The Seamstress

by Allison Pittman

  “I have money.” I whisper this, as if shame taints the sum.

  She raises an eyebrow and dismisses her maid. “It is rude to speak of such things. And I couldn’t possibly begin to think of a price suitable for my service to you.”

  I sit, heart in my throat, mortified at her misunderstanding. “Of course not, Madame Gisela. And I wouldn’t think to insult you by having myself, a poor country shepherdess, thinking a great lady like yourself would even touch a coin from my hand. But I’m wondering if you could help me—somehow—to send some of it home. To Gagnon, and my cousin. To help them.”

  A look of disappointment tinged with embarrassment flits across her face, and I glance aside as she composes herself. “That seems an undertaking. I don’t know that I’ll be able to smuggle you away, given that you’ve made yourself so . . . useful.”

  “I don’t wish to be smuggled away, Madame Gisela. Only this little bit—”

  “How much?”

  Hesitantly, I reach down deep and pull out my modest pile of wealth. It is not everything; some I’ve sewn into the hem of my skirt. But it is enough for her to raise both her eyebrows.

  “People at court are more generous than I imagined,” she says, calculating. “You must be a very silent little girl.”

  “I am.”

  “I could have it transferred into a note for safer passage by post, but there’s no telling if anyone in your little Moulin Blanc—”

  “Mouton Blanc.”

  “—would have the means to cash its value. Better you should keep it here, chérie. I can find a safe spot where it won’t be under the noses of that rabble of thieves you work with.”

  I’m taken aback, wondering if she would lump me in with such disdain. “I keep it all on my person. Unless I’m assaulted in my sleep, I think it will be safe.”

  She sniffs, unconvinced. “Suit yourself.”

  “Still,” I say, hoping my professed need of her will restore me to her good graces, “will you help me to post a letter?”

  “Do you need me to write it for you?”

  “No, but thank you. Gagnon taught us well. Me, anyway. But I haven’t any paper, or knowledge of where—”

  “Come.” She stands and motions for me to follow back into her bedroom. Even close to midday, it is dark, with curtains drawn to combat the merciless heat of summer. “I don’t have a proper morning room in this place, so my dressing table often has to serve duty as a writing desk.” She mentions this as if giving voice to a deep embarrassment, and I say nothing. She produces a short stack of stationery and a quill, and I give full attention to her instructions about the ink and the blotter, not wanting to waste a precious drop or page.

  As she’s leaving me to my privacy I ask, “Please, may I write two letters? Will you post them together to Mouton Blanc?”

  “Avec plaisir.” She gives the tight-lipped smile that I’ve come to know carries the foremost of her affection and leaves me to the dimness.

  The first letter I write to Gagnon. That I am fine, that I am well and fed. That I spend my days—every day—doing what I love to do. That God’s favor has shone upon me, and the gift he bestowed upon my hands has given me a life I could never have dreamed possible. That I miss him, and Laurette, and the dogs, and the sheep. But that I’ve found a place, and I pray for his prosperity back where I will always call “home.” I sign it, With love, Renée.

  The second letter, in which I will enclose the first, is composed of just a very few lines. To Marcel, in care of Le Cochon Gros. Simply a plea. To deliver my letter to Gagnon with a kiss to each cheek, and for my cousin, too. And then, as a secret between us two, if he can, to come to Versailles and ask for me, Renée, la couturière.

  L’épisode 12

  Laurette

  * * *

  MOUTON BLANC

  * * *

  As spring disintegrated into summer, bone-dry days stretched into dark nights offering no respite from the heat. Philippe and Nicolas escaped the stifling loft and took their mats to the thatched roof to sleep beneath the luxury of the night breeze. Tonight, they’d escaped entirely, having taken the flock to the farthest corner of Gagnon’s land to graze. “As I did when I was a boy,” Gagnon said. “As most shepherds do in the summer, I suppose.” They’d be gone for the next two days at least, eating sparingly from the sack of food Laurette had packed for them and drinking from the stream that marked the property’s border.

