“There is no need for that. Here take this. Only present it to him if you think he means to come here. Once you show him this letter he will leave her be.”
Suddenly the door flung open and I scrambled to the light at the end of the hallway. A black spider sat in a dusty cobweb between two beams in the wall. The tiny creature would be my salvation.
“What are you doing on the floor Céleste?”
Armande’s father and Sophie loomed over me. She held the baby that she brought last week to Armande for help with her nursing. I thought she must have stashed the letter away in her pocket.
“Observing the spider perched in its web,” I replied, my heart threatening to leave my rib cage.
“Spiders are wise creatures. Did you know they aren’t insects at all but invertebrates?”
Still squatting on the floor, I shook my head at Monsieur Vivant’s question. I took in a long, deep breath down to my toes. The shadows moved away from me into darkness, the echo of voices filling the corridor.
Sophie sat in the drawing room rocking her baby and was smiling from ear to ear. Her eyes looked tired, her skin paler than before.
“I’m here to report on progress with my milk,” she said proudly. Armande wandered in at that moment. She wore a deep blue shawl over her shoulders and held Nathalie in her arms.
“I did just as you instructed Madame Vivant,” she said. “Now he’s the happiest baby in France.” Her grey-blue cloak was open to reveal a lovely green robe the colour of pond moss. That shade made her blonde hair even more dazzling.
“I also began listening like you told me, even though I considered it strange to be so attentive to such a delicate, unknowing creature.”
“Not unknowing Sophie,” Armande corrected her. “All-knowing.”
Sophie looked at her queerly, almost afraid.
“Don’t forget you must be strict about your diet as it influences the quality of your milk. In summertime, eat soft foods like lettuce, spinach, clover flowers and pansies. In winter, eat foods that fix you to the earth—carrots, turnips and yams.”
Maybe this was another reason people claimed her milk made babies more docile. Armande had a gentle way about her, which some said also penetrated the milk.
“That’s a great distance for you to come Sophie, all the way from Les Combes,” I said.
“My father escorted me,” she replied anxiously. “He had some business to do in your village. I’m staying with my mother and father now that my husband is gone.” Her eyes had tears in them. “Last spring and summer my father worked for a seigneur not far from here, and that is who he is visiting. He plowed the land using two of his horses, and helped sow the man’s crops. When he returned to us after the summer, he was sunburned, almost black—the same colour as the earth.” She forced a laugh, her freckled cheeks billowing.
I was desperate to speak to her alone. I did not like going behind Armande’s back, yet I knew her father was being secretive for his daughter’s sake, and it seemed only natural I should do the same. After all, as her father said, it was my job to keep her from harm’s way. She was precious as was her milk. Both needed protecting.
“Why don’t you stay and eat Sophie?” I said to her. “I’m going to make some cheese and honey on bread for Jacques, wherever he’s hiding.” Armande told me he was in the kitchen playing with some pots and pans.
“No, thank you, my father will be along any moment, and we must arrive back before dark.” She stood up, curtseyed and left the drawing room.
“I am worried about Armande,” I told her in a low voice as I walked her to the front door.
“So am I,” she said.
“Oh, why is that?”
The young woman turned away from me, moving a hand in front of her face.
“Some villagers say she’s cursed because she killed her own.” Her lips were pressed together like the painted mouth of a porcelain doll. She hesitated a moment as if she wanted to tell me something more. Then she opened the front door to leave. She seemed honest at heart, yet not cunning like I was. Monsieur Vivant made a big mistake giving a task to Sophie whose only experience of thieves and killers was through fairy tales.
“Wait.” I wanted desperately to get my hands on the letter Armande’s father gave her, yet I could not ask her for it. Then she would know I had eavesdropped on her and Monsieur Vivant.
“I know you are looking out for the wet nurse, as am I. Of course, that’s because she has helped you nurse your baby, and is so kind and gentle to you.” Her eyes lit up.
