“In any case, they asked for me,” she told him. “Perhaps by staying I am putting you in danger?”
“It is a trap.” Monsieur Vivant leapt up from the sofa. “He knows about my bookselling as I said. Why else would he have addressed the letter to me rather than you?” Monsieur Vivant’s white shirt hung outside his breeches, his tails waving this way and that as he walked on the carpet before the fire.
“My father gave Auguste a book he wrote of libertine tales,” she explained to me. “He thinks that might have caused his dear friend’s arrest, and put my father in their sights once more.”
I already knew about the book in Auguste’s possession as Monsieur Vivant told me the day he received the letter about his imprisonment.
“Yes, they’ve heard about your milk and, yes, the King and Queen want you to nurse the dearly loved and sickly Dauphin, the next in line to be crowned,” he continued. “Yet what is also clear to me on reading this letter is that the King doesn’t know where I am, yet believes you will make his letter known to me. I will then accompany you to Versailles at which point I will be arrested. If you journey on your own they will demand you tell them of my whereabouts. It is possible that they will harm you if you don’t obey their wishes. If we go together, all will be over for me. Yet should you refuse to go, eventually they would come looking for both of us.”
“How can you be so sure they are after you as well?”
“My beloved daughter, remember when I went into hiding for several months and you mistook me for dead. Scoundrels sent by the King set the boat on fire that contained the books I was transporting down the Rhône River. I barely escaped with my life. As it happens, some time ago, Monsieur Taranne invited me to work with him in Paris just like old times. I told him I would give the matter serious consideration. With his connections to foreign publishers and go-betweens coupled with my good judgment about what to print, facility for printing pamphlets and finding authors, we are well-matched business partners. Just imagine that these various facets of our work are several springs, which, as La Mettrie writes, make up the man as machine, and you have the level of solidity and efficiency we embody.”
“You are a very good match,” said Armande. “That does not change the fact that you are the most obstinate man I know.”
“Not quite the most obstinate man.”
“You promised to never speak of him again.” Armande’s voice shrank to a whisper.
My ears perked up. Was her father talking about her estranged husband? I never met him, yet heard from villagers he fled the village saying she was a witch. She changed her name back after he left her. What sort of woman would not take her husband’s name to the grave? Idle gossip was better to ignore.
“Can you ever forgive me? I am feeling the weight of what is before us and was thoughtless.” He took her hand, brushing a hair from her face.
Armande’s shoulders shook as she cried. I set my book to the side and ran over to comfort her.
“You mustn’t go father. Not again,” she said between sobs.
I held her for several moments, her wet cheek on my shoulder. I did not know what to say and so just kept her close to me until she pulled away.
“Now, now my darling daughter—you mean everything to me.” He cupped her face with his hands. “You fear for my safety.”
“There are more of the King’s police roaming the streets in Paris, more chances that you’ll be captured,” she said, her eyes gazing on him with worry and adoration.
Little Jacques came running in at that moment. I quickly set out some blocks for him to play with so he wouldn’t bother Armande. He sat on his heels, throwing a handful of colourful wooden shapes across the floor, then clapping his hands at the ear-splitting sound they made. His hair was messy and he wore one of Armande’s scarves on his head like a turban. A green shiny necklace circled his wrist.
“Please come with me to Paris. And of course Céleste should come too. I can protect you both there.” He looked in my direction. “It is only a matter of time before they start looking for us.”
“They may come for me if they wish father, yet my home is here and this is where I belong.”
“Why is wet nursing your duty?” His tone was anxious. “I did not spend all that time with you in the library reading for you to care for other people’s children.” It was the first time I heard him raise his voice to her in anger.
“You have never understood father,” Armande said to him. “Women seek my counsel and are lost without it. This is where we differ.”
She hurried out of the drawing room, covering her face with her hands.
“Armande has enemies as you well know.” He pointed a finger at me. “Ignorance is rampant here. She must stay out of harm’s way.”
“Yes Monsieur.” I lowered my head, trying with every scrap of my being not to cry.
“Sometimes circumstances force us to stand up for what we know is right, no matter what the outcome. Auguste was a cherished friend.” Two lines etched between his brows. “The other day I was on a jaunt through the forest when the woman who keeps bees passed by. She said something under her breath about my having a devil for a daughter. Peasants are becoming more restless as they have less and less to feed and clothe their children. They imagine things. Weave stories about people that aren’t true. Soon they will be out for blood, not milk.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. His words sliced through me. I saw how some people looked at Armande as though she was a dark force, yet I also saw how villagers warmed to her and held her in high esteem.
“You will take care of my daughter won’t you? See she doesn’t come to any harm?”
“I will, Monsieur,” I told him, not considering for a moment he might really leave us.
“You’re a good girl, Céleste. Nobody is as sturdy and constant as you.” His hair was tied back, a few strands trailing over his eyes. Beads of sweat collected on his brow and above his upper lip.