  “Renée and I never did,” she pointed out, surprised by her petulance. Gagnon’s growing affection for the boys made her lately feel without an ally. They were eager to learn all he had to teach, from farmwork to Scriptures, leaving her with the frequent feeling of being just shy of inclusion. She cooked, she cleaned—much as she ever had—but she was not a wife, not a mother, yet earned no wage to buy loyalty. She had a room, a roof, a bed, and food if she prepared it.

  Weeks before, she’d contracted a mild summer cold and taken to her bed, declaring herself too weak to go to the market in Mouton Blanc, too ill to spend time preparing whatever food lay about the cupboards. And what happened? Gagnon, Nicolas, and Philippe didn’t eat, at least nothing beyond tearing off a hunk of bread and washing it down with well-drawn water. Not at proper mealtimes, either. Purely at the will and whim of their appetites. Worse, nothing beyond the same was offered to her. Oh, Gagnon offered to try his hand at a stew, but the thought of him battering around in the root cellar was enough to bring about Laurette’s healing.

  “Girls are different,” he said. “They lack a certain sense of adventure.”

  Laurette wanted to reply that Renée had enough sense of adventure to ride off in the queen’s carriage, but bit back the words. Enough that she had mentioned Renée’s name; no need to summon her spirit. Laurette didn’t want to spoil a rare evening that found the two of them alone, her place in the house restored.

  “It’s quiet without them,” Laurette said, staying with the subject she knew he would welcome. They sat in the cottage’s open doorway, the sweet smell of his pipe smoke drifting out and away, his frequent contribution to their dialogue. “Though it’s nice to only make half the supper. I hope I sent them with enough. Still, like as not, they’ll come back with the appetite of a bear.” She knew she sounded like a nattering old woman, but knew a prolonged silence might send him packing off to bed. “You don’t suppose we need to worry about wolves, do you? Those boys, out in the open field.”

  “Not with the dogs,” Gagnon said, pipe clenched between his teeth.

  “What about us? Left here alone without our ferocious guardians? What if a wolf comes here? Or worse?”

  He took the pipe out of his mouth and looked over, matching her humor. “If a wolf comes, I’ll shoot it. If a man? I’ll have him ask you a question and watch him run to get away from the sound of your voice.”

  “I suppose I’ve no need to worry. You’ll be asleep soon, and the sound of your snoring would scare away the fiercest creature.”

  They had perfected this banter, sharp salvos that protected from the tedious questions of the summer. Would they see rain? How long until all crops were lost? How would anyone survive the winter? Such questions invited only hopelessness. Better to light a spark, complaining about those things that brought true comfort. Laurette knew Gagnon was just as content to hear her speak as to sit in silence, and his snores were comforting on the other side of the wall. And now, in the summer, when they slept with windows and doors wide open, the sound snaked into her room as if no walls existed.

  But the wolves? They existed, though not the carnivorous wild dogs of children’s stories. Marcel said once the true wolves were the poor of France, driven from their farms as the crops in their fields grew brown and withered and died. They’d come to live in a world where a day’s work wouldn’t earn enough money for a single loaf of bread. Idleness and gnawing hunger drove men into fruitless actions, abandoning their families in the guise of searching for a better life, only to band with each other in aimless roaming.
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br />   While the boys’ father had taken heed of Gagnon’s warning, other haggard shells of men knew no better. More than once Laurette awoke to the sound of Cossette and Copine, furiously barking in the yard, keeping an animated stack of rags at bay. The dogs would not attack without Gagnon’s command, but no man could know that. The first time Laurette saw them, swelled to nearly twice their size, teeth bared and ears laid low, she feared they’d turned rabid. But Gagnon, with a single word in a stern voice, brought them down, though their eyes remained on our unwanted guests.

  Nobody was ever sent away without water and food—enough for that day and the next. But they could not stay the night, lest one night stretched into two, and they could not cloud the air with anger and accusation.

  “No man can withhold the rain,” he would say when a wanderer cursed our king. “Only the Creator commands creation, and God brings the heat of summer to us all.”

