The Seamstress

by Allison Pittman

  Every day during that week in April, Laurette listened to Gagnon giving special instruction to Philippe: how to hold the ewe, to direct the blades, to speak calmly and maintain control while she completed her task of cleaning the wool, trimming out clumps of dirt and other, smellier masses. She tried to pass this task on to Nicolas, but Gagnon laughingly refused.

  “He’s better suited to walking the animals into the barn.”

  “And what does that say of me?” Laurette asked, indignant. “That I’m better suited for snipping around the bottom half of a sheep?”

  “Look at him.” Gagnon pointed with his shears at the mud-speckled boy whose hair grew out as sharp as his bones. “Would you trust him to clean anything?”

  They laughed, and another chip of winter fell away.

  On the day he decided to take his wool into Mouton Blanc, Gagnon left before dawn to go to Girard’s to borrow a cart and horse while Laurette made other preparations for the day’s trade. Flour, of course—though she dreaded what price they’d pay for it. If rumors and all that Marcel railed about proved to be true, that expense alone could take half of Gagnon’s pay. And seeds for her garden, a little sugar if there was any to be had. She’d also have to get word out that they needed to buy or trade for chickens, as their brood had been all but decimated over the winter. There’d be no luxury of clothing or shoes, though she’d see if she could find leather scraps to mend the ones they had. All of this she recorded in her mind, envisioning the market, seeing the booths and storefronts, planning the route she’d take while Gagnon shouted with the others in the weighing house, fighting for his price.

  She’d just given the boys their orders for the day—to air out the tickings from their loft beds and check every fence post in the sheep corral—when the Girards’ cart came into view with two distinct silhouettes on the seat. Gagnon, of course, she recognized, even at a distance with the sun behind obscuring all features. The other she knew only to be a woman, thin and hunched. Elianne.

  “I have my own trading to do,” Elianne said as soon as Gagnon brought the wagon to a stop. “So Papa suggested I go with you.”

  “Did he?” Laurette lifted her hand as a pretense of shielding her eyes but sent Gagnon a hidden look of amusement. “Well, isn’t your father exceedingly logical?”

  “You can tell her what we need and stay here if you like,” Gagnon said. “I know there’s much to do.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll be ready to go as soon as you and the boys load the wagon.”

  Without extending any invitation to Elianne, Laurette took herself inside and went straight to the room she’d reclaimed the morning of the first birdsong. She ripped off the rag tied around her head and ran her fingers through her hair before plaiting it into a single, loose braid. The skirt she wore was the only one that fit around her emaciated frame, but she did have one chemise cleaner than what she currently wore, and the green vest stitched with peacock feathers, though it, too, looked depleted. In the kitchen, she added another few slices of bread to the sack dinner she’d prepared and congratulated herself on her generosity of spirit. There was no way to stretch the cheese.

  They rode with sparse conversation, Elianne in the middle, talking about little more than the relief of the spring and the hope of a better summer. Whenever possible, Laurette offered something tart, at which Gagnon would laugh and Elianne would appear confused.

  At the first sight of Mouton Blanc, however, all three fell into a sober silence. It was one thing to see the dilapidated shacks on the outskirts of town looking all the worse for weathering the winter, but the market center itself looked to have fared no better. Every building appeared a lifeless gray, half the windows boarded up. The few people in the streets wandered with no outward show of purpose. The open market had completely disappeared. Not a single farmer with a single seed. Laurette thought of her garden, the patch of land that was meant to feed them for the summer and the months to follow.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked, more to herself than Gagnon, but he answered anyway.

  “Home. Hungry.”

  The only sign of normal life came at the weighing house, where a few familiar faces gathered at the door.

  “Thank God the king still needs wool,” Gagnon said, “because there’s nobody left here to buy it.”

  Tradition held that no women—not even widows—were allowed into the weighing house, but Laurette had crossed that threshold before and had no qualms about doing so again. The world had changed since the first time Gagnon had left her and Renée as young girls sitting in the back of the wagon, legs dangling, with a sweet bun to eat while they waited. On this day she left Elianne to her own devices and walked beside him until Dubois met them at the door.

  “N’entrez pas.” His looming frame blocked her entrance. “It is men’s business that we do in here.”

  Indeed she could hear the business roaring inside, men’s voices raised, numbers shouted among a host of vulgarities and insults.

  “Go,” Gagnon said, seeming surprised that she’d accompanied him in the first place.

  “Go? Where? There’s nothing—”

  “Wait outside with Elianne.”

  Laurette obeyed, but without any pretense of grace. She huffed past the stranded, bewildered Elianne and straight to the baker’s, recognizable only by the faded signboard hanging above the door. There were no loaves in the window and no enticingly yeasty scent wafting through the open door. The shelves along the back wall were bare and the establishment empty until Madame Ledard came out of the back room, where the ever-burning brick ovens used to make this place a warm haven in winter.

  “We’ve got nothing,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron, though there was clearly no flour to dust away. “The man has journeyed three days out looking for flour, and God help us what the price will be when he finds it. Go home.”

  She turned to leave, but Laurette called out, “Wait. You’re sure you have nothing? Not even a single sweet bun? That maybe you set aside for yourself but you’d take a trade for?”

