Intent on rescue, Laurette quickened her steps and sidled next to him, saying, “Don’t the two of you look like quite the conspirators?”
“Some conversations call for softer voices,” Gagnon said, and Elianne heaved a sigh behind him.
“Come!” Girard clapped him on the back. He was a good head taller than Gagnon, and the blow was hard enough for Laurette to wince against it. “A glass of wine before we start our journey home. My name is still good here, I think.”
“Yes, let’s.” Elianne smiled, bringing no improvement to her face as sweat glistened between the range of blemishes on her brow.
“Perhaps one?” Gagnon looked to Laurette as if garnering permission.
“Of course.” She remembered the darkness of Le Cochon Gros, the long tables and loud voices and the court Marcel held in the corner. Girard and Gagnon led the way, the first with his trunk of an arm settled across the other’s shoulders. Laurette and Elianne followed, creating a hodgepodge of a procession. Soon enough, it was obvious Elianne was setting a slower pace, increasing the distance between the men and the girls.
“How is it between you two?” Elianne whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you share his bed?”
Laurette felt a twinge of pity, tempered by amusement. “I share nothing.”
The darkness inside Le Cochon Gros was at first both blinding and paralyzing. She stepped over the threshold, stumbling straight into the center of Gagnon’s back, and stood stock-still as he held her steady. Soon enough, shadows emerged, becoming shapes of men and women in varying shades of gray. Here, as in the market outside, the atmosphere was subdued. No slamming of pewter cups on wooden tables, no shouted challenges to drink another and another. No impassioned gathering around a single voice. No Marcel.
It was Elianne’s hand, thin and moist, that took hers and led her to a bench, and her sour breath in Laurette’s ear asking—something. The question was lost in a rush of blood and thought. She broke away and tugged for Gagnon’s attention.
“I have one more trade to make. The cheese. I thought I might get some molasses for the boys, they’ve worked so hard. I’ll find you outside.”
She couldn’t miss the look of triumph on Elianne’s face, but neither did she care. Outside, once again in the jarring light, she headed straight for the low, long building where she knew she would find Marcel, or nobody. Every spring she came here with Gagnon, their sheep pelts piled high and bound. Every spring she waited outside, as women were strictly forbidden to attend the weighing and the auction. But there’d be no weighing today; the auction house was merely another door for Laurette to open, step inside, and adjust to the darkness.
And to the dust. It floated, carrying a sheep’s worth of wool dancing through the air, illuminated by the sunlight shining through the slats of careless construction. Great hooks hung from the rafters, five in all, each with a half-moon scale and a chain with a swaying platform beneath. Dubois hunkered over one of the platforms, adjusting an iron sphere, then stood to read the scale’s bouncing needle.
Laurette made a small noise, and he turned.
“What do you want?” he said by way of greeting. Then he laughed, picked up the sphere, and moved to another scale. “As if I didn’t know. Let me guess, that curly-headed bastard sired a bastard of his own.”
Laurette felt a new band of sweat soak through her chemise, and her mouth filled with too much of a dusty protest to make a sound. Not that Dubois wanted to hear.
“I reckon it’s been, what? Four, five months since we took our little jaunt out in search of the carriage? Made fools of all of us, he did. And then that runt of a cousin of yours disappears right along with it. You know, I knew her mother, like almost any other man in this godforsaken place. Good a chance as any that she’s mine. But you? You’ve probably got a good idea who’s the papa of your brat. Not that it’ll do you any more good than if you didn’t.”
The chain creaked in protest as he dropped the sphere on the platform, causing the needle to spin so violently Laurette could hear it from behind its glass. She moved her basket to cover her belly, knowing it to be round, yes. But soft, and—to her relief—empty.
“I’m not . . .” She stopped, too ashamed to say the word.
“Well, that’s a blessing anyway,” Dubois said. He rubbed his hand over his graying whiskers, squinting at the needle, willing it to stop. “Because he’s gone.”