  Such was the path of Laurette’s wandering thoughts, leaving her at a silent fork, where she could wonder if Marcel had become one of those ragged vagabonds, or speculate about Renée’s fortunes. She let the silence linger for a bit more before asking, quite involuntarily, “Do you think . . .” Catching herself, she let the thought drift away with the pipe smoke.

  “Do I think what?”

  She dug in, pitching her voice so he would not think the question purely rhetorical. “Do you think Renée knows anything of our misery?”

  “I didn’t know we were miserable. Our well still has water. Our stream not yet depleted. Rain is not the only means of God’s provision.”

  “But do you think—?”

  “What would give you peace, Laurette? To imagine Renée suffering? To know that she did not escape your misery? Or to imagine her rejoicing in our plight while she lives the luxurious life of the elite? Which of these fantasies would you like me to confirm?”

  Despite the sternness, she sensed no anger in his tone. It was Gagnon’s way, to herd her thoughts the way the dogs directed the sheep, edged with fear, but no real threat.

  “I’ve no fantasies about Renée. I barely think of her at all.”

  “Only every day?”

  So he could read her thoughts as well as herd them. “No more than you, Gagnon.”

  The first of the lambs were old enough to be taken from their mothers. Gagnon had promised several in trade, along with the only two baby goats born that spring. The lambs were due to their neighbors in exchange for being lenient when their land was encroached upon for grazing, and the goats to merchants in town for an agreed-upon line of credit. The bit of money left from the sale of his wool was all but useless in Mouton Blanc. Piles of silver could not be consumed, but a goat meant milk and cheese for a merchant’s family.

  “You’re coming with me,” Gagnon announced.

  Laurette hadn’t been to the market in the center of Mouton Blanc since the opening days of summer, when there was still hope of rain, and while the place had been a shadow of its former self, there were still vendors with heaps of spring vegetables and skeins of brightly-dyed yarn from a long winter’s spinning. So, too, had the open square been populated with wine-soaked visionaries gathered around a man elevated high on a crate in their midst calling for all men to act together in defiance of the aristocracy. That man had, of course, been Marcel, who feigned oblivion to her presence, acknowledging her only when Gagnon’s hand gripped her elbow, tugging her away.

  “Why me?” This would not be a simple walk into town. It meant the handcart, as the journey would be too arduous for the baby goats, and to leave them to themselves would mean a constant chase to return them to the path. Never mind that Gagnon would assuredly handle the cart, and she would only be responsible for carrying her part of the conversation. Much as she longed for even a glimpse of Marcel, she dreaded the idea that her glimpse would not be enough. Worse, that it would go unnoticed. “Take the boys. Let them wrestle to keep the kids in the wagon.”

  “I trust your charm to negotiate a better price.”

  They took the forest road, as the canopy of trees offered some respite from the heat. For long stretches, the only sound was the rumbling of the wheels and the occasional bleats of discontent from the passengers nestled in the hay. Laurette would bleat back, and then speak soft, reassuring words.

  Gagnon teased. “You can speak to a goat but you can’t whistle to a dog?”

  “These poor babies miss their mother. I want to make them feel better for a little while if I can.”

  “Well, be sure to give them a nice kiss good-bye.”

  “I would have liked to have had a final kiss from my mother.” She spoke more to the speckled sky beyond the treetops than to him, and he responded with silence.

  In some ways, she supposed, she was no better than these little goats. At the moment, their world was this cart, rumbling along the road, the sides too high for them to see beyond. By sunset, they would have a new home, and would live out their days as God intended, and die at a butcher’s hand. Powerless.

  “No wonder they see us as animals.” Her building sadness brought the words aloud.

  They’d come to a narrow patch in the road, and Gagnon walked ahead of her. Without pausing, he glanced over his shoulder to ask, “Who sees us as animals?”

  “The elite. The rich, the nobles.”

  He chuckled. “Those are Marcel’s words coming out of your mouth.”

  “I’m capable of my own thoughts,” she snapped. “The Church, too, I think. I’ve yet to meet a hungry priest.”

  “That’s because you don’t go to Mass. Our Father Pietro has no flesh to spare.” He turned around again.