After supper, Armande and I sat side-by-side on the dormeuse. Her lavender and milk smells filled my nose when she hugged me closed and draped her shawl over my shoulders. She would put sprigs of the plant in her armoire to carry the scent with her throughout the day. The fire was almost out, the last log quickly melting into the embers. Armande’s breath was light and steady. She pressed her body close to mine, a lock of her hair brushing against my cheek. One of my big toes peeked out of a hole in my stocking, and so it was colder than the rest. The drawing room suddenly became dark without the fire. A chill ran over my shoulders and the back of my neck when Armande got up and went to the window.
“Anything that encourages the fires of rebellion is viewed as a danger by those who hold power,” she said. “My father is worried for us should we remain here. He is afraid that, like his friend, he too risks imprisonment, death, or being sent off in chains to row in the galleys.”
Blue curtains surrounded her thin yet solid body on either side. Her gown was deep red like cherries and her chemise billowed at the arms midway down. I thought she could almost be a portrait hanging on a wall. She stood so still, her hair fastened on top of her head with a few locks around her face, just like a proper queen.
With her back to me, she said, “They have finally caught up to us Céleste.”
Stranger
TWO DAYS AFTER MONSIEUR VIVANT received the lettre de cachet, a storm hit our village and a maple tree came crashing down, barely missing the house. I saw this as God’s way of protecting Armande from malevolent forces and from stopping her father leaving us too soon. The wind knocked at the door like a desperate soul needing shelter. I rolled up an old carpet and placed it at the base to staunch the flow of cold air coming in. Monsieur Vivant dug snow from the front door. Then, axe in hand, he began cutting up the fallen tree for firewood. From the drawing room window I watched him hacking into the trunk as he cursed the storm for making him
wait days to leave.
I put on my cloak and dashed outside. Our house had a red door with a letterbox beside it. Snowdrifts were high beside the narrow path and rooftops bent with snow. Like other houses in the village, ours was made of rough stone and sunken into the ground.
“It’s as much as I can muster now,” he said out of breath and pointing to the fresh pile of wood. “More trees fell in the woods during the storm so we’ll have more to cut.” His cheeks were red from the cold, his body wrapped in layers of clothing, and there was a sprinkling of snow on top of his greying hair.
“I’ll chop.” I took the axe from him.
He smiled at me, wiping his sweaty brow. His breath came out of his mouth in large clumps, hitting my face. The axe was hot where he gripped it. A leafless tree waved in the wind, the forest behind it was smudged white.
“As soon as the storm settles, I’ll go,” he told me, then grimaced and said, “Recently, inspecteurs de la librairie at Rouen confiscated copies I ordered from Brussels of Nun in a Bedgown and One Thousand and One Memories for the Comte de Pestels. In Paris my shipments will be less conspicuous. Besides, Monsieur Taranne will arrange everything for me there.”
I tried to smile for his sake yet my face was tight from cold.
He added, “Don’t forget what I told you about protecting Armande.”
In the afternoon the wind died down. Armande’s face showed grief as she stood by the window and watched the sun peeking through clouds. Good weather meant her father would soon go away. From where I sat by the fire, her eyes seemed hollow and her mouth was sunken a little into her face, like those on a mask from a Greek tragedy. There was a picture of one such mask in a book belonging to her father about the history of drama.
I was mending Jacques’ coat and rather than play with his blocks he wanted to help me. He kept saying, “Let me, let me,” and putting his hand on mine as I held the needle. This bothered me no end. I was behind on my mending and he was slowing me down. The collar was coming apart where he previously gnawed and pulled at it and the whole thing was almost off. I slowly pushed the needle into the cloth and pulled it out to show him how, then after a few moments, his attention turned elsewhere.
Monsieur Vivant crouched on the floor arranging his pens and inks. He had different size wooden boxes spread out in front of him. One had a faded label on the side that said sauterelles, and another, papillons. He collected grasshoppers and butterflies but his main love was bees. In his library was a wooden case with many small compartments that housed a hundred or more bees. Some were large and round with yellow and black markings, while others were much smaller, and had perfect wings.
“Céleste, father reminded me of the passages between our neighbours’ houses,” she said perking up.
“You used to clamber around down there as a child,” he said.
“Our cellar has a passageway from it to Bertrand and Nadine’s root cellar, and from there to the wool spinner Madame Jardin,” she told me. “The passage then leads to the Gallants’ house.”
Monsieur Vivant glanced up at me, a box of butterflies in one hand. “It would be too cold to stay for very long. I’ve spoken to these neighbours and they told me they will keep you warm and fed.”
“What if they come looking for us next door?” I asked.
“They will certainly call on the neighbours to trace you,” he told me. “So you’ll have to go between their houses depending on where the danger lies.”
I imagined us scurrying back and forth between the neighbour’s houses like a pair of frightened mice. Strangely though, Monsieur Vivant’s plan made me feel more secure.
“Thank you,” she whispered, clutching the gold pendant around her neck, which held a silhouette portrait of her mother and father. She curled up on the dormeuse, her dark hair streaming down the sides of her face and onto her delicate shoulders.
“We survived far worse,” he said sensing her melancholy. Armande met his gaze. “Remember during the scourge when fever and chills gripped so many helpless souls?” He sat up, crossed his legs, his long shirt covering his knees.