  Madame Ledard propped her hands on her ample hips. “What have you got to trade?”

  Laurette felt the burn of tears at the back of her throat and forced a weak smile. “Nothing, just like you. But Gagnon’s selling his wool as we speak, and—it’s just, it was a hard winter. And I can’t remember the last time I had anything sweet.”

  To her surprise, Madame Ledard disappeared and came back with a single, small sweet roll and placed it directly in Laurette’s hand. “Do you remember, when you girls were so little, and your maman gone, how I fed you?”

  Laurette nodded, tears still at bay but gathered in her eyes. Any day she and Renée came to the baker’s, there was always a baguette left from the day before. Or a few rolls with scorched bottoms that no one would buy. Or a tart with its top shell smashed and its filling seeping out into the cloth.

  “That’s the worst part about these days, you know?” Madame Ledard went back behind her counter, as if a line of customers stood at the door. “So hard, even to do the smallest Christian duty. It’s bad enough to have nothing to sell, but worse to have so little to give.”

  “Thank you,” Laurette said, pressing her thumb into the brown, crusty top to find it pleasingly soft underneath.

  Madame Ledard held up a hand. “It feels good to give something.”

  Laurette heard the door scrape open behind her, and from the enraptured expression on Madame Ledard’s face, knew immediately who’d entered the store.

  “Any left for me, Tante Belle?”

  “Just one,” she said before scuttling back, leaving Laurette alone with Marcel, seeing him for the first time since he’d disappeared with the birdsong.

  Although only weeks had passed, his hair had grown, or perhaps it only appeared so as dark curls fell beneath a red knit cap, along the corner of one eye and nearly touching his cheek. He remained thin, but the pallor of winter was now a healthier gold, and his eyes were bright. Health—that’s what she sa
w. A man of health and vitality, as rare to see in these early days of spring as in the days of snow.

  Madame Ledard presented him a pastry identical to the one Laurette held. “I gave the other to this young lady.”

  “I can think of no one more deserving. This is the true bread of life, but no sweeter than the hands that made it.”

  Madame Ledard giggled and blushed like she was still the young girl who first came to this shop to work beside the owner’s son. She made a shooing motion with her apron. “Get on, both of you. Go outside and take in this beautiful day. Find some hope to bring back to the rest of us.”

  Marcel thanked her again and opened the door, ushering Laurette out before following. It was he who fell into step with her, though she couldn’t say that she would not have followed him. Their silence fell easier than it should, and when Marcel did speak, it was with a deceptively familiar ease, as if nothing but camaraderie had ever passed between them.

  “Your man is fetching a good price for his wool.”

  “He’s not my man.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “He’s never been my man.”

  Marcel looked at her, his brow disappearing beneath the cap. “Never?”

  “Never.”

  He made a noncommittal noise. “At any rate, he’s brought in the finest quality of anybody today—of any I’ve seen yet. Healthy wool. Healthy sheep.”

  It was obvious he expected some kind of acknowledgment for the feed he provided over the winter, but Laurette would give him none. That was business best left between the two men; she’d brokered nothing.

  “Come have a drink with me, Laurette. I have an open bottle waiting for me at the pub.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Gagnon will be waiting. . . .”

  “He’ll be haggling with Dubois for an hour at least to get even half of what is owed him. Come. One drink, two. Get yourself cheered up for the long ride home.”

  “And what makes you think it will be a long ride?”

  “Because no wagon rides smoothly with three wheels.”

  Laurette dipped her head to hide her smile. When they turned the corner, she spied Elianne on the opposite side of the nearly deserted market, speaking with an older woman—Madame Tournac, as revealed when the woman turned her head to give a peek within her bonnet. She, too, bore the toll of winter, appearing to be able to stand only through her grip on Elianne’s arm. Laurette knew she belonged with them—another woman withered by winter. She should be the third in their conversation, worrying about their gardens and the summer and the rattling cough that seemed to have taken root in their lungs.

  Or she could go with Marcel. What would it be like to sit in an upholstered chair next to a fire burning with somebody else’s fuel? To sip wine and bring some life back to her blood—pink to her cheeks, light to her eyes.

  She never spoke consent; neither did she offer further protest. Instead, she pinched a bite off the pastry and let the sweetness melt on her tongue. A side glance showed that he did the same. And with that shared experience, they walked across the threshold into the semidarkness of Le Cochon Gros.

  As before, Marcel was greeted with a general chorus of raised voices and cups. “Mes frères!” He acknowledged them with a tipping of his cap, bringing to Laurette’s attention how many of them wore the same. Like a poor man’s uniform, for Marcel was the only man not dressed in near rags.

  He took her to his table, where, as promised, a dark bottle sat upright. A boy no older than Nicolas scurried over with a second glass, wiping it with a nearly clean cloth en route. Marcel motioned for her to sit and was about to do the same when the room fell into utter silence, prompting a curse as he looked behind her to the open door.