  She ignored his remark. “Look how we live at the mercy of the earth, Gagnon. We eat what animals eat. We share our land and our home with them. We discard our children, let them be taken away without any kind of a fight. How the Cholers left their sons without question. How we traded Renée—”

  “We did not trade Renée.” By now the road was wide enough for Laurette to have come alongside him, but he still did not look at her.

  “You’re right. With a trade, you get something in return. We gave her away and have nothing.”

  Gagnon dropped the cart, sending the little goats tumbling into one another. “And just how would you have liked to be compensated, Laurette?”

  “I just meant—no wonder they don’t see our lives as having any value, because we don’t value them ourselves.”

  “They, they, they.” He wrapped his hands around the cart handles, squared his shoulders, and lifted it again. “More of Marcel. Dividing the world into two parts. Us and them. Rich and poor.”

  She had to trot to keep his pace. “What else is there?”

  “There are good rich men, and bad. There are good poor men, and bad. And even in those camps—the good and the bad—there are gradients.” They’d come to the outlying streets of Mouton Blanc. One of the scattered shacks had been her home, but now was unrecognizable, deteriorated to weathered walls. A few men cast leering glances at Laurette, seeing a young woman in a tattered dress, no different from those eking out a living on the other side of the sagging doors.

  Gagnon stopped again and stepped toward her protectively, taking her face into his hands and drawing close enough to block away the ugliness of their surroundings. “Some poor men murder their wives. Rich men do, too. Some poor men are kind, and I have to believe that there are kind men living in places of power. You must never, Laurette, find your esteem in the eyes of anyone other than our heavenly Father who loves you. The way men determine the value of others means nothing.”

  He drew her closer still, and placed a kiss on her brow, something he’d never done in all their years together. The touch of it was surprisingly cool, given the heat of the day, the weight of the air. The scruff of his whiskers stimulated her skin; the touch of his lips drew every thought from her head to that very spot, galvanizing them into one: This is a kind man.

  The market square of Mouton Blanc looked to have suffered
the same ravages as the surrounding farmland. The line of shops stood with open, empty doors, their signs bleached from months of unrelenting sun. A few carts dotted the empty space, each with half-empty baskets of wilted green things. The loaves in the baker’s window were small, and marked with a price that made Laurette’s blood run as hot as the near-noon sun above.

  “What has happened?” She looked to Gagnon, sincerely expecting a response.

  “Drought has happened,” he said. “But our bones aren’t dry yet. See? That woman, she has beets. When’s the last time we had those at our table?” He slipped a coin in Laurette’s hand. “Go, buy all she has. I’ll make our other trades.”

  Laurette lifted her market basket from the cart and proceeded. The woman with the beets looked like one herself, round and red, with a few long, twisting whiskers growing from her chin. She sniffed at Laurette’s coin, and offered only half her wares for the price.

  “You’re mad,” Laurette said, more shocked than offended. “This is twice what they’re worth.”

  “Won’t buy me a week’s worth of bread,” the woman said. “And for all that I’m better off with my food than your silver.”

  “Robbery,” Laurette muttered, pushing the woman’s hand away and choosing the largest and darkest of the beets. They would make a fine addition to supper, boiled and mashed. The tops she would dice and fry up in salted butter—a treat the boys hadn’t yet had at her table.

  She’d brought with her two small rounds of soft cheese, and wandered the tattered remnants of the market deciding where to make her trade. Perhaps a crock of molasses. Or a cake of sweet-smelling soap from the man whose luxurious wares ensured his poverty. She strolled, barely moving forward, inclining her head and giving deep study to the sparse offerings. Marcel’s words echoed in her head, and she tuned her ear for his voice. There was no crowd today, no stage, no audience. Across the way she saw Gagnon, rid of the goats, engaged in conversation with Monsieur Girard. Both men spoke with furrowed brows, hands cupped to disguise their words. Elianne, Girard’s homely daughter, looked on with an expression of unabashed longing. If Gagnon turned his head, or stepped even an inch closer, he would find himself ensnared.