“Gone?”
The scale lost its appeal as he turned to her. “You didn’t know?”
“I only know that I haven’t seen him. Where did he go? I assume Paris, like everyone else.”
Dubois shrugged, took a bit of chalk out of his pocket, and wrote something on the dark metal of the hook. “He got a letter. From her, you know?”
“Her?”
He picked up the sphere, went to the next scale, and repeated the process. The answer to Laurette’s own question rang with the weight, her eyes locked on the needle, and her mind screamed in protest of learning what she already knew.
“The girl. That little cousin of yours. Did she not have a letter for you, too?” He laughed again, the sound of it mimicking the rhythm of the needle. “Yes, yes. He comes in one day with this paper. Finest paper any of us have ever seen. And he won’t let us have a look, whether we could read or not, and just says he’s been summoned to the palace. ‘Summoned to the palace.’ Exactly what he says. And then he grabs that silent brute Le Rocher, and they’re gone before supper.”
Laurette said nothing, owed him no explanation, not that he would hear over the sound of his own rusty laughter. Mutely she turned, hearing him laugh even after the door closed behind her. She made her trades without haggling, the expression on her face clearly showing she would not be budged. The very thought of going back into Le Cochon Gros made her cheeks burn even hotter than the afternoon sun, and she lingered in the street, fingering a strand of ribbon on a rag man’s cart until he finally took pity on her and said, “Go on and take it, now that your hands have dirtied it up.” No softness in the kind gesture, but she thanked him sweetly, wrapped it into a coil, and willed Gagnon to find her.
They walked back with the Girards, at least to the point past the woods where their paths diverged.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come to our house for some supper?” Elianne asked. “There’s plenty.”
Laurette bit back the fact that they, too, had plenty, and allowed Gagnon to decline the invitation.
“The boys will be wanting supper, too. We’d best get back to them.”
The foursome said their good-byes and went their separate ways. Once she was sure their friends were out of earshot, Laurette asked Gagnon if he realized Elianne Girard was in love with him.
“Nonsense,” he replied. “Her father and mine were great friends.”
“You haven’t noticed the way she looks at you?”
“How does she look at me?”
“Like she’s hungry.”
“As we all are.”
It was a cryptic reply, and one that would remain so, as nothing in his tone led her to believe he would expound on its meaning. She suspected he was holding back a comparison to her feelings for Marcel and wondered if he’d heard anything about Renée’s letter from the men in Le Cochon Gros. He hadn’t mentioned it, but neither had she, and it gave her an unsettled feeling to think they were walking side by side holding the same secret.
Gagnon was one who could carry on the rest of the journey in companionable silence, but her questions ground upon each other with every step. What did he know? What wasn’t he telling her? And if he knew of Renée’s letter, why would he withhold such a treasure? She had her reasons, wanting to protect his feelings. He might be hurt to know that, given the opportunity, Renée summoned Marcel instead of him. Perhaps he was offering her the same gift, guarding her heart from the man who would run off at the crook of her cousin’s finger.
She should ask, flat out—What did you he
ar of Marcel? But she held off for a few more steps, crafting her question to allay any criticism, and said, “What news did you hear at Le Cochon Gros?”
“Nothing you would find interesting, I’m sure.”
“More of what you and Monsieur Girard were discussing so secretively before you went inside?”
“I don’t wish to spend the remainder of our walk in an argument.”
Our walk. As if they were enjoying a summer stroll rather than trucking home a handcart with a pathetic bundle of beets and a small jar of molasses to speak for an entire day’s trade. “I’ll be good. Quiet and agreeable like Elianne.”
To that, he had no comment. “There was an incident in Saint-Michel—you know the place?”
She did, a village not far—maybe a day’s walk to the east. “What kind of incident?”
“The mayor’s house was burned to the ground, as the mayor and his family slept inside. The whole family killed at the hands of the villagers because they thought he was hoarding their grain, driving up prices.”