“Maybe we could work together to protect Armande.”
“Monsieur told me not to tell anyone,” she said timidly. “I have told you too much already.”
“I wouldn’t want you to do anything against Armande’s father. He is a father to me also, and I owe him every bit of my respect.”
“I must go, my father’s waiting for me.”
Sophie’s baby groped the air with his mouth. Then she curtsied awkwardly and was out the door, her darkly clothed shape bobbing amidst a sea of white. I gave chase with no coat or shoes.
“You must let me help you,” I stammered, when I caught up to her. “Armande is in grave danger. You must promise not to tell a single living soul.”
I told her about the lettre de cachet and Armande refusing to go to Versailles and nurse the sickly Dauphin. If I gave to her, she might give back. It was my only chance to learn more from her.
Finally, my words ignited something in the girl. “Come over and see me next Monday.” She was breathless. “I’ll be alone and we can talk then.”
Handkerchief
I SUFFERED A STRING OF DISTURBING nightmares and awoke in a sweat to hear wolves howling. My bedchamber was dark and cold. Jacques was crying to himself as I walked by his room.
“Monsieur is going away.” His face was beet red, his apple-sized cheeks streaming with tears. “No more horsey.”
“Yes, he is leaving.” I set the light on the bedside table. “I can play horsey with you. Why don’t you climb on my back right now and I’ll show you.”
Jacques stood on his bed, a smile widening. He was two-and-a-half years old yet had the strength of a much older child. He jumped up and down and then tucked his nightshirt between his legs. I bent down, my back to him. I grabbed hold of his legs as he climbed on, whinnied like a horse and cantered round and round the cold bedchamber.
“Go horsey, go,” he shouted, taking a clump of my thin hair in each hand. I took some clothes for him before we trotted down the stairs together. With each step my heart sunk as I thought about Armande’s father leaving us. There would be no impromptu lessons about bees, the constellations, the machinelike qualities of the human body or any other scientific facts. He was the first man I knew who did not want something from me.
When I reached the kitchen, Monsieur Vivant was already dressed in his coat. The fire was roaring, the frost on the windows thawing in droplets. He wore a periwig, which he only dusted off for travelling and societal affairs.
I dressed Jacques in his heavy brown trousers with pockets at the sides, and a chemise with long arms and a plain round neck. The first I had fashioned from Armande’s old cloak, and the second out of a hemp scrap left over from a summer curtain.
Monsieur Vivant sat at the table eating porridge, his black felt hat on the table beside him. He raised his head to look at me as I entered the kitchen. “Dear Céleste, I know you will take care of things while I’m away.”
“Yes Monsieur,” I replied, my heart shrinking inside my chest. A chill went up my skirts all the way to my neck as I watched him spoon the thick liquid into his mouth.
“Unlike most young women of her station, Armande had no governess and never went to a convent,” he explained. “She had no mother at her side, yet I raised her as best I could and encouraged her to spend much time in Nature. I have always wo
rried that perhaps I raised her to be too independent. Sometimes when she needs a helping hand she doesn’t ask for it.”
“I understand. I will keep a watchful eye.”
The lines in his forehead disappeared to show I had his confidence.
Moments later Armande came downstairs complaining of a headache. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders. Nathalie still slept upstairs.
The two spoke in solemn tones about her father’s long journey ahead. How many days it would take given the new snow, how the poor horses would be made to plow through it, and where he might stay in the different towns and villages. He had friends throughout the countryside that would feed and lodge him. And if he stopped in a village where he was a stranger, then a peasant family would take him in.
“It would be most grand if I could hire a désobligeant in Grenoble,” he perked up.
“Yes,” replied Armande. “That way you could rest or write and not be obliged to speak to anybody,” she mused. She wore a simple beige dress with black swirls of stitching at the hem and an off-white petticoat.
