor. These people populate the halls of Versailles not as invited guests, but as citizens of France, members of the Second Estate—nobility, no matter how tenuous the claim. Madame Gisela clings to her apartment as a special friend of the queen, with no recourse should that friendship be severed. Some of these who wander claim temporary residence, too. Or invite themselves as guests, even spending nights sleeping on the floors in obscure hallways. They shuffle outside the dining halls, hoping to slip into a place at the table, or they buy provisions from the farmers who hawk their wares in the outer courts. One woman paid me to tack on a fresh panel to her bodice and refashion her sleeves so that she might don a wig and present herself as a noblewoman newly arrived, rather than the same who had been hiding behind her fan for a week.
So I keep their coins and I keep their secrets, and with my nose inches away from their outward show of wealth, I listen.
“They are pouring into Paris,” one man sneers. He is stuffing his face with something roasted while I fashion a patch in the seat of his breeches. “Looking for work. Unskilled and unwashed and passels of children clinging behind.” He doesn’t see me as I work, and only tosses two coppers at my feet when I return his breeches.
I want to ask about Mouton Blanc. Has there been rain? Does a man named Émile Gagnon still have the largest herd of sheep, and do men still gather at Le Cochon Gros to drink wine and sing? But asking questions brings attention, and I’d rather remain invisible, lest somebody realize I’m nothing more than a peasant girl with a handy needle.
When I get up, the coins clink in my deep pocket, and I wonder how many sheep Gagnon would have to shear to fetch such a price. Or would it be enough to pay the taxes on his land? Or to buy a new dress for Laurette? I have more money than I’ve ever known in my life, and no means to spend it. Though other servants complain of hunger, I can’t quite remember what it feels like. Always there is a platter of this and baskets of that set up in the servants’ dining hall. I have a small but proper bed in the corner of the sewing room, and nobody’s come to collect any kind of price for it. When I am chastised for not wearing shoes, I make my own, woven of sturdy cloth and fashione
d snugly to my foot with straps crisscrossed up to my knee. Already I am on the lookout for leather and full of ideas for shoes for the winter. But what is my cousin facing back home? Does Laurette have shoes? Will there be food on the table? I left before the shearing, so I have no idea what resources Gagnon will have to provide for the winter. I don’t know what crop he will harvest in the fall. I don’t know if he’s seen a drop of rain this summer.
But I do. Deep down, I know the answers to all of these. Because I listen. The rich talk about the poor, the peasants, the lives and land ruined by the drought. Violence and uprisings and villages that have been emptied of their people because there will be no crops to harvest, and thus no food, and thus no reason to remain and wait to die.
And it is a shame I carry deep within me that I don’t ever, ever want to go back.
“Can you help me?” I ask Madame Gisela one afternoon. It is the third of July, and unmercifully hot. I’ve sent her a note asking for an invitation to speak with her, in the way I have observed such things done at court. Neither of us are noble, and I am far below her class, but the very act of penning a message and imploring one of the pages to take it to her apartment made me feel every bit a lady. More exciting, she replied in kind, listing a day and time favorable to her schedule, as she put it.
“What more can I do for you, my dear?” she asks at the appointed time. She is sitting on the high-backed sofa—a bit shabby, I notice, having seen so many other fine furnishings in my travels throughout the palace. “Already you have achieved a status above anything I could have imagined. They talk about you as if you were a sprite.”
The Seamstress Page 12