“Was he?”
Gagnon looked at her incredulously. “That is your question? If he were, does it justify the murder of his children? People are afraid, and that fear is turning into anger, and that anger is bringing them to unspeakable acts.”
“Do you think anything like that could happen here?” She thought back to the night before Renée left, the anger that fueled Marcel and his friends in their vengeful chase.
“I don’t know. I hope not, as long as cooler heads can prevail. Now Saint-Michel is overrun by the king’s soldiers; people have lost their homes to them. They’ve had to take food out of their children’s mouths to feed healthy men. Those are the consequences of succumbing to anger, Laurette. And it only takes one hothead like Marcel to encourage such an action.”
“Marcel isn’t here.”
“I know.”
She feigned innocence. “Do you know where he is?”
He hesitated long enough for her to wonder if he was formulating the perfect phrasing for his answer. “In Paris, I suppose. Or Versailles. He’ll never be able to plant his seeds of rebellion here. The good men of the village won’t allow it.”
“That’s not why he left.” Her intention to hide the secret folded in her desire to defend him. “He went to find Renée.”
L’épisode 13
Renée
* * *
VERSAILLES
* * *
For the remainder of the summer, the queen has taken up residence at the Petit Trianon, though I’ve yet to understand anything petit about it, other than in comparison to the palace of Versailles with its labyrinth of hallways echoing with the voices of milling strangers. Only those especially invited by the queen are allowed to accompany her on this sojourn. For some reason I have been included in that number. It’s particularly puzzling because in this place, the queen abandons much of her fashion, choosing to wear simple gowns—sometimes spending an entire day in a dressing shift.
“She’s taken to you,” Madame Gisela says with some consternation when I pose the question to her. “Marie has always been partial to pets. You are a pet to her, Renée. Stay loyal and close. Stay interesting, and you’ll have a place always.”
I’m not sure I appreciate being likened to a pet, but the sentiment about the queen is true. Her inner circle, those brought to this sanctuary of gardens and comfort, have been hand-chosen. I have a proper room here, one that I share with three other girls, rather than a spot squeezed in between the dozens of other sewing women. And I’ve been given leave to pursue what I please. She is especially pleased with my execution of a quilted dressing gown—just warm enough for the earliest hours of the summer day, heavy enough to conceal the details of her figure as it is without structuring undergarments. The first I made with a layer of thin wool stitched between silk and cotton, with wide sleeves cut at the elbows. Now she wants more for her responsibilities at the palace. Ones that she can wear to receive guests in the morning before she’s had time to fulfill her beauty regimen.
The sewing room at the Petit Trianon is nothing like that of Versailles. There are only two cutting tables and a single wall shelved with bolts of fabric. But it is mine, completely. The only other woman here in this capacity is a doddering old maid whose hands shake too violently for her to thread a needle or be trusted with scissors of any kind. At the palace, her duties are relegated to pressing down the seams of a completed garment. She is here only as a matter of protocol, because to have me here alone would elevate my status beyond what I’ve earned.
This, I suppose—this paring down of those who serve—is the queen’s way of establishing normalcy in her life. The entire staff numbers fewer than fifty people, and though this château sits on the grounds of Versailles, there is a feeling of being a world away. The gardens here have been allowed to be overgrown and untamed, not groomed into submissive designs. The paths wander without intent. At Versailles, I imagine a bird flying over the gardens would look down and see something that looks like intricate green embroidery. Here at the Petit Trianon, I imagine a bird might think a bit of its own green forest has been uprooted and transplanted, exposed roots and all.
Whenever possible—and the queen is so generous with both the grounds and with time—I come out here. Once again free to wander without my shoes, I let my bare feet linger in the soft grass of the open spaces and tread the smooth stones of the paths. The treetops provide an escape from the sun, and on the rare occasion when a breeze presents itself, they rattle their waxy green leaves in tune. It’s the closest I ever feel to being at home.