Monsieur Vivant’s bags lay in a heap at the front door. Bertrand, a neighbour, arrived to accompany him on foot as far as the town of Briançon where he would then hire a coach to the city.
I pushed my feelings down when he hugged me close. I did not know when I would see him again.
“You have never done what you were told,” he scolded his daughter. “You must have learned that from me.” The two laughed and then wept as they held each other tightly. They pulled me into their circle so we were three. Warmth from their bodies filled me head to toe, and it was the first time I really understood the word family.
That afternoon, Armande was busy with Jacques. He had a new set of teeth at the back breaking the skin and was crying and fussing. After trying a few different things that bore no fruit, she consulted Encyclopédie, reading under the words enfants, nourrice, maladies d’enfants for a morsel of wisdom to help her. Yet she only became angry at the tome and those who wrote in it.
“Men of scientific methods using scholarly dissertations that are too stupid or inadequate to ever be applied,” she mumbled then said, “The majority of these reasoners lack common sense and will cure me of reasoning altogether.”
At her wits end, she quit the drawing room, leaving me with the screaming child. Since Monsieur Vivant left that morning she was more quick-tempered. I tried to hold Jacques to still him while I sang his favourite song, yet the child would have none of it. He broke free and headed for the sofa, jumping up and down on the cushions and screaming. I did not have the same skill with children that Armande did. They often squeezed out of my grip, their little mouths wailing and spitting until I delivered them back to Armande. Finally, I managed to lure the boy to the floor to play with some blocks. A few minutes later he said, “My blocks are gone. I lost them all.” He had a dab of brown lentil on his chin from lunch. His forehead was bruised where he bumped it earlier in the day. I reached under the sofa to retrieve the blocks at which point he quieted down and began building a tower.
Armande returned with Madame Le Rebours’ Avis aux Mères qui veulent nourir leurs enfants. Sitting at her escritoire, she flipped through the pages of the book and then read aloud what the good midwife counselled: “Rub whole clove over its gums to deaden the pain, and then rock the baby until it falls to sleep.”
Armande went to the kitchen and came back with cloves. Though Jacques wasn’t happy to have the strong taste of the spice in his mouth, he took what she gave him as per Madame’s instruction. After, she brought him upstairs for a nap and gave him a cold carrot to chew on for the pain. She told the child a good yarn in his bed until his eyes closed.
When all was quiet, she wrote in her notebook. The lantern on her escritoire shook as her pen moved across the page. Maybe she recorded how the child would not even eat applesauce, his favourite, and how he kicked and waved his arms in the air when she tried to give him suck. An occasional treat, now that he was mostly eating solid foods. The flames greedily ate the wood scraps I threw into the pit and then clawed at the only log, partly burned away. Adding a bigger piece of cedar with some small branches attached, I poked the red embers to make it catch.
Now that Armande was busy, and Nathalie and Jacques were napping, it was my chance to go to her father’s library. I had not had a moment to myself all day.
I tugged and pulled at the heavy curtains in the library to open them, then watched as dust particles floated on rays of light. Little glass windowpanes bent the image of a row of still-young cypress trees outside. I lit a lantern, as the winter light was dim outside. I looked around the room half expecting to see Monsieur Vivant correcting proofs for his next pamphlet. Thoughts of his booming voice, of his shining eyes, suddenly warmed me. I opened a drawer of his writing desk. Inside was a collection of ivory carved miniatures from the Orient. A mix-up of limbs, tongues and private parts.Where there was a buttock, there was a hand, a breast here, there a pair of lips. The sinful scene made me blush as it was just like I imagined her father to be with the women he frequented, twisted bodies groping, grunting, eyes gleaming.