  Two men walked in. Rather, one man, and a relative giant who had to wait for his companion to enter first, as the breadth of his shoulders would not allow them to walk in side by side. Both were bareheaded, and the taller of the two had a shock of hair as blond as sweet new straw. They were given no greeting and offered none in return. While the smaller took a table, the giant went to the bar and ordered a bottle of wine, his sheer size guaranteeing the keeper’s service.

  “Who are those men?” Laurette asked, instinctively whispering.

  “None of ours.” Marcel pulled his hat low, then took the bread from Laurette’s hand and dropped it in his shirt pocket along with his own. He grabbed the wine bottle by its neck, the two glasses with his fingers, and said, “Follow me,” heading directly for the stairs at the back.

  “Where?”

  “To my room.”

  “I don’t think—”

  He looped an arm around her shoulders and spoke directly into her ear. “Come. If you kick up a fuss, I’ll be a dead man in the morning.”

  She allowed herself to be escorted without further questions up the dark, narrow steps with Marcel close at her back, then through the door indicated with a whisper and a prodding of the wine bottle.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Laurette said as she heard a latch slide behind her.

  “Well, you are. And you’ll stay. For a while at least. Two glasses of wine, yes? And the delightful pastry from Madame Ledard. And then, free as a bird. Free from me, anyway. He’ll no doubt lock you right back into your cage.”

  She heard the wine pour into the glass; then he took her hand and wrapped her fingers around it.

  “To Gagnon,” he said, touching his glass to hers. “Drink. Drink up, and you’ll get your bread.”

  Laurette obeyed, not for the bread, but for the taste of the wine, instantly feeling her nerves settle—a warmth that sparked at the top of her head and spilled until an ensuing dizziness brought her feet to the edge of the narrow bed. Sitting upon it, she found it to be nothing more than an unyielding plank and thin mattress, apparently the source of the sour smell that permeated the room.

  “Why do you hate him?” she asked, taking the bread from his hand. “He’s been good to you.”

  “Why do you love him? He’s done nothing for you.”

  She swallowed, thankful for the time to gather a reply. “I don’t love him.”

  “You shared his bed all winter.”

  “Only so we—he—could give one to you.”

  “Glad I could be of service.”

  The room, lit only by a window thick with beveled glass, was the color of dark ash, and—Laurette expected—just as filthy. It contained nothing but the narrow bed and a rickety table where Marcel set the wine bottle before settling beside her.

  “How long after I left did you leave his bed? Or have you?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Why, of course?”

  “I told you. It was only so you could have a place for the winter. He is a generous man even to his enemy.”

  “And what makes me his enemy?” He refilled his glass. “Because I desire you? Or because you desire me?”

  The wine rushed around his declaration. But then, perhaps the wine inspired it. “Neither.”

  “Exactement. I am his enemy because I desire equality with him. Equality for all of the brotherhood of France, so that nobody can look to their land or their generations for superiority. What are you to him, Laurette?” He took her glass, refilled it, and passed it back. “I’ll tell you what you are. Rien. Nothing. You are nothing. Not his wife, not his daughter. Not his lover. He pays you no wage, so you are not a servant. You are owed no inheritance, and he is too pious to make you his whore.” Laurette gasped at the idea, and he laughed. “Why the shock? At least a whore knows her place. Where is your place?”

  She steeled herself. “With Gagnon.”

  “Beside him? Or beneath him?”

  No amount of steel could withstand such an insult. She threw her glass to the ground, mindless of its shattering, and moved to slap his face, but he tossed his own empty glass onto the mattress and caught her arms, drawing her close. “I know you remember that night, Laurette. You gave yourself to me.”

  “And you tossed m
e straight aside.” A year of shame roiled up from where she’d kept it tamped down.

  “Because of him. That night after the shearing, he treated me like I was some kind of animal. Threatened my life if I came near you. He’s locked you up, Laurette. And he uses his piety as a key.”

  “He saved my life. Took me in.”

  “Like those boys,” he said with derision. “A cozy little family, aren’t you? I saw it this winter. Maman, Papa. Les deux fils. Two sons for which you get all the drudgery of being a mother with none of the comforts of being a wife. You should know such comforts.”

  Laurette fought his kiss at first, tried to pull herself away, but he held her in place, and his lips tasted so sweet—like unfinished wine. Slowly, he loosened his grip, testing her to see if she’d flee. She didn’t. She leaned in, taking his face in her hands, bringing her fingers through his thick curls, knocking the red cap to the ground.

  “Laurette, Laurette . . .” He trailed her name with kisses, across her cheek and down her neck, pulling her closer, his body pushing hers until she felt the mattress against her back.

  “Non.” She pushed against him and felt him smile.

  “I’m sorry. Of course, not here.” He moved away, his only touch a soft holding of her hands. “Come with me, Laurette.”

  She should have repeated non but instead asked, “Where?”

  “To Paris.”

  “Paris. As what, Marcel? Your wife? Your sister? Your lover?” The ugliness of his tirade took hold. “Your whore?”

  “As my equal. As a part of something.”

  “Gagnon would never let me go.”

  “You don’t have to ask him. He doesn’t own you. Besides, I know exactly what he would say.” He straightened his back, appearing taller, and transformed his stature to broaden his shoulders. “Go or stay as you wish, Laurette. It is yours to decide.”