I hear that, in years past, the queen amused herself with life-size sculptures of livestock—living out her fantasies of being a poor farm girl. Perhaps that’s another reason she’s drawn to me. I’m the girl she never was. Now I feel like I could just emerge from the other side of the garden and find myself in the grazing field, with Gagnon’s sheep in the distance and Laurette by my side. There are days when I’m tempted to try, when loneliness takes hold and I want to hear a familiar voice telling a common story.
But then I’ll be summoned. Couturière, the queen is not happy with the cut of her gown. Can you fix it? Couturière, the princess wished to have a blue ribbon stitched to her skirt! Come, before she realizes it has been forgotten. Couturière, the queen’s guest so admires your work she wishes to meet you and kiss your nimble fingers.
And I think, how have I come to be so fortunate? Why does God allow me to live and breathe each day doing only what I love, with such ample reward and blessings for the pleasure?
Here, those of us who work in service to the queen gather for a late supper every evening, when the lion’s share of the work is done and she and her guests are engaged in their choice of frivolous pursuits. We’ll have a hearty lamb stew, or a platter made of the cuts of meat not suitable for serving, with loaves of good dark bread and sweet water to drink. We take turns telling stories, though I am more content to listen to theirs rather than share my own. These people, after a lifetime in shadows, know secrets without bounds, and they spare no details. By mid-August I know the deviances of all the great men of France, the nobles and clergy alike, and the part of me that seeks to preserve my life compels me to stay for as long as I am welcome. When the day comes that I am not, I’ll gladly take my needles and thread and return to Gagnon.
It is late in the evening, too hot to retire to my stuffy room, so I am biding time in the garden, lying flat on my back on a bench of stone and studying the stars when I hear someone calling me.
“Couturière! Couturière, are you out here?”
A part of me wants to roll off the bench and hide beneath it until the search is called off. A summons this late often means that I’m being called in for the queen’s amusement. I’ve taught her little dogs to obey some of the whistled commands I used with Cossette and Copine, and while her little mops are far too spoiled and stupid to do any real work, they will sit and roll and dance on their hind legs according t
o my whistle. They will only obey me, and I don’t feel amusing tonight. I am tired and have been drowning in the day’s oppressive heat since rising early in the morning. But two things compel me to sit up and listen. First, this is not the shrill tone of one of the queen’s ladies, too consumed with jealousy of my favor to ever speak with true kindness, let alone deference. This is a man’s voice, and a familiar one at that—one of the queen’s personal guards. Bertrand. Second, he isn’t shouting for me, as is the usual case for my summons. He is whispering, more like an act of warning so as not to startle me upon turning a corner.
“I’m here,” I say, sitting up and straightening my skirt, preparing for him to see me.
He walks through a canopy of vines allowed to grow pell-mell over a trellis, and my breath catches as it does every time I see him. His fair skin stretches like snowy plains along the contours of his smooth face, and his shoulders are half as wide as I am tall. Among those assigned to guard the queen, he is the most physically impressive and, surprisingly, the youngest. Unsavory rumors decree that he was chosen for those attributes, and that his duties extend far beyond merely keeping the queen safe as she sleeps in her bedchamber. But I know that not to be true, just as I know none of the rumors about our queen having unnatural appetites are true. And if Bertrand is aware of his role in such lies, he bears the weight in silence.
“There you are,” he says. “I knew I would find you here.”
I can’t imagine that he even knows who I am. We’ve never spoken before, though I’ve spent my fair share of time glancing at him over my needlework as he stands guard at the entrance to the queen’s apartments. I don’t know the color of his eyes, as I’ve never seen him up close. Now it’s too dark to make a determination, but the fairness of his skin leads me to believe that they are blue, and the moonlight reveals that his lashes are as pale as the hair on his head, giving him a ghostly appearance that I choose to explain the bubble of fear in the pit of my stomach.
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