She turned to me and continued her father’s thought: “I comforted neighbours who lay in their beds crying out for God to have mercy on their souls. I applied a cold cloth to their heads, sometimes reading poetry or the Bible, to ease their suffering. Those who lived through the ordeal were badly disfigured.”
I listened to their remembrances and watched Jacques proudly try on the coat I just finished mending for him.
“A villager circulated a story about the scourge that because our village was high in the mountains God was giving us a quicker way to experience Heaven,” said Monsieur Vivant. “Another story went that we were being punished because a few people in the village were secretly involved in a ceremony in which an effigy was made of the King and then burned.”
Armande laughed weakly.
“Do you remember what I said?” he asked her.
“Yes father, you called this talk absurd and told me not to heed words of superstition and fear because reason and science would save us from ignorance, eventually saving us from illness and disease altogether.”
“Sophie was telling me about the cahiers,” I said, eager to join the conversation. “She says a delegate was sent to her village by the King to collect grievances. Everybody from farmers to physicks fought to have their complaints recorded in these Royal cahiers. From what she told me, many are demanding a stop to the abuses of hunting rights.”
“Why should a noble be free to hunt fox and wolf, keep pigeons and rabbits when peasants are punished for pulling a measly fish out of the river that runs through the estate they live on?” Monsieur Vivant stopped arranging his inks and pens on the floor.
“What do you make of this action by the King?” Armande asked.
“This is an astonishing gesture on his part, yet far too late to be of much use,” he said dismissing it with a sweeping hand.
Armande ran upstairs to nurse the crying baby and her father tossed a log on the fire and quit the drawing room. Maybe he was right about it being too late for the King to mend his ways. I never had much faith in men, as most I met were scoundrels, except of course for Monsieur Vivant. Since living with them, I did not go hungry and was genuinely loved yet I had more questions. I called these questions my thoughts. When reading a passage from a great work or after watching an infant drink Armande’s precious milk, something happened to make me wander around in these thoughts as if they were rooms. I asked: What is life? Will I marry? When will I die? Will I ever be happy? Now and then, I imagined they were the rooms of Armande or those of her father. I knew when they were his rooms because I recognized his brown books with gilded spines, his Greek and Roman statues, a favourite chair, heavy and carved with jungle creatures, like the one in his library, a walking stick, an old dressing gown. He often left it hanging on a hook in his bedroom. Her rooms were filled with plants, a red quill dyed from mountain berries, books of poetry, a sleeping baby, a clever baby, and a lock of dark wavy hair—though I cannot say from whose head it was plucked. When he left us would I only be wandering in her rooms or would traces of his presence remain in my mind and body?
Later that afternoon I went into the kitchen to find Armande chopping vegetables for the evening supper. Beside her, windowpanes were painted with hoarfrost in the shape of flowers. Nathalie lay on a blanket on the floor. I picked her up and she made a gurgling sound that told me she was content.
“He really is leaving us,” I said, trying to convince myself it was true.
“He seems determined,” she answered with a deep sigh. She wore a simple ivory robe with thick pleats at the back that brought out her curves, and a top petticoat in dark pink and white.
Jacques was at the table happily playing with an empty inkwell, round like the globe of the world. With book and paper in hand, I sat beside him and turned to a page from my
reading the other day, about Jupiter and its moons as observed by the Tuscan astronomer through his self-made instrument. I began to write down a list of new words I learned—Jupiter, nebulous, Milky Way, orbit, when the front door flew open. A gust of wind entered followed by shrill laughter. I ran out of the kitchen to see who was there when a young woman scurried down the hallway, the puffed up backside of her gown slipping into the library.
She was laughing in that way women do when they want a man to kiss them. At first, I thought Monsieur Vivant was up to his tricks of seducing the ladies. Armande told me, as a young man he was to join the priesthood yet could not keep his nose out from under women’s petticoats. I edged my way along the corridor to the library and heard muffled voices. Furniture scraped across the floor, then more laughter. “Yes, I saw the man you described to me,” said the woman. “The house where he stays is two over from mine in Les Combes. There is little doubt it is he. Look, I found this in the snow by his front door.”
The library door was thick and so I crouched firmly against it. My knees together, petticoat circling me, and my hands cupped to my ear.
“Yes, there is no doubt now, good girl Sophie. He must have dropped it.”
There was more mumbling. It was almost dark in the corridor, only a sliver of day coming in from a small window at the end. Cold crept under my petticoat sending a chill up my back.
“Does he know about her reputation?” Sophie asked.
“Of course, yes he must know. That man makes a habit of knowing everything. I’ve heard he works undercover, spying on hapless citizens in Paris, since leaving the village. Keep watch on him each time he leaves the house. I need to know why he is here. I must leave, as it is no longer safe for me. I am counting on you Sophie. See that he doesn’t come to our home.”
“I will not seduce him Monsieur. You have been very kind to me and I am a poor widow, yet a girl has her virtue to uphold.” Sophie’s voice was feeble.
Milk Fever Page 3