On top of his desk were notes about bees’ mating habits and their relationship to flowers. Shortly after erupting from the pupae, the solitary female bee mates with a male counterpart and then carefully assembles a nest of her own making. After filling it with enough pollen for her progeny, she lays her eggs within each of the cells lined with wax, petals or tiny particles of leaf. The mother then leaves the nest, dying shortly after, perhaps while catching the final sip of nectar from her favourite flower. The pages had his initials in each corner and were bent at the edges. Solitary bees are very selective about what flowers they gather pollen from. Most frequent only a few species of flower and it is not apparent whether this is as a result of a preference for one colour of flower over another or whether it is the unique nectar that draws them.
To smell wax and ink on these papers scattered over his writing desk and written in his hand made me feel how much I truly loved him as the father I never had. Yet, not finding any clues linking to his secret exchange with Sophie irritated me.
In a cupboard under the shelves was where Monsieur Vivant kept his writing books and published works, along with odds and ends such as special coloured inks, a gold ring with a red stone. Most of the papers that he did not take with him on his trip he burned for fear they would get into the wrong hands.
While crouching on the library floor to look in the cupboard, something caught my eye. It was a white handkerchief, dusty and smelling of honey and cedar. I shook it until it came clean, and then saw, inscribed in the corner in bright red the initials R.P.
Armande was calling me from the drawing room to fetch her some more dry wood. Quickly placing the handkerchief on the long table by the silver taperstick, I gathered wood from the small pile in the back room, then deposited some in the kitchen and drawing room. I thought the handkerchief must be what Sophie found in the snow and gave to Monsieur Vivant that day when the two met. Deeply ashamed for snooping through his things, I told Armande that I was going to chop wood, and then rushed outside. I didn’t want her to catch the lie on my face, even though I had to admit I was content to have found something.
The grey stone wall circling the village was rough on my fingertips, and ice wet and cooled my skin. Our village was cradled in a valley, more like a saucer than a cup. It was so small and hidden against the mountains and tall trees above it that few people passing on the road from outside would have known it was even there. A shortcut through an old cow patch showed that neither man nor beast had come by there all winter long. When I put my feet down, the ground held onto me. Before placing my leg in front of me again, I had to pull my foot out of the hole every time I took a step. The snow was like feathers on top, broken and hard underneath. My bad leg pained me and grew poorer from walking. It was the leg that broke from the Master whipping
me one time. I went a little further and stopped at a fallen tree. Sap was frozen in the wrinkles of bark, the branches clothed in fresh snow. Soft lumps of white fell on my hair and shoulders from trees overhead. A bird flew away, lighting on the branch of another leafless giant.
Feet steady, I began hacking the tree. Sounds of the axe ripping wood travelled into the still air that entered my mouth, stinging it at the back. The initials R.P., on the handkerchief in red stitching, flashed in my head as I chopped. A brown and white rabbit darted through trees and bushes, scared away by the noise. My body was warm, my hands and feet icy cold. I stopped to catch a breath, made a fist and blew on my fingers to warm them. A booming melody broke the stillness. The sound was coming from a nearby tree. A figure poked its head out and startled me. It was Pierre.
I straightened my chemise pulling the cloth to my neck. He was shorter than me, but with a wider frame. Once his mother asked me to take him for a walk, said he had trouble meeting girls. Probably because he didn’t talk much and was sometimes rough. He reached out and rested a hand on my shoulder. His brown eyes shone, breath from his nose and mouth floating overhead. Before I could stop him, he pushed me to the ground. Not giving him the chance to kick snow in my face, I raised myself partway up, and pulled him on top of me. The two of us laughed as we hit each other. A bird called out as if to scold us for being childish. He looked at me funny and, for a moment, I thought he would kiss me. Instead he stood up and started singing again.
“Take your music elsewhere,” I said.
He squinted and kicked snow at me. His brown hair was tied at the back. It swished to and fro like a horse’s tail.
“I’ve work to do.” I threw snow at him, a soft chunk landing in his eye.
“How is the good wet nurse?” He winked at me and tossed his head.
“Very well, thanks.”
We stood there for a few moments, sensing the forest’s quiet, our breath rising and mixing.
Milk Fever Page